RECAPITULATION; THE RESPECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE GREAT RACES;
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE WHITE TYPE, AND, WITHIN THIS TYPE, OF THE ARYAN
FAMILY
I have shown the unique place in the organic world occupied by the human
species, the profound physical, as well as moral, differences separating
it from all other kinds of living creatures. Considering it by itself, I
have been able to distinguish, on physiological grounds alone, three
great and clearly marked types, the black, the yellow, and the white.
However uncertain the aims of physiology may be, however meagre its
resources, however defective its methods, it can proceed thus far with
absolute certainty.
The negroid variety is the lowest, and stands at the foot of the ladder.
The animal character, that appears in the shape of the pelvis, is
stamped on the negro from birth, and foreshadows his destiny. His
intellect will always move within a very narrow circle. He is not
however a mere brute, for behind his low receding brow, in the middle of
his skull, we can see signs of a powerful energy, however crude its
objects. If his mental faculties are dull or even non-existent, he often
has an intensity of desire, and so of will, which may be called
terrible. Many of his senses, especially taste and smell, are developed
to an extent unknown to the other two races.[144]
The very strength of his sensations is the most striking proof of his
inferiority. All food is good in his eyes, nothing disgusts or repels
him. What he desires is to eat, to eat furiously, and to excess; no
carrion is too revolting to be swallowed by him. It is the same with
odours; his inordinate desires are satisfied with all, however coarse or
even horrible. To these qualities may be added an instability and
capriciousness of feeling, that cannot be tied down to any single
object, and which, so far as he is concerned, do away with all
distinctions of good and evil. We might even say that the violence with
which he pursues the object that has aroused his senses and inflamed his
desires is a guarantee of the desires being soon satisfied and the
object forgotten. Finally, he is equally careless of his own life and
that of others: he kills willingly, for the sake of killing; and this
human machine, in whom it is so easy to arouse emotion, shows, in face
of suffering, either a monstrous indifference or a cowardice that seeks
a voluntary refuge in death.
The yellow race is the exact opposite of this type. The skull points
forward, not backward. The forehead is wide and bony, often high and
projecting. The shape of the face is triangular, the nose and chin
showing none of the coarse protuberances that mark the negro. There is
further a general proneness to obesity, which, though not confined to
the yellow type, is found there more frequently than in the others. The
yellow man has little physical energy, and is inclined to apathy; he
commits none of the strange excesses so common among negroes. His
desires are feeble, his will-power rather obstinate than violent; his
longing for material pleasures, though constant, is kept within bounds.
A rare glutton by nature, he shows far more discrimination in his choice
of food. He tends to mediocrity in everything; he understands easily
enough anything not too deep or sublime.[145] He has a love of utility
and a respect for order, and knows the value of a certain amount of
freedom. He is practical, in the narrowest sense of the word. He does
not dream or theorize; he invents little, but can appreciate and take
over what is useful to him. His whole desire is to live in the easiest
and most comfortable way possible. The yellow races are thus clearly
superior to the black. Every founder of a civilization would wish the
backbone of his society, his middle class, to consist of such men. But
no civilized society could be created by them; they could not supply its
nerve-force, or set in motion the springs of beauty and action.
We come now to the white peoples. These are gifted with reflective
energy, or rather with an energetic intelligence. They have a feeling
for utility, but in a sense far wider and higher, more courageous and
ideal, than the yellow races; a perseverance that takes account of
obstacles and ultimately finds a means of overcoming them; a greater
physical power, an extraordinary instinct for order, not merely as a
guarantee of peace and tranquillity, but as an indispensable means of
self-preservation. At the same time, they have a remarkable, and even
extreme, love of liberty, and are openly hostile to the formalism under
which the Chinese are glad to vegetate, as well as to the strict
despotism which is the only way of governing the negro.
The white races are, further, distinguished by an extraordinary
attachment to life. They know better how to use it, and so, as it would
seem, set a greater price on it; both in their own persons and those of
others, they are more sparing of life. When they are cruel, they are
conscious of their cruelty; it is very doubtful whether such a
consciousness exists in the negro. At the same time, they have
discovered reasons why they should surrender this busy life of theirs,
that is so precious to them. The principal motive is honour, which under
various names has played an enormous part in the ideas of the race from
the beginning. I need hardly add that the word honour, together with all
the civilizing influences connoted by it, is unknown to both the yellow
and the black man.
On the other hand, the immense superiority of the white peoples in the
whole field of the intellect is balanced by an inferiority in the
intensity of their sensations. In the world of the senses, the white man
is far less gifted than the others, and so is less tempted and less
absorbed by considerations of the body, although in physical structure
he is far the most vigorous.[146]
Such are the three constituent elements of the human race. I call them
secondary types, as I think myself obliged to omit all discussion of the
Adamite man. From the combination, by intermarriage, of the varieties of
these types come the tertiary groups. The quaternary formations are
produced by the union of one of these tertiary types, or of a
pure-blooded tribe, with another group taken from one of the two foreign
species.
Below these categories others have appeared—and still appear. Some of
these are very strongly characterized, and form new and distinct points
of departure, coming as they do from races that have been completely
fused. Others are incomplete, and ill-ordered, and, one might even say,
anti-social, since their elements, being too numerous, too disparate, or
too barbarous, have had neither the time nor the opportunity for
combining to any fruitful purpose. No limits, except the horror excited
by the possibility of infinite intermixture, can be assigned to the
number of these hybrid and chequered races that make up the whole of
mankind.
It would be unjust to assert that every mixture is bad and harmful. If
the three great types had remained strictly separate, the supremacy
would no doubt have always been in the hands of the finest of the white
races, and the yellow and black varieties would have crawled for ever at
the feet of the lowest of the whites. Such a state is so far ideal,
since it has never been beheld in history; and we can imagine it only by
recognizing the undisputed superiority of those groups of the white
races which have remained the purest.
It would not have been all gain. The superiority of the white race would
have been clearly shown, but it would have been bought at the price of
certain advantages which have followed the mixture of blood. Although
these are far from counterbalancing the defects they have brought in
their train, yet they are sometimes to be commended. Artistic genius,
which is equally foreign to each of the three great types, arose only
after the intermarriage of white and black. Again, in the Malayan
variety, a human family was produced from the yellow and black races
that had more intelligence than either of its ancestors. Finally, from
the union of white and yellow, certain intermediary peoples have sprung,
who are superior to the purely Finnish tribes as well as to the negroes.
I do not deny that these are good results. The world of art and great
literature that comes from the mixture of blood, the improvement and
ennoblement of inferior races—all these are wonders for which we must
needs be thankful. The small have been raised. Unfortunately, the great
have been lowered by the same process; and this is an evil that nothing
can balance or repair. Since I am putting together the advantages of
racial mixtures, I will also add that to them is due the refinement of
manners and beliefs, and especially the tempering of passion and desire.
But these are merely transitory benefits, and if I recognize that the
mulatto, who may become a lawyer, a doctor, or a business man, is worth
more than his negro grandfather, who was absolutely savage, and fit for
nothing, I must also confess that the Brahmans of primitive India, the
heroes of the Iliad and the Shahnameh, the warriors of Scandinavia—the
glorious shades of noble races that have disappeared—give us a higher
and more brilliant idea of humanity, and were more active, intelligent,
and trusty instruments of civilization and grandeur than the peoples,
hybrid a hundred times over, of the present day. And the blood even of
these was no longer pure.
However it has come about, the human races, as we find them in history,
are complex; and one of the chief consequences has been to throw into
disorder most of the primitive characteristics of each type. The good as
well as the bad qualities are seen to diminish in intensity with
repeated intermixture of blood; but they also scatter and separate off
from each other, and are often mutually opposed. The white race
originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength.
By its union with other varieties, hybrids were created, which were
beautiful without strength, strong without intelligence, or, if
intelligent, both weak and ugly. Further, when the quantity of white
blood was increased to an indefinite amount by successive infusions, and
not by a single admixture, it no longer carried with it its natural
advantages, and often merely increased the confusion already existing in
the racial elements. Its strength, in fact, seemed to be its only
remaining quality, and even its strength served only to promote
disorder. The apparent anomaly is easily explained. Each stage of a
perfect mixture produces a new type from diverse elements, and develops
special faculties. As soon as further elements are added, the vast
difficulty of harmonizing the whole creates a state of anarchy. The more
this increases, the more do even the best and richest of the new
contributions diminish in value, and by their mere presence add fuel to
an evil which they cannot abate. If mixtures of blood are, to a certain
extent, beneficial to the mass of mankind, if they raise and ennoble it,
this is merely at the expense of mankind itself, which is stunted,
abased, enervated, and humiliated in the persons of its noblest sons.
Even if we admit that it is better to turn a myriad of degraded beings
into mediocre men than to preserve the race of princes whose blood is
adulterated and impoverished by being made to suffer this dishonourable
change, yet there is still the unfortunate fact that the change does not
stop here; for when the mediocre men are once created at the expense of
the greater, they combine with other mediocrities, and from such unions,
which grow ever more and more degraded, is born a confusion which, like
that of Babel, ends in utter impotence, and leads societies down to the
abyss of nothingness whence no power on earth can rescue them.
Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive
from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a
society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of
the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs
to the most illustrious branch of our species.
