The laws which govern the distribution of the various races of man and their evolution through selection are substantially the same as those controlling the evolution and distribution of the larger mammals.
Man, however, with his superior mentality has freed himself from many of the conditions which impose restraint upon the expansion of animals. In his case selection through disease and social and economic competition has largely replaced selection through adjustment to the limitations of food supply.
Man is the most cosmopolitan of animals and in one form or another thrives in the tropics and in the arctics, at sea level and on high plateaux, in the desert and in the reeking forests of the equator. Nevertheless, the various races of Europe have each a certain natural habitat in which it achieves its highest development.
The Nordics appear in their present centre of distribution, the basin of the Baltic, at the close of the Paleolithic, as soon as the retreating glaciers left habitable land. This race was probably at that time in possession of its fundamental characters, and its extension from the plains of Russia to Scandinavia was not in the nature of a radical change of environment. The race in consequence is now, always has been and probably always will be, adjusted to certain environmental conditions, chief of which is protection from a tropical sun. The actinic rays of the sun at the same latitude are uniform in strength the world over and continuous sunlight affects adversely the delicate nervous organization of the Nordics. The fogs and long winter nights of the North serve as a protection from too much sun and from its too direct rays.
Scarcely less important is the presence of a large amount of moisture but above all a constant variety of temperature is needed. Sharp contrast between night and day temperature and between summer and winter are necessary to maintain the vigor of the Nordic race at a high pitch. Uniform weather, if long continued, lessens its energy. Too great extremes as in midwinter or midsummer in parts of New England are injurious. Limited but constant alternations of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness, of sun and clouds, of calm and cyclonic storms offer the ideal surroundings.
Where the environment is too soft and luxurious and no strife is required for survival, not only are weak strains and individuals allowed to survive and encouraged to breed but the strong types also grow fat mentally and physically, like overfed Indians on reservations or wingless birds on oceanic islands, which have lost the power of flight as a result of prolonged protective conditions.
Men of the Nordic race may not enjoy the fogs and snows of the North, the endless changes of weather and the violent fluctuations of the thermometer and they may seek the sunny southern isles, but under the former conditions they flourish, do their work and raise their families. In the south they grow listless and cease to breed.
In the lower classes in the Southern States of America the increasing proportion of “poor whites” and “crackers” are symptoms of lack of climatic adjustment. The whites in Georgia, in the Bahamas and, above all, in Barbadoes are excellent examples of the deleterious effects of residence outside the natural habitat of the Nordic race.
The poor whites of the Cumberland Mountains in Kentucky and Tennessee present a more difficult problem, because here the altitude, even though moderate, should modify the effects of latitude and the climate of these mountains cannot be particularly unfavorable to men of Nordic breed. There are probably other hereditary forces at work there as yet little understood.
No doubt bad food and economic conditions, prolonged inbreeding and the loss through emigration of the best elements have played a large part in the degeneration of these mountaineers. They represent to a large extent the offspring of indentured servants brought over by the rich planters in early Colonial times and their names indicate that many of them are the descendants of the old borderers along the Scotch and English frontier. The persistence with which family feuds are maintained certainly points to such an origin. The physical type is typically Nordic, for the most part pure Saxon or Anglian, and the whole mountain population show somewhat aberrant but very pronounced physical, moral and mental characteristics which would repay scientific investigation. The problem is too complex to be disposed of by reference to the hookworm, illiteracy or competition with Negroes.
This type played a large part in the settlement of the Middle West, by way of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. Thence they passed both up the Missouri River and down the Santa Fé trail and contributed rather more than their share of the train robbers, horse thieves and bad men of the West.
Scotland and the Bahamas are inhabited by men of precisely the same race, but the vigor of the English in the Bahamas is gone and the beauty of their women has faded. The fact that they were not in competition with an autochthonous race better adjusted to climatic conditions has enabled them to survive, but the type could not have persisted, even during the last two hundred years, if they had been compelled to compete on terms of equality with a native and acclimated population.
Another element entering into racial degeneration on many other islands and for that matter in many New England villages, is the loss through emigration of the more vigorous and energetic individuals, leaving behind the less efficient to continue the race at home.
In subtropical countries where the energy of the Nordics is at a low ebb it would appear that the racial inheritance of physical strength and mental vigor was suppressed and recessive rather than destroyed. Many individuals born in unfavorable climatic surroundings, who move back to the original habitat of their race in the north, recover their full quota of energy and vigor. New York and other Northern cities have many Southerners who are fully as efficient as pure Northerners.
