Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, historian and anthropologist.
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The Passing of the Great Race (1916)Edit
- In the democratic forms of government the operation of universal suffrage tends toward the selection of the average man for public office rather than the man qualified by birth, education, and integrity … [F]rom a racial point of view, it will inevitably increase the preponderance of the lower types and cause a corresponding loss of efficiency in the community as a whole.
- Where the environment is too soft and luxurious and no strife is required for survival, not only are weak strains and individuals allowed to survive and encouraged to breed but the strong types also grow fat mentally and physically.
- The name "Aryan race" must also be frankly discarded as a term of racial significance. It is today purely linguistic, although there was at one time … an identity between the original Aryan mother tongue and the race that first spoke and developed it. In short there is not now, and there never was either a Caucasian or an Indo-European race, but there was once, thousands of years ago, an Aryan race now long since vanished into dim memories of the past.
- The boast of the modern Indian that he is of the same race as his English ruler, is entirely without basis in fact, and the little dark native lives amid the monuments of a departed grandeur, professing the religion and speaking the tongue of his long forgotten Nordic conquerors, without the slightest claim to blood kinship.
- 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.
- The continuity of physical traits and the limitation of the effects of environment to the individual only are now so thoroughly recognized by scientists that it is at most a question of time when the social consequences which result from such crossings will be generally understood by the public at large. As soon as the true bearing and import of the facts are appreciated by lawmakers, a complete change in our political structure will inevitably occur, and our present reliance on the influences of education will be superseded by a readjustment based on racial values.
- This [the Mediterranean] is the race that gave the world the great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phoenicia including Carthage, of Etruria and of Mycenaean Greece. It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with Nordic elements, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman State.
- One of its [the First World War’s] most certain results will be the partial destruction of the aristocratic classes everywhere in northern Europe … This will tend to realize the standardization of type so dear to democratic ideals. If equality cannot be obtained by lengthening and uplifting the stunted of body and of mind, it can be at least realized by the destruction of the exalted of stature and of soul.
- Africa north of the Sahara, from a zoological point of view, is now, and has been since early Tertiary times, a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man. The Berbers of north Africa to-day are racially identical with the Spaniards and south Italians.
The Conquest of a Continent (1933)Edit
- The antipathy of the English settlers to the Indians was far too great to lead to the sort of miscegenation which was encouraged by the French … In the British colonies the half-breed was looked upon as an Indian … It was not until within the lifetime of those now living that an infusion of Indian blood became a subject of pride … unless one makes exception for such isolated tales as the somewhat grotesque Pocahontas tradition in Virginia.
- There is nothing like [Indian cruelty] in history in any part of the world and the result was that the aboriginal Indians were regarded as ravening wolves or worse and deprived of all sympathy, while the Whites stole their lands and killed their game. No one who knew the true nature of the Indian felt any regret that they were driven off their hunting grounds. This attitude was found wherever the Whites came in conflict with them and explains why they were scarcely regarded as human beings.
- Although the [American] revolution grew out of economic and political causes, it represents primarily one of those costly and unfortunate internecine wars in which the Nordics have been prone to indulge at intervals for two or three thousand years, and which have done so much to weaken them as a race.
- The Mongol is not inferior to the Nordic in intelligence, as is the Negro, but represents such a divergent type that the mixture between Nordics and Chinese or Japanese is not a good one. The overflow of these Asiatics into our Pacific Coast might have Mongolized the States there had not the American laboring man taken alarm and secured legislation forbidding their immigration.
- The Southerners understand how to treat the Negro — with firmness and with kindness — and the Negroes are liked below the Mason and Dixon line so long as they keep to their proper relation to the Whites, but in the North the blocks of Negroes in the large cities, migrating from the South, have introduced new complications, which are certain to produce trouble in the future …
- [T]he intelligence and ability of a colored person are in pretty direct proportion to the amount of white blood he has, and … most of the positions of leadership, influence, and prominence in the Negro race are held not by real Negroes but by Mulattoes, many of whom have very little Negro blood.
- No doubt the Mexican Indian is well suited to his environment, and his traditional habits are well suited to him. This does not mean, however, that either has any important contribution to make to the United States which would be realized by a northward mass migration of agricultural and industrial serfs. On the contrary, the Mexican immigration to the United States, which is made up overwhelmingly of the poorer Indian element, has brought nothing but disadvantages.
- The law of 1790 providing that no one could become a citizen of the United States except free Whites was the law until the aftermath of the Civil War added the word "black" or "of African descent" to those who could be naturalized. This last provision should be repealed and the blacks with the South American and Central American Indians put on the same footing as the Orientals.
- We see the Nordics again confronted across the Pacific by their immemorial rivals, the Mongols. This will be the final arena of the struggle between these two major divisions of man for world dominance.
