The Standard Natural History. Vol. VI. The Natural History of Man. Illustrated by Two Hundred and Seventy-one and Fifty-three Full-page Plates.

Notes

Vol. 6 of this set is adapted from Friedrich von Hellwald’s Naturgeschichte des Menschen (1882-85). After commenting on the Gypsies (their "low stage of culture is concomitant with their purity of blood"), the Jews are said to "illustrate the same law. Except where they have been brought in intimate contact with other peoples, they are ignorant, fanatical, and superstitious. A Jew, it is true, can rise to be the premier of the British empire, but this is the exception noted; here there was contact with other people. To see the Jew in all his purity and the accompanying degradation, we must visit those places, like southern Russia, where they form whole communities" (p. 472). See the related illustration of a bearded orthodox Jew with phylacteries, "Jew from the government of Cherson, Russia," on p. 471. The so-called Falasha Jews of Abyssinia are introduced on p. 345.