Every long-established race has necessarily its peculiar fitness for
the conditions under which it has lived, owing to the sure operation
of Darwin's law of natural selection. However, I am not much concerned
for the present with the greater part of those aptitudes, but only
with such as are available in some form or other of high civilization.
We may reckon upon the advent of a time when civilization, which is
now sparse and feeble and far more superficial than it is vaunted to
be, shall overspread the globe. Ultimately it is sure to do so,
because civilization is the necessary fruit of high intelligence when
found in a social animal, and there is no plainer lesson to be read
off the face of Nature than that the result of the operation of her
laws is to evoke intelligence in connection with sociability.
Intelligence is as much an advantage to an animal as physical strength
or any other natural gift; and therefore, out of two varieties of any
race of animal who are equally endowed in other respects, the most
intelligent variety is sure to prevail in the battle of life.
Similarly, among animals as intelligent as man, the most social race
is sure to prevail, other qualities being equal.
Under even a very moderate form of material civilization, a vast
number of aptitudes acquired through the "survivorship of the fittest"
and the unsparing destruction of the unfit, for hundreds of
generations, have become as obsolete as the old mail-coach habits and
customs since the establishment of railroads, and there is not the
slightest use in attempting to preserve them; they are hindrances, and
not gains, to civilization. I shall refer to some of these a little
further on, but I will first speak of the qualities needed in
civilized society. They are, speaking generally, such as will enable a
race to supply a large contingent to the various groups of eminent men
of whom I have treated in my several chapters. Without going so far as
to say that this very convenient test is perfectly fair, we are at all
events justified in making considerable use of it, as I will do in the
estimates I am about to give.
In comparing the worth of different races, I shall make frequent use
of the law of deviation from an average, to which I have already been
much beholden; and to save the reader's time and patience, I propose
to act upon an assumption that would require a good deal of discussion
to limit, and to which the reader may at first demur, but which cannot
lead to any error of importance in a rough provisional inquiry. I
shall assume that the _intervals_ between the grades of ability are
the _same_ in all the races.... I know this cannot be strictly true,
for it would be in defiance of analogy if the variability of all races
were precisely the same; but on the other hand, there is good reason
to expect that the error introduced by the assumption cannot sensibly
affect the off-hand results for which alone I propose to employ it;
moreover, the rough data I shall adduce will go far to show the
justice of this expectation.
Let us then compare the negro race with the Anglo-Saxon, with respect
to those qualities alone which are capable of producing judges,
statesmen, commanders, men of literature and science, poets, artists,
and divines. If the negro race in America had been affected by no
social disabilities, a comparison of their achievements with those of
the whites in their several branches of intellectual effort, having
regard to the total number of their respective populations, would give
the necessary information. As matters stand, we must be content with
much rougher data.
First, the negro race has occasionally, but very rarely, produced such
men as Toussaint L'Ouverture....
Secondly, the negro race is by no means wholly deficient in men
capable of becoming good factors, thriving merchants, and otherwise
considerably raised above the average of whites....
Thirdly, we may compare, but with much caution, the relative position
of negroes in their native country with that of the travelers who
visit them. The latter no doubt bring with them the knowledge current
in civilized lands, but that is an advantage of less importance than
we are apt to suppose. The native chief has as good an education in
the art of ruling men as can be desired; he is continually exercised
in personal government, and usually maintains his place by the
ascendency of his character, shown every day over his subjects and
rivals. A traveler in wild countries also fills to a certain degree
the position of a commander, and has to confront native chiefs at
every inhabited place. The result is familiar enough--the white
traveler almost invariably holds his own in their presence. It is
seldom that we hear of a white traveler meeting with a black chief
whom he feels to be the better man. I have often discussed this
subject with competent persons, and can only recall a few cases of the
inferiority of the white man,--certainly not more than might be
ascribed to an average actual difference of three grades, of which one
may be due to the relative demerits of native education, and the
remaining two to a difference in natural gifts.
Fourthly, the number among the negroes of those whom we should call
half-witted men is very large. Every book alluding to negro servants
in America is full of instances. I was myself much impressed by this
fact during my travels in Africa. The mistakes the negroes made in
their own matters were so childish, stupid, and simpleton-like as
frequently to make me ashamed of my own species. I do not think it any
exaggeration to say that their _c_ is as low as our _e_, which would
be a difference of two grades, as before. I have no information as to
actual idiocy among the negroes--I mean, of course, of that class of
idiocy which is not due to disease.
