I. Influence de la race sur la liberté.

CHAP. 2: I. Influence of race on liberty.

§ 1. Men, I have said, are all the freer as they have more developed their faculties and better learned to regulate their use. But first, are the faculties of all races of men susceptible of the same degree of rectitude and development?

§ 2. There is perhaps no living species that offers more numerous varieties than the human genus. These varieties, by causes that are only very imperfectly known to us, have so multiplied that it has become as if impossible to make an exact enumeration of them. One can, however, by suppressing an infinite number of intermediate nuances, and by taking into account only the most salient differences, note a certain number of very distinct ones. Zoologists ordinarily count five: the Caucasian, which they place at the center, and which they regard as the stock of the human genus; the Mongolian and the Ethiopian, which are at the two opposite extremities, and at an equal distance from the first; finally, the American and the Malayan, which are found as intermediaries, the first between the Caucasian and the Mongolian, and the second between the Caucasian and the Ethiopian [^20] .

The principal characteristic traits of each of these races are well enough known.

What distinguishes the Caucasian above all is a white skin; a rosy complexion or one tending toward brown; cheeks endowed with the singular faculty of blushing, of paling, and of thus betraying the emotions of the soul; soft, thick, and more or less curly hair; an oval and straight face; the top of the head and especially the forehead very developed; the front of the skull descending perpendicularly toward the face, etc.

The Mongolian variety is particularly characterized by an olive complexion tending toward yellow; black, straight, coarse, and sparse hair; little or no beard; a square head; a wide and flat face with a narrow and low forehead; prominent cheekbones; slanted and obliquely slit eyes; large ears; thick lips; a stature generally shorter and more stocky than that of Europeans.

The principal traits of the Ethiopian variety are an ebony skin; black and woolly hair; the skull compressed at the sides, flattened at the front, and extending immoderately to the rear; a low, narrow, and irregular forehead; round eyes, flush with the head; prominent cheekbones; narrow and projecting jaws; the upper incisor teeth inclined forward; the chin drawn back; large lips, a flat nose that in some way merges with the upper jaw; the knees ordinarily turned inward.

Such are the traits of the three most pronounced and most distant varieties from one another. Those of the two intermediate varieties are but different nuances of them, which serve as a transition from the Caucasian race to its two most opposite derivations. The traits of the American race are a mixture of those of the Caucasian race and the Mongolian race; the traits of the Malayan race are a mixture of those of the Caucasian race and the Ethiopian race [^21] .

One feels that such general descriptions could not equally suit all the nuances that each variety embraces. However, it is not doubtful that they apply more or less to each of them, and one has been able to say with a certain exactitude which peoples each variety is composed of.

Included in the white or Caucasian race have been all ancient and modern Europeans, minus the Lapps and the remnants of the Finnish race; all the ancient and new inhabitants of the west of Asia, within the extent of the countries embraced by the Ob, the Caspian Sea, and the Ganges; finally, the inhabitants of the north of Africa, joining to them some tribes advanced toward the south.

The yellow or Mongolian race has embraced the rest of the Asiatic nations, the Lapps and the Finns in the north of Europe, and the Eskimos spread across the most northern extremity of America, from the Bering Strait to the confines of Greenland.

All the nations of Africa that are not part of the first variety have been included in the black or Ethiopian race.

The red or American variety has been composed of all the natives of America, minus the Eskimos.

Finally, to the brown or Malayan variety have belonged all the inhabitants of the numerous islands of the South Sea, from the true Malay whom his color, his features, his long and soft hair bring very close to the European race, to the savage of Van Diemen's Land, who, by his black skin and his short, frizzy, and tight hair, appears to merge with the African [^22] .

The differences we have just noted between the principal varieties of the human genus are not the only ones that distinguish them. These varieties, so strongly separated by color, features, hair, the look of the head, differ hardly less in stature, in the proportions of the body, perhaps in the fineness of the senses, but above all in the form and capacity of the skull, by the volume and mode of development of the brain.

There is certainly some distance from the high and domed skull of the European to the wide and flattened skull of the Mongol, or to the narrow and oblong skull of the negro. This distance would be perceptible even if, in each race, one were to take one's objects of comparison from the moderately characterized forms. All Caucasians, without doubt, do not have a high forehead, nor all Mongols a flattened skull, nor all Ethiopians an elongated skull; but one cannot deny that this difference, in the conformation of the skull, is not, in general, one of the most characteristic types of each of these races....

The volume and disposition of the brain appear to have, in the Caucasian race, a marked superiority over the two varieties that are most distant from it. The organs of intelligence are those that predominate in the head of the European, and those of animality in the head of the Mongol and especially of the negro. These latter races are perhaps better endowed on the side of the senses; but the first would appear superior by the organs of thought. The face, which is small in the Caucasian, comparatively to the rest of the head, is enormous in the Mongol, and especially in the Ethiopian relative to the volume of the brain [^23] .

The proportions of the body are hardly less different. The Mongol has a wide and square torso, short and muscular extremities [^24] . The negro, on the contrary, is slender of body and especially of the loins; he often has long and frail extremities, and almost always the leg and foot turned inward [^25] . The Caucasian is equally distant from these forms; he is neither stocky like the Mongol, nor slender and lanky and ungainly like the Ethiopian.

Moreover, it is not a question here of attributing superiority to the Caucasian race, nor of establishing the races of color in a state of inferiority; it is only a question of noting some of the differences that distinguish the diverse races; and even if one were not struck by all the remarks that have been made to the advantage of the white race, it would nonetheless remain evident that there exist, in many respects, very salient differences between the great varieties of which the human family is composed.

