Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Social solidarity, the clearest expression of which to-day is
nationality, is the resultant of a multitude of factors. Foremost
among these stand unity of language, a common heritage of tradition
and belief, and the permanent occupation of a definite territory.
The first two are largely psychological in essence. The third, a
material circumstance, is necessary rather to insure the stability of
the others than for its own sake; although, as we know, attachment
to the soil may in itself become a positive factor in patriotism.
Two European peoples alone are there which, although landless,
have succeeded, notwithstanding, in a maintenance of their social
consciousness, almost at the level of nationality. Both Gypsies and
Jews are men without a country. Of these, the latter offer perhaps
the most remarkable example, for the Gypsies have never disbanded
tribally. They still wander about eastern Europe and Asia Minor
in organized bands, after the fashion of the nomad peoples of the
East. The Jews, on the other hand, have maintained their solidarity
in all parts of the earth, even in individual isolation one from
another. They wander not gregariously in tribes, often not even in
families. Their seed is scattered like the plant spores of which
the botanists tell us; which, driven by wind or sea, independently
travel thousands of miles before striking root or becoming fecund.
True, the Jews bunch wherever possible. This is often a necessity
imposed for self-preservation; but in their enforced migrations their
associations must change kaleidoscopically from place to place.
Not all has been said even yet of the unique achievement of this
landless people. That the Jews have preserved their individuality
despite all mutations of environment goes without saying. They have
done more. They have accomplished this without absolute unity of
language. Forced of necessity to adopt the speech of their immediate
neighbors, they have only where congregated in sufficient numbers
been able either to preserve or to evolve a distinctive speech. In
Spain and the Balkan states they make use of Spanish; in Russia and
Poland they speak a corrupt German; and in the interior of Morocco,
Arabic. Nevertheless, despite these discouragements of every kind,
they still constitute a distinctive social unit wherever they chance
to be.
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