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ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
No. XXVII.
OCTOBER, 1869.
THE ARYANAND THE SEMITE.
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By jºwicksos, ESQ, F.A.S.L.
IN a previous paper we have endeavoured to define the relation of
the great Turanian family to the Aryan branch of the Caucasian race.
We now purpose attempting something of the same kind in reference
to the Semites, whose historic antecedents and racial specialities were
till recently, but imperfectly understood either by scholars or anthro-
pologists. The truth is, the Semite has been underestimated by his
Aryan rivals. Intimately known to us, only through the Hebrews,
we have largely ignored the learning of Egypt and the imperial
splendour of Assyria; while Phoenician commerce, Carthaginian power,
and Saracenic conquest have been unduly relegated into the back-
ground of history, to make way for the well-deserved prominence
universally accorded to the annals of Grecian culture and Roman
greatness. Till quite recently, this was unavoidable. The scholarship of
Europe was, and to a large extent still is, purely classic. This, of course,
implies that we have been accustomed to regard the ancient peoples
of the East through Hellenic spectacles, a very doubtful procedure,
if our object be, not the confirmation of our prejudices, but their
Supercession by the truth. The days of this one-sided pedantry are
now, however, numbered. Archaeology, and the study of Oriental
languages, have somewhat enlarged our ideas. We now know not
only that there were colossal empires before that of Rome, but also
a civilisation anterior to that of Hellas. Babylon and Nineveh, Thebes
and Memphis, have become somewhat more than faint echoes and
vague traditions. We now know that there was a great cycle of what
is perhaps not inaptly termed monumental civilisation, whereof the
written records have utterly perished, and which is, nevertheless,
being slowly rehabilitated by the investigation of its ruins and the
interpretation of its inscriptions. The importance of such archæo-
logical studies cannot well be overestimated. We have thus revealed
WOL. VII. —NO, XXVII. A A
334 ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
to us the history of a great family of man, whose annals seemed to
have irretrievably perished, or at best been preserved for us only in
the fragmentary form of incidental notices in the prejudiced chronicles
of their enemies or successors.
In truth, the greatest wars which history narrates as having occurred
within the Caucasian area, were those between the Semites and Aryans.
To say nothing of the obviously Persian physiognomies still preserved
on the walls of the royal tombs in the Thebaid, indicative of prehistoric
relations, pacific and militant, between the eastern Aryans and the
early dwellers in the land of Misraim, we find at the dawn of written
history, the great fact of Babylonian subsidence beneath Persian su-
premacy, when the sceptre of western Asia passed from Semitic to
Aryan hands. Then we have the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses,
whereby the entire area of Semitic civilisation was rendered subject
to Persian supremacy. And while these events were being trans-
acted, we read of the gradual rise of Carthaginian power, obviously
produced by the transference of Semitic wealth and population west-
wards, probably to escape the more immediate pressure of Aryan con-
quest in the hither east. And thus, once more, the Semite struggled
with the Aryan for the Supremacy of civilisation, and, under Hannibal,
almost achieved it. Do we yet understand the full significance of
Egyptian and Carthaginian power, those mighty colonial extensions
of Asian civilisation over an African area º Have we duly pondered
their racial import, and the evidence they afford that Africa is the ap-
panage of Asia, as America is of Europe?
But it must not be supposed that this great racial conflict ter-
minated with the fall of Carthage. It was renewed on a still grander
scale at the Crusades, when the Aryan Christians of the West threw
themselves on the Saracenic Mohammedans of the East. It also re-
appeared at the Moorish invasion of Spain and the Arabian conquest
of India. Using the Seljucks and Osmanlies—that is, the western
Turanians—as its instruments, the Semitic faith of the crescent car-
ried these barbarian converts to the Supremacy of western Asia, and
ultimately to the conquest of Constantinople. With such antecedents,
extending over fully three thousand years, and in a sense antedating
history, we may be quite sure that this great racial conflict has not
yet terminated,—in truth it has scarcely paused. The conquest of
India by the English, and that terrible mutiny, which was intended
to restore the effete descendant of the Great Mogul to the imperial
throne of his illustrious ancestors, were but the later incidents of
its continuation; while the inevitable decline of Turkey, and the
insatiable ambition of Russia, may suffice to show that the materials
for its renewal are by no means wanting.
i
***º
*
JACKSON ON THE ARYAN AND THE SEMITE. 335
In truth, if the Semite represent the man of the South, with his
moral exaltation and his theological mission, and the Aryan, in contra-
distinction, represent the man of the North, with his intellectual ex-
pansion and his consequent aptitude for literature, science, and art ;
then, as the racial embodiments respectively of faith and reason, they
present the bipolar aspect of man's Superior mature, whose harmony
is the effect and expression of well-balanced antagonism. In a sense,
their rivalry is eternal, because it is elemental. Their opposition can
never cease; for it is rooted in nature, and is simply a manifestation;
of that unresting interaction which characterises all her forms. -
If the foregoing view be correct, then we shall find Aryan and Se-
mite on the moral as well as the physical battlefield, the one being
the complement as well as the antagonist of the other. This may be
Succinctly summed up by saying that philosophy is the vocation of
the Aryan, and religion the mission of the Semite. Such a statement,
however, requires some detailed illustration for its confirmation. Let
us, then, interrogate history, and listem to its response.
The three great religions of existing Caucasian man are Judaism,
Christianity, and the faith of Islam, all of Semitic origin ; while, on
the other hand, our science, literature, and art are mostly of Aryan
lineage. So strongly pronounced, indeed, are these racial proclivities
that the religion of the Aryan ever tends to assume the form of a
philosophic Pantheism, eventuating in a deification and worship of
mature, as among the ancient Hindoos and modern Europeans; while,
conversely, the science of the Semite is ever prone to sink into a
superstition, as in the astrology of the Chaldeans and the alchemy of
the Saracens. This is only saying in other words that, influenced by
his predominant moral principles, the Semite believes and worships,
where the Aryan, guided by his preponderating intellectual faculties,
investigates facts and deduces conclusions. Hence to define them,
we may say that the one is a priest and the other a philosopher; that
the former spiritualises and elevates humanity, while the latter en-
lightens and expands it. Both are necessary; the one to correct the
excesses and extravagancies of the other; for left to their own un-
limited tendencies, the Semite degenerates into an exclusive bigot,
and the Aryan sinks into a utilitarian materialist.
These general statements, however, are by no means sufficient, and
have, indeed, been put forward simply as a convenient summary of
the question, into whose minuter details we now propose to enter.
And, firstly, let us ask, what is the Caucasian, whereof Aryan and
Semite are but the two great subdivisions' And we reply, that he is
preeminently the man of civilisation. All pure Savages incline either
to the Negroid or the Turanian type; they do so from the absence of
A A 2
336 ANTHROPOLOGICAL IREVIEW.
adequate nervous force for their effective development into the truly
human form. This is not the utterance of prejudice, but the simple
statement of a fact. The coarser types are differenced from the finer
by their inferiority, that is, by the comparative weakness of the
moral and intellectual elements, and the preponderating power of the
passional and impulsive. This is clearly indicated, to a properly qua-
lified observer, in their physical organisation. In the Negroid type,
the brain lacks volume ; the nervous system is not adequately Cen-
tralised: and this brain, thus deficient in quantity, is equally wanting
in quality. The rude mould of the features, where all the indica-
tions of intelligence are weak, while those which imply sensuality
are large, – the rudimentary character of the hands, - the semi-
quadrumamous structure of the feet, and the generally unfinished
build of the whole body, to say nothing of the porous skin and its
woolly envelope, are ample and undeniable evidence of the exceed-
ingly coarse quality of the Negroid family. And this brain, thus de-
ficient both in quantity and quality, is also equally wanting in form.
The cranium is compressed laterally and retreats anteriorly, indicat-
ing an utter incapacity either for breadth of view or depth of thought.
But it is elevated coronally and developed posteriorly, showing that
here, in this rootman of the South, we have the invaluable germs of
moral sentiment and domestic affection.
Diametrically opposed to this, as if formed under transverse influ-
ences, we have the broad-built Turanian, in whom, however, with
Somewhat more of the human, there is still much of the animal ele-
ment. He has, in excess, that which is wanting in his Negroid
brother—breadth. His volume of brain is enormous, though its qua-
lity is coarse and its form rude. He has attained to a higher grade
of centralisation, and we have reason to believe, therefore, of spe-
cialisation, than the primitive man of the South. His deficiency is
in altitude. He lacks the higher moral sentiments, and the creative
portion of the intellectual faculties. But he has practical power and
executant ability of a high order. In other words, he has force, but
is Wanting in susceptibility to the higher motives for its noblest ex-
ercise. As an instrument in the hands of a superior race, he may
prove invaluable ; but as a leader and pioneer of humanity, he is
fatally deficient.
What then is the Savage? and we reply, that he is man on the
plane of nature, adapted—by the limitation of his faculties and the
bluntness of his susceptibilities—to the only social and physical life
possible in the wilderness and the forest, at the dawn of human ex-
istence on earth. Any higher type would have been out of harmony
with the circumstances; for it would have implied wants that could
JACKSON ON TE:[E ARYAN AND THE SEMITE. 337
not be satisfied, and capabilities that could not be used, to say nothing
of aspirations existing only to be blighted, and sensibilities developed
only to be wounded. Beings so limited in opportunity needed to be
proportionately circumscribed in endowment, otherwise “the etermal
fitness of things” would have been cruelly violated. But such mental
deficiencies, when characteristic of a race, are of necessity reflected in
their organisation; that is, in the volume and contour of the brain,_
in the form of the features,--in the expression of the face,—in the
build of the body, and in the fashion of its extremities. And thus,
then, it is that we have the savage, precisely as we have the lion and
the eagle, the jackall and the vulture, we have him as an organic
adaptation to a certain environment with which he is in harmony, be-
cause, as the advocates of development would say, he was its product.
Now, that this primitive Savage always inclines either to the Negroid
or the Turanian type, is a fact of no slight significance in the
Science of man, and one to which, therefore, we may again have oc-
casion to refer.