The Australian type is at least one grade below the African negro. I
possess a few serviceable data about the natural capacity of the
Australian, but not sufficient to induce me to invite the reader to
consider them.
The average standard of the Lowland Scotch and the English North
Country men is decidedly a fraction of a grade superior to that of the
ordinary English, because the number of the former who attain to
eminence is far greater than the proportionate number of their race
would have led us to expect. The same superiority is distinctly shown
by a comparison of the well-being of the masses of the population; for
the Scotch laborer is much less of a drudge than the Englishman of the
Midland counties--he does his work better, and "lives his life"
besides. The peasant women of Northumberland work all day in the
fields, and are not broken down by the work; on the contrary, they
take a pride in their effective labor as girls, and when married they
attend well to the comfort of their homes. It is perfectly distressing
to me to witness the draggled, drudged, mean look of the mass of
individuals, especially of the women, that one meets in the streets of
London and other purely English towns. The conditions of their life
seem too hard for their constitutions, and to be crushing them into
degeneracy.
The ablest race of whom history bears record is unquestionably the
ancient Greek, partly because their masterpieces in the principal
departments of intellectual activity are still unsurpassed and in many
respects unequaled, and partly because the population that gave birth
to the creators of those masterpieces was very small. Of the various
Greek sub-races, that of Attica was the ablest, and she was no doubt
largely indebted to the following cause for her superiority: Athens
opened her arms to immigrants, but not indiscriminately, for her
social life was such that none but very able men could take any
pleasure in it; on the other hand, she offered attractions such as men
of the highest ability and culture could find in no other city. Thus
by a system of partly unconscious selection she built up a magnificent
breed of human animals, which in the space of one century--viz.,
between 530 and 430 B. C.--produced the following illustrious persons,
fourteen in number:--
_Statesmen and Commanders._--Themistocles (mother an alien),
Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon (son of Miltiades), Pericles (son of
Xanthippus, the victor at Mycale).
_Literary and Scientific Men._--Thucydides, Socrates, Xenophon, Plato.
_Poets._--AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes.
_Sculptor._--Phidias.
We are able to make a closely approximate estimate of the population
that produced these men, because the number of the inhabitants of
Attica has been a matter of frequent inquiry, and critics appear at
length to be quite agreed in the general results.... The average
ability of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very
nearly two grades higher than our own--that is, about as much as our
race is above that of the African negro. This estimate, which may seem
prodigious to some, is confirmed by the quick intelligence and high
culture of the Athenian commonalty, before whom literary works were
recited, and works of art exhibited, of a far more severe character
than could possibly be appreciated by the average of our race, the
calibre of whose intellect is easily gauged by a glance at the
contents of a railway book-stall.
We know, and may guess something more, of the reason why this
marvelously gifted race declined. Social morality grew exceedingly
lax; marriage became unfashionable, and was avoided; many of the more
ambitious and accomplished women were avowed courtesans and
consequently infertile, and the mothers of the incoming population
were of a heterogeneous class. In a small sea-bordered country, where
emigration and immigration are constantly going on, and where the
manners are as dissolute as were those of Greece in the period of
which I speak, the purity of a race would necessarily fail. It can be
therefore no surprise to us, though it has been a severe misfortune to
humanity, that the high Athenian breed decayed and disappeared; for if
it had maintained its excellence, and had multiplied and spread over
large countries, displacing inferior populations (which it well might
have done, for it was exceedingly prolific), it would assuredly have
accomplished results advantageous to human civilization, to a degree
that transcends our powers of imagination.
If we could raise the average standard of our race only one grade,
what vast changes would be produced! The number of men of natural
gifts equal to those of the eminent men of the present day would be
necessarily increased more than tenfold;... but far more important to
the progress of civilization would be the increase in the yet higher
orders of intellect. We know how intimately the course of events is
dependent on the thoughts of a few illustrious men. If the first-rate
men in the different groups had never been born, even if those among
them who have a place in my appendices on account of their hereditary
gifts had never existed, the world would be very different to what it
is....
