The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races Part 7

In St. Domingo, national independence is intact. There are no missionaries exercising absolute, though concealed, control, no foreign ministry governing in the European spirit; everything is left to the genius and inspiration of the population. In the Spanish part of the island, this population consists of mulattoes. I shall not speak of them. They seem to imitate, in some fashion, the simplest and easiest features of our civilization. Like all half-breeds, they have a tendency to a.s.similate with that branch of their genealogy which does them most honor. They are, therefore, capable of practising, in some degree, our usages. The absolute question of the capacity of races cannot be studied among them. Let us cross the mountain ridge which separates the republic of Dominica from the empire of Hayti.

There we find inst.i.tutions not only similar to ours, but founded upon the most recent maxims of our political wisdom. All that, since sixty years, the voice of the most refined liberalism has proclaimed in the deliberative a.s.semblies of Europe, all that the most zealous friends of the freedom and dignity of man have written, all the declarations of rights and principles, have found an echo on the banks of Artibonite. No trace of Africa remains in the _written_ laws, or the _official_ language; the recollections of the land of Ham are _officially_ expunged from every mind; once more, the inst.i.tutions are completely European.

Let us now examine how they harmonize with the manners.

What a contrast! The manners are as depraved, as beastly, as ferocious as in Dahomey[70] or the country of the Fellatahs. The same barbarous love of ornament, combined with the same indifference to form; beauty consists in color, and provided a garment is of gaudy red, and adorned with imitation gold, taste is little concerned with useless attention to materials or fitness; and as for cleanliness, this is a superfluity for which no one cares. You desire an audience with some high functionary: you are ushered into the presence of an athletic negro, stretched on a wooden bench, his head wrapped in a dirty, tattered handkerchief, and surmounted by a three-cornered hat, profusely decorated with gold. The general apparel consists of an embroidered coat (without suitable nether-garments), a huge sword, and slippers. You converse with this ma.s.s of flesh, and are anxious to discover what ideas can occupy a mind under so unpromising an exterior. You find an intellect of the lowest order combined with the most savage pride, which can be equalled only by as profound and incurable a laziness. If the individual before you opens his mouth, he will retail all the hackneyed common-places that the papers have wearied you with for the last half century. This barbarian knows them by heart; he has very different interests, different instincts; he has no ideas of his own. He will talk like Baron Holbach, reason like Grimm, and at the bottom has no serious care except chewing tobacco, drinking spirits, butchering his enemies, and propitiating his sorcerers. The rest of the time he sleeps.

The state is divided into two factions, not separated by incompatibility of politics, but of color--the negroes and the mulattoes. The latter, doubtless, are superior in intelligence, as I have already remarked with regard to the Dominicans. The European blood has modified the nature of the African, and in a community of whites, with good models constantly before their eyes, these men might be converted into useful members of society. But, unfortunately, the superiority of numbers belongs at present to the negroes, and these, though removed from Africa by several generations, are the same as in their native clime. Their supreme felicity is idleness; their supreme reason, murder. Among the two divisions of the island the most intense hatred has always prevailed.

The history of independent Hayti is nothing but a long series of ma.s.sacres: ma.s.sacres of mulattoes by the negroes, when the latter were strongest; of the negroes by the mulattoes, when the power was in their hands. The inst.i.tutions, with all their boasted liberality and philanthropy, are of no use whatever. They sleep undisturbedly and impotently upon the paper on which they were written, and the savage instincts of the population reign supreme. Conformably to the law of nature which I pointed out before, the negro, who belongs to a race exhibiting little apt.i.tude for civilization, entertains the most profound horror for all other races. Thus we see the Haytien negroes energetically repel the white man from their territory, and forbid him even to enter it; they would also drive out the mulattoes, and contemplate their ultimate extermination. Hostility to the foreigner is the _primum mobile_ of their local policy. Owing to the innate laziness of the race, agriculture is abandoned, industry not known even by name, commerce drivelling; misery prevents the increase of the population, while continual wars, insurrections, and military executions diminish it continually. The inevitable and not very remote consequence of such a condition of things is to convert into a desert a country whose fertility and natural resources enriched generations of planters, which in exports and commercial activity surpa.s.sed even Cuba.[71]

These examples of St. Domingo and the Sandwich Islands seem to me conclusive. I cannot, however, forbear, before definitely leaving the subject, from mentioning another a.n.a.logous fact, the peculiar character of which greatly confirms my position. I allude to the attempts of the Jesuit missionaries to civilize the natives of Paraguay.[72]

These missionaries, by their exalted intelligence and self-sacrificing courage, have excited universal admiration; and the most decided enemies of their order have never refused them an unstinted tribute of praise.

