Chapter 9
THE NORDIC FATHERLAND

THE area in Europe where the Nordic race developed, and in which the Aryan languages took their origin, probably included the forest region of eastern Germany, Poland, and Russia, together with the grasslands which stretched from the Ukraine eastward into the steppes south of the Ural. For reasons already explained this area was long isolated from the rest of the world, especially from Asia. When the unity of the Aryan race and of the Aryan language was broken up during the Bronze Age, the early Nordics pushed west along the sandy plains of the north and pressed against and through the Alpine populations of central Europe. They also swept down through Thrace into Greece and Asia Minor, while other large and important groups entered Asia partly through the Caucasus Mountains but in greater strength around the north and east sides of the Caspian-Aral Sea. That portion of the Nordic race which continued to inhabit south Russia and grazed their flocks of sheep and herds of horses on the grasslands, were the Scythians of the Greeks, and from these nomad shepherds came the Cimmerians, Persians, Sacae, Massagetae, and perhaps the Kassites and Mitanni, and other early Aryan-speaking Nordic invaders of Asia. The descendants of these Nordics are scattered everywhere in Russia, but are now submerged by the later Slavs. Well-marked characters of the Nordic race enable us to distinguish it definitely wherever it first appears in history, and we know that all the blondness in the world is derived from this source. When it first enters the Mediterranean world coming from the north, its arrival is everywhere marked by a new and higher civilization. In most cases the contact of the vigorous barbarians with the ancient civilizations created a sudden impulse of life and an outburst of culture as soon as the first destruction wrought by the conquest was repaired. In addition to the long continued selection exercised by the severe climatic conditions of the north, and the consequent elimination of ineffectives, all of which affects a race, there is another force at work which concerns the individual as well. The energy developed in the north is not immediately lost when transferred to the softer conditions of existence in the Mediterranean and Indian countries. This energy endures for several generations, and only dies slowly away as the northern blood becomes diluted and the impulse to strive fades. The contact of Hellene and Pelasgian caused the blossoming of the ancient civilization of Hellas, just as two thousand years later, when the Nordic invaders of Italy had absorbed the science, art, and literature of Rome, they produced that splendid century we call the Renaissance. The chief men of the Cinque Cento were of Nordic, largely Gothic and Lombard, blood, a fact easily recognized by a close inspection of busts or portraits in north Italy. Dante, Raphael, Titian, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci were all of Nordic type. Similar expansions of civilization and organization of empire, followed the incursion of the Nordic Persians into the land of the round skull Medes, and the introduction of Sanskrit into India by the Nordic Sacae who conquered that peninsula. These outbursts of progress, due to the first contact and mixture of two contrasted races, are, however, only transitory and pass with the last lingering trace of Nordic blood. In India the blood of these Aryan-speaking invaders has been absorbed by the dark Hindu, and in the final event only their synthetic speech survived. The marvelous organization of the Roman state made use of the services of Nordic mercenaries, and kept the Western Empire alive for three centuries after the blood of the ancient Romans had virtually ceased to exist. The date when the population of the Empire had become predominantly of Mediterranean and Oriental blood, due to the introduction of slaves from the east and the wastage of Italian blood in war, coincides with the establishment of the Empire under Augustus, and the last Republican patriots represent the final protest of the old patrician Nordic strain. For the most part they refused to abdicate their right to rule in favor of manumitted slaves and imperial favorites, and fell in battle and sword in hand. The Roman died out but the slaves survived, and their descendants predominate among the south Italians of to-day. The Byzantine Empire, from much the same causes, in its turn gradually became less and less European and more and more Oriental until it, too, withered away. When these facts are considered the fall of Rome ceases to be a mystery, and the only wonder is that the Roman state lived on after the Romans were extinct, or that the Eastern Empire struggled on so long with an ever fading Greek population. Both in Rome and in Greece only the language of the dominant race survived. So entirely had the blood of the Romans vanished in the last days of the Empire that sorry bands of barbarians wandered at will through the desolated provinces. Caesar and his legions would have made short work of these unorganized ban- ditti, but Caesar and his legions had become a memory, although that memory was great enough to inspire in the intruders a certain awe and desire to imitate. Against invaders, however, blood and brawn are more effective than tradition and culture, however noble these may be. Early ascetic Christianity played a large part in this decline of the Roman Empire, as it was at the outset the religion of the slave, the meek, and the lowly, while Stoicism was the religion of the strong men of the time. This bias in favor of the weaker elements greatly interfered with their elimination by natural processes, and the fighting force of the empire was gradually undermined. Christianity was in sharp contrast to the worship of tribal deities which preceded it, and tended then, as it does now, to break down class and race distinctions. Such distinctions are absolutely essential to the maintenance of race purity in any community when two or more races live side by side. Race feeling may be called prejudice by those whose careers are cramped by it, but it is a natural antipathy which serves to maintain the purity of type. The unfortunate fact that nearly all species of men interbreed freely leaves us no choice in the matter. Either the races must be kept apart by artificial devices of this sort, or else they ultimately amalgamate, and in the offspring the more generalized or lower type prevails.