This Nordic race can exist outside of its native environment as land owning aristocrats who are not required to do manual labor in the fields under a blazing sun. As such an aristocracy it continues to exist under Italian skies, but as a field laborer the man of Nordic blood cannot compete with his Alpine or Mediterranean rival. It is not to be supposed that the various Nordic tribes and armies, which for a thousand years after the fall of Rome poured down from the Alps like the glaciers to melt in the southern sun, were composed solely of knights and gentlemen who became the landed nobility of Italy. The man in the ranks also took up his land and work in Italy, but he had to compete directly with the native under climatic conditions which were unfavorable to his race. In this competition the blue eyed Nordic giant died and the native survived. His officer, however, lived in the castle and directed the labor of his bondsmen without other preoccupation than the chase and war and he long maintained his vigor.
The same thing happened in our South before the Civil War. There the white men did not work in the fields or in the factory. The heavy work under the blazing sun was carried on by Negro slaves and the planter was spared exposure to an unfavorable environment. Under these conditions he was able to retain much of his vigor. When slavery was abolished and the white man had to plough his own fields or work in the factory deterioration began.
The change in type of the men who are now sent by the Southern States to represent them in the Federal Government from their predecessors in ante-bellum times is partly due to these causes, but in greater degree it is to be attributed to the fact that a large portion of the best racial strains in the South were killed off during the Civil War. In addition the war shattered the aristocratic traditions which formerly secured the selection of the best men as rulers. The new democratic ideals, with universal suffrage in free operation among the whites, result in the choice of representatives who lack the distinction and ability of the leaders of the Old South.
A race may be thoroughly adjusted to a certain country at one stage of its development and be at a disadvantage when an economic change occurs, such as was experienced in England a century ago when the nation changed from an agricultural to a manufacturing community. The type of man that flourishes in the fields is not the type of man that thrives in the factory, just as the type of man required for the crew of a sailing ship is not the type useful as stokers on a modern steamer.
The environment of the Alpine race seems to have always been the mountainous country of central and eastern Europe, as well as western Asia, but they are now spreading into the plains, notably in Poland and Russia. This type has never flourished in the deserts of Arabia or the Sahara, nor has it succeeded well in maintaining its early colonies in the northwest of Europe within the domain of the Nordic long heads. It is, however, a sturdy and persistent stock and, while much of it may not be overrefined or cultured, undoubtedly possesses great potentialities for future development.
The Alpines in the west of Europe, especially in Switzerland and the districts immediately surrounding, have been so thoroughly Nordicized and so saturated with the culture of the adjoining nations that they stand in sharp contrast to backward Alpines of Slavic speech in the Balkans and east of Europe.
The Mediterranean race, on the other hand, is clearly a southern type with eastern affinities. It is a type that did not endure in the north of Europe under former agricultural conditions nor is it suitable to the farming districts and frontiers of America and Canada. It is adjusted to subtropical and tropical countries better than any other European type and will flourish in our Southern States and around the coasts of the Spanish Main. In France it is well known that members of the Mediterranean race are better adapted for colonization in Algeria than are French Alpines or Nordics. This subspecies of man is notoriously intolerant of extreme cold, owing to its susceptibility to diseases of the lungs and it shrinks from the blasts of the northern winter in which the Nordics revel.
The brunet Mediterranean element in the native American seems to be increasing at the expense of the blond Nordic element generally throughout the Southern States and probably also in the large cities. This type of man, however, is scarce on our frontiers. In the Northwest and in Alaska in the days of the gold rush it was in the mining camps a matter of comment if a man turned up with dark eyes, so universal were blue and gray eyes among the American pioneers.
Where two races occupy a country side by side, it is not correct to speak of one type as changing into the other. Even if present in equal numbers one of the two contrasted types will have some small advantage or capacity which the other lacks toward a perfect adjustment to surroundings. Those possessing these favorable variations will flourish at the expense of their rivals and their offspring will not only be more numerous, but will also tend to inherit such variations. In this way one type gradually breeds the other out. In this sense, and in this sense only, do races change.
Man continuously undergoes selection through the operation of the forces of social environment. Among native Americans of the Colonial period a large family was an asset and social pressure and economic advantage counselled both early marriage and numerous children. Two hundred years of continuous political expansion and material prosperity changed these conditions and children, instead of being an asset to till the fields and guard the cattle, became an expensive liability. They now require support, education and endowment from their parents and a large family is regarded by some as a serious handicap in the social struggle.
