hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism
seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth; witness the
strident self-assertion of the newly-constituted little nations in
Europe, and the cult of "Nationalism" in South Africa to-day. It is
natural for birds of feather to flock together and screech together, and
in the same way throughout mankind particular groups of people tend
naturally to keep together and to marry among themselves separately from
the rest of the community by which they happen to be surrounded, and
this ethnic instinct, if so it may be called, is seen to operate even
where, as among the Italian immigrants in America, there is no great
racial difference between them and the Native-born inhabitants, and,
much more markedly, in the Southern States of America where, according
to a recent observer, the present tendency is not towards but away from
miscegenation, so that the ultimate blending of colour is not likely to
take place there in the course of nature.[23]

The normal Native man does not hanker after white women, and the normal
Native woman is not, as a rule, anxious to mate with a white man, but
this normal disposition is apt to be disturbed by the familiarity which
is bred by the close contact that occurs in towns and other centres. It
is not, therefore, safe to deny the possibility that with advancing
industrialism in congested areas there will be some white women ready to
marry or cohabit with Native men who are either in positions of relative
superiority or in possession of more money than their white
fellow-workers or neighbours, making it possible for them to outbid
these in the providing of comparative ease and luxury, which things have
always appealed strongly to women of all races. Yet I think that those
who prophesy the speedy merging of the two races in South Africa do not
give sufficient weight to the fact of the collective consciousness of a
racial entity which, being strongly established in the European section,
is also being fostered and increased in the Natives by the civilisation
which is now spreading among them, so that it seems reasonable to expect
that the European aversion from racial blending will be reciprocated
from the Native side more and more as time goes on, and that this
reciprocal feeling will go far towards keeping the two races
biologically intact. I think, therefore, that despite the conditions
that conduce to miscegenation, the factor of the growing and