The prime motive of this article is to remove from the minds of our English friends many false impressions which I have constantly met in my intercourse even among men who hold important positions, of which the address of Sir William Crookes is but an extreme expression, and to bring into common view a comprehension of the resources of this country and of the mutual dependence of the United Kingdom and the United States in the supply and consumption not only of wheat, but of all the other necessaries of life.
[THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.]
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.
(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SUPPLEMENT.—THE JEWS.[1]
Social solidarity, the clearest expression of which to-day is nationality, is the resultant of a multitude of factors. Foremost among these stand unity of language, a common heritage of tradition and belief, and the permanent occupation of a definite territory. The first two are largely psychological in essence. The third, a material circumstance, is necessary rather to insure the stability of the others than for its own sake; although, as we know, attachment to the soil may in itself become a positive factor in patriotism. Two European peoples alone are there which, although landless, have succeeded, notwithstanding, in a maintenance of their social consciousness, almost at the level of nationality. Both Gypsies and Jews are men without a country. Of these, the latter offer perhaps the most remarkable example, for the Gypsies have never disbanded tribally. They still wander about eastern Europe and Asia Minor in organized bands, after the fashion of the nomad peoples of the East. The Jews, on the other hand, have maintained their solidarity in all parts of the earth, even in individual isolation one from another. They wander not gregariously in tribes, often not even in families. Their seed is scattered like the plant spores of which the botanists tell us; which, driven by wind or sea, independently travel thousands of miles before striking root or becoming fecund. True, the Jews bunch wherever possible. This is often a necessity imposed for self-preservation; but in their enforced migrations their associations must change kaleidoscopically from place to place. Not all has been said even yet of the unique achievement of this landless people. That the Jews have preserved their individuality despite all mutations of environment goes without saying. They have done more. They have accomplished this without absolute unity of language. Forced of necessity to adopt the speech of their immediate neighbors, they have only where congregated in sufficient numbers been able either to preserve or to evolve a distinctive speech. In Spain and the Balkan states they make use of Spanish; in Russia and Poland they speak a corrupt German; and in the interior of Morocco, Arabic. Nevertheless, despite these discouragements of every kind, they still constitute a distinctive social unit wherever they chance to be.
This social individuality of the Jews is of a peculiar sort. Bereft of linguistic and geographical support, it could not be political. The nineteenth century, says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, is the age of nationality; meaning obviously territorial nationality, the product of contiguity, not birth. To this, he says, the Jew is indifferent, typifying still the Oriental tribal idea. As a result he is out of harmony with his environment. An element of dislike of a political nature on the part of the Christian is added to the irreconcilability of religious belief. It has ever been the Aryan versus the Semite in religion throughout all history, as Renan has observed; and to-day it has also become the people versus the nation, as well as the Jew versus the Christian. Granted that this political dissonance is largely the fault of the Gentile, its existence must be acknowledged, nevertheless.
