Hans Günther - The racial elements of European history
THE RACIAL ELEMENTS OF
EUROPEAN HISTORY
Chapter
V
ENVIRONMENT, INHERITANCE, RACIAL MIXTURE
THE
attempt has been made, especially in the nineteenth century, to explain racial
characters by the environment: according to this theory one environment produces
brachycephaly, another dolichocephaly; one produces light colouring, another
dark; one produces tallness, another shortness. It came even to be supposed that
an influence was exercised by men's activities, by their customs, by their
calling, even by their food. These views were strengthened by a belief in the
inheritance of acquired characters (Lamarckism), which research on heredity
could not confirm. The leading investigators on heredity in our time, such as
Morgan and his fellow-workers in North America, de Vries in Holland, Johansen in
Denmark, Correns and Baur in Germany, have all expressed themselves against the
possibility of an inheritance of acquired characters. This is true, too, for the
mental qualities of man. 'When Johansen says that experimental research has so
far not yielded a single example of acquired characters being inherited, this is
also true in every way for the inheritance of psychic characters.'1
But as a result the belief arose that racial differences are more or less
unstable, meaningless phenomena, when set against the 'might of the
environment.' It was believed that in the United States a homogeneous division
of mankind was gradually growing up from the most heterogeneous species with a
like bodily and mental constitution, through the influence of the environment,
which brought about a gradual fusion of the most heterogeneous elements. This is
the 'melting-pot theory' which the American investigators on race rightly scoff
at to-day.
Research now shows
how careful we must be in pre-supposing influences of the environment; it has
been able to explain the variations found in different parts of a country or in
different classes of a people by hereditary endowment, and changes in the
physical and mental nature of a settled people, undisturbed by immigration from
outside, by selection -- by the differences, that is, in the birth-rate in
individual districts and social classes (selection by fertility) of a country.
Later on we shall
have to deal rather more particularly with the phenomena of selection. Here we
must say something about the question of race mixture, for on this question
like-wise mistaken views are current. One hears it said that in the United
States of North America there is gradually coming into being through the
mingling of the races a homogeneous people, that will embody a compromise
between all the existing racial qualities, a mixed race with characteristics
distributed more or less evenly throughout the whole nation. Europe, too, it is
said, through racial mixture is gradually becoming homogeneous -- and thus
peaceful. All such views, however, on the rise of 'mixed races' are mistaken. A
transmissible combination of the characteristics of two or more races can be
brought about only on certain defined conditions, conditions which cannot any
longer be realized in the national life of to-day. Even after the longest of
periods no 'German race' will be born out of the races we see to-day in Germany,
though this is sometimes assumed. In Europe, which has been the scene from
prehistoric times of the wanderings of peoples of differing races, where a
thoroughgoing mingling of the races has always been going on, a compromise
between all their characters should long ago have taken place: a medium height,
a medium shape of the skull, face, and nose, and medium colouring should all be
fairly evenly distributed in every part, and no important mental differences
ought any longer to be found as between districts or between individuals.
Central Europe, at any rate, should show a uniform, thoroughly homogeneous type
of mankind.
In the 'sixties of
last century the Augustinian abbot Johann Mendel (1822-84) (whose name in
religion was Gregor) was carrying on at Brünn investigations on heredity, and
was thus led to discover a statistical fundamental law of inheritance. Since
then such investigations have in a relatively short time reached an
extraordinary pitch of development; and Eugen Fischer, using the Hottentot-European
mixed people of the Rehoboth cross-breeds as his material, has been able to show
that the laws of heredity already discovered apply to mankind.2 It
was found that, when two races are crossed, what results is not a 'mixed race,'
but a highly varied pattern of the racial marks: the height of the one race
combined in one man with the shape of the head of the other race; the colour of
the skin, for example, of the Nordic race combined with the colour of the Alpine
eye; the hair texture of a curly-headed dark race combined with the hair
colouring of a fair race; while we find, besides, medium shapes and colouring.
Then again we have men who seem to belong wholly to one or other of the
component races, parents showing a different combination of characteristics from
their children, and so forth.
