POLITICAL CATASTROPHES.
Perishable condition of all human societies—Ancient ideas concerning
this phenomenon—Modern theories.
The downfall of civilizations is the most striking,
and, at the same time, the most obscure of all the
phenomena of history. If the sublime grandeur
of this spectacle impresses the mind with awe, the
mystery in which it is wrapped presents a boundless
field for inquiry and meditation to a reflecting
mind. The study of the birth and growth of nations
is, indeed, fraught with many valuable observations:
the gradual development of human
societies, their successes, conquests, and triumphs,
strike the imagination in a lively manner, and
excite an ever increasing interest. But these
phenomena, however grand and interesting, seem
susceptible of an easy explanation. We consider
them as the necessary consequences of the intellectual
and moral endowments of man. Once we
admit the existence of these endowments, their
results will no longer surprise us.
But we perceive that, after a period of glory and
strength, all societies formed by man begin to totter
and fall; all, I said, because there is no exception.
Scattered over the surface of our globe, we
see the vestiges of preceding civilizations, many
of which are known to us only by name, or have
not left behind them even that faint memorial, and
are recorded only by the mute stones in the depths
of primeval forests.[30] If we glance at our modern
States, we are forced to the conclusion that, though
their date is but of yesterday, some of them already
exhibit signs of old age. The awful truth of prophetic
language about the instability of all things
human, applies with equal force to political bodies
and to individuals, to nations and their civilizations.
Every association of men for social and
political purposes, though protected by the most
ingenious social and political ties and contrivances,
conceals among the very elements of its life, the
germ of inevitable destruction, contracted the day
it was formed. This terrible fact is proved by the
history of all ages as well as of our own. It is
owing to a natural law of death which seems to
govern societies as well as individuals; but, does
this law operate alike in all cases? is it uniform
like the result it brings about, and do all civilizations
perish from the same pre-existing cause?
A superficial glance at the page of history would
tempt us to answer in the negative, for the apparent
causes of the downfall of the great empires of
antiquity were very different in each case. Yet,
if we pierce below the surface, we find in this very
necessity of decay, which weighs so imperiously
upon all societies without exception, the evidence
of the existence of some general, though concealed,
cause, producing a natural death, even where no
external causes anticipate it by violent destruction.
We also discover that all civilizations, after a short
duration, exhibit, to the acute observer, certain
intimate disturbances, difficult to define, but whose
existence is undeniable; and that these present in
all cases an analogous character. Finally, if we
distinguish the ruin of civilizations from that of
States (for we sometimes see the same culture
subsist in a country under foreign domination, and
survive the destruction of the political body which
gave it birth; while, again, comparatively slight
misfortunes cause it to be transformed, or to disappear
altogether), we become more and more
confirmed in the idea that this principle of death
in all societies is not only a necessary condition of
their life, independent, in a great measure, of external
causes, but is also uniform in all. To fix
and determine this principle, and to trace its effects
in the lives of those nations, of whom history has
left us records, has been my object and endeavor
in the studies, the results of which I now lay before
the reader.
The fact that every human agglomeration, and
the peculiar culture resulting from it, is doomed
to perish, was not known to the ancients. Even
in the epochs immediately preceding ours, it was
not believed. The religious spirit of Asiatic antiquity
looked upon the great political catastrophes
in the same light that they did upon the sudden destruction
of an individual: as a demonstration of
Divine wrath, visiting a nation or an individual
whose sins had marked them out for signal punishment,
which would serve as an example to those criminals
whom the rod had as yet spared. The Jews,
misunderstanding the meaning of the promise,
believed their empire imperishable. Rome, at the
very moment when the threatening clouds lowered
in the horizon of her grandeur, entertained no
doubt as to the eternity of hers.[31] But our generation
has profited by experience; and, as no one
presumes to doubt that all men must die, because
all who came before us have died; so we are firmly
convinced, that the days of nations, as of individuals,
however many they be, are numbered. The
wisdom of the ancients, therefore, will afford us
but little assistance in the unravelling of our subject,
if we except one fundamental maxim: that
the finger of Divine Providence is always visible
in the conduct of the affairs of this world. From
this solid basis we shall not depart, accepting it in
the full extent that it is recognized by the church.
It cannot be contested that no civilization will
perish without the will of God, and to apply to the
mortal condition of all societies, the sacred axiom
by which the ancients explained certain remarkable,
and, in their opinion, isolated cases of destruction,
is but proclaiming a truth of the first
order, of which we must never lose sight in our
researches after truths of secondary importance.
If it be further added that societies perish by their
sins, I willingly accede to it; it is but drawing a
parallel between them and individuals who also
find their death, or accelerate it, by disobedience
to the laws of the Creator. So far, there is nothing
contradictory to reason, even when unassisted by
Divine light; but these two truths once admitted
and duly weighed, the wisdom of the ancients, I
repeat, affords no further assistance. They did
not search into the ways by which the Divine will
effected the ruin of nations; on the contrary, they
were rather inclined to consider these ways as
essentially mysterious, and above comprehension.
Seized with pious terror at the aspect of the wrecks,
they easily imagined that Providence had specially
interfered thus to strike and completely
destroy once powerful states. Where a miracle
is recorded by the Sacred Scriptures, I willingly
submit; but where that high testimony is wanting,
as it is in the great number of cases, we may justly
consider the ancient theory as defective, and not
sufficiently enlightened. We may even conclude,
that as Divine Justice watches over nations unremittingly,
and its decrees were pronounced ere the
first human society was formed, they are also enforced
in a predeterminate manner, and according
to the unalterable laws of the universe, which
govern both animated nature and the inorganic
world.
If we have cause to reproach the philosophers of
the earlier ages, for having contented themselves,
in attempting to fathom the mystery, with the vindication
of an incontestable theological truth, but
which itself is another mystery; at least, they
have not increased the difficulties of the question
by making it a theme for a maze of errors. In
this respect, they rank highly above the rationalist
schools of various epochs.
The thinkers of Athens and Rome established
the doctrine, which has retained its ground to our
days, that states, nations, civilizations, perished
only through luxury, enervation, bad government,
corruption of morals, fanaticism. All these causes,
either singly or combined, were supposed to account
for the downfall of civilizations. It is a
necessary consequence of this doctrine, that where
neither of these causes are in operation, no destructive
agency is at work. Societies would therefore
possess this advantage over individuals, that they
could die no other but a violent death; and, to
establish a body politic as durable as the globe
itself, nothing further would be necessary than to
elude the dangers which I enumerated above.
The inventors of this thesis did not perceive its
bearing. They considered it as an excellent means
for illustrating the doctrine of morality, which, as
is well known, was the sole aim of their historical
writings. In their narratives of events, they were so
strongly preoccupied with showing the happy rewards
of virtue, and the disastrous results of crime
and vice, that they cared little for what seemed to
furnish no illustration. This erroneous and narrow-minded
system often operated contrary to the intention
of the authors, for it applied, according to occasion,
the name of virtue and vice in a very arbitrary
manner; still, to a great extent, the severe
and laudable sentiment upon which it was based,
excuses it. If the genius of a Plutarch or a Tacitus
could draw from history, studied in this manner,
nothing but romances and satires, yet the romances
were sublime, and the satires generous.
I wish I could be equally indulgent to the
writers of the eighteenth century, who made their
own application of the same theory; but there is,
between them and their teachers, too great a difference.
While the ancients were attached to the
established social system, even to a fault, our
moderns were anxious for destruction, and greedy
of untried novelties. The former exerted themselves
to deduce useful lessons from their theory;
the latter have perverted it into a fearful weapon
against all rational principles of government, which
they stigmatized by every term that mankind holds
in horror. To save societies from ruin, the disciples
of Voltaire would destroy religion, law, industry,
commerce; because, if we believe them,
religion is fanaticism; laws, despotism; industry
and commerce, luxury and corruption.
I have not the slightest intention of entering
the field of polemics; I wished merely to direct
attention to the widely diverging results of this
principle, when applied by Thucydides, or the
Abbé Raynal. Conservative in the one, cynically
aggressive in the other, it is erroneous in both.
The causes to which the downfall of nations is
generally ascribed are not the true ones, and
whilst I admit that these evils may be rifest in
the last stages of dissolution of a people, I deny
that they possess in themselves sufficient strength,
and so destructive an energy, as to produce the
final, irremediable catastrophe.
ALLEGED CAUSES OF POLITICAL CATASTROPHES
EXAMINED.
Fanaticism—Aztec Empire of Mexico.—Luxury—Modern European
States as luxurious as the ancient.—Corruption of
morals—The standard of morality fluctuates in the various
periods of a nation's history: example, France—Is no higher
in youthful communities than in old ones—Morality of Paris.—Irreligion—Never
spreads through all ranks of a nation—Greece
and Rome—Tenacity of Paganism.
Before entering upon my reasons for the opinion
expressed at the end of the preceding chapter,
it will be necessary to explain and define what I
understand by the term society. I do not apply
this term to the more or less extended circle belonging
to a distinct sovereignty. The republic
of Athens is not, in my sense of the word, a society;
neither is the kingdom of Magadha, the
empire of Pontus, or the caliphat of Egypt in the
time of the Fatimites. These are fragments of
societies, which are transformed, united, or subdivided,
by the operation of those primordial laws
into which I am inquiring, but whose existence or
annihilation does not constitute the existence or
annihilation of a society. Their formation is, for
the most part, a transient phenomenon, which exerts
but a limited, or even indirect influence upon the
civilization that gave it birth. By the term society,
I understand an association of men, actuated
by similar ideas, and possessed of the same general
instincts. This association need by no means
be perfect in a political sense, but must be complete
from a social point of view. Thus, Egypt,
Assyria, Greece, India, China, have been, or are
still, the theatres upon which distinct societies
have worked out their destinies, to which the perturbations
in their political relations were merely
secondary. I shall, therefore, speak of the fractions
of these societies only when my reasoning
applies equally to the whole. I am now prepared
to proceed to the examination of the question before
us, and I hope to prove that fanaticism, luxury,
corruption of morals, and irreligion, do not necessarily
occasion the ruin of nations.
All these maladies, either singly or combined,
have attacked, and sometimes with great virulence,
nations which nevertheless recovered from them,
and were, perhaps, all the more vigorous afterward.
The Aztec empire, in Mexico, seemed to flourish
for the especial glory and exaltation of fanaticism.
What can there be more fanatical than a social
and political system, based on a religion which
requires the incessant and profuse shedding of the
blood of fellow-beings?[32] Our remote ancestors,
the barbarous nations of Northern Europe, did
indeed practise this unholy rite, but they never
chose for their sacrifices innocent victims,[33] or, at
least, such as they considered so: the shipwrecked
and prisoners of war, were not considered innocent.
But, for the Mexicans, all victims were alike; with
that ferocity, which a modern physiologist[34] recognizes
as a characteristic of the races of the New
World, they butchered their own fellow-citizens
indiscriminately, and without remorse or pity. And
yet, this did not prevent them from being a powerful,
industrious, and wealthy nation, who might
long have continued to blaspheme the Deity by
their dark creed, but for Cortez's genius and
the bravery of his companions. In this instance,
then, fanaticism was not the cause of the downfall.[35]
Nor are luxury or enervation more powerful in
their effects. These vices are almost always peculiar
to the higher classes, and seldom penetrate
the whole mass of the population. But I doubt
whether among the Greeks, the Persians, or the
Romans, whose downfall they are said to have
caused, luxury and enervation, albeit in a different
form, had risen to a higher pitch than we see them
to-day in some of our modern States, in France,
Germany, England, and Russia, for instance. The
two last countries are especially distinguished for
the luxury prevalent among the higher classes,
and yet, these two countries seem to be endued
with a vitality much more vigorous and promising
than most other European States. In the Middle
Ages, the Venetians, Genoese, Pisanese, accumulated
in their magazines the treasures and luxuries
of the world; yet, the gorgeous magnificence of
their palaces, and the splendid decorations of their
vessels, did certainly not diminish their power, or
subvert their dominion.[36]
Even the corruption of morals, this most terrible
of all scourges, is not necessarily a cause of
national ruin. If it were, the prosperity of a nation,
its power and preponderance, would be in a
direct ratio to the purity of its manners; and it is
hardly necessary to say that this is not the case.
The odd fashion of ascribing all sorts of imaginary
virtues to the first Romans, is now pretty much
out of date.[37] Few would now dare to hold up as
models of morality those sturdy patricians of the
old school, who treated their women as slaves, their
children as cattle, and their creditors like wild
beasts. If there should still be some who would
defend so bad a cause, their reasoning could easily
be refuted, and its want of solidity shown. Abuse
of power, in all epochs, has created equal indignation;
there were deeper reasons for the abolition of
royalty than the rape of Lucretia, for the expulsion
of the decemvirs than the outrage of Appius; but
these pretexts for two important revolutions, sufficiently
demonstrate the public sentiment with regard
to morals. It is a great mistake to ascribe the vigor
of a young nation to its superior virtues; since
the beginning of historical times, there has not
been a community, however small, among which
all the reprehensible tendencies of human nature
were not visible, notwithstanding which, it has increased
and prospered. There are even instances
where the splendor of a state was owing to the
most abominable institutions. The Spartans are
indebted for their renown, and place in history, to
a legislation fit only for a community of bandits.[38]
So far from being willing to accord to youthful
communities any superiority in regard to morals,
I have no doubt that, as nations advance in age
and consequently approach their period of decay,
they present to the eyes of the moralist a far more
satisfactory spectacle.[39] Manners become milder;
men accommodate themselves more readily to one
another; the means of subsistence become, if not
easier, at least more varied; reciprocal obligations
are better defined and understood; more refined
theories of right and wrong gain ground. It would
be difficult to show that at the time when the
Greek arms conquered Darius, or when Greek
liberty itself fled forever from the battle-field of
Chæronæa, or when the Goths entered Rome as
victors; that the Persian monarchy, Athens, or
the imperial city, in those times of their downfall,
contained a smaller proportion of honest and virtuous
people than in the most glorious epochs of
their national existence.
But we need not go so far back for illustrations.
If any one were required to name
the place where the spirit of our age displayed
itself in the most complete contrast with the
virtuous ages of the world (if such there were),
he would most certainly point out Paris. Yet,
many learned and pious persons have assured
me, that nowhere, and in no epoch, could more
practical virtue, solid piety, greater delicacy of
conscience, be found than within the precincts of
this great and corrupt city. The ideal of goodness
is as exalted, the duties of a Christian as well understood,
as by the most brilliant luminaries of
the Church in the seventeenth century. I might
add, that these virtues are divested of the bitterness
and severity from which, in those times, they were
not always exempt; and that they are more united
with feelings of toleration and universal philanthropy.[40]
Thus we find, as if to counterbalance
the fearful aberrations of our own epoch, in the
principal theatre of these aberrations, contrasts
more numerous and more striking, than probably
blessed the sight of the faithful in preceding ages.
I cannot even perceive that great men are wanting
in those periods of corruption and decay; on
the contrary, these periods are often signalized by
the appearance of men remarkable for energy of
character and stern virtue.[41] If we look at the
catalogue of Roman emperors, we find a great
number of them as exalted in merit as in rank;
we meet with names like those of Trajan, Antoninus
Pius, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus,
Jovian; and if we glance beneath the throne,
we see a glorious constellation of great doctors
of our faith, of martyrs, and apostles of the primitive
church; not to consider the number of
virtuous pagans. Active, firm, and valorous minds
filled the camps and the forums, so that it may
reasonably be doubted whether Rome, in the times
of Cincinnatus, possessed so great a number of
eminent men in every department of human activity.
Many other examples might be alleged, to
prove that senile and tottering communities, so
far from being deficient in men of virtue, talent,
and action, possess them probably in greater number
than young and rising states; and that their
general standard of morals is often higher.
Public morality, indeed, varies greatly at different
periods of a nation's history. The history of
the French nation, better than any other, illustrates
this fact. Few will deny that the Gallo-Romans
of the fifth and sixth centuries, though a subject
race, were greatly superior in point of morals
to their heroic conquerors.[42] Individually taken,
they were often not inferior to the latter in courage
and military virtue.[43] The intermixture of the
two races, during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries,
reduced the standard of morals among the
whole nation to a disgraceful level. In the three
succeeding centuries, the picture brightens again.
Yet, this period of comparative light was succeeded
by the dark scenes of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, when tyranny and debauchery
ran riot over the land, and infected all classes of
society, not excepting the clergy; when the nobles
robbed their vassals, and the commonalty sold their
country to a foreign foe. This period, so distinguished
for the total absence of patriotism, and
every honest sentiment, was emphatically one of
decay; the state was shaken to its very foundation,
and seemed ready to bury under its ruins so much
shame and dishonor. But the crisis passed; foreign
and intestine foes were vanquished; the machinery
of government reconstructed on a firmer basis;
the state of society improved. Notwithstanding
its bloody follies, the sixteenth century dishonors
less the annals of the nation than its predecessors,
and it formed the transition period to the age of
those pure and ever-brilliant lights, Fenelon, Bossuet,
Montausier, and others. This period, again,
was succeeded by the vices of the regency, and the
horrors of the Revolution. Since that time, we
have witnessed almost incredible fluctuations of
public morality every decade of years.
I have sketched rapidly, and merely pointed
out the most prominent changes. To do even
this properly, much more to descend to details,
would require greater space than the limits and
designs of this work permit. But I think what
I have said is sufficient to show that the corruption
of public morals, though always a great,
is often a transient evil, a malady which may be
corrected or which corrects itself, and cannot,
therefore, be the sole cause of national ruin,
though it may hasten the catastrophe.
The corruption of public morals is nearly allied
to another evil, which has been assigned as one of
the causes of the downfall of empires. It is observed
of Athens and Rome, that the glory of
these two commonwealths faded about the same
time that they abandoned their national creeds.
These, however, are the only examples of such a
coincidence that can be cited. The religion of
Zoroaster was never more flourishing in the Persian
empire, than at the time of its downfall.
Tyre, Carthage, Judea, the Mexican and Peruvian
empires expired at the moment when they embraced
their altars with the greatest zeal and
devotion. Nay, I do not believe that even at
Athens and Rome, the ancient creed was abandoned
until the day when it was replaced in every
conscience, by the complete triumph of Christianity.
I am firmly convinced that, politically
speaking, irreligion never existed among any
people, and that none ever abandoned the faith of
their forefathers, except in exchange for another.
In other words, there never was such a thing as a
religious interregnum. The Gallic Teutates gave
way to the Jupiter of the Romans; the worship of
Jupiter, in its turn, was replaced by Christianity.
It is true that, in Athens, not long before the time
of Pericles, and in Rome, towards the age of the
Scipios, it became the fashion among the higher
classes, first to reason upon religious subjects,
next to doubt them, and finally to disbelieve them
altogether, and to pride themselves upon scepticism.
But though there were many who joined
in the sentiment of the ancient "freethinker" who
dared the augurs to look at one another without
laughing, yet this scepticism never gained ground
among the mass of the people.
Aspasia at her evening parties, and Lelius
among his intimates, might ridicule the religious
dogmas of their country, and amuse themselves at
the expense of those that believed them. But at
both these epochs, the most brilliant in the history
of Greece and Rome, it would have been highly
dangerous to express such sentiments publicly.
The imprudence of his mistress came near costing
Pericles himself dearly, and the tears which he
shed before the tribunal, were not in themselves
sufficiently powerful to save the fair sceptic. The
poets of the times, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and
afterwards Æschylus, found it necessary, whatever
were their private sentiments, to flatter the religious
notions of the masses. The whole nation
regarded Socrates as an impious innovator, and
would have put to death Anaxagoras, but for the
strenuous intercession of Pericles. Nor did the
philosophical and sceptical theories penetrate the
masses at a later period. Never, at any time, did
they extend beyond the sphere of the elegant and
refined. It may be objected that the opinion of
the rest, the mechanics, traders, the rural population,
the slaves, etc., was of little moment, as
they had no influence in the policy of the state.
If this were the case, why was it necessary, until
the last expiring throb of Paganism, to preserve
its temples and pay the hierophants? Why did
men, the most eminent and enlightened, the most
sceptical in their religious notions, not only don
the sacerdotal robe, but even descend to the most
repugnant offices of the popular worship? The
daily reader of Lucretius[44] had to snatch moments
of leisure from the all-absorbing game of politics,
to compose a treatise on haruspicy. I allude to
the first Cæsar.[45] And all his successors, down to
Constantine, were compelled to unite the pontificial
with the imperial dignity. Even Constantine
himself, though as a Christian prince he had far
better reasons for repugnance to such an office
than any of his predecessors, was compelled
to compromise with the still powerful ancient
religion of the nation.[46] This is a clear proof
of the prevalence of the popular sentiment
over the opinion of the higher and more enlightened
classes. They might appeal to reason
and common sense, against the absurdities of the
masses, but the latter would not, could not, renounce
one faith until they had adopted another,
confirming the old truth, that in the affairs of this
world, the positive ever takes precedent over the
negative. The popular sentiment was so strong
that, in the third century, it infected even the
higher classes to some extent, and created among
them a serious religious reaction, which did not
entirely subside until after the final triumph of
Christianity. The revolution of ideas which gradually
diffused true religion among all classes, is
highly interesting, and it may not be altogether
irrelevant to my subject, to point out the principal
causes which occasioned it.
In the latter stages of the Roman empire, the
armies had acquired such undue political preponderance,
that from the emperor, who inevitably
was chosen by them, down to the pettiest governor
of a district, all the functionaries of the government
issued from the ranks. They had sprung
from those popular masses, of whose passionate
attachment to their faith I have already spoken,
and upon attaining their elevated stations, came
in contact with the former rulers of the country,
the old distinguished families, the municipal dignitaries
of cities, in fact those classes who took
pride and delight in sceptical literature. At first
there was hostility between these latter and the
real rulers of the state, whom they would willingly
have treated as upstarts, if they had dared. But
as the court gave the tone, and all the minor military
chiefs were, for the most part, devout and
fanatic, the sceptics were compelled to disguise
their real sentiments, and the philosophers set
about inventing systems to reconcile the rationalistic
theories with the state religion. This revival
of pagan piety caused the greater number of the
persecutions. The rural populations, who had
suffered their faith to be outraged by the atheists
so long as the higher classes domineered over
them, now, that the imperial democracy had reduced
all to the same level, were panting for
revenge; but, mistaking their victims, they directed
their fury against the Christians. The real sceptics
were such men as King Agrippa, who wishes
to hear St. Paul[47] from mere curiosity; who hears
him, debates with him, considers him a fool, but
never thinks of persecuting him because he differs
in opinion; or Tacitus, the historian, who, though
full of contempt for the believers in the new
religion, blames Nero for his cruelties towards
them.
Agrippa and Tacitus were pagan sceptics. Diocletian
was a politician, who gave way to the
clamors of an incensed populace. Decius and
Aurelian were fanatics, like the masses they
governed, and from whom they had sprung.
Even after the Christian religion had become
the religion of the state, what immense difficulties
were experienced in attempting to bring the masses
within its pale! So hopeless was in some places
the contest with the local divinities, that in many
instances conversion was rather the result of address,
than the effect of persuasion. The genius
of the holy propagators of our religion was reduced
to the invention of pious frauds. The
divinities of the groves, fields, and fountains, were
still worshipped, but under the name of the saints,
the martyrs, and the Virgin. After being for a
time misdirected, these homages would finally
find the right way. Yet such is the obstinacy
with which the masses cling to a faith once received,
that there are traces of it remaining in our
day. There are still parishes in France, where
some heathenish superstition alarms the piety, and
defies the efforts of the minister. In Catholic Brittany,
even in the last centuries, the bishop in vain
attempted to dehort his flock from the worship of
an idol of stone. The rude image was thrown
into the water, but rescued by its obstinate adorers;
and the assistance of the military was required to
break it to pieces. Such was, and such is the
longevity of paganism. I conclude, therefore, that
no nation, either in ancient or modern times, ever
abandoned its religion without having duly and
earnestly embraced another, and that, consequently,
none ever found itself, for a moment, in a state
of irreligion, which could have been the cause of
its ruin.
Having denied the destructive effects of fanaticism,
luxury, and immorality, and the political
possibility of irreligion, I shall now speak of the
effects of bad government. This subject is well
worthy of an entire chapter.
INFLUENCE OF GOVERNMENT UPON THE LONGEVITY
OF NATIONS.
Misgovernment defined—Athens, China, Spain, Germany, Italy,
etc.—Is not in itself a sufficient cause for the ruin of nations.
I am aware of the difficulty of the task I have
undertaken in attempting to establish a truth,
which by many of my readers will be regarded as
a mere paradox. That good laws and good
government exert a direct and powerful influence
upon the well-being and prosperity of
a nation, is an indisputable fact, of which I am
fully convinced; but I think that history proves
that they are not absolute conditions of the existence
of a community; or, in other words, that
their absence is not necessarily productive of ruin.
Nations, like individuals, are often preyed upon
by fearful diseases, which show no outward traces
of the ravages within, and which, though dangerous,
are not always fatal. Indeed, if they were,
few communities would survive the first few years
of their formation, for it is precisely during that
period that the government is worst, the laws most
imperfect, and least observed. But here the comparison
between the body political and the human
organization ceases, for while the latter dreads
most the attack of disease during infancy, the
former easily overcomes it at that period. History
furnishes innumerable examples of successful contest
on the part of young communities with the
most formidable and most devastating political
evils, of which none can be worse than ill-conceived
laws, administered in an oppressive or
negligent manner.[48]
Let us first define what we understand by bad
government. The varieties of this evil are as
various as nations, countries, and epochs. It were
impossible to enumerate them all. Yet, by classing
them under four principal categories, few
varieties will be omitted.
A government is bad, when imposed by foreign
influence. Athens experienced this evil under the
thirty tyrants. Yet she shook off the odious
yoke, and patriotism, far from expiring, gained
renewed vigor by the oppression.
A government is bad, when based upon absolute
and unconditional conquest. Almost the whole extent
of France in the fourteenth century, groaned
under the dominion of England. The ordeal was
passed, and the nation rose from it more powerful
and brilliant than before. China was overrun and
conquered by the Mongol hordes. They were
ejected from its territories, after having previously
undergone a singular transformation. It next fell
into the hands of the Mantchoo conquerors, but
though they already count the years of their reign
by centuries, they are now at the eve of experiencing
the same fate as their Mongol predecessors.
A government is especially bad, when the principles
upon which it was based are disregarded or
forgotten. This was the fate of the Spanish monarchy.
It was based upon the military spirit of
the nation, and upon its municipal freedom, and
declined soon after these principles came to be
forgotten. It is impossible to imagine greater
political disorganization than this country represented.
Nowhere was the authority of the sovereign
more nominal and despised; nowhere did
the clergy lay themselves more open to censure.
Agriculture and industry, following the same
downward impulse, were also involved in the
national marasmus. Yet Spain, of whom so many
despaired, at a moment when her star seemed
setting forever, gave the glorious example of
heroic and successful resistance to the arms of one
who had hitherto experienced no check in his
career of conquest. Since that, the better spirit
of the nation has been roused, and there is, probably,
at this time, no European state with more
promising prospects, and stronger vitality.[49]
A government is also very bad, when, by its
institutions, it authorizes an antagonism either
between the supreme power and the nation, or
among the different classes of which it is composed.
This was the case in the Middle Ages,
when the kings of France and England were at
war with their great vassals, and the peasants in
perpetual feud with the lords. In Germany, the
first effects of the liberty of thought, were the
civil wars of the Hussites, Anabaptists, and other
sectaries. Italy, at a more remote period, was so
distracted by the division of the supreme authority
for which emperor, pope, nobles, and municipalities
contended, that the masses, not knowing whom
to obey, in many instances finished by obeying
neither. Yet in the midst of all these troubles,
Italian nationality did not perish. On the contrary,
its civilization was at no time more brilliant,
its industry never more productive, its foreign influence
never greater.
If communities have survived such fearful political
tempests, it cannot well be said that national
ruin is a necessary cause of misgovernment. Besides,
wise and happy reigns are few and far
between, in the history of every nation; and these
few are not considered such by all. Historians
are not unanimous in their praise of Elizabeth,
nor do they all consider the reign of William and
Mary as an epoch of prosperity for England.
Truly this science of statesmanship, the highest
and most complicated of all, is so disproportionate
to the capacity of man,[50] and so various are the
opinions concerning it, that nations have early and
frequent opportunities of learning to accommodate
themselves to misgovernment, which, in its
worst forms, is still preferable to anarchy. It is a
well-proved fact, which even a superficial study of
history will clearly demonstrate, that communities
often perish under the best government of a long
series that came before.[51]
DEFINITION OF THE WORD DEGENERACY—ITS
CAUSE.
Skeleton history of a nation—Origin of castes, nobility, etc.—Vitality
of nations not necessarily extinguished by conquest—China,
Hindostan—Permanency of their peculiar civilizations.
If the spirit of the preceding pages has been at
all understood, it will be seen that I am far from
considering these great national maladies, misgovernment,
fanaticism, irreligion, and immorality,
as mere trifling accidents, without influence or importance.
On the contrary, I sincerely pity the
community which is afflicted by such scourges,
and think that no efforts can be misdirected which
tend to mitigate or remove them. But I repeat,
that unless these disorganizing elements are grafted
upon another more destructive principle, unless
they are the consequences of a greater, though
concealed, evil; we may rest assured that their
ravages are not fatal, and that society, after a
shorter or longer period of suffering, will escape
their toils, perhaps with renewed vigor and youth.
The examples I have alleged seem to me conclusive;
their number, if necessary, might be increased
to any extent. But the conviction has
already gained ground, that these are but secondary
evils, to which an undue importance has
hitherto been attached, and that the law which
governs the life and death of societies must be
sought for elsewhere, and deeper. It is admitted
that the germ of destruction is inherent in the
constitution of communities; that so long as it
remains latent, exterior dangers are little to be
dreaded; but when it has once attained full growth
and maturity, the nation must die, even though
surrounded by the most favorable circumstances,
precisely as a jaded steed breaks down, be the
track ever so smooth.
Degeneracy was the name given to this cause of
dissolution. This view of the question was a great
step towards the truth, but, unfortunately, it went
no further; the first difficulty proved insurmountable.
The term was certainly correct, etymologically
and in every other respect, but how is it with
the definition. A people is said to be degenerated,
when it is badly governed, abuses its riches, is
fanatical, or irreligious; in short, when it has lost
the characteristic virtues of its forefathers. This
is begging the question. Thus, communities succumb
under the burden of social and political evils
only when they are degenerate, and they are degenerate
only when such evils prevail. This circular
argument proves nothing but the small
progress hitherto made in the science of national
biology. I readily admit that nations perish from
degeneracy, and from no other cause; it is when
in that wretched condition, that foreign attacks are
fatal to them, for then they no longer possess the
strength to protect themselves against adverse
fortune, or to recover from its blows. They die,
because, though exposed to the same perils as their
ancestors, they have not the same powers of overcoming
them. I repeat it, the term degeneracy is
correct; but it is necessary to define it, to give it
a real and tangible meaning. It is necessary to
say how and why this vigor, this capacity of overcoming
surrounding dangers, are lost. Hitherto,
we have been satisfied with a mere word, but the
thing itself is as little known as ever.[52] The step
beyond, I shall attempt to make.
In my opinion, a nation is degenerate, when
the blood of its founders no longer flows in its
veins, but has been gradually deteriorated by
successive foreign admixtures; so that the nation,
while retaining its original name, is no longer
composed of the same elements. The attenuation
of the original blood is attended by a modification
of the original instincts, or modes of thinking;
the new elements assert their influence, and when
they have once gained perfect and entire preponderance,
the degeneration may be considered as
complete. With the last remnant of the original
ethnical principle, expires the life of the society
and its civilization. The masses, which composed
it, have thenceforth no separate, independent, social
and political existence; they are attracted to
different centres of civilization, and swell the ranks
of new societies having new instincts and new
purposes.
In attempting to establish this theorem, I am
met by a question which involves the solution of
a far more difficult problem than any I have yet
approached. This question, so momentous in its
bearings, is the following:—
Is there, in reality, a serious and palpable difference
in the capacity and intrinsic worth of different
branches of the human family?
For the sake of clearness, I shall advance, à priori,
that this difference exists. It then remains to show
how the ethnical character of a nation can undergo
such a total change as I designate by the term
degeneracy.
Physiologists assert that the human frame is
subject to a constant wear and tear, which would
soon destroy the whole machine, but for new particles
which are continually taking the form and
place of the old ones. So rapid is this change
said to be, that, in a few years, the whole framework
is renovated, and the material identity of the
individual changed. The same, to a great extent,
may be said of nations, only that, while the individual
always preserves a certain similarity of form
and features, those of a nation are subject to innumerable
and ever-varying changes. Let us take
a nation at the moment when it assumes a political
existence, and commences to play a part in the
great drama of the world's stage. In its embryo,
we call it a tribe.
The simplest and most natural political institution
is that of tribes. It is the only form of
government known to rude and savage nations.
Civilization is the result of a great concentration
of powerful physical and intellectual forces,[53]
which, in small and scattered fragments, is impossible.
The first step towards it is, therefore, undoubtedly,
the union of several tribes by alliance
or conquest. Such a coalescence is what we call
a nation or empire. I think it admits of an easy
demonstration, that in proportion as a human
family is endowed with the capacity for intellectual
progress, it exhibits a tendency to enlarge the
circle of its influence and dominion. On the contrary,
where that capacity is weak, or wanting, we
find the population subdivided into innumerable
small fragments, which, though in perpetual collision,
remain forever detached and isolated. The
stronger may massacre the weaker, but permanent
conquest is never attempted; depredatory incursions
are the sole object and whole extent of warfare.
This is the case with the natives of Polynesia,
many parts of Africa, and the Arctic regions.
Nor can their stagnant condition be ascribed to
local or climatical causes. We have seen such
wretched hordes inhabiting, indifferently, temperate
as well as torrid or frigid zones; fertile prairies
and barren deserts; river-shores and coasts as well
as inland regions. It must therefore be founded
upon an inherent incapacity of progress. The
more civilizable a race is, the stronger is the tendency
for aggregation of masses. Complex political
organizations are not so much the effect as the
cause of civilization.[54] A tribe with superior intellectual
and physical endowments, soon perceives
that, to increase its power and prosperity, it must
compel its neighbors to enter into the sphere of its
influence. Where peaceful means fail, war is resorted
to. Territories are conquered, a division
into classes established between the victorious and
the subjugated race; in one word, a nation has
made its appearance upon the theatre of history.