[^18]: It is not only from the ideas and habits of the country that the government receives its form and its mode of action; it is also from those of neighboring countries, and especially of those which exercise a sort of ascendancy over it.

[^19]: The art of governing oneself is the last that a people acquires, because it is the most difficult of all. It is that which demands the most knowledge, the most experience, the most reason, the most moderation, the most courage.

[^20]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71.

[^21]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.

[^22]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.

[^23]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.

[^24]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.

[^25]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.Let us add to these remarks that the diverse varieties, so long as they do not interbreed, invariably conserve the characters that are proper to them. These characters remain the same in all latitudes and in all climates. The American is red from one end of America to the other; the African remains black under the ice of the pole; the European is born white under the sun of Africa; the Moors and the Arabs, who are of our race, still, after a long series of generations, have children who are, at birth, as white as ours [^26] . The Hottentots remain eternally small next to the Kaffirs who are large; and the Chaymas, puny and slender, next to the Caribs or Carives who are enormous. The Gallas, an African nation placed directly on the equator, have, according to Bruce [^27] , an almost white complexion that the fires of the sun do not alter; and the Kaffirs, who are a few degrees from the cape, in a climate whose heat is very bearable, preserve, according to Paterson [^28] , their skin of the darkest ebony black. A single race, which does not mix, remains identical under the most diverse climates [^29] . Diverse races, which do not mix, all conserve, in the same country, the traits that are proper to them. The same quarters of the globe have been successively inhabited by very different peoples, without the characteristic traits of any of these peoples having undergone the slightest alteration. It is not in man's power, finally, to modify his posterity by acting upon himself. No mutilation, accidental or voluntary, is transmissible by generation: the Caribs artfully deform their skulls; Chinese women reduce their feet to a third of their proper dimensions; certain savages excessively elongate their ears, and none of them succeeds in transmitting these deformities to his descendants. For three or four thousand years the Jews have engaged in the practice of circumcision, and their children are still born uncircumcised, says Doctor Prichard [^30] .

§ 3. It would be to depart from the subject I am treating to inquire here whence these differences between the principal varieties of our species could have arisen. Are they original or adventitious? Did several distinct races primitively exist, as some authors believe, or was the human genus identical in its origin, and are all the varieties of the human species but more or less perceptible deviations from this original and primitive type? If this is so, how did these deviations occur? Were they the fruit of climate, soil, food, or other external causes, as has always been claimed; or, as has recently been explained, were they produced by that tendency of species to variation, which is, it is said, a law of the physical world, which acts equally upon plants and upon animals, which acts above all in the state of domesticity, and with a force all the greater as one is in a more advanced state of culture and civilization [^31] ?

All these questions, more or less curious, more or less important, are of the domain of zoology, and I have no need to occupy myself with them in this work. But what I can and must occupy myself with here is to know whether such perceptible, such permanent differences between the varieties must not entail any in the degree of culture, and consequently in the degree of liberty of which they are susceptible.

§ 4. It is difficult to doubt that they entail considerable ones. We know to what point age, infirmities, passions influence the use that man is capable of making of his forces: how could the difference of conformation be, in this regard, without influence? We recognize that this difference can create a great one between the capacity of two individuals: how would it create none between the capacity of two races? We admit that, outside the human genus and in the other species of animals, all varieties are not susceptible of a uniform education; that, for example, it is not possible to give the Flemish horse the speed of the English or Limousin horse, to procure for the mastiff the agility of the greyhound, to give the greyhound the sense of smell of the hunting dog, to communicate to the mastiff the intelligence of the barbet and the sheepdog: how then would it be easier to get the same result from all the races of men? Does there exist between a Bushman and a native of Europe, between a Carib and a Caucasian, less difference than between a mastiff and a hunting dog, than between an Arab courser and the heavy horse that we use for cartage?

I am far from claiming (and I insist on this remark, because several writers who have combated me appear to have paid it no attention), I am far from claiming, I say, that certain varieties of our species are not susceptible of any culture; I believe, on the contrary, that a quality common to all is that of being able to be perfected by education; but, at the same time, it appears to me impossible to admit that they are all equally perfectible [^32] .

§ 5. And first, how can one admit that the Eskimo could by culture become as large as the Patagonian? that the Hottentots could acquire as much strength as the Kaffirs? that the Lapps, the Greenlanders, and the other pygmy peoples of the Mongol variety would manage to get from their physical faculties the same result as the most beautiful and most robust races of the Caucasian variety? When the Spanish invaded America, says Herrera, they generally found the Indians weaker than themselves, and it was even this weakness of the Indians that gave rise to the introduction of slaves from Africa, who were much more capable of sustaining the harsh labors of the mines [^33] . Volney remarks that, in their combats, whether troop against troop, or man against man, the European inhabitants of Virginia and Kentucky have always displayed more physical vigor than the natives of North America [^34] . Several other travelers have found, on various points of North America, the same inferiority of muscular strength in the natives of the country. On the other hand, certain indigenous peoples of America appear endowed with a vigor of body that it would probably be as difficult to find in most of our peasants as to communicate to them. What, I ask, is the dietary regimen that could give to the inhabitants of certain of our provinces, whose average height is not five feet, the singular vigor of those Caribs, who can row for fifteen hours straight against the swiftest current, in a heat of thirty degrees on the Réaumur thermometer, or the even more athletic strength of those Tenateros Indians, employed in the labors of the Mexican mines, who can remain, for six hours, laden with a weight of two hundred twenty-five to three hundred fifty pounds, and climb seven or eight times in a row, with such burdens, staircases of eighteen hundred steps [^35] ? It is perceptible that, by the very fact that certain varieties differ in height and the proper proportions of the body, they must also differ in physical vigor, and that, in this respect, they can develop and become free only to very unequal degrees.

