Man and culture / by Clark Wissler.

  • Wissler, Clark, 1870-1947.
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Man and culture / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    367/392 (page 351)
    tional characteristics, for information upon which the reader should turn to the appropriate literature, the point of present interest to us being that this Nordic stock is the producer of Euro-American culture. Further, the spread of Euro-American culture has been greatly accelerated by colonization and missionary efforts, and these, being world-wide, brought the Nordic peoples into contact with every variety of culture and race. It is therefore inevitable that attention should be given to the significance of blood and that the defense and promotion of Euro-American culture should be looked upon as also a conservation of the Nordic stock. So in recent years the menace of over-population has greatly stimulated thought along this line, because as a matter of self-preservation the Nordics must maintain a position of relative weight in numbers. As we have remarked once before, all such questions develop passion¬ ate controversies and so it is that the real issue seems to be be-clouded by quarrels among the Nordics them¬ selves as to whether it is English, Scandinavian, or Teuton, or some other variety of the stock that is most responsible for the resulting culture, and so most de¬ serving of preservation. Yet this is but a family quarrel for as to the desirability of conserving the native stock there is general unanimity among all Nordics. How¬ ever, it is not our present purpose to offer advice as to how to achieve ends considered desirable, but to analyze them so as to see them for what they are. Yet to get before us the setting of the race conservation problem we must briefly review the place of the Nordics among mankind. One’s position on subjects of this kind will depend upon his conception of race, a term with whose short¬ comings we are now familiar. It is one of those con¬ venient words in our language like instinct, mind, society, etc., the import of which we are certain of until we stop