Antisemitism and Modern Science

Preface

When I was invited a few months ago by the Neue Freie Presse and nearly simultaneously by the Revue des Revues to explain my opinions about antisemitism, I did not respond at first with good will; I felt the disgust that catches even the least impatient scientist when he must study the most revolting human secretions. To determine whether a hatred among a population can be justified, in our times, is already certainly an odious and agonizing task; and it is not simply accounted for.

But, as often happens, after I began the work, my annoyance not only vanished, but I gradually felt that longing for new investigations, for more detailed research that thrusts the scholar before a problem that escapes his grasp. And I persuaded myself that a human phenomenon that threatens many beings in many regions always merits attentive study; and after having worked with psychological and with experimental anthropological methods while seeking to investigate even more difficult problems—such as the nature of genius, evil, and political evil—I should not find tackling this similar question too difficult, with the aid of that new instrument that I introduced into the scientific world, which even guaranteed against the danger of my impartiality—the greatest concern in question. I gradually reassured myself of the undertaking when I saw that I could perhaps benefit from four noble and powerful talents: Leroy Beaulieu, Israel Among the Nations, 1893; [Jacques] Novicow, Struggle of the Races; [Felix von] Luschan, Anthropological Position of the Jews, 1892; and [Joseph] Jacobs, The Jews—Journal of the Anthropology Institute of Great Britain, 1885–86 and 1891.

The assistance from these masters from across nations most rife with antisemites and philosemites lent new earnestness to the rectitude and impartiality of my judgment, despite those who doubted the instruments that I had operated for only a short time.

But not for this do I hope to persuade even one of the fanatics who, in ethnic questions, makes a weapon of a footstool in his search for unhealthy glory. When factions enter into politics, which is one form with which one preserves or justifies our congenital tendencies, little or nothing—even the most rigorous studies—can persuade our instinctive sentiments.

Turin, December 2, 1893

C. Lombroso

Chapter 1. Causes

In these last years, while from every side one idyllically sings praises of the love of man, of fraternity of the populace, an icy breath of savage hatred has swept across even the most civil populations of Europe, giving a place to that scene that one could not have believed possible even in the Middle Ages; the murmur of antisemitism earned its name and made headway in Germany, but under other less scientific names it had caught fire in previous epochs and smoldered, dormant, in the low strata of the European populace.

The phenomenon is too important for sociologist not to worry about, and to study its causes and remedies.

Which are its most apparent causes? It is said: the disaffinity of race, especially when proximity was not favored by mixed marriage nor by mutual interests.

But this cause is not permissible, for, as we will see, the disaffinity of race is found much greater amidst a population when [races] merged together; and one can even say that there is not a country in Europe that does not present a very varied mosaic of races; and in France we find the coexistence of the Celtic race with the Basque, the Latin with the German (in Normandy); in England the Celtic with the Anglo-Saxon and with the Latin.

[Jews] are accused of having too much wealth, and [August] Bebel adduced the cause of antisemitism in Germany to the idea that commercial agriculture was nearly all in their hands: but we do not see our great riches instinctively detested, and even less in those English and American populations which are very wealthy.

Nor do the causes adopted by the diverse religions seem to me sufficient: for the Buddhists, the Muslims do not elicit this kind of antipathy among us.

We must return instead to two causes, certainly more influential, at once atavistic and thus powerful.

The first was in the self-satisfaction that surged out of the sentiment of superiority over others, recalling the memory of the ancient dominion of the liberal Arius over the enslaved population; a sentiment that redoubles once it becomes national, for one strips away the decency of personal vanity and multiplies with imitation.¹

This helps to explain, then, the reciprocal hatred of Poles and Russians; each feels self-satisfaction in his dominion: each believes himself to have true superiority of blood. It is enough to understand it as the Brahmin’s opinion of the Shudra, which he believes makes him impure simply from his touch;² or as how the erudite English wrote about the Irish prior to Gladstone,³ claiming they could not be perfected. The hated, then, naturally counter claims against sentiments so unjust; and thus aversions become more embittered and multiply.