Of the multitude of peoples which live or have lived on the earth, ten
alone have risen to the position of complete societies. The remainder
have gravitated round these more or less independently, like planets
round their suns. If there is any element of life in these ten
civilizations that is not due to the impulse of the white races, any
seed of death that does not come from the inferior stocks that mingled
with them, then the whole theory on which this book rests is false. On
the other hand, if the facts are as I say, then we have an irrefragable
proof of the nobility of our own species. Only the actual details can
set the final seal of truth on my system, and they alone can show with
sufficient exactness the full implications of my main thesis, that
peoples degenerate only in consequence of the various admixtures of
blood which they undergo; that their degeneration corresponds exactly to
the quantity and quality of the new blood, and that the rudest possible
shock to the vitality of a civilization is given when the ruling
elements in a society and those developed by racial change have become
so numerous that they are clearly moving away from the homogeneity
necessary to their life, and it therefore becomes impossible for them to
be brought into harmony and so acquire the common instincts and
interests, the common logic of existence, which is the sole
justification for any social bond whatever. There is no greater curse
than such disorder, for however bad it may have made the present state
of things, it promises still worse for the future.
NOTE.—The “ten civilizations” mentioned in the last paragraph are as
follows. They are fully discussed in the subsequent books of the
“Inequality of Races,” of which the present volume forms the first.
I. The Indian civilization, which reached its highest point round the
Indian Ocean, and in the north and east of the Indian Continent,
south-east of the Brahmaputra. It arose from a branch of a white people,
the Aryans.
II. The Egyptians, round whom collected the Ethiopians, the Nubians, and
a few smaller peoples to the west of the oasis of Ammon. This society
was created by an Aryan colony from India, that settled in the upper
valley of the Nile.
III. The Assyrians, with whom may be classed the Jews, the Phœnicians,
the Lydians, the Carthaginians, and the Hymiarites. They owed their
civilizing qualities to the great white invasions which may be grouped
under the name of the descendants of Shem and Ham. The Zoroastrian
Iranians who ruled part of Central Asia under the names of Medes,
Persians, and Bactrians, were a branch of the Aryan family.
IV. The Greeks, who came from the same Aryan stock, as modified by
Semitic elements.
V. The Chinese civilization, arising from a cause similar to that
operating in Egypt. An Aryan colony from India brought the light of
civilization to China also. Instead however of becoming mixed with black
peoples, as on the Nile, the colony became absorbed in Malay and yellow
races, and was reinforced, from the north-west, by a fair number of
white elements, equally Aryan but no longer Hindu.
VI. The ancient civilization of the Italian peninsula, the cradle of
Roman culture. This was produced by a mixture of Celts, Iberians,
Aryans, and Semites.
VII. The Germanic races, which in the fifth century transformed the
Western mind. These were Aryans.
VIII.–X. The three civilizations of America, the Alleghanian, the
Mexican, and the Peruvian.
Of the first seven civilizations, which are those of the Old World, six
belong, at least in part, to the Aryan race, and the seventh, that of
Assyria, owes to this race the Iranian Renaissance, which is,
historically, its best title to fame. Almost the whole of the Continent
of Europe is inhabited at the present time by groups of which the basis
is white, but in which the non-Aryan elements are the most numerous.
There is no true civilization, among the European peoples, where the
Aryan branch is not predominant.
In the above list no negro race is seen as the initiator of a
civilization. Only when it is mixed with some other can it even be
initiated into one.
Similarly, no spontaneous civilization is to be found among the yellow
races; and when the Aryan blood is exhausted stagnation supervenes.
INDEX
Abraham, 123
Abu-Hanifah, 123
Achaemenidae, 176
Adair, 72
Adam, 118–9, 145
Æschylus, 14, 99
Agrippa, 17
Albigenses, 198
Alcæus, 94
Alexander the Great, 44, 175–6, 193
Alexandria, 61
Alexandrians, 38, 176
Algiers, 171
Alleghany race, 71, 172
Altaic languages, 183
Altai Mountains, 128, 141
Amalfi, 61
America, Anglo-Saxons of North, 39, 71, 160 _n._
Anabaptists, 20
Anaxagoras, 14
Ancorso, 143
Andes, 115
Anglo-Saxons, 30, 69
Annam, 164
Anne, Queen, 42
Antilles, 50
Antioch, 60
Antonines, 15
Antoninus Pius, 11
Anubis, 66
Apollo, 108–9
Appius Claudius, 9
Arabs, 21, 58, 122–5, 177–9
Aral, Lake, 128
Aramaic, 194
Aranda, Count of, 52
Ararat, Mount, 142
Araucans, 119
Arbela, 33
Arcadia, 59
Arginusæ, 158
Aristophanes, 14, 157
Aristotle, 166
Arkansas, 71
Armagnacs, 12
Armenians, 58, 193
Arsacidæ, 177
Artibonite, 48
Aryan languages, 183, 188, 199
Aryavarta, 32
Aseddin, 129
Ashik-Pacha-Zadeh, 130 _n._
Aspasia, 14
Assyria, 2, 7, 56, 79
Assyrians, 87, 126
Athene, 94
Athenians, 7;
religion, 13, 17;
art and politics, 157–8
Athens, 59, 104
Atlas, Mount, 141
Attila, 132
Aurelian, 17
Auvergne, 121
Aymaras, 85
Aztecs, 8, 13, 192
Baber, 129 _n._
Babylon, 10, 194
Bagdad, 178
Baker, 137–8
Balaïbalan, 188
Bambaras, 180
Barrow, 121 _n._
Basques, 194
Belgium, 92, 99
Berbers, 194, 201
Berlin, climate of, 38
Bernard, St., 69
Bichat, 24
Birman, 190
Blumenbach, 109–10, 119, 146
Bœotia, 59
Bordeaux, 60
Born, Bertran de, 197
Bossuet, 12
Brahmans, 32, 65;
civilization, 83, 97, 209;
religion, 142;
pacifism, 161
Brazil, 125 _n._
Bremen, 60
Breton, language, 201
Brittany, 17, 44, 101 _n._
Buddhists, 65, 97
Burgundian, 201
Bushmen, 187
Caciques, 171
Cadiz, 150
Cæsar, Julius, 15, 158
Calabrians, 121
Calvinists, 41
Camper, 108–10
Canaries, 144, 155
Cappadocians, 193
Capri, 60
Carians, 193
Caroline Islands, 173
Carthage, 13
Carthaginians, 35, 38, 66, 79
Carus, 54 _n._, 74 _n._, 111–4, 149
Catalans, 92
Catawhas, 172
Cato, 158
Catullus, 166
Caucasian, 119, 146
Caucasus, 127, 141–2, 187
Celtic languages, 189–90, 196–201
Celts, 32, 35, 172
Chagres, 61
Charlemagne, 150
Charles I, of England, 41;
VII, of France, 43
Cherokees, 69, 71–2, 74, 121, 172
China, 7, 20;
climate of, 56–7
Chinese, 33;
as traders, 58;
Chinese Christians, 64–5;
material civilization, 87, 95–7;
permanent characteristics, 138;
language, 184–5
Chiquitos, 202
Chlodwig, 160 _n._
Christianity, its fight against paganism, 45;
relation to civilization, chap. vii _passim_
Cicero, 158
Cincinnatus, 11
Cingalese, 126
Cirionos, 53
Civilization, Guizot’s definition, 80–1;
von Humboldt’s definition, 82;
Gobineau’s definition, 91;
list of —s, 211–12
Co-adjutor, 41
Columbus, 144
Confucius, 74 _n._
Constantine, 15
Constantinople, 61, 128, 150
Coptic, 185 _n._
Cordilleras, the, 64
Cordova, 29, 177
Corinth, 59
Coromandel Coast, 122
Cortes, 8, 192
Creeks, 71
Croats, 29
Cuba, 51
Cuvier, 118, 136, 141
Cuzco, 167
Cyrus the Great, 10
Dahomey, 48, 85
Damascus, 57
Dante, 198
Darius, 10, 33, 176
Davis, 96
Deccan, 147
Decius, 17
Degeneration, meaning of, 25
Delaware, 190
Delhi, 34
Demeter, 59, 94
Diocletian, 17, 96
Djelat-Eddin-Rumi, 188
Dodona, 175
Draco, 40
Druids, 44
Ecbatana, 175
Egypt, 2, 7, 56
Egyptians, 30, 80;
civilization, 87;
relations with Islam, 178
Ekkhili, 201
England, luxury in, 8;
change in institutions, 42
English, as rulers of India, 34;
civilization, 81, 92, 97–102
Epicurus, 13
Erie, Lake, 55
