De quelques causes particulières des progrès des Européens dans les diverses parties du monde. — Du

CHAP. 50: > Of some particular causes of the progress of Europeans in the diverse parts of the world. — Of the moral improvement of the races whose intellectual faculties are supposed to be little susceptible of development. — Conclusion.

But there are facts more remarkable than the preceding ones by which it is proven that all the colored species are, by their nature, inferior to the peoples of the Caucasian species: these are the immense progress that these peoples have made in the same places where the others had always remained barbarous. The English colonists became a flourishing nation in North America, in the very place occupied by tribes of the copper-colored species who had never emerged from the savage state, and these tribes did not advance a single step alongside the Europeans. The Dutch colonists prospered at the Cape of Good Hope on the very spot where the Hottentots and Kaffirs had been able to rise only to the nomadic life. In New Holland and on Van Diemen's Land, men of the negro species had always remained in the most profound barbarism; since the English established themselves there, this country has been advancing toward prosperity at the most rapid pace. Are these not manifest proofs that, by their nature, the colored species are inferior to our own?

In general, the progress a people makes is only in proportion to the improvements it makes to certain things: where nature is immutable, man himself cannot change much. Now, I will ask what improvements the English have made to the things they found on Van Diemen's Land and in New Holland, and by what means have they made these improvements? What are the plants they have multiplied or perfected there; the animals they have tamed and fashioned to domestic life? If, with all the aid of every kind that they have drawn from Europe, nothing that the country produces in plants or animals has been perfected, must one attribute to the nature of the natives the stationary state in which they had remained? And what I say of the natives of New Holland, I can say of those of the Cape of Good Hope and even of those of the American continent. For one species of men to have some reason to believe itself of a nature superior to another, it would have to have made more progress with the same means; which has not happened in the facts that are intended to serve as proofs. As for the stationary state or the decline of the natives of America alongside the European colonists, these are facts whose causes are too numerous and too complicated to expound here.

There are two phenomena that I believe I have previously proven beyond a doubt: one, that the development of our physical, intellectual, and moral organs depends, in large part, on the circumstances that surround us or on the position in which we are placed; the other, that organs of a mediocre primitive constitution, which have been long exercised, possess a power superior to that of the best-constituted organs that have always remained in inaction. It results from this that, admitting that there exist species which, by their own nature, are inferior to others, the difference that would exist in this regard could be more than compensated for by a difference of position. It is clear, for example, that Europeans who had been placed in the Gobi desert could not have acquired the same development that peoples of the Mongol species would have attained, had they been cast upon the coasts or in the islands of Greece. A multitude of circumstances could therefore render equal peoples who would be unequal by their nature, or even give a real superiority to those who would be really inferior by their organization.

It could not be so, however, if it were true that there is a certain number of vicious habits that are inherent in the nature of certain species, or virtuous habits that these same species are incapable of contracting. But in studying with the greatest care the descriptions of the morals of the peoples of the diverse species that travelers or historians have given us, it is impossible to discover anything that could lead one to suppose that such differences exist between peoples. W. Lawrence himself has observed none; he has confined himself to stating vague generalities, without supporting them with any positive fact. Far from finding, in some species, virtues or vices inherent in their nature and foreign to the men of other species, we see that at the same degree of civilization, or in a similar position, all peoples resemble each other in their morals and intellectual development. One has been able to convince oneself of this truth by comparing among themselves the peoples whose morals I have previously described; but it will become more striking when I have treated of domestic slavery.

The development of the intellectual faculties exercises a very extensive influence on morals: this is a fact that I believe I have previously established. One must not believe, however, that to possess a certain number of good habits, or to be exempt from certain vices, it is necessary to have given one’s intelligence a very considerable development. If, taking as a whole the population of the most civilized country, the country where morals are the purest and intellects the most enlightened, one compares the intellectual development that each individual has received to the development of which he was susceptible, one will find that the greatest part of the intellectual forces with which each man was endowed perishes without any use having been made or being able to be made of it. There are few workers, peasants, or other men who are not susceptible of acquiring the knowledge possessed by most of the members of our academies, and who nevertheless die in the most profound ignorance: the intellectual development that each receives is perhaps not the hundredth part of that of which he is susceptible. It is impossible for it to be otherwise, since each is obliged, in order to live, to devote his time to executing a certain number of mechanical operations for which the most limited intelligence can suffice. Now, to know how two peoples who do not belong to the same species really differ, it is not enough to compare the intellectual development that each individual could acquire if he devoted all his time and all his forces to his instruction; one must above all compare the development that each has the means of actually acquiring, while devoting himself to the labors that his position requires. I will make myself better understood by using less general expressions.