These conditions do not obtain at first among immigrants, and large families among the newly arrived population are still the rule, precisely as they were in Colonial America and are to-day in French Canada where backwoods conditions still prevail.
The result is that one class or type in a population expands more rapidly than another and ultimately replaces it. This process of replacement of one type by another does not mean that the race changes or is transformed into another. It is a replacement pure and simple and not a transformation.
The lowering of the birth rate among the most valuable classes, while the birth rate of the lower classes remains unaffected, is a frequent phenomenon of prosperity. Such a change becomes extremely injurious to the race if unchecked, unless nature is allowed to maintain by her own cruel devices the relative numbers of the different classes in their due proportions. To attack race suicide by encouraging indiscriminate reproduction is not only futile but is dangerous if it leads to an increase in the undesirable elements. What is needed in the community most of all is an increase in the desirable classes, which are of superior type physically, intellectually and morally and not merely an increase in the absolute numbers of the population.
The value and efficiency of a population are not numbered by what the newspapers call souls, but by the proportion of men of physical and intellectual vigor. The small Colonial population of America was, on an average and man for man, far superior to the present inhabitants, although the latter are twenty-five times more numerous. The ideal in eugenics toward which statesmanship should be directed is, of course, improvement in quality rather than quantity. This, however, is at present a counsel of perfection and we must face conditions as they are.
The small birth rate in the upper classes is to some extent offset by the care received by such children as are born and the better chance they have to become adult and breed in their turn. The large birth rate of the lower classes is under normal conditions offset by a heavy infant mortality, which eliminates the weaker children.
Where altruism, philanthropy or sentimentalism intervene with the noblest purpose and forbid nature to penalize the unfortunate victims of reckless breeding, the multiplication of inferior types is encouraged and fostered. Indiscriminate efforts to preserve babies among the lower classes often result in serious injury to the race. At the existing stage of civilization, the legalizing of birth control would probably be of benefit by reducing the number of offspring in the undesirable classes. Regulation of the number of children is, for good or evil, in full operation among the better classes and its recognition by the state would result in no further harm among them.
Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.
It is highly unjust that a minute minority should be called upon to supply brains for the unthinking mass of the community, but it is even worse to burden the responsible and larger but still overworked elements in the community with an ever increasing number of moral perverts, mental defectives and hereditary cripples. As the percentage of incompetents increases, the burden of their support will become ever more onerous until, at no distant date, society will in self-defense put a stop to the supply of feebleminded and criminal children of weaklings.
The church assumes a serious responsibility toward the future of the race whenever it steps in and preserves a defective strain. The marriage of deaf mutes was hailed a generation ago as a triumph of humanity. Now it is recognized as an absolute crime against the race. A great injury is done to the community by the perpetuation of worthless types. These strains are apt to be meek and lowly and as such make a strong appeal to the sympathies of the successful. Before eugenics were understood much could be said from a Christian and humane viewpoint in favor of indiscriminate charity for the benefit of the individual. The societies for charity, altruism or extension of rights, should have in these days, however, in their management some small modicum of brains, otherwise they may continue to do, as they have sometimes done in the past, more injury to the race than black death or smallpox.
As long as such charitable organizations confine themselves to the relief of suffering individuals, no matter how criminal or diseased they may be, no harm is done except to our own generation and if modern society recognizes a duty to the humblest malefactors or imbeciles that duty can be harmlessly performed in full, provided they be deprived of the capacity to procreate their defective strain.
Those who read these pages will feel that there is little hope for humanity, but the remedy has been found, and can be quickly and mercifully applied. A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words, social failures—would solve the whole question in a century, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of victims of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful and inevitable solution of the whole problem and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.
Efforts to increase the birth rate of the genius producing classes of the community, while most desirable, encounter great difficulties. In such efforts we encounter social conditions over which we have as yet no control. It was tried two thousand years ago by Augustus and his efforts to avert race suicide and the extinction of the old Roman stock were singularly prophetic of what some far seeing men are attempting in order to preserve the race of native Americans of Colonial descent.
Man has the choice of two methods of race improvement. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization. The first method was adopted by the Spartans, who had for their national ideals military efficiency and the virtues of self-control, and along these lines the results were completely successful. Under modern social conditions it would be extremely difficult in the first instance to determine which were the most desirable types, except in the most general way and even if a satisfactory selection were finally made, it would be in a democracy a virtual impossibility to limit by law the right to breed to a privileged and chosen few.
Interesting efforts to improve the quality as well as the quantity of the population, however, will probably be made in more than one country after the war has ended.
