[The Muscles and Brains of a Race are not bound to decay.]
We are dealing in the following pages with race rather than nation; with muscle, blood and brain, rather than with political power and influence; let us turn then to history in order to find out whether or not organic deterioration must actually close the history of every race, for if this is the case, our studies of racial change, though of none the less intellectual interest, will have lost their promise of practical utility. But, fortunately for the hopefulness of our future work, we may anticipate by saying that history shows us that the innate and organic is that which is most permanent and lasting, and that change and catastrophe in a nation’s career have in most cases been due to circumstances which we may term surrounding or accidental. We shall see that races, unlike individuals, may remain through the whole of their historic period without any sign of organic decay, but that the organisations, on the part of individuals of the race for purposes of trade or protection, may be prone to dangers which sooner or later overtake them.
[The Fall of Greek and Roman Political Organisation.]
A few illustrations will assist in making these points clear, and we may begin with the fall of the Greek states under Macedonian rule. It is here quite wrong to assume that the Greeks were at the time of their first conquest a deteriorated race; individually their conquerors were probably inferior to them; indeed, Alexander, the Macedonian, is reported to have said in a burst of passion, “The Greeks are demigods among Macedonian brutes.” The Greeks from earliest times lived in small and independent states, jealously competing with each other, and unwilling to join hands in the face of a common danger. Their political organisation was from the first of the weakest kind, and they were at all times in their history liable to fall a prey to any aggressors who might have a stronger and bigger political organisation than theirs. This want of cohesion all but gave Greece to Persia; indeed during the Persian invasion the independence of Greece was almost lost owing to the selfish neutrality or active treachery of several Greek states. It is evident, therefore, that the want of cohesion between a collection of small states carried with it an element of danger, and that the chances were that they would fall a prey sooner or later to foreign conquest. In the case of the Roman Empire we are dealing with a political organisation which has a place in the world’s history only second in importance to that of the British Empire. In its growth, maturity and fall, we do not trace the history of any particular race, for it bound together nearly all the ancient world. It is said that when Constantine removed the seat of government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, there were no Romans of pure blood in Rome itself, and the inhabitants of Rome, who migrated with Constantine, and took up their residence in Constantinople, soon lost even the Latin tongue, and Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire. But this organisation of Greeks, Thracians, Persians, Egyptians and Hellenized Asiatics lasted till Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453, and here the climax was due to other causes than those resulting from internal racial decay. Constantinople, the gate of the East, was by its position the richest and the most powerful city of the Eastern world, and while this was so, the organisation of which it was the centre remained comparatively secure. When, however, the merchants of Genoa and Venice opened up other routes of trade, the Eastern Roman capital lost its importance by the source of its power being diverted into other channels, and it was conquered by a race that formerly it had held in check. With the conquest of Constantinople the organisation of the Eastern Roman Empire ceased to exist.
These two examples will serve to indicate how slow must we be to assume that race deterioration has occurred merely because a state or empire has fallen to the ground.
We shall seek in vain either in Greek or Roman history for any answer to the question, “Must a race sooner or later organically deteriorate?” During the Roman Empire so great a commingling of blood occurred, and the modern Italian is so different—as far as race is concerned—from an inhabitant of the peninsula at the time of the Cæsars, that a comparison of their qualities would not give an answer to the question we are seeking. The same objection would be raised to a comparison between the modern Greek said to excel even the Jew in barter (the chief outlet to his intelligence), and a Greek of the time of the Macedonian conquest, because in the interval race intermixture has been incessant. There are, however, many examples of races which have existed through long periods of time without mixing to any great extent with their neighbours. If we can find amongst these a single example in which their physical and mental powers have shown undiminished activity, this will serve to establish the fact that racial decay is not a necessary termination to the history of a people.
[The Permanence of the Scandinavian and Jewish Types.]
Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to turn to the Scandinavian races from which we spring. These races, when kept as far as possible from interbreeding with other races, have shown wonderfully persistent characteristics for a great many centuries. For their powers of conquest and settlement, witness their early occupation of the sea borders of Britain, Iceland and Normandy, their expeditions to the Mediterranean, and even to North America, of which they were the first discoverers: these are the precursors of our British colonisation on a larger scale. The Lothians of Scotland are to-day peopled by almost as pure a type of Scandinavian as you will find in Bergen or Trondhjem, and they are perhaps the hardest headed, as they are the longest limbed, of all the British. In Iceland, a country peopled by those who fled from the rule of Harold, the first king of Norway, because they were not used to kings, and would not tolerate a novel form of government, we have a pure race isolated for centuries, who to-day have the same characters as their Norse forefathers, and who have developed and are developing as far as their narrow limits will permit.
In even a more striking manner the Jewish race illustrates the same point. Always of striking capacity, they suffered national extinction at the hands of an enemy who had, so to speak, specialised in the ways of warfare. So far from this national extinction indicating any race enfeeblement, we have clear proof to the contrary, for to the present day the Jews are more than fairly represented amongst artists, musicians, scientists and men of affairs; and in our own mercantile community, with the disadvantage of having two holidays in the week against the Gentile’s one, the Jew more than holds his own in the race for wealth.