myth and Christianity, and not long ago a Danish theologian has
attempted to show that the sagas of the Edda were imported into the
North by Christian monks, the world-tree Yggdrasil was said to be the
biblical tree of life, the same from which the wood of Christ's cross
had been taken, Loki was identified with Lucifer, the blind Höder
with Longinus, the Roman captain who thrust the lance into the side
of Christ, etc. It is a strange coincidence that Longinus was blind,
according to the Gospel of Nicodemus, which may have been written in
the eighth century. Longinus, it is told, acquired sight through the
blood of Jesus, thus interpreting the passage "they shall look at him
whom they pierced" in the sense as if Longinus had not been able to
look at Jesus before.
A Jewish libel against Christianity, _Toledoth Jeshu_, (reprinted
in Eisenmenger's "Entdecktes Judenthum") contains a very striking
similarity with the Baldur myth. It is told:
"When the wise had ordered Jesus, after he had been stoned, to be
hanged to the wood and the wood would not bear him but broke, his
disciples saw it and they wept and said: 'Lo the justice of our Lord
Jesus; no wood will bear him.' The disciples did not know that he had
extorted an oath from all the wood while he had still the name (viz.,
the mystical and miracle-working name of God) in his power, for he
knew his fate that he would be condemned to be hanged.... But when
Judas saw that no wood would bear him, he said to the wise: Consider
the shrewdness of his mind. He has taken oaths from all wood that it
should not bear him, but in my garden grows an enormous cabbage-stock.
I shall go and bring it; perhaps it will bear him. The wise said: Do as
you say. Then Judas went and brought the cabbage-stock, and they hanged
Jesus on it."
This account being older than 1278, it was supposed to have contributed
to form the Baldur myth of the Edda, but Müllenhoff refuted all the
attempts to attribute a recent origin to the Edda. The mistle does
not grow in Iceland, accordingly the main parts of the Baldur myth in
which the mistle plays so prominent a part must have existed before the
Icelanders left their Scandinavian homes.
Dr. Krause's investigations strongly tend to corroborate the new view
of placing the home of the Aryas in Europe.
By Aryas in the old sense of the name were understood those families
of nations which spoke the Aryan languages, viz., the Hindoo, the
Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Slaves, the Germans, and
the Celts, and some few smaller ones. These Aryas were formerly
considered as kin in blood and their home was sought somewhere in
Asia. Of late, however, many considerations tend to prove that these
Aryan nations were by no means one family; they are the product of
a mixture of several races among which one has forced its language
upon the others. If we call this race the Aryans proper we find that
they are represented most purely in the Teutonic nations, the Saxons,
Low Germans, and Scandinavians. These Aryans are a tall, blond, and
dolichocephalic race. They appear as the conquerors of India, the
masters of Persia, the Dorian immigrators of Greece, showing everywhere
the same attributes. It is natural that they were swallowed up again
by the dark brachycephalic races whom they had conquered, because the
latter were better adapted to the southern climate than their masters.
There are three long-headed races: (1) the blond long-heads or
Aryas, (2) the dark South European long-heads, and (3) the dark and
woolly-haired long-heads of Africa or the Negroes. There are also
several broad-headed races, among them the Ugro-Finnians, Turanians,
South European broad-heads are represented as the Savoyards. The
original Aryans (by A. de Quatrefages called the Cannstadt race) were
extremely long-headed, the proportion sinking below 75 : 100. This race,
so called after the discovery of graves in Cannstadt, shows a strong
similarity with, and must be considered as, an evolution from the
Neanderthal type. The eyebrows of the male Neanderthal type skulls
protrude (slightly reminding us of the Gorilla) making the smallness
of the forehead still more noticeable. The hind part of the head is
well developed. The bones are extremely strong, the skull is thick, and
the proportion of length to breadth averages in both, the Neanderthal
and Cannstadt types, 71·3. This race inhabited the banks of the Rhine
and Seine and has been called the Germanic type by Hölder, the Saxon
type by Englishmen, Cymrians by Broca, while Dr. Krause calls them
Aryans. The South European long-heads with dark hair are called by
A. de Quatrefages the Cro-Magnon type, named after a place in the
Vésère valley where as its first specimen a tall old man had been
discovered. The Cro-Magnon type varies greatly from the Cannstadt
type; the forehead is broad and high, and the cranium is also well
formed. The proportion of breadth to length is also dolichocephalic,
it averages 73·76. The orbits are broad but closely set, and the size
of the lower parts of the face from the middle downward is strongly
lessened in proportion to the higher parts, ending in a pointed and
protruding chin. This race lived in Greece, Southern Italy, France, and
Spain, and is found also in England, where its descendants even to-day
can be traced in some of the Silurian inhabitants of South Wales and
Ireland. Tacitus says that the Silurians have come from Spain, and even
to-day the people of Berkshire resemble greatly, as Boyd-Dawkins says,
the Basques of the Western Pyrenees, near Bagnères de Bogorre. Their
stature is sometimes small but not always, they are sometimes tall,
their gait is light, their nose narrow and long, sometimes approaching
Jewish features, their skin dark, their hair coarse, black, and usually
curled.
