SUICIDE AMONG THE JEWS 199 



anthropologically superior and inferior races is based appear 

 very insufficient.^ We shall understand the survival of the 

 Jewish communities in Europe better if we consider the Jews as 

 a race possessed, in a remarkable degree, of the power of adapta- 

 tion to their environment. The laws of the Middle Ages ex- 

 cluded the Jews from aU professions in the service of the State. 

 A race which lacked the adaptive capacity of the Jews, and which 

 had been thus handicapped in the struggle for existence, would 

 have died out. But the Jews, prohibited from entering the 

 service of the State, shut out from every recognised profession, 

 rendered incapable, in some coimtries, of acquiring fixed property, 

 none the less succeeded in adapting themselves to the very 



possess among the Gennanic peoples the greatest proportion of uncon- 

 taminated Aryan blood, to break down the boundaries which political 

 necessities have artificially set up, and to bring about a fusion of all 

 the Germanic peoples within a new Holy Roman Empire. Among the 

 countries thus reckoned as Germanic, and which are to be absorbed, are 

 Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and the north-eastern provinces 

 of !France {vide J. L. Reimer, Ein Pangermanisches DeutscUand : Versuch 

 iiber die Konsequenzen der gegenwdrtigen wissenschaftlichen Bassenbetracktung 

 jilr unsere politischen und religidsen Probleme, Berlin and Leipzig, 1905 ; 

 K. von Strantz, Das verwelschte Deutschtum jenseits der Westmarhen des 

 Reiches, Berlin and Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1903 ; H. Daniel, Leitfaden fiir 

 den Unterricht in der Oeographie, Halle, 1904). The edition which we have 

 of the latter work is the 241st. It is a manual of geography for use in 

 the State schools, and the number of its editions is sufficient proof of its 

 popularity. This book — from which tens of thousands of German children 

 have learned their geography during the last thirty years — teaches, as a 

 proved fact, that the German countries of Europe, of which the German 

 Empire is the principal, consist also of Austria, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, 

 Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. 



^ There is certainly an element of truth in the doctrines of the anthropo- 

 logical school of sociologists. It is undoubtedly true that the division of 

 the population of Europe into Germanic, Slav, and Latin races is in- 

 accurate ; for these divisions correspond to the culture of the respective 

 groups, but not to any anthropological classification ; and it is an abuse of 

 terms to apply the word " race " to a group absolutely lacking in homo- 

 geneity of type, as is especially the case with the so-called Latin race. 

 The classification which M. de Lapouge gives of the European races agrees 

 with that of anthropologists in general. For instance, M. Paul Topinard 



