164 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



even yet of the unique achievement of this landless people. That 

 the Jews have preserved their individuality despite all mutations of 

 environment goes without saying. They have done more. They 

 have accomplished this without absolute unity of language. Forced 

 of necessity to adopt the speech of their immediate neighbors, they 

 have only where congregated in sufficient numbers been able either 

 to preserve or to evolve a distinctive speech. In Spain and the 

 Balkan states they make use of Spanish; in Kussia and Poland they 

 speak a corrupt German; and in the interior of Morocco, Arabic. 

 Nevertheless, despite these discouragements of every kind, they still 

 constitute a distinctive social unit wherever they chance to be. 



This social individuality of the Jews is of a peculiar sort. Be- 

 reft of linguistic and geographical support, it could not be political. 

 The nineteenth century, says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, is the age of 

 nationality; meaning obviously territorial nationality, the product 

 of contiguity, not birth. To this, he says, the Jew is indifferent, 

 typifying still the Oriental tribal idea. As a result he is out of 

 harmony with his environment. An element of dislike of a political 

 nature on the part of the Christian is added to the irreconcilability 

 of religious belief. It has ever been the Aryan versus the Semite 

 in religion throughout all history, as Kenan has observed; and to- 

 day it has also become the people versus the nation, as well as the 

 Jew versus the Christian. Granted that this political dissonance is 

 largely the fault of the Gentile, its existence must be acknowledged, 

 nevertheless. 



How has this remarkable result been achieved? How, bereft of 

 two out of three of the essentials of nationality, has the Jew been 

 enabled to perpetuate his social consciousness? Is the superior force 

 of religion, perhaps abnormally developed, alone able to account for 

 it all? Is it a case of compensatory development, analogous in the 

 body to a loss of eyesight remedied through greater delicacy of finger 

 touch ? Or is there some hidden, some unsuspected factor, which has 

 contributed to this result? We have elsewhere shown that a fourth 

 element of social solidarity is sometimes, though rarely, found, in a 

 community of physical descent. That, in other words, to the ce- 

 menting bonds of speech, tradition, belief, and contiguity, is added 

 the element of physical brotherhood — that is to say, of race. Can it 

 be that herein is a partial explanation of the social individuality of 

 the Jewish people ? It is a question for the scientist alone. Race, as 

 we constantly maintain, despite the abuses of the word, really is to 

 be measured only by physical characteristics. The task before us is 

 to apply the criteria of anthropological science, therefore, to the 

 problems of Jewish derivation and descent. Only incidentally and 

 as matters of contributory interest shall we consider the views of 



