Essay on the inequality of human races 9782367530291

Citation preview

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau

Essay on Inequality of Races

human

Stvpress

Copyright

217, rue Saint-Honoré, 75001 Paris, France www.stvpress.com

Cover illustrator - Mohamed Saadi All rights of translation, reproduction and adaptation reserved for all country

© Kinoscript and Stvpress, October 2012

A great romantic poet by HUBERT JUIN

The Gobinists are people who are easily jealous, and they have erected an ideal statue for their hero that should only be approached with respect. I consider him one of the greatest among the French writers of the 19th century.e

century, and also for the one who, more than any other, dreamed his life. However, the story is not simple.

First, this life, because it merges with the dream, is full of holes, which is convenient for the interpreters: nothing beats a saint of dubious origins in a chapel (if he ceases to be a object of worship, it becomes a subject of quarrels, which is entirely beneficial). Then, the use for nauseating purposes of books where racism is less obvious than one might think, means that part of the work is "gazed" by attributing to a scholar who was hardly cultivated what belongs , for good, to the writer, and without which we cannot see anything very clearly in this writer.

There is a tone of voice in the Essay that would make philosophers shudder. It's not me who will complain about it. Poems can be recognized by this: they are songs. Gobineau has never sung so loudly or so well as here.

1

Let's try to capture Gobineau in motion. It is very curious that we must – for once – study an author based on his posthumous fortune and no longer the other way around: it is because Gobineau – who never had much luck in his life, we must to be fair – was the most unlucky of romantic writers. One says !The Pleiades! –and it really is as if we had said everything. It turned out that the worst imbeciles, the lunatics and the criminals of our time were completely wrong about him, taking his lyricism for science, his personal confessions for objective proof, his intimate torments for scientific demonstrations: Gobineau always carried out a thousand tasks at once, he was a man of turbulent nature, but who had only one fixed point in life, which was the sourness that rose to his throat when he saw the gallery of famous men of his time pass before the eyes of his memory. He is right-wing, like Barbey, out of dandyism; unfortunately, he is not a dandy. Brief ! these are the opposites of a Maxime Du Camp (who comes forward hanging on Théophile Gautier's coattails), of a Louis Veuillot who is there, at the doors of the churches, to beg for a good living in the name of the denier of God...

Paradox. Let a Hitler copy with a rather loose pen a few pages of the Essay on Inequality in what will become, in the eyes of a horde of assassins, something like a bible, and here scruple diverts the more objectives of thisEssayexactly. You have to see better: withoutEssay, point ofPleiades. It's worse: Gobineau doesn't arrive because he was too proud to want to arrive. He guarded himself against the “rabble” like the plague, and refused to eat his hay from the racks who were not royalists. At least that's what he lets us understand. Alexis de Tocqueville, an honest man, had already corrected him on this. Jean Gaulmier has done the net in this area.

Gobineau is the man in a cage, lost in a very Manichean era: we are on the side of the people or the other side, but there are, in this division (less simple today), a thousand copied nuances on the Treatises on good posture, on theEpiscopal catechisms, on the Coats of arms from ancient times.Gobineau sees nothing but decadence in this cuisine.

Which was right.

** * Gobineau, whom I read a lot, never really pleased me. I saw the man as a wretch of little interest. This was a false view. When we get closer, we understand that he is an unfortunate person, who has suffered greatly. As we know: it is not given to everyone to suffer well. And we take revenge as best we can. Gobineau's revenge is a poem in three parts:Essay on Inequalityé, theHistory of the Persiansand finally,Ottar Jarl.This poem is certainly one of the great poetic constructions bequeathed to us by romanticism. First of all, this vision of humanity in progress does not belong only to Gobineau. This is a common theme at this time, where we see Victor Hugo writingThe Legend of the Centuries, Michelet sign The Bible of Humanity, Lamartine chantingThe Fall of an Angel, Quinet writeAhasverus.The lyricism of Gobineau, in theEssayabove all, is a good come-on: we find in these feverish pages diamond shards (although with slippage in style which is of poor quality). But Gobineau is a pessimist. While others sing of progress, of humanity on the road to Good and Peace, Gobineau proclaims his apocalypse, his despair, his hatred. He hates his century, that's for sure.

But why ?

His mother ? A naughty girl who escapes into various loves. His father ? A high fitted collar, which does not deign to lower the head. His wife ? A friend first, an enemy later. Her daughters ? He turns away. His life ? A Wagner of letters, but without Bayreuth... All this, quickly, only wants to show the truth of Gobineau: he accommodates himself to the accommodations of the earth, comes to terms less easily with God (which, moreover, does not concern him), but turns life into a dream, in this churn which never ceases to amaze us: his work. He has ten readers: he makes a world of them.

There are thousands of them today: he is unknown.

For cuckolding, it's more serious. It is, to use modern language, a trauma. The child is fifteen years old, and suddenly realizes that his mother is sleeping with his tutor. The father is an imbecile. The race becomes mongrel. Everything is said: until his last breath, Gobineau will pay researchers, archivists, booksellers, so that the history of his family is delivered to him down to the small details, even if it means having to go over the whole thing, to rewrite it with meticulousness against the facts, to make Gobineau, to make Arthur, through the imaginary and fabulous Ottar Jarl, a son of Odin. In the same way, but with greater truth, we will see, in The Pléiades, the “sons of kings” opposing the scoundrels, the imbeciles and the peat (always democratic, by the way)...

* ** This work, which sometimes seems to be swaying and falling apart, is, on the contrary, a beautiful unity. Certainly ! there are the stories composed by a Rastignac to shine in newspapers where he will never shine. Of course, there are the funny theories of the so-called orientalist Gobineau, and already the scholars of his time were arguing

before his treatise on cuneiforms. There is even, my God yes! the poems that, it seems, Germans manage to love. Gobineau is a jack of all trades who never loses sight of his true goal.

This goal is very difficult to grasp: it is only truly expressed by mixing the circumstances of life with the reading of the work. Since the age of fifteen, Gobineau has been convinced that the world is coming to an end. In Brazil, where he will be a half-disgraced ambassador, he prophesies the coming depopulation of the country: that says it all.

He has little scientific training, and he doesn't care. Is there a lack of information? He invents them. He who loves Germany so much(but, please, let us note that he has this taste in common with his most illustrious contemporaries, Hugo included, but Stendhal and Mérimée excepted.)foresees the fall of Prussia and the strengthening of Austria. Romain Rolland clearly said he was presbyopic, seeing Sylla better than Bismarck!

Despite all this, theEssay on Inequalityis one of the great lyrical works of the 19th centuryecentury. You have to be blind not to notice it, but crazy to look for something else.

* ** See the relentlessness of destiny on this poor Gobineau: one cuckolding presides over his literary vocation, another cuckolding desperately roots him in his pessimism. Gobineau gets married. Wrong. He marries a Creole: great demonstration! His wife, who was a strange person, will persuade him, out of pure malice(maybe)that one of his daughters was not his.

Faced with such malignity, before such a combination of sordid events (the wife after the mother), the "king's son", disdainful and

spleenetic, has only one recourse: to push in the direction of the Essay, to go to the depths, to writeOttar Jarl,the sumptuously imaginary story of an imaginary lineage of Gobineau.

Ottar Jarl,This is the end of the poem. But there is also this late work: The Renaissance. THECalendaris here at his business: Michelangelo, Leo X, Savonarola, Caesar Borgia, Julius II. It's a crowning achievement. A little indigestible no doubt. Marcel Brion notes:A work like The Renaissance was therefore the one that best allowed Gobineau to blossom this wealth of sensations and thoughts, excessive for a single man.Why not ? But this heavy machine is also the other side of Gobineau, a great diplomat, statesman of stature, scholar of genius, lauded writer. Old Gobineau no longer dreams:The Renaissanceis a work whose aftertaste is sadness.

2

In Gobineau, we see it in three lines, the contradictions are not lacking: how? in a world which is diluted because races no longer exist, there remains a family, and, of this family, a final offspring (Arthur) who is not affected by general decline... This "racist" pursued a chimera itself. Oh ! the sweet music of science to the ears of this Ulysses in search of Germanic Ithaca. There is something similar in one of the volumes of Fantômas, when a king is prisoner under the fountains of the Place de la Concorde and these fountains sing. What song can be more deceptive than that of sirens? Gobineau's Lorelei is in libraries. Bulimia plays against seriousness. Racist? Let's get along.

First, Gobineau never defended Aryanism, since in the darkness of his book the ancient Aryans (as he said) disappeared forever. Better: he writes at a turn of the page (which Hitler did not copy) that even if the Aryans still existed, well! they could do nothing and would disappear immediately. The truth of Gobineau's racism lies elsewhere: it is in the hatred of democracy. Where democracy reigns, peat reigns. He dreams of a solid country (which gives us beautiful romantic pages on feudalism) governed by a nobility from which the bastards would be mercilessly rejected (did Saint-Simon see the examples of monarchy differently?) and by a strong army. He, the royalist whose feelings for Napoleon are known, will soon join the Coup d'Etat of December 2. He will darkly applaud the disaster of 1870, and bleed himself with a brochure:What happened to France in 1870. Jean Gaulmier showed how, if he criticizes the philosophy of Napoleon III, he does not cease to admire this imbecile from Baroche who had, in his eyes, the merit of being a convinced sabrepeople. What is worth its weight in gold is that Gobineau will not have harsh words for the Communards, other than that he will say that they are the scoundrel (which is an almost friendly word for Gobineau when he speaks Democrats or Republicans). In 1871, Gobineau watched Paris burn and sneered. It's a crow who planned everything. But also, he pushes himself, this“son of king». Clumsily, it's true, but with constancy. Tocqueville puts his foot in the door:I have a sort of selfesteem in your distinguishing yourself in the career to which I was so happy to open the door for you. I have always believed that you possess the main qualities which make it progress in a brilliant manner and that if you managed to establish a little more bond with men (you will forgive this little criticism of my sincere friendship), it you wouldn't miss anything...Charles de Rémusat, the thick Baroche, and even Princess Mathilde(despite Walevski's somewhat gray expression), these are some uses. His incompetence and his bad character do the rest: there are quarrels, annoyances, quarrels. At the slightest setback, Gobineau drapes himself with dignity in the mantle of legitimism, a trappings that have been used by all comers in politics since 1789. His correspondence is teeming with a thousand lines in which the man's massacring humor constantly appears. This Viking

(descendant of Ottar Jarl, himself descendant of Odin) does not like being stepped on. He has a delicate shoe. The misfortune is that he constantly thinks that he is being trampled, except when he is in the anteroom in the hope... In the hope of what? Let's not throw stones at him. The modesty of his origin made his pocket empty. There“career» jolted him pretty hard. What annoys us is that he poses. This is not modesty.

An aristocrat of territory rather than terroir, he indefinitely takes on attitudes in front of posterity.

* ** He has loyal friends. Her life smells like a pretty woman. Her urbanity is praised in companies where there are many women. He runs around with four people, always behind on a debt, maintaining a family that will drag him through the mud. He tells himself stories that he shouldn't believe, but that he believes in, which enlivens his correspondence. He sees himself from the Institute through the care of Mérimée. It won't be. Then he sees himself from the Academy through the thousand steps he takes, and even into the office of Jules Favre (a Republican, but, for once, Gobineau is right:he's a scoundrel, – except this time he doesn't say it). It won't be.

THE“son of king»who advocates the ethics of disdain will run the mail of firms, recommendations, solicitations. The confusion in his work has two sources: his head is like a weather vane, and his conscience must accommodate the ups and downs of everyday life. He will even bow to that jackal from Saint-Arnault after the shooting at the Tortoni!

* **

Count de Gobineau lied a lot, and horribly. The fact remains that even if he compromised on almost everything, there remained, deep in his heart, a terrible loyalty to this pessimism which is very much his and which AB Duff somewhere describes asMagnificent (which, lyrically, is true). Now, this pessimism, the edification of this pessimism, the expression of this pessimism, is precisely the work of his entire life, and this work is theEssay on the inequality of human races. We must take at face value, well and truly, the declaration he makes in the foreword to the second edition of his master work, and which is this:As well this book (the Essay, of course) is the basis of everything I have done and will do subsequently.

Let's open, for example, theAsian News. It is ultimately a late work, the merits of which are indisputable:The Illustrious MagicianAnd The Turkoman Warare among the most beautiful short stories ever written in French. We know that Gobineau praised Stendhal to the skies(it's curious, but it's like that, and I can't do anything about it, Gobineau's texts are irrefutable). He added that he too would only really be read after a century, which was a good thing to see, as Beyle had clearly seen. Like Stendhal, Gobineau puts himself everywhere in his work. He lacks imagination to tears. It is told sideways, indirectly, under the oblique gaze of theEssay (here we are)... Gobineau stayed in Persia twice. Before going there,Essayis well advanced. He does not put himself toNewsthat having come back so far for the second time.

When he arrived in Asia from his first journey, in the first letter found, what can we read? This :What impressed me the most was the grandeur of the things accomplished in all these seas by the Portuguese. It's unimaginable. Their works, their name, the memory of their glory is still present on the rocks and in all imaginations. We cannot imagine this when we have not seen it. It begins in Gondar, in the interior of Abyssinia and ends in Macau. Today, they are the best servants in India. I have one here who just gave me a

superb uniform cap. This is the effect of race mixing.This is a letter from May 5, 1855.

Gobineau startedEssayin 1850, he finished the first volume in April 1851 and the second in July 1852. The initial shock? Don't look for it: it's the revolution of 1848. Gobineau sets up, against the“dirty blouses », a war machine... The first two volumes of theEssayappeared in June-July 1853, and Gobineau began, in March 1854, writing the second part of his large work, sliding“beautifully»towards the great organs of pessimism, and plunging into a rare silence. He is in Persia when the second part of the'Essaywas published by Didot in two volumes, on December 11, 1855...

From 1872, in the cold of Stockholm, he thought about Asian news,which he finished in 1875. He did not change his mind. It's always theEssaywho dominates. And he will end a life he had dreamed of, but not a bad one either, byHistory of Ottar Jarl, the most romantic of secretly romantic works. A tombstone full of baroque beauties. Unfortunately, by wanting to prove too much, we prove nothing, and when Gobineau wants to remember too clearly theEssay,it's the worstAsian Newsthat then he writesThe Lovers of Kandahar. His old age is sad to the point of perishing: he dies of boredom among his sculptures, always between two cities, two hopes, two quarrels. He died alone, in a hotel room in Turin, without having made much noise in the world, and not suspecting that a furious madman was going to make him the unwitting accomplice of heinous crimes. It is from this, now, that we should cleanse the memory of Gobineau, a rather vain man, an admirable writer by temperament, a charlatan of science, but a character with a heart torn by the saddest existence and the most lamentable adventures.

* ** One more word on this bizarre destiny: the Château de Chaméane, between Issoire and Ambert, in the Auvergne mountains, had been converted, by Madame de La Tour, into a museum dedicated, entirely, to Gobineau and his work. This castle was completely destroyed on July 30, 1944 by a Nazi horde who had filled the underground passages with dynamite.

3

This count was not a count: it is a portrait. He deceives himself about everything, and, talented as he knows how to be, he deceives us. His false nobility makes him a true feudal lord:in many ways, we are inferior to what we once were!he exclaims at the end of a sentence. And why ? Because civilization is immobile. As soon as it moves, it deteriorates. Now, what is happening in the tangled career of Mr.“county»of Gobineau? Lots of hassle! Lots of movement! It's up to you to conclude: the universe is in the wrong, Gobineau is in the right... In 1840, Gobineau was aScelto. His gospel?Ambition, independence of mind, aristocratic ideas.A Condottiere who will get a slap on the wrist from André Suarès, who – at least – knew what he was talking about. We see from here how and to what extent the theme of force is rooted in Gobineau, and how and why the caricatures which made 1851 will, in his eyes, be right against the men of flesh and blood who made 1848.: shame on the vanquished. Besides, shouldn't Gobineau take a brilliant revenge on life? Is he not a descendant of Odin, of a nobility so small that it gets lost and gets lost in the fringes of little history??In Stockholm, in Madame de La Tour's blue salon, Gobineau, with Zaluski, will be one of the three calenders. Nothing has

exchange. L'Essaycovered the whole life.The Renaissancemade the most rightwing heads of the time nod.

All the life ? It's going too fast. First, Gobineau puts all his trust in blood. He imagines in some mythical prehistory the Golden Age of true men: a constant, immobile, serious and feudal place. The truth is the clan. And when all this starts, it's to go down. What is History? A gnawing worm. The civilization that wants to evolve is never anything other than a civilization that declines. So what ? Imperialism?... Not even. What do we gain by getting our hands on colonies, other than degrading ourselves. Gobineau's dream is impossibly insular. The race ? It no longer exists. People from the North? If you only knew how boring people are in Stockholm. The Germans ? They are simply spoiling the Anglo-Saxons of America: they are an extremely mixed race. Moreover, Gobineau obviously knows that Austria will be the real power tomorrow and that the Prussians will return to their rightful condition. Persia? It’s discomfiture. The myth of the Orient? It was perfect, seen from afar. The myth of feudalism? Always useful against“dirty blouses», but, unfortunately, we don't always have a Baroche to congratulate. The myth of the Germans? It's more serious because it's more vague. There is the late meeting with Wagner. Wagner dreams, Gobineau too. Nietzsche? What his sister says is questionable(always). He read Gobineau? Probably. But Nietzsche was enamored of Latinity. He was like Hölderlin: he went towards the sun. Who to believe? Person.

* ** Yes, Napoleon III... Arthur, Count of Gobineau, background diplomat, rejected writer, unhappy husband, is closely contemporary with this man's reign. Napoleon III only did one good thing in his entire life as a brigand: he made Victor Hugo. He is half

son of no one, like Gobineau: these are the“son of king». They met: we imagine the half-closed eyes of one and the arrogance of the other. Alley cats don't get along together: they hunt on the same territory. Gobineau plays the legitimist. Louis-Bonaparte, to the Emperor. They could only understand each other sideways. This is what happened. The Emperor had a taste for Saint-Simonism. He has this advantage over Thiers: he believes in the railways. The railways, or Le Creusot, the“ county»de Gobineau turns away from it: all that is decadence. The Emperor inaugurates the balls at the Élysée; Gobineau is racking his brains in embassy offices. The Quai d'Orsay has never been fun. Gobineau is one of the rare writers who came out of it: that’s merit. Will he turn away from the December 2 Coup? Of course, no! To Tocqueville, who is a resolute opponent, he says:sincerely loves absolute power vis-à-vis the French people(March 4, 1859). I don't know if he instinctively loved the Bonapartist conception of the army (we must always be wary of this devil of a man and his instincts), but he paints a masterful portrait of it, of which we would find traces even in the military works of General de Gaulle. The passage is a little long; it touches on this moment in history when imperial Rome allowed itself to be dominated by Semitic elements; he underlines – by antiphrase – the correctness of those who, from the fighters of the Paris Commune, via Jaurès, to the men of our time, defend the popular army against the professional army, the army of citizens against the army of mercenaries (but we will see, reading the Essay properly, that even the errors of Gobineau, this hollow genius, are fertile):The unique necessity, to use the expression of an ancient Celtic song, admits for armies only one mode of organization, hierarchical classification and obedience. In whatever state of ethnic anarchy a social body finds itself, as soon as an army exists, we must without bias leave it this invariable rule. As far as the rest of the political organism is concerned, everything can be in question. We will doubt everything there; we will try, mock, scold everything; but as for the army, it will remain isolated in the middle of the State, perhaps bad in its main goal, but always more energetic than its surroundings, immobile, like a

factitiously homogeneous people. One day, it will be the only healthy and active part of the nation. This means that after many movements, cries, complaints, stifled songs of triumph, soon under the debris of the legal edifice which, constantly being raised, constantly collapsing, the army ends up eclipsing the rest, and that the masses can sometimes still believe themselves in the happy times of their vigorous childhood when the most diverse functions were united under the same heads, the people being the army, the army being the people. There is not much to be applauded, however, about these false pretenses of adolescence in the midst of caducity; because, because the army is better than the rest, its first duty is to contain, to subdue, no longer the enemies of the fatherland, but its rebellious members, who are the masses...

The masses... This is the army of 48, the one that shoots, that machine-guns, that surrounds the suburbs, that cuts into the blood of the workers. It's the army of 51, which is making a splash on the grand boulevards(from then ), and which crossesThe punishmentsby Victor Hugo with red(shame)on the forehead. But this army, and when he wrote this page, Gobineau does not yet know it, is also the army of resignation: the army of Sedan, the army of Metz, the one that crawls, and which goes. The military writer Charles de Gaulle attempts to justify it. Either ! Her justification was to have returned, in April 1871, in the enemy's vans, to brilliantly accomplish this dirty work that the German did not want to accomplish himself: Bloody Week. This is the army of Louis Bonaparte. Here's his font. Hence probably Gobineau's sneer(in 71), who was a suddenly lucid observer. By excess of disgust, one must believe. Gobineau believed in the professional army. Dear presbyope! He saw the professional army at work. There was no found“son of king».

Among the nationalists, neither. Which explains this superficial paradox: the French right has never claimed to follow Gobineau. See Maurras! It goes without saying that I am talking about those who, on the right, have some culture or some intelligence. I saw this title in an extremist magazine at the top of an article onEssay:Gobineau, a

dispassionate theorist. Double stupidity: Gobineau is an enthusiast without any real theory. His only theory is his passion. We only have one mistake: not reading it. I mean: don't read the Essay. Some, who turn away from it, would discover a masterful work, a piece of literature which deserves all the praise. Others, who see fit to refer to it“chic», would quickly see reasons to turn away from it. Gobineau only likes“quality men».

* ** When Alexis de Tocqueville had finished reading theEssay, he discovered there not the rather simplistic racism that one generally finds there but the anti-democratic sentiments which make up its essentials. A few quotes will not be useless:I confess to you that after having read you as well as before, I remain placed at the opposite extreme of these doctrines. I believe them to be very likely false and most certainly pernicious.. Elsewhere :Do you not see that from your doctrine come naturally all the evils that permanent inequality gives rise to, pride, violence, contempt for fellow human beings, tyranny and abjection in all its forms?Then finally, with a certain weariness and a lot of disdain, the magnificent exclamation:What do you want ? We are stubborn old people who have given in human freedom, as Louis Courier said he had given in the charter, and who cannot, at all, come back from it.4...

4 Travel trains youth and distorts theories. The priority of blood quickly becomes mythical for Gobineau. He no longer really believes in it, and he would easily abandon the scaffolding so laboriously constructed, were it not for the rag burning in the couple's bosom. Ms. Gobineau is a Creole, so Mr. Gobineau, despite everything, is right.

If blood is lacking, there remains family. So, sorry! The count immediately retracts. Certainly ! there is Mother Bénédicte, this tenderly loved sister. Is she up to the task? It must be admitted that no, and that acquired characteristics are not transmitted. Nothing more revealing, nothing less “racist” than Gobineau’s will:I give and bequeath what Madame de Gobineau, my wife, did not steal or spend from me of my fortune to Madame la Baronne de Guldencrone, née Diane de Gobineau, and to her sister, Mademoiselle Christine de Gobineau, and do so because that the law forces me to do so, because in justice and in truth, I owe them and would only like to leave them my sovereign contempt and my indignation for their cowardice and their ingratitude, to both of them5.And There you go !

For races, is it true that Gobineau wants to show the priority of some over others? Read it quickly, yes. Reading it better, that's not the main thing, that's not the important thing. The breeds“lower», after all, are happy breeds. The breeds“superior»They carry the sin of the world on their shoulders: they are at fault. Here is Gobineau. The racists never realized that it gave them a guilty conscience. An example: America. Certainly ! Prokesch-Osten prophesies(sinisterly):You sow the earth of the future. Tocqueville, always so right, notes:I believe that your book's chance is to return to France from abroad, especially from Germany (we will come there). First, America. It was in this country that the Essay was first translated. Is Gobineau satisfied? Listen to it:the Americans believe that I encourage them to knock out their Negroes, praise me for it, but do not want to translate the part of the book that concerns them.What would he have taken, the other one, the author of My Combat, architect of death camps! ...

Hotz's translation was produced by Lippincott in Philadelphia in 1856.

* ** A more serious example: Germany. In 1905, that very good mind that was Remy de Gourmont devoted a half-hearted article to Gobineau. I can't resist the pleasure of this quote: I will never forget this little dialogue between his mother, who does nothing, and a young girl who makes tapestry: “–Mom, don't you think if I made the dog's tongue a lighter green it would look better?

».

“–Yes, my child; but I would like it better purple, it's more natural Thus M. de Gobineau taught me, from a young age, the principles of realism...

Admirable Gourmont! Admirable Gobineau!

For me, I remember a hospital bed, in Aix-en-Provence, where he lay between wrists solidly covered with a barbaric cast; one of my friends, a bookseller in this town, gave me a semi-luxury edition of Scaramouche. This is how I took Gobineau from the beginning, and as a vice. Jean Gaulmier's work fills me: I hate myths. I don't like that Aragon speaks well of snobbery. Snobbery is taste when it is dull6. But Gaulmier gets carried away with his subject. Gobineau is a master of writing. And I don't know anything more extraordinary than certain page turns ofPleiades. Have you readAdelaide?Have you readMiss Irnois?So, don’t make us believe: you are contaminated. Gobineau is still genius. L'Essay, it's grim, but it's great.

Besides, Gobineau is a drug. François-Régis Bastide, who haunts mills, astrologers and presbyteries, had announced, on our author, a work which was to have the title:Gobineau or the Dreamed Life. What do you think happened? François-Régis Bastide wrote a novel with the titleThe Dreamed Life. Double-sided Gobineau. Let's get serious:Caribou Hunting,it's still better than Auschwitz or Ravensbrück. So who was wrong? Who deceived us? Oh yes ! I was talking about a more serious example: Germany, and, incidentally, about this article by Remy de Gourmont, in which we read, from the opening, thatThere has been a “Société Gobineau” in Germany for around ten years.(Gobineau-Vereinigung),founded to study the work and ideas of the writer little known in his homeland.First of all, Gobineau, the homeland, was windy, foolish and not serious. Then, this very Germanic “Société Gobineau” deserves a careful look. If I confine myself solely to the after all unusual work of Robert Dreyfus: The life and prophecies of Count de Gobineau, – Gentlemen anti-Semites, shoot first! – I am forced to note that this Society is strange, that there is, in advance, among the lords of the steel industry, among the princes of Gott mit uns, among the barons of the Rhine synarchy, grouped in there, a curious smell (in advance) of bloody bluff and real corpses. Let's go.

(A small remark: Gourmont seemed to regret that the Germans had come to make Gobineau their business. He was right. We were well received). In Germany, Gobineau, thanks to the efforts of the so-calledVereinigung, His name is not Gobineau, his name is Houston Stewart Chamberlain. William II is at his knees. Philip of Eulenburg, to his devotion. Let's continue. Official German anti-Semitism dates from 1880. That year a petition was addressed to Prince Bismarck. She denounces the Jewish peril(already, – and again). Signatures: Pastor Stoecker, a utility; Bernhard Foerster, who would become(how important it is)Nietzsche's brother-in-law, whose sister, etc., etc.(Rimbaud also had a sister);and still one of the influential members of the saidGobineau-Vereinigung, A

disciple of Wagner, a Wolzogen, baron of his state, pathetic otherwise, and pro-Nazi through double-mindedness. This is what we did with Gobineau. It is not Gobineau who is guilty, it isGobineau-Vereinigung. Wagner didn't even know that he was making his music for crooked-fingered illiterates. And Gobineau? He wouldn't have come back.

In truth, he didn't come back from it. This is why it is urgent to reissue this book which caused tons of ink to flow, and then this ink caused tons of blood to flow, even though it was, initially, an ERROR.

* ** Gobineau believed in the army: he was used to make soap from human fat. Nietzsche believed in the superman: he was used to make a bunch of poor guys kill each other(only cannon dealers know the real reasons for the war of 1914). Wagner believed in Valkyries: he – fortunately – did not see the shrews of the fascist paradise. The misunderstanding is not at the level of Wagner, Nietzsche, Gobineau, it is much lower: at the level of a certain mire, which still proliferates, alas! among those who are, basically, incapable of listening to this one or reading those. How nice they were, the elder Rosnys writing (inThe astonishing journey of Hareton Ironcastle) this sentence :A man of tall stature, perfect symbol of the type invented by Gobineau... – and Jack London, “socialist” and rushing into the primary racism ofThe Snow Maiden. It is true that they did not need soap. In reality, when Gobineau sees the dogma of blood disappear, then the revelation of the family, all that remains is the individual. Here we are brought back toPleiades.This story ofcalendars, of“son of king», well ! we didn't get out of it. Gobineau gave everything to blood.

Others gave everything in the middle. There remains only one enigma, but it is crucial, and it was Gobineau who definitively fixed its terms: this enigma is that of the man of quality. In a bar in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in Montana, in this era after the Liberation when we saw people leaving the Gares du Nord, de l'Est or Lyon, at every hour of the day and night. night, a good handful of Rastignac, it was a question that Roger Vailland and I debated a lot, under the rather sarcastic gaze of the blonde Mireille. Then, as the years passed, Roger Vailland wrote his famousPraise of Cardinal de Bernis. I will neither quote nor summarize this text. It is dedicated to “amateurs» ( this is how, I believe, Vailland ended up designating the modern“happy news"). Gobineau holds his part. Besides, remember the beginning of Pleiades, and you will better understand the great organs that are unleashed in theEssay:son of a king, he said, butthere is not a single time in more than a hundred where the character thus presented is anything other, as far as his exterior is concerned, than a poor devil very mistreated by fortune. The exhibition is indoors. The son of a king is never the son of the King. How right Vailland was to refer to LEP O'Brien's book:Horses from the Ain department (1891). Vailland said:The language of breeders at the end of the 19th centuryecentury fascinates me.

This is not a joke: if Stalin had read LEP O'Brien he might not have been Stalin. But this is another story.

5 Gobineau's error is to believe in the virtues of what is immobile. Listen to it:A government, he writes, is still very bad when, by the nature of its institutions, it authorizes antagonism, either between the supreme power and the mass of the nation, or between the different classes.Aristotle's engine was a stationary engine that led nowhere. In 1871, men learned that contradiction was the very essence of society and progress. Not Gobineau. Social classes ? Baroche is good. The rich are stupid. Poor people are stupid. An example, that of the workers. Here is the page of

Gobineau who should make Germanic racists ashamed of being racist and even of being German:Our eastern departments and our large manufacturing towns have many workers who willingly learn to read and write. They live in an environment that demonstrates its usefulness to them. But as soon as these men possess the basic elements of education to a sufficient degree, what do most of them do with them? Means of acquiring such ideas and such feelings no longer instinctively, but now actively hostile to the social order. Here is the most beautiful:I only make an exception for our agricultural and even working populations of the northeast, where elementary knowledge is much more widespread than anywhere else, retained once acquired, and generally bears only good fruit.Is there a reason for this? Certainly ! Guess?It will be noted that these populations hold much closer than all the others to the Germanic race, and I am not surprised to see them for what they are.This speaks for itself.

This beautiful writer(Gobineau)becomes stupid as soon as he is racist. He therefore becomes similar to the racists. There is, objectively, no racial discrimination: there is only social discrimination. The racists(as they call themselves)when they are honest, will push cynicism to the point of recognizing that their only valid theory is that of the exploitation of man by man. They are of the race of lords because they are on the side of the handle, or because they want to achieve it. They are the first to make fun of the little fools who follow them: complacent inferiors. Racism leads to personality distortion. It's a disease. She has become economical: she has lost all dignity.

* ** What we must clearly see is that after all Gobineau is not “racist”. He is a nostalgic person, for whom the Golden Age is in the past, and catastrophe in the future. He has the pride of the upstart. It would be contemptible

if he were not such a great writer. Civilization, in his eyes, is stability. Nothing more absurd.I believe I can now summarize my thoughts on civilization, by defining it as a state of relative stability, where multitudes strive to peacefully seek the satisfaction of their needs, and refine their intelligence and their morals. Thanks for the relative stability.For the rest, I am a count (or almost) and I remain so. Racist? You want to laugh. There are no races. There are, desperately, the“son-of-king», and then the“dirty blouses». Certainly ! if one and the other sometimes come to be confused, where are we going? Long live Baroche. What I mean by society is a meeting, more or less perfect from the political point of view, but complete from the social point of view, of men living under the direction of similar ideas and with identical instincts.And Gobineau continues the momentum of his error with an enthusiasm and lyricism that takes our breath away.

He understood nothing of dynamism as a civilizing element, of contradiction as a dialectical necessity. We have just experienced the era of decolonization. We saw that this blindness was shared. You must readthe Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.And this for two reasons. Opposites.

6 Arthur de Gobineau is a writer. He tried a thousand careers. He only wanted that one. His arrogance prevented him from throwing science overboard. Fortunately, we can readAkrivie Phrangopoulo OrThe Turkoman War.What a feather! But'Essay ?Well, it is essentially a work of literature, a poem filled to the brim with the bitterest of pessimisms. It is a long personal, subjective cry, to the aid of which, in shortcuts that make one dizzy, that stun, the whole of History, dreamed of, syncopated, martyred, pruned, glorified, is – in periods which are among the most Belles of French Romanticism – subpoenaed. It is summoned to appear, History. And it appears. With streaks of blood. Swells that

military standards and war music swell. With her wolf hair. Then the'Essay,it is also, despite Gobineau, a demonstration through the absurd. Nothing stops man. History has meaning. It is irreversible.

This enthusiast without theory, perhaps today, could rejoice in it. HUBERT JUIN.

Dedication from the first edition (1854)

TO HIS MAJESTY

GEORGES V. KING OF HANOVER

SIRE,

I have the honor of offering here to YOUR MAJESTY the fruit of long meditations and favorite studies, often interrupted, always resumed.

The considerable events, revolutions, bloody wars, overthrows of laws, which, for too many years, have acted on the European States, easily turn the imagination towards the examination of political facts. While the vulgar consider only the immediate results and only admire or disapprove of the electric spark whose interests they strike, more serious thinkers seek to discover the hidden causes of such terrible shocks, and, lowering the lamp by hand in the obscure paths of philosophy and history, they will ask from the analysis of the human heart or from the attentive examination of the annals the answer to an enigma which so deeply disturbs both existences and consciences. .

Like everyone else, I felt what the agitation of modern times inspires with anxious curiosity. But, by applying all the strength of my intelligence to understanding its motives, I saw the horizon of my astonishment, already so vast, widen still further. Leaving, little by little, I admit, the observation of the current era for that of previous periods, then of the entire past, I brought together these diverse fragments into an immense whole, and, led by the analogy , I turned, almost in spite of myself, to divination of the most distant future. It was no longer only the direct causes of our so-called reforming turmoils that it seemed desirable to me to know: I aspired to discover the higher reasons for this identity of social illnesses than the most imperfect knowledge human chronicles are enough to be noted in all the nations that ever were, that are, as, in all likelihood, in those that one day will be. I thought, moreover, that I saw, for such work, particular facilities in the present era. If, through its agitations, it encourages the practice of a sort of historical chemistry, it also facilitates the labors. The thick fog, the deep darkness which hid from us, since time immemorial, the beginnings of civilizations different from ours, is rising and dissolving today in the sun of science. A

wonderful purification of analytical methods, after having, under the hands of Niebuhr, revealed a Rome unknown to Livy, discovering and also explaining to us the truths mixed with the fabulous stories of Hellenic childhood. Towards another part of the world, the Germanic peoples, long unknown, show themselves to us as great, as majestic as the writers of the Late Empire had told us they were barbarians. Egypt opens its hypogeums, translates its hieroglyphs, confesses the age of its pyramids. Assyria reveals its palaces and their endless inscriptions, previously still vanished under their own rubble. The Iran of Zoroaster was unable to hide anything from the powerful investigations of Burnouf, and primitive India tells us, in the Vedas, facts very close to the day after creation. From all of these conquests, already so important in themselves, results still a fairer and broader understanding of Herodotus, Homer and especially of the first chapters of the Holy Book, this abyss of assertions of which we cannot never admire enough the richness and rectitude when we approach it with a mind sufficiently enlightened. So many unexpected or unhoped-for discoveries are undoubtedly not beyond the reach of any criticism. They are far from presenting, without gaps, the lists of dynasties, the regular sequence of reigns and facts. However, in the midst of their incomplete results, there are some admirable ones; for the work that concerns me, there are some more fruitful than the best followed chronological tables could be. What I find there with joy is the revelation of the customs, the customs, even the portraits, even the costumes of the disappeared nations. We now know the state of their arts. We see their entire life, physical and moral, public and private, and it has become possible for us to reconstruct, using the most authentic materials, what constitutes the personality of races and the main criterion of their value.

Faced with such an accumulation of brand new or newly understood riches, no one is any longer authorized to claim to explain the complicated play of social relationships, the reasons for national rises and declines with the sole help of abstract and purely hypothetical considerations that a skeptical philosophy can provide. Since positive facts now abound, they arise from

everywhere, rise up from all the sepulchres, and rise up under the hand of whoever wants to question them, it is no longer permissible to go, with the revolutionary theorists, amassing clouds to form fantastic men and give oneself the pleasure to artificially move chimeras in political circles that resemble them. Reality, too notorious, too pressing, prohibits such games, often impious, always harmful. To decide healthily on the characters of humanity, the tribunal of history has become the only competent one. He is, moreover, I agree, a severe arbiter, a very formidable judge to evoke in times as sad as this. Not that the past itself is immaculate. It contains everything, and, as such, we obtain the admission of many faults and we discover more than one shameful failure. The men of today would even have the right to make a trophy of some of the merits that he lacks in his presence. But if, to repel their accusations, he suddenly comes to evoke the grandiose shadows of heroic periods, what will they say? If he accuses them of having compromised religious faith, political loyalty, the cult of duty, what should we say? If he assures them that they are only capable of continuing the development of knowledge whose principles have been recognized and exposed by him; if he adds that ancient virtue has become an object of ridicule; that energy passed from man to steam; that poetry has died out, that its great interpreters no longer live; that what we call interests are reduced to the most petty considerations; what to allege? Nothing, except that all beautiful things, having fallen into silence, are not dead and are sleeping; that all ages have seen periods of transition, times when suffering struggles with life and from which the latter emerges, in the end, victorious and resplendent, and that, since the overly aged Chaldea was once replaced by Young and vigorous Persia, Greece decrepit by virile Rome and the bastardized domination of Augustulus by the kingdoms of the noble Teutonic princes, so the modern races will obtain their rejuvenation. This is what I myself hoped for a moment, a very short moment, and I would have liked to respond immediately to History to confuse its

accusations and his gloomy prognoses, if I had not been struck by this overwhelming consideration, that I was too hasty to put forward a proposition devoid of proof. I wanted to look for it, and so I was constantly drawn back, by my sympathy for the manifestations of living humanity, to delve further into the secrets of dead humanity.

It was then that, from induction to induction, I had to penetrate myself with this evidence, that the ethnic question dominates all the other problems of history, holds the key, and that the inequality of races whose competition forms a nation, is enough to explain the entire sequence of destinies of peoples. There is no one, moreover, who has not been struck by some presentiment of such a dazzling truth. Everyone has been able to observe that certain human groups, by attacking a country, once transformed, by a sudden action, both habits and life, and that, where, before their arrival, torpor reigned, they are shown to be adept at bringing forth an unknown activity. It is thus, to cite an example, that a new power was prepared for Great Britain by the AngloSaxon invasion, at the discretion of Providence which, by leading to this island some peoples governed by the sword of YOUR MAJESTY's illustrious ancestors, reserved, as an August Person one day remarked with depth, to return to the two branches of the same nation this same sovereign house, which draws its glorious rights from the distant sources of the most heroic origin. After having recognized that there are strong races and that there are weak ones, I endeavored to preferably observe the former, to disentangle their aptitudes, and above all to trace the chain of their genealogies. By following this method, I ended up convincing myself that everything great, noble, fertile on earth, in terms of human creations, science, art, civilization, brings back observer towards a single point, only comes from the same germ, only resulted from a single thought, belongs to only one family whose different branches have reigned in all civilized countries of the Universe. The exposition of this synthesis is found in this book, of which I have come to lay homage at the foot of YOUR MAJESTY'S throne. It was not for me, and I did not think of it, to leave the higher regions and

pure scientific discussion to descend into the terrain of contemporary polemic. I have not sought to clarify the future of tomorrow, nor even that of the years that will follow. The periods that I trace are ample and broad. I begin with the first peoples who were once, to reach those who are not yet. I only calculate by series of centuries. I do, in a word, moral geology. I rarely speak of the man, even more rarely of the citizen or the subject, often, always of the different ethnic fractions, because for me, on the peaks where I have placed myself, it is not a question of chance nationalities, nor even of the existence of States, but of races, societies and diverse civilizations, In daring to trace these considerations here, I feel emboldened, SIRE, by the protection that the vast and lofty spirit of YOUR MAJESTY grants to the efforts of the intelligence and by the more particular interest with which It honors the works of historical scholarship. I can never lose the memory of the precious teachings that I was given to gather from the mouth of YOUR MAJESTY, and I will dare to add that I only know how to admire more knowledge so brilliant, so solid, whose Sovereign of Hanover has the most varied harvests, or generous sentiment and noble aspirations which fertilize them and ensure his people such a prosperous reign. Full of unalterable gratitude for the kindnesses of YOUR MAJESTY, I ask Her to deign to welcome The expression of the deep respect with which I have the honor to be, Sire,

OF YOUR MAJESTY, The very humble and very obedient servant,

A. de GOBINEAU.

Foreword from the second edition

This book was published for the first time in 1853 (volume I and volume II) the last two volumes (volume III and volume IV) are from 1855. The current edition has not changed a single line, not that, in the meantime, considerable work has not resulted in much detailed progress. But none of the truths I have uttered have been shaken, and I have found it necessary to maintain the truth as I have found it. In the past, we only had very timid doubts about the human races. We vaguely felt that it was necessary to delve in this direction if we wanted to uncover the still unnoticed basis of history and we had a presentiment that in this order of notions so rough, under these mysteries so obscure, must be encountered at from certain depths the vast substructions on which the foundations, then the walls, were gradually raised, in short all the social developments of the very varied multitudes of which together compose the marquetry of our peoples. But we didn't see the way forward to conclude anything. Since the second half of the last century, we have reasoned on the general annals and we have claimed, however, to reduce all these phenomena whose series they present to fixed laws. This new way of classifying everything, of explaining everything, of praising, of condemning, by means of abstract formulas whose rigor we strove to demonstrate, naturally led us to suspect, beneath the emergence of the facts, a force of which we could not understand. had never before recognized nature. The prosperity or misfortune of a nation, its greatness and its decadence, had long been content to result from the virtues and vices evident on the special point under examination. An honest people should be

necessarily an illustrious people, and, conversely, a society which practiced too freely the active recruitment of lax consciences, mercilessly brought the ruin of Susa, of Athens, of Rome, just as a similar situation had brought the final punishment on the maligned cities of the Dead Sea. By turning such keys, one believed to open all the mysteries; but, in reality, everything remained closed. The virtues useful to large agglomerations must have a very particular character of collective selfishness which does not make them the same as what we call virtue among individuals. The Spartan bandit and the Roman usurer were public figures of rare effectiveness, although judging from a moral point of view, and Lysander and Cato were quite bad people; we had to agree on it after reflection and, consequently, if we took it into our heads to praise the virtue in one people and to denounce with indignation the vice in another, we found ourselves obliged to recognize and admit out loud that it was not It was not a question of merits and demerits of interest to the Christian conscience, but rather of certain aptitudes, of certain active powers of the soul and even of the body, determining or paralyzing the development of life in the nations, which led to wondering why one of these could do what the other could not, and thus one found himself induced to confess that it was a fact resulting from race. For some time we were content with this declaration to which we did not know how to give the necessary precision. It was an empty word, it was a phrase, and no era has ever enjoyed phrases and had the taste for them like that of the present. A sort of translucent obscurity which ordinarily emanates from unexplained words was projected here by physiological studies and was sufficient, or, at least, we wanted to be satisfied with it for a while longer. Besides, we were a little afraid of what was going to follow. We felt that if the intrinsic value of a people derives from its origin, it was necessary to restrict, perhaps eliminate everything that we call Equality and, moreover, a great or miserable people would therefore be neither to be praised nor to blame. It would be like the relative value of gold and copper. We recoiled from such confessions.

Was it necessary to admit, in these days of childish passion for equality, that such an undemocratic hierarchy existed among the sons of Adam? how many dogmas, both philosophical and religious, declared themselves ready to demand!

While we hesitated, we nevertheless walked; discoveries piled up and their voices were raised and demanded that we speak reason. Geography told what lay before its sight; the collections were full of new human types. Ancient history better studied, Asian secrets more revealed, American traditions made accessible in ways they had not been before, all proclaimed the importance of race. We had to decide to tackle the question as it is. At this time, a physiologist, Mr. Pritchard, appeared, a mediocre historian, an even more mediocre theologian, who, wanting above all to prove that all races were equal, maintained that it was wrong to be afraid and gave himself to fear. even. He set out not to know and tell the truth of things, but to reassure philanthropy. With this intention, he sewed together a certain number of isolated facts, observed more or less well and which required nothing better than to prove the innate aptitude of the Negro of Mozambique, and of the Malay of the Mariana Islands to become strong great people if the opportunity presented itself. Mr. Pritchard was nevertheless greatly to be esteemed by this alone that he really touched upon the difficulty. It was, it is true, on the small side, but it was nevertheless and we cannot be too grateful to him.

I then wrote the book of which I present the second edition here. Since it appeared, there have been many discussions about it. The principles were less fought than the applications and especially the conclusions. The supporters of unlimited progress were not in favor of it. The scholar Ewald expressed the opinion that it was an inspiration from extreme Catholics; the positivist school declared it dangerous. However, writers who are neither Catholic nor positivist, but who today have a great reputation, have introduced incognito, without admitting it, the principles and even entire parts into

their works and, in short, Fallmereyer was not wrong to say that they were used more often and more widely than we were willing to admit. One of the main ideas of this work is the great influence of ethnic mixtures, in other words of marriages between various races. This was the first time that this observation was made and that, by bringing out the results from a social point of view, the axiom was presented that the mixture obtained was worth, the human variety produced by this mixture was worth, and that the progress and the setbacks of societies are nothing other than the effects of this rapprochement. From this was derived the theory of selection which became so famous in the hands of Darwin and even more so of his students. This resulted, among others, in Buckle's system, and by the considerable difference that the opinions of this philosopher present with mine, we can measure the relative distance of the routes that two hostile thoughts starting from one can open up. common point. Buckle was interrupted in his work by death, but the democratic flavor of his sentiments assured him, in these times, a success which the rigor of his deductions does not justify any more than the solidity of his knowledge.

Darwin and Buckle thus created the main diversions of the stream which I opened. Many others simply gave as truths found by themselves what they copied from me, mixing in as best they could today's ideas of fashion. So I leave my book as I made it and I will change absolutely nothing. It is the presentation of a system, it is the expression of a truth which is as clear and as indubitable to me today as it was to me at the time when I professed it for the first time. Advances in historical knowledge have not changed my opinion in any way or to any extent. My beliefs of the past are those of today, which have tilted neither to the right nor to the left, but which have remained as they were from the first moment I knew them. The acquisitions that have occurred in the field of facts do not harm them. The details have multiplied, I am happy with that. They have not altered any of the findings acquired. I am satisfied that the testimonies

provided by experience have further demonstrated the reality of racial inequality. I admit that I might have been tempted to add my protest to so many others who speak out against Darwinism. Fortunately, I could not forget that my book is not a work of polemic. Its goal is to profess the truth and not to wage war on errors. I must therefore resist a bellicose temptation. This is why I will also refrain from arguing against this so-called deepening of erudition which, under the name of prehistoric studies, has nevertheless made quite a resounding noise in the world. Dispensing with knowing and especially examining the most ancient documents of all peoples is like a rule, always easy, for this so-called type of work. It is a way of assuming oneself free from all information; we thus declare the slate blank, and we find ourselves perfectly authorized to clutter it as we choose with such hypotheses which may be suitable and which we can put wherever we suppose the void. So, we arrange everything as we wish and, by means of a special phraseology, by calculating the times, by ages of stone, bronze, iron, substituting the geological vagueness for approximations of chronology which would not be surprising enough. , we manage to put the mind in a state of acute overexcitement, which allows us to imagine everything and find everything admissible. Then, in the midst of the most fantastical inconsistencies, we suddenly open, in every corner of the terrestrial globe, holes, cellars, caverns of the wildest appearance, and from them we bring out terrible piles of skulls and fossil tibias, edible detritus, oyster shells and bones of every possible and impossible animal, cut, engraved, scratched, polished and unpolished, axes, arrowheads, nameless tools ; and the whole collapsing on the troubled imaginations, with resounding fanfares of unparalleled pedantry, bewilders them in such an irresistible manner that the adepts can without scruple, with Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Evans, heroes of these harsh labors , assign to all these beautiful things an antiquity, sometimes of a hundred thousand years, sometimes another of five hundred thousand, and these are differences of opinion whose reason cannot be explained in the least.

We must know how to respect prehistoric congresses and their amusements. The taste for it will pass when such excesses have been pushed a little further, and when repulsed minds simply reduce all these follies to nothing. From this essential reform we will finally remove the flint axes and obsidian knives from the hands of Professor Haeckel's anthropoids, people who make such bad use of them. These daydreams, I say, will pass by themselves. We can already see them passing by. Ethnology needs to shed its excesses before finding itself wise. There was a time, and it is not long ago, when the prejudices against consanguineous marriages had become such that there was talk of giving them the consecration of the law. Marrying a first cousin was tantamount to striking all one's children in advance with deafness and other hereditary conditions. No one seemed to reflect that the generations which preceded ours, very addicted to consanguineous marriages, knew nothing of the morbid consequences which we claim to attribute to them; that the Seleucids, the Ptolemies, the Incas, husbands of their sisters, were, one and the other, of very good health and of very acceptable intelligence, not to mention their beauty, generally out of line. Facts so conclusive, so irrefutable, could not convince anyone, because they pretended to use, willy-nilly, the fantasies of a liberalism which, not liking chapter exclusivity, was contrary to all purity of blood, and we wanted as much as possible to celebrate the union of the Negro and the white from which the mulatto comes. What had to be demonstrated as dangerous and unacceptable was a race which only united and perpetuated itself with itself. When we had been sufficiently unreasonable, the completely conclusive experiments of Doctor Broca rejected forever a paradox that phantasmagorias of the same kind will join when their end has arrived.

Once again, I leave these pages as I wrote them at the time when the doctrine they contain was leaving my mind, as a bird puts its head out of the nest and seeks its way in the space where it n There are no limits. My theory was what it was, with its weaknesses and its strength, its accuracy and its share of errors, similar to all the divinations of man. It has taken off, and it continues to do so. I

I will neither try to shorten nor lengthen its wings, nor even less to correct its flight. Who would prove to me that today I would direct it better and above all that I would reach higher in the region of truth? What I thought was correct, I still think so and therefore have no reason to change anything. This book is also the basis of everything I have done and will do subsequently. I kind of started it from my childhood. It is the expression of the instincts brought by me when I was born. I have been eager, from the first day I reflected, and I reflected early, to realize my own nature, because I was strongly struck by this maxim:“ Know thyself», I did not consider that I could know myself, without knowing what was the environment in which I came to live and which, in part, attracted me to it by the most passionate and tender sympathy, in part disgusted me and filled me with hatred, contempt and horror. I therefore did my best to penetrate as best I could into the analysis of what is called, in a somewhat more general way than necessary, the human species, and it is this study which learned what I am saying here. Little by little there emerged, for me, from this theory, the more detailed and more minute observation of the laws that I had posed. I compared the races to each other. I chose one from the best I saw and wrotethe History of the Persians,to show by the example of the Aryan nation, the most isolated of all its fellows, how powerless the differences of climate, neighborhood and the circumstances of the times are to change or curb the genius of a race. It was after having put an end to this second part of my task that I was able to tackle the difficulties of the third, the cause and purpose of my interest. I wrote the history of a family, of its faculties received from either origin, of his aptitudes, of his faults, of the fluctuations which acted on his destinies, and I wrote the story of Ottar Jarl, Norwegian pirate, and of his descendants, This is how after having removed the green, thorny, thick shell of the nut, then the woody bark, I exposed the core. The path I followed does not lead to one of these steep promontories where the earth stops, but rather to one of these narrow meadows, where the road remaining

open, the individual inherits the supreme results of the race, his instincts good or bad, strong or weak, and develops freely in his personality. Today we like large units, vast clusters where isolated entities disappear. This is what we suppose to be the product of science. In each era, science would like to devour a truth that bothers it. You shouldn't be frightened by it. Jupiter always escapes the voracity of Saturn, and the husband and son of Rhee, gods, both, reign, without being able to destroy each other, over the majesty of the universe.

First book Preliminary considerations definitions, research and exposition of the laws natural resources that govern the social world.

First chapter.

Mortality civilizations and societies results from a general and common cause.

The fall of civilizations is the most striking and at the same time the most obscure of all phenomena in history. By frightening the mind, this misfortune reserves something so mysterious and so grandiose that the thinker never tires of considering it, of studying it, of turning around its secret. Without a doubt, the birth and formation of peoples offer very remarkable observations for examination: the successive development of societies, their successes, their conquests, their triumphs, are enough to strike the imagination very vividly and engage it;

but all these facts, however great they may be supposed, seem to be easily explained; we accept them as the simple consequences of man's intellectual gifts; once these gifts are recognized, we are not surprised by their results; they explain, by the sole fact of their existence, the great things of which they are the source. So, no difficulties, no hesitations on this side. But when, after a time of strength and glory, we realize that all human societies have their decline and their fall, all, I say, and not this or that; when we notice with what terrible taciturnity the globe shows us, scattered on its surface, the debris of civilizations which preceded ours, and not only of known civilizations, but also of several others of which we only know the names, and of a few -some which, lying in stone skeletons at the bottom of almost contemporary forests of the world7, have not even transmitted to us this shadow of memory; when the mind, looking back on our modern States, realizes their extreme youth, admits that they began yesterday and that some of them are already obsolete: then we recognize, not without a certain philosophical terror, with how rigorously the words of the prophets on the instability of things apply to civilizations as well as to peoples, to peoples as well as to States, to States as well as to individuals, and we are forced to note that any agglomeration human nature, even protected by the most ingenious complication of social bonds, contracts, on the very day it is formed, and hidden among the elements of its life, the principle of an inevitable death.

But what is this principle? Is it uniform and the result it brings, and do all civilizations perish from an identical cause? To the first aspect, we are tempted to respond negatively; because we have seen many empires fall, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, in conflicts of circumstances which were not similar. However, by digging deeper than the bark, we soon find, in this very necessity to finish which imperatively weighs on all societies without exception, the irrefutable existence, although latent, of a general cause, and, hence of this certain principle of natural death independent of all cases of violent death, we realize that all civilizations, after having lasted for a while, show intimate, difficult troubles upon observation.

to be defined, but no less difficult to deny, which bear an analogous character in all places and times; finally, by noting an obvious difference between the ruin of States and that of civilizations, by seeing the same type of culture sometimes persisting in a country under foreign domination, braving the most calamitous events, and sometimes, on the contrary, in the presence of mediocre misfortunes, disappear or transform, we stop more and more at this idea, that the principle of death, visible at the bottom of all societies, is not only adherent to their life, but also uniform and the same for all . I have devoted the studies whose results I give here to the examination of this great fact.

It is we moderns, we the first, who know that any agglomeration of men and the mode of intellectual culture which results from it must perish. Previous eras did not believe this. In Asian antiquity, the religious spirit, moved as if by an abnormal apparition by the spectacle of great political catastrophes, attributed them to the heavenly anger striking down the sins of a nation; This was, it was thought, a punishment suitable to bring to repentance those guilty who were still unpunished. The Jews, misinterpreting the meaning of the Promise, assumed that their empire would never end. Rome, even as it began to sink, did not doubt the eternity of its8. But, having seen more, current generations also know much more; and, just as no one doubts the universally mortal condition of men, because all the men who preceded us are dead, so we firmly believe that peoples have numbered days, although more numerous; for none of those who reigned before us continued their career alongside us. There is therefore, for the clarification of our subject, little to be taken from ancient wisdom, apart from a single fundamental remark, the recognition of the divine finger in the conduct of this world, a solid and primary basis of which we must not part with it, accepting it with all the extent assigned to it by the Catholic Church. It is incontestable that no civilization dies without God's will, and to apply to the mortal condition of all societies the sacred axiom which the ancient sanctuaries used to explain some remarkable destructions,

considered by them, but wrongly, as isolated facts, it is to proclaim a truth of the first order, which must dominate the search for earthly truths. Adding that all societies perish because they are guilty, I easily agree; it is still only establishing a fair parallelism with the condition of individuals, by finding in sin the germ of destruction. In this respect, nothing prevents, even reasoning according to the simple lights of the mind, from societies following the fate of the beings who compose them, and, guilty by them, ending like them; but, these two truths admitted and weighed, I repeat, ancient wisdom offers us no help. It tells us nothing precise about the paths that the divine will follows to bring about the death of peoples; on the contrary, it is inclined to consider these paths as essentially mysterious. Seized with pious terror at the sight of the ruins, she admits too easily that states which collapse cannot be thus struck, shaken, swallowed up, except with the help of prodigies. That a miraculous fact occurred in certain occurrences, as the holy books affirm, I submit without difficulty to believe it; but where the sacred testimonies are not pronounced in a formal manner, and this is the majority of cases, we can legitimately consider the opinion of ancient times as incomplete, insufficiently enlightened, and recognize, unlike the side where it leans, that, since celestial severity is exercised on our societies constantly and as a result of a decision prior to the establishment of the first people, the judgment is executed in a planned, normal manner and by virtue of prescriptions definitively inscribed in the code of the universe, alongside the other laws which, in their imperturbable regularity, govern animate nature as well as the inorganic world. If we are right to reproach the sacred philosophy of the first times for having, in its lack of experience, limited itself, in explaining a mystery, to the exposition of an indubitable theological truth, but which it -itself is another mystery, and for not having pushed his research to the point of observing the facts falling under the domain of reason, at least we cannot accuse him of having misunderstood the magnitude of the problem by looking for solutions at ground level. To put it bluntly, she was content to nobly ask the question, and, if she did not

resolved or even clarified, at least she did not make it a theme of errors. This is why it places itself well above the work provided by rationalist schools. The fine minds of Athens and Rome established this doctrine accepted until our days, that States, peoples, civilizations perish only through luxury, effeminacy, bad administration, corruption of morals, fanaticism . All these causes, whether combined or isolated, were declared responsible for the end of societies; and the necessary consequence of this opinion is that where they do not act, no dissolving force must exist either. The final result is to establish that societies only die violent deaths, happier in this way than men, and that, unless we avoid the causes of destruction that I have just listed, we can perfectly imagine a nationality as enduring as the globe itself. In inventing this thesis, the ancients had no idea of its significance; they saw in it nothing other than a means of supporting moral doctrine, the only goal, as we know, of their historical system. In the accounts of events, they were so concerned to note above all the happy influence of virtue, the deplorable effects of crime and vice, that everything that went beyond this moral framework was of little importance to them, most often remained unnoticed. or neglected. This method was false, petty, and too often even worked against the intention of its authors, because it applied, according to the needs of the moment, the name of virtue and vice in an arbitrary manner; but, to a certain point, the severe and laudable sentiment which formed its basis serves as an excuse, and, if the genius of Plutarch and that of Tacitus only derived from this theory novels and libels, they are sublime novels and generous libels. I would like to be able to show myself as lenient for the application made of it by the authors of the eighteenth century; but there is too great a difference between their masters and them: the former were devoted to the point of exaggeration to the maintenance of the social establishment; the latter were eager for new things and hell-bent on destroying: some strove to make their lies bear fruit nobly; the others drew terrible consequences from it, knowing how to find weapons against all the principles of government, to which in turn came

apply the reproach of tyranny, fanaticism, corruption. To prevent societies from perishing, the Voltairian way consists of destroying religion, law, industry, commerce, under the pretext that religion is fanaticism; law, despotism; industry and commerce, luxury and corruption. Certainly, the reign of so much abuse is bad government. My goal is not in the least to start a controversy; I only wanted to point out how the idea common to Thucydides and Abbot Raynal produces divergent results; to be conservative in one, cynically aggressive in another, is a mistake everywhere. It is not true that the causes behind the falls of nations are necessarily guilty, and, while readily recognizing that they can be seen at the moment of the death of a people, I deny that they have enough force, that they are endowed with an energy surely destructive enough to singlehandedly cause the irremediable catastrophe.

First book

Chapter II

Fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and irreligion do not necessarily lead

the fall of societies.

It is necessary to first clearly explain what I mean by a company. It is not the more or less extended circle in which a distinct sovereignty is exercised, in one form or another. The republic of Athens is not a society, any more than the kingdom of Magadha, the empire of Pontus or the caliphate of Egypt at the time of the Fatimites. These are fragments of society which undoubtedly transform, come together or subdivide under the pressure of the natural laws that I am looking for, but whose existence or death does not constitute the existence or death of a society. Their formation is only a phenomenon that is most often transitory, and which has only a limited or even indirect action on the civilization in which it emerges. What I mean by society is a meeting, more or less perfect from the political point of view, but complete from the social point of view, of men living under the direction of similar ideas and with identical instincts. Thus Egypt, Assyria, Greece, India, China, were or still are the theater where distinct societies unfolded their destinies, regardless of the disturbances that occurred in their political constitutions. As I will only speak of fractions when my reasoning can be applied to the whole, I will use the wordnationor that ofpeople in the general or restricted sense, without any amphibology being able to result from it. This definition made, I return to the examination of the question, and I will demonstrate that fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and irreligion are not instruments of certain death for people.

All these facts were encountered, sometimes separately, sometimes simultaneously and with very great intensity, among nations which were only better off, or which, at least, were not worse off. It was for the greater glory of fanaticism that the American empire of the Aztecs seemed to exist above all. I can't imagine anything more fanatical

that a social state which, like this, rested on a religious basis, incessantly watered with the blood of human butchery9. We recently denied10, and perhaps with some appearance of reason, that the ancient European peoples never practiced religious murder on victims considered innocent, prisoners of war or shipwrecked people not being included in this category; but, for the Mexicans, all victims were good to them. With that ferocity which a modern physiologist recognizes as the general character of the races of the new world11, they mercilessly massacred fellow citizens on their altars, and without hesitation as without choice, which did not prevent them from being a powerful, industrious, rich people, and who would certainly have lasted for a long time, reigned, slaughtered, if the genius of Fernand Cortez and the courage of his companions had not come to put an end to the monstrous existence of such an empire. Fanaticism therefore does not cause the death of States.

Luxury and effeminacy are no more proven culprits; their effects are felt in the upper classes, and I doubt that among the Greeks, among the Persians, among the Romans, effeminacy and luxury, to have other forms, had more intensity than we give them. we see today in France, in Germany, in England, in Russia, especially in Russia and among our neighbors across the Channel; and precisely these last two countries seem endowed with a very particular vitality among the States of modern Europe. And in the Middle Ages, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans, to accumulate in their stores, display in their Palaces, carry in their ships, on all the seas, the treasures of the whole world, were certainly not weaker. Sluggishness and luxury are therefore not necessary causes of weakening and death for a people.

Corruption of morals itself, the most horrible of scourges, does not inevitably play a destructive role. For this to happen, the prosperity of a nation, its power and its preponderance would have to be developed as a direct result of the purity of its customs; and that is what is not. We have generally returned from the bizarre fantasy which attributed so many virtues to the first Romans12. We see nothing very edifying, and we are right, in these patricians of the ancient rock who treated their women as slaves, their children as

cattle, and their creditors like wild beasts; and, if there remained defenders of such a bad cause who wanted to argue about an alleged variation in the moral level at various times, it would not be very difficult to reject the argument and demonstrate its lack of solidity. In all times, the abuse of force has excited equal indignation; if the kings were not expelled for the rape of Lucretia, if the tribunate was not established for the attack on Appius, at least the deeper causes of these two great revolutions, by arming themselves with such pretexts, testified sufficiently contemporary provisions of public morality. No, it is not in greater virtue that we must look for the cause of the early vigor among all peoples; since the beginning of historical eras, there has been no human aggregation, even as small as one wishes to imagine it, in which all reprehensible tendencies have not been betrayed; and yet, bending under this odious baggage, States nevertheless maintain themselves, and often, on the contrary, seem indebted for their splendor to abominable institutions. The Spartans only lived and gained admiration through the effects of bandit legislation. Did the Phoenicians owe their downfall to the corruption which was gnawing at them and which they were sowing everywhere? No ; on the contrary, it is this corruption which was the main instrument of their power and their glory; since the day when, on the shores of the Greek islands13, they went about, rogue traffickers, scoundrel hosts, seducing women to become merchandise, and stealing here and there the commodities they were running to sell, their reputation was, without doubt, well and justly discreditable; they have nonetheless grown and held a rank in the annals of the world to which their rapacity and bad faith have in no way contributed to lowering them. Far from discovering moral superiority in young societies, I have no doubt that nations as they age, and consequently as they approach their fall, present a much more satisfactory state in the eyes of the censor. Customs are softening, people are getting along more closely, everyone is finding life more easily, reciprocal rights have had time to be better defined and understood; so much so that the theories on what is just and what is unjust have gradually acquired a greater degree of delicacy. It would be difficult to demonstrate that at the time when the Greeks overthrew the empire of Darius, as at the time when the Goths

entered Rome, there were not many more honest people in Athens, Babylon and the great imperial city than in the glorious days of Harmodius, Cyrus the Great and Publicola. Without going back to those distant times, we can judge for ourselves. One of the points on the globe where the century is most advanced, and presents a more perfect contrast with the naive age, is certainly Paris; and yet a large number of religious and learned people admit that in no place, in no time, would one find so many effective virtues, solid piety, gentle regularity, fineness of conscience, as are found today. in this great city. The ideal that we have of good is just as high as it could be in the soul of the most illustrious models of the seventeenth century, and even then it has stripped away this bitterness, this sort of stiffness and savagery, dare I say this pedantry, from which he was not always free then; so that, to counterbalance the terrible deviations of the modern spirit, we find, in the very places where this spirit has established the principal seat of its power, striking contrasts, of which past centuries have not had, to as high a degree as we do, the consoling spectacle. I do not even see that great men are lacking in periods of corruption and decadence, I say the great men best characterized by energy of character and strong virtues. If I search in the catalog of Roman emperors, most of them superior to their subjects in merit as well as in rank, I find names like those of Trajan, Antoninus the Pious, Septimius Severus, Jovian; and below the throne, in the crowd itself, I admire all the great doctors, the great martyrs, the apostles of the primitive Church, without counting the virtuous pagans. I add that active, firm, valiant spirits filled the camps and municipalities in such a way as to make one doubt whether at the time of Cincinnatus, and proportionally speaking, Rome had possessed so many eminent men in all kinds of activity. The examination of the facts is completely conclusive. Thus, people of virtue, people of energy, people of talent, far from being lacking in periods of decadence and old age of societies, are found there with more abundance perhaps than within the empires which

have just been born, and, moreover, the common level of morality is higher there. It is therefore not generally true to claim that, in states which fall, the corruption of morals is more intense than in those which are born; that this same corruption destroys people is also subject to dispute, since certain States, far from dying from their perversity, have lived from it; but we can go even further, and demonstrate that moral degradation is not necessarily fatal, because, among the diseases which affect societies, it has the advantage of being able to be cured, and sometimes quite quickly. Indeed, the particular customs of a people present very frequent undulations following the periods that the history of this people goes through. To address only us, French, let us note that the Gallo-Romans of the fifth and sixth centuries, a submissive race, were certainly better than their heroic victors, from all points of view that morality embraces; they were not even always, individually taken, their inferiors in courage and military virtue14. It would seem that, in the ages which followed, when the two races had begun to mingle, everything got worse, and that, towards the eighth and ninth centuries, the national territory did not present a picture from which we can draw much. vanity. But in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the spectacle had been totally transformed, and while society had succeeded in amalgamating its most discordant elements, the state of morals was generally worthy of respect; there were, in the notions of that time, no such ambiguities which distance those who wish to achieve it from good. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were deplorable times of perversity and conflict; brigandage predominated; it was in a thousand ways, and in the broadest and most rigorous sense of the word, a period of decadence; one would have said that in the face of the debaucheries, the massacres, the tyrannies, the complete weakening of all honest feeling in the nobles who stole from their villains, in the bourgeois who sold the country to England, in a clergy without regularity , in all orders finally, the entire society was going to collapse, and under its ruins swallow up and hide so much shame. Society did not collapse, it continued to live, it invented, it fought, it came out of trouble. The sixteenth century, despite its bloody follies, softened consequences of the preceding age, was much more honorable than its predecessor; And,

for humanity, Saint-Barthélemy's Day is not ignominious like the Armagnac massacre. Finally, from this half-corrected time, French society passed to the bright and pure lights of the age of Fénelon, Bossuet and Montausier. Thus, until Louis XIV, our history presents rapid successions from good to evil, and the vitality specific to the nation remains outside the state of its morals. I traced the biggest differences as I ran; those of detail abound; it would take many pages to list them; but, speaking only of what we have almost seen with our eyes, don't we know that every ten years, since 1787, the level of morality has varied enormously? I conclude that, the corruption of morals being, ultimately, a transitory and floating fact, which sometimes gets worse and sometimes improves, we cannot consider it as a necessary and determining cause of ruin for States.

Here I find myself led to examine an argument of a contemporary nature which it was not part of the ideas of the eighteenth century to put forward; but, as it ties in wonderfully with the decadence of morals, I don't think I can talk more about it. Many people are inclined to think that the end of a society is imminent when religious ideas tend to weaken and disappear. We observe a sort of correlation in Athens and Rome between the public profession of the doctrines of Zeno and Epicurus, the abandonment of national cults which followed, it is said, and the end of the two republics. We also neglect to notice that these two examples are almost the only ones that we can cite of such synchronism; that the Persian Empire was very devoted to the cult of the Magi when it fell; that Tyre, Carthage, Judea, the Aztec and Peruvian monarchies were struck dead by kissing their altars with great love, and that consequently it is impossible to claim that all the peoples who see their nationality destroyed expiate by this made an abandonment of the worship of their fathers. But that is not all: in the only two examples that seem to me justified in invoking, the fact that we note has much more appearance than substance, and I completely deny that in Rome as in Athens, the ancient cult was never abandoned, until the day it was replaced in all consciences by the complete triumph of Christianity; in other words, I believe that in matters of religious faith, there has never been among any people in the world a true solution of

continuity; that, when the form or the intimate nature of the belief changed, the Gallic Teutates seized the Roman Jupiter, and the Jupiter Christianity, absolutely as, in law, the dead seizes the living, without transition of incredulity; and therefore, if there has never been a nation of which one has the right to say that it was without faith, it is ill-founded to put forward that the lack of faith destroys States. I see clearly what the reasoning is based on. It will be said that it is a notorious fact that a little before the time of Pericles, in Athens, and among the Romans around the time of the Scipios, the custom spread among the upper classes of reasoning on religious matters. first, then to doubt it, then decidedly to no longer believe in it and to take pride in atheism. Little by little, this habit gained ground, and there remained, it is added, no one with any pretensions to sound judgment who did not defy the omens of looking at each other without laughing.

This opinion, while somewhat true, also mixes a lot of falsehood. That Aspasia, at the end of her little suppers, and Laelius, among his friends, took pride in flouting the sacred dogmas of their country, there is, to maintain, nothing but very correct; but nevertheless, at these two periods, the most brilliant in the history of Greece and Rome, we would not have allowed ourselves to profess such ideas too publicly. The imprudence of his mistress almost cost Pericles himself dearly; we remember the tears he shed in court, and which, alone, would not have succeeded in absolving the beautiful, unbelieving woman. We have not forgotten either the official language of the poets of the time, and like Aristophanes with Sophocles, after Aeschylus, established himself as the merciless avenger of the outraged divinities. This is because the entire nation believed in its gods, regarded Socrates as a guilty innovator, and wanted to see Anaxagoras judged and condemned. But later?... Did philosophical and impious theories later succeed in penetrating the popular masses? Never, in any time, in any day, did they succeed. Skepticism remained a habit of elegant people, and did not extend beyond their sphere. We will object that it is quite useless to talk about what the petty bourgeoisie, the village populations, the slaves thought, all without influence in the conduct of the State, and whose ideas had no effect on the policy. The proof they had is that,

until the last sigh of paganism, it was necessary to preserve their temples and their chapels; their hierophants had to be paid; it was necessary that the most eminent men, the most enlightened, the most firm in religious negation, not only publicly honored themselves by wearing the priestly robe, but themselves, accustomed to turning the leaves of the book of Lucretius, filled ,manu diurna, manu nocturna, the most repugnant tasks of worship, and not only performed them on ceremonial days, but also employed their rare leisure time, leisure time laboriously fought over in the most terrible games of politics, in writing aruspicine treatises. I'm talking here about the great Jules15. What! all the emperors after him were and must have been sovereign pontiffs, Constantine again; and, while he had much stronger reasons than all his predecessors to reject a charge so odious to his honor as a Christian prince, he had to, constrained by public opinion, obviously very powerful, although on the eve of his When it died out, it still had to reckon with the ancient national religion. So, it was not the faith of the petty bourgeoisie, of the village populations, of the slaves, which was little, it was the opinion of enlightened people. The latter may have rebelled, in the name of reason and common sense, against the absurdities of paganism; the popular masses did not want, could not, renounce a belief before they had been given another, giving there a great demonstration of this truth, that it is the positive and not the negative which is used in the affairs of this world; and the pressure of this general feeling was so strong that in the third century there was, in the upper classes, a religious reaction, a solid, serious reaction, which lasted until the definitive passage of the world into the arms of the Church; so that the reign of philosophism would have reached its peak under the Antonines, and began its decline shortly after their death. But this is not the place to debate this question, which is also interesting for the history of ideas; It is enough for me to establish that the renovation gained more and more, and to bring out the most apparent cause.

The older the Roman world became, the more considerable the role of armies became. From the emperor, who inevitably emerged from the ranks of the militia, to the last officer of his praetorium, to the slimmest district governor, all the officials had begun by rotating under the centurion's vine. So everyone came out of these masses

popular people whose indomitable piety I have already noted, and, upon arriving at the splendors of a high rank, found to displease them, shock them, hurt them, the ancient splendor of the municipal classes, of these city senators, who readily regarded them as upstarts, and would have mocked them wholeheartedly, had it not been for their fear. There was thus hostility between the real masters of the State and the formerly superior families. The leaders of the army were believers and fanatics, witness Maximin, Galerius, a hundred others; senators and decurions still delighted in skeptical literature; but as we lived, ultimately, at court, and therefore among the military, we were forced to adopt language and official opinions which were not dangerous. Little by little, everything became devout in the empire, and it was out of devotion that the philosophers themselves, led by Évhémère, began to invent systems to reconcile rationalist theories with the cult of the State, a method of which the Emperor Julian was the most powerful Corypheus. There is no reason to praise much this revival of pagan piety, since it caused most of the persecutions which befell our martyrs. The populations, offended in their worship by the atheist sects, had waited as long as the upper classes had dominated them; but, as soon as imperial democracy had reduced these same classes to the most humble role, the people below wanted to take revenge on them, and, choosing the wrong victims, slaughtered the Christians, whom they called impious and took for philosophers. What a difference between the eras! The truly skeptical pagan is this King Agrippa who, out of curiosity, wants to hear Saint Paul 16. He listens to him, discusses with him, considers him crazy, but does not think of punishing him for thinking differently than he does himself. It is the historian Tacitus, full of contempt for the new religionists, but blaming Nero for his cruelties towards them; Agrippa and Tacitus were unbelievers. Diocletian was a politician driven by the clamor of the governed; Decius and Aurelian were fanatics like their people.

And how much difficulty was still felt, when the Roman government had definitively embraced the cause of Christianity, in leading the populations into the fold of the faith! In Greece, terrible resistance broke out, both in the pulpits of schools and in towns and villages, and everywhere the bishops experienced so much difficulty in triumphing over the small topical deities,

that, on many points, victory was less the work of conversion and persuasion than of skill, patience and time. The genius of apostolic men, reduced to using pious frauds, substituted saints, martyrs and virgins for the deities of woods, meadows, fountains. So the tributes continued, for some time misdirected, and finally found the right way. What did I say ? Is it really certain? Is it proven that, in some parts of France itself, there is no such parish where some superstitions, as tenacious as they are bizarre, do not still worry the concern of the priests? In Catholic Brittany, in the last century, a bishop fought against populations stubborn in the worship of a stone idol. In vain the crude simulacrum was thrown into the water, its stubborn worshipers knew how to remove it, and it required the intervention of a company of infantry to tear it to pieces. This is what the longevity of paganism was and is. I conclude that it is ill-founded to maintain that Rome and Athens found themselves without religion for a single day. Since it has never happened, neither in ancient nor in modern times, that a nation abandoned its religion before being well and duly provided with another, it is impossible to claim that the ruin of the peoples is the consequence of their irreligion. After having refused a necessarily destructive power to fanaticism, luxury, corruption of morals, and political reality to irreligion, it remains for me to deal with the influence of bad government; This subject is well worth opening a separate chapter to it.

First book

Chapter III

The relative merit of governments has no influence on the longevity of people.

I understand what difficulty I am raising. To even dare to approach it will seem to many readers a kind of paradox. We are convinced, and we do very well to be, that good laws, good administration, have a direct and powerful influence on the health of a nation; but we are so strong that we attribute to these laws, to this administration, the very fact of the duration of a social aggregation, and this is where we are wrong.

We would undoubtedly be right if people could only live in a state of well-being; but we know well that they persist for a long time, just like the individual, carrying within them disorganizing affections, the ravages of which often break out forcefully outside. If nations were always to die from their diseases, there are none who would survive the first years of training; because it is precisely then that we can find in them the worst administration, the worst laws and the most poorly observed; but they have precisely this point of dissimilarity with the human organism, that, while the latter fears, especially in childhood, a series of scourges to the attack of which we know in advance that it would not resist, society does not recognize such evils, and superabundant proof is provided by history, that it continually escapes the most formidable, the longest, the most devastating invasions of political suffering, including ill-conceived laws and oppressive or negligent administration are the extremes17.

Let us first try to clarify what bad government is.

The varieties of this evil appear quite numerous; it would even be impossible to count them all; they multiply infinitely according to the constitution of the people, the places, the times. However, by grouping them under four main categories, few varieties will escape. A government is bad when it is imposed by foreign influence. Athens experienced this government under the Thirty Tyrants; she got rid of it, and the national spirit, far from dying in her country in the course of this oppression, only became more tempered by it.

A government is bad when pure and simple conquest is its basis. France, in the fourteenth century, almost entirely suffered the yoke of England. She emerged stronger and brighter. China was covered and taken by the Mongol hordes; she ended up rejecting them beyond her limits, after subjecting them to a singular level of irritation. Since that time, it has fallen under another yoke; but, although the Manchus already have a reign of more than centuries, they are on the verge of experiencing the same fate as the Mongols, after having gone through a similar weakening preparation. A government is especially bad when the principle from which it emerged, allowing itself to be vitiated, ceases to be healthy and vigorous as it was initially. This was the fate of the Spanish monarchy. Founded on the military spirit and communal freedom, it began to decline, towards the end of the reign of Philip II, through the forgetting of its origins. It is impossible to imagine a country where good maxims had fallen more into oblivion, where power seemed weaker and more discredited, where the religious organization itself gave more room for criticism. Agriculture and industry, hit like everything else, were almost buried in the national slump. Is Spain dead? No. This country, of which many despaired, gave Europe the glorious example of obstinate resistance to the fortune of our weapons, and it is perhaps that of all the modern States whose nationality is showing itself at this moment the most long-lived.

A government is still very bad when, by the nature of its institutions, it authorizes antagonism, either between the supreme power and the mass of the nation, or between the different classes. Thus we saw, in the Middle Ages, kings of England and France struggling with their great vassals, peasants struggling with their lords; thus, in Germany, the first effects of freedom of thought brought the civil wars of the Hussites, the Anabaptists and many other sectarians; and, at a slightly more distant time, Italy suffered so much from the sharing of an authority torn between the emperor, the pope, the nobles and the communes, that the masses, not knowing who to obey, often ended up no longer obey anyone. Is Italian society dead then? No. Its civilization was never more brilliant, its industry more productive, its influence abroad more uncontested.

And I would like to believe that sometimes, in the midst of these storms, a wise and regular power, similar to a ray of sunshine, emerged for a time for the greater good of peoples; but it was a short fortune, and just as the opposite situation did not give death, the exception, no more, did not give life. To achieve such a result, it was essential that the prosperous periods were frequent and of fairly long duration. And if judicious reigns were then sparse, it was the same at all times. Even for the best, what disputes and what shadows to the happiest pictures! Do all authors equally regard the time of King William of Orange as an era of prosperity for England? Do they all admire Louis XIV, the Great, without any reservation? On the contrary. There is no shortage of detractors, and the reproaches know where to go; However, it is, more or less, what our neighbors and we have, either the best ordered or the most fruitful, in the past. Good governments are distributed in such a parsimonious manner over the course of time, and, when they occur, are still so questionable; this science of politics, the highest, the most thorny of all, is so disproportionate to the weakness of man that we cannot claim, in good faith, that, because of being poorly conducted, people perish. Thanks to heaven, they have the means to get used to this evil early, which, even in its greatest intensity, is preferable, in a thousand ways, to anarchy; and It is a proven fact, and that the slightest study of history will suffice to demonstrate, that the government,

however bad it may be, in whose hands a people expires, it is often better than some of the administrations which preceded it.

First book

Chapter IV

Of what is meant by the word degeneration; of the mixture of ethnic principles, and how societies form and break down.

As long as the spirit of the preceding pages has been understood, one will not have concluded that I gave no importance to the illnesses of the social body, and that bad government, fanaticism, irreligion, did not constitute, in my opinion, eyes, only accidents without significance. My thoughts are certainly quite different. I recognize, with general opinion, that there is good reason to lament when society suffers from the development of these sad scourges, and that all the care, all the trouble, all the efforts that can be applied to it bring remedy, cannot be lost; what I only affirm is that if these unfortunate elements of disorganization are not based on a more vigorous destructive principle, if they are not the consequences of a more terrible hidden evil, we can remain assured that their blows will not be fatal, and that after

a more or less long period of suffering, society will emerge from their nets perhaps rejuvenated, perhaps stronger. The alleged examples seem conclusive to me; we could increase their number to infinity; and it is undoubtedly for this reason that common sentiment ended up feeling the instinct for truth. He saw that ultimately secondary scourges should not be given disproportionate importance, and that it would be appropriate to look elsewhere and more deeply for the reasons for existing or dying which dominate peoples. Independently of the circumstances of well-being or discomfort, we began to consider the constitution of societies in itself, and we showed ourselves willing to admit that no external cause had a mortal hold on it, as long as a destructive principle born of itself and in its bosom, inherent, attached to its bowels, was not powerfully developed, and that on the contrary, as soon as this destructive fact existed, the people, among whom it had to be noted, could not fail to die, even if it were the best governed of peoples, absolutely like an exhausted horse falling down on a level road. By taking the question from this point of view, we were taking a big step, it must be recognized, and we were placing ourselves on ground, in any case, much more philosophical than the first. In fact, Bichat did not seek to discover the great mystery of existence by studying the outside; he asked everything within the human subject. By doing the same, we focused on the only true means of arriving at discoveries. Unfortunately this good thought, being only the result of instinct, did not push his logic very far, and we saw it break at the first difficulty. People exclaimed: Yes, really, it is in the very heart of a social body that the cause of its dissolution exists; but what is this cause? Theredegeneration,was he replied; nations die when they are composed of elementsdegenerates. The answer was very good, etymologically and in any case; it was only a matter of defining what was meant by these words:degenerate nation. This is where we were shipwrecked: we explained adegenerate peopleby a people who, poorly governed, abusing their wealth, fanatical or irreligious, have lost the characteristic virtues of their first fathers. Sad fall! Thus a nation perishes under social scourges because it is degenerate, and it is

degenerated because it perishes. This circular argument only proves the infancy of art in matters of social anatomy. I am willing for peoples to perish because they are degenerate, and not for any other cause; it is through this misfortune that they are rendered definitively incapable of suffering the shock of ambient disasters, and that then, no longer able to withstand the blows of adverse fortune, nor to get up again after having suffered them, they give the spectacle of their illustrious agonies; if they die, it is because they no longer have the same vigor to overcome the dangers of life that their ancestors possessed; it is, in a word, that they are degenerates.The expression, once again, is very good; but we need to explain it a little better and make sense of it. How and why is vigor lost? This is what needs to be said. How do we degenerate? This is what needs to be exposed. so far we have been content with the word, we have not revealed the thing. It is this further step that I will try to take.

So I think that the worddegenerate,applying to a people, must mean and signifies that this people no longer has the intrinsic value that it once possessed, because it no longer has in its veins the same blood, of which successive alloys have gradually modified the value ; in other words, that with the same name, it has not preserved the same race as its founders; finally, that the man of decadence, the one we call man degenerate,is a different product, from an ethnic point of view, of the hero of the great eras. I really want him to have something of his essence; but the more it degenerates, the more this something attenuates. The heterogeneous elements which now predominate in it compose a completely new nationality and very unfortunate in its originality; he only belongs to those he still says are his fathers, only in a very collateral line. It will die definitively, and its civilization with it, the day when the primordial ethnic element finds itself so subdivided and drowned in contributions from foreign races, that the virtuality of this element will no longer exert sufficient action. It will undoubtedly not disappear absolutely; but, in practice, it will be so fought, so weakened, that its force will become less and less perceptible, and it is at this moment that the degeneration can be considered complete, and that all its effects will appear.

If I manage to prove this theorem, I have given meaning to the word degeneration. By showing how the essence of a nation gradually alters, I shift the responsibility for decadence; I make it, in a way, less shameful; because it no longer weighs on sons, but on nephews, then on cousins, then on less and less close allies; and when I point out that great peoples, at the moment of their death, have only a very small, very imponderable part of the blood of the founders which they inherited, I have sufficiently explained how it can be that civilizations end, since they do not remain in the same hands. But here, at the same time, I touch on a problem even more daring than the one I attempted to clarify in the preceding chapters, since the question I am addressing is this: Are there really serious differences in intrinsic value between human races, and are these differences possible to appreciate? Without further delay, I begin the series of considerations relating to the first point; the second will be resolved by the discussion itself.

To make my thoughts understood in a clearer and more understandable way, I begin by comparing a nation, any nation, to the human body, with regard to which physiologists profess this opinion, that it is constantly renewing itself, in all its constituent parts, that the work of transformation which takes place in him is incessant, and that at the end of certain periods, he contains very little of what was initially an integral part of it, so that the old man has nothing of the made man, the man makes nothing of the adolescent, the adolescent nothing of the child, and that material individuality is not otherwise maintained than by internal and external forms which have succeeded one another to others by almost copying themselves. One difference that I will admit, however, between the human body and nations is that, in the latter, there is very little question of the conservation of forms, which are destroyed and disappear with infinite rapidity. I take a people, or, to put it better, a tribe, at the moment when, yielding to a pronounced instinct of vitality, it gives itself laws and begins to play a role in this world. By the very fact that her needs, her strengths increase, she finds herself in contact

inevitable with other families, and, through war or peace, manages to incorporate them.

It is not given to all human families to rise to this first level, a necessary passage that a tribe must cross to one day reach the state of a nation. If a certain number of races, which are not even rated very high on the civilizing scale, have nevertheless crossed it, we cannot say with truth that this is a general rule; it would seem, on the contrary, that the human species experiences quite great difficulty in rising above the fragmentary organization, and that it is only for specially gifted groups that the transition to a more complex. I will invoke, as testimony, the current state of a large number of groups spread throughout all parts of the world. These crude tribes, especially those of the Pelagian Negroes of Polynesia, the Samoyeds and other families of the boreal world and the majority of African Negroes, have never been able to escape from this impotence, and live juxtaposed with each other and in reports of complete independence. The strongest massacre the weakest, the weakest seek to put as great a distance as possible between themselves and the strongest; This limits the entire policy of these embryonic societies which have been perpetuated since the beginning of the human species, in such an imperfect state, without ever having been able to do better. It will be objected that these miserable hordes form the smallest part of the population of the globe; no doubt, but we must take into account all their likes which have existed and disappeared. The number is incalculable, and it certainly makes up the vast majority of pure breeds in the yellow and black varieties.

If we must therefore admit that, for a very large number of humans, it has been impossible and will forever be impossible to take even the first step towards civilization; if, moreover, we consider that these peoples are scattered over the entire face of the world, in the most diverse conditions of places and climates, inhabiting indifferently icy, temperate, torrid countries, the edges of seas, lakes and rivers, the depths of the woods, the grassy meadows, or the arid deserts, we are led to conclude that a part of humanity is, in itself, affected by the impotence of ever becoming civilized, even in the first degree , since she

is incapable of overcoming the natural repugnance that man, like animals, feels towards crossbreeding.

We therefore leave these unsociable tribes aside, and we continue the upward march with those who understand that, whether through war or through peace, if they want to increase their power and their well-being, it is an absolute necessity to force their neighbors to enter their circle of existence. War is undoubtedly the simpler of the two means. The war is therefore waged; but, the campaign over, when the destructive passions are satisfied, there remain prisoners, these prisoners become slaves, these slaves work; here are ranks, here is an industry, here is a tribe that has become a people. It is a higher level which, in turn, is not necessarily reached by the aggregations of men who have been able to rise to it; many are content with it and languish there.

But some others, much more imaginative and more energetic, understand something better than simple marauding; they conquer a vast land, and take ownership, not only of the inhabitants, but of the soil with them. A true nation is therefore formed. Often then, for a time, the two races continue to live side by side without mixing; and yet, as they have become indispensable to each other, as the community of work and interests has in the long run been established, as the rancor of conquest and its pride are blunted, as, while those who are below naturally tend to rise to the level of their masters, the masters also encounter a thousand reasons to tolerate and sometimes to serve this tendency, the mixture of blood ends up taking place, and the men of the two origins, ceasing to be linked to distinct tribes, are becoming more and more confused. The spirit of isolation, however, is so inherent in the human species that, even in this advanced state of interbreeding, there is still resistance to further interbreeding. There are peoples of whom we know in a very positive way that their origin is multiple, and who nevertheless preserve the clan spirit with extraordinary force. We know this for the Arabs, who do more than come out of different branches of the

Semitic stock; they belong, at the same time, to what we call the family of Shem and that of Ham, not to mention other infinite local kinships. Despite this diversity of sources, their attachment to separation by tribe forms one of the most striking features of their national character and their political history; so much so that it was believed that they could attribute, in large part, their expulsion from Spain, not only to the fragmentation of their power in this country, but also and above all to the more intimate fragmentation that the continued distinction, and consequently the rivalry families, perpetuated within the small monarchies of Valencia, Toledo, Cordoba and Granada18. For most peoples we can make the same observation, adding that where separation by tribe has disappeared, that by nation replaces it, acting with an almost similar energy, and such that the community of religion is not enough to paralyze her. It exists between the Arabs and the Turks as between the Persians and the Jews, the Parsis and the Hindus, the Syrian Nestorians and the Kurds; it is also found in European Turkey; we follow his trace in Hungary, between the Madjars, the Saxons, the Vlachs, the Croats, and I can affirm, having seen him, that in certain parts of France, this country where the races are mixed more than anywhere else perhaps there are populations who, from village to village, are still reluctant to enter into an alliance today.

I believe I have the right to conclude, from these examples which embrace all countries and all centuries, even our country and our time, that humanity experiences, in all its branches, a secret repulsion for crossings; that, in several of these branches, this repulsion is invincible; that, in others, it is only tamed to a certain extent; that those, finally, who most completely shake off the yoke of this idea cannot, however, get rid of it in such a way that at least some traces of it remain: the latter form what is civilizable in our species. Thus the human race finds itself subject to two laws, one of repulsion, the other of attraction, acting, to different degrees, on its various races; two laws, the first of which is only respected by those of those races who must never rise above the completely elementary improvements of tribal life, while the second, on the contrary, reigns

with all the more influence, as the ethnic families on which it is exercised are more susceptible to developments. But this is where you especially need to be precise. I have just taken a people in the state of family, of embryo; I endowed him with the necessary aptitude to move into the state of a nation; he is there ; history does not teach me what the constituent elements of the original group were; all I know is that these elements made him suitable for the transformations that I made him undergo; now enlarged, only two possibilities are present for it; between two destinies, one or the other is inevitable: either he will be conqueror, or he will be conquered.