The impulse being once given, it will not stop
short in the career of conquest. If wisdom and
moderation preside in its councils, the tracks of
its armies will not be marked by wanton destruction
and bloodshed; the monuments, institutions,
and manners of the conquered will be respected;
superior creations will take the place of the old,
where changes are necessary and useful;—a great
empire will be formed.[55] At first, and perhaps for
a long time, victors and vanquished will remain
separated and distinct. But gradually, as the
pride of the conqueror becomes less obtrusive, and
the bitterness of defeat is forgotten by the conquered;
as the ties of common interest become
stronger, the boundary line between them is obliterated.
Policy, fear, or natural justice, prompts
the masters to concessions; intermarriages take
place, and, in the course of time, the various ethnical
elements are blended, and the different nations
composing the state begin to consider themselves
as one. This is the general history of the rise of
all empires whose records have been transmitted
to us.[56] An inferior race, by falling into the hands
of vigorous masters, is thus called to share a
destiny, of which, alone, it would have been incapable.
Witness the Saxons by the Norman
conquest.[57] But, if there is a decided disparity in
the capacity of the two races, their mixture, while
it ennobles the baser, deteriorates the nobler; a
new race springs up, inferior to the one, though
superior to the other, and, perhaps, possessed of
peculiar qualities unknown to either. The modification
of the ethnical character of the nation,
however, does not terminate here.
Every new acquisition of territory, by conquest
or treaty, brings an addition of foreign blood. The
wealth and splendor of a great empire attract
crowds of strangers to its capital, great inland
cities, or seaports. Apart from the fact that the
conquering race—that which founds the empire,
and supports and animates it—is, in most cases,
inferior in numbers to the masses which it subdued
and assimilated; the conspicuous part which it
takes in the affairs of the state, renders it more
directly exposed to the fatal results of battles,
proscriptions, and revolts.[58] In some instances,
also, it happens that the substratum of native
populations are singularly prolific—witness the
Celts and Sclaves. Sooner or later, therefore, the
conquering race is absorbed by the masses which
its vigor and superiority have aggregated. The
very materials of which it erected its splendor, and
upon which it based its strength, are ultimately
the means of its weakness and destruction. But
the civilization which it has developed, may survive
for a limited period. The forward impulse,
once imparted to the mass, will still propel it for a
while, but its force is continually decreasing. Manners,
laws, and institutions remain, but the spirit
which animated them has fled; the lifeless body
still exhibits the apparent symptoms of life, and,
perhaps, even increases, but the real strength has
departed; the edifice soon begins to totter, at the
slightest collision it will crumble, and bury beneath
its ruins the civilization which it had developed.
If this definition of degeneracy be accepted, and
its consequences admitted, the problem of the rise
and fall of empires no longer presents any difficulty.
A nation lives so long as it preserves the ethnical
principle to which it owes its existence; with this
principle, it loses the primum mobile of its successes,
its glory, and its civilization: it must therefore disappear
from the stage of history. Who can doubt
that if Alexander had been opposed by real Persians,
the men of the Arian stock, whom Cyrus led
to victory, the issue of the battle of Arbela would
have been very different. Or if Rome, in her decadence,
had possessed soldiers and senators like those
of the time of Fabius, Scipio, and Cato, would she
have fallen so easy a prey to the barbarians of the
North?
It will be objected that, even had the integrity
of the original blood remained intact, a time must
have come when they would find their masters.
They would have succumbed under a series of
well-combined attacks, a long-continued overwhelming
pressure, or simply by the chances of a
lost battle. The political edifice might have been
destroyed in this manner, not the civilization,
not the social organization. Invasion and defeat
would have been reverses, sad ones, indeed, but
not irremediable. There is no want of facts to
confirm this assertion.
In modern times, the Chinese have suffered two
complete conquests. In each case they have imposed
their manners and their institutions upon
the conquerors; they have given them much, and
received but little in return. The first invaders,
after having undergone this change, were expelled;
the same fate is now threatening the second.[59]
In
this case the vanquished were intellectually and
numerically superior to their victors. I shall mention
another case where the victors, though intellectually
superior, are not possessed of sufficient
numerical strength to transform the intellectual
and moral character of the vanquished.
The political supremacy of the British in Hindostan
is perfect, yet they exert little or no moral
influence over the masses they govern. All
that the utmost exertion of their power can effect
upon the fears of their subjects, is an outward
compliance. The notions of the Hindoo cannot
be replaced by European ideas—the spirit of
Hindoo civilization cannot be conquered by any
power, however great, of the law. Political forms
may change, and do change, without materially
affecting the basis upon which they rest; Hyderabad,
Lahore, and Delhi may cease to be capitals:
Hindoo society will subsist, nevertheless. A time
must come, sooner or later, when India will regain
a separate political existence, and publicly proclaim
those laws of her own, which she now
secretly obeys, or of which she is tacitly left in
possession.
The mere accident of conquest cannot destroy
the principle of vitality in a people. At most, it
may suspend for a time the exterior manifestations
of that vitality, and strip it of its outward honors.
But so long as the blood, and consequently the
culture of a nation, exhibit sufficiently strong
traces of the initiatory race, that nation exists;
and whether it has to deal, like the Chinese, with
conquerors who are superior only materially; or
whether, like the Hindoos, it maintains a struggle
of patience against a race much superior in every
respect; that nation may rest assured of its future—independence
will dawn for it one day. On the
contrary, when a nation has completely exhausted
the initiatory ethnical element, defeat is certain
death; it has consumed the term of existence
which Heaven had granted it—its destiny is
fulfilled.[60]
I, therefore, consider the question as settled,
which has been so often discussed, as to what
would have been the result, if the Carthaginians,
instead of succumbing to the fortune of Rome,
had conquered Italy. As they belonged to the
Phenician family, a stock greatly inferior to the
Italian in political capacity, they would have been
absorbed by the superior race after the victory,
precisely as they were after the defeat. The final
result, therefore, would have been the same in
either case.
The destiny of civilizations is not ruled by
accident; it depends not on the issue of a battle,
a thrust of a sword, the favors or frowns of fickle
fortune. The most warlike, formidable, and triumphant
nations, when they were distinguished
for nothing but bravery, strategical science, and
military successes, have never had a nobler fate
than that of learning from their subjects, perhaps
too late, the art of living in peace. The Celts,
the nomad hordes of Central Asia, are memorable
illustrations of this truth.
The whole of my demonstration now rests upon
one hypothesis, the proof of which I have reserved
for the succeeding chapters: the moral
and intellectual diversities of the various
branches of the human family.
THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY OF
RACES IS NOT THE RESULT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.
Antipathy of races—Results of their mixture—The scientific
axiom of the absolute equality of men, but an extension of
the political—Its fallacy—Universal belief in unequal endowment
of races—The moral and intellectual diversity of races
not attributable to institutions—Indigenous institutions are
the expression of popular sentiments; when foreign and
imported, they never prosper—Illustrations: England and
France—Roman Empire—European Colonies—Sandwich
Islands—St. Domingo—Jesuit missions in Paraguay.
The idea of an innate and permanent difference
in the moral and mental endowments of the various
groups of the human species, is one of the
most ancient, as well as universally adopted, opinions.
With few exceptions, and these mostly in
our own times, it has formed the basis of almost
all political theories, and has been the fundamental
maxim of government of every nation, great or
small. The prejudices of country have no other
cause; each nation believes in its own superiority
over its neighbors, and very often different parts
of the same nation regard each other with contempt.
There seems to exist an instinctive antipathy
among the different races, and even among
the subdivisions of the same race, of which none
is entirely exempt, but which acts with the greatest
force in the least civilized or least civilizable.
We behold it in the characteristic suspiciousness
and hostility of the savage; in the isolation from
foreign influence and intercourse of the Chinese
and Japanese; in the various distinctions founded
upon birth in more civilized communities, such as
castes, orders of nobility and aristocratic privileges.[61]
Not even a common religion can extinguish
the hereditary aversion of the Arab[62] to the
Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria; or
the bitter hostility of the Magyar and Sclave, who,
without intermingling, have inhabited the same
country for centuries. But as the different types
lose their purity and become blended, this hostility
of race abates; the maxim of absolute and permanent
inequality is first discussed, then doubted.
A man of mixed race or caste will not be apt to
admit disparity in his double ancestry. The superiority
of particular types, and their consequent
claims to dominion, find fewer advocates. This
dominion is stigmatized as a tyrannical usurpation
of power.[63] The mixture of castes gives rise to
the political axiom that all men are equal, and,
therefore, entitled to the same rights. Indeed,
since there are no longer any distinct hereditary
classes, none can justly claim superior merit and
privileges. But this assertion, which is true only
where a complete fusion has taken place, is applied
to the whole human race—to all present, past, and
future generations. The political axiom of equality
which, like the bag of Æolus, contains so many
tempests, is soon followed by the scientific. It is
said—and the more heterogeneous the ethnical
elements of a nation are, the more extensively the
theory gains ground—that, "all branches of the
human family are endowed with intellectual capacities
of the same nature, which, though in different
stages of development, are all equally susceptible
of improvement." This is not, perhaps,
the precise language, but certainly the meaning.
Thus, the Huron, by proper culture, might become
the equal of the Englishman and Frenchman.
Why, then, I would ask, did he never, in the
course of centuries, invent the art of printing or
apply the power of steam; why, among the warriors
of his tribe, has there never arisen a Cæsar
or a Charlemagne, among his bards and medicine-men,
a Homer or a Hippocrates?
These questions are generally met by advancing
the influence of climate, local circumstances, etc.
An island, it is said, can never be the theatre of
great social and political developments in the same
measure as a continent; the natives of a southern
clime will not display the energy of those of the
north; seacoasts and large navigable rivers will
promote a civilization which could never have
flourished in an inland region;—and a great deal
more to the same purpose. But all these ingenious
and plausible hypotheses are contradicted by facts.
The same soil and the same climate have been
visited, alternately, by barbarism and civilization.
The degraded fellah is charred by the same sun
which once burnt the powerful priest of Memphis;
the learned professor of Berlin lectures
under the same inclement sky that witnessed the
miseries of the savage Finn.
What is most curious is, that while the belief of
equality may influence institutions and manners,
there is not a nation, nor an individual but renders
homage to the contrary sentiment. Who has not
heard of the distinctive traits of the Frenchman,
the German, the Spaniard, the English, the Russ.
One is called sprightly and volatile, but brave;
the other is sober and meditative; a third is noted
for his gravity; a fourth is known by his coldness
and reserve, and his eagerness of gain; a fifth, on
the contrary, is notorious for reckless expense. I
shall not express any opinion upon the accuracy
of these distinctions, I merely point out that they
are made daily and adopted by common consent.
The same has been done in all ages. The Roman
of Italy distinguished the Roman of Greece by
the epithet Græculus, and attributed to him, as
characteristic peculiarities, want of courage and
boastful loquacity. He laughed at the colonist of
Carthage, whom he pretended to recognize among
thousands by his litigious spirit and bad faith.
The Alexandrians passed for wily, insolent, and
seditious. Yet the doctrine of equality was as
universally received among the Romans of that
period as it is among ourselves. If, then, various
nations display qualities so different; if some are
eager for war and glory; others, lovers of their
ease and comfort, it follows that their destinies
must be very diverse. The strongest will act in
the great tragedy of history the roles of kings and
heroes, the weaker will be content with the humbler
parts.
I do not believe that the ingenuity of our times
has succeeded in reconciling the universally adopted
belief in the special character of each nation
with the no less general conviction that they are
all equal. Yet this contradiction is very flagrant,
the more so as its partisans are not behindhand in
extolling the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons of
North America over all the other nations of the
same continent. It is true that they ascribe that
superiority to the influence of political institutions.
But they will hardly contest the characteristic
aptitude of the countrymen of Penn and Washington,
to establish wherever they go liberal forms of
government, and their still more valuable ability
to preserve them, when once established. Is not
this a very high prerogative allotted to that branch
of the human family? the more precious, since so
few of the groups that have ever inhabited the
globe possessed it.
I know that my opponents will not allow me an
easy victory. They will object to me the immense
potency of manners and institutions; they will
show me how much the spirit of the government,
by its inherent and irresistible force, influences the
development of a nation; how vastly different will
be its progress when fostered by liberty or crushed
by despotism. This argument, however, by no
means invalidates my position.
Political institutions can have but two origins:
either they emanate from the people which is to be
governed by them, or they are the invention of a
foreign nation, by whom they are imposed, or from
whom they are copied.
In the former case, the institutions are necessarily
moulded upon the instincts and wants of the
people; and if, through carelessness or ignorance,
they are in aught incompatible with either, such
defects will soon be removed or remedied. In
every independent community the law may be said
to emanate from the people; for though they have
not apparently the power of promulgating it, it
cannot be applicable to them unless it is consonant
with their views and sentiments: it must be the
reflex of the national character.[64] The wise law-giver,
to whose superior genius his countrymen
seem solely indebted, has but given a voice to the
wants and desires of all. The mere theorist, like
Draco, finds his code a dead letter, and destined
soon to give place to the institutions of the more
judicious philosopher who would give to his compatriots
"not the best laws possible, but such
only as they were capable of receiving." When
Charles I., guided by the fatal counsels of the Earl
of Strafford, attempted to curb the English nation
under the yoke of absolutism, king and minister
were treading the bloody quagmire of theories.
But when Ferdinand the Catholic ordered those
terrible, but, in the then condition of the nation,
politically necessary persecutions of the Spanish
Moors, or when Napoleon re-established religion
and authority in France, and flattered the military
spirit of the nation—both these potentates had
rightly understood the genius of their subjects,
and were building upon a solid and practical
foundation.
False institutions, often beautiful on paper, are
those which are not conformed to the national
virtues or failings, and consequently unsuitable
to the country, though perhaps perfectly practicable
and highly useful in a neighboring state.
Such institutions, were they borrowed from the
legislation of the angels, will produce nothing but
discord and anarchy. Others, on the contrary,
which the theorist will eschew, and the moralist
blame in many points, or perhaps throughout, may
be the best adapted to the community. Lycurgus
was no theorist; his laws were in strict accordance
with the spirit and manners of his countrymen.[65]
The Dorians of Sparta were few in number, valiant,
and rapacious; false institutions would have
made them but petty villains—Lycurgus changed
them into heroic brigands.[66]
The influence of laws and political institutions
is certainly very great; they preserve and invigorate
the genius of a nation, define its objects, and
help to attain them; but though they may develop
powers, they cannot create them where they do not
already exist. They first receive their imprint
from the nation, and then return and confirm it.
In other words, it is the nation that fashions the
laws, before the laws, in turn, can fashion the nation.
Another proof of this fact are the changes and modifications
which they undergo in the course of time.
I have already said above, that in proportion as
nations advance in civilization, and extend their
territory and power, their ethnical character, and,
with it, their instincts, undergo a gradual alteration.
New manners and new tendencies prevail,
and soon give rise to a series of modifications, the
more frequent and radical as the influx of blood
becomes greater and the fusion more complete.
England, where the ethnical changes have been
slower and less considerable than in any other European
country, preserves to this day the basis of
the social system of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The municipal organization of the times
of the Plantagenets and the Tudors flourishes in
almost all its ancient vigor. There is the same
participation of the nobility in the government,
and the same manner of composing that nobility;
the same respect for ancient families, united to an
appreciation of those whose merits raise them
above their class. Since the accession of James I.,
and still more since the union, in Queen Anne's
reign, there has indeed been an influx of Scotch
and Irish blood; foreign nations have also, though
imperceptibly, furnished their contingent to the
mixture; alterations have consequently become
more frequent of late, but without, as yet, touching
the original spirit of the constitution.
In France, the ethnical elements are much more
numerous, and their mixtures more varied; and
there it has repeatedly happened that the principal
power of the state passed suddenly from the hands
of one race to those of another. Changes, rather
than modifications, have therefore taken place in
the social and political system; and the changes
were abrupt or radical, in proportion as these races
were more or less dissimilar. So long as the north
of France, where the Germanic element prevailed,
preponderated in the policy of the country, the
fabric of feudalism, or rather its inform remains,
maintained their ground. After the expulsion of
the English in the fifteenth century, the provinces
of the centre took the lead. Their efforts, under
the guidance of Charles VII., had recently restored
the national independence, and the Gallo-Roman
blood naturally predominated in camp and council.
From this time dates the introduction of the
taste for military life and foreign conquests, peculiar
to the Celtic race, and the tendency to concentrate
and consolidate the sovereign authority,
which characterized the Roman. The road being
thus prepared, the next step towards the establishment
of absolute power was made at the end of
the sixteenth century, by the Aquitanian followers
of Henry IV., who had still more of the Roman
than of the Celtic blood in their veins. The centralization
of power, resulting from the ascendency
of the southern populations, soon gave Paris an
overweening preponderance, and finally made it,
what it now is, the sovereign of the state. This
great capital, this modern Babel, whose population
is a motley compound of all the most varied ethnical
elements, no longer had any motive to love or
respect any tradition or peculiar tendency, and,
coming to a complete rupture with the past, hurried
France into a series of political and social
experiments of doctrines the most remote from,
and repulsive to, the ancient customs and traditional
tendencies of the realm.
These examples seem to me sufficient to prove
that political institutions, when not imposed by
foreign influence, take their mould from the national
character, not only in the first place, but
throughout all subsequent changes. Let us now
examine the second case, when a foreign code is,
nolens volens, forced upon a nation by a superior
power.
There are few instances of such attempts. Indeed,
they were never made on a grand scale, by
any truly sagacious governments of either ancient
or modern times. The Romans were too politic
to indulge in such hazardous experiments. Alexander,
before them, had never ventured it, and his
successors, convinced, either by reason or instinct, of
the futility of such efforts, had been contented to
reign, like the conqueror of Darius, over a vast
mosaic of nations, each of which retained its own
habits, manners, laws, and administrative forms,
and, at least so long as it preserved its ethnical
identity, resembled its fellow-subjects in nothing
but submission to the same fiscal and military
regulations.
There were, it is true, among the nations subdued
by the Romans, some whose codes contained
practices so utterly repugnant to their masters,
that the latter could not possibly have tolerated
them. Such were the human sacrifices of the
Druids, which were, indeed, visited with the severest
penalties. But the Romans, with all their
power, never succeeded in completely extirpating
this barbarous rite. In the Narbonnese, the victory
was easy, for the Gallic population had
been almost completely replaced by Roman colonists;
but the more intact tribes of the interior
provinces made an obstinate resistance; and, in
the peninsula of Brittany, where, in the fourth century,
a British colony re-imported the ancient instincts
with the ancient blood, the population, in
spite of the Romans, continued, either from patriotism
or veneration for their ancient traditions, to
butcher fellow-beings on their altars, as often as
they could elude the vigilance of their masters.
All revolts began with the restoration of this
fearful feature of the national creed, and even
Christianity could not entirely efface its traces,
until after protracted and strenuous efforts. As
late as the seventeenth century, the shipwrecked
were murdered, and wrecks plundered in all the
maritime provinces where the Kimric blood had
preserved itself unmixed. These barbarous customs
were in accordance with the manners of a
race which, not being yet sufficiently admixed,
still remained true to its irrepressible instincts.
One characteristic of European civilization is
its intolerance. Conscious of its pre-eminence, we
are prone to deny the existence of any other, or,
at least, to consider it as the standard of all. We
look with supreme contempt upon all nations that
are not within its pale, and when they fall under
our influence, we attempt to convert them to our
views and modes of thinking. Institutions which
we know to be good and useful, but which persuasion
fails to propagate among nations to whose
instincts they are foreign, we force upon them by
the power of our arms. Where are the results?
Since the sixteenth century, when the European
spirit of discovery and conquest penetrated to the
east, it does not seem to have operated the slightest
change in the manners and mode of existence
of the populations which it subjected.
I have already adduced the example of British
India. All the other European possessions present
the same spectacle. The aborigines of
Java, though completely subjugated by the
Dutch, have not yet made the first step towards
embracing the manners of their conquerors.
Java, at this day, preserves the social regulations
of the time of its independence. In South America,
where Spain ruled with unrestrained power
for centuries, what effect has it produced? The
ancient empires, it is true, are no longer; their
traces, even, are almost obliterated. But while
the native has not risen to the level of his conqueror,
the latter has been degraded by the mixture
of blood.[67]
In the North, a different method has
been pursued, but with results equally negative;
nay, in the eyes of philanthropy, more deplorable;
for, while the Spanish Indians have at least increased
in numbers,[68] and even mixed with their
masters, to the Red-Man of the North, the contact
with the Anglo-Saxon race has been death. The
feeble remnants of these wretched tribes are fast
disappearing, and disappearing as uncivilized, as
uncivilizable, as their ancestors. In Oceanica, the
same observation holds good. The number of
aborigines is daily diminishing. The European
may disarm them, and prevent them from doing
him injury, but change them he cannot. Where-ever
he is master, they no longer eat one another,
but they fill themselves with firewater, and this
novel species of brutishness is all they learn of
European civilization.
There are, indeed, two governments framed by
nations of a different race, after our models: that
of the Sandwich Islands, and that of St. Domingo.
A glance at these two countries will complete the
proof of the futility of any attempts to give to a
nation institutions not suggested by its own genius.
In the Sandwich Islands, the representative system
shines with full lustre. We there find an Upper
House, a Lower House, a ministry who govern,
and a king who reigns; nothing is wanted. Yet
all this is mere decoration; the wheel-work that
moves the whole machine, the indispensable motive
power, is the corps of missionaries. To them alone
belongs the honor of finding the ideas, of presenting
them, and carrying them through, either by
their personal influence over their neophytes, or,
if need be, by threats. It may be doubted, however,
whether the missionaries, if they had no other
instruments but the king and chambers, would not,
after struggling for a while against the inaptitude
of their pupils, find themselves compelled to take
a more direct, and, consequently, more apparent
part in the management of affairs. This difficulty
is obviated by the establishment of a ministry
composed of Europeans, or half-bloods. Between
them and the missionaries, all public affairs are
prearranged; the rest is only for show. King
Kamehameha III. is, it seems, a man of ability.
For his own account, he has abandoned tattooing,
and although he has not yet succeeded in dissuading
all his courtiers from this agreeable practice,
he enjoys the satisfaction of seeing their countenances
adorned with comparatively slight designs.
The mass of the nation, the country nobility and
common people, persist upon this as all other
points, in the ancient ideas and customs.[69] Still, a
variety of causes tend to daily increase the European
population of the Isles. The proximity of
California makes them a point of great interest to
the far-seeing energy of our nations. Runaway
sailors, and mutineers, are no longer the only
white colonists; merchants, speculators, adventurers
of all sorts, collect there in considerable
numbers, build houses, and become permanent
settlers. The native population is gradually becoming
absorbed in the mixture with the whites.
It is highly probable that, ere long, the present
representative form of government will be superseded
by an administration composed of delegates
from one or all of the great maritime powers.
Of one thing I feel firmly convinced, that these
imported institutions will take firm root in the
country, but the day of their final triumph, by a
necessary synchronism, will be that of the extinction
of the native race.
In St. Domingo, national independence is intact.
There are no missionaries exercising absolute,
though concealed, control, no foreign ministry
governing in the European spirit; everything is
left to the genius and inspiration of the population.
In the Spanish part of the island, this population
consists of mulattoes. I shall not speak of them.
They seem to imitate, in some fashion, the simplest
and easiest features of our civilization. Like all
half-breeds, they have a tendency to assimilate
with that branch of their genealogy which does
them most honor. They are, therefore, capable
of practising, in some degree, our usages. The
absolute question of the capacity of races cannot be
studied among them. Let us cross the mountain
ridge which separates the republic of Dominica
from the empire of Hayti.
There we find institutions not only similar to
ours, but founded upon the most recent maxims
of our political wisdom. All that, since sixty
years, the voice of the most refined liberalism has
proclaimed in the deliberative assemblies of
Europe, all that the most zealous friends of the
freedom and dignity of man have written, all the
declarations of rights and principles, have found
an echo on the banks of Artibonite. No trace of
Africa remains in the written laws, or the official
language; the recollections of the land of Ham
are officially expunged from every mind; once
more, the institutions are completely European.
Let us now examine how they harmonize with the
manners.
What a contrast! The manners are as depraved,
as beastly, as ferocious as in Dahomey[70] or the country
of the Fellatahs. The same barbarous love of
ornament, combined with the same indifference to
form; beauty consists in color, and provided a garment
is of gaudy red, and adorned with imitation
gold, taste is little concerned with useless attention
to materials or fitness; and as for cleanliness, this
is a superfluity for which no one cares. You desire
an audience with some high functionary: you
are ushered into the presence of an athletic negro,
stretched on a wooden bench, his head wrapped
in a dirty, tattered handkerchief, and surmounted
by a three-cornered hat, profusely decorated with
gold. The general apparel consists of an embroidered
coat (without suitable nether-garments), a
huge sword, and slippers. You converse with this
mass of flesh, and are anxious to discover what
ideas can occupy a mind under so unpromising an
exterior. You find an intellect of the lowest order
combined with the most savage pride, which can
be equalled only by as profound and incurable a
laziness. If the individual before you opens his
mouth, he will retail all the hackneyed common-places
that the papers have wearied you with for
the last half century. This barbarian knows them
by heart; he has very different interests, different
instincts; he has no ideas of his own. He will
talk like Baron Holbach, reason like Grimm, and
at the bottom has no serious care except chewing
tobacco, drinking spirits, butchering his enemies,
and propitiating his sorcerers. The rest of the
time he sleeps.
The state is divided into two factions, not separated
by incompatibility of politics, but of color—the
negroes and the mulattoes. The latter, doubtless,
are superior in intelligence, as I have already
remarked with regard to the Dominicans. The
European blood has modified the nature of the
African, and in a community of whites, with good
models constantly before their eyes, these men
might be converted into useful members of society.
But, unfortunately, the superiority of numbers
belongs at present to the negroes, and these,
though removed from Africa by several generations,
are the same as in their native clime. Their
supreme felicity is idleness; their supreme reason,
murder. Among the two divisions of the island
the most intense hatred has always prevailed. The
history of independent Hayti is nothing but a long
series of massacres: massacres of mulattoes by the
negroes, when the latter were strongest; of the
negroes by the mulattoes, when the power was in
their hands. The institutions, with all their boasted
liberality and philanthropy, are of no use whatever.
They sleep undisturbedly and impotently
upon the paper on which they were written, and
the savage instincts of the population reign supreme.
Conformably to the law of nature which
I pointed out before, the negro, who belongs to a
race exhibiting little aptitude for civilization, entertains
the most profound horror for all other
races. Thus we see the Haytien negroes energetically
repel the white man from their territory,
and forbid him even to enter it; they would also
drive out the mulattoes, and contemplate their
ultimate extermination. Hostility to the foreigner
is the primum mobile of their local policy. Owing
to the innate laziness of the race, agriculture is
abandoned, industry not known even by name,
commerce drivelling; misery prevents the increase
of the population, while continual wars, insurrections,
and military executions diminish it continually.
The inevitable and not very remote
consequence of such a condition of things is to
convert into a desert a country whose fertility and
natural resources enriched generations of planters,
which in exports and commercial activity surpassed
even Cuba.[71]
These examples of St. Domingo and the Sandwich
Islands seem to me conclusive. I cannot,
however, forbear, before definitely leaving the subject,
from mentioning another analogous fact, the
peculiar character of which greatly confirms my
position. I allude to the attempts of the Jesuit
missionaries to civilize the natives of Paraguay.[72]
These missionaries, by their exalted intelligence
and self-sacrificing courage, have excited universal
admiration; and the most decided enemies of
their order have never refused them an unstinted
tribute of praise. If foreign institutions have ever
had the slightest chance of success with a nation,
these assuredly had it, based as they were upon
the power of religious feelings, and supported and
applied with a tact as correct as it was refined.
The fathers were of the pretty general opinion
that barbarism was to nations what childhood is
to the individual, and that the more savage and
untutored we find a people, the younger we may
conclude them to be. To educate their neophytes
to adolescence, they therefore treated them like
children. Their government was as firm in its
views and commands as it was mild and affectionate
in its forms. The aborigines of the American
continent have generally a tendency to republicanism;
a monarchy or aristocracy is rarely found
among them, and then in a very restricted form.
The Guaranis of Paraguay did not differ, in this
respect, from their congeners. By a happy circumstance,
however, these tribes displayed rather more
intelligence and less ferocity than their neighbors,
and seemed capable, to some extent, of conceiving
new wants and adopting new ideas. About one
hundred and twenty thousand souls were collected
in the villages of the missions, under the guidance
of the fathers. All that experience, daily study,
and active charity could teach the Jesuits, was
employed for the benefit of their pupils; incessant
efforts were made to hasten success, without hazarding
it by rashness. In spite of all these cares,
however, it was soon felt that the most absolute
authority over the neophytes could hardly constrain
them to persist in the right path, and occasions
were not wanting that revealed the little real
solidity of the edifice.[73]
When the measures of Count Aranda deprived
Paraguay of its pious and skilful civilizers, the
sad truth appeared in complete light. The Guaranis,
deprived of their spiritual guides, refused
all confidence in the lay directors sent them by the
Spanish crown. They showed no attachment to
their new institutions. Their taste for savage life
revived, and at present there are but thirty-seven
little villages still vegetating on the banks of the
Parana, the Paraguay, and Uraguay, and these
contain a considerable nucleus of half-breed population.
The rest have returned to the forest, and
live there in as savage a state as the western tribes
of the same stock, the Guaranis and Cirionos. I
will not say that the deserters have readopted
their ancient manners completely, but there is little
trace left of the pious missionaries' labors, and
this because it is given to no human race to be
oblivious of its instincts, nor to abandon the path
in which the Creator has placed them.
It may be supposed, had the Jesuits continued to
direct their missions in Paraguay, that their efforts,
assisted by time, would have been crowned with
better success. I am willing to concede this, but
on one condition only, always the same: that a
group of Europeans would gradually have settled
in the country under the protection of the Jesuit
directors. These would have modified, and finally
completely transformed the native blood, and a
state would have been formed, bearing probably
an aboriginal name, whose inhabitants might have
prided themselves upon descending from autochthonic
ancestors, though as completely belonging
to Europe as the institutions by which they might
be governed.
THIS DIVERSITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF GEOGRAPHICAL
SITUATION.
America—Ancient empires—Phenicians and Romans—Jews—Greece
and Rome—Commercial cities of Europe—Isthmus of
Darien.
It is impossible to leave entirely out of the
question the influence which climate, the nature of
the soil, and topographical circumstances, exert
upon the development of nations. This influence,
so much overrated by many of the learned, I shall
investigate more fully, although I have rapidly
glanced at it already, in another place.
It is a very common opinion that a nation living
under a temperate sky, not too warm to enervate
the man, nor too cold to render the soil unproductive;
on the shores of large rivers, affording extensive
and commodious means of communication;
in plains and valleys adapted to varied cultivation;
at the foot of mountains pregnant with the
useful and precious ores—that a nation thus favored
by nature, would soon be prompted to cast off
barbarism, and progress rapidly in civilization.[74]
On the other hand, and by the same reasoning, it
is easily admitted that tribes, charred by an ardent
sun, or benumbed by unceasing cold, and having
no territory save sterile rocks, would be much
more liable to remain in a state of barbarism.
According to this hypothesis, the intellectual powers
of man could be developed only by the aid of
external nature, and all his worth and greatness
are not implanted in him, but in the objects without
and around. Specious as is this opinion at
first sight, it has against it all the numerous facts
which observation furnishes.
Nowhere, certainly, is there a greater variety of
soil and climate than in the extensive Western Continent.
Nowhere are there more fertile regions,
milder skies, larger and more numerous rivers.
The coasts are indented with gulfs and bays; deep
and magnificent harbors abound; the most valuable
riches of the mineral kingdom crop out of the
ground; nature has lavished on the soil her
choicest and most variegated vegetable productions,
and the woods and prairies swarm with alimentary
species of animals, presenting still more
substantial resources. And yet, the greater part
of these happy countries is inhabited, and has been
for a series of centuries, by tribes who ignore the
most mediocre exploration of all these treasures.
Several of them seem to have been in the way
of doing better. A meagre culture, a rude knowledge
of the art of working metals, may be observed
in more than one place. Several useful
arts, practised with some ingenuity, still surprise
the traveller. But all this is really on a very
humble scale, and never formed what might be
termed a civilization. There certainly has existed
at some very remote period, a nation which inhabited
the vast region extending from Lake Erie
to the Mexican Gulf. There can be no doubt that
the country lying between the Alleghany and the
Rocky Mountains, and extending from Lake Erie
to the Gulf of Mexico, was, at some very remote
epoch, inhabited by a nation that has left remarkable
traces of its existence behind.[75] The remains
of buildings, inscriptions on rocks, the tumuli,[76]
and mummies which they inclose, indicate a high
degree of intellectual culture. But there is no
evidence that between this mysterious people and
the tribes now wandering over its tombs, there is
any very near affinity. However this may be, if by
inheritance or slavish imitation the now existing
aborigines derive their first knowledge of the arts
which they now rudely practise, from the former
masters of the soil, we cannot but be struck by
their incapacity of perfecting what they had been
taught; and I see in this a new motive for adhering
to my opinion, that a nation placed amid the
most favorable geographical circumstances, is not,
therefore, destined to arrive at civilization.
On the contrary, there is between the propitiousness
of soil and climate and the establishment
of civilization, a complete independence. India
was a country which required fertilization; so was
Egypt.[77] Here we have two very celebrated centres
of human culture and development. China,
though very productive in some parts, presented
in others difficulties of a very serious character.
The first events recorded in its history are struggles
with rivers that had burst their bonds; its
heroes are victors over the ruthless flood; the ancient
emperors distinguished themselves by excavating
canals and draining marshes. The country
of the Tigris and Euphrates, the theatre of Assyrian
splendor and hallowed by our most sacred
traditions, those regions where, Syncellus says,
wheat grew spontaneously, possess a soil so little
productive, when unassisted by art, that only a
vast and laborious system of irrigation can render
it capable of giving the means of subsistence to
its inhabitants. Now that the canals are filled up
or obstructed, sterility has reassumed its former
dominion. I am, therefore, inclined to think that
nature had not so greatly favored these countries
as is usually supposed. Yet, I shall not discuss
this point.