And now, perhaps, the reader will begin to understand the truth
and force of our assertion,--that the Caucasian is emphatically the
man of civilisation, as contradistinguished from the Savage. What,
them, is this Caucasian'ſ And we reply, the highest type to which
man has yet attained. He presents us with that form of humanity
in which cerebration and respiration are most powerful in proportion
to alimentation and reproduction. He is the most effectually de-
veloped type of man, the one in whom the functions, that are spe-
cially human, are the most powerful in proportion to those which are
also bestial. This, of course, implies an organic structure, adapted
as an instrument for the efficient discharge of these higher duties.
And accordingly we find that his brain is equal in volume to that of
the Turanian, while it is superior in form and finer in quality; thus
conducing, through intensity and activity, not only to greater mental
power, but also to power of a higher order. His thoughts are more
logically concatemated, and his conceptions are more beautiful and
artistic. His special superiority to the Turanian is, however, in the
moral sentiments. He is better developed coronally ; and hence, is
more amenable to the influence of “faith, hope, and charity,” and, we
may add, justice. Thus, in a sense, it may be said that he unites the
excellencies of the two inferior races without the defects of either.
He has the breadth of the Turanian without his coarseness, and the
altitude of the Negro without his marrowness, while in temperament
he immeasurably transcends them both. Of course, with such a
brain, so powerful in structure, so fine in quality, so complex in its
convolutions, and so intense in its functions, there must be a face to
338 ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
correspond; that is, with features distinctly marked and delicately
chiselled, and susceptible, in duly cultured individualities, of all the
varying shades of intellectual expression and spiritual emotion. For
the same reason, that is, by the law of correspondence,—or, in other
words, the harmonic relation of the several parts of every normally
constituted organism to each other, the extremities are perfectly
finished and thoroughly specialised, the hand being solely prehensile,
the foot simply locomotive in ordinary function, while the thoracic
thoroughly dominate the abdominal viscera. It need scarcely be said
to any competent observer, that this is rather the ideal to which the
average existing Caucasian tends, than the real, to which, in the ma-
jority of instances, he has actually attained.
And now, them, we are perhaps somewhat better prepared to esti-
mate, at its proper value, the absurd talk which we sometimes hear
about “our savage ancestors”! meaning, of course, thereby, “the an-
cient Britons”, or in anthropological terms, the Celts of western Eu-
rope. We have swept the world from the equator almost to the pole,
and we have circumnavigated it, and yet we have never discovered a
race of Savages of even approximately Caucasian type. In truth, the
thing is impossible. A Caucasian is a being with aptitudes and sus-
ceptibilities adapted to the requirements, and needing the conve-
niencies of civilisation, and so, save in a few exceptional instances, ill
at ease amidst the rudeness and privations of Savagism. This is only
saying, in other words, that as the Savage is suited to his environment,
so the civilised man is suited to his environment, “the fitness of
things” demanding the one as well as the other.
But this high-caste Caucasian, this man of civilisation, is organic-
ally, lingually, and theologically, divisible into two well-marked
families, Aryans and Semites, or Indo-Europeans and Arabians; the
former especially located in Europe, and the latter in Asia, although
the first are the predominant population of Persia and India, and the
last extend throughout all northern Africa. It may thus be said that
the Caucasian occupies the temperate Zone of the world from India.
to Britain, with the Negroid races to the south, and the Turanian to
the north, the Semites, resting on and through Moors, Tuaricks,
Nubians, and Abyssinians, gradually shading off into the former ;
while the Aryans rest on and through Slavons, Muscovites, and Cos-
sacks, gradually shade off into the latter. Thus, whether we regard
their geographical position, their mental constitution, or their organic
specialities, we shall find that the Semites are allied, as flower and
root, to the Negroid type of the south, and the Aryans to the Tura-
nian type of the north. These leading facts, even thus succinctly
stated, without their corroborative details and accessories, are, to say
JACKSON ON TEIE ARY AN AND THE SEMITE. 339
the least of it, eminently suggestive. They suffice to show us how
little we yet know, how far we are from a satisfactory solution of the
great race problems, and consequently, how much yet remains to be
done, whether in the accumulation of facts, or the deduction of
Conclusions.
Foremost among the theories which have been propounded to account
for the present location and distribution of these races, is that which at-
tributes an eastern origin to the Aryans, and accounts for their presence
in Europe, by the successive waves of an overwhelming and all-
absorbing emigration from their Asian seats, in ages which, though
decidedly prehistoric, are still within the range of reliable tradition.
It need scarcely be said that this is only part of a larger whole,_the
Somewhat mythical hypothesis which regards Asia as the primal seat
of man and the cradle of civilisation, and which consequently pre-
dicates the unity, if it does not imply the aboriginally high-caste or-
ganisation of humanity. Now, in previous papers, we have shown
that this Orientalism of tradition is probably due to the undoubted fact,
that civilisation and empire have been moving north-westwards during
the historic period, and, of course, carrying with them traditions cal-
culated to aggrandise Asia at the expense of Europe. While there
are not wanting very important data, derived from archaeology, mytho-
logy, comparative anthropology, and philology, which seem to indi-
cate the probability of a previous movement in an exactly opposite
direction; namely, South-eastwards, and of which the existing colo-
nial effects are seen in the presence of European-speaking peoples in
Persia and India, whereof the latter are avowedly immigrant con-
querors from the north-west.
Let us examine this eastern Aryan hypothesis somewhat more in
detail. And, firstly, what are the facts in relation to it! We find an
Aryan-speaking population of predominantly Caucasian, though par-
tially Turanian type, inhabiting the whole of Europe, with the ex-
ception of the apparently aboriginal Finns and Lapps in the north,
and the Biscayans in the south, together with the comparatively
recent and historically immigrant Huns and Turks in the east. Eu-
rope is them, undoubtedly, at present an important province of the
great Aryan area ; in truth, numerically, politically, and intellectually
the most important : and not only so, but we find that its several
languages are radically and grammatically, in terminology and struc-
ture, of Aryan type, their oldest extinct forms and their existing
peasant dialects being those in which their congruity with the San-
scrit and Zend are most apparent. With the exception of the Bis-
cayan geographical names in Spain, the south of France and Italy,
there is nothing to indicate that the Aryans of Europe are intrusive
340 ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
immigrants, as they undoubtedly are in India, but rather aborigines,
as far as such a phrase is applicable to any type not absolutely
Savage. But it is quite otherwise with the Hindoos and Persians.
They are on every side surrounded and closely pressed upon by alien
populations of Semitic or Turanian lineage. Their true area is very
limited, for India is undoubtedly Turanian ; while much of (political)
Persia is now in possession of the Tartars, as large portions of it
were once in the possession of the Semitic Assyrians. In truth, when
we reflect on the wide diffusion of the Arabs (proper), and on the
early rise and extended sway of the Semitic empires that arose on the
Tigris and Euphrates, we cannot but pause ere accepting the utterly
improbable hypothesis of Aryan origination in the neighbourhood of
Balk, and the diffusion thence of this geographically and lingually
isolated type over the entire area of Europe. So far, indeed, from
the racial relationships and more immediate surroundings of the
eastern Aryans being indicative of their aboriginality, they are strongly
suggestive of the hypothesis that they were intrusive immigrants of,
probably, European lineage, and whose primal home was rather on
the Elbe and the Vistula than the Jaxartes. The truth, indeed, is,
that the Aryan patriarchs who celebrated their simple sacrifices to
the Sacred chant of the Vedic hymns, were isolated strangers, main-
taining themselves only by the utmost efforts against the incessant
attacks of alien races. Whenever, indeed, we come in direct contact
with primitive Aryan life in the East, we find it to be one of deadly
conflict, not with lingually and racially allied peoples, but with re-
ligiously hostile and barbarian strangers, whose destruction was a
duty due alike to God and man.
But it was quite otherwise with the Semites. The Syrian and As-
Syrian were simply the civilised extensions and outposts of the Arab,
that magnificent aborigine of the Southern wilderness, never Savage,
though always simple, and who, in his immate grandeur and external
barbarism may, beyond all others, be regarded as the Caucasian patri-
arch ; so that if compelled to admit the unity of the type, we should,
without hesitation, say here is the root. Without a break, the Semite
stretches away into the deserts of Arabia, and, we may say, the wilds
of Africa. If not absolutely at home on the Euphrates and the
Tigris, he was, at least, on the border-land; and his aboriginal rivals
here, we suspect, were not Aryans, whether from the East or West,
but Turanians from the North. These, we know, are very heretical
opinions, and we should not venture to entertain them save on the
apparent authority of facts, that seem to compel a dissent from esta-
blished anthropological, or rather, philological opinion on this subject.
This comparatively isolated and alien position of the eastern Aryans,
JACKSON ON TEIE ARYAN AND THE SEMITE. 341
not surrounded by nations gradually shading off in language and
structure towards other and ruder types, but sharply divided by
lingual and typal demarcations, amounting to decided contrast from
all their neighbours, is a fact that has never been duly pondered by
the advocates of their Oriental origin. And not only is the area
which they occupy thus isolated, it is also limited in extent; thus
affording additional evidence that the presence of the Aryan in Asia
is exceptional. While, in combination with this, is the very important
and highly suggestive fact, that the languages of the eastern Aryans
are all essentially of one, and even nominally, but of two families;
namely, the Indic and Iranic, whose subdivision is almost a matter
of history. Now, in contrast with this, we have the western Aryans
occupying almost the entire expanse of Europe, as if it were their
own proper territory, their true ethnic area, a conclusion confirmed
by their manifold lingual divisions and subdivisions, indicative of the
fact that they had here both time and opportunity, not only for geo-
graphical expansion, but also diversity of development. From the
Celtic to the Teutonic, from the Italic and Hellenic to the Wendic, we
have a lingual range to which the Aryan peoples of Asia can furnish
nothing parallel,-Sanscrit and Zend, with their derivatives, being
little other than the counterparts of the Hellenic and Italic, with
theirs.
And if we do not gravely err, physical anthropology confirms this
view of Europe, rather than Asia, being the native habitat, the
aboriginal seat of the Aryan. It may now be regarded as an esta-
blished principle in anthropological investigations, that every race
thrives best, and attains to its highest and most vigorous type, mental
and physical, on its own proper area, there being always something
of the weakness of a forceling and exotic in an immigrant population.
