The inequality of human races

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Title: The inequality of human races
Author: Gobineau, Arthur de
Language: English
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RACES ***

THE INEQUALITY
OF HUMAN RACES

THE RENAISSANCE

By ARTHUR, COUNT GOBINEAU.

With an Introductory Essay on Count
Gobineau’s Life-Work by Dr. Oscar Levy.
One Vol., Demy 8vo, Illustrated 10s net

THE YOUNG NIETZSCHE

By FRAU FÖRSTER NIETZSCHE.
One Volume, Demy 8vo, Price 15s net

THE LONELY NIETZSCHE

By FRAU FÖRSTER NIETZSCHE.
One Volume, Royal 8vo, Price 15s net

NIETZSCHE

By GEORGE BRANDES
One Volume, Demy 8vo, 6s net

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

THE INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES

BY ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

TRANSLATED BY ADRIAN COLLINS, M.A.

INTRODUCTION BY DR. OSCAR LEVY, EDITOR OF THE AUTHORISED ENGLISH VERSION
OF NIETZSCHE’S WORKS

[Illustration]

WILLIAM HEINEMANN
LONDON MCMXV

_London William Heinemann 1915_

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

FROM THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION xi

AUTHOR’S PREFACE xv

I. THE MORTAL DISEASE OF CIVILIZATIONS AND SOCIETIES PROCEEDS
FROM GENERAL CAUSES COMMON TO THEM ALL 1

II. FANATICISM, LUXURY, CORRUPTION OF MORALS, AND IRRELIGION DO
NOT NECESSARILY LEAD TO THE FALL OF SOCIETIES 7

III. THE RELATIVE MERIT OF GOVERNMENTS HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE
LENGTH OF A NATION’S LIFE 19

IV. THE MEANING OF THE WORD “DEGENERATION”; THE MIXTURE OF
RACIAL ELEMENTS; HOW SOCIETIES ARE FORMED AND BROKEN UP 23

V. RACIAL INEQUALITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF INSTITUTIONS 36

VI. NATIONS, WHETHER PROGRESSING OR STAGNATING ARE INDEPENDENT
OF THE REGIONS IN WHICH THEY LIVE 54

VII. CHRISTIANITY NEITHER CREATES NOR CHANGES THE CAPACITY FOR
CIVILIZATION 63

VIII. DEFINITION OF THE WORD “CIVILIZATION”; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
HAS A TWOFOLD ORIGIN 77

IX. DEFINITION OF THE WORD “CIVILIZATION” (_continued_);
DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS OF CIVILIZED SOCIETIES; OUR
CIVILIZATION IS NOT SUPERIOR TO THOSE WHICH HAVE GONE
BEFORE 89

X. SOME ANTHROPOLOGISTS REGARD MAN AS HAVING A MULTIPLE ORIGIN 106

XI. RACIAL DIFFERENCES ARE PERMANENT 117

XII. HOW THE RACES WERE PHYSIOLOGICALLY SEPARATED, AND THE
DIFFERENT VARIETIES FORMED BY THEIR INTER-MIXTURE. THEY
ARE UNEQUAL IN STRENGTH AND BEAUTY 141

XIII. THE HUMAN RACES ARE INTELLECTUALLY UNEQUAL; MANKIND IS NOT
CAPABLE OF INFINITE PROGRESS 154

XIV. PROOF OF THE INTELLECTUAL INEQUALITY OF RACES (_continued_).
DIFFERENT CIVILIZATIONS ARE MUTUALLY REPULSIVE; HYBRID
RACES HAVE EQUALLY HYBRID CIVILIZATIONS 168

XV. THE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES ARE UNEQUAL, AND CORRESPOND
PERFECTLY IN RELATIVE MERIT TO THE RACES THAT USE THEM 182

XVI. RECAPITULATION; THE RESPECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE
GREAT RACES; THE SUPERIORITY OF THE WHITE TYPE, AND,
WITHIN THIS TYPE, OF THE ARYAN FAMILY 205

INTRODUCTION TO GOBINEAU’S “INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES”

Though many people have accused this age of irreligion, there is at
least one point of similarity between modern Europe and that
pre-Christian Era to which our present religion is due. Just as in
ancient Palestine, there are living amongst us two kinds of prophets—the
prophets of evil and disaster, and those of bliss, or, as Europe likes
to call it, of “progress.” As in Palestine of old the public usually
sides with the lighter, the optimistic, the more comfortable sort of
people, with the prophets of bliss, while Time and Fate invariably
decide in favour of the sterner and gloomier individuals, the prophets
of evil. In the world to-day as well as in Palestine of old, the
prophets of bliss are the false prophets; the prophets of evil, to-day
as of yore, are the true ones. Such a true prophet was Count Arthur de
Gobineau.

Even his friends—those few friends whom he gained at the end of his
life—still thought him unduly pessimistic. Old Wagner, who introduced
him to the German public, thought of brightening his gloom by a little
Christian faith, hope, and charity, in order to make the pill more
palatable to that great public, which he, the great Stage-manager, knew
so well. Other Germans—Chamberlain, Schemann, and the Gobineau
school—poured a great deal of water into his wine, sweetened it with
patriotic syrups, adulterated it with their own pleasant inventions,
which were all too readily swallowed by a gullible and credulous
generation. But stern old Gobineau knew the world better than his young
and cheerful offspring. He had seen through all that boisterous gaiety
of the age, all its breathless labour, all its technical advancement,
all its materialistic progress, and had diagnosed, behind it that muddle
of moral values which our forefathers have bequeathed to us and which in
our generation has only become a greater muddle still. The catastrophe
which Gobineau had prophesied to an Aristocracy which had forgotten its
tradition, to a Democracy which had no root in reality, to a
Christianity which he thought entirely inefficient, is now upon us.

Under the stress of the present misfortunes, we frequently hear that all
our previous opinions need revision, that we have to forget many things
and to learn afresh still more, that we must try to build up our
civilization on a safer basis, that we must reconsider and reconstruct
the values received from former ages. It is therefore our duty, I think,
to turn back to those prophets who accused our forefathers of being on
the road to destruction, all the more so as these prophets were likewise
true poets who tried as such to point out the right road, endeavouring
to remedy, as far as their insight went, the evil of their time. This is
the best, and I trust a perfectly satisfactory, reason for the
translation of “The Inequality of Human Races.”

This book, written as early as 1853, is no doubt a youthful and somewhat
bewildering performance, but it gives us the basis of Gobineau’s creed,
his belief in Race and Aristocracy as the first condition of
civilization, his disbelief in the influence of environment, his
distrust in the efficacy of religion and morality. The latter kind of
scepticism brings him into relationship with Nietzsche, who has even
accentuated Count Gobineau’s suspicions and who has branded our morality
as Slave-Morality, and consequently as harmful to good government. What
a Europe without Masters, but with plenty of Half-masters and Slaves,
was driving at, Gobineau foresaw as well as Nietzsche.

I sincerely hope that no intelligent reader will overlook this sceptical
attitude of Gobineau towards religion, because that is a point of great
importance at the present time, when our faith will certainly thrive
again on a misfortune, which, by the propagation of slave-values, it
indirectly has caused. It is this scepticism against the Church and its
Semitic values, which separates a Gobineau from Disraeli, to whom
otherwise—in his rejection of Buckle, Darwin, and their science, in his
praise of Race and Aristocracy, and in his prophecy of evil—he is so
nearly related. Disraeli still believed in a Church based upon a revival
of the old principles, Gobineau, like Nietzsche, had no hope whatever in
this respect. It is the great merit of both Nietzsche and Gobineau, that
they were not, like Disraeli, trying to revive a corpse, but that they
frankly acknowledged, the one that the corpse was dead, the other that
it was positively poisoning the air. The occasional bows which Gobineau
makes to the Church cannot, I repeat, mislead any serious critics of his
work, especially if they likewise consult his later books, about which,
by the way, I have spoken at greater length elsewhere.[1] Both Spinoza
and Montaigne had the same laudable habit, and they did not mean it
either. For the first business of a great freethinker is not to be
mistaken for a little one; his greatest misfortune is to be “understood”
by the wrong class of people, and thus an occasional bow to the old and
venerable Power—apart from the safety which it procures—protects him
from an offensive handshake with enthusiastic and unbalanced disciples
and apostles.

OSCAR LEVY

GENEVA, _July 1915_

FROM THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION (1854)[2]
TO HIS MAJESTY GEORGE V, KING OF HANOVER

The great events—the bloody wars, the revolutions, and the breaking up
of laws—which have been rife for so many years in the States of Europe,
are apt to turn men’s minds to the study of political problems. While
the vulgar consider merely immediate results, and heap all their praise
and blame on the little electric spark that marks the contact with their
own interests, the more serious thinker will seek to discover the hidden
causes of these terrible upheavals. He will descend, lamp in hand, by
the obscure paths of philosophy and history; and in the analysis of the
human heart or the careful search among the annals of the past he will
try to gain the master-key to the enigma which has so long baffled the
imagination of man.

Like every one else, I have felt all the prickings of curiosity to which
our restless modern world gives rise. But when I tried to study, as
completely as I could, the forces underlying this world, I found the
horizon of my inquiry growing wider and wider. I had to push further and
further into the past, and, forced by analogy almost in spite of myself,
to lift my eyes further and further into the future. It seemed that I
should aspire to know not merely the immediate causes of the plagues
that are supposed to chasten us, but also to trace the more remote
reasons for those social evils which the most meagre knowledge of
history will show to have prevailed, in exactly the same form, among all
the nations that ever lived, as well as those which survive to-day—evils
that in all likelihood will exist among nations yet unborn.

Further, the present age, I thought, offered peculiar facilities for
such an inquiry. While its very restlessness urges us on to a kind of
historical chemistry, it also makes our labours easier. The thick mists,
the profound darkness that from time immemorial veiled the beginnings of
civilizations different from our own, now lift and dissolve under the
sun of science. An analytic method of marvellous delicacy has made a
Rome, unknown to Livy, rise before us under the hands of Niebuhr, and
has unravelled for us the truths that lay hid among the legendary tales
of early Greece. In another quarter of the world, the Germanic peoples,
so long misunderstood, appear to us now as great and majestic as they
were thought barbarous by the writers of the Later Empire. Egypt opens
its subterranean tombs, translates its hieroglyphs, and reveals the age
of its pyramids. Assyria lays bare its palaces with their endless
inscriptions, which had till yesterday been buried beneath their own
ruins. The Iran of Zoroaster has held no secrets from the searching eyes
of Burnouf, and the Vedas of early India take us back to events not far
from the dawn of creation. From all these conquests together, so
important in themselves, we gain a larger and truer understanding of
Homer, Herodotus, and especially of the first chapters of the Bible,
that deep well of truth, whose riches we can only begin to appreciate
when we go down into it with a fully enlightened mind.

These sudden and unexpected discoveries are naturally not always beyond
the reach of criticism. They are far from giving us complete lists of
dynasties, or an unbroken sequence of reigns and events. In spite,
however, of the fragmentary nature of their results, many of them are
admirable for my present purpose, and far more fruitful than the most
accurate chronological tables would be. I welcome, most of all, the
revelation of manners and customs, of the very portraits and costumes,
of vanished peoples. We know the condition of their art. Their whole
life, public and private, physical and moral, is unrolled before us, and
it becomes possible to reconstruct, with the aid of the most authentic
materials, that which constitutes the personality of races and mainly
determines their value.

With such a treasury of knowledge, new or newly understood, to draw
upon, no one can claim any longer to explain the complicated play of
social forces, the causes of the rise and decay of nations, in the light
of the purely abstract and hypothetical arguments supplied by a
sceptical philosophy. Since we have now an abundance of positive facts
crowding upon us from all sides, rising from every sepulchre, and lying
ready to every seeker’s hand, we may no longer, like the theorists of
the Revolution, form a collection of imaginary beings out of clouds, and
amuse ourselves by moving these chimeras about like marionettes, in a
political environment manufactured to suit them. The reality is now too
pressing, too well known; and it forbids games like these, which are
always unseasonable, and sometimes impious. There is only one tribunal
competent to decide rationally upon the general characteristics of man,
and that is history—a severe judge, I confess, and one to whom we may
well fear to appeal in an age so wretched as our own.

Not that the past is itself without stain. It includes everything, and
so may well have many faults, and more than one shameful dereliction of
duty, to confess. The men of to-day might even be justified in
flourishing in its face some new merits of their own. But suppose, as an
answer to their charges, that the past suddenly called up the gigantic
shades of the heroic ages, what would they say then? If it reproached
them with having compromised the names of religious faith, political
honour, and moral duty, what would they answer? If it told them that
they are no longer fit for anything but to work out the knowledge of
which the principles had already been recognized and laid down by
itself; that the virtue of the ancients has become a laughing-stock,
that energy has passed from man to steam, that the light of poetry is
out, that its great prophets are no more, and that what men call their
interests are confined to the most pitiful tasks of daily life;—how
could they defend themselves?

They could merely reply that not every beautiful thing is dead which has
been swallowed up in silence; it may be only sleeping. All ages, they
might say, have beheld periods of transition, when life grapples with
suffering and in the end arises victorious and splendid. Just as Chaldæa
in its dotage was succeeded by the young and vigorous Persia, tottering
Greece by virile Rome, and the degenerate rule of Augustulus by the
kingdoms of the noble Teutonic princes, so the races of modern times
will regain their lost youth.

This was a hope I myself cherished for a brief moment, and I should like
to have at once flung back in the teeth of History its accusations and
gloomy forebodings, had I not been suddenly struck with the devastating
thought, that in my hurry I was putting forward something that was
absolutely without proof. I began to look about for proofs, and so, in
my sympathy for the living, was more and more driven to plumb to their
depths the secrets of the dead.

Then, passing from one induction to another, I was gradually penetrated
by the conviction that the racial question overshadows all other
problems of history, that it holds the key to them all, and that the
inequality of the races from whose fusion a people is formed is enough
to explain the whole course of its destiny. Every one must have had some
inkling of this colossal truth, for every one must have seen how certain
agglomerations of men have descended on some country, and utterly
transformed its way of life; how they have shown themselves able to
strike out a new vein of activity where, before their coming, all had
been sunk in torpor. Thus, to take an example, a new era of power was
opened for Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxon invasion, thanks to a decree
of Providence, which by sending to this island some of the peoples
governed by the sword of your Majesty’s illustrious ancestors, was to
bring two branches of the same nation under the sceptre of a single
house—a house that can trace its glorious title to the dim sources of
the heroic nation itself.

Recognizing that both strong and weak races exist, I preferred to
examine the former, to analyse their qualities, and especially to follow
them back to their origins. By this method I convinced myself at last
that everything great, noble, and fruitful in the works of man on this
earth, in science, art, and civilization, derives from a single
starting-point, is the development of a single germ and the result of a
single thought; it belongs to one family alone, the different branches
of which have reigned in all the civilized countries of the universe.

THE INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES

CHAPTER I
THE MORTAL DISEASE OF CIVILIZATIONS AND SOCIETIES PROCEEDS FROM GENERAL
CAUSES COMMON TO THEM ALL

The fall of civilizations is the most striking, and, at the same time,
the most obscure, of all the phenomena of history. It is a calamity that
strikes fear into the soul, and yet has always something so mysterious
and so vast in reserve, that the thinker is never weary of looking at
it, of studying it, of groping for its secrets. No doubt the birth and
growth of peoples offer a very remarkable subject for the observer; the
successive development of societies, their gains, their conquests, their
triumphs, have something that vividly takes the imagination and holds it
captive. But all these events, however great one may think them, seem to
be easy of explanation; one accepts them as the mere outcome of the
intellectual gifts of man. Once we recognize these gifts, we are not
astonished at their results; they explain, by the bare fact of their
existence, the great stream of being whose source they are. So, on this
score, there need be no difficulty or hesitation. But when we see that
after a time of strength and glory all human societies come to their
decline and fall—all, I say, not this or that; when we see in what awful
silence the earth shows us, scattered on its surface, the wrecks of the
civilizations that have preceded our own—not merely the famous
civilizations, but also many others, of which we know nothing but the
names, and some, that lie as skeletons of stone in deep world-old
forests, and have not left us even this shadow of a memory; when the
mind returns to our modern States, reflects on their extreme youth, and
confesses that they are a growth of yesterday, and that some of them are
already toppling to their fall: then at last we recognize, not without a
certain philosophic shudder, that the words of the prophets on the
instability of mortal things apply with the same rigour to civilizations
as to peoples, to peoples as to States, to States as to individuals; and
we are forced to affirm that every assemblage of men, however ingenious
the network of social relations that protects it, acquires on the very
day of its birth, hidden among the elements of its life, the seed of an
inevitable death.

But what is this seed, this principle of death? Is it uniform, as its
results are, and do all civilizations perish from the same cause?

At first sight we are tempted to answer in the negative; for we have
seen the fall of many empires, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, amid the
clash of events that had no likeness one to the other. Yet, if we pierce
below the surface, we soon find that this very necessity of coming to an
end, that weighs imperiously on all societies without exception,
presupposes such a general cause, which, though hidden, cannot be
explained away. When we start from this fixed principle of natural
death—a principle unaffected by all the cases of violent death,—we see
that all civilizations, after they have lasted some time, betray to the
observer some little symptoms of uneasiness, which are difficult to
define, but not less difficult to deny; these are of a like nature in
all times and all places. We may admit one obvious point of difference
between the fall of States and that of civilizations, when we see the
same kind of culture sometimes persisting in a country under foreign
rule and weathering every storm of calamity, at other times being
destroyed or changed by the slightest breath of a contrary wind; but we
are, in the end, more and more driven to the idea that the principle of
death which can be seen at the base of all societies is not only
inherent in their life, but also uniform and the same for all.

To the elucidation of this great fact I have devoted the studies of
which I here give the results.

We moderns are the first to have recognized that every assemblage of
men, together with the kind of culture it produces, is doomed to perish.
Former ages did not believe this. Among the early Asiatics, the
religious consciousness, moved by the spectacle of great political
catastrophes, as if by some apparition from another world, attributed
them to the anger of heaven smiting a nation for its sins; they were, it
was thought, a chastisement meet to bring to repentance the criminals
yet unpunished. The Jews, misinterpreting the meaning of the Covenant,
supposed that their Empire would never come to an end. Rome, at the very
moment when she was nearing the precipice, did not doubt that her own
empire was eternal.[3] But the knowledge of later generations has
increased with experience; and just as no one doubts of the mortal state
of humanity, because all the men who preceded us are dead, so we firmly
believe that the days of peoples are numbered, however great the number
may be; for all those who held dominion before us have now fallen out of
the race. The wisdom of the ancients yields little that throws light on
our subject, except one fundamental axiom, the recognition of the finger
of God in the conduct of this world; to this firm and ultimate principle
we must adhere, accepting it in the full sense in which it is understood
by the Catholic Church. It is certain that no civilization falls to the
ground unless God wills it; and when we apply to the mortal state of all
societies the sacred formula used by the ancient priesthoods to explain
some striking catastrophes, which they wrongly considered as isolated
facts, we are asserting a truth of the first importance, which should
govern the search for all the truths of this world. Add, if you will,
that all societies perish because they are sinful—and I will agree with
you; this merely sets up a true parallel to the case of individuals,
finding in sin the germ of destruction. In this regard, there is no
objection to saying that human societies share the fate of their
members; they contract the stain from them, and come to a like end. This
is to reason merely by the light of nature. But when we have once
admitted and pondered these two truths, we shall find no further help, I
repeat, in the wisdom of the ancients.

That wisdom tells us nothing definite as to the ways in which the Divine
will moves in order to compass the death of peoples; it is, on the
contrary, driven to consider these ways as essentially mysterious. It is
seized with a pious terror at the sight of ruins, and admits too easily
that the fallen peoples could not have been thus shaken, struck down,
and hurled into the gulf, except by the aid of miracles. I can readily
believe that certain events have had a miraculous element, so far as
this is stated by Scripture; but where, as is usually the case, the
formal testimony of Scripture is wanting, we may legitimately hold the
ancient opinion to be incomplete and unenlightened. We may, in fact,
take the opposite view, and recognize that the heavy hand of God is laid
without ceasing on our societies, as the effect of a decision pronounced
before the rise of the first people; and that the blow falls according
to rule and foreknowledge, by virtue of fixed edicts, inscribed in the
code of the universe by the side of other laws which, in their rigid
severity, govern organic and inorganic nature alike.

We may justly reproach the philosophy of the early sacred writers with a
lack of experience; and so, we may say, they explain a mystery merely by
enunciating a theological truth which, however certain, is itself
another mystery. They have not pushed their inquiries so far as to
observe the facts of the natural world. But at least one cannot accuse
them of misunderstanding the greatness of the problem and scratching for
solutions at the surface of the ground. In fact, they have been content
to state the question in lofty language; and if they have not solved it,
or even thrown light upon it, at least they have not made it a breeder
of errors. This puts them far above the rationalistic schools and all
their works.

The great minds of Athens and Rome formulated the theory, accepted by
later ages, that States, civilizations, and peoples, are destroyed only
by luxury, effeminacy, misgovernment, fanaticism, and the corruption of
morals. These causes, taken singly or together, were declared to be
responsible for the fall of human societies; the natural corollary being
that in the absence of these causes there can be no solvent whatever.
The final conclusion is that societies, more fortunate than men, die
only a violent death; and if a nation can be imagined as escaping the
destructive forces I have mentioned, there is no reason why it should
not last as long as the earth itself. When the ancients invented this
theory, they did not see where it was leading them; they regarded it
merely as a buttress for their ethical notions, to establish which was,
as we know, the sole aim of their historical method. In their narrative
of events, they were so taken up with the idea of bringing out the
admirable influence of virtue, and the deplorable effects of vice and
crime, that anything which marred the harmony of this excellent moral
picture had little interest for them, and so was generally forgotten or
set aside. This method was not only false and petty, but also had very
often a different result from that intended by its authors; for it
applied the terms “virtue” and “vice” in an arbitrary way, as the needs
of the moment dictated. Yet, to a certain extent, the theory is excused
by the stern and noble sentiment that lay at the base of it; and if the
genius of Plutarch and Tacitus has built mere romances and libels on
this foundation, at any rate the libels are generous, and the romances
sublime.

I wish I could show myself as indulgent to the use that the authors of
the eighteenth century have made of the theory. But there is too great a
difference between their masters and themselves. The former had even a
quixotic devotion to the maintenance of the social order; the latter
were eager for novelty and furiously bent on destruction. The ancients
made their false ideas bear a noble progeny; the moderns have produced
only monstrous abortions. Their theory has furnished them with arms
against all principles of government, which they have reproached in turn
with tyranny, fanaticism, and corruption. The Voltairean way of
“preventing the ruin of society” is to destroy religion, law, industry,
and commerce, under the pretext that religion is another name for
fanaticism, law for despotism, industry and commerce for luxury and
corruption. Where so many errors reign, I certainly agree that we have
“bad government.”

I have not the least desire to write a polemic; my object is merely to
show how an idea common to Thucydides and the Abbé Raynal can produce
quite opposite results. It makes for conservatism in the one, for an
anarchic cynicism in the other—and is an error in both. The causes
usually given for the fall of nations are not necessarily the real
causes; and though I willingly admit that they may come to the surface
in the death-agony of a people, I deny that they have enough power,
enough destructive energy, to draw on, by themselves, the irremediable
catastrophe.

CHAPTER II
FANATICISM, LUXURY, CORRUPTION OF MORALS, AND IRRELIGION DO NOT
NECESSARILY LEAD TO THE FALL OF SOCIETIES

I must first explain what I understand by a “society.” I do not mean the
more or less extended sphere within which, in some form or other, a
distinct sovereignty is exercised. The Athenian democracy is not a
“society” in our sense, any more than the Kingdom of Magadha, the empire
of Pontus, or the Caliphate of Egypt in the time of the Fatimites. They
are fragments of societies, which, no doubt, change, coalesce, or break
up according to the natural laws that I am investigating; but their
existence or death does not imply the existence or death of a society.
Their formation is usually a mere transitory phenomenon, having but a
limited or indirect influence on the civilization in which they arise.
What I mean by a “society” is an assemblage of men moved by similar
ideas and the same instincts; their political unity may be more or less
imperfect, but their social unity must be complete. Thus Egypt, Assyria,
Greece, India, and China were, or still are, the theatre where distinct
and separate societies have played out their own destinies, save when
these have been brought for a time into conjunction by political
troubles. As I shall speak of the parts only when my argument applies to
the whole, I shall use the words “nation” or “people” either in the wide
or the narrow sense, without any room for ambiguity. I return now to my
main subject, which is to show that fanaticism, luxury, corruption of
morals, and irreligion do not necessarily bring about the ruin of
nations.

All these phenomena have been found in a highly developed state, either
in isolation or together, among peoples which were actually the better
for them—or at any rate not the worse.

The Aztec Empire in America seems to have existed mainly “for the
greater glory” of fanaticism. I cannot imagine anything more fanatical
than a society like that of the Aztecs, which rested on a religious
foundation, continually watered by the blood of human sacrifice. It has
been denied,[4] perhaps with some truth, that the ancient peoples of
Europe ever practised ritual murder on victims who were regarded as
innocent, with the exception of shipwrecked sailors and prisoners of
war. But for the ancient Mexicans one victim was as good as another.
With a ferocity recognized by a modern physiologist[5] as characteristic
of the races of the New World, they massacred their fellow-citizens on
their altars, without pity, without flinching, and without
discrimination. This did not prevent their being a powerful,
industrious, and wealthy people, which would certainly for many ages
have gone on flourishing, reigning, and throat-cutting, had not the
genius of Hernando Cortes and the courage of his companions stepped in
to put an end to the monstrous existence of such an Empire. Thus
fanaticism does not cause the fall of States.

Luxury and effeminacy have no better claims than fanaticism. Their
effects are to be seen only in the upper classes; and though they
assumed different forms in the ancient world, among the Greeks, the
Persians, and the Romans, I doubt whether they were ever brought to a
greater pitch of refinement than at the present day, in France, Germany,
England, and Russia—especially in the last two. And it is just these
two, England and Russia, that, of all the States of modern Europe, seem
to be gifted with a peculiar vitality. Again, in the Middle Ages, the
Venetians, the Genoese, and the Pisans crowded their shops with the
treasures of the whole world; they displayed them in their palaces, and
carried them over every sea. But they were certainly none the weaker for
that. Thus luxury and effeminacy are in no way the necessary causes of
weakness and ruin.

Again, the corruption of morals, however terrible a scourge it may be,
is not always an agent of destruction. If it were, the military power
and commercial prosperity of a nation would have to vary directly with
the purity of its morals; but this is by no means the case. The curious
idea that the early Romans had all the virtues[6] has now been rightly
given up by most people. We no longer see anything very edifying in the
patricians of the early Republic, who treated their wives like slaves,
their children like cattle, and their creditors like wild beasts. If
there were still any advocates to plead their unrighteous cause by
arguing from an assumed “variation in the moral standard of different
ages,” it would not be very hard to show how flimsy such an argument is.
In all ages the misuse of power has excited equal indignation. If the
rape of Lucrece did not bring about the expulsion of the kings, if the
tribunate[7] was not established owing to the attempt of Appius
Claudius, at any rate the real causes that lay behind these two great
revolutions, by cloaking themselves under such pretexts, reveal the
state of public morality at the time. No, we cannot account for the
greater vigour of all early peoples by alleging their greater virtue.
From the beginning of history, there has been no human society, however
small, that has not contained the germ of every vice. And yet, however
burdened with this load of depravity, the nations seem to march on very
comfortably, and often, in fact, to owe their greatness to their
detestable customs. The Spartans enjoyed a long life and the admiration
of men merely owing to their laws, which were those of a robber-state.
Was the fall of the Phœnicians due to the corruption that gnawed their
vitals and was disseminated by them over the whole world? Not at all; on
the contrary, this corruption was the main instrument of their power and
glory. From the day when they first touched the shores of the Greek
islands,[8] and went their way, cheating their customers, robbing their
hosts, abducting women for the slave-market, stealing in one place to
sell in another—from that day, it is true, their reputation fell not
unreasonably low; but they did not prosper any the less for that, and
they hold a place in history which is quite unaffected by all the
stories of their greed and treachery.

Far from admitting the superior moral character of early societies, I
have no doubt that nations, as they grow older and so draw nearer their
fall, present a far more satisfactory appearance from the censor’s point
of view. Customs become less rigid, rough edges become softened, the
path of life is made easier, the rights existing between man and man
have had time to become better defined and understood, and so the
theories of social justice have reached, little by little, a higher
degree of delicacy. At the time when the Greeks overthrew the Empire of
Darius, or when the Goths entered Rome, there were probably far more
honest men in Athens, Babylon, and the imperial city than in the
glorious days of Harmodius, Cyrus the Great, and Valerius Publicola.

We need not go back to those distant epochs, but may judge them by
ourselves. Paris is certainly one of the places on this earth where
civilization has touched its highest point, and where the contrast with
primitive ages is most marked; and yet you will find a large number of
religious and learned people admitting that in no place and time were
there so many examples of practical virtue, of sincere piety, of saintly
lives governed by a fine sense of duty, as are to be met to-day in the
great modern city. The ideals of goodness are as high now as they ever
were in the loftiest minds of the seventeenth century; and they have
laid aside the bitterness, the strain of sternness and savagery—I was
almost saying, of pedantry—that sometimes coloured them in that age. And
so, as a set-off to the frightful perversities of the modern spirit, we
find, in the very temple where that spirit has set up the high altar of
its power, a striking contrast, which never appeared to former centuries
in the same consoling light as it has to our own.

I do not even believe that there is a lack of great men in periods of
corruption and decadence; and by “great men” I mean those most richly
endowed with energy of character and the masculine virtues. If I look at
the list of the Roman Emperors (most of them, by the way, as high above
their subjects in merit as they were in rank) I find names like Trajan,
Antoninus Pius, Septimius Severus, and Jovian; and below the throne,
even among the city mob, I see with admiration all the great
theologians, the great martyrs, the apostles of the primitive Church, to
say nothing of the virtuous Pagans. Strong, brave, and active spirits
filled the camps and the Italian towns; and one may doubt whether in the
time of Cincinnatus, Rome held, in proportion, so many men of eminence
in all the walks of practical life. The testimony of the facts is
conclusive.

Thus men of strong character, men of talent and energy, so far from
being unknown to human societies in the time of their decadence and old
age, are actually to be found in greater abundance than in the days when
an empire is young. Further, the ordinary level of morality is higher in
the later period than in the earlier. It is not generally true to say
that in States on the point of death the corruption of morals is any
more virulent than in those just born. It is equally doubtful whether
this corruption brings about their fall; for some States, far from dying
of their perversity, have lived and grown fat on it. One may go further,
and show that moral degradation is not necessarily a mortal disease at
all; for, as against the other maladies of society, it has the advantage
of being curable; and the cure is sometimes very rapid.

In fact, the morals of any particular people are in continual ebb and
flow throughout its history. To go no further afield than our own
France, we may say that, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the conquered
race of the Gallo-Romans were certainly better than their conquerors
from a moral point of view. Taken individually, they were not always
their inferiors even in courage and the military virtues.[9] In the
following centuries, when the two races had begun to intermingle, they
seem to have deteriorated; and we have no reason to be very proud of the
picture that was presented by our dear country about the eighth and
ninth centuries. But in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, a great
change came over the scene. Society had succeeded in harmonizing its
most discordant elements, and the state of morals was reasonably good.
The ideas of the time were not favourable to the little casuistries that
keep a man from the right path even when he wishes to walk in it. The
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were times of terrible conflict and
perversity. Brigandage reigned supreme. It was a period of decadence in
the strictest sense of the word; and the decadence was shown in a
thousand ways. In view of the debauchery, the tyranny, and the massacres
of that age, of the complete withering of all the finer feelings in
every section of the State—in the nobles who plundered their villeins,
in the citizens who sold their country to England, in a clergy that was
false to its professions—one might have thought that the whole society
was about to crash to the ground and bury its shame deep under its own
ruins.... The crash never came. The society continued to live; it
devised remedies, it beat back its foes, it emerged from the dark cloud.
The sixteenth century was far more reputable than its predecessor, in
spite of its orgies of blood, which were a pale reflection of those of
the preceding age. St. Bartholomew’s day is not such a shameful memory
as the massacre of the Armagnacs. Finally, the French people passed from
this semi-barbarous twilight into the pure splendour of day, the age of
Fénelon, Bossuet, and the Montausier. Thus, up to Louis XIV, our history
shows a series of rapid changes from good to evil, from evil to good;
while the real vitality of the nation has little to do with its moral
condition. I have touched lightly on the larger curves of change; to
trace the multitude of lesser changes within these would require many
pages. To speak even of what we have all but seen with our own eyes, is
it not clear that in every decade since 1787 the standard of morality
has varied enormously? I conclude that the corruption of morals is a
fleeting and unstable phenomenon; it becomes sometimes worse and
sometimes better, and so cannot be considered as necessarily causing the
ruin of societies.

I must examine here an argument, put forward in our time, which never
entered people’s heads in the eighteenth century; but as it fits in
admirably with the subject of the preceding paragraph, I could not find
a better place in which to speak of it. Many people have come to think
that the end of a society is at hand when its religious ideas tend to
weaken and disappear. They see a kind of connexion between the open
profession of the doctrines of Zeno and Epicurus at Athens and Rome,
with the consequent abandonment (according to them) of the national
cults, and the fall of the two republics. They fail to notice that these
are virtually the only examples that can be given of such a coincidence.
The Persian Empire at the time of its fall was wholly under the sway of
the Magi. Tyre, Carthage, Judæa, the Aztec and Peruvian monarchies were
struck down while fanatically clinging to their altars. Thus it cannot
be maintained that all the peoples whose existence as a nation is being
destroyed are at that moment expiating the sin they committed in
deserting the faith of their fathers. Further, even the two examples
that go to support the theory seem to prove much more than they really
do. I deny absolutely that the ancient cults were ever given up in Rome
or Athens, until the day when they were supplanted in the hearts of all
men by the victorious religion of Christ. In other words, I believe that
there has never been a real breach of continuity in the religious
beliefs of any nation on this earth. The outward form or inner meaning
of the creed may have changed; but we shall always find some Gallic
Teutates making way for the Roman Jupiter, Jupiter for the Christian
God, without any interval of unbelief, in exactly the same way as the
dead give up their inheritance to the living. Hence, as there has never
been a nation of which one could say that it had no faith at all, we
have no right to assume that “the lack of faith causes the destruction
of States.”

I quite see the grounds on which such a view is based. Its defenders
will tell us of “the notorious fact” that a little before the time of
Pericles at Athens, and about the age of the Scipios at Rome the upper
classes became more and more prone, first to reason about their
religion, then to doubt it, and finally to give up all faith in it, and
to take pride in being atheists. Little by little, we shall be told, the
habit of atheism spread, until there was no one with any pretensions to
intellect at all who did not defy one augur to pass another without
smiling.

This opinion has a grain of truth, but is largely false. Say, if you
will, that Aspasia, at the end of her little suppers, and Lælius, in the
company of his friends, made a virtue of mocking at the sacred beliefs
of their country; no one will contradict you. But they would not have
been allowed to vent their ideas too publicly; and yet they lived at the
two most brilliant periods of Greek and Roman history. The imprudent
conduct of his mistress all but cost Pericles himself very dear; we
remember the tears he shed in open court, tears which would not of
themselves have secured the acquittal of the fair infidel. Think, too,
of the official language held by contemporary poets, how Sophocles and
Aristophanes succeeded Æschylus as the stern champions of outraged
deity. The whole nation believed in its gods, regarded Socrates as a
revolutionary and a criminal, and wished to see Anaxagoras brought to
trial and condemned.... What of the later ages? Did the impious theories
of the philosophers succeed at any time in reaching the masses? Not for
a single day. Scepticism remained a luxury of the fashionable world and
of that world alone. One may call it useless to speak of the thoughts of
the plain citizens, the country folk, and the slaves, who had no
influence in the government, and could not impose their ideas on their
rulers. They had, however, a very real influence; and the proof is that
until paganism was at its last gasp, their temples and shrines had to be
kept going, and their acolytes to be paid. The most eminent and
enlightened men, the most fervent in their unbelief, had not only to
accept the public honour of wearing the priestly robe, but to undertake
the most disagreeable duties of the cult—they who were accustomed to
turn over, day and night, _manu diurna, manu nocturna_, the pages of
Lucretius. Not only did they go through these rites on ceremonial
occasions, but they used their scanty hours of leisure, hours snatched
with difficulty from the life-and-death game of politics, in composing
treatises on augury. I am referring to the great Julius.[10] Well, all
the emperors after him had to hold the office of high-priest, even
Constantine. He, certainly, had far stronger reason than all his
predecessors for shaking off a yoke so degrading to his honour as a
Christian prince; yet he was forced by public opinion, that blazed up
for the last time before being extinguished for ever, to come to terms
with the old national religion. Thus it was not the faith of the plain
citizens, the country folk, and the slaves that was of small account; it
was the theories of the men of culture that mattered nothing. They
protested in vain, in the name of reason and good sense, against the
absurdities of paganism; the mass of the people neither would nor could
give up one belief before they had been provided with another. They
proved once more the great truth that it is affirmation, not negation,
which is of service in the business of this world. So strongly did men
feel this truth in the third century that there was a religious reaction
among the higher classes. The reaction was serious and general, and
lasted till the world definitely passed into the arms of the Church. In
fact, the supremacy of philosophy reached its highest point under the
Antonines and began to decline soon after their death. I need not here
go deeply into this question, however interesting it may be for the
historian of ideas; it will be enough for me to show that the revolution
gained ground as the years went on, and to bring out its immediate
cause.

The older the Roman world became, the greater was the part played by the
army. From the emperor, who invariably came from the ranks, down to the
pettiest officer in his Prætorian guard and the prefect of the most
unimportant district, every official had begun his career on the
parade-ground, under the vine-staff of the centurion; in other words
they had all sprung from the mass of the people, of whose unquenchable
piety I have already spoken. When they had scaled the heights of office,
they found confronting them, to their intense annoyance and dismay, the
ancient aristocracy of the municipalities, the local senators, who took
pleasure in regarding them as upstarts, and would gladly have turned
them to ridicule if they had dared. Thus the real masters of the State
and the once predominant families were at daggers drawn. The commanders
of the army were believers and fanatics—Maximin, for example, and
Galerius, and a hundred others. The senators and decurions still found
their chief delight in the literature of the sceptics; but as they
actually lived at court, that is to say among soldiers, they were forced
to adopt a way of speaking and an official set of opinions which should
not put them to any risk. Gradually an atmosphere of devotion spread
through the Empire; and this led the philosophers themselves, with
Euhemerus at their head, to invent systems of reconciling the theories
of the rationalists with the State religion—a movement in which the
Emperor Julian was the most powerful spirit. There is no reason to give
much praise to this renaissance of pagan piety, for it caused most of
the persecutions under which our martyrs have suffered. The masses,
whose religious feelings had been wounded by the atheistic sects, had
bided their time so long as they were ruled by the upper classes. But as
soon as the empire had become democratic, and the pride of these classes
had been brought low, then the populace determined to have their
revenge. They made a mistake, however, in their victims, and cut the
throats of the Christians, whom they took for philosophers, and accused
of impiety. What a difference there was between this and an earlier age!
The really sceptical pagan was King Agrippa, who wished to hear St. Paul
merely out of curiosity.[11] He listened to him, disputed with him, took
him for a madman, but did not dream of punishing him for thinking
differently from himself. Another example is the historian Tacitus, who
was full of contempt for the new sectaries, but blamed Nero for his
cruelty in persecuting them. Agrippa and Tacitus were the real
unbelievers. Diocletian was a politician ruled by the clamours of his
people; Decius and Aurelian were fanatics like their subjects.

Even when the Roman Government had definitely gone over to Christianity,
what a task it was to bring the different peoples into the bosom of the
Church! In Greece there was a series of terrible struggles, in the
Universities as well as in the small towns and villages. The bishops had
everywhere such difficulty in ousting the little local divinities that
very often the victory was due less to argument and conversion than to
time, patience, and diplomacy. The clergy were forced to make use of
pious frauds, and their ingenuity replaced the deities of wood, meadow,
and fountain, by saints, martyrs, and virgins. Thus the feelings of
reverence continued without a break; for some time they were directed to
the wrong objects, but they at last found the right road.... But what am
I saying? Can we be so certain that even in France there are not to be
found to this day a few places where the tenacity of some odd
superstition still gives trouble to the parish priest? In Catholic
Brittany, in the eighteenth century, a bishop had a long struggle with a
village-people that clung to the worship of a stone idol. In vain was
the gross image thrown into the water; its fanatical admirers always
fished it out again, and the help of a company of infantry was needed to
break it to pieces. We see from this what a long life paganism had—and
still has. I conclude that there is no good reason for holding that Rome
and Athens were for a single day without religion.

Since then, a nation has never, either in ancient or modern times, given
up one faith before being duly provided with another, it is impossible
to claim that the ruin of nations follows from their irreligion.

I have now shown that fanaticism, luxury, and the corruption of morals
have not necessarily any power of destruction, and that irreligion has
no political reality at all; it remains to discuss the influence of bad
government, which is well worth a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER III
THE RELATIVE MERIT OF GOVERNMENTS HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE LENGTH OF A
NATION’S LIFE

I know the difficulty of my present task. That I should even venture to
touch on it will seem a kind of paradox to many of my readers. People
are convinced, and rightly convinced, that the good administration of
good laws has a direct and powerful influence on the health of a people;
and this conviction is so strong, that they attribute to such
administration the mere fact that a human society goes on living at all.
Here they are wrong.

They would be right, of course, if it were true that nations could exist
only in a state of well-being; but we know that, like individuals, they
can often go on for a long time, carrying within them the seeds of some
fell disease, which may suddenly break out in a virulent form. If
nations invariably died of their sufferings, not one would survive the
first years of its growth; for it is precisely in those years that they
show the worst administration, the worst laws, and the greatest
disorder. But in this respect they are the exact opposite of the human
organism. The greatest enemy that the latter has to fear, especially in
infancy, is a continuous series of illnesses—we know beforehand that
there is no resisting these; to a society, however, such a series does
no harm at all, and history gives us abundant proof that the body
politic is always being cured of the longest, the most terrible and
devastating attacks of disease, of which the worst forms are
ill-conceived laws and an oppressive or negligent administration.[12]

We will first try to make clear in what a “bad government” consists.

It is a malady that seems to take many forms. It would be impossible
even to enumerate them all, for they are multiplied to infinity by the
differences in the constitutions of peoples, and in the place and time
of their existence. But if we group these forms under four main
headings, there are very few varieties that will not be included.

A government is bad when it is set up by a foreign Power. Athens
experienced this kind of government under the Thirty Tyrants; they were
driven out, and the national spirit, far from dying under their
oppressive rule, was tempered by it to a greater hardness.

A government is bad when it is based on conquest, pure and simple. In
the fourteenth century practically the whole of France passed under the
yoke of England. It emerged stronger than before, and entered on a
career of great brilliance. China was overrun and conquered by hordes of
Mongols; it managed to expel them beyond its borders, after sapping
their vitality in a most extraordinary way. Since that time China has
fallen into a new servitude; but although the Manchus have already
enjoyed more than a century of sovereignty, they are on the eve of
suffering the same fate as the Mongols, and have passed through a
similar period of weakness.

A government is especially bad when the principle on which it rests
becomes vitiated, and ceases to operate in the healthy and vigorous way
it did at first. This was the condition of the Spanish monarchy. It was
based on the military spirit and the idea of social freedom; towards the
end of Philip II’s reign it forgot its origin and began to degenerate.
There has never been a country where all theories of conduct had become
more obsolete, where the executive was more feeble and discredited,
where the organization of the church itself was so open to criticism.
Agriculture and industry, like everything else, were struck down and all
but buried in the morass where the nation was decaying.... But is Spain
dead? Not at all. The country of which so many despaired has given
Europe the glorious example of a desperate resistance to the fortune of
our arms; and at the present moment it is perhaps in Spain, of all the
modern States, that the feeling of nationality is most intense.

Finally, a government is bad when, by the very nature of its
institutions, it gives colour to an antagonism between the supreme power
and the mass of the people, or between different classes of society.
Thus, in the Middle Ages, we see the kings of England and France engaged
in a struggle with their great vassals, and the peasants flying at the
throats of their overlords. In Germany, too, the first effects of the
new freedom of thought were the civil wars of the Hussites, the
Anabaptists, and all the other sectaries. A little before that, Italy
was in such distress through the division of the supreme power, and the
quarrel over the fragments between the Emperor, the Pope, the nobles,
and the communes, that the masses, not knowing whom to obey, often ended
by obeying nobody. Did this cause the ruin of the whole society? Not at
all. Its civilization was never more brilliant, its industry more
productive, its influence abroad more incontestable.

I can well believe that sometimes, in the midst of these storms, a wise
and potent law-giver came, like a sunbeam, to shed the light of his
beneficence on the peoples he ruled. The light remained only for a short
space; and just as its absence had not caused death, so its presence did
not bring life. For this, the times of prosperity would have had to be
frequent and of long duration. But upright princes were rare in that
age, and are rare in all ages. Even the best of them have their
detractors, and the happiest pictures are full of shadow. Do all
historians alike regard the time of King William III as an era of
prosperity for England? Do they all admire Louis XIV, the Great, without
reserve? On the contrary; the critics are all at their posts, and their
arrows know where to find their mark. And yet these are, on the whole,
the best regulated and most fruitful periods in the history of ourselves
and our neighbours. Good governments are so thinly sown on the soil of
the ages, and even when they spring up, are so withered by criticism;
political science, the highest and most intricate of all sciences, is so
incommensurate with the weakness of man, that we cannot sincerely claim
that nations perish from being ill-governed. Thank heaven they have the
power of soon becoming accustomed to their sufferings, which, in their
worst forms, are infinitely preferable to anarchy. The most superficial
study of history will be enough to show that however bad may be the
government that is draining away the life-blood of a people, it is often
better than many of the administrations that have gone before.

CHAPTER IV
THE MEANING OF THE WORD “DEGENERATION”; THE MIXTURE OF RACIAL ELEMENTS;
HOW SOCIETIES ARE FORMED AND BROKEN UP

However little the spirit of the foregoing pages may have been
understood, no one will conclude from them that I attach no importance
to the maladies of the social organism, and that, for me, bad
government, fanaticism, and irreligion are mere unmeaning accidents. On
the contrary I quite agree with the ordinary view, that it is a
lamentable thing to see a society being gradually undermined by these
fell diseases, and that no amount of care and trouble would be wasted if
a remedy could only be found. I merely add that if these poisonous
blossoms of disunion are not grafted on a stronger principle of
destruction, if they are not the consequences of a hidden plague more
terrible still, we may rest assured that their ravages will not be fatal
and that after a time of suffering more or less drawn out, the society
will emerge from their toils, perhaps with strength and youth renewed.

The examples I have brought forward seem to me conclusive, though their
number might be indefinitely increased. Through some such reasoning as
this the ordinary opinions of men have at last come to contain an
instinctive perception of the truth. It is being dimly seen that one
ought not to have given such a preponderant importance to evils which
were after all merely derivative, and that the true causes of the life
and death of peoples should have been sought elsewhere, and been drawn
from a deeper well. Men have begun to look at the inner constitution of
a society, by itself, quite apart from all circumstances of health or
disease. They have shown themselves ready to admit that no external
cause could lay the hand of death on any society, so long as a certain
destructive principle, inherent in it from the first, born from its womb
and nourished on its entrails, had not reached its full maturity; on the
other hand, so soon as this destructive principle had come into
existence, the society was doomed to certain death, even though it had
the best of all possible governments—in exactly the same way as a spent
horse will fall dead on a concrete road.

