Political Extremes · State Ideology

The Passing of the Great Race

by Madison Grant

Published in 1916 by Madison Grant, a New York lawyer and conservationist, this book divides Europeans into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean races, asserts Nordic superiority, and argues that immigration and intermarriage were destroying American stock. It recommends immigration restriction and eugenic measures including sterilisation. Its claims have no scientific standing: the racial typology it relies on was abandoned by anthropology, and its central assertions are false. The book matters as evidence rather than as argument — it was influential in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, was cited approvingly in American eugenic sterilisation campaigns, and was praised in a letter from Adolf Hitler. It is held here as a primary source in the history of scientific racism and immigration policy. Preservation is not endorsement.

Period

1916

Region

United States

Language

English

Rights

Public domain — first published 1916; copyright has expired. Project Gutenberg eBook #68185.

Source

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68185/pg68185.txt

Full text

THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE OR THE RACIAL BASIS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

BY

MADISON GRANT

CHAIRMAN, NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY; TRUSTEE, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY; COUNCILOR, AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

_FOURTH REVISED EDITION WITH A DOCUMENTARY SUPPLEMENT_

WITH PREFACES BY HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1923

COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1918, 1921, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Printed in the United States of America

Published October, 1916 Reprinted December, 1916

NEW AND REVISED EDITION Published March, 1918 Reprinted March, 1919

THIRD EDITION, REVISED Published May, 1920

FOURTH EDITION, REVISED Published August, 1921 Reprinted February, July, 1922 February, September, 1923

[Illustration]

To MY FATHER

PREFACE

European history has been written in terms of nationality and of language, but never before in terms of race; yet race has played a far larger part than either language or nationality in moulding the destinies of men; race implies heredity and heredity implies all the moral, social and intellectual characteristics and traits which are the springs of politics and government.

Quite independently and unconsciously the author, never before a historian, has turned this historical sketch into the current of a great biological movement, which may be traced back to the teachings of Galton and Weismann, beginning in the last third of the nineteenth century. This movement has compelled us to recognize the superior force and stability of heredity, as being more enduring and potent than environment. This movement is also a reaction from the teachings of Hippolyte Taine among historians and of Herbert Spencer among biologists, because it proves that environment and in the case of man, education, have an immediate, apparent and temporary influence, while heredity has a deep, subtle and permanent influence on the actions of men.

Thus the racial history of Europe, which forms the author’s main outline and subject and which is wholly original in treatment, might be paraphrased as the heredity history of Europe. It is history as influenced by the hereditary impulses, predispositions and tendencies which, as highly distinctive racial traits, date back many thousands of years and were originally formed when man was still in the tribal state, long before the advent of civilization.

In the author’s opening chapters these traits and tendencies are commented upon as they are observed to-day under the varying influences of migration and changes of social and physical environment. In the chapters relating to the racial history of Europe we enter a new and fascinating field of study, which I trust the author himself may some day expand into a longer story. There is no gainsaying that this is the correct scientific method of approaching the problem of the past.

The moral tendency of the heredity interpretation of history is for our day and generation and is in strong accord with the true spirit of the modern eugenics movement in relation to patriotism, namely, the conservation and multiplication for our country of the best spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical forces of heredity; thus only will the integrity of our institutions be maintained in the future. These divine forces are more or less sporadically distributed in all races, some of them are found in what we call the lowest races, some are scattered widely throughout humanity, but they are certainly more widely and uniformly distributed in some races than in others.

Thus conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country, of a true sentiment which is based upon knowledge and the lessons of history rather than upon the sentimentalism which is fostered by ignorance. If I were asked: What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic to-day? I would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our people of those hereditary traits through which the principles of our religious, political and social foundations were laid down and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble character.

HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN.

July 13, 1916.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

History is repeating itself in America at the present time and incidentally is giving a convincing demonstration of the central thought in this volume, namely, that heredity and racial predisposition are stronger and more stable than environment and education.

Whatever may be its intellectual, its literary, its artistic or its musical aptitudes, as compared with other races, the Anglo-Saxon branch of the Nordic race is again showing itself to be that upon which the nation must chiefly depend for leadership, for courage, for loyalty, for unity and harmony of action, for self-sacrifice and devotion to an ideal. Not that members of other races are not doing their part, many of them are, but in no other human stock which has come to this country is there displayed the unanimity of heart, mind and action which is now being displayed by the descendants of the blue eyed, fair-haired peoples of the north of Europe. In a recent journey in northern California and Oregon I noted that, in the faces of the regiments which were first to leave for the city of New York and later that, in the wonderful array of young men at Plattsburg, the Anglo-Saxon type was clearly dominant over every other and the purest members of this type largely outnumbered the others. In northern California I saw a great regiment detrain and with one or two exceptions they were all native Americans, descendants of the English, Scotch and north of Ireland men who founded the State of Oregon in the first half of the nineteenth century. At Plattsburg fair hair and blue eyes were very noticeable, much more so than in any ordinary crowds of American collegians as seen assembled in our universities.

It should be remembered also that many of the dark-haired, dark-eyed youths of Plattsburg and other volunteer training camps are often three-fourths or seven-eighths Nordic, because it only requires a single dark-eyed ancestor to lend the dark hair and eye color to an otherwise pure Nordic strain. There is a clear differentiation between the original Nordic, the Alpine and the Mediterranean strains; but where physical characters and characteristics are partly combined in a mosaic, and to a less degree are blended, it requires long experience to judge which strain dominates.

With a race having these predispositions, extending back to the very beginnings of European history, there is no hesitation or even waiting for conscription and the sad thought was continually in my mind in California, in Oregon and in Plattsburg that again this race was passing, that this war will take a very heavy toll of this strain of Anglo-Saxon life which has played so large a part in American history.

