“Then let’s move on,” grandfather walked away from the stove. — You must remember that at the beginning of covering our topic, I said that there is no single humanity on Earth and never has been. Do you remember?
“Of course I remember, but I thought you just misspoke.”
- You can make a reservation, but I can’t. “Every word I say carries a certain meaning,” the forester grandfather flashed his eyes, “I repeat: there is no single humanity on Earth and never has been.” It exists only on paper and in the degenerate minds of liberal democrats.
The old man sat down in his seat and continued:
- Do you remember we talked about the single mythical center of the origin of humanity? First they talked about the African one, and then about the Palestinian one that spun off from the latter.
I nodded. The know-it-all was silent for a few seconds, then said:
— Africa is actually the cradle of at least three different races. We won’t talk about the North. The territory of the ancient Sahara about 3 thousand years BC. was inhabited by the ancestors of the modern Mediterranean race. Before them, people from Central Africa lived on these vast lands. They, along the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, which did not yet exist in those distant times, penetrated into Europe.
You should know about this. This means we need to focus on East Africa, Central and South. I will not name the names of anthropologists and geneticists who came to the conclusion that three completely different races formed on the territory of the three above-mentioned regions...
- Wait, wait! - I stopped the narrator. - Explain then why in Central Africa, and in the southern and eastern parts of it, people live with the same skin color? As you say, they all come from different backgrounds, but their skin color is the same?
“So you ran ahead of the cart again,” the guardian smiled, looking at me. “Give me time, I’ll tell you everything in detail.” What you know about the origin of earthly races, don’t think that I want to offend you, is below the level of Stalin’s “educational education.” They gave you only the top - the essence, without details. We will have to touch the depths. Otherwise, you will not understand the design of the next trap where human consciousness has landed.
- Traps? - I didn’t understand.
- Yes, traps! Why are you surprised? Information priority is one of the main ones. That's why it's so complicated. And what connects it with the origin of races, you will understand later. To begin with, let us remember that two races came to Earth from deep space almost simultaneously: from the constellation Orion, the so-called race of white gods, from the double star Sirius - the black race. This happened about 18 million years ago. Just when the race of big-headed ancestors of the Neanderthals began to degrade after the great catastrophe in the Oligocene.
Everything happened according to the rule: the owners, degrading to an animal state, were replaced by a healthy wave of migrants. Both cosmic races had to re-equip the planet and build long-term bases on it, and then cities. Black people in those half-forgotten times chose East Africa, and white people chose the huge northern continent, which was named Oriana in honor of its star metropolis.
But several thousand years passed, and a war broke out on Earth between both races. There have been many similar conflicts between colonists on our planet during its 5-5 billion year existence. But this conflict left a serious mark. The fact is that the race of black people, due to the powerful radioactive background that arose at the place of its settlement, was forced to leave East Africa and move to a giant island in the Indian Ocean.
This is how the famous Lemurian civilization arose, which existed for quite a long time and died 2-2 million years ago as a result of a giant asteroid falling on it. “Everything you are telling me now, I have heard more than once,” I interrupted the narrator.
“I know that you must know this,” the old man answered calmly. “But there is a truth that repetition is the mother of learning.” And then, I answer your question, why do the African races have different origins. But they all have approximately the same skin color. How were you told about the origin of humanity? That supposedly half a million years ago some lizard-like Anunnaki flew to our Earth.
That they came for gold. Therefore, their planet is Nibiru, what order is it if this metal is absent on it?
“It turns out that the second one,” I answered.
- No! Think, learn to think. Their Nibiru, perhaps, will become a planet of the 2nd order, and then, for sure, and at the present time it is a planet like our Earth, only even more robbed by its own inhabitants. Why am I sure that this is so? Because civilizations living on planets of the 2nd order are able to obtain any resources, no matter what their origin is: inorganic or otherwise, as well as the required amount of energy directly from the ether. So they won’t go to hell in search of gold. The myth of Atracharsis, which describes the mission of the Anunnaki, was written from more ancient sources, and it is reinterpreted.
So it's not accurate. You can't trust him completely. In addition, we do not need to be sure that we received the original.
— Is forgery of this level really possible?
- Why not? Modern technologies make it possible to invent anything. What were Sumerian, Akkadian and Chaldean texts written in?
On clay. Do we have enough clay? In addition, entire institutions are engaged in falsifying ancient sources. It is clear that they are closed and little is known about them in official circles. But these establishments “know their business poorly.” What is written in the Anunnaki myth? That they were supposedly tired of mining gold on their own and attracted the people they created to this business. It turns out that all earthly races arose as a result of alien intervention, including the white northern Nordic. Now do you understand where the dog is buried?
- I understand, again a single center of origin of humanity, only this time from the Anunnaki.
- Just about, I see that you have realized that the myth also says something about the white gods of the earth, but they, the white gods, tried to please the leader of the Anunnaki, Enlil. It was for this reason, according to the myth, that the Great Flood broke out on Earth, which, as you know, destroyed humanity.
“To give rise to myths about Manu, Noah and the like,” I interjected.
- Again, to impose on earthly society fairy tales about a single center of origin of earthly races. An old played record. You see how many information vectors there are and they all end up at one point. This is how it should work! There is a lot to learn from them. But let's return again to the myth about the Anunnaki. It says that intelligent reptiles created slaves for themselves on Earth.
— They took a monkey as a basis and got a human?
— The myth doesn’t talk about subtleties. But you yourself understand that it is more difficult to turn a monkey into a rational being than an archanthrope. There were as many of the latter on Earth in those days. Moreover, of such species that our science has no idea about yet. It is now known that several species of Australopithecus lived on Earth.
But no one knows how many species of Pithecanthropus lived on it. The same can be said about Neanderthals. Do you think there was only one species on earth? No matter how it is! Even from their descendants it is clear that there were several prosimians similar to Neanderthals.
- Who do you mean? — I was surprised at this logic.
- Compare the Semites, Iberian-Basques and Caucasians. They are all somewhat similar, but at the same time they are different. First of all, anthropologically.
The conclusion is clear. There can be no other way. It’s just that few people pay attention to such little things. But it would be necessary. After all, the essence is always hidden in the little things. And it’s time for us to finally realize this. But let’s return to the origin of our earthly races. They were actually created, according to mythology, by intelligent reptiles. But not from one type of archanthropes, as the Illuminati are trying to convince us through science, but from all those that have only been found on Earth. Hence the diversity of earthly races. Three more races - white, yellow and black are divided in turn into many subraces, which for the most part are essentially separate human subspecies and even species. Yes, yes, don’t be surprised, the real species are genetically completely different people. That is why at the beginning of our conversation I told you that humanity as such does not and cannot exist. This is a myth invented by liberals and internationalists.
Now let's return to your question, why do three African races of different origins have the same dark skin, while Europeans, their counterparts of similar origins, have light, even white skin?
- But I didn’t ask about Europeans!
- How meticulous you are! - Grandfather Cherdyntsev winced. - how petty... You hang on to every word I say. I can tell you with all my heart, and you? - and the old man, seeing my confused look, burst out laughing. - You can’t even joke with you! You still take me seriously.
It's time to get used to the half-crazy grandfather. Maybe you can guess why European subraces have white skin and African subraces have black skin?
— Did intelligent lizards from Nibiru insert the genes of black Lemurians into the African archanthropes?
- It finally dawned on you.
— And all European subraces have Orian or Atlantean genes.
“The same genes of the white gods were introduced into the chromosomes of the Chinese prosimians - Sinanthropus.
- How could this happen if the Earth was controlled by the race of white gods of our ancestors?
- You forgot about the Moon, my young friend!
- What does Luna have to do with it?
“She has a very direct connection to everything that happened.”
Do you remember when the great Lemuria died?
- At the beginning of the Quaternary period, about 2-2 million years ago.
-What happened to the Earth then?
— As it rotated around its axis, it began to periodically sway. During such periods, terrible cataclysms rolled across its surface.
- That's right, that's how it was. And what did our ancestors do?
— It seems that they have taken up the construction of the Moon, an artificial satellite of the Earth, which with its gravitational field could keep the Earth from repeated swings.
- You're pulling the cat by the tail! I swear by Chernomyrdin, there’s something wrong with your head!
“You’d better swear by Satan himself,” I said indignantly.
- Next time, if things start to seem obvious to you again. How round you are becoming. Nothing specific, everything around the bush. The moon is our salvation. It still performs its function. Remove it and the same thing will happen again!
- Why? - I didn’t understand.
“Because you don’t know basic physics,” the annoyed grandfather snapped. — Any material system has inertial memory. On the one hand, the Moon provides stability to the Earth, but on the other hand, if it is taken away from us, the Earth’s civilization will be over! Whoever does this will get rid of us and get the Moon. Two birds with one stone. It is quite possible that one of the neighboring worlds is already busy with such a project.
- Who do you mean?
- Yes, the same intelligent reptiles. They have controlled the Earth for millions of years. More precisely, from the Jurassic. And then, hundreds of thousands of years ago, our glorious ancestors set about building an artificial satellite for themselves. They did not find any other way out of this situation.
Construction took several hundred years. The period, you must admit, is not short. And somewhere around 300 thousand years ago they began to put the Moon into its modern orbit.
— Did they build it in another place?
— The skeleton of the Moon was collected in the asteroid belt. From there they brought it to Earth and installed it in a modern orbit. It was installed not immediately, but gradually, otherwise, due to its powerful gravitational field, such cataclysms could begin on the planet that the Earth’s biosphere would come to an early end. This is what the minds of our distant ancestors were occupied with. Those same white gods who met the Anunnaki. But after the core of the Moon entered low-Earth orbit, it had to be “plastered”, covered with a shell of earthly rocks. They had to be lifted from the bottom of the oceans and transported over vast distances. Even though the white gods had teleportation technology, such work still took a huge amount of effort and time. Therefore, proper control over uninvited guests was not organized on Earth. Now think about it, could the Anunnaki’s arrival on Earth have been accidental? Most likely no. Everything was calculated down to the smallest detail. And the ancient Sumerians clearly went overboard with gold mining.
“But very ancient mines have actually been found in southern Africa,” I reminded.
- But who said that they were dug by reptilians or their earthly slaves? These mines could have been built by anyone. On Earth, one space civilization was replaced by another, and this went on for millions of years. The exact age of the mines, you understand, is almost impossible to determine. It is clear that the Anunnaki did not create slaves for themselves to mine gold. In those distant times, they launched a project to capture our mother Earth. Their civilization, although ancient, did not rise to a new level in its evolutionary development, but began to develop cyclically. Therefore, over time, when the natural resources of their home planet were depleted, they needed new worlds. Our Earth is only part of their project. At the same time, they are probably conducting conquest in other star systems. Where there are suitable planets for their life. This is the nature of intelligent reptiles.
They are predators. But our ancestors accepted them as friends. Their mistake still makes itself felt. In order to crush the white gods, our ancestors, who were in no way inferior to them, and in many ways superior to them, intelligent reptiles decided to turn into people who had degraded to the level of monkeys, the descendants of ancient cosmic races. To do this, they not only introduced the genes of the white and surviving Lemurians into the chromosomes of some species of archanthropes, but also irradiated the cell nuclei of their embryos with the genetic information of the owners of the planet.
- Why was it necessary to irradiate? Is this mandatory? - Of course! You just don't know true genetics, young man. Without a wave influence on the chromosome, it is impossible to change behavior. This is an axiom, but modern geneticists do not know it. For them, a molecular gene is everything. But such a gene is responsible only for the construction of proteins. As you know, we have only 20 types of proteins. Hence the stupid conclusion of our geneticists that supposedly only 1% of genes are responsible for the human body, 99% of genes are a kind of garbage. In fact, the main part of the genome is precisely the one that is considered junk. Why? But because it acts as an antenna. At the protein level, a person and any worm are the same, but not at the information level. You should know that DNA easily captures photons, and they are an information carrier. Do you understand what happens when a chromosome is irradiated?
- I guess vaguely.
— If information is transmitted through photons, for example, when using a laser, essentially a generator of powerful torsion fields, then it is received by those 99% who are responsible not for the body, but for behavior, for that inner world that distinguishes a person from an animal.
This is a simplified diagram, but I think you get the idea.
“It turns out that with such an impact, there is a restructuring of not only proteins, but also the mental code.
- Which, by the way, does not depend on protein. This is what our would-be geneticists cannot understand.
“I think it’s finally dawned on me,” I said.
- Glory to Rod! We are making progress! Finally, you began to think. But we will return to true genetics later.