Now, we suppose it is almost unnecessary to say that, physically, the
Aryan of Europe is, and—to the remotest verge of history—always
has been, the perfection of his type, whether we regard strength,
stature, beauty, or longevity. While contemplated morally and in-
tellectually, it is on this area that he has built up his greatest and
most enduring empires,--it is here that he has attained to his highest
and most diversified phases of civilisation ; and it is here alone that,
after the lapse of so many centuries of Supposed colonial residence,
he manifests that unexhausted vigour both of body and mind, which
renders him, whether as conqueror and colonist, or as guide and ex-
ample, the hope of the world. Now, what has the eastern Aryan to
show in the way of parallel or rivalry to this? As the conqueror of
India, he is hopelessly effete ; as a Persian, he is comparatively weak
and demoralised, existing upon the sufferance of Russia, and not yet
342 e ANTEHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
quite free from the shadow of Old Tartarean subjugation. In truth, it
is only as a Kurd and an Affghan—where his mountain altitudes enable
him to enjoy aleuropean temperature, and breathean atmosphere almost
as invigorating as that of the peninsular West—that he has preserved
either the physical or mental vigour, the courage or the enterprise, of
his European ancestors and congeners, and even of these two divisions
we have yet to learn how far the former is free from Turanian, and
the latter from Semitic, admixture.
But perhaps it will be said that this argument proves too much ;
for if it be worth anything, it will equally tend to show that the
Semites are also aliens in Asia, and thus leave this vast continent as
the appanage proper of the Turanians only. And if by Asia be meant
only that part of the Old World which lies east of the Uralian
mountains, the Caspian sea, the great valley of Mesopotamia, and the
Persian Gulf, there is, perhaps, a certain measure of truth in this
assertion. But if we include Western Asia and Arabia, the supposed
parallel between the eastern Aryans and the Semites no longer holds
good; for some of the greatest empires of the latter, from the As-
syrian to the Saracenic, were on this area, which, moreover, as the
source of the faith of Islam, is still the seat of a quasi theological
supremacy. It was also on this area that Judaism flourished and
Christianity originated ; and here, also, that the world-renowned
commerce of Tyre and Sidon was developed. No doubt, Egypt and
Carthage may be readily quoted as illustrious instances of extra-Asian
Semitic power and culture. But not to mention the obviously Asian
character of the former, and the known fact that the latter was but
a colonial settlement of Phoenician enterprise, it can never be said
of these two states that they and their people were to Africa what
the Aryans are to Europe; for the especially African man is not the
Caucasian Moor to the north, but the Negro to the south of the Sahara.
While admitting, then, that the Semite occupies but a comparatively
insignificant section of the geographical area of Asia, and that nu-
merically he was, even at his maximum, vastly inferior to the Turanian;
we must yet assert that, as an Asian man, he occupies a very superior
position to the Aryan, and One, we may add, far more clearly indi-
cative of an aboriginal connexion with the eastern continent.
Not that we are at all disposed to despise or underestimate the
African Semite, who, as an Egyptian, seems to have led the way to
monumental civilisation ; and as a Carthaginian, proved a not un-
worthy rival of the most imperial type of the European Aryan yet
developed. But in both instances, this development of civilisation
and power on an African area was so exceptional, whether as regards
historic antecedents or geographical Surroundings, that in neither case
JACKSON | ON THE ARY AN AND TEIE , SEMITE. 3.43
can it be regarded as an analogue of the great eastern empires, or of
the intellectual culture and political power of either classic or modern
Europe. Northern Africa, indeed, although beyond all question an
integral portion of the Semitic area, and, in a certain sense, the re-
mote root-ground of the race, where its rudest, most muscular, and
most Osseous types are still found, is yet apparently by no means
favourable to a high development of civilisation, independently of
extraneous aid. The Moor, the Berber, and the Tuarick, are still at
the barbarian stage, despite Egyptian learning and Carthaginian
trade, and notwithstanding the proximity of Asiatic, and the example
of European civilisation, and the consequent influence and training,
to which immediately or remotely, they have been so long subjected.
This is assuredly adequate proof that they have no native aptitude
for refined culture, and do not occupy the highest portion of their
own ethnic area, which must consequently be placed in Asia, and
even on the most liberal interpretation, may be said to extend from
the Nile to the Euphrates, rather than from the former to the Pillars
of Hercules. We have entered into this somewhat wearisome state-
ment of facts, and rather lengthened exposition of the argument, be-
cause it is of some importance to anthropological Science that the
great question should be settled, whether the Semite is to be regarded
as preeminently the Asian type of the Caucasian man, or whether he
is to share this in common with his Aryan rival!
But there is another and perhaps a broader view of the relation of
the Semite to the Aryan, to which allusion has been already made ;
that which contemplates the former as the Caucasian man of the
south, the flower of a Negroid root ; and the latter as the Caucasian
man of the north, equally the flower of a Turanian root. But even
thus contemplated, it must be admitted that the especial seat of the
Aryan is in the north-west, and not in the south-east. While in con-
nexion with, and corroborative of this, it is observable that the more
salient features of his character, his ethnic specialities, attain to their
maximum of development and manifestation only on an European area.
As a conclusion to this branch of the subject, it may not, perhaps,
be altogether amiss to observe, that as history repeats itself, on the
principle of the cycle and epicycle, so at the present moment we see
Russia advancing through the Caucasus, on the west, and through
Bockhara, on the east of the Caspian, towards the area of the Iranic
and Indic immigrations of former ages; thus renewing that move-
ment which formerly carried the Lettic dialect of the primitive Aryan
tongue to the neighbourhood of Balk, where, as well as on the plaims
of Iran, a Slavonic conqueror will again plant his victorious standards,
unless repulsed by the courage and policy of the British Celt, already
344 ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
in possession of the partially Aryanised area of aboriginally Turanian
India.
Leaving now the great questions of Aryan Origin and area, let us
return to the Semites. This great family has been subdivided into
three branches, the Amharic, or southern ; the Aramaic, or northern;
and the Hebraic, or central. The first embraces the Arabs proper,
the Moors, Berbers, Tuaricks, Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and
Abyssinians. This is apparently the purest and, perhaps we may
add, the most nearly primitive type of the race. The principal ad-
mixture here is from Negroid sources south of the Sahara. The Se-
cond embraces the Syrians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, and may be
defined as the especially imperial type of the race. The principal
interaction here has been with the Iranic branch of the eastern
Aryans; although, judging by the physical type of the two last, we
should also suspect the presence of a Turanian element, probably as
the underlying basis of the population, derived from the Tatar abo-
rigines of this border-land of the true Semitic area. The contest for
political Supremacy between the Aramaic Semites and their Iranian
rivals, constitutes the history of western Asia for a thousand years.
The third branch embraces the Jews, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians,
together with the colonial extensions of the two latter. The principal
interaction here has been with the Hellenic and Italic branches of the
classic stock. As the Amharic branch is the most nearly related to
the Negroid type ; so this central and Hebraic branch is the most
closely allied to the Aryan family. Indeed, both the Jew and Phoeni-
ciam have so many European characteristics, and have maintained so
many and such diversified European relations, that we are quite jus-
tified in suspecting a large admixture of European elements in their
constitution. Was not Palestine, indeed, as a part of the Mediterra-
mean coast of western Asia, simply an extension of Ionia'ſ and were
not the Phoenicians, though thoroughly Hebraic in language, yet
largely imbued with the ideas, and prone to the maritime and com-
mercial habits, of their Greek neighbours. It is doubtful if we have
yet realised our full indebtedness to this vigorous section of the Se-
mitic peoples. In a sense, it may be said that Europe owes her trade
to the Phoenicians, and her religion to the Jews; so that their influ-
ence is second, if second, only to that of the Greeks and Romans.
From this bare enumeration of Semitic nations it must be at once
obvious that we have here to do with a great race, who have played a
very important part in history, and in various ways stamped their
impress indelibly on humanity. Such a type must then be worthy of
the profoundest study, although the especial cycle of their greatness is
passed, having waned, at least for the present, before the increasing
JACKSON ON THE ARYAN AND THE SEMITE. 345
splendour of Aryan power and civilisation. Such a race cannot be
despised or ignored. Anthropology must endeavour to understand
and define them. What is their relative age as compared with that
of the Aryans? When did their interaction with the latter com-
mence, and what are the indications of its continuance or renewal'ſ
What is a Semite'ſ What place does he hold in the scale of being'ſ
What has he done for the religion, literature, art, and science of the
world ! What was his essential character and vocation in the past, and
what intellectual, political, and commercial position will he probably
hold ; in other words, what services will he render to civilisation in the
future? These are rather searching questions, and yet Anthropology
can scarcely be regarded as a science unless we are prepared with some-
thing like a definitive reply to most of them. It must be at once ob-
vious that in any such investigation as that here proposed, we must
advance cautiously, yet daringly, from the boundaries of recognised
knowledge into the region of speculation, where certainty will have to
be exchanged for uncertainty, and where the utmost we can yet hope
to accomplish is but to throw out a few suggestions, not so much for
the guidance as the consideration of others. - - -
As to the relative age of the Semite, if there be any truth in the
idea that he is the flower of the Negroid type, the ethnic culmination
of the man of the South, the cultured representative of the oldest and
most nearly rudimentary phase of humanity, then we have from this
circumstance alone some ground for regarding him as the elder branch
of the Caucasian family. The fact that he was the founder of the
earliest historic empires, and that his great cycle of now monumental
civilisation on the Egypto-Assyrian area, preceded the historic
Aryan cycle of Iranic and classic development, is also partially cor-
roborative of his ethnic seniority. Do his organic specialities throw
any light on this subject? Is there anything in his structure to indi-
cate the relative maturity or immaturity of his type? What says
anatomy to the proportions of the skeleton, the disposition of the
muscles, the arrangement of the viscera, and the convolutions of the
brain'ſ What says physiology to the functional vigour of cerebration,
respiration, alimentation, and reproduction in the Semite as compared
with the Aryan, and yet more remotely, with the Negro and the
Turanian'ſ Alas, it is only necessary to ask such questions to discover
how limited is our knowledge, how inadequate are our data for the
solution of any of the great race problems still under discussion
When did the interaction between the Aryan and Semitic peoples,
which constitutes the staple of all history, commence? Is there amy-
thing in monumental remains or racial type calculated to throw any
light on this subject'ſ What, for example, was Egypt? Was the
346 ANTEUROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
civilisation of this great country the pure product of Semitic vigour
and intelligence? Has not historic Egypt been constantly subjected
to reaction from without 7 Persian, Greek, Roman, Mameluke, and
Turk present us with a rather extensive cycle of alien invasion, both
from Aryan and Turanian sources. Was there nothing akin to this in
prehistoric times? Will the principle of the cycle and the epicyle
warrant such a conclusion 7 Do the monuments of Egypt themselves
sustain it ! Is there not much here to indicate that Egypt was a
colonial extension from some previously civilised centre'. The builders
of the pyramids, more especially the great pyramid, must have been
architects of no mean experience. Is not the architecture of Egypt
a development of the Cyclopean, whose centre was Greece and Italy,
as the latter was, perhaps, an advance upon the Dolmen or so-called
Druidic style of Western Europe? Have we yet the data requisite for
even an approximative solution of the problem involved in the relation
of Cyclopean to prehistoric Mediterranean civilisation generally, and
until this has been settled, what are all our speculations about the be-
ginnings of Egyptian civilisation but vague surmises, utterly devoid
of all claim to be regarded as of a genuinely scientific character.