Eskimos, 64–5, 69, 131
Etruscans, 80, 121
Euhemerus, 16
Euphrates, 56
Europeans, physical and mental characteristics of, 107–8 and chaps. x,
xii, xvi, _passim_
Euskara, 201, 203
Eve, 119
Fabii, 33, 159
Farnese Hercules, 108
Fatimites, 7
Fellatahs, 48
Fénelon, 12
Ferdinand the Catholic, 41
Finns, 38, 127–32, 146
Flourens, 116
France, luxury in, 8;
under English rule, 20;
change in institutions, 43
Franklin, 180 _n._
Franks, 199
French, civilization of, 81, 92;
power of resistance, 152;
language, 189, 196–201
Galerius, 16
Galla, 67
Gallatin, 72
Gallo-Romans, 11, 197
_Garin le Loherain_, 200–1
Gauls, the, independence of, 170
Gayaseddin-Keikosrev, 129
Genesis, Book of, 117–8
Genoese, 8, 79
Gerando, 132
Germanic tribes, 87, 91, 93, 128;
language, 189–90, 198–9
Germany, religious wars in, 21
Gioberti, 151
Goethe, 83, 185 _n._
Gothic, 190
Goths, 10, 197
Greece, 2, 7;
Christianity in, 17;
climate of, 59
Greeks, 8, 10;
civilization, 87–8, 92, 94;
religion, 142;
relation to Persians, 174–6;
language, 191–4
Grenada, 29
Grimm, Monsieur de, 49
Guaranis, 52–3
Guizot, 77–82
Gutenberg, 165
Ham, 29, 48
Hamites, 118, 146
Hanover, 92
Hanseatic towns, 60
Harmodius, 10
Hawaii, 47
Hayti, 48–51
Hedjaz, 178
Helvetius, 151
Henry IV, of France, 43
Heracles, Tyrian, 66
Hindus, 29–30, 76;
civilization, 80, 87, 91;
age of marriage among, 124
Holbach, Baron, 49
Holland, 92, 99
Homer, 157
Hottentots, 121, 180
Humboldt, A. von, 129 _n._, 132 _n._, 137 _n._, 144 _n._
Humboldt, W. von, 82–4, 183 _n._, 187, 192, 195
Hungary, 29
Huns, 132
Huron, 37
Hussites, 20
Hybrids, fertility of, 115–7
Hyderabad, 34
Iberians, 172–3
Ibn Foszlan, 160 _n._
_Iliad_, the, 199, 209
Illyrians, 172
India, 7;
government of, by the English, 34;
climate, 56–7;
art, 104
Indians, North-American, _see_ Redskins
Indians, South-American, 171
Ishmael, 122, 177
Isis, 66
Isola Madre, 144
Jamaica, 51
James I, of England, 42
Janissaries, 130
Japanese, 64, 80
Japhet, 118
Javanese, 45, 171
Jerome, St., 197
Jesuits, 51–3, 68, 125 _n._
Jews, 3, 29;
growth, 58–9;
religion, 66;
physical identity, 122–3;
language, 194–5
Jovian, 11
Judæa, 13
Julia, 15 _n._
Julian, 16
Jupiter, 13
Kabyles, 57
Kaffirs, 85, 180
Kalidasa, 157
Kalmucks, 108
Kamaun, 147
Kamehameha III, 47
Katai Mountains, 128
Kawi, 190
Khalil Chendereli, 130
Khorsabad, 126
Kirghiz-Kasaks, 132
Klemm, 86 _n._
Koran, 123–4
Krapff, 125 _n._
Kurds, 29
Lællius, 14
Lahore, 34
Lander, 180
Languedoc, 122
_Langue d’oil_, 197, 199–201
Lapps, 69, 127, 131, 133
Latin, rustic, 196–7
Leila, 124
Lenni-Lenapes, 55 _n._, 190–1
_Lingua romana_, 189, 197–9
Littré, 199
London, mixture of races in, 150
Louis XIV, 12, 21, 151
Lucrece, 9
Ludolf, 114 _n._
Lutherans, Danish, 69
Lycurgus, 40, 42
Lyons, 60
Macaulay, Lord, 198
Macedonians, the, 30, 175
Magadha, 7
Magi, 13
Magyars, 29, 131–3
Malabar, 122
Malays, 58, 111–3, 152, 208
Manchus, 20
Manu, Code of, 32
Marcius, Ancus, 15 _n._
Marianne Islands, the, 172
Marseilles, 60
Martial, 166
Martinique, 51
Maximin, 16
Medusa, 109
Meiners, 107 _n._
Memphis, 38
Meru, 142
Mexico, Gulf of, 55
Mieris, 113 _n._
Milan, 60
Mississippi, 71
Missouri, 55
Mohammedans, 51, 177–9
Mohammed IV, 130
Mohammed (the Prophet), 177–8
Mongols, 20;
Mongol Christians, 64;
material civilization, 85;
physical characteristics, 111–5, 150.
_See also_ Yellow Races
Montausier, the, 12
Montpellier, 178
Moors, 41
Moravians, 69, 161
Morosini, 193
Morton, 111
Mulattoes, 149, 209
Muskhogees, 172
Mussulmans, _see_ Mohammedans
Napoleon, 41, 151
Narbonese Gaul, 44
Narbonne, 60
Natchez, 172
Negroes, incapacity for civilization, 74–5;
physical and mental characteristics, chaps. x, xii, xvi, _passim_
Nero, 17
Nestorians, 29
Neustria, 133
New Zealanders, 152
Nimroud, 168
Nineveh, 104
Normandy, climate of, 144
Normans, 31, 60
Novgorod, 60
Numidia, 94
Nushirwan, 128 _n._
Oceania, 46, 57, 107, 116, 162
Odenathus, 177
Oghuzes, 128–9
Olympia, 175
Olympus, Mount, 142
d’Orbigny, 163 _n._, 202
Orenburg, 76
Ortoghrul, 129
Osman, 129–30
Osmanlis, 129–30
Ostiaks, 127, 133
Othomi, 185 _n._
Owen, 109–11
Palestine, climate of, 59
Palmyra, 177
Panama, 61
Paraguay, 51–3, 125 _n._
Parana, 53
Paris, 10, 43, 60;
mixture of races in, 150
Park, Mungo, 180
Parsees, 29
Parthenon, 193
Pathans, 76
Paul, St., 17
Pecheray, 150
Pelagian, 150
Penn, 39
Pericles, 14, 94, 157
Permians, 133
Persepolis, 126, 176
Persians, 8, 13, 29–30, 33;
relation to Greeks, 174–6;
relation to Arabs, 178–9
Peru, 13, 85
Peruvians, 80, 115;
civilization, 167;
language, 192
Philæ, 104
Philip of Macedon, 94
Philip the Arabian, 177
Phœnicians, 9, 35, 57, 79
Picardy, 201
Piedmont, 87
Pindar, 94, 157
Pisans, 8, 79
Plato, 157, 166
Pliny, 159, 166
Plutarch, 5
Polynesians, 27, 85, 147
Pompeius, 158
Pontus, 7
Postumus, C. Junius, 159
Prætorian Guard, 16
Prakriti, 86
Prichard, 8, 73, chap. x _passim_, 123, 125, 137, 146
Prometheus, 142
Purusha, 86
Quaternary type, 149
Quichuas, 85, 115
Quito, 167
Radack Islands, the, 143
Ravenna, 61
Raynal, Abbé, 6
Rechabites, 122
Redskins of North America, their treatment, 46;
skull-measurement, 111–2;
exclusiveness, 170–1
Regent of France (Anne of Austria), 41
Rocky Mountains, 55
Roman Empire, fall of, 2–3, 33
Romans, 8, 9;
civilization, 87, 92, 94–7;
modernity, 158–9;
diffusion of books among, 166
Rome, luxury in, 8;
religion in, 13, 17, 66;
climate of, 59–60
Rosa, St., 68
Roussillon, 122
Rubens, 113 _n._
Rûm, 129
Russia, 8, 152
Russians, 76
de Sacy, 187
Sakuntala, 124
Salsette, 104
Samal, 143
Samoyedes, 27, 85, 127, 131
San Domingo, 48–51
Sandwich Islands, 46–7
Sanscrit, 188–91, 203
Saracens, 197
Sarah, 123
Sassanidæ, 177
Saxons, 29
Scandinavians, 133, 209
Schlotzer, 132
Scilly Isles, 173
Scipio, 14, 35
Scythians, 129 _n._, 133
Seljukians, 129–30
Seminoles, 172
Semites, 29, 118, 146
Semitic languages, 184, 188–9
Seneca, 161
Septimius Severus, 11
_Shahnameh_, the, 209
Sharuz, 128
Shelley, 37 _n._
Shem, 29
Siamese, 164 _n._
Siculi, 132
Sicyon, 175
Sidon, 57
Slavs, 32, 74, 92
Socrates, 14
Sophocles, 14
Spain, 20; Arabs in, 29
Spaniards, in South America, 46, 52;
independence of, 170
Sparta, 59, 175
Spartacus, 159
Spartans, 9, 40, 79
Squier, 55 _n._
St. Bartholomew’s day, 12
Strafford, Earl of, 41
Suetonius, 15 _n._
Sufis, 188
Sulla, 158
Sulpicius Severus, 197
Swabia, 79
Switzerland, 124;
climate of, 144
Syria, 79
Syrians, 94, 172, 177–9
Tacitus, 5, 17
Tahitians, 154
Talmud, 195
Tatars, 146
Tchingiz, 129 _n._
Tenochtitlan, 104
Terah, 194
Teresa, St., 69
Tertiary type, 147
Tertullian, 159
Teutates, 13
Thebaid, 69
Thirty Tyrants, 20
Thucydides, 6
Thuringia, 79
Tiberius, 60
Tibetans, 80, 91, 97
Tigris, 56
Tihuanaco, 167
Tlaxcala, 159
Tocqueville, de, 72 _n._
Toledo, 29
Tonga-Tabu, 154
Tonkin, 164
Toulouse, 60
Touraine, 100 _n._
Trajan, 11, 159
Treves, 60, 197
Tribunate, the, 9
Triptolemus, 59
Tungusians, 117, 127, 133
Turanians, 128
Turkestan, 128
Turkey, 29
Turks, 29, 127–31
Tylos, 57
Tyre, 13, 57
Ulea, 143
Ulfilas, 190
Ur, 194
Urkan, 130
Uruguay, 53
Valentia, 29
Valerius Publicola, 10
Valmiki, 157
Vaqueiras, Raimbaut de, 198
Venetians, 8, 79
Venice, 60
Venus, 108
Virgil, 166
Voltaire, 5
Vrolik, 114–5
Wallachians, 29, 190
Wanikas, 125 _n._
Washington, 39
White races, definition, 146;
_see also_ Europeans
William III, of England, 21, 81
Xerxes, 176
Yellow races, physical and mental characteristics of, chaps. x, xii,
xvi _passim_;
definition, 146;
_see also_ Mongols
Yemen, 178
Yolofs, 180
Yo-kiao-li, 125 _n._
Yunnan, 87
Zama, battle of, 35
Zend, 201
Zeno, 14
Zenobia, 177
Zerubbabel, 194
Zingaris, 124, 195 _n._
Zita, St., 69
Zuleika, 124
PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON & EDINBURGH
-----
Footnote 1:
See my Introduction to Count Gobineau’s “Renaissance” (Heinemann).