Now let's talk about the appearance of southern colored races on Earth. What did intelligent reptiles do on Earth when our ancestors were completely absorbed in space: bringing a gigantic structure made of interlocking asteroids into Earth’s orbit, which still had to be covered with a shell? The Annunaki began to implement their project. That’s how they are built, these humanoid lizards. What is it? Nothing supernatural. Everything is simple to the point of banality. They, as I have already said, introduced the genes of two cosmic races living on Earth into the DNA of archanthropes, giving birth in its southern latitudes to several local degenerative groups of pre-humans created in this way, which subsequently turned into races.
It must be said that all the archanthropes who lived on Earth, both in the south and in the north, had dark skin color. Neanderthals are dirty gray in color, Pithecanthropus is brown. So it turned out that the genes of the black Lemurians turned the African races into what we are seeing now. The answer to your question, as you can see, is quite simple. Let's count together how many species of new people arose in Africa.
In the east this is the Ethiopian race, in the south - the race of Bushmen and Gotintots, it clearly has Mongoloid characteristics, what does this mean?
— That it was formed from African Pithecanthropus. It is they who have a flat face.
- Most likely, it is so. Then what race? Central African. It differs sharply from both the southern and eastern Ethiopian races.
Then there is a special race of African pygmies and a race of lizard people.
But it is an atavism that came to us from very ancient times. How much did you get?
- Four or even five.
- Note that all African races have completely different origins. They are united only by the genes of black Lemurians. But this is an appendage, nothing more. In fact, we have before us four or, as you say, even five completely different types of people. Why do I say this? Because all the above-mentioned races have completely different biochemistry. What does this mean? That different proteins are synthesized. Consequently, they have different structures of internal organs, different distribution of fat deposits in the body. Have you seen the butts of Bushwomen? God forbid they dream of such a thing, but in their understanding it is beautiful. And there’s nothing to say about African pygmies. They differ from all black races so much that it would be exhausting to list the characteristics. But the most important thing is different. In their nervous system. It is no secret that African blacks have a brain volume on average four hundred cubic centimeters less than that of Europeans. Moreover, due to the frontal lobes, which are responsible for creativity. But that's not all. Africans have less gray matter in the frontal region of their brains than Europeans. And the Rolandic and Sylvian fissures are located differently. Moreover, among Africans they are not as deep and less differentiated than among Europeans.
“Aren’t you trying to say that African blacks are inferior races?”
- That's what racists say. I'm talking about something else. About different structures.
That's all. Moreover, all African races or types of black people also have different central nervous systems. Some have one, others have another. This indicates a serious difference in origin. But let's leave Africa. Let's look at the Asian continent.
What are we seeing on the Arabian Peninsula? People with dark, but no longer black, skin live on it. What does this mean? That we have before us a different kind of person. Arabs have a different body structure from blacks, a different skull, a different structure of the nervous system. Naturally, the biochemistry of the Arabian tribes differs sharply from that of Africa. The structure of the protein is completely different, hence everything is different, even the smell. You should know that each large earthly race has its own specific smell. It's the same with subraces. But we will return to this issue later. On the Arabian Peninsula, I think you have already guessed this, we were faced with a completely different origin of the race, this time the genes of the white gods of our ancestors served in the ennoblement of the archanthropes, in particular the late Neanderthal. Hence the light skin color and a fairly developed central nervous system, which was inherited not only from the Nordic race, but also from the Neanderthals who began a new evolutionary cycle.
In Western Asia, Transcaucasia, on the plains of Western Europe and the Balkans at that time, another unique race arose. We have already talked about it. I mean the Iberians. They appeared from a genetic mixture of European Neanderthals and a white man of the Nordic race. How such hybridization could occur is not yet clear.
Most likely, it also arose due to the interference of the Anunnaki in the affairs of earthlings. This is confirmed in the mythology of the same Basques.
And the Old Testament speaks of a mixture of the divine and the earthly, of the sons of God who took earthly women for themselves. By now, the Iberians - half-Neanderthals, half-humans - have dissolved into the so-called Indo-Europeans. In fact, hybrids gave rise to the southern Mediterranean and Balkan-Caucasian subraces in Europe. We have already talked about the European region. I just wanted to say that Europe was also one of the centers of race formation. But not the Nordic race, as many modern researchers are trying to prove, but the hybrid Iberian race. This is easily proven using genetic analysis. Do you know who?
- Don't know.
— The corpses of frozen people are repeatedly found in the Alps. Prehistoric goat hunters. So, their genetics differs sharply from the genetics of people of the Nordic race. These are typical half-Neanderthals - Iberians. Genetically they are close to modern Basques and our Georgians.
“Aren’t you trying to say that Georgians are half-monkeys?” - I was surprised.
— I don’t want to, Georgians are Iberians by language, but genetically they are modified Iberians. Iranians, Scythians, and even Greeks and Romans took part in the formation of this ethnic group. But, despite this, genetically they are closer to the ancient inhabitants of Europe than the same Germans, Belgians, Swedes or us Russians. And then, we must not forget, in Europe 35-40 thousand years ago, one of the North African races lived next to the Iberians. She moved north between fresh lakes along the bottom of the then non-existent Mediterranean Sea. It is noteworthy that even in our time, typical representatives of the Negroid race are sometimes found among the population of Western Europe. Their skin is white and their hair is not black, but the structure of the skull and body is typically African. Most white blacks are found in Britain, Spain, France, and in the east of Europe - here, in Ukraine. Mainly in Galicia.
“Maybe it’s their genetics, coupled with the genetics of the Transcarpathian Iberians, that rebel against us Russians as against an alien genetic element.” It seems that the split between the “Westerners” and the “Easterners” is not of an ideological nature at all, but deeper? — I involuntarily asked my educator. Hearing my question, Grandfather Cherdyntsev looked at me questioningly for a long time, then slowly choosing his words carefully, said:
— You and I recently talked about the equilibrium of systems and the factor that shifts this equilibrium in one direction or another. Now think about what is happening in Ukraine. More precisely, on the territory of the former Galicia.
“Ideologically, economically and with the help of the religious press, the system was brought to a point of equilibrium. Then the genetic automaton began to operate.
- Essentially, different genetics, and then don’t forget that the Semitic genetics are superimposed on the Slavic-Iberian genetic layer. This is also an important factor. It appeared in those places at the end of the late Middle Ages, when Polish magnates appointed Jews as managers of their estates. See what a genetic mess it is?
- Why did you forget about the genetics of white blacks?
— I haven’t forgotten, it’s just not widespread enough to talk about. In the British Isles, ancient Africans lived quite compactly, which is why white blacks are found among the British. But there are fewer of them on the territory of Ukraine. That's all. The bad thing is that in the 2nd-3rd centuries BC. The Celts penetrated into Transcarpathia, by this time they were heavily mixed with the Iberians from the Pyrenees and the Alpine Tungras.
This genetic seed is felt to this day. It is expressed in zoological hatred towards the purebred descendants of the Orians-Rus and Russians, who consider themselves an integral part of our regional civilization. But you again turned our conversation into a different direction.
Although, it seems to me, it will be useful to you. The old man was silent for a second, then continued:
“We just have to consider the process of race formation that was launched by the reptilians in the Far East. What did the bug-eyed scoundrels do there? They took the Far Eastern Pithecanthropus as a basis and introduced into its DNA the genes of our ancestors - the white gods. Presumably, the skin of Sinanthropus was dark brown. As a result, it noticeably brightened and turned yellow. But the skull of the hybrid race remained archaic. This is where Mongoloid origins came from in the Far Eastern race.
- I've heard this more than once.
“Okay, repetition is the mother of learning,” grandfather smiled calmly with his eyes alone. - And in general, I want to tell you this: where did we start our conversation? Because there is not and cannot be a single humanity. So?
I agreed.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to hammer into your stupid head.”
It was clear that the taiga know-it-all was not serious. Therefore, ignoring his words deaf ears, I said:
“But then it turns out that the people of our planet do not have a past, as such.” A myth was invented instead.
- That's it, a myth! You put it correctly. The biblical myth about the common origin of humanity from Adam, then the same myth of the construction of the Tower of Babel and the third myth that after the flood the people of the Earth descended from the sons of the famous Noah. See how smart! Three myths about the same thing. If we don't wash, we'll just ride. This is how they get us to believe in nonsense. It would seem that these are harmless myths, but in fact they are part of a monstrous project to conquer our planet.
- I don’t understand something, what are you talking about? - Don’t you understand? More likely, you're being a fool again. There is nothing to understand here. How do you think their experiments with various types of earthly archanthropes ended for intelligent reptiles?
“Probably a quarrel with the true owners of the planet,” I suggested.
- Not probably and not a quarrel, but a fight! You always strive to express yourself in a streamlined manner. You're all spouting off. Do you really not know the myths about the struggle of our Nordic ancestors with the reptile race? There are a great many epics, legends and fairy tales on this topic. Only among the Mongoloids of the Far East are dragons cute. All other peoples of the Earth despise them, even blacks, Papuans and Australians. African legends say that the lizard-heads were the first to try to enslave the people of Earth. Australian myths tell the same story. So don't assume. The war has begun, the war of our ancestors with the lizard-headed race. Then the combined forces of the Orians and Atlanteans defeated the predatory creatures. Some of them went into space, but the lizard-heads did not leave the Earth. A small group of them moved into the underground voids. And hiding there, through her emissaries she began to influence the processes taking place in earthly society. How? Naturally, informationally, how could it be otherwise? Now tell me, why did the reptilians, on the sly of the white gods busy with cosmic affairs, create several hybrid human races on Earth?
“You answered this question a long time ago,” I laughed. - Of course, not in order to ennoble the archanthropes.
- Then for what? — the restless grandfather pestered with his question.
- Probably to declare all races of the Earth genetically equivalent.
- What next? Well, they announced what's next?
“That’s why the Illuminati came up with the myth of the common origin of humanity.
“And the corrupt geneticists said that all earthly races, and therefore ethnic groups, descend from one foremother. Naturally, they called her Aunt Eva. And what from this? That's right, I agree.
- But you yourself hinted in order to promote a liberal democratic project on Earth in the future. It's all that simple!
- What is simple? - Grandfather, “stupid” from my intelligence, stared at me for no reason at all. — Can you really explain the essence of the project?
“If humanity is one, all earthly races descended from common ancestors,” I began to explain. - So, there is a precedent for the genetic merging of different races into one earthly race.
- Well, what's wrong with that? Just think... From the point of view of the Liberoids, everything will be “okay”! What don't you like?
- That the descendants of white gods will dissolve in the ocean of southern colored peoples. The Nordic race will disappear from the face of the Earth. Humans are by nature designed to generate great ideas. If this happens, the process of humanization of hybrid earthly races will stop.
— Consequently, according to the law of nature, if a system has stopped in its development, then the Creator becomes unnecessary. He refuses her. What is this if not the death of our man-made civilization going nowhere? That's what I wanted to hear from you. - Do you seriously admit that the liberal-democratic project on planet Earth was launched by lizard-heads as much as 300 thousand years ago? - I asked the hermit.
- I don’t admit it, that’s how it is. In today's conversation, I showed you the links of one chain. Look, one after another. Iron logic all around! And everywhere she rests on lies. On a strong information foundation. Now you know that the information war with the descendants of the white gods has been waged by the lizard-headed race for 300 thousand years. This is a gigantic period for us. This is not a deadline for our opponents. If the process is not stopped, then, according to the forecast of the world media, in a couple of hundred years the white race will disappear from the face of the Earth, and in a thousand years across Europe, Asia and America, crowds of ferocious Neanderthals will again roam between the ruins of dead cities. Since by this time almost all the fauna on Earth will be “mastered,” the crazy ones will devour themselves.
Such is the prospect! Not fun, brother... Well, enough about that, I think it’s time for us to rest a little,” the old man stood up from his seat, “we have a lot of work.”
"G. Sidorov - The Radiance of the Highest Gods and the Krameshniks (Fundamentals of State Building)» Page. 96 - 110

- Today we talked about the origin of earthly races, what did we find out? That the three great races have completely different origins.
The white race is the descendant of the great Orians. It was not formed on Earth. All the rest are of our earthly origin. In fact, genetically ennobled descendants of ancient space aliens. Those who failed to fulfill their heavenly destiny and fell into the chaos of entropy. You know who created them. A cosmic race of lizard-heads, one that evolves very slowly and is forced to live on planets of the 1st order.
“And these two colored conglomerates of races were created in order to genetically dissolve the cosmic descendants of the white gods into their mass,” I added.
— That’s right, an elementary technology for cleansing the planet of serious rivals. Smart?
- That's not the right word - brilliant! And brainwashing is simple. A myth was invented that all earthly races originate from one center. This means that they have common ancestors, therefore, by nature they are equal in all respects. Therefore, God himself commands all earthly races to mix. This is the essence of liberal democratic ideology. I would like to say, bravo guys, you did it!

"G. Sidorov - The Radiance of the Highest Gods and the Krameshniks (Fundamentals of State Building)» Page. 112 - 113

In different fields of science there are things that seem to be generally known facts. However, in reality they all turn out to be nothing more than myths and misconceptions. A recent study found that as many as 82 percent of people are wrong about at least one scientific issue. Here are the most common myths that many people accept as true.

Wonders of science brought to Las Vegas

Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place

This is rather a saying that should be understood in an allegorical sense. On the contrary, there are objects that, due to certain properties, attract lightning. Thus, the 103-story Empire State Building in New York is struck by lightning up to 25 times a year. Once during a thunderstorm, the building was struck by lightning eight times in half an hour!

The Great Wall of China can be seen from space

This myth was born in the 18th century, when space flights were still very far away. Modern astronauts claim that it is impossible to see the wall with the naked eye even from orbit. Although the Great Wall of China is more than 20,000 kilometers long, it is only six meters wide. Those who allegedly saw it from space most likely confused it with China's Grand Canal, which is much wider, experts say.

The color red makes bulls furious

As you know, matadors during bullfights wave a red rag in front of the bulls to enrage them. But if they had waved a cloth of any other color, the result would have been the same: these representatives of cattle are simply color blind.

For the sake of the experiment, three stuffed animals were placed in front of the bull, equipped with rags of different colors. It turned out that the animal runs towards the stuffed animal whose rag starts to move... In the arena, the bull reacts not to color, but to the movements of the matador.

Chameleons can change color at will

This is not entirely a myth. It’s just that in the body of chameleons there are special cells - chromatophores, which, depending on the situation, produce one or another pigment. But this does not mean at all that the change of color depends on the desire of the reptile.

This is usually influenced by the environment. So, when direct sunlight hits a lizard, it can turn blinding white to reflect the heat. In cool weather, chameleons, on the contrary, darken to absorb light. When a male chameleon meets a female, he may decorate himself with colorful patterns, signaling his readiness to mate.

Humans only have five senses

It is easy for us to list them: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In fact, humans have more than twenty sense organs. So, one of them helps us feel temperature changes, the other helps us maintain balance, the third helps us navigate in space... Special receptors are also responsible for hunger, thirst, and pain.

We only use 10 percent of our brains

Many people are convinced that “unblocking” the rest of the brain will immediately make us geniuses: we will gain unusual abilities, learn dozens of languages, be able to do complex mathematical calculations in our heads...

But in reality we use our brain one hundred percent. Even in one second he has to process such an array of information that he has to use most of the neural connections. Completing any task stimulates different parts of the brain. So the statement that our brain has almost unlimited reserves that need to be “awakened” is something from the realm of fantasy, not science.

People's abilities depend on which hemisphere of their brain is more developed

It is believed that people who are prone to creativity are dominated by the right hemisphere, while those who are inclined to the exact sciences are dominated by the left hemisphere. Scientists from the University of Utah decided to test this. Over the course of two years, they asked 1,000 volunteers to perform various tasks while recording their brain activity. But they found no evidence that there is a connection between the activity of one or another half of the brain and the results of solving problems.

Based on data from a survey conducted by the American magazine Live Science, a list of the most common scientific myths was compiled, which scientists then commented on.

