RACE AND LIFE ON ENGLISH SOIL.1

BY BENJAMIN WARD RICHARDSON, M.D., F.R.S.

HE theme, long since cast in my mind and every day before it, on which, to-night, I would discourse, shall be of the races of men on our English soil; these races in relation to their mental and physical life and its probable future, in so far as that future may be inferred from the past and present.

If I can handle the theme to your satisfaction I shall be more than content, for at this moment, in the history of the little planet on which we dwell, the question of race is the question of the human history of the planet in respect to its social progression. The races form the frictional surfaces by which, in natural collision, the knowledge and wisdom which make life worth having are struck out. The fire of the soul is lighted by the contact of race with race. If all the earth were inhabited by one people of one race, having the same tastes, the same hopes, the same desires, the same traditions, the same colour, the same arts, the same literature, the same tongue, it were, I believe, physiologically impossible that such a race could long exist. It would exhibit, soon, a craving for one object and that signifies decay; for the ordinance of nature is that desire shall always be kept under the dominion of necessity.

No finer example, no grander poem of life was ever set in illustration of this ordinance than the tradition of the Tower that was to scale the skies. A race set itself one task. It craved to know the unknowable. In its self-willed ignorance it said, as a child might say: this blue canopy over our heads with the lights set in it, lights which, many though they be, we might count up if we tried, this blue canopy is the veil, thin perchance as a cloud could we pierce it, which hides from our sight the Heaven of Heavens, and shuts us out its precincts. Our mountains seem to approach it; it is not so high that it may not be approached. Let us build a tower whose top shall reach into it!

What labour they who thus presumed threw into their work who shall tell? What self-sacrifice they underwent, danger, privation, hope deferred, who shall tell? And the end was that the Heavens remained as serenely blue as ever, as unscathed as ever, as far off as ever; while the men, made helplessly mad with their own conceit, talked madmen's gibberish so that they understood not what was

'Inaugural Address delivered before the Cymmrodorion Section of the National Eisteddfod, held at Denbigh on August 21, 1882. Sir Robert Cunliffe, M.P., in the chair.

meant when they spoke to each other, but dispersed like the vision they had created.

It is the same with some men in this day as with the men of Babel. He who craves is mad; he lives to himself; he lives for himself; he learns a manner of thought and sentiment and desire and expression which does not fit in with the general life. Thus he falls out of the ranks, or dies, or becomes an inmate of one of our great modern temples of confusion of tongues, our asylums for the insane, our Babels.

Nature, never altering her ordinations, provides these corrections, or, more strictly speaking, permits no divergence from her own course. Here is man, by virtue of a special ingenuity in construction and communication, master of all created life on the earth. But take from him that special power, or let him take it from himself, and he were amongst the feeblest of animals, the prey of a thousand; so much their prey they might quickly tread the earth free of him and his control. Liberate our Babels; leave their inmates free and alone on the face of the earth, and where in the course of a century were such men of the earth? They would fight for a time the men of their time; they would kill and be killed, and to the untamed brutes would fall a ready feast.

To prevent these catastrophes nature provides races of men, varieties that keep the universal man alive in mental health and mental strength. By the very force with which she endows races to preserve their own individuality she maintains the genus man amongst the beasts. If the races of men commingle they come back to their original type, or make temporarily, in the commingling, a nation or people as distinct in its elements as the original from which each element was derived.

In London, mixture of the world, we see the commingling of the races in the most systematic form. For the moment, that wonderful city is the centre of the planet in representation of human life. In Wales, in a Welsh district, in a Welsh town we see race in its purer and individual type. In London we see the effect of the commingling. In such a province as this in which we now are we see the effect of the separation. To casual observation the two pictures appear diverse enough. To faithful analytical observation they are the same, showing the same natural lines, the same harmony of result.

I have for my part learned these racial distinctions and comminglings so carefully that I can distinguish them in the crowded city as distinctly as in the county or province. I will tell you first the way in which I learned this lesson. I will then narrate or distinguish the racial characteristics which lie at the foundation of our modern society.

For fourteen years of my life it was my duty, twice a week, to attend at one, and for a time at two, of those public institutions called medical charities. The seats of my labours were in the eastern and east central portions of the great city, and the scenes of

my labours were in the outdoor departments of medical practice. I sat at a table in a small room, and one by one, in line, the sick passed before me to be prescribed for. During the first two or three years my mind was chiefly directed to the details of the physician's skill, and all who came before me were to me the same; they were so many sick coming to be treated for their maladies. In course of time the labour became monotonous to a degree I can hardly explain. The description of ailment was often a mere repetition, told and retold fifty, nay a hundred, times at one sitting; the sight was that of one or two hundred faces traversing from entrance to exit door; the art was that of prescribing, which from constant habit became almost a stereotyped act. You may imagine the monotony.

By-and-by a new light began to break on me. I got an insight into what we physicians, from the days of Hippocrates to these days, call temperaments. Those people passing before me were, in by far the greater number of instances, so-called English or British people, but yet they were exceedingly different the one from the other. They were different in look, in the manner in which they bore and described themselves, in the mode in which they explained their diseases. The character of their diseases was modified by their peculiar condition and tendency, and the mental, if not the physical, course of treatment admitted of being changed to suit variety of taste, disposition, and habit.