War is in the highest sense dysgenic rather than eugenic. It is destructive of the best strains, spiritually, morally and physically. For the world’s future the destruction of wealth is a small matter compared with the destruction of the best human strains, for wealth can be renewed while these strains of the real human aristocracy once lost are lost forever. In the new world that we are working and fighting for, the world of liberty, of justice and of humanity, we shall save democracy only when democracy discovers its own aristocracy as in the days when our Republic was founded.

HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN.

December, 1917.

CONTENTS

_PART I_ RACE, LANGUAGE AND NATIONALITY PAGE I. RACE AND DEMOCRACY 3 II. THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF RACE 13 III. RACE AND HABITAT 37 IV. THE COMPETITION OF RACES 46 V. RACE, LANGUAGE AND NATIONALITY 56 VI. RACE AND LANGUAGE 69 VII. THE EUROPEAN RACES IN COLONIES 76

_PART II_ EUROPEAN RACES IN HISTORY I. EOLITHIC MAN 97 II. PALEOLITHIC MAN 104 III. THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES 119 IV. THE ALPINE RACE 134 V. THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE 148 VI. THE NORDIC RACE 167 VII. TEUTONIC EUROPE 179 VIII. THE EXPANSION OF THE NORDICS 188 IX. THE NORDIC FATHERLAND 213 X. THE NORDIC RACE OUTSIDE OF EUROPE 223 XI. RACIAL APTITUDES 226 XII. ARYA 233 XIII. ORIGIN OF THE ARYAN LANGUAGES 242 XIV. THE ARYAN LANGUAGE IN ASIA 253

APPENDIX WITH COLORED MAPS 265 DOCUMENTARY SUPPLEMENT 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY 415 INDEX 445

CHARTS AND MAPS

CHARTS CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE _Pages_ 132–133

CLASSIFICATION OF THE RACES OF EUROPE _Facing page_ 123

PROVISIONAL OUTLINE OF NORDIC INVASIONS AND METAL CULTURES _Facing page_ 191

MAPS MAXIMUM EXPANSION OF ALPINES WITH BRONZE CULTURE, 3000–1800 B. C. _Facing page_ 266

EXPANSION OF THE PRE-TEUTONIC NORDICS, 1800–100 B. C. _Facing page_ 268

EXPANSION OF THE TEUTONIC NORDICS AND SLAVIC ALPINES, 100 B. C.–1100 A. D. _Facing page_ 270

PRESENT DISTRIBUTION OF EUROPEAN RACES _Facing page_ 272

INTRODUCTION

The following pages are devoted to an attempt to elucidate the meaning of history in terms of race; that is, by the physical and psychical characters of the inhabitants of Europe instead of by their political grouping or by their spoken language. Practically all historians, while using the word race, have relied on tribal or national names as its sole definition. The ancients, like the moderns, in determining ethnical origin did not look beyond a man’s name, language or country and the actual information furnished by classic literature on the subject of physical characters is limited to a few scattered and often obscure remarks.

Modern anthropology has demonstrated that racial lines are not only absolutely independent of both national and linguistic groupings, but that in many cases these racial lines cut through them at sharp angles and correspond closely with the divisions of social cleavage. The great lesson of the science of race is the immutability of somatological or bodily characters, with which is closely associated the immutability of psychical predispositions and impulses. This continuity of inheritance has a most important bearing on the theory of democracy and still more upon that of socialism, for it naturally tends to reduce the relative importance of environment. Those engaged in social uplift and in revolutionary movements are therefore usually very intolerant of the limitations imposed by heredity. Discussion of these limitations is also most offensive to the advocates of the obliteration, under the guise of internationalism, of all existing distinctions based on nationality, language, race, religion and class. Those individuals who have neither country, nor flag, nor language, nor class, nor even surnames of their own and who can only acquire them by gift or assumption, very naturally decry and sneer at the value of these attributes of the higher types.

Democratic theories of government in their modern form are based on dogmas of equality formulated some hundred and fifty years ago and rest upon the assumption that environment and not heredity is the controlling factor in human development. Philanthropy and noble purpose dictated the doctrine expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the document which to-day constitutes the actual basis of American institutions. The men who wrote the words, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” were themselves the owners of slaves and despised Indians as something less than human. Equality in their minds meant merely that they were just as good Englishmen as their brothers across the sea. The words “that all men are created equal” have since been subtly falsified by adding the word “free,” although no such expression is found in the original document and the teachings based on these altered words in the American public schools of to-day would startle and amaze the men who formulated the Declaration.

It will be necessary for the reader to divest his mind of all preconceptions as to race, since modern anthropology, when applied to history, involves an entire change of definition. We must, first of all, realize that race pure and simple, the physical and psychical structure of man, is something entirely distinct from either nationality or language. Furthermore, race lies at the base of all the manifestation of modern society, just as it has done throughout the unrecorded eons of the past and the laws of nature operate with the same relentless and unchanging force in human affairs as in the phenomena of inanimate nature.

The antiquity of existing European populations, viewed in the light thrown upon their origins by the discoveries of the last few decades, enables us to carry back history and prehistory into periods so remote that the classic world is but of yesterday. The living peoples of Europe consist of layer upon layer of diverse racial elements in varying proportions and historians and anthropologists, while studying these populations, have been concerned chiefly with the recent strata and have neglected the more ancient and submerged types.

Aboriginal populations from time immemorial have been again and again swamped under floods of newcomers and have disappeared for a time from historic view. In the course of centuries, however, these primitive elements have slowly reasserted their physical type and have gradually bred out their conquerors, so that the racial history of Europe has been in the past, and is to-day, a story of the repression and resurgence of ancient races.

