The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races

There would be some reason for believing in an improvement in political science, if we had invented some governmental machinery which had hitherto been unknown, or at least never carried into practice. This glory we cannot arrogate to ourselves. Limited monarchies were known in every age. There are even some very curious examples of this form of government found among certain Indian tribes who, nevertheless, have remained savages. Democratic and aristocratic republics of every form, and balanced in the most varied manner, flourished in the new world as well as the old. Tlascala is as complete a model of this kind as Athens, Sparta, or Mecca before Mohammed's times. And even supposing that we have applied to governmental science some secondary principle of our own invention, does this justify us in our exaggerated pretension to unlimited perfectibility? Let us rather be modest, and say with the wisest of kings: "Nil novi sub sole."[175 - The principles of government applied to practice at the formation of our Constitution, Mr. Gobineau considers as identical with those laid down at the beginning of every society founded by the Germanic race. In his succeeding volumes he mentions several analogues. – H.]

It is said that our manners are milder than those of the other great human societies; this assertion also is very open to criticism. There are some philanthropists who would induce nations no longer to resort to armies in settling their quarrels. The idea is borrowed from Seneca. Some of the Eastern sages professed the same principles in this respect as the Moravian Brethren. But assuming that the members of the Peace Congress succeed in disgusting Europe with the turmoil and miseries of warfare, they would still have the difficult task left of forever transforming the human passions. Neither Seneca nor the Eastern sages have been able to accomplish this, and it may reasonably be doubted whether this grand achievement is reserved for our generation. We possess pure and exalted principles, I admit, but are they carried into practice? Look at our fields, the streets of our cities – the bloody traces of contests as fierce as any recorded in history are scarcely yet effaced. Never since the beginning of our civilization has there been an interval of peace of fifty years, and we are, in this respect, far behind ancient Italy, which, under the Romans, once enjoyed two centuries of perfect tranquillity. But even so long a repose would not warrant us in concluding that the temple of Janus was thenceforth to be forever closed.

The state of our civilization does not, therefore, prove the unlimited perfectibility of man. If he have learned many things, he has forgotten others. He has not added another to his senses; his soul is not enriched by one new faculty. I cannot too much insist upon the great though sad truth, that whatever we gain in one direction is counterbalanced by some loss in another; that, limited as is our intellectual domain, we are doomed never to possess its whole extent at once. Were it not for this fatal law, we might imagine that at some period, however distant, man, finding himself in possession of the experience of successive ages, and having acquired all that it is in his power to acquire, would have learned at last to apply his acquisitions to his welfare – to live without battling against his kind, and against misery; to enjoy a state, if not of unalloyed happiness, at least of abundance and peace.

But even so limited a felicity is not promised us here below, for in proportion as man learns he unlearns; whatever he acquires, is at the cost of some previous acquisition; whatever he possesses he is always in danger of losing.

We flatter ourselves with the belief that our civilization is imperishable, because we possess the art of printing, gunpowder, the steam engine, &c. These are valuable means to accomplish great results, but the accomplishment depends on their use.

The art of printing is known to many other nations beside ourselves, and is as extensively used by them as by us.[176 - M. J. Mohl, Rapport Annuel à la Société Asiatique, 1851, p. 92: "The Indian book trade of indigenous productions is extremely lively, and consists of a number of works which are never heard of in Europe, nor ever enter a European's library even in India. Mr. Springer asserts in a letter, that in the single town of Luknau there are thirteen lithographical establishments exclusively occupied with multiplying books for the schools, and he gives a list of considerable length of books, none of which have probably ever reached Europe. The same is the case in Delhi, Agra, Cawnpour, Allahabad, and other cities."] Let us see its fruits. In Tonquin, Anam, Japan, books are plentiful, much cheaper than with us – so cheap that they are within the reach of even the poorest – and even the poorest read them. How is it, then, that these people are so enervated, so degraded, so sunk in sloth and vice[177 - The Siamese are probably the most debased in morals of any people on earth. They belong to the remotest outskirts of the Indo-Chinese civilization; yet among them every one knows how to read and write. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. iii. p. 1152.)]– so near that stage in which even civilized man, having frittered away his physical and mental powers, may sink infinitely below the rude barbarian, who, at the first convenient opportunity, becomes his master? Whence this result? Precisely because the art of printing is a means, and not an agent. So long as it is used to diffuse sound, sterling ideas, to afford wholesome and refreshing nutriment to vigorous minds, a civilization never decays. But when it becomes the vile caterer to a depraved taste, when it serves only to multiply the morbid productions of enervated or vitiated minds, the senseless quibbles of a sectarian theology instead of religion, the venomous scurrility of libellists instead of politics, the foul obscenities of licentious rhymers instead of poesy – how and why should the art of printing save a civilization from ruin?