A great step in advance was made, I admit, when the question was
considered from this point of view, which was anyhow much more
philosophic than the one taken up before. Bichat,[13] as we know, did
not seek to discover the great mystery of existence by studying the
human subject from the outside; the key to the riddle, he saw, lay
within. Those who followed the same method, in our own subject, were
travelling on the only road that really led to discoveries.
Unfortunately, this excellent idea of theirs was the result of mere
instinct; its logical implications were not carried very far, and it was
shattered on the first difficulty. “Yes,” they cried, “the cause of
destruction lies hidden in the very vitals of the social organism; but
what is this cause?” “_Degeneration_,” was the answer; “nations die when
they are composed of elements that have _degenerated_.” The answer was
excellent, etymologically and otherwise. It only remained to define the
meaning of “nation that has degenerated.” This was the rock on which
they foundered; a _degenerate people_ meant, they said, “A people which
through bad government, misuse of wealth, fanaticism, or irreligion, had
lost the characteristic virtues of its ancestors.” What a fall is there!
Thus a people dies of its endemic diseases because it is degenerate, and
is degenerate because it dies. This circular argument merely proves that
the science of social anatomy is in its infancy. I quite agree that
societies perish because they are degenerate, and for no other reason.
This is the evil condition that makes them wholly unable to withstand
the shock of the disasters that close in upon them; and when they can no
longer endure the blows of adverse fortune, and have no power to raise
their heads when the scourge has passed, then we have the sublime
spectacle of a nation in agony. If it perish, it is because it has no
longer the same vigour as it had of old in battling with the dangers of
life; in a word, because it is _degenerate_. I repeat, the term is
excellent; but we must explain it a little better, and give it a
definite meaning. How and why is a nation’s vigour lost? How does it
degenerate? These are the questions which we must try to answer. Up to
the present, men have been content with finding the word, without
unveiling the reality that lies behind. This further step I shall now
attempt to take.

The word _degenerate_, when applied to a people, means (as it ought to
mean) that the people has no longer the same intrinsic value as it had
before, because it has no longer the same blood in its veins, continual
adulterations having gradually affected the quality of that blood. In
other words, though the nation bears the name given by its founders, the
name no longer connotes the same race; in fact, the man of a decadent
time, the _degenerate_ man properly so called, is a different being,
from the racial point of view, from the heroes of the great ages. I
agree that he still keeps something of their essence; but the more he
degenerates the more attenuated does this “something” become. The
heterogeneous elements that henceforth prevail in him give him quite a
different nationality—a very original one, no doubt, but such
originality is not to be envied. He is only a very distant kinsman of
those he still calls his ancestors. He, and his civilization with him,
will certainly die on the day when the primordial race-unit is so broken
up and swamped by the influx of foreign elements, that its effective
qualities have no longer a sufficient freedom of action. It will not, of
course, absolutely disappear, but it will in practice be so beaten down
and enfeebled, that its power will be felt less and less as time goes
on. It is at this point that all the results of degeneration will
appear, and the process may be considered complete.

If I manage to prove this proposition, I shall have given a meaning to
the word “degeneration.” By showing how the essential quality of a
nation gradually alters, I shift the responsibility for its decadence,
which thus becomes, in a way, less shameful, for it weighs no longer on
the sons, but on the nephews, then on the cousins, then on collaterals
more or less removed. And when I have shown by examples that great
peoples, at the moment of their death, have only a very small and
insignificant share in the blood of the founders, into whose inheritance
they come, I shall thereby have explained clearly enough how it is
possible for civilizations to fall—the reason being that they are no
longer in the same hands. At the same time I shall be touching on a
problem which is much more dangerous than that which I have tried to
solve in the preceding chapters. This problem is: “Are there serious and
ultimate differences of value between human races; and can these
differences be estimated?”

I will begin at once to develop the series of arguments that touch the
first point; they will indirectly settle the second also.

To put my ideas into a clearer and more easily intelligible form I may
compare a nation to a human body, which, according to the physiologists,
is constantly renewing all its parts; the work of transformation that
goes on is incessant, and after a certain number of years the body
retains hardly any of its former elements. Thus, in the old man, there
are no traces of the man of middle age, in the adult no traces of the
youth, nor in the youth of the child; the personal identity in all these
stages is kept purely by the succession of inner and outer forms, each
an imperfect copy of the last. Yet I will admit one difference between a
nation and a human body; in the former there is no question of the
“forms” being preserved, for these are destroyed and disappear with
enormous rapidity. I will take a people, or better, a tribe, at the
moment when, yielding to a definite vital instinct, it provides itself
with laws and begins to play a part in the world. By the mere fact of
its wants and powers increasing, it inevitably finds itself in contact
with other similar associations, and by war or peaceful measures
succeeds in incorporating them with itself.

Not all human families can reach this first step; but it is a step that
every tribe must take if it is to rank one day as a nation. Even if a
certain number of races, themselves perhaps not very far advanced on the
ladder of civilization, have passed through this stage, we cannot
properly regard this as a general rule.

Indeed, the human species seems to have a very great difficulty in
raising itself above a rudimentary type of organization; the transition
to a more complex state is made only by those groups of tribes, that are
eminently gifted. I may cite, in support of this, the actual condition
of a large number of communities spread throughout the world. These
backward tribes, especially the Polynesian negroes, the Samoyedes and
others in the far north, and the majority of the African races, have
never been able to shake themselves free from their impotence; they live
side by side in complete independence of each other. The stronger
massacre the weaker, the weaker try to move as far away as possible from
the stronger. This sums up the political ideas of these embryo
societies, which have lived on in their imperfect state, without
possibility of improvement, as long as the human race itself. It may be
said that these miserable savages are a very small part of the earth’s
population. Granted; but we must take account of all the similar peoples
who have lived and disappeared. Their number is incalculable, and
certainly includes the vast majority of the pure-blooded yellow and
black races.

If then we are driven to admit that for a very large number of human
beings it has been, and always will be, impossible to take even the
first step towards civilization; if, again, we consider that these
peoples are scattered over the whole face of the earth under the most
varying conditions of climate and environment, that they live
indifferently in the tropics, in the temperate zones, and in the Arctic
circle, by sea, lake, and river, in the depths of the forest, in the
grassy plains, in the arid deserts, we must conclude that a part of
mankind, is in its own nature stricken with a paralysis, which makes it
for ever unable to take even the first step towards civilization, since
it cannot overcome the natural repugnance, felt by men and animals
alike, to a crossing of blood.

Leaving these tribes, that are incapable of civilization, on one side,
we come, in our journey upwards, to those which understand that if they
wish to increase their power and prosperity, they are absolutely
compelled, either by war or peaceful measures, to draw their neighbours
within their sphere of influence. War is undoubtedly the simpler way of
doing this. Accordingly, they go to war. But when the campaign is
finished, and the craving for destruction is satisfied, some prisoners
are left over; these prisoners become slaves, and as slaves, work for
their masters. We have class distinctions at once, and an industrial
system: the tribe has become a little people. This is a higher rung on
the ladder of civilization, and is not necessarily passed by all the
tribes which have been able to reach it; many remain at this stage in
cheerful stagnation.

But there are others, more imaginative and energetic, whose ideas soar
beyond mere brigandage. They manage to conquer a great territory, and
assume rights of ownership not only over the inhabitants, but also over
their land. From this moment a real nation has been formed. The two
races often continue for a time to live side by side without mingling;
and yet, as they become indispensable to each other, as a community of
work and interest is gradually built up, as the pride and rancour of
conquest begin to ebb away, as those below naturally tend to rise to the
level of their masters, while the masters have a thousand reasons for
allowing, or even for promoting, such a tendency, the mixture of blood
finally takes place, the two races cease to be associated with distinct
tribes, and become more and more fused into a single whole.

The spirit of isolation is, however, so innate in the human race, that
even those who have reached this advanced stage of crossing refuse in
many cases to take a step further. There are some peoples who are, as we
know positively, of mixed origin, but who keep their feeling for the
clan to an extraordinary degree. The Arabs, for example, do more than
merely spring from different branches of the Semitic stock; they belong
at one and the same time to the so-called families of Shem and Ham, not
to speak of a vast number of local strains that are intermingled with
these. Nevertheless, their attachment to the tribe, as a separate unit,
is one of the most striking features of their national character and
their political history. In fact, it has been thought possible to
attribute their expulsion from Spain not only to the actual breaking up
of their power there, but also, to a large extent, to their being
continually divided into smaller and mutually antagonistic groups, in
the struggles for promotion among the Arab families at the petty courts
of Valentia, Toledo, Cordova, and Grenada.[14]

We may say the same about the majority of such peoples. Further, where
the tribal separation has broken down, a national feeling takes its
place, and acts with a similar vigour, which a community of religion is
not enough to destroy. This is the case among the Arabs and the Turks,
the Persians and the Jews, the Parsees and the Hindus, the Nestorians of
Syria and the Kurds. We find it also in European Turkey, and can trace
its course in Hungary, among the Magyars, the Saxons, the Wallachians,
and the Croats. I know, from what I have seen with my own eyes, that in
certain parts of France, the country where races are mingled more than
perhaps anywhere else, there are little communities to be found to this
day, who feel a repugnance to marrying outside their own village.

I think I am right in concluding from these examples, which cover all
countries and ages, including our own, that the human race in all its
branches has a secret repulsion from the crossing of blood, a repulsion
which in many of the branches is invincible, and in others is only
conquered to a slight extent. Even those who most completely shake off
the yoke of this idea cannot get rid of the few last traces of it; yet
such peoples are the only members of our species who can be civilized at
all.

Thus mankind lives in obedience to two laws, one of repulsion, the other
of attraction; these act with different force on different peoples. The
first is fully respected only by those races which can never raise
themselves above the elementary completeness of the tribal life, while
the power of the second, on the contrary, is the more absolute, as the
racial units on which it is exercised are more capable of development.

Here especially I must be concrete. I have just taken the example of a
people in embryo, whose state is like that of a single family. I have
given them the qualities which will allow them to pass into the state of
a nation. Well, suppose they have become a nation. History does not tell
me what the elements were that constituted the original group; all I
know is that these elements fitted it for the transformation which I
have made it undergo. Now that it has grown, it has only two
possibilities. One or other of two destinies is inevitable. It will
either conquer or be conquered.

I will give it the better part, and assume that it will conquer. It will
at the same time rule, administer, and civilize. It will not go through
its provinces, sowing a useless harvest of fire and massacre. Monuments,
customs, and institutions will be alike sacred. It will change what it
can usefully modify, and replace it by something better. Weakness in its
hands will become strength. It will behave in such a way that, in the
words of Scripture, it will be magnified in the sight of men.

I do not know if the same thought has already struck the reader; but in
the picture which I am presenting—and which in certain features is that
of the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Persians and the Macedonians—two facts
appear to me to stand out. The first is that a nation, which itself
lacks vigour and power, is suddenly called upon to share a new and a
better destiny—that of the strong masters into whose hands it has
fallen; this was the case with the Anglo-Saxons, when they had been
subdued by the Normans. The second fact is that a picked race of men, a
sovereign people, with the usual strong propensities of such a people to
cross its blood with another’s, finds itself henceforth in close contact
with a race whose inferiority is shown, not only by defeat, but also by
the lack of the attributes that may be seen in the conquerors. From the
very day when the conquest is accomplished and the fusion begins, there
appears a noticeable change of quality in the blood of the masters. If
there were no other modifying influence at work, then—at the end of a
number of years, which would vary according to the number of peoples
that composed the original stock—we should be confronted with a new
race, less powerful certainly than the better of its two ancestors, but
still of considerable strength. It would have developed special
qualities resulting from the actual mixture, and unknown to the
communities from which it sprang. But the case is not generally so
simple as this, and the intermingling of blood is not confined for long
to the two constituent peoples.

The empire I have just been imagining is a powerful one, and its power
is used to control its neighbours. I assume that there will be new
conquests; and, every time, a current of fresh blood will be mingled
with the main stream. Henceforth, as the nation grows, whether by war or
treaty, its racial character changes more and more. It is rich,
commercial, and civilized. The needs and the pleasures of other peoples
find ample satisfaction in its capitals, its great towns, and its ports;
while its myriad attractions cause many foreigners to make it their
home. After a short time, we might truly say that a distinction of
castes takes the place of the original distinction of races.

I am willing to grant that the people of whom I am speaking is
strengthened in its exclusive notions by the most formal commands of
religion, and that some dreadful penalty lurks in the background, to awe
the disobedient. But since the people is civilized, its character is
soft and tolerant, even to the contempt of its faith. Its oracles will
speak in vain; there will be births outside the caste-limits. Every day
new distinctions will have to be drawn, new classifications invented;
the number of social grades will be increased, and it will be almost
impossible to know where one is, amid the infinite variety of the
subdivisions, that change from province to province, from canton to
canton, from village to village. In fact, the condition will be that of
the Hindu countries. It is only, however, the Brahman who has shown
himself so tenacious of his ideas of separation; the foreign peoples he
civilized have never fastened these cramping fetters on their shoulders,
or any rate have long since shaken them off. In all the States that have
made any advance in intellectual culture, the process has not been
checked for a single moment by those desperate shifts to which the
law-givers of the Aryavarta were put, in their desire to reconcile the
prescriptions of the Code of Manu with the irresistible march of events.
In every other place where there were really any castes at all, they
ceased to exist at the moment when the chance of making a fortune, and
of becoming famous by useful discoveries or social talents, became open
to the whole world, without distinction of origin. But also, from that
same day, the nation that was originally the active, conquering, and
civilizing power began to disappear; its blood became merged in that of
all the tributaries which it had attracted to its own stream.

Generally the dominating peoples begin by being far fewer in number than
those they conquer; while, on the other hand, certain races that form
the basis of the population in immense districts are extremely
prolific—the Celts, for example, and the Slavs. This is yet another
reason for the rapid disappearance of the conquering races. Again, their
greater activity and the more personal part they take in the affairs of
the State make them the chief mark for attack after a disastrous battle,
a proscription, or a revolution. Thus, while by their very genius for
civilization they collect round them the different elements in which
they are to be absorbed, they are the victims, first of their original
smallness of number, and then of a host of secondary causes which
combine together for their destruction.

It is fairly obvious that the time when the disappearance takes place
will vary considerably, according to circumstances. Yet it does finally
come to pass, and is everywhere quite complete, long before the end of
the civilization which the victorious race is supposed to be animating.
A people may often go on living and working, and even growing in power,
after the active, generating force of its life and glory has ceased to
exist. Does this contradict what I have said above? Not at all; for
while the blood of the civilizing race is gradually drained away by
being parcelled out among the peoples that are conquered or annexed, the
impulse originally given to these peoples still persists. The
institutions which the dead master had invented, the laws he had
prescribed, the customs he had initiated—all these live after him. No
doubt the customs, laws, and institutions have quite forgotten the
spirit that informed their youth; they survive in dishonoured old age,
every day more sapless and rotten. But so long as even their shadows
remain, the building stands, the body seems to have a soul, the pale
ghost walks. When the original impulse has worked itself out, the last
word has been said. Nothing remains; the civilization is dead.

I think I now have all the data necessary for grappling with the problem
of the life and death of nations; and I can say positively that a people
will never die, if it remains eternally composed of the same national
elements. If the empire of Darius had, at the battle of Arbela, been
able to fill its ranks with Persians, that is to say with real Aryans;
if the Romans of the later Empire had had a Senate and an army of the
same stock as that which existed at the time of the Fabii, their
dominion would never have come to an end. So long as they kept the same
purity of blood, the Persians and Romans would have lived and reigned.
In the long run, it might be said, a conqueror, more irresistible than
they, would have appeared on the scene; and they would have fallen under
a well-directed attack, or a long siege, or simply by the fortune of a
single battle. Yes, a State might be overthrown in this way, but not a
civilization or a social organism. Invasion and defeat are but the dark
clouds that for a time blot out the day, and then pass over. Many
examples might be brought forward in proof of this.

In modern times the Chinese have been twice conquered. They have always
forced their conquerors to become assimilated to them, and to respect
their customs; they gave much, and took hardly anything in return. They
drove out the first invaders, and in time will do the same with the
second.

The English are the masters of India, and yet their moral hold over
their subjects is almost non-existent. They are themselves influenced in
many ways by the local civilization, and cannot succeed in stamping
their ideas on a people that fears its conquerors, but is only
physically dominated by them. It keeps its soul erect, and its thoughts
apart from theirs. The Hindu race has become a stranger to the race that
governs it to-day, and its civilization does not obey the law that gives
the battle to the strong. External forms, kingdoms, and empires have
changed, and will change again; but the foundations on which they rest,
and from which they spring, do not necessarily change with them. Though
Hyderabad, Lahore, and Delhi are no longer capital cities, Hindu society
none the less persists. A moment will come, in one way or another, when
India will again live publicly, as she already does privately, under her
own laws; and, by the help either of the races actually existing or of a
hybrid proceeding from them, will assume again, in the full sense of the
word, a political personality.

The hazard of war cannot destroy the life of a people. At most, it
suspends its animation for a time, and in some ways shears it of its
outward pomp. So long as the blood and institutions of a nation keep to
a sufficient degree the impress of the original race, that nation
exists. Whether, as in the case of the Chinese, its conqueror has, in a
purely material sense, greater energy than itself; whether, like the
Hindu, it is matched, in a long and arduous trial of patience, against a
nation, such as the English, in all points its superior; in either case
the thought of its certain destiny should bring consolation—one day it
will be free. But if, like the Greeks, and the Romans of the later
Empire, the people has been absolutely drained of its original blood,
and the qualities conferred by the blood, then the day of its defeat
will be the day of its death. It has used up the time that heaven
granted at its birth, for it has completely changed its race, and with
its race its nature. It is therefore degenerate.

In view of the preceding paragraph, we may regard as settled the vexed
question as to what would have happened if the Carthaginians, instead of
falling before the fortunes of Rome, had become masters of Italy.
Inasmuch as they belonged to the Phœnician stock, a stock inferior in
the citizen-virtues to the races that produced the soldiers of Scipio, a
different issue of the battle of Zama could not have made any change in
their destiny. If they had been lucky on one day, the next would have
seen their luck recoil on their heads; or they might have been merged in
the Italian race by victory, as they were by defeat. In any case the
final result would have been exactly the same. The destiny of
civilizations is not a matter of chance; it does not depend on the toss
of a coin. It is only men who are killed by the sword; and when the most
redoubtable, warlike, and successful nations have nothing but valour in
their hearts, military science in their heads, and the laurels of
victory in their hands, without any thought that rises above mere
conquest, they always end merely by learning, and learning badly, from
those they have conquered, how to live in time of peace. The annals of
the Celts and the Nomadic hordes of Asia tell no other tale than this.

I have now given a meaning to the word _degeneration_; and so have been
able to attack the problem of a nation’s vitality. I must next proceed
to prove what for the sake of clearness I have had to put forward as a
mere hypothesis; namely, that there are real differences in the relative
value of human races. The consequences of proving this will be
considerable, and cover a wide field. But first I must lay a foundation
of fact and argument capable of holding up such a vast building; and the
foundation cannot be too complete. The question with which I have just
been dealing was only the gateway of the temple.

CHAPTER V
RACIAL INEQUALITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF INSTITUTIONS

The idea of an original, clear-cut, and permanent inequality among the
different races is one of the oldest and most widely held opinions in
the world. We need not be surprised at this, when we consider the
isolation of primitive tribes and communities, and how in the early ages
they all used to “retire into their shell”; a great number have never
left this stage. Except in quite modern times, this idea has been the
basis of nearly all theories of government. Every people, great or
small, has begun by making inequality its chief political motto. This is
the origin of all systems of caste, of nobility, and of aristocracy, in
so far as the last is founded on the right of birth. The law of
primogeniture, which assumes the pre-eminence of the first born and his
descendants, is merely a corollary of the same principle. With it go the
repulsion felt for the foreigner and the superiority which every nation
claims for itself with regard to its neighbours. As soon as the isolated
groups have begun to intermingle and to become one people, they grow
great and civilized, and look at each other in a more favourable light,
as one finds the other useful. Then, and only then, do we see the
absolute principle of the inequality, and hence the mutual hostility, of
races questioned and undermined. Finally, when the majority of the
citizens have mixed blood flowing in their veins, they erect into a
universal and absolute truth what is only true for themselves, and feel
it to be their duty to assert that all men are equal. They are also
moved by praiseworthy dislike of oppression, a legitimate hatred towards
the abuse of power; to all thinking men these cast an ugly shadow on the
memory of races which have once been dominant, and which have never
failed (for such is the way of the world) to justify to some extent many
of the charges that have been brought against them. From mere
declamation against tyranny, men go on to deny the natural causes of the
superiority against which they are declaiming. The tyrant’s power is, to
them, not only misused, but usurped. They refuse, quite wrongly, to
admit that certain qualities are by a fatal necessity the exclusive
inheritance of such and such a stock. In fact, the more heterogeneous
the elements of which a people is composed, the more complacently does
it assert that the most different powers are, or can be, possessed in
the same measure by every fraction of the human race, without exception.
This theory is barely applicable to these hybrid philosophers
themselves; but they extend it to cover all the generations which were,
are, and ever shall be on the earth. They end one day by summing up
their views in the words which, like the bag of Æolus, contain so many
storms—“All men are brothers.”[15]

This is the political axiom. Would you like to hear it in its scientific
form? “All men,” say the defenders of human equality, “are furnished
with similar intellectual powers, of the same nature, of the same value,
of the same compass.” These are not perhaps their exact words, but they
certainly give the right meaning. So the brain of the Huron Indian
contains in an undeveloped form an intellect which is absolutely the
same as that of the Englishman or the Frenchman! Why then, in the course
of the ages, has he not invented printing or steam-power? I should be
quite justified in asking our Huron why, if he is equal to our European
peoples, his tribe has never produced a Cæsar or a Charlemagne among its
warriors, and why his bards and sorcerers have, in some inexplicable
way, neglected to become Homers and Galens. The difficulty is usually
met by the blessed phrase, “the predominating influence of environment.”
According to this doctrine, an island will not see the same miracles of
civilization as a continent, the same people will be different in the
north from what it is in the south, forests will not allow of
developments which are favoured by open country. What else? the humidity
of a marsh, I suppose, will produce a civilization which would
inevitably have been stifled by the dryness of the Sahara! However
ingenious these little hypotheses may be, the testimony of fact is
against them. In spite of wind and rain, cold and heat, sterility and
fruitfulness, the world has seen barbarism and civilization flourishing
everywhere, one after the other, on the same soil. The brutish fellah is
tanned by the same sun as scorched the powerful priest of Memphis; the
learned professor of Berlin lectures under the same inclement sky that
once beheld the wretched existence of the Finnish savage.

The curious point is that the theory of equality, which is held by the
majority of men and so has permeated our customs and institutions, has
not been powerful enough to overthrow the evidence against it; and those
who are most convinced of its truth pay homage every day to its
opposite. No one at any time refuses to admit that there are great
differences between nations, and the ordinary speech of men, with a
naïve inconsistency, confesses the fact. In this it is merely imitating
the practice of other ages which were not less convinced than we are—and
for the same reason—of the absolute equality of races.

While clinging to the liberal dogma of human brotherhood, every nation
has always managed to add to the names of others certain qualifications
and epithets that suggest their unlikeness from itself. The Roman of
Italy called the Græco-Roman a _Græculus_, or “little Greek,” and gave
him the monopoly of cowardice and empty chatter. He ridiculed the
Carthaginian settler, and pretended to be able to pick him out among a
thousand for his litigious character and his want of faith. The
Alexandrians were held to be witty, insolent, and seditious. In the
Middle Ages, the Anglo-Norman kings accused their French subjects of
lightness and inconstancy. To-day, every one talks of the “national
characteristics” of the German, the Spaniard, the Englishman, and the
Russian. I am not asking whether the judgments are true or not. My sole
point is that they exist, and are adopted in ordinary speech. Thus, if
on the one hand human societies are called equal, and on the other we
find some of them frivolous, others serious; some avaricious, others
thriftless; some passionately fond of fighting, others careful of their
lives and energies;—it stands to reason that these differing nations
must have destinies which are also absolutely different, and, in a word,
unequal. The stronger will play the parts of kings and rulers in the
tragedy of the world. The weaker will be content with a more humble
position.

I do not think that the usual idea of a national character for each
people has yet been reconciled with the belief, which is just as widely
held, that all peoples are equal. Yet the contradiction is striking and
flagrant, and all the more serious because the most ardent democrats are
the first to claim superiority for the Anglo-Saxons of North America
over all the nations of the same continent. It is true that they ascribe
the high position of their favourites merely to their political
constitution. But, so far as I know, they do not deny that the
countrymen of Penn and Washington, are, as a nation, peculiarly prone to
set up liberal institutions in all their places of settlement, and, what
is more, to keep them going. Is not this very tenacity a wonderful
characteristic of this branch of the human race, and the more precious
because most of the societies which have existed, or still exist, in the
world seem to be without it?

I do not flatter myself that I shall be able to enjoy this inconsistency
without opposition. The friends of equality will no doubt talk very
loudly, at this point, about “the power of customs and institutions.”
They will tell me once more how powerfully the health and growth of a
nation are influenced by “the essential quality of a government, taken
by itself,” or “the fact of despotism or liberty.” But it is just at
this point that I too shall oppose their arguments.

Political institutions have only two possible sources. They either come
directly from the nation which has to live under them, or they are
invented by a powerful people and imposed on all the States that fall
within its sphere of influence.

There is no difficulty in the first hypothesis. A people obviously
adapts its institutions to its wants and instincts; and will beware of
laying down any rule which may thwart the one or the other. If, by some
lack of skill or care, such a rule is laid down, the consequent feeling
of discomfort leads the people to amend its laws, and put them into more
perfect harmony with their express objects. In every autonomous State,
the laws, we may say, always emanate from the people; not generally
because it has a direct power of making them, but because, in order to
be good laws, they must be based upon the people’s point of view, and be
such as it might have thought out for itself, if it had been better
informed. If some wise law-giver seems, at first sight, the sole source
of some piece of legislation, a nearer view will show that his very
wisdom has led him merely to give out the oracles that have been
dictated by his nation. If he is a judicious man, like Lycurgus, he will
prescribe nothing that the Dorian of Sparta could not accept. If he is a
mere doctrinaire, like Draco, he will draw up a code that will soon be
amended or repealed by the Ionian of Athens, who, like all the children
of Adam, is incapable of living for long under laws that are foreign to
the natural tendencies of his real self. The entrance of a man of genius
into this great business of law-making is merely a special manifestation
of the enlightened will of the people; if the laws simply fulfilled the
fantastic dreams of one individual, they could not rule any people for
long. We cannot admit that the institutions thus invented and moulded by
a race of men make that race what it is. They are effects, not causes.
Their influence is, of course, very great; they preserve the special
genius of the nation, they mark out the road on which it is to travel,
the end at which it must aim. To a certain extent, they are the hothouse
where its instincts develop, the armoury that furnishes its best weapons
for action. But they do not create their creator; and though they may be
a powerful element in his success by helping on the growth of his innate
qualities, they will fail miserably whenever they attempt to alter
these, or to extend them beyond their natural limits. In a word, they
cannot achieve the impossible.

Ill-fitting institutions, however, together with their consequences,
have played a great part in the world. When Charles I, by the evil
counsels of the Earl of Strafford, wished to force absolute monarchy on
the English, the King and his minister were walking on the blood-stained
morass of political theory. When the Calvinists dreamed of bringing the
French under a government that was at once aristocratic and republican,
they were just as far away from the right road.

When the Regent[16] tried to join hands with the nobles who were
conquered in 1652, and to carry on the government by intrigue, as the
co-adjutor and his friends had desired,[17] her efforts pleased nobody,
and offended equally the nobility, the clergy, the Parliament, and the
Third Estate. Only a few tax-farmers were pleased. But when Ferdinand
the Catholic promulgated against the Moors of Spain his terrible, though
necessary, measures of destruction; when Napoleon re-established
religion in France, flattered the military spirit, and organized his
power in such a way as to protect his subjects while coercing them, both
these sovereigns, having studied and understood the special character of
their people, were building their house upon a rock. In fact, bad
institutions are those which, however well they look on paper, are not
in harmony with the national qualities or caprices, and so do not suit a
particular State, though they might be very successful in the
neighbouring country. They would bring only anarchy and disorder, even
if they were taken from the statute-book of the angels. On the contrary,
other institutions are good for the opposite reason, though they might
be condemned, from a particular point of view or even absolutely, by the
political philosopher or the moralist. The Spartans were small in
number, of high courage, ambitious, and violent. Ill-fitting laws might
have turned them into a mere set of pettifogging knaves; Lycurgus made
them a nation of heroic brigands.

There is no doubt about it. As the people is born before the laws, the
laws take after the people; and receive from it the stamp which they are
afterwards to impress in their turn. The changes made in institutions by
the lapse of time are a great proof of what I say.

I have already mentioned that as nations become greater, more powerful,
and more civilized, their blood loses its purity and their instincts are
gradually altered. As a result, it becomes impossible for them to live
happily under the laws that suited their ancestors. New generations have
new customs and tendencies, and profound changes in the institutions are
not slow to follow. These are more frequent and far-reaching in
proportion as the race itself is changed; while they are rarer, and more
gradual, so long as the people is more nearly akin to the first founders
of the State. In England, where modifications of the stock have been
slower and, up to now, less varied than in any other European country,
we still see the institutions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
forming the base of the social structure. We find there, almost in its
first vigour, the communal organization of the Plantagenets and the
Tudors, the same method of giving the nobility a share in the
government, the same gradations of rank in this nobility, the same
respect for old families tempered with the same love of low-born merit.
Since James I, however, and especially since the Union under Queen Anne,
the English blood has been more and more prone to mingle with that of
the Scotch and Irish, while other nations have also helped, by
imperceptible degrees, to modify its purity. The result is that
innovations have been more frequent in our time than ever before, though
they have always remained fairly faithful to the spirit of the original
constitution.

In France, intermixture of race has been far more common and varied. In
some cases, by a sudden turn of the wheel, power has even passed from
one race to another. Further, on the social side, there have been
complete changes rather than modifications, and these were more or less
far-reaching, as the groups that successively held the chief power were
more or less different. While the north of France was the preponderating
element in national politics, feudalism—or rather a degenerate parody of
feudalism—maintained itself with fair success; and the municipal spirit
followed its fortunes. After the expulsion of the English, in the
fifteenth century, and the restoration of national independence under
Charles VII, the central provinces, which had taken the chief part in
this revolution and were far less Germanic in race than the districts
beyond the Loire, naturally saw their Gallo-Roman blood predominant in
the camp and the council-chamber. They combined the taste for military
life and foreign conquest—the heritage of the Celtic race—with the love
of authority that was innate in their Roman blood; and they turned the
current of national feeling in this direction. During the sixteenth
century they largely prepared the ground on which, in 1599, the
Aquitanian supporters of Henry IV, less Celtic though still more Roman
than themselves, laid the foundation stone of another and greater
edifice of absolute power. When Paris, whose population is certainly a
museum of the most varied ethnological specimens, had finally gained
dominion over the rest of France owing to the centralizing policy
favoured by the Southern character, it had no longer any reason to love,
respect, or understand any particular tendency or tradition. This great
capital, this Tower of Babel, broke with the past—the past of Flanders,
Poitou, and Languedoc—and dragged the whole of France into ceaseless
experiments with doctrines that were quite out of harmony with its
ancient customs.

We cannot therefore admit that institutions make peoples what they are
in cases where the peoples themselves have invented the institutions.
But may we say the same of the second hypothesis, which deals with cases
where a nation receives its code from the hands of foreigners powerful
enough to enforce their will, whether the people like it or not?

There are a few cases of such attempts; but I confess I cannot find any
which have been carried out on a great scale by governments of real
political genius in ancient or modern times. Their wisdom has never been
used to change the actual foundations of any great national system. The
Romans were too clever to try such dangerous experiments. Alexander the
Great had never done so; and the successors of Augustus, like the
conqueror of Darius, were content to rule over a vast mosaic of nations,
all of which clung to their own customs, habits, laws, and methods of
government. So long as they and their fellow-subjects remained racially
the same, they were controlled by their rulers only in matters of
taxation and military defence.

There is, however, one point that must not be passed over. Many of the
peoples subdued by the Romans had certain features in their codes so
outrageous that their existence could not be tolerated by Roman
sentiment; for example, the human sacrifices of the Druids, which were
visited with the severest penalties. Well, the Romans, for all their
power, never succeeded in completely stamping out these barbarous rites.
In Narbonese Gaul the victory was easy, as the native population had
been almost entirely replaced by Roman colonists. But in the centre,
where the tribes were wilder, the resistance was more obstinate; and in
the Breton Peninsula, where settlers from England in the fourth century
brought back the ancient customs with the ancient blood, the people
continued, from mere feelings of patriotism and love of tradition, to
cut men’s throats on their altars as often as they dared. The strictest
supervision did not succeed in taking the sacred knife and torch out of
their hands. Every revolt began by restoring this terrible feature of
the national cult; and Christianity, still panting with rage after its
victory over an immoral polytheism, hurled itself with shuddering horror
against the still more hideous superstitions of the Armorici. It
destroyed them only after a long struggle; for as late as the
seventeenth century shipwrecked sailors were massacred and wrecks
plundered in all the parishes on the seaboard where the Cymric blood had
kept its purity. These barbarous customs were in accordance with the
irresistible instincts of a race which had not yet become sufficiently
mixed, and so had seen no reason to change its ways.

It is, however, in modern times especially that we find examples of
institutions imposed by a conqueror and not accepted by his subjects.
Intolerance is one of the chief notes of European civilization.
Conscious of its own power and greatness, it finds itself confronted
either by different civilizations or by peoples in a state of barbarism.
It treats both kinds with equal contempt; and as it sees obstacles to
its own progress in everything that is different from itself, it is apt
to demand a complete change in its subjects’ point of view. The
Spaniards, however, the English, the Dutch, and even the French, did not
venture to push their innovating tendencies too far, when the conquered
peoples were at all considerable in number. In this they copied the
moderation that was forced on the conquerors of antiquity. The East, and
North and West Africa, show clear proof that the most enlightened
nations cannot set up institutions unsuited to the character of their
subjects. I have already mentioned that British India lives its ancient
life, under its own immemorial laws. The Javanese have lost all
political independence, but are very far from accepting any institutions
like those of the Netherlands. They continue to live bound as they lived
free; and since the sixteenth century, when Europe first turned her face
towards the East, we cannot find the least trace of any moral influence
exerted by her, even in the case of the peoples she has most completely
conquered.

Not all these, however, have been so numerous as to force self-control
on their European masters. In some cases the persuasive tongue has been
backed by the stern argument of the sword. The order has gone forth to
abolish existing customs, and put in their place others which the
masters knew to be good and useful. Has the attempt ever succeeded?

America provides us with the richest field for gathering answers to this
question. In the South, the Spaniards reigned without check, and to what
end? They uprooted the ancient empires, but brought no light. They
founded no race like themselves.

In the North the methods were different, but the results just as
negative. In fact, they have been still more unfruitful, still more
disastrous from the point of view of humanity. The Spanish Indians, are,
at any rate, extremely prolific,[18] and have even transformed the blood
of their conquerors, who have now dropped to their level. But the
Redskins of the United States have withered at the touch of the
Anglo-Saxon energy. The few who remain are growing less every day; and
those few are as uncivilized, and as incapable of civilization, as their
forefathers.

In Oceania, the facts point to the same conclusions; the natives are
dying out everywhere. We sometimes manage to take away their arms, and
prevent them from doing harm; but we do not change their nature.
Wherever the European rules, they drink brandy instead of eating each
other. This is the only new custom which our active minds have been
quite successful in imposing; it does not mark a great step in advance.

There are in the world two Governments formed on European models by
peoples different from us in race; one in the Sandwich Islands, the
other at San Domingo. A short sketch of these two Governments will be
enough to show the impotence of all attempts to set up institutions
which are not suggested by the national character.

In the Sandwich Islands the representative system is to be seen in all
its majesty. There is a House of Lords, a House of Commons, an executive
Ministry, a reigning King; nothing is wanting. But all this is mere
ornament. The real motive power that keeps the machine going is a body
of Protestant missionaries. Without them, King, Lords, and Commons would
not know which way to turn, and would soon cease to turn at all. To the
missionaries alone belongs the credit of furnishing the ideas, of
putting them into a palatable form, and imposing them on the people;
they do this either by the influence they exert on their neophytes, or,
in the last resort, by threats. Even so, I rather think that if the
missionaries had nothing but King and Parliament to work with, they
might struggle for a time with the stupidity of their scholars, but
would be forced in the end to take themselves a large and prominent part
in the management of affairs. This would show their hand too obviously;
and so they avoid it by appointing a ministry that consists simply of
men of European race. The whole business is thus a matter of agreement
between the Protestant mission and its nominees; the rest is merely for
show.

As to the King, Kamehameha III, he appears to be a prince of
considerable parts. He has given up tattooing his face, and although he
has not yet converted all the courtiers to his views, he already
experiences the well-earned satisfaction of seeing nothing on their
faces and cheeks but chaste designs, traced in thin outline. The bulk of
the nation, the landed nobility and the townspeople, cling, in this and
other respects, to their old ideas. The European population of the
Sandwich Islands is, however, swollen every day by new arrivals. There
are many reasons for this. The short distance separating the Hawaiian
Kingdom from California makes it a very interesting focus for the
clear-sighted energy of the white race. Deserters from the whaling
vessels or mutinous sailors are not the only colonists; merchants,
speculators, adventurers of all kinds, flock to the islands, build
houses, and settle down. The native race is gradually tending to mix
with the invaders and disappear. I am not sure that the present
representative and independent system of administration will not soon
give place to an ordinary government of delegates, controlled by some
great power. But of this I am certain, that the institutions that are
brought in will end by establishing themselves firmly, and the first day
of their triumph will necessarily be the last for the natives.

At San Domingo the independence is complete. There are no missionaries
to exert a veiled and absolute power, no foreign ministry to carry out
European ideas; everything is left to the inspiration of the people
itself. Its Spanish part consists of mulattoes, of whom I need say
nothing. They seem to imitate, well or badly, all that is most easily
grasped in our civilization. They tend, like all hybrids, to identify
themselves with the more creditable of the races to which they belong.
Thus they are capable, to a certain extent, of reproducing our customs.
It is not among them that we must study the question in its essence. Let
us cross the mountains that separate the Republic of San Domingo from
the State of Hayti.

We find a society of which the institutions are not only parallel to our
own, but are derived from the latest pronouncements of our political
wisdom. All that the most enlightened liberalism has proclaimed for the
last sixty years in the deliberative assemblies of Europe, all that has
been written by the most enthusiastic champions of man’s dignity and
independence, all the declarations of rights and principles—these have
all found their echo on the banks of the Artibonite. Nothing African has
remained in the statute law. All memories of the land of Ham have been
officially expunged from men’s minds. The State language has never shown
a trace of African influence. The institutions, as I said before, are
completely European. Let us consider how they harmonize with the manners
of the people.

We are in a different world at once. The manners are as depraved,
brutal, and savage as in Dahomey or among the Fellatahs.[19] There is
the same barbaric love of finery coupled with the same indifference to
form. Beauty consists in colour, and so long as a garment is of flaming
red and edged with tinsel, the owner does not trouble about its being
largely in holes. The question of cleanliness never enters anyone’s
head. If you wish to approach a high official in this country, you find
yourself being introduced to a gigantic negro lying on his back, on a
wooden bench. His head is enveloped in a torn and dirty handkerchief,
surmounted by a cocked hat, all over gold lace. An immense sword hangs
from his shapeless body. His embroidered coat lacks the final perfection
of a waistcoat. Our general’s feet are cased in carpet slippers. Do you
wish to question him, to penetrate his mind, and learn the nature of the
ideas he is revolving there? You will find him as uncultured as a
savage, and his bestial self-satisfaction is only equalled by his
profound and incurable laziness. If he deigns to open his mouth, he will
roll you out all the commonplaces which the newspapers have been
inflicting on us for the last half-century. The barbarian knows them all
by heart. He has other interests, of course, and very different
interests; but no other ideas. He speaks like Baron Holbach, argues like
Monsieur de Grimm, and has ultimately no serious preoccupation except
chewing tobacco, drinking alcohol, disembowelling his enemies, and
conciliating his sorcerers. The rest of the time he sleeps.

The State is divided among two factions. These are separated from each
other by a certain incompatibility, not of political theory, but of
skin. The mulattoes are on one side, the negroes on the other. The
former have certainly more intelligence and are more open to ideas. As I
have already remarked in the case of San Domingo, the European blood has
modified the African character. If these men were set in the midst of a
large white population, and so had good models constantly before their
eyes, they might become quite useful citizens. Unfortunately the negroes
are for the time being superior in strength and numbers. Although their
racial memory of Africa has its origin, in many cases, as far back as
their grandfathers, they are still completely under the sway of African
ideals. Their greatest pleasure is idleness; their most cogent argument
is murder. The most intense hatred has always existed between the two
parties in the island. The history of Hayti, of democratic Hayti, is
merely a long series of massacres; massacres of mulattoes by negroes, or
of negroes by mulattoes, according as the one or the other held the
reins of power. The constitution, however enlightened it may pretend to
be, has no influence whatever. It sleeps harmlessly upon the paper on
which it is written. The power that reigns unchecked is the true spirit
of these peoples. According to the natural law already mentioned, the
black race, belonging as it does to a branch of the human family that is
incapable of civilization, cherishes the deepest feelings of repulsion
towards all the others. Thus we see the negroes of Hayti violently
driving out the whites and forbidding them to enter their territory.
They would like to exclude even the mulattoes; and they aim at their
extermination. Hatred of the foreigner is the mainspring of local
politics. Owing, further, to the innate laziness of the race,
agriculture is abolished, industry is not even mentioned, commerce
becomes less every day. The hideous increase of misery prevents the
growth of population, which is actually being diminished by the
continual wars, revolts, and military executions. The inevitable result
is not far off. A country of which the fertility and natural resources
used to enrich generation after generation of planters will become a
desert; and the wild goat will roam alone over the fruitful plains, the
magnificent valleys, the sublime mountains, of the Queen of the
Antilles.[20]

Let us suppose for a moment that the peoples of this unhappy island
could manage to live in accordance with the spirit of their several
races. In such a case they would not be influenced, and so (of course)
overshadowed by foreign theories, but would found their society in free
obedience to their own instincts. A separation between the two colours
would take place, more or less spontaneously, though certainly not
without some acts of violence.

The mulattoes would settle on the seaboard, in order to keep continually
in touch with Europeans. This is their chief wish. Under European
direction they would become merchants (and especially money-brokers),
lawyers, and physicians. They would tighten the links with the higher
elements of their race by a continual crossing of blood; they would be
gradually improved and lose their African character in the same
proportion as their African blood.

The negroes would withdraw to the interior and form small societies like
those of the runaway slaves in San Domingo itself, in Martinique,
Jamaica, and especially in Cuba, where the size of the country and the
depth of the forests baffle all pursuit. Amid the varied and tropical
vegetation of the Antilles, the American negro would find the
necessities of life yielded him in abundance and without labour by the
fruitful earth. He would return quite freely to the despotic,
patriarchal system that is naturally suited to those of his brethren on
whom the conquering Mussulmans of Africa have not yet laid their yoke.
The love of isolation would be at once the cause and the result of his
institutions. Tribes would be formed, and become, at the end of a short
time, foreign and hostile to each other. Local wars would constitute the
sole political history of the different cantons; and the island, though
it would be wild, thinly peopled, and ill-cultivated, would yet maintain
a double population. This is now condemned to disappear, owing to the
fatal influence wielded by laws and institutions that have no relation
to the mind of the negro, his interests, and his wants.

The examples of San Domingo and the Sandwich Islands are conclusive. But
I cannot leave this part of my subject without touching on a similar
instance, of a peculiar character, which strongly supports my view. I
cited first a State where the institutions, imposed by Protestant
preachers, are a mere childish copy of the British system. I then spoke
of a government, materially free, but spiritually bound by European
theories; which it tries to carry out, with fatal consequences for the
unhappy population. I will now bring forward an instance of quite a
different kind; I mean the attempt of the Jesuits to civilize the
natives of Paraguay.[21]

These missionaries have been universally praised for their fine courage
and lofty intelligence. The bitterest enemies of the Order have not been
able to withhold a warm tribute of admiration for them. If any
institutions imposed on a nation from without ever had a chance of
success, it was certainly those of the Jesuits, based as they were on a
powerful religious sentiment, and supported by all the links of
association that could be devised by an exact and subtle knowledge of
human nature. The Fathers were persuaded, as so many others have been,
that barbarism occupies the same place in the life of peoples as infancy
does in the life of a man; and that the more rudeness and savagery a
nation shows, the younger it really is.

In order, then, to bring their neophytes to the adult stage, they
treated them like children, and gave them a despotic government, which
was as unyielding in its real aims, as it was mild and gracious in its
outward appearance. The savage tribes of America have, as a rule,
democratic tendencies; monarchy and aristocracy are rarely seen among
them, and then only in a very limited form. The natural character of the
Guaranis, among whom the Jesuits came, did not differ in this respect
from that of the other tribes. Happily, however, their intelligence was
relatively higher, and their ferocity perhaps a little less, than was
the case with most of their neighbours; they had, too, in some degree,
the power of conceiving new needs. About a hundred and twenty thousand
souls were collected together in the mission villages, under the control
of the Fathers. All that experience, unremitting study, and the living
spirit of charity had taught the Jesuits, was now drawn upon; they made
untiring efforts to secure a quick, though lasting, success. In spite of
all their care, they found that their absolute power was not sufficient
to keep their scholars on the right road, and they had frequent proofs
of the want of solidity in the whole structure.

The proof was complete, when in an evil hour the edict of the Count of
Aranda ended the reign of piety and intelligence in Paraguay. The
Guaranis, deprived of their spiritual guides, refused to trust the
laymen set over them by the Crown of Spain. They showed no attachment to
their new institutions. They felt once more the call of the savage life,
and to-day, with the exception of thirty-seven straggling little
villages on the banks of the Parana, the Paraguay, and the
Uruguay—villages in which the population is, no doubt, partly hybrid—the
rest of the tribes have returned to the woods, and live there in just as
wild a state as the western tribes of the same stock, Guaranis and
Cirionos. I do not say that they keep all the old customs in their
original form, but at any rate their present ones show an attempt to
revive the ancient practices, and are directly descended from them; for
no human race can be unfaithful to its instincts, and leave the path
that has been marked out for it by God. We may believe that if the
Jesuits had continued to direct their missions in Paraguay, their
efforts would, in the course of time, have had better results. I admit
it; but, in accordance with our universal law, this could only have
happened on one condition—that a series of European settlements should
have been gradually made in the country under the protection of the
Jesuits. These settlers would have mingled with the natives, have first
modified and then completely changed their blood. A State would have
arisen, bearing perhaps a native name and boasting that it had sprung
from the soil; but it would actually have been as European as its own
institutions.

This is the end of my argument as to the relation between institutions
and races.

CHAPTER VI
NATIONS, WHETHER PROGRESSING OR STAGNATING, ARE INDEPENDENT OF THE
REGIONS IN WHICH THEY LIVE

I must now consider whether the development of peoples is affected (as
many writers have asserted) by climate, soil, or geographical situation.
And although I have briefly touched on this point in speaking of
environment,[22] I should be leaving a real gap in my theory if I did
not discuss it more thoroughly.

Suppose that a nation lives in a temperate climate, which is not hot
enough to sap its energies, or cold enough to make the soil
unproductive; that its territory contains large rivers, wide roads
suitable for traffic, plains and valleys capable of varied cultivation,
and mountains filled with rich veins of ore—we are usually led to
believe that a nation so favoured by nature will be quick to leave the
stage of barbarism, and will pass, with no difficulty, to that of
civilization.[23] We are just as ready to admit, as a corollary, that
the tribes which are burnt by the sun or numbed by the eternal ice will
be much more liable to remain in a savage state, living as they do on
nothing but barren rocks. It goes without saying, that on this
hypothesis, mankind is capable of perfection only by the help of
material nature, and that its value and greatness exist potentially
outside itself. This view may seem attractive at first sight, but it has
no support whatever from the facts of observation.

Nowhere is the soil more fertile, the climate milder, than in certain
parts of America. There is an abundance of great rivers. The gulfs, the
bays, the harbours, are large, deep, magnificent, and innumerable.
Precious metals can be dug out almost at the surface of the ground. The
vegetable world yields in abundance, and almost of its own accord, the
necessaries of life in the most varied forms; while the animals, most of
which are good for food, are a still more valuable source of wealth. And
yet the greater part of this happy land has been occupied, for
centuries, by peoples who have not succeeded, to the slightest extent,
in exploiting their treasures.