Experiments in limiting reproduction to the undesirable classes were unconsciously made in mediæval Europe under the guidance of the church. After the fall of Rome social conditions were such that all those who loved a studious and quiet life were compelled to seek refuge from the violence of the times in monastic institutions and upon such the church imposed the obligation of celibacy and thus deprived the world of offspring from these desirable classes.
In the Middle Ages, through persecution resulting in actual death, life imprisonment and banishment, the free thinking, progressive and intellectual elements were persistently eliminated over large areas, leaving the perpetuation of the race to be carried on by the brutal, the servile and the stupid. It is now impossible to say to what extent the Roman Church by these methods has impaired the brain capacity of Europe, but in Spain alone, for a period of over three centuries from the years 1471 to 1781, the Inquisition condemned to the stake or imprisonment an average of 1,000 persons annually. During these three centuries no less than 32,000 were burned alive and 291,000 were condemned to various terms of imprisonment and other penalties and 17,000 persons were burned in effigy, representing men who had died in prison or had fled the country.
No better method of eliminating the genius producing strains of a nation could be devised and if such were its purpose the result was eminently satisfactory, as is demonstrated by the superstitious and unintelligent Spaniard of to-day. A similar elimination of brains and ability took place in northern Italy, in France and in the Low Countries, where hundreds of thousands of Huguenots were murdered or driven into exile.
Under existing conditions the most practical and hopeful method of race improvement is through the elimination of the least desirable elements in the nation by depriving them of the power to contribute to future generations. It is well known to stock breeders that the color of a herd of cattle can be modified by continuous destruction of worthless shades and of course this is true of other characters. Black sheep, for instance, have been practically obliterated by cutting out generation after generation all animals that show this color phase, until in carefully maintained flocks a black individual only appears as a rare sport.
In mankind it would not be a matter of great difficulty to secure a general consensus of public opinion as to the least desirable, let us say, ten per cent of the community. When this unemployed and unemployable human residuum has been eliminated together with the great mass of crime, poverty, alcoholism and feeblemindedness associated therewith it would be easy to consider the advisability of further restricting the perpetuation of the then remaining least valuable types. By this method mankind might ultimately become sufficiently intelligent to choose deliberately the most vital and intellectual strains to carry on the race.
In addition to selection by climatic environment man is now, and has been for ages, undergoing selection through disease. He has been decimated throughout the centuries by pestilences such as the black death and bubonic plague. In our fathers’ days yellow fever and smallpox cursed humanity. These plagues are now under control, but similar diseases now regarded as mere nuisances to childhood, such as measles, mumps and scarlatina, are terrible scourges to native populations without previous experience with them. Add to these smallpox and other white men’s diseases and one has the great empire builders of yesterday. It was not the swords in the hands of Columbus and his followers that decimated the American Indians, it was the germs that his men and their successors brought over, implanting the white man’s maladies in the red man’s world. Long before the arrival of the Puritans in New England, smallpox had flickered up and down the coast until the natives were but a broken remnant of their former numbers.
At the present time the Nordic race is undergoing selection through alcoholism, a peculiarly Nordic vice, and through consumption. Both these dread scourges unfortunately attack those members of the race that are otherwise most desirable, differing in this respect from filth diseases like typhus, typhoid or smallpox. One has only to look among the more desirable classes for the victims of rum and tubercule to realize that death or mental and physical impairment through these two causes have cost the race many of its most brilliant and attractive members.
Nationality is an artificial political grouping of population usually centring around a single language as an expression of traditions and aspirations. Nationality can, however, exist independently of language but states thus formed, such as Belgium or Austria, are far less stable than those where a uniform language is prevalent, as, for example, France or England.
States without a single national language are constantly exposed to disintegration, especially where a substantial minority of the inhabitants speak a tongue which is predominant in an adjoining state and, as a consequence, tend to gravitate toward such state.
The history of the last century in Europe has been the record of a long series of struggles to unite in one political unit all those speaking the same or closely allied dialects. With the exception of internal and social revolutions, every European war since the Napoleonic period has been caused by the effort to bring about the unification either of Italy or of Germany or by the desperate attempts of the Balkan States to struggle out of Turkish chaos into modern European nations on a basis of community of language. The unification of both Italy and Germany is as yet incomplete according to the views held by their more advanced patriots and the solution of the Balkan question is still in the future.
