a strict

a genuine racial peculiarity and an expression acquired by the individual has often been the source of error in anthropology. The Parisian is a type quite distinct from the provincial, yet very few Parisian families have lived in Paris for more than three generations. In England there are marked differences of face between men occupying different social positions. It is not difficult to distinguish between an officer and a private soldier even when both wear the same kind of clothes as in a hockey match. Since at the time of conquest the total possible number of ancestors of any Englishman now living, far exceeds the number of people then inhabiting England, it follows that unless there were isolation of classes every Englishman has ancestors among all classes of the community. But there never has been any such isolation and the same surnames occur in all classes from the highest to the lowest. Every English family, not excluding the royal family, must then have had, five hundred years ago, among its numerous ancestors, men occupying the humblest positions in life. The marked difference of appearance between the higher and lower classes cannot therefore be in any way due to race. A petty labourer shopkeeper acquires wealth and rises in social position. He himself will bear the marks of his origin all his life, and perhaps his son will shew some traces of it, but his grandson will not differ at all in manners or appearance from other men of the class to which his family has come to belong. In India too occupation and society leave their marks on the face. Through overlooking this fact some writers have been led to a theory, which I believe to be false, that caste depends on race. A learned Brahman pandit no doubt differs very much from a chamar doing menial work, but there is no difference between a Brahman coolie and a chamar coolie. At least the present writer has failed to discover any, after a search of several years.

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We have seen that the Jews have no distinctive racial characters. The question now arises: "Are they of pure race, modified more or less by environmental influences, or are they a religious sect

* Cf. Nesfield Caste System of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, p. 75, para. 135.

composed of racial elements acquired by proselytism and intermarriage during their migrations in various parts of the world?" The answer will depend to some extent on the view we take of the power of climate and environment to modify physical structure. Unfortunately this is a point about which there are wide differences of opinion. Professor Ridgway maintains in his article "Celt" in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" the view he had previously advocated at the meeting of the British Association in 1908.

"Not only do animals change their physical characteristics in new environment, but modern peoples when settled in new surroundings for even one or two centuries, e.g., the American of New England and the Boer of South Africa, prove that man is no less readily affected by his surroundings."

According to Dr. Fishberg this statement is entirely mistaken.

"In the course of three hundred years' sojourn in America no new race has appeared. The descendants of the original English, Spanish and French settlers are of the same physical type as the parent stock, the inhabitants of England, Spain and France of to-day."

The only scientific observations are those of Professor Boas referred to in a former number of this Review. He took measurements of some 30,000 immigrants and their descendants in New York and found changes in stature and head-form and even in complexion. But as Dr. Fishberg remarks, until similar investigations have been carried out in other parts of the world, no definite conclusions can be drawn. The problem of the influence of climate on race is as yet unsolved, and as Professor Ridgway points out, will not be solved unless it is treated as part of the general biological problem of the influence of climate on animal species.

The differences between Jews in different countries are, however, so great that it is difficult to believe they could have been produced by climate alone in the comparatively short time since the dispersion. Before accepting such a view we should want the strongest evidence that there has been no mixture with other races. But there is instead a great deal of evidence to the contrary. From the earliest times of which there is any record the Jews inter

"Anthropometry and Race" Modern Review, April, 1911.

married with the other races inhabiting Palestine. After the return from the Babylonian captivity Ezra found mixed marriages common, and tried to prevent them but with only partial success. Much later Church Councils found it necessary to prohibit marriages between Jews and Christians. Such marraiages were according to Graetz frequent in Gaul and Spain in the sixth century. Seven hundred years afterwards in 1229

"Archbishop Robert von Gran complained to the Pope that many Jews in Hungary are married to Christian women, and that the latter are often converted to Judaism; that Christian parents are selling their children to Jews, and some, out of greed for money, permit themselves to be circumcised and that within a few years many thousands of Christians were lost to the Church."

We see from this that proselytism as well as intermarriage has modified the racial character of the Jews. At the beginning. of our era there were many converts from paganism to Judaism. When Europe became Christian the converts diminished in number but so long as slavery lasted, the slaves of Jews often accepted the religion of their masters. Even in modern times there have been many converts to Judaism in Russia.