Some have started on the road to improvement. In more than one place we
come upon an attenuated kind of culture, a rudimentary attempt to
extract the minerals. The traveller may still, to his surprise, find a
few useful arts being practised with a certain ingenuity. But all these
efforts are very humble and uncoordinated; they are certainly not the
beginnings of any definite civilization. In the vast territory between
Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico, the River Missouri and the Rocky
Mountains,[24] there certainly existed, in remote ages, a nation which
has left remarkable traces of its presence. The remains of buildings,
the inscriptions engraved on rocks, the tumuli,[25] the mummies, show
that it had reached an advanced state of mental culture. But there is
nothing to prove a very close kinship between this mysterious people and
the tribes that now wander over its tombs. Suppose, if you will, that
there was some relation between them, whether by way of blood or of
slavery, and that thus the natives of to-day did learn from the ancient
lords of the country, the first rudiments of the arts they practise so
imperfectly; this only makes us wonder the more that they should have
found it impossible to carry any further what they had been taught. In
fact, this would supply one more reason for my belief that not every
people would be capable of civilization, even if it chose the most
favoured spot on earth as its settlement.

Indeed, civilization is quite independent of climate and soil, and their
adaptability to man’s wants. India and Egypt are both countries which
have had to be artificially fertilized;[26] yet they are famous centres
of human culture and development. In China, certain regions are
naturally fertile; but others have needed great labour to fit them for
cultivation. Chinese history begins with the conquest of the rivers. The
first benefits conferred by the ancient Emperors were the opening of
canals and the draining of marshes. In the country between the Euphrates
and the Tigris, that beheld the splendour of the first Assyrian empire,
and is the majestic scene of our most sacred recollections—in this
region, where wheat is said to grow of its own accord,[27] the soil is
naturally so unproductive that vast works of irrigation, carried out in
the teeth of every difficulty, have been needed to make it a fit abode
for man. Now that the canals are destroyed or filled up, sterility has
resumed its ancient reign. I am therefore inclined to believe that
nature did not favour these regions as much as we are apt to think. But
I will not discuss the point. I will grant, if you like, that China,
Egypt, India, and Assyria, contained all the conditions of prosperity,
and were eminently suited for the founding of powerful empires and the
development of great civilizations. But, we must also admit, these
conditions were of such a kind that, in order to receive any benefit
from them the inhabitants must have reached beforehand, by other means,
a high stage of social culture. Thus, for the commerce to be able to
make use of the great waterways, manufactures, or at any rate
agriculture, must have already existed; again, neighbouring peoples
would not have been attracted to these great centres before towns and
markets had grown up and prospered. Thus the great natural advantages of
China, India, and Assyria, imply not only a considerable mental power on
the part of the nations that profited by them, but even a civilization
going back beyond the day when these advantages began to be exploited.
We will now leave these specially favoured regions, and consider others.

When the Phœnicians, in the course of their migration, left Tylos, or
some other island in the south-east, and settled in a portion of Syria,
what did they find in their new home? A desert and rocky coast, forming
a narrow strip of land between the sea and a range of cliffs that seemed
to be cursed with everlasting barrenness. There was no room for
expansion in such a place, for the girdle of mountains was unbroken on
all sides. And yet this wretched country, which should have been a
prison, became, thanks to the industry of its inhabitants, a crown
studded with temples and palaces. The Phœnicians, who seemed for ever
condemned to be a set of fish-eating barbarians, or at most a miserable
crew of pirates, were, as a fact, pirates on a grand scale; they were
also clever and enterprising merchants, bold and lucky speculators.
“Yes,” it may be objected, “necessity is the mother of invention; if the
founders of Tyre and Sidon had settled in the plains of Damascus, they
would have been content to live by agriculture, and would probably have
never become a famous nation. Misery sharpened their wits, and awakened
their genius.”

Then why does it not awaken the genius of all the tribes of Africa,
America, and Oceania, who find themselves in a similar condition? The
Kabyles of Morocco are an ancient race; they have certainly had a long
time for reflection, and, what is more striking still, have had every
reason to imitate the customs of their betters; why then have they never
thought of a more fruitful way of alleviating their wretchedness than
mere brigandage on the high seas? Why, in the Indian archipelago, which
seems created for trade, and in the Pacific islands, where
intercommunication is so easy, are nearly all the commercial advantages
in the hands of foreigners—Chinese, Malays, and Arabs? And where
half-caste natives or other mixed races have been able to share in these
advantages, why has the trade at once fallen off? Why is the internal
exchange of commodities carried on more and more by elementary methods
of barter? The fact is, that for a commercial state to be established on
any coast or island, something more is necessary than an open sea, and
the pressure exerted by the barrenness of the land—something more, even,
than the lessons learned from the experience of others; the native of
the coast or the island must be gifted with the special talent that
alone can lead him to profit by the tools that lie to his hand, and
alone can point him the road to success.

It is not enough to show that a nation’s value in the scale of
civilization does not come from the fertility—or, to be more precise,
the infertility—of the country where it happens to live. I must also
prove that this value is quite independent of all the material
conditions of environment. For example, the Armenians, shut up in their
mountains—the same mountains where, for generations, so many other
peoples have lived and died in barbarism—had already reached a high
stage of civilization in a very remote age. Yet their country was almost
entirely cut off from others; it had no communication with the sea, and
could boast of no great fertility.

The Jews were in a similar position. They were surrounded by tribes
speaking the dialects of a language cognate with their own, and for the
most part closely connected with them in race; yet they outdistanced all
these tribes. They became warriors, farmers, and traders. Their method
of government was extremely complicated; it was a mixture of monarchy
and theocracy, of patriarchal and democratic rule (this last being
represented by the assemblies and the prophets), all in a curious
equilibrium. Under this government they lived through long ages of
prosperity and glory, and by a scientific system of emigration they
conquered the difficulties that were put in the way of their expansion
by the narrow limits of their territory. And what kind of territory was
it? Modern travellers know what an amount of organized effort was
required from the Israelite farmers, in order to keep up its artificial
fertility. Since the chosen race ceased to dwell in the mountains and
the plains of Palestine, the well where Jacob’s flocks came down to
drink has been filled up with sand, Naboth’s vineyard has been invaded
by the desert, and the bramble flourishes in the place where stood the
palace of Ahab. And what did the Jews become, in this miserable corner
of the earth? They became a people that succeeded in everything it
undertook, a free, strong, and intelligent people, and one which, before
it lost, sword in hand, the name of an independent nation, had given as
many learned men to the world as it had merchants.[28]

The Greeks themselves could not wholly congratulate themselves on their
geographical position. Their country was a wretched one, for the most
part. Arcadia was beloved of shepherds, Bœotia claimed to be dear to
Demeter and Triptolemus; but Arcadia and Bœotia play a very minor part
in Greek history. The rich and brilliant Corinth itself, favoured by
Plutus and Aphrodite, is in this respect only in the second rank. To
which city belongs the chief glory? To Athens, where the fields and
olive-groves were perpetually covered with grey dust, and where statues
and books were the main articles of commerce; to Sparta also, a city
buried in a narrow valley, at the foot of a mass of rocks which Victory
had to cross to find her out.

And what of the miserable quarter of Latium that was chosen for the
foundation of Rome? The little river Tiber, on whose banks it lay,
flowed down to an almost unknown coast, that no Greek or Phœnician ship
had ever touched, save by chance; was it through her situation that Rome
became the mistress of the world? No sooner did the whole world lie at
the feet of the Roman eagles, than the central government found that its
capital was ill-placed; and the long series of insults to the eternal
city began. The early emperors had their eyes turned towards Greece, and
nearly always lived there. When Tiberius was in Italy he stayed at
Capri, a point facing the two halves of the empire. His successors went
to Antioch. Some of them, in view of the importance of Gaul, went as far
north as Treves. Finally, an edict took away even the title of chief
city from Rome and conferred it on Milan. If the Romans made some stir
in the world, it was certainly in spite of the position of the district
from which their first armies issued forth.

Coming down to modern history I am overwhelmed by the multitude of facts
that support my theory. I see prosperity suddenly leaving the
Mediterranean coasts, a clear proof that it was not inseparably attached
to them. The great commercial cities of the Middle Ages grew up in
places where no political philosopher of an earlier time would have
thought of founding them. Novgorod rose in the midst of an ice-bound
land; Bremen on a coast almost as cold. The Hanseatic towns in the
centre of Germany were built in regions plunged, as it seemed, in
immemorial slumber. Venice emerged from a deep gulf in the Adriatic. The
balance of political power was shifted to places scarcely heard of
before, but now gleaming with a new splendour. In France the whole
strength was concentrated to the north of the Loire, almost beyond the
Seine. Lyons, Toulouse, Narbonne, Marseilles, and Bordeaux fell from the
high dignity to which they had been called by the Romans. It was Paris
that became the important city, Paris, which was too far from the sea
for purposes of trade, and which would soon prove too near to escape the
invasions of the Norman pirates. In Italy, towns formerly of the lowest
rank became greater than the city of the Popes. Ravenna rose from its
marshes, Amalfi began its long career of power. Chance, I may remark,
had no part in these changes, which can all be explained by the
presence, at the given point, of a victorious or powerful race. In other
words, a nation does not derive its value from its position; it never
has and never will. On the contrary, it is the people which has always
given—and always will give—to the land its moral, economic, and
political value.

I add, for the sake of clearness, that I have no wish to deny the
importance of geographical position for certain towns, whether they are
trade-centres, ports, or capitals. The arguments that have been brought
forward,[29] in the case of Constantinople and especially of Alexandria,
are indisputable. There certainly exist different points which we may
call “the keys of the earth.” Thus we may imagine that when the isthmus
of Panama is pierced, the power holding the town that is yet to be built
on the hypothetical canal, might play a great part in the history of the
world. But this part will be played well, badly, or even not at all,
according to the intrinsic excellence of the people in question. Make
Chagres into a large city, let the two seas meet under its walls, and
assume that you are free to fill it with what settlers you will. Your
choice will finally determine the future of the new town. Suppose that
Chagres is not exactly in the best position to develop all the
advantages coming from the junction of the two oceans; then, if the race
is really worthy of its high calling, it will remove to some other place
where it may in perfect freedom work out its splendid destiny.[30]

CHAPTER VII
CHRISTIANITY NEITHER CREATES NOR CHANGES THE CAPACITY FOR CIVILIZATION

After my arguments on the subject of institutions and climates, I come
to another, which I should really have put before all the rest; not that
I think it stronger than they are, but because the facts on which it is
based naturally command our reverence. If my conclusions in the
preceding chapters are admitted, two points become increasingly evident:
first, that most human races are for ever incapable of civilization, so
long as they remain unmixed; secondly, that such races are not only
without the inner impulse necessary to start them on the path of
improvement, but also that no external force, however energetic in other
respects, is powerful enough to turn their congenital barrenness into
fertility. Here we shall be asked, no doubt, whether the light of
Christianity is to shine in vain on entire nations, and whether some
peoples are doomed never to behold it at all.

Some writers have answered in the affirmative. They have not scrupled to
contradict the promise of the Gospel, by denying the most characteristic
feature of the new law, which is precisely that of being accessible to
all men. Their view merely restates the old formula of the Hebrews, to
which it returns by a little larger gate than that of the Old Covenant;
but it returns all the same. I have no desire to follow the champions of
this idea, which is condemned by the Church, nor have I the least
difficulty in admitting that all human races are gifted with an equal
capacity for being received into the bosom of the Christian Communion.
Here there is no impediment arising from any original difference between
races; for this purpose their inequalities are of no account. Religions
and their followers are not, as has been assumed, distributed in zones
over the surface of the earth. It is not true that Christianity must
rule from this meridian to that, while from such and such a point Islam
takes up the sceptre, holding it only as far as a certain impassable
frontier, and then having to deliver it into the hands of Buddhism or
Brahmanism, while the fetichists of the tribe of Ham divide among
themselves the rest of the world.

Christians are found in all latitudes and all climates. Statistics,
inaccurate perhaps, but still approximately true, show us a vast number
of them, Mongols wandering in the plains of Upper Asia, savages hunting
on the tableland of the Cordilleras, Eskimos fishing in the ice of the
Arctic circle, even Chinese and Japanese dying under the scourge of the
persecutor. The least observation will show this, and will also prevent
us from falling into the very common error of confusing the universal
power of recognizing the truths of Christianity and following its
precepts, with the very different faculty that leads one human race, and
not another, to understand the earthly conditions of social improvement,
and to be able to pass from one rung of the ladder to another, so as to
reach finally the state which we call _civilization_. The rungs of this
ladder are the measure of the inequality of human races.

It was held, quite wrongly, in the last century, that the doctrine of
renunciation, a corner-stone of Christianity, was essentially opposed to
social development; and that people to whom the highest virtue consists
in despising the things here below, and in turning their eyes and
hearts, without ceasing, towards the heavenly Jerusalem, will not do
much to help the progress of this world. The very imperfection of man
may serve to rebut such an argument. There has never been any serious
reason to fear that he will renounce the joys of earth; and though the
counsels of religion were expressly directed to this point, we may say
that they were pulling against a current that they knew to be
irresistible, and were merely demanding a great deal in order to obtain
a very little. Further, the Christian precepts are a great aid to
society; they plane away all roughness, they pour the oil of charity on
all social relations, they condemn violence, force men to appeal to the
sole authority of reason, and so gain for the spirit a plenitude of
power which works in a thousand ways for the good of the flesh. Again,
religion elevates the mind by the metaphysical and intellectual
character of its dogmas, while through the purity of its moral ideal it
tends to free the spirit from a host of corrosive vices and weaknesses,
which are dangerous to material progress. Thus, as against the
philosophers of the eighteenth century, we are right in calling
Christianity a civilizing power—but only within certain limits; if we
take the words in too wide a sense, we shall find ourselves drawn into a
maze of error.

Christianity is a civilizing force in so far as it makes a man better
minded and better mannered; yet it is only indirectly so, for it has no
idea of applying this improvement in morals and intelligence to the
perishable things of this world, and it is always content with the
social conditions in which it finds its neophytes, however imperfect the
conditions may be. So long as it can pull out the noxious weeds that
stifle the well-being of the soul, it is indifferent to everything else.
It leaves all men as it finds them—the Chinese in his robes, the Eskimo
in his furs, the first eating rice, and the second eating whale-blubber.
It does not require them to change their way of life. If their state can
be improved as a direct consequence of their conversion, then
Christianity will certainly do its best to bring such an improvement
about; but it will not try to alter a single custom, and certainly will
not force any advance from one civilization to another, for it has not
yet adopted one itself. It uses all civilizations and is above all.
There are proofs in abundance, and I will speak of them in a moment; but
I must first make the confession that I have never understood the
ultra-modern doctrine which identifies the law of Christ and the
interests of this world in such a way that it creates from their union a
fictitious social order which it calls “Christian civilization.”

There is certainly such a thing as a pagan civilization, just as there
is a Brahman, Buddhist, or Jewish civilization. Societies have existed,
and still exist, which are absolutely based on religion. Religion has
given them their constitution, drawn up their laws, settled their civic
duties, marked out their frontiers, and prescribed their foreign policy.
Such societies have only been able to persist by placing themselves
under a more or less strict theocracy. We can no more imagine their
living without their rites and creeds than we can imagine the rites and
creeds existing by themselves, without the people. The whole of
antiquity was more or less in this condition. Roman statesmanship
certainly invented the legal tolerance of creeds, and a decadent
theology produced a vast system of fusion and assimilation of cults; but
these belonged to the latest age of paganism, when the fruit was already
rotten on the tree. While it was young and flourishing, there were as
many Jupiters, Mercuries, and Venuses, as there were towns. The god was
a jealous god, in a sense quite different from the jealousy of the
Jewish God; he was still more exclusive, and recognized no one but his
fellow-citizens in this world and the next. Every ancient civilization
rose to greatness under the ægis of some divinity, of some particular
cult. Religion and the State were united so closely and inseparably that
the responsibility for all that happened was shared between them. We may
speak, if we will, of “finding traces of the cult of the Tyrian Heracles
in the public policy of Carthage”; but I think that we can really
identify the effects of the doctrines taught by the priests with the
policy of the suffetes and the trend of social development. Again, I
have no doubt that the dog-headed Anubis, Isis Neith, and the Ibises
taught the men of the Nile valley all that they knew and practised.
Christianity, however, acted in this respect quite differently from all
preceding religions; this was its greatest innovation. Unlike them, it
had no chosen people. It was addressed to the whole world, not only to
the rich or the poor. From the first it received from the Holy Ghost the
gift of tongues,[31] that it might speak to each man in the language of
his country, and proclaim the Gospel by means of the ideas and images
that each nation could best understand. It did not come to change the
outward part of man, the material world; it taught him to despise this
outward part, and was only concerned with his inner self. We read in a
very ancient apocryphal book, “Let not the strong man boast of his
strength, nor the rich man of his riches; but let him who will be
glorified glorify himself in the Lord.”[32] Strength, riches, worldly
power, and the way of ambition—all these have no meaning for our law. No
civilization whatever has excited its envy or contempt; and because of
this rare impartiality, and the consequences that were to flow from it,
the law could rightly call itself “Catholic,” or universal. It does not
belong exclusively to any civilization. It did not come to bless any one
form of earthly existence; it rejects none, and would purify all.

The canonical books, the writings of the Fathers, the stories of the
missionaries of all ages, are filled with proofs of this indifference to
the outward forms of social life, and to social life itself. Provided
that a man believes, and that none of his daily actions tend to
transgress the ordinances of religion, nothing else matters. Of what
importance is the shape of a Christian’s house, the cut and material of
his clothes, his system of government, the measure of tyranny or liberty
in his public institutions? He may be a fisherman, a hunter, a
ploughman, a sailor, a soldier—whatever you like. In all these different
employments is there anything to prevent a man—to whatever nation he
belong, English, Turkish, Siberian, American, Hottentot—from receiving
the light of the Christian faith? Absolutely nothing; and when this
result is attained, the rest counts for very little. The savage Galla
can remain a Galla, and yet become as staunch a believer, as pure a
“vessel of election,” as the holiest prelate in Europe. It is here that
Christianity shows its striking superiority to other religions, in its
peculiar quality of _grace_. We must not take this away, in deference to
a favourite idea of modern Europe, that something of material utility
must be found everywhere, even in the holiest things.

During the eighteen centuries that the Church has existed, it has
converted many nations. In all these it has allowed the political
conditions to reign unchecked, just as it found them at first. It began
by protesting to the world of antiquity that it did not wish to alter in
the slightest degree the outward forms of society. It has been even
reproached, on occasion, with an excess of tolerance in this respect;
compare, for example, the attitude of the Jesuits towards the Chinese
ceremonies. We do not, however, find that Christianity has ever given
the world a unique type of civilization to which all believers had to
belong. The Church adapts itself to everything, even to the mud-hut; and
wherever there is a savage too stupid even to understand the use of
shelter, you are sure to find a devoted missionary sitting beside him on
the hard rock, and thinking of nothing but how to impress his soul with
the ideas essential to salvation. Christianity is thus not a civilizing
power in the ordinary sense of the word; it can be embraced by the most
different races without stunting their growth, or making demands on them
that they cannot fulfil.

I said above that Christianity elevates the soul by the sublimity of its
dogmas, and enlarges the intellect by their subtlety. This is only true
in so far as the soul and intellect to which it appeals are capable of
being enlarged and elevated. Its mission is not to bestow the gift of
genius, or to provide ideas for those who are without them. Neither
genius nor ideas are necessary for salvation. Indeed the Church has
expressly declared that it prefers the weak and lowly to the strong. It
gives only what it wishes to receive. It fertilizes but does not create.
It supports but does not lift on high. It takes the man as he is, and
merely helps him to walk. If he is lame, it does not ask him to run.

If I open the “Lives of the Saints,” shall I find many wise men among
them? Certainly not. The company of the blessed ones whose name and
memory are honoured by the Church consists mainly of those who were
eminent for their virtue and devotion; but, though full of genius in all
that concerned heaven, they had none for the things of earth. When I see
St. Rosa of Lima honoured equally with St. Bernard, the intercession of
St. Zita valued no less than that of St. Teresa; when I see all the
Anglo-Saxon saints, most of the Irish monks, the unsavoury hermits of
the Egyptian Thebaid, the legions of martyrs who sprang from the dregs
of the people and whom a sudden flash of courage and devotion raised to
shine eternally in glory—when I see all these venerated to the same
extent as the cleverest apologists of dogma, as the wisest champions of
the faith, then I find myself justified in my conclusion that
Christianity is not a civilizing power, in the narrow and worldly sense
of the phrase. Just as it merely asks of every man what he has himself
received, so it asks nothing of any race but what it is capable of
giving, and does not set it in a higher place among the civilized races
of the earth than its natural powers give it a right to expect. Hence I
absolutely deny the egalitarian argument which identifies the
possibility of adopting the Christian faith with that of an unlimited
intellectual growth. Most of the tribes of South America were received
centuries ago into the bosom of the Church; but they have always
remained savages, with no understanding of the European civilization
unfolding itself before their eyes. I am not surprised that the
Cherokees of North America have been largely converted by Methodist
missionaries; but it would greatly astonish me if this tribe, while it
remained pure in blood, ever managed to form one of the States of the
American Union, or exert any influence in Congress. I find it quite
natural also that the Danish Lutherans and the Moravians should have
opened the eyes of the Eskimos to the light of faith; but I think it
equally natural that their disciples should have remained in the social
condition in which they had been stagnating for ages. Again, the Swedish
Lapps are, as we might have expected, in the same state of barbarism as
their ancestors, even though centuries have passed since the gospel
first brought them the message of salvation. All these peoples may
produce—perhaps have produced already—men conspicuous for their piety
and the purity of their lives; but I do not expect to see learned
theologians among them, or skilful soldiers, or clever mathematicians,
or great artists. In other words they will for ever exclude the select
company of the fine spirits who clasp hands across the ages and
continually renew the strength of the dominant races. Still less will
those rare and mighty geniuses appear who are followed by their nations,
in the paths they mark out for themselves, only if those nations are
themselves able to understand them and go forward under their direction.
Even as a matter of justice we must leave Christianity absolutely out of
the present question. If all races are equally capable of receiving its
benefits, it cannot have been sent to bring equality among men. Its
kingdom, we may say, is in the most literal sense “not of this world.”

Many people are accustomed to judge the merits of Christianity in the
light of the prejudices natural to our age; and I fear that, in spite of
what I have said above, they may have some difficulty in getting rid of
their inaccurate ideas. Even if they agree on the whole with my
conclusions, they may still believe that the scale is turned by the
indirect action of religion on conduct, of conduct on institutions, of
institutions on the whole social order. I cannot admit any such action.
My opponents will assert that the personal influence of the
missionaries, nay, their mere presence, will be enough to change
appreciably the political condition of the converts and their ideas of
material well-being. They will say, for example, that these apostles
nearly always (though not invariably) come from a nation more advanced
than that to which they are preaching; thus they will of their own
accord, almost by instinct, change the merely human customs of their
disciples, while they are reforming their morals. Suppose the
missionaries have to do with savages, plunged in an abyss of
wretchedness through their own ignorance. They will instruct them in
useful arts and show them how men escape from famine by work on the
land. After providing the necessary tools for this, they will go
further, and teach them how to build better huts, to rear cattle, to
control the water-supply—both in order to irrigate their fields, and to
prevent inundations. Little by little they will manage to give them
enough taste for matters of the intellect to make them use an alphabet,
and perhaps, as the Cherokees have done,[33] invent one for themselves.
Finally, if they are exceptionally successful, they will bring their
cultivated disciples to imitate so exactly the customs of which the
missionaries have told them, that they will possess, like the Cherokees
and the Creeks on the south bank of the Arkansas, flocks of valuable
sheep, and even a collection of black slaves to work on their
plantations. They will be completely equipped for living on the land.

I have expressly chosen as examples the two races which are considered
to be the most advanced of all. Yet, far from agreeing with the
advocates of equality, I cannot imagine any more striking instances than
these of the general incapacity of any race to adopt a way of life which
it could not have found for itself.

These two peoples are the isolated remnant of many nations which have
been driven out or annihilated by the whites. They are naturally on a
different plane from the rest, since they are supposed to be descended
from the ancient Alleghany race to which the great ruins found to the
north of the Mississippi are attributed.[34] Here is already a great
inconsistency in the arguments of those who assert that the Cherokees
are the equals of the European races; for the first step in their proof
is that these Alleghany tribes are near the Anglo-Saxons precisely
because they are themselves superior to the other races of North
America! Well, what has happened to these chosen peoples? The American
Government took their ancient territories from both the tribes, and, by
means of a special treaty, made them emigrate to a definite region,
where separate places of settlement were marked out for them. Here,
under the general superintendence of the Ministry of War and the direct
guidance of Protestant missionaries, they were forced to take up their
present mode of life, whether they liked it or not. The writer from whom
I borrow these details—and who has himself taken them from the great
work of Gallatin[35]—says the number of the Cherokees is continually
increasing. His argument is that at the time when Adair visited them,
their warriors were estimated at 2300, while to-day the sum-total of
their population is calculated to be 15,000; this figure includes, it is
true, the 1200 negro slaves who have become their property. He also
adds, however, that their schools are, like their churches, in the hands
of the missionaries, and that these missionaries, being Protestants, are
for the most part married men with white children or servants, and
probably also a sort of general staff of Europeans, acting as clerks,
and the like. It thus becomes very difficult to establish the fact of
any real increase in the number of the natives, while on the other hand
it is very easy to appreciate the strong pressure that must be exerted
by the European race over its pupils.[36]

The possibility of making war is clearly taken away from them; they are
exiled, surrounded on all sides by the American power, which is too vast
for them to comprehend, and are, I believe, sincerely converted to the
religion of their masters. They are kindly treated by their spiritual
guides and convinced of the necessity for working, in the sense in which
work is understood by their masters, if they are not to die of hunger.
Under these conditions I can quite imagine that they will become
successful agriculturists, and will learn to carry out the ideas that
have been dinned into them, day in, day out, without ceasing.

By the exercise of a little patience and by the judicious use of hunger
as a spur to greed, we can teach animals what they would never learn by
instinct. But to cry out at our success would be to rate much lower than
it is the intelligence even of the humblest member of the human family.
When the village fairs are full of learned animals going through the
most complicated tricks, can we be surprised that men, who have been
submitted to a rigorous training and cut off from all means of escape or
relaxation, should manage to perform those functions of civilized life
which, even in a savage state, they might be able to understand, without
having the desire to practise them? The result is a matter of course;
and anyone who is surprised at it is putting man far below the
card-playing dog or the horse who orders his dinner! By arbitrarily
gathering one’s premises from the “intelligent actions” of a few human
groups, one ends in being too easily satisfied, and in coming to feel
enthusiasms which are not very flattering even to those who are their
objects.

I know that some learned men have given colour to these rather obvious
comparisons by asserting that between some human races and the larger
apes there is only a slight difference of degree, and none of kind. As I
absolutely reject such an insult to humanity, I may be also allowed to
take no notice of the exaggerations by which it is usually answered. I
believe, of course, that human races are unequal; but I do not think
that any of them are like the brute, or to be classed with it. The
lowest tribe, the most backward and miserable variety of the human
species, is at least capable of imitation; and I have no doubt that if
we take one of the most hideous bushmen, we could develop—I do not say
in him, if he is already grown up, but in his son or at any rate his
grandson—sufficient intelligence to make his acts correspond to a
certain degree of civilization, even if this required some conscious
effort of study on his part. Are we to infer that the people to which he
belongs could be civilized on our model? This would be a hasty and
superficial conclusion. From the practice of the arts and professions
invented under an advanced civilization, it is a far cry to that
civilization itself. Further, though the Protestant missionaries are an
indispensable link between the savage tribe and the central civilizing
power, is it certain that these missionaries are equal to the task
imposed on them? Are they the masters of a complete system of social
science? I doubt it. If communications were suddenly cut off between the
American Government and its spiritual legates among the Cherokees, the
traveller would find in the native farms, at the end of a few years,
some new practices that he had not expected. These would result from the
mixture of white and Indian blood; and our traveller would look in vain
for anything more than a very pale copy of what is taught at New York.

We often hear of negroes who have learnt music, who are clerks in
banking-houses, and who know how to read, write, count, dance, and
speak, like white men. People are astonished at this, and conclude that
the negro is capable of everything! And then, in the same breath, they
will express surprise at the contrast between the Slav civilization and
our own. The Russians, Poles, and Serbians (they will say), even though
they are far nearer to us than the negroes, are only civilized on the
surface; the higher classes alone participate in our ideas, owing to the
continual admixture of English, French, and German blood. The masses, on
the other hand, are invincibly ignorant of the Western world and its
movements, although they have been Christian for so many centuries—in
many cases before we were converted ourselves! The solution is simple.
There is a great difference between imitation and conviction. Imitation
does not necessarily imply a serious breach with hereditary instincts;
but no one has a real part in any civilization until he is able to make
progress by himself, without direction from others.[37] What is the use
of telling me how clever some particular savages are in guiding the
plough, in spelling, or reading, when they are only repeating the
lessons they have learnt? Show me rather, among the many regions in
which negroes have lived for ages in contact with Europeans, one single
place where, in addition to the religious doctrines, the ideas, customs,
and institutions of even one European people have been so completely
assimilated that progress in them is made as naturally and spontaneously
as among ourselves. Show me a place where the introduction of printing
has had results, similar to those in Europe, where our sciences are
brought to perfection, where new applications are made of our
discoveries, where our philosophies are the parents of other
philosophies, of political systems, of literature and art, of books,
statues, and pictures!

But I am not really so exacting and narrow-minded as I seem. I am not
seriously asking that a people should adopt our whole individuality at
the same time as our faith. I am willing to admit that it should reject
our way of thinking and strike out quite a different one. Well then! let
me see our negro, at the moment when he opens his eyes to the light of
the Gospel, suddenly realizing that his earthly path is as dark and
perplexed as his spiritual life was before. Let me see him creating for
himself a new social order in his own image, putting ideas into practice
that have hitherto rusted unused, taking foreign notions and moulding
them to his purpose. I will wait long for the work to be finished; I
merely ask that it may be begun. But it has never been begun; it has
never even been attempted. You may search through all the pages of
history, and you will not find a single people that has attained to
European civilization by adopting Christianity, or has been brought by
the great fact of its conversion to civilize itself when it was not
civilized already.

On the other hand, I shall find, in the vast tracts of Southern Asia and
in certain parts of Europe, States fused together out of men of very
different religions. The unalterable hostility of races, however, will
be found side by side with that of cults; we can distinguish the Pathan
who has become a Christian from the converted Hindu, just as easily as
we separate to-day the Russian of Orenburg from the nomad Christian
tribes among which he lives.

Once more, Christianity is not a civilizing power, and has excellent
reasons for not being so.

CHAPTER VIII
DEFINITION OF THE WORD “CIVILIZATION”; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT HAS A TWOFOLD
ORIGIN

Here I must enter on a digression vital to my argument. At every turn I
am using a word involving a circle of ideas which it is very necessary
to define. I am continually speaking of “civilization,” and cannot help
doing so; for it is only by the existence in some measure, or the
complete absence, of this attribute that I can gauge the relative merits
of the different races. I refer both to European civilization and to
others which may be distinguished from it. I must not leave the
slightest vagueness on this point, especially as I differ from the
celebrated writer who alone in France has made it his special business
to fix the meaning and province of this particular word.

Guizot, if I may be allowed to dispute his great authority, begins his
book on “Civilization in Europe” by a confusion of terms which leads him
into serious error. He calls civilization an _event_.

The word _event_ must be used by Guizot in a less positive and accurate
way than it usually is—in a wide, uncertain, elastic sense that it never
bears; otherwise, it does not properly define the meaning of the word
_civilization_ at all. Civilization is not an event, it is a _series_, a
_chain_ of events linked more or less logically together and brought
about by the inter-action of ideas which are often themselves very
complex. There is a continual bringing to birth of further ideas and
events. The result is sometimes incessant movement, sometimes
stagnation. In either case, civilization is not an event, but an
assemblage of events and ideas, a _state_ in which a human society
subsists, an _environment_ with which it has managed to surround itself,
which is created by it, emanates from it, and in turn reacts on it.

This state is universal in a sense in which an event never is. It admits
of many variations which it could not survive if it were merely an
event. Further, it is quite independent of all forms of government; it
makes as much progress under a despotism as under the freest democracy,
and it does not cease to exist when the conditions of political life are
modified or even absolutely changed by civil war.

This does not mean that we may more or less neglect the forms of
government. They are intimately bound up with the health of the social
organism; its prosperity is impaired or destroyed if the choice of
government is bad, favoured and developed if the choice is good. But we
are not concerned here with mere questions of prosperity. Our subject is
more serious. It deals with the very existence of peoples and of
civilization; and civilization has to do with certain elemental
conditions which are independent of politics, and have to look far
deeper for the motive-forces that bring them into being, direct, and
expand them, make them fruitful or barren and, in a word, mould their
whole life. In face of such root-questions as these, considerations of
government, prosperity, and misery naturally take a second place. The
first place is always and everywhere held by the question “to be or not
to be,” which is as supreme for a people as for an individual. As Guizot
does not seem to have realized this, civilization is to him not a state
or an environment, but an _event_; and he finds its generating principle
in another event, of a purely political character.

If we open his eloquent and famous book, we shall come upon a mass of
hypotheses calculated to set his leading idea into relief. After
mentioning a certain number of situations to which human societies might
come, the author asks “whether common instinct would recognize in these
the conditions under which a people _civilizes_ itself, in the natural
sense of the word.”

The first hypothesis is as follows: “Consider a people whose external
life is easy and luxurious. It pays few taxes, and is in no distress.
Justice is fairly administered between man and man. In fact, its
material and moral life is carefully kept in a state of inertia, of
torpor, I will not say of oppression, because there is no feeling of
this, but at any rate of repression. The case is not unexampled. There
have been a large number of little aristocratic republics, where the
subjects have been treated in this way, like sheep, well looked after
and, in a material sense, happy, but without any intellectual or moral
activity. Is this civilization? And is such a people civilizing itself?”

I do not know whether it is actually civilizing itself; but certainly
the people of whom he speaks might be very “civilized.” Otherwise, we
should have to rank among savage tribes or barbarians all the
aristocratic republics, of ancient and modern times, which Guizot
confessedly includes as instances of his hypothesis. The general
instinct would certainly be offended by a method that forbids not only
the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, and the Spartans to enter the temple
of civilization, but also the Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans, and
all the free Imperial cities of Germany, in a word all the powerful
municipalities of the last few centuries. This conclusion seems in
itself too violently paradoxical to be admitted by the common sense to
which it appeals; but besides this, it has, I think, to face a still
greater difficulty. These little aristocratic States which, owing to
their form of government, Guizot refuses to accept as capable of
civilization, have never, in most cases, possessed a special and unique
culture. However powerful many of them may have been, they were in this
respect assimilated to peoples who were differently governed, but very
near them in race; they merely shared in a common civilization. Thus,
though the Carthaginians and the Phœnicians were at a great distance
from each other, they were nevertheless united by a similar form of
culture, which had its prototype in Assyria. The Italian republics took
part in the movement of ideas and opinions which were dominant in the
neighbouring monarchies. The Imperial towns of Swabia and Thuringia were
quite independent politically, but were otherwise wholly within the
sweep of the general progress or decadence of the German race. Hence
while Guizot is distributing his orders of merit among the nations
according to their degree of political liberty and their forms of
government, he is really making cleavages, within races, that he cannot
justify, and assuming differences that do not exist. A more detailed
discussion of the point would hardly be in place here, and I pass on. If
I did open such an argument, I should begin (and rightly I think) by
refusing to admit that Pisa, Genoa, Venice, and the rest were in any way
inferior to towns such as Milan, Naples, and Rome.

Guizot himself anticipates such an objection. He does not allow that a
people is civilized, “which is governed mildly, but kept in a state of
repression”; yet he also refuses civilization to another people “whose
material life is less easy and luxurious, though still tolerable, yet
whose moral and intellectual needs have not been neglected.... In the
people I am supposing,” he says, “pure and noble sentiments are
fostered. Their religious and ethical beliefs are developed to a certain
degree, but the idea of freedom is extinct. Every one has his share of
truth doled out to him; no one is allowed to seek it for himself. This
is the condition into which most of the Asiatic nations, the Hindus, for
example, have fallen; their manly qualities are sapped by the domination
of the priests.”

Thus into the same limbo as the aristocratic peoples must now be thrust
the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, the Peruvians, the Tibetans,
the Japanese, and even the districts subject to modern Rome.

I will not touch on Guizot’s last two hypotheses, for the first two have
so restricted the meaning of civilization that scarcely any nation of
the earth can rightly lay claim to it any more. In order to do so a
people would have to live under institutions in which power and freedom
were equally mingled, and material development and moral progress
co-ordinated in one particular way. Government and religion would have
strict limits drawn round them, beyond which they would not be allowed
to advance. Finally, the subjects would necessarily possess rights of a
very definite kind. On such an assumption, the only civilized peoples
would be those whose government is both constitutional and
representative. Thus, I should not be able to save any of the European
nations from the indignity of being thrust into barbarism; and, as I
should be always measuring the degree of civilization with reference to
one single and unique political standard, I should gradually come to
reject even those constitutional states that made a bad use of their
Parliaments, and keep the prize exclusively for those which used them
well. In the end I should be driven to consider only one nation, of all
that have ever lived, as truly civilized—namely, the English.

I am, of course, full of respect and admiration for the great people
whose power and prodigious deeds are witnessed in every corner of the
world by their victories, their industry, and their commerce. I do not,
however, feel that I am bound to respect and admire no other. It seems
to me a confession altogether too cruel and humiliating to mankind, to
say that, since the beginning of the ages, it has only succeeded in
producing the full flower of civilization on a little island in the
western ocean, and that even there the true principle was not discovered
before the reign of William and Mary. Such a conception seems, you must
allow, a little narrow. And then consider its danger. If civilization
depends on a particular form of government, then reason, observation,
and science will soon have no voice in the question at all;
party-feeling alone will decide. Some bold spirits will be found to
follow their own preferences, and refuse to the British institutions the
honour of being the ideal of human perfection; all their enthusiasm will
be given to the system established at Petrograd or Vienna. Many people,
perhaps the majority of those living between the Rhine and the Pyrenees,
will hold that, in spite of some defects, France is still the most
civilized country in the world. The moment that a decision as to culture
becomes a matter of personal feeling, agreement is impossible. The most
highly developed man will be he who holds the same views as oneself as
to the respective duties of ruler and subjects; while the unfortunate
people who happen to think differently will be barbarians and savages.
No one, I suppose, will question the logic of this, or dispute that a
system that can lead to such a conclusion is, to say the least of it,
very incomplete.

For my own part, Guizot’s definition seems to me inferior even to that
given by William von Humboldt: “Civilization is the humanizing of
peoples both in their outward customs and institutions, and in the
inward feelings that correspond to these.”[38]

The defect here is the exact opposite of that which I have ventured to
find in Guizot’s formula. The cord is too loose, the field of
application too wide. If civilization is acquired merely by softness of
temper, more than one very primitive tribe will have the right to claim
it in preference to some European nation that may be rather rough in its
character. There are some tribes, in the islands of the South Pacific
Ocean and elsewhere, which are very mild and inoffensive, very easy of
approach; and yet no one, even while praising them, has ever dreamed of
setting them above the surly Norwegians, or even at the side of the
ferocious Malays, who are clad in flaming robes made by themselves, who
sail the seas in ships they have cleverly built with their own hands,
and are the terror, and at the same time the most intelligent agents, of
the carrying trade to the Eastern ports of the Indian Ocean. So eminent
a thinker as von Humboldt could not fail to see this; by the side,
therefore, of civilization, and just one grade above it, he places
_culture_. “By culture,” he says, “a people which is already humanized
in its social relations attains to art and science.”

According to this hierarchy, we find the second age of the world[39]
filled with affectionate and sympathetic beings, poets, artists, and
scholars. These, however, in their own nature, stand outside the grosser
forms of work; they are as aloof from the hardships of war as they are
from tilling the soil or practising the ordinary trades.

The leisure-time allowed for the exercise of the pure intellect is very
small, even in times of the greatest happiness and stability; and there
is an incessant struggle going on with Nature and the laws of the
universe to gain even the bare means of subsistence. This being so, we
can easily see that our Berlin philosopher is less concerned with
describing realities than with taking certain abstractions which seem to
him great and beautiful (as indeed they are), endowing them with life,
and making them act and move in a sphere as ideal as they are
themselves. Any doubts that might remain on this point are soon
dispelled when we come to the culminating-point of the system, which
consists of a third grade, higher than the others. Here stands the
“completely formed man,” in whose nature is “something at once higher
and more personal, a way of looking at the universe by which all the
impressions gathered from the intellectual and moral forces at work
around him are welded harmoniously together and taken up into his
character and sensibility.”

In this rather elaborate series the first stage is thus the “civilized
man,” that is, the softened or humanized man; the next is the “cultured
man,” the poet, artist, and scholar, and the last is the highest point
of development of which our species is capable, the “completely formed
man,”—of whom (if I understand the doctrine aright) we can gain an exact
idea from what we are told of Goethe and his “Olympian calm.” The
principle at the base of this theory is merely the vast difference which
von Humboldt sees between the general level of a people’s civilization
and the stage of perfection reached by a few great individuals. This
difference is so great that civilizations quite foreign to our own—that
of the Brahmans, for instance—have been able, so far as we know, to
produce men far superior in some ways to those that are most admired
among ourselves.

I quite agree with von Humboldt on this point. It is quite true that our
European society gives us neither the most sublime thinkers, nor the
greatest poets, nor even the cleverest artists. I venture to think,
however, in spite of the great scholar’s opinion, that, in order to
define and criticize civilization generally, we must, if only for a
moment, be careful to shake off our prejudices with regard to the
details of some particular type. We must not cast our net so widely as
to include the man in von Humboldt’s first stage, whom I refuse to call
civilized merely because he happens to be mild in character. On the
other hand we must not be so narrow as to reject every one but the
philosopher of the third stage. This would limit too strictly the scope
of all human endeavour after progress, and present its results as merely
isolated and individual.

Von Humboldt’s system does honour to the width and subtlety of a noble
mind, and may be compared, in its essentially abstract nature, with the
frail worlds, imagined by the Hindu philosophers, which are born from
the brain of a sleeping god, rise into the æther like the
rainbow-coloured bubbles blown by a child, and then break and give place
to others according to the dreams that lightly hover round the Divine
slumber.

The nature of my investigations keeps me on a lower and more prosaic
level; I wish to arrive at results that are a little more within the
range of practical experience. The restricted angle of my vision forbids
me to consider, as Guizot does, the measure of prosperity enjoyed by
human societies, or to contemplate, with von Humboldt, the high peaks on
which a few great minds sit in solitary splendour; my inquiries concern
merely the amount of power, material as well as moral, that has been
developed among the mass of a people. It has made me uneasy, I confess,
to see two of the most famous men of the century losing themselves in
by-ways; and if I am to trust myself to follow a different road from
theirs, I must survey my ground, and go back as far as possible for my
premises, in order to reach my goal without stumbling. I must ask the
reader to follow me with patience and attention through the winding
paths in which I have to walk, and I will try to illuminate, as far as I
can, the inherent obscurity of my subject.

There is no tribe so degraded that we cannot discover in it the instinct
to satisfy both its material and its moral needs. The first and most
obvious difference between races lies in the various ways in which the
two sides of this instinct are balanced. Among the most primitive
peoples they are never of equal intensity. In some, the sense of the
physical need is uppermost, in others, the tendency to contemplation.
Thus the brutish hordes of the yellow race seem to be dominated by the
needs of the body, though they are not quite without gleams of a
spiritual world. On the other hand to most of the negro tribes that have
reached the same stage of development, action is less than thought, and
the imagination gives a higher value to the things unseen than those
that can be handled. From the point of view of civilization, I do not
regard this as a reason for placing the negroes on a higher level; for
the experience of centuries shows that they are no more capable of being
civilized than the others. Ages have passed without their doing anything
to improve their condition; they are all equally powerless to mingle act
and idea in sufficient strength to burst their prison walls and emerge
from their degradation. But even in the lowest stages of human progress
I always find this twofold stream of instinct, in which now one, now the
other current predominates; and I will try to trace its path as I go up
the scale of civilization.

Above the Samoyedes, as above some of the Polynesian negroes, come the
tribes that are not quite content with a hut made of branches or with
force as the only social relation, but desire something better. These
tribes are raised one step above absolute barbarism. If they belong to
those races to whom action is more than thought, we shall see them
improving their tools, their arms, and their ornaments, setting up a
government in which the warriors are more important than the priests,
developing ideas of exchange, and already showing a fair aptitude for
commerce. Their wars will still be cruel, but will tend more and more to
become mere pillaging expeditions; in fact, material comfort and
physical enjoyment will be the main aim of the people. I find this
picture realized in many of the Mongolian tribes; also, in a higher
form, among the Quichuas and Aymaras of Peru. The opposite condition,
involving a greater detachment from mere bodily needs, will be found
among the Dahomeys of West Africa, and the Kaffirs.

I now continue the journey upwards, and leave the groups in which the
social system is not strong enough to impose itself over a large
population, even after a fusion of blood. I pass to those in which the
racial elements are so strong that they grip fast everything that comes
within their reach, and draw it into themselves; they found over immense
tracts of territory a supreme dominion resting on a basis of ideas and
actions that are more or less perfectly co-ordinated. For the first time
we have reached what can be called a _civilization_. The same internal
differences that I brought out in the first two stages appear in the
third; they are in fact far more marked than before, as it is only in
this third stage that their effects are of any real importance. From the
moment when an assemblage of men, which began as a mere tribe, has so
widened the horizon of its social relations as to merit the name of a
_people_, we see one of the two currents of instinct, the material and
the intellectual, flowing with greater force than before, according as
the separate groups, now fused together, were originally borne along by
one or the other. Thus, different results will follow, and different
qualities of a nation will come to the surface, according as the power
of thought or that of action is dominant. We may use here the Hindu
symbolism, and represent what I call the “intellectual current” by
Prakriti, the female principle, and the “material current” by Purusha,
the male principle. There is, of course, no blame or praise attaching to
either of these phrases; they merely imply that the one principle is
fertilized by the other.[40]

Further, we can see, at some periods of a people’s existence, a strong
oscillation between the two principles, one of which alternately
prevails over the other. These changes depend on the mingling of blood
that inevitably takes place at various times. Their consequences are
very important, and sensibly alter the character of the civilization by
impairing its stability.

I can thus divide peoples into two classes, as they come predominantly
under the action of one or other of these currents; though the division
is, of course, in no way absolute. At the head of the “male” category I
put the Chinese; the Hindus being the prototype of the opposite class.

After the Chinese come most of the peoples of ancient Italy, the Romans
of the Early Republic, and the Germanic tribes. In the opposite camp are
ranged the nations of Egypt and Assyria. They take their place behind
the men of Hindustan.

When we follow the nations down the ages, we find that the civilization
of nearly all of them has been modified by their oscillation between the
two principles. The peoples of Northern China were at first almost
entirely materialistic. By a gradual fusion with tribes of different
blood, especially those in the Yunnan, their outlook became less purely
utilitarian. The reason why this development has been arrested, or at
least has been very slow, for centuries past, is because the “male”
constituents of the population are far greater in quantity than the
slight “female” element in its blood.

In Northern Europe the materialistic strain, contributed by the best of
the Germanic tribes, has been continually strengthened by the influx of
Celts and Slavs. But as the white peoples drifted more and more towards
the south, the male influences gradually lost their force and were
absorbed by an excess of female elements, which finally triumphed. We
must allow some exceptions to this, for example in Piedmont and Northern
Spain.

Passing now to the other division, we see that the Hindus have in a high
degree the feeling of the supernatural, that they are more given to
meditation than to action. As their earliest conquests brought them
mainly into contact with races organized along the same lines as
themselves, the male principle could not be sufficiently developed among
them. In such an environment their civilization was not able to advance
on the material side as it had on the intellectual. We may contrast the
ancient Romans, who were naturally materialistic, and only ceased to be
so after a complete fusion with Greeks, Africans, and Orientals had
changed their original nature and given them a totally new temperament.
The internal development of the Greeks resembled that of the Hindus.

