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 Library of Che Theological Seminary 
 
 PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 
 
 <P: 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 John Stuart Conning, D.D. 
 CB 195 .K3 1926 
 Kautsky, Karl, 1854-1938. 
 Are the Jews a race? 
 
 
 

 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 In 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/arejewsraceOOkaut_0O 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 

 
Are the Jews a Race? 
 
 by Karl Kautsky~Translated 
 from the 2nd German edition 
 
 INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK 
 
 
 
CopyricHut, 1926, By 
 INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., Inc. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
PUBLISHER’S NOTE 
 
 Are the Jews a Race now appears for the first time in 
 English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under 
 the title Rasse und Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, 
 already included a number of important additions and im- 
 provements, particularly the new chapter entitled “*Zionism 
 After the War”; for the present English version, the author 
 has revised and brought up to date the second German 
 edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine. 
 
CoryricutT, 1926, By 
 INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., Inc. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
PUBLISHER'S NOTE 
 
 Are the Jews a Race now appears for the first time in 
 English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under 
 the title Rasse und Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, 
 already included a number of important additions and im- 
 provements, particularly the new chapter entitled “Zionism 
 After the War”; for the present English version, the author 
 has revised and brought up to date the second German 
 edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine. 
 

 
 
 
 a" 
 
 y ha 4 ny 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Race THEORIES 
 
 II. Racers or ANIMALS . 
 
 a. Domestic Animals 
 
 b. Wild Animals 
 III. Tuer Races or Man 
 
 IV. DirreErENcES AND OpposiITions BETWEEN THE 
 Races or Man . 
 
 V. Puysitcat CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWISH 
 Racer 
 
 VI. Menrat QUALITIES OF THE JEWISH Racer 
 VII. Tue AssmmMILaTION OF THE JEWS 
 VIII. Anti-Semitism 
 IX. Zionism Brerore THE War 
 X. ZiontsM AFTER THE Wark. 
 XI. Pure Races anp Mixep Races 
 XII. Tue Last Staces or JupDAIsM . 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 11 
 20 
 
 44, 
 
 64 
 
 89 
 125 
 144 
 157 
 180 
 193 
 216 
 240 
 249 
 

 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 

 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 RACE THEORIES 
 
 “On the Jew’s faith I do not look, his race is what I 
 cannot brook’,* is the motto of modern anti-Semitism, 
 which—contrary to the naive anti-Semitism of earlier 
 periods—is proud of its scientific spirit and feels itself 
 free from religious prejudices. Just as religion was once 
 obliged, and is still obliged, to cloak or justify all possible 
 varieties of secular partisan interests, so natural science 
 must now aid in representing aspirations of interests with 
 strictly temporal and spacial limitations as natural and 
 eternal necessities. 
 
 This does not mean that religion formerly—and the nat- 
 ural sciences now—were actually created for such purposes 
 by interested parties, as is sometimes maintained with re- 
 gard to religion. Both grow from entirely different roots. 
 But as soon as either has become a force dominating the 
 thought of men, each social stratum finds itself impelled 
 to make use of this force and to justify its interests on 
 
 1 Was der Jude glaubt, ist einerlei, 
 In der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei. 
 
 11 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 the basis of this force. When, at the end of the Eleventh 
 Century, the nations of western and central Europe had 
 been relieved of the pressure of the Slavs and Arabs to 
 such an extent as to enable them to take the offensive and 
 plunder the wealthy Orient, they inaugurated their preda- 
 tory campaigns—the Crusades—with the battle-cry: Dieu 
 le veult! And when, a few centuries later, after the Turks 
 had again pushed back the Christians in the Mediterranean, 
 and the rising capitalism of western Europe was crying for 
 colonial booty and finding ready tools for its adventurous 
 expeditions to new continents in the declining knighthood 
 and the expropriated peasants, these continents were 
 visited with fire and sword, plunder and serfdom, in order 
 to bring the light of true religion to the heathen for the 
 greater glory of God. And the class struggles in Europe 
 itself, which were then disintegrating feudalism and usher- 
 ing in capitalism, were conducted as late as in the Seven- 
 teenth Century by the various parties with constant in- 
 vocations of the Bible and the Fathers of the Church. 
 Since then religion has lost its power. As industrial 
 capitalism advances, the religious mode of thought is re- 
 placed by the scientific mode of thought. Religion still 
 maintains itself for a period, by force of habit, as a con- 
 servative power, but the motive springs of the ensuing 
 social evolution cease to make use of religious modes of 
 thought and arguments. ‘The advances of the new, 
 capitalist mode of production are closely connected with the 
 advances in the natural sciences. Each serves as a pow- 
 
 12 
 
RACE THEORIES 
 
 erful stimulus to the other. The bourgeois intelligentsia 
 now demand that all social aspirations be in accord with 
 natural science, i.¢., with the recognized laws of nature; 
 each social interest must find its justification in its com- 
 patibility with the laws of nature. In this connection, 
 however, human society sometimes still fails to be regarded 
 as a specific portion of nature, having its own laws, just 
 as organic nature has its own laws as distinguished from 
 those of inorganic nature. The inadequacy of this point of 
 view easily becomes apparent, producing a reaction in 
 favour of isolating human society, or man himself, as a 
 social, ethical creature, from the natural laws of causality. 
 
 The bourgeois philosophy of our times moves between 
 these two extremes. 
 
 Once Darwinism had completed its victorious procession 
 through the natural sciences, it was regarded as up-to-date 
 to apply it without further ado to social conditions also, 
 There are no sudden leaps in nature, but only imperceptible 
 transformations, therefore natural science forbids revolu- 
 tion as a violation of natural laws. The struggle for ex- 
 istence is represented as an eternal process, wherefor it is 
 contrary to nature to construct a society without com- 
 petition, etc. / 
 
 In the last few decades it is particularly the conception 
 of race that enjoys precedence as an explanation, or rather 
 justification, of social institutions and aspirations. 
 
 A colonial policy is represented by the theoreticians of 
 race as a natural necessity, as a consequence of the fact 
 
 13 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 that nature creates master races and slave races. Only 
 the former have creative ability; the others are devoid of 
 independence, cannot exist without foreign guidance, can- 
 not evolve to a higher stage, but are doomed to serve the 
 master races. 
 
 But the law of natural necessity with which these race 
 theoreticians operate also affords additional pleasant in- 
 ferences for certain bourgeois cliques of our time. Even 
 within the master races there are differences of race, the 
 blond race being the most magnificent of all. These blond 
 (Nordic) gentlemen proclaim themselves to be the cleverest, 
 noblest and mightiest of men, whom all others must serve. 
 International politics must be based on this conception, 
 from which also results the necessity for the existence of 
 exploiters and exploited. 
 
 Viewed from this standpoint, the French Revolution as- 
 sumes a very peculiar function. Mr. Bornhak, Professor 
 of Public Law at the University of Berlin, begins with the 
 fact that the area of present-day France, formerly in- 
 habited by Celts, and later conquered by the Romans, 
 finally succumbed during the migration of nations to 
 Teutonic tribes, who there created a new government au- 
 thority, controlled by them with the aid of the Catholic 
 Church. This state appears to Bornhak as the exclusive 
 achievement of the Teutonic barbarians: “The Celts are 
 politically one of the most incapable races that have ever 
 existed.” The Teutons, on the other hand, are “a truly 
 state-organising race of creative endowment”. It is they 
 
 14 
 
RACE THEORIES 
 
 who made France a power, until their Celtic subjects ex- 
 terminated the master race in the great revolution, “with 
 barbarous cruelty”. 
 
 “The Romanised Celtic race becomes the entire popula- 
 tion. But this result simultaneously, owing to the political 
 incapacity of the Celtic race, sealed the fate of the French 
 nation.” * 
 
 The same conception of the French Revolution as a 
 rebellion of inferior Celts against the noble blond race had 
 previously been advocated by Driesmans, who maintained 
 that this revolution had been “made by lawyers and jour- 
 nalists”, professions of ‘unquestioned Celtic origin”.* That 
 is the way our race theoreticians understand the writing 
 of history. 
 
 Their political economy is not any sounder. The 
 _ anthropologist Ammon in 1893 published a work on nat- 
 ural selection among humans (Die natiirliche Auslese bewmn 
 Menschen), in which he finds, on the basis of material col- 
 lected in Baden, that the class distinction between cap- 
 italists and proletarians is based on the existence of two 
 races within the population, a blond, dolichocephalic, 
 Teutonic race, and a black, brachycephalic, “Mongolian” 
 race. The latter are declared deficient in independence and 
 mental endowment, differing in these respects from the 
 Teutons: “Like all Aryans, the Teutons are born to rule 
 
 2C. Bornhak: Der Einfluss der Rasse auf die Staatsbildung, 
 “Archiv fiir Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie”’, March, 1904, pp. 254 
 et seq. 
 
 8 Quoted by Hertz: Moderne Rassentheorien, p. 10. 
 
 15, 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 other peoples. Wherever they appear, they are the ruling 
 and socially preferred classes, they are a people of fierce 
 courage and indomitable energy, of devotion and fidelity, 
 of pride and truthfulness, a shining race of demigods, the 
 like of whom the world has seen but once before, in the 
 Greeks, and will probably never see again.” 
 
 Ammon investigates the story of the evolution of these 
 demigods on the basis of material collected in the little 
 province of Baden, where they live in the country as peas- 
 ants together with the Mongolian roundheads, and emi- 
 grate to the cities like the latter. In the cities, owing to 
 their demigod nature, they soon rise to splendid eminence, 
 being transfigured into city employees, brewers, grain 
 dealers, and other god-like forms, while the black-haired 
 Asiatics from the Schwarzwald are relegated to the well 
 deserved, contemptible servitude of wage-labour. 
 
 About the same time, even antedating Ammon, other 
 theoreticians of race came forward with the statement that 
 it was not the blond Teutons but the black-haired Asiatics 
 who were more and more gaining control of capital in the 
 cities, subjugating the Teutons and gradually displacing 
 them even as intellectuals, physicians, lawyers, journalists. 
 But the victors in this case were not lauded as demigods, 
 but denounced as a dangerous riff-raff, who must be driven 
 out or at least disfranchised, in the interest of the lordly 
 Teutons. This race of swarthy undesirables is that of the 
 Jews. 'The race argument is used more in support of anti- 
 Semitism than in any other social movement of our times, 
 
 16 
 
RACE THEORIES 
 
 having now completely displaced the religious argument in 
 western Europe. 
 
 The anti-Semitism inherited from the Feudal Era had 
 long seemed to be about to disappear, having dwindled to 
 the same extent, and under the influence of the same 
 capitalist evolution, as the power of religion, and being re- 
 garded as one of the prejudices of backward persons. 
 
 But about a generation ago it began to come up again, 
 becoming modernised, and while it may not be a political 
 factor in modern countries, it is nevertheless everywhere 
 a social factor. We shall learn subsequently the causes of 
 this condition, as well as why we shall not be able to dis- 
 pose of this anti-Semitism so quickly, but also—of course 
 —why anti-Semitism cannot count on a victory. 
 
 Let us first consider only the racial argument of anti- 
 Semitism, an argument which is not used by anti-Semitism 
 alone, but also by other domestic and international move- 
 ments. 
 
 Characteristically enough, there is rising within Judaism, 
 as a reaction against anti-Semitism, a similar tendency to 
 accept and utilize the theory of race. It is a natural ap- 
 plication of the principle: If this theory permits Christian- 
 Teutonic patriots to declare themselves demigods, why 
 should Zionist patriots not use it in order to stamp the 
 _ people chosen by God as a chosen race of nature, a noble 
 race that must be carefully guarded from any deterioration 
 and contamination by foreign elements? A considerable 
 literature has been produced within the past decade dealing 
 
 17 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 with questions of this order. Already in 1904, these 
 arguments were well summarised and evaluated in Friedrich 
 Hertz’s book on modern theories of race,* of which a second 
 revised and much enlarged edition was printed under 
 another title in 1915.5 Among the latest books on this 
 subject, one of the best is that of Dr. Maurice Fishberg: 
 The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment, London and 
 New York, 1911, 578 pp.° 
 
 Fishberg uses not only material collected by other an- 
 thropologists, but also much new data obtained by him 
 by measuring more than four thousand Jews from four 
 continents, and digesting this material in a most conscien- 
 tious and scholarly manner. It was to the many sug- 
 gestions given me by this book that I owe the idea of 
 writing the present little work. 
 
 In this connection, I might mention that I am again 
 placed in the same embarrassing position that was mine 
 when I wrote my book Increase and Evolution in Nature 
 and Society, and to which I referred on pages vu and 17 
 of that work: ‘ namely, I am obliged, although I am a lay- 
 man in this field, to discuss questions connected with the 
 
 4Hertz: Moderne Rassentheorien, Vienna, 1904. 
 
 5 Rasse und Kultur, Leipzig. 
 
 6 Kautsky uses the German translation of L. Hepner: Die Rassen- 
 merkmale der Juden, Hine Einfiihrung in thre Anthropologie, 
 Miinchen, 1913, 300 pp. Our references are to the pages of the 
 English edition, except where the German translation, which involved 
 some changes, is specifically mentioned.—TransLaTor. 
 
 *Vermehrung und Entwicklung in Natur und Gesellschaft, Stutt- 
 gart, 1908, 
 
 18 
 
RACE THEORIES 
 
 natural science of biology. Here also there is a border 
 region, one of the many points at which biology and sociol- 
 ogy meet, and which, strictly speaking, would require the 
 writer to be a master in both fields. But the present state 
 of knowledge makes this impossible for any living man. 
 No one who enters such a field—and they are much entered 
 —can be required to have a mastery of more than one of 
 the sciences in question, together with so much knowledge 
 of the other as to know the general state of the science. 
 His own science must always be such a man’s point of 
 departure; it is his task to show the agreement between 
 the conclusions of his own science and those of the border 
 science, which is by no means a simple matter—let us say— 
 for a sociologist, who finds the specialists in natural science 
 in such great disagreement in questions of race, as, for 
 instance, on the fundamental problem of heredity. The 
 sociologist may, therefore, consider himself justified in 
 making his selection among the conflicting theories of the 
 natural scientist, though he be a layman, and to favour such 
 theory as may be compatible with the firm basis he has 
 gained in sociology. | 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTER II 
 RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 a. Domestic Animals 
 
 One of the most remarkable peculiarities of our theo- 
 reticians of race, who call themselves “anthropo-sociol- 
 ogists’’, is the fact that they leave us all the more in the 
 dark as to the true nature of the concept of race, the more 
 they have occasion to manipulate with this concept in the 
 explanation of social phenomena. A man’s being, action, 
 performance, are due in their opinion simply to his race; 
 they have been inherited from his ancestors and are trans- 
 mitted with the certainty of natural law to his descendants. 
 Race is the modern Fate, as inscrutable and immutable as 
 the latter. | 
 
 It seems self-evident to the anthropo-sociological theo- 
 reticians of race that those groups designated as human 
 races should be understood in the same way as we under- 
 stand races of animals. They seem to be not troubled for 
 a moment by any question as to whether the hfe conditions 
 of man do not alter the concept of race as applied to man. 
 They do not even take up the question of which type of 
 animal race is represented by the human races, 
 
 As a matter of fact, the races of animals are not all of 
 the same type, but may be divided into two different 
 
 20 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 groups: the races of domestic animals, and the races of 
 anmals in the wild state. 
 
 Zoologists and botanists distinguish these groups with 
 great care. As arule, they apply the word “race” only to 
 the former, while the latter are termed “varieties” or 
 ‘“‘species”. The theoreticians of race, the anthropo- 
 sociologists, however, indiscriminately apply observations 
 and laws valid for both the races of domestic animals as 
 well as for the varieties of wild animals, to the human races. 
 This alone must give rise to dreadful confusion, altogether 
 aside from the fact that human beings are neither domestic 
 animals nor animals in the wild condition, but a tribe living 
 under quite peculiar conditions, conditions which do not 
 resemble those of any other animals. 
 
 Before taking up the problem of race, we must therefore 
 first attain clarity as to the distinction between the “race” 
 of the domestic animal and the “variety” of the wild animal. 
 We speak here only of animals, since only they are of im- 
 portance to our problem, which concerns the human races, 
 but the following remarks apply just as well to plants as to 
 animals. 
 
 A phenomenon is best understood when its origin is 
 known. In the case of the races of domestic animals, it is 
 not difficult to ascertain this origin, for the process is 
 being accomplished daily before our eyes. The breeding of 
 new races is constantly going on. On the other hand, the 
 formation of varieties in nature cannot be observed; it 
 must be inferred as an hypothesis. 
 
 21 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 If we regard the organisms in nature, we shall find that 
 none of them serves a purpose lying outside of itself, but 
 that each is an end in itself. Its individual organs must 
 serve for the preservation of the whole, and must therefore 
 be adequate for—or at least compatible with—self- 
 preservation. An organism constituted otherwise cannot 
 continue to exist, and certainly not to multiply. 
 
 But in the case of the animal organism, not only its own 
 organs are important, but also those of other organisms 
 with which it comes in contact, which oppose it, or on which 
 it lives. Only man, however, has advanced to the point of 
 altering in such manner the organs of the organisms from 
 which or by which he lives, as to make them more sub- 
 servient to his purposes. This is one of the means by which 
 he has advanced beyond his primitive condition. 
 
 His first step in this process is to cause animals (also 
 plants) which he would otherwise be obliged to seek out 
 and capture with more or less difficulty, to live and multiply 
 in his proximity. His first object in this is probably merely 
 to diminish the difficulties of seeking, perhaps also of over- 
 coming, the organisms on which he lives. But once the 
 latter have been accustomed to live together with man as 
 tame companions, man is also impelled to attempt to adapt 
 the organs of the domestic animal, or of the cultivated 
 plant, to his own purposes, for which nature did not intend 
 them. 
 
 This is best attained by adequately altering their con- 
 ditions of life, by increasing their supply of food, perhaps 
 
 22 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 by fertilizing or battening, decreasing their expenditure of 
 strength in the life process, for instance, by sparing them 
 the necessity of looking for fodder, of fleeing from enemies, 
 of losing heat in the winter cold, etc. But, ultimately, 
 man comes to the point of altering these organisms by 
 making use of his observation that each individual has the 
 tendency to transmit his qualities to his posterity. Much 
 as all the individuals of the same species may resemble each 
 other, they are never completely identical. Slight varia- 
 tions are always present, and these may easily be trans- 
 mitted. 
 
 Most domestic animals finally become so amenable to 
 man’s guidance that he is enabled to mate them, or pre- 
 vent them from reproducing, as he likes. Once he has 
 advanced to this point, he will, of course, prefer to permit 
 those specimens to reproduce that are most suitable for his 
 purposes, that furnish most milk, meat, or fat, or yield 
 the finest wool, or lay most eggs, have most traction power 
 or swiftness, etc. If those of their posterity continue to 
 reproduce, who present these qualities in the most emphatic 
 form, these qualities will gradually be reinforced to such an 
 extent, and the bodies of the animals will alter so greatly, 
 as to be perceptibly different from those of their ancestors, 
 thus producing a new species from the old species, with 
 permanent, repeatedly transmittable characteristics, pro- 
 vided the breeding-animals are always mated only with 
 their like. 
 
 This selection is at first predominantly an unconscious 
 
 23 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 one. The best specimens are reproduced because they are 
 most prized. Without any intention of securing a new 
 race, this final outcome of the process has not been ap- 
 parent from the outset. But the art of breeding is per- 
 fected more and more, becomes more and more conscious, 
 and finally actually sets out to create specific races with 
 specific race traits. At times, new variations may sporad- 
 ically appear in isolated specimens. If these are of advan- 
 tage to man, he will attempt to reproduce them. Thus, in 
 1791, a ram with short, crooked legs and a long back, 
 which was thus prevented from jumping over hedges, gave 
 rise to a new race in America, that of the Ancona sheep. 
 Likewise in France in 1828, a hornless ram with uncom- 
 monly soft, long wool, led to the creation of a new race, 
 the Mauchamp sheep. As a rule, however, the creation of 
 a new race is not such a simple matter, but proceeds by 
 means of a slow, gradual reinforcement of traits, often 
 discernible in the first generation only to the trained eye 
 of experienced breeders, and not attaining practical sig- 
 nificance until they have been reinforced to a sufficient 
 extent in the course of generations. 
 
 The uninterrupted selection of breeding-animals, con- 
 tinued for generations according to the same plan, creates 
 a new race which is maintained by the fact that only such 
 specimens are reproduced as present this race trait in the 
 most emphatic form, that a mating with individuals of 
 other races is strictly avoided, and all specimens of the 
 specific race which present a variation that deviates from 
 
 24 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 the desired race trait are of course excluded from further 
 breeding. 
 
 The necessary condition for the formation of such new 
 races is, of course, that the animals reproduce in the tame 
 state and that their mating be under man’s control. The 
 elephant, as a rule, reproduces only in the wild state and 
 has created no new races. 
 
 On the other hand, the domestic cat leaves nothing to be 
 desired in the way of prolificness, yet the cat has preserved 
 much of its original freedom in spite of man. Its love-life 
 is carried on not in the stable but on the roofs, and there- 
 fore, according to Darwin, it does not furnish any different 
 races within the same country.’ 
 
 However, the formation of new races under otherwise 
 identical circumstances will be the easier, the greater the 
 certainty to mate specific individuals, and the more swiftly 
 the generations succeed each other. This is the reason for 
 the great increase of races of rabbits and pigeons; here the 
 breeding of such races has become a sport. 
 
 b. Wild Animals 
 
 Let us now examine the case of the formation of varieties 
 of animals in the wild condition, which should—it would 
 appear—have been examined before we took up the races 
 of domestic animals, for the wild varieties, of course, arose 
 
 i1Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under 
 Domestication, London, 1876, vol. i, pp. 45, 46; vol. ii, pp. 220, 222. 
 
 25 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 earlier and constitute the fundamental trunk from which 
 the races of domestic animals have branched off. But ina 
 study of the history of the theory of the evolution of races, 
 the origin of the organisms controlled by man is the proper 
 point of departure, for it was the observations made in 
 artificial selection that led Darwin to construct his hypoth- 
 esis of natural selection. 
 
 Darwin assumed that the formation of varieties and 
 species proceeds in the natural condition, as in the case 
 of domestic animals and cultivated plants, by a selection of 
 the best, most adapted, specimens for reproduction, and 
 excluding from reproduction those less fitted, with the sole 
 difference that the selection, in the natural condition, is 
 not conducted by man, in accordance with his purposes, but 
 by the struggle for existence, which is a consequence of 
 overpopulation, of the circumstance that more individuals 
 of each species are produced than can continue to exist. 
 A constant merciless struggle is going on among them, in 
 which the weakest, least fit, succumb, while the strongest, 
 most fit, maintain themselves and reproduce. Serious ob- 
 jections were raised to this view at the very outset. If 
 the struggle for existence is a continuous, progressive 
 selection of the best specimens, the transformation of 
 species must be going on continuously, and at a rather 
 rapid rate. In the case of certain domestic animals and 
 garden plants a specific new race may be produced in the 
 course of a few years. 
 
 In nature, on the other hand, observation shows us that 
 
 26 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 species remain apparently unchanged for long periods. 
 They may change in geological periods, but remain un- 
 changed for many thousands of years within a geological 
 period. In historical times, the great mass of wild animal 
 species has remained entirely the same. As depicted on 
 the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, they look 
 exactly like their prototypes of today. We are told this 
 difficulty may be eliminated by assuming that evolution pro- 
 ceeds with tremendous slowness, by a gradual accumula- 
 tion of imperceptible alterations. But the slower this 
 evolution, the more imperceptible the alterations contrib- 
 uted to progress by each generation, the more insurmount- 
 able becomes another difficulty in the theory of selection: 
 it becomes more and more impossible to assume that each 
 alteration bestows upon the individual producing it a 
 preponderance over other individuals not supplied with it. 
 In artificial selection, the selection is made by men who 
 already have in mind the new type that is to be bred, 
 grasping its practical advantages and appreciating— 
 through eyes that have been sharpened by this prophecy— 
 the significance of hardly perceptible alterations, which are 
 important not in themselves, but merely as points of de- 
 parture in a long chain of development, the new type being 
 realised only at its termination. The theory of evolution 
 attempts to dispense altogether with providence in the 
 formation of natural species. Without the aid of far- 
 sighted selection, however, imperceptible alterations cannot 
 become the cause for the survival and reproduction of the 
 
 27 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 individuals supplied with them. Reference to artificial 
 selection is here of no value at all. 
 
 In addition, we have a third difficulty: Darwin called 
 his theory of natural selection an explanation of the origin 
 of species. If correct, this theory would merely afford an 
 explanation of the evolution of more highly organised im- 
 dividuals from those less highly organised. Its whole 
 emphasis is laid on the solution of the problem of evolution. 
 But, in order to explain the origin of species, we must also 
 explain the similarity between individuals, which leads to 
 generalising them as a specific species. Whence this sim- 
 larity? 
 
 In the case of artificial selection, the cause of the sim- 
 ilarity between individuals is in their common descent from 
 the same ancestors. The ancestral tree is here of great 
 importance. But it is impossible, in this case, to maintain 
 a “pure race” without constant intervention on the part of 
 the breeder, who must carefully guard his race animals 
 against mating with others, and who must eliminate from 
 their posterity all those individuals that present alterations 
 deviating from the pure racial type. 
 
 In nature this breeder is lacking. Unless the alterations 
 are of such variety as to doom the individual to early de- 
 struction, they will not prevent it from mating with other 
 differently constituted individuals, and thus from repro- 
 ducing. A constant mingling of individuals with the most 
 _ varied changes will take place. 
 
 A breeder producing a new race, furthermore, is con- 
 
 28 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 cerned only with a specific one-sided peculiarity, which he 
 aims to perpetuate. His selection is made solely with this 
 object in view. But in nature, it is not merely a single 
 quality which affords advantage to the individuals pos- 
 sessing it; the most varied qualities may be of value. Let 
 us assume the theory of selection to be correct to the extent 
 that evolution takes place by reason of the fact that in- 
 dividuals with advantageous alterations maintain and re- 
 produce themselves more easily than others. Even here, 
 the most varied alterations are possible, as we may see 
 from the case of the hare. Some hares will be benefited 
 by longer legs, others by greater endurance, a third variety 
 by better protective mimicry (perhaps they are white in 
 winter and brown in summer), a fourth group by reason of 
 enhanced productiveness, others again through increased 
 power of resistance to climatic influences (perhaps they 
 have a thick pelt in winter, a light one in summer) ; finer 
 differences in the sense organs, sharper eyes, better hearing, 
 finer sense of smell, as well as differences in intelligence, in 
 swiftness and correctness of the judgments based on sen- 
 sual impressions, will be of advantage. One individual may 
 present one set of advantages, another may have other 
 advantages. 
 
 If only such individuals should continue to mate as have 
 coincident traits, they might emphasise these traits and 
 thus create a new race. But since there are many such 
 traits, a single species within the same region would not 
 give rise to a single new species but to many such. Thus, 
 
 29 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 as contrasted with wild rabbits, tame rabbits may be 
 divided into many races. 
 
 But a mating limited to individuals of the same peculiar- 
 ities is impossible in the wild state. The character of the 
 mates there depends entirely on accident, on the mating of 
 certain individuals at the moment of the mating season. 
 There is not always sexual selection; mating is often pro- 
 miscuous. Where there is such selection, it is limited to one 
 sex. The victorious stag will have relations with all the 
 does of his herd, regardless of their properties. And the 
 selection—if present at all—is carried out among a small 
 number only. 
 
 In the wild state, therefore, the most varied deviations 
 will be transmitted within a certain species. These devia- 
 tions continue to mingle again. It is impossible to see how 
 natural selection can here produce new important species 
 with coincident traits. If a constant progressive evolution 
 takes place owing to the survival of the fittest, with new 
 properties and by means of their transmission, this evolu- 
 tion must lead to a disintegration of existing species into a 
 confused mass of varying individuals, all similarity among 
 which will progressively disappear. ‘The theory of the 
 origin of species becomes a theory of their dissolution, and 
 it remains impossible to grasp how species based on the 
 similarity of numerous individuals should ever arise. But, 
 as a matter of fact, we find in nature many more indi- 
 viduals having coincident traits than we do among domestic 
 animals. We have already pointed out how great is the 
 
 30 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 number of races of tame rabbits, as compared with the 
 uniformity found among wild rabbits and field hares. 
 
 And the number of species of wild animals is not in- 
 creasing, while almost each new year supplies us with a new 
 race in the case of many domestic animals: 
 
 “But geology shows us, that from an early part of the 
 tertiary period the number of species of shells, and that 
 from the middle part of this same period the number of 
 mammals, has not greatly or at all increased.” ” 
 
 In the introduction to his fine book on the distribution of 
 the animal world, Kobelt says: “I have not been able to 
 convince myself that a sole, uniform transformation of the 
 animal kingdom is taking place over long periods, as a 
 strict interpretation of Darwinism would require... . 
 Beginning with the middle pliocene period (the geological 
 period immediately preceding the origin of man —K.), we 
 cannot prove with any degree of certainty the new origin 
 of any species.” * 
 
 Whence then the great similarity between so many in- 
 dividuals in the wild state? 
 
 We cannot explain this similarity by considering only 
 the individual and the evolution of the individual. We are 
 here dealing with a mass phenomenon, which may be ex- 
 plained only by means of a factor lying outside of the 
 individuals, above them, influencing them all in the same 
 manner. It is not hard to discover this factor if we con- 
 
 2Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Harvard Classics Edition, 
 chap. iv, p. 140. 
 8 Die Verbreitung der Tierwelt, Leipzig, 1902. 
 
 31 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 sider the varieties of animals in the natural state. Among 
 races of domestic animals, the individual ancestors, the 
 ancestral tree, is of importance. But the varieties of wild 
 animals are “geographical races”. This is true even for 
 the domestic cat, which resists artificial breeding; it is all 
 the more true of animals in the unrestrained, natural state. 
 Thus, among lions, we may distinguish the varieties of 
 the Barbary lion, the Senegal lion, the Cape lion, the Per- 
 sian lion, the Guzerat lion. Among elephants, we distinguish 
 between the Indian and the African. Rhinoceroses are 
 divided into several varieties: the Indian rhinoceros, “whose 
 area of distribution seems limited to the Indian peninsula” ; 
 the Varana rhinoceros, “as far as our knowledge goes, is 
 found only in Java”. ‘The half-armored rhinoceros is 
 found only in Sumatra (Cerator hinus sumatrensis).” 
 “The area of distribution of the double-horned rhinoceros 
 (Atelodus bicornis and Atelodus simus) now extends over 
 all of Central Africa.” ‘The hornless rhinoceros is said 
 now to be limited to the southern half of Africa.” * 
 Similarly in the case of the hare: “AIl of central Europe 
 and a small portion of western Asia is the home of the 
 Continental hare. In the south, it is the Mediterranean 
 hare, a deviating species of small size and reddish color; in 
 the high mountains, it is the Alpine hare, in the far north, 
 the snow hare. . . . The African hares differ from ours by 
 their smaller size and also by their uncommonly long 
 
 ears.’’ § 
 
 4Brehm: Tierleben. 5 Ibid. 
 B25 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 In other words, it is the geographical differences which 
 produce the differences between varieties in the natural 
 state: differences in climate, configuration of the soil, the 
 nature of the nutrition and the mode of obtaining it, the 
 species of enemies, etc. On the other hand, it is the wni- 
 formity of the conditions of life within a certain region 
 which produces the similarity between the individuals of 
 the species concerned. ‘This similarity is more powerful 
 than the differences, the variations of the individuals. The 
 latter tend to be dissimilar, to diverge. The conditions of 
 life in nature, in a certain region, are the same, however, 
 for all, operate in the same way, and oppose the tendency 
 to diverge. 
 
 If we thus consider the conditions of life, the milieu, as 
 the decisive factor in the moulding of varieties and species 
 in the natural state, we are eliminating the difficulties that 
 would arise if we should proceed—in our explanation of 
 natural varieties—from the experiences obtained in the 
 breeding of the races of domestic animals. 
 
 We are now enabled to understand not only the similarity 
 of the individuals of the same species within a certain 
 region, but also the constancy, the tendency to immuta- 
 bility, of species in historical times, as well as their alter- 
 ations in geological periods. As long as the milieu remains 
 the same, the species will not change. But the milieu does 
 not permanently remain the same. The earth changes, 
 alters its position in the firmament. Passing through 
 space, together with the entire solar system, it may at times 
 
 33 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 encounter colder regions, at other times warmer ones, in 
 what we call the universe. Nor is its position always the 
 same with regard to the sun; its axis oscillates, and many 
 portions of the earth’s surface may thus obtain a more 
 polar climate than formerly, while others obtain a more 
 equatorial climate. 
 
 Far more certain than these changes are those arising 
 from the gradually growing coldness of the earth, its grad- 
 ual shrinking. Continents and oceans are formed, some of 
 the latter deep, others shallow; flat lands and mountains, 
 marine currents and trade winds, nothing permanent, 
 everything changing, but changing only in endless periods. 
 For thousands of years the same condition will prevail in 
 a certain region; then it will gradually change; moisture 
 yields to drought, warmth to cold, low plains are lifted up, 
 twisted into mountain chains, or subside and furnish sea 
 bottoms. When such changes ensue, the organisms of the 
 region cannot remain the same. Some are destroyed, some 
 are driven out, forced to migrate, some adapt themselves to 
 the new conditions, which they may do in many ways, for 
 which Lamarck and Darwin, as well as their disciples, have 
 gathered very interesting illustrations. But once the or- 
 ganisms of the region are adapted to the new condition of 
 affairs, we no longer find any cause for further changes 
 of their condition, and they will remain in their new forms 
 until new changes in their life conditions are introduced. 
 
 This is not a new view. Darwin himself, in the historical 
 sketch introducing his book on the origin of species, points 
 
 34 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 out that Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had stated it to 
 be his opinion (in 1850) of the traits of species, “that 
 they are permanent for each species so long as it repro- 
 duces itself within the same conditions, but that they 
 change when the external conditions of life change’’. 
 
 Darwin fully recognised the effect of the altered condi- 
 tions of life as well as of the use or non-use of organs. But 
 he underestimated their importance, since he was com- 
 pletely dominated by the observations made in artificial 
 selection, and by the assumption of a constant struggle for 
 existence under the pressure of overpopulation. This lat- 
 ter view he owed to Malthus; it is still considered a cast- 
 iron law of natural science. 
 
 But if we examine the struggle for existence, we shall 
 find that overpopulation—in other words, the struggle be- 
 tween individuals of the same species for fodder—plays 
 but a small réle, is only an exceptional phenomenon. 
 
 A few concrete examples will help us. Hares, as is well 
 known, are very fruitful. The female hare gives birth to a 
 number of young as early as the month of March; very few 
 of these survive; how many, depends chiefly on the weather. 
 Snow, freezing weather, will destroy almost all of them. 
 Sunshine, warm breezes, will enable many to live. It is 
 clear that in these cases the selection among the young 
 hares is but little concerned with the number struggling 
 for existence. The struggle here amounts to a struggle 
 against the external conditions of life, not against nu- 
 merous competitors of the same species. 
 
 35 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Or, let us consider antelopes in an African steppe. Some- 
 times there is drought for many weeks; springs run dry, 
 pools of water evaporate, many antelopes die of thirst. 
 Only those remain alive which can bear thirst longest, or 
 whose organs are so delicate as to enable them to sense 
 the presence of water at great distances, better than the 
 other antelopes. The struggle for existence here certainly 
 produces an extensive selection, but it is a struggle against 
 the external conditions of life, and has nothing to do with 
 the number of antelopes. The quantity of water did not 
 become insufficient because it was drunk by too many 
 antelopes. 
 
 Another enemy of the antelopes is the lion. But the 
 lhion’s strength and cruelty do not depend upon the number 
 of antelopes. ‘There may even ensue a struggle between two 
 lions for a single antelope, if there are not many antelopes, 
 the stronger lion being victorious. But even this is of rare 
 occurrence, 
 
 Far from being the general and constant cause of the 
 struggle for existence, the great fruitfulness of certain 
 organisms is rather a weapon enabling them to maintain 
 themselves in this struggle, in which they would otherwise 
 succumb. ‘The struggle for existence, as a rule, is not a 
 struggle between members of the same species when it has 
 become too numerous, but a struggle of the individual or a 
 group of individuals of the same species against the ex- 
 ternal conditions of life, which include not only the 
 inorganic surroundings, but also the organic surroundings. 
 
 36 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 Changes in these conditions of life also involve changes in 
 the mode of the struggle for existence, in the method of 
 using the organs; old organs or forms of organs become 
 dispensable, new organs, or new forms of old organs, become 
 necessary. If the species succeeds in evolving in the strug- 
 gle with the new conditions, and thus becoming a new 
 species, it will maintain itself ; otherwise it will be destroyed. 
 We may judge from remains found in the bowels of the 
 earth how many such species have been destroyed in the 
 earth’s history. 
 
 The theory of overpopulation proves nothing, therefore, 
 against the assumption that the final cause for the forma- 
 tion of new species is in the changes of the conditions of life. 
 Another view must still be mentioned: the view that ac- 
 quired characteristics cannot be inherited. 
 
 Modern physiologists distinguish between the body cells 
 and the reproductive cells, the “body plasm” and the 
 “erm plasm”. The germ plasm, according to their view, 
 is immutable, being transmitted again and again. But, 
 according to Weismann, it is immutable even to the extent 
 that it is not influenced by the qualities acquired by the 
 body of the individual during his life. The individual 
 cannot, therefore, transmit these acquisitions. Thus the 
 formation of new, transmittable traits of species by the 
 influence of new conditions of life on the body, is precluded. 
 But this view was emphatically opposed, from its first ap- 
 pearance, particularly by Darwinists. Darwin, himself, 
 assumed the heredity of acquired characteristics, as did 
 
 37 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 also Herbert Spencer. Recent experiments show, on the 
 one hand, that external influences do produce changes 
 which are transmitted, and, on the other hand, that the 
 germ plasm is by no means absolutely independent of the 
 body plasm. This question is excellently treated by 
 Tschulok in his little book on evolution; the following 
 experiment is particularly interesting: 
 
 ‘““T'wo races of hens were treated, one pure black, the other 
 pure white. The races-were pure, i.¢e., it was known def- 
 initely for each individual that its parents, grandparents 
 and great-grandparents had all presented the same char- 
 acteristics as the individual itself; in other words, that no 
 mixture had taken place. When such a white hen was 
 crossed with a white cock, their posterity were white ex- 
 clusively. Similarly, mating a black hen with a black cock 
 produced only black posterity. 
 
 “Now the following experiment was made: 
 
 “The ovary of a white hen was removed and implanted 
 in the body of a black hen; the black hen’s ovary was also 
 implanted in the white hen. The operation was performed 
 so neatly that the animals remained alive and were capable, 
 after the wounds had healed, of producing posterity by the 
 normal methods. ‘The white hen with the black ovary was 
 now fructified by a black cock. We should here expect the 
 posterity to be black, for the ova in the ovary of the white 
 hen came from a black hen, and the male semen was like- 
 wise obtained from a black cock. However, the chickens 
 were colored black and white. Similarly, the black hen, 
 
 38 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 with an ovary taken from a white hen, was fructified by a 
 white cock. The posterity included not only pure white 
 chickens, but also chickens with black spots.” ° 
 
 This result is the more astonishing in that it was attained 
 by powerful mechanical interference, not by a gradual, 
 organic alteration. ‘The ovary in the body of the black 
 hen had already attained full development when it was 
 implanted in the white hen’s body, and yet the influence of 
 the new body cells on the transferred germ cells was so 
 strong as to enable the new body fully to impress its type 
 upon the ovary. It might be assumed that the influence of 
 changed somatic traits on the germ plasm must be still 
 stronger in cases where the body suffers changes by reason 
 of the influence of altered conditions, before its germ cells 
 attain full maturity, with the result that the process of 
 maturing goes on completely under the influence of the new 
 properties. 
 
 We, therefore, see no reason that would oblige us to 
 assume that acquired characteristics cannot be trans- 
 mitted. The manner in which heredity works is, however, 
 still completely hidden. Nor may we assume that all ac- 
 quired characteristics are inherited. Lesions and mutila- 
 tions, for instance, are hardly transmitted. Weismann cut 
 off the tails of many generations of mice, without ever 
 obtaining a tailless mouse. Many an apparent case of 
 heredity may also be explained by the fact that the pos- 
 terity live under the same conditions as their ancestors, 
 
 6 Tschulok, Entwicklungstheorie, Stuttgart, J. H. W. Dietz, 1912. 
 
 39 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 and therefore acquire and present the same character- 
 istics, without necessarily inheriting them. 
 
 There are many degrees among the inherited character- 
 istics, Some are more persistent than others. ‘There are 
 inherited characteristics which the individual may easily 
 lose if it enters a milieu deviating from that: producing 
 these qualities. Other traits, on the other hand, are stub- 
 bornly retained for many generations, even with the great- 
 est variations in the conditions of life. Relatively, as com- 
 pared with those traits that change easily, inherited traits 
 of the latter kind may be considered immutable. But if 
 they were acquired owing to the influence of special condi- 
 tions of life, it would be impossible to understand why they 
 should not be capable of changing under the influence of 
 altered conditions of life. 
 
 Many scientists distinguish between race traits proper, 
 in man, which are said to be absolutely unchanging, such as 
 the color of the eyes, the hair, the skin, the shape of the 
 skull; and secondary or fluctuating properties, such as 
 bodily stature, bone structure, muscular system, fatty tis- 
 sue, etc. 
 
 No doubt there is a difference between race traits of 
 these two kinds. But perhaps this difference should be 
 ascribed solely to the fact that the conditions bringing 
 about the fluctuating properties are more susceptible and 
 more swiftly susceptible to change than those causing the 
 apparently immutable race traits. The former may change 
 so quickly as to enable us to observe their influence without 
 
 40 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 difficulty. The other conditions we do not even know, 
 perhaps for the reason that they do not change per- 
 ceptibly within the period of our observations. But we 
 cannot say of any race trait that it is absolutely un- 
 changing; such a trait would be the sole unchanging 
 phenomenon in this changing world. 
 