Long after the appearance of these long-heads arrived several varieties
of broad-heads, among them Mongoloid, Ugro-Finnish, and Turanian types.
Dr. Krause arrives at the following résumé, that the Cannstadt skull
represents the Germanic or better the Aryan type. "This race lived in
Middle Europe in the oldest times to which prehistoric investigation
descends and has not immigrated from Asia since the great ice-era. This
conclusion has been adopted by the most prominent anthropologists, in
France by Hamy, Topinard, Quatrefages, in England by Beddoe, Flower,
Thurnam, in Germany by Ecker, Lindenschmit, Hölder, Virchow, and
others."
Dr. Krause adds: "Virchow however takes in this question of the
characteristic features of the Aryan race a strange and isolated
position, in so far as he believes that from the beginning there had
been and are still broad-heads as well as long-heads among the Germanic
races." With respect to the conflict between Virchow and Dr. Krause,
we should prefer to call the old and original races by new names, as
Quatrefages did; we should speak of them as the Cannstadt type, the
Cro-Magnon type, etc. When we speak of Aryans, or Saxons, or Germanic
nations, we should know that they are no longer the pure Cannstadt
type, but a mixture, and this mixture has not even to-day become
sufficiently fixed to produce one uniform race. There are certain
features predominant in certain nations, and certainly the blond
long-heads are purest in the Teutonic nations; nevertheless, it is not
an uncommon occurrence that in one and the same family both types are
distinctly represented. Johannes Ranke on the strength of this fact has
no faith in the constancy of the skull and does not regard it as a fit
method of settling any race problem.
The Aryans, i. e. the tall, blond broad-heads of the Cannstadt type
are distinguished by strength and by power of will. They were hunters,
fishermen, sea-faring people, and warriors. They loved the sea,
they loved rivers and lakes. They appear repeatedly in history as
conquerors. The arts and industries, however, the use of metals, the
invention of pottery, do not seem to have originated among them.
It seems to us that Dr. Krause exhibits an excusable partiality for
the blond tall Aryas in comparison with the dark South-European
long-heads as well as the broad-heads. The Aryans were chiefly the
rulers, except in Palestine, where the tall blond Amorites had been
conquered by Semites. It appears that the conquest of a country by
the Aryas for instance in India, in Persia, in Greece, gave a start
to civilisation, as the Ostro-Goths restored peace and reawakened the
arts in Italy. But at the same time we notice that the Aryas were most
likely more savage than their broad-headed fellowmen. The present
Teutonic population represents so little the pure type of the old tall
long-heads that Professor Virchow refuses to recognise long-headedness
as a race symptom at all. We find long-heads and broad-heads in the
same family. Both long-headed parents may have broad-headed children
and _vice versa._ This need not prove the correctness of Professor
Virchow's position, but it may very well prove that the present
nations, the Teutonic race not excluded, are the product of a mixture.