I conclude from such facts as these that every human activity, moral or
intellectual, has its original source in one or other of these two
currents, “male” or “female”; and only the races which have one of these
elements in abundance (without, of course, being quite destitute of the
other) can reach, in their social life, a satisfactory stage of culture,
and so attain to civilization.

CHAPTER IX
DEFINITION OF THE WORD “CIVILIZATION” (_continued_); DIFFERENT
CHARACTERISTICS OF CIVILIZED SOCIETIES; OUR CIVILIZATION IS NOT SUPERIOR
TO THOSE WHICH HAVE GONE BEFORE

When a nation, belonging to either the male or female series, has the
civilizing instinct so strongly that it can impose its laws on vast
multitudes of men; when it is so fortunate as to be able to satisfy
their inner needs, and appeal to their hearts as well as their heads;
from this moment a culture is brought into being. This general appeal is
the essential note of the civilizing instinct, and its greatest glory.
This alone makes it a living and active force. The interests of
individuals only flourish in isolation; and social life always tends, to
some extent, to mutilate them. For a system of ideas to be really
fruitful and convincing, it must suit the particular ways of thought and
feeling current among the people to whom it is offered.

When some special point of view is accepted by the mass of a people as
the basis of their legislation, it is really because it fulfils, in the
main, their most cherished desires. The male nations look principally
for material well-being, the female nations are more taken up with the
needs of the imagination; but, I repeat, as soon as the multitudes enrol
themselves under a banner, or—to speak more exactly—as soon as a
particular form of administration is accepted, a civilization is born.

Another invariable mark of civilization is the need that is felt for
stability. This follows immediately from what I have said above; for the
moment that men have admitted, as a community, that some special
principle is to govern and unite them, and have consented to make
individual sacrifices to bring this about, their first impulse is to
respect the governing principle—as much for what it brings as for what
it demands—and to declare it unshakable. The purer a race keeps its
blood, the less will its social foundations be liable to attack; for the
general way of thought will remain the same. Yet the desire for
stability cannot be entirely satisfied for long. The admixture of blood
will be followed by some modifications in the fundamental ideas of the
people, and these again by an itch for change in the building itself.
Such change will sometimes mean real progress, especially in the dawn of
a civilization, when the governing principle is usually rigid and
absolute, owing to the exclusive predominance of some single race.
Later, the tinkering will become incessant, as the mass is more
heterogeneous and loses its singleness of aim; and the community will
not always be able to congratulate itself on the result. So long,
however, as it remains under the guidance of the original impulse, it
will not cease, while holding fast to the idea of bettering its
condition, to follow a chimera of stability. Fickle, unstable, changing
every hour, it yet thinks itself eternal, and marches on, as towards
some goal in Paradise. It clings to the doctrine (even while continually
denying it in practice) that one of the chief marks of civilization is
to borrow a part of God’s immutability for the profit of man. When the
likeness obviously does not exist, it takes courage, and consoles itself
by the conviction that soon, at any rate, it will attain to the Divine
attribute.

By the side of stability, and the co-operation of individual interests,
which touch each other without being destroyed, we must put a third and
a fourth characteristic of civilization, sociability, and the hatred of
violence—in other words the demand that the head, and not the fists,
shall be used for self-defence.

These last two features are the source of all mental improvement, and so
of all material progress; it is to these especially that we look for the
evidence as to whether a society is advanced or not.[41]

I think I may now sum up my view of civilization by defining it as _a
state of relative stability, where the mass of men try to satisfy their
wants by peaceful means, and are refined in their conduct and
intelligence_.

In this formula are comprised all the peoples whom I have mentioned up
to now as being civilized, whether they belong to one or the other
class. Assuming that the conditions are fulfilled, we must now inquire
whether all civilizations are equal. I think not. The social needs of
the chief peoples are not felt with the same intensity or directed
towards the same objects; thus their conduct and intelligence will show
great differences in kind, as well as in degree. What are the material
needs of the Hindu? Rice and butter for his food, and a linen cloth for
his raiment. We may certainly be tempted to ascribe this simplicity to
conditions of climate. But the Tibetans live in a very severe climate,
and are yet most remarkable for their abstinence. The main interest of
both these peoples is in their religious and philosophical development,
in providing for the very insistent demands of the mind and the spirit.
Thus there is no balance kept between the male and female principles.
The scale is too heavily weighted on the intellectual side, the
consequence being that almost all the work done under this civilization
is exclusively devoted to the one end, to the detriment of the other.
Huge monuments, mountains of stone, are chiselled and set up, at a cost
of toil and effort that staggers the imagination. Colossal buildings
cover the ground—and with what object? to honour the gods. Nothing is
made for man—except perhaps the tombs. By the side of the marvels
produced by the sculptor, literature, with no less vigour, creates her
masterpieces. The theology, the metaphysics, are as varied as they are
subtle and ingenious, and man’s thought goes down, without flinching,
into the immeasurable abyss. In lyric poetry feminine civilization is
the pride of humanity.

But when I pass from the kingdom of ideals and visions to that of the
useful inventions, and the theoretical sciences on which they rest, I
fall at once from the heights into the depths, and the brilliant day
gives place to night. Useful discoveries are rare; the few that appear
are petty and sterile; the power of observation practically does not
exist. While the Chinese were continually inventing, the Hindus
conceived a few ideas, which they did not take the trouble to work out.
Again the Greeks had, as we know from their literature, many scientific
notions that were unworthy of them; while the Romans, after passing the
culminating-point in their history, could not advance very far, although
they did more than the Greeks; for the mixture of Asiatic blood, that
absorbed them with startling rapidity, denied them the qualities which
are indispensable for a patient investigation of nature. Yet their
administrative genius, their legislation, and the useful buildings that
were set up throughout the Empire are a sufficient witness to the
positive nature of their social ideas at a certain period; they prove
that if Southern Europe had not been so quickly covered by the continual
stream of colonists from Asia and Africa, positive science would have
won the day, and the Germanic pioneers would, in consequence, have lost
a few of their laurels.

The conquerors of the fifth century brought into Europe a spirit of the
same order as that of the Chinese, but with very different powers. It
was equipped, to a far greater extent, with the feminine qualities, and
united the two motive-forces far more harmoniously. Wherever this branch
of the human family was dominant, the utilitarian tendencies, though in
a nobler form, are unmistakable. In England, North America, Holland, and
Hanover, they override the other instincts of the people. It is the same
in Belgium, and also in the north of France, where there is always a
wonderfully quick comprehension of anything with a practical bearing. As
we go further south these tendencies become weaker. This is not due to
the fiercer action of the sun, for the Catalans and the Piedmontese
certainly live in a hotter climate than the men of Provence or
Bas-Languedoc; the sole cause is the influence of blood.

The female or feminized races occupy the greater part of the globe, and,
in particular, the greater part of Europe. With the exception of the
Teutonic group and some of the Slavs, all the races in our part of the
world have the material instincts only in a slight degree; they have
already played their parts in former ages and cannot begin again. The
masses, in their infinite gradations from Gaul to Celtiberian, from
Celtiberian to the nameless mixture of Italians and other Latin races,
form a descending scale, so far as the chief powers (though not all the
powers) of the male principle are concerned.

Our civilization has been created by the mingling of the Germanic tribes
with the races of the ancient world, the union, that is to say, of
pre-eminently male groups with races and fragments of races clinging to
the decayed remnants of the ancient ideas. The richness, variety, and
fertility of invention for which we honour our modern societies, are the
natural, and more or less successful, result of the maimed and disparate
elements which our Germanic ancestors instinctively knew how to use,
temper, and disguise.

Our own kind of culture has two general marks, wherever it is found; it
has been touched, however superficially, by the Germanic element, and it
is Christian. This second characteristic (to repeat what I have said
already) is more marked than the other, and leaps first to the eye,
because it is an outward feature of our modern State, a sort of varnish
on its surface; but it is not absolutely essential, as many nations are
Christian—and still more might become Christian—without forming a part
of our circle of civilization. The first characteristic is, on the
contrary, positive and decisive. Where the Germanic element has never
penetrated, our special kind of civilization does not exist.

This naturally brings me to the question whether we can call our
European societies entirely civilized; whether the ideas and actions
that appear on the surface have the roots of their being deep down in
the mass of the people, and therefore whether their effects correspond
with the instincts of the greatest number. This leads to a further
question: do the lower strata of our populations think and act in
accordance with what we call European civilization?

Many have admired, and with good reason, the extraordinary unity of
ideas and views that guided the whole body of citizens in the Greek
states of the best period. The conclusions on every essential point were
often hostile to each other; but they all derived from the same source.
In politics, some wanted more or less democracy, some more or less
oligarchy. In religion, some chose to worship the Eleusinian Demeter,
others Athene Parthenos. As a matter of literary taste, Æschylus might
be preferred to Sophocles, Alcæus to Pindar. But, at bottom, the ideas
discussed were all such as we might call national; the disputes turned
merely on points of proportion. The same was the case at Rome, before
the Punic Wars; the civilization of the country was uniform and
unquestioned. It reached the slave through the master; all shared in it
to a different extent, but none shared in any other.

From the time of the Punic Wars among the Romans, and from that of
Pericles, and especially of Philip, among the Greeks, this uniformity
tended more and more to break down. The mixture of nations brought with
it a mixture of civilizations. The result was a very complex and learned
society, with a culture far more refined than before. But it had one
striking disadvantage; both in Italy and in Hellas, it existed merely
for the upper classes, the lower strata being left quite ignorant of its
nature, its merits, and its aims. Roman civilization after the great
Asiatic wars was, no doubt, a powerful manifestation of human genius;
but it really embraced none but the Greek rhetoricians who supplied its
philosophical basis, the Syrian lawyers who built up for it an atheistic
legal system, the rich men who were engaged in public administration or
money-making, and finally the leisured voluptuaries who did nothing at
all. By the masses it was, at all times, merely tolerated. The peoples
of Europe understood nothing of its Asiatic and African elements, those
of Egypt had no better idea of what it brought them from Gaul and Spain,
those of Numidia had no appreciation of what came to them from the rest
of the world. Thus, below what we might call the social classes, lived
innumerable multitudes who had a different civilization from that of the
official world, or were not civilized at all. Only the minority of the
Roman people held the secret, and attached any importance to it. We have
here the example of a civilization that is accepted and dominant, no
longer through the convictions of the peoples who live under it, but by
their exhaustion, their weakness, and their indifference.

In China we find the exact contrary. The territory is of course immense,
but from one end to the other there is the same spirit among the native
Chinese—I leave the rest out of account—and the same grasp of their
civilization. Whatever its principles may be, whether we approve of its
aims or not, we must admit that the part played by the masses in their
civilization shows how well they understand it. The reason is not that
the country is free in our sense, that a democratic feeling of rivalry
impels all to do their best in order to secure a position guaranteed
them by law. Not at all; I am not trying to paint an ideal picture.
Peasants and middle classes alike have little hope, in the Middle
Kingdom at any rate, of rising by sheer force of merit. In this part of
the Empire, in spite of the official promises with regard to the system
of examinations by which the public services are filled, no one doubts
that the places are all reserved for members of the official families,
and that the decision of the professors is often affected more by money
than by scholarship;[42] but though shipwrecked ambitions may bewail the
evils of the system, they do not imagine that there could be a better
one, and the existing state of things is the object of unshakable
admiration to the whole people.

Education in China is remarkably general and widespread; it extends to
classes considerably below those which, in France, might conceivably
feel the want of it. The cheapness of books,[43] the number and the low
fees of the schools, bring a certain measure of education within the
reach of everybody. The aims and spirit of the laws are generally well
understood, and the government is proud of having made legal knowledge
accessible to all. There is a strong instinct of repulsion against
radical changes in the Government. A very trustworthy critic on this
point, Mr. John F. Davis, the British Commissioner in China, who has not
only lived in Canton but has studied its affairs with the closest
application, says that the Chinese are a people whose history does not
show a single attempt at a social revolution, or any alteration in the
outward forms of power. In his opinion, they are best described as “a
nation of steady conservatives.”

The contrast is very striking, when we turn to the civilization of the
Roman world, where changes of government followed each other with
startling rapidity right up to the coming of the northern peoples.
Everywhere in this great society, and at every time, we can find
populations so detached from the existing order as to be ready for the
wildest experiments. Nothing was left untried in this long period, no
principle respected. Property, religion, the family were all called in
question, and many, both in the North and South, were inclined to put
the novel theories into practice. Absolutely nothing in the Græco-Roman
world rested on a solid foundation, not even the unity of the Empire, so
necessary one would think for the general safety. Further, it was not
only the armies, with their hosts of improvised Cæsars, who were
continually battering at this Palladium of society; the emperors
themselves, beginning with Diocletian, had so little belief in the
monarchy, that they established of their own accord a division of power.
At last there were four rulers at once. Not a single institution, not a
single principle, was fixed, in this unhappy society, which had no
better reason for continuing to exist than the physical impossibility of
deciding on which rock it should founder; until the moment came when it
was crushed in the vigorous arms of the North, and forced at last to
become something definite.

Thus we find a complete opposition between these two great societies,
the Celestial and the Roman Empires. To the civilization of Eastern Asia
I will add that of the Brahmans, which is also of extraordinary strength
and universality. If in China every one, or nearly every one, has
reached a certain level of knowledge, the same is the case among the
Hindus. Each man, according to his caste, shares in a spirit that has
lasted for ages, and knows exactly what he ought to learn, think, and
believe. Among the Buddhists of Tibet and other parts of Upper Asia,
nothing is rarer than a peasant who cannot read. Every one has similar
convictions on the important matters of life.

Do we find the same uniformity among Europeans? The question is not
worth asking. The Græco-Roman civilization has no definitely marked
colour, either throughout the nations as a whole, or even within the
same people. I need not speak of Russia or most of the Austrian States;
the proof would be too easy. But consider Germany or Italy (especially
South Italy); Spain shows a similar picture, though in fainter lines;
France is in the same position as Spain.

Take the case of France. I will not confine myself to the fact, which
always strikes the most superficial observer, that between Paris and the
rest of France there is an impassable gulf, and that at the very gates
of the capital a new nation begins, which is quite different from that
living within the walls. On this point there is no room for doubt, and
those who base their conclusions, as to the unity of ideas and the
fusion of blood, on the formal unity of our Government, are under a
great illusion.

Not a single social law or root-principle of civilization is understood
in the same way in all our departments. I do not refer merely to the
peoples of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Limousin, Gascony, and Provence;
every one knows how little one is like the other, and how they vary in
their opinions. The important point is that, while in China, Tibet, and
India the ideas essential to the maintenance of civilization are
familiar to all classes, this is not at all the case among ourselves.
The most elementary and accessible facts are sealed mysteries to most of
our rural populations, who are absolutely indifferent to them; for
usually they can neither read nor write, and have no wish to learn. They
cannot see the use of such knowledge, nor the possibility of applying
it. In such a matter, I put no trust in the promises of the law, or the
fine show made by institutions, but rather in what I have seen for
myself, and in the reports of careful observers. Different governments
have made the most praiseworthy attempts to raise the peasants from
their ignorance; not only are the children given every opportunity for
being educated in their villages, but even adults, who are made
conscripts at twenty, find in the regimental schools an excellent system
of instruction in the most necessary subjects. Yet, in spite of these
provisions, and the fatherly anxiety of the Government, in spite of the
_compelle intrare_[44] which it is continually dinning into the ears of
its agents, the agricultural classes learn nothing whatever. Like all
those who have lived in the provinces, I have seen how parents never
send their children to school without obvious reluctance, how they
regard the hours spent there as a mere waste of time, how they withdraw
them at once on the slightest pretext and never allow the compulsory
number of years to be extended. Once he leaves school, the young man’s
first duty is to forget what he has learnt. This is, to a certain
extent, a point of honour with him; and his example is followed by the
discharged soldiers, who, in many parts of France, are not only ashamed
of having learnt to read and write, but even affect to forget their own
language, and often succeed in doing so. Hence I could more easily
approve all the generous efforts that have been so fruitlessly made to
educate our rural populations, if I were not convinced that the
knowledge put before them is quite unsuitable, and that at the root of
their apparent indifference there is a feeling of invincible hostility
to our civilization. One proof lies in their attitude of passive
resistance; but the spectre of another and more convincing argument
appears before me, as soon as I see any instance of this obstinacy being
overcome, under apparently favourable circumstances. In some respects
the attempts at education are succeeding better than before. In our
eastern departments and the great manufacturing towns there are many
workmen who learn of their own accord to read and write. They live in a
circle where such knowledge is obviously useful. But as soon as they
have a sufficient grasp of the rudiments, how do they use them?
Generally as a means of acquiring ideas and feelings which are now no
longer instinctively, but actively, opposed to the social order. The
only exception is to be found in the agricultural and even the
industrial population of the North-west, where knowledge up to an
elementary point is far more widespread than in any other part, and
where it is not only retained after the school time is over, but is
usually made to serve a good end. As these populations have much more
affinity than the others to the Germanic race, I am not surprised at the
result. We see the same phenomenon in Belgium and the Netherlands.

If we go on to consider the fundamental beliefs and opinions of the
people, the difference becomes still more marked. With regard to the
beliefs we have to congratulate the Christian religion on not being
exclusive or making its dogmas too narrow. If it had, it would have
struck some very dangerous shoals. The bishops and the clergy have to
struggle, as they have done for these five, ten, fifteen centuries,
against the stream of hereditary tendencies and prejudices, which are
the more formidable as they are hardly even admitted, and so can neither
be fought nor conquered. There is no enlightened priest who does not
know, after his mission-work in the villages, the deep cunning with
which even the religious peasant will continue to cherish, in his inmost
heart, some traditional idea that comes to the surface only at rare
moments, in spite of himself. His complete confidence in his parish
priest just stops short of what we might call his secret religion. Does
he mention it to him? he denies it, will admit no discussion, and will
not budge an inch from his convictions. This is the reason of the
taciturnity that, in every province, is the main attitude of the peasant
in face of the middle classes; it raises too an insuperable barrier
between him and even the most popular landowners in his canton. With
this view of civilization on the part of the majority of the people who
are supposed to be most deeply attached to it, I can well believe that
an approximate estimate of ten millions within our circle of culture,
and twenty-six millions outside it, would be, if anything, an
under-statement.

If our rural populations were merely brutal and ignorant, we might not
take much notice of this cleavage, but console ourselves with the
delusive hope of gradually winning them over, and absorbing them in the
multitudes that are already civilized. But these peasants are like
certain savage tribes: at first sight they seem brutish and unthinking,
for they are outwardly self-effacing and humble. But if one digs even a
little beneath the surface, into their real life, one finds that their
isolation is voluntary, and comes from no feeling of weakness. Their
likes and dislikes are not a matter of chance; everything obeys a
logical sequence of definite ideas. When I spoke just now of religion, I
might also have pointed out how very far removed our moral doctrines are
from those of the peasants,[45] what a different sense they give to the
word _delicacy_, how obstinately they cling to their custom of regarding
every one who is not of peasant stock in the same way as the men of
remote antiquity viewed the foreigner. It is true they do not murder
him, thanks to the strange and mysterious terror inspired by laws they
have not themselves made; but they do not conceal their hatred and
distrust of him, and they take great pleasure in annoying him, if they
can do it without risk. Does this mean that they are ill-natured? No,
not among themselves—we may continually see them doing each other little
kindnesses. They simply look on themselves as a race apart, a race (if
we may believe them) which is weak and oppressed, and obliged to deal
crookedly, but which also keeps its stiff-necked and contemptuous pride.
In some of our provinces the workman thinks himself of far better blood
and older stock than his former master. Family pride, in some of the
peasants, is at least equal to that of the nobility of the Middle
Ages.[46]

We cannot doubt it; the lower strata of the French people have very
little in common with the surface. They form an abyss over which
civilization is suspended, and the deep stagnant waters, sleeping at the
bottom of the gulf, will one day show their power of dissolving all that
comes in their way. The most tragic crises of her history have deluged
the country with blood, without the agricultural population playing any
part except that which was forced on it. Where its immediate interests
were not engaged, it let the storms pass by without troubling itself in
the least. Those who are astonished and scandalized by such callousness
say that the peasant is essentially immoral—which is both unjust and
untrue. The peasants look on us almost in the light of enemies. They
understand nothing of our civilization, they share in it unwillingly,
and think themselves justified in profiting, as far as they can, by its
misfortunes. If we put aside this antagonism, which is sometimes active
but generally inert, we need not hesitate to allow them some high moral
qualities, however strangely these may, at times, be manifested.

I may apply to the whole of Europe what I have just said of France, and
conclude that modern civilization includes far more than it absorbs; in
this it resembles the Roman Empire. Hence one cannot be confident that
our state of society will last; and I see a clear proof of this in the
smallness of its hold even over the classes raised a little above the
country population. Our civilization may be compared to the temporary
islands thrown up in the sea by submarine volcanoes. Exposed as they are
to the destructive action of the currents, and robbed of the forces that
first kept them in position, they will one day break up, and their
fragments will be hurled into the gulf of the all-conquering waves. It
is a sad end, and one which many noble races before ourselves have had
to meet. The blow cannot be turned aside; it is inevitable. The wise man
may see it coming, but can do nothing more. The most consummate
statesmanship is not able for one moment to counteract the immutable
laws of the world.

But though thus unknown, despised, or hated by the majority of those who
live under its shadow, our civilization is yet one of the most glorious
monuments ever erected by the genius of man. It is certainly not
distinguished by its power of invention; but putting this aside, we may
say that it has greatly developed the capacity for understanding, and so
for conquest. To mistake nothing is to take everything. If it has not
founded the “exact sciences,” it has at least made them exact, and freed
them from errors to which, curiously enough, they were more liable than
any other branch of knowledge. Thanks to its discoveries, it knows the
material world better than all the societies which have gone before. It
has guessed some of its chief laws, it can describe and explain them,
and borrow from them a marvellous strength that passes a hundredfold the
strength of a man. Little by little, by a skilful use of induction, it
has reconstructed large periods of history of which the ancients never
suspected the existence. The further we are from primitive times, the
more clearly can we see them, and penetrate their mysteries. This is a
great point of superiority, and one which we must, in fairness, allow to
our civilization.

But when we have admitted this, should we be right in concluding, as is
usually done, without reflexion, that it is superior to all the
civilizations that have ever existed, and to all those that exist at the
present day? Yes and no. Yes, because the extreme diversity of its
elements allows it to rest on a powerful basis of comparison and
analysis, and so to assimilate at once almost anything; yes, because
this power of choice is favourable to its development in many different
directions; yes again, because, thanks to the impulse of the Germanic
element (which is too materialistic to be a destructive force) it has
made itself a morality, the wise prescriptions of which were generally
unknown before. If, however, we carry this idea of its greatness so far
as to regard it as having an absolute and unqualified superiority, then
I say no, the simple fact being that it excels in practically nothing
whatever.

In politics, we see it in bondage to the continual change brought about
by the different requirements of the races which it includes. In
England, Holland, Naples, and Russia, its principles are still fairly
stable, because the populations are more homogeneous, or at any rate
form groups of the same kind, with similar instincts. But everywhere
else, especially in France, Central Italy, and Germany—where variations
of race are infinite—theories of government can never rise to the rank
of accepted truths, and political science is a matter of continual
experiment. As our civilization is unable to have any sure confidence in
itself, it is without the stability that is one of the most important
qualities mentioned in my definition. This weakness is to be found
neither in the Buddhist and Brahman societies, nor in the Celestial
Empire; and these civilizations have in this respect an advantage over
ours. The whole people is at one in its political beliefs. When there is
a wise government, and the ancient institutions are bearing good fruit,
every one is glad. When they are in clumsy hands, and injure the
commonwealth, they are pitied by the citizens as a man pities himself;
but they never cease to be respected. There is sometimes a desire to
purify them, but never to sweep them away or replace them by others. It
does not need very keen eyes to see here a guarantee of long life which
our civilization is very far from possessing.

In art, our inferiority to India, as well as to Egypt, Greece, and
America, is very marked. Neither in sublimity nor beauty have we
anything to compare with the masterpieces of antiquity. When our day has
drawn to its close, and the ruins of our towns and monuments cover the
face of the land, the traveller will discover nothing, in the forests
and marshes that will skirt the Thames, the Seine, and the Rhine, to
rival the gorgeous ruins of Philæ, Nineveh, Athens, Salsette, and the
valley of Tenochtitlan. If future ages have something to learn from us
in the way of positive science, this is not the case with poetry, as is
clearly proved by the despairing admiration that we so justly feel for
the intellectual wonders of foreign civilizations.

So far as the refinement of manners is concerned, we have obviously
changed for the worse. This is shown by our own past history; there were
periods when luxury, elegance, and sumptuousness were understood far
better and practised on a far more lavish scale than to-day. Pleasure
was certainly confined to a smaller number. Comparatively few were in
what we should call a state of _well-being_. On the other hand, if we
admit (as we must) that refinement of manners elevates the minds of the
multitudes who look on, as well as ennobling the life of a few favoured
individuals, that it spreads a varnish of beauty and grandeur over the
whole country, and that these become the common inheritance of all—then
our civilization, which is essentially petty on its external side,
cannot be compared to its rivals.

I may add, finally, that the active element distinguishing any
civilization is identical with the most striking quality, whatever it
may be, of the dominant race. The civilization is modified and
transformed according to the changes undergone by this race, and when
the race itself has disappeared, carries on for some time the impulse
originally received from it. Thus the kind of order kept in any society
is the best index to the special capacities of the people and to the
stage of progress to which they have attained: it is the clearest mirror
in which their individuality can be reflected.

I see that the long digression, into which I have strayed, has carried
me further than I expected. I do not regret it, for it has enabled me to
vent certain ideas that the reader might well keep in mind. But it is
now time to return to the main course of my argument, the chain of which
is still far from being complete.

I established first that the life or death of societies was the result
of internal causes. I have said what these causes are, and described
their essential nature, in order that they may be more easily
recognized. I have shown that they are generally referred to a wrong
source; and in looking for some sign that could always distinguish them,
and indicate their presence, I found it in the capacity to create a
civilization. As it seemed impossible to discover a clear conception of
this term, it was necessary to define it, as I have done. My next step
must be to study the natural and unvarying phenomenon which I have
identified as the latent cause of the life and death of societies. This,
as I have said, consists in the relative worth of the different races.
Logic requires me to make clear at once what I understand by the word
_race_. This will be the subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER X
SOME ANTHROPOLOGISTS REGARD MAN AS HAVING A MULTIPLE ORIGIN[47]

We must first discuss the word _race_ in its physiological sense.

A good many observers, who judge by first impressions and so take
extreme views, assert that there are such radical and essential
differences between human families that one must refuse them any
identity of origin.[48] The writers who adhere to such a notion assume
many other genealogies by the side of that from Adam. To them there is
no original unity in the species, or rather there is no single species;
there are three or four, or even more, which produce perfectly distinct
types, and these again have united to form hybrids.

The supporters of this theory easily win belief by citing the clear and
striking differences between certain human groups. When we see before us
a man with a yellowish skin, scanty hair and beard, a large face, a
pyramidal skull, small stature, thick-set limbs, and slanting eyes with
the skin of the eyelids turned so much outwards that the eye will hardly
open[49]—we recognize a very well-marked type, the main features of
which it is easy to bear in mind.

From him we turn to another—a negro from the West Coast of Africa, tall,
strong-looking, with thick-set limbs and a tendency to fat. His colour
is no longer yellowish, but entirely black; his hair no longer thin and
wiry, but thick, coarse, woolly, and luxuriant; his lower jaw juts out,
the shape of the skull is what is known as _prognathous_. “The long
bones stand out, the front of the tibia and the fibula are more convex
than in a European, the calves are very high and reach above the knee;
the feet are quite flat, and the heel-bone, instead of being arched, is
almost in a straight line with the other bones of the foot, which is
very large. The hand is similarly formed.”

When we look for a moment at an individual of this type, we are
involuntarily reminded of the structure of the monkey, and are inclined
to admit that the negro races of West Africa come from a stock that has
nothing in common, except the human form, with the Mongolian.

We come next to tribes whose appearance is still less flattering to the
self-love of mankind than that of the Congo negro. Oceania has the
special privilege of providing the most ugly, degraded, and repulsive
specimens of the race, which seem to have been created with the express
purpose of forming a link between man and the brute pure and simple. By
the side of many Australian tribes, the African negro himself assumes a
value and dignity, and seems to derive from a nobler source. In many of
the wretched inhabitants of this New World, the size of the head, the
extreme thinness of the limbs, the famished look of the body, are
absolutely hideous. The hair is flat or wavy, and generally woolly, the
flesh is black on a foundation of grey.

When, after examining these types, taken from all the quarters of the
globe, we finally come back to the inhabitants of Europe, and of South
and West Asia, we find them so superior in beauty, in just proportion of
limb and regularity of feature, that we are at once tempted to accept
the conclusions of those who assert the multiplicity of races. Not only
are these peoples more beautiful than the rest of mankind, which is, I
confess, a pestilent congregation of ugliness;[50] not only have they
had the glory of giving the world such admirable types as a Venus, an
Apollo, a Farnese Hercules; but also there is a visible hierarchy of
beauty established from ancient times even among themselves, and in this
natural aristocracy the Europeans are the most eminent, by their grace
of outline and strength of muscular developement. The most reasonable
view appears to be that the families into which man is divided are as
distinct as are animals of different species. Such was the conclusion
drawn from simple observation, and so long as only general facts were in
question, it seemed irrefutable.

Camper was one of the first to reduce these observations to some kind of
system. He was no longer satisfied with merely superficial evidence, but
wished to give his proofs a mathematical foundation; he tried to define
anatomically the differences between races. He succeeded in establishing
a strict method that left no room for doubt, and his views gained the
numerical accuracy without which there can be no science. His method was
to take the front part of the skull and measure the inclination of the
profile by means of two lines which he called the _facial lines_. Their
intersection formed an angle, the size of which gave the degree of
elevation attained by the race to which the skull belonged. One of these
lines connected the base of the nose with the orifice of the ear; the
other was tangential to the most prominent part of the forehead and the
jut of the upper jaw. On the basis of the angle thus formed, he
constructed a scale including not only man but all kinds of animals. At
the top stood the European; and the more acute the angle, the further
was the distance from the type which, according to Camper, was the most
perfect. Thus birds and fishes showed smaller angles than the various
mammals. A certain kind of ape reached 42°, and even 50°. Then came the
heads of the African negro and the Kalmuck, which touched 70°. The
European stood at 80°, and, to quote the inventor’s own words, which are
very flattering to our own type, “On this difference of 10° the superior
beauty of the European, what one might call his ‘comparative beauty,’
depends; the ‘absolute beauty’ that is so striking in some of the works
of ancient sculpture, as in the head of Apollo and the Medusa of
Sosicles, is the result of a still greater angle, amounting in this
instance to 100°.”[51]

This method was attractive by its simplicity. Unhappily, the facts are
against it, as against so many systems. By a series of accurate
observations, Owen showed that, in the case of monkeys, Camper had
studied the skulls only of the young animals; but since, in the adults,
the growth of the teeth and jaws, and the development of the zygomatic
arch, were not accompanied by a corresponding enlargement of the brain,
the numerical difference between these and human skulls was much greater
than Camper had supposed, since the facial angle of the black
orang-outang or the highest type of chimpanzee was at most 30° or 35°.
From this to the 70° of the negro and the Kalmuck the gap was too great
for Camper’s scale to have any significance.

Camper’s theory made considerable use of phrenology. He attempted to
discover a corresponding development of instinct as he mounted his scale
from the animals to man. But here too the facts were against him. The
elephant, for example, whose intelligence is certainly greater than the
orang-outang’s, has a far more acute facial angle; and even the most
docile and intelligent monkeys do not belong to the species which are
the “highest” in Camper’s series.

Beside these two great defects, the method is very open to attack in
that it does not apply to all the varieties of the human race. It leaves
out of account the tribes with pyramidally shaped heads, who form,
however, a striking division by themselves.

Blumenbach, who held the field against his predecessor, elaborated a
system in his turn; this was to study a man’s head from the top. He
called his discovery _norma verticalis_, the “vertical method.” He was
confident that the comparison of heads according to their width brought
out the chief differences in the general configuration of the skull.
According to him, the study of this part of the body is so pregnant with
results, especially in its bearing on national character, that it is
impossible to measure all the differences merely by lines and angles; to
reach a satisfying basis of classification, we must consider the heads
from the point of view in which we can take in at one glance the
greatest number of varieties. His idea was, in outline, as follows:
“Arrange the skulls that you wish to compare in such a way that the
jaw-bones are on the same horizontal line; in other words, let each rest
on its lower jaw. Then stand behind the skulls and fix the eye on the
vertex of each. In this way you will best see the varieties of shape
that have most to do with national character; these consist either (1)
in the direction of the jaw-bone and maxillary, or (2) in the breadth or
narrowness of the oval outline presented by the top half of the skull,
or (3) in the flattened or vaulted form of the frontal bone.”[52]

Blumenbach’s system resulted in the division of mankind into five main
categories, which were in their turn subdivided into a certain number of
types and classes.

This classification was of very doubtful value. Like that of Camper, it
overlooked many important characteristics. It was partly to escape such
objections that Owen proposed to examine skulls, not from the top, but
from the bottom. One of the chief results of this new method was to show
such a strong and definite line of difference between a man and an
orang-outang that it became for ever impossible to find the link that
Camper imagined to exist between the two species. In fact, one glance at
the two skulls, from Owen’s point of view, is enough to bring out their
radical difference. The diameter from front to back is longer in the
orang-outang than in man; the zygomatic arch, instead of being wholly in
the front part of the base, is in the middle, and occupies just a third
of its diameter. Finally the position of the occipital orifice, which
has such a marked influence on general structure and habits, is quite
different. In the skull of a man, it is almost at the centre of the
base; in that of an orang-outang, it is a sixth of the way from the
hinder end.[53]

Owen’s observations have, no doubt, considerable value; I would prefer,
however, the most recent of the craniological systems, which is at the
same time, in many ways, the most ingenious, I mean that of the American
scholar Morton, adopted by Carus.[54] In outline this is as follows:

To show the difference of races, Morton and Carus started from the idea,
that the greater the size of the skull, the higher the type to which the
individual belonged, and they set out to investigate whether the
development of the skull is equal in all the human races.

To solve this question, Morton took a certain number of heads belonging
to whites, Mongols, negroes, and Redskins of North America. He stopped
all the openings with cotton, except the _foramen magnum_, and
completely filled the inside with carefully dried grains of pepper. He
then compared the number of grains in each. This gave him the following
table:

┌────────────────────┬─────────┬───────┬───────┬───────┐
│ │Number of│Average│Maximum│Minimum│
│ │ skulls │number │number │number │
│ │measured.│ of │ of │ of │
│ │ │grains.│grains.│grains.│
├────────────────────┼─────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤
│White races │ 52│ 87│ 109│ 75│
│Yellow races│Mongols│ 10│ 83│ 93│ 69│
│ │Malays │ 18│ 81│ 89│ 64│
│Redskins │ 147│ 82│ 100│ 60│
│Negroes │ 29│ 78│ 94│ 65│
└────────────────────┴─────────┴───────┴───────┴───────┘

The results set down in the first two columns are certainly very
curious. On the other hand, I attach little importance to those in the
last two; for if the extraordinary variations from the average in the
second column are to have any real significance, Morton should have
taken a far greater number of skulls, and further, have given details as
to the social position of those to whom the skulls belonged. He was
probably able to procure, in the case of the whites and the Redskins,
heads which had belonged to men at any rate above the lowest level of
society, while it is not likely that he had access to the skulls of
negro chiefs, or of Chinese mandarins. This explains how he has been
able to assign the number 100 to an American Indian, while the most
intelligent Mongol whom he has examined does not rise above 93, and is
thus inferior even to the negro, who reaches 94. Such results are a mere
matter of chance. They are quite incomplete and unscientific; in such
questions, however, one cannot be too careful to avoid judgments founded
merely on individual cases. I am inclined therefore to reject altogether
the second half of Morton’s calculations.

I must also question one detail in the other half. In the second column,
there is a clear gradation from the number 87, indicating the capacity
of the white man’s skull, to the numbers 83 and 78 for the yellow and
black man respectively. But the figures 83, 81, 82, for the Mongols,
Malays, and Redskins, give average results which evidently shade into
one another; all the more so, because Carus does not hesitate to count
the Mongols and Malays as the same race, and consequently to put the
numbers 83 and 81 together. But, in that case, why allow the number 82
to mark a distinct race, and thus create arbitrarily a fourth great
division of mankind?

This anomaly, however, actually buttresses the weak point in Carus’
system. He likes to think that, just as we see our planet pass through
the four stages of day and night, evening and morning twilight, so there
_must_ be in the human species four subdivisions corresponding to these.
He sees here a symbol, which is always a temptation for a subtle mind.
Carus yields to it, as many of his learned fellow-countrymen would have
done in his place. The white races are the nations of the day; the black
those of the night; the yellow those of the Eastern, and the red those
of the Western twilight. We may easily guess the ingenious comparisons
suggested by such a picture. Thus, the European nations, owing to the
brilliance of their scientific knowledge and the clear outlines of their
civilization, are obviously in the full glare of day, while the negroes
sleep in the darkness of ignorance, and the Chinese live in a half-light
that gives them an incomplete, though powerful, social development. As
for the Redskins, who are gradually disappearing from the earth, where
can we find a more beautiful image of their fate than the setting sun?

Unhappily, comparison is not proof, and by yielding too easily to this
poetic impulse, Carus has a little damaged his fine theory. The same
charge also may be levelled at this as at the other ethnological
doctrines; Carus does not manage to include in a systematic whole the
various physiological differences between one race and another.[55]

The supporters of the theory of racial unity have not failed to seize on
this weak point, and to claim that, where we cannot arrange the
observations on the shape of the skull in such a way as to constitute a
proof of the original separation of types, we must no longer consider
the variations as pointing to any radical difference, but merely regard
them as the result of secondary and isolated causes, with no specific
relevance.

The cry of victory may be raised a little too soon. It may be hard to
find the correct method, without being necessarily impossible. The
“unitarians,” however, do not admit this reservation. They support their
view by observing that certain tribes that belong to the same race show
a very different physical type. They cite, for instance, the various
branches of the hybrid Malayo-Polynesian family, without taking account
of the proportion in which the elements are mingled in each case. If
groups (they say) with a common origin can show quite a different
conformation of features and skull, the unity of the human race cannot
be disproved along these lines at all. However foreign the negro or
Mongol type may appear to European eyes, this is no evidence of their
different origin; the reasons why the human families have diverged will
be found nearer to hand, and we may regard these physiological
deviations merely as the result of certain local causes acting for a
definite period of time.[56]

In face of so many objections, good and bad, the champions of
multiplicity tried to extend the sphere of their arguments. Relying no
longer on the mere study of skulls, they passed to that of the
individual man as a whole. In order to prove (as is quite true) that the
differences do not merely lie in the facial appearance and the bony
conformation of the head, they brought forward other important
differences with regard to the shape of the pelvis, the proportions of
the limbs, the colour of the skin, and the nature of the capillary
system.

Camper and other anthropologists had already recognized that the pelvis
of the negro showed certain peculiarities. Dr. Vrolik pushed these
inquiries further, and observed that the difference between the male and
female pelvis was far less marked in the European, while in the negro
race he saw in the pelvis of both sexes a considerable approximation to
the brute. Assuming that the configuration of the pelvis necessarily
affected that of the embryo, he inferred a difference of origin.[57]

Weber attacked this theory, with little result. He had to recognize that
some formations of the pelvis were found in one race more frequently
than in another; and all he could do was to show that there were some
exceptions to Vrolik’s rule, and that certain American, African, and
Mongolian specimens showed formations that were usually confined to
Europeans. This does not prove very much, especially as, in speaking of
these exceptions, Weber does not seem to have inquired whether the
peculiar configuration in question might not result from a mixture of
blood.

With regard to the size of the limbs, the opponents of a common origin
assert that the European is better proportioned. The answer—which is a
good one—is that we have no reason to be surprised at the thinness of
the extremities in peoples who live mainly on vegetables or have not
generally enough to eat. But as against the argument from the
extraordinary development of the bust among the Quichuas, the critics
who refuse to recognize this as a specific difference are on less firm
ground. Their contention that the development among the mountaineers of
Peru is explained by the height of the Andes, is hardly serious. There
are many mountain-peoples in the world who are quite differently
constituted from the Quichuas.[58]

The next point is the colour of the skin. The unitarians deny this any
specific influence, first because the colour depends on facts of
climate, and is not permanent—a very bold assertion; secondly because
the colour is capable of infinite gradation, passing insensibly from
white to yellow, from yellow to black, without showing a really definite
line of cleavage. This proves nothing but the existence of a vast number
of hybrids, a fact which the unitarians are continually neglecting, to
the great prejudice of their theory.

As to the specific character of the hair, Flourens is of opinion that
this is no argument against an original unity of race.

After this rapid review of the divergent theories I come to the great
scientific stronghold of the unitarians, an argument of great weight,
which I have kept to the end—I mean the ease with which the different
branches of the human family create hybrids, and the fertility of these
hybrids.

The observations of naturalists seem to prove that, in the animal or
vegetable world, hybrids can be produced only from allied species, and
that, even so, they are condemned to barrenness. It has also been
observed that between related species intercourse, although possibly
fertile, is repugnant, and usually has to be effected by trickery or
force. This would tend to show that in the free state the number of
hybrids is even more limited than when controlled by man. We may
conclude that the power of producing fertile offspring is among the
marks of a distinct species.

As nothing leads us to believe that the human race is outside this rule,
there is no answer to this argument, which more than any other has
served to hold in check the forces opposed to unity. We hear, it is
true, that in certain parts of Oceania the native women who have become
mothers by Europeans are no longer fitted for impregnation by their own
kind. Assuming this to be true, we might make it the basis of a more
profound inquiry; but, so far as the present discussion goes, we could
not use it to weaken the general principle of the fertility of human
hybrids and the infertility of all others; it has no bearing on any
conclusions that may be drawn from this principle.

CHAPTER XI
RACIAL DIFFERENCES ARE PERMANENT

The Unitarians say that the separation of the races is merely apparent,
and due to local influences, such as are still at work, or to accidental
variations of shape in the ancestor of some particular branch. All
mankind is, for them, capable of the same improvement; the original
type, though more or less disguised, persists in unabated strength, and
the negro, the American savage, the Tungusian of Northern Siberia, can
attain a beauty of outline equal to that of the European, and would do
so, if they were brought up under similar conditions. This theory cannot
be accepted.

We have seen above that the strongest scientific rampart of the
Unitarians lay in the fertility of human hybrids. Up to now, this has
been very difficult to refute, but perhaps it will not always be so; at
any rate, I should not think it worth while to pause over this argument
if it were not supported by another, of a very different kind, which, I
confess, gives me more concern. It is said that Genesis does not admit
of a multiple origin for our species.

If the text is clear, positive, peremptory, and incontestable, we must
bow our heads; the greatest doubts must yield, reason can only declare
herself imperfect and inferior, the origin of mankind is single, and
everything that seems to prove the contrary is merely a delusive
appearance. It is better to let darkness gather round a point of
scholarship, than to enter the lists against such an authority. But if
the Bible is not explicit, if the Holy Scriptures, which were written to
shed light on quite other questions than those of race, have been
misunderstood, and if without doing them violence one can draw a
different meaning from them, then I shall not hesitate to go forward.

We must, of course, acknowledge that Adam is the ancestor of the white
race. The scriptures are evidently meant to be so understood, for the
generations deriving from him are certainly white. This being admitted,
there is nothing to show that, in the view of the first compilers of the
Adamite genealogies, those outside the white race were counted as part
of the species at all. Not a word is said about the yellow races, and it
is only an arbitrary interpretation of the text that makes us regard the
patriarch Ham as black. Of course the translators and commentators, in
calling Adam the common ancestor of all men, have had to enrol among his
descendants all the peoples who have lived since his time. According to
them, the European nations are of the stock of Japhet, hither Asia was
occupied by the Semites, and the regions of Africa by the Hamites, who
are, as I say, unreasonably considered to be of negro origin. The whole
scheme fits admirably together—for one part of the world. But what about
the other part? It is simply left out.

For the moment, I do not insist on this line of argument. I do not wish
to run counter to even literal interpretations of the text, if they are
generally accepted. I will merely point out that we might, perhaps,
doubt their value, without going beyond the limits imposed by the
Church; and then I will ask whether we may admit the basic principle of
the unitarians, such as it is, and yet somehow explain the facts
otherwise than they do. In other words, I will simply ask whether
independently of any question of an original unity or multiplicity,
there may not exist the most radical and far-reaching differences, both
physical and moral, between human races.

The racial identity of all the different kinds of dog is admitted by
Frédéric Cuvier among others;[59] but no one would say that in all dogs,
without distinction of species, we find the same shapes, instincts,
habits, and qualities. The same is true of horses, bulls, bears, and the
like. Everywhere we see identity of origin, diversity of everything
else, a diversity so deep that it cannot be lost except by crossing, and
even then the products do not return to a real identity of nature. On
the other hand, so long as the race is kept pure, the special
characteristics remain unchanged, and are reproduced for generations
without any appreciable difference.

This fact, which is indisputable, has led some to ask whether in the
various kinds of domestic animals we can recognize the shapes and
instincts of the primitive stock. The question seems for ever insoluble.
It is impossible to determine the form and nature of a primitive type,
and to be certain how far the specimens we see to-day deviate from it.
The same problem is raised in the case of a large number of vegetables.
Man especially, whose origin offers a more interesting study than that
of all the rest, seems to resist all explanation, from this point of
view.

The different races have never doubted that the original ancestor of the
whole species had precisely their own characteristics. On this point,
and this alone, tradition is unanimous. The white peoples have made for
themselves an Adam and an Eve that Blumenbach would have called
Caucasian; whereas in the “Arabian Nights”—a book which, though
apparently trivial, is a mine of true sayings and well-observed facts—we
read that some negroes regard Adam and his wife as black, and since
these were created in the image of God, God must also be black and the
angels too, while the prophet of God was naturally too near divinity to
show a white skin to his disciples.

Unhappily, modern science has been able to provide no clue to the
labyrinth of the various opinions. No likely hypothesis has succeeded in
lightening this darkness, and in all probability the human races are as
different from their common ancestor, if they have one, as they are from
each other. I will therefore assume without discussion the principle of
unity; and my only task, in the narrow and limited field to which I am
confining myself, is to explain the actual deviation from the primitive
type.

The causes are very hard to disentangle. The theory of the unitarians
attributes the deviation, as I have already said, to habits, climate,
and locality. It is impossible to agree with this.[60] Changes have
certainly been brought about in the constitution of races, since the
dawn of history, by such external influences; but they do not seem to
have been important enough to be able to explain fully the many vital
divergences that exist. This will become clear in a moment.

I will suppose that there are two tribes which still bear a resemblance
to the primitive type, and happen to be living, the one in a mountainous
country in the interior of a continent, the other on an island in the
midst of the ocean. The atmosphere and the food conditions of each will
be quite different. I will assume that the one has many ways of
obtaining food, the other very few. Further, I will place the former in
a cold climate, the second under a tropical sun. By this means the
external contrast between them will be complete. The course of time will
add its own weight to the action of the natural forces, and there is no
doubt that the two groups will gradually accumulate some special
characteristics which will distinguish them from each other. But even
after many centuries no vital or organic change will have taken place in
their constitution. This is proved by the fact that we find peoples of a
very similar type, living on opposite sides of the world and under quite
different conditions, of climate and everything else. Ethnologists are
agreed on this point and some have even believed that the Hottentots are
a Chinese colony—a hypothesis impossible on other grounds—on account of
their likeness to the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.[61] In the
same way, some have seen a great resemblance between the portraits we
have of the ancient Etruscans and the Araucans of South America. In
features and general shape the Cherokees seem almost identical with many
of the Italian peoples, such as the Calabrians. The usual type of face
among the inhabitants of Auvergne, especially the women, is far less
like the ordinary European’s than that of many Indian tribes of North
America. Thus when we grant that nature can produce similar types in
widely separated countries, under different conditions of life and
climate, it becomes quite clear that the human races do not take their
qualities from any of the external forces that are active at the present
day.