Perhaps, however, the best evidence that the elements of Egyptian
civilisation were imported, and this too from a higher, if not alien
race, is to be found in the rigid formality and traditional immutability
of religion, law, art, and manners in the land of Misraim. Nowhere
else has spontaneity been so completely eliminated from the life of a
people. Precedent and example were Supreme, and authority so
crushed individuality, that from the palace to the cottage the system
was everything and the man was nothing; adequate proof that here
was a nation of pupils whose teachers had departed, and who felt that
their only Safety consisted in strict and unquestioning obedience to
the behests of a past too exalted for the rivalry of the present.
It is doubtful if we yet understand the profounder spirit of monu-
mental civilisation. What grandeur, yet what simplicity of thought,
is reflected in the walls of Tiryns, the pyramids of Memphis, and the
temples of Thebes. Have we fully realised the cast of mind that
produced the Ramesseion,--Or, for that matter, the Parthenon or
York Minster'ſ Is not the architecture of a time the reflection of its
thought, and, if so, have we yet interpreted Nilotic culture by this
record? In it the sublimity of mass, the element of strength as con-
tradistinguished from beauty, culminated. Its ruins seem like the
remains of another World, and in a sense, perhaps, they are so, the
African, as an area distinct from that of Europe or Asia. There is
nothing composite in the Egyptian style. We see at a glance that the
elements of thought had not been broken up and recomposed in the
JACKSON ON THE ARYAN AND THE SEMITE. 34.7
soul of its builders, whose ideas were few and simple, but of stupendous
vastitude. Such men do not exist now. They belonged to the
primeval generations, to the primary strata of civilisation, and have
left no successors.
But is not the term “monumental,” as applied to the cycle of
Semitic civilisation, relative rather than absolute! With the exception
of the Hebrew records, it is no doubt monumental to us, but was it
so to cotemporaries? Was there not an Egyptian, Phoenician, As-
syrian, and Chaldean literature of great antiquity and of considerable
historic interest ? Mamétho, Sanchoniathon, and Berosus are, no doubt,
somewhat mythical when compared with Herodotus; but do not even
such confused and fragmentary echoes indicate that there once were
real voices to set them in motion? We hear many Io paeans over the
discovery of Sanscrit literature, and perhaps to us as Aryans, and for
philological purposes generally, this recovery of the oldest existing
form of our early mother tongue, is the most important of all possible
events in the science of language. But historically, and perhaps we
may add, morally, who shall estimate what we have lost by the de-
struction of that preclassic literature, and with it of those forms of
thought which reflected the inner life of the stately dwellers on the
Nile and Euphrates? Wanting this, must not our psychological record
of humanity, ever remain imperfect " If we so value what was said at
Athens and Rome, may we not be permitted to regret the eclipse which
has shrouded in everlasting night the intellectual light of Thebes and
Memphis, of Babylon and Nineveh, more especially when we consider
the significance and power of the fragments that remain to us of the
racially allied and cotemporary people of Jerusalem'. But merely
classical scholars cannot understand this, and Orthodox Hebrew
scholars will not, so the summation of our loss in this respect must
remain as a labour for the future.
We would then (of course quite hypothetically) define Egyptian
civilisation as the result of Asian and European immigration on an
African area, whence, by the specialities of soil and climate, the alien
blood was ultimately eliminated, leaving traditional Semitic and Aryan
influences to operate, on an aboriginal population, fundamentally
identical with that of the modern Fellahs, but with this difference, that
whereas the latter now simply represent the rustic and artisan classes,
the ancient Egyptians were an effectually developed national type,
with its full hierarchy of Sacerdotal, aristocratic, and professional
classes in normal relation to each other, and to the state as a collective
organism. And, if asked to account for the speciality of the Egyptian
type of mind, for judging by their works, they must have been a
people almost unique, even from the remotest antiquity, we would
348 ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
point to their geographical isolation, shut in by the sea and the desert,
in virtue of which they were enabled to develope and emphasise their
formalistic proclivities to the uttermost, comparatively undisturbed
by foreign invasion. This was apparently a characteristic of primeval
nations generally, among whom events moved slowly; but it was
especially so with the Egyptians, and hence their rigidly exclusive
nationality of thought and feeling, and the striking peculiarities of
architecture in which the weird spirit of their inner life became at last
tangibly embodied. -
It is, perhaps, rather more difficult to estimate the reaction of
Egypt upon other countries. Her wisdom was proverbial among all
the great nations of antiquity. But, whatever else she may have
taught them, she did not give them her architecture, and therefore
we may presume, scarcely the ideas of which it was the symbol. Her
nationality was too intense, too strikingly characterised, for ready
transference. It implied a certain speciality of organic structure,
that of the lower Nilotic area, reinforced by millenniums of training,
for its effectual development. India and China approximate to, but
do not equal her in speciality ; they do so from their similar geo-
graphical isolation. Notwithstanding all this, however, ancient, like
classic Egypt, was a great School. Judaism bears her stamp in every
lineament. It was scarcely necessary to inform us that the great
law-giver of the Jews “was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians.” The Mosaic code is simply the Egyptian system of law
and ceremonial adapted to the requirements of Hebraic Semites, and
engrafted on the doctrinal peculiarities of patriarchal theology.
It is somewhat more difficult to define the character and extent of
the influence exercised by Egypt on the moral and intellectual de-
velopment of the Greeks. Tradition implies prehistoric interaction,
probably during the Cyclopean era, and this seems to have continued
down to the Homeric age ; while Pythagoras and Plato both confessed
their indebtedness to Nilotic teachers. As the more immediate channel
through which Asian theosophy and Oriental mysticism impinged on
the classic world of Greece and Rome, the influence of Egypt was also
manifested at a later day in the production of such men as Plotinus,
Proclus, and Jamblichus, the Neoplatonic and Thaumaturgic Schools
of declining heathenism being, indeed, very largely of her fostering.
Even thus contemplated, Egypt must be regarded as a nationality of
no mean significance in the ancient world. The parent of Jewish law
and ceremonial, and the nurse of Greek philosophy, under her native
sovereigns, she became under the Ptolemies, the seat of a school of
mathematics and physics, whose influence on the progress of Science is
still appreciable. While at Alexandria, more especially, were elabor-
JACKSON ON THE ARYAN ANI) TEIE SEMITE. 349
- • * •
ated those specialities of doctrine, consisting in a union of Greek
philosophy with Judaic theology, that under the zealous apostleship
of the Nazarenes, eventuated in the establishment of Christianity.
Thus from the dawn of monumental civilisation to the fall of the
Roman empire, Egypt was a power in the world of thought. Such
them was the position of this elder branch of the Amharic portion of
the great Semitic family. Such was the place of Egypt in the scale
of nations—not to be forgotten while history continues to be written.
And what were the Mesopotamian empires of Nineveh and Babylon'ſ
And we reply the result of Semitic expansion on a Turanian border,
where the immigrant population were, moreover, subjected from an early
period to Iranian influences, beneath which, in a political sense at least,
they ultimately succumbed. What manner of men, then, were these As-
Syrians, that “nation of a fierce countenance,” the imperial masters of
Western Asia And we reply Semitic conquerors with an element of
muscularity from their Turanian subjects, and of intellectuality from
their Aryan neighbours. Physically, and perhaps mentally, they were
the strongest and most massive of all the Semitic types, the Romans
of the East ; pre-eminently the warriors and rulers of their race. In
them Semitism, at its first or monumental cycle, culminated politically.
They held Asia with the strong hand, almost from the Mediterranean
to the Indus, and hence loom out at the remote dawn of the historic
period, with mysterious grandeur as the great founders of that imperial
system, which, in its successive phases, constituted such an important
feature in ancient civilisation. -
Morally, however, Assyria is more remote than Egypt. We know
more of the dwellers on the Nile than the Tigris or the Euphrates.
The citizens of Thebes and Memphis probably differed more than those
of Nineveh and Babylon from the present inhabitants of London and
Paris, but we know better in what that difference consisted. We can
realise Egyptian more distinctly than Assyrian life, perhaps in virtue
of the greater number and variety of archaeological data which it has
bequeathed to us, and in part also from the influence which, through
Hebraic and Hellenic media, it still exercises over the life of to-day.