Invasions of new races have ordinarily arrived in successive waves, the earlier ones being quickly absorbed by the conquered, while the later arrivals usually maintain longer the purity of their type. Consequently the more recent elements are found in a less mixed state than the older and the more primitive strata of the population always contain physical traits derived from still more ancient predecessors.

Man has inhabited Europe in some form or other for hundreds of thousands of years and during all this lapse of time the population has been as dense as the food supply permitted. Tribes in the hunting stage are necessarily of small size, no matter how abundant the game and in the Paleolithic period man probably existed only in specially favorable localities and in relatively small communities.

In the Neolithic and Bronze periods domesticated animals and the knowledge of agriculture, although of primitive character, afforded an enlarged food supply and the population in consequence greatly increased. The lake dwellers of the Neolithic were, for example, relatively numerous. With the clearing of the forests and the draining of the swamps during the Middle Ages and, above all, with the industrial expansion of the last century the population multiplied with great rapidity. We can, of course, form little or no estimate of the numbers of the Paleolithic population of Europe and not much more of those of Neolithic times, but even the latter must have been very small in comparison with the census of to-day.

Some conception of the growth of population in recent times may be based on the increase in England. It has been computed that Saxon England at the time of the Conquest contained about 1,500,000 inhabitants, at the time of Queen Elizabeth the population was about 4,000,000, while in 1911 the census gave for the same area some 35,000,000.

The immense range of the subject of race in connection with history from its nebulous dawn and the limitations of space, require that generalizations must often be stated without mention of exceptions. These sweeping statements may even appear to be too bold, but they rest, to the best of the writer’s belief, upon solid foundations of facts or else are legitimate conclusions from evidence now in hand. In a science as recent as modern anthropology, new facts are constantly revealed and require the modification of existing hypotheses. The more the subject is studied, the more provisional even the best-sustained theory appears, but modern research opens a vista of vast interest and significance to man, now that we have discarded the shackles of former false viewpoints and are able to discern, even though dimly, the solution of many of the problems of race. In the future new data will inevitably expand and perhaps change our ideas, but such facts as are now in hand and the conclusions based thereupon are provisionally set forth in the following chapters and necessarily often in a dogmatic form.

The statements relating to time have presented the greatest difficulty, as the authorities differ widely, but the dates have been fixed with extreme conservatism and the writer believes that whatever changes in them are hereafter required by further investigation and study, will result in pushing them back and not forward in prehistory. The dates given in the chapter on “Paleolithic Man” are frankly taken from the most recent authority on this subject, “The Men of the Old Stone Age,” by Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn and the writer desires to take this opportunity to acknowledge his great indebtedness to this source of information, as well as to Mr. M. Taylor Pyne and to Mr. Charles Stewart Davison for their assistance and many helpful suggestions.

The author also wishes to acknowledge his obligation to Prof. William Z. Ripley’s “The Races of Europe,” which contains a large array of anthropological measurements, maps and type portraits, providing valuable data for the present distribution of the three primary races of Europe.

The American Geographical Society and its staff, particularly Mr. Leon Dominian, have also been of great help in the preparation of the maps herein contained and this occasion is taken by the writer to express his appreciation for their assistance.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH REVISED EDITION

The addition of a Documentary Supplement to the latest revision of this book has been made in response to a persistent demand for “authorities.”

The author has endeavored to make the references and quotations in this Supplement very full and, so far as possible, interesting in themselves as well as entirely distinct from the text, which stands substantially unchanged, and the authorities quoted are not necessarily the sources of the views herein expressed but more often are given in support of them. The contents of the book, since its first appearance, have had the advantage of the criticism of virtually every anthropologist in America and in England, France and Italy—many of whom have furnished the author with valuable corroborative material. Some of this material appears in the notes, but accessible authorities and the classical writers have been given the more prominent place. The supplement covered, as first prepared, substantially every statement in the book, but much was afterward omitted because it would seem that some things could be taken without proof.

“The Passing of the Great Race,” in its original form, was designed by the author to rouse his fellow-Americans to the overwhelming importance of race and to the folly of the “Melting Pot” theory, even at the expense of bitter controversy. This purpose has been accomplished thoroughly, and one of the most far-reaching effects of the doctrines enunciated in this volume and in the discussions that followed its publication was the decision of the Congress of the United States to adopt discriminatory and restrictive measures against the immigration of undesirable races and peoples.

Another of the results has been the publication in America and Europe of a series of books and articles more or less anthropological in character which have sustained or controverted its main theme. The new definition of race and the controlling rôle played by race in all the manifestations of what we call civilization are now generally accepted even by those whose political position depends upon popular favor.

It was to be expected that there would be bitter opposition to those definitions of race which are based on physical and psychical characters that are immutable, rather than upon those derived from language or political allegiance, that are easily altered.

To admit the unchangeable differentiation of race in its modern scientific meaning is to admit inevitably the existence of superiority in one race and of inferiority in another. Such an admission we can hardly expect from those of inferior races. These inferior races and classes are prompt to recognize in such an admission the very real danger to themselves of being relegated again to their former obscurity and subordinate position in society. The favorite defense of these inferior classes is an unqualified denial of the existence of fixed inherited qualities, either physical or spiritual, which cannot be obliterated or greatly modified by a change of environment. Failing in this, as they must necessarily fail, they point out the presence of mixed or intermediate types, and claim that in these mixtures, or blends as they choose to call them, the higher type tends to predominate. In fact, of course, the exact opposite is the case and it is scarcely necessary to cite the universal distrust, often contempt, that the half-breed between two sharply contrasted races inspires the world over. Belonging physically and spiritually to the lower race, but aspiring to recognition as one of the higher race, the unfortunate mongrel, in addition to a disharmonic physique, often inherits from one parent an unstable brain which is stimulated and at times overexcited by flashes of brilliancy from the other. The result is a total lack of continuity of purpose, an intermittent intellect goaded into spasmodic outbursts of energy. Physical and psychical disharmonies are common among crosses between Indians, negroes and whites, but where the parents are more closely related racially we often obtain individuals occupying the border-land between genius and insanity.

