The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races Part 20

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 pa.s.sions, and pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.ses 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 impa.s.sivity.[194]

With regard to his moral capacities, it may be stated that he is susceptible, in an eminent degree, of religious emotions; but unless a.s.sisted 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 ant.i.thesis 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 pa.s.sionate; their sensuality more refinedly vicious than absorbing. They are, therefore, seldom p.r.o.ne 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 modic.u.m of personal or munic.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s smoothly and quietly through life.

It is apparent from this sketch, that they are superior to the blacks in apt.i.tude 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, enn.o.bles, 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 pa.s.sions, not the result of callousness or impa.s.sivity: they spring from exalted, though often erroneous, sentiments, the princ.i.p.al 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 n.o.ble 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 princ.i.p.al 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 abas.e.m.e.nt 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, surpa.s.s 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 ma.s.ses of men, h.o.m.ogeneity of thoughts and feelings, are severed, the only solid foundation of a social structure sapped and rotten.

To furnish the necessary details for this a.s.sertion, 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 a.s.sertion 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 n.o.blest, 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.syrians, 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 cla.s.s 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[191] I do not hesitate to consider as an unmistakable mark of intellectual inferiority, the exaggerated development of instincts that characterizes certain savages. The perfection which some of their senses acquire, cannot but be at the expense of the reasoning faculties. See, upon this subject, the opinions of Mr. Lesson des Papous, in a memoir inserted in the tenth volume of the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_.

[192] "The negro's sense of smell and of taste is as powerful as it is unselecting. He eats everything, and I have good reasons for a.s.serting, that odors the most disagreeable to us, are positively pleasant to him."

(Pruner, _Op. cit._, vol. i. p. 133.)

Mr. Pruner's a.s.sertions would, I think, be corroborated by every one who has lived much among the negroes. It is a notorious fact that the blacks on our southern plantations eat every animal they can lay hold of. I have seen them discuss a piece of fox, or the still more strongly flavored pole-cat, with evident relish. Nay, on one occasion, I have known a party of negroes feast on an alligator for a whole week, during which time they bartered their allowance of meat for trinkets. Upon my expressing surprise at so strange a repast, I was a.s.sured that it was by no means uncommon; that it was a favorite viand of the negroes in their native country, and that even here they often killed them with the prospect of a savory roast or stew. I am aware that some persons north of the Mason's & Dixon's line might be disposed to explain this by a.s.serting that _hunger_ drove them to such extremities; but I can testify, from my own observation, that this is not the case. In the instances I have mentioned, and in many others which are too repulsive to be committed to paper, the banqueters were well fed, and evidently made such a feast from choice. There are, in the Southern States, many of the poor white population who are neither so well clothed nor so well fed as these negroes were, and yet I never heard of their resorting to such dishes.

In regard to the negro's fondness for odors, I am less qualified to speak from my own observations, but nearly every description of the manners of his native climes that I have read, mentioned the fact of their besmearing themselves with the strong musky fluid secreted by many animals--the alligator, for instance. And I remember having heard woodsmen in the South say, that while the white man shuns the polecat more than he does the rattlesnake, and will make a considerable circuit to get out of its way, the negro is but little afraid of this formidable animal and its nauseous weapon.--H.

[193] This is ill.u.s.trated by many of their practices in their natural state. For instance, the well-known custom of putting to death, at the demise of some prince or great man, a number--corresponding with the rank of the deceased--of his slaves, in order that they may wait upon him in the other world. Hundreds of poor creatures are often thus ma.s.sacred at the funeral celebrations in honor of some king or ruler.

Yet it would be unjust to call the negro ferocious or cruel. It merely proves the slight estimation in which he holds human life.--H.

[194] There is a callousness in the negro, which strikingly distinguishes him from the whites, though it is possessed in perhaps an equal degree by other races. I borrow from Mr. Van Amringe's _Nat. Hist.

of Man_, a few remarks on this subject by Dr. Mosely, in his _Treatise on Tropical Diseases_: "Negroes," says the Doctor, "whatever the cause may be, are devoid of sensibility (physical) to a surprising degree.

They are not subject to nervous diseases. They sleep sound in every disease, nor does any mental disturbance ever keep them awake. They bear chirurgical operations much better than white people, and what would be the cause of insupportable pain to a white man, a negro would almost disregard. I have amputated the legs of many negroes, who have held the upper part of the limb themselves." Every southern planter, and every physician of experience in the South, could bear witness to these facts.--H.