What were those early empires that constitute the beginnings of
history? Were they in reality the first great political agglomerations
of humanity? Because, if so, we must accord to the Semites the palm
of precedence, at least over the Aryans, if not the Turanians. China
may, perhaps, lay claim to an antiquity equal to that of Assyria, if
not Egypt, but Persia, Greece, and Rome were, as we know, her
juniors and successors. Here, again, we are brought back to a recon-
sideration of the great problem of the true Aryan area, and with it, of
the possibility of a prehistoric movement of civilisation from the north-
VOL. VII. —NO, XXVII. B B
350 ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
west to the south-east. Was there not a cycle of Celtic power and
civilisation in Western Europe, and a yet more advanced Cyclopean
cycle in Southern Europe, of which history makes no mention, and
whereof even the tradition has waxed faint, and which, from the
character of their architectural and other remains, must have preceded
the era of monumental civilisation ? Alas, how short is the plumbline
of our historic knowledge, how lamentably inadequate for fathoming
such depths as those over which we are now sailing ! Would it be too
much to say in this connection, that there have been three great cycles
of imperial power; the Aryan, extending from the Iranic to the Roman
empire, which may be termed historic ; the Semitic, extending from
the Egyptian to the Babylonian, and known as monumental ; and
lastly, the premonumental or archaeological cycle, embracing the
Celtic and Cyclopean remains of Europe, and, perhaps, the earth-
mounds of American and Turanian Asia'ſ
It will, of course, be understood that in these remarks we use the
term “empire” in its widest signification. Strictly speaking, the Roman
is the only empire upon record. The great Persian monarchy was but
an aggregation of Satrapies, while the Assyrian was merely an array
of dependent kingdoms. The primitive Oriental idea of empire was
simply a great system of military Supremacy on the part of one people,
and of tributary subordination on that of others, and of this Assyria
was apparently a perfect realisation. Of a central executive, exercising,
directly or by delegation, administrative functions in every province,
of even approximative uniformity in language, laws, and institutions,
the men of the monumental era had not the slightest conception.
This, like the idea of a universal faith, was the product of a later time,
when humanity collectively, had attained to a larger growth of thought
and a riper maturity of intellect.
Of these Aramaic Semites, the Chaldeans were apparently the more
intellectual branch. The Magi of Babylon were second, if second,
only to those of Egypt, in reputation for wisdom and knowledge. And
it is observable that this knowledge, as in the case of the Egyptians,
ever tended to assume a mystic and quasi thaumaturgic character.
In such minds astronomy is simply the basis for astrology, while
chemistry assumes the guise of alchemy, and science generally tends to
the study of occult processes and the production of magical results.
Were these specially Semitic, or merely primaeval characteristics .
Their reappearance in almost more than pristine force among the
Saracens, notwithstanding the intervening period of Greek culture,
is certainly an indication of some deeply seated tendency to the
mystic and occult in the Semitic mind, although the nearly pa-
rallel condition of the European Aryans, during the middle ages,
JACKSON ON TEIE ARY AN AND THE SEMITE. 351
should render us charitable in the interpretation of such procli-
vities, as being perhaps the result of ignorance rather than racial
tendency. If, however, we institute a comparison between the cul-
minating periods of Semitic and Aryan culture, and endeavour to
analyse their respective characteristics, it will become at once obvious
that, under the former, there was a manifest tendency to theosophy
and magic, and under the latter, to philosophy and science. Thus,
for example, compare the ancient Egyptians with the Hindoos, the
Babylonians with the Greeks, or the Saracens with the people of
modern Europe, and it will be at once seen that the former have an
element of mysticism in their nature largely wanting in the latter.
And this contrast becomes yet more striking when the two older
peoples are excluded, and the comparison is confined, so far as Aryans
are concerned, to those on their proper, that is European, area.
This diversity is what might be expected from the fact that the
Semites are the moral and the Aryans the intellectual division of the
Caucasian type. This Semitic speciality, however, did not culminate
in either the Amharic or Aramaic branch of the race, but in the middle
or Hebraic, where the especially commingling element was neither Ne-
groid, as among the Egyptians, nor Turanian, as among the Assyrians,
but either Iranic from the east or Hellenic from the west, and in either
case of purely high-caste Aryan lineage. Does this help to explain the
exalted moral position and vocation of the Jews, in virtue of which they
are theologically the representative men of their family, not only in pos-
session of an exalted monotheism themselves, but also the acknowledged
source whence it was borrowed by Christians on the one hand, and Mo-
hammedans on the other? And are they not in this respect somewhat
analogous to the Celts of Western Europe, who in a similar manner, and
from circumstances also arising out of geographical position, have been
largely protected from invasion by non-Caucasian immigrants, and so
have been enabled to retain a finer temperament and higher type than
those less fortunately situated? Does not this specially Aryan admix-
ture, which had probably a prehistoric as well as a historic cycle, also
help to explain the partially European character of the Jews and
Phoenicians, who as being, in a maritime sense at least, on the border
land of the true Aryan area, inevitably partook more or less of its
expansive influences both morally and ethnically
To return, however, to the Aramaic Semites. In them the first or
monumental cycle of Semitic imperialism, culminated and closed ;
giving place to the Iranic, itself to be succeeded by the Hellenic, and
this, in turn, to be superseded by the Roman, constituting collectively
the historic or Aryan cycle of imperial development. Do historians
understand these great racial revolutions? Have they, for the most
B B 2
352 ANTHROP() LOGICAL REVIEW.
part, even the remotest conception of their existence? Occupied with
the details and minutiae attending the rise or fall of the waters in
their own small inlet, they altogether neglect or ignore the great tidal
movement of the ocean beyond, whereof their ebb and flow is but an
insignificant and fractional portion—not to be understood moreover in
its remoter causes and effects, unless thoroughly comprehended as but
part of a larger whole. Has it not been said that history must be re-
written, and must we not here re-echo the assertion from the anthro-
pological standpoint! --
We have already alluded to the probability of prehistoric cycles of
Aryan power in the west; are we to consider the Persian as the first
in the east? What say the conquest of Northern India and the
settlement of the Aryans on the plains of Iran, to any such hypothesis"
Were not these the effects of conquest and colonisation, implying
military power and resources, together with a general political
supremacy, virtually imperial? Perhaps, however, this fact of the
Aryan settlement of Iran may be disputed. But what say the Zendic
litanies in the Avesta! Are they not, as we have already remarked,
exactly akin to those of the early Aryans in India, namely, the almost
agonised supplications of high caste immigrants, surrounded on every
hand by rude Turanian aborigines, from whose secret machinations
and open hostility they pray to be delivered? The Zendic remains of
Iran, like the Vedic literature of India, is clearly demonstrative of the
fact that, in both regions, the Aryans were invaders, not surrounded
simply by a hostile population, but by a people radically diverse in
language, institutions, and personal appearance, and with whom, in a
sense, there could be no peace—save that of the grave.
And why, it may here be asked, did the Iranic rather than the
Indic division of the Eastern Aryans emerge into imperial power
and we reply, because of their comparative proximity to their proper
ethnic area, and, perhaps, in part, from the fact that the Turanian
aborigines of Iran were apparently nomads, while those of India were
cultivators, in virtue of which the Iranic immigrants did not remain
as simply a Sacerdotal and military caste, but became, to a large ex-
tent, the virtual inhabitants of the land. And this brings us to that
important problem, the geographical limits of the Aryan area proper,
involving the limits of ethnic areas generally. Are these unalterably
fixed, or susceptible of gradual expansion on the part of higher types,
of course at the expense of lower, during what may be called geologic
time, and in accordance with the slow change of telluric and other
determining influences of racial type 1 As a fact, for example, have we
not seen an extension of the Aryan area in Scandinavia, at the expense
of the Turanian, during the historic period. And are there not indi-
JACKSON ON THE ARY AN AND THU. SEMITE. 353
cations that a similar but prehistoric extension took place in Spain,
where the Iberic gradually yielded to the Celtic element—unless, in-
deed, we reverse the conditions of the problem, and regard the former
as a colonial invasion from Africa on the true area of the latter? But
what are the facts, historical, traditional, and archaeological, respecting
the eastern border of the Aryan area º And we may say that the first
are nil, the second vague, and the third unknown. In this insuffi-
ciency of reliable data, we are thrown back on speculation, and may
Say as a probability, that the mountains of Kurdistall were the pre-
historic Eastern border of the Aryan type, prior to that great colonial
extension, which eventuated in the formation of the Iranic and Indic
areas of historic time.
And what are the eastern Aryans? In what do they differ from
those of Europe, and how are they related to them 1 Although beyond
question Aryans in lineage and language, and endowed moreover with
all the predominant intellectuality of their type, they have neverthe-
less a certain Orientalism of thought and feeling not found in their
kinsmen of the West. Do they owe this to an infusion of blood, per-
haps from their Semitic neighbours; or is it due solely to the moral
influence of Asian residence, accumulated through successive genera-
tions! Lingually, they are, perhaps, most nearly allied to the Lettic
branch of the European family, while in type they approach the classic
or even the Teutonic peoples, so that any decision on this point would
be rather premature. Philology demonstrates that their separation
from us—or our separation from them, as the case may be, must
have occurred at a comparatively early period of our common lingual
development, and with this we must for the present be satisfied.
Was the rise of Persian on the ruins of Babylonian power a merely
local incident, a mational event, or the turn of a racial tide, that gave
the Aryan supremacy over the Semite for fully a thousand years, and
with the exception of the Caliphate and the earlier years of Turcoman
and Osmanli conquest, we may say, to the present hour ! The course
of events indicates that it was the beginning of an ethmic tide, still on
the flood, despite Carthaginian and Saracenic eddies of very respectable
magnitude and considerable duration. This movement of civilisation
and power westwards was, no doubt, aided by the tendency of an
Aryan cycle of supremacy to seek effective development on its own
appropriate area. Thus contemplated, the eventual rise of Greek on
the ruins of Persian power was an inevitability, which in the process
of effectuation assumed the form of Philip's preparations and
Alexander's conquests.