The essential character of all these racial mixtures is a lack of harmony—both physical and mental—in the first few generations. Then, if the strain survives, it is by the slow reversion to one of the parent types—almost inevitably the lower.

The temporary advantage of mere numbers enjoyed by the inferior classes in modern democracies can only be made permanent by the destruction of superior types—by massacre, as in Russia, or by taxation, as in England. In the latter country the financial burdens of the war and the selfish interests of labor have imposed such a load of taxation upon the upper and middle classes that marriage and children are becoming increasingly burdensome.

The best example of complete elimination of a dominant class is in Santo Domingo. The horrors of the black revolt were followed by the slow death of the culture of the white man. This history should be studied carefully because it gives in prophetic form the sequence of events that we may expect to find in Mexico and in parts of South America where the replacement of the higher type by the resurgent native is taking place.

In the countries inhabited by a population more or less racially uniform the phenomenon of the multiplication of the inferior classes fostered and aided by the noble but fatuous philanthropy of the well-to-do everywhere appears. Nature’s laws when unchecked maintain a relatively fixed ratio between the classes, which is greatly impaired in modern society by humanitarian and charitable activities. The resurgence of inferior races and classes throughout not merely Europe but the world, is evident in every despatch from Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Rumania, India and Mexico. It is called nationalism, patriotism, freedom and other high-sounding names, but it is everywhere the phenomenon of the long-suppressed, conquered servile classes rising against the master race. The late Peloponnesian War in the world at large, like the Civil War in America, has shattered the prestige of the white race and it will take several generations and perhaps wars to recover its former control, if it ever does regain it. The danger is from within and not from without. Neither the black, nor the brown, nor the yellow, nor the red will conquer the white in battle. But if the valuable elements in the Nordic race mix with inferior strains or die out through race suicide, then the citadel of civilization will fall for mere lack of defenders.

One of the curious effects of democracy is the unquestionable fact that there is less freedom of the press than under autocratic forms of government. It is well-nigh impossible to publish in the American newspapers any reflection upon certain religions or races which are hysterically sensitive even when mentioned by name. The underlying idea seems to be that if publication can be suppressed the facts themselves will ultimately disappear. Abroad, conditions are fully as bad, and we have the authority of one of the most eminent anthropologists in France that the collection of anthropological measurements and data among French recruits at the outbreak of the Great War was prevented by Jewish influence, which aimed to suppress any suggestion of racial differentiation in France. In the United States also, during the war, we were unable to obtain complete measurements and data, in spite of the self-devotion of certain scientists, like Drs. Davenport, Sullivan and others. This failure was due to lack of time and equipment and not to racial influences, but in the near future we may confidently expect in this country strenuous opposition to any public discussion of race as such.

The rapidly growing appreciation of the importance of race during the last few years, the study of the influence of race on nationality as shown by the after-war disputes over boundaries, the increasing complexity of our own problems between the whites and blacks, between the Americans and Japs, and between the native Americans and the hyphenated aliens in our midst upon whom we have carelessly urged citizenship, and, above all, the recognition that the leaders of labor and their more zealous followers are almost all foreigners, have served to arouse Americans to a realization of the menace of the impending Migration of Peoples through unrestrained freedom of entry here. The days of the Civil War and the provincial sentimentalism which governed or misgoverned our public opinion are past, and this generation must completely repudiate the proud boast of our fathers that they acknowledged no distinction in “race, creed, or color,” or else the native American must turn the page of history and write:

“FINIS AMERICÆ”

THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE

_PART I_ RACE, LANGUAGE AND NATIONALITY

I RACE AND DEMOCRACY

Failure to recognize the clear distinction between race and nationality and the still greater distinction between race and language and the easy assumption that the one is indicative of the other have been in the past serious impediments to an understanding of racial values. Historians and philologists have approached the subject from the viewpoint of linguistics and as a result we are to-day burdened with a group of mythical races, such as the Latin, the Aryan, the Indo-Germanic, the Caucasian and, perhaps, most inconsistent of all, the Celtic race.

Man is an animal differing from his fellow inhabitants of the globe not in kind but only in degree of development and an intelligent study of the human species must be preceded by an extended knowledge of other mammals, especially the primates. Instead of such essential training, anthropologists often seek to qualify by research in linguistics, religion or marriage customs or in designs of pottery or blanket weaving, all of which relate to ethnology alone. As a result the influence of environment is often overestimated and overstated at the expense of heredity.

The question of race has been further complicated by the effort of old-fashioned theologians to cramp all mankind into the scant six thousand years of Hebrew chronology as expounded by Archbishop Ussher. Religious teachers have also maintained the proposition not only that man is something fundamentally distinct from other living creatures, but that there are no inherited differences in humanity that cannot be obliterated by education and environment.

It is, therefore, necessary at the outset for the reader to appreciate thoroughly that race, language and nationality are three separate and distinct things and that in Europe these three elements are found only occasionally persisting in combination, as in the Scandinavian nations.

To realize the transitory nature of political boundaries one has but to consider the changes which have occurred during the past century and as to language, here in America we hear daily the English language spoken by many men who possess not one drop of English blood and who, a few years since, knew not one word of Saxon speech.