It is objected that the art of printing contributes to the preservation of a civilization by the facility with which it multiplies and diffuses the masterpieces of the human mind, so that, even in times of intellectual sterility, when they can no longer be emulated, they still form the standard of taste, and by their clear and steady light prevent the possibility of utter darkness. But it should be remembered that to delve in the hoarded treasures of thought, and to appropriate them for purposes of mental improvement, presupposes the possession of that greatest of earthly goods – an enlightened mind. And in epochs of intellectual degeneracy, few care about those monuments of lost virtues and powers; they are left undisturbed on their dusty shelves in libraries whose silence is but seldom broken by the tread of the anxious, painstaking student.

The longevity which Guttenberg's invention assures to the productions of genius is much exaggerated. There are a few works that enjoy the honor of being reproduced occasionally; with this exception, books die now precisely as formerly did the manuscripts. Works of science, especially, disappear with singular rapidity from the realms of literature. A few hundred copies are struck off at first, and they are seldom, and, after a while, never heard of more. With considerable trouble you can find them in some large collection. Look what has become of the thousands of excellent works that have appeared since the first printed page came from the press. The greater portion are forgotten. Many that are still spoken of, are never read; the titles even of others, that were carefully sought after fifty years ago, are gradually disappearing from every memory.

So long as a civilization is vigorous and flourishing, this disappearance of old books is but a slight misfortune. They are superseded; their valuable portions are embodied in new ones; the seed exists no longer, but the fruit is developing. In times of intellectual degeneracy it is otherwise. The weakened powers cannot grapple with the solid thought of more vigorous eras; it is split up into more convenient fragments – rendered more portable, as it were; the strong beverage that once was the pabulum of minds as strong, must be diluted to suit the present taste; and innumerable dilutions, each weaker than the other, immediately claim public favor; the task of learning must be lightened in proportion to the decreasing capacity for acquiring; everything becomes superficial; what costs the least effort gains the greatest esteem; play upon words is accounted wit; shallowness, learning; the surface is preferred to the depth. Thus it has ever been in periods of decay; thus it will be with us when we have once reached that point whence every movement is retrogressive. Who knows but we are near it already? – and the art of printing will not save us from it.

To enhance the advantages which we derive from that art, the number and diffusion of manuscripts have been too much underrated. It is true that they were scarce in the epoch immediately preceding; but in the latter periods of the Roman empire they were much more numerous and much more widely diffused than is generally imagined. In those times, the facilities for instruction were by no means of difficult access; books, indeed, were quite common. We may judge so from the extraordinary number of threadbare grammarians with which even the smallest villages swarmed; a sort of people very much like the petty novelists, lawyers, and editors of modern times, and whose loose morals, shabbiness, and passionate love for enjoyments, are described in Pretronius's Satyricon. Even when the decadence was complete, those who wished for books could easily procure them. Virgil was read everywhere; so much so, that the illiterate peasantry, hearing so much of him, imagined him to be some dangerous and powerful sorcerer. The monks copied him; they copied Pliny, Dioscorides, Plato, and Aristotle; they copied Catullus and Martial. These books, then, cannot have been very rare. Again, when we consider how great a number has come down to us notwithstanding centuries of war and devastation – notwithstanding so many conflagrations of monasteries, castles, libraries, &c. – we cannot but admit that, in spite of the laborious process of transcription, literary productions must have been multiplied to a very great extent. It is possible, therefore, to greatly exaggerate the obligations under which science, poetry, morality, and true civilization lie to the typographic art; and I repeat it, that art is a marvellous instrument, but if the arm that wields it, and the head that directs the arm, are not, the instrument cannot be, of much service.

Some people believe that the possession of gunpowder exempts modern societies from many of the dangers that proved fatal to the ancient. They assert that it abates the horrors of warfare, and diminishes its frequency, bidding fair, therefore, to establish, in time, a state of universal peace. If such be the beneficial results attendant on this accidental invention, they have not as yet manifested themselves.

Of the various applications of steam, and other industrial inventions, I would say, as of the art of printing, that they are great means, but their results depend upon the agent. Such arts might be practised by rote long after the intellectual activity that produced them had ceased. There are innumerable instances of processes which continue in use, though the theoretical secret is lost. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose, that the practice of our inventions might survive our civilization; that is, it might continue when these inventions were no longer possible, when no further improvements were to be hoped for. Material well-being is but an external appendage of a civilization; intellectual activity, and a consequent progress, are its life. A state of intellectual torpor, therefore, cannot be a state of civilization, even though the people thus stagnating, have the means of transporting themselves rapidly from place to place, or of adorning themselves and their dwellings. This would only prove that they were the heirs of a former civilization, but not that they actually possessed one. I have said, in another place, that a civilization may thus preserve, for a time, every appearance of life: the effect may continue after the cause has ceased. But, as a continuous change seems to be the order of nature in all things material and immaterial, a downward tendency is soon manifest. I have before compared a civilization to the human body. While alive, it undergoes a perpetual modification: every hour has wrought a change; when dead, it preserves, for a time, the appearance of life, perhaps even its beauty; but gradually, symptoms of decay become manifest, and every stage of dissolution is more precipitate than the one before, as a stone thrown up in the air, poises itself there for an inappreciable fraction of time, then falls with continually increasing velocity, more and more swiftly as it approaches the ground.

