226 : 7. Conklin, in _Heredity and Environment_, p. 207, says:
“Psychological characters appear to be inherited in the same way that
anatomical and physiological traits are; indeed, all that has been said
regarding the correlation of morphological and physiological characters
applies also to psychological ones. No one doubts that particular
instincts, aptitudes and capacities are inherited among both animals and
men, nor that different races and species differ hereditarily in
psychological characteristics. The general tendency of recent work on
heredity is unmistakable, whether it concerns man or lower animals. The
entire organism, consisting of structures and functions, body and mind,
develops out of the germ, and the organization of the germ determines
all the possibilities of development of the mind no less than of the
body, though the actual realization of any possibility is dependent also
upon environmental stimuli.”
_Cf._ Haeckel, _The Riddle of the Universe_, _passim_.
226 : 17. Deniker, 2, pp. 76, 97–104.
227 : 1. _Cf._ their busts with other Greek statues.
227 : 15. This does not refer to the peculiar nests of round heads
alluded to by Fleure and James, and Zaborowski, but to the Alpines
proper.
227 : 20. DeLapouge, _Les Sélections sociales_.
228 : 18. See Tacitus, _Germania_.
229 : 6. It may be interesting in this connection to quote Fleure and
James, pp. 118–119, who, after giving illustrations of Mediterranean
types, say of them: “Types 1(a) to 1(c) contribute considerable numbers
to the ministries of the various churches, possibly in part from
inherent and racial leanings, but partly also because these are the
people of the Moorlands. The idealism of such people usually expresses
itself in music, poetry, literature and religion, rather than in
architecture, painting and plastic arts generally. They rarely have a
sufficiency of material resources for the latter activities. These types
also contribute a number of men to the medical profession, for somewhat
similar reasons, no doubt.
“The successful commercial men, who have given the Welsh their
extraordinarily prominent place in British trade (shipping firms, for
example), usually belong to types 2 or 4” [Nordic and Nordic-Alpine,
Beaker Maker], “rather than to 1, as also do the great majority of Welsh
members of Parliament, though there are exceptions of the first
importance.
“The Nordic type is marked by ingenuity and enterprise in striking out
new lines. Type 2(c)” [Beaker Maker] “in Wales is remarkable for
governmental ability of the administrative kind as well as for
independence of thought and critical power.”
The following remarks are taken from Beddoe, 4, p. 142: “In opposition
to the current opinion it would seem that the Welsh rise most in
commerce, the Scotch coming after them and the Irish nowhere. The people
of Welsh descent and name hold their own fairly in science; the Scotch
do more, the Irish less. But when one looks to the attainment of
military or political distinction, the case is altered. Here the
Scotchmen, and especially the Highlanders bear away the palm; the Irish
retrieve their position and the Welsh are little heard of.”
See also p. 10 of Beddoe’s _Races of Britain_, and Hector McLean in vol.
IV, pp. 218 _seq._ of the _Anthropological Review_ and elsewhere. The
following quotation from Hall’s _Ancient History of the Near East_ is
interesting:
“Knowing what we do of the psychological peculiarities of the different
races of mankind, it is perhaps not an illegitimate speculation to
wonder whence the Greeks inherited this sense of proportion in their
whole mental outlook. The feeling of Hellenes for art in general was
surely inherited from their forebears on the Ægean, not the
Indo-European side.[7] The feeling for naturalistic art, for truth of
representation, may have come from the Ægeans, but the equally
characteristic love of the crude and bizarre was not inherited: the
sense of proportion inhibited it. In fact, we may ascribe this sense to
the Aryan element in the Hellenic brain, to which must also be
attributed the Greek political sense, the idea of the rights of the folk
and of the individual in it.[8] The Mediterranean possessed the artistic
sense without the sense of proportion: the Aryan had little artistic
sense but had the sense of proportion and justice, and with it the
political sense. The result of the fusion of the two races we see in the
true canon of taste and beauty in all things that had become the ideal
of the Greeks,[9] and was through them to become the ideal of mankind.”
Footnote 7:
“We have only to look around and seek, vainly, for any self-developed
artistic feeling among the pure Indo-Europeans. The Kassites had none
and blighted that of Babylonia for centuries: the Persians had none
and merely adopted that of Assyria: the Goths and Vandals had none:
the Celts and Teutons have throughout the centuries derived theirs
from the Mediterranean region.”
Footnote 8:
The predominance of the Aryan element in Greek political ideas is
obvious. It is not probable that the old Ægean had any more definite
political ideas than had his relative the Egyptian.
