cern to determine this point. Happily for us, such questions have no terrors to-day. We have already seen how securely nationality may rest upon heterogeneity of physical descent. Be that as it may, it seems to be certain that the peasantry of Prussia is far from being purely Teutonic in physical type. We should expect this to be the case, of course, in those eastern provinces, Posen and Silesia, which still retain their Slavic languages as evidence of former political independence. These ought normally to be allied to Russia and eastern Europe, as we have already observed. But as to Brandenburg—the provinces about Berlin. How about them? Do they also betray signs of an intermixture with the broad-headed Alpine race, of which the Slavs are part? It seems to be so indeed. Germany on the east shades off imperceptibly into Lithuania and the Polish provinces of Russia. Little by little the heads broaden to an index rising eighty-three. Whether this is a product of historic expansion we may discuss later. For the present we may accept it as a fact.[1]
The race question in Germany came to the front some years ago under rather peculiar circumstances. Shortly after the close of the Franco-Prussian War, while the sting of defeat was still smarting in France, de Quatrefages, an eminent anthropologist at Paris, promulgated the theory, afterward published in a brochure entitled The Prussian Race, that the dominant people in Germany were not Teutons at all, but were directly descended from the Finns. Being nothing but Finns, they were to be classed with the Lapps and other peoples of western Russia. As a consequence they were alien to Germany—barbarians, ruling by the sword alone. The political effect of such a theory, emanating from so high an authority, may well be imagined. Coming at a time of profound national humiliation in France, when bitter jealousies were still rife among the Germans, the book created a profound sensation. It must be confessed that the tone of the work was by no means judicial, although it was respectably scientific in its outward form. Thus the chapter in it describing the bombardment of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, of which de Quatrefages was the director, intended to prove the anti-civilized proclivities of the hated conquerors, could not in the nature of things be entirely dispassionate. The Parisian press, as may be imagined, was not slow to take advantage of such an opportunity. Articles of de Quatrefages in the Revue de Deux Mondes were everywhere quoted, with such additions as seemed fitting under
- ↑ Authorities are cited in our article in L'Anthropologie, Paris, vii, 1896, p. 619 seq. Kollmann, in Archiv f. Anth., xiii, 1881, p. 117 seq., gives many references. See also Lithuania, Esthonia, etc., in our bibliography above mentioned. Virchow admits it himself, Alte Berliner Schädel, in Verh. Berl. Ges. f. Anth., 1880, p. 234.