It seems to me most essential to the well-being of future generations,
that the average standard of ability of the present time should be
raised. Civilization is a new condition imposed upon man by the course
of events, just as in the history of geological changes new conditions
have continually been imposed on different races of animals. They have
had the effect either of modifying the nature of the races through the
process of natural selection, whenever the changes were sufficiently
slow and the race sufficiently pliant, or of destroying them
altogether, when the changes were too abrupt or the race unyielding.
The number of the races of mankind that have been entirely destroyed
under the pressure of the requirements of an incoming civilization,
reads us a terrible lesson. Probably in no former period of the world
has the destruction of the races of any animal whatever been effected
over such wide areas, and with such startling rapidity, as in the case
of savage man. In the North-American continent, in the West-Indian
islands, in the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, New Zealand, and Van
Diemen's Land, the human denizens of vast regions have been entirely
swept away in the short space of three centuries, less by the pressure
of a stronger race than through the influence of a civilization they
were incapable of supporting. And we too, the foremost laborers in
creating this civilization, are beginning to show ourselves incapable
of keeping pace with our own work. The needs of centralization,
communication, and culture, call for more brains and mental stamina
than the average of our race possess. We are in crying want for a
greater fund of ability in all stations of life; for neither the
classes of statesmen, philosophers, artisans, nor laborers are up to
the modern complexity of their several professions. An extended
civilization like ours comprises more interests than the ordinary
statesmen or philosophers of our present race are capable of dealing
with, and it exacts more intelligent work than our ordinary artisans
and laborers are capable of performing. Our race is overweighted, and
appears likely to be drudged into degeneracy by demands that exceed
its powers....
When the severity of the struggle for existence is not too great for
the powers of the race, its action is healthy and conservative;
otherwise it is deadly, just as we may see exemplified in the scanty,
wretched vegetation that leads a precarious existence near the summer
snow line of the Alps, and disappears altogether a little higher up.
We want as much backbone as we can get, to bear the racket to which we
are henceforth to be exposed, and as good brains as possible to
contrive machinery, for modern life to work more smoothly than at
present. We can in some degree raise the nature of man to a level with
the new conditions imposed upon his existence; and we can also in some
degree modify the conditions to suit his nature. It is clearly right
that both these powers should be exerted, with the view of bringing
his nature and the conditions of his existence into as close harmony
as possible.
In proportion as the world becomes filled with mankind, the relations
of society necessarily increase in complexity, and the nomadic
disposition found in most barbarians becomes unsuitable to the novel
conditions. There is a most unusual unanimity in respect to the causes
of incapacity of savages for civilization, among writers on those
hunting and migratory nations who are brought into contact with
advancing colonization, and perish, as they invariably do, by the
contact. They tell us that the labor of such men is neither constant
nor steady; that the love of a wandering, independent life prevents
their settling anywhere to work, except for a short time, when urged
by want and encouraged by kind treatment. Meadows says that the
Chinese call the barbarous races on their borders by a phrase which
means "hither and thither," "not fixed." And any amount of evidence
might be adduced, to show how deeply Bohemian habits of one kind or
another were ingrained in the nature of the men who inhabited most
parts of the earth, now overspread by the Anglo-Saxon and other
civilized races. Luckily there is still room for adventure, and a man
who feels the cravings of a roving, adventurous spirit to be too
strong for resistance, may yet find a legitimate outlet for it in the
colonies, in the army, or on board ship. But such a spirit is, on the
whole, an heirloom that brings more impatient restlessness and beating
of the wings against cage bars, than persons of more civilized
characters can readily comprehend, and it is directly at war with the
more modern portion of our moral natures. If a man be purely a nomad,
he has only to be nomadic and his instinct is satisfied; but no
Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purely nomadic. The most so
among them have also inherited many civilized cravings that are
necessarily starved when they become wanderers, in the same way as the
wandering instincts are starved when they are settled at home.
