396 THREE CENTURIES' PERSPECTIVES
covers a different kind of reason for contemporary interest in the
arguments of Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
Browne begins by noting that traits of individuals can't automati-
cally be extended to properties of groups. We do not doubt that
individuals have distinctive odors, but groups might span the full
range of individual differences, and thereby fail to maintain any
special identity. What kid of group might therefore qualify as a good
candidate for such distinctive properties?
Browne argues that such a group would have to be tightly de-
fined, either by strict criteria of genealogy (so that members might
share properties by heredity of unique descent) or by common hab-
its and modes of life not followed by other people (but Browne
had already shown that Jewish lifestyles of moderation and hygiene
disprove any claim for unsavory national odor).
Browne then clinches his case by arguing that the Jewish people
do not represent a strict genealogical group. Jews have been dis-
persed throughout the world, reviled and despised, expelled and
excluded. Many subgroups have been lost by assimilation, others
diluted by extensive intermarriage. Most nations, in fact, are
strongly commingled and therefore do not represent discrete
groups by genealogical definition; this common tendency has been
exaggerated among the Jewish people. Jews are not a distinct hered-
itary group, and therefore cannot have such properties as a na-
tional odor:
There will be found no easie assurance to fasten a material or temperamen-
tal propriety upon any nation;... much more will it be difficult to make
out this affection in the Jews; whose race however pretended to be pure,
must needs have suffered inseparable commixtures with nations of all sorts.
... It being therefore acknowledged that some [Jews] are lost, evident that
others are mixed, and not assured that any are distinct, it will be hard to
establish this quality [of national odor] upon the Jews.
In many years of pondering over fallacious theories of biological
determinism, and noting their extraordinary persistence and ten-
dency to reemerge after presumed extirpation, I have been struck
by a property that I call "surrogacy." Specific arguments raise a
definite charge against a particular group—that Jews stink, that
Irishmen drink, that women love mink, that Africans can't think—
but each specific claim acts as a surrogate for any other. The general