I am willing to admit that China, Egypt, India,
and Mesopotamia were regions perfectly adapted
in every respect to the establishment of great empires,
and the consequent development of brilliant
civilizations. But it cannot be disputed that these
nations, to profit by these superior advantages,
must have previously brought their social system
to a high degree of perfection. Before the great
watercourses became the highways of commerce,
industry, or at least agriculture, must have flourished
to some extent. The great advantages accorded
to these countries presuppose, therefore,
in the nations that have profited by them, a peculiar
intellectual vocation, and even a certain anterior
degree of civilization. But from these specially
favored regions let us glance elsewhere.
When the Phenicians migrated from the southeast,
they fixed their abode on an arid, rocky
coast, inclosed by steep and ragged mountains.
Such a geographical situation would appear to
preclude a people from any expansion, and force
them to remain forever dependent on the produce
of their fisheries for sustenance. The utmost that
could be expected of them was to see them petty
pirates. They were pirates, indeed, but on a magnificent
scale; and, what is more, they were bold
and successful merchants and speculators. They
planted colonies everywhere, while the barren
rocks of the mother country were covered with the
palaces and temples of a wealthy and luxurious
community. Some will say, that "the very unpropitiousness
of external circumstances forced the
founders of Tyre and Sidon to become what they
were. Necessity is the mother of invention; their
misery spurred them on to exertion; had they inhabited
the plains of Damascus, they would have
been content with the peaceful products of agriculture,
and would probably never have become an
illustrious nation."[78]
And why does not misery spur on other nations
placed under similar circumstances? The Kabyles
of Morocco are an ancient race; they have had
sufficient time for reflection, and, moreover, every
possible inducement for mere imitation; yet they
have never imagined any other method for alleviating
their wretched lot except petty piracy. The
unparalleled facilities for commerce afforded by the
Indian archipelago and the island clusters of the
Pacific, have never been improved by the natives;
all the peaceful and profitable relations were left
in the hands of foreign races—the Chinese, Malays,
and Arabs; where commerce has fallen into the
hands of a semi-indigenous or half-breed population,
it has instantly commenced to languish.
What conclusions can we deduce from these observations
than that pressing wants are not sufficient
for inciting a nation to profit by the natural
facilities of its coasts and islands, and that some
special aptitude is needed for establishing a commercial
state even in localities best adapted for
that purpose.
But I shall not content myself with proving that
the social and political aptitudes of races are not
dependent on geographical situations, whether these
be favorable or unfavorable; I shall, moreover,
endeavor to show that these aptitudes have no sort
of relation with any exterior circumstances. The
Armenians, in their almost inaccessible mountains,
where so many other nations have vegetated in a
state of barbarism from generation to generation,
and without any access to the sea, attained, already
at a remote period, a high state of civilization. The
Jews found themselves in an analogous position;
they were surrounded by tribes who spoke kindred
dialects, and who, for the most part, were nearly
related to them in blood. Yet, they excelled all
these groups. They were warriors, agriculturists,
and merchants. Under a government in which
theocracy, monarchy, patriarchal authority, and
popular will, were singularly complicated and
balanced, they traversed centuries of prosperity
and glory. The difficulties which the narrow
limits of their patrimonial domain opposed to
their expansion, were overcome by an intelligent
system of emigration. What was this famous
Canaan? Modern travellers bear witness to the
laborious and well-directed efforts by which the
Jewish agriculturists maintained the factitious
fertility of their soil. Since the chosen race no
longer inhabits these mountains and plains, the
wells where Jacob's flocks drank are dried up;
Naboth's vineyard is invaded by the desert,
Achab's palace-gardens filled with thistles. In
this miserable corner of the world, what were the
Jews? A people dextrous in all they undertook,
a free, powerful, intelligent people, who, before
losing bravely, and against a much superior foe,
the title of independent nation, had furnished to
the world almost as many doctors as merchants.[79]
Let us look at Greece. Arcadia was the paradise
of the shepherd, and Bœotia, the favored land
of Ceres and Triptolemus: yet, Arcadia and Bœotia
play but a very inferior part in history. The
wealthy Corinth, the favorite of Plutus and Venus,
also appears in the second rank. To whom pertains
the glory of Grecian history? To Attica,
whose whitish, sandy soil afforded a scanty sustenance
to puny olive-trees; to Athens, whose principal
commerce consisted in books and statues.
Then to Sparta, shut up in a narrow valley between
masses of rocks, where victory went in search of it.
Who would dare to assert that Rome owed her
universal empire to her geographical position? In
the poor district of Latium, on the banks of a tiny
stream emptying its waters on an almost unknown
coast, where neither Greek nor Phenician vessel
ever landed, except by accident, the future mistress
of the world was born. So soon as the nations
of the earth obeyed the Roman standard,
politicians found the metropolis ill-placed, and
the eternal city was neglected: even abandoned.
The first emperors, being chiefly occupied with the
East, resided in Greece almost continually. Tiberius
chose Caprea, in the centre of his empire. His
successors went to Antioch. Several lived at Trebia.
Finally, a decree deprived Rome of the very name
of capital, and gave it to Milan. If the Romans
have conquered the world, it is certainly in spite
of the locality whence issued forth their first armies,
and not on account of its advantages.
In modern history, the proofs of the correctness
of my position are so abundant, that I
hardly know how to select. I see prosperity
abandoning the coasts of the Mediterranean, evidence
that it was not dependent on them. The
great commercial cities of the Middle Ages rise
where no theorist of a preceding age could have
predicted them. Novogorod flourishes in an almost
arctic region, Bremen on a coast nearly as cold.
The Hanse-towns of Germany rise in a country
where civilization has scarcely dawned; Venice
appears at the head of a long, narrow gulf. Political
preponderance belongs to places before unknown.
Lyons, Toulouse, Narbonne, Marseilles,
Bordeaux, lose the importance assigned them by
the Romans, and Paris becomes the metropolis—Paris,
then a third-rate town, too far from the sea
for commerce, too near it for the Norman barges.
In Italy, cities formerly obscure, surpass the capital
of the popes. Ravenna rises in the midst of
marshes; Amalfi, for a long time, enjoys extensive
dominion. It must be observed, that in all these
changes accident has no part: they all are the
result of the presence of a victorious and preponderating
race. It is not the place which determines
the importance of a nation, it is the nation which
gives to the place its political and economical importance.
I do not, however, deny the importance of certain
situations for commercial depots, or for capitals.
The observations made with regard to
Alexandria and Constantinople, are incontestable.[80]
There are, upon our globe, various points which
may be called the keys of the world. Thus, it is
obvious that a city, built on the proposed canal
which is to pierce the Isthmus of Darien, would
act an important part in the affairs of the world.
But, such a part a nation may act well or badly,
or even not at all, according to its merits. Aggrandize
Chagres, and let the two oceans unite under
her walls, the destiny of the city would depend
entirely on the race by which it was peopled. If
this race be worthy of their good fortune, they will
soon discover whether Chagres be the point whence
the greatest benefits can be derived from the union
of the two oceans; and, if it is not, they will leave
it, and then, untrammelled, develop elsewhere their
brilliant destinies.[81]
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY UPON MORAL AND
INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY OF RACES.
The term Christian civilization examined—Reasons for rejecting
it—Intellectual diversity no hindrance to the universal diffusion
of Christianity—Civilizing influence of Christian religion
by elevating and purifying the morals, etc.; but does not
remove intellectual disparities—Various instances—Cherokees—Difference
between imitation and comprehension of
civilized life.
By the foregoing observations, two facts seem
to me clearly established: first, that there are
branches of the human family incapable of spontaneous
civilization, so long as they remain unmixed;
and, secondly, that this innate incapacity
cannot be overcome by external agencies, however
powerful in their nature. It now remains to speak
of the civilizing influence of Christianity, a subject
which, on account of its extensive bearing, I have
reserved for the last, in my consideration of the
instruments of civilization.
The first question that suggests itself to the
thinking mind, is a startling one. If some races
are so vastly inferior in all respects, can they comprehend
the truths of the gospel, or are they forever
to be debarred from the blessing of salvation?
In answer, I unhesitatingly declare my firm
conviction, that the pale of salvation is open to
them all, and that all are endowed with equal
capacity to enter it. Writers are not wanting
who have asserted a contrary opinion. They dare
to contradict the sacred promise of the Gospel, and
deny the peculiar characteristic of our faith, which
consists in its accessibility to all men. According
to them, religions are confined within geographical
limits which they cannot transgress. But the
Christian religion knows no degrees of latitude or
longitude. There is scarcely a nation, or a tribe,
among whom it has not made converts. Statistics—imperfect,
no doubt, but, as far as they go, reliable—show
them in great numbers in the remotest
parts of the globe: nomad Mongols, in the steppes
of Asia, savage hunters in the table-lands of the
Andes; dark-hued natives of an African clime;
persecuted in China;[82] tortured in Madagascar;
perishing under the lash in Japan.
But this universal capacity of receiving the
light of the gospel must not be confounded, as is
so often done, with a faculty of entirely different
character, that of social improvement. This latter
consists in being able to conceive new wants,
which, being supplied, give rise to others, and
gradually produce that perfection of the social and
political system which we call civilization. While
the former belongs equally to all races, whatever
may be their disparity in other respects, the latter
is of a purely intellectual character, and the prerogative
of certain privileged groups, to the partial
or even total exclusion of others.
With regard to Christianity, intellectual deficiencies
cannot be a hindrance to a race. Our
religion addresses itself to the lowly and simple,
even in preference to the great and wise of this
earth. Intellect and learning are not necessary
to salvation. The most brilliant lights of our
church were not always found among the body
of the learned. The glorious martyrs, whom we
venerate even above the skilful and erudite defender
of the dogma, or the eloquent panegyrist of
the faith, were men who sprang from the masses of
the people; men, distinguished neither for worldly
learning, nor brilliant talents, but for the simple
virtues of their lives, their unwavering faith, their
self-devotion. It is exactly in this that consists
one great superiority of our religion over the
most elaborate and ingenious systems devised by
philosophers, that it is intelligible to the humblest
capacity as well as to the highest. The poor
Esquimaux of Labrador may be as good and as
pure a Christian as the most learned prelate in
Europe.
But we now come to an error which, in its various
phases, has led to serious consequences. The
utilitarian tendency of our age renders us prone
to seek, even in things sacred, a character of material
usefulness. We ascribe to the influence of
Christianity a certain order of things, which we
call Christian civilization.
To what political or social condition this term
can be fitly applied, I confess myself unable to
conceive. There certainly is a Pagan, a Brahmin,
and Buddhistic, a Judaic civilization. There have
been, and still are, societies so intimately connected
with a more or less exclusive theological formula,
that the civilizations peculiar to them, can only be
designated by the name of their creed. In such
societies, religion is the sole source of all political
forms, all civil and social legislation; the groundwork
of the whole civilization. This union of religious
and temporal institutions, we find in the history
of every nation of antiquity. Each country had its
own peculiar divinity, which exercised a more or
less direct influence in the government,[83] and from
which laws and civilization were said to be immediately
derived. It was only when paganism began
to wane, that the politicians of Rome imagined a
separation of temporal and religious power, by
attempting a fusion of the different forms of worship,
and proclaiming the dogma of legal toleration.
When paganism was in its youth and vigor, each
city had its Jupiter, Mercury, or Venus, and the
local deity recognized neither in this world nor
the next any but compatriots.
But, with Christianity, it is otherwise. It chooses
no particular people, prescribes no form of government,
no social system. It interferes not in temporal
matters, has naught to do with the material
world, "its kingdom is of another." Provided it
succeeds in changing the interior man, external
circumstances are of no import. If the convert
fervently embraces the faith, and in all his actions
tries to observe its prescriptions, it inquires not
about the built of his dwelling, the cut of his
garments, or the materials of which they are composed,
his daily occupations, the regulations of his
government, the degree of despotism, or of freedom,
which pervades his political institutions. It
leaves the Chinese in his robes, the Esquimaux in
his seal-skins; the former to his rice, the latter to
his fish-oil; and who would dare to assert that the
prayers of both may not breathe as pure a faith
as those of the civilized European? No mode of
existence can attract its preference, none, however
humble, its disdain. It attacks no form of government,
no social institution; prescribes none, because
it has adopted none. It teaches not the art
of promoting worldly comforts, it teaches to despise
them. What, then, can we call a Christian
civilization? Had Christ, or his disciples, prescribed,
or even recommended any particular
political or social forms,[84] the term would then be
applicable. But his law may be observed under
all—of whatever nature—and is therefore superior
to them all. It is justly and truly called the
Catholic, or Universal.
And has Christianity, then, no civilizing influence?
I shall be asked. Undoubtedly; and a
very great one. Its precepts elevate and purify
the soul, and, by their purely spiritual nature, disengage
the mind from worldly things, and expand
its powers. In a merely human point of view,
the material benefits it confers on its followers are
inestimable. It softens the manners, and facilitates
the intercourse between man and his fellow-man;
it mitigates violence, and weans him from corrosive
vices. It is, therefore, a powerful promoter
of his worldly interests. But it only expands the
mind in proportion to the susceptibility of the
mind for being expanded. It does not give intellect,
or confer talents, though it may exalt both,
and render them more useful. It does not create
new capacities, though it fosters and develops
those it finds. Where the capacities of an individual,
or a race, are such as to admit an improvement
in the mode of existence, it tends to
produce it; where such capacities are not already,
it does not give them. As it belongs to no particular
civilization, it does not compel a nation to
change its own. In fine, as it does not level all
individuals to the same intellectual standard, so it
does not raise all races to the same rank in the
political assemblage of the nations of the earth.
It is wrong, therefore, to consider the equal aptitude
of all races for the true religion, as a proof
of their intellectual equality. Though having embraced
it, they will still display the same characteristic
differences, and divergent or even opposite
tendencies. A few examples will suffice to set my
idea in a clearer light.
The major portion of the Indian tribes of South
America have, for centuries, been received within
the pale of the church, yet the European civilization,
with which they are in constant contact, has
never become their own.[85] The Cherokees, in the
northern part of the same continent, have nearly
all been converted by the Methodist missionaries.
At this I am not surprised, but I should be greatly
so, if these tribes, without mixing with the whites,
were ever to form one of the States, and exercise
any influence in Congress. The Moravians and
Danish Lutheran missionaries in Labrador and
Greenland, have opened the eyes of the Esquimaux
to the light of religion; but their neophytes
have remained in the same social condition in
which they vegetated before. A still more forcible
illustration is afforded by the Laplanders of
Sweden, who have not emerged from the state of
barbarism of their ancestors, though the doctrine
of salvation was preached to them, and believed
by them, centuries ago.
I sincerely believe that all these peoples may
produce, and, perhaps, already have produced,
persons remarkable for piety and pure morals;
but I do not expect ever to see among them learned
theologians, great statesmen, able military leaders,
profound mathematicians, or distinguished artists;—any
of those superior minds, whose number and
perpetual succession are the cause of power in a
preponderating race; much less those rare geniuses
whose meteor-like appearance is productive of
permanent good only when their countrymen are
so constituted as to be able to understand them,
and to advance under their direction. We cannot,
therefore, call Christianity a promoter of civilization
in the narrow and purely material sense of
some writers.
Many of my readers, while admitting my observations
in the main to be correct, will object that
the modifying influence of religion upon the manners
must produce a corresponding modification
of the institutions, and finally in the whole social
system. The propagators of the gospel, they will
say, are almost always—though not necessarily—from
a nation superior in civilization to the one
they visit. In their personal intercourse, therefore,
with their neophytes, the latter cannot but
acquire new notions of material well-being. Even
the political system may be greatly influenced by
the relations between instructor and pupil. The
missionary, while he provides for the spiritual
welfare of his flock, will not either neglect their
material wants. By his teaching and example,
the savage will learn how to provide against
famine, by tilling the soil. This improvement in
his condition once effected, he will soon be led to
build himself a better dwelling, and to practise
some of the simpler useful arts. Gradually, and
by careful training, he may acquire sufficient taste
for things purely intellectual, to learn the alphabet,
or even, as in the case of the Cherokees, to
invent one himself. In course of time, if the
missionaries' labors are crowned with success, they
may, perhaps, so firmly implant their manners
and mode of living among this formerly savage
tribe, that the traveller will find among them well-cultivated
fields, numerous flocks, and, like these
same Cherokees, and the Creeks on the southern
banks of the Arkansas, black slaves to work on
their plantations.
Let us see how far facts correspond with this
plausible argument. I shall select the two nations
which are cited as being the furthest advanced in
European civilization, and their example will, it
seems to me, demonstrate beyond a doubt, how
impossible it is for any race to pursue a career in
which their own nature has not placed them.
The Cherokees and Creeks are said to be the
remnants or descendants of the Alleghanian Race,
the supposed builders of those great monuments
of which we still find traces in the Mississippi
Valley. If this be the case, these two nations may
lay claim to a natural superiority over the other
tribes of North America.
Deprived of their hereditary dominions by the
American government, they were forced—under a
treaty of transplantation—to emigrate to regions
selected for them by the latter. There they were
placed under the superintendence of the Minister
of War, and of Protestant missionaries, who finally
succeeded in persuading them to embrace the mode
of life they now lead. Mr. Prichard,[86] my authority
for these facts, and who derives them himself from
the great work of Mr. Gallatin,[87] asserts that, while
all the other Indian tribes are continually diminishing,
these are steadily increasing in numbers. As
a proof of this, he alleges that when Adair visited
the Cherokee tribes, in 1762, the number of their
warriors was estimated at 2,300; at present, their
total population amounts to 15,000 souls, including
about 1,200 negroes in their possession. When
we consider that their schools, as well as churches,
are directed by white missionaries; that the greater
number of these missionaries—being Protestants—are
probably married and have children and servants
also white, besides, very likely, a sort of
retinue of clerks and other European employees;—the
increase of the aboriginal population becomes
extremely doubtful,[88] while it is easy to conceive the
pressure of the white race upon its pupils. Surrounded
on all sides by the power of the United
States, incommensurable to their imagination;
converted to the religion of their masters, which
they have, I think, sincerely embraced; treated
kindly and judiciously by their spiritual guides;
and exposed to the alternation of working or of
starving in their contracted territory;—I can understand
that it was possible to make them tillers
of the earth.
It would be underrating the intelligence of the
humblest, meanest specimen of our kind, to
express surprise at such a result, when we see
that, by dexterously and patiently acting upon
the passions and wants of animals, we succeed
in teaching them what their own instincts
would never have taught them. Every village
fair is filled with animals which are trained to
perform the oddest tricks, and is it to be wondered
at that men submitted to a rigorous system of
training, and deprived of the means of escaping
from it, should, in the end, be made to perform
certain mechanical functions of civilized life;
functions which, even in the savage state, they are
capable of understanding, though they have not
the will to practise them? This were placing
human beings lower in the scale of creation than
the learned pig, or Mr. Leonard's domino-playing
dogs.[89] Such exultation on the part of the believers
in the equality of races is little flattering to those
who excite it.
I am aware that this exaggeration of the intellectual
capacity of certain races is in a great
measure provoked by the notions of some very
learned and distinguished men, who pretend that
between the lowest races of men, and the highest
of apes there was but a shade of distinction. So
gross an insult to the dignity of man, I indignantly
reject. Certainly, in my estimation, the different
races are very unequally endowed, both physically
and mentally; but I should be loath to think that
in any, even in the most degraded, the unmistakable
line of demarcation between man and
brute were effaced. I recognize no link of gradation
which would connect man mentally with the
brute creation.
But does it follow, that because the lowest of
the human species is still unmistakably human, that
all of that species are capable of the same development?
Take a Bushman, the most hideous and
stupid of human families, and by careful training
you may teach him, or if he is already adult, his
son, to learn and practise a handicraft, even one
that requires a certain degree of intelligence. But
are we warranted thence to conclude that the nation
to which this individual belongs, is susceptible
of adopting our civilization? There is a vast
difference between mechanically practising handicrafts
and arts, the products of an advanced civilization,
and that civilization itself. Let us suppose
that the Cherokee tribes were suddenly cut
off from all connection with the American government,
the traveller, a few years hence, would find
among them very unexpected and singular institutions,
resulting from their mixture with the
whites, but partaking only feebly of the character
of European civilization.
We often hear of negroes proficient in music,
negroes who are clerks in counting-rooms, who
can read, write, talk like the whites. We admire,
and conclude that the negroes are capable of everything
that whites are. Notwithstanding this admiration
and these hasty conclusions, we express
surprise at the contrast of Sclavonian civilization
with ours. We aver that the Russian, Polish, Servish
nations, are civilized only at the surface, that
none but the higher classes are in possession of
our ideas, and this, thanks to their intermixture
with the English, French, and German stock; that
the masses, on the contrary, evince a hopeless inaptitude
for participating in the forward movement
of Western Europe, although these masses have
been Christians for centuries, many of them while
our ancestors were heathens. Are the negroes,
then, more closely allied to our race than the Sclavonic
nations? On the one hand, we assert the
intellectual equality of the white and black races;
on the other, a disparity among subdivisions of
our own race.
There is a vast difference between imitation and
comprehension. The imitation of a civilization does
not necessarily imply an eradication of the hereditary
instincts. A nation can be said to have adopted
a civilization, only when it has the power to progress
in it unprompted, and without guidance. Instead
of extolling the intelligence of savages in handling
a plough, after being shown; in spelling and reading,
after they have been taught; let a single example
be alleged of a tribe in any of the numerous
countries in contact with Europeans, which, with
our religion, has also made the ideas, institutions,
and manners of a European nation so completely
its own, that the whole social and political machinery
moves forward as easily and naturally as in
our States. Let an example be alleged of an extra-European
nation, among whom the art of printing
produces effects analogous to those it produces
among us; where new applications of our discoveries
are attempted; where our systems of philosophy
give birth to new systems; where our arts
and sciences flourish.
But, no; I will be more moderate in my demands.
I shall not ask of that nation to adopt, together
with our faith, all in which consists our individuality.
I shall suppose that it rejects it totally,
and chooses one entirely different, adapted to its
peculiar genius and circumstances. When the
eyes of that nation open to the truths of the Gospel,
it perceives that its earthly course is as encumbered
and wretched as its spiritual life had hitherto
been. It now begins the work of improvement,
collects its ideas, which had hitherto remained
fruitless, examines the notions of others, transforms
them, and adapts them to its peculiar circumstances;
in fact, erects, by its own power, a
social and political system, a civilization, however
humble. Where is there such a nation? The entire
records of all history may be searched in vain
for a single instance of a nation which, together
with Christianity, adopted European civilization,
or which—by the same grand change in its religious
ideas—was led to form a civilization of its
own, if it did not possess one already before.
On the contrary, I will show, in every part of
the world, ethnical characteristics not in the least
effaced by the adoption of Christianity. The
Christian Mongol and Tartar tribes lead the
same erratic life as their unconverted brethren,
and are as distinct from the Russian of the same
religion, who tills the soil, or plies his trade in
their midst, as they were centuries ago. Nay, the
very hostilities of race survive the adoption of a
common religion, as we have already pointed out
in a preceding chapter. The Christian religion,
then, does not equalize the intellectual disparities
of races.
Rapid survey of the populations comprised under the appellation
"Teutonic"—Their present ethnological area, and leading
characteristics—Fondness for the sea displayed by the
Teutonic tribes of Northwestern Europe, and perceptible in
their descendants.
Several of the ideas expressed by the author in the
course of the two next following chapters, seemed to
the annotator of this volume to call for a few remarks
on his part, which could not conveniently be condensed
within the limited space of foot-notes. Besides, the
text is already sufficiently encumbered with them, and
any increase in their length or number could not but
be displeasing to the eye, while it would divert attention
from the main subject. He has, therefore, taken
the liberty—an unwarranted one, perhaps—of introducing
his remarks in this form and place.
The leading proposition in this volume is, that the
civilization originated and developed by a race, is the
clearest index of its character—the mirror in which its
principal features are truthfully reflected. In other
words, that every race, capable of developing a civilization,
will develop one peculiar to itself, and impossible
to every other. This the author illustrates by the
actual state of our civilization, which he asserts to be
originated by the Teutonic race, but modified in proportion
to the admixture of that race with a different
blood. To clearly comprehend his idea, and to appreciate
the value of his arguments, it is, therefore, necessary
for the reader to take a rapid survey of the populations
comprised under the appellation Teutonic, and
to examine into the present geographical extension of
that race. This I shall endeavor to do, not, indeed, by
entering into an elaborate ethnological disquisition—a
task greatly beyond my powers, and the due performance
of which would require a space much larger than
the whole of this volume—but by merely grouping together
well-known facts, in such a manner as to set the
author's idea in a clearer light.
The words Teutonic and Germanic are generally
used synonymously, and we shall not depart from this
custom. Strict accuracy, however, would probably require
that the term Teutonic should be used as the
general appellation of all those swarms of northern
warriors, who, under various names, harassed and finally
subverted the overgrown dominion of ancient Rome,
while the term Germanic would apply to a portion of
them only. The Northern Barbarians, as the Romans
contemptuously styled them, all claimed to belong to
the "Thiudu," or the nation par excellence, and from
that word the term Teutonic is supposed to be derived.
Many of their descendants still retain the name: Teutsch
or Deutsch (German). The Romans called them Germanes,
from the boastful title of "the warlike," or "the
men of war," which the first invading tribes had given
themselves. These Germanes of the Romans were
again divided into two classes, the Saxon tribes, and
the Suevic; terms expressive of their mode of life, the
former having fixed habitations and inclosed farms, the
latter cultivating the fields by turn, and being prone to
change their abodes. The first class comprised many
other tribes besides those who figure in history, under
the name of Saxons, as the invaders and conquerors of
Britain. But as I desire to avoid all not well-authorized
distinctions, I shall use the terms Teutonic and Germanic
indiscriminately.
The Germans appear to have been at all times an
eminently warlike and courageous race. History first
speaks of them as warriors alarming, nay, terrifying,
the arrogant Romans, and that not in the infancy
of Rome's power, when the Samnites and Volscians
were formidable antagonists, but in the very fulness of
its strength, in the first vigor of youthful manhood,
when Italy, Spain, part of Gaul, the northern coasts
of Africa, Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor, were subdued
to the republican yoke. Then it was that the
Cimbri and Teutones invaded and harassed Italy, chilling
the mistress of the world with fear.
The Germans next meet us in Cæsar's Commentaries.
The principal resistance which the future usurper experienced
in subduing Gaul, appears to have been
offered, not by the Gallic population, but either by
German tribes, settled in that country, or German
armies from the right banks of the Rhine, who longed
to dispute the tempting prize with the Romans. The
great general twice crossed the Rhine, but probably
more for the éclat of such an exploit, than with the hope
of making permanent conquests. The temporary successes
gained by his imperial successors were amply
counterbalanced by the massacre of the flower of the
Roman armies.
At the end of the first five centuries after Christ,
nothing was left of the great Roman empire but ruins.
Every country in Northern, Western, and Southern
Europe acknowledged German masters. The tribes of
the extreme north had entered Russia, and there
established a powerful republic; the tribes of the northwest
(the Angles and Saxons) had conquered Britain;
a confederation of the southern tribes, under the name
of Franks, had conquered Gaul; the various Gothic
tribes of the east, the Heruli, the Longobardi, Ostrogoths,
etc., had subjected Italy to their arms, and disputed
its possession among themselves. Other Gothic
tribes (the Visigoths, Burgundians, and Vandals) had
shared with the Franks the beautiful tracts of Gaul,
or had carried their victorious arms to Spain, and the
northern coasts of Africa. The three most beautiful and
most fertile countries of Europe, to this day, retain the
name of their conquerors—England, France, Lombardy.
It is impossible now to determine with accuracy the
amount of German blood in the populations of the
various states founded by the Teutonic tribes. Yet
certain general results are easily arrived at in this interesting
investigation.
Thus, we know that Germany, notwithstanding its
name, contains by no means a pure Germanic population.
The fierce Scythian hordes, whom Attila led on to
the work of devastation, after the death of their leader,
incorporated themselves with various of the Teutonic
tribes. They form one of the ethnical elements of the
population of Italy, but especially of the south and
southeast of Germany. While, therefore, the population
of Northern Germany is comparatively pure
Teutonic, that of the southern and eastern portion is a
mixture of Teutonic and Sclavonian elements.
The Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, are probably
the most Germanic nations of continental Europe.
In Spain, the Visigoths were, in a great measure,
absorbed by the native population, consisting of the
aboriginal Celtiberians and the numerous Roman colonists.
In the tenth century, an amalgamation began
with the eastern blood brought by the Arab conquerors.
Italy, already at the time of the downfall of Rome,
contained an extremely mixed population, drawn thither
by the all-absorbing vortex of the Eternal City. In
the north, the Germanic element had time to engraft
itself in some measure; but the south, passing into the
hands of the Byzantine emperors, received an addition
of the already mixed Greek blood of the east.
Gaul, at the time of the Frankish conquest, was an
extremely populous country. Beside the aboriginal
Gauls, the population consisted of numerous Roman
colonists. The Mediterranean coast of Gaul had, from
the earliest times, received Phenician, Carthaginian,
and Greek settlers, who founded there large and prosperous
cities. The original differences in the population
of Gaul are to this day perceptible. The Germanic
element preponderates in the north, where already,
in Cæsar's time, the Germans had succeeded in making
permanent settlements, and in the northeast, where
the Burgundians had well-nigh extirpated and completely
supplanted the Gallic natives.[90] But everywhere
else,[91] the Germanic element forms but a small portion
of the population, and this is well illustrated by the
striking resemblance of the character of the modern
French to that of the ancient Gauls. But though
vastly inferior in numbers, the descendants of the German
conquerors, for one thousand years, were the dominant
race in France. Until the fifteenth century, all
the higher nobility were of Frankish or Burgundian
origin. But, after the Celtic and Celto-Roman provinces
south of the Loire had rallied around a youthful
king, to reconquer their capital and best territories from
the English foe, the Frankish blood ruled with less exclusive
sway in all the higher offices of the state; and
the distinction was almost entirely lost by the accession
of the first southern dynasty, that of the Bourbons, towards
the end of the sixteenth century. The corresponding
variations in the national policy and the
exterior manifestations of the national character, Mr.
Gobineau has rapidly pointed out elsewhere.[92]
While the population of France presents so great a
mixture of various different races, and but a slight infusion
of German blood, that of England, on the contrary,
is almost purely Teutonic. The original inhabitants
of the country were, for the most part, driven into
the mountain fastnesses of Wales by the German invaders,
where they preserve, to this day, their original
language. Every subsequent great addition to the
population of England was by the German race. The
Danes, and, after them, the Normans, were tribes of the
same stock as the Saxons, and all came from very nearly
the same portion of Europe. It is obvious, therefore,
that England, even after the Norman conquest, when,
for a time, the upper and the lower classes spoke different
languages, contained a more homogeneous population
than France did at the same, or any subsequent
epoch. In England, from the Saxon yeoman up to the
proudest Norman lord, all belonged to the great German
race; in France, only the nobility, while the peasants
were Gauls. The wars between the two countries
afford a striking proof of the difference of these two
races. The battles of Cressy, of Poitiers, and of Agincourt,
which will never be forgotten so long as English
poetry can find an echo in an English breast, were won
by the English against greatly superior numbers. "Victories,
indeed, they were," says Macaulay, "of which
a nation may justly be proud; for they are to be attributed
to the moral superiority of the victors, a superiority
which was most striking in the lowest ranks. The
knights of England found worthy rivals in the knights
of France. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du
Guesclin. But France had no infantry that dared to
face the English bows and bills." The Celt has probably,
at no time, been inferior to the Teuton in valor;
in martial enthusiasm, he exceeds him. But, at a time
when bodily strength decided the combat, the difference
between the sturdy Saxon and the small, slight—though
active—Gaul, must have been great.
In this rapid and necessarily imperfect sketch, I have
endeavored to show the relative proportion of the Teutonic
blood in the population of the various countries
of Europe. I have endeavored to direct the reader's
attention to the fact, that though it forms an element
in the population of all, it exists in perfect purity in
but few, and that England presents a happy fusion of
some of the most distinguished branches of the German
family. If we now glance at the United States, we shall
there find—at least in the first years of her national
existence—a pendant to what has been asserted of England.
The elements of the population of the original
thirteen States, were almost exclusively of English,
Lowland Scotch, Dutch, and Swedish blood; that is
to say, decidedly Germanic. Ireland was as yet slightly
represented. France had made but inconsiderable contributions
to the population. Since we have assumed
a rank among the great powers of the earth, every
portion of the inhabited globe has sent us its contingent
of blood, yet even now, the great body of the
nation belongs to the Teutonic race.
Much has been said of the effects of ethnical mixture.
Many consider it as decidedly beneficial, others as
decidedly deleterious. It seems to me susceptible of
mathematical demonstration, that when a very inferior
race amalgamates with one of higher order, the compound—though
superior to the one, must be inferior to
the other. In that case, therefore, mixture is injurious.
But when various branches of the same race, or nearly
cognate races mix, as in the case of the Saxons, Angles,
Danes, and Normans, the mixture cannot but be beneficial.
For, while none of the higher qualities are lost,
the compound presents a felicitous combination of some
of the virtues peculiar to each.
If our civilization received its tone and character
from the Teutonic race, as Mr. Gobineau asserts, this
character must be most strikingly displayed wherever
that race forms the preponderating element of the
population.
Before investigating this question, we must cast a
glance on the manners and modes of thinking that
characterized this race in the earliest times. Unfortunately,
but few records are left to assist us in forming
a judgment. Tacitus's celebrated treatise was, probably,
more an imaginary sketch, which he wished to hold
up to a people sunk in luxury and vice, as were his
countrymen. In our times, the North American Indian
has often been held up as a model of uncorrupted simplicity,
and many touching romances have been written
on the theme, now rather hackneyed and out of fashion.
But though the noble Roman may have highly colored
the picture, the incorruptible love of truth, which
shines so brilliantly in all his works, assures us of the
truth of its outlines.
Of one thing we can entertain no doubt, viz: that
history nowhere shows us our Germanic forefathers in
the same state of barbarism that we find other races—many
of the American Indians, the South-Sea Islanders,
and others. In the earliest times they practised
agriculture, they cultivated rye, barley, oats and wheat.
Many of the tribes had regular farms, which were inclosed.
They knew how to work iron, an art which
even the most civilized of the American Indians had
never learned. They had extensive and complicated
political relations, often forming themselves in vast
confederacies. But, above all, they were an eminently
chaste people; they respected woman,[93] and assigned to
her her legitimate place in the social circle. Marriage
with them was a sacred institution.