Footnote 2:
This dedication and the following preface apply to the whole work, of
which the present volume contains the first book. The remaining books
are occupied by a detailed examination of the civilizations mentioned
at the end of this volume, and it is of these as well as the present
book that the author is thinking, in his preface, when speaking of his
imitators. A few passages in the dedication that relate exclusively to
these books have been omitted.—Tr.
Footnote 3:
Amédée Thierry, _La Gaule sous l’administration romaine_, vol. i, p.
244.
Footnote 4:
By C. F. Weber, _Lucani Pharsalia_ (Leipzig, 1828), vol. i, pp. 122–3,
_note_.
Footnote 5:
Prichard, “Natural History of Man.” Dr. Martius is still more
explicit. _Cf._ Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, pp.
379–80.
Footnote 6:
Balzac, _Lettre à madame la duchesse de Montausier_.
Footnote 7:
The power of the Tribunate was revived after Appius’s decemvirate in
450 B.C., but the office had been founded more than forty years
before. On the other hand, consular tribunes were first elected after
450 (in 445); but the consular tribunate could hardly be described as
a “great revolution.” The author may be confusing the two
tribunates.—Tr.
Footnote 8:
_Cp._ Homer, “Odyssey,” XV, 415 _sqq._
Footnote 9:
Augustin Thierry, _Récits des temps mérovingiens_; see especially the
story of Mummolus.
Footnote 10:
Cæsar, the democrat and sceptic, knew how to hold language contrary to
his opinions when it was necessary. His funeral oration on his aunt is
very curious: “On the mother’s side,” he said, “Julia was descended
from kings; on her father’s, from the immortal gods: for the Marcian
Reges, whose name her mother bore, were sprung from Ancus Marcius,
while Venus is the ancestress of the Julii, the clan to which belongs
the family of the Cæsars. Thus in our blood is mingled at the same
time the sanctity of kings, who are the mightiest of men, and the
awful majesty of the gods, who hold kings themselves in their power”
(Suetonius, “Julius,” p. 6). Nothing could be more monarchical; and
also, for an atheist, nothing could be more religious.
Footnote 11:
Acts xxvi, 24, 28, 31.
Footnote 12:
The reader will understand that I am not speaking of the political
existence of a centre of sovereignty, but of the life of a whole
society, or the span of a whole civilization. The distinction drawn at
the beginning of chap. ii must be applied here.
Footnote 13:
The celebrated physiologist (1771–1802), and author of _L’Anatomie
générale_.—Tr.
Footnote 14:
This attachment of the Arab tribes to their racial unity shows itself
sometimes in a very curious manner. A traveller (M. Fulgence Fresnel,
I think) says that at Djiddah, where morals are very lax, the same
Bedouin girl who will sell her favours for the smallest piece of money
would think herself dishonoured if she contracted a legal marriage
with the Turk or European to whom she contemptuously lends herself.
Footnote 15:
The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys;
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
SHELLEY, “Queen Mab.”
Footnote 16:
Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV.—Tr.
Footnote 17:
The Comte de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_, has rightly shown that the party crushed by Cardinal
Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism or the great
aristocratic methods of government. Montmorency, Cinq-Mars, and
Marillac tried to overthrow the State merely in order to obtain favour
and office for themselves. The great Cardinal was quite innocent of
the “murder of the French nobility,” with which he has been so often
reproached.
Footnote 18:
A. von Humboldt, _Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du
nouveau continent_, vol. ii, pp. 129–30.
Footnote 19:
See the articles of Gustave d’Alaux in the _Revue des deux Mondes_.
Footnote 20:
The colony of San Domingo, before its emancipation, was one of the
places where the luxury and refinement of wealth had reached its
highest point. It was, to a superior degree, what Havana has become
through its commercial activity. The slaves are now free and have set
their own house in order. This is the result!
Footnote 21:
Consult, on this subject, Prichard, d’Orbigny, A. von Humboldt, &c.
Footnote 22:
_See above_, p. 38.
Footnote 23:
Compare Carus, _Über ungleiche Befähigung der verschiedenen
Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung_ (Leipzig, 1849), p.
96 _et passim_.
Footnote 24:
Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 37. _See also_ Squier,
“Observations on the Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.”
Footnote 25:
The special construction of these tumuli and the numerous instruments
and utensils they contain are occupying the attention of many eminent
American antiquaries. It is impossible to doubt the great age of these
monuments. Squier is perfectly right in finding a proof of this in the
mere fact that the skeletons discovered in the tumuli fall to pieces
when brought into the slightest contact with the air, although the
conditions for their preservation are excellent, so far as the quality
of the soil is concerned. On the other hand, the bodies which lay
buried under the cromlechs of Brittany, and which are at least 1800
years old, are perfectly firm. Hence we may easily imagine that there
is no relation between these ancient inhabitants of the land and the
tribes of the present day—the Lenni-Lenapes and others. I must not end
this note without praising the industry and resource shown by American
scholars in the study of the antiquities of their continent. Finding
their labours greatly hindered by the extreme brittleness of the
skulls they had exhumed, they discovered, after many abortive
attempts, a way of pouring a preparation of bitumen into the bodies,
which solidifies at once and keeps the bones from crumbling. This
delicate process, which requires infinite care and quickness, seems,
as a rule, to be entirely successful.
Footnote 26:
Ancient India required a vast amount of clearing on the part of the
first white settlers. _See_ Lassen, _Indische Altertumskunde_, vol. i.
As to Egypt, compare Bunsen, _Ägyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte_,
as to the fertilization of the Fayoum, a vast work executed by the
early kings.
Footnote 27:
“They say that it spontaneously produces wheat, barley, beans, and
sesame, and all the edible plants that grow in the plains”
(Syncellus).
Footnote 28:
Salvador, _Histoire des Juifs_.
Footnote 29:
M. Saint-Marc Girardin, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
Footnote 30:
We may cite, on the subject treated in this chapter, the opinion of a
learned historian, though it is rather truculent in tone:
“A large number of writers are convinced that the country makes the
people; that the Bavarians or the Saxons were predestined by the
nature of the soil to become what they are to-day; that Protestantism
does not suit the South, nor Catholicism the North, and so on. Some of
the people who interpret history in the light of their meagre
knowledge, narrow sympathies, and limited intelligence would like to
show that the nation of which we are speaking (the Jews) possessed
such and such qualities—whether these gentlemen understand the nature
of the qualities or not—merely from having lived in Palestine instead
of India or Greece. But if these great scholars, who are so clever in
proving everything, would condescend to reflect that the soil of the
Holy Land has contained in its limited area very different peoples,
with different ideas and religions, and that between these various
peoples and their successors at the present day there have been
infinite degrees of diversity, although the actual country has
remained the same—they would then see how little influence is exerted
by material conditions on a nation’s character and civilization.”
Ewald, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, vol. i, p. 259.
Footnote 31:
Acts ii, 4, 8, 9–11.
Footnote 32:
Apocryphal Gospels: “The Story of Joseph the Carpenter,” chap. i.
Footnote 33:
Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 41.
Footnote 34:
_Ibid._
Footnote 35:
“Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America.”
Footnote 36:
I have discussed Prichard’s facts without questioning their value. I
might, however, have simply denied them, and should have had on my
side the weighty authority of A. de Tocqueville, who in his great work
on “Democracy in America” refers to the Cherokees in these words: “The
presence of half-breeds has favoured the very rapid development of
European habits among the Indians. The half-breed shares the
enlightenment of his father without entirely giving up the savage
customs of his mother’s race. He is thus a natural link between
civilization and barbarism. Wherever half-breeds exist and multiply we
see the savages gradually changing their customs and social
conditions” (“Democracy in America,” vol. iii). De Tocqueville ends by
prophesying that although the Cherokees and the Creeks are half-breeds
and not natives, as Prichard says, they will nevertheless disappear in
a short time through the encroachment of the white race.
