CHRISTIANITY NEITHER CREATES NOR CHANGES THE CAPACITY FOR CIVILIZATION
After my arguments on the subject of institutions and climates, I come
to another, which I should really have put before all the rest; not that
I think it stronger than they are, but because the facts on which it is
based naturally command our reverence. If my conclusions in the
preceding chapters are admitted, two points become increasingly evident:
first, that most human races are for ever incapable of civilization, so
long as they remain unmixed; secondly, that such races are not only
without the inner impulse necessary to start them on the path of
improvement, but also that no external force, however energetic in other
respects, is powerful enough to turn their congenital barrenness into
fertility. Here we shall be asked, no doubt, whether the light of
Christianity is to shine in vain on entire nations, and whether some
peoples are doomed never to behold it at all.
Some writers have answered in the affirmative. They have not scrupled to
contradict the promise of the Gospel, by denying the most characteristic
feature of the new law, which is precisely that of being accessible to
all men. Their view merely restates the old formula of the Hebrews, to
which it returns by a little larger gate than that of the Old Covenant;
but it returns all the same. I have no desire to follow the champions of
this idea, which is condemned by the Church, nor have I the least
difficulty in admitting that all human races are gifted with an equal
capacity for being received into the bosom of the Christian Communion.
Here there is no impediment arising from any original difference between
races; for this purpose their inequalities are of no account. Religions
and their followers are not, as has been assumed, distributed in zones
over the surface of the earth. It is not true that Christianity must
rule from this meridian to that, while from such and such a point Islam
takes up the sceptre, holding it only as far as a certain impassable
frontier, and then having to deliver it into the hands of Buddhism or
Brahmanism, while the fetichists of the tribe of Ham divide among
themselves the rest of the world.
Christians are found in all latitudes and all climates. Statistics,
inaccurate perhaps, but still approximately true, show us a vast number
of them, Mongols wandering in the plains of Upper Asia, savages hunting
on the tableland of the Cordilleras, Eskimos fishing in the ice of the
Arctic circle, even Chinese and Japanese dying under the scourge of the
persecutor. The least observation will show this, and will also prevent
us from falling into the very common error of confusing the universal
power of recognizing the truths of Christianity and following its
precepts, with the very different faculty that leads one human race, and
not another, to understand the earthly conditions of social improvement,
and to be able to pass from one rung of the ladder to another, so as to
reach finally the state which we call _civilization_. The rungs of this
ladder are the measure of the inequality of human races.
It was held, quite wrongly, in the last century, that the doctrine of
renunciation, a corner-stone of Christianity, was essentially opposed to
social development; and that people to whom the highest virtue consists
in despising the things here below, and in turning their eyes and
hearts, without ceasing, towards the heavenly Jerusalem, will not do
much to help the progress of this world. The very imperfection of man
may serve to rebut such an argument. There has never been any serious
reason to fear that he will renounce the joys of earth; and though the
counsels of religion were expressly directed to this point, we may say
that they were pulling against a current that they knew to be
irresistible, and were merely demanding a great deal in order to obtain
a very little. Further, the Christian precepts are a great aid to
society; they plane away all roughness, they pour the oil of charity on
all social relations, they condemn violence, force men to appeal to the
sole authority of reason, and so gain for the spirit a plenitude of
power which works in a thousand ways for the good of the flesh. Again,
religion elevates the mind by the metaphysical and intellectual
character of its dogmas, while through the purity of its moral ideal it
tends to free the spirit from a host of corrosive vices and weaknesses,
which are dangerous to material progress. Thus, as against the
philosophers of the eighteenth century, we are right in calling
Christianity a civilizing power—but only within certain limits; if we
take the words in too wide a sense, we shall find ourselves drawn into a
maze of error.
Christianity is a civilizing force in so far as it makes a man better
minded and better mannered; yet it is only indirectly so, for it has no
idea of applying this improvement in morals and intelligence to the
perishable things of this world, and it is always content with the
social conditions in which it finds its neophytes, however imperfect the
conditions may be. So long as it can pull out the noxious weeds that
stifle the well-being of the soul, it is indifferent to everything else.
It leaves all men as it finds them—the Chinese in his robes, the Eskimo
in his furs, the first eating rice, and the second eating whale-blubber.