I suppose him to be a conqueror; I give him the best part: he dominates, governs and civilizes all at the same time; he will not go, in the provinces he travels through, to sow pointless murder and fire; monuments, institutions, customs, will also be sacred to him; what he changes, what he finds good and useful to modify, will be replaced by superior creations; weakness will become strength in his hands; he will behave in such a way that, according to the word of Scripture, he will be great before men. I don't know if the reader has already thought about it, but, in the picture that I am drawing, and which is, in certain respects, none other than that presented by the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Macedonians, two facts remind me appear very prominent. The first is that a nation, without strength and without power, suddenly finds itself, by the fact of having fallen into the hands of vigorous masters, called to share a new and better destiny, as well as it happened to the Saxons of England, when the Normans had subdued them; the second is that an elite people, a sovereign people, armed, as such, with a marked propensity to mix with another blood, now finds itself in intimate contact with a race whose inferiority is not This is not only demonstrated by defeat, but also by the lack of qualities visible in the victors. Here then, dating precisely from the day when the conquest is accomplished and where the fusion begins, is a significant modification in the constitution of the blood of the masters. If the novelty were to stop there, we would find ourselves, after a period of time all the more considerable as the superimposed nations

would have been originally more numerous, facing a new race, less powerful, for sure, than the best of its ancestors, still strong however, and showing special qualities resulting from the mixture itself, and unknown to the two generating families. But this is not usually the case, and the alloy is not for long limited to the dual national race only. The empire that I have just imagined is powerful; he acts on his neighbors. I suppose new conquests; it is yet another new blood which, each time, comes to mingle with the current. Now, as the nation grows, either by arms or by treaties, its ethnic character becomes more and more altered. She is rich, commercial, civilized; the needs and pleasures of other peoples find ample satisfaction here, in its capitals, in its large cities, in its ports, and the thousand attractions that it possesses secure the stay of numerous foreigners in its midst. A little time passes, and a distinction of castes can, with good reason, succeed the primitive distinction by nations. I want the people about whom I reason to be confirmed in their ideas of separation by the most formal religious prescriptions, and for a formidable penalty to watch over them to terrify the delinquents. Because this people is civilized, their morals are gentle and tolerant, even in contempt of their faith; his oracles may speak, discast people will be born: it will be necessary to create new distinctions every day, invent new classifications, multiply the ranks, make it almost impossible to recognize one another in the middle of subdivisions varying infinitely, changing provinces to province, from canton to canton, from village to village; finally do what takes place in Hindu countries. But there is hardly anyone other than the Brahmin who has shown so much tenacity in his separative ideas; the peoples civilized by it, outside its bosom, have never adopted, or at least have long since rejected, annoying constraints. In all the states advanced in intellectual culture, we have not even stopped for a moment at the desperate resources that the desire to reconcile the prescriptions of the code of Manu with the irresistible current of things inspired in the legislators of Aryavarta. Everywhere else, castes, when there really were any, ceased to exist at the moment when the power to make a fortune, to become famous for discoveries

useful or pleasant talents, has been acquired by everyone, without distinction of origin. But also, from the same day, the originally conquering, active, civilizing nation began to disappear: its blood was immersed in that of all the tributaries that it had diverted towards itself. Most often, moreover, the dominating peoples began by being infinitely less numerous than their vanquished, and it seems, on the other hand, that certain races which serve as the basis of the population of very extensive countries are singularly prolific; I will cite the Celts, the Slavs. All the more reason for the master races to disappear quickly. Yet another reason is that their greater activity, the more direct role they play in the affairs of their State, expose them particularly to the disastrous results of battles, proscriptions and revolts. Thus, while, on the one hand, they amass around themselves, by the very fact of their civilizing genius, various elements in which they must absorb themselves, they are still victims of a primary cause, their small original number , and a host of secondary causes, which all conspire to destroy them. It is quite obvious that the disappearance of the victorious race is subject, depending on the different environments, to time conditions varying infinitely. However, it ends everywhere, and everywhere it is as perfect as necessary, long before the end of the civilization that it is supposed to animate, so that a people walks, lives, functions, often even grows after the motive generator of his life and his glory has ceased to be. Do we think we find here a contradiction with the above? Not at all; for, while the influence of the civilizing blood is exhausted by division, the force of propulsion formerly impressed upon the subject or annexed masses still subsists; the institutions that the late master had invented, the laws that he had formulated, the morals of which he had provided the type were maintained after him. No doubt, customs, laws, institutions only survive when they are very forgetful of their ancient spirit, disfigured more every day, defunct and losing their sap; but, as long as a shadow remains, the building is supported, the body seems to have a soul, the corpse walks. When the last effort of this ancient impulse is completed, everything is said; nothing remains, civilization is dead.

I believe I am now equipped with everything necessary to resolve the problem of the life and death of nations, and I say that a people would never die if it remained eternally composed of the same national elements. If the empire of Darius had still been able to put Persians, true Arians, into line at the battle of Arbelles; if the Romans of the Late Empire had had a senate and a militia made up of ethnic elements similar to those which existed at the time of the Fabius, their dominations would not have ended, and, as long as they would have preserved the same integrity of blood , Persians and Romans would have lived and reigned. It will be objected that they would nevertheless, in the long run, have seen conquerors more irresistible than themselves coming towards them and that they would have succumbed under well-combined assaults, under long pressure, or, more simply, under chance. of a lost battle. States, in fact, could have ended in this way, not civilization, nor the social body. The invasion and defeat would only have been a sad but temporary passage through some pretty bad days. There are many examples to provide.

In modern times, the Chinese have been conquered twice and forced their conquerors to assimilate with them; they imposed on them respect for their morals; they gave them a lot, and received almost nothing. Once they have expelled the first invaders, and, in a given time, they will do the same to the second. The English are the masters of India, and yet their moral influence on their subjects is almost absolutely zero. They themselves are subject, in many ways, to the influence of local civilization, and cannot succeed in getting their ideas into the minds of a crowd which fears its rulers, only bends physically before them, and maintains its notions standing opposite theirs. This is because the Hindu race has become foreign to those who control it today, and its civilization escapes the law of the strongest. The external forms, the kingdoms, the empires have been able to vary, and will continue to vary, without the background on which such constructions rest, from which they only emanate, being essentially altered with them; and Haiderabad, Lahore, Delhi ceasing to be capitals, Hindu society will no less survive. One moment

will come when, one way or another, India will begin to live publicly again according to its own laws, as it does tacitly, and, either through its current race or through mixed race, will resume the fullness of its political personality . The chance of conquests cannot decide the life of a people. At most, it suspends its manifestations for a time, and, in a way, external honors. As long as the blood of this people and its institutions still preserve, to a sufficient extent, the imprint of the initiating race, this people exists; and whether he is dealing, like the Chinese, with conquerors who are only materially more energetic than him; whether, like the Hindus, he supports a battle of patience, much more arduous, against a nation superior in every way, such as we see the English, his certain future must console him; he will be free one day. On the contrary, if this people, like the Greeks, like the Romans of the Late Empire, has absolutely exhausted its ethnic principle and the consequences that flowed from it, the moment of its defeat will be that of its death: it has worn out the time that heaven had granted him in advance, because he has completely changed his race, therefore his nature, and consequently he is degenerate.

By virtue of this observation, we must consider as resolved the question, often agitated, of knowing what would have happened if the Carthaginians, instead of succumbing to the fortune of Rome, had become masters of Italy. As a member of the Phoenician stock, a stock inferior in political virtues to the races from which Scipio's soldiers came, the contrary outcome of the Battle of Zama could not change their fate. Happy one day, the next day would have seen them face revenge; or else, absorbed into the Italian element by victory, as they were by defeat, the final result would have been identically the same. The destiny of civilizations does not happen by chance, it does not depend on a roll of the dice; the sword only kills men; and the most warlike, the most formidable, the most triumphant nations, when they have had in their hearts, in their heads and in their hands, only bravery, strategic knowledge and warlike success, without any other superior instinct, have never obtained a more beautiful end than to learn from their vanquished, and to learn it badly, how one

lives in peace. The Celts, the nomadic hordes of Asia, have annals to tell no more. After assigning a meaning to the worddegeneration,and having treated, with this help, the problem of the vitality of peoples, it is now necessary to prove what I had to put forward, for the clarity of the discussiona priori:that there are perceptible differences in the relative value of human races. The consequences of such a demonstration are considerable; their reach goes far. Before approaching them, we cannot support them with too complete a set of facts and reasons capable of supporting such a large edifice. The first question I solved was just the propylaeum of the temple.

First book

Chapter V

Ethnic inequalities are not

the results of institutions.

The idea of a native, original, clear-cut and permanent inequality between the various races is, in the world, one of the most anciently widespread and adopted opinions; and, given the primitive isolation of tribes, peoples, and thisretirementtowards themselves which all practiced at a more or less distant time, and from which a large number have never left, we have no reason to be surprised. With the exception of what has happened in our most modern times, this notion has served as the basis for almost all governmental theories. No people, large or small, have not started by making this their first state maxim. The system of castes, nobility, that of aristocracies, as long as they are based on the prerogatives of birth, have no other origin; and the right of primogeniture, assuming the pre-excellence of the first-born son and his descendants, is also only a derivative. With this doctrine agree the repulsion for the foreigner and the superiority that each nation claims towards its neighbors. It is only as the groups mingle and merge, that, now enlarged, civilized and considering themselves in a more benevolent light as a result of the usefulness they have to each other, we see among them this absolute maxim of inequality, and first of all the hostility of races, undermined and discussed. Then, when the greatest number of citizens of the State feel mixed blood flowing through their veins, this greatest number, transforming into universal and absolute truth what is real only for them, feels called to affirm that all men are equal. A laudable repugnance for oppression, the legitimate horror of the abuse of force, then cast, in all minds, a rather bad varnish on the memory of the races once dominant and which have never failed, because such is the world, to legitimize, to a certain point, many accusations. From the declamation against tyranny, we move on to the negation of the natural causes of the superiority that we insult; she is declared not only perverse, but also a usurper; we deny, and quite wrongly, that certain aptitudes are necessarily, fatally, the exclusive inheritance of such and such descendants; finally, the more a people is composed of heterogeneous elements, the more it takes pleasure in proclaiming that the most diverse faculties are possessed or can be possessed to the same degree by all fractions of the human species without exclusion. This theory, which is more or less tenable as far as they are concerned, the mixed race reasoners apply it to all the generations which have appeared, are appearing and will appear on the

earth, and one day they end up summarizing their feelings in these words, which, like the wineskin of Aeolus, contain so many storms: “All men are brothers! » This is the political axiom. Do we want the scientific axiom? “All men,” say the defenders of human equality, “are equipped with similar intellectual instruments, of the same nature, of the same value, of the same scope. » These are not the express words, perhaps, but at least that is the meaning. Thus, the cerebellum of the Huron contains in germ a mind quite similar to that of the English and the French! Why then, over the centuries, has he discovered neither printing nor steam? I would have the right to ask him, this Huron, if he is equal to our compatriots, where it comes from that the warriors of his tribe did not provide Caesar or Charlemagne, and by what inexplicable negligence his singers and its sorcerers never became either Homers or Hippocrates? We usually respond to this difficulty by highlighting the sovereign influence of environments. According to this doctrine, an island will not see, in terms of social prodigies, what a continent will experience; in the north, we will not be what we are in the south; the woods will not allow the developments that the open plain will favor; what do I know? The humidity of a marsh will grow a civilization that the drought of the Sahara would have infallibly stifled. However ingenious these little hypotheses may be, they have the voice of facts against them. Despite the wind, the rain, the cold, the heat, the sterility, the abundant abundance, everywhere the world has seen barbarism and civilization flourish in turn, and on the same soils. The stupid fellah burns in the same sun that burned the powerful priest of Memphis; the learned professor from Berlin teaches under the same inclement sky which once saw the miseries of the Finnish savage.

The most curious thing is that the egalitarian opinion, admitted by the mass of minds, from which it arose in our institutions and in our morals, has not found enough strength to dethrone the evidence, and that the the people most convinced of its truth pay homage to the opposite sentiment every day. No one refuses to note, at every moment, serious differences between nations, and even common language confesses them with the most naive inconsistency. In this we are only imitating

which was practiced at times no less convinced than we are, and for the same causes, of the absolute equality of races. Each nation has always known, alongside the liberal dogma of fraternity, to maintain, alongside the names of other peoples, qualifications and epithets which indicated dissimilarities. The Roman of Italy called the Roman of Greece,Graeculus,and attributed to him the monopoly of vain loquacity and lack of courage. He made fun of the colonist of Carthage, and claimed to recognize him among a thousand by his processive spirit and his bad faith. The Alexandrians were considered witty, insolent and seditious. In the Middle Ages, the AngloNorman monarchs accused their Welsh subjects of lightness and inconsistency of mind. Today who has not heard of the distinctive features of the German, the Spanish, the English and the Russian? I do not have to comment on the accuracy of the judgments. I only note that they exist, and that current opinion adopts them. So, if, on the one hand, human families are said to be equal, and, on the other, some are frivolous, others posed ; those eager to gain, those eager to spend; some energetically in love with combat, many sparing with their sorrows and their lives, it is obvious that these very different nations must have very diverse destinies, very dissimilar, let's put it mildly, very unequal. The strongest will play the characters of kings and masters in the tragedy of the world. The weakest will be content with low-level jobs.

I do not believe that today we have made the connection between the generally accepted ideas on the existence of a special character for each people and the equally widespread conviction that all peoples are equal. However, this contradiction is very striking; it is blatant, and all the more serious since the supporters of democracy are not the last to celebrate the superiority of the Saxons of North America over all the nations of the same continent. They attribute, in truth, the high prerogatives of their favorites to the sole influence of the governmental form. However, they do not deny, as far as I know, the particular and native disposition of the compatriots of Penn and Washington to establish liberal institutions in all the places of their stay, and, what is more, to know how to preserve them. Isn't this force of persistence, I

request, a very great prerogative allocated to this branch of the human family, a prerogative all the more precious since most of the groups which once populated or still populate the universe seem to be deprived of it?

I do not pretend to enjoy the sight of this inconsistency without a fight. It is here, no doubt, that the partisans of equality will loudly object to the power of institutions and morals; it is here that they will say, once again, how much the essence of government by its sole and proper virtue, how much the fact of despotism or freedom, powerfully influences the merit and development of a nation: but It is here that I, likewise, will contest the force of the argument. Political institutions only have to choose between two origins: either they derive from the nation which must live under their rule, or else, invented among an influential people, they are applied by them to States falling within its sphere of influence. 'action.

With the first hypothesis there is no difficulty. The people obviously calculated their institutions on their instincts and their needs; he took care not to rule on anything that could disturb one or the other; and if, through inadvertence or clumsiness, he has done so, the resulting discomfort soon leads him to correct his laws and bring them into more perfect harmony with their purpose. In any autonomous country, we can say that the law always emanates from the people; not because he constantly has the ability to promulgate it directly, but because, to be good, it must be modeled on his views, and such as, if well informed, he would have imagined it himself. If some very wise legislator appears, at first glance, to be the only source of the law, look closely and we will immediately be convinced that, through the effect of his own wisdom, the venerable master limits himself to delivering his oracles under the dictation of his nation. Judicious like Lycurgus, he will order nothing that the Dorian of Sparta cannot admit, and, theorist like Draco, he will create a code which will soon be either modified or abrogated by the Ionian of Athens, incapable, like all the children of 'Adam, to maintain for a long time a legislation foreign to his true and natural tendencies. The intervention of a superior genius in this great affair of an invention of laws is never more than a

special manifestation of the enlightened will of a people, or, if it is only the isolated product of the reveries of an individual, no people could put up with it for long. We cannot therefore admit that the institutions thus found and shaped by the races make the races what we see them to be. These are effects, not causes. Their influence is obviously great: they preserve the national genius, they clear paths for it, they indicate to it its goal, and even, to a certain point, warm up its instincts, and put in its hands the best instruments of action ; but they do not create their creator, and, being able to powerfully serve his success by helping him to develop his innate qualities, they can only ever fail miserably when they claim to enlarge the circle too much or change it. In a word, they cannot do the impossible.

False institutions and their effects, however, have played a big role in the world. When Charles 1er, annoyingly advised by the Earl of Strafford, wanted to bend the English to absolute government, the king and his minister walked on the muddy and bloody ground of theories. When the Calvinists dreamed in our country of an administration that was both aristocratic and republican, and worked to implement it by force of arms, they also sidestepped the truth.

When the regent claimed to win the case of the defeated courtiers in 1652, and try the government of intrigue that the coadjutor and his friends had desired19, his efforts pleased no one, and also hurt the nobility, clergy, parliament and third estate. A few traders alone rejoiced. But when Ferdinand the Catholic instituted against the Moors of Spain his terrible and necessary means of destruction; when Napoleon reestablished religion in France, flattered the military spirit, organized power in a manner that was both protective and restrictive, both of these potentates had listened well and understood the genius of their subjects, and they built on the practical ground. In a word, false institutions, often very beautiful on paper, are those which, not being in conformity with national qualities and failings, are not suitable for a State, although they can make a fortune in the neighboring country. They only create disorder and anarchy, even if they are borrowed from the legislation of angels. The others, on the contrary, that at such

or such point of view, and even in an absolute way, the theoretician and the moralist can blame, are good for the opposite reasons. The Spartans were small in number, large in heart, ambitious and violent: false laws would only have produced pale rascals; Lycurgus made them heroic brigands.

Let there be no doubt about it. As the nation was born before the law, the law comes from it and bears its imprint before giving it its own. The changes that time brings to institutions are further proof of this. It was said above that as peoples became civilized, enlarged, and more powerful, their blood mixed and their instincts underwent gradual alterations. By thus taking different aptitudes, it becomes impossible for them to accommodate the laws suitable for their predecessors. In new generations, morals and trends are also affected, and profound changes in institutions are not long in coming. We see these modifications becoming more frequent and more profound, as the race changes more, while they remained rarer and more gradual, as long as the populations themselves were closer relatives of the first inspirations of the State. In England, that of all the countries of Europe where the modifications of the blood have been the slowest and until now the least varied, we still see the institutions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries subsisting in the bases of the social edifice. . We find there, almost in its ancient vigor, the communal organization of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, the same way of mixing the nobility in the government and of composing this nobility, the same respect for the antiquity of families united with the same taste for upstarts of merit20. But however, as, since James 1er,and especially since the Union of Queen Anne, English blood has tended more and more to mix with that of Scotland and Ireland, which other nations have also contributed, although imperceptibly, to alter the purity of descent, the result is that innovations, while still remaining fairly faithful to the primitive spirit of the constitution, have become, nowadays, more frequent than previously.

In France, ethnic marriages were much more numerous and varied. It has even happened that, through sudden changes, power has passed from one race to another. There were therefore, in social life, changes rather than modifications, and these changes were all the more serious as the groups which succeeded one another in power were more different. As long as the north of France remained preponderant in the country's politics, feudalism, or, better said, its shapeless remnants, defended itself with sufficient advantage, and the municipal spirit held firm with them. After the expulsion of the English, in the fifteenth century, the central provinces, much less Germanic than the regions beyond the Loire, and which, having just restored national independence under the leadership of Charles VII, naturally saw their Gallic blood -Roman predominate in the councils and in the camps, made reign the taste for military life, for external conquests, very particular to the Celtic race, and the love of authority, infused in the Roman blood. During the sixteenth century, they largely prepared the ground on which the Aquitaine companions of Henry IV, less Celtic and even more Roman, came, in 1599, to place another and larger stone of absolute power. Then, Paris having, in the end, acquired domination as a result of the concentration that the southern genius had favored, Paris, whose population is certainly a summary of the most varied ethnic specimens, no longer had any reason to understand, to love nor respect any tradition, any special tendency, and this great capital, this tower of Babel, breaking with the past, whether of Flanders, of Poitou, or of Languedoc, attracted France into the multiplied experiments of the doctrines most foreign to its ancient customs.

We cannot therefore admit that institutions make people do what we see them do, when it is the people who invented them. But is it the same in the second hypothesis, that is to say when a nation receives its code from foreign hands equipped with the necessary power to make it accept it, willy-nilly?

There are examples of such attempts. I will not find any, in truth, which were carried out on a large scale by the truly political governments of antiquity or modern times; their wisdom has never applied itself to transforming the very basis of

great multitudes. The Romans were too clever to engage in such dangerous experiments. Alexander, before them, had not tried them; and convinced, by instinct or reason, of the inanity of such efforts, the successors of Augustus were content, like the conqueror of Darius, to reign over a vast mosaic of peoples who all preserved their habits, their morals, their laws, their own processes of administration and government, and who, for the most part, at least as long as they remained racially quite identical to themselves, only accepted, in common with their co-subjects, prescriptions of taxation or military precaution. However, there is one circumstance that should not be overlooked. Several of the peoples enslaved to the Romans had, in their codes, points so inconsistent with the feelings of their masters that it was impossible for the latter to tolerate their existence: witness the human sacrifices of the Druids, which in effect pursued the most severe defenses. Well, the Romans, with all their power, never completely succeeded in extirpating such barbaric rites. In Narbonne, victory was easy: the Gallic population had been almost entirely replaced by Roman colonists; but in the center, among the more intact tribes, resistance persisted, and in the Breton peninsula, where, in the fourth century, a colony brought back from England the old customs with the old blood, the peoples persisted. , out of patriotism, out of attachment to their traditions, to slaughter men on their altars as often as they dared. The most active surveillance did not succeed in snatching the sacred knife and torch from their hands. All the revolts began with the restoration of this terrible feature of the national cult, and Christianity, the still indignant victor of a polytheism without morality, came, among the Armoricans, to clash with terror against even more repulsive superstitions. He only succeeded in destroying them after very long efforts, since in the seventeenth century, the massacre of shipwrecked people and the exercise of the right of destruction continued in all the maritime parishes where the Kimric blood had remained pure. This is because these barbaric customs responded to the instincts and indomitable feelings of a race which, not having been sufficiently mixed, had until then had no decisive reasons to change its mind.

This fact is worthy of reflection; but modern times above all present examples of institutions imposed and not imposed. A remarkable character of European civilization is its intolerance, a consequence of its awareness of its value and its strength. It is found in the world, either facing determined barbarities or alongside other civilizations. It treats both with almost equal disdain, and, seeing in everything that is not itself obstacles to its conquests, it is very disposed to demand a complete transformation from the people. However, the Spanish, the English and the Dutch, and sometimes we too, did not dare to abandon ourselves too completely to the impulses of innovative genius, where we had somewhat considerable masses before us, thus imitating the forced discretion of the conquerors of antiquity. The East and Africa, whether northern or western, are irrefutable witnesses that the most enlightened nations do not succeed in giving conquered peoples institutions antipathetic to their nature. I have already recalled that English India continues its centuries-old way of life under the laws it once gave itself. The Javanese, although very submissive, are far from feeling drawn towards institutions approaching those of the Netherlands. They continue to live opposite their masters as they lived free, and, since the sixteenth century, when European action in the Eastern world began, we do not notice that it has had the slightest influence on the morals of the best-tamed tributaries.

But not all the vanquished peoples are strong enough in numbers for the European master to be willing to constrain himself. There are some on whom we have weighed with all the power of the saber to aid that of persuasion. We resolutely wanted to change their way of existence, to give them institutions that we know are good and useful. Did we succeed?

America offers us the richest field of experience on this subject. Throughout the south, where Spanish power reigned without constraint, what did it achieve? To uproot the old empires, no doubt, not to enlighten the populations; she did not create men like their preceptors.

In the north, with different processes, the results were also negative; what did I say ? they were more null in terms of the beneficent influence, more calamitous from the point of view of humanity, because, at least, the Spanish Indians multiply in a remarkable manner21; they even transformed the blood of their conquerors, who thus descended to their level, while the red-skinned men of the United States, seized by AngloSaxon energy, died from contact. The little that still remains disappears every day, and disappears just as uncivilized, just as uncivilizable as its fathers. In Oceania, observations conclude the same: aboriginal peoples are dying out everywhere. We sometimes succeed in wresting their weapons from them, preventing them from causing harm; we don't change them. Wherever the European is the master, they no longer eat each other, they gorge themselves on brandy, and this new stupidity is all that our initiating spirit succeeds in making them love. Finally, there are two governments in the world formed by peoples foreign to our races on models provided by us: one functions in the Sandwich Islands, the other in Santo Domingo. The appreciation of these two States will demonstrate the impotence of all attempts to give a people institutions which are not suggested to them by their own genius. In the Sandwich Islands, the representative system shines in all its glory. There we find an upper house, a lower house, a ministry which governs, a king who reigns; nothing is missing. But this is all just decoration. The essential cog in the machine, the one who sets it in motion, is the body of Protestant missionaries. Without them, king, peers and deputies, unaware of the road to follow, would soon cease to function. The missionaries alone have the honor of finding the ideas, of presenting them, of having them accepted, either by the credit they enjoy over their neophytes, or, if necessary, by threat. I doubt, however, that if the missionaries had only the king and the chambers as instruments of their will, they would not see themselves obliged, after having fought for some time against the inaptitude of their students, to take a more serious approach to the management of affairs. part very large, very direct, and therefore too apparent. They have overcome this disadvantage by means of a ministry which is quite simply composed of men of European race. Thus, the

Affairs are handled and decided, in fact, between the Protestant mission and its agents; the rest is just for show. As for Kamehameha III, he is, it seems, a prince of merit. He has, for his part, given up tattooing his face, and, although not yet having converted all his courtiers, he already feels the just satisfaction of no longer seeing them traced on their foreheads and cheeks until quite a few times. light designs. The bulk of the nation, country nobles and common people, persist on this point, as on the others, in the old ideas. However, very numerous causes bring an additional European population to the Sandwich Islands every day. The proximity of California makes the Hawaiian kingdom a very interesting point for the clairvoyant energy of our nations. Deserted whalers and refractory sailors from the military navy are no longer the only settlers of the white race: merchants, speculators, adventurers of all kinds, come running, build houses there and settle there. The indigenous race, invaded, will gradually mix and disappear. I do not know if representative and independent government will not soon give way to a simple delegated administration, reporting to some great foreign power; what I do not doubt is that the imported institutions will end up firmly establishing themselves in this country, and the day of their triumph will see, necessary synchronism, the total ruin of the natives. In Santo Domingo, independence is complete. There, there are no missionaries exercising veiled and absolute authority; there is no foreign ministry functioning with the European spirit: everything is left to the inspirations of the population itself. This population, in the Spanish part, is made up of mulattoes. I won't talk about it. These people seem to imitate, as best they can, what is easiest about our civilization: they tend, like all mixed race people, to blend into the branch of their genealogy which gives them the most honor; they are therefore capable, to a certain point, of putting our uses into practice. It is not among them that we must study the absolute question. So let's cross the mountains that separate the Dominican Republic from the State of Haiti.

We find ourselves faced with a society whose institutions are not only similar to ours, but also derive from the maxims

most recent of our political wisdom. Everything that, for sixty years, the most refined liberalism has had proclaimed in the deliberative assemblies of Europe, everything that the thinkers most friendly to the independence and dignity of man have been able to write, all declarations of rights and principles found their echo on the banks of the Artibonite. Nothing African has survived in the written laws; memories of the Hamitic land have officially disappeared from minds; official language has never shown any trace of it; the institutions, I repeat, are completely European. Now let's see how they adapt to morals. What a contrast! The mores ? we see them as depraved, as brutal, as ferocious as in Dahomey or the country of the Fellatahs. The same barbaric love of adornment is combined with the same indifference to the merit of form; beauty resides in the color, and, provided that a garment is a dazzling red and trimmed with false gold, taste hardly concerns itself with the solutions of continuity of the fabric; and, as for cleanliness, no one cares about it. In that country, do you want to approach a senior official? we are introduced near a large negro lying backwards on a wooden bench, his head wrapped in a bad torn handkerchief and covered with a horned hat largely laced with gold. An immense saber hangs next to this pile of limbs; the embroidered coat is not accompanied by a vest; the general has slippers. Do you question him, do you seek to penetrate his mind to appreciate the nature of the ideas which occupy him? you find the most uneducated intelligence united with the wildest pride, which is matched only by such profound and incurable nonchalance. If this man opens his mouth, he will tell you all the commonplaces with which the newspapers have tired us for half a century. This barbarian knows them by heart; he has other interests, very different instincts; he has no other acquired notions. He speaks like Baron d'Holbach, reasons like M. de Grimm, and, deep down, he has no serious concerns other than chewing tobacco, drinking alcohol, disemboweling his enemies and conciliating sorcerers. The rest of the time he sleeps.

The State is divided into two fractions, separated not by incompatibilities of doctrine, but of skin: the mulattoes stand on one side, the Negroes on the other. To mulattoes belongs, without any

doubt, more intelligence, a more open mind to conception. I have already pointed out this for the Dominicans: European blood has modified African nature, and these men could, melted into a white mass, and with good models constantly before their eyes, become useful citizens elsewhere. Unfortunately the supremacy in numbers and strength belongs, for the moment, to the Negroes. These, although their grandfathers, at most, knew the land of Africa, are still subject to its full influence; their supreme joy is laziness; their supreme reason is murder. Between the two parties which divide the island, the most intense hatred has never ceased to reign. The history of Haiti, of democratic Haiti, is nothing but a long story of massacres: massacres of mulattoes by Negroes, when they are the strongest, of Negroes by mulattoes, when power is in the hands of hands of the latter. Institutions, however philanthropic they may claim to be, can do nothing about it; they sleep helplessly on the paper where they were written; what reigns unchecked is the true spirit of the people. In accordance with a natural law indicated above, the black variety, belonging to those human tribes which are not fitted to become civilized, nourishes the deepest horror for all other races; We also see the Negroes of Haiti energetically repelling the whites and preventing them from entering their territory; they would also like to exclude the mulattoes, and aim for their extermination. Hatred of foreigners is the main motive of local politics. Then, as a consequence of the organic laziness of the species, agriculture is canceled, industry does not even exist in name, commerce is reduced day by day, poverty, in its deplorable progress, prevents the population to reproduce, while continual wars, revolts, military executions, constantly succeed in diminishing it. The inevitable and not very distant result of such a situation will be to render desert a country whose fertility and natural resources have once enriched generations of planters, and to abandon to wild goats the fertile plains, the magnificent valleys, the grandiose hills. of the Queen of the West Indies22. I suppose the case where the populations of this unfortunate country could have acted in accordance with the spirit of the races from which they come, where, not finding themselves under the inevitable protectorate and the impulse of foreign doctrines, they would have formed their society entirely completely freely and

following their instincts alone. Then, there would have been, more or less spontaneously, but never without some violence, a separation between people of the two colors.

The mulattoes would have inhabited the seaside, in order to always maintain the relations that they seek with Europeans. Under the direction of these, we would have seen them merchants, especially brokers, lawyers, doctors, tightening ties that flatter them, mixing more and more, gradually improving, losing, in given proportions, the character with African blood. The Negroes would have withdrawn into the interior, and there they would have formed small societies similar to those formerly created by the Maroon slaves in Saint-Domingue itself, in Martinique, in Jamaica and especially in Cuba, whose extensive territory and deep forests provide safer shelter. There, in the midst of the varied and brilliant productions of the West Indian vegetation, the American black, abundantly provided with the means of existence provided, at such little cost, by an opulent land, would have returned in complete freedom to this despotically patriarchal organization. so natural to those of his fellows whom the Muslim conquerors of Africa have not yet forced. The love of isolation would have been both the cause and the result of these institutions. Tribes forming would, after a short time, become foreign and hostile to each other. Local wars would have been the only political event in the different cantons, and the island, wild, sparsely populated, very poorly cultivated, would nevertheless have preserved a double population, now condemned to disappear, following the disastrous influence of laws and institutions unrelated to the structure of the intelligence of Negroes, to their interests, to their needs.

These examples from Santo Domingo and the Sandwich Islands are quite conclusive. However, I cannot resist the desire to touch again, before leaving this subject definitively, to another analogous fact whose particular character lends great force to my opinion. I called in testimony a State where the institutions, imposed by Protestant preachers, are only a rather childish model of

the British organization; then I spoke of a government that was materially free, but intellectually linked to European theories, and which had to put into practice the application of these theories, from which death followed for the unfortunate Haitian populations. Here now is an example of a completely different nature, which is offered to me by the attempts of the Jesuit fathers to civilize the natives of Paraguay23. These missionaries, by the elevation of their intelligence and the beauty of their courage, excited universal admiration; and the most declared enemies of their order did not believe they could refuse them an ample tribute of praise. Indeed, if institutions arising from a mind foreign to a nation ever had some chance of success, it was certainly those, founded on the power of religious sentiment and supported by what a genius of observation, as fair as it is fine, was able to find ideas for appropriation. The Fathers were convinced, a very widespread opinion, that barbarism is to the life of people what childhood is to that of individuals, and that the more savage and uneducated a nation shows itself, the younger it is.

To lead their neophytes to adolescence, they therefore treated them like children, and gave them a despotic government as firm in its views and wishes as it was gentle and affectionate in its forms. American peoples generally have republican tendencies, and the monarchy or aristocracy, rare among them, is never more than very limited. The native dispositions of the Guaranis, to whom the Jesuits came to address, did not contrast, on this point, with those of the other natives. However, by a fortunate circumstance, these peoples demonstrated a relatively developed intelligence, a little less ferocity perhaps than some of their neighbors, and some ease in conceiving new needs. Approximately one hundred and twenty thousand souls were gathered in the mission villages under the guidance of the Fathers. Everything that experience, daily study, and lively charity taught the Jesuits was profitable; incessant efforts were made to hasten success without compromising it. Despite so much care, we felt, however, that it was not too much absolute power to force the neophytes to persist on the right path, and we could convince ourselves, on many occasions, of the lack of real solidity of the edifice. .

When the measures of the Count of Aranda came to remove from Paraguay its pious and skillful civilizers, we received the saddest and most complete demonstration. The Guarani, deprived of their spiritual guides, refused any confidence in the secular leaders sent by the crown of Spain. They showed no attachment to their new institutions. The taste for wild life took them back, and today, with the exception of thirty-seven small villages which still vegetate on the banks of Parana, Paraguay and Uruguay, villages which certainly contain a core of mixed-race population , all the rest have returned to the forests and live there in a state as wild as the tribes of the same stock, Guaranis and Cirionos, are in the West. The fugitives have resumed, I am not saying their old customs in all their purity, but at least customs which have barely been rejuvenated and which result directly from them, and this because it is not given to any human race to be unfaithful to her instincts, nor to abandon the path on which God has put her. We can believe that, if the Jesuits had continued to govern their missions in Paraguay, their efforts, served by time, would have brought greater success, I admit; but on this unique condition, always the same, that groups of European population would have come little by little, under the protection of their dictatorship, to establish themselves in the country, would have mixed with the natives, would have first modified, then completely changed the blood, and, under these conditions, there would have been formed in these countries a State bearing perhaps an aboriginal name, perhaps boasting of descending from indigenous ancestors, but in fact, but in truth, as European as the institutions which would have governed it.

This is what I had to say about the relationship between institutions and races.

First book

Chapter VI

In progress or stagnation, people are independent of the places they inhabit.

It is impossible not to take some account of the influence given by several scientists to climates, to the nature of the self, to the topographical arrangement on the development of peoples; and, although I have touched on the doctrine of environments in passing, it would be leaving a real gap not to talk about it in depth. We are generally led to believe that a nation established under a temperate sky, not hot enough to enervate men, not cold enough to make the soil unproductive, on the banks of large rivers, wide and moving roads, in plains and valleys suitable for several types of culture, at the foot of mountains whose opulent bosom is gorged with metals, that this nation, thus helped by nature, will be quickly led to leave barbarism, and, without fail, will become civilized. On the other hand, and as a consequence of this reasoning, we easily admit that tribes burned by the sun or numbed on eternal ice, having no other territory than barren rocks, will be much more exposed to remaining in the state of barbarism. So it goes without saying that, in this hypothesis, humanity would only be perfectible with the help of material nature, and that all its value and greatness would exist in germ outside itself. However specious this opinion appears at first glance, it does not agree on any point with the numerous realities that observation provides.

Certainly no countries are more fertile, no climates milder than those of the different countries of America. The great rivers abound there, the gulfs, the bays, the harbors are vast, deep, magnificent, multiplied; the precious metals are found there on the surface of the ground; plant nature almost spontaneously provides the most abundant and varied means of existence, while the fauna, rich in food species, presents even more substantial resources. And yet the greater part of these happy lands has been traversed, for a series of centuries, by peoples who have remained foreign to the most mediocre exploitation of so many treasures. Many have been on the path to doing better. A meager culture, a barbaric working of the ore, are facts that we observe in more than one place. Some useful arts, practiced with a sort of talent, still surprise the traveler. But all of this, ultimately, is very humble and does not form a whole, a bundle from which any civilization has ever emerged. Certainly there existed, at very distant times, in the region extended between Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico, from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, a nation which left remarkable traces of its presence. The remains of buildings, the inscriptions engraved on rocks, the tumulus24, mummies indicate an advanced intellectual culture. But nothing proves that between this mysterious nation and the people wandering today over its tombs, there is a very close relationship. In any case, if, as a result of any natural link, or initiation of slaves, the current aborigines have from the former masters of the country the first notion of these arts which they practice in the elementary state, we could only be more struck by the impossibility in which they found themselves of perfecting what they had been taught, and I would see there one more reason to remain convinced that the first people to come, placed in the geographical circumstances the more favorable, is not therefore destined to become civilized. On the contrary, there is, between the ability of a climate and a country to serve the needs of man and the very fact of civilization, a complete independence. India is a country that had to be fertilized, as was Egypt.

These are two well-known centers of human culture and improvement. China, alongside the fertility of some of its parts, presented, in others, very laborious difficulties to overcome. The first events there are battles against the rivers; the first benefits of the ancient emperors consisted of the opening of canals and the drying out of marshes. In the Mesopotamian region of the Euphrates and the Tigris, scene of the splendor of the first Assyrian States, territory sanctified by the majesty of the most sacred memories, in these regions where wheat, it is said, grows spontaneously, the soil is however so little productive in itself, only vast and courageous irrigation works could make it suitable for feeding men. Now that the canals are destroyed, filled in or clogged, sterility has taken over. I am therefore very inclined to believe that nature had not favored these regions as much as we usually think. However, I will not argue on this point. I admit that China, Egypt, India, and Assyria were places entirely suitable for the establishment of great empires and the development of powerful civilizations; I grant that these places have brought together the best conditions for prosperity. It will also be admitted that these conditions were of such a nature that, to benefit from them, it was essential to have previously achieved, by other means, a high degree of social improvement. Thus, for commerce to be able to take over the great rivers, industry, or at least agriculture, had to already exist, and the attraction of neighboring peoples would not have occurred before that cities and markets were built and enriched long ago. The great advantages granted to China, India and Assyria therefore presuppose, among the people who took good advantage of them, a true intellectual vocation and even a civilization prior to the day when the exploitation of these advantages could begin. . But let's leave the specially favored regions and look elsewhere. When the Phoenicians, in their migration, came from Tylos, or from any other place in the south-east that one wishes, what did they find in the canton of Syria where they settled? An arid, rocky coast, squeezed tightly between the sea and chains of rocks which seemed likely to remain barren forever. Such a miserable territory forced the nation never to expand, because, on all sides, it found itself surrounded by a belt of mountains. And yet this place, which must have been a

prison, became, thanks to the industrious genius of the people who inhabited it, a nest of temples and palaces. The Phoenicians, condemned forever to be only crude fish eaters, or at most miserable pirates, were indeed pirates, but greatly, and, moreover, bold and skillful merchants, daring and happy speculators. Good ! some contradictor will say, necessity is the mother of invention; if the founders of Tire and Sidon had inhabited the plains of Damascus, content with the products of agriculture, they would perhaps never have been an illustrious people. Poverty spurred them on, poverty awakened their genius.

And why then does it not awaken that of so many African, American, Oceanian tribes, placed in similar circumstances? Why do we see the Kabyles of Morocco, an ancient race who certainly had all the time necessary for reflection, and, what is even more surprising, all the possible incentives for simple imitation, to have never conceived an idea? more fruitful, to soften his unfortunate fate, than pure and simple maritime brigandage? Why, in this Indian archipelago, which seems created for commerce, in these Oceanic islands, which can so easily communicate with each other, are peacefully fruitful relations almost absolutely in the hands of foreign, Chinese races? , Malay and Arab? and where semi-indigenous peoples, or mixed-race nations have been able to take it over, why is activity decreasing? Why does circulation only take place according to increasingly elementary data? This is because in truth, for a commercial State to be established on any coast or on any island, something more is necessary than the open sea, than the excitements born of the sterility of the soil, than even the lessons from the experience of others: it is necessary, in the spirit of the naturalness of this coast or this island, the special aptitude which alone will lead it to benefit from the instruments of work and success placed within its reach.

But I will not limit myself to showing that a geographical situation, declared suitable because it is fertile, or, precisely, because it is not, does not give nations their social value: it is still necessary clearly establish that this social value is completely independent of the surrounding material circumstances. I will cite the Armenians, confined in their mountains, in these same mountains

where so many other peoples live and die barbarians from generation to generation, achieving, from very remote antiquity, a fairly high civilization. These regions, however, were almost closed, without remarkable fertility, without communication with the sea.

The Jews found themselves in a similar position, surrounded by tribes speaking dialects of a patent language of their own, most of which were fairly closely related to them by blood; However, they were ahead of all these groups. We saw them as warriors, farmers, traders; we saw them, under this singularly complicated government, where the monarchy, theocracy, the patriarchal power of the heads of families and the democratic power of the people, represented by the assemblies and the prophets, balanced each other in a very bizarre way, crossing long centuries of prosperity and glory, and overcome, through a most intelligent system of emigration, the difficulties which the narrow limits of their domain opposed to their expansion. And what else was this domain? Modern travelers know at the cost of what scholarly efforts the Israelite agronomists maintained its artificial fertility. Since this chosen race no longer inhabits its mountains and plains, the well where Jacob's flocks drank is filled with sand, Naboth's vineyard has been invaded by the desert, just like the site of Ahab's palace through the brambles. And in this miserable corner of the world, what were the Jews? I repeat, a people skilled in everything they undertook, a free people, a strong people, an intelligent people, and who, before bravely losing, arms in hand, the title of independent nation, had provided the world almost as many doctors as merchants25. The Greeks, the Greeks themselves, were far from having to praise geographical circumstances in everything. Their country was, in many parts, nothing but a miserable land. If Arcadia was a country loved by shepherds, if Boeotia declared itself dear to Ceres and Triptolemus, Arcadia and Boeotia play a very small role in Hellenic history. Rich Corinth itself, the favorite city of Plutus and Venus Melanis, shines here only in second place. Who gets the glory? in Athens, where a whitish dust covered the countryside and the meager olive trees; in Athens, which, as its main trade, sold statues and books; then to Sparta,

buried in a narrow valley, at the bottom of the piles of rocks where victory would seek her. And Rome, in the poor canton of Latium where its founders placed it, on the banks of this little Tiber, which opened onto an almost unknown coast, which no Phoenician or Greek vessel ever touched except by chance, is it by its topographical arrangement that she has become the mistress of the world? But, as soon as the world obeyed Roman standards, politics found its metropolis misplaced, and the eternal city began the long series of its affronts. The first emperors, having their eyes turned mainly towards Greece, almost always resided there. Tiberius, in Italy, stood at Captea, between the two halves of his universe. His successors went to Antioch. Some, preoccupied with Gallic affairs, went up to Trier. Finally a final decree took away the very title of capital from Rome and gave it to Milan. That if the Romans made people talk about them in the world, it is certainly despite the position of the district from which their first armies came, and not because of this position. Coming down to modern times, the multitude of facts that I can support embarrass me. I see prosperity completely leaving the Mediterranean coasts, unmistakable proof that it was not attached to them. The great trading cities of the Middle Ages were born where no theorist of previous eras would have built them. Novogorod rises in a frozen country; Bremen on a coast almost as cold. The Hanseatic cities of central Germany merge into the middle of countries that are barely waking up; Venice appears at the bottom of a deep gulf. Political preponderance shines in places barely seen before. In France, it is north of the Loire and almost beyond the Seine that the strength lies. Lyon, Toulouse, Narbonne, Marseille, Bordeaux, fell from the high rank to which the choice of the Romans had brought them. It is Paris which becomes the important city, Paris, a town too far from the sea when it comes to trade, and which will be too close when the Norman boats come. In Italy, cities, formerly of the last order, take precedence over the city of the popes; Ravenna awakens at the bottom of its marshes, Amalfi has long been powerful. I note, in passing, that chance had no part in all these reversals, that all are explained by the presence on the point

given of a victorious or predominant race. I mean that it was not the place which made the value of the nation, which never made it, which will never make it: on the contrary, it was the nation which gave, has given and will give the territory its value economic, moral and political.

In order to be as clear as possible, I will add, however, that my intention is not to deny the importance of the situation for certain cities, whether warehouses, seaports or capitals. The observations that have been made, concerning Constantinople and Alexandria in particular, are incontestable. It is certain that there are different points on the globe that can be called the keys to the world, and thus we can see that, in the case of the drilling of the Isthmus of Panama, the power which would possess the city still to building on this hypothetical channel would have a large role to play in the affairs of the universe. But a nation plays this role well, plays it poorly, or even does not play it at all, depending on its worth. Enlarge Chagres, and make the two seas unite under its walls; then be free to populate the city with a colony as you wish: the choice you make will determine the future of the new city. That the race is truly worthy of the high fortune to which it will have been called, if the location of Chagres is not precisely the most suitable for developing all the advantages of the union of the two Oceans, this population will leave it and go elsewhere to deploy in complete freedom the splendors of its fate26.

First book

Chapter VII

Christianity does not create and does not transform the civilizing aptitude.

After the objections drawn from institutions, from climates, there comes one which, to tell the truth, I should have placed before all the others, not because I judge it to be stronger, but for the reverence naturally inspired by the fact on which she leans. In adopting the foregoing conclusions as correct, two assertions become more and more evident: first, that the majority of human races are incapable of ever becoming civilized, unless they mix; it is, then, that not only do these races not possess the internal spring declared necessary to push them forward on the ladder of perfection, but also that any external agent is powerless to fertilize their organic sterility, although this agent can be very energetic. Here it will undoubtedly be asked whether Christianity must shine in vain for entire nations? if there are peoples condemned to never know him? Some authors responded affirmatively. Unscrupulously putting themselves in contradiction with the Gospel promise, they denied the most special character of the new law, which is precisely to be accessible to the universality of men. Such an opinion reproduced the narrow formula of the Hebrews. It was entering through a door a little wider than that of the old Alliance; nevertheless it was getting there. I feel no inclination to follow the partisans of this idea condemned by the Church, and do not experience the slightest difficulty in fully recognizing that all human races are endowed with an equal capacity to enter into the bosom of Christian communion. . On this point, there is no original impediment, no hindrance in the nature of races; their inequalities do nothing. Religions are not, as some have wanted to claim, parked in zones on the surface of the globe with their

cultists. It is not true that, from one degree of the meridian to another, Christianity must dominate, while from such a limit, Islamism will take the empire to keep it until the impassable border where it must hand it over to Buddhism or Brahmanism, while the shamanists and fetishists will share what remains of the world.

Christians are spread in all latitudes and in all climates. The statistics, imperfect no doubt, but probable in their data, show us them in large numbers, Mongols wandering in the plains of upper Asia, savages hunting on the plateaus of the Cordilleras, Eskimos fishing in the ice of the Arctic pole, finally Chinese and Japanese dying under the lash of persecutors. Observation no longer allows the slightest doubt on this question. But the same observation does not allow us to confuse, as is daily done, Christianity, the universal aptitude of men to recognize its truths, to practice its precepts, with the faculty, quite different, of a whole another order, of a completely different nature, which leads such a human family, to the exclusion of such others, to understand the purely earthly necessities of social improvement, and to know how to prepare for and pass through its phases, in order to rise to the state that we call civilization, a state whose degrees mark the relations of inequality between races. It has been claimed, certainly wrongly, in the last century, that the doctrine of renunciation, which constitutes a capital part of Christianity, was, by its nature, very opposed to social development, and that people whose supreme merit must be to value nothing here below, and to always have one's eyes fixed and one's desires tended towards the heavenly Jerusalem, are hardly likely to advance the interests of this world. Human imperfection takes care of retorting the argument. There has never been a serious fear that humanity would renounce the things of the century, and, however express the recommendations and advice were in this respect, we can say that, fighting against a current recognized as irresistible, much was asked of this sole purpose of getting a little. Furthermore, Christian precepts are a great social vehicle, in the sense that they soften morals, facilitate relationships through charity, condemn all violence, force one to appeal to the sole power of the

reasoning, and thus claim for the soul a plenitude of authority which, in a thousand applications, turns to the benefit of course of the flesh. Then, by the entirely metaphysical and intellectual nature of its dogmas, religion calls the mind to elevate itself, while, by the purity of its morality, it tends to detach it from a host of weaknesses and corrosive vices, dangerous for the progress of material interests. Unlike the philosophers of the eighteenth century, we are justified in granting Christianity the epithet of civilizer: but it requires moderation, and this over-amplified data would lead to profound errors. Christianity is civilizing in that it makes man more reflective and gentler; however it is only indirectly, because his aim is not to apply this gentleness and this development of intelligence to perishable things, and everywhere we see him content with the social state where he finds its neophytes, however imperfect this state may be. Provided that he can prune out that which is harmful to the health of the soul, the rest matters nothing to him. He leaves the Chinese with their robes, the Eskimos with their furs, the former eating rice, the latter whale blubber, absolutely as he found them, and he attaches no importance to their adopting another gender. of existence. If the condition of these people involves a consequent improvement in itself, Christianity will certainly tend to bring it about; but he will not at all change the habits that he will have first encountered and will not force the passage from one civilization to another, because he has not adopted any of them; he uses all, and is above all. Facts and evidence abound: I'm going to talk about it; but, previously, let me confess, I have never understood this very modern doctrine which consists of so identifying the law of Christ with the interests of this world, that we bring out from it a supposed order of things calledChristian civilization.

There is undoubtedly a pagan civilization, a Brahmanical, Buddhist, Judaic civilization. There have existed, there exist societies of which religion is the basis, has given the form, composed the laws, regulated civil duties, marked the limits, indicated the hostilities; societies which only exist on the more or less broad prescriptions of a theocratic formula, and which we cannot imagine alive without their faith and their

rites, like rites and faith are not possible either without the people they formed. All antiquity has more or less lived by this rule. Legal tolerance, an invention of Roman politics, and the vast system of assimilation and fusion of religions, the work of a theology of decadence, were, for paganism, the fruits of recent times. But, as long as he was young and strong, as many cities, as many different Jupiters, Mercurys, Venuses, and the god, jealous, much differently than that of the Jews and even more exclusive, did not recognize, in this world and in the other, than his fellow citizens. Thus each civilization of this kind is formed and grows under the aegis of a divinity, of a particular religion. Religion and the State are united in such a close and inseparable way that they find themselves equally responsible for evil and good. Whether we therefore recognize in Carthage the political traces of the cult of the Tyrian Hercules, I believe that with truth we will be able to confuse the action of the doctrine preached by the priests with the policy of the suffets and the direction of development. social. Nor do I doubt that the dog-headed Anubis, the Isis Neith and the Ibises taught the men of the Nile valley everything they knew and practiced; but the greatest novelty that Christianity has brought to the world is precisely to act in a manner completely opposed to previous religions. They had their people, he did not have his own: he did not choose anyone, he addressed everyone, and not only to the rich as well as to the poor, but first of all he received from the Holy Spirit the everyone's language27, in order to speak to each person the language of their country and to announce the faith with the ideas and by means of the images most understandable to each nation. He did not come to change the exterior of man, the material world, he came to learn to despise it. He only claimed to touch the inner being. An apocryphal book, venerable for its antiquity, said: “Let not the strong boast of his strength, nor the rich of his riches; but whoever wants to be glorified boasts in the Lord28. » Strength, wealth, worldly power, means of acquiring it, all this does not count for our law. No civilization, of whatever kind it may be, has ever called for his love or aroused his disdain, and it is for this rare impartiality, and only by the effects which were to come out of it, that this law could be called with reason Catholic, universal, because it does not belong to any civilization, it has not come to advocate exclusively any form of earthly existence, it rejects none and wants to purify them all.

The proofs of this indifference for the external forms of social life, for social life itself, fill the canonical books first, then the writings of the Fathers, then the reports of the missionaries, from the earliest times to 'to the present day. Provided that, in any man, belief penetrates, and that, in the actions of his life, this creature tends to do nothing which could transgress religious prescriptions, everything else is indifferent in the eyes of faith. What do the shape of his house, the cut and material of his clothes, the rules of his government, the measure of despotism or freedom which animates his public institutions matter to a convert? Fisherman, hunter, plowman, navigator, warrior, who cares? Is there, in these various modes of material existence, anything that can prevent man, I say man of whatever race he comes from, English, Turkish, Siberian, American, Hottentot, nothing that can prevent him? prevent us from opening our eyes to the Christian light? Absolutely anything; and, once this result is obtained, everything else counts for little. The savage Galla is likely to become, by remaining Galla, as perfect a believer, as pure an elect as the holiest prelate in Europe. This is the salient superiority of Christianity, which gives it its main character ofgrace.We must not take it away simply to please a favorite idea of our time and our countries, which is to look everywhere, even in the most holy things, for a materially useful side. In the eighteen hundred years that the Church has existed, it has converted many nations, and in all of them it has allowed the political state it had found to reign, without ever attacking it. Its beginning, vis-à-vis the ancient world, was to protest that it did not want to touch in any way the external form of society. He has even been criticized, on occasion, for excessive tolerance in this regard. As proof of this, I cite the affair of the Jesuits in the question of Chinese ceremonies. What we do not see is that it ever provided the world with a unique type of civilization to which it claimed that its believers should attach themselves. It adapts to everything, even the crudest hut, and where there is a savage stupid enough not to want to understand the usefulness of a shelter, there is also a missionary devoted enough to sit next to him on the hard rock, and thinking only of penetrating into his soul the essential notions of

Hi. Christianity is therefore not civilizing as we usually understand it; it can therefore be adopted by the most diverse races without offending their special aptitudes, nor asking them for anything that exceeds the limit of their faculties. I have just said above that he elevated the soul by the sublimity of his dogmas, and that he enlarged the mind by their subtlety. Yes, to the extent that the soul and spirit to which it is addressed are capable of being elevated and enlarged. Its mission is not to spread the gift of genius nor to provide ideas to those who lack them. Neither genius nor ideas are necessary for salvation. Christianity declared, on the contrary, that it preferred the small and humble to the strong. He only gives what he wants to be given back to him. It fertilizes, it does not create; he supports, he supports, he does not remove; he takes the man as he is, and only helps him to walk: if the man is lame, he does not ask him to run. Thus, I will open the lives of the saints: will I find there especially scholars? No, certainly. The crowd of blessed whose names and memories the Church honors is composed above all of individuals who are precious for their virtues or their devotion, but who, full of genius in the things of heaven, lacked it for those of earth; and when I am shown Saint Rose of Lima venerated like Saint Bernard, Saint Zite implored like Saint Thérèse, and all the Anglo-Saxon saints, most of the Irish monks, and the crude solitaries of the Thebaid of Egypt, and these legions of martyrs who, from the bosom of the earthly populace, owed to a flash of courage and devotion to shine eternally in glory, respected on an equal footing with the most skilful defenders of dogma, the most learned panegyrists of the faith, I find myself authorized to repeat that Christianity is not civilizing in the narrow and worldly sense that we must attach to this word, and that, since it only asks of each man what each has received, it also only asks of each race than what it is capable of, and does not undertake to assign to it, in the political assembly of the peoples of the universe, a higher rank than that in which its faculties give it the right to sit. Therefore, I do not at all accept the egalitarian argument which confuses the possibility of adopting the Christian faith with the aptitude for indefinite intellectual development. I see the greater part of the tribes of South America brought into the bosom of the Church for centuries, and yet still savage, still unintelligent of the

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

European civilization which is practiced before their eyes. I am not surprised that in the north of the new continent the Cherokees were largely converted by Methodist ministers; but I would be very happy if this people were ever to form, while remaining pure, of course, one of the States of the American Confederation, and to exercise some influence in the Congress. I still find it quite natural that the Danish Lutherans and the Moravians opened the eyes of the Eskimos to religious light; but I find it no less that their neophytes have remained absolutely in the same social state in which they vegetated before. Finally, to conclude, it is, in my eyes, a simple and natural fact to know the Swedish Laplanders in the state of barbarism of their ancestors, although, for centuries, the salutary doctrines of the Gospel have been made. I sincerely believe that all these peoples will be able to produce, perhaps have already produced, people remarkable for their piety and the purity of their morals, but I do not expect to ever see learned theologians, intelligent soldiers, skilled mathematicians, artists of merit, in a word this elite of refined minds whose number and perpetual succession make up the strength and fertility of the dominating races, much more than the rare appearance of these offline geniuses who are not followed by the peoples, in the paths in which they engage, only if these peoples are themselves conformed in such a way as to be able to understand them and advance under their guidance. It is therefore necessary and right to completely disinterest Christianity in the question. If all races are equally capable of recognizing it and enjoying its benefits, it has not given itself the mission of making them the same among themselves: its kingdom, we can boldly say, in the sense in question here. , is not of this world.

Despite the above, I fear that some people, too accustomed, through a natural participation in the ideas of the time, to judge the merits of Christianity through the prejudices of our time, will have some difficulty in detaching themselves from inaccurate notions, and , while broadly accepting the observations that I have just presented, do not feel inclined to attribute to the indirect action of religion on morals, and of morals on institutions, and of institutions on the whole of social order, a determining power that I conclude I do not recognize. These contradictors will think that, if only by

the personal influence of the propagators of the faith, there is, in their attendance alone, enough to significantly modify the political situation of the converts and their notions of material well-being. They will say, for example, that these apostles, coming almost constantly, although not necessarily, from a nation more advanced than that to which they brought faith, will find themselves carried by themselves, and as if by instinct, to reform the purely human habits of their neophytes, at the same time as they straighten out their moral paths. Are they dealing with savages, with people reduced, by their ignorance, to supporting great misery? they will endeavor to teach them the useful arts and to show them how to escape famine through field work, for which they will want to provide them with the tools. Then these missionaries, going even further, will teach them to build better shelters, to raise livestock, to direct the flow of water, either to organize irrigation or to prevent flooding. Little by little, they will come to give them enough taste for purely intellectual things to teach them to use an alphabet, and perhaps even more, as happened among the Cherokees29, to invent one themselves. Finally, if they achieve truly offline success, they will lead their well-bred people to imitate so closely the morals that they have preached to them, that henceforth, completely fashioned for the exploitation of the land, they will possess, like these same Cherokees I'm talking about, and like the Creeks of the south side of Arkansas, well tended herds and even many black slaves to work on the plantations.

I deliberately chose the two savage peoples who are cited as the most advanced; and, far from agreeing with the egalitarians, I do not imagine, observing these examples, that there could be any more striking of the general incapacity of races to enter into a path than their nature clean was not enough to make them find it. Here are two peoples, isolated remains of numerous nations destroyed or expelled by the whites, and moreover two peoples who are naturally out of par with the others, since they are said to be descended from the Alleghanian race, to which the great remains of ancient monuments discovered north of the Mississippi30. There is already there,

in the minds of those who claim to see equality between the Cherokees and the European races, a great deviation from their entire system, since the first word of their demonstration consists of establishing that the Alleghanian nations are not approaching the Anglo -Saxons only because they themselves are superior to the other races of North America. Besides, what happened to these two elite tribes? The American government took from them the territories on which they formerly lived, and, by means of a transplant treaty, it made them both emigrate to a chosen piece of land, where it marked each of them with their place. There, under the supervision of the Ministry of War and under the guidance of Protestant missionaries, these natives had to embrace, willingly or unwillingly, the kind of life they practice today. The author from whom I draw these details, and who himself draws them from the great work of Mr. Gallatin31, assures that the number of Cherokees will increase. He alleges as proof that at the time Adair visited them, the number of their warriors was estimated at 2,300, and that today the total number of their population is increased to 15,000 souls, including, in truth, 1,200 Negro slaves, who became their property; and, as he also adds that their schools are, as well as their churches, directed by the missionaries; that these missionaries, in their capacity as Protestants, are married, if not all, at least for the most part, have children or servants of the white race, and probably also a sort of staff of European clerks and employees of all professions, it becomes very difficult to assess whether there has really been an increase in the number of natives, while it is very easy to note the vigorous pressure that the European race exercises here on its students32. Placed in a recognized impossibility of waging war, disoriented, surrounded on all sides by American power immeasurable for their imagination, and, on the other hand, converted to the religion of their rulers, and having adopted it, I think, sincerely ; Treated with gentleness by their spiritual teachers and fully convinced of the necessity of working as these masters intend and indicate to them, unless they want to die of hunger, I understand how one succeeds in making them farmers. We must end up instilling in them the practice of these ideas that we present to them every day, and constantly, and tirelessly.

It would be to degrade the very intelligence of the last branch, of the most humble scion of the human species, to declare ourselves surprised, when we see that with certain processes of patience, and by skillfully bringing into play greed and Abstinence, we manage to teach animals what their instinct did not in the least lead them to know. When village fairs are filled only with learned animals who are made to perform the most bizarre tricks, should we protest that men subjected to a rigorous education, and removed from any means of escaping it like distract themselves from it, manage to fulfill those functions of civilized life that ultimately, in the wild state, they could still understand, even with the will not to practice them? That would put these men below, well below, the card-playing dog and the gourmet horse! By dint of wanting to draw on all the facts to transform them into arguments demonstrating the intelligence of certain human groups, we end up showing ourselves to be too easy to satisfy, and to feel enthusiasms that are unflattering for the very people who excite. I know that very erudite, very learned men have given rise to these rather crude rehabilitations, by claiming that between certain human races and the great species of apes there were only nuances for any separation. As I unreservedly reject such an insult, I am also permitted to ignore the exaggeration with which it is responded to. No doubt, in my eyes, the human races are unequal; but I don't believe in any of them that she has the brute next to her and similar to her. The last tribe, the crudest variety, the most miserable subgenus of our species is at least susceptible of imitation, and I have no doubt that by taking any subject among the most hideous Boschimens, one cannot obtain, not of this subject itself, if he is already an adult, but of his son, at least of his grandson, who has enough conception to learn and practice a state, even a state which requires a certain degree of study. Will we conclude that the nation to which this individual belongs can be civilized in our way? It's reasoning lightly and concluding quickly. There is a long way between the practice of trades and arts, products of an advanced civilization, and this civilization itself. And moreover the Protestant missionaries, an indispensable link which connects the wild tribe to be converted to the center

initiator, are we certain that they are sufficient for the task imposed on them? Are they therefore the repositories of a very complete social science? I doubt ; and if communication were suddenly to break down between the American government and the spiritual representatives it maintains among the Cherokees, the traveler, after a few years, would find very unexpected, very new institutions on the native farms, the result of mixture of a few white people with these red skins, and he would only recognize a very pale reflection of what is taught in New York. We often talk about Negroes who have learned music, Negroes who are clerks in banking houses, Negroes who know how to read, write, count, dance, speak like white people; and we admire, and we conclude that these people are fit for everything! And alongside these admirations and these hasty conclusions, the same people will be surprised by the contrast that the civilization of the Slavic nations presents with ours. They will say that the Russian, Polish and Serbian peoples, although much more closely related to us than the Negroes, are only civilized on the surface; they will claim that only the upper classes are in possession of our ideas, thanks also to these incessant movements of fusion with the English, French and German families; and they will point out an invincible inability of the masses to blend into the movement of the Western world, although these masses have been Christians for so many centuries, and several even were so before us! There is therefore a big difference between imitation and conviction. Imitation does not necessarily indicate a serious break with hereditary tendencies, and one has only truly entered the bosom of a civilization when one finds oneself in a position to progress there oneself, by oneself. -self and without guide33. Instead of boasting of the ability of savages, from whatever part of the world, to guide the plow when they have been taught it, or to spell or read when they have been taught it, let them show us, on one of the points of the earth in centuries-old contact with Europeans, and there are certainly many, a single place where the ideas, the institutions, the morals of one of our nations have been so well adopted with our religious doctrines, that all progresses there by a movement as clean, as frank, as natural as we see it in our States; a single place where printing produces effects analogous to what is with us, where our sciences are

perfect, where new applications of our discoveries are tried, where our philosophies give birth to other philosophies, political systems, literature, arts, books, statues and paintings! No ! I am not so demanding, so exclusive. I no longer ask that with our faith a people embrace everything that makes up our individuality; I can tolerate him pushing her away; I admit that he chooses a completely different one. Well ! let me at least see him, at the moment when he opens his eyes to the light of the Gospel, suddenly understand how his earthly walk is as embarrassed and miserable as his spiritual life was previously; that I see him creating for himself a new social order as he pleases, bringing together ideas that until then remained infertile, admitting foreign notions that he transforms. I await him at work; I just ask him to get started. None start. None have ever tried. No one will point out to me, by examining all the records of history, a single nation that came to European civilization as a result of the adoption of Christianity, not a single one that the same great fact led to its civilization. -even when she wasn't already.

But, on the other hand, I will discover in the vast regions of southern Asia and in certain parts of Europe, States formed of several superimposed masses of different religions. The hostilities of races will remain unshakably side by side, in the midst of the hostilities of religions, and we will distinguish the Patan who has become a Christian from the converted Hindu, with as much ease as we can separate the Russian from Orenburg today. Christianized nomadic tribes among which he lives. Once again, Christianity is not civilizing, and it is very right not to be.

First book

Chapter VIII

Definition of the word civilization; social development results from a double source.

An essential digression will find its place here. I use at every moment a word which contains in its meaning a set of ideas important to define. I often speak of civilization, and no doubt rightly so, because it is by the relative existence or absolute absence of this great particularity that I can only grade the respective merit of races. I am talking about European civilization, and I distinguish it from civilizations that I say are different. I must not allow the slightest vagueness to remain, and all the less since I do not find myself in agreement with the famous writer who, in France, took special care to establish the character and scope of the expression that I use.

Mr. Guizot, if I dare to challenge his great authority, begins, in his book on theCivilization in Europe, by a confusion of words from which rather serious positive errors arise. He expresses this thought that civilization is ado. Or the worddomust be understood here in a much less precise and positive sense than common usage requires, in a broad and somewhat floating sense, I would almost dare to say elastic and which has never belonged to it, or else, it is not suitable not to characterize the notion understood in the wordcivilization. Civilization is not a fact, it's a series, a sequence of factsmore or less logically united to each other, and generated by a competition of ideas often quite

multiple; ideas and facts are constantly fertilizing each other. An incessant turnover is sometimes the consequence of first principles; sometimes also this consequence is stagnation; in all cases, civilization is not a fact, it is a bundle of facts and ideas, it is astatein which a human society finds itself placed, amediumin which she managed to put herself, which she created, which emanates from her, and which in turn reacts on her.

Thisstatehas a great general character that adonever owns; it lends itself to many variations than adocannot endure without disappearing, and, among other things, it is completely independent of governmental forms, developing as well under despotism as under the regime of freedom, and not even ceasing to exist when civil commotions modify or even absolutely transform the conditions of political life. This is not to say, however, that governmental forms should be held in low esteem. Their choice is intimately linked to the prosperity of the social body: false, it hinders or destroys it; judicious, he serves and develops it. However, it is not a question here of prosperity; the question is more serious: it concerns the very existence of peoples and civilization, a phenomenon intimately linked to certain elementary conditions, independent of the political state, and which draw their reason for being, the reasons for their direction, of their expansion, of their fecundity or their weakness, everything that constitutes them, in very much deeper roots. It therefore goes without saying that, in the face of such capital considerations, questions of political conformity, prosperity or poverty are pushed to second place; because, everywhere and always, what comes first is this famous question from Hamlet:to be or not to be.For peoples as well as for individuals, it hovers above everything. As Mr. Guizot does not seem to have confronted this truth, civilization is for him, not astate,not onemedium,but onedo;and the generating principle from which he draws it is another fact of an exclusively political character. Let us open the book of the eloquent and illustrious professor: we find there a bundle of hypotheses chosen to put the dominant thought into

relief. After having indicated a certain number of situations in which societies can find themselves, the author wonders “if the general instinct would recognize there” the state of a people which is becoming civilized; if this is the meaning that the human race “naturally attaches to the word civilization34.»

The first hypothesis is this: “Here is a people whose external life is sweet, comfortable: they pay few taxes, they suffer no; justice is indeed “rendered to him in private relations; in a word, the material and moral existence of this people is held with great care in a state of numbness, of inertia, I do not mean oppression, because they have none. the feeling, but of compression. This is not without example. “There are a large number of small aristocratic republics, where the subjects have been treated like herds, well kept and materially happy, but without intellectual and moral activity. Is this “civilization?” Are these people becoming civilized? » I do not know if this is a people who are becoming civilized, but certainly it can be a very civilized people, otherwise we would have to push back among the savage or barbarian hordes all these aristocratic republics of antiquity and modern times which are find, as Mr. Guizot himself remarks, included within the limits of his hypothesis; and public instinct, general sense, cannot fail to be injured by a method which rejects the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Lacedaemonians, from the sanctuary of civilization, and then does the same to the Venetians, the Genoese, of the Pisans, of all the free imperial cities of Germany, in a word, of all the powerful municipalities of recent centuries. Besides the fact that this conclusion appears in itself too violently paradoxical for the common feeling to which it appeals to be willing to admit, it seems to me to face an even greater difficulty. These small aristocratic states to which, by virtue of their form of government, M. Guizot denies the aptitude for civilization, have never found themselves, for the most part in possession of a special culture which belonged only to them. . However powerful we have seen several of them, they were confused, in this respect, with peoples governed differently, but of very related race, and were only

participate in a set of civilization. Thus, the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians, distant from each other, were nonetheless united in a similar mode of culture and which had its type in Assyria. The Italian republics united in the movement of ideas and opinions dominant within the neighboring monarchies. The Swabian and Thuringian imperial cities, very independent from the political point of view, were entirely annexed to the general progress or decadence of the German race. It follows from these observations that Mr. Guizot, by thus distributing to people merit numbers calculated on the degree and form of their freedoms, creates in the races unjustifiable disjunctions and differences which do not exist. A discussion pushed too far would not be out of place here, and I will pass quickly; If, however, there was reason to begin the controversy, should we not refuse to admit that Pisa, Genoa, Venice and the others are inferior to countries such as Milan, Naples and Rome? But Mr. Guizot himself meets this objection. If he does not recognize civilization in a people “gently governed, but held in a “situation of compression”, he does not admit it any more in another people “whose material existence is less gentle, less convenient, bearable “however, on the other hand, we have not neglected the moral, “intellectual” needs...; whose elevated, pure feelings are cultivated; whose “religious and moral beliefs have reached a certain degree of development,” but in whom the principle of freedom is stifled; where we measure each person’s “share of truth; where no one is allowed to seek it alone. “This is the state into which most of the populations of Asia have fallen, where theocratic dominations hold back humanity; this is the state of the Hindus, for example35". Thus, in the same exclusion as the aristocratic peoples, we must further push back the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, the Peruvians, the Thibetans, the Japanese, and even modern Rome and its territories.

I will not touch on the last two hypotheses, for the reason that, thanks to the first two, here is the state of civilization already so restricted

that, on the globe, almost no nation is no longer authorized to legitimately claim it. From the moment that, to have the right to claim it, one must enjoy institutions that are equally moderating of power and freedom, and in which material development and moral progress are coordinated in one way and not in another; where government, like religion, is confined within precisely drawn limits; where the subjects, finally, must of all necessity possess rights of a defined nature, I realize that there are only civilized peoples those whose political institutions are constitutional and representative. From then on, I will not even be able to save all the European peoples from the insult of being pushed back into barbarism, and if, step by step, and always measuring the degree of civilization by the perfection of a single and unique form political, I disdain those of the constitutional States which use the parliamentary instrument poorly, to reserve the prize exclusively for those who use it well, I will find myself led to consider as truly civilized, in the past and in the present, only the English nation. Certainly I am full of respect and admiration for the great people whose victory, industry and commerce tell of their power and wonders everywhere. But I do not feel disposed, however, to respect and admire only him alone: it would seem to me too humiliating and too cruel for humanity to admit that, since the beginning of the centuries, it has not succeeded in doing civilization flourished only on a small island in the Western Ocean, and has only found its true laws since the reign of William and Mary. This conception, it will be admitted, may seem a little narrow. Then see the danger! If we want to attach the idea of civilization to a political form, reasoning, observation, science will soon lose all chance of deciding this question, and only the passion of the parties will decide. There will be minds who, according to their preferences, will intrepidly refuse to British institutions the honor of being the ideal of human improvement: their enthusiasm will be for the order established in Saint Petersburg or in Vienna. Many finally, and perhaps the greatest number, between the Rhine and the Pyrenees Mountains, will maintain that, despite some spots, the most civilized country in the world is still France. From the moment that determining the degree of culture becomes a matter of preference, a question of

feeling, getting along is impossible. The most nobly developed man will be, for everyone, the one who thinks like him on the respective duties of rulers and subjects, while the unfortunates gifted with different aims will be the barbarians and the savages. I believe that no one will dare to confront this logic, and we will admit, with common agreement, that the system where it takes its source is, at the very least, very incomplete.

For me, I do not find it superior, it seems to me even inferior to the definition given by Baron Guillaume de Humboldt: “Civilization is the humanization of peoples in their external institutions, in their morals and in their internal feeling. which relates to it. I encounter here a fault precisely opposite to the one that I allowed myself to note in Mr. Guizot's formula. The link is too loose, the terrain indicated too wide. From the moment that civilization is acquired by means of a simple softening of morals, more than one wild people, and very wild people, will have the right to claim precedence over such a nation of Europe whose character will offer even a little harshness. There are in the islands of the South Sea, and elsewhere, more than one very harmless tribe, of very gentle habits, of very good humor, which, however, they have never thought, while praising them, of putting above the rather harsh Norwegians, nor even next to the ferocious Malays who, dressed in brilliant fabrics made by themselves, and traveling the waves in boats skillfully constructed with their own hands, are at once the terror of commerce shipping and its most intelligent brokers in the eastern reaches of the Indian Ocean. This observation could not escape a mind as eminent as that of Mr. William of Humboldt; also, alongside civilization and on a higher level, he imaginesCulture,and he declares that, through it, the peoples, already softened, gainscience and art.

According to this hierarchy, we find the world populated, in the second age, by beingsaffectionateAndfriendly,more erudite, poets and artists, but, by the effect of all these qualities combined, foreign to the crude tasks, to the necessities of war, as to those of plowing and trades.

By reflecting on the small number of leisure activities that the perfected and assured existence of the happiest eras gives to their contemporaries to devote themselves to the pure occupations of the spirit, by looking at how incessant is the combat that must be waged against nature and to the laws of the universe just to survive, we quickly realize that the Berlin philosopher claimed less to depict realities than to draw from the bosom of abstractions certain entities which seemed beautiful and great to him, which in fact are so. , and to make them act and move in an ideal sphere like themselves. Any doubts that might remain in this regard soon disappear when we reach the highest point of the system, consisting of a third and final degree superior to the other two. This supreme point is that where the formed man places himself, that is to say the man who, in his nature, possesses "something higher, more intimate at the same time, that is - to say a way of understanding which spreads “harmoniously on the sensitivity and the character the impressions that it “receives from intellectual and moral activity as a whole”.

This sequence, somewhat laborious, therefore goes from the civilized or softened, humanized man, to the cultured man, scholar, poet and artist, to finally arrive at the highest development to which our species can achieve, to the trained man, who, if I understand correctly in my turn, will be aptly represented by what we are told was Goethe in his Olympian serenity. The idea from which this theory comes is nothing other than the profound difference noticed by Mr. William of Humboldt between the civilization of a people and the relative height of the perfection of great individuals; difference such that civilizations foreign to ours were able, obviously, to possess men who were very superior in certain respects to those we most admire: Brahmanical civilization, for example. I unreservedly share the opinion of the scholar whose ideas I present here. Nothing is more exact: our European social state produces neither the best nor the most sublime thinkers, nor the greatest poets, nor the most skilful artists. Nevertheless, I allow myself to believe, contrary to the opinion of the illustrious philologist, that, to judge and define civilization in general, it is necessary to carefully get rid of, if only for a moment, the

prejudices and detailed judgments concerning this or that civilization in particular. We must not be too broad, as for the man of the first degree, whom I persist in not finding civilized, only because he is softened; nor too narrow, as for the wise man of the third. The improving work of the human species is thus too reduced. It only produces purely isolated and typical results. The system of Mr. Guillaume de Humboldt does, moreover, the greatest honor to the grandiose delicacy which was the dominant trait of this generous intelligence, and we can compare it, in its essentially abstract nature, to these fragile worlds imagined by the Hindu philosophy. Born from the brain of a sleeping God, they rise into the atmosphere like the iridescent bubbles blown into soap by a child's blowtorch, and break and follow one another according to the dreams which the celestial sleep enjoys. .

Placed by the nature of my research on a more strictly positive ground, I need to arrive at results that practice and experience can palpate a little better. What the angle of my visual ray strives to embrace is not, with Mr. Guizot, the more or less prosperous state of societies; nor, with Humboldt's MG, is it the isolated elevation of individual intelligences: it is the whole of the power, both material and moral, developed in the masses. Disturbed, I admit, by the spectacle of the deviations in which two of the most admired men of this century have gone astray, I need, in order to freely follow a road separated from theirs, to check in with myself and to take the essential deductions as high as possible in order to arrive with firm steps at my goal. I therefore ask the reader to follow me with patience and attention in the twists and turns in which I must engage, and I will endeavor to shed light as best I can on the natural obscurity of my subject.

There is no people so stupid that a double instinct does not emerge: that of material needs and that of moral life. The measurement of intensity of each gives rise to the first and most sensitive difference between the races. Nowhere, even in the crudest tribes, do the two instincts balance each other by force.

equal. Among some, physical need dominates by far; in others, contemplative tendencies prevail. Thus the lower hordes of the yellow race appear to us to be dominated by material sensation, without however being absolutely deprived of any light cast on superhuman things. On the contrary, among the majority of Negro tribes of the corresponding degree, habits are less active than pensive, and the imagination gives more value to things that cannot be seen than to those that can be touched. I will not draw the conclusion from a superiority of these last wild races over the first, from the point of view of civilization, because they are not, the experience of centuries proves, more likely to reach the each other. Times have passed and have seen them do nothing to improve their lot, locked in that they are all equally incapable of combining enough ideas with enough facts to emerge from their degradation. I limit myself to noticing that, in the lowest level of human populations, I find this double current, variously constituted, whose progress I will have to follow as I ascend. Above the Samoyeds, like the Negroes Fidas and Pelagians, we must place these tribes which are not quite content with a hut of branches and social relations based on force alone, but which understand and desire a better state . They are raised one step above the most barbarous. If they belong to the series of races more active than thinking, we will see them perfecting their instruments of work, their weapons, their adornment; to have a government where warriors will dominate over priests, where the science of trade will acquire a certain development, where the mercantile spirit will already appear quite strong. Wars, always cruel, will however have a marked tendency towards pillage; in a word, well-being, physical enjoyments, will be the main goal of individuals. I find the realization of this picture in several of the Mongol nations; I still discover it, although with honorable differences, among the Quichuas and Aymaras of Peru; and I will encounter the antithesis, that is to say more detachment from material interests, among the Dahomeys of West Africa and among the Kaffirs. Now I continue the upward march. I abandon these groups whose social system is not vigorous enough to know how to impose itself,

with the fusion of blood, to very great multitudes. I come to those whose constitutive principle has such a strong virtuality, that it connects and encloses everything that surrounds its center of action, incorporates it and raises over immense regions the uncontested domination of a set of ideas and facts more or less well coordinated, in a word what can be called a civilization.The same difference, the same classification that I brought out for the first two cases, is found here in its entirety, much more recognizable still; and even it is only here that it bears real fruit, and that its consequences have far-reaching effect. From the moment when, from the state of a people, an agglomeration of men extends its relations, its horizon, enough to pass to that of a people, we notice in it that the two currents, material and intellectual, have increased in strength, according to that the groups which have entered into it and which merge there belong in greater quantity to one or the other. Thus, when the pensive faculty dominates, such results occur; when it is the active faculty, such others are produced. The nation displays qualities of a different nature, depending on whether this or that of the two elements reigns. We could here apply Hindu symbolism, representing what I called the intellectual current by Prakriti, female principle, and the material current by Pouroucha, male principle, provided however, of course, that these words only understand an idea of reciprocal fertilization, without placing praise on one side and blame on the other36. It will be noted, moreover, that at different periods of the life of a people and in strict dependence with the inevitable mixtures of blood, the oscillation becomes stronger between the two principles, and it happens that one alternately prevails over the other. The facts which result from this mobility are very important, and modify in a significant way the character of a civilization by acting on its stability. I will therefore divide, to place them more particularly, but never absolutely, that we remember, under the action of one of the currents, all peoples into two classes. At the head of the male category, I will include the Chinese; and as a prototype of the opposing class, I will choose the Hindus.

Following the Chinese, it will be necessary to include most of the peoples of ancient Italy, the first Romans of the republic, the Germanic tribes. In the opposite camp, I see the nations of Egypt, those of Assyria. They take their place behind the men of Hindustan. Following the course of the centuries, we see that almost all peoples have transformed their civilization as a result of the oscillations of the two principles. The northern Chinese, an almost absolutely materialistic population at first, gradually allied themselves with tribes of another blood, especially in Yunnan, and this mixture made their genius less exclusively utilitarian. If this development has remained stationary, or at least very slow for centuries, it is because the mass of male populations far exceeded the small amount of contrary blood that they shared.

For our European groups, the utilitarian element brought by the best of the Germanic tribes was constantly strengthened in the north, by the accession of the Celts and the Slavs. But, as the white peoples moved further south, male influences found themselves less strong, lost in an overly feminine element (some exceptions must be made, for example, for Piedmont and the north). of Spain), and this feminine element triumphed. Now let's move on to the other side. We see the Hindus endowed to a high degree with the feeling of supernatural things, and more meditative than active. As their oldest conquests mainly brought them into contact with races equipped with an organization of the same order, the male principle could not develop sufficiently. In these environments, civilization has not taken on a utilitarian growth proportionate to its successes of the other kind. On the contrary, ancient Rome, naturally utilitarian, only moved in the opposite direction when a complete fusion with the Greeks, Africans and Orientals transformed its first nature and created a completely new temperament.

For the Greeks, inner work was even more comparable to that of the Hindus.

From all of such facts, I draw this conclusion, that all human activity, whether intellectual or moral, originally takes its source in one of the two currents, male or female, and that it is only among races sufficiently abundantly provided with one of these two elements, without one ever being completely devoid of the other, that the social state can achieve a satisfactory degree of culture, and consequently civilization.

I now move on to other points which are still worthy of note.

First book

Chapter IX

Continuation of the definition of the word civilization; different characters of human societies; our civilization is not

superior to those that existed before it.

When a nation, belonging to the feminine or masculine series, possesses a civilizing instinct strong enough to impose its law on multitudes, happy enough above all to fit with their needs and their feelings by seizing their convictions, the culture which must in

result exists from this very moment. This is, for this instinct, the most essential, the most practical of merits, and that which only makes it usual and can give it life; because individual interests are, by their nature, inclined to isolate themselves. The association never fails to partially injure them; thus, for a conviction to take place in an intimate and fruitful way, it must agree in its views with the particular logic and feelings of the people it appeals to. When a way of understanding the law is accepted by the masses, it is because in reality it gives satisfaction, on the main points, to the needs considered to be the most dear. Male nations will especially want wellbeing; female nations will be more concerned with the demands of imagination, but from the moment, I repeat, that multitudes enlist under a banner, or, what is more exact here, from the moment If a particular regime manages to gain acceptance, there is an emerging civilization.

A second indelible character of this state is the need for stability, and it follows directly from what precedes; because, as soon as men have admitted, in common, that a certain principle must unite them, and have consented to individual sacrifices to make this principle reign, their first feeling is to respect it, for what it brings them as well as for what it brings to them. what it costs them, and to declare it irremovable. The purer a race remains, the less its social base is attacked, because the logic of the race remains the same. However, this need for stability is far from being satisfied for long. With mixtures of blood come modifications in national ideas; with these modifications, a malaise which requires correlative changes in the building. Sometimes these changes lead to real progress, and especially at the dawn of societies where the constitutive principle is, in general, absolute, rigorous, following the too complete predominance of a single race. Then, when variations multiply according to heterogeneous multitudes without common convictions, the general interest no longer always has to applaud the transformations. However, as long as the agglomerated group subsists under the direction of first impressions, it does not cease to pursue, through the idea of well-being which prevails, a chimera of stability. Varied, inconstant, changing every hour, it believes itself to be eternal and

moving towards a sort of heavenly goal. He preserves, even while denying it every hour through his actions, this doctrine, that one of the main features of civilization is to borrow from God, in favor of human interests, something of his immutability; and if this resemblance does not visibly exist, he reassures himself and consoles himself by convincing himself that tomorrow he will achieve it. Alongside the stability and the convergence of individual interests touching each other without destroying each other, we must place a third and a fourth character, the anathema of violence, then sociability.

Finally, from sociability and the need to defend oneself less with the fist than with the head, are born the improvements of intelligence, which, in turn, lead to material improvements, and it is to these last two traits that the eye especially recognizes an advanced social state37.

I now believe I can summarize my thoughts on civilization, by defining it as Onestate of relative stability, where multitudes strive to peacefully seek the satisfaction of their needs, and refine their intelligence and their morals. In this formula all the peoples that I have cited so far as civilized fit one as well as the other. The question now is whether, the conditions indicated being met, all civilizations are equal. That's what I don't think; because, the needs and sociability of all elite nations not having the same intensity or the same direction, their intelligence and their morals take, in their quality, very different degrees. What does the Hindu need materially? rice and butter for his food, cotton cloth for his clothing. We will no doubt be tempted to attribute this extreme sobriety to climatic conditions. But the Thibetians live in a harsh climate; however their sobriety is still very notable. What dominates for both of these peoples is the philosophical and religious development responsible for providing nourishment to the much more restless demands of the soul and the spirit. So, there, there is no balance between the two male and female principles; the predominance being on the side of the intellectual part, gives it too much weight, and the result is that all the works

of this civilization are almost exclusively inclined towards one result to the detriment of the other. Immense monuments, mountains of stone, will be sculpted at the cost of effort and pain that frighten the imagination. Gigantic constructions will cover the earth: for what purpose? that of honoring the gods, and nothing will be done for man, unless they are tombs. Alongside the wonders produced by the sculptor's chisel, literature, no less powerful, will create admirable masterpieces. In theology, in metaphysics, it will be as ingenious, as subtle as it is varied, and human thought will descend, without fear, to immeasurable depths. In lyric poetry, female civilization will be the pride of humanity. But if from the domain of idealistic reverie I pass to materially useful inventions and to the sciences which are the generating theory, from a summit I fall into an abyss, and the bright day gives way to night. Useful inventions remain rare, petty, sterile; the talent for observation practically does not exist. While the Chinese found a lot, the Hindus imagined very little, and took little care; the Greeks, likewise, transmitted to us knowledge often unworthy of them, and the Romans, once arrived at the culmination of their history, while doing more, could not go very far, because the Asian mixture, in which they absorbed with frightening rapidity, denied them the qualities essential for a patient investigation of realities. What we can say about them, however, is that their administrative genius, their legislation and the useful monuments with which they provided the soil of their territories, sufficiently attest to the positive character that their social thought took on at a certain moment, and proves that if the south of Europe had not been so quickly covered by the incessant colonizations of Asia and Africa, positive science would have gained, and Germanic initiative would subsequently have reaped less glory.

The winners of the Vecentury brought to Europe a mind of the same category as the Chinese mind, but much differently gifted. He was seen armed, to a greater extent, with feminine faculties. He achieved a happier agreement between the two motives. Wherever this branch of people dominates, the utilitarian, ennobled tendencies are unrecognizable.

In England, in North America, in Holland, in Hanover, these dispositions dominate other national instincts. It is the same in Belgium, and again in the north of France, where everything that is of positive application has constantly found marvelous facilities to be understood. As we move south, these predispositions weaken. It is not to the brighter action of the sun that we must attribute it, because certainly the Catalans and the Piedmontese live in warmer regions than the Provençals and the inhabitants of lower Languedoc; it is the influence of the blood. The series of feminine or feminized races holds the greatest place on the globe; this observation applies to Europe in particular. Except for the Teutonic family and a part of the Slavs, we find, in our part of the world, only groups weakly endowed with a utilitarian sense, and which, having already played their role in previous eras, could no longer do so. restart. The masses, nuanced in their varieties, present, from the Gauls to the Celtiberian, from the Celtiberian to the nameless mixture of Italian and Roman nations, a descending scale not as regards all the aptitudes of the male principle, at least as regards the main ones.

The mixture of Germanic tribes with the races of the ancient world, this union of male groups in such a high degree with races and remains of races consumed in the detritus of ancient ideas, has created our civilization; the wealth, diversity, fertility, which we honor to our societies, is a natural result of the truncated and disparate elements that it was in the nature of our paternal tribes to know, to a certain point, mix, disguise and use. Wherever our mode of culture extends, it bears two common characteristics: one, it is to have been at least touched by Germanic contact; the other, to be Christian. But, I say again, this second trait, although the most apparent and the one which first catches the eye, because it occurs outside our States, of which it seems in some way the veneer, n This is not absolutely essential, given that many nations are Christian, and an even greater number could become so, without being part of our circle of civilization. The first character is, at

contrary, positive, decisive. Where the Germanic element has never penetrated, there is no civilization in our way.

This naturally leads me to address this question: Can we affirm that European societies are entirely civilized? that the ideas, the facts which occur on their surfaces, have their reason for being deeply rooted in the masses, and that the consequences of these ideas and these principles respond to the instincts of the greatest number? We must also add this request, which is the corollary: Do the last layers of our populations think and act in the direction of what we call European civilization? We have rightly admired the extreme homogeneity of ideas and views which, in the Greek states of the belle époque, governed the entire body of citizens. On each essential point, the data, often hostile, nevertheless came from the same source: we wanted more or less democracy, more or less oligarchy in politics; in religion, we preferably worshiped either the Eleusinian Ceres or the Minerva of the Parthenon; in matters of literary taste, one could prefer Aeschylus to Sophocles, Alcaeus to Pindar; basically, the ideas about which we were arguing were all what we could call national; the discussion only attacked the measure. In Rome, before the Punic Wars, it was the same, and the civilization of the country was uniform, uncontested. In its way of proceeding, it extended from master to slave; everyone participated in it to varying degrees, but only participated in it.

Since the Punic wars among the successors of Romulus, and among all the Greeks since Pericles and especially since Philip, this character of homogeneity tended more and more to alter. The greater mixture of nations led to the mixture of civilizations, and the result was an extremely multiple, very learned product, much more refined than the ancient culture, which had this capital disadvantage, in Italy as in Hellas, of not being to exist only for the upper classes, and to leave the strata below quite ignorant of its nature, its merits and its ways. Roman civilization, after the great Asian wars, was undoubtedly a powerful manifestation of human genius; however, with the exception of the Greek rhetoricians, who supplied the part

transcendental, Syrian jurists, who came to compose an atheistic, egalitarian and monarchical system of laws, rich men, engaged in public administration or in money-making businesses, and finally people of leisure and pleasure, she had this misfortune of never being anything other than suffered by the masses, given that the people of Europe understood nothing about its Asian and African elements, that those of Egypt had no more understanding of what it brought them of Gaul and Spain, and that those of Numidia did not appreciate what came to them from the rest of the world. So that below what we could call the social classes, lived innumerable multitudes, civilized differently from the official world, or having no civilization at all. It was therefore the minority of the Roman people who, in possession of the secret, attached some value to it. Here is an example of a civilization accepted and reigning, no longer by the conviction of the peoples it covers, but by their exhaustion, their weakness, their abandonment. In China, a completely different spectacle presents itself. The territory is undoubtedly immense; but, from one end to the other of this vast expanse, circulates, among the national race (I leave the others aside), the same spirit, the same intelligence of the civilization possessed. Whatever the principles may be, whether one approves or blames the ends, it must be admitted that the multitudes take a demonstrative part of the intelligence they have of it. And it is not that this country is free in the sense in which we understand it, that democratic emulation pushes everyone to do well, in order to achieve the place that the laws guarantee it. No ; I push away any ideal picture. Peasants like bourgeois are very unlikely, in the Middle Kingdom, to escape from their position by the power of merit alone. At this end of the world, and despite the official promises of the examination system applied to the recruitment of public posts, there is no one who does not suspect that the families of civil servants absorb the places, and that school votes often cost more than money than scientific efforts38; but injured ambitions, while moaning about the wrongs of this organization, cannot imagine a better one, and the whole of existing civilization is for the entire people the object of imperturbable admiration.

Quite remarkably, education in China is very widespread and general; it reaches and goes beyond classes of which we do not easily imagine, in our country, that they can even feel needs of this kind. The cheapness of books, the multiplicity and low cost of schools, put people who want to in a position to learn, at least to a sufficient extent. The laws, their spirit, their tendencies, are very well known, and even the government prides itself on opening understanding to all about this useful science. Common instinct has the deepest horror of political upheavals. A very competent judge in this matter, who not only lived in Canton, but studied the cases there with the attention of a man interested in knowing them, Mr. John Francis Davis, commissioner of British SM in China, affirms that he saw there a nation whose history does not present a single attempt at social revolution, nor change in the forms of power. In his opinion, it cannot be better defined than by declaring it composed entirely of determined conservatives.

This is a very striking contrast with the civilization of the Roman world, where governmental modifications followed with such frightening rapidity until the arrival of the northern nations. On all points of this great society we always and easily found populations disinterested enough in the existing order to show themselves ready to serve the craziest attempts. There was nothing untried during this long period of several centuries, no principle respected. Property, religion, the family raised, there as elsewhere, considerable doubts about their legitimacy and large masses found themselves disposed, either in the North or in the South, to apply by force the theories of the innovators. Nothing, no nothing, rested, in the Greco-Roman world, on a solid foundation, not even imperial unity, so indispensable, it seems, to common salvation, and it was not only the armies, with their clouds of Improvised Augustes, who took it upon themselves to constantly shake this palladium of society; the emperors themselves, starting with Diocletian, believed so weakly in monarchy that they voluntarily tried dualism in power, then joined forces to govern. I repeat, not one institution, not one principle was stable in this miserable society, which had no better reason for being than physical impossibility.

to fail on one side or the other, until the moment when strong arms came, dismantling it, forcing it to become something definite.