The greatest point of superiority of our civilization,
over all preceding and contemporaneous ones—a point
which Mr. Gobineau has omitted to mention—is the
high rank which woman occupies in the modern structure
of society. The boasted civilizations of Greece
and Rome, if superior in others, are vastly inferior to
us in this respect. And this glorious superiority we
owe to the pure and chaste manners of our forefathers.
Representative government, trial by jury, and all the
discoveries in political science upon which we pride ourselves
most, are the necessary development of their
simple institutions, to which, indeed, they can be distinctly
traced.
I have purposely selected these two characteristics
of the German races—respect for woman, and love of
liberty, or, what is more, a capacity for establishing
and preserving liberal institutions. The question now
resolves itself into this: Does woman occupy the highest
rank, do liberal institutions best flourish where the
Germanic race is most pure? I will not answer the
question, but beg the reader to compare the more Germanic
countries with those that are less so—England,
Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Northern
Germany, with France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Russia;
the United States and Canada, with Mexico and
the South American republics.
Mr. Gobineau speaks of the utilitarian character of the
Germanic races, but furnishes no proofs of his assertion.
I shall therefore endeavor to supply the deficiency.
Those countries which ethnology tells us contain the
most Germanic populations, viz: England, the northern
States of Europe, including Holland, and the United
States, have the entire commerce, and nearly all the
manufacture of the whole world in their hands. They
have given to mankind all the great inventions which
shed an everlasting lustre over our era. They, together,
possess nine-tenths of all the railroads built in the world,
and the greater part of the remaining tenth was built by
their enterprise and capital. Whatever perfection in
the useful arts one of these countries attains, is readily
adopted by all; slowly only, and sometimes never by any
of the others.
On the other hand, we find that the polite arts do
not meet, in these countries, with a very congenial soil.
Artists may flock thither, and, perhaps, reap a harvest
of gold; but they seldom stay. The admiration which
they receive is oftenest the mere dictate of fashion. It
is true that England, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, and
the United States, have produced some eminent artists,
but the mass of the population do not exhibit that innate
taste, that passionate fondness for the arts, which
we find among all classes in Italy, Spain, and to some
extent in France and Southern Germany.
Before I conclude this hasty sketch, for which I crave
the reader's indulgence, I wish to draw attention to a
striking instance of the permanency of ethnical characteristics.
The nations that most fondly and most successfully
plough the briny main, are the English, the
Americans, the Swedes, Danes, Dutch. Notwithstanding
the littleness of these latter, they have successfully
competed in maritime discovery with larger nations;
and even now, own considerable and far distant colonial
possessions. The Dutch, for a time, were the greatest
maritime power in the world, and to this day carry on
an extensive and profitable commerce. History tells
us that the forefathers of these nations were distinguished
by the same nautical genius.
The real Saxons—the invaders of England—are
mentioned already in the middle of the second century,
by Ptolemy, as skilful sailors. In the fourth and fifth
century, they became dreaded from their piracies. They
and their confederates, the Angles, originally inhabited
the present Holstein, and the islands in the vicinity of
the Baltic coast. Their neighbors, the Danes, were
equally famous for maritime exploits. Their celebrated
vykings still live in song and tale. Their piratical incursions
and settlements in England, are known to
every schoolboy. How familiar the Normans were with
the watery element, is abundantly proved by history.
They ascended the Rhine, and other rivers, for hundreds
of miles, marking their landing-place by devastation.
Of the Angle, the Saxon, the Dane, and the Norman,
the present Englishman and his adventurous brother of
Massachusetts, are lineal descendants. The best sailors
in our commercial navy, next to the native sailors, are
the Danes and the Swedes. Normandy, to this day,
furnishes the best for the French service.—H.
CIVILIZATION.
Mr. Guizot's and Mr. W. von Humboldt's definitions examined.
Its elements.
The reader will here pardon me an indispensable
digression. I make use at almost every
moment of a term comprising in its extensive signification
a collection of ideas which it is important
to define accurately: civilization. The greater
or less degree in which this term is applicable to
the social condition of various nations, is my only
standard for the comparative merit of races. I
also speak of a European civilization, in contradistinction
to others of a different character. It
is the more necessary to avoid the least vagueness,
as I am under the disagreeable necessity of differing
from a celebrated writer, who has assumed the
special task of determining the meaning and comprehensiveness
of this expression.
Mr. Guizot, in his History of Civilization in Modern
Europe, makes use of a term which seems to
me to give rise to a serious confusion of ideas, and
lead to positive errors. He says that civilization
is a fact.
Now, either the word fact must here be understood
in a sense much less strict and precise than
common usage requires, a sense so indistinct—I
might almost say elastic—as has never pertained to
it, or what we comprehend under the term civilization
cannot be expressed by the word fact. Civilization
is not a fact; it is a series, a concatenation
of facts, more or less logically united, and resulting
from ideas often sufficiently diverse: ideas and
facts continually reproduce each other. Civilization
is a term applied to a certain state or condition
in which a society exists—a condition which
is of its own creation, bears its character, and, in
turn, reacts upon it. This condition is of so variable
a nature, that it cannot be called a fact; for a
fact cannot be variable without ceasing to be a
fact. In other words, there is more than one civilization:
there are various kinds. Thus, a civilization
may flourish under every form of government,
and it does not cease to exist when civil commotions
destroy or alter that form.
Let it not be understood that I esteem governmental
forms of little importance. Their choice
is intimately connected with the prosperity of the
society: if judicious, promoting and developing it;
if unpractical, endangering its destruction. But
I speak not here of the temporary prosperity or
misery of a society. I speak of its civilization;
and this is a phenomenon whose causes must be
sought elsewhere, and deeper than in transient
political forms. Its character, its growth, fecundity,
or barrenness, depends upon elementary principles
of far greater importance.
But, in Mr. Guizot's opinion, civilization is a
fact, a unity; and it is of an essentially political
character. Let us see how he defines it. He
has chosen a series of hypotheses, describing society
in various conditions, and then asks if the
state so described is, in the general opinion of
mankind, the state of a people advancing in civilization—if
it answers to the signification which
mankind generally attaches to this word.[94]
"First imagine a people whose outward circumstances
are easy and agreeable; few taxes; few
hardships; justice is fairly administered; in a
word, physical existence, taken altogether, is satisfactorily
and happily regulated. But, with all
this, the moral and intellectual energies of this
people are studiously kept in a state of torpor and
inertness. It can hardly be called oppression; its
tendency is not of that character—it is rather compression.
We are not without examples of this
state of society. There have been a great number
of little aristocratic republics, in which the people
have been thus treated like a flock of sheep, carefully
tended, physically happy, but without the
least intellectual and moral activity. Is this civilization?
Do we recognize here a people in a state
of moral and social advancement?"
I know not whether such a people is in a state
of advancement, but it certainly may be in a very
advanced state of civilization, else we should find
ourselves compelled to class among the savages
or barbarians all those aristocratic republics of
ancient and modern times, which answer Mr.
Guizot's description. But the common sense of
mankind would never ratify a method which
ejected from within the pale of civilization not only
the Phenicians, Carthaginians, and Lacedæmonians,
but even Venice, Genoa, Pisa, the free cities
of Germany—in fact, all the powerful municipalities
of the last centuries. But, besides this mode
of proceeding being too paradoxical and restrictive,
it seems to me to encounter another difficulty.
Those little aristocratic states, to whom, on account
of their form of government, Mr. Guizot denies the
aptitude for civilization, have, for the most part,
never been in possession of a special culture peculiar
to themselves. Powerful as many of them
have been, they assimilated, in this respect, with
nations differently governed, but of consanguineous
affinity; they formed a fragment only of a greater
and more general civilization. Thus, the Carthaginians
and Phenicians, though at a great distance
from one another, had a similar mode of culture,
the type of which must be sought in Assyria. The
Italian republics participated in the same ideas and
opinions which developed themselves in the bosom
of neighboring monarchies. The imperial cities
of Thuringia and Suabia, although perfectly independent
in a political point of view, were nevertheless
intimately united with the general progressive
or retrogressive movement of the whole German
race. Mr. Guizot, therefore, by assigning to the
people of different countries degrees of merit proportionate
to the degree and form of their liberty,
creates unjustifiable subdivisions in the same race,
and makes distinctions without a difference. A
lengthy discussion is not in its place here, and I
shall therefore proceed rapidly. If, however, it
were necessary to enter into a controversy, might
we not justly protest against recognizing any inferiority
in the case of Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and
others, when compared with countries like Milan,
Naples, or Rome?
Mr. Guizot has himself foreseen this difficulty,
and removed the objection. If he does not recognize
a state of civilization among a people "mildly
governed, but in a state of compression," neither
does he accord this prerogative to another, "whose
outward circumstances are less favorable and agreeable,
although supportable, but whose intellectual
and moral cravings have not been entirely neglected;
among whom pure and elevated sentiments
have been cultivated, and religious and moral
notions reached a certain degree of improvement,
but among whom the desire of liberty has been
stifled; where a certain portion of truth is doled
out to each, but no one permitted to seek for it
himself. This is the condition to which most of
the populations of Asia are sunk, because theocratical
governments there restrain the progress of
mankind; such, for instance, is the state of the
Hindoos."
Thus, besides the aristocratic nations of the
earth, we must moreover exclude from the pale
of civilization the Hindoos, Egyptians, Etruscans,
Peruvians, Thibetans, Japanese—nay, even modern
Rome and her territories.
I omit the last two hypotheses, because, thanks
to the first two, the state of civilization is already
restricted within boundaries so contracted that
scarce any people on the globe is justified in
pretending to it. A nation, then, can be called
civilized only when it enjoys institutions happily
blending popular liberty and the requisite
strength of authority for maintaining order; when
its progress in material well-being and its moral
development are co-ordinate in a certain manner,
and no other; where religion, as well as government,
is confined within limits accurately defined,
which neither ever transgresses; where each individual
possesses clearly determinate and inalienable
rights. According to this formula, no nation
can be civilized unless its political institutions are
of the constitutional and representative form, and
consequently it is impossible to save many European
nations from the reproach of barbarism.
Then, measuring the degree of civilization by the
perfection of this same and only political form, we
are compelled to place in a second rank all those
constitutional states which have ill employed the
engine of parliament, to reserve the crown exclusively
for those who know how to make good use
of it. By this reasoning, I am forced to consider
as truly civilized, in the past as well as the present,
none but the single English nation.[95]
I sincerely respect and admire that great people,
whose victories, industry, and universal commerce
have left no portion of our globe ignorant
of its puissance and the prodigies it has
performed. But still, I do not feel disposed to
respect and admire in the world no other: it
would seem to me too humiliating and cruel to
humanity to confess that, since the beginning of
time, it has never succeeded in producing a civilization
anywhere but upon a small island of the
Western Ocean, has never discovered the laws
and forms which produce this state until the reign
of William and Mary. Such a conception of civilization
might seem to many rather a little too
narrow and restrictive. But there is another objection.
If we attach the idea of civilization to a
political form, reason, observation, and science will
soon lose their vote in the decision of the question,
which must thenceforth be left to the passions and
prejudices of parties. There will be some whose
preferences will lead them stoutly to deny that the
institutions of the British Isles are the "perfection
of human reason:" their enthusiasm, perchance,
will be expended in praising the order established
in St. Petersburg or in Vienna. Many, again, and
perhaps the greater number of all living between
the Rhine and the Pyrenees, will sustain to the last
that, notwithstanding a few blemishes, the most
polished, the most civilized country of the world
is la belle France. The moment that the decision
of the degree of intellectual culture becomes a
matter of preference, a question of sentiment, to
come to an understanding is impossible. Each
one will think him the man most advanced in
civilization who shall coincide with his views
about the respective duties of the governing and
the governed; while those who are unfortunate
enough to differ, will be set down as men behind
the age, little better than barbarians, mere "old
fogies," whose visual organs are too weak for the
dazzling lights of the epoch; or else as daring,
incendiary innovators, who wish to destroy all
established order, and sap the very foundation of
civilization. I think few will differ from me in
considering Mr. Guizot's definition as defective,
and the source from which he derives civilization
as not the real one.
Let us now examine Baron W. Von Humboldt's
definition. "Civilization," says that celebrated
statesman, "is the humanization of nations in their
outward institutions, in their manners, and in the
inward feelings upon which these depend."[96]
Here we meet with a defect of the very opposite
kind to that which I took the liberty to point out
in Mr. Guizot's definition. The formula is too
vague, the boundary lines too indistinct. If civilization
consists in a softening of manners, more
than one untutored tribe, some extremely low in
the scale of races, might take precedence over
several European nations whose character contains
more acerbity. There are in the South Sea
Islands, and elsewhere, very inoffensive populations,
of exceedingly gentle manners, and kind,
accommodating dispositions; yet, though we may
praise them, no one would think of placing them,
in the scale of civilization, above the rough Norwegians,
or even above the ferocious Malays, who,
dressed in brilliant garments of their own fabric,
and upon skilfully constructed vessels of their
own making, traverse the Indian seas, at the same
time the terror and scourge of maritime commerce,
and its most successful votaries. This observation
could not escape so great a mind as William Von
Humboldt's; and he therefore imagines, besides
civilization, a higher degree of development, which
he calls culture, and by which he declares that nations
gain, above their gentle manners, "science and
the arts."[97] When the world shall have arrived at
this higher state, it will be peopled by affectionate
and sympathetic beings, very erudite, poetic, and
artistic, but, by reason of this same reunion of
qualities, ignoring the grosser wants of existence:
strangers to the necessity of war, as well as those
of rude mechanical toil.
When we reflect upon the limited leisure that
the mass of even those can enjoy whose lot is cast
in the happiest epoch, to abandon themselves to
purely intellectual occupations—when we consider
how incessant and arduous must ever be the strife
of man with nature and the elements to insure the
mere means of subsistence, it will soon be perceived
that the philosopher of Berlin aimed less
at depicting realities than at drawing from the
domain of abstraction certain entities which appeared
to him beautiful and sublime, and which
are so, indeed, and at causing them to act and
move in a sphere as ideal as themselves. If any
doubts should still remain in this respect, they are
soon dispelled when we arrive at the culminating
point of the system, consisting of a third and last
degree superior to the two others. This greatest
point of perfection is that upon which stands the
finished man (der Gebildete); that is to say, the
man who, in his nature, possesses "something
higher and more inward or essential; a clear and
comprehensive faculty of seeing all things in their
true light; a recognition and appreciation of the
ultimate goal of man's moral and intellectual aspirations,
which diffuses itself harmoniously over all
his feelings and his character."[98]
We here have a regular gradation from man in
a civilized or "humanized" state, to the man of cultivation—the
philosopher, the poet, the artist; and
thence still higher to the finished, the perfect man,
who has attained the greatest elevation possible
to our species; a man who, if I seize rightly Mr.
Humboldt's idea, had his living counterpart in
Gœthe, as that towering mind is described to us
in its olympic serenity. This theory rests upon
no other basis than Mr. Von Humboldt's perception
of the immense difference between the civilization
of a nation and the comparative height of perfection
attained by great, isolated individualities. This
difference is so great that civilizations different
from ours, and perhaps inferior to it, have produced
men in some respects superior to those we
admire most.
Upon this point I fully coincide with the great
philosopher whose theory I am unfolding. It is
perfectly correct, that our state of development—what
we call the European civilization—produces
neither the profoundest nor the sublimest thinkers,
nor the greatest poets, nor the most skilful artists.
Yet I venture to differ from the illustrious philologist
in believing that to give a practical meaning
to the word civilization, it is necessary to divest
one's self, if but for a moment, from the prejudices
or prepossessions resulting from the examination
of mere details in any particular civilization. We
must take the aggregate result of the whole, and
not make the requisites too few, as in the case of
the man of the first degree, whom I persist in not
acknowledging as civilized merely because his
manners are gentle; nor too many, as in the case
of the sage of the third, for then the development
of human faculties would be limited to a few
individuals, and would produce results purely
isolated and typical.
The Baron Von Humboldt's system, however,
does honor to that exquisite and generous sensibility,
that grand sublimity which was the dominant
characteristic of this great mind; and in its
purely abstract nature may be compared to the
fragile worlds of Brahmin philosophy. Born from
the brain of a slumbering god, they rise in the air
like the irised bubbles that the child blows from
the suds, bursting and succeeding one another as
the dreams that amuse the celestial sleeper.
But the character of my researches permits me
not to indulge in mere abstractions, however brilliant
and attractive; I must arrive at results tangible
to practical sense and common experience.
I do not wish, like Mr. Guizot, to investigate the
conditions more or less favorable to the prosperity
of societies, nor, like Mr. William Von Humboldt,
to speculate upon the isolated elevation of individual
intelligences; my purpose is to encompass,
if possible, the aggregate power, moral as well as
material, which is developed in great masses of
men. It is not without trepidation that I engage
in a path in which two of the most admired men
of our century have lost themselves; and to avoid
the errors into which they have fallen, I shall
descend to first principles, and define civilization
by first investigating from what causes it results.
If the reader, then, will follow me patiently and
attentively through the mazes into which I am
forced to enter, I shall endeavor to throw as much
light as I am capable of, upon this inherently obscure
and abstruse subject.
There is no human being so degraded, so
brutish, in whom a twofold instinct, if I may be
permitted so to call it, is not manifest; the instinct
which incites to the gratification of material wants,
and that which leads to higher aspirations. The
degree of intensity of either of these two is the
first and principal measure of the differences
among races. In none, not even in the lowest
tribes, are the two instincts precisely balanced.
Among some, the physical wants or animal propensities
preponderate; in others, these are subordinate
to the speculative tendencies—the cravings
for the abstract, the supernatural. Thus, the
lowest of the yellow races seem to me to be
dominated rather by the first, the physical instinct,
without, however, being absolutely deprived
of all capacity for abstractions. On the
contrary, among the majority of the black races
of corresponding rank, the habits are less active
than pensive; imagination there attaches greater
value to the things of the invisible than to those
of the visible world. I do not thence deduce any
conclusion of superior capacity for civilization on
the part of those latter races over the former, for
history demonstrates that both are equally insusceptible
to attain it. Centuries, thousands of
years, have passed by without either of them
doing aught to ameliorate their condition, because
they have never been able to associate a sufficient
number of ideas with the same number of facts,
to begin the march of progress. I wish merely to
draw attention to the fact, that even among the
lowest races we find this double current differently
constituted. I shall now follow the ascending
scale.
Above the Samoyedes on the one hand, and
the Fidas and Pelagian negroes on the other, we
must place those tribes who are not content with
a mere hut of branches, and a social condition
based upon force only, but who are capable of
comprehending and aspiring to a better condition.
These are one degree above the most barbarous.
If they belong to the first category of races—those
who act more than they think, among whom
the material tendency predominates over that for
the abstract—their development will display itself
in a greater perfection of their instruments of
labor, and of war, in a greater care and skill in
their ornaments, etc. In government, the warriors
will take precedence over the priests; in their
intercourse with others, they will show a certain
aptitude and readiness for trafficking. Their wars,
though still characterized by cruelty, will originate
rather in a love of gain, than in the mere gratification
of vindictive passions. In one word, material
well-being, physical enjoyments, will be the
main pursuit of each individual. I find this picture
realized among several of the Mongol races,
and also, to some extent, among the Quichuas and
Azmaras of Peru.
On the other hand, if they belong to the second
category—to those who have a predominating tendency
for the speculative, the abstract—less care will
be bestowed upon the material interests; the influence
of the priests will preponderate in the government;
in fact, we perceive a complete antithesis to
the condition above described. The Dahomees,
of Western Africa, and the Caffres of the south,
are examples of this state.
Leaving those races whose progressive tendency
is not sufficiently vigorous to enable them to extend
their influence over great multitudes,[99] we
come to those of a higher order, in whom this
tendency is so vigorous that they are capable of
incorporating, and bringing within their sphere
of action, all those they come in contact with.
They soon ingraft their own social and political
system upon immense multitudes, and impose
upon vast countries the dominion of that combination
of facts and ideas—more or less co-ordinate—which
we call a civilization. Among these
races, again, we find the same difference, the same
division, that I already pointed out in those of inferior
merit—in some the speculative, in others
the more materially active tendency predominates.
It is, indeed, among these races only, that this
difference has important consequences, and is
clearly perceptible. When a tribe, by incorporating
with it great multitudes, has become a people,
has founded a vast dominion, we find that these
two currents or tendencies have augmented in
strength, according to the character of the populations
which enter into the combination, and there
become blended. Whatever tendency prevails
among these populations, they will proportionably
modify the character of the whole. It will be remarked,
moreover, that at different periods of the
life of a people, and in strict accordance with the
mixture of blood and the fusion of different elements,
the oscillation between the two tendencies
becomes more violent, and it may happen that
their relative proportion changes altogether; that
one, at first subordinate, in time becomes predominant.
The results of this mobility are important,
as they influence, in a sensible manner, the
character of a civilization, and its stability.[100]
For the sake of simplicity, I shall distinguish
the two categories of races by designations expressive
of the tendency which predominates in
them, and shall call them accordingly, either speculative
or utilitarian.[101] As I have before observed,
these terms imply neither praise nor blame. I use
them merely for convenience, to designate the
leading characteristic, without thereby expressing
a total absence of the other. Thus, the most
utilitarian of the speculative races would closely
approximate to the most speculative of the utilitarian.
At the head of the utilitarian category, as
its type, I place the Chinese; at the head, and as
the type of the other, the Hindoos. Next to the
Chinese I would put the majority of the populations
of ancient Italy, the first Romans of the time
of the republic, and the Germanic tribes. On the
opposite side, among the speculative races, I would
range next to the Hindoos, the Egyptians, and the
nations of the Assyrian empire.
I have said already that the oscillations of the
two principles or tendencies sometimes result in
the preponderance of one, which before was subordinate,
and thus the character of the civilization
is changed. Minor modifications, the history of
almost every people presents. Thus, even the materialistic
utilitarian tendency of the Chinese has been
somewhat modified by their amalgamation with
tribes of another blood, and a different tendency.
In the south, the Yunnan particularly, where this
population prevailed, the inhabitants are much less
exclusively utilitarian than in the north, where
the Chinese element is more pure. If this admixture
of blood operated so slight a change in the
genius of that immense nation, that its effects have
ceased, or make themselves perceptible only in an
exceedingly slow manner, it is because its quantity
was so extremely small, compared to the utilitarian
population by which it was absorbed.
Into the actual populations of Europe, the Germanic
tribes infused a strong utilitarian tendency,
and in the north, this has been continually recruited
by new accessions of the same ethnical element;
but in the south (with some exceptions, Piedmont,
and the North of Spain, for example), the Germanic
element forms not so great a portion of the
whole mass, and the utilitarian tendency has there
been overweighed by the opposite genius of the
native populations.
Among the speculative races we have signalized
the Hindoos. They are endowed in a high degree
with the tendency for the supernatural, the abstract.
Their character is more meditative than active and
practical. As their ancient conquests incorporated
with them races of a similar disposition, the utilitarian
element has never prevailed sufficiently to
produce decided results. While, therefore, their
civilization has arrived at a high degree of perfection
in other respects, it has lagged far behind in
all that promotes material comfort, in all that is
strictly useful and practical.
Rome, at first strictly utilitarian, changed its
character gradually as the fusion with Greek,
Asiatic, and African elements proceeded, and when
once the ancient utilitarian population was absorbed
in this ethnical inundation, the practical
character of Rome was lost.
From the consideration of these and similar
facts, I arrive at the conclusion, that all intellectual
or moral activity results from the combined action
and mutual reaction of these two tendencies, and
that the social system can arrive at that development
which entitles it to the name of civilization,
only in races which possess, in a high degree,
either of the two, without being too much deficient
in the other.
I now proceed to the examination of other
points also deserving of notice.
ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION—CONTINUED.
Definition of the term—Specific differences of civilizations—Hindoo,
Chinese, European, Greek, and Roman civilizations—Universality
of Chinese civilization—Superficiality of ours—Picture
of the social condition of France.
When a tribe, impelled by more vigorous instincts
than its neighbors, succeeds in collecting
the hitherto scattered and isolated fragments into
a compact whole, the first impetus of progress is
thus given, the corner-stone of a civilization laid.
But, to produce great and lasting results, a mere
political preponderance is not sufficient. The
dominant race must know how to lay hold of the
feelings of the masses it has aggregated, to assimilate
their individual interests, and to concentrate
their energies to the same purposes. When the
different elements composing the nation are thus
blended into a more or less homogeneous mass,
certain principles and modes of thinking become
general, and form the standard around which all
rally. These principles and modes of thinking,
however, cannot be arbitrarily imposed, and must
be resulting from, and in the main consonant with,
pre-existing sentiments and desires.[102] They will
be characterized by a utilitarian or a speculative
tendency, according to the degree in which either
instinct predominates in the constituent elements
of the nation.
This harmony of views and interests is the first
essential to civilization; the second is stability,
and is a natural consequence of the first. The
general principles upon which the political and
social system rests, being based upon instincts
common to all, are by all regarded with the most
affectionate veneration, and firmly believed to be
perpetual. The purer a race remains, the more
conservative will it be in its institutions, for its
instincts never change. But the admixture of
foreign blood produces proportionate modifications
in the national ideas. The new-comers
introduce instincts and notions which were
not calculated upon in the social edifice. Alterations
therefore become necessary, and these are
often wholesome, especially in the youthful period
of the society, when the new ethnical elements
have not as yet acquired an undue preponderance.
But, as the empire increases, and comprises elements
more and more heterogeneous, the changes
become more radical, and are not always for the
better. Finally, as the initiatory and conservative
element disappears, the different parts of the nation
are no longer united by common instincts
and interests; the original institutions are not
adapted to their wants; sudden and total transformations
become common, and a vain phantom of
stability is pursued through endless experiments.
But, while thus vacillating betwixt conflicting interests,
and changing its purpose every hour, the
nation imagines itself advancing to some imaginary
goal of perfection. Firmly convinced of its own
perpetuity, it holds fast to the doctrine which its
daily acts disprove, that one of the principal features
of a civilization is God-like immutability.
And though each day brings forth new discontents
and new changes equally futile, the apprehensions
of the day are quieted with the expectations of
to-morrow.
I have said that the conditions necessary for the
development of a civilization are—the aggregation
of large masses, and stable institutions resulting
from common views and interests. The sociable
inclinations of man, and the less noble attributes
of his nature, perform the rest. While the former
bring him in intimate and varied connections with
his fellow-men, the latter give rise to continual
contests and emulation. In a large community, a
strong fist is no longer sufficient to insure protection
and give distinction, and the resources of the
mind are applied and developed. Intellect continually
seeks and finds new fields for exertion,
either in the regions of the abstract, or in the
material world. By its productions in either, we
recognize an advanced state of society. The most
common source of error in judging foreign nations,
is that we are apt to look merely at the exterior
demonstrations of their civilization, and because,
in this respect, their civilization does not resemble
ours, we hastily conclude that they are barbarous,
or, at least, greatly inferior to us. A conclusion,
drawn from such premises, must needs be very
superficial, and therefore ought to be received with
caution.
I believe myself now prepared to express my
idea of a civilization, by defining it as
A state of comparative stability, in which a large
collection of individuals strive, by peaceful means, to
satisfy their wants, and refine their intelligence and
manners.
This definition includes, without exception, all
the nations which I have mentioned as being civilized.
But, as these nations have few points of resemblance,
the question suggests itself: Do not, then,
all civilizations tend to the same results? I think
not; for, as the nations called to the noble task of
accomplishing a civilization, are endowed with the
utilitarian and speculative tendencies in various
degrees and proportions, their paths must necessarily
lie in very divergent directions.
What are the material wants of the Hindoo?
Rice and butter for his nourishment, and a piece
of cotton cloth for his garment. Nor can this
abstemiousness be accounted for by climate, for
the native of Thibet, under a much more rigorous
sky, displays the same quality. In these peoples,
the imaginative faculty greatly predominates, their
intellectual efforts are directed to abstractions, and
the fruits of their civilization are therefore seldom
of a practical or utilitarian character. Magnificent
temples are hewn out of mountains of solid rock
at an expense of labor and time that terrifies the
imagination; gigantic constructions are erected;—all
this in honor of the gods, while nothing is
done for man's benefit, unless it be tombs. By
the side of the miracles wrought by the sculptor's
chisel, we admire the finished masterpieces of a
literature full of vigor, and as ingenious and subtle
in theology and metaphysics, as beautiful in its
variety: in speculative efforts, human thought descends
without trepidation to immeasurable depths;
its lyric poetry challenges the admiration of all
mankind.
But if we leave the domain of idealistic reveries,
and seek for inventions of practical utility, and
for the sciences that are their theoretical basis, we
find a deplorable deficiency. From a dazzling
height, we suddenly find ourselves descended to a
profound and darksome abyss. Useful inventions
are scarce, of a petty character, and, being neglected,
remain barren of results. While the Chinese observed
and invented a great deal, the Hindoos invented
but little, and of that little took no care;
the Greeks, also, have left us much information,
but little worthy of their genius; and the Romans,
once arrived at the culminating point of their
history, could no longer make any real progress,
for the Asiatic admixture in which they were absorbed
with surprising rapidity, produced a population
incapable of the patient and toilsome investigation
of stern realities. Their administrative
genius, however, their legislation, and the useful
monuments with which they provided the soil of
their territories, attest sufficiently the practical
character which, at one time, so eminently characterized
that people; and prove that if the
South of Europe had not been so rapidly submerged
with colonists from Asia and the North of
Africa, positive science would have been the
gainer, and less would have been left to be accomplished
by the Germanic races, which afterward
gave it a renewed impulse.
The Germanic conquerors of the fifth century
were characterized by instincts of a similar kind
to those of the Chinese, but of a higher order.
While they possessed the utilitarian tendency as
strongly, if not stronger, they had, at the same
time, a much greater endowment of the speculative.
Their disposition presented a happy blending
of these two mainsprings of activity. Where-ever
the Teutonic blood predominates, the utilitarian
tendency, ennobled and refined by the
speculative, is unmistakable. In England, North
America, and Holland, this tendency governs and
preponderates over all the other national instincts.
It is so, in a lesser degree, in Belgium, and even
in the North of France, where everything susceptible
of practical application is understood with
marvellous facility. But as we advance further
south, this predisposition is less apparent, and,
finally, disappears altogether. We cannot attribute
this to the action of the sun, for the
Piedmontese live in a much warmer climate than
the Provençals and the inhabitants of the Languedoc;
it is the effect of blood.
The series of speculative races, or those rendered
so by admixture, occupies the greater portion
of the globe, and this observation is particularly
applicable to Europe. With the exception of the
Teutonic family, and a portion of the Sclavonic,
all other groups of our part of the world are but
slightly endowed with the faculty for the useful
and practical; or, having already acted their part
in the world's history, will not be able to recommence
it. All these races, from the Gaul to the
Celtiberian, and thence to the variegated compounds
of the Italian populations, present a descending
scale from a utilitarian point of view.
Not that they are devoid of all the aptitudes of
that tendency, but they are wanting in some of
the most essential.
The union of the Germanic tribes with the
races of the ancient world, this engrafting of a
vigorous utilitarian principle upon the ideas of
that variegated compound, produced our civilization;
the richness, diversity, and fecundity of our
state of culture is the natural result of that combination
of so many different elements, which
each contributed their part, and which the practical
vigor of our Germanic ancestors, succeeded in
blending into a more or less harmonious whole.
Wherever our state of civilization extends, it is
characterized by two traits; the first, that the
population contains a greater or less admixture of
Teutonic blood; the other, that it is Christian.
This last feature, however, as I said before, though
the most obvious and striking, is by no means
essential, because many nations are Christian, and
many more may become so, without participating
in our civilization. But the first feature is positive,
decisive. Wherever the Germanic element
has not penetrated, our civilization cannot flourish.[103]
This leads me to the investigation of a serious
and important question: "Can it be asserted that
all the European nations are really and thoroughly
civilized?" Do the ideas and facts which rise
upon the surface of our civilization, strike root
in the basis of our social and political structure,
and derive their vitality from that source? Are
the results of these ideas and facts such as are
conformable to the instincts, the tendencies, of the
masses? Or, in other words, have the lowest strata
of our populations the same direction of thought
and action as the highest—that direction which we
may call the spirit or genius of our progressive
movement?
To arrive at a true and unbiassed solution of
this question, let us examine other civilizations,
different from ours, and then institute a comparison.
The similarity of views and ideas, the unity of
purpose, which characterized the whole body of
citizens in the Grecian states, during the brilliant
period of their history, has been justly admired.
Upon every essential point, the opinions of every
individual, though often conflicting, were, nevertheless,
derived from the same source, emanated
from the same general views and sentiments; individuals
might differ in politics, one wishing a more
oligarchical, another a more democratic government;
or they might differ in religion, one worshipping,
by preference, the Eleusinian Ceres, another
the Minerva of the Parthenon; or in matters of
taste, one might prefer Æschylus to Sophocles,
Alceus to Pindar. At the bottom, the disputants
all participated in the same views and ideas, ideas
which might well be called national. The question
was one of degree, not of kind.[104]
Rome, previous to the Punic wars, presented
the same spectacle; the civilization of the country
was uniform, and embraced all, from the master to
the slave.[105] All might not participate in it to the
same extent, but all participated in it and in no
other.
But in Rome, after the Punic wars, and in Greece,
soon after Pericles, and especially after Philip of
Macedon, this character of homogeneity began to
disappear. The greater mixture of nations produced
a corresponding mixture of civilizations,
and the compound thus formed exceeded in variety,
elegance, refinement, and learning, the ancient
mode of culture. But it had this capital inconvenience,
both in Hellas and in Italy, that it belonged
exclusively to the higher classes. Its nature, its
merits, its tendencies, were ignored by the sub-strata
of the population. Let us take the civilization
of Rome after the Asiatic wars. It was a grand,
magnificent monument of human genius. It had a
cosmopolitan character: the rhetoricians of Greece
contributed to it the transcendental spirit, the
jurists and publicists of Syria and Alexandria
gave it a code of atheistic, levelling, and monarchical
laws—each part of the empire furnished to the
common store some portion of its ideas, its sciences,
and its character. But whom did this civilization
embrace? The men engaged in the public administration
or in great monetary enterprises, the people
of wealth and of leisure. It was merely submitted
to, not adopted by the masses. The populations
of Europe understood nothing of those Asiatic and
African contributions to the civilization; the inhabitants
of Egypt, Numidia, or Asia, were equally
uninterested in what came from Gaul and Spain,
countries with which they had nothing in common.