It turned out that most of them are completely unfounded:

1. “Nerves do not recover”

It is not true. The most active growth of the human brain, of course, is observed at an early age; it is at this time that it goes through all stages of formation. However, scientists say that even in adulthood, brain cells do not stop dividing. Numerous studies have proven that neurons grow and change before a person's death. So don’t listen to those who say that nerves do not recover - anyone can grow wiser at any age.

2. “A chicken can live without a head”

This is true. Scientists confirm that a chicken can actually live for a couple of minutes after its head is cut off. The fact is that even without a head, the bird retains the stem part of the brain, which is responsible for many reflexes. There is a known case when one chicken was able to live without a head for 18 months. Now it becomes clear where the phrase “brainless chicken” came from - the head is not such a vital part of the body for a chicken.

3. “There is no gravity in space”

It is not true. Most likely, this misconception arose due to the popular expressions “weightlessness” or “zero gravity.” Scientists claim that gravity exists everywhere, even in space. Astronauts float in zero gravity only because they fall to Earth in a horizontal plane. Gravity becomes weaker with distance, but never completely disappears. By the way, the statement that there is a vacuum in space is also incorrect. Interstellar space is filled with all sorts of particles and atoms, but in space the distance between them is greater than on our planet.

4. “The human brain only uses 10% of its capacity.”

This misconception has been around for more than a century, but scientists assure that it is nothing more than a myth. The results of MRI studies have shown that a person uses a large part of the cerebral cortex, and the human brain works even when he is sleeping. So we will have to disappoint those who believe that in the future scientists will come up with a way to make the brain work better and then everyone will have superpowers.

5. “Eating a bun with poppy seeds is like smoking opium.”

No matter how strange it may sound, this statement is partly true. Of course, it is foolish to expect from a bun with poppy seeds the kind of euphoria that drug addicts get from smoking opium, but problems with drug control due to poppy ingested are likely to arise. If after some time after eating two buns with poppy seeds, a blood test is taken from a person, the test for opiates will be positive.

6. “Chicken broth helps cure colds.”

And this statement can be recognized as partly true. It is certainly not possible to cure a cold with chicken broth, but it is still not in vain that parents persuade their sick children to eat broth. The results of the study showed that chicken broth contains substances that have an anti-inflammatory effect and help stop the progression of the disease.

7. “Yawning is contagious.”

This is very similar to the truth. Many people have probably noticed that if someone starts to yawn, it’s as if he “infects” everyone else. It is difficult to say how true this statement is from a scientific point of view, but, according to anthropologists, we inherited the reflex to repeat the yawns of a person nearby from monkeys. Chimpanzees, for example, really like to imitate the yawns of others. It turns out that when we yawn after another person, we imitate him on a subconscious level.

8. “If you run in the rain, you’ll get less wet.”

Mathematical equations developed to describe this process prove that this statement is most likely true. But when running, the risk of ruining your suit increases noticeably, since in this case the front part of the body will get very wet, and if you walk at a measured pace, the main impact of the rain will fall on your head.

9. “The only man-made object visible from space is the Great Wall of China.”

This statement comes in different variations, but they are all equally wrong. From low orbit, astronauts see many man-made objects, for example, the Egyptian pyramids and even the runways of major airports. The Chinese Wall, without knowing exactly where it is, is much more difficult to see, and even impossible from the Moon.

10. “The change of seasons occurs when the distance to the Sun changes”

It is not true. The change in distance to the Sun, which occurs as our planet moves along its orbit, has virtually no effect on the temperature on Earth. It’s not all about distance, but about the angle of inclination of the Earth’s axis, when it changes, the seasons change.

“Compass” that the best educational criticism can discredit a prejudice, but cannot dislodge it from consciousness if there is nothing to replace it. The need for explanation takes its toll; it “does not tolerate a vacuum”: in the absence of positive knowledge, a war with one false and/or harmful idea only leads to its displacement by another, which is no closer to the truth. A good example: Voltaire’s criticism of religion, discrediting the biblical myth, he created the Aryan myth with the other hand, since the sciences had not yet developed to scientific atheism, neither natural nor about society. At the same time, he made mistakes of a scientific nature: see about this in the book by V.A. Shnirelman:

“One of the first philosophers who was fascinated by India and saw in it the source of human wisdom was Voltaire. He believed that it was there that the ancient (Vedic) religion arose and that it was there that Egyptian priests and Chinese sages went for training. Based on the stories of the Jesuits, he even believed that in Ancient India there was a monotheistic tradition that preceded Christianity and dated back at least 5 thousand years. And since the Bible said nothing about India, this helped the freethinker Voltaire to cast doubt on Christian truth and in every possible way vilify the Jews for their “prejudices” and “irrationalism.” It also allowed him to claim that Europeans owed nothing to the ancient Israelites, who he believed simply stole much of their sacred knowledge from the Aryans, the biblical Gog and Magog. In addition, the comparison of the “primordial Vedic sources” with contemporary India led Voltaire to the idea of ​​​​the degradation that the Aryans allegedly experienced in India (Figueira 2002: 10–18).

Only later was it established that, to his misfortune, Voltaire overly trusted a forged text created for his own purposes by the Jesuits (Trautmann 1997: 72).

I. - G. Herder also did not escape the Indian temptation. But he went even further and made the high mountains adjacent to Northern India the ancestral home of all mankind. Although he never visited India, he endowed Indians with all possible virtues, seeing in them the ideal of the “noble savage”. However, while he admired India, he valued its poetry more than Vedic literature. After all, in poetry he saw the true “soul of the people.” But he was pessimistic about the prospect of discovering the original religious texts, believing that those that have come down to us were greatly modified and distorted in the course of history. Like Voltaire, he was convinced of the degradation of the newcomers who came under the influence of local tribes in India with their primitive totemism (Herder 1977: 305–310. On this, see: Figueira 2002: 19–22).

In Germany, all this was complemented by national romanticism, in the context of which, according to the Italian folklorist G. Cocchiara, first “the noble savage gave way to the virtuous people,” and by the middle of the 19th century. such a people turned into “Aryans” and “our ancestors” (Cocchiara 1960: 199, 298). This meticulous historian of folklore noted that

“for romantics, the past is the top of the mountain from which they survey the world; this mountain is their own past (their people), they turn to it as an ideal refuge for all occasions” (Cocchiara 1960: 204).

At the same time, this refuge did not solve all problems, and romanticism endowed the German person with an ambivalent fate. On the one hand, he had a universal human mission, elevating him above everyone around him; but, on the other hand, he was allegedly in danger of being crucified by his neighbors and, above all, by the Jews. This opinion was held, for example, by the famous German philosopher I. G. Fichte (Rose 1992: 10).

In other words, the maturation of the “Aryan myth” occurred in Europe in parallel with the growth of anti-Semitic sentiments, initially directed against Judaism as allegedly sharply limiting freedom and cultivating cruelty. At that time, even Young Germany, founded by intellectuals of Jewish origin, which stood for the emancipation of the Jews, demanded that Jews renounce everything “Jewish” that was rooted in Judaism. This should explain the negative attitude towards Jewry of the young Marx, who was brought up in such an atmosphere and actually reproduced the ideas of a prominent figure in Young Germany, journalist Ludwig Börne (Rose 1992: 14–17).

Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire). The father of that atheism, which imagines itself as an elitist worldview, and attacks religion not as a social evil, but as “the beliefs of cattle.” Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic.

The social tension that grew in society during modernization was expressed not only in public sentiment and political struggle. Oddly enough, it found a place even in scientific ideas that, at first glance, had nothing in common with current socio-political processes. The notorious “Jewish question” had a latent influence on the interpretation of ancient history, where, inspired by the discovery of such new disciplines as Indo-European studies and Semitology, some scientists of the 19th century. discovered in ancient times the opposition between the Semites and the Aryans, who turned out to be almost antipodes.

Their mythical rivalry began with scholastic theological disputes about what language Adam and Eve spoke. If Saint Augustine confidently called the Hebrew language the most ancient language of all mankind, then back in the 4th–5th centuries. he had opponents who gave the palm to some other languages. This debate revived at the turn of the Modern Age, when some educated Europeans, including G. W. Leibniz, not only sought an independent source of the Germanic languages, but also argued that this primitive language could successfully compete with Hebrew with its primitive structure and antiquity (Olender 1992: 1–2). For the longest time, the traditional view of the originality of the Hebrew language was supported by the church.

But already at the end of the 17th century. the founder of biblical criticism, Richard Simon, perspicaciously saw an emerging national idea behind the façade of the linguistic dispute:

"Nations fight for their own languages."

A hundred years later, Herder emphasized that “every ancient nation wants to see itself as first-born and to imagine its territory as the place of the formation of humanity” (quoted in Olender 1992: 3–4). In addition, hidden behind the language debate was the idea of ​​“national character,” the belief of thinkers of that era that language expresses something deep, subconscious, which was described as the “soul of the people.” All these ideas were found in Herder.

European scientific thought developed in the 18th–19th centuries. the hard way. At first, European scientists tried to move the Indo-European ancestral home as far as possible from the Middle East - albeit far to the east, as long as it did not coincide with the ancestral home of the “Semites”. And only much later did it move to Europe in their works, reflecting the growing attractiveness of the principle of autochthonism. Here's how it happened.

Although guesses about the relationship of European languages ​​with Armenian and Iranian were expressed before him, the Englishman William Jones became the person who, having thoroughly studied Sanskrit, was the first to declare the unity of Indo-European languages, laying the foundation not only for Indo-European studies, but in general for comparative historical linguistics (this it didn’t hurt that he made several erroneous linguistic convergences). At the same time, like many of his contemporaries, he idealized the Aryans, seeing in them an unusually talented people who had a rich imagination and deep knowledge about the world. He was convinced that they generously shared their wisdom with others, including the Greeks (Trautmann 1997: 37–38, 47–52, 59–61; Olender 1992: 6; Figueira 2002: 22–23). At the same time, who gave the first scientific reading of the Indian Vedas, Henry Thomas Colebrooke drew a deep chasm separating the ancient Aryans and the population of contemporary India, where there were no traces of the original “monotheistic religion” that he attributed to the Aryans; but idolatry and barbaric rituals, absent among the ancients, appeared (Figueira 2002: 23–25).

This added to the charm of Ancient India, and not so much in England, where practical knowledge about it and the snobbery of the colonialists restrained wild imagination, but in Germany, where armchair reflections, coupled with national romanticism, opened the door to the most dizzying theories. This is how the “Aryan myth” was born, the authorship of which belongs to the famous German romantic thinker Friedrich Schlegel, the first translator of Sanskrit texts into German. Glorifying myth and poetry, Schlegel called for learning from the ancients, meaning by this Ancient India and seeing in it the beginning of all beginnings. It is noteworthy that, while paying tribute to the value of national culture, this erudite and liberal demonstrated cosmopolitanism; he opposed the extreme Germanomania characteristic of his era and stood for the emancipation of the Jews (Polyakov 1996: 206; Cocchiara 1960: 210–211; Goodrick-Clark 1998: 32). Singing the wisdom and beauty of India, where he never managed to visit, Schlegel brought out all the great nations from there, including the Egyptian civilization. He called the driving force behind this unprecedented campaign the wandering preachers, allegedly consumed by the desire to be cleansed of some terrible sin, which forced them to leave their blessed homeland and go to the far north. Schlegel laid the foundation for the romantic tradition, which presented Sanskrit as the source of all other Indo-European languages. At the same time, he was convinced that the original Vedic knowledge was irretrievably lost. Therefore, to study their traces, he proposed to rely solely on the facts of language (Godwin 1993: 38–39; Figueira 2002: 30).

If in the 18th century. Some thinkers assumed that Moses could “steal” his knowledge from Egypt, then at the beginning of the 19th century. in the development of Voltaire's ideas, they were replaced by even more ridiculous ideas that derived Judaism from Indian Brahmanism. This extravagant version was started by the German scientists Joseph Goerres and Friedrich Kroeser (Figueira 2002: 32). In 1824, the ultra-conservative magazine “Catholic” began to be published in France, which sought to tie the faith of Moses to India (Polyakov 1996: 217). And later this idea was picked up by E. Blavatsky.

At the beginning of the 19th century. German philologist I. H. Adelung placed the biblical paradise on the territory of Kashmir. He endowed Adam and Eve with “beautiful European forms” and an ancient language that sounded suspiciously like what would soon be called “Aryan.” Then I. G. Rode, who argued with him, moved Eden to the mountains, where the Amu Darya and Syr Darya have their sources and where the “Aryans” allegedly settled (Polyakov 1998: 139–140).”

All of this is, of course, extremes. But even while avoiding them, many respectable authors of the era, including such famous philosophers as Schelling, Schopenhauer and Hegel, tended to accept Indian genealogy. Moreover, following the geographer Karl Ritter, who emphasized the similarity of Sanskrit with ancient German, many German thinkers were then inclined to believe that the Germans, unlike other peoples of Europe, were directly descended from the ancient Aryans (Figueira 2002: 33).

Aryans and racial theory

Meanwhile, the formation of Indo-European studies as a science of languages ​​was taking place. Moreover, if in England Thomas Young introduced the term “Indo-Europeans” in 1813, then in Germany the term “Indo-Germans”, proposed by K. Malthe-Brun in 1810 and picked up by J. von Klaproth in 1823, competed with it. At the same time in Germany The term “Aryans” became popular, associated with the name of the Frenchman A. Anquetil-Duperron, the discoverer of the Avesta, who initially used it only for the Medes and Persians. A broader meaning was given to it by the same F. Schlegel, who connected it with the great “Kulturträger people” (Polyakov 1996: 208–209; Olender 1992: 11; Godwin 1993: 39; Goodrick-Clark 1998: 32). And even earlier, Herder and A. L. von Schlözer began to use the term “Semites,” applying it at first only to a group of languages.

The problem quickly went beyond linguistics. After all, behind language, researchers of that time, following Herder, saw culture, people, and even “race” (but the latter - in spite of Herder, who protested against the division of humanity into separate races). Linguistic reconstructions began to be used to study the culture and history of ancient peoples, their philosophy, religion and social organization. Moreover, at one time Sanskrit was called the oldest Indo-European language, and the Vedas were perceived as a collection of texts from the most ancient religion of the Indo-Europeans, almost like the “Aryan Bible”. The “Aryan” principle was first identified with the ancient Indians and ancient Greeks, and the “Semitic” with the Jews. But then “Aryan” received an expanded meaning.

