CHAPTER XI

. RACIAL APTITUDES

226 : 7. Conklin, in _Heredity and Environment_, p. 207, says: “Psychological characters appear to be inherited in the same way that anatomical and physiological traits are; indeed, all that has been said regarding the correlation of morphological and physiological characters applies also to psychological ones. No one doubts that particular instincts, aptitudes and capacities are inherited among both animals and men, nor that different races and species differ hereditarily in psychological characteristics. The general tendency of recent work on heredity is unmistakable, whether it concerns man or lower animals. The entire organism, consisting of structures and functions, body and mind, develops out of the germ, and the organization of the germ determines all the possibilities of development of the mind no less than of the body, though the actual realization of any possibility is dependent also upon environmental stimuli.”

_Cf._ Haeckel, _The Riddle of the Universe_, _passim_.

226 : 17. Deniker, 2, pp. 76, 97–104.

227 : 1. _Cf._ their busts with other Greek statues.

227 : 15. This does not refer to the peculiar nests of round heads alluded to by Fleure and James, and Zaborowski, but to the Alpines proper.

227 : 20. DeLapouge, _Les Sélections sociales_.

228 : 18. See Tacitus, _Germania_.

229 : 6. It may be interesting in this connection to quote Fleure and James, pp. 118–119, who, after giving illustrations of Mediterranean types, say of them: “Types 1(a) to 1(c) contribute considerable numbers to the ministries of the various churches, possibly in part from inherent and racial leanings, but partly also because these are the people of the Moorlands. The idealism of such people usually expresses itself in music, poetry, literature and religion, rather than in architecture, painting and plastic arts generally. They rarely have a sufficiency of material resources for the latter activities. These types also contribute a number of men to the medical profession, for somewhat similar reasons, no doubt.

“The successful commercial men, who have given the Welsh their extraordinarily prominent place in British trade (shipping firms, for example), usually belong to types 2 or 4” [Nordic and Nordic-Alpine, Beaker Maker], “rather than to 1, as also do the great majority of Welsh members of Parliament, though there are exceptions of the first importance.

“The Nordic type is marked by ingenuity and enterprise in striking out new lines. Type 2(c)” [Beaker Maker] “in Wales is remarkable for governmental ability of the administrative kind as well as for independence of thought and critical power.”

The following remarks are taken from Beddoe, 4, p. 142: “In opposition to the current opinion it would seem that the Welsh rise most in commerce, the Scotch coming after them and the Irish nowhere. The people of Welsh descent and name hold their own fairly in science; the Scotch do more, the Irish less. But when one looks to the attainment of military or political distinction, the case is altered. Here the Scotchmen, and especially the Highlanders bear away the palm; the Irish retrieve their position and the Welsh are little heard of.”

See also p. 10 of Beddoe’s _Races of Britain_, and Hector McLean in vol. IV, pp. 218 _seq._ of the _Anthropological Review_ and elsewhere. The following quotation from Hall’s _Ancient History of the Near East_ is interesting:

“Knowing what we do of the psychological peculiarities of the different races of mankind, it is perhaps not an illegitimate speculation to wonder whence the Greeks inherited this sense of proportion in their whole mental outlook. The feeling of Hellenes for art in general was surely inherited from their forebears on the Ægean, not the Indo-European side.[7] The feeling for naturalistic art, for truth of representation, may have come from the Ægeans, but the equally characteristic love of the crude and bizarre was not inherited: the sense of proportion inhibited it. In fact, we may ascribe this sense to the Aryan element in the Hellenic brain, to which must also be attributed the Greek political sense, the idea of the rights of the folk and of the individual in it.[8] The Mediterranean possessed the artistic sense without the sense of proportion: the Aryan had little artistic sense but had the sense of proportion and justice, and with it the political sense. The result of the fusion of the two races we see in the true canon of taste and beauty in all things that had become the ideal of the Greeks,[9] and was through them to become the ideal of mankind.”

Footnote 7:

“We have only to look around and seek, vainly, for any self-developed artistic feeling among the pure Indo-Europeans. The Kassites had none and blighted that of Babylonia for centuries: the Persians had none and merely adopted that of Assyria: the Goths and Vandals had none: the Celts and Teutons have throughout the centuries derived theirs from the Mediterranean region.”

Footnote 8:

The predominance of the Aryan element in Greek political ideas is obvious. It is not probable that the old Ægean had any more definite political ideas than had his relative the Egyptian.

