Figs. 1, 2, and 3.
Another characteristic of the Jewish physiognomy is the eyes. The eyebrows, seemingly thick because of their darkness, appear to be nearer together than usual, arching smoothly into the lines of the nose. The lids are rather full, the eyes large, dark, and brilliant. A general impression of heaviness is apt to be given. In favorable cases this imparts a dreamy, melancholy, or thoughtful expression to the countenance; in others it degenerates into a blinking, drowsy type; or, again, with eyes half closed, it may suggest suppressed cunning. The particular adjective to be applied to this expression varies greatly according to the personal equation of the observer. Quite persistent also is a fullness of the lips, often amounting in the lower one almost to a pout. The chin in many cases is certainly rather pointed and receding, Jacobs to the contrary notwithstanding. A feature of my own observation, perhaps not fully justified, is a peculiar separation of the teeth, which seem to stand well apart from one another. But a truce to speculations. Entering into greater detail, the flat contradictions of different observers show that they are vainly generalizing from an all too narrow base of observations. Even the fancied differences in feature between the two great branches of the Hebrew people seem to us to be of doubtful existence. Our portraits do not bear it out. It seems rather that the two descriptions of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim types which we have quoted denote rather the distinction between the faces of those of the upper and the lower classes. Enough for us to know that there is a something Jewish in these faces which we instantly detect. We recognize it in Rembrandt's Hermitage, or in Munkaczy's Christ before Pilate. Not invariable are these traits. Not even to the Jew himself are they always a sure criterion. Weissenberg gives an interesting example of this.[25] To a friend, a Jew in Elizabethgrad, he submitted two hundred and fifty photographs of Russian Jews and Christians in undistinctive costume. Seventy per cent of the Jews were rightly chosen, while but ten per cent of the Russians were wrongly classed as Jews. Of what concern is it whether this characterization be entirely featural, or in part a matter of expression? The first would be a matter of direct heredity, the second hypothesis partakes more of the nature of a characteristic acquired from the social environment. Some one—Jacobs, I think—speaks of it as the "expression of the Ghetto." It certainly appears in the remarkable series of composite Jewish portraits published in his monograph. It would not be surprising to find this true. Continued hardship, persecution, a desperate struggle against an inexorable human environment as well as natural one, could not but write its lines upon the face. The impression of a dreary past is deep sunk in the bodily proportions, as we have seen. Why not in the face as well?
We are now prepared, in conclusion, to deal with what is perhaps the most interesting phase of our discussion. It is certainly, if true, of profound sociological importance. We have in these pages spoken at length of the head form—primary index of race; we have shown that there are Jews and Jews in this respect. Yet which was the real Jew it was not for us to decide, for the ninety-and-nine were broad-headed, while the Semite in the East is still, as ever, a long-headed member of the Africanoid races. This discouraged our hopes of proving the existence of a Jewish cephalic type as the result of purity of descent. It may indeed be affirmed with certainty that the Jews are by hereditary descent from early times no purer than most of their European neighbors. Then we discovered evidence that in this head form the Jews were often closely akin to the people among whom they lived. In long-headed Africa they were dolichocephalic. In brachycephalic Piedmont, though supposedly of Sephardim descent, they were quite like the Italians of Turin. And all over Slavic Europe no distinction in head form between Jew and Christian existed. In the Caucasus also they approximate closely the cranial characteristics of their neighbors. Hypnotic suggestion was not needed to find a connection here, especially since all history bore us out in our assumption of a large degree of intermixture of Gentile blood. Close upon this disproval of purity of type by descent came evidence of a distinct uniformity of facial type. Even so impartial an observer as Weissenberg—certainly not prejudiced in favor of cephalic invariability—confesses this featural unity.