Thus we find in two great social beings, the Celestial Empire and the Roman world, a perfect opposition. To the civilization of Eastern Asia I would add Brahmanical civilization, the intensity and diffusion of which must be admired at the same time. If, in China, a certain level of knowledge reaches everyone, or almost everyone, it is the same among Hindus: everyone, in their caste, is animated by a secular spirit, and clearly knows what he must learn, think and believe. Among the Buddhists of Tibet and other parts of upper Asia, nothing is rarer than meeting a peasant who cannot read. Everyone has similar beliefs on important subjects. Do we find the same homogeneity in our European nations? The question is not worth asking. The Greco-Roman Empire hardly offers us such distinct nuances, colors, not between different peoples, but I say within the same nationalities. I will glide over what concerns Russia and a large part of the Austrian States; my demonstration would be too easy there. Let's look at Germany, or Italy, especially southern Italy; Spain, although to a lesser degree, would present a similar picture; France, likewise. Let's take France: I will not only say that the difference in manners there strikes the most superficial observers so clearly, that we have long realized that between Paris and the rest of the territory there is an abyss, and that at the very gates of the capital, a nation begins entirely other than that which is within the walls. Nothing could be truer; people who rely on the political unity established among us to conclude from it the unity of ideas and the fusion of blood, are engaging in a great illusion.

Not a social law, not a generating principle of civilization understood in the same way in all our departments. It is useless to bring up here the Norman, the Breton, the Angevin, the Limousin, the Gascon, the Provençal; everyone must know how little these people resemble each other and how much they vary in their judgments. What to report,

This is because, while in China, Tibet and India, the most essential notions for the maintenance of civilization are familiar to all classes, it is in no way the same with us. The first, the most elementary of our knowledge, the most accessible, remains a mystery very neglected by the mass of our rural populations: because very generally we do not know how to read or write, and we attach no importance to it. learn, because we don't see the use of it, because we don't find the application. On this point, I believe little in the promises of laws, in the beautiful pretenses of institutions, and a lot in what I have seen myself, and in the facts noted by good observers. Governments have exhausted the most laudable efforts to draw the peasants out of their ignorance; not only do children find, in their villages, every facility for education, but even adults, seized, at the age of twenty, by conscription, find, in regimental schools, the best means of acquiring the skills most essential knowledge. Despite these precautions, despite this paternal solicitude and this perpetual compelle intrarewhose advice the administration repeats to its agents every day, the agricultural classes learn nothing. I have seen, and all the people who have lived in the province have seen it as I have, that parents only send their children to school with marked reluctance, and consider the hours spent there to be wasted time. pass; remove them hastily, under the slightest pretext, never allow the first years of strength to continue there; and when once he leaves school, the young man has nothing more in a hurry than to forget what he learned there. He makes it, in a way, a point of honor, in which he is imitated by the dismissed soldiers, who, in more than one part of France, not only no longer want to know how to read and write, but, even pretending to forget French, often succeed. I would therefore approve, with more peace of mind, so many generous efforts vainly spent to educate our rural populations, if I were not convinced that the knowledge we want to give them does not suit them, and that it There is, at the bottom of their apparent nonchalance, a feeling invincibly hostile to our civilization. I find proof of this in this passive resistance; but it is not the only one, and where we manage, with the help of circumstances which seem favorable, to make this obstinacy give way, another proof even more convincing appears to me and pursues me. On some points, we are more successful in educational attempts. Our eastern departments

and our large manufacturing towns have many workers who willingly learn to read and write. They live in an environment that demonstrates its usefulness to them. But as soon as these men possess the basic elements of education to a sufficient degree, what do most of them do with them? Means of acquiring such ideas and feelings no longer instinctively, but now actively hostile to the social order. I only make an exception for our agricultural and even working populations of the northeast, where elementary knowledge is much more widespread than anywhere else, retained once acquired, and generally bears only good fruit. It will be noted that these populations hold much closer than all the others to the Germanic race, and I am not surprised to see them for what they are. What I say here about our northeastern departments applies to Belgium and the Netherlands. If, after having noted the lack of taste for our civilization, we consider the substance of the beliefs and opinions, the distance becomes even more remarkable. As for beliefs, this is where we must thank the Christian faith for not being exclusive and for not wanting to impose too narrow a form. She would have encountered very dangerous pitfalls. Bishops and priests have to fight, no less today than a century ago, than there are five, than there are fifteen, against prejudices and tendencies transmitted hereditarily, and all the more to be feared because, almost never admitting to themselves, they allow themselves neither to be fought nor defeated. There is no enlightened priest, having evangelized villages, who does not know with what profound astuteness the peasant, even a devout one, continues to hide, to cherish in the depths of his mind, some traditional idea whose existence is only revealed despite himself and in rare moments. Do we talk to him about it? he denies it, never accepts discussion and remains unshakeably convinced. He has complete confidence in his pastor, everything, to the point of what could be called his secret religion exclusively, and hence this taciturnity which, in all our provinces, is the most marked character of the peasant towards what he calls the bourgeois, and this line of demarcation so impassable between him and the most beloved owners of his canton. This, against civilization, is the attitude of the majority of this people who are considered to be the most attached to it; I would be inclined to believe that if, drawing up some sort of approximate statistics, we said that in France 10 million souls

act in our sphere of sociability, and 26 million remain outside, we would be below the truth. And again if our rural populations were only crude and ignorant, we could be little concerned about this separation, and console ourselves with the vulgar hope of conquering them little by little and blending them into the already enlightened multitudes. But it is with these masses absolutely like certain savages: at first glance, we judge them to be thoughtless and half-raw, because the exterior is humble and selfeffacing; then as we penetrate, however little, into the heart of their particular life, we realize that they do not obey, in their voluntary isolation, a feeling of powerlessness. Their affections and antipathies do not happen at random, and everything about them agrees in a logical sequence of very fixed ideas. Speaking earlier about religion, I could also have pointed out what an immense distance separates our moral doctrines from those of the peasants,39how much what they would call delicacyis different from what we understand under this name; and, finally, with what tenacity they continue to look at everything that is not, like them, peasant, under the same aspect that men of the most distant antiquity considered the foreigner. In truth, they do not kill him, thanks to the terror, even singular and mysterious, that the laws that they did not make inspire in them; but they frankly hate it, distrust it, and, when it comes to ransoming it, are happy to do so, when they can without too much risk. So are they evil? No, not between them; we see them exchanging good practices and kindnesses. Only they see themselves as another species, a species, according to them, oppressed, weak, which must have recourse to cunning, but which also keeps its very tenacious, very contemptuous pride. In some of our provinces, the farmer considers himself of much better blood and older stock than his former lord. Family pride, among certain peasants, is today equal, at the very least, to what was observed among the nobility of the Middle Ages.40.

There is no doubt that the depths of the French population have little in common with its surface area; it is an abyss above which civilization is suspended, and the deep and still waters, sleeping at the bottom of the abyss, will show themselves, some day, irresistibly

solvents. The most tragic events have stained the country with blood, without the agricultural nation having sought any other part than that which it was forced to take. Where her personal and direct interest was not at stake, she let the storms pass without getting involved, even out of sympathy. Frightened and scandalized at this spectacle, many people declared that the peasants were essentially perverse; it is both an injustice and a very false assessment. The farmers look at us almost as enemies. They understand nothing about our civilization, they do not contribute to it of their own free will, and, as much as they can, they believe they are authorized to profit from its disasters. If we consider them outside of this antagonism, sometimes active, most often inert, we no longer doubt that high moral qualities, although often very singularly applied, reside in them.

I apply to all of Europe what I have just said about France, and I infer that, like the Roman Empire, the modern world embraces infinitely more than it embraces. We cannot therefore place much confidence in the duration of our social state, and the little attachment it inspires, even in sections of the population above the rural classes, seems to me a clear demonstration of this. Our civilization is comparable to these temporary islets pushed above the seas by the power of underwater volcanoes. Delivered to the destructive action of the currents and abandoned by the force which had initially sustained them, they give way one day, and will swallow up their debris in the domains of the conquering waves. Sad end, and one that many generous races had to endure before us! There is no need to deflect evil, it is inevitable. Wisdom can only predict, and nothing more. The most consummate prudence is not capable of thwarting for a single moment the immutable laws of the world.

Thus, unknown, disdained or hated by the majority of men assembled under its shadow, our civilization is nevertheless one of the most glorious monuments that the genius of the species has ever built. It is not, in truth, through invention that it stands out. This quality aside, let us say that it pushed far the understanding spirit and the power of conquest, which is a consequence. Understanding everything, that's all

take. If it did not create the exact sciences, it at least gave them their accuracy and freed them from the wanderings with which, by a singular phenomenon, they were perhaps even more mixed than all other knowledge. Thanks to its discoveries, it knows the material world better than previous societies did. She has guessed part of its main laws, she knows how to expose them, describe them and borrow from them truly marvelous forces to increase those of man a hundredfold. Little by little and by the rectitude with which she handles induction, she has reconstructed immense fragments of history, of which the ancients had never suspected, and, the further she moves away from primitive eras, the more she sees them and penetrates their mysteries. These are great superiorities, and which cannot be disputed without injustice.

This admitted, are we right to conclude, as we generally do too easily, that our civilization has pre-excellence over all those which have existed and exist outside of it? Yes and no. Yes, because it owes to the prodigious diversity of the elements which compose it, to rest on a powerful spirit of comparison and analysis, which makes it easier for it to appropriate almost everything; yes, because this eclecticism favors its developments in the most diverse directions; yes, again, because, thanks to the advice of Germanic genius, too utilitarian to be destructive, she created a morality whose wise requirements were generally unknown until her. But, if we push this idea of its merit to the point of declaring it superior absolutely and without reservation, I say no, because precisely it does not excel in almost anything.

In the art of government, we see it subjected, like a slave, to the incessant oscillations brought about by the demands of the very distinct races that it contains. In England, in Holland, in Naples, in Russia, the principles are still quite stable, because the populations are more homogeneous, or at least belong to groups of the same category and have similar instincts. But everywhere else, especially in France, in central Italy, in Germany, where ethnic diversity is limitless, governmental theories can never rise to the level of truth, and political science is in perpetual experimentation. . Our civilization, thus rendered incapable of taking a firm belief

in itself, therefore lacks this stability which is one of the main characteristics that I had to understand above in the definition formula. As we do not find this sad impotence among Buddhist and Brahmanical societies, as the Celestial Empire does not know it either, it is an advantage that these civilizations have over ours. There, everyone agrees on what to believe in political matters. Under wise administration, when secular institutions bear good fruit, we rejoice. When, in clumsy hands, they harm the public welfare, we pity them as we pity ourselves. But, at no time, does respect cease to surround them. We sometimes want to purify them, never destroy them or replace them with others. You would have to be blind not to see this as a guarantee of longevity that our civilization is far from providing. From the point of view of the arts, our inferiority towards India is marked, just as much as towards Egypt, Greece and America. Neither in the grandiose, nor in the beautiful, we have anything comparable to the masterpieces of ancient races, and when, our days are over, the ruins of our monuments and our cities will cover the face of our countries , certainly the traveler will discover nothing, in the forests and swamps of the banks of the Thames, the Seine and the Rhine, which rivals the sumptuous ruins of Philae, of Nineveh, of the Parthenon, of Salsette, of the valley of Tenochtitlan . If, in the field of positive sciences, future centuries have to learn from us, this is not the case for poetry. The desperate admiration that we have devoted, with so much justice, to the intellectual marvels of foreign civilizations, is superabundant proof of this.

Speaking now of the refinement of morals, it is obvious that we are rewarded on all sides. We are so from our own past, where there are times when luxury, delicacy of habits and sumptuousness of life were understood in a way infinitely more expensive, more demanding and broader than in our days, the truth, the enjoyments were less generalized. What is calledwell-being belonged to relatively few people. I believe it: but, if it must be admitted, an incontestable fact, that the elegance of morals so elevates the spirit of the multitudes of spectators

that it ennobles the existence of favored individuals, and that it spreads over the entire country in which it is practiced a veneer of grandeur and beauty, which has become the common heritage, our civilization, essentially petty in its external manifestations, n is not comparable to its rivals.

I will end this chapter by observing that the primitively organizing character of all civilization is identical with the most salient feature of the spirit of the dominating race; that civilization alters, changes, is transformed as this race itself undergoes such effects; that it is in civilization that the impulse given by a race which however has disappeared continues, for a more or less long period, and, consequently, that the type of order established in a society is the fact which best reflects the particular aptitudes and degree of elevation of the people; it is the clearest mirror where they can reflect their individuality. I realize that I have made a very long digression, and whose ramifications have extended further than I expected. I don't regret it too much. On this occasion, I was able to put forward certain ideas which were bound to come before the reader's eyes. However, it is time for me to return to the natural flow of my deductions. The series is still far from complete. I first posited this truth, that the life or death of societies resulted from internal causes. I said what these causes were. I addressed their intimate nature to be able to recognize them. I have demonstrated the falsity of the origins that are generally attributed to them. By looking for a sign which could constantly denounce them, and serve to establish, in all cases, their existence, I found the ability to create civilization, compared to the impossibility of conceiving this state. It is from this research that I am emerging at the moment. Now what is the first thing I need to take care of? It is undoubtedly, after having recognized in itself the latent cause of the life or death of societies in a natural and constant sign, to study the intimate nature of this cause. I said that it derived from the relative merit of the races. Logic therefore demands that I

immediately clarifies what I mean by the word race, and this is what will be the subject of the following chapter.

First book

Chapter X

Some anatomists attribute to humanity

multiple origins.

We must first question the wordbreedin its physiological scope.

The opinion of a large number of observers, proceeding from first impression and judging on the extremes41, declares that human families are marked by differences so radical, so essential, that we can do no less than deny them their original identity. Alongside Adamic descent, scholars supporting this system assume several other genealogies. For them the primordial unity does not exist in the species, or, to put it better, there is not a single species; there are three, four, and more, from which perfectly distinct generations arise, which, through their mixtures, have formed hybrids.

To support this theory, we quite easily grasp the common conviction by placing before the critic's eyes the obvious, clear, striking dissimilarities of human groups. When the observer is confronted with a subject with a yellowish complexion, a beard and sparse hair, a broad mask, a pyramidal skull, strongly oblique eyes, and the skin of the eyelids so tightly stretched towards the external angle that the eye barely opens, with a fairly humble stature and heavy limbs42, this observer recognizes a well-characterized, wellmarked type, and whose main features are certainly easy to keep in memory. Another individual appears: he is a negro from the west coast of Africa, tall, vigorous in appearance, with heavy limbs, with a marked tendency towards obesity43. The color is no longer yellowish, but entirely black; the hair is no longer rare and thin, but, on the contrary, thick, coarse, woolly and growing exuberantly; the lower jaw protrudes, the skull has this shape that we callprognathous,and as for the stature, it is no less particular. “The long bones are thrown outwards, the tibia and fibula are, in front, more convex than in Europeans, the calves are very high and reach up to the hock; the feet are very flat, and the calcaneus, instead of being arched, continues almost in a straight line with the other bones of the foot, which is remarkably broad. The hand also presents, “in its general disposition, something analogous44. » When the eye is fixed for a moment on an individual thus conformed, the mind involuntarily recalls the structure of the ape and feels inclined to admit that the Negro races of West Africa came from a stock which did not has nothing in common, other than certain general relationships in form, with the Mongolian family.

Next come tribes whose appearance flatters the self-esteem of humanity even less than that of the Congo Negro. It is a particular merit of Oceania to furnish the most degraded, the most hideous, the most repulsive specimens of these miserable beings, formed, apparently, to serve as a transition between man and brute pure and

simple. Compared to several Australian tribes, the African Negro himself elevates himself, gains value, seems to betray better descent. In many of the unfortunate populations of this last found world, the size of the head, the excessive thinness of the limbs, the starving shape of the body, present a hideous appearance. The hair is flat or wavy, more often woolly, the complexion is black, on a gray background45. Finally, if, after having examined these types taken from all corners of the globe, we return to the inhabitants of Europe, the south and the west of Asia, we find in them such superiority of beauty, of accuracy in the proportion of the limbs, the regularity of the facial features, that, immediately, one is tempted to accept the conclusion of the supporters of the multiplicity of races. Not only are the last peoples that I have just named more beautiful than the rest of humanity, a rather sad compendium, it must be admitted, of many uglies46; not only did these people have the glory of providing the admirable models of the Venus, the Apollo and the Farnese Hercules; but, moreover, between them, a visible hierarchy has been established from all antiquity, and, in this human nobility, the Europeans are the most eminent for the beauty of the forms and the vigor of muscular development. Nothing seems more reasonable than to declare the families of which humanity is composed as foreign to each other as animals of different species are to each other.

This was also the conclusion drawn from the first remarks, and, as long as we only decided on general facts, it did not seem that anything could invalidate it.

Camper, one of the first, systematized these studies. He was no longer content to decide solely on the basis of superficial testimony; he wanted to base his demonstrations in a mathematical manner, and sought to specify, anatomically, the characteristic differences of human categories. By succeeding, he established a strict method which left no more room for doubts, and his opinions acquired that rigor without which there is no real science. He therefore imagined taking the lateral face of the bony head, and measuring the opening of the

profile by means of two lines called, by him,facial lines.Their intersection formed an angle, which, by its greater or lesser opening, should give the measure of the degree of elevation of the race. One of these lines went from the base of the nose to the auditory meatus; the other was tangent to the projection of the forehead from above, and from below to the most prominent part of the lower jaw. By means of the angle thus formed, a scale was established, not only for man, but for all classes of animals, of which the European formed the summit; and the more acute the angle, the more the subjects moved away from the type which, in Camper's thinking, summed up the most perfection. Thus, the birds formed the smallest angle with the fish. Mammals of different classes enlarged it. A certain species of monkey reached up to 42 degrees, even up to 50. Then came the head of the African negro, which, like that of the Kalmouk, reached 70. The European reached 80, and, to quote the very words of the inventor, words so flattering for our fellow creature: “It is,” he says, “on this difference of 10 degrees that its greater beauty depends, what we can call its comparative beauty. As for this absolute beauty which strikes us to such a high degree "in certain works of ancient statuary, as in the head of Apollo" and in the Medusa of Sosicles, it results from an even greater opening "of the 'angle, which in this case reaches up to 100 degrees47. »

This method was attractive for its simplicity. Unfortunately, she had the facts against her, an accident that happens to many systems. Owen established, through a series of unanswered observations, that Camper had only studied the conformation of the bony heads of monkeys on young subjects, and that, in individuals reaching adulthood, the growth of teeth, the enlargement of the jaws and the development of the zygomatic arch not being accompanied by a corresponding enlargement of the brain, the differences with the human head are quite other than those for which Camper had established the figures, since the facial angle of the black orang or nature's most favored chimpanzee does not exceed 30 and 35 degrees at most. From this figure to the 70 degrees of the Negro and the Kalmouk, there is too far for the series imagined by Camper to remain admissible.

Phrenology had married many of its demonstrations to the theory of the Dutch scientist. We liked to recognize, in the ascending series from animals to man, corresponding developments in the instincts. However, the facts were still contrary to this point of view. It was objected, among other things, that the elephant, whose intelligence is incontestably superior to that of the orangutans, has a much more acute facial angle than theirs, and, among the apes themselves, it is far from that. the most intelligent, the most likely to receive some sort of domestic education, belong to the largest species. Besides these two serious defects, Camper's method still presented a very open aspect. It did not apply to all varieties of the human race. It left tribes with pyramidal heads outside of its categories, and this is, however, a rather striking feature. Blumenbach, having a good hand against his predecessor, proposed, in his turn, a system: it was to study the man's head from above. He called his invention,norma verticalis, the vertical method. He assured that the comparison of the upper width of the heads highlighted the main differences in the general configuration of the skull. According to him, the study of this part of the body raises so many remarks, especially regarding the points determining the national character, that it is impossible to subject all these diversities to a single measurement of lines and angles, and that, for To achieve a satisfactory classification, it is necessary to consider the heads under the aspect which can embrace, at a single glance, the greatest number of varieties. Now, his idea had to have this advantage. It was summarized as follows: “Place the series of skulls that we want to compare so that the malar bones are on the same horizontal line, as happens when these skulls rest on the lower jaw; then place yourself behind, bringing the eye “successively above the vertex of each; from this point, in fact, we will grasp the varieties in the form of the parts which contribute the most to the national character, whether they consist in the direction of the maxillary and malar bones, or whether they depend on the width or from the narrowness of the “oval” outline presented by the vertex; or, finally, that they are in the “flattened or convex configuration of the frontal bone48. »

The consequence of this system was, for Blumenbach, a division of humanity into five large categories, divided in turn into a certain number of genres and types. Several doubts attached to this classification. We could rightly criticize him, like that of Camper, for neglecting several important characteristics, and it was, in part, to avoid the main objections that Owen proposed to examine the skulls no longer by their summit, but by their basis. One of the main results of this new way of proceeding was to definitively find a line of demarcation so clear and so strong, between man and the orang, that it became forever impossible to find between the two species the link imagined by Camp. Indeed, the first glance cast at two skulls, one of an orang, the other of a man, examined from their bases, is enough to reveal capital differences. The anteroposterior diameter is more elongated in the orang than in humans; the zygomatic arch, instead of being included in the anterior half of the cranial base, forms, in the middle region, just a third of the total length of the diameter; finally, the position of the foramen magnum, so interesting because of its relationship with the general character of the individual's forms, and especially because of the influence it exerts on habits, is by no means the same. In man, it occupies almost the middle of the base of the skull; in the orang, it is pushed back to the middle of the posterior third49.

The merit of Owen's observations is great, no doubt; I would, however, prefer the most recent of the cranioscopic systems, which is, at the same time, the most ingenious, in many respects, that of the American scientist Mr. Morton, adopted by Mr. Carus50. Here is what it consists of:

To demonstrate the difference between races, the two scientists I cite started from the idea that the larger the skulls, the more, in general, the individuals to which these skulls belong appear superior.51. The question asked is therefore this: Is the development of the skull equal in all human categories?

To obtain the desired solution, Mr. Morton took a certain number of heads belonging to whites, Mongols, negroes, and Red Indians of North America, and, blocking with cotton all the openings , except the foramen magnum, he filled the interior completely with carefully dried peppercorns; then he compared the quantities thus contained. This examination provided him with the following table52

:

1

Number

skulls measures

2

3

4

Average

Maximum

Minimum

of the number

of

of

capacity

ability

ability

52

87

109

75

Mongols

10

83

93

69

Malay

18

81

89

64

Peoples whites

Yellow peoples

Redskins Negroes

147 29

82 78

100 94

60 65

The results recorded in the first two columns are certainly very curious. On the other hand, I attach little value to those of the last two; because for the violent disturbance that they seem to bring in the observations of the second column to be real, it would be necessary, first, for Mr. Morton to have operated on a much more considerable number of skulls, and, secondly, for him to would have specified the social position of the people to whom the skulls would have belonged. Thus he was able to have quite beautiful subjects for the whites and the Redskins: he obtained there heads which belonged to men above the completely vulgar level; while, for the blacks, it is not probable that he had at his disposal the skulls of chiefs of tribes, and, for the yellows, the heads of mandarins. This explains to me how he was able to attribute the number 100 to an American native, while the most intelligent Mongol he examined does not exceed 93, and thus allows himself to be taken over by even the Negro, who reaches 94. Such results are completely incomplete, fortuitous and without scientific value and, in such questions, we cannot avoid too carefully judgments based on the examination of individualities. I would therefore be inclined to reject the second half of Mr. Morton's calculations altogether.

I also feel willing to challenge a detail of others. Thus, in the second column, between the numbers 87, indicative of the capacity of the white skull, 83 of the yellow and 78 of the black, there is a clear and obvious gradation. But the measurements of 83, 81 and 82, given for the Mongols, the Malays and the Redskins, are averages which, obviously, are confused, and all the better since Mr. Carus does not hesitate to understand the Mongols and the Malays in one and the same race, that is to say, to combine the numbers 83 and 81. Why, then, take 82 as the characteristic of a distinct race, and thus completely arbitrarily create a fourth great human subdivision?

This anomaly also supports the weak part of Mr. Carus' system. The Saxon scholar likes to suppose that, just as we see our planet passing through the four states of day, night, evening twilight and morning twilight, so there must be in the human species, four subdivisions corresponding to these variations of light. He sees a symbol there53, a temptation always very dangerous for a refined mind. Mr. Carus gave in to it, as many of his learned compatriots would have done in his place. The white peoples are the peoples of the day; the black ones, those of the night; the yellows, those of morning or eastern twilight; the reds, those of the evening or the western twilight. We can easily guess all the ingenious connections that are attached to this painting. Thus, the European nations, by the brilliance of their sciences and the clarity of their civilization, have the most obvious relationships with the luminous state, and, while the blacks sleep in the darkness of ignorance, the Chinese live in half a day which gives them an incomplete, yet powerful, social existence. For the Redskins, gradually disappearing from this world, where can we find a more beautiful image of their fate than the setting sun!

Unfortunately, comparison is not reason, and, by having abandoned himself unduly to this poetic trend, Mr. Carus has somewhat spoiled his beautiful theory. Moreover, we must again admit here what I said for all the other ethnological doctrines, those of Camper, Blumenbach, Owen: Mr. Carus does not succeed in regularly systematizing all the physiological diversities noted in the breeds54. The supporters of ethnic unity have not failed to seize this impotence, and to claim that, since the observations on the conformation of the bony head seem unable to be classified in such a way as to formulate a demonstrative system of the original separation of types, we must consider the divergences, no longer as great radically distinctive features, but as the simple results of independent secondary causes, completely destitute of specific character.

It's singing victory a little too quickly. The difficulty of finding a method does not always lead to the conclusion that it is impossible to discover it. The Unitarians, however, did not admit this reservation. To support their opinion, they pointed out that certain tribes belonging to the same race, far from presenting the same physical type, deviate, on the contrary, quite notably. For example, without taking into account the quantity of elements in each mixture, they cited the different branches of the mixed MalayoPolynesian family, and they added that, if groups whose origin is common55can however take on totally different cranial and facial forms, it follows that the greatest diversities in this genus do not prove the primary multiplicity of origins; that, therefore, however strange the Negro or Mongolian types may appear to European eyes, it is not a demonstration of this multiplicity of origins, and that the causes of the separation of human families must be sought less high and less far, we can consider physiological deviations as the simple results of certain local causes acting over a more or less long period of time56. Pursued by so many good and bad objections, the partisans of the multiplicity of races have sought to enlarge the circle of their arguments; and, ceasing to confine themselves to the study of skulls alone, they moved on to that of the entire human individual. To show, which is true, that the differences do not exist only in the appearance of the face and in the bony construction of the heads, they have alleged facts no less serious, such as the shape of the pelvis, the relative proportion of limbs, skin color, nature of the hair system.

Camper and other anatomists had recognized, for a long time, that the Negro's pelvis presented certain particularities. Doctor Vrolik, extending his research further, observed that, for Europeans, the differences between the pelvis of man and that of woman are much less marked, and in the Negro race he sees, in both sexes, a very salient character of animality. The Amsterdam scientist, starting from the idea that the conformation of the pelvis necessarily influences that of the fetus, concluded that there were original differences57.

Mr. Weber came to attack this theory; however, with little

advantages. He had to recognize that certain forms of pelvis were found more frequently in one race than in another, and all he was able to do was to show that the rule is not without exception, and that such American, African, Mongolian subjects present forms ordinary to Europeans. This does not prove much, especially since Mr. Weber, when speaking of these exceptions, does not seem to have been concerned with the idea that their particular conformation could only be the result of a mixture of blood .

As for the size of the limbs, the adversaries of the unity of the species claim that the European is better proportioned. They are told that the thinness of the extremities, among nations which feed particularly on plants, or whose diet is imperfect, is nothing that should be surprising; and this line is certainly good. But when we further object to the extraordinary development of the bust among the Quichuas, the critics, determined not to recognize it as a specific character, refute the argument in a less conclusive way: for to claim, as they do fact, that this size of the chest is explained, among the mountain people of Peru, by the elevation of the Andes chain, this is not to give a very serious reason58. There are many mountain populations in the world, which are constituted quite differently from the Quichuas.59. Next come observations on skin color. The Unitarians maintain that no specific character can be found there: first, because this coloring is due to climacteric circumstances, and is not permanent, a more than bold assertion; secondly, because color lends itself to the establishment of infinite gradations, through which we pass imperceptibly from white to yellow, from yellow to black, without being able to discover a sufficiently clear line of demarcation. This fact simply proves the existence of innumerable hybrids, an observation to which the Unitarians make the fundamental mistake of being constantly inattentive. On the specific character of hair, Mr. Flourens brings his great authority in favor of the original unity of races.

After quickly reviewing the inconsistent arguments, I arrive at the true scientific citadel of the Unitarians. They have an argument of great force, and I have reserved it for the last: I mean the ease with which the different branches of the human species produce hybrids, and the fertility of these same hybrids. The observations of naturalists seem to have demonstrated that, in the animal or vegetable world, mongrels can only be born from fairly related species, and that, even in this case, their products are condemned in advance to sterility. It has also been observed that between closely related species, although fertilization is possible, mating is repugnant and is generally only achieved by trickery or force; which would indicate that, in the free state, the number of hybrids is even more limited than the intervention of man has succeeded in making it. We concluded that it was necessary to include among the specific characteristics the ability to produce fertile individuals. As nothing allows us to believe that the human species is exempt from this rule, nothing, until now, has been able to shake the force of the objection which, more than all others, keeps the system in check. opponents of unity. It is true that it is affirmed that, in certain parts of Oceania, indigenous women, who have become mothers of European halfbreeds, are no longer capable of being impregnated by their compatriots. Accepting this information as accurate it would be worthy of serving as a starting point for more in-depth investigations; but, as for now, we cannot yet use it to invalidate the accepted principles on the generation of hybrids. It proves nothing against the deductions that we draw from it.

First book

Chapter XI

Ethnic differences are permanent.

The Unitarians assert that the separation of races is apparent, and due only to local circumstances such as those whose influence we now experience, or to accidental deviations of conformation in the origin of a branch. All humanity is, for them, accessible to the same improvements; everywhere the common original type, more or less veiled, persists with equal force, and the Negro, the American savage, the Tongouse of northern Siberia can and must, under the influence of a similar education, manage to compete with the European for the beauty of forms. This theory is unacceptable. We saw above what was the strongest scientific bulwark of the Unitarians: it is the fertility of human crossbreeding. This observation, which until now appears to present great difficulties for refutation, will perhaps not always be so invincible, and it would not be enough to stop me if I did not see it supported by another argument, of a similar nature. very different, which, I admit, touches me more: it is said that Genesis does not admit, for our species, several origins. If the text is positive, peremptory, clear, incontestable, we must bow our heads: the greatest doubts must give way, reason has only to declare itself imperfect and defeated, the origin of humanity is one, and everything that seems to demonstrate the contrary is only an appearance that we should not dwell on. For it is better to allow obscurity to thicken on a point of erudition than to venture against such an authority. But if the

Bible is not explicit? If the holy books, dedicated to anything other than the clarification of ethnic questions, have been misunderstood, and if, without doing violence to them, another meaning can be extracted from them, then I will not hesitate to ignore them. .

That Adam is the author of our white species must certainly be admitted. It is very clear that the Scriptures want us to understand it this way, since from him descend generations who were incontestably white. This being said, there is nothing to prove that, in the minds of the first writers of the Adamite genealogies, creatures which did not belong to the white race were considered to be part of the species. Not a word is said about the yellow nations, and it is only through an interpretation whose arbitrary character I will succeed, I think, in the following book, that the color is attributed to the Cham patriarch. black. Without doubt, the translators and commentators, by affirming that Adam was the author of everything that bears the name of man, have brought into the families of his sons all the peoples who have come since. According to them, the Japhethides are the stock of European nations, the Semites occupy earlier Asia, the Hamites, who are made, without good reason, I repeat, to be an originally Melanian race, occupy the African regions. That's it for part of the globe: it's wonderful; and the population of the rest of the world, what in fact? It remains outside this classification. I am not insisting, at this moment, on this idea. I do not want to enter into an apparent struggle, even with simple interpretations, as long as they are accredited. I am content to indicate that we could perhaps, without going beyond the limits imposed by the Church, contest its value; then I fall back to looking if, admitting, as it is, the fundamental part of the opinion of the Unitarians, there would not still be a way of explaining the facts otherwise than they do, and of examining whether the The most essential physical and moral differences cannot exist between human races and have all their consequences, independently of the unity or multiplicity of first origin?

Ethnic identity is accepted for all canine varieties.60; who therefore, however, will undertake the thesis difficult to observe in all

these animals, without distinction of gender, the same forms, the same tendencies, the same habits, the same qualities? The same is true for other species, such as horses, cattle, bears, etc. Everywhere: identity as to the origin, diversity for everything else, and diversity so deeply established that it can only be lost through crossings, and even then the types do not return to a real identity of character. Whereas, as long as racial purity is maintained, the special traits remain permanent and are reproduced, from generation to generation, without showing significant deviations.

This fact, which is incontestable, has led to the question whether, in animal species subjected to domesticity and having contracted the habits, we could recognize the forms and instincts of the primitive stock. The question seems likely to remain insoluble. It is impossible to determine what the forms and nature of the primitive individual must have been, and how far from or near the deviations placed before our eyes today are. A very large number of plants offer the same issue. Man especially, the most interesting creature to know about his origins, seems to refuse any decipherment in this respect. The different races have not doubted that the ancient author of the species had precisely their characteristics. On this point, on this one alone, their traditions are unanimous. The whites created an Adam and an Eve that Blumenbach would have declared Caucasian; and a book, frivolous in appearance, but full of fair observations and exact facts,the thousand and One Nights,says that some negroes consider Adam and his wife black; that, these authors of humanity having been created in the image of God, God is black also, and the angels likewise, and that the prophet of God was naturally too favored to show white skin to his disciples.

Unfortunately, modern science has been unable to do anything to simplify the maze of these opinions. No probable hypothesis has succeeded in illuminating this obscurity, and, in all likelihood, the human races differ as much from their common generator, if indeed they had one, as they do from each other. It remains to be explained, on the modest and

narrow where I confine myself, admitting the opinion of the Unitarians, this deviation from the primitive type.

The causes are very difficult to disentangle. The opinion of the Unitarians attributes it, as I have said, to the influence of climate, topographical position and habits. It is impossible to agree with such an opinion61, whereas the modifications in the constitution of races, since the beginning of historical times, under the influence of the circumstances indicated here, do not appear to have had the importance that should be attributed to them to sufficiently explain so many and such profound dissimilarities . We'll figure it out right now.

I suppose that two tribes, still similar to the primitive type, are found to inhabit, one an alpine region, located in the interior of a continent, the other an island in the maritime region. The ambient air condition will be completely different for the two populations, the food will be the same. If, moreover, I attribute abundant means of nourishment to one, precarious to the other; that in addition, I place the first under the action of a cold climate, the second under that of a tropical sun, it is quite certain that I will have accumulated the most essential local contrasts. The course of time adding what we suppose to be forces to the natural activity of physical agents, little by little the two groups will certainly end up taking on some of their own characteristics which will help to distinguish them. But, even after a series of centuries, nothing essential, nothing organic will have changed in their conformation; and the proof is that we find populations separated throughout the world, placed in very disparate climate and existence conditions, whose types nevertheless offer the most perfect resemblance. All ethnologists agree. We even wanted the Hottentots to be a Chinese colony, as they resemble the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, an unacceptable assumption.62. We also discover a great similarity between the portrait that has remained to us of the ancient Etruscans and the type of the Araucans of South America. The face and body shapes of the Cherokees seem to merge completely with those of several Italian populations, such as the Calabrians. The marked physiognomy of the inhabitants of Auvergne, especially among the women, is much further removed from the common character of nations

European than that of several Indian tribes of North America. Thus, from the moment that, in distant and different climates, and in very different living conditions, nature can produce types which resemble each other, it is very clear that it is not the external agents acting today which impose their characters on human types. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that local circumstances can at least favor the greater or lesser intensity of certain shades of complexion, the tendency towards obesity, the relative development of the chest muscles, the lengthening of the lower limbs or arms, the measure of physical strength. But, once again, there is nothing essential there, and judging from the very slight modifications that these causes, when they change their nature, bring into the conformation of individuals, there is no not to be believed either, and it is yet another proof which has weight, that they never exerted much action.

If we do not know what revolutions may have occurred in the physical organization of peoples up to the dawn of historical times, we can at least note that this period only includes approximately half of the age attributed to our species; and if therefore, for three or four thousand years, the darkness is impenetrable, we have three thousand other years remaining, to the beginning of which we can go back for some nations, and everything proves that the races then known, and which remained, since this time, in a state of relative purity, have not notably changed their appearance, although some have ceased to inhabit the same places, to be subject, consequently, to the same external causes. I will cite the Arabs. As the Egyptian monuments represent them to us, so we still find them, not only in the arid deserts of their country, but in the fertile, often humid regions of Malabar and the Coromandel coast, in the islands of the Sea of India, on several points of the northern coast of Africa, where they are, in truth, more mixed than anywhere else; and their trace is still found in some parts of Roussillon, Languedoc and the Spanish beach, although two centuries, approximately, have passed since their invasion. The only influence of the environments, if it had the power, as we suppose, to do and undo the

organic demarcations, would not have allowed such longevity of types to exist. By changing locations, the descendants of the Ishmaelite stock would also have changed their conformation.

After the Arabs, I will cite the Jews, even more remarkable in this matter, because they emigrated to climates extremely different, in any case, from that of Palestine, and they did not retain their ancient kind of life. Their type, however, remained similar to itself, offering only completely insignificant alterations, which were not sufficient, in any latitude, in any country condition, to alter the general character of the breed. As we see the warlike Rechabites of the Arab deserts, so also appear to us the peaceful Portuguese, French, German and Polish Israelites. I had the opportunity to examine a man belonging to the latter category. The cut of his face perfectly betrayed his origin. His eyes especially were unforgettable. This inhabitant of the North, whose direct ancestors had lived for several generations in the snow, seemed to have been browned yesterday by the rays of the Syrian sun. Thus, we must admit that the face of the Semite has preserved, in its main and truly characteristic features, the appearance that we see in Egyptian paintings executed three or four thousand years ago and more; and this aspect is found in the most multiple, most clearly defined climacteric circumstances, equally striking, equally recognizable. The identity of descendants with ancestors does not stop at facial features: it persists, likewise, in the conformation of the limbs and in the nature of the temperament. German Jews are, in general, smaller, and have a more slender structure than the men of European race, among whom they have lived for centuries. In addition, the age of marriage is, for them, much earlier than for their compatriots of another race.63. This, moreover, is an assertion diametrically opposed to the feeling of Mr. Prichard. This physiologist, in his zeal to prove the unity of the species, seeks to demonstrate that the time of puberty, in both sexes, is the same everywhere and for all races.64. The reasons he puts forward are taken from the Old Testament for the Jews, and, for the Arabs, from the

religious law of the Koran by which the age of marriage for women is fixed at 15 years and even at 18, in the opinion of Abou-Hanifah.

These two arguments seem very debatable. First of all, biblical testimonies are hardly admissible in this matter, since they often present facts outside the usual course of things, and, to cite one, the birth of Sarah, which occurred in her extreme old age. , and when Abraham himself was 100 years old, is an event on which ordinary reasoning cannot rely65. Moving on to the opinion and prescriptions of Muslim law, I note that the Koran did not only intend to establish physical aptitude before authorizing marriage: it also wanted the woman to be sufficiently advanced. of intelligence and education to be able to understand the duties of such a serious state. The proof is that the Prophet took great care to order, with regard to young girls, the continuation of religious education until the wedding time. From such a point of view, it was quite simple that this moment was delayed as much as possible, and that the legislator found it very important to develop reason before being as hasty, in his authorizations, as nature was in the his. That's not all. Against the serious evidence that Mr. Prichard invokes, there are others more conclusive, although lighter, and which decide the question in favor of my opinion. The poets, attached only, in their love stories, to showing their heroines at the flower of their beauty, without worrying about moral development, the oriental poets have always made their lovers much younger than the age indicated by the Koran . Zélika Leïla is certainly not fourteen years old. In India, the difference is even more marked. Sakontala would be in Europe a very young girl, a child. The golden age of love for a woman in that country is nine to twelve years old. Here then is a very general opinion, well established, well accepted in the Indian, Persian and Arab races, that the spring of life, among women, blooms at a somewhat early time for us. For a long time our writers took the advice, in this matter, of the ancient models of Rome. These, in agreement with their teachers in Greece, accepted fifteen years for good age. Since the ideas of the North influenced our

literature, we have only seen adolescent girls of eighteen years old in novels, and even beyond. If, now, we return to less cheerful arguments, we will not find them in less abundance. In addition to what has already been said above about German Jews, we can note that, in several parts of Switzerland, the physical development of the population is so late that, for men, it is not always completed in the twentieth year. Another series of observations, very easy to approach, would be offered by the Bohemians or Zingaris66. Individuals of this race present exactly the same physical precocity as their Hindu parents; and under the harshest skies, in Russia, in Moldavia, we see them preserving, with their ancient notions and habits, the appearance, the shape of the faces and the bodily proportions of the pariahs. However, I do not pretend to fight Mr. Prichard on all points. There is one of his observations that I eagerly adopt: it is that “the difference in climate has little or no effect in producing significant diversities in the periods of physical changes to which the human constitution is subject.67". This remark is very well-founded, and I would not seek to refute it, limiting myself to adding only that it seems to slightly contradict the principles defended by the learned American physiologist and antiquary. We will not have failed to notice that the question of permanence in types is, here, the key to the discussion. If it is demonstrated that the human races are, each, locked in a sort of individuality from which nothing can bring them out except mixture, then the doctrine of the Unitarians finds itself very pressed and cannot escape recognizing that , from the moment the types are so completely hereditary, so constant, so permanent,in a word, despite climates and time, humanity is no less completely and unshakably divided than if specific distinctions took their source in a primitive diversity of origin.

This assertion, so important, has now become easy for us to support. We saw it supported by the testimony of Egyptian sculptures, about the Arabs, and by the observation of Jews and

Zingaris. It would be to deprive oneself, without any reason, of precious assistance not to recall, at the same time, that the paintings of the temples and hypogeums of the Nile valley also attest to the permanence of the Negro type with frizzy hair, a head prognathous, with big lips, and that the recent discovery of the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad68, confirming what the figured monuments of Persepolis already proclaimed, establishes, in turn, in an incontestable manner, the physiological identity of the Assyrian populations with such nations which today occupy the same territory.

If we had similar documents on a larger number of races still alive, the results would remain the same. The permanence of types would be all the more demonstrated. However, it is sufficient to have established the fact for all cases where study is possible. It is now up to the opponents to offer their objections. They lack resources, and in the defense they attempt, they deny themselves, from the first word, or put themselves in contradiction with the most palpable realities. Thus, they allege that the Jews changed their type depending on the climate, and the facts demonstrate the opposite. Their reason is that there are many blond Israelites with blue eyes in Germany. For this allegation to have value, from the point of view taken by the Unitarians, the climate must be recognized as being the sole or at least main cause of this phenomenon, and precisely the scholars of this school assure, of on the other hand, that the color of the skin, eyes and hair does not depend, in any way, on the geographical location, nor on the influences of cold or heat69. They find and report, with good reason, blue eyes and blond hair among the Sinhalese; they even observe a wide variety of complexions ranging from light brown to black. On the other hand, they admit that the Samoyeds and Tongouses, although living on the shores of the Frozen Sea, are extremely dark. The climate therefore has nothing to do with the fixed complexion, any more than with the color of the hair and eyes. We must therefore leave these marks either as indifferent in themselves, or as annexed to the race, and since we know very precisely that red hair is not rare in the Orient and has never been so. , no one can be surprised to see them today in Jews

Germans. There is nothing here to establish anything, neither the permanence of types nor the opposite.

Unitarians are no happier when they call on historical evidence to help them. They only provide two: one applies to the Turks, the other to the Madjars. For the former, Asian origin is considered out of the question. We believe we can say the same about their close relationship with the Finnish branches of the Ostiaks and the Lapps. From then on they originally had the yellow face, the high cheekbones, and the small size of the Mongols. This point established, we turn to their current descendants, and, seeing them equipped with the European type, with thick and long beards, almond-shaped eyes and no longer slanted, we victoriously conclude that the races are not permanent , since the Turks thus transformed themselves70. “In truth,” say the Unitarians, “some people have claimed that there had been mixtures” with the Greek, Georgian and Circassian families. But, they add, “immediately, these mixtures could only be very partial: not all the Turks were “rich enough to buy their wives in the Caucasus; not all of them had harems populated by white slaves, and, on the other hand, the hatred of the Greeks for their conquerors and religious antipathies did not favor alliances, since the two peoples, although living together, are still “today as separated as on the first day of the conquest71". These reasons are more specious than solid. The Finnic origin of the Turkish race can only be admitted under the benefit of an inventory. This origin has only been demonstrated, until now, by means of a single argument: the relationship of languages. I will establish below to what extent this argument, when presented in isolation, leaves the criticism and room for doubt. Supposing, however, that the first authors of the nation belonged to the yellow type, the means abound to establish that they had the best reasons to move away from it. Between the moment when the first Turanian hordes descended towards the southwest and the day they captured the city of Constantine, between these two dates separated by so many centuries, many events happened; the Western Turks have had many mixed fortunes.

In turn, victors and vanquished, slaves or masters, they settled among very diverse nationalities. According to the annalists72, their Oghuze ancestors, descended from Altai, inhabited, at the time of Abraham, these immense steppes of upper Asia which extend from Katai to Lake Aral, from Siberia to Tibet, precisely the ancient and mysterious domain where still living at this time, many Germanic nations73. Quite a singular circumstance: as soon as writers from the East begin to speak of the peoples of Turkestan, it is to praise the beauty of their size and their faces.74. All the hyperboles are, on this subject, familiar to them, and as these writers had, before their eyes, to serve as a point of comparison, the most beautiful types of the ancient world, it is not very probable that they were excited by the sight of creatures as undeniably ugly and repulsive as individuals of Mongolian blood usually are. Thus, despite linguistics, perhaps poorly applied75, there would be something to say there. Let us admit, however, that the Oghuze of Altai were, as is supposed, a Finnish people, and let us go back to the Muslim era when the Turkic tribes were established in Persia and Asia Minor under different denominations and in different situations. no less varied. The Osmanlis did not yet exist, and the Seljukis, from which they were to come, were already strongly mixed with the races of Islamism. The princes of this nation, such as Ghaïaseddin-Keïkosrew, in 1237, freely married Arab women. They did even better, since the mother of another Seljuk dynast, Aseddin, was Christian; and, from the moment that the chiefs, in all countries, more jealous than the vulgar to maintain genealogical purity, showed themselves to be so free from prejudices, it is, at least, permissible to suppose that the subjects were not more scrupulous. As their perpetual races gave them all the means to kidnap slaves on the vast territory they covered, there is no doubt that from the 13thecentury the ancient Oghuz branch, to which the Seljukis of Roum belonged by far, was extremely impregnated with Semitic blood.

It was from this branch that Osman, son of Ortoghroul and father of the Osmanlis, came out. The families gathered around his tent were few in number.

His army was little better than a band, and if the first successors of this wandering Romulus were able to succeed in increasing it, it was only by using the process practiced by Remus' brother, that is to say , opening their tents to all those who wished entry. I want to assume that the ruin of the Seljuki empire contributed to sending them recruits of their race. This race was very deteriorated, as we see, and moreover the resource was insufficient, since from that moment on the Turks hunted down slaves with the avowed aim of thickening their ranks. At the beginning of the 14th centuryecentury, Ourkan, advised by Khalil Tjendereli the Black, established the Janissary militia. At first there were only a thousand. But, under Mohammed IV, the new militias numbered one hundred and forty thousand soldiers, and, as up to that time, care was taken to fill the companies only with Christian children kidnapped in Poland, Germany and Italy, or recruited in the Turkey of Europe, then converted to Islamism, there were at least five hundred thousand heads of families who, over a period of four centuries, came to infuse European blood into the veins of the Turkish nation.

Ethnic additions were not limited to this. Piracy, practiced on such a large scale throughout the Mediterranean basin, was mainly aimed at recruiting harems, and, what is still more conclusive, no battle was fought and won which did not likewise increase the believing people. A good part of the male captives abjured, and from then on were counted among the Turks. Then the surroundings of the combat field traversed by the troops yielded all the women that the victors could seize. Often this booty was found to be so abundant that it was difficult to place; we exchanged the most beautiful girl foraboot

. By comparing these observations with the well-known figure of the Turkish population, both in Asia and in Europe, which has never exceeded 12 million, we will remain convinced that the question of the permanence of the type has absolutely nothing to borrow from it. , in terms of arguments for or against, to the history of a people as mixed as the Turks. And this truth is so clear that by finding, which sometimes happens, in Osmanli individuals, some fairly recognizable traits of the yellow race, it is not to a direct Finnic origin that we must attribute this encounter; it is simply the effects of a Slavic or Tatar alliance, delivering, of second 76

hand what she herself had received from a stranger. This is what we can observe about the ethnology of the Ottomans. I now move on to the Madjars.

The claim of the Unitarians is based on the following reasoning: "The Madjars are of Finnish origin, relatives of the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Eskimos, all people of small stature, with broad faces and high cheekbones, with complexions yellowish or dirty brown. However, the Madjars have a tall and well-built stature, long, supple and vigorous limbs, features similar to those of white nations and of obvious beauty. The Finns have “always been weak, unintelligent, oppressed. The Madjars hold an illustrious rank among the “conquerors of the world. They made slaves and were not; therefore... since the Madjars are Finnish, and, physically and morally, differ so far from all the other branches of their primitive stock, it is because they have changed enormously77". The change would be so extraordinary, if it had taken place, that it would be inexplicable, even for the Unitarians, assuming, moreover, the types endowed with the most excessive mobility; because the metamorphosis would have taken place between the end of the 9the century and our era, that is to say in a space of only 800 years, during which we know that the compatriots of Saint Stephen mixed relatively little with the nations among which they lived. Fortunately for common sense, there is no reason to be surprised, since the reasoning that I am going to combat, although perfect in fact, fails in its essentials; Hungarians are certainly not Finns. In a very well written notice, MA de Gérando78has now reduced to nothing the theories of Schlotzer and his supporters, and proven, by the most solid reasons, drawn from Greek and Arab historians, by the opinion of Hungarian annalists, by observed facts and dates which defy all criticism , for philological reasons finally, the kinship of the Siculians with the Huns and the primitive identity of the Transylvanian tribe with the last invaders of Pannonia. The Hungarians are therefore Huns.

Here a new objection will undoubtedly arise. It will be said that this only results for the Madjars in a different, but no less intimate, relationship with the yellow race. It is a mistake. If the name Huns is a name of nation, it is also, historically speaking, a collective word, and which does not designate a homogeneous mass. Among the crowd of tribes enlisted under the banner of Attila's ancestors, we have distinguished, among others, from all times, certain bands called the White Huns, where the Germanic element dominated79.

In truth, contact with the yellow groups had altered the purity of the blood: but this is also what the slightly angular and bony features of the Madjar confess with remarkable sincerity. The language is very close, in its affinities, to the Turkish dialects: the Madjars are therefore white Huns, and this nation, which has been improperly made a yellow people, because it was confused, by voluntary or forced alliances, with this race is thus composed of mixed race with a Germanic base. The language has roots and terminology completely foreign to their dominant species, absolutely as it was for the Yellow Scythians, who spoke an Arian dialect.80, and for the Scandinavians of Neustria, won over, after a few years of conquest, to the Celtic dialect of their subjects81. Nothing in all this authorizes us to suppose that time, the effect of various climates and change of habits have made a Lapp or an Ostiak, a Tongouse or a Permian, a Saint Stephen. By virtue of this refutation of the arguments presented by the Unitarians alone, I conclude that the permanence of types among races is beyond all dispute, and so strong, so unshakeable, that the most complete change of environment can do nothing to destroy it. , as long as there is no mixture of one human branch with any other.

Thus, whatever side we want to take on the unity or the multiplicity of the origins of the species, the different families are today perfectly separated from each other, since no external influence could make them resemble each other, to assimilate, to merge. The current races are therefore very distinct branches of one or more lost primitive stocks, which historical times have not

never known, the characteristics of which we are in no way able to imagine, even the most general; and these races, differing among themselves by the external shapes and proportions of the limbs, by the structure of the bony head, by the internal conformation of the body, by the nature of the hair system, by the complexion, etc., do not manage to lose their main traits only as a result and by the power of crossings.

This permanence of generic characters is fully sufficient to produce the effects of radical dissimilarity and inequality, to give them the scope of natural laws, and to apply to the physiological life of peoples the same distinctions that I will apply later to their moral life. .

Since I have resigned myself, out of respect for a scientific agent that I cannot destroy, and, even more, by a religious interpretation that I would not dare to attack, to leave aside the vehement doubts which besiege me on the subject of the question of primordial unity, I will now try to expose, as much as possible, by the means remaining to me, the probable causes of such indelible physiological divergences.

No one will be tempted to deny it, there hovers over a question of this seriousness a mysterious darkness, pregnant with both physical and immaterial causes. Certain reasons belonging to the divine domain, and of which the frightened mind senses the proximity without guessing the nature, dominate at the bottom of the thickest darkness of the problem, and it is very probable that the earthly agents, from whom we ask the key to the secret, are themselves only instruments, lower springs of the great work. The origins of all things, of all movements, of all facts, are not infinitely small, as we often like to say, but so immense, on the contrary, so vast and disproportionate compared to of our weakness, that we can suspect them and indicate that perhaps they exist, without ever being able to hope to touch them or reveal them in a certain way. Just as, in an iron chain intended to support a great weight, it frequently happens that the ring closest to the object is the smallest, so the ultimate cause can often seem almost insignificant, and if we stop considering it in isolation, we forget the long series which

precedes and supports it, and which, strong and powerful, takes its attachment out of sight. We should therefore not, with the ancient anecdote, marvel at the power of the rose leaf which caused the water to overflow: it is more accurate to consider that the accident lay at the bottom of the liquid superabundantly contained in the sides of the vase. Let us pay all respect to the first, generative, celestial and distant causes, without which nothing would exist, and which, confidants of the divine motive, are entitled to a share of the veneration rendered to their omnipotent author; however, let us refrain from discussing it here. It is not appropriate to leave the human sphere where only one can hope to encounter certainties, and it is appropriate to limit oneself to grasping the chain, if not by its last and least ring, at least by its visible and tangible part. , without having the pretension, too difficult to maintain, of going up beyond the reach of the arm. This is not irreverence; it is, on the contrary, the sincere feeling of insurmountable weakness.

Man is a newcomer to the world. Geology, proceeding only by induction, it is true, but with very remarkable persistence, notes its absence in all the previous formations of the globe; and, among the fossils, she does not find it. When, for the first time, our parents appeared on the already old earth, God, according to the holy books, taught them that they would be its masters, and that everything would bend under their authority. This promise of domination was addressed less to individuals than to their descendants; because these weak creatures seemed equipped with very few resources, I will not say to tame all of nature, but only to resist its slightest forces82. The ethereal heavens had seen, in previous periods, beings much more imposing than man emerge from the earth's silt and deep waters. Without doubt, most of the gigantic races had disappeared in the terrible revolutions where the inorganic world testified to a power so far removed from any proportion with that of animate nature. Yet a large number of these monstrous beasts still lived. Elephants and rhinoceroses haunted all climates in herds, and the mastodon itself still leaves traces of its existence in American traditions.83.

These retarded monsters must have been enough and beyond to imprint on the first individuals of our species, with a fearful feeling of their inferiority, very modest thoughts about their problematic royalty. And it was not the only animals with whom he was going to compete and take away the empire. We could, if necessary, fight them, use ruse against them, if not force, and, if not defeat them, at least avoid and flee from them. It was not the same with this immense nature which, on all sides, embraced, enclosed the primitive families and made them feel heavily its frightening domination.84. The cosmic causes to which we must attribute the ancient upheavals were still active, although weakened. Partial cataclysms still disturbed the relative positions of land and ocean. Sometimes sea levels rose and swallowed up vast beaches; sometimes a terrible volcanic eruption raised from the bosom of the waves some mountainous region which came to annex itself to a continent. The world was still in labor, and Jehovah had not calmed it by saying: All is well!

In this situation, the atmospheric conditions were necessarily affected by the general lack of balance. The struggles between earth, water and fire brought rapid and marked variations in humidity, dryness, cold and heat, and the exhalations of a still quivering ground exerted an irresistible action on beings. All these causes, enveloping the globe with a breath of combat, suffering, and pain, necessarily redoubled the pressure that nature exerted on man, and the influence of environments and climatic differences then possessed, to react on our first parents, a completely different efficiency than today. Cuvier states in hisSpeech on the Revolutions of the Globe,that the current state of inorganic forces could, in no way, determine terrestrial convulsions, uprisings, formations similar to those whose effects geology notes. What this nature, so terribly gifted, then exerted on itself in modifications that have now become impossible, it could also do on the human species, and can no longer do so now. Its omnipotence has been so lost, or at least so diminished and diminished, that in a series of years equivalent to about half the time that our species has spent on earth, it has produced no change of any kind. importance, much less nothing

comparable to these fixed traits which have separated the different races forever85.

Two points are not in doubt: that the main differences which separate the branches of our species were fixed in the first half of our terrestrial existence, and then that, to conceive a moment when, in this first half, these physiological separations could have taken place, we must go back to times when the influence of external agents was more active than we see it being in the ordinary state of the world, in its normal health. This era could not be other than that which immediately surrounded creation, while still moved by the latest catastrophes, it was subjected without reserve to the horrible influences of their last tremors. Sticking to the doctrine of the Unitarians, it is impossible to assign a later date to the separation of types. There is no point in taking advantage of these fortuitous deviations which sometimes occur in certain individuals, and which, if they were perpetuated, would undoubtedly create varieties very worthy of attention. Without mentioning several conditions, such as gibbosity, we have noted curious facts which seem, at first glance, likely to explain the diversity of races. To name just one, Mr. Prichard speaks, according to Mr. Baker 86, of a man covered all over his body, with the exception of the face, with a sort of dark-colored shell, similar to an immense very hard, insensitive and calloused wart, which, when cut , did not give blood. At different times, this singular integument, having reached a thickness of three-quarters of an inch, was detached, fell off, and was replaced by another exactly the same. Four sons were born to this man. They were like their father. Only one survived: but Mr. Baker, who saw him as a child, does not say whether he reached adulthood. He only concludes that, since the father had produced such offspring, a particular family could have been formed, which would have preserved a special type, and that, with the help of time and forgetting, we would have believed ourselves authorized, later, to consider this variety of men as presenting particular specific characters.

The conclusion is admissible. However, individuals, so different from the species in general, do not perpetuate themselves. Their posterity enters into the common rule or soon becomes extinct. Anything that deviates from the natural and normal order can only borrow life and is not capable of preserving it. Otherwise, the strangest accidents would have long ago separated humanity from the physiological conditions observed throughout history. It must be inferred that one of the essential, constitutive conditions of these anomalies is precisely to be transitory, and we cannot therefore include in such categories the hair of the Negro, his black skin, the yellow color of the Chinese, his broad face, his slanted eyes. These are all permanent characteristics which have nothing abnormal and which, consequently, do not come from an accidental deviation. Let us summarize all of the above here.

Faced with the difficulties presented by the most widespread interpretation of the biblical text and the objection drawn from the law which governs the generation of hybrids, it is impossible to pronounce categorically and to affirm, for the species, the multiplicity of origins.

We must therefore be content to assign inferior causes to these very clear-cut varieties whose permanence is incontestably the main character, a permanence which can only be lost through the effect of crossings. These causes can be seen in the climacteric energy that our globe possessed in the early days when the human race appeared. There is no doubt that the conditions of force of inorganic nature were, then, quite differently powerful than we have known them since, and it was possible to accomplish, under their pressure, ethnic modifications which had become impossible. . Probably also, the beings exposed to this formidable action were much better suited to it than current types could be. Man, being newly created, presented forms that were still uncertain, perhaps even belonging in a clearly defined way neither to the white, nor to the black, nor to the yellow variety. In this case, the deviations which carried the primitive characteristics of the species towards the varieties now established, had much less distance to travel than would now have the black race, for example, to be brought back to the white type, or the yellow to be confused with the black.

In this supposition, we should imagine the Adamite individual as equally foreign to all current human groups; these would have radiated around him and would have moved away from each other by double the distance existing between him and each of them. What would individuals of all races have therefore retained from the primitive specimen? Only the most general characteristics which constitute our species: the vague resemblance of forms which the most distant groups have in common; the ability to express their needs through vocal sounds; but nothing more. As for the surplus of the most special traits of this first type, we would have lost them all, both black and non-black peoples; and, although originally descended from him, we would have received from foreign influences everything that now constitutes our own and distinct nature. From then on, products of both the primitive Adamic race and cosmogonic environments, the human races would have only very weak and almost zero relationships with each other. The persistent testimony of this primordial brotherhood would be the possibility of giving birth to fertile hybrids, and it would be unique. There would be nothing more, and at the same time as the differences in primordial environments would have distributed to each group its isolated character, its shapes, its features, its color in a permanent manner, they would have decidedly broken the primitive unity , remained sterile in terms of its influence on ethnic development. The rigorous, indelible permanence of features and forms, this permanence which the most distant historical documents affirm and guarantee, would be the hallmark, the confirmation of this eternal separation of races.

First book

Chapter XII

How the races separated physiologically, and what varieties they then formed through their mixtures. They are unequal in strength and beauty.

It is good to completely clarify the question of cosmogonic influences, since the arguments that emerge from it are those with which I am content here. The first doubt to be put aside is the following: How could men, united at a single point due to a common origin, be exposed to totally diverse physical actions? And if their groups, when racial differences began, were already numerous enough to spread into distinct climates, how is it that having to struggle against immense difficulties, such as crossing deep forests and marshy regions , deserts of sand or snow, crossings of rivers, encounters of lakes and oceans, have they managed to make journeys that civilized man, with all his power, still only accomplishes with great difficulty? To respond to these objections, it is necessary to examine what could have been the first station of the species. It is a very ancient notion, and one adopted by great minds of modern times, such as Georges Cuvier, that the different mountain systems must have served as starting points for certain categories of races. Thus the whites, and even some African varieties, which, by the shape of the bony head, approximate the proportions of our families, would have had their first residence in the Caucasus. The yellow race is said to have descended from the icy heights of Altai. In their turn, the tribes of prognathous Negroes would have, on the southern slopes of the Atlas, built their first huts, attempted their first migrations; and, in this way, what the original times would have known best, would be precisely these formidable places, difficult to access, full of dark

horrors, torrents, caverns, ice, eternal snow, impassable abysses; while all the terrors of the unknown would have been found, for our most ancient relatives, in the open plains, on the great banks of rivers, lakes and seas. The primary motive which seems to have led ancient philosophers to put forward this theory, and modern ones to renew it, is the idea that, to get through the great physical crises of our globe, the human species had to rally around peaks where the floods could not reach it. But this enlarged and generalized application of the tradition of Ararat, although perhaps suitable for periods subsequent to primitive times, at times when populations had already covered the face of the world, becomes completely unacceptable for times where precisely the species had to be born in the at least relative calm of nature, and, incidentally, it is completely contrary to the notions of unity of the species. Furthermore, mountains have always been, from the most ancient times, the object of deep fear and superstitious respect. This is where all mythologies have placed the residence of the gods. It is on the cloudy summit of Olympus, it is on Mount Meru that the Greeks and the Brahmins dreamed of their divine assemblies; it was on the top of the Caucasus that Prometheus suffered the mysterious punishment of an even more mysterious crime; and, if men had begun by inhabiting these high retreats, it is unlikely that their imagination would have raised them so strongly as to carry them into the sky. We poorly venerate what we have seen, known, trodden underfoot: there would have been deities only in the waters and the plains. I am therefore led to admit the contrary idea, and to suppose that the open and flat lands were witnesses of the first steps of man. Besides, it is the biblical notion87, and from the moment the first stay is thus established, the difficulties of migration are significantly reduced; because flat lands, generally cut by rivers, lead to seas, and there is no longer any need to worry about the much more difficult crossing of forests, deserts and large swamps.

There are two kinds of migration: some voluntary; of these there can be no question in the completely genetic ages. The others are unforeseen and more possible and even more probable in

imprudent, clumsy savages, than among perfected nations. All it takes is a family embarked on a drifting raft, a few unfortunate people surprised by an irruption of the sea, clinging to tree trunks and seized by the currents, to give the reason for a distant transplant. The weaker man is, the more he is the toy of inorganic forces. The less experience he has, the more he obeys like a slave to accidents which he was unable to foresee and which he cannot avoid. We know of striking examples of the ease with which beings of our species can be transported, in spite of themselves, to considerable distances. Thus it is said that in 1696, two canoes from Ancorso, crewed by around thirty savages, men and women, were seized by bad weather, and, after having drifted for some time, finally arrived at the one of the Philippine islands, Samal, three hundred leagues from the point from which the canoes left. Another example: Four natives of Ulea, being in a canoe, were carried away by a gale, wandered for eight months at sea, and finally arrived at one of the islands of Radack, at the eastern extremity of the the Caroline archipelago, having thus involuntarily made a crossing of 550 leagues. These unfortunate people lived solely on fish; they collected the raindrops with the greatest care. Should this resource fail them, they would dive to the bottom of the sea and drink from this water, which, it is said, is less salty. It goes without saying that upon arriving at Radack, the navigators were in the most deplorable state; However, they recovered fairly quickly and regained their health.88.

These two quotes are enough to make admissible the idea of a rapid diffusion of certain human groups in very different climates, and under the influence of the most opposite local circumstances. If, however, further proof were needed, we could speak of the ease with which insects, testaceans, plants, spread everywhere, and certainly it is not necessary to demonstrate that what happens for the categories of beings that I have just named is, all the more reason, less difficult for man89. Terrestrial testaceans are swept into the sea by the destruction of cliffs, then carried to distant beaches by currents. The zoophytes, attached to the shell of molluscs, or letting their buds float on the surface of the ocean, go, where the winds carry them, to establish distant colonies.

; and these same trees of unknown species, these same sculpted beams which, in the 15thecentury, came stranded, after so many others unobserved, on the coasts of the Canaries, and serving as a text for the meditations of Christopher Columbus, contributed to the discovery of the new world, probably also carried, on their surfaces, eggs of insects, which the heat of a new sap must have hatched far from the place of their origin and the land where their congeners lived. There is therefore no difficulty in the fact that the first human families were able to quickly inhabit very diverse climates, places very far from each other. But for the temperature and the resulting local circumstances to be diverse, it is not necessary, even in the present state of the globe, that the places be at long distances. Not to mention mountainous countries, like Switzerland, where, in the space of one or two leagues of land, the conditions of the atmosphere and the soil vary so much that we find, in some way, confused the flora of Lapland and that of southern Italy; without remembering that the Isola Madre, on Lake Maggiore, nourishes orange trees in the open ground, large cacti and dwarf palm trees within sight of the Simplon, no one is unaware of how much the temperature of Normandy is harsher than that of island of jersey. In a narrow triangle, and without there being any need to resort to deductions from orography, our western coasts present the most varied spectacle in terms of plant existence.90.

What must not have been the value of contrasts, in the narrowest space, in the formidable epochs to the aftermath of which the birth of our species is postponed! One and the same place easily became the scene of the greatest atmospheric revolutions, when the sea moved away from it or approached it by flooding or drying up neighboring regions; when mountains suddenly rose in enormous masses, or fell to the common level of the globe, so as to leave plains replacing their crests; when, finally, tremors in the axis of the earth and, consequently, in the general balance and in the inclination of the poles on the ecliptic, came to disturb the general economy of the planet.

We must therefore consider as ruled out any objection based on the difficulty of changing places and temperatures in the early ages of the world, and nothing prevents the human family from being able to extend some of its groups very far. , or, by keeping them all together in a fairly tight space, see them subject to very multiple influences. It is in this way that the secondary types from which the current branches of the species have descended could be formed. As for the man of the first creation, as for the Adamite, since it is impossible to know anything about his specific characteristics, nor how much each of the new families has preserved or lost its resemblance, let us leave it entirely , outside of the controversy. In this way, we do not go further back in our examination than the second training breeds.

I meet these well-characterized races, only three in number: the white, the black and the yellow.91. If I use names borrowed from skin color, it is not that I find the expression fair or happy, because the three categories I am talking about do not precisely have the complexion as a distinctive feature, which is always very multiple. in its nuances, and we saw above that even more important facts of conformation were added. But, unless I invent new names myself, which I do not believe I have the right to do, I must resolve to choose, in the terminology in use, designations that are not absolutely good, but less defective than the others, and I decidedly prefer those that I use here and which, after prior warning, are quite harmless, to all these appellatives taken from geography or history, which have thrown so much disorder on a ground already quite embarrassed by himself. So I warn, once and for all, that I mean bywhitesthese men who are also referred to as the Caucasian, Semitic, Japhetid race. I callblack,the Hamites, and yellow,the Altaic, Mongolian, Finnish, Tatar branch. These are the three pure and primitive elements of humanity. There are no more reasons to admit Blumenbach's twenty-eight varieties than Mr. Prichard's seven, both classifying notorious hybrids in their series. Each of the three original types, in its particular, probably never presented perfect unity. The great cosmogonic causes had not only created clear-cut varieties in the species: they had also, on the points where their action was exerted,

determined, in the sense of each of the three main varieties, the appearance of several genera which possessed, in addition to the general characteristics of their branch, particular distinctive features. There was no need for ethnic crossbreeding to bring about these special modifications; they pre-existed all alloys. It is in vain that we would seek today to observe them in the mixed-race agglomeration which constitutes what we call the white race. This impossibility must also exist for the yellow. Perhaps the Melanian type has been preserved pure somewhere; at least, it has certainly remained more original, and it thus demonstrates, upon seeing itself, what we can, for the two other human categories, admit, not according to the testimony of our senses, but according to the inductions provided by history.

Negroes continued to offer different original varieties, such as the prognathous type with woolly hair, that of the Hindu negro of Kamaoun and Dekkhan, that of the Pelagian of Polynesia. Most certainly varieties were formed between these genera by means of mixtures, and it is from this that what we can call the tertiary types derive, as much for the blacks as for the whites and the yellows. We have noted a fact worthy of note, which we claim to use today as a sure criterion to recognize the degree of ethnic purity of a population. It is the resemblance of faces, shapes, constitution and, therefore, gestures and posture. The more alloy-free a nation is, the more all its members would have in common these similarities that I am listing. On the contrary, the more it crossed, the more differences we would find in the physiognomy, the size, the bearing, and finally the appearance of the individuals. The fact is incontestable, and the benefit to be gained from it is precious; but it's not quite what you think. The first observation which revealed this fact took place on Polynesians; However, the Polynesians are not a pure race, far from it, since they come from differently graded mixtures between blacks and yellows. The integral transmission of the type in the different individuals therefore does not indicate the purity of the race, but only this: that the elements, more or less numerous, of which this race is composed, have managed to blend perfectly together, so as to what the

This combination has, in the end, become homogeneous, and since each individual of the species has no blood in its veins other than its neighbor, there is no way that it differs physically. Just as brothers and sisters often resemble each other, as if coming from similar elements, so, when two productive races have managed to amalgamate so completely that there are no longer any groups in the nation having more of the same essence of one or the other, a sort of fictitious purity is established, through balance, an artificial type, and all newborns bear the imprint of it.

In this way, the tertiary type, whose mode of formation I have defined, could early have the stamp falsely attributed to the absolute and true purity of race, that is to say the resemblance of its individualities, and this was possible in a shorter period of time as two varieties of the same type were relatively little different from each other. It is for this reason that, in a family, if the father belongs to a nation other than that of the mother, the children will resemble either one or the other of their authors, and will have difficulty establishing a identity of physical characters between them; whereas, if the parents both come from the same national stock, this identity will be produced without any difficulty.

There is one more law to point out before going further: crossbreeding does not only result in the fusion of two varieties. They determine the creation of new characters, which therefore become the most important aspect by which we can consider a subgenre. We will soon see examples of this. I do not need to add, which is self-evident enough, that the development of this new originality cannot be complete without this condition that the fusion of the generative types will first be perfect, without which the tertiary race could not pass as truly founded. We therefore guess that time conditions are necessary here which are all the more considerable, as the two merged nations will be more numerous. Until the mixture is complete and the resemblance and physiological identity of the individuals have been established, there is no new subgenre, there is no normal development of its own originality, although than composite; there exists only the confusion and disorder which always arise from the incomplete combination of elements naturally foreign to each other.

We have very little historical knowledge of tertiary races. It is only in the foggiest beginnings of human chronicles that we can glimpse, on certain points, the white species in this state which nowhere seems to have lasted long. The essentially civilizing inclinations of this elite race constantly pushed them to mix with other peoples. As for the two yellow and black types, where they are found in this tertiary state, they have no history, because they are savages92. The tertiary races are followed by others that I will call quartenary. They come from the hymen of two main varieties. The Polynesians born from the mixture of the yellow type with the black type93, mulattoes, produced by whites and blacks, these are generations which belong to the quartenary type. There is no need to point out, once again, that the new type unites in a more or less perfect manner special characters with traits which recall its double descent. From the moment a quarter-year-old race is further modified by the intervention of a new type, the mixture no longer comes together with difficulty, combines only slowly and has great difficulty in becoming regularized. The original characteristics that entered its composition, already considerably weakened, are increasingly neutralized. They tend to disappear in a confusion which becomes the main hallmark of the new product. The more this product multiplies and crosses itself, the more this arrangement increases. It reaches infinity. The population where we see it accomplished is too numerous for the balance to have any chance of being established before a series of centuries. It presents only a frightening spectacle of ethnic anarchy. In the individualities, we find, here and there, some dominant trait which is a sure reminder that this population has blood from all sources in its veins. One man will have Negro hair, another the Mongolian face; this one the eyes of the German, that one the size of the Semite, and they will all be relatives! This is the phenomenon offered by the great civilized nations, and we observe it especially in their seaports, their capitals and their colonies, places where mergers are accomplished with the most ease. In Paris, in London, in Cadiz, in Constantinople, we will find, without leaving the enclosure of the walls, and by

limiting ourselves to the observation of the population which calls itself indigenous, of the characters belonging to all branches of humanity. In the lower classes, from the prognathic head of the Negro to the triangular face and slanted eyes of the Chinese, we will see everything; because, mainly since the domination of the Romans, the most distant and disparate races have supplied their contingent to the blood of the inhabitants of our great cities. Successive invasions, trade, established colonies, peace and war have contributed, in turn, to increasing the disorder, and if we could go back a little higher on the genealogical tree of the first man to come, we would have the chance to be surprised by the strangeness of his ancestors94. Having established the physical difference of the races, it still remains to be decided whether this fact is accompanied by inequality, either in the beauty of the forms or in the measures of muscular strength. The question cannot remain in doubt for long.

I have already noted that, of all human groups, those who belong to European nations and their descendants are the most beautiful. To be fully convinced of this, it is enough to compare the varied types spread over the globe, and we see that from the construction and the face, in some way, rudimentary of the Pelagian and the Pecherai to the tall stature, to the noble proportions of Charlemagne, to the intelligent regularity of Napoleon's features, to the imposing majesty which breathes on the royal face of Louis XIV, there is a series of gradations by which peoples who are not of the blood white people approach beauty, but do not achieve it. Those who touch it more closely are our closest relatives: such as the degenerate Arian family of India and Persia, and the Semitic populations least degraded by black contact.95. As all these races move too far from the white type, their features and their members undergo incorrect forms, defects of proportion which, by amplifying more and more, in those which have become foreign to us, end up by producing this excessive ugliness, ancient division, inerasable character of the greatest number of human branches. We are no longer listening to the doctrine reproduced by Helvetius in his book Spirit, and which consists of making the notion of beauty a purely

artificial and variable. Let all those who might still have some scruples in this regard consult the admirable essay by Mr. Gioberti96, there will be nothing left for them to contest. Nowhere has it been better demonstrated that beauty is an absolute and necessary idea, which cannot have an optional application, and it is by virtue of the solid principles established by the Piedmontese philosopher that I do not hesitate to recognize the race white for superior in beauty to all the others, which, among themselves, still differ to the extent that they approach or move away from the model offered to them. There is therefore inequality of beauty in human groups, logical, explained, permanent and indelible inequality.

Is there also an inequality of power? Unquestionably, the savages of America, like the Hindus, are by far our inferiors on this point. The Australians find themselves in the same situation. Negroes also have less muscular vigor97. All these people tolerate fatigue infinitely less. But there is reason to distinguish between purely muscular force, that which only needs to be deployed at a single given moment to win, and this power of resistance whose most remarkable character is duration. The latter is more typical than the first, which would meet rivals if necessary, even in the most notoriously weak races. The heaviness of the fist, if we wanted to take it as the sole criterion of force, is found among very stupid Negro tribes, among very weakly constituted New Zealanders, among Lascars, among Malays, a few individuals who can exercise it way to counterbalance the exploits of the English populace; while taking nations en masse, and judging them according to the amount of work they endure without wavering, the palm belongs to our peoples of the white race. Even among these peoples, in terms of strength as well as beauty, inequality is still found in the different groups equally, although to a lower degree. The Italians are more beautiful than the Germans and the Swiss, more beautiful than the French and the Spanish. Likewise, the English have a character of bodily beauty superior to that of the Slavic nations.

As for the strength of the fist, the English are superior to all other European races; while the French and the Spanish possess a superior power of resistance to fatigue, deprivation, and the bad weather of the harshest climates. The question was put beyond doubt for the French during the disastrous Russian campaign. Where the Germans and the northern troops, accustomed however to the rigors of the temperature, collapsed, almost entirely, under the snow, our regiments, while paying a horrible tribute to the rigors of the retreat, were nevertheless able to save the most people. We wanted to attribute this prerogative to the superiority of moral education and warlike feeling. The explanation is unsatisfactory. The German officers, who perished by the hundreds, had just as much honor and as high a conception of duty as our soldiers, and they succumbed none the less. Let us therefore conclude that the French populations possess certain physical qualities superior to those of the German family and which allow them to brave, without dying, the snows of Russia as well as the burning sands of Egypt.

First book

Chapter XIII

Les human races are intellectually unequal; humanity is not infinitely perfectible.

To properly appreciate the intellectual differences of races, the first step must be to note to what degree of stupidity humanity can descend. We already know the greatest effort it can produce: it is civilization. Most scientific observers have until now had a marked tendency to demean, beyond the truth, the smallest types. Almost all the first information on a savage tribe depicts it in falsely horrible colors, and assigns to it such impotence of intelligence and reasoning, that it falls to the level of the ape and below the elephant. This judgment, it is true, has its contrasts. Is a navigator well received on an island, does he believe he finds kindness and a hospitable welcome among the inhabitants, does he manage to persuade some of them to work, even a little, with the sailors, immediately praises pile up on the happy people; she is declared good for everything, suitable for everything, capable of everything, and sometimes enthusiasm, crossing all limits, swears to have found superior minds in her.

We must appeal both the judgment that is too favorable and the judgment that is too harsh. Because some Taitians contributed to the refitting of a whaling ship, their nation is not therefore civilizable. Because such a man from Tonga-Tabou will have shown benevolence to strangers, he is not necessarily accessible to all progress, and, in the same way, we are not authorized to reduce such a native to the brute. a coast long unknown, because he received the first visitors with arrows, or even because he was found eating raw lizards and balls of earth. This type of meal undoubtedly does not indicate a high level of intelligence or well-cultivated morals. But let us be certain, however, that in the most loathsome cannibal there remains a spark of the divine fire, and understanding can be kindled in him at least to a certain degree. No tribes so humble which do not make, on the things by which they are surrounded, some judgments, true or false, just or erroneous, which, by the mere fact that they exist, prove

sufficiently the persistence of an intellectual ray in all branches of humanity. It is through this that the most degraded savages are accessible to the teachings of religion and that they are distinguished, in a very particular and always recognizable way, from the most intelligent brutes. However, is this moral life, placed deep in the consciousness of each individual of our species, capable of expanding infinitely? Do all men have, to an equal degree, the unlimited power to progress in their intellectual development? In other words, are the different human races endowed with the power to equal each other? This question is, fundamentally, that of the indefinite perfectibility of the species and of the equality of races among themselves. On both points, I answer no. The idea of infinite perfectibility appeals greatly to moderns and they rely on this remark that our mode of civilization has advantages and merits that our predecessors, differently cultivated, did not have. We cite all the facts that distinguish our societies. I have already spoken about it; I am happy to list them again. It is therefore assured that we have truer opinions on everything that falls within the domain of science; that our morals are, in general, gentle, and our morals preferable to those of the Greeks and Romans. We also have, it is added, on the subject of political freedom, ideas and feelings, opinions, beliefs, tolerances which prove better than anything else our superiority. There is no shortage of theorists with great hopes to maintain that the consequences of our institutions must lead us straight to this garden of the Hesperides, so sought after and so little found since the oldest navigators noted its absence in the Canary Islands.

A slightly more serious examination of history does justice to these lofty pretensions.

We are, in truth, more learned than the ancients. This is because we benefited from their discoveries. If we have more than

knowledge, it is only because we are their continuators, their students and their heirs. Does it follow that the discovery of the forces of steam and the solution of some mechanical problems take us towards omniscience? At most, these successes will lead us to penetrate all the secrets of the material world. When we have completed this conquest, for which there are still many and many things to be done which have not even been started or envisaged, will we have advanced a single step beyond the pure and simple observation of physical laws? ? We will have, I hope, greatly increased our forces to react to nature and bend it to our needs. We will still have crossed the land from one side to the other, or definitively recognized this impassable route. We will have learned to navigate in the air, and, by getting a few thousand meters closer to the limits of breathable air, discovered and clarified certain astronomical or other problems; nothing more. All this does not take us to infinity. And if we had counted all the planetary systems that move in space, would we be closer to this infinity? Have we learned, about the great mysteries, something unknown to the ancients? We have, it seems to me, changed the methods used before us, to revolve around secrecy. We have not taken another step into its darkness. Then, admitting that we are more enlightened on certain facts, how many, on the other hand, we have lost of notions familiar to our most distant ancestors! Is it doubtful that in the time of Abraham much more was known about primordial history than we do? How many things discovered by us, with great difficulty, or by chance, are ultimately only forgotten and rediscovered knowledge! And how, on many points, we are inferior to what we once were! What could we compare, as I said above for another object, yes, what could we compare, by choosing from our most splendid works, to these marvels as Egypt, India, Greece, America still shows us, attesting to the boundless magnificence of so many other buildings that the weight of the centuries has caused to disappear, much less than the inept ravages of man? How do our arts compare to those of Athens? What are our thinkers compared to those of Alexandria and

from India ? What are our poets compared to Valmiki, Kalidasa, Homer and Pindar?

In short, we do things differently. We apply our minds to other goals, to other research than other civilized groups of humanity; but, by changing the terrain, we were not able to preserve in all their fertility the lands they were already cultivating. There was therefore abandonment on one side, at the same time as there was conquest on the other. It was a sad compensation, and, far from announcing progress, it only indicates a shift. For there to be real acquisition, it would be necessary that, having at least kept in all their integrity the main riches of previous societies, we should have succeeded in building, alongside their work, certain great results that they and we sought. also ; that our sciences and our arts, based on their arts and their sciences, had found some profound novelty touching life and death, the formation of beings, the primordial principles of the world. Now, on all these questions, modern science no longer has the gleams which were projected, one has reason to think, at the dawn of ancient times, and, of its own creation and its own efforts, it does not has only reached this humiliating confession: “I seek and do not find. » There is therefore little real progress in man's intellectual conquests. Our criticism alone is incontestably better than that of our predecessors. This is a great point; butcriticalmeansranking,and not acquisition.

As for our supposedly new ideas on politics, we can without disadvantage take even greater liberties with them than with our sciences. This fertility of theories, of which we like to pride ourselves, is found just as great in Athens after Pericles. The way to convince yourself of this is to reread these comedies of Aristophanes, satirical amplifications, the reading of which Plato recommended to anyone who wanted to know the public morals of the city of Minerva. We have rejected the comparison since we decided to claim that servitude creates a fundamental difference between our current social order and the state of Greek antiquity. The demagoguery was all the more profound, if you like, and

that is all. Slaves were then spoken of in the same tone in which workers and proletarians are spoken today, and how advanced were these Athenian people who did so much to please their servile plebs after the battle of the Arginuses !

Let us transport ourselves to Rome. Let's open Cicero's letters. What a moderate Tory this Roman orator is! what a perfect similarity between his republic and our constitutional societies, as regards the language of parties and parliamentary struggles! There, too, in the lower depths, there was a population of depraved slaves, always revolting in their hearts, when they didn't have it in their fists. Let's leave this peat. We can do so all the better because the law did not recognize it as having a civil existence, it did not count in politics, and only acted on decisions, on days of riot, as an auxiliary of born disruptors. free. Well ! slaves thrown into nothingness, do we not have, on the Forum, everything that constitutes a modern social state? The populace, who demanded bread, games, free distributions and the right to enjoy; the bourgeoisie, who wanted and obtained the sharing of public jobs; the patriciate, successively transformed and always retreating, and always losing its rights, until the moment when its very defenders accepted, as the only system of defense, to refuse any prerogative by demanding only freedom for all? Aren't these perfect resemblances? Do we believe that in the opinions expressed today, however varied they may be, there is only one, there is even a nuance that was not known in Rome? I was talking earlier about the letters written from Tusculum: this is the thinking of a progressive conservative. Compared to Sulla, Pompey and Cicero were liberals. They were not yet enough for Caesar. They were too much for Cato. Later, under the principate, we see, in Pliny the Younger, a moderate royalist, a friend of rest all the same. He wants neither too much freedom nor excess of power, and, positive in his doctrines, holding very little to the vanished greatness of the age of the Fabius, he preferred the prosaic administration of Trajan. This was not everyone's opinion. Many people thought,

fearing some resurrection of the ancient Spartacus, that the emperor could not make his power too felt. Some provincials, on the contrary, asked for and obtained what we would call constitutional guarantees; while socialist opinions found no less exponents than the Gallic Caesar C. Junius Posthumus, who exclaimed in his declamations:Dives and pauper, inimici,the rich and the poor are born enemies. In short, every man with any claim to participate in the enlightenment of the time strongly supported the equality of the human race, the universal right to possess the goods of this earth, the obvious necessity of GrecoLatin civilization, its perfection, its gentleness, its future progress even greater than its present advantages, and, to crown it all, its eternity. These ideas were not only the consolation and pride of the pagans; it was also the solid hope of the first, the most illustrious Fathers of the Church, of which Tertullian was the interpreter.98. Finally, to complete the picture with one last striking feature, the most numerous of all parties was that of the indifferent, those people too weak, too disgusted, too fearful or too indecisive to grasp a truth in the midst of all the disparate theories. which they constantly saw glimmering in their eyes, and who, enjoying order when it existed, supporting, as best they could, disorder when it came, admired, at all times, the progress of material enjoyments unknown to their fathers, and, without wanting to think too much about the rest, consoled themselves by repeating to satiety:

We work today with a miraculous air. There would be more reason to believe in improvements in political science if we had invented some mechanism unknown to us, and which had not previously been practiced, at least in the essentials. We miss this glory. Limited monarchies have been known throughout time. We even see curious models among certain American peoples who nevertheless remain barbaric. Democratic and aristocratic republics of all forms and weighted according to the most varied methods existed in the new world as in

the old one. Tlascala is, in this genre, a complete specimen just like Athens, Sparta, and Mecca before Mohammed. And even if, moreover, it were true that we had applied to government science some secondary improvement of our invention, would that be enough to justify a claim as great as that of unlimited perfectibility? Let us be modest, as the wisest of kings once was:Nile novi sub sole 99. Let's look at our morals now. They are said to be gentler than those of other great human societies: this is yet another assertion which tempts criticism.

There are rhetoricians who today would like to eliminate the recourse to war from the code of nations. They took this theory from Seneca. Certain wise men from the East also professed, in this regard, ideas entirely consistent with those of the Moravian Brothers. But even if the friends of universal peace succeeded in disgusting Europe with the call to arms, they would still have to lead human passions to be transformed forever. Neither Seneca nor the Brahmins achieved this victory. It is doubtful that it is reserved for us, and as for our leniency, look in our fields, in our streets, at the bloody mark it digs there.

?

Our principles are pure and high, I want that. Does practice answer it?

Let us wait, to boast, until our countries, which since the beginning of modern civilization have not yet gone fifty years without massacres, can boast, like Roman Italy, of two centuries of peace, which have no elsewhere, alas! nothing proven for the future100! Human perfectibility is therefore not demonstrated by the state of our civilization. Man has been able to learn certain things, but he has forgotten many others. He has not added a sense to his senses, a limb to his limbs, a faculty to his soul. He has only turned to another side of the circle assigned to him, and the comparison of his destinies to those of

numerous families of birds and insects are not even capable of always inspiring very consoling thoughts about their happiness here below.

From the moment termites, bees, black ants were created, they spontaneously found the kind of life that suited them. Termites and ants, in their communities, first discovered, for their homes, a method of construction, and for their provisions a storage, for their assets a system of care, which naturalists think does not admit no variations or refinements101. At least as it is, it has constantly sufficed for the needs of the poor beings who use it. Likewise the bees, with their monarchical government exposed to overthrows of sovereigns, never to social revolutions, have not, for a single day, ignored the way of living most appropriate to what their nature desires. It has long been open to metaphysicians to call animals machines, and to refer to God,anima brutorum, the cause of their movements. Today that, with a slightly more careful eye, we study the morals of these so-called automatons, we have not limited ourselves to abandoning this disdainful doctrine: we have recognized in instinct a scope which approaches it to the dignity of reason. What can we say when, in the kingdoms of bees, we see the sovereigns exposed to the anger of their subjects, which supposes either the spirit of mutiny among the latter, or the inability to fulfill legitimate obligations among the queens? What can we say when we see termites sparing their vanquished enemies, then chaining them and employing them for the public good by forcing them to take care of young individuals?

No doubt our States are more complicated, satisfy more needs; but when I look at the wandering savage, dark, dirty, fierce, idle, lazily dragging his steps and the pointed stick which serves as a spear on uncultivated soil; when I contemplate him, followed by his wife, united to him by a hymen of which a ferociously inept violence constituted the entire ceremony102; when I see this woman carrying her child, who she will kill herself if he gets sick, or only if he bothers her103; that suddenly, hunger making itself felt, this miserable group, in search of some game, stops charmed

in front of one of these dwellings of intelligent ants, sets foot in the building, steals and devours the eggs, then, the meal done, retires sadly into a hollow in the rock, I wonder if the insects which come from perish were not more favorably gifted than the stupid family of the destroyer; if the instinct of animals, limited to a short set of needs, does not make them happier than this reason with which our humanity found itself naked on the earth, and more exposed a hundred times than other species to the suffering that can causing air, sun, snow and rain to be warded off. Poor humanity! she never managed to invent a way to clothe everyone and protect everyone from thirst and hunger. Certainly the least of the savages knows more than the animals; but animals know what is useful to them, and we do not. They stick to it, and we cannot keep it, when sometimes we have discovered it. They are always, in normal times, assured, by their instincts, of finding what they need. We see numerous hordes who, since the beginning of the centuries, have not been able to escape a precarious and suffering state. As it is only a question of terrestrial well-being, we have nothing better than the animals, nothing better than a more extensive horizon to cover, but finite and limited like theirs. I have not insisted enough on this sad human condition, of always losing on one side when we win on the other; However, this is the great fact which condemns us to wander in our intellectual domains, without ever succeeding, limited as they are, in possessing them in their entirety. If this fatal law did not exist, we would understand that on a given day, distant perhaps, in any case probable, man, finding himself in possession of all the experience of successive ages, knowing what he can know, having seized what he can take, would have finally learned to apply his riches, would live in the middle of nature, without fighting with his fellow men or with poverty, and, peacefully at the end , would rest, if not at the apogee of perfections, at least in a sufficient state of abundance and joy.

Such happiness, however restricted it would be, is not even promised to us, since as man learns, he unlearns; since he cannot win in the intellectual and moral respect without losing in the

physical relationship, and that he does not hold any of his conquests strongly enough to be sure of keeping them always.

We believe that our civilization will never perish, because we have printing, steam, gunpowder. Printing, which is no less known in Tonquin, in the Empire of Annam and in Japan 104that in today's Europe, has it, by chance, given the people of these countries even a passable civilization? However, they have books, lots of books, books that sell at much lower prices than ours. Where does it come from that these peoples are so degraded, so weak, so close to the level where civilized man, corrupt, weak and cowardly, is not worth, in intellectual power, that barbarian who, given the opportunity, goes oppress him105? Where does this come from? Only because printing is a means, and not a principle. If you use it to reproduce healthy, vigorous, salutary ideas, it will function most fruitfully, and contribute to the support of civilization. If, on the contrary, intelligences are so bastardized that no one anymore brings to the presses philosophical, historical, literary works capable of strongly nourishing the genius of a nation; if these debased presses only serve to multiply the unhealthy and venomous compositions of angry brains, the poisonous productions of a theology of sectarians, of a politics of libellists, of a poetry of libertines, how and why the printing press would it save civilization? We undoubtedly suppose that, through the ease with which it can disseminate intellectual masterpieces in large numbers, printing contributes to preserving them, and even in times when intellectual sterility does not allow them to be preserved. to give them rivals, to offer them at least to the meditations of honest people. This is indeed how it is. However, to seek out a book from the past and use it for one's own improvement, one must already possess, without this book, the best of goods: the strength of an enlightened soul. In bad times, witnessing the departure of public virtues, little attention is paid to old compositions, and no one cares to disturb the silence of libraries. It is already worth a lot to think of frequenting these august places, and at such times we are worth nothing...