The other cause is connected with the stratification of memory; and it consists in hatred conceived by the Romans against this people, which first they ventured to resist and with Christianity took their true revenge in the religious arena, a sentiment that redoubled further in the Middle Ages, when the clerical caste, which had become spiritual father of Europe, made it a duty and a ritual.

“Antisemitism is already present in the persecutions of great cities of antiquity against the Jews.

“In Rome, in Antioch, in Alexandria they were against strangers, and if not against race, then certainly against strange dress and different culture, at which the Greek and Roman commoners hurled abuse more readily than against enemies of their gods. Professor [Heinrich] Von Treitschke includes among them such illustrious ancestors as Juvenal or Tacitus, who when discussing the Sabbath or circumcision⁴ were already disturbed by ‘Judaism’ of ancient society.” (Leroy Beau-lieu, op. cit. [Israel among the Nations, 1893]).

Thus, one should not be astounded if all Europe finds itself in agreement with persecution that not only procured joy from pain and delight from easy capital gains but was also considered praiseworthy work; and the marks of hatred are so strong that they have remained even more steadfast and active as they have been passed unconsciously to the children of persecutors.

Add to this the segregation of living, the dissonance of customs, food, dialects, the competition in commerce which fomented jealousy, the intensification of real and apparent disparities: all of this renders their debasement desirable and useful to individuals, if not to the country; and finally, this psychic epidemic spreads and grows via hatred and myths. [ . . . ]

Chapter 11. Measures against Antisemitism

An eminent but illusive philanthropist, an excessive philosemite, Birnbaum⁵ proposes to favor the Jews’ colonization of Palestine: and he found followers in Austria, established newspapers, transplanted rich and numerous societies that created a dozen colonies there; but beyond that, as much as they deny it, a good part of Palestine is limited to desert, leaving no other riches besides traditions, so, without big capital, one cannot give life to colonies, and a desert exposed often to excursions by semi-savage tribes; beyond this, the torture and tomb of Christ have consecrated that land to other religions—Christians, Greeks, Schismatics, Calvinists, etc.; they compete for each inch, each clump of dirt: and even if they are tranquilized under the apathetic Muslims, who live and let live, they cannot accept a Jewish ruler who opposes their own fanaticism; it would exacerbate, it would multiply and profane the mysticism with its very presence.

The more complete solution would be if the Jews and Christians elevated themselves simultaneously from prevalent prejudices, converged in a new religion—neither the Vatican, nor ancient Judaism—which respected new scientific discoveries and took as a symbol new social ideas, which Christ had already juggled; if it forms, therefore, a neo-Christian-Socialism in which Jews could gather, stripped of their old rites and fooleries, just as Christians would be freed from hatred and anti-scientific superstitions, all without shame and without coercion.

It is true that emotion is the base of religion; our petty emotions impede the birth of new things, instead engrafting the old. But even among the Nordic races, at least certainly the Anglo-Saxons, emotionality, and thus religious fecundity, is not extinguished. Thus, everyone gives great importance to religion.

In terms of our races, the new socialist doctrine, in fact, was born out of the waning of customs in some regions, just as in new religions: evils have created a new kind of bond that brings the adept people closer together, creating new ideals, new springs of emotion which—when united with the interested hopes of the derelict commoners—should favor the formation of a religion of love, aimed at dissipating the bloody antisemitic vapors. If one adds to this the phenomenon of hypnotism (with which [the new socialist doctrine] goes hand in hand), now multiplying itself in front of our eyes, it seems to have been created deliberately to accompany those marvelous and little understood facts that a new religion needs to make its way and diffuse itself. And it would be the first time that scientists could, in so doing, share a common cause with common citizens.

Turin, December 1, 1893.

C. Lombroso.