Footnote 9:
“In matters of political and ordinary justice between man and man they
fell short of their ideal often enough, but they had the reasonable
ideal: the barbarians had none. The Egyptians were an imaginative
race, but their imagination was untrammelled by the sense of
proportion: their only thinker with reasonable and logical ideas,
Akhenaten, soon became as mad a fanatic as any unreasonable Nitrian
monk or Arab Mahdi. Ordinarily speaking, Egyptian and Semitic ideals
were purely religious, and so, to the Greek mind, beyond the domain of
reason. The Babylonians, Assyrians, and Phœnicians cannot be said ever
to have possessed any ideals of any kind.”
229 : 22. Fleure and James, p. 146, say: “In the folk tales, it is true,
the people are called fairies but colouring is mentioned only in one
case—that is of a trader from the sea who is said to be fair; _i. e._,
fair hair is treated as something worthy of special mention. The fairy
children (changelings) are always described in such a way as to suggest
that they were dark, and that they were the children of the Upland-folk
of our hypothesis—_i. e._, mostly of Mediterranean race. In the romances
the princes and princesses are said to be fair, as though that were
exceptional. Our friend, Mr. J. H. Shaxby, draws our attention to the
probability that the word fair in ‘fair’ or ‘fair-folk’ does not refer
to physical traits, but is an adulatory term such as men so generally
use in describing beings about whom their superstitions gather.”
230 : 5. Pope Gregory, about 578 A. D.
230 : 9. For evidence as to the blond characters of Christ and the
indications of His descent, see Haeckel, _The Riddle of the Universe_,
chap. XVII.
Every now and then some reference to this question is noted in the daily
papers. Not long ago, in one of the large New York dailies, there
appeared a short paragraph concerning the letter of Lentulus. All
mention of the extremely doubtful authenticity of this letter was
omitted. The _Catholic Cyclopædia_, vol. IX, discusses the matter as
follows:
Publius Lentulus, A fictitious person said to have been the governor of
Judea before Pontius Pilate and to have written the following letter to
the Roman Senate: “Lentulus, the Governor of the Jerusalemites, to the
Roman Senate and People, greetings. There has appeared in our times and
there still lives, a man of great power (virtue), called Jesus Christ.
The people call him prophet of truth; his disciples son of God. He
raises the dead, and heals infirmities. He is a man of medium size
(_statura procerus, mediocris et spectabilis_); he has a venerable
aspect, and his beholders can both fear and love him. His hair is of the
color of the ripe hazel nut, straight down to the ears, but below the
ears wavy and curled, with a bluish and bright reflection flowing over
his shoulders. It is parted in two on the top of the head, after the
pattern of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and very cheerful, with a
face without a wrinkle or spot, embellished by a slightly ruddy
complexion. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is abundant, of
the color of his hair, not long, but divided at the chin. His aspect is
simple and mature, his eyes are changeable and bright. He is terrible in
his reprimands, sweet and amiable in his admonitions, cheerful without
loss of gravity. He was never known to laugh, but often to weep. His
stature is straight, his hands and arms beautiful to behold. His
conversation is grave, infrequent and modest. He is the most beautiful
among the children of men.” The letter was first printed in _The Life of
Christ_, by Ludolph the Carthusian, at Cologne, 1474. According to the
manuscript of Jena, a certain Giacomo Colonna found the letter in an
ancient Roman document sent to Rome from Constantinople. It must be of
Greek origin and have been translated into Latin during the thirteenth
or fourteenth century, though it received its present form at the hands
of a humanist of the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
The description agrees with the so-called Abgar picture of Our Lord. It
also agrees with the portrait of Jesus Christ drawn by Nicephorus, St.
John Damascene, and the Book of Painters (of Mt. Athos). Munter, (_Die
Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen_, Altona, 1825, p.
9), believes he can trace the letter down to the time of Diocletian, but
this is not generally admitted. The Letter of Lentulus is certainly
apocryphal; there never was a governor of Jerusalem; no procurator of
Judea is known to have been called Lentulus; a Roman governor would not
have addressed the Senate, but the Emperor; a Roman writer would not
have employed the expressions, “prophet of truth,” “sons of men,” “Jesus
Christ.” The former two are Hebrew idioms, the third is taken from the
New Testament. The letter, therefore, shows us a description of Our Lord
such as Christian piety conceived him.
There is considerable literature touching on this letter, for which see
the _Catholic Cyclopædia_. Although we cannot credit the letter as
genuine, it is interesting, as the article indicated, in showing the
popular attitude to the traits in question, and in attributing these
Nordic characters to Christ, as are the occasional efforts to bring the
matter up again in the journals of to-day.