I would not, however, deny that local conditions may favour the
deepening of some particular skin-colour, the tendency to obesity, the
development of the chest muscles, the lengthening of the arms or the
lower limbs, the increase or decrease of physical strength. But, I
repeat, these are not essential points; and to judge from the very
slight difference made by the alteration of local conditions in the
shape of the body, there is no reason to believe that they have ever had
very much influence. This is an argument of considerable weight.

Although we do not know what cataclysmal changes may have been effected
in the physical organization of the races before the dawn of history, we
may at least observe that this period extends only to about half the age
attributed to our species. If for three or four thousand years the
darkness is impenetrable, we still have another period of three thousand
years, of which we can go right back to the beginning in the case of
certain nations. Everything tends to show that the races which were then
known, and which have remained relatively pure since that time, have not
greatly changed in their outward appearance, although some of them no
longer live in the same places, and so are no longer affected by the
same external causes. Take, for example, the Arabs of the stock of
Ishmael. We still find them, just as they are represented in the
Egyptian monuments, not only in the parched deserts of their own land,
but in the fertile, and often damp, regions of Malabar and the
Coromandel Coast, in the islands of the Indies, and on many points of
the north coast of Africa, where they are, as a fact, more mixed than
anywhere else. Traces of them are still found in some parts of
Roussillon, Languedoc, and the Spanish coast, although almost two
centuries have passed away since their invasion. If the mere influence
of environment had the power, as is supposed, of setting up and taking
away the limits between organic types, it would have not allowed these
to persist so long. The change of place would have been followed by a
corresponding change of form.

After the Arabs, I will mention the Jews, who are still more remarkable
in this connexion, as they have settled in lands with very different
climates from that of Palestine, and have given up their ancient mode of
life. The Jewish type has, however, remained much the same; the
modifications it has undergone are of no importance and have never been
enough, in any country or latitude, to change the general character of
the race. The warlike Rechabites of the Arabian desert, the peaceful
Portuguese, French, German, and Polish Jews—they all look alike. I have
had the opportunity of examining closely one of the last kind. His
features and profile clearly betrayed his origin. His eyes especially
were unforgettable. This denizen of the north, whose immediate ancestors
had lived, for many generations, in the snow, seemed to have been just
tanned by the rays of the Syrian sun. The Semitic face looks exactly the
same, in its main characteristics, as it appears on the Egyptian
paintings of three or four thousand years ago, and more; and we find it
also, in an equally striking and recognizable form, under the most
varied and disparate conditions of climate. The identity of descendant
and ancestor does not stop at the features; it continues also in the
shape of the limbs and the temperament. The German Jews are usually
smaller and more slender in build than the men of European race among
whom they have lived for centuries. Further, the marriageable age is
much earlier among them than among their fellow-countrymen of another
race.[62]

This, by the way, is an assertion diametrically opposed to the opinion
of Prichard, who in his zeal for proving the unity of the species, tries
to show that the age of puberty, for the two sexes, is the same
everywhere and in all races.[63] The reasons which he advances are drawn
from the Old Testament in the case of the Jews, and, in the case of the
Arabs, from the religious law of the Koran, by which the age of marriage
is fixed, for girls, at fifteen, and even (in the opinion of
Abu-Hanifah) at eighteen.

These two arguments seem very questionable. In the first place, the
Biblical evidence is not admissible on this point, as it often includes
facts that contradict the ordinary course of nature. Sarah, for example,
was brought to bed of a child in extreme old age, when Abraham himself
had reached a hundred years;[64] to such an event ordinary reasoning
cannot apply. Secondly, as to the views and ordinances of the Mohammedan
law, I may say that the Koran did not intend merely to make sure of the
physical fitness of the woman before authorizing the marriage. It wished
her also to be far enough advanced in education and intelligence to be
able to understand the serious duties of her new position. This is shown
by the pains taken by the prophet to prescribe that the girl’s religious
instruction shall be continued to the time of her marriage. It is easy
to see why, from this point of view, the day should have been put off as
long as possible and why the law-giver thought it so important to
develop the reasoning powers, instead of being as hasty in his
ordinances as nature is in hers. This is not all. Against the serious
evidence brought forward by Prichard, there are some conclusive
arguments, though of a lighter nature, that decide the question in
favour of my view.

The poets, in their stories of love, are concerned merely with showing
their heroines in the flower of their beauty, without thinking of their
moral development; and the Oriental poets have always made their
girl-lovers younger than the age prescribed by the Koran. Zuleika and
Leila are certainly not yet fourteen. In India, the difference is still
more marked. Sakuntala would be a mere child in Europe. The best age of
love for an Indian girl is from nine to twelve years. It is a very
general opinion, long accepted and established among the Indian,
Persian, and Arab races, that the spring of life, for a woman, flowers
at an age that we should call a little precocious. Our own writers have
for long followed the lead, in this matter, of their Roman models.
These, like their Greek teachers, regarded fifteen as the best age.
Since our literature has been influenced by Northern ideas,[65] we have
seen in our novels nothing but girls of eighteen, or even older.

Returning now to more serious arguments, we find them equally abundant.
In addition to what I have said about the German Jews, it may be
mentioned that in many parts of Switzerland the sexual development of
the people is so slow that, in the case of the men, it is not always
complete at twenty. The Bohemians, or Zingaris, yield another set of
results, which are easily verified. They show the same early development
as the Hindus, who are akin to them; and under the most inclement skies,
in Russia and in Moldavia, they still keep the expression and shape of
the face and the physical proportions, as well as the ideas and customs,
of the pariahs.[66]

I do not, however, mean to oppose Prichard on every point. One of his
conclusions I gratefully adopt, namely that “difference of climate
occasions very little, if any, important diversity as to the periods of
life and the physical changes to which the human constitution is
subject.”[67] This remark is very true, and I would not dream of
contesting it. I merely add that it seems to contradict to some slight
extent the principles otherwise upheld by the learned American
physiologist and antiquary.

The reader will not fail to see that the question on which the argument
here turns is that of the permanence of types. If we have shown that the
human races are each, as it were, shut up in their own individuality,
and can only issue from it by a mixture of blood, the unitarian theory
will find itself very hard-pressed. It will have to recognize that, if
the types are thus absolutely fixed, hereditary, and _permanent_, in
spite of climate and lapse of time, mankind is no less completely and
definitely split into separate parts, than it would be if specific
differences were due to a real divergence of origin.

It now becomes an easy matter for us to maintain this important
conclusion, which we have seen to be amply supported, in the case of the
Arabs, by the evidence of Egyptian sculpture, and also by the
observation of Jews and gipsies. At the same time there is no reason for
rejecting the valuable help given by the paintings in the temples and
underground chambers in the valley of the Nile, which equally show the
permanence of the Negro type, with its woolly hair, prognathous head,
and thick lips. The recent discovery of the bas-reliefs at Khorsabad
confirm what was already known from the sculptured tombs of Persepolis,
and themselves prove, with absolute certainty, that the Assyrians are
physiologically identical with the peoples who occupy their territory at
the present day.

If we had a similar body of evidence with regard to other races still
living, the result would be the same. The fact of the permanence of
types would merely be more fully demonstrated. It is enough however to
have established it in all the cases where observation was possible. It
is now for those who disagree to propose objections.

They have no means of doing so, and their line of defence shows them
either contradicting themselves from the start, or making some assertion
quite contrary to the obvious facts. For example, they say that the
Jewish type has changed with the climate, whereas the facts show the
opposite. They base their argument on the existence in Germany of many
fair-haired Jews with blue eyes.[68] For this to have any value from the
unitarian point of view, climate would have to be regarded as the sole,
or at any rate the chief, cause of the phenomenon; whereas the
unitarians themselves admit that the colour of the skin, eyes, and hair
in no way depends either on geographical situation or on the influence
of cold or heat.[69] They rightly mention the presence of blue eyes and
fair hair among the Cingalese;[70] they even notice a considerable
variation from light brown to black. Again, they admit that the
Samoyedes and Tungusians, although living on the borders of the Arctic
Ocean, are very swarthy.[71] Thus the climate counts for nothing so far
as the colouring of the skin, hair, and eyes is concerned. We must
regard them either as having no significance at all, or as vitally bound
up with race. We know, for example, that red hair is not, and never has
been, rare in the East; and so no one need be surprised to find it
to-day in some German Jews. Such a fact has no influence, one way or the
other, on the theory of the permanence of types.

The unitarians are no more fortunate when they call in history to help
them. They give only two instances to prove their theory—the Turks and
the Magyars. The Asiatic origin of the former is taken as self-evident,
as well as their close relation to the Finnish stocks of the Ostiaks and
the Laplanders. Hence they had in primitive times the yellow face,
prominent cheek-bones, and short stature of the Mongols. Having settled
this point, our unitarian turns to their descendants of to-day; and
finding them of a European type, with long thick beards, eyes
almond-shaped, but no longer slanting, he concludes triumphantly, from
this utter transformation of the Turks, that there is no permanence in
race.[72] “Some people,” he says in effect, “have certainly supposed in
them a mixture of Greek, Georgian, and Circassian blood. But this
mixture has been only partial. Not all Turks have been rich enough to
buy wives from the Caucasus; not all have had harems filled with white
slaves. On the other hand, the hatred felt by the Greeks towards their
conquerors, and religious antipathy in general, have been unfavourable
to such alliances; though the two peoples live together, they are just
as much separated in spirit at the present time as on the first day of
the conquest.”[73]

These reasons are more specious than solid. We can only admit
provisionally the Finnish origin of the Turkish race. Up to now, it has
been supported only by a single argument, the affinity of language. I
will show later how the argument from language, when taken alone, is
peculiarly open to doubt and criticism. Assuming however that the
ancestors of the Turkish people belonged to the yellow race, we can
easily show that they had excellent reasons for keeping themselves apart
from it.

From the time when the first Turanian hordes descended from the
north-east to that when they made themselves masters of the city of
Constantine, a period comprising many centuries, great changes passed
over the world; and the Western Turks suffered many vicissitudes of
fortune. They were in turn victors and vanquished, slaves and masters;
and very diverse were the peoples among whom they settled. According to
the annalists,[74] the Oghuzes, their ancestors, came down from the
Altai Mountains, and, in the time of Abraham lived in the immense
steppes of Upper Asia that extend from the Katai to Lake Aral, from
Siberia to Tibet. This is the ancient and mysterious domain that was
still inhabited by many Germanic peoples.[75] It is a curious fact that
as soon as Eastern writers begin to speak of the peoples of Turkestan,
they praise their beauty of face and stature.[76] Hyperbolic expressions
are the rule, in this connexion; and as these writers had the beautiful
types of the ancient world before their eyes, as a standard, it is not
very likely that their enthusiasm should have been aroused by the sight
of creatures so incontrovertibly ugly and repulsive as the ordinary
specimens of the Mongolian race. Thus in spite of the linguistic
argument, which may itself be wrongly used,[77] we might still make out
a good case for our view. But we will concede the point, and admit that
the Oghuzes of the Altai were really a Finnish people; and we will pass
on to the Mohammedan period, when the Turkish tribes were established,
under different names and varied circumstances, in Persia and Asia
Minor.

The Osmanlis did not as yet exist, and their ancestors, the Seljukians,
were already closely connected in blood with the races of Islam. The
chiefs of this people, such as Gayaseddin-Keikosrev, in 1237, freely
intermarried with Arab women. They did better still; for Aseddin, the
mother of another line of Seljukian princes, was a Christian. In all
countries the chiefs watch more jealously than the common people over
the purity of their race; and when a chief showed himself so free from
prejudice, it is at least permissible to assume that his subjects were
not more scrupulous. As the continual raids of the Seljukians offered
them every opportunity to seize slaves throughout the vast territory
which they overran, there is no doubt that, from the thirteenth century,
the ancient Oghuz stock, with which the Seljukians of Rûm claimed a
distant kinship, was permeated to a great extent with Semitic blood.

From this branch sprang Osman, the son of Ortoghrul and father of the
Osmanlis. The families that collected round his tent were not very
numerous. His army was no more than a robber-band; and if the early
successors of this nomad Romulus were able to increase it, they did so
merely by following the practice of the founder of Rome, and opening
their tents to anyone who wished to enter.

It may be assumed that the fall of the Seljukian Empire helped to send
recruits of their own race to the Osmanlis. It is clear that this race
had undergone considerable change; besides, even these new resources
were not enough, for from this time the Turks began to make systematic
slave-raids, with the express object of increasing their own population.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Urkan, at the instance of
Khalil Chendereli the Black, founded the Guard of Janissaries. At first
these were only a thousand strong. But under Mohammed IV the new guard
numbered 140,000; and as up to this time the Turks had been careful to
fill up the ranks only with Christian children taken from Poland,
Germany, and Italy, or from European Turkey itself, and then converted
to Islam, there were in four centuries at least 5000 heads of families
who infused European blood into the veins of the Turkish nation.

The racial admixture did not end here. The main object of the piracy
practised on such a large scale throughout the Mediterranean was to fill
up the harems. Further (a still more conclusive fact) there was no
battle, whether lost or won, that did not increase the number of the
Faithful. A considerable number of the males changed their religion, and
counted henceforth as Turks. Again, the country surrounding the field of
battle was overrun by the troops and yielded them all the women they
could seize. The plunder was often so abundant that they had difficulty
in disposing of it; the most beautiful girl was bartered for a
jackboot.[78] When we consider this in connexion with the population of
Asiatic and European Turkey, which has, as we know, never exceeded
twelve millions, we see clearly that the arguments for or against the
permanence of racial type find no support whatever in the history of
such a mixed people as the Turks. This is so self-evident, that when we
notice, as we often do, some characteristic features of the yellow race
in an Osmanli, we cannot attribute this directly to his Finnish origin;
it is simply the effect of Slav or Tartar blood, exhibiting, at second
hand, the foreign elements it had itself absorbed.

Having finished my observations on the ethnology of the Ottomans, I pass
to the Magyars.

The unitarian theory is backed by such arguments as the following: “The
Magyars are of Finnish origin, and allied to the Laplanders, Samoyedes,
and Eskimos. These are all people of low stature, with wide faces and
prominent cheek-bones, yellowish or dirty brown in colour. The Magyars,
however, are tall and well set up; their limbs are long, supple and
vigorous, their features are of marked beauty, and resemble those of the
white nations. The Finns have always been weak, unintelligent, and
oppressed. The Magyars take a high place among the conquerors of the
world. They have enslaved others, but have never been slaves themselves.
Thus, since the Magyars are Finns, and are so different, physically and
morally, from all the other branches of their primitive stock, they must
have changed enormously.”[79]

If such a change had really taken place, it would be so extraordinary as
to defy all explanation, even by the unitarians, however great the
modifications that may be assumed in these particular types; for the
transformation-scene would have taken place between the end of the ninth
century and the present day, that is, in about 800 years. Further, we
know that in this period St. Stephen’s fellow-countrymen have not
intermarried to any great extent with the nations among whom they live.
Happily for common sense, there is no need for surprise, as the
argument, though otherwise perfect, makes one vital mistake—the
Hungarians are certainly not Finns.

In a well-written article, A. de Gerando[80] has exploded the theories
of Schlotzer and his followers. By weighty arguments drawn from Greek
and Arab historians and Hungarian annalists, by facts and dates that
defy criticism, he has proved the kinship of the Transylvanian tribe of
the Siculi with the Huns, and the identity in primitive times of the
former with the last invaders of Pannonia. Thus the Magyars are Huns.

Here we shall no doubt be met by a further objection, namely that though
this argument may point to a different origin for the Magyars, it
connects them just as intimately as the other with the yellow race. This
is an error. The name “Huns” may denote a nation, but it is also,
historically speaking, a collective word. The mass of tribes to which it
refers is not homogeneous. Among the crowd of peoples enrolled under the
banner of Attila’s ancestors, certain bands, known as the “White Huns,”
have always been distinguished. In these the Germanic element
predominated.[81]

Contact with the yellow races had certainly affected the purity of their
blood. There is no mystery about this; the fact is betrayed at once by
the rather angular and bony features of the Magyar. The language is very
closely related to some Turkish dialects. Thus the Magyars are White
Huns, though they have been wrongly made out to be a yellow race, a
confusion caused, by their intermarriages in the past (whether voluntary
or otherwise) with Mongolians. They are really, as we have shown,
cross-breeds with a Germanic basis. The roots and general vocabulary of
their language are quite different from those of the Germanic family;
but exactly the same was the case with the Scythians, a yellow race
speaking an Aryan dialect,[82] and with the Scandinavians of Neustria,
who were, after some years of conquest, led to adopt the Celto-Latin
dialect of their subjects.[83] Nothing warrants the belief that lapse of
time, difference of climate, or change of customs should have turned a
Laplander or an Ostiak, a Tungusian or a Permian, into a St. Stephen. I
conclude, from this refutation of the only arguments brought forward by
the unitarians, that the permanence of racial types is beyond dispute;
it is so strong and indestructible that the most complete change of
environment has no power to overthrow it, so long as no crossing takes
place.

Whatever side, therefore, one may take in the controversy as to the
unity or multiplicity of origin possessed by the human species, it is
certain that the different families are to-day absolutely separate; for
there is no external influence that could cause any resemblance between
them or force them into a homogeneous mass.

The existing races constitute separate branches of one or many primitive
stocks. These stocks have now vanished. They are not known in historical
times at all, and we cannot form even the most general idea of their
qualities. They differed from each other in the shape and proportion of
the limbs, the structure of the skull, the internal conformation of the
body, the nature of the capillary system, the colour of the skin, and
the like; and they never succeeded in losing their characteristic
features except under the powerful influence of the crossing of blood.

This permanence of racial qualities is quite sufficient to generate the
radical unlikeness and inequality that exists between the different
branches, to raise them to the dignity of natural laws, and to justify
the same distinctions being drawn with regard to the physiological life
of nations, as I shall show, later, to be applicable to their moral
life.

Owing to my respect for a scientific authority which I cannot overthrow,
and, still more, for a religious interpretation that I could not venture
to attack, I must resign myself to leaving on one side the grave doubts
that are always oppressing me as to the question of original unity; and
I will now try to discover as far as I can, with the resources that are
still left to me, the probable causes of these ultimate physiological
differences.

As no one will venture to deny, there broods over this grave question a
mysterious darkness, big with causes that are at the same time physical
and supernatural. In the inmost recesses of the obscurity that shrouds
the problem, reign the causes which have their ultimate home in the mind
of God; the human spirit feels their presence without divining their
nature, and shrinks back in awful reverence. It is probable that the
earthly agents to whom we look for the key of the secret are themselves
but instruments and petty springs in the great machine. The origins of
all things, of all events and movements, are not infinitely small, as we
are often pleased to say, but on the contrary so vast, so immeasurable
by the poor foot-rule of man’s intelligence, that while we may perhaps
have some vague suspicion of their existence, we can never hope to lay
hands on them or attain to any sure discovery of their nature. Just as
in an iron chain that is meant to lift up a great weight it frequently
happens that the link nearest the object is the smallest, so the
proximate cause may often seem insignificant; and if we merely consider
it in isolation, we tend to forget the long series that has gone before.
This alone gives it meaning, but this, in all its strength and might,
derives from something that human eye has never seen. We must not
therefore, like the fool in the old adage, wonder at the power of the
roseleaf to make the water overflow; we should rather think that the
reason of the accident lay in the depths of the water that filled the
vessel to overflowing. Let us yield all respect to the primal and
generating causes, that dwell far off in heaven, and without which
nothing would exist; conscious of the Divine power that moves them, they
rightly claim a part of the veneration we pay to their Infinite Creator.
But let us abstain from speaking of them here. It is not fitting for us
to leave the human sphere, where alone we may hope to meet with
certainty. All we can do is to seize the chain, if not by the last small
link, at any rate by that part of it which we can see and touch, without
trying to catch at what is beyond our reach—a task too difficult for
mortal man. There is no irreverence in saying this; on the contrary, it
expresses the sincere conviction of a weakness that is insurmountable.

Man is a new-comer in this world. Geology—proceeding merely by
induction, but attacking its problems in a marvellously systematic
way—asserts that man is absent from all the oldest strata of the earth’s
surface. There is no trace of him among the fossils. When our ancestors
appeared for the first time in an already aged world, God, according to
Scripture, told them that they would be its masters and have dominion
over everything on earth. This promise was given not so much to them as
to their descendants; for these first feeble creatures seem to have been
provided with very few means, not merely of conquering the whole of
nature, but even of resisting its weakest attacks.[84] The ethereal
heavens had seen, in former epochs, beings far more imposing than man
rise from the muddy earth and the deep waters. Most of these gigantic
races had, no doubt, disappeared in the terrible revolutions in which
the inorganic world had shown a power so immeasurably beyond that
possessed by animate nature. A great number, however, of these monstrous
creatures were still living. Every region was haunted by herds of
elephants and rhinoceroses, and even the mastodon has left traces of its
existence in American tradition.[85]

These last remnants of the monsters of an earlier day were more than
enough to impress the first members of our species with an uneasy
feeling of their own inferiority, and a very modest view of their
problematic royalty. It was not merely the animals from whom they had to
wrest their disputed empire. These could in the last resort be fought,
by craft if not by force, and in default of conquest could be avoided by
flight. The case was quite different with Nature, that immense Nature
that surrounded the primitive families on all sides, held them in a
close grip, and made them feel in every nerve her awful power.[86] The
cosmic causes of the ancient cataclysms, although feebler, were always
at work. Partial upheavals still disturbed the relative positions of
earth and ocean. Sometimes the level of the sea rose and swallowed up
vast stretches of coast; sometimes a terrible volcanic eruption would
vomit from the depths of the waters some mountainous mass, to become
part of a continent. The world was still in travail, and Jehovah had not
calmed it by “seeing that it was good.”

This general lack of equilibrium necessarily reacted on atmospheric
conditions. The strife of earth, fire, and water brought with it
complete and rapid changes of heat, cold, dryness, and humidity. The
exhalations from the ground, still shaken with earthquake, had an
irresistible influence on living creatures. The causes that enveloped
the globe with the breath of battle and suffering could not but increase
the pressure brought to bear by nature on man. Differences of climate
and environment acted on our first parents far more effectively than
to-day. Cuvier, in his “Treatise on the revolutions of the globe,” says
that the inorganic forces of the present day would be quite incapable of
causing convulsions and upheavals, or new arrangements of the earth’s
surface, such as those to which geology bears witness. The changes that
were wrought in the past on her own body by the awful might of nature
would be impossible to-day; she had a similar power over the human race,
but has it no longer. Her omnipotence has been so lost, or at least so
weakened and whittled away, that in a period of years covering roughly
half the life of our species on the earth, she has brought about no
change of any importance, much less one that can be compared to that by
which the different races were for ever marked off from each other.[87]

Two points are certain: first that the main differences between the
branches of our race were fixed in the earliest epoch of our terrestrial
life; secondly, that in order to imagine a period when these
physiological cleavages could have been brought about, we must go back
to the time when the influence of natural causes was far more active
than it is now, under the normal and healthy conditions. Such a time
could be none other than that immediately after the creation, when the
earth was still shaken by its recent catastrophes and without any
defence against the fearful effects of their last death-throes.

Assuming the unitarian theory, we cannot give any later date for the
separation of types.

No argument can be based on the accidental deviations from the normal
which are sometimes found in certain individual instances, and which, if
transmitted, would certainly give rise to important varieties. Without
including such deformities as a hump-back, some curious facts have been
collected which seem, at first sight, to be of value in explaining the
diversity of races. To cite only one instance, Prichard[88] quotes
Baker’s account of a man whose whole body, with the exception of his
face, was covered with a sort of dark shell, resembling a large
collection of warts, very hard and callous, and insensible to pain; when
cut, it did not bleed. At different periods this curious covering, after
reaching a thickness of three-quarters of an inch, would become
detached, and fall off; it was then replaced by another, similar in all
respects. Four sons were born to him, all resembling their father. One
survived; but Baker, who saw him in infancy, does not say whether he
reached manhood. He merely infers that since the father has produced
such offspring, “a race of people may be propagated by this man, having
such rugged coats and coverings as himself; and if this should ever
happen, and the accidental original be forgotten, it is not improbable
they might be deemed a different species of mankind.”

Such a conclusion is possible. Individuals, however, who are so
different as these from the species in general, do not transmit their
characteristics. Their posterity either returns to the regular path or
is soon extinguished. All things that deviate from the natural and
normal order of the world can only borrow life for a time; they are not
fitted to keep it. Otherwise, a succession of strange accidents would,
long before this, have set mankind on a road far removed from the
physiological conditions which have obtained, without change, throughout
the ages. We must conclude that impermanence is one of the essential and
basic features of these anomalies. We could not include in such a
category the woolly hair and black skin of the negro, or the yellow
colour, wide face, and slanting eyes of the Chinaman. These are all
permanent characteristics; they are in no way abnormal, and so cannot
come from an accidental deviation.

We will now give a summary of the present chapter.

In face of the difficulties offered by the most liberal interpretation
of the Biblical text, and the objection founded on the law regulating
the generation of hybrids, it is impossible to pronounce categorically
in favour of a multiplicity of origin for the human species.

We must therefore be content to assign a lower cause to those clear-cut
varieties of which the main quality is undoubtedly their permanence, a
permanence that can only be lost by a crossing of blood. We can identify
this cause with the amount of climatic energy possessed by the earth at
a time when the human race had just appeared on its surface. There is no
doubt that the forces that inorganic nature could bring into play were
far greater then than anything we have known since, and under their
pressure racial modifications were accomplished which would now be
impossible. Probably, too, the creatures exposed to these tremendous
forces were more liable to be affected by them than existing types would
be. Man, in his earliest stages, assumed many unstable forms; he did not
perhaps belong, in any definite manner, to the white, red, or yellow
variety. The deviations that transformed the primitive characteristics
of the species into the types established to-day were probably much
smaller than those that would now be required for the black race, for
example, to become assimilated to the white, or the yellow to the black.
On this hypothesis, we should have to regard Adamite man as equally
different from all the existing human groups; these would have radiated
all around him, the distance between him and any group being double that
between one group and another. How much of the primitive type would the
peoples of the different races have subsequently retained? Merely the
most general characteristics of our species, the vague resemblances of
shape common to the most distant groups, and the possibility of
expressing their wants by articulate sounds—but nothing more. The
remaining features peculiar to primitive man would have been completely
lost, by the black as well as the non-black races; and although we are
all originally descended from him, we should have owed to outside
influences everything that gave us our distinctive and special
character. Henceforth the human races, the product of cosmic forces as
well as of the primitive Adamic stock, would be very slightly, if at
all, related to each other. The power of giving birth to fertile hybrids
would certainly be a perpetual proof of original connexion; but it would
be the only one. As soon as the primal differences of environment had
given each group its isolated character, as a possession for ever—its
shape, features, and colour—from that moment the link of primal unity
would have been suddenly snapped; the unity, so far as influence on
racial development went, would be actually sterile. The strict and
unassailable permanence of form and feature to which the earliest
historical documents bear witness would be the charter and sign-manual
of the eternal separation of races.

CHAPTER XII
HOW THE RACES WERE PHYSIOLOGICALLY SEPARATED, AND THE DIFFERENT
VARIETIES FORMED BY THEIR INTER-MIXTURE. THEY ARE UNEQUAL IN STRENGTH
AND BEAUTY

The question of cosmic influences is one that ought to be fully cleared
up, as I am confining myself to arguments based on it. The first problem
with which I have to deal is the following:—“How could men, whose common
origin implies a single starting-point, have been exposed to such a
diversity of influences from without?” After the first separation of
races, the groups were already numerous enough to be found under totally
different conditions of climate; how then, considering the immense
difficulties they had to contend against, the vast forests and marshy
plains they had to cross, the sandy or snowy deserts, the rivers, lakes,
and oceans—how, with all these obstacles, did they manage to cover
distances which civilized man to-day, with all his developed power, can
only surmount with great toil and trouble? To answer these objections,
we must try to discover where the human species had its original home.

A very ancient idea, adopted also by some great modern minds, such as
Cuvier, is that the different mountain-systems must have served as the
point of departure for certain races. According to this theory, the
white races, and even certain African varieties whose skull is shaped
like our own, had their first settlement in the Caucasus. The yellow
race came down from the ice-bound heights of the Altai. Again, the
tribes of prognathous negroes built their first huts on the southern
slopes of Mount Atlas, and made this the starting-point of their first
migrations. Thus, the frightful places of the earth, difficult of access
and full of gloomy horror—torrents, caverns, icy mountains, eternal
snows, and impassable abysses—were actually more familiar to primitive
ages than any others; while all the terrors of the unknown lurked, for
our first ancestors, in the uncovered plains, on the banks of the great
rivers, on the coasts of the lakes and seas.

The chief motive urging the ancient philosophers to put forward this
theory, and the moderns to revive it, seems to have been the idea that,
in order to pass successfully through the great physical crises of the
world, mankind must have collected on the mountain heights, where the
floods and inundations could not reach them. This large and general
interpretation of the tradition of Ararat may suit perhaps the later
epochs, when the children of men had covered the face of the earth; but
it is quite inapplicable to the time of relative calm that marked their
first appearance. It is also contrary to all theories as to the unity of
the species. Again, mountains from the remotest times have been the
object of profound terror and religious awe. On them has been set, by
all mythologies, the abode of the gods. It was on the snowy peak of
Olympus, it was on Mount Meru that the Greeks and the Brahmans imagined
their divine synods. It was on the summit of the Caucasus that
Prometheus suffered the mysterious punishment of his still more
mysterious crime. If men had begun by making their home in the remote
heights, it is not likely that their imagination would have caused them
to raise these to the height of heaven itself. We have a scant respect
for what we have seen and known and trodden underfoot. There would have
been no divinities but those of the waters and the plains. Hence I
incline to the opposite belief, that the flat and uncovered regions
witnessed the first steps of man. This is, by the way, the Biblical
notion.[89] After the first settlements were made in these parts, the
difficulties of accounting for migrations are sensibly diminished; for
flat regions are generally cut by rivers and reach down to the sea, and
so there would have been no need to undertake the difficult task of
crossing forests, deserts, and great marshes.

There are two kinds of migrations, the voluntary and the unexpected. The
former are out of the question in very early times. The latter are more
possible, and more probable too, among shiftless and unprepared savages
than among civilised nations. A family huddled together on a drifting
raft, a few unfortunate people surprised by an inrush of the sea,
clinging to trunks of trees, and caught up by the currents—these are
enough to account for a transplantation over long distances. The weaker
man is, the more is he the sport of inorganic forces. The less
experience he has, the more slavishly does he respond to accidents which
he can neither foresee nor avoid. There are striking examples of the
ease with which men can be carried, in spite of themselves, over
considerable distances. Thus, we hear that in 1696 two large canoes from
Ancorso, containing about thirty savages, men and women, were caught in
a storm, and after drifting aimlessly some time, finally arrived at
Samal, one of the Philippine Islands, three hundred leagues from their
starting-point. Again, four natives of Ulea were carried out to sea in a
canoe by a sudden squall. They drifted about for eight months, and
reached at last one of the Radack Islands, at the eastern end of the
Caroline Archipelago, after an involuntary voyage of 550 leagues. These
unfortunate men lived solely on fish, and carefully collected every drop
of rain they could. When rain failed them, they dived into the depths of
the sea and drank the water there, which, they say, is less salt.
Naturally, when they reached Radack, the travellers were in a deplorable
state; but they soon rallied, and were eventually restored to
health.[90]

These two examples are a sufficient witness for the rapid diffusion of
human groups in very different regions, and under the most varied local
conditions. If further proofs were required, we might mention the ease
with which insects, plants, and testaceans are carried all over the
world; it is, of course, unnecessary to show that what happens to such
things may, a fortiori, happen more easily to man.[91] The
land-testaceans are thrown into the sea by the destruction of the
cliffs, and are then carried to distant shores by means of currents.
Zoophytes attach themselves to the shells of molluscs or let their
tentacles float on the surface of the sea, and so are driven along by
the wind to form distant colonies. The very trees of unknown species,
the very sculptured planks, the last of a long line, which were cast up
on the Canaries in the fifteenth century, and by providing a text for
the meditations of Christopher Columbus paved the way for the discovery
of the New World—even these probably carried on their surface the eggs
of insects; and these eggs were hatched, by the heat engendered by new
sap, far from their place of origin and the land where lived the others
of their kind.

Thus there is nothing against the notion that the first human families
might soon have been separated, and lived under very different
conditions of climate, in regions far apart from each other. But it is
not necessary, even under present circumstances, for the places to be
far apart, in order to ensure a variation in the temperature, and in the
local conditions resulting from it. In mountainous countries like
Switzerland, the distance of a few miles makes such a difference in the
soil and atmosphere, that we find the flora of Lapland and Southern
Italy practically side by side; similarly in Isola Madre, on Lago
Maggiore, oranges, great cacti, and dwarf palms grow in the open, in
full view of the Simplon. We need not confine ourselves to mountains;
the temperature of Normandy is lower than that of Jersey, while in the
narrow triangle formed by the Western coasts of France, the vegetation
is of the most varied character.[92]

The contrasts must have been tremendous, even over the smallest areas,
in the days that followed the first appearance of our species on the
globe. The selfsame place might easily become the theatre of vast
atmospheric revolutions, when the sea retreated or advanced by the
inundation or drying up of the neighbouring regions; when mountains
suddenly rose in enormous masses, or sank to the common level of the
earth, so that the plains covered what once was their crests; and when
tremors, that shook the axis of the earth, and by affecting its
equilibrium and the inclination of the poles to the ecliptic, came to
disturb the general economy of the planet.

We may now consider that we have met all the objections, that might be
urged as to the difficulty of changing one’s place and climate in the
early ages of the world. There is no reason why some groups of the human
family should not have gone far afield, while others were huddled
together in a limited area and yet were exposed to very varied
influences. It is thus that the secondary types, from which are
descended the existing races, could have come into being. As to the type
of man first created, the Adamite, we will leave him out of the argument
altogether; for it is impossible to know anything of his specific
character, or how far each of the later families has kept or lost its
likeness to him. Our investigation will not take us further back than
the races of the second stage.

I find these races naturally divided into three, and three only—the
white, the black, and the yellow.[93] If I use a basis of division
suggested by the colour of the skin, it is not that I consider it either
correct or happy, for the three categories of which I speak are not
distinguished exactly by colour, which is a very complex and variable
thing; I have already said that certain facts in the conformation of the
skeleton are far more important. But in default of inventing new
names—which I do not consider myself justified in doing—I must make my
choice from the vocabulary already in use. The terms may not be very
good, but they are at any rate less open to objection than any others,
especially if they are carefully defined. I certainly prefer them to all
the designations taken from geography or history, for these have thrown
an already confused subject into further confusion. So I may say, once
for all, that I understand by _white_ men the members of those races
which are also called Caucasian, Semitic, or Japhetic. By _black_ men I
mean the Hamites; by _yellow_ the Altaic, Mongol, Finnish, and Tatar
branches. These are the three primitive elements of mankind. There is no
more reason to admit Blumenbach’s twenty-eight varieties than Prichard’s
seven; for both these schemes include notorious hybrids. It is probable
that none of the three original types was ever found in absolute
simplicity. The great cosmic agents had not merely brought into being
the three clear-cut varieties; they had also, in the course of their
action, caused many sub-species to appear. These were distinguished by
some peculiar features, quite apart from the general character which
they had in common with the whole branch. Racial crossing was not
necessary to create these specific modifications; they existed before
any interbreeding took place at all. It would be fruitless to try to
identify them to-day in the hybrid agglomeration that constitutes what
we call the “white race.” It would be equally impossible with regard to
the yellow race. Perhaps the black type has to some extent kept itself
pure; at any rate it has remained nearer its original form, and thus
shows at first sight what, in the case of the other great human
divisions, is not given by the testimony of our senses, but may be
admitted on the strength of historical proof.

The negroes have always perpetuated the original forms of their race,
such as the prognathous type with woolly hair, the Hindu type of the
Kamaun and the Deccan, and the Pelagian of Polynesia. New varieties have
certainly been created from their intermixture; this is the origin of
what we may call the “tertiary types,” which are seen in the white and
yellow races, as well as the black.

Much has been made of a noteworthy fact, which is used to-day as a sure
criterion for determining the racial purity of a nation. This fact is
the resemblance of face, shape, and general constitution, including
gesture and carriage. The further these resemblances go, the less
mixture of blood is there supposed to be in the whole people. On the
other hand, the more crossing there has been, the greater differences we
shall find in the features, stature, walk, and general appearance of the
individuals. The fact is incontestable, and valuable conclusions may be
drawn from it; but the conclusions are a little different from those
hitherto made.

The first series of observations by which the fact was discovered was
carried out on the Polynesians. Now, these are far from being of pure
race; they come from mixtures, in different proportions, of yellow and
black. Hence the complete transmission of the type that we see to-day
among the Polynesians shows, not the purity of the race, but simply that
the more or less numerous elements of which it is composed have at last
been fused in a full and homogeneous unity. Each man has the same blood
in his veins as his neighbour, and so there is no reason why he should
differ physically from him. Just as brothers and sisters are often much
alike, as being produced from like elements, so, when two races have
been so completely amalgamated that there is no group in the resulting
people in which either race predominates, an artificial type is
established, with a kind of factitious purity; and every new-born child
bears its impress.

What I have defined as the “tertiary type” might in this way easily
acquire the quality that is wrongly appropriated to a people of
absolutely pure race—namely the likeness of the individual members to
each other. This could be attained in a much shorter time at this stage,
as the differences between two varieties of the same type are relatively
slight. In a family, for example, where the father and mother belong to
different nations, the children will be like one or the other, but there
will be little chance of any real identity of physical characteristics
between them. If, however, the parents are both from the same national
stock, such an identity will be easily produced.

We must mention another law before going further. Crossing of blood does
not merely imply the fusion of the two varieties, but also creates new
characteristics, which henceforth furnish the most important standpoint
from which to consider any particular sub-species. Examples will be
given later; meanwhile I need hardly say that these new and original
qualities cannot be completely developed unless there has previously
been a perfect fusion of the parent-types; otherwise the tertiary race
cannot be considered as really established. The larger the two nations
are, the greater will naturally be the time required for their fusion.
But until the process is complete, and a state of physiological identity
brought about, no new sub-species will be possible, as there is no
question of normal development from an original, though composite
source, but merely of the confusion and disorder that are always
engendered from the imperfect mixture of elements which are naturally
foreign to each other.

Our actual knowledge of the life of these tertiary races is very slight.
Only in the misty beginnings of human history can we catch a glimpse, in
certain places, of the white race when it was still in this stage—a
stage which seems to have been everywhere short-lived. The civilizing
instincts of these chosen peoples were continually forcing them to mix
their blood with that of others. As for the black and yellow types, they
are mere savages in the tertiary stage, and have no history at all.[94]

To the tertiary races succeed others, which I will call “quaternary.”
The Polynesians, sprung from the mixture of black and yellow,[95] the
mulattoes, a blend of white and black,—these are among the peoples
belonging to the quaternary type. I need hardly say, once more, that the
new type brings the characteristics peculiar to itself more or less into
harmony with those which recall its twofold descent.

When a quaternary race is again modified by the intervention of a new
type, the resulting mixture has great difficulty in becoming stable; its
elements are brought very slowly into harmony, and are combined in very
irregular proportions. The original qualities of which it is composed
are already weakened to a considerable extent, and become more and more
neutralized. They tend to disappear in the confusion that has grown to
be the main feature of the new product. The more this product reproduces
itself and crosses its blood, the more the confusion increases. It
reaches infinity, when the people is too numerous for any equilibrium to
have a chance of being established—at any rate, not before long ages
have passed. Such a people is merely an awful example of racial anarchy.
In the individuals we find, here and there, a dominant feature reminding
us in no uncertain way that blood from every source runs in their veins.
One man will have the negro’s hair, another the eyes of a Teuton, a
third will have a Mongolian face, a fourth a Semitic figure; and yet all
these will be akin! This is the state in which the great civilized
nations are to-day; we may especially see proofs of it in their
sea-ports, capitals, and colonies, where a fusion of blood is more
easily brought about. In Paris, London, Cadiz, and Constantinople, we
find traits recalling every branch of mankind, and that without going
outside the circle of the walls, or considering any but the so-called
“native population.” The lower classes will give us examples of all
kinds, from the prognathous head of the negro to the triangular face and
slanting eyes of the Chinaman; for, especially since the Roman Empire,
the most remote and divergent races have contributed to the blood of the
inhabitants of our great cities. Commerce, peace, and war, the founding
of colonies, the succession of invasions, have all helped in their turn
to increase the disorder; and if one could trace, some way back, the
genealogical tree of the first man he met, he would probably be
surprised at the strange company of ancestors among whom he would find
himself.[96]

We have shown that races differ physically from each other; we must now
ask if they are also unequal in beauty and muscular strength. The answer
cannot be long doubtful.

I have already observed that the human groups to which the European
nations and their descendants belong are the most beautiful. One has
only to compare the various types of men scattered over the earth’s
surface to be convinced of this. From the almost rudimentary face and
structure of the Pelagian and the Pecheray to the tall and nobly
proportioned figure of Charlemagne, the intelligent regularity of the
features of Napoleon, and the imposing majesty that exhales from the
royal countenance of Louis XIV, there is a series of gradations; the
peoples who are not of white blood approach beauty, but do not attain
it.

Those who are most akin to us come nearest to beauty; such are the
degenerate Aryan stocks of India and Persia, and the Semitic peoples who
are least infected by contact with the black race.[97] As these races
recede from the white type, their features and limbs become incorrect in
form; they acquire defects of proportion which, in the races that are
completely foreign to us, end by producing an extreme ugliness. This is
the ancient heritage and indelible mark of the greater number of human
groups. We can no longer subscribe to the doctrine (reproduced by
Helvetius in his book on the “Human Intellect”) which regards the idea
of the beautiful as purely artificial and variable. All who still have
scruples on that point should consult the admirable “Essay on the
Beautiful” of the Piedmontese philosopher, Gioberti; and their doubts
will be laid to rest. Nowhere is it better brought out that beauty is an
absolute and necessary idea, admitting of no arbitrary application. I
take my stand on the solid principles established by Gioberti, and have
no hesitation in regarding the white race as superior to all others in
beauty; these, again, differ among themselves in the degree in which
they approach or recede from their model. Thus the human groups are
unequal in beauty; and this inequality is rational, logical, permanent,
and indestructible.

Is there also an inequality in physical strength? The American savages,
like the Hindus, are certainly our inferiors in this respect, as are
also the Australians. The negroes, too, have less muscular power;[98]
and all these peoples are infinitely less able to bear fatigue. We must
distinguish, however, between purely muscular strength, which merely
needs to spend itself for a single instant of victory, and the power of
keeping up a prolonged resistance. The latter is far more typical than
the former, of which we may find examples even in notoriously feeble
races. If we take the blow of the fist as the sole criterion of
strength, we shall find, among very backward negro races, among the New
Zealanders (who are usually of weak constitution), among Lascars and
Malays, certain individuals who can deliver such a blow as well as any
Englishman. But if we take the peoples as a whole, and judge them by the
amount of labour that they can go through without flinching, we shall
give the palm to those belonging to the white race.

The different groups within the white race itself are as unequal in
strength as they are in beauty, though the difference is less marked.
The Italians are more beautiful than the Germans or the Swiss, the
French or the Spanish. Similarly, the English show a higher type of
physical beauty than the Slav nations.

In strength of fist, the English are superior to all the other European
races; while the French and Spanish have a greater power of resisting
fatigue and privation, as well as the inclemency of extreme climates.
The question is settled, so far as the French are concerned, by the
terrible campaign in Russia. Nearly all the Germans and the northern
troops, accustomed though they were to very low temperatures, sank down
in the snow; while the French regiments, though they paid their awful
tribute to the rigours of the retreat, were yet able to save most of
their number. This superiority has been attributed to their better moral
education and military spirit. But such an explanation is insufficient.
The German officers, who perished by hundreds, had just as high a sense
of honour and duty as our soldiers had; but this did not prevent them
from going under. We may conclude that the French have certain physical
qualities that are superior to those of the Germans, which allow them to
brave with impunity the snows of Russia as well as the burning sands of
Egypt.

CHAPTER XIII
THE HUMAN RACES ARE INTELLECTUALLY UNEQUAL; MANKIND IS NOT CAPABLE OF
INFINITE PROGRESS

In order to appreciate the intellectual differences between races, we
ought first to ascertain the degree of stupidity to which mankind can
descend. We know already the highest point that it can reach, namely
civilization.

Most scientific observers up to now have been very prone to make out the
lowest types as worse than they really are.

Nearly all the early accounts of a savage tribe paint it in hideous
colours, far more hideous than the reality. They give it so little power
of reason and understanding, that it seems to be on a level with the
monkey and below the elephant. It is true that we find the contrary
opinion. If a captain is well received in an island, if he meets, as he
believes, with a kind and hospitable welcome, and succeeds in making a
few natives do a small amount of work with his sailors, then praises are
showered on the happy people. They are declared to be fit for anything
and capable of everything; and sometimes the enthusiasm bursts all
bounds, and swears it has found among them some higher intelligences.

We must appeal from both judgments—harsh and favourable alike. The fact
that certain Tahitians have helped to repair a whaler does not make
their nation capable of civilization. Because a man of Tonga-Tabu shows
goodwill to strangers, he is not necessarily open to ideas of progress.
Similarly, we are not entitled to degrade a native of a hitherto unknown
coast to the level of the brute, just because he receives his first
visitors with a flight of arrows, or because he is found eating raw
lizards and mud pies. Such a banquet does not certainly connote a very
high intelligence or very cultivated manners. But even in the most
hideous cannibal there is a spark of the divine fire, and to some extent
the flame of understanding can always be kindled in him. There are no
tribes so low that they do not pass some judgments, true or false, just
or unjust, on the things around them; the mere existence of such
judgments is enough to show that in every branch of mankind some ray of
intelligence is kept alive. It is this that makes the most degraded
savages accessible to the teachings of religion and distinguishes them
in a special manner, of which they are themselves conscious, from even
the most intelligent beasts.

Are however these moral possibilities, which lie at the back of every
man’s consciousness, capable of infinite extension? Do all men possess
in an equal degree an unlimited power of intellectual development? In
other words, has every human race the capacity for becoming equal to
every other? The question is ultimately concerned with the infinite
capacity for improvement possessed by the species as a whole, and with
the equality of races. I deny both points.

The idea of an infinite progress is very seductive to many modern
philosophers, and they support it by declaring that our civilization has
many merits and advantages which our differently trained ancestors did
not possess. They bring forward all the phenomena that distinguished our
modern societies. I have spoken of these already; but I am glad to be
able to go through them again.

We are told that our scientific opinions are truer than they were; that
our manners are, as a rule, kindly, and our morals better than those of
the Greeks and Romans. Especially with regard to political liberty, they
say, have we ideas and feelings, beliefs and tolerances, that prove our
superiority. There are even some hopeful theorists who maintain that our
institutions should lead us straight to that garden of the Hesperides
which was sought so long, and with such ill-success, since the time when
the ancient navigators reported that it was not in the Canaries....

A little more serious consideration of history will show what truth
there is in these high claims.

We are certainly more learned than the ancients. This is because we have
profited by their discoveries. If we have amassed more knowledge than
they, it is merely because we are their heirs and pupils, and have
continued their work. Does it follow that the discovery of steam-power
and the solution of a few mechanical problems have brought us on the way
to omniscience? At most, our success may lead us to explore all the
secrets of the material world. Before we achieve this conquest, there
are many things to do which have not even been begun, nay of which the
very existence is not yet suspected; but even when the victory is ours,
shall we have advanced a single step beyond the bare affirmation of
physical laws? We shall, I agree, have greatly increased our power of
influencing nature and harnessing her to our service. We shall have
found different ways of going round the world, or recognized definitely
that certain routes are impossible. We shall have learnt how to move
freely about in the air, and, by mounting a few miles nearer the limits
of the earth’s atmosphere, discovered or cleared up certain astronomical
or other problems; but nothing more. All this does not lead us to
infinity. Even if we had counted all the planetary systems that move
through space, should we be any nearer? Have we learnt a single thing
about the great mysteries that was unknown to the ancients? We have,
merely, so far as I can see, changed the previous methods of circling
the cave where the secret lies. We have not pierced its darkness one
inch further.