Men are keenly aware of their nationality and are very sensitive about their language, but only in a few cases, notably in Sweden and Germany, does any large section of the population possess anything analogous to true race consciousness, although the term “race” is everywhere misused to designate linguistic or political groups.
The unifying power of a common language works subtly and unceasingly. In the long run it forms a bond which draws peoples together—as the English-speaking peoples of the British Empire with those of America. In the same manner this linguistic sympathy will bring the German-speaking Austrians into a closer political community with the rest of Germany and will hold together all the German-speaking provinces.
It sometimes happens that a section of the population of a large nation gathers around language, reinforced by religion, as an expression of individuality. The struggle between the French-speaking Alpine Walloons and the Nordic Flemings of Low Dutch tongue in Belgium is an example of two competing languages in an artificial nation which was formed originally around religion. On the other hand, the Irish National movement centres chiefly around religion reinforced by myths of ancient grandeur. The French Canadians and the Poles use both religion and language to hold together what they consider a political unit. None of these so-called nationalities are founded on race.
During the past century side by side with the tendency to form imperial or large national groups, such as the Pan-Germanic, Pan-Slavic, Pan-Rumanian or Italia Irredenta movements, there has appeared a counter movement on the part of small disintegrating “nationalities” to reassert themselves, such as the Bohemian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Irish, and Egyptian national revivals. The upheaval is usually caused, as in the cases of the Irish and the Serbians, by delusions of former greatness now become national obsessions, but sometimes it means the resistance of a small group of higher culture to absorption by a lower civilization. The reassertion of these small nationalities is associated with the resurgence of the lower races at the expense of the Nordics.
Examples of a high type threatened by a lower culture are afforded by the Finlanders, who are trying to escape the dire fate of their neighbors across the Gulf of Finland—the Russification of the Germans and Swedes of the Baltic Provinces—and by the struggle of the Danes of Schleswig to escape Germanization. The Armenians, too, have resisted stoutly the pressure of Islam to force them away from their ancient Christian faith. This people really represents the last outpost of Europe toward the Mohammedan East and constitutes the best remaining medium through which Western ideals and culture can be introduced into Asia.
In these as in other cases, the process of absorption from the viewpoint of the world at large is good or evil exactly in proportion to the relative value of the culture and race of the two groups. The world would be no richer in civilization with an independent Bohemia or an enlarged Rumania; but, on the contrary, an independent Hungarian nation strong enough to stand alone, a Finland self-governing or reunited to Sweden, or an enlarged Greece would add greatly to the forces that make for good government and progress. An independent Ireland worked out on a Tammany model is not a pleasing prospect. A free Poland, apart from its value as a buffer state, might be actually a step backward. Poland was once great, but the elements that made it so are scattered and gone and the Poland of to-day is a geographical expression and nothing more.
The prevailing lack of true race consciousness is probably due to the fact that every important nation in Europe as at present organized, with the sole exception of the Iberian and Scandinavian states, possesses in large proportions representatives of at least two of the fundamental European subspecies of man and of all manner of crosses between them. In France to-day, as in Cæsar’s Gaul, the three races divide the nation in unequal proportions.
In the future, however, with an increased knowledge of the correct definition of true human races and types and with a recognition of the immutability of fundamental racial characters and of the results of mixed breeding, far more value will be attached to racial in contrast to national or linguistic affinities. In marital relations the consciousness of race will also play a much larger part than at present, although in the social sphere we shall have to contend with a certain strange attraction for contrasted types. When it becomes thoroughly understood that the children of mixed marriages between contrasted races belong to the lower type, the importance of transmitting in unimpaired purity the blood inheritance of ages will be appreciated at its full value and to bring half-breeds into the world will be regarded as a social and racial crime of the first magnitude. The laws against miscegenation must be greatly extended if the higher races are to be maintained.
The language that a man speaks may be nothing more than evidence that at some time in the past his race has been in contact, either as conqueror or as conquered, with its original possessors. Postulating the Nordic origin and dissemination of the Proto-Aryan language, then in Asia and elsewhere existing Aryan speech on the lips of populations showing no sign of Nordic characters is to be considered evidence of a former dominance of Nordics now long vanished.
One has only to consider the spread of the language of Rome over the vast extent of her Empire to realize how few of those who speak to-day Romance tongues derive any portion of their blood from the pure Latin stock and the error of talking about a “Latin race” becomes evident.
There is, however, such a thing as a large group of nations which have a mutual understanding and sympathy based on the possession of a common or closely related group of languages and on the culture of which it is the medium. This assemblage maybe called the “Latin nations,” but never the “Latin race.”