Moreover, we greatly exaggerate the longevity assured to the productions of the mind by the discovery of Gutenberg. With the exception of a few works reproduced during a certain period, all books die today, as manuscripts once died. Printed in a few hundred copies, works of science especially disappear quickly from the common domain. They can still be found, although with difficulty, in major collections. It was absolutely the same with the intellectual riches of antiquity, and, once again, it is not erudition which saves a people arriving at decrepitude. Let us find out what has become of these myriads of excellent works published since the day the first press functioned. Most are forgotten. Those that we still talk about hardly have any readers anymore, and someone who was looking for himself fifty years ago sees his very title disappear little by little from all memories.

To enhance the merit of printing, the diffusion of manuscripts has been denied too much. She was bigger than you imagine. At the time of the Roman Empire, the means of instruction were very widespread, books were even common, if we must judge from the extraordinary number of ragged grammarians who swarmed even in the smallest towns, a sort of people comparable to the lawyers, novelists, journalists of our time, and whoseSatyriconof Petronius tells us of wanton morals, poverty and the passionate taste for pleasure. When decadence was complete, everyone who wanted books still found them. Virgil was read everywhere. The peasants, who heard him praise it, took him for a dangerous enchanter. The monks copied it. They also copied Pliny, Dioscorides, Plato and Aristotle. They also copied Catullus and Martial. In the Middle Ages, we can, from the large number left to us after so many wars, devastations, fires of abbeys and castles, guess how many literary, scientific, philosophical works, coming from the pens of contemporaries, had been multiplied beyond what we think. We therefore exaggerate the real merits of printing towards science, poetry, morality and true civilization, and we would be more accurate if, modestly slipping on this thesis, we focused mainly on talking about the services daily wages rendered by this invention to the interests

religious and political of all kinds, Printing, I repeat, is a marvelous instrument; but, when the hand and the head are lacking, the instrument cannot function well by itself. A lengthy demonstration is not necessary to establish that gunpowder cannot save a society in mortal danger either. This is knowledge that will certainly not be forgotten. Besides, it is doubtful that the savage peoples who possess it today like us, and use it as much, will ever consider it from any other point of view than that of destruction. For steam and all industrial discoveries, I will also say, as for printing, that these are great means; I would add that we have sometimes seen processes born from scientific discoveries perpetuated in a state of routine, when the intellectual movement which had given rise to them had stopped forever, and had allowed the theoretical secret of where these processes emanated. Finally, I would remind you that material well-being has never been more than an external annex of civilization, and that we have never heard of a society that it had existed solely because it knew the means of 'go quickly and dress well.

All the civilizations that preceded us thought, like us, that they had clung to the rock of time through their unforgettable discoveries. They all believed in their immortality. The families of the Incas, whose palanquins traveled quickly over these admirable causeways five or six hundred leagues long which still unite Cuzco with Quito, were certainly convinced of the eternity of their conquests. The centuries, with a sweep of their wings, have thrown their empire, alongside so many others, into the depths of nothingness. They too had these sovereigns of Peru, their sciences, their mechanics, their powerful machines whose works we admire with amazement without being able to guess their secret. They, too, knew the secret of transporting enormous masses. They built fortresses where blocks of stone thirtyeight feet long and eighteen feet wide were piled on top of each other. The ruins of Tihuanaco show us such a spectacle, and these monstrous materials were brought from several leagues away. Do we know how the engineers of this vanished people went about solving

such a problem? We do not know it any more than we know the means applied to the construction of the gigantic Cyclopean walls whose remains still resist the efforts of time, in so many places in southern Europe. So let us not mistake the results of a civilization for its causes. The causes are lost, the results are forgotten when the spirit which gave birth to them disappears, or, if they persist, it is thanks to a new spirit which will take possession of them, and often give them a different scope. from the one they had first. Human intelligence, constantly vacillating, runs from one point to another, has no ubiquity, exalts the value of what it holds, forgets what it lets go, and, chained in the circle that she is condemned never to cross, only succeeds in fertilizing part of her domains by leaving the other fallow, always both superior and inferior to her ancestors. Humanity therefore never surpasses itself; humanity is therefore not infinitely perfectible.

First book

Chapter XIV

Continuation of the proof of inequality

intellectual of races. Various civilizations repel each other. Mixed breeds

have equally mixed civilizations.

If human races were equal to each other, history would present us with a very touching, very magnificent and very glorious picture. All intelligent, all with their eyes open to their true interests, all skilled to the same degree in finding the means to conquer and triumph, they would have, from the first days of the world, brightened the face of the globe with a host of simultaneous and identical equally flourishing; at the same time as the oldest Sanskrit peoples founded their empire, and, through religion and the sword, covered northern India with crops, cities, palaces and temples; at the same time that the first empire of Assyria illustrated the plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates with its sumptuous constructions, and that the chariots and cavalry of Nimrod challenged the peoples of the four winds, we would have seen, on the African coast, among the tribes of Negroes with prognathic heads, there arises a reasoned, cultivated social state, learned in its means, powerful in its results.

The traveling Celts would have brought to the depths of the extreme west of Europe, with some remnants of oriental wisdom from primitive ages, the essential elements of a great society, and would certainly have found among the Iberian populations then spread across the face of Italy, in the islands of the Mediterranean, in Gaul and Spain, rivals as well informed as themselves about ancient traditions, as experts in the necessary arts and in inventions of pleasure. Unitary humanity would have wandered nobly throughout the world, rich in its intelligence, founding similar societies everywhere, and a short time would have been enough for all nations, judging their needs in the same way, considering nature with the same eye. , asking him the same things, found themselves in close contact and were able to link these

relationships, these multiple exchanges, so necessary everywhere and so profitable to the progress of civilization.

Certain tribes, unfortunately confined in sterile climates, at the bottom of rocky mountain gorges, on the edge of icy beaches, in steppes incessantly swept by northern winds, could have had to fight longer than the favored nations against the ingratitude of nature. But finally these tribes, having no less intelligence and wisdom than the others, would not have taken long to discover that there are remedies against the harshness of the climates. We would have seen them display the intelligent activity shown today by the Danes, the Norwegians, the Icelanders. They would have subdued the rebellious soil, forced in spite of itself to produce. In the mountainous regions, they would, like the Swiss, have exploited the advantages of pastoral life, or, like the Kashmiris, resorted to the resources of industry, and if their country had been so bad, its geographical situation so unfavorable that the If the impossibility of ever taking advantage of it would have been well demonstrated to them, they would have reflected that the world was big, had many valleys, many plains pleasant to their inhabitants, and, leaving their reluctant homeland, they would not have taken long to encounter lands where they can fruitfully deploy their intelligent activity. Then the nations here below, equally enlightened, equally rich, some by commerce, multiplying in their maritime cities, others by agriculture, flourishing in their vast countryside, the latter by the industry exercised in the Alpine places, those by transit, a happy result of their joint situation, all these nations, despite temporary dissensions, civil wars, seditions, misfortunes inseparable from the human condition, would have soon imagined, between their interests, a any weighting system. The original identical civilizations, lending a lot to each other, borrowing from each other in the same way, would have ended up resembling each other in almost every way, and we would have seen the establishment of this universal confederation, the dream of so many centuries, and that nothing could not prevent it from being realized, if, in fact, all races were provided with the same dose and the same form of faculties.

We know that this painting is fantastic. The first peoples, worthy of the name, agglomerates under the influence of an idea of association that the barbarians, living more or less far from them, not only did not have as quickly, but did not not had since. They emigrated from their first domain and met other peoples: these peoples were tamed, they never knowingly embraced or understood the idea that dominated in the civilization that was imposed on them. Far from testifying that the intelligence of all human tribes was similar, civilizable nations have always proven the opposite, first by basing their social state on completely diverse bases, then by showing a decided distance from each other. . The force of the example did not awaken anything in the groups which did not find themselves pushed by an inner force. Spain and the Gauls saw in turn the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Carthaginians establish flourishing cities on their coasts. Neither Spain nor the Gauls agreed to imitate the customs and governments of these famous merchants, and when the Romans came, these victors only managed to transform their new domain by saturating it with colonies. The Celts and the Iberians then proved that civilization cannot be acquired without the mixture of blood. The American peoples, what spectacle are they not witnessing at this moment? They find themselves placed alongside a people who want to grow in number in order to increase in power. They see thousands of ships passing and returning on their shores. They know that the strength of their masters is irresistible. The hope of seeing, one day, their native lands freed from the presence of conquerors does not exist among any of them. They are all aware that their entire continent is now the heritage of the European. They only have to look to be convinced of the fertility of these exotic institutions which no longer make the prolongation of life dependent on the abundance of game and the wealth of fishing. They know, since they buy brandy, blankets, guns, that even their crude tastes would find more easily satisfaction in the ranks of this society which calls them, which solicits them to come, which pays them and flatters them to get their help. They refuse to do so, they prefer to flee from solitude to solitude; they sink deeper and deeper into the interior. They give up

everything, down to the bones of their fathers. They will die, they know it; but a mysterious horror keeps them under the yoke of their invincible repugnance, and, while admiring the strength and superiority of the white race, their conscience, their entire nature, their blood in short, revolt at the very idea of having nothing in common with her.

In Spanish America we believe we encounter less aversion among the natives. This is because the metropolitan government had previously left these peoples under the administration of their leaders. He did not seek to civilize them. He allowed them to keep their customs and their laws, and, provided they were Christians, he only asked them for a tribute of money. He himself hardly colonized. The conquest once completed, he abandoned himself to an indolent tolerance, and only oppressed with jokes. This is why the Indians of Spanish America are less unhappy and continue to live, while the neighbors of the Anglo-Saxons will perish without mercy.

It is not only for savages that civilization is incommunicable, it is also for enlightened peoples. French goodwill and philanthropy are, at this moment, being put to the test in the former regency of Algiers in a manner no less complete than the English in India and the Dutch in Batavia. No examples, no more striking, more conclusive proofs of the dissimilarity and inequality of races among themselves. For if we reasoned only according to the barbarity of certain peoples, and, declaring this original barbarity, we concluded that any kind of culture is refused to them, we would expose ourselves to serious objections. Many savage nations have preserved traces of a better situation than that in which we see them immersed. There are tribes, very brutal in fact, which, for the celebration of marriages, for the distribution of inheritances, for political administration, have traditional regulations of a curious complication, and whose rites, today private of meaning, obviously derive from a higher order of ideas. As testimony to this, we cite the tribes of Redskins wandering in the vast solitudes which we suppose to have once seen the establishments of the Alleghanians.106 . There are other peoples who have

manufacturing processes of which they cannot be the inventors: such as the natives of the Mariana Islands. They keep them without reflection, and put them into use, so to speak, mechanically. There is therefore reason to look closely when, seeing a nation in a state of barbarism, we feel inclined to conclude that it has always been there. To avoid making any mistakes, let's take several circumstances into account.

There are peoples who, seized by the activity of a parent race, more or less submit to it, accept certain consequences, retain certain procedures; then, when the dominating race disappears, either by expulsion or by complete immersion in the bosom of the vanquished, they allow almost the entire culture to perish, especially the principles, and only keep what little they have of it. were able to understand. This fact can only happen between nations allied by blood. This is how the Assyrians acted towards the Chaldean creations; the Syrian and Egyptian Greeks, vis-à-vis the Greeks of Europe; the Iberians, the Celts, the Illyrians, against Roman ideas. If therefore the Cherokees, the Catawhas, the Muskhogees, the Seminoles, the Natchez, etc., have retained a certain imprint of Alleghanian intelligence, I will not conclude that they are the direct and pure descendants of the initiating party. of the race, which would lead to the consequence that a race can have been civilized and no longer be so: I would say that, if one of these tribes still holds ethnically to the old dominant type, it is through a indirect and very bastard link, without which the Cherokees would never have fallen into barbarism, and, as for the other less gifted peoples, they represent to me only the core of the foreign population, conquered, vanquished, agglomerated by force, on which once rested the social state. Therefore, it is not surprising that these social detritus have preserved, without understanding them, habits, laws, rites combined by those more skilled than them, and of which they never knew the scope and the secret, guessing in it nothing more than an object of superstitious respect. This reasoning applies to the perpetuity of mechanical arts debris. The processes that we admire there may originally come from an elite race that has long since disappeared. Sometimes also the source goes further back. Thus, with regard to the exploitation of mines among the Iberians, the Aquitaines and the Bretons of the Cassiteride Islands, the secret of this science was in the high

Asia, from where the ancestors of Western populations had once brought it in their emigration.

The inhabitants of the Carolinas are almost the most interesting islanders of Polynesia. Their looms, their sculpted boats, their taste for navigation and commerce draw a deep line of demarcation between them and the Pelagian negroes. It's easy to see where their talents come from. They owe them to the Malay blood infused in their veins, and as, at the same time, this blood is far from being pure, the ethnic gifts could only be preserved among them without bearing fruit and degrading. Thus, the fact that among a barbarian people there are traces of civilization, it is not thereby proven that this people was ever civilized. He lived under the domination of a related and superior tribe, or else, finding himself in its vicinity, he humbly and feebly profited from its lessons. The races that are wild today have always been so, and, reasoning by analogy, we are entirely justified in concluding that they will continue to be so until the day they disappear.

This result is inevitable as soon as two types, between whom there is no kinship, find themselves in active contact, and I know of no better demonstration of this than the fate of Polynesian and American families. It is therefore established, by the preceding reasonings: 1° That the tribes currently savage have always been so, whatever the superior environment they may have crossed, and that they always will be; 2° that, for a savage nation to even be able to withstand residence in a civilized environment, the nation which creates this environment must be a nobler branch of the same race; 3° that the same circumstance is still necessary for diverse civilizations not to be able to merge, which never happens, but only to be strongly modified by each other, to make rich reciprocal loans, to give birth to other civilizations composed of their elements; 4° that civilizations originating from races completely foreign to each other can only touch each other on the surface, never penetrate each other and exclude each other

always. As this last point has not been sufficiently clarified, I will insist on it. Conflicts brought Persian civilization into contact with Greek civilization, Egyptian civilization with Greek and Roman civilization, Roman civilization with Greek civilization; then the modern civilization of Europe with all those that exist today in the world, and in particular the Arab civilization. The relations between Greek intelligence and Persian culture were as numerous as they were forced. First, a large part of the Hellenic population, and the richest, if not the most independent, was concentrated in these cities on the Syrian coast, in these colonies of Asia Minor and Pontus, which, very quickly united with the States of the great king, lived under the supervision of the satraps, preserving, to a certain point, their isonomy. Continental and free Greece, for its part, maintained very intimate relations with the coast of Asia.

Did the civilizations of the two countries come to merge? We know not. The Greeks treated their powerful antagonists as barbarians and they probably reciprocated this. The political mores, the form of governments, the direction given to the arts, the scope and the inner meaning of public worship, the private mores of nations intertwined on so many points nevertheless remained distinct. In Ecbatana, we understood only a single, hereditary authority, limited by certain traditional prescriptions, absolute in the rest. In Hellas, power was subdivided into a host of small sovereignties. The government, aristocratic in some, democratic in others, monarchical in others, tyrannical in others, displayed in Sparta, in Athens, in Sicyone, in Macedonia, the strangest variegation. Among the Persians, the cult of the State, much closer to primitive emanatism, showed the same tendency towards unity as the government, and above all had a moral and metaphysical scope which did not lack depth. Among the Greeks, symbolism, concerned only with the varied appearances of nature, was content to glorify forms. Religion left to civil laws the task of commanding conscience, and as soon as the desired rites were completed, the

honors paid to the god or the topical hero, faith had fulfilled its mission. Then these rites, these honors, these gods and these heroes changed every half-league. In case, in some sanctuaries, like at Olympia for example, or at Dodona, we would no longer like to recognize the adoration of one of the forces or of one of the elements of nature, but that of the cosmic principle itself , this sort of unity would only make the fractionation more remarkable, as being practiced only in isolated places. Moreover, the Dodonan oracle and the Jupiter of Olympia were foreign cults. As for customs, it is not necessary to point out to what extent they differed from those of Persia. It was exposing oneself to public contempt, when one was young, rich, voluptuous and cosmopolitan, to want to imitate the ways of life of rivals who were much more luxurious and refined than the Hellenes. Thus, until the time of Alexander, that is to say, during the beautiful and great period of Greek power, during the fertile and glorious period, Persia, despite all its preponderance, could not convert Greece to its civilization. With Alexander, this fact received a singular confirmation. Seeing Hellas conquer the empire of Darius, we doubtless believed, for a moment, that Asia was going to become Greek, and all the better, since the conqueror had allowed himself, in a night of confusion, against the monuments of the country, acts of aggression so violent that it seemed to demonstrate as much contempt as hatred. But the incendiary of Persepolis soon changed his mind, and so completely that we could guess his plan to replace himself purely and simply with the Achaemenid dynasty and to govern like his predecessor or like the great Xerxes, with the Greece of more in his States. In this way, Persian sociability would have absorbed that of the Hellenes.

However, despite all of Alexander's authority, nothing of the sort happened. His generals, his soldiers could not accept seeing him put on the long, flowing robe, gird the mitre, surround himself with eunuchs and deny his country. He died. Some of his successors continued his system. However, they were forced to mitigate it, and why were they still able to establish this middle term which became the state

normal of the Asian coast and the Hellenizers of Egypt? Because their subjects were made up of a variegated population of Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, who had no reason to accept anything other than a compromise in terms of culture. But where the races remained distinct, there was no transaction. Each country kept its national morals. Likewise again, until the last days of the Roman Empire, the mixed civilization which reigned throughout the Orient, including then continental Greece, had become much more Asian than Greek, because the masses held much more of the former. blood than the second. Intelligence seemed, it is true, to adorn itself with Hellenic forms. However, it is not difficult to discover, in the thought of these times and these countries, an oriental background which vivifies everything that the Alexandrian school did, such as the unitary doctrines of the GrecoSyrian jurisconsults. Thus the proportion, as to the respective quantity of blood, is kept: the preponderance belongs to the most abundant part.

Before ending this parallel, which applies to contact with all civilizations, a few words only on the situation of Arab culture vis-àvis ours. As for the reciprocal repulsion, there is no doubt about it. Our fathers of the Middle Ages were able to admire up close the marvels of the Muslim State, when they did not refuse to send their students to the schools of Cordoba. However, nothing Arab remained in Europe outside of the countries which retained some Ishmaelite blood, and Brahmanical India showed itself to be of no better composition than us. Like us, subject to Mohammedan masters, she successfully resisted their efforts.

Today, it is our turn to act on the remains of Arab civilization. We sweep them away, we destroy them: we do not succeed in transforming them, and, yet, this civilization is not itself original, and should therefore resist less. The Arab nation, so small in number, has notoriously only assimilated scraps of the races subjugated by its sword. Thus the Muslims, an extremely mixed population, have nothing other than a civilization of the same mixed character of which it is easy to find all the elements. The core

of the victors, as we know, were not, before Mohammed, a new or unknown people. His traditions were common to him with the Hamite and Semitic families from which he took his origins. He rubbed shoulders with the Phoenicians as well as the Jews. He had the blood of both of them in his veins, and had served as their broker for trade in the Red Sea, the eastern coast of Africa and India. With the Persians and the Romans, he had played the same role. Several of its tribes had taken part in the political life of Persia under the Arsacids and the sons of Sassan, while some of its princes, like Odenatus, established themselves as Caesar, and some of its daughters, like Zenobia, daughter of Amrou, sovereign of Palmyra, covered herself with entirely Roman glory, and one of her adventurers, like Philip, was even able to rise to the point of donning imperial purple. This bastard nation had therefore never ceased, since ancient times, to maintain close relations with the powerful societies which neighboring it. She had taken part in their work and, like a body half immersed in water, half exposed to the sun, she was, at the same time, an advanced culture and barbarism. Mohammed invented the religion most consistent with the ideas of his people, where idolatry found many followers, but where Christianity, depraved by heretics and Judaizers, made hardly any fewer proselytes. The religious theme of the Koreishite prophet was such a combination that the agreement between the law of Moses and the Christian faith, this problem so worrying for the first Catholics and still quite present in the consciousness of oriental populations, was found to be more balanced. than in the doctrines of the Church. It was already a lure with a seductive flavor, and besides, any theological novelty had a chance of winning believers among the Syrians and Egyptians. To crown the work, the new religion presented itself with saber in hand, another guarantee of success among masses without a common bond, and imbued with the feeling of their powerlessness.

This is how Islamism emerged from its deserts. Arrogant, not very inventive, and already, in advance, conquered, two-thirds, to Greco-Asian civilization, as he advanced he found, on the two beaches of the east and south of the Mediterranean, all his recruits saturated in advance with this complicated combination. He soaked it up more, Since

Baghdad to Montpellier, he extended his cult borrowed from the Church, the Synagogue, the disfigured traditions of Hejaz and Yemen, his Persian and Roman laws, his Greco-Syrian science.107and Egyptian, its administration, from the first day, tolerant as is appropriate, when nothing unitary resides in a body of state. It was a great mistake to be surprised by the rapid progress of Muslims in the refinement of morals. The bulk of this people had simply changed their clothes, and they were misunderstood when they began to play the role of apostle on the stage of the world where, for a long time, they had no longer noticed them under their old names. . One more crucial fact must be taken into account. In this aggregation of such diverse families, each undoubtedly contributed their share to the common prosperity. Who, however, had given the impetus, who sustained the momentum as long as it lasted, which was not long? Only the small core of Arab tribes that emerged from the interior of the peninsula, and who provided not scholars, but fanatics, soldiers, victors and masters.

Arab civilization was nothing other than Grecosyrian civilization, rejuvenated, revived by the breath of a rather short-lived but newer genius, and altered by an additional Persian mixture. Thus made, willing to make many concessions, it nevertheless does not agree with any social formula coming from origins other than its own; no, no more than Greek culture was in harmony with Roman culture, such a close relative and which remained confined for so many centuries within the limits of the same empire. This is what I wanted to say about the impossibility of civilizations possessed by ethnic groups foreign to each other, ever to merge.

When history so clearly establishes this irreconcilable antagonism between races and their modes of culture, it is very obvious that dissimilarity and inequality reside at the bottom of these constitutive repugnances, and since the European cannot hope to to civilize the Negro, and that he only succeeds in transmitting to the mulatto a fragment of his aptitudes; that this mulatto, in turn, united with the blood of whites, will not yet create individuals perfectly capable of understanding something better than a mixed culture of a degree

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

more advanced towards the ideas of the white race, I am authorized to establish the inequality of intelligences among the different races.

I repeat here again that it is in no way a question of falling back into a method that is unfortunately too dear to ethnologists, and, to say the least, ridiculous. I do not discuss, like them, the moral and intellectual value of individuals taken in isolation.

As for moral value, I put it completely out of the question when I noted the aptitude of all human families to recognize, to a useful degree, the enlightenment of Christianity. When it comes to intellectual merit, I absolutely refuse this way of arguing which consists of saying: Every Negro is inept.108, and my main reason for abstaining from it is that I would be forced to recognize, by way of compensation, that every European is intelligent, and I stay a hundred leagues away from such a paradox. I will not wait for the friends of racial equality to come and show me a certain passage from a missionary or navigator's book, from which it relates that a Yolof showed himself to be a vigorous carpenter, that a Hottentot became good servant, that a Kaffir dances and plays the violin, and that a Bambara knows arithmetic.

I admit, yes, I admit, before it is proven to me, all the marvelous things that can be said, in this genre, from the most stupid savages. I denied the excessive stupidity, the chronic ineptitude, even among the lowest tribes. I go even further than my adversaries, since I do not doubt that a good number of Negro leaders exceed, by the strength and the abundance of their ideas, by the power of combination of their spirit, by the intensity of their active faculties, the common level to which our peasants, or even our suitably educated and gifted bourgeoisie, can reach. Once again, and a hundred times, it is not on the narrow terrain of individualities that I place myself. It seems to me too unworthy of science to dwell on such futile arguments. If MungoPark or Lander gave some negro a certificate of intelligence, who tells me that another traveler, encountering the same phoenix, would not have founded a conviction on his head

diametrically opposed? So let's leave aside this childishness and compare, not men, but groups. It is when we have clearly recognized what the latter are or are not capable of, within what limits their faculties are exercised, to what intellectual heights they reach, and which other nations have dominated them since the beginning of historical times, that the we will, perhaps one day, be authorized to go into detail, to investigate why the great individuals of one race are inferior to the fine geniuses of another. Then, comparing the powers of common men of all types, we will inquire into the aspects in which these powers are equal and those in which they precede each other. This difficult and delicate work cannot be accomplished until we have balanced in the most exact manner, and, as it were, by mathematical processes, the relative situation of the races. I don't even know if we will ever obtain results of incontestable clarity, and if, free to no longer pronounce only on general facts, we will be able to grasp the nuances so closely that we can define, recognize and classify the lower strata of each nation and the passive individualities. In this case, it will be easily proven that the activity, the energy, the intelligence of the least gifted subjects in the dominant races, surpass the intelligence, the energy, the activity of the corresponding subjects produced by the other groups109. Here then is humanity divided into two very dissimilar, very unequal fractions, or, to put it better, into a series of categories subordinate to each other, and where the degree of intelligence marks the degree of elevation. In this vast hierarchy, there are two considerable facts acting incessantly on each series. These facts, eternal causes of the movement which brings races together and tends to confuse them, are, as I have already indicated110: the approximate similarity of the main physical characteristics, and the general ability to express sensations and ideas through modulations of the voice.

I have spoken at great length about the first of these phenomena, confining it to its true limits.

I will now deal with the second and investigate what relationships exist between ethnic power and the value of language: in other words, if the most beautiful idioms belong to strong races; if not, how can the anomaly be explained.

First book

Chapter XV

Languages, unequal to each other,

are in perfect relationship with the relative merit of the races.

If it were possible that crude peoples, placed at the bottom of the ethnic scale, having had as little impact on the male development as on the female action of humanity, would nevertheless have invented philosophically profound, aesthetically beautiful and flexible languages , rich in diverse and precise expressions, in characterized and happy forms, equally suited to the sublimities, to the graces of poetry, as well as to the severe precision of politics and science, it is indubitable that these people would have been gifted with a very useless genius: that of inventing and

to perfect an unused instrument in the midst of powerless faculties. We would then have to believe that nature has aimless whims, and admit that certain impasses of observation lead not to the unknown, a frequent encounter, not to the indecipherable, but quite simply to the absurd. The first glance at the question seems to favor this unfortunate solution. Because, taking the races in their current state, we are obliged to agree that the perfection of idioms is far from being everywhere proportional to the degree of civilization. Considering only the languages of modern Europe, they are unequal among themselves, and the most beautiful, the richest do not necessarily belong to the most advanced peoples. If we also compare these languages to several of those which were spread throughout the world at different times, we see them without exception remaining well behind. A more singular spectacle: entire groups of nations stuck at more than mediocre levels of culture are in possession of languages whose value cannot be denied. So that the network of languages, composed of meshes of different prices, would seem to be thrown at random over humanity, silk and gold sometimes covering miserable, uneducated and ferocious beings; the wool, hemp and embarrassing horsehair of inspired, learned and wise societies. Fortunately, this is only an appearance and, by applying the doctrine of the diversity of races, aided by the help of history, we will soon be right, so as to further strengthen the proofs given more high on the intellectual inequality of human types.

The first philologists committed a double error: the first, of supposing that, parallel to what the Unitarians say about the original identity of all groups, all languages are formed on the same principle; the second, to attribute the invention of language to the pure influence of material needs. For languages, doubt is not even allowed. There is complete diversity in the modes of training and, although the classifications

proposed by philology may still be subject to revision, we cannot keep, for a single minute, the idea that the Altaic family, Ariane, Semitic do not come from sources perfectly foreign to each other. Everything is different there. Lexicology has, in these different linguistic environments, forms that are perfectly characterized apart. The modulation of the voice is special: here, mainly using the lips to create sounds; there, rendering them by the contraction of the throat; in another system, producing them by nasal emission and as if from the top of the head. The composition of the parts of speech offers no less distinct marks, uniting or separating the nuances of thought, and presenting, especially in the inflections of nouns and in the nature of the verb, the most striking proofs of the difference in logic. and sensitivity that exists between human categories. What results from this? This is because, when the philosopher strives to realize, through purely abstract conjectures, the origin of languages, begins in this work by putting himself in the presence of man ideally conceived, of man deprived of of all special breed characteristics,the manfinally, it begins with real nonsense, and continues unerringly in the same way. There is no ideal man,the mandoes not exist, and if I am convinced that we do not discover it anywhere, it is especially when it comes to language. On this ground, I know the owner of the Finnish language, the owner of the Arian system or Semitic combinations; butthe man Absolutely, I don't know him. So, I cannot reason from this idea that any single starting point led humanity into its idiomatic creations. There were several starting points because there were several forms of intelligence and sensitivity111. Passing now to the second opinion, I believe no less in its falsity. According to this doctrine, there would have been development only to the extent that there was necessity. It would result that the male races would possess a more precise, more abundant, richer language than the female races, and since, moreover, material needs are addressed to objects which fall under the senses and are manifested above all by acts , lexicology would be the main part of idioms.

Grammatical mechanism and syntax would never have had the opportunity to go beyond the limits of the most basic combinations

and the simplest. A sequence of well or poorly linked sounds is always enough to express a need, and the gesture, an easy comment, can make up for what the expression leaves obscure.112, as the Chinese know well. And it is not only the synthesis of language that would have remained in childhood. We would have had to suffer another kind of poverty no less sensitive, doing without harmony, number and rhythm. What does melodic merit matter, in fact, when it is only a question of obtaining a positive result? Languages would have been the thoughtless, fortuitous assembly of sounds indifferently applied.

This theory has some arguments. Chinese, the language of a masculine race, seems, at first, to have been designed only for utilitarian purposes. The word did not rise above the sound. It remained monosyllable. There, no lexicological developments. No root giving rise to families of derivatives. All words are roots, they do not modify themselves, but among themselves, and following a very crude mode of juxtaposition. There we encounter a grammatical simplicity from which results an extreme uniformity in speech, and which excludes, for intelligences accustomed to rich, varied, abundant forms, to inexhaustible combinations of happier idioms, even the very idea aesthetic perfection. It must, however, be added that there is no reason to admit that the Chinese themselves experience this latter impression, and, consequently, since their language has a goal of beauty for those who speak it, since it is subject to certain specific rules to favor the melodic development of sounds, if it can be accused, from the comparative point of view, of achieving these results less well than other languages, we have no right to ignore that, it too, the continues. From then on, there is something else in the first elements of Chinese and more than a simple accumulation of utilitarian articulations.113.

However, I do not reject the idea of attributing to male races a fairly marked aesthetic inferiority114, which would be reproduced in the construction of their idioms. I find the clue, not only in Chinese and its relative poverty, but also in the care with which certain modern races of the West have stripped Latin of its finest rhythmic faculties, and Gothic of its sonority. The low merit of our current languages, even the most beautiful, compared to Sanskrit,

Greek, even Latin, does not need to be demonstrated, and agrees perfectly with the mediocrity of our civilization and that of the Celestial Empire, in matters of art and literature. However, while admitting that this difference can serve, with other features, to characterize the languages of masculine races, as there nevertheless exists in these languages a feeling, doubtless less, but still powerful, of eurythmy, and a real tendency to create and maintain laws of sequence between sounds and particular conditions of forms and classes for spoken modifications of thought, I conclude that, even within the idioms of masculine races, the feeling of beautiful and logical, the intellectual spark is still visible and therefore everywhere presides over the origin of languages, as well as material need. I said earlier that, if this last cause had been able to reign alone, a background of articulations formed at random would have sufficed for human needs, in the early days of the existence of the species. It seems established that this hypothesis is not tenable. Sounds were not applied casually to ideas. The choice was guided by the instinctive recognition of a certain logical relationship between external noises collected by the human ear, and an idea that his throat or his tongue wanted to convey. In the last century, we were struck by this truth. Unfortunately, the etymological exaggeration, which was then used, took hold of it, and it did not take long to come up against results so absurd that a just unpopularity came to strike them and do justice to them. For a long time, this terrain, so madly exploited by its first explorers, frightened good minds. Now we return to it, and, taking advantage of the severe lessons of experience to be prudent and restrained, we will be able to collect observations very worthy of being recorded. Without pushing remarks, true in themselves, into the realm of chimeras, we can admit, in fact, that primitive language was able, as much as possible, to take advantage of the impressions of hearing to form certain categories of words, and that, in the creation of others, he was guided by the feeling of mysterious relationships between certain notions of abstract nature and certain particular noises. This is how, for example, the sound ofiseems suitable for

express dissolution; that ofw, the physical and moral vagueness, the wind, the wishes; that of them, the condition of motherhood115. This doctrine, contained within very prudent limits, finds its application frequently enough for us to be forced to recognize some reality in it. But, certainly, we cannot use it with too much reserve, otherwise we risk venturing down paths without clarity, where common sense soon goes astray. These indications, however weak they may be, demonstrate that material need did not alone govern the formation of languages, and that men brought their finest faculties into play. They did not arbitrarily apply sounds to things and ideas. They only proceeded in this matter by virtue of a pre-established order for which they found the revelation within themselves. From then on, one of these first languages, however harsh, so poor and so crude as we imagine it, nevertheless contained all the elements necessary for its future branches to be able to develop one day in a logical, reasonable sense. and necessary.

Mr. William of Humboldt noticed, with his perspicacity ordinary, that each language exists in great independence from the will of the men who speak it. Being closely tied to their intellectual state, it is, entirely, above the power of their whims, and it is not in their power to alter it arbitrarily. Essays of this type provide curious evidence of this. . The Bushisman tribes invented a system of alteration of their language, intended to make it unintelligible to all those who are not initiated in the modifying process. Some peoples of the Caucasus practice the same custom. Despite all efforts, the result obtained does not go beyond the simple addition or intercalation of a subsidiary syllable at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of words. Apart from this parasitic element, the language has remained the same, as little altered in substance as in form. A more complete attempt was made by Mr. Sylvestre de Sacy, regarding the Balaïbalan language. This strange idiom had been composed by the Sufis, for the use of their mystical books, and as a means

to surround with more mysteries the reveries of their theologians. They had invented, at random, the words which seemed to resonate most strangely in their ears. However, if this so-called language did not belong to any stock, if the meaning attributed to the words was entirely artificial, the eurythmic value of the sounds, the grammar, the syntax, everything which gives the typical character was invincibly the exact model of the Arabic and Persian. The Sufis therefore produced a Semitic and Arian jargon at the same time, a cipher, and nothing more. The fellow devotees of Djelat-Eddin-Roumi had not been able to invent a language. This power, obviously, was not given to the creature116.

I draw this conclusion from this, that the fact of language is intimately linked to the form of the intelligence of races, and, from its first manifestation, has possessed, if only in germ, the necessary means of reproducing the various traits of this intelligence at its different degrees

.

117

But, where the intelligence of races has encountered impasses and experienced shortcomings, language has had them too. This is what Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek and the Semitic group demonstrate. I have already noted, for Chinese, a more particularly utilitarian tendency consistent with the path along which the spirit of variety travels. The bountiful abundance of philosophical and ethnological expressions of Sanskrit, its eurythmic richness and beauty are still parallel to the genius of the nation. It is the same in Greek, while the lack of precision of the idioms spoken by the Semitic peoples fits perfectly with the naturalness of these families.

If, leaving the somewhat vaporous heights of ancient times, we descend to historical hills closer to our times, we witness, this time, the very birth of a multitude of idioms, and this great phenomenon makes us see more clearly again with what fidelity ethnic genius is reflected in languages. As soon as peoples mix, the respective languages undergo a revolution, sometimes slow, sometimes sudden, always inevitable. They deteriorate and, after a short time, die. The new idiom

which replaces them is a compromise between the disappeared types, and each race contributes a part all the stronger as it provided more individuals to the emerging society118. This is how, in our Western populations, since the 13thecentury, the Germanic dialects had to give way, not to Latin, but to the Roman119, as Gallo-Roman power was reborn. As for the Celtic, he had not retreated from Italian civilization, it was from colonization that he had fled, and we can still say with truth that he had won in the end, thanks to the number of those who spoke it, more than half a victory since it had been given to him, when the fusion of the Galls, the Romans and the men of the North had taken place definitively, to prepare its syntax for the modern language, to extinguish in it the harsh accentuations coming from Germany and the livelier sounds brought from the Peninsula, and to make the rather dull eurythmy that he himself possessed triumph. The gradual development of our French is only the effect of this latent, patient and sure work. The causes which stripped modern German of the rather dazzling forms noted in the Gothic of Bishop Ulphila, are no other than the presence of a thick Kymric population under the small number of Germanic elements remaining in the beyond the Rhine120, after the great migrations which followed the 5th century AD. The mixtures of peoples presenting particular characteristics at each point resulting from the quantum of ethnic elements, the linguistic results are also nuanced. We can pose as a general thesis that no idiom remains pure after intimate contact with a different idiom; that even, when the respective principles offer the most dissimilarities, the alteration is at least felt in the lexicology; that, if the parasitic language has some strength, it does not fail to attack the mode of eurythmy, and even the weakest sides of the grammatical system, from which it results that language is one of the most delicate and the most fragile of the individuality of peoples. We will therefore often have the singular spectacle of a noble and very cultured language passing, through its union with a barbaric idiom, into a sort of relative barbarism, stripping itself by degrees of its most beautiful faculties, becoming impoverished of words, drying up. of forms, and thus testifying to an irresistible inclination to assimilate, more and more, to the companion of inferior merit

that the mating of races will have given him. This is what happened to Vlach and Rhaetian, Kawi and Burmese. Both of these latter idioms are imbued with Sanskrit elements, and, despite the nobility of this alliance, competent judges declare them inferior in merit to Delaware 121. Coming from the trunk of the Lenni-Lenapes, the association of tribes which speak this dialect is originally worth more than the two yellow groups towed by Hindu civilization, and if, despite this prerogative, it is below them, it is because the The Asians in question live under the impression of the social inventions of a noble race, and profit from these merits, while being little in themselves. Sanskrit contact was enough to raise them quite high, while the Lenapes, who have never been impregnated by anything similar, were unable to rise, in civilization, above the value that we see in them. It is thus, to use an easy-toappreciate comparison, that young mulattoes raised in the colleges of London and Paris can, while remaining mulattoes and very mulattoes, present, in certain respects, an appearance of culture. more satisfactory than those inhabitants of southern Italy whose intimate value is incontestably greater. It is therefore necessary, when we encounter a savage people in possession of a language superior to that of more civilized nations, to carefully distinguish whether the civilization of the latter belongs to them in their own right, or whether it only comes from an infiltration of blood. stranger. In the latter case, the imperfection of primitive language and the bastardization of imported language agree perfectly with the existence of a certain degree of social culture122. I have said elsewhere that, each civilization having a particular scope, we should not be surprised if the poetic and philosophical sense was more developed among the Sanskrit Hindus and the Greeks than among us, while the practical, critical spirit , scholar, further distinguishes our societies. Taken as a mass, we are endowed with an active virtue more energetic than the illustrious rulers of southern Asia and Hellas. On the other hand, we must give way to them on the terrain of beauty, and it is, therefore, natural that our idioms hold the humble rank of our minds. A more powerful rise towards the ideal spheres is naturally reflected in the words of which the writers of India and Ionia have

makes use of it, so that language, while being, I believe, I admit, a very good criterion for the general elevation of races, is nevertheless, in a more special way, for their aesthetic elevation , and it especially takes on this character when it is applied to the comparison of respective civilizations. To avoid leaving this point doubtful, I will allow myself to discuss an opinion expressed by Baron Guillaume de Humboldt, on the subject of the superiority of the Mexican over the Peruvian.123, obvious superiority, he says, although the civilization of the Incas was far above that of the inhabitants of Anahuac.

The morals of the Peruvians were, no doubt, gentler, their religious ideas as harmless as those of Montezuma's subjects were fierce. Despite all this, their entire social state was far from presenting as much energy, as much variety. While their rather crude despotism only achieved a sort of stupefying communism, the Aztec civilization had tried very refined forms of government. The military state was much more vigorous there, and, although the two empires were equally ignorant of the use of writing, it would seem that poetry, history and morality, very cultivated at the time Cortez appeared, would have played a role. a greater role in Mexico than in Peru, whose institutions leaned towards a nonchalant Epicureanism unfavorable to the work of intelligence. It then becomes quite simple to see the superiority of the most active people over the most modest people. Moreover, the opinion of Mr. William of Humboldt is, here, consistent with the way in which he defines civilization. Without renewing the controversy, it was essential for me not to leave this point in the dark; because, if two civilizations had ever been able to develop in parallel with languages in contradiction with their respective merits, we would have to abandon the idea of any solidarity between the value of idioms and that of intelligences. This fact is impossible to concede to a different extent from what I said above for Sanskrit and Greek compared to English, French, German.

Moreover, by following this path, it would not be a trivial difficulty to determine for mixed-race populations the causes of the idiomatic state in which we find them. We do not always have sufficient insight into the quantity of mixtures or their quality to be able to examine their organizing work. However, the influence of these primary causes persists, and, if not unmasked, can easily lead to erroneous conclusions. Precisely because the relationship between language and race is quite close, it is preserved much longer than people keep their bodies of state. It becomes recognized after the people have changed their name. Only, altering like their blood, it only disappears, it only dies with the last particle of their nationality.124. Modern Greek is in this case; mutilated as much as possible, stripped of the best part of its grammatical riches, disturbed and soiled in its lexicology, even impoverished, it seems, as for the number of its sounds, it has nonetheless preserved its original imprint125. This is, in a way, in the intellectual universe, what is, on earth, this degraded Parthenon, which, after having served as a church for the popes, then, having become a powder magazine, having exploded, in a thousand places of its pediment and its columns, under the Venetian cannonballs of Morosini, still presents to the admiration of the centuries the adorable model of serious grace and simple majesty. It also happens that perfect fidelity to the language of the ancestors is not in the character of all races. This is yet another difficulty when we seek to disentangle, with the help of philology, either the origin or the relative merit of human types. Not only do idioms sometimes undergo alterations, the ethnic cause of which is not always easy to trace; There are still nations who, pressed by contact with foreign languages, abandon their own. This is what happened, after the conquests of Alexander, to the enlightened part of the populations of Western Asia, such as the Carians, the Cappadocians and the Armenians, and this is what I also pointed out for our Gauls. Both, however, instilled in the victorious languages a foreign principle which, in the end, transfigured them in turn. But while these peoples still maintained, although in an imperfect manner, their own intellectual instrument; than others, much more tenacious, such as the Basques, the Berbers of the Atlas, the Ekkhilis of Arabia

southern region, speak until today as their most ancient relatives spoke, there are groups, the Jews for example, who seem never to have cared about it, and this indifference is evident from the first steps of the migration of God's favorites. Thare, coming from Ur of the Chaldeans, had certainly not learned, in the country of his relatives, the Canaanite language which became national for the children of Israel. They had therefore stripped themselves of their native idiom to accept another different one, and which, undergoing somewhat, I want to believe, the influence of primary memories, became, in their mouths, a particular dialect of this language. very ancient, mother of the oldest Arabic, legitimate heritage of the tribes allied, very closely, to the Black Hamites126. The Jews were not to be more faithful to this language than to the first. On their return from captivity, Zerubbabel's bands had forgotten her on the banks of the rivers of Babylon, during their stay, although very short, of seventy years. Patriotism, strong against exile, had retained its warmth: the rest had been abandoned with strange ease by this people who were both jealous of themselves and excessively cosmopolitan. In rebuilt Jerusalem, the multitude reappeared, speaking an Aramaic or Chaldean jargon which, moreover, was perhaps not without resemblance to the idiom of the fathers of Abraham.

In the times of Jesus Christ, this dialect barely resisted the invasion of a Greek patois which, from all sides, penetrated Jewish intelligence. It was only under this new costume, more or less elegant, displaying more or less Attic pretensions, that the Jewish writers of the time produced their works. The later canonical books of the Old Testament, like the writings of Philo and Josephus, are Hellenistic works. When the destruction of the holy city had dispersed the nation now disinherited from the goodness of the Lord, the East regained control of the intelligence of its sons. Hebrew culture broke with Athens as with Alexandria, and the language, the ideas of the Talmud and the teachings of the school of Tiberias were once again Semitic, sometimes Arab and often Canaanite, to use Isaiah's expression. I am talking about the language that is now sacred, that of the rabbis, of religion, of that henceforth considered national. But for the

commerce of life, the Jews used the idioms of the countries where they found themselves transported. It should also be noted that everywhere these exiles stood out for their particular accent. The language they had adopted and learned from early childhood never succeeded in softening their vocal organs. This observation would confirm what Mr. William of Humboldt says about such an intimate relationship between race and language, that in his opinion, generations do not get used to properly pronouncing words that their ancestors did not know.127.

Be that as it may, here, in the Jews, is a remarkable proof of the truth that we must not always, at first sight, establish an exact concordance between a race and the language of which it is possessed, given that this language may not originally belong to it. After the Jews, I could still cite the example of the Gypsies and many other peoples128. We see with what caution it is appropriate to use the affinity and even the similarity of languages to conclude the identity of races, since not only do numerous nations use only altered languages whose main elements are not identical. were not provided by them, witness the majority of the populations of Western Asia and almost all those of southern Europe, but also that several others adopted completely foreign ones, to the making of which they contributed almost no . This last fact is undoubtedly rarer. It even presents itself as an anomaly. It is enough, however, that it can take place for us to have to be on our guard against a type of proof which suffers from such deviations. However, since the fact is abnormal, since it is not encountered as frequently as its opposite, that is to say the centuries-old conservation of national idioms by very small human groups; since we also see how much languages resemble the particular genius of the people who create them, and how they alter precisely to the extent that the blood of this people is modified; since the role they play in the formation of their derivatives is proportional to the numerical influence of the race which brings them into the new mixture, everything gives the right to conclude that a people cannot have a language worth better than itself -even, unless there are special reasons. As we do not

cannot insist too much on this point, I will bring out the evidence by a new kind of demonstration. We have already seen that, in a nation of composite essence, civilization does not exist for all successive layers. At the same time as the old ethnic causes continue their work at the bottom of the social scale, they only admit and allow the influences of the national genius to penetrate there weakly, and in a completely transitory manner. leader. I recently applied this principle to France, and I said that, out of its 36 million inhabitants, there were, at least, 20 who only took a forced, passive, temporary part in the civilizing development of the country. modern Europe. Except for Great Britain, served by a greater unity in its types, a consequence of its insular isolation, this sad proportion is even more considerable on the rest of the continent. Since I have already chosen France as an example once, I stick to it, and believe I find that my opinion on the ethnic state of this country, and that which I have just expressed just now for all races in general, as for the perfect concordance of type and language, confirm each other in a striking manner. We know little, or, to put it better, we do not know, proof in hand, through which phases Celtic and rustic Latin129had to pass first before getting closer and ending up confusing each other. Saint Jerome and his contemporary Sulpice Severus teach us, however, the first in his Commentson the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians, the second in his Dialogue on the merits of the monks of the East,that, in their time, at least two vulgar languages were spoken in Gaul: Celtic,preserved so pure on the banks of the Rhine, that the language of the Gallo-Greeks, distant from the motherland for six hundred years, resembled it in every way; then what we calledGallic,and which, in the opinion of one commentator, could only be an already altered Roman. But this Gaulish, different from what was spoken in Trier, was neither the language of the west nor that of Aquitaine. This dialect of IVecentury, probably itself divided into two large divisions, therefore only finds a place in the center and south of present-day France. It is to this common source that we must refer the currents, differently Latinized, which later formed, with other mixtures, and in various proportions,

the langue d'oïl and the novel itself. I will talk about the latter first. To give birth to it, it was only a matter of creating a fairly easy alteration of Latin terminology, modified by a certain number of grammatical ideas borrowed from Celtic and other languages formerly unknown in western Europe. . The imperial colonies had brought a good number of Italian, African and Asian elements. The Burgundian invasions, and especially the Gothic ones, provided a new contribution endowed with great vivacity of harmony, broad and brilliant sounds. The Saracen irruptions reinforced its power. So that the novel, completely distinguishing itself from the Gallic, in terms of its mode of eurythmy, soon took on a very special character. Without doubt, we do not find it, in the oath formula of the sons of Louis the Débonnaire, arrived at its perfection, as later, in the poems of Raimbaud de Vachères or Bertrand de Born. However, we already recognize it for what it is, its main characteristics are acquired, its direction is clearly indicated to it. It was, from then on, in its different Limousin, Provencal and Auvergne dialects, the language of a population as mixed in origin as there has ever been in the world. This supple, fine, witty, mocking language, full of brilliance, but without depth, without philosophy, tinsel and not gold, had only been able, in any of the opulent mines that had been opened to it, to glean from the surface. It was without serious principles: it had to remain an instrument of universal indifference, hence of skepticism and mockery. She did not fail in this vocation. The race cared about nothing but pleasures and brilliant appearances. Brave to excess, joyful with equal passion, passionate without subject and lively without conviction, she had an instrument very suitable to serve her tendencies, and which moreover, object of Dante's admiration, never served, in poetry, to rhyme satires, love songs, war challenges, and, in religion, to support heresies like that of the Albigensians, licentious Manichaeism, devoid of value, even literary, of which an English author, little Catholic, congratulates the papacy for having delivered the Middle Ages130. This was once the Romance language, and it is still found today. She is pretty, not beautiful, and you only need to examine her to see how little she is suited to serving a great civilization.

Was the tongue of oil formed under similar conditions? Examination will prove that no, and in whatever way the fusion of Celtic, Latin and Germanic elements took place, which cannot be fully appreciated.131, in the absence of monuments belonging to the period of creation, it is at least certain that it was born from a decided antagonism between three different idioms, and that the product represented by it had to be provided with a character and a background of energy completely foreign to the numerous compromises, to the rather soft transactions from which the novel had emerged. This langue d'oïl was, at one point in his life, quite close to Germanic principles. We discover, in the written remains that have come down to us, one of the best characteristics of the Arian languages: it is the power, limited it is true, less great than in Sanskrit, Greek and German, but still considerable. , to form compound words. We recognize, for nouns, inflections indicated by affixes, and, as a consequence, an ease of inversion lost to us, and of which the French language of the 16th centuryecentury, having inherited imperfectly, enjoyed clarity of speech only at the expense. Its lexicology also contained many elements brought by the Frankish race132. Thus, the langue d'oïl began by being almost as much Germanic as Gallic, and Celtic appeared in the background, as perhaps deciding the melodic reasons for the language. The finest praise that can be given to it is found in the success of the ingenious attempt by Mr. Littré, who was able to translate literally and verse for verse, into 13th century French.e century, the first song of theIliad, an impractical tour de force in our French today133.

This language thus drawn obviously belonged to a people who greatly contrasted with the inhabitants of southern Gaul. More deeply attached to Catholic ideas, carrying into politics lively notions of independence, freedom, dignity, and in all its institutions a very characteristic search for the useful, the popular literature of this race had the mission of collecting, not the fantasies of the mind or the heart, the quips of a universal skepticism, but the national annals, as they were then understood and judged to be true. We owe to this glorious arrangement of the nation and the language the great rhyming compositions, especially Garin the

Loherain, testimony, since disowned, of the predominance of the North. Unfortunately, as the compilers of these traditions, and even their first authors, had, above all, the intention of preserving historical facts or serving positive passions, poetry proper, the love of form and the search for beautiful do not always take up enough space in their great stories. The literature of the langue d'oïl had, above all, the pretension of being utilitarian. This is how races, language and writings find themselves in perfect harmony here. But it was natural that the Germanic element, much less abundant than the Gallic background and the Roman mixture, gradually lost ground in the blood. At the same time, he lost some in the language and, on the one hand, Celtic, on the other hand, Latin gained as he withdrew. This beautiful and strong language, of which we only know the peak, and which would have been further perfected by following its path, began to decline and corrupt towards the end of the 13th century.ecentury. In the 15the, it was nothing more than a patois from which the Germanic elements had completely disappeared. What remained of this spent treasure, now appearing only as an anomaly in the midst of the progress of Celtic and Latin, offered only an illogical and barbaric aspect. In the 16th centurye century, the return of classical studies found French in this dilapidation, and wanted to seize it to perfect it in the sense of ancient languages. This was the avowed goal of the literati of this beautiful era. They hardly succeeded, and the XVIecentury, wiser, or realizing that it could not master the irresistible power of things, only occupied itself with improving, by itself, a language which rushed more and more each day towards the most natural forms to the predominant race, that is to say towards those which had formerly constituted the grammatical life of Celtic.

Although the langue d'oïl first, and then the French, owed to the greater simplicity of the mixtures of races and idioms from which they came a greater character of unity than the novel, they had however dialects which have lived and are maintained. It does not do too much honor for these forms to call them dialects, and not patois. Their reason for being is not found in the corruption of the dominant type of which they have always been at least the contemporaries. She

lies in the different proportion of Celtic, Roman and Germanic elements which have constituted or still constitute our nationality. Below the Seine, the Picardy dialect is, through eurythmy and lexicology, very close to Flemish, whose Germanic affinities are so obvious that there is no need to note them. In this, Flemish has remained faithful to the predilections of the langue d'oïl, which was able, at a certain moment, without ceasing to be itself, to admit, in the verses of a poem, the forms and expressions almost pure from the language spoken in Arras134.

As we advance beyond the Seine and below the Loire, the provincial idioms are more and more Celtic in nature. In Burgundy, in the dialects of the Pays de Vaud and Savoie, the lexicology itself, something very worthy of note, has kept numerous traces, which are not found in French, where generally rustic Latin dominates.135. I noted elsewhere how, from the 15thecentury, the influence of northern France had given way to the growing preponderance of races from beyond the Loire. We only have to compare what I say here, regarding language, with what I then said about blood, to see how close the relationship is between the physical element and the phonetic instrument of individuality. of a population136.

I dwelled a little on a fact particular to France. If we want to generalize it to all of Europe, we will hardly find any refutation. Everywhere we will see that the successive modifications and changes of an idiom are not, as is commonly said, the work of centuries: if this were so, Ekkhili, Berber, Euskara, Bas -Breton, would have long since disappeared, and they live. Modifications and changes are brought about, with a very striking parallelism, by the revolutions occurring in the blood of successive generations. Nor will I pass over in silence a detail which must find its explanation here. I have said how certain ethnic groups could, under the influence of particular aptitude and necessities, renounce their natural idiom to accept one which was more or less foreign to them. I cited the Jews, I cited the Parsis. There are still more examples

singular of this abandonment. We see savage peoples in possession of languages superior to themselves, and it is America which offers us this spectacle. This continent has had this singular destiny, that its most active populations have developed, so to speak, in secret. The art of writing was lacking in its civilizations. Historical times do not begin there until very late, remaining almost always obscure. The soil of the new world has a large number of tribes which, neighbor to neighbor, bear little resemblance to each other, although they all belong to common origins in various combinations.

Mr. d'Orbigny tells us that, in Central America, the group

which he calls Chiquitéan branch, is a composite of nations counting, for the most numerous, approximately fifteen thousand souls, and for those which are less, between three hundred and fifty members, and that all these nations, even the infinitely small, have distinct idioms. Such a state of affairs can only result from immense ethnic anarchy.

In this hypothesis, I am in no way surprised to see several of these tribes, like the Chiquitos, masters of a complicated and, it seems, quite learned language. Among these natives, the words that the man uses are not always the same as those that the woman uses. In any case, the man, when he uses the woman's expressions, modifies the endings. This is certainly very refined. Unfortunately, alongside this lexicological luxury, the number system is restricted to the most basic numbers. Very probably, in a language apparently so elaborate, this trait of indigence is only the effect of the insult of the centuries, served by the barbarity of the current possessors. We are involuntarily reminded, while contemplating such oddities, of these sumptuous palaces, wonders of the Renaissance, which the effects of revolutions have definitively awarded to rude villagers. The eye still admires delicate columns, elegant scrollwork, sculpted porches, bold staircases, imposing edges, luxury unnecessary to the poverty that inhabits them; while the broken roofs let in the rain, the floors collapse and the parietaria disjoints the walls it invades.

I can now establish that philology, in its relationship with the particular nature of races, confirms all the observations of physiology and history. However, his assertions stand out for their extreme delicacy, and when we can only rely on them, nothing is more risky than relying on them to conclude. Without doubt, without a doubt, the state of a language responds to the intellectual state of the group which speaks it, but not always to its intimate value. To obtain this relationship, we must consider only the race by and for which this language was originally created. But history only seems to address us, apart from the black family and a few yellow peoples, to races that are at most fourteen years old. Consequently, it only leads us to derived idioms, the law of formation of which can only be clearly specified when these idioms belong to comparatively recent periods. It follows that the results thus obtained, and which constantly need historical confirmation, cannot provide a class of very infallible proof. As we move deeper into antiquity and the light fades more, philological arguments become even more hypothetical. It is unfortunate to see oneself reduced to this when one seeks to shed light on the progress of a human family and to recognize the ethnic elements that compose it. We know that Sanskrit and Zend are related languages. That's a great point. As for their common root, nothing is revealed to us. The same goes for other very old languages. We know nothing about Basque except itself. As it has, until now, no analogue, we do not know its genealogy, we do not know whether it should be considered completely primitive, or whether we should see in it only a derivative. It cannot therefore tell us anything positive about the simple or composite nature of the group that speaks it.

In matters of ethnology, it is good to gratefully accept philological assistance. However, we must only receive them with reservation, and, as far as possible, not base anything on them alone.137.

This rule is dictated by necessary prudence. However, all the facts which have just been reviewed establish that the identity is originally complete between the intellectual merit of a race and that of

of its natural and proper language; that languages are, consequently, unequal in value and scope, dissimilar in form and content, like races; that their modifications only come from mixtures with other idioms, like the modifications of races; that their qualities and merits are absorbed and disappear, absolutely like the blood of races, in too considerable an immersion of heterogeneous elements; finally that, when a higher caste language is found among a human group unworthy of it, it does not fail to wither away and become mutilated. If it is therefore often difficult, in a particular case, to conclude, at first glance, from the value of the language to that of the people who use it, it nevertheless remains incontestable that in principle we can. TO DO. I therefore state this general axiom: The hierarchy of languages corresponds rigorously to the hierarchy of races.

First book

Chapter XVI

Recap; respective characters of the three great races; social effects of mixtures; superiority of the white type and,

in this type,

of the Ariane family.

I showed the reserved place that our species occupies in the organic world. We could see that profound physical differences, and no less marked moral differences, separated it from all other classes of living beings. Thus apart, I studied it in itself, and physiology, although uncertain in its ways, unsure in its resources, and defective in its methods, nevertheless allowed me to distinguish three major types clearly. distinct, black, yellow and white. The Melanian variety is the most humble and lies at the bottom of the scale. The animal character imprinted in the shape of its pelvis imposes its destiny on it, from the moment of conception. She will never leave the most restricted intellectual circle. However, he is not a pure and simple brute, this negro with a narrow and receding forehead, who carries, in the middle part of his skull, the signs of certain grossly powerful energies. If these thinking faculties are mediocre or even non-existent, he possesses in desire, and consequently in will, an often terrible intensity. Several of its senses are developed with a vigor unknown to the other two races: taste and smell mainly138.

But there, precisely, in the very greed of his sensations, is found the striking stamp of his inferiority. All foods are good for him, none disgusts him, none repels him. What he wants is to eat, to eat in excess, with fury; there is no loathsome carrion unworthy of being swallowed up in its stomach. It is the same for odors, and its sensuality accommodates not only the grossest, but the most odious. To these main character traits he adds an instability of mood, a variability of feelings that nothing can fix, and which cancels out, for him, both virtue and vice. It would be said that the very passion with which he pursues the object which has set his sensitivity in vibration and inflamed his lust, is a guarantee of prompt

appeasement of one and rapid forgetting of the other. Finally, he also cares little about his life and that of others; he willingly kills for the sake of killing, and this human machine, so easy to move, is, in the face of suffering, either of a cowardice which willingly takes refuge in death, or of a monstrous impassivity.

The yellow race presents itself as the antithesis of this type. The skull, instead of being thrown back, is carried precisely forward. The forehead, broad, bony, often protruding, developed in height, has a triangular appearance, where the nose and chin show none of the coarse and harsh projections that make the Negro stand out. A general tendency towards obesity is not a very special trait, yet it is found more frequently in the yellow tribes than in other varieties. Little physical vigor, prone to apathy. Morally, none of these strange excesses, so common among the Melanians. Weak desires, a will rather obstinate than extreme, a perpetual but quiet taste for material enjoyments; with a rare gluttony, more choice than the Negroes in the dishes intended to satisfy her. In all things, tendencies towards mediocrity; fairly easy understanding of what is neither too high nor too deep; love of what is useful, respect for the rule, awareness of the advantages of a certain dose of freedom. Yellow people are practical people in the narrow sense of the word. They do not dream, do not like theories, invent little, but are capable of appreciating and adopting what is useful. Their desires are limited to living as gently and comfortably as possible. We see that they are superior to the Negroes. It is a populace and a small bourgeoisie that any civilizer would wish to choose as the basis of his society: this is not, however, enough to create this society nor give it nerve, beauty and action.

Now come the white people. Reflected energy, or better said, energetic intelligence; the sense of useful, but in a much broader, higher, more courageous, more ideal meaning of this word than among the yellow nations; a perseverance which realizes the obstacles and finds, in the long run, the means to remove them; with greater physical power, an extraordinary instinct for order, no longer only as a guarantee of rest and peace, but as an indispensable means of preservation, and, at the same time,

time, a pronounced taste for freedom, even extreme; a declared hostility against this formalist organization in which the Chinese willingly fall asleep, as well as against haughty despotism, the only sufficient restraint on black peoples.

White people are still distinguished by a singular love of life. It seems that, knowing how to use it better, they value it more, they treat it more carefully, in themselves and in others. Their cruelty, when it is exercised, is conscious of its excesses, a very problematic feeling among blacks. At the same time, this busy life, which is so precious to them, they have discovered reasons to give it up without murmuring. The first of these motives is honor, which, under almost the same names, has occupied an enormous place in ideas since the beginning of the species. I do not need to add that this word of honor and the civilizing notion it contains are equally unknown to yellows and blacks.

To complete the picture, I add that the immense superiority of whites, in the entire domain of intelligence, is associated with an inferiority no less marked in the intensity of sensations. White is much less gifted than black and yellow in sensual matters. It is thus less stressed and less absorbed by bodily action, although its structure is remarkably more vigorous139. These are the three constituent elements of the human race, what I called the secondary types, since I thought it necessary to leave the Adamite individual out of the discussion. It is from the combination of varieties of each of these types, marrying together, that the tertiary groups arise. The fourth formations were born from the marriage of one of these tertiary types or of a pure tribe with another group belonging to one of the two foreign species.

Below these categories, others have been revealed and are being revealed every day. Some are very characterized, forming new distinct originalities, because they come from completed mergers; the others are incomplete, disordered, and, one can say, antisocial, because their elements are either too disparate, or too numerous, or too tiny,

did not have the time or the possibility to penetrate each other in a fruitful way. To the multitude of all these variegated mixed races which now make up all of humanity, there is no need to assign any other limits than the frightening possibility of combinations of numbers. It would be inaccurate to claim that all mixtures are bad and harmful. If the three great types, remaining strictly separate, had not united among themselves, undoubtedly supremacy would always have remained with the most beautiful of the white tribes, and the yellow and black varieties would have crawled eternally at the feet of the lesser nations of this race. . This is a somewhat ideal state, since history has not seen it. We can only imagine it by recognizing the indisputable predominance of those of our groups who have remained the purest. But not everything would have been a gain in such a situation. Relative superiority, by persisting in a more obvious manner, would not, it must be recognized, have been accompanied by certain advantages that the mixtures produced, and which, although not counterbalancing, are far from it. , the sum of their disadvantages, are no less worthy of being, sometimes, applauded. This is how artistic genius, equally foreign to the three great types, only emerged following the marriage of whites with Negroes. This is also how, through the birth of the Malay variety, there emerged from the yellow and black races a family more intelligent than its double parentage, and that from the yellow and white alliance there came, in the same way, intermediates much superior to the purely Finnish populations as well as to the Melanian tribes.

I don't deny it: these are good results. The world of arts and noble literature resulting from the mixtures of blood, the improved, ennobled inferior races, are all marvels to which we must applaud. The little ones have been raised. Unfortunately the great ones, at the same time, were lowered, and this is an evil that nothing compensates for or repairs. Since I am listing everything that is in favor of ethnic mixtures, I will also add that we owe them many refinements of morals, of beliefs, especially softening of passions and inclinations. But these are all transitory benefits, and if I recognize that the mulatto, of whom we can make a lawyer, a doctor, a trader,

is better than his Negro grandfather, entirely uneducated and fit for nothing, I must also admit that the Brahmins of primitive India, the heroes of the Iliad, those of the Schahnameh, the Scandinavian warriors, all such glorious ghosts of the races the most beautiful, now extinct, offered a brighter and nobler image of humanity, were above all more active, more intelligent, more reliable agents of civilization and grandeur than the mixed-race populations, a hundred times mixed-race, of the time current, and yet, already, they were not pure.

Be that as it may, the complex state of human races is the historical state, and one of the principal consequences of this situation has been to throw into disorder a large part of the primitive characteristics of each type. We have seen, as a result of multiplied hymens, the prerogatives not only diminish in intensity like the defects, but also separate, scatter and often contrast. The white race originally had a monopoly on beauty, intelligence and strength. Following his unions with other varieties, he met mixed race people who were beautiful without being strong, strong without being intelligent, intelligent with a lot of ugliness and debility. It also turned out that the greatest possible abundance of white blood, when it accumulated, not all at once, but in successive layers, in a nation, no longer gave it its natural prerogatives. It often only increased the already existing disorder in the ethnic elements and only seemed to retain from its native excellence a greater power in the fertilization of the disorder. This apparent anomaly is easily explained, since each degree of perfect mixture produces, in addition to an alliance of diverse elements, a new type, a development of particular faculties. As soon as other elements are added to a series of creations of this kind, the difficulty of harmonizing everything creates anarchy, and the more this anarchy increases, the better, the richest, the happiest contributions lose their merit and, by the mere fact of their presence, increase an evil that they find themselves powerless to calm. If therefore the mixtures are, within a certain limit, favorable to the mass of humanity, uplifting and ennobling it, it is only at the expense of this very humanity, since they degrade it, enervate it. , humiliate him, head him in his noblest elements, and even if we would like to admit that it is better to transform him into mediocre men

of the myriads of tiny beings than to preserve races of princes whose blood, subdivided, impoverished, adulterated, becomes the dishonored element of a similar metamorphosis, there would still remain this misfortune that the mixtures do not stop; that mediocre men, previously formed at the expense of what was great, unite with new mediocrities, and that from these marriages, more and more debased, is born a confusion which, similar to that of Babel, leads to the most complete impotence, and leads societies to nothingness which nothing can remedy.

This is what history teaches us. It shows us that all civilization arises from the white race, that none can exist without the help of this race, and that a society is only great and brilliant in proportion as it preserves for a longer time the noble group which created it and that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of the species. To expose these truths in a vivid light, it is enough to enumerate and then examine the civilizations that have reigned in the world, and the list is not long. Of these multitudes of nations which have passed or still live on the earth, only ten have risen to the state of complete societies. The rest, more or less independent, gravitate around like the planets around their suns. In these ten civilizations, if there is either an element of life foreign to the white impulse, or an element of death which does not come from the races annexed to the civilizers, or due to the disorders introduced by the mixtures, it is It is obvious that the entire theory presented in these pages is false. On the contrary, if things are as I announce them, the nobility of our species remains proven in the most irrefutable way, and there is no longer any way of contesting it. This is where the only sufficient confirmation and the desirable detail of the proofs of the system are found at the same time. It is only there that we can follow, with satisfactory accuracy, the development of this fundamental affirmation, that peoples only degenerate as a result and in proportion to the mixtures they undergo, and to the extent of their quality. of these mixtures; that, whatever this measure, the hardest blow that can shake the vitality of a civilization is when the regulatory elements of societies and the elements developed by ethnic facts reach this point of

multiplicity that it becomes impossible for them to harmonize, to tend, in a sensitive way, towards a necessary homogeneity, and, consequently, to obtain, with a common logic, these instincts and these common interests, alone and unique reasons for a social bond. No greater scourge than this disorder, for however bad it may make the present time, it prepares for an even worse future. To enter into these demonstrations, I will address the historical part of my subject. It is a vast task, I agree; however, it presents itself so strongly linked in all its parts, and, there, so concordant, converging so strictly towards the same goal, that, far from being embarrassed by its grandeur, I seem to draw from it a powerful aid to better establish the solidity of the arguments that I will harvest. I will undoubtedly have to travel, with the white migrations, a large part of our globe. But it will always radiate around the regions of upper Asia, the central point from which the civilizing race originally descended. I will have to relate, in turn, to the domain of history, regions which, once entered into its possession, will no longer be able to separate themselves from it. There, I will see ethnic laws and their combination unfold, in all their consequences. I will note with what inexorable and monotonous regularity they impose their application. From the whole of this spectacle, certainly very imposing, from the aspect of this animated landscape which embraces, in its immense frame, all the countries of the earth where man has shown himself to be truly dominant; finally, from this competition of equally moving and grandiose paintings, I will draw, to establish the inequality of human races and the preeminence of one over all the others, incorruptible proofs like the diamond, and on which the viperine tooth of the The demagogic idea will not bite. I will therefore leave, here, the form of criticism and reasoning to take that of synthesis and affirmation. All that remains is for me to make the land on which I am establishing myself well known. It will be short.

I said that the great human civilizations are only ten in number and that all of them came from the initiative of the white race140. At the top of the list:

I.Indian civilization. She advanced into the Indian Sea, in the north and east of the Asian continent, beyond the Brahmaputra. His home was in an offshoot of the white Arians nation. II.Next come the Egyptians. Around them rally the Ethiopians, Nubians, and some small peoples living west of the oasis of Ammon. An Arian colony from India, established in the upper Nile valley, created this society. III.The Assyrians, to whom the Jews are attached, the Phoenicians the Lydians, the Carthaginians, the Hymiarites, owed their social intelligence to these great white invasions to which we can retain the name of descendants of Ham and Shem. As for the Zoroastrian-Iranians who dominated in earlier Asia under the name of Medes, Persians and Bactrians, they were a branch of the Ariane family.

IV.The Greeks came from the same Arian stock, and they were the Semitic elements which modified it. v.The counterpart of what is happening to Egypt is found in China. An Ariane colony, coming from India, brought social enlightenment there. Only, instead of mingling, as on the banks of the Nile, with black populations, it blended into Malay and yellow masses, and also received, from the northwest, quite numerous contributions of elements white, also Arians, but no longer Hindu141.

VI. The ancient civilization of the Italic peninsula, from which the Roman culture, was a marquetry of Celts, Iberians, Arians and Semites. VII.The Germanic races transformed, in the Vecentury, the genius of

the West. They were Arianes.

VIII, IX, X.Under these figures, I will classify the three civilizations of

America, those of the Alleghanians, Mexicans and Peruvians.

Of the first seven civilizations, which are those of the ancient world, six belong, in part at least, to the Arian race, and the seventh, that of Assyria, owes to this same race the Iranian renaissance, which has remained its most illustrious historical monument. Almost the entire continent of Europe is currently occupied by groups where the white principle exists, but where non-Arian elements are the most numerous. There is no real civilization among European nations when the Arian branches have not dominated.

In the ten civilizations, not a Melanian race appears among the ranks of the initiators. Only mixed race people reach the rank of initiates. Likewise, there were no spontaneous civilizations among the yellow nations, and stagnation when the Arian blood was exhausted.

This is the theme whose rigorous development I will follow in the universal annals. The first part of my work ends here.

Book second

Ancient civilization spread from central Asia to the southwest

Chapter one: The Hamites The first traces of certain history date back to a time before the year 5000 before the birth of Jesus Christ142. Around this date, the obvious presence of men begins to disturb the silence of the centuries. We hear the buzzing of the anthills of the nations on the side of Lower Asia. The noise extends south, in the direction of the Arabian Peninsula and the African continent; while, towards the east, starting from the high valleys open on the slopes of the Bolor143, it reverberates, from echo to echo, even towards the regions located on the left bank of the Indus.

The populations that first call our attention are black. This extreme diffusion of the Melanian family cannot fail to surprise 144. Not content with the continent which belongs to it entirely, we see it, before the birth of any society, absolute mistress and dominator of southern Asia, and when, later, we climb towards the north pole, we will discover even more ancient peoples of the same blood, forgotten until today in the Chinese mountains of Kouenloun and beyond the islands of Japan. However extraordinary the fact may seem, such was nevertheless, in the earliest ages, the fertility of this immense category of the human race.145. Either it must be considered simple or compound146Whether we consider it in the burning regions of the south or in the icy valleys of the north, it transmits no vestige of civilization, neither present nor possible. The customs of these peoples appear to have been very

brutally cruel. The war of extermination, that is their policy; anthropophagy, that’s for their morality and their worship. Nowhere do we see towns, temples, or anything that indicates any feeling of sociability. It is barbarism in all its ugliness, and the selfishness of weakness in all its ferocity. The impression received by the primitive observers, of another blood, whom I will soon introduce on the scene, was everywhere the same, mixed with contempt, terror and disgust. The beasts of prey seemed too noble to serve as a point of comparison with these hideous tribes. Monkeys were enough to represent the idea physically, and as for the moral, we felt obliged to evoke the resemblance of the spirits of darkness147.

While the central world was, far to the north-east, inundated by such swarms, the boreal part of Asia, the edges of the Ice Sea and Europe, almost entirely, found themselves in the power of 'a completely different variety148. It was the yellow race, which, escaping from the great continent of America, had advanced to the east and west along the borders of the two oceans, and spread, on one side, towards the south, where, through her hymen with the black species, she gave birth to the populous Malay family, and, on the other, towards the west, which led her to the still unoccupied European lands. This bifurcation of the yellow invasion demonstrates, in an obvious manner, that the waves of arrivals encountered, on their front, a powerful cause which forced them to divide. They were broken up, towards the plains of Manchuria, by a strong and compact dyke, and a long time passed before they were able to flood, at their ease, the vast central regions where their descendants camp today. They therefore flowed, in numerous streams, on the sides of the obstacle, first occupying the deserted regions, and it is for this reason that the yellow peoples became the first possessors of Europe. This race has sown its tombs and some of its instruments of hunting and war in the steppes of Siberia, as well as in the Scandinavian forests and the peat bogs of the British Isles.149. Pronounced according to the style of these utensils, one could not judge the yellow race much more favorably than the black masters of the south. It was not then, over the greater part of the earth, genius, nor even intelligence, which held the scepter. Violence, the weakest of forces, alone possessed domination.

How long did this state of affairs last? In a sense, the answer is easy: this regime still continues wherever the black and yellow species have remained in the tertiary state. So this ancient story is not speculative. It can serve as a mirror to the contemporary state of a notable portion of the globe. But to say when barbarism began is beyond the power of science. By its very nature it is negative, because it remains without action. It vegetates unnoticed, and its existence can only be noted the day an opposing force of nature presents itself to defeat it. This day was that of the appearance of the white race among the blacks. From this moment alone we can glimpse an aurora hovering above human chaos. Let us therefore turn to the origins of the elite family, in order to grasp its first influence. This race does not appear to be less ancient than the other two. Before its invasions, it lived in silence, preparing human destinies and growing, for the glory of the planet, in a part of our globe which has since become very obscure. It is, between the two worlds of the north and the south, and, to use the Hindu expression, between the southern country, land of death, and the northern land, region of riches.150, a series of plateaus that seem isolated from the rest of the universe, on one side by mountains of incomparable height, on the other by snow deserts and a sea of ice151.

There, a harsh and severe climate would seem particularly suited to the education of strong races, if it had raised or transformed several of them. Icy and violent winds, short summers, long winters, in a word, more harm than good, nothing that is said to excite, develop, create civilizing genius: that is the aspect of this earth. But, alongside so much harshness, and as a true symbol of the secret merits of all austerity, the soil covers immense mineral riches. This formidable country is, par excellence, the country of riches and fine stones.152.On its mountains live animals with precious furs and wool, and musk, this production so dear to Asians, was one day to come out of there. Yet so many wonders remain useless when skillful hands are not there to reveal them and give them their price. But it was neither gold, nor diamonds, nor furs, nor musk, from which these regions were to draw their glory: their incomparable honor was to have raised the white race.

Different, at the same time, from the black savages of the south and the yellow barbarians of the north, this human variety, limited, in its beginnings, to the most restricted, the least fertile part of the world, obviously had to conquer the rest, It was in the designs of Providence that this remains should never be put to good use. Such an effort was too absolutely beyond the power of the miserable multitudes who were masters of the whole. The task seems so difficult, even for white people, that five thousand years have not yet been enough for its complete accomplishment.

The predestined family, like its two servants, can only be very obscurely defined. It bore great similarities everywhere, which authorize and even force us to place it, entirely, under the same name: that, somewhat vague and very incomplete, of the white race. As, at the same time, its main ramifications betray quite diverse abilities and are easily characterized separately, we can judge that there is no complete identity in the origins of the whole; and, just as the black race and the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere present, within their respective species, very clear differences, it is also probable that the physiology of white people offered, from the beginning, a similar multiplicity of types. Later we will look for traces of these divergences. Let us only concern ourselves here with common characteristics. The first examination highlights something important: the white race never appears to us in the rudimentary state in which we see others. From the first moment, it shows itself to be relatively cultivated and in possession of the main elements of a higher state, which, developed later by its multiple branches, will result in various forms of civilization.

She still lived together in the remote countries of northern Asia, where she already enjoyed the teachings of a cosmogony that we must assume is learned, since the most advanced modern peoples have no other, except dis- I ? have only fragments of this ancient science consecrated by religion153. In addition to these insights into the origins of the world, the whites kept the memory of the first ancestors, both of those who had succeeded the Noahides, and of the patriarchs prior to the last cosmic catastrophe. We would be entitled to infer that, under the three names of Shem, Ham and Japhet, they classified not all our congeners, but only the branches of the single race

considered by them as truly human, that is to say, their own. The deep contempt that we later experienced for other species would be quite strong proof of this. When we applied the name Cham, sometimes to the Egyptians, sometimes to the black races, we did so only arbitrarily in a single country, in relatively recent times and as a result of analogies of sounds which present nothing certain and are not sufficient for a serious etymology.

Whatever the case, here are these white peoples, long before historical times, provided, in their different branches, with the two main elements of all civilization: a religion, a history. As for their morals, one salient feature remained: they did not fight on foot, like, probably, their crude neighbors to the north and east. They rushed against their enemies, mounted on war chariots, and, from this habit unanimously preserved by the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Galls, we are entitled to conclude a certain refinement in military science, which it would have been impossible to achieve without the practice of several complicated arts, such as the working of wood, leather, the knowledge of metals, and the talent to extract and melt them. The primitive whites also knew how to weave fabrics154for their clothing and lived together and sedentary in large villages155, decorated with pyramids, obelisks and stone or earth mounds. They knew how to reduce horses to domesticity. Their mode of existence was pastoral life. Their wealth consisted of numerous herds of bulls and heifers156. The comparative study of languages, from which so many curious and unexpected facts spring forth every day, seems to establish, in agreement with the nature of their territories, that they devoted little time to agriculture.157. Here then is a race in possession of the primordial truths of religion, endowed to a high degree with a preoccupation with the past, a feeling which will always distinguish it and which will illustrate the Arabs and the Hebrews no less than the Hindus, the Greeks, the Romans. , the Gauls and the Scandinavians. Skilled in the principal mechanical arts, having already meditated enough on the military art to make it something more than the elementary brawls of savages, and sovereign of several classes of animals subject to its needs, this race shows itself to us, placed vis-àvis other human families, on such a degree of superiority,

that we must, from now on, establish, in principle, that any comparison is impossible simply because we do not find a trace of barbarity in his very childhood. Showing, at its beginning, a keen and strong intelligence, it dominates the other incomparably more numerous varieties, not yet by virtue of an authority acquired over these humiliated rivals, since no notable contact has taken place, but already with all the height of the civilizing aptitude on the nothingness of this faculty. The time to enter into struggle arrived around the date indicated above. At least five thousand years before our era, the territory occupied by the white tribes was crossed. Probably pushed by related masses who were themselves beginning to move in the north under the pressure of the yellow peoples, the nations of this species which found themselves located furthest south, abandoned their ancient homes, crossed the lower regions , known to the Orientals as Touran 158, and, attacking to the west the black races which blocked their passage, appeared outside the limits which they had never before touched or even seen. This primordial descent of white peoples is that of the Hamites, and developing, here, what I indicated a few pages above, I will protest against the habit, hardly justified in my opinion, of declaring these multitudes originally black. Nothing in the ancient testimonies authorizes us to consider the patriarch, author of their descendants, as soiled by the paternal curse, with the physical characteristics of the reprobate races. The punishment for his crime only developed with time, and the vengeful stigmata had not yet been realized at that moment when the Hamite tribes separated from the rest of the Noahide nations. The very threats made by the author of the white species, whose father saved from the waters blighted some of his children, confirm my opinion. First of all, they are not addressed to Cham himself, nor to all his descendants. Then, they only have a moral significance, and it is only through a very forced induction that we have been able to attribute physiological consequences to them. “Cursed be Canaan,” says the text, “he will be a servant of the servants of his brothers159".

The Hamites thus arrived withered in advance in their destiny and in their blood. However, the energy that they had borrowed from the treasure of the forces particular to white nature nevertheless allowed them to found several vast societies. The first Assyrian dynasty, the

patricians of the cities of Canaan, are the principal monuments of these distant ages, the character of which is found, in some way, summed up in the name of Nimrod160.

These great conquests, these courageous and distant invasions, could not be peaceful. They were exercised at the expense of peoples of the most inept variety, but also the most ferocious: of that which calls more for the abuse of constraint. Naturally inclined to resist these irresistible foreigners who came to despoil her, she opposed them with the incurable savagery of her essence, and forced them to rely only on the incessant use of their vigor. She was not to be converted, since she lacked the intelligence necessary to be persuaded. It was therefore necessary not to hope for thoughtful participation in the civilizing work, and to be content with bending its members to become animated machines applied to social work. As I have already announced, the impression experienced by the white Hamites, at the sight of their hideous antagonists, is painted with the same colors with which the Hindu conquerors later clothed their local enemies, brothers of these. For newcomers, they are ferocious beings of gigantic size. They are monsters equally formidable for their ugliness, their vigor and their wickedness. If the first conquest was difficult, both because of the thickness of the masses attacked, and because of their resistance, whether furious or stupidly inert, the maintenance of the States that the victory inaugurated could not have required less energy. Compression became the only means of government. This is why Nimrod, whose name I mentioned earlier, was a great hunter before the Lord161. All the societies resulting from this first immigration revealed the same character of haughty and boundless despotism.

But, living as despots among their slaves, the Hamites soon gave birth to a mixed-race population. From then on, the position of the former conquerors became less eminent, and that of the vanquished peoples less abject. However, governmental omnipotence could not lose any of its prerogatives, which, by their excessive nature, were too consistent with the very spirit of the black species. Also there was no modification in the idea that people had of the way and the rights of reigning. However, power, henceforth, was exercised on another basis than that of superiority of blood.

Its principle was limited to no longer assuming the preexcellences of families and no longer of peoples. The opinion that we had of the character of the dominators began this decreasing march, which always takes place in the history of mixed nations. The ancient white Hamites got lost every day, and eventually disappeared. Their mulatto descendants, who could very well still bear their name as a title of honor, gradually became a people saturated in black. This is what the most numerous genealogical branches of their family tree wanted. From this moment, the physical stamp which was to make the posterity of Canaan recognized and reserve it for the servitude of more pious children, was forever imprinted on all the nations formed by the too intimate union of the white conquerors with their conquered ones. Melanian race. At the same time as this material fusion was taking place, another completely moral one was taking place, which ended up separating, forever, the new mixed-race populations from the ancient noble stock, to which they only owed part of their origin. . I want to talk about the rapprochement between languages. The first Hamites had brought from the northeast a dialect of this idiom originally common to white families, the vestiges of which it is still so easy today to recognize in the languages of our European races. As the immigrant tribes came into contact with the black multitudes, they could not prevent their natural language from being altered; and when they found themselves increasingly allied with the blacks, they lost it completely. They had allowed it to be invaded by Melanian dialects in such a way as to disfigure it. In truth, we are not completely entitled to apply, peremptorily, to the languages of Cham the reflections suggested by what we know of Phoenician and Libyan. Many elements, subsequently developed by Semitic migrations, were infused into these mixed-race idioms, and one could object that the new contributions had a character other than that of the languages first formed by the Black Hamites. I don't believe it though. What we know of Chanaanite, and the study of Berber dialects, seem to reveal a common system of language imbued with the essence that has been called Semitic, to a greater degree than the Semitic languages themselves possess. , consequently moving further away from the forms belonging to languages

white peoples, and thus retaining fewer traces of the idiom typical of the noble race. For my part, I have no difficulty in considering this linguistic revolution as a consequence of the almost identification with black peoples, and I will give my reasons below. The Chamite was degenerate: here he is within his society of slaves, surrounded by it, dominated by his spirit, while he himself dominates his matter, engendering, from his black women, sons and daughters who bear , less and less, the stamp of the ancient conquerors. However, because there remains something of the blood of his fathers, he is not a savage, he is not a barbarian. It keeps standing a social organization which, for so many centuries since it disappeared, still lets fall on the imagination of the world the shadow of something monstrous and senseless, but no less grandiose. The world will no longer be able to see anything comparable, in terms of effects, to the results of the marriage of white Hamites with black peoples. The elements of such an alliance do not exist anywhere, and it is not surprising that, in the so frequent production of hybrids of the two species, nothing anymore represents physically or morally the energy of the first creation. the black element has generally retained enough purity to show qualities roughly analogous to those of its oldest types, it is not the same for white. The species is not found anywhere in its original value. Our most alloy-free nations are only very decomposed results, very little harmonic, of a series of mixtures, either black and white like, in the south of Europe, the Spaniards, the Italians, the Provençals; either yellow and white like, in the north, the English, the Germans, the Russians. So that the halfbreeds, products of a so-called white father, whose original essence is already so modified, can in no way rise to the clinical value possessed by the black Hamites. Among these men, the hymen was accomplished between types equally and completely armed with their own vigor and originality. The conflict between the two natures had been able to show itself strongly in their fruits and carried this character of vigor, a source of excesses impossible today. The observation of contemporary facts provides conclusive proof: when a Provençal or an Italian gives birth to a mulatto hybrid, this offspring is infinitely less vigorous than when it is born from a father

English. This is because in fact the white type of the Anglo-Saxon, although far from being pure, is at least not weakened in advance by series of Melanian alluvium like that of the peoples of the south of the Europe, and he can transmit to his half-breeds a greater share of the primordial force. However, I repeat, the most vigorous mulatto today is far from being equivalent to the black Hamite of Assyria, who, spear in hand, made so many slave nations tremble.

To present a similar portrait of the latter, I find nothing better than to apply to him the story of the Bible on certain other halfbreeds even older than him, and whose history, too obscure and partly mythical, should not find place in these pages. These halfbreeds are the antediluvian beings given as sons of the Cainites and the angels. Here it is essential to get rid of the pleasant idea with which Christian notions have invested the name of these mysterious creatures. The Chanaanite imagination, origin of the Mosaic notion, did not take things that way. The angels were, for her, as, moreover, for the Hebrews, messengers of the divinity, no doubt, but rather dark than gentle, rather animated by a great material force than representing a purely ideal energy. As such, we imagined them in monstrous forms capable of inspiring terror, not sympathy.162.

When these robust creatures were united with the daughters of the Cainites, giants were born.163whose character we can judge by the oldest piece of literature, perhaps, in the world, by this song, which one of the descendants of Abel's murderer, probably a very close relative of these formidable half-breeds, said to his wives:

“Hear my voice, women of Lamech; hear my word: Just as I killed a man for a wound and a child for an affront, so the sevenfold vengeance of Cain will be for Lamech seventy-seven times sevenfold!164» This, I imagine, is what best depicts the black Hamites, and I would easily allow myself to see a close relationship of similarity between the mixture from which they came and the cursed hymen of Noah's ancestors with this other unknown type that primitive thought relegated, not without some horror, to a supernatural rank.

Book second

Chapter II The Semites. While the Hamites spread far ahead throughout all of anterior Asia and along the Arabian coasts into eastern Africa165, other white tribes, pressing on their heels, had gained, to the west, the mountains of Armenia and the southern slopes of the Caucasus166. These people are those we call Semites. Their main force appears to have been concentrated, in the early days, in the middle of the mountainous regions of upper Chaldea. It is from there that their most vigorous masses emerged, at different times. It was from there that came the currents whose mixture regenerated best, and for the longest time, the denatured blood of the Hamites, and, subsequently, the equally bastardized species of the oldest emigrants of their own race. This very fertile family spread over a very large area of territory. It pushed, in the direction of the southeast, the Armenians, the Arameans, the Elamites, the Elymaeans, same name in different forms167; she covered Asia Minor with her descendants. The Lycians, the Lydians, the Carians belong to him. Its colonies invaded Crete, from where they later returned, under the name of Philistines, to occupy the Cyclades, Thera, Melos, Cythera and Thrace. They extended around the entire circumference of the Propontis, in the Troad, along the coast of Greece, arriving at Malta, in the Lipari Islands, in Sicily. Meanwhile, other Semites, the Joktanids168, sent, to the extreme south of Arabia, tribes destined to play an important role in the history of ancient societies. These Joktanides were known from Greek and Latin Antiquity under the name of Homerites, and what the civilization of Ethiopia did not owe to Egyptian influence, it borrowed from these Arabs who formed, not the part the oldest of the nation, prerogative of the black Hamites, sons of Cush, but certainly the most glorious, when the Ishmaelite Arabs, still unborn at the time we speak, came to place themselves at their side. These establishments are numerous. However, they do not exhaust the long list of Semitic possessions. I have said nothing until now about their invasions on several points in Italy, and it must be added that,

Masters of the northern coast of Africa, they ended up occupying Spain in such large numbers that in Roman times their presence was easily noted. Such an enormous diffusion could not be explained, whatever the fertility of the race might be, if one wanted to claim long-term purity of blood for these people. But, for many reasons, this claim would not be tenable. The Hamites, restrained by a natural repugnance, had perhaps resisted for some time the mixture which confused their blood with that of their black subjects. To support this fight and maintain the separation of the winners and the vanquished, there was no shortage of good reasons, and the consequences of carelessness were obvious. Paternal feeling must have been moderately flattered by no longer finding the likeness of whites in the mulatto offspring. However, sensual training had triumphed over this disgust, as it always triumphed, and the result was a mixed race population more attractive than the ancient aborigines, and which presented, with physical temptations stronger than those to which the Hamites had been victims. , the prospect of results, ultimately, much less repulsive. Then the situation was not the same either: the black Hamites did not find themselves, vis-à-vis the newcomers, in the inferiority that the ancestors of their mothers had seen themselves facing the ancient conquerors. They formed powerful nations to which the action of the white founders had infused the civilized element, given luxury and wealth, lent all the attractions of pleasure. Not only could the mulattoes not cause horror, but they must, in many respects, excite both the admiration and the envy of the Semites, who were still unskilled in the arts of peace.