As a result of certain religious and social doctrines, now happily becoming obsolete, race consciousness has been greatly impaired among civilized nations but in the beginning all differences of class, of caste and of color marked actual lines of race cleavage.

In many countries the existing classes represent races that were once distinct. In the city of New York and elsewhere in the United States there is a native American aristocracy resting upon layer after layer of immigrants of lower races and these native Americans, while, of course, disclaiming the distinction of a patrician class and lacking in class consciousness and class dignity, have, nevertheless, up to this time supplied the leaders in thought and in the control of capital as well as of education and of the religious ideals and altruistic bias of the community.

In the democratic forms of government the operation of universal suffrage tends toward the selection of the average man for public office rather than the man qualified by birth, education and integrity. How this scheme of administration will ultimately work out remains to be seen but from a racial point of view it will inevitably increase the preponderance of the lower types and cause a corresponding loss of efficiency in the community as a whole.

The tendency in a democracy is toward a standardization of type and a diminution of the influence of genius. A majority must of necessity be inferior to a picked minority and it always resents specializations in which it cannot share. In the French Revolution the majority, calling itself “the people,” deliberately endeavored to destroy the higher type and something of the same sort was in a measure done after the American Revolution by the expulsion of the Loyalists and the confiscation of their lands, with a resultant loss to the growing nation of good race strains, which were in the next century replaced by immigrants of far lower type.

In America we have nearly succeeded in destroying the privilege of birth; that is, the intellectual and moral advantage a man of good stock brings into the world with him. We are now engaged in destroying the privilege of wealth; that is, the reward of successful intelligence and industry and in some quarters there is developing a tendency to attack the privilege of intellect and to deprive a man of the advantage gained from an early and thorough classical education. Simplified spelling is a step in this direction. Ignorance of English grammar or classic learning must not, forsooth, be held up as a reproach to the political or social aspirant.

Mankind emerged from savagery and barbarism under the leadership of selected individuals whose personal prowess, capacity or wisdom gave them the right to lead and the power to compel obedience. Such leaders have always been a minute fraction of the whole, but as long as the tradition of their predominance persisted they were able to use the brute strength of the unthinking herd as part of their own force and were able to direct at will the blind dynamic impulse of the slaves, peasants or lower classes. Such a despot had an enormous power at his disposal which, if he were benevolent or even intelligent, could be used and most frequently was used for the general uplift of the race. Even those rulers who most abused this power put down with merciless rigor the antisocial elements, such as pirates, brigands or anarchists, which impair the progress of a community, as disease or wounds cripple an individual.

True aristocracy or a true republic is government by the wisest and best, always a small minority in any population. Human society is like a serpent dragging its long body on the ground, but with the head always thrust a little in advance and a little elevated above the earth. The serpent’s tail, in human society represented by the antisocial forces, was in the past dragged by sheer strength along the path of progress. Such has been the organization of mankind from the beginning, and such it still is in older communities than ours. What progress humanity can make under the control of universal suffrage, or the rule of the average, may find a further analogy in the habits of certain snakes which wiggle sideways and disregard the head with its brains and eyes. Such serpents, however, are not noted for their ability to make rapid progress.

A true republic, the function of which is administration in the interests of the whole community—in contrast to a pure democracy, which in last analysis is the rule of the demos or a majority in its own interests—should be, and often is, the medium of selection for the technical task of government of those best qualified by antecedents, character and education, in short, of experts.

To use another simile, in an aristocratic as distinguished from a plutocratic or democratic organization the intellectual and talented classes form the point of the lance while the massive shaft represents the body of the population and adds by its bulk and weight to the penetrative impact of the tip. In a democratic system this concentrated force is dispersed throughout the mass. It supplies, to be sure, a certain amount of leaven but in the long run the force and genius of the small minority is dissipated, and its efficiency lost. _Vox populi_, so far from being _Vox Dei_, thus becomes an unending wail for rights and never a chant of duty.

Where a conquering race is imposed on another race the institution of slavery often arises to compel the servient race to work and to introduce it forcibly to a higher form of civilization. As soon as men can be induced to labor to supply their own needs slavery becomes wasteful and tends to vanish. From a material point of view slaves are often more fortunate than freemen when treated with reasonable humanity and when their elemental wants of food, clothing and shelter are supplied.

The Indians around the fur posts in northern Canada were formerly the virtual bond slaves of the Hudson Bay Company, each Indian and his squaw and pappoose being adequately supplied with simple food and equipment. He was protected as well against the white man’s rum as the red man’s scalping parties and in return gave the Company all his peltries—the whole product of his year’s work. From an Indian’s point of view this was nearly an ideal condition but was to all intents serfdom or slavery. When through the opening up of the country the continuance of such an archaic system became an impossibility, the Indian sold his furs to the highest bidder, received a large price in cash and then wasted the proceeds in trinkets instead of blankets and in rum instead of flour, with the result that he is now gloriously free but is on the highroad to becoming a diseased outcast. In this case of the Hudson Bay Indian the advantages of the upward step from serfdom to freedom are not altogether clear. A very similar condition of vassalage existed until recently among the peons of Mexico, but without the compensation of the control of an intelligent and provident ruling class.

In the same way serfdom in mediæval Europe apparently was a device through which the landowners repressed the nomadic instinct in their tenantry which became marked when the fertility of the land declined after the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Years are required to bring land to its highest productivity and agriculture cannot be successfully practised even in well-watered and fertile districts by farmers who continually drift from one locality to another. The serf or villein was, therefore, tied by law to the land and could not leave except with his master’s consent. As soon as the nomadic instinct was eliminated serfdom vanished. One has but to read the severe laws against vagrancy in England just before the Reformation to realize how widespread and serious was this nomadic instinct. Here in America we have not yet forgotten the wandering instincts of our Western pioneers, which in that case proved beneficial to every one except the migrants.

