Page:Decline of the West (Volume 2).djvu/145

Rh words: "What in point of variety of skull-formation is displayed by mankind in general is displayed also on the smaller scale by every tribe (Volksstamm) and even by many fair-sized communities — a union of the different skull-forms with the extremes led up to through finely graduated intermediate forms." No one would deny that it is reasonable to seek for ideal basic forms, but the researcher ought not to lose sight of the fact that these are ideals and that, for all the objectivity of his measurements, it is his taste that really fixes his limits and his classification. Much more important than any attempts to discover an ordering principle is the fact that within the unit "humanity" all these forms occur and have occurred from the earliest ice-times, that they have never markedly varied, and that they are found indiscriminately even within the same families. The one certain result of science is that observed by Ranke, that when skull-forms are arranged serially with respect to transitions, certain averages emerge which are characteristic not of "race," but of the land.

In reality, the race-expression of a human head can associate itself with any conceivable skull-form, the decisive element being not the bone, but the flesh, the look, the play of feature. Since the days of Romanticism we have spoken of an "Indogermanic" race. But is there such a thing as an Aryan or a Semitic skull? Can we distinguish Celtic and Frankish skulls, or even Boer and Kaffir? And if not, what may not the earth have witnessed in the way of history unknown to us, for which not the slightest evidences, but only bones, remain! How unimportant these are for that which we call race in higher mankind can be shown by a drastic experiment. Take a set of men with every conceivable race-difference, and, while mentally picturing "race," observe them in an X-ray apparatus. The result is simply comic. As soon as light is let through it, "race" vanishes suddenly and completely.

It cannot be too often repeated, moreover, that the little that is really illustrative in skeletal structure is a growth of the landscape and never a function of the blood. Elliot Smith in Egypt and von Luschen in Crete have examined an immense material yielded by graves ranging from the Stone Age to the present day. From the "Sea-peoples" of the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the Arabs and the Turks one human stream after another has passed over this region, but the average bone-structure has remained unaltered. It would be true, in a measure, to say that "race" has travelled as flesh over the fixed skeleton-form of the land. The Alpine region to-day contains "peoples"