As the most important feature of Aryan character Dr. Krause considers
their religion, and we are inclined to accept Dr. Krause's opinion as
thoroughly sound. The Aryan religion, he says, is the cult of light
in opposition to the southern cult of darkness. The original Semites
worshipped the earth, the moon, the night; the Aryan, worshipped
the sun, the sky, the day, the former bowed before womanhood and
sentimentality; the latter represented manhood and will-power. (The
Jews are not pure Semites, they show a constant proportion in the north
of a little over 14/100 and in the south of a little over 13/100 of
tall, blond long-heads. These blond Jews, are according to Virchow,
the Amorites with which the Israelites mixed after the conquest of
Palestine. The religion of the Jews also shows very strong Aryan
influences especially since their contact with the Persians.)
The Aryan religions as a rule begin the world with male motherless
Gods; while the Semitic religions begin with female mother-gods
without fathers. There is the giant Ymir or in Alfadur, here the
goddess Kybele, Isis, Rhea, or Demeter. This difference is founded on
a social difference which again depends upon climatic conditions. In
the south we find in the beginning a state of matriarchy. There was
no great difficulty in bringing up large families and the assistance
of the father was not needed. In consequence thereof the father was
and remained a stranger, an occasional visitor. There were no lasting
family ties between himself and the mother of his children, the sexual
relations remained free, and the right of heredity recognised the
mother only. How different was it in the north! Without their father a
family had to perish. The severe struggle for life created the family
and eventually the monogamic family, it made the men strong, active,
liberty-loving. There was undoubtedly much rudeness among the northern
nations; they were savages in many respects, but wherever they appeared
as conquerors they introduced their religion of light, activity, and
submission to moral laws. The conquered tribes contributed undoubtedly
many most valuable qualities to the mixture from which the future races
arose, qualities which the Aryans would perhaps never have been able to
evolve out of themselves alone. Nevertheless the Aryans gave character
to the nations, impressed upon them their speech, their thought, their
world-conception and their morality.
Dr. Krause's treatment of comparative mythology with reference to the
physical and geographical conditions under which myths originate, is
very suggestive, and we wish he had also taken into consideration the
parallelism of the northern Sun-myths with Christianity. Dr. Krause
mentions that the idea of immortality is an Aryan thought, he might
have added that the idea of a dying God who will again rise from the
dead can only have originated in the home of the Baldur myth.
Dr. Krause's work contains in 624 pages an almost inexhaustible store
of investigations. It is one of the most interesting books we have ever
seen. We mention here only the chapters on the Megalithian Monuments,
on Orion, on the northern animals of Apollo, on little Red Ridinghood,
on the Wagon in the Skies and Tom Thumb, on Helen and her northern
representatives, and on the history of the Odyssee. The book would be
more valuable to the reader if it possessed an index.
κρς.
DIE MATHEMATIK DIE FACKELTRAEGERIN EINER NEUEN ZEIT. By _C. Dillmann_.
Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1889.
The importance of this little book does not lie so much in the theories
as in the practical aims of the author. Oberstudienrath Dillmann is a
reformer in the system of higher education; he is not a mere theorist,
but a man of experience who has now been for years the principal of a
school like that which he advocates. Mr. Dillmann's idea is very simple
and obviously correct. He claims that the old so-called classical
method, where the teaching of dead languages is made the basis of
education, no longer meets the needs of our time; that there is however
another discipline, which for its universality and its fundamental
importance in every branch of knowledge should be made the corner-stone
of education, and that is mathematics. So he proposes to have our boys
educated in mathematical high schools.
We may insert here some information concerning Mr. Dillmann, which
is not found in his book but will throw light upon his plans and
theories. Mr. Dillmann is the son of a schoolmaster. He inherited
from his father the aspiration of acquiring a higher education and
having passed through the gymnasium he went to the university to
study theology. The study of theology is the only one in which a poor
youth finds support and material help from his fellowmen. Having
passed his examinations he was engaged for about seven years as a
vicar in the service of the church. He felt however the need of
completing his education in mathematics and the natural sciences. He
went again to the university (this time to the polytechnic school
at Stuttgart) and devoted himself with great zeal to his favorite
studies. Having passed his examinations in these branches he was
appointed professor of mathematics at the Stuttgart gymnasium. While
here engaged in preparing his pupils for the university, he became more
and more convinced that the whole plan of teaching then followed was
inadequate. Our youth receive much information about trifles which are
useless to them in after life, while the main things are treated with
indifference. He wrote a book "The demands of the Realistic Sciences
on Education," which excited general interest and called the attention
of Kultus-minister von Golther to his ideas. Herr von Golther founded
a new kind of a high school which besides giving good philological
instruction, Latin included, was to be devoted mainly to a thorough
mathematical education; and Professor Dillmann was appointed president
of the school, which first bore the name of "mathematical gymnasium."