§ 6. For the rest, the strength that men possess in their arms is always so small in comparison to that which they can procure for themselves by their intelligence, that it hardly deserves to be counted; and, whatever difference one might notice between their muscles, I would not hesitate to say that they are susceptible of the same liberty, if they were otherwise susceptible of the same degree of intellectual and moral culture. But must the diversity of their physical conformation entail none in their moral powers? Can one admit that the savage tribes of Tierra del Fuego or of New Holland, for example, would be capable, in otherwise equal situations, of learning to make of their intellectual faculties a use as extended and as reasonable as the most happily organized nations of Europe?

I have already remarked upon the difference that the principal varieties of the species offer in the conformation of the head. This difference is one of those that appear to distinguish them most strongly; and a negro, a Kalmyk, an European are perhaps no more separated by the color of the skin than by the form of the skull. Does one think that such a difference in the intellectual organs must entail none in the functions of the intelligence? and, even if one wished to see in man but a pure spirit served by organs, would it be possible to admit that this spirit is equally powerful, whatever be the organs that serve it?

We have, I know, no means of knowing how, in this regard, the physical influences the moral; but it appears to be a constant observation in zoology that the more the head of animals approaches certain forms, the less imperfect is the use they can make of their intellectual faculties. It is by this that certain animals show themselves superior to others; it is by this above all that man distinguishes himself from the brute: why would the same cause not distinguish man from man?

§ 7. If the phenomena of intelligence depended in no way on physical organization, one would notice no coincidence between the enlightenment of peoples and the mode of their conformation. One would encounter indistinctly, in all races, the same mixture of skill and ineptitude, of prosperity and misery; fine characters and great talents would appear in the same number, all proportion otherwise kept, in the best conformations and in the most imperfect organizations; the Ethiopian, the Mongol, the European would be at the same point civilized. But it is far from being thus. It is found on the contrary that the superiority of civilization coincides here with the superiority of physical organization, and that the race whose head appears the best made is also the most civilized. The Kalmyk, with his wide face and crushed forehead, has not in general raised himself much above the nomadic life; the negro, with his narrow and elongated skull, has always wallowed in a state neighboring on pure barbarism; while the Caucasian, whose forehead is very developed, and whose face is almost vertical, has attained, at diverse epochs, and especially in modern times, a comparatively very high degree of civilization. Everything seems to indicate that, of the animals of our species, the most susceptible of culture is the man of white color, it is the animal that Linnæus calls homo sapiens europeus.

I do not say that a certain number of individuals in the dark-colored races cannot raise themselves as high and perhaps higher than the common run of men of the white race: I would certainly be contradicted by the facts. I know that one can cite examples of negroes who have more or less distinguished themselves in the arts, in letters, even in the sciences [^36] . But these exceptions, though numerous, do not seem to be so enough to invalidate the rule, and one would hardly succeed, by gathering them, and by comparing them to the mass of distinguished men that the Caucasian race has contained in all times, but in showing how much the latter is in general superior in the faculties of the mind and the force of thought.

Nor do I say that the other races, considered in their entirety, cannot raise themselves to a certain degree of civilization: the facts would again be contrary to me. One can cite, in the African race, the blacks of Saint-Domingue; in the Malayan, the Tahitians; the Peruvians and the Mexicans, in the American; and in the Mongol, the Japanese and especially the Chinese, who are each in their own way, at a more or less elevated degree of culture. However, what comparison can be established between these diverse civilizations and that of the European race? How inferior are they not to it in extent, in intensity, in perfection? That of the Chinese, the most remarkable of all, appears to be, in many respects, at an infinite distance from it. And besides, were it currently more perfect, a single one of its characteristics would suffice, with time, to render it inferior. I mean to speak of its immobility. It has been stationary for forty centuries; it resembles a sort of instinct: very different from European civilization, whose essential character is to be at once mobile and progressive, that is to say, to modify itself without cease and to improve itself in being modified [^37] .

The Caucasian race distinguishes itself from the others from the first times of its history. No monument, no tradition shows it in a state of degradation and brutishness like that in which various tribes of the other varieties have been discovered. It is permissible to suppose that it began by being entirely savage; but one cannot assign an epoch when it was so, and the most ancient monuments represent it at least in the nomadic state. The Arabs of Genesis, the Greeks of Homer, the Germans of Tacitus are not yet, without doubt, very advanced peoples; but who could deny that their state is not very superior to that in which the natives of New Holland and several tribes of America have been found?

If the Caucasians distinguish themselves from the other varieties at their origin, they distinguish themselves from them much more in later times. The further one moves from their point of departure, the more one finds them ahead of the other races. They do not make uninterrupted progress; their civilization is irregular in its march; it stops, it retrogrades; it never disappears entirely; it reappears on the contrary with more force; it spreads over more extended spaces; from place to place, it has thus invaded all of Europe, and for several centuries, it has made sustained and ever more general progress there.

In the same time, the education of the other races does not appear to have made any perceptible progress. I spoke just now of the immobility of the Asiatics; one can speak of that of the Africans. They have remained plunged, for two thousand years, in their original barbarism, and the negro whom we know is not superior to the Ethiopian whom the ancients knew. As for the natives of America and the islands of the South Sea, one knows in what state they were found and in what state they still are.