Every civilization has produced in those who enjoyed its fruits, a firm conviction of its stability, its perpetuity.

When the palanquins of the Incas travelled rapidly on the smooth, magnificent causeways which still unite Cuzco and Quito, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, with what feelings of exultation must they have contemplated the conquests of the present, what magnificent prospects of the future must have presented themselves to their imaginations! Stern time, with one blow of his gigantic wings, hurled their empire into the deepest depths of the abyss of oblivion. These proud sovereigns of Peru – they, too, had their sciences, their mechanical inventions, their powerful machines: the works they accomplished we contemplate with amazement, and a vain effort to divine the means employed. How were those blocks of stone, thirty-five feet long and eighteen thick, raised one upon another? How were they transported the vast distance from the quarries where they were hewn? By what contrivance did the engineers of that people hoist those enormous masses to a dizzy height? It is indeed a problem – a problem, too, which we will never solve. Nor are the ruins of Tihuanaco unparalleled by the remains of European civilizations of ante-historic times. The cyclopean walls with which Southern Europe abounds, and which have withstood the all-destroying tooth of time for thousands upon thousands of years – who built them? Who piled these monstrous masses, which modern art could scarcely move?

Let us not mistake the results of a civilization for its causes. The causes cease, the results subsist for a while, then are lost. If they again bear fruit, it is because a new spirit has appropriated them, and converted them to purposes often very different from those they had at first. Human intelligence is finite, nor can it ever reign at once in the whole of its domain:[178 - No individual can encompass the whole circle of human knowledge: no civilization comprise at once all the improvements possible to humanity. – H.] it can turn to account one portion of it only by leaving the other bare; it exalts what it possesses, esteems lightly what it has lost. Thus, every generation is at the same time superior and inferior to its predecessors. Man cannot, then, surpass himself: man's perfectibility is not infinite.

CHAPTER XIV.

MUTUAL RELATIONS OF DIFFERENT MODES OF INTELLECTUAL CULTURE

Necessary consequences of a supposed equality of all races – Uniform testimony of history to the contrary – Traces of extinct civilizations among barbarous tribes – Laws which govern the adoption of a state of civilization by conquered populations – Antagonism of different modes of culture; the Hellenic and Persian, European and Arab, etc.

Had it been the will of the Creator to endow all the branches of the human family with equal intellectual capacities, what a glorious tableau would history not unfold before us. All being equally intelligent, equally aware of their true interests, equally capable of triumphing over obstacles, a number of simultaneous and flourishing civilizations would have gladdened every portion of the inhabited globe. While the most ancient Sanscrit nations covered Northern India with harvests, cities, palaces, and temples; and the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates shook under the trampling of Nimrod's cavalry and chariots, the prognathous tribes of Africa would have formed and developed a social system, sagaciously constructed, and productive of brilliant results.

Some luckless tribes, whose lot fortune had cast in inhospitable climes, burning sands, or glacial regions, mountain gorges, or cheerless steppes swept by the piercing winds of the north, would have been compelled to a longer and severer struggle against such unpropitious circumstances, than more fortunate nations. But being not inferior in intelligence and sagacity, they would not have been long in discovering the means of bettering their condition. Like the Icelanders, the Danes, and Norwegians, they would have forced the reluctant soil to afford them sustenance; if inhabitants of mountainous regions, they would, like the Swiss, have enjoyed the advantages of a pastoral life, or like the Cashmerians, resorted to manufacturing industry. But if their geographical situation had been so unfavorable as to admit of no resource, they would have reflected that the world was large, contained many a pleasant valley and fertile plain, where they might seek the fruits of intelligent activity, which their stepmotherly native land refused them.

Thus all the nations of the earth would have been equally enlightened, equally prosperous; some by the commerce of maritime cities, others by productive agriculture in inland regions, or successful industry in barren and Alpine districts. Though they might not exempt themselves from the misfortunes to which the imperfections of human nature give rise – transitory dissensions, civil wars, seditions, etc. – their individual interests would soon have led them to invent some system of relative equiponderance. As the differences in their civilizations resulted merely from fortuitous circumstances, and not from innate inequalities, a mutual interchange would soon have assimilated them in all essential points. Nothing could then prevent a universal confederation, that dream of so many centuries; and the inhabitants of the most distant parts of the globe would have been as members of one great cosmopolite people.

