46 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



read how the Japanese attributed their successes to the 

 " spirits of their ancestors " and " the merits of their 

 Emperor," the latter as an incarnation of the present 

 racial aspirations. 



Alone among the ancient religions, that of the Jews 

 has survived in the Western world to the present time. 

 Apart, therefore, from other considerations of its great 

 interest and importance to us, we are led to inquire 

 into the probable reasons of its remarkable persistence 

 and vitality. 



Now the Jews laid great stress on the continuity of 

 the family. They gave the family a national and patri- 

 otic aspect. Moreover, there was always the hope for 

 the Hebrew parent to become the progenitor of the 

 promised child, the Messiah. The tendency to look 

 back to a common ancestry in the great legendary fore- 

 fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was accompanied 

 by the effort to look forward and consider the interests 

 of their children's children to the third and fourth 

 generations. They set aside one tribe to supply the 

 priesthood, they classified their men as keepers of flocks 

 or tillers of the soil. Even when they became town- 

 dwellers, such solemnities as the feast of tabernacles 

 recalled their pastoral origin and emphasized the depend- 

 ence of the city on the country, of man on Nature. 

 They disliked the alien populations with whom they 

 were surrounded and discouraged association and inter- 

 marriage with them. In the light of modern science 

 there is reason to believe that this restriction embodies 

 a very sound biological principle. In such points as 

 these, the Jews appear to have had a very strong racial 

 instinct, a profound sense of the importance of heredity. 