Footnote 37:
In discussing the list of remarkable negroes which is given in the
first instance by Blumenbach and could easily be supplemented, Carus
well says that among the black races there has never been any politics
or literature or any developed ideas of art, and that when any
individual negroes have distinguished themselves it has always been
the result of white influence. There is not a single man among them to
be compared, I will not say to one of our men of genius, but to the
heroes of the yellow races—for example, Confucius. (Carus, _op. cit._)
Footnote 38:
W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-sprache auf der Insel Java_,
Introduction, vol. i, p. 37.
Footnote 39:
_I.e._ the world in its second stage of improvement.
Footnote 40:
Klemm (_Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_) divides the races
of men into “active” and “passive.” I do not know his book, and so
cannot tell if his idea agrees with my own. But it is natural that if
we follow the same path we should light upon the same truth.
Footnote 41:
It is also in connexion with these that we find the main cause of the
false judgments passed on foreign peoples. Because the externals of
their civilization are unlike the corresponding parts of our own, we
are often apt to infer hastily that they are either barbarians or of
less worth than ourselves. Nothing could be more superficial, and so
more doubtful, than a conclusion drawn from such premises.
Footnote 42:
“It is still only in China that a poor student can offer himself for
the Imperial examination and come out a great man. This is a splendid
feature of the social organization of the Chinese, and their theory is
certainly better than any other. Unfortunately, its application is far
from perfect. I am not here referring to the errors of judgment and
corruption on the part of the examiners, or even to the sale of
literary degrees, an expedient to which the Government is sometimes
driven in times of financial stress....” (F. J. Mohl, “Annual Report
of the Société Asiatique,” 1846).
Footnote 43:
John F. Davis, “The Chinese” (London, 1840): “Three or four volumes of
any ordinary work of the octavo size and shape may be had for a sum
equivalent to two shillings. A Canton bookseller’s manuscript
catalogue marked the price of the four books of Confucius, including
the commentary, at a price rather under half-a-crown. The cheapness of
their common literature is occasioned partly by the mode of printing,
but partly also by the low price of paper.”
Footnote 44:
“Force them to enter.”
Footnote 45:
A nurse of Touraine put a bird into the hands of the three-year-old
boy of whom she was in charge, and encouraged him to pull out its
wings and feathers. When the parents blamed her for teaching such
wickedness, she replied, “It is to make him proud.” This answer, given
in 1847, goes back directly to the educational maxims in vogue at the
time of Vercingetorix.
Footnote 46:
A very few years ago there was a question of electing a churchwarden
in a little obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the old
province which the true Bretons call the “Welsh,” or “foreign,”
country. The church council, composed of peasants, deliberated for two
days without being able to make up their minds; for the candidate
before them, though rich and well esteemed as a good man and a good
Christian, was a “foreigner.” The council would not move from its
opinion, although the “foreigner’s” father, as well as himself, had
been born in the district; it was still remembered that his
grandfather, who had been dead for many years and had never known any
member of the council, was an immigrant from another part of the
country. The daughter of a peasant-proprietor makes a _mésalliance_ if
she marries a tailor or a miller or even a farmer, if he works for
wages. It does not matter whether the husband is richer than she is;
her crime is often punished, just the same, by a father’s curse. Is
not this case exactly like that of the churchwarden?
Footnote 47:
This chapter was, of course, written before the appearance of the
“Origin of Species” or the “Descent of Man”; see author’s preface.—Tr.
Footnote 48:
These views are quoted by Flourens (_Eloge de Blumenbach_, _Mémoire de
l’Académie des Sciences_), who himself dissents from them.
Footnote 49:
This and the other illustrations in this chapter are taken from
Prichard, “Natural History of Man.”
Footnote 50:
Meiners was so struck with the repulsive appearance of the greater
part of humanity that he imagined a very simple system of
classification, containing only two categories—the _beautiful_, namely
the white race, and the _ugly_, which includes all the others
(_Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit_). The reader will see that
I have not thought it necessary to go through all the ethnological
theories. I only mention the most important.
Footnote 51:
Prichard, _op. cit._ (2nd edition, 1845), p. 112.
Footnote 52:
Prichard, p. 116.
Footnote 53:
_Ibid._, pp. 117–18.
Footnote 54:
Carus, _op. cit._, from which the following details are taken.
Footnote 55:
There are some apparently trivial differences which are, however, very
characteristic. A certain fullness at the side of the lower lip, that
we see among Germans and English, is an example. This mark of Germanic
origin may also be found in some faces of the Flemish School, in the
Rubens _Madonna_ at Dresden, in the _Satyrs and Nymphs_ in the same
collection, in a _Lute-player_ of Mieris, &c. No craniological method
can take account of such details, though they have a certain
importance, in view of the mixed character of our races.
Footnote 56:
Job Ludolf, whose data on this subject were necessarily very
incomplete and inferior to those we have now, is none the less opposed
to the opinion accepted by Prichard. His remarks on the black race are
striking and unanswerable, and I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting
them: “It is not my purpose to speak here about the blackness of the
Ethiop; most people may, if they will, attribute it to the heat of the
sun and the torrid zone. Yet even within the sun’s equatorial path
there are peoples who, if not white, are at least not quite black.
Many who live outside either tropic are further from the Equator than
the Persians or Syrians—for instance, the inhabitants of the Cape of
Good Hope, who, however, are absolutely black. If you say that
blackness belongs solely to Africa and the sons of Ham, you must still
allow that the Malabars and the Cingalese and other even more remote
peoples of Asia are equally black. If you regard the climate and soil
as the reason, then why do not white men become black when they settle
down in these regions? If you take refuge in ‘hidden qualities,’ you
would do better to confess your ignorance at once” (Jobus Ludolfus,
_Commentarium ad Historiam Æthiopicam_). I will add a short and
conclusive passage of Mr. Pickering. He speaks of the regions
inhabited by the black race in these words: “Excluding the northern
and southern extremes, with the tableland of Abyssinia, it holds all
the _more temperate_ and fertile parts of the Continent.” Thus it is
just where we find most of the pure negroes that it is least hot ...
(Pickering, “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution.”
The essay is to be found in the “Records of the United States’
Exploring Expedition during the Years 1838–42,” vol. ix).
Footnote 57:
Prichard, p. 124.
Footnote 58:
Neither the Swiss nor the Tyrolese, nor the Highlanders of Scotland,
nor the Balkan Slavs, nor the Himalaya tribes have the same hideous
appearance as the Quichuas.
Footnote 59:
_Annales du Muséum_, vol. xi, p. 458.
Footnote 60:
The unitarians are continually bringing forward comparisons between
man and the animals in support of their theory; I have just been using
such a line of argument myself. It only applies, however, within
limits, and I could not honestly avail myself of it in speaking of the
modification of species by climate. In this respect the difference
between man and the animals is radical and (one might almost say)
specific. There is a geography of animals, as there is of plants; but
there is no geography of man. It is only in certain latitudes that
certain vegetables, mammals, reptiles, fishes, and molluscs can exist;
man, in all his varieties, can live equally well everywhere. In the
case of the animals this fully explains a vast number of differences
in organization; and I can easily believe that the species that cannot
cross a certain meridian or rise to a certain height above sea-level
without dying are very dependent upon the influence of climate and
quick to betray its effects in their forms and instincts. It is just,
however, because man is absolutely free from such bondage that I
refuse to be always comparing his position, in face of the forces of
nature, with that of the animals.
Footnote 61:
Barrow is the author of this theory, which he bases on certain points
of resemblance in the shape of the head and the yellowish colour of
the skin in the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. A traveller, whose
name I forget, has even brought additional evidence by observing that
the Hottentots usually wear a head-dress like the conical hat of the
Chinese.
Footnote 62:
Müller, _Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen_, vol. ii, p. 639.
Footnote 63:
Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” 2nd edition, pp. 484 _et sqq._
Footnote 64:
Genesis xxi, 5.
Footnote 65:
We must make an exception in the case of Shakespeare, who is painting
a picture of Italy. Thus in _Romeo and Juliet_ Capulet says:
“My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”
To which Paris answers:
“Younger than she are happy mothers made.”
Footnote 66:
According to Krapff, a Protestant missionary in East Africa, the
Wanikas marry at twelve, boys and girls alike (_Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, vol. iii, p. 317). In
Paraguay the Jesuits introduced the custom, which still holds among
their disciples, of marrying the boys at thirteen and the girls at
ten. Widows of eleven and twelve are to be seen in this country (A.
d’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, vol. i, p. 40). In South Brazil the
women marry at ten or eleven. Menstruation both appears and ceases at
an early age (Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_ vol. i, p. 382).
Such quotations might be infinitely extended; I will only cite one
more. In the novel of Yo-kiao-Li the Chinese heroine is sixteen years
old, and her father is in despair that at such an age she is not yet
married!
Footnote 67:
Prichard, p. 486.
Footnote 68:
It has been since discovered that this fairness, in certain Jews, is
due to a mixture of Tartar blood; in the 9th century a tribe of
Chasars went over to Judaism and intermarried with the German-Polish
Jews (Kutschera, _Die Chasaren_).—Tr.