The authorities soon considered it best to change the name into
Real-gymnasium. The school was started in 1867 as a mere trial and in
1871, when its success appeared to be assured, it became a permanent
institution. For 15 years it counts an average of from 800 to 900
pupils.
In spite of the confidence of the public, the new school had and
has still its hard times. The views now prevalent among the German
authorities are less favorable to great reformatory ideas than
ever. The restrictions put upon the Real-gymnasia have also hit Mr.
Dillmann's school, although his institution is different in plan from
the other Real-gymnasia, the latter being, as a rule, schools in which
the scholastic severity of the gymnasia is neglected without replacing
it by other systematic studies.
The present book has been written to explain and justify Mr. Dillmann's
methods, and we cannot but say that we heartily sympathise with his
aspirations. At the same time we express here the sincere hope that
another Dillmann might rise on American soil and institute a real
mathematical high school which will give a more solid foundation for
the education of scientists than our present educational systems can
give. We do not mean that the philological and historical studies
should be neglected in such a mathematical school. We trust that they
can be taught with less waste of energy than has been done in the past.
There is perhaps no need of preaching against Greek and Latin in our
American schools, because philology, it appears, is the most neglected
study on this side of the Atlantic and the ignorance in classics often
of highly educated scholars is sometimes astounding and would be
shocking to pedants of European philology. But I have not as yet been
able to discover that this ignorance concerning a few grammatical rules
of two dead languages has wrought great harm. At the same time I have
noticed that European savants in spite of their enormous philological
scholarship are sometimes grossly ignorant of the spirit that lived
in the so-called classic nations. They have translated Homer, have
analysed the Ionic and Aeolian and Dorian forms of Homeric speech,
but they have rarely read Homer and imbibed the beauties of Greek
poetry. Philological scholarship is dry and hard work, but the study of
historical evolution, to be nourished with the spirit of the past and
to see it develop into the spirit of modern times is rather recreation
than drudgery. We can keep the latter without plaguing our boys so much
as before with the former.
The present book contains as introduction an "open word" by the
author to his Excellency the Prussian Secretary of Education, Dr. von
Gossler, pointing out the error of his policy not to admit the pupils
of Real-gymnasia to the universities. The bulk of the book is devoted
to an explanation of the importance of mathematics in all the sciences.
Mr. Dillmann declares it is a mistake to believe that the objective
world is unknowable. Kant has torn the world in two halves and by
making space and time purely subjective, he created a gap between the
subject and the object, between mind and nature, a gap which, if Kant's
assumption be true, cannot be bridged. Kant's division of the world
however is wrong. Does not every thinking subject with his feelings and
concepts lie in the sphere of objectivity of other subjects? Time and
space are not purely subjective and the science of time and space is
destined to reconcile the conflicting parties, it will restore peace
and harmony again between mind and nature. Our world of conception is
in immediate contact and interconnection with the world of reality. All
intellectual activity is motion of our organ of thought. Sensations
are produced by motions of the objective world and these sensations
are gradually transformed into concepts. Words are the embodiment of
concepts. The phenomena of the outer world reappear in the symbolism
of language, and thus our intellectual activity can lead to a faithful
representation of nature. The world is cognisable, truth can be born in
us and we need not lose the self-confidence in our own abilities.
These theoretical explanations are of great interest, and we need
scarcely add that Mr. Dillmann's plan would still retain its value,
if they were proved to contain inaccuracies or errors. We look upon
it as the author's philosophical confession of faith, the main idea
of which is indubitably correct while many of its details are without
great consequence. We would express the main idea of Mr. Dillmann's
book in the following way: Formal thought is the basis of all knowledge
and a correct comprehension of the main formal sciences especially of
mathematics is the primary condition of a scientific education.
