We know that the Hollander remains in Holland, though the greatness
of Holland has passed; we know that the Latin blood remains in Italy,
whether to a greater or less extent; and that the Latin culture has
died out in the African realm it once won, while it has lasted in Spain
and France, and thence has extended itself to continents beyond the
ocean. We may not know the causes of the facts, save partially; but
the facts themselves we do know. But there are other cases in which
we are at present ignorant even of the facts; we do not know what the
changes really were, still less the hidden causes and meaning of these
changes. Much remains to be found out before we can speak with any
certainty as to whether some changes mean the actual dying out or the
mere transformation of types. It is, for instance, astonishing how
little permanent change in the physical make-up of the people seems to
have been worked in Europe by the migrations of the races in historic
times. A tall, fair-haired, long-skulled race penetrates to some
southern country and establishes a commonwealth. The generations pass.
There is no violent revolution, no break in continuity of history,
nothing in the written records to indicate an epoch-making change at
any given moment; and yet after a time we find that the old type has
reappeared and that the people of the locality do not substantially
differ in physical form from the people of other localities that did
not suffer such an invasion. Does this mean that gradually the children
of the invaders have dwindled and died out; or, as the blood is mixed
with the ancient blood, has there been a change, part reversion and
part assimilation, to the ancient type in its old surroundings? Do
tint of skin, eyes and hair, shape of skull, and stature change in the
new environment, so as to be like those of the older people who dwelt
in this environment? Do the intrusive races, without change of blood,
tend under the pressure of their new surroundings to change in type
so as to resemble the ancient peoples of the land? Or, as the strains
mingled, has the new strain dwindled and vanished, from causes as yet
obscure? Has the blood of the Lombard practically disappeared from
Italy, and of the Visigoth from Spain, or does it still flow in large
populations where the old physical type has once more become dominant?
Here in England, the long-skulled men of the long barrows, the
short-skulled men of the round barrows--have they blended, or has one
or the other type actually died out; or are they merged in some older
race which they seemingly supplanted, or have they adopted the tongue
and civilization of some later race which seemingly destroyed them?
We can not say. We do not know which of the widely different stocks
now speaking Aryan tongues represents in physical characteristics the
ancient Aryan type, nor where the type originated, nor how or why it
imposed its language on other types, nor how much or how little mixture
of blood accompanied the change of tongue.
The phenomena of national growth and decay, both of those which can
and those which can not be explained, have been peculiarly in evidence
during the four centuries that have gone by since the discovery of
America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These have been the
four centuries of by far the most intense and constantly accelerating
rapidity of movement and development that the world has yet seen. The
movement has covered all the fields of human activity. It has witnessed
an altogether unexampled spread of civilized mankind over the world, as
well as an altogether unexampled advance in man’s dominion over nature;
and this together with a literary and artistic activity to be matched
in but one previous epoch. This period of extension and development
has been that of one race, the so-called white race, or, to speak more
accurately, the group of peoples living in Europe, who undoubtedly have
a certain kinship of blood, who profess the Christian religion, and
trace back their culture to Greece and Rome.
The memories of men are short, and it is easy to forget how brief is
this period of unquestioned supremacy of the so-called white race.
It is but a thing of yesterday. During the thousand years which went
before the opening of this era of European supremacy, the attitude of
Asia and Africa, of Hun and Mongol, Turk and Tartar, Arab and Moor, had
on the whole been that of successful aggression against Europe. More
than a century went by after the voyages of Columbus before the mastery
in war began to pass from the Asiatic to the European. During that time
Europe produced no generals or conquerors able to stand comparison with
Selim and Solyman, Baber and Akbar. Then the European advance gathered
momentum; until at the present time peoples of European blood hold
dominion over all America and Australia and the islands of the sea,
over most of Africa, and the major half of Asia. Much of this world
conquest is merely political, and such a conquest is always likely in
the long run to vanish. But very much of it represents not a merely
political, but an ethnic conquest; the intrusive people having either
exterminated or driven out the conquered peoples, or else having
imposed upon them its tongue, law, culture, and religion, together
with a strain of its blood. During this period substantially all of
the world achievements worth remembering are to be credited to the
people of European descent. The first exception of any consequence is
the wonderful rise of Japan within the last generation--a phenomenon
unexampled in history; for both in blood and in culture the Japanese
line of ancestral descent is as remote as possible from ours; and yet
Japan, while hitherto keeping most of what was strongest in her ancient
character and traditions, has assimilated with curious completeness
most of the characteristics that have given power and leadership to the
West.
During this period of intense and feverish activity among the peoples
of European stock, first one and then another has taken the lead.