It does not require them to change their way of life. If their state can
be improved as a direct consequence of their conversion, then
Christianity will certainly do its best to bring such an improvement
about; but it will not try to alter a single custom, and certainly will
not force any advance from one civilization to another, for it has not
yet adopted one itself. It uses all civilizations and is above all.
There are proofs in abundance, and I will speak of them in a moment; but
I must first make the confession that I have never understood the
ultra-modern doctrine which identifies the law of Christ and the
interests of this world in such a way that it creates from their union a
fictitious social order which it calls “Christian civilization.”
There is certainly such a thing as a pagan civilization, just as there
is a Brahman, Buddhist, or Jewish civilization. Societies have existed,
and still exist, which are absolutely based on religion. Religion has
given them their constitution, drawn up their laws, settled their civic
duties, marked out their frontiers, and prescribed their foreign policy.
Such societies have only been able to persist by placing themselves
under a more or less strict theocracy. We can no more imagine their
living without their rites and creeds than we can imagine the rites and
creeds existing by themselves, without the people. The whole of
antiquity was more or less in this condition. Roman statesmanship
certainly invented the legal tolerance of creeds, and a decadent
theology produced a vast system of fusion and assimilation of cults; but
these belonged to the latest age of paganism, when the fruit was already
rotten on the tree. While it was young and flourishing, there were as
many Jupiters, Mercuries, and Venuses, as there were towns. The god was
a jealous god, in a sense quite different from the jealousy of the
Jewish God; he was still more exclusive, and recognized no one but his
fellow-citizens in this world and the next. Every ancient civilization
rose to greatness under the ægis of some divinity, of some particular
cult. Religion and the State were united so closely and inseparably that
the responsibility for all that happened was shared between them. We may
speak, if we will, of “finding traces of the cult of the Tyrian Heracles
in the public policy of Carthage”; but I think that we can really
identify the effects of the doctrines taught by the priests with the
policy of the suffetes and the trend of social development. Again, I
have no doubt that the dog-headed Anubis, Isis Neith, and the Ibises
taught the men of the Nile valley all that they knew and practised.
Christianity, however, acted in this respect quite differently from all
preceding religions; this was its greatest innovation. Unlike them, it
had no chosen people. It was addressed to the whole world, not only to
the rich or the poor. From the first it received from the Holy Ghost the
gift of tongues,[31] that it might speak to each man in the language of
his country, and proclaim the Gospel by means of the ideas and images
that each nation could best understand. It did not come to change the
outward part of man, the material world; it taught him to despise this
outward part, and was only concerned with his inner self. We read in a
very ancient apocryphal book, “Let not the strong man boast of his
strength, nor the rich man of his riches; but let him who will be
glorified glorify himself in the Lord.”[32] Strength, riches, worldly
power, and the way of ambition—all these have no meaning for our law. No
civilization whatever has excited its envy or contempt; and because of
this rare impartiality, and the consequences that were to flow from it,
the law could rightly call itself “Catholic,” or universal. It does not
belong exclusively to any civilization. It did not come to bless any one
form of earthly existence; it rejects none, and would purify all.
The canonical books, the writings of the Fathers, the stories of the
missionaries of all ages, are filled with proofs of this indifference to
the outward forms of social life, and to social life itself. Provided
that a man believes, and that none of his daily actions tend to
transgress the ordinances of religion, nothing else matters. Of what
importance is the shape of a Christian’s house, the cut and material of
his clothes, his system of government, the measure of tyranny or liberty
in his public institutions? He may be a fisherman, a hunter, a
ploughman, a sailor, a soldier—whatever you like. In all these different
employments is there anything to prevent a man—to whatever nation he
belong, English, Turkish, Siberian, American, Hottentot—from receiving
the light of the Christian faith? Absolutely nothing; and when this
result is attained, the rest counts for very little. The savage Galla
can remain a Galla, and yet become as staunch a believer, as pure a
“vessel of election,” as the holiest prelate in Europe. It is here that
Christianity shows its striking superiority to other religions, in its
peculiar quality of _grace_. We must not take this away, in deference to
a favourite idea of modern Europe, that something of material utility
must be found everywhere, even in the holiest things.