And one must not, as has been done, attribute to climate the development of the European race. All the races are spread across extremely varied latitudes. One knows the extent of Africa; America touches both poles; Asia embraces the most diverse climates: how, in such prodigiously different situations, would the dark-colored races not have made progress comparable to that of the white race, if they were not naturally inferior? The Europeans have developed in the most unfavorable climates; the other races have remained more or less uncultivated in all climates. The Europeans have civilized themselves in the same places where other races have never been able to cease being savage. What an argument the flourishing republic of the United States does not offer against those who wish to give the credit for the civilization of the Europeans to the climate of Europe?

It would not be more exact to say that the Europeans are indebted for their civilization to better governments, to less barbarous institutions; for these things are part of their civilization and are precisely the fruit of their superiority. If the other races were naturally capable of them, why would they not possess them? Why would they not also have regular governments and reasonable institutions? The laws, the morals, the sciences, the arts, the industry of the European race are not creations of heaven; the author of things had deposited the germ of them in it; but it has the merit of having developed it: its civilization is its own work; it is the effect and not the cause of its superiority.

One would no better explain the superiority of the Europeans over other races, and for example over the black, observed in our colonies, by saying that the inferiority of the latter stems from its state of servitude. First, this servitude is itself a rather strange phenomenon, and one that would demand explanation. Why is it not the black race that commands? Why is it not the white that serves? Next, the black race would perhaps sustain the comparison with the white no better in its native country, where it is free, than in our colonies, where it is a slave. Finally, the white race has also been seen in slavery, and in a slavery worse than that of the blacks. Mr. Jefferson, in his excellent notes on Virginia, observes with reason that the condition of the slaves among the Romans, particularly in the age of Augustus, was infinitely harsher than is that of the negroes whom we have reduced to slavery. However, he says, despite all these kinds of oppression, and many other discouraging circumstances, the slaves, among the Romans, frequently showed the greatest talents. Several excelled in the sciences; so that their masters commonly entrusted to them the education of their children. Epictetus, Phaedrus, and Terence were slaves; but these slaves were of the race of the whites. It is not, therefore, he adds, slavery, but nature that has put between the races such a great difference [^38] .

Not only have the dark-colored races not developed, of their own movement, to the same degree as the white race; but it even seems that they are incapable of appropriating its civilization. For three centuries, for example, that the natives of America have had before their eyes the spectacle of the arts of Europe, transplanted onto their own soil, their arts have lost nothing of their native coarseness. They have seen powerful colonies born and grow without being tempted to imitate the labors to which they owed their growing prosperity. Example, persuasion, encouragement, nothing has been able to make them abandon their vagabond and precarious life for agriculture and the arts.

[^26]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.

[^27]: Travels to discover the source of the Nile, by James Bruce, vol. II, p. 222.

[^28]: A Narrative of four journeys into the country of the Hottentots and Caffraria, by William Paterson, p. 89.

[^29]: Précis de Physiologie, by M. Magendie, t. I, p. 71 and following.

[^30]: Researches into the physical history of man, by James Cowles Prichard, p. 148.

[^31]: Researches into the physical history of man, by James Cowles Prichard, p. 148.

[^32]: Researches into the physical history of man, by James Cowles Prichard, p. 148.

[^33]: Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del mar oceano, by Antonio de Herrera, dec. I, lib. IX, cap. V.

[^34]: Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis, by M. de Volney, t. I, p. 445.

[^35]: Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, by M. de Humboldt, t. I, p. 128.

[^36]: See the work of M. Grégoire, De la littérature des nègres.

[^37]: Researches into the physical history of man, by James Cowles Prichard, p. 148.

[^38]: Notes on the State of Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson, p. 264.One would wish to doubt the intellectual preeminence of the white race, and one is ceaselessly alerted to its superiority by some new consideration. How striking, for example, is the importance of the role it plays on our planet, the extent of the dominion it exercises there, and the continual extension of this dominion? It occupies Europe almost exclusively; it is sovereign mistress of America; it reigns over a considerable portion of Asia; it has colonies in Africa and in New Holland; it has spread to all quarters of the globe; it has establishments everywhere, and these establishments are ceaselessly extending. The other races are very far from having shown the same curiosity, the same audacity, the same expansive force. It is not they who came to seek the Europeans, it is the Europeans who went forth to them, who went to discover them, to visit them in the most remote corners of the earth. The world, without the Europeans, would not even know of their existence, and most of them would have remained unknown to the rest of the human genus.

A final mark of the inferiority of the latter, a fact from which it would seem to result that they are but degenerations of the white race, is that they tend to return to its color and its features, while it takes on their color and features only with great difficulty. Such at least is the opinion of Blumenbach, adopted by W. Lawrence, and which these learned naturalists support with observations made in the islands of the South Sea and in several parts of Africa [^39] .

The facts would thus seem to establish that the dark-colored races, whether their nervous and cerebral system be less developed or differently developed, or whether this apparatus is not endowed in them with the same degree of sensibility or energy, are far from manifesting the same vivacity of intelligence, from deploying the same fund of industry, from showing themselves at the same point capable of increasing by art their natural power, in a word, of making of their forces a use as ingenious, as learned, as varied, as extended, and above all as perceptibly progressive; and if, among the number of differences that distinguish the diverse varieties of the species, there is one thing that is particularly of a nature to strike, it is this superiority of intelligence that the Caucasian variety manifests in the whole of its labors and its works.

