Buch lesen: «The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races», Seite 7

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.⁶⁵ 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,⁶⁶ 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.⁶⁷ 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 Dahomey⁶⁸ 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.⁶⁹

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.⁷⁰

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.⁷¹

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.

CHAPTER VI.
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.⁷² 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.⁷³ The remains of buildings, inscriptions on rocks, the tumuli,⁷⁴ 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.⁷⁵ 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."⁷⁶

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.⁷⁷

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.⁷⁸ 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.⁷⁹