“Latin America” is a still greater misnomer as the great mass of the populations of South and Central America is not even European and still less “Latin,” being overwhelmingly of Amerindian blood.
In the Teutonic group a large majority of those who speak Teutonic languages, as the English, Flemings, Dutch, North Germans and Scandinavians, are descendants of the Nordic race while the dominant class in Europe is everywhere of that blood.
As to the so-called “Celtic race,” the fantastic inapplicability of the term is at once apparent when we consider that those populations on the borders of the Atlantic Ocean, who to-day speak Celtic dialects, are divided into three groups, each one showing in great purity the characters of one of the three entirely distinct human subspecies found in Europe. To class together the Breton peasant with his round Alpine skull; the little, long skulled, brunet Welshman of Mediterranean race, and the tall, blond, light-eyed Scottish Highlander of pure Nordic blood, in a single group labelled Celtic is obviously impossible. These peoples have neither physical, mental nor cultural characteristics in common. If one be of “Celtic” blood then the other two are clearly of different origin.
There was once a people who used the original Celtic language and they formed the western vanguard of the Nordic race. This people was spread all over central and western Europe prior to the irruption of the Teutonic tribes and were, no doubt, much mixed with Alpines among the lower classes. The descendants of these Celts must be sought to-day among those having the characters of the Nordic race and not elsewhere.
In England the short, dark Mediterranean Welshman talks about being “Celtic,” quite unconscious that he is the residuum of Pre-Nordic races of immense antiquity. If the Celts are Mediterranean in race then they are absent from central Europe and we must regard as Celts all the Berbers and Egyptians, as well as many Persians and Hindus.
In France many anthropologists regard the Breton of Alpine blood in the same light and ignore his remote Asiatic origin. If these Alpine Bretons are Celts then there is no substantial trace of their blood, in the British Isles, as round skulls are practically absent there and all the blond elements in England, Scotland and Ireland must be attributed to the historic Teutonic invasions. Furthermore, we must call all the continental Alpines “Celts,” and must also include all Slavs, Armenians and other brachycephs of western Asia within that designation, which would be obviously grotesque. The fact that the original Celts left their speech on the tongues of Mediterraneans in Wales and of Alpines in Brittany must not mislead us, as it indicates nothing more than that Celtic speech antedates the Anglo-Saxons in England and the Romans in France. We must once and for all time discard the name “Celt” for any existing race whatever and speak only of “Celtic” language and culture.
In Ireland the big, blond Nordic Danes claim the honor of the name of “Celt,” if honor it be, but they are fully as Nordic as the English and the great mass of the Irish are of Danish, Norse and Anglo-Norman blood in addition to earlier and Pre-Nordic elements. We are all familiar with the blond and the brunet type of Irishman. These represent precisely the same racial elements as those which enter into the composition of the English, namely, the tall Nordic blond and the little Mediterranean brunet pure or combined with Paleolithic remnants. The Irish are consequently not entitled to independent national existence on the ground of race, but if there be any ground for political separation from England it must rest like that of Belgium on religion, a basis for political combinations now happily obsolete in communities well advanced in culture.
In the case of the so-called “Slavic race,” there is much more unity between racial type and language. It is true that in most Slavic-speaking countries the predominant race is clearly Alpine, except perhaps in Russia where there is a very large substratum of Nordic type—which may be considered as Proto-Nordic. The objection which is made to the identification of the Slavic race with the Alpine type rests chiefly on the fact that a very large portion of the Alpine race is German-speaking in Germany, Italian-speaking in Italy and French-speaking in central France. Moreover, large portions of Rumania are of exactly the same racial complexion.
Many of the modern Greeks are also Alpines; in fact, are little more than Byzantinized Slavs. It was through the Byzantine Empire that the Slavs first came in contact with the Mediterranean world and through this Greek medium the Russians, the Serbians, the Rumanians and the Bulgarians received their Christianity.
Situated on the eastern marches of Europe, the Slavs were submerged during long periods in the Middle Ages by Mongolian hordes and were checked in development and warped in culture. Definite traces remain of the blood of the Mongols both in isolated and compact groups in south Russia and also scattered throughout the whole country as far west as the German boundary. The high tide of the Mongol invasion was during the thirteenth century. Three hundred years later the great Muscovite expansion began, first over the steppes to the Urals and then across Siberian tundras and forests to the waters of the Pacific, taking up in its course much Mongolian blood, especially during the early stages of its advance.
