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Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange Rare Books and Manuscripts Special Collections 1936 "Race" in Europe Julian Huxley Follow this and additional works at: https://digital.kenyon.edu/rarebooks Recommended Citation Huxley, Julian, ""Race" in Europe" (1936). Rare Books and Manuscripts. 16. https://digital.kenyon.edu/rarebooks/16 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections at Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Rare Books and Manuscripts by an authorized administrator of Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 'RACE' IN EUROPE By JULIAN HUXLEY OXFORD PAMPHLETS ON WORLD AFFAIRS No. 5 'RACE' IN EUROPE BY JULIAN HUXLEY OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1 939 'RACE' IN EUROPE THE vague term 'race' has been much misused in modern pseudo-scientific writings and nationalist Nature and Origin of the Group-sentiment propaganda. The meaning of the term is here dis­ F all appeals to which human beings respond, cussed, and the theory of an 'Aryan race' is shown few are as powerful as that of tribal, or-in to be a myth. National types, the 'Nordic' theory aO more advanced stage-of national feeling. Such th~ Jewish question, and the advantages of race~ sentiment is at the basis of life in the modern State. mixture are among the other topics dealt with. It is doubtless founded upon some form of the herd The Pamphlet is based on sections of the book impulse, which receives satisfaction in social animals We Europeans, by Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon, through the presence of other animals like them­ and grateful acknowledgements are due to Dr. selves. In Man, however, this impulse, like other so­ Haddon and to Messrs. Jonathan Cape. called 'instincts', is not simple and straightforward in operation. The likenesses upon which this 'con­ sciousness of kind' is based are inborn in animals: but in Man they are very largely acquired, being the product of experience and social factors. Very many human activities, aspirations, and OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS emotions have contributed, either naturally or arti­ AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4 London Edinburgh Glasgow New York ficially, to build up the great synthesis that we term Toronto Melbourne Capetown Bombay a 'nation'; language, religion, art, law, even food, Calcutta Madras HUMPHREY MILFORD gesture, table manners, clothing, an~ sport all p~ay PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY their part. So also does the sentiment of km­ ship, for the family has extended some of its age-old glamour to that wholly different and much newer aggregate, the 'national' unit. I would stress the contrast between family and nation, since the family is an ancient and biological factor, while the nation­ state is a modern conception and product, the result of certain peculiar social and economic circum­ stances. The family has been produced by Nature, PRINTED IN CREA T BRITAIN the nation by Man himself. Before the Renaissance, that is to say before the 4655,5 'RACE' IN EUROPE 5 4 'RACE' IN EUROPE is our neighbour (Luke x. 25-37), and the very fifteenth century, nations or national States in our basis of Christianity is the proclamation 'There is sense of the word did not exist, though there were neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free: composite human aggregates related to the tribes of for ye are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians iii. 28). an earlier cultural stage. For the moment we will Throughout the histo:Y of civilizatio~ the call the sentiment which holds tribes and nations establishment and regulation of group-sentiment together 'group-sentiment'. To call it 'racial' is to among those who are held together .maii:ly by beg a very important question which it is the pur­ political bonds has been .one o~ the chi~f ai.ms of pose of this pamphlet to discuss. It is, however, statecraft. To achieve this the idea of kmship has clear that even in the pre-Renaissance stage group­ been pressed into ever wider service. It has been sentiment was a complex thing, certain elements expanded beyond the family, to embrace the tribe, being derived from the idea of kinship, certain then the loosely knit federation of tribes, and finally others from local feeling, from economic necessity, the yet more extensive aggregate, the nation. from history, from custom, or from religion. The transference of the idea of kinship to the The Brotherhood of Mankind 'group-sentiment' of nations has been fateful for When religions and philosophi~s have clair_ned our civilization. For while the idea of kinship is one and empires have sought to be universal, ~he. idea of the most primitive emotional stimuli, the senti­ of kinship has been extended beyond the limits of ment which it arouses is also one of the most the nation -state. Prelates have been the shepherds enduring. It is for this reason that the authors of of many flocks and commonwealths have become moral and legal codes have frequently found it families of nations. In all ages law, reason, and necessary to protect the State against aspects of religion alike have laid emphas!s on th.e brotherhood group-sentiment which induced hostility to foreign of all mankind. It was an ancient philosopher-poet elements. The Bible is full of allusions to such who said, 'I am a man, and nothing that is human checks. 'The stranger that dwelleth with you shall do I deem alien from myself'; and a murderer who be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt yet earlier asked, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land But especially the common elements that al.I ?1en of Egypt: I am the Lord your God' (Leviticus xix. share have been the theme of the great spmtual 34). 'One ordinance shall be both for you of the leaders. Malachi's question 'Have we not all one congregation, and also for the stranger that sojour­ Father? Hath not one God created us?', the beauti­ neth with you, an ordinance for ever in your genera­ ful treatise on the love of God as inseparable from tions: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the the love of our fell ow men, known as the First Lord' (Numbers xv. 15). One of the most gracious Epistle General of John, and St. Paul's assertion, 'He parables of Jesus is devoted to the discussion of who 6 'RACE' IN EUROPE 'RACE' IN EUROPE 7 hath made of one blood all nations of men for to which it is often confused-was one of the prepon­ · dwell on all the face of the earth', have all been derating political factors of the nineteenth century. echoed by a myriad voices. The community of In Germany it broke the power of Napoleon and mankind is a sentiment which has particularly later created an empire; it freed Italy from the rule appealed to teachers. 'The same sky covers us all, of Austria and made her a nation; it almost drove the same sun and stars revolve about us, and light the Turk out of Europe and stimulated nationalist us all in turn', said the great Czech educator sentiments among the Greeks and among all the Comenius (1592-1671). peoples of the Balkans. It has also been the main Of all studies the most universal is that which we idea in the formation of the 'succession states' since call science, and with its advent in the seventeenth the War of 1914-18. century the unity of mankind became especially All the movements towards national unity that emphasized. Such was the principle which the were so characteristic of the nineteenth century great French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) present certain features in common. Among these detected in the continuity of research in the sciences. we would note especially the rise of a myth, so similar 'The whole succession of men through the ages in all these cases that we must suppose that it is a should be considered as one man, ever living and natural way of thinking for peoples in like circum­ always learning.' stances. Among all the newer and almost all the older nationalities a state of freedom from external The Idea of Nationality political domination has been fictitiously supposed Mankind, however, has shown itself to be still to have existed in the past and has been associated unprepared to accept the idea of universal human with a hypothetical ancient unity, itself considered brotherhood, and has often denied it most loudly as derived from an imaginary common inheritance. when maintaining the universal fatherhood of God. The implications of this unity are usually left vague. Tribal, religious, and national sentiment have, time A 'nation' has been cynically but not inaptly defined and again, overruled the sentiment for humanity. as 'a society united by a common error as to its The idea of nationality has yielded as fruit that origin and a common aversion to its neighbours'. patriotism which has proved itself one of the The economic movements of the nineteenth strongest forces known to history, second perhaps century gave rise to unparalleled social and political only to religion. It is hardly necessary to emphasize dislocations. The resulting conflicts have by some the part played by patriotic sentiment in the mould­ been interpreted as originating from an incom­ ing of Europe. The passionate desire for freedom patibility of 'racial' elements in the populations from foreign domination-which we may note is involved. But such incompatibility, if it be a very far from the desire for freedom itself, with reality, must have existed for many centuries in the 8 'RACE' IN EUROPE 'RACE' IN EUROPE 9 populations before these disturbances declared that thou mayest be my salvation to the end of the earth .
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