By mingling with them, it was not slaves that the victors acquired, they were companions well-trained to the refinements of a long-established civilization. Without doubt the part brought by the Semites to the association was the most beautiful and the most fruitful, since it was composed of the energy and the initiating faculty of a blood closer to the white stock; yet she was the least brilliant. The Semites offered first fruits and early fruits, hopes and strength. The Black Hamites were already in possession of a crop which had borne fruit. We know what it was: vast and sumptuous cities governed the Assyrian plains. Flourishing towns rose on the coasts of the

Mediterranean. Sidon extended its commerce far and wide, and astonished the world no less with its magnificence than Nineveh and Babylon. Shechem, Damascus, Ascalon169, still other cities, contained active populations accustomed to all the enjoyments of life. This powerful society was fragmented into myriads of States which all, to a more or less complete degree, but without exception, were subject to the religious and moral influence of the center of action placed in Assyria.170. There was the source of civilization; there were united the main motives of the developments, and this fact, proven by multiple considerations, makes me fully accept the assertion of Herodotus, bringing from this neighborhood the Phoenician tribes, although the fact has recently been contested171. Chanaanite activity was too lively not to have drawn birth from the purest sources of Hamite emigration172. Everywhere in this society, in Babylon as in Tyre, there is a strong taste for gigantic monuments, which the large number of available workers, their servitude and their abjection, made so easy to erect. Never, anywhere, were there such means of constructing enormous monuments, except in Egypt, in India and in America, under the influence of circumstances and by the force of absolutely similar reasons. was not enough for the proud Hamites to raise sumptuous buildings to the sky; they still had to erect mountains to serve as bases for their palaces, their temples, artificial mountains no less solidly welded to the ground than natural mountains, and rivaling them in the extent of their contours and the elevation of their crests. . The surroundings of Lake Van173still show what were these prodigious masterpieces of an unbridled imagination, served by a pitiless despotism, obeyed by vigorous stupidity. These giant mounds are all the more worthy of attention because they take us back to times before the separation of the White Hamites from the rest of the species. The type constitutes the primordial monument common to the entire race. We will find it in India, we will see it among the Celts. The Slavs will also show it to us, and it will not be without surprise that after having contemplated it on the banks of the Jenissei and the Amur River, we will recognize it rising at the foot of the Alleghanian mountains, and serving as a base for the Mexican teocallis. . Nowhere, except in Egypt, did the mounds receive the powerful proportions that the Assyrians were able to give them. Accompaniments

ordinary of their largest constructions, they erected them with a search for luxury and incredible solidity. Like other peoples, they did not only make tombs; nor did they reduce them to the role of solid bases, they arranged them as underground palaces to serve as a refuge for monarchs and the great against the heat of summer. Their need for artistic expansion was not limited to architecture. They were admirable in figured and written sculpture. The surfaces of the rocks, the slopes of the mountains became immense paintings where they took pleasure in sculpting gigantic characters and inscriptions which were no less gigantic, and whose copy covers volumes174. On their walls, historical scenes, religious ceremonies, details of private life, expertly carved into the marble and stone, and served the need for immortality which tormented these excessive imaginations. The splendor of private life was no less. An immense domestic luxury surrounded all lives and, to use an economist's expression, the Semo-Chamite States were remarkably consuming. Fabrics varied in material and fabric, dazzling dyes, delicate embroidery, sophisticated hairstyles, expensive weapons decorated to the point of extravagance, as well as chariots and furniture, the use of perfumes, baths of scent, the curling of hair and beard, the unbridled taste for jewelry and jewels, rings, pendant earrings, necklaces, bracelets, canes of Indian rush or precious wood, finally, all the demands, all the whims of refinement pushed to the point of absolute softness: such were the habits of the Assyrian mongrels175. Let us not forget that in the midst of their elegance, and as a stigma inflicted by the less noble part of their blood, they practiced the barbaric custom of tattooing.176. To satisfy their ever-renewing, ever-increasing needs, trade would search every corner of the world, begging for the tribute of every rarity. The vast territories of Lower and Upper Asia were constantly demanding, always demanding new acquisitions. Nothing was too beautiful or too expensive for them. They found themselves, through the accumulation of their wealth, in a position to want everything, appreciate everything and pay for everything. But alongside so much material magnificence, mixed with artistic activity and promoting it, terrible clues, hideous wounds

revealed the degrading diseases that the infusion of black blood had given rise to and developed in a terrible way. The ancient beauty of religious ideas had been gradually sullied by the superstitious needs of mulattoes. The simplicity of ancient theology had given way to a crude emanatism, hideous in its symbols, delighting in representing divine attributes and the forces of nature under monstrous images, disfiguring healthy ideas, pure notions, under such a mass. of mysteries, reservations, exclusions and indecipherable myths, that it had become impossible for the truth, thus systematically denied to the greatest number, not to end up, over time, becoming unaffordable, even to the smallest . It is not that I do not understand the repugnance that the white Hamites must have felt in committing the majesty of the doctrines of their fathers with the abject superstition of the black peat, and from this feeling we can derive the first principle of their love of secrecy. Then they also did not fail to soon understand all the power that silence gave to their pontificates on multitudes more inclined to fear the haughty reserve of the dogma and its threats than to seek its sympathetic sides and its promises. On the other hand, I also understand that the blood of slaves, having, one day, bastardized the masters, soon inspired in the latter this same spirit of superstition against which the cult had first warned itself. What had initially been modesty, then political means, ended up becoming sincere belief, and, the rulers having fallen to the level of the subjects, everyone believed in ugliness, admired and adored deformity, victorious leprosy, invincibly united henceforth to the doctrines and figurative representations. And it is not in vain that worship dishonors itself among a people. Soon the morals of this people, faithfully following the sad path on which faith embarks, is no less degraded than its guide. It is impossible for the human creature who prostrates himself before a trunk of wood or an ugly piece of stone not to lose the notion of good after that of beauty. The black Hamites had, moreover, so many good reasons to pervert themselves! Their governments put them so directly on the path that they could not fail to do so. As long as the sovereign power remained in the hands of the white race, the oppression of the subjects had perhaps turned to the benefit of the improvement of morals. Since black blood had stained everything

its brutal superstitions, its innate ferocity, its greed for material enjoyments, the exercise of power had particularly benefited the satisfaction of the less noble instincts, and general servitude, without becoming gentler, had become much more gentle. degrading. All the vices met in the Assyrian countries. Alongside the luxury refinements that I listed earlier, human sacrifices, this type of homage to divinity, which the white race has never practiced except by borrowing from the habits of other species, and which the slightest new infusion of his own blood immediately made him curse, human sacrifices dishonored the temples of the richest and most civilized cities. In Nineveh, in Tyre, and later in Carthage, these infamies were a political institution, and never ceased to be carried out with the most imposing ceremonial. They were considered necessary for the prosperity of the state. Mothers gave their children to be disembowelled on the altars. They took pride in seeing their babies moan and struggle in the flames of Baal's hearth. Among the devout, the love of mutilation was the most esteemed indicator of zeal. To cut off a limb, to tear out the organs of virility, was to do a pious deed. To imitate, willingly, on one's own person the atrocities that civil justice carried out against the guilty, to beat one's nose and ears, and to dedicate oneself all bloody, in this crew, to the Tyrian Melkart or the Bel of Nineveh, that is was to deserve the favors of these abominable fetishes. That's the fierce side; let's move on to the depraved. The turpitudes that, many centuries later, Petronius described in Rome, which had become Asiatic, and those which the famous novel of Apuleius, according to the Milesian fables, made fodder for jokes, were commonplace among all the Assyrian peoples. Prostitution, recommended, honored and practiced in sanctuaries, had spread within public morals, and the laws of more than one large city had made it a religious duty and a natural and admissible means of acquiring a dowry. . Polygamy, although very jealous and terrible in its suspicions and its vengeance, was not armed with any delicacy in this regard. The venal success of the bride cast no shadow of opprobrium on the wife's brow. When the Semites, coming down from their mountains, appeared,

2,000 years before Christ177, in the middle of Hamite society and

even had it, in lower Chaldea178, subject to a dynasty descended from their blood, the new white principles thrown into the midst of the masses had to regenerate and indeed regenerated the nations into which they were infused. But their role was not completely active. It was among half-breeds and cowards that they arrived, not among barbarians. They could have destroyed everything, if they had been pleased to act as brutal masters. Many regrettable things would have perished: they did better. They used the admirable instinct which has never abandoned the species, and, giving from afar an example which, later, the Germans did not fail to follow, they imposed on themselves the obligation of supporting the an aging and dying society with which the youth of their blood came to associate. To achieve this, they put themselves to the school of their vanquished and learned what the experience of civilization had to teach them. Judging by the event, their successes left nothing to be desired. Their reign was full of brilliance and their glory so brilliant that the Greek collectors of Asian antiquities gave them the honor of founding the empire of Assyria, of which they were only the restorers. A very honorable error for them and which gives, at the same time, the measure of their taste for civilization and the vast extent of their work.

In Hamite society, over whose destiny they found themselves presiding, they appear in many functions. Soldiers, sailors, workers, pastors, kings, continuators of the governments for which they replaced, they accepted Assyrian policy in what was essential. They were thus led to devote part of their attention to commercial interests.

If earlier Asia was the great market of the Western world and its main point of consumption, the coast of the Mediterranean presented itself as the natural warehouse for foodstuffs drawn from the continents of Africa and Europe, and the country of Canaan, where the intellectual and mercantile activity of the maritime Hamites was concentrated, became a very interesting point for the Assyrian governments and peoples. The Babylonian and Ninevite Semites understood this perfectly. All their efforts therefore tended to dominate, either directly or by influence, over these skilful peoples. These, for their part, had always strived to maintain their political independence vis-à-vis the ancient dynasties for which victory had replaced the new white branch. To change this state of affairs, the Chaldean conquerors initiated a

following negotiations and wars, most often happy, which made the genius of their race famous, under the characteristic name and duplicated by history of the Semiramis queens179.

However, because the Semites found themselves mixed with civilized populations, their action on the Chanaanite cities was not exercised solely by force of arms and politics. Endowed with great activity, they acted individually as well as in nations, and they penetrated in very large numbers and peacefully into the campaigns of Palestine, as well as into the walls of Sidon and Tyre, as mercenary soldiers, workers, sailors. This peaceful mode of infiltration had no less great results than conquest, for the unity of Asian civilization and the future of the Phoenician States.180. Genesis has preserved for us a curious and lively account of the way in which the peaceful movements of certain tribes or, to put it better, of simple Semitic families were accomplished. It is one of these that the Holy Book takes from the middle of the Chaldean mountains, takes it from province to province, and of which it shows us the miseries, the labors, the successes down to the smallest details. It would be a failure on our part not to use such valuable information. Genesis, therefore, tells us that a man of the race of Shem, of the Armenian branch of Arphaxad, of the very prolific nation of Hebr, lived in upper Chaldea, in the mountainous country of Ur; that this man one day conceived the thought of leaving his country to go and live in the land of Canaan181. The Holy Book does not tell us what powerful reasons dictated the Semite's resolution. These reasons were serious, no doubt, since the emigrant's son later forbade his race from ever repatriating, although at the same time he ordered his heir to choose a wife in the country of his kin.182. Thare (this is the name of the traveler), having decided to leave, gathered those of his people who were to accompany him, and set off on the journey with them. The relatives he surrounded himself with were Abram, his eldest son; Sarai, his daughter from another bed, wife of Abram 183, and Lot, his grandson, whose father, Aran, had died a few years ago184. This group of masters was joined by slaves, a very small number, because the family was poor, and a few camels, donkeys, cows, sheep, goats.

The reason why Thare chose Chanaan as the end of his journey is easy to guess. He was a shepherd like his fathers, and did not expatriate with the intention of changing state185. What he was looking for was a new land, abundant in pastures, and where the population was sparse enough for him to be able to roam his herds at ease and multiply them. Tharé therefore belonged to the least adventurous class of his fellow citizens. He was also very old when he left Upper Chaldea. At age 70, he had his son Abram, and, at the time of departure, this son was married. If Tharé had the hope of leading his caravan very far, this hope was disappointed. The old man died in Haran, before he could leave Mesopotamia186. His people walked very slowly and as people concerned, above all, to let their herds graze and not tire them out. When the tents were pitched in a favorable location, they remained there until the wells were dry and the meadows mowed. Abram, who had become the leader of the emigration, had grown old under the tutelage of his father. He was 75 years old when the latter's death emancipated him, and he became leader at a time when he had no reason to complain about being one. The number of slaves had increased, as had that of herds.

. Which was also of some importance, once he left the Assyrian countries and entered the almost deserted land of Canaan, the Semitic pastor saw around his camp only nations too weak to worry him. Tribes of aboriginal negroes, Hamitic peoples, a small number of Semitic groups, emigrants like him, although much earlier arrived in the country, that was all, and the son of Thare who, in the land of Ur, had counted, in all probability, that for a very slight personage, he found himself to be, in this new homeland, a great owner, a considerable man, almost a king188. This usually happens to those who, conveniently abandoning a barren land, bring courage, energy and the resolution to expand into a new country. 187

Abram lacked none of these qualities. He did not at first form a permanent establishment. God had promised him to one day make him master of the country and to establish there the generations born from his loins. He wanted to know his empire. He looked through it all. He contracted useful alliances with several of the nomads who exploited him like him189. He

even went down to Egypt; in short, when he neared the end of his career, he was powerful, he was rich. He had gained a lot of gold and slaves, a lot of herds. Above all, he had become the man of the country, and he could judge it as well as the people who inhabited it. This judgment was harsh. He was well aware of the brutal and abominable customs of the Hamites. What had happened to Sodom and Gomorrah seemed to him highly deserved by the crimes of the two cities where God had proven to him that there were not ten honest people190. He did not want his descendants to be sullied, in the only branch that was close to his heart, by a kinship with such perverted races, and he ordered his steward to go and find, in the native country of his tribe, a woman of his relatives, a daughter of Bathuel, son of Melcha and Nachor 191, therefore his great-niece. Formerly he had been informed of the birth of this child.192. Thus, in these primitive times, emigration did not break all the links between the Semites absent from their mountains and the members of their families who had continued to live there. The news crossed the plains and the rivers, flew from the Chaldean house to the wandering tent of Canaan, and circulated across vast regions divided between so many diverse sovereignties. It is an example and proof of the activity of life and the community of ideas and feelings which embraced the Chamo-Semitic world. I don't want to pursue the details of this story any further: we know them well enough. We know that the Abrahamid Semites ended up settling permanently in the land of Promise. What I only want to add is that the scenes of the first establishment, like those of the departure and the hesitations which preceded, recall in a striking manner what is shown, today, by so many Irish or German families on earth. of America. When an intelligent leader leads them and directs their work, they succeed like the children of the patriarch. When they are misguided, they fail and disappear like so many Semitic groups whose disasters the Bible gives us glimpses of. It's the same situation; the same feelings are shown there in always similar circumstances. We see persisting in the depths of hearts this touching partiality towards the distant homeland, towards which, for nothing in the world, we would nevertheless want to backslide. It is a similar joy to receive news, the same pride attached to the kinship that one preserves there; in a word, everything is the same.

I showed a family of quite obscure, quite humble pastors. This was not what made the isolated Semitic emigrations particularly important in the Assyrian or Chanaanite states. These shepherds lived too much for themselves and were not of direct enough use to the populations they visited. It is therefore quite simple that those of their brothers who had embraced the profession of arms and showed themselves to be experts in this useful profession were more sought after and more noticed. One of the main features of the degradation of the Hamites, and the most apparent cause of their fall in the government of the Assyrian States, was the forgetting of warrior courage and the habit of no longer taking part in military work. This shame, profound in Babylon and Nineveh, was hardly less so in Tire and Sidon. There, military virtues were neglected and despised by these merchants, too absorbed in the idea of getting rich. Their civilization had already found the reasoning which the Italian patricians of the Middle Ages later used to discredit the profession of the soldier.193.

Troops of Semitic adventurers offered themselves in crowds to fill the gap that ideas and morals tended to make deeper every day. They were eagerly accepted. Under the names of Carians, Pisidians, Cilicians, Lydians, Philistines, wearing metal helmets, on whose foreheads their martial coquetry invented to float plumes, dressed in short and tight tunics, breastplates, with their arms passed in a round shield, surrounded by a sword that exceeded the ordinary size of Asian swords and carrying javelins in their hands, they were charged with guarding the capitals and became the defenders of the fleets194. Their merits were less great, however, than the annoyance of those who paid them195. The very high Phoenician nobility was the only part of the nation which, somewhat faithful to the memories of its fathers, the great hunters of the Lord, had retained the habit of bearing arms. She still loved to hang her shields, richly painted and gilded, from the tops of the great towers and to embellish her cities with this brilliant adornment which, according to testimonies, made them shine like stars from afar.196. The rest of the people worked. He enjoyed the products of his industry and commerce. When politics demanded some boost of vigor, some colonization, some emigration, the kings and aristocratic councils, after having removed the scum from their populations by a forced press, gave it as

guards and supporters of the Semites; while a few descendants of the black Hamites, putting themselves at the head of this mixture, sometimes commanded temporarily, sometimes went, beyond the seas, to form the nucleus of a new local patriciate and create a State modeled on the political and religious habits of the motherland. In this way, the Semitic bands penetrated wherever the Hamites had action. They did not separate themselves, so to speak, from their vanquished, and the circle of the latter, their environment, their power were also theirs. The whites of the second alluvium seemed, in a word, to have no other mission to fulfill than to prolong as much as possible, by the addition of their blood, which remained purer, the ancient establishment of the first white invasion in the southwest. It was believed for a long time that this regenerative source was inexhaustible. While, around the time of the first emigration of the Semites, some of the Arian nations, other white tribes, established themselves in Sogdiana and present-day Punjab, it happened that two branches were detached from them. The Aryan-Hellenic and AryanZoroastrian peoples, seeking a way to reach the west, pressed forcefully on the Semites, and forced them to abandon their mountain valleys to throw themselves into the plains and descend towards the south. There were located the most considerable states founded by the Black Hamites.

It is difficult to know exactly whether the resistance opposed to the Hellenic invaders was very vigorous in its misfortune. It doesn't seem so. The Semites, superior to the black Hamites, were however no match for the newcomers. Less penetrated by Melanian alloys than the descendants of Nimrod, they were nevertheless infected to a large extent, since they had abandoned the language of the whites to accept the system resulting from the hymen of its remains with the dialects of the blacks, a system which is known to us under the very questionable name of Semitic. Current philology divides Semitic languages into four main groups197: the first contains Phoenician, Punic and Libyque, of which the Berber dialects are derivatives198; the second contains Hebrew and its variations199; the third, the Aramaic branches; the fourth, Arabic, Gheez and Amharic.

Considering the Semitic group as a whole and ignoring the words imported by later ethnic mixtures with white nations, we cannot affirm that there was a radical separation between this group and what we call the Indogermanic languages. , which are those of the species from which, incontestably, the fathers of the Hamites and their successors came. The Semitic system presents, in its organism, remarkable gaps. It would seem that, when it was formed, its first developments encountered powerful antipathies around them, in the languages they replaced, over which they were unable to completely triumph. They destroyed the obstacles without being able to fertilize their remains, so that the Semitic languages are incomplete languages 200. It is not only by what they lack that we can see this character in them, it is also by what they possess. One of their main features is the richness of verbal combinations. In ancient Arabic, forms exist for fifteen conjugations in which an ideal verb can pass. But this verb, as I say, is ideal, and none of the real verbs is capable of taking advantage of the ease of inflection nor of the multiplicity of nuances which are offered to it by grammatical theory201. There is certainly, deep in the nature of these languages, something unknown which opposes them. It follows that all verbs are defective and that irregularities and exceptions abound. Now, as has been well demonstrated, every language has the complement of what it lacks in the more logical opulence of some other to which she made her imperfect loans202. The complement of the Semitic system seems to be found in African languages. There, we are struck to find the entire apparatus of verbal forms, so salient in Semitic idioms, with this serious difference that nothing is sterile; all verbs pass, without difficulty, through all conjugations203. On the other hand, we no longer find these roots whose visible relationship with Indo-Germanic singularly disturbs the ideas of those who want to make the Semitic group an entirely original system, absolutely isolated from the languages of our species.204. For Negro idioms, no trace, no possible suspicion of any alliance with the languages of India and Europe; At

on the contrary, intimate alliance, visible kinship with those of Assyria, Judea, Canaan and Libya. I'm talking about East African languages here. We were already of the opinion that Gheez and Amharic, spoken in Abyssinia, are frankly Semitic, and, by common agreement, we linked them, purely and simply, to the Arab stock205, But now the list is growing, and in the new linguistic branches which must, willingly or unwillingly, be linked to the name of Shem, special characters appear which force them to be constituted apart from the idiom of the Cushites, Joktanides and Ishmaelites. In the first line are the tögr-jana and the tögray; then the language of Gouraghé in the southwest, Adari in Harar, Gafat west of Lake Tzana, Ilmorma, in use among several Galla tribes, Afar and its two dialects; the saho206, ssomal, sechuana and wanika207. All these languages have distinctly Semitic characteristics. We must also add the suahili, which in turn opens another corner of the horizon.

It is a Kaffir language, and the people who speak its dialects, formerly limited, in the opinion of Europeans, to the southernmost territories of Africa, now extend, for us, 5° further north, until beyond Monbaz208. He reached Abyssinia, confessed, he being black and not Negro, a fundamental community of language with purely Negro tribes, such as the Suahilis proper, the Makouas and the Monjous. Finally, the Gallas all speak dialects which are close to Kaffir.209. These observations do not stop there. We are entitled to add this last word, of the greatest importance: the entire continent of Africa, from south to north and from east to west, knows only one language, speaks only dialects of the same origin. In the Congo as in Kafrerie and Angola, all around the coasts, we find the same shapes and the same roots210. Nigritia, which has not yet been studied, and the dialect of the Hottentots, remain, provisionally, outside this assertion, but do not refute it. Now, let's recap. 1° Everything we know about the languages of Africa, both those belonging to black nations and those spoken by black tribes, relates to the same system; 2° this system presents the main characters of the Semitic group in a greater state of perfection than in this group itself; 3° several

languages which emerge from it are boldly classified, by those who study them, in the Semitic group.

Do we need more to recognize that this group, both in its forms and in its shortcomings, draws its reasons for existing from the ethnic elements that compose it, that is to say from the effects of a white origin? absorbed within an infinitely high proportion of melanian elements? It is not necessary, to understand the genesis of the languages of earlier Asia, to suppose that the Semitic populations were previously drowned in the blood of blacks. The fact, indisputable for the Hamites, is not so for their associates. In the way in which they mingled with previous societies, sometimes falling victoriously on the central States, sometimes slipping, as useful and intelligent servants, into the maritime communities, it is strong to believe that they did as the children of Abraham: they learned the languages of the country where they came to earn their living as well as to reign211. The example given by the Hebrew branch could very well have been followed by all branches of the family, and I am not reluctant to believe that the dialects subsequently formed by it did not have precisely the typical character of creating, or at least widen gaps. I mentioned them earlier in the Semitic languages organization. This is not, moreover, a summary. The Semites less mixed with Hamite blood, such as the Hebrews, possessed a more imperfect idiom than the Arabs. The multiplied alliances of the latter with the surrounding peoples had constantly plunged the language back to its Melanian origins. However, Arabic is still far from achieving the black ideal, as the essence of those who possess it is far from being identical with African blood. As for the Hamites, it was different: it was necessary, of necessity, that, to give birth to the linguistic system which they adopted and transmitted to the Semites, they abandoned themselves without reservation to the black element. They must have possessed the Semitic system much more purely, and I would not be surprised if, despite the encounter of Indo-Germanic roots in the inscriptions of Bi-Soutoun, we were led to recognize one day that the language of some of these annals of the most distant past are closer to the Negro type than Arabic, and even more so than Hebrew and Aramaic.

I have just shown how there were several degrees towards Semitic perfection. We start from Aramaic, the most defective of the languages of this family, to arrive at pure black. I will show later how we leave this system, with the peoples least affected by the black mixture, to move back gradually towards the languages of the white family. However, let's leave this subject for a moment: it is enough to have established the ethnic situation of the Semitic conquerors. More respected than the primitive Assyrians by Melanian leprosy, they were mixed race like them. They were only able to triumph over sick nations, and we will always see them succumb when they have to deal with men of nobler extraction. But, around the year 2000 BC, these men of higher energy, the Zoroastrian Arians, began to appear on the eastern horizon. They were only concerned with securing the residences conquered by them in Media. For their part, the Hellenic Arians only sought to make room for themselves in their migration towards Europe. The Semites thus had long centuries of predominance and assured triumphs over the civilized people of the southwest. Each time a movement of the Hellenic Arians forced them to cede some part of their former territory, the defeat was resolved for them into a fruitful victory, because it took place at the expense of the colonists of rich Babylonia. This is how these bands of defeated fugitives, burying the shame of their rout in the darkness of the countries located towards the Caucasus and the Caspian, struck the world with admiration at the sight of the easy laurels which their flight garnered. The Semitic invasions therefore constitute works repeated several times. The detail doesn't matter here. It is enough to recall that the first emigration took possession of the States located in lower Chaldea. Another expedition, that of the Joktanides, extended as far as Arabia212. Another, and still others, populated the maritime regions of Upper Asia with new masters. Black blood often successfully combatted, among the most mixed of these peoples, the sedentary tendencies of the species; and, not only did very considerable movements take place among the masses, but sometimes also small tribes, yielding to considerations of all kinds, abandoned their residences to reach another homeland.

The Semites were already in full possession of the entire Hamite universe, where the social leaders who were not directly defeated nevertheless suffered their influence, when a people appeared in the midst of their establishments destined for great trials and great glories: I want to speak of the branch of the Hebrew nation, which I have already brought out of the Armenian mountains, and which, under the leadership of Abraham, and soon with the name of Israel, had continued its march as far as Egypt to return then to the land of Canaan. When with the father of the patriarchs the nation crossed this country, it was sparsely populated. When Joshua reappeared there, the land was widely occupied and well cultivated by many Semites213.

The birth of Abraham is fixed by exegesis in the year 2017, after the first attacks of the Hellenic nations against the mountain peoples, therefore not far from the time of the latter's victories over the Hamites, and from the rise of the new Assyrian dynasty. Abraham belonged to a nation from which the Joktanides had already come, and whose branches, remaining in the motherland, later formed different States under the names of Péleg, Réhou, Saroudj, Nachor and others.214. The son of Thare himself became the revered founder of several peoples, the most famous of which were the children of Jacob, then the Western Arabs, who, under the name of Ishmaelites, sharing with the Hebrew Joktanides and the Kushite Hamites the domination of the peninsula, subsequently acted with the most force on the destinies of the world, either when they gave new dynasties to the Assyrians, or when, with Mohammed, they directed the last renaissance of the Semitic race. Before following further the ethnic destiny of the people of Israel, and now that I have found in the date of the birth of its patriarch a certain chronological point which can serve to fix the thought, I will exhaust what remains for me to say about the other most apparent ChamoSemitic nations. We must not lose sight of the fact that the number of independent states included in the society of that time was innumerable. However, I can only speak of those who have left the deepest traces of their existence and their actions. Let us first focus on the Phoenicians.

Book second

Chapter III The maritime Canaanites. At the time of Abraham, the Hamite civilization was in all the splendor of its perfection and its vices.215. One of its most notable territories was Palestine216, where the cities of Canaan flourished, thanks to their trade fueled by already countless colonies. What all these towns might lack in population was amply compensated by the fortunate circumstance that no competitor still rivaled them for the immense profits from their fabric factories, their dyeing, their navigation and their transit.217. All the resources of wealth that I have just listed remained concentrated in the hands of their creators. But, as if to prove how weak a mark of the vital force of nations productive commerce is, the Phoenicians, fallen from the ancient energy which had once brought them from the shores of the Persian Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean, had retained no real political independence 218. They governed themselves, most often, it is true, by their own laws and in their ancient aristocratic forms. But, in fact, the Assyrian power had annulled their independence. They received and respected orders from the regions of the Euphrates219. When, in some internal movements, they tried to shake off this yoke, their only resource was to turn towards Egypt and substitute the influence of Memphis for that of Nineveh. There was no longer any question of true isonomy. Besides the preponderance of the two great empires between which the Chanaanite cities were squeezed, a motive of another nature forced the Phoenicians to be most constant in their dealings with these powerful neighbors. The territories of Assyria and Egypt, but especially of Assyria, were the great outlets for the trade of Sidon and Tyre. In truth, the Canaanites were going, on other points still, to carry the purple fabrics, the glassware, the perfumes and the foodstuffs of all kinds, with which their stores were overflowing. But when the high prow of their long black ships touched the still young shore of the Greek coast or the shores of Italy, Africa, Spain,

the crew only made fairly meager profits there. The long boat was pulled ashore by the black rowers, in red tunics, short and tight. The aboriginal populations surrounded, with lust and astonishment painted on their faces, these arrogant navigators who began by arranging cautiously armed groups of their Semite mercenaries around their ship; then they displayed before the kings and chiefs, who had come from all parts of the country, what was contained in the sides of the ship. As much as possible, we sought to obtain precious metals in exchange. This was what was asked of Spain, rich in this way. With the Greeks, we dealt mainly for herds, mainly for wood, as in Africa for slaves. When the opportunity was right and the merchant judged himself to be the strongest, without scruple he threw himself, with his people, on the beautiful girls, royal virgins or servants, on the children, on the young boys, on the men facts, and joyfully brought back into the markets of his homeland the abundant fruits of this faithless commerce which, from the earliest antiquity, made famous the greed, cowardice and perfidy of the Hamites and their allies. We understand, moreover, what dangerous aversion these merchants must have inspired on the coasts, where they had not yet assured themselves, through fixed establishments, the upper hand and absolute domination. In short, what all these countries were doing was exploiting local wealth. Giving little to obtain or extort, or extract, much, their operations were limited to a barter trade, and their finest products, like their most precious commodities, found no investment there. The great importance of the West therefore did not consist for them in any way in what they brought there, but rather in what they got out of it, at the cheapest possible price. Our regions provided the raw material, which Tyre, Sidon and the other Chanaanite cities worked, shaped or put to use elsewhere, among the Egyptians and in the Mesopotamic countries. Canaanite

It was not only in Europe and Africa that the Phoenicians sought the elements of their speculations. Through very ancient relationships with the Kuschite Arabs and the children of Joktan, they took part in the trade in perfumes, spices, ivory and ebony, coming from Yemen or from much more distant places, such as the eastern coast of Africa, India, or even the Far East220. Yet not having there, as for the products of Europe, an absolute monopoly,

their attention remained fixed preferably on the Western countries, and it was between these monopolized lands and the two great centers of contemporary civilization that they played, in all its fullness, the advantageous role of unique factors. Their existence and prosperity were thus closely linked to the destinies of Nineveh and Thebes. When these countries suffered, consumption immediately fell, and immediately the blow fell on Canaanite industry and commerce. If the kings of Mesopotamia believed they had reason to complain about the merchant states of Phoenicia, or if they wanted, in a quarrel, to bring them to a compromise without drawing the sword, some fiscal measures directed against the introduction of the commodities of the West in the Assyrian countries or in the Egyptian provinces harmed the patricians of Tire much more, affected them more deeply and more noticeably in their existence and, thus, in their internal tranquility, than if one had sent against them countless armies of horsemen and chariots. Here then, in the most distant antiquity, were the Phoenicians, so proud of their mercantile activity, so depraved, so degraded by somewhat ignoble vices, inseparable companions of this type of merit, reduced to possessing only the shadow of independence and living humiliated servants of their powerful buyers.

The government of the coastal towns once began as severely theocratic. This was the custom of the race of Ham. Indeed, the first white victors had shown themselves among the black populations with the apparatus of such superiority of intelligence, will and strength, that these superstitious masses could not better depict the sensation of admiration and of the terror they experienced when they declared them gods. It was as a result of a very similar idea that the peoples of America, at the time of discovery, asked the Spaniards if they did not come from heaven, if they were not gods, and, despite the negative responses dictated to the conquerors by the Christian faith, their vanquished persisted in vehemently suspecting them of hiding their quality. It is in the same way that, today, the tribes of East Africa do not depict the state in which they see Europeans other than by saying: they are gods.221. The white Hamites, poorly restrained by the conscientious delicacies of modern times, had probably had no

struggles to bring himself to worship. But when the blood mixed, and the pure race was succeeded everywhere by mulattoes, the black discovered numerous traces of humanity in the master that his daughter or his sister had given birth to. The new hybrid, however, was powerful and haughty. He held to the ancient conquerors by his genealogy, and if the reign of the divinities ended, that of their priests began. Despotism, although it changed form, was no less blindly venerated. The Canaanites preserved in their history222the very complete presentation of this double state of affairs. They had been ruled by Melkart and Baal, and later by the pontiffs of these superhuman beings223. When the Semites arrived, the revolution took a step forward. The Semites were, fundamentally, closer relatives of the gods than the hieratic dynasties of the Black Hamites. They had more recently left the common stock, and their blood, although quite altered, was less so than that of the half-breeds whose wealth they came to share and support the political existence, which became more feeble every day. However, the Phoenician priests would not have agreed with this superiority of nobility, and even if they had wanted to, they would not have been able to, because the black essence predominated so much in their veins, that they had forgotten the God of their gods and the real origin of the latter. They considered themselves, with them, as indigenous224. This means that they had adopted the crude superstitions of their mothers' ancestors. For these degenerate people, there is no white migration from Tylos to the Mediterranean coast. Melkart and his people had emerged from the silt on which their dwellings stood. In other countries and in other times, the Hindus, the Greeks, the Italians and other nations borrowed the same error from the same sources. But the facts follow their consequences, without worrying about the competition of opinions. The Semites could, no doubt, become gods since they did not have pure blood and, being preponderant, they were not pure enough to act on the imaginations to the degree necessary for apotheosis. The black Hamites also knew how to refuse them entry to the priesthoods reserved for so many centuries for the same families. Then the Semites humiliated the theocracy and, higher than it, placed the government and the power of the sword. After a fairly lively, priestly, monarchical and absolute struggle, the government of the Phoenician cities became

aristocratic, republican and absolute, thus retaining only the last of the triad of forces that it replaced. He did not completely destroy the other two, faithful in this to the reforming, modifying role, rather than revolutionary, imposed on his actions by his origin, so close to that of the black Hamites, and therefore respectful of the substance of their works. Among the greatness of his aristocracy, he gave a most honorable place to pontificates. He assigned them the second rank in the State, and continued to leave the honors to the noble Hamite families who until then had possessed them. Royalty was not treated so well. Perhaps, moreover, the black Hamites themselves had never developed their power more than mediocrely, as one is tempted to believe for the Assyrian States. Whether we now accepted, in the government of the Phoenician cities, a single leader, or, a more frequent combination, that the split crown was shared between two kings intentionally chosen from two rival houses, the authority of these supreme leaders became entirely limited, monitored, constrained, and they were only granted, with fullness, prerogatives without effect and splendours without freedom. It is reasonable to believe that the Semites extended this jealous surveillance of monarchical power to all the countries where they dominated, and that in Nineveh as in Babylon, the holders of the empire were, under their inspiration, only the representatives without initiative of priests and nobles. This was the organization resulting from the fusion of the black Hamites of Phenicia with the Semites. The kings, in other words the suffets, lived in sumptuous palaces. Nothing seemed too beautiful or too good to enhance the magnificence with which the true masters of the State took pleasure in adorning the double head. Multitudes of slaves of both sexes, splendidly dressed, were at the orders of these mortals overwhelmed by the display of pleasures. Herds of eunuchs guarded the entrance to their gardens and their gynoeciums. Women from all countries were brought to them by passenger ships. They ate in gold, they crowned themselves with diamonds and pearls, amethysts, rubies, topaz, and purple, so exalted by the ancient imagination, was the color respectfully reserved for all their clothing. Apart from this sumptuous life and the forms of veneration that the law ordered to be added to it, there was nothing. The suffets gave their opinion on the

public affairs like other nobles, nothing more; or if they went beyond, it was through the use of a personal influence which had been disputed before being submitted to; because legal and regular action, and even executive power, were concentrated in the hands of the heads of the great houses225. For the latter, collectively, authority had no limits. From the moment an agreement concluded between them had taken on the imperative character which constitutes the law, everything had to bow before this law, of which the legislators themselves were the first victims. Nowhere and never did this abstraction spare personal situations. An inflexible rigor introduced its formidable effects even into the interior of families, tyrannized the most intimate relationships of spouses, hovered over the head of the father, despot of his children, placed constraint between the individual and his conscience. In the entire State, from the last sailor, the lowest worker, to the high priest of the most revered God, to the most arrogant nobleman, the law extended to the terrible level revealed by this short sentence: As many men, so many slaves! This is how the Semites, united with the posterity of Ham, understood and practiced the science of government. I insist all the more on this severe conception, as we will see it, with Semitic blood, penetrating into the constitutions of almost all the peoples of antiquity, and even reaching modern times, where it does not retreat, provisionally, than before the more equitable and healthier notions of the Germanic race.

Let us not forget to analyze the inspirations which governed this rigorous organization. In what was brutal and odious about them, their source, obviously, was steeped in black nature, friend of the absolute, easy to slavery, willingly gathering in an abstract idea from which it does not ask to allow oneself to be understood, but to be feared and obeyed. On the contrary, in the elements of a higher nature, which cannot be ignored, in this attempt at balancing between royalty, the priesthood and the armed nobility, in this love of rule and legality, we find the well-marked instincts that we will see everywhere among people of the white race. The Canaanite cities attracted numerous troops of Semites, belonging to all branches of the race, and consequently differently mixed. The men who arrived from Assyria

brought, from the particular Chamite mixture with which they had touched, a blood quite different from that of the Semite who, coming from lower Egypt or southern Arabia, had been in contact for a long time with the woolly-haired Negro. The Chaldean of the north, that of the mountains of Armenia226, the Hebrew, finally, in the alloys undergone by his race, had had more participation in the white essence. This other, who came from the neighboring regions of the Caucasus, could already, directly or indirectly, bring in his veins a memory of the yellow species. Such bands coming out of Phrygia had Greek women as mothers.

So many new emigrations, so many new ethnic elements who came to land in the Phoenician cities. Besides these different relationships of the Semitic family, there were also Hamites from the Country, Hamites supplied by the great Eastern States, and also Cushite Arabs and Egyptians and pure Negroes. In short, the two families white and black, and to some extent even the yellow species, combined in a thousand different ways in the middle of Canaan, were constantly renewed there and constantly abounded there, so as to form varieties and varieties. previously unknown types. Such a competition took place because Phoenicia offered occupation to all these people. The work of its ports, its factories, its caravans, required a lot of hands. Tire and Sidon, in addition to being large maritime and commercial cities like London and Hamburg, were at the same time large industrial centers like Liverpool and Birmingham; having become the outlets of the populations of earlier Asia, they occupied them all and transferred the overflow to the vast circle of their colonies. They sent there in this way, through constant immigration, fresh forces and an addition of their own lives. Let us not admire this prodigious activity too much. All these advantages of an ever-increasing population had their unfortunate reverses: they began by altering the political constitution so as to improve it; they ended up determining its total ruin. We have seen by what ethnic transformations the reign of the gods had ended to be replaced by that of the priests, who, in their turn, had given way to a complicated and learned organization, intended to give access to the sphere of power to the chiefs and to the powerful of the cities. Following this reform, the distinction between races had fallen into oblivion.

There was nothing left but families. Faced with the perpetual and rapid mutability of ethnic elements, this aristocratic state, the last word, the extreme term of revolutionary sentiment among the first Semitic arrivals, one day found itself no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the rising generations, and democratic ideas began to dawn. They first relied on kings. They willingly listened to principles whose first application was to humiliate the patricians. They then addressed themselves to the herds of workers employed in the factories, and made them the nerve of the faction they united. As active agents of intrigues and conspiracies, we recruited largely from a particular class of men, a troop accustomed to luxury, touching, at least with their eyes, the great seductions of power, but without rights, without other consideration than that of the favor, despised especially by the nobles, and therefore favoring them little; I mean royal slaves, palace eunuchs, favorites or those who tended to become favorites. This was the composition of the party which pushed for the destruction of the aristocratic order. The adversaries of this party had many resources to defend themselves. Against the desires and inclinations of kings, they had legal impotence, dependence on these magistrates without authority. They tried to tighten the knots. To the turbulent masses of workers and sailors, they presented the swords and darts of this multitude of mercenary troops, especially Carians and Philistines, who formed the garrisons of the cities and of which they alone exercised command. Finally, to the tricks and intrigues of the royal slaves, they opposed a long habit of business with a sufficiently acute distrust of human nature, a practical wisdom far superior to the trickery of their rivals; in a word, against the intrigues of some, the brutal force of others, the ardent ambition of the greatest, the gross lusts of the smallest, they could use this immense resource of being masters, a weapon which does not break easily in the fist of the strong. Certainly they would have kept their empire as any aristocracy would keep it, in perpetuity, if victory could only have resulted from the energy of the attackers; but it was from their weakening that it was to hatch. Defeat was only to be expected from the mixing of their blood.

The revolution only triumphed when it had auxiliaries within the palaces whose doors it strove to break down. In states where commerce gives wealth and wealth gives influence, mesalliances, to use a technical term, are always difficult to avoid. The sailor of yesterday is the rich shipowner of tomorrow, and his daughters penetrate, like the rain of gold, into the bosom of the proudest families. The blood of the patricians of Phoenicia was already so mixed that there was certainly little care taken to protect it against attractive modifications. Polygamy, so dear to black or halfblack peoples, also makes all precautions useless in this regard. Homogeneity had therefore ceased to exist among the sovereign races of the coast of Canaan, and democracy found means of making proselytes among them. More than one noble began to taste doctrines mortal to his caste. The aristocracy, realizing this open wound in its sides, defended itself by means of deportation. When seditions were about to break out, or when a riot was defeated, the guilty were seized; the government took them on board by force with Carian troops, responsible for monitoring them, and sent them either to Libya, or to Spain, or beyond the Pillars of Hercules, to places so distant, that it was claimed to find the trace of these colonizations as far as Senegal. The noble apostates, mixed with the peat, were to, in this eternal exile, form in their turn the patriciate of the new colonies, and we have not heard that, despite their liberalism, they ever disobeyed this last order of the Mother land. However, a day came when the nobility had to succumb. We know the date of this definitive defeat; we know the form it took; we can designate the determining cause. The date is 829 BC; the form is the aristocratic emigration which founded Carthage227; the determining cause is indicated by the extreme mixture to which the populations had reached under the action of a new element which, for about a century, had irresistibly fomented the anarchy of the ethnic elements.

The Hellenic peoples had developed considerably. They had begun, for their part, to create colonies, and these ramifications of their power, extending on the coast of Asia Minor, had not taken long to send very numerous immigrations to Canaan228. THE

newcomers, much more intelligent and alert than the Semites, much more vigorous in body and mind, brought a valuable contribution of strength to the democratic idea, and hastened by their presence the maturity of the revolution. Sidon was the first to succumb to demagogic efforts. The victorious populace had chased away the nobles, who had gone to found a new city in Aradus, where trade and prosperity had taken refuge, to the detriment of the ancient city, which remained completely ruined.229. Tire soon suffered a similar fate. The patricians, fearing at the same time the rioters of the factories, the common people, the royal slaves and the king; warned of the fate which threatened them by the assassination of the greatest of them, the pontiff of Melkart, and not judging that they could further maintain their authority, nor save their lives in the face of a generation resulting from too many mixtures, took the side of expatriate. The fleet belonged to them, the ships were guarded by their troops. They resigned themselves, they moved away with their treasures, and especially with their governmental and administrative knowledge, their long and traditional practice of commerce, and they went to carry their destinies to a point on the coast of Africa which faces to Sicily.

Thus was accomplished a heroic act which has hardly been seen since. Twice, however, in modern times, there was talk of renewing it. The Senate of Venice, in the war of Chiozza, deliberated whether he should not embark for the Peloponnese with all his nation, and it is not too long ago that a similar eventuality was foreseen and discussed in the English parliament. Carthage had no childhood230. The masters who governed it were sure in advance of their will. They had as their precise goal what ancient Tire had taught them to value and pursue. They were surrounded by populations that were almost entirely black, and therefore inferior to the mixed-race people who came to sit in their midst. They had no difficulty in being obeyed. Their government, going back over the centuries, resumed, in the face of its subjects, all the Hamitic harshness and inflexibility; and as the city of Dido only ever received, for all white immigration, Tyrian or Chanaanite nobles, victims, like its founders, of demagogic catastrophes, it weighed down its yoke as much as it pleased. Until the moment of its ruin, it did not make the slightest concession to its people. When they dared to call to arms, she knew how to punish them

without ever weakening. This is because his authority was based on an ethnic difference which did not have time to compose and disappear.

Tyrian anarchy had become complete after the departure of the nobles who alone still possessed a shadow of the ancient value of the race, especially its relative homogeneity. When the kings and the common people found themselves alone to act, the diversity of origins threw itself across the public square to prevent any serious reorganization. The Hamitic spirit, the multiplicity of Semitic branches, Greek nature, everything spoke loudly, everything spoke loudly. It was impossible to agree, and we realized that, far from claiming to ever find a logical and firmly designed system of government, we should consider ourselves very lucky when we could obtain a temporary peace by means of compromise. passengers. After the founding of Carthage, Tire did not create any new colonies. The elders, deserting their cause, rallied, one after the other, to the patrician city, which thus became their capital: nothing could be more logical. They did not change their obedience: only the metropolitan soil was changed. The dominating race remained the same, and so much the same, that from then on it was they who colonized. At the end of the VIIIe

century, it had establishments in Sardinia: it itself was not yet a hundred years old. Fifty years later, it captured the Balearic Islands. In VIecentury, she had Libyan settlers reoccupy all the formerly Phoenician cities of the West, too sparsely populated for her liking 231. Now, among the newcomers, black blood predominated even more than on the coast of Canaan, from which their predecessors had come: also, when, shortly before J.-C., Strabo wrote that the greater part of Spain was in the power of the Phoenicians, that three hundred towns on the Mediterranean coast, at least, had no other inhabitants, this meant that these populations were formed of a fairly thick black base on which had come superimpose, in a lesser proportion, elements drawn from the white and yellow races brought back again by Carthaginian alluvium towards the Melanian natural. It was from his Hamite patricianship that the homeland of Hannibal received its great preponderance over all the blacker peoples. Tyre, deprived of this force and given over to complete racial incoherence, sank into anarchy with giant steps.

Shortly after the departure of its nobles, it fell, forever, into foreign servitude, first Assyrian, then Persian, then Macedonian. It was forever more than a subject city. During the few years that still remained for it to exercise its isonomy, only seventy-nine years after the founding of Carthage, it became famous for its seditious spirit, its constant and bloody revolutions. The workers of its factories resorted, on several occasions, to unprecedented violence, massacring the rich, seizing their wives and daughters and establishing themselves as masters in the homes of the victims in the midst of usurped wealth.232. In short, Tire became the horror of all Canaan, of which it had been the glory, and it inspired in all the surrounding countries such strong and long-lasting hatred and indignation that, when Alexander came to lay siege to its walls , all the towns in the neighborhood hastened to provide vessels to reduce it. Following a local tradition, there was unanimous applause in Syria when the conqueror condemned the vanquished to be put on the cross. It was the legal torture of the rebellious slaves: the Tyrians were nothing else. Such was, in Phoenicia, the result of the immoderate, disorderly mixture of races, a mixture too complicated to have had time to become a fusion, and which, only succeeding in juxtaposing the various instincts, the multiple notions, the antipathies of the different types, favored, created and perpetuated deadly hostilities.

I cannot help but address here episodically a curious question, a real historical problem. This is the humble and submissive attitude of the Phoenician colonies towards their metropolises: Tire first, Carthage then. Obedience and respect were such that, for a long period of centuries, we do not cite a single example of proclamation of independence in these colonies, which however had not always been made up of the best elements. We know how they were founded. They were at first simple temporary camps, summarily fortified to defend the ships against the depredations of the natives. When the place gained importance due to the nature of the trade, or when the Canaanites found it more profitable to exploit the region themselves, the encampment became a town or city. The policy of the metropolis multiplied these cities, taking great care to maintain them in a state

of smallness which prevented them from thinking of going alone. It was also thought that spreading them over a larger area of the country increased the profit from speculation. Rarely were several emissions of emigrants directed towards the same point, and hence Cádiz, at the time of its greatest splendor and when the world was full of the noise of its opulence, had only a very modest extent. and a very small permanent population233. All these towns were strictly isolated from each other. Complete reciprocal independence was the innate right that they were taught to maintain, with a jealousy very pleasing to the centralizing spirit of the capital. Free, they were without strength vis-à-vis their distant rulers, and, not being able to do without protection, they adhered with fervor to the powerful homeland from which they came and which preserved their existence. Another very strong reason for this development is that these colonies founded with a view to trade all had only one major outlet, Asia, and one only reached Asia by passing through Chanaan. To reach the markets of Babylon and Nineveh, to enter Egypt, the confession of the Phoenician cities was necessary and the factories were thus forced to confuse political submission and the desire to sell in a single idea. To quarrel with the mother country was nothing other than to close the doors of the world, and to soon see wealth and profits pass to some rival village that was more submissive, and therefore happier. The history of Carthage clearly shows the power of this necessity. Despite the hatreds which seemed likely to create an abyss between the demagogic metropolis and its proud colony, Carthage did not want to break the bond of a certain dependence. Long and benevolent relations only ceased to exist when Tire no longer counted as an entrepot, and it was only after its ruin and when the Greek cities had replaced its commercial activity that Carthage assumed supremacy. She then united the other foundations under her empire, and became declared leader of the Canaanite people, whose name, once so glorious, she had proudly preserved. This is what its populations have always been calledChanani 234, although the soil of Palestine never belonged to them235. What the Carthaginians looked after so hard in the Tyrians, with whom they had been unable to live, was less the center of national worship than the free passage of goods towards Asia.

Here now is a second fact which reinforces the evidence of the deductions to be drawn from the first.

When the Persian kings seized Phenicia and Egypt, they claimed to consider Carthage as conqueredipso factoand legitimately united with the fate of its former capital. They therefore sent heralds to the patricians of Lake Tritonide to give them certain orders and make certain defenses for them. Carthage then was very powerful; she had little reason to fear the armies of the great king, firstly because of her enormous resources, then because she was far from the center of the Persian monarchy. Yet she obeyed and humbled herself. It was necessary at all costs to preserve the benevolence of a dynasty which could close at will the eastern ports of the Mediterranean. The Carthaginians, positive politicians, decided, on this occasion, by reasons similar to those who, in the 17theand XVIIIecenturies, led several European nations, wishing to maintain their relations with Japan and China, to undergo humiliations quite harsh for the Christian conscience. Faced with such resignation on the part of Carthage, and when we weigh the causes, we can understand why the Phoenician colonies have always shown a spirit far removed from any desire for revolt. Besides, we would be very mistaken if we believed that these colonies were ever preoccupied with the thought of civilizing the nations among which they were founded.236. Driven solely by mercantile ideas, we know from Homer what aversion they inspired in the ancient populations of Hellas. In Spain and on the coasts of Gaul, they did not give a better opinion of them. Where the Canaanites found themselves faced with weak populations, they pushed the compression to the point of atrocity, and reduced the natives employed in mining work to the state of beasts of burden. If they encountered more resistance, they employed more cunning. But the result was the same. Everywhere the local populations were for them only instruments which they abused, or adversaries whom they exterminated. Hostility was permanent between the aborigines of all countries and these ferocious merchants. This was again a reason which forced the colonies, always isolated, weak and bad with their neighbors, to remain faithful to the metropolis, and it was also a great lever in the hand of Rome to overthrow the Carthaginian power. The policy of the Italian city, compared to that of its rival, appeared humane and thereby won sympathy, and

ultimately victory. I do not want here to address the consuls and praetors with undeserved praise. There was a great way to show oneself cruel and oppressive by being less cruel than the Canaanite race. This nation of mulattoes, Phoenician or Carthaginian, never had the slightest idea of justice nor the slightest desire to organize, I will not say in an equitable, only tolerable manner, the peoples subject to its empire. She remained faithful to the principles received by the Semites from the descendants of Nimrod, and drawn by them from the blood of blacks.

The history of the Phoenician colonies, if it does honor to the skill of the organizers, owes, in short, what was particularly fortunate for the metropolises to very particular circumstances, which have never been able to be repeated since. . The Greek colonies were less faithful; those of modern peoples, too: both had the world open, and were not forced to cross the motherland to reach markets where they could sell their productions. There is nothing left for me to say about the most enduring branch of the Chanaanite family. It provides, through its merits and its vices, the first certainty that history presents to ethnology: the black element dominated there. From there, unbridled love of material enjoyments, deep superstitions, dispositions for the arts, immorality, ferocity. The white guy showed up in less force. His male character tended to fade away in the face of the feminine elements which absorbed him. He brought, into this vast hymen, the utilitarian and conquering spirit, the taste for a stable organization and this natural tendency to political regularity which says its word and plays its role in the institution of legal despotism, a role no doubt thwarted , however effective, To complete the picture, the superabundance of irreconcilable types, resulting from the various proportions between the mixtures, gave birth to chronic disorder, and brought social paralysis and this state of gregarious degradation where each day the power of the Melanian essence. It is in this situation that the races formed by the Canaanite alloys now languish. Let us return to the other branches of the families of Ham and Shem.

Book second

Chapter IV

The Assyrians; the Hebrews; the Choreans. The unanimous feeling of antiquity has never ceased to attribute to the peoples of the Mesopotamian region this marked superiority over all the other nations descended from Ham and Shem, of which I have already touched a few words. The Phoenicians were clever; the Carthaginians were in turn. The Jewish, Arab, Lydian and Phrygian States had their splendor and their glory. Nothing better: in short, these planets were only the satellites of the great country where their destinies were being worked out. Assyria dominated everything, without question.

Where could such superiority come from? Philology will respond strictly.

I showed that the system of Semitic languages was an imperfect extension of that of black languages. It is only there that the ideal of this mode of idiom is found. It is altered in Arabic, even more incomplete in Hebrew, and I have not advanced, in the downward progression, beyond Aramaic, where the decadence of the constituent principles is even more pronounced. We find ourselves there like a man who, sinking into an underground passage, loses the light as he advances. By continuing to walk, we will see the light again, but it will be from another side of the cave, and its glow will be different. Aramaic still only offers a negative desertion of the Melanian spirit. It does not reveal forms that are clearly foreign to this system. Looking a little further, geographically speaking, ancient Armenian soon presents itself, and there, without a doubt, we notice new developments. We get our hands on a striking originality. We look at it, we study it: it is the Indo-Germanic element. There is no doubt about it. Still very limited, weak perhaps, nevertheless alive and unrecognizable. I continue on my way. Next to the Armenians are the Medes. I listen to their language. I still notice Semitic sounds and shapes. Both are more erased than in Armenian, and Indogermanic occupies a greater place there.237. As soon as I enter the territories located north of Media, I pass to the Zend. I still find Semitic there, this time in a completely subordinate state. If, by a side step, I fell towards the south, the pehlvi, still Indo-Germanic, would nevertheless bring me back towards a greater abundance of elements

borrowed from Shem. I avoid it, I push ever further into the north-east, and the first Hindu places immediately offer me the best known type of the languages of the white species, by presenting me with Sanskrit.238. I draw from these facts this conclusion that, the more I go down to the south, the more Semitic alloy I find, and that in proportion as I rise towards the north, I encounter the white elements in a better state of purity and with an incomparable abundance. Now the Assyrian States were, of all the Chamo-Semitic foundations, the furthest back in this direction. They were constantly affected by immigration, latent or declared, coming down from the mountains of the northeast. This, then, was the cause of their long, secular preponderance. We have seen how quickly the invasions followed one another. The SemiticChaldean dynasty, which had put an end to the exclusive domination of the Hamites around the year 2000, was overthrown, approximately two hundred years later, by new bands emerging from the mountains.

To these, history gives the name of medics. We would have reason to be a little surprised to encounter Indo-Germanic nations so far in the southwest, at a time that was still very remote, if, persisting in the old classification, we claimed to draw a rigorous line of demarcation between the white peoples, of different origins, and clearly separate the Semites from the nations whose main branches populated India and later Europe. We have just seen that philological truth rejects this method of strict classifications. We are completely entitled to admit the Medes as founders of a very ancient Assyrian dynasty, and to consider these Medes, or, with Movers, as Semitic-Chaldeans.239, either with Ewald, as with the Arian or Indo-German peoples, depending on the aspect under which we prefer to consider the question240. Serving as a transition to the two races, they belong to both. They are indifferently, speaking geography, the last of the Semites or the first of the Arians, as you wish.

I have no doubt that, in terms of the qualities linked to race, these Medes of the first invasion were superior to the Semites more mixed with the blacks of whom they were parents. I take as testimony their religion, which was magism. It must be inferred from the name of the second king of their dynasty, Zaratuschtra.241. Not that I am tempted to confuse this monarch with the religious legislator: this one lived at a time

much older; but the appearance of the name of this prophet, carried by a sovereign, is a guarantee of the existence of his dogmas in the midst of the nation. The Medes were therefore not degraded by the monstrosities of the Hamitic cults, and, with healthier religious notions, they certainly retained more military vigor and more governmental faculties. However, it was not possible for their domination to be maintained indefinitely. The reasons which imposed on them a rapid decline are of different order. The Persian nation has never been very numerous, we will have the opportunity to demonstrate this later, and if, in VIIIecentury BC, it regained over the Assyrian States an authority lost since the year 2234 BC, it was then powerfully helped by the final bastardization of the Chamo-Semitic races, by the absence complete from any competitor to the empire and by the alliance of several Arian nations, which, at the time of its first invasion, had not yet appeared in the southwestern regions which they later occupied, between other Persian tribes. So that the Medes formed a sort of vanguard of the Arian famine. They were not numerous in their own right, they were not supported by other peoples, their relatives; and not only were they not, because they had not yet descended, alongside them, towards the southern countries, but because, in these remote periods and after the departure of the Arians Hellenes (whose migrations constantly threw swarms of Semites on the Assyrian and Chanaanite world) an imposing civilization exercised an immense empire over the bulk of the Arian Zoroastrian peoples, in the regions located between the Caspian and the Hindukoh, and, more particularly, in Bactria. There reigned a populous city, Balk,the mother of cities, to use the emphatic expression used by Iranian traditions when they want to paint in the same stroke the power and the incredible antiquity of the ancient metropolis of magism. There was formed on this point a center of life which, concentrating all the attention and all the sympathy of the Zoroastrian nations, diverted them from entering into the Assyrian current. What remained of their activity, outside this sphere, was transferred entirely towards the east, towards the regions of India, towards the countries of the Punjab, where close relations of

kinship, important memories, old habits, similarity of language, and even religious hatreds and the spirit of controversy, which is the natural consequence, carried over their thoughts. The Medes, in their enterprises in anterior Asia, thus found themselves reduced to the meagerness of their sole resources, a situation made all the weaker by the fact that ambitious competitors, bands of Semites coming down from the north, were constantly succeeding one another to shake their domination. Equal in number, these Semites were not worth them. But their thick, multiplying waves forced them to make efforts which could not always be successful, and all the less so since the merits would, ultimately, become equalized, and even something more, as the years progressed. passed over the masters of the throne. These resided in the cities of Assyria, supported, no doubt, from afar, by their nation, however separated from it and living far from it, lost in the Chamo-Semitic crowd. Their blood was altered, as that of the white Hamites and that of the first Chaldeans had been corrupted. The Semitic incursions, initially vigorously rebuffed, one day no longer found the same resistance. That day, they made a breach and the Persian domination was so completely overthrown that the sword of the victors even commanded the bulk of the people, discouraged and overwhelmed by the multitudes who came to attack them. The Assyrian states had begun to decline again under the last Median rulers. They regained their splendor, their omnipotence throughout all of anterior Asia, with the new supply of fresh and chosen blood which came, if not to revive their national races, at least to govern them without contest. It was through this incessant series of regenerations that Assyria always remained at the head of the Chamo-Semitic countries.

The new invasion gave birth, for the king-country, to large territorial extensions242. After enslaving the country of the Medes, the Semitic conquerors made invasions to the north and east. They ravaged part of Bactria and penetrated to the first confines of India. Phenicia, once conquered, was conquered again, and Assyrian ideas, notions, sciences, customs spread more than ever, and pushed their roots further. Big companies, big creations followed one another quickly. While powerful Babylonian monarchs

founded in the east, around the current city of Kandahar, this city of Kophen, the ruins of which were found by Colonel Rawlinson243, Mabudj stood on the Euphrates, Damascus and Gadara further west 244. The Semitic civilizers crossed the Halys, and organized on the coast of the Troas, in the Lydian countries, sovereignties which, later independent, took pride forever in having owed their birth to them.

.

245

It is useless to follow the movement of these Assyrian dynasties, which retained for so many centuries the government of earlier Asia in regenerating hands. As long as the neighboring countries of Armenia and backed by the Caucasus provided whiter populations than those who inhabited the southern plains, the forces of the Assyrian States were always renewed at the right time. A dynasty of Ishmaelite Arabs alone interrupted (from 1520 to 1274 BC) the course of Chaldean power. A degenerate race was thus replaced by Semites from the south, less corrupt than the Hamitic element, so quick to rot all the contributions of noble blood in the Mesopotamic countries. But as soon as the Chaldeans, purer than the Ishmaelite family, showed themselves again, the latter came down from the throne to cede it to them. We see it: in the high spheres of power, where civilizing ideas are developed, there is no longer any question, there must never again be any consideration of the black Hamites. Their masses were completely humiliated under the successive layers of Semites. They are numerous in the State, and no longer play an active role. But such a seemingly humble role is no less terrible and decisive. It is the stagnant bottom where all the conquerors come, after a few generations, to descend and be swallowed up. First, on this corrupted ground on which the victors walk triumphantly, the mud only goes up to their ankles. Soon the feet sink, and the immersion goes beyond the head. Physiologically as well as morally, it is complete. In the time of Agamemnon, what most struck the Greeks in the Assyrians who came to Priam's aid was the color of Memnon, the son of Dawn. To these oriental peoples the rhapsodes applied without hesitation the significant name of Ethiopians246. After the destruction of Troy, the same commercial motives which had induced the Assyrians to favor the establishment of maritime cities in the country of the Philistines and in the north of Asia Minor247, also led them to forgive the Greeks the destruction of a city, their

tributary, and to protect Ionia. Their aim was to put an end to the monopoly of the Phoenician cities, and consequently, once the Trojans had fallen without remedy, their conquerors were allowed to replace them. The Asian Greeks thus became the preferred factors in the trade of Nineveh and Babylon. This is the first proof that we have yet encountered of this truth so often repeated by history, that, if racial identity creates identity of destiny between peoples, it in no way determines identity of interests. , and consequently mutual affection.

As long as the Phoenicians were the only ones to exploit the western regions of the world, they sold their goods too dearly to the Assyrians, who did not stop until, having created competitors for them, first in the Trojans, then among the Greeks, they would have succeeded in obtaining at a cheaper price the products required for their consumption248.

Thus, throughout ancient Asia people lived under the leadership of the Assyrians. If one was to succeed, one succeeded through them, and anything that tried to emerge from their shadow remained weak and languishing. Yet this disastrous independence was only ever relative, even among the nomadic tribes of the desert. Not a nation, large or small, which did not experience the action of the populations and the power of Mesopotamia. However, among those who felt the least, the sons of Israel seemed to be at the forefront. They said they were jealous of their individuality more than any other Semitic tribe. They wanted to be seen as pure in their descendants. They pretended to isolate themselves from everything around them. For this reason alone, they would deserve to occupy a reserved place in these pages, if the great ideas that their name awakens had not assured them in advance.

Abraham's sons changed their names several times. They began by calling themselves Hebrews. But this title, which they shared with so many other peoples, was too vast, too general. They substituted that of son of Israel. Later, Judah having dominated in splendor and glory all the memories of their patriarchs, they became the Jews. Finally, after the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, this taste for archaism, this passion for origins, a sad admission of present impotence which never fails to grip old peoples, a natural and touching feeling, made them take up the name of 'Hebrews.

This nation, despite what it may have claimed, never possessed, any more than the Phoenicians, a civilization of its own. She limited herself to following the examples from Mesopotamia, mixing them with a little Egyptian taste. The morals of the Israelites, in their finest moment, at the time of David and Solomon249, were completely Tyrian, and therefore Ninevites. We know with what difficulty and even with what mixed success, the efforts of their priests constantly tended to keep them far from the most horrible abuses of oriental emanatism. If the sons of Abraham had been able to keep, after their descent from the Chaldean mountains, the relative purity of race that they brought with them, there is no doubt that they would have preserved and extended this preponderance only with the father of their patriarchs, we saw them exercising over the more civilized Canaanite populations, richer, but less energetic, because they were blacker. Unfortunately, despite fundamental prescriptions, despite successive defenses of the law, despite even the terrible examples of disapproval recalled by the names of the Ishmaelites, the Edomites, illegitimate and rejected descendants of the Abrahamid stock, it was all wrong. that the Hebrews only ally themselves within their kinship250. From their earliest days, politics forced them to accept the alliance of several reprobate nations, to reside among them, to mingle their tents and their flocks with the flocks and tents of the foreigner, and the young men of the two families met at the cisterns. The Kenaens, a fraction of Amalek, and many others, were thus merged into the people of the twelve tribes251.

Then the patriarchs were the first to violate the law. The Mosaic genealogies teach us that Sarah was her husband's half-sister, and therefore of pure blood.252. But if Jacob married Lia and Rachel, his cousins, and had eight sons, his other four children, who are no less numbered among the true fathers of Israel, were born to the two maids Bala and Zelpha253. The example given was followed by its offspring254. In the following eras, we find other ethnic alliances, and, when we arrive at the monarchical era, it is impossible to enumerate them, so common have they become. David's kingdom, extending as far as the Euphrates, embraced many diverse populations. There could not even be any question of maintaining ethnic purity there. The mixture therefore penetrated through all the pores, into the

members of Israel. It is true that the principle remained; that later Zerubbabel exercised approved severities against men married to the daughters of the nations. But the integrity of Abraham's blood had nonetheless disappeared, and the Jews were as tainted with the Melanian alloy as the Hamites and Semites among whom they lived. They had adopted their language255. They had adopted their customs; their annals were partly those of their neighbors, Philistines, Edomites, Amalekites, Amorites. Too often, they will carry the imitation of morals to the point of religious apostasy256. Hebrews and Gentiles were cut, in truth, on one and the same model. Finally, I give this, both as proof and as a consequence: neither in the time of Joshua, nor under David or Solomon, nor when the Maccabees reigned, did the Jews succeed in exercising over the peoples around them, over so many small related nations, yet so weak, a somewhat lasting superiority. They were like the Ishmaelites, like the Philistines. They had days, nothing but a few days of power, and the equality was complete with their rivals. I have already explained why the Israelites, the sons of Ishmael, those of Edom, and Amalek, composed of the same fundamental black elements, Hamites and Semites, as the Phoenicians and the Assyrians, constantly remained at the lowest level of the typical civilization of the race, leaving the people of Mesopotamia the inspiring and leading role. This is because the elements of white origin were periodically renewed in the latter, and never in them. They therefore did not succeed in making stable conquests, and, when they found themselves having the leisure and the taste to perfect their morals, they could only borrow everything from Assyrian culture, without ever returning anything to it, practicing it a little. , I imagine, like the provincials make Paris fashions. The Tyrians, great merchants as they were, were no more inspired. They understood only incompletely what Nineveh taught them. Solomon, in turn, when he wanted to build his temple, bringing architects, sculptors and embroiderers from Tire, did not get the last word on the talents of his time. It is probable that, in the magnificence which so dazzled Jerusalem, the eye of a man of taste coming from Nineveh would have unraveled only a second-hand copy of the beautiful things which he had contemplated in the original in the great Mesopotamian metropolises, where the West, the East, India and China

even, according to Isaiah257, sent, without tiring, all that was most accomplished in all genres.

Nothing's easier. The small peoples of whom I am speaking at the moment were Semites too chamitized to play any role other than that of satellites in a system of culture which, moreover, being that of their race, suited them and did not need to seem perfect to them. than to undergo local modifications. It was precisely these local modifications which, reducing the Ninevite splendors to the degree desired by obscure and poor nations, created the diminution of civilization. Transported to Babylon, the Phoenician, the Hebrew, the Arab, easily put themselves on par with the rest of the populations, except perhaps the most recently arrived Semites from the north, and became adept at shaking off the bonds that their imposed the mediocrity of their national environments; but that was imitation, nothing more. In these fractional groups did not reside the excellence of the type258. I will not leave the Israelites without having touched a few words of certain tribes who lived among them for a long time, in the districts north of the Jordan. This mysterious population appears to have been none other than the pure remains of some of the Melanian families, of these blacks who were once the sole masters of earlier Asia before the arrival of the white Hamites. The description that the holy books give us of these miserable men is precise, characteristic, terrible because of the idea of profound degradation that it awakens.

At the time of Job they only lived in the mountainous district of Seir or Edom, south of the Jordan. Abraham had already known them there. Esau, it was probably not his least fault, lived among them

, and, as a natural consequence in those times, he took, among his wives, one of their wives, Oolibama, daughter of Anah, daughter of Sebeon, so that the sons he had by them, Jehus, Jhelon and Coré, found themselves very directly linked by their mother to the black race. 259

The Septuagint call these peoples the Choreans; the Vulgate less aptly names them Horreans, and they are mentioned in several places in the Scriptures260. They lived among rocks and huddled in caves. Their very name meanstroglodytes261. Their tribes had independent communities. All year long, wandering at random, they stole what they found, murdering when they could. Their size was very tall. Miserable to excess, the

travelers feared them for their ferocity. But any description pales in comparison with the verses of Job, where M. d'Ewald262recognizes their portrait. Here is the passage: “They mock me, even those whose fathers I would not have deigned to place with the dogs of my flock... “From scarcity and hunger, they kept themselves apart, fleeing into arid places, “dark, desolate and deserted.

“They cut wild herbs near the shrubs and the roots of juniper trees to keep warm.

“They were chased away from among other men, and people shouted at them as at a thief. “They dwelt in the hollows of the streams, in the holes of the earth* and “rocks.” “They made noise among the shrubs, and they gathered among* the “thistles.” “They are men of nothingness and namelessness who have been brought low* lower than “the earth.” » (Job, XXX, I, 3-8).

The names of these savages are Semitic, if it is absolutely necessary to use the established abusive expression; but, speaking more precisely, the black languages claim direct ownership. As for the beings who bore these names, can we imagine anything more degraded? Do we not believe we read, in the words of the holy man, an exact description of the Boschisman and the Pelagian? In reality, the kinship which united the ancient Chorean to these stupid Negroes is intimate. We recognize in these three branches of the Melanian species, not the very type of Negroes, but a degree of degradation to which this branch of humanity alone can fall. I am willing to admit that the oppression exercised by the Hamites on these miserable beings, like that of the Kaffirs on the Hottentots and the Malays on the Pelagians, can be considered as the immediate cause of their degradation. Let us be certain, however, that such an excuse, found by modern philanthropy for stupidity and its opprobrium, never needed to be invoked for the populations of our family. Certainly there was no lack of victims there any more than among the blacks and yellows. The vanquished peoples, the vexed, tyrannized, ruined peoples have met there and will meet there in crowds. But as long as an active drop of white blood persists in a nation, the degradation, sometimes individual, never becomes general. We will cite, yes, we will cite multitudes reduced to an abject condition, and

It will be said that misfortune alone could have led them there. We will see these wretches inhabiting the bushes, devouring lizards and snakes alive, wandering naked on the shores, sometimes losing the greater part of the words necessary to form a language, and losing them with the sum of the ideas or needs that these words contain. represented, and the missionary will find no other solution to this sad problem than the cruelties of a despotic conqueror and the lack of food. It is a mistake. Let's take a better look. The people reduced to this tiny level will always be Negroes and Finns, and, on no page of history, will the most unfortunate whites see their memory so shamefully consecrated. Thus the primitive annals cannot show us our white ancestors in the wild; on the contrary, they show us them endowed with aptitude and civilizing elements, and here is moreover a new principle which arises, and of which the succession of centuries will bring us a host of incessant demonstrations: these glorious ancestors never could have been brought by the most overwhelming misfortunes to this dishonorable point from which they had not come. This, it seems to me, is great proof of their absolute superiority over the rest of the human species. The Choreans stopped resisting and disappeared. Dispossessed of the little that remained to them by their parents, sons of Esau, children of Oolibama, Edomites263they died out in the face of civilization, as the aborigines of North America are dying out today. They played no political role. Their expeditions were nothing but brigandage. We know from the story of Goliath that they had no other role than to serve the hatred of their despoilers against the Israelites. As for the Jews, they remained faithful to the Ninevite influence as long as the Semites ruled it. Later, when the scepter had passed into the hands of the Zoroastrian Arians, as racial relations no longer existed between the rulers of Mesopotamia and the nations of the southwest, there could be political obedience: there was no more communion of ideas. But these considerations would be premature here. Before descending to the periods in which they must find their place, there remain many facts for me to examine, among which those relating to Egypt immediately demand attention.

Book second

Chapter V The Egyptians, the Ethiopians. Until now there has only been a question of a single civilization, emerging from the mixture of the white race of the Hamites and the Semites with the blacks, and which I have called Assyrian. It acquired an influence not only long, not only lasting, but eternal, and it is not too much to consider it, even today, as much more important in its consequences than all those which have enlightened the world, except the last.

However, to the idea of the supremacy of domination, it would be inaccurate to add that of anteriority of existence. The plains of lower Asia have not seen the flowering of regular states before any other country on earth. The extreme antiquity of Hindu establishments will be discussed later; For the moment I will speak of the Egyptian governments, the founding of which is probably roughly synchronous with that of the Ninevite countries. The first question to be debated is the origin of the civilizing part of the nation inhabiting the Nile valley. The physiology questioned responds with very satisfactory precision; the oldest statues and paintings irrefutably show the presence of the white type.264The head of the statue known in the British Museum under the name of Young Memnon has often been cited with good reason, for the beauty and nobility of its features.265. Likewise, in other figured monuments, the foundation of which goes back precisely to the most distant eras, the priests, the kings, the military leaders belong, if not to the perfectly pure white race, at least to a variety which does not is not yet ruled out much266. However, the enlargement of the face, the size of the ears, the relief of the cheekbones, the thickness of the lips are all frequent characteristics in the representations of hypogeums and temples, and which, varied to the extreme and graduated from one hundred manners, do not allow us to cast doubt on the fairly strong infusion of black blood of both varieties, with flat and frizzy hair267. There is nothing to oppose, in this matter, to the testimony of the constructions of Medinet-Abou. Thus we can admit that the Egyptian population had to combine the following elements: blacks

with flat hair, Negroes with woolly heads, plus white immigration, which gave life to this whole mixture. The difficulty is to decide to which branch of the noble family this last term of the alloy belonged. Blumenbach, citing the head of Rhamses, compares it to the Hindu type. This observation, while correct as it is, unfortunately cannot suffice to form a firm judgment, because the extreme variety presented by the Egyptian types of different periods hesitates a lot, as it is easy to imagine, between the Melanian data and the white traits. Everywhere, in fact, even in the head attributed to Rhamses, features that are still very beautiful and very close to the white type are however already sufficiently altered, by the effects of mixtures, to present a beginning of degradation which confuses ideas and prevents conviction. to settle down. In addition to this decisive reason, we must never forget that physiognomic appearances often provide only very imperfect reasons when it comes to deciding on nuances.268. So if physiology is enough to teach us that the blood of white people flowed in the veins of the Egyptians, it cannot tell us from which branch this blood was borrowed, whether it was Hamite or Arian. She does enough for us, however, by asserting the fact in broad terms and by completely overturning the opinion of De Guignes, according to which the ancestors of Sesostris were a Chinese colony, a hypothesis which today has been completely ruled out. discussion. History, more explicit than physiology, is nevertheless horrifying by the excessive distance to which it seems to want to refer and hide the origins of the Egyptian nation.269. After so many centuries of research and effort, we have not yet been able to agree on the chronology of the kings, on the composition of the dynasties, and even less on the synchronisms which unite the facts that happened in the valley of the Nile to events accomplished elsewhere. This corner of human annals has never ceased to be one of the most moving, most variable terrains of science, and at every moment a discovery or just a theory moves it. There is no choice here between the brilliant opinions of Mr. Bunsen and the more modest approach of Sir Gardiner Wilkinson. I would be careful not to want to exclude some and confide only in the other. It is possible that the publication of the last part, still unknown, of theÆgyptens Stelle in der Welt-Geschichte, elevates the assertions of the learned Prussian diplomat to the height of

irrefutable demonstration. While awaiting this great result, and despite the tendency that I might have to eagerly adopt a doctrine which relates so well to the opinions of this book, the most prudent thing is, without a doubt, to stick, for the main thing, in the English author's way of seeing.

According to the latter, we should place the most brilliant moment of the civilization, arts and military power of Egypt, in the strictly historical period between the reign of Osirtasen, king of the 18edynasty, and that of Diospolite of the 19e, Rhamses III, the Mi-A-Moun of monuments, that is to say between the year 1740 and the year 1355 BC.270. However, this splendor was not at its beginning. The time when the pyramids were built goes back further, and it is on these mysterious testimonies that Mr. Bunsen has mainly focused his most ingenious attempts at decipherment. Let us calculate, with the method of explanation most commonly applied to the story of Eratosthenes, that the pyramids located north of Memphis, generally considered to be the oldest, were built around the year 2120 BC by Suphis and his brother Sensuphis. Thus, in 2120 BC, Egypt would have already presented a very advanced state of civilization capable of undertaking and bringing to a successful conclusion the most astonishing works ever accomplished by the hand of man. White emigration had therefore taken place before this time, since each group of pyramids belongs to a different age, and each pyramid, in particular, must have cost enough effort so that a single generation could not undertake the construction of several271. Do we want to suppose that a Hamite branch advanced to the regions of the Nile, between Syene and the sea, and founded Egyptian civilization there? This hypothesis reverses itself. Why would these Hamites, after having established a considerable State, then break all relations with the other peoples of their race, confining themselves far from the route followed by the latter, by themselves, in the migrations towards Africa? , far from the Mediterranean, far from the Delta, to invent there, in isolation, a completely selfish civilization, hostile on a thousand points to that of the Black Hamites? How could they have adopted a language so remarkably different from the idioms of their peers? We do not see a reasonable response to these objections. THE

Egyptians are therefore not Hamites, and we must turn in another direction. The ancient Egyptian language consists of three parts. One belongs to black languages. The other, coming from the contact of these black languages with the idiom of the Hamites and the Semites, produces this mixture which we name after the second of these races. Finally, a third part presents itself, very mysterious, very original, no doubt, but which, on several points, seems to betray Arian affinities and a certain kinship with Sanskrit.272. This important fact, if firmly established, might be considered as concluding the discussion, and might serve to trace the route of the white settlers of Egypt, from the Punjab to the mouth of the Indus, and thence into the upper Nile valley. Unfortunately, although indicated, it is not clear and can only serve as a clue273. However, it is not impossible to find props for it. The lower regions of Egypt have long been considered to have been a primitive part of the country of Misr. This was an erroneous opinion. The places where Egyptian civilization established its most ancient splendors are entirely above the Delta. Outside of the Arabian coast, because the sterile nature of the soil did not allow large settlements there, ancient colonization did not stray too far from it and did not yet seek to reach the shores of the Mediterranean. This is because, probably, she did not want to break all relations with the old homeland. Despite the sands, despite the rocks which border the gulf through which immigration could have taken place, commercial ports existed on these shores, among others, Philoteras274, all connected to the fertile center where the populations mainly moved, by means of stations established in the desert, Wadi-Djasous, for example, whose wells we know were repaired by Amounm-Gori (1686 BC, according to Wilkinson; at an earlier date, according to Mr. Chevalier Bunsen), and when the Egyptians possessed nothing on the Palestinian side. There is even reason to believe that the emerald mines of Djebel-Zabara were already exploited before this time. In the tombs of the Pharaohs of the 18e

dynasty, lapis lazuli and other precious stones, originating from India, are found in abundance. I am not talking here about the porcelain vases, which undoubtedly came from China, and discovered in hypogeums whose founding date is unknown. The latter

This circumstance alone is sufficient to give the right to attribute these monuments and their contents to a very remote period.275.

From the fact that the Egyptians were established in the center of the Nile valley, I conclude that they did not belong to the Hamite and Semitic nations, whose route to West Africa was, on the contrary, the Mediterranean shore. From the fact that they bear, in all figurative representations, the obviously Caucasian character, I conclude that the civilizing part of the nation had a white origin. From the Arian traces which are found in their language, I also conclude, from now on, their primitive identity with the Sanskrit family. As we move forward in examining the people of Isis, many details will confirm, one after another, these premises. I have shown that in the most distant historical periods, the Egyptians had little or no contact with the Hamite or Semitic peoples and the countries inhabited by these peoples; while on the contrary, they appear to have maintained close relations with the maritime nations of the southeast. Their activity turned so naturally in this direction, the resulting transactions had such a degree of importance, that in the time of Solomon the trade between the two countries exceeded, for a single import trip, the value of 80 million of our francs 276. While noting the Sanskrit origin of the civilizing core of the race, we should not deny that, from a very ancient period, this race was strongly impregnated with the blood of blacks and also mixed with numerous Hamite swarms and sons of Sem. I cited, on this point, the authority of Juba, which recognizes the residents of the Nile, from Syene to Meroe, of Arab origin.277. Despite this multiple descent, the Egyptians believed and called themselves indigenous. They were in fact, as heirs, by the blood of the Melanian aborigines. However, if we want to focus on the noblest part of their genealogy, we will refuse to share their opinion, and, persisting in considering them as immigrants, not so much from the north and east as from southeast, we will note in the constitution of their morals the very apparent traces of the filiation that ignorance made them deny. To the ferocious religion of the Assyrian nations, the Egyptians opposed the magnificence of a cult, if not more ideal, at least more human, and which, capable of having abolished at the time of the ancient empire, under the first

successors of Menes278, the Negro custom of hieratic massacres, had never dared to try to revive it. The general principles of religious art practiced in Thebes and Memphis were certainly not afraid of producing the ugly, but they did not seek too much for the horrible, and although the image of Typhon and others are quite repulsive, the Egyptian divinity favors grotesque forms rather than the contortions of the wild beast, or the grimaces of the cannibal. These deviations of taste, mixed with a true character of greatness and obviously controlled by the black quantity infused into the race, were dominated by the special value of the white part, which, superior as far as one must judge, according to this In fact, at the Chamo-Semitic tributary, it was gentler, and forced the black element to abound in ridicule, abandoning the atrocious. However, it would be an exaggeration to praise the populations along the Nile too much. If, from the point of view of morality, we must congratulate a society for being more ridiculous than wicked, from that of force, we must pity it. The Assyrian nations had the guilty misfortune of bastardizing their consciences at the feet of the monstrous images of Astarte, of Baal, of Melkart, of these horrible idols found in the soil of Sardinia as well as under the threshold of the gates of Khorsabad; but the people of Thebes and Memphis were, for their part, degraded enough, by their alliance with the aboriginal race, to prostitute their adoration to what is most humble, both the vegetable kingdom and animal nature. Let's not talk here about thecapello cobra, whose symbolic cult, common to the populations of India and Egypt, was perhaps only an import from the mother country279. Let's also leave out crocodiles and everything that can be feared, the eternal cult of those who have black blood in their veins. Infatuation for harmless beings, like the goat, the cat, the beetle; for vegetables which offered nothing but the very vulgar in their forms and in their merits: this is what is particular to Egypt, so that the Negro influence, while showing itself tamed, does not appear there. was no less felt than in Canaan and in the lands of Nineveh. The absurd reigned alone; it was only more complete and the Melanian action, so naturally powerful, only differed in intensity and form according to the particular value of the white influence, which still directed it while allowing itself to be obscured by it. . Hence the differences between the two Assyrian and Egyptian nationalities.

I do not completely confuse the cult of Apis, nor especially the deep respect shown to the cow and the bull, with the cult of plants. Worship, as homage paid to the Divinity, is a testimony of somewhat excessive respect, no doubt; and when we give it to the created thing, the feeling from which this error is born can very well relate to the same source as the other condemnable apotheoses280. But, deep down in Egyptian sympathy for the bovine race, there is something foreign to pure and simple fetishism. We must unscrupulously link it to the ancient pastoral habits of the white race, and, like the veneration given to the cobra di capello, assign it a Hindu origin. It is madness whose source is not crude. I would make the same reservation for other very striking similarities, such as the character of Typhon, the love of the lotus and, above all, the particular physiognomy of the cosmogony which is very close to Brahmanical ideas. In truth, it is sometimes dangerous to add too explicit faith to the conclusions drawn from similar comparisons. Ideas can often travel half-dead and come to regenerate on a terrain suitable for making them successful, after having passed through many environments. Thus would be disappointed the hopes that one could have conceived of their presence at two extreme points, to note a racial identity among their different owners. This time, however, it's hard to be suspicious. The most unfavorable hypothesis for direct communication between the Hindus and the Egyptians would be to suppose that the theological notions of the former would have passed from the sacred territory into Gedrosia, from there among the various Arab tribes, to finally fall among the latter. Now, the Gedrosians were miserable barbarians, filthy trash of the black tribes281. The Arabs devoted themselves entirely to the notions of the Hamites, and we do not find a trace, among them, of those in question. These therefore came directly from India, without intermediate transmission. This is another great argument in favor of the Arian origin of the people of the Pharaohs.

I will not consider quite as conclusive a particularity which, at first glance, is nevertheless very striking. This is the existence, in both countries, of the caste system. This institution seems to carry within itself such a stamp of originality that it gives every possible temptation to consider it as only being able to be the

result of a single source, and to conclude from its presence among several peoples their original identity. But, by thinking about it a little, we have no difficulty in convincing ourselves that the genealogical organization of social functions is only a direct consequence of the idea of inequality of races among themselves, and that wherever there have been victors and vanquished, mainly when these two poles of the State were visibly separated by physiological barriers, the desire was born among the strong to retain power for their descendants, compelling them to keep pure, as far as possible, this same blood whose virtues they considered as the sole cause of their domination. Almost all the branches of the white race have tried, for a moment, the outline of this exclusive system, and if they have not generally pushed it as far as the guardians of the Vedas and the followers of Osiris, it is that the populations among whom they found themselves were already too closely related to them when they decided to make themselves inaccessible. In this respect, all white societies started too late; the Egyptians, like the others, and even the Brahmins. Their claim could only arise after experience of the disadvantages to be avoided. It therefore only constituted a more or less impotent effort. Thus, the existence of castes does not in itself presuppose the identity of peoples, since it exists among the Germans, among the Etruscans, among the Romans as in Thebes, just as in Videha. However, one could respond that, if the separatist idea must occur wherever two unequal races are present, it is not the same for the varied applications which have been made of it, and we will insist on this great resemblance in the systems of Egypt and India: the perpetual constraint of lineages to the profession of their ancestors. This, in fact, is the connection. There is also the dissimilarity, and this is it: in Egypt, provided that a son fulfilled the same functions as his father, the law was satisfied; the mother could come from any descent, except from a family of shepherds. This exception against herdsmen, a forced corollary of this other which closed the entrance to the sanctuaries to them, very well confirms the tolerance of the rule. Moreover, examples abound. Kings marry negresses, witness Amenoph 1er. Kings are mulattoes like Amenoph II, and society, faithful to the letter of the institution, does not seem to have taken any care to observe it, nor even to understand its spirit.

Finally, here are two final proofs, and they are certainly the strongest. The Egyptian annals give the date of the institution of castes and honor one of their first kings, the third of the 3edynasty, the Sesonchosis of the scoliast of the Argonautics, the Sesostris of Aristotle. Second argument: the ancient antiquity to which the time when the Arian emigrants left the mouths of the Indus to head towards the west would have to be postponed makes the Sanskrit origin of the law inadmissible, given that then it certainly did not exist in the very country to which a sort of classical reputation is attached to it. I have just proven that I am not trying to strengthen my opinion of an argument that I consider fragile. Now I will add that in pronouncing myself against all direct conclusions to be drawn from the simultaneous existence of castes in India and in Egypt, I in no way claim to affirm that certain collateral inductions cannot be extracted from them, which do not leave not only to corroborate in a very useful way the principle of the community of origin: such is the equal veneration for the ministers of religion, their long domination and the dependence in which they knew how to retain the military caste, even when it He wore the crown, a triumph that the Hamite priesthood was unable to achieve, and which also brought glory and strength to the civilizations of the Indus and the Nile. This is because the Ariane race is above all religious. We must also observe the constant intervention of priests in the most intimate habits and acts of the domestic hearth.282. In Egypt, as well as in India, we see the men of the temples regulating everything, even the choice of food, and establishing, on this subject, almost the same discipline. In short, although the number of castes does not correspond, the hierarchy is quite similar in the two territories.283 This is all that can be useful to note about facts, apparently secondary, but which have the advantage of allowing themselves to be brought together very easily, separated fragments of a primitive unity, if not of institutions, at least of instincts, as well as blood.

The oldest monuments of Egyptian civilization are found in the upper and middle parts of the country284. Neglecting the north and the northeast, the first dynasties left traces of an obvious predilection for the opposite direction, and their communications with India must necessarily have multiplied their relations with the countries located

on this whole, such as the region of the Kuschite Arabs, the eastern coast of Africa and, perhaps, some of the great islands of the Ocean285.

However, nothing indicates on all these points, except the Sinai peninsula, a regularly dominating action, and it is not the same if we turn towards the south and towards West Africa.286. There, the Egyptians appear as masters. Also the main theater of the ancient Egyptian civilization allows the Nile to descend to the sea without extending with its lower course; while he goes back beyond Meroe and even leaves it to advance into the western region, under the palm trees of the oasis of Ammon. The ancients realized this situation when they assigned the geographical name ofKousch287,both to Upper Egypt and part of Middle Egypt as well as to Abyssinia, Nubia and the districts of Yemen inhabited by the descendants of the Black Hamites. Failing to take this point of view, there has been much concern about the true value of this name, and too often we have exhausted ourselves in the impossible task of creating a positive topographical meaning for it. This word is like so many others: India, Syria, Ethiopia, Illyria, vague designations which have constantly varied according to the times and political movements. The best we can do is not try to attribute to them a scientific correctness that their proper use does not imply. I will therefore make no effort to specify the borders of this country of Kush, as Ethiopia is thus designated, and, considering that, among the territories it embraces, Egypt, incontestably, takes precedence over all the others, and rallies them around its superior provinces in a common civilization, I will take advantage of the fact that the word exists, to point out that it could be used very aptly to name both the hearth and the conquests of this ancient culture, if exclusively facing the south, and foreign to the shores of the Mediterranean. The pyramids are the imposing remains of this primitive glory. They were built by the first dynasties which, extending from Menes to the time of Abraham and a little below, have, until now, lent themselves so much to discussion and so little to certainty.288. All that is useful to note here is that there, as in Assyria, the government begins by being exercised by the gods, from the gods to the priests, from the priests to the military leaders.289. It's the Negro idea

which reappears in the same form and aroused by very similar circumstances. The gods are the whites, the priests, the mulattoes of the hieratic caste. The kings are the armed leaders, authorized by the community of white origin to claim the sharing of the empire, that is to say to seize the government of bodies while leaving that of souls to their rivals. We can assume that the struggle was long and well sustained, that the pontiffs did not easily allow themselves to be wrested from the crown or driven from the throne, because military royalty had all the characteristics, not of a victory, but of a compromise. The sovereign could belong indifferently to one or the other caste, that of the pontiffs or that of the warriors. This is the concession. The restriction follows: if the sovereign was of the second category, he had to, before entering into the enjoyment of royal rights, be admitted among the servants of the temples and learn in the sciences of the sanctuary290. Once he had become a hierophant in form and in fact, and only then, the happy soldier could call himself king, and, throughout the rest of his life, showing boundless respect for religion and the priesthood, he must, in his private conduct and his most intimate habits, never deviate from the rules of which the priests were the authors and guardians. Down to the depths of the most particular withdrawal from royal existence, the master's rivals had their eyes fixed. When it came to public affairs, the dependence was even closer. Nothing was executed without the participation of the hierophant: member of the sovereign council, his voice had the weight of the oracles, and as if all these bonds of servitude had still seemed too weak to safeguard this enormous share of power, the kings knew that after their death they would have to undergo judgment, not from their people, but from their priests; and in a nation which had such particular ideas about the existence beyond the grave, one can easily imagine what terror entertained in the mind of the most daring despot the idea of a trial which, aroused at his helpless corpse could deprive him of the most desirable happiness according to national ideas, a magnificent burial and the last honors. These future judges were therefore constantly formidable, and it was not too prudent to spare them throughout life.291. The existence of a king of Egypt thus chained, watched, thwarted on the most important points as well as in the most futile details, would have been intolerable, if some compensation had not been offered to him.

Religious rights aside, the monarch was all-powerful, and the most refined respect was constantly offered to him by the people on their knees. He was not God, undoubtedly, and he was not worshiped during his lifetime; but he was venerated as the absolute arbiter of life and death, and also as a sacred personage, for he was pontiff himself. The greatest of the State were hardly noble enough to serve it in the most humble jobs. It was his sons who had the honor of running behind his chariot, in the dust, carrying his parasols. These customs were not unrelated to what happened in Assyria. The absolute character of power, and the abjection that it imposed on subjects, were also very completely encountered at Nineveh. However, the slavery of kings to priests does not seem to have existed there, and if we turn to another branch of the black Semo-Chamites, if we look at Tyre, we find there indeed a slave king; but it is an aristocracy which dominates it, and the pontiff of Melkart, appearing in the ranks of the patricians as a force, does not represent the sole or dominant force there. Considering similarities and dissimilarities from an ethnic point of view, the similarities are shown in the debasement of subjects and in the enormity of power. The prerogative exercised over brutal beings is complete in Egypt as in Assyria, as in Tyre. The reason is that, in all countries where the black element was or is subject to white power, authority takes on a constant character of atrocity, on the one hand, from the need to be obeyed by unintelligent beings, and, on the other hand, to the very idea that these beings have of the unlimited rights of power to their submission. As for the dissimilarities, their source is that the civilizing branch of Egypt was superior in merit to the branches of Ham and Shem. From then on, the Egyptian Sanskrits were able to bring, into the country of their conquest, a quite different and certainly more moral organization; for it is not a point to be disputed that, wherever despotism is the only possible government, priestly authority, even when pushed to the extreme, always has the most salutary results, because, at least, it is she is always more imbued with intelligence. After the kings and priests of Egypt, we must not forget the nobles, who, like the Kchattryas of India, alone had the right to bear arms and the job of defending the country. Assuming that they acquitted themselves with distinction, they appear to have put no less

of energy to oppress their inferiors: I just indicated this earlier, and it is not bad to return to it. The lower people of Egypt were as unhappy as possible, and their existence, barely guaranteed by the laws, found itself constantly exposed to the violence of the upper classes. He was forced to work tirelessly; agriculture devoured both his sweat and his health; housed in miserable cabins, he died there of fatigue and illness without anyone being concerned, and of the admirable harvests he produced, of the marvelous fruits he grew, nothing belonged to him. He was barely given an insufficient share in his food. This is the testimony given to the state of the lower classes in Egypt by the writers of Greek antiquity.292. In truth, we can also cite, in a contrary sense, the lamentations of the Israelites tired of eating the manna of the desert. These nomads then regretted the onions of captivity. But we also justly incriminate the murmurs of the guilty nation, as coming from an inconceivable excess of baseness and dejection. Those who uttered these blasphemies forgot that they had only left the country of Misr to flee an oppression that had become exorbitant, which was, more or less, only the ordinary regime of the indigenous people. But he was powerless to imitate the children of Israel in their Exodus, and, born of an infinitely less noble race, he also felt his misery much less. The flight of the Israelites, considered from this point of view, is not one of the least examples of the resolution with which the genius of people closely allied to the white family knows how to avoid descending to too deep a degree of degradation. . Thus the political regime imposed on the lower population was at least as harsh in Egypt as in the Hamite and Semitic countries, in terms of the intensity of slavery and the nullity of the subjects' rights. However, deep down he was less bloodthirsty because religion, clement and gentle, did not demand the homicidal horrors in which the gods of Canaan, Babylon and Nineveh took pleasure.293. In this respect, the Egyptian peasant, worker, and slave were less to be pitied than the Asian peat; in this respect alone, and if these wretches should not fear ever falling under the holy knife of the priest, they would crawl all their lives at the feet of the high castes. They too were employed like beasts of burden, to carry out these gigantic works that all centuries will admire.

