to us the laws of leverage. The relations of the moving power to the resistance to be overcome and to the point of resistance that must be stable are to be learned in other ways. So with the brain, the wider the survey we can take of the physical conditions and relations that affect its working, the more impressed will we be with the number whose influence must be focussed in every act of successful cerebration, and therefore in every manifestation of correlated mental activity. However subtle the latter may be,-however independent of all physical trammels the meditating, reasoningcomprehending soul may seem to itself to be,-the brain is still the indispensable energising agent, and as such it cannot escape the tyranny of mechanical limitations and adjustments, nor of the laws to which all motions are subservient. EDINBURGH. JAMES CAPPIE, M. D. THE CONFLICT OF RACES, CLASSES, AND "WITHIN SOCIETIES.1 ITHIN FIFTY YEARS," said Napoleon at the time of his greatest glory, and therefore when his words were accepted as an oracle, "Europe will be Republican or Cossack." Fifty years have passed and many more, and still there is not the slightest indication of its becoming the one or the other. Events must have followed the counsel of Marquis Colombe: "Between yes and no, be of the contrary opinion." For instance, we have had a Franco-Russian alliance, which, in spite of the cause which Levasseur wished to find for it in German politics, was none the less a fact. And yet, Europe is not Cossack, and does not seem in the way of becoming so. France indeed is Republican, but an enthusiastic French Republican, Frederic Passy, recently acknowledged : "I do not believe it possible to hold Europe for Republicanism, much less to say that it will become so and when." So the conflict between French society and the Cossack race, predicted by Napoleon, and which was to decide the destiny of Europe has not taken place. Instead there has been a Franco-Russian alliance for combating another alliance between Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary. These three nations, or at least the first two, as commonly considered, do not form a society, much less a race. Then what has become of the famous theory of the Rassenkampf? The Roumanians, the Servians, and the Slavs certainly do not form a race, and yet they 'Translated from Professor Fiamingo's Manuscript by I. W. Howerth, University of Chicago. 2 Levasseur, La population française, Paris, 1892, Vol. III. are united in a struggle against the Magyars. The Poles in Prussia and the Danes of Schleswig, however Teutonic the latter may be by race, are engaged in a struggle against the Germans. The principle of nationality urges them on, and this principle has little to do with race. The migrations of peoples in Europe in the Middle Ages show us tribes bound together for war-like undertakings, as for instance the Cimbrians, the Teutons, the Scythians, etc., etc. But, in a new environment these tribes were assimilated by the rest of the population. The invading race did not absorb the other, but a natural environment united both into one uniform group in accordance with the conditions of the environment. 1. It was principally under the influence of Hegelianism that the theory of races was elaborated in Germany. In France this theory found its principal defender in Ernest Renan. In 1840 and especially in 1848 the theory became dominant, not only because German politics put it at its service, but also and chiefly because it accorded with the national and patriotic spirit that stirred the nations, and with that tendency toward unity which characterised all the peoples of Europe. "It is necessary," they said, "that the State be national, that the nation be one, and that it comprehend all individuals speaking the national language and belonging to the same race. Further, it was important that this national State reduce the heterogeneous elements, that is to say, the foreign. When this theory had served its purpose and had almost completely disappeared from the political field, it still remained in the scientific field. Even to-day, with a considerable number of authors, the social element of the highest importance is that of race. Thus, for example, Morselli writes: " "Even in the matter of suicides we find that the zone of frequency corresponds to countries inhabited by peoples differing in religion, culture, and in political constitution, 1Cf. de Gobineau, L'inégalité des races, Paris, 1894; L. Gumplowicz, Der Rassenkampf, Gratz, 1883; Lazare, L'antisemitisme, Paris, 1895. 66 but kindred by race." And Sergi declares that, "If we seek an ex"planation of the origin of civilisation, and of the dominant Aryan "people, along the Mediterranean as well as in central Europe, we "shall find up to a few years ago, in the minds of all archæologists, linguists, and anthropologists the conviction that Asia was "the unquestioned cradle of the one and the other. The centre "of dispersion of peoples and of civilisation, at least so far as the "primitive ideas of biblical origin are concerned, has been removed "from Mesopotamia to Hindoo Koosh, and Europe becomes an "Asiatic colony into which civilisation has been brought along "with its people."? According to this view civilisation originated in Asia, the cradle of languages and of the Aryan people, the centre of dispersion of the European population. The European people in various groups and in successive times left the common Asiatic centre and established themselves in Europe in their various settlements, carrying with them a common patrimony of languages and civil and religious institutions. There were at first distinct groups, as for instance the Italo-Greeks, the Celts, the Letto-Slavs, the Germans, all of which had formerly belonged to the Indo-Iranian people-the Asiatic group. The Aryans are supposed to have invaded Europe from the east and the west, from the north and the south. Thus even from the first civilisation was supposed to be due to the superiority of a single race. This race, according to the view here outlined, was the Germanic, and civilisation, including the Greek and Roman, to say nothing of the other successive civilisations, was due to Germanic invasions. Huxley declares that even in historic times the area occupied by the fair races with elongated skulls and speaking the Aryan language, was at least for a time continuous from the northern sea coast to central Asia. It is a fact, however, that the Germanic type is not encountered in any of these regions except in a very limited number. The chief 1 E. Morselli, Il suicidio, Milano, 1879, p. 158. 2 G. Sergi, Origine e diffusióne della stirpe della Mediterranea, Roma, 1895, p. 3; Isaac Taylor, Origin of the Aryans, French translation, Paris, 1895. characteristics of the Germanic type have always been recognised as fair complexion, tall stature, blue eyes, and elongated skulls. The purest example of this type is found in southern Scandinavia. Now the contents of numerous graves in Scandinavia show that, so far as archæology has investigated the so-called neolithic age, the great majority of inhabitants had the same structure, and the same cranial peculiarities as at present. Near the graves of men of this tall race, fair and with long skulls, are found men with wide skulls, that is, with skulls of a greater width, often much greater, sometimes four-fifths of the length. This fact was indeed recognised by Professor Huxley, who, as we have just seen, was deluded by the mirage of the Indo-Germanic theory. He writes that in whatever direction we traverse the interior of continental Europe now occupied by a fair race with elongated skulls, let it be through the Southwest, southern France, across the provinces of Belgium into eastern France, in Switzerland, in southern Germany, in Tyrol, or to the northeast into Poland and Russia, or north into Finland and Lapland, wide skulls appear frequently among the elongated. We find among persons who typically have wide skulls, as for instance the Swedes and the Germans, those with elongated skulls. As a general rule in France, in Belgium, in Switzerland, and in southern Germany the increase in the number of wide skulls is accompanied by the appearance of an always increasing proportion of men of dark complexion and low stature. Even in central France and from that point toward the east among the Cévennes and the Alps of Dauphiné, of Savoy and of Tremont, to the western plains of north ern Italy, the tall, fair race, with elongated skulls practically disappears and is replaced by a dark race with wide skulls. But this mixed type, which Huxley recognises among people which more particularly inhabit the so-called basin of the Mediterranean, must also be recognised among the Germans. Several years ago a German writer, Dr. Welcher, more impartial than some of his kinsmen have shown themselves in this question, wrote: "The modern Germans are in part brachycephalic, in part artocephalic, never 1 Nineteenth Century, 1890. |