Moreover, if at one time F. Schlegel attributed to the Germans

“directness, sincerity, firmness, diligence and depth, combined with some naivety and clumsiness” (Cocchiara 1960: 211),

This was soon transferred to the “Aryans” as a whole. Bearing in mind the wide geographical space occupied by the Indo-Europeans, they were credited with an inescapable will to migrate and travel, as well as a passion for innovation, while the Semites were seen as a clumsy, inert people, committed to their conservative values ​​and resisting any changes. From this point of view, Indo-European polytheism was seen as much more attractive than Semitic monotheism. Only the formation of more rigorous scientific approaches in the second half of the 19th century. made it possible to reconsider these early ideas, although at that time they were still shared by such a founder of Semitology as E. Renan (Olender 1992: 9, 12, 54–56).

In general, the entire first half of the 19th century. took place in Europe under the sign of Indomania. It was then that it became fashionable to contrast Zoroaster with Moses and argue that the Semites borrowed philosophy and religious ideas from the Indo-Germans, as, for example, the German Indologist Christian Lassen, a student of the Schlegel brothers, insisted. This author was the first to contrast the Aryans with the Semites, praising the Aryans as “the most organized and most creative people,” who spread high culture and therefore had the right to subjugate the aborigines (Polyakov 1998: 141–142; Godwin 1993: 39). In the middle of the 19th century. Jacob Grimm included this version in his textbooks on literature and history, thanks to which the general German public learned about the “Aryans” and “Aryan glory.” It is noteworthy that Grimm explained their movement to the west following the sun as an “irresistible urge” (Polyakov 1996: 212–214).

Meanwhile, comparative linguistics was experiencing a period of rapid development. In 1814–1818 the Dane R. Rusk included the Icelandic language in the Indo-European family, in 1816 the German F. Bopp finally substantiated the relationship of Sanskrit with a number of European languages, in 1820 the Russian researcher A. Kh. Vostokov proved the relationship of the Slavic languages, in 1820 - 1830- x years the Swiss Adolphe Pictet enriched the Indo-European family with Celtic languages, and in 1836–1845. the German F. Dietz laid the foundation for Romanesque philology. On this basis, by the middle of the 19th century. A scientific direction emerged that sought to reconstruct the characteristics of primitive cultures and the way of life of their bearers, based on the facts of language.

In line with this trend, Indomania quickly waned, and the views of many scientists were focused on Europe for a long time. Now, at the center of the debate, the question has arisen about whether Central Europe or the steppe strip of Eastern Europe should be seen as the center of formation of the Indo-Europeans. The first solution was defended by the former philologist G. Kossinna, who became an archaeologist, and the second seemed more plausible to the linguist O. Schrader. There were also other opinions. For example, R. von Lichtenberg was looking for the ancestral home of the Aryans on the Iberian Peninsula.

However, in the second half of the 19th century. In France and, to a lesser extent, in German countries, the hypothesis was developed that the original Aryans settled from the territory of Central Asia or, more precisely, from Sogdiana or Bactria. So, for example, J. von Klaproth, Henri Martin, H. Lassen, A. de Gobineau, F. Max Muller, A. Pictet, F. Lenormand, A. de Quatrefage, S. E. Uyfalvy, J. de Morgan believed . This idea was especially revived in the 1890s, after Tocharian manuscripts were discovered in Xinjiang. She lived until the First World War, when the English archaeologist J. Myers still identified the early Indo-Europeans with the steppe pastoralists of Central Asia.

In those years, the main heroes of this kind of research were, of course, the primitive Aryans. And one of the first who took upon himself the labor-intensive work of reconstructing their way of life, social organization, customs, and religion was the Swiss A. Pictet, who called his method linguistic paleontology and devoted his three-volume work to this. He praised the Aryans as a “gifted race,” full of inner perfection and endowed with enormous creative energy, which enabled them to wage successful conquests. He called it "the most powerful race on earth" and believed that it was destined to rule the world. Moreover, he justified the conquest of India by the British by the fact that the “European Aryans” were destined by Providence to return to India and bring a higher civilization to their brothers. In addition, Pictet saw the primitive Aryans as sun worshipers and attributed to them primordial monotheism, which thus arose out of connection with the Semitic tradition. He also paid tribute to the formation of the “Aryan/Jewish” opposition, where Jews were endowed with exceptional conservatism and intolerance, and Aryans were endowed with the ability for creative development and openness. In his scheme they appeared as antagonists without any possibility of compromise (Olender 1992: 95–99, 102–104). Pictet's ideas had a great influence on his contemporaries, among whom were such famous scientists as the orientalist and philologist E. Renan and the physical anthropologist A. de Quatrefages.

Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, classic of racism. If the “Aryan myth” was conceived by rationalists and enlighteners, then it was picked up and made a social force by romantics and other irrationalists

Gobineau's book made no impression on republican France, but found a lively response among German intellectuals who were experiencing the stage of romantic nationalism and dreaming of future German glory. After all, according to Gobineau, it was the Germans who preserved Aryan blood in its purest form. It is significant that history and cultural studies attracted Gobineau not as a source of knowledge, but as a lesson and warning for the contemporary world. In other words, he wrote his book not for specialists, but for the general public, offering it the racial myth as a universal key to understanding the essence of social development. Indeed, there was little scientific content in his work. In his description of India, Gobineau based himself on the book of H. Lassen, distorting many of its provisions and subtracting from there what was not there (Figueira 2002: 70–71). According to Cocchiara, “although Gobineau considered himself an ethnologist, it is quite clear from his writing that he did not have the slightest idea of ​​what primitive peoples were” (Cocchiara 1960: 298).

The Aryan myth fascinated not only philosophers, orientalists and ethnologists. Thanks to Gobineau, he became widely discussed by the educated public and even inspired some German revolutionaries. A unique example of the synthesis of revolutionary ideas, folklore and music, passed through the crucible of the Aryan myth, was the work of the famous German composer Richard Wagner. An active participant in the revolution of 1848, after its defeat Wagner was imbued with the German idea, and from then on his nationalism was colored in racial tones. And if at first Christian sources were quite sufficient for his anti-Semitic sentiments, then he was inspired by a racial approach, which, it seemed to him, gave a deeper understanding of the essence of the world around him. He became interested in German folklore, believing that an appeal to the ideals of German antiquity could open the way to future German freedom. Since then, he has tried to embody in his operas the ideal of the struggle for social justice directed against bourgeois society. At the same time, the positive heroes of the operas invariably became the “German-Aryans,” while their antipodes were given “Semitic” features, identified with everything disgusting that was in the society of the burghers. Thus, over time, Wagner’s socialist ideas turned into an obsessive desire to cleanse Germany of Jews. All this was metaphorically reflected in the Nibelungen cycle, conceived by the composer back in the late 1840s. (Rose 1992: 68–72). However, the crystallization of these thoughts came later, when Wagner discovered Schopenhauer (1854), and then in the 1870s. got acquainted with Darwin's books. He read Gobineau’s work only in 1880, although he had been personally acquainted with the French thinker since 1876. But in the 1870s. Wagner regularly received anti-Semitic books and pamphlets from their authors, who exposed him to nuances of racial theory that interested him (Katz 1986: 105–106).

Wagner outlined his ideological platform in articles of 1877–1881, where, developing the Aryan idea, he wrote about the differences between “our Savior” and the “tribal god of Israel”, about the “Jewish anti-race”, about the “pollution of German blood” and the degradation of modern Christians , as well as the need to return to “Aryan Christianity”. From criticism of decayed Christianity, he moved on to denunciations of the modern bourgeois world, allegedly infected with the “Jewish spirit.” He called for a “rebirth of the race,” which required getting rid of not only the “spirit of Judaism,” but also the “Jews” themselves. At the same time, he dreamed of the Liberator, seeing his prototype in Siegfried. He tried to convey all these sentiments in his last opera, Parsifal, intended to become a metaphor for the revival of the “Aryan race” (Katz 1986: 107–109, 117; Rose 1992: 141–166).

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. The creator of the idea of ​​a superman did not really correspond to it - he served as a professor in the “democracy” he hated and suffered from a complex of self-hatred.

Friedrich Nietzsche also made his contribution to the development of the Aryan myth. Having entered into an argument with Sanskrit scholars, he argued that the term “arya” does not mean “noble”, as many of his contemporaries thought, but “rich” or “owner”. This supposedly revealed the true nature of the Aryans, called to “own,” that is, to be “masters” and “conquerors.” But he also understood the danger of this: after all, while settling new lands and conquering the local population, the Aryans sooner or later mixed with them and suffered degradation, losing their original glorious qualities. He believed that this had once happened in Europe, but believed that the Indian Aryans had fortunately escaped moral and physical decline. He considered the Laws of Manu to be the oldest book of humanity and cited them as an example of an unsurpassed Aryan code of morality and social order. Moreover, this order was based on castes with their endogamous principle, that is, it assumed a genetic heritage. Therefore, in order to overcome the troubles of his contemporary society, Nietzsche proposed returning to the hierarchy and caste system, within the framework of which only the man of the future, the “Aryan superman,” could be formed. He considered the best way to achieve this to be the breeding of new races artificially, which in those years was already called eugenics (Figueira 2002: 50–57). At the same time, relying on the “Laws of Manu,” Nietzsche ignored all other Indian sources. This ancient code was enough for him to create his myth of the “Aryan Golden Age.”

Nietzsche imagined the Germans as “people of the North,” ill-adapted to Christianity. He was concerned about the morale of the Germans, who were at a loss in the environment of rapid modernization that swept Germany in the last quarter of the 19th century. He believed that they should gather all their will and show strong character in order to survive in a rapidly changing world. The soft position of Christianity, which called for compassion towards the weak and unfortunate, was clearly not suitable for this. Therefore, Nietzsche rejected it as a religion directed against Aryan values ​​and dooming the strong to defeat by the weak (Nietzsche 1997a: 283; 1997b).

It is noteworthy that Nietzsche’s adherence to the principle of blood did not give rise to any tendency in him to either racism or anti-Semitism (Ionkis 2009: 237–241). On the contrary, he considered the Jews to be the strongest and “racially pure” people of Europe and believed that the most promising offspring came from Aryan-Jewish marriages (Nietzsche 1997a: 371). In particular, he believed that the mixing of Germans with Slavs, Celts and Jews had a beneficial effect on the German soul. However, while having a positive attitude towards Jews as a people, Nietzsche condemned Judaism and the Christianity that grew out of it. In addition, he considered Jews to be imitators and intermediaries and denied their creative abilities. He set them as an example the Aryans, who, without relying on God, created a set of laws for themselves and introduced a social hierarchy. Therefore, it was the Aryans, in the eyes of Nietzsche, who were the innate “master race”, called upon to rule all others. His ideal was the Brahmins, who shunned the low-born (Figueira 2002: 58–60).

Nietzsche also revived the myth of the Hyperboreans, living a harsh life in the northern ice. Allegedly, this strengthened character: the metaphors of “ice” and “cold” turned the northerners into people of unbending will and promised them power over the world in the future. In fact, the images of Hyperboreans and Aryans merged in Nietzsche’s idea of ​​the superman with his insatiable “will to power.” Coldness, power and individualism were made markers of the ideal person of the future (Frank 2011). These metaphors were later gratefully adopted by the Nazis and are still reproduced by neo-Nazis today.

In the second half of the 19th century. The “Aryan myth” was introduced into high science by the orientalist and Germanophile Ernest Renan and the Indologist linguist Friedrich Max Müller. Renan paid tribute to the achievements of the two “great races” (Aryan and Semitic) in history, associating them only with “civilized peoples” (Olender 1992: 59–60). However, this myth remained in the positions of Christian historiosophy when it came to the future: like Judaism, the “Semitic race” had already fully played its role, and there was no place for it in the future - only “Aryans” reigned there; It was they who were destined to become “masters of the planet.” At the same time, the “Aryans” had “sublime ideas” on their side, while the “Semites” were fatally let down by their “terribly simple mind.” According to Renan, the Semites did not and could not give anything to the world except a monotheistic religion. As Polyakov noted, in his work Renan used the terms “Semitic race” and “Jewish people” as synonyms, while “Aryans” often seemed like a euphemism for the Germans. Thus, Renan opened the floodgates for an avalanche of secondary literature devoted to the confrontation between the “Aryans” and the “Semites” (Polyakov 1996: 222–225).

Among such authors, the prolific but now forgotten esoteric writer Louis Jacolliot, who served as the French consul in Calcutta, stood out. He created the myth of an antediluvian world theocracy with its capital Asgartha (“city of the Sun”), which was later captured by the “Aryan Brahmins.” Rejecting the ambitious, in his opinion, claims of Christianity, Jacolliot discovered the origins of the Bible in the mountains of India, and his books were read by both H. P. Blavatsky and even Nietzsche (Goodrick-Clark 1995: 235; Godwin 1993: 81–82, 86; Figueira 2002: 53; Andreev 2008: 52). However, Max Müller called his book “The Bible in India” “the stupidest... that I know” (Polyakov 1996: 228).

It is noteworthy that for Max Müller, historical and philological studies were by no means of an abstract nature. He tried to return Europeans to their ancient heritage in the hope that this would help them solve a number of modern problems and restore order to their internal lives (Figueira 2002: 34, 38). Working mainly in linguistics and mythology, Max Müller sharply separated the Aryans from the Semites and Turans, with whom, in his opinion, they had nothing in common. Unlike his predecessors and a number of contemporaries, he did not find any similarities between the ancient Aryan and ancient Semitic religions - in the distant past, the paths of the Aryans and Jews, in his opinion, did not intersect anywhere. Max Müller did not yet know where exactly the ancestral home of the “Aryan race” was located. He conventionally placed it somewhere in the mountains of Central Asia, from where the ancient Aryans settled: some to the west, others to the south. At the same time, he sharply contrasted one with the other: it was the former who possessed the necessary skills for progressive development, while the latter were distinguished by passivity and contemplation. At the same time, he unambiguously included Indians as part of the “Caucasian (Japhetic) race,” attributing the darkening of their skin to the local climate. Being a proponent of the theory of conquest, Max Müller described how the newcomer Aryans conquered the local Dasyu, whom he called Turanians, attributing to them the Scythian language. He believed that the Brahmins were descended from these Aryans, while he associated the tribal population and the untouchables with the descendants of the Dasyu (Trautmann 1997: 196–197). Moreover, he constantly emphasized the differences between the original Aryans, who once came to India, and their distant descendants, who experienced decay and degradation and moved from primary monotheism to idolatry and caste society. He saw Hinduism as a distortion of the original Aryan religion (Thapar 1996: 5–6; Figueira 2002: 36, 39–43). In all this, as D. Figueira notes, he was “the last avatar of romanticism in the field of linguistics” (Figueira 2002: 47).