There is then no Jewish race. All the evidence tends to shew that the Jews in different countries are of the same race as the other inhabitants of those countries.

of a

"There is no more justification for speaking of ethnic unity among the modern Jews or 'Jewish' race' than there is justification to speak of ethnic unity of the Christians, of Mohammedans, or of a Unitarian, Presbyterian or Methodist race." "The Jew in Russia has less kinship in blood with his co-religionist in the interior of Morocco than with the Slavs among whom he lives; the thirty per cent. of Jewish blondes are nearer in blood relationship to the North European Teutons, or the East European blondes than to their co-religionists in Yemen, Arabia."

The point is of great importance, and our condensed summary gives only a very imperfect idea of Dr. Fishberg's arguments. Another of the race theories prevalent even so late as thirty years ago has been swept away. The writer remembers that when he was a student it was still generally believed that all the speakers of Indo-European languages were descended from a primitive Indo-European or "Aryan" race. These "Aryans according to Max Muller, possessed a high

was

standard of morals, a pure family life and a religion somewhat resembling Lutheran Protestantism. In course of time the "Aryans" became sub-divided into various distinct races, Latins, Celts, Teutons; of which races the Teutonic is the noblest. A German professor once told the present writer that only the Teutonic race capable of reaching the highest degree of civilisation. Historical facts were simply and quickly explained by the differing qualities of different races. Why do the Jews believe in one God? M. Renan tells us the reason; because the Semitic races are monotheistic. The great charm of these explanations was their extreme facility. facility. Why do the English play cricket? The answer is obvious; because the English are a cricket-playing race. The English, it is true, have not always played cricket, nor were the Jews always monotheists, but the literary man in search of generalisations does not allow himself to be embarrassed by such mere details. These race theories were the work of philologists who entirely ignored biology. Even before the time of which I am speaking, anthropologists, especially Broca and Huxley, had pointed out the mistake of supposing that race corresponded with language, but errors persist in the popular mind long after they have been refuted. Even now it is common enough to see in journals such phrases as the "Latin raees,' "the Teutonic races." The reader can best convince himself of their absurdity by a glance at an anthropological map of Europe, where he will see that the distribution of race does not correspond to the distribution of language.

Dr. Fishberg's discussion of the Jewish "race", apart from its own interest is valuable for the light it throws on two general questions; acclimatisation and the possibility of mixed races. In his article in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" Wallace takes the Jews as a good example of acclimatisation because "they keep themselves almost wholly free from intermixture with the people round them." As we have seen this is not the case. No doubt as Wallace

then the mere fact that man now inhabits every region, and is in each case constitutionally adapted to the climate proves that acclimatisation has occurred." But we are dealing not with the long period of time during which the human race has existed but with the short period covered by history. There does not seem to be any satisfactory evidence that within such a short period men may become adapted to a climate widely differing from their own. It must be remembered that climate is not a matter of latitude only. White men may live even in tropical countries on high table-lands. But as a rule the man from the north cannot adapt himself to the climate of the south. The conquests which occupy so much space in history have probably effected no permanent change in the population of the conquered countries. It seems less difficult for the southerner to adapt himself to the north. Men of the plains can live perfectly well in Kulu and Kashmir, but the hill-man cannot live in the plains. "Hamlog is mulk men marjāenge", a hill-man once said to me. So too, while Englishmen suffer from the heat of India, Indians do not, I believe, feel the cold of England more than Englishmen themselves. It seems then likely that the movement of population has been in the reverse direction to the general course of invasions; the one from south to north, the other from north to south; the one silent and peaceful but permanent in its effects; the other noisy and violent but producing only temporary results.

In a former article in this Review we quoted Broca's opinion as to the possibility of mixed races. Recently fresh evidence. has been obtained by Professor Boas.

His

"investigations have shown that crossing of whites with North American Indians and Negroes has not produced any new type nor middle types, but generally the half-breed showed a reversion to one of the parent types."

This is confirmed by the example of the Jews. Thus the Chinese Jews, although some of their ancestors may have been Jewish, are, as the photographs shew, exactly like other Chinese. We We may conjecture that the return to one of the parent types takes place somewhat in the following way. Putting one side the question how far Mendel's results apply to human beings, it is a fact that

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*P. 25.

all the children of a family do not inherit the parental qualities in the same proportions. Any one can see this for himself in Eurasian families. Now while the features which distinguish races do not in themselves confer any advantage, they are probably associated with other qualities that do, for example, greater power of resistance malaria or tuberculosis. Thus a child resembling one of his parents will have a greater chance of survival than a child resembling the other. There will then be a continuous process of selection tending to eliminate one of the types.

to

We come now to the demography or vital statistics of the Jews. Dr. Fishberg makes the very important general remark:

"It must be stated at the outset that from the enormous mass of vital statistics collected during the past century nothing definite has been established as to the influence of race on the birth and death rates." "Standards of comfort, intellectual, social and economic condition are the sole determining factors."