They were the ones who carried the blocks intended for the erection of the monolithic statues and obelisks. It was this black or almost black population whose crowds died digging the canals, while the whiter castes imagined, ordered and supervised the work, and, when it was completed, rightly reaped the glory. That humanity groans at such a terrible spectacle is appropriate; but, after a sufficient tribute of indignation and regret, we appreciate the terrible reasons which forced the popular masses of Egypt and Assyria to patiently accommodate themselves to such a harshly imposed yoke: there was among the plebe of these countries invincible ethnic necessity to submit to the whims of all masters, on the condition however that these masters would retain the talisman which assured them obedience, that is to say, enough of the blood of whites to justify their rights to domination. This condition was certainly met in the good times of Egyptian power. At the most illustrious moments of the Assyrian empire, the thrones of Babylon and Nineveh did not see nobler profiles parade before the eyes of the kings than those whose majesty we still admire on the sculptures of Beni-Hassan294. But it is quite obvious that this purity, even if relative, could not last indefinitely. The castes were not organized in such a way as to preserve it sufficiently. There is therefore no doubt that, if Egyptian civilization had had no other reason for existing than the sole influence of the Hindu type to which it owed its life, it would not have had the longevity that we can imagine. attribute to him, and long before Rhamses III, who ends the era of greatest splendor, long before the XIIIecentury BC, decadence would have begun. What sustained this civilization was the blood of its Asian enemies, Hamites and Semites, who, on several occasions and in different ways, came to somewhat regenerate it. Without commenting strictly on the nationality of the Hyksos, we cannot doubt that they belonged to a race allied to the white species.295. From a political point of view, their arrival was a misfortune, but a misfortune which nevertheless refreshed the national blood and revived its essence. The wars with the Asian peoples, sustained for a long time on equal terms, although it is prudent to doubt many of these conquests extended as far as the Caspian Sea, of which Asia offers no traces either in its history or in its monuments, these wars of Sesostris, Rhamses and other happy princes, made

the captives of Canaan, Assyria and Arabia flowed into the interior nomes, and their blood, although mixed itself, somewhat tempered the savagery of the blood of the blacks, that the lower classes, and especially the neighborhood and intimate contact with the Abyssinian and Nubian tribes, flowed incessantly into the veins of the nation. Then, we must take into account this double Hamite and Semitic current which, for so many centuries, skirted Middle Egypt and penetrated it. It was by this route that the half-white hordes spread over the western coast of Africa, and the population which was formed there later brought to the State of the successors of Menes a mixed race, in which the blood Hinduism did not exist, and which drew all its merit from the numerous mixtures with the civilizing groups of Lower Asia. From these successive alluvial deposits of white principles were born the nations which defended the Kushite civilization from too premature a disappearance, and at the same time, as these alluvial deposits were never very rich, the Egyptian spirit was able to always keep a distance from democratic notions in the end. triumphant in Tire and Sidon, because its populace never rose to such improvement in blood that it could conceive ambitious thought and acquire the faculty of becoming the equal of its masters. All the revolutions took place between the upper castes. The hieratic and royal organization was not attacked. If sometimes Melanian dynasties, like that of which Tirhakah was the hero 296, appeared at the head of the government of a nome, their triumph was short: it was only an elevation profitable to certain leaders, an elevation resulting from the fortuitous games of politics, and which never inspired those it glorified the temptation to use their omnipotence to establish this equality of rights sought by the groups, in fact almost equal, who quarreled in the streets and squares of the towns of Phoenicia. This is how the causes of Egyptian stability become clear.

This stability very early became stagnation, because Egypt only really grew as long as the supremacy of the Hindu branch which had founded it persisted: what the other white races provided it in support was enough to prolong its civilization, and not to develop it. Nevertheless, even in decadence, and although Egyptian art from times after the 19edynasty, that is to say at Menephthah (1480 BC), only presents monuments at distant intervals

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

worthy of rivaling in beauty of execution, and never again in grandeur, with those of preceding ages297, nevertheless, I say, Egypt always remained so far above the countries located to the south and southwest of its territory, that it did not cease to be for them the center from which their life emanated.

This civilizing prerogative was, however, far from being absolute, and, in order not to err, it is necessary to note that the civilization of Abyssinia came from two sources. One, without doubt, was indeed Egyptian and always showed itself to be the most abundant and the most fertile; but the other carried out an action which is also worth noting. It was due to a very ancient emigration of the black Hamites first, the Cushite Arabs, then of the Semites, the Himyarite Arabs, who both crossed the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb and brought the populations of Africa a part of what they themselves possessed of Assyrian culture. Judging from the situation occupied by these nations on the southern coast of Arabia, and the extensive trade in which they took part with India, a trade which appears to have determined the founding of a Sanskrit city on their coast298, it is quite probable that their own ideas must have received a certain Ariane tint, proportionate to the ethnic mixture which could have been made by these merchants with the Hindu family. In any case, and by extending as much as possible the sum of their civilizing riches, we have, in the example of the Phoenicians, the measure of the degree of development to which these populations annexed to the race of Assyria reached, a measure which did not go far beyond the ability to understand and accept what the whiter branches, that is to say the nations of Mesopotamia, had the exclusive power to create and develop. The Phoenicians, however skilled they were, did not rise above this humble rank, and when we consider, however, that their blood was constantly renewed and improved by at least half-white emigrations, which, quite certainly , were lacking in the Himyarites, insofar as the mixture of them with the Hindus could be neither very intimate nor very fruitful, we are led to conclude that the civilization of the extreme Arabs, although Assyrian, was not comparable in merit and splendor to the reflection enjoyed by the Chanaanite cities299. Following this decreasing proportion, the emigrants who crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and came to settle in Ethiopia, did not bring

that a fragmentary civilization, and the black races of Nubia and Abyssinia could not have been seriously or long affected, either in their physical type or in their moral value, if the neighborhood of Egypt had not not one day made up, more largely than usual, for the poverty of ordinary gifts coming from the civilizations of Misr and Arabia. I do not mean here that Abyssinia and the surrounding countries have become the scene of a very advanced society. Not only was the culture of this country never original, not only was it always limited to the simple and distant imitation of what was done, whether in the Arab cities of the coast, or in Arian India and in the Egyptian capitals. , Thebes, Memphis, and later Alexandria, but still the imitation proved neither complete nor extensive.

I know that I am uttering very irreverent words here and which cannot fail to outrage the panegyrists of the Negro species, because we are well aware that, with party spirit getting involved, the flatterers of this fraction of humanity were in the mood to win titles of glory, and did not hesitate to present the Abyssinian civilization as typical, coming only from the intellect of their favorites and prior to any other culture. From there, taken with a noble impulse that nothing can stop, they caused this so-called black civilization to spread throughout Egypt, and pulled it further towards Asia. In truth, physiology, linguistics, history, monuments, common sense, unanimously protest against this way of representing the past. But the inventors of this beautiful system are not easily surprised. Embarrassed by little knowledge, armed with a lot of audacity, it is likely that they will continue their journey and will not stop proposing Aksum for the capital of the world. These are eccentricities that I only mention to establish that they are not worth discussing.300. The scientific reality, for those who do not want to laugh, is that the Abyssinian civilization comes from the two sources that I have just indicated, Egyptian and Arab, and that the first especially dominated much over the second in the ancient age. It will always be difficult to establish at what time the first emigrations of the Cushites from Asia and the Himyarites took place. An opinion which dates from our XVIIecentury, and of which Scaliger was the author, only dated the invasion of the Joktanides in this African country to the time of Justinian. Job Ludolf refutes it very well and rightly prefers it

the feeling of Conringius. Without citing all his reasons, I will borrow two things from him: one, from an argument which at least fixes the mind on the very ancient antiquity of the Himyarite emigration301, and the other, of a sentence in which he characterizes the ancient Ethiopian language, and over which it is good not to let an obscurity reign which could suggest an apparent contradiction with what I have put forward about the predominance of the Egyptian element in Abyssinian civilization. First, the first point: Ludolf very skillfully reverses Scaliger's reasoning about the silence of Greek historians on the Himyarite emigration to Abyssinia. It proves that this silence had no other cause than the oblivion accumulated by a long series of centuries on a fact too frequent in the history of ancient ages for the observers of the time to have thought of recognizing it as importance. At the time when the Greeks began to concern themselves with the ethnology of the nations which, for them, were near the end of the world, these events were already too far away for their information, always quite incomplete on foreign annals, to be able to penetrate as far as -there. The silence of the Hellenic travelers means absolutely nothing, and does not invalidate the reasons drawn from the ancient community of worship, the physical resemblance, and finally the affinity of languages, all arguments that Ludolf puts forward very well. It is this point that we must especially talk about, and it constitutes my second borrowing.

This affinity between Arabic and the ancient Ethiopian language, or Gheez, does not create a relationship of descent; it is simply a consequence of the nature of the two idioms which classifies them both in the same group302. If gheez belongs to the Semitic family, it is not because it borrowed this character from Arabic. The purely black indigenous population of the country provided the broadest base, the richest fabric of this system. She possessed the elements, the principles, the determining causes even more perfectly than the Himyarites, since the latter had allowed the purity of the black idiom to be altered by the Arian memories remaining with the white part of their origin; and to throw into the language of civilized Ethiopia these traces of foreign action, it was not even strictly necessary that the intervention of the Semites was brought into play. We remember that these same Semitic elements are also found in ancient Egyptian303. Thus, without denying that the Himyarites brought to the language of Ethiopia

marks of their white origin, it must nevertheless be noted that such remains could also have come from Egyptian importation and, in any case, took the opportunity to increase in strength. Furthermore, certain elements, not only Aryan, but more particularly Sanskrit, deposited in ancient Egyptian, having passed from there into Gheez, give this language this triplicity of source existing in the idiom of the civilizers. Thus, the national language represents ethnic origins very well: much more loaded with Semitic, that is to say black, elements than Arabic and Egyptian in particular, it also had fewer Sanskrit traces than the latter.

Under 18eand 19edynasties (from 1575 to 1180 BC), the Abyssinians were subject to the Pharaohs and paid tribute304. The monuments show them bringing the riches and curiosities of their country to the royal stewards. These men, strongly marked with the Negro imprint, are covered in transparent muslin tunics supplied by factories in India or the cities of Arabia and Egypt. This short garment, reaching only to the knees, is held in place by a belt of worked leather, richly gilded and painted.305. A leopard skin attached to the shoulders makes a coat; necklaces fall on the chest, bracelets cinch the wrists, large metal earrings dangle from the ears, and the head is laden with ostrich feathers. Although this barbaric magnificence was not in conformity with Egyptian taste, it possessed it, and the imitation is felt in all the important parts of the costume, such as the tunic and the belt. Leopard skin was borrowed from Negroes by several hierophants. The nature of the tribute does not indicate an advanced people. These are raw products, for the most part, rare animals, livestock, and especially slaves. The troops also provided as auxiliaries did not have the learned organization of the Egyptian or Semitic corps, and fought irregularly. Nothing therefore, at that moment, indicated a great development, even in the simple imitation of what the victors, the masters, most commonly practiced. We must go down to a lower era to find, with more refinement, the ethnic cause of the innovations to which I have already alluded. At the time of Psammatik (664 BC), this prince, the first of a Saite dynasty, the 26eof Manetho, having dissatisfied the national army with his taste for Ionian-Greek and Carian-Semitic mercenaries, a

great military emigration took place towards Abyssinia, and 240,000 soldiers, abandoning women and children, went into the south never to return306. This is where the brilliant era of Abyssinia dates from and we can now speak of monuments in this region, where one would look in vain for earlier ones that were truly national.307.

Two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian heads of family, belonging to the military caste, undoubtedly very mixed with black blood, and, probably, having received a certain contribution of the white race through Hamite and Semitic intermediaries, such a group coming adding to what Abyssinia already possessed of the faculties of the superior race, could determine in the whole of the national movement an activity capable of separating it further from the stagnation of the black race308. But it would have been very surprising and completely inexplicable if an original civilization, or only a masterfully made copy, had emerged from this mixture where, ultimately, black continued to dominate. The monuments presented only mediocre imitations of what was seen at Thebes, Memphis and elsewhere. Nothing, not a clue, not a trace, shows a personal creation of the Abyssinians, and their greatest glory, what has made their name illustrious, is, it must be admitted, merit, in itself quite pale, to have been the last of the peoples located in Africa among whom the most meticulous research was able to discover the vestiges of a true political and intellectual culture.

In the times of the Roman Empire, world trade having greatly expanded, the Abyssinians played a role behind the Himyarites. The genius of ancient Egypt was then completely extinct. Hellenized colonists penetrated as far as Nubia, and the Semitic element, brought by them, began to prevail over the memory of the Pharaohs. Gheez had a script borrowed from Arabia. However, despite everything, the natives of the country gave such little brilliance to their action, they were so poorly and so little known, their influence was so distant, so faded, that they remained constant, even for the most learned and the most insightful, in the state of half-enigmas. The advent of Christianity did not raise the level of their culture. In truth, persisting for some time longer in their habits of receiving everything from Egypt, and touched by the apostolic zeal of the first missionaries, they embraced the faith quite generally. They had already had the neighborhood of Arab tribes with which some invasions,

executed under Emperor Justin309, had strengthened their ancient ties, the adoption of certain Jewish ideas much noted later, and which agreed quite naturally with the Semitic portion of their blood

.

310

The Christianity brought by the Fathers of the desert, these terrible anchorites accustomed to the harshest austerities, to the most frightening macerations, even inclined to the most energetic mutilations, was likely to strike the imaginations of these people. They would most likely have been insensitive to the sweet and sublime virtues of Saint Hilary of Poitiers. The penances of a Saint Anthony or a Saint Egyptian Mary exercised unlimited authority over them, and it is thus that Catholicism, so admirable in its diversity, so universal in its powers, so complete in its deductions, does not was no less equipped to open the hearts of these companions of the gazelle, the hippopotamus and the tiger, than he was later to go, with Adam of Bremen, to speak reason to the Scandinavians and convince them. The Abyssinians, already more than half deserters from Egyptian civilization since the weakening of the upper provinces of the ancient empire of the Pharaohs, and more turned towards Yemen, remained for centuries in a sort of intermediate situation between complete barbarism and a slightly better social state; and, to continue the transformation of which they had become susceptible, a new supply of Semitic blood was necessary. The irruption which provided it took place 600 years AD: it was that of the Muslim Arabs. I place little emphasis on the few conquests carried out on different occasions by the Abyssinians in the Arabian peninsula. There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that, of two populations living opposite each other, the less noble one sometimes has temporary success. Abyssinia never gained enough from its victories in Yemen to form a lasting establishment there. However, the additional black blood that she brought did not contribute a little to hastening the submergence of the merit of the Himyarites.311. The relations of Arab populations with Ethiopia, during the time of Islamism, had a completely opposite ethnic meaning. Led, and largely executed by Ishmaelites, instead of bastardizing the species in the peninsula, they renewed it among the men of Africa. Neither Greece nor Rome, despite the glory of their name and the majesty of their examples,

had the power to draw the Abyssinians into the heart of their civilizations. The Semites of Mohammed carried out this conversion and obtained, not so much religious apostasies, which were never very complete, as numerous desertions from the old social form. The blood of the newcomers and that of the old inhabitants mixed abundantly. Without difficulty the minds recognized and understood each other, they had the same logic, they understood the facts in the same way. Hindu blood had dried up enough to have no further claim to domination. The costume, customs, principles of government and literary taste of the Arabs invaded memories of the past; but the work was not complete. Muslim civilization strictly speaking never penetrated well. In its most beautiful expression, it had the reason of being an ethnic combination too different from that of the Abyssinian populations. The latter were simply limited to spelling out the Semitic portion of Muslim culture, and until our days, Christian or Mohammedan, they have not had anything else, they have not had more and have not stopped to be the end, the extreme term, the frontier application of this Greco-Semitic civilization, as in the most distant antiquity, to which I am eager to return, they had also been only the echo of Egyptian perfection, supported by a memory of Assyria transmitted from hand to hand to her. The fantastic splendors of the court of Priest John, if we believe that he was the great Negu, existed only in the imagination of romantic travelers of times past.

For the first time, our research has just found in Ethiopia one of these annex countries of a great foreign civilization, possessing it only in an incomplete way and absolutely like the lunar disk made for the light of the sun. Abyssinia is to ancient Egypt what the Empire of Annam is to China, and Tibet to China and India312. These kinds of imitative or mixed societies offer the points where the spirit of the system is attached to go back against all the facts presented by history. This is where we like to disfigure the barely visible vestiges of a certain import, and to give them the value of primordial inspirations. It is there above all that we found weapons to defend this modern theory which wants that savage peoples are only degenerate peoples, a doctrine parallel to this other, that all men are great geniuses disarmed by circumstances.

This opinion, wherever it is applied, among the natives of the two Americas, among the Polynesians as among the Abyssinians, is an abuse of language or a profound error. Far from being able to attribute to the pressure of external facts the fatal numbness which has always weighed, with more or less force, on the cultivated nations of East Africa, we must be convinced that this is a closely inherent infirmity. to their nature; that these nations have never been perfectly, intimately civilized; that their most numerous ethnic elements have always been radically incapable of self-improvement; that the weak effects of fertility imported by veins of better blood were too insignificant to be able to last long; that their group fulfilled the simple role of unintelligent and temporary imitators of peoples made up of more generous elements. However, even in this Abyssinian nation and especially there, since it is at the extreme point, the happy energy of the blood of the whites still demands admiration. Certainly, what, after so many centuries, remains today in the veins of these populations is subdivided to an infinite extent. Moreover, before reaching them, how many heterogeneous stains had not attached themselves to it among the Himyarites, among the Egyptians, among the Muslim Arabs? However, where black blood has been able to contract this illustrious alliance, it retains its precious effects for incalculable times. If the Abyssinian ranks at the very lowest level of men bordering on civilization, he is, at the same time, the first of black peoples. He shook what was most abased by the Melanian species. The features of his face have become ennobled, his size has developed; it escapes this law of simple races to present only slight deviations from an immobile national type, and in the variety of Nubian physiognomies we even find, in a surprising way, traces, honorable in this case, of the mixed race origin. For intellectual value, although mediocre and now infertile, it at least presents a real superiority over that of several tribes of Gallas, oppressors of the country, more true blacks and more true barbarians in the full scope of the expression.

Book second

Chapter VI

The Egyptians were not conquerors; why their civilization remained stationary. There is no need to worry about the western oases, and in particular the oasis of Ammon. Egyptian culture reigned alone there, and probably was only ever possessed by the priestly families grouped around the sanctuaries. The rest of the population practiced little more than obedience. Let us therefore only concern ourselves with Egypt proper, where this question, the only important one, remains to be resolved almost in its entirety: did the greatness of Egyptian civilization correspond exactly to the greater or lesser concentration of blood? of the white race in the groups living in the country? In other words, this civilization, emerging from a Hindu migration and modified by Hamite and Semitic mixtures, always declined as the black background, existing under the three vital elements, gradually took over. ? Before Menes, the first king of the first human dynasty, Egypt was already civilized and had at least two considerable cities, Thebes and This. The new monarch united under his domination several small states that had until then been separated. The language had already taken on its own character. Thus the Hindu invasion and its alliance with the Hamites go back beyond this very ancient period, which was its crowning achievement. no story so far. The sufferings, dangers and fatigues of the first establishment form, as among the Assyrians, the age of the gods, the heroic era. This situation is not specific to Egypt: it is found in all the states that are starting out. As long as the difficult work of arrival lasts, as long as colonization remains uncertain, as the climate is not yet cleansed, nor food assured, nor the aborigines subdued, as the victors themselves, scattered in the muddy marshes, are too absorbed by the attacks that each individuality must face, the facts arrive without us collecting them; we have no other concern than preservation, if not conquest.

This period has an end. As soon as labor really bears its first fruits, as soon as man begins to enjoy that relative security towards which all his instincts lead him, and as a regular government,

organ of general feeling, is finally seated; at that moment, history begins, and the nation truly knows itself. This is what has happened, before our eyes, on several occasions, in the two Americas, since the discovery of the 15thecentury. The consequence of this observation is that truly antehistorical times have little value, either because they belong to uncivilizable races, or because they constitute, for white societies, periods of gestation where nothing is complete or coordinated. , and cannot entrust a set of logical facts to the memory of centuries. From the first Egyptian dynasties, civilization progressed so quickly that hieroglyphic writing was found; it was not perfected at the same time. There is no reason to suppose that the figurative character was immediately transformed, so as to simplify itself, and, at the same time, to idealize itself in a purely graphic form.313. Good criticism nowadays attaches, and very rightly, a high idea of civilizing superiority to the possession of a means of fixing thought, and the merit is all the greater as the means are less complicated. Nothing denotes in a people more depth of reflection, more accuracy of deduction, more power of application to the necessities of life, than an alphabet reduced to elements as simple as possible. As such, the Egyptians are far from being able to claim their invention to occupy one of the places of honor. Their discovery, always dark, always laborious to implement, throws them onto the lower rungs of the scale of cultivated nations. Behind them, there are only the Peruvians tying their dyed cords, their quipos, and the Mexicans painting their enigmatic drawings. Above them are the Chinese themselves; because, at least, the latter have frankly passed from the figurative system to a conventional expression of sounds, an operation, no doubt, still imperfect, but which, nevertheless, has enabled those who were content with it to bring together the elements of writing under a fairly limited number of keys. Moreover, how much is this effort, more skillful than that of the men of Thebes, still inferior to the intelligent combinations of the Semitic alphabets, and even to the cuneiform writings, less perfect, no doubt, than these which, in their turn, must yield the prize to the beautiful reform of the Greek alphabet, the last term of good of this kind, and which the Sanskrit system, however beautiful, does not equal! And why doesn't he equal it? It is only

because no race, as much as Western families, has been endowed, at the same time, with this power of abstraction which, united with the lively feeling of the useful, is the true source of the alphabet.

Thus, while considering hieroglyphic writing as a solid title of the Egyptian nation to take its place among civilized peoples, we cannot ignore the fact that the nature of this conception, even having reached its final perfections, does not class its inventors as under the Assyrian peoples. That's not all: in the fact of this sterilized idea, there is still something to notice. If the black peoples of Egypt had not been governed, even before the time of Menes, by white initiators, this first step in the discovery of hieroglyphic writing would certainly not have been taken. But, on the other hand, if the inaptitude of the black species had not, in turn, dominated the natural tendency of the Arians to perfect everything, hieroglyphic writing and, after it, the arts of Egypt would not have been struck by this immobility, which is not one of the least special characteristics of the civilization of the Nile. As long as the country was only subject to national dynasties, as long as it was directed, enlightened by ideas born on its soil and coming from its race, its arts could be modified in the parts; they never changed overall. No powerful innovation upset them. Rougher perhaps under 2eand the 3e dynasty, they did not obtain, under the 18eand 19e, that the softening of this harshness, and under the 29e, who preceded Cambyses, decadence is expressed only by the perversion of forms, and not by the introduction of hitherto unknown principles. The local genius grew old and did not change. Elevated, carried to the sublime as long as the white element exercised the preponderance, stationary as long as this illustrious element was able to maintain itself on the civilizing ground, decreasing every time that the black genius accidentally took the upper hand, it never recovered. The victories of the harmful influence were too constantly supported by the Melanian foundation on which the edifice rested. . We have always been struck by this mysterious drowsiness. The Greeks and Romans were astonished at this as we are, and since there is nothing that remains without an explanation, such as it is, we thought we were right in accusing the priests of having produced evil. 314

The Egyptian priesthood was dominating, without a doubt, friend of rest, enemy of innovations like all aristocracies. But what ! THE

Hamite, Semitic and Hindu societies also had pontificates that were vigorously organized and enjoyed vast influence. Where does it come from that, in these countries, civilization has moved, marched, gone through multiple phases; that the arts have progressed, that writing has changed forms and reached its perfection? It is simply that, in these different places, the power of the pontificates, immense as it may have been, was nothing compared to the action exerted by the successive layers of white blood, an inexhaustible source of life and power. The men of the sanctuaries themselves, imbued with the need for expansion which heated their chests, were not the last to find and create. It is to demean the value and the force of the eternal principles of social existence to suppose insurmountable obstacles in the essentially mobile and transitory fact of institutions. When, by these inventions of human convenience, civilization finds itself hampered in its progress, it, which created them solely to benefit from them, is perfectly equipped to undo them, and we can boldly decide that, when a diet lasts is that it suits those who tolerate it and do not change it. Egyptian society, having received into its bosom only very few new white tributaries, had no reason to renounce what, originally, it had found good and complete, and which continued to seem so to it. The Ethiopians, the Negroes, authors of the oldest and most numerous invasions, were not the people to transform the order of the empire. After having plundered it, they had only two alternatives: either to withdraw, or to obey the rules established before their arrival. The mutual relations of the ethnic elements of Egypt having only been modified, until the conquest of Cambyses, by the increasing inundation of the black race, there is nothing surprising in the fact that any movement began by slowing down, then stopped, and that the arts, writing, the whole of civilization, developed, until the seventh century BC, in a single direction, without abandoning none of the conventions which had initially served as props, and which ended up, following the rule, by constituting the most salient part of national originality. We have proof that, from the second dynasty, the influence of the defeated black race was already felt in the institutions, and, if we imagine the resolute oppression of the masters and their systematic contempt for the populations, we cannot will not doubt that, to obtain credibility in this way, it was necessary for the ideas of the subjects to be expressed through the mouths of powerful

interested, men placed so as to exercise the dominating prerogatives of the white race, while sharing to a certain point the feelings of the black. These men could not be other than mulattoes. The fact in question here is that which Jules Africanus relates in the following terms, to the reign of Kaïechos, second king of the Thinite dynasty: "Since this monarch, says the abbreviator, it has been established in law that Apis oxen in Memphis, and Mnevis in Heliopolis, and the Mendesian goat were gods. » I regret not finding, under the learned pen of Mr. Chevalier Bunsen, the sufficiently accurate translation of this sentence, which is more full of meaning than he attributes to it.315. Jules Africain does not say, as one could infer from the expressions used by the learned Prussian diplomat, that the cult of sacred animals was, forthe first time, introduced, but although it was officially recognized, being already old. As for this last point, I rely on Negroes for not having failed, from the origin of their species, to calculate religion on the basis of animality. If this adoration of all times needed to be consecrated by a decree to become legal, it is because, until then, it had not been able to rally the sympathies of the dominant part of society, and like this part dominant was of white origin, for such a serious revolution to take place against all Arian notions of truth, wisdom and beauty, the moral and intellectual sense of the nation had to have already suffered an unfortunate degradation. It was the consequence of innovations occurring in the nature of blood. From white, active society had become mixed race and, descending more and more into blackness, had, along the way, become associated with the idea that an ox and a goat deserved altars. We may be tempted to criticize this as a sort of contradiction. I seem to give all the reasons and gather all the causes of a merciless decadence in the very hands of the first king Menes and, yet, Egypt only began under him long centuries of illustration316. On closer inspection, the apparent difficulty disappears. We have already seen, in the Assyrian States, how slowly the ethnic fusion spread over a large area takes place. It is a real combat between its elements and, in addition to this general struggle whose outcome is very easy to specify, there are on a thousand particular points partial struggles where the influence to which is assured, by the reason of quantity, victory

definitive, nonetheless suffers momentary defeats, all the more multiplied as this influence finds itself grappling with a competitor, in itself, much more gifted and powerful. Just as its victory will be the end of everything, so also, as long as life, imported by the foreign principle, manifests itself, the power whose character is inertia receives failure after failure. All she can is to trace the circle from which her adversary ends up unable to escape, and which, shrinking more and more, will one day suffocate her. Thus it happened to the white element which directed the destiny of the Egyptian nation, in the midst and contrary to the tendencies of a too considerable mass of Melanian principles. As soon as these principles began to be quite noticeably mixed with him, they imposed on his discoveries, on his inventions, a limit which he could never make them cross. They restrained his genius and only allowed him to do works of patience and application. They were willing to let him always build these prodigious pyramids for which he had brought, from the vicinity of the Ural and Altai mountains, the inspiration and model. They also wanted the main improvements found in the early days of the establishment (because, there, everything that was truly genius dated from the highest antiquity) to continue to be applied; but, gradually, the merit of the execution grew at the expense of the conception, and, at the end of a period which, by extending it as much as possible, can hardly be extended beyond seven to eight centuries, the decadence began. After Rhamses III, around the middle of the thirteenth century BC.317, it was the end of all Egyptian greatness. We no longer lived except on the indications, each day fading, of ancient errors318. It is impossible that the most fervent admirers of ancient Egypt would not have been struck by a remark which forms a singular contrast with the halo with which the imagination surrounds this country. This remark casts an unfortunate shadow over the place he occupies among the splendors of the world: it is the almost complete isolation in which he lived vis-à-vis the civilized States of his time. . I am speaking, of course, of the ancient empire, and above all, as for the Assyrians, I do not bring down the text of my current considerations below the seventh century BC.319. In truth, the great name of Sesostris hovers over the entire history of primitive Egypt, and our mind, having become accustomed to chaining countless populations behind the chariot of this conqueror, lets itself go

easily to carry with him the Egyptian flags from the depths of Nubia to the Pillars of Hercules, from the Pillars of Hercules to the southern extremity of Arabia, from the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb to the Caspian Sea, and to to return to Memphis, still surrounded by the Thracians and these fabulous Pelasgians whose homelands the Egyptian hero is supposed to have subdued. It is a grandiose spectacle, but the reality raises objections.

To begin with, the personality of the conqueror is not itself very clear. We have never agreed on the age at which it flowered, nor even on its real name. He lived long before Minos, says a Greek author; while another mercilessly pushes it back into the clouds of mythological eras. This one calls him Sesostris; that one Sesoosis; a last one wants to recognize him in a Rhamses, but in which one? Modern chronologists, embarrassed heirs of all these contradictions, are divided, in their turn, to make of this mysterious character an Osirtasen or a Sésortesen, or even a Rhamsès II or a Rhamsès III. One of the most solid arguments by which it was thought to be able to support the favorite opinion concerning the extent of the conquests of this mysterious character was the existence of victorious stelae erected by him on several points of his steps. We have, in fact, found, which must be attributed to sovereigns of the Nile, and in Nubia near Wadi Halfah, and in the peninsula of Sinai320 . But another monument, all the more famous because Herodotus mentions it, a monument still existing near Beirut, has been positively recognized, today, for the pledge of victory of an Assyrian triumphant321. Besides, nothing Egyptian has ever been encountered above Palestine. With all the reservation that I must bring to present myself in this debate, I admit that of the different ways in which people have wanted to prove the conquests of the Pharaohs in Asia, none has ever seemed satisfactory to me.322. They are based on allegations that are too vague; they make the winners run too far and give them too much land not to arouse distrust323. Then they come up against a very serious difficulty: the complete ignorance in which we find the so-called vanquished by their misfortune. I do not see, with the exception of a few small states of Syria, not a moment in the united, continuous, compact history of the Assyrian nations until the VIIe

century, where we can introduce conquerors other than the different

layers of Semites and a few Arians, and as for reporting the doubtful omnipotence of a nebulous Sesostris, the task only becomes more scabrous. During these indeterminate periods, witnesses, it is true, of the most beautiful efflorescence of Thebes and Memphis, the main efforts of the country were directed towards the south324, towards interior Africa, a little towards the east, while the Delta served as a passage for people of various races along the beaches of northern Africa.

In addition to the expeditions to Nubia and the Sinaitic regions, we must also take into account the immense canalization and clearing works, such as the drying out of the Fayoum, the connection of this basin, and the vast constructions including the different groups of pyramids. are the costly results. All these peaceful works of the first dynasties do not indicate a people who had either much taste or much leisure for distant expeditions, which nothing, not even the reason of proximity, made attractive, much less necessary325. However, let us put aside all these strong objections for a moment. Let us silence them, and adopt Sesostris and his conquests for what they are given to us. It will remain undisputed that these invasions were entirely temporary, despite the vaguely indicated foundation of so-called numerous cities, and completely unknown in Asia Minor, and the colonization of Colchis, occupied by black peoples, Ethiopians, said the Greeks, that is to say men who, like the Ethiopian Memnon, may very well have been only Assyrians. All the stories which make the monarchs of Memphis so many previous incarnations of Tamerlane, apart from the fact that they are contrary to the peaceful mood and the soft languor of the worshipers of Phtah, to their taste for rural occupations, to their stay-at-home religiosity , appear too incoherent not to be based on infinite confusions of ideas, dates, facts and peoples326. Until the seventeenth century BC, Egyptian influence, and always Africa excepted, had very little action; she had little prestige, she was barely known327. Defense works of the type that the kings had built on the eastern borders to close the passage to the sands and especially to foreigners328, are always the work of a people who, by protecting themselves from invasions, themselves limit their territory. The Egyptians were therefore voluntarily separated from the eastern nations. Without all

warlike or peaceful relations were destroyed, there did not result in a lasting exchange of ideas, and consequently civilization remained confined to the soil which had seen it born, and did not carry its wonders to the east or to the north, nor to the even in West Africa329.

What a difference with Assyrian culture! In its immense flight this encompassed such a vast tour of the country that it surpassed the expansion which, in later times, Greece first, then Rome, could achieve. It dominated Middle Asia, discovered Africa, discovered Europe, sowed its merits and vices deeply in all these places, established itself everywhere, in the most lasting way, and, vis-à-vis it, the Egyptian improvement, remained more or less local, found itself in a situation similar to what China has since been for the rest of the world. The reason for this phenomenon is very simple, if we want to look for it in ethnic causes. From Assyrian civilization, the product of white Hamites mixed with black peoples, then of different branches of the Semites added to the whole, there resulted the birth of thick masses which, pushing and penetrating each other in a thousand ways, were carried in a hundred different places, between the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Gibraltar, the composite nations born from their incessant fertilization. On the contrary, Egyptian civilization was never able to rejuvenate itself in its creative element which was always on the defensive and always lost ground. Coming from a branch of Arians-Hindus mixed with black races and a few Hamites and Semites, it took on a particular character which, from its earliest times, was perfectly fixed and developed for a long time in its own sense before being attacked by foreign elements. It was already ripe when invasions or introductions of Semites came to superimpose themselves on it.330. These currents could have transformed it, if they had been considerable. They remained weak, and the organization of the castes, imperfect as it was, was long enough to neutralize them. While in Assyria the emigrants from the north entered and showed themselves kings, priests, nobles, everything, they encountered on the soil of Egypt a jealous legislation which began by closing their entry to the territory as impure beings, and when, despite this defense, maintained until the time of Psammatik (664 BC), the intruders managed to slip alongside the masters of the country, discarded and hated, it was only slowly that they blended into this forbidding society. They succeeded, however, I believe; but for what result? For

imitate the work of Hellenic blood in Phoenicia. Like him, they contributed, united in black action, to hasten the dissolution of a race which, more numerous and arriving earlier, they would have brought to life and regeneration. If, from the first years when Menes reigned, to the mixture of Arian, Hamite and black, a strong dose of Semitic blood could have been added, Egypt would have been profoundly revolutionized and agitated. It would not have remained isolated in the world, and it would have found itself in direct and intimate communication with the Assyrian States.

To judge this, it is enough to break down the two groups of nations: ASSYRIANS FUNDAMENTAL BLACK ELEMENT

Hamites,in quantity large enough to be fertile.

Semites,of several layers, singularly fertilizing. Black, always solvents. Greeks,in dissolving quantity.

EGYPTIANS FUNDAMENTAL BLACK ELEMENT

Arians,dominant on the Chamite element.

Hamites,in quantity fertilizing.

Black, numerous and solvents.

Semites,in dissolving quantity.

We can draw yet another truth from this table: it is that, the Chamite blood tending to be exhausted in the two peoples, the resemblances also tended to disappear with this element which, alone, had founded them and would have been in a state to maintain them, since Semitic action was exercised in the two societies in opposite directions. In Egypt, it only penetrated in dissolving quantities; in Assyria, it spread profusely, overflowing from there to Africa, Europe, and became, between a thousand nations, the link of an alliance from which the land of the Pharaohs was going to be excluded,

reduced as she saw herself to her black and Ariane fusion; the virtues were exhausted every day, without anything coming to revive them. Egypt was only admirable in ancient times. So, this is truly the soil of miracles. But what ! his qualities and his strengths are concentrated on too narrow a point. The ranks of its initiating population cannot be recruited anywhere. Decadence begins early, and nothing can stop it, while the Assyrian civilization will live a long time, will undergo many transformations, and, more immoral, more tormented than its contemporary, will have played a much more important character. This is what we will be convinced of when, after considering the situation of Egypt in the VIIecentury, an already very humble and desperate situation, we will see it reduced to such a degree of impotence that, in its own domain, in its own affairs, it will no longer play a role, will leave power and influence in the hands of the conquerors and foreign colonists, and will reach the point of being so forgotten that the name Egyptian will indicate much less one of the descendants of the ancient race than a son of the new Semitic, Greek or Roman inhabitants. This novelty will still yield it in singularity to this one: Egypt will no longer be, as in the past, the upper part of the country, the neighborhood of the Pyramids, the classical land, Memphis, Thebes: it will rather be Alexandria, this shore abandoned, in the era of glory, to the path of the Semitic invasions. Thus Nineveh, victorious over its rival, will have stripped both the men and the soil of the national name. Despite the wall of Heliopolis, the land of Misr will have become the inert prey of the sands and the Semites, because no new Arian element will have saved its population from the misfortune of being swallowed up in the finally decided preponderance of its Melanian principles .

Book second

Chapter VII Ethnic relationship between the Assyrian nations and Egypt. The arts and lyric poetry are produced by the mixture of white people with black people.

The entire primordial civilization of the world is summed up, for Westerners, in these two illustrious names: Nineveh and Memphis. Tire and Carthage, Aksum and the cities of the Himyarites are only intellectual colonies of these two royal points. In trying to characterize the civilizations they represent, I have touched on some of their points of contact. But I have reserved until now the study of the main common relationships, and at the moment when their decline will begin, with varying fortunes, when the role of one will cease, the role of the other will increase still further. in foreign hands, changing name, form and scope; at this moment, when I will see myself forced, in a very serious subject, to imitate the method of the chivalrous poets, to pass from the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile to the mountains of Media and Persia, and to m 'going into the steppes of upper Asia, to seek out the new peoples who will transfigure the political world and civilizations, I cannot delay any longer in clarifying and defining the causes of the general resemblance of Egypt and Assyria,

The white groups who had created civilization in both did not belong to the same variety of the species, otherwise it would be impossible to explain their profound differences. Apart from the civilizing spirit that they also possessed, particular traits marked them, and imprinted a stamp of ownership on their respective creations. The backgrounds, being equally black, could not bring about any dissimilarities; and even if we would like to find diversities between their Melanian populations, by only discovering blacks with flat hair in the Assyrian countries, blacks with curly hair in Egypt, apart from the fact that nothing authorizes this supposition, nothing has ever indicated either that between the branches of the black race ethnic differences imply a greater or lesser dose of civilizing aptitude. Far from it, wherever we study the effects of mixtures, we realize that a black background, despite the varieties it can present, creates similarities between societies by only providing them with these obviously foreign negative abilities. to the faculties of the white species. We must therefore admit, in the face of the civilizing nullity of blacks, that the source of the differences lies in the white race; that, consequently, there are varieties between the whites; and if we now consider the first example in Assyria and Egypt, to see the spirit more regularizing, more gentle, more peaceful, more positive

above all, from the weak Arian branch established in the Nile valley, we are inclined to give the whole family a real superiority over the branches of Ham and Shem. The more the story unfolds its pages, the more we will be confirmed in this first impression. Returning to the black peoples, I wonder what are the marks of their nature, the similar marks that they carried in the two civilizations of Assyria and Egypt. The answer is obvious. It emerges from facts which take conviction through the eyes. There is no doubt that it is this striking taste for things of the imagination, this vehement passion for everything that could bring into play the parts of the intelligence that are easiest to inflame, this devotion to everything that falls under the senses, and, finally, this dedication to a materialism which, for being adorned, adorned, ennobled, was all the more complete. This is what unites the two primordial civilizations of the West. We encounter, in both, the consequences of such an agreement. In both, the great monuments, in both, the arts of representation of man and animals, painting, sculpture lavished in temples and palaces, and obviously cherished by the populations. We still notice the equal love of magnificent adjustments, sumptuous harems, women entrusted to eunuchs, the passion for rest, the growing disgust for war and its work, and finally the same doctrines of government: a sometimes hieratic despotism , sometimes royal, sometimes noble, always without limits, delirious pride in the upper classes, unbridled abjection in the lower classes. The arts and poetry had to be and were, in fact, the most apparent, the most real, the most constant expression of these times and these places. In poetry reigns the complete abandonment of the soul to external influences. I want, as proof, picked up or by chance, this kind of Phoenician lament in memory of Southoul, daughter of Kabirchis, engraved in Eryx on her tomb: “The mountains of Eryx groan. There is everywhere the sound of zithers and songs, and the wailing of harps in the assembly of the house of Mecamosh.

“Do his people still have his like? Its magnificence was like a “torrent of fire.”

“More than the snow shone the radiance of his gaze... Your veiled chest was like the heart of the snow.

“Like a withered flower, our soul is withered by your loss; it is broken by “the moaning of funeral songs. “On our chests our tears flow331. » This is the lapidary style of the Semites.

Everything in this poetry is burning, everything aims to carry away the senses, everything is external. Such stanzas are not intended to awaken the mind and transport it to an ideal world. If, while listening to them, we do not cry, if we do not shout, if we do not tear our clothes, if we do not cover our faces with ashes, they have missed their goal. This is the breath that has since passed into Arabic poetry, boundless lyricism, a kind of intoxication which borders on madness and sometimes swims in the sublime.

When it comes to painting in a fiery style, with expressions of furious and wandering energy, frantic sensations, the sons of Cham and those of Shem were able to find connections of images, violence of expression which, in their inconsistencies, in a way volcanic, leave far behind them everything that enthusiasm or despair could have suggested to the singers of other nations. The poetry of the Pharaohs has left fewer traces than that of the Assyrians, all the necessary elements of which are found either in the Bible or in the Arabic compilations of the Kitab-Alaghani, the Hamasa and the Moallakats. But Plutarch speaks to us of the songs of the Egyptians, and it would seem that the fairly regular nature of the nation inspired its poets to adopt accents, if not more reasonable, at least a little more lukewarm. Moreover, for Egypt as for Assyria, poetry had only two forms: lyrical, or didactic, coldly and weakly historical, and, in the latter case, pursuing no other aim than to enclose done in a rhythmic and easy-to-remember format. Neither in Egypt nor in Assyria do we find these beautiful and great poems which need, in order to be produced, faculties far superior to those from which lyrical effusion can spring. We will see that epic poetry is the privilege of the Ariane family; yet it only has all its fire, all its brilliance, among the nations of this branch which have been affected by the Melanian mixture.

Alongside this literature so liberal for sensation, and so sterile for reflection, are placed painting and sculpture. It would be a mistake to talk about them while separating them; because if the sculpture was sufficiently perfected for it to be studied and admired separately, it was not the same for its sister, a simple annex to the relief figure, and which, devoid of the light-

obscure as perspective, and proceeding only in flat tints, is sometimes found isolated in the hypogeums, but then only serves for ornamentation, or else leaves one regretting the absence of the sculpture which it should cover. A flat painting can only be used as an abbreviation. Moreover, as it is very doubtful that sculpture ever did without the complement of colors, and that Assyrian or Egyptian artists consented to present to the demanding gaze of their materialist spectators works dressed only in the hues of stone, of marble, porphyry or basalt; To separate the two arts or to elevate painting to an equal position with sculpture is to misunderstand the spirit of these antiquities. In Nineveh and Thebes, we must only imagine the statues, the tops, the bottoms and the half-reliefs, gilded and painted in the richest colors. With what exuberance Assyrian and Egyptian sensuality rushed towards all the seductive manifestations of matter! To these overexcited imaginations, always wanting to be more so, art had to arrive not through reflection, but through the eyes, and when it hit the mark, it was rewarded with prodigious enthusiasm and an almost incredible domination. Travelers who travel through the Orient today notice, with surprise, the deep, and somewhat crazy, impression produced on populations by figurative representations, and there is not a thinker who does not recognize, with the Bible and the Koran, the spiritualist utility of the prohibition placed on the imitation of human forms among peoples so singularly inclined to exceed the limits of legitimate admiration, and to make the arts of drawing the most powerful of demoralizing machines. Such excessive provisions are, at the same time, favorable and contrary to the arts. They are favorable, because, without the sympathy and excitement of the masses, there is no creation possible. They harm, they poison, they kill inspiration, because, leading it astray in too violent an intoxication, they distance it from the search for beauty, an abstraction which must continue outside and above the gigantic of forms. and the magic of colors. The history of art still has a lot to learn, and one could say that with each of its conquests it notices new gaps. However, since Winckelmann, she has made discoveries which have

changed his doctrines several times. She has given up attributing the origins of Greek perfection to Egypt. Better informed, she now seeks them in the free style of Assyrian productions. The comparison of the Aeginetic statues with the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad cannot fail to give rise to the idea of a very close relationship between these two manifestations of art. Nothing could be more glorious for the civilization of Nineveh than to have advanced so far on the road which was to lead to Pheidias. However, this was not what Assyrian art aimed for. What he wanted was splendor, the grandiose, the gigantic, the sublime, and not the beautiful. I stop in front of these sculptures from Khorsabad, and what do I see there? Well certainly the production of a skillful and free chisel. The part given to the convention is relatively small, if we compare these great works to what is seen in the temple-palace of Karnak and on the walls of Memnonium. However, the attitudes are forced, the muscles bulging, their exaggeration systematic. The idea of oppressive force emerges from all these fabulously vigorous, proudly tense members. In the bust, in the legs, in the arms, the desire that animated the artist, to paint movement and life, is pushed beyond all measures. But the head? the head, what does it say? what does the face say, this field of beauty, of ideal conception, of the elevation of thought, of the divinization of the spirit? The head, the face, are useless, are frozen. No expression is painted on these impassive features. Like the fighters in the temple of Minerva, they say nothing; bodies struggle, but faces neither suffer nor triumph. This is because there was no question of the soul, it was only a question of the body. It was the fact and not the thought that was sought; and the proof that this was indeed the sole cause of the eternal pause in which Assyrian art died is that, for everything that is not intellectual, for everything that is addressed solely to the sensation, perfection has been achieved. When we examine the ornamental details of Khorsabad, these elegant Greeks, these bricks enamelled with flowers and delicious arabesques, we quickly agree with ourselves that the Hellenic genius had only to copy, and found nothing to add to the perfection of this taste, nor to the graceful and correct freshness of these inventions.

As moral idealization is zero in Assyrian art, it could not, despite its great qualities, avoid a thousand monstrous enormities.

who constantly accompanied him and who were his tomb. This is how the Semitic Kabirs and Telchines manufactured, for the edification of Greece, their half-compatriot, these mechanical idols, moving their arms and legs, since imitated by Daedalus, and soon despised by the right sense of 'a nation too masculine to delight in such trivialities. As for the female populations of Cham and Shem, I am very convinced that they never tired of it; the absurd could not exist for them in tendencies to imitate, as closely as possible, what nature presents as materially true. Let us think of the Baal of Malta with his blond, reddish or golden wig and beard; that we remember these shapeless stones, dressed in splendid clothes and saluted with the name of divinities in the temples of Syria, and that from there we move on to the systematic and repulsive ugliness of the hieratic dolls of the Armeria of Turin, it is not There is nothing, in all these aberrations, that is very consistent with the inclinations of the Hamite race and its ally. They both wanted something striking, something terrible, and, in the absence of something gigantic, they threw themselves into the frightful and rubbed their sensations even with the disgusting. It was a natural adjunct to the worship of animals.

These considerations also apply to Egypt, with the only difference that, in this more methodical society, the ugly and the deformed did not develop with the same abundance of wild freedom in which Nineveh and Carthage abandoned themselves. These tendencies took on the immobile forms of the nationality which introduced them, moreover, very willingly, into its pantheon. Thus, the civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile are also characterized by the victorious predominance of imagination over reason, and of sensuality over spiritualism. Lyrical poetry and the style of drawing arts were the intellectual expressions of this situation. If we note, moreover, that the power of the arts was never greater, since it reached and exceeded the limits that everywhere else common sense succeeded in imposing on it and that, in these dangerous wanderings, it invaded by many in the theological, moral, political and social domain, we will wonder what was the cause, the primary origin of this exorbitant law of primitive societies.

The problem is, I believe, already solved for the reader. It is good, however, to see if, in other places and in other times, nothing

nothing similar has appeared. Apart from India, and even India from an era subsequent to its true Arian civilization, no, nothing similar has ever existed. Never has the human imagination found itself so free from all restraint and has never experienced, with so much thirst and so much hunger for matter, such indomitable inclinations to depravity; the fact is therefore, without dispute, particular to Assyria and Egypt. Having established this, let us consider, before concluding, another side of the question. If we admit, with the Greeks and the most competent judges in this matter, that exaltation and enthusiasm are the life of the genius of the arts, that this genius, even when it is complete, borders on madness , it will not be in any organizing and wise feeling of our nature that we will look for the creative cause, but rather at the bottom of the upheavals of the senses, in these ambitious impulses which lead them to marry the spirit and appearances, in order to get something out of it that is better than reality. Now, we have seen that, for the two primitive civilizations, what organized, disciplined, invented laws, governed with the help of these laws, in a word, worked by reason, was the white element, Hamite, Arian and Semite. From then on this very rigorous conclusion arises, that the source from which the arts sprang is foreign to the civilizing instincts. It is hidden in the blood of black people. This universal power of the imagination, which we see enveloping and penetrating primordial civilizations, has no other cause than the ever-increasing influence of the Melanian principle. If this assertion is founded, here is what must happen: the power of the arts over the masses will always be found to be in direct proportion to the quantity of black blood that they can contain. The exuberance of the imagination will be all the stronger as the Melanian element occupies more place in the ethnic composition of peoples. The principle is confirmed by experience: let's keep the Assyrians and the Egyptians at the top of the catalog.

We will place Hindu civilization, subsequent to Sakya-Mouni, alongside them; Then will come the Greeks; To a lower degree, the Italians of the Middle Ages; Further down, the Spanish;

Lower still, the French of modern times; And finally, after these, drawing a line, we will admit nothing more than indirect inspirations and products of learned imitation,

no avenues for the popular masses. It is, it will be said, a very beautiful crown that I place on the deformed head of the Negro, and a very great honor to do him to group around him the harmonious choir of the Muses. The honor is not so great. I did not say that all the Pierides were gathered there, the noblest are missing, those who rely on reflection, those who want beauty preferentially to passion. Furthermore, what does it take to build a lyre? a fragment of scale and pieces of wood; and I do not know that anyone has attributed to the dragging turtle, to the cypress, even to the entrails of the pig or to the brass of the mine, the merit of the musician's songs: and yet, without all these necessary ingredients, what harmonious music, what inspired songs? Certainly the black element is indispensable for developing artistic genius in a race, because we have seen what profusion of fire, of flame, of sparks, of drive, of thoughtlessness resides in its essence, and how much imagination , this reflection of sensuality, and all the appetites towards matter make it suitable for undergoing the impressions produced by the arts, in a degree of intensity entirely unknown to other human families. This is my starting point, and if there was nothing to add, the Negro would certainly appear as the lyric poet, the musician, the sculptor par excellence. But everything is not said, and what remains considerably modifies the face of the question. Yes, again, the Negro is the human creature most energetically seized by artistic emotion, but on this essential condition that his intelligence will have penetrated its meaning and understood its scope. That if you show him the Juno of Polykleitos, it is doubtful whether he will admire it. He does not know what Juno is, and this marble representation intended to convey certain transcendental ideas of beauty which are even more unknown to him, will leave him as cold as the exposition of an algebra problem. Likewise, let verses from the Odyssey be translated to him, and in particular Ulysses' meeting with Nausicaa, the sublime of reflected inspiration: he will sleep. In all beings, for sympathy to emerge, intelligence must first have understood, and therein lies the difficulty with the Negro, whose mind is obtuse, incapable of rising above the humblest. level, as long as you have to think, learn, compare, draw conclusions. The artistic sensitivity of this being, in itself powerful beyond all expression, will therefore necessarily remain limited to the most miserable

jobs. She will ignite and she will be passionate, but for what? For ridiculous, roughly colored images. She will shudder with adoration before a hideous wooden trunk, more moved, moreover, more possessed a thousand times, by this degrading spectacle, than the chosen soul of Pericles ever was at the feet of the Olympian Jupiter. This is because the Negro can raise his thoughts to the ridiculous image, to the hideous piece of wood, and that in the face of the truly beautiful this thought is deaf, mute and blind from birth. There is therefore no possible training for her. Also, among all the arts that the Melanian creature prefers, music holds first place, as it caresses its ear with a succession of sounds, and as it asks nothing of the thinking part of its brain. The Negro loves it very much, he enjoys it excessively; yet, how foreign he remains to those delicate conventions by which the European imagination has learned to ennoble sensations! In the charming air of PaolinoSecret marriage: Pray che spunfi in sky' the aurora, etc. ...

the sensuality of the illuminated white, directed by science and reflection, will, from the first bars, create, as they say, a picture. The magic of sounds evokes around him a fantastic horizon where the first light of dawn litters an already blue sky! The happy listener feels the fresh warmth of a spring morning spreading and penetrating him into this ideal atmosphere where rapture transports him. The flowers open, shake off the dew, discreetly spread their perfumes above the damp grass already dotted with their petals. The garden door opens, and, under the clematis and vine vines with which it is half hidden, appear, leaning on each other, the two lovers who are about to escape. Delicious dream! the senses gently lift the spirit and cradle it in the ideal spheres where taste and memory offer it the most exquisite part of its delicate pleasure. The Negro sees none of this. He does not grasp the slightest part of it and yet, if we succeed in awakening his instincts: the enthusiasm, the emotion, will be much more intense than our suppressed delight and our satisfaction as honest people. I seem to see a Bambara assisting in the performance of one of the tunes he likes. His face burns, his eyes shine. He laughs, and his wide mouth shows, sparkling in the middle of his dark face, his white and sharp teeth. Enjoyment comes, the African clings to his

seat: one would say that by curling up in it, by bringing its limbs one under the other, it seeks, by the reduction in the extent of its surface, to concentrate more in its chest and in its head the tumultuous tensions of good - be furious that he feels. Inarticulate sounds make an effort to escape from his throat, which is compressed by passion; big tears roll down her prominent cheeks; another moment, he will scream: the music stops, he is overwhelmed with fatigue332.

In our refined habits, we have made of art something so intimately linked with the most sublime meditations of the mind and the suggestions of science, that it is only by abstraction, and with a certain effort, that we can extend the notion to dance. For the Negro, on the contrary, dance is, with music, the object of the most irresistible passion. This is because sensuality is for almost everything, if not everything, in dance. It also held a very large place in the public and private existence of the Assyrians and Egyptians; and where the ancient world of Rome encountered it even more curious and more intoxicating than anywhere else, it is still there that we moderns go to look for it, among the Semitic populations of Spain, and mainly in Cadiz.

Thus the Negro possesses to the highest degree the sensual faculty without which there is no art possible; and, on the other hand, the absence of intellectual aptitude makes it completely unfit for the cultivation of art, even for the appreciation of what this noble application of human intelligence can produce. To highlight his abilities, he must ally himself with a differently gifted race. In this hymen, the Melanian species appears as a feminine personality, and although its various branches present, on this point, more or less, always, in this alliance with the white element, the male principle is represented by the latter . The resulting product does not combine the full qualities of the two breeds. It also has this very duality which explains subsequent fertilization. Less vehement in sensuality than the absolute individualities of the feminine principle, less complete in intellectual power than those of the male principle, he enjoys a combination of the two forces which allows him artistic creation, prohibited to both. other of the associated strains. It goes without saying that this being that I invent is abstract, entirely ideal. We only rarely see, and as a result of very multiple circumstances, entities in which these

generating principles reproduce and confront each other with suitably weighted forces. In any case, and if we can believe in such combinations in isolated men, we should not think about it for a minute for nations, and we are only talking about the latter here. Ethnic elements are in constant oscillation among the masses. It is so difficult to capture the moments when they are approximately in balance; These moments are so rapid, so impossible to predict, that it is better not to talk about them and to reason only about those where one element, clearly prevailing over the other, presides over national destinies for a little longer. The two primordial civilizations strongly imbued with Melanian germs, at the same time as being directed and inspired by the power specific to the white race, owed to the increasingly declared predominance of the black element the exaltation which characterized them: sensuality was therefore their main and common stamp. Egypt, little or not at all regenerated, showed itself less active for a long time than the black Hamite nations, so happily renewed by Semitic blood. The country, however, had something obviously superior in its Arian motive; but the rising tide of Melanian blood, without absolutely destroying the prerogatives of this blood, dominated them, and, giving the nation this immobility for which it is criticized, only allowed it to escape from the immense only to fall into the grotesque. Assyrian society received, from the series of white invasions which renewed it, more independence in its artistic inspirations. It also gained, it must be admitted, a more dazzling splendor; for if nothing, in the sublime genre, exceeds the majesty of the pyramids and certain palace temples of Upper Egypt, these marvelous monuments do not offer human representations which, for the firmness of the execution, the science of forms, can be compared to the superb bas-reliefs of Khorsabad. As for the part of ornamentation of the Ninevite buildings, such as the mosaics, the enameled bricks, I have already said everything that the least favorable judgment would be forced to recognize: that the Greeks themselves only knew how to copy these inventions, and have never exceeded the sure and exquisite taste.

Unfortunately the Melanian principle was too strong and had to win. The beautiful Assyrian sculptures, which must be rejected in an antiquity prior to the seventh century BC, marked only a

fairly short period. After the date I indicate, the decadence was profound, and the cult of ugliness, so dear to the incapacity of blacks, this cult always triumphant, always practiced, even alongside the most striking masterpieces, ends up winning outright. From which it follows that, to ensure a true victory for the arts, it was necessary to obtain a mixture of the blood of blacks with that of whites, in which the latter entered in a greater proportion than the best times of Memphis and Nineveh. had been able to obtain it, and thus formed a race endowed with infinite imagination and sensitivity united with great intelligence. This mixture was later combined when the southern Greeks appeared in world history.

Book three Civilization radiating from central Asia to the south and southeast.

Book three

First chapter

The Arians; the Brahmins and their social system

I reached the time when Babylon was taken by storm by the Medes. The Assyrian empire will change both in form and in value. The sons of Ham and Shem will forever cease to be in the forefront of

nations. Instead of directing and leading States, they will henceforth form their corrupting base. An Arian people appears on the scene, and, allowing itself to be seen and judged better than the branch of the same race enveloped in Egyptian alloys, it invites us to consider closely, and with the attention it deserves, this illustrious human family , the noblest, without doubt, of white extraction.

It would be risking putting this truth in an incomplete light, to present the Medes, without having previously studied and known the whole group of which they are only a small fraction. So I cannot begin with them. I will first focus on the most powerful branches of their kinship. For this purpose, I am going to penetrate into the regions located east of the Indus, where the most considerable swarms of the Arian peoples first developed. But these first steps, diverted from the part of history which I first examined, will take me beyond the Hindu regions; because Brahmanical civilization, almost foreign to the west of the world, powerfully invigorated the eastern region, and, meeting there races that Assyria and Egypt had only glimpsed, it found itself in intimate contact with the yellow hordes. The study of these reports and their results is of primary importance. We will see, with this help, if the superiority of the white race can be established vis-à-vis the Mongols as vis-à-vis the blacks, to what extent history demonstrates it, and consequently the respective state of the two lower races and their derivatives. It is difficult to find synchronisms between the primordial emigrations of the Hamites and those of the Arians; it is no less so to evade the need to seek it. The descent of the Hindus into the Punjab is a fact so remote beyond all the limits of positive history, philology assigns it a date so ancient, that this event seems to touch on times prior to the year 4000 BC. C. Chamites and Arians would thus have left, at approximately the same time and under the influence of the same necessities, the primordial residences of the white family, to go down to the south, some towards the west, others towards the East.

The Arians, happier than the Hamites, kept, for a long series of centuries, with their national language, a sacred appendix of the primitive white idiom, a physical type which did not expose them, as it remained particular, to being confused. among black populations. To explain this double phenomenon, it must be admitted that, before their footsteps, the aboriginal races withdrew, dispersed or destroyed by avant-garde incursions, or else that they were very sparse in the upper valleys of Kachemyr, the first country Hindu invaded by the conquerors. Moreover, there is no doubt that the first population of these countries belonged to the black type.333. The Melanian tribes that we still find today in Kamaoun bear witness to this. They are made up of the descendants of the fugitives who, not having followed their fellows during the great reflux towards the Vyndhia mountains and the Dekkhan334, threw themselves into the middle of the Alpine gorges, a safe haven, since they have preserved their individuality there for countless series of years.

Before setting foot further on the soil of India, let us grasp the whole of the primitive Ariane family, at this moment when its movement towards the south is already pronounced, but where, however, if it has begun to invade the valley of Kachemyr by its column heads, the bulk of its nations have not yet passed beyond Sogdiana. Already the Arians are detached from the Celtic nations, routed towards the northwest and bypassing the Caspian Sea from above; while the Slavs, very little different from this last and vast mass of peoples, follow an even more northern route towards Europe.

The Arians therefore, long before arriving in India, no longer had anything in common with the nations which were to become European. They formed an immense multitude entirely distinct from the rest of the white species, and which needs to be designated, as I do, by a special name. Unfortunately, leading scientists did not appreciate this necessity. Absorbed by philology, they gave a little lightly, to all the languages of the race, the very inaccurate name of Indo-Germanic, without stopping at this consideration, however very serious, that, of all peoples who have these idioms, only one is

went to India, while the others never came near it. The need, moreover imperative, for classifications has always been the main source of scientific errors. The languages of the white race are no more Hindu than Celtic335, and I see them much less Germanic than Greek. The sooner we abandon these geographical designations the better. The name Arian has this precious advantage of having been chosen by the very tribes to which it is applied, and of following them everywhere independently of the places they inhabit or may have inhabited. This name is the most beautiful that a race can adopt: it means honorable336; thus, the Arian nations were nationshonorable men, men worthy of esteem and respect, and probably, by extension, men who, when they were not given what was due to them, knew how to take it. If this interpretation is not strictly in the word, we will see that it is found in the facts. The white peoples who applied this name to themselves understood its haughty and pompous significance. They attached themselves to it with force, and only let it disappear late under the particular qualifications that each of them subsequently gave themselves. The Hindus called the land sacred, legal India,Arya-varta,the land of honorable men337. Later, when they were divided into castes, the name of Arya remained with the bulk of the nation, with the Vaycias, the last category of true Hindus, twice born, readers of the Vedas.

The primitive name, claimed by the Iranian Arians, to whom the Medes belonged, was (foreign alphabet). Another branch of this family, the Persians, had also started by calling themselves (foreign alphabet), and when they renounced it for the whole nation, they retained the root of this word in most of their names. men, such as Arta-xerxes, Ario-barzane, Arta-baze, and lent them thus to the Scythian-Mongols converted to their language, and who later found to renew the use of it in the use made of it for their part the Sarmatian Arians338.

In their cosmogonic ideas, the Iranians saw the country as the first to create a region that they calledAiryanem-Vaëgo,and they placed it far in the northeast, towards the sources of the Oxus and the Yaxartes339. They remembered that summer there lasted only two months of the year, and that for ten other months, winter raged there with extreme rigor. Thus, for them, the country of honorable men remained the ancient homeland; while the Hindus of later times, attached to the name and forgetting the thing, transported the designation and donated it to their new homeland. This rootarfollowed the various branches of the race everywhere and constantly preoccupied them. The Greeks show it, well preserved and in a good place, in the word (in Greek) which personifies the honorable being par excellence, the god of battles, the perfect hero; in this other word, (in Greek), which first indicates the meeting of the qualities necessary for a true man, bravery, firmness, wisdom, and which, later, meant virtue. We find it again in this expression of (in Greek), which relates to the action of honoring superhuman powers; finally, it would not be too bold, perhaps, nor contrary to all good etymology to see the generic name of the Ariane family attached to one of its most glorious descendants, by bringing together the wordsarya, ayrianem,of (in Greek), and of (in Greek). The Greeks, in separating at an ancient time from the common group, would not have abjured its name neither in their habits of thought, the fact is incontestable, nor even in their national denomination.

We could push this research much further, and we would find this rootar, irOrer,preserved even in the modern German word Ehre,which seems to prove that a feeling of pride based on moral merit has always occupied a large place in the thoughts of the most beautiful of human races340. According to such numerous testimonies, we will perhaps find it appropriate to one day give back to the network of peoples in question the general and welldeserved name that it had applied to itself and to renounce to these appellations of Japhetides, Caucasians and Indo-Germans, the disadvantages of which cannot be overemphasized. While waiting for this restitution

very desirable for the clarity of human genealogies, I will allow myself to anticipate it, and I will form a particular class of all white peoples who, having inscribed this qualification either on stone monuments, or in their laws, or in their books, do not allow it to be taken away from them. Starting from this principle, I believe I can name this special race after the parts which constitute it at the moment when, already separated from the rest of the species, it advances towards the south.

We count the multitudes who will invade India and those who, following the route where the Semites marched, will reach the lower shores of the Caspian Sea, and from there, passing into Asia Minor and Greece. , in different shows there will be called the Hellenes. We can still recognize these numerous columns, some of which, descending to the southwest, penetrated as far as the Persian Gulf, while the others, remaining for centuries in the vicinity of Imaüs, reserved the Sarmatians for the European world. Hindus, Greeks, Iranians, Sarmatians, thus form only one race distinct from the other branches of the species and superior to all341. As for the physical conformation, there is no doubt: she was the most beautiful one we have ever heard of342. The nobility of her features, the vigor and majesty of her slender stature, her muscular strength, are attested to us by testimonies which, although being subsequent to the time when she was reunited, nonetheless have an irresistible weight.343. They all establish, at the different points where they are collected, a great identity of general features, and only allow local deviations to be seen as consequences of later alloys.344. In India, crossbreeding took place with black races; in Iran, with Hamites, Semites and blacks; in Greece, with white peoples who cannot be determined here, and Semites. But the basis of the type remained the same everywhere, and it is little disputed that the stock which, even degenerated from its primordial beauty, provided types like those of the current Kachemyrians and like most of the Brahmins of the north, like those whose representation has was featured under the first successors of Cyrus, in the constructions of Nakschi-Roustam and Persepolis; finally, that the men whose physical appearance inspired the sculptors of the Pythian Apollo, the Jupiter of Athens, the Venus of

Milo, formed the most beautiful species of men whose sight could have delighted the stars and the earth.

The complexion of the Arians was white and pink: such appeared the most ancient Greeks and the Persians; such also showed themselves the primitive Hindus. Among the colors of hair and beard, blond dominated, and we cannot forget the predilection that the Hellenes had for it: they did not imagine their noblest deities otherwise. All critics saw, in this caprice of an era when blond hair had become very disheveled in Athens and on the quays of the Eurotas, a remembrance of the primitive ages of the Hellenic race. Even today, this nuance is not absolutely lost in India, and particularly in the north, that is to say in the part where the Arian race has best preserved and renewed its purity. In Kattiwar, reddish hair and blue eyes are commonly found. The idea of beauty has remained for Hindus attached to that of whiteness, and nothing proves this better than the descriptions of predestined children, so frequent in Buddhist legends.345. These pious stories show the divine creature, in the first days of his cradle, with a white complexion and golden-colored skin. Its head must have the shape of a parasol (that is, be round and away from the pyramidal configuration in black). His arms are long, his forehead broad, his eyebrows together, his nose prominent.

Like this description, after the VIIecentury BC BC, applies to a race whose best branches were quite mixed, we cannot be surprised to see somewhat abnormal requirements, such as the golden color desired for the skin of the body and eyebrows together. As for the white complexion, the long arms, the broad forehead, the round head, the prominent nose, these are all traits which reveal the presence of the white species and which, having continued to be characteristic of the high castes, allow us to to think that the Ariane race, as a whole, also possessed them.

This human variety, thus surrounded by a supreme beauty of body, was no less superior in spirit346. She had to spend a sum

inexhaustible liveliness and energy, and the nature of the government she had given herself coincided perfectly with the needs of such an active nature.

The Arians, divided into tribes or small peoples concentrated in large villages347, put at their head, leaders whose very limited power had nothing in common with the absolute omnipotence exercised by the sovereigns among the black peoples or among the yellow nations 348. The oldest Sanskrit name to express the idea of a king, of a director of the political community, isviç pati;Zendviç païtishas preserved it perfectly, and the Lithuanianwiespatistill indicates today a land lord349.The meaning is entirely in the (Greek words) so frequent in Homer and Hesiod, and, as the Greek monarchy of the heroic era, entirely consistent with that of the Iranians before Cyrus, only shows, in the sovereigns, that 'a most limited authority; as the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata also only know the elective royalty conferred by the inhabitants of the cities, the Brahmins and even the allied kings, everything leads us to conclude that a power emanating, in such a complete way, from the general will, should only be a fairly weak delegation, perhaps even precarious, entirely in the style of the Germanic organization prior to the kind of reform that Khlodowig made in our country350.

These kings of the Arians, sitting in their villages, among herds of oxen, cows and horses, necessary judges of the violent disputes which at any time harm the life of pastoral nations, were surrounded by men even more warlike than shepherds. . When I spoke, when I speak of the Ariane nation, of the Ariane family, I do not mean to say that the different peoples who formed it lived among themselves in feelings of affectionate kinship.351. The contrary is indisputable: their most ordinary state seems to have been blatant and approved hostility, and these honorable men saw nothing so worthy of admiration as a warrior mounted on a chariot, running, aided by his squire, to exhaust his arrows against a neighboring tribe 352. This squire, always present in Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian sculptures, in Greek or Sanskrit poems, in the Schah-nameh, in the

Scandinavian songs and the chivalric epics of the Middle Ages, was also a military figure of great importance in India. The Arians therefore warred among themselves353, and as they were not nomads354, as they remained as long as possible in the homeland they had adopted, and as their valiant audacity had everywhere promptly put an end to the resistance of the natives, their most frequent expeditions, their longest campaigns, their most complete disasters , like also their most beautiful triumphs, had only themselves as actors. Virtue was therefore the heroism of the fighter, and, above all other considerations, goodness was bravery, a notion that we find, far from those times, in Italian poetry where the buon Rinaldois alsohe great virtuosofrom Ariosto. The most brilliant rewards were assured to the most energetic champions. They were namedçoura, the celestials355, because, if they fell in battle, they would live in Svarga, a splendid palace where Indra, the king of the gods, received them, and this honor was so great, so above all that the other could reserve. life, that neither by rich sacrifices, nor by the breadth and depth of knowledge, nor by any human means, was it given to anyone to occupy the same place in heaven as the çouras. Death received while fighting, all merit eclipsed before that. But the prerogative of the intrepid warriors did not even stop at this supreme point. It could happen to them, not only to go and inhabit, as venerated guests, the ethereal abode of the gods: they were on the verge of dethroning the gods themselves, and, within his power, Indra, constantly threatened with seeing his scepter by an indomitable mortal, still trembled

.

356

We will find striking connections between these ideas and those of Scandinavian mythology. These are not relationships, it is a perfect identity that must be noted here between the opinions of these two tribes of the white family, so distant by centuries and places. Moreover, this proud conception of man's relations with supernatural beings is found in the same grandiose proportions among the Greeks of the heroic era. Prometheus, removing the divine fire, shows himself more cunning and more provident than Jupiter; Hercules tears Cerberus from Erebus by force; Theseus makes Pluto tremble on his throne; Ajax hurts

Venus ; and Mercury, god that he is, does not dare to commit himself with the indomitable courage of the companions of Menelaus.

The Shah-nameh also shows its champions grappling with infernal characters, who succumb under the vigor of their adversaries. The feeling on which this boastful exaggeration is based among all white peoples is undoubtedly a very frank idea of the excellence of the race, its power and its dignity. I am not surprised to see the Negroes so easily recognize the divinity of the conquerors from the north, when they assume, in good faith, the supernatural power communicable towards them, and believe they can, in certain cases, and at the price of certain warlike or moral exploits, rise to places from where the gods contemplate them, encourage them and fear them. It is an observation that can be easily made, in common existence, that sincere people are easily taken for what they give themselves. All the more so when the black man of Assyria and Egypt, stripped and trembling, heard his sovereign affirm that, if he was not yet god, he would soon become one. . Seeing him govern, govern, institute laws, clear forests, drain marshes, found cities, in a word, accomplish this civilizing work of which he himself recognized himself incapable, the black man said to his people: “He is wrong : he is not going to become god, he already is. » And they loved him.

With this exaggerated feeling of his dignity one might believe that the heart of the white man associated some inclination towards impiety. We would be wrong; because white is precisely religious par excellence357. Theological ideas preoccupy him to a very high degree. We have already seen with what care he preserved the ancient cosmogonic memories, the most numerous fragments of which the Semitic tribe of Abrahamid Hebrews possessed, half through their own funds, half through Hamitic transmission. The Arian nation, for its part, lent its testimony to some of the truths of Genesis358. Moreover, what she especially sought in religion were metaphysical ideas, moral prescriptions. The worship itself was very simple.

Equally simple, at this early period, was the organization of the Pantheon. Some gods presided over by Indra ruled rather than dominated the world359. The proud Arians had made heaven a republic. However, these gods who had the honor of ruling over such haughty men certainly owed them to being worthy of homage. Contrary to what happened later in India, and entirely in agreement with what we saw in Persia, and especially in Greece, these gods were of impeccable beauty.360. The Arian People wanted to have them in their image. As he knew nothing superior to himself on earth, he claimed that nothing was more perfect than him in heaven; but the superhuman beings who ruled the world needed a distinct prerogative. The Arian chose it in that which is even more beautiful than the human form in its perfection, in the source of beauty and which also seems to be the source of life: he chose it in the light and derived the name of the supreme beings from the rootfrom where, which meansenlighten;so he created for them a luminous nature361. The idea seemed good to the whole race, and the chosen root brought everywhere a majestic unity in the religious ideas of the white peoples. This was theDevas Hindus; the (Greek word), the (Greek word) of the Hellenes; THEDiewas Lithuanians, theDuz gallic362; THEDiaCelts from Ireland; THETirefrom the Edda; THEZiofrom High German; thereDewanaSlavic; thereDianaLatin. Finally, everywhere where the white race penetrated and where it dominated, we find this sacred term, at least at the origin of the tribes. It is opposed, in regions where there are points of contact with black elements, to theAlMelanian aborigines363The latter represents superstition, the other thought; one is the work of the imagination running wild and running towards the absurd, the other comes from reason. When theGodand theAl mixed, which unfortunately happened too often, there arose, in religious doctrine, confusions analogous to those which resulted, for social organization, from the mixtures of the black race with the white. The error was all the more monstrous and degrading becauseAlprevailed more in this union. On the contrary, theGoddid he have the upper hand? The error showed itself to be less vile, and, in the charm lent to it by admirable arts and a learned philosophy, the spirit of man, if it did not fall asleep without

danger, at least he could without shame. THEGodis therefore the expression and object of the highest veneration among the Arian race. Let us except the Iranian family for very particular causes, whose exposure will come in due time364 It was at the time when the Arian peoples were already touching Sogdiana that the departure of the Hellenic nations made the confederation less numerous. The Hellenes found themselves facing the road which was to lead them to their destiny; if they had accompanied the descent of the other tribes further down, they would not have had the idea of then going up towards the northwest. Marching directly west, they would have taken on the role that the Iranians later filled. They would have created neither Sicyone, nor Argos, nor Athens, nor Sparta, nor Corinth. So I conclude that they left at that moment.

I doubt that this event resulted from the causes which had decided the primitive emigration of the white populations. The counter-attack was already exhausted, because if the yellow invaders had pursued the fugitives, we would have seen all the white peoples, Arians, Celts and Slavs, to escape their attacks, also rush towards the south and flood this part of the world. It was not so. At approximately the same time as the Arians descended towards Sogdiana, the Celts and Slavs gravitated to the northwest and found routes, if not free, at least weakly defended enough for the passage to remain practicable. It must therefore be recognized that the pressure which determined the Hellenes to move towards the west did not come from the upper regions: it was caused by fellow Arians.

These nations, all equally brave, were in continual conflict. The consequences of this violent situation led to the destruction of villages, the upheaval of States and the obligation for the defeated peoples to submit to the yoke or to flee. The Hellenes, having found themselves the weakest, took the latter course, and, bidding farewell to the country which they could no longer defend against turbulent brothers, they mounted their chariots, and, bow in hand , entered the western mountains. These mountains were occupied by the Semites, who had driven out or, at least, enslaved the Hamites, to whom had

more anciently belonged the honor of taming the black aborigines. The Semites, beaten by the Hellenes, did not resist these valiant exiles and fell back on Mesopotamia, and the more the Hellenes advanced, pushed by the Iranian nations, the more they forced Semitic populations to move to give them passage, and the more they increased the flooding of the ancient Assyrian world by this mixed race. We have seen this show before. Let the emigrants continue their journey. We know in which illustrious places this story will find them.

After this separation, two considerable groups still form the Arian family, the Hindu nations and the Zoroastrians. Gaining ground and considering themselves as one people, these tribes arrived in the Punjab region. They settled there in the pastures watered by the Sindh, its five tributaries and a seventh river which is difficult to recognize, but which is either the Yamouna or the Sarasvati.365This vast landscape and its beauties remained deeply engraved in the memory of the Iranian Zoroastrians long after they had left it, never to see it again. The Punjab was, in their opinion, the whole of India: they had not seen more. Their knowledge on this point guided that of all Western nations, and the Zend-Avesta, settling later on what the ancestors had told, gave India the qualification of septuple. This region, the object of so many memories, thus witnessed the new splitting of the Ariane family, and the already more vivid clarity of history 366allow us to unravel quite well the circumstances of the debate which was its origin. I am going to tell the story of the oldest war of religion.

The type of piety particular to the white race reveals itself all the better in its reasoning scope, the better we are in a position to examine it. After having noted pale but clearly recognizable glimmers of it among the mixed-race descendants of the Hamites, after having found precious fragments among the Semitic families, we saw more fully the ancient simplicity of the beliefs and the sovereign importance which was attributed to the Arians gathered in their first station before the exodus

of the Hellenes. At that time worship was simple. It would seem that everything in social organization was oriented towards the practical side and judged from this point of view. Thus, just like the head of the community, the judge of the large village, the viç-pati was only an elective magistrate surrounded, for all prestige, by the reputation given to him by his bravery, his wisdom and the number of his servants and his flocks; just as the warriors, fathers of families, saw in their daughters only useful helpers to pastoral work, responsible for milking camels, cows and goats, and gave them no other name than that of their job ; so, again, if they honored the necessities of worship, they did not imagine that the functions had to be fulfilled by special personages, and each was his own pontiff, and judged his hands to be sufficiently pure, his forehead to be high enough, the heart noble enough, the intelligence enlightened enough, to address without intermediary the majesty of the immortal gods367. But either, in the period which elapsed between the departure of the Greeks and the occupation of the Punjab, the Ariane family, having found itself in long contact with the aboriginal nations, had already lost its purity and complicated its physical essence. and morality of the addition of a foreign thought and blood; whether the modifications which occurred were only the natural development of the progressive genius of the Arians, the fact remains that the ancient notions on the nature of the pontificate were modified imperceptibly, and that a moment came when the warriors no longer believed themselves to have the right nor the science of carrying out priestly functions: priests were instituted.

These new guides of conscience immediately became the advisors of kings and the moderators of people. They were called purohitas. The simplicity of worship was altered in their hands; it became complicated, and the art of sacrifices became a science full of obscurities dangerous for the profane. From then on, people feared committing formal errors in the act of worship that could offend the gods, and, in order to avoid this danger, they no longer risked acting themselves: they resorted to the only purohita. It is probable that this special man added knowledge of medicine and surgery to the practice of theology and liturgical functions; that he devoted himself to the composition of sacred hymns, and that he made himself triple venerable

in the eyes of kings, warriors, entire populations by the merits which shone in his person from the point of view of religion, morality and science368. While the pontiff thus created for himself sublime functions well suited to winning him admiration and sympathies, free men were not without gaining something from the loss of several of their ancient rights, and, just as the purohita, by exclusively seizing a part of social activity, knew how to extract wonders from it that previous generations had not suspected, in the same way the head of the family, entirely vacant of earthly cares, perfected himself in the material arts of life, in the science of government, in that of war and in the aptitude for conquest. The most restless ambition had no time to reflect on the value of what it had given up, and moreover the advice of the purohita, no less than his help, when the warrior was defeated, or wounded, or sick, no less than his songs and his stories, when he was at leisure, contributed to impressing him in favor of the influence which he had left clear, which he allowed to grow at his side, and to stun him on the dangers with which, for the future, it could threaten its power and its freedom. Besides, the purohita was not a being that could seem formidable. He lived isolated with chiefs rich or generous enough to maintain his simple and peaceful life. He did not bear arms; he was not of an enemy race. Coming from the viç-pati's own family or his tribe, he was the son, the brother, the cousin of the warriors369. He communicated his knowledge to disciples who could leave him at their discretion and take up the bow and arrow again. It was therefore imperceptibly and by means unknown, even to those who followed them, that Brahmanism thus laid the foundations of an authority which was to become exorbitant.

One of the first steps taken by the priesthood in the direct handling of temporal affairs testifies to a great political and moral improvement among these contemporaries of an era that German scholars call, with poetic accuracy, thegray anteriority of times370. The viç-pati understood that it would be good to no longer be for their

administered, who, imperceptibly, became their subjects, the irregular products of ruse or happy violence. We wanted a greater consecration than popular election to invest the pastors of the people with particular rights to respect, and we imagined making the legitimacy of their character depend on a kind of coronation administered by the purohitas371. From then on the importance of kings undoubtedly increased, because they had become participants in the nature of holy things, even without having yet dethroned a god. But the worldly power of the priesthood was also founded, and we can now guess what it will become in the hands of enlightened, peaceful men, with a formidable energy for good, and who, knowing that, for a nation devoted, body and soul, to the admiration of bravery, no pretext, however sacred, could cover the suspicion of being a coward, already began to practice austere doctrines of intrepid abstinence and obstinate renunciation. This spirit of penitence was to result, one day, in frenzied mutilations, in absurd tortures, equally revolting to the heart and to the reason. The purohitas weren't there yet. Priests of a white nation, they did not even dream of such enormities. Priestly power was now based on solid foundations. Secular power, proud to obtain its consecration and to rely on it, willingly served its developments. Soon he was able to realize that what is asked is also refused. All the kings were not equally well received by the masters of the sacrifices, and it was enough for a few meetings where the firmness of these was in agreement with the feelings of the people, it was enough for some of them to perish as martyrs for their resistance to the wishes of a usurper, so that public opinion, struck with recognition and admiration, made the united purohitas a bridge to the highest enterprises. They accepted the eminent role assigned to them. However, I believe neither in the predominance of selfish calculations in the politics of an entire class, nor in great results brought about by small causes. When a lasting revolution occurs within societies, it is because the passions of the triumphants have firmer ground to bounce back from than personal interests, without which they level the earth and amount to nothing. The fact from which the Arian priesthood decided to spring its destinies, far

to be miserable or ridiculous, must, on the contrary, win him the intimate sympathies of the genius of the race, and the observation made by the priests of this ancient period reveals, among them, a rare aptitude for the science of government , at the same time as a subtle, learned, combinatory and logical mind to the point of rage.

This is what these philosophers noticed, and what their foresight then imagined. They considered that the Arian nations found themselves surrounded by black peoples whose multitudes extended to every corner of the horizon and greatly exceeded in number the tribes of the white race established on the territory of the Seven Rivers, and already descended to the mouth of the Indus. They saw, moreover, that among the Arians lived, submissive and peaceful, other aboriginal populations which still formed a considerable mass, and which had already begun to mingle with certain families, probably the most poor, the least illustrious, the least proud of the conquering nation. They noticed without difficulty how much the mulattoes were inferior in beauty, in intelligence, in courage to their white parents; and above all they had to think about the consequences that could bring, for the domination of the Arians, an influence exerted by mixed-race individuals on the subject or independent black populations. Perhaps they had before their eyes the experience of some fortuitous accessions of mixed blood to royal dignity.

Guided by the desire to retain sovereign power for the white race, they imagined a social state hierarchical according to the degree of elevation of intelligence. They claimed to entrust the wisest and most skilful with the supreme conduct of government. To those whose minds were less elevated, but whose arms were strong, whose hearts were eager for warlike emotions, whose imagination was sensitive to the excitements of honor, they entrusted the task of defending public affairs. To men of a gentle mood, curious about peaceful work, reluctant to the fatigue of war, they prided themselves on finding suitable employment by inviting them to feed the State through agriculture, to enrich it through trade and commerce. 'industry. Then, of the great number of those whose brains were only illuminated by incomplete glimmers, of all those who did not have the soul ready to endure, without weakness, the shock of danger, of people too poor to live free,

they composed an amalgam on which they threw the level of equal inferiority, and decided that this humble class would earn its subsistence by fulfilling those painful or even humiliating functions which are nevertheless necessary in established societies.

The problem had found its ideal solution, and no one can refuse their approval to a social body so organized that it is governed by reason and served by unintelligence. The great difficulty is to bring an abstract project of this kind into the mold of a practical realization. All the theorists of the Western world have failed: the purohitas believed they had found the sure way to succeed. Starting from this observation established, for them, on irrefutable proof, that all superiority was on the side of the Arians, all weakness, all incapacity on the side of the blacks, they admire, as a logical consequence, that the proportion of intrinsic value in all men was in direct proportion to the purity of the blood, and they based their categories on this principle. These categories they calledvarna,which meantcolor,and which, since then, has taken on the meaning ofcaste372.

To form the firstcaste,they brought together the families of the purohitas in whom some merit shone, such as those of the Gautama, the Bhrigou, the Atri373, famous for their liturgical chants, transmitted hereditarily as a precious property. They assumed that the blood of these commendable families was more Arian, purer than that of all the others. To this class, to thisvarna,at thiscolorwhite par excellence, they attributed not first the right to govern, a definitive result which could only be the work of time, but at least the principle of this right and everything that could lead to it, that is to say - to say the monopoly of priestly functions, the royal consecration which they already possessed, the ownership of religious songs, the power to compose them, to interpret them and to communicate their knowledge; finally they declared themselves sacred, inviolable characters; they refused military employment,

surrounded themselves with necessary leisure, and devoted themselves to meditation, to study, to all the sciences of the mind, which excluded neither aptitude nor political science374.

Immediately below them they placed the category of kings then existing with their families. To exclude any of them would have been to deny the value of the consecration, and, at the same time, to create too formidable hostilities for the nascent organization. Next to the kings they placed the most eminent warriors, all men distinguished by their influence and their wealth, and they assumed, more or less correctly, that this class, thisvarna,thiscolor, was already less frankly white than theirs, had already contracted a certain mixture with aboriginal blood, or else that, equal in purity, just as faithful to the Ariane stock, it nevertheless only deserved the second rank, by the superiority of the intellectual and religious vocation on physical vigor. It was a great, noble, illustrious race that could accept such a doctrine. To the members of the military caste, the purohitas gave the namekschattryas or strong men.They made it a religious duty for them to exercise arms and strategic science, and, while granting them the government of peoples, subject to religious consecration, they relied on public sentiment, imbued with free doctrines. of the race, to deny them absolute power375. They declared that eachvarnaconferred on its members inalienable privileges, before which the royal will expired. The sovereign was forbidden to encroach on the rights of priests. He was no less forbidden to attack those of the kschattryas or lower castes376. The monarch was surrounded by a certain number of ministers or advisors, without whose assistance he could not act and who belonged both to the class of purohitas and to that of warriors.

.

377

The constituents did more. In the name of religious laws, they prescribed to kings a certain conduct in the interior life. They regulated even food and proscribed, in the most energetic manner, and under temporal and spiritual penalties, any infraction of

their commands. Their masterpiece, in my opinion, against the kschattryas and the caste which will follow, is to have known how to depart from the rigor of classifications so as not to absolutely monopolize the matters of intelligence in the within their brotherhood. They understood, without doubt, that instruction cannot be refused to those who are capable of acquiring it, just as it is allowed without result to intelligences poorly created to receive it; then, that if knowledge is a force and exercises prestige, it is on the condition of having spectators who can form, for themselves, a fair idea of its merit, and who, to be in a position to appreciate the value, must at least have brought the lips close to its cup. Far from forbidding education to the kschattryas, the purohitas recommended it to them, allowed them to read the sacred books, encouraged them to have them explained to them, and saw them with complacency devoting themselves to secular knowledge, such as poetry, history and astronomy. They thus formed, around them, an intelligent as well as brave military class, and which, if it could one day find, in the awakening of its ideas, the excitement to combat the progress of the priesthood, met no less reasons to be seduced by them, to smile at them and to favor them in the name of this instinctive sympathy which the mind inspires to the mind and talent to talent. However, we must not hide it: whatever the intimate dispositions of the kschattryas, the general interest of their caste and the nature of things made them a terrible stumbling block for religious innovators, and a danger was bound to sooner or later later show up on that side.

It was not the same for thevarnawhich came after the warrior caste. It was that ofvayçias,supposedly less white than the two higher social categories, and who, probably also, were less rich and less influential in society. However, their relationship with the two high castes was still obvious and indisputable, the new system considered them as elite men, twice-born men (dvidja), expression dedicated to representing the excellence of the race vis-à-vis the aboriginal populations378, and they formed the people, the bulk of the nation properly so called, above whom were the priests and the soldiers, and it was for this reason that the name of Arians, abandoned by the

kschattryas, as by the purohitas, more proud, some of their title of strong,the others of the newly taken qualification ofBrahmins, remained the division of the third caste. The law of Manou, later, moreover, in its current form, at the time in question, establishes, according to authorities older than itself, the circle of action in which the existence of the vayçias was to flow. . They were entrusted with the care of the livestock. The already considerable refinement of morals no longer allowed the upper classes to take care of them, as their ancestors had done. The vayçias traded, lent money at interest and cultivated the land379. Called to thus concentrate the greatest riches in their hands, they were commanded to give alms and sacrifices to the gods. They too were allowed to read or have the Vedas read to them.380, and, in order to assure their peaceful character the quiet enjoyment of the humble, prosaic but fruitful advantages which were granted to them, the brahmans, like the kschattryas, were strictly forbidden to encroach on their attributions, to mingle in their work and to obtain either an ear of wheat or a manufactured item, other than through them. Thus, from the earliest antiquity, the Arian civilization of India based its work on the existence of a numerous bourgeoisie, strongly organized and defended, in the exercise of considerable rights, by all the power of religious prescriptions.381. It will also be noted that, no less than the kschattryas, this class was admitted to intellectual studies, and that their habits, more peaceful, more homely than those of the warriors, tended to make them benefit more from them. With these three high castes, Hindu society, in its ideal, was complete. Outside their circle, no more Arians, no more twice-born men. However, it was necessary to take into account the aborigines, who, having been subjugated for more or less a long time and perhaps somewhat related to the blood of the victors, lived obscurely at the bottom of the social scale. We could not absolutely repulse these men, attached to their conquerors and receiving only their sustenance from them, without throwing ourselves, with barbaric imprudence, into unnecessary perils. Moreover, by what happened next, it is very probable that the Brahmins had already felt how contrary it would be to their true interests to break with these black multitudes who, if they did not pay them the delicate and reasoned honors

other castes, surrounded them with more blind admiration and served them with more devoted fanaticism. The Melanian spirit was found there completely. The Brahmin, priest for the kschattryas and the vayçias, was god for the black crowd. One does not fall out of cheerfulness with such warm friends, and especially when there is no need to do much to keep them. The Brahmins made up a fourth caste of this entire population of laborers, workers, peasants and vagabonds. It was that ofçoudrasor some dazas,of theservants,who received a monopoly on all servile employment. It was strictly forbidden to mistreat them, and they were subjected to a state of eternal guardianship, but with the obligation, for the upper classes, to govern them gently and protect them from famine and other effects of poverty. The reading of sacred books was forbidden to them; they were not considered pure, and nothing could be more righteous, for they were not Arians382.

After having thus distributed their categories, the inventors of the caste system founded its perpetuity, by decreeing that each situation would be hereditary, that one would only be part of a varna on the condition of being born of father and mother both belonging to it383. It still wasn't enough. Just as kings could not govern without having obtained Brahmanical consecration, so no one was admitted to the enjoyment of the privileges of his caste before having accomplished, with priestly assent, the particular ceremonies of accession.384. People forgetting these obligatory formalities were excluded from Hindu society385. Impure, even if they were born Brahmins of father and mother, they were calledvratyas386:bandits, plunderers, assassins,and it is very probable that, in order to live, these rejects of the law were often forced to arm themselves against it. They formed the basis of numerous tribes which became foreign to the Hindu nationality.