Footnote 69:
_Edinburgh Review_, “Ethnology or the Science of Races,” October 1848,
pp. 444–8: “There is probably no evidence of original diversity of
race which is so generally relied upon as that derived from the
_colour of the skin and the character of the hair_ ... but it will
not, we think, stand the test of a serious examination....”
Footnote 70:
_Ibid._, p. 453: “The Cingalese are described by Dr. Davy as varying
in colour from light brown to black. The prevalent hue of their hair
and eyes is black, but hazel eyes and brown hair are not very
uncommon; grey eyes and red hair are occasionally seen, though rarely,
and sometimes the light blue or red eye and flaxen hair of the
Albino.”
Footnote 71:
_Edinburgh Review_, “The Samoyedes, Tungusians, and others living on
the borders of the Icy Sea have a dirty brown or swarthy complexion.”
Footnote 72:
_Ibid._, p. 439.
Footnote 73:
_Ibid._, p. 439 (summarized).
Footnote 74:
Hammer, _Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs_, vol. i, p. 2.
Footnote 75:
Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. i, pp. 433, 1115, &c.; Tassen,
_Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes_, vol. ii, p. 65; Benfey,
Ersch and Gruber’s _Encyclopädie, Indien_, p. 12. A. von Humboldt
calls this fact one of the most important discoveries of our time
(_Asie centrale_, vol. ii, p. 639). From the point of view of
historical science this is absolutely true.
Footnote 76:
Nushirwan, who reigned in the first half of the sixth century A.D.,
married Sharuz, daughter of the Turkish Khan. She was the most
beautiful woman of her time (Haneberg, _Zeitschrift für die Kunde des
Morgenlandes_, vol. i, p. 187). The Shahnameh gives many facts of the
same kind.
Footnote 77:
Just as the Scythians, a Mongolian race, had adopted an Aryan tongue,
so there would be nothing surprising in the view that the Oghuzes were
an Aryan race, although they spoke a Finnish dialect. This theory is
curiously supported by a naïve phrase of the traveller Rubruquis, who
was sent by St. Louis to the ruler of the Mongols. “I was struck,”
says the good monk, “by the likeness borne by this prince to the late
M. Jean de Beaumont, who was equally ruddy and fresh-looking.”
Alexander von Humboldt, interested, as he well might be, by such a
remark, adds with no less good sense, “This point of physiognomy is
especially worth noting if we remember that the family of Tchingiz was
probably Turkish, and not Mongolian.” He confirms his conclusion by
adding that “the absence of Mongolian characteristics strikes us also
in the portraits which we have of the descendants of Baber, the rulers
of India” (_Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 248 _and note_).
Footnote 78:
Hammer, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 448: “The battle against the Hungarians
was hotly contested and the booty considerable. So many boys and girls
were seized that the most beautiful female slave was exchanged for a
jackboot, and Ashik-Pacha-Zadeh, the historian, who himself took part
in the battle and the plunder, could not sell five boy-slaves at Skopi
for more than 500 piastres.”
Footnote 79:
“Ethnology,” &c., p. 439: “The Hungarian nobility ... is proved by
historical and philological evidence to have been a branch of the
great Northern Asiatic stock, closely allied in blood to the stupid
and feeble Ostiaks and the untamable Laplanders.”
Footnote 80:
_Essai historique sur l’origine des Hongrois_ (Paris, 1844).
Footnote 81:
The current opinions about the peoples of Central Asia will, it seems,
have to be greatly modified. It can no longer be denied that the blood
of the yellow races has been crossed more or less considerably by a
white strain. This fact was not suspected before, but it throws a
doubt on all the ancient notions on the subject, which must now be
revised in the light of it. Alexander von Humboldt makes a very
important observation with regard to the Kirghiz-Kasaks, who are
mentioned by Menander of Byzantium and Constantine Porphyrogenetes. He
rightly shows that when the former speaks of a Kirghiz (Χερχις)
concubine given by the Turkish Shagan Dithubul to Zemarch, the envoy
of the Emperor Justin II, in 569, he is referring to a girl of mixed
blood. She corresponds exactly to the beautiful Turkish girls who are
so praised by the Persians, and who were as little Mongolian in type
as this Kirghiz (_Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 237, &c.; vol. ii, pp.
130–31).
Footnote 82:
Schaffarik, _Slavische Altertümer_, vol. i, p. 279 _et pass._
Footnote 83:
Aug. Thierry, _Histoire de la Conquête d’Angleterre_, vol. i, p. 155.
Footnote 84:
Lyell, “Principles of Geology,” vol. i, p. 178.
Footnote 85:
Link, _Die Urwelt und das Altertum_, vol. i, p. 84.
Footnote 86:
Link, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 91.
Footnote 87:
Cuvier, _op. cit._ Compare also, on this point, the opinion of
Alexander von Humboldt: “In the epochs preceding the existence of the
human race the action of the forces in the interior of the globe must,
as the earth’s crust increased in thickness, have modified the
temperature of the air and made the whole earth habitable by the
products which we now regard as exclusively tropical. Afterwards the
spatial relation of our planet to the central body (the sun) began, by
means of radiation and cooling down, to be almost the sole agent in
determining the climate at different latitudes. It was also in these
primitive times that the elastic fluids, or volcanic forces, inside
the earth, more powerful than they are to-day, made their way through
the oxidized and imperfectly solidified crust of our planet” (_Asie
centrale_, vol. i, p. 47).
Footnote 88:
Second edition, pp. 92–4. The man was born in 1727.
Footnote 89:
_See_ Genesis ii, 8, 10, 15.
Footnote 90:
Lyell, “Principles of Geology,” vol. ii, p. 119.
Footnote 91:
Alexander von Humboldt does not think that this hypothesis can apply
to the migration of plants. “What we know,” he says, “of the
deleterious action exerted by sea-water, during a voyage of 500 or 600
leagues, over the reproductive power of most grains, does not favour
the theory of the migration of vegetables by means of ocean currents.
Such a theory is too general and comprehensive” (_Examen critique de
l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent_, vol. ii, p. 78).
Footnote 92:
Alexander von Humboldt gives the law determining these facts in the
following passage (_Asie centrale_, vol. iii, p. 23): “The foundation
of the science of climatology is the accurate knowledge of the
inequalities of a continent’s surface (hypsometry). Without this
knowledge we are apt to attribute to elevation what is really the
effect of other causes, acting, in low-lying regions, on a surface of
which the curve is continuous with that of the sea, along the
isothermic lines (i.e. lines along which the temperature is the
same).” By calling attention to the multiplicity of influences acting
on the temperature of any given geographical point, Von Humboldt shows
how very different conditions of climate may exist in places that are
quite near each other, independently of their height above sea-level.
Thus in the north-east of Ireland, on the Glenarn coast, there is a
region, on the same parallel of latitude as Königsberg in Prussia,
which produces myrtles growing in the open air quite as vigorously as
in Portugal; this region is in striking contrast with those round it.
“There are hardly any frosts in winter, and the heat in summer is not
enough to ripen the grapes.... The pools and small lakes of the Faroe
Islands are not frozen over during the winter, in spite of the
latitude (62°).... In England, on the Devonshire coast, the myrtle,
the camelia iaponica, the fuchsia coccinea, and the Boddleya globosa
flourish in the open, unsheltered, throughout the winter.... At
Salcombe the winters are so mild that orange-trees have been seen,
with fruit on them, sheltered by a wall and protected merely by
screens” (pp. 147–48).
Footnote 93:
I will explain in due course the reasons why I do not include the
American Indian as a pure and primitive type. I have already given
indications of my view on p. 112. Here I merely subscribe to the
opinion of Flourens, who also recognizes only three great subdivisions
of the species—those of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The names call for
criticism but the divisions are in the main correct.
Footnote 94:
Carus gives his powerful support to the law I have laid down, namely
that the civilizing races are especially prone to mix their blood. He
points out the immense variety of elements composing the perfected
human organism, as against the simplicity of the infinitesimal beings
on the lowest step in the scale of creation. He deduces the following
axiom: “Whenever there is an extreme likeness between the elements of
an organic whole, its state cannot be regarded as the expression of a
complete and final development, but is merely primitive and
elementary” (_Über die ungleiche Befähigkeit der verschiedenen
Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung_, p. 4). In another
place he says: “The greatest possible diversity (_i.e._ inequality) of
the parts, together with the most complete unity of the whole, is
clearly, in every sphere, the standard of the highest perfection of an
organism.” In the political world this is the state of a society where
the governing classes are racially quite distinct from the masses,
while being themselves carefully organised into a strict hierarchy.
Footnote 95:
Flourens (_Eloge de Blumenbach_, p. xi) describes the Polynesian race
as “a mixture of two others, the _Caucasian_ and the Mongolian.”
_Caucasian_ is probably a mere slip; he certainly meant _black_.
Footnote 96:
The physiological characteristics of the ancestors are reproduced in
their descendants according to fixed rules. Thus we see in South
America that though the children of a white man and a negress may have
straight soft hair, yet the crisp woolly hair invariably appears in
the second generation (A. d’Orbigny, _l’Homme américain_, vol. i, p.
143).
Footnote 97:
It may be remarked that the happiest blend, from the point of view of
beauty, is that made by the marriage of white and black. We need only
put the striking charm of many mulatto, Creole, and quadroon women by
the side of such mixtures of yellow and white as the Russians and
Hungarians. The comparison is not to the advantage of the latter. It
is no less certain that a beautiful Rajput is more ideally beautiful
than the most perfect Slav.