Consequently their nature has opposite wants, which can never be
satisfied except by chance, through some very exceptional turn of
circumstances. This is a serious calamity; and as the Bohemianism in
the nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes the
happier for mankind. The social requirements of English life are
steadily destroying it. No man who only works by fits and starts is
able to obtain his living nowadays, for he has not a chance of
thriving in competition with steady workmen. If his nature revolts
against the monotony of daily labor, he is tempted to the
public-house, to intemperance, and it may be to poaching, and to much
more serious crime; otherwise he banishes himself from our shores. In
the first case, he is unlikely to leave as many children as men of
more domestic and marrying habits; and in the second case, his breed
is wholly lost to England. By this steady riddance of the Bohemian
spirit of our race, the artisan part of our population is slowly
becoming bred to its duties, and the primary qualities of the typical
modern British workman are already the very opposite of those of the
nomad. What they are now was well described by Mr. Chadwick as
consisting of "great bodily strength, applied under the command of a
steady, persevering will; mental self-contentedness; impassibility to
external irrelevant impressions, which carries them through the
continued repetition of toilsome labor, 'steady as time.'"
It is curious to remark how unimportant to modern civilization has
become the once famous and thoroughbred-looking Norman. The type of
his features, which is probably in some degree correlated with his
peculiar form of adventurous disposition, is no longer characteristic
of our rulers, and is rarely found among celebrities of the present
day; it is more often met with among the undistinguished members of
highly born families, and especially among the less conspicuous
officers of the army. Modern leading men in all paths of eminence, as
may easily be seen in a collection of photographs, are of a coarser
and more robust breed: less excitable and dashing, but endowed with
far more ruggedness and real vigor. Such also is the case as regards
the German portion of the Austrian nation....
Much more alien to the genius of an enlightened civilization than the
nomadic habit is the impulsive and uncontrolled nature of the savage.
A civilized man must bear and forbear; he must keep before his mind
the claims of the morrow as clearly as those of the passing minute; of
the absent as well as of the present. This is the most trying of the
new conditions imposed on man by civilization, and the one that makes
it hopeless for any but exceptional natures among savages to live
under them. The instinct of a savage is admirably consonant with the
needs of savage life; every day he is in danger through transient
causes; he lives from hand to mouth, in the hour and for the hour,
without care for the past or forethought for the future: but such an
instinct is utterly at fault in civilized life. The half-reclaimed
savage, being unable to deal with more subjects of consideration than
are directly before him, is continually doing acts through mere
maladroitness and incapacity, at which he is afterwards deeply grieved
and annoyed. The nearer inducements always seem to him, through his
uncorrected sense of moral perspective, to be incomparably larger than
others of the same actual size but more remote; consequently, when the
temptation of the moment has been yielded to and passed away, and its
bitter result comes in its turn before the man, he is amazed and
remorseful at his past weakness. It seems incredible that he should
have done that yesterday which to-day seems so silly, so unjust, and
so unkindly. The newly reclaimed barbarian, with the impulsive,
unstable nature of the savage, when he also chances to be gifted with
a peculiarly generous and affectionate disposition, is of all others
the man most oppressed with the sense of sin.
Now, it is a just assertion, and a common theme of moralists of many
creeds, that man, such as we find him, is born with an imperfect
nature. He has lofty aspirations, but there is a weakness in his
disposition which incapacitates him from carrying his nobler purposes
into effect. He sees that some particular course of action is his
duty, and should be his delight; but his inclinations are fickle and
base, and do not conform to his better judgment. The whole moral
nature of man is tainted with sin, which prevents him from doing the
things he knows to be right.
The explanation I offer to this apparent anomaly seems perfectly
satisfactory from a scientific point of view. It is neither more nor
less than that the development of our nature, whether under Darwin's
law of natural selection or through the effects of changed ancestral
habits, has not yet overtaken the development of our moral
civilization. Man was barbarous but yesterday, and therefore it is not
to be expected that the natural aptitudes of his race should already
have become molded into accordance with his very recent advance. We,
men of the present centuries, are like animals suddenly transplanted
among new conditions of climate and of food: our instincts fail us
under the altered circumstances.
My theory is confirmed by the fact that the members of old
civilizations are far less sensible than recent converts from
barbarism, of their nature being inadequate to their moral needs. The
conscience of a negro is aghast at his own wild, impulsive nature, and
is easily stirred by a preacher; but it is scarcely possible to ruffle
the self-complacency of a steady-going Chinaman.
The sense of original sin would show, according to my theory, not that
man was fallen from high estate, but that he was rising in moral
culture with more rapidity than the nature of his race could follow.
My view is corroborated by the conclusion reached at the end of each
of the many independent lines of ethnological research--that the human
race were utter savages in the beginning; and that after myriads of
years of barbarism, man has but very recently found his way into the
paths of morality and civilization.