Nevertheless, Max Müller was far from racist. In his younger years, he, firstly, wrote about the “Aryan brotherhood”, meaning Europeans and Indians, and secondly, he did not see any harm in racial and cultural mixing. On the contrary, he believed that in India it benefited the Aryans and their culture. He argued that for the progress of civilization it is not at all necessary to force local inhabitants to switch to the language and culture of aliens. On the contrary, close peaceful relationships created the basis for successful development. Thus, race did not at all serve as a determining factor in the fate of people. Max Müller spent his life campaigning against discrimination against Indians (Trautmann 1997: 176–178). However, it was he who sanctified with his authority the identification of language with race, and to him the science of the second half of the 19th century. owes the popularity of the concept of the “Aryan race”. He himself bitterly regretted this in the last period of his life, noting that talking about the “Aryan race” is the same as talking about “brachycephalic grammar” (Cocchiara 1960: 313; Polyakov 1996: 229–230; Thapar 1996: 6; Figueira 2002: 44–46).

These regrets were caused by the extraordinary popularity of the “Aryan idea” in the second half of the 19th century, when it was used in a variety of dubious teachings. For example, she played a significant role in the formation of Theosophy, the founder of which, H. P. Blavatsky, extolled Sanskrit and declared the “Aryan race” to be the leading one on Earth, with which the future of humanity is supposedly connected. Her teaching included such provisions as the identification of Sanskrit with the Proto-Indo-European language, the endowment of race with internal immanent properties, the glorification of the Aryans as a “superior race,” the derivation of the Bible from Brahmanism, the idea of ​​“racial degradation” and the inevitable extinction of “obsolete races.” True, in her understanding, “Aryans” were a broader concept than “white race.”

As for Renan, while constantly using the term “race,” he was ambivalent about it. He believed that only in ancient times was race an unconditional “physiological fact.” However, due to subsequent historical processes, it lost its connection with blood and became associated with language, religion, laws and customs. Thus, “spirituality” became the basis of the race, pushing blood into the background. From this point of view, in modernity, where the political principle of community dominated, even the concept of “linguistic race” lost all meaning. However, all this did not abolish the racial hierarchy, because outside the “civilized world,” that is, Europe, race retained its previous character. Therefore, Renan proclaimed the principle of “racial inequality” (Olender 1992: 58–63). This republican approach to race, which received a unique expression in the works of G. Le Bon on the “racial soul” or “mentality” (Taguieff 2009: 65–67), was shared in France even by extreme nationalists such as Maurice Barrès.

Be that as it may, in the 1860s. the division into “Aryans” and “Semites” “already formed part of the intellectual baggage of educated Europeans” (Polyakov 1996: 274). This division was based on linguistic criteria, but in the works of a considerable number of authors it also contained racial connotations. Renan was one of the first to emphasize the sharp cultural differences between “Aryans” and “Semites.” He limited the merits of the “Semites” to musical abilities and monotheism. In all other positions, they fatally lost to the “Aryans,” whose main advantage was that, possessing a rich imagination, the pagans deeply understood the surrounding nature. This enabled them to discover scientific principles and embark on the path of rapid progress, while adherence to monotheism withered thought and retarded the development of the “Semites” (Olender 1992: 63–68).

Beginning of the second half of the 19th century. was marked by the emergence of doubts about the unity of Indians and Europeans, which, as we have seen, philologists insisted on. In England, such doubts began to be expressed by former military medic John Crawfurd, who served for many years in Southeast Asia and Northern India. Pointing out the significant physical differences between the inhabitants of India and Europe, he could not believe that they had once had common ancestors. He also argued that mixed marriages could be harmful to civilization. Contrary to Max Müller, with whom he argued, race for him meant destiny (Trautmann 1997: 180–181).

Showing the naivety of youth, physical anthropology at first paid tribute to admiration for the “Aryans” with their supposed natural superiority over everyone else, which was not least determined by the accompanying political factors. Thus, the example of one of the founders of the French anthropological school, A. de Quatrefage, who was so shocked by the barbarity of the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian War, has already become a textbook example that in a dispute with the patriarch of German anthropology, Rudolf Virchow, he tried to exclude the Prussians from the number of “Aryans” and attributed they are of “Finnish or Slavic-Finnish origin” (Polyakov 1996: 279–280; Field 1981: 208–209).

[In fact, “barbarism” was a rationalization, and the assertion that the Prussians were not real Germans (“Aryans”) but Germanized “Finns” or “Mongols” was a commonplace of French racism in the 1860s. This contrasted them with the “true Aryans” - the Bavarians, Hessians, etc., whom Napoleon III’s France tried to patronize, as well as, of course, the French themselves. Sedan, Gravelotte, Metz put an end to this, but the very idea of ​​​​considering a hostile nation “Asians” was taken up by all nationalists east of the Rhine and has survived to this day. See Henri Taguieff. Color and blood***]

But “Jewish origin” turned out to be even worse, and in the last quarter of the 19th century, when anti-Semitism in Germany was on the rise, some ethnologists, orientalists and anthropologists attributed to the Semites a lack of creative abilities and called them a degraded branch of the “white trunk” (Polyakov 1996: 293 –294). Others turned to cultural studies and natural philosophy to substantiate the supposedly eternal nature of the “Semitic/Aryan” opposition. In the second half of the 19th century. a number of orientalists - E. Quinet, A. Warmund, E. Renan, J. Langbehn - who emphasized the connection between culture and the natural environment, contrasted the “peoples of the desert” with their allegedly predatory attitude towards nature to the “peoples of the forests” who deified it and striving to preserve it. Thus, the German orientalist Adolf Warmund contrasted the “mature Jewish race” with the “young Aryan.” He attributed to the first an insatiable wanderlust, allegedly inherited from nomadic ancestors, and the second he associated with the sedentary people of the forest. In turn, this gave him grounds to accuse the “people of the desert” of a consumerist predatory attitude towards nature, while the “people of the forest” aroused in him only admiration for their spiritual aesthetic view of nature. This scheme was used by the German economist Werner Sombart, who sought to show how the predatory attitude towards nature is transferred by the “people of the desert” to social relationships. Later, this paradigm became part of the concept of the “collective unconscious” by C. G. Jung, who contrasted “Aryan psychology” with “Jewish” (Polyakov 1996: 305–309).

At the same time, by the end of the 19th century. the increased authority of physical anthropology has forced us to approach with greater caution the interpretation of the complex connections between language, thinking and physical type. At the turn of the century, some experts had already begun to perceive the thesis of “Aryan origin” as a new myth (Polyakov 1996: 286). Results of scientific research in the second half of the 19th century. were summarized by Isaac Tylor in his widely acclaimed popular book The Origin of the Aryans (1889). He tried to synthesize the data accumulated by that time by linguists, physical anthropologists, archaeologists and folklorists. His main goal was to prove the absence of strict connections between language and physical type, and he reproached linguists in the person of Max Müller for their careless and hasty conclusion about the common origin of peoples speaking “Aryan languages”. He noted that even the modern peoples of Europe, despite the similarity of languages, differ significantly from each other in physical characteristics, and this biological heterogeneity of the local population has been noted at least since Neolithic times. He defended the position that in the course of history peoples could move from language to language, while the physical type was much more stable. Thus, the belief in the unity of the “Aryan race”, which supposedly united all Indo-European peoples, turned out to be fundamentally erroneous. Like a number of other researchers, Tylor argued that the place of origin of the Aryan languages ​​could be the European plain, that is, the “Aryans” were an autochthonous population in Europe, and not at all aliens.

Following the French physical anthropologist Paul Broca, Tylor associated ethnic characteristics with physical type rather than with language, and in this understanding the basis of ethnology was physical anthropology, not linguistics. Accordingly, the original Aryans meant a certain racial group that, over time, shared its language with everyone it met along the way. It is noteworthy that the portrait of the primitive Aryans, painted by a variety of sources, was strikingly different from their perception by the romantics. They did not look like a “superior race” at all: they had no state, no monumental buildings, no science, no monotheism, no developed mythology (Tylor 1897).

Paul Broca. A classic of physical anthropology, who considered the Prussians to be “Finns” and went to various lengths to prove that their brains are smaller than the French.

At the same time, as T. Trotman notes, Tylor narrowed the meaning of the concept of “Aryan (white) race” to such an extent that it became suitable for politicization. After all, now we were talking about a small group of the “white population”, which successfully spread its language throughout the world and passed it on to other “weaker races”, replacing their own “less perfect” languages. Thus, the Aryan idea broke away from the idea of ​​the Indo-European community, but underwent racialization, preserving the image of the Kulturtraegers (Trautmann 1997: 186–187). In other words, language lost its role as the fundamental bond that determines the kinship of all Indo-Europeans, and turned into a formal, insignificant factor. But in this capacity it was replaced by blood kinship, and the (ethno) racial indicator came to the fore. Accordingly, physical anthropology took the place where linguistics had previously completely dominated. The consequence of this was the exclusion of Indians from the “Aryan race”, and India lost its attractiveness as a possible ancestral home of the “Aryans”. Since then, the eyes of those who were searching for such an ancestral home turned to Europe.

Now the direct identification of language with a physical type has been preserved only in pseudo-scientific, journalistic and fiction literature. But some tried to closely connect race with religion, and this was not alien to Tylor. In this context, where “Aryanism” was sometimes identified with Christianity, the theological dispute between Christianity and Judaism already took on a racial aspect (Polyakov 1996: 278–279). It is noteworthy that as Christian historiosophy lost its universality and became confined to clerical circles, its central idea of ​​​​the extraordinary vitality of the Jewish people continued to retain its persuasiveness for those who now appealed to science. This vitality and adaptability, fascinating some and frightening others, in any case required explanation. A number of naturalists pointed to innate vitality, others to the ability to keep one’s blood “pure” or, in general, to the power of Jewish blood, still others to the ability to acclimatize, and still others to cosmopolitanism. Regardless of these disputes, many believed that Jews were created differently from all other people. But if for some this meant the imminent end of Jewry, others, on the contrary, predicted extraordinary success for it. Some authors saw this as a danger to others. However, further progress of science made it possible to qualify all such views as atavisms of former superstitions (Polyakov 1996: 300–303).

No matter how much experts distance themselves from extremes, at the end of the 19th century. the idea of ​​racial inequality was considered to be based on “scientific facts.” Therefore, even without a strict connection with language, the “Aryan idea” continued to seduce a certain part of physical anthropologists who were passionate about craniology. In 1840, the Swede Anders Retzius introduced the concept of “cephalic index,” which allowed him to divide the European population into dolichocephalic and brachycephalic. In his opinion, the former were significantly superior to the latter in their abilities. “Advanced (Aryan) peoples” consisted of them, while brachycephalics were defined as “Turanians” and were associated with backwardness (Polyakov 1996: 282).

Despite the cautious objections of the founder of the German anthropological school, Rudolf Virchow, this idea was firmly entrenched in science for a long time. At the same time, a number of German scientists associated the “Aryans” with the northern Germans, who were characterized by dolichocephaly, while some French authors, on the contrary, identified the “Aryans” with brachycephalics, since the majority of the French belonged precisely to this group. Of course, each side argued that it was its ancestors who made Europe civilized (Polyakov 1996: 282–286). Participating in this debate about the historical and cultural role of brachycephalic and dolichocephalic, Tylor argued that the former showed more ability for civilization. Therefore, he made the original Aryans brachycephalic, contrasting the “noble race of Aryans” with the “disgusting savages” with their long heads. He denied the Teutons membership in the “children of the light” (Tylor 1897).

Some authors, like the French anthropologist Paul Topinard, sought a compromise solution. In his opinion, although the blond dolichocephalic people conquered the brunette brachycephalic people, they then merged into a single nation. J. Vache de Lapouge did not agree with this, linking the decline of the former greatness of France with the coming to power of the dolichocephalic Aryans. Following Gobineau, he mourned the decline of the “Aryan race,” for, in his opinion, the brachycephalic Turanians were only capable of obeying and readily sought new masters for themselves. He saw in history a “struggle of races” and predicted mass slaughter, which supposedly even small differences in the “head index” could cause. He found a way out in eugenic measures, because, in his opinion, only they could stop the racial war (Tagieff 2009: 117–119).

The Aryan myth reached its peak at the end of the 19th century. in Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899). Chamberlain was neither a historian nor a physical anthropologist. Everything in his life was confused: the son of a British admiral, he spent his childhood in France, and his entire adult life was spent in Germany, and he considered himself a “German”; preparing to become a botanist, he never defended his dissertation and preferred to engage in free writing. He was the son-in-law of Richard Wagner and was a member of the Gobineau Society and the New Wagner Society, distinguished by German chauvinism. He was favored by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was greatly impressed by his book.

Chamberlain was most interested in the question of race, but he did not have a clear scientific understanding of this phenomenon: “race” for him meant either a biological community, a state of mind, a historical and cultural category, or a religious group. He used the terms "Indo-Germans", "Indo-Europeans", "Aryans" and "Teutons" interchangeably. Moreover, he included the Germans, Celts and Slavs in the category of Teutons, believing, however, that the Germans preserved “Aryan blood” in its purest form. At the same time, he was convinced that “the shape of the head and the structure of the brain have a decisive influence on the form and structure of thinking” (quoted in Field 1981: 154–155, 191). At the same time, he attached much more importance to the state of mind than to language or physical features. And the process of development and the future interested him much more than the origin of races. For example, he wrote: “If it were proven that there was no Aryan race in the past, we will see it in the future; for people, deeds are a very important moment” (Field 1981: 220; Figueira 2002: 76). In other words, behind his racial rhetoric was a concern for the unity of the German nation and the desire to ensure its political supremacy in the world, and it was for this purpose that he lovingly built his grandiose racial myth.