 On this point, Fishberg says: 
 
 “Recent investigations have led to a modification or even 
 complete abandonment of the theory of the constancy and 
 persistence of race traits. For a long time, some anthro- 
 pologists have maintained that the external environment, 
 particularly the nutrition, the social and geographical sur- 
 roundings, have a powerful influence on the modification 
 of some traits, such as musculature, stature, etc. Many 
 even go so far as to say that these agencies may alter pig- 
 mentation and head-form. Ridgeway, going further, 
 assumes that the duration of human types in a certain 
 region, and over long periods, is an expression not of the 
 influence of heredity, but of environment, and that, on the 
 other hand, modifications of the human form found in the 
 Mediterranean region, and in central and northwest Africa, 
 may be traced back to differences of climate, soil and 
 national products. 
 
 “This theory of the decisive influence of environment on 
 the alteration or modification of basic somatic traits may 
 easily be applied to some of the race traits, . . . In some 
 regions it has been found that the soil has a powerful 
 influence on the stature of the inhabitants; for instance, 
 
 41 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 the great height of persons inhabiting the State of Ken- 
 tucky is very probably to be explained by the presence of 
 hard water in this region, Similarly (according to Rése), 
 the stature of the population in Gotha, Germany, has been 
 undergoing changes since the introduction of hard water. 
 Observations have also been made on the influence of en- 
 vironment on the head-form—a trait that has hitherto been 
 considered immutable under all circumstances. .. . 
 
 “Professor Franz Boas, of New York, recently arrived 
 at the conclusion, based on his investigations, that the 
 absolute persistence of human types is an untenable theory. 
 His investigations of the physical characteristics of im- 
 migrants have revealed an extremely interesting condition; 
 he finds that the children of immigrants are of higher stat- 
 ure and better bodily development than their parents born 
 in Europe. He has also discovered a very remarkable 
 alteration in the head-form of children born in America 
 after their parents had landed. Even a child born abroad, 
 and not more than one year old on its arrival in America, 
 will retain the foreign head-form. But a child born in 
 America, though only a few months after the parents have 
 landed, has the American head-form.” ? 
 
 Other investigators before Boas had found that the 
 whites in the United States acquire more and more Indian 
 traits in the course of a few generations, thus becoming 
 *“Indianized”’, 
 
 But it would be premature to infer from these facts that 
 
 7 Fishberg, German edition, pp. 5 et seq. 
 42 
 
RACES OF ANIMALS 
 
 the American milieu will ultimately make Indians of the 
 whites. 
 
 Even among animals, the milieu is only one of the cir- 
 cumstances determining somatic forms and_ physical 
 strength. Other things being equal, these conditions will 
 produce both; but these conditions also include the organ- 
 ism on which the milieu is working. The same milieu will 
 not necessarily influence different organisms in the same 
 way, but may have different effects on each. If various 
 races are transplanted from the milieus producing them, 
 into a new environment, they will all be changed by this 
 environment, but not necessarily all in the same way. 
 
 The American conditions may have a different effect on a 
 white man than on a Mongolian or on a Negro. 
 
 Other factors enter also, however, which make the race 
 problem in the case of man much more complicated even 
 than among animals. 
 
 43 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 We have found that the races of animals in the natural 
 condition, and the races of domestic animals, are two very 
 different things. It would, therefore, be erroneous to apply 
 to one of these groups observations made in the case of the 
 other. 
 
 The pure race of domestic animals may always be traced 
 back to a specific parent couple. <A specific race (variety) 
 of wild animals may be traced to a certain region. The 
 naive view of primitive peoples derived each species of wild 
 animals from a specific parent couple—as they also de- 
 rived each nation from such a couple. When the Deluge 
 was impending, Noah, in order to preserve the animal 
 creation, took of each species ‘‘a male and his female” into 
 the Ark, later liberating them again. We are not told how 
 the carnivorous animals kept alive when only two specimens 
 of each variety of herbivorous animals were available. 
 
 Primitive though this view may be, it still prevails to a 
 great extent even in present-day thinking. In the case of 
 related varieties and species, we still speak of a “common 
 blood”’, a common descent. 
 
 Darwin says: “All the individuals of the same species, 
 and all the species of the same genus, or even higher group, 
 
 44: 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 must have descended from common parents; and therefore, 
 in however distant and isolated parts of the world they are 
 now found, they must, in the course of successive genera- 
 tions, have passed from some one part to the others.” * 
 
 This common descent from a single parent couple, which 
 may be observed in races produced artificially, is Saeey 
 improbable in the case of natural species. 
 
 We know nothing of the origin of life, but we must 
 assume that, like all other phenomena, this origin is subject 
 to the law that like causes under like circumstances will 
 always produce like effects. As soon as the conditions 
 and causes of organic life were present on earth, it is not 
 probable that an isolated speck of albumen took shape, 
 with living functions, multiplying its number by growth 
 and fission, thus becoming the parent of all existing organ- 
 isms, but we must assume that primitive organisms, how- 
 ever we may conceive their shape—were formed in all places 
 in which the conditions for their existence were given—and 
 that they immediately expanded and peopled their entire 
 ‘nutrition area”. They began to multiply as soon as suit- 
 able areas were available, and they began to assume varying 
 forms as these areas, and with them the conditions of life, 
 became more manifold. Each new higher species therefore 
 must have been present in numerous specimens from its very 
 beginning. 
 
 And we must make this assumption even in the case of 
 the highest forms. We have no evidence that humanity 
 
 1 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Speeies, New York, 1860, p. 400. 
 
 45 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 is descended from a single couple of ape-men. It is more 
 probable that the evolution proceeded on the basis of an 
 entire species of ape-like animals, which had become subject 
 to conditions bringing about their development into hu- 
 mans. Common racial traits among animals in the natural 
 condition do not therefore by any means point to a common 
 origin—not to the remotest degree—in a single parent 
 couple, and therefore not to blood relationship. But it may 
 be assumed that a great number of them are more or less 
 closely related. The number of blood relations within a 
 variety will probably be the greater, the longer this variety 
 has been in existence and the smaller the territory now 
 inhabited by it. 
 
 The varieties of an animal species in the natural state 
 within a certain region are extremely limited; therefore, 
 there is only one such variety in a specific region, and this 
 variety does not change as long as the conditions of the 
 region remain the same. The races of a species of domestic 
 animals within a certain region may, on the other hand, 
 be quite numerous. They are being constantly trans- 
 formed, become constantly more numerous, and become 
 more and more different from the primitive race from which 
 they take their origin. 
 
 This condition is brought about by the fact that man is 
 able to provide an artificial environment for the animal 
 races shaped by him, thus abolishing in great measure the 
 effects of the natural environment. In the case of animals 
 in the natural state, the organism is adapted to its life 
 
 46 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 conditions: in the case of domestic conditions, the life 
 conditions are adapted to the organism which man is breed- 
 ing in accordance with his needs. MHigh-breed domestic 
 animals could probably no longer exist without the aid of 
 man. 
 
 This new kind of adaptation—not of the organism to its 
 environment, but of the environment to the organism—con- 
 ducted by man for his domestic animals, he, of course, ap- 
 plies in the highest degree when dealing with himself. It is 
 this process which causes man to cease to be a wild animal, 
 but it does not make him a domestic animal. 
 
 In the accommodation of its life conditions to the organ- 
 ism, the domestic animal is purely passive; this adaptation 
 is undertaken by man for the animal. Man is the active 
 element in the process. But the animal ceases to be an end 
 in itself. Its organism becomes subservient to the purposes 
 of man. But, like the animal in the wild state, man knows 
 no higher end than himself; he alters his milieu to swit 
 himself. 
 
 To be sure, the purpose served by man may not be ex- 
 clusively his own personality. Even among animals in the 
 natural state there are social animals, among whom the 
 individual cannot exist for itself alone, or at least it cannot 
 exist fully for itself alone; each is obliged to cooperate with 
 others; its welfare depends on the welfare of the social 
 group to which it belongs. Society is higher than the 
 individual; its purposes are higher than those of the 
 individual. 
 
 Ary 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Even in the animal world, the dependence of the in- 
 dividual on the group to which it belongs is carried to a 
 high stage. It is probably not an accident that precisely 
 those animal species were best fitted to become domestic 
 animals which were able to subordinate their individuality 
 to an outer compulsion. In the case of man, the social 
 cohesion, owing to language and economy, is much closer 
 than in most animals—perhaps excepting bees and ants. 
 The individual’s dependence on society increases. But 
 great as may be the occasional contradiction between the 
 interests of the totality and those of the individual, in the 
 case of man, the social interests are always human in- 
 terests, and are therefore always directly or indirectly the 
 interests of the individual himself. We are here dealing 
 with a primitive, simple society, and are therefore dis- 
 regarding class differences. 
 
 Removal from the natural state usually has not the same 
 effect on man as on the other animals. This removal is 
 man’s own work, the product of his knowledge of the con- _ 
 ditions of life, of his mental superiority over the rest of 
 organic nature. It is the outcome of his ability to 
 strengthen and variegate his organs of sensual perception 
 and motion by means of artificial organs, and thereby to 
 surmount the obstacles in surrounding nature to a greater 
 extent than he could in the natural condition, 7.e., aided by 
 his bodily organs alone. Each new advance in this field, 
 each victory over a natural barrier, makes man face a new 
 difficulty, new problems, but also provides him with new, 
 
 48 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 hitherto unknown means and knowledge for their solution. 
 The natural environment to which the organisms of wild 
 animals are adapted do not change in historical times, i.¢., 
 as measured in human records. The artificial environment 
 adapted by man to his own organism, has been changing 
 considerably in historical times. Doubtless nature also is 
 in constant flux, but the rate of change is imperceptible, 
 as measured by the advances in the evolution of technology 
 and social forms among men. The natural environment of 
 wild animals may therefore be considered unchanging as 
 compared with the constantly changing artificial environ- 
 ment of man. 
 
 This environment is adapted to the needs of the human 
 organism. But it also has its effect on this organism. It 
 makes no new demands on most of the bodily organs, per- 
 haps even reduces the number of its former demands; for 
 example, in the case of the teeth, which may deteriorate 
 as a result. But it makes more and more demands on 
 those organs which have created this environment, the 
 organs of cognition and judgment, or, in other words, of 
 mental activity in general. 
 
 In the natural state, the same situations repeat them- 
 selves again and again with very slight differences for each 
 animal species, so long as no alterations ensue in the en- 
 vironment. The experiences, judgments and actions arising 
 from these situations therefore tend to uniformity, to be- 
 come fixed habits. And, like other acquired characteristics, 
 habits practised for generations and turning out to be ex- 
 
 49 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 pedient for the organism, finally become hereditary; they 
 become impulses, instincts, which are followed without 
 thought. 
 
 In the case of man, the instinctive life is more and more 
 forced into the background, as the natural environment is 
 replaced by an artificial environment and as the changes in 
 the latter proceed more and more rapidly, as they intro- 
 duce more and more new problems, which cannot be solved 
 without careful investigation. The organs of mental activ- 
 ity are therefore made to deal with more and more varied 
 new tasks, are put to more and more exertion and thus 
 develop more and more. ‘The demands made upon the 
 mental organs are of increasing complexity and variety; 
 likewise, the manner in which these organs are called upon 
 to act. Simultaneously, the relations of men to each other, 
 both between individuals and tribes, become quite varied, 
 with the result that the most manifold possibilities arise for 
 mental development. ‘The organs of the human spirit 
 become the most valuable, but also the most adaptable of 
 all organs, those subject to the swiftest and most powerful 
 transformations. 
 
 We find an opposite evolutionary trend among domestic 
 animals, the development of whose organs depends on man. 
 But from most of these animals man asks only more meat, 
 milk, wool, eggs, traction power; he rarely asks increased 
 intelligence, never independent judgment. Aside from 
 dogs, the progress of breeding, in the case of domestic 
 animals, is accompanied by a decrease of intelligence, and 
 
 50 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 even in the case of the dog, it is doubtful whether the 
 “noblest”? races are also the most intelligent. 
 
 As man’s intelligence and technology improve, he be- 
 comes more able to offer resistance to the influences of the 
 life conditions surrounding him. He may, therefore, when 
 geographical conditions change, maintain his hereditary 
 somatic traits, his racial peculiarities, better than in the 
 natural condition. ‘This reduces the effect of accommoda- 
 tion in man, and emphasises that of heredity. But this 
 applies only to the somatic traits in the narrower sense, 
 not to the organs of mental life, which, when enhanced in 
 sensitiveness and variability, at once react to any altera- 
 tion in the life conditions. 
 
 But in the case of man, a change, not only in the artificial 
 conditions of life, but also in those that are natural, may 
 easily ensue, while such changes are rare in the natural 
 state. In nature, we have usually only slow changes, al- 
 terations over geological periods, such as in ice ages, in the 
 rising and subsiding of continents, which cause important 
 and permanent migrations of animal species. Such proc- 
 esses take place so slowly that the organisms concerned 
 are eliminated almost imperceptibly, step by step, thus 
 facilitating their adaptation to the new conditions of neigh- 
 -bouring regions. Man, however, acquires means of locomo- 
 tion enabling him to cover great distances with increasing 
 speed, and his technology in the winning of foodstuffs, 
 the manufacturing of clothing, the construction of houses, 
 the uses of fuel, illumination, etc., enable him to enter 
 
 51 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 regions in which he could not possibly maintain himself in 
 his natural state. 
 
 But with the possibility of undertaking swift and ex- 
 tended journeys, man’s desire for such journeys is awak- 
 ened. In the natural state, the fruitfulness of each species 
 of organisms is adapted to its life conditions, with a result- 
 ing state of equilibrium between the various species. My 
 book on increase and evolution takes up this question more 
 in detail. I am here obliged merely to suggest this thought, 
 like so many others. 
 
 Man’s technology disturbs this Eadie of equilibrium. 
 His fruitfulness is now subject to changing conditions, like- 
 wise his mortality. This may sometimes lead to the dying 
 out of certain tribes, while at other times it may cause so ~ 
 extensive an increase as to deprive posterity of the neces- 
 sary space in the home country. Later, the attraction of 
 certain regions for strangers also is an element, even when 
 such strangers are not driven from their homes by over- 
 population. This attraction itself depends on the evolu- 
 tion of technology and economy and may be of varying 
 nature. River constructions or improvements in naviga- 
 tion may render the shores of rivers or the coasts of oceans, 
 formerly desolate and inaccessible, so attractive as to make 
 them a goal for poorer tribes. In our own days, the gold 
 resources of Alaska have caused a migration into that 
 region. 
 
 The most varied causes and opportunities for migrations 
 arise. The same race may now be found living in the most 
 
 52 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 varied regions and climates. These migrations may pro- 
 ceed so swiftly, and be so temporary, as to preclude any 
 possibility of the race’s adaptation to the new conditions, 
 its acquisition of new hereditary traits. But even when a 
 migration leads to permanent settlement in a new region, 
 the artificial environment created by man in that region will 
 be so powerful as to enable it to resist the influence of the 
 natural environment over periods that may be of relatively 
 considerable duration. 
 
 We know nothing of man in the natural state. Even the 
 most primitive men we know have a certain technology. 
 We do not know whether man in the natural state inhab- 
 ited only a specific region of uniform character, or several 
 regions with varying character, whether he then consti- 
 tuted a single geographical race or several such. At any 
 rate, his race character must have been entirely dependent 
 on nature. 
 
 Technical and economic progress then creates two dif- 
 ferent tendencies. Increased impulses and opportunities 
 for migrations induce many races gradually to spread over 
 the most varied regions; the varying natural conditions of 
 the new environments have an influence in the direction of 
 substituting changed race traits for old race traits, of 
 substituting for the old race, or placing by its side—if 
 not all of the race has emigrated—a group of new races. 
 The alteration in race traits takes place either directly, 
 through the influence of natural factors: heat, cold, 
 drought, moisture, light, darkness, etc.; or, indirectly, 
 
 53 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 through the struggle against these factors, through the use 
 , of certain organs, disuse of others. Depending on the 
 development of technology and of the social conditions, 
 this struggle may assume different forms, and in the same 
 region may therefore produce various race types among 
 varying modes of production. If a steppe becomes inhab- 
 ited by fugitive nomads, it will produce different traits in 
 these nomads from those produced in a later population 
 with a sufficiently developed technology to enable it to 
 transform the steppe into fruitful farm land by means of 
 irrigation, and therefore cultivating this land as a per- 
 manent peasantry. 
 
 Therefore, the advances in technology and the migrations 
 increase the number of race differences and create new 
 geographical races. On the other hand, however, tech- 
 nology, beyond a certain level, may retard the formation 
 of such races. ‘The higher the evolution of human tech- 
 nology, the more independent becomes the race of the 
 nature of the environment. ‘The race may maintain its 
 character in the most varied regions, even such as have no 
 similarity with the region in which the race originated. 
 Thus, we find Europeans, Chinese, Negroes, in the most 
 varied parts of the world, living under the most different 
 climates. 
 
 But no matter how highly developed its technology, no 
 race can permanently and completely escape from the in- 
 fluence of the environment. It may most easily escape from 
 the organic environment, the flora and fauna, which may 
 
 54 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 be changed rather easily by human intervention. On the 
 other hand, the influence of telluric factors—altitude above 
 sea level, configuration of the soil, quantity of sunlight, 
 heat, cold—can never be entirely eliminated. 
 
 But even here our remarks refer only to somatic race 
 traits proper. Even the most temporary change in the 
 location of a race, producing no alteration in the physical 
 appearance, may, by opening up new regions, with new 
 conditions, produce new impressions, new problems, may 
 not be without effect on the mental life, and therefore also 
 on its organs, whose quality, like that of any organ, de- 
 pends on the degree and nature of their use. The more 
 diligently the race applies itself to resist the influence of 
 the new milieu, the more its somatic race traits are thus 
 retained, the more will its organs of mental life be exerted 
 in a new manner and consequently be subject to change 
 under the influence of the new environment. 
 
 The possibility that a race may pass beyond the geo- 
 graphical boundaries set up by nature, that therefore the 
 human races may cease to be geographical races, like the 
 varieties of animals in the natural state, often leads—and 
 has led more and more of late—to the presence of a number 
 of races in the same region, living together more or less 
 amicably. There results a new possibility which is very 
 exceptional in the natural state, namely, that of race miz- 
 ture, which may at times lead to the creation of new races, 
 but very often merely disintegrates the old races, for which 
 it substitutes a conglomeration of the most varied ingredi- 
 
 55 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ents. This process of race mixture has been going on for 
 tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of 
 years: 
 
 “The present presents millions of cases of this, as did 
 also the past, and there is no such thing as an unmixed race 
 on this small planet with its easy communications. . . . On 
 this earth, all the races gradually merge into each other, 
 and each race is composed of various subdivisions.” ? 
 
 The further a race is removed from its original habita- 
 tions and its original conditions, the greater its migrations, 
 the richer its history, the more developed its commerce; in 
 other words, the higher its status, the more will be the 
 opportunities it has had for race mixture, the less will it 
 retain of its original “‘race’’; the more has it ceased to be a 
 “pure” race, and the more varied will be the race elements 
 of other provenience which it has absorbed. Unless the 
 rather permanent influence of uniform natural conditions 
 in a certain region has opposed this manifold character and 
 tended to create a new homogeneous geographical race, 
 cross-breedings and atavism in such a popu/ation will pro- 
 duce the greatest variety of somatic, and particularly, of 
 mental, traits, the latter being far more variable than the 
 former. ‘The higher the technical and social stages of 
 evolution, therefore, the smaller will be the influence of the 
 natural conditions. 
 
 But social progress produces not only a tendency to 
 dissolve the old traditional forms, but also gives rise to 
 
 aRatzel: <Anthropogeographie, vol. ii, p. 587. 
 
 56 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 factors tending to create new types within a population. 
 This is brought about by the division of labour, which is 
 but rarely found in the animal kingdom—again excepting 
 bees and ants—but which attains considerable proportions 
 in human society and becomes one of the most important 
 bases of its progress. 
 
 The division into callings sometimes becomes a division 
 into classes, ruling anc. ruled classes, exploiting and ex- 
 ploited. The division of labour finally leads to a division 
 of society into workers and non-workers. Such divisions 
 result in the formation of groups within a people, each of 
 which makes use of its natural organs differently, or makes 
 use of different organs, and in their living each under dif- 
 ferent conditions, in a different environment. Under these 
 circumstances, each of these groups acquires its special 
 properties, sometimes somatic traits, but chiefly mental 
 traits, for the economic and social divisions create more 
 differences in mental aptitudes than of occupation in those 
 that are physical in the narrower sense. 
 
 We have already observed that the same race, by scat- 
 tering over various regions, with different modes of pro- 
 duction, may suffer changes. We now find that the same 
 race, within the same region, may present such divisions, 
 owing to economic influences. On the other hand, similar- 
 ity of occupation may impress the same trait upon members 
 of different races and tend to eliminate such differences as 
 may have been present. 
 
 Ratzel, for instance, observes: ‘‘In many cases, when we 
 
 57 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 speak of ‘race’, it would be better to speak of ‘class’. 
 Throughout all peoples, somatic differences accompany the 
 division into castes, which division is the more emphatic, 
 the further removed the races are from culture and free- 
 dom. ... The distribution of skin pigment most fre- 
 quently accompanies differences of castes, for obvious 
 reasons. . . . We cannot trace the precise scale of colour 
 dividing the upper and lower classes upon one and the same 
 island. Cook and Forster state that the former are lighter 
 in colour, also taller and more refined in bearing. G. 
 Forster, in his exaggerated manner, imagines that these 
 nobles are so far ahead of the ordinary man as to appear an 
 entirely different type of human. Yet, he expressly em- 
 phasises the relation between a lighter skin and delicate 
 features with a more comfortable, inactive mode of life. But 
 he found in the mind and character of these individuals a 
 certain refinement, if not a certain nobility. The nobles, 
 being both chieftains and priests, were also the will-power 
 and the intelligentsia of Polynesia, with a monopoly of 
 knowledge and of philosophy based on knowledge.” * Such 
 is Ratzel’s view of this question. 
 
 Different classes may assume the character of different 
 races. On the other hand, the meeting of many races, each 
 developing an occupation of its own, may lead to their 
 taking up various callings or social positions within the 
 same community; race becomes class. Particularly fre- 
 quent is the case of a poor but warlike nomadic race at- 
 
 3 Ratzel, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 590, 591. 
 58 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 tacking a prosperous, peaceful peasant population and 
 subjecting it, the former race then assuming the function 
 of a warrior nobility with a monopoly of national de- 
 fence. This nobility will develop exclusively warlike prop- 
 erties, despise productive labour, and the workers will 
 become poor, badly nourished, defenceless, and unmilitant, 
 which qualities may, in some cases, develop to the point of 
 cowardice. 
 
 When race traits coincide with vocational traits, they 
 are further sharpened and intensified by the division of 
 labour. 
 
 On the other hand, the intensification of a property 
 acquired in vocational life or class life into a race trait 
 may be encouraged by the fact that the members of a class 
 or of a calling are forced to marry only within their own 
 group. ‘This may be in part a consequence of the arro- 
 gance of the upper class, which despises the other classes, 
 but it may also result from reasons of selection: the ruling 
 class wishes to preserve undiminished its predominant qual- 
 ities, by which it has obtained power, and therefore seeks 
 to avoid any mingling with other groups, lacking in such 
 qualities. The heredity of the traits of the dominant class 
 must be rendered safe. On the other hand, groups that 
 have been depressed to the lowest level are prohibited from 
 mingling with the rest of the population, in order that the 
 latter may not be contaminated with the defects of these 
 outcasts. 
 
 As in the case of domestic animals it is also sought to 
 
 59 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 conserve predominant traits among the classes by main- 
 taining the race “pure”. But man is not a domestic an- 
 imal, and purity of race encounters many difficulties in the 
 human existence. 
 
 It is not sufficient, in the case of domestic animals, that 
 the stud-animals be preserved from breeding with foreign 
 species. EXven among these race animals, it is always the 
 best specimens that are chosen and used as reproducing 
 animals. ‘The others, less excellent, are often destroyed 
 and always excluded from reproduction. 
 
 But no class among humans may proceed so harshly 
 toward its own members, no matter how far superior the 
 class interest may appear in its eyes to that of the in- 
 dividual. A class often arrogates to itself, or bestows 
 upon ‘the child’s father, the right to decide whether the 
 child is to be brought up or killed. ‘The Christian order 
 of Teutonic Knights were freed from the necessity of mak- 
 ing this choice by their opportunity to put into a monas- 
 tery weak or unwarlike boys, and thus prevent them from 
 producing legitimate offspring. But these methods of 
 selection were not always applied in accordance with con- 
 siderations of breeding only, often being crossed by other 
 considerations. A father desiring an heir, and not having 
 obtained one that was healthy, probably did not kill his 
 weak child, but brought him up, and instead of condemning 
 him to celibacy may even have married him off. 
 
 In order to preserve the race pure as a class, it is neces- 
 sary to have complete control of the sexual life of woman 
 
 60 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 —not of man. The man’s illegitimate offspring do not 
 become members of the ruling class, but adultery on the 
 part of the legitimate wife, unless discovered, impairs the 
 purity of the race. The freer woman is, the easier it will 
 be for her to commit adultery. Lack of freedom for the 
 woman, when it goes so far as to shut her up in a harem, 
 like a cow in a stable, is always associated with polygamy, 
 but since the number of women everywhere is about equal to 
 that of men, it implies that women not belonging to the 
 ruling class may be elevated to the status of wife. Further- 
 more, even the woman in the harem is by no means a cow 
 in a stable and completely deprived of her freedom of 
 action. Even such a woman may find opportunities for 
 adultery, as was already observed by the Sultan Sche- 
 herban, who said there was only one means of assuring one- 
 self of a woman’s fidelity: killing her after the first 
 embrace. 
 
 If, in spite of all these obstacles, the purity of a race is 
 maintained intact, further misfortune threatens from in- 
 breeding. Inbreeding may remain harmless for long 
 periods, when only healthy individuals are chosen for re- 
 production. The exploiting class, which has consolidated 
 its power and controls great wealth, is, however, likely to 
 yield to a life of idle enjoyment, with its degenerating 
 results. When this is the case, inbreeding still further 
 accentuates decay, and it does this the more, the purer the 
 race. | 
 
 We thus find that the phenomenon of race is far more 
 
 61 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 complicated in man than in the animal world. The sharp- 
 ness of race demarcation, which is evident in the case of 
 animals, disappears more and more among men. In the 
 place of sharply distinct races, unchanged for long periods, 
 we find a constant and increasingly rapid process of race 
 disintegration; the formation of new races, race mixtures, 
 conditioned by the general process of technical, economic, 
 social evolution, arising from this process and closely inter- 
 laced with it. It becomes more and more difficult to dis- 
 tinguish between inherited properties and those acquired by 
 the individual; races become more manifold, also the race 
 traits, more and more varied are the individuals within 
 each human group, more and more variable and important 
 become the extremely changeable mental traits, instead of 
 the less easily changing somatic traits; these mental traits 
 cannot be completely defined by any measurement, and may 
 often be inferred only from the most fugitive observations. 
 
 There is probably no more difficult task than that of 
 observing the influence of race, as an isolated factor, in 
 any specific phenomenon of human history. The task be- 
 comes the more difficult and—at least for our present ways 
 and means of investigation—more hopeless, the more we 
 advance in history, the more the races mingle, the more 
 varied and powerful become the artificial conditions under 
 which they live. 
 
 Our race theoreticians regard that which is perhaps the 
 most complicated problem in human history as the simple 
 and self-evident explanation of this history. The concept 
 
 62 
 
THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 of race, extremely fluctuating even in the case of animal 
 and vegetable organisms, where it is not complicated, is 
 regarded by them as a firm basis upon which the entire 
 theory and practice of human society may be built up with- 
 out hesitation. 
 
 63 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS BETWEEN THE 
 RACES OF MAN 
 
 Wutte the literary and journalistic race theoreticians 
 regard the concept of race in the case of man as something 
 self-evident, natural scientists are by no means agreed on 
 the division of human races, but are obliged to admit that 
 everything is in a state of flux. Darwin tells us: 
 
 “Our naturalist would likewise be much disturbed as soon 
 as he should discern that the distinctive traits of man are 
 extremely variable. . . . We may doubt whether any trait 
 may be adduced that is distinctive and constant for a cer- 
 tain race.... The form of the skull varies considerably in 
 certain races ; likewise every other trait. . . . The races of 
 man graduate into each other, independently, in many 
 cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. 
 Man has been studied more thoroughly than any other 
 organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible di- 
 versity amongst capable judges whether he should be 
 classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as 
 three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), 
 six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven 
 (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Des- 
 
 64 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 moulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or 
 sixty-three (Burke).” * 
 
 These words were written half a century ago, but are 
 just as applicable today. In their embarrassment, many 
 anthropologists finally resort to the device of classifying a 
 series of races not by their somatic traits, but by language, 
 concerning which Ernst Hackel maintains with a straight 
 face that it “is transmitted far more rigidly than the skull 
 forms”? 
 
 Of course, the only thing inherited is the ability to 
 speak, not the specific language. Language is acquired, 
 the earliest and most important teachers being the persons 
 among whom the individual grows up when a child, not 
 necessarily the parents in every case. Owing to migrations, 
 to altered environment, to contacts with strange peoples, 
 the ancestral language may be forgotten, and a foreign 
 language acquired, while the native pigmentation of hair, 
 eyes, skin, the form of the nose, etc., are not lost. Any 
 races may, without in any way changing their racial char- 
 acter, change their language and, vice versa, the most dif- 
 ferent races may appear in succession in a certain region, 
 each supplanting the other, and each receiving its language 
 from its predecessors. In present-day Greece, practically 
 the same Greek language is spoken as two or three thousand 
 years ago, and yet, how many races have succeeded each 
 
 1 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, London, 1871, vol. ii, pp. 
 225, 226. 
 2 Nattirliche Schépfungsgeschichte, 5th ed., p. 602. 
 
 65 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 other in that country! On the other hand, the Irish have 
 abandoned their Celtic language in the course of the last 
 few centuries, without noticeably changing their “race”. 
 If language were a race trait, the Negroes of the United 
 States would have to be counted as Anglo-Saxons, and 
 many Negroes and Indians of Central and South America 
 as Latins. In fact, some Negroes would also have to be 
 classified as Germans. A German scientist was much sur- 
 prised to encounter, in°the primeval Brazilian forest, a 
 Negro who spoke Low German. His master was a colonist 
 who had immigrated to Brazil from the Waterkant, a part 
 of Germany where Low German is spoken. 
 
 As a matter of fact, language is even less an indication 
 of race than skin, hair, or head-form. ‘There is no Semitic 
 race, there is no Aryan race. The Aryan race is not a 
 primitive race, but merely an “invention of the closeted 
 scholar.” * 
 
 This does not mean that language may not be of great 
 importance in defining the groups of mankind. Language 
 is their means of communication, of social cooperation. 
 When men speak the same language, it is easy for them to 
 live and work together. When brought together by the 
 material conditions of life and labour, they must seek to 
 make themselves understood by each other by means of a 
 common language. ‘Thus, language is in a state of con- 
 stant and close interaction with the compass of this social 
 
 grouping of men; it becomes one of the most important 
 
 3 Dr. E. Houzé, L’Aryen et Vanthropologie, Brussels, 1906, p. 33. 
 66 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 means of uniting and segregating men; and the study of 
 old linguistic survivals may at times help us in recon- 
 structing the history of social groupings in periods that 
 afford no other evidence on this point. It is no doubt justi- 
 fiable to divide mankind according to language groups, but 
 this division by no means coincides with the division ac- 
 cording to race. Originally, while each race of man repre- 
 sented a geographical race, a human group inhabiting 
 certain regions for many thousands of years, under like 
 conditions, each race may also have developed a type of 
 language peculiar to itself, a language dividing off into 
 many dialects. A common language tree points in the first 
 place to a former common home, and to the common life 
 conditions of this home, and, in very primitive peoples, 
 to membership in the same geographical race. But there is 
 probably not a single tribe today that inhabits the prim- 
 itive seats in which the language now spoken by this tribe 
 was formed, without any mixture with other tribes. The 
 more varied its wanderings, its mingling with other races, 
 its historical destinies, the more will language and race 
 become independent of each other. And, as the means of 
 intercourse grow, as the groups of men become larger and 
 larger who are united by their economy in permanent social 
 cooperation, the sooner will very different races and race 
 mixtures be embraced in a single linguistic and cultural 
 group. On the other hand, this same increase in the means 
 of intercourse, as the members of the same race are drawn 
 into the most different regions of the earth, attaching them 
 
 67 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 to the most different human communities, must divide many 
 races into a number of linguistically different sections, so 
 that many descendants of the same race will understand 
 each other less and less, will become mentally less and less 
 connected with each other. 
 
 Language as a race trait is therefore of no value. 
 
 And modern anthropologists are of quite different opin- 
 ion on the matter of race from those “anthropo-sociol- 
 ogists” who term themselves thus because they know as 
 little of anthropology as of sociology. Professor Felix 
 von Luschan, of Berlin, presented a very interesting out- 
 line of the “anthropological view of race” at the First 
 General Racial Congress held in London in 1911. We are 
 giving his remarks in some detail, including those in which 
 excellent light is thrown upon the pseudo-scientific race- 
 conceit of our colonial fanatics of the Rohrbach type. 
 Luschan said, among other things: 
 
 “Coloured people are often described as savage races, 
 but it is comparatively rare to find any attempts to give a 
 proper definition of coloured and savage. 
 
 ““A certain order issued by a European governor in 
 Africa once stated what Negroes, Arabs, Hindus, Portu- 
 guese, Greeks, and other coloured people had to do on 
 meeting a white man, and in the German Reichstag one of 
 the successors of Bismarck once spoke of the Samoans as 
 a ‘handful of savages’. Again, many books have been writ- 
 ten on the differences between races of men, and serious 
 scientists have tried in vain to draw up an exact definition 
 
 68 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 of what really constitutes the difference between savage 
 and civilised races. It is very easy to speak of ‘Greeks 
 and other coloured people’; but some assign the ancient 
 Greeks to the civilised races, and are so severe in their 
 division as to exclude from that group the ancient Romans 
 as half-barbarians. 
 
 “The division of mankind into active and passive races 
 is an old one. Since then an attempt was made to put 
 ‘twilight? races between the ‘day’ races and the ‘night’ 
 races, and the Japanese were included in this group of 
 Dammerungsmenschen,—the Japanese, who are now in the 
 van of human civilisation in Asia, and who have, perhaps, 
 saved the mental freedom of Europe at Tsushima and on 
 the battlefields of Manchuria. 
 
 “Still weaker and more objectionable is the division as to 
 colour. We now know that colour of hair and skin is only 
 the effect of environment, and that we are fair only because 
 our ancestors lived for thousands, or probably tens of 
 thousands, of years in sunless and foggy countries. Fair- 
 ness is nothing else but lack of pigment, and our ancestors 
 lost part of their pigment because they did not need it. 
 Just as the Proteus sanguineus and certain beetles became 
 blind in caves, where their eyes were useless, so we poor fair 
 people have to wear dark glasses and gloves when walking 
 on a glacier, and get our skin burned when we expose it 
 unduly to the light of the sun. 
 
 “It is therefore only natural that certain Indian races 
 and the Singhalese are dark; but it would be absurd to call 
 
 69 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 them ‘savage’ on that account, as they have an ancient 
 civilisation, and had a noble and refined religion at a time 
 when our own ancestors had a very low standard of life.” * 
 
 With the aid of many examples, Luschan then shows that 
 the alleged inferiority of savages is in many cases only an 
 apparent inferiority, the proofs adduced in favour of this 
 inferiority being often merely a consequence of the sim- 
 plicity and impatience of their observers, who inferred the 
 absence of intelligence where intelligence was absent only 
 from the observers. Luschan continues, in the same paper 
 from which we have already quoted: 
 
 “In former times it was not so much the mental and 
 material culture of foreign races as their anatomical 
 qualities, which were taken as the starting point, in show- 
 ing their inferiority. Especially in America, before the 
 Civil War, anthropology (or what they called by that 
 name) was engaged in showing that the Negro, with his 
 black skin, his prognathism, his blubber-lips and his short 
 and broad nose, was no real human being but a domestic 
 animal. How to treat him was the owner’s private affair; 
 it was nobody else’s business, any more than the treatment 
 of his cattle or horses. 
 
 “Even today there are scientists who claim a separate 
 origin for the various human types, and who link one 
 palxolithic race to the Gorilla and another to the Orang. 
 
 4 Anthropological View of Race, reprinted in Papers on Inter-racial 
 Problems, Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress, held 
 at the University of London, July 26-29, pp. 18 et seq. 
 
 70 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 The author of Anthropozoon biblicum goes still further 
 and wants us to believe that the dark races are the de- 
 scendants of incestuous intercourse between ‘Aryans’ and 
 monkeys. But the great majority of our modern au- 
 thorities now claim a monogenetic origin for all of man- 
 kind. 
 
 **So the question of the number of human races has quite 
 lost its raison d’étre, and has become a subject rather of 
 philosophical speculation than of scientific research. It 
 is of no more importance now to know how many human 
 races there are than to know how many angels can dance 
 on the point of a needle. Our aim now is to find out how 
 ancient and primitive races developed from others, and 
 how races have changed or evolved through migration or 
 interbreeding. 
 
 “We do not yet know where the first man began to de- 
 velop from earlier stages of zoological existence. . . . We 
 shall probably not be far from the truth if we say that the 
 paleolithic man of Europe was not essentially different 
 from the modern Australian. If we are allowed to draw 
 conclusions as to the soft parts from the parts of the 
 skeleton, our paleolithic ancestor had dark skin, dark 
 eyes, and dark, more or less, straight hair. His home 
 was probably in some part of Southern Asia; but we find 
 similar types even now among the Toala of Celebes and the 
 Veddas of Ceylon. In fact, millions of dark men in India 
 belong to the same stock, and so do all the dark tribes of 
 Afghanistan and Beluchistan. 
 
 ri 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ‘So we can trace an early and primitive type of mankind 
 from Gibraltar, Moustier, Spy, Neandertal, Kropina, etc., 
 to Ceylon, Celebes, and Australia. This certainly is a wide 
 area, but every year is now bringing fresh proofs of this 
 direct continuity of a distinct human type from the earliest 
 paleolithic ages to modern times. 
 
 “The question naturally arises how it is that our Aus- 
 tralian brothers have remained for fifty or a hundred 
 thousand years, or longer, in such a primitive state of 
 mental and material culture, while we Europeans have 
 reached the height of modern civilisation. ‘The answer is 
 not difficult. Australia was isolated from the rest of the 
 world through an early geological catastrophe soon after 
 the immigration of paleolithic man. Every impulse and 
 incentive from without ceased, and human life began to 
 petrify. 
 
 “It was quite otherwise in Europe and in Western Asia. 
 The thousand advantages of the environment, the broken 
 coastlines, the many islands, the navigable rivers, and espe- 
 cially the constant passing from Asia to Europe and from 
 Europe to Asia and Africa, the ready exchange of inven- 
 tions and discoveries and acquisitions, the incessant trade 
 and traffic, have made us what we are. 
 
 ‘This primitive but uniform human type began to change 
 chiefly in two directions. ‘To the southwest of the line 
 connecting Gibraltar with Australia, man, in some way or 
 other, developed curly and woolly hair, and so became 
 what we now call Protonigritian. We find his descendants 
 
 12 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 in Melanesia and in Africa. The Pygmies form a very old 
 branch of this protonigritic group. .. . 
 
 “On the other side of this line, in Northern Asia, prim- 
 itive man acquired, during many thousands of years, 
 straight hair and a shorter or broader skull. The modern 
 Chinese, and the typical, now nearly extinct, American 
 Indians, are at the end of this northeastern line of develop- 
 ment, while the typical Negro represents the southwestern 
 end. 
 
 “We have thus three chief varieties of mankind—the old 
 Indo-European, the African, and the East-Asiatic, all 
 branching off from the same primitive stock, diverging 
 from each other for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thou- 
 sands, of years, but all these forming a complete unity, 
 intermarrying in all directions without the slightest de- 
 crease in fertility. ! 
 
 “From these three varieties came all the different types 
 of modern mankind, generally by local isolation. A very 
 interesting example of such mutation is found in the 
 earliest known inhabitants of Western Asia. This is the 
 land of those extremely narrow and high-arched noses, we 
 generally call Jewish or even Semitic. These remarkable 
 noses, however, do not belong to the Semitic invaders, of 
 whom Abraham is the eponymic hero, but to the pre- 
 Semitic population which might be called Hittite or 
 Armenoid, as the modern Armenians are their direct de- 
 scendants. 
 
 “These old Hittites or Armenoids emigrated in very 
 
 73 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 early times to Europe, where the ‘Alpine Race’ descended 
 from them. In the most out-of-the-way valleys of Savoy, 
 Graubiinden, Tyrol, and Carinthia, more than half of the 
 population has the head-form and the nose of this second 
 immigration from Asia to Europe, and from the mingling 
 of this short-headed ‘Alpine Race’ with the descendants 
 of the long-headed Paleolithic or Neanderthal or proto- 
 Australian Race, all the great modern European races have 
 sprung. va. ( 
 
 “While the first varieties of primitive man were certainly 
 formed and fixed by long isolation, later variations were 
 caused by migration and colonisation. . 
 
 “In former times ethnologists used to admire the ap- 
 parent unity in the direction of the human mind, and to 
 wonder how it was that in all parts of the earth men had 
 similar ideas and ways. Now this Vélkergedanken theory 
 is nearly abandoned, and we are forced to admit the real 
 unity of mankind. Fair and dark races, long- and short- 
 headed, intelligent and primitive, all come from one stock. 
 Favourable circumstances and surroundings, especially a 
 good environment, a favourable geographical position, 
 trade and traffic, caused one group to advance more quickly 
 than another, while some groups have remained in a very 
 primitive state of development, but all are adapted to their 
 surroundings, according to the law of the survival of the 
 fittest.” 
 
 This mode of thought can hardly be better characterised 
 than in the words of Luschan, and we have therefore given 
 
 74 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 them in full. Essentially, this is the attitude of all of 
 modern anthropology; of course, the various scientists 
 differ considerably as to matters of detail, but this does not 
 alter their essential agreement. 
 