Let us contrast this fantastic picture with the reality. The first nations worthy of the name, owed their formation to an instinct of aggregation, which the barbarous tribes near them not only did not feel then, but never afterward. These nations spread beyond their original boundaries, and forced others to submit to their power. But the conquered neither adopted nor understood the principles of the civilization imposed upon them. Nor has the force of example been of avail to those in whom innate capacity was wanting. The native populations of the Spanish peninsula, and of Transalpine and Ligurian Gaul, saw Phenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians, successively establish flourishing cities on their coasts, without feeling the least incitement to imitate the manners or forms of government of these prosperous merchants.

What a glorious spectacle do not the Indians of North America witness at this moment. They have before their eyes a great and prosperous nation, eminent for the successful practical application of modern theories and sciences to political and social forms, as well as to industrial art. The superiority of this foreign race, which has so firmly established itself upon his former patrimony, is evident to the red man. He sees their magnificent cities, their thousands of vessels upon the once silent rivers, their successful agriculture; he knows that even his own rude wants, the blanket with which he covers himself, the weapon with which he slays his game, the ardent spirits he has learned to love so well, can be supplied only by the stranger. The last feeble hope to see his native soil delivered from the presence of the conqueror's race, has long since vanished from his breast; he feels that the land of his fathers is not his own. Yet he stubbornly refuses to enter the pale of this civilization which invites him, solicits him, tries to entice him with superior advantages and comforts. He prefers to retreat from solitude to solitude, deeper and deeper into the primitive forest. He is doomed to perish, and he knows it; but a mysterious power retains him under the yoke of his invincible repugnances, and while he admires the strength and superiority of the whites, his conscience, his whole nature, revolts at the idea of assimilating to them. He cannot forget or smother the instincts of his race.

The aborigines of Spanish America are supposed to evince a less unconquerable aversion. It is because the Spanish metropolitan government had never attempted to civilize them. Provided they were Christians, at least in name, they were left to their own usages and habits, and, in many instances, under the administration of their Caziques. The Spaniards colonized but little, and when the conquest was completed and their sanguinary appetites glutted by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible disgrace, they indulged in a lazy toleration, and directed their tyranny rather against individuals than against modes of thinking and living. The Indians have, in a great measure, mixed with their conquerors, and will continue to live while their brethren in the vicinity of the Anglo-Saxon race are inevitably doomed to perish.

But not only savages, even nations of a higher rank in the intellectual scale are incapable of adopting a foreign civilization. We have already alluded to the failure of the English in India and of the Dutch in Java, in trying to import their own ideas into their foreign dependencies. French philanthropy is at this moment gaining the same experience in the new French possession of Algeria. There can be no stronger or more conclusive proof of the various endowments of different races.

If we had no other argument in proof of the innate imparity of races than the actual condition of certain barbarous tribes, and the supposition that they had always been in that condition, and, consequently, always would be, we should expose ourselves to serious objections. For many barbarous nations preserve traces of former cultivation and refinement. There are some tribes, very degraded in every other respect, who yet possess traditional regulations respecting the marriage celebration, the forms of justice and the division of inheritances, which evidently are remnants of a higher state of society, though the rites have long since lost all meaning. Many of the Indian tribes who wander over the tracts once occupied by the Alleghanian race, may be cited as instances of this kind. The natives of the Marian Islands, and many other savages, practise mechanically certain processes of manufacture, the invention of which presupposes a degree of ingenuity and knowledge utterly at variance with their present stupidity and ignorance. To avoid hasty and erroneous conclusions concerning this seeming decadence, there are several circumstances to be taken into consideration.

Let us suppose a savage population to fall within the sphere of activity of a proximate, but superior race. In that case they may gradually learn to conform externally to the civilization of their masters, and acquire the technicalities of their arts and inventions. Should the dominant race disappear either by expulsion or absorption, the civilization would expire, but some of its outward forms might be retained and perpetuated. A certain degree of mechanical skill might survive the scientific principles upon which it was based. In other words, practice might long continue after the theory was lost. History furnishes us a number of examples in support of this assertion.

Such, for instance, was the attitude of the Assyrians toward the civilization of the Chaldeans; of the Iberians, Celts, and Illyrians towards that of the Romans. If, then, the Cherokees, the Catawbas, Muskogees, Seminoles, Natchez and other tribes, still preserve a feeble impress of the Alleghanian civilization, I should not thence conclude that they are the pure and direct descendants of the initiatory element of that people, which would imply that a race may once have been civilized, and be no longer so. I should say, on the contrary, that the Cherokees, if at all ethnically connected with the ancient dominant type, are so by only a collateral tie of consanguinity, else they could never have relapsed into a state of barbarism. The other tribes which exhibit little or no vestiges of the former civilization are probably the descendants of a different conquered population which formed no constituent element of the society, but served rather as the substratum upon which the edifice was erected. It is no matter of surprise, if this be the case, that they should preserve – without understanding them and with a sort of superstitious veneration – customs, laws, and rites invented by others far more intelligent than themselves.