This is the classification on which the successors of the purohitas imagined building their social state. Before judging the consequences and the success, before, above all, stopping in front of the subtlety, the incredible resources, the sustained energy, the irresistible patience

used by the Brahmins to defend their work, it is essential to consider it from a general point of view. From an ethnographic point of view, the first and greatest fault of the system was that it was based on a fiction. The Brahmins were not and could not be the most authentic Arians, excluding such families of kschattryas and vayçias whose purity was perhaps not questionable, but who, by the position they occupied in society, the measure of their resources, were necessarily designated to hold one rank and not another. I suppose, on the other hand, that the illustrious races of the Gautama and the Atri had in their genealogical tree several ancestors descended from warrior fathers at a time when these alliances were legal, and that, moreover, these ancestors had, in their blood, a more or less large quantity of Melanian alloy: here are the Gautama, here are the Atri recognized as mixed race. Are they less possessors of the sacred hymns composed by their ancestors? Do they not fulfill the functions of revered priesthood under powerful kings? Powerful! Are they not themselves? They are among the coryphees of the new party, and we should not expect that, looking back on their own extraction, the vice of which perhaps, moreover, they are unaware of, they will voluntarily exclude themselves from the supreme caste.

However, if it were a question of examining things only through Hindu notions, one could answer that as soon as, through exclusive marriages, the special races of the Brahmins, the Kschattryas, the Vayçias had been established, the gradation, at first supposed, as to relative purity, soon became real; that the brahmans were found to be whiter than the kschattryas, the latter than the men of the third class who, in their turn, dominated, at this point, those of the fourth, almost entirely black. Accepting this way of reasoning, it is no less true that the Brahmins themselves were no longer perfect and unmixed white people. Facing the rest of the species, vis-à-vis the Celts, vis-à-vis the Slavs, and even more so the other members of the Ariane family, the Iranians and the Sarmatians, they had adopted, from then on, a special nationality and had become distinct from the common stock. Superior in illustration to the rest of the white tribes

contemporary, they were inferior to the primitive type and no longer possessed its ancient energy.

Many of the faculties of the black race had begun to rub off on them. We no longer recognize in them this rectitude of judgment, this coldness of reason, heritage of the white species, in its purity, and we see, in the very grandeur of the plans of their society, that the imagination now held a large place in their calculations and exercised a dominant influence on the combination of their ideas. In terms of burst of intelligence, openness of vision, scope of genius, they had won. They had won by the softening of their first instincts, becoming less rough and more flexible. But as a half-breed, I find them nothing more than a diminutive of the sovereign virtues, and if the Brahmins present themselves thus fallen, all the more so the kschattryas and, to an even greater degree, the vayçias were what we can call fundamental merits degenerate. We observed in Egypt that the first and most general effect of the interference of black blood is to effeminate the natural. This weakness does not make people devoid of courage; however it alters and excites the calm, and one might say compact, vigor, the prerogative of the most excellent of types. The Hamites only come under observation at a moment when they have lost too much of the special characteristics of their paternal origin, and we cannot base an exact demonstration on them. Nevertheless, in the languor mixed with ferocity in which we saw them immersed, we recognize a point where the ethnically corresponding classes of the Hindu nation have arrived today. We are therefore entitled to suppose that, in their beginnings, the Hamites also had a period comparable to that of the Brahmanical caste in its beginnings. For the Semites, whose principle we can better understand, such a rapprochement leaves nothing to be desired. Thus all the experiments considered so far give this identical result: the mixture with the black species, when it is light, develops intelligence in the white race, insofar as it turns it towards the imagination, makes it more artistic, lends it larger wings; at the same time, it disarms his reason, diminishes the intensity of his practical faculties, deals an irreparable blow to his activity and his physical strength, and also, almost always, removes power and rights from the group resulting from this marriage, otherwise to shine much more than the white species

and to think more deeply, at least to struggle with it with patience, firmness and sagacity. I conclude that the Brahmins, having engaged, before the formation of castes, in some Melanian mixtures, were thus prepared for defeat, when the day came to fight with races that remained whiter. These reservations made, if we agree to consider the Hindu nations only in themselves, admiration for the legislators must be unreserved. Faced with the normal castes and the decast populations that surround them, they appear truly sublime. It will be only too easy to recognize later how, with the course of time and the inevitable perversion of types constantly growing despite all efforts, the Brahmins have degenerated; but never have travelers, English administrators, scholars who have devoted their time to the study of the great Asian peninsula, hesitated to recognize that, within Hindu society, the Brahmin caste maintains an imperturbable superiority over everything that lives around it. Today, soiled by the alloys that so horrified her first fathers, she nevertheless shows, among her people, a degree of physical purity that nothing comes close to. It is among her that we still find the taste for study, the veneration of written monuments, the science of the sacred language; and the merit of its members as theologians and grammarians is genuine enough for the Colebrookes, the Wilsons and other justly admired Indianists to have reason to congratulate themselves on having had recourse to their enlightenment. The British government even entrusted them with a significant part of the teaching at the Fort-William college. This reflection of the former glory is very dull, no doubt. It is only an echo, and this echo grows weaker and weaker as social disorganization in India increases. However, the hierarchical system invented by the ancient purohitas has remained intact. We can study it completely in all its parts, and to be led to give it, without any regret, the honor due to it, it is enough to calculate approximately how long it has lasted.

The era of Kali dates back to the year 3102 BC, and yet it only began after the great heroic wars of the Kouravas and Pandavas.387. Now, at that time, if Brahmanism had not yet reached all its developments, it existed in its points

main. The caste plan was, if not strictly closed, at least outlined, and the period of the purohitas had long passed. Unfortunately there is something so enormous about the number of 3102 years388 that I do not want to press conviction too hard on this point, and I turn in another direction.

The Kachemyrian era begins a little more modestly, 2,448 years BC. It is also said to occur after the great heroic war; therefore, it leaves an interval of 654 years between its beginning and the era of Kali.

However uncertain these two dates may be, if we want to look for more recent ones, we do not find any, and as we advance, the historical clarity, becoming more intense, does not allow us to doubt that we do not move away from the desired object. Thus, after a gap, indeed quite long, in the 14th centuryecentury BC, we find Brahmanism perfectly established and organized, the liturgical writings fixed and the Vedic calendar established; it is therefore impossible to go lower.

We found the era of Kali too exaggerated: let's not talk about it. Let us reduce the number of years it requires and let us fall back to the Kachemyrian era. We cannot go any further without making any Egyptian chronology impossible. In my opinion, this is giving way too much to doubt. But, for what is in question here, I am satisfied with it. Let us not even consider that Brahmanism visibly existed long before this time and conclude that from the year 2448 BC to the year of the Lord 1852, 4300 years have passed, that the Brahmanical organization lives always, that it is today in a state comparable to the situation of the Egyptians under the Ptolemies of the IIIe century BC, and that of the first Assyrian civilization at different periods, among others in the 7thecentury. Thus, by being generous towards Egyptian civilization, by granting it, what I do not do for that of the Brahmins, the entire period preceding the migration and all that of its beginnings before Menes, it will have lasted since the year 2448 until the year 300 BC, that is to say 2148 years. As for Assyrian civilization, by moving its starting point back as far as one wishes, as one cannot do before many centuries before the era

Kachemyrian, it follows that we should not even talk about it: it stops too far from the goal.

The Egyptian organization remains the only term of comparison, and it is back, on the type from which it drew its life, by 2152 years. I do not need to confess everything that is arbitrary in this calculation: we can see it anyway. However, we must not forget that this arbitrariness has the effect of enormously lowering the number of years of Brahmanical existence; that I voluntarily assume the organization of the contemporary castes of the era of Kachemyr; that with no less exaggerated ease I admit, against all probability, a perfect synchronism between the first developments of Brahmanism and the birth of civilization in the Nile valley, and finally that I postpone to IIIecentury BC (a time when the true Egyptians no longer counted, so to speak), the comparison I make with the current Brahmins, which brings little honor to the latter. I believed, however, that I owed this homage to the century in which Manetho was born. Thus, it is well understood that by only making Hindu society live 2500 years longer than that of Assyria, and 2000 years longer than that of Egypt, I am slandering it, I am lowering its longevity by a good number centuries. However, I persist, because the incomplete figures that are in my hands still allow me to establish the following reasoning: Given three societies, they perpetuate themselves to the extent that the white principle which is also their basis is maintained.

Assyrian society, constantly renewed by means of mediocrely pure tributaries, displayed an extreme intensity of life, demonstrated a somewhat convulsive activity. Then, assailed by too many Melanian elements and delivered to perpetual ethnic struggles, the light it projected was perpetually syncopated, constantly changing direction, shapes and colors, until the day when the Ariane race- medicine came to give it a new nature. This is the fate of a very mixed society: first it is extreme agitation, then morbid torpor, finally death.

Egypt offers a middle ground, because the organization of this country was limited to half-measures. The caste system exerted only a very limited ethnic influence there, because it was incompletely applied, heterogeneous alliances having remained possible. Probably, the Arian core had felt too weak to command absolutely and had fallen back on dealings with the dark species. He received the fair rent for this moderation. More lively than the Assyrian organization, above all more logical, more compact, less fragile and less variable, it had a discreet existence, mixed with fewer affairs, less influential on general history, but more honorable and much longer. . Here now is the third term of the observation: it is India. No avowed compromise with the foreign race, superior purity; the brahmans enjoy it first, the kschattryas afterwards. The vayçias and even the çoudras retain the primary nationality in a relative way. Each caste balances its particular ethnic value vis-à-vis the other. The degrees are consolidated and maintained. Society expands its bases, and, like the plants of this torrid climate, grows, on all sides, the most luxuriant vegetation. When European science only knew the edge of the Eastern world, its admiration for ancient civilization made the Phoenicians and the men of Egypt and Assyria so many characters of a titanic nature. She attributed to them the possession of all the glories of the past. Looking at the pyramids, we were surprised that there could have been creatures capable of such vast works. But since our steps ventured further and, on the banks of the Ganges, we saw what India was in ancient times, for infinite series of centuries, our enthusiasm moves, crosses the Nile, passes the Euphrates, and will take in the wonders accomplished between the Indus and the lower course of the Brahmaputra. It is there that human genius has truly created, in all genres, wonders which astonish the mind. It is there that philosophy and poetry have their apogee, and where the vigorous and intelligent bourgeoisie of the vayçias have long attracted and absorbed all that the ancient world possessed in terms of wealth in gold, silver and precious materials. The general result of the Brahmanical organization was even greater than the details of the work. What emerged was a society that was almost immortal compared to the duration of all the others. She had two dangers to fear, and only two: the attack

of a nation more purely white than itself, the difficulty of maintaining its laws against ethnic mixtures. The first danger has broken out several times, and until now, if the foreigner has constantly found himself strong enough to subjugate Hindu society, he has, no less constantly, recognized himself powerless to dissolve it. As soon as the cause of his momentary superiority ceased, that is to say, he allowed the purity of his blood to be undermined, he wasted no time in disappearing and leaving his majestic slave free.

The second danger has also come true. It was, moreover, in embryo in the primitive organization. The secret was not to stifle it or even to stop its growth, caused by alloys which, although rare and often unnoticed, are no less certain and only show themselves too much in the bastardization. progressive of the upper castes of India. However, if the caste regime has not succeeded in completely paralyzing the demands of nature, it has greatly reduced them. The progress of evil has only been accomplished extremely slowly, and as the superiority of the Brahmins and the Kschattryas over the Hindu populations has not ceased, until our days, to be an incontestable fact, we cannot predict, before a very nebulous future, the definitive end of this society. It is one more great demonstration of the superiority of the white type and the invigorating effects of the separation of the races.

Book three

Chapter II

Developments in Brahmanism.

In the table of the regime invented by the purohitas, and which became Brahmanism, I have only indicated the system in itself, without having shown it struggling with the difficulties of application, and I have chosen for depict it, not the moment when it began to form, developing little by little, being completed by additional acts, but the time of its peak. If I wanted to represent him like this, in his tallest size, and from head to toe, it is so that after having described childhood, I would not have to explain maturity. Now, to see the system at work, let's get into the realm of history. The power of the purohitas was established on two strong pillars: the intelligent piety of the Ariane race, on the one hand; on the other, the devotion, less noble but more fanatical, of the submissive half-breeds and aborigines. This power rested on the vayçias, always inclined to seek support against the preponderance of warriors, and on the çoudras, imbued with a Negro feeling of terror and superstitious admiration for men honored with daily communications with the Divinity. Without this double support, the purohitas could not reasonably have thought of attacking the spirit of independence so dear to their race, or, having dared to do so, would not have succeeded. Knowing they were supported, they were bold. Immediately, as they must have expected, strong resistance broke out among a large fraction of the Arians. It was certainly following the battles and the great disasters brought about by this religious novelty that the Zoroastrian nations, breaking with the Hindu family, left the Punjab and neighboring countries, and moved away towards the west, breaking forever with brothers whose political organization no longer suited them. If we inquire into the causes of this split, if we ask why what pleased some excluded others, the answer is undoubtedly difficult. However, I have little doubt that the Zoroastrians, having remained further north and in the rearguard of the Hindu Arians, would have

preserved, with greater ethnic purity, good reasons to refuse the establishment of a hierarchy of birth, artificial from their point of view, and, therefore, of no use, without popularity among them. If they did not have black çoudras, nor caper vayçias, nor mulatto kschattryas in their ranks; if they were all white, all strong, all equal, no reasonable reason existed for them to accept, at the head of the social body, morally sovereign Brahmins. It is, in all cases, certain that the new system inspired in them an aversion which could not be concealed. We find traces of this hatred in the reform of which a very ancient Zoroaster, Zerduscht or Zeretoschtro, was the promoter; because the dissidents did not preserve the ancient Arian cult any more than the Hindus. They perhaps claimed to bring it back to a more exact formula. Everything in magism has a Protestant character, and this is where the anger against Brahmanism is seen.389. In the sacred language of the Zoroastrian nations, the God of the Hindus, theDeva,became theDiw,the evil spirit390, and the wordmaanioureceived the meaning ofcelestial when its root, for the Brahmanical nations, retained that of furyand ofhate391.This would be the case here to apply 101everse from the first book of Lucretius.

The separation therefore took place, and the two peoples, continuing their lives apart, had no further relations except with bows in their hands. Nevertheless, while returning, without measure, dislike for dislike, insult for insult, they always remembered their common origin and did not deny their kinship.

I will note here, in passing, that it was, in all probability, a short time after this separation, that the precrit dialect began to form and that the Arian language properly so called, if ever it existed in a more concrete form than a bundle of dialects, finally disappeared. Sanskrit still dominated for a long time in the state of a spoken and pre-excellent idiom, which did not prevent the derivations from multiplying and tending to repress, in the long run, the holy language into the eloquent silence of books. Happy the Brahmins, if the departure of the Zoroastrian nations could have freed them from all opposition! But they had not yet fought

that with only one enemy, and many opponents must strive to destroy their work. They had only experienced one form of protest: other, more formidable ones would reveal themselves. The Arians had not stopped gravitating towards the south and towards the east, and this movement, which lasted until the 18thecentury AD, and which, perhaps even, still continues obscurely as Brahmanism is so alive, was followed and, in part, caused by the northern pressure of other populations arriving from the ancient homeland. The Mahabharata tells the great story of this late migration392. These newcomers, under the leadership of the sons of Pandu, appear to have followed the route of their predecessors and to have come to India via Sogdiana, where they founded a city which, from the name of their patriarch, was calledPanda393, As for the race to which these invaders belonged, there is no room for doubt. The word that designates them meansa white man394.The Brahmins recognize, without difficulty, these enemies as descendants of the human family, the source of the Hindu nation. They even admit the kinship of these intruders with the orthodox royal race of the Kouravas. Their women were tall and fair, and enjoyed that freedom which, among the Teutons, a halfcondemned oddity of the Romans, was only the continuation of the primitive customs of the white family.395.

These Pandavas ate all kinds of meat, that is to say, they ate oxen and cows, a supreme abomination for the Hindu Arians. On this point, the Zoroastrian reformers retained the ancient doctrine, and this is a new and strong retrospective proof that a particular mode of civilization and a common deviation in religious ideas, had long united the two branches apart from the primordial ideas. of the race. The Pandavas, disrespectful of sacred animals, did not know the hierarchy of castes either. Their priests were not Brahmins, not even the purohitas of old. For these different reasons, they appeared, in the eyes of the Hindus, to be affected by impurity and their contact seriously compromised Brahmanical civilization. As they were received very poorly (they probably did not expect any other reception), a war began, which took place throughout the north, the

south, east of the peninsula up to Videha and Viçala, and for actors all the populations, both Arian and aboriginal396. The quarrel was all the longer because the invaders had natural allies in many Arian nations of the Himalayas, hostile to the Brahmanical regime. They found among several mixed-race peoples, even more interested in repelling it, and, if possible, in destroying it: conquerors and plunderers, plunderers of all colors became their friends

.

397

Interest obviously leans towards the side of the Kouravas, who defended civilization. However, after much time and trouble, after having pushed back their antagonists for a long time, the Kouravas finally succumbed. The Punjab and vast surrounding areas remained in the possession of the invaders who were whiter and, consequently, more energetic than the Brahmanical nations, and Hindu civilization, forced to yield, penetrated further into the south-east. But she was tenacious because of the immobility of her races. She only had to wait, and her revenge on the descendants of the Pandavas was brilliant. These, living free from all sacred restrictions, quickly mingled with the natives. Their ethnic merit deteriorated. The Brahmins regained the upper hand. They entwined the degenerate sons of Pandou in their sphere of action, imposed ideas and dogmas on them, and, forcing them to organize themselves on the models given by them, crowned victory by providing them with a priestly caste which was not sorted among what was best. We also notice, in Kachemyr, that the men of the highest class are darker today than the rest of the population. It's because their ancestors come from the south398. Relations between the castes were not, in the north, the same as they were in the south. The Brahmins did not show themselves intellectually superior to the rest of the nationals, the latter never easily obeyed their priesthood399, and the deep contempt for true Hindus, insulting qualifications, and, best of all, a very marked moral inferiority forever punished the descendants of the Pandavas for the disruption which they had brought for a moment to the Brahmanical work. We can therefore observe here this phenomenon, that it was less the purity of the race than the homogeneity of the ethnic elements that

resulted in the victory of the Brahmins over the descendants of the Pandavas. Among the first, all the instincts were classified and acted, without harming each other, in special spheres; in the latter, the unlimited mixture of blood confused them to infinity. We have already seen the analogue of this situation in the later period of Tyrian history.

From this time on, many Arian nations found themselves more or less cut off from Hindu nationality, and reduced to a lower degree of dignity and esteem. We must place, in this category, the white tribes, living between the Sarasvati and the Hindu-koh, and several of the riparians of the Indus, that is to say the very ones who, in the eyes of the Greek or Roman antiquity, represented the populations of India 400. Below these disdained peoples, there were a very large number of impure ones, then came the aborigines401.

Thus, for the Brahmins, terrible logicians, political humanity was divided into three large fractions: the Hindu nation proper, with its three sacred castes and its additional caste, which we could call tolerance – a sacrifice that conviction made to necessity - then the Arian nations, called vratyas, too openly mixed with indigenous blood, who had adopted the sacred rule late and did not follow it rigorously, or, worse, had persisted in rejecting it. In this case, the appellation of vratya, thief, plunderer, was not enough for the indignant aversion of the true Hindu, and such people were described asdasyou,term which carries a roughly similar meaning with the superlative. This insult suited the acrimonious resentment of those who used it all the more because it is etymologically close to zenddandyou, dakyou, dakhou402, which the southern Zoroastrians used to designate the provinces of their states. Nothing is more similar (charity aside) to the scum of the human race than a heretic, and vice versa.

Finally, thirdly and even below thesedasyousso hated, came the aboriginal nations. Nowhere can we imagine more complete savages, and, unfortunately, their number was exorbitant. To judge their moral value, we must see today what their purest descendants are, either in the Dekkhan or in

the Vyndhias Mountains and in the central forests of the peninsula, where they roam in flocks. Let us look at them alive, after so many centuries, as their ancestors did at the time when Rama came to fight the islanders of Ceylon, then their fellows. I do not pretend to list them all, that is not my business; I will only indicate a few names.

The Kad-Erili-Garou speak Tamil. They go completely naked, sleep under caves and bushes, live on roots, fruits and animals that they catch. Are these not the sons of Anak, the Choreans of Scripture?403?

The Katodis camp under trees, eat raw reptiles, and, when they dare, lie down on the dung of Hindu villages. The Kauhirs do not even know how to defend themselves against attacks from wild beasts. They flee or are devoured, and let themselves be404.

The Kandas, very given to human sacrifices, slaughter the Hindu children they steal, or even buy some from the most miserable outcasts, their peers in many respects. That's enough405. The Brahmins gave to all peoples of this sad category the general name ofMlekkhas406, wild,orBarbaras.This last name is embedded in all the languages of the white species. It clearly demonstrates the superiority that this family claims over the rest of the human species. 407. Considering the immense number of aborigines, the politicians of India nevertheless understood that denying them did not paralyze them, and that it was necessary, putting aside all repugnance, to rally them by some kind of lure to Arian civilization. But the way? What was there left to offer them that could tempt them? All the happiness of this world was distributed. The Brahmins nevertheless imagined offering them to them, even the highest, even those whom the first Arians were confident of conquering by the vigor of their arms, I mean the divine character, with this sole reservation, that so many magnificent perspectives cannot were to

open only after death, what am I saying? after a long series of existences. The dogma of metempsychosis once admitted, nothing could be more plausible, and as the Mlekkha saw, before his eyes, all classes of Hindu society acting by virtue of this belief, he had already, in the good faith of his converters, a strong reason to be convinced. The truly penitent, mortified, virtuous Brahmin prided himself highly on taking his place, after his death, in a category of beings superior to humanity. The kschattrya was reborn as a Brahmin with the same hope in the second degree, the vayçia reappeared kschattrya, the çoudra, vayçia408. Why wouldn't the native have become a çoudra, and so on? Moreover, it happened that this last rank was conferred on him even during his lifetime. When a nation submitted en masse, and it was necessary to incorporate it into a Hindu state, we were forced, despite the dogma, to organize it, and the least we could do for it was still to immediately admit him into the last of the regular castes409.

Political resources like this system of promises achievable through resurrection cannot be improvised. They only have value when the good faith of those who use them is intact. In this case they become irresistible, and the example of India proves it. There were thus, with regard to the Aborigines, two kinds of conquests. One, the least successful, was operated by the kschattryas. These warriors, forming a regular quadruple army, say the poems, that is to say composed of infantry, cavalry, armed chariots and elephants, and generally supported by an auxiliary body of natives, set out in the countryside and were going to attack the enemy. After the victory, civil and religious law prohibited the military from carrying out the incorporation of impure populations. The kschattyras were content to remove power from the chief promoter of the quarrel, and substitute one of his relatives in his place; after which they withdrew, taking the spoils and precarious promises of submission and alliance410. The Brahmins proceeded quite differently, and their way alone constitutes the true taking possession of the country and serious conquests.411.

They advanced in small groups beyond the sacred territory of Aryavarta or Brahmavarta. Once in these thick forests, in these uncultivated swamps where the nature of the tropics makes trees, fruits, flowers grow in abundance, places birds with rich plumage and varied songs, gazelles in flocks, but also tigers and the most formidable reptiles, they built isolated hermitages where the aborigines saw them incessantly applying themselves to prayer, meditation, teaching. The savage could kill them without difficulty. Half-naked, seated at the door of their branch cabins, alone most of the time, at most assisted by a few disciples as unarmed as themselves, the massacre presented neither the difficulties nor the exhilaration of the struggle. However, thousands of victims fell412. But for one hermit who had his throat cut, ten came running, competing for the now sanctified sanctuary, and the venerable colonies, extending their ramifications more and more, irresistibly conquered the land. Their founders no less captured the imagination of their fierce murderers. They, struck by surprise or superstitious terror, finally wanted to know what these mysterious characters were, so indifferent to suffering and death, and what strange task they were accomplishing. And this is what the anchorites taught them. “We are the most august of men, and no one here below is comparable to us. It is not without having deserved it that we possess “this supreme dignity.” In our previous existences, we were seen as “miserable as you are.” By dint of virtues and degrees by degrees, we have reached the point where even kings grovel at our feet. Always driven by a single ambition, aspiring to limitless greatness, we work to become gods. Our penances, our austerities, our presence here, have “no other purpose.” Kill us: we will have succeeded. Hear us, believe, humble yourself, serve, and you will become what we are413. »

The savages listened, believed and served. Aryavarta gained a province. The anchorites became the root of a local Brahmanical branch. A colony of kschattryas came running to govern and guard the new territory. Very often, almost always, a necessary tolerance allowed the kings of the country to take rank in the military caste. Vayçias were also formed, and, I believe, without too much respect for the purity of the blood. From one district of India to

the other, the reproach of lacking purity has never stopped running and reaching even the Brahmins414. It is indisputable that this reproach is wellfounded, and we can provide striking proof of it. Thus, in epic times, Lomâpâda, the native king of the converted Angas, married Çanta, daughter of the Arian king of Ayodhya415. So again, in the 18th centuryecentury, during the Hindu colonizations carried out among the yellow peoples, east of Kali, in Nepal and Boutan, we saw the Brahmins mingling with the daughters of the country and installing their mixed-race offspring as a military caste

.

416

Proceeding in this way, in the name of their principle; making this principle indispensable to social organization, however making it bend, unfortunately for the future, very judiciously for the present, in the face of too great difficulties, the Brahmanical ascetics formed a corporation all the more numerous as the life of its members was generally sober and always away from the work of war. Their system was deeply embedded in the society that owed them their lives. Everything looked good: only, however great the obstacles already overcome, even more formidable ones were going to arise. The kschattryas realized that if, in this social organization, the most brilliant role was assigned to them, the power left to them by the priesthood had more flowers than fruits. Almost reduced to the situation of erased satellites, it became difficult for them to have an idea, a will, a plan different from that which the Brahmins had decided on, without them, and, although they were said to be kings, they felt so embraced by the priests that their prestige, vis-à-vis the people, became secondary. Nor was it, for their future, a little threatening symptom to see the Brahmins pose, in the State, as eternal mediators between the sovereigns and their bourgeois, their people, perhaps even their warriors, while that by means of energetic patience, of an indomitable detachment from human joys, these same Brahmins made themselves the fathers, the augmenters of Aryavarta, through the mass conversions that their courageous missionaries carried out in the aboriginal nations. Such a picture would cease, sooner or later, to be considered with a placid eye by princes, and the Brahmins seem not to have enough

spared, even according to the data of their own system, the mistrust and ambition of the men they had the most to fear. It's not that they didn't use some caution. Just as they had bended the rigor of their system to the point of admitting aboriginal chiefs to the dignity of kschattryas, they had demonstrated an even more difficult tolerance towards the Arians of this caste, by allowing many, who demonstrated holiness, knowledge and extraordinary penances, to rise to the rank of Brahmin. The episode of Visvamitra, in the Ramayana, has no other meaning . We would also mention the consecration of another warrior of the Kourava race. But such concessions could only be rare, and it must be admitted that in exchange they reserved the right to marry the daughters of kschattryas and become kings in their turn. Sons-in-law of sovereigns, they still admitted that the offspring of their alliances followed a law of decline, and found themselves excluded from the priestly caste. But, from the head of their mother, the prerogatives of the military tribe fully returned to them, and the royal dignity at the same time. There is, on this subject, an anecdote that I will insert here, although it interrupts, or perhaps because it interrupts rather long and rather dry considerations. 417

There existed, in very ancient times, in Tchampa, a Brahmin. This Brahmin had a daughter, and he asked the astrologers what future was reserved for the object of his restless tenderness. They, having consulted the stars, unanimously recognized that the little brahmani would one day be the mother of two children, one of whom would become an illustrious saint and the other a great sovereign. The father was transported with joy at this news, and as soon as the young girl found herself marriageable, noting with pride how she was endowed with perfect beauty, he wanted to contribute to the fulfillment of destiny, perhaps to hasten it, and he went to offer his child to Bandusara, king of Pataliputhra, a monarch renowned for his wealth and his power.

The gift was accepted, and the new wife was taken to the royal gynoecium. His graces caused too much sensation there. The other wives of the kschattrya considered her so dangerous that they feared being replaced in the heart of the king, and began to look for a ruse

which, just as well as impossible violence, could rid them of their fears by removing their rival. The beautiful brahmani was, as I said, very young, and, probably, without much malice. The conspirators were able to persuade her that, to please her husband, she had to learn to shave him, perfume him and cut his hair. She had every imaginable desire to be a submissive wife: she therefore promptly obeyed these perfidious advice, so that the first time Bandusara sent for her, she presented herself before him with an ewer in one hand and carrying, in the the other, the whole apparatus of the profession that she had just learned.

The monarch, who, no doubt, was a little lost in the number of his wives and had concerns of all kinds on his mind, forgot the tender movements with which he had been agitated a moment before, craned his neck and allowed himself to be adorned. He was delighted with the address and grace of his servant, and so much so that the next day he asked for her again. New ceremony, new enchantment, and this time, wanting, like a generous prince, to recognize the pleasure he received, he asked the young girl how he could reward her.

The beautiful brahmani naively indicated a means without which the promises of the astrologers could not, in fact, be fulfilled. But the king protested loudly. However, he kindly pointed out to the beautiful applicant that, since she was from the barber caste, her pretension was untenable, and that he would certainly not commit an action as enormous as that with which she requested him. Immediately, explanation; the unrecognized wife claims, with the right feeling of wounded dignity, her quality as brahmani, recounts why and with what laudable intention she fulfills the servile functions which scandalize the king while pleasing him. The truth emerges, beauty triumphs, intrigue disappears, and astrology is honored with one more success, to the great satisfaction of the old Brahmin418.

Thus, in the ancient organization of India, the union of two castes was, to say the least, tolerated, and, in a thousand circumstances, the Brahmins had to find themselves in direct competition with the Kschattryas for the material exercise of the sovereign power419. How to do ?

Applying the principle of separation in its entirety would not hurt everyone? Care was needed. On the other hand, if too much was kept, the system itself was in danger. To avoid the double pitfall, we tried to resort to the logic and subtlety so admirable of Brahmanical politics. It was established that, as a rule, the son of a kschattrya and a brahmani could be neither king nor priest. Participating, at the same time, in both natures, he would be the bard and the squire of kings. As a degenerate Brahmin, he could be learned in history, know secular poetry, compose some himself, recite them to his master and to the assembled kschattryas. However, he would not have a priestly character, he would not know the liturgical hymns, and the direct study of the sacred sciences would be forbidden to his intelligence. As an incomplete kschattrya, he would have the right to bear arms, to ride a horse, to lead a chariot, to fight, but under orders, and without hope of ever commanding warriors himself. A great virtue was reserved for him: it was self-sacrifice. To accomplish exploits for his prince and to forget himself by singing the valorous traits of the bravest, such was his lot; it was called the souta. No heroic figure in Hindu epics has more gentleness, grace, tenderness and melancholy. It's a woman's dedication in the indomitable heart of a hero420.

Once the principle was accepted, its applications became constant, and, outside of the four legal castes, the number of parasitic associations would become immeasurable.421. It became so much so, the crossing combinations formed such an inextricable network, that we can consider today, in India, the primitive castes as almost suffocated under the prodigious ramifications to which they gave birth, and under the grafts perpetual consequences that these additional ramifications have caused in turn. From a brahmani and a kschattrya we saw the birth of the bard-squires; from a brahmani and a vayçia came the ambastas, who took the monopoly on medicine, and so on. As for the names imposed on these subdivisions, some indicate the special functions attributed to them, others are simply names of indigenous peoples extended to

categories which, undoubtedly, had deserved to take them, by mingling with their true owners422. This apparent order, however ingenious it was, ultimately became disorder, and although the compromises from which it resulted were inseparable from the beginnings of the system, there was no doubt that, if one wanted to prevent the system itself to perish under the exuberance of these harmful concessions, it was not necessary to tack any longer, and that a vigorous remedy must, whatever might happen, cauterize as quickly as possible the open wound in the sides of the social state. It was according to this principle that Brahmanism invented the category of chandalas, which came to complete in a terrible way the hierarchy of impure castes.

Insulting names and rigors were not spared to the refractory Arians nor to the rebellious aborigines. But we can say that expulsion, and even death, were little compared to the filthy condition to which the four legal castes had to know that the unfortunate people resulting from their mixtures by forbidden marriages would henceforth be condemned. The approach of these sad beings was in itself a shame, a stain from which the kschattrya could, at his discretion, cleanse himself by immolating those who were guilty of it. They were refused entry to towns and villages. Anyone who saw them could set the dogs on them. A fountain where they had been seen drinking was condemned. If they settled in any place, we had the right to destroy their asylum. Finally, there have never been hated monsters on earth against whom a social theory, a political abstraction, has been pleased to imagine such terrible anathema effects. It was not the unfortunate chandalas who were being considered at the time when such atrocious threats were being fulminated: it was their future parents who had to be frightened. It must also be recognized that if the affected caste felt, on a few occasions, the bloodthirsty arm of the law weighing down on it, these occasions were rare. The theory struggled here in vain against the gentleness of Hindu morals. The chandalas were despised, hated; yet they lived. They owned villages which would have had the right to burn, and which were not burned. We did not even take so much care to avoid their contact that we did not tolerate their presence in the cities. They were allowed to take over several branches of industry, and we saw everything

time the brahmani of Tchampa taken for a thandala by the king her husband, because she fulfilled an office granted to this tribe, and yet favorably received by even a monarch. In modern India, functions deemed impure, such as those of butchers for example, bring large profits to the thandalas who are involved in them. Many became rich through the wheat trade. Others play important roles as interpreters. Climbing to the top of the social ladder, one finds chandalas rich, happy and, regardless of the idea of caste, considered and respected. A particular Hindu dynasty is well known for belonging to the impure caste, which does not prevent it from having Brahmins as advisors who prostrate themselves before it. It is true that such a state of affairs could only have been brought about by the upheavals which have occurred since the foreign invasions. As for practical tolerance and the gentleness of morals opposed to the theoretical fury of the law, it is of all times423.

I will only add that, in all times too, the chandalas, if they had something Arian in their origin, as we cannot doubt, have had nothing more urgent than to lose it. They used the vast latitude of dishonor where they were abandoned, to ally and interbreed, endlessly, with the natives. So they are, in general, the blackest of the Hindus, and as for their moral degradation, their cowardly perversity, it has no limits.424. The invention of this terrible caste certainly had great results, and I have no doubt that it was powerful enough to maintain in Hindu society the classification which formed its basis, and to place a great obstacle to the birth of new castes, at least within the provinces already united with Aryavarta. As for those that were later, the sources of the categories should not be sought too strictly either. There as elsewhere, then as before, the Brahmins did what they could. They only need to have an appearance to begin with, and only establish their rules once the organization is established. I will not repeat here what I said about Bhutan and Nepal. What happened in these countries happened in many others. However, we must not lose

seeing that, whatever the degree to which the purity of the Arian blood was compromised in this or that place, this purity always remained greater in the veins of the Brahmins first, then of the Kschattryas, than in those of the other local castes, and hence this incontestable superiority which, even today, after so many upheavals, has not yet been lacking at the head of Brahmanical society. Then, if the ethnic value of the whole lost its elevation, the disorder of the elements was only temporary. The amalgamation of races took place more quickly within each caste by finding itself limited to a small number of principles, and civilization rose or fell, but did not transform, because the confusion of instincts quite quickly made way in each category. to a true unity, although often of very pale merit. In other words, as many castes, as many mixed races, but closed and easily balanced. The category of thandalas responded to an implacable necessity of the institution, which must especially seem odious to military families. So many laws, so many restrictions stopped the kschattryas in the exercise of their warrior and royal rights, humiliated them in their personal independence, hindered them in the effervescence of their passions, by denying them access to the girls and women of their subjects. After long hesitations, they wanted to shake off the yoke, and, raising their hands to their weapons, declared war on the priests, the hermits, the ascetics, the philosophers whose work had exhausted their patience. It is thus that after having triumphed over the Zoroastrian heretics and others, after having overcome the ferocious inintelligence of the natives, after having overcome difficulties of all kinds to dig in the flow of each caste a bed contained between the dikes of the law and the forcing them not to encroach on their neighbors' beds, the Brahmins now saw civil war coming, and war of the most dangerous kind, since it took place between the armed man and the unarmed man.425.

The history of Malabar has preserved for us the date, if not of the struggle itself, at least of one of its episodes which was certainly among the main ones. The annals of this country relate that a great quarrel arose between the kschattryas and the sages in the north of India, that all the warriors were exterminated, and that the victors, led by

Paraçou Rama, a famous Brahmin who should not be confused with the hero of the Ramayana, came, after their triumphs, to establish themselves on the southern coast, and established a republican state there. The date of this event, which provides the beginning of the Malabar era, is the year 1176 BC. AD426.

There is a bit of boasting in this story. Generally the practice of the strongest is not to abandon the battlefield, and especially when the vanquished is annihilated. It is therefore likely that, contrary to what their chronicle claims, the Brahmins were beaten and forced to expatriate, and that in hatred of the royal caste whose insult they had had to suffer, they adopted the governmental form which does not recognize the unity of the sovereign. This defeat was, moreover, only one episode of the war, and there was more than one encounter where the Brahmins did not obtain the advantage. Everything also indicates that their adversaries, Arians almost as much as themselves, did not show themselves devoid of skill, and that they did not place such absolute confidence in the power of their swords that they did not believe it necessary to sharpen even less material weapons. The kschattryas placed themselves very adroitly within the enemy's resources, in the theological citadel, either in order to blunt the influence of the brahmans on the vayçias, the çoudras and the natives, or to calm their own conscience and avoid their enterprise a character of impiety which would have quickly made it odious to the profoundly religious spirit of the nation.

We have seen that, during the stay in Sogdiana and later, all the Zoroastrian and Hindu tribes professed a fairly simple cult. If it was more fraught with errors than that of the completely primordial epochs of the white race, it was nevertheless less complicated than the religious notions of the purohitas who began the work of Brahmanism. As Hindu society grew older and consequently the black blood of the aborigines of the west and south and the yellow type of the east and north infiltrated more into its bosom, the religious needs which had to be answered varied and became demanding. To satisfy the black element, Nineveh and Egypt have already taught us the

essential concessions. It was the beginning of the death of the Arian nations. These had continued to be purely abstract and moral, and although anthropomorphism was perhaps at the heart of the ideas, it had not yet manifested itself. It was said that the gods were beautiful, beautiful in the way of Arian heroes. We had not thought of portraying them.

When the two elements black and yellow had the floor, the system had to be changed, the gods themselves had to leave the ideal world in which the Arians had found pleasure in allowing their sublime essences to hover. Whatever the capital differences existing, moreover, between the black type and the yellow type, without needing to take into account, either, the fact that it was the first who spoke first and was always listened to, all that was aboriginal came together, not only to want to see and touch the gods that were so praised to them, but also so that they appeared to them rather terrible, fierce, bizarre and different from man, than beautiful, gentle, benign, and placing itself above the human creature only by the greater perfection of its forms. This doctrine would have been too metaphysical in the sense of peat. It is also reasonable to believe that the primitive inexperience of the artists made it more difficult to achieve. So they wanted very ugly idols with a terrible appearance. This is the side of depravity. It has sometimes been said, to find an explanation for these repulsive oddities of the pagan images of India, Assyria and Egypt, for these hideous obscenities in which the imaginations of oriental peoples have always delighted, that the fault in returned to an abstruse metaphysics, which did not seek so much to present monstrosities to the eyes as to offer them symbols suitable for providing food for transcendental considerations. The explanation seems more specious to me than solid. I even find that it lends, quite gratuitously, a perverse taste to high minds who, in wanting to penetrate the most subtle mysteries, are nevertheless not,ipso facto, in the absolute necessity of bullying and degrading their physical sensations. Isn't it possible to use symbols that are not repugnant? Could the powers of nature, the varied forces of the Divinity, its numerous attributes only be expressed by revolting comparisons? When Hellenism wanted to produce the mystical statue of the triple Hecate, did it give it three

heads, six arms, six legs, did he go around his faces in abominable contractions? Did he sit her on a filthy Cerberus? Did he place a necklace of heads on his chest and in his hands instruments of torture soiled with the marks of recent use? When, in turn, did the Christian faith represent the threefold and one Divinity, throw itself into horrors? To show a Saint Peter, opening both the world above and the world below, did she resort to caricature? Not at all. Hellenism and Catholic thought knew how to perfectly avoid appealing to ugliness in subjects which, however, were no less metaphysical than the most complicated Hindu, Assyrian, Egyptian dogmas. Thus, it is not the nature of the abstract idea in itself that must be attacked when the images are odious: it is the disposition of the eyes, the minds, the imaginations which must be address figurative representations. Now, the black man and the yellow man could only understand the ugly: it was for them that the ugly was invented and always remained strictly necessary. At the same time as among the Hindus it was necessary to produce theological personifications, it was also necessary to multiply them in order, by doubling them, to make them present a clearer and easier to grasp meaning. The few gods of the primordial ages, Indra and his companions, were no longer enough to convey the series of ideas that an increasingly vast civilization was giving birth to in profusion. To cite one example, the notion of wealth having become more familiar to the masses who had learned to appreciate its causes and effects, this powerful social motive was placed in the custody of a celestial master, and we inventedKouvéra, goddess made in such a way as to fully satisfy the taste of blacks427. In this multiplication of gods, however, there was not only crudeness. As the Brahmanical spirit itself became more refined, it made an effort and sought to recapture the ancient truth that had previously escaped the Ariane race, and at the same time as it created inferior gods to satisfy the rallied aborigines, or although he first tolerated and then accepted indigenous cults, he rose on his own. He searched from above, and, imagining powers, celestial entities superior to Indra, to Agni, he discovered Brahma, gave him the character

the most sublime that human philosophy could ever combine, and, in the world of super-ethereal creation where his instinct for beautiful things conceived such a great being, he allowed few ideas to penetrate that were unworthy of it. For a long time Brahma remained an unknown god to the crowd. It was not figured out until very late. Neglected by the lower castes, who neither understood nor cared about him, he was par excellence the particular god of ascetics, the one from whom they claimed, who was the subject of their highest studies, and whom they had not no thought of ever dethroning. After having passed through the whole series of superior existences, after having been gods themselves, all they hoped was to merge in his bosom and rest, for a time, from the fatigues of life, heavy with bear for them, even in the delights of heavenly existence.

If the superior god of the Brahmins hovered too far above the narrow understanding of the lower classes and perhaps of the vayçias themselves, he was nevertheless accessible to the higher sense of the kschattryas, who, remaining participants in Vedic science, had, without doubt, a less active piety than their contemplative adversaries, but possessed enough knowledge with enough clarity of mind, not to clash head-on with a notion whose value they appreciated very well. They took a bias, and, with the help of military theologians, or some deserting Brahmin, they transformed the subordinate nature of a hitherto little-noticed kschattrya god, Vishnu428, and, setting up a metaphysical throne for him, raised him as high as the celestial master of their enemies. Placed then opposite and on the same level as Brahma, the warrior altar was equal to that of the rival and the warriors did not have to humiliate themselves under a superiority of doctrine. Such a blow, well meditated no doubt, and considered for a long time, because it demonstrates through the developments which were necessary for it the length and fierceness of an obstinate struggle, threatened the power of the Brahmins, and, with it, Hindu society, of complete ruin. On one side would have been Vischnou with his free and armed kschattryas; on the other, Brahma, equaled by a new god, with his peaceful priests, and the powerless classes of vayçias and çoudras. The aborigines would have been put

forced to choose between two systems, the first of which would have offered them, with a religion just as complete as the ancient one, absolute deliverance from the tyranny of castes and the prospect, for the last of men, of achieving everything, during the very course of current life, without having to wait for a second birth. The other regime had nothing new to say; always unfavorable situation when it comes to pleading before the masses; and, just as he could not accuse his rivals of impiety, since they recognized the same pantheon as him, except a different superior god, he could not pose, as he had done until then , as a defender of the rights of the weak, as a liberal, as we would say today; because liberalism was obviously on the side of those who promised everything to the most humble, and even wanted to grant them supreme rank on occasion. Now, if the Brahmins lost the loyalty of their black world, what soldiers would they have to oppose to the edge of the royal swords, they who could not pay with their person?

How the difficulty was handled is what it is impossible to grasp. These things are so old that we guess them rather than see them amid the mutilated rubble of history. It is, however, evident that, in the two sums of faults which two belligerent political parties never fail to commit, the smaller figure goes to the Brahmins. They also had the merit of not being stubborn about details, and of saving the substance while sacrificing much of the rest. Following long discussions, priests and warriors reconciled, and, if we are to judge from the event, these were the terms of the treaty. Brahma shared the supreme rank with Vishnu. Many years later, other revolutions of which I do not have to speak, because they do not have a directly ethnic character, were added to them by Siva429, and, later still, a certain philosophical doctrine, having merged these three divine individualities into a trinity endowed with the character of creation, conservation and destruction, brought, by this detour, Brahmanical theology to the primitive conception of 'a single god enveloping the universe430.

The Brahmins renounced ever occupying the supreme rank, and the Kschattryas retained it as an inalienable right of their birth. In return, the caste regime was maintained in its entire rigor, and any infraction resolutely led the fruit of the crime to the impurity of the lower castes. Hindu society, sealed on the foundations chosen by the Brahmins, had fortunately just passed one of the most perilous crises it could endure. She had acquired a lot of strength, she was homogeneous and had only to continue her journey: this is what she did with as much consistency as with success. Towards the south, it colonized most of the fertile territories, it drove the recalcitrants back into the deserts and marshes, on the icy peaks of the Himalayas, at the bottom of the Vyndhias mountains. She occupied Dekkhan, she captured Ceylon, and brought her culture there with her colonies. Everything suggests that it then advanced to the distant islands of Java and Bali.431; she instilled herself on the lower banks of the Ganges, and dared to penetrate along the unhealthy course of the Brahmaputra, among the yellow populations that, for a long time, she had known in certain points of the north, of the east, and in the islands of south432.

While such work was being accomplished, all the more difficult as the regions were larger, the distances longer, the natural difficulties accumulated much differently than in Egypt, an immense maritime trade was going in all directions, in China, between others, and that, according to a very probable calculation, 1,400 years BC, bring the magnificent products of the soil, mines and manufactures, and bring back what the Celestial Empire and the other civilized places of the world possessed more excellent. Hindu merchants also frequented Babylon433. On the coast of Yemen their stay was, so to speak, permanent. Also the brilliant States of their peninsula were full of treasures, magnificences and pleasures, the results of a civilization developed under strict rules, but which the national character made gentle and paternal. This is, at least, the feeling one gets when reading the great historical epics and religious legends provided by Buddhism.

Civilization was not limited to these brilliant external effects. Daughter of theological science, she had drawn from this source the genius for the greatest things, and we can say of her what the alchemists of the Middle Ages thought of the great work, the least merit of which was to make gold. With all its prodigies, with all its labors, with its setbacks so nobly borne, its victories so wisely put to good use, Hindu civilization considered as the least part of itself what it accomplished that was positive and visible, and , in his eyes, his only triumphs worthy of esteem began beyond the grave.

This was the great point of the Brahmanical institution. By establishing the categories into which she divided humanity, she made sure to use each to perfect man, and send him, through the formidable passage to which agony is the door, to a higher destiny. , if he had lived well, or, if not, in a state whose inferiority gave time for repentance. And what is the power of this conception on the mind of the believer, since today even the Hindu of the vilest castes, supported, almost proud by the hope of being reborn to a better rank, despises the master European who pays him, or the Muslim who hits him, with as much bitterness and sincerity as a kschattrya can do? Death and the judgment beyond the grave are therefore the great points of the life of a Hindu, and we can say, from the indifference with which he commonly bears the present existence, that he exists only for die. There are obvious similarities here with this sepulchral spirit of Egypt, entirely focused on the future life, divining it and, in some way, arranging it in advance. The parallel is easy, or better, the two orders of ideas intersect at right angles and start from a common summit. This disdain for existence, this solid and deliberate faith in religious promises, gives to the history of a nation a logic, a firmness, an independence, a sublimity that nothing can match. When man lives at the same time, through thought, in both worlds, and, by embracing with the eye and the mind what the horizons of the tomb are darkest for the unbeliever, illuminates them with dazzling hopes, he is little restrained by the fears common to rationalist societies, and, in the pursuit of

affairs here below, he no longer counts among the obstacles the fear of death which is only a habitual passage. The most illustrious moment in human civilizations is the one when life is not yet rated so high that we do not place, before the need to preserve it, many other concerns more useful to individuals. Where does this happy disposition depend on? We will always and everywhere see it correlative to the greater or lesser abundance of Arian blood in the veins of a people. Theology and metaphysical research were therefore the pivot of Hindu society. From there emerged, without ever detaching themselves from it, the political sciences, the social sciences. Brahmanism did not make two special parts of the conscience of the citizen and that of the believer. The Chinese and European theory of the separation of Church and State was never admissible for him. Without religion, there is no Brahmanical society. Not a single act of private life was isolated from it. She was everything, penetrated everywhere, vivified everything and in a very powerful way, since she raised the thandala itself, while lowering it, and even gave this wretch a reason for pride and inferiors to despise.

Under the aegis of science and faith, the poetry of the sutas had also found illustrious imitators in the sacred hermitages. The anchorites, descended from the incredible heights of their meditations, protected the profane poets, excited them and even knew how to anticipate them. Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, was a revered ascetic. The two rhapsodes to whom he entrusted the task of learning and repeating his verses were kschattryas, Cuso and Lavo, sons of Rama himself. The courts of the kings of the country warmly welcomed intellectual pleasures, a part of the Brahmins soon devoted themselves to the sole job of providing them with them.434. Poems, elegies, stories of all kinds came to be placed alongside the voluminous lucubrations of the austere sciences435. On a stage illustrated by the most magnificent geniuses, drama and comedy brilliantly represented the morals of present times and the most grandiose actions of past eras. Certainly, the great name of Kalidasa deserves to shine on a par with the most illustrious memories of which literary splendor boasts.436. Alongside this illustrious man, several still created these masterpieces collected in part by the scholar Wilson, in hisIndian theater,and, in short, the love of pleasures

intellectuals, on the one hand, and that of the profits it brought, on the other, had ended up creating, in this ancient world, the profession of man of letters, as we have seen it practiced before our eyes for thirty years approximately, not quite in the same form as to the productions, but without the slightest difference as to the spirit437. As a demonstration, I only want a short anecdote which I will cite, in order to also open up a glimpse of the familiar side of this great civilization. A Brahmin did the job I am talking about, and whether he earned little, or perhaps spent too much, he found himself short of money. His wife advised him to go and stand in the way of the Rajah and, as soon as he saw him leaving his palace, to come forward boldly and recite to him something that might be agreeable to him. The poet found the idea ingenious, and, following the advice of the brahmani, he met the king as he was going for his walk, sitting on the back of his elephant. The venal author did not pride himself on great respect. “Which of the two shall I praise? he says to him. This elephant is dear and pleasant to the people; let's leave the king there, I'll sing the elephant438. »

This is the carelessness of what we call today the life of an artist or journalist, with this difference that the danger was not great in the midst of the barriers which surrounded all the paths. I would not, however, answer that these ways of independence, seducing some minds, did not contribute to bringing about the last great insurrection and one of the most dangerous, certainly, that Brahmanism had to undergo. I want to talk about the birth of Buddhist doctrines and the political application that they attempted.

Book three

Chapter III

Buddhism, its defeat; present-day India.

We had arrived at a time which, according to the Sinhalese calculation, would agree with the VIIecentury BC439, and according to other Buddhist calculations drawn up for northern India, would go down to the year 543 BCE440. For some time now, very dangerous ideas had crept into this branch of Hindu science which bears the name Sankhya philosophy. Two Brahmins, Patandjali and Kapila, had taught that the works ordered by the Vedas were useless in themselves for the perfection of creatures, and that, to arrive at higher existences, the practice of individual and arbitrary asceticism was sufficient. By this doctrine, one was entitled, without disadvantage for the future of the tomb, to despise everything that Brahmanism recommended and to do what it prohibited.441. Such a theory could overturn society. However, as it was only presented in a purely scientific form and was only communicated in schools, it remained a matter of discussion for scholars and did not descend into politics. But, whether the ideas which had given birth to him were something more than the accidental discovery of a searching mind, or whether very practical men had knowledge of them, it turned out that a young prince, of the most illustrious origin, belonging to a branch of the solar race, Sakya, son of Çuddodhana, king of Kapilavastu, undertook to initiate the populations into what was liberal about this doctrine.

He began to teach, like Kapila, that the Vedic works were worthless; he added that it was neither through liturgical readings, nor through austerities and tortures, nor through respect for classifications, that it was possible to free oneself from the constraints of current existence; that, for this, one had to resort only to the observance of moral laws, in which one was all the more perfect the less one cared about oneself and the more about others. As superior virtues and of incomparable effectiveness, he proclaimed liberality, continence, knowledge, energy, patience and mercy. He accepted, moreover, in matters of theology and cosmogony, everything that Brahmanism knew, apart from one last point, on which he claimed to promise much more than the regular law. He claimed to be able to lead men, not only into the bosom of Brahma, from where, after a time, ancient theology taught that, following the exhaustion of merits, it was necessary to leave to begin the series of earthly existences again, but in the essence of the perfect Buddha, where we found nirwana, that is to say complete and eternal nothingness. Thus Brahmanism was a very complicated pantheism, and Buddhism complicated it further by making it continue its path to the abyss of negation.442. Now, how did Sakya produce his ideas and seek to spread them? He began by renouncing the throne; he covered himself with a dress of coarse yellow common linen, made up of rags that he had collected himself from the tampers, from the cemeteries, and sewn by his own hand; he took a stick and a bowl, and from then on only ate what alms wanted to give him. He stopped in the public squares of towns and villages and preached his moral doctrine443. If there were Brahmins there, he made an onslaught of knowledge and subtlety with them, and those present listened, for hours on end, to a polemic that was inflamed by the equal conviction of the antagonists. Soon he had disciples. He recruited many from the military caste, perhaps even more from that of the vayçias, then very powerful and well honored, as well as very rich. Some Brahmins also came to him. It was especially among the common people that he enlisted his most numerous proselytes.444. From the moment he had rejected the prescriptions of the Vedas, caste separations no longer existed for him and he declared that he recognized no other superiority than that of virtue.445.

One of his first and most devoted disciples, Ananda, his cousin, kschattrya of a large family, returning one day from a long trek in the countryside, overwhelmed with fatigue and heat, approached a well where he sees a young girl busy drawing water. He expresses the desire to have it. She apologizes, pointing out that by rendering him this service she would defile him, being from the Matanghi tribe, from the Chadala caste. “I am not asking you, my sister,” replied Ananda, “neither your caste nor your family, but only water, if you can give me some.”446. »

He took the jug and drank, and, to bear even more striking testimony to the freedom of his ideas, some time later he married the thandala. That innovators of this strength exercised power over the imagination of the common people is easy to imagine. Sakya's preachings converted an infinite number of people, and, after his death, ardent disciples, continuing his work on all sides, extended its success far beyond the limits of India, where kings became Buddhists with all their house and their yard.

However, the Brahmanical organization was so powerful that the reform did not dare, in practice, to show itself as hostile or as reckless as in theory. The religious necessity of castes was indeed denied, in principle, and often even in action. In politics, we could not find a way to escape it. That Ananda married an impure girl was enough to gain applause from his friends, but not to prevent his children from being impure in their turn. As Buddhists, they could become perfect Buddhas and be held in great reverence in their sect; as citizens, they had just the rights and position assigned at their birth. Also, despite the great dogmatic shaking, the threatened society was not seriously damaged.447. This situation continued in a manner which alone proves the extraordinary vigor of the Brahmanical organization. Two hundred years after the death of Sakya, and in a kingdom governed by the Buddhist king Pyadassi, the edicts never failed to give the Brahmins precedence over their rivals.448, and the real war, the war of intolerance, the persecution only began with the Vecentury of our

time449. Thus Buddhism had been able to live for almost eight hundred years, at the very least, side by side with the ancient regulator of the soil, without managing to make itself strong enough to worry it and make it run to arms.

It was not for lack of good will. Conversions in the lower classes had always been increasing. At the call of a doctrine which, claiming to take into account only the moral value of men, told them: "By this simple fact that you welcome me, I relieve you of your degradation in this world", everything which did not want or could not naturally obtain a social rank was strongly tempted to run. Then, among the Brahmins there were men without knowledge, without consideration; in the kschattryas, warriors who did not know how to fight; in the vayçias, wasters regretting their fortune, and too lazy or too worthless to make another one through work450. All these accessions gave relief to the sect by spreading it among the upper classes, and it was, in short, as flattering as it was easy to glory in intimate and unnoticed virtues, to give moral speeches, and immediately to be held responsible. for saint and leave the rest451.

Convents multiplied. Monks and nuns filled these asylums called viharas, and the arts, which ancient civilization had trained and elevated, lent their aid to the glorification of the new sect452. The caves of Magatanie, Baug, on the road to Oudjeïn, the caves of Elephanta are Buddhist temples. Some are as extraordinary for the vast extent of the proportions as for the precious finish of the details. The entire Brahmanical pantheon, coupled with the new mythology which came to be buried on its branches, with all the Buddhas, all the boddhisatvas and other inventions of an imagination all the more fruitful as it plunged deeper into the black classes, everything that human thought, drunk with refinements and completely disconcerted by the abuse of reflection, could ever imagine as extravagant in terms of forms, came to be enthroned under these splendid asylums453. It was time, if the Brahmins wanted to save their society, to get to work. The struggle began, and if we compare the time of combat to that of patience, one was as long as the other. The war that began in the Ve century ends in the 14the454.

As far as we can judge, Buddhism deserved to be defeated, because it recoiled from its consequences. Sensitive, early on, to the reproach, obviously very deserved, of belying his pretensions to moral perfection by recruiting himself from all the lost people, he had allowed himself to be persuaded to admit physical and moral reasons for exclusion. By this, it was already no longer the universal religion, and the most numerous accessions were closed off, if they were not the most honorable. Furthermore, as he had not been able to destroy, at first glance, the castes, and as he had been obliged to recognize them in fact, while denying them in theory, he had had, within his own bosom, to reckon with they455. The Kschattrya kings and proud of it although Buddhists, the converted Brahmins and who had nothing to gain, both, from the new faith, except the dignity of Buddha and perfect annihilation , must, sooner or later, either through them or through their descendants, experience, in a thousand circumstances, violent temptations to break with the peat which was equal to them, and to resume the fullness of their ancient honors.

In a hundred ways Buddhism lost ground; to the 11thecentury, it completely disappeared from Indian soil. He took refuge in colonies, such as Ceylon or Java, which Brahmanical culture had undoubtedly formed, but where, due to the ethnic inferiority of the priests and warriors, the struggle could continue indecisively and even end to the advantage of the heretics. . The dissident cult still found an asylum in the north-east of India, where however, as in Nepal, we see it today, degenerate and powerless, retreating before Brahmanism. In short, he was only really at ease where he did not encounter castes, in China, in Annam, in Tibet, in Central Asia. He deployed at his ease, and, contrary to the opinion of some superficial critics, it must be admitted that the examination is not favorable to him and shows in a striking manner the little that he managed to produce, for men and for societies, a political and religious doctrine which prides itself on being based solely on morality and reason. Experience soon demonstrates how vain and hollow this pretension is. Like Buddhism, the incomplete doctrine wants to repair its fault by providing itself, after the fact, with foundations. It's too late, she only creates absurdities. Proceeding the opposite of what is seen in the

true philosophies, instead of the moral law arising from ontology, it is, on the contrary, the ontology which arises from the moral law456. From there, even more nonsense, if possible, than in degenerate Brahmanism, which contains so much. From there, a theology without soul, entirely artificial, and the nonsense of the prayer cylinder, which, plastered with manuscripts of prayers and set in perpetual rotation by hydraulic force, is supposed to send to heaven the pious spirit contained under the letters , and rejoice the supreme intelligences457. To what point of degradation soon falls a rationalist theory which ventures outside of schools and undertakes the conduct of the people! Buddhism shows this fully, and we can say that the immense multitudes whose consciences it directs belong to the vilest classes of China and the surrounding countries. Such was its end, such is its current fate. Brahmanism did not only take advantage of the infirmities and faults of its enemy. He also had benefits of skill, and he followed, in these circumstances, the same policy which he had already used successfully during the revolt of the kschattryas. He knew how to forgive and grant the necessary concessions. He did not want to violate consciences or humiliate them. He imagined, by means of an accommodating syncretism, of making the Sakya-mouni Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu. In this way, he allowed those who wanted to return to him to always venerate their idol, and spared them the bitterest part of conversions, the contempt for what one has adored. Then, little by little, its pantheon welcomed many Buddhist deities, with the sole reservation that these latest arrivals only occupied lower ranks. Finally he maneuvered in such a way that today Buddhism is as much non-existent in India as if it had never existed there. The monuments coming out of the hands of this sect pass, in general opinion, for the work of its happy rival 458. Public opinion does not dispute them with the winner, so much so that the adversary is dead, his remains have remained with the Brahmins, and the return of the spirits is as complete as possible. What can be said of the power, patience and skill of a school which, after a campaign of nearly two thousand years, if not more, achieved a similar victory? For my part, I admit, I see nothing so extraordinary in history, and I know nothing, either, which does so much honor to the authority of the human spirit.

What should we admire more here? Is it the tenacity with which Brahmanism preserved itself, during this enormous period of time, perfectly the same as itself in its essential dogmas and in what was most vital to its political system, without ever compromising on these two grounds? Is it, on the contrary, his condescension to pay homage to the honorary part of his opponent's ideas and to disregard self-esteem at the supreme moment of defeat? I wouldn't dare decide. Brahmanism showed, during this long contestation, this double type of skill, once praised with so much reason in the English aristocracy, of knowing how to maintain the past while accommodating itself to the demands of the present. In short, he was animated by a true spirit of government, and he received the reward for it with the salvation of the society which was his work.

His triumph was mainly due to the happiness of having been compact, something that Buddhism lacked. The excellence of the Arian blood was also much more on his side than that of his adversaries who, recruited mainly from the lower castes and less strictly attached to the laws of separation whose religious value they denied, offered, from the ethnic point of view, very inferior qualities. Brahmanism represented, in India, the just supremacy of the white principle, although very altered, and the Buddhists attempted, on the contrary, a protest from the lower ranks. This revolt could not succeed as long as the Arian type, despite its stains, still retained, by means of its isolation, the greater part of its special virtues. It does not follow, it is true, that the long resistance of Buddhists has not had results: far from it. I have no doubt that the return to the Brahmanical bosom of numerous tribes of the priestly caste and of kschattryas mediocrely faithful, for so many centuries, to ethnic prescriptions, has considerably developed the unfortunate seeds which already existed. However, Ariane's nature was strong enough, and still is today, to keep its organization standing in the midst of the most terrible trials that people have ever gone through. From the year 1001 AD, India had ceased to be this country closed to Western nations, including the greatest of conquerors, Alexander himself.

even, could only suspect the wonders among the impure peoples, among the vratya nations of the west whom he had fought459. Philip's son had not touched the sacred territory. A Muslim prince of mixed race, much whiter than had become the alloy from which the Brahmins and the Kschattryas now emerge, Mahmoud the Gnaznevid, at the head of armies animated by Muslim fanaticism, marched the iron and the fire on the peninsula, destroyed the temples, persecuted the priests, massacred the warriors, attacked the books and began, on a vast scale, a persecution which, from then on, has never completely ceased. If it is difficult for any civilization to stand up against the internal assaults that human passions constantly inflict upon it, what is it like when it is not only attacked, but possessed by foreigners who do not spare it? and have no greater concern than to bring about his ruin? Is there, in history, an example of happy and long resistance to this terrible conspiracy? I only know one, and it is in India that I find it. Since the harsh Sultan of Ghizni, we can affirm that Brahmanical society has not enjoyed a moment of tranquility and, amidst these constant attacks, she retained the strength to expel Buddhism. After the Persians of Mahmoud came the Turks, the Mongols, the Afghans, the Tatars, the Arabs, the Abyssinians, then again the Persians of Nadir-Schah, the Portuguese, the English, the French. To the north, to the west, to the south, routes of incessant invasions opened up, disparate swarms of foreign populations came to cover the provinces. Forced by the sword, entire nations have defected to the national religion. The Kashmiris became Muslims; the Syndhis too, still other groups from Malabar and the Coromandel Coast. Everywhere the apostles of Mohammed, favored by the princes of the conquest, gave, and not without success, feared preaching. Brahmanism has not given up the fight for an instant, and we know, on the contrary, that in the east, in the northern mountains, particularly since the conquest of Nepal by the Gorkhas in the 15the century, he still continues his proselytism, and he succeeds460. The infusion of half-Arian blood, into the Punjab, produced the egalitarian religion of Nanek. Brahmanism compensated itself for this loss by making the Muslim faith that resides with it more and more imperfect.

Undermined for a century by European action, we know with what imperturbable confidence it has so far resisted, and I do not believe that there is a man, having lived in India, who allows himself to believe that this country can ever undergo a transformation and become civilized in our own way. Several of the observers who practiced it the most and knew it best testified that, in their conviction, that moment would not arrive.

Yet Brahmanism is in complete decadence; its great men have disappeared; the absurd or ferocious superstitions, the theological nonsense of the black part of his cult, have taken over in a frightening manner over what his ancient philosophy presented as so lofty, so nobly arduous. The Negro type and the yellow principle have dug their way into its elite populations, and, on several points, it is difficult, even impossible, to distinguish the Brahmins from such individuals belonging to the low castes. In any case, the perverted nature of this degenerate race will never be able to prevail against the superior strength of the white nations coming from Western Europe.

But if it happened that, as a result of circumstances unrelated to local political events, English domination ceased in these vast countries and that, returned to themselves, they had to reconstitute themselves, no doubt after a more or less time long, Brahmanism, the only social order which still offers, in this country, some solidity, some unshakable doctrines, would end up prevailing. In the first moment, the material force residing rather among the Rohillas of the west and among the Sykhs of the north, the honor of providing the sovereigns would fall to these tribes. Nevertheless, Muslim civilization is too degraded, too intimately united with the vilest types of the population to provide a long career. Some nations of this belief perhaps escape this harsh judgment; but it falls squarely on the greatest number. Brahmanism is patient in its conquests. He would wear down, with the very blows he could bear without dying, the edge of the chipped saber of his enemies, and, first raised with triumph among the Mahrattes and the Radjaputs, he would not take long to find himself master of the most much of the ground it has lost over so many centuries. Besides, he is not inflexible in transactions, and, if he

consented, in a definitive treaty, to receive into the rank of the first two castes the warlike converts of the Arianized races of the north and this restless and active class of Anglo-Hindu mixed race, would it not counterbalance, in its very heart, the long infusion of the lower types, and could it not thus be reborn to some mediocre power? Something like this would probably happen. However, I admit, ethnic disorder would be more complicated, and the majestic unity of primitive civilization would not be reborn. These are only the rigorous applications of the principles laid down so far and of the experiences that I have noted and indicated. If, leaving these hypotheses, we want to leave the future, and limit ourselves to summarizing the lessons which from the point of view of races we can draw from the history of India, here are the facts, entirely incontestable, which come out.

We must consider the Ariane family as the noblest, the most intelligent, the most energetic of the white species. In Egypt, where we first saw it, in Hindu land, where we have just observed it, we recognized in it high philosophical faculties, a great feeling of morality, gentleness in its institutions, energy to maintain them; in short, a marked superiority over the aborigines, either from the Nile valley, or from the banks of the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. In Egypt, however, we have only managed to consider it already, and from the earliest antiquity, violently fought and paralyzed by too considerable interference of black blood, and, as time progressed, this interference, taking more forces, ended up absorbing the energies of the principle to which Egyptian civilization owed life. In India, it was not the same. The Arian torrent, rushing from the top of the Kachemyr valley onto the Cisgangetic peninsula, was most considerable. Although it was split by the desertion of the Zoroastrians, it always remained powerful, and the caste regime was, despite its slow decomposition, despite its repeated deviations, a decisive cause, which preserved for the two upper classes of Hindu society the virtues and the advantages of authority. Then, if illegal infiltrations of foreign blood took place, through the influence of revolutions, in the veins of

brahmans and kschattryas, not all were harmful in the same way, not all produced similar bad consequences. What came from the Arian or half-Arian tribes of the north reinforced the vigor of the ancient white principle, and we have noticed that the invasion of the Pandavas had made a very deep gap in Aryavarta. The influence of this immigration was therefore disorganizing there, and not annoying. Then, all around this same mountainous border, other white populations appeared incessantly on the ridges, and descending as far as India, at different times, they also brought some reminder of the merits of the species. As for harmful mixtures, the Hindu family does not have as much to complain about the yellow kinships it has given itself as about the black ones, and although, without a doubt, it has not seen descendants come out of these mixtures as robust than when it only produced with itself, it nevertheless has, on this side, lineages which are not absolutely devoid of value, and which, mixing with Hindu culture, whose main rules they have adopted, certain ideas Chinese, lend, if necessary, some assistance to Brahmanical civilization. Such are the Mahrattes, such again, the Burmese. In short, the strength of India against foreign invasions, the strength which persists while yielding remains confined in the northwest, the north and the west, that is to say among the people of Ariane origin more or less pure: Syndhis, Rohillas, mountaineers of Hindu-koh, Sykhs, Radjaputs, Gorkhas of Nepal; then come the Mahrattes, finally the Burmese whom I named above. In this reserve camp, supremacy belongs, incontestably, to the most Arianized descendants of the north and northwest. And what singular ethnic persistence, what lively and powerful consciousness every family allied to the Ariane race has of its merit! I would find a singular mark of this in the curious existence of a very strange religion widespread among a few miserable peoples, inhabiting the northern peaks. There, tribes still faithful to ancient history are surrounded on all sides by yellows who, masters of the lower valleys, have pushed them back onto the snowy heights and into the Alpine gorges, and these people, our last and unfortunate parents, adore , above all, an ancient hero called Bhim-Sem. This god, son of Pandou, is the

personification of the white race in the last great migration it made to this side of the world461. There remains the south of India, the part which extends towards Calcutta, along the Ganges, the vast central provinces and the Dekkhan. In these regions, tribes of black savages are numerous, the forests are immense and impenetrable, and the use of dialects derived from Sanskrit ceases almost completely. A mass of languages, more or less ennobled by borrowings from the sacred idiom, Tamil, Malabar and a hundred others share the populations. An infinite variegation of complexions first astonishes the European, who, in the physical appearance of men, discovers no trace of unity, not even among the high castes. These regions are those where mixing with the aborigines is most advanced. They are also the least recommendable, in every respect. Mole multitudes, without energy, without courage, more basely superstitious than anywhere else, seem dead, and it is only fair to them to declare them incapable of allowing themselves to be galvanized, for a single moment, by a desire to independence. They have never been anything other than submissive and subject, and Brahmanism has received no help, because the proportion of black blood, spread within this mass, exceeds too much what we see in the north, 'where the Arian tribes never grew so far, either by land or by sea, only insufficient colonies462. However, these southern regions of India possess, today, a new ethnic element of great value, to which I have already alluded above. These are the mestizos, born of European fathers and indigenous mothers and crossed again with Europeans and natives. This class, which is growing every day, shows such special qualities, such a lively intelligence, that the attention of scholars and politicians has already been awakened to its subject, and we have seen, in its existence, the future cause of the revolutions of India.

It is a fact that it deserves interest. On the mothers' side, the origins are not brilliant: it is only the lowest classes who provide subjects for the pleasures of the conquerors. If some women belong to a slightly less degraded social rank, they are Muslims, and this circumstance does not guarantee any superiority of blood.

However, as the origin of these Hindus has ceased to be absolutely identical with the black species and has already been raised by the accession of a white principle, however weak one may wish to suppose it, there is profitable, and we must establish an immense distance between the product of a low-caste Bengali woman and that of a Yolof or Bambara negress.

On the father's side, there can be great differences in the intensity of the white principle transmitted to the child. Depending on whether this man is English, Irish, French, Italian or Spanish, the variations are notable. As, most often, English blood dominates, as it is the one which, in Europe, has retained the most affinities with the Ariane essence, the half-breeds are generally beautiful or intelligent. I therefore join the opinion which attaches importance for the future of India to the development of this new population, and, by refraining from thinking that it will ever be in a position to put its hand to collar of its masters and to attack the radiant genius of Great Britain, I do not think it unacceptable that after the European dominators the soil of India should see it seize the scepter. In truth, this composite race is exposed to the same danger under which almost all Muslim nations have succumbed, I mean the continuity of mixtures and the bastardization which is its consequence. Brahmanism alone has the secret of thwarting the progress of such a scourge. Having thus classified the Hindu groups and indicated the points from which the living spark, although very weakened, will spring forth on occasion, I cannot help but return to the extraordinary longevity of a civilization which functioned before the heroic ages of Greece, and which, apart from the modifications desired by ethnic variations, has kept, until our days, the same principles, has always progressed along the same paths, because the ruling race has remained sufficiently compact. This marvelous colossus of genius, strength and beauty has, since Herodotus, offered the Western world the image of one of those priestesses who, although covered in a thick dress and a discreet veil, nevertheless managed, by the majesty of their attitude, to convince all eyes that they were beautiful. We did not see her, we only saw the large folds of her clothes, we had never gone beyond the area occupied by the peoples whom she herself renounced as her own. Later, the conquests of the Muslims, half-known in Europe, and their discoveries, including the

results only arrived disfigured, gradually increased admiration for this mysterious country, although knowledge of it remained very imperfect. But, for about twenty years since philology, philosophy, statistics, began the inventory of Hindu society and nature, without almost having the hope of completing it for a long time, so rich is the material and abundant, the opposite has happened to what common experience reveals: the less a thing is known, the more it is admired; here, as we know and appreciate better, we admire more. Accustomed to the limited existence of our civilizations, we repeated, imperturbably, the words of the Psalter on the fragility of human things, and when the immense curtain which hid the activity of Asian existence was lifted, and India and China appeared clearly to our eyes, with their unshakeable constitutions, we did not know how to take this discovery so humiliating for our wisdom and our strength. What a shame, in fact, for systems which each in turn proclaimed themselves and still proclaim themselves without rivals! What a lesson for Greek and Roman thought, for ours, to see a country which, beaten by eight hundred years of pillage and massacres, spoliations and misery, has more than one hundred and forty million inhabitants, and, probably , before his misfortunes, fed more than twice as many; country which has never ceased to surround with its boundless affection and its devoted conviction the religious, social and political ideas to which it owes life, and which, in their degradation, preserve the indelible character of its nationality! What a lesson, I say, for the States of the West, condemned by the instability of their beliefs to constantly change shape and direction, like the moving dunes of certain shores of the North Sea!

However, it would be unfair to blame some too much and to praise others too much. The longevity of India is only the benefit of a natural law which has rarely been able to be applied for good. With a ruling race eternally the same, this country has possessed principles eternally similar; while, everywhere else, the groups,

mixing without restraint and without choice, succeeding each other with rapidity, did not succeed in keeping their institutions alive, because they themselves quickly disappeared before successors equipped with new instincts.

But I have just said it: India was not the only country where the phenomenon that I admire took place: we must also mention China. Let us investigate whether the same causes have brought about the same effects. This study is all the better linked to that which ends here, since between the Celestial Empire and the Hindu countries there are vast regions, such as Tibet, where mixed institutions bear the character of the two societies from which they emanate. . But, before informing ourselves whether this duality is really the result of a double ethnic principle, we must, of all necessity, know the source of social culture in China, and realize the rank that this country has the right to occupy among the civilized nations of the world.

Book three

Chapter IV

The yellow race.

As the Hindu tribes advanced further east, and after having skirted the Vyndhias mountains, they passed the Ganges and the Brahmaputra to enter the country of the Burmese, we saw them come into contact with human varieties that Western Asia had not yet introduced to us. These varieties, no less multiplied in their physical and moral nuances than the differences already noted in the Negro species, are a new reason for us to admit, by analogy, that the white race also had, like the other two, its own separations. , and that not only did there exist inequalities between her and black men and those of the new category that I am addressing, but also that, within her own bosom, the same law exercised its influence, and that a similar diversity distinguished her tribes and arranged them in stages.

A new family, very variegated in shape, physiognomy and color, very special in its intellectual qualities, presents itself to us as soon as we leave Bengal walking towards the east, and as obvious affinities bring together this avant-garde vast populations marked with its stamp, we must adopt, for this whole group, a single name, and, despite the differences which divide it, give it a common name. We find ourselves facing the yellow peoples, the third constituent element of the world's population. The entire empire of China, Siberia, the whole of Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of its southernmost extremities, such are the vast territories of which the yellow group shows itself in possession as soon as white emigrants place foot in the regions located to the west, north or east of the icy plateaus of Central Asia.

This race is generally small, some of its tribes even do not exceed the reduced proportions of dwarves. The structure of the limbs and the power of the muscles are far from equaling what we see in white people. The shapes of the body are squat, stocky, without beauty or grace, with something grotesque and often hideous. In physiognomy, nature has spared drawing and lines. His liberality is limited to the essential: a nose, a mouth, small eyes are thrown into broad, flat faces, and seem traced with carelessness and

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

a completely rudimentary disdain. Obviously, the Creator only wanted to make an outline. Hair is rare among most peoples. However, we see them, as if by reaction, frighteningly abundant in some and reaching down to the back; for all, black, stiff, straight and coarse as horsehair. This is the physical appearance of the yellow race463. As for its intellectual qualities, they are no less particular, and make such a clear opposition to the aptitudes of the black species, that having given the latter the title of feminine, I apply to the other that of male, par excellence. An absolute lack of imagination, a unique tendency to satisfy natural needs, a lot of tenacity and consistency applied to earthly or ridiculous ideas, some instinct for individual freedom, manifested in the greatest number of tribes, by attachment to nomadic life, and, among the most civilized peoples, by respect for domestic life; little or no activity, no curiosity of mind, none of those passionate tastes for adornment, so remarkable among Negroes: these are the main traits that all the branches of the Mongolian family possess, in common, to different degrees. From there, their deeply convinced pride and their no less characteristic mediocrity, feeling nothing but the material sting, and having long ago found the means to satisfy it. Everything that is done outside the narrow circle they know seems senseless, inept to them, and inspires only pity in them. Yellow people are much more satisfied with themselves than Negroes, whose crude imagination, constantly on fire, dreams of anything other than the present moment and existing facts.

But, it must also be admitted, this general and unique tendency towards humbly positive things, and the fixity of views, consequence of the absence of imagination, give yellow peoples more aptitude for crude sociability than Negroes. 'have some. The most inept minds, having, for centuries, only one thought from which nothing distracted them, that of feeding themselves, clothing themselves and lodging themselves, end up obtaining, in this genre, more complete results than people who, naturally no less stupid, are still constantly disturbed by the thoughts that could come to them, by flares of imagination. Also the people

yellows have become quite skilled in certain trades, and it is not without surprise that we see them, from the earliest antiquity, leaving, as an irrefutable mark of their presence in a region, traces of quite major mining works. This, so to speak, is the ancient and national role of the yellow race.464. The dwarves are blacksmiths, are goldsmiths, and because they have possessed such knowledge and have preserved it through the centuries until the present day (for, to the east of the eastern Tongouses and on the banks of the sea of Ochotsk, the Ducheris and other tribes are no less skillful blacksmiths than the Permians of Scandinavian songs), it must be concluded that, at all times, the Finns have found themselves, at least, capable of forming the passive part of certain civilizations465.

Where did these people come from? From the great continent of America. This is the answer from both physiology and linguistics; this is also what we must conclude from this observation, that, from the most ancient times, even before what we call the primitive ages, considerable masses of yellow populations had accumulated in the extreme north of the Siberia, and from there had extended their camps and their hordes far into the Western world, providing very discreditable information about their first ancestors. They claimed to be descended from apes, and were very satisfied with it. It is therefore not surprising that the Hindu epic, having to depict the aboriginal auxiliaries of Sita's heroic husband in his campaign against Ceylon, tells us quite simply that these auxiliaries were an army of monkeys. Perhaps, in fact, Rama, wanting to fight the black peoples of the south of the Dekkhan, had recourse to some yellow tribes camped on the southern foothills of the Himalayas. Whatever it may be, these nations were very numerous, and a few very clear deductions from points already known will immediately establish this.

It is not a fact necessary to prove, for it is abundantly so, that the white nations have always been sedentary, and, as such, have never left their homes except by compulsion. However, the oldest

known residence of these nations being the high plateau of Central Asia, if they abandoned it, it is because they were driven out. I understand well that certain branches, left alone, in isolation, could be considered as having been victims of their congeners, and beaten, violated by parents. I will admit it for the Hellenic tribes and for the Zoroastrians; but I cannot extend this reasoning to all white migrations. The whole race did not have to be expelled from its home as a whole, and yet we see it moving, so to speak, en masse and almost at the same time, before the year 5000. At this time and in the centuries closest to it, the Hamites, the Semites, the Arians, the Celts and the Slavs also deserted their primitive domains. The white species escapes on all sides, goes away on all sides, and certainly in such a dissolution, which ends up leaving its native plains in the hands of the yellows, it is difficult to see anything other than the result of a most violent pressure operated by these savages on its primordial beam. On the other hand, the physical and moral inferiority of the conquering multitudes is so clear and so established that their invasion and the final victory which demonstrates its strength, cannot have its source elsewhere than in the very large number of agglomerated individuals. in these bands. There is, therefore, no doubt that Siberia was overflowing with Finnish populations, and this is also what will soon be demonstrated by a body of evidence which, this time, belongs to history. For the moment, continuing the ray of clarity that the comparison of the relative vigor of the races throws on the events of these obscure times, I will further point out that, if we admit the victory of the yellow nations over the white and the dispersion of the latter, it will also be necessary to accommodate the following alternative:

Either the territory of the white nations extended much towards the north and very little towards the east, reaching at least, in the first direction, the Middle Urals, and, in the other, not exceeding the Kouen-loun , which would seem to imply a certain development towards the steppes of the northwest;

Either these peoples, gathered on the crests of the Mouztagh, in the high plains which immediately follow, and in the three Thibets, existed only in very small numbers and in a proportion compatible with the mediocre extent of these territories and the very limited food resources, almost zero, that they can offer.

I will first explain how I see myself forced to draw these limits; then I will establish why we must reject the second hypothesis and strongly attach ourselves to the first. I said that the yellow race appeared in the primordial possession of China, and, moreover, that the black type with a prognathous and woolly head, the Pelagian species, went back as far as Kouen-loun, on the one hand, and, on the other side, to Formosa466, in Japan and beyond. Even today populations of this kind inhabit these remote countries.

Seeing the Negro established so far in the interior of Asia has already been for us the great proof of the alliance, in some way, original of the Hamites and the Semites with these peoples of an inferior essence; I said original, because the alliance was obviously contracted before the descent of the invaders into the Mesopotamic countries of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Now, transporting us from the plains of Babylonia to those of China, we will find a specimen of the graduated results of the mixture of the two black and yellow species in these mongrels who inhabit Yunnan, and whom Marco Polo calls the Zerdendam. Going further, we will encounter yet another family, no less marked with the characteristics of the alloy, which covers the Chinese province of Fokien, and finally we will fall into the middle of the innumerable nuances of these groups confined in the southern provinces of Celestial Empire, in transgangetic India, in the archipelagos of the Indian Sea, from Madagascar to Polynesia, and from Polynesia to the western shores of America, reaching Easter Island467. Thus the black race embraced the entire south of the ancient world and invaded strongly in the north, while the yellow, meeting with it in

the east of Asia, contracted there a fertile hymen whose offspring occupy all the clusters of islands extending in the direction of the southern pole. If we reflect that the center, the home of the Melanian species is Africa, and that it is from there that its main diffusion took place, and, moreover, that the yellow race, at the same time that its half-breeds owned the islands, would also reproduce in the north and east of Asia and throughout Europe, we will conclude that the white family, in order not to get lost and disappear among the inferior varieties, had to combine the power of his genius and his courage with the guarantee of numbers, although to a lesser degree, undoubtedly, than his adversaries.

We cannot even attempt to enumerate the Hamite and Semitic masses who descended, through the passages from Armenia, into the southern and western regions. But, at least, let us consider the enormous number of mixtures which were made with the black race, even beyond the plains of Ethiopia, and, to the north, on the entire coast of Africa, beyond the Atlas. , tending towards Senegal; let us look at the products of these hymens populating Spain, lower Italy, the Greek islands, and we will be in a position to convince ourselves that the white species was not limited to a few tribes. We must decide this all the more surely, since to the multitudes that I have just listed it is appropriate to add the Arian nations of all the southern branches, and the Celts, and the Slavs, and the Sarmatians, and other peoples without fame, but by no means without influence, who remained among the yellows. The white race was therefore also very prolific, and since the two black and Finnish species did not allow it to go beyond the Mouztagh and the Altai to the east, the Urals to the west, confined within such limits, it It extended to the north, as far as the middle course of the Amur, Lake Baikal and the Obi.

The consequences of this geographical arrangement are considerable and will soon find their applications. I have observed the practical faculties of the yellow race. However, by recognizing her aptitude superior to that of the black woman for the lower functions of a cultured society, I refused her the capacity

to occupy a glorious rank on the scale of civilization, and this because his intelligence, otherwise limited, is no less narrowly limited than that of the Negroes, and because his instinct for utility is too undemanding. We must relax something of the severity of this judgment when it is no longer a question of the yellow species, no longer of the black type, but of the mixed race of the two families, the Malay. Whether we take, in fact, a Mongol, an inhabitant of Tonga-Tabu and a Pelagian or Hottentot negro, the inhabitant of Tonga-Tabu, however uneducated he may be, will certainly show a superior type.

It would seem that the faults of the two races have been balanced and moderated in the common product, and that with more imagination raising the mind, while a less false sense of reality restraining the imagination, the result has been more ability to compare, grasp, conclude. The physical type has also experienced happy modifications. The Malay's hair is hard and coarse, in truth; but, inclined to crease, they do not do so; the nose is more formed than in the Kalmyks. For some islanders, in Tahiti for example, it becomes almost similar to the straight nose of the white race. The eye is no longer always raised to the external angle. If the cheekbones remain prominent, it is because this trait is common to both parent breeds. The Malays, moreover, could not be more different from each other. Depending on whether black or yellow blood dominates in the formation of a tribe, the physical and moral characteristics are affected. Later alloys increased this extreme variability of types. In short, two clearly distinctive signs remain with all these families, as a gift of their double origin: more intelligent than the Negro and the yellow man, they have kept the implacable ferocity of one, of the other the icy insensitivity468. I have finished what there was to say about the peoples who figure in the history of Eastern Asia, it is now appropriate to move on to the examination of their civilization. The highest degree is found in China. This is, at the same time, the starting point of their culture and its most original expression: this is therefore where it is appropriate to study it.

Book three

Chapter V

The Chinese.

I find myself, first of all, in dissent with a fairly generally held idea. We are inclined to consider Chinese civilization as the oldest in the world, and I only see its advent at a time before the dawn of Brahmanism, before the foundation of the first Hamite, Semitic and Egyptian empires. Here are my reasons. It goes without saying that we no longer discuss the chronological and historical assertions of the Tao-sse. For these sectarians, cycles of 300,000 years cost absolutely nothing. As these somewhat long periods form the environment in which sovereigns with dragon heads act, and whose bodies are shaped like monstrous serpents, the best thing to do is to abandon the examination of them to philosophy, which will be able to glean something from it, but to exclude, with great care, the study of positive facts469. The most rational date on which the scholars of the Celestial Empire place themselves to judge their ancient state is the reign of Tsin-chi-hoangti, who, to cut short feudal conspiracies and save the unitary cause of which he was the promoter, wanted to stifle the old ideas, had the

most of the books, and only agreed to save the annals of the princely dynasty of Tsin, from which he himself was descended. This event happened 207 years BC.

Since that time, the facts have been well detailed, following the Chinese method. I nevertheless appreciate the observation of a learned missionary, who would like to see in these heavy compilations a little more European criticism470. In any case, from that moment on, everything came together as best it could. When we want to go back further, it is not the same for long. As long as we remain in times close to Tsinchi-hoang-ti, the clarity continues to weaken. We go back, step by step, to Emperor Yaô. This prince reigned for one hundred and one years, and his accession is placed in the year 2357 BC. Beyond this period, the dates, already very conjectural, are replaced by complete uncertainty.471.Scholars have claimed that this unfortunate interruption of a chronicle whose materials, according to them, could go back to the first days of the world, is only the consequence of this famous burning of books, deplored from father to son, and which became one of the beautiful subjects of amplification that Chinese rhetoric has at command. But, in my opinion, this misfortune is not enough to explain the disorder of the first annals. All the peoples of the ancient world had their books burned, all lost the systematic chain of their dynasties insofar as the primitive books must have been their depositories, and yet all these peoples preserved enough remains of their history for , under the invigorating breath of criticism, the past rises, stirs, resuscitates, and, revealing itself little by little, shows us a physiognomy that is certainly very ancient, very different from the times of which we have the tradition. Among the Chinese, nothing similar. As soon as positive times cease, twilight fades, and immediately we arrive, not at mythological times, as everywhere else, but at irreconcilable chronologies, at absurdities of the flattest kind, the slightest fault of which is to contain nothing living. Then, alongside this pretentious nullity of written history, a complete and very significant absence of monuments. This belongs to the character of Chinese civilization. Scholars are great fans of antiques, and there is a shortage of antiques; the oldest do not go back

not beyond VIIIecentury AD472. So that, in this stable country par excellence, the figured memories, statues, vases, instruments, have nothing that can be compared, for antiquity, with what our West so stirred, so tormented, so ravaged and transformed so many times, can nevertheless display with proud abundance. China has not materially preserved anything473which takes us back even from afar, to those extravagant times when some scholars of the last century were delighted to see history sink in by mocking the mosaic testimonies. Let us therefore leave aside the impossible concordances of the different systems followed by scholars to establish the periods prior to Tsinchihoang-ti, and let us only collect the facts supported by the assent of other peoples, or carrying with them sufficient certainty. The Chinese tell us that the first man was Pon-kou. THE first man,they say; but they surround this primordial being with such circumstances that he was obviously not alone in the place where they make him appear. He was surrounded by creatures inferior to him, and here one wonders if he was not dealing with these sons of monkeys, these yellow men whose singular vanity took pleasure in claiming such a brutal origin.

Doubt soon turns into certainty. Native historians claim that upon the arrival of the Chinese, the Miao474already occupied the region, and that these people were foreign to the simplest notions of sociability. They lived in holes, in caves, drank the blood of animals they caught while running, or, in the absence of raw flesh, ate grass and wild fruits. As for the form of their government, it did not belie so much barbarity. The Miao fought with tree branches, and the strongest remained the master until one came along stronger than him. No honor was paid to the dead. We were content to bundle them in branches and grass, we tied them in the middle of these kinds of fagots, and we hid them under bushes.475. I will note, in passing, that here is indeed, in a historical reality, the primitive man of the philosophy of Rousseau and his supporters;

the man who, having only equals, can only found a transitional authority whose club is legitimacy, a type of right quite often disfavored before somewhat free and proud minds. Unfortunately for the revolutionary idea, if this theory finds proof among the Miao and among the blacks, it has not yet succeeded in discovering it among the whites, where we cannot see a dawn deprived of the clarity of intelligence. Pan-Kou, in the middle of these sons of monkeys476, was therefore regarded, and I dare say, with full reason, as the first man. Chinese legend does not make us witness his birth. It does not show us a creature, but rather a creator, because it expressly declares that he began to regulate the relations of humanity. Where did he come from, since, unlike the Adam of Genesis, the autochthonous, Phoenician and Athenian, he did not come out of the mud? On this point the legend is silent; However, if she cannot tell us where he was born, she tells us, at least, where he died and where he was buried: it is, she says, in the southern province of Honan477.

This circumstance should not be neglected, and it must be brought together, without delay, with information very clearly articulated by the Manava-Dharma-Sastra. This religious code of the Hindus, compiled at a time after the writing of the great poems, but on incontestably very ancient documents, declares, in a positive manner, that Maha-Tsin, the great country of China, was conquered by tribes of refractory kschattryas who, after crossing the Ganges and wandering for some time in Bengal, crossed the eastern mountains and spread into the south of the Celestial Empire, whose peoples they civilized478. This information acquires much more weight coming from the Brahmins than if it came from another source. We do not have the slightest reason to suppose that the glory of having civilized a territory different from theirs, by a branch of their nation, was enough to tempt their vanity and mislead their good faith. From the moment we left the desired organization among them, we became odious to them, we were guilty by all leaders and disowned; and, just as they had forgotten their kinship ties with so many

of white nations, they would have done the same with these, if the separation had taken place at a relatively low time and at a time when, the civilization of India being already established, there was no longer any way of not to notice a fact as considerable as the departure and separatist colonization of a significant number of tribes belonging to the second caste of the State. Thus, nothing invalidates, everything supports, on the contrary, the testimony of the laws of Manou, and it follows that China, at a time subsequent to the first heroic times of India, was civilized by an immigrant nation from the Hindu race, kschattrya, ariane, white, and, consequently, that Pan-Kou, this first man who, at first, we are surprised to see defined as a legislator by Chinese legend, was or one of the leaders, or the leader, or the personification of a white people coming to work in China, in Honan, the same wonders that an equally Hindu branch had previously prepared in the upper valley of the Nile479.

From then on, India's very old relations with China are easily explained, and we no longer need, to comment on them, to resort to the ventured hypothesis of always difficult navigation. The valley of the Brahmaputra and that which, along the course of the Irawaddy, encloses the plains and the numerous passages of the country of the Burmese, offered the vratyas of Ho-nan paths already well known, since it had formerly been necessary to follow them to leave Aryavarta.

