THE JEWS: RACE AND ENVIRONMENT 5°7 



by any one. 13 Intellectually we do have proofs that the children born 

 to mixed marriages are not below the average of Jewish and christian 

 in Europe. Grant Allen was the first to point out the striking number 

 of distinguished persons of half-Jewish blood as something simply 

 extraordinary. 14 To mention only some of them — Sir John Herschel, 

 the astronomer; Paul Lindau and his brother; G-. Ebers, the Egyptolo- 

 gist; Professor Oldenburg, the philologist; Ludovic Halevy, the musi- 

 cian; Paul Heyse; Francis Turner Palgrave, the critic; W. Gifford 

 Palgrave, the traveler; Sir H. Drumond Wolff, Prevost-Paradol ; 

 Edwin Booth, the actor; Bret Harte, the novelist, Elie Metchnikoff, 

 the biologist; David Manin; Leon Gambetta; Sir John Millais, the 

 British painter; and many others. 



Religion of the Children resulting from Mixed Marriages 



The church in many countries often complained that mixed mar- 

 riages are a net loss to Christianity, because the children born to chris- 

 tians married to Jews are more apt to be raised in the tenets of 

 Judaism. The Jews, on the other hand, have always maintained that 

 each marriage of this kind is a distinct loss to Judaism. In fact, it 

 has been pointed out that most of the children are brought up as chris- 

 tians, and that this is a distinct advantage to the Jews, because the 

 race is thus maintained in its desirable purity, unadulterated by the 

 infusion of foreign blood. 



From statistical evidence available on the subject, it appears 

 that about 75 per cent, of all the children born to Jews married 

 to christians are baptized immediately at birth, and only 25 per 

 cent, are raised as Jews. This is best seen in Hungary, where the 

 law permitting mixed marriages stipulates that a person intending to 

 marry one of another religion may make provision at the time of 

 making the application for a marriage license about the religion of the 

 children which may be born to them in the future. They may also 

 leave the question open for future consideration, if they so desire. In 

 the latter case it is provided that boys should follow the religion of 

 their father, and girls that of their mother. Of the 3,590 mixed 

 marriages contracted in that country from 1895 to 1903, only 801 

 have taken advantage of the provision of the law, and decided, at the 

 time they applied for their marriage licenses, about the religious affilia- 



13 If the proportion of stillbirths should be taken as an index of the vitality 

 of the new born, then nothing unfavorable can be found in cases of mixed mar- 

 riages: In Prussia the percentage of stillbirths was found from 1875 to 1899 

 as follows: Christians, 3.59 per cent.; Jewish, 3.21 per cent.; and mixed, 3.45 

 per cent. The rates of the mixed are thus about midway between the pure 

 Jewish and pure christian. 



14 Mind, Vol. VIII., pp. 504-5. 