But a small minority of the Roman people stood
on the pinnacle, and being in possession of the
secret, valued it. The rest, those not included in
the aristocracy of wealth and position, preserved
the civilization peculiar to the land of their birth,
or, perhaps, had none at all. Here, then, we have
an example of a great and highly perfected civilization,
dominating over untold millions, but
founding its reign not in their desires or convictions,
but in their exhaustion, their weakness, their
listlessness.
A very different spectacle is presented in China.
The boundless extent of that empire includes, indeed,
several races markedly distinct, but I shall
speak at present only of the national race, the
Chinese proper. One spirit animates the whole of
this immense multitude, which is counted by hundreds
of millions. Whatever we think of their
civilization, whether we admire or censure the
principles upon which it is based, the results which
it has produced, and the direction which it takes;
we cannot deny that it pervades all ranks, that
every individual takes in it a definite and intelligent
part. And this is not because the country is
free, in our sense of the word: there is no democratic
principle which secures, by law, to every
one the position which his efforts may attain, and
thus spurs him on to exertions. No; I discard
all Utopian pictures. The peasant and the man of
the middle classes, in the Celestial Empire, are no
better assured of rising by their own merit only,
than they are elsewhere. It is true that, in theory,
public honors are solely the reward of merit, and
every one is permitted to offer himself as a candidate;[106]
but it is well known that, in reality, the
families of great functionaries monopolize all
lucrative offices, and that the scholastic diplomas
often cost more money than efforts of study. But
disappointed or hopeless ambition never leads the
possessor to imagine a different system; the aim
of the reformer is to remedy the abuses of the
established organization, not to substitute another.
The masses may groan under ills and abuses, but
the fault is charged, not to the social and political
system, which to them is an object of unqualified
admiration, but to the persons to whose care the performance
of its duties is committed. The head of
the government, or his functionaries, may become
unpopular, but the form itself, the government,
never. A very remarkable feature of the Chinese
is that among them primary instruction is so
universal; it reaches classes whom we hardly
imagine to have any need of it. The cheapness
of books, the immense number and low price of
the schools, enable even the poorest to acquire the
elements of knowledge, reading and writing.[107] The
laws, their spirit and tendency, are well known
and understood by all classes, and the government
prides itself upon facilitating the study of this useful
science.[108] The instinct of the masses is decidedly
averse to all political convulsions. Mr. Davis, who
was commissioner of H. B. Majesty in China, and
who studied its affairs with the assiduity of a man
who is interested in understanding them well, says
that the character of the people cannot be better
expressed than by calling them "a nation of steady
conservatives."[109]
Here, then, we have a most striking contrast to
the civilization of Rome in her latter days, when
governmental changes occurred in fearfully rapid
succession, until the arrival of the nations of the
north. In every portion of that vast empire, there
were whole populations that had no interest in the
preservation of established order, and were ever
ready to second the maddest schemes, to embark in
any enterprise that seemed to promise advantage,
or that was represented in seductive colors by some
ambitious demagogue. During that long period
of several centuries, no scheme was left untried:
property, religion, the sanctity of family relations,
were all called in question, and innovators in
every portion of the empire, found multitudes
ever disposed to carry their theories into practice
by force. Nothing in the Greco-Roman world
rested on a solid basis, not even the imperial
unity, so indispensable, it would seem, to the mere
self-preservation of such a state of society. It
was not only the armies, with their swarm of
improvisto Cæsars, that undertook the task of
shaking this palladium of national safety; the emperors
themselves, beginning with Diocletian, had
so little faith in monarchy, that they willingly made
the experiment of dualism in the government,
and finally found four at a time not too many for
governing the empire.[110] I repeat it, not one institution,
not one principle, was stable in that
wretched state of society, which continued to preserve
some outward form, merely from the physical
impossibility of assuming any others, until the
men of the north came to assist in its demolition.
Between these two great societies, then, the Roman
empire, and that of China, we perceive the
most complete contrast. By the side of the civilization
of Eastern Asia, I may mention that of
India, Thibet, and other portions of Central Asia,
which is equally universal, and diffused among
all ranks and classes. As in China there is a certain
level of information to which all attain, so in
Hindostan, every one is animated by the same
spirit; each individual knows precisely what his
caste requires him to learn, to think, to believe.
Among the Buddhists of Thibet, and the table-lands
of Asia, nothing is rarer than to find a peasant
who cannot read, and there everybody has the
same convictions upon important subjects.
Do we find this homogeneity in European nations?
It is scarce worth while to put the question.
Not even the Greco-Roman empire presents incongruities
so strange, or contrasts so striking, as are
to be found among us; not only among the
various nationalities of Europe, but in the bosom
of the same sovereignty. I shall not speak of
Russia, and the states that form the Austrian
empire; the demonstration of my position would
there be too facile. Let us turn to Germany; to
Italy, Southern Italy in particular; to Spain, which,
though in a less degree, presents a similar picture;
or to France.
I select France. The difference of manners, in
various parts of this country, has struck even the
most superficial observer, and it has long since
been observed that Paris is separated from the
rest of France by a line of demarcation so decided
and accurately defined, that at the very gates of
the capital, a nation is found, utterly different from
that within the walls. Nothing can be more true:
those who attach to our political unity the idea of
similarity of thoughts, of character—in fine, of
nationality, are laboring under a great delusion.
There is not one principle that governs society
and is connected with our civilization, which is
understood in the same manner in all our departments.
I do not speak here merely of the
peculiarities that characterize the native of Normandy,
of Brittany, Angevin, Limousin, Gascony,
Provence. Every one knows how little alike
these various populations are,[111] and how they differ
in their tendencies and modes of thinking. I
wish to draw attention to the fact, that while in
China, Thibet, India, the most essential ideas upon
which the civilization is based, are common to all
classes, participated in by all, it is by no means
so among us. The very rudiments of our knowledge,
the most elementary and most generally accessible
portion of it, remain an impenetrable mystery
to our rural populations, among whom but
few individuals are found acquainted with reading
and writing. This is not for want of opportunities—it
is because no value is attached to these
acquisitions, because their utility is not perceived.
I speak from my own observation, and that of
persons who had ample facilities, and brought
extensive information and great judgment to the
task of investigation. Government has made the
most praiseworthy efforts to remedy the evil, to
raise the peasantry from the sink of ignorance in
which they vegetate. But the wisest laws, and
the most carefully calculated institutions have
proved abortive. The smallest village affords
ample opportunities for common education; even
the adult, when conscription forces him into the
army, finds in the regimental schools every facility
for acquiring the most necessary branches of
knowledge. Compulsion is resorted to—every one
who has lived in the provinces knows with what
success. Parents send their children to school
with undisguised repugnance, for they regret the
time thus spent as wasted, and, therefore, eagerly
seize the most trifling pretext for withdrawing
them, and never suffer them to exceed the legal
term of attendance. So soon as the young man
leaves school, or the soldier has served his time,
they hasten to forget what they were compelled to
learn, and what they are heartily ashamed of.
They return forever after to the local patois[112] of
their birthplace, and pretend to have forgotten
the French language, which, indeed, is but too
often true. It is a painful conclusion, but one
which many and careful observations have forced
upon me, that all the generous private and public
endeavors to instruct our rural population, are absolutely
futile, and can tend no further than to
enforce an outward compliance. They care not for
the knowledge we wish to give them—they will
not have it, and this not from mere negligence or
apathy, but from a feeling of positive hostility to
our civilization. This is a startling assertion, but
I have not yet adduced all the proofs in support of
it.
In those parts of the country where the laboring
classes are employed in manufactures principally,
and in the great cities, the workmen are
easily induced to learn to read and write. The
circumstances with which they are surrounded,
leave them no doubt as to the practical advantages
accruing to them from these acquisitions. But so
soon as these men have sufficiently mastered the
first elements of knowledge, to what use do they,
for the most part, apply them? To imbibe or
give vent to ideas and sentiments the most subversive
of all social order. The instinctive, but
passive hostility to our civilization, is superseded
by a bitter and active enmity, often productive
of the most fearful calamities. It is among
these classes that the projectors of the wildest,
most incendiary schemes readily recruit their
partisans; that the advocates of socialism, community
of goods and wives, all, in fact, who, under
the pretext of removing the ills and abuses that
afflict the social system, propose to tear it down,
find ready listeners and zealous believers.
There are, however, portions of the country to
which this picture does not apply; and these exceptions
furnish me with another proof in favor of
my proposition. Among the agricultural and
manufacturing populations of the north and northeast,
information is general; it is readily received,
and, once received, retained and productive of
good fruits. These people are intelligent, well-informed,
and orderly, like their neighbors in Belgium
and the whole of the Netherlands. And
these, also, are the populations most closely akin
to the Teutonic race, the race which, as I said in
another place, gave the initiative to our civilization.
The aversion to our civilization, of which I spoke,
is not the only singular feature in the character of
our rural populations. If we penetrate into the privacy
of their thoughts and beliefs, we make discoveries
equally striking and startling. The bishops
and parish clergy have to this day, as they had one,
five, or fifteen centuries ago, to battle with mysterious
superstitions, or hereditary tendencies, some
of which are the more formidable as they are seldom
openly avowed, and can, therefore, be neither
attacked nor conquered. There is no enlightened
priest, that has the care of his flock at heart, but
knows from experience with what deep cunning
the peasant, however devout, knows how to conceal
in his own bosom some fondly cherished traditional
idea or belief, which reveals itself only at
long intervals, and without his knowledge. If he
is spoken to about it, he denies or evades the discussion,
but remains unshaken in his convictions.
He has unbounded confidence in his pastor, unbounded
except upon this one subject, that might
not inappropriately be called his secret religion.
Hence that taciturnity and reserve which, in all
our provinces, is the most marked characteristic
of the peasant, and which he never for a moment
lays aside towards the class he calls bourgeois; that
impassable barrier between him and even the most
popular and well-intentioned landed proprietor of
his district.
It must not be supposed that this results merely
from rudeness and ignorance. Were it so,
we might console ourselves with the hope that
they will gradually improve and assimilate with
the more enlightened classes. But these people
are precisely like certain savages; at a superficial
glance they appear unreflecting and brutish,
because their exterior is humble, and their
character requires to be studied. But so soon as
we penetrate, however little, into their own circle
of ideas, the feelings that govern their private
life, we discover that in their obstinate isolation
from our civilization, they are not actuated by a
feeling of degradation. Their affections and antipathies
do not arise from mere accidental circumstances,
but, on the contrary, are in accordance
with logical reasoning based upon well-defined
and clearly conceived ideas.[113] In speaking of their
religious notions awhile ago, I should have remarked
what an immense distance there is between
our doctrines of morals and those of the peasantry,
how widely different are their ideas from those
which we attach to the same word.[114] With what
pertinacious obstinacy they continue to look upon
every one not peasant like themselves, as the people
of remote antiquity looked upon a foreigner.
It is true they do not kill him, thanks to the singular
and mysterious terror which the laws, in the
making of which they have no part, inspire them;
but they hate him cordially, distrust him, and if
they can do so without too great a risk, fleece him
without scruple and with immense satisfaction.
Yet they are not wicked or ill-disposed. Among
themselves they are kind-hearted, charitable, and
obliging. But then they regard themselves as a
distinct race—a race, they tell you—that is weak,
oppressed, and that must resort to cunning and
stratagem to gain their due, but which, nevertheless,
preserves its pride and contempt for all others.
In many of our provinces, the laborer believes
himself of much better stock than his former lord
or present employer. The family pride of many
of our peasants is, to say the least, as great as that
of the nobility during the Middle Ages.[115]
It cannot be doubted that the lower strata of
the population of France have few features in
common with the higher. Our civilization penetrates
but little below the surface. The great
mass is indifferent—nay, positively hostile to it.
The most tragic events have stained the country
with torrents of blood, unparalleled convulsions
have destroyed every ancient fabric, both social
and political. Yet the agricultural populations
have never been roused from their apathetic indifference,[116]
have never taken any other part but that
to which they were forced. When their own personal
and immediate interests were not at stake,
they allowed the tempests to blow by without concern,
without even passive sympathy on one side
or the other. Many persons, frightened and scandalized
at this spectacle, have declared the peasantry
as irreclaimably perverse. This is at the
same time an injustice, and a very false appreciation
of their character. The peasants regard us
almost as their enemies. They comprehend nothing
of our civilization, contribute nothing to it
of their own accord, and they think themselves
authorized to profit by its disasters, whenever they
can. Apart from this antagonism, which sometimes
displays itself in an active, but oftener in a
passive manner, it cannot be doubted that they
possess moral qualities of a high order, though
often singularly applied.
Such is the state of civilization in France. It
may be asserted that of a population of thirty-six
millions, ten participate in the ideas and mode of
thinking upon which our civilization is based,
while the remaining twenty-six altogether ignore
them, are indifferent and even hostile to them, and
this computation would, I think, be even more
flattering than the real truth. Nor is France an
exception in this respect. The picture I have
given applies to the greater part of Europe. Our
civilization is suspended, as it were, over an unfathomable
gulf, at the bottom of which there slumber
elements which may, one day, be roused and
prove fearfully, irresistibly destructive. This is
an awful, an ominous truth. Upon its ultimate
consequences it is painful to reflect. Wisdom
may, perhaps, foresee the storm, but can do little
to avert it.
But ignored, despised, or hated as it is by the
greater number of those over whom it extends its
dominion, our civilization is, nevertheless, one of
the grandest, most glorious monuments of the
human mind. In the inventive, initiatory quality
it does not surpass, or even equal some of its predecessors,
but in comprehensiveness it surpasses all.
From this comprehensiveness arise its powers of
appropriation, of conquest; for, to comprehend is
to seize, to possess. It has appropriated all their
acquisitions, and has remodelled, reconstructed
them. It did not create the exact sciences, but it
has given them their exactitude, and has disembarrassed
them from the divagations from which,
by a singular paradox, they were anciently less
free than any other branch of knowledge. Thanks
to its discoveries, the material world is better
known than at any other epoch. The laws by
which nature is governed, it has, in a great measure,
succeeded in unveiling, and it has applied
them so as to produce results truly wonderful.
Gradually, and by the clearness and correctness of
its induction, it has reconstructed immense fragments
of history, of which the ancients had no
knowledge; and as it recedes from the primitive
ages of the world, it penetrates further into the
mist that obscures them. These are great points
of superiority, and which cannot be contested.
But these being admitted, are we authorized to
conclude—as is so generally assumed as a matter
of course—that the characteristics of our civilization
are such as to entitle it to the pre-eminence
among all others? Let us examine what are its
peculiar excellencies. Thanks to the prodigious
number of various elements that contributed to
its formation, it has an eclectic character which
none of its predecessors or contemporaries possess.
It unites and combines so many various qualities
and faculties, that its progress is equally facile
in all directions; and it has powers of analysis
and generalization so great, that it can embrace
and appropriate all things, and, what is more,
apply them to practical purposes. In other words,
it advances at once in a number of different directions,
and makes valuable conquests in all, but it
cannot be said that it advances at the same time
furthest in all. Variety, perhaps, rather than great
intensity, is its characteristic. If we compare its
progress in any one direction with what has been
done by others in the same, we shall find that in
few, indeed, can our civilization claim pre-eminence.
I shall select three of the most striking
features of every civilization; the art of government,
the state of the fine arts, and refinement of
manners.
In the art of government, the civilization of
Europe has arrived at no positive result. In this
respect, it has been unable to assume a definite
character. It has laid down no principles. In
every country over which its dominion extends, it
is subservient to the exigencies of the various
races which it has aggregated, but not united. In
England, Holland, Naples, and Russia, political
forms are still in a state of comparative stability,
because either the whole population, or the dominant
portion of it, is composed of the same or
homogeneous elements. But everywhere else,
especially in France, Central Italy, and Germany,
where the ethnical diversity is boundless, governmental
theories have never risen to the dignity of
recognized truth; political science consisted in an
endless series of experiments. Our civilization,
therefore, being unable to assume a definite political
feature, is devoid, in this respect, of that stability
which I comprised as an essential feature in
my definition of a civilization. This impotency
is not found in many other civilizations which we
deem inferior. In the Celestial Empire, in the
Buddhistic and Brahminical societies, the political
feature of the civilization is clearly enounced, and
clearly understood by each individual member.
In matters of politics all think alike; under a wise
administration, when the secular institutions produce
beneficent fruits, all rejoice; when in unskilled
or malignant hands, they endanger the
public welfare, it is a misfortune to be regretted
as we regret our own faults; but no circumstance
can abate the respect and admiration with which
they are regarded. It may be desirable to correct
abuses that have crept into them, but never to replace
them by others. It cannot be denied that
these civilizations, therefore, whatever we may
think of them in other respects, enjoy a guarantee
of durability, of longevity, in which ours is sadly
wanting.
With regard to the arts, our civilization is decidedly
inferior to others. Whether we aim at
the grand or the beautiful, we cannot rival either
the imposing grandeur of the civilization of Egypt,
of India, or even of the ancient American empires,
nor the elegant beauty of that of Greece. Centuries
hence—when the span of time allotted to us
shall have been consumed, when our civilization,
like all that preceded it, shall have sunk in the
dim shades of the past, and have become a matter
of inquiry only to the historical student—some
future traveller may wander among the forests and
marshes on the banks of the Thames, the Seine,
or the Rhine, but he will find no glorious monuments
of our grandeur; no sumptuous or gigantic
ruins like those of Philæ, of Nineveh, of Athens, of
Salsetta, or of Tenochtitlan. A remote posterity
may venerate our memory as their preceptors in
exact sciences. They may admire our ingenuity,
our patience, the perfection to which we have carried
inductive reasoning—not so our conquests in
the regions of the abstract. In poesy we can bequeath
them nothing. The boundless admiration
which we bestow upon the productions of foreign
civilizations both past and present, is a positive
proof of our own inferiority in this respect.[117]
Perhaps the most striking features of a civilization,
though not a true standard of its merit, is
the degree of refinement which it has attained.
By refinement I mean all the luxuries and amenities
of life, the regulations of social intercourse,
delicacy of habits and tastes. It cannot be denied
that in all these we do not surpass, nor even equal,
many former as well as contemporaneous civilizations.
We cannot rival the magnificence of the
latter days of Rome, or of the Byzantine empire;
we can but imagine the gorgeous luxury of Eastern
civilizations; and in our own past history we
find periods when the modes of living were more
sumptuous, polished intercourse regulated by a
higher and more exacting standard, when taste
was more cultivated, and habits more refined. It
is true, that we are amply compensated by a
greater and more general diffusion of the comforts
of life; but in its exterior manifestations, our civilization
compares unfavorably with many others,
and might almost be called shabby.
Before concluding this digression upon civilization,
which has already extended perhaps too far,
it may not be unnecessary to reiterate the principal
ideas which I wished to present to the mind
of the reader. I have endeavored to show that
every civilization derives its peculiar character
from the race which gave the initiatory impulse.
The alteration of this initiatory principle produces
corresponding modifications, and even total changes,
in the character of the civilization. Thus our
civilization owes its origin to the Teutonic race,
whose leading characteristic was an elevated utilitarianism.
But as these races ingrafted their mode
of culture upon stocks essentially different, the
character of the civilization has been variously
modified according to the elements which it combined
and amalgamated. The civilization of a
nation, therefore, exhibits the kind and degree of
their capabilities. It is the mirror in which they
reflect their individuality.
I shall now return to the natural order of my
deductions, the series of which is yet far from
being complete. I commenced by enouncing the
truth that the existence and annihilation of human
societies depended upon immutable and uniform
laws. I have proved the insufficiency of adventitious
circumstances to produce these phenomena,
and have traced their causes to the various capabilities
of different human groups; in other
words, to the moral and intellectual diversity of
races. Logic, then, demands that I should determine
the meaning and bearing of the word race,
and this will be the object of the next chapter.
QUESTION OF UNITY OR PLURALITY OF SPECIES.
Systems of Camper, Blumenbach, Morton, Carus—Investigations
of Owen, Vrolik, Weber—Prolificness of hybrids, the great
scientific stronghold of the advocates of unity of species.
It will be necessary to determine first the physiological
bearing of the word race.
In the opinion of many scientific observers, who
judge from the first impression, and take extremes[118]
as the basis of their reasoning, the groups of the
human family are distinguished by differences so
radical and essential, that it is impossible to believe
them all derived from the same stock. They,
therefore, suppose several other genealogies besides
that of Adam and Eve. According to this doctrine,
instead of but one species in the genus homo,
there would be three, four, or even more, entirely
distinct ones, whose commingling would produce
what the naturalists call hybrids.
General conviction is easily secured in favor of
this theory, by placing before the eyes of the observer
instances of obvious and striking dissimilarities
among the various groups. The critic who
has before him a human subject with a skin of
olive-yellow; black, straight, and thin hair; little,
if any beard, eyebrows, and eyelashes; a broad
and flattened face, with features not very distinct;
the space between the eyes broad and flat; the
orbits large and open; the nose flattened; the
cheeks high and prominent; the opening of the
eyelids narrow, linear, and oblique, the inner angle
the lowest; the ears and lips large; the forehead
low and slanting, allowing a considerable portion
of the face to be seen when viewed from above;
the head of somewhat a pyramidal form; the limbs
clumsy; the stature humble; the whole conformation
betraying a marked tendency to obesity:[119] the
critic who examines this specimen of humanity,
at once recognizes a well characterized and clearly
defined type, the principal features of which will
readily be imprinted in his memory.
Let us suppose him now to examine another individual:
a negro, from the western coast of
Africa. This specimen is of large size, and vigorous
appearance. The color is a jetty black, the
hair crisp, generally called woolly; the eyes are
prominent, and the orbits large; the nose thick,
flat, and confounded with the prominent cheeks;
the lips very thick and everted; the jaws projecting,
and the chin receding; the skull assuming
the form called prognathous. The low forehead
and muzzle-like elongation of the jaws, give to
the whole being an almost animal appearance,
which is heightened by the large and powerful
lower-jaw, the ample provision for muscular insertions,
the greater size of cavities destined for the
reception of the organs of smell and sight, the
length of the forearm compared with the arm, the
narrow and tapering fingers, etc. "In the negro,
the bones of the leg are bent outwards; the tibia
and fibula are more convex in front than in the
European; the calves of the legs are very high,
so as to encroach upon the hams; the feet and
hand, but particularly the former, are flat; the os
calcis, instead of being arched, is continued nearly
in a straight line with the other bones of the foot,
which is remarkably broad."[120]
In contemplating a human being so formed, we
are involuntarily reminded of the structure of the
ape, and we feel almost inclined to admit that the
tribes of Western Africa are descended from a
stock which bears but a slight and general resemblance
to that of the Mongolian family.
But there are some groups, whose aspect is even
less flattering to the self-love of humanity than
that of the Congo. It is the peculiar distinction
of Oceanica to furnish about the most degraded
and repulsive of those wretched beings, who seem
to occupy a sort of intermediate station between
man and the mere brute. Many of the groups of
that latest-discovered world, by the excessive leanness
and starveling development of their limbs;[121]
the disproportionate size of their heads; the excessive,
hopeless stupidity stamped upon their
countenances; present an aspect so hideous and
disgusting, that—contrasted with them—even the
negro of Western Africa gains in our estimation,
and seems to claim a less ignoble descent than
they.
We are still more tempted to adopt the conclusions
of the advocates for the plurality of species,
when, after having examined types taken from
every quarter of the globe, we return to the inhabitants
of Europe and Southern and Western
Asia. How vast a superiority these exhibit in
beauty, correctness of proportion, and regularity
of features! It is they who enjoy the honor of
having furnished the living models for the unrivalled
masterpieces of ancient sculpture. But
even among these races there has existed, since the
remotest times, a gradation of beauty, at the head
of which the European may justly be placed, as
well for symmetry of limbs as for vigorous muscular
development. Nothing, then, would appear
more reasonable than to pronounce the different
types of mankind as foreign to each other as are
animals of different species.
Such, indeed, was the conclusion arrived at by
those who first systematized their observations, and
attempted to establish a classification; and so far
as this classification depended upon general facts,
it seemed incontestable.
Camper took the lead. He was not content
with deciding upon merely superficial appearances,
but wished to rest his demonstrations upon a
mathematical basis, by defining, anatomically, the
distinguishing characteristics of different types.
If he succeeded in this, he would thereby establish
a strict and logical method of treating the subject,
preclude all doubt, and give to his opinions that
rigorous precision without which there is no true
science. I borrow from Mr. Prichard,[122] Camper's
own account of his method. "The basis on which
the distinction of nations[123] is founded, says he, may
be displayed by two straight lines; one of which
is to be drawn through the meatus auditorius (the
external entrance of the ear) to the base of the
nose; and the other touching the prominent centre
of the forehead, and falling thence on the most
prominent part of the upper jaw-bone, the head
being viewed in profile. In the angle produced
by these two lines, may be said to consist, not
only the distinctions between the skulls of the
several species of animals, but also those which
are found to exist between different nations; and
it might be concluded that nature has availed herself
of this angle to mark out the diversities of
the animal kingdom, and at the same time to establish
a scale from the inferior tribes up to the
most beautiful forms which are found in the human
species. Thus it will be found that the heads of
birds display the smallest angle, and that it always
becomes of greater extent as the animal approaches
more nearly to the human figure. Thus, there is
one species of the ape tribe, in which the head has
a facial angle of forty-two degrees; in another animal
of the same family, which is one of those
simiæ most approximating in figure to mankind,
the facial angle contains exactly fifty degrees.
Next to this is the head of an African negro,
which, as well as that of the Kalmuc, forms an
angle of seventy degrees; while the angle discovered
in the heads of Europeans contains eighty
degrees. On this difference of ten degrees in the
facial angle, the superior beauty of the European
depends; while that high character of sublime
beauty, which is so striking in some works of
ancient statuary, as in the head of Apollo, and in
the Medusa of Sisocles, is given by an angle
which amounts to one hundred degrees."
This method was seductive from its exceeding
simplicity. Unfortunately, facts were against it,
as happens to a good many theories. The curious
and interesting discoveries of Prof. Owen have
proved beyond dispute, that Camper, as well as
other anatomists since him, founded all their observations
on orangs of immature age, and that,
while the jaws become enlarged, and lengthened
with the increase of the maxillary apparatus, and
the zygomatic arch is extended, no corresponding
increase of the brain takes place. The importance
of this difference of age, with respect to the facial
angle, is very great in the simiæ. Thus, while
Camper, measuring the skull of young apes, has
found the facial angle even as much as sixty-four
degrees; in reality, it never exceeds, in the most
favored specimen, from thirty to thirty-five.
Between this figure and the seventy degrees of the
negro and Kalmuc, there is too wide a gap to
admit of the possibility of Camper's ascending
series.
The advocates of phrenological science eagerly
espoused the theory of the Dutch savant. They
imagined that they could detect a development of
instincts corresponding to the rank which the animal
occupied in his scale. But even here facts
were against them. It was objected that the elephant—not
to mention numerous other instances—whose
intelligence is incontestably superior to that
of the orang, presents a much more acute facial
angle than the latter. Even among the ape tribes,
the most intelligent, those most susceptible of
education, are by no means the highest in Camper's
scale.
Besides these great defects, the theory possessed
another very weak point. It did not apply to all
the varieties of the human species. The races
with pyramidal skulls found no place in it. Yet
this is a sufficiently striking characteristic.
Camper's theory being refuted, Blumenbach proposed
another system. He called his invention
norma verticalis, the vertical method. According
to him,[124] the comparison of the breadth of the
head, particularly of the vertex, points out the
principal and most strongly marked differences in
the general configuration of the cranium. He
adds that the whole cranium is susceptible of so
many varieties in its form, the parts which contribute
more or less to determine the national
character displaying such different proportions and
directions, that it is impossible to subject all these
diversities to the measurement of any lines and
angles. In comparing and arranging skulls according
to the varieties in their shape, it is preferable
to survey them in that method which presents
at one view the greatest number of characteristic
peculiarities. "The best way of obtaining this
end is to place a series of skulls, with the cheek-bones
on the same horizontal line, resting on the
lower jaws, and then, viewing them from behind,
and fixing the eye on the vertex of each, to mark
all the varieties in the shape of parts that contribute
most to the national character, whether
they consist in the direction of the maxillary and
malar bones, in the breadth or narrowness of the
oval figure presented by the vertex, or in the flattened
or vaulted form of the frontal bone."
The results which Blumenbach deduced from
this method, were a division of mankind into
five grand categories, each of which was again
subdivided into a variety of families and types.
This classification, also, is liable to many objections.
Like Camper's, it left out several important
characteristics. Owen supposed that these
objections might be obviated by measuring the
basis of the skull instead of the summit. "The
relative proportions and extent," says Prichard,
"and the peculiarities of formation of the different
parts of the cranium, are more fully discovered
by this mode of comparison, than by any other."
One of the most important results of this method
was the discovery of a line of demarcation between
man and the anthropoid apes, so distinct,
and clearly drawn, that it becomes thenceforward
impossible to find between the two genera the
connecting link which Camper supposed to exist.
It is, indeed, sufficient to cast one glance at the
bases of two skulls, one human, and the other
that of an orang, to perceive essential and decisive
differences. The antero-posterior diameter of
the basis of the skull is, in the orang, very much
longer than in man. The zygoma is situated in
the middle region of the skull, instead of being
included, as in all races of men, and even human
idiots, in the anterior half of the basis cranii; and
it occupies in the basis just one-third part of the
entire length of its diameter. Moreover, the position
of the great occipital foramen is very different
in the two skulls; and this feature is very important,
on account of its relations to the general
character of structure, and its influence on the
habits of the whole being. This foramen, in the
human head, is very near the middle of the basis
of the skull, or, rather, it is situated immediately
behind the middle transverse diameter; while, in
the adult chimpantsi, it is placed in the middle of
the posterior third part of the basis cranii.[125]
Owen certainly deserves great credit for his observations,
but I should prefer the most recent, as
well as ingenious, of cranioscopic systems, that of
the learned American, Dr. Morton, which has been
adopted by Mr. Carus.[126]
The substance of this theory is, that individuals
are superior in intellect in proportion as their skulls
are larger.[127] Taking this as the general rule, Dr.
Morton and Mr. Carus proceed thereby to demonstrate
the difference of races. The question to be
decided is, whether all types of the human race
have the same craniological development.
To elucidate this fact, Dr. Morton took a certain
number of skulls, belonging to the four principal
human families—Whites, Mongolians, Negroes,
and North American Indians—and, after
carefully closing every aperture, except the foramen
magnum, he measured their capacity by filling
them with well dried grains of pepper. The results
of this measurement are exhibited in the
subjoined table.[128]
|
Number
of skulls
measured. |
Average
capacity. |
Maximum. |
Minimum. |
| White races |
52 |
87 |
109 |
75 |
| Yellow races |
{ |
Mongolians |
10 |
83 |
93 |
69 |
| Malays |
18 |
81 |
89 |
64 |
| Copper-colored races |
147 |
82 |
100 |
60 |
| Negroes |
29 |
78 |
94 |
65 |
The results given in the first two columns are
certainly very curious, but to those in the last two
I attach little value. These two columns, giving
the maximum and minimum capacities, differ so
greatly from the second, which shows the average,
that they could be of weight only if Mr. Morton
had experimented upon a much greater number of
skulls, and if he had specified the social position
of the individuals to whom they belonged. Thus,
for his specimens of the white and copper-colored
races, he might select skulls that had belonged to
individuals rather above the common herd.[129] But
the Blacks and Mongolians were not represented
by the skulls of their great chiefs and mandarins.
This explains why Dr. Morton could ascribe the
figure 100 to an aboriginal of America, while the
most intelligent Mongolian that he examined did
not exceed 93, and is surpassed even by the negro,
who reaches 94. Such results are entirely incomplete,
fortuitous, and of no scientific value. In
questions of this kind, too much care cannot be
taken to reject conclusions which are based upon
the examination of individualities. I am, therefore,
unable to accept the second half of Dr. Morton's
calculations.
I am also disposed to doubt one of the details
in the other half. The figures 100, 83, and 78,
respectively indicating the average capacity of the
skull of the white, Mongolian, and negro, follow
a clear and evident gradation. But the figures 83,
81, and 82, given for the Mongol, the Malay, and
the red-skin, are conflicting; the more so, as Mr.
Carus does not hesitate to comprise the Mongols
and Malays into one and the same race, and thus
unites the figures 83 and 81—by which he receives,
as the average capacity of the yellow race,
82, or the same as that of the red-skins. Wherefore,
then, take the figure 82 as the characteristic
of a distinct race, and thus create, quite arbitrarily,
a fourth great subdivision of our species.
This anomaly supports the weak side of Mr.
Carus's system. The learned Saxon amuses himself
by supposing that, just as we see our planet
pass through the four stages of day, night, morning
twilight, and evening twilight, so there must
be four subdivisions of the human species, corresponding
to these variations of light. He perceives
in this a symbol,[130] which is always a dangerous
temptation to a mind of refined susceptibilities.
The white races are to him the nations of day;
the black, those of night; the yellow, those of
morning; the red, those of evening. It will be
perceived how many ingenious analogies may be
brought forward in support of this fanciful invention.
Thus, the European nations, by the brilliancy
of their scientific discoveries and their superior
civilization, are in an enlightened state, while the
blacks are plunged in the gloomy darkness of
ignorance. The Eastern nations live in a sort of
twilight, which affords them an incomplete, though
powerful, social existence. And as for the Indians
of the Western World, who are rapidly disappearing,
what more beautiful image of their destiny
can be found than the setting sun?
Unfortunately, parables are no arguments, and
Mr. Carus has somewhat injured his beautiful
theory by unduly abandoning himself to this
poetical current. Moreover, what I have said
with regard to all other ethnological theories—those
of Camper, Blumenbach, and Owen—holds
good of this: Mr. Carus does not succeed in systematizing
regularly the whole of the physiological
diversities observable in races.[131]
The advocates for unity of species have not
failed to take advantage of this inability on the
part of their opponents to find a system which
will include the many varieties of the human
family; and they pretend that, as the observations
upon the conformation of the skull cannot be reduced
to a system which demonstrates the original
separation of types, the different varieties must be
regarded as simple divergencies occasioned by adventitious
and secondary causes, and which do not
prove a difference of origin.
