454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nize as without limit in space and without beginning or end in 

 time/' and this noumenal power of philosophy, of which all phe- 

 nomena are but manifestations, is the God of religion " the 

 infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed." 



THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 

 A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. 



{Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.) 

 By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Pn. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOE OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTUREB IN 

 ANTHROPO-GEOGEAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 



I. LANGUAGE, NATIONALITY, AND RACE. 



THE historian of The Norman Conquest of England was very 

 fond of contrasting the east and the west of Europe. He 

 maintained that the political unrest which underlies the Eastern 

 question was due to the utter lack of physical assimilation among 

 the people of the Balkan states ; that, in other words, nationality 

 had no foundation in race. This was undoubtedly true to some 

 extent ; and yet even in the west, the formation of these boasted 

 nationalities is so recent that it accords but slightly with the 

 lines of physical descent. A slight scratch of the skin of neigh- 

 bors suffices to reveal radical differences of blood, so that the west 

 is merely a step in advance of the east after all. It is a trite ob- 

 servation that all over Europe population has been laid down in 

 different strata more or less horizontal. In the east of Europe 

 this stratification is recent and distinct. West of the Austro- 

 Hungarian Empire the primitive layers have become metamor- 

 phosed, to borrow a geological term, by the fusing heat of nation- 

 ality and the pressure of civilization. The population of the east 

 of Europe structurally is as different from that of the west to 

 the naked eye as, to complete our simile, sandstone is from gran- 

 ite ; nevertheless, despite their apparent homogeneity on analysis 

 we may still read the history of these western nations by the aid 

 of natural science from the purely physical characteristics of their 

 people alone. > 



To the ordinary observer a uniform layer of population is 

 spread over the continent as waters cover the earth. In reality, 

 while apparently at rest, this great body of men reveals itself to- 

 day in constant motion internally. Currents and counter-cur- 

 rents sweep hither and thither, some rising and others falling, 

 with now and then a quiet pool or eddy where alone population is 

 really in a quiescent state. These movements are not transient ; 

 they have been going on for centuries, determined by the eco- 

 nomic character and the geography of the continent. They are 