§ 8. The consequence to be drawn from these remarks, supposing them to be founded, is surely not that this race may dispense with being just toward the others, and that instead of employing its intelligence to extend the benefits of civilization, it must make it serve to crush ignorance and weakness; that its role is to finish making miserable the races that already have the misfortune of being inferior to it; that it has done well to establish the trade and slavery of Africans; that it was right to begin by massacring the natives of America; that it showed proof of sagacity when it called into question whether the Indians were men, and whether papal bulls were not needed to treat them as such; that it showed itself very skillful when it condemned to a perpetual minority the small number of these unfortunates whom it had not exterminated [^40] ..... If anything could cast doubt upon the superiority of its mind as well as that of its moral affections, it is surely the conduct it has held toward its relatives in Africa and America, a conduct not only odious, inhuman, but singularly absurd, and which may become as disastrous for itself as it has been for the peoples who have felt its first effects.

All that I wish to induce from the inferiority of the colored races, is that being, at least in their current state, less susceptible of culture than the white race, they are less susceptible of liberty. I have not the slightest desire to flatter the vanity of the one; still less would I wish to offend the dignity of the others. My sole design is to state a truth whose knowledge is important to all, to wit, that the liberty of men depends, before all things, on the perfection of their faculties. Now, the facts, I believe, make this truth manifest. The superior civilization of the white race proceeds from no happy chance; it is not the fruit of more favorable local circumstances: I have begun to show this in this chapter [^41], and it will be seen better in the following chapter [^42]: It results, therefore, from the natural or acquired superiority of its conformation. By the sole fact that this race is endowed with more perfect organs, it can derive a greater advantage from its intelligence; it is, more than another, capable of exercising a useful and powerful action upon nature and upon itself, and of bringing to the labors and functions of society the scientific knowledge and moral habits that can facilitate their exercise and make them fruitful.

§ 9. I must not leave my reader in ignorance that these ideas, on the preeminence of the European race, have been strongly attacked. M. Comte, in a considerable and justly esteemed work, which appeared about fifteen months after the first edition of this volume, has devoted several chapters to combating the reasons that appear to establish the superiority of the white race over the dark-colored races [^43] . It is not to me by name that this critique is addressed. The author has directed his argumentation only against W. Lawrence, whom I had cited much in the course of this chapter, and to whom I owed the best part of my observations. But as, in naming only the English anthropologist, the author of the Traité de législation nonetheless attacks ideas that are particular to me, and several times cites my own expressions, it is impossible for me not to take for myself a part of the philosophical blame that is poured upon the opinion of Lawrence; and besides, even if only Lawrence were touched by these remarks, it is enough that I have adopted the principal ideas of this author for me to believe myself obliged to make known the objections raised against his doctrine.

M. Comte begins by observing that it is extremely difficult to discern the influence of race amidst all those exercised upon the progress of a people, not only by the local circumstances in which it is placed, but by language, laws, morals, religion, government, etc. It seems to me, on the contrary, that nothing should be more proper than government, religion, laws, and morals to show the influence of race; for as none of all that exists prior to all culture and all development, it is evident that these things can only be what they have been made by the genius of the people that produced them, under the influence, if you will, of the external circumstances that inspired it. Just as one judges the tree by the fruit, so too the character of the arts, of language, of religion, of morals, of government, of all that constitutes the civilization of a country, can serve to show of what race of men this civilization is the work. Doubtless, it is not as easy to judge the race by the civilization as the tree by the inspection of the fruit; but far from the civilization of a people preventing one from seeing how it has been influenced by its nature, it seems that nothing must be more proper than its works to reveal the nature and extent of its faculties.

The author of the Traité de Législation does not approve that, in seeking to point out what is diverse in the races, and their greater or lesser perfectibility, one should apply oneself particularly to bringing out the traits favorable to one of them. He is entirely right; and if, in relating the facts that appear to establish the intellectual superiority of the white race, Lawrence or I have had the air of making its apology, we have both been wrong. But if one must abstain from taking sides for a race, one must also abstain from appearing to plead against it; for it would certainly be no more philosophical to disparage it than to exalt it. This is something to which M. Comte has perhaps not paid enough heed. But what he has done matters little: his error would not excuse ours; his remark remains no less founded, and it is certain that, in the examination of any order of facts, and especially of facts as grave as these, one cannot take too much care to free oneself from all preoccupation.

By the very fact that one must set aside all preoccupation from one's research, it is evident that in studying the question of races, there is no cause to worry in advance about the results that this or that solution may have. Consequently, there is no cause to say, with M. Comte, that if all races are not susceptible of the same culture, several unfortunate consequences will manifest themselves. One must, doubtless, take the greatest care to examine if the thing is exact; but it would be unscientific, if I am not mistaken, to begin, before knowing if the fact is true, by enumerating all that is distressing in the thesis of those who regard it as true.

I agree that from the unequal perfectibility of races several rather sad things may result; for example, the impossibility of making all of them become equally industrious, rich, enlightened, moral, happy; or else of preventing the strongest from often abusing their preeminence, from abusing it for a long time, from abusing it until they are advanced enough to understand that injustice degrades him who exercises it, and that oppression does not only harm the oppressed. But from the natural inequality of individuals, there also result, in each race and in each nation, things that are unfortunately rather unfortunate [^44] . Is that a reason to raise doubts about this inequality? No, doubtless. Just as, therefore, the disadvantages entailed by the natural inequality of individuals do not prevent one from recognizing that they are born with very unequal faculties, so too the more or less grave consequences that the inequality of races may have is not a reason either to close one's eyes to this inequality, if it has in effect something real.