Thus, in China, as in Egypt, at the other end of the Asian world, as in all the regions that we have already traveled so far, here is a white branch charged by Providence with inventing a civilization. It would be useless to try to estimate the number of these refractory Arians who, upon their arrival in Ho-nan, were probably mixed and lost their primitive purity. Whatever their multitude, small or large, their civilizing task was no less possible. They had, as a result of their alliance, the means to act on the yellow masses. Then, they were not the only offspring of the illustrious race sent to these distant lands, and they had to be associated with ancient parents able to compete, to help in their work.

Today, in the high valleys which border greater Tibet on the Boutan side, we find, just as well as on the snowy ridges, regions located further to the west, very weak, very sparse tribes, for the most part strangely mixed, in truth, which nevertheless accuse an Ariane descent480. Lost, as they are, in the middle of black and yellow debris from all sources, we are entitled to compare these people to pieces of quartz which, carried away by the waters, contain gold and come from very far away. Perhaps ethnic storms and racial catastrophes took them where their species itself had never appeared. I will therefore not use this overly altered waste, and I limit myself to noting their existence481. But, much further in the north, we see, at a fairly recent time, around the year 177 BC, numerous white nations with blond or red hair, with blue eyes, confined on the western borders of China. The writers of the Celestial Empire, to whom we owe knowledge of this fact, name five of these nations. Let us first note the geographical position they occupied at the time they were revealed to us. The two most famous are the Yue-tchi and the Ou-soun. These two peoples lived north of Hoang-ho, on the edge of the Gobi desert.

.

482

Then came, to the east of the Ou-soun, the Khou-te483.

Higher up, to the north of the Ou-soun, to the west of Baikal, were the Tingling484.

The Kian-kouans, or Ha-kas, succeeded the latter and surpassed the Yenisei485. Finally, further south, in the current region of Kaschgar, beyond Thian-chan, extended the Chou-le or Kin-tcha, followed by the Yan-Thsai, Sarmatians-Alains, whose territory extended as far as the Caspian met

.

486

In this way, at a time relatively close to us, since it is in IIecentury BC, and after so many great migrations of the white race which should have exhausted the species, there still remained, in Central Asia, branches numerous and powerful enough to surround Tibet and the north of the China, so that not only did the Celestial Empire possess, within the southern provinces, immigrant Arian-Hindu nations at the time when its history begins, but, moreover, it is very difficult not to admit that the ancient white peoples of the north and west, fleeing the great irruption of their yellow enemies, were not often thrown back on China and forced to unite with its original populations487. It would only have been, in eastern Asia, a repetition of what had been done in the southwest by the Hamites, the children of Shem and the Hellene and Zoroastrian Arians. In any case, there is no doubt that these white populations of the eastern borders were, at a very ancient time, much more compact than they could have been at the beginning of our era. This is enough to demonstrate the likelihood, the very necessity of frequent invasions and therefore frequent mixing.488. I have no doubt, however, that the influence of the southern kschattryas was initially dominant. History sufficiently establishes this. It was in the south that civilization laid its first roots, it was from there that it spread in all directions489.

We probably do not expect to find, in refractory kschattryas, propagators of the Brahmanical doctrine. Indeed, the first point that they had to strike from their codes was the superiority of one caste over all the others, and, to be logical, the very organization of the castes. Moreover, like the Egyptians, they had left the bulk of the Arian nations at a time when perhaps Brahmanism itself had not yet completely developed its principles. We therefore find nothing in China which is directly linked to the social system of the Hindus; However, while positive reports are lacking, the same is not true of negative ones. We come across some of this type which give rise to some rather curious comparisons.

When, due to theological disagreements, the Zoroastrian nations separated from their parents, they showed them a hatred which manifested itself by the attribution of the venerated name of the Brahmanical gods to evil spirits and by other violence of the same kind. The kschattryas of China, already mixed with the blood of the yellows, seem to have considered things from a rather male than female aspect, rather political than religious, and, from this point of view, they made an opposition just as strong as the Zoroastrians. . It was by going against the most natural ideas that they demonstrated their horror against the Brahmanical hierarchy. They did not want to admit any difference in rank, nor pure or impure situations resulting from birth. They substituted absolute equality for the doctrine of their adversaries. However, as they were pursued, in spite of themselves and by virtue of their white origin, by the indestructible idea of an inequality annexed to the race, they conceived the singular idea of ennobling fathers through their children, instead of remaining faithful to the ancient notion of the illustration of children by the glory of the fathers. It is impossible to see in this institution, which depends, according to the merit of a man, on a certain number of ascending generations, a system borrowed from the yellow peoples. It is found nowhere among them, except where Chinese civilization has imported it. Furthermore, this oddity is repugnant to any thoughtful idea, and, even from the Chinese point of view, it is still absurd. Nobility is an honorable prerogative for those who possess it. If we want to make it adhere solely to merit, there is no need to create a separate rank for it in the State by forcing it to rise or fall around the person who enjoys it. If, on the contrary, we are concerned with creating a sequel, a consequence extended to the family of the favored man, it is not to his ancestors that we must apply it, since they cannot enjoy it. . Another very strong reason: there is no kind of advantage, for the one who receives such a reward, to adorn his ancestors with it, in a country where all ancestors without distinction, being the object of an official cult and national, are quite respected and even adored. A retrospective title of nobility therefore adds little to the honors they enjoy. Let us not look, therefore, in the Chinese idea for what it seems to give, but rather an opposition to Brahmanical doctrines, of which the immigrant kschattryas had a horror.

and that they wanted to fight. The fact is all the more incontestable because, alongside this fictitious nobility, the Chinese were unable to prevent the formation of another, which is very real and which is based, as everywhere else, on the prerogatives of descent. . This aristocracy is made up of the sons, grandsons and agnates of the imperial houses, those of Confucius, those of Meng-tseu, and several other venerated figures. In truth, this very numerous class only possesses honorary privileges; however, it has, by the very fact that it is recognized, something inviolable, and proves very well that the backward system placed alongside it is an artificial invention entirely contrary to the natural suggestions of the human mind, and resulting from a special cause.

This act of hatred for Brahmanical institutions seems interesting to me to note. Compared to the Zoroastrian split and other insurrectional events carried out on the soil of India itself, it proves all the resistance that the Hindu organization encountered and the irreconcilable repulsions that it aroused. The triumph of the Brahmins is greater. I come back to China. If we must point out as an anti-Brahminical institution, and, consequently, as a hateful memory for the motherland, the creation of the retroactive nobility, it is not possible to assign the same origin to the patriarchal form chosen by the government of the Middle Kingdom. In a situation as serious as the choice of a political formula, as it is a question of satisfying, not personal theories, nor acquired ideas, but what the needs of the races, which, combined together, form the State, demand the most imperiously, it must be public reason which judges and decides, admits or retains in the last resort what is proposed to it, and the error never lasts more than a time. In China, the governmental formula having received, over the centuries, only partial modifications without ever being affected in its essence, it must be considered as conforming to what the national genius wanted. The legislator took as the type of authority the right of the father of the family. He established as an unshakable axiom that this principle was the strength of the social body, and that, since man could do anything about the children brought into the world,

nourished and raised by him, likewise the prince had full authority over his subjects, whom, like children, he watches over, guards and defends in their interests and in their lives. This notion, in itself, and if we consider it in a certain way, is not, strictly speaking, Chinese. She belongs very well to the Ariane race, and, precisely because, in this race, each isolated individual possessed an importance which it never seems to have had in the inert multitudes of the yellow and black peoples, the authority of the complete man, from the father of the family, on his members, that is to say on the people grouped around his home, must be the type of government.

Where the idea is altered as soon as Arian blood mixes with species other than whites, it is in the various consequences drawn from this first principle. – Yes, said the Hindu Arian, or Sarmatian, or Greek, or Persian, or Median, and even the Celt, yes, paternal authority is the type of political government; but it is nevertheless through a fiction that we bring these two facts together. A head of state is not a father: he has neither the affections nor the interests. While a head of a family wishes only with great difficulty, and through a sort of reversal of natural laws, the harm of his offspring, it may very well happen that, without even being guilty, the prince directs the tendencies of the community. in a way that is too harmful to the particular needs of each person, and, therefore, the value of the Arian man, his dignity is compromised; it no longer exists ; Arian is no longer himself: he is no longer a man.

This is the reasoning by which the warrior of the white race stopped the development of the patriarchal theory altogether, and, as a result, we saw the first kings of the Hindu States being only elective magistrates, fathers of their subjects in a very sense. restricted and with a closely monitored authority. Later, the rajah gained strength. This modification in the nature of his power was only realized when he commanded much less Arians than half-breeds, than blacks, and he had all the less of a free hand as he wanted to make his scepter on whiter subjects. The political sentiment of the Ariane race is therefore not absolutely repugnant to patriarchal fiction: only, it comments on it in a cautious way.

It is not, moreover, only among the Hindu Arians that we have already observed the organization of public authorities. The states of earlier Asia and the civilization of the Nile also offered us the application of the patriarchal formula. The modifications which were made there to the primitive idea are not only very different from what we see in China, they are also very different from what was observed in India. Much less liberal than in the latter country, the notion of paternal government was commented on by populations foreign to the reasonable and elevated sentiments of the dominant race. It could not be the expression of a peaceful despotism as in China, because it involved taming multitudes illdisposed to understand what is useful, and only bowing before brutal force. The power was therefore, in Assyria, terrible, merciless, armed with the sword, and above all prided itself on being obeyed. She did not allow discussion and did not allow herself to be limited. Egypt didn't seem as harsh. The Arian blood maintained there a shadow of its pretensions, and the castes, less perfect than in India, nevertheless surrounded themselves, especially the priestly castes, with certain immunities, with certain respects which, not being equal to those of the Aryavarta , still retained some reflection of the noble demands of the white species. As for the black population, they were constantly treated by the Pharaohs as the peat which was related to them was on the Euphrates, the Tigris, and on the banks of the Mediterranean. The patriarchal formula, addressed to Negroes, therefore only had to do with the vanquished, insensitive to any other argument than those of violence, it became heavily, absolutely despotic, without pity, without limit, without letup, without restriction, except bloodthirsty revolt.

In China, the second part of the formula was very different. Certainly, the Ariane family which brought it had no reason to relinquish the rights and duties of the civilizing conqueror in order to proclaim its own conclusion. It was no more possible than tempting; but the black conclusion was not adopted either, for the reason that the indigenous populations had a different nature and very special tendencies.

The Malay mixture, that is to say the product of black blood mixed with the yellow type, was the element that the immigrant kschattryas had to tame, to subjugate, to civilize, by mixing with it. It is believed that, in this age, the fusion of the two inferior races was far from being as complete as we see today, and that, in many places in the south of China, where the Hindu civilizers operated , tribes, fragments of tribes or even individualities of each species still remained more or less pure and kept the opposite type in check. However, from this imperfect mixture emerged needs, feelings, as a whole very similar to those which could have been produced later as the result of a completed fusion, and the whites saw themselves there grappling with necessities of a completely different order. different from those to which their fellow victors in Western Asia had been forced to submit. I have already defined the Malay race: without being susceptible to great bursts of imagination, it is not incapable of understanding the advantages of a regular and coordinated organization. It has tastes for well-being, like the entire yellow species, and exclusively material well-being. She is patient, apathetic, and easily submits to the law, arranging herself, without difficulty, so as to derive the advantages that a social state entails, and to undergo the pressure without too much anger.

With people animated by such dispositions, there was no need for this violent and brutal despotism which brought about the stupidity of the blacks and the gradual debasement of the Hamites, who had become too close relatives of their subjects and participated in their incapacities. On the contrary, in China, when the mixtures had begun to enervate the Arian spirit, it turned out that this noble element, as it subdivided and spread among the masses, brought out the native dispositions of the people. He certainly did not give them his flexibility, his generous energy, his taste for freedom. However, it confirmed their instinctive love of rule and order, their antipathy for excesses of the imagination. If a sovereign of Assyria immersed himself in exorbitant cruelties, if, like this Ninevite Zohak whose horrors are recounted in Persian tradition, he fed the serpents budding on his body with the flesh and blood of his subjects, the people in was suffering, no doubt; but how excited people's heads were before such paintings! As, deep down, the Semite understood well

the passionate exaggeration of the acts of omnipotence and how the most depraved ferocity still grew in his eyes the gigantic image! A gentle and quiet prince risked becoming an object of disdain at home. The Chinese did not see things that way. Very prosaic minds, excess horrified them, public sentiment revolted, and the monarch who was guilty of it immediately lost all prestige and destroyed all respect for his authority. It therefore happened, in this country, that the principle of government was patriarchy, because the civilizers were Arians, that its application was absolute power, because the Arians acted as conquerors and masters in the midst of inferior populations; but that, in practice, the sovereign's absolutism manifested itself neither by traits of superhuman pride, nor by acts of repulsive despotism, and was confined within generally narrow limits, because the Malay sense did not call for too great demonstrations of arrogance, and that the Arian spirit, by mingling with it, found there a background disposed to understand better and better that the salvation of a State is in the observance of the laws, as well of course the social heights than in the lower depths. This is the government of the Middle Kingdom organized. The king is the father of his subjects, he is entitled to their complete submission, he becomes for them the agent of the Divinity, and he is only approached on his knees. What he wants, he can theoretically do; but, in practice, if he wants an enormity, he has great difficulty achieving it. The nation appears irritated, the mandarins make representations heard, the ministers, prostrated at the feet of the imperial throne, moan aloud about the aberrations of the common father, and the common father, in the middle of thisoutcrygeneral, remains the master of pushing his fantasy to its limits, on the sole condition of breaking with what he was taught, from childhood, to consider sacred and inviolable. He sees himself isolated and is aware that, if he continues on the path he is taking, the insurrection will be over.

The Chinese annals are eloquent on this subject. In the first dynasties, what is said about the misdeeds of the reprobate emperors would have

seemed very venial to the historians of Assyria, Tire or Canaan. I want to give an example. Emperor Yeou-wang, of the Tcheou dynasty, who ascended the throne 781 years BC, reigned for three years without any serious reproach being made against him. In the third year, he fell in love with a girl named Paosse, and gave himself up unreservedly to the passion of this feeling. Pao-sse gave him a son, whom he named Pe-fou, and whom he wanted to make crown prince in place of the eldest, Y-kieou. To achieve this, he exiled the empress and her son, which culminated the discontent already aroused by conduct that was not in accordance with the rites. Opposition broke out on all sides.

The great ones of the empire made respectful observations to the emperor. People everywhere demanded the removal of Paosse, they accused him of exhausting the State with his expenses, of distracting the sovereign from his duties. Violent satires ran everywhere, repeated by the populations. For their part, the Empress's parents had taken refuge, with her, among the Tartars, and an invasion from these terrible neighbors was expected, a fear which greatly increased the general fury. The emperor loved Pao-sse desperately and would not give in. However, as he in turn feared, not without reason, the alliance of the discontented with the hordes of the border, he gathered troops, placed them in suitable positions, and ordered that in case of alarm fires should be lit. and beat the drum, at which signal all the generals would have to run, with their people, to stand up to the enemy.

Pao-sse had a very serious character. The emperor was perpetually consumed in efforts to bring a smile to his lips. It was great luck when he succeeded, and nothing was more pleasant to him. One day, a sudden panic spread everywhere, the signal keepers believed that the Tartar horsemen had crossed the limits and were approaching; They promptly set fire to the pyres that had been prepared, and immediately all the drums began to beat. At this noise, princes and generals, gathering their troops, ran; we only saw people

in arms, hurrying here and there and asking where the enemy was, whom no one saw, since he did not exist and the alarm was false. It seems that the animated faces of the leaders and their bellicose attitudes seemed supremely ridiculous to the serious Pao-sse, because she began to laugh. Seeing this, the emperor declared himself overjoyed. It was not the same with the serious breastplates of such good humor. They withdrew deeply wounded, and the end of the story is that, when the Tartars appeared in earnest, no one came at the signal, the emperor was taken and killed, Pao-sse kidnapped, his son degraded, and all returned. in order under the rule of Y-kieou, who took the crown under the name of Ping-wang490. This is enough to show how, in fact, the absolute authority of the emperors was limited by public opinion and morals; and this is how we have always seen, in China, tyranny appearing only as an accident constantly detested, repressed, and which is hardly perpetuated, because the nature of the race being governed does not lend itself to it. not. The emperor is, without doubt, the master of the Middle States, or even, by a bolder fiction, of the entire world, and anything that refuses his obedience is, for this very reason, deemed barbaric and outside of all civilization. . But, while the Chinese chancellery exhausts itself in formulas of respect when it addresses the Son of Heaven, custom does not allow him to express himself, on his own account, in such a manner. pompous. His language affects extreme modesty: the prince represents himself as below, through his little merit and his mediocre virtue, the sublime functions that his august father entrusted to his insufficiency. He retains all the gentle and affectionate phraseology of domestic language, and does not miss an opportunity to protest his ardent love for the good of his dear children: they are his subjects491.

The authority is therefore, in fact, quite limited, because I need not say that, in this empire, whose governmental principles have never varied, as to the essentials, what was considered good in the past has become, for this alone, better today. Tradition is all-powerful492, and it is already a tyranny, in an emperor, to move away, for the smallest detail, from the custom followed by the ancestors. Brief,

the Son of Heaven can do anything, provided he wants nothing but what is already known and approved.

It was natural that Chinese civilization, relying, at its beginning, on Malay peoples, and later on agglomerations of yellow races, mixed with a few Arians, was invincibly directed towards material utility.493. While, in the great civilizations of the ancient Western world, the administration itself and the police were only very secondary and barely outlined objects, in China it was the great business of power, and everything was rejected out of hand. puts in the background the two questions which prevailed elsewhere: war and diplomatic relations. It was accepted as an eternal principle that, for the State to maintain a normal situation, it was necessary that food be available in abundance, that everyone be able to clothe themselves, feed themselves and house themselves; that agriculture received perpetual encouragement, no less than industry; and, as the supreme means of achieving these ends, it was necessary above all a solid and profound tranquility, and minute precautions against everything which was capable of moving the populations or disturbing the order. If the black race had exercised any influential action in the empire, there is no doubt that none of these precepts would have held for long. The yellow peoples, on the contrary, gaining ground every day, and understanding the usefulness of this order of things, found nothing in themselves which did not keenly appreciate the material happiness in which they were intended to be buried. Philosophical theories and religious opinions, these ordinary brands of the burning of States, remained forever without force in the face of national inertia, which, well satisfied with rice and with its cotton coat on its back, did not worry about 'face the baton of policemen for the greater glory of an abstraction494. The Chinese government allowed everything to be preached, everything to be affirmed, the most monstrous absurdities to be taught, on the condition that nothing in the most daring novelties would tend towards any social result whatsoever. As soon as this barrier threatened to be breached, the administration acted mercilessly and repressed innovations with unprecedented severity, confirmed by the constant mood of public opinion.495.

In India, Brahmanism had also installed an administration far superior to what the Hamite, Semitic or Egyptian states ever possessed. However, this administration did not occupy the first rank in the State, where the creative concerns of intelligence demanded the better share of the attention. We should therefore not be surprised if the Hindu genius, in his freedom, in his pride, in his taste for great things and in his superhuman theories, ultimately only looked at material interests as a secondary point. He was, moreover, materially encouraged in such an opinion by the suggestions of the black alloy. In China, the apogee was therefore reached in matters of material organization, and, taking into account the difference of races, which requires different processes, it seems to me that we can admit that, in this respect, the Celestial Empire obtained much more perfect and above all more continuous results than we see in the countries of modern Europe, since governments have particularly applied themselves to this branch of politics. In any case, the Roman Empire is not comparable.

However, we must also agree, it is a spectacle without beauty and without dignity. If this yellow multitude is peaceful and submissive, it is on the condition of remaining, forever, deprived of feelings foreign to the humblest notion of physical utility. His religion is a summary of practices and maxims which recall very well what the Genevan moralists and their educational books like to recommend as the ultimategood: economy, restraint, prudence, the art of winning and never losing. Chinese politeness is only an application of these principles. It is, to use the English word, acant perpetual, which has no reason to exist, like the courtesy of our Middle Ages, this noble benevolence of the free man towards his equals, this deference full of gravity towards superiors, this affectionate condescension towards inferiors; it is only a social duty, which, taking its source in the grossest selfishness, results in an abject prostration before superiors, a ridiculous combat of ceremonies with equals and an arrogance with inferiors which increases in proportion as their rank decreases. Politeness is thus rather a formalist invention, to keep everyone in their place,

than an inspiration of the heart. The ceremonies that everyone must perform, in the most ordinary acts of life, are regulated by laws just as obligatory and as rigorous as those which relate to apparently more essential subjects.

Literature is a big deal for the Chinese. Far from becoming, as everywhere else, a means of improvement, it has become, on the contrary, a powerful agent of stagnation. The government shows itself to be a great friend of enlightenment; we just need to know how he and public opinion understand it. In the 300 million souls, generally attributed to the Middle Kingdom, which, following the apt expression of Mr. Ritter, makes up a world in itself, there are very few men, even in the lowest classes, who cannot read and write sufficiently for the ordinary needs of life, and the administration takes care that this instruction is as general as possible. The concern of those in power goes even further. He wants each subject to know the laws; we take all the necessary measures to ensure that this is so. The texts are made available to everyone, and, in addition, public readings are carried out on new moon days, in order to instill in subjects the essential prescriptions, such as the duties of children towards their parents and, hence, citizens towards the emperor and the magistrates. In this way, the Chinese people are, most certainly, what we call, nowadays, more advanced than our Europeans. In Asian, Greek and Roman antiquity, the thought of a comparison cannot even present itself. Thus, educated in the most essential, the common people understand that the first thing to obtain public office is to make oneself capable of passing the exams. This is another powerful encouragement to learn496. So we learn. And what ? We learn what is useful, and there is the impassable stopping point. What is useful is what has always been known and practiced, what cannot give rise to discussion. You have to learn, but what previous generations knew before you, and as they knew: any pretension to create something new, in this sense, would lead the student to be rejected from the exam, and, he persisted in a treason trial where no one would pardon him. So there is no one who risks such chances, and, in this field of

Chinese education and science, so constantly, so exemplarily plowed, there is not the slightest chance that an unknown idea will ever raise its head. She would be torn away instantly with indignationfour hundred ninety seven.

In literature proper, the bout-rhyme and all the ingeniously puerile distractions which resemble it are held in great honour. Quite gentle elegies, descriptions of nature more minute than picturesque, although not without grace, that's the best. The really good thing is the novel. These people without imagination have a great spirit of observation and finesse, and such production resulting from these two qualities recalls among them, and perhaps going beyond them, the English works intended to depict the life of the great world. There the flight of the Chinese muse ends. The drama is poorly designed and quite flat. The ode to the style of Pindar has never passed through the minds of this stale nation. When the Chinese poet fights his sides to warm up his verve, he throws himself headlong into the clouds, summons dragons of all colors, runs out of breath, and grasps nothing but ridicule.

Philosophy, and especially moral philosophy, the object of great predilection, consists only of usual maxims, the perfect observance of which would certainly be very meritorious, but which, by the childishly obscure and dryly didactic way in which they are exposed and deduced, do not constitute a branch of knowledge very worthy of admiration498. Big scientific works attract more praise. In truth, these wordy compilations lack criticism. The mind of the yellow race is neither deep enough nor sagacious enough to grasp this quality reserved for the white species. However, much can still be learned and gathered from historical documents499. What relates to the natural sciences is sometimes precious, especially for the accuracy of observation and the patience of artists in reproducing known plants and animals. But one should not expect general theories. When the vague fantasy of creating one enters the minds of scholars, they immediately fall below stupidity. We will not see them, like the Hindus or the Semitic peoples, inventing fables which, in their incoherence, are at least grandiose or attractive. No: their

design will remain only heavy and pedantic. They will seriously tell you, as an incontestable fact, the transformation of the toad into this or that animal. There is nothing to say about their astronomy. It can provide some insight into the difficult work of chronologists, without its intrinsic value, correlative to that of the instruments it uses, ceasing to be very mediocre. The Chinese themselves recognized this through their esteem for the Jesuit missionaries. They charged them with correcting their observations and even working on their almanacs.

In short, they like science in its immediate application part . For what is great, sublime, fertile, on the one hand, they cannot attain it, on the other, they fear it and carefully exclude it. Highly appreciated scholars in Beijing would have been Trissotin and his friends. 500

For having had, thirty years, eyes and ears; For having used nine to ten thousand watches Namely what others have said before them.

Molière's sarcasm would not be understood in a country where literature fell in childhood into the hands of a race whose Arian spirit was completely drowned in yellow elements, a composite race, endowed with certain merits which do not contain those of invention and boldness. In the matter of art, there is still less to approve. I was talking, earlier, about the accuracy of painters of flowers and plants. We know, in Europe, the delicacy of their brush. In portraiture, they also obtain honorable success, and, skilled enough in capturing the character of physiognomies, they can contend with the flat masterpieces of the daguerreotype. Then, that's all. Great paintings are bizarre, without genius, without energy, without taste. Sculpture is limited to monstrous and common representations. The vases have the shapes we know. Seeking the bizarre and the unexpected, their bronzes are designed with the same feeling as their porcelain. For architecture, they prefer above all these eight-story pagodas whose invention does not come from

completely of them, having something Hindu in the whole; but the details belong to them, and, if the eye which has not yet observed them can be seduced by the novelty, it soon becomes disgusted with this eccentric uniformity. In these constructions, nothing is solid, nothing is able to withstand the centuries. The Chinese are too prudent and too good calculators to use more capital in the construction of a building than is necessary. Their most remarkable works all spring from the principle of utility: such as the countless canals through which the empire is crossed, the dikes, the levees to prevent floods, especially those of the Hoang-ho. Here we find the Chinese on his true ground. Let us repeat it one last time: the populations of the Celestial Empire are exclusively utilitarian; they are so much so that they were able to admit, without danger, two institutions which seem hardly compatible with any regular government: popular assemblies gathered spontaneously to blame or approve the conduct of magistrates and the independence of the press501. In China, neither free assembly nor the dissemination of ideas is prohibited.502. It goes without saying, however, that when abuse shows itself, or, better said, if abuse shows itself, repression will be as prompt as it is implacable, and will take place under the direction of the laws against treason. We will agree: what solidity, what strength does a social organization have which can allow such deviations from its principle and which has never seen the slightest inconvenience escape from its tolerance!

The Chinese administration has achieved, in the sphere of material interests, results that no other ancient or modern nation has ever achieved.503; popular education spread everywhere, well-being of subjects, complete freedom within the permitted sphere, most complete industrial and agricultural developments, production at the lowest prices, and which would make any European competition difficult with ordinary consumer goods, such as cotton, silk, pottery. These are the indisputable results of which the Chinese system can boast504.

It is impossible here to avoid the reflection that, if the doctrines of these schools that we call socialist ever came to be applied

and to succeed in the States of Europe, theultimategood would be to obtain what the Chinese have managed to immobilize at home. It is certain, in all cases, and it must be recognized to the glory of logic, that the leaders of these schools have not in the least rejected the first and indispensable condition for the success of their ideas, which is the despotism. They very well admitted, like the politicians of the Celestial Empire, that we cannot force nations to follow a precise and exact rule, if the law is not armed, at all times, with a complete and spontaneous initiative of repression. To enthrone their regime, they would not refuse to tyrannize. Triumph would be at this price, and once the doctrine was established, the universality of men would have food, housing and practical instruction assured. There would no longer be any need to worry about questions about the circulation of capital, the organization of credit, the right to work and other details.505. There is, undoubtedly, something in China which seems repugnant to the appearance of socialist theories. Although democratic in its source, since it comes from competitions and public examinations, the mandarinship is surrounded by many prerogatives and a shine that is embarrassing for egalitarian ideas. Likewise, the head of state, who, in principle, is not necessarily from a ruling house (because, in ancient times, a rule still present, more than one emperor was only proclaimed for his merit), this sovereign, chosen from among the sons of his predecessor and without regard to the order of birth, is too venerated and placed too high above the crowd. These are, in appearance, so many oppositions to the ideas on which the Phalansterians and their emulators build. However, if we think about it, we will see that these distinctions are only results to which Mr. Fourrier and Proudhon, heads of state, would themselves soon lead. In countries where material well-being is everything and where, to preserve it, it is necessary to keep the crowd within the limits of a strict organization, the law, immutable like God (because if it were not, the public well-being would be constantly exposed to the most serious reversals), must end up, one day or another, by participating in the respects paid to the supreme intelligence. It is no longer submission that is necessary to a law so preserving, so necessary, so inviolable, it is adoration, and we cannot go too far in this direction. It is therefore

natural that the powers she institutes to spread her benefits and watch over her salvation participate in the worship accorded to her; and as these powers are well armed with all their rigor, it is inevitable that they will know how to get what they are owed. I admit that so many benefits, consequences of so many conditions, do not seem attractive to me. Sacrifice on the baker's rack, on the threshold of a comfortable home, on the bench of a primary school, what science has as transcendental, poetry as sublime, the arts as magnificent, throwing away all feeling of human dignity . abdicating one's individuality in what is most precious: the right to learn and know, to communicate to others what was not known before, is too much, it is giving too much to the appetites of matter . I would be very frightened to see such a type of happiness threaten us or our descendants, if I were not reassured by the conviction that our current generations are not yet capable of submitting to such enjoyments at the cost of such sacrifices. We can well invent alcorans of all kinds; but this fertile variability, which I am far from applauding, has the downside of its faults. We are not people capable of putting into practice everything we imagine. Our highest follies are followed by others, which cause them to be neglected. The Chinese will still consider themselves the first administrators of the world, that forgetting all proposals to imitate them, we will have moved on to some new phase of our histories, alas! so colorful!

The annals of the Celestial Empire are uniform. The white race, the primary author of Chinese civilization, has never renewed itself in a sufficient manner to cause immense populations to deviate from their natural instincts. The additions which were made at different times generally belonged to the same element, to the yellow species. They brought almost nothing new, they only contributed to extending white principles by diluting them in masses of another nature and increasingly stronger. As for themselves, finding a civilization conforming to their instincts, they embraced it willingly and always ended up getting lost in the heart of the social ocean, where their presence, however, did not fail to determine several

slight disturbances, which it is not impossible to disentangle and observe. I'm going to try it by taking things from above. When the Arians began to civilize the black and yellow mixtures, in other words Malays, which they found in possession of the southern provinces, they brought them, as I said, patriarchal government, a form capable of different applications, restrictive or extensive. We have seen that this form, applied to blacks, quickly degenerates into harsh and exalted despotism, and that, among the Malays, and especially among the more purely yellow peoples, if the despotism is complete, it is, at least, tempered in its nature. action and forced to refrain from unnecessary excesses, lack of imagination in the subjects to be more frightened than irritated, to understand and tolerate them. This explains the particular constitution of royalty in China. But a general connection between the first political constitution of this country and the special organizations of all the white branches, a curious connection which I have not yet brought out, is the fragmentary institution of authority and its dissemination in one large number of sovereignties more or less united by the common bond of a supreme power. We saw this sort of dispersion of forces in Assyria, where the Hamites, then the Semites, founded so many isolated States under the suzerainty, recognized or contested, depending on the time, of Babylon and Nineveh; dissemination so extreme, that after the setbacks of the descendants of Solomon, thirtytwo distinct States were created in the sole remains of David's conquests, on the side of the Euphrates506. In Egypt, before Menes, the country was also divided between several princes, and it was the same on the side of India, where the Arian character was always better preserved. A complete territorial reunion of the country never took place under any Brahmanical prince. In China, things were different, and this is a new proof of the repugnance of the Arian genius for unity, the action of which, according to the Roman expression, is summed up in these two words:reges and greges.

The Arians, proud victors of whom one does not easily make subjects, wanted, every time they found themselves masters of the races

inferior, not to leave the enjoyments of command in the hands of a single one of them. In China, therefore, as in all other colonizations of the family, the sovereignty of the territory was divided, and under the precarious suzerainty of an emperor a feudalism, jealous of its rights507, was established and maintained from the invasion of the Kschattryas until the reign of Tsin-chi-hoang-ti, the year 246 BC, in other words, as long as the white race retained enough virtuality to keep your main skills 508. But, as soon as its fusion with the Malay and Yellow families was sufficiently pronounced that there remained no even half-white groups, and the mass of the Chinese nation found itself elevated from everything that these hitherto dominating groups had been reduced to be degraded and confused with it, the feudal system, the hierarchical domination, the large number of small royalties and the independence of people, no longer had any reason to exist, and the imperial level passed over everyone's heads , without distinction. It was from this moment that China was constituted in its current form.

. However, the revolution of Tsin-chi-hoang-ti only abolished the last apparent trace of the white race, and the unity of the country added nothing to its governmental forms, which remained patriarchal as before. There was nothing more than this novelty, great in itself, that the last trace of independence, of personal dignity, understood in the Ariane way, had disappeared forever in the face of the definitive invasions of the species. YELLOW510. 509

Yet another point. We first saw the Malay race receiving in Yunnan the first lessons from the Arians by allying with them; then, through conquests and additions of all kinds, the yellow family grew rapidly and ended up no less neutralizing, in the majority of the provinces of the empire, the Melanian half-breeds, than it transformed, into dividing it, the virtue of the white species. This resulted for some time in a lack of balance manifested by the appearance of some completely barbaric customs. Thus, in the north, deceased princes were often buried with their wives and soldiers, customs certainly borrowed from the Finnish species.511. It was also admitted that it was an imperial grace to send

a saber to a disgraced mandarin so that he could put himself to death512. These traces of savage harshness did not last. They disappeared before the remaining institutions of the white race and what still survived of its spirit. As new yellow tribes merged into the Chinese people, they adopted their customs and ideas. Then, as these ideas were now shared by a larger mass, they diminished in strength, they became blunted, the ability to grow and develop was taken away from them, and stagnation spread irresistibly. In the 13thecentury AD, a terrible catastrophe shook the Asian world. A Mongol prince, Témoutchin, united under his standards an immense number of tribes of upper Asia, and, among other conquests, began that of China, completed by Koubilaï. The Mongols, finding themselves the masters, rushed from all sides, and one wonders why, instead of founding institutions invented by them, they hastened to recognize as good the inspirations of the mandarins; why they placed themselves under the direction of these vanquished people, conformed as best they could to the ideas of the country, prided themselves on civilizing themselves in the Chinese way, and ended up, after a few centuries, having thus rubbed shoulders rather than embraced the worse, by being shamefully chased away.

Here is what I answer. The Mongol, Tatar and other tribes which formed the armies of Djinghiz-khan belonged, almost entirely, to the yellow race. However, as, in fairly distant antiquity, the main branches of the coalition, that is to say the Mongols and the Tatars, had been penetrated by white elements, such as those coming from the Hakas, it had resulted in a long state of relative civilization vis-à-vis the purely yellow branches of these nations, and, as a consequence of this superiority, the faculty, under special circumstances, of uniting these branches around the same standard and of making them compete for some time towards a single goal. Without the presence and happy conjunction of white principles spread in yellow multitudes, it is completely impossible to realize the formation of the great invading armies which, at different times, came out of Central Asia with the Huns, the Mongols of Djinghiz-khan, the Tatars of Timur, all coalition multitudes and by no means homogeneous.

If, in these agglomerations, the dominant tribes possessed their initiative, by virtue of a fortuitous meeting of white elements hitherto too scattered to act, and who, in some way, galvanized those around them, the wealth of these elements did not was, however, not sufficient to endow the masses that they trained with a great civilizing aptitude, nor even to maintain, in the elite of these masses, the power of movement which had raised them to the life of conquest. Let us therefore imagine these triumphant yellows animated, I would say almost intoxicated by the accidental competition of a few white interferences dissolving in their bosom, therefore exercising a relative superiority over their more absolutely yellow congeners. These triumphants are not, however, sufficiently advanced to found a civilization of their own. They will not do like the Germanic peoples, who, beginning by adopting Roman civilization, soon transformed it into another entirely original culture. They don't have the value of going that far. However, they possess a fairly fine instinct which makes them understand the merits of the social order, and, thus capable of taking the first step, they respectfully turn towards the organization which governs yellow peoples like themselves.

However, if there is kinship, affinity between the semi-barbarian nations of Central Asia and the Chinese, there is no identity. Among the latter, the white and especially Malay mixture is felt with much more force, and, consequently, the civilizing aptitude is much more active. Among the others, there is a taste, a partiality for Chinese civilization, however less for what it has retained of Arian than for what is correlative, in it, to the ethnic genius of the Mongols. They are therefore always barbarians in the eyes of their vanquished, and the more they make efforts to learn the lessons of the Chinese, the more they are despised. Feeling thus isolated in the midst of several hundred millions of disdainful subjects, they do not dare to separate, they concentrate on rallying points, they do not give up, they do not dare to renounce the use of weapons, and as, however, the mania for imitation which works on them has pushed them right into Chinese softness, a day comes when, without roots in the country, although born of its women, suddenly

shoulder is enough to push them out. This is the story of the Mongols. It will also be that of the Mantchous.

In order to appreciate the truth of what I am putting forward, concerning the taste of the yellow rulers of Central Asia for Chinese civilization, it is enough to consider these nomads in their conquests, other than those of the Celestial Empire. In general, their savagery has been greatly exaggerated. Thus, the Huns, the Hioung-niou of the Chinese513, were far from being these stupid horsemen that the terrors of the West dreamed of. Certainly placed at a low social level, they nonetheless had fairly skilful political institutions, a reasoned military organization, large tent cities, opulent merchants, and even religious monuments. The same could be said of several other Finnish nations, such as the Kyrgyz, a race more remarkable than all the others, because it was even more mixed with white elements.514. However, these peoples who knew how to appreciate the merit of a peaceful government and sedentary morals, constantly showed feelings very hostile to all civilization when they found themselves in contact with branches belonging to human varieties different from the yellow species. In India, no Tatar has ever pretended to feel the slightest propensity for Brahmanical organization. With an ease which reveals the lack of dogmatic aptitude of these utilitarian minds, Tamerlane's hordes hastened, in general, to adopt Islamism. Did we also see them conform their morals to those of the Semitic populations who communicated the faith to them? No way. These conquerors changed neither their morals, nor their costumes, nor their language. They remained isolated, seeking very little to convey in their language the masterpieces of a literature that was more brilliant than solid, and which must have seemed unreasonable to them. They camped as masters, and as indifferent masters, on the soil of their slaves. How far this disdain is from the sympathetic respect that these same yellow tribes showed when they approached the frontiers of Chinese civilization! I gave the ethnic reasons which seemed to me to prevent the Montchous, as they prevented the Mongols, from founding a definitive empire in China. If there was perfect identity between the two races, the Manchus, who contributed nothing to the sum of the country's ideas,

would receive the existing notions, would not fear disbanding and getting confused with the different classes of this society, and there would be only one people. But, as they are masters who give nothing and who only take to a certain extent; as these are leaders who, in reality, are inferior, this situation presents a shocking inconsistency which will only end with the expulsion of the dynasty. One may wonder what would happen if a white invasion came to replace the present government and carry out Lord Clive's bold project. This great man thought he only needed an army of thirty thousand men to subdue the entire Middle Kingdom, and we are led to believe his exact calculation, to see the chronic cowardice of these poor people, who do not want to that we tear them away from the gentle digestive fermentation which is their only business. Let us therefore suppose the conquest attempted and completed. In what position would these thirty thousand men have found themselves? According to Lord Clive, their role should have been limited to garrisoning the towns. As success would have been achieved with a simple aim of exploitation, the troops would have occupied the main ports, perhaps would have pushed expeditions into the interior of the country to maintain submission, ensure the free movement of goods and the re-entry of goods. taxes; nothing more.

Such a state of affairs, however suitable it may be, can never continue for long. Thirty thousand men to dominate three hundred million is too little, especially when these three hundred million are so compact of feelings and instincts, of needs and repugnances. The daring general would have ended up increasing his forces and bringing them to a figure better proportioned to the immensity of the popular ocean whose storms he would have wanted to contain. Here I begin a kind of utopia. If I continue to suppose Lord Clive a simple and faithful representative of the mother country, he still appears, despite the indefinite increase of his army, very isolated, very threatened, and, one day, he himself or his descendants will be expelled from these provinces which receive all the winners in

intruder. But let's change our hypothesis: let us indulge in the suspicion which caused the directors of the East India Company to reject, it is said, the sumptuous proposals of the Governor General. Let us imagine that Lord Clive, a disloyal subject of the English crown, wants to reign on his own account, rejects the allegiance of the metropolis and installs himself, true emperor of China, among the populations subjugated by his sword. So things can happen very differently than in the first case.

If its soldiers are all of European race or if a large number of Hindu or Muslim sepoys are mixed with the English, the immigrant element will necessarily be affected to the extent of its vigor. In the first generation, the leader and the foreign army, very exposed to being thrown out, will still have all their racial energy to defend themselves and will be able to get through these dangerous moments without too much trouble. They will focus on forcing their new ideas into government and administration. Europeans, they will be indignant at the pretentious mediocrity of the entire system, at the hollow pedantry of local science, at the cowardice created by bad military institutions. They will do the opposite of the Mantchous, who swooned with admiration in front of such beautiful things. They will courageously put the ax to it and renew, in new forms, the literary proscription of Tsin-chi-hoang-ti. In the second generation, they will be much stronger in terms of numbers. A close rank of mixed race, born from indigenous women, will have created a happy intermediary with the populations. These half-breeds, educated, on the one hand, in the thought of their fathers, and, on the other, dominated by the feelings of their mothers' compatriots, will soften what the intellectual import had that was too European, and will accommodate it better to local notions. Soon, from generation to generation, the foreign element will disperse among the masses, modifying them, and the ancient Chinese establishment, cruelly shaken, if not overthrown, will no longer be reestablished; for the Arian blood of the kschattryas has long been exhausted, and if its work were interrupted it could no longer be resumed.

On the other hand, the serious disturbances infused into Chinese blood would certainly not lead, as I have just said, to a European-style civilization. To transform three hundred million souls, all our nations combined would barely have enough blood to give, and the half-breeds, moreover, never reproduce what their fathers were. We must therefore conclude:

1° That in China, conquests coming from the yellow race and thus only being able to humiliate the strength of the victors before the organization of the vanquished, have never changed anything and will never change anything in the secular state of the country ;

2° That a conquest of the whites, under certain conditions, would indeed have the power to modify and even overthrow forever the current state of Chinese civilization, but only by means of the mestizos. Again, this thesis, which can be put forward theoretically, would encounter, in practice, very serious difficulties, resulting from the enormous number of agglomerated populations, a circumstance which would make it very difficult for the most numerous emigration to seriously attack their ranks.

Thus, the Chinese nation seems likely to keep its institutions for incalculable times. She will be easily defeated, easily dominated; but transformed, I hardly see the way. It owes this governmental immutability, this incredible persistence in its forms of administration, to the sole fact that the same race has always dominated on its soil since it was launched into social paths by the Arians, and that no idea no stranger appeared with an escort strong enough to divert its course. As a demonstration of the omnipotence of the ethnic principle in the destinies of peoples, the example of China is as striking as that of India. This country, thanks to the favor of circumstances, obtained, without too much difficulty and without any exaggeration of its political institutions, on the contrary, by softening what was too extreme in its absolutism, the result that the Brahmins, with all their energy, all

their efforts, however, have only imperfectly affected. The latter, to safeguard their rules, had to support, by artificial means, the conservation of their race. The invention of castes was always laborious, often illusory, and had the disadvantage of rejecting from the Hindu family many people who later served foreign invasions and increased extrasocial disorder. However, Brahmanism has more or less reached its goal, and it must be added that this goal, incompletely achieved, is much higher than that at the foot of which the Chinese population crawls. This has only been favored with more calm and peace, in its interminable life, because, in the conflicts of the various races which have assailed it for 4000 years, it has only ever had to deal with foreign populations too few in number to dent the thickness of its sleepy masses. It therefore remained more homogeneous than the Hindu family, and therefore calmer and more stable, but also more inert. In short, China and India are the two columns, the two great living proofs of this truth, that races are only modified, by themselves, in the details; that they are not capable of transforming themselves, and that they never deviate from the particular path open to each of them, even if the journey lasts as long as the world.

Book three

Chapter VI

The origins of the white race.

Just as we have seen, alongside the Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations, societies of secondary merit being formed with the help of loans made to the civilizing race, so India and China are surrounded by a host of of States, some of which are formed on the Hindu standard, others of which strive to approach, as closely as possible, the Chinese ideal, while the latter balance between the two systems.

In the first category, we must place Ceylon and, very anciently, Java, today Muslim515, several of the islands of the archipelago, such as Bali516, Sumatra, then others. In the second, we must put Japan, Korea, Laos in last place. The third includes, with infinite modifications to the extent that each of the two contending civilizations is accepted, Nepal, Bhutan, the two Thibets, the kingdom of Ladakh, the States of transgangetic India and part of the archipelago of the Indian Sea, so that, from island to island, from group to group, the Malay populations have circulated Chinese or Hindu inventions as far as Polynesia, which will fade further as the mixture with the blood of one of the two initiating races diminishes. We saw Nineveh shine on Tyre, and, through Tyre, on Carthage, inspire the Himyarites, the children of Israel, and lose all the more its influence on these countries, as the identity of the races was more disturbed between them and She. Similarly we saw Egypt sending civilization to interior Africa. The secondary societies of Asia present, with the same spectacle, the rigorous observation of the same laws.

In Ceylon, Java, Bali, very ancient Brahmanical emigrations brought the type of culture particular to India and the system of

castes. These colonizations, more and more restricted, as the shores of the Dekkhan moved away, also ranged in merit. The most distant, where Hindu blood was in less abundance, were also the most imperfect517. Long before the arrival of the Arians, invasions of yellow peoples had come to modify the blood of the black aborigines, and the Malay halfbreeds, in several places, had even already begun to replace the purely Melanian tribes. This was a decisive reason why the derived societies, formed later under the influence of white mixed-race people, did not resemble, despite all the efforts of the initiators, those of the countries where the pure black race served as a basis. The Malay nature, colder, more reasoning, more apathetic, did not adapt well to the separation of castes, and as soon as Buddhism appeared, this crude religion quickly succeeded in establishing itself among the half-yellow multitudes. What success was it not likely to obtain with those whose elements were even freer from Melanian principles. Ceylon and Java remained for a long time the citadels of Buddha's faith. As the Arian Hindu principle existed in these two islands, the cult of Sakya remained quite noble there. He built beautiful monuments in Java, witness those of Boro-Budor, Madjapahit, Brambanan, and, not deviating too much, not completely degenerating from the intellectual data which are the glory of India, he gave birth to a remarkable literature, where Brahmanical ideas and those of the new religious system were mixed. Later, Ceylon and Java received Arab colonization. Islamism made great progress there, and the Malay blood, thus modified and enhanced by Brahmanical, Buddhist and Semitic immigrations, never returned to the humility of other peoples of its race.

In Japan, the appearances are Chinese, and a large number of institutions were brought by several colonies coming originally, and at different times, from the Celestial Empire. There are also very different ethnic elements which lead to significant divergences. Thus, the state is still feudal, the mood of the hereditary nobles has remained belligerent. The dual secular and ecclesiastical government is not easily obeyed. China's suspicious policy towards foreigners was adopted by the Koubo, which takes

great care to isolate his subjects from contact with Europe. It seems that the state of mind proves him right, and that, modeled on a completely different model from those of China, its citizens, gifted in a dangerous way, are eager for novelties. Japan therefore seems to be drawn in the direction of Chinese civilization by the results of numerous yellow immigrations, and at the same time it resists it through the effect of ethnic principles which do not belong to Finnish blood. Indeed, there is certainly a strong dose of black alloy in the Japanese population, and perhaps even some white elements in the upper classes of society.518. So that, the first facts in the history of this country not going back very far, only 660 years BC, Japan would today be approximately in the situation in which China found itself under the direction from the descendants of the refractory kschattryas, up to the emperor Tsin-chihoang-ti. What would confirm the idea that colonies of the white race originally civilized the Malay population which forms the basis of this country is that we find there, at the beginning of history, the same mythical stories as in Assyria, Egypt and even China, although in an even more marked way. The first sovereigns prior to the positive era were gods, then demigods. I explain the development of poetic imagination evidenced by the nature of this tradition, a development which would be incomprehensible among a pure yellow people, by a certain predominance of Melanian elements. This opinion is not a hypothesis. We saw above that Kaempfer noted the presence of blacks on an island north of Japan, a few centuries before his trip, and, south of the same point, he invokes the testimony of written annals to establish the same fact.519. This would explain the physiological and moral particularities which create Japanese originality.520. There is, moreover, no mistake: this little-known corner of the world, much more mysterious than its Chinese prototype, conceals the solution to the most serious ethnographic questions. When it is permitted to approach it, to study it in peace, to compare the races there, to spread observations on the archipelagos which touch it to the north, we will find, on this soil, many decisive aids for the elucidation of what is most difficult about American origins.

Korea is, like Japan, a copy of China, although less interesting. As the Arian blood only arrived in these remote places through very indirect communication, there were only very clumsy attempts at imitation. Laos, as I have already hinted, is still below, and, even lower, is the population of the Lieou-kieou archipelago.521. The countries where the two principles, Hindu and Chinese, share the sympathies of the populations, are also foreign to the most beautiful conquest of the civilizations they revere, stability. Nothing is more moving, more variable, than the ideas, the doctrines, the customs of these territories. This mobility has nothing to reproach with ours. In the trans-Gangetic lands, the people are Malay, and their nationalities blur into imperceptible as well as innumerable nuances, depending on whether the yellow or black elements dominate. When an invasion from the east gives preponderance to the former, the Brahmanical spirit recedes, and this is the situation of recent centuries, in many provinces, where imposing ruins and pompous inscriptions in Devanagari characters still proclaim the ancient domination of the Sanskrit race, or, at least, of the Buddhists expelled by it.

Sometimes also the white principle takes over. Thus, its missions are currently pursuing real successes in Assam 522, the Annamite States523, among the Burmese524. In Nepal, modern invasions also gave power to Brahmanism, but what Brahmanism! As imperfect as the yellow race could make him. To the north, towards the center of the Himalayan ranges, in this maze of mountains where the two Tibets have established the sanctuaries of Lamaic Buddhism, begin the inadmissible imitations of the doctrines of Sakya which reach, through alteration, to the shores from the Glacial Sea, almost to the Behring Strait. Arian invasions, from different periods, have left, deep in these mountains, numerous tribes closely mixed with yellow blood. This is where we must look for the source of Tibetan civilization and the cause of

the brilliance she cast. Chinese influence came early to combat the genius of the Hindu family on this ground, and, supported by the majority of ethnic elements, it has naturally gained a lot of ground and is gaining more every day. Hindu culture is in visible loss around Hlassa525. Higher up, towards the north, it soon ceases to appear, when the steppes traversed by the great nomadic nations of Central Asia open up. The counterfeiting of Chinese ideas reigns alone, in these cold regions, with a reformed Buddhism, almost completely stripped of Hindu ideas. I cannot repeat it enough: we have represented ourselves as much more barbaric than they are, and especially than they were, these powerful masses of men who influenced so strongly, under Attila, under Djen -ghiz-khan, at the time of Timur the Lame, on the destinies of the world, even the Western world. But, in demanding more justice for the yellow horsemen of the great invasions, I agree that their culture lacked originality and that the foreign builders of all these temples, all these palaces, whose ruins cover the Mongolian steppes, remaining isolated in the among the warriors who asked them and paid them for the use of their talents, generally came from China. Having made this reservation, I can say that no people have taken their love of printing and its products further than the Kyrgyz. Princes, without much fame and mediocre power, Ablai, among others, sowed the desert of Buddhist monasteries, today in rubble. Several of these monuments offered, until the last century, when Academician Müller visited them526, the spectacle of their large rooms devastated for years, half dismantled and without roofs or windows, yet all still filled with thousands of volumes. The books that fell to the ground, following the breakage of the moldy shelves which formerly supported them, provided wads for rifles and paper to glue the windows, to all the nomadic tribes and the Cossacks of the surrounding area.527.

Where could this perseverance, this good will for civilization, have come from among the warlike multitudes of the 16th century?ecentury, leading an existence of the harshest, the most bristling with deprivations, on an unproductive land? I said it above: from an ancient mixture of these races with a few lost white branches528.

Now is the opportunity to tackle a problem which will soon take on the most imposing proportions and almost set back the audacity of the mind. I have cited, in the preceding chapter, the names of six white nations known to the Chinese to have resided, in comparatively recent times, on their north-western and eastern frontiers. With these words, relatively recent,I indicate the IIecentury BC. These nations all had subsequent destinies which are known. Two of them, the Yue-tchi and the Ou-soun, living on the left bank of the Hoang-ho, against the edge of the Gobi desert, were attacked by the Huns, Hioung-niou, a people of Turkish race, who came from the northeast. Forced to yield to numbers, and separated in their retreats, they went to settle, the Yue-tchi, a little lower towards the southwest, and the Ousoun, quite far in the same direction, on the northern slope of the Thian- chan529.

The formidable advance of the enemy masses did not allow them to enjoy their improvised homeland in peace for long. After twelve years the Yue-tchi were overwhelmed again. They crossed the Thian-chan, skirted the new country of the Ou-soun and came to the south, on the Sihoun, in Sogdiana. There was a white nation like them, called the Szou by the Chinese, and which Greek historians call the Getae or IndoScythians. These are the Khetas of the Mahabharata, the current Ghats of the Punjab, the Utsavaran-Ketas of western Kashmir. These Getae, attacked by the Yue-tchi, gave way to them, and fell back on the mixed and degenerate monarchy of the Bactrians-Macedonians. Having overthrown it, they founded, in the midst of its debris, an empire which nevertheless became quite important.

Meanwhile, the Ou-soun had happily resisted the attacks of the Hunnic hordes. They had expanded on the banks of the river Yli, and had established a considerable state there. As among the primitive Arians, their customs were pastoral and warlike, their leaders bore this title which the Chinese transcription has pronouncedkouen-miOr houen-mo,and in which we easily find the root of the Germanic word kunig530.The homes of the Ou-soun were sedentary. The prosperity of this courageous nation rose rapidly. In the year 107 BC, that is to say 170 years after the migration, the establishment of this people offered enough solidity for Chinese policy to believe it had to use it as support against the Huns. . A close alliance was formed between the emperor and the kouen-mi of Ou-soun, and a princess came from the Middle Kingdom to share the power of the white sovereign and bear the title of kouen-ti(queen)531.

But the spirit of personal independence and factionalism, specific to the Ariane race, decided too early the fate of a monarchy which, exposed to incessant attacks, would have needed to be strongly united to stand up to them. Under the grandson of the Chinese queen, the nation was divided into two branches, governed by different leaders, and, following this unfortunate split, the northern part was soon overwhelmed by yellow barbarians, called the Sian -pi, who, rushing in large numbers, chased away the inhabitants. First the fugitives withdrew towards the west and the north. After remaining in their asylum for four hundred years, they were again expelled and dispersed. A fraction sought refuge beyond Jaxartes, in the lands of Transoxiana; the rest gained towards Irtisch and withdrew into the Kirghiz steppe, where, in 619 AD, having fallen under the subjection of the Turks, they allied themselves with their conquerors and disappeared532.

For the other branch of the Ou-soun, it was absorbed by the invaders, and mingled with them like the water of a lake with that of the great river which crosses it.

Alongside the Ou-soun and the Yue-tchi, when they lived on the Hoangho, other white peoples lived. The Ting-ling occupied the country

the west of Lake Baikal; the Khou-te held the plains west of the Ousoun; the Chou-le extended towards the more southern region where Kaschgar is today; the Kian-kouan or Ha-kas ascended towards the Jenissei where, later, they merged with the Kyrgyz. Finally, the Yanthsaï, Alans-Sarmatians, touched the northern extremity of the Caspian Sea533. We have not lost sight of the fact that we are dealing here with the year 177 or 200 BC. We have also noticed that all those of the white peoples that I have just named, when they were able to maintain themselves , founded societies: such as the Szou or Khétas, the Ou-soun and the Yan-thsaï or Alains. I move on to a new consideration which is deduced from the above.

Since the black race occupied, in primordial times, and before the descent of the white nations, the southern part of the world, having as borders, in Asia, at least the lower part of the Caspian Sea on the one hand, on the another the mountains of Kouen-loun, around 36° north latitude, and the islands of Japan below 4° approximately; that the yellow race, at the same time, prior to any appearance of white peoples in the south, was advanced at least as far as Kouen-loun, and, in southern China, as far as the shore of the Glacial Sea, while that, in the countries of Europe, it went as far as Italy and Spain, which supposes the prior occupation of the north534; since, finally, the white race, by appearing on the crests of Imaüs and allowing itself to be seen on the limits of Touran, invaded lands which were entirely new to it; for all these reasons, it is very obvious, very incontestable, very positive that the first domains of this white race must be sought on the plateaus of central Asia, a truth already admitted, but moreover, that we can delimit them in an exact way. In the south, these territories have their border from Lake Aral to the upper course of the Hoang-ho, to Khou-khou-noor. In the west, the boundary runs from the Caspian Sea to the Ural Mountains. To the east, it rises sharply outside of Kouen-loun towards Altai. The delimitation to the north seems more difficult; However, we will, presently, seek it and find it.

The white race was very numerous, the fact is not in dispute535. I have given the main proofs of this elsewhere. She was, moreover,

sedentary and, moreover, despite the considerable emissions of peoples that it had made outside its borders, several of its nations still remained in the northwest of China, long after the yellow race had succeeded in breaking the resistance of the main trunk, to break it, to disperse it and to advance in its place in southern Asia. However, the position occupied, in IIecentury BC, the Yue-tchi and the Ou-soun, on the left bank of the Hoang-ho, pulling towards the upper Gobi, that is to say on the direct route of the yellow invasions, towards the center of China, has something surprising, and one could consider it as forced, as being the violent result of certain shocks which would have pushed back the two white branches of an older and more naturally placed territory, if the relative position of the six other nations which I have also named, did not indicate that all these members of the great dispersed family were really at home and forming the stakeout of the ancient possessions of their race, at the time of the reunion. Thus, there had been a primitive extension of the white peoples beyond Lake Khou-khou-noor towards the east, while to the north these same peoples still touched, at a fairly low time, Lake Baikal and the upper course of the Jenissei. Now that all the limits are specified, it is necessary to seek if the ground which they embrace no longer contains any material debris, any trace, which could relate to our first parents. I know very well that I am asking for almost hyperbolic antiquities here. However, the task is not chimerical in the face of the curious discoveries surrounded by so many mysteries which had the honor, in the last century, of attracting the attention of the Emperor Peter the Great, and of giving, in his person , one more proof of this kind of divination which belongs to genius.

The Cossacks, conquerors of Siberia at the end of the 16th centurye century, had found trails of mounds either of earth or of stones, which, in the middle of completely deserted steppes, accompanied the course of the rivers. In the Middle Urals, we also encountered them. The majority were of mediocre size. Some, magnificently constructed of blocks of serpentine and jasper, were pyramidal in shape and measured up to five hundred feet around the base.536. In the vicinity of these burials, we noticed, in addition, extensive remains of circumvallations, massive ramparts, and, what is still

today of great use to the Russians, innumerable mining works on all points rich in gold, silver and copper537. The Cossacks and imperial administrators of the 17th centuryecentury would have paid little attention to these remains of unknown antiquities, except, perhaps, the openings of mines, if an interesting circumstance had not captivated them. The Kyrgyz were in the habit of opening these tombs, many of them even made a profession of it, and it was not without reason. They extracted, in large quantities, ornaments or instruments of gold, silver and copper. It does not appear that iron has ever appeared there. In the monuments built for the common people, the find was of mediocre value; Also, Kyrgyz hunters have allowed a large number of these constructions to survive to this day. But the most beautiful, those which announced, in the dead, rank or wealth, were overturned without pity, not without profit, because in their bosom gold was collected in profusion. The Cossacks soon took their part in these destructive operations; but Peter the Great, having learned of it, forbade the melting or destruction of the objects unearthed in the excavations, and ordered them to be sent to him in St. Petersburg. This is how the curious museum of Chud antiquities was formed in this capital, precious for its material and even more so for its historical value. These monuments were calledtchoudesOr daours,an undeserved honor given to the Finns, for lack of knowledge of the true authors.

The discoveries were not to be limited there. Soon we realized that we hadn't seen everything. As we advanced towards the east, we found tombs by the thousands, fortifications, mines. In Altai, we even noticed the remains of cities, and, step by step, we were able to convince ourselves that these mysterious traces of the presence of civilized man embraced an immense area, since they extended from the Middle Urals to the upper course of the Amur, thus taking the entire width of Asia and covering with undeniable marks of a high civilization these terrible Siberian plains today deserted, sterile and desolate. Towards the south, we do not know the limit of the monuments. In Semipalatinsk, on the Irtisch, in the Tomsk government, the

The countryside bristles with powerful accumulations of earth and stones. On the Tarbagataï and the Chaïnda, the remains of numerous cities still reveal colossal ruins538. These are the facts. Following them this question arises: to which numerous and civilized peoples did these fortifications, these cities, these tombs, these gold and silver instruments belong?

To obtain an answer, we must first proceed by exclusion. We cannot think of attributing all these wonders to the great yellow empires of upper Asia. They too have left marks of their existence. We know them, these brands, and they are not the ones. They have a completely different appearance, a different disposition. There is no way to confuse them with those discussed here. The same goes for the remnants of the passing greatness of certain peoples, such as the Kyrgyz. The Buddhist convents of Ablaï-kitka have their own character, which cannot be confused with that of the Chud constructions.539.

Modern times thus excluded, let us look in ancient times to which nation we can address. Mr. Ritter insinuates that the inhabitants of this mysterious and vast northern empire may well have been the Arimaspes of Herodotus. I will allow myself to resist the opinion of the great German scholar, who moreover only offers this solution without himself appearing convinced of its value. To stick to it, it seems to me that we would have to force the text of the father of History. What's he saying ? He relates that above the Hindus dwell the Arimaspes, and he describes the Arimaspes; but above the Arimaspes reside the Gryphons, further still the Hyperboreans. All these peoples are the same half-fantastic nations with which the poets of India populate Uttara-Kourou540. I see no reason to attribute to these ghosts, which moreover hide real people and, undoubtedly, of the white race, what we must refer to real men. We would be closer to the truth in seeing in the Issedons, the Arimaspes, the Gryphons, the Hyperboreans, only fragments of the ancient white society, peoples related to the Zoroastrian Arians, to the Sarmatians541. What supports this opinion is that so far the

geographers had placed these tribes in a circle around Sogdiana and nowhere in northern Siberia. This is the true meaning of Herodotus, and there is no reason to be unfaithful to it. Furthermore, the stories of Aristaeus of Proconnesus, as Herodotus relates them, relate to a time when the white nations of Asia were too divided, too persecuted to be able to found great things, and leave traces of a civilization spread over such immense lands. If these peoples had been as powerful as Mr. Ritter supposes, the Chinese would not have been able to avoid very numerous contacts with them, and the Greeks, who knew such wonderful things about these Chinese, that I have no difficulty recognizing in the bald, wise and essentially peaceful Argippeans542, would also have given more minute and more exact details on facts as striking as those whose existence the Chud monuments proclaim. It therefore seems in no way possible to me that in VI ecentury BC the whole center of Asia was the possession of a large cultivated people, extending from the Yenisei to the Amur, of whom neither the Chinese, nor the Greeks, nor the Persians, nor the Hindus would never have had any wind or news, all convinced, on the contrary, with the exception of the first, who have the privilege of dreaming of nothing, that it was necessary to populate these unknown regions with half-mythological creatures.

If we cannot attribute such works to the time of Herodotus, just as it is also not possible to refer them, after him, to the time of Alexander, for example, where this prince, having advanced to the extremity of Sogdiana, would have learned nothing of the wonders of the north, which is unacceptable, we must, of all necessity, plunge intrepidly into what antiquity has the most remote, the most black, even more dark, and not hesitate to see in the Siberian countries the primitive residence of the white species, while the various nations of this race, united and civilized, occupied residences close to each other, while they did not yet have any reason to leave their homeland and disperse in search of another far away.

Everything that has been exhumed from Chud or Daourian tombs and ruins confirms this feeling. The skeletons are always or

almost always accompanied by horse heads. Next to them we observe a saddle, a bridle, stirrups, coins marked with a rose, copper mirrors, an encounter so common among Chinese and Etruscan relics, so frequent still under the Tongusan yurts where these instruments are used. to magical operations. They are found abundantly in the poorest Daourian tombs543. More remarkable: in the last century, Pallas saw extensive inscriptions on a monument in the shape of an obelisk and on tombstones. A vase removed from a sepulcher also bore one, and WG Grimm did not hesitate to point out between the characters of these inscriptions and the Germanic runes, not a complete identity, but an unrecognizable resemblance.544. I come to the striking, conclusive feature, in my opinion: among the most frequent ornaments, such as the horns of a ram, a deer, an elk, an argali, in metal, gold or copper, the most ordinary subject, the most repeated is the sphinx. It is found on the handles of mirrors and even cut in relief on stones545. It befits the enigmatic inhabitants of ancient Siberia to have done themselves justice before posterity by bequeathing it, as their most perfect emblem, the symbol of the inscrutable. But, too lavish, the sphinx ends up revealing itself. As we find it among the Persians sculpted on the walls of Persepolis, as we encounter it in Egypt stretching silently in front of the desert, and as on the hills of the Cithaeron of the Greeks it still wanders while Herodotus, that careful observer, see among the Arimaspes, it becomes possible to place your hand on the shoulder of this taciturn creature, and to tell her, if not who she is, at least the name of her master. She obviously belongs in common to the white race. It is part of its heritage, and although the secret of what it means has not yet been penetrated, we are authorized to declare that, where we see it, there were also Arian peoples. These steppes of northern Asia, today so sad, so deserted, so depopulated, but not barren, as is generally believed546, are therefore the country that Iranians talk about, Airyanemvaëgo, the cradle of their ancestors. They themselves said that he had been struck by winter by Ahriman, and that he did not have two months of summer. It is the Uttara-Kourou of the Brahmanical tradition, a region located, according to her, in the extreme north, where

the most absolute freedom reigned for men and women; freedom regulated however by wisdom, because there dwelt the Rischis, the saints of ancient times547. It is the Hermionia of the Hellenes, homeland of the Hyperboreans, people from the far north, macrobians, whose life was long, their virtue profound, their knowledge infinite, their existence happy. Finally, it was this eastern country of which the Germanic Suevi spoke only with boundless respect, because, they said, it was possessed by their glorious ancestors, the most illustrious of men, the Semnons.

.

548

Thus, here are four Arian peoples who, since the separation of the species, have never communicated together, and who agree to place in the depths of the north, in the east of Europe, the first stay of their families. If such testimony were rejected, I no longer know on what solid basis the story could rely.

The land of Siberia therefore preserves in its solitudes the venerable monuments of an era much more ancient than that of Semiramis, much more majestic than that of Nimrod. It is neither clay, nor cut stone, nor molten metal that I admire. I reflect that, in such ancient times, the civilization that I observe closely touches the geological ages, at this time still troubled by the revolts of a poorly submissive nature which saw the drying up of the great inland sea whose Gobi Desert was the background. It was around the sixtieth century BC that the Hamites and Hindus appeared on the threshold of the southern world. There therefore remains to reach the limit that religion and natural sciences seem to impose on the age of the world only about one or two thousand years, and it is during this period that developed with a vigor whose There are numerous and patent proofs of a social improvement which does not leave the slightest lasting space for primitive barbarism. What I have repeated several times already about the innate sociability and dignity of the white species, I believe that I have just established definitively here, and, by dismissing, by pushing back into inexorable nothingness the wild man, the first man of the materialist philosophers, the one whose constantly evoked specter serves to combat what is most respectable and most necessary in social institutions, by definitively hunting in the kraals of the Hottentots and

to the depths of the Tongan huts, and beyond still, in the caves of the Pelagians, this miserable human creature who is not one of us, and who calls herself the daughter of the monkeys, forgetful of a better origin although disfigured, I do nothing other than accept what the discoveries of science bring to confirm the ancient words of Genesis.

The holy book does not admit savages into the dawn of the world. Its first man acts and speaks, not on the basis of blind whims, not at the whim of purely brutal passions, but in accordance with the preestablished rule, called by theologians lawnatural,and which has no other possible source than revelation, thus establishing morality on a more solid and more immutable ground than this ridiculous right of hunting and fishing proposed by the doctors of socialism. I open Genesis, and, in the second chapter, if the two ancestors are naked, it is because they are in a state of innocence: “it is,” says the holy book, “that they do not do not take it to shame. » As soon as the paradise state ceases, I do not see the authors of the white species starting to wander in the deserts. They immediately recognize the necessity of work, and they practice it. They are immediately civilized, since agricultural life and pastoral habits are revealed to them. Biblical thought is so firm on this point, that the founder of the first city is Cain, the son of the first man, and this city is named after Enoch, the grandson of Adam549. There is no point in debating here whether the sacred story should be understood in a literal sense or in any other way: that is not my subject. I limit myself to noting that, in the religious tradition, which is at the same time the most complete account of the primitive ages of humanity, civilization is born, so to speak, with the race, and this fact is fully confirmed by all the facts that can be grouped around. One more word on the yellow species. We see it, from the primordial ages, held back by the thick and powerful dike which white civilization opposes, forced, before having been able to overcome the obstacle, to divide itself into two branches and to flood Europe and Europe. East Asia, flowing along the Ice Sea, the Sea of Japan and the beaches of China. But it is not possible to suppose, seeing what frightening masses

were pressing, in the second century BC, in the north of presentday Mongolia, that these multitudes took birth and continued to form only in the miserable territories of the Tongouses, the Ostiaks, the Yakuts, and in the almost Kamtschatka Island. Everything indicates, therefore, that the original seat of this race is on the American continent. I deduce the following facts: The white peoples, isolated at first, following cosmic catastrophes, from their congeners of the other two species, and knowing neither the yellow hordes nor the black tribes, had no reason to suppose that there existed other men than them. This way of judging, far from being shaken by the first appearance of the Finns and the Negroes, was confirmed on the contrary. The whites could not imagine seeing beings equal to them in these creatures who, through a wicked hostility, a hideous ugliness, a brutal lack of intelligence and the title of sons of monkeys that they claimed, seemed to repel themselves. among animals. Later, when conflicts came, the elite race stigmatized the two lower groups, especially the black peoples, by this name barbarians,which remained as the eternal testimony of just contempt.

But alongside this truth is also this, that the yellow race, attacking and victorious, falling precisely among the white nations, became like a river which crosses and destroys gold deposits: it loads its silt with flakes, and enriches himself. This is why the yellow race appears so often, in history, half-civilized and relatively civilizable, important at least as an instrument of destruction, while the black species, more isolated from any contact with the illustrious family, remains immersed in a deep inertia.

Book Four Semitized civilizations of the southwest

Book Four

First chapter

History only exists among white nations. For what almost all civilizations developed in the west of the globe.

We are now abandoning, until the time comes to go, with the Spanish conquerors, to touch the soil of the American continent, these isolated peoples who, less exposed than the others to ethnic mixtures, were able to maintain, over a long sequence of centuries, a organization against which nothing acted. India and China, in their separation from the rest of the world, presented us with this rare spectacle. And just as we will henceforth only see nations chaining their interests, their ideas, their doctrines and their destinies to the march of differently formed nations, so we will no longer see social institutions lasting. Nowhere will we have for a single moment the illusion

which, in the Celestial Empire and in the land of the Brahmins, could easily lead the observer to wonder if the thought of man is not immortal. Instead of this majestic duration, instead of this almost imperishable solidity, magnificent prerogative that the relative homogeneity of the races guarantees to the two societies that I have just named, we will no longer contemplate, from the VIIecentury BC, in the turbulent arena where the majority of white peoples will rush, that instability, inconstancy in the civilizing idea. Earlier, to measure the length of time the series of Hindu or Chinese facts, it was necessary to count in tens of centuries. Unaccustomed to this method, we will soon find that a civilization of five to six hundred years is comparatively very venerable. The most splendid political creations will only last two hundred, three hundred years, and, once this term is over, they will have to transform or die. Dazzled for a moment by the ephemeral splendor of Greece and Republican Rome, it will be a great consolation for us, when we come to modern times, to reflect that, if our social scaffoldings last a short time, they nevertheless have as much longevity as everything that Asia and Europe saw born, admired, feared, then, once dead, trampled underfoot since this era of the 7the

century BC, a time of renewal and almost complete transformation of white influence in the affairs of Western lands.

The West has always been the center of the world. This pretension, all regions that are even slightly apparent have, in truth, nourished and displayed it. For the Hindus, Aryavarta is in the middle of the sublunary regions; around this holy country extend the Dwipas, attached to the sacred center, like lotus petals to the chalice of the divine plant. According to the Chinese, the universe radiates around the Celestial Empire. The same fantasy amused the Greeks; their temple at Delphi was the navel of the Good Goddess. The Egyptians were also crazy. It is not in the sense of this old geographical vanity that it is permitted for a nation or a group of nations to attribute to itself a central role on the globe. It is not even granted to claim the constant direction of civilizing interests and, in this respect, I allow myself to make a very radical criticism of the famous work of Mr. Gioberti550. It is, from a purely moral point of view, that it is correct to maintain that, apart from all patriotic concerns, the center of gravity of the world

social has always oscillated in the western countries, without ever leaving them, having, depending on the times, two extreme limits, Babylon and London from east to west, Stockholm and Thebes of Egypt from north to south; beyond that, isolation, restricted personality, inability to excite general sympathy, and finally barbarism in all its forms. The Western world, as I have just outlined it, is like a chessboard where the greatest interests come to struggle. It is a lake that has constantly overflowed onto the rest of the globe, sometimes ravaging it, always fertilizing it. It is a sort of field with colorful crops where all the plants, healthy and poisonous, nutritious and deadly, have found cultivators. The greatest amount of movement, the most astonishing diversity of facts, the most illustrious conflicts and the most interesting in terms of their vast consequences are concentrated there, while in China and India there have been many considerable upheavals including the universe has been so little informed that erudition, awakened by certain clues, only discovers its traces with great effort. On the contrary, among the civilized peoples of the West, there is not a slightly serious battle, not a slightly bloody revolution, not a slightly notable change of dynasty, which, having happened thirty centuries ago, has not has reached us, often with details which leave the reader as surprised as the antiquary can be when, on the monuments of ancient ages, his eye finds intact the delicacy of the finest sculptures.

Where does this difference come from ? This is because, in the eastern part of the world, the permanent struggle of ethnic causes took place only between the Arian element, on the one hand, and the black and yellow principles, on the other. I do not need to point out that where the black races fought only with themselves, where the yellow races also rotated in their own circle or where again where the black and yellow mixtures are fighting today today, there is no possible story. The results of these conflicts being essentially infertile, like the ethnic agents which determine them, nothing appeared, nothing remained. This is the case for America, most of Africa and too considerable a fraction of Asia. History only springs from the contact of the white races.

In India, the noble species only has contact with two inferior antagonists. Compact, to begin with, in its Ariane essence, its entire work is to defend itself against invasion, against immersion within foreign principles. This protective work continues with energy, with awareness of the danger and by means that can be said to be desperate, and which would be truly romantic, if they had not given practical results for so long. This struggle, so real, so true, is nevertheless not of a nature to produce history properly so called. As the white branch put into action is, as I have just said, compact, and as it has a single goal, a single civilizing idea, a single form, it is enough for it to conquer and live. Little variety in the origin of movements gives rise to little desire to keep track of facts, and just as we have rightly remarked that happy peoples have no annals, we can add that they do not have none, because they only have to tell each other what everyone knows back home. Thus the development of a unitary civilization such as that of India, offering to national reflection very few surprising innovations, unexpected reversals in thoughts, in doctrines, in morals, has nothing no longer serious to narrate, and this is why Hindu chronicles have always taken on the theological form, the colors of poetry, and present such a complete absence of chronology and such considerable gaps in the recording of things.

In China, collecting facts is an ancient practice. This can be explained by observing that China was early in contact with peoples generally too few in number to be able to conquer it, yet strong enough to worry and move it, and who, formed, in all or in part, of white elements, came, when they attacked, not only to clash with sabers, but also with ideas. China, although far from European contact, nevertheless had a lot to do with the repercussions of the various migrations, and the more we read the great compilations of its writers, the more information we will find on our own origins, information that the The history of Aryavarta does not provide us with comparable precision. Already, for several years, it is through the books of scholars that we have modified, in the happiest way, many false ideas about the Huns and the

Alans. We have also collected valuable details on the subject of the Slavs, and perhaps the too small amount of information obtained so far on the beginnings of the Sarmatian peoples will be increased, in this way, by new discoveries. Moreover, this abundance of ancient realities, preserved by the literature of the Celestial Empire, applies, and this is notable, much more to the regions of the northwest of China than to those of the south of this State. We should not look for the cause elsewhere than in the friction of the mixed white populations of the Celestial Empire with the white or half-white tribes of the borders; so that following an obvious progression, starting from the inert silence of the black or yellow races, we first find India, with its civilizers, having little history, because they have little relationship with other branches of the same race. We then encounter Egypt, which has only a little more for the same reason. China comes later, presenting more, because the frictions with the Arian foreigner have been reiterated, and we thus arrive at the western territory of the world, at anterior Asia, at the European countries, where the annals then develop with a permanent character and tireless activity. This is because there no longer confront only one or two or three branches of the noble species, busy defending themselves as best they can against the entwining of the lower branches of the human tree. The scene is quite different, and in this turbulent theater, dating from the seventh century BCE, numerous groups of white mixed-race people gifted in different ways, all grappling with each other, fighting with their fists and especially with their ideas. , endlessly modify their reciprocal civilizations in the middle of a battlefield where the black and yellow peoples only appear disguised by centuries-old mixtures and only act on their conquerors by a latent and unnoticed infusion, the only auxiliary of which is the weather. If, in a word, history flourishes from this moment in the western regions, it is because from now on who will be at the head of all the parties will be mixed with white, it will only be a question of Arians , Semites (the Hamites having already merged with them), Celts, Slavs, all originally noble peoples, having special ideas, all having created a more or less refined system of civilization, but all possessing it one, and surprising themselves and each other by the doctrines that they put forward in all things, and of which they seek the triumph over rival doctrines. This immense and incessant intellectual antagonism has

seemed, at all times, to those who accomplished it, the most worthy of being observed, collected, recorded hour by hour, while other less tormented peoples did not consider it useful to keep much memory of a social existence always uniform, despite the victories won over almost silent races. Thus, the west of Asia and Europe is the great workshop where the most important human questions were asked. It is there, moreover, that for the needs of the civilizing struggle, everything in the world which has been of a price capable of exciting covetousness has inevitably tended to be concentrated.

If we did not create everything there, we wanted to possess everything there, and we always succeeded, to the extent that the white essence exercised its empire, because, we must not forget, the noble race n It is pure nowhere, and rests everywhere on a heterogeneous ethnic background which, in most circumstances, paralyzes it in a way which, although unnoticed, is no less decisive. At the times when white action was freest, we saw in the Western environment, in this ocean where all civilizing currents flow, we saw the intellectual conquests of other white branches acting in the center of the spheres. more distant, come in turn to enrich the common treasure of the family. This is how, in the heyday of Greece, Athens seized the best that Egyptian science knew and the most subtle that Hindu philosophy taught. In Rome, likewise, they had the art of seizing discoveries belonging to the most distant points of the globe. In the Middle Ages, when civil society seemed, to many people, inferior to what it was under the Caesars and the Augustians, zeal was nevertheless redoubled and greater success was achieved for the concentration of knowledge. We penetrated much further into the sanctuaries of oriental wisdom, we collected many more correct notions; and, at the same time, intrepid travelers, driven by the adventurous genius of their race, accomplished distant journeys compared to which the journeys of Scylax and Annon, those of Pytheas and Nearchus barely deserve to be cited. And, however, were a king of France, and even a pope of the twelfth century, promoters and supporters of these generous enterprises, comparable to the colossi of authority who governed the Roman world?

This is because in the Middle Ages, the white element was nobler, purer, and therefore more active than the palaces of ancient Rome had known it.

But we are in the seventh century before the Christian era, at that important epoch when, in the vast arena of the Western world, positive history begins and never ceases, where long state existences will no longer be possible, where the shocks of peoples and civilizations will follow one another at very short intervals, where social sterility and fertility will have to move and replace each other in the same countries, depending on the more or less considerable thickness of the white elements which will cover the funds black or yellow. This is the place to return to what I said in the first book, about the importance given by some scholars to the geographical situation.

I will not renew my arguments against this doctrine. I will not repeat that, if the locations of Alexandria, of Constantinople, were totally indicated to become large centers of population, they would have remained and will remain such in all times, an allegation denied by the facts. Nor will I recall that, judging thus, neither Paris, nor London, nor Vienna, nor Berlin, nor Madrid, would have any right to be the famous capitals that these cities have all become, and that their place, we would have seen, from the birth of the first merchants, Cadiz or perhaps better Gibraltar, Alexandria much earlier than Tire or Sidon, Constantinople to the eternal exclusion of Odessa, Venice, without hope for Trieste, monopolizing a natural supremacy, incommunicable, inalienable, indomitable, if I may use this word, and human history revolves eternally around these predestined points. Indeed, these are the places in the West most favorably placed to serve traffic. But, and the thing is very fortunate, the world has other and greater interests than those of merchandise. His affairs do not go according to the wishes of the economist sect. Mobiles higher than views ofmustAndto havepresides over its actions, and Providence has, from the dawn of time, thus established the rules of social gravitation, that the most important place on the globe is not necessarily the best disposed to buy or to sell, to make transit foodstuffs or to manufacture them, to collect or cultivate raw materials. It is the one where the group lives, at a given moment.

purest, most intelligent and strongest white. Were this group to reside, through a combination of invincible political circumstances, at the bottom of the polar ice or under the fiery rays of the equator, it is in this direction that the intellectual world would incline. This is where all ideas, all trends, all efforts would not fail to converge, and there are no natural obstacles that could prevent the most distant foodstuffs and products from arriving there through seas, rivers and mountains. The perpetual changes occurring in the social importance of large cities are an unmistakable demonstration of this truth on which the pretentious declamations of economic theoreticians cannot bite. Nothing is more detestable than the credit which we see as being a so-called science which, from a few general observations applied by the common sense of all positive Arian eras, was able to extract, by wanting to give it dogmatic cohesion, the greatest and the most dangerous practical nonsense; which, by taking too much control of the confidence of a public sensitive to the influence ofsesquipedalia verba, rises to the disastrous role of a true heresy by giving itself the appearance of dominating, of greedy, of accommodating religion, laws, and morals to its views. Basing all human life and, likewise, the life of peoples on these words which have become cabalistic in its schools: produce and consume, it calls honorable what is only natural and just: the work of the laborer, and the word honor loses all the sublimity of its primitive meaning. It makes private economy the highest of virtues, and, by dint of exalting the advantages of prudence for the individual and the benefits of peace for the State, dedication, public loyalty, courage and intrepidity almost become vices according to his maxims. It is not a science, because the most miserable negation of the true needs of man, and of the holiest, forms its narrow basis. It is the merit of a miller and spinner displaced from his modest rank and offered to the admiration of empires. But, to limit myself to refuting the slightest of its errors, I will say, once again, that, despite the commercial conveniences which could recommend this or that topographical point, the civilizations of antiquity never stopped advancing towards the west, simply because the white tribes themselves followed this path, and only arrived on our continent

that they encountered these yellow mixtures which led them towards the utilitarian ideas adopted with more reserve by the Arian race and too little known by the Semitic world. We should therefore expect to see white nations becoming more and more realistic, less and less artistic the further we observe them in the West. It is certainly not for reasons borrowed from climacteric influence that they will be such. This is only because they will become both more mixed with yellow elements and more free from Melanian principles. Let us draw up here, in order to better convince ourselves, a list of gradations of the results that I indicate. The reader needs to pay attention to this. The Iranians, as we will see shortly, were more realistic, more masculine than the Semites, who, being more so than the Hamites, make it possible to establish this progression: Black,

Hamites, Semites, Iranians. We will then see the monarchy of Darius sink to the bottom of the Semitic element and pass the palm to the blood of the Greeks, who, although mixed, were nevertheless, in the time of Alexander, freer from Melanian alloys.

Soon the Greeks, drowned in Asian essence, will be ethnically inferior to the Romans, who will push the empire of the world a good distance further west, and who, in their faintly yellow, white fusion to a higher degree, and finally Semiticized in an increasing progression, would nevertheless have retained the domination, if whiter competitors had not once again appeared. This is why the German Arians decidedly established civilization in the northwest. Just as I have just recalled this principle from the first book, that the geographical position of nations in no way contributes to their glory and only contributes (I could have added) to a minimal extent to activate

their political, intellectual, commercial existence, likewise for sovereign countries, questions of climate remain unaddressed, and as we have seen in China the ancient supremacy, first given to Yunnan, then pass to Pé-tché -li; that in India the northern regions are today the most vibrant, when, for long centuries, the south, on the contrary, prevailed, thus there are no climates in the west of the world who have not had their days of splendor and power. Babylon where it never rains, and England where it always rains; Cairo where the sun is scorching, Saint Petersburg where the cold is deadly, these are the extremes: domination reigns or has reigned in these different places.

I could also, after these questions, raise that of fertility: nothing more useless. Holland answers us quite well that the genius of a people overcomes everything, creates great cities in the water, makes a homeland on stilts, attracts gold and the tributes of the universe into unproductive swamps. Venice proves even more: it says that, without any territory, not even a swamp, not even a moor, a State can be founded, which competes in splendor with the largest and lives beyond the years granted to the strongest. It is therefore established that the question of race is major in assessing the degree of the vital principle in the great foundations; that history was created, developed and sustained only where several white branches came into contact; that it takes on a positive character all the more as it deals with the affairs of whiter peoples, which amounts to saying that these are the only historical ones, and that the memory of their actions only matters to humanity. It also follows from this that history, in different periods, takes more account of a nation as this nation dominates more, or, in other words, as its white origin is purer.

Before tackling the study of the modifications introduced to VIIe century BC in Western societies, I had to observe the application of certain principles previously laid down and bring out new observations from the ground on which I walked. I now approach

the analysis of what is most remarkable about the ethnic composition of the Zoroastrians.

Book Four

Chapter II

The Zoroastrians.

The Bactrians, the Medes, the Persians, were part of this group of peoples who, at the same time as the Hindus and the Greeks, were separated from the other white families of upper Asia. They went down with them not far from the northern limits of Sogdiana 551. There the Hellenic tribes abandoned the mass of emigration and turned west, following the mountains and the lower edges of the Caspian. Hindus and Zoroastrians continued to live together and call each other by the same name.Aryasor Airyas552for a fairly long period, until religious quarrels, which appear to have acquired a great bitterness, led the two peoples to form distinct nationalities553 . The Zoroastrian nations occupied fairly large territories, the boundaries of which in the northeast are difficult to specify. Probably they

extended to the bottom of the Muztagh gorges, and on the interior plateaus, from where they later came to bring to European countries the so famous names of the Sarmatians, the Alans and the Aesir. Towards the south, we know their limits better. They invaded successively from Sogdiana, Bactria and the country of Mardes to the borders of Arachosia, then to the Tigris. But these vast regions also contain immense spaces that are completely sterile and uninhabitable for large multitudes. They are cut by sandy deserts, crossed by mountains of inexorable aridity. The Arian population could therefore not survive there in numbers. The strength of the race thus found itself thrown forever out of the center of action which the monarchies of the Medes and Persians would one day embrace. It was reserved by Providence to found European civilization much later.

Although separated from the Hindus, the Zoroastrian peoples of the eastern border were not easily distinguished in their own eyes or in those of the Greeks. However, the inhabitants of Aryavarta, accepting them as blood relatives, refused, with horror, to consider them as compatriots. It was all the easier for these bordering tribes to be only half Zoroastrian, as the nature of the religious reform, the origin of the entire people, based on freedom, was far from creating a social bond as strong as that of India. We are entitled to believe, on the contrary, since the insurrection had taken place against a fairly tyrannical doctrine, that, following the natural effect of any reaction, the Protestant spirit, wanting to abjure the severe discipline of the Brahmins, had given left and instituted a little license. Indeed, the Zoroastrian nations appear to us to be very hostile to each other and mutually oppressive. Each, constituted separately, led, following the custom of the white race, a turbulent existence in the midst of great pastoral wealth, governed by magistrates either elective or hereditary, but forced to reckon closely with public opinion.554. All these tribes therefore prided themselves on independence. Thus organized, they gradually descended towards the southwest, where they would eventually encounter the Assyrians.

Before the time of this contact, the first columns found, in the surroundings of Gedrosia, black populations or at least Hamites, and mingled intimately with them555. Hence it was that the Zoroastrian nations of the south, those who took part in Persian glory, were early affected by a certain dose of Melanian blood. The greatest number, penetrated too deeply by this alloy, fell, long before the conquest of Babylon, almost to the state of the Semites. What indicates this is that the Bactrians, Medes and Persians were the only Zoroastrians who played a role. The others limited themselves to the honor of supporting these elite families.

It may seem strange that these Arians, thus impregnated with the blood of blacks, directly or by alliance with the Hamites and the degenerate Semites, were able to fulfill the important character attributed to them by history. If, therefore, we believed ourselves justified in assuming, among all their tribes, an equal measure in the proportion of the mixture, it would become difficult to explain clinically the domination of the most illustrious of the latter over the Assyrian populations. But, to establish certainty, it is enough to compare the Zoroastrian languages with each other, as I have already done elsewhere.

Zend, this fact is not doubtful, spoken among the Bactrians, inhabitants of this Balk called in the Orientthe mother of cities556, the most powerful of the primitive Zoroastrians, was almost pure of Semitic alloys, and the Persian dialect, which did not enjoy this prerogative as much, nevertheless possessed it to a certain degree, superior to the Persian, less Semitic in turn than the pehlvi, so that the blood of the future conquerors of anterior Asia preserved, in the noblest of its southern branches, a sufficiently Arian character to explain their superiority, The Medes and especially the Persians were the successors of the ancient influence of the Bactrians who, after having directed the first steps of

famine in the ways of magism, had lost their preponderance in a way unknown today. The heirs deserved the honor that fell to them. We have just seen that they had remained Arians, less complete undoubtedly than the Zoroastrians of the north-east, and even than the Greeks, just as much nonetheless as the Hindus of the same period, much more than the group of their congeners, already almost absorbed on the banks of the Nile. The great and irremediable disadvantage which the Medes and Persians brought, upon entering the political scene of the world, was their restricted numbers and the already advanced degeneration of the other Zoroastrian tribes of the south, their natural allies. However, they could order for some time. They were still in possession of one of the most honorable characteristics of the noble species, a religion closer to true sources than most of the Semites, in whose eyes they were going to be called upon to perform an act of strength.

Already, in ancient times, a Persian tribe had reigned over Assyria. Its numerical weakness had forced it to submit to a Chaldean-Semitic invasion from the mountains of the northwest. From this time, relatively venerable religious doctrines are linked to the name of Zoroaster worn by the first king of this Ariane dynasty.557: there is no way of confusing the prince so called with the religious reformer; but the presence of such a name, at the date of 2234 BC, can serve to show that the Medes and Persians of the VIIecentury retained the same monotheistic faith as their oldest ancestors. The Bactrians and the Arian tribes which limited them to the north and east had created and developed these dogmas. They had seen the birth of the prophet in that very distant age when, under the nebulous reigns of the Kaianian kings, the Zoroastrian nations, including those from which the Sarmatians were one day to emerge, were in the aftermath of their separation from the Hindus.

.

558

At this time, the national religion, although, through its reform, became foreign to the cult of the purohitas, and even to these simpler theological notions, the primitive heritage of the entire white race in the northern regions of the world. This religion was incomparably more dignified, more moral, more elevated than that of the Semites. We can judge

by this fact, that in the VIIecentury it was better, despite its alterations, than polytheism, although less abject, adopted long ago by the Hellenic nations559. Under the guidance of this belief, morals were also not so degraded and retained vigor. In accordance with the primitive organization of the Arian races, the Medes lived in tribes, dispersed in villages. They elected their leaders, as their fathers had once elected their viç-patis560. They were warlike and restless, however, with a sense of order, and they proved it by leading the exercise of their right of suffrage to the founding of a regular monarchy, based on the principle of heredity.561. There is nothing there that we cannot also find in the ancient Hindus, among the Aryan Egyptians, among the Macedonians, the Thessalians, the Epirotes, as well as in the Germanic nations. Everywhere the choice of the people creates the form of government, almost everywhere prefers the monarchy and maintains it in a particular family. For all these peoples, the question of descent and the power of established fact are two principles, or, better said, two instincts which dominate social institutions and enliven them. These Medes, shepherds and warriors, remained free men, in all the force of the term, even during this period when their small number obliged them to submit to the suzerainty of the Chaldeans, and, if their exaggerated spirit of independence, by pushing them to fractionation and antagonism of forces, certainly contributed to prolonging their time of subordination, we cannot admire enough that this state did not degrade their naturalness, and that after long gropings, the nation, having rallied all its resources in its monarchical form, became capable, after sixteen hundred years, of resuming the conquest of the throne of Assyria and of executing it.

Since she had been driven out of Nineveh, she had not fallen. She had persisted in her cult, a very rare honor, obviously due to her persistent homogeneity. It had retained its taste for independence under leaders who had too little control over those they governed: the Median nation had therefore remained Ariane. When once it was torn from its warlike anarchy, the need to give application to its vigor, left without use by the happy stifling of civil discord, turned its sights towards external conquests. Starting with

subjugate the related nations established in its neighborhood, among others, the Persians562, it was strengthened by their addition. Then, when she had brought under her flags and merged into a single body of people of which she was the head all the southern disciples of her religion, she attacked the Ninevite empire.

Many writers have seen, in these wars of earlier Asia, in