While democracy is fatal to progress when two races of unequal value live side by side, an aristocracy may be equally injurious whenever, in order to purchase a few generations of ease and luxury, slaves or immigrants are imported to do the heavy work. It was a form of aristocracy that brought slaves to the American colonies and the West Indies and if there had been an aristocratic form of governmental control in California, Chinese coolies and Japanese laborers would now form the controlling element, so far as numbers are concerned, on the Pacific coast.

It was the upper classes who encouraged the introduction of immigrant labor to work American factories and mines and it is the native American gentleman who builds a palace on the country side and who introduces as servants all manner of foreigners into purely American districts. The farming and artisan classes of America did not take alarm until it was too late and they are now seriously threatened with extermination in many parts of the country. In Rome, also, it was the plebeian, who first went under in the competition with slaves but the patrician followed in his turn a few generations later.

The West Indian sugar planters flourished in the eighteenth century and produced some strong men; to-day from the same causes they have vanished from the scene.

During the last century the New England manufacturer imported the Irish and French Canadians and the resultant fall in the New England birth rate at once became ominous. The refusal of the native American to work with his hands when he can hire or import serfs to do manual labor for him is the prelude to his extinction and the immigrant laborers are now breeding out their masters and killing by filth and by crowding as effectively as by the sword.

Thus the American sold his birthright in a continent to solve a labor problem. Instead of retaining political control and making citizenship an honorable and valued privilege, he intrusted the government of his country and the maintenance of his ideals to races who have never yet succeeded in governing themselves, much less any one else.

Associated with this advance of democracy and the transfer of power from the higher to the lower races, from the intellectual to the plebeian class, we find the spread of socialism and the recrudescence of obsolete religious forms. Although these phenomena appear to be contradictory, they are in reality closely related since both represent reactions from the intense individualism which a century ago was eminently characteristic of Americans.

II THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF RACE

In the modern and scientific study of race we have long since discarded the Adamic theory that man is descended from a single pair, created a few thousand years ago in a mythical Garden of Eden somewhere in Asia, to spread later over the earth in successive waves.

It is a fact, however, that Asia was the chief area of evolution and differentiation of man and that the various groups had their main development there and not on the peninsula we call Europe.

Many of the races of Europe, both living and extinct, did come from the East through Asia Minor or by way of the African littoral, but most of the direct ancestors of existing populations have inhabited Europe for many thousands of years. During that time numerous races of men have passed over the scene. Some undoubtedly have utterly vanished and some have left their blood behind them in the Europeans of to-day.

We now know, since the elaboration of the Mendelian Laws of Inheritance, that certain bodily characters, such as skull shape, stature, eye color, hair color and nose form, some of which are so-called unit characters, are transmitted in accordance with fixed laws, and, further, that various characters which are normally correlated or linked together in pure races may, after a prolonged admixture of races, pass down separately and form what is known as disharmonic combinations. Such disharmonic combinations are, for example, a tall brunet or a short blond; blue eyes associated with brunet hair or brown eyes with blond hair.

The process of intermixture of characters has gone far in existing populations and through the ease of modern methods of transportation this process is going much further in Europe and in America. The results of such mixture are not blends or intermediate types, but rather mosaics of contrasted characters. Such blends, if any, as ultimately occur are too remote to concern us here.

The crossing of an individual of pure brunet race with an individual of pure blond race produces in the first generation offspring which are distinctly dark. In subsequent generations, brunets and blonds appear in various proportions but the former tend to be much the more numerous. The blond is consequently said to be recessive to the brunet because it recedes from view in the first generation. This or any similar recessive or suppressed trait is not lost to the germ plasm, but reappears in later generations of the hybridized stock. A similar rule prevails with other physical characters.

In defining race in Europe it is necessary not only to consider pure groups or pure types but also the distribution of characters belonging to each particular subspecies of man found there. The interbreeding of these populations has progressed to such an extent that in many cases such an analysis of physical characters is necessary to reconstruct the elements which have entered into their ethnic composition. To rely on averages alone leads to misunderstanding and to disregard of the relative proportion of pure, as contrasted with mixed types.

Sometimes we find a character appearing here and there as the sole remnant of a once numerous race, for example, the rare appearance in European populations of a skull of the Neanderthal type, a race widely spread over Europe 40,000 years ago, or of the Cro-Magnon type, the predominant race 16,000 years ago. Before the fossil remains of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon races were studied and understood such reversional specimens were considered pathological, instead of being recognized as the reappearance of an ancient and submerged type.

These physical characters are to all intents and purposes immutable and they do not change during the lifetime of a language or an empire. The skull shape of the Egyptian fellaheen, in the unchanging environment of the Nile Valley, is absolutely identical in measurements, proportions and capacity with skulls found in the pre-dynastic tombs dating back more than six thousand years.

There exists to-day a widespread and fatuous belief in the power of environment, as well as of education and opportunity to alter heredity, which arises from the dogma of the brotherhood of man, derived in its turn from the loose thinkers of the French Revolution and their American mimics. Such beliefs have done much damage in the past and if allowed to go uncontradicted, may do even more serious damage in the future. Thus the view that the Negro slave was an unfortunate cousin of the white man, deeply tanned by the tropic sun and denied the blessings of Christianity and civilization, played no small part with the sentimentalists of the Civil War period and it has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school and to church do not transform a Negro into a white man. Nor was a Syrian or Egyptian freedman transformed into a Roman by wearing a toga and applauding his favorite gladiator in the amphitheatre. Americans will have a similar experience with the Polish Jew, whose dwarf stature, peculiar mentality and ruthless concentration on self-interest are being engrafted upon the stock of the nation.