 But we shall not take up this subject here. The im- 
 portant point is that modern anthropology does not con- 
 sider differences of race to be an impassible gulf. The 
 races are in a state of constant flux and transition, all 
 are of the same origin in the long run; none of the dominant 
 races may boast that its present superiority is based on 
 its blood and is immutable so long as the race preserves 
 its purity. We may not maintain that any of the sub- 
 ject races owes its servitude to a natural immutable in- 
 feriority. The superiority of one group is to be ascribed 
 only to favourable circumstances in the environment, the 
 backwardness of the other group to unfavourable circum- 
 stances. We may say of any race that under the same 
 favourable circumstances it will accomplish as much as 
 the highest races—not necessarily, however, at once. The 
 Teutons mentioned by Tacitus lived about one hundred and 
 fifty years after those mentioned by Cesar, and seem to 
 have remained just as barbarous as the latter. Fully ten 
 centuries were required, after the Teutonic migrations, 
 before society again attained the level of the defunct Greco- 
 Roman civilisation, and further centuries have intervened 
 before the attainment of our present level of civilisation. 
 It is sometimes carelessly denied that Negroes have any 
 cultural aptitude because in the United States, in the 
 
 75 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 sixty years that have elapsed since their liberation, they 
 have not yet so far emerged from the state of barbarism 
 in which they had lived before their liberation, as to pro- 
 duce a Darwin or a Kant. And yet, the Negroes in the 
 United States are methodically kept in a state of the 
 greatest ignorance, having great difficulty even in obtain- 
 ing such necessary and “inalienable” rights as the most 
 rudimentary schooling. 
 
 Only a few years after the liberation of the Negroes, 
 Hackel considered it his privilege to write: “The wlotriches 
 (woolly-haired) are incapable of any true inner culture or 
 of a higher mental training, even under such favourable 
 (?) conditions of adaptation as have now been offered 
 them in the United States of America.” ° 
 
 A fine view for an “evolutionist” to hold! Truly, Hiackel 
 has no ground for this view, which is being relinquished 
 more and more by anthropologists, except where the de- 
 mands of a “scientific” pretext for a colonial policy revive 
 such prejudices. 
 
 One thing is no doubt true: the leading races of modern 
 civilisation have advanced with such immense rapidity in 
 the last few centuries, particularly in their technology, that 
 their lead has become more and more extensive, leaving 
 the backward peoples farther and farther behind along 
 the path the latter must follow in order to attain the 
 level of the civilised races. But this by no means signifies 
 that the backward peoples will and must continue to re- 
 
 5 Ernst Hickel, Natitirliche Schipfungsgeschichte, 5th ed., p. 603. 
 
 76 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 main backward. ‘The rapid progress of the European 
 nations since the Sixteenth Century was due only to an 
 expansion of trade which brought all the races and peoples 
 of the earth into the closest contact with each other. The 
 first effect of this process was to destroy the weakest 
 races, for modern society is based on brutal hostilities of 
 interests: it destroyed them body and soul. Some were 
 exterminated, forced down into the status of domestic 
 animals and doomed to the stupidity of the latter—tike 
 the present condition of the European proletarians. But 
 this tendency did not everywhere have a permanently de- 
 grading effect. As in the case of all the more energetic 
 strata of the proletariat, there will also come a time for 
 the more energetic of the backward races subjugated by 
 capitalism, when their degradation will lead them to rebel 
 against this degradation and thus proceed along an up- 
 ward course. This rise can only be accomplished by tak- 
 ing possession of the mental and material weapons by 
 which the ‘“‘master races” have created their dominant 
 position. The handicap of the dominant capitalist na- 
 tions is too great for any one of the oppressed nations to 
 believe that they may overcome it by self-devised means. 
 They hasten to follow the lead of the “more civilised” and 
 are gradually catching up with them by means of the 
 processes devised and prepared by the leading nations 
 themselves. The backward nations are spared the neces- 
 sity of this labour of seeking and trail-blazing, and they 
 may thus accomplish in a few decades that which required 
 
 ue 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 many centuries on the part of the leading nations. Of 
 course, in order to achieve this, they must relinquish their 
 originality, their original native traits, their spiritual inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 Man’s teeth have suffered owing to the cooking and the 
 artificial dividing of foodstuffs. His memory has very 
 probably suffered owing to his use of writing and print- 
 ing. Similarly, the inventive spirit of the backward peo- 
 ples is probably being much weakened by their acquisition 
 of so many superior inventions ready-made, requiring the 
 use of their full mental powers to absorb them. The 
 greater half of mankind is transformed from intelligently 
 investigating creatures into imitative creatures, into mere 
 pupils of superior teachers. 
 
 But this also is merely a transient stage, from which 
 each people emerges as soon as it has attained the level 
 of modern civilisation, after which it begins to partake 
 actively in this civilisation. , 
 
 The permanent result of this process of development 
 must finally be a mental similarity of the human race, on 
 the basis of this civilisation, in which the already very 
 variable and indefinite mental race traits will be far more 
 quickly eradicated than bodily traits, in order to be ab- 
 sorbed in a new body of traits, within which other, greater, 
 individual differences will arise. ‘Types disappear, indi- 
 vidualities grow. The point of departure in human evolu- 
 tion was probably a uniform human race. This race is 
 divided into an increasing number of races, which is now 
 
 78 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 again forming a new community of the human race, but 
 a community of a different kind. Ratzel, in his An- 
 thropogeographie, has already mentioned this process, 
 which, like his “negation” and his “negation of negation’, 
 is a dialectic process resembling that expounded by Marx 
 in Capital, there ending with the expropriation of the ex- 
 propriators. Ratzel’s words, taken from the book above 
 mentioned, are as follows: 
 
 “The similarity of species in present-day mankind is of 
 far different origin than the similarities between the various 
 animal and plant species. The latter similarities are caused 
 by a more and more emphatic development of specific traits 
 in a certain definite direction, while mankind has become 
 more and more a unit—and will become even more so— 
 by the combination of its formerly far diverging groups. 
 These two groups of similarities have therefore come into 
 being by entirely different paths, the former by segregation, 
 the latter by conjoining and combining. Therefore the 
 former are more limited in area, while the latter embrace 
 the entire earth. And therefore these similarities are of 
 different character also. The closed system of animal and 
 plant species may be contrasted with the varied character 
 of the branches of mankind, which are based on a great 
 mass of reduced or attenuated differences which, however, 
 . tend more and more to combine, tc make mankind a more 
 unified mass. Present-day humanity may be conceived as 
 standing, in time, midway between a humanity of the past, 
 with greater internal differences, perhaps even differences 
 
 79 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 of species, and a humanity of the future, with much smaller 
 internal differences.” ° 
 
 Ratzel is here concerned chiefly with the effects of race 
 mixture. Like most anthropologists, he does not pay sufli- 
 cient attention to the economic factor. But he is well 
 aware of the tendency of evolution, and also of the dif- 
 ferences between the race development of animals and that 
 of historical man. The future belongs not to a separation 
 of races into exploiting and exploited, or—as it is some- 
 times put more euphemistically—into active and passive, 
 into day races and night races, but to a dissolving of races 
 in a single human race. The first step in this direction 
 will be a mental combination, an economic equality, from 
 which there must result an increasing “toning down or at- 
 tenuation of differences”—even though esthetes may turn 
 up their noses at this possibility. 
 
 Of course, Werner Sombart is one of these esthetes. He 
 considers it imperative to maintain the race differences 
 existing between men, for: “Who would want to miss the 
 racy Judiths and Miriams? To be sure, they must be racy 
 and ready to remain so. We cannot tolerate this black- 
 
 blond mix-up.” 7 
 
 And since * 
 
 we” do not desire any diminution of race 
 traits, the historical process will respectfully refrain from 
 touching them. In this connection, Sombart had already 
 forgotten in 1912 what he was still aware of in 1911, 
 
 6 Vol. ii, p. 585. 
 7 Die Zukunft der Juden, Leipzig, 1912, p. 72. 
 
 80 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 namely, “That when I say: this woman is racy (has class), 
 this does not mean the same as when I say: this person be- 
 longs to the Mongolian race.” ® 
 
 Anthropologists and scientific students in general speak 
 of the Mongolian race; but the concept of a “racy”? woman 
 is born in those learned circles whose chief interest cen- 
 tres about horses and women of a certain class, to whom 
 it transfers the jargon of the stable. 
 
 In spite of all these esthetic individuals, the attenuation 
 of the races can hardly be retarded. Capitalism is working 
 with all its might in this development and thus preparing 
 a higher form of society by this means also. To socialism 
 falls the task of strengthening the oppressed and disin- 
 herited against the exploitation of capitalism, of leading 
 them to the victory, in other words, of making them not 
 only superior in strength to their exploiters, but also of 
 making them their superiors or at least their equals in 
 mental maturity. 
 
 The result of all this conflict and struggle between the 
 capitalists and the proletarians of the advanced nations 
 and the rebellious strata of the backward nations, is not 
 only the international solidarity of the proletariat of the 
 civilised nations, but—in the last analysis—the interna- 
 tional unity of the entire human race in thought and knowl- 
 edge, in investigation and aspirations. 
 
 Finally we shall behold the realisation of the dictum first 
 uttered as an ideal of the thinkers and pioneers of the 
 
 8 Die Juden und das Wirischaftsleben, Leipzig, 1911, p. 349. 
 
 81 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 revolutionary bourgeoisie, the dictum adopted ready-made 
 by the revolutionary proletariat: 
 
 Alle Menschen, gleich geboren, 
 Sind em adliges Geschlecht. 
 
 This aspiration might still have been considered chimerical 
 some years ago. But in the meantime, the victories of 
 the Japanese over Russia have revealed to all the world 
 the extent to which Asia has been revolutionised by cap- 
 italism and by the uprisings of its nations. These nations, 
 of whom it was once assumed that their conservative ad- 
 herence to the traditional forms of life was of their very 
 essence—of the marrow of their bones, as it were, a perma- 
 nent race trait—have now become a revolutionary element 
 in world history. 
 
 Not only the victory of the proletariat of the white 
 races, but also the liberation of the “coloured” races, is 
 only a question of time. 
 
 But is not this struggle for liberation a race struggle? 
 Is it not a portion of the uninterrupted struggle of the 
 races which has been going on from time immemorial and 
 which must continue to be waged because the struggle 
 for existence is a natural necessity? 
 
 We have seen that the struggle for existence in the animal 
 world is almost exclusively a struggle against surrounding 
 nature, not against individuals of the same species. In 
 
 nature, this struggle—as a rule—is not even a struggle 
 
 82 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 between different varieties of the same species. For these 
 varieties are geographical in their origin, each having its 
 special territory, within which it lives in a condition of 
 equilibrium, and which it does not leave unless this equilib- 
 rium is disturbed, an event therefore traceable to geological 
 eras. 
 
 In the case of man the situation changes. Man’s tech- 
 nology destroys the equilibrium in nature and also the 
 equilibrium in his own ranks. In many regions we now 
 find overpopulation ensuing, combined with a struggle for 
 food resources. But this is not a struggle of race against 
 race, but rather at first a struggle waged by the horde 
 against a neighbouring horde which seeks to displace it, 
 when all sources of food have been cut off. This cannot 
 be called a race struggle, but a struggle within the race. 
 The hordes and tribes were far too small to enable us to 
 consider any single one of them as an entire race; each was 
 but a portion of the same race. 
 
 If this condition of overpopulation continues, the move- 
 ment will probably involve all the tribes of a certain region, 
 some of whom must immigrate. These may advance so 
 far as to come into hostile contact with hordes or tribes 
 of another race, but the struggle with these groups is at 
 bottom no different from that within the same race. At 
 most, the foreign appearance of the opponent may ac- 
 centuate the ruthlessness of the struggle and the complete- 
 ness of the victory. But even here the differences in 
 
 language and culture, making a mutual understanding dif- 
 
 83 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ficult, are of greater effect than the differences in race 
 traits. 
 
 As civilisation advances, the social groups develop 
 into states and nations; but even these are by no means 
 synonymous with races. We have the simultaneous de- 
 velopment of the differences between classes and of the 
 oppositions between exploiters and exploited. ‘These op- 
 positions are a determining element not only in the internal, 
 but also in the external politics of states. The exploiters 
 seek to increase the number of those exploited by them, 
 in order to increase the profits of exploitation, either by 
 seizures of men, by slavery, or by the conquest of new 
 regions and by the subjection of their inhabitants. ‘The 
 cause for war is no longer overpopulation, but exploita- 
 tion: struggles between exploiters and exploited, or be- 
 tween the exploiters among themselves for the ownership 
 of an exploited community. 
 
 The deep roots of these struggles are not to be found 
 in the differences of race, but in the social conditions. It 
 is possible that the opposing groups of those interested 
 may be of different races, but this is by no means the 
 rule, for it is self-evident that the first persons with whom 
 one comes in contact either as exploiter or as one ex- 
 ploited are one’s own neighbours. It was quite a common 
 thing to find Greek and Italian slaves among the ancient 
 Athenians and Romans, while Negro slaves were practically 
 unknown. The relation of exploitation, the opposition of 
 interests, does not arise from differences of race, which 
 
 84 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 may only serve as a contributing cause for rendering the 
 expressions of this opposition more brutal. 
 
 EKiven in cases where opposing interested groups belong 
 to different races and, differing even in their external ear- 
 marks, are brought into savage opposition to each other, 
 we never find a race unified in its conflict with another. 
 We are always dealing with individual groups, each of 
 _ which may enter into the most varied combinations with 
 other groups either of its own race or of another race. 
 
 Many of the Negro slaves brought by white traders to 
 America had formerly been the slaves of other Negroes 
 who had sold them to the whites. 
 
 The struggle between Indians and “palefaces” in North 
 America may appear to have been a race struggle. But the 
 whites, after their arrival in America, did not act as rep- 
 resentatives of one and the same race, cooperating with 
 each other, but as the representatives of different states, 
 fighting each other bitterly. In this struggle, each sought 
 and obtained the assistance of Indian tribes. During the 
 entire Eighteenth Century, we find whites struggling against 
 whites in America; Frenchmen against Englishmen, later 
 American colonials against Englishmen, and Indians against 
 Indians. And where we find Indians fighting the whites, 
 they were often acting on the instigation of other whites. 
 
 But it is sufficient to consider our own epoch, in which 
 the conception of the race struggle plays such an impor- 
 tant part, to reveal the emptiness and ridiculousness of this 
 phrase. 
 
 85 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 We are told that the “race” of the Teutons is destined 
 by nature for a life-and-death struggle with the “race” 
 of the Slavs and the Romance races. It was found neces- 
 sary to increase the German army because the Balkan 
 War had disturbed the equilibrium between Teutons and 
 Slavs and Austria was now threatened by the Southern 
 Slavs. But it was not the race of the Teutons that had 
 come into hostile contact with the Europeans, but the 
 more or less impure race of landed proprietors (agra- 
 rians), particularly the Hungarian, Polish and Bohemian 
 junkers, who cared mighty little about the Teutonic race! 
 
 But simultaneously the Teutons of Germany, in order 
 to wage the “race” struggle against the Latins of France, 
 allied themselves with the Latins of Italy. For a time, 
 our Teutons also aimed to obtain the friendship of the 
 Teutonic race in England; then, “blood was thicker than 
 water”. But later, the English Teutons wickedly sought 
 an entente with Russia, the home of the Slavic race, and 
 with the principal Romance race, France, in order to op- 
 pose their Teutonic blood-kindred in Germany! 
 
 Like the “Aryan” and “Semitic”, the Teutonic or the 
 Slavic race, the race struggle itself is an invention of the 
 brains of schoolmasters, rejected by serious scholars. 
 
 This was the case even before the World War, which 
 forced the German Government to seek the aid of the 
 Turks and of the entire Mohammedan world, while, during 
 the war, France and England, and later America, sent 
 coloured regiments against their white enemies. This 
 
 86 
 
DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 
 
 would appear to be a peculiar phase of the race struggle. 
 Eduard Meyer once said concerning this struggle: 
 “While the differences in somatic structure, and par- 
 ticularly of skin pigment, have always been obvious, they 
 have never had any effect on the relations between nations 
 except where these sharp distinctions involved not only 
 mere external appearance, but also—and particularly— 
 a difference in the cultural aptitude and the mode of 
 thought, as between Europeans and Negroes. In this 
 field also, it was reserved for our time to assign an inner 
 significance to the external contrast, and many theories, 
 in their far-fetched application, have ascribed to the factor 
 of race a significance which it never possessed and which 
 is in direct contradiction with all the experiences of history. 
 “The popular notion that the hostility to the Jews (‘anti- 
 Semitism’) is a race hostility, or that it has anything to 
 do with race, is completely erroneous; we find this hostility 
 among the closest of kin to the Jews, as well as among 
 the Europeans. It is generally known that the importance 
 of race is hardly dreamed of in the Orient and that even 
 the aversion for the Negro is found fully developed only 
 among the Teutonic (English) tribes.” ° 
 There is surely nothing more absurd than the theory 
 of the “natural” hostility between races, but unfortunately 
 it is not one of the theories that may be killed by laughing 
 at it. It arises from interests that are too strong, it serves 
 too well the purpose of facilitating the demagogic exploita- 
 9 Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I, 1, 8rd ed., 1910, p. 77. 
 
 87 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 tion of ancient prejudices and errors on the subject of 
 foreign phenomena, to prevent this absurd creature of the 
 overheated pedantic brain to be considered in editorial 
 offices and on the parliamentary rostrum, by professional 
 patriots as a recognised science, as a self-evident truth, im- 
 parting to it ever new accessions of vitality. 
 
 88 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 
 JEWISH RACE 
 
 We have seen that the traits derived from the primitive 
 races of man tend more and more to disappear, as the 
 economic evolution progresses. Race mixtures and a con- 
 stant transformation in the economic conditions are cease- 
 lessly at work on the creation of new types, again subject 
 to progressive change, in part to new differentiations, in 
 part to new combinations, causing a continual weakening 
 of the definiteness and permanence of races, and also bring- 
 ing about more and more variety in individual differentia- 
 tion. ‘The process of history is not a continuous struggle 
 between immutable races, but a process of uninterrupted 
 alteration in the economic environment, of constant change 
 in the groups of interests struggling with each other, re- 
 sulting in a constant mutation in the traditional race traits 
 as determined by the original state of nature. Race, mean- 
 ing the races of animals—wild animals as well as domestic 
 animals—becomes more and more vague among men, de- 
 parting further and further from the divisions of men into 
 states and languages, as developed in the course of his- 
 torical evolution. 
 
 89 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 It may therefore be assumed in advance, in the case of 
 a group of humans that have marched for tens of centuries 
 in the front rank of the process of economic evolution, that 
 have undergone the most extensive migrations, economic 
 and political revolutions, that there is no possibility that 
 such a race may be a unit or a pure race. 
 
 But we are told this statement does not apply to the 
 Jews. It is claimed, again and again, that the Jewish 
 race has maintained itself in all its purity since time 1m- 
 memorial, and this alleged permanence of the Jewish racial 
 type has become one of the most frequently utilised bases 
 of the views of race theory among the anthropo-sociologists. 
 
 A full century ago, Blumenbach wrote: “It is generally 
 known that the Jewish race has been spread for many 
 centuries over all the earth; it has nevertheless maintained 
 its racial traits pure and even typical. This remarkable 
 fact has long been receiving the attention of scientists and 
 physiologists.” 
 
 The well-known anthropologist, Richard Andree, de- 
 clared: 
 
 “Anthropologically considered, the Jews are one of the 
 most interesting subjects. For no other race type can be 
 traced back through tens of centuries with the same cer- 
 tainty as the Jews, and no other race type presents such 
 permanent forms, no other has so well resisted the influence 
 of time and the influence of its environment.” * 
 
 This view is widely accepted to this day as an irrefutable 
 
 1 Quoted by Fishberg, p. 9. 
 
 90 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 and unquestionable fact, a fact which is so irrefutable and 
 unquestionable that its advocate forgets to state what are 
 the appallingly constant and immutable traits of the Jew- 
 ish race. The race theorists usually hand over this scien- 
 tific task to the cartoonists of the comic papers. 
 
 These most dependable scholars have found the principal 
 trait of Judaism in its nose. The comic papers picture no 
 Jew without the Jewish nose. But what is the state of 
 affairs outside of the comic papers? 
 
 Fishberg states: 
 
 “The present author has investigated the subject among 
 Jews in New York City and also in the various countries 
 east and west of Europe, in North Africa, and Jewish im- 
 migrants of various countries in Asia. The results of 
 these investigations do not bear out the popular notion that 
 the hooked nose is to be considered the ‘Jewish’ nose, be- 
 cause only a small minority of Jews have the privilege of 
 possessing this kind of nose. Among 2,836 adult male Jews 
 in New York City, the percentage of noses was as follows: 
 
 ptraightor, Grecky curve se sten lee eae 57.26% 
 etrousse. Of, SNUD SL erie oe side eas 22.07% 
 BAMIUIN GOL ALOOKEOM ie oad gh pte ste ts 14.25% 
 BTAUBANC TOA cio ies ine sere state een Maree 6.42% 
 
 Among 1,284 Jewesses, the percentage of straight noses 
 was even higher, and of aquiline and hooked noses even 
 smaller than among the men: 
 
 91 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Straight or, Greek ivcenc ee iy nee 59.42% 
 Retroussé, or Snubis i. aire poids orate 13.86% 
 Aquiline, or Hooked 4.2... 3% 5/2 ens vei 12.70% 
 Blati and: Broad ):2\s.cpcircae bie Wee 14.02%” ” 
 
 But a small portion of the Jews, therefore—thirteen or 
 fourteen per cent.—have the Jewish nose! 
 
 Fishberg is not the only investigator who has found this 
 percentage so low. Other scholars working in Russia 
 and Austria have arrived at the same result. 
 
 On the other hand, we find that the aquiline nose is by 
 no means possessed by Jews only. It is quite common in 
 Western Asia, on the Mediterranean Sea, as well as among 
 American Indians. We have already quoted Luschan’s 
 observation that the Jewish nose is particularly frequent 
 in the Alpine valleys that are cut off from all outside in- 
 fluences, that it is an earmark of the homo alpinus, the 
 Alpine man. While but thirteen or fourteen per cent. of the 
 Jews have a Jewish nose—as a rule—the conservative 
 Catholic population of Ancient Bavaria* shows thirty-one 
 per cent. of Jewish noses. 
 
 A further observation of Fishberg’s is very interesting: 
 the forms of noses found among Jews have a tendency to 
 vary with the forms of noses in the environment in which. 
 they live. 
 
 “Tt is noteworthy that Bavarian Jews also have a higher 
 
 2 Fishberg, p. 79. 
 * Altbayern, former designation for the Bavarian provinces of 
 Upper and Lower Bavaria.—Transtaror. 
 
 92 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 proportion of hooked noses than their co-religionists in 
 other countries.” * 
 
 Wide noses are found more frequently among the Jews 
 of Northern Africa than among those of Eastern Europe. 
 But the snub nose, on the other hand, among Jews, is most 
 numerous among those living in the midst of a Slavic 
 population, where this type of nose, as is well known, is very 
 frequent. 
 
 If we are obliged to relinquish the Jewish nose, we are 
 giving up- the most widely recognised race trait of the 
 Jews. What other such traits do we still have? Skin 
 pigmentation, eye pigmentation, hair pigmentation? These 
 are often mentioned as race traits, but if we are to con- 
 sider black hair, dark eyes, swarthy or sallow skin as 
 particular traits of the Jews, we should have to regard 
 as Jews all Europeans that are not blond. 
 
 Furthermore, there are blond and blue-eyed persons 
 among the Jews. Among 4,235 Jews examined by Fish- 
 berg in New York, the following were the proportions: 
 
 Jews J ewesses 
 Brunette Type ....... 52.62% 56.94% 
 long ype wens ai. eee 10.42% 10.27% 
 Bixed UL UDES Gace vac 36.96% 32.79% 
 
 “The brunette type, which is considered characteristic 
 of the Jews from time immemorial, is thus reduced to only 
 fifty-two per cent. among the European representatives of 
 
 3 Fishberg, p. 83. 
 
 93 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 the race, while among the Jewesses it is not much larger, 
 fifty-seven per cent.” * 
 
 But the blond Jew is not equally numerous everywhere: 
 
 “On the whole, it can be stated that most of the blond 
 Jews are found in countries where the general population 
 has a considerable proportion of blonds. ‘This is exem- 
 plified by the number of blond Jews in England, twenty- 
 five per cent., and in Germany, where over thirty per cent. 
 of Jewish children had blond hair. On the other hand, in 
 Italy, where the Christian population is distinctly brunette, 
 less than five per cent. of the Jews are blond, while in 
 Algeria, Bokhara, the Caucasus, etc., the percentage is 
 
 even less.” ® 
 
 We have still to consider the skull. The skull is said to 
 be an unchanging race trait. Where the race has been pre- 
 served in its purity, the skull, according to many anthro- 
 pologists, will not change, while others dispute this condi- 
 tion. This is not the place to attempt the solution of 
 such controversies. Assuming that the form of the skull 
 is the decisive factor, by which we mean whether the form 
 of the skull, as: viewed from above, shows a greater or 
 less ratio between length and breadth, what are the results 
 that may be said to have been determined by skull measure- 
 ments? 
 
 “It may, in fact, be stated that there is no single type 
 of head which is found among the Jews of all countries in 
 
 4 Fishberg, p. 66. 
 5 Fishberg, p. 70. 
 
 94 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 which they live. Indeed nearly all varieties of skulls are 
 met with among Jews of today.” ° 
 
 The head-forms of the Jews in various countries are 
 quite different from each other. The condition is as fol- 
 
 lows: 
 
 
 
 Daghestan, Jews in North Yemen, 
 
 Caucasus Europe Africa Arabia 
 Hyperdolichocephalic (—76)..  .... 2.89% 25.97% 71.80% 
 Dolichocephalic (76-77) ...... ara 7.36 24.67 14.10 
 Subdolichocephalic (78-79).... 4.70% 15.51 19.48 7.69 
 Mesocephalic (80-81) ........ 6.10 25.78 13.00 2.56 
 Subbrachycephalic (82-83) ... 17.37 24.01 9.09 3.85 
 Brachycephalic (84-85) ....... 23.94 15.97 6.49 
 Hyperbrachycephalic (86+)... 47.89 8.47 1.80 
 Number of Observations ...... 213 2,641 77 78 7 
 
 The Jews in the Caucasus are therefore predominantly 
 brachycephalic, while those in Northern Africa, and par- 
 ticularly those in Arabia, are predominantly dolicho- 
 cephalic, and those in Europe predominantly of medium 
 types. 
 
 Fishberg therefore rightly observes: 
 
 ‘““As far as head-form is concerned, these three groups 
 of Jews represent three different races as clearly as if they 
 were of white, black, and yellow skin.” ° 
 
 6 Fishberg, p. 49. 
 
 7 These figures (the cephalic index) indicate the width of the skull 
 expressed as a percentage of its length. For instance, if the skull 
 length is 200 mm., and its width 160 mm., the cephalic index will be 
 80, and the head-form is termed mesocephalic. 
 
 8 P, 38, German ed. 
 
 95 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Here again, we find the characteristics of the Jews co- 
 inciding with those of the nations among which they live. 
 The Caucasians among whom they live are brachycephalic. 
 In Arabia, Mesopotamia and Northern Africa, the Jews 
 are as distinctly dolichocephalic as the races native to 
 these regions. European Jews, like the rest of the Euro- 
 peans, are midway between these extremes. 
 
 Within Europe itself the cephalic index of Jews and non- 
 Jews shows striking coincidences within the same region. 
 Thus, Fishberg found the average cephalic indexes in the 
 following countries to be: 
 
 ayes Cephalic Index 
 
 Country of Jews of Non-Jews 
 Taithnania reise emetic 81.05 81.88 
 Rumania Won vias wettest 81.82 82.92 
 FLUNG are ale Glace islet 82.45 81.40 
 Poland Wena aia Wit eare gets 81.91 82.13 
 Tittle i Risser (ashe ate ive 82.45 82.31 
 Cralicia Me i a We iL 83.33 84.40 ® 
 
 In general, we find a great uniformity of head forms 
 among both Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe; there 
 is but slight divergence; this condition is attributed by the 
 American anthropologist, Ripley, to “the perfect monotony 
 and uniformity of environment of the Russian people’’, to 
 the unvarying conditions of nature “from the Carpathian 
 Mountains, east and north’, 
 
 ® Fishberg, p. 52. 
 10 Fishberg, p. 51. 
 
 96 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 What becomes now of the so-called immutable, sharply- 
 defined race type of the Jews which “may be traced with 
 equal certainty through the course of thousands of years’? 
 We cannot even find such sharply-defined traits in our 
 own day. 
 
 Being unable to prove the existence of the Jewish race 
 type by those traits which are generally regarded as racial 
 indications, the advocates of the presence of a distinct 
 Jewish race are obliged to turn from anthropological to 
 physiological traits. The Jew is to be distinguished, they 
 say, not by the appearance of his body, but by its posture. 
 
 We are already leaving the ground of comparatively un- 
 changing factors and entering the field of very alterable 
 factors. Among Jews the chest measurement is declared 
 to be strikingly small, menstruation to appear very early 
 in life, their fruitfulness is said to attain extremely high 
 figures, their adaptability to climate to be extremely great. 
 On the whole, these statements appear quite true, but do 
 no seem to be “Jewish characteristics” at all, if we take 
 the pains to compare the Jews not with the totality of the 
 population among whom they live, but with the classes in 
 which Jews are most commonly found. It will then be 
 found that narrow chests are as common among non-Jews 
 who are accustomed——because they are merchants or in- 
 tellectuals—to a sedentary mode of life, with little physical 
 exercise, and that menstruation, not only among Jewesses, 
 but among all city women, appears earlier than among 
 
 country girls. 
 
 97 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 The faculty of acclimatisation in the tropics is pos- 
 sessed by the Jew in common with the other Europeans who 
 visit those climates as merchants, not as soldiers or heavy 
 labourers, and who are able to abstain from alcohol. For 
 hard physical exertion and alcohol are the greatest enemy 
 of the European in the tropics. We cannot consider the 
 Jew’s faculty of acclimatisation as a specific Jewish quality 
 unless we assume that alcoholism is one of the immutable 
 race traits of the dominant blond race. 
 
 As for their fruitfulness, which has resulted in making 
 the Jews as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore, 
 this property also reveals how great is the dependence of 
 “immutable race traits” on social conditions. As in all 
 other urban populations, the Jewish population of cities 
 also presents a distinct decline in the birth rate. This 
 fact is well known in the case of Western Europe, but is 
 even beginning to be observed in Eastern Europe. In 
 Rumania, the rate of living births per thousand inhabitants 
 shows the following changes: 
 
 For the Population For the Jews 
 Wh Only 
 
 as a ole 
 US71L-LS 7 Bure cate et ete 34.2% 46.5% 
 1881-1 SSO mem are 41.3% 46.8% 
 TQOTA1L OOS ee eines 89.5% 32.6% 11 
 
 The birth rate of the Jews was considerably higher than 
 that of the entire population thirty years ago, but is now 
 considerably lower. 
 
 11 Fishberg, German ed., p. 229. 
 | 98 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 In Western Europe and America the fruitfulness of the 
 Jews is decreasing as rapidly as the general fruitfulness of 
 the population of France. In fact, if the present tendency 
 continues, it will actually mean the dying out of the Jews, 
 which would be the most original manner of solving the 
 entire Jewish question. 
 
 In Prussia, the excess of births over deaths per thou- 
 sand of respective population groups was: 
 
 Natural Increase 
 
 Jews hristians 
 Up Lad st iP By Ae Aah peas eae Br oP 10.33 12.29 
 LS OO Wane ld'e lets, clera ohare alle 7.64 12.58 
 DO paaalet stata stot o dias erates aisha 6.66 15.12 
 POO aetrarsteve ata eks late tains te sheep 4.52 14.57 
 POO aes lehe Ni aie: ou etis sre) Sat ebah aie » 3.34 12.93 
 LOO Grin sc atelatalaheyetele a) etece slats 3.33 14.97 1? 
 
 “In certain German cities the birth and death rates of 
 the Jews are almost equal; in Breslau in 1906-1907, there 
 were registered 507 Jewish births and 694 Jewish deaths. 
 Here they do not replenish the earth.” ** 
 
 Interesting figures are communicated by Felix Theilhaber 
 in a book entitled Sterile Berlin,** which contains far more 
 information than is suggested by the title, being in fact 
 a thorough discussion of the entire modern population 
 problem. 
 
 12 Fishberg, p. 69. 
 
 13 Fishberg, German ed., p. 60. 
 14 Das sterile Berlin, Berlin, 1913. 
 
 99 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Theilhaber had already issued in 1911 a book bearing 
 the ominous title: The Destruction of the German Jews.** 
 In the work above mentioned he communicates a number of 
 new calculations based on Berlin conditions, referring to 
 the relative number of Jewish births in that city: 
 
 Births per 1,000 
 
 sas tol ives Jewish Births ee aed 
 ES SO ie a alee tec 13,300 1,497 112 
 PS OO Ue mists 3s Bee 22,678 1,694 75 
 1900 see eaten 24,531 1,649 67 
 LUO Dit es ale sole ka tees 25,491 1,630 64 
 1910 approx. .. 24,000 1,806 54 
 
 If the Jewish births are to replace the losses by death, 
 there would have to be seventy-eight births per 1,000 Jew- 
 ish women of child-bearing age. But with the present birth 
 rate, 1,000 Jewish couples, in other words, “2,000 Jews 
 of child-producing age, have a total offspring of only 
 1,400 persons, equivalent to a dying out of one-third their 
 number. If this should continue to be the condition, the 
 Jews of Berlin will, after two or three generations—in 
 other words, in 80-120 years—be almost extinct.” * 
 
 Of course, we are here ignoring immigration from other 
 regions. At any rate, our figures are sufficient to show 
 that the “infinite fruitfulness of the Jews” as an “im- 
 mutable” race trait is a non-existent quantity. 
 
 15 Der Untergang der deutschen Juden. 
 16 Das sterile Berlin, pp. 106-107. 
 
 100 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Physiology having transpired to be as poor a basis as 
 anthropology, pathology is called upon for assistance. 
 The race traits which a healthy Jew is incapable of con- 
 tributing are now sought in the Jew suffering from disease. 
 It is maintained that the Jew is more subject to certain 
 diseases than the non-Jew, while he is less subject to others 
 than the non-Jew. But here again we are dealing only 
 with hasty generalisations. 
 
 Diabetes (sugar), for example, is commonly considered 
 a “Jewish sickness”. As a matter of fact, many Jews do 
 die of this disease. | 
 
 “From Auerbach’s Analysis of the Demography of the 
 Jews in Budapest, it appears that of the 487 deaths re- 
 ported as due to diabetes in 1902-07, 288, or more than 
 one-half, occurred in Jews, although they only constituted 
 22.6 per cent. of the population. The rates were 5.9 
 deaths due to diabetes per 100,000 Catholics and 21.4 
 per 100,000 Jews.* 
 
 But comparisons of this kind between Jews and non- 
 Jews are quite misleading, whether they are concerned with 
 diseases or with criminality or with school attendance. We 
 know that certain diseases are more common in certain 
 vocations and social strata than others. A comparison 
 between Jews and non-Jews is legitimate when the non-Jews 
 are compared with Jews of those classes to which most of 
 the Jews belong. Proceeding in this manner, we shall 
 observe that diabetes is a very common complaint among 
 
 17 Fishberg, pp. 297-298. 
 
 101 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 merchants and intellectuals, including non-Jewish mer- 
 chants and intellectuals. Accordingly, Fishberg determined 
 that diabetes is a specifically Jewish disease only in places 
 where the Jews are predominantly in business. In New 
 York, German Jews, according to the records of the hos- 
 pitals, suffer from diabetes three times as frequently as 
 non-Jews. The Russian Jews, on the other hand, most 
 of whom are workers, do not show a higher percentage of 
 diabetes than that of the population as a whole. Diabetes 
 also is, therefore, not a race disease but a class disease. 
 On the other hand, it is declared that Jews are not so 
 susceptible to certain diseases as non-Jews; such diseases 
 are: cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, etc. Where this dec- 
 laration agrees with the facts, it may be explained by the 
 social conditions of the Jews, who, in Germany, for in- 
 stance, are members of the wealthier classes, are less ad- 
 dicted to alcohol, and are always more inclined to consult 
 a physician at once, while the uneducated masses of the 
 people usually regard physicians with mistrust. Even 
 the most orthodox, most superstitious Jew will not seek 
 to oppose the epidemic by prayers and sacrifices alone, as 
 is the custom among the Italian and Russian masses. 
 “As a matter of fact, it is well known to every physician 
 of experience among the Jews that they are always ready 
 to take advantage of every new measure to prevent or 
 cure disease. There are practically no anti-vaccinationists 
 among them; nor are there any other kind of cranks among 
 them to urge them on to resist the attempts on the part 
 
 102 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 of the authorities to vaccinate them. The Jewish clergy 
 is always in favour of placing medical matters in the hands 
 of physicians and is not in favour of leaving such matters 
 in the hands of Providence.” ** 
 
 Shall we consider ignorance among the masses as a race 
 trait of the “Aryans”? For the present, we still explain 
 such traits by the social and political conditions in which 
 the nations live. 
 
 It appears that disease as a race trait also is a poor 
 argument. There remains for the advocates of Jewish 
 racial purity a single refuge, the last refuge of the race 
 theorists who aim to construct races on the basis of the 
 modern nations, namely, language. 
 
 Of course, language as a race trait is particularly un- 
 reliable in the case of the Jews, more unreliable than in 
 any other human group, since the Jews—with the excep- 
 tion of the Polish and Russian Jews—everywhere speak 
 the language of their environment. Unable to use the 
 criterion of language in the case of the Jews, the criterion 
 of pronunciation is resorted to. We are told the Jew 
 may always be recognised by his pronunciation. In all the 
 languages he speaks, the Jew has his Jewish accent. Said 
 the famous African explorer, Gerhart Rohlfs: 
 
 “We know that the Jew in Germany can always be 
 recognised by his discordant accent. The same is the case 
 with the Jews in all European countries... also in 
 Northern .Africa.” 
 
 18 Fishberg, p. 128. 
 103 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 And Andree says: 
 
 “The so-called Jewish accent (mauscheln) is a Jewish 
 race trait, as ineradicable in them as the Jewish type 
 itself, . . . This is very decidedly a race trait, since it is 
 found among the Jews of all countries.” * 
 
 Richard Wagner’s reasoning to show that the Jew is in- 
 capable of producing good music is based on the so-called 
 Jewish pronunciation. After pointing out in his essay, 
 “The Jews in Music”,” that the physical appearance of 
 the Jew always has for us an “unpleasantly foreign quality: 
 we involuntarily feel that we desire to have nothing to do 
 with a person who has this appearance”, he continues: 
 
 “Far more important—in fact, of decisive importance— 
 is the nature of the influence of the Jew’s pronunciation 
 upon us; particularly, this is the essential point of de- 
 parture in a study of the Jewish influence on music... . 
 Particularly repulsive to us is the purely sensual manifesta- 
 tion of the Jewish language. Civilisation has not succeeded 
 in surmounting the peculiar stubbornness of the Jewish 
 character in the matter of the Semitic mode of pronuncia- 
 tion, in spite of their two thousand years of contact with 
 European nations. Our ear feels the absolutely foreign 
 and unpleasant sound of a certain hissing, strident, lisping 
 and choking pronunciation in the Jewish speech; a dis- 
 tortion and peculiar rearrangement of the words and of 
 phrase constructions, entirely foreign to our national lan- 
 
 19 Fishberg, German ed., p. 77. 
 20 Das Judentum in der Musik. 
 
 104 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 guage, finally imparts to this pronunciation the character 
 of a confused babbling, to listen to which causes our atten- 
 tion to dwell rather on this repulsive manner of the Jewish 
 speech, than on the substance it conveys. ‘The exceptional 
 importance of this circumstance in explaining the impres- 
 sion made upon us by the musical works of modern Jews 
 must be recognised and emphasised from the outset... . 
 If the quality of his mode of speech makes it almost im- 
 possible for a Jew to acquire the ability of an artistic ex- 
 pression of his feelings and views through speech, his 
 capacity for manifesting such moods and thoughts in song 
 must be even far inferior, etc.” 
 
 No doubt a Siegfried speaking with a Jewish accent 
 would be impossible on the stage. Richard Wagner’s dialect 
 was not a Jewish dialect but that of Saxony. If we should 
 use Wagner’s arguments, we might say: 
 
 “Civilisation has not succeeded in surmounting the 
 peculiar stubbornness of the Saxon character in the matter 
 of the Saxon mode of pronunciation, in spite of their two 
 thousand years of contact with European nations.” But it 
 is not unreasonable to assume that Direktor Striese in The 
 Rape of the Sabine Women” would hardly do much better in 
 the réle of Siegfried than the well-known Schmock.” Would 
 
 21 Direktor Striese, a character who speaks in the Saxon dialect in 
 the farce, Der Raub der Sabinerinnen (1885), by Franz von Schonthan 
 (1849-1913) and Paul von Schénthan (1853-1905). 
 
 22 Schmock is a Jewish journalist in Freytag’s (1816-1895) play 
 Die Journalisten, who speaks German with exaggerated Jewish man- 
 nerisms. 
 
 105 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 it be reasonable to assume that the influence of the Saxons 
 on music could not but be disastrous? 
 
 Pronunciation is a most peculiar element in language. 
 Grammar and vocabulary may be fixed in writing and 
 taught through books; pronunciation may be but roughly 
 indicated by our limited alphabet; it cannot be precisely 
 set down. To learn to pronounce, we must be in personal 
 contact with persons who speak the language as natives. 
 Pronunciation is far more*tenacious in its retention of the 
 influences of the life of the people, of the masses, than 
 are grammar and vocabulary, which may be fixed in writing 
 and thus isolated from life. The differences between the 
 dialects are chiefly differences of pronunciation. Further- 
 more, contrary to the condition in the case of grammar 
 and vocabulary, which may be learned by purely theoretical 
 means, the acquisition of a correct pronunciation requires 
 constant practice of tongue and ear. 
 
