The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part II - European Races In History
Chapter
11
THE RACIAL APTITUDES
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SUCH are the three races, the Alpine,
Mediterranean, and Nordic, which enter into the composition of European
populations of to-day, and in various combinations comprise the great bulk of
white men all over the world. These races vary intellectually and morally
just as they do physically. Moral, intellectual, and spiritual attributes are
as persistent as physical characters, and are transmitted unchanged from
generation to generation. In considering skull characters we must
remember that, while indicative of independent descent, the size and shape of
the head are not closely related to brain power. Aristotle was a
Mediterranean and had a small, long skull, while Humboldt had a large and
characteristically Nordic skull, but equally dolichocephalic. Socrates and
Diogenes were apparently quite un-Greek and represent remnants of some early
race, perhaps of Paleolithic man. The history of their lives shows clearly
that each was recognized as in some degree alien by their fellow countrymen,
just as the Jews apparently regarded Christ, as, in some indefinite way,
un-Jewish. Mental spiritual and moral traits are
closely as- sociated with the physical distinctions
among the different European races, although like somatological characters,
these spiritual attributes have in many cases gone astray. Enough remain,
however, to show that certain races have special aptitudes for certain
pursuits. The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants, an
agricultural and never a maritime race. In fact, they only extend to salt
water at the head of the Adriatic. The coastal and seafaring populations of
north Europe are everywhere Nordic as far as the coast of Spain, and among
Europeans this race is preeminently fitted to maritime pursuits. The Nordics are, all over the world, a race
of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers,
organizers, and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant
character of the Alpines. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving
but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and
feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable
for the most part to the north. The mental characteristics of the
Mediterranean race are well known, and this race, while inferior in bodily
stamina to both the Nordic and the Alpine, is probably the superior of both,
certainly of the Alpines, in intellectual attainments. In the field of art
its superiority to both the other European races is unquestioned. Before leaving this interesting subject of
the correlation of spiritual and moral traits with physical characters, we
may note that these influences are so deeply rooted in everyday consciousness
that the average novelist or playwright would not fail to make his hero a
tall, blond, honest, and somewhat stupid youth, or his villain a small, dark,
and exceptionally intelligent individual of warped moral character. The gods
of Olympus were almost all described as blond, and it would be difficult to
imagine a Greek artist painting a brunette Venus. In church pictures to-day
all angels are blonds, while the denizens of the lower regions revel in deep
brunetness. Most ancient tapestries show a blond earl on horseback and a dark
haired churl holding the bridle, and in depicting the crucifixion no artist
hesitates to make the two thieves brunet in contrast to the blond Saviour.
This latter is something more than a convention, as such quasi-authentic
traditions as we have of our Lord indicate his Nordic, possibly Greek,
physical and moral attributes. These and other similar traditions clearly
point to the relation of one race to another in classic, mediaeval, and
modern times. How far they will be modified by democratic institutions and
the rule of the majority remains to be seen. The wars of the last two thousand years in
Europe have been almost exclusively wars between the various nations of this race, or
between rulers of Nordic blood. From a race point of view the present
European conflict is essentially a civil war, and nearly all the officers and
a large proportion of the men on both sides are members of this race. It is
the same old story of mutual butchery and mutual destruction between Nordics,
just as the Nordic nobility of Renaissance Italy seem to have been possessed
with a blood mania to kill one another off. It is the modern edition of the old
berserker blood rage, and is class suicide on a gigantic scale. It is hard to
say on which side there is a preponderance of Nordic blood, as Flanders and
northern France are more Teutonic than south Germany, and the backbone of the
armies that England has put in the field, together with those of her
colonies, are almost purely Nordic, while a large portion of the Russian
armies is of the same race. The writer has carefully refrained in this
article from the use of the words "Teutonic" and
"Germanic"' except in their most limited sense, because the names
are currently used in a national and not in a racial sense, to denote the
inhabitants of the central empires. Such broader use would include millions
who are totally un-Teutonic, and exclude millions, of pure Teutonic blood who
are outside of the political borders of Austro-Germany. |
Continue on to Part 2, Chapter 12 - ARYA