THE NATURE AND SCOPE
nationality in the nineteenth century has been colored at least by this feeling of a special worth or importance in ourselves as contrasted with others, a feeling, we must not forget, which the Negro, Hindu, and Chinaman shares with the most progressive of Europeans.
Once entertained, the idea that there have been certain unique races in the past, and that there is one such race in the present, yields itself readily to interested elaboration. So the Hegelian theory has been replaced, on further consideration, by the view which sees all human advancement as the varied expression of the power and genius, not of the Absolute, but of the Aryan race; and while this conception permitted, at first, of a fairly generous interpretation, a more thorough application has restricted the definition of: the conquering race to the dolichocephalic (or longheaded) blonds from northern Europe. Wherever this race has penetrated, there, it would appear, the surrounding peoples have been subjugated, and there prosperity and a great civilization have sprung up. So complete is this clue, indeed, that any manifestation of genius, whether in Palestine, Greece, Italy, or Germany, becomes an unequivocal proof of the presence of, at least,
[7]
