Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
So far, then, from history and anthropology giving contrary verdicts
with regard to the racial purity of the Jews, the above considerations
would seem to show that they rather confirm one another's
interpretation of the facts. If brain capacity and skull index follow
the intellectual struggle for existence, we should not be surprised to
find the Jews mostly broad-headed. If there had been much
intermixture with races who had less cause to exercise their brains in
the struggle for existence, we might expect a greater admixture of
dolichocephalism among them. To my mind a much stronger case could
have been made out for the admixture of the Jews by the large number
of blondes among them, ranging to about twenty per cent, but, as a
rule, in Europe blond types are dolichocephalic, and the evidence of
admixture that could be drawn from the admixture of blue eyes or brown
hair among the Jews is counterbalanced by that very evidence of their
uniform round-headedness, upon which Professor Ripley lays so much
stress. In the memoir I have frequently quoted I have given reasons
for believing that there was a blond as well as a brunette type among
the ancient Jews, and till evidence is shown to the contrary the
presence of the fair Jew is only an indication of descent from the
earlier blond strain of the race.
Professor Ripley has scarcely taken into account the more positive
arguments I have adduced in my memoir for the comparative purity of
Jewish descent. I have pointed out a definite class of Jews--the
Cohens, or priestly descendants of Aaron--who can not, according to
Jewish law, marry proselytes. These still constitute, I have
calculated, some five per cent of Jews even at the present day. He
appears to think that this is merely a matter of name, and asks how I
would explain the existence of quasi-Jewish names, such as Davis,
Harris, Phillips, and Hart, among Christian populations of the
Anglo-Saxon world. As a matter of fact, it can be proved that, on the
contrary, these names among the Jews have been adopted for "mimicry"
reasons from the corresponding Christian names which are mostly
derived from the Bible. But, at the best, Professor Ripley's argument
would merely prove a certain amount of Jewish blood among the
Christian populations of Europe and America, which nobody would deny.
That Jews, under the pressure of persecution or for other reasons,
have abjured their faith, married Christian wives, and become merged
in the surrounding populations, is undoubtedly a fact, but does not in
any way affect the relative purity of the "remnant" which has remained
true to its faith. It certainly does not affect the very important
fact that the ancestry of at least five per cent of Jews at the
present day can not have married proselytes, owing to the rigid
requirements of Jewish law.
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