Historical race concepts have varied across cultures and over time, and have been controversial for social, political and scientific reasons. Until the 19th century, race was thought by many to constitute an immutable and distinct type or species which shared particular racial characteristics, such as body constitution, temperament and mental capacities.
One concept, that of Christian Europe, conceived of the races as constituting a hierarchical chain of life known as the Great Chain of Being, which was believed to have been created by God, in which the people thought the Christian European races were closest to God in perfection.
Read more about Historical Race Concepts: Etymology, Earliest Views On Ethnic Differences, Medieval Theories, Early Modern Period, Age of Enlightenment, Racial Anthropology (1850-1930), Decline of Racial Studies After 1930
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“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
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—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.”
—William James (1842–1910)