The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part II - European Races In History
Chapter
9
THE NORDIC FATHERLAND
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THE area in Europe where the Nordic race
developed, and in which the Aryan languages took their origin, probably
included the forest region of eastern Germany, Poland, and Russia, together
with the grasslands which stretched from the Ukraine eastward into the
steppes south of the Ural. For reasons already explained this area was long
isolated from the rest of the world, especially from Asia. When the unity of
the Aryan race and of the Aryan language was broken up during the Bronze Age,
the early Nordics pushed west along the sandy plains of the north and pressed
against and through the Alpine populations of central Europe. They also swept
down through Thrace into Greece and Asia Minor, while other large and
important groups entered Asia partly through the Caucasus Mountains but in
greater strength around the north and east sides of the Caspian-Aral Sea. That portion of the Nordic race which
continued to inhabit south Russia and grazed their flocks of sheep and herds
of horses on the grasslands, were the Scythians of the Greeks, and from these
nomad shepherds came the Cimmerians, Persians, Sacae, Massagetae, and perhaps the Kassites
and Mitanni, and other early Aryan-speaking Nordic invaders of Asia. The
descendants of these Nordics are scattered everywhere in Russia, but are now
submerged by the later Slavs. Well-marked characters of the Nordic race
enable us to distinguish it definitely wherever it first appears in history,
and we know that all the blondness in the world is derived from this source.
When it first enters the Mediterranean world coming from the north, its arrival
is everywhere marked by a new and higher civilization. In most cases the
contact of the vigorous barbarians with the ancient civilizations created a
sudden impulse of life and an outburst of culture as soon as the first
destruction wrought by the conquest was repaired. In addition to the long continued selection
exercised by the severe climatic conditions of the north, and the consequent
elimination of ineffectives, all of which affects a race, there is another
force at work which concerns the individual as well. The energy developed in
the north is not immediately lost when transferred to the softer conditions
of existence in the Mediterranean and Indian countries. This energy endures
for several generations, and only dies slowly away as the northern blood
becomes diluted and the impulse to strive fades. The contact of Hellene and Pelasgian caused
the blossoming of the ancient civilization of Hellas, just as two thousand
years later, when the Nordic invaders of Italy had absorbed the science, art,
and literature of Rome, they produced that splendid century we call the
Renaissance. The chief men of the Cinque Cento were of
Nordic, largely Gothic and Lombard, blood, a fact easily recognized by a
close inspection of busts or portraits in north Italy. Dante, Raphael,
Titian, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci were all of Nordic type. Similar expansions of civilization and
organization of empire, followed the incursion of the Nordic Persians into
the land of the round skull Medes, and the introduction of Sanskrit into
India by the Nordic Sacae who conquered that peninsula. These outbursts of
progress, due to the first contact and mixture of two contrasted races, are,
however, only transitory and pass with the last lingering trace of Nordic
blood. In India the blood of these Aryan-speaking
invaders has been absorbed by the dark Hindu, and in the final event only
their synthetic speech survived. The marvelous organization of the Roman
state made use of the services of Nordic mercenaries, and kept the Western Empire
alive for three centuries after the blood of the ancient Romans had virtually
ceased to exist. The date when the population of the Empire had become
predominantly of Mediterranean and Oriental blood, due to the introduction of
slaves from the east and the wastage of Italian blood in war, coincides with
the establishment of the Empire under Augustus, and the last Republican
patriots represent the final protest of the old patrician Nordic strain. For
the most part they refused to abdicate their right to rule in favor of
manumitted slaves and imperial favorites, and fell in battle and sword in
hand. The Roman died out but the slaves survived, and their descendants
predominate among the south Italians of to-day. The Byzantine Empire, from much the same
causes, in its turn gradually became less and less European and more and more
Oriental until it, too, withered away. When these facts are considered the fall of
Rome ceases to be a mystery, and the only wonder is that the Roman state
lived on after the Romans were extinct, or that the Eastern Empire struggled
on so long with an ever fading Greek population. Both in Rome and in Greece
only the language of the dominant race survived. So entirely had the blood of the Romans
vanished in the last days of the Empire that sorry bands of barbarians
wandered at will through the desolated provinces. Caesar and his legions
would have made short work of these unorganized ban- ditti, but Caesar and
his legions had become a memory, although that memory was great enough to inspire
in the intruders a certain awe and desire to imitate. Against invaders,
however, blood and brawn are more effective than tradition and culture,
however noble these may be. Early ascetic Christianity played a large
part in this decline of the Roman Empire, as it was at the outset the
religion of the slave, the meek, and the lowly, while Stoicism was the
religion of the strong men of the time. This bias in favor of the weaker
elements greatly interfered with their elimination by natural processes, and
the fighting force of the empire was gradually undermined. Christianity was
in sharp contrast to the worship of tribal deities which preceded it, and
tended then, as it does now, to break down class and race distinctions. Such
distinctions are absolutely essential to the maintenance of race purity in
any community when two or more races live side by side. Race feeling may be called prejudice by
those whose careers are cramped by it, but it is a natural antipathy which
serves to maintain the purity of type. The unfortunate fact that nearly all
species of men interbreed freely leaves us no choice in the matter. Either
the races must be kept apart by artificial devices of this sort, or else they
ultimately amalgamate, and in the offspring the more generalized or lower
type prevails. |
Continue on to Part 2, Chapter 10 - NORDIC RACE OUTSIDE OF EUROPE