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Thus the great difference in the birth-rates of Italy and Southern France cannot be accounted for either by climate or by race, for they are nearly the same in both countries. Adam Smith observed that poverty is generally accompanied by great fertility. In Europe, at the present time, the inhabitants of the poorest part, the East, are the most fertile, and fertility decreases we go West. So too the increasing prosperity of recent years has brought with it a steady decline in the birth-rate. This is true both for Jews and Christians, but the decline has been most marked among the Jews. Thus we find that the annual birthrate in Bavaria among Christians dropped from 46 per thousand in 1876 to 36 in 1906, while among Jews it dropped from 34 to 19. In Prussia the birth-rate among Christians in 1908 was 33, while among Jews it was only 17. As is well known this decline is due not to physiological reasons but to deliberate choice:

"Those who have been for some time in the United States are only too frequently inquiring as to the best means of 'prudentially' limiting the size of the family. In Eastern Europe the same Jewesses have known of the possibility of doing any such thing."

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The fall in the birth-rate is greater in towns that in agricultural districts, and in the richest quarters of towns it is greater than in the poorer. Now the Jews live in cities, and in Western Europe are for the most

part fairly prosperous. This accounts for their fertility being lower than that of Christians without the need of assuming any race difference.

"If Jews in Germany were compared with Christians in that country who are merchants, manufacturers, professional people, bankers, etc, there would hardly be any difference between the two groups in regard to fertility."

In Russia the birth-rate among the Jews is still high, but even there prudential limitation of the size of the family is no longer unknown. Pamphlets explaining

how this result may be obtained have appeared in Yiddish and had a wide circulation.

Dr. Fishberg discusses the alleged infertility of mixed marriages between Jews and Christians. The discussion is very interest. ing as it shows the fallacious conclusions to which statistics may lead when not carefully used. At first it seems as if in mixed marriages there were fewer children born per marriage. But the figures are obtained by the fallacious method of dividing the number of births in a year by the number of marriages in that year.

As the number of mixed marriages is steadily increasing this gives too low a result. Again either husband or wife frequently changes religion and then the marriage is no longer entered as mixed. When these sources of error are removed it does not appear that mixed marriages are less fertile than pure marriages. There is no reason why they should be, since, as have seen, it is a mistake to suppose that the Jews are of a different race from their Christian neighbours.

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If the birth-rate is low among Jews so also is the death-rate. The difference in the mortality of Jews and Christians is most marked during infancy and childhood. Here, too, there is no need to look to "race" for an explanation

"The lower mortality of Jewish infants is not due to any special inherent vitality, but finds its explana

tion in certain social causes. Jewesses in Eastern Europe and the United States almost invariably nurse their infants at the breast and it is rare to find among them an infant brought up by artificial feeding, unless the mother is physically incapable of suckling, which is comparatively rare among them. The mortality of breast-fed is much lower than that of hand-fed. A large proportion of lives is thus saved. Jewish mothers only rarely go to work after marriage, and can therefore bestow all possible care on their infants, which cannot be said to be invariably true of the

Thus the natural increase of the Jews in

Prussia is now only about one-fourth that of the Christians, although in 1885 they were nearly equal. Some writers have said that the Hindus are a dying race, but it will be seen the Jews have much more reason for fear. Indeed there are towns such as Breslau where the number of deaths actually exceeds the number of births.

Judaism like Hinduism seldom gains and often loses adherents. There is a constant drain through conversion to other religions. It seems that in Europe some 224,000 Jews were baptized during the nineteenth century. But this does not nearly represent the whole loss to Judaism, since these figures apply chiefly to Eastern Europe. In France, England, the United States, where the State does not interfere with religion very few baptisms take place. There is no reason why a Jew who has given up his religion should be baptized, for many Englishmen of Christian parentage do not have have their Jew quietly drops his religion just as many children baptized. In Western Europe a Christians do. Now in Austria, for example, a man must belong to one of three recognized religions, Judaism, Roman Catholicism or Protestantism.† He may, it is true, call himself a free thinker, confessionslos, but

* P. 262.

+ In Bosnia and Herzogovina Mahommedanism is also recognized.