The same may be said of the mechanical arts. The aborigines of the Carolines are about the most interesting of the South Sea islanders. Their looms, sculptured canoes, their taste for navigation and commerce show them vastly superior to the Pelagian negroes, their neighbors. It is easy to account for this superiority by the well-authenticated admixture of Malay blood. But as this element is greatly attenuated, the inventions which it introduced have not borne indigenous fruits, but, on the contrary, are gradually, but surely, disappearing.

The preceding observations will, I think, suffice to show that the traces of civilization among a barbarous tribe are not a necessary proof that this tribe itself has ever been really civilized. It may either have lived under the domination of a superior but consanguineous race, or living in its vicinity, have, in an humble and feeble degree, profited by its lessons. This result, however, is possible only when there exists between the superior and the inferior race a certain ethnical affinity; that is to say, when the former is either a noble branch of the same stock, or ennobled by intermixture with another. When the disparity between races is too great and too decided, and there is no intermediate link to connect them, the contact is always fatal to the inferior race, as is abundantly proved by the disappearance of the aborigines of North America and Polynesia.

I shall now speak of the relations arising from the contact of different civilizations.

The Persian civilization came in contact with the Grecian; the Egyptian with the Grecian and Roman; the Roman with the Grecian; and finally the modern civilization of Europe with all those at present subsisting on the globe, and especially with the Arabian.

The contact of Greek intelligence with the culture of the Persians was as frequent as it was compulsory. The greater portion of the Hellenic population, and the wealthiest, though not the most independent, was concentrated in the cities of the Syrian coast, the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, and on the shores of the Euxine, all of which formed a part of the Persian dominions. Though these colonies preserved their own local laws and politics, they were under the authority of the satraps of the great king. Intimate relations, moreover, were maintained between European Greece and Asia. That the Persians were then possessed of a high degree of civilization is proved by their political organization and financial administration, by the magnificent ruins which still attest the splendor and grandeur of their cities. But the principles of government and religion, the modes and habits of life, the genius of the arts, were very differently understood by the two nations; and, therefore, notwithstanding their constant intercourse, neither made the slightest approach toward assimilation with the other. The Greeks called their puissant neighbors barbarians, and the latter, no doubt, amply returned the compliment.

In Ecbatana no other form of government could be conceived than an undivided hereditary authority, limited only by certain religious prescriptions and a court ceremonial. The genius of the Greeks tended to an endless variety of governmental forms; subdivided into a number of petty sovereignties. Greek society presented a singular mosaic of political structures; oligarchical in Sparta, democratical in Athens, tyrannical in Sicyon, monarchical in Macedonia, the forms of government were the same in scarcely two cities or districts. The state religion of the Persians evinced the same tendency to unity as their politics, and was more of a metaphysical and moral than a material character. The Greeks, on the contrary, had a symbolical system of religion, consisting in the worship of natural objects and influences, which gradually changed into a perfect prosopopœia, representing the gods as sentient beings, subject to the same passions, and engaged in the same pursuits and occupations as the inhabitants of the earth. The worship consisted principally in the performance of rites and demonstrations of respect to the deities; the conscience was left to the direction of the civil laws. Besides, the rites, as well as the divinities and heroes in whose honor they were practised, were different in every place.

As for the manners and habits of life, it is unnecessary to point out how vastly different they were from those of Persia. Public contempt punished the young, wealthy, pleasure-loving cosmopolitan, who attempted to live in Persian style. Thus, until the time of Alexander, when the power of Greece had arrived at its culminating point, Persia, with all her preponderance, could not convert Hellas to her civilization.

In the time of Alexander, this incompatibility of dissimilar modes of culture was singularly demonstrated. When the empire of Darius succumbed to the Macedonian phalanxes, it was expected, for a time, that a Hellenic civilization would spread over Asia. There seemed the more reason for this belief when the conqueror, in a moment of aberrancy, treated the monuments of the land with such aggressive violence as seemed to evince equal hatred and contempt. But the wanton incendiary of Persepolis soon changed his mind, and so completely, that his design became apparent to simply substitute himself in the room of the dynasty of Achæmenes, and rule over Persia like a Persian king, with Greece added to his estates. Great as was Alexander's power, it was insufficient for the execution of such a project. His generals and soldiers could not brook to see their commander assume the long flowing robes of the eastern kings, surround himself with eunuchs, and renounce the habits and manners of his native land. Though after his death some of his successors persisted in the same system, they were compelled greatly to mitigate it. Where the population consisted of a motley compound of Greeks, Syrians, and Arabs, as in Egypt and the coast of Asia Minor, a sort of compromise between the two civilizations became thenceforth the normal state of the country; but where the races remained unmixed, the national manners were preserved.