The term “Caucasian race” has ceased to have any meaning except where it is used, in the United States, to contrast white populations with Negroes or Indians or in the Old World with Mongols. It is, however, a convenient term to include the three European subspecies when considered as divisions of one of the primary branches or species of mankind but it is, at best, a cumbersome and archaic designation. The name “Caucasian” arose a century ago from a false assumption that the cradle of the blond Europeans was in the Caucasus where no traces are now found of any such race, except a small and decreasing minority of blond traits among the Ossetes, a tribe whose Aryan speech is related to that of the Armenians, and who while mainly brachycephalic still retain some blond and dolichocephalic elements which apparently are fading fast. The Ossetes now have about thirty per cent fair eyes and ten per cent fair hair. They are supposed to be to some extent a remnant of the Alans, the easternmost Teutonic tribe and closely related to the Goths. Both Alans and Goths very early in the Christian era occupied southern Russia, and were the latest known Nordics in the vicinity of the Caucasus Mountains. If these Ossetes are not partly of Alan origin they may possibly represent the last lingering trace of ancient Scythian dolichocephalic blondness.
The phrase “Indo-European or Indo-Germanic race” is also of little use. If it has any meaning at all it must include all the three European races as well as members of the Mediterranean race in Persia and India. The use of this name also involves a false assumption of blood relationship between the north European populations and the Hindus, because of their possession in common of Aryan speech.
The name “Aryan race” must also be frankly discarded as a term of racial significance. It is to-day purely linguistic, although there was at one time, of course, an identity between the original Proto-Aryan mother tongue and the race that first spoke and developed it. In short, there is not nor has there ever been either a Caucasian or an Indo-European race, but there was once, thousands of years ago, an original Aryan race long since vanished into dim memories of the past. If used in a racial sense other than as above, it should be limited to the Nordic invaders of Hindustan now long extinct. The great lapse of time since the disappearance of the ancient Aryan race as such is measured by the extreme disintegration of the various groups of Aryan languages. These linguistic divergences are chiefly due to the imposition by conquest of Aryan speech upon several distinct subspecies of man throughout western Asia and Europe.
It may be pertinent before leaving this subject to point out that, as a whole, “Germans,” “French,” and “English,” as certain populations are now called, are but little more entitled to be considered the direct descendants, or even the exclusive modern representatives, of the ancient Germans, Franks or Anglo-Saxons, than are the living Italians or Greeks to be regarded as the offspring of the Romans of the days of the Republic or the Hellenes of the classic period. There are, of course, many individuals and groups, perhaps even classes, in each of these nations, who do accurately represent the race from which the national name was derived. The Scandinavians, on the other hand, are racially what they were two thousand years ago, though diminished somewhat in race vigor by the loss through the emigration of some of their more enterprising members. Meanwhile, at the other end of Europe, the modern Spaniard probably more closely represents the Iberians before the arrival of the Gauls than did the Spaniard of five hundred years ago.
When a country is invaded and conquered by a race speaking a foreign language, one of several things may happen: replacement of both population and language, as in the case of eastern England when conquered by the Saxons or adoption of the language of the victors by the natives, as happened in Roman Gaul, where the invaders imposed their Latin tongue throughout the land without substantially altering the race.
The Romans probably modified the race in Gaul by killing a much larger proportion of the Nordic fighting classes than of the more submissive Alpines and Mediterraneans. This is confirmed by the fact that when the prolonged and brilliant resistance to Cæsar’s legions was finally broken, no serious attempt was ever again made to throw off the Roman yoke and a few centuries later the Teutonic invaders encountered no determined opposition from the inhabitants when they entered and occupied the land.
In England and Scotland later conquerors, Norsemen, Danes and Normans, failed to change radically the Saxon speech of the country and in Gaul the Teutonic tongues of the Franks, Burgundians and Northmen could not displace the language of Rome.
Autochthonous inhabitants frequently impose upon their invaders their own language and customs. In Normandy the conquering Norse pirates accepted the language, religion and customs of the natives and in a century they vanish from history as Scandinavian heathen and appear as the foremost representatives of the speech and religion of Rome.
In Hindustan the blond Nordic invaders forced their Aryan language on the aborigines, but their blood was quickly and utterly absorbed in the darker strains of the original owners of the land. A record of the desperate efforts of the conqueror classes in India to preserve the purity of their blood persists until this very day in their carefully regulated system of castes. In our Southern States Jim Crow cars and social discriminations have exactly the same purpose and justification.