The movement began with Spain and Portugal. Their flowering-time was
as brief as it was wonderful. The gorgeous pages of their annals are
illumined by the figures of warriors, explorers, statesmen, poets,
and painters. Then their days of greatness ceased. Many partial
explanations can be given, but something remains behind, some hidden
force for evil, some hidden source of weakness upon which we can not
lay our hands. Yet there are many signs that in the New World, after
centuries of arrested growth, the peoples of Spanish and Portuguese
stock are entering upon another era of development, and there are other
signs that this is true also in the Iberian peninsula itself.
About the time that the first brilliant period of the leadership of the
Iberian peoples was drawing to a close, at the other end of Europe, in
the land of melancholy steppe and melancholy forest, the Slav turned in
his troubled sleep and stretched out his hand to grasp leadership and
dominion. Since then almost every nation of Europe has at one time or
another sought a place in the movement of expansion; but for the last
three centuries the great phenomenon of mankind has been the growth of
the English-speaking peoples and their spread over the world’s waste
spaces.
Comparison is often made between the empire of Britain and the
empire of Rome. When judged relatively to the effect on all modern
civilization, the empire of Rome is of course the more important,
simply because all the nations of Europe and their offshoots in other
continents trace back their culture either to the earlier Rome by
the Tiber, or the later Rome by the Bosphorus. The empire of Rome
is the most stupendous fact in lay history; no empire later in time
can be compared with it. But this is merely another way of saying
that the nearer the source the more important becomes any deflection
of the stream’s current. Absolutely, comparing the two empires one
with the other in point of actual achievement, and disregarding the
immensely increased effect on other civilizations which inhered in the
older empire because it antedated the younger by a couple of thousand
years, there is little to choose between them as regards the wide and
abounding interest and importance of their careers.
In the world of antiquity each great empire rose when its predecessor
had already crumbled. By the time that Rome loomed large over the
horizon of history, there were left for her to contend with only
decaying civilizations and raw barbarism. When she conquered Pyrrhus,
she strove against the strength of but one of the many fragments into
which Alexander’s kingdom had fallen. When she conquered Carthage,
she overthrew a foe against whom for two centuries the single Greek
city of Syracuse had contended on equal terms; it was not the Sepoy
armies of the Carthaginian plutocracy, but the towering genius of the
House of Barca, which rendered the struggle forever memorable. It was
the distance and the desert, rather than the Parthian horse-bowmen,
that set bounds to Rome in the east; and on the north her advance was
curbed by the vast reaches of marshy woodland, rather than by the
tall barbarians who dwelt therein. During the long generations of her
greatness, and until the sword dropped from her withered hand, the
Parthian was never a menace of aggression, and the German threatened
her but to die.
On the contrary, the great expansion of England has occurred, the great
empire of Britain has been achieved, during the centuries that have
also seen mighty military nations rise and flourish on the continent
of Europe. It is as if Rome, while creating and keeping the empire she
won between the days of Scipio and the days of Trajan, had at the same
time held her own with the Nineveh of Sargon and Tiglath, the Egypt of
Thothmes and Rameses, and the kingdoms of Persia and Macedon in the red
flush of their warrior-dawn. The empire of Britain is vaster in space,
in population, in wealth, in wide variety of possession, in a history
of multiplied and manifold achievement of every kind, than even the
glorious empire of Rome. Yet, unlike Rome, Britain has won dominion in
every clime, has carried her flag by conquest and settlement to the
uttermost ends of the earth, at the very time that haughty and powerful
rivals, in their abounding youth or strong maturity, were eager to
set bounds to her greatness, and to tear from her what she had won
afar. England has peopled continents with her children, has swayed
the destinies of teeming myriads of alien race, has ruled ancient
monarchies, and wrested from all corners the right to the world’s waste
spaces, while at home she has held her own before nations, each of
military power comparable to Rome’s at her zenith.
Rome fell by attack from without only because the ills within her own
borders had grown incurable. What is true of your country, my hearers,
is true of my own; while we should be vigilant against foes from
without, yet we need never really fear them so long as we safeguard
ourselves against the enemies within our own households; and these
enemies are our own passions and follies. Free peoples can escape
being mastered by others only by being able to master themselves. We
Americans and you people of the British Isles alike need ever to keep
in mind that, among the many qualities indispensable to the success of
a great democracy, and second only to a high and stern sense of duty,
of moral obligation, are self-knowledge and self-mastery. You, my
hosts, and I may not agree in all our views; some of you would think
me a very radical democrat--as, for the matter of that, I am--and my
theory of imperialism would probably suit the anti-imperialists as
little as it would suit a certain type of forcible-feeble imperialist.
But there are some points on which we must all agree if we think
soundly. The precise form of government, democratic or otherwise, is
the instrument, the tool, with which we work. It is important to have
a good tool. But, even if it is the best possible, it is only a tool.
No implement can ever take the place of the guiding intelligence that
wields it. A very bad tool will ruin the work of the best craftsman;
but a good tool in bad hands is no better. In the last analysis the
all-important factor in national greatness is national character.