In the latter periods of the Roman empire, the two civilizations had become completely blended in the whole East, including continental Greece; but it was tinged more with the Asiatic than the Greek tendencies, because the masses belonged much more to the former element than to the latter. Hellenic forms, it is true, still subsisted, but it is not difficult to discover in the ideas of those periods and countries the Oriental stock upon which the scions of the Alexandrian school had been engrafted. The respective influence of the various elements was in strict proportion to the quantity of blood; the intellectual preponderance belonged to that which had contributed the greatest share.

The same antagonism which I pointed out between the intellectual culture of the Greeks and that of the Persians, will be found to result from the contact of all other widely different civilizations. I shall mention but one more instance: the relations between the Arab civilization[179 - The word Arab is here used instead of the more common, but less correct, term Saracen, which was the general appellation bestowed on the first propagators of the Islam by the Greeks and Latins. The Arab civilization reached its culminating point about the reign of Harun al Rashid. At that time, it comprised nearly all that remained of the arts and sciences of former ages. The splendor and magnificence for which it was distinguished, is even yet the theme of romancers and poets; and may be discerned to this day in the voluptuous and gorgeous modes of life among the higher classes in those countries where it still survives, as well as in the remains of Arab architecture in Spain, the best preserved and most beautiful of which is the well-known Alhambra. Though the Arab civilization had a decidedly sensual tendency and character, it was not without great benefits to mankind. From it our forefathers learned some valuable secrets of agriculture, and the first lessons in horticulture. The peach, the pear, the apricot, the finer varieties of apples and plums, and nearly all of our most valued fruits were brought into Western and Central Europe by the returning crusaders from the land of the Saracens. Many valuable processes of manufacture, and especially of the art of working metals, are derived from the same source. In the science of medicine, the Arabs laid the foundation of that noble structure we now admire. Though they were prevented by religious scruples from dissecting the human body, and, therefore, remained in ignorance of the most important facts of anatomy, they brought to light innumerable secrets of the healing powers in the vegetable kingdom; they first practised the art of distillation and of chemical analysis. They were the beginners of the science of Chemistry, to which they gave its name, and in which many of the commonest technical terms (such as alkali, alembic, alcohol, and many others), still attest their labors. In mathematical science they were no less industrious. To them we owe that simple and useful method which so greatly facilitates the more complex processes of calculation, without which, indeed, some of them would be impossible, and which still retains its Arabic name – Algebra. But what is more, to them we owe our system of notation, so vastly superior to that of the Greeks and Romans, so admirable in its efficacy and simplicity, that it has made arithmetic accessible to the humblest understanding; at the present time, the whole Christian world uses Arabic numerals. – H.] and our own.

There was a time when the arts and sciences, the muses and their train, seemed to have forsaken their former abodes, to rally around the standard of Mohammed. That our forefathers were not blind to the excellencies of the Arab civilization is proved by their sending their sons to the schools of Cordova. But not a trace of the spirit of that civilization has remained in Europe, save in those countries which still retain a portion of Ishmaelitic blood. Nor has the Arab civilization found a more congenial soil in India over which, also, its dominion extended. Like those portions of Europe which were subjected to Moslem masters, that country has preserved its own modes of thinking intact.

But if the pressure of the Arab civilization, at the time of its greatest splendor and our greatest ignorance, could not affect the modes of thinking of the races of Western Europe, neither can we, at present, when the positions are reversed, affect in the slightest degree the feeble remnants of that once so flourishing civilization. Our action upon these remnants is continuous – the pressure of our intellectual activity upon them immense; we succeed only in destroying, not in transforming or remodelling.[180 - It is supposed by many that Turkey will ultimately be won to our civilization, and, as a proof of this, great stress is laid upon the efforts of the present Sultan, as well as his predecessor, to "Europeanize" the Turks. Whoever has carefully and unbiassedly studied the present condition of that nation, knows how unsuccessful these efforts, backed, though they were, by absolute authority, and by the immense influence of the whole of Western Europe, have hitherto been and always will be. It is a notorious fact, that the Turks fight less well in their semi-European dress and with their European tactics, of which so much was anticipated, than they did with their own. The Moslem now regards the Christian with the same feelings that he did in the zenith of his power, and these feelings are not the less bitter, because they can no longer be so ostentatiously displayed. – H.]

Yet this civilization was not even original, and might, therefore, be supposed to have a less obstinate vitality. The Arab nation, it is well known, based its empire and its intellectual culture upon fragments of races which it had aggregated by the weight of the sword. A variegated compound like the Islamitic populations, could not but develop a civilization of an equally variegated character, to which each ethnical element contributed its share. These elements it is not difficult to determine and point out.