The Hindu to-day speaks a very ancient form of Aryan language, but there remains not one recognizable trace of the blood of the white conquerors who poured in through the passes of the Northwest. The boast of the modern Indian that he is of the same race as his English ruler is entirely without basis in fact and the little swarthy native lives amid the monuments of a departed grandeur, professing the religion and speaking the tongue of his long-forgotten Nordic conquerors, without the slightest claim to blood kinship. The dim and uncertain traces of Nordic blood in northern India only serve to emphasize the utter swamping of the white man in the burning South.
The power of racial resistance of a dense and thoroughly acclimated population to an incoming army is very great. No ethnic conquest can be complete unless the natives are exterminated and the invaders bring their own women with them. If the conquerors are obliged to depend upon the women of the vanquished to carry on the race, the intrusive blood strain of the invaders in a short time becomes diluted beyond recognition.
It sometimes happens that an infiltration of population takes place either in the guise of unwilling slaves or of willing immigrants, who fill up waste places and take to the lowly tasks which the lords of the land despise, thus gradually occupying the country and literally breeding out their masters.
The former catastrophe happened in the declining days of the Roman Republic and the south Italians of to-day are very largely descendants of the nondescript slaves of all races, chiefly from the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, who were imported by the Romans under the Empire to work their vast estates. The latter is occurring to-day in many parts of America, especially in New England.
The eastern half of Germany has a Slavic Alpine substratum which represents the descendants of the Wends, who first appear about the commencement of the Christian era and who by the sixth century had penetrated as far west as the Elbe, occupying the lands left vacant by the Teutonic tribes which had migrated southward. These Wends in turn were Teutonized by a return wave of military conquest from the tenth century onward, and to-day their descendants are considered Germans in good standing. Having adopted the German as their sole tongue they are now in religious, political and cultural sympathy with the pure Teutons; in fact, they are quite unconscious of any racial distinction.
This historic fact underlies the ferocious controversy which has been raised over the ethnic origin of the Prussians, the issue being whether the populations in Brandenburg, Silesia, Posen, West Prussia, and other districts in eastern Germany, are Alpine Wends or true Nordics. The truth is that the dominant half of the population is purely Teutonic and the remainder of the population are merely Teutonized Wends and Poles of Alpine affinities. Of course, these territories must also retain some of their early Teutonic population and the blood of the Goth, Burgund, Vandal and Lombard, who at the commencement of the Christian era were located there, as well as of the later Saxon element, must enter largely into the composition of the Prussian of to-day.
Some anthropologists regard the Teutonized round heads of south Germany as a distinct subdivision of the Alpines because of the large percentage of blond hair and still larger percentage of light colored eyes.
The most important communities in continental Europe of pure German type are to be found in old Saxony, the country around Hanover, and this element prevails generally in the northwestern part of the German Empire among the Low German-speaking population, while the High German-speaking population is largely composed of Teutonized Alpines.
The coasts of the North Sea extending from Schleswig and Holstein into Holland are inhabited by a very pure Nordic type known as the Frisians. They are the handsomest and in many respects the finest of the continental Nordics and are closely related to the English, as many of the Post-Roman invaders of England either came from Frisia or from adjoining districts.
All the states involved in the present world war have sent to the front their fighting Nordic element and the loss of life now going on in Europe will fall much more heavily on the blond giant than on the little brunet.
As in all wars since Roman times from a breeding point of view the little dark man is the final winner. No one who saw one of our regiments march on its way to the Spanish War could fail to be impressed with the size and blondness of the men in the ranks as contrasted with the complacent citizen, who from his safe stand on the gutter curb gave his applause to the fighting man and then stayed behind to perpetuate his own brunet type. In the present war one has merely to study the type of officer and of the man in the ranks to realize that, in spite of the draft net, the Nordic race is contributing an enormous majority of the fighting men, out of all proportion to their relative numbers in the nation at large.
This same Nordic element, everywhere the type of the sailor, the soldier, the adventurer and the pioneer, was ever the type to migrate to new countries, until the ease of transportation and the desire to escape military service in the last forty years reversed the immigrant tide. In consequence of this change our immigrants now largely represent lowly refugees from “persecution,” and other social discards.
In most cases the blood of pioneers has been lost to their race. They did not take their women with them. They either died childless or left half-breeds behind them. The virile blood of the Spanish conquistadores, who are now little more than a memory in Central and South America, died out from these causes.
This was also true in the early days of our Western frontiersmen, who individually were a far finer type than the settlers who followed them. In fact, it is said that practically every one of the Forty-Niners in California was of Nordic type.