If foreign inst.i.tutions have ever had the slightest chance of success with a nation, these a.s.suredly had it, based as they were upon the power of religious feelings, and supported and applied with a tact as correct as it was refined. The fathers were of the pretty general opinion that barbarism was to nations what childhood is to the individual, and that the more savage and untutored we find a people, the younger we may conclude them to be. To educate their neophytes to adolescence, they therefore treated them like children. Their government was as firm in its views and commands as it was mild and affectionate in its forms. The aborigines of the American continent have generally a tendency to republicanism; a monarchy or aristocracy is rarely found among them, and then in a very restricted form. The Guaranis of Paraguay did not differ, in this respect, from their congeners. By a happy circ.u.mstance, however, these tribes displayed rather more intelligence and less ferocity than their neighbors, and seemed capable, to some extent, of conceiving new wants and adopting new ideas. About one hundred and twenty thousand souls were collected in the villages of the missions, under the guidance of the fathers. All that experience, daily study, and active charity could teach the Jesuits, was employed for the benefit of their pupils; incessant efforts were made to hasten success, without hazarding it by rashness. In spite of all these cares, however, it was soon felt that the most absolute authority over the neophytes could hardly constrain them to persist in the right path, and occasions were not wanting that revealed the little real solidity of the edifice.[73]

When the measures of Count Aranda deprived Paraguay of its pious and skilful civilizers, the sad truth appeared in complete light. The Guaranis, deprived of their spiritual guides, refused all confidence in the lay directors sent them by the Spanish crown. They showed no attachment to their new inst.i.tutions. Their taste for savage life revived, and at present there are but thirty-seven little villages still vegetating on the banks of the Parana, the Paraguay, and Uraguay, and these contain a considerable nucleus of half-breed population. The rest have returned to the forest, and live there in as savage a state as the western tribes of the same stock, the Guaranis and Cirionos. I will not say that the deserters have readopted their ancient manners completely, but there is little trace left of the pious missionaries'

labors, and this because it is given to no human race to be oblivious of its instincts, nor to abandon the path in which the Creator has placed them.

It may be supposed, had the Jesuits continued to direct their missions in Paraguay, that their efforts, a.s.sisted by time, would have been crowned with better success. I am willing to concede this, but on one condition only, always the same: that a group of Europeans would gradually have settled in the country under the protection of the Jesuit directors. These would have modified, and finally completely transformed the native blood, and a state would have been formed, bearing probably an aboriginal name, whose inhabitants might have prided themselves upon descending from autochthonic ancestors, though as completely belonging to Europe as the inst.i.tutions by which they might be governed.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] The author of _Democracy in America_ (vol. ii. book 3, ch. 1), speculating upon the total want of sympathy among the various cla.s.ses of an aristocratic community, says: "Each caste has its own opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and mode of living. The members of each caste do not resemble the rest of their fellow-citizens; they do not think and feel in the same manner, and believe themselves a distinct race.... When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who all belonged to the aristocracy by birth and education, relate the tragical end of a n.o.ble, their grief flows apace; while they tell, with the utmost indifference, of ma.s.sacres and tortures inflicted on the common people. In this they were actuated by an _instinct_ rather than by a pa.s.sion, for they felt no habitual hatred or systematic disdain for the people: war between the several cla.s.ses of the community was not yet declared." The writer gives extracts from Mme. de Sevigne's letters, displaying, to use his own words, "a cruel jocularity which, in our day, the harshest man writing to the most insensible person of his acquaintance would not venture to indulge in; and yet Madame de Sevigne was not selfish or cruel; she was pa.s.sionately attached to her children, and ever ready to sympathize with her friends, and she treated her servants and va.s.sals with kindness and indulgence." "Whence does this arise?" asks M. De Tocqueville; "have we really more sensibility than our forefathers?" When it is recollected, as has been pointed out in a previous note, that the n.o.bility of France were of Germanic, and the peasantry of Celtic origin, we will find in this an additional proof of the correctness of our author's theory.

Thanks to the revolution, the barriers that separated the various ranks have been torn down, and continual intermixture has blended the blood of the Frankish n.o.ble and of the Gallic boor. Wherever this fusion has not yet taken place, or but imperfectly, M. De Tocqueville's remarks still apply.--H.