The nucleus, around which aggregated those countless multitudes, was a small band of valiant warriors who unfurled in their native deserts the standard of a new creed. They were not, before Mohammed's time, a new or unknown people. They had frequently come in contact with the Jews and Phenicians, and had in their veins the blood of both these nations. Taking advantage of their favorable situation for commerce, they had performed the carrier trade of the Red Sea, and the eastern coast of Africa and India, for the most celebrated nations of ancient times, the Jews and the Phenicians, later still, for the Romans and Persians. They had the same traditions in common with the Shemitic and Hamitic families from which they sprung.[181 - The Arabs believed themselves the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Hagar. This belief, even before Mohammed's time, had been curiously blended with the idolatrous doctrines of some of their tribes. – H.] They had even taken an active part in the political life of neighboring nations. Under the Arsacides and the sons of Sassan, some of their tribes exerted great influence in the politics of the Persian empire. One of their adventurers[182 - Philip, an Arabian adventurer who was prefect of the prætorian guards under the third Gordian, and who, through his boldness and ability, succeeded that sovereign on the throne in A. D. 244. – H.] had become Emperor of Rome; one of their princes protected the majesty of Rome against a conqueror before whom the whole east trembled, and shared the imperial purple with the Roman sovereign;[183 - Odenathus, senator of Palmyra, after Sapor, the King of Persia, had taken prisoner the Emperor of Rome, and was devastating the empire, met the ruthless conqueror with a body of Palmyrians, and several times routed his much more numerous armies. Being the only one who could protect the Eastern possessions of the Roman empire against the aggressions of the Persians, he was appointed Cæsar, or coadjutor to the emperor by Gallienus, the son of Valerian, the captive sovereign. – H.] one of their cities had become, under Zenobia, the centre and capital of a vast empire that rivalled and even threatened Rome.[184 - The history of Zenobia, the Queen of the East, as she styled herself, and one of the most interesting characters in history, is well known. As in the preceding notes, I shall, therefore, merely draw attention to familiar facts, with a view to refresh the reader's memory, not to instruct him.The famous Arabian queen was the widow of Odenathus, of Palmyra, who bequeathed to her his dignity as Cæsar, or protector of the Eastern dominions of Rome. It soon, however, became apparent that she disdained to owe allegiance to the Roman emperors, and aimed at establishing a new great empire for herself and her descendants. Though the most accomplished, as well as the most beautiful woman of her time, she led her armies in person, and was so eminently successful in her military enterprises that she soon extended her dominion from the Euphrates to the Nile. Palmyra thus became the centre and capital of a vast empire, which, as Mr. Gobineau observes, rivalled and even threatened Rome itself. She was, however, defeated by Aurelian, and, in A. D. 273, graced the triumph of her conqueror on his return to Rome.The former splendor of the now deserted Palmyra is attested by the magnificent ruins which still form an inexhaustible theme for the admiration of the traveller and antiquarian. – H.]

It is evident, therefore, that the Arab nation had never ceased, from the remotest antiquity, to entertain intimate relations with the most powerful and celebrated ancient societies. It had taken part in their political and intellectual[185 - Though the mass of the nation were ignorant of letters, the Arabs had already before Mohammed's times some famous writers. They had even made voyages of discovery, in which they went as far as China. The earliest, and, as modern researches have proved, the most truthful, account of the manners and customs of that country is by Arab writers. – H.] activity; and it might not inappropriately be compared to a body half-plunged into the water, and half exposed to the sun, as it partook at the same time of an advanced state of civilization and of complete barbarism.

