CASTE.
Ne sutor ultra crepidam.
In old Egypt, where we find the earliest development of Aryan
civilization, every occupation was hereditary. In the United States,
where we have its most recent development, no occupation is hereditary.
In Egypt a man’s ancestors from everlasting had practised, and his
descendants to everlasting would have to practise, the same business as
himself. In the United States it is a common occurrence for the same man
to have practised in succession several businesses.
With respect to ourselves, it is a trite remark that in this country
legislation is the only work that is designedly made hereditary. It
is, however, obvious that this is an instance which is subject to
considerable limitations, both as to its hereditary character, and as to
its actual extent. For our legislator caste is always receiving into its
ranks recruits from outside, and its legislative power is only a power
that is exercised co-ordinately with that of an unhereditary chamber.
Circumstances, not positive institution, except indirectly, have hitherto
made our agricultural labourers very much of a caste. Those who are
engaged in this kind of work are generally descended from those who have
for many generations been so employed. Multitudes of the class, however,
escape from it; and every village school that is at work amongst us is
supplying means of escape from it for many of those whose horizon it
enlarges.
The clergy of the Established Church to a great extent form a caste,
but without hereditary succession. This caste character of the clergy
is a result of their segregation from secular employments, and of their
corporate perpetuity.
Serfdom had, in mediæval Europe, a similar effect, which was, at the
same period, felt at the other extremity also of society, through the
institution of feudal nobility.
But the most widely-spread form of the institution was that which
now appears to us the most hideous of all human institutions, that
of slavery. Still we cannot pronounce it unnatural, for we find it,
at certain stages of their development, among all races of men; and
even constituting a regular part of the economy of certain insects.
In Europe it is difficult to believe that some of the early advances
of society could have been made without its aid. It belongs to that
stage when wealth, which gives the leisure which makes any degree of
intellectual culture possible, can only be secured by binding down the
many to compulsory toil for the few, and giving to them all that the
many can produce in excess of the absolute necessaries of existence.
The Homeric chieftain was the product of this arrangement. So were the
highly-cultured Greeks of the age of Pericles. It was the same with
the governing class in the period of Roman greatness. It is, in one
view, a very complete form of the institution, because it embraces
every member of the community, from the top to the bottom. It divides
society into two castes, assigning to one leisure, culture, the use of
arms, government; to the other, denying them all participation in these
advantages and employments, it assigns absolute subjection, labour, and
bare subsistence. The history of this institution is very instructive. It
shows how, in human affairs, circumstances rule and decide the question
of expediency; and even that it is impossible to predicate of matters
of this kind good or evil absolutely. Here, at all events, is something
(it is, in fact, the very mould in which a community is cast,) which at
one time builds up society, and at another overthrows it; which at one
time is the cause and instrument of progress, and at other times retards,
or reverses it; which, under some conditions, is not unfavourable to
morality, and is under others immoral and demoralizing.
Of all these arrangements, then, we may suppose that they were, in their
respective times, necessary and useful. They appear to belong to early
and transitional stages of society, and not, if there be, or ever is to
be, such a state, to its maturity. They mean either that every member
of society is not yet fit to be trusted; or that society cannot yet
afford to endow all its members with freedom and power, and that, under
such circumstances, more or less rigid restriction is an indispensable
condition of life and growth.
The abolition of slavery is the recognition, morally and
logically—though, of course, not always practically and politically: it
must, however, always work in this direction—of the axioms ‘that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit
of happiness.’
In India the word for caste signifies colour. The castes are the colours.
This connects the institution with conquest. Probably in Egypt it had
the same origin. We have seen that it might have had. But this could
not have maintained it through thousands of years. Nothing could have
given it such vitality but its utility. Benefit of clergy is evidence of
there having been a period in the history of modern Europe when only a
very limited class was educated, and so it became the sole depository of
the knowledge of the times. As there was such a period in the history of
those who had inherited the arts of Greece and Rome, and among them an
easy style of writing, it could not have been otherwise in old Egypt. The
difficulties of maintaining knowledge must at that time have been very
great; and, as all knowledge was more or less connected with religion
(religion, indeed, then meaning the organization of the knowledge of
the community for the regulation of its life and action), it naturally
fell into the keeping of the priests, who could see no advantage in
communicating it to the profane vulgar. It was their patrimony, their
inheritance. This at once preserved it, and constituted its guardians
a caste. The existence of one such caste would make the general
introduction of the system throughout the community natural and easy. It
was obviously in such times the best way of maintaining the knowledge
of every art, as well as of religion itself. It also endowed society
with a fixity and order nothing else could impart to it. Every man in
the community was born to a certain definite condition and occupation,
of which nothing could divest him, and which he never could abandon.
This utterly extinguished all motives for, and almost the very idea of,
insurrections and revolutions.
Such a state of society had, of course, certain easily-seen
disadvantages, but it also had certain very considerable advantages. The
chief of these was that just adverted to, that society, having paid the
penalty of the restrictions and losses the system imposed, advanced with
internal peace and order. These, when the system had once been disturbed,
could never again be attained till society had arrived at the opposite,
that is the Chinese or American, extreme, in which there is abolished,
as far as possible, every vestige of the old system, even what might
be called the natural and uninstituted caste of the ignorant. Caste
throughout from top to bottom, or caste nowhere, equally ensures domestic
quiet. All between, every form of the partial application of the system,
carries within itself the germs of social disquiet, dissatisfaction,
and disorder. The history of all countries has been hitherto very much
a history of caste. This is a point which has not been sufficiently
kept in sight. The picture of social order maintained in ancient Egypt
for several thousand years, as in India, astonishes us. Universal caste
explain the phenomenon. There was nothing in the bosom of those great
communities to suggest recourse to arms, except the occasional occurrence
of religious innovations, or of dynastic rivalries.