ent. The governing caste may, as Reibmayr says,
favor the growth of culture, but it is usually the culture of that
caste, and not of the people at large. The ruling caste is usually the
result of selection of the strongest and ablest, but after it becomes
a caste, the individuals are selected on account of hereditary social
position and not primarily on account of ability. Now biological
experiments show that although artificial selection may be carried to
a point where animals will breed true to a characteristic to within 90
per cent, yet if selection is stopped, and the descendants of the
selected individuals are allowed to breed freely among themselves,
they will in a very few generations revert to the original type. This
is what happens in a social caste, unless, as in the case of the
English aristocracy, it is continually renewed by selection of the
ablest of the other classes.

The superposition and crossing of cultures, the development of
secondary civilization, is necessary to social evolution in its
broadest sense, and this usually involves crossing of blood as well as
crossing of cultures. As a result of the unprecedented migrations of
the last half-century we have in the United States the greatest
variety of social types ever brought so closely together. An
opportunity is offered either for the perpetuation of each racial type
by inbreeding, with the prospect of an indefinite stratification of
society, or for the amalgamation of all cultural and racial elements
into a homogeneous whole, and the development of a race more versatile
and adaptable than any the world has yet known. The general tendency
will undoubtedly be toward amalgamation, but there are decided
tendencies in the other direction, as for instance in the "first
families of Virginia," and in that large element of the New England
population which prides itself upon its exclusively Puritan ancestry,
and which has inherited from its progenitors that intolerance which
characterized the early settlers of New England more than the pioneers
of the other colonies. The dynamic forces of modern civilization are,
however, opposed to caste--the West has long ago obliterated the
distinction between the Pennsylvania German and the Puritan, the
Scotch-Irish and the Knickerbocker Dutch. These same dynamic forces,
which have prevented the formation of caste have at the same time been
diminishing the percentage of consanguineous marriage and will
undoubtedly conti