[13] The permanent and fixed type of the Jewish variety of
the human race, which enables it to transmit its physical
and mental characteristics with perfect truth even when
crossed with another race, was probably created by the
fact that the Jews were all descended from one or a very
small body of ancestors, and bred rigorously in and in.
Their own very suggestive legend states that the original
founder mated with his own sister, which would make it
almost impossible for the true Jews to revert to any but
one type. So it is possible to understand how the Boer,
in the course of a few generations, has formed a type
fixed and marked, both mentally and physically, only when
we consider how small was the number of individuals from
which he originally sprung, and how he must of necessity
have bred in and in, cousin marrying cousin again and yet
again. There probably often land in a large American and
Australian port, on a single day, more European emigrants
than the number which composed the whole original stock
of the Boer, including all French additions; there is
therefore no possibility of the average colonist forming
so quickly an equally marked type. Even to-day it is not
uncommon to find a Boer three times related to his own
wife; she may be his first cousin on his father's side, his
second cousin on his mother's side, a fourth cousin through
a maternal grandmother, and there may have been antecedent
intermarriages of which there is no record. The children of
such a marriage inheriting an almost homogeneous blood from
both sides, can hardly fail to be some fixed type. On the
other hand, the Boer race has probably been preserved from
the dangers of interbreeding by the fact that the small
original stock were of such very distinct national types.
But we must turn now to the most interesting point in the early history
of the Boer, and one which alone would fully account for his attitude
towards Europe, and for many other of his unique characteristics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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