How shall we solve this enigma of ethnic purity, and yet impurity, of type? In this very apparent contradiction lies the grain of comfort for our sociological hypothesis. The Jew is radically mixed in the line of racial descent; he is, on the other hand, the legitimate heir to all Judaism as a matter of choice. It is for us a case of purely artificial selection, operative as ever only in those physical traits which appeal to the senses. It is precisely analogous to our example of the Basques in France and Spain. What we have said of them will apply with equal force here. Both Jews and Basques possessed in a high degree a "consciousness of kind"; they were keenly sensible of their social individuality. The Basques primarily owed theirs to geographical isolation and a peculiar language; that of the Jews was derived from the circumstances of social isolation, dependent upon the dictates of religion. Another case in point occurs to us in this connection. Chantre,[26] in a recent notable work, has shown the remarkable uniformity in physical type among the Armenians. They are so peculiar in head form that we in America recognize them at once by their foreshortened and sugar-loaf skulls, almost devoid of occiput. They too, like the Jews, have long been socially isolated in their religion. Thus in all these cases, Basques, Armenians, and Jews, we have a potent selective force at work. So far as in their power lay, the individuality of all these people was encouraged and perpetuated as one of their dearest possessions. It affected every detail of their lives. Why should it not also react upon their ideal of physical beauty? and why not influence their sexual preferences, as well as to determine their choice in marriage? Its results became thus accentuated through heredity. But all this would be accomplished, be it especially noted, only in so far as the physical traits were consciously or unconsciously impressed upon them by the facts of observation. There arises at once the difference between artificial selection in the matter of the head form and that concerning the facial features. One is an unsuspected possession of individuality, the other is matter of common notice and, it may be, of report. What Jew or Christian, till he became anthropologist, ever stopped to consider the shape of his head, any more than the addition of a number of cubits to his stature? Who has not, on the other hand, early acquired a distinct concept of a Jewish face and of a distinctly Jewish type? Could such a potent fact escape observation for a moment?
We are confirmed in our belief in the potency of an artificial selection, such as we have described, to perpetuate or to evolve a Jewish facial type by reason of another observation. The women among the Jews, as Jacobs[27] notes, in confirmation of our own belief, betray far more constantly than the men the outward characteristics peculiar to the people. We have already cited Weissenberg's testimony that brunetteness is twice as prevalent among Russian Jewesses as among the men. Of course this may be a matter of anabolism, pure and simple. This would be perhaps a competent explanation of the phenomenon for physiologists like Geddes and Thompson. For us this other cause may be more directly responsible. Artificial selection in a social group, wherein the active choice of mates falls to the share of the male, would seem to tend in the direction of an accentuated type in that more passive sex on which the selective influence directly plays. At all events, observations from widely scattered sources verify the law that the facial individuality of a people is more often than otherwise expressed most clearly in the women. Thus, for example, the women betray the Mongol type more constantly than the men among the Asiatic tribes of eastern Russia.[28] On the other hand, Mainof, best of authority, confirms the same tendency among those of Finnic descent.[29] The Setti Communi in northern Italy still preserve their German language as evidence of a historic Teutonic descent. They seem to have lost their identity entirely in respect of the head form,[30] but Ranke[31] states that among the women the German facial type constantly reappears. This, I confess, is not altogether easy to understand, unless the Lombards, of whom these colonies are supposedly the remnants, brought their native women with them across the Alps. Perhaps, however, not bringing their women, a new Teutonic resemblance has been evolved out of whole cloth. A better example than this is offered among the Hamitic peoples of Africa north of the Sahara. These peoples, from Abyssinia to Morocco, really belong to the white races of Europe. Among nearly all their tribes the negroid traits are far more accentuated among the women, according to Sergi.[32] It is not necessary to cite more specific testimony. The law occupies a respected place among anthropologists. That the Jews confirm it, would seem to strengthen our hypothesis at every point.
Our final conclusion, then, is this: It is paradoxical, yet true, we affirm. The Jews are not a race, but only a people, after all. In their faces we read its confirmation, while in respect of their other traits we are convinced that such individuality as they possess—by no means inconsiderable—is of their own making from one generation to the next, rather than as a product of an unprecedented purity of physical descent.