This is crying victory too soon. The difficulty
of finding a method does not always prove that
none can be found. But the believers in the
unity of species did not admit this reserve. To
set off their theory, they point to the fact that certain
tribes, belonging to the same race, instead of
presenting the same physical type, diverge from it
very considerably. They cite the different groups
of the mixed Malay-Polynesian family; and, without
paying attention to the proportion of the elements
which compose the mixtures, they say that
if groups of the same origin can assume such
totally different craniological and facial forms, the
greatest diversities of that kind do not prove the
primary plurality of origins.[132] Strange as it may
be to European eyes, the distinct types of the
negro and the Mongolian are not then demonstrative
of difference of species; and the differences
among the human family must be ascribed
simply to certain local causes operating during a
greater or less lapse of time.[133]
The advocates for the plurality of races, being
met with so many objections, good as well as bad,
have attempted to enlarge the circle of their arguments,
and, ceasing to make the skull their only
study, have proceeded to the examination of the
entire individual. They have rightly shown that
the differences do not exist merely in the aspect
of the face and formation of the skull, but, what
is no less important, they exist also in the shape
of the pelvis, the relative proportion of the limbs,
and the nature of the pilous system.
Camper and other naturalists had long since
perceived that the pelvis of the negro presented
certain peculiarities. Dr. Vrolik extended his researches
further, and observed that in the European
race the differences between the male and
female pelvis are much less distinctly marked,
while the pelvis of the negro, of either sex, partakes
in a very striking degree of the animal character.
The Amsterdam savant, starting from the
idea that the formation of the pelvis necessarily
influences that of the fœtus, concludes that there
must be difference of origin.[134]
Mr. Weber has attacked this theory with but
little success. He was obliged to allow that certain
formations of the pelvis occur more frequently
in one race than in another; and all he could do,
was to show that the rule is not without exceptions,
and that some individuals of the American, African,
or Mongol race presented the forms common
among the European. This is not proving a great
deal, especially as it never seems to have occurred
to Mr. Weber that these exceptions might be
owing to a mixture of blood.
The adversaries of the unity doctrine pretend
that the European is better proportioned. They
are answered that the excessive leanness of the
extremities among those nations which subsist
principally on vegetable diet, or whose alimentation
is imperfect, is not at all surprising; and this
reply is certainly valid. But a much less conclusive
reply is made to the argument drawn from
the excessive development of bust among the
mountaineers of Peru (Quichuas) by those who
are unwilling to recognize it as a specific characteristic;
for to pretend, as they do, that it can be
explained by the elevation of the Andes, is not
advancing a very serious reason.[135] There are in
the world many mountain populations who are
constituted very differently from the Quichuas.[136]
The color of the skin is another argument for
diversity of origin. But the opposite party refuse
to accept this as a specific characteristic, for two
reasons: first, because, they say, this coloration
depends upon climatic circumstances, and is not
permanent—which is, to say the least of it, a
very bold assertion; secondly, because color is
liable to indefinite gradations, by which white
insensibly passes into yellow, yellow into black,
so that it is impossible to find a line of demarcation
sufficiently decided. This fact simply proves
the existence of innumerable hybrids; an observation
to which the advocates for unity are constantly
inattentive.
With regard to the specific differences in the
formation of the pile, Mr. Flourens brings his great
authority in favor of the original unity of race.[137]
I have now passed rapidly in review the more
or less inconsistent arguments of the advocates of
unity; but their strongest one still remains. It is
of great force, and I therefore reserved it for the
last—the facility with which the different branches
of the human family produce hybrids, and the
fecundity of these hybrids themselves.
The observations of naturalists seem to have
well established the fact that half-breeds can
spring only from nearly related species, and that
even in that case they are condemned to sterility.
It has been further observed that, even among
closely allied species, where fecundation is possible,
copulation is repugnant, and obtained, generally,
either by force or ruse, which would lead
us to suppose that, in a state of nature, the number
of hybrids is even more limited than that
obtained by the intervention of man. It has,
therefore, been concluded that, among the number
of specific characteristics, we must place the
faculty of producing prolific offspring.
As nothing authorizes us to believe that the
human race are exempt from this law, so nothing
has hitherto been able to shake the strength of
this objection,[138] which, more than all the others,
holds the advocates for plurality in check. It is,
indeed, affirmed that, in certain portions of Oceanica,
indigenous women, after having brought forth
a half-breed European child, can no longer be
fecundated by compatriots. If this assertion be
admitted as correct, it might serve as a starting
point for further investigations; but at present it
could not be used to invalidate the admitted principles
of science upon the generation of hybrids—against
the deductions drawn from these it proves
nothing.
PERMANENCY OF TYPES.
The language of Holy Writ in favor of common origin—The
permanency of their characteristics separates the races of
men as effectually as if they were distinct creations—Arabs,
Jews—Prichard's argument about the influence of climate
examined—Ethnological history of the Turks and Hungarians.
The believers in unity of race affirm that types
are different in appearance only; that, in fact, the
differences existing among them are owing to local
circumstances still in operation, or to an accidental
peculiarity of conformation in the progenitor of a
branch, and that, though they all, more or less,
diverge from the original prototype, they all are
capable of again returning to it. According to
this, then, the negro, the North American savage,
the Tungoose of North Siberia, might, under
favorable circumstances, gain all the physical and
mental attributes which now distinguish the European.
Such a theory is inadmissible.
We have shown above that the only solid scientific
stronghold of the believers in unity of species
is the prolificness of human hybrids. This fact,
which seems at present so difficult to refute, may
not always present the same difficulties, and would
not, by itself, suffice to arrest my conclusions,
were it not supported by another argument which,
I confess, appears to me of greater moment:
Scripture is said to declare against difference of
origin.
If the text is clear, peremptory, and indisputable,
we must submit; the most serious doubts must
disappear; human reason, in its imperfection, must
bow to faith. Better to let the veil of obscurity
cover a point of erudition, than to call in question
so high and incontestable an authority. If the
Bible declares that mankind are descended from
the same common stock, all that goes to prove the
contrary is mere semblance, unworthy of consideration.
But is the Bible really explicit on this
point? The sacred writings have a much higher
purpose than the elucidation of ethnological problems;
and if it be admitted that they may have
been misunderstood in this particular, and that
without straining the text, it may be interpreted
otherwise, I return to my first impression.
The Bible evidently speaks of Adam as the
progenitor of the white race, because from him
are descended generations which—it cannot be
doubted—were white. But nothing proves that
at the first redaction of the Adamite genealogies
the colored races were considered as forming part
of the species. There is not a word said about the
yellow nations, and I hope to prove, in my second
volume, that the pretended black color of the
patriarch Ham rests upon no other basis than an
arbitrary interpretation. At a later period, doubtless,
translators and commentators, who affirmed
that Adam was the father of all beings called men,
were obliged to bring in as descendants of the sons
of Noah all the different varieties with whom they
were acquainted. In this manner, Japheth was
considered the progenitor of the European nations,
while the inhabitants of the greater portion of
Asia were looked upon as the descendants of
Shem; and those of Africa, of Ham. This arrangement
answers admirably for one portion of
the globe. But what becomes of the population
of the rest of the world, who are not included in
this classification?
I will not, at present, particularly insist upon
this idea. I dislike the mere appearance of impugning
even simple interpretations if they have
the sanction of the church, and wish merely to
intimate that their authority might, perhaps, be
questioned without transgressing the limits established
by the church.[139] If this is not the case, and
we must accept, in the main, the opinions of the
believers in unity, I still do not despair that the
facts may be explained in a manner different from
theirs, and that the principal physical and moral
differences among the branches of the human
family may exist, with all their necessary consequences,
independently of unity or plurality of
origin.
The specific identity of all canines is acknowledged,[140]
but who would undertake the difficult
task of proving that all these animals, to whatever
variety they may belong, were possessed of
the same shapes, instincts, habits, qualities? The
same is the case with many other species, the
equine, bovine, ursine, etc. Here we find perfect
identity of origin, and yet diversity in every other
respect, and a diversity so radical, that even intermixture
can not produce a real identity of character
in the several types. On the contrary, so long
as each type remains pure, their distinctive features
are permanent, and reproduced, without any sensible
deviation, in each successive generation.[141]
This incontestable fact has led to the inquiry
whether in those species which, by domestication,
have lost their original habits, and contracted
others, the forms and instincts of the primitive
stock were still discernible. I think this highly
improbable, and can hardly believe that we shall
ever be able to determine the shape and characteristics
of the prototype of each species, and how
much or how little it is approached by the deviations
now before our eyes. A very great number
of vegetables present the same problem, and with
regard to man, whose origin it is most interesting
and important for us to know, the inquiry seems
to be attended with the greatest and most insurmountable
difficulties.
Each race is convinced that its progenitor had
precisely the characteristics which now distinguish
it. This is the only point upon which their traditions
perfectly agree. The white races represent
to themselves an Adam and Eve, whom Blumenbach
would at once have pronounced Caucasians;
the Mohammedan negroes, on the contrary, believe
the first pair to have been black; these being created
in God's own image, it follows that the Supreme
Being, and also the angels, are of the same
color, and the prophet himself was certainly too
greatly favored by his Sender to display a pale
skin to his disciples.[142]
Unfortunately, modern science has as yet found
no clue to this maze of opinions. No admissible
theory has been advanced which affords the least
light upon the subject, and, in all probability, the
various types differ as much from their common
progenitor—if they possess one—as they do among
themselves. The causes of these deviations are
exceedingly difficult to ascertain. The believers
in the unity of origin pretend to find them, as I remarked
before, in various local circumstances, such
as climate, habits, &c. It is impossible to coincide
with such an opinion, for, although these circumstances
have always existed, they have not, within
historical times, produced such alterations in the
races which were exposed to their influence as to
make it even probable that they were the causes
of so vast and radical a dissimilarity as we now
see before us. Suppose two tribes, not yet departed
from the primitive type, to inhabit, one an
alpine region in the interior of a continent, the
other some isolated isle in the immensity of the
ocean. Their atmospheric and alimentary conditions
would, of course, be totally different. If we
further suppose one of these tribes to be abundantly
provided with nourishment, and the other
possessing but precarious means of subsistence;
one to inhabit a cold latitude, and the other to be
exposed to the action of a tropical sun; it seems
to me that we have accumulated the most essential
local contrasts. Allowing these physical causes to
operate a sufficient lapse of time, the two groups
would, no doubt, ultimately assume certain peculiar
characteristics, by which they might be distinguished
from each other. But no imaginable
length of time could bring about any essential,
organic change of conformation; and as a proof
of this assertion, I would point to the populations
of opposite portions of the globe, living under
physical conditions the most widely different, who,
nevertheless, present a perfect resemblance of type.
The Hottentots so strongly resemble the inhabitants
of the Celestial Empire, that it has even been
supposed, though without good reasons, that they
were originally a Chinese colony. A great similarity
exists between the ancient Etruscans, whose
portraits have come down to us, and the Araucanians
of South America. The features and outlines
of the Cherokees seem to be perfectly identical
with those of several Italian populations, the
Calabrians, for instance. The inhabitants of Auvergne,
especially the female portion, much more
nearly resemble in physiognomy several Indian
tribes of North America than any European nation.
Thus we see that in very different climes,
and under conditions of life so very dissimilar,
nature can reproduce the same forms. The peculiar
characteristics which now distinguish the different
types cannot, therefore, be the effects of
local circumstances such as now exist.[143]
Though it is impossible to ascertain what physical
changes different branches of the human
family may have undergone anterior to the historic
epoch, yet we have the best proofs that since
then, no race has changed its peculiar characteristics.
The historic epoch comprises about one
half of the time during which our earth is supposed
to have been inhabited, and there are several
nations whom we can trace up to the verge of
ante-historic ages; yet we find that the races then
known have remained the same to our days, even
though they ceased to inhabit the same localities,
and consequently were no longer exposed to the
influence of the same external conditions.
Witness the Arabs. As they are represented
on the monuments of Egypt, so we find them at
present, not only in the arid deserts of their native
land, but in the fertile regions and moist climate
of Malabar, Coromandel, and the islands of the
Indian Ocean. We find them again, though more
mixed, on the northern coasts of Africa, and, although
many centuries have elapsed since their
invasion, traces of Arab blood are still discernible
in some portions of Roussillon, Languedoc, and
Spain.
Next to the Arabs I would instance the Jews.
They have emigrated to countries in every respect
the most dissimilar to Palestine, and have not
even preserved their ancient habits of life. Yet
their type has always remained peculiar and the
same in every latitude and under every physical
condition. The warlike Rechabites in the deserts
of Arabia present to us the same features as our
own peaceable Jews. I had occasion not long
since to examine a Polish Jew. The cut of his
face, and especially his eyes, perfectly betrayed
his origin. This inhabitant of a northern zone,
whose direct ancestors for several generations had
lived among the snows and ice of an inhospitable
clime, seemed to have been tanned but the day
before, by the ardent rays of a Syrian sun. The
same Shemitic face which the Egyptian artist represented
some four thousand or more years ago,
we recognize daily around us; and its principal
and really characteristic features are equally
strikingly preserved under the most diverse climatic
circumstances. But the resemblance is not
confined to the face only, it extends to the conformation
of the limbs and the nature of the temperament.
German Jews are generally smaller
and more slender in stature than the European
nations among whom they have lived for centuries;
and the age of puberty arrives earlier
with them than with their compatriots of another
race.[144]
This is, I am aware, an assertion diametrically
opposed to Mr. Prichard's opinions. This celebrated
physiologist, in his zeal to prove the unity
of species, attempts to prove that the age of puberty
in both sexes is the same everywhere and
among all races. His arguments are based upon
the precepts of the Old Testament and the Koran,
by which the marriageable age of women is fixed
at fifteen, and even eighteen, according to Abou-Hanifah.[145]
I hardly think that biblical testimony is admissible
in matters of this kind, because the Scriptures
often narrate facts which cannot be accounted
for by the ordinary laws of nature. Thus, the
pregnancy of Sarah at an extreme old age, and
when Abraham himself was a centenarian, is an
event upon which no ordinary course of reasoning
could be based. As for the precepts of the Mohammedan
law, I would observe that they were
intended to insure not merely the physical aptitude
for marriage, but also that degree of mental maturity
and education which befit a woman about
to enter on the duties of so serious a station. The
prophet makes it a special injunction that the religious
education of young women should be continued
to the time of their marriage. Taking this
view, the law-giver would naturally incline to delay
the period of marriage as long as possible, in order
to afford time for the development of the reasoning
faculties, and he would therefore be less precipitate
in his authorizations than nature in hers. But
there are some other proofs which I would adduce
against Mr. Prichard's grave arguments, which,
though of less weighty character, are not the less
conclusive, and will settle the question, I think, in
my favor.
Poets, in their tales of love, are mainly solicitous
of exhibiting their heroines in the first bloom of
beauty, without caring much about their moral and
mental development. Accordingly, we find that
oriental poets have always made their lovers much
younger than the age prescribed by the Koran.
Zelika and Leila are not, surely, fourteen years
old. In India, this difference is still more striking.
Sacontala, in Europe, would be quite a small girl,
a mere child. The spring-time of life for a Hindoo
female is from the age of nine to that of twelve.
In the Chinese romance, Yu-Kiao-li, the heroine is
sixteen; and her father is in great distress, and
laments pathetically that at so advanced an age
she should still be unmarried. The Roman writers,
following in the footsteps of their Greek preceptors,
took fifteen as the period of bloom of a
woman's life; our own authors for a long time adhered
to these models, but since the ideas of the
North have begun to exert their influence upon
our literature, the heroines of our novels are full-grown
young ladies of eighteen, and very often
more.[146]
But arguments of a more serious character are
by no means wanting. Besides what I said of the
precocity of the Jews in Germany, I may point
out the reverse as a peculiarity of the population
of many portions of Switzerland. Among them
the physical development is so slow, that the age
of puberty is not always attained at twenty. The
Zingaris, or gypsies, display the same physical
precocity as their Hindoo ancestry, and, under the
austere sky of Russia and Moldavia, they preserve,
together with their ancient notions and habits, the
general aspect of face and form of the Pariahs.[147]
I do not, however, wish to attack Mr. Prichard
upon all points. There is one of his conclusions
which I readily adopt, viz.: "that the 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."[148] This
conclusion is very well founded, and I shall not
seek to invalidate it; but it appears to me that it
contradicts a little the principles so ably advocated
by the learned physiologist and antiquary.
The reader must have perceived that the discussion
turns solely upon permanency of type. If
it can be proved that the different branches of the
human family are each possessed of a certain individuality
which is independent of climate and the
lapse of ages, and can be effaced only by intermixture,
the question of origin is reduced to
little importance; for, in that case, the different
types are no less completely and irrevocably separated
than if their specific differences arose from
diversity of origin.
That such is the case, we have already proved
by the testimony of Egyptian sculptures with regard
to the Arabs, and by our observations upon
the Jews and gypsies. Should any further proofs
be needed, we would mention that the paintings
in the temples and subterraneous buildings of the
Nile valley as indubitably attest the permanence
of the negro type. There we see the same crisped
hair, prognathous skull, and thick lips. The recent
discovery of the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad[149] has removed
beyond doubt the conclusions previously
formed from the figured monuments of Persepolis,
viz.: that the present Assyrian nations are
physiologically identical with those who formerly
inhabited the same regions.
If similar investigations could be made upon a
greater number of existing races, the results would
be the same. We have established the fact of permanence
of types in all cases where investigation
is possible, and the burden of proof, therefore, falls
upon the dissenting party.
Their arguments, indeed, are in direct contradiction
to the most obvious facts. Thus they allege,
although the most ordinary observation shows the
contrary, that climate has produced alterations in
the Jewish type, inasmuch as many light-haired,
blue-eyed Jews are found in Germany. For this
argument to be of any weight in their position,
the advocates for unity of race must recognize climate
to be the sole, or at least principal, cause of
this phenomenon. But the adherents of that doctrine
elsewhere assert that the color of the eyes,
hair, and skin, no ways depends upon geographical
situation or the action of heat and cold.[150] As an
evidence of this, they justly cite the Cinghalese,
who have blue eyes and light hair;[151] they even
observe among them a very considerable difference
of complexion, varying from a light brown to
black. Again, they admit that the Samoiedes and
Tungusians, though living on the borders of the
Frozen Ocean,[152] have an exceedingly swarthy complexion.
If, therefore, climate exerts no influence
upon the complexion and color of hair and eyes,
these marks must be considered as of no importance,
or as pertaining to race. We know that red
hair is not at all uncommon in the East, and at no
time has been so; it cannot, therefore, create much
surprise if we occasionally find it among the Jews
of Germany. This fact cannot be adduced as evidence
either in favor of, or against, the permanence
of types.
The advocates for unity are no less unfortunate
in their historical arguments. They furnish but
two; the Turks and the Magyars. The Asiatic
origin of the former is supposed to be established
beyond doubt, as well as of their intimate relationship
with the Finnic branches of the Laplanders
and Ostiacs. It follows from this that they must
originally have displayed the yellow skin, projecting
cheek bones, and low stature of the Mongolian
races. This point being settled, we are told to look
at the Turks of our day, who exhibit all the characteristics
of the European type. Types, then,
are not permanent, it is victoriously concluded,
because the Turks have undergone such a transformation.
"It is true," say the adherents of the
unity school, "that some pretend there had been
an admixture of Greek, Georgian, and Circassian
blood. But this admixture can have taken place
only to a very limited extent; all Turks are not
rich enough to buy their wives in the Caucasus, or
to have seraglios filled with white slaves; on the
other hand, the hatred which the Greeks cherish
for their conquerors, and the religious antipathies
of both nations, were not favorable to alliances
between them, and consequently we see them—though
inhabiting the same country—as distinct
at this day as at the time of the conquest."[153]
These arguments are more specious than solid.
In the first place, I am greatly disposed to doubt
the Finnic origin of the Turkish race, because the
only evidence that has hitherto been produced in
favor of this supposition is affinity of language,
and I shall hereafter give my reasons for believing
this argument—when unsupported by any other—as
extremely unreliable, and open to doubt. But
even if we suppose the ancestors of the Turkish
nation to belong to the yellow race, it is easy to
show why their descendants have so widely departed
from that type.
Centuries elapsed from the time of the first appearance
of the Turanian hordes to the day which
saw them the masters of the city of Constantine,
and during that period, multifarious events took
place; the fortune of the Western Turks has been
a checkered one. Alternately conquerors or conquered,
masters or slaves, they have become incorporated
with various nationalities. According to
the annalists,[154] their Orghuse ancestors, who descended
from the Altai Mountains, inhabited in
Abraham's time the immense steppes of Upper
Asia which extend from Katai to the sea of Aral,
from Siberia to Thibet, and which, as has recently
been proved—were then the abode of numerous
Germanic tribes.[155] It is a singular circumstance,
that the first mentioning by Oriental writers of the
tribes of Turkestan is in celebrating them for
their beauty of face and form.[156] The most extravagant
hyperboles are lavished on them without
reserve, and as these writers had before their eyes
the handsomest types of the old world with which
to compare them, it is not probable that they
should have wasted their enthusiasm on creatures
so ugly and repulsive as are generally the races of
pure Mongolian blood. Thus, notwithstanding
the dicta of philology, I think serious doubts
might be raised on that point.[157]
But I am willing to admit that the Turcomannic
tribes were, indeed, as is supposed, of Finnic origin.
Let us come down to a later period—the Mohammedan
era. We then find these tribes under various
denominations and in equally various situations,
dispersed over Persia and Asia Minor. The
Osmanli were not yet existing at that time, and
their predecessors, the Seldjuks, were already
greatly mixed with the races that had embraced
Islamism. We see from the example of Ghaïased-din-Keikosrew,
who lived in 1237, that the Seljuk
princes were in the habit of frequently intermarrying
with Arab women. They must have gone
still further, for we find that Aseddin, the mother
of one of the Seljuk dynasties, was a Christian.
It is reasonable to suppose, that if the chiefs of
the nation, who everywhere are the most anxious
to preserve the purity of their genealogy, showed
themselves so devoid of prejudice, their subjects
were still less scrupulous on that point. Their
constant inroads in which they ranged over vast
districts, gave them ample opportunities for capturing
slaves, and there is every reason to believe
that already in the 13th century, the ancient
Orghuse branch was strongly tinctured with Shemitic
blood.
To this branch belonged Osman, the son of Ortoghrul,
and father of the Osmanli. But few
families were collected around his tent. His army
was, at first, little better than a band of adventurers,
and the same expedient which swelled the
ranks of the first builders of Rome, increased the
number of adherents of this new Romulus of the
Steppes. Every desperate adventurer or fugitive,
of whatever nation, was welcome among them,
and assured of protection. I shall suppose that
the downfall of the Seljuk empire brought to their
standards a great number of their own race. But
we have already said that this race was very much
mixed; and besides, this addition was insufficient,
as is proved by the fact that, from that time, the
Turks began to capture slaves for the avowed purpose
of repairing, by this means, the waste which
constant warfare made in their own ranks. In
the beginning of the 14th century, the sultan Orkhan,
following the advice of his vizier, Khalil
Tjendereli, surnamed the Black, instituted the
famous military body called Janissaries.[158] They
were composed entirely of Christian children captured
in Poland, Germany, Italy, or the Bizantine
Empire, who were educated in the Mohammedan
religion and the practice of arms. Under
Mohammed IV., their number had increased to
140,000 men. Here, then, we find an influx of at
least half a million male individuals of European
blood in the course of four centuries.
But the infusion of European blood was not
limited to this. The piracy which was carried on,
on so large a scale, in the whole basin of the Mediterranean,
had for one of its principal objects
the replenishment of the harems. Every victory
gained increased the number of believers in the
Prophet. A great number of the prisoners of war
abjured Christianity, and were henceforth counted
among the true believers. The localities adjacent
to the field of battle supplied as many females as
the marauding victors could lay hold of. In some
cases, this sort of booty was so plentiful that it
became inconvenient to dispose of. Hammer relates[159]
that, on one occasion, the handsomest female
captive was bartered for one boot. When we consider
that the Turkish population of the whole
Ottoman empire never exceeded twelve millions,
it becomes apparent that the history of so amalgamated
a nation affords no arguments, either for or
against, the permanency of type. We will now
proceed to the second historic argument advanced
by the believers in unity.
"The Magyars," they say, "are of Finnic origin,
nearly related to the Laplanders, Samoiedes, and
Esquimaux, all of which are people of low stature,
with big faces, projecting cheek-bones, and
yellowish or dirty brown complexion. Yet the
Magyars are tall, well formed, and have handsome
features. The Finns have always been feeble, unintelligent,
and oppressed; the Magyars, on the
contrary, occupy a distinguished rank among the
conquerors of the earth, and are noted for their
love of liberty and independence. As they are
so immensely superior, both physically and morally,
to all the collateral branches of the Finnic
stock, it follows that they have undergone an
enormous transformation."[160]
If such a transformation had ever taken place,
it would, indeed, be astonishing and inexplicable
even to those who ascribe the least stability to
types, for it must have occurred within the last
800 years, during which we know that the compatriots
of St. Stephen[161] mixed but little with surrounding
nations. But the whole course of reasoning
is based upon false premises, for the Hungarians
are most assuredly not of Finnic origin.
Mr. A. De Gérando[162] has placed this fact beyond
doubt. He has proved, by the authority of Greek
and Arab historians, as well as Hungarian annalists
and by indisputable philological arguments,
that the Magyars are a fragment of that great inundation
of nations which swept over Europe
under the denomination of Huns. It will be objected
that this is merely giving the Hungarians
another parentage, but which connects them no
less intimately with the yellow race. Such is not
the case. The designation of Huns applies not
only to a nation, but is also a collective appellation
of a very heterogeneous mass. Among the
tribes which rallied around the standards of Attila
and his ancestors, there were some which have at all
times been distinguished from the rest by the term
white Huns. Among them the Germanic blood
predominated.[163] It is true, that the close contact
with the yellow race somewhat adulterated the
breed; but this very fact is singularly exhibited
in the somewhat angular and bony facial conformation
of the Hungarians. I conclude, therefore,
that the Magyars were white Huns, and of Germanic
origin, though slightly mixed with the Mongolian
stock.
The philological difficulty of their speaking a
non-Germanic dialect is not insurmountable. I
have already alluded to the Mongolian Scyths
who yet spoke an Arian tongue;[164] I might, moreover,
cite the Norman settlers in France who, not
many years after their conquest, exchanged their
Scandinavian dialect, in a great measure, for the
Celto-Latin of their subjects,[165] whence sprang that
singular compound called Norman-French, which
the followers of William the Conqueror imported
into England, and which now forms an element of
the English language.
There is, therefore, no reason to suppose that
the agency of climate and change of habits have
transformed a Laplander, or an Ostiak, or a
Tunguse, or a Permian, into a St. Stephen or a
Kossuth.
Having thus, I think, refuted the only two historical
instances which the believers in unity of
species adduce, of a pretended alteration of type
by local circumstances and change of habits, and
having, moreover, instanced several cases where
these causes could produce no alteration; the fact
of permanency of type seems to me to be incontestably
established.[166] Thus, whichever side we
take, whether we believe in original unity, or
original diversity, is immaterial; the several groups
of the human species are, at present, so perfectly
separated from each other, that no exterior influence
can efface their distinctive peculiarities. The
permanency of these differences, so long as there
is no intermixture, produces precisely the same
physical and moral results as if the groups were
so many distinct and separate creations.
In conclusion, I shall repeat what I have said
above, that I have very serious doubts as to the
unity of origin. These doubts, however, I am compelled
to repress, because they are in contradiction
to a scientific fact which I cannot refute—the prolificness
of half-breeds; and secondly, what is of
much greater weight with me, they impugn a
religious interpretation sanctioned by the church.
CLASSIFICATION OF RACES.
Primary varieties—Test for recognizing them; not always reliable—Effects
of intermixture—Secondary varieties—Tertiary
varieties—Amalgamation of races in large cities—Relative
scale of beauty in various branches of the human family—Their
inequality in muscular strength and powers of endurance.
[In supervising the publication of this work, I have
thought proper to omit, in this place, a portion of the
translation, because containing ideas and suggestions
which—though they might be novel to a French public—have
often been laid before English readers, and as
often proven untenable. This omission, however, embraces
no essential feature of the book, no link of the
chain of argumentation. It extends no further than
a digressional attempt of the author to account for the
diversities observable in the various branches of the
human family, by imagining the existence of cosmogonal
causes, long since effete, but operating for a time
soon after the creation of man, when the globe was
still in a nascent and chaotic state. It must be obvious
that all such speculations can never bridge over the
wide abyss which separates hypotheses from facts.
They afford a boundless field for play to a fertile
imagination, but will never stand the test of criticism.
Even if we were to suppose that such causes had effected
diversities in the human family in primeval times, the
types thus produced must all have perished in the
flood, save that to which Noah and his family belonged.
If these writers, however, should be disposed to deny
the universality of the deluge, they would evidently
do greater violence to the language of Holy Writ, than
by at once supposing a plurality of origins for mankind.
The legitimate field of human science is the investigation
of the laws now governing the material world.
Beyond this it may not go. Whatever is recognized as
not coming within the scope of action of these laws,
belongs not to its province. We have proved, and I
think it is generally admitted, that the actual varieties
of the human family are permanent; that there are no
causes now in operation, which can transform them.
The investigation of those causes, therefore, cannot
properly be said to belong to the province of human
science. In regard to their various systems of classification,
naturalists may be permitted to dispute about
unity or plurality of species, because the use of the
word species is more or less arbitrary; it is an expedient
to secure a convenient arrangement. But none,
I hope, presume ever to be able to fathom the mysteries
of Creative Power—to challenge the fiat of the Almighty,
and inquire into his means.—H.]
In the investigation of the moral and intellectual
diversities of races, there is no difficulty so
great as an accurate classification. I am disposed
to think a separation into three great groups sufficient
for all practical purposes. These groups I
shall call primary varieties, not in the sense of
distinct creations, but as offering obvious and well-defined
distinguishing characteristics. I would
designate them respectively by the terms white,
yellow, and black. I am aware of the inaccuracy
of these appellations, because the complexion is
not always the distinctive feature of these groups:
other and more important physiological traits must
be taken into consideration. But as I have not
the right to invent new names, and am, therefore,
compelled to select among those already in
use, I have chosen these because, though by no
means correct, they seemed preferable to others
borrowed from geography or history, and not so
apt as the latter to add to the confusion which
already sufficiently perplexes the investigator of
this subject. To obviate any misconception here
and hereafter, I wish it to be distinctly understood
that by "white" races I mean those usually comprised
under the name of Caucasian, Shemitic,
Japhetic; by "black," the Hamitic, African, etc.;
by "yellow," the Altaic, Mongolian, Finnic, and
Tartar. These I consider to be the three categories
under which all races of the human family
can be placed. I shall hereafter explain my reasons
for not recognizing the American Indians as a
separate variety, and for classing them among the
yellow races.[167]
It is obvious that each of these groups comprises
races very dissimilar among themselves,
each of which, besides the general characteristics
belonging to the whole group, possesses others
peculiar to itself. Thus, in the group of black
races we find marked distinctions: the tribes with
prognathous skull and woolly hair, the low-caste
Hindoos of Kamaoun and of Dekhan, the Pelagian
negroes of Polynesia, etc. In the yellow
group, the Tungusians, Mongols, Chinese, etc.
There is every reason to believe that these sub-varieties
are coeval; that is, the same causes which
produced one, produced at the same time all the
others.
It is, moreover, extremely difficult to determine
the typical character of each variety. In the
white, and also in the yellow group, the mixture
of the sub-varieties is so great, that it is impossible
to fix upon the type. In the black group,
the type is perhaps discernible; at least, it is preserved
in its greatest purity.
To ascertain the relative purity or mixture of a
race, a criterion has been adopted by many, who
consider it infallible: this is resemblance of face,
form, constitution, etc. It is supposed that the
purer a race has preserved itself, the greater must
be the exterior resemblances of all the individuals
composing it. On the contrary, considerable and
varied intermixtures would produce an infinite
diversity of appearance among individuals. This
fact is incontestable, and of great value in ethnological
science, but I do not think it quite so reliable
as some suppose.
Intermixture of races does, indeed, produce at
first individual dissemblances, for few individuals
belong in precisely the same degree to either of
the races composing the mixture. But suppose
that, in course of time, the fusion has become complete—that
every individual member of the mixed
race had precisely the same proportion of mixed
blood as every other—he could not then differ
greatly from his neighbor. The whole mass, in
that case, must present the same general homogeneity
as a pure race. The perfect amalgamation
of two races of the same group would, therefore,
produce a new type, presenting a fictitious appearance
of purity, and reproducing itself in succeeding
generations.
I imagine it possible, therefore, that a "secondary"
type may in time assume all the characteristics
of a "primary" one, viz: resemblance of the
individuals composing it. The lapse of time to
produce this complete fusion would necessarily be
commensurate to the original diversity of the constituent
elements. Where two races belonging to
different groups combine, such a complete fusion
would probably never be possible. I can illustrate
this by reference to individuals. Parents of widely
different nations generally have children but little
resembling each other—some apparently partaking
more of the father's type, some more of the mother's.
But if the parents are both of the same,
or at least of homogeneous stocks, their offspring
exhibits little or no variety; and though the children
might resemble neither of the parents, they
would be apt to resemble one another.
To distinguish the varieties produced by a fusion
of proximate races from those which are the effect
of intermixture between races belonging to different
groups, I shall call the latter tertiary varieties.
Thus the woolly-headed negro and the Pelagian
are both "primary" varieties belonging to the same
group; their offspring I would call a "secondary"
variety; but the hymen of either of them with a
race belonging to the white or yellow groups,
would produce a "tertiary" variety. To this last,
then, belong the mulatto, or cross between white
and black, and the Polynesian, who is a cross between
the black and the yellow.[168] Half-breeds of
this kind display, in various proportions and degrees,
the special characteristics of both the ancestral
races. But a complete fusion, as in the case
of branches of the same group, probably never
results from the union of two widely dissimilar
races, or, at least, would require an incommensurable
lapse of time.
If a tertiary type is again modified by intermixture
with another, as is the case in a cross between
a mulatto and a Mongolian, or between a Polynesian
and a European, the ethnical mixture is too
great to permit us, in the present state of the
science, to arrive at any general conclusions. It
appears that every additional intermixture increases
the difficulty of complete fusion. In a population
composed of a great number of dissimilar ethnical
elements, it would require countless ages for a
thorough amalgamation; that is to say, so complete
a mixture that each individual would have
precisely the kind and relative proportion of mixed
blood as every other. It follows, therefore, that,
in a population so constituted, there is an infinite
diversity of form and features among individuals,
some pertaining more to one type than another.