I have some difficulty understanding why there has been such a strong outcry against this idea of the inequality of races. It seems to me, however, that it offers nothing more strange and more paradoxical than that of the inequality of individuals. If one individual can differ from another, one does not see why ten individuals could not differ from ten others, a thousand from a thousand others. If a man can have his own physiognomy, his own character, his own particular turn of mind, one does not see why what is most salient in this mind, this character, this physiognomy, could not be common to a multitude of men. Not only does the inequality of races have nothing more extraordinary than that of individuals, but the first of these inequalities presents itself as a natural consequence of the second. All races in effect having begun with individuals, it is clear that if these individuals could differ, their posterity could be born different; that if the first authors of each race could have, each on their own side, their particular type of figure, of intelligence, of character, these original differences could continue to be reproduced in the races that came from them. It was sufficient for this that these races did not mix; and unfortunately too numerous causes have conspired to prevent mixing: the distance that separated populations, the natural obstacles that arose between them, attachment to the native soil, the differences of color, form, language, ideas, tastes, morals; the violent antipathies that all these differences had to produce, and that war came to envenom still more, etc. Thus, despite many invasions, conquests, and migrations, the diverse varieties of which the human family is composed have perhaps mixed less than one is commonly disposed to believe. First, the fusion between the five principal varieties seems to have been almost nil. The stock of each of these great fractions of the human genus has remained faithful to the quarter of the globe that had seen it born, or on which it developed. The stock of the white race has remained in Europe, of the red in America, of the yellow in Asia, of the black in Africa, of the brown in Oceania. The portions of our race that have made incursions among others have remained separate from them. Europeans have invaded America, without mixing with the copper-colored race. They have transported millions of Africans there, without allying themselves with the black race. There have been, in fact, some crossings between several races on the soil of America, but these crossings have been furtive, clandestine, few in number, and one can say that in reality, no fusion has yet taken place between the principal races. What is more, the diverse nuances of these races, in each quarter of the globe, have as yet mixed only very imperfectly. The spirit of nationality has been more or less maintained throughout the earth, and the antipathies, the rivalries, that divided peoples are not yet completely effaced anywhere, not even in the European race, among whom, however, reason and sociability have made infinitely more progress than in any other. If, therefore, the fathers of nations, if the individuals from whom peoples have come, could differ among themselves, as one does not hesitate to recognize, what would be astonishing in there still being manifest differences between the generations they have produced, especially when these generations have remained more or less separate. One finds even in our race striking proofs of this constancy with which a nation can retain the features and the character of its ancestors. The Jewish nation is one example. The Scots are another.

«The whole of Scottish morals, observes an English writer, offers us the most astonishing spectacle: it is all the ardor of southern passions nurtured under a harsh sky; passionate friendships, vivid and profound hatreds, unbridled loves, poetic and musical instinct, domestic habits, even to the rapid dance of the Provençal peasants, all is found again among the inhabitants of the mountains and plains situated north of the Tweed. One cannot mistake the Celtic and Gallic race, ancient usurper of these deserted shores, and forever separated by the force of blood and the empire of morals from the Germanic race that peopled England [^45] . »

Once again, the idea that there can be, not only physically, but morally, differences between the races thus presents nothing very singular.

One is so alerted to these differences, that M. Comte himself sometimes feels the need to take them into account. He reproaches Montesquieu for not doing so enough; and if, to show the influence of climate, the author of L'Esprit des Lois imagines opposing the Chinese to peoples of Europe, M. Comte does not fail to tell him that he is comparing peoples diverse by race, whereas, to reason justly, he ought to establish a parallel only between peoples of the same species, placed under different degrees of heat. M. Comte therefore believes in the diversity of races and in the influence that this diversity can produce on that of their developments.

I agree that the differences, not only between peoples of the same color, but between the most characterized and most distant varieties of the species, have been rather poorly observed, especially as regards the organs of intelligence; and perhaps the little that is known, in this regard, is not sufficient to account for the preeminence that I have attributed to the European race. But, whether the superiority of this race stems from a happier organization or a more vivid sensibility, it shows itself with such brilliance in its works that it is difficult not to believe that it also exists in its faculties, especially when one cannot attribute it, as will be seen in the next chapter, to the advantage of the local circumstances under whose influence it has developed.M. Comte, on the contrary, thinks that it is in the difference of situations that one must seek the cause of that which exists between the progress made by the diverse varieties of the species. If the Europeans, he observes, had found themselves in local circumstances as unfavorable as the Kalmyks, as the Hottentots, as the savages of New Holland; if all the soil of Europe had resembled the Gobi desert; if the English had not brought any of the products of the mother country to New South Wales; if the Dutch had found themselves reduced, at the Cape of Good Hope, to only those resources that the land offered to the natives of the country;—they would have had much more trouble making progress, I remain in agreement with M. Comte on that. But is that really the question? It is clear that men of every kind must be slower to develop when they find themselves in situations where progress is more difficult. But not all peoples of the Mongol race are perhaps established in deserts; not all African nations inhabit arid shores... The question is to know whether the peoples of color, who have found themselves in local circumstances as advantageous as the Europeans, have made comparable progress. Now, this becomes difficult to maintain. I do not know, moreover, if the soil of the Cape and of New Holland offers the natives as few resources as is claimed. It appears that the soil of New Holland is far from being as devoid of rivers and fertile regions as had been believed. The picture that Malte-Brun paints of the Cape of Good Hope would not seem to indicate that this country is naturally as poor as the author of the Traité de Législation thinks. In short, it is proven that the Hottentots have remained a stupid people at the Cape, and it is not proven that Europeans, placed in similar circumstances, would have remained in the same state of brutishness.

