SKETCHES FROM EASTERN HISTORY pdf download

J

Sketches From Eastern History by John Sutherland Black, Theodor Noldeke.

SKETCHES FROM EASTERN HISTORY

Some characteristics of the Semitic race.

One of the most difficult tasks of the historian is to depict the moral physiognomy of a nation in such a way that no trait shall be lost, and none exaggerated at the cost of the others.

The difficulty of the task may be best appreciated by considering how complicated a thing, full of apparent contradictions, individual character is, and that the historian who seeks to define the character of a nation, or perhaps of a race embracing many nations, has to deal with a still more complex phenomenon, made up of widely varying individuals.

This difficulty, indeed, is not actually great with all nations. The common characters of the Semitic nations are in many respects so definite and strongly marked, that on the whole they are more easily portrayed than those of the small Greek people, which, although at bottom a unity, embraced a great variety of distinct local types, —

Athenians as well as Corinthians as well as Spartans, Arcadians and Italians as well as Milesians and Sybarites. And yet it is no very easy matter to form an estimate of the psychical characteristics of the Semites, — witness the contradictory judgments passed on them by such distinguished scholars as Eenan and Steinthal.

I have no mind to attempt a new portrait of the Semitic type of humanity. All that I intend is to offer a few contributions to the subject, connecting my remarks, whether by way of