I found further, as I began to discriminate, or, if I may use the term, differentiate, that there was a marked difference in them as to the mode in which they accepted and appreciated what was done for them, and as to the amount of faith or confidence which they had for the doer and the doing. On these points they moved in groups perfectly distinct. I noticed, further, special differences in different sets as to their own expectations, hopes, desires, fears. Some were pessimists always, others were optimists, others neutral or passive; but all in groups which, in time, became easily definable. My ear, too, caught in their voices distinctions and peculiarities which soon classified into order, so that by the voice and mode of using it I could usually tell, though I did not look at him, the natural group to which the speaker belonged.

But that which struck me as the strangest thing of all was that the groups into which I was able to divide these people began to be declared to me by the names of the persons who formed each group. At first when this dawned upon me I could not believe it to be more than a fancy, and I began to question myself whether I was not letting a mere hypothesis draw me into the net of false inference. That I might avoid this risk I pursued a systematic plan of inquiry.

I made a list of groups based on the peculiarities of types which I had recognised, and I marked these by a number,-group one, two, and three, and so on. Then I requested that all new persons who were shown in to me, each of whom would be quite a stranger, should be announced by name before I saw them. If, then, it were a male

or a spinster who was announced, for married women were of course out of court since they bore their husband's name, I placed the name under the group to which I believed it to belong. When I had got a goodly list of names arranged in this way I reckoned up the results, and found that I was correct within five to six per cent.

In this way I got naturally and plainly in my mind certain special characteristics which were detectable and recognisable by name, and, having obtained this clue from my medical observations in the first instance, I began to follow it up and to trace it out in all with whom I might come into contact in business, in pleasure, in travel, in practice, in times of solemnest moment and danger and death.

For over a quarter of a century I have pursued these observations, studying the racial differences, first from their primitive position or stock, and next from the admixtures of these in what may be called specimens of mixed races.

As it will be necessary, for the sake of the inferences and suggestions I shall have to draw in the sequel, to present a clear view of the races of men to which reference will be made, I propose in the first instance, with your kind permission, to submit a picture or outline of each different race in its primitive type, and of some of the more important classes springing from combinations of the original or primitive stock.

THE RACES.

I. The representatives of the first race to which I would direct your attention are persons of fair complexion, with light flaxen or brown hair, not very abundant in quantity, and blue or grey eyes. The head is large, massive, round; the supporting neck short and strong. The features heavy, but not, of necessity, dull. The aspect either very friendly, cheerful, and open, or stolid, determined, cold, or even scowling. The body of heavy build and medium height, rarely very tall. The shoulders broad. The voice clear and resonant; the words comparatively few, usually to the point, and in disease plaintive without being complaining.

In disposition these persons are not much distressed about their future and not peculiarly thrifty, but they are truthful and singularly trustful and confiding. I observed from week to week, and even month to month, that whatever might be the cause of their illness, when they were ill they rarely change their course towards their physician, nor think of change. They do not lavish praise on his skill, but they rest on it satisfied not to seek other assistance. To everyone else they have the same tendency. Affectionate in an cxtreme degree to those closely allied to them by ties of blood, they show little sympathy with persons outside their own circle. They do not meddle with other people's affairs, nor pry into them. For this same reason they allow no one to meddle or pry into their affairs. They are not specially attached to any particular place, but are ready

to travel and settle down anywhere and make a home. That home, once made, is like a sacred grove, into which no intruding foot is welcome without invitation. The Englishman's house is his castle' is especially their motto.

They enjoy looking at works of art, listen with pleasure to music and laugh at sallies of wit and humour and sarcasm with a ring of laughter round, full, hearty, and good to hear. They are themselves not deficient in rude wit, humour, sally; yet they fail to excel in the refined arts and occupations. By nature they are workers with the hands at hard, steady, exact, pioneering work. The men are powerful in handicrafts; giants in physical labour. The women aз housewives and as labourers in domestic work are orderly, slow, clean, conservative, but not particularly economical. Amongst the industrial classes many of the women work at handicrafts: at the knitting-frame in the stocking districts, at the loom in the factory, in the field and the garden in agricultural places.

The tone of mind of this class of English people, in relation to subjects of solemnest interest, and during states of life when those subjects assume the solemnest impressions, is singularly characteristic. It is marked by staid and stolid disposition. They are, as a rule, Protestant in their religion, unswerving in the path they have chosen, if they have chosen any, and choosing mostly that form that is simplest and broadest. To them gorgeous ceremonial is a mere sight or wonder, it never touches them; nor are they enthusiasts in matters of religious controversy, except when they are roused to tear down what they dislike; then they may be terrible in their earnestness, sparing nothing, however classical, precious, or beautiful. Their natural tendency is towards what some call 'fatalism,' or to that form of belief which has been dignified by the name of 'necessitarianism.' They are a practical family even in these concerns. They cannot interfere with what is to be; if they could, they would not; to obey their call is enough. The results lie in the hands of the higher Power. Thus they resign themselves to die with astounding equanimity, and, when they or those who are nearest to them are out of reasonable hope, they are the first to request that the dying be let alone, tormented by no vain endeavour to prolong a life at the close of its earthly course. Owing to this endurance and freedom from brooding over the future, some of them show great tenacity of life; have many lives.

Connected with this same tone of mind they have ordinarily a singular freedom from sense of danger, a freedom indeed which to keener and more timorous or sensitive constitutions savours of obtuseness. It is not bravado. It is a natural absence of fear, and is accompanied with what may truly be called an absence of sympathy with fear and with all kinds of pain. Hence the members of this family easily become mechanically perfect in moments of danger, and thorough to the end in what they have then to do. This faculty makes them invincible in contest, and sometimes detestable in