There are questions which we of the great civilized nations are ever
tempted to ask of the future. Is our time of growth drawing to an
end? Are we as nations soon to come under the rule of that great law
of death which is itself but part of the great law of life? None can
tell. Forces that we can see, and other forces that are hidden or that
can but dimly be apprehended, are at work all around us, both for good
and for evil. The growth in luxury, in love of ease, in taste for
vapid and frivolous excitement, is both evident and unhealthy. The
most ominous sign is the diminution in the birth-rate, in the rate of
natural increase, now to a larger or lesser degree shared by most of
the civilized nations of central and western Europe, of America and
Australia--a diminution so great that, if it continues for the next
century at the rate which has obtained for the last twenty-five years,
all the more highly civilized peoples will be stationary or else
have begun to go backward in population, while many of them will have
already gone very far backward.
There is much that should give us concern for the future. But there
is much also which should give us hope. No man is more apt to be
mistaken than the prophet of evil. After the French Revolution in
1830 Niebuhr hazarded the guess that all civilization was about to go
down with a crash, that we were all about to share the fall of third-
and fourth-century Rome--a respectable, but painfully overworked,
comparison. The fears once expressed by the followers of Malthus as to
the future of the world have proved groundless as regards the civilized
portion of the world; it is strange indeed to look back at Carlyle’s
prophecies of some seventy years ago, and then think of the teeming
life of achievement, the life of conquest of every kind, and of noble
effort crowned by success, which has been ours for the two generations
since he complained to High Heaven that all the tales had been told and
all the songs sung, and that all the deeds really worth doing had been
done. I believe with all my heart that a great future remains for us;
but whether it does or does not, our duty is not altered. However the
battle may go, the soldier worthy of the name will with utmost vigor
do his allotted task, and bear himself as valiantly in defeat as in
victory. Come what will, we belong to peoples who have not yielded
to the craven fear of being great. In the ages that have gone by, the
great nations, the nations that have expanded and that have played a
mighty part in the world, have in the end grown old and weakened and
vanished; but so have the nations whose only thought was to avoid all
danger, all effort, who would risk nothing, and who therefore gained
nothing. In the end, the same fate may overwhelm all alike; but the
memory of the one type perishes with it, while the other leaves its
mark deep on the history of all the future of mankind.
A nation that seemingly dies may be born again; and even though in
the physical sense it die utterly, it may yet hand down a history of
heroic achievement, and for all time to come may profoundly influence
the nations that arise in its place by the impress of what it has
done. Best of all is it to do our part well, and at the same time to
see our blood live young and vital in men and women fit to take up
the task as we lay it down; for so shall our seed inherit the earth.
But if this, which is best, is denied us, then at least it is ours to
remember that if we choose we can be torch-bearers, as our fathers were
before us. The torch has been handed on from nation to nation, from
civilization to civilization, throughout all recorded time, from the
dim years before history dawned down to the blazing splendor of this
teeming century of ours. It dropped from the hands of the coward and
the sluggard, of the man wrapped in luxury or love of ease, the man
whose soul was eaten away by self-indulgence; it has been kept alight
only by those who were mighty of heart and cunning of hand. What they
worked at, provided it was worth doing at all, was of less matter than
how they worked, whether in the realm of the mind or the realm of the
body. If their work was good, if what they achieved was of substance,
then high success was really theirs.
In the first part of this lecture I drew certain analogies between what
has occurred to forms of animal life through the procession of the ages
on this planet, and what has occurred and is occurring to the great
artificial civilizations which have gradually spread over the world’s
surface during the thousands of years that have elapsed since cities
of temples and palaces first rose beside the Nile and the Euphrates,
and the harbors of Minoan Crete bristled with the masts of the Ægean
craft. But of course the parallel is true only in the roughest and most
general way. Moreover, even between the civilizations of to-day and
the civilizations of ancient times there are differences so profound
that we must be cautious in drawing any conclusions for the present
based on what has happened in the past. While freely admitting all
of our follies and weaknesses of to-day, it is yet mere perversity to
refuse to realize the incredible advance that has been made in ethical
standards. I do not believe that there is the slightest necessary
connection between any weakening of virile force and this advance in
the moral standard, this growth of the sense of obligation to one’s
neighbor and of reluctance to do that neighbor wrong. We need have
scant patience with that silly cynicism which insists that kindliness
of character only accompanies weakness of character. On the contrary,
just as in private life many of the men of strongest character are
the very men of loftiest and most exalted morality, so I believe that
in national life, as the ages go by, we shall find that the permanent
national types will more and more tend to become those in which,
though intellect stands high, character stands higher; in which rugged
strength and courage, rugged capacity to resist wrongful aggression
by others, will go hand in hand with a lofty scorn of doing wrong
to others. This is the type of Timoleon, of Hampden, of Washington,
and Lincoln. These were as good men, as disinterested and unselfish
men, as ever served a state; and they were also as strong men as ever
founded or saved a state. Surely such examples prove that there is
nothing Utopian in our effort to combine justice and strength in the
same nation. The really high civilizations must themselves supply the
antidote to the self-indulgence and love of ease which they tend to
produce.