Let us suppose that the intellectual development that each individual of a certain species is susceptible of receiving is equal to ten, and that, by the necessity of devoting oneself to a multitude of mechanical operations, the effective development that each receives can never exceed one, it will be necessary to calculate the degree of civilization on one and not on ten; for the nine-tenths that, for lack of time or wealth, will remain without development, will be a lost force. If it were a question of knowing the riches of a mine, one would not take as a basis for calculation the quantity of gold that was contained in the bowels of the earth; one would take the quantity that it would be possible to extract by given means. It is exactly the same with the riches of the intelligence; the quantity that it is not possible to develop can be counted for nothing.Suppose, on the other hand, that the intellectual development that each individual of another species is capable of receiving is only equal to six, and that the actual development that the needs of society permit each to acquire is also one; it is evident that the two peoples could arrive at the same degree of civilization, although, by their nature, a great inequality exists between them. It is no less evident that the peoples of this latter race could achieve a civilization double that of the first if, instead of giving their intelligence only one-sixth of the strength it is capable of acquiring, they managed to give it two-sixths.

This reasoning, it is true, can only be applied to the mass of the population of each species; for, when a people has already made certain progress in civilization, there are always a certain number of individuals, more or less great, who give their faculties all the development of which they are capable. A difference would therefore always exist in favor of the species endowed with the best intellectual organization; but this difference would be found only in the very small number of enlightened men that would exist in each species, and would produce none on the population as a whole. The best-organized species might have the glory of discoveries, but all would share in the benefits. Indeed, if men endowed with great genius are needed to discover certain truths, to invent the processes of the most complicated arts, it does not take an equally extensive capacity to understand these discoveries, or to execute these processes. The most ordinary men understand or practice what the most extraordinary men have managed to discover only after long nights and painful labors. Thus, even if it were true that the Caucasian race has an intelligence more capable of being developed than that of the others, all could profit from the discoveries that would be made by it alone.

Finally, whatever progress some nations of the Caucasian species have made in morals, laws, the arts, or the sciences, one must guard against believing that they have reached perfection in every field. This vanity would be scarcely less ridiculous than that for which the Chinese have been reproached; it would be all the more so since the very nations that would call themselves perfect, when comparing themselves to the peoples of other species, are those that complain most loudly about the vices of their social order. However, if one admits that the most civilized peoples are still capable of making immense progress, on what grounds could one claim that the nations of other species can no longer advance? If it is possible for them to advance, why would they not arrive at the point where we are? And if they can arrive there, what are the reasons for our present pride?

What conclusions should be drawn from the preceding? Must we conclude that all species of men are equal by their own nature? No, certainly not. The only reasonable conclusions that can be drawn are that, in the current state of our knowledge, it is impossible to determine the essential differences that exist between the diverse species of men, relative to their intellectual and moral faculties; that a system which explains all the differences observed between nations by a difference in the organization of their intellectual faculties is no more consistent with the truth than one which explains all physical, moral, and intellectual phenomena by the temperature of the atmosphere; that, if some differences exist in the nature of the diverse species, these differences can be compensated for by a multitude of other circumstances, such that the people who, by its nature, is the least capable of development, may nevertheless be more developed than the one that is best organized, but which is placed in less favorable circumstances; that the civilization of a people depends, not on the degree of development of which it is capable by its own nature, but on that which its geographical position permits it to receive; that the morals and industry of a people can reach a high degree of improvement, although each individual does not give his intellectual faculties all the development of which they are capable by their nature; finally, that one is no more justified in fixing the point of civilization at which the colored species must stop, than one would be justified in determining the point at which the peoples of the Caucasian species will stop.

But if it is still impossible to determine what moral and intellectual differences exist between the diverse species, and which are consequences of the nature of each, it is not equally impossible to determine the consequences that result from their position, their separation or their mixing, their slavery or their freedom. I have already explained the influence that a nation's surroundings have on it, whatever the species to which it belongs; we have seen how the kind of development it receives is determined by the position in which it is found, and how this development determines the kind of action that nations exercise upon one another. It now remains for me to say what the nature of this action is, and what consequences result from it for the intelligence, morals, and laws of the peoples who exercise it, and of those who are subject to it. We will see at the same time how this action and the effects it produces are modified, depending on whether the peoples who are thus in contact are of the same species or belong to different species.

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.