Again, admitting that we are in certain directions more enlightened, yet
we must have lost all trace of many things that were familiar to our
remote ancestors. Can we doubt that at the time of Abraham far more was
known about primeval history than we know to-day? How many of our
discoveries, made by chance or with great labour, are merely
re-discoveries of forgotten knowledge! Further, how inferior we are in
many respects to those who have lived before us! As I said above, in a
different connexion, can one compare even our most splendid works to the
marvels still to be seen in Egypt, India, Greece, and America? And these
bear witness to the vanished magnificence of many other buildings, which
have been destroyed far less by the heavy hand of time than by the
senseless ravages of man. What are our arts, compared with those of
Athens? What are our thinkers, compared with those of Alexandria and
India? What are our poets, by the side of Valmiki, Kalidasa, Homer, and
Pindar?

Our work is, in fact, different from theirs. We have turned our minds to
other inquiries and other ends than those pursued by the earlier
civilized groups of mankind. But while tilling our new field, we have
not been able to keep fertile the lands already cultivated. We have
advanced on one flank, but have given ground on the other. It is a poor
compensation; and far from proving our progress, it merely means that we
have changed our position. For a real advance to have been made, we
should at least have preserved in their integrity the chief intellectual
treasures of the earlier societies, and set up, in addition, certain
great and firmly based conclusions at which the ancients had aimed as
well as ourselves. Our arts and sciences, using theirs as the
starting-point, should have discovered some new and profound truths
about life and death, the genesis of living creatures, and the basic
principles of the universe. On all these questions, modern science, as
we imagine, has lost the visionary gleam that played round the dawn of
antiquity, and its own efforts have merely brought it to the humiliating
confession, “I seek and do not find.” There has been no real progress in
the intellectual conquests of man. Our power of criticism is certainly
better than that of our forefathers. This is a considerable gain, but it
stands alone; and, after all, criticism merely means _classification_,
not _discovery_.

As for our so-called new ideas on politics, we may allow ourselves to be
more disrespectful to them than to our sciences.

The same fertility in theorizing, on which we so pride ourselves, was to
be found at Athens after the death of Pericles. Anyone may be convinced
of this by reading again the comedies of Aristophanes, and allowing for
satirical exaggeration; they were recommended by Plato himself as a
guide to the public life of the city of Athene. We have always despised
such comparisons, since we persuaded ourselves that a fundamental
difference between our present social order and the ancient Greek State
was created by slavery. It made for a more far-reaching demagogy, I
admit; but that is all. People spoke of slaves in the same way as one
speaks to-day of workmen and the lower classes; and, further, how very
advanced the Athenians must have been, when they tried to please their
servile population after the battle of Arginusæ!

Let us now turn to Rome. If you open the letters of Cicero, you will
find the Roman orator a moderate Tory of to-day. His republic is exactly
like our constitutional societies, in all that relates to the language
of parties and Parliamentary squabbles. There too, in the lower depths,
seethed a population of degraded slaves, with revolt ever in their
hearts, and sometimes in their fists also. We will leave this mob on one
side; and we can do it the more readily as the law did not recognize
their civil existence. They did not count in politics, and their
influence was limited to times of uproar. Even then, they merely carried
out the commands of the revolutionaries of free birth.

Regarding, then, the slaves as of no account, does not the Forum offer
us all the constituents of a modern social State? The populace,
demanding bread and games, free doles and the right to enjoy them; the
middle class, which succeeded in its aim of monopolizing the public
services; the patriciate, always being transformed and giving ground,
always losing its rights, until even its defenders agreed, as their one
means of defence, to refuse all privileges and merely claim liberty for
all;—have we not here an exact correspondence with our own time?

Does anyone believe that of the opinions we hear expressed to-day,
however various they may be, there is a single one, or any shade of one,
that was not known at Rome? I spoke above of the letters written from
the Tusculan Villa: they contain the thoughts of a Conservative with
progressive leanings. As against Sulla, Pompeius and Cicero were
Liberals. They were not liberal enough for Cæsar, and were too much so
for Cato. Later, under the Principate, we find a moderate Royalist in
Pliny the Younger, though one who loved tranquillity. He was against
excessive liberty for the people, and excessive power for the Emperor.
His views were positivist; he thought little of the vanished splendours
of the age of the Fabii, and preferred the prosaic administration of a
Trajan. Not everyone agreed with him. Many feared another insurrection
like that of Spartacus, and thought that the Emperor could not make too
despotic a use of his power. On the other hand, some of the provincials
asked for, and obtained, what we should call constitutional guarantees;
while Socialist opinions found so highly placed a representative as the
Gallic Emperor Gaius Junius Postumus, who set down, among his subjects
for declamation, _Dives et pauper inimici_, “The rich and the poor are
natural enemies.”

In fact, every man who had any claim to share in the enlightenment of
the time strongly asserted the equality of the human race, the right of
all men to have their part in the good things of this world, the obvious
necessity of the Græco-Roman civilization, its perfection and
refinement, its certainty of a future progress even beyond its present
state, and, to crown all, its existence for ever. These ideas were not
merely the pride and consolation of the pagans; they inspired also the
firm hopes of the first and most illustrious Fathers of the Church, of
whose views Tertullian was the self-constituted interpreter.[99]

Finally—to complete the picture with a last striking trait—the most
numerous party of all was formed by the indifferent, the people who were
too weak or timid, too sceptical or contemptuous, to find truth in the
midst of all the divergent theories that passed kaleidoscopically before
their eyes; who loved order when it existed, and (so far as they could)
endured disorder when it came; who were always wondering at the progress
of material comforts unknown to their fathers, and who, without wishing
to think too much of the other side, consoled themselves by repeating
over and over again, “Wonderful are the works of to-day!”

There would be more reason to believe that we have made improvements in
political science, if we had invented some machinery that was unknown,
in its essentials, before our time. Such a glory is not ours. Limited
monarchies, for example, have been familiar to every age, and curious
instances can be seen among certain American tribes, which in other
respects have remained savage. Democratic and aristocratic republics of
all kinds, balanced in the most various ways, have existed in the New as
well as the Old World. Tlaxcala is just as good an example as Athens,
Sparta, and Mecca before Mohammed’s time. Even if it were shown that we
had ourselves made some secondary improvements in the art of government,
would this be enough to justify such a sweeping assertion as that the
human race is capable of unlimited progress? Let us be as modest as that
wisest of kings, when he said, “There is nothing new under the
sun.”[100]

We come now to the question of manners. Ours are said to be gentler than
those of the other great human societies; but this is very doubtful.

There are some rhetoricians to-day who would like to abolish war between
nations. They have taken this theory from Seneca. Certain wise men of
the East had also, on this subject, views that are precisely similar to
those of the Moravian brotherhood. But even if the friends of universal
peace succeeded in making Europe disgusted with the idea of war, they
would still have to bring about a permanent change in the passions of
mankind. Neither Seneca nor the Brahmans obtained such a victory. It is
doubtful whether we are to succeed where they failed; especially as we
may still see in our fields and our streets the bloody traces left by
our so-called “humanity.”

I agree that our principles are pure and elevated. Does our practice
correspond to them?

Before we congratulate ourselves on our achievements, let us wait till
our modern countries can boast of two centuries of peace, as could Roman
Italy,[101] the example of which has unfortunately not been followed by
later ages; for since the beginning of modern civilization fifty years
have never passed without massacres.

The capacity for infinite progress is, thus, not shown by the present
state of our civilization. Man has been able to learn some things, but
has forgotten many others. He has not added one sense to his senses, one
limb to his limbs, one faculty to his soul. He has merely explored
another region of the circle in which he is confined, and even the
comparison of his destiny with that of many kinds of birds and insects
does not always inspire very consoling thoughts as to his happiness in
this life.

The bees, the ants, and the termites have found for themselves, from the
day of their creation, the kind of life that suited them. The last two,
in their communities, have invented a way of building their houses,
laying in their provisions, and looking after their eggs, which in the
opinion of naturalists could be neither altered nor improved.[102] Such
as it is, it has always been sufficient for the small wants of the
creatures who use it. Similarly the bees—with their monarchical
government, which admits of the deposition of the sovereign but not of a
social revolution—have never for a single day turned aside from the
manner of life that is most suitable to their needs. Metaphysicians were
allowed for a long time to call animals machines, and to assign the
cause of their movements to God, who was the “soul of the brutes,”
_anima brutorum_. Now that the habits of these so-called automata are
studied in a more careful way, we have not merely given up this
contemptuous theory; we have even recognized that instinct has a
capacity that raises it almost to the dignity of reason.

In the bee-kingdom, we see the queens a prey to the anger of their
subjects; this implies either a spirit of mutiny in the latter, or the
inability of the former to fulfil their lawful obligations. We see too
the termites sparing their conquered enemies, and then making them
prisoners, and employing them in the public service by giving them the
care of the young. What are we to conclude from such facts as these?

Our modern States are certainly more complicated, and satisfy our needs
in larger measure: but when I see the savage wandering on his way,
fierce, sullen, idle, and dirty, lazily dragging his feet along his
uncultivated ground, carrying the pointed stick that is his only weapon,
and followed by the wife whom he has bound to him by a marriage-ceremony
consisting solely in an empty and ferocious violence;[103] when I see
the wife carrying her child, whom she will kill with her own hands if he
falls ill, or even if he worries her;[104] when I see this miserable
group under the pressure of hunger, suddenly stop, in its search for
food, before a hill peopled by intelligent ants, gape at it in wonder,
put their feet through it, seize the eggs and devour them, and then
withdraw sadly into the hollow of a rock,—when I see all this, I ask
myself whether the insects that have just perished are not more highly
gifted than the stupid family of the destroyer, and whether the instinct
of the animals, restricted as it is to a small circle of wants, does not
really make them happier than the faculty of reason which has left our
poor humanity naked on the earth, and a thousand times more exposed than
any other species to the sufferings caused by the united agency of air,
sun, rain, and snow. Man, in his wretchedness, has never succeeded in
inventing a way of providing the whole race with clothes or in putting
them beyond the reach of hunger and thirst. It is true that the
knowledge possessed by the lowest savage is more extensive than that of
any animal; but the animals know what is useful to them, and we do not.
They hold fast to what knowledge they have, but we often cannot keep
what we have ourselves discovered. They are always, in normal seasons,
sure of satisfying their needs by their instincts. But there are
numerous tribes of men that from the beginning of their history have
never been able to rise above a stinted and precarious existence. So far
as material well-being goes, we are no better than the animals; our
horizon is wider than theirs, but, like theirs, it is still cramped and
bounded.

I have hardly insisted enough on this unfortunate tendency of mankind to
lose on one side what it gains on the other. Yet this is the great fact
that condemns us to wander through our intellectual domains without ever
succeeding, in spite of their narrow limits, in holding them all at the
same time. If this fatal law did not exist, it might well happen that at
some date in the dim future, when man had gathered together all the
wisdom of all the ages, knowing what he had power to know and possessing
all that was within his reach, he might at last have learnt how to apply
his wealth, and live in the midst of nature, at peace with his kind and
no longer at grips with misery; and having gained tranquillity after all
his struggles, he might find his ultimate rest, if not in a state of
absolute perfection, at any rate in the midst of joy and abundance.

Such happiness, with all its limitations, is not even possible for us,
since man unlearns as fast as he learns; he cannot gain intellectually
and morally without losing physically, and he does not hold any of his
conquests strongly enough to be certain of keeping them always.

We moderns believe that our civilization will never perish, because we
have discovered printing, steam, and gunpowder. Has printing, which is
no less known to the inhabitants of Tonkin and Annam[105] than in
Europe, managed to give them even a tolerable civilization? They have
books, and many of them—books which are sold far cheaper than ours. How
is it that these peoples are so weak and degraded, so near the point
where civilized man, strengthless, cowardly, and corrupted, is inferior
in intellectual power to any barbarian who may seize the opportunity to
crush him?[106] The reason is, that printing is merely a means and not
an end. If you use it to disseminate healthy and vigorous ideas, it will
serve a most fruitful purpose and help to maintain civilization. If, on
the other hand, the intellectual life of a people is so debased that no
one any longer prints such works of philosophy, history, and literature,
as can give strong nourishment to a nation’s genius; if the degraded
press merely serves to multiply the unhealthy and poisonous compilations
of enervated minds, if its theology is the work of sectaries, its
politics of libellers, its poetry of libertines,—then how and why should
the printing-press be the saviour of civilization?

Because copies of the great masterpieces can be easily multiplied, it is
supposed that printing helps to preserve them; and that in times of
intellectual barrenness, when they have no other competitors, printing
can at least make them accessible to the nobler minds of the age. This
is of course true. Yet if a man is to trouble himself about an ancient
book at all, or gain any improvement from it, he must already have the
precious gift of an enlightened mind. In evil times, when public virtue
has left the earth, ancient writings are of little account, and no one
cares to disturb the silence of the libraries. A man must be already
worth something before he thinks of entering these august portals; but
in such times no one is worth anything....

Further, the length of life assured by Gutenberg’s discovery to the
achievements of the human mind is greatly exaggerated. With the
exception of a few works which are from time to time reprinted, all
books are dying to-day, as manuscripts died in the old days. Scientific
works especially, which are published in editions of a few hundred
copies, soon disappear from the common stock. They can still be found,
though with difficulty, in large collections. The intellectual treasures
of antiquity were in exactly the same case; and, I repeat, learning will
not save a people which has fallen into its dotage.

What have become of the thousands of admirable books published since the
first printing-press was set up? Most of them have been forgotten. Many
of those that are still spoken of have no longer any readers, while the
very names of the authors who were in demand fifty years ago are
gradually fading from memory.

In the attempt to heighten the influence of printing, too little stress
has been laid on the great diffusion of manuscripts that preceded it. At
the time of the Roman Empire, opportunities for education were very
general, and books must have been very common indeed, if we look at the
extraordinary number of out-at-elbows grammarians, whose poverty,
licentiousness, and passionate search for enjoyment live for us in the
_Satyricon_ of Petronius. They swarmed even in the smallest towns, and
may be compared to the novelists, lawyers, and journalists of our own
age. Even when the decadence was complete, anyone who wanted books could
get them. Virgil was read everywhere. The peasants who heard his praises
took him for a dangerous enchanter. The monks copied him. They copied
also Pliny, Dioscorides, Plato, Aristotle, even Catullus and Martial.
From the great number of mediæval manuscripts that remain after so much
war and pillage, after the burning of so many castles and abbeys, we may
guess that far more copies than one thinks were made of contemporary
works, literary, scientific, and philosophical. We exaggerate the real
services done by printing to science, poetry, morality, and
civilization; it would be better if we merely touched lightly on these
merits and spoke more of the way in which the invention of printing is
continually helping all kinds of religious and political interests.
Printing, I say again, is a marvellous tool; but when head and hand
fail, a tool cannot work by itself.

Gunpowder has no more power than printing to save a society that is in
danger of death. The knowledge of how to make it will certainly never be
forgotten. I doubt, however, whether the half-civilized peoples who use
it to-day as much as we do ourselves, ever look upon it from any other
point of view than that of destruction.

As for steam-power and the various industrial discoveries, they too,
like printing, are most excellent means, but not ends in themselves. I
may add that some processes which began as scientific discoveries ended
as matters of routine, when the intellectual movement that gave them
birth had stopped for ever, and the theoretical secrets at the back of
the processes had been lost. Finally, material well-being has never been
anything but an excrescence on civilization; no one has ever heard of a
society that persisted solely through its knowledge of how to travel
quickly and make fine clothes.

All the civilizations before our own have thought, as we do, that they
were set firmly on the rock of time by their unforgettable discoveries.
They all believed in their immortality. The Incas and their families,
who travelled swiftly in their palanquins on the excellent roads,
fifteen hundred miles long, that still link Cuzco to Quito, were
certainly convinced that their conquests would last for ever. Time, with
one blow of his wing, has hurled their empire, like so many others, into
the uttermost abyss. These kings of Peru also had their sciences, their
machinery, their powerful engines, at the work of which we still stand
amazed without being able to guess their construction. They too knew the
secret of carrying enormous masses from place to place. They built
fortresses by piling, one upon the other, blocks of stone thirty-eight
feet long and eighteen wide, such as may be seen in the ruins of
Tihuanaco, to which these gigantic building-materials must have been
brought from a distance of many miles. Do we know the means used by the
engineers of this vanished people to solve such a problem? No more than
we know how the vast Cyclopean walls were constructed, the ruins of
which, in many parts of Southern Europe, still defy the ravages of time.

We must not confuse the causes of a civilization with its results. The
causes disappear, and the results are forgotten, when the spirit that
gave them birth has departed. If they persist, it is because of a new
spirit that takes hold of them, and often succeeds in giving quite a new
direction to their activities. The human mind is always in motion. It
runs from one point to another, but cannot be in all places at once. It
exalts what it embraces, and forgets what it has abandoned. Held
prisoner for ever within a circle whose bounds it may not overstep, it
never manages to cultivate one part of its domain without leaving the
others fallow. It is always at the same time superior and inferior to
its forbears. Mankind never goes beyond itself, and so is not capable of
infinite progress.

CHAPTER XIV
PROOF OF THE INTELLECTUAL INEQUALITY OF RACES (_continued_). DIFFERENT
CIVILIZATIONS ARE MUTUALLY REPULSIVE. HYBRID RACES HAVE EQUALLY HYBRID
CIVILIZATIONS

If the human races were equal, the course of history would form an
affecting, glorious, and magnificent picture. The races would all have
been equally intelligent, with a keen eye for their true interests and
the same aptitude for conquest and domination. Early in the world’s
history, they would have gladdened the face of the earth with a crowd of
civilizations, all flourishing at the same time, and all exactly alike.
At the moment when the most ancient Sanscrit peoples were founding their
empire, and, by means of religion and the sword, were covering Northern
India with harvests, towns, palaces, and temples; at the moment when the
first Assyrian Empire was crowning the plains of the Tigris and
Euphrates with its splendid buildings, and the chariots and horsemen of
Nimroud were defying the four winds, we should have seen, on the African
coast, among the tribes of the prognathous negroes, the rise of an
enlightened and cultured social state, skilful in adapting means to
ends, and in possession of great wealth and power.

The Celts, in the course of their migrations, would have carried with
them to the extreme west of Europe the necessary elements of a great
society, as well as some tincture of the ancient wisdom of the East;
they would certainly have found, among the Iberian peoples spread over
the face of Italy, in Gaul and Spain and the islands of the
Mediterranean, rivals as well schooled as themselves in the early
traditions, as expert as they in the arts and inventions required for
civilization.

Mankind, at one with itself, would have nobly walked the earth, rich in
understanding, and founding everywhere societies resembling each other.
All nations would have judged their needs in the same way, asked nature
for the same things, and viewed her from the same angle. A short time
would have been sufficient for them to get into close contact with each
other and to form the complex network of relations that is everywhere so
necessary and profitable for progress.

The tribes that were unlucky enough to live on a barren soil, at the
bottom of rocky gorges, on the shores of ice-bound seas, or on steppes
for ever swept by the north winds—these might have had to battle against
the unkindness of nature for a longer time than the more favoured
peoples. But in the end, having no less wisdom and understanding than
the others, they would not have been backward in discovering that the
rigours of a climate has its remedies. They would have shown the
intelligent activity we see to-day among the Danes, the Norwegians, and
the Icelanders. They would have tamed the rebellious soil, and forced
it, in spite of itself, to be productive. In mountainous regions, we
should have found them leading a pastoral life, like the Swiss, or
developing industries like those of Cashmere. If their climate had been
so bad, and its situation so unfavourable, that there was obviously
nothing to be done with it, then the thought would have struck them that
the world was large, and contained many valleys and kindly plains; they
would have left their ungrateful country, and soon have found a land
where they could turn their energy and intelligence to good account.

Then the nations of the earth, equally enlightened and equally rich,
some by the commerce of their seething maritime cities, some by the
agriculture of their vast and flourishing prairies, others by the
industries of a mountainous district, others again by the facilities for
transport afforded them by their central position—all these, in spite of
the temporary quarrels, civil wars, and seditions inseparable from our
condition as men, might soon have devised some system of balancing their
conflicting interests. Civilizations identical in origin would, by a
long process of give and take, have ended by being almost exactly alike;
one might then have seen established that federation of the world which
has been the dream of so many centuries, and which would inevitably be
realized if all races were actually gifted, in the same degree, with the
same powers.

But we know that such a picture is purely fantastic. The first peoples
worthy of the name came together under the inspiration of an idea of
union which the barbarians who lived more or less near them not only
failed to conceive so quickly, but never conceived at all. The early
peoples emigrated from their first home and came across other peoples,
which they conquered; but these again neither understood nor ever
adopted with any intelligence the main ideas in the civilization which
had been imposed on them. Far from showing that all the tribes of
mankind are intellectually alike, the nations capable of civilization
have always proved the contrary, first by the absolutely different
foundations on which they based their states, and secondly by the marked
antipathy which they showed to each other. The force of example has
never awakened any instinct, in any people, which did not spring from
their own nature. Spain and the Gauls saw the Phœnicians, the Greeks,
and the Carthaginians, set up flourishing towns, one after the other, on
their coasts. But both Spain and the Gauls refused to copy the manners
and the government of these great trading powers. When the Romans came
as conquerors, they only succeeded in introducing a different spirit by
filling their new dominions with Roman colonies. Thus the case of the
Celts and the Iberians shows that civilization cannot be acquired
without the crossing of blood.

Consider the position of the American Indians at the present day. They
live side by side with a people which always wishes to increase in
numbers, to strengthen its power. They see thousands of ships passing up
and down their waterways. They know that the strength of their masters
is irresistible. They have no hope whatever of seeing their native land
one day delivered from the conqueror; their whole continent is
henceforth, as they all know, the inheritance of the European. A glance
is enough to convince them of the tenacity of those foreign institutions
under which human life ceases to depend, for its continuance, on the
abundance of game or fish. From their purchases of brandy, guns, and
blankets, they know that even their own coarse tastes would be more
easily satisfied in the midst of such a society, which is always
inviting them to come in, and which seeks, by bribes and flattery, to
obtain their consent. It is always refused. They prefer to flee from one
lonely spot to another; they bury themselves more and more in the heart
of the country, abandoning all, even the bones of their fathers. They
will die out, as they know well; but they are kept, by a mysterious
feeling of horror, under the yoke of their unconquerable repulsion from
the white race, and although they admire its strength and general
superiority, their conscience and their whole nature, in a word, their
blood, revolts from the mere thought of having anything in common with
it.

In Spanish America less aversion is felt by the natives towards their
masters. The reason is that they were formerly left by the central
Government under the rule of their Caciques. The Government did not try
to civilize them; it allowed them to keep their own laws and customs,
and, provided they became Christians, merely required them to pay
tribute. There was no question of colonization. Once the conquest was
made, the Spaniards showed a lazy tolerance to the conquered, and only
oppressed them spasmodically. This is why the Indians of South America
are less unhappy than those of the north, and continue to live on,
whereas the neighbours of the Anglo-Saxons will be pitilessly driven
down into the abyss.

Civilization is incommunicable, not only to savages, but also to more
enlightened nations. This is shown by the efforts of French goodwill and
conciliation in the ancient kingdom of Algiers at the present day, as
well as by the experience of the English in India, and the Dutch in
Java. There are no more striking and conclusive proofs of the unlikeness
and inequality of races.

We should be wrong to conclude that the barbarism of certain tribes is
so innate that no kind of culture is possible for them. Traces may be
seen, among many savage peoples, of a state of things better than that
obtaining now. Some tribes, otherwise sunk in brutishness, hold to
traditional rules, of a curious complexity, in the matter of marriage,
inheritance, and government. Their rites are unmeaning to-day, but they
evidently go back to a higher order of ideas. The Red Indians are
brought forward as an example; the vast deserts over which they roam are
supposed to have been once the settlements of the Alleghanians.[107]
Others, such as the natives of the Marianne Islands, have methods of
manufacture which they cannot have invented themselves. They hand them
down, without thought, from father to son, and employ them quite
mechanically.

When we see a people in a state of barbarism, we must look more closely
before concluding that this has always been their condition. We must
take many other facts into account, if we would avoid error.

Some peoples are caught in the sweep of a kindred race; they submit to
it more or less, taking over certain customs, and following them out as
far as possible. On the disappearance of the dominant race, either by
expulsion, or by a complete absorption in the conquered people, the
latter allows the culture, especially its root principles, to die out
almost entirely, and retains only the small part it has been able to
understand. Even this cannot happen except among nations related by
blood. This was the attitude of the Assyrians towards the Chaldean
culture, of the Syrian and Egyptian Greeks towards the Greeks of Europe,
of the Iberians, Celts, and Illyrians in face of the Roman ideas. If the
Cherokees, the Catawhas, the Muskhogees, the Seminoles, the Natchez, and
the like, still show some traces of the Alleghanian intelligence, I
cannot indeed infer that they are of pure blood, and directly descended
from the originating stock—this would mean that a race that was once
civilized can lose its civilization;—I merely say that if any of them
derives from the ancient conquering type as its source, the stream is a
muddy one, and has been mingled with many tributaries on the way. If it
were otherwise, the Cherokees would never have fallen into barbarism. As
for the other and less gifted tribes, they seem to represent merely the
dregs of the indigenous population, which was forced by the foreign
conquerors to combine together to form the basic elements of a new
social state. It is not surprising that these remnants of civilization
should have preserved, without understanding them, laws, rites, and
customs invented by men cleverer than themselves; they never knew their
meaning or theoretical principles, or regarded them as anything but
objects of superstitious veneration. The same argument applies to the
traces of mechanical skill found among them. The methods so admired by
travellers may well have been ultimately derived from a finer race that
has long disappeared. Sometimes we must look even further for their
origin. Thus, the working of mines was known to the Iberians,
Aquitanians, and the Bretons of the Scilly Isles; but the secret was
first discovered in Upper Asia, and thence brought long ago by the
ancestors of the Western peoples in the course of their migration.

The natives of the Caroline Islands are almost the most interesting in
Polynesia. Their looms, their carved canoes, their taste for trade and
navigation put a deep barrier between them and the other negroes. It is
not hard to see how they come to have these powers. They owe them to the
Malay blood in their veins; and as, at the same time, their blood is far
from being pure, their racial gifts have survived only in a stunted and
degraded form.

We must not therefore infer, from the traces of civilization existing
among a barbarous people, that it has ever been really civilized. It has
lived under the dominion of another tribe, of kindred blood but superior
to it; or perhaps, by merely living close to the other tribe, it has,
feebly and humbly, imitated its customs. The savage races of to-day have
always been savage, and we are right in concluding, by analogy, that
they will continue to be so, until the day when they disappear.

Their disappearance is inevitable as soon as two entirely unconnected
races come into active contact; and the best proof is the fate of the
Polynesians and the American Indians.

The preceding argument has established the following facts:

(i) The tribes which are savage at the present day have always been so,
and always will be, however high the civilizations with which they are
brought into contact.

(ii) For a savage people even to go on living in the midst of
civilization, the nation which created the civilization must be a nobler
branch of the same race.

(iii) This is also necessary if two distinct civilizations are to affect
each other to any extent, by an exchange of qualities, and give birth to
other civilizations compounded from their elements. That they should
ever be fused together is of course out of the question.

(iv) The civilizations that proceed from two completely foreign races
can only touch on the surface. They never coalesce, and the one will
always exclude the other. I will say more about this last point, as it
has not been sufficiently illustrated.

The fortune of war brought the Persian civilization face to face with
the Greek, the Greek with the Roman, the Egyptian with both Roman and
Greek; similarly the modern European civilization has confronted all
those existing to-day in the world, especially the Arabian.

The relations of Greek with Persian culture were manifold and
inevitable. A large part of the Hellenic population—the richest, if not
the most independent—was concentrated in the towns of the Syrian
littoral, and in the colonies of Asia Minor and the Euxine. These were,
soon after their foundation, absorbed in the dominions of the Great
King; the inhabitants lived under the eye of the satrap, though to a
certain extent they retained their democratic institutions. Again,
Greece proper, the Greece that was free, was always in close contact
with the cities of the Asiatic coast.

Were the civilizations of the two countries ever fused into one? We know
they were not. The Greeks regarded their powerful enemies as barbarians,
and their contempt was probably returned with interest. The two nations
were continually coming into contact, but their political ideas, their
private habits, the inner meaning of their public rites, the scope of
their art, and the forms of their government, remained quite distinct.
At Ecbatana only one authority was recognized; it was hereditary, and
limited in certain traditional ways, but was otherwise absolute. In
Hellas the power was subdivided among a crowd of different sovereigns.
The government was monarchical at Sparta, democratic at Athens,
aristocratic at Sicyon, tyrannic in Macedonia—a strange medley! Among
the Persians, the State religion was far nearer to the primitive idea of
_emanation_; it showed the same tendency to unity as the government
itself did, and had a moral and metaphysical significance that was not
without a certain philosophic depth. The Greek symbolism, on the other
hand, was concerned merely with the various outward appearances of
nature, and issued in a glorification of the human form. Religion left
the business of controlling a man’s conscience to the laws of the State;
as soon as the due rites were performed, and his meed of honour paid to
the local god or hero, the office of faith was complete. Further, the
rites themselves, the gods, and the heroes, were different in places a
few miles apart. If, in some sanctuaries like Olympia or Dodona, we seem
to find the worship, not of some special force of nature, but of the
cosmic principle itself, such a unity only makes the diversity of the
rest more remarkable; for this kind of worship was confined to a few
isolated places. Besides, the oracle of Dodona and the cult of the
Olympian Zeus were foreign importations.

As for the private customs of the Greeks, it is hardly necessary to show
how much they differed from those of the Persians. For a rich,
pleasure-loving, and cosmopolitan youth to imitate the habits of rivals
far more luxurious and outwardly refined than the Greeks, was to bring
himself into public contempt. Until the time of Alexander—in other
words, during the great, fruitful and glorious period of
Hellenism—Persia, in spite of its continual pressure, could not convert
Greece to its civilization.

With the coming of Alexander, this was curiously confirmed. Men believed
for a moment, when they saw Hellas conquering the kingdom of Darius,
that Asia was about to become Greek, or, still better, that the acts of
violence wrought in the madness of a single night by the conqueror
against the monuments of the country were, in their very excess, a proof
of contempt as well as hatred. But the burner of Persepolis soon changed
his mind. The change was so complete that his design at last became
apparent; it was to substitute himself purely and simply for the dynasty
of the Achaemenidae, and to rule like his predecessor or the great
Xerxes, with Greece as an appanage of his empire. In this way, the
Persian social system might have absorbed that of the Greeks.

In spite, however, of all Alexander’s authority, nothing of the kind
happened. His generals and soldiers never became used to seeing him in
his long clinging robe, wearing a turban on his head, surrounded by
eunuchs and denying his country. After his death, his system was
continued by some of his successors; they were, however, forced to
mitigate it. And why, as a fact, were they able to find the middle term
which became the normal condition of the Asiatics of the coast and the
Græco-Egyptians? Simply because their subjects consisted of a mixed
population of Greeks, Syrians, and Arabs, who had no reason to refuse
the compromise. Where, however, the races remained distinct, all terms
of union were impossible, and each country held to its national culture.

Similarly, right up to the last days of the Roman Empire, the hybrid
civilization that was dominant all over the East, including Greece
proper, had become much more Asiatic than Greek, owing to the great
preponderance of Asiatic blood in the mass of the people. The
intellectual life, it is true, took pride in being Hellenic. But it is
not hard to find, in the thought of the time, an Oriental strain
vitalizing all the products of the Alexandrian school, such as the
“centralized state” idea of the Græco-Syrian jurists. We see how the
different racial elements were balanced, and to which side the scale
inclined.

Other civilizations may be compared in the same way; and before ending
this chapter, I will say a few words about the relation between Arab
culture and our own.

No one can doubt their mutual repulsion. Our mediæval ancestors had
opportunities of seeing at close quarters the marvels of the Mussulman
State, when they willingly sent their sons to study in the schools of
Cordova. Yet nothing Arabian remains in Europe outside the nations that
have a tinge of Ishmaelitish blood. Brahmanic India showed no more
eagerness than ourselves to come to terms with Islam, and has, like us,
resisted all the efforts of its Mohammedan masters.

To-day, it is our turn to deal with the remains of Arab civilization. We
harry and destroy the Arabs, but we do not succeed in changing them,
although their civilization is not itself original, and so should have
less power of resistance. It is notorious that the Arabian people,
itself weak in numbers, continually incorporated the remnants of the
races it had conquered by the sword. The Mussulmans form a very mixed
population, with an equally hybrid culture, of which it is easy to
disentangle the elements. The conquering nucleus did not, before
Mohammed, consist of a new or unknown people. Its traditions were held
in common with the Semite and Hamite families from which it was
originally derived. It was brought into conflict with the Phœnicians and
the Jews, and had the blood of both in its veins. It played a
middleman’s part in their Red Sea trade, and on the eastern coasts of
India and Africa. It did the same, later, for the Persians and the
Romans. Many Arab tribes took part in the political life of Persia under
the Arsacidæ and Sassanidæ, while some of their princes, like
Odenathus,[108] were proclaimed Cæsar, some of their princesses, like
Zenobia, daughter of Amru and Queen of Palmyra, won a glory that was
distinctively Roman, and some of their adventurers, like Philip, even
raised themselves to the Imperial purple. Thus this hybrid nation had
never ceased, from the most ancient times, to make itself felt among the
powerful societies among which it lived. It had associated itself with
their work, and like a body half sunk in water, half exposed to the sun,
contained at one and the same time elements of barbarism and of an
advanced civilization.

Mohammed invented the religion that was best fitted to the mental state
of his people, where idolatry found many followers, but where
Christianity, distorted by heretics and Judaizers, made just as many
proselytes. In the religious system of the Prophet of Koresh the
reconciliation between the law of Moses and the Christian faith was more
complete than in the doctrines of the Church. This problem had greatly
exercised the minds of the early Catholics, and was always present to
the Oriental conscience. Hence Mohammed’s gift had already an appetizing
appearance, and besides, any theological novelty had a good chance of
gaining converts among the Syrians and Egyptians. To crown all, the new
religion came forward sword in hand; this was another guarantee of
success among the masses, who had no common bond of union, other than
the strong conviction of their helplessness.

It was thus that Islam came forth from the desert. Arrogant,
uninventive, and with a civilization that was already, for the most
part, Græco-Asiatic, it found the ground prepared for it. Its recruits,
on the East and South coasts of the Mediterranean, had already been
saturated with the complex product which it was bringing to them, and
which in turn it reabsorbed. The new cult, that had borrowed its
doctrines from the Church, the Synagogue, and the garbled traditions of
the Hedjaz and the Yemen, extended from Bagdad to Montpellier; and with
the cult came its Persian and Roman laws, its Græco-Syrian[109] and
Egyptian science, and its system of administration, which was tolerant
from the first, as is natural where there is no unity in the State
organism. We need not be astonished at the rapid progress in refinement
made by the Mussulmans. The greater part of the people had merely
changed their habits for the time being. When they began to play the
part of apostles in the world, their identity was not at once
recognized; they had not been known under their old names for some time.
Another important point must be remembered. In this varied collection of
peoples, each no doubt contributed its share to the common welfare. But
which of them had given the first push to the machine, and which
directed its motion for the short time it lasted? Why, the little
nucleus of Arab tribes that had come from the interior of the peninsula,
and consisted, not of philosophers, but of fanatics, soldiers,
conquerors, and rulers.

Arab civilization was merely the old Græco-Syrian civilization, modified
by Persian admixture, and revived and rejuvenated by the new, sharp
breath of a genius. Hence, although ready to make concessions, it could
not come to terms with any form of society that had a different origin
from its own, any more than the Greek culture could with the Roman,
although these were so near to each other and lived side by side for so
many centuries within the same Empire.

The preceding paragraphs are enough to show how impossible it is that
the civilizations belonging to racially distinct groups should ever be
fused together. The irreconcilable antagonism between different races
and cultures is clearly established by history, and such innate
repulsion must imply unlikeness and inequality. If it is admitted that
the European cannot hope to civilize the negro, and manages to transmit
to the mulatto only a very few of his own characteristics; if the
children of a mulatto and a white woman cannot really understand
anything better than a hybrid culture, a little nearer than their
father’s to the ideas of the white race,—in that case, I am right in
saying that the different races are unequal in intelligence.

I will not adopt the ridiculous method that is unhappily only too dear
to our ethnologists. I will not discuss, as they do, the moral and
intellectual standing of individuals taken one by one.

I need not indeed speak of morality at all, as I have already admitted
the power of every human family to receive the light of Christianity in
its own way. As to the question of intellectual merit, I absolutely
refuse to make use of the argument, “every negro is a fool.”[110] My
main reason for avoiding it is that I should have to recognize, for the
sake of balance, that every European is intelligent; and heaven keep me
from such a paradox!

I will not wait for the friends of equality to show me such and such
passages in books written by missionaries or sea-captains, who declare
that some Yolof is a fine carpenter, some Hottentot a good servant, that
some Kaffir dances and plays the violin, and some Bambara knows
arithmetic.

I am ready to admit without proof all the marvels of this kind that
anyone can tell me, even about the most degraded savages. I have already
denied that even the lowest tribes are absolutely stupid. I actually go
further than my opponents, as I have no doubt that a fair number of
negro chiefs are superior, in the wealth of their ideas, the synthetic
power of their minds, and the strength of their capacity for action, to
the level usually reached by our peasants, or even by the average
specimens of our half-educated middle class. But, I say again, I do not
take my stand on the narrow ground of individual capacity. It seems to
me unworthy of science to cling to such futile arguments. If Mungo Park
or Lander have given a certificate of intelligence to some negro, what
is to prevent another traveller, who meets the same phœnix, from coming
to a diametrically opposite conclusion? Let us leave these puerilities,
and compare together, not men, but groups. When, as may happen some day,
we have carefully investigated what the different groups can and cannot
do, what is the limit of their faculties and the utmost reach of their
intelligence, by what nations they have been dominated since the dawn of
history—then and then only shall we have the right to consider why the
higher individuals of one race are inferior to the geniuses of another.
We may then go on to compare the powers of the average men belonging to
these types, and to find out where these powers are equal and where one
surpasses the other. But this difficult and delicate task cannot be
performed until the relative position of the different races has been
accurately, and to some extent mathematically, gauged. I do not even
know if we shall ever get clear and undisputed results, if we shall ever
be free to go beyond a mere general conclusion and come to such close
grips with the minor varieties as to be able to recognize, define, and
classify the lower strata and the average minds of each nation. If we
can do this, we shall easily be able to show that the activity, energy,
and intelligence of the least gifted individuals in the dominant races,
are greater than the same qualities in the corresponding specimens
produced by the other groups.[111]

Mankind is thus divided into unlike and unequal parts, or rather into a
series of categories, arranged, one above the other, according to
differences of intellect.

In this vast hierarchy there are two great forces always acting on each
member of the series. These forces are continually setting up movements
that tend to fuse the races together; they are, as I have already
indicated,[112] (i) resemblance in general bodily structure and (ii) the
common power of expressing ideas and sensations by the modulation of the
voice.

I have said enough about the first of these, and have shown the true
limits within which it operates.

I will now discuss the second point, and inquire what is the relation
between the power of a race and the merit of its language; in other
words, whether the strongest races have the best idioms, and if not, how
the anomaly may be explained.

CHAPTER XV
THE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES ARE UNEQUAL, AND CORRESPOND PERFECTLY IN
RELATIVE MERIT TO THE RACES THAT USE THEM

If a degraded people, at the lowest rung of the racial ladder, with as
little significance for the “male” as for the “female” progress of
mankind, could possibly have invented a language of philosophic depth,
of æsthetic beauty and flexibility, rich in characteristic forms and
precise idioms, fitted alike to express the sublimities of religion, the
graces of poetry, the accuracy of physical and political science,—such a
people would certainly possess an utterly useless talent, that of
inventing and perfecting an instrument which their mental capacity would
be too weak to turn to any account.

We should have, in such a case, to believe that our observation has been
suddenly brought to a stop, not by something unknown or unintelligible
(as often happens) but by a mere absurdity.

At first sight, this tantalizing answer seems the correct one. If we
take the races as they are to-day, we must admit that the perfection of
idiom is very far from corresponding, in all cases, to the degree of
civilization reached. The tongues of modern Europe, to speak of no
others, are unequal in merit, and the richest and most beautiful do not
necessarily belong to the most advanced people. Further, they are one
and all vastly inferior to many languages which have been at different
times spoken in the world.

A still more curious fact is that the languages of whole groups of
peoples which have stopped at a low level of culture may be of
considerable merit. Thus the net of language, with its varied meshes,
might seem to have been cast over mankind at random, the silk and the
gold sometimes covering rude, ferocious, and miserable tribes, while
wise and learned peoples are still caught in the hemp, the wool, and the
horsehair. Happily, this is so only in appearance. If, with the aid of
history, we apply our doctrine of the difference of races, we shall soon
find that our proofs of their intellectual inequality are even
strengthened.

The early philologists were doubly in error, when they thought, first
that all languages are formed on the same principle, secondly that
language was invented merely under the stress of material needs. In the
former point they were influenced by the unitarian doctrine that all
human groups have a common origin.

With regard to language, doubt is not even possible. The modes of
formation are completely different; and whether the classifications of
philology require revision or not, we cannot believe for a moment that
the Altaic, Aryan, and Semitic families were not from the first
absolutely foreign to each other. Nothing is the same. The vocabulary
has its own peculiar character in each of these groups. There is a
different modulation of the voice in each. In one, the lips are used to
produce the sounds; in another, the contraction of the throat; in
another the nasal passage and the upper part of the head. The
composition of the parts of speech, according as they confuse or
distinguish the various shades of thought, points equally to a
difference of origin. The most striking proof of the divergence in
thought and feeling between one group and another are seen in the
inflexions of the substantive and the conjugations of the verb. When,
therefore, the philosopher tries to give an account of the origin of
language by a process of purely abstract conjecture, and begins by
conceiving an “original man,” without any specific racial or linguistic
character, he starts from an absurdity, and continues on the same lines.
There is no such being as “man” in the abstract; and I am especially
sure that he will not be discovered by the investigation of language. I
cannot argue on the basis that mankind started from some one point in
its creation of idiom. There were many points of departure, because
there were many forms of thought and feeling.[113]

The second view, I think, is just as false. According to this theory,
there would have been no development save as dictated by necessity. The
result would be that the “male” races would have a richer and more
accurate language than the “female”; further, as material needs are
concerned with objects apprehended by the senses, and especially with
actions, the main factor of human speech would be vocabulary.

There would be no necessity for the syntax and grammatical structure to
advance beyond the simplest and most elementary combinations. A series
of sounds more or less linked together is always enough to express a
need; and a gesture, as the Chinese know well, is an obvious form of
commentary, when the phrase is obscure without it.[114] Not only would
the synthetic power of language remain undeveloped; it would also be the
poorer for dispensing with harmony, quantity, and rhythm. For what is
the use of melody when the sole object is to obtain some positive
result? A language, in fact, would be a mere chance collection of
arbitrary sounds.

Certain questions are apparently cleared up by such a theory. Chinese,
the tongue of a masculine race, seems to have been at first developed
with a purely utilitarian aim. The word has never risen above a mere
sound, and has remained monosyllabic. There is no evolution of
vocabulary, no root giving birth to a family of derivatives. All the
words are roots; they are not modified by suffixes, but by each other,
according to a very crude method of juxtaposition. The grammar is
extremely simple; which makes the phraseology very monotonous. The very
idea of æsthetic value is excluded, at any rate for ears that are
accustomed to the rich, varied, and abundant forms, the inexhaustible
combinations of happier tongues. We must however add that this may not
be the impression produced on the Chinese themselves; and their spoken
language certainly aims at some kind of beauty, since there are definite
rules governing the melodic sequence of sounds. If it does not succeed
in being so euphonious as other languages, we must still recognize that
it aims at euphony no less than they. Further, the primary elements of
Chinese are something more than a mere heaping together of useful
sounds.[115]

I admit that the masculine races may be markedly inferior in æsthetic
power to the others,[116] and their inferiority may be reproduced in
their idioms. This is shown, not merely by the relative poverty of
Chinese, but also by the careful way in which certain Western races have
robbed Latin of its finest rhythmic qualities, and Gothic of its
sonority. The inferiority of our modern languages, even the best of
them, to Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, is self-evident, and corresponds
exactly to the mediocrity of the Chinese civilization and our own, so
far as art and literature are concerned. I admit that this difference,
alone with others, may serve to mark off the languages of the masculine
races. They still, however, have a feeling for rhythm (less than that of
the ancient tongues, but still powerful), and make a real attempt to
create and obey laws of correspondence between sounds and the forms by
which thought is modified in speech. I conclude that even in the
languages of masculine races there still flickers the intellectual
spark, the feeling for beauty and logic; this feeling, as well as that
of material need, must preside at the birth of every language.

I said above that if material need had reigned alone, a set of any
chance sounds would have been enough for human necessities, in the first
ages of man’s existence. Such a theory cannot be maintained.

Sounds are not assigned to ideas by pure chance. The choice is governed
by the instinctive recognition of a certain logical relation between
noises heard outwardly by man’s ear and ideas that his throat or tongue
wishes to express. In the eighteenth century men were greatly struck by
this truth. Unfortunately, it was caught in the net of etymological
exaggeration so characteristic of the time; and its results were so
absurd that they justly fell into disrepute. For a long time the best
minds were warned off the land that had been so stupidly exploited by
the early pioneers. They are now beginning to return to it again, and if
they have learnt prudence and restraint in the bitter school of
experience, they may arrive at valuable conclusions. Without pushing a
theory, true in itself, into the realm of chimeras, we may allow that
primitive speech knew how to use as far as possible the different
impressions received by the ear, in order to form certain classes of
words; in creating others it was guided by the feeling of a mysterious
relation between certain abstract ideas and some particular noises.
Thus, for example, the sound of _ē_ seems to suggest death and
dissolution, that of _v_ or _w_, vagueness in the moral or physical
realm, vows, wind, and the like; _s_ suggests starkness and standing
fast, _m_ maternity, and so on.[117] Such a theory is sufficiently well
founded for us to take it seriously, if kept within due limits. But it
must be used with great circumspection, if we are not to find ourselves
in the dark paths where even common sense is soon led astray.

The last paragraph may show, however imperfectly, that material need is
not the only element that produces a language, but that the best of
man’s powers have helped in the task. Sounds were not applied
arbitrarily to ideas and objects, and in this respect men followed a
pre-established order, one side of which was manifested in themselves.
Thus the primitive tongues, however crude and poor they may have been,
contained all the elements from which their branches might at a later
time be developed in a logical and necessary sequence.

W. von Humboldt has observed, with his usual acuteness, that every
language is independent of the will of those who speak it. It is closely
bound up with their intellectual condition, and is beyond the reach of
arbitrary caprice. It cannot be altered at will, as is curiously shown
by the efforts that have been made to do so.

The Bushmen have invented a system of changing their language, in order
to prevent its being understood by the uninitiated. We find the same
custom among certain tribes of the Caucasus. But all their efforts come
to no more than the mere insertion of a subsidiary syllable at the
beginning, middle, or end of words. Take away this parasitic element,
and the language remains the same, changed neither in forms nor syntax.