The march of a Greek army from the Bosphorus to the Indus was
an event whose effects are still apparent. The faith of the cross
354 # ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
occupies the western, and that of the crescent the eastern portion of
the great area of classic power. Regarded from the mundame stand- º
point, Hellenic and Italic civilisation constituted but the bipolar
aspect of one system, the epicycle of the Cyclopean, occupying the
same site, and employing perhaps, ethnically speaking, the same
Jeople. The speciality of the Greeks was their purely Aryan type of
character. They show us the European prior to his moral baptism by
Semitic theology. The masterminds of time in literature and art,
their religion was a speculative philosophy to the few and a profligate
polytheism to the many; a people whom, from the theoretical Christian
standpoint, we may, perhaps, regard, much as the Semitised Orientals
affect to regard us, namely, as a people no less admirable for their
talents than pitiable for their morals. Not that in this latter respect
London or Paris need throw any stones at Athens, or even Corinth
—which every man could not afford to visit
The Greek, as we have said, is the representative Aryan, regarded
intellectually, as the Jew is equally the representative Semite, con-
templated theologically, it was, therefore, quite proper that in the
further interaction of these races, they should especially combine for
the evolution of a new and more expansive phase of religious develop-
ment. And here we are brought in view of one of the gravest pro-
blems in historic anthropology, namely, the monotheism of the Semite,
whereof the Hebrews are regarded as the original exponents, and the
Arabs, in their capacity as Mohammedan conquerors, the principal
Apostles. If this be a generically Semitic speciality, why were the
Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians such determined polytheists?
Perhaps, because of a Negroid intermixture in the one case, and an
underlying Turanian element in the other. Granting that originally,
it was simply a Hebrew characteristic, how is it that the Phoenicians and
their descendants, the Carthaginians, were such persistent idolators?
Nay, were not the Jews themselves constantly prone to the sin of idol-
atry, till after their return from the captivity, that is, in reality, till after
their contact with the Zoroastrian fireworshippers of Iran, the earliest
iconoclasts upon record, and who, under Cambyses, gave the Egyp-
tians a foretaste of what other idolatrous nations afterwards expe-
rienced at the hands of Mussulman invaders, in a later age % Where,
then, are we look for the root of monotheism." How did it become a
Hebrew speciality? and why is it now regarded as a Semitic charac-
teristic | Here, too, as in so many other departments of anthropo-
logy, we want “more light.” * *
It is in the Romans, however, that we see the truly imperial divi-
sion of the classic peoples, and accordingly on them devolved the
final conflict with Semitic imperialism at its first cycle. The rise of
JACKSON ON THE ARY AN ANT) THE SEMITE. 355
Carthage, and its place in the world's history, have been but imper-
fectly understood. Sharing in the unfortunate destiny of all its con-
geners, except the Jews, its written records have utterly perished ;
and though contemporary with the most brilliant historic nations of
antiquity, it belongs, by race and fate, to the previous cycle of monu-
mental civilisation, of which it was, in truth, the continuation and
termination. Of Hebrew lineage, and more immediately of Phoenician
descent, the Carthaginians were not altogether aliens, even in northern
Africa. The muscular Moor and the wiry Tuarick were their remote
kinsmen; while even Egyptians and Abyssinians were only another
branch of the same great Semitic family with themselves.
What was the ethnic relation of the Phoenicians to the Ionian
Greeks? Judging by cameos, coins, etc., were not Hannibal and other
Carthaginian commanders as purely Hellenic in type as the best bred
gentlemen of Attica'ſ Was it from a Greek or an Arabian source
that the Tyrians and Sidonians obtained their manufacturing industry
and their maritime enterprise? We have already in part replied to
this, by saying that the Hebrews owe their distinctive specialities to
the fact that they are the Aryanised branch of the Semitic family,
and so favourably contradistinguished from either their Amharic or
Aramaic kinsmen, in whose blood a Negroid or Turanian taint is clearly
perceptible. But let it be distinctly understood that this is speculation,
not fact, a suggestion based on probabilities, not a conclusion de-
rived from reliable data. -
Was the rise of Carthaginian power a part of the general march of
civilisation westwards, the response of the Semitic man of the south
to the vigorous development of the Aryan man of the north, the one
on an African, and the other on a European area, with the Medi-
terranean, its islands and coasts, as the debateable border between
them." And what are the indications afforded by Egypt and Carthage
as to the capabilities of northern Africa as an ethnic area'. Obviously
that it is the colonial appanage of Asia rather than Europe; and
that its next cycle of civilisation and power can, at the earliest, only
be coincident with, or consequent upon, the resurrection of the former.
Be this, however, as it may, the past of Egypt and Mauritania is adequate
indication of an illustrious future, whether under European or Asian
leadership, when the inherent and indestructible physical manhood of
the Moor, like that of the Teuton, will tell with considerable force
upon at least the political destinies of the world. -
Whether the Aryan or the Semite be inherently and essentially the
nobler and the stronger man, the contest between the Roman and
Carthaginian could have but one termination. The former was on
his own area, and represented the Aryan cycle approaching its meri-
356 ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
dian of power and splendour. The latter was a colonist, the last
surviving remnant of that mighty but departed family of Semitic
nations, who, as Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians,
had once loomed out so grandly upon the ancient world, but whose.
power had waned, and whose glory was dimmed, when their far-off
daughter entered upon her internecine conflict with the sternest and
most imperial type of the Aryan yet developed. Rome was young,
at the maximum of her republican vigour, with all the splendour of
her imperial destiny yet before her; while Carthage was old, not
merely by individual senility, but as the heiress of that monumental
civilisation, whose cruel and degrading superstitions were an ama-
chronism in the presence of Greek culture and Roman law.
Semitic civilisation is not yet understood. Historians have not
grasped the idea of a great system of life and thought, stamped
throughout with a definitive racial impress, extending geographically
from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules, and chronologically,
from the earliest of the Egyptian dynasties till the Roman plough
passed over the last remnants of Carthaginian greatness. What is
the sum of the influence exercised by this vast cycle? To what ex-
tent has it aided the progress of civilisation, and how far are we still
its debtors'! It reared several great empires, and built many mighty
cities; but the power of the first and the splendour of the last have
alike crumbled into ruin. Memphis and Thebes, Nineveh and Baby-
lon, Tyre and Sidon, and Carthage, where are they'ſ Even the Jew
is in exile; and Jerusalem, the sacred city of Melchisedec, and the
capital of David and Solomon, sits desolate, as a widow, among the
nations, “trodden under foot of the Gentiles.” No such ruin has
overtaken the Aryan peoples. The language of the Vedas is studied;
and the institutes of Menu are maintained from the Indus to the
Ganges. The Persians are still a nation. The Greeks are under-
going a resurrection ; and although, strictly speaking, there are no
Romans, we have Italians, with a past of intellectual glory, and a
future of political promise. Is this difference of destiny due to any
racial speciality? Is the Semite an anachronism, or has he merely
succumbed to the temporary predominance of the Aryan'. As the
developed type of a Negroid root, is his day of power and predo-
minance permanently gone, or will he, phoenix-like, arise in youth,
and strength, and beauty, from the ashes of the past?
To this, the spread of Mohammedanism and the rise of the Sara-
cemic power of the Caliphs is, in some measure, a response. Here,
for the first time in history, the Semite, pure and simple, or as nearly
so as he anywhere exists, came to the front, and, as prophet and war-
rior, gave laws for some centuries to a considerable portion of the
JACKSON ON THE ARY AN AND THE SEMITE. 357
civilised world,—unhappily, with the result of his monumental pre-
decessors, of more mingled lineage, desolation. The special character
of Mohammedanism, and the causes of its rise and diffusion, are
easily understood, and may be succinctly stated. Classic civilisation
had raised southern Europe and western Asia above the level of
ancient heathenism. The practical result of this was the develop-
ment and diffusion of Christianity. But this faith, especially under
the Greek and Roman churches, became so thoroughly Aryanised in
doctrine and ritual, as to be no longer adapted to a Semitic popula-
tion, more especially when that population had been subjected for some
centuries to Judaic influences. Hence reaction became inevitable,
and this assumed the form of the faith of Islam, which is simply mo-
motheistic Judaism stripped of its sacrificial ceremonial. Funda-
mentally and essentially it is the same movement as Christianity,
only it is that movement adapted to a Semitic in place of an Aryan
people.
What, then, are the Arabs, who were the prime movers and chief
actors in the great drama of Mohammedanism' and we reply, Semites
of the purest blood, and on their highest ethnic area. Less per-
sistent and industrious than the Egyptians,—less massive and im-
perial than the Assyrians, and less refined and intellectual than the
Hebrews, they suffice to show us how much the great Semitic peoples
of antiquity were indebted to alien elements for the place which they
occupy in the pages of history. Intense, fervid, devout, and bigoted,
a man of one idea, but holding that idea with the tenacity, and pro-
pagating it with the fervour, of a prophet, the Mussulman Arab was
a true Abdallah, a sword of God, going forth to the conversion or the
slaughter of the infidel. Dolichocephalic, with a preponderating co-
ronal development, and of eminently nervo-fibrous temperament, with
all the vigour and elasticity, mental and physical, which usually cha-
racterise this type, he was and is exactly fitted for a mundane raid
on more civilised peoples in the hour of their political collapse and
racial effeteness.
Regarded politically, and we may add ethnically, Mohammedan
conquest was the reply of the man of the south to Turanian invasion
from the north. Neither would have been possible during the vigour
of either Iranic or classic civilisation. Both were barbarian inroads,
whereof, however, the Turanian was the rudest ; and so when, as was
inevitable, they coalesced, it assumed the stamp of the faith of Islam,
and once more raised the standard of the Crescent as it was falling
from the nerveless grasp of the exhausted Saracen. This reveals to
us the essential character of Mohammedan faith and of Saracenic
power. Both were the product of reaction during that period of
358 ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
collapse which divides the decline of classic from the rise of modern
civilisation. They were never in the true van of humanity, never
in the right line of progress; hence, they have ended in failure and
desolation, leaving no bequest of any moment to posterity.
Contemplated theologically, however, Mohammedamism holds a
distinguished place in the great scheme of human progress, as the
most distinctly emphasised proclamation of monotheism of which his-
tory bears record. This was its true mission, whereto conquest and
imperial supremacy were subordinate instrumentalities. This also
decides its relation to Christianity, and shows that it is the positive
and masculine phase of that Judaised faith which, in a duplex or
bipolar form, has superseded ancient heathenism over the entire area
of classic power.
