The science of comparative ethnology is one which has been greatly
developed during the last twenty-five years. The persistence of
race tendencies, as in the Semitic tribes, Jews and Arabs, or in
the Teutonic and Celtic branches of the great Aryan stock, has been
generally admitted. Though few would now say, with the ethnologist
Knox, "Race is everything," none would wholly dispense with this
factor, as Buckle did, in writing a history of civilization.
Racial varieties have existed from prehistoric times. Their origin is
lost in the remote past. As far as history goes back, we find them the
same that they are now. When and how the primitive stock differentiated
itself into the great varieties which we call Aryan, Semitic, and
Turanian, no one can tell. But there are well-established varieties of
which we can trace the rise and development; I mean national varieties.
The character of an Englishman or a Frenchman is as distinctly marked
as that of a Greek or Roman. There is a general resemblance among all
Englishmen; and the same kind of resemblance among all Frenchmen,
Spaniards, Swedes, Poles. But this crystallization into national types
of character has taken place in a comparatively short period. We look
back to a time when there were no Englishmen in Great Britain; but only
Danes, Saxons, Normans, and Celts; no Frenchmen in France; but Gauls,
Franks, and Romans. Gradually a distinct quality emerges, and we have
Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen. The type, once arrived at, persists,
and becomes more marked. It is marked by personal looks and manners,
by a common temperament, a common style of thinking, feeling, acting;
the same kind of morals and manners. This type was formed by the action
and reaction of the divers races brought side by side--Normans and
Saxons mutually influencing each other in England, and being influenced
again by climate, conditions of life, forms of government, national
customs. So, at last, we have the well-developed national character,--a
mysterious but very certain element, from which no individual can
wholly escape. All drink of that one spirit.
Thus far I have been stating what we all know. But now I would call
your attention to a curious fact, which, so far as I am aware, has not
before been noticed. It is this,--that when two nations, during their
forming period, have been in relation to each other, there will be a
peculiar character developed in each. That is to say, they will differ
from each other according to certain well-defined lines, and these
differences will repeat themselves again and again in history, in
curious parallelisms, or dualisms.
To take the most familiar illustration of this: consider the national
qualities of the French and English. The English and French, during
several centuries, have been acting and reacting on each other, both
in war and peace. Now, what are the typical characteristics of these
two nations? Stated in a broad way they might be described something as
follows:--
The English mind is more practical than ideal; its movement is slow
but persistent; its progress is by gradual development; it excels in
the industrial arts; it reverences power; it loves liberty more than
equality, not objecting to an aristocracy. It tends to individualism.
Its conquests have been due to the power of order, and adherence to law.
The French mind is more ideal than practical; versatile, rather than
persistent; its movements rapid, its progress by crises and revolution,
rather than by development; it excels in whatever is tasteful and
artistic; it admires glory rather than power; loves equality more than
liberty; objects to an aristocracy, but is ready to yield individual
rights at the bidding of the community; renouncing individualism for
the sake of communism; and its successes have been due to enthusiasm
rather than to organization.
Next, look at the Greeks and Romans. These peoples were in intimate
relations during the forming period of national life; and we find in
them much the same contrasts of character that we do in the English and
the French. The Romans were deficient in imagination, rather prosaic,
fond of rule and fixed methods, conservative of ancient customs. The
Greeks were quick and versatile; artistic to a high degree; producing
masterpieces of architecture, painting, statuary, and creating every
form of literature; inventing the drama, the epic poem, oratory, odes,
history, philosophy. The Romans borrowed from them their art and their
literature, but were themselves the creators of law, the organizers of
force. The Greeks and Romans were the English and French of antiquity;
and you will notice that they occupy geographically the same relative
positions,--the Greeks and French on the east; the Romans and English
on the west.
But now observe another curious fact. The Roman Empire and the Greek
republics came to an end; and in Greece no important nationality took
the place of those wonderful commonwealths. But in Italy, by the union
of the old inhabitants with the Teutonic northern invaders, modern
Italy was slowly formed into a new national life. No longer deriving
any important influence from Greece (which had ceased to be a living
and independent force), Italy, during the Middle Ages, came into
relations with Spain and the Spaniards. In Spain, as in Italy, a new
national life was in process of formation by the union of the Gothic
tribes, the Mohammedan invaders, and the ancient inhabitants. The
Spaniards occupied Sicily in 1282, and Naples fell later into their
hands, about 1420, and in 1526 took possession of Milan. Thus Italy and
Spain were entangled in complex relations during their forming period.
What was the final result? Modern Italians became the very opposite of
the ancient Romans. The Spaniards on the west are now the Romans, and
the Italians, the Greeks. The Spaniards are slow, strong, conservative;
the Italians, quick-witted, full of feeling and sentiment, versatile.
The Spaniards trust to organization, the Italians to enthusiasm. The
Spaniards are practical, the Italians ideal. In fine, the Spaniards, on
the west, are like the English and the ancient Romans; the Italians,
on the east, like the French and the Greeks. The English pride, the
Roman pride, the Spanish pride, we have all heard of; but the French,
the Greeks, and the Italians are not so much inclined to pride and the
love of power, as to vanity and the love of fame. England, Rome, and
Spain, united by law and the love of organization, gradually became
solidified into empires; Greece, Italy, and France were always divided
into independent states, provinces, or republics.
