Savants Take Simon to Task for ‘aryanism’

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The Times of London publishes the following letter, signed by three English savants renowned for their researches in the field of ethnology in which Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon is taken to task for his use of the word “Aryan” in his now famous letter regarding his ancestry:

“Sir, the use of the word “Aryan” in the letter of Sir John Simon which appeared in your issue of Aug. 4 could have gone without comment if the word had not been written by a minister of the Crown.

“Anthropologists have recognized that while it is permissible to speak of Aryan languages, it is incorrect to use this word to designate a Western European race. As a matter of fact, it was only a few days ago that Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, in his welcome address to the International Congress of Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences treated on this question with great eloquence.

“Although the use of the term ‘Aryan peoples’ must be attributed to Professor Max Muller, one must not forget the fact that before making answer to the severe critics, one must admit that an ethnologist who speaks of the Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair is as great a sinner as the linguist who speaks of the dolichocephalist dictionary or the brachycephalic grammar.

“We do not question the appropriateness of the fact that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs corrected an error as to his ancestry. Nevertheless, we regret his erroneous use of a scientific term in a sense which has created such great political damage in Germany.

“It is against the illegitimate use of the word that we protest.”

The letter bore the signatures of A. C. Haddon, F. Gowland Hopkins and J. B. S. Haldane.

This letter brought a rejoinder from Sir Arthur Keith, in which he wrote:

“When Max Muller put forward his theory in 1861 he naturally supposed that the Aryan mother tongue was spoken by actual men and women, and these, at first, he spoke of as Aryan. Under Huxley’s attack he recanted. As a matter of fact Max Muller was right and should have withstood Huxley. He should have said to him:

“If I do not know who the original Aryan speakers were I do know what they were not. They were not Arabs, nor Jews, nor Egyptians, nor Negroes, nor Chinamen, nor American Indians.

“It is in this explicit sense that Sir John Simon uses the term Aryan, and he is perfectly right in doing so. What other term could he have used to cover the meaning he wished to express?”

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