The understanding of
the processes of heredity is complicated by the fact that the members of any
nation are mostly cross-breeds who come not from parents belonging to different
races, each being, however, of pure race, but who come from parents who are
themselves cross-breeds. A further difficulty for investigations on heredity and
race lies in the fact that some characteristics will be 'recessive,' others
'dominant.' It can thus very well happen that in the outward appearance of a man
of mixed race almost all the characteristics of one race, and these only, may be
visible, while he may also inherit many dispositions of the other race, which
dispositions have remained 'recessive.' Thus, for example, brown-eyed parents
may have a blue-eyed child, as the light colouring of hair, skin, and of eyes is
recessive; but purely blue-eyed parents will never have a brown-eyed child, for
light colouring is never found to be dominant. From this it follows that the
outward appearance of a man (his phenotype) gives a certain clue, by no means to
be despised, to his racial membership, but not a complete proof. To have any
understanding of his hereditary portrait (idiotype) we also need to take into
consideration his forebears, his brothers and sisters, and his offspring. From
the foregoing, we see, too, that in regard to the racial or health 'value' of a
man we have to distinguish between his value or worth as an individual, and as a
parent; and lastly that men who have the same phenotype -- that is, outward
appearance -- may have a different idiotype -- that is, hereditary composite
portrait, and vice versâ.
It is usually only
the phenotype of a living creature that can be influenced by the environment,
not the idiotype. (The importance of a poisonous stimulant like alcohol lies in
the very fact that alcohol has a harmful effect on the idiotype.) Many of the
traits which strike us in a man as marks of his nationality, or of a wider
membership, are peculiarities of the phenotype, acquired in and for the
individual life, and thus are not hereditary traits impressed on him by the
speech, and by the movements and attitudes peculiar to the particular
nationality or human group concerned. One sometimes hears the view that some
people or other makes up a true-breeding human group through the influence of
the environment, or as a special 'mixed race.' This is the same mistake in a
higher degree as the confusion of nation or people with race (cp. Chapter One).
If two races are
crossed, a 'mixed race,' breeding true, will result only under special
conditions. 'New races can never be born through crossing alone. Crossing can
only give rise to new combinations; and the old characteristics do not disappear
through crossing only. The disappearance of the old and the making of something
really new can only be brought about by selection. The new combinations,
therefore, can be so selected and sifted that all those with certain qualities
disappear, while those left show certain new combinations. A new race has now
come into being as a result of a mixture; the real factors at work were
selection and rejection.'3 The social group which is to keep to the
same direction of selection must also be allowed to live for long periods in
isolation. It is by a direction of selection continuously maintained in
isolation that the rise of races in prehistoric times must be explained; and
often human groups, breeding true, that is, races, must have been formed, too,
from the mingling of two or more earlier races through selection in a
determinate enclosed environment. In the racial mixture of the Jews, too, I am
inclined to see another example of selective processes which have produced a
considerable degree of uniformity in a group of mixed elements (cp. Chapter
Four). Among the European peoples, however, the mingling of races which has been
going on since Neolithic times has only had the result of producing that
variegated mixture we spoke of above; sometimes, however, leading to cases of
so-called catalysis or breaking down, where in a child characteristics from the
hereditary endowment of his racially mixed parents meet together again in a
determinate racial structure.4
Footnotes for
Chapter V
1
W. Peters, Die
Vererbung geistiger Eigenschaften und die psychische Konstitution, 1925.
2
Fischer, Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen,
1913. The discovery by Boas ('Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of
Immigrants,' Immigrant Commission, Senate Document, No. 208, 1911) that
children from immigrant Jews in America are somewhat longer-headed, those of
immigrant Sicilians somewhat shorter-headed, than were their parents, does not
tell at all for an influence from the environment, since neither the Jews nor
the Sicilians are races, but are racially mixed peoples, in whom
the children may well show characteristics differing from their parents. Boas,
however, as a result of his investigations, goes no further than to suppose
changes in the phenotype, not in the idiotype. 'It might well be that these same
persons brought back to their old environment would return to their earlier
bodily characteristics' ('New Evidence in regard to the Instability of Human
Types,' Proc. Nat. Acad. Sc., ii., 1916). Boas's investigations, however,
have had their value strongly questioned; cp. Deniker, Les races et les
peuples de la terre, 1926, p. 138.
3
Fischer, in Baur-Fischer-Lenz, Grundriss, i., 1923.
4
As all these references to phenomena of heredity must necessarily be only
sketchy, owing to the need for brevity, readers are referred to Siemens's
excellent book, written 'for the educated of every profession,' Grundzüge der
Vererbungslehre, der Rassenhygiene, etc., 1926; and to Fetscher's small
book, Grundzüge der Vererbungslehre, 1925. Siemens's book has been
translated by L. F. Barker (from an earlier edition) under the title Race
Hygiene and Heredity (London and New York, 1924).
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