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
This social individuality of the Jews is of a peculiar sort. Bereft
of linguistic and geographical support, it could not be political.
The nineteenth century, says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, is the age of
nationality; meaning obviously territorial nationality, the product
of contiguity, not birth. To this, he says, the Jew is indifferent,
typifying still the Oriental tribal idea. As a result he is out of
harmony with his environment. An element of dislike of a political
nature on the part of the Christian is added to the irreconcilability
of religious belief. It has ever been the Aryan versus the Semite in
religion throughout all history, as Renan has observed; and to-day it
has also become the people _versus_ the nation, as well as the Jew
_versus_ the Christian. Granted that this political dissonance is
largely the fault of the Gentile, its existence must be acknowledged,
nevertheless.
[Illustration: GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION of JEWS.]
How has this remarkable result been achieved? How, bereft of two out
of three of the essentials of nationality, has the Jew been enabled
to perpetuate his social consciousness? Is the superior force of
religion, perhaps abnormally developed, alone able to account for it
all? Is it a case of compensatory development, analogous in the body
to a loss of eyesight remedied through greater delicacy of finger
touch? Or is there some hidden, some unsuspected factor, which has
contributed to this result? We have elsewhere shown that a fourth
element of social solidarity is sometimes, though rarely, found, in a
community of physical descent. That, in other words, to the cementing
bonds of speech, tradition, belief, and contiguity, is added the
element of physical brotherhood--that is to say, of race. Can it be
that herein is a partial explanation of the social individuality of
the Jewish people? It is a question for the scientist alone. Race,
as we constantly maintain, despite the abuses of the word, really
is to be measured only by physical characteristics. The task before
us is to apply the criteria of anthropological science, therefore,
to the problems of Jewish derivation and descent. Only incidentally
and as matters of contributory interest shall we consider the views
of the linguists, the archæologists, and the students of religious
traditions. Our testimony is derived from facts of shape of head,
color of hair and eye, of stature, and the like. These alone are
the data indicative of racial descent. To these the geographer may
add the probabilities derived from present distribution in Europe.
No more do we need to settle the primary racial facts. Further
speculations concerning matters rather than men belong to the
historian and the philologist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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