[62] The spirit of clanship is so strong in the Arab tribes, and their instinct of ethnical isolation so powerful, that it often displays itself in a rather odd manner. A traveller (Mr. Fulgence Fresnel, if I am not mistaken) relates that at Djidda, where morality is at a rather low ebb, the same Bedouine who cannot resist the slightest pecuniary temptation, would think herself forever dishonored, if she were joined in lawful wedlock to the Turk or European, to whose embrace she willingly yields while she despises him.

[63]

The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of man, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.

Sh.e.l.lEY, _Queen Mab_.

[64] Montesquieu expresses a similar idea, in his usual epigrammatic style. "The customs of an enslaved people," says he, "are a part of their servitude; those of a free people, a part of their liberty."--_Esprit des Lois_, b. xix. c. 27.--H.

[65] "A great portion of the peculiarities of the Spartan const.i.tution and their inst.i.tutions was a.s.suredly of ancient Doric origin, and must have been rather given up by the other Dorians, than newly invented and inst.i.tuted by the Spartans."--_Niebuhr's Ancient History_, vol. i. p.

306.--H.

[66] See note on page 121.

[67] The amalgamation of races in South America must indeed be inconceivable. "I find," says Alex. von Humboldt, in 1826, "by several statements, that if we estimate the population of the whole of the Spanish colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of souls, there are, in that number, at most, _three_ millions of pure whites, including about 200,000 Europeans." (_Pers. Nar._, vol. i. p. 400.) Of the progress which this mongrel population have made in civilization, I cannot give a better idea than by an extract from Dr. Tschudi's work, describing the mode of ploughing in some parts of Chili. "If a field is to be tilled, it is done by two natives, who are furnished with long poles, pointed at one end. The one thrusts his pole, pretty deeply, and in an oblique direction, into the earth, so that it forms an angle with the surface of the ground. The other Indian sticks his pole in, at a little distance, and also obliquely, and he forces it beneath that of his fellow-laborer, so that the first pole lies, as it were, upon the second. The first Indian then presses on his pole, and makes it work on the other, as a lever on its fulcrum, and the earth is thrown up by the point of the pole. Thus they gradually advance, until the whole field is furrowed by this laborious process." (_Dr. Tschudi, Travels in Peru, during the years 1838-1842._ London, 1847, p. 14.) I really do not think that a counterpart to this could be found, except, perhaps, in the manner of working the mines all over South America. Both Darwin and Tschudi speak of it with surprise. Every pound of ore is brought out of the shafts on men's shoulders. The mines are drained of the water acc.u.mulating in them, in the same manner, by means of water-tight bags. Dr. Tschudi describes the process employed for the amalgamation of the quicksilver with the silver ore. It is done by causing them to be trodden together by horses', or human feet. Not only is this method attended with incredible waste of material, and therefore very expensive, but it soon kills the horses employed in it, while the men contract the most fearful, and, generally, incurable diseases! (_Op. cit._, p.

331-334.)--H.

[68] A. von Humboldt, _Examen critique de l'Histoire et de la Geographie du N. C._, vol. ii. p. 129-130.

The same opinion is expressed by Mr. Humboldt in his _Personal Narrative_. London, 1852, vol. i. p. 296.--H.

[69] Speaking of the habit of tattooing among the South Sea Islanders, Mr. Darwin says that even girls who had been brought up in missionaries'

houses, could not be dissuaded from this practice, though in everything else, they seemed to have forgotten the savage instincts of their race.

"The wives of the missionaries tried to prevent them, but a famous operator having arrived from the South, they said: 'We really must have just a few lines on our lips, else, when we grow old, we shall be so ugly.'"--_Journal of a Naturalist_, vol. ii. p. 208.--H.

[70] For the latest details, see Mr. Gustave d'Alaux's articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1853.

[71] The subjoined comparison of the exports of Haytien staple products may not be uninteresting to many of our readers, while it serves to confirm the author's a.s.sertion. I extract it from a statistical table in Mackenzie's report to the British government, upon the condition of the then republic (now empire). Mr. Mackenzie resided there as special _envoye_ several years, for the purpose of collecting authentic information for his government, and his statements may therefore be relied upon. (_Notes on Hayti_, vol. ii. note FF. London, 1830.)

SUGAR. COTTON. COFFEE.

lbs. lbs. lbs.

1789 141,089,831 7,004,274 76,835,219 1826 32,864 620,972 32,189,784

It will be perceived, from these figures, that the decrease is greatest in that staple which requires the most laborious cultivation. Thus, sugar requires almost unremitting toil; coffee, comparatively little.