De Sacy has discovered a more ambitious attempt, in the language called
“Balaïbalan.” This curious idiom was invented by the Sufis, to be used
in their mystical books, with the object of wrapping the speculations of
their theologians in still greater mystery. They made up, on no special
plan, the words that seemed to them to sound most strangely to their
ears. If however this so-called language did not belong to any family
and if the meaning given to its sounds was entirely arbitrary, yet the
principles of euphony, the grammar and the syntax, everything in fact
which gives a language its special character, bore the unmistakable
stamp of Arabic and Persian. The Sufis produced a jargon at once Aryan
and Semitic, and of no importance whatever. The pious colleagues of
Djelat-Eddin-Rumi were not able to invent a language; and clearly this
power has not been given to any single man.[118]

Hence the language of a race is closely bound up with its intelligence,
and has the power of reflecting its various mental stages, as they are
reached. This power may be at first only implicit.[119]

Where the mental development of a race is faulty or imperfect, the
language suffers to the same extent. This is shown by Sanscrit, Greek,
and the Semitic group, as well as by Chinese, in which I have already
pointed out a utilitarian tendency corresponding to the intellectual
bent of the people. The superabundance of philosophical and ethnological
terms in Sanscrit corresponds to the genius of those who spoke it, as
well as its richness and rhythmic beauty. The same is the case with
Greek; while the lack of precision in the Semitic tongues is exactly
paralleled by the character of the Semitic peoples.

If we leave the cloudy heights of the remoter ages, and come down to the
more familiar regions of modern history, we shall be, as it were,
presiding at the birth of many new tongues; and this will make us see
with even greater clearness how faithfully language mirrors the genius
of a race.

As soon as two nations are fused together, a revolution takes place in
their respective languages; this is sometimes slow, sometimes sudden,
but always inevitable. The languages are changed and, after a certain
time, die out as separate entities. The new tongue is a compromise
between them, the dominant element being furnished by the speech of the
race that has contributed most members to the new people.[120] Thus,
from the thirteenth century, the Germanic dialects of France have had to
yield ground, not to Latin, but to the _lingua romana_, with the revival
of the Gallo-Roman power.[121] Celtic, too, had to retreat before the
Italian colonists. It did not yield to Italian civilization; in fact,
one might say, that, thanks to the number of those who spoke it, Celtic
finally gained a kind of victory. For after the complete fusion of the
Gauls, the Romans, and the northern tribes, it was Celtic that laid the
foundations of modern French syntax, abolished the strong accentuation
of Germanic as well as the sonority of Latin, and introduced its own
equable rhythm. The gradual development of French is merely the effect
of this patient labour, that went on, without ceasing, under the
surface. Again, the reason why modern German has lost the striking forms
to be seen in the Gothic of Bishop Ulfilas lies in the presence of a
strong Cymric element in the midst of the small Germanic population that
was still left to the east of the Rhine,[122] after the great migrations
of the sixth and following centuries of our era.

The linguistic results of the fusion of two peoples are as individual as
the new racial character itself. One may say generally that no language
remains pure after it has come into close contact with a different
language. Even when their structures are totally unlike each other, the
vocabulary at any rate suffers some changes. If the parasitic language
has any strength at all, it will certainly attack the other in its
rhythmic quality, and even in the unstable parts of its syntax. Thus
language is one of the most fragile and delicate forms of property; and
we may often see a noble and refined speech being affected by barbarous
idioms and passing itself into a kind of relative barbarism. By degrees
it will lose its beauty; its vocabulary will be impoverished, and many
of its forms obsolete, while it will show an irresistible tendency to
become assimilated to its inferior neighbour. This has happened in the
case of Wallachian and Rhætian, Kawi and Birman. The two latter have
been leavened with Sanscrit elements; but in spite of this noble
alliance, they have been declared by competent judges to be inferior to
Delaware.[123]

The group of tribes speaking this dialect are of the Lenni-Lenapes
family, and they originally ranked higher than the two yellow peoples
who were caught in the sweep of Hindu civilization. If, in spite of
their primitive superiority, they are now inferior to the Asiatics, it
is because these live under the influence of the social institutions of
a noble race and have profited by them, though in themselves they are of
slight account. Contact with the Hindus has been enough to raise them
some way in the scale, while the Lenapes, who have never been touched by
any such influence, have not been able to rise above their present
civilization. In a similar way (to take an obvious example) the young
mulattoes who have been educated in London or Paris may show a certain
veneer of culture superior to that of some Southern Italian peoples, who
are in point of merit infinitely higher; for once a mulatto, always a
mulatto. When therefore we come upon a savage tribe with a language
better than that of a more civilized nation, we must examine carefully
whether the civilization of the latter really belongs to it, or is
merely the result of a slight admixture of foreign blood. If so, a low
type of native language helped out by a hybrid mixture of foreign idioms
may well exist side by side with a certain degree of social
culture.[124]

I have already said that, as each civilization has a special character,
we must not be surprised if the poetic and philosophic sense was more
developed among the Hindus and the Greeks than among ourselves; whereas
our modern societies are marked rather by their practical, scientific,
and critical spirit. Taken as a whole, we have more energy and a greater
genius for action than the conquerors of Southern Asia and Hellas. On
the other hand, we must yield them the first place in the kingdom of
beauty, and here our languages naturally mirror our humble position. The
style of the Indian and Ionian writers takes a more powerful flight
towards the sphere of the ideal. Language, in fact, while being an
excellent index of the general elevation of races, is in a special
degree the measure of their æsthetic capacities. This is the character
it assumes when we use it as a means of comparing different
civilizations.

To bring out this point further, I will venture to question a view put
forward by William von Humboldt, that in spite of the obvious
superiority of the Mexican to the Peruvian language, the civilization of
the Incas was yet far above that of the people of Anahuac.[125]

The Peruvian customs were certainly more gentle than the Mexican; and
their religious ideas were as inoffensive as those of Montezuma’s
subjects were ferocious. In spite of this, their social condition was
marked by far less energy and variety. Their crude despotism never
developed into more than a dull kind of communism; whereas the Aztec
civilization had made various political experiments of great complexity.
Its military system was far more vigorous; and though the use of writing
was equally unknown in both empires, it seems that poetry, history, and
ethics, which were extensively studied at the time of Cortes, would have
advanced further in Mexico than in Peru, the institutions of which were
coloured by an Epicurean indifferentism that was highly unfavourable to
intellectual progress. Clearly we must regard the more active people as
superior.

Von Humboldt’s view is simply a consequence of the way in which he
defines civilization.[126] Without going over the same ground again, I
was yet bound to clear up this point; for if two civilizations had
really been able to develop in inverse ratio to the merits of their
respective languages, I should have had to give up the idea of any
necessary connexion between the intelligence of a people and the value
of the language spoken by it. But I cannot do this, in view of what I
have already said about Greek and Sanscrit, as compared with English,
French, and German.

It would be, however, a very difficult task to assign a reason, along
these lines, for the exact course taken by the language of a hybrid
people. We have seldom sufficient knowledge either of the quantity or
quality of the intermixture of blood to be able properly to trace its
effects. Yet these racial influences persist, and if they are not
unravelled, we may easily come to false conclusions. It is just because
the connexion between race and language is so close, that it lasts much
longer than the political unity of the different peoples, and may be
recognized even when the peoples are grouped under new names. The
language changes with their blood, but does not die out until the last
fragment of the national life has disappeared. This is the case with
modern Greek. Sadly mutilated, robbed of its wealth of grammar,
impoverished in the number of its sounds, with the pure stream of its
vocabulary troubled and muddy, it has none the less retained the impress
of its original form.[127] In the intellectual world it corresponds to
the sullied and deflowered Parthenon, which first became a church for
the Greek popes, and then a powder-magazine; which had its pediments and
columns shattered in a thousand places by the Venetian bullets of
Morosini; but which still stands, for the wonder and adoration of the
ages, as a model of pure grace and unadorned majesty.

Not every race has the power of being faithful to the tongue of its
ancestors. This makes our task still more difficult, when we try to
determine the origin or relative value of different human types by the
help of philology. Not only do languages change without any obvious
reason, at any rate from the racial point of view; but there are also
certain nations which give up their own language altogether, when they
are brought for some time into contact with a foreign race. This
happened, after the conquests of Alexander, in the case of the more
enlightened nations of Western Asia, such as the Carians, Cappadocians,
and Armenians. The Gauls are another instance, as I have already said.
Yet all these peoples brought a foreign element into the conquering
tongue, which was transformed in its turn. Thus they could all be
regarded as using their own intellectual tools, though to a very
imperfect extent; while others, more tenacious of theirs, such as the
Basques, the Berbers of Mount Atlas, and the Ekkhilis of Southern
Arabia, speak even at the present day the same tongue as was spoken by
their most primitive ancestors. But there are certain peoples, the Jews
for example, who seem never to have held to their ancestral speech at
all; and we can discover this indifference from the time of their
earliest migrations. When Terah left the land of his fathers, Ur of the
Chaldees, he certainly had not learnt the Canaanitish tongue that
henceforth became the national speech of the children of Israel. It was
probably influenced to some extent by their earlier recollections, and
in their mouth became a special dialect of the very ancient language
which was the mother of the earliest Arabic we know, and the lawful
inheritance of tribes closely allied to the black Hamites.[128] Yet not
even to this language were the Jews to remain faithful. The tribes who
were brought back from captivity by Zerubbabel had forgotten it during
their short stay of sixty-two years by the rivers of Babylon. Their
patriotism was proof against exile, and still burned with its original
fire; but the rest had been given up, with remarkable facility, by a
people which is at the same time jealous of its own traditions and
extremely cosmopolitan. Jerusalem was rebuilt, and its inhabitants
reappeared, speaking an Aramaic or Chaldean jargon, which may have had
some slight resemblance to the speech of the fathers of Abraham.

At the time of Christ, this dialect offered only a feeble resistance to
the invasion of Hellenistic Greek, which assailed the Jewish mind on all
sides. Henceforth all the works produced by Jewish writers appeared in
the new dress, which fitted them more or less elegantly, and copied to
some extent the old Attic fashions. The last canonical books of the Old
Testament, as well as the works of Philo and Josephus, are Hellenistic
in spirit.

When the Holy City was destroyed, and the Jewish nation scattered, the
favour of God departed from them, and the East came again into its own.
Hebrew culture broke with Athens as it had broken with Alexandria, and
the language and ideas of the Talmud, the teaching of the school of
Tiberias, were again Semitic, sometimes in the form of Arabic, sometimes
in that of the “language of Canaan,” to use Isaiah’s phrase. I am
speaking of what was henceforth to be the sacred language of religion
and the Rabbis, and was regarded as the true national speech. In their
everyday life, however, the Jews used the tongue of the country where
they settled; and, further, these exiles were known everywhere by their
special accent. They never succeeded in fitting their vocal organs to
their adopted language, even when they had learnt it from childhood.
This goes to confirm what William von Humboldt says as to the connexion
between race and language being so close that later generations never
get quite accustomed to pronounce correctly words that were unknown to
their ancestors.[129]

Whether this be true or not, we have in the Jews a remarkable proof of
the fact that one must not always assume, at first sight, a close
connexion between a race and its language, for the language may not have
belonged to it originally.[130]

We see how cautiously we must tread if we attempt to infer an identity
of race from the affinity, or even the resemblance, of languages. Not
only have most of the nations of Western Asia and nearly all those of
Southern Europe merely adapted the speech of others to their own use,
while leaving its main elements untouched; but there are also some who
have taken over languages absolutely foreign to them, to which they have
made no contribution whatever. The latter case is certainly rarer, and
may even be regarded as an anomaly. But its mere existence is enough to
make us very careful in admitting a form of proof in which such
exceptions are possible. On the other hand, since they _are_ exceptions,
and are not met with so often as the opposite case, of a national tongue
being preserved for centuries by even a weak nation; since we also see
how a language is assimilated to the particular character of the people
that has created it, and how its changes are in exact proportion to the
successive modifications in the people’s blood; since the part played by
a language in forming its derivatives varies with the numerical
strength, in the new groups, of the race that speaks it, we may justly
conclude that no nation can have a language of greater value than
itself, except under special circumstances. As this point is of
considerable importance, I will try to bring it out by a new line of
proof.

We have already seen that the civilization of a composite people does
not include all its social classes.[131] The racial influences that were
at work in the lower strata from the first still go on; and they prevent
the directing forces of the national culture from reaching the depths at
all,—if they do, their action is weak and transitory. In France, about
five-eighths of the total population play merely an unwilling and
passive part in the development of modern European culture, and that
only by fits and starts. With the exception of Great Britain, of which
the insular position produces a greater unity of type, the proportion is
even higher in the rest of the Continent. I will speak of France at
greater length, as an instance of the exact correspondence between
language and racial type; for in France we have a particular instance
that strikingly confirms our main thesis.

We know little, or rather we have no real evidence at all, of the phases
which Celtic and rustic Latin[132] passed through before they met and
coalesced. Nevertheless, St. Jerome and his contemporary Sulpicius
Severus tell us (the former in his “Commentaries” on St. Paul’s Epistle
to the Galatians, the second in his “Dialogue on the virtues of the
Eastern Monks”) that in their time at least two languages were generally
spoken in Gaul. There was, first, Celtic, which was preserved on the
banks of the Rhine in so pure a form, that it remained identical with
the language spoken by the Galatians of Asia Minor, who had been
separated from their mother country for more than six centuries.[133]
Secondly, there was the language called “Gallic,” which according to a
commentator, can only have been a form, already broken down, of Popular
Latin. This fourth century dialect, while different from the Gallic of
Treves, was spoken neither in the West nor in Aquitaine. It was found
only in the centre and south of what is now France, and was itself
probably split up into two great divisions. It is the common source of
the currents, more or less Latinized, which were mingled with other
elements in different proportions, and formed later the _langue d’oil_
and the _lingua romana_, in the narrower sense. I will speak first of
the latter.

In order to bring it into being, all that was necessary was a slight
alteration in the vocabulary of Latin, and the introduction of a few
syntactical notions borrowed from Celtic and other languages till then
unknown in the West of Europe. The Imperial colonies had brought in a
fair number of Italian, African, and Asiatic elements. The Burgundian,
and especially the Gothic, invasions added another, which was marked by
considerable harmony, liveliness, and sonority. Its vocabulary was
further increased after the inroads of the Saracens. Thus the _lingua
romana_ became, in its rhythmic quality, quite distinct from Gallic, and
soon assumed a character of its own. It is true that we do not find this
in its perfection, in the “Oath of the Sons of Ludwig the Pious,” as we
do later in the poems of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras or Bertran de Born.[134]
Yet even in the “Oath” we can recognize the language for what it is; it
has already acquired its main features, and its future path is clearly
mapped out. It formed henceforth (in its different dialects of Limousin,
Provençal, and Auvergnat) the speech of a people of as mixed an origin
as any in the world. It was a refined and supple language, witty,
brilliant, and satirical, but without depth or philosophy. It was of
tinsel rather than gold, and had never been able to do more than pick up
a few ingots on the surface of the rich mines that lay open to it.
Without any serious principles, it was destined to remain an instrument
of indifference, of universal scepticism and mockery. It did not fail to
be used as such. The people cared for nothing but pleasure and parade.
Brave to a fault, beyond measure gay, spending their passion on a dream,
and their vitality on idle toys, they had an instrument that was exactly
suited to their character, and which, though admired by Dante, was put
to no better use in poetry than to tag satires, love-songs, and
challenges, and in religion to support heresies such as that of the
Albigenses, a pestilent Manicheism, without value even for literature,
from which an English author, in no way Catholic in his sympathies,
congratulates the Papacy on having delivered the Middle Ages.[135] Such
was the _lingua romana_ of old, and such do we find it even to-day. It
is pretty rather than beautiful, and shows on the surface how little it
is fitted to serve a great civilization.

Was the _langue d’oil_ formed in a similar way? Obviously not. However
the Celtic, Latin, and Germanic elements were fused (for we cannot be
certain on this point, in the absence of records going back to the
earliest period of the language[136]), it is at any rate clear that it
rose from a strongly marked antagonism between the three tongues, and
that it would thus have a character and energy quite incompatible with
such compromises and adaptations as those which gave birth to the
_lingua romana_. In one moment of its life, the _langue d’oil_ was
partly a Germanic tongue. In the written remains that have survived, we
find one of the best qualities of the Aryan languages, the power of
forming compounds. This power, it is true, is limited; and though still
considerable, is less than in Sanscrit, Greek, and German. In the nouns,
we find a system of inflexion by suffix, and, in consequence, an ease in
inverting the order which modern French has lost, and which the language
of the sixteenth century retained only to a slight extent, its
inversions being gained at the expense of clearness. Again, the
vocabulary of the _langue d’oil_ included many words brought in by the
Franks.[137] Thus it began by being almost as much Germanic as Gallic;
Celtic elements appeared in its second stage, and perhaps fixed the
melodic principles of the language. The best possible tribute to its
merits is to be found in the successful experiment of Littré,[138] who
translated the first book of the “Iliad” literally, line for line, into
French of the thirteenth century. Such a _tour de force_ would be
impossible in modern French.

Such a language belonged to a people that was evidently very different
from the inhabitants of Southern Gaul. It was more deeply attached to
Catholicism; its politics were permeated by a lively idea of freedom,
dignity, and independence, its institutions had no aim but utility. Thus
the mission set before the popular literature was not to express the
fancies of the mind or heart, the freakishness of a universal
scepticism, but to put together the annals of the nation, and to set
down what was at that time regarded as the truth. It is to this temper
of the people and their language that we owe the great rhymed
chronicles, especially “Garin le Loherain,” which bear witness, though
it has since been denied, to the predominance of the North.
Unfortunately, since the compilers of these traditions, and even their
original authors, mainly aimed at preserving historical facts or
satisfying their desire for positive and solid results, poetry in the
true sense, the love of form and the search for beauty, does not always
bulk as large as it should in their long narratives. The literature of
the _langue d’oil_ was, above all, utilitarian; and so the race, the
language, and the literature were in perfect harmony.

The Germanic element in the race, however, being far less than the
Gallic basis or the Roman accretions, naturally began to lose ground.
The same thing took place in the language; Celtic and Latin advanced,
Germanic retreated. That noble speech, which we know only at its highest
stage, and which might have risen even higher, began to decline and
become corrupted towards the end of the thirteenth century. In the
fifteenth, it was no more than a patois, from which the Germanic
elements had completely disappeared. The treasury was exhausted; and
what remained was an illogical and barbarous anomaly in the midst of the
progress of Celtic and Latin. Thus in the sixteenth century the revival
of classical studies found the language in ruins, and tried to remodel
it on the lines of Greek and Latin. This was the professed aim of the
writers of this great age. They did not succeed, and the seventeenth
century, wisely seeing that the irresistible march of events could in no
wise be curbed by the hand of man, set itself merely to improve the
language from within; for every day it was assuming more and more the
forms best suited to the dominant race, the forms, in other words, into
which the grammatical life of Celtic had formerly been cast.

Although both the _langue d’oil_ and French proper are marked by a
greater unity than the _lingua romana_ (since the mixture of races and
languages that gave birth to them was less complex) yet they have
produced separate dialects which survive to this day. It is not doing
these too much honour to call them dialects, not patois. They arose, not
from the corruption of the dominant type, with which they were at least
contemporary, but from the different proportions in which the Celtic,
Latin, and Germanic elements, that still make up the French nationality,
were mingled. To the north of the Seine, we find the dialect of Picardy;
this is, in vocabulary and rhythmic quality, very near Flemish, of which
the Germanic character is too obvious to be dwelt upon. Flemish, in this
respect, shows the same power of choice as the _langue d’oil_, which
could in a certain poem, without ceasing to be itself, admit forms and
expressions taken bodily from the language spoken at Arras.[139]

As we go south of the Seine towards the Loire, the Celtic elements in
the provincial dialects grow more numerous. In Burgundian, and the
dialects of Vaud and Savoy, even the vocabulary has many traces of
Celtic; these are not found in French, where the predominant factor is
rustic Latin.[140]

I have shown above[141] how from the sixteenth century the influence of
the north had given ground before the growing preponderance of the
peoples beyond the Loire. The reader has merely to compare the present
sections on language with my former remarks on blood to see how close is
the relation between the speech of a people and its physical
constitution.[142]

I have dealt in detail with the special case of France, but the
principle could easily be illustrated from the rest of Europe; and it
would be seen, as a universal rule, that the successive changes and
modifications of a language are not, as one usually hears, the work of
centuries. If they were, Ekkhili, Berber, Euskara, and Bas-Breton would
long have disappeared; and yet they still survive. The changes in
language are caused by corresponding changes in the blood of successive
generations, and the parallelism is exact.

I must here explain a phenomenon to which I have already referred,
namely the renunciation by certain racial groups (under pressure of
special necessity, or their own nature) of their native tongue in favour
of one which is more or less foreign to them. I took the Jews and the
Parsees as examples. There are others more remarkable still; for we
find, in America, savage tribes speaking languages superior to
themselves.

In America, by a curious stroke of fate, the most energetic nations have
developed, so to speak, in secret. The art of writing was unknown to
them, and their history proper begins very late and is nearly always
very obscure. The New World contains a great number of peoples which,
though they are neighbours and derive in different directions from a
common origin, have very little resemblance to each other.

According to d’Orbigny, the so-called “Chiquitean group” in Central
America is composed of tribes, of which the largest contain about 1500
souls, and the least numerous 50 and 300. All these, even the smallest,
have distinct languages. Such a state of things can only be the result
of a complete racial anarchy.

On this hypothesis, I am not at all surprised to see many of these
tribes, like the Chiquitos, in possession of a complicated and
apparently scientific language. The words used by the men are sometimes
different from those of the women; and in every case when a man borrows
one of the women’s phrases, he changes the terminations. Where such
luxury in vocabulary is possible, the language has surely reached a very
refined stage. Unfortunately, side by side with this we find that the
table of numerals does not go much further than ten. Such poverty, in
the midst of so much careful elaboration, is probably due to the
ravaging hand of time, aided by the barbarous condition of the natives
to-day. When we see anomalies like these, we cannot help recalling the
sumptuous palaces, once marvels of the Renaissance, which have come, by
some revolution, into the hands of rude peasants. The eye may rove with
admiration over delicate columns, elegant trellis-work, sculptured
porches, noble staircases, and striking gables—luxuries which are
useless to the wretchedness that lives under them; for the ruined roofs
let in the rain, the floors crack, and the worm eats into the mouldering
walls.

I can now say with certainty that, with regard to the special character
of races, philology confirms all the facts of physiology and history.
Its conclusions however must be handled with extreme care, and when they
are all we have to go upon, it is very dangerous to rest content with
them. Without the slightest doubt, a people’s language corresponds to
its mentality, but not always to its real value for civilization. In
order to ascertain this, we must fix our eyes solely on the race by
which, and for which, the language was at first designed. Now with the
exception of the negroes, and a few yellow groups, we meet only
quaternary races in recorded history. All the languages we know are thus
derivative, and we cannot gain the least idea of the laws governing
their formation except in the comparatively later stages. Our results,
even when confirmed by history, cannot be regarded as infallibly proved.
The further we go back, the dimmer becomes the light, and the more
hypothetical the nature of any arguments drawn from philology. It is
exasperating to be thrown back on these when we try to trace the
progress of any human family or to discover the racial elements that
make it up. We know that Sanscrit and Zend are akin. That is something;
but their common roots are sealed to us. The other ancient tongues are
in the same case. We know nothing of Euskara except itself. As no
analogue to it has been discovered up to now, we are ignorant of its
history, and whether it is to be regarded as itself primitive or
derived. It yields us no positive knowledge as to whether the people who
speak it are racially simple or composite.

Ethnology may well be grateful for the help given by philology. But the
help must not be accepted unconditionally, or any theories based on it
alone.[143]

This rule is dictated by a necessary prudence. All the facts, however,
mentioned in this chapter go to prove that, originally, there is a
perfect correspondence between the intellectual virtues of a race and
those of its native speech; that languages are, in consequence, unequal
in value and significance, unlike in their forms and basic elements, as
races are also; that their modifications, like those of races, come
merely from intermixture with other idioms; that their qualities and
merits, like a people’s blood, disappear or become absorbed, when they
are swamped by too many heterogeneous elements; finally, that when a
language of a higher order is used by some human group which is unworthy
of it, it will certainly become mutilated and die out. Hence, though it
is often difficult to infer at once, in a particular case, the merits of
a people from those of its language, it is quite certain that in theory
this can always be done.

I may thus lay it down, as a universal axiom, that the hierarchy of
languages is in strict correspondence with the hierarchy of races.

CHAPTER XVI
RECAPITULATION; THE RESPECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE GREAT RACES;
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE WHITE TYPE, AND, WITHIN THIS TYPE, OF THE ARYAN
FAMILY

I have shown the unique place in the organic world occupied by the human
species, the profound physical, as well as moral, differences separating
it from all other kinds of living creatures. Considering it by itself, I
have been able to distinguish, on physiological grounds alone, three
great and clearly marked types, the black, the yellow, and the white.
However uncertain the aims of physiology may be, however meagre its
resources, however defective its methods, it can proceed thus far with
absolute certainty.

The negroid variety is the lowest, and stands at the foot of the ladder.
The animal character, that appears in the shape of the pelvis, is
stamped on the negro from birth, and foreshadows his destiny. His
intellect will always move within a very narrow circle. He is not
however a mere brute, for behind his low receding brow, in the middle of
his skull, we can see signs of a powerful energy, however crude its
objects. If his mental faculties are dull or even non-existent, he often
has an intensity of desire, and so of will, which may be called
terrible. Many of his senses, especially taste and smell, are developed
to an extent unknown to the other two races.[144]

The very strength of his sensations is the most striking proof of his
inferiority. All food is good in his eyes, nothing disgusts or repels
him. What he desires is to eat, to eat furiously, and to excess; no
carrion is too revolting to be swallowed by him. It is the same with
odours; his inordinate desires are satisfied with all, however coarse or
even horrible. To these qualities may be added an instability and
capriciousness of feeling, that cannot be tied down to any single
object, and which, so far as he is concerned, do away with all
distinctions of good and evil. We might even say that the violence with
which he pursues the object that has aroused his senses and inflamed his
desires is a guarantee of the desires being soon satisfied and the
object forgotten. Finally, he is equally careless of his own life and
that of others: he kills willingly, for the sake of killing; and this
human machine, in whom it is so easy to arouse emotion, shows, in face
of suffering, either a monstrous indifference or a cowardice that seeks
a voluntary refuge in death.

The yellow race is the exact opposite of this type. The skull points
forward, not backward. The forehead is wide and bony, often high and
projecting. The shape of the face is triangular, the nose and chin
showing none of the coarse protuberances that mark the negro. There is
further a general proneness to obesity, which, though not confined to
the yellow type, is found there more frequently than in the others. The
yellow man has little physical energy, and is inclined to apathy; he
commits none of the strange excesses so common among negroes. His
desires are feeble, his will-power rather obstinate than violent; his
longing for material pleasures, though constant, is kept within bounds.
A rare glutton by nature, he shows far more discrimination in his choice
of food. He tends to mediocrity in everything; he understands easily
enough anything not too deep or sublime.[145] He has a love of utility
and a respect for order, and knows the value of a certain amount of
freedom. He is practical, in the narrowest sense of the word. He does
not dream or theorize; he invents little, but can appreciate and take
over what is useful to him. His whole desire is to live in the easiest
and most comfortable way possible. The yellow races are thus clearly
superior to the black. Every founder of a civilization would wish the
backbone of his society, his middle class, to consist of such men. But
no civilized society could be created by them; they could not supply its
nerve-force, or set in motion the springs of beauty and action.

We come now to the white peoples. These are gifted with reflective
energy, or rather with an energetic intelligence. They have a feeling
for utility, but in a sense far wider and higher, more courageous and
ideal, than the yellow races; a perseverance that takes account of
obstacles and ultimately finds a means of overcoming them; a greater
physical power, an extraordinary instinct for order, not merely as a
guarantee of peace and tranquillity, but as an indispensable means of
self-preservation. At the same time, they have a remarkable, and even
extreme, love of liberty, and are openly hostile to the formalism under
which the Chinese are glad to vegetate, as well as to the strict
despotism which is the only way of governing the negro.

The white races are, further, distinguished by an extraordinary
attachment to life. They know better how to use it, and so, as it would
seem, set a greater price on it; both in their own persons and those of
others, they are more sparing of life. When they are cruel, they are
conscious of their cruelty; it is very doubtful whether such a
consciousness exists in the negro. At the same time, they have
discovered reasons why they should surrender this busy life of theirs,
that is so precious to them. The principal motive is honour, which under
various names has played an enormous part in the ideas of the race from
the beginning. I need hardly add that the word honour, together with all
the civilizing influences connoted by it, is unknown to both the yellow
and the black man.

On the other hand, the immense superiority of the white peoples in the
whole field of the intellect is balanced by an inferiority in the
intensity of their sensations. In the world of the senses, the white man
is far less gifted than the others, and so is less tempted and less
absorbed by considerations of the body, although in physical structure
he is far the most vigorous.[146]

Such are the three constituent elements of the human race. I call them
secondary types, as I think myself obliged to omit all discussion of the
Adamite man. From the combination, by intermarriage, of the varieties of
these types come the tertiary groups. The quaternary formations are
produced by the union of one of these tertiary types, or of a
pure-blooded tribe, with another group taken from one of the two foreign
species.

Below these categories others have appeared—and still appear. Some of
these are very strongly characterized, and form new and distinct points
of departure, coming as they do from races that have been completely
fused. Others are incomplete, and ill-ordered, and, one might even say,
anti-social, since their elements, being too numerous, too disparate, or
too barbarous, have had neither the time nor the opportunity for
combining to any fruitful purpose. No limits, except the horror excited
by the possibility of infinite intermixture, can be assigned to the
number of these hybrid and chequered races that make up the whole of
mankind.

It would be unjust to assert that every mixture is bad and harmful. If
the three great types had remained strictly separate, the supremacy
would no doubt have always been in the hands of the finest of the white
races, and the yellow and black varieties would have crawled for ever at
the feet of the lowest of the whites. Such a state is so far ideal,
since it has never been beheld in history; and we can imagine it only by
recognizing the undisputed superiority of those groups of the white
races which have remained the purest.

It would not have been all gain. The superiority of the white race would
have been clearly shown, but it would have been bought at the price of
certain advantages which have followed the mixture of blood. Although
these are far from counterbalancing the defects they have brought in
their train, yet they are sometimes to be commended. Artistic genius,
which is equally foreign to each of the three great types, arose only
after the intermarriage of white and black. Again, in the Malayan
variety, a human family was produced from the yellow and black races
that had more intelligence than either of its ancestors. Finally, from
the union of white and yellow, certain intermediary peoples have sprung,
who are superior to the purely Finnish tribes as well as to the negroes.

I do not deny that these are good results. The world of art and great
literature that comes from the mixture of blood, the improvement and
ennoblement of inferior races—all these are wonders for which we must
needs be thankful. The small have been raised. Unfortunately, the great
have been lowered by the same process; and this is an evil that nothing
can balance or repair. Since I am putting together the advantages of
racial mixtures, I will also add that to them is due the refinement of
manners and beliefs, and especially the tempering of passion and desire.
But these are merely transitory benefits, and if I recognize that the
mulatto, who may become a lawyer, a doctor, or a business man, is worth
more than his negro grandfather, who was absolutely savage, and fit for
nothing, I must also confess that the Brahmans of primitive India, the
heroes of the Iliad and the Shahnameh, the warriors of Scandinavia—the
glorious shades of noble races that have disappeared—give us a higher
and more brilliant idea of humanity, and were more active, intelligent,
and trusty instruments of civilization and grandeur than the peoples,
hybrid a hundred times over, of the present day. And the blood even of
these was no longer pure.

However it has come about, the human races, as we find them in history,
are complex; and one of the chief consequences has been to throw into
disorder most of the primitive characteristics of each type. The good as
well as the bad qualities are seen to diminish in intensity with
repeated intermixture of blood; but they also scatter and separate off
from each other, and are often mutually opposed. The white race
originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength.
By its union with other varieties, hybrids were created, which were
beautiful without strength, strong without intelligence, or, if
intelligent, both weak and ugly. Further, when the quantity of white
blood was increased to an indefinite amount by successive infusions, and
not by a single admixture, it no longer carried with it its natural
advantages, and often merely increased the confusion already existing in
the racial elements. Its strength, in fact, seemed to be its only
remaining quality, and even its strength served only to promote
disorder. The apparent anomaly is easily explained. Each stage of a
perfect mixture produces a new type from diverse elements, and develops
special faculties. As soon as further elements are added, the vast
difficulty of harmonizing the whole creates a state of anarchy. The more
this increases, the more do even the best and richest of the new
contributions diminish in value, and by their mere presence add fuel to
an evil which they cannot abate. If mixtures of blood are, to a certain
extent, beneficial to the mass of mankind, if they raise and ennoble it,
this is merely at the expense of mankind itself, which is stunted,
abased, enervated, and humiliated in the persons of its noblest sons.
Even if we admit that it is better to turn a myriad of degraded beings
into mediocre men than to preserve the race of princes whose blood is
adulterated and impoverished by being made to suffer this dishonourable
change, yet there is still the unfortunate fact that the change does not
stop here; for when the mediocre men are once created at the expense of
the greater, they combine with other mediocrities, and from such unions,
which grow ever more and more degraded, is born a confusion which, like
that of Babel, ends in utter impotence, and leads societies down to the
abyss of nothingness whence no power on earth can rescue them.

Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive
from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a
society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of
the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs
to the most illustrious branch of our species.

Of the multitude of peoples which live or have lived on the earth, ten
alone have risen to the position of complete societies. The remainder
have gravitated round these more or less independently, like planets
round their suns. If there is any element of life in these ten
civilizations that is not due to the impulse of the white races, any
seed of death that does not come from the inferior stocks that mingled
with them, then the whole theory on which this book rests is false. On
the other hand, if the facts are as I say, then we have an irrefragable
proof of the nobility of our own species. Only the actual details can
set the final seal of truth on my system, and they alone can show with
sufficient exactness the full implications of my main thesis, that
peoples degenerate only in consequence of the various admixtures of
blood which they undergo; that their degeneration corresponds exactly to
the quantity and quality of the new blood, and that the rudest possible
shock to the vitality of a civilization is given when the ruling
elements in a society and those developed by racial change have become
so numerous that they are clearly moving away from the homogeneity
necessary to their life, and it therefore becomes impossible for them to
be brought into harmony and so acquire the common instincts and
interests, the common logic of existence, which is the sole
justification for any social bond whatever. There is no greater curse
than such disorder, for however bad it may have made the present state
of things, it promises still worse for the future.

NOTE.—The “ten civilizations” mentioned in the last paragraph are as
follows. They are fully discussed in the subsequent books of the
“Inequality of Races,” of which the present volume forms the first.

I. The Indian civilization, which reached its highest point round the
Indian Ocean, and in the north and east of the Indian Continent,
south-east of the Brahmaputra. It arose from a branch of a white people,
the Aryans.

II. The Egyptians, round whom collected the Ethiopians, the Nubians, and
a few smaller peoples to the west of the oasis of Ammon. This society
was created by an Aryan colony from India, that settled in the upper
valley of the Nile.

III. The Assyrians, with whom may be classed the Jews, the Phœnicians,
the Lydians, the Carthaginians, and the Hymiarites. They owed their
civilizing qualities to the great white invasions which may be grouped
under the name of the descendants of Shem and Ham. The Zoroastrian
Iranians who ruled part of Central Asia under the names of Medes,
Persians, and Bactrians, were a branch of the Aryan family.

IV. The Greeks, who came from the same Aryan stock, as modified by
Semitic elements.

V. The Chinese civilization, arising from a cause similar to that
operating in Egypt. An Aryan colony from India brought the light of
civilization to China also. Instead however of becoming mixed with black
peoples, as on the Nile, the colony became absorbed in Malay and yellow
races, and was reinforced, from the north-west, by a fair number of
white elements, equally Aryan but no longer Hindu.

VI. The ancient civilization of the Italian peninsula, the cradle of
Roman culture. This was produced by a mixture of Celts, Iberians,
Aryans, and Semites.

VII. The Germanic races, which in the fifth century transformed the
Western mind. These were Aryans.

VIII.–X. The three civilizations of America, the Alleghanian, the
Mexican, and the Peruvian.

Of the first seven civilizations, which are those of the Old World, six
belong, at least in part, to the Aryan race, and the seventh, that of
Assyria, owes to this race the Iranian Renaissance, which is,
historically, its best title to fame. Almost the whole of the Continent
of Europe is inhabited at the present time by groups of which the basis
is white, but in which the non-Aryan elements are the most numerous.
There is no true civilization, among the European peoples, where the
Aryan branch is not predominant.

In the above list no negro race is seen as the initiator of a
civilization. Only when it is mixed with some other can it even be
initiated into one.

Similarly, no spontaneous civilization is to be found among the yellow
races; and when the Aryan blood is exhausted stagnation supervenes.

INDEX

Abraham, 123

Abu-Hanifah, 123

Achaemenidae, 176

Adair, 72

Adam, 118–9, 145

Æschylus, 14, 99

Agrippa, 17

Albigenses, 198

Alcæus, 94

Alexander the Great, 44, 175–6, 193

Alexandria, 61

Alexandrians, 38, 176

Algiers, 171

Alleghany race, 71, 172

Altaic languages, 183

Altai Mountains, 128, 141

Amalfi, 61

America, Anglo-Saxons of North, 39, 71, 160 _n._

Anabaptists, 20

Anaxagoras, 14

Ancorso, 143

Andes, 115

Anglo-Saxons, 30, 69

Annam, 164

Anne, Queen, 42

Antilles, 50

Antioch, 60

Antonines, 15

Antoninus Pius, 11

Anubis, 66

Apollo, 108–9

Appius Claudius, 9

Arabs, 21, 58, 122–5, 177–9

Aral, Lake, 128

Aramaic, 194

Aranda, Count of, 52

Ararat, Mount, 142

Araucans, 119

Arbela, 33

Arcadia, 59

Arginusæ, 158

Aristophanes, 14, 157

Aristotle, 166

Arkansas, 71

Armagnacs, 12

Armenians, 58, 193

Arsacidæ, 177

Artibonite, 48

Aryan languages, 183, 188, 199

Aryavarta, 32

Aseddin, 129

Ashik-Pacha-Zadeh, 130 _n._

Aspasia, 14

Assyria, 2, 7, 56, 79

Assyrians, 87, 126

Athene, 94

Athenians, 7;
religion, 13, 17;
art and politics, 157–8

Athens, 59, 104

Atlas, Mount, 141

Attila, 132

Aurelian, 17

Auvergne, 121

Aymaras, 85

Aztecs, 8, 13, 192

Baber, 129 _n._

Babylon, 10, 194

Bagdad, 178

Baker, 137–8

Balaïbalan, 188

Bambaras, 180

Barrow, 121 _n._

Basques, 194

Belgium, 92, 99

Berbers, 194, 201

Berlin, climate of, 38

Bernard, St., 69

Bichat, 24

Birman, 190

Blumenbach, 109–10, 119, 146

Bœotia, 59

Bordeaux, 60

Born, Bertran de, 197

Bossuet, 12

Brahmans, 32, 65;
civilization, 83, 97, 209;
religion, 142;
pacifism, 161

Brazil, 125 _n._

Bremen, 60

Breton, language, 201

Brittany, 17, 44, 101 _n._

Buddhists, 65, 97

Burgundian, 201

Bushmen, 187

Caciques, 171

Cadiz, 150

Cæsar, Julius, 15, 158

Calabrians, 121

Calvinists, 41

Camper, 108–10

Canaries, 144, 155

Cappadocians, 193

Capri, 60

Carians, 193

Caroline Islands, 173

Carthage, 13

Carthaginians, 35, 38, 66, 79

Carus, 54 _n._, 74 _n._, 111–4, 149

Catalans, 92

Catawhas, 172

Cato, 158

Catullus, 166

Caucasian, 119, 146

Caucasus, 127, 141–2, 187

Celtic languages, 189–90, 196–201

Celts, 32, 35, 172

Chagres, 61

Charlemagne, 150

Charles I, of England, 41;
VII, of France, 43

Cherokees, 69, 71–2, 74, 121, 172

China, 7, 20;
climate of, 56–7

Chinese, 33;
as traders, 58;
Chinese Christians, 64–5;
material civilization, 87, 95–7;
permanent characteristics, 138;
language, 184–5

Chiquitos, 202

Chlodwig, 160 _n._

Christianity, its fight against paganism, 45;
relation to civilization, chap. vii _passim_

Cicero, 158

Cincinnatus, 11

Cingalese, 126

Cirionos, 53

Civilization, Guizot’s definition, 80–1;
von Humboldt’s definition, 82;
Gobineau’s definition, 91;
list of —s, 211–12

Co-adjutor, 41

Columbus, 144

Confucius, 74 _n._

Constantine, 15

Constantinople, 61, 128, 150

Coptic, 185 _n._

Cordilleras, the, 64

Cordova, 29, 177

Corinth, 59

Coromandel Coast, 122

Cortes, 8, 192

Creeks, 71

Croats, 29

Cuba, 51

Cuvier, 118, 136, 141

Cuzco, 167

Cyrus the Great, 10

Dahomey, 48, 85

Damascus, 57

Dante, 198

Darius, 10, 33, 176

Davis, 96

Deccan, 147

Decius, 17

Degeneration, meaning of, 25

Delaware, 190

Delhi, 34

Demeter, 59, 94

Diocletian, 17, 96

Djelat-Eddin-Rumi, 188

Dodona, 175

Draco, 40

Druids, 44

Ecbatana, 175

Egypt, 2, 7, 56

Egyptians, 30, 80;
civilization, 87;
relations with Islam, 178

Ekkhili, 201

England, luxury in, 8;
change in institutions, 42

English, as rulers of India, 34;
civilization, 81, 92, 97–102

Epicurus, 13

Erie, Lake, 55

Eskimos, 64–5, 69, 131

Etruscans, 80, 121

Euhemerus, 16

Euphrates, 56

Europeans, physical and mental characteristics of, 107–8 and chaps. x,
xii, xvi, _passim_

Euskara, 201, 203

Eve, 119

Fabii, 33, 159

Farnese Hercules, 108

Fatimites, 7

Fellatahs, 48

Fénelon, 12

Ferdinand the Catholic, 41

Finns, 38, 127–32, 146

Flourens, 116

France, luxury in, 8;
under English rule, 20;
change in institutions, 43

Franklin, 180 _n._

Franks, 199

French, civilization of, 81, 92;
power of resistance, 152;
language, 189, 196–201

Galerius, 16

Galla, 67

Gallatin, 72

Gallo-Romans, 11, 197

_Garin le Loherain_, 200–1

Gauls, the, independence of, 170

Gayaseddin-Keikosrev, 129

Genesis, Book of, 117–8

Genoese, 8, 79

Gerando, 132

Germanic tribes, 87, 91, 93, 128;
language, 189–90, 198–9

Germany, religious wars in, 21

Gioberti, 151

Goethe, 83, 185 _n._

Gothic, 190

Goths, 10, 197

Greece, 2, 7;
Christianity in, 17;
climate of, 59

Greeks, 8, 10;
civilization, 87–8, 92, 94;
religion, 142;
relation to Persians, 174–6;
language, 191–4

Grenada, 29

Grimm, Monsieur de, 49

Guaranis, 52–3

Guizot, 77–82

Gutenberg, 165

Ham, 29, 48

Hamites, 118, 146

Hanover, 92

Hanseatic towns, 60

Harmodius, 10

Hawaii, 47

Hayti, 48–51

Hedjaz, 178

Helvetius, 151

Henry IV, of France, 43

Heracles, Tyrian, 66

Hindus, 29–30, 76;
civilization, 80, 87, 91;
age of marriage among, 124

Holbach, Baron, 49

Holland, 92, 99

Homer, 157

Hottentots, 121, 180

Humboldt, A. von, 129 _n._, 132 _n._, 137 _n._, 144 _n._

Humboldt, W. von, 82–4, 183 _n._, 187, 192, 195

Hungary, 29

Huns, 132

Huron, 37

Hussites, 20

Hybrids, fertility of, 115–7

Hyderabad, 34

Iberians, 172–3

Ibn Foszlan, 160 _n._

_Iliad_, the, 199, 209

Illyrians, 172

India, 7;
government of, by the English, 34;
climate, 56–7;
art, 104

Indians, North-American, _see_ Redskins

Indians, South-American, 171

Ishmael, 122, 177

Isis, 66

Isola Madre, 144

Jamaica, 51

James I, of England, 42

Janissaries, 130

Japanese, 64, 80

Japhet, 118

Javanese, 45, 171

Jerome, St., 197

Jesuits, 51–3, 68, 125 _n._

Jews, 3, 29;
growth, 58–9;
religion, 66;
physical identity, 122–3;
language, 194–5

Jovian, 11

Judæa, 13

Julia, 15 _n._

Julian, 16

Jupiter, 13

Kabyles, 57

Kaffirs, 85, 180

Kalidasa, 157

Kalmucks, 108

Kamaun, 147

Kamehameha III, 47

Katai Mountains, 128

Kawi, 190

Khalil Chendereli, 130

Khorsabad, 126

Kirghiz-Kasaks, 132

Klemm, 86 _n._

Koran, 123–4

Krapff, 125 _n._

Kurds, 29

Lællius, 14

Lahore, 34

Lander, 180

Languedoc, 122

_Langue d’oil_, 197, 199–201

Lapps, 69, 127, 131, 133

Latin, rustic, 196–7

Leila, 124

Lenni-Lenapes, 55 _n._, 190–1

_Lingua romana_, 189, 197–9

Littré, 199

London, mixture of races in, 150

Louis XIV, 12, 21, 151

Lucrece, 9

Ludolf, 114 _n._

Lutherans, Danish, 69

Lycurgus, 40, 42

Lyons, 60

Macaulay, Lord, 198

Macedonians, the, 30, 175

Magadha, 7

Magi, 13

Magyars, 29, 131–3

Malabar, 122

Malays, 58, 111–3, 152, 208

Manchus, 20

Manu, Code of, 32

Marcius, Ancus, 15 _n._

Marianne Islands, the, 172

Marseilles, 60

Martial, 166

Martinique, 51

Maximin, 16

Medusa, 109

Meiners, 107 _n._

Memphis, 38

Meru, 142

Mexico, Gulf of, 55

Mieris, 113 _n._

Milan, 60

Mississippi, 71

Missouri, 55

Mohammedans, 51, 177–9

Mohammed IV, 130

Mohammed (the Prophet), 177–8

Mongols, 20;
Mongol Christians, 64;
material civilization, 85;
physical characteristics, 111–5, 150.
_See also_ Yellow Races

Montausier, the, 12

Montpellier, 178

Moors, 41

Moravians, 69, 161

Morosini, 193

Morton, 111

Mulattoes, 149, 209

Muskhogees, 172

Mussulmans, _see_ Mohammedans

Napoleon, 41, 151

Narbonese Gaul, 44

Narbonne, 60

Natchez, 172

Negroes, incapacity for civilization, 74–5;
physical and mental characteristics, chaps. x, xii, xvi, _passim_

Nero, 17

Nestorians, 29

Neustria, 133

New Zealanders, 152

Nimroud, 168

Nineveh, 104

Normandy, climate of, 144

Normans, 31, 60

Novgorod, 60

Numidia, 94

Nushirwan, 128 _n._

Oceania, 46, 57, 107, 116, 162

Odenathus, 177

Oghuzes, 128–9

Olympia, 175

Olympus, Mount, 142

d’Orbigny, 163 _n._, 202

Orenburg, 76

Ortoghrul, 129

Osman, 129–30

Osmanlis, 129–30

Ostiaks, 127, 133

Othomi, 185 _n._

Owen, 109–11

Palestine, climate of, 59

Palmyra, 177

Panama, 61

Paraguay, 51–3, 125 _n._

Parana, 53

Paris, 10, 43, 60;
mixture of races in, 150

Park, Mungo, 180

Parsees, 29

Parthenon, 193

Pathans, 76

Paul, St., 17

Pecheray, 150

Pelagian, 150

Penn, 39

Pericles, 14, 94, 157

Permians, 133

Persepolis, 126, 176

Persians, 8, 13, 29–30, 33;
relation to Greeks, 174–6;
relation to Arabs, 178–9

Peru, 13, 85

Peruvians, 80, 115;
civilization, 167;
language, 192

Philæ, 104

Philip of Macedon, 94

Philip the Arabian, 177

Phœnicians, 9, 35, 57, 79

Picardy, 201

Piedmont, 87

Pindar, 94, 157

Pisans, 8, 79

Plato, 157, 166

Pliny, 159, 166

Plutarch, 5

Polynesians, 27, 85, 147

Pompeius, 158

Pontus, 7

Postumus, C. Junius, 159

Prætorian Guard, 16

Prakriti, 86

Prichard, 8, 73, chap. x _passim_, 123, 125, 137, 146

Prometheus, 142

Purusha, 86

Quaternary type, 149

Quichuas, 85, 115

Quito, 167

Radack Islands, the, 143

Ravenna, 61

Raynal, Abbé, 6

Rechabites, 122

Redskins of North America, their treatment, 46;
skull-measurement, 111–2;
exclusiveness, 170–1

Regent of France (Anne of Austria), 41

Rocky Mountains, 55

Roman Empire, fall of, 2–3, 33

Romans, 8, 9;
civilization, 87, 92, 94–7;
modernity, 158–9;
diffusion of books among, 166

Rome, luxury in, 8;
religion in, 13, 17, 66;
climate of, 59–60

Rosa, St., 68

Roussillon, 122

Rubens, 113 _n._

Rûm, 129

Russia, 8, 152

Russians, 76

de Sacy, 187

Sakuntala, 124

Salsette, 104

Samal, 143

Samoyedes, 27, 85, 127, 131

San Domingo, 48–51

Sandwich Islands, 46–7

Sanscrit, 188–91, 203

Saracens, 197

Sarah, 123

Sassanidæ, 177

Saxons, 29

Scandinavians, 133, 209

Schlotzer, 132

Scilly Isles, 173

Scipio, 14, 35

Scythians, 129 _n._, 133

Seljukians, 129–30

Seminoles, 172

Semites, 29, 118, 146

Semitic languages, 184, 188–9

Seneca, 161

Septimius Severus, 11

_Shahnameh_, the, 209

Sharuz, 128

Shelley, 37 _n._

Shem, 29

Siamese, 164 _n._

Siculi, 132

Sicyon, 175

Sidon, 57

Slavs, 32, 74, 92

Socrates, 14

Sophocles, 14

Spain, 20; Arabs in, 29

Spaniards, in South America, 46, 52;
independence of, 170

Sparta, 59, 175

Spartacus, 159

Spartans, 9, 40, 79

Squier, 55 _n._

St. Bartholomew’s day, 12

Strafford, Earl of, 41

Suetonius, 15 _n._

Sufis, 188

Sulla, 158

Sulpicius Severus, 197

Swabia, 79

Switzerland, 124;
climate of, 144

Syria, 79

Syrians, 94, 172, 177–9

Tacitus, 5, 17

Tahitians, 154

Talmud, 195

Tatars, 146

Tchingiz, 129 _n._

Tenochtitlan, 104

Terah, 194

Teresa, St., 69

Tertiary type, 147

Tertullian, 159

Teutates, 13

Thebaid, 69

Thirty Tyrants, 20

Thucydides, 6

Thuringia, 79

Tiberius, 60

Tibetans, 80, 91, 97

Tigris, 56

Tihuanaco, 167

Tlaxcala, 159

Tocqueville, de, 72 _n._

Toledo, 29

Tonga-Tabu, 154

Tonkin, 164

Toulouse, 60

Touraine, 100 _n._

Trajan, 11, 159

Treves, 60, 197

Tribunate, the, 9

Triptolemus, 59

Tungusians, 117, 127, 133

Turanians, 128

Turkestan, 128

Turkey, 29

Turks, 29, 127–31

Tylos, 57

Tyre, 13, 57

Ulea, 143

Ulfilas, 190

Ur, 194

Urkan, 130

Uruguay, 53

Valentia, 29

Valerius Publicola, 10

Valmiki, 157

Vaqueiras, Raimbaut de, 198

Venetians, 8, 79

Venice, 60

Venus, 108

Virgil, 166

Voltaire, 5

Vrolik, 114–5

Wallachians, 29, 190

Wanikas, 125 _n._

Washington, 39

White races, definition, 146;
_see also_ Europeans

William III, of England, 21, 81

Xerxes, 176

Yellow races, physical and mental characteristics of, chaps. x, xii,
xvi _passim_;
definition, 146;
_see also_ Mongols

Yemen, 178

Yolofs, 180

Yo-kiao-li, 125 _n._

Yunnan, 87

Zama, battle of, 35

Zend, 201

Zeno, 14

Zenobia, 177

Zerubbabel, 194

Zingaris, 124, 195 _n._

Zita, St., 69

Zuleika, 124

PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON & EDINBURGH

-----

Footnote 1:

See my Introduction to Count Gobineau’s “Renaissance” (Heinemann).

