The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European historyGrant, Madison
History
The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history
Grant, Madison
Ethnology -- Europe
Democratic theories of government in their modern form are based on
dogmas of equality formulated some hundred and fifty years ago and rest
upon the assumption that environment and not heredity is the controlling
factor in human development. Philanthropy and noble purpose dictated the
doctrine expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the document
which to-day constitutes the actual basis of American institutions. The
men who wrote the words, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal,” were themselves the owners of slaves and
despised Indians as something less than human. Equality in their minds
meant merely that they were just as good Englishmen as their brothers
across the sea. The words “that all men are created equal” have since
been subtly falsified by adding the word “free,” although no such
expression is found in the original document and the teachings based on
these altered words in the American public schools of to-day would
startle and amaze the men who formulated the Declaration.
It will be necessary for the reader to divest his mind of all
preconceptions as to race, since modern anthropology, when applied to
history, involves an entire change of definition. We must, first of all,
realize that race pure and simple, the physical and psychical structure
of man, is something entirely distinct from either nationality or
language. Furthermore, race lies at the base of all the manifestation of
modern society, just as it has done throughout the unrecorded eons of
the past and the laws of nature operate with the same relentless and
unchanging force in human affairs as in the phenomena of inanimate
nature.
The antiquity of existing European populations, viewed in the light
thrown upon their origins by the discoveries of the last few decades,
enables us to carry back history and prehistory into periods so remote
that the classic world is but of yesterday. The living peoples of Europe
consist of layer upon layer of diverse racial elements in varying
proportions and historians and anthropologists, while studying these
populations, have been concerned chiefly with the recent strata and have
neglected the more ancient and submerged types.
Aboriginal populations from time immemorial have been again and again
swamped under floods of newcomers and have disappeared for a time from
historic view. In the course of centuries, however, these primitive
elements have slowly reasserted their physical type and have gradually
bred out their conquerors, so that the racial history of Europe has been
in the past, and is to-day, a story of the repression and resurgence of
ancient races.
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