In other words, there being no equilibrium between
the various types, they crop out here and
there without any apparent reason.
We find this spectacle among the great civilized
nations of Europe, especially in their capitals and
seaports. In these great vortexes of humanity, every
possible variety of our species has been absorbed.
Negro, Chinese, Tartar, Hottentot, Indian, Malay,
and all the minor varieties produced by their mixture,
have contributed their contingent to the population
of our large cities. Since the Roman domination,
this amalgamation has continually increased,
and is still increasing in proportion as our inventions
bring in closer proximity the various portions
of the globe. It affects all classes to some extent,
but more especially the lowest. Among them you
may see every type of the human family more or
less represented. In London, Paris, Cadiz, Constantinople,
in any of the greater marts and thoroughfares
of the world, the lower strata of the
native population exhibit every possible variety,
from the prognathous skull to the pyramidal: you
shall find one man with hair as crisp as a negro's;
another, with the eyes of an ancient German, or
the oblique ones of a Chinese; a third, with a
thoroughly Shemitic countenance; yet all three
may be close relations, and would be greatly surprised
were they told that any but the purest white
blood flows in their veins. In these vast gathering
places of humanity, if you could take the first
comer—a native of the place—and ascend his
genealogical tree to any height, you would probably
be amazed at the strange ancestry at the top.
It may now be asked whether, for all the various
races of which I have spoken, there is but one
standard of beauty, or whether each has one of its
own. Helvetius, in his De l'Esprit, maintains that
the idea of beauty is purely conventional and variable.
This assertion found many advocates in
its time, but it is at present superseded by the
more philosophical theory that the conception of
the beautiful is an absolute and invariable idea,
and can never have a merely optional application.
Believing the latter view to be correct, I do not
hesitate to compare the various races of man in
point of beauty, and to establish a regular scale of
gradation. Thus, if we compare the various races,
from the ungainly appearance of the Pelagian or
Pecherai up to the noble proportions of a Charlemagne,
the expressive regularity of features of a
Napoleon, or the majestic countenance of a Louis
XIV., we shall find in the lowest on the scale a
sort of rudimentary development of the beauty
which attracts us in the highest; and in proportion
to the perfectness of that development, the races
rise in the scale of beauty.[169] Taking the white
race as the standard of beauty, we perceive all
the others more or less receding from that model.
There is, then, an inequality in point of beauty
among the various races of men, and this inequality
is permanent and indelible.[170]
The next question to be decided is, whether
there is also an inequality in point of physical
strength. It cannot be denied that the American
Indians and the Hindoos are greatly inferior to us
in this respect. Of the Australians, the same may
safely be asserted. Even the negroes possess less
muscular vigor.[171] It is necessary, however, to distinguish
between purely muscular force—that which
exerts itself suddenly at a given moment—and the
force of resistance or capacity for endurance. The
degree of the former is measured by its intensity,
that of the other by its duration. Of the two, the
latter is the typical—the standard by which to
judge of the capabilities of races. Great muscular
strength is found among races notoriously weak.
Among the lowest of the negro tribes, for instance,
it would not be difficult to find individuals that
could match an experienced European wrestler or
English boxer. This is equally true of the Lascars
and Malays. But we must take the masses, and
judge according to the amount of long-continued,
persevering toil and fatigue they are capable of.
In this respect, the white races are undoubtedly
entitled to pre-eminence.
But there are differences, again, among the white
races, both in beauty and in strength, which even
the extensive ethnical mixture, that European nations
present, has not entirely obliterated. The
Italians are handsomer than the French and the
Spaniards, and still more so than the Swiss and
Germans. The English also present a high degree
of corporeal beauty; the Sclavonian nations a
comparatively humble one.
In muscular power, the English rank far above
all other European nations; but the French and
Spaniards are greatly superior in power of endurance:
they suffer less from fatigue, from privations,
and the rigors and changes of climate. This
question has been settled beyond dispute by the
fatal campaign in Russia. While the Germans,
and other troops from the North, who yet were
accustomed to severe cold, were almost totally
annihilated, the French regiments, though paying
fearfully dear for their retreat, nevertheless saved
the greatest number of men. Some have attempted
to explain this by a supposed superiority on the
part of the French in martial education and military
spirit. But the German officers had certainly
as high a conception of a soldier's duty, as elevated
a sentiment of honor, as our soldiers; yet
they perished in incredibly greater numbers. I
think it can hardly be disputed that the masses of
the population of France possess a superiority in
certain physical qualities, which enables them to
defy with greater impunity than most other nations
the freezing snows of Russia and the burning
sands of Egypt.
The position and treatment of woman among the various races
of men a proof of their moral and intellectual diversity.
The reader will pardon me if to Mr. Gobineau's scale
of gradation in point of beauty and physical strength,
I add another as accurate, I think, if not more so, and
certainly as interesting. I allude to the manner in which
the weaker sex is regarded and treated among the various
races of men.
In the words of Van Amringe, "from the brutal New
Hollander, who secures his wife by knocking her down
with a club and dragging the prize to his cave, to the
polished European, who, fearfully, but respectfully and
assiduously, spends a probation of months or years for
his better half, the ascent may be traced with unfailing
precision and accuracy." The same writer correctly
argues that if any principle could be inferred from analogy
to animals, it would certainly be a uniform treatment
of the female sex among all races of man; for animals
are remarkably uniform in the relations of the male and
female in the same species. Yet among some races of
men polygamy has always prevailed, among others never.
Would not any naturalist consider as distinct species
any animals of the same genus so distinguished? This
subject has not yet met with due attention at the hands of
ethnologists. "When we hear of a race of men," says
the same author, "being subjected to the tyranny of
another race, either by personal bondage or the more
easy condition of tribute, our sympathies are enlisted
in their favor, and our constant good wishes, if not our
efforts, accompany them. But when we hear of hundreds
of millions of the truest and most tender-hearted
of human creatures being trodden down and trampled
upon in everything that is dear to the human heart, our
sympathies, which are so freely expended on slighter
occasions or imaginary evils, are scarcely awakened to
their crushing woes."
With the writer from whom I have already made copious
extracts, I believe that the moral and intellectual
diversity of the races of men cannot be thoroughly and
accurately investigated without taking into consideration
the relations which most influence individual as
well as national progress and development, and which
result from the position occupied by woman towards
man. This truth has not escaped former investigators—it
would be singular if it had—but they have contented
themselves with asserting that the condition of
the female sex was indicative of the degree of civilization.
Had they said, of the intrinsic worth of various
races, I should cheerfully assent. But the elevation or
degradation of woman in the social scale is generally
regarded as a result, not a cause. It is said that all
barbarians treat their women as slaves; but, as they
progress in civilization, woman gradually rises to her
legitimate rank.
For the sake of the argument, I shall assume that
all now civilized nations at first treated their women
as the actual barbarians treat theirs. That this is
not so, I hope to place beyond doubt; but, assuming it
to be the case, might not the fact that some left off that
treatment, while others did not, be adduced as a proof
of the inequality of races? "The law of the relation of
the sexes," says Van Amringe, "is more deeply engraven
upon human nature than any other; because, whatever
theories may be adopted in regard to the origin of society,
languages, etc., no doubt can be entertained that
the influence of woman must have been anterior to any
improvements of the original condition of man. Consequently
it was antecedent and superior to education
and government. That these relations were powerfully
instrumental in the origin of development, to give it a
direction and character according to the natures operating
and operated upon, cannot be doubted by any
one who has paid the slightest attention to domestic
influences, from and under which education, customs,
and government commenced."
But I totally deny that all races, in their first state
of development, treated their women equally. There
is not only no historical testimony to prove that any of
the white races were ever in such a state of barbarity
and in such moral debasement as most of the dark races
are to this day, and have always been, but there is positive
evidence to show that our barbarous ancestors assigned
to woman the same position we assign her now:
she was the companion, and not the slave, of man. I
have already alluded to this in a previous note on the
Teutonic races; I cannot, however, but revert to it
again.
As I have not space for a lengthy discussion, I shall
mention but one fact, which I think conclusive, and
which rests upon incontrovertible historical testimony.
"To a German mind," says Tacitus (Murphy's transl.,
vol. vii. 8), "the idea of a woman led into captivity is
insupportable. In consequence of this prevailing sentiment,
the states which deliver as hostages the daughters
of illustrious families are bound by the most effectual
obligations." Did this assertion rest on the authority
of Tacitus only, it might perhaps be called in question.
It might be said that the illustrious Roman had drawn
an ideal picture, etc. But Cæsar dealt with realities,
not idealities; he was a shrewd, practical statesman,
and an able general; yet Cæsar did take females as
hostages from the German tribes, in preference to men.
Suppose Cæsar had made war against the King of
Ashantee, and taken away some of his three thousand
three hundred and thirty-three wives, the mystical number
being thus forcibly disturbed, might have alarmed
the nation, whose welfare is supposed to depend on it;
but the misfortune would soon have been remedied.
But it is possible to demonstrate not only that all
races did not treat their women equally in their first
stage of development, but also that no race which assigned
to woman in the beginning an inferior position
ever raised her from it in any subsequent stage of development.
I select the Chinese for illustration, because
they furnish us with an example of a long-continued
and regular intellectual progress,[172] which yet never resulted
in an alteration of woman's position in the social
structure. The decadent Chinese of our day look upon
the female half of their nation as did the rapidly advancing
Chinese of the seventh and eighth centuries;
and the latter in precisely the same manner as their
barbarous ancestors, the subjects of the Emperor Fou,
more than twenty centuries before.
I repeat it, the relations of the sexes, in various
races, are equally dissimilar in every stage of development.
The state of society may change, the tendency
of a race never. Faculties may be developed, but
never lost.
As the mothers and wives of our Teutonic ancestors
were near the battle-field, to administer refreshments
to the wearied combatants, to stanch the bleeding of
their wounds, and to inspire with renewed courage the
despairing, so, in modern times, matrons and maidens
of the highest rank—worthy daughters of a heroic ancestry—have
been found by thousands ready to sacrifice
the comforts and quiet of home for the horrors of a
hospital.[173] As the rude warrior of a former age won his
beloved by deeds of valor, so, to his civilized descendant,
the hand of his mistress is the prize and reward of
exertion. The wives and mothers of the ancient Germans
and Celts were the counsellors of their sons and
husbands in the most important affairs; our wives and
mothers are our advisers in our more peaceful pursuits.
But the Arab, when he had arrived at the culminating
point of his civilization, and when he had become the
teacher of our forefathers of the Middle Ages in science
and the arts, looked upon his many wives in the same
light as his roaming brother in the desert had done
before, and does now. I do not ask of all these races
that they should assign to their women the same rank
that we do. If intellectual progress and social development
among them showed the slightest tendency to
produce ultimately an alteration in woman's position
towards her lord, I might be content to submit to the
opinion of those who regard that position as the effect
of such a progress and such a development. But I
cannot, in the history of those races, perceive the slightest
indication of such a result, and all my observations
lead me to the conclusion that the relations between the
sexes are a cause, and not an effect.
The character of the women of different races differs
in essential points. What a vast difference, for instance,
between the females of the rude crusaders who took
possession of Constantinople, and the more civilized
Byzantine Greeks whom they so easily conquered; between
the heroic matron of barbarous Germany and the
highly civilized Chinese lady! These differences cannot
be entirely the effect of education, else we are forced
to consider the female sex as mere automatons. They
must be the result of diversity of character. And why
not, in the investigation of the moral and intellectual
diversity of races and the natural history of man, take
into consideration the peculiarities that characterize the
female portion of each race, a portion—I am forced to
make this trite observation, because so many investigators
seem to forget it—which comprises at least one-half
of the individuals to be described?—H.
PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN.
Imperfect notions of the capability of savage tribes—Parallel
between our civilization and those that preceded it—Our
modern political theories no novelty—The political parties
of Rome—Peace societies—The art of printing a means, the
results of which depend on its use—What constitutes a
"living" civilization—Limits of the sphere of intellectual
acquisitions.
To understand perfectly the differences existing
among races, in regard to their intellectual capacity,
it is necessary to ascertain the lowest degree of
stupidity that humanity is capable of. The inferior
branches of the human family have hitherto
been represented, by a majority of scientific observers,
as considerably more abased than they are
in reality. The first accounts of a tribe of savages
almost always depict them in exaggerated colors
of the darkest cast, and impute to them such utter
intellectual and reasoning incapacity, that they
seem to sink to the level of the monkey, and below
that of the elephant. There are, indeed, some contrasts.
Let a navigator be well received in some
island—let him succeed in persuading a few of the
natives to work, however little, with the sailors,
and praises are lavished upon the fortunate tribe:
they are declared susceptible of every improvement;
and perhaps the eulogist will go so far as
to assert that he has found among them minds of
a very superior order.
To both these judgments we must object—the
one being too favorable, the other too severe. Because
some natives of Tahiti assisted in repairing
a whaler, or some inhabitant of Tonga Tabou exhibited
good feelings towards the white strangers
who landed on his isle, it does not follow that
either are capable of receiving our civilization, or
of being raised to a level with us. Nor are we
warranted in classing among brutes the poor naturals
of a newly-discovered coast, who greet their
first visitors with a shower of stones and arrows,
or who are found making a dainty repast on raw
lizards and clods of clay. Such a meal does not,
indeed, indicate a very superior intelligence, or
very refined manners. But even in the most repulsive
cannibal there lies latent a spark of the
divine flame, and reason may be awakened to a
certain extent. There are no tribes so very degraded
that they do not reason in some degree,
whether correctly or otherwise, upon the things
which surround them. This ray of human intelligence,
however faint it may be, is what distinguishes
the most degraded savage from the most
intelligent brute, and capacitates him for receiving
the teachings of religion.
But are these mental faculties, which every individual
of our species possesses, susceptible of
indefinite development? Have all men the same
capacity for intellectual progress? In other words,
can cultivation raise all the different races to the
same intellectual standard? and are no limits imposed
to the perfectibility of our species? My
answer to these questions is, that all races are
capable of improvement, but all cannot attain the
same degree of perfection, and even the most
favored cannot exceed a certain limit.
The idea of infinite perfection has gained many
partisans in our times, because we, like all who
came before us, pride ourselves upon possessing
advantages and points of superiority unknown to
our predecessors. I have already spoken of the
distinguishing features of our civilization, but willingly
revert to this subject again.
It may be said, that in all the departments of
science we possess clearer and more correct notions;
that, upon the whole, our manners are more
polished, and our code of morals is preferable to
that of the ancients. It is further asserted, as the
principal proof of our superiority, that we have
better defined, juster and more tolerant ideas with
regard to political liberty. Sanguine theorists are
not wanting, who pretend that our discoveries in
political science and our enlightened views of the
rights of man will ultimately lead us to that universal
happiness and harmony which the ancients
in vain sought in the fabled garden of Hesperides.
These lofty pretensions will hardly bear the test
of severe historical criticism.
If we surpass preceding generations in scientific
knowledge, it is because we have added
our share to the discoveries which they bequeathed
to us. We are their heirs, their pupils, their continuators,
just as future generations will be ours.
We achieve great results by the application of the
power of steam; we have solved many great problems
in mechanics, and pressed the elements as
submissive slaves into our service. But do these
successes bring us any nearer to omniscience. At
most, they may enable us ultimately to fathom all
the secrets of the material world. And when we
shall have achieved that grand conquest, for which
so much requires still to be done that is not yet
commenced, nor even anticipated; have we advanced
a single step beyond the simple exposition
of the laws which govern the material world?
We may have learned to direct our course through
the air, to approach the limits of the respirable
atmosphere; we may discover and elucidate several
interesting astronomical problems; we may
have greater powers for controlling nature and
compelling her to minister to our wants, but can
all this knowledge make us better, happier beings?
Suppose we had counted all the planetary systems
and measured the immense regions of space, would
we know more of the grand mystery of existence
than those that came before us? Would this add
one new faculty to the human mind, or ennoble
human nature by the eradication of one bad passion?
Admitting that we are more enlightened upon
some subjects, in how many other respects are we
inferior to our more remote ancestors? Can it be
doubted, for instance, that in Abraham's times much
more was known of primordial traditions than the
dubious beams which have come down to us?
How many discoveries which we owe to mere accident,
or which are the fruits of painful efforts,
were the lost possessions of remote ages? How
many more are not yet restored? What is there
in the most splendid of our works that can compare
with those wonders by which Egypt, India,
Greece, and America still attest the grandeur and
magnificence of so many edifices which the weight
of centuries, much more than the impotent ravages
of man, has caused to disappear? What are
our works of art by the side of those of Athens;
our thinkers by the side of those of Alexandria
or India; our poets by the side of a Valmiki,
Kalidasa, Homer, Pindar?
The truth is, we pursue a different direction
from that of the human societies whose civilization
preceded ours. We apply our mind to different
purposes and different investigations; but
while we clear and cultivate new lands, we are
compelled to neglect and abandon to sterility those
to which they devoted their attention. What we
gain in one direction we lose in another. We
cannot call ourselves superior to the ancients, unless
we had preserved at least the principal acquisitions
of preceding ages in all their integrity, and
had succeeded in establishing by the side of these,
the great results which they as well as we sought
after. Our sciences and arts superadded to theirs
have not enabled us to advance one step nearer
the solution of the great problems of existence,
the mysteries of life and death. "I seek, but find
not," has always been, will ever be, the humiliating
confession of science when endeavoring to
penetrate into the secrets concealed by the veil
that it is not given to mortal to lift. In criticism[174]
we are, undoubtedly, much in advance of our predecessors;
but criticism implies classification, not
acquisition.
Nor can we justly pride ourselves upon any
superiority in regard to political ideas. Political
and social theories were as rife in Athens after the
age of Pericles as they are in our days. To be
convinced of this, it is necessary only to study
Aristophanes, whose comedies Plato recommends
to the perusal of whoever wishes to become acquainted
with the public morals of the city of
Minerva. It has been pretended that our present
structure of society, and that of the ancients, admit
of no comparison, owing to the institution of
slavery which formed an element of the latter.
But the only real difference is that demagogism
had then an even more fertile soil in which to
strike root. The slaves of those days find their
precise counterpart in our working classes and
proletarians.[175] The Athenian people propitiating
their servile class after the battle of Arginuses,
might be taken for a picture of the nineteenth
century.
Look at Rome. Open Cicero's letters. What a
specimen of the moderate Tory that great Roman
orator was; what a similarity between his republic
and our constitutional bodies politic, with regard
to the language of parties and parliamentary debates!
There, too, the background of the picture
was occupied by degraded masses of a servile and
prædial population, always eager for change, and
ready to rise in actual rebellion.
Let us leave those dregs of the population,
whose civil existence the law ignored, and who
counted in politics but as the formidable tool of
designing individuals of free birth. But does not
the free population of Rome afford a perfect analogue
to a modern body politic? There is the mob
crying for bread, greedy of shows, flattery, gratuitous
distributions, and amusements; the middle
classes (bourgeoisie) monopolizing and dividing
among themselves the public offices; the hereditary
aristocracy, continually assailed at all points,
continually losing ground, until driven in mere
self-defence to abjure all superior claims and stipulate
for equal rights to all. Are not these perfect
resemblances?
Among the boundless variety of opinions that
make themselves heard in our day, there is not
one that had not advocates in Rome. I alluded a
while ago to the letters written from the villa of
Tusculum; they express the sentiments of the
Roman conservative Progressist party. By the side
of Sylla, Pompey and Cicero were Radicals.[176] Their
notions were not sufficiently radical for Cæsar;
too much so for Cato. At a later period we find
in Pliny the younger a mild royalist, a friend of
quiet, even at some cost. Apprehensive of too
much liberty, yet jealous of power too absolute;
very practical in his views, caring but little for
the poetical splendor of the age of the Fabii, he preferred
the more prosaic administration of Trajan.
There were others not of his opinion, good people
who feared an insurrection headed by some new
Spartacus, and who, therefore, thought that the
Emperor could not hold the reins too tight.
Then there were others, from the provinces,
who obstreperously demanded and obtained what
would now be called "constitutional guaranties."
Again, there were the socialists, and their views
found no less an expounder than the Gallic Cæsar,
C. Junius Posthumus, who exclaims: "Dives et
pauper, inimici," the rich and the poor are enemies
born.
Every man who had any pretensions to participate
in the lights of the day, declaimed on the
absolute equality of all men, their "inalienable
rights," the manifest necessity and ultimate universality
of the Greco-Latin civilization, its superiority,
its mildness, its future progress, much greater
even than that actually made, and above all its
perpetuity. Nor were those ideas merely the
pride and consolation of the pagans; they were
the firm hopes and expectations of the earliest
and most illustrious Fathers of the Church, whose
sentiments found so eloquent an interpreter in
Tertullian.
And as a last touch, to complete the picture, let
us not forget those people who, then as now, formed
the most numerous of all parties: those that
belonged to none—people who are too weak-minded,
or indifferent, or apprehensive, or disgusted,
to lay hold of a truth, from among the
midst of contradictory theories that float around
them—people who are content with order when
it exists, submit passively in times of disorder
and confusion; who admire the increase of conveniences
and comforts of life unknown to their
ancestors, and who, without thinking further,
centre their hope in the future and pride in the
present, in the reflection: "What wonderful facilities
we enjoy now-a-days."
There would be some reason for believing in an
improvement in political science, if we had invented
some governmental machinery which had
hitherto been unknown, or at least never carried
into practice. This glory we cannot arrogate to
ourselves. Limited monarchies were known in
every age. There are even some very curious
examples of this form of government found among
certain Indian tribes who, nevertheless, have remained
savages. Democratic and aristocratic republics of
every form, and balanced in the most varied manner,
flourished in the new world as well as the old.
Tlascala is as complete a model of this kind as
Athens, Sparta, or Mecca before Mohammed's times.
And even supposing that we have applied to governmental
science some secondary principle of
our own invention, does this justify us in our exaggerated
pretension to unlimited perfectibility?
Let us rather be modest, and say with the wisest
of kings: "Nil novi sub sole."[177]
It is said that our manners are milder than
those of the other great human societies; this assertion
also is very open to criticism. There are
some philanthropists who would induce nations no
longer to resort to armies in settling their quarrels.
The idea is borrowed from Seneca. Some of the
Eastern sages professed the same principles in this
respect as the Moravian Brethren. But assuming
that the members of the Peace Congress succeed
in disgusting Europe with the turmoil and miseries
of warfare, they would still have the difficult
task left of forever transforming the human passions.
Neither Seneca nor the Eastern sages have
been able to accomplish this, and it may reasonably
be doubted whether this grand achievement
is reserved for our generation. We possess pure
and exalted principles, I admit, but are they carried
into practice? Look at our fields, the streets
of our cities—the bloody traces of contests as
fierce as any recorded in history are scarcely yet
effaced. Never since the beginning of our civilization
has there been an interval of peace of fifty
years, and we are, in this respect, far behind
ancient Italy, which, under the Romans, once enjoyed
two centuries of perfect tranquillity. But
even so long a repose would not warrant us in
concluding that the temple of Janus was thenceforth
to be forever closed.
The state of our civilization does not, therefore,
prove the unlimited perfectibility of man. If he
have learned many things, he has forgotten others.
He has not added another to his senses; his soul
is not enriched by one new faculty. I cannot too
much insist upon the great though sad truth, that
whatever we gain in one direction is counterbalanced
by some loss in another; that, limited as
is our intellectual domain, we are doomed never to
possess its whole extent at once. Were it not for
this fatal law, we might imagine that at some period,
however distant, man, finding himself in
possession of the experience of successive ages,
and having acquired all that it is in his power to
acquire, would have learned at last to apply his
acquisitions to his welfare—to live without battling
against his kind, and against misery; to enjoy a
state, if not of unalloyed happiness, at least of
abundance and peace.
But even so limited a felicity is not promised
us here below, for in proportion as man learns he
unlearns; whatever he acquires, is at the cost of
some previous acquisition; whatever he possesses
he is always in danger of losing.
We flatter ourselves with the belief that our
civilization is imperishable, because we possess the
art of printing, gunpowder, the steam engine, &c.
These are valuable means to accomplish great
results, but the accomplishment depends on their
use.
The art of printing is known to many other
nations beside ourselves, and is as extensively used
by them as by us.[178] Let us see its fruits. In Tonquin,
Anam, Japan, books are plentiful, much
cheaper than with us—so cheap that they are
within the reach of even the poorest—and even
the poorest read them. How is it, then, that these
people are so enervated, so degraded, so sunk in
sloth and vice[179]—so near that stage in which even
civilized man, having frittered away his physical
and mental powers, may sink infinitely below the
rude barbarian, who, at the first convenient opportunity,
becomes his master? Whence this result?
Precisely because the art of printing is a means,
and not an agent. So long as it is used to diffuse
sound, sterling ideas, to afford wholesome and refreshing
nutriment to vigorous minds, a civilization
never decays. But when it becomes the vile
caterer to a depraved taste, when it serves only to
multiply the morbid productions of enervated or
vitiated minds, the senseless quibbles of a sectarian
theology instead of religion, the venomous scurrility
of libellists instead of politics, the foul obscenities
of licentious rhymers instead of poesy—how
and why should the art of printing save a
civilization from ruin?
It is objected that the art of printing contributes
to the preservation of a civilization by the facility
with which it multiplies and diffuses the masterpieces
of the human mind, so that, even in times
of intellectual sterility, when they can no longer
be emulated, they still form the standard of taste,
and by their clear and steady light prevent the
possibility of utter darkness. But it should be
remembered that to delve in the hoarded treasures
of thought, and to appropriate them for purposes
of mental improvement, presupposes the possession
of that greatest of earthly goods—an enlightened
mind. And in epochs of intellectual degeneracy,
few care about those monuments of lost virtues
and powers; they are left undisturbed on their
dusty shelves in libraries whose silence is but seldom
broken by the tread of the anxious, painstaking
student.
The longevity which Guttenberg's invention
assures to the productions of genius is much
exaggerated. There are a few works that enjoy
the honor of being reproduced occasionally; with
this exception, books die now precisely as formerly
did the manuscripts. Works of science,
especially, disappear with singular rapidity from
the realms of literature. A few hundred copies
are struck off at first, and they are seldom, and,
after a while, never heard of more. With considerable
trouble you can find them in some large
collection. Look what has become of the thousands
of excellent works that have appeared since
the first printed page came from the press. The
greater portion are forgotten. Many that are still
spoken of, are never read; the titles even of others,
that were carefully sought after fifty years ago, are
gradually disappearing from every memory.
So long as a civilization is vigorous and flourishing,
this disappearance of old books is but a slight
misfortune. They are superseded; their valuable
portions are embodied in new ones; the seed
exists no longer, but the fruit is developing. In
times of intellectual degeneracy it is otherwise.
The weakened powers cannot grapple with the
solid thought of more vigorous eras; it is split up
into more convenient fragments—rendered more
portable, as it were; the strong beverage that once
was the pabulum of minds as strong, must be
diluted to suit the present taste; and innumerable
dilutions, each weaker than the other, immediately
claim public favor; the task of learning must be
lightened in proportion to the decreasing capacity
for acquiring; everything becomes superficial;
what costs the least effort gains the greatest esteem;
play upon words is accounted wit; shallowness,
learning; the surface is preferred to the depth.
Thus it has ever been in periods of decay; thus it
will be with us when we have once reached that
point whence every movement is retrogressive.
Who knows but we are near it already?—and the
art of printing will not save us from it.
To enhance the advantages which we derive
from that art, the number and diffusion of manuscripts
have been too much underrated. It is true
that they were scarce in the epoch immediately
preceding; but in the latter periods of the Roman
empire they were much more numerous and much
more widely diffused than is generally imagined.
In those times, the facilities for instruction were
by no means of difficult access; books, indeed,
were quite common. We may judge so from the
extraordinary number of threadbare grammarians
with which even the smallest villages swarmed; a
sort of people very much like the petty novelists,
lawyers, and editors of modern times, and whose
loose morals, shabbiness, and passionate love for
enjoyments, are described in Pretronius's Satyricon.
Even when the decadence was complete, those who
wished for books could easily procure them. Virgil
was read everywhere; so much so, that the
illiterate peasantry, hearing so much of him, imagined
him to be some dangerous and powerful sorcerer.
The monks copied him; they copied Pliny,
Dioscorides, Plato, and Aristotle; they copied
Catullus and Martial. These books, then, cannot
have been very rare. Again, when we consider
how great a number has come down to us notwithstanding
centuries of war and devastation—notwithstanding
so many conflagrations of monasteries,
castles, libraries, &c.—we cannot but admit
that, in spite of the laborious process of transcription,
literary productions must have been multiplied
to a very great extent. It is possible, therefore,
to greatly exaggerate the obligations under
which science, poetry, morality, and true civilization
lie to the typographic art; and I repeat it,
that art is a marvellous instrument, but if the arm
that wields it, and the head that directs the arm,
are not, the instrument cannot be, of much service.
Some people believe that the possession of gunpowder
exempts modern societies from many of
the dangers that proved fatal to the ancient. They
assert that it abates the horrors of warfare, and
diminishes its frequency, bidding fair, therefore, to
establish, in time, a state of universal peace. If
such be the beneficial results attendant on this accidental
invention, they have not as yet manifested
themselves.
Of the various applications of steam, and other
industrial inventions, I would say, as of the art of
printing, that they are great means, but their results
depend upon the agent. Such arts might be
practised by rote long after the intellectual activity
that produced them had ceased. There are innumerable
instances of processes which continue in
use, though the theoretical secret is lost. It is
therefore not unreasonable to suppose, that the
practice of our inventions might survive our civilization;
that is, it might continue when these inventions
were no longer possible, when no further
improvements were to be hoped for. Material
well-being is but an external appendage of a civilization;
intellectual activity, and a consequent
progress, are its life. A state of intellectual torpor,
therefore, cannot be a state of civilization,
even though the people thus stagnating, have the
means of transporting themselves rapidly from
place to place, or of adorning themselves and their
dwellings. This would only prove that they were
the heirs of a former civilization, but not that they
actually possessed one. I have said, in another
place, that a civilization may thus preserve, for a
time, every appearance of life: the effect may
continue after the cause has ceased. But, as a
continuous change seems to be the order of nature
in all things material and immaterial, a downward
tendency is soon manifest. I have before compared
a civilization to the human body. While alive, it
undergoes a perpetual modification: every hour
has wrought a change; when dead, it preserves,
for a time, the appearance of life, perhaps even its
beauty; but gradually, symptoms of decay become
manifest, and every stage of dissolution is more
precipitate than the one before, as a stone thrown
up in the air, poises itself there for an inappreciable
fraction of time, then falls with continually
increasing velocity, more and more swiftly as it
approaches the ground.
Every civilization has produced in those who
enjoyed its fruits, a firm conviction of its stability,
its perpetuity.
When the palanquins of the Incas travelled
rapidly on the smooth, magnificent causeways
which still unite Cuzco and Quito, a distance of
fifteen hundred miles, with what feelings of exultation
must they have contemplated the conquests
of the present, what magnificent prospects of the
future must have presented themselves to their
imaginations! Stern time, with one blow of his
gigantic wings, hurled their empire into the deepest
depths of the abyss of oblivion. These proud
sovereigns of Peru—they, too, had their sciences,
their mechanical inventions, their powerful machines:
the works they accomplished we contemplate
with amazement, and a vain effort to divine
the means employed. How were those blocks of
stone, thirty-five feet long and eighteen thick,
raised one upon another? How were they transported
the vast distance from the quarries where
they were hewn? By what contrivance did the
engineers of that people hoist those enormous
masses to a dizzy height? It is indeed a problem—a
problem, too, which we will never solve. Nor
are the ruins of Tihuanaco unparalleled by the
remains of European civilizations of ante-historic
times. The cyclopean walls with which Southern
Europe abounds, and which have withstood the
all-destroying tooth of time for thousands upon
thousands of years—who built them? Who piled
these monstrous masses, which modern art could
scarcely move?
Let us not mistake the results of a civilization
for its causes. The causes cease, the results subsist
for a while, then are lost. If they again bear
fruit, it is because a new spirit has appropriated
them, and converted them to purposes often very
different from those they had at first. Human intelligence
is finite, nor can it ever reign at once in
the whole of its domain:[180] it can turn to account
one portion of it only by leaving the other bare;
it exalts what it possesses, esteems lightly what it
has lost. Thus, every generation is at the same
time superior and inferior to its predecessors. Man
cannot, then, surpass himself: man's perfectibility
is not infinite.
MUTUAL RELATIONS OF DIFFERENT MODES OF
INTELLECTUAL CULTURE.
Necessary consequences of a supposed equality of all races—Uniform
testimony of history to the contrary—Traces of extinct
civilizations among barbarous tribes—Laws which govern
the adoption of a state of civilization by conquered populations—Antagonism
of different modes of culture; the Hellenic
and Persian, European and Arab, etc.
Had it been the will of the Creator to endow
all the branches of the human family with equal
intellectual capacities, what a glorious tableau
would history not unfold before us. All being
equally intelligent, equally aware of their true
interests, equally capable of triumphing over
obstacles, a number of simultaneous and flourishing
civilizations would have gladdened every portion
of the inhabited globe. While the most
ancient Sanscrit nations covered Northern India
with harvests, cities, palaces, and temples; and the
plains of the Tigris and Euphrates shook under
the trampling of Nimrod's cavalry and chariots,
the prognathous tribes of Africa would have formed
and developed a social system, sagaciously
constructed, and productive of brilliant results.
Some luckless tribes, whose lot fortune had cast
in inhospitable climes, burning sands, or glacial
regions, mountain gorges, or cheerless steppes
swept by the piercing winds of the north, would
have been compelled to a longer and severer
struggle against such unpropitious circumstances,
than more fortunate nations. But being not inferior
in intelligence and sagacity, they would not
have been long in discovering the means of bettering
their condition. Like the Icelanders, the
Danes, and Norwegians, they would have forced
the reluctant soil to afford them sustenance; if
inhabitants of mountainous regions, they would,
like the Swiss, have enjoyed the advantages of a
pastoral life, or like the Cashmerians, resorted to
manufacturing industry. But if their geographical
situation had been so unfavorable as to admit of
no resource, they would have reflected that the
world was large, contained many a pleasant valley
and fertile plain, where they might seek the fruits
of intelligent activity, which their stepmotherly
native land refused them.
Thus all the nations of the earth would have
been equally enlightened, equally prosperous;
some by the commerce of maritime cities, others
by productive agriculture in inland regions, or
successful industry in barren and Alpine districts.