Now, let us go east and consider two empires that have grown up, side
by side, with constant mutual relations: Japan and China. The people
of Japan, on the east, are described by all travelers in language
that might be applied to the ancient Greeks or the modern French. They
are said to be quick-witted, lively, volatile, ready of apprehension,
with a keen sense of honor, which prefers death to disgrace; eminently
a social and pleasure-seeking people, fond of feasts, dancing, music,
and frolics. Men and women are pleasing, polite, affable. On the
other hand, the Chinese are described as more given to reason than
to sentiment, prosaic, slow to acquire, but tenacious of all that is
gained, very conservative, great lovers of law and order; with little
taste for art, but much national pride. They are the English of Asia;
the Japanese, the French.
Go back to earlier times, when the two oldest branches of the great
Aryan stock diverged on the table-lands of central Asia; the Vedic
race descending into India, and the Zend people passing west, into
Persia. The same duplex development took place that we have seen
in other instances. The people on the Indus became what they still
are,--a people of sentiment and feeling. Like the French, they are
polite, and cultivate civility and courtesy. The same tendency to
local administration which we see in France is found in India; the
commune being, in both, the germ-cell of national life. The village
communities in India are little republics, almost independent of
anything outside. Dynasties change, new rulers and kings arrive;
Hindoo, Mohammedan, English; but the village community remains the
same. Like the Japanese, the French, the Italians, the inhabitants
of India are skillful manufacturers of ornamental articles. Their
religion tends to sentiment more than to morality,--to feeling, rather
than to action. This is the development which India took when these
races inhabited the Punjaub. But the ancient Persians were different.
Their religion included a morality which placed its essence in right
thinking and right action. A sentimental religion, like that of India
and of Italy, tends to the adoration of saints and holy images and to
multiplied ceremonies. A moral religion, like that of Persia, of Judea,
and of the Teutonic races, tends to the adoration and service of the
unseen. The Hindoos had innumerable gods, temples, idols. The Persians
worshiped the sacred fire, without temple, priest, altar, sacrifice,
or ritual. The ancient Persians, wholly unlike the modern Persians,
were a people of action, energy, enterprise. But when the old Persian
empire fell, the character of the people changed. Just as in Italy
the old Roman type disappeared, and was replaced by the opposite in
the modern Italian, so modern Persia has swung round to the opposite
pole of national character. The Persians and Turks, both professing
the Mohammedan religion, belong to different sects of that faith. The
Turks are proud, tenacious of old customs, grave in their demeanor,
generally just in their dealings, keeping their word. The Persians, as
they appear in the works of Malcolm and Monier, are changeable, kindly,
polite, given to ceremonies, fond of poetry, with taste for fine art
and decoration,--a mobile people. The Turk is silent, the Persian
talkative. The Turk is proud and cold, the Persian affable and full of
sentiment. In short, the Persian is the Frenchman, and the Turk the
Englishman. And here again, as in the other cases, the French type of
nationality unfolds itself on the east, and the English on the west.
These national doubles have not been exhausted. We have other instances
of twin nations, born of much the same confluence of race elements,
of whom, as of Esau and Jacob, it might be predicted to the mother
race, "Two nations shall be born of thee; two kinds of people shall go
forth from thee; and the one shall be stronger than the other." Thus
there are the twin races which inhabit Sweden and Norway; the Swedes,
on the east, are more intelligent, quick-witted, and versatile; the
Norwegians, on the west, slow, persistent, and disposed to foreign
conquest and adventure, as shown in the sea-kings, who discovered
Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland; and the modern emigrants who reap the
vast wheatfields of Minnesota. So, too, we might speak of the Poles and
Germans. The Polish nation, on the east, resembling the French; the
German, on the west, the English.
But time will not allow me to carry out these parallels into details.
The question is, are these mere coincidences, or do they belong to the
homologons of history, where the same law of progress repeats itself
under different conditions, as the skeleton of the mammal is found in
the whale. Such curious homologons we find in national events, and they
can hardly be explained as accidental coincidences. For instance, the
English and French revolutions proceeded by six identical steps. First,
an insurrection of the people. Secondly, the dethronement and execution
of the king. Thirdly, a military usurper. Fourthly, the old line
restored. Fifthly, after the death of the restored king, his brother
succeeds to the throne. Sixthly, a second revolution drives the brother
into exile, and a constitutional king of a collateral branch takes his
place.
But if these doubles which I have described come by some mysterious law
of polar force, as in the magnet, where the two kinds of electricity
are repelled to opposite poles, and yet attract each other, how
account for the regularity of the geographical position? Why is the
French, Greek, Hindoo, Persian, Italian, Polish, Swedish type always
at the east, and the English, Roman, Iranic, Ottoman, Spanish, German,
Norwegian type always at the west? Are nations, like tides, affected
by the diurnal revolution of the globe? This, I confess, I am unable
to explain; and I leave it to others to consider whether what I have
described is pure coincidence, or if it belongs in some way to the
philosophy of history and comes under universal law.