CHAPTER III.
The Influence of Race and Heredity on Genius and Insanity.
Race.—We have seen that in Italy the Greek and the Etruscan racial elements combine with the temperate and mountainous climate to produce men of genius; the influence of race calling forth genius even where the climate is not happy. We cannot otherwise explain the genius produced at Modena, Mantua, and Lucca, which possess the Etruscan origin, although not the delicious climate, of Florence. The Jews, again, offer us an eloquent example.
I have elsewhere shown (Uomo Bianco e l’ Uomo di Colore and Pensiero e Meteore) how, owing to the bloody selection of medieval persecutions, and owing also to the influence of temperate climate, the Jews of Europe have risen above those of Africa and the East, and have often surpassed the Aryans. It is not only a difference in general culture, but we find more precocious and extended mental work applied to different sciences. It is certainly thus in music, the drama, satirical and humorous literature, journalism, and in various branches of science. This has been statistically proved by various writers, as by Jacobs in a very careful study on the ability of the Jews in Western Europe and of Jews in general.[1]
- ↑ Joseph Jacobs, “The Comparative Distribution of Jewish Ability,” Journal of Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, 1886, pp. 351–379.
