ZIONISM FROM THE STANDPOINT O f ITS VICTIMS 75 having determined ethnocultural and racial characteristics. In 1808, as an instance, Schlegel discerned a clear rift between the Indo-Germ anic (or Aryan) languages on the one hand and, on the other, the Sem itic-African languages. The form er he said were creative, regenerative, lively, and aesthetically pleasing; the latter were mechanical in their operations, unregenerate, passive. From this kind o f distinction, Schlegel, and later Renan, went on to generalize about the great distance separat­ ing a superior A ryan and an inferior non-Aryan mind, culture, and society. Perhaps the most effective deformation or translation of science into something more accurately resembling political administration took place in the amorphous field assembling together jurisprudence, social philosophy, and political theory. First o f all, a fairly influential tradition in philosophic empiri­ cism (recently studied by Harry B racken )13 seriously advocated a type o f racial distinction that divided humankind into lesser and greater breeds o f men. The actual problems (in England, mainly) o f dealing with a 300-year-old Indian em pire, as well as numerous voyages o f discovery, made it possible “ scientifical­ ly’ 1 to show that some cultures were advanced and civilized, others backward and uncivilized; these ideas, plus the lasting social meaning imparted to the fact o f color (and hence o f race) by philosophers like John Locke and David Hume, made it axiomatic by the middle o f the nineteenth century that Europeans always ought to rule non-Europeans. This doctrine was reinforced in other ways, some o f which had a direct bearing, I think, on Zionist practice and vision in Palestine. A m ong the supposed juridical distinctions between civilized and noncivilized peoples was an attitude toward land, almost a doxology about land, which noncivilized people supposedly lacked. A civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it, accordingly, he bred useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For an uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly (i.e., inefficiently by Western standards) or it was left to rot. From this string o f ideas, by which whole native societies who lived on Am erican. A frican, and Asian