Mohammed invented the religion most conformable to the ideas of a people, among whom idolatry had still many zealous adherents, but where Christianity, though having made numerous converts, was losing favor on account of the endless schisms and contentions of its followers.[186 - At the time of the appearance of the false prophet, Arabia contained within its bosom every then known religious sect. This was owing not only to the central position of that country, but also to the liberty which was then as now a prerogative of the Arab. Among them every one was free to select or compose for himself his own private religion. While the adjacent countries were shaken by the storms of conquest and tyranny, the persecuted sects fled to the happy land where they might profess what they thought, and practice what they professed.A religious persecution had driven from Persia many who professed the religion of the ancient Magi. The Jews also were early settlers in Arabia. Seven centuries before the death of Mohammed they had firmly established themselves there. The destruction of Jerusalem brought still greater numbers of these industrious exiles, who at once erected synagogues, and to protect the wealth they rapidly acquired, built and garrisoned strongly fortified towns in various portions of the wilderness. The Bible had at an early day been translated into the Arabic tongue. Christian missionaries were not wanting, and their active zeal was eminently successful. Several of the Arab tribes had become converts. There were Christian churches in Yemen; the states of Hira and Gassan were under the jurisdiction of Jacobite and Nestorian bishops. The various heretical sects found shelter and safety among the hospitable Arabs. But this very fact proved detrimental to the progress of the Christian religion, and opened the path for the creed of Mohammed. So many and various were the Christian sects that crowded together in that country, and so widely departed from the true spirit of Christianity were some of them, that bitter hostilities sprung up among them, and their religion fell into contempt. The Eastern Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism, one of the sects (the Collyridian heretics) had even gone so far as to invest the virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess. This is what the author alludes to in saying that Christianity was losing favor in Arabia at the time of the appearance of Mohammed. – H.] The religious dogma of the Koreishite prophet was a skilful compromise between the various contending opinions. It reconciled the Jewish dispensation with the New Law better than could the Church at that time, and thus solved a problem which had disquieted the consciences of many of the earlier Christians, and which, especially in the east, had given rise to many heretical sects. This was in itself a very tempting bait, and, besides, any theological novelty had decided chances of success among the Syrians and Egyptians.[187 - The student of ecclesiastical history knows what a number of sects had sprung up about that time to distress and harass the Church. It is not so generally appreciated, however, that for the first hundred years, the progress of Islamism was almost exclusively at the expense of Christianity. The whole of the present Ottoman empire, and almost the whole northern coast of Africa were previously Christian countries. Whether the loss is greatly to be regretted, I know not, for the Syrians and Egyptians, from being very indifferent Christians, became good Mohammedans. These populations were to the Christian Church like a cankered limb, the lopping off of which may have been ordained by an all-wise Providence for the salvation of what was yet sound in the body. – H.] Moreover, the new religion appeared with sword in hand, which in those times of schismatical propagandism seemed a warrant of success more relied upon by the masses to whom it addressed itself, than peaceful persuasion.

Thus arrayed, Islamism issued from its native deserts. Arrogant, and possessed but in a very slight degree of the inventive faculty, it developed no civilization peculiar to itself, but it had adopted, as far as it was capable of doing, the bastard Greco-Asiatic civilization already extant. As its triumphant banners progressed on the east and south of the Mediterranean, it incorporated masses imbued with the same tendencies and spirit. From each of these it borrowed something. As its religious dogmas were a patchwork of the tenets of the Church, those of the Synagogue, and of the disfigured traditions of Hedjaz and Yemen, so its code of laws was a compound of the Persian and the Roman, its science was Greco-Syrian[188 - W. Von Humboldt. Ueber die Karo-Sprache, Einleitung, p. 243. "Durch die Richtung auf diese Bildung und durch innere Stammes-verwandschaft wurden sie wirklich für griechischen Geist und griechische Sprache empfänglich, da die Araber vorzugsweise nur an den wissenschaftlichen Resultaten griechischer Forschung hiengen."] and Egyptian, its administration from the beginning tolerant like that of every body politic that embraces many heterogeneous elements.

It has caused much useless surprise, that Moslem society should have made such rapid strides to refinement of manners. But the mass of the people over whom its dominion extended, had merely changed the name of their creed; they were old and well-known actors on the stage of history, and have simply been mistaken for a new nation when they undertook to play the part of apostles before the world. These people gave to the common store their previous refinement and luxury; each new addition to the standard of Islamism, contributed some portion of its acquisitions. The vitalizing principle of the society, the motive power of this cumbrous mass, was the small nucleus of Arab tribes that had come forth from the heart of the peninsula. They furnished, not artists and learned men, but fanatics, soldiers, victors, and masters.

The Arab civilization, then, is nothing but the Greco-Syrian civilization, rejuvenated and quickened, for a time, with a new and energetic, but short-lived, genius. It was, besides, a little renovated and a little modified, by a slight dash of Persian civilization.

Yet, motley and incongruous as are the elements of which it is composed, and capable of stretching and accommodating itself as such a compound must be, it cannot adapt itself to any social structure erected by other elements than its own. In other words, many as are the races that contributed to its formation, it is suited to none that have not contributed to it.

This is what the whole course of history teaches us. Every race has its own modes of thinking; every race, capable of developing a civilization, develops one peculiar to itself, and which it cannot engraft upon any other, except by amalgamation of blood, and then in but a modified degree. The European cannot win the Asiatic to his modes of thinking; he cannot civilize the Australian, or the Negro; he can transmit but a portion of his intelligence to his half-breed offspring of the inferior race; the progeny of that half-breed and the nobler branch of his ancestry, is but one degree nearer, but not equal to that branch in capacity: the proportions of blood are strictly preserved. I have adduced illustrations of this truth from the history of various branches of the human family, of the lowest as well as of the higher in the scale of intellectual progress. Are we not, then, authorized to conclude that the diversity observable among them is constitutional, innate, and not the result of accident or circumstances – that there is an absolute inequality in their intellectual endowments?

CHAPTER XV.