Recent attempts have been made in the interest of inferior races among our immigrants to show that the shape of the skull does change, not merely in a century, but in a single generation. In 1910, the report of the anthropological expert of the Congressional Immigration Commission gravely declared that a round skull Jew on his way across the Atlantic might and did have a round skull child; but a few years later, in response to the subtle elixir of American institutions as exemplified in an East Side tenement, might and did have a child whose skull was appreciably longer; and that a long skull south Italian, breeding freely, would have precisely the same experience in the reverse direction. In other words the Melting Pot was acting instantly under the influence of a changed environment.

What the Melting Pot actually does in practice can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican and which is now engaged in demonstrating its incapacity for self-government. The world has seen many such mixtures and the character of a mongrel race is only just beginning to be understood at its true value.

It must be borne in mind that the specializations which characterize the higher races are of relatively recent development, are highly unstable and when mixed with generalized or primitive characters tend to disappear. Whether we like to admit it or not, the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.

In the crossing of the blond and brunet elements of a population, the more deeply rooted and ancient dark traits are prepotent or dominant. This is matter of everyday observation and the working of this law of nature is not influenced or affected by democratic institutions or by religious beliefs. Nature cares not for the individual nor how he may be modified by environment. She is concerned only with the perpetuation of the species or type and heredity alone is the medium through which she acts.

As measured in terms of centuries these characters are fixed and rigid and the only benefit to be derived from a changed environment and better food conditions is the opportunity afforded a race which has lived under adverse conditions to achieve its maximum development but the limits of that development are fixed for it by heredity and not by environment.

In dealing with European populations the best method of determining race has been found to lie in a comparison of proportions of the skull, the so-called cephalic index. This is the ratio of maximum _width_, taken at the widest part of the skull above the ears, to maximum _length_. Skulls with an index of 75 or less, that is, those with a width that is three-fourths of the length or less, are considered dolichocephalic or long skulls. Skulls of an index of 80 or over are round or brachycephalic skulls. Intermediate indices, between 75 and 80, are considered mesaticephalic. These are cranial indices. To allow for the flesh on living specimens about two per cent is to be added to this index and the result is the cephalic index. In the following pages only long and round skulls are considered and the intermediate forms are assigned to the dolichocephalic group.

This cephalic index, though an extremely important if not the controlling character, is, nevertheless, but a single character and must be checked up with other somatological traits. Normally, a long skull is associated with a long face and a round skull with a round face.

The use of this test, the cephalic index, enables us to divide the great bulk of the European populations into three distinct subspecies of man, one northern and one southern, both dolichocephalic or characterized by a long skull and a central subspecies which is brachycephalic or characterized by a round skull.

The first is the Nordic or Baltic subspecies. This race is long skulled, very tall, fair skinned with blond or brown hair and light colored eyes. The Nordics inhabit the countries around the North and Baltic Seas and include not only the great Scandinavian and Teutonic groups, but also other early peoples who first appear in southern Europe and in Asia as representatives of Aryan language and culture.

The second is the dark Mediterranean or Iberian subspecies, occupying the shores of the inland sea and extending along the Atlantic coast until it reaches the Nordic species. It also spreads far east into southern Asia. It is long skulled like the Nordic race but the absolute size of the skull is less. The eyes and hair are very dark or black and the skin more or less swarthy. The stature is distinctly less than that of the Nordic race and the musculature and bony framework weak.

The third is the Alpine subspecies occupying all central and eastern Europe and extending through Asia Minor to the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs. The Armenoids constitute an Alpine subdivision and may possibly represent the ancestral type of this race which remained in the mountains and high plateaux of Anatolia and western Asia.

The Alpines are round skulled, of medium height and sturdy build both as to skeleton and muscles. The coloration of both hair and eyes was originally very dark and still tends strongly in that direction but many light colored eyes, especially gray, are now common among the Alpine populations of western Europe.

While the inhabitants of Europe betray as a whole their mixed origin, nevertheless, individuals of each of the three main subspecies are found in large numbers and in great purity, as well as sparse remnants of still more ancient races represented by small groups or by individuals and even by single characters.

These three main groups have bodily characters which constitute them distinct subspecies. Each group is a large one and includes several well-marked varieties, which differ even more widely in cultural development than in physical divergence so that when the Mediterranean of England is compared with the Hindu, or the Alpine Savoyard with the Rumanian or Turcoman, a wide gulf is found.

In zoology, related species when grouped together constitute subgenera and genera and the term species implies the existence of a certain definite amount of divergence from the most closely related type but race does not require a similar amount of difference. In man, where all groups are more or less fertile when crossed, so many intermediate or mixed types occur that the word species has at the present day too extended a meaning.

For the sake of clearness the word race and not the word species or subspecies will be used in the following chapters as far as possible.

The old idea that fertility or infertility of races of animals was the measure of species is now abandoned. One of the greatest difficulties in classifying man is his perverse predisposition to mismate. This is a matter of daily observation, especially among the women of the better classes, probably because of their wider range of choice.

There must have existed many subspecies and species, if not genera, of men since the Pliocene and new discoveries of their remains may be expected at any time and in any part of the eastern hemisphere.

The cephalic index is of less value in the classification of Asiatic populations but the distribution of round and long skulls is similar to that in Europe. The vast central plateau of that continent is inhabited by round skulls. In fact, Thibet and the western Himalayas were probably the centre of radiation of all the round skulls of the world. In India and Persia south of this central area occurs a long skull race related to Mediterranean man in Europe.

