The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races

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.169 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.

NOTE TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.

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,170 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.171 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

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 criticism172 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.173 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.174 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."175