 If a child has practised no other pronunciation than 
 that of his home dialect, it will be difficult for him to get 
 rid of this dialectic tinge. Very few persons have so fine 
 a hearing and so ready a tongue as to be able to acquire 
 the correct pronunciation of a foreign language late in 
 life, or, for that matter, of a strange dialect. Even those 
 persons who are complete masters of the foreign language, 
 who speak it fluently, will reveal in their pronunciation 
 that they are not speaking their mother-tongue. On the 
 other hand, having less occasion to practise their own 
 language when abroad, these persons will forget its words 
 
 106 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 and its constructions more easily than its pronunciation. I 
 met German workers living in England who had been in 
 that country since their childhood, and who were already 
 having difficulty in speaking German at all-—in fact, who 
 preferred to speak English—but whose pronunciation both 
 of German and English revealed the part of Germany 
 from which they had come. 
 
 If the Jews have their specific accent always and every- 
 where—so do the Saxons, so do the Swabians. Does this 
 justify us in erecting race traits on this basis? In Saxony 
 everybody speaks with a Saxon accent, regardless of his 
 country of origin. On the other hand, the children of 
 Saxon parents, if they are raised in Wiirttemberg, will not 
 speak the Saxon dialect but the Swabian dialect; they will 
 speak Bavarian in Miinchen and Plattdeutsch on the Baltic 
 coast. Pronunciation is no more hereditary than vocabu- 
 lary and grammar, but acquired. It is acquired, however, 
 in a somewhat different manner, and the environment of the 
 individual is a more important factor. 
 
 If the Jews have a different pronunciation of the lan- 
 guages of the nations among whom they live than these 
 nations themselves, this proves only that the Jews form a 
 separate community in the individual nations, thus remain- 
 ing in close contact with each other; only to the extent that 
 they lead such a separate existence will they preserve their 
 peculiar pronunciation. Jews that have not been raised 
 in a closed Jewish community but together with non-Jewish 
 people will have as little of the Jewish accent as the other 
 
 107 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 people. There is a well-known anecdote of a Jewish boy 
 sent by his father into the country in order that he might 
 get rid of the Jewish accent. When his father calls for 
 him at the expiration of a year, he finds to his horror that 
 little Baruch has not only not relinquished his Jewish pro- 
 nunciation but has imparted it to the entire village. 
 
 Little Baruch’s infectious influence deserves all our re- 
 spect, but an anecdote of this type could be considered as 
 having scientific value only by a Sombart or by the pro- 
 tagonists of Jewish ritual murder. The so-called Jewish 
 accent disappears more quickly even than their narrow- 
 ness of chest when they begin to live in a different social 
 environment. The fact that some persons have sought to 
 elevate this condition into a race trait proves only that 
 there are persons who would represent the Jews as a sep- 
 arate race at any cost, and who yet are put in the most 
 embarrassing position if asked to state what are the per- 
 manent and unmistakable traits of this race. 
 
 The Jews of the present day are not a pure race, either 
 geographically or chronologically; even the most super- 
 ficial acquaintance with their history will prove this state- 
 ment. Judaism arose on the soil of Palestine, a border 
 region between two areas, each of which embraces a distinct 
 race, probably the result of the peculiarities of the two 
 regions: in Palestine, the foot-hills of mountainous Asia 
 Minor (in the widest sense of the word, therefore, including 
 Armenia), whence originated the Armenoid type, and the 
 beginnings of the extensive steppes of Arabia, extending as 
 
 108 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 far as Mesopotamia. In the latter regions there arose the 
 type commonly designated as the Semitic type, but which 
 might perhaps better be ascribed to a certain area and 
 not to a certain language group, namely, the Arabian type. 
 Some members of the Armenoid type must be counted with 
 the Semitic language family; for example, the Assyrians.” 
 
 Both these geographical races must have come in con- 
 tact, at an early period, as well as repeatedly thereafter, 
 and have intermingled at their border points, therefore in 
 Palestine also. Primitive Israelitic history is of course 
 still very obscure: the reports in the Bible are absolutely 
 unreliable. But there is no doubt among scholars that the 
 population of Palestine must have constituted a mixture 
 of races at a very early period, however greatly they may 
 differ in minor points. 
 
 But Palestine was a border region in another sense also. 
 The “spheres of influence’”—to use a modern term—of the 
 first two great states of the historical era, of Babylonia 
 and Egypt, met in Palestine. Before the development of 
 navigation on the Mediterranean, the entire commercial 
 intercourse between these two empires passed through 
 Palestine, which also afforded passage for their military 
 forces, and often even served as their battleground. 
 
 Palestine has, therefore, seen merchants with their slaves 
 and mercenaries, who often came from great distances, and 
 belonged to the most varied races. The mercenaries often 
 
 23 Cf. among others, Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 
 2nd ed., i, li, p. 377 et seq. 
 
 109 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 remained garrisoned in the fortresses of Palestine for long 
 periods. Such elements have never failed to provide a 
 numerous posterity in any country in which they have 
 been stationed. 
 
 Furthermore, the Israelites were at first by no means 
 averse to conjugal relations with persons of other races. 
 Stade informs us on this point: 
 
 “The people of Israel were no more a people of pure 
 blood than any other people on earth: for, in addition to 
 Canaanitic, Hebraic, Arabic components, individuals of 
 Aramaic and Egyptian origin were also absorbed by them. 
 
 “How slight was the effort they made to be exclusive is 
 apparent from the circumstance that we meet with an 
 Ishmaelite in David’s family. In addition, the ancient 
 Israelites were distinctly surprised by the timidity with 
 which the ancient Egyptians guarded themselves against 
 any contact with foreigners.“ Of course, this does not 
 mean that the Jews did not prize their own nationality and 
 the purity of their Israelitic origin. But since such purity 
 was surely quite unusual in the oldest period, its absence 
 was not considered a blemish. This makes it easy for us 
 to understand that while, according to the most ancient 
 form of the legend, Isaac, the son of promise, was to have 
 married a woman of his kindred, it is narrated without 
 
 24 Compare Genesis xliii, 832, where we read of Joseph and his 
 brothers: “And they set on for him by himself, and for them by 
 themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him by them- 
 
 selves: because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; 
 for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” 
 
 110 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 apparent surprise that other fathers marry foreign women: 
 Judah, a Canaanitic woman; Joseph, an Egyptian 
 woman.” * 
 
 While the position of Palestine facilitated the incursion 
 of foreign elements and an intermingling with them, it also 
 facilitated the spreading of the inhabitants of the country 
 among their neighbours. Being a poor, unproductive coun- 
 try, Palestine was likely to suffer from excess of popula- 
 tion. It was too small and weak, the superior power of its 
 neighbours too crushing, to enable Palestine to dispose of 
 its population by settling it in conquered regions. The 
 territory of the Pheenicians cut Palestine off from good 
 seaports and the practice of navigation. Therefore the 
 path of colonisation beyond the seas was also closed to the 
 Israelites. ‘Their surplus population had no other alter- 
 native than to go abroad as merchants (sometimes as mer- 
 cenaries, but these played no important part in history). 
 In this capacity, they travelled further and further and 
 founded a number of settlements. In many cities they be- 
 came so numerous as to conduct not only trading opera- 
 tions, but also to employ artisans of their own; the number 
 of their intellectuals also increased. 
 
 Constantly crowded and congested in their homeland by 
 the overwhelming strength of their neighbours, this little 
 race had no other path of expansion. This path was pur- 
 sued so energetically that the Israelitic population abroad 
 finally became more numerous than the home population. 
 
 25 Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. i, p. 111. 
 111 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 The home population repeatedly loses its status as an 
 independent nation, finally losing it forever. But before 
 this time had come, the centre of gravity of Judaism had 
 been shifted from its original location to a number of cities 
 in Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. 
 
 As long as the Israelites had remained in Palestine, the 
 uniform natural environment necessarily favored the exist- 
 ence of a tendency in the direction of the production of a 
 uniform geographical race, thereby somewhat opposing the 
 differentiation of types resulting from race mixture. But 
 their migrations and their distribution to the most different 
 natural environments completely abolished this tendency 
 toward a uniform geographical race. But the mixture of 
 races, which was already traditional, now went on with 
 redoubled speed. 
 
 The greater number of the Jews now lived outside of 
 their homeland. Strangers among strangers, tolerated 
 only, quite often regarded with hostility, they found no 
 support in the little nation whose capital was Jerusalem. 
 They could maintain themselves only by observing the most 
 intimate unity among them. This unity applied not only 
 to the specific locality, but also to all the localities; there 
 was a sort of interlocal solidarity. In the immense region 
 over which they were spread, they were never simultane- 
 ously persecuted, plundered, exiled, in all their colonies. 
 If such events came to pass in one region, the victims, the 
 despoiled and homeless, always found active assistance and 
 support in other regions. 
 
 112 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 But this unified organisation became less and less na- 
 tional. The Jews had never constituted a uniform race; 
 they now ceased to be even a nation. Everything that 
 constitutes the essence of a nation had been lost to them; 
 they had lost their common land, even their common 
 language. 
 
 “The Jews living abroad had to speak the foreign 
 tongue, and if several generations had already been living 
 abroad, the younger generations finally would be able to 
 speak only the language of their native country, forgetting 
 their mother tongue. Greek particularly became very pop- 
 ular among them. Already in the Third Century pz.c., the 
 sacred writings of the Jews were translated into Greek, 
 probably for the reason that but few Alexandrian Jews still 
 understood Hebrew and possibly also for purposes of 
 propaganda among the Greeks. . . . Several centuries be- 
 fore the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, Hebrew 
 already ceased to be a living tongue.” *° 
 
 There remained to the Jews of their existence as a nation 
 practically only their national aspiration, their desire to 
 become a nation again, and as no bounds may be set to 
 man’s wishes, they felt that this nation would be headed 
 by an indomitable saviour, the Messiah. But, as a matter of 
 actual fact, the Jews were becoming more and more trans- 
 formed from a nation into an international association. 
 Their bond of union was the remnant of their ancient 
 
 26 Karl Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity, New York, 1925, pp. 
 257, 258. 
 
 113 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 national life that was still maintained, namely, their re- 
 ligion. But precisely the religions, in the form of myth 
 and philosophy, were in a state of constant flux in the 
 centuries before and after the birth of Christ, particularly 
 in the circles from which the Jews were then exclusively 
 recruited, namely, the populations of the cities. The firm 
 and tangible symbol of the Jews’ community was not the 
 philosophy of religion, but the religious ceremonial; this it 
 was that served the Jews of all the regions then involved 
 in world traffic as the bond recognised and recognisable by 
 all. And simultaneously as a means of keeping outsiders 
 out. 
 
 We must not infer that the Jews aimed to preserve a 
 rigid exclusiveness toward all new elements. On the con- 
 trary, with the progress of their loss of a national exist- 
 ence, and their assumption of the character of a mere 
 international association for mutual aid, we find a simul- 
 taneous increase of the desire to swell their ranks by 
 means of propaganda and thus to acquire new forces. Con- 
 quests of new territory were impossible under the circum- 
 stances; propaganda was resorted to. 
 
 ** “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ 
 the gospel lays these words into the mouth of Jesus, ‘for 
 ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte and, when 
 he is made, ye make him twofold more a child of hell than 
 yourselves’,”’ 7” 
 
 I have treated the causes and effects of this propaganda 
 
 27 Matthew xxiii, 15; Kautsky, ibid., p. 260. 
 
 114 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 in full detail in my Foundations of Christianity.** It would 
 lead us too far afield to go over all this ground again. It is 
 sufficient to state here that this propaganda met with 
 great success; and the greater the success, the more neces- 
 sary would it, of course, seem to be to keep aloof from all 
 undependable newcomers. ‘The strict observation of the 
 ritual prescriptions now became doubly necessary. In 
 Freemasonry we find a similar rich development of cere- 
 monial which, particularly for intelligent persons, fre- 
 quently makes a very stupid impression, and is valuable 
 only because it serves as a means of making it difficult for 
 frivolous interlopers to gain admission. ‘Those who sub- 
 jected themselves permanently to the Jewish rite might 
 be depended upon as reliable fellow-members. 
 
 But every stranger was welcome who would recognise 
 this rite—without regard to origin. Jewish exclusiveness 
 was not an exclusiveness of race. The Jewish propaganda 
 in all the regions of the ancient world was rather calculated 
 to stimulate tremendously the mingling of races within 
 Judaism. 
 
 In spite of the great success of this propaganda, it did 
 not take hold of the masses of the pagan peoples. These 
 rather displayed an increasing aversion to Judaism, as the 
 latter ceased to constitute a nation and became an inter- 
 national league. The more Judaism lost the character of 
 a nation, the more did it cease to embrace all the classes 
 of society as then known, now including only the urban 
 
 28 Kautsky, ibid., pp. 253-264 
 115 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 groups, in many cases only those concerned with commer- 
 cial and financial business. As long as the Jews had been 
 a nation, and a very small nation at that, they had been a 
 source of concern to their nearest neighbours—by reason 
 of their aspirations for expansion or for maintaining them- 
 selves—only in occasional instances. ‘The more they devel- 
 oped into a league of members of a specific class, spread 
 throughout the world, the more were they involved in the 
 class struggles of the entire world. And this in a two-fold 
 manner. In the first place, they were drawn into the 
 struggles of their own class against other classes, and in 
 the second place, they were also drawn into conflicts with 
 competitors within their own class, for this class was much 
 annoyed by the strength drawn by the Jews from their 
 international dissemination and solidarity. These two 
 varieties of class struggle were ultimately combined in a 
 manner that was quite uncomfortable for the Jews: com- 
 petitors in their own commercial class made efforts to turn 
 aside the hostility of other classes, particularly to the 
 Jewish members of their class, thus transforming struggles 
 against middlemen, tax farmers, usurers, into struggles 
 against the Jews. This distortion of conditions was fa- 
 voured by the fact that the Jews were defenceless foreigners, 
 and also—to just as great a degree—by those properties 
 of the Jews by which they sought to maintain themselves, 
 since they were defenceless foreigners, by their close union 
 and their international solidarity. Elements of the popula- 
 tion thus constituted easily become suspicious in the eyes 
 
 116 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 of popular masses with local prejudices. It was just as 
 easy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, in Eng- 
 land, to instigate a massacre of Catholics for the most 
 trivial causes as it was throughout the last two thousand 
 years to inaugurate occasional pogroms against the Jews 
 everywhere in Europe. But no one has ever thought of 
 ever designating the English persecutions of Catholics as 
 race struggles and the English Catholics as a peculiar, 
 “pure race”’. 
 
 The situation became a desperate one for the Jews when 
 the Government authorities also rose against them. Before 
 Cesarism felt itself firm in the saddle, it had considered the 
 Jews to be a valuable ally. But as imperial absolutism 
 became solidified, it became more suspicious of all inde- 
 pendent organisations, including Judaism. And when the 
 Jews of Jerusalem went so far as to seek to maintain their 
 independence as opposed to the Romans, by actual war- 
 fare, Judaism was completely outlawed.” 
 
 From now on, the propaganda of Judaism was deprived 
 of every foundation; everywhere the Jews were forced into 
 the defensive, all accessions from non-Jewish circles were 
 cut off. The Jews then became a caste which had to 
 increase by inbreeding, within their own ranks. For the 
 first time, the isolation of the Jews became quite marked. 
 
 This condition found its culmination in the ghetto of the 
 feudal era, in the Jewish quarters in which the Jewish 
 population of each city was strictly confined. This condi- 
 
 29 Kautsky, ibid., pp. 167-171. 
 
 117 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 tion might perhaps have succeeded in maintaining the Jews 
 as a pure race if they had been a pure race to begin with. 
 But the Jews never were a pure race, and even at the period 
 of their most stringent isolation there were two conditions 
 opposing the formation of a uniform race. 
 
 The Jews could not become a geographical race, for 
 their settlements extended over the most varied and distant 
 countries. On the other hand, even if the Jews had orig- 
 inally constituted a puré race, they could not have main- 
 tained their purity, owing to the impossibility of preventing 
 a mingling with foreign elements. 
 
 Precisely the period of the most rigid isolation of the 
 Jews is also the period of their greatest legal disability, 
 subjecting them to one persecution after another. They 
 were not robbed only of their valuables; not only were men 
 slain, but women were violated in great numbers. But the 
 posterity of these women were considered as Jews and bred 
 as such. Even though we should assume that all Jewish 
 women had always been inaccessible to the seductive arts 
 of their non-Jewish neighbours, the fact of the persecu- 
 tions of the Jews alone would be sufficient to preclude the 
 possibility of an immutable “purity” of Jewish blood 
 during the last two thousand years. A mixed race from 
 the very outset, the Jews, in the course of their migrations, 
 have come into contact with a great succession of new 
 races, and their blood has thus become more and more 
 mixed. 
 
 We have already pointed out the significant fact that the 
 
 118 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Jews of each region present many physical traits in com- 
 mon with the non-Jewish population of the same region. 
 This may, perhaps, be an effect of like natural conditions 
 on both Jews and non-Jews. But it is just as plausible to 
 assume that it may be the result of a sexual contact between 
 Jews and non-Jews. Probably the case is the same as in the 
 world of organisms in general: both factors, adaptation 
 and heredity, have had considerable to do with the deter- 
 mination of bodily traits. 
 
 But the non-Jews among whom the Jews live are no less 
 a mixed race than the Jews themselves. Jewish blood flows 
 in their veins also. It is not only the extra-conjugal 
 relations between—let us say—Jewish business men or 
 students and Christian servant girls or waitresses that 
 makes many a Christian child an “offspring of the Jews”. 
 Perhaps even more Jewish blood was transmitted to the 
 body of the Christian population by the conversion of 
 Jews, a process which has been going on for centuries. In 
 Spain, for example, in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Cen- 
 turies, hundreds of thousands of Jews were converted to 
 Christianity. Their posterity infected the Aryan race with 
 their blood. There is no Jew today who can say to himself 
 with certainty that he has not a drop of non-Jewish blood 
 in his veins, if only for the reason that there never has 
 existed a Jewish race either in the sense of a pure breed of 
 domestic animals or in the other sense, that of a geograph- 
 ical race. 
 
 But even if we should assume that all those who were 
 
 119 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 following the ritual laws of the Jews two thousand years 
 ago constituted a specific race, no Jew of the present day 
 can assert with absolute sureness that his ancestors in- 
 cluded only elements that had descended from the Jews of 
 that period. 
 
 On the other hand, also, there is not a single Christian 
 who can declare with absolute certainty that his own ante- 
 cedents include no Jew among their members. 
 
 No race traits can be mentioned which could be used as a 
 criterion for determining this question. The “Jewish coun- 
 tenance”, black hair, flashing eyes, and particularly the 
 aquiline nose, heritages from one of the many races out of 
 which the Jews were built up, cannot serve as a criterion, 
 no matter how outspoken these traits may be considered 
 to be, for they are found also, as we have seen, among many 
 non-Jewish races. Furthermore, they are found only 
 among a small fraction of the Jews themselves. This char- 
 acteristic countenance has probably become associated 
 with the Jewish type, as in those regions of Northern 
 Europe in which the Jews lived together in rather great 
 numbers, namely, east of the Elbe and north of the Car- 
 pathians, it is less frequent among the non-Jews, and there- 
 fore most sharply distinguished from the countenance 
 found in the most frequent types, and therefore most 
 striking. , 
 
 Yet even in those regions, the “Jewish face” does not of 
 itself determine the Jewish type. Particularly striking 
 qualities of dress and coiffure, kaftan and pajes (side 
 
 120 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 curls), pronunciation, bodily carriage, play of the features, 
 and gesticulations—all of which are social peculiarities, 
 handed down by more or less involuntary imitation of one’s 
 environment—must cooperate with the hereditary Jewish 
 face in order to make the unmistakable, the “correct” 
 Jewish type apparent. 
 
 The cartoonists of the comic papers are quite justified 
 in depicting Jews as possessing the “Jewish countenance”’. 
 The task of the caricaturist is to exaggerate and emphasize 
 striking and unusual traits. But when anthropologists 
 dignify this countenance by making it an earmark of a 
 specific Jewish race, they are creating a caricature of their 
 own science. Werner Sombart, of course, imagines that 
 Jews may always be detected by their faces: 
 
 “A later age will hardly find it possible to believe that 
 persons existed in our day who were incapable of dis- 
 tinguishing the Jew as a member of a specific nation or of a 
 specific race (it does not at all matter whether the Jews 
 be called Jews or not) from a Negro or an Eskimo, or a 
 Pomeranian, or a Southern Frenchman”, and this is the 
 more culpable, for: “Our eye has been obviously much 
 sharpened, owing to training in the natural sciences, in its 
 ability to detect the influence of the blood in man, during 
 the last generation.” *° 
 
 This sharp eye has been rendered so acute in the case of 
 Sombart that it is sufficient for him to cast a glance at a 
 portrait, even though it be but a wood-cut or a copper 
 
 30 Werner Sombart, Die Zukunft der Juden, pp. 50, 55. 
 
 121 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 engraving, to determine at once whether the original was a 
 Jew or not: 
 
 “It is well known that the Governor-General of the Dutch 
 East Indian Company who, though he may not be consid- 
 ered as the founder of the Dutch power in Java, neverthe- 
 less contributed much to the solidification of this power, 
 bore the name of Cohn (Coen). And we can easily convince 
 ourselves that he was not the only Jewish governor of the 
 Dutch East Indian possessions, if we glance through a set 
 of portraits of these officials.” * 
 
 If a man’s name is Coen, Sombart, owing to his acute 
 sense of the blood in man, “knows”? that his name was 
 Cohn, and that he was a Jew. Those who are acquainted 
 with the Dutch colonial policy, and who “know” more of 
 Coen than his name, are of course aware that Coen had 
 nothing to do with Cohn, and that he was as little a Jew 
 as the other governors whose portraits have been exam- 
 ined by our conscientious professor.” 
 
 By means of the same profound method, Sombart de- 
 clares the Scotchman Law as likely to have been a Jew, for 
 Law might have been Levy and in “‘many (!) of his pic- 
 tures” he looks Jewish! 
 
 Another example of this splendid method is the following, 
 also taken from Sombart: ‘In order to prove the sig- 
 nificance of the Jews as financiers in France, it is sufficient 
 
 81 Werner Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, pp. 30, 31. 
 82Cf. W. v. Ravesteijn, Kapitalismus und Judentum, Die Neue 
 Zeit, vol. xxx, part 2, pp. 714, 715. 
 
 122 
 
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 to recall the influential position occupied by Samuel Ber- 
 nard during the later portion of the reign of Louis XIV 
 and the entire reign of Louis XV.” * 
 
 In other words, to prove the importance of the Jews, “‘it 
 is sufficient” for Sombart to remind us of a single Jew. 
 This is quite funny, and is made even funnier if this Jew 
 should happen to be not a Jew. Sombart’s critic in the 
 Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Soztalpolitik, Julius 
 Guttmann, has the following to say on this subject. 
 
 “In so important a country as France, the Jews remained 
 for a long time of very subordinate importance as finan- 
 ciers. The only great Jewish financier discovered by Som- 
 bart as far down as the Eighteenth Century is Samuel 
 Bernard. Bernard, according to the evidence of his bap- 
 tismal certificate, which has been long available, was a 
 Christian by birth, and the only circumstance that could 
 be adduced in favour of his Jewish descent would be the fact 
 that his father and grandfather had already lived in France 
 as painters.” ** 
 
 Houston Stewart Chamberlain seems to be just as skilful 
 in detecting the “influence of the blood”, for he declares 
 concerning Marx and Engels that they were two “highly 
 gifted Jews, who sought to transplant to Europe from 
 
 99 35 
 
 Asia many of the best thoughts of their race”. 
 
 33 Sombart. Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, p. 56. 
 
 34 Archivo fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. xxxvi, p. 159. 
 
 35 Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1899, vol. ii, p. 
 835. 
 
 123 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 The “scientific”? method of the Sombart and Chamberlain 
 school of Jewish studies was already anticipated by our 
 friend Schonlank more than twenty years ago in a de- 
 lightful parody in the feuileton of the Vorwdrts—it hap- 
 pened to be an April First number—in which he proved 
 that Hammerstein, the well-known editor-in-chief of the 
 Kreuzzeitung, was of Jewish extraction, originally bearing 
 the name Chamer Stein. ~ And how about Chamer Laihn— 
 has not this name also a Jewish sound, Mr. Chamberlain? 
 
 124 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MENTAL QUALITIES OF THE JEWISH RACE 
 
 THERE is not much to be gotten, therefore, out of the 
 bodily traits of the Jewish race. Even the racial anti- 
 Semites themselves do not display any very great con- 
 fidence in the certainty of such traits, in spite of all their 
 bombast concerning the profound natural gulf separating 
 the Jewish race from the other races. They are very care- 
 ful not to draw practical inferences from their race the- 
 ories, or to demand—let us say—the political disfranchise- 
 ment, the prohibition against marrying “Aryan” persons, 
 or the elimination from Europe of every man who displays 
 a “Jewish countenance”, Nor do they recognise every man 
 as an Aryan who fails to possess this countenance. They 
 are finally brought to the pass of recognising as the natural 
 “race trait” of the Jews only the records of the Bureau of 
 Vital Statistics. | 
 
 But of course, the wickedness and disaster involved in 
 the Jewish race is not based upon the peculiarity of their 
 bodily traits, but on their mental traits, not on their 
 hooked noses and crooked legs, but on their crooked moral- 
 ity. The high intelligence, the close solidarity of the Jews, 
 are not virtues but vices, For they make the evil qualities 
 
 of the Jews more dangerous, namely, his importunity, his 
 
 125 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 destructive, purely negative criticism, and, particularly, his 
 heartless, ruthless desire for gain. In order to prove that 
 the Jew is a born criminal, our racial anti-Semites bring 
 no more destructive argument to bear than the over- 
 whelming assertion that the Jew is a born capitalist. They 
 claim that all the vulgarity of the capitalist mode of 
 thought, which the Teutonic individual has had the greatest 
 difficulty in acquiring, has been inherent in the Jewish blood 
 from the beginning of history. Long before the slightest 
 trace of capitalism was in existence, the Jew had already 
 been impregnated by some miracle with the capitalist mode 
 of thought and feeling, an undistinguishable race trait 
 for all times and countries, and in all modes of production. 
 It is therefore not surprising that the Jew leaves all his 
 competitors far behind in the game of capitalist compe- 
 tition, thus injuring the Christian proletarians beyond 
 repair by causing them to be exploited not only by “blond 
 beasts” who had to be artificially trained to this capitalist 
 viciousness. 
 
 The thorn in the flesh of these theorists is the mental 
 qualities of the Jews. The fact that these qualities include 
 a number that were unpleasant to their Jewish neighbours 
 was an observation frequently made long before the days 
 of the racial anti-Semites. But formerly these traits had 
 been ascribed to their peculiar social situation, to their 
 oppression, their limitation to a few fixed callings. It had 
 formerly been assumed that with the elimination of this 
 exceptional situation, these peculiarities also would dis- 
 
 126 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 appear. Under these circumstances, a criticism of the 
 Jews usually developed into a criticism of state and society 
 and into a demand for social and political reforms. But 
 it is possible to escape the necessity of making such de- 
 mands if the mental qualities of the Jews are considered to 
 be an inextinguishable race trait. 
 
 “Race alone may often serve only to cloak our igno- 
 rance,” says Fishberg, “particularly if all the conditions of 
 the environment have been ignored.” * 
 
 No doubt this is often the case. But just as frequently 
 we find “race” resorted to as a means of preventing any 
 criticism of society, any effort to secure its further evolu- 
 tion, or even the investigation of its nature, the conception 
 of race being used in such instances in order to nullify the 
 influence of the milieu—including also the artificial, social 
 milieu—on man. 
 
 We have observed in the preceding chapter that the 
 Jews are a mixed race, but we were nevertheless in a 
 position to indicate the traces of the bodily traits of one 
 of the geographical races of which this mixture is com- 
 posed. We can no longer say anything concerning its 
 mental traits, for mental traits are so intangible and vari- 
 able that it is difficult if not impossible to assign per- 
 manent mental traits with definiteness to a certain race. 
 This impossibility becomes the greater in the case of a 
 prehistoric race of which no written documents are pre- 
 served. We completely lack any material for determin- 
 
 1 Fishberg, German ed., p. 86. 
 127 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ing the mental qualities of the races out of which the 
 population of Palestine was built up several thousands of 
 years ago. 
 
 But it is very difficult even to outline the characteristics 
 of a nation on the basis of its written evidence. It is even 
 very daring to judge a man on the basis of certain of his 
 writings. Many individualities express themselves differ- 
 ently in their writings than in their real character. Per- 
 sonal observation itself is not sufficient to enable us to 
 grasp the entire inner life of an individual; in fact, the 
 individual is in the dark concerning much of his own 
 individuality. He is aware of his inner life only where it 
 enters his consciousness, and even his conscious mental life 
 is coloured, simplified, idealised, by memory. 
 
 What little information we have concerning the life of 
 earlier races is in the form of certain expressions by certain 
 individuals. It is as a rule entirely impossible to determine 
 at this late date to what extent these expressions are typ- 
 ical, if only for the class involved, not to mention the entire 
 people. 
 
 Such evidences are extremely important as a means of 
 determining the course of events, the problems faced by the 
 human beings of the period and people in question, the stage 
 of their knowledge and ability, the goals of their aspira- 
 tions, the natural and artificial environment in which they 
 moved. But he who would go beyond these things, he who 
 would infer their entire inner life from these materials, will 
 be able as a rule to deliver merely the production of his 
 
 128 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 own imagination; this product will be interesting chiefly as 
 a characterisation of the investigator rather than of those 
 investigated. Nothing is more difficult than to place one- 
 
 self inside another’s skin. | 
 
 Even if there existed anywhere a civilised nation corre- 
 sponding to a pure race, and which had preserved its race 
 purity for thousands of years, we should not be able to 
 trace its mental idiosyncrasies through these thousands of 
 years with such precision as to be able to state which 
 elements must be assigned to heredity and which to the 
 influence of the environment. 
 
 But in the case of a mixed race, the mere attempt to 
 make such a distinction would be ridiculous. 
 
 There is more likelihood of success if we begin, not with 
 the race, not with the environment, not with the past, but 
 with the present. In this case, we can at least determine 
 to a certain extent, by means of numerous observations, 
 what alterations in the mental character are produced at 
 this day by alterations in the environment. Proceeding 
 from this knowledge, we may then with a certain definite- 
 ness interpret many evidences of former times. For we are 
 then proceeding from the known to an explanation of the 
 unknown, while to make the assumption that any mental 
 characteristic known to us is a race trait is equivalent to 
 the opposite process of explaining the known by means of 
 the unknown. 
 
 The former method, that which begins with the environ- 
 ment, is quite sufficient to explain the mental traits ob- 
 
 129 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 servable in the greater number of the Jews of the present 
 day. We need only to note the influence of the urban 
 environment on human beings at this day, the alterations in 
 the country-dweller when exposed to the influence of city 
 life, and then to recall that the Jews are the only race on 
 earth that has constituted a purely urban population for 
 approximately two thousand years: we now have an almost 
 perfect explanation of Jewish traits. They are an exag- 
 gerated form of urban traits in general. I used the urban 
 traits as early as 1890 in order to explain the Jewish 
 character”. The Jew has become the city dweller par 
 excellence. ‘The uniformity of the artificial environment 
 imparted to the Jews everywhere a uniform mental type, 
 in spite of all the variations in their natural environment, 
 and all the differences in the inherited race elements. If 
 this uniform type should be accepted as a race type, the 
 descendant of the homo alpinus might be designated as the 
 homo urbanus. 
 
 Until long after the beginning of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, the circumstances under which the great masses of the 
 population lived in cities were—regardless of the country 
 or race concerned—so destructive that it was impossible 
 for them to maintain their numbers by natural increase 
 alone. If there had not been a constant accession of new 
 forces from the country, they would have died out re- 
 
 2 Die Neue Zeit, vol. viii, pp. 22 et seq. Cf. also my article, “Das 
 
 Massaker von Kischeneff und die Judenfrage”, Die Neue Zeit, vol. 
 xxi, part 2, p. 303. 
 
 130 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 peatedly. <A large fraction of the urban population con- 
 sists everywhere of elements derived from the provinces; 
 only an insignificant fraction can point to city ancestors 
 for more than a century past. The Jews, however, have 
 accomplished the astounding feat of so adapting them- 
 selves to urban life as not only to maintain themselves for 
 two thousand years as an almost exclusively urban popula- 
 tion, but even to increase in numbers under these conditions. 
 
 This may have been in part the operation of an uncon- 
 scious process of selection, resulting in the elimination of 
 all those unsuited to urban life. In the case of the non- 
 Jewish population, this process was not necessary, since 
 it was constantly interrupted by the accession of new ele- 
 ments from the country districts, who married into the 
 established families, thus bringing about a mingling of 
 selected and non-selected elements. 
 
 It is very questionable whether natural selection, in the 
 form of the survival of the fittest, has had much influence 
 on evolution. But there is no doubt that it has had an 
 immense influence on the shaping and maintaining of species 
 by means of the elimination of those unfit for the given 
 environment. 
 
 In addition to this unconscious adaption, there is also 
 a conscious adaptation. We have already pointed out that 
 the Jew is far more inclined to consult a physician, and to 
 observe the physician’s orders conscientiously, than is the 
 non-Jew, and also, that the Jew—at least in the ghetto— 
 is far less addicted to alcohol. This difference between Jew 
 
 131 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 and non-Jew is at bottom again merely a difference between 
 city-dweller and country-dweller. 
 
 Owing to the conditions of his life, the latter is far 
 superior to the city-dweller in strength; he is rarely ill. In 
 the fullness of his strength, he despises disease. Owing to 
 his love of displaying his vigour, and to his fear of appear- 
 ing to be a weakling, he considers it a disgrace to be sick; 
 besides, he is often too ignorant to have confidence in a 
 physician. 
 
 The case with alcohol is similar. Alcohol is far less 
 injurious to the vigorous peasant than to the neurasthenic 
 city-dweller. And, the better his nervous state, the greater 
 his muscular energy, the greater will be the quantities of 
 alcohol he can consume without injury. Competitive drink- 
 ing becomes a means of displaying bodily vigour, and he 
 who avoids such tests is considered a coward. 
 
 There are no celebrations in the country without exten- 
 sive intoxication. This condition occasionally leads to 
 brawls, to murder and other killings, but otherwise has no 
 injurious effect on the healthy peasant. In the city, where 
 there is less opportunity for varied physical movement in 
 the open air, and where the work to be accomplished is 
 either more mental or more monotonous, and is performed 
 in confined quarters and shops, the need of neutralising 
 the feeling of an exhausted. nervous condition becomes 
 greater, the desire for alcohol is greater than in the coun- 
 try; the opportunities for obtaining alcohol are more nu- 
 merous, but its effect is more destructive. This is clearly 
 
 132 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 apparent today, with great masses of the population living 
 and working in cities, and with the present comparative, 
 if not absolute cessation in the arrival of new elements from 
 the country, as compared with the size of the city popula- 
 tion. This condition, as well as the progress of a knowl- 
 edge of physiology, is giving rise to a more and more 
 energetic struggle with alcoholism. In this matter, the 
 Jews have a lead of centuries, not in the requirement of 
 abstinence, but in their abhorrence of intoxication; not so 
 much because of a scientific knowledge, as because of their 
 social position. ‘The nations of the south are less inclined 
 to be immoderate than those of the north. The Jews, com- 
 ing from the south, and now living among Teutons and 
 Slavs, being cut off from their environment, were not ex- 
 posed to the temptations of this environment. Further- 
 more, the defenceless Jew was always far more exposed to 
 danger than the non-Jew, and therefore sobriety was far 
 more necessary to him. An intoxicated Jew who would 
 transgress the laws would have brought great misfortune 
 not only upon himself but upon the entire Jewry of his 
 home town. ‘This is perhaps the best explanation that can 
 be offered for the moderation of the Jews. Although 
 originally serving only to render the position of the Jews 
 more secure, and perhaps practised as a habit handed 
 down from their Oriental home, this abstinence has neces- 
 sarily had an extremely favourable hygienic influence. 
 
 Of similar importance is the Jew’s respect for learning, 
 particularly for medicine. In the crude and ignorant con- 
 
 133 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 dition which settled down over Europe during the migra- 
 tion of nations, the Jews were for a long time one of the 
 few asylums still retaining remnants of ancient civilisation. 
 As a result, they preserved a higher respect for science 
 than their environment, and also practised science more in- 
 tensively, except where this tendency was frustrated by 
 the exclusiveness of the ghetto. The high level to which 
 the art of healing had been developed among the Greeks 
 was maintained in the first place by Jewish physicians, then 
 further developed in the Orient, and passed on to the 
 Arabs. Their better medical understanding was handed 
 on to the Jews of the north from the Orient and from 
 Spain. 
 
 By reason of a gradual natural selection, as well as 
 owing to a conscious adaptation to their conditions of 
 life, the Jews were finally enabled to resist the destructive 
 influences of the city environment more successfully than 
 the new arrivals from the provinces. While the non-Jewish 
 city population was subject to constant renewal every few 
 generations, the Jews had become a purely urban popula- 
 tion. 
 
 The peculiarities of their historical position not only 
 limited the Jews to the cities, but to certain callings within 
 the cities. 
 
 They had to live as strangers among strangers, which 
 is not so difficult for merchants. At first, merchants not 
 only undertake to purchase and sell goods, but also to 
 transport them, and such convoys of goods had often to 
 
 134 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 be personally conducted or at least personally supervised. 
 The trade in commodities required that the merchants 
 travel and sojourn in foreign countries, and all those na- 
 tions which had a trade in commodities had adapted and 
 accustomed themselves to the presence of foreign mer- 
 chants among them. 
 
 The Jews, who found themselves compelled to leave their 
 homeland, found it easiest to get along in foreign coun- 
 tries as merchants. Furthermore, it was those Jews whose 
 mental makeup was best adapted to trade who were most 
 likely to venture abroad. 
 
 In their original home the Jews, like any other nation, 
 gave birth to all the classes and vocations natural to their 
 social conditions. ‘They displayed as little as any other 
 people the mental limitation considered by anthropo-so- 
 ciologists as the determining characteristic of the various 
 races, namely, a turning of their faculties to one calling 
 or to a few callings at most. They showed as much apti- 
 tude for agriculture as for trade and industry; as much 
 for military service as for the art of government; as much 
 for philosophy as for poetry. For the mind of the in- 
 dividual human being is far richer in its aptitudes than 
 many a race theoretician can imagine. It is only the bar- 
 riers of a narrow, monotonous life that cause an individual 
 to develop only a few of his faculties to their full capacity, 
 and perhaps to hand them on to his progeny in a more 
 pronounced form, while other faculties may become stunted 
 
 through desuetude. 
 135 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 The Jews outside of Palestine were therefore obliged to 
 turn to trade chiefly. We therefore find them a trading 
 nation at an early date. They thus must surely have de- 
 veloped emphatically those abilities needed by the mer- 
 chant, and this great capacity must in the course of many 
 generations of such activity within the same families have 
 finally produced hereditary aptitudes and traits. 
 
 However, the Jews did not limit themselves to trade. 
 Wherever possible, they resorted to other vocations also, 
 particularly in cities where there were great numbers of 
 Jews. Trade can never support more than a small 
 minority, for trade is non-productive. Trade may under 
 certain circumstances facilitate production but can never 
 replace it. The Jews could not constitute a large fraction 
 of the population of a city except where they were per- 
 mitted to practise some other calling besides that of trade, 
 perhaps a handicraft. On the other hand, where great 
 numbers of Jews were living together, artisans and mem- 
 bers of the liberal professions, such as physicians, who 
 were of Jewish extraction, had better opportunities to 
 maintain themselves as they found among their numerous 
 co-religionists a strong support and an adequate market 
 for their products and services. In antiquity, wherever 
 the Jews lived together in great numbers, for instance, in 
 Alexandria, we find also many artisans among them, in 
 spite of that mysterious race predilection which is sup- 
 posed to have made the commercial spirit an ineradicable 
 characteristic of every Jew from the very beginning of his- 
 
 136 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 tory, in other words, long before there was any such thing 
 as trade. 
 
 Being exclusively city-dwellers, they naturally did not 
 favour those callings for which the new arrival from the 
 country is best adapted, but those for which city life is the 
 best preparation: such callings are those, on the one hand, 
 which require much intelligence and theoretical knowledge, 
 and which, on the other hand, do not demand much physical 
 strength. When they turn to handicraft, they become, 
 therefore, tailors rather than smiths, while the surplus of 
 the merchant families, which cannot be absorbed in com- 
 merce, or which does not need to practise commerce, turns 
 to purely mental labour. 
 
 Trade not only develops an excellent material foundation 
 for mental labour, by favouring the prosperity of the 
 families concerned, but far more by reason of the excellent 
 natural talents encouraged by it. In my book, Founda- 
 tions of Christianity, I already pointed out the connection 
 between “trade and philosophy’’.*® I have shown in that 
 work that industry develops rather the abilities required by 
 the reproductive arts, while trade develops rather the 
 capacities for mathematical, abstract thought, but also for 
 investigation and mental speculation, the tendency to as- 
 sociate with elements known those unknown elements that 
 are necessarily connected with them. Furthermore, world 
 commerce expands the horizon beyond that which is cus- 
 tomary and traditional. 
 
 8 Op cit., pp. 203-208. 
 
 137 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 To be sure, scientific speculation is not to be regarded as 
 identical with commercial speculation. But they differ not 
 in the abilities required for them, but in the conditions of 
 their application. Occupation with trade, investigation 
 and speculation from an interested standpoint, are a great 
 obstacle to disinterested investigation and speculation, in 
 other words, to scientific work, and vice versa. 
 
 “Trade develops the necessary ability for scientific pur- 
 poses, but not its application to scientific ends. On the 
 contrary, where trade secures an influence over learning, 
 its effect is entirely in the direction of doctoring the re- 
 sults of learning for its own purposes, of which our present- 
 day bourgeois learning presents numerous examples. 
 
 ‘Scientific thought could only be developed in a class 
 that was endowed with all the gifts, experience and knowl- 
 edge involved in trade, but also liberated from the necessity 
 of earning a living, and therefore possessing the necessary 
 leisure, opportunity, and pleasure in disinterested investi- 
 gation, in the solution of problems without regard to their 
 immediate, practical and personal outcome.” * 
 
 These conditions were realised in antiquity in some of 
 the Greek commercial cities, but also in a number of Jewish 
 settlements, particularly in Alexandria. We have already 
 pointed out the importance of the Alexandrian Jewry in 
 the history of medicine. Its importance in the development 
 of philosophy is equally considerable. 
 