Footnote 98:
_See_ (among other authorities), for the American aborigine, Martius
and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, p. 259; for the negroes,
Pruner, _Der Neger, eine aphoristische Skizze aus der medizinischen
Topographie von Cairo_, in the _Zeitschrift der Deutschen
morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, vol. i, p. 131; for the muscular
superiority of the white race over all the others, Carus, _op. cit._,
p. 84.
Footnote 99:
Amédée Thierry, _Histoire de la Gaule sous l’administration romaine_,
vol. i, p. 241.
Footnote 100:
One is sometimes led to consider the government of the United States
of America as an original creation, peculiar to our time; its most
remarkable feature is taken to be the small amount of opportunity left
for Government initiative or even interference. Yet if we cast our
eyes over the early years of all the States founded by the white race,
we shall find exactly the same phenomenon. “Self-government” is no
more triumphant in New York to-day, than it was in Paris at the time
of the Franks. It is true that the Indians are treated far less
humanely by the Americans than the Gallo-Romans were by the nobles of
Chlodwig. But we must remember that the racial difference between the
enlightened Republicans of the New World and their victims is far
greater than that between the Germanic conqueror and those he
conquered.
In fact, _all_ Aryan societies began by exaggerating their
independence as against the law and the magistrates.
The power of political invention possessed by the world cannot, I
think, travel outside the boundaries traced by two particular peoples,
one of them living in the north-east of Europe, the other on the banks
of the Nile, in the extreme south of Egypt. The Government of the
first of these peoples (in Bolgari, near Kazan) was accustomed to
“order men of intelligence to be hanged” as a preventive measure. We
owe our knowledge of this interesting fact to the Arabian traveller
Ibn Foszlan (A. von Humboldt, _Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 494). In the
other nation, living at Fazoql, whenever the king did not give
satisfaction, his relations and ministers came and told him so. They
informed him that since he no longer pleased “the men, women,
children, oxen, asses,” &c., the best thing he could do was to die;
they then proceeded to help him to his death as speedily as possible
(Lepsius, _Briefe aus Ägypten, Äthiopien, und der Halbinsel des
Sinai_; Berlin, 1852).
Footnote 101:
Amédée Thierry, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 241.
Footnote 102:
Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. iii, p. 950, &c.
Footnote 103:
In many tribes of Oceania the institution of marriage is conceived as
follows:—A man sees a maiden, who, he thinks, will suit him. He
obtains her from her father, by means of a few presents, among which a
bottle of brandy, if he has been able to get one, holds the most
distinguished place. Then the young suitor proceeds to conceal himself
in a thicket, or behind a rock. The maiden passes by, thinking no
harm. He knocks her down with a blow of his stick, beats her until she
becomes unconscious, and carries her lovingly to his house, bathed in
her blood. The formalities have been complied with, and the legal
union is accomplished.
Footnote 104:
D’Orbigny tells how Indian mothers love their children to distraction,
and take such care of them as to be really their slaves. If however
the child annoys the mother at any time, then she drowns him or
crushes him to death, or abandons him in the forest, without any
regret. I know no other example of such an extraordinary change
(D’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, vol. ii, p. 232).
Footnote 105:
“The native Indian trade in books is very active, and many of the
works produced are never seen in the libraries of Europeans, even in
India. Sprenger says, in a letter, that in Lucknow alone there are
thirteen lithographic establishments occupied purely in printing
school-books, and he gives a considerable list of works of which
probably not one has reached Europe. The same is the case at Delhi,
Agra, Cawnpore, Allahabad, and other towns” (Mohl, _Rapport annuel à
la Société asiatique_, 1851, p. 92).
Footnote 106:
“The Siamese are the most shameless people in the world. They are at
the lowest point of Indo-Chinese civilization; and yet they can all
read and write” (Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. iii, p. 1152).
Footnote 107:
Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 41.
Footnote 108:
King of Palmyra in Syria, and husband of Zenobia. He was recognized by
the Emperor Gallienus as co-regent of the East in 267, and was
murdered in the same year.—Tr.
Footnote 109:
“The impulse towards this science given them by their kinship with the
Græco-Syrians made them capable of really absorbing the Greek language
and spirit; for the Arabs preferred to confine themselves to the
purely scientific results of Greek speculation” (W. von Humboldt,
_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. cclxiii).
Footnote 110:
The severest judgment on the negro that has perhaps been passed up to
now comes from one of the pioneers of the doctrine of equality.
Franklin defines the negro as “an animal who eats as much, and works
as little, as possible.”
Footnote 111:
I have no hesitation in regarding the exaggerated development of
instinct among savage races as a specific mark of intellectual
inferiority. The sharpening of certain senses can only be gained by
the deterioration of the mental facilities. On this point, compare
what Lesson says of the Papuans, in a paper printed in the _Annales
des sciences naturelles_, vol. x.
Footnote 112:
_See_ p. 139.
Footnote 113:
W. von Humboldt, in one of the most brilliant of his minor works, has
admirably expressed this fact, in its essentials. “In language,” he
says, “the work of time is helped everywhere by national
idiosyncrasies. The characteristic features in the idioms of the
warrior hordes of America and Northern Asia were not necessarily those
of the primitive races of India and Greece. It is not possible to
trace a perfectly equal, and as it were natural, development of any
language, whether it was spoken by one nation or many” (W. von
Humboldt, _Über das Entstehen der grammatischen Formen, und ihren
Einfluss auf die Ideenentwickelung_).
Footnote 114:
W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction.
Footnote 115:
I am inclined to believe that the monosyllabic quality of Chinese is
not really a specific mark of the language at all; and though a
striking characteristic, it does not seem to be an essential one. If
it were, Chinese would be an “isolating” language, connected with
others having the same structure. We know that this is not so. Chinese
belongs to the Tatar or Finnish system, of which some branches are
polysyllabic. On the other hand, we find monosyllabic languages among
groups with quite a different origin. I do not lay any stress on the
example of Othomi, a Mexican dialect which, according to du Ponceau,
has the monosyllabic quality of Chinese, and yet in other respects
belongs to the American family among which it is found, as Chinese
does to the Tatar group (_see_ Morton, “An Inquiry into the
Distinctive Characteristics of the aboriginal race of America,”
Philadelphia, 1844). My reason for neglecting this apparently
important example is that these American languages may one day be
recognized as forming merely a vast branch of the Tatar family; and
thus any conclusion I might draw from them would simply go to confirm
what I have said as to the relation of Chinese to the surrounding
dialects, a relation which is in no way disproved by the peculiar
character of Chinese itself.
I find therefore a more conclusive instance in Coptic, which will not
easily be shown to have any relation to Chinese. But here also every
syllable is a root; and the simple affixes that modify the root are so
independent that even the determining particle that marks the time of
the verb does not always remain joined to the word. Thus _hon_ means
“to command”; _a-hon_, “he commanded”; but _a Moyses hon_, “Moses
commanded” (_see_ E. Meier, _Hebräisches Wurzelwörterbuch_).
Thus it seems possible for monosyllabism to appear in every linguistic
family. It is a kind of infirmity produced by causes which are not yet
understood; it is not however a specific feature, separating the
language in which it occurs from the rest, and setting it in a class
by itself.
Footnote 116:
Goethe says in _Wilhelm Meister_: “Few Germans, and perhaps few men of
modern nations, have the sense of an æsthetic whole. We only know how
to praise and blame details, we can only show a fragmentary
admiration.”
Footnote 117:
_Cf._ W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xcv:
“We may call the sound that imitates the meaning of a word _symbolic_,
although the symbolic element in speech goes far deeper than this....
This kind of imitation undoubtedly had a great, and perhaps exclusive,
influence over the early attempts at word-building.”
Footnote 118:
There is probably another jargon of the same kind as Balaïbalan. This
is called “Afnskoë,” and is spoken by the pedlars and horse-dealers of
Greater Russia, especially in the province of Vladimir. It is confined
to men. The grammar is entirely Russian, though the roots are foreign.
(_See_ Pott, Ersch and Gruber’s _Encyclopädie, Indogermanischer
Sprachstamm_, p. 110.)
Footnote 119:
C. O. Müller, in an admirable passage which I cannot resist the
temptation of transcribing, shows the true nature of language: “Our
age has learnt, by the study of the Hindu and especially the Germanic
languages, that the laws of speech are as fixed as those of organic
life. Between different dialects, developing independently after their
separation, there are still mysterious links, which reciprocally
determine the sounds and their sequences. Literature and science set
limits to this growth, and arrest perhaps some of its richer
developments; but they cannot impose any law on it higher than that
ordained by nature, mother of all things. Even a long time before the
coming of decadence and bad taste, languages may fall sick, from
outward or inward causes, and suffer vast changes; but so long as life
remains in them, their innate power is enough to heal their wounds, to
set their torn limbs, and to restore unity and regularity, even when
the beauty and perfection of the noble plants has almost entirely
disappeared” (_Die Etrusker_, p. 65).
Footnote 120:
Pott, _op. cit._, p. 74.