Every modern civilized nation has many and terrible problems to
solve within its own borders, problems that arise not merely from
juxtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from the
self-consciousness of both poverty and riches. Each nation must deal
with these matters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit in which the
problem is approached must ever be fundamentally the same. It must
be a spirit of broad humanity, of brotherly kindness, of acceptance
of responsibility, one for each and each for all, and at the same
time a spirit as remote as the poles from every form of weakness and
sentimentality. As in war to pardon the coward is to do cruel wrong
to the brave man whose life his cowardice jeopardizes, so in civil
affairs it is revolting to every principle of justice to give to the
lazy, the vicious, or even the feeble or dull-witted a reward which
is really the robbery of what braver, wiser, abler men have earned.
The only effective way to help any man is to help him to help himself;
and the worst lesson to teach him is that he can be permanently
helped at the expense of some one else. True liberty shows itself to
best advantage in protecting the rights of others, and especially
of minorities. Privilege should not be tolerated because it is to
the advantage of a minority; nor yet because it is to the advantage
of a majority. No doctrinaire theories of vested rights or freedom
of contract can stand in the way of our cutting out abuses from the
body politic. Just as little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires
of an impossible--and incidentally of a highly undesirable--social
revolution which, in destroying individual rights--including property
rights--and the family, would destroy the two chief agents in the
advance of mankind, and the two chief reasons why either the advance
or the preservation of mankind is worth while. It is an evil and a
dreadful thing to be callous to sorrow and suffering and blind to our
duty to do all things possible for the betterment of social conditions.
But it is an unspeakably foolish thing to strive for this betterment
by means so destructive that they would leave no social conditions to
better. In dealing with all these social problems, with the intimate
relations of the family, with wealth in private use and business use,
with labor, with poverty, the one prime necessity is to remember that,
though hardness of heart is a great evil, it is no greater an evil than
softness of head.
But in addition to these problems, the most intimate and important
of all, and which to a larger or less degree affect all the modern
nations somewhat alike, we of the great nations that have expanded,
that are now in complicated relations with one another and with alien
races, have special problems and special duties of our own. You belong
to a nation which possesses the greatest empire upon which the sun has
ever shone. I belong to a nation which is trying, on a scale hitherto
unexampled, to work out the problems of government for, of, and by the
people, while at the same time doing the international duty of a great
Power. But there are certain problems which both of us have to solve,
and as to which our standards should be the same. The Englishman, the
man of the British Isles, in his various homes across the seas, and
the American, both at home and abroad, are brought into contact with
utterly alien peoples, some with a civilization more ancient than our
own, others still in, or having but recently arisen from, the barbarism
which our people left behind ages ago. The problems that arise are
of well-nigh inconceivable difficulty. They can not be solved by the
foolish sentimentality of stay-at-home people, with little patent
recipes and those cut-and-dried theories of the political nursery which
have such limited applicability amid the crash of elemental forces.
Neither can they be solved by the raw brutality of the men who, whether
at home or on the rough frontier of civilization, adopt might as the
only standard of right in dealing with other men, and treat alien races
only as subjects for exploitation.
No hard-and-fast rule can be drawn as applying to all alien races,
because they differ from one another far more widely than some of
them differ from us. But there are one or two rules which must not
be forgotten. In the long run there can be no justification for
one race managing or controlling another unless the management and
control are exercised in the interest and for the benefit of that
other race. This is what our peoples have in the main done, and must
continue in the future in even greater degree to do, in India, Egypt,
and the Philippines alike. In the next place, as regards every race,
everywhere, at home or abroad, we can not afford to deviate from the
great rule of righteousness which bids us treat each man on his worth
as a man. He must not be sentimentally favored because he belongs to a
given race; he must not be given immunity in wrong-doing or permitted
to cumber the ground, or given other privileges which would be denied
to the vicious and unfit among ourselves. On the other hand, where he
acts in a way which would entitle him to respect and reward if he was
one of our own stock, he is just as entitled to that respect and reward
if he comes of another stock, even though that other stock produces a
much smaller proportion of men of his type than does our own. This has
nothing to do with social intermingling, with what is called social
equality. It has to do merely with the question of doing to each man
and each woman that elementary justice which will permit him or her
to gain from life the reward which should always accompany thrift,
sobriety, self-control, respect for the rights of others, and hard
and intelligent work to a given end. To more than such just treatment
no man is entitled, and less than such just treatment no man should
receive.