 Their respect for science and their desire to provide the 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 207. 
 
 138 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 scholar with an existence free from material care dis- 
 tinguished the Jews of the Middle Ages as mentally far 
 superior to their barbarous environment. The Church 
 was one of the communities, besides the Jews, which main- 
 tained alive the remnants of ancient civilisation in the 
 midst of the Christian-Teutonic barbarism, and for this 
 the Church has been not a little praised. But little atten- 
 tion has been given to the fact that the Church was prac- 
 tising a mental selection of the most dubious kind. In the 
 Jewish families marriage and parenthood on the part of the 
 most intelligent were assiduously encouraged.* The Catholic 
 Church absorbed the most intelligent elements of the 
 Christian families and doomed them to celibacy, forbade 
 them to reproduce. This was equivalent to the precise op- 
 posite of the Jewish process of selection; the Church was 
 practising a breeding of the most stupid, of course only 
 during the period in which it served as the goal of the 
 most intelligent men in the nation. 
 
 5 This condition finally attained absurd dimensions among the Jews 
 of Poland. In the section of his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie 
 that deals with the Jewish philosopher Maimon (born 1754, died 1800), 
 Kuno Fischer says: 
 
 “Among the Polish Jews the Talmudists and rabbis enjoyed the 
 greatest prestige. Every family regarded it as a matter of pride to 
 have a scholar of this type among its members, and if none of its sons 
 was a Talmudist, effort was made to secure a son-in-law to embellish 
 the family with such a connection. Young Talmudists were very 
 much in demand as good matches. . . . Salomon Maimon had attained 
 the third (supreme) degree in the Talmudic learning at the age of 
 nine. ... He was married before attaining the age of eleven. He 
 was a husband in his eleventh year, a father in his fourteenth year.” 
 (Section v, pp. 120, 121.) 
 
 139 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Lecky, in his Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Ra- 
 tionalism in Europe, describes in glowing words the en- 
 thusiasm of the Jews for learning: 
 
 “While those around them were groveling in the darkness 
 of besotted ignorance; while juggling miracles and lying 
 relics were the themes on which all Europe was expatiat- 
 ing; while the intellect of Christendom, enthralled by count- 
 less superstitions, had sunk into a deadly torpor, in which 
 all love of enquiry and all search for truth were abandoned, 
 the Jews were still pursuing the path of knowledge, amass- 
 ing learning, and stimulating progress with the same un- 
 flinching constancy that they manifested in their faith. 
 They were the most skilful physicians, the ablest financiers, 
 and among the most profound philosophers; while they 
 were only second to the Moors in the cultivation of nat- 
 ural science. ‘They were also the chief interpreters to 
 Western Europe of Arab learning. But their most im- 
 portant service, and that with which we are now most 
 especially concerned, was in sustaining commercial activity. 
 For centuries they were almost its only representatives.” ° 
 
 Such were the circumstances under which the mental 
 character of Judaism developed—and not from its “race” 
 —whatever that may mean—but from the historical pe- 
 culiarity of its social evolution. Precisely this historical 
 evolution imparted to the Jews those qualities needed by 
 capitalism, those qualities most conducive to success under 
 
 6éW. EH. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit 
 of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1910, vol. ii, p. 103. 
 
 140 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 capitalism. The capitalist mode of production is pre- 
 dominantly urban in character; it concentrates the mass 
 of the population in cities, makes the provinces eco- 
 nomically dependent on the cities. It transforms all of 
 production into commodities production, makes all of pro- 
 duction dependent on the ‘trade in commodities. It 
 abolishes the handicraft routine, and replaces it by the 
 application of science to all fields. 
 
 Therefore that section of the population will make itself 
 most felt within capitalism whose faculties have been best 
 adapted to urban life, to trade, to scientific labour: this 
 means the Jews. 
 
 Of course, Sombart explains the capitalist spirit as well 
 as the power of mental abstraction found among the Jews 
 not on the basis of their urban life, nor of their commercial 
 activity, but as due to the—cattle-breeding practised by 
 the nomads of the desert who were among the ancestors of 
 the Jews thousands of years ago! 
 
 “Out of the boundless desert, out of the supervision of 
 flocks, arises capitalism in contrast to the old established 
 economic order. The management of herds has no defi- 
 nitely limited domain, no clearly defined field of activity, 
 for the field of cattle-breeding is unlimited ; its practice may 
 be destroyed overnight, or may grow ten-fold in the course 
 of a few years.” 
 
 Sombart does not explain how he accomplishes the 
 miracle of causing a herd of cattle to grow ten-fold in the 
 course of a few years; and yet such a revelation would be 
 
 141 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 very valuable as an aid to overcoming the high price of 
 meat. Furthermore, Sombart appears to regard pasture 
 —in the wilderness—as unlimited, as well as the fodder 
 furnished by it, which manifestly must also grow ten-fold 
 in the course of a few years. 
 
 This new history of the origin of capitalism continues: 
 
 ‘“‘Hlere (in the wilderness) alone, in the cattle-breeding 
 economy—never in the sphere of agriculture—could the 
 idea of gain strike root. Here only could economy be 
 adapted naturally to an unlimited increase of the number 
 of products.” 
 
 In other words, the idea of unlimited increase, in other 
 words, of unlimited fruitfulness, could only arise in the 
 most unfruitful wildernesses, never in the most fruitful 
 agricultural countries. ‘The sandy desert is the indicated 
 soil for the production of cattle and cattle-fodder in un- 
 limited quantities. 
 
 But the desert not only creates the possibility of an un- 
 limited increase of products, but the nomadic mode of 
 pasturing pursued in the desert also creates the impulse 
 to increase “possessions” beyond all limits, without regard 
 to whether they are needed or not. Karl Marx supposed 
 that the boundless proportions attained by the desire for 
 accumulating a hoard, for collecting gold and silver, were 
 a result of the production of commodities. But Sombart 
 knows better. It was not the production of commodities, 
 but the fact that oxen and cows produce calves, that created 
 the boundless impulse—in the desert—of accumulating 
 
 142 
 
MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 hoards in cattle, of multiplying one’s holdings in cattle ten- 
 fold in the course of a few years, without asking for a 
 moment whether this increased quantity can be put to any 
 use, in other words, for the mere pleasure of counting the 
 number of heads of cattle: 
 
 “Here only was it possible for the conception to arise 
 _that the abstract quantity of commodities and not the 
 quality of utility is the dominant category of economic 
 life. Here, for the first time, counting was resorted to in 
 economic life. But the elements of rationalism also pene- 
 trated into the economic life, owing to nomad habits, which 
 thus (!) become the father of capitalism in almost every 
 respect. Again we find an immensely increased illumination 
 for our understanding of the close relation between cap- 
 italism and Judaism, the latter here appearing as the con- 
 necting link between the former and nomadism.” ’ 
 
 The “immensely increased illumination” which we find 
 here serves only to illuminate the boundless fertility of the 
 
 wilderness of our professor’s imagination. 
 
 7 Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, pp. 425, 426. 
 
 143 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 Tue mental race traits of the Jews are said to be of such 
 nature as to constitute_a profound and impassable gulf 
 between them and all other races. On examination, this 
 information resolves itself into the fact that the great 
 mass of the Jews has constituted for two thousand years 
 an exclusive, hereditary caste of urban merchants, finan- 
 ciers, intellectuals, including some artisans, and has de- 
 veloped, by practice and accumulation from generation to 
 generation, more and more of the traits peculiar to all 
 these strata, as opposed to the peasant masses of the rest 
 of the population. 
 
 The Jews have always been distinguished from the latter 
 since the termination of the existence of the Jewish state; 
 they have always seemed strangers to the rest of the popula- 
 tion, a condition encouraged in the Middle Ages by the fact 
 that each vocation within the city was always concentrated 
 in a certain quarter of the city. Within this quarter, if 
 several races were represented, each of the races had its 
 specific section. In addition, in the case of the Jews, we 
 also have the peculiarity of their religion and their rite, all 
 of which are matters that have nothing to do with race 
 traits. But while the Jews may always have appeared 
 
 144 
 
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 foreign, they were not always treated as enemies. Whether 
 the Jews were regarded favourably or not depended en- 
 tirely on the needs and conditions of the country in which 
 they lived. The opposition which is frequently represented 
 as a natural race hostility was determined by very mutable 
 economic circumstances. 
 
 Wherever there was need of merchants or financiers, or 
 intellectuals in general, and wherever the native supply of 
 such elements was insufficient, the Jew was welcome. Such 
 was the case in the Christian empires of Western and 
 Northern Europe in the centuries after the migration of 
 nations, in other words, at precisely the period when ‘‘Ger- 
 manism’? must have been in evidence in its purest form. 
 Cities then developed with the utmost difficulty. The Jews 
 were welcome as a means of invigorating the economic life 
 of the cities. 
 
 ‘At all points where this formation of cities is going on, 
 where an urban community is developing out of the former 
 castellum of the Romans, the Jews contributed a decisive 
 element by bringing trade within the walls. This is ex- 
 pressed in a truly classic manner in the words in which 
 Bishop Riidiger of Speyer opens his Charter to the Jews 
 in the year 1084: ‘Desiring to make a city out of the vil- 
 lage of Speyer, I have admitted the Jews... .? The 
 Bishop not only points out that the Jews enjoy the same 
 rights in other cities, such as complete trade privileges, 
 property in land, local autonomy, but adds also: ‘I have 
 thought to multiply one thousand times the honour of our 
 
 145 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 city by gathering the Jews within its walls.’ This Charter 
 was expanded into a general privilege by Emperor 
 Henry IV. The Archbishop of Cologne in his Charter of 
 1252 says: ‘We believe that it will redound not a little to 
 our prosperity and honour if the Jews who entrust them- 
 selves to our support and who—hoping for our protection 
 and our favour—submit to our rule—may actually enjoy 
 this protection.’ ” * 
 
 The Jews of Cologne obtained not only autonomy within 
 the Jewish quarter but full rights of citizenship and admis- 
 sion to parish offices. Thus, G. L. von Maurer quotes a 
 document dating from “about 1200”, in which a Jew 
 named Egeberth is appointed as Alderman of the Parish of 
 Saint Lorenz.” But von Maurer is obliged to admit that 
 the Jews did not hold this favourable position except “for 
 a time”, ‘On the whole, they had greater privileges in 
 the earlier period than in the later.” ° 
 
 For the Jews in Christendom fared somewhat as the Ger- 
 mans in Bohemia. As long as they were needed in order 
 to develop and encourage the growth of cities and in order 
 to invigorate trade, they were welcome. When the cities 
 began to develop a class of native financiers, traders, and 
 artisans, the imported foreigners, once they had become 
 established, were no longer regarded as a welcome as- 
 sistance, but as an undesirable competition, as “undesirable 
 
 1 Zollschan, Das Rassenproblem, pp. 351, 353. 
 2 Geschichte der Stddteverfassung, vol. ii, p. 232. 
 3 Op. cit., p. 230. 
 
 146 
 
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 aliens”. The population suddenly bethought itself that 
 some difference or other, of religious or other nature—the 
 distinctions between races had not yet been invented in 
 those “dark” ages—constituted an opposition obliging one 
 to persecute the foreigners. While the Jews had been 
 sought for in Western Europe down into the Thirteenth 
 Century, every effort was made from that time on to make 
 life unbearable for them, to abridge their rights; they were 
 maltreated, plundered, and driven out, if not actually 
 slain. Wherever a wretched existence is still possible for 
 them, their activity is restricted in every possible way. 
 They are prevented from engaging in large-scale com- 
 mercial enterprises, are forbidden to own land, to practise 
 a trade. Nothing is left to them but the trade of usury 
 and a petty huckstery and colportage. The haggling Jew 
 as a type of the Jewish “race” is a product of Christian 
 charity. 
 
 We may mention—merely as a curlosity—the fact that 
 it was during this period of the most intense persecutions 
 that the Jews were forbidden to visit disorderly houses. 
 Thus Queen Jeanne I issued such a prohibition in 1347 for 
 the City of Avignon. This pious and virtuous potentate 
 reserved the privilege of visiting the bordello to Christians. 
 By reason of its enduring into the Sixteenth Century, this 
 privilege was transformed into a greater privilege on the 
 part of Christians to acquire syphilis.* Perhaps as a 
 
 4 Lecky, op cit., vol. ii, pp. 100, 101, especially the footnotes. 
 14:7 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 measure of compensatory justice, Christians were forbid- 
 den to obtain treatment from Jewish physicians. 
 
 The reader will observe that the health of the Christians 
 was not enhanced by the persecutions of the Jews. 
 
 The rise of the modern state at first brought no allevia- 
 tion to the Jews. To be sure, the state’s strong police 
 power considerably abridged irregular plundering—the 
 plunderings of its subjects now became the monopoly of 
 the state, and were applied, with the aid of its organized 
 power, in the form of taxes. 
 
 On the other hand, this same state authority showed it- 
 self to be very suspicious toward all autonomous bodies. 
 Any independence, any deviation from the mode of thought 
 prescribed by the state power was tabooed and often sub- 
 ject to cruel penalties. Thus, the religion of the ruling 
 monarch was considered to determine also the religious 
 feeling of all his subjects. Where the Jews were weak and 
 not numerous, their religious peculiarities might still be 
 tolerated. Where they constituted a power, they were now 
 most brutally maltreated by the state authority, frequently 
 driven out of the country, as was the case particularly in 
 Spain and Portugal. Hundreds of thousands were ban- 
 ished from the former country in 1492, and hundreds of 
 thousands of others converted to Christianity by force. A 
 similar compulsion was carried out in Portugal shortly 
 thereafter. 
 
 It was not until industrial capital became strong that 
 the general position became more favourable to the Jews. 
 
 148 
 
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 Industrial capital arises not only in opposition to feudal 
 landlordism and to guild handicraft and financial capital. 
 The latter aim at attaining privileges from the state, while 
 industrial capital seeks to maintain free competition within 
 its ranks. The greater the competition among merchants 
 and those who hold the power to grant credits, the better 
 will industry flourish. It was in the interest of industry 
 to permit Jewish traders and Jewish financiers to compete 
 with Christians, to abolish the barriers which kept out the 
 former. This attitude was fully in keeping with the general 
 tendency to abolish medieval guilds. The ghetto was one 
 of the medieval corporations. It had to go, in the interest 
 of a speedy evolution of capitalism; though it continued, in 
 some cities, into the Modern Era, its fate was sealed. 
 
 But industrial capitalism is distinguished from the arti- 
 sanry of the Feudal Era not only by reason of the fact 
 that it is obliged to break down all the guild barriers, but 
 also because of the fact that it substitutes an application 
 of science for the traditional routine. Simultaneously 
 there ensues a necessary expansion of the newspaper sys- 
 tem. For these reasons, as well as for others, the enumera- 
 tion of which would take us too far afield, the demand for 
 intellectuals of every variety increased. But the supply 
 offered by the feudal state was comparatively low. The 
 Church still absorbed so many intellectuals as to constitute 
 a serious interference with the demands of learning and 
 capital, It became absolutely necessary for the new and 
 rising mode of production to liberate the Jewish intelli- 
 
 149 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 gentsia and to cut off the uninterrupted blood-letting prac- 
 tised by the Church, particularly the Catholic Church, with 
 its commandment of celibacy, on the non-Jewish in- 
 telligentsia. 
 
 In all these efforts, industrial capitalism found itself 
 impeded more and more not only by feudal landlordism, 
 by guild handicraft, by the Church, by the privileged strata 
 among the intellectuals,.by the commercial organisations, 
 by high finance, but also by the power of the state itself, 
 which was ruled by these classes, and which was naturally 
 applying the means of its authority in the interests of 
 these classes. 
 
 Only by overthrowing this authority could the path be 
 cleared for a most speedy evolution of the new mode of 
 production. In this process, industrial capitalism found 
 allies only in the lower classes, in the proletariat and in 
 the peasantry, as well as in those strata of the petty bour- 
 geoisie and the intelligentsia which were not among the 
 privileged classes and which could advance only by means 
 of an elimination of all privileges. ‘Thus modern democ- 
 racy arose with its pronouncement of the equality of all 
 creatures in human form. ‘The natural consequence was 
 an effort to emancipate Judaism, and also—on the other 
 hand—an alliance between the energetic, aggressive ele- 
 ments of Judaism and revolution. Only through revolu- 
 tion could Judaism be liberated. 
 
 The negative, destructive, critical spirit which is said to 
 be a natural trait of the Jewish race is in reality the neces- 
 
 150 
 
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 sary outcome of the social and political situation of Juda- 
 ism, which excluded it from all the advantages of existing 
 society, and made the Jews feel their disadvantages most 
 keenly. If this spirit is a race trait, it is among the invari- 
 able race traits of every oppressed and exploited class 
 during such period of oppression and exploitation. 
 
 The liberation of the Jews was realised in the great 
 French Revolution and in its minor successors. It was 
 heralded by an increasing tolerance for the Jews in the 
 more advanced capitalist states, first in Holland, then in 
 England, beginning with the Seventeenth Century, a change 
 which brought many Spanish and Portuguese Jewish or 
 pseudo-Christian capitalists to those states. Finally, the 
 Jew obtained equal rights with all other citizens. There- 
 upon he began to rise rapidly in capitalistic society, to 
 whose needs he had become so perfectly adapted, in trade, 
 in banking, in journalism, in medicine, in jurisprudence. 
 But simultaneously there also began the Jew’s adaptation 
 to non-Jewish society, his assimilation. 
 
 This process was apparent in his language; the modern 
 Jew no longer speaks with a Jewish accent. Then it ensued 
 in his rite: the dietary laws and commandments for the 
 celebration of festivals, which once separated the Jew from 
 the non-Jew, constituting such a profound gulf between 
 them, now cease to govern the Jew entirely. More and 
 more Jews leave their religious community. Zollschan cites 
 an estimate made by Licencié de la Roy, to the effect that 
 more than two hundred thousand Jews were baptised in the 
 
 151 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 course of the Nineteenth Century, not including conver- 
 sions to dissenting groups or the baptisms of children 
 of mixed marriages. And this tendency to conversions 
 from Judaism is on the increase. In Vienna, the annual 
 
 number of conversions was as follows: 
 
 No. of Jews per 
 
 Conversions from Judaism Conversion 
 1886-1890 ...2.'. Sele fam 330 359 
 LB SGT GOO ie Rela tce aie ane 511 288 
 OOO moi ce dei(vliel bela elaLemats 607 240 
 LQO Gwroals cies teene lets aad otis 643 
 
 After giving these data, together with many others, 
 Zollschan draws the following inference: 
 
 “If we recapitulate all this material, we shall find a con- 
 siderable increase in the number of Jewish baptisms in 
 western countries. Judaism in Austria (not counting 
 Galicia) is losing more than 2 per 1,000 of its adherents 
 annually; in Germany, at least 1 per 1,000; in Hungary, 
 about 34 per 1,000, to Christianity. On the other hand, 
 the huge Jewish zone in Russia and Galicia is maintaining 
 its ground against Christian influences and is suffering only 
 slight abrasions.” ° 
 
 Far greater than the number of Jews who abandon 
 their religious affiliation is the number of those who, though 
 they remain in it, nevertheless completely relinquish their 
 religious practice and their religious mode of thought. Of 
 
 6 Zollschan, op. cit., p. 475. 
 152 
 
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 course, the same process is simultaneously going on among 
 the great majority of the non-Jewish urban population, 
 who also, by force of habit, still remain within the field of 
 the traditional religious organisations, without having the 
 slightest share in the religious life of these organisations. 
 The religious assimilation of the Jews in Western Europe 
 is making rapid progress, not so much because the Jews 
 are accepting the Christian faith or the Christians accept- 
 ing the Jewish faith, as because both parties are succumb- 
 ing to the same unbelief and to the same religious 
 indifferentism. 
 
 This finds its expression also in the number of mixed 
 marriages, which is increasing rapidly. Thus, the number 
 of mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews in Prussia 
 
 was: 
 Average for the Years SAAS 4 lb nf 
 Ds oa OM arc lale chy E ol legis fol ale +: a kl'ehec eile aa 10.1 
 EBM DOORN ts stalelgels agit) olyie:e ale 4. s/o" aiel es 12.4 
 DESO SOOM NG Pe etate trate shore wos as eee tote aes 16.9 
 OO Giactaiststavsre et ctevateeisins cinieve ketal e Bre oie at a's 23.6 
 TD OGUAIN Ye ats teres aia gle elethre hearer aes Wrote Dwr ale 23.3 
 DOES Mitety 5 te eee te wich Co geele Ns ols bha-rake lanaeel sane 25.6 
 
 In the large cities with a numerous Jewish population, 
 the number of mixed marriages is either already very large, 
 or is rapidly increasing. 
 
 The figures for a few of these cities are given below. 
 
 153 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Number of Mixed Marriages 
 Between Jews and Non-Jews 
 iven as a Percentage of 
 
 City Average for the Years Purely Jewish Marriages 
 Berlin 1901-1904 ir ine oles 35.4 
 LOO ac estate tment setae 44.4 
 Frankfort on TOO Bre eit oy ante wots ete 22.5 
 the Main 19067 eee eee 26.0 
 LOOT ari aw iaabetes ets ae temas 19.6 
 JOOS Ter datavers late te ate neaets es 30.7 
 Hamburg 19035-1905 rie ease peek 49.5 
 Amsterdam B09 SOO aS ees 8.1 
 LOOOVCE Tai. etnias. doko tales ts 8.8 
 LOO UM iia ce ieie ee hes 11.3 
 102 ate lsie it pie lemietekeatetes 13.6 
 LOO. coe tere isi iatotaiene le eats 20.1 
 
 The figures for Amsterdam especially show a rapid in- 
 crease in mixed marriages. 
 
 In Italy, France, England, and the United States, there 
 are no religious statistics. Zollschan sadly observes that in 
 these countries, in which the Jews have the fullest freedom, 
 “the process of dissolution of the native Jewry is proceed- 
 ing at full speed”.° In the Jewish families of Italy which 
 belong to the higher social classes he says it has ‘almost 
 become a rule to marry their children only to Christians”. 
 
 The figures from Trieste, until recently an Austrian city, 
 but which has always had a predominantly Italian popu- 
 lation, point in the same direction. In Austria, mixed 
 
 6 Zollschan, op. cit., p. 477. 
 154 
 
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 
 
 marriages were subject to considerable limitation, being 
 permitted only between Jews and unbelievers. And mar- 
 riages in which both the Jewish and the Christian party 
 were without religious affiliation were not considered as 
 mixed marriages. 
 
 In spite of all this, the number of mixed marriages in 
 Trieste, as a percentage of purely Jewish marriages, was 
 as follows: 
 
 PB UI-LBOO pee wa nce ein sige cetohele, eet 6, sieteta 33.3 
 PSU LATS O BIE we statins Woaie ekecatetasstala estar elo) ares s 38.5 
 PROG ES OO Uno tnicalerd sieelare evaiG es veralata's) 64s 41.6 
 POO0= 1 OO BO eile ss 0 erties ore sictele a away vies sls 61.4 
 
 To be sure, this is in the country of “black” Italians. 
 But—oh, horror !—in the land of the noblest blonds, the 
 “black-blond mix-up”, in spite of all the offence this may 
 give to Sombart’s holiest emotions, is proceeding most 
 abominably. In Copenhagen, the number of mixed mar- 
 riages between Jews and non-Jews, expressed as a percent- 
 age of the purely Jewish marriages, was as follows: 
 
 TEOUSL SOUR sree is ster s ecto she vis ols aoa ore o chet ess 55.8 
 BS Seed Gets a utate ale lets ata tle wel vs ere Ost ale 68.7 
 DOUORT OOD ee irae cieg b ies ele tlaceiaistere » wane 82.9 
 
 Accordingly, Zollschan declares: 
 “It is apparent that the Jewish population of Denmark 
 has not increased in the sixty years from 1840 to 1901, 
 
 155 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 but has decreased absolutely and even more, relatively. In 
 1840, 0.3 per cent. of the total population was still Jew- 
 ish; in 1901, only 0.14 per cent. The proportion of Jews 
 had therefore decreased by more than one-half. ‘The rea- 
 son is not only the comparatively small number of children, 
 but chiefly the numerous mixed marriages by means of 
 which the Danish Jews are being gradually absorbed by 
 the non-Jewish population.” * 
 
 The examples of Italy and Denmark go to show how 
 correct were the calculations of those champions of Jewish 
 emancipation who expected that it would result in a com- 
 plete absorption of the Jews by the races among which they 
 lived. Zollschan is right; it is only in the ghetto, in a 
 condition of compulsory exclusion from their environment, 
 and under political pressure, deprived of their rights and 
 surrounded by hostility, that the Jews can maintain them- 
 selves among other peoples. They will dissolve, unite with 
 their environment and disappear, where the Jew is regarded 
 and treated as a free man and as an equal. 
 
 There now remains only one possible source of a new 
 lease of life for Judaism and therefore also for the “Jewish 
 peril”, namely, the peril that non-Jews will be forced out 
 by Jews in the struggle of capitalist competition. This 
 new lease of life for the “Jewish peril” may come from 
 anti-Semitism. 
 
 t Zolischan, op. cit., p. 478. 
 
 156 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 InpusTRIAL capitalism, by means of its union with the 
 revolutionary portions of the intelligentsia, had put down 
 the elements opposing it. The result was a form of the 
 state organisation which favoured an extremely rapid 
 growth of industrial capital but also permitted the disad- 
 vantages involved.in the latter for the petty bourgeoisie 
 and the proletariat to express themselves most clearly. 
 Sooner or later each of these two classes turned its back on 
 bourgeois democracy or liberalism—the earlier, the lower 
 was the degree of revolutionary energy developed by the 
 latter in the period of its rise, and the less profound was 
 therefore its spiritual control of the masses of the people, 
 which depended in turn on the stage reached in the general 
 economic evolution and therefore by the proletarian move- 
 ment as a whole. The later the introduction of the bour- 
 geois-democratic opposition and revolution, the greater is 
 the internal resistance it feels by reason of its fear of the 
 proletariat. As we travel from west to east, from England 
 to Russia, we find liberalism entering later and later on 
 the political arena. We find liberalism therefore growing 
 weaker and weaker, being less and less capable of maintain- 
 
 157 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ing the proletarians and petty bourgeois in a state of 
 dependence on itself, and the earlier do both these elements 
 cut loose from liberalism, until finally, in Russia, we reach 
 a stage where the proletariat, as well as the petty bour- 
 geoisie, has already been separated from liberalism before 
 it enters upon the political struggle. 
 
 But the opposition to liberalism, assumes, as is well 
 known, quite a different-form among the proletariat than 
 among the petty bourgeoisie. Both find their social posi- 
 tion in capitalistic society intolerable. But, in the case of 
 the proletariat, the achievements of democracy and of cap- 
 italist economy are the presupposition for its own liber- 
 ation. The proletariat does not seek to neutralise these 
 achievements of democracy, but rather to annex them, to 
 utilize them in its own struggle. 
 
 The petty bourgeoisie would have as much to gain from 
 socialism as the proletariat, but only a portion of its mem- 
 bers is able to rise, through its political leadership, to the 
 recognition of this fact. ‘The conditions of its existence 
 at the present time depend on private property in the 
 means of production and on the exploitation of wage- 
 labourers, particularly of the weakest of all wage- 
 labourers, particularly women and children. In this 
 process, it encounters the resistance of the proletariat, and 
 is made to contrast sharply with the proletariat and its 
 socialist tendencies. 
 
 Considerable portions of the petty bourgeoisie, turning 
 from liberalism, do not seek their salvation in advancing 
 
 158 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 beyond liberalism, but rather feel themselves obliged to 
 retrace their steps, to become politically and economically 
 reactionary, in which process they find allies in the powers 
 that had been surmounted by liberalism. 
 
 Of course, they cannot turn back the wheel of Betore 
 No doubt, capitalism is changing. With the issues of stock 
 shares and the expansion of the banks, industrial capital 
 is concentrating more and more and beginning to coincide 
 with financial capital. The tendencies of the primitive 
 financial and trading capital to eliminate competition by 
 private monopoly are again becoming manifest. ‘The polit- 
 ical reaction may for a time be encouraged by such meas- 
 ures, but economically capitalism is thus being pushed to 
 the extreme. The petty bourgeoisie gains nothing by such 
 methods. 
 
 Powerless to combat capitalism as a whole, it has no 
 other recourse than to fight individual, partial manifesta- 
 tions of capitalism and thus to join the political reaction, 
 of which it expects, of course in vain, an economic reaction 
 also. 
 
 In this situation, it finds a fruitful soil for the reawaken- 
 ing of anti-Semitic tendencies. The battle against capital 
 as a whole seems hopeless. But the conflict with Judaism, 
 with Jewish capital, which is so unpleasantly felt by many 
 a non-Jewish capitalist, seems to afford better prospects of 
 success. 
 
 But not only proletarians and petty bourgeois turn 
 their backs on liberalism, which has not fulfilled their ex- 
 
 159 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 pectations, and feel themselves threatened by the rising 
 tide of Judaism. The vanguard of liberalism had been 
 composed of intellectuals. As long as they occupied an 
 exceptional position, as long as they were an unusual 
 curiosity, their position was favourable; but this condition 
 gradually subsided in the course of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury. An overproduction of intellectuals began to make 
 itself felt, for which there were many reasons, not the least 
 among which was the decline of the petty bourgeoisie, which 
 is sending its sons—now even its daughters—to the uni- 
 versity, or, if the means are not available for this, at least 
 to commercial and trade schools, in order to enable them to 
 make their way as clerks or as independent mental workers, 
 since handicraft and petty trade no longer afford these 
 opportunities. Again we find, in the most varied fields, 
 that it is the Jews who advance most quickly. Therefore, 
 among non-Jewish intellectuals and clerks also, those who 
 are incapable of accepting socialism, which would put an 
 end to all the ills of a competitive society, become quite 
 accessible to anti-Semitic influences, which are an expres- 
 sion of their own discontent with life. 
 
 Thus, since the ’seventies of the Nineteenth Century, we 
 again find movements in rather extensive sections of the 
 population of Germany, Austria, France, etc., which favour 
 a political disfranchisement, and a legal restriction or at 
 least a social boycott of the Jews. Aspirations which unite 
 with the anti-Jewish hatred on the part of narrow-minded 
 circles and with the contempt for the Jews on the part of 
 
 160 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 feudal arrogance, to both of which they impart renewed 
 strength. 
 
 Sombart manages to justify to himself the reduction of 
 the rights of Jews in the army and at the universities: 
 
 “The practice in all of Germany at present, in filling the 
 professorships at the universities, as well as in admissions 
 to the position of Privatdozent, is practically not to ex- 
 clude Jews on principle, but to place certain restrictions 
 on their admission or election. This may be regrettable in 
 the interest of an offictally certified science, for it is always 
 equivalent to an injury to the scientific performance of a 
 serious institution of learning if of two competitors the 
 more stupid is chosen for a certain position. But is it 
 possible to consider scientific interests alone, or even pre- 
 dominantly, iw filling the positions of professors at a 
 university? Or, putting the question to fit our conditions: 
 Would it be a conceivable and tolerable condition to have 
 all the positions of Dozent and Professors at the universi- 
 ties filled by Jews—baptised or not baptised—that makes 
 no difference? Since the Jews are on the average so much 
 brighter and so much more industrious than we, this might 
 be equivalent to completely handing over the positions of 
 university instruction to the Jews. . . . Perhaps the uni- 
 versities will suffer more from such restrictions than the 
 Jews themselves. . . . But in the long run, it is better 
 thus.” * 
 
 Well then: learning suffers more from the existing con- 
 
 1 Sombart, Die Zukunft der Juden, pp. 82, 83. 
 
 161 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 dition of keeping out the Jews, but nevertheless it is “‘in 
 the long run, better thus”, for the universities are “after 
 all”? not institutions in which “the interests of science alone, 
 or even predominantly, may be considered”. They are not 
 the seat of the high goddess of science, but merely stalls 
 for the needed milch cattle, institutions which must provide 
 so and so many posts for so and so many aspirants coming 
 from good families. Therefore it would not be right to 
 permit the Jews to take possession of the whole business. 
 “But in the long run, it is better thus.” 
 
 And how about the army? Here, it really appears that 
 the officers will not tolerate Jews among their number and 
 for so “clever a man” as Sombart that is quite sufficient. 
 
 “The traditions followed in the army are, after all, anti- 
 Semitic traditions. ... This is a fact that may be re- 
 gretted but which cannot be eliminated because of this 
 regret, a fact with which every clever man will have to 
 reckon.” ? 
 
 All persons who take off their hats to any obstacle that 
 would require a greater exertion of energy than mere “‘re- 
 gretting” apparently seem “clever” to Sombart. 
 
 We should therefore not be astonished to find Sombart 
 formulating his “programme” on the Jewish question 
 “briefly” as follows: 
 
 “The nations give their (the nations’?) Jewish fellow- 
 citizens full equality of rights, and the Jews will surely be 
 intelligent and tactful enough not to demand a full exercise 
 
 2Ibid., pp. 85, 86. 
 
 162 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 of this equality of rights at every point and to the fullest 
 possible extent.” ° 
 
 This “intelligence”’, which at one and the same time offers 
 to both the Jews and their opponents everything they ask, 
 to the former of course only in the protasis, to the latter 
 in the apodosis, is really matchless and baffles all attempts 
 to parallel it. 
 
 In spite of all the anti-Semitism, of all the restrictions 
 and disabilities of the Jews, the rise of Judaism, together— 
 of course—with its dissolution because of desertions from 
 the faith and because of mixed marriages, is still in prog- 
 ress. ‘The data we have already given on this subject are 
 all taken from the period of the renaissance of anti- 
 Semitism. 
 
 If, in spite of this fact, the effects of assimilation have 
 been apparently brought to a standstill, and Judaism is 
 not losing ground as a distinct racial group, we may 
 ascribe this to the movement that has recently been gain- 
 ing greatly in popularity among the Jews of Eastern 
 Europe. 
 
 We have seen above how the persecutions of the Jews pre- 
 cisely in the days of humanism and precisely in the most 
 enlightened sections of Europe made existence almost im- 
 possible for the Jews, who fled to the East, to Poland, and 
 Turkey. In these barbarous countries they were toler- 
 ated precisely for the reason that they were barbarous 
 countries which were in need of a city population. In their 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 87. 
 
 163 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 capacity as strangers, being tolerated merely, they must 
 have been particularly welcome in the eyes of those in 
 power, who would necessarily regard with disfavour a 
 strong urban bourgeoisie, which would have limited their 
 own power. 
 
 In the regions then belonging to Poland and Turkey, in 
 Hungary, Rumania, Poland proper, and the western por- 
 tion of Russia, the Jews gathered from all portions of 
 Europe, particularly from Germany. The Spanish Jews, 
 for the most part, sought the southern sections of Euro- 
 pean Turkey (Saloniki). The legal, and for the most 
 part even the economic, situation of the Jews in Turkey, is 
 at present still the best in the world.* 
 
 Most of the Jews in the world have concentrated in these 
 regions. According to figures given by Nawratzki, the 
 number of Jews in the world immediately before the war 
 was between 12,500,000 and 13,000,000.° 'Trieksch gives 
 a higher estimate; ° he makes their total number 14,500,000 
 in 1914. 
 
 Nawratzki assigns 6,000,000 Jews to Russia, 1,000,000 
 to Galicia and the Bukowina, 900,000 to Hungary, 300,000 
 
 4W. W. Kaplun-Kogan, Die Wanderbewegungen der Juden, Bonn, — 
 1918, p. 46. Valuable statistical material may also be found in the 
 essay of I. M. Rubinow, The Economic Condition of the Jews in 
 Russia, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labour, Washington, D. C., 1907. 
 Cf. also the series of articles, Die Gkonomische Lage des jiidischen 
 Proletariats in Russland, Die Neue Zeit, vol. xxiv, part 1, p. 281 
 et seq. 
 
 5C. Nawratzki, Die jidische Kolonisation Paldstinas, Miinchen, 
 1914, pp. xvi, 538. 
 
 6 Palaistina und die Juden, Berlin, 1919, p. 46. 
 
 164 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 to Rumania, 200,000 to European Turkey, while Trieksch 
 assigns 7,000,000 to Russia, 2,300,000 to Austria, 300,000 
 to Rumania, and 400,000 to Turkey.’ 
 
 In other words, about 8,500,000-10,000,000 Jews in 
 round numbers were living in the domains of former Poland 
 and former Turkey. Those living in Great Britain (250,- 
 000-300,000) and America (2,300,000-2,500,000) have for 
 the most part migrated into those countries from the 
 former regions in comparatively recent days. This would 
 give a figure of from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 living in 
 Eastern Europe, or coming from Eastern Europe, and of 
 not quite 2,000,000 Jews of every provenience in the rest 
 of the world. 
 
 They are found most densely settled in the regions of 
 former Poland, where they came directly from Germany or 
 by way of Germany, with the result that they have pre- 
 served to this day a peculiar language distinguishing them 
 from their Slavonic environment, the so-called Yiddish, a 
 corrupt German—the only Jewish population in the world 
 that has not assimilated the language of its environment. 
 It is in this Russian-Polish Jewish population that the 
 Jew’s consciousness, or orthodoxy, has been most vigor- 
 ously and actively maintained. 
 
 Living together in such great numbers, they could not 
 remain a nation of merchants, usurers and intellectuals 
 
 7See also the estimates made by Israel Cohen, Jewish Life in 
 Modern Times, London, 1914, p. 345 et seq., also the World Almanac 
 for 1926, p. 698.—Trans.aror. 
 
 165 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 alone. This was made all the less possible by the fact that 
 the country in which they lived was not only economically 
 backward when they settled there, but continued to remain 
 so. The shifting of trade routes to India, once a land- 
 route over Europe, later a sea-route, circumnavigating 
 Africa, the discovery of America, the displacement of the 
 economic centre of gravity of Europe to the coast of the 
 Atlantic Ocean, retarded. the development not only of Italy, 
 but still more that of Poland and Turkey, and thus inaugu- 
 rated the political decline and disintegration of those two 
 countries. Under these circumstances, no strong capitalist 
 industry could develop, and the intelligentsia also were cut 
 off from their relations with the mental life of the rest of 
 Europe and became entirely subordinate to the servants of 
 the religious rite. The entire magnificent mental growth 
 ensuing upon the Italian Renaissance did not exist for 
 them. They remained living in the age of scholasticism, 
 in the Jewish scholasticism of the Talmud. This species of 
 intellectual ability was required only among the Jews, and 
 the demand for any other kind of intelligence on the part 
 of the non-Jewish community was very low. Therefore, a 
 large portion of the Polish Jews turned to handicrafts, 
 particularly to tailoring. In the Jewish pale, in other 
 words, in that portion of the Russian Empire in which the 
 great mass of the Jews were alone permitted to dwell, the 
 Russian Census of 1897, which was the first and last census 
 carried out by the Czarist Empire, gives the following 
 occupational figures: 
 
 166 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 Per Each 100 
 Non-Jews in the 
 
 Employed in Gainful Occupations Same Category 
 Absolute Number Percentages There Were 
 Jews Non-Jews Jews Non-Jews Jews 
 Total population .. 1,428,835 9,854,054 100 100 14.5 
 Employed in Indus- 
 RE Me cehe\e a's oe 6 518,075 1,182,264 36 11.5 46 
 Employed in_ the 
 Garment  Indus- 
 BEY ae ecee iste hs ot 235,993 222,764 16.5 2.0 106 
 Employed in Com- 
 POT CE x d's ses 450,427 108,499 31.5 17 415 
 Employed in Grain 
 and Cattle Trade 202,016 57,485 14 0.6 351 
 
 These figures are those of our own times.* In former 
 days, the Jews constituted the great mass of the urban, 
 commercial, and, in many cases, even the industrial popu- 
 lation in the regions we are discussing. 
 
 After the Crimean War, and during the era of liberal- 
 ism which ensued upon it, a fully developed western cap- 
 italism suddenly forced its way into those economically 
 backward countries. Its first effect was that of mmensely 
 increasing the money needs of the state, its indebtedness, 
 but also its tax burdens. At a single stroke, the natural 
 economy of the peasant was transformed into a commod- 
 
 8 I take them from a book of L. Hersch, Le Juif errant d’aujourd’- 
 hui, Etude sur Vémigration des Israélites de ’Europe orientale aux 
 Etats-Unis de VAmérique, Paris, 1913, p. 191. This book appeared 
 practically at the same time with the above mentioned book of 
 Kaplun-Kogan, on the migrations of the Jews. Both books partly 
 treat the same subject, with the same material, and arrive at similar 
 conclusions, thus giving support to each other. Hersch goes more into 
 statistical details, while Kaplun-Kogan’s treatment is more compre- 
 hensive. I have found both very useful in the present study. 
 
 167 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ities economy, which under the given circumstances did not 
 improve the operation of his farm, but rather ruined it by 
 reason of a more and more intensified robbing of the soil. 
 An increasing proportion of the country population was 
 driven into the cities. As early as in the census of 1897, 
 of the 14,800,000 non-Jewish inhabitants of the cities, 
 7,300,000 had come from the peasantry.® The influx from 
 city to country has sinee assumed much greater propor- 
 tions. But in the cities, these persons found no quickly 
 growing industry which might have been able to absorb 
 them, nor did the deteriorating peasants offer any adequate 
 market for such an industry. Competition grew among 
 artisans and peddlers. The Jews were now oppressed more 
 and more; their situation—never very brilliant—now be- 
 came more and more hopeless. But the non-Jewish popu- 
 lation also suffered; the frame of production was too small 
 to accommodate all, and the mass of the population was too 
 ignorant to seek or find a solution of these difficulties in a 
 corresponding expansion of this frame, for the condition 
 of economic backwardness was closely connected with the 
 political backwardness, and any effort to alter the state 
 authority was also connected with too many dangers. It 
 was far less dangerous, far more convenient and simple to 
 turn against that competition which was represented by the 
 defenceless Jews. 
 
 The state authority itself, in its various organs, met 
 these tendencies more than halfway. For it felt itself 
 
 ® Hersch, op. cit., p. 229. 
 