κρς.
GEISTESSTOERUNGEN IN DER SCHULE. Ein Vortrag nebst 13 Krankenbildern.
By _Christian Ufer_. Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann. 1891.
The subject-matter of this pamphlet was read as a lecture on November
9th, 1890, before the _Verein für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik_ at
Weissenfels. The author's aim is, to bring home to parents and teachers
the important idea, that the treatment of psychical disturbances
must be based on our best knowledge of psychology, and especially
of physiological psychology. A deeper insight into pathological
conditions, says Krafft-Ebing, will remove many mistakes and tyrannies
in our education. Teachers as a rule have to deal with healthy
children, but diseased conditions are sufficiently frequent to demand
of our teachers that they should learn how to treat them. The cases
with which the author illustrates his doctrines show that one of the
most common causes of psychic diseases in children must be sought in
the nervous disposition of their parents, their unequal treatment and
also their over-anxious ambition which produces excitement in the
child's mind without helping him to overcome the rather heavy demands
of German school-life.
κρς.
THE SOUL OF MAN. An Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and
Experimental Psychology. By Dr. _Paul Carus_. Chicago: The Open
Court Publishing Co. 1891.
The Editor of _The Monist_ has collected and collated in this book the
results of the work done in the field of psychology and its auxiliary
sciences. The author's philosophical standpoint is characterised in
the first chapter where he contrasts feeling and motion. Feeling
is defined as the subjective aspect of certain processes which,
viewed objectively, appear as motions, and it is described as a
state of awareness. Feeling originates from the simpler elements of
subjectivity and becomes naturally representative, i. e. it acquires
meaning. Mind is an organised totality of meaning-endowed feelings.
The author reconciles from his standpoint idealism with realism. He
shows that "the fulfilment of mind is truth.... Mind expands in the
measure that it contains and reflects truth" (p. 46). The question
of telepathy is touched, yet telepathy has here a different meaning
from mystic thought-transference without any means of communication.
Every sensation is a "far feeling" in the literal sense of the word,
for "we do not feel our sense-organs but in and through our sense
organs objects outside of us are felt. In and through our eyes most
distant stars are seen.... What is the soul but a telepathic machine?"
(p. 44) In the chapters following are described the characteristic
features of organised life and its rise from non-organised life. The
physiological part of the book treats of the soul-life of plants, then
of animals, and gives by the aid of profuse illustrations an account
of the evolution of nervous systems up to man. The chapter on the seat
of consciousness proposes a new theory which will be of interest to
physiologists as well as psychologists.
The recapitulation of the present state of experimental psychology
presents the most telling facts of hypnotism, compares them with their
correspondent normal states of soul-life, and explains them from the
standpoint of the author. The conclusion of the book is devoted to the
ethical and religious application of this conception of psychology.
The practical importance of the new truths in the psychological field
is vigorously maintained, but at the same time it is shown that the
old conceptions psychological as well as religious are by no means
worthless. They contain great truths and cannot be discarded offhand.
In this sense are discussed among others the problems of Freewill and
Responsibility, of Immortality and of the God-idea.
PERIODICALS.
MIND. April, 1891. No. LXII.
CONTENTS:
FREE-WILL: AN ANALYSIS. By _Shadworth H. Hodgson_.
THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. By _G. F. Stout_.
THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. By _Alexander F. Shand_.
ARNOLD GEULINCX AND HIS WORKS. By Professor _J. P. N. Land_.
DISCUSSION: 1) On Thought-Relations. By _Arthur Eastwood_. 2)
Notes on Volition. By _Professor A. Bain_. 3) On Psychology and
Metaphysic. By _J. S. Mackenzie_.
CRITICAL NOTICES: Morgan's "Animal Life and Intelligence";
Croll's "Philosophical Basis of Evolution"; Ladd's
"Introduction to Philosophy"; Stumpf's "Tonpsychologie, II."