Footnote 9:

“In matters of political and ordinary justice between man and man they fell short of their ideal often enough, but they had the reasonable ideal: the barbarians had none. The Egyptians were an imaginative race, but their imagination was untrammelled by the sense of proportion: their only thinker with reasonable and logical ideas, Akhenaten, soon became as mad a fanatic as any unreasonable Nitrian monk or Arab Mahdi. Ordinarily speaking, Egyptian and Semitic ideals were purely religious, and so, to the Greek mind, beyond the domain of reason. The Babylonians, Assyrians, and Phœnicians cannot be said ever to have possessed any ideals of any kind.”

229 : 22. Fleure and James, p. 146, say: “In the folk tales, it is true, the people are called fairies but colouring is mentioned only in one case—that is of a trader from the sea who is said to be fair; _i. e._, fair hair is treated as something worthy of special mention. The fairy children (changelings) are always described in such a way as to suggest that they were dark, and that they were the children of the Upland-folk of our hypothesis—_i. e._, mostly of Mediterranean race. In the romances the princes and princesses are said to be fair, as though that were exceptional. Our friend, Mr. J. H. Shaxby, draws our attention to the probability that the word fair in ‘fair’ or ‘fair-folk’ does not refer to physical traits, but is an adulatory term such as men so generally use in describing beings about whom their superstitions gather.”

230 : 5. Pope Gregory, about 578 A. D.

230 : 9. For evidence as to the blond characters of Christ and the indications of His descent, see Haeckel, _The Riddle of the Universe_, chap. XVII.

Every now and then some reference to this question is noted in the daily papers. Not long ago, in one of the large New York dailies, there appeared a short paragraph concerning the letter of Lentulus. All mention of the extremely doubtful authenticity of this letter was omitted. The _Catholic Cyclopædia_, vol. IX, discusses the matter as follows:

Publius Lentulus, A fictitious person said to have been the governor of Judea before Pontius Pilate and to have written the following letter to the Roman Senate: “Lentulus, the Governor of the Jerusalemites, to the Roman Senate and People, greetings. There has appeared in our times and there still lives, a man of great power (virtue), called Jesus Christ. The people call him prophet of truth; his disciples son of God. He raises the dead, and heals infirmities. He is a man of medium size (_statura procerus, mediocris et spectabilis_); he has a venerable aspect, and his beholders can both fear and love him. His hair is of the color of the ripe hazel nut, straight down to the ears, but below the ears wavy and curled, with a bluish and bright reflection flowing over his shoulders. It is parted in two on the top of the head, after the pattern of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and very cheerful, with a face without a wrinkle or spot, embellished by a slightly ruddy complexion. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is abundant, of the color of his hair, not long, but divided at the chin. His aspect is simple and mature, his eyes are changeable and bright. He is terrible in his reprimands, sweet and amiable in his admonitions, cheerful without loss of gravity. He was never known to laugh, but often to weep. His stature is straight, his hands and arms beautiful to behold. His conversation is grave, infrequent and modest. He is the most beautiful among the children of men.” The letter was first printed in _The Life of Christ_, by Ludolph the Carthusian, at Cologne, 1474. According to the manuscript of Jena, a certain Giacomo Colonna found the letter in an ancient Roman document sent to Rome from Constantinople. It must be of Greek origin and have been translated into Latin during the thirteenth or fourteenth century, though it received its present form at the hands of a humanist of the fifteenth or sixteenth century.

The description agrees with the so-called Abgar picture of Our Lord. It also agrees with the portrait of Jesus Christ drawn by Nicephorus, St. John Damascene, and the Book of Painters (of Mt. Athos). Munter, (_Die Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen_, Altona, 1825, p. 9), believes he can trace the letter down to the time of Diocletian, but this is not generally admitted. The Letter of Lentulus is certainly apocryphal; there never was a governor of Jerusalem; no procurator of Judea is known to have been called Lentulus; a Roman governor would not have addressed the Senate, but the Emperor; a Roman writer would not have employed the expressions, “prophet of truth,” “sons of men,” “Jesus Christ.” The former two are Hebrew idioms, the third is taken from the New Testament. The letter, therefore, shows us a description of Our Lord such as Christian piety conceived him.

There is considerable literature touching on this letter, for which see the _Catholic Cyclopædia_. Although we cannot credit the letter as genuine, it is interesting, as the article indicated, in showing the popular attitude to the traits in question, and in attributing these Nordic characters to Christ, as are the occasional efforts to bring the matter up again in the journals of to-day.

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