 168 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 threatened by the results of the economic revolution, even 
 though the latter might for the present be engendering 
 political opposition, not in the masses of the people, but 
 
 only in the young men and women at the universities. The 
 growing discontent was unmistakable; the heads of the 
 state felt it necessary to ward it off, and the unhappy Jews 
 were obliged to furnish a convenient lightning-rod. 
 
 The anti-Semitic tendencies in the upper and lower 
 strata were strengthened by the fact that in Russia, more 
 than anywhere else, the Jews had escaped assimilation by 
 reason of their concentration in a single region. They 
 differed greatly from the rest of the population, not only— 
 as we have already seen—by their rigid adherence to their 
 rite, to the dietary laws, the observing of holidays, the 
 peculiarities of their language,*° but also in their headdress. 
 In Russia and the adjacent countries, more than anywhere 
 else, the Jew has remained a foreigner among the people. 
 Foreignness may be comic in its effect where it reveals 
 only a difference, and is not associated with a social con- 
 tradiction. But when the latter also is present, it makes 
 the difference more striking and tangible, it produces in- 
 citing and embittering conditions. 
 
 Thus there arose after a short period of liberalism, and, 
 
 10 As late as 1897, the Census of that year showed that 5,054,300 
 persons of Jewish faith gave “Yiddish” as their mother-tongue, while 
 161,505 gave another language. At the same time, we find 8,856 
 persons of non-Jewish faith setting down Yiddish as their mother- 
 tongue, obviously converted Jews—but incompletely converted. Cf. 
 Rubinow, The Economic Condition of the Jews in Russia, p. 488. 
 
 169 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 beginning with the ’eighties of the Nineteenth Century, a 
 period of a most savage and intensifying anti-Semitism, 
 of increasing maltreatments of the Jews by their environ- 
 ment, and of a progressive disfranchisement. After 1882, 
 the Jews were limited to a pale of settlement embracing 
 only four per cent. of the area of the Russian Empire. 
 Only rich merchants, certain intellectuals, and certain 
 master-artisans were permitted to settle outside the pale, 
 and within it, they were permitted to live only in the cities. 
 All the Jews who had settled in the country districts were 
 forced into the cities beginning with 1882, and many who 
 had ventured outside of the pale of settlement during the 
 liberal era were again forced back into it. 
 
 Among those congested in this area, a terrible period of 
 distress ensued. ‘The pogroms were bad enough. Worse 
 were the devilish torments and extortions practised by the 
 Russian authorities; worst of all was the material distress. 
 
 In this terrible situation only the bravest are courageous 
 enough to fight for a better lot. Of the others, all who 
 have any means of doing so, and any prospect of obtaining 
 employment elsewhere, resort to emigration; industrial 
 workers therefore emigrated more than petty tradesmen. 
 Particularly marked is the emigration in the overcrowded 
 vocations. According to the census of 1897, there were 
 147,435 Jews employed as tailors in the pale of settlement. 
 From 1899 to 1910, 15,896 members of this trade emi- 
 grated to the United States from the pale of settlement 
 each year; in other words, 10.5 per cent. annually. On 
 
 170 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 the other hand, the average for shoemakers was only 1960 
 per year, or 2.7 per cent. The garment industry was pre- 
 dominantly still a domestic industry, producing for the 
 local requirements, while in the shoemaking industry fac- 
 tory production was rapidly growing, and filled a market 
 
 over all Russia." 
 
 The Jewish immigration to America was 
 more numerous than to any other country. From 1881 to 
 1912, the total Jewish immigration to the United States 
 amounted to 2,258,146 persons; from 1899 to 1912, to 
 1,246,260 persons. The total immigration of Jews from 
 1881 to 1898 was 1,011,886, of which 526,122, or more 
 than half, came from Russia. From 1899 to 1911, the 
 total number of Jewish immigrants was 1,165,665, of which 
 831,001, or three-quarters, came from Russia. 
 
 The Jewish emigration from Russia to the countries of 
 Western Europe was far smaller than the above figures. 
 According to Ruppin’s figures, the following numbers of 
 Jews emigrated from 1881 to 1908. 
 
 From From From From Other 
 
 Russia Austria Germany Countries Total 
 OMEN OTANG oll nth ales cry ¢ 150,000 10,000 20,000 10,000 190,000 
 ELOPGETMANY: 6.4). a <s0ie TS.OOG R25 OOO Me armies Wun aes 40,000 
 POEM TENCE On ce sien he ai 30,000 LO,0O0 Wee rere 10,000 50,000 
 LEN STS Fee (hen gg A SOOO ays vou a eee eaters 5,000 10,000 
 
 In the case of Germany and Austria, internal migrations 
 of Jews from east to west were of greater importance. 
 This was a portion of the general migration so character- 
 
 11 Hersch, op. cit., p. 240. 
 171 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 istic of capitalism, namely, the migration from country to 
 city, from agricultural districts to industrial districts. 
 The process was accentuated by the economic conditions of 
 the Polish sections of those countries, which in Germany 
 and Austria, as well as in Russia, though not to so great a 
 degree nor in such brutal forms as the latter, were 
 making a portion of the agricultural population unneces- 
 sary, which surplus population flowed in part into the 
 cities and supplanted the Jews or emigrated together with 
 the Jews. 
 
 In the Province of Posen (Prussia) there were still 
 76,757 Jews in 1849, but only 26,512 in 1910! The 
 provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania and 
 Posen, together, had still 116,075 Jews in 1871, and only 
 62,355 in 1910. This migration was directed chiefly 
 toward Berlin. Within the city limits of Berlin and the 
 Province of Brandenburg, the Jewish population grew 
 from 47,489 persons in 1871, to 151,356 persons in 1910. 
 
 Similarly, the number of Jews in Vienna increased from 
 73,222 in 1880 to 175,318 in 1910, an increase of 139 
 per cent., while the total Jewish population of Austria in- 
 creased only 30 per cent. in the same period. In Russian 
 Poland, Warsaw included in 1893 only 13.8 per cent. of 
 the Jewish population of Poland (168,677 Jews, of a total 
 Jewish population of 1,224,652), while in 1909 it included 
 16.1 per cent. (281,754 persons, of a total Jewish popula- 
 tion of 1,747,655); in 1910, the Jewish population of 
 Warsaw amounted to 308,488. The Jewish population of 
 
 172 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 Lodz tripled in the same period, increasing from 37,106 to 
 92,558 persons.” 
 
 Almost all the Jewish immigrants entering France gath- 
 ered in Paris; those entering England, in London; while 
 the majority of those headed for the United States re- 
 mained in New York, which now counts more than 1,000,- 
 000 Jews.*® 
 
 The mere fact of its concentration in a few great metrop- 
 olises necessarily has brought the Jewish population more 
 and more into the foreground. This condition is further 
 accentuated by the fact that the immigrant Jews are far 
 more sharply distinct from their new environment and 
 appear much more foreign in it than do the Jews who have 
 lived in the same environment for many years. 
 
 The new great migratory movement of the Jews is of 
 entirely different type from that of former days. For- 
 merly, the Jews emigrated to countries of lower, or at least 
 not higher, culture. Now we find backward Jewish masses 
 flowing to countries at a high stage of development, to- 
 gether with Irishmen, Southern Italians, Poles and Ruthen- 
 ians, or Chinese. To be sure, the Polish Jews in their 
 homeland are superior in education to their environment, 
 
 12 Hersch, op. cit., pp. 172, 309. 
 
 13 According to the estimate of the American Jewish Year Book 
 (1925-26), there were, in 1920, 1,643,012 Jews in the City of New 
 York. Of the Jews, the Borough of Manhattan shelters 657,101; 
 Brooklyn, 604,380; The Bronx, 278,169; Queens, 86,194; Richmond, 
 17,168. About 29 per cent. of the New York City population is 
 Jewish, by the above estimate; they comprise 38 per cent. of the 
 inhabitants of the Bronx.—Trans ator. 
 
 173 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 which is one of the causes preventing their assimilation 
 with the non-Jewish population. But as compared with 
 Western Europeans or Americans, they are on a lower 
 level. 
 
 The Russian census of 1897 recorded among male Jews 
 above the age of 10, 33.4 per cent. of illiterates, while 
 among the non-Jewish families of the same age-group, even 
 as many as 63.4 per cent. were illiterate! But of course 
 it must be remembered that the total population of Russia 
 showed an illiteracy among males above the age of 10 of 
 no less than 61.3 per cent., and among females of no less 
 than 83 per cent! Immigrants entering the United States 
 are examined as to their ability to read and write. In these 
 tests, the Jews showed better percentages than were dis- 
 played in the Russian census of 1897. This may be due 
 partly to the fact that the American figures I am using are 
 of later date than the Russian (1910,** as compared with 
 1897), and also to the fact that only adults were consid- 
 ered in the American figures ; perhaps also because the most 
 ignorant would be most likely to remain at home. Further- 
 more, the American figures included all Jewish immigrants, 
 not only those coming from Russia. Nevertheless, the Jews 
 appear from these figures to be far beyond other peoples 
 in the matter of literacy as is shown by the following table 
 from Hersch’s book.*® 
 
 14 Hersch, op. cit., p. 91. 
 
 15 Jewish immigration to the United States has been greatly re- 
 duced, together with most other immigration, as a result of recent 
 restrictive legislation.-—TransLaTor. 
 
 174 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 Illiterates per 1,000 Adult Immigrants 
 
 SCHMCINAVINNG As. chy cues 6a 6 0k Ain SSIOVERS oui a tes wale sasha civelss ois 240 
 ROR tee Sie A sand Serius cis TW C208 ate te Vales ahd. ow ete EM aes 260 
 REAR LE STE MOe tit ela Gia cates ee LEY Greeksiis W serats cae dale oe sre ats 264 
 BRR tee rece CS a Nie Ge eae ed 18.“ VAR umaniangs tale de sats e selene es 340 
 eC TEAS A GR AR iy Lap POR RR ty et ele civ ta ae ee Oe 354 
 RN Bad alae ea ar ep ar ae 25 Croatians and Slovenes...... 361 
 MCI ee ee cts trae Sh Va WUUSSIANS es etic dela tee dele eos 384 
 ROMINA Or oh CS wl Sule slyly es 52 Bulgarians and Serbs ....... 4,09 
 MCUCU eT fens ots « Sake eee ks Gooey AL NMAMIANSW ue es we te ele )ies 489 
 PGELIMRITALANS Too su eet ales TIP Ruthenianse aot es we eats 534 
 POV ARSM She kes cect 8 L149 4, Sonthern: Italians. 3 0. s «2/4 539 
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 Only Eastern and Southern Slavs, Southern Italians and 
 Portuguese show a higher percentage of illiteracy than the 
 great majority of the immigrant Jews. This condition is a 
 disgrace not to the races involved, but to their govern- 
 ments. The orthodox Jewish elements who flowed from the 
 East to the highly developed West were quite backward. 
 The first effect of this condition was to retard the process 
 of assimilation on the part of the Jews of the West; a 
 further effect was the reviving of anti-Semitism. The 
 latter process was stimulated in two ways; in the first 
 place, by the increased competition faced by intellectuals 
 and traders; in the second place, by the more emphatically 
 foreign aspect of the Jewish community. But anti- 
 Semitism is no longer what it used to be. In former days, 
 it was directed chiefly against capitalist exploitation, of 
 which the Jew was considered—in anti-Semitic countries— 
 
 16 Including also Germans from Austria. 
 
 175 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 the most outstanding representative. Now it is more and 
 more the proletarian Jew, the poor student, the poor ped- 
 dler, the worker who works in his own house, who incurs 
 the hostility of the anti-Semites. The times are passed 
 when anti-Semitism might parade as a variety of socialism 
 —“the socialism of the simple citizen of Vienna”. ‘Today, 
 anti-Semitism is a phase of the struggle against the pro- 
 letariat, and it is indeed the most cowardly and brutal of 
 these phases; it has become “the socialist-baiting of the 
 simple citizen of Vienna’. 
 
 Meanwhile, a gap has opened up within Judaism itself; 
 the wealthy and cultured Jews of the West, who have been 
 almost assimilated, are in many cases unpleasantly affected 
 by the new accession of their poor, ignorant “Yiddish” 
 brothers from the East. They very often regard the latter 
 with feelings that might be designated as an anti-Semitism 
 within Judaism itself. 
 
 Formerly, one of the most prominent characteristics of 
 the Jews had been the intimate solidarity prevailing within 
 their own ranks. ‘The constant persecutions had power- 
 fully supported their inner cohesion, and this strong co- 
 hesion had become one of the most effective means of 
 resisting persecution. Although frequently represented as 
 a Jewish race trait, it is—like the rest of their alleged ear- 
 marks—only a product of the conditions of their life. 
 
 With every change in these conditions, there comes also 
 a change in the “race trait”. The feeling of solidarity 
 on the part of the Western Jews has already been weakened 
 
 176 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 considerably, because of—or perhaps in spite of—the fact 
 that social anti-Semitism in the West (in Berlin, Paris, 
 London, New York, and particularly in Vienna) has tempo- 
 rarily increased. Among Jewish capitalists who have risen 
 to occupy dominant positions in the existing order, the 
 feeling of Jewish solidarity is but rarely in evidence, and 
 when expressed at all, it takes the form of charity. Such 
 charity—in view of their rapidly increasing wealth—may 
 assume large proportions, but it is extended only to the 
 mendicant, not to the fighting Jewish proletariat. 
 
 ' The Jewish solidarity broke down completely even be- 
 fore the war, when it was needed in order to support the 
 aggressive section of the Eastern European Jewry. And 
 the most treacherous opponent of this stratum in Europe, 
 the Czar, became an ally of the rich Jews of Western 
 Europe, being supported by them with all the means at 
 their disposal. 
 
 Haman, Imperial Chancellor of King Ahasuerus, was the 
 original prototype of a pogrom-instigator, and was con- 
 sidered by the ancient Jews as the enemy who should be 
 suspended from a gallows fifty feet in height. The Czar 
 maltreated the Jewish people far more cruelly than ever 
 Haman had done, but the capitalist Jews not only did not 
 desire his ruin, but even supported him by means of the 
 loans they granted him, thus repeatedly prolonging his 
 existence. For Mordecai had become a poor tailor, and 
 Esther had not risen to the dignity of a queen, but had 
 been dragged off to an Argentine bordello. 
 
 177 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 It is precisely at the time when the theory of the pure 
 race is set up and the Jews are raised to the dignity of 
 being the model of a pure, exclusive race, that they begin 
 to present the profoundest cleavages due to class hostil- 
 ities, which here coincide with a cultural hostility. The 
 contrast between capitalist and proletarian Jews imparts 
 to the present migrations of the Jews an entirely different 
 character, as well as entirely different effects, than for- 
 merly. Kaplun-Kogan has excellently characterised the 
 difference in the nature of these migrations, but he has 
 made the rather poor inference that the difference is based 
 on their having been formerly bearers of economic progress, 
 while now they are bearers of economic retrogression.*’ 
 
 “Economic progress” means the progress of capitalism, 
 and for this there are needed not only means of production 
 but also proletarians. The means of production do not 
 become capital until they begin to be applied by the pro- 
 letarians. American capitalism could not have made its 
 enormous advances within the last few decades if it had 
 not been for the immense influx of proletarian masses from 
 Europe. All the proletarians who set forth from an en- 
 vironment of economic obstruction to an environment 
 favorable to progress, and who, in the latter environment, 
 place themselves at the disposal of their employers, thus 
 became an element of economic progress. At first, they are 
 an unconscious influence in this direction, but later they 
 become its conscious agents, for their migration has made 
 
 17 Kaplun-Kogan, op cit., pp. 58, 147. 
 
 178 
 
ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 them more capable of struggle. And in spite of their inev- 
 itable great illiteracy as a result of the Czarist barbarism, 
 they were far superior in mental swiftness and in theoret- 
 ical ability in the United States, as a city population, to 
 other immigrants who came from the most backward agri- 
 cultural districts. 
 
 The Jewish workers’ movement in the United States is 
 one of the most active pioneers of social progress. 
 
 179 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 Tue immense transformation in the conditions of Russia 
 has not been without its effect on Jewish thought, and it 
 has awakened to life the most varied aspirations among the 
 Russian Jews, many forms of the ambition to defend them- 
 selves against their enemies, and to emerge from their des- 
 perate situation. 
 
 In so far as these ambitions are not limited to a mere 
 running away, to mere emigration, they consist in the 
 effort to increase the strength of Judaism by means of 
 solidarity: either through proletarian solidarity, by a 
 union of the Jewish proletarians with the non-Jewish pro- 
 letarians, or by means of a general Jewish solidarity, by 
 uniting the powers of the Jews of all countries with those 
 of the Russian Jews. 
 
 The efforts to make the Jewish proletariat a part of the 
 class struggle of the entire Russian proletariat found their 
 feasible expression in the Jewish Workers Union (Arbeiter- 
 bund). Jewish socialists, proletarians as well as intel- 
 lectuals, played a prominent part in both the Russian 
 revolutions, that of 1905 as well as that of 1917. We shall 
 merely mention this fact in passing, for a complete exposi- 
 tion of the circumstances would amount to writing a history 
 of the Russian Revolution. 
 
 180 
 
ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 The culmination of the second tendency mentioned above 
 is Zionism. 
 
 After the first Russian Revolution (1905), a new tend- 
 ency set in, aiming at a union of Zionism and socialism. 
 We need not discuss this movement here, for our general 
 consideration of Zionism will also pay some attention to its 
 socialist phase. 
 
 The literary origin of Zionism is in Western Europe, but 
 the real need of Zionism is felt only by the Jews of Eastern 
 Europe. 
 
 The proletarian class struggle, with its socialist leader- 
 ship, finds the wage workers of modern large-scale industry 
 most accessible to its needs, and precisely this group of 
 workers is not strongly represented among the Jewish pro- 
 letarians, who furnish a larger contingent to the workers 
 in backward forms of industry, working as individual mas- 
 ters, as domestic workers; the Jewish immigrants in Eng- 
 land and America are engaged chiefly in work done at 
 their own homes.* In addition, there are numerous petty 
 traders and forms of life living from hand to mouth, on 
 whatever resources may come to hand, Luftmenschen, as 
 Max Nordau calls them, persons living on the edge of the 
 Lumpenproletariat. <All these elements—other things 
 being equal—are more difficult to organise and cannot so 
 easily be drawn into the struggle as the workers in large- 
 
 1 With the gradual abandonment of the sweatshop system in New 
 York, in favour of comparatively large factory centres, this condition 
 may now be regarded as a thing of the past.—Trans.arTor. 
 
 181 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 scale industry, who have been already united and schooled 
 in team action by the mechanical process. Furthermore, 
 the revolutionary movement had first brought about per- 
 secutions of the Jews by reactionary forces in many parts 
 of Eastern Europe. The Jewish intelligentsia always 
 played a prominent part among the Russian revolutionary 
 intelligentsia; this Jewish intelligentsia therefore drew the 
 fire of the anti-Semitic reaction and because of it the 
 entire Jewish community was held responsible, as a race 
 rebellious by nature. For this reason the political motives 
 of the counter-revolution associated themselves with its 
 economic motives to increase the already considerable suf- 
 ferings of the Jews. 
 
 As a result of all these circumstances, the slogan of 
 solidarity between the proletarians of all nations and faiths 
 became a guiding principle only for a portion of the Jewish 
 proletarians. For the slogan of proletarian solidarity the 
 other sections of the Jewish proletariat substituted the 
 slogan of a national solidarity of Judaism. 
 
 Those who became tired of the struggle or felt them- 
 selves incapable of fighting, but yet had still sufficient 
 energy to desire not to be eliminated entirely, sought 
 foreign shores. But were they likely to find an improve- 
 ment in their situation by going abroad? Wherever the 
 Jew—we mean the Eastern European Jew, still far from 
 assimilation—may come, he is regarded as a foreigner 
 among foreigners. He is nowhere certain even to be tol- 
 
 erated. The reactionary American workers, who keep out 
 
 182 
 
ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 the Chinese and Japanese, who keep Negro workers out of 
 their organisations, are equally opposed to Jewish im- 
 migration, The beginnings of such an attitude are already 
 apparent. The Jew is secure against oppression only in a 
 state in which he lives not as a foreigner, in a state— 
 therefore—of his own nationality. Only in a real Jewish 
 state will the emancipation of Judaism be possible. 
 
 This is the guiding thought of Zionism. Even among the 
 circles of Western European Judaism, this idea has in 
 recent years been replacing the idea of assimilation, of 
 equality of rights within the existing states, which had 
 until recently been dominant among the Jews. Zionism is 
 coming more and more in conflict with this thought, for as 
 assimilation progresses, the national Jewry loses in 
 strength. It is therefore necessary to segregate Jews as 
 sharply as possible from non-Jews. 
 
 Zionism meets anti-Semitism halfway in this effort, as 
 well as in the fact that its goal is the removal of all Jews 
 from the existing states. 
 
 The agreement between Zionism and anti-Semitism on 
 these points is so strong, that there have even been Zionists 
 who expected much gracious assistance in the realisation of 
 their objects from the head of the Orthodox Russian 
 nation, from the fountain-head of anti-Semitism all over 
 the world, from the Czar of Russia. 
 
 There is no doubt of the needs that serve as the basis 
 of the Zionist aspirations ; in these needs lies their strength. 
 But the needs may only serve as an explanation of the 
 
 183 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 aspirations ; it may not assure their success, which depends 
 on entirely different factors. 
 
 In the civilised world all regions have been preempted ; 
 there is no more room for a Jewish state. It is only outside 
 of the limits of the civilised world, and only under the 
 tutelage and patronage of a non-Jewish national state that 
 a Jewish community is still conceivable. For a time it was 
 hoped to found a colony in East Africa under English 
 suzerainty, but finally thoughts have always converged on 
 Palestine as the indicated home for a Jewish community. 
 
 But, curiously enough, there had already been a Jewish 
 state in Palestine, founded by Jews in exile, under the 
 protection of a non-Jewish state; and even at that remote 
 period—two thousand years ago—this state had not served 
 as a very powerful attraction for the Jews living in the 
 Diaspora. Most of the Jews chose to remain in Babylon, 
 Damascus, Alexandria, Rome, and in other places of domi- 
 cile, only a portion of them settling in Jerusalem. Most 
 of them contented themselves with an occasional pilgrimage 
 to the Holy City. They found that they prospered better 
 when living as strangers among strangers than in the 
 national state. 
 
 Nothing has since been changed in this condition. To be 
 sure, the situation of the Polish, Hungarian and Rumanian 
 Jews is desperate, unendurable. But the question is not 
 whether they could live better in Palestine than now in 
 Western Europe, but whether the founding of a Jewish 
 community in Palestine would afford them better oppor- 
 
 184 
 
ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 tunities than revolution in their own country. Im fact, 
 it 1s very questionable whether all the Jews now living— 
 though but painfully—in Eastern Europe, could find any 
 opportunities for their existence in Palestine at all. 
 
 One of the conditions for the independent existence of a 
 state is that it shall include all the classes necessary for its 
 process of production under the present conditions of divi- 
 sion of labour. This process is based on a constant ex- 
 change between city and country; a state is impossible 
 without agriculture. But whence is the agriculture of the 
 new Zion to be derived? 
 
 It is, of course, absurd to maintain that the Jewish race 
 is incapable by nature of engaging in agriculture. In the 
 days when it was far more possible to speak of the exist- 
 ence of a Jewish race than now, namely, in the period pre- 
 ceding the Babylonian Exile, the Jews were predominantly 
 agriculturists, as were all the peoples of antiquity. Even in 
 our day efforts to make peasants of Jews have occasionally 
 met with success. If such efforts have never been extended 
 and followed up, this condition is due not to the fact that 
 the Jews are Jews, but to the fact that they are city- 
 dwellers. While the path from country to city is easy to 
 follow, it is difficult to retrace one’s steps if they are to 
 lead to hard manual toil and not to mere enthusiasm for 
 nature and sport. Let anyone point out any large body of 
 “Indo-Germanic” city-dwellers flocking to the country in 
 order to earn their living as peasants or farm hands! 
 Needless to say, there are none. In present-day society, 
 
 185 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 earning one’s living in the country is associated with con- 
 ditions that are intolerable for the city dweller. ‘There is 
 no doubt that we are emphatically in need of a stemming 
 of the present tide from country to city, both for hygienic 
 as well as for economic reasons, but the conditions for such 
 a reversal of the process may be found only in a socialist 
 society. Even Herzl recognised this situation when he 
 said: ‘Anyone who would make agriculturists out of 
 Jews is a victim of a most peculiar delusion.” 7 
 
 Herzl indeed recognised the necessity of agriculture for 
 the Jewish State, but in order to find a possibility for 
 Jewish agriculture he was obliged to build up an entire 
 Utopia. 
 
 We are well aware, however, that the replacement of the 
 present mode of production by a higher mode of produc- 
 tion can only emanate from centres in which capitalism has 
 already been developed to the highest point. We are no 
 longer living in times when men sought to establish socialist 
 colonies in the wilderness. Industrial capitalism is the 
 sine qua non of socialism. Whether it be desired to estab- 
 lish the Jewish state on a capitalist or on a socialist basis, 
 the capitalist structure of society will be the necessary 
 point of departure and it is here that we encounter a sec- 
 ond obstacle. 
 
 How will it be possible for a powerful industry to develop 
 in Palestine? There is no large domestic market. The ris- 
 ing industry would be obliged to work for the export trade 
 
 2 Der Judenstaat, Leipzig, 1896, p. 23. 
 
 186 
 
ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 from the very beginning. But even in the competitive 
 struggle on the world market, an industry—other things 
 being equal—can maintain itself far better if it has at its 
 disposal an extensive internal market capable of absorbing 
 large quantities, and furnishing the basis for the industry’s 
 demand. If an industry is to become capable of meeting 
 competition on the foreign market, without possessing a 
 market at home, exceptionally favourable circumstances 
 must be on its side. In Palestine, on the contrary, the 
 conditions for the growth of industry have been as un- 
 favourable as possible: the soil has thus far revealed no 
 deposits of coal or of raw materials; neither ores, nor tex- 
 tile substances, nor wood; it grows but few foodstuffs, with 
 the result that prices of foodstuffs rise at once when im- 
 migration increases; there are no transportation routes, no 
 navigable rivers, no good ports, no highways; and, before 
 the war, there was no railroad line of importance. 
 
 The conditions in Turkey had not turned out to be very 
 favourable for an industrial boom, and these conditions 
 were nowhere so wretched as in Palestine. No industry can 
 be founded on Biblical reminiscences; and Palestine has 
 hitherto produced nothing in the way of other products. 
 Capital, in its hunt for profits—Jewish capital as well as 
 other capital—has therefore always avoided the “Holy 
 Land” in spite of the eager rapacity with which it has 
 penetrated into all other countries affording any prospect 
 of gain. 
 
 The Zionist state of the future in Palestine had therefore 
 
 187 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 not succeeded before the war in making any notable ad- 
 vance. According to Ruppin, 2,000,000 Jews emigrated 
 from 1881 to 1908 from Russia, Austria and Rumania, of 
 whom 1,600,000 went to America, almost 300,000 to West- 
 ern Europe, and only 26,000 to Palestine! 
 
 We have already mentioned Nawratzki’s work on the 
 colonisation of Palestine, which is a painstaking and de- 
 tailed book and which was evidently written as a labour of 
 love. But the critical reader will not be able to form the 
 optimistic expectations which the author draws from his 
 material. 
 
 Immense sums have been spent by Jewish philanthropists 
 in order to further the colonisation of Palestine. ‘In the 
 foundation of the Rothschild colonies very large sums have 
 been invested by these philanthropists alone; the amount 
 is estimated at about fifty million francs.” ° 
 
 The Jewish Colonisation Association was given a capital 
 of 160,000,000 marks by Baron Hirsch,* most of which 
 went to the work of advancing the colonisation of Palestine. 
 In addition, there was an uninterrupted flow of money to 
 Palestine from many other collections and donations. 
 
 “An approximate estimate of all the moneys flowing an- 
 nually into Palestine for the above-mentioned purposes 
 would reach the figure of at least 10,000,000 francs.” ° 
 
 What has been accomplished in Palestine in the three 
 
 3 Nawratzki, p. 495. 
 4 Nawratzki, p. 100. 
 5 Nawratzki, p. 109. 
 
 188 
 
ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 decades of colonising activity preceding the war, with these 
 enormous money resources? One of the tasks was the 
 founding of a Jewish agricultural community. “At the end 
 of the year 1912, and including the settlements of the 
 recently arrived Yemenites and the farm workers in the 
 colonies and land groups, there was a country population 
 of about 10,000.”° As compared with the total Jewish 
 emigration to foreign countries, this is a mere drop in the 
 bucket. 
 
 The experiences gathered in the attempts at colonisation 
 led to the following inference: ‘“The costs of a farm ‘are 
 comparatively high and may fluctuate between 12,000 and 
 18,000 francs per family. The necessary requirements to 
 be met by a family of colonists are a sufficient knowledge 
 of farming and enough money to pay for one-eighth or one- 
 fourth of the cost of the farm and, in addition, to have 
 enough operating capital left over for the first year’s 
 operations’.” ? 
 
 Where such wealthy and experienced Jewish peasants 
 are to come from we are not told. And, therefore, this 
 proposition is not one that could lead to the emancipation 
 of the Jewish proletarians in Russia. 
 
 But of course, there were also large-scale Jewish agri- 
 cultural establishments which flourished. The Jewish cap- 
 italist farmers had found a difficulty, however, in the 
 employment of Jewish proletarians from Russia as farm 
 
 6 Nawratzki, p. 349. 
 
 7 Nawratzki, p. 360. 
 
 189 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 hands: these Russian Jews are more exacting and less 
 easily managed than the Arabs, for which reason the Jewish 
 patriots have substituted Arab workers for their Jewish 
 workers, as German patriots have frequently substituted 
 Italian and Polish workers for their German workers. Since 
 this device, however, conflicts with the purposes of Jewish 
 colonisation, and since it is necessary, nevertheless, to 
 exploit Jews as farm hands, recourse was had to the intro- 
 duction of Jews from Yemen (Arabia). These Jews are 
 at as low a cultural level as the Arabs among whom they 
 live, are completely cut off from their European co- 
 religionists, and have not the slightest connection with the 
 problems of the European Jewry; but they are willing and 
 cheap and therefore afford a possibility of solving the 
 question of the Jewish colonisation of Palestine. ‘Within 
 the last ten years, about 6,000 Yemenites have probably 
 emigrated to Palestine.” ® 
 
 No doubt this was very fortunate for the purposes of the 
 capitalist Jewish colonist, but it threatened to bring on a 
 bankruptcy of the policy of inducing the Jewish pro- 
 letarians of Russia to take up agriculture in Palestine. 
 
 Now for the non-agricultural Jewish population in Pal- 
 estine. This population, on the whole, seems hitherto to 
 have lived in wretched conditions, in many cases resorting 
 to actual mendicancy. ‘This mendicancy was not a form 
 of street-begging, but a drawing of alms from charitable 
 institutions supported by Jews in all countries. Nor was 
 
 8 Nawratzki, p. 441. 
 
 190 
 
ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 
 
 it possible for the non-agricultural population to live in 
 any other way: “Industry has as yet attained no im- 
 portance in Palestine.” ° 
 
 The wages that were paid before the war may be in- 
 ferred from the fact that Jewish farm hands who asked 
 from 1.15 to 2 francs per day were considered too ex- 
 pensive; Arabs could be had for 1.10 francs. Efforts were 
 made to introduce a lace industry: “A fairly good factory 
 girl gets as much as 1 franc per day!”? Furthermore, food- 
 stuffs were high. The workers in the colony of Rechoboth 
 had to pay about 45 francs per month for food alone in 
 the years 1907 to 1910. 
 
 It should give rise to no surprise to find that the im- 
 migration to Palestine was not large and that a large 
 percentage of this immigration consisted of aged persons 
 who did not go to Palestine in order to work, but in order 
 to live on charity, or on their own incomes, and to end 
 their days in the land of their fathers. Most of the 
 younger immigrants again set forth to other parts. Of the 
 1,979 Jewish emigrants leaving Odessa for Palestine in 
 1910, 606, or 30 per cent., were over 50 years of age. 
 Data gathered in Jaffa show that m 1912 there arrived in 
 that port, in addition to 350 Yemenites and 950 Bukhara 
 Jews, 2,280 Jews from Eastern Europe (Ashkenazim), of 
 whom only 30 per cent. were under the age of thirty.*° If 
 we calculate the absolute figures on the basis of the per- 
 
 9 Nawratzki, p. 403. 
 10 Nawratzki, p. 444. 
 
 191 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 centages communicated by Nawratzki—who does not fur- 
 nish us with the absolute figures—we find that 684 young 
 Jews entered Jaffa in 1912, while 790 emigrated in the 
 same year. 
 
 In other words, there were more young Jews emigrating 
 than immigrating. In spite of Sombart’s “theory of the 
 wilderness”, the Jew, like any other modern man, is at- 
 tracted to the large city and not to the wilderness, when 
 in search of a livelihood. 
 
 192 
 
CHAPTER X 
 ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 Since then we have had the World War, which has by no 
 
 means improved the economic conditions for the flourishing 
 of a Jewish community in Palestine. To be sure, the 
 political conditions for Jewish emigration to that region 
 have apparently been improved, while the consequences of 
 the war have at the same time strengthened anti-Semitism 
 in Eastern Europe and thus increased the desire for a 
 secure homeland for the Jewish race. 
 
 In Western Europe and America as well as in the Central 
 Powers, the Jewish population had become exceedingly 
 patriotic for the most part; far from standing above the 
 warring factions, as an exclusive race or nation might have 
 done, they plunged into the war with the greatest enthusi- 
 asm. ‘The German Jews felt that they were only German, 
 the French Jews that they were only French. They hated 
 each other with all the fury of the war psychosis, and did 
 not consider that they had any interests in common. 
 
 Neither of the two belligerent groups had the upper 
 hand from the outset. Each was obliged to utilise every 
 resource at its disposal. On both sides of the trenches, 
 each government sought to obtain the full support of its 
 proletarians, and also of its Jews. The cheapest conces- 
 
 193 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 sion that could be made to the latter was in the form of 
 promises to support Zionism. For these promises were all 
 to be realised at the expense of Turkey. The Central 
 Powers, as well as the Entente, permitted the Jews to 
 believe that their victory would result in a Jewish home- 
 land in Palestine. 
 
 Therefore the war stimulated not only the English, 
 French, German or other nationalism of the Jewish popu- 
 lation, but also its specifically Jewish nationalism: Zion- 
 ism. Now that the war is over, it appears that this 
 aspiration is to be realised through the victors. ‘The 
 victors, in the Peace Treaty with Turkey, assigned control 
 over Palestine to the League of Nations. In the name of 
 the League, Palestine is to be administered by England, 
 which will encourage the establishment of a Jewish home- 
 land in Palestine. Of course, this is by no means equivalent 
 as yet to the establishment of an independent Jewish state, 
 but it may give rise to hopes of such a state. However, 
 this will be possible only if a steady stream of Jewish 
 emigration turns to Palestine and there creates a flourish- 
 ing community. ‘This stream would have to be a very 
 generous one if it should introduce any essential improve- 
 ment in the lot of the Eastern European Jews. We have 
 already seen that in the twenty-seven years between 1881 
 and 1908, 2,000,000 Jews emigrated from Europe, but the 
 number of Jews in Eastern Europe nevertheless increased 
 considerably during the same period, while their situation 
 became worse and worse. In Russia, in 1880, there were not 
 
 194 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 quite 4,000,000 Jews, while in 1914, there were 6,000,000 
 or 7,000,000, an increase of 2,000,000 or 3,000,000. In 
 Austria-Hungary, in 1880, there were 1,646,000 Jews, 
 while in 1914, there were 2,260,000, an increase of more 
 than half a million. Of the 2,000,000 Jews who emigrated, 
 only 26,000 had turned their steps to Palestine; this means 
 that emigration to Palestine would have to increase phe- 
 nomenally if any alleviation of the condition of the Eastern 
 European Jews should be expected from this source. 
 
 The hopes of the Zionists in this field were much raised 
 by a calculation made by Professor Ballod in a book en- 
 titled: Paldstina als jtidisches Ansiedlungsgebiet,* which 
 was written during the war. Ballod argues in this work 
 against a calculation set up by the German geographer, 
 Professor Philippson, who had maintained in an article 
 contributed to the Berliner Tageblatt of February 9, 1916, 
 which is based on the professor’s intimate knowledge of 
 the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, that the stony 
 soil of Palestine could not support a population of more 
 than 1,200,000 persons. 
 
 Ballod also attacks a book written by the agronomist, 
 Jakob Ottinger, entitled Methoden und Kapitalbedarf 
 jtidischer Kolonisation in Paldstina,* who believed that he 
 was taking a very optimistic position in assuming that 
 about 100,000 farming families could be established in 
 
 1 Pro-Palistina, Schriften des deutschen Komitees zur Forderung 
 der jiidischen Palistinaansiedlung, Zweites Heft. 
 2 Ballod, Paldstina, p. 18. 
 
 195 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 Palestine, affording a livelihood to 500,000 members of 
 these families. Ballod considers it possible to settle six 
 million persons in Palestine—not in the Palestine of 
 to-day, but in a Palestine to be created on a new founda- 
 tion. The realisation of Ballod’s proposals would raise 
 Palestine from hitherto the most neglected corner of the 
 earth to its most highly developed state. Ballod would 
 establish 100,000 petty farms and 1,000 large-scale en- 
 terprises, operating with the most perfect machines, and 
 the most effective fertilisers, and producing in accordance 
 with the most modern methods. An immense irrigation 
 system will transform the arid land into a paradise. Ot- 
 tinger counts on an average wheat crop of 600 kilo- 
 grammes per hectare, while Ballod expects an average 
 crop of 3,000 kilogrammes; in Germany the average crop 
 is only 2,000 kilogrammes. Im the case of cotton, Ballod 
 hopes for crops of 600 kilogrammes per hectare, while in 
 the United States only 200 or 250 kilogrammes are pro- 
 duced for the same area. 
 
 But Ballod calculates that the entire immense trans- 
 formation of Palestine which would make it possible to 
 achieve such record crops and would make the country a 
 home for 6,000,000 persons, would cost only 5,000,000,000 
 gold marks, while Ottinger had calculated a year before 
 that 2,000,000,000 francs would be necessary in order to 
 settle half a million persons in Palestine. 
 
 It must be that Ballod expects to pay lower prices than 
 Ottinger. For instance, Ballod says: “The erection of 
 
 196 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 ordinary houses, together with wells and cisterns and the 
 necessary irrigation plants, could be carried out for 1,000 
 marks.” Ottinger, on the other hand, declares: “In ac- 
 cordance with previous experiences in Palestine, the 
 dwelling of a worker will cost at least 2,000 francs; ... 
 connecting up the farm with an irrigation system would 
 probably cost 500 francs more.” * 
 
 Even Ottinger’s worker’s cottage, costing 2,500 francs 
 (including irrigation system), will hardly be a palace. 
 Later Zionists prefer, however, to take their material from 
 Ballod. <As late as 1919, Davis Triesch declares in his little 
 book, Paldstina und die Juden, Tatsachen und Ziffern: 
 “For 1,000 marks, a solidly built modest house can be 
 erected. As a matter of fact, houses have recently been 
 erected at this price in Germany.”* Lest the reader 
 imagine that Triesch refers to the construction of bird- 
 cages, he adds: ‘Houses of five rooms or more must be 
 erected for 1,000 marks, depending on the mode of con- 
 struction.” 
 
 “Facts and figures” ° of this kind must cause us to won- 
 der why not only the entire Jewish race but also all of 
 Christendom is not found flocking to this promised land, 
 whose fabulously cheap houses have a striking way of 
 reminding us of its fabulously large clusters of grapes, 
 
 3 Ottinger, Jiidische Kolonisation, p. 67. 
 
 4 Triesch, op. cit., p. 26. 
 
 5 Tatsachen und Ziffern, an allusion to the subtitle of Triesch’s book. 
 TRANSLATOR. 
 
 197% 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 each cluster of which must be carried by two men, with the 
 aid of a pole, because of its great size.° 
 
 But even if all of Ballod’s calculations should be correct, 
 we are not informed as to the period within which they are 
 to be made real. Even the far more sober Ottinger gives us 
 no definite suggestions on this point. On page 100 of his 
 book, Ottinger outlines a project for the foundation of new 
 colonies: . 
 
 “In accordance with this plan, in the course of about 
 12 years, 30 new Jewish points of support, having an initial 
 agricultural population of 3,000 families, or 12,000 to 
 15,000 persons, would be established. In addition, about 
 30,000 Jews of other occupations would probably be at- 
 tracted into the country by reason of this colonising.” 
 These colonies would require a capital of 77,500,000 gold 
 francs. But the 45,000 new immigrants provided here are 
 quite a different figure from Ballod’s 6,000,000. 
 
 To be sure, Ottinger later adds that the colonisation of 
 Palestine might, under favourable circumstances, proceed 
 at a more rapid rate, in which connection he mentions the 
 possibility of housing half a million new settlers in Pales- 
 tine, but with the cautious interpolation: ‘Of course, this 
 figure should be regarded as entirely hypothetical, and the 
 questton as to the time required for the colonisation of such 
 
 6“And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from 
 thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between 
 two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates and of the 
 figs.”—Numbers xiii, 23. 
 
 198 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 a number of colonists should for the present be entirely 
 left out of account.” ” 
 
 Yet, this question is by no means of little account to 
 Zionism. Whatever Zionism does not accomplish in the 
 immediate future, it will never accomplish, as we shall see 
 later. And it is entirely impossible to throw great masses 
 of Jewish colonists into Palestine in the immediate future. 
 
 The war did not spare Palestine. The economic situa- 
 tion of the country was, like that of all other countries, far 
 worse after the war than before it. 
 
