Coming back to European peoples, it is worthy of note that both
Hungary and Finland are inhabited by the same race. These two
countries are separated by about fifteen degrees of latitude, but in
the matter of murder the people of Finland are much more nearly allied
to the Hungarians than to their immediate neighbours, the Swedes and
Norwegians. The Finns commit about twice as many murders in proportion
to the population as the Teutons of Scandinavia, but only about half
as many as the Hungarians; and it is not improbable to suppose that
while the effect of race makes them more murderous than the
Scandinavians, the effect of climate makes them less murderous than
the inhabitants of Hungary.
Before bringing forward any additional material on one side or the
other, let us pause for a moment to consider the results which have
just been obtained as to the effect of race as compared with climate
upon crime. In India we have found an Aryan and a non-Aryan population
living together under the same climatic influences, and very much the
same social conditions, and we have seen that the Aborigines are more
criminally disposed than the Aryan invaders. Again we have a Mongolian
race living in the far North of Europe, and we find that they show a
larger percentage of homicidal crime than the Teutonic inhabitants
who live in the same latitudes. In Hungary, where the Mongoloid type
is once more met with, the same facts are substantially reproduced;
this type is more homicidal than the Austrian Teutons living under a
similar climate. While these facts point to the conclusion that race
has apparently some influence on the amount of crime, they fail to
show that race characteristics alone are sufficient to explain the
differences in criminality between the same peoples when settled in
different quarters of the globe. The Mongoloid type in Finland is
less criminal than the same type in Hungary, and the Teutonic type
in Scandinavia is less murderously disposed than the same type in
the empire of Austria. It has also been pointed out that the
Anglo-American of the Northern States is more law abiding than his
brother by race in the South, while both are more murderous than the
inhabitants of the United Kingdom; where extremes of climate are not
so great.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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