During the eighteen centuries that the Church has existed, it has
converted many nations. In all these it has allowed the political
conditions to reign unchecked, just as it found them at first. It began
by protesting to the world of antiquity that it did not wish to alter in
the slightest degree the outward forms of society. It has been even
reproached, on occasion, with an excess of tolerance in this respect;
compare, for example, the attitude of the Jesuits towards the Chinese
ceremonies. We do not, however, find that Christianity has ever given
the world a unique type of civilization to which all believers had to
belong. The Church adapts itself to everything, even to the mud-hut; and
wherever there is a savage too stupid even to understand the use of
shelter, you are sure to find a devoted missionary sitting beside him on
the hard rock, and thinking of nothing but how to impress his soul with
the ideas essential to salvation. Christianity is thus not a civilizing
power in the ordinary sense of the word; it can be embraced by the most
different races without stunting their growth, or making demands on them
that they cannot fulfil.
I said above that Christianity elevates the soul by the sublimity of its
dogmas, and enlarges the intellect by their subtlety. This is only true
in so far as the soul and intellect to which it appeals are capable of
being enlarged and elevated. Its mission is not to bestow the gift of
genius, or to provide ideas for those who are without them. Neither
genius nor ideas are necessary for salvation. Indeed the Church has
expressly declared that it prefers the weak and lowly to the strong. It
gives only what it wishes to receive. It fertilizes but does not create.
It supports but does not lift on high. It takes the man as he is, and
merely helps him to walk. If he is lame, it does not ask him to run.
If I open the “Lives of the Saints,” shall I find many wise men among
them? Certainly not. The company of the blessed ones whose name and
memory are honoured by the Church consists mainly of those who were
eminent for their virtue and devotion; but, though full of genius in all
that concerned heaven, they had none for the things of earth. When I see
St. Rosa of Lima honoured equally with St. Bernard, the intercession of
St. Zita valued no less than that of St. Teresa; when I see all the
Anglo-Saxon saints, most of the Irish monks, the unsavoury hermits of
the Egyptian Thebaid, the legions of martyrs who sprang from the dregs
of the people and whom a sudden flash of courage and devotion raised to
shine eternally in glory—when I see all these venerated to the same
extent as the cleverest apologists of dogma, as the wisest champions of
the faith, then I find myself justified in my conclusion that
Christianity is not a civilizing power, in the narrow and worldly sense
of the phrase. Just as it merely asks of every man what he has himself
received, so it asks nothing of any race but what it is capable of
giving, and does not set it in a higher place among the civilized races
of the earth than its natural powers give it a right to expect. Hence I
absolutely deny the egalitarian argument which identifies the
possibility of adopting the Christian faith with that of an unlimited
intellectual growth. Most of the tribes of South America were received
centuries ago into the bosom of the Church; but they have always
remained savages, with no understanding of the European civilization
unfolding itself before their eyes. I am not surprised that the
Cherokees of North America have been largely converted by Methodist
missionaries; but it would greatly astonish me if this tribe, while it
remained pure in blood, ever managed to form one of the States of the
American Union, or exert any influence in Congress. I find it quite
natural also that the Danish Lutherans and the Moravians should have
opened the eyes of the Eskimos to the light of faith; but I think it
equally natural that their disciples should have remained in the social
condition in which they had been stagnating for ages. Again, the Swedish
Lapps are, as we might have expected, in the same state of barbarism as
their ancestors, even though centuries have passed since the gospel
first brought them the message of salvation. All these peoples may
produce—perhaps have produced already—men conspicuous for their piety
and the purity of their lives; but I do not expect to see learned
theologians among them, or skilful soldiers, or clever mathematicians,
or great artists. In other words they will for ever exclude the select
company of the fine spirits who clasp hands across the ages and
continually renew the strength of the dominant races. Still less will
those rare and mighty geniuses appear who are followed by their nations,
in the paths they mark out for themselves, only if those nations are
themselves able to understand them and go forward under their direction.
Even as a matter of justice we must leave Christianity absolutely out of
the present question. If all races are equally capable of receiving its
benefits, it cannot have been sent to bring equality among men. Its
kingdom, we may say, is in the most literal sense “not of this world.”
Many people are accustomed to judge the merits of Christianity in the
light of the prejudices natural to our age; and I fear that, in spite of
what I have said above, they may have some difficulty in getting rid of
their inaccurate ideas. Even if they agree on the whole with my
conclusions, they may still believe that the scale is turned by the
indirect action of religion on conduct, of conduct on institutions, of
institutions on the whole social order. I cannot admit any such action.