 The situation in Palestine in the year 1919 may be in- 
 ferred from a private letter which I have received from a 
 Zionist whose name I may not divulge, but the name does 
 not matter for the present. I have received confirmation 
 of the contents of this letter from many quarters. The 
 letter, which was written in Palestine and dated October 
 30, 1919, says among other things: 
 
 “We are no longer of our former opinion as to immigra- 
 tion. . . . We are coming to the conclusion that a mass 
 immigration is not only undesirable at the present time, but 
 that it would be an outright cruelty, particularly for two 
 reasons: 
 
 “1. Hygienic reasons. The whole region (cities as well 
 as the country districts) is infected with malaria, not to 
 mention a number of other avoidable infectious diseases, 
 such as trachoma (an inflammation of the eyes). Palestine 
 is in need of a thorough housecleaning before it will be 
 
 7 Ottinger, op. cit., p. 104. 
 199 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 suitable for colonisation. We found many of the Jewish 
 colonies or villages in the most wretched condition; every 
 settler in some towns was actually either incapable of work 
 or hopelessly run down. The same condition was found in 
 the cities. Although Jerusalem lies above the normal mos- 
 quito line, great numbers of mosquitoes are found there. 
 A group of heroic young Jews from Poland arrived here 
 after incredible adventures at the beginning of this year. 
 We found most of them ill. The local medical station of 
 the American Zionists has accomplished much; for instance, 
 it annihilated the mosquitoes at Safed in six weeks, by hav- 
 ing oil poured on the water in the cisterns. As a conse- 
 quence of the visit paid by Brandeis, this station will 
 achieve even greater things. But it will be a long time be- 
 fore the country is healthy enough to receive a mass 
 immigration, for the draining of the swamps will involve 
 far more labour than the oiling of the tanks. 
 
 “2. Employment. Palestine is full of Jewish beggars 
 today. The Jewish population of Jerusalem and other 
 so-called ‘holy’ places have been accustomed to live on the 
 gifts of their co-religionists abroad. ‘These donations were 
 cut off during the war and cannot be renewed now because 
 of the present situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe. 
 Much misery is the result. In Safed, the Jewish population 
 decreased from 10,000 to 3,000. These persons were not 
 accustomed to work, but they have now been converted to 
 the idea and are shouting for work. New industries are 
 urgently required, and we have carefully considered the 
 
 200 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 possibility of such industries; for instance, printing, the 
 production of articles used in synagogues, of preserved 
 fruit, garments, etc. But you may imagine that such in- 
 dustries must be built on a firm foundation if sweatshops 
 and other undesirable European (and not only European; 
 the factories of Damascus, for example, are said to be 
 frightful) concomitants of industry are to be avoided... . 
 
 “I know very well what this delay will mean for the Jews 
 of Eastern Europe who are ready to flock into this country 
 by the millions. Unfortunately, Palestine cannot, even 
 under the most favourable circumstances, undertake for 
 many years to absorb in any adequate way all those that 
 are prepared to come. The best informed authority on mat- 
 ters of the colonisation of Palestine, Artur Ruppin, has 
 calculated—in a book that appeared last April, Der 
 Aufbau des Landes Israel—that 20 years will be required 
 under favourable conditions to increase the present Jewish 
 population to 1,000,000 or 1,250,000, and that the in- 
 crease in the number of Jewish workers employed in public 
 works cannot be made more than 15,000 per year in the 
 near future. 
 
 ‘The best authorities do not doubt that the country can 
 be made to support a numerous population after the lapse 
 of two generations. But this is but sad consolation for 
 the victims of pogroms in our own day. But we cannot 
 have our cake and eat it too. 
 
 “If Palestine is to become an asylum of refuge, it cannot 
 be a truly healthy community. If it is to be built up on 
 
 201 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 sound economic foundations, the would-be fugitives will 
 have to bide their time.” 
 
 Since this letter was written, the economic conditions of 
 the Jews in Palestine have improved considerably. Thanks 
 to the active support of Jews all over the world, and to the 
 energy and enthusiasm of the Jewish immigrants, much 
 has been accomplished in the way of road construction, 
 irrigation systems, agricultural settlements, and cultural 
 institutions. An absolutely new Jewish city, Tel Aviv, has 
 sprung into being, on a site that was a mere sand dune 
 before the war; also, a Jewish university has recently been 
 created. 
 
 The character of the Jewish immigration has changed 
 considerably. While before the war it consisted chiefly of 
 beggars, who lived in many parts of the world on Jewish 
 charity, it is now workers and intellectuals at the prime of 
 life who are coming, able and willing to reconquer the land 
 of their fathers in the sweat of their brows, and, if need be, 
 by superhuman exertions. 
 
 Anyone who has doubted the possibility of the Jewish 
 people’s showing energy, resolution and intelligence in this 
 crisis, must surely have changed his mind by reason of the 
 work of Zionist reconstruction in Palestine. 
 
 To be sure, the giving of such an object lesson can 
 hardly have been necessary, for no one really doubts that 
 the Jewish race possesses great capabilities. The point at 
 issue is not whether the Jews have ability, but whether 
 
 202 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 the accomplishments of the Jewish cultural work in Pales- 
 tine may justify the assumption that this region may 
 become the centre for a great emancipation of the entire 
 Jewish people, may put an end to the condition of the 
 Diaspora, and gather the Jews of all the world into one 
 great national state. 
 
 Our first question should be: How long will it be pos- 
 sible for the Jewish rehabilitation process in Palestine to 
 proceed at a fairly rapid rate? 
 
 In view of the extremely unfavourable natural conditions 
 offered by Palestine in the work of creating new arable 
 soil and maintaining the excellence of that already ac- 
 quired, as well as in the work of securing routes of com- 
 munication, without which agricultural colonies cannot 
 prosper, truly superhuman powers will be required, and the 
 exertion of such efforts will deprive the workers of every 
 vestige of a higher standard of living. 
 
 Of the Jewish immigrants who have come hitherto, and 
 I do not mean former peasants, or ditch-diggers, but in 
 great measure intellectuals, many—impelled by a patriotic 
 enthusiasm—have willingly submitted to these labours and 
 privations without a murmur. 
 
 But enthusiasm of this type has always been the special 
 gift of a small group of chosen persons, and even in such 
 cases it is not a permanent acquisition. The hard toil of 
 the daily grind usually succeeds in soon crushing all heaven- 
 storming enthusiasms, and in the long run a new social 
 order cannot be built up on overwork and on exertions 
 
 203 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 greater than those formerly borne by the individuals in 
 question. 
 
 The accessions of new enthusiasts must ultimately 
 dwindle, and the ranks of those now at work will be thinned 
 in the course of time. 
 
 Even in South America, and in present-day Russia or 
 in the United States, where the natural conditions are far 
 more favourable, and where political obstacles to the farm- 
 ing activities of the Jews are as little present as in Pal- 
 estine, we have not observed that any isolated attempts to 
 transform Jews into peasants have led—by their success— 
 to any widespread emulation on the part of most Jews. We 
 have no reason to assume that conditions in Palestine will 
 be any different, once the period of the first flash of en- 
 thusiasm is past. 
 
 Already we find a predominant tendency on the part of 
 the Jews in Palestine to settle in the cities. Tel Aviv is 
 growing far more rapidly than are the agricultural col- 
 onies. This city is now only six years old, and already it 
 has 40,000 inhabitants. There were 80,000 Jews in 
 Palestine in 1921, who had increased to 120,000 by the end 
 of 1924. In other words, the entire increase in population 
 is accounted for by the existence of the city of Tel Aviv. 
 In addition, there are 40,000 Jews in Jerusalem and 12,000 — 
 in Jaffa. 
 
 Reports from the cities themselves inform us that em- 
 ployment for artisans is increasing very slowly and that 
 the number of vagrants (Luftmenschen) and intellectuals 
 
 204 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 constitutes a percentage of the population that is rapidly 
 increasing. 
 
 In other words, these cities will soon be facing the same 
 problem that has been encountered by the Jews in the cities 
 of Eastern Europe; in fact, the problem will be a more 
 serious one, for the European Jews are at least living 
 among a dense population which, though not Jewish, is 
 nevertheless agricultural. 
 
 These difficulties will increase as the Jewish population 
 of Palestine begins to live on its own work, ceasing to live 
 on foreign philanthropy, as it did before the war. With 
 the rise of a working class will come—even in Palestine— 
 an increase in socialistic ideas, which will condition a sharp 
 opposition of many Jewish elements to capitalism within 
 Zionism. ‘These contrasts became quite apparent even at 
 the last Zionist Congress at Vienna; they will necessarily 
 increase and express themselves with more and more def- 
 initeness. 
 
 As this condition increases, the interest shown by the 
 Jewish capitalists of the world in Zionism will lose its 
 ardour. But without constant accessions of new capital, 
 the Jewish work of cultivation in Palestine will not make 
 much progress. 
 
 As yet, there has never been much Jewish immigration. 
 We have seen that the total increase of the number of 
 Jews in Palestine was only 40,000 during the four-year 
 period above mentioned; in other words, an average in- 
 crease of 10,000 per year. The rate may since have risen 
 
 205 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 to 20,000 or 30,000 per year. These figures are large 
 when compared with the small area of the country, already 
 holding six hundred thousand inhabitants. 
 
 But how insignificant are these figures when compared 
 with the total growth of Judaism throughout the world! 
 Annually this increase amounts to ten times the size of 
 the Jewish immigration into Palestine. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, how could this country ever absorb more than 
 an imperceptible fraction of the world’s Jewish population? 
 
 No doubt the promised land will some day be able to offer 
 work to more inhabitants than at present, once all the pro- 
 jected great irrigation plants, highways, railroads, etc., 
 have been completed, but the volume of the immigration 
 tending in that direction will never be so great as to reduce 
 in any way the number of Jews living in Europe and Amer- 
 ica, and thus to solve the present Jewish question. 
 
 At best, it might bring about the following partial ac- 
 complishment: the number of Jews in Palestine may in- 
 crease more rapidly than the number of non-Jews in the 
 country (the Arabs) and the new Jewish state, although it 
 will never embrace the great mass of the world’s Jewish 
 population, may nevertheless be predominantly Jewish in 
 tone. 
 
 But even this prospect is not likely to be fulfilled. 
 
 To be sure, the length of time that would be required by 
 Jewish colonisation in order to impress a Jewish stamp 
 upon Palestine would be no argument against such colonisa- 
 tion, provided time were working in favour of Zionism as 
 
 206 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 it has worked in favour of socialism; in other words, if the 
 conditions for the realisation of Zionism were progressively 
 improving in the course of the economic and political evolu- 
 tion. But these conditions do not apply in the case of 
 Zionism, and this constitutes its fundamental weakness. 
 Zionism cannot afford to wait, for the political conditions 
 for its realisation are rapidly becoming worse. Whatever 
 Zionism does not attain within the next few years, it will 
 never attain at all. 
 
 For Zionism is not a progressive movement, but a reac- 
 tionary movement. Zionism aims not at following the line 
 of necessary evolution, but of putting a spoke in the wheel 
 of progress. 
 
 Zionism denies the right of self-determination of nations, 
 instead of which it proclaims the doctrine of historical 
 rights, which is breaking down everywhere today, even 
 where it is supported by the greatest powers. 
 
 The idea of democracy, of the self-determination of na- 
 tions, is indissolubly connected with modern economic evo- 
 lution, and is thus made irresistible.* This is not only true 
 today for Europe, but it is beginning to be true for Asia 
 also. 
 
 The outcome of the World War might have involved a 
 considerable progress in international relations, if the vic- 
 tors had everywhere accepted the democratic doctrine and 
 recognised throughout, as a principle, the self-determina- 
 
 8] have discussed this subject in detail in my book, Die Befreiung 
 der Nationen, Stuttgart, 1917. 
 
 207 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 tion of nations. But they permitted themselves to be 
 guided only by their love of power; they condescended to 
 apply the notion of the self-determination of nations only 
 at such points where it was convenient for them. Wherever 
 an application of this doctrine might have strengthened 
 their former opponents, they replaced it quite arbitrarily 
 with other guiding notions, such as that of strategic boun- 
 daries, of monopolisation of the treasures of the soil or of 
 traffic routes, as well as that of historical rights, the claim 
 of a nation to the restoration of the boundaries of its state 
 as they existed centuries ago, under entirely different cir- 
 cumstances. , 
 
 Among the many antiquated legal claims which the little 
 protégés of the great victors filed with the latter, the most 
 ancient and moth-eaten is the historical claim of the Jews 
 to Palestine. This claim is two thousand years old, and 
 during these two thousand years the Jews have completely 
 ceased to be a nation. They have not only lost their 
 common territory, but even their common language. The 
 only language that today might be considered a living Jew- 
 ish language, namely, “Yiddish,” is a mutilated German. 
 A faint tinge of Jewish nationalism is attained by this 
 language only when it is set down in writing, not when it is 
 spoken. It is German written in Hebrew characters. 
 
 Palestine does not yet have a Jewish population of any 
 importance as to size. The single city of New York con- 
 tains fourteen times as many Jews as Palestine, where the 
 Jewish population amounts to not more than one-eighth 
 
 208 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 of the total population, of which the great majority con- 
 sists of Arabs. There are 620,000 Arabs as compared with 
 120,000 Jews; as economic conditions improve, the number 
 of Arabs will increase as well as the number of Jews. 
 Palestine could not very well be isolated from the neigh- 
 bouring countries, which are entirely Arabic. 
 
 There is hardly any possibility that the Jews in Palestine 
 will become more numerous than the Arabs. But every 
 attempt made by the advancing Jewry in that country to 
 displace the Arabs cannot fail to arouse the fighting spirit 
 of the latter, in which opposition to the Jews the Arabs 
 of Palestine will be more and more assured of the support 
 of the entire Arab population of Asia Minor, in whose 
 eyes the Jews appear as foreign rulers or as allies of the 
 English oppressor. 
 
 It is a delusion to imagine that the Jews arriving from 
 Europe and America will ever succeed in convincing the 
 Arabs that Jewish rule in this country will ever redound to 
 the advantage of the Arabs themselves. 
 
 In the early days of Zionism, people were blind to this 
 difficulty. Little more attention was paid to the Arabs 
 than was paid to the Indians in North America, Only 
 occasionally is it remembered that Palestine is already an 
 occupied country. It is then simply assumed that its 
 former inhabitants will be pushed aside in order to make 
 room for the incoming Jews. Ballod, for instance, dis- 
 cusses as follows the question of what is to be done in the 
 way of claiming all of Palestine for Jewish colonisation: 
 
 209 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ‘In the case of a mass colonisation, mere individual pur- 
 chases of land from the Arab proprietors of large holdings 
 would not be sufficient; on the other hand, in order that 
 real-estate prices may not rise to fabulous heights, a Jewish 
 chartered company must be given the right to expro- 
 priate land in return for adequate compensation.” * Ballod 
 also says that the petty peasants, the fellahs, will not 
 provide much trouble. In his opinion, they would “gladly 
 leave Palestine if they should be offered opportunities else- 
 where, for instance in Northern Syria or Babylonia, if the 
 latter is to be reawakened to life by large-scale engineering 
 operations, to obtain better conditions”. But who is to offer 
 them these “better conditions” ? 
 
 Ballod, himself, therefore expects that there will be 
 trouble between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. His book 
 was written at a time when Ballod was convinced of the 
 victory of the Central Powers. We therefore find him 
 expressing, in a special chapter entitled ‘‘The Central 
 Powers and Zionism’’, the advantages offered by Zionism to 
 the Central Powers. He points out “that it is to the 
 interest of Germany and Austria to have large masses of 
 Jews settled in Turkey’’,*° in the first place, because this 
 would mean an accession of population to their ally, 
 Turkey, which would by that time have been somewhat de- 
 nuded of population and resources, and in the second place, 
 because the Eastern European Jews who would furnish this 
 immigration would speak German and would thus help 
 
 ® Ballod, Paldstina, p. 30. 10 Ballod, op. ctt., p. 27. 
 
 210 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 advance Turkey’s trade with the Central Powers, and, 
 finally, for the reason that the Jews in Palestine would 
 furnish a counterweight to the Arabs, who favoured 
 England. 
 
 But the fact now is that England has won the war, and 
 the Arabs have become as burdensome to England as they 
 once were to the Turks. The Zionists now present the 
 reverse side of the medal and extol the Jewish colonists in 
 Palestine as England’s allies against the Arab aspirations 
 for independence. 
 
 In spite of all these changes, one condition remains per- 
 _manent: the dependence of Jewish colonisation on the 
 victorious European great powers, and the opposition of 
 the colonists to the Arabs. Both are necessary results of 
 the given economic and political conditions, and each of the 
 two factors gives strength to the other in rapid alterna- 
 tion. Here we find the profoundest cause for the untena- 
 bility of Zionism. Jewish colonisation in Palestine must 
 collapse as soon as the Anglo-French hegemony over Asia 
 Minor (including Egypt) collapses, and this is merely a 
 question of time, perhaps of the very near future. 
 
 The war immensely strengthened the nationalism of the 
 Arabs. The English themselves aided considerably in this 
 process by appealing to the Arabs as allies against the 
 Turkish régime. Now they cannot exorcise the powers 
 which they thus have conjured.** The spirit of national 
 
 11 “Die ich rief, die Geister, 
 Werd’ ich nun nicht los.” 
 —Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling, 1797. 
 
 211 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 self-determination is irresistible in Western Asia as every- 
 where today, once it has seized the masses of the people, 
 and such is the case now with the Arabs. Arabia is now 
 practically independent. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, will 
 become independent in the course of a few decades, and they 
 will more and more deprive the European protectorate, 
 which they must accept for the present, of all real 
 authority. 
 
 There is no longer any doubt of the final victory of the 
 Arabian people; the question merely is whether this vic- 
 tory is to be obtained by the peaceful method of a suc- 
 cessive forcing of concessions, or by a period of wild 
 guerilla warfare and bloody insurrections. The English 
 mode of government points rather to the former, the French 
 rather to the latter methods. In whatever way the process 
 of transformation may be realised, the poor, weak Jewish 
 settlers in Palestine will be the chief sufferers, during the 
 battle of the Arabs for independence, as well as after their 
 victory. Of all the European elements in Asia Minor, the 
 Jews will be least able to defend themselves, as well as least 
 capable of escape, and yet they will be treated as the worst 
 enemies, because their colonising the country will prove 
 that they intend to remain in it and not only make the 
 former inhabitants dependent. on them but even drive them 
 out entirely. 
 
 Thus it may be considered truly fortunate for the Jews, 
 who would be the sufferers, that the Zionist colonisation 
 policy will very probably have great difficulty in getting 
 
 212 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 started. We may therefore hope that the number of victims 
 to the policy of Zionism will not be very great; this policy 
 aims at bottom at nothing else than to transplant—at im- 
 mense cost and with the greatest sacrifices of those 
 concerned—enthusiastic Jews from regions in which anti- 
 Jewish pogroms are subsiding, into a country where such 
 pogroms are likely to ensue on a larger scale, if the Zionist 
 programme should be successful to any extent that is at all 
 perceptible. 
 
 This distortion of the original intentions into their pre- 
 cise opposite is inevitable whenever men base their conduct 
 in the present time not on an investigation of the present, 
 but on a submission to phantoms conjured up from a hoary 
 antiquity. 
 
 But the dangers to the Jews who are lured to Palestine 
 by a Messianic aspiration do not exhaust all the baleful 
 effects of Zionism. It is perhaps far worse that Zionism 
 means a wasting of the fortunes and resources of the Jews 
 in a wrong direction, at a moment when their true destinies 
 are being decided on an entirely different arena, for which 
 decision it would be necessary for them to concentrate all 
 their forces. 
 
 It is not in Palestine, but in Eastern Europe, that the 
 destinies of the suffering and oppressed portion of Jewry 
 are being fought out. Not for a few thousand Jews, or at 
 most a few hundred thousand, but for a population of be- 
 tween eight and ten million. Emigration abroad cannot 
 help them, no matter whither it may be turned. Their 
 
 213 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 destiny is intimately connected with that of the revolution, 
 in their own country. 
 
 The methods of the Bolsheviks are not those of the 
 Western European Social-Democracy. The Bolsheviks will 
 not be able to found a modern socialist state. What they 
 are really establishing is a bourgeois revolution, which will 
 assume forms corresponding to the social condition of 
 present-day Russia, resembling in many ways the forms of 
 the great French Revolution toward the end of the Kigh- 
 teenth Century. Among its other effects, the French 
 Revolution liberated the Jews in France, giving them full 
 rights of citizenship. The same accomplishment will be in- 
 cluded among the permanent achievements of the Russian 
 Revolution for all of Eastern Europe, unless the Revolu- 
 tion succumbs to the most savage counter-revolution. But 
 the struggle in Eastern Europe now is not only a struggle 
 for political freedom and for the rights of the Jews to 
 change their domicile. The conditions are also being pre- 
 pared for an enhancement of their economic situation. In 
 addition to the emancipation of the Jews, the emancipation 
 of the peasants also will be one of the achievements of the 
 revolution in Eastern Europe. A more prosperous peas- 
 antry will take the place of the present impoverished 
 peasantry, thus creating a greater internal market for | 
 urban industry. Once peace has been reestablished in 
 Kastern Europe, industry, and with it transportation, will 
 necessarily develop with giant strides; the urban population 
 will find abundant employment and food, and the great 
 
 214 
 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
 
 mass of the Jewish population will find it possible to rise 
 from conditions of life in which they have hardly emerged 
 from the lwmpenproletariat, to the conditions of the pro- 
 letariat in large-scale industry, as a portion of which class 
 they may then take part in the upward struggle of the 
 entire class. 
 
 Herein only is there a possibility for the Jewish masses 
 to achieve a truly human status. Zionism cannot 
 strengthen them in this effort. Zionism will weaken them 
 at the historically decisive moment by promulgating an 
 ambition which amounts practically to a desertion of the 
 colours. 
 
 215 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 We cannot take leave of Zionism before discussing an- 
 other one of its arguments, its last argument, which will 
 lead us back to the question of race. 
 
 It may appear to be a paradox, but it is a fact, that 
 not a few Jews look with some misgiving on the emanci- 
 pation of the Jews in Eastern Europe. They understand, 
 and rightly so, that this emancipation will extend into the 
 east of Europe the assimilation of the Jews that has been 
 going on in the west for some time. For when the artificial 
 exclusiveness of the Jews is terminated, when the ghetto 
 ceases to exist, their assimilation will become everywhere 
 inevitable. | 
 
 Only in those regions of Eastern Europe in which the 
 Jews were settled together in great numbers and artificially 
 cut off from their environment, have they been able to 
 preserve their national peculiarities. With the emancipa- 
 tion of the Jews in Eastern Europe, the last reservoir still 
 feeding the Jewish community of the whole world will — 
 disappear, the last obstacle to its gradual assimilation. 
 Judaism will then cease to exist as a separate body. 
 
 To be sure, this process will take place under circum- 
 stances which lift all the Jews still oppressed out of the 
 
 216 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 slough in which they may still be living, into the full status 
 of human beings. But Jewish nationalism regards the 
 conservation of traditional Judaism as more important 
 than the elevation of the Jewish individual. 
 
 Jews who regard the matter thus are in many cases quite 
 progressive in their other views. As is so often the case in 
 modern society, where it is found necessary to render con- 
 servative and radical thought compatible, the race theory 
 plays a prominent part here also. 
 
 It is declared to be urgently necessary to erect Palestine 
 into a world ghetto, in which a great number of Jews are 
 to be confined and cut off from the surrounding world, be- 
 cause in this way only can the Jewish race be protected 
 against admixture and preserved as a race. 
 
 For the Jews are a pure race, and it is only the pure 
 races that are called upon to achieve the highest per- 
 formances. Race mixture degrades human types and low- 
 ers their cultural capacity. In other words, we should be 
 impelled to believe that the cultural capacity of mankind 
 decreases with its increase in culture, for an increase in 
 culture is synonymous with an increase in international 
 communications and contacts, and therefore in race mix- 
 tures also. 
 
 One of the most prominent advocates of the Palestinian 
 world ghetto as a means of preserving the race purity of 
 the Jews is Zollschan. Sharp and correct though his criti- 
 cisms even of Chamberlain may be, he nevertheless exploits 
 without question the most untenable of Chamberlain’s 
 
 217 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 theories, namely, the theory that exalted human qualities 
 may be found only in the pure races. Zollschan says: 
 
 ““Chamberlain’s book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth 
 Century, has been attacked with a vehemence that has been 
 directed to but few other works; and in most cases these 
 attacks were well founded. But the turning point, the 
 nucleus of Chamberlain’s system, namely, his emphasis of 
 the ennobling effects of race purity and of the destructive 
 results of race chaos, is unquestionably sound. . . . Cham- 
 berlain properly observes that the normal course of devel- 
 opment is not from race to racelessness, but from a 
 politically conditioned racelessness to a sharper and 
 sharper definition of race, the quintessence of the race being 
 expressed in the genius, the hero... . 
 
 “Chamberlain says he cares very little for anthropo- 
 logical subdivisions; ‘by race I mean that emphasis of 
 specific essential characteristics and of the universal power 
 of performance; that exaltation of the entire being, which 
 is attained under very specific conditions of selection, 
 mingling, in-breeding—but only under these very specific 
 conditions, in which case it results, however, invariably; in 
 other words, with the certainty of a natural law. .. .’ 
 
 ‘In the case of the bastard, the individual abilities may 
 increase, while the general, ‘instinctive’ abilities (character- 
 istics) disappear; precisely the latter constitute the 
 potential factor giving rise to all real greatness. 
 
 “In the case of crossing between members of widely sep- 
 arate races, the constitutional type is lost in their pos- 
 
 218 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 terity, although the latter may quite frequently be well 
 equipped as far as individual aptitudes are concerned. .. . 
 
 “Doubtless the force of heredity is far more significant 
 in the case of the pure races. It is certain that in favour- 
 ably bastardised races the kinetic cultural energy will 
 constantly prevail, while in the pure inbred races the 
 potential cultural energy will always prevail; but that only 
 the latter is the fruitful soil from which the ingenious power 
 of creation as well as the artistic and moral genius may 
 grow forth. | 
 
 “This distinction between inbred and mongrel races 
 makes clear to us the value of race purity.” * 
 
 It is only with ill-concealed astonishment that we can 
 receive this anti-Semitic-Zionist-bastardisation of Cham- 
 berlain’s pure race vagaries at the hands of Zollschan— 
 otherwise an intelligent man. The race, defining itself with 
 increasing sharpness, and whose quintessence is the genius, 
 the hero, the race which represents nothing short of an 
 exaltation of the entire being, in which the potential cul- 
 tural energy will always be predominant—this is in truth a 
 ‘race chaos” which is based on nothing but the energetic 
 use of the words “doubtless”, “without doubt”, “‘with cer- 
 tainty”, which are applied the more emphatically, the less 
 definite the conceptions associated with them. 
 
 The most amusing point about the whole matter is the 
 fact that Zollschan, at the beginning of his book, himself 
 rejects the “nobility of race of the modern ‘Teutons as 
 
 1 Das Rassenproblem, pp. 264-270. 
 
 219 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 advanced by Gobineau, Richard Wagner, and Houston 
 Stewart Chamberlain”, and with reason, for: 
 
 ‘Chamberlain ascertained that the Jews owe their origin 
 to the crossing of three races entirely different from each 
 other: the Semites, the Hittites, the Amorites. . .. The 
 crossing between the Semites, Hittites and Amorites, is 
 designated by Chamberlain as outright ‘incest’; in the 
 destinies of the Jewish nation resulting from this mingling, 
 as well as in its mental unfruitfulness, Chamberlain beholds 
 an inevitable fate which necessarily intervened with the cer- 
 tainty of a natural law, and from which the race will never 
 be able to escape.” ° 
 
 Yet this same Chamberlain is accepted as a cast-iron 
 basis by the Zionist race theoreticians ! 
 
 This seems absurd; yet it is quite simple; Zollschan has 
 only to prove that the Jews give evidence of great mental 
 achievement, of much genius, such as only a pure race can 
 develop, according to Chamberlain. It will follow as a self- 
 evident consequence that they must be a pure race, and it 
 would be equivalent to committing a sin against the holy 
 spirit of history, if one should sully their purity with a 
 mingling with other races, by bastardising them! 'There- 
 fore the Zionist world-ghetto becomes the necessary goal 
 for all Jews! 
 
 Unfortunately, this subtle reasoning is not a sufficient 
 refutation of the fact that the Jews are a mixed race—and 
 
 2 Zollschan, op. cit., p. 32. 
 8 Zollschan, ibid., pp. 152, 153. 
 
 220 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 not the Jews alone, for every cultural race is a mixed 
 race, If only “pure races” are the native soil from which 
 the “ingenious power of creation and artistic and moral 
 genius may grow forth”, if the bastard races show no such 
 qualities, we shall probably have to retrace our steps almost 
 to the purity of the ape-man before we encounter the last 
 remnants of these “generic’”’ capacities. In the case of the 
 cultural races, they must have long since expired, for the 
 ‘“bastardisation” of these races is true “beyond a doubt”. 
 
 The view is no doubt very widespread that ‘‘mixed races 
 for the most part emphasise only the defects and vices of 
 their progenitors, not their favourable points’, and Zoll- 
 schan presents this view as “established today”.* But, as 
 a matter of fact, this principle is as little accepted as the 
 other “undoubted” truths on which Zollschan bases his 
 argument in this case. | 
 
 We have already seen that the concept of the “pure” 
 race is borrowed from the realm of domestic animals. It 
 loses its point altogether when applied to the varieties, to 
 the geographical races of wild animals, and even to the 
 races of humans, in so far as they are geographical in 
 character. All the learning of our race theoreticians and 
 the “sharpened glance of our day for that which is in the 
 blood” are based in the last analysis merely on a constant 
 confusion of the most varied conceptions of race. To 
 Chamberlain’s honour be it said that he makes this idiocy 
 quite clear to us. Again and again he places the experi- 
 
 4 Zollschan, ibid., p. 264. 
 
 221 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 ences of history on a par with the experiences gathered in 
 artificial selection: 
 
 “The history of our own race teaches us with an eloquent 
 tongue what we are also taught by every race horse, every 
 pure-bred fox terrier, every Cochin-China hen!” ° 
 
 Chamberlain alleges that the Hellenic people are an 
 example of this process. 
 
 In an earlier passage,® Chamberlain observes that per- 
 haps no “other question encounters such black ignorance 
 even among highly educated, even learned, men, as the ques- 
 tion concerning the essence and significance of the concep- 
 tion of ‘race’ ’’, Chamberlain then turns against Virchow, 
 who had demanded equality before the law for the various 
 races and had advocated a cult of personality as opposed to 
 the cult of race. 
 
 “As if the whole course of history did not prove to us 
 the close connection between personality and race, the con- 
 ditioning of the nature of personality by the nature of its 
 race, and the connection of the power of personality with 
 certain conditions of its blood! And as if the scientific 
 breeding of plants and animals did not afford us an im- 
 mensely varied and reliable material, with the aid of which 
 we may learn both the conditions as well as the significance 
 of ‘race’. Do the (rightly) so-called ‘noble’ races of ani- 
 mals, the Limousin draught-horses, the American trotters, 
 the Irish race-horses, the absolutely dependable hunting 
 
 5 Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, vol. i, p. 272. German 
 edition: Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts. 
 6 Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 264 et seq. 
 
 222 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 dogs—do these arise by accident and promiscuity? Are 
 they the result of granting the animals equality before the 
 law, of feeding them all on the same fodder and subjecting 
 them all to the same rod? No, they arise by sexual (sic/) 
 selection and by strict preservation of the purity of the 
 race. . . . A continuous condition of promiscuity between 
 two prominent animal races will invariably lead to a de- 
 struction of the most outstanding characteristics of both. 
 Why should mankind be an exception?” 
 
 This question can embarrass only such persons whose 
 “black ignorance” is so great as to prevent them from 
 distinguishing between the races of domestic animals and 
 other races, and who may believe that the laws of the 
 stud-farm are the universal laws of nature and of human 
 history, persons who imagine that the “race” of the Hel- 
 lenes and the race of Cochin-China hens were produced in 
 exactly the same way. 
 
 In the case of the latter, there is no doubt that “a per- 
 manent condition of promiscuity” with another race will 
 “degrade” both races. The organism of the domestic ani- 
 mal is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its 
 efficiency and excellence are not estimated by its power of 
 performance to the advantage of its own preservation and 
 procreation, but by its utility for the specific human pur- 
 pose for which the animal has been bred. Its efficiency in 
 this connection will increase with its specialization, with the 
 increasing one-sidedness of specific organs. ‘This one- 
 sidedness is decreased by crossing a highly bred race with 
 
 223 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 another race, presenting peculiarities of an entirely dif- 
 ferent type. In this way the special value inherent in each 
 of the two races from the standpoint of the purposes of 
 man, may easily be decreased, and the pure race—to this 
 extent—“degraded”’. 
 
 But in the case of animals who are not domestic animals, 
 efficiency must be measured by a different standard. The 
 standard now becomes, not their efficiency in subserving 
 the purposes of others, but their efficiency in answering the 
 requirements of the preservation of their own organism and 
 its own posterity. In the case of pure races, in other 
 words, such races whose efficiency for a certain end pro- 
 posed by man has been enhanced by a one-sided develop- 
 ment, the efficiency for the purposes of their own organism 
 may indeed increase by crossing the race with another and 
 thus reducing its one-sided qualities. 
 
 As a matter of fact, breeders rather frequently resort to 
 a crossing of pure races, either in order to attain new race 
 characteristics, or in order to infuse increased energy and 
 power of resistance into an over-refined, enervated race, 
 by means of crossing. 
 
 Even Chamberlain admits the possibility of improving 
 the race in this manner, by crossing. But “only very 
 specific and limited blood-minglings are favourable to an | 
 ennobling of a race or to the establishment of a new race. 
 Here again the clearest and most unambiguous evidence is 
 furnished by the breeding of animals. The blood-mingling 
 must be for a limited time only, it must furthermore be 
 
 224 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 adapted to the purpose; not all minglings, but only certain 
 minglings may serve as a basis for race improvement. In 
 limiting the time, I mean that the supply of new blood must 
 be introduced very swiftly, after which it must cease at 
 once.” * 
 
 Continuous blood-mingling is tantamount to a “baleful, 
 destructive condition, a sim against nature’, nature mean- 
 ing—in Chamberlain’s eyes—fox-terriers and Cochin-China 
 hens. But in the natural state there is no breeder to choose 
 the breeding couples and to regulate the supply of new 
 blood in such manner as to limit it to a swift introduction, 
 after which the supply is cut off. Nor is man today—as 
 yet—bred artificially. Humans never mated under Cham- 
 berlain’s conditions. 
 
 To be sure, man resembles the domestic animals in his 
 tendency to a one-sided development owing to the division 
 of labor and to specialisation. This one-sidedness is easily 
 overcome in cases where callings vary from generation to 
 generation. But such one-sidedness may be developed to a 
 high point where occupations are hereditary. This con- 
 dition will be naturally attained in cases where the one- 
 sidedness of the vocation is not an adaptation to social 
 peculiarities, but to peculiarities of nature, to a specific 
 natural environment, resulting in a specific mode of pro- 
 duction. Particularly the mental characteristics (the 
 nervous system), which are of course more variable and 
 more capable of accommodation than the somatic elements 
 
 7 Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 284. 
 225 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 (skeleton, muscles, etc.), may here attain the most extreme 
 forms; a race of horsemen may develop into a state of 
 bloodthirsty savagery; a race of farmers into a condition 
 of cowardly enervation; isolated in the mists of a lonely 
 mountain range, a race may develop a gloomy and fretful 
 mysticism, while an active condition of social contact may 
 produce—under a cloudless sky—the most frivolous and 
 arrogant joy of life. A mingling of such elements may, 
 under such circumstances, produce very desirable conse- 
 quences. 
 
 But such minglings may particularly be of great advan- 
 tage in cases where a continuous process of in-breeding has 
 imparted a pathological character to certain one-sided 
 peculiarities. ‘There is hardly any doubt that in-breeding 
 will not be injurious under all circumstances. But it has 
 been recognised that in-breeding leads to swift degenera- 
 tion where pathological predispositions are involved. Even 
 Zollschan admits this, although he is quite enthusiastically 
 in favour of in-breeding: 
 
 “In-breeding—unless certain vicious conditions such as 
 tuberculosis, lues, alcoholism, psychoses, have gained a 
 foothold in a family—is by no means so pernicious as is 
 generally assumed, even in the case of very close alliances 
 within the same family. If constitutional pathogenic germs — 
 are present, these will, to be sure, attain enormous propor- 
 tions; but healthy constitutions are by no means ruined in 
 this process.” § 
 
 8 Das Rassenproblem, p. 266. 
 226 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 The more civilisation develops, the more artificial and 
 unnatural becomes the environment in which the majority 
 live. The number of persons obliged to live in cities, to 
 work indoors, increases; the nervous system is forced to 
 develop along narrower and narrower channels. These 
 conditions make the organism far more receptive to germs 
 of disease. At the same time, an extending of the artificial 
 environment tends to limit the effects of the struggle for 
 existence with surrounding nature, to prolong the life of 
 diseased organisms, to render propagation possible to such 
 organisms. Under these circumstances, in-breeding must be 
 particularly injurious, and a mingling of varied elements 
 must be of exceptional advantage. The increasing min- 
 gling of races by reason of the increase in world traffic 
 may probably be considered as one of the most powerful 
 factors opposing the tendency to a debasing of “race” by 
 civilisation. ‘The more we turn our backs on nature, the 
 more necessary becomes a mingling of races. 
 
 Our anthropologists, accordingly, are by no means in- 
 clined to regard race mixture as a misfortune—at least not 
 those anthropologists who study the question of interest to 
 the human race by studying man himself and not the 
 processes of the chicken-coop or the florist’s hothouse. 
 
 In the lecture delivered by Luschan at the Racial Con- 
 gress, which we have already quoted several times, this 
 scholar also has the following to say on the question of 
 mixed races: 
 
 “We all know that a certain admixture of blood has 
 
 227 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 always been of great advantage to a nation. England, 
 France and Germany are equally distinguished for the 
 variety of their racial elements. In the case of Italy we 
 know that in ancient times and at the Renaissance, North- 
 ern “Barbarians” were the leaven in the great advance of 
 art and civilisation; and even Slavonic immigration has not 
 been without effect on this movement. ‘The marvellous 
 ancient civilisation of Crete, again, seems to have been not 
 quite autochthonous. We know also that the ancient 
 Babylonian civilisation sprang from a mixture of two quite 
 different national and racial elements, and we find a nearly 
 homogeneous population in most parts of Russia and in the 
 interior of China associated with a somewhat low stage of 
 evolution.” 
 
 Luschan does indeed seem inclined to regard mixtures 
 between whites and blacks with disfavour. But he states 
 his case cautiously in the paragraph immediately following 
 the above quotation: 
 
 “On the other hand, we are all more or less disposed to 
 dislike and despise a mixture of Europeans with the greater 
 part of foreign races. ‘God created the white man and 
 God created the black man, but the created the 
 
 mulatto’, is a very well-known proverb. As a matter of 
 
 
 
 fact, we are absolutely ignorant as to the moral and in- 
 tellectual qualities of half-castes. It would be absurd to ex- 
 pect from the union of a good-for-nothing European with 
 an equally good-for-nothing black woman, children that 
 march on the heights of humanity, and we know of many 
 
 228 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 half-castes that are absolutely sans reproche; but we have 
 no good statistics of the qualities of half-castes in com- 
 parison with those of their parents.” ° 
 
 It is apparent that Luschan is very far removed from 
 any acceptance of the popular conception—so carelessly 
 proclaimed by Zollschan as a demonstrated truth—namely, 
 that mongrels reproduce only the defects and vices of their 
 progenitors and not also their virtues. 
 
 In the case of mongrels between white races, he main- 
 tains the precise opposite. As for the products of unions 
 between whites and coloured people he considers the matter 
 as not sufficiently proved. No writer assigns any reason 
 for a worsening of character by reason of such mixture. 
 Zollschan, like Chamberlain himself, admits that the half- 
 castes may often excel their parents in physical strength, 
 in beauty, and in natural intelligence. But both declare 
 that the character suffers by reason of the mixture. Why 
 this degrading of race should be expressed precisely in the 
 character and not in any other trait appears to be a 
 decision of fate, and one requiring no explanation. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the defects due to a min- 
 gling of races express themselves only in the domain in 
 which they are least likely to be checked up. Nothing is 
 more subjective by nature than our judgment of the char- 
 acter of another individual. His external traits, his 
 strength, his talent, are subject to objective measurement, 
 but the impression made upon me by his character depends 
 
 9 Anthropological View of Race (see footnote, pp. 22, 23). 
 
 229 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 in large measure on whether my intercourse with him is of 
 friendly or hostile nature. Any man whose reputation has 
 been subjected to distortion by party hatred and party 
 favour will present an uncertain image in the records of 
 history.*° The same individual will present quite different 
 traits in the eyes of his friends from those seen by his 
 enemies. One may be the tenderest and kindliest father to 
 one’s children and yet be a most ruthless usurer or slave- 
 driver. On the other hand, any specific expression of 
 another’s character will produce quite a different impres- 
 sion on the onlooker, depending on whether the latter is 
 fighting by his side or constitutes a menace to his life. 
 Character may express itself only in one’s relation with 
 others; manifestations of character depend entirely on 
 one’s relations with others; likewise, the evaluation of these 
 manifestations by third persons will depend on such rela- 
 tions also. In a word, far more than in bodily stature, or 
 in the strength or ability of the individual, the social factor, 
 the influence of the environment, will assume the foreground 
 in the impression made by his character. The factor of 
 heredity appears here to be most variable and most diffi- 
 cult to be isolated and recognised as such. 
 
 But if we make an effort to ascertain the social factors 
 producing the result that half-castes between whites and 
 blacks appear for the most part to be of bad character, we 
 
 10 “Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verzerrt, 
 Schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte.” . 
 —Friedrich Schiller, Prologue to Wallensteins Lager. 
 
 230 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 shall not have far to seek. We need only to refer to the 
 “bastards” produced in Europe by parents of the same 
 race, who are distinguished from the other children in the 
 same country merely by the fact that they have been so 
 unfortunate as to lack all the economic and social support 
 which society and the law grant to legitimate children. 
 