Having set himself the goal of depicting thirty centuries of human history, Chamberlain managed to realize only a small part of his plan in his book. However, this was enough for him to show in 1200 pages the deep racial conflict between “Aryans” and “Semites”, which supposedly permeated all known human history. At the same time, although he turned to a wide variety of sources, his guiding light was the works of racial thinkers and anti-Semites, for, as J. Field notes, “his mind did not perceive non-racial constructs” (Field 1981: 173).

Chamberlain reduced all history to the development and decline of races: each cultural era was the creation of a dominant human type. At the same time, the “racial struggle” was depicted as the core of world history. Chamberlain extolled the Teutonic, or Aryan, race in every possible way, portraying it as the creator of all known civilizations. He called its enemy “racial chaos,” which regularly arose if people forgot about fundamental racial principles. Moreover, he showed the “Semites” as the main destroyers of order and civilization. Following Gobineau, he argued that mixing with “strangers,” that is, an admixture of “alien blood,” inevitably leads to “racial decline” and degradation. It is noteworthy that he saw such a mixed population, capable of serving only “anti-national” and “anti-racial” forces, in the southern Europeans, and this subsequently gave Mussolini reason to reject his book (Field 1981: 185).

Chamberlain portrayed the Jews as a mixed group, deriving their origins from three different “racial types”—the Bedouin Semites, the Hittites, and the Amorites or Canaanites. He painted the latter as Aryans who came from the north. The mixing of the first two types allegedly gave rise to Jews, and from the mixing of those with Aryans, “true Israelis” appeared, who were in many ways superior to Jews. But this mixture happened too late, and therefore the cultural rise of Ancient Israel was short-lived and ended in collapse. And after the captivity, the priests revised the Old Testament and distorted it, completely excluding from it the memories of the “Aryans,” but declaring the Jews the “chosen people.” Chamberlain admired the Jews' adherence to the principle of blood, but he was horrified by the desire to establish their power over the world, which he attributed to them, following many anti-Semites of that time. At the same time, it is not difficult to notice that Chamberlain’s ideas about Jews suffered from striking contradictions: on the one hand, he saw in them a “pure racial type,” and on the other, he considered them a product of a mixture of several different “types.” This plunged him into confusion, because they violated all the “laws of racial development” he had derived. Therefore, seeing in them a certain mystical force, he declared that they were corrupting the noble Nordic souls (Field 1981: 187–189). It is noteworthy that, in concluding his abstract discussion of the role of the Jews in history, he ended with the assertion that they benefit more than others from modern modernization, which falls heavily on the shoulders of the “Teutonic nation” (Field 1981: 190). Since then, this accusation has constantly accompanied all anti-Semitic speeches.

Chamberlain, of course, contrasted the Jews with the Teutons with their spirit of corporatism and hierarchy, idealism and the predominance of “ethics” over the spirit of political freedom. He opposed liberalism and painted the ideal of an elite society, which he sought to combine with “Teutonic industrialism.” He devoted the last chapter of his work to praising the achievements of the “Teutons” over the last millennium - it was primarily about philosophy, science and art. In the 19th century he saw a challenge to the Teutons from emancipated Jews and financial capitalism. He wrote about the high mission of the Germans, called upon to defeat socialism and plutocracy.

Chamberlain adhered to the version of the "Aryan nature" of Jesus Christ, and it was thanks to the success of his book that the version of the "Aryan Christ" gained public popularity. According to him, it was Christ who created “Aryan Christianity,” which thereby not only had nothing in common with Judaism, but was distorted by it (Field 1981: 182–183, 305–307). At the same time, when describing the differences between the “Aryan religion” and Judaism, Chamberlain relied on the Rig Veda, seeing in it a statement of the principles of monotheism, which were subsequently allegedly “stolen” by the Jews and completely distorted by them (Figueira 2002: 77–80). In 1921, Chamberlain even participated in the founding of the Union for the German Church (Field 1981: 412).

Although his book was in fact a compilation of earlier racial constructs, and also contained a lot of contradictions and unsubstantiated claims, it was enthusiastically received by the German public due to its expressed patriotism and boundless glorification of the German cultural tradition. The public also liked the idea of ​​“racial superiority,” which, when translated into practical terms, meant “nation unity” (Field 1981: 169–224, 233).

So by the end of the 19th century. Among European intellectuals, “scientific racism” finally prevailed, making full use of the idea of ​​evolution to divide humanity into “lower” and “superior races.” The latter, of course, were led by the “Aryans” as supposedly the most adapted to the new era. It is noteworthy that such ideas were based not only on the judgments of scientists, but also on esoteric teachings, the flourishing of which was then observed. At the same time, social optimists, led by Herbert Spencer, were opposed by pessimists (F. Golten, K. Pearson), who began to sound the alarm about “racial decline” and “degeneration,” which the high fertility of “lower races” could supposedly lead to. In Germany and Austria, the Slavs were classified as such, in England - the Irish. The idea of ​​deterioration of human qualities due to “racial mixing” also gained some popularity at that time. At the same time, the belief in the omnipotence of heredity reached its culmination in Germany. There, the concepts of “race” and “Aryanism” left academic classrooms and had a noticeable impact on public sentiment. Things got to the point that even some teachers (G. Alvardt) became concerned about the “struggle of the Aryans with the Jews.” For example, Wilhelm Schwaner then published an anti-Semitic magazine for teachers and played a prominent role in the German youth movement.

Thus, if at the pan-European level the Aryan myth justified the system of colonialism (for example, the British legitimized their right to own India with it), then at the level of individual states it served local nationalism, contrasting the indigenous inhabitants, the descendants of the “Aryans,” with the alien Other, under which in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century understood primarily as Jews (Figueira 2002: 49).

"Aryan Christianity"

The trends discussed above did not bypass the Christian religion. Although the rapid development of science in the 19th century. questioned many former Christian dogmas, Christian historiosophy continued to influence the minds of even those scientists who outwardly broke with Christianity in the name of what they considered scientific truth. Let me remind you that the traditional Christian view of history divided it into three eras, accordingly assessing the role of the Jews in it. Christian authors were grateful to the ancient Israelites, who, in their opinion, prepared the coming of Jesus Christ. However, as much as the role of the Israelis in the early period was portrayed as positive, they received a negative assessment in relation to the second period. After all, having rejected Christ, they became natural enemies of Christianity, supposedly interfering with its development in every possible way. If in the early period they looked like a creative people, the only bearer of divine truth, then, when this truth was transmitted to Christians, they became an annoying hindrance to the “new Israel,” as Christians now liked to call themselves. In the new world, there was no longer a place for Jewish Jews, and many Christians were surprised and suspicious of the people who continued to exist, despite the fact that by the Act itself it was destined to go into oblivion. The Fathers of the Church called the Jews “the children of Satan,” and from them Christians inherited the idea of ​​the treachery of the Jews, who were supposedly preparing the coming of the Antichrist and called upon to serve him in the era of general collapse and lawlessness, which should come on the eve of the Last Judgment. Then came the turn of the third era, when the righteous were destined to enjoy endless bliss in a world freed from evil forces and their minions. Needless to say that this scheme constantly fueled anti-Semitic sentiments among its adherents?

It is easy to see that all this was reflected in the opposition that many of the thinkers mentioned above lovingly built. In principle, it retained the same character, although the Christians, or “New Israel”, were replaced by “Aryans”. Moreover, the same ideas made themselves felt in new esoteric concepts that spoke of a regular change of eras and races. Here, the doctrine of the approaching end of the era of Pisces, fraught with general decline and global cataclysms, after which the world should supposedly see the arrival of a new race, has gained great popularity. Esotericists portrayed our era as a time of dominance of the “Aryan race,” while random remnants of former races (including the “Semites”) were doomed to leave the scene. In this paradigm, Jews (“Semites”), with their supposedly immanent commitment to particularism, also looked culturally sterile, devoid of creativity and without a future. But the future was associated with universal people, “Aryans”.

It is noteworthy that in this ideological climate, which demanded that Christianity be separated as much as possible from Judaism, the idea of ​​an “Aryan Jesus” gained some popularity. As early as 1858, the French revolutionary Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued that monotheism could not have been created by a “commercial race” (i.e. the Jews), but was the creation of an “Indo-Germanic mind” (Rose 1992: 65). Then in Switzerland A. Pictet endowed the Aryans with “primitive monotheism”, and in France E. Renan did everything to tear Jesus Christ away from his Jewish roots. “There was nothing Jewish about Jesus,” he wrote. It is noteworthy that Renan found less monotheism in Christianity than in Judaism or Islam. Thus Christianity naturally became an “Aryan religion.” Moreover, the more it moved away from Judaism, the more it improved. Therefore, Renan insisted on the need for further “Aryanization” of Christianity and its cleansing of “Semitic shortcomings.” Moreover, Renan once even suggested, following Adelung, that Eden was located in Kashmir. He also interpreted the natural differences between wooded Galilee, where Christianity was born, and desert Judea, where Judaism flourished, in favor of the opposition he depicted (Olender 1992: 69–72, 79).

Ernest Renan, who contributed to the birth of the "Aryan Christ"

Trying to draw a sharp line between the “religion of the Jews” and the “religion of the Aryans,” supporters of this approach were divided into two groups. Some believed that the Semitic nomads, distinguished by their dry mind and extreme rationalism, were doomed to monotheism, while the Aryans, who had creative imagination, were able to create a polytheistic religion for themselves. Others, on the contrary, argued that the “Jewish mind” was incapable of realizing the full depth of monotheism; but it was available to the Aryans. In any case, during the 19th century. In Europe, sentiments were brewing that demanded a complete break between Christianity and Judaism and the purification of Christianity from “Semitic inclusions.”

This went furthest in Germany, where there were attempts to create an “Aryan Christianity.” If Richard Wagner portrayed the legendary Siegfried as a “true Aryan,” then his successor, the racist writer Klaus Wagner, in his book “War” (1906) already spoke about “Jesus-Siegfried.” And if in the 19th century. Some German intellectuals, starting with Fichte (Davies 1975: 572–573), were concerned about the “Aryan origin” of Jesus Christ, then in the first half of the 20th century. their followers, following Chamberlain, were already thinking about how to cleanse the Old Testament of “Semitism.” This, of course, required the “abolition of Judaism,” which was heralded in the last quarter of the 19th century. Orientalist Paul de Lagarde spoke in his treatise “The Religion of the Future” (Davies 1975: 574). At the same time, dreaming of a “religion of the sun,” Ernst von Bunsen stated that Adam was supposedly an “Aryan”, and the seducing serpent was a “Semite” (Polyakov 1996: 330–332). In turn, the Belgian socialist Edmond Picard discovered the “Aryan essence” of Jesus Christ in that he was allegedly opposed to capitalism (Davies 1975: 575). And in France at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Many Catholic authors called Jesus an “Aryan,” a “Galilean,” or even a “Celt,” but not a Jew (Wilson 1982: 515). And finally, the pinnacle of European anti-Semitism in the 19th century, Chamberlain, tried to mobilize all possible sources in order to turn Jesus Christ into an “Aryan.” In doing so, he appealed to “spirit” rather than appearance and insisted that Jesus raised the “flag of idealism,” thereby challenging Judaism. He then declared the need to “de-Judaize” Christianity and set the task of creating a new Aryan Gospel. Following this plan, at the end of his life he proclaimed the Persians, and not the Jews, to be the source of Christianity (Polyakov 1996: 340–341; Davies 1975: 575–576; Field 1981: 193–195).

Such sentiments were promoted by sensational scientific discoveries in Mesopotamia, which allowed the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch to come up with the hypothesis in 1902 that many of the plots and ideas of Deuteronomy, including the main provisions of monotheism, were borrowed by the Israelites from the heritage of Babylonia. At the same time, he not only demonstrated the relevant facts, but emphasized the poverty and backwardness of the culture of the ancient Israelites. Moreover, if earlier A. Tylor believed that the Aryans borrowed many features of their ancient religion and mythology from the Semites, now Delitzsch, on the contrary, thought about the “Aryan nature” of Jesus Christ. Needless to say, all this added fuel to the fire of anti-Semitism? Thus, Chamberlain did not fail to include Delitzsch’s discoveries, of course, in his own interpretation, in the introduction to the fourth edition of his book (Field 1981: 255–257; Poliakov 1985: 26; Marchand 1996: 223–226). Then, even in St. Petersburg, some students demonstrated their anti-Semitic sentiments with reference to Delitzsch. This is what, for example, M. M. Grott did, proving the creative weakness of the Jews, who allegedly had to “plagiarize” (Grott 1915: 61–63).

In Germany, similar ideas, although devoid of an anti-Semitic touch, were popularized by A. Drews, who argued that, having fallen under the influence of Persian Mithraism in the Achaemenid era, the Israelis made serious adjustments to the basic ideas of Judaism. For example, the image of Yahweh changed, turning from a cruel and vengeful god into a kind, merciful and loving father. Allegedly, against this background, next to the harsh Pharisaic-rabbinic legalism, a “humane and living morality” appeared, going beyond the limits of narrow “Jewish nationalism” (Drevs 1923. T. 1: 8 – 13; 1930: 25–32, 37–39). Drews did not forget to mention that the ancient Israelites were allegedly no strangers to human sacrifice. However, according to him, even this they partially borrowed from the Persians (Drevs 1923. T. 1: 33–38). In other words, according to Drews, the basic concepts of Judaism were finally formed under the strong influence of Persian religion and Hellenic philosophy. At the same time, as he argued, the foundation of Christianity was laid by syncretic (“Gnostic”) teachings, widespread in Western Asia at the end of the 1st millennium BC. e. Among the sources of external influence, he even named Buddhism (Drevs 1923. T. 1: 55–62). But Drews associated the core of Christianity with the idea of ​​a self-sacrificing god, allegedly brought by the Aryans from the north. He even argued that from this point of view Jesus was an “Aryan” (Drews 1923. Vol. 1: 126). Thus, Judaism was presented as a “secondary religion,” and the direct genetic connection of Christianity with it was questioned. However, Drews was not consistent and in a later book he admitted that Christianity grew out of Judaism, although it developed a completely different idea of ​​​​God (Drews 1930: 366).