My opponents will assert that the personal influence of the
missionaries, nay, their mere presence, will be enough to change
appreciably the political condition of the converts and their ideas of
material well-being. They will say, for example, that these apostles
nearly always (though not invariably) come from a nation more advanced
than that to which they are preaching; thus they will of their own
accord, almost by instinct, change the merely human customs of their
disciples, while they are reforming their morals. Suppose the
missionaries have to do with savages, plunged in an abyss of
wretchedness through their own ignorance. They will instruct them in
useful arts and show them how men escape from famine by work on the
land. After providing the necessary tools for this, they will go
further, and teach them how to build better huts, to rear cattle, to
control the water-supply—both in order to irrigate their fields, and to
prevent inundations. Little by little they will manage to give them
enough taste for matters of the intellect to make them use an alphabet,
and perhaps, as the Cherokees have done,[33] invent one for themselves.
Finally, if they are exceptionally successful, they will bring their
cultivated disciples to imitate so exactly the customs of which the
missionaries have told them, that they will possess, like the Cherokees
and the Creeks on the south bank of the Arkansas, flocks of valuable
sheep, and even a collection of black slaves to work on their
plantations. They will be completely equipped for living on the land.
I have expressly chosen as examples the two races which are considered
to be the most advanced of all. Yet, far from agreeing with the
advocates of equality, I cannot imagine any more striking instances than
these of the general incapacity of any race to adopt a way of life which
it could not have found for itself.
These two peoples are the isolated remnant of many nations which have
been driven out or annihilated by the whites. They are naturally on a
different plane from the rest, since they are supposed to be descended
from the ancient Alleghany race to which the great ruins found to the
north of the Mississippi are attributed.[34] Here is already a great
inconsistency in the arguments of those who assert that the Cherokees
are the equals of the European races; for the first step in their proof
is that these Alleghany tribes are near the Anglo-Saxons precisely
because they are themselves superior to the other races of North
America! Well, what has happened to these chosen peoples? The American
Government took their ancient territories from both the tribes, and, by
means of a special treaty, made them emigrate to a definite region,
where separate places of settlement were marked out for them. Here,
under the general superintendence of the Ministry of War and the direct
guidance of Protestant missionaries, they were forced to take up their
present mode of life, whether they liked it or not. The writer from whom
I borrow these details—and who has himself taken them from the great
work of Gallatin[35]—says the number of the Cherokees is continually
increasing. His argument is that at the time when Adair visited them,
their warriors were estimated at 2300, while to-day the sum-total of
their population is calculated to be 15,000; this figure includes, it is
true, the 1200 negro slaves who have become their property. He also
adds, however, that their schools are, like their churches, in the hands
of the missionaries, and that these missionaries, being Protestants, are
for the most part married men with white children or servants, and
probably also a sort of general staff of Europeans, acting as clerks,
and the like. It thus becomes very difficult to establish the fact of
any real increase in the number of the natives, while on the other hand
it is very easy to appreciate the strong pressure that must be exerted
by the European race over its pupils.[36]
The possibility of making war is clearly taken away from them; they are
exiled, surrounded on all sides by the American power, which is too vast
for them to comprehend, and are, I believe, sincerely converted to the
religion of their masters. They are kindly treated by their spiritual
guides and convinced of the necessity for working, in the sense in which
work is understood by their masters, if they are not to die of hunger.
Under these conditions I can quite imagine that they will become
successful agriculturists, and will learn to carry out the ideas that
have been dinned into them, day in, day out, without ceasing.
By the exercise of a little patience and by the judicious use of hunger
as a spur to greed, we can teach animals what they would never learn by
instinct. But to cry out at our success would be to rate much lower than
it is the intelligence even of the humblest member of the human family.
When the village fairs are full of learned animals going through the
most complicated tricks, can we be surprised that men, who have been
submitted to a rigorous training and cut off from all means of escape or
relaxation, should manage to perform those functions of civilized life
which, even in a savage state, they might be able to understand, without
having the desire to practise them? The result is a matter of course;
and anyone who is surprised at it is putting man far below the
card-playing dog or the horse who orders his dinner! By arbitrarily
gathering one’s premises from the “intelligent actions” of a few human
groups, one ends in being too easily satisfied, and in coming to feel
enthusiasms which are not very flattering even to those who are their
objects.