All branches of industry have fearfully decreased; some of them have ceased entirely; and the small and continually dwindling commerce of that wretched country consists now mainly of articles of spontaneous growth. The statistics of imports are in perfect keeping with those of exports. (_Op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 183.) As might be expected from such a state of things, the annual expenditure in 1827 was estimated at a little more than _double_ the amount of the annual revenue! (_Ibid._, "Finance.")

That matters have not improved under the administration of that Most Gracious, Most Christian monarch, the Emperor Faustin I., will be seen by reference to last year's _Annuaire de la Revue del deux Mondes_, "Haiti," p. 876, _et seq._, where some curious details about his majesty and his majesty's sable subjects will be found.

[72] Upon this subject, consult Prichard, d'Orbigny, and A. de Humboldt.

[73] I recollect having read, several years ago, in a Jesuit missionary journal (I forget its name and date, but am confident that the authority is a reliable one), a rather ludicrous account of an instance of this kind. One of the fathers, who had a little isolated village under his charge, had occasion to leave his flock for a time, and his place, unfortunately, could not be replaced by another. He therefore called the most promising of his neophytes, and committed to their care the domestic animals and agricultural implements with which the society had provided the newly-converted savages, then left them with many exhortations and instructions. His absence being prolonged beyond the period antic.i.p.ated, the Indians thought him dead, and inst.i.tuted a grand funeral feast in his honor, at which they slaughtered all the oxen, and roasted them by fires made of the ploughs, hoe-handles, etc.; and he arrived just in time to witness the closing scenes of this mourning ceremony.--H.

CHAPTER VI.

THIS DIVERSITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION.

America--Ancient empires--Phenicians and Romans--Jews--Greece and Rome--Commercial cities of Europe--Isthmus of Darien.

It is impossible to leave entirely out of the question the influence which climate, the nature of the soil, and topographical circ.u.mstances, exert upon the development of nations. This influence, so much overrated by many of the learned, I shall investigate more fully, although I have rapidly glanced at it already, in another place.

It is a very common opinion that a nation living under a temperate sky, not too warm to enervate the man, nor too cold to render the soil unproductive; on the sh.o.r.es of large rivers, affording extensive and commodious means of communication; in plains and valleys adapted to varied cultivation; at the foot of mountains pregnant with the useful and precious ores--that a nation thus favored by nature, would soon be prompted to cast off barbarism, and progress rapidly in civilization.[74] On the other hand, and by the same reasoning, it is easily admitted that tribes, charred by an ardent sun, or benumbed by unceasing cold, and having no territory save sterile rocks, would be much more liable to remain in a state of barbarism. According to this hypothesis, the intellectual powers of man could be developed only by the aid of external nature, and all his worth and greatness are not implanted in him, but in the objects without and around. Specious as is this opinion at first sight, it has against it all the numerous facts which observation furnishes.

Nowhere, certainly, is there a greater variety of soil and climate than in the extensive Western Continent. Nowhere are there more fertile regions, milder skies, larger and more numerous rivers. The coasts are indented with gulfs and bays; deep and magnificent harbors abound; the most valuable riches of the mineral kingdom crop out of the ground; nature has lavished on the soil her choicest and most variegated vegetable productions, and the woods and prairies swarm with alimentary species of animals, presenting still more substantial resources. And yet, the greater part of these happy countries is inhabited, and has been for a series of centuries, by tribes who ignore the most mediocre exploration of all these treasures.

Several of them seem to have been in the way of doing better. A meagre culture, a rude knowledge of the art of working metals, may be observed in more than one place. Several useful arts, practised with some ingenuity, still surprise the traveller. But all this is really on a very humble scale, and never formed what might be termed a civilization.

There certainly has existed at some very remote period, a nation which inhabited the vast region extending from Lake Erie to the Mexican Gulf.

There can be no doubt that the country lying between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains, and extending from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico, was, at some very remote epoch, inhabited by a nation that has left remarkable traces of its existence behind.[75] The remains of buildings, inscriptions on rocks, the tumuli,[76] and mummies which they inclose, indicate a high degree of intellectual culture. But there is no evidence that between this mysterious people and the tribes now wandering over its tombs, there is any very near affinity. However this may be, if by inheritance or slavish imitation the now existing aborigines derive their first knowledge of the arts which they now rudely practise, from the former masters of the soil, we cannot but be struck by their incapacity of perfecting what they had been taught; and I see in this a new motive for adhering to my opinion, that a nation placed amid the most favorable geographical circ.u.mstances, is not, therefore, destined to arrive at civilization.

On the contrary, there is between the propitiousness of soil and climate and the establishment of civilization, a complete independence. India was a country which required fertilization; so was Egypt.[77] Here we have two very celebrated centres of human culture and development.