The empire of the Caliphs arose like an exhalation, absorbing not
only the Semitic peoples of Asia and Africa, but also the Iranic
Aryans, while, at one time, it also seriously threatened those of Eu-
; rope with ultimate subjugation. The Crusades were the result, re-
*newing the old internecine strife between Aryan and Semite on the
grandest scale, and reminding us of those conflicts between the Solar
and lunar Rajpoots, which apparently constituted so salient a feature
in the ancient history of India. The march of Saracenic power was
arrested; and under Togrul Bey and Alp Arslan the Turcoman Su-
perseded the Arab as the political leader of the faith of Islam, and,
under the dynasty of Othman, so continues to the present hour. -
As an index of what the Semite, when fully aroused and under
favourable circumstances, can yet accomplish, the rise and diffusion of
Mohammedanism is gravely significant. With Egypt and Assyria in
ruins, with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians absolutely extinct, and
the Jews in exile, the Arab alone sufficed, in a single generation, to
restore the Semitic race to the supremacy of western Asia, and the
command of northern Africa. Nor did the tidal movement cease till
India, on the east, and Spain, on the west, were added to the domi-
mions of the Crescent. A race that could accomplish this, will doubt-
less yet claim recognition in those far-off ages of the future, when the
epicycle of Egyptian and Assyrian greatness, of Phoenician commerce
and Jewish influence, shall have arrived, and the world will again be-
hold, not a spasmodic display of convulsive strength, as under the
Saracens; but the steady growth of well-ordered and abiding power,
and the effective development of a complex system of civilisation,
stamped throughout with the racial impress of a Semitic population,
and so manifesting in its religion, literature, and art, the special cha-
racteristics of this peculiar type of man. Of this cycle, and its pro-
bable place in universal history, it is impossible to judge by the
JACKSON ON THE ARYAN AND THIE SEMITE. e 359
achievements and position of the caliphate ; it can only be remotely
estimated by the place and power of the older Semitic empires during
the true era of their racial supremacy. t
But much both of time and circumstance must intervene ere the
advent of such a period of Semitic resurrection. In “Iran and Tu-
ran” we have shown that the Aryan of the West is steadily but irre-
sistibly advancing towards universal empire, of which, morally, he is
already in virtual possession. Now, if we have interpreted history
aright, this biceltic and oceanic empire must culminate and decline,
and its more immediate successor, the epicycle of prehistoric Cyclo-
pean civilisation be also effectually developed, and probably have
passed its meridian, ere the future phase of Semitic Supremacy can
really commence. And here it will, perhaps, be asked, whether we
expect its agents to be pure Semites, like the founders of the caliphate
and the modern Wahhabees, or a mingled people, like the ancient
Egyptians and Assyrians; and we reply, in all probability a mingled
people like the two latter, but with this difference, that the com-
mingling element will consist of a large proportion of Aryan immi-
grants, and consequently, that the resultant type, thus baptised, will
resemble the Hebraic rather than the Amharic or Aramaic branch of
the ancient and monumental Semites. We come to this conclusion,
on the ground that the Semitic cycle of the future will follow, and be
in a sense consequent upon a precycle of Aryan power, during which
Asia and northern Africa cannot fail to be extensively colonised from
Europe. Thus, not only will the olden sites of Semitic power be
largely occupied by Aryan settlers, but there are not wanting several
indications that even the Arabian peninsula itself will be subjected
at least along its coasts, if not to some extent through the interior—
to this, perhaps, friendly and commercial invasion of Western civilisers.
In addition to this, the inferior Negroid and Turanian elements have,
apparently, in the general progress of humanity, been somewhat cur-
tailed of their former power and dimensions, and thus do not loom
out so largely in the probabilities of the future as in the actualities of
the past. Let it be distinctly understood, however, that all this is
pure speculation, and So, perhaps, strictly speaking, Scarcely admis-
sible in a scientific paper; but where would science have been at the
present hour without suggestions and speculations, at the time mo
better supported and far bolder than the foregoing!
But it is time that we should hasten to a conclusion. If correct
in regarding the Aryan as a cultured phase of the Turanian type, and
the Semite, correspondingly, as a cultured phase of the Negroid type,
this would be sufficient to decide the superiority, and perhaps ulti-
mate supremacy of the former. We must not, however, ignore the
360 - ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
fact that the Semite is the “representative man” of the moral
Sentiments, and that these are, after all, the ruling element in human
affairs. We should also remember that we are ourselves Aryans, and
live, moreover, during the marked predominance of an Aryan cycle,
and from both causes are liable to over-estimate the inherent capa-
bilities, and so misapprehend the place of the Aryan in the ethnic
cale. It would then, perhaps, be better to regard these two great
divisions of humanity as bipolar, and so indestructible, doomed to
ever-recurrent though intermittent interaction, moral and physical.
This is the indication afforded by their history in the past, and we
have no reason to believe that their fortunes in the future will belie
it. The forms which this interaction may assume must, of course,
depend on the culture of humanity in general, and on that of the
rival candidates for power and precedence in particular. The indica-
tions are that in the moral sphere, the Semite will exalt, and the
Aryan expand, the collective mind of civilised man. Hitherto this
has been accomplished by the former assuming the theological mis-
sion ; while the latter has undertaken the development of literature,
art, and science. Not that this “division of labour” has been rigidly
observed ; for the Egyptians and Babylonians were apparently by no
means devoid of the intellectual element ; while in Buddhism we
have an instance, and that, too, on the largest scale, of an Aryan
faith extensively diffused among inferior races. If we mistake not,
the culture of modern Europe is steadily advancing to a somewhat
similar manifestation during the approaching period of Celtic predo-
minance ; when, as Christianity assumed an artistic phase under
classic influences, it will equally assume an intellectual phase in the
hands of the most refined, sensitive, and spiritual of all the Aryan
types of the West.
We have, in previous papers, referred to the fact of racial baptisms
as a recurrent phenomenon in the physical history of man, of which
those between Celts and Teutons are an instance in point. Now,
have we not reason to believe that those wars, conquests, aud revolu-
tions, that world-old and oft-renewed contest for supremacy between
Aryan and Semite, at whose more salient features we have glanced in
the previous pages, was simply this fact on the grandest scale, and in
its most distinctly pronounced aspect, and if so, then in its ultimately
most beneficent form. Have not, as already remarked, some of the
grandest results yet achieved by man been apparently due, in part,
to this interaction ? And is it supposable that these are its last or
its greatest results? Was classic civilisation the highest possible form
of Aryan development'ſ Has not modern Europe, for instance, many
moral and intellectual elements of which Greek and Roman life was
JACKSON ON THE ARYAN AND THE SEMITE. 361
either partially or wholly devoid? Granting, them, that the western
Aryan is destined, at no very remote period, to conquer and colonise
the larger portion of Asia, will he not bring with him social institu-
tions, scientific attainments, and industrial resources, immeasurably
superior to anything of the kind in possession of the historic Greeks
of the age of Alexander, or those prehistoric Aryans who laid the
foundation of the Indic and Iranic civilisation of an earlier time !
And conversely, is not Mohammedan Asia in a much higher religious
condition than idolatrous Egypt, Assyria, and Arabia, at any period,
near or remote, prior to the diffusion of the faith of Islam. Practi.
cally, as a result of these higher elements on either side, may we not
expect that at the next great racial interaction between these two
grand divisions of humanity, the Asian Semites will prevail to lift
Europe wholly out of Aryan polytheism ; while in return the Eu.
ropean Aryans will redeem Asia from her material desolation and
her intellectual darkness, making this desert, morally and physically,
bloom like a garden. -
In speculating on any prospective interåction of the grander divi-
sions of mankind, we should remember that the instrumentalities for
its furtherance are now immeasurably greater than at any former
period. Locomotion, whether by Sea. Or land, can now be effected
with a rapidity and facility previously unknown ; and that, as a result
of this, races are now interacting who were never previously in con-
tact. In truth, the entire system of modern European colonisation,
as a process whereby the highly civilised Caucasian is carried directly
to countries previously inhabited only by Savages, at their stone age,
is almost a new fact, and, in its present magnitude and importance,
certainly inaugurates a new era in the physical history of man. The
extinction, rather than the amelioration, of the poor savage is an in-
evitable result of the stupendous disparity in the social and intel-
lectual elements, thus brought suddenly into such immediate juxta-
position ; so that strictly speaking, this phenomenon does not pertain
So much to the province of racial interaction as supercession, and in-
dicates, if we mistake not, an epochal revolution in the numerical
proportion and geographical distribution of races, itself, perhaps, the
effect of climatic and other changes, not the less sure and efficient
because almost inconceivably slow in their operation.
Now, the especial instrumentality which has conduced to this phe-
momenon of displacement, is navigation, and What that has accom-
plished in three centuries, will be subject matter for all future history.
But we have now another and corresponding instrumentality in our
present improved means for locomotion by land, the full effects of
which have yet to be witnessed. In “Iran and Turan” we have
362 ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
shown the important bearing of railway communication on the ethnic
future of Tartary, where a large extension of the Aryan area cannot
fail to result from its operation, and where the resultant racial effect
will also be largely one of displacement. But it will be quite other-
wise with the present Caucasian area of Asia, whether Semitic or
Aryan, where improved means of intercommunication can only eventu-
ate in racial interaction, taking the form, in this case, of European
conquest and immigration,--the epicycle, as we have remarked, not
of Greek invasion under Alexander, but of that prehistoric movement
which carried the Aryan patriarchs to Iran and India, ere Zend and
Sanscrit became distinct dialects of their common mother tongue.
Now, as Anthropologists, we cannot fail to be interested in the racial
effects of an ethnic baptism so extensive, and it will not, perhaps,
be altogether foreign to the purpose of the present paper, if we venture
a few farther remarks on this subject. -
The fact that the Aryans and Semites have their material roots, re-
spectively, in the Turanian and Negroid types of uncultured man,
would imply that it is to these divisions they would have recourse in
their periods of physical exhaustion for a fresh baptism of bone and
muscle, sometimes immediately, as in the case of direct Turaniari
conquest; and at others more remotely, and in a modified form, as
in the Slavonic invasions of Greece, and the Teutonic colonisation of
the Celtic area of western Europe. But for mental invigoration and
refinement, implying of course a proportionate development of the
nervous system, probably the most efficient process is interaction be-
tween the two great and contradistinguished types of Caucasian man,
that constitute the especial subject matter of our present remarks,
under which the Semitic element conduces to moral elevation, and
the Aryan provides for intellectual expansion. We see the effects of
this, though on a comparatively small scale, regarded numerically
and geographically, in the Hebraic and Hellenic divisions of these
races as they stand revealed to us on the pages of history. Now,
one of the organic specialities of these peoples was their effective
Caucasianisation, arising, doubtless, from the circumstance that they
were less exposed, than most other divisions of the Semitic and Aryan
peoples, to a direct admixture of Negroid and Turanian elements; in
place of which they obtained the refining yet invigorating influence
of an equally developed yet contrasted type of cultured man. This,
then, reveals to us the great ethnic problem of the future, and, we
may add, the manner of its solution.