Both skull types occur much intermixed among the American Indians and the cephalic index is of little value in classifying the Amerinds. No satisfactory explanation of the variability of the skull shape in the western hemisphere has as yet been found, but the total range of variation of physical characters among them, from northern Canada to southern Patagonia, is less than the range of such variation from Normandy to Provence in France.

In Africa the cephalic index is also of small classification value because all of the populations are characterized by a long skull.

The distinction between a long skull and a round skull in mankind probably goes back at least to early Paleolithic times, if not to a period still more remote. It is of such great antiquity that when new species or races appear in Europe at the close of the Paleolithic, between 10,000 and 7,000 years B. C., the skull characters among them are as clearly defined as they are to-day.

The fact that two distinct species of mankind have long skulls, as have the north European and the African Negro, is no necessary indication of relationship and in that instance is merely a case of parallel specialization, but the fact, however, that the Swede has a long skull and the Savoyard a round skull does prove them to be racially distinct.

The claim that the Nordic race is a mere variation of the Mediterranean race and that the latter is in turn derived from the Ethiopian Negro rests upon a mistaken idea that a dolichocephaly in common must mean identity of origin, as well as upon a failure to take into consideration many somatological characters of almost equal value with the cephalic index. Indeed, the cephalic index, being merely a ratio, may be identical for skulls differing in every other proportion and detail, as well as in absolute size and capacity.

Eye color is of very great importance in race determination because all blue, gray or green eyes in the world to-day came originally from the same source, namely, the Nordic race of northern Europe. This light colored eye has appeared nowhere else on earth, is a specialization of this subspecies of man only and consequently is of extreme value in the classification of European races. Dark colored eyes are all but universal among wild mammals and entirely so among the primates, man’s nearest relatives. It may be taken as an absolute certainty that all the original races of man had dark eyes.

One subspecies of man and one alone specialized in light colored eyes. This same subspecies also evolved light brown or blond hair, a character far less deeply rooted than eye color, as blond children tend to grow darker with advancing years and populations partly of Nordic extraction, such as those of Lombardy, upon admixture with darker races lose their blond hair more readily than their light colored eyes. In short, light colored eyes are far more common than light colored hair. In crosses between Alpines and Nordics, the Alpine stature and the Nordic eye appear to prevail. Light color in eyes is largely due to a greater or less absence of pigment but it is not associated with weak eyesight, as in the case of Albinos. In fact, among marksmen, it has been noted that nearly all the great rifle-shots in England or America have had light colored eyes.

Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. Whenever we find blondness among the darker races of the earth we may be sure some Nordic wanderer has passed that way. When individuals of perfect blond type occur, as sometimes in Greek islands, we may suspect a recent visit of sailors from a passing ship but when only single characters remain spread thinly, but widely, over considerable areas, like the blondness of the Atlas Berbers or of the Albanian mountaineers, we must search in the dim past for the origin of these blurred traits of early invaders.

The range of blond hair color in pure Nordic peoples runs from flaxen and red to shades of chestnut and brown. The darker shades may indicate crossing in some cases, but absolutely black hair certainly does mean an ancestral cross with a dark race—in England with the Mediterranean race.

It must be clearly understood that blondness of hair and of eye is not a final test of Nordic race. The Nordics include all the blonds, and also those of darker hair or eye when possessed of a preponderance of other Nordic characters. In this sense the word “blond” means those lighter shades of hair or eye color in contrast to the very dark or black shades which are termed brunet. The meaning of “blond” as now used is therefore not limited to the lighter or flaxen shades as in colloquial speech.

In England among Nordic populations there are large numbers of individuals with hazel brown eyes joined with the light brown or chestnut hair which is the typical hair shade of the English and Americans. This combination is also common in Holland and Westphalia and is frequently associated with a very fair skin. These men are all of “blond” aspect and constitution and consequently are to be classed as members of the Nordic race.

In Nordic populations the women are, in general, lighter haired than the men, a fact which points to a blond past and a darker future for those populations. Women in all human races, as the females among all mammals, tend to exhibit the older, more generalized and primitive traits of the past of the race. The male in his individual development indicates the direction in which the race is tending under the influence of variation and selection.

It is interesting to note in connection with the more primitive physique of the female, that in the spiritual sphere also women retain the ancient and intuitive knowledge that the great mass of mankind is not free and equal but bond and unequal.

The color of the skin is a character of importance but one that is exceedingly hard to measure as the range of variation in Europe between skins of extreme fairness and those that are exceedingly swarthy is almost complete. The Nordic race in its purity has an absolutely fair skin and is consequently the white man par excellence.

Many members of the Nordic race otherwise apparently pure have skins, as well as hair, more or less dark, so that the determinative value of this character is uncertain. There can be no doubt that the quality of the skin and the extreme range of its variation in color from black, brown, red, yellow to ivory-white are excellent measures of the specific or subgeneric distinctions between the larger groups of mankind but in dealing with European populations it is sometimes difficult to correlate the shades of fairness with other physical characters.

In general, hair color and skin color are linked together, but it often happens that an individual with all other Nordic characters in great purity has a skin of an olive or dark tint. Even more frequently we find individuals with absolutely pure brunet traits in possession of a skin of almost ivory whiteness and of great clarity. This last combination is very frequent among the brunets of the British Isles. That these are, to some extent, disharmonic combinations we may be certain but beyond that our knowledge does not lead. Women, however, of fair skin have always been the objects of keen envy by those of the sex whose skins are black, yellow or red.

Stature is another character of greater value than skin color and, perhaps, than hair color and is one of much importance in European classification for on that continent we have the most extreme variations of human height.

Continue reading — 3011 more paragraphs

Preservation is not endorsement. The Free Knowledge Library preserves primary sources from across the political spectrum. Keeping a document does not mean we agree with it. What the labels mean.