Footnote 2:

This dedication and the following preface apply to the whole work, of
which the present volume contains the first book. The remaining books
are occupied by a detailed examination of the civilizations mentioned
at the end of this volume, and it is of these as well as the present
book that the author is thinking, in his preface, when speaking of his
imitators. A few passages in the dedication that relate exclusively to
these books have been omitted.—Tr.

Footnote 3:

Amédée Thierry, _La Gaule sous l’administration romaine_, vol. i, p.
244.

Footnote 4:

By C. F. Weber, _Lucani Pharsalia_ (Leipzig, 1828), vol. i, pp. 122–3,
_note_.

Footnote 5:

Prichard, “Natural History of Man.” Dr. Martius is still more
explicit. _Cf._ Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, pp.
379–80.

Footnote 6:

Balzac, _Lettre à madame la duchesse de Montausier_.

Footnote 7:

The power of the Tribunate was revived after Appius’s decemvirate in
450 B.C., but the office had been founded more than forty years
before. On the other hand, consular tribunes were first elected after
450 (in 445); but the consular tribunate could hardly be described as
a “great revolution.” The author may be confusing the two
tribunates.—Tr.

Footnote 8:

_Cp._ Homer, “Odyssey,” XV, 415 _sqq._

Footnote 9:

Augustin Thierry, _Récits des temps mérovingiens_; see especially the
story of Mummolus.

Footnote 10:

Cæsar, the democrat and sceptic, knew how to hold language contrary to
his opinions when it was necessary. His funeral oration on his aunt is
very curious: “On the mother’s side,” he said, “Julia was descended
from kings; on her father’s, from the immortal gods: for the Marcian
Reges, whose name her mother bore, were sprung from Ancus Marcius,
while Venus is the ancestress of the Julii, the clan to which belongs
the family of the Cæsars. Thus in our blood is mingled at the same
time the sanctity of kings, who are the mightiest of men, and the
awful majesty of the gods, who hold kings themselves in their power”
(Suetonius, “Julius,” p. 6). Nothing could be more monarchical; and
also, for an atheist, nothing could be more religious.

Footnote 11:

Acts xxvi, 24, 28, 31.

Footnote 12:

The reader will understand that I am not speaking of the political
existence of a centre of sovereignty, but of the life of a whole
society, or the span of a whole civilization. The distinction drawn at
the beginning of chap. ii must be applied here.

Footnote 13:

The celebrated physiologist (1771–1802), and author of _L’Anatomie
générale_.—Tr.

Footnote 14:

This attachment of the Arab tribes to their racial unity shows itself
sometimes in a very curious manner. A traveller (M. Fulgence Fresnel,
I think) says that at Djiddah, where morals are very lax, the same
Bedouin girl who will sell her favours for the smallest piece of money
would think herself dishonoured if she contracted a legal marriage
with the Turk or European to whom she contemptuously lends herself.

Footnote 15:

The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys;
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
SHELLEY, “Queen Mab.”

Footnote 16:

Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV.—Tr.

Footnote 17:

The Comte de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_, has rightly shown that the party crushed by Cardinal
Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism or the great
aristocratic methods of government. Montmorency, Cinq-Mars, and
Marillac tried to overthrow the State merely in order to obtain favour
and office for themselves. The great Cardinal was quite innocent of
the “murder of the French nobility,” with which he has been so often
reproached.

Footnote 18:

A. von Humboldt, _Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du
nouveau continent_, vol. ii, pp. 129–30.

Footnote 19:

See the articles of Gustave d’Alaux in the _Revue des deux Mondes_.

Footnote 20:

The colony of San Domingo, before its emancipation, was one of the
places where the luxury and refinement of wealth had reached its
highest point. It was, to a superior degree, what Havana has become
through its commercial activity. The slaves are now free and have set
their own house in order. This is the result!

Footnote 21:

Consult, on this subject, Prichard, d’Orbigny, A. von Humboldt, &c.

Footnote 22:

_See above_, p. 38.

Footnote 23:

Compare Carus, _Über ungleiche Befähigung der verschiedenen
Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung_ (Leipzig, 1849), p.
96 _et passim_.

Footnote 24:

Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 37. _See also_ Squier,
“Observations on the Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.”

Footnote 25:

The special construction of these tumuli and the numerous instruments
and utensils they contain are occupying the attention of many eminent
American antiquaries. It is impossible to doubt the great age of these
monuments. Squier is perfectly right in finding a proof of this in the
mere fact that the skeletons discovered in the tumuli fall to pieces
when brought into the slightest contact with the air, although the
conditions for their preservation are excellent, so far as the quality
of the soil is concerned. On the other hand, the bodies which lay
buried under the cromlechs of Brittany, and which are at least 1800
years old, are perfectly firm. Hence we may easily imagine that there
is no relation between these ancient inhabitants of the land and the
tribes of the present day—the Lenni-Lenapes and others. I must not end
this note without praising the industry and resource shown by American
scholars in the study of the antiquities of their continent. Finding
their labours greatly hindered by the extreme brittleness of the
skulls they had exhumed, they discovered, after many abortive
attempts, a way of pouring a preparation of bitumen into the bodies,
which solidifies at once and keeps the bones from crumbling. This
delicate process, which requires infinite care and quickness, seems,
as a rule, to be entirely successful.

Footnote 26:

Ancient India required a vast amount of clearing on the part of the
first white settlers. _See_ Lassen, _Indische Altertumskunde_, vol. i.
As to Egypt, compare Bunsen, _Ägyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte_,
as to the fertilization of the Fayoum, a vast work executed by the
early kings.

Footnote 27:

“They say that it spontaneously produces wheat, barley, beans, and
sesame, and all the edible plants that grow in the plains”
(Syncellus).

Footnote 28:

Salvador, _Histoire des Juifs_.

Footnote 29:

M. Saint-Marc Girardin, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.

Footnote 30:

We may cite, on the subject treated in this chapter, the opinion of a
learned historian, though it is rather truculent in tone:

“A large number of writers are convinced that the country makes the
people; that the Bavarians or the Saxons were predestined by the
nature of the soil to become what they are to-day; that Protestantism
does not suit the South, nor Catholicism the North, and so on. Some of
the people who interpret history in the light of their meagre
knowledge, narrow sympathies, and limited intelligence would like to
show that the nation of which we are speaking (the Jews) possessed
such and such qualities—whether these gentlemen understand the nature
of the qualities or not—merely from having lived in Palestine instead
of India or Greece. But if these great scholars, who are so clever in
proving everything, would condescend to reflect that the soil of the
Holy Land has contained in its limited area very different peoples,
with different ideas and religions, and that between these various
peoples and their successors at the present day there have been
infinite degrees of diversity, although the actual country has
remained the same—they would then see how little influence is exerted
by material conditions on a nation’s character and civilization.”
Ewald, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, vol. i, p. 259.

Footnote 31:

Acts ii, 4, 8, 9–11.

Footnote 32:

Apocryphal Gospels: “The Story of Joseph the Carpenter,” chap. i.

Footnote 33:

Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 41.

Footnote 34:

_Ibid._

Footnote 35:

“Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America.”

Footnote 36:

I have discussed Prichard’s facts without questioning their value. I
might, however, have simply denied them, and should have had on my
side the weighty authority of A. de Tocqueville, who in his great work
on “Democracy in America” refers to the Cherokees in these words: “The
presence of half-breeds has favoured the very rapid development of
European habits among the Indians. The half-breed shares the
enlightenment of his father without entirely giving up the savage
customs of his mother’s race. He is thus a natural link between
civilization and barbarism. Wherever half-breeds exist and multiply we
see the savages gradually changing their customs and social
conditions” (“Democracy in America,” vol. iii). De Tocqueville ends by
prophesying that although the Cherokees and the Creeks are half-breeds
and not natives, as Prichard says, they will nevertheless disappear in
a short time through the encroachment of the white race.

Footnote 37:

In discussing the list of remarkable negroes which is given in the
first instance by Blumenbach and could easily be supplemented, Carus
well says that among the black races there has never been any politics
or literature or any developed ideas of art, and that when any
individual negroes have distinguished themselves it has always been
the result of white influence. There is not a single man among them to
be compared, I will not say to one of our men of genius, but to the
heroes of the yellow races—for example, Confucius. (Carus, _op. cit._)

Footnote 38:

W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-sprache auf der Insel Java_,
Introduction, vol. i, p. 37.

Footnote 39:

_I.e._ the world in its second stage of improvement.

Footnote 40:

Klemm (_Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_) divides the races
of men into “active” and “passive.” I do not know his book, and so
cannot tell if his idea agrees with my own. But it is natural that if
we follow the same path we should light upon the same truth.

Footnote 41:

It is also in connexion with these that we find the main cause of the
false judgments passed on foreign peoples. Because the externals of
their civilization are unlike the corresponding parts of our own, we
are often apt to infer hastily that they are either barbarians or of
less worth than ourselves. Nothing could be more superficial, and so
more doubtful, than a conclusion drawn from such premises.

Footnote 42:

“It is still only in China that a poor student can offer himself for
the Imperial examination and come out a great man. This is a splendid
feature of the social organization of the Chinese, and their theory is
certainly better than any other. Unfortunately, its application is far
from perfect. I am not here referring to the errors of judgment and
corruption on the part of the examiners, or even to the sale of
literary degrees, an expedient to which the Government is sometimes
driven in times of financial stress....” (F. J. Mohl, “Annual Report
of the Société Asiatique,” 1846).

Footnote 43:

John F. Davis, “The Chinese” (London, 1840): “Three or four volumes of
any ordinary work of the octavo size and shape may be had for a sum
equivalent to two shillings. A Canton bookseller’s manuscript
catalogue marked the price of the four books of Confucius, including
the commentary, at a price rather under half-a-crown. The cheapness of
their common literature is occasioned partly by the mode of printing,
but partly also by the low price of paper.”

Footnote 44:

“Force them to enter.”

Footnote 45:

A nurse of Touraine put a bird into the hands of the three-year-old
boy of whom she was in charge, and encouraged him to pull out its
wings and feathers. When the parents blamed her for teaching such
wickedness, she replied, “It is to make him proud.” This answer, given
in 1847, goes back directly to the educational maxims in vogue at the
time of Vercingetorix.

Footnote 46:

A very few years ago there was a question of electing a churchwarden
in a little obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the old
province which the true Bretons call the “Welsh,” or “foreign,”
country. The church council, composed of peasants, deliberated for two
days without being able to make up their minds; for the candidate
before them, though rich and well esteemed as a good man and a good
Christian, was a “foreigner.” The council would not move from its
opinion, although the “foreigner’s” father, as well as himself, had
been born in the district; it was still remembered that his
grandfather, who had been dead for many years and had never known any
member of the council, was an immigrant from another part of the
country. The daughter of a peasant-proprietor makes a _mésalliance_ if
she marries a tailor or a miller or even a farmer, if he works for
wages. It does not matter whether the husband is richer than she is;
her crime is often punished, just the same, by a father’s curse. Is
not this case exactly like that of the churchwarden?

Footnote 47:

This chapter was, of course, written before the appearance of the
“Origin of Species” or the “Descent of Man”; see author’s preface.—Tr.

Footnote 48:

These views are quoted by Flourens (_Eloge de Blumenbach_, _Mémoire de
l’Académie des Sciences_), who himself dissents from them.

Footnote 49:

This and the other illustrations in this chapter are taken from
Prichard, “Natural History of Man.”

Footnote 50:

Meiners was so struck with the repulsive appearance of the greater
part of humanity that he imagined a very simple system of
classification, containing only two categories—the _beautiful_, namely
the white race, and the _ugly_, which includes all the others
(_Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit_). The reader will see that
I have not thought it necessary to go through all the ethnological
theories. I only mention the most important.

Footnote 51:

Prichard, _op. cit._ (2nd edition, 1845), p. 112.

Footnote 52:

Prichard, p. 116.

Footnote 53:

_Ibid._, pp. 117–18.

Footnote 54:

Carus, _op. cit._, from which the following details are taken.

Footnote 55:

There are some apparently trivial differences which are, however, very
characteristic. A certain fullness at the side of the lower lip, that
we see among Germans and English, is an example. This mark of Germanic
origin may also be found in some faces of the Flemish School, in the
Rubens _Madonna_ at Dresden, in the _Satyrs and Nymphs_ in the same
collection, in a _Lute-player_ of Mieris, &c. No craniological method
can take account of such details, though they have a certain
importance, in view of the mixed character of our races.

Footnote 56:

Job Ludolf, whose data on this subject were necessarily very
incomplete and inferior to those we have now, is none the less opposed
to the opinion accepted by Prichard. His remarks on the black race are
striking and unanswerable, and I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting
them: “It is not my purpose to speak here about the blackness of the
Ethiop; most people may, if they will, attribute it to the heat of the
sun and the torrid zone. Yet even within the sun’s equatorial path
there are peoples who, if not white, are at least not quite black.
Many who live outside either tropic are further from the Equator than
the Persians or Syrians—for instance, the inhabitants of the Cape of
Good Hope, who, however, are absolutely black. If you say that
blackness belongs solely to Africa and the sons of Ham, you must still
allow that the Malabars and the Cingalese and other even more remote
peoples of Asia are equally black. If you regard the climate and soil
as the reason, then why do not white men become black when they settle
down in these regions? If you take refuge in ‘hidden qualities,’ you
would do better to confess your ignorance at once” (Jobus Ludolfus,
_Commentarium ad Historiam Æthiopicam_). I will add a short and
conclusive passage of Mr. Pickering. He speaks of the regions
inhabited by the black race in these words: “Excluding the northern
and southern extremes, with the tableland of Abyssinia, it holds all
the _more temperate_ and fertile parts of the Continent.” Thus it is
just where we find most of the pure negroes that it is least hot ...
(Pickering, “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution.”
The essay is to be found in the “Records of the United States’
Exploring Expedition during the Years 1838–42,” vol. ix).

Footnote 57:

Prichard, p. 124.

Footnote 58:

Neither the Swiss nor the Tyrolese, nor the Highlanders of Scotland,
nor the Balkan Slavs, nor the Himalaya tribes have the same hideous
appearance as the Quichuas.

Footnote 59:

_Annales du Muséum_, vol. xi, p. 458.

Footnote 60:

The unitarians are continually bringing forward comparisons between
man and the animals in support of their theory; I have just been using
such a line of argument myself. It only applies, however, within
limits, and I could not honestly avail myself of it in speaking of the
modification of species by climate. In this respect the difference
between man and the animals is radical and (one might almost say)
specific. There is a geography of animals, as there is of plants; but
there is no geography of man. It is only in certain latitudes that
certain vegetables, mammals, reptiles, fishes, and molluscs can exist;
man, in all his varieties, can live equally well everywhere. In the
case of the animals this fully explains a vast number of differences
in organization; and I can easily believe that the species that cannot
cross a certain meridian or rise to a certain height above sea-level
without dying are very dependent upon the influence of climate and
quick to betray its effects in their forms and instincts. It is just,
however, because man is absolutely free from such bondage that I
refuse to be always comparing his position, in face of the forces of
nature, with that of the animals.

Footnote 61:

Barrow is the author of this theory, which he bases on certain points
of resemblance in the shape of the head and the yellowish colour of
the skin in the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. A traveller, whose
name I forget, has even brought additional evidence by observing that
the Hottentots usually wear a head-dress like the conical hat of the
Chinese.

Footnote 62:

Müller, _Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen_, vol. ii, p. 639.

Footnote 63:

Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” 2nd edition, pp. 484 _et sqq._

Footnote 64:

Genesis xxi, 5.

Footnote 65:

We must make an exception in the case of Shakespeare, who is painting
a picture of Italy. Thus in _Romeo and Juliet_ Capulet says:

“My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”

To which Paris answers:

“Younger than she are happy mothers made.”

Footnote 66:

According to Krapff, a Protestant missionary in East Africa, the
Wanikas marry at twelve, boys and girls alike (_Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, vol. iii, p. 317). In
Paraguay the Jesuits introduced the custom, which still holds among
their disciples, of marrying the boys at thirteen and the girls at
ten. Widows of eleven and twelve are to be seen in this country (A.
d’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, vol. i, p. 40). In South Brazil the
women marry at ten or eleven. Menstruation both appears and ceases at
an early age (Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_ vol. i, p. 382).
Such quotations might be infinitely extended; I will only cite one
more. In the novel of Yo-kiao-Li the Chinese heroine is sixteen years
old, and her father is in despair that at such an age she is not yet
married!

Footnote 67:

Prichard, p. 486.

Footnote 68:

It has been since discovered that this fairness, in certain Jews, is
due to a mixture of Tartar blood; in the 9th century a tribe of
Chasars went over to Judaism and intermarried with the German-Polish
Jews (Kutschera, _Die Chasaren_).—Tr.

Footnote 69:

_Edinburgh Review_, “Ethnology or the Science of Races,” October 1848,
pp. 444–8: “There is probably no evidence of original diversity of
race which is so generally relied upon as that derived from the
_colour of the skin and the character of the hair_ ... but it will
not, we think, stand the test of a serious examination....”

Footnote 70:

_Ibid._, p. 453: “The Cingalese are described by Dr. Davy as varying
in colour from light brown to black. The prevalent hue of their hair
and eyes is black, but hazel eyes and brown hair are not very
uncommon; grey eyes and red hair are occasionally seen, though rarely,
and sometimes the light blue or red eye and flaxen hair of the
Albino.”

Footnote 71:

_Edinburgh Review_, “The Samoyedes, Tungusians, and others living on
the borders of the Icy Sea have a dirty brown or swarthy complexion.”

Footnote 72:

_Ibid._, p. 439.

Footnote 73:

_Ibid._, p. 439 (summarized).

Footnote 74:

Hammer, _Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs_, vol. i, p. 2.

Footnote 75:

Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. i, pp. 433, 1115, &c.; Tassen,
_Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes_, vol. ii, p. 65; Benfey,
Ersch and Gruber’s _Encyclopädie, Indien_, p. 12. A. von Humboldt
calls this fact one of the most important discoveries of our time
(_Asie centrale_, vol. ii, p. 639). From the point of view of
historical science this is absolutely true.

Footnote 76:

Nushirwan, who reigned in the first half of the sixth century A.D.,
married Sharuz, daughter of the Turkish Khan. She was the most
beautiful woman of her time (Haneberg, _Zeitschrift für die Kunde des
Morgenlandes_, vol. i, p. 187). The Shahnameh gives many facts of the
same kind.

Footnote 77:

Just as the Scythians, a Mongolian race, had adopted an Aryan tongue,
so there would be nothing surprising in the view that the Oghuzes were
an Aryan race, although they spoke a Finnish dialect. This theory is
curiously supported by a naïve phrase of the traveller Rubruquis, who
was sent by St. Louis to the ruler of the Mongols. “I was struck,”
says the good monk, “by the likeness borne by this prince to the late
M. Jean de Beaumont, who was equally ruddy and fresh-looking.”
Alexander von Humboldt, interested, as he well might be, by such a
remark, adds with no less good sense, “This point of physiognomy is
especially worth noting if we remember that the family of Tchingiz was
probably Turkish, and not Mongolian.” He confirms his conclusion by
adding that “the absence of Mongolian characteristics strikes us also
in the portraits which we have of the descendants of Baber, the rulers
of India” (_Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 248 _and note_).

Footnote 78:

Hammer, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 448: “The battle against the Hungarians
was hotly contested and the booty considerable. So many boys and girls
were seized that the most beautiful female slave was exchanged for a
jackboot, and Ashik-Pacha-Zadeh, the historian, who himself took part
in the battle and the plunder, could not sell five boy-slaves at Skopi
for more than 500 piastres.”

Footnote 79:

“Ethnology,” &c., p. 439: “The Hungarian nobility ... is proved by
historical and philological evidence to have been a branch of the
great Northern Asiatic stock, closely allied in blood to the stupid
and feeble Ostiaks and the untamable Laplanders.”

Footnote 80:

_Essai historique sur l’origine des Hongrois_ (Paris, 1844).

Footnote 81:

The current opinions about the peoples of Central Asia will, it seems,
have to be greatly modified. It can no longer be denied that the blood
of the yellow races has been crossed more or less considerably by a
white strain. This fact was not suspected before, but it throws a
doubt on all the ancient notions on the subject, which must now be
revised in the light of it. Alexander von Humboldt makes a very
important observation with regard to the Kirghiz-Kasaks, who are
mentioned by Menander of Byzantium and Constantine Porphyrogenetes. He
rightly shows that when the former speaks of a Kirghiz (Χερχις)
concubine given by the Turkish Shagan Dithubul to Zemarch, the envoy
of the Emperor Justin II, in 569, he is referring to a girl of mixed
blood. She corresponds exactly to the beautiful Turkish girls who are
so praised by the Persians, and who were as little Mongolian in type
as this Kirghiz (_Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 237, &c.; vol. ii, pp.
130–31).

Footnote 82:

Schaffarik, _Slavische Altertümer_, vol. i, p. 279 _et pass._

Footnote 83:

Aug. Thierry, _Histoire de la Conquête d’Angleterre_, vol. i, p. 155.

Footnote 84:

Lyell, “Principles of Geology,” vol. i, p. 178.

Footnote 85:

Link, _Die Urwelt und das Altertum_, vol. i, p. 84.

Footnote 86:

Link, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 91.

Footnote 87:

Cuvier, _op. cit._ Compare also, on this point, the opinion of
Alexander von Humboldt: “In the epochs preceding the existence of the
human race the action of the forces in the interior of the globe must,
as the earth’s crust increased in thickness, have modified the
temperature of the air and made the whole earth habitable by the
products which we now regard as exclusively tropical. Afterwards the
spatial relation of our planet to the central body (the sun) began, by
means of radiation and cooling down, to be almost the sole agent in
determining the climate at different latitudes. It was also in these
primitive times that the elastic fluids, or volcanic forces, inside
the earth, more powerful than they are to-day, made their way through
the oxidized and imperfectly solidified crust of our planet” (_Asie
centrale_, vol. i, p. 47).

Footnote 88:

Second edition, pp. 92–4. The man was born in 1727.

Footnote 89:

_See_ Genesis ii, 8, 10, 15.

Footnote 90:

Lyell, “Principles of Geology,” vol. ii, p. 119.

Footnote 91:

Alexander von Humboldt does not think that this hypothesis can apply
to the migration of plants. “What we know,” he says, “of the
deleterious action exerted by sea-water, during a voyage of 500 or 600
leagues, over the reproductive power of most grains, does not favour
the theory of the migration of vegetables by means of ocean currents.
Such a theory is too general and comprehensive” (_Examen critique de
l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent_, vol. ii, p. 78).

Footnote 92:

Alexander von Humboldt gives the law determining these facts in the
following passage (_Asie centrale_, vol. iii, p. 23): “The foundation
of the science of climatology is the accurate knowledge of the
inequalities of a continent’s surface (hypsometry). Without this
knowledge we are apt to attribute to elevation what is really the
effect of other causes, acting, in low-lying regions, on a surface of
which the curve is continuous with that of the sea, along the
isothermic lines (i.e. lines along which the temperature is the
same).” By calling attention to the multiplicity of influences acting
on the temperature of any given geographical point, Von Humboldt shows
how very different conditions of climate may exist in places that are
quite near each other, independently of their height above sea-level.
Thus in the north-east of Ireland, on the Glenarn coast, there is a
region, on the same parallel of latitude as Königsberg in Prussia,
which produces myrtles growing in the open air quite as vigorously as
in Portugal; this region is in striking contrast with those round it.
“There are hardly any frosts in winter, and the heat in summer is not
enough to ripen the grapes.... The pools and small lakes of the Faroe
Islands are not frozen over during the winter, in spite of the
latitude (62°).... In England, on the Devonshire coast, the myrtle,
the camelia iaponica, the fuchsia coccinea, and the Boddleya globosa
flourish in the open, unsheltered, throughout the winter.... At
Salcombe the winters are so mild that orange-trees have been seen,
with fruit on them, sheltered by a wall and protected merely by
screens” (pp. 147–48).

Footnote 93:

I will explain in due course the reasons why I do not include the
American Indian as a pure and primitive type. I have already given
indications of my view on p. 112. Here I merely subscribe to the
opinion of Flourens, who also recognizes only three great subdivisions
of the species—those of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The names call for
criticism but the divisions are in the main correct.

Footnote 94:

Carus gives his powerful support to the law I have laid down, namely
that the civilizing races are especially prone to mix their blood. He
points out the immense variety of elements composing the perfected
human organism, as against the simplicity of the infinitesimal beings
on the lowest step in the scale of creation. He deduces the following
axiom: “Whenever there is an extreme likeness between the elements of
an organic whole, its state cannot be regarded as the expression of a
complete and final development, but is merely primitive and
elementary” (_Über die ungleiche Befähigkeit der verschiedenen
Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung_, p. 4). In another
place he says: “The greatest possible diversity (_i.e._ inequality) of
the parts, together with the most complete unity of the whole, is
clearly, in every sphere, the standard of the highest perfection of an
organism.” In the political world this is the state of a society where
the governing classes are racially quite distinct from the masses,
while being themselves carefully organised into a strict hierarchy.

Footnote 95:

Flourens (_Eloge de Blumenbach_, p. xi) describes the Polynesian race
as “a mixture of two others, the _Caucasian_ and the Mongolian.”
_Caucasian_ is probably a mere slip; he certainly meant _black_.

Footnote 96:

The physiological characteristics of the ancestors are reproduced in
their descendants according to fixed rules. Thus we see in South
America that though the children of a white man and a negress may have
straight soft hair, yet the crisp woolly hair invariably appears in
the second generation (A. d’Orbigny, _l’Homme américain_, vol. i, p.
143).

Footnote 97:

It may be remarked that the happiest blend, from the point of view of
beauty, is that made by the marriage of white and black. We need only
put the striking charm of many mulatto, Creole, and quadroon women by
the side of such mixtures of yellow and white as the Russians and
Hungarians. The comparison is not to the advantage of the latter. It
is no less certain that a beautiful Rajput is more ideally beautiful
than the most perfect Slav.

Footnote 98:

_See_ (among other authorities), for the American aborigine, Martius
and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, p. 259; for the negroes,
Pruner, _Der Neger, eine aphoristische Skizze aus der medizinischen
Topographie von Cairo_, in the _Zeitschrift der Deutschen
morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, vol. i, p. 131; for the muscular
superiority of the white race over all the others, Carus, _op. cit._,
p. 84.

Footnote 99:

Amédée Thierry, _Histoire de la Gaule sous l’administration romaine_,
vol. i, p. 241.

Footnote 100:

One is sometimes led to consider the government of the United States
of America as an original creation, peculiar to our time; its most
remarkable feature is taken to be the small amount of opportunity left
for Government initiative or even interference. Yet if we cast our
eyes over the early years of all the States founded by the white race,
we shall find exactly the same phenomenon. “Self-government” is no
more triumphant in New York to-day, than it was in Paris at the time
of the Franks. It is true that the Indians are treated far less
humanely by the Americans than the Gallo-Romans were by the nobles of
Chlodwig. But we must remember that the racial difference between the
enlightened Republicans of the New World and their victims is far
greater than that between the Germanic conqueror and those he
conquered.

In fact, _all_ Aryan societies began by exaggerating their
independence as against the law and the magistrates.

The power of political invention possessed by the world cannot, I
think, travel outside the boundaries traced by two particular peoples,
one of them living in the north-east of Europe, the other on the banks
of the Nile, in the extreme south of Egypt. The Government of the
first of these peoples (in Bolgari, near Kazan) was accustomed to
“order men of intelligence to be hanged” as a preventive measure. We
owe our knowledge of this interesting fact to the Arabian traveller
Ibn Foszlan (A. von Humboldt, _Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 494). In the
other nation, living at Fazoql, whenever the king did not give
satisfaction, his relations and ministers came and told him so. They
informed him that since he no longer pleased “the men, women,
children, oxen, asses,” &c., the best thing he could do was to die;
they then proceeded to help him to his death as speedily as possible
(Lepsius, _Briefe aus Ägypten, Äthiopien, und der Halbinsel des
Sinai_; Berlin, 1852).

Footnote 101:

Amédée Thierry, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 241.

Footnote 102:

Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. iii, p. 950, &c.

Footnote 103:

In many tribes of Oceania the institution of marriage is conceived as
follows:—A man sees a maiden, who, he thinks, will suit him. He
obtains her from her father, by means of a few presents, among which a
bottle of brandy, if he has been able to get one, holds the most
distinguished place. Then the young suitor proceeds to conceal himself
in a thicket, or behind a rock. The maiden passes by, thinking no
harm. He knocks her down with a blow of his stick, beats her until she
becomes unconscious, and carries her lovingly to his house, bathed in
her blood. The formalities have been complied with, and the legal
union is accomplished.

Footnote 104:

D’Orbigny tells how Indian mothers love their children to distraction,
and take such care of them as to be really their slaves. If however
the child annoys the mother at any time, then she drowns him or
crushes him to death, or abandons him in the forest, without any
regret. I know no other example of such an extraordinary change
(D’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, vol. ii, p. 232).

Footnote 105:

“The native Indian trade in books is very active, and many of the
works produced are never seen in the libraries of Europeans, even in
India. Sprenger says, in a letter, that in Lucknow alone there are
thirteen lithographic establishments occupied purely in printing
school-books, and he gives a considerable list of works of which
probably not one has reached Europe. The same is the case at Delhi,
Agra, Cawnpore, Allahabad, and other towns” (Mohl, _Rapport annuel à
la Société asiatique_, 1851, p. 92).

Footnote 106:

“The Siamese are the most shameless people in the world. They are at
the lowest point of Indo-Chinese civilization; and yet they can all
read and write” (Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. iii, p. 1152).

Footnote 107:

Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 41.

Footnote 108:

King of Palmyra in Syria, and husband of Zenobia. He was recognized by
the Emperor Gallienus as co-regent of the East in 267, and was
murdered in the same year.—Tr.

Footnote 109:

“The impulse towards this science given them by their kinship with the
Græco-Syrians made them capable of really absorbing the Greek language
and spirit; for the Arabs preferred to confine themselves to the
purely scientific results of Greek speculation” (W. von Humboldt,
_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. cclxiii).

Footnote 110:

The severest judgment on the negro that has perhaps been passed up to
now comes from one of the pioneers of the doctrine of equality.
Franklin defines the negro as “an animal who eats as much, and works
as little, as possible.”

Footnote 111:

I have no hesitation in regarding the exaggerated development of
instinct among savage races as a specific mark of intellectual
inferiority. The sharpening of certain senses can only be gained by
the deterioration of the mental facilities. On this point, compare
what Lesson says of the Papuans, in a paper printed in the _Annales
des sciences naturelles_, vol. x.

Footnote 112:

_See_ p. 139.

Footnote 113:

W. von Humboldt, in one of the most brilliant of his minor works, has
admirably expressed this fact, in its essentials. “In language,” he
says, “the work of time is helped everywhere by national
idiosyncrasies. The characteristic features in the idioms of the
warrior hordes of America and Northern Asia were not necessarily those
of the primitive races of India and Greece. It is not possible to
trace a perfectly equal, and as it were natural, development of any
language, whether it was spoken by one nation or many” (W. von
Humboldt, _Über das Entstehen der grammatischen Formen, und ihren
Einfluss auf die Ideenentwickelung_).

Footnote 114:

W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction.

Footnote 115:

I am inclined to believe that the monosyllabic quality of Chinese is
not really a specific mark of the language at all; and though a
striking characteristic, it does not seem to be an essential one. If
it were, Chinese would be an “isolating” language, connected with
others having the same structure. We know that this is not so. Chinese
belongs to the Tatar or Finnish system, of which some branches are
polysyllabic. On the other hand, we find monosyllabic languages among
groups with quite a different origin. I do not lay any stress on the
example of Othomi, a Mexican dialect which, according to du Ponceau,
has the monosyllabic quality of Chinese, and yet in other respects
belongs to the American family among which it is found, as Chinese
does to the Tatar group (_see_ Morton, “An Inquiry into the
Distinctive Characteristics of the aboriginal race of America,”
Philadelphia, 1844). My reason for neglecting this apparently
important example is that these American languages may one day be
recognized as forming merely a vast branch of the Tatar family; and
thus any conclusion I might draw from them would simply go to confirm
what I have said as to the relation of Chinese to the surrounding
dialects, a relation which is in no way disproved by the peculiar
character of Chinese itself.

I find therefore a more conclusive instance in Coptic, which will not
easily be shown to have any relation to Chinese. But here also every
syllable is a root; and the simple affixes that modify the root are so
independent that even the determining particle that marks the time of
the verb does not always remain joined to the word. Thus _hon_ means
“to command”; _a-hon_, “he commanded”; but _a Moyses hon_, “Moses
commanded” (_see_ E. Meier, _Hebräisches Wurzelwörterbuch_).

Thus it seems possible for monosyllabism to appear in every linguistic
family. It is a kind of infirmity produced by causes which are not yet
understood; it is not however a specific feature, separating the
language in which it occurs from the rest, and setting it in a class
by itself.

Footnote 116:

Goethe says in _Wilhelm Meister_: “Few Germans, and perhaps few men of
modern nations, have the sense of an æsthetic whole. We only know how
to praise and blame details, we can only show a fragmentary
admiration.”

Footnote 117:

_Cf._ W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xcv:
“We may call the sound that imitates the meaning of a word _symbolic_,
although the symbolic element in speech goes far deeper than this....
This kind of imitation undoubtedly had a great, and perhaps exclusive,
influence over the early attempts at word-building.”

Footnote 118:

There is probably another jargon of the same kind as Balaïbalan. This
is called “Afnskoë,” and is spoken by the pedlars and horse-dealers of
Greater Russia, especially in the province of Vladimir. It is confined
to men. The grammar is entirely Russian, though the roots are foreign.
(_See_ Pott, Ersch and Gruber’s _Encyclopädie, Indogermanischer
Sprachstamm_, p. 110.)

Footnote 119:

C. O. Müller, in an admirable passage which I cannot resist the
temptation of transcribing, shows the true nature of language: “Our
age has learnt, by the study of the Hindu and especially the Germanic
languages, that the laws of speech are as fixed as those of organic
life. Between different dialects, developing independently after their
separation, there are still mysterious links, which reciprocally
determine the sounds and their sequences. Literature and science set
limits to this growth, and arrest perhaps some of its richer
developments; but they cannot impose any law on it higher than that
ordained by nature, mother of all things. Even a long time before the
coming of decadence and bad taste, languages may fall sick, from
outward or inward causes, and suffer vast changes; but so long as life
remains in them, their innate power is enough to heal their wounds, to
set their torn limbs, and to restore unity and regularity, even when
the beauty and perfection of the noble plants has almost entirely
disappeared” (_Die Etrusker_, p. 65).

Footnote 120:

Pott, _op. cit._, p. 74.

Footnote 121:

That the mixture of idioms is proportionate to that of the races
constituting a nation had already been noticed before philology, in
the modern sense, existed at all. Kämpfer for example says in his
“History of Japan” (published in 1729): “We may take it as a fixed
rule that the settlement of foreigners in a country will bring a
corresponding proportion of foreign words into the language; these
will be naturalized by degrees, and become as familiar as the native
words themselves.”

Footnote 122:

Keferstein shows that German is merely a hybrid language made up of
Celtic and Gothic (_Ansichten über die keltischen Altertümer_, Halle,
1846–51; Introduction, p. xxxviii). Grimm is of the same opinion.

Footnote 123:

W. von Humboldt says: “Languages, that are apparently crude and
unrefined, may show some striking qualities in their structure, and
often do so. In this respect they may quite possibly surpass more
highly developed tongues. The comparison of Birman with Delaware, not
to speak of Mexican, can leave no doubt of the superiority of the
latter; yet a strand of Indian culture has certainly been interwoven
into Birman by Pali” (_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p.
xxxiv).

Footnote 124:

This difference of level between the intellect of the conqueror and
that of the conquered is the cause of the “sacred languages” that we
find used in the early days of an empire; such as that of the
Egyptians, or the Incas of Peru. These languages are the object of a
superstitious veneration; they are the exclusive property of the upper
classes, and often of a sacerdotal caste, and they furnish the
strongest possible proof of the existence of a foreign race that has
conquered the country where they are found.

Footnote 125:

W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xxxiv.

Footnote 126:

_See_ p. 82 above.

Footnote 127:

Ancient Greece contained many dialects, but not so many as the Greece
of the sixteenth century, when seventy were counted by Simeon
Kavasila; further we may notice (in connexion with the following
paragraph) that in the thirteenth century French was spoken throughout
Greece, and especially in Attica (Heilmayer, quoted by Pott, _op.
cit._, p. 73).

Footnote 128:

The Hebrews themselves did not call their language “Hebrew”; they
called it, quite properly, the “language of Canaan” (Isaiah xix, 18).
Compare Roediger’s preface to the Hebrew grammar of Gesenius (16th
edition, Leipzig, 1851, p. 7 _et passim_).

Footnote 129:

This is also the view of W. Edwards (“Physical Characteristics of the
Human Races”).

Footnote 130:

Besides the Jews, I might also mention the Gipsies. There is, further,
the case where a people speaks two languages. In Grisons almost all
the peasants of the Engadine speak Roumansch and German with equal
facility, the former among themselves, the latter to foreigners. In
Courland there is a district where the peoples speak Esthonian (a
Finnish dialect) to each other and Lithuanian to every one else (Pott,
_op. cit._, p. 104).

Footnote 131:

_See_ pp. 97–102.

Footnote 132:

The way was not so long from rustic Latin, _lingua rustica Romanorum_,
to the _lingua romana_ and thence to corruption, as it was from the
classical tongue, the precise and elaborate forms of which offered
more resistance to decay. We may add that, as every foreign legionary
brought his own provincial patois into the Gallic colonies, the advent
of a common dialect was hastened, not merely by the Celts, but by the
immigrants themselves.

Footnote 133:

Sulp. Severus, _Dial. I de virtutibus monachorum orientalium_.

Footnote 134:

Both troubadours who flourished in the latter half of the twelfth
century.—Tr.

Footnote 135:

Macaulay, “History of England,” _ad init._ The Albigenses are the
special favourites of revolutionary writers, especially in Germany
(_see_ Lenau’s poem, _Die Albigenser_). Nevertheless the sectaries of
Languedoc were recruited mainly from the knightly orders and the
dignitaries of the Church. Their doctrines were indeed anti-social;
and for this reason much may be pardoned to them.

Footnote 136:

See the curious remarks of Génin in his preface to the _Chanson de
Roland_ (edited 1851).

Footnote 137:

_See_ Hickes, _Thesaurus litteraturæ septentrionalis_; also
_L’Histoire littéraire de France_, vol. xvii, p. 633.

Footnote 138:

Published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.

Footnote 139:

P. Pâris, _Garin le Loherain_, preface.

Footnote 140:

It may however be observed that the accent of Vaud and Savoy has a
southern ring, strongly reminiscent of the colony of Aventicum.

Footnote 141:

_See_ p. 43.

Footnote 142:

Pott brings out very well the fact that the different dialects
maintain the balance between the blood of a race and its language,
when he says, “Dialects are the diversity in unity, the prismatic
sections of the monochromatic light and the primordial One” (Ersch and
Gruber’s _Encyclopädie_, p. 66). The phraseology is obscure; but it
shows his meaning clearly enough.

Footnote 143:

This caution applies only when the history of a single people is in
question, not that of a group of peoples. Although one nation may
sometimes change its language, this never happens, and could not
happen, in the case of a complex of nationalities, racially identical
though politically independent. The Jews have given up their national
speech; but the Semitic nations as a whole can neither lose their
native dialects nor acquire others.

Footnote 144:

“Taste and smell in the negro are as powerful as they are
undiscriminating. He eats everything, and odours which are revolting
to us are pleasant to him” (Pruner).

Footnote 145:

Carus, _op. cit._, p. 60.

Footnote 146:

Martius observes that the European is superior to the coloured man in
the pressure of the nervous fluid (_Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, p.
259).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE RENAISSANCE

BY COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

TRANSLATED BY PAUL V. COHN, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON COUNT
GOBINEAU’S LIFE AND WORK, BY DR. OSCAR LEVY

One Volume, Demy 8vo, Illustrated, 10s net

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

These five historical dramas cover the flowering time of the Italian
Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the last
days of Michael Angelo (about 1560). While grouped round the leading
figures who provide the titles—Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II, Leo
X, and Michael Angelo—the plays introduce almost every interesting
character of the period. Nor are we only concerned with the great names;
the author aims at catching the spirit of the people, and the thoughts
and feelings of soldier, artisan, trader, and their womenfolk find ample
voice in his pages.

The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English
readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own
Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in history:
even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much—or at any rate so
much that has survived-to the world of politics, art, and thought. Now
while this interest is amply reflected in contemporary literature, from
the monumental work of Symonds down to the flotsam and jetsam of
everyday fiction, there is one kind of man who more than an historian
would show insight into this age, and that is a poet.

It is as a poet’s work that Gobineau’s “Historical Scenes” recommend
themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets; there is
the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and sub-moral
kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral kind. Only the
last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise with such mighty
figures as Cesare Borgia and Julius II—the religious poet being inclined
to paint them as monsters, the sub-religious as freaks and neurotics.
_Similia similibus_: equals can only be recognised by their equals, and
Gobineau was himself a type of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an
age of low bourgeois and socialist ideals. In a century swayed by
romanticism and democracy, Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He
is a forerunner of Nietzsche (“the only European spirit I should care to
converse with,” said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is
peculiarly fitted to deal with one of the few periods that was _not_
dominated by the moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to
attract the large and evergrowing circle of students of Nietzsche in
this country and America.

“I can only add that this is a volume of serious import, worth reading
from cover to cover, a book which even a jaded reviewer closes with a
sigh of regret that he has not got to read it all over again.”—G. S.
LAYARD in the _Bookman_.

“We scarcely know whether to be more struck with the truth or
liveliness of these portraits. Savonarola, for example, is something
more than the Savonarola of history and tradition. Not only is the
character of the man subtly brought out; not only are we made aware,
for the first time, adequately, of that devouring egotism which could
see nothing but self as God’s instrument, self as the scourge of
Florence, self as the inspired prophet; but beneath all this and
vouching for it is the consciousness of the reality of the man, the
consciousness that his cries of distress are real cries, and his
moments of fierce aspiration and black despair genuine experiences.
More touching and even more lifelike is the figure of Michael Angelo,
a figure in the main familiar to us, but endowed with advancing years
with a peace of mind, a lucidity of intelligence, and a breadth of
sympathy such as were foreign to its young and stormy epoch. The last
scene between Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna is a noble one, and
can be read more than once with pleasure.”—_The Morning Post._

“A debt is due to Dr. Oscar Levy for bringing before English readers
this translation of that great work of Count Gobineau, in which,
through the medium of the drama, he reveals his reverence for the
spirit that inspired the Italian Renaissance. The plays constituting
the book are five in number, ‘Savonarola,’ ‘Cesare Borgia,’ ‘Julius
II,’ ‘Leo X,’ and ‘Michael Angelo,’—and nothing more brilliant has
appeared in recent times. In scope we can only compare with it Mr.
Hardy’s ‘Dynasts,’ but no more striking contrast could be conceived
than the creations of these two geniuses. Through the pages of these
plays moves the whole glittering pageant of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, a mob of soldiers, priests, artists, men and
women, slaying, plundering, preaching, poisoning, painting, rioting,
and loving, while out of the surgent mass rise the figures of the
splendid three, Borgia, Julius, and Michael Angelo, dominating all by
the sheer greatness of their ideas and their contempt for other men’s
opinions. They are the great aristocrats of their time, and the five
plays—really one in conception—are an assertion of the saving grace of
aristocracy, of the glory of race, at a time when the democratic
flood, whose source is Christianity, was beginning to pour over
Europe, to the overwhelming of all greatness of thought and art. The
translation, which is excellent, is by Paul V. Cohn.”—_Glasgow
Herald._

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

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