If the Europeans, M. Comte objects, are more perfectible than the other races because they are more perfected, it must be admitted that those among them who are more perfected are, by that very fact, more perfectible. And why, in effect, would there not be differences between the diverse nations of which the Caucasian race is composed? Who would want to affirm that the Celts, the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Hellenes, were originally peoples equally apt for everything? And even still, although mixing and contact and friction have perceptibly effaced the primitive imprint of the diverse peoples of Europe, who will dare to assure that no difference exists between them, and that they are all born with the same aptitudes and the same inclinations? Who will answer me that the Spanish are naturally endowed with the same talent for business as the English; or better still, that the English are as happily organized for music as the Italians? Montesquieu was surely wrong to attribute to climate the very different effects he had seen music produce in England and in Italy; but would he have been wrong to say that the musical organ was more pronounced in Italian brains than in English heads; or, if one does not approve of this language, that the Italians were born with more of a disposition for music than the English? — Besides, the European peoples could be unequal among themselves without for that reason ceasing to be superior to the other races.

M. Comte does not see proof of this superiority in the at once mobile and progressive character of our civilization. If the Chinese, he observes, have not advanced a single step in four thousand years, what does that prove, if not that they had already made immense progress when we were still barbarians?.... It proves, moreover, that all progress among them has long since ceased, and that they find themselves exceedingly behind, although they had an immense head start. It does not seem to me that there is anything in that to glorify them. There are, in the number of animate beings, species that produce, from birth, by an instinctive impulse, miraculous works, and which, afterward, eternally reproduce the same marvels. One truly does not know if the peoples of China do not partake somewhat of those species. It would be difficult, whatever one may say, to find in our race examples of an immobility comparable to theirs. Invasions, conquests, oppressions, have surely not been lacking among us; and nevertheless I know of no conquest that has had the power to halt us for forty centuries. The state of retrogradation or immobility, comparatively short-lived in our race, has moreover been only local; and when movement and life have been stifled in one nation, they have soon been seen to be reborn in the bosom of another.

I will not follow the author of the Traité de Législation any further. There is, without a doubt, in the whole part of his work to which I am responding, a very remarkable talent for argumentation. However, I confess that I have not been convinced, and that the objections raised against the superiority that the Caucasian variety appears to possess in important respects, although often specious, are far from appearing to me, in general, insoluble.

Besides, I do not wish to make myself here, I repeat, either the apologist of this race, or the detractor of any other; I do not propose, properly, either to establish that the white is superior to those of color, or to mark the rank that belongs to each species. Certain qualities may be common to all. It is possible that each has its particular advantages. Perhaps there would be profit for all in drawing closer, in mixing, in crossbreeding. God forbid that I should lightly advance anything of a nature to maintain hostile prejudices between the diverse branches of the human family, especially when, in several quarters of the globe, a considerable number of individuals belonging to these diverse branches find themselves united on the same soil, and their mutual enmities can have such deplorable consequences for both sides. But just as one can say that individuals are unequal without exciting them to hate one another, so too one can observe that inequalities exist between the races, without for that reason pushing them to make war. All that such observations must naturally produce in the minds of men is a common desire to work for the improvement of their race, and there would surely be nothing unfortunate in giving birth in them to such a desire.

What I intend to show, therefore, is that differences exist between men; that they resemble one another neither physically nor morally; that they are not all born equally handsome, robust, intelligent, sensitive, energetic; that the degree of power and liberty they are susceptible of acquiring depends, to the highest degree, on the nature and extent of the means with which they are born provided, and that, consequently, the first need of all is to think of perfecting their race, as the first care of a proprietor who wishes to improve his livestock, if one will be so good as not to take offense at the comparison, is to seek first to perfect the species.

Now, the question, reduced to these terms, appears scarcely susceptible to controversy. No one contests, first, that individuals, in each race, are born extremely different, and that, consequently, the first interest of those whose organization is not very advantageous is to draw closer to those who are more happily organized.

But one cannot contest either that differences exist between the races. There are several of these differences that leap to the eye. Such are those that manifest themselves in color, features, physiognomy, hair, etc. Those that exist in intelligence and moral affections may be more difficult to observe without for that reason being less real. When there are not two men in a nation who have precisely the same turn of mind, the same measure of intelligence, the same degree of sensibility, a perfect identity of character, it is very difficult to believe that no nation has its own particular genius, its dominant passions, its particular turn of mind. When such sensible differences of humor, instinct, intelligence manifest themselves between the varieties of a single species of animal, it is very difficult to admit that all human races are intellectually and morally similar. It is more than probable, in a word, that the mean of strength, of beauty, of mind, of gentle and benevolent inclinations is not the same in all the varieties.

Therefore, it cannot be a matter of indifference to be similar to the men of one variety or to those of another. If it is important for a given individual, born in a given race and living in its midst, to have the qualities it esteems most, there is an advantage, in general, in being made in the manner of the most powerful race, and in possessing the faculties from which it is possible to derive the greatest advantage. There may be something to be gained in drawing closer to one race for height, in resembling another for the proportions of the body or the regularity of the features, another for vivacity of mind or moral energy. It appears to me incontestable, finally, that the first interest of a people that wished to attain a high degree of power and liberty would be to unite, if it were possible, in the person of all its members, the physical, intellectual, and moral perfections that may be found distributed among the diverse varieties of the human genus.

However, as evident as this opinion appears to me, I would not dare to say that it is universally shared. M. Comte, for example, has been led, in examining the influence that the external world exercises upon man, to attach such importance to the action of this cause, that he ends by counting the influence of race for almost nothing. He thinks that the most imperfect races are still happily enough endowed to succeed in making an easy and extensive use of their forces. He believes that any people whatsoever could push very far the perfection of its industry and its morals, without giving to its faculties all the extension and all the rectitude of which they are naturally susceptible. He advances that it is external circumstances, and not the greater or lesser natural energy and intelligence of a people, that decide the extent of its progress, and, in his own terms, that its civilization depends, not on the degree of development of which it is susceptible by its own nature, but on that which its geographical position permits it to receive.

