The conclusion I have thus drawn from anthropological data receives remarkable confirmation from the results of an inquiry I made on the Comparative Distribution of Jewish Ability, and contributed to the Anthropological Institute in 1886. Applying the methods of Galton, I compared the celebrities produced by the Jewish race during the last hundred years with those of Englishmen and Scotchmen, and came to the conclusion that the race, as a whole, took rank between Scotchmen and Englishmen in intellectual capacity, while if the comparison had been confined to western Jews, who alone have had an opportunity of displaying their talents, they would have come out superior to both. From the anthropological side we should expect that the brachycephalism of Jews would show itself in superior mental capacity, and this is confirmed by the number of distinguished persons of Jewish blood recorded in the European dictionaries of biography.
The anthropological and sociological importance of this result, if confirmed by further inquiry, seems to me of very great significance for the science of anthropology, and for this reason I have insisted so much upon it. Skull capacity and cephalic index are not so much indications of race as of intellect. If it is found that, as a rule, each race, and even each people, tends to have a uniform cephalic index, that would merely imply that the sociological conditions of the said race or people were tolerably uniform as regards intellectual development. Australians, who have had no opportunity of pitting their wits against any other competing race, and have depended for their existence on the fleetness of their legs and the capacity of their stomachs to carry food from one orgy to another, have used their brains less than all other human races, and have the narrowest skulls of all. Teutons, who have had the largest sphere for intellectual rivalry with their neighbors, have the broadest skulls of all except the Jews, who have, so to speak, lived by their wits the last two thousand years. The evidence produced by Professor Ripley of long-headed Jews among the lower developed communities only shows that where the brain is not much exercised the skull is not broadened.
So far, then, from history and anthropology giving contrary verdicts with regard to the racial purity of the Jews, the above considerations would seem to show that they rather confirm one another's interpretation of the facts. If brain capacity and skull index follow the intellectual struggle for existence, we should not be surprised to find the Jews mostly broad-headed. If there had been much intermixture with races who had less cause to exercise their brains in the struggle for existence, we might expect a greater admixture of dolichocephalism among them. To my mind a much stronger case could have been made out for the admixture of the Jews by the large number of blondes among them, ranging to about twenty per cent, but, as a rule, in Europe blond types are dolichocephalic, and the evidence of admixture that could be drawn from the admixture of blue eyes or brown hair among the Jews is counterbalanced by that very evidence of their uniform round-headedness, upon which Professor Ripley lays so much stress. In the memoir I have frequently quoted I have given reasons for believing that there was a blond as well as a brunette type among the ancient Jews, and till evidence is shown to the contrary the presence of the fair Jew is only an indication of descent from the earlier blond strain of the race.
Professor Ripley has scarcely taken into account the more positive arguments I have adduced in my memoir for the comparative purity of Jewish descent. I have pointed out a definite class of Jews—the Cohens, or priestly descendants of Aaron—who can not, according to Jewish law, marry proselytes. These still constitute, I have calculated, some five per cent of Jews even at the present day. He appears to think that this is merely a matter of name, and asks how I would explain the existence of quasi-Jewish names, such as Davis, Harris, Phillips, and Hart, among Christian populations of the Anglo-Saxon world. As a matter of fact, it can be proved that, on the contrary, these names among the Jews have been adopted for "mimicry" reasons from the corresponding Christian names which are mostly derived from the Bible. But, at the best, Professor Ripley's argument would merely prove a certain amount of Jewish blood among the Christian populations of Europe and America, which nobody would deny. That Jews, under the pressure of persecution or for other reasons, have abjured their faith, married Christian wives, and become merged in the surrounding populations, is undoubtedly a fact, but does not in any way affect the relative purity of the "remnant" which has remained true to its faith. It certainly does not affect the very important fact that the ancestry of at least five per cent of Jews at the present day can not have married proselytes, owing to the rigid requirements of Jewish law.
So far as I understand the latter part of Professor Ripley's second article, he appears to contend that the remarkable similarity of the Jewish physiognomy all over the world has no force in proving their racial unity. This is, of course, from the popular point of view, the strongest argument which Professor Ripley has to meet. Speaking generally, one can always tell a Jew or Jewess by the Jewish features and expression. So marked is this that Andrée mentions an instance where the negroes of the Gold Coast even distinguish between other whites and Jews by its means, saying not "Here are three whites coming," but "Here are two whites and a Jew." So marked a community of expression and appearance would be, to an ordinary mind, an absolute proof of unity of race, but Professor Ripley prefers to judge by the skull beneath, rather than by the expression and features on the surface. He hints at some obscure embryological process by which Jewish mothers can stamp on their offspring the Ghetto expression, whatever be the racial formation of skull. According to him, it would appear that noses are more plastic in this regard than skulls. I do not quite see how this would work out in detail. Are we to suppose that a pair of snub-nosed converts to Judaism would produce offspring with the characteristic Jewish nose because the lady convert had her imagination influenced by the hook-noses surrounding her? Are we to suppose that round heads can only beget round heads, but that snub noses can produce the hooked variety as a mere result of imagination?
Mere expression one could understand could be produced by sociological causes, and it is certainly my impression that Jews who mix more with their fellow-citizens lose a good deal of the characteristic Jewish expression, but that Jewish features should be influenced in this way few people would be prepared to allow. Jewish "nostrility," as I have termed it, and the "Jew's eye," can not be affected by change of environment. They can be affected, I grant, by admixture with races snub-nosed or dull-eyed, but as they have persisted throughout the ages they are themselves a striking proof of the absence of such admixture.
Altogether I remain unconvinced by Professor Ripley's arguments as to any large admixture of alien elements among contemporary Jews as unvouched for by history, and not necessarily postulated by anthropology. The broad skulls of the Jews, if they differ from those of earlier date (of which Professor Ripley has produced no evidence whatever), are due to the development of Jewish capacity, owing to their consistent attention to education and to the conditions under which they have pursued the struggle for existence. The persistence of Jewish features throughout the ages and the existence of an influential minority who are not allowed by Jewish law to marry outside their race is further proof of the position for which I have throughout contended. If there has been a tolerably large admixture of Jewish and alien blood throughout the Christian centuries it has been by conversions to Christianity or Islam, not by adoption of Judaism, and it is confirmed by history that the offspring have wandered away from the Jewish race and have not affected the more conservative remnant.
The significance of this result for the science of anthropology can not be overrated. The great question of the science is that expressed by Dr. Galton as "the struggle between Nature and nurture"—the difference that social influences can produce on men of the same race. Jews afford the science almost the sole instance in which this problem can be studied in its least complex form. My own investigations have shown that social environment has a direct influence on such anthropometrical data as height and breathing capacity. The Jews of the West End of London, though of the same race as those of the East End, are superior in height and other external qualities, and this superiority can thus be shown to be due entirely to nurture. Similarly, if the argument I have previously adduced is correct, the brachycephalism of the Jew is a proof that intellectual development produces broad heads, and that, roughly speaking, the cephalic index is a key to intellectual capacity. I should rather reverse Professor Ripley's main contentions: breadth of skull is not a criterion of race, but of intellectual development; whereas features, which are not directly influenced by social or intellectual characteristics, are the true index to racial purity.