Footnote 121:
That the mixture of idioms is proportionate to that of the races
constituting a nation had already been noticed before philology, in
the modern sense, existed at all. Kämpfer for example says in his
“History of Japan” (published in 1729): “We may take it as a fixed
rule that the settlement of foreigners in a country will bring a
corresponding proportion of foreign words into the language; these
will be naturalized by degrees, and become as familiar as the native
words themselves.”
Footnote 122:
Keferstein shows that German is merely a hybrid language made up of
Celtic and Gothic (_Ansichten über die keltischen Altertümer_, Halle,
1846–51; Introduction, p. xxxviii). Grimm is of the same opinion.
Footnote 123:
W. von Humboldt says: “Languages, that are apparently crude and
unrefined, may show some striking qualities in their structure, and
often do so. In this respect they may quite possibly surpass more
highly developed tongues. The comparison of Birman with Delaware, not
to speak of Mexican, can leave no doubt of the superiority of the
latter; yet a strand of Indian culture has certainly been interwoven
into Birman by Pali” (_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p.
xxxiv).
Footnote 124:
This difference of level between the intellect of the conqueror and
that of the conquered is the cause of the “sacred languages” that we
find used in the early days of an empire; such as that of the
Egyptians, or the Incas of Peru. These languages are the object of a
superstitious veneration; they are the exclusive property of the upper
classes, and often of a sacerdotal caste, and they furnish the
strongest possible proof of the existence of a foreign race that has
conquered the country where they are found.
Footnote 125:
W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xxxiv.
Footnote 126:
_See_ p. 82 above.
Footnote 127:
Ancient Greece contained many dialects, but not so many as the Greece
of the sixteenth century, when seventy were counted by Simeon
Kavasila; further we may notice (in connexion with the following
paragraph) that in the thirteenth century French was spoken throughout
Greece, and especially in Attica (Heilmayer, quoted by Pott, _op.
cit._, p. 73).
Footnote 128:
The Hebrews themselves did not call their language “Hebrew”; they
called it, quite properly, the “language of Canaan” (Isaiah xix, 18).
Compare Roediger’s preface to the Hebrew grammar of Gesenius (16th
edition, Leipzig, 1851, p. 7 _et passim_).
Footnote 129:
This is also the view of W. Edwards (“Physical Characteristics of the
Human Races”).
Footnote 130:
Besides the Jews, I might also mention the Gipsies. There is, further,
the case where a people speaks two languages. In Grisons almost all
the peasants of the Engadine speak Roumansch and German with equal
facility, the former among themselves, the latter to foreigners. In
Courland there is a district where the peoples speak Esthonian (a
Finnish dialect) to each other and Lithuanian to every one else (Pott,
_op. cit._, p. 104).
Footnote 131:
_See_ pp. 97–102.
Footnote 132:
The way was not so long from rustic Latin, _lingua rustica Romanorum_,
to the _lingua romana_ and thence to corruption, as it was from the
classical tongue, the precise and elaborate forms of which offered
more resistance to decay. We may add that, as every foreign legionary
brought his own provincial patois into the Gallic colonies, the advent
of a common dialect was hastened, not merely by the Celts, but by the
immigrants themselves.
Footnote 133:
Sulp. Severus, _Dial. I de virtutibus monachorum orientalium_.
Footnote 134:
Both troubadours who flourished in the latter half of the twelfth
century.—Tr.
Footnote 135:
Macaulay, “History of England,” _ad init._ The Albigenses are the
special favourites of revolutionary writers, especially in Germany
(_see_ Lenau’s poem, _Die Albigenser_). Nevertheless the sectaries of
Languedoc were recruited mainly from the knightly orders and the
dignitaries of the Church. Their doctrines were indeed anti-social;
and for this reason much may be pardoned to them.
Footnote 136:
See the curious remarks of Génin in his preface to the _Chanson de
Roland_ (edited 1851).
Footnote 137:
_See_ Hickes, _Thesaurus litteraturæ septentrionalis_; also
_L’Histoire littéraire de France_, vol. xvii, p. 633.
Footnote 138:
Published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
Footnote 139:
P. Pâris, _Garin le Loherain_, preface.
Footnote 140:
It may however be observed that the accent of Vaud and Savoy has a
southern ring, strongly reminiscent of the colony of Aventicum.
Footnote 141:
_See_ p. 43.
Footnote 142:
Pott brings out very well the fact that the different dialects
maintain the balance between the blood of a race and its language,
when he says, “Dialects are the diversity in unity, the prismatic
sections of the monochromatic light and the primordial One” (Ersch and
Gruber’s _Encyclopädie_, p. 66). The phraseology is obscure; but it
shows his meaning clearly enough.
Footnote 143:
This caution applies only when the history of a single people is in
question, not that of a group of peoples. Although one nation may
sometimes change its language, this never happens, and could not
happen, in the case of a complex of nationalities, racially identical
though politically independent. The Jews have given up their national
speech; but the Semitic nations as a whole can neither lose their
native dialects nor acquire others.
Footnote 144:
“Taste and smell in the negro are as powerful as they are
undiscriminating. He eats everything, and odours which are revolting
to us are pleasant to him” (Pruner).
Footnote 145:
Carus, _op. cit._, p. 60.
Footnote 146:
Martius observes that the European is superior to the coloured man in
the pressure of the nervous fluid (_Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, p.
259).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RENAISSANCE
BY COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU
TRANSLATED BY PAUL V. COHN, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON COUNT
GOBINEAU’S LIFE AND WORK, BY DR. OSCAR LEVY
One Volume, Demy 8vo, Illustrated, 10s net
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
These five historical dramas cover the flowering time of the Italian
Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the last
days of Michael Angelo (about 1560). While grouped round the leading
figures who provide the titles—Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II, Leo
X, and Michael Angelo—the plays introduce almost every interesting
character of the period. Nor are we only concerned with the great names;
the author aims at catching the spirit of the people, and the thoughts
and feelings of soldier, artisan, trader, and their womenfolk find ample
voice in his pages.
The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English
readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own
Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in history:
even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much—or at any rate so
much that has survived-to the world of politics, art, and thought. Now
while this interest is amply reflected in contemporary literature, from
the monumental work of Symonds down to the flotsam and jetsam of
everyday fiction, there is one kind of man who more than an historian
would show insight into this age, and that is a poet.
It is as a poet’s work that Gobineau’s “Historical Scenes” recommend
themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets; there is
the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and sub-moral
kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral kind. Only the
last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise with such mighty
figures as Cesare Borgia and Julius II—the religious poet being inclined
to paint them as monsters, the sub-religious as freaks and neurotics.
_Similia similibus_: equals can only be recognised by their equals, and
Gobineau was himself a type of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an
age of low bourgeois and socialist ideals. In a century swayed by
romanticism and democracy, Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He
is a forerunner of Nietzsche (“the only European spirit I should care to
converse with,” said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is
peculiarly fitted to deal with one of the few periods that was _not_
dominated by the moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to
attract the large and evergrowing circle of students of Nietzsche in
this country and America.
“I can only add that this is a volume of serious import, worth reading
from cover to cover, a book which even a jaded reviewer closes with a
sigh of regret that he has not got to read it all over again.”—G. S.
LAYARD in the _Bookman_.
“We scarcely know whether to be more struck with the truth or
liveliness of these portraits. Savonarola, for example, is something
more than the Savonarola of history and tradition. Not only is the
character of the man subtly brought out; not only are we made aware,
for the first time, adequately, of that devouring egotism which could
see nothing but self as God’s instrument, self as the scourge of
Florence, self as the inspired prophet; but beneath all this and
vouching for it is the consciousness of the reality of the man, the
consciousness that his cries of distress are real cries, and his
moments of fierce aspiration and black despair genuine experiences.
More touching and even more lifelike is the figure of Michael Angelo,
a figure in the main familiar to us, but endowed with advancing years
with a peace of mind, a lucidity of intelligence, and a breadth of
sympathy such as were foreign to its young and stormy epoch. The last
scene between Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna is a noble one, and
can be read more than once with pleasure.”—_The Morning Post._
“A debt is due to Dr. Oscar Levy for bringing before English readers
this translation of that great work of Count Gobineau, in which,
through the medium of the drama, he reveals his reverence for the
spirit that inspired the Italian Renaissance. The plays constituting
the book are five in number, ‘Savonarola,’ ‘Cesare Borgia,’ ‘Julius
II,’ ‘Leo X,’ and ‘Michael Angelo,’—and nothing more brilliant has
appeared in recent times. In scope we can only compare with it Mr.
Hardy’s ‘Dynasts,’ but no more striking contrast could be conceived
than the creations of these two geniuses. Through the pages of these
plays moves the whole glittering pageant of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, a mob of soldiers, priests, artists, men and
women, slaying, plundering, preaching, poisoning, painting, rioting,
and loving, while out of the surgent mass rise the figures of the
splendid three, Borgia, Julius, and Michael Angelo, dominating all by
the sheer greatness of their ideas and their contempt for other men’s
opinions. They are the great aristocrats of their time, and the five
plays—really one in conception—are an assertion of the saving grace of
aristocracy, of the glory of race, at a time when the democratic
flood, whose source is Christianity, was beginning to pour over
Europe, to the overwhelming of all greatness of thought and art. The
translation, which is excellent, is by Paul V. Cohn.”—_Glasgow
Herald._
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.