I confess that this conclusion does not appear admissible to me. I do believe, and I will presently have occasion to say why, that our development depends, to a high degree, on the physical circumstances that surround us, on the more or less favorable milieu in which we find ourselves placed; but, at the same time, I cannot believe that, in the fact of our development, external causes play the primary role; I think, on the contrary, that the principle of our development is in ourselves, in the vigor of our intelligence, in the energy of our will; that the civilization of man is above all the work of human nature; in a word, that it is man who makes himself and not things that make him. It is doubtless very essential that he be placed in such a way as to be able to take advantage of his forces; but it is necessary first that these forces exist; it is from this fact that everything proceeds, and his culture depends, before all things, on the greater or lesser power and perfection with which his faculties are naturally endowed.

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Notes

[^20]: This classification, which belongs to Blumenbach (De gen. hum. variet. nativa), has been adopted by W. Lawrence (Lectures on physiology, zoology and the natural history of man, pp. 549 to 572). It is surely not beyond objection; it has, like all classifications, the defect of being more or less arbitrary: one passes, in effect, from one race to another only by imperceptible nuances. It may moreover appear incomplete, and it is not doubtful that each of the varieties noted by Blumenbach contains a great number of very different ones. But besides the fact that, in the current state of our knowledge, it would probably be impossible to make an exact and complete division of the human genus, the one I employ is more than sufficient for the object I propose in this chapter. [^21]: W. Lawrence, pp. 549 to 572. [^22]: Law., pp. 549 to 572. [^23]: “The intellectual characters are reduced, the animal features enlarged and exagerated,” says W. Law. speaking of the head of the negro. (Work cited above, p. 363.) [^24]: Law. and the authors he cites, ib., pp. 354 and 355. [^25]: Ibid., p. 398. [^26]: Poiret. Voyage en Barbarie, vol. I, p. 31. [^27]: Cited by Law., ib., p. 533. [^28]: Id., ibid. [^29]: Witness the Jewish nation, among many others. [^30]: Cited by Law., p. 509. [^31]: W. Lawrence, who believes in the original unity of the human genus, and who has given more plausible reasons for this opinion than perhaps any other naturalist had done before him, is the first, if I am not mistaken, who has explained the diversity of human races in this way. According to him, only one reasonable cause can be assigned to this diversity: the occasional, accidental appearance of children born with particular and hitherto unknown characteristics, which make them a new variety, and the perpetuation of this variety by generation. (See the work cited, pp. 300, 446, 510 and 515.) [^32]: This is, word for word, what I said in the first edition of this volume, and here is how M. B. Constant expresses himself in the critical examination he was kind enough to make of my work, vol. 29, p. 427 of the Rev. Encyclop.: “Moreover this system (the system of the diversity of races) is false in this, that, if there are more perfect races, all races are perfectible.” What else do I say? Do I deny that all races are perfectible? No; I affirm the contrary. I only add that all of them do not seem to me to be perfectible to the same degree. [^33]: Dec. 1, lib. 9, cap. 5. [^34]: Tableau des États-Unis, vol. I, p. 447. [^35]: According to the accounts presented to the chambers in 1826 by the minister of war, out of 1,043,422 young men summoned before the review boards, 380,213, well over a third, were rejected as unfit because they did not have the short height of 4 feet 10 inches. (See the Courrier Français of July 20, 1827.) [^36]: See the examples reported by Blumenbach, de gen. var. nat., and those added by Lawrence, pp. 494 and 498 of the work already cited. See also the interesting work of M. Grégoire on the literature of the negroes. [^37]: Adelung says, speaking of China and the countries neighboring that vast empire: “The peoples of these immense regions still retain in their language all the imperfections of a nascent language. Like children, they articulate only monosyllables. They speak as they spoke several thousand years ago, when the species was still in its cradle. No division of words into several classes, as occurs in all languages; full and entire confusion of persons and tenses; no inflection of words; no distinction of cases and numbers; the plural is formed, as children form it, by repeating the same number several times, like three and again three, three and several others, etc. (Mithridate, p. 18.) Such an imperfect language, the same author continues, makes all progress impossible; and as long as the Chinese do not speak another, they would make vain efforts to appropriate the arts and sciences of Europe.” (Ib. p. 28, cited by Law. p. 471.) [^38]: Notes on Virginia, French translation, pp. 206 to 208. [^39]: W. Law., work cited, p. 554. [^40]: “In a century when it was formally debated whether the Indians were reasonable beings,” says M. de Humboldt, “it was thought a benefit was being granted to them by treating them as minors, by placing them in perpetuity under the guardianship of the whites, and by declaring null any act signed by a native of the coppery race, any obligation that this native might contract above the sum of 15 fr. These laws are maintained in their full force; they place insurmountable barriers between the Indians and the other castes, whose mixing is generally prohibited. Thousands of inhabitants cannot make valid contracts (no pueden tratar y contratar [they cannot treat and contract]). Condemned to a perpetual minority, they become a burden to themselves and to the State in which they live.” (Essai polit. sur la Nouvelle-Espagne, vol. I, p. 433.) [^41]: See above p. 72. [^43]: Treatise on Legislation, vol. III, book IV, ch. 10, 11, 12, and 13. [^44]: This will be seen further on, ch. xii. [^45]: Rev. Britannique, vol. 14, p. 38.