During these years, anti-Semites faced a dilemma - to accept or reject Christianity. In order for it to be acceptable to them, it had to be cleansed of any trace of Judaism. But while moderate racists accepted Christian ethics as “Aryan,” radicals saw in it a distinctly Jewish heritage. After all, the German heroic principle, as they saw it, was in no way compatible with it. Therefore, over time, the radicals abandoned Christianity and moved towards neo-paganism, a prime example of which was the German general Erich Ludendorff and his wife Matilda (Poewe 2006: 74). In Nazi Germany, German pagan folklore as a source of primordial moral norms was revered much higher than Christianity associated with Judaism, although Hitler’s own attitude towards such a “German idea” was distinguished by a certain cynicism. But Himmler dreamed of creating a “neo-German religion” that could replace Christianity (McCann 1990: 75–79). After all, many Nazis saw anti-Christianity as a deeper form of anti-Semitism (Poewe 2006: 7).

For their part, adherents of “German Christianity” supported the “revival” of the German people under National Socialism, argued that the church was fully consistent with the National Socialist idea, and showed their readiness to defend the Nazi state from pagan tendencies. They defended the idea of ​​​​the Aryan origin of Jesus, associated Christianity with “blood” and did their best to cleanse it of any remnants of Judaism. This, according to A. Davies, “narcissistic church” was fully consistent with the totalitarian nature of the Nazi state (Davies 1975: 577–578).

“Aryan Christianity” was one of the key ideas of A. Rosenberg’s concept, which turned it into an exclusive racial religion. Rosenberg insisted that the Jews, represented by the Apostle Paul, “perverted” the true essence of the teachings of Christ. He looked for the “Aryan” foundations of teaching in the Indian Upanishads, in Zoroastrianism and in the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart (Figueira 2002: 83–86). A supporter of “Aryan Christianity” was also a former patient of a psychiatric clinic, Karl Maria Wiligut, an esotericist and spiritual mentor of G. Himmler, who developed SS rituals and symbols. He called himself a descendant of the ancient German kings and argued that Christianity was born from the religion of the ancient Germans (“the Irminist religion of Christ”), among whom, long before the “Semites,” the original Bible was allegedly written. His concept also included the crucifixion of the ancient leader Baldur by “schismatic Wotanists” (Goodrick-Clark 1995: 199–201; Vasilchenko 2008: 437–454).

The German Faith Movement arose in Tübingen in 1929. Its adherents worshiped Hitler and believed that only through him could Jesus Christ be reached. One of the goals of this “German Christianity” was to unite the German nation, split along religious lines. However, under the Nazis, this movement came into conflict with the Confessional Church established by the authorities, which posed the same task, but gave preference to Protestants. After all, the German Faith Movement presented itself as a “third faith”, different from Protestants and Catholics and seeking to gather around itself religious groups not associated with Christianity - racist pagans and esotericists, that is, those who, even in the Weimar period, demonstrated their racist inclinations and wanted to cleanse Christianity of “Semitism” (Poewe 2006). The Nazi state, while declaring itself a supporter of “positive Christianity,” refrained from openly supporting any of the faiths, although it sympathized with Protestantism (Alles 2002: 180–181). Ultimately, the Nazi cult was based on the idea of ​​the Third Reich; he did not need any other gods (Poewe 2006: 148–149). Under these conditions, the German Faith Movement did not encounter any opposition, and it was through its efforts that the Aryan Institute was established in Tübingen (in December 1942), and the Museum for the Study of Religions in Marburg. Moreover, if before the Nazis came to power, Judaism also figured among the religions there, but already in the museum program of 1933 there was no place for it, unlike all other major religions of the world (Alles 2002: 184).

The founder and first leader of the German Faith Movement, former missionary Jacob Wilhelm Hauer, who was inclined to explain the differences between religions by racial factors, sharply contrasted “Indo-Germanic religiosity” with “Middle Eastern Semitic.” If the first allegedly gave man a place next to the gods, then the second painted him as a pitiful, wretched, sinful creature, which could only be saved by the mediation of third parties; the first contributed to the development of initiative, the second instilled fatalism; the first called for an active struggle for justice, the second doomed him to eternal submission to a despot god; the first was characterized by tolerance, and the second strived for dominance. The Indo-Germans needed not a savior, but a leader. Therefore, Hauer taught, in order to avoid getting into trouble, a person must act in accordance with his “racial character” (Alles 2002: 190; Poewe 2006). It is noteworthy that many Christians portray all this as the opposition of Christianity to Judaism, where Christianity has the same features as the “Indo-Germanic religion,” according to Hauer.

German Renaissance, which took place in the 19th century. and which began with a fascination with mythology and folklore, soon acquired social forms - collective gymnastics and athletics, hiking in the mountains with “German rituals” held there, choral singing, organization of annual festivals with the manifestation of German identity. The greatest enthusiasm for this was shown by the provincial intelligentsia and youth, who united in informal groups (“verein”). At this base in Austria in the last quarter of the 19th century. Political movements began to emerge that stood on the platform of pan-Germanism, which emphasized “community by blood.” His supporters were outraged by the actions of the authorities aimed at supporting Slavic cultures and languages. The Austrian Germans feared that their key positions in the political system and economy would be undermined. In 1897, things escalated into bloody clashes between crowds and police, which brought Austria to the brink of civil war (Goodrick-Clark 1995: 17–20, 94).

Under these conditions, the pan-Germanists saw their enemies not only as the Slavs, but also as the Catholic Church, which did not share their racial sympathies. Catholics were associated with Slavophilism and were viewed as traitors to the German idea. In turn, disillusionment with Catholicism created a favorable environment for the search for alternative beliefs. German intellectuals were fascinated by exotic Eastern religions, but to understand them they drew on the scientific ideas of their time. So they turned to Teutonic beliefs, which fit well into the then emerging “Nordic ideology”. Christianity, with its calls for egalitarianism and universal justice, did not in any way correspond to the spirit of the times, which yearned for a rigid order based on elitism and hierarchy (Goodrick-Clark 1995: 40–41). At the end of the 19th century. in Germany and Austria, honoring medieval heroes and organizing summer solstice holidays became increasingly popular; German history circles appeared everywhere, keen on the search for the Teutonic ancestors and their “national religion.”

P.S. . Therefore, you cannot play chess with the help of good intentions (evil ones too), and it is extremely important to “teach” the influence of any ideology, especially the left and progressive, initially based on a scientific approach (the right - on the sacred, bonds, tradition, etc. Blut und Boden). The more an ideology is based on objective knowledge, and the less - on emotions, even the noblest ones (the best feelings are especially toxic here - sympathy for the oppressed (“badly dressed people”), love for the motherland and humanity, thirst for freedom, etc. It is not by chance that they are called the most dangerous of virtues, but only in this situation of ignorance, with the replacement of one myth by another, not in general)), the lower the likelihood of making a mistake, betraying one’s own ideas and serving ideological opponents, like the last 60 years of left-wing Islamophiles in Europe from “anti-imperialism”.

Note

And anti-Semitism is baptized, like anti-communism of various kinds of Orwellian-Koestler, anti-Sovietism with Russophobia who dumped the former Soviet intellectuals (or homophobia of hidden gays, if you grew up in a conservative family) is an extremely contagious thing, because it is an example of a strong cognitive dissonance. It arises when a person, due to weakness of spirit, for reasons of profit, etc., renounces himself and joins not even “strangers,” but the “enemy,” who is always ready to use renunciation to trample on former “friends.” Hence, ordinary people have a strong need for (self) justification with corresponding emotions, to the point of screaming and spitting saliva - which is what we see in Orwells and Koestlers throughout their subsequent lives.

A genius can take a detached look, see the absurdity of a stereotype and free himself from it. For example, the connection between Jewry and “trading” asserted by the author of “Zur Judenfrage” was sharply inconsistent with his dearly beloved father: the first Jew to become a lawyer in the Rhineland, a progressive and unmercenary, a sympathizer of the Great French Revolution, who supported his son in his endeavors. Therefore, Marx no longer repeated his youthful nonsense, and in maturity was sharply opposed to what was common among German and English socialists identification of "Jew" with "capitalist", which made a significant contribution to the sharp rise of anti-Semitism in Western Europe from the 1880s. (see Bebel’s famous definition of anti-Semitism as “the socialism of fools”).

The ability of a myth to self-organize does not mean that it is formed and spreads spontaneously, since its spread is based not only on the properties of mass consciousness, but also on people’s natural interest. But the culture that emerged from the myth and is built on it is in no hurry to reveal this connection, relying on the irrational.

Science is a different matter. It has its own special, logically justified and generally negative attitude towards myths, although it is not completely alien to myth-making. Philosophy also still has a negative attitude towards myths and their influence on the scientific and social process, and judging by the most typical statements, it can be considered a priori decided. An example of this is the harsh assessment of myth as an “insidious”, “poisoned weapon”, a “social drug” leading “to the distortion of the normal perception of personal and public consciousness”, opposing science and playing a clearly negative role in society.

The relationship of science to myth is based on the requirement to return to common sense and live according to “scientifically verified theories”, because the world as a whole rests on reasonable foundations (the idea of ​​a rational worldview), and myth as a pre-scientific “primitive” form of consciousness is extra-scientific and should be “scientific” worldview" has been overcome. Thus, relying on evolutionism, reductionism and rationalism, science tried to limit the action of myth to the sphere of culture and hastened to declare itself a zone free from it.

As a result, for most people, myth has become synonymous with non-existence, non-existence, fiction, false fantasy, and science in most cases shares this point of view. And even in those few cases when the origins of myth are nevertheless derived from natural and practically unchangeable processes, immanently characteristic of both society in general and man in particular, the role of myth in society is still generally assessed negatively.

In them, the “lie of myth” is opposed to “scientific truth,” which is not only “pure” of it, but is also fundamentally incompatible with it. The only exceptions in this case are certain areas and branches of the social sciences placed at the service of the authorities. These sciences are subject to mythologization to the extent that they serve the authorities that are opposed to the masses and interested in deceiving them.

In other cases, science vigilantly stands guard at the threshold of truth, cognizing it and reserving for itself the exclusive right to determine the truth of certain hypotheses, theories and ideas. This generally accepted point of view points to a serious misconception in the “scientific” methods of studying mythology in general, and social mythology in particular. In fact, “in art and science... not only is myth-making possible, but it literally overwhelms them.” And this is explained not only by the inevitable limitations of science, but also by the need for its control over the volitional and mental processes, in its constant assessment and revaluation of the content of mass social and political orientations, which force science to actively intervene in the process of myth-making and constantly engage in it.

Being a sphere of human activity for the development and theoretical systematization of objective knowledge about reality, science has become a special productive force of society and its social institution. Structurally, it includes activities to obtain new knowledge (science-research) and the sum of scientific knowledge that together form a scientific picture of the world (science-worldview).

Based on the results of ongoing scientific research, philosophy performs in science the functions of a methodology of cognition and ideological interpretation of the facts supplied by science, appropriately explaining the world, its structure and development, forming the so-called. a scientific picture of the world, that is, that system of ideas that will correspond to the level of development of modern science, creating a holistic picture of ideas about the world, its general properties and patterns, resulting from the generalization and synthesis of basic natural science concepts and principles, built on the basis of a certain fundamental scientific theory . There is nothing special in creating such a picture if it were not for the identification of the scientific model with reality. According to the principle: the world is as we now imagine it.

The active involvement of science in myth-making, with its negative attitude towards myth in general, causes some bewilderment, which makes one think that it is beneficial for science not to admit its natural imperfections and persistently demonstrate scientific snobbery. But myth, as a phenomenon immanently inherent in man and society, does not initially carry a negative or positive charge. The person himself gives it such a charge. With your desires, thoughts, words and actions. There are no poisons or medicines, everything depends on the dose, said the great physician Paracelsus. And this applies to myth. The myth itself is not dangerous. It is a natural given, inherent in society and man, their psychology and way of perceiving the world. And it all depends on who set it in motion, for what purpose and on what soil it fell.

Despite the clear and obvious opposition between the world of science and the world of myths and symbols, Science, as a rule, not only does not fight myths, but actively participates in their emergence and formation. And she openly opposes only those myths that prevent her from developing herself and do not contribute to the affirmation of one or another of her ideas. Then words are heard about myths as archaic and prejudices that play a clearly negative role in society. In fact, modern science itself, in the apt expression of J. Orwell, often “fights on the side of prejudice", actively participating in the creation of their own myths, thus becoming both the object and subject of mythologization.

“Due to its specialization, science has turned into a place for the study of endless particulars, which allow it to be manipulated in the same way as social consciousness is manipulated,” H. Ortega y Gasset wrote on this occasion, immediately drawing a conclusion ruthless in its precision: ... Every science ", to the extent that it attempts to explore society or project its research onto society, is an object of manipulation." Let's add manipulations that deny, and often mutually exclude each other. And although for different scientists the same research problem will cause only minor nuances in its consideration, some shift of certain accents, projected onto everything else, they give such an amplitude of disagreements that it often becomes impossible to agree on something. Although they will talk about the same thing. And everyone will be right in their own way.

That is why we have to admit that science not only discovers and studies, but also hides, ignores, silences. She often turns a blind eye to what she does not understand, what violates the usual and threatens the dominance of the established, consciously avoiding those facts that contradict established and generally accepted scientific theories, adjusting the facts she has discovered to the generally accepted principle according to the principle: it was so because We don’t understand it any other way. But still, despite this, no matter what we talk about science, about its modern ideas, no matter how they are criticized and no matter how doubted they are, at the moment we generally have in it what can be considered the highest achievement modern scientific knowledge and human thought.

To what extent is science immune to myth? How susceptible is it to mythologization and what factors determine it? First of all, it should be noted that, using language, in a word, science already, by virtue of this, enters the zone of myth. Its result is information that is more or less perceived personally, more or less symbolized and, therefore, more or less mythologized. But maybe there is a science where personal perception is reduced to a minimum?

Denying mythology to be scientific, its opponents contrast it with “pure” exact science, science as research. Indeed, if there is a science free from myth, then we are talking primarily about such a science: “pure” science is free from ideological cliches and sensory layers, and “accurate” science deals only with numbers and experimentally verified, not subject to interpretation , facts. As for science as research, everything is somewhat different. After all, the zone of scientific research passes where knowledge borders on the unknown, where there is nothing definite and finally established, where thought, based on facts, operates only with hypotheses. But, being born in the “twilight” zone, on the border with the unknown, any hypothesis inevitably finds itself in the space of myth, and will not be subject to mythologization only to the extent that it is considered and evaluated precisely as a hypothesis. For a scientific hypothesis does not provide for conviction and a categorical statement, but for possibility and probability; not feeling, but detachment; not logic, but intuition.