[195] Thinking that it might not be uninteresting to some of our readers to see the views concerning the negro of another European writer besides Mr. Gobineau, I subjoin the following extract from Mr. Tschudi's _Travels in South America_. Mr. Tschudi is a Swiss naturalist of undoubted reputation, an experienced philosophic observer, and a candid seeker for truth. His opinion is somewhat harsher than would be that of a man who had resided among that cla.s.s all his life, but it nevertheless contains some valuable truths, and is, at least, curious on account of the source whence it comes.

"In Lima, and, indeed, throughout the whole of Peru, the free negroes are a plague to society. Too indolent to support themselves by laborious industry, they readily fall into any dishonest means of getting money.

Almost all the robbers that infest the roads on the coast of Peru are free negroes. Dishonesty seems to be a part of their very nature; and, moreover, all their tastes and inclinations are coa.r.s.e and sensual. Many warm defenders excuse these qualities by ascribing them to the want of education, the recollection of slavery, the spirit of revenge, etc. But I here speak of free-born negroes, who are admitted into the houses of wealthy families, who, from their early childhood, have received as good an education as falls to the share of many of the white Creoles--who are treated with kindness and liberally remunerated, and yet they do not differ from their half-savage brethren who are shut out from these advantages. If the negro has learned to read and write, and has thereby made some little advance in education, he is transformed into a conceited c.o.xcomb, who, instead of plundering travellers on the highway, finds in city life a sphere for the indulgence of his evil propensities.... My opinion is, that the negroes, in respect to capability for mental improvement, are far behind the Europeans; and that, considered in the aggregate, they will not, even with the advantages of careful education, attain a very high degree of cultivation. This is apparent from the structure of the skull, on which depends the development of the brain, and which, in the negro, approximates closely to the animal form. The imitative faculty of the monkey is highly developed in the negro, who readily seizes anything merely mechanical, whilst things demanding intelligence are beyond his reach. Sensuality is the impulse which controls the thoughts, the acts, the whole existence of the negroes. To them, freedom can be only nominal, for if they conduct themselves well, it is because they are compelled, not because they are inclined to do so. Herein lie at once the cause of, and the apology for, their bad character." (_Travels in Peru_, London, 1848, p. 110, _et pa.s.sim_.)--H.

[196] The sickening moral degradation of some of the branches of our species is well known to the student of anthropology, though, for obvious reasons, details of this kind cannot find a place in books destined for the general reader.--H.

[197] As many of the terms of modern ethnography have not yet found their way into the dictionaries, I shall offer a short explanation of the meaning of this word, for the benefit of those readers who have not paid particular attention to that science.

The word "Arian" is derived from _Aryas_ or ~Arioi~, respectively the indigenous and the Greek designation of the ancient Medes, and is applied to a race, or rather a family of races, whose original ethnological area is not as yet accurately defined, but who have gradually spread from the centre of Asia to the mouth of the Ganges, to the British Isles, and the northern extremities of Scandinavia. To this family of races belong, among others, the ancient Medes and Persians, the white conquerors of India (now forming the caste of the Brahmins), _and the Germanic races_. The whole group is often called Indo-European. The affinities between the Greek and the German languages had long been an interesting question to philologists; but Schlegel, I believe, was the first to discover the intimate relations between these two and the Sanscrit, and he applied to the whole three, and their collateral branches, the name of _Indo-Germanic_ languages. The discovery attracted the attention both of philologists and ethnographers, and it is now indubitably proved that the civilizers of India, and the subverters of the Roman Empire are descended from the same ethnical stock. It is known that the Sanscrit is as unlike all other Indian languages, as the high-caste Brahmins are unlike the Pariahs and all the other aboriginal races of that country; and Latham has lately come to the conclusion that it has actually been _carried to India from Europe_. It will be seen from this that Mr. Gobineau, in his view of the origin of various civilizations, is supported in at least several of the most important instances.

It is a familiar saying that _civilization travels westward_: if we believe ethnologists, the Arian races have _always migrated in that direction_--from Central Asia to India, to Asia Minor, to Egypt, to Greece, to Western Europe, to the western coasts of the Atlantic, and the same impulse of migration is now carrying them to the Pacific.--H.

APPENDIX.

BY J. C. NOTT, M. D.,

MOBILE, ALABAMA.

APPENDIX.