 Nor do we find that the half-castes in the colonies have 
 been subjected to worse judgements than the illegitimate 
 children of European parents of “‘pure” race: 
 
 “In every respect, physically, mentally and morally, they 
 constitute on the whole a debilitated, more or less degraded 
 group. The mere fact that they were produced in extra- 
 conjugal, illegitimate relations, becomes in their case a 
 powerful cause of disease and death, both before and after 
 birth, and throughout their entire lives. In the total 
 statistics of disease, as well as in the mortality statistics of 
 any country, they furnish, year in and year out, a very 
 considerable and—we might add—constantly increasing 
 contingent, both in physical as well as in mental diseases, 
 mental debility, suicide, not to mention crimes of all kinds. 
 Far more frequently than other groups, as compared with 
 their number, they fill our public institutions, beginning 
 with the lying-in hospital and the orphan asylum, and end- 
 ing with the hospitals, the prisons, and the morgue.” ** 
 
 Why should we not expect to find that the facts obtain- 
 ing of these unhappy pariahs in our society are also ap- 
 plicable to the half-castes in the colonies, almost all of 
 
 11 Osterlen, Medizinische Statistik, p. 200. 
 231 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 whom are illegitimate children—frequently as a result of 
 the laws, for Christian governments, which know no closer 
 concern than the protection of. marriage and the family, 
 do indeed permit white men to take coloured women as 
 concubines, but not to marry them, and to permit their 
 children to enjoy a father’s care? 
 
 It should not surprise us to find that the coloured bas- 
 tards lead just as sorry a life as the white bastards, and 
 this fact would by no means prove that their general back- 
 wardness was due to their being of mixed extraction and 
 not to their social position. But we find as a rule that 
 bastards of barbarous tribes have far more chances of 
 success than the illegitimate children of civilisation, which 
 again does not of course prove that half-castes between 
 Europeans and coloured races are of better endowment 
 than children produced by two European parents. But 
 their inferiority has not at all been proved. Under favour- 
 able circumstances, such half-castes may even give eVi- 
 dence of considerable ability. 
 
 Thus, Ratzel, in his Vélkerkunde, speaks with great re- 
 spect of the bastaards, the offspring of a mixture of white 
 and Hottentot blood, who—it is claimed—have raised the 
 Hottentots to a higher level. Ratzel has the following to 
 say on this subject: 
 
 “It is claimed, concerning the European half-castes, in 
 South Africa as well as in India and in South America, that 
 they possess the defects of both their parents, but none of 
 their virtues. In all these regions so much of this state- 
 
 232 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 ment is true, that the half-castes to be sure rarely unite all 
 the favourable traits of the European father with all the 
 virtues of the coloured mother. But this is due less to the 
 mixture of blood than to the peculiar and hardly favourable 
 breeding which these persons receive and must receive by 
 reason of their situation between two widely separated 
 races. It is self-evident that the care of their education 
 falls to the mother, and that therefore the first impressions 
 received by the young half-caste are obtained in the en- 
 vironment of the lower race. As he grows up, he may be- 
 come conscious of the superiority inherent in him as a 
 rule—as far as his mentality is concerned, and often even 
 physically—as a result of his share of the lighter blood; 
 but the race to which his father belongs will not accept 
 him; it will regard him as a coloured man, in spite of the 
 better qualities he may have inherited as a half-caste. He 
 will therefore grow up, usually, to receive less education 
 and culture than his capacities would require, and it is 
 quite natural that he should not be able—under these cir- 
 cumstances—to make the best use of his gifts in every 
 case. Superior to the coloured community in mental en- 
 dowment, in energy, and often even in physical strength, or 
 at least in the spirit and love of putting his strength to 
 the test, he lacks the gift of contentedness with his lowly 
 and oppressed situation and with the phlegmatic insensibil- 
 ity to privations of every kind which are characteristic of 
 his coloured brothers.” ** 
 
 12 Ratzel, Volkerkunde, pp. 115, 116. 
 
 233 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 In other words, the “worsening” of the character of the 
 half-castes consists in their furnishing less convenient ob- 
 jects of exploitation, and in their being more inclined to 
 rebel against their subjection than the “pure” coloured 
 race. Quite worthy of note is the judgement formed by Sid- 
 ney Olivier, who, for a number of years, was governor of 
 Jamaica, where there exists a considerable population of 
 half-castes. In 1891, this island had only 15,000 whites, 
 122,000 half-castes, and about 500,000 Negroes. Olivier 
 has a very high opinion of the latter and expects much 
 from their future development. But of course the whites 
 are at present far superior to them. In this connection, 
 the half-castes may be considered socially an element of 
 great value: 
 
 “The offspring of such breeding, whether legitimate or 
 illegitimate, is, from the point of view of efficiency, an 
 acquisition to the community, and, under favourable con- 
 ditions, an advance on the pure bred African. For, not- 
 withstanding all that it may be possible to adduce in favour 
 of that prejudice against the mixed race, of which I have 
 spoken, and which I have myself fully shared, I am con- 
 vinced that this class as it at present exists, is a valuable 
 and indispensable part of any West Indian community, and 
 that a colony of black, coloured, and whites has far more 
 organic efficiency and far more promise in it than a colony 
 of black and white alone. A community of white and 
 black alone is in far greater danger of remaining, so far 
 as the unofficial classes are concerned, a community of em- 
 
 234 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 ployers and serfs, concessionaires and tributaries, with, at 
 best, a bureaucracy to keep the peace between them. The 
 graded mixed class in Jamaica helps to make an organic 
 whole of the community and saves it from this distinct 
 cleavage. 
 
 “A very significant light is thrown on the psychology 
 of colour prejudice in mixed communities by the fact 
 that, in the whites, it is stronger against the coloured 
 than against the blacks. I believe this is chiefly because 
 the coloured intermediate class do form such a bridge as I 
 have described, and undermine, or threaten to undermine, 
 the economic and social ascendancy of the white, hitherto 
 the dominant aristocracy of these communities. This 
 jealousy or indignation is much more pungent than the 
 alleged natural instinct of race-aversion.” ** 
 
 In spite of the favourable results of many a mixture of 
 Negroes and whites, it is nevertheless easy to understand 
 why investigators who are favourably disposed to the col- 
 oured race may condemn a mingling between white and 
 coloured. But this may hardly be considered as due to the 
 laws of heredity, but rather to considerations of ethical 
 and esthetic nature. 
 
 The aversion to such mixtures is an aversion to the re- 
 lations between the sexes found in regions where an un- 
 married white master class has unlimited control, in the 
 colonies, over disfranchised natives. Such unions in these 
 
 13 Sidney Olivier, White Capital and Coloured Labour, London, 
 1906, pp. 37-39. 
 
 235 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 countries will not partake of the character of a free love- 
 selection, but rather of that of prostitution or even viola- 
 tion of the women involved. Such violent forms of race 
 mixture should surely be condemned, but they have nothing 
 to do with the question of heredity. 
 
 And surely they cannot be invoked in a consideration of 
 the question as to whether the Jews should be preserved 
 as a pure race by artificial segregation and by an avoid- 
 ance of all mixed marriages. 
 
 We have seen that the Jews are in no sense a pure race; 
 we have seen that even mixtures between widely separated 
 races may be of advantage; and finally we have seen that 
 mixtures between related races are as a rule of great value. 
 Why should it be precisely the Jewish half-castes that have 
 so disastrous an effect? On the contrary, it might be main- 
 tained that no mixture between European populations is 
 likely to produce better results than that between Jews and 
 non-Jews. No stratum of the population has become more 
 one-sidedly urban in character than the Jews, and in no 
 other stratum has in-breeding under unfavourable hygienic 
 conditions produced more unhappy results than among the 
 Jews. 
 
 It is Zollschan’s opinion that “in-breeding within a human 
 community of ten or eleven million” has “no longer the 
 slightest similarity with in-breeding within the limits of a 
 small group of relatives.” But it is not true that the entire 
 Jewish community lives in a single segregated region and 
 that marriages take place only within this region. Jews 
 
 236 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 in Vilna hardly regard Jewesses in Morocco or Yemen as 
 possible mates. It is quite possible that the result of such 
 matings might be a desirable one. But in many regions 
 the Jews constitute a very small community, and the result 
 very frequently is marriages between relatives, where the 
 situation is such as to render impossible marriages outside 
 of this community. 
 
 It might be possible to speak, however, of another form 
 of in-breeding besides that within the family. Blood-rela- 
 tionship alone appears to be not a dangerous factor in 
 marriage. It becomes dangerous only by reason of the 
 probability that the same pathological predispositions have 
 been inherited by both husband and wife and may therefore 
 be transmitted to their children in an exaggerated form. 
 But acquired defects may have just as much influence on 
 posterity as those that are inherited, if present in both 
 parents. This identity of acquired defects will most likely 
 be present in those cases in which both husband and wife, 
 as well as their ancestors for several generations, have been 
 living and working under the same conditions. In this 
 connection, it would be necessary to call attention not only 
 to in-breeding within the family, but also to a vocational 
 or social in-breeding. The more pernicious and one-sided 
 the common conditions of labour and life of the two groups 
 of ancestors, the more dangerous will be in-breeding within 
 the vocation, as far as posterity is concerned; the more 
 necessary a mingling with members of other vocations or 
 
 classes; the greater the necessity, therefore—of course— 
 
 237 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 of technical and social reforms for eliminating noxious and 
 one-sided tendencies. 
 
 Darwin also believed that alterations in the conditions 
 of life, as well as the crossing of individuals who have been 
 subject to different conditions of life, are of advantage, 
 unless the alteration to which the individuals are sub- 
 jected be too great. 
 
 “Hence it seems that, on the one hand, slight changes 
 in the conditions of life benefit all organic beings, and on 
 the other hand, that slight crosses, that is, crosses between 
 the males and females of the same species, which have been 
 subjected to slightly different conditions, or which have 
 slightly varied, give vigour and fertility to the off- 
 spring.” ** 
 
 The Jews have suffered most from a uniformity of their 
 conditions of life, since they have in their ranks but a 
 modicum of variety in vocation, and since they lack par- 
 ticularly the invigorating influence of new accessions of 
 peasant blood. And precisely in those regions in which 
 they live together in great numbers, and where—therefore 
 —the danger of in-breeding between blood-relations is 
 smaller, their conditions of life are the most monotonous 
 and unfavourable, and the dangers of vocational and social 
 in-breeding become greatest for them. No stratum of the 
 population has more to gain by an admixture of non- 
 Jewish—more or less peasant—hblood, than the Jews. 
 
 14 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, The Harvard Classics, 
 New York, 1909, chap. ix, p. 318. 
 
 238 
 
PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 
 
 The Jews have therefore not the slightest reason to 
 avoid, because of fear of their assimilation, the only path 
 to salvation that is available to them: an energetic par- 
 ticipation in the class struggle of the proletariat. 
 
 239 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 
 
 ZIONIsM is an untenable Utopia. On the other hand, 
 liberalism is no longer capable—and perhaps not even de- 
 sirous—of carrying out what it has neglected hitherto. 
 Besides, its resources and its backing in the population are 
 weakening. Wherever the liberals have not succeeded in 
 bringing about a complete emancipation of the Jews—not 
 merely a legal emancipation, but a real social equality of 
 the Jews—it is certain that they will not be able to do so 
 in the future. 
 
 The capitalist Jews are in all countries content with what 
 has been attained. Though they may not have gotten as 
 much as they wished, they at least have power enough, by 
 reason of their wealth, to overcome slight inconveniences. 
 This was true even in Czarist Russia, and in places where 
 it is not the case these disabilities do not appear important 
 enough, in their eyes, to justify a risk of revolution in 
 order to overcome them. The capitalist Jews themselves 
 are becoming conservative and are accepting conditions as 
 they are. 
 
 The only force capable of a thorough overturning of the 
 present order and of a complete destruction of all oppres- 
 
 240 
 
THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 
 
 sion, of all legal and social inequality, now remains the 
 proletariat, which must achieve this end in order to achieve 
 its own liberation. Only a victorious proletariat can bring 
 complete emancipation for the Jews; all of Jewry, except 
 in so far as it is already fettered to capitalism, is interested 
 in a proletarian victory. 
 
 There is no doubt that the liberation of the Jews will be 
 equivalent to their absorption to the extent to which this 
 liberation is achieved. 
 
 The centre of gravity of the Jewish question now lies in 
 the great areas of former Russia. If Russia achieves full 
 civil equality for the Jews, and if the country becomes 
 economically prosperous and develops growing industries, 
 we shall not again encounter a Jewish migration to the 
 west. But this will mean that the process of Jewish as- 
 similation, already so far advanced in the past, but some- 
 what retarded within the last decades, will again set in. 
 Even in England and America, the assimilation of the new 
 strata of Russian Jews will proceed at a rapid pace. If 
 the accessions from Russia cease to arrive, probably the 
 second generation and surely the third generation of the 
 Jews in the London East End and on the East Side of 
 New York, will no longer understand Yiddish but will all 
 speak English; they will no longer live in a single section 
 of the city, closely congested in a few sweated industries that 
 yield but slight opportunity to live, but will spread through- 
 out the country and find the same opportunities as the 
 
 rest of the population for earning a living in the most 
 
 241 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 varied occupations. And religion will probably have be- 
 come a matter of indifference to these Jews; thus the last 
 barrier to their assimilation will be removed. 
 
 This prophecy, which I already made before the war, is 
 also confirmed by the observation of Zollschan as contained 
 in his book printed in 1919: 
 
 ‘The second generation of the inhabitants in this country 
 speak Yiddish only in their parental environment, and 
 later generations speak it only in unusual cases. . . . The 
 Yiddish theatre has already passed beyond its culmination. 
 My questions as to the basic reasons for this condition 
 always brought the answer that the second generation has 
 entirely lost interest in it as well as in the language it- 
 self,”? * 
 
 In the Chinese quarter Zollschan even found two Russian 
 Jewesses who had married Chinese! 
 
 The process of the disintegration of Judaism will pro- 
 ceed more slowly in Eastern Europe than in America. But 
 even in Eastern Europe, the process must go on, in spite 
 of the fact that the struggle for the emancipation of the 
 Jews has at this moment led to the laying of greater em- 
 phasis on their Jewish traits. 
 
 Like other nations who have been ruled by a master class 
 which prevented them from securing contact with modern 
 civilisation, the Jews of Russia have also created a litera- 
 ture in their own language, which hitherto had had no 
 literature, as soon as they began to develop an aspiration 
 
 1 Zolischan, Revision des jiidischen Nationalismus, p. 14. 
 
 242 
 
THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 
 
 towards independence. There resulted the growth of a 
 Yiddish literature, a Yiddish theatre, a Yiddish press, 
 which in America includes great daily newspapers and 
 periodicals, and had already attained large dimensions even 
 in Russia when the war opened. 
 
 “The ‘Yiddish’ daily press, after having been in ex- 
 istence for ten years, exceeds the Polish press in circulation 
 and in Russia is second in this respect only to the Russian 
 press proper.” ” 
 
 The productions and resources of an active national life 
 on the part of the Russian Jews will become progressively 
 greater and stronger as long as the struggle for Jewish 
 freedom advances. But that which we call the Jewish 
 nation can achieve the victory only in order then to dis- 
 appear. 
 
 The Jewish nation could maintain itself only by means 
 of a living together of all the Jews in close contact with 
 each other. But the callings to which the great mass of the 
 Jews in Eastern Europe chiefly flock are not compatible in 
 great measure with such a congestion of population. Per- 
 sons engaged in these callings can prosper only when they 
 are living among great numbers of persons engaged in other 
 occupations, in which the non-Jewish population predom- 
 inates. Precisely the compulsory congestion of popula- 
 tion in a small space—which today still gives plausibility 
 to the conception of a Jewish nationality—has also created 
 the specific Jewish misery. With the disappearance of the 
 
 2 Hersch, Le Juif, p. 9. 
 
 243 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 latter will come also the disappearance of the conditions 
 for a Jewish nationality. The Jewish misery can disap- 
 pear only under a political and social condition of Eastern 
 Europe which will impel the Jews in those regions to speak 
 the language of their environment, which means the begin- 
 ning of this assimilation. The latter will be further 
 stimulated by the fact that in an Eastern Europe which 
 is politically free, the intellectual advancement of the en- 
 tire population will become one of the most important tasks 
 of the state. Judaism draws its strength—as a specific 
 group, segregated from its environment—from anti- 
 Semitism alone, from persecution. In the absence of the 
 latter, 1t would have been absorbed long ago. Counter- 
 revolution might imbue Judaism with a new lease of life; 
 but counter-revolution can be nothing more than a tempo- 
 rary phenomenon. When the Jews shall have ceased to be 
 persecuted and outlawed, the Jews themselves will cease to 
 exist. 
 
 Have we any reason to deplore this prospect? 
 
 Our answer will of course depend on the point of view 
 from which we judge the matter. But it seems to me that 
 for the Jew himself the ghetto—which is the specific Jewish 
 form of life—is not a phenomenon calculated to give rise 
 to melancholy longings. And the friends of human progress 
 have far less cause than the conservative Jew to shed a 
 tear over the disappearance of Judaism. 
 
 We have seen that Judaism developed to the highest 
 point the properties of the city-dweller. ‘These are pre- 
 
 24:4 
 
THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 
 
 cisely the mental properties at present most required for 
 the progress of humanity. We find accordingly that the 
 comparatively insignificant number of Jews in Western 
 Kurope has produced an astonishingly long list of epoch- 
 making minds, the proud enumeration of which would ex- 
 tend from Baruch Spinoza to Heinrich Heine, Ferdinand 
 Lassalle, and Karl Marx. 
 
 But although the Jews developed as their culminating 
 properties such immense mental abilities, they became more 
 and more unfitted to apply the abilities they had developed. 
 Until late in the Middle Ages, the Jews, like the Catholic 
 Church, had constituted an element of progress; but— 
 again like the Catholic Church—they have since cut them- 
 selves off from progress; even more than the Catholic 
 Church, owing to the narrow limits of Judaism and its 
 strict segregation from the non-Jewish world, which had 
 begun to widen its horizon immensely after the Fifteenth 
 Century, and to pass through an era of continuous mental 
 revolutions, the Jewish community ceased to participate in 
 the work of progress. The Jews, restricted to the ghetto 
 by their orthodoxy, remained totally untouched by this 
 great transformation of the human mind; they assumed a 
 hostile position to the new philosophy. ‘The spiritual 
 giants produced by modern Judaism could bring their forces 
 into action only after they had burst the fetters of Judaism. 
 Their activities were carried on, without exception, out- 
 side of the bounds of Judaism, and within the realm of 
 modern culture, which is as little Jewish as it is Christian, 
 
 245 
 
ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 
 
 and often their activities were in complete conscious op- 
 position to Judaism—by which we mean, as it may be neces- 
 sary to point out again, not the total number of Jews, but 
 those Jews who are comprised in a specific group and as 
 such are cut off from the rest of mankind. Even the 
 pioneers of Zionism, such men as Herzl, Nordau, Zangwill, 
 make use of the so-called world languages and not of “*Yid- 
 dish”. The Jews have become an eminently revolutionary 
 factor, while Judaism has become a reactionary factor. It 
 is like a weight of lead attached to the feet of the Jews who 
 eagerly seek to progress, one of the last remnants of the 
 feudal Middle Ages, a social ghetto still maintaining its 
 existence in the consciousness, after the tangible, physical 
 ghetto has disappeared. We cannot say we have com- 
 pletely emerged from the Middle Ages as long as Judaism 
 still exists among us. The sooner it disappears, the better 
 it will be, not only for society, but also for the Jews them- 
 selves. 
 
 The disappearance of the Jews will not involve a tragic 
 process like the disappearance of the American Indians or 
 the Tasmanians. It will not be equivalent to a declining 
 into stupidity and degradation, but to a rising to greater 
 strength, to prosperity and well-being, to the opening up 
 of an immense field of activity. It will not mean a mere 
 shifting of domicile from one medieval ruin to another, 
 not a transition from orthodox Judaism to ecclesiastical 
 Christianity, but the creation of a new and higher type of 
 man. 
 
 246 
 
THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 
 
 Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, will at last have found a 
 haven of rest. He will continue to live in the memory of 
 man as man’s greatest sufferer, as he who has been dealt 
 with most severely by mankind, to whom he has given most. 
 
 247 
 
Dd 
 
 he 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Abraham, eponymic hero, 73 
 
 Adultery, 61 
 
 Afghanistan, 71 
 
 Africa, 36, 68, 91, 92, 166, 184, 
 232 
 
 Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 
 64 
 
 Agriculture, Jewish, 188-192, 194— 
 198 
 
 Ahasuerus, King, 177, 247 
 
 Alaska, 52 
 
 Alcoholism, 131-133, 226 
 
 Alexandria, 113, 186, 188, 184 
 
 Algeria, 94 
 
 America, 165, 166, 232 
 
 Ammon, Otto, 15, 16 
 
 Amorites, 220 
 
 Amsterdam, Holland, 154 
 
 Ancona sheep, 24 
 
 Andrée, Richard, 90 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, 66 
 
 Animals, see Domestic Animals, 
 Wild Animals 
 
 Antelopes, survival of, 36 
 
 Anthropology, passim 
 
 Anthropo-sociologists, 20 
 
 Anthropozoon biblicum, 71 
 
 Anti-Semitism, passim 
 
 Anti-vaccinationists, see Vacci- 
 nation 
 
 Apes, see Monkeys 
 
 Aguiline nose, see Nose 
 
 Arabia, 108, 109, 212 
 
 Arabs, the, 12, 68, 134, 140, 191, 
 206, 210, 211 
 
 Argentina, 177 
 
 Armenians, the, 73, 108 
 
 Armenoids, the, 73, 108, 109, 127 
 
 Artificial selection, 27, 28, 139 
 
 Aryans, the, 15, 66, 86, 108, 125 
 
 Ashkenazim, 191 
 
 Asia, 71-74, 82, 91, 207, 211, 212 
 
 Assyrian monuments, 27 
 
 Auerbach, physician, 101 
 
 Austria, 152, 154, 160, 172, 175, 
 footnote, 210 
 
 Australia, 71, 72 
 
 Avignon, France, 147 
 
 4 
 
 B 
 
 Babylon, ancient city, 184 
 
 Babylonia, 210, 228 
 
 Babylonian Exile, 185 
 
 Baden, German province, 15, 16 
 
 Ballod, Professor Karl, 195-198, 
 210 
 
 Barbary lion, 32 
 
 Bavaria, 92, 93, 107 
 
 Belgium, 171 
 
 Beluchistan, 71 
 
 Berlin, Germany, 99, 100, 153, 
 LIZ TT 
 
 Berliner Tageblatt, 195 
 
 Bernard, Samuel, 123 
 
 Biology, 19 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, 68 
 
 Blond type, 93, 94 
 
 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 
 64, 90 
 
 Boas, Franz, 42 
 
 Body plasm, 37, 39 
 
INDEX 
 
 Bohemia, Germans in, 146 
 
 Bohemians, 86 
 
 Bokhara, 94, 191 
 
 Bolsheviks, see Russian Revolu- 
 tion of 1917 
 
 Bordello, visits to, 147, 177 
 
 Bornhak, Konrad, 14, 15 
 
 Botany, 21 
 
 Bourgeois democracy, 157, 207 
 
 Brachycephalic, 15, 95 
 
 Brandeis, Louis Dembitz, 200 
 
 Brandenburg, province of, 172 
 
 Bronx, number of Jews, 173, 
 footnote 
 
 Brooklyn, number of Jews, 173, 
 footnote 
 
 Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 32 
 
 Breslau, Germany, 99 
 
 Brunette type, 93, 94 
 
 Budapest, Hungary, 101 
 
 Buffon, Georges Louis\Leclere, 64 
 
 Bukovina, 164 
 
 Bulgarians, 175 
 
 Burke, Robert O’Hara, 65 
 
 C 
 
 Cesar, Julius, 75 
 
 Cape lion, 32 
 
 Capitalism, 12, 77, 126, 140-143, 
 187 
 
 Caricatures of Jews, 121 
 
 Carinthia, 74 
 
 Carpathian mountains, 96, 120 
 
 Cartoons of Jews, see Caricatures 
 
 Caste, 58 
 
 Catholic Church, the, 14, 117, 189, 
 149, 150, 245 
 
 Cats, domestic, 25 
 
 Cattle-breeding, 141 
 
 Celebes, 71, 72 
 
 Celibacy, 60, 139 
 
 Celtic race, 14, 15, 66 
 
 Cephalic index, see Skull, shape 
 of 
 
 Ceylon, see Singhalese 
 
 Chamberlain, Houston Stuart, 
 123, 124, 217-226 
 
 Chest measurement, 97 
 
 Chinese, 54, 78, 1738, 183, 228 
 
 Christ Jesus, 114 
 
 Christianity, 126, 139, 147, 148, 
 245, 246 
 
 Cities, rise of, 145-147 
 
 City populations distinguished 
 from peasantry, 1380-135 
 
 Civil War, U. S. A., 70 
 
 Class stratification, 58, 60, 61 
 
 Cochin-China hens, 222, 223, 225 
 
 Coen, East Indian Governor, 122 
 
 Cohen, Israel, 164 
 
 Cohn vs. Coen, see Coen 
 
 Coiffure, 120, 121 
 
 Cologne, Germany, 146 
 
 Colonial policy, 13, 14, 122, 188- 
 192, 194-198 
 
 Commerce, Jews in, 140, 147, 167 
 
 Cook, Capt. James, 58 
 
 Copenhagen, Denmark, 155 
 
 Cotton, in Palestine, 196 
 
 Crawfurd, anthropologist, 65 
 
 Cretan civilisation, 228 
 
 Croatians, 175 
 
 Crusades, the, 12 
 
 Czechs, 175 
 
 D 
 
 Damascus, 184, 200 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 25, 26, 31, 34, 
 35, 37, 44, 45, 64, 65, 76, 237 
 
 Darwinism, 13, 31, 37 
 
 Degeneration, 226 
 
 De la Roy Licencié, 151 
 
 Democracy, see Bourgeois de- 
 mocracy 
 
INDEX 
 
 Denmark, 155, 156 
 
 Desmoulins, Charles, 64, 65 
 
 Diabetes, 101, 102 
 
 Diaspora, 184 
 
 Diseases, “Jewish,” 101-103, 226 
 
 Dolichocephalic, 15, 95 
 
 Domestic animals, 20-25, 60, 222— 
 226 
 
 Driesmans, Heinrich, 15 
 
 i 
 
 Egeberth, Jew of Cologne, 146 
 
 Egypt, 110, 112, 211, 212 
 
 Egyptian monuments, 27 
 
 Elbe, river, 120 
 
 Employment, in Palestine, 200, 
 201 
 
 Engels, Friedrich, 123 
 
 England, 86, 107, 117, 154, 157, 
 171, 173, 175, 184, 211, 212, 228 
 
 Environment, effect of, 42, 43, 
 46, 47, 49 
 
 Eskimos, 121 
 
 Esther, 177 
 
 Evolution, 18, 27, 28, 50, 76 
 
 Eyes, colour of, 40, 65, 93 
 
 F 
 
 Farmers, see Agriculture 
 
 Fecundity of the Jews, 98-100 
 
 Fellahs, 210 
 
 Fidelity of wives, 61, 118 
 
 Finns, 175 
 
 Fischer, Kuno, 139, footnote 
 
 Fishberg, Maurice, 18, 42, 90-96, 
 98, 99, 104, 127 
 
 Forster, George, 58 
 
 Foundations of Christianity, by 
 Karl Kautsky, 113-115, 117, 
 137, 138 
 
 Foundations of the Nineteenth 
 Century, see Chamberlain, 
 Houston Stuart 
 
 Fox-terriers, 225 
 
 France, 86, 99, 121-123, 154, 160, 
 171, 178, 193, 211, 214, 228 
 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main, 153 
 
 Freemasonry, 115 
 
 French, the, 175 
 
 French Revolution, 15, 151, 214 
 
 Freytag, Gustav, 105 
 
 G 
 
 Galicia, Poland, 152 
 
 Garment industries, Jews in, 167 
 
 Geology, 31 
 
 Germ plasm, 37, 39 
 
 German language, see Yiddish, 
 and Wagner, Richard 
 
 Germanic race, see Teutonic race 
 
 Germany, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 
 152-154, 160, 165, 171, 172, 175, 
 193, 196, 197, 210, 228 
 
 Ghetto, the, 117, 118, 144, 149, 
 156, 217-245, 246 
 
 Gibraltar, 72 
 
 Gobineau, Comte Joseph Arthur 
 de, 220 
 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 
 211, footnote 
 
 Gorilla, 70 
 
 Gotha, German city, 42 
 
 Grapes, in Palestine, 197 
 
 Graubiinden, 74 
 
 Great Britain, 165 
 
 Greek language, 65, 66, 68, 69, 
 113 
 
 Guttmann, Julius, 123 
 
 Guzerat lion, 32 
 
 H 
 
 Hickel, Ernst, 65, 76 
 
 Hair, color of, 40, 65, 93, 120 
 Haman, Imperial chancellor, 177 
 Hamburg, Germany, 154 
 
INDEX 
 
 Hammerstein, Wilhelm Freiherr 
 von, 124 
 
 Hard water, effect on stature, 42 
 
 Hare, survival of the, 29, 32, 35 
 
 Harem, the, 61 
 
 Hebrew language, 113, 208 
 
 Heine, Heinrich, 245 
 
 Hens, transplantation of ovaries, 
 38, 39 
 
 Hellenes, the, 223 
 
 Henry IV, German Emperor, 
 146 
 
 Hepner, L., 18 
 
 Heredity, 19, 39, 40, 59, 287 
 
 Hersch, L., 167, 168, 171, 174 
 
 Hertz, 15, 18 
 
 Herzl, Theodor, 186, 246 
 
 Hindus, the, 68 
 
 Hirsch, Baron, 188 
 
 Hittites, the, 73, 220 
 
 Holland, 122, 151, 175 
 
 Homo alpinus, 130 
 
 Hottentots, the, 231 
 
 Houzé, Dr. E., 66 
 
 Hungarians, 86 
 
 Hungary, 96, 152, 164, 184 
 
 Hunter, anthropologist, 64 
 
 I 
 
 Illegitimacy, see Legitimacy 
 
 Illiteracy, 174, 175 
 
 Immigration, 42, 91, 171, 174, 175, 
 203, 205 
 
 Inbreeding, 61, 226 
 
 India, 166, 232 
 
 Indians, American, %3, 85, 92, 
 246 
 
 Indo-Europeans, see Aryans 
 
 Indo-Germanic race, 185 
 
 Intellectuals, overproduction of, 
 
 160 
 Intermarriage, 153-156 
 
 252 
 
 Irishmen, 173, 175 
 
 Isaac, son of promise, 110 
 
 Italy, 86, 94, 102, 154, 156, 166, 
 173, 175, 228 
 
 J 
 
 Jacquinot, anthropologist, 64 
 Jaffa, 191, 192, 204 
 Jamaica, island of, 234, 235 
 Java, 32 
 
 Japanese, the, 69, 82, 183 
 Jeanne I, Queen of France, 147 
 Jerusalem, 184, 204 
 
 Jesus Christ, 114 
 
 Jewry, passim 
 
 Jews, the, passim 
 
 Joseph’s marriage, lil 
 Judah’s marriage, 111 
 Judaism, passim 
 
 Julius Cesar, 75 
 
 K 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 64, 76 
 
 Kaplun-Kogan, W. W., 164, 167, 
 footnote 
 
 Kautsky, Karl, 18, 113-115, 117, 
 1387, 1388, 207 
 
 Keltic race, see Celtic race 
 
 Kentucky, 42 - 
 
 Kishineff massacre, 130, foot- 
 note 
 
 Kobelt, Wilhelm, 31 
 
 Kreuzzeitung, Berlin daily, 124 
 
 Kropina, 72 
 
 L 
 
 Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre, 
 34 
 
 Language a criterion of race, 
 65-67, 103-108, 150 
 
INDEX 
 
 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 245 
 
 Law, John, 122 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 140, 147 
 
 Legal disabilities, 118, 147 
 
 Legitimate offspring, 60, 231 
 
 Liberalism, 157, 167, 240 
 
 Limousin draught horses, 222 
 
 Lions, classification of, 32, 36 
 
 Lithuania, 96 
 
 Lithuanians, 175 
 
 Lodz, Poland, 173 
 
 London, England, 173, 177, 241 
 
 Louis XIV, King of France, 123 
 
 Louis XV, King of France, 123 
 
 Low German language, 66 
 
 Luschan, Felix von, 68-75, 92, 
 227-229 
 
 M 
 
 Magyars, 175 
 
 Maimon, Salomon, 139 
 
 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 35 
 
 Manchuria, 68 
 
 Manhattan, number of Jews, 173, 
 footnote 
 
 Marriages, Jewish, 139 
 
 Marx, Karl, 79, 128, 142, 245 
 
 Mauchamp sheep, 24 
 
 Maurer, Georg L. von, 146 
 
 Mauscheln, 104 
 
 Medicine, Jews in, 138, 140, 148 
 
 Menstruation, 97 
 
 Merchants, Jews as, 133-137 
 
 Mesopotamia, 109, 112, 212 
 
 Meyer, Eduard, 87, 109 
 
 Milieu, effect of, see Environ- 
 ment 
 
 Mimicry, 29 
 
 Mongolians, 43, 81 
 
 Monkeys, 45, 46 
 
 Moors, the, 140 
 
 Mordecai, 177 
 
 253 
 
 Morocco, 237 
 
 Mortality statistics, 100, 101 
 Morton, Samuel George, 65 
 Moustier, 72 
 
 Munich, Bavaria, 107 
 Music, Jews in, 104-106 
 
 N 
 
 Natural selection, 15, 26, 223 
 
 Nawratzki, C., 164, 188-192 
 
 Neandertal, 72, 74 
 
 Negroes, 43, 54, 66, 68, 70, 75, 
 16,) 84, 85, 87; 121, 7188; 234, 
 235 
 
 New York City, 42, 91, 173, 177, 
 208, 209, 241 
 
 Nomadic communities, 54, 58, 59 
 
 Nordau, Max, 181, 246 
 
 Nordics, 14 
 
 Nose, shape of, 91-98, 120, 125 
 
 O 
 
 Odessa, Russia, 191 
 
 Olivier, Sidney, 234, 235 
 
 Orang, 70 
 
 Origin of Species, 30, 31, 34, 35, 
 45, 237 
 
 Osterlen, statistician, 231 
 
 Ottinger, Jakob, 195-199 
 
 Ovaries, hens’, transplanted, 38, 
 39 
 
 EB 
 
 Palestine, 108-113, 186, 184, 187, 
 190, 191, 193, 194-207, 209-218 
 
 Pajes (side-curls), 120, 121 
 
 Paris we rance, biogses ¢ 
 
 Pathology, a race criterion, 101- 
 103 
 
 Peasants, effects of city life on, 
 131-133 
 
 Persian lion, 32 
 
 Petty bourgeoisie, 158-160 
 
INDEX 
 
 Pharisees, 114 
 
 Philippson, Professor, 195 
 
 Physicians consulted by Jews, 
 133, 134 
 
 Physiology, 97 
 
 Pickering, Charles, 64 
 
 Pigeons, breeding of, 25 
 
 Plasm, see Germ plasm, Body 
 plasm 
 
 Plattdeutsch, 107 
 
 Pliocene period, 31 
 
 Pogroms, 201 
 
 Posen, Prussian province, 172 
 
 Poland, 96, 139, 163, 164, 165, 
 166, 172, 184, 200 
 
 Poles, the, 86, 103, 173, 175 
 
 Polynesia, 58 
 
 Pomeranians, 121, 172 
 
 Portugal, 148, 151 
 
 Portuguese, the, 68, 175 
 
 Posture, a race criterion, 97 
 
 Poznanya, see Posen 
 
 Prognathism, 70 
 
 Proletariat, passim 
 
 Propaganda, Jewish, 
 117 
 
 Proselytism, Jewish, 113-115 
 
 Proteus sanguineus, 69 
 
 Protonigritic group, 72, 73 
 
 Prussia, 99, 153, 172 
 
 Purity, racial, 60, 61, 90, 103, 
 118, 127, 128, 220-224, 238 
 
 Pygmies, 72 
 
 113-115, 
 
 Q 
 
 Queens, borough of, number of 
 Jews, 173, footnote 
 
 R 
 
 Rabbits, 25 
 Rams, breeding of, 24 
 
 254 
 
 Ratzel, Friedrich, 56-58, 79, 80, 
 232, 233 
 
 Ravesteijn, W. v., 122 
 
 Rechobosh, Jewish colony, 191 
 
 Renaissance, 166, 228 
 
 Rhinoceros, 32 
 
 Richmond, borough of, number 
 of Jews, 173, footnote 
 
 Ridgeway, William, 41 
 
 Ripley, anthropologist, 96 
 
 Ritual murder, 108 
 
 Rohlfs, Gerhart, 103 
 
 Roman empire, 117 
 
 Romance races, 86 
 
 Rome, 184 
 
 Rose, German anthropologist, 42 
 
 Rothschild, Baron, 188 
 
 Rubinow, I. M., 164, 169, foot- 
 note 
 
 Riidiger, Bishop of Speyer, 145, 
 146 
 
 Rumania, 96, 98 
 
 Rumanians, 175, 184 
 
 Ruppin, Artur, 171, 201 
 
 Russia, 82, 86, 92, 96, 102, 103, 
 152, 157, 158, 164, 165, 166, 169, 
 172, 174, 175, 182, 188, 189, 
 190, 228, 240, 241 
 
 Russian Revolution of 1905, 180, 
 181 
 
 Russian Revolution of 1917, 180, 
 214, 215, 241 
 
 Ruthenians, 173, 175 
 
 S 
 
 Safed, Palestine, 200 
 
 Saint-Hilaire, Isidore Geoffroy, 
 35 
 
 Saint Vincent, Bory, 64 
 
 Saloniki, 164 
 
 Saxon dialect of German, 105, 
 106 
 
INDEX 
 
 Scandinavians, 175, see also Den- 
 mark 
 
 Scheherban, Sultan, 61 
 
 Schiller, Friedrich, 230, footnote 
 
 Schmock, 105, footnote 
 
 Schénlank, German journalist, 
 124 
 
 Schonthan, Franz von, 105, fooé- 
 note 
 
 Schénthan, Paul von, 105, foof- 
 note 
 
 Schwarzwald, the, 16 
 
 Science, respect for, 138, 139 
 
 Self-determination of nations, 
 207, 208 
 
 Self-preservation, 22 
 
 Semites, passim 
 
 Semitic race, passim 
 
 Senegal lion, 32 
 
 Serbs, 175 
 
 Siegfried, Wagnerian hero, 105 
 
 Singhalese, the, 69, 70, 71, 72 
 
 Skin pigment, 40, 58, 65, 93 
 
 Skull, shape of, 40, 42, 94-96 
 
 Slavery, 84, 85 
 
 Slavs, the, 12, 86, 183, 228 
 
 Slovaks, 175 
 
 Slovenes, 175 
 
 Sociology, 19 
 
 Sombart, Werner, 80, 81, 108, 121- 
 123, 124, 141-143, 155, 161-163, 
 192 
 
 Spain, 148, 151 
 
 Spaniards, 175 
 
 Species, of animals, 23, 24 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 38 
 
 Speyer, Germany, 145, 146 
 
 Spiers, see Speyer 
 
 Spinoza, Baruch, 245 
 
 Spy, geographical name, 72 
 
 Stade, historian, 110, 111 
 
 Stags and does, 30 
 
 Staten Island, see Richmond 
 
 Striese, Direktor, 105, footnote 
 
 255 
 
 Struggle for existence, 26, 37 
 Swabian dialect of Germany, 107 
 Syphilis, 147, 226 
 
 Syria, 112, 210, 212 
 
 fh 
 
 Tacitus, 75 
 
 Talmudic learning, 139, 166 
 
 Tasmanians, the, 246 
 
 Teeth, deterioration of, 49, 78 
 
 Tel Aviv, Palestine, 202, 204 
 
 Telluric factors, 55 
 
 Tertiary period, 31 
 
 Teutonic Knights, order of, 60 
 
 Teutonic race, 14-17, 75, 86, 126, 
 133, 139 
 
 Teutons, see Teutonic race 
 
 Theilhaber, Felix, 99, 100 
 
 Toala of Celebes, 71 
 
 Trade, Jews in, see Commerce 
 
 Trieksch, 164, 165 
 
 Triesch, Davis, 197 
 
 Trieste, Italy, 154, 155 
 
 Tschulok, Dr. S., 88, 39 
 
 Tsushima, battle of, 69 
 
 Tuberculosis, see Diseases 
 
 Turkey, 163, 164, 165, 187, 210 
 
 Turks, the, 12, 211 
 
 Tyrol, the, 74 
 
 Ly 
 
 Ulotriches, the, 76 
 
 Unemployment, see Employment 
 
 United States of America, 70, 
 15, 16, 85, 154, 1738-175, 179, 
 182, 183, 196 
 
 Universities, Jewish professors 
 in German, 161, 162 
 
 Urban traits are Jewish traits, 
 130 
 
 Usury, 147 
 
INDEX 
 
 V 
 
 Vaccination, 102, 103 
 
 Varana rhinoceros, 32 
 
 Variation under domestication, 
 25 
 
 Varieties, of animals, 44, 46 
 
 Veddas of Ceylon, 71 
 
 Vienna, Austria, 172, 176, 205 
 
 Vilna, Russia, 237 
 
 Violations of women, 118 
 
 Virchow, Rudolf, 222 
 
 Virey, anthropologist, 64 
 
 Vital statistics, 125, see also 
 Mortality 
 
 Vocational traits, 59, 126, 127 
 
 Vorwdrts, Berlin daily, 124 
 
 WwW 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 104-106, 220 
 
 Wandering Jew, the, 247 
 
 War, behaviour of Jews in, 193, 
 194 
 
 Warsaw, Poland, 172 
 
 Waterkant, Germany, 66 
 
 Weismann, August, 37, 39 
 
 Wheat, in Palestine, 196 
 
 Wild animals, 25-43 
 
 Wilderness, Sombart’s theory of 
 the, see Sombart, Werner 
 
 Wool, animals producing, 24 
 
 Wiirttemberg, 107 
 
 we 
 
 Yemen (Arabia), 190, 237 
 
 Yemenites, 189, 190 
 
 Yiddish, 104-106, 108, 165, 169, 
 footnote, 208, 210, 211, 241, 246 
 
 Z 
 
 Zangwill, Israel, 246 
 
 Zion, 185 
 
 Zionism, passim 
 
 Zollschan, Ignaz, 146, 151, 152, 
 154-156, 217-221, 226, 229, 236 
 
 Zoology, 21 
 

 

 
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