China, though very productive in some parts, presented in others difficulties of a very serious character. The first events recorded in its history are struggles with rivers that had burst their bonds; its heroes are victors over the ruthless flood; the ancient emperors distinguished themselves by excavating ca.n.a.ls and draining marshes. The country of the Tigris and Euphrates, the theatre of a.s.syrian splendor and hallowed by our most sacred traditions, those regions where, Syncellus says, wheat grew spontaneously, possess a soil so little productive, when una.s.sisted by art, that only a vast and laborious system of irrigation can render it capable of giving the means of subsistence to its inhabitants. Now that the ca.n.a.ls are filled up or obstructed, sterility has rea.s.sumed its former dominion. I am, therefore, inclined to think that nature had not so greatly favored these countries as is usually supposed. Yet, I shall not discuss this point.

I am willing to admit that China, Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia were regions perfectly adapted in every respect to the establishment of great empires, and the consequent development of brilliant civilizations. But it cannot be disputed that these nations, to profit by these superior advantages, must have previously brought their social system to a high degree of perfection. Before the great watercourses became the highways of commerce, industry, or at least agriculture, must have flourished to some extent. The great advantages accorded to these countries presuppose, therefore, in the nations that have profited by them, a peculiar intellectual vocation, and even a certain anterior degree of civilization. But from these specially favored regions let us glance elsewhere.

When the Phenicians migrated from the southeast, they fixed their abode on an arid, rocky coast, inclosed by steep and ragged mountains. Such a geographical situation would appear to preclude a people from any expansion, and force them to remain forever dependent on the produce of their fisheries for sustenance. The utmost that could be expected of them was to see them petty pirates. They were pirates, indeed, but on a magnificent scale; and, what is more, they were bold and successful merchants and speculators. They planted colonies everywhere, while the barren rocks of the mother country were covered with the palaces and temples of a wealthy and luxurious community. Some will say, that "the very unpropitiousness of external circ.u.mstances forced the founders of Tyre and Sidon to become what they were. Necessity is the mother of invention; their misery spurred them on to exertion; had they inhabited the plains of Damascus, they would have been content with the peaceful products of agriculture, and would probably never have become an ill.u.s.trious nation."[78]

And why does not misery spur on other nations placed under similar circ.u.mstances? The Kabyles of Morocco are an ancient race; they have had sufficient time for reflection, and, moreover, every possible inducement for mere imitation; yet they have never imagined any other method for alleviating their wretched lot except petty piracy. The unparalleled facilities for commerce afforded by the Indian archipelago and the island cl.u.s.ters of the Pacific, have never been improved by the natives; all the peaceful and profitable relations were left in the hands of foreign races--the Chinese, Malays, and Arabs; where commerce has fallen into the hands of a semi-indigenous or half-breed population, it has instantly commenced to languish. What conclusions can we deduce from these observations than that pressing wants are not sufficient for inciting a nation to profit by the natural facilities of its coasts and islands, and that some special apt.i.tude is needed for establishing a commercial state even in localities best adapted for that purpose.

But I shall not content myself with proving that the social and political apt.i.tudes of races are not dependent on geographical situations, whether these be favorable or unfavorable; I shall, moreover, endeavor to show that these apt.i.tudes have no sort of relation with any exterior circ.u.mstances. The Armenians, in their almost inaccessible mountains, where so many other nations have vegetated in a state of barbarism from generation to generation, and without any access to the sea, attained, already at a remote period, a high state of civilization. The Jews found themselves in an a.n.a.logous position; they were surrounded by tribes who spoke kindred dialects, and who, for the most part, were nearly related to them in blood. Yet, they excelled all these groups. They were warriors, agriculturists, and merchants. Under a government in which theocracy, monarchy, patriarchal authority, and popular will, were singularly complicated and balanced, they traversed centuries of prosperity and glory. The difficulties which the narrow limits of their patrimonial domain opposed to their expansion, were overcome by an intelligent system of emigration. What was this famous Canaan? Modern travellers bear witness to the laborious and well-directed efforts by which the Jewish agriculturists maintained the fact.i.tious fertility of their soil. Since the chosen race no longer inhabits these mountains and plains, the wells where Jacob's flocks drank are dried up; Naboth's vineyard is invaded by the desert, Achab's palace-gardens filled with thistles. In this miserable corner of the world, what were the Jews? A people dextrous in all they undertook, a free, powerful, intelligent people, who, before losing bravely, and against a much superior foe, the t.i.tle of independent nation, had furnished to the world almost as many doctors as merchants.[79]