Detachment from everything that makes a scientist a hostage to his own views.
On the other side, arising in conditions of a lack of information, a hypothesis is, to one degree or another, based on conjectures and conjectures. And then it turns out to be closest to myth, since it requires a special detachment (according to A.F. Losev - detachment) - symbolic, which fills the hypothesis with mythical meaning.

Unlike real science, in pure science the scientist would limit himself only to the derivation of the laws themselves, interpreting them only as hypotheses. And the development of such a science can be reduced to the replacement of some hypotheses that do not meet the level of the latest scientific discoveries, and therefore are outdated, with others that take into account the latest discoveries and, therefore, newer ones. In turn, the accumulation of new empirical data will ultimately lead to the fact that these hypotheses will sooner or later be significantly adjusted or completely replaced. And there is no tragedy in this. “For science to be science, only a hypothesis is needed and nothing more. The essence of pure science lies only in setting a hypothesis and replacing it with another, more perfect one, if there is a reason for it,” wrote A.F., analyzing this issue. Losev.

Elsewhere, developing his thought, he notes: “From a strictly scientific point of view, one can only say that now the circumstances, experimental and logical, are such that one has to accept such and such a hypothesis. You can’t vouch for anything else if you don’t want to fall into creed and in the deification of abstract concepts. And most importantly, nothing more than this is needed for science. Everything beyond this is your own tastes."

Of course, he was absolutely right, but we know that scientists who managed to make great discoveries in science, as a rule, did not limit themselves to considering them as hypotheses and tried to build on their basis their scientific theory, their model, extending its functioning to as large a region as possible. part of the world explored by science. Why they did this is understandable, but any attempts to go beyond scientific hypotheses are a movement along the path of mythologizing science. In this case, science as research moves into the sphere of worldview, into the area of ​​scientific ideology, the task of which is to defend a new picture of the world until other research and discoveries made as a result of them transform it or destroy it to the ground.

Thus, they invaded the zone of myth and created their own mythology. “All these endless physicists, chemists, mechanics and astronomers have completely theological ideas about their “forces”, “laws”, matter”, “electrons”, “gases”, “liquids”, “bodies”, “heat”, “electricity” etc. "- stated A.F. Losev. And then it becomes clear that "under those philosophical constructions that in the new philosophy were called upon to understand scientific experience, lies a very definite mythology." The only exception is abstract science; science as a system of logical and numerical patterns, that is, pure science.

One of the fading forms of mythical consciousness is belief in the omnipotence of science. Even at the dawn of the Enlightenment, having won its first victories, science considered that common sense had triumphed and, imagining itself omnipotent, declared a monopoly on the truth, which it could cognize logically. m. Acting as objective and reliable knowledge, maximally verified in form and systematized in content, science has tried to fulfill this task. But the reality reflected in the course of scientific knowledge required the compilation of a scientific picture of the world. And on the basis of science-research, a science-worldview has emerged, which rather plays the role of its ideology. Humanity needs a more or less plausible picture of the world. And science fulfills this order.

But to what extent is it fulfilled, to what extent does the scientific picture correspond to reality? Apparently, as much as we will consider it as such. At a certain stage in science there was an impression that such a picture had already been created. Based on this, science, as a worldview, began to increasingly influence the conduct of scientific research, determine its strategy, and decide what is considered scientific in it and what is not. In some countries, this influence became so strong that science could develop as research only where and to the extent where and when it came to the security of society and the state.

So the thought of O. Spengler is that " there are no eternal truths... The permanence of thoughts is an illusion. The point is what kind of person found his image in them", was consigned to oblivion. And then, in addition to the objective reasons prompting voluntary or involuntary mythologization, science received a real incentive to continue this process consciously and purposefully. But the knowledge initially given loses its meaning. Or it no longer has anything to do with science, although may be clothed in a "scientific" (scientific) shell. And then we read, but do not understand. We analyze, but do not think about it. We know, but do not understand.

The dialectics of the relationship between science and myth especially highlights the problem of the mythological nature of science, its involvement in the process of social myth formation. Analyzing the relationship and relationship between science and myth, A.F. Losev argued that “myth is not science or philosophy, and has nothing to do with them,” that science does not emerge from myth, and myth does not precede science. Without challenging his conclusions in principle, let us try to clarify them.

Firstly, although science is not born from myth and is not identical to it, in real life, understood personally, it does not exist without it and, therefore, is always mythological to one degree or another.

That's why under every direction in science, more or less empirically proven, logically justified(positivism, materialism, etc.) and personally meaningful, lies its own mythology, its own mythological system. And therefore, created by people in a certain historical era, real science acquires and is accompanied by its own mythology, feeding on it and drawing from it its initial intuitions. As for the fundamental differences between science and myth, they do not determine their fundamental incompatibility and incompatibility.

Of course, myth and science are not the same thing, but some of their interconnection and dependence is quite obvious. They are not identical, but compatible and intertwined. Their relationship is dialectically natural and inevitable, because their zone of functioning almost completely coincides. Especially in the field of social and social sciences. And this factor confirms not only their intertwining, but also their periodic interchangeability, when science begins to work for myth, and myths support certain statements of science. Such processes can be denied or condemned, but they cannot be destroyed. And therefore, the most effective way to cleanse science from its inherent myths is to avoid its absolutization, to move away from its categoricalness and rigid certainty, to consider it as a continuous dialectical process, where some hypotheses fight with others, without establishing themselves in science as something unshakable and final. But, unfortunately, real science is different. It not only suggests and proves, but also inspires and propagandizes. But science, used for propaganda purposes with the aim of absolutizing certain abstract principles and hypotheses, itself becomes a myth, because in this case the essential constructions derived from the “primary myth” of the doctrine are as mythological as the particulars accompanying it.

Analysis of the relationship between science and myth leads us to the need to consider the question of whether mythology can be a branch of science? To do this you need to find out:

1) can myth and mythology have properties traditionally considered a criterion and sign of science? One of the criteria for the scientific nature of a particular theory is the scientific opposition of “true” and “apparent”, “imaginable” and “real”, “essential” and “insignificant”. According to a number of myth researchers (E. Cassirer, R. Barth, S. Moscovici), myth represents significance and therefore cannot be considered from the point of view of truth. Such attempts by scientists to deny mythology some degree of truth and regularity A. F. Losev called “absurd”". And he had reasons for that. We don’t even take into account in this case the fact that the truth of myth and mythology as a sum of myths has a different character than the truth of mythology as the science of myths. After all, we are talking about truth in principle, and not about its specific form. So, in his opinion, on the one hand, myth does not contrast these categories “scientifically”, since it itself is immediate reality. But it is not correct to deny any possibility of such oppositions in myth. Myth can distinguish the true from the apparent, and the imagined from the real. But he does this not scientifically, but mythically. That is why, when contrasting science with myth, one cannot “bring it to such an absurdity that mythology has absolutely no truth or, at least, regularity.”

And indeed, in any religious and ideological struggle we see our mythical truth, our criteria of truth, our laws. An example of this is, say, the struggle of Christian mythology with pagan, Orthodox with Catholic, atheistic with religious. Each of the above mythologies contains a certain structure - a certain method of the emergence of various myths and mythical images, and is aligned from the point of view of a certain criterion (inherent to it), which is true for it. This criterion is unique to it, distinguishing this mythology from others, and is one of the main arguments in their constant struggle, which, within the framework of mythical consciousness, is possible only if the category of truth is understood and the differences between the real and the imaginary are identified. When one mythological system, fighting with another, considers and evaluates everything from the point of view of “truth”. But not scientific truth, but mythical truth.

How is one different from the other? At first glance, everything is simple here. Scientific truth is based on facts and evidence, while mythical truth is based on faith. The first allows doubt, and the second excludes it. But in reality everything is much more complicated. Why?

Firstly, any system of evidence comes from the ideas of true and false, real and apparent, real and imagined. And we have already seen that a social myth, despite all its external absurdity, is always logical and demonstrative for its bearers. And therefore each of his supporters can say: I believe because I know. And no matter what we think about this, no matter how his views are criticized, he will be completely convinced that he is right until the time comes to exchange one myth for another.

Secondly, the concept of “truth” comes from the possibility of possessing “genuine knowledge” that supports conclusions about the truth of a particular scientific theory. But such “genuine” knowledge is possible only when we consider knowledge not as a complex dialectical process, but as a certain given, as an absolutely indisputable fact; as something that can never be questioned or revised. And of course, there are such facts in science. Their indisputability may not be questioned, but, as a rule, it is not possible to build a cognitive process solely on them. And in new theoretical and associative combinations, they can acquire fluidity and relativity that is not characteristic of them, or they can become meaningless particulars. And then the myth suddenly leaves the zone assigned to it by science between “genuine knowledge” and “unrecognized error” to occupy the entire sphere of knowledge; a sphere where knowledge included in the process of cognition already carries within itself an element of error and ignorance, where myths can become the support of the dominant scientific theory, or prepare its future overthrow. Where myths move (as hypotheses) and support (as a worldview) real science, which is just a product of a certain historical development.

2) are myths capable of using a system of evidence or do they rely only and exclusively on faith? “Mythology has not been proven by anything, is not provable by anything and should not be proven by anything,” says A.F. Losev. And this happens, in his opinion, because science cannot destroy or refute a myth, since it is “scientifically” irrefutable. Thus, unable to destroy the myth, science is trying with all its might to drive it into the sphere of art, into the realm of poetry and unconscious intuitions; into a zone where facts, logical evidence and life experience mean nothing. And where myth is not content with this, where “the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is destroyed.”

That is why, according to A.F. Losev, myth is extra-scientific and cannot be based on “scientific” experience. But in our opinion this is not entirely true.

Firstly, myth may not require analysis of concepts, terminological clarity and thoughtfulness of language, conclusions brought into the system and proof of their provisions, but at the same time it is not worth simplifying. The peculiarity of a myth is the simplicity of its direct perception, when the most ordinary and scientifically unprepared person realizes, understands and accepts the myth immediately, directly and sensually. But at the same time, his perception begins with the simplest things, but is not exhausted by them. From the point of view of levels of perception and interpretation, myth is inexhaustible. Or we will exhaust it to the extent that the ideas about it of those people who perceive it are “exhaustible”, accepting it not only with their feelings, but also with their minds.

Secondly, in science itself, the provable is often built on the unprovable and self-evident (versions, hypotheses, opinions), and this or that myth is regularly “scientifically” refuted. Another thing is that these denials in no way weaken him. More precisely, the myth will be absolutely invulnerable for them as long as it is desirable for the masses. But as soon as the masses become disillusioned with him, all the previously presented evidence will become convincing and irrefutable for them.

Third, examples of modern social and political myths show the opposite. Thus, modern social and political myth is perceived not only extra-scientifically and intuitively, it is based on the social and political “experience” of states, classes, peoples and can be fully proven.

Evidence of this is the social and political myths about the leadership and guiding role of the CPSU, about the advantages of socialism and its victory in the USSR; teachings about communism, progress and universal equality; slogans in the spirit of US messianism, the doctrines of Nazism and the Cold War. These myths were not simply based on feelings, but were proven by many examples, statistical data, scientific provisions and calculations.

This situation, unfortunately, depends not only on the authorities, but also on society, which wants to “know the answers to the main problems of our time,” and after the overthrow of the church that played this role, science inevitably had to replace it to one degree or another. Based on this, it is clear that all social and political mythology, any ideology, every political doctrine, although designed for feelings, is always built on a certain kind of evidence. We can believe them or doubt them, prove them or refute them, understand that they focus not on logic, but on conviction, not on reason, but on the subconscious, but for those for whom they are designed, they will be indisputable evidence of their obvious historical and scientific correctness.

Fourth, denying the scientific nature of myth and mythology as a science, A.F. Losev himself created his own scientific theory of myth, his own mythology, logically verified, evidence-based and scientifically convincing.

3) can mythology go beyond myths? Is it capable of abstracting from them or should it be considered only as a certain sum of myths, a mythological worldview limited by the boundaries of its own mythological system? The famous expert on comparative mythology J. Campbell argued that “as a science or history, mythology is absurd.” According to A.F. Losev, mythology is not a science, but a “vital attitude towards the environment.” “Myth is not scientific in any way and does not strive for science, it ... is extra-scientific,” because it is “absolutely spontaneous and naive” [Ibid.]. It is visible, tangible, but concerns the external, sensory, private, figurative and real.

Such conclusions of A.F. Losev are in no way compatible with his other conclusions, where he claims exactly the opposite, because to reduce a myth to something “absolutely” naive, superficial, immediate means not to understand it at all. Any most spiritual, most profound mythology operates with outwardly simple sensual images, which does not negate their symbolically filled significance, the endless symbolic interpretation of their deep meaning, symbolically outlined for us. We can consider myths in themselves, as the concrete, figurative content of the worldview and worldview, and then they are concrete, immediate, sensual. And we can - as the basis of a worldview, which has its own code, its own language, its own structure, its own way of perception and understanding, as a form and way of seeing the world, where the degree of development and fullness of consciousness determines the level of depth and richness of perception.

And thus, the myth is simple and complex at the same time, superficially naive and spontaneous and at the same time symbolically inexhaustible and universal. He makes the simple complex, the ordinary extraordinary and mysterious. It turns every functionally specific thing, every person, every phenomenon into an inexhaustible microcosm, constantly appearing and hidden, appearing in everything, obvious and incomprehensible, breaking the usual connections and connecting the incompatible. It allows us to produce symbolic interpretations of everything that is significant for a person, endowing it with the symbolic meaning that it never had outside of our perception, outside of our sensations and feelings.

But in this case that is not the case. And if myth is “extra-scientific,” is all mythology doomed to be extra-scientific? In our opinion, as a collection of myths, mythology retains their characteristic features, and therefore cannot be science. But as a section that sees myths as an object of study, studying myths, their properties, the peculiarities of their emergence and functioning, the degree of their impact on people, mythology is a science and in this form will always be a science.

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