112 Heredity. 



the national character, which remains intact where there is no 

 such intermixture. But there are very few nations indeed that 

 have been able to survive and gain civilization without fusion with 

 others. Though it has been held that the superior races are those 

 which have ever been exclusive a proposition which we will 

 hereafter examine in detail still it is difficult to see how, under 

 such conditions, a people could acquire that variety and that 

 complexity of elements without which civilization is impossible. 

 A great, simple civilization is a contradiction in terms, so that 

 we have but little chance of reaching a conclusion. One of two 

 things must always take place : either a people remains intact, 

 and then its development is inconsiderable ; or it develops only 

 by intermingling with other races. 



Yet, after having spoken of nations among whom the primitive 

 national character, in its struggle with foreign elements, must have 

 been in some degree modified, we turn to some which have been 

 at least relatively exclusive. Were China better known, that 

 country would probably offer a curious subject of study. We 

 take for examples the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Cagots. 



THE JEWS. 



The Jewish people is, perhaps, the only one that has played a 

 part in history, while jealously guarding its purity of race. It 

 is not, however, quite unmixed. From the psychological point of 

 view, it is not easy to decide how far its character has been 

 modified by Persian doctrines after the Babylonian captivity, by 

 Greek and Egyptian manners from Alexander to Philo, and, in 

 the middle ages, by the hard condition of its very existence. 

 According to Munck, l the commercial spirit of the modern Jew 

 is not a heritage from his ancestors, but the result of the 

 oppressions to which they were subjected, and of their exclusion 

 from every other trade/ It will, however, be generally admitted 

 that, notwithstanding a few physical and moral variations from 

 which no living thing is free, the Jewish nation has preserved 

 better than any other its distinctive character : in other words, 

 that in them heredity is better seen than elsewhere. 



But when we attempt to determine the physical and moral 

 characteristics of this race, not in vague and general phrases, but 