I know that some learned men have given colour to these rather obvious
comparisons by asserting that between some human races and the larger
apes there is only a slight difference of degree, and none of kind. As I
absolutely reject such an insult to humanity, I may be also allowed to
take no notice of the exaggerations by which it is usually answered. I
believe, of course, that human races are unequal; but I do not think
that any of them are like the brute, or to be classed with it. The
lowest tribe, the most backward and miserable variety of the human
species, is at least capable of imitation; and I have no doubt that if
we take one of the most hideous bushmen, we could develop—I do not say
in him, if he is already grown up, but in his son or at any rate his
grandson—sufficient intelligence to make his acts correspond to a
certain degree of civilization, even if this required some conscious
effort of study on his part. Are we to infer that the people to which he
belongs could be civilized on our model? This would be a hasty and
superficial conclusion. From the practice of the arts and professions
invented under an advanced civilization, it is a far cry to that
civilization itself. Further, though the Protestant missionaries are an
indispensable link between the savage tribe and the central civilizing
power, is it certain that these missionaries are equal to the task
imposed on them? Are they the masters of a complete system of social
science? I doubt it. If communications were suddenly cut off between the
American Government and its spiritual legates among the Cherokees, the
traveller would find in the native farms, at the end of a few years,
some new practices that he had not expected. These would result from the
mixture of white and Indian blood; and our traveller would look in vain
for anything more than a very pale copy of what is taught at New York.
We often hear of negroes who have learnt music, who are clerks in
banking-houses, and who know how to read, write, count, dance, and
speak, like white men. People are astonished at this, and conclude that
the negro is capable of everything! And then, in the same breath, they
will express surprise at the contrast between the Slav civilization and
our own. The Russians, Poles, and Serbians (they will say), even though
they are far nearer to us than the negroes, are only civilized on the
surface; the higher classes alone participate in our ideas, owing to the
continual admixture of English, French, and German blood. The masses, on
the other hand, are invincibly ignorant of the Western world and its
movements, although they have been Christian for so many centuries—in
many cases before we were converted ourselves! The solution is simple.
There is a great difference between imitation and conviction. Imitation
does not necessarily imply a serious breach with hereditary instincts;
but no one has a real part in any civilization until he is able to make
progress by himself, without direction from others.[37] What is the use
of telling me how clever some particular savages are in guiding the
plough, in spelling, or reading, when they are only repeating the
lessons they have learnt? Show me rather, among the many regions in
which negroes have lived for ages in contact with Europeans, one single
place where, in addition to the religious doctrines, the ideas, customs,
and institutions of even one European people have been so completely
assimilated that progress in them is made as naturally and spontaneously
as among ourselves. Show me a place where the introduction of printing
has had results, similar to those in Europe, where our sciences are
brought to perfection, where new applications are made of our
discoveries, where our philosophies are the parents of other
philosophies, of political systems, of literature and art, of books,
statues, and pictures!
But I am not really so exacting and narrow-minded as I seem. I am not
seriously asking that a people should adopt our whole individuality at
the same time as our faith. I am willing to admit that it should reject
our way of thinking and strike out quite a different one. Well then! let
me see our negro, at the moment when he opens his eyes to the light of
the Gospel, suddenly realizing that his earthly path is as dark and
perplexed as his spiritual life was before. Let me see him creating for
himself a new social order in his own image, putting ideas into practice
that have hitherto rusted unused, taking foreign notions and moulding
them to his purpose. I will wait long for the work to be finished; I
merely ask that it may be begun. But it has never been begun; it has
never even been attempted. You may search through all the pages of
history, and you will not find a single people that has attained to
European civilization by adopting Christianity, or has been brought by
the great fact of its conversion to civilize itself when it was not
civilized already.
On the other hand, I shall find, in the vast tracts of Southern Asia and
in certain parts of Europe, States fused together out of men of very
different religions. The unalterable hostility of races, however, will
be found side by side with that of cults; we can distinguish the Pathan
who has become a Christian from the converted Hindu, just as easily as
we separate to-day the Russian of Orenburg from the nomad Christian
tribes among which he lives.
Once more, Christianity is not a civilizing power, and has excellent
reasons for not being so.