We have already shown that the speciality of these latter, or post-
classic ages, as we may term them, is the predominance, from India
to Britain, of the muscular over their correlated nervous types,
JACKSON ON TEIE ARYAN AND TFIE SEMITE, 363
this predominance being the effect of military conquest, consequent
on the physical exhaustion and political decay of the Indic and Iranic,
the Greek, Roman, and Celtic divisions of the great Aryan race, and
the corresponding decay of the Amharic, Aramaic, and Hebraic divi-
sions of the Semitic peoples, but temporarily redeemed by the spas-
madic outburst of wild Arabian energy at the founding of Moham-
medanism. Of necessity, such a subjugation of the superior by the
inferior types could not be permanent. In truth, none of these sub-
jugations are other than the normal phenomena of racial interaction,
and so, like the tides and seasons, are subject to the law of periodicity.
Muscular predominance represents the ebb, nervous predominance,
the flood; and what we now see is the setting in of the latter, from
the Aryan area of the West. But while the colonial extensions of
Europe in America and Africa, and her conquests in Asia, constitute
a very important chapter in Aryan history, they are obviously but
the incipient stage of the present movement of resurgence and pre-
dominance. Except in India, they have left the old civilised area of
of the East untouched, and thus far have conduced to no direct and
effective interaction between the Aryan and Semitic divisions of hu-
manity. This, then, we hold to be the next, and in a sense, the im-
mediately impending phase of the movement. It is obviously a mere
question of time, when Asia, from the Bosphorus to the Ganges, shall
be subjected to European conquest and occupation; and here the
high-caste and civilised Aryan of the West will come in contact, not
with hunting Savages and nomadic barbarians of Turanian type, but
with civilised Semites and eastern Aryans, of as pure blood and proud
descent as his own, and who cannot fail to react with great power,
both morally and physically, upon their conqueror.
This eastern movement of humanity, and the consequent ethnic
baptism of at least western Asia by the Aryans of Europe, promises
to open a new chapter in the physical, intellectual, religious, and
political history of mankind. Is it not here that we discover the
possibility of a new and improved type, uniting the moral elevation
of the Semite with the intellectual expansion of the Aryan, and cf
which we occasionally see, even in Aryan Europe, some magnificent
instances, more especially since her long subjection to the partially
Semitic influences of Christianity? And it is observable that when
men of this type emerge into manifestation on the intellectual plane,
they constitute a hierarchy of master-minds of the very highest order.
It is only necessary to name Dante and Tasso, Calderon and Camoens,
Shakspeare and Bacon, and, perhaps, we may add, as approximative
instances, Melanchthon and Sully, Goethe and Cuvier, to recall the
lordly altitude of brow, and the exalted coronal region, which gave
364 - ANTEIROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.
even vulgar beholders the impression that here were gods rather than
IY) 01).
While, then, we are decidedly of opinion, that the next and nearly
impending eastern movement of civilisation, will eventuate in a Eu-
ropean colonisation of a large portion of Tartaria, and in an ethnic
baptism, more or less extensive, of the greater part of Mongolia, we
cannot ignore another equally important result, to which it must also
of necessity conduce,—we mean the rebaptism of those races of Asia
that are already Caucasian in type, and have in previous ages played
an important part in promoting the development of civilisation.
With the exception of the Arabs, these have all been subjected, for
many centuries, to the predominance of Turanian conquerors, whose
hopelessly barbarous rule, however, is now obviously drawing to a
close, and will be succeeded by the expansive and invigorating leader-
ship of the western Aryans, already in possession of British India.
Thus, them, it is obvious that three distinct though allied racial move-
ments are impending over the eastern World, as a result of its tem-
porary subjection to European Supremacy; namely, the extension of
the Caucasian area at the expense of the Turanian,—the rehabilita-
tion of the oriental Aryans,—and lastly, though not leastly, the
baptism of the high-caste and morally developed Semites by the
equally high-caste and intellectually developed Aryans of the West.
It is with the last that we are principally concerned at present.
What will be the effect of the moral and physical interaction of these
contrasted types of Caucasian man Judging by the Jews and
Greeks, who present us with the process and its results in the purest
form achievable by antiquity, we should be justified in predicting
great things from this commingling of the moral and intellectual
elements of humanity. Perhaps we should not be going too far in
suggesting the possibility of a virtually new—that is, organically and
mentally—improved type of man being the result of such a union ;
while it can scarcely fail to eventuate in a development of religion,
and perhaps literature, into a sublimer phase of manifestation and
expression than they have ever hitherto attained. We must remember
that, with the exception of the two great nations already named,
nearly every distinguished Semitic or Aryan people have been more
or less mingled with inferior Negroid or Turanian elements, and have
obviously been indebted for many of their ruder attributes and cha-
racteristics to the coarser stock, of whose barbarous proclivities they
thus partook. Now, the indications as to the future are, that the
especially constituent elements of the mext great Semitico-Aryan
baptism will be between the two purest of the remaining divisions of
either race; namely, the Arabs and the Celts (of Gaul and Britain),
JACKSON ON THE ARY AN AND THE SEMITE. 365
with just such a proportion of Hebraic and Hellenic, and perhaps we
may add Italic and Syrian, influences as will suffice for cement be-
tween the two extremes. - -
These things lead us to rather profound depths of investigation,
and far-stretching vistas of speculation. Has there ever been, with
the Hebraic and Hellenic, or, shall we say, classic, exceptions already
named, more than an approximately Caucasianised type that has at-
tained to national distinction, far less imperial supremacy, during the
historic period? and let it be remembered that it is to these two ex-
ceptional peoples that we owe our religion, literature, and art. Are
there not degrees of Caucasianisation both in the Semitic and Aryan
types? Are the coarse-featured Moor and flat-footed Slavon perfect
forms, mentally or physically, of the Caucasian man' Have they the
requisite proportion of nerve to bone and muscle, the contour of
head, the chiselling of features, or that finish of the extremities, to
say nothing of delicacy of perception, elevation of thought, or grandeur
of conception, which we regard as, in some of their higher individu-
alities at least, the natural endowments of a Caucasian people? In-
deed, thus contemplated, is there at present, or has there ever been,
a perfectly Caucasianised nation'. In the lower social strata of Aryan
and Semitic communities, when existing as actual nations, with all
their several orders and classes in efficient activity, do we not find
the former tend to a semi-Turanian, and the latter to a semi-Negroid
type 4 And are we not thus brought back to the idea, perhaps some-
what faintly adumbrated in Iran and Turan, that the Caucasian must
be regarded as in some measure a cultured type, alternately product
and agent, or shall we say, appropriate organic instrumentality of our
higher civilisation? But it is time we should conclude. Our paper,
though long, is so far from being exhaustive, that on many very in-
teresting subjects we have scarcely broken ground. The iconography
of Egypt and Assyria as deducible from existing monuments, the
comparative anatomy and physiology of the Aryan and the Semite,
and we may add, their comparative psychology, demand, and would
repay, the most profound investigation. On these, however, as well
as many other kindred departments, additional information is being
so rapidly accumulated, that the time for enunciating definitive
opinions has obviously not yet arrived. They belong to the debate-
able land of Anthropology, where farther investigation should precede
settled conviction, and where anything approaching to dogmatism
would be altogether misplaced ; and we have accordingly endeavoured
to avoid this, preferring the modest suggestion that courts farther
inquiry, to the unwarrantable assumption of authority on grounds ad-
mittedly inadequate to its support.
VOL. VII. —NO. XXVII. C C
366
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, AND
THE PERFECTIBILITY OF ITS RACES.*
By Prof. SoHAAFHAUSEN, Honorary Fellow of the Anthropological Society of
London. .
NATURE is the universe. Hence, there is no subject which does not
belong to the investigation of nature. Proud of so many victories
by which natural science has overthrown error and prejudice, she
strides triumphantly along foreign provinces, and should she be
obstructed in her path, she claims her right; for all science of anti-
quity has proceeded from her. Thus, there exists by the side of his-
tory, which relates the course of times, the names of great kings,
wars, and battles, or the rise and decline of arts and sciences, a
matural history of the human species investigating the struggles and
doings of peoples; the various degrees of culture as a matural devel-
opment, to which the picture of individual human life forms a coun-
terpart. Peoples, also, have their ages. As organic life in general is
determined by natural influences, so is the crude man intimately con-
nected with nature ; but even the cultured man is not independent
of it, he merely learns to apply her laws to his objects. The know-
ledge of the surface of the globe has thrown light upon the course of
universal history; and since a new science, that of statistics, has
commenced a strict investigation into the most complex cultural con-
ditions of modern nations, we have learned that human society every-
where is subject to natural laws, that events, hitherto deemed acci-
dental, such as deaths, births, the number of marriages, crimes, may
be calculated beforehand. Here we meet with the unsolved problem,
that liberty of human action and natural necessity stand side by side.
The various cultural conditions of the human species, as they fol-
lowed each other in time, have a special charm for the naturalist,
inasmuch as he sees them side by side in the various human races.
Many features in the manners of Savage peoples are not sufficiently
made use of, to afford a living picture of the beginnings of our own
civilisation.
Just as the brightness of light is measured by the depth of the
shade ; so do we estimate the height of our own civilisation by looking
into the depths from which Savage peoples often vainly try to emerge.
The judgment concerning the condition of Savage races varies ac-
* Translated from the official Report of the Thirty-third Assembly of
German Naturalists and Physicians, held at Bonn.
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