[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
In extending the general law of conjugal conation to the Seri, it is found peculiarly applicable, in view of their distinctive marriage custom, the effect of which is to intensify conjugal sentiments, with the attendant magnification, and potential if not actual incarnation, of ideals.[256] Accordingly there would appear to be a harmony between Seri race-sense and Seri race-type no less delicate than that between the stressful action and the stress-shaped structures of the tribe, and while the inception of both type and feeling may be ascribed to the isolated environment, it seems manifest that both have interacted constructively and in cumulative fashion through a significant process exemplified more clearly by this tribe than by others thus far studied. At the same time, analysis of the harmony between type and sentiment indicates that the lowly Seri are actually, albeit unconsciously, carrying out a meaningful experiment in stirpiculture—an experiment whose methods and results are equally valuable to students. The Seri gymnastic and the Seri stirpiculture are in close accord, in that both are conditioned by initially dilatory yet ultimately intense action; the results are equally accordant in that the one conduces toward individual vigor and the other toward a vigorous and distinctive stirp; while the excellence of the methods (viewed from the somatic standpoint) is attested by the magnificence of the product. Now, comparison of the stirpicultured Seri with contemporary tribes shows that the desert-bound folk have attained unequaled somatic development, and suggests that the intuitive stirpicultural processes have been rendered peculiarly effective through the persistence of that tribal isolation in which the processes apparently took rise; so the race-sense of the Seri may be regarded as the product of long-continued stirpicultural processes, initially shaped by environment, yet developed to unusual degree by somatico-social habits, kept alive largely through continuous environmental interaction.
[256] The law of conjugal conation was indeed suggested by observations on the peculiar marriage custom and peculiarly developed race-sense of the Seri tribe, and it has already been applied in certain of its aspects as an explanation of the initial humanization of mankind (The Trend of Human Progress, American Anthropologist, new series, vol. 1, 1889, pp. 415-418).