Though they might not exempt themselves from
the misfortunes to which the imperfections of
human nature give rise—transitory dissensions,
civil wars, seditions, etc.—their individual interests
would soon have led them to invent some system
of relative equiponderance. As the differences in
their civilizations resulted merely from fortuitous
circumstances, and not from innate inequalities, a
mutual interchange would soon have assimilated
them in all essential points. Nothing could then
prevent a universal confederation, that dream of
so many centuries; and the inhabitants of the
most distant parts of the globe would have been
as members of one great cosmopolite people.
Let us contrast this fantastic picture with the
reality. The first nations worthy of the name,
owed their formation to an instinct of aggregation,
which the barbarous tribes near them not only did
not feel then, but never afterward. These nations
spread beyond their original boundaries, and
forced others to submit to their power. But the
conquered neither adopted nor understood the
principles of the civilization imposed upon them.
Nor has the force of example been of avail to
those in whom innate capacity was wanting. The
native populations of the Spanish peninsula, and
of Transalpine and Ligurian Gaul, saw Phenicians,
Greeks, and Carthaginians, successively establish
flourishing cities on their coasts, without feeling
the least incitement to imitate the manners or
forms of government of these prosperous merchants.
What a glorious spectacle do not the Indians of
North America witness at this moment. They
have before their eyes a great and prosperous
nation, eminent for the successful practical application
of modern theories and sciences to political
and social forms, as well as to industrial art. The
superiority of this foreign race, which has so firmly
established itself upon his former patrimony, is
evident to the red man. He sees their magnificent
cities, their thousands of vessels upon the once
silent rivers, their successful agriculture; he knows
that even his own rude wants, the blanket with
which he covers himself, the weapon with which
he slays his game, the ardent spirits he has learned
to love so well, can be supplied only by the
stranger. The last feeble hope to see his native
soil delivered from the presence of the conqueror's
race, has long since vanished from his breast; he
feels that the land of his fathers is not his own.
Yet he stubbornly refuses to enter the pale of this
civilization which invites him, solicits him, tries to
entice him with superior advantages and comforts.
He prefers to retreat from solitude to solitude,
deeper and deeper into the primitive forest. He
is doomed to perish, and he knows it; but a mysterious
power retains him under the yoke of his
invincible repugnances, and while he admires the
strength and superiority of the whites, his conscience,
his whole nature, revolts at the idea of
assimilating to them. He cannot forget or smother
the instincts of his race.
The aborigines of Spanish America are supposed
to evince a less unconquerable aversion.
It is because the Spanish metropolitan government
had never attempted to civilize them. Provided
they were Christians, at least in name, they were
left to their own usages and habits, and, in many
instances, under the administration of their Caziques.
The Spaniards colonized but little, and
when the conquest was completed and their sanguinary
appetites glutted by those unparalleled
atrocities which brand them with indelible disgrace,
they indulged in a lazy toleration, and directed
their tyranny rather against individuals
than against modes of thinking and living. The
Indians have, in a great measure, mixed with their
conquerors, and will continue to live while their
brethren in the vicinity of the Anglo-Saxon race
are inevitably doomed to perish.
But not only savages, even nations of a higher
rank in the intellectual scale are incapable of
adopting a foreign civilization. We have already
alluded to the failure of the English in India and
of the Dutch in Java, in trying to import their
own ideas into their foreign dependencies. French
philanthropy is at this moment gaining the same
experience in the new French possession of Algeria.
There can be no stronger or more conclusive
proof of the various endowments of different
races.
If we had no other argument in proof of the
innate imparity of races than the actual condition
of certain barbarous tribes, and the supposition
that they had always been in that condition, and,
consequently, always would be, we should expose
ourselves to serious objections. For many barbarous
nations preserve traces of former cultivation
and refinement. There are some tribes, very degraded
in every other respect, who yet possess
traditional regulations respecting the marriage
celebration, the forms of justice and the division
of inheritances, which evidently are remnants of
a higher state of society, though the rites have
long since lost all meaning. Many of the Indian
tribes who wander over the tracts once occupied
by the Alleghanian race, may be cited as instances
of this kind. The natives of the Marian Islands,
and many other savages, practise mechanically
certain processes of manufacture, the invention
of which presupposes a degree of ingenuity and
knowledge utterly at variance with their present
stupidity and ignorance. To avoid hasty and
erroneous conclusions concerning this seeming
decadence, there are several circumstances to be
taken into consideration.
Let us suppose a savage population to fall within
the sphere of activity of a proximate, but superior
race. In that case they may gradually
learn to conform externally to the civilization of
their masters, and acquire the technicalities of
their arts and inventions. Should the dominant
race disappear either by expulsion or absorption,
the civilization would expire, but some of its outward
forms might be retained and perpetuated.
A certain degree of mechanical skill might survive
the scientific principles upon which it was
based. In other words, practice might long continue
after the theory was lost. History furnishes
us a number of examples in support of this assertion.
Such, for instance, was the attitude of the Assyrians
toward the civilization of the Chaldeans; of
the Iberians, Celts, and Illyrians towards that of
the Romans. If, then, the Cherokees, the Catawbas,
Muskogees, Seminoles, Natchez and other
tribes, still preserve a feeble impress of the Alleghanian
civilization, I should not thence conclude
that they are the pure and direct descendants of
the initiatory element of that people, which would
imply that a race may once have been civilized,
and be no longer so. I should say, on the contrary,
that the Cherokees, if at all ethnically connected
with the ancient dominant type, are so by
only a collateral tie of consanguinity, else they
could never have relapsed into a state of barbarism.
The other tribes which exhibit little or no
vestiges of the former civilization are probably
the descendants of a different conquered population
which formed no constituent element of the
society, but served rather as the substratum upon
which the edifice was erected. It is no matter of
surprise, if this be the case, that they should preserve—without
understanding them and with a
sort of superstitious veneration—customs, laws,
and rites invented by others far more intelligent
than themselves.
The same may be said of the mechanical arts.
The aborigines of the Carolines are about the
most interesting of the South Sea islanders. Their
looms, sculptured canoes, their taste for navigation
and commerce show them vastly superior to
the Pelagian negroes, their neighbors. It is easy
to account for this superiority by the well-authenticated
admixture of Malay blood. But as this
element is greatly attenuated, the inventions which
it introduced have not borne indigenous fruits,
but, on the contrary, are gradually, but surely,
disappearing.
The preceding observations will, I think, suffice
to show that the traces of civilization among a
barbarous tribe are not a necessary proof that this
tribe itself has ever been really civilized. It may
either have lived under the domination of a superior
but consanguineous race, or living in its vicinity,
have, in an humble and feeble degree, profited
by its lessons. This result, however, is possible
only when there exists between the superior
and the inferior race a certain ethnical affinity;
that is to say, when the former is either a noble
branch of the same stock, or ennobled by intermixture
with another. When the disparity between
races is too great and too decided, and there
is no intermediate link to connect them, the contact
is always fatal to the inferior race, as is abundantly
proved by the disappearance of the aborigines
of North America and Polynesia.
I shall now speak of the relations arising from
the contact of different civilizations.
The Persian civilization came in contact with
the Grecian; the Egyptian with the Grecian and
Roman; the Roman with the Grecian; and finally
the modern civilization of Europe with all those
at present subsisting on the globe, and especially
with the Arabian.
The contact of Greek intelligence with the culture
of the Persians was as frequent as it was
compulsory. The greater portion of the Hellenic
population, and the wealthiest, though not the
most independent, was concentrated in the cities
of the Syrian coast, the Greek colonies of Asia
Minor, and on the shores of the Euxine, all of
which formed a part of the Persian dominions.
Though these colonies preserved their own local
laws and politics, they were under the authority
of the satraps of the great king. Intimate relations,
moreover, were maintained between European
Greece and Asia. That the Persians were
then possessed of a high degree of civilization is
proved by their political organization and financial
administration, by the magnificent ruins which
still attest the splendor and grandeur of their
cities. But the principles of government and religion,
the modes and habits of life, the genius of
the arts, were very differently understood by the
two nations; and, therefore, notwithstanding their
constant intercourse, neither made the slightest
approach toward assimilation with the other.
The Greeks called their puissant neighbors barbarians,
and the latter, no doubt, amply returned
the compliment.
In Ecbatana no other form of government could
be conceived than an undivided hereditary authority,
limited only by certain religious prescriptions
and a court ceremonial. The genius of the Greeks
tended to an endless variety of governmental forms;
subdivided into a number of petty sovereignties.
Greek society presented a singular mosaic of political
structures; oligarchical in Sparta, democratical
in Athens, tyrannical in Sicyon, monarchical in
Macedonia, the forms of government were the same
in scarcely two cities or districts. The state religion
of the Persians evinced the same tendency to unity
as their politics, and was more of a metaphysical and
moral than a material character. The Greeks, on
the contrary, had a symbolical system of religion,
consisting in the worship of natural objects and
influences, which gradually changed into a perfect
prosopopœia, representing the gods as sentient
beings, subject to the same passions, and engaged
in the same pursuits and occupations as the inhabitants
of the earth. The worship consisted
principally in the performance of rites and demonstrations
of respect to the deities; the conscience
was left to the direction of the civil laws. Besides,
the rites, as well as the divinities and heroes in
whose honor they were practised, were different
in every place.
As for the manners and habits of life, it is unnecessary
to point out how vastly different they
were from those of Persia. Public contempt
punished the young, wealthy, pleasure-loving cosmopolitan,
who attempted to live in Persian style.
Thus, until the time of Alexander, when the power
of Greece had arrived at its culminating point,
Persia, with all her preponderance, could not convert
Hellas to her civilization.
In the time of Alexander, this incompatibility of
dissimilar modes of culture was singularly demonstrated.
When the empire of Darius succumbed
to the Macedonian phalanxes, it was expected, for
a time, that a Hellenic civilization would spread
over Asia. There seemed the more reason for
this belief when the conqueror, in a moment of
aberrancy, treated the monuments of the land
with such aggressive violence as seemed to evince
equal hatred and contempt. But the wanton incendiary
of Persepolis soon changed his mind,
and so completely, that his design became apparent
to simply substitute himself in the room of
the dynasty of Achæmenes, and rule over Persia
like a Persian king, with Greece added to his
estates. Great as was Alexander's power, it was
insufficient for the execution of such a project.
His generals and soldiers could not brook to see
their commander assume the long flowing robes of
the eastern kings, surround himself with eunuchs,
and renounce the habits and manners of his native
land. Though after his death some of his successors
persisted in the same system, they were compelled
greatly to mitigate it. Where the population
consisted of a motley compound of Greeks,
Syrians, and Arabs, as in Egypt and the coast of
Asia Minor, a sort of compromise between the two
civilizations became thenceforth the normal state
of the country; but where the races remained
unmixed, the national manners were preserved.
In the latter periods of the Roman empire, the
two civilizations had become completely blended
in the whole East, including continental Greece;
but it was tinged more with the Asiatic than the
Greek tendencies, because the masses belonged
much more to the former element than to the
latter. Hellenic forms, it is true, still subsisted,
but it is not difficult to discover in the ideas of
those periods and countries the Oriental stock
upon which the scions of the Alexandrian school
had been engrafted. The respective influence of
the various elements was in strict proportion to
the quantity of blood; the intellectual preponderance
belonged to that which had contributed the
greatest share.
The same antagonism which I pointed out between
the intellectual culture of the Greeks and
that of the Persians, will be found to result from
the contact of all other widely different civilizations.
I shall mention but one more instance:
the relations between the Arab civilization[181] and
our own.
There was a time when the arts and sciences,
the muses and their train, seemed to have forsaken
their former abodes, to rally around the standard
of Mohammed. That our forefathers were not
blind to the excellencies of the Arab civilization
is proved by their sending their sons to the schools
of Cordova. But not a trace of the spirit of that
civilization has remained in Europe, save in those
countries which still retain a portion of Ishmaelitic
blood. Nor has the Arab civilization found a
more congenial soil in India over which, also, its
dominion extended. Like those portions of Europe
which were subjected to Moslem masters,
that country has preserved its own modes of thinking
intact.
But if the pressure of the Arab civilization, at
the time of its greatest splendor and our greatest
ignorance, could not affect the modes of thinking
of the races of Western Europe, neither can we,
at present, when the positions are reversed, affect
in the slightest degree the feeble remnants of that
once so flourishing civilization. Our action upon
these remnants is continuous—the pressure of our
intellectual activity upon them immense; we succeed
only in destroying, not in transforming or
remodelling.[182]
Yet this civilization was not even original, and
might, therefore, be supposed to have a less obstinate
vitality. The Arab nation, it is well known,
based its empire and its intellectual culture upon
fragments of races which it had aggregated by
the weight of the sword. A variegated compound
like the Islamitic populations, could not but develop
a civilization of an equally variegated character,
to which each ethnical element contributed its
share. These elements it is not difficult to determine
and point out.
The nucleus, around which aggregated those
countless multitudes, was a small band of valiant
warriors who unfurled in their native deserts the
standard of a new creed. They were not, before
Mohammed's time, a new or unknown people.
They had frequently come in contact with the
Jews and Phenicians, and had in their veins the
blood of both these nations. Taking advantage of
their favorable situation for commerce, they had
performed the carrier trade of the Red Sea, and
the eastern coast of Africa and India, for the most
celebrated nations of ancient times, the Jews and
the Phenicians, later still, for the Romans and
Persians. They had the same traditions in common
with the Shemitic and Hamitic families from
which they sprung.[183] They had even taken an
active part in the political life of neighboring nations.
Under the Arsacides and the sons of Sassan,
some of their tribes exerted great influence in the
politics of the Persian empire. One of their adventurers[184]
had become Emperor of Rome; one of
their princes protected the majesty of Rome against
a conqueror before whom the whole east trembled,
and shared the imperial purple with the Roman
sovereign;[185] one of their cities had become, under
Zenobia, the centre and capital of a vast empire
that rivalled and even threatened Rome.[186]
It is evident, therefore, that the Arab nation
had never ceased, from the remotest antiquity, to
entertain intimate relations with the most powerful
and celebrated ancient societies. It had taken
part in their political and intellectual[187] activity;
and it might not inappropriately be compared to a
body half-plunged into the water, and half exposed
to the sun, as it partook at the same time of an
advanced state of civilization and of complete
barbarism.
Mohammed invented the religion most conformable
to the ideas of a people, among whom idolatry
had still many zealous adherents, but where
Christianity, though having made numerous converts,
was losing favor on account of the endless
schisms and contentions of its followers.[188] The
religious dogma of the Koreishite prophet was a
skilful compromise between the various contending
opinions. It reconciled the Jewish dispensation
with the New Law better than could the Church
at that time, and thus solved a problem which had
disquieted the consciences of many of the earlier
Christians, and which, especially in the east, had
given rise to many heretical sects. This was in
itself a very tempting bait, and, besides, any theological
novelty had decided chances of success
among the Syrians and Egyptians.[189] Moreover, the
new religion appeared with sword in hand, which
in those times of schismatical propagandism seemed
a warrant of success more relied upon by the masses
to whom it addressed itself, than peaceful persuasion.
Thus arrayed, Islamism issued from its native
deserts. Arrogant, and possessed but in a very
slight degree of the inventive faculty, it developed
no civilization peculiar to itself, but it had adopted,
as far as it was capable of doing, the bastard Greco-Asiatic
civilization already extant. As its triumphant
banners progressed on the east and south of
the Mediterranean, it incorporated masses imbued
with the same tendencies and spirit. From each
of these it borrowed something. As its religious
dogmas were a patchwork of the tenets of the
Church, those of the Synagogue, and of the disfigured
traditions of Hedjaz and Yemen, so its
code of laws was a compound of the Persian and
the Roman, its science was Greco-Syrian[190] and Egyptian,
its administration from the beginning tolerant
like that of every body politic that embraces many
heterogeneous elements.
It has caused much useless surprise, that Moslem
society should have made such rapid strides to
refinement of manners. But the mass of the people
over whom its dominion extended, had merely
changed the name of their creed; they were old
and well-known actors on the stage of history, and
have simply been mistaken for a new nation when
they undertook to play the part of apostles before
the world. These people gave to the common
store their previous refinement and luxury; each
new addition to the standard of Islamism, contributed
some portion of its acquisitions. The vitalizing
principle of the society, the motive power of
this cumbrous mass, was the small nucleus of Arab
tribes that had come forth from the heart of the
peninsula. They furnished, not artists and learned
men, but fanatics, soldiers, victors, and masters.
The Arab civilization, then, is nothing but
the Greco-Syrian civilization, rejuvenated and
quickened, for a time, with a new and energetic,
but short-lived, genius. It was, besides, a little
renovated and a little modified, by a slight dash of
Persian civilization.
Yet, motley and incongruous as are the elements
of which it is composed, and capable of stretching
and accommodating itself as such a compound
must be, it cannot adapt itself to any social structure
erected by other elements than its own. In
other words, many as are the races that contributed
to its formation, it is suited to none that have not
contributed to it.
This is what the whole course of history teaches
us. Every race has its own modes of thinking;
every race, capable of developing a civilization,
develops one peculiar to itself, and which it cannot
engraft upon any other, except by amalgamation
of blood, and then in but a modified degree.
The European cannot win the Asiatic to his modes
of thinking; he cannot civilize the Australian, or
the Negro; he can transmit but a portion of his
intelligence to his half-breed offspring of the inferior
race; the progeny of that half-breed and the
nobler branch of his ancestry, is but one degree
nearer, but not equal to that branch in capacity:
the proportions of blood are strictly preserved. I
have adduced illustrations of this truth from the
history of various branches of the human family,
of the lowest as well as of the higher in the scale
of intellectual progress. Are we not, then, authorized
to conclude that the diversity observable
among them is constitutional, innate, and not the
result of accident or circumstances—that there is
an absolute inequality in their intellectual endowments?
MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE THREE GREAT VARIETIES.
Impropriety of drawing general conclusions from individual
cases—Recapitulatory sketch of the leading features of the
Negro, the Yellow, and the White races—Superiority of the
latter—Conclusion of volume the first.
In the preceding pages, I have endeavored to
show that, though there are both scientific and
religious reasons for not believing in a plurality
of origins of our species, the various branches of
the human family are distinguished by permanent
and irradicable differences, both mentally and physically.
They are unequal in intellectual capacity,[191]
in personal beauty, and in physical strength.
Again I repeat, that in coming to this conclusion,
I have totally eschewed the method which is, unfortunately
for the cause of science, too often resorted
to by ethnologists, and which, to say the
least of it, is simply ridiculous. The discussion
has not rested upon the moral and intellectual
worth of isolated individuals.
With regard to moral worth, I have proved
that all men, to whatever race they may belong,
are capable of receiving the lights of true religion,
and of sufficiently appreciating that blessing to
work out their own salvation. With regard to
intellectual capacity, I emphatically protest against
that mode of arguing which consists in saying,
"every negro is a dunce;" because, by the same
logic, I should be compelled to admit that "every
white man is intelligent;" and I shall take good
care to commit no such absurdity.
I shall not even wait for the vindicators of the
absolute equality of all races, to adduce to me
such and such a passage in some missionary's or
navigator's journal, wherefrom it appears that some
Yolof has become a skilful carpenter, that some
Hottentot has made an excellent domestic, that
some Caffre plays well on the violin, or that some
Bambarra has made very respectable progress in
arithmetic.
I am prepared to admit—and to admit without
proof—anything of that sort, however remarkable,
that may be related of the most degraded
savages. I have already denied the excessive
stupidity, the incurable idiotcy of even the
lowest on the scale of humanity. Nay, I go
further than my opponents, and am not in the least
disposed to doubt that, among the chiefs of the
rude negroes of Africa, there could be found a
considerable number of active and vigorous minds,
greatly surpassing in fertility of ideas and mental
resources, the average of our peasantry, and even
of some of our middle classes. But the unfairness
of deductions based upon a comparison of the
most intelligent blacks and the least intelligent
whites, must be obvious to every candid mind.
Once for all, such arguments seem to me unworthy
of real science, and I do not wish to place
myself upon so narrow and unsafe a ground. If
Mungo Park, or the brothers Lander, have given
to some negro a certificate of superior intelligence,
who will assure us that another traveller, meeting
the same individual, would not have arrived
at a diametrically opposite conclusion concerning
him? Let us leave such puerilities, and compare,
not the individuals, but the masses. When we
shall have clearly established of what the latter
are capable, by what tendencies they are characterized,
and by what limits their intellectual activity
and development are circumscribed, whether, since
the beginning of the historic epoch, they have
acted upon, or been acted upon by other groups—when
we shall have clearly established these points,
we may then descend to details, and, perhaps, one
day be able to decide why the greatest minds of
one group are inferior to the most brilliant geniuses
of another, in what respects the vulgar herds of
all types assimilate, and in what others they differ,
and why. But this difficult and delicate task cannot
be accomplished until the relative position of
the whole mass of each race shall have been
nicely, and, so to say, mathematically defined. I
do not know whether we may hope ever to arrive
at results of such incontestable clearness and precision,
as to be able to no longer trust solely to
general facts, but to embrace the various shades
of intelligence in each group, to define and class
the inferior strata of every population and their
influence on the activity of the whole. Were it
possible thus to divide each group into certain
strata, and compare these with the corresponding
strata of every other: the most gifted of the dominant
with the most gifted of the dominated races,
and so on downwards, the superiority of some in
capacity, energy, and activity would be self-demonstrated.
After having mentioned the facts which prove
the inequality of various branches of the human
family, and having laid down the method by which
that proof should be established, I arrived at the
conclusion that the whole of our species is divisible
into three great groups, which I call primary
varieties, in order to distinguish them from others
formed by intermixture. It now remains for me
to assign to each of these groups the principal
characteristics by which it is distinguished from
the others.
The dark races are the lowest on the scale. The
shape of the pelvis has a character of animalism,
which is imprinted on the individuals of that race
ere their birth, and seems to portend their destiny.
The circle of intellectual development of that group
is more contracted than that of either of the two
others.
If the negro's narrow and receding forehead
seems to mark him as inferior in reasoning capacity,
other portions of his cranium as decidedly
point to faculties of an humbler, but not the less
powerful character. He has energies of a not despicable
order, and which sometimes display themselves
with an intensity truly formidable. He is
capable of violent passions, and passionate attachments.
Some of his senses have an acuteness unknown
to the other races: the sense of taste, and
that of smell, for instance.
But it is precisely this development of the animal
faculties that stamps the negro with the mark
of inferiority to other races. I said that his sense
of taste was acute; it is by no means fastidious.
Every sort of food is welcome to his palate; none
disgusts[192] him; there is no flesh nor fowl too vile
to find a place in his stomach. So it is with regard
to odor. His sense of smell might rather be called
greedy than acute. He easily accommodates himself
to the most repulsive.
To these traits he joins a childish instability of
humor. His feelings are intense, but not enduring.
His grief is as transitory as it is poignant, and he
rapidly passes from it to extreme gayety. He is
seldom vindictive—his anger is violent, but soon
appeased. It might almost be said that this variability
of sentiments annihilates for him the existence
of both virtue and vice. The very ardency
to which his sensibilities are aroused, implies a
speedy subsidence; the intensity of his desire, a
prompt gratification, easily forgotten. He does not
cling to life with the tenacity of the whites. But
moderately careful of his own, he easily sacrifices
that of others, and kills, though not absolutely
bloodthirsty, without much provocation or subsequent
remorse.[193] Under intense suffering, he exhibits
a moral cowardice which readily seeks refuge
in death, or in a sort of monstrous impassivity.[194]
With regard to his moral capacities, it may be
stated that he is susceptible, in an eminent degree,
of religious emotions; but unless assisted by the
light of the Gospel, his religious sentiments are of
a decidedly sensual character.
Having demonstrated the little intellectual and
strongly sensual[195] character of the black variety,
as the type of which I have taken the negro of
Western Africa, I shall now proceed to examine
the moral and intellectual characteristics of the
second in the scale—the yellow.
This seems to form a complete antithesis to
the former. In them, the skull, instead of being
thrown backward, projects. The forehead is large,
often jutting out, and of respectable height. The
facial conformation is somewhat triangular, but
neither chin nor nose has the rude, animalish
development that characterizes the negro. A
tendency to obesity is not precisely a specific
feature, but it is more often met with among the
yellow races than among any others. In muscular
vigor, in intensity of feelings and desires, they are
greatly inferior to the black. They are supple and
agile, but not strong. They have a decided taste
for sensual pleasures, but their sensuality is less
violent, and, if I may so call it, more vicious than
the negro's, and less quickly appeased. They
place a somewhat greater value upon human life
than the negro does, but they are more cruel for
the sake of cruelty. They are as gluttonous as
the negro, but more fastidious in their choice of
viands, as is proved by the immoderate attention
bestowed on the culinary art among the more
civilized of these races. In other words, the yellow
races are less impulsive than the black. Their
will is characterized by obstinacy rather than
energetic violence; their anger is vindictive
rather than clamorous; their cruelty more studied
than passionate; their sensuality more refinedly
vicious than absorbing. They are, therefore, seldom
prone to extremes. In morals, as in intellect,
they display a mediocrity: they are given to grovelling
vices rather than to dark crimes; when
virtuous, they are so oftener from a sense of practical
usefulness than from exalted sentiments. In
regard to intellectual capacity, they easily understand
whatever is not very profound, nor very
sublime; they have a keen appreciation of the
useful and practical, a great love of quiet and
order, and even a certain conception of a slight
modicum of personal or municipal liberty. The
yellow races are practical people in the narrowest
sense of the word. They have little scope of
imagination, and therefore invent but little: for
great inventions, even the most exclusively utilitarian,
require a high degree of the imaginative
faculty. But they easily understand and adopt
whatever is of practical utility. The summum
bonum of their desires and aspirations is to pass
smoothly and quietly through life.
It is apparent from this sketch, that they are
superior to the blacks in aptitude and intellectual
capacity. A theorist who would form some model
society, might wish such a population to form the
substratum upon which to erect his structure; but
a society, composed entirely of such elements,
would display neither great stamina nor capacity
for anything great and exalted.
We are now arrived at the third and last of the
"primary" varieties—the white. Among them we
find great physical vigor and capacity of endurance;
an intensity of will and desire, but which
is balanced and governed by the intellectual faculties.
Great things are undertaken, but not blindly,
not without a full appreciation of the obstacles to
be overcome, and with a systematic effort to overcome
them. The utilitarian tendency is strong,
but is united with a powerful imaginative faculty,
which elevates, ennobles, idealizes it. Hence, the
power of invention; while the negro can merely
imitate, the Chinese only utilize, to a certain extent,
the practical results attained by the white,
the latter is continually adding new ones to those
already gained. His capacity for combination of
ideas leads him perpetually to construct new facts
from the fragments of the old; hurries him along
through a series of unceasing modifications and
changes. He has as keen a sense of order as the
man of the yellow race, but not, like him, from
love of repose and inertia, but from a desire to
protect and preserve his acquisitions. At the
same time, he has an ardent love of liberty, which
is often carried to an extreme; an instinctive aversion
to the trammels of that rigidly formalistic
organization under which the Chinese vegetates
with luxurious ease; and he as indignantly rejects
the haughty despotism which alone proves a sufficient
restraint for the black races.
The white man is also characterized by a singular
love of life. Perhaps it is because he knows
better how to make use of it than other races, that
he attaches to it a greater value and spares it more
both in himself and in others. In the extreme of
his cruelty, he is conscious of his excesses; a sentiment
which it may well be doubted whether it
exist among the blacks. Yet though he loves life
better than other races, he has discovered a number
of reasons for sacrificing it or laying it down
without murmur. His valor, his bravery, are not
brute, unthinking passions, not the result of callousness
or impassivity: they spring from exalted,
though often erroneous, sentiments, the principal
of which is expressed by the word "honor." This
feeling, under a variety of names and applications,
has formed the mainspring of action of most of the
white races since the beginning of historical times.
It accommodates itself to every mode of existence,
to every walk of life. It is as puissant in the
pulpit and at the martyr's stake, as on the field of
battle; in the most peaceful and humble pursuits
of life as in the highest and most stirring. It were
impossible to define all the ideas which this word
comprises; they are better felt than expressed.
But this feeling—we might call it instinctive—is
unknown to the yellow, and unknown to the black
races: while in the white it quickens every noble
sentiment—the sense of justice, liberty, patriotism,
love, religion—it has no name in the language, no
place in the hearts, of other races. This I consider
as the principal reason of the superiority of our
branch of the human family over all others; because
even in the lowest, the most debased of our
race, we generally find some spark of this redeeming
trait, and however misapplied it may often be,
and certainly is, it prevents us, even in our deepest
errors, from falling so fearfully low as the others.
The extent of moral abasement in which we find so
many of the yellow and black races is absolutely
impossible even to the very refuse of our society.
The latter may equal, nay, surpass them in crime;
but even they would shudder at that hideous abyss
of corrosive vices, which opens before the friend of
humanity on a closer study of these races.[196]
Before concluding this picture, I would add that
the immense superiority of the white races in all
that regards the intellectual faculties, is joined to
an inferiority as strikingly marked, in the intensity
of sensations. Though his whole structure is more
vigorous, the white man is less gifted in regard to
the perfection of the senses than either the black
or the yellow, and therefore less solicited and less
absorbed by animal gratifications.
I have now arrived at the historical portion of
my subject. There I shall place the truths
enounced in this volume in a clearer light, and
furnish irrefragable proofs of the fact, which forms
the basis of my theory, that nations degenerate
only in consequence and in proportion to their
admixture with an inferior race—that a society
receives its death-blow when, from the number of
diverse ethnical elements which it comprises, a
number of diverse modes of thinking and interests
contend for predominance; when these modes
of thinking, and these interests have arisen in
such multiplicity that every effort to harmonize
them, to make them subservient to some great
purpose, is in vain; when, therefore, the only
natural ties that can bind large masses of men,
homogeneity of thoughts and feelings, are severed,
the only solid foundation of a social structure
sapped and rotten.
To furnish the necessary details for this assertion,
to remove the possibility of even the slightest
doubt, I shall take up separately, every great
and independent civilization that the world has
seen flourish. I shall trace its first beginnings, its
subsequent stages of development, its decadence
and final decay. Here, then, is the proper test of
my theory; here we can see the laws that govern
ethnical relations in full force on a magnificent
scale; we can verify their inexorably uniform and
rigorous application. The subject is immense, the
panorama spread before us the grandest and most
imposing that the philosopher can contemplate,
for its tableaux comprise the scene of action of
every instance where man has really worked out
his mission "to have dominion over the earth."
The task is great—too great, perhaps, for any
one's undertaking. Yet, on a more careful investigation,
many of the apparently insuperable difficulties
which discouraged the inquirer will vanish;
in the gorgeous succession of scenes that meet his
glance, he will perceive a uniformity, an intimate
relation and connection which, like Ariadne's
thread, will enable the undaunted and persevering
student to find his way through the mazes of the
labyrinth: we shall find that every civilization
owes its origin, its development, its splendors, to
the agency of the white races. In China and in
India, in the vast continent of the West, centuries
ere Columbus found it—it was one of the group
of white races that gave the impetus, and, so long
as it lasted, sustained it. Startling as this assertion
may appear to a great number of readers,
I hope to demonstrate its correctness by incontrovertible
historical testimony. Everywhere the
white races have taken the initiative, everywhere
they have brought civilization to the others—everywhere
they have sown the seed: the vigor
and beauty of the plant depended on whether the
soil it found was congenial or not.
The migrations of the white race, therefore,
afford us at once a guide for our historical researches,
and a clue to many apparently inexplicable
mysteries: we shall learn to understand why,
in a vast country, the development of civilization
has come to a stand, and been superseded by a
retrogressive movement; why, in another, all but
feeble traces of a high state of culture has vanished
without apparent cause; why people, the lowest
in the scale of intellect, are yet found in possession
of arts and mechanical processes that would do
honor to a highly intellectual race.
Among the group of white races, the noblest,
the most highly gifted in intellect and personal
beauty, the most active in the cause of civilization,
is the Arian[197] race. Its history is intimately associated
with almost every effort on the part of man
to develop his moral and intellectual powers.
It now remains for me to trace out the field of
inquiry into which I propose to enter in the succeeding
volumes. The list of great, independent
civilizations is not long. Among all the innumerable
nations that "strutted their brief hour on the
stage" of the world, ten only have arrived at the
state of complete societies, giving birth to distinct
modes of intellectual culture. All the others
were imitators or dependents; like planets they
revolved around, and derived their light from the
suns of the systems to which they belonged. At
the head of my list I would place:—
1. The Indian civilization. It spread among
the islands of the Indian Ocean, towards the north,
beyond the Himalaya Mountains, and towards
the east, beyond the Brahmapootra. It was originated
by a white race of the Arian stock.
2. The Egyptian civilization comes next. As
its satellites may be mentioned the less perfect
civilizations of the Ethiopians, Nubians, and several
other small peoples west of the oasis of Ammon.
An Arian colony from India, settled in the
upper part of the Nile valley, had established this
society.
3. The Assyrians, around whom rallied the
Jews, Phenicians, Lydians, Carthaginians, and Hymiarites,
were indebted for their social intelligence
to the repeated invasions of white populations.
The Zoroastrian Iranians, who flourished in Further
Asia, under the names of Medes, Persians,
and Bactrians, were all branches of the Arian
family.
4. The Greeks belonged to the same stock, but
were modified by Shemitic elements, which, in
course of time, totally transformed their character.
5. China presents the precise counterpart of
Egypt. The light of civilization was carried
thither by Arian colonies. The substratum of the
social structure was composed of elements of the
yellow race, but the white civilizers received reinforcements
of their blood at various times.
6. The ancient civilization of the Italian peninsula
(the Etruscan civilization), was developed by
a mosaic of populations of the Celtic, Iberian, and
Shemitic stock, but cemented by Arian elements.
From it emerged the civilization of Rome.
7. Our civilization is indebted for its tone and
character to the Germanic conquerors of the fifth
century. They were a branch of the Arian family.
8, 9, 10. Under these heads I class the three
civilizations of the western continent, the Alleghanian,
the Mexican, and the Peruvians.
This is the field I have marked out for my investigations,
the results of which will be laid before
the reader in the succeeding volumes. The first
part of my work is here at an end—the vestibule
of the structure I wish to erect is completed.
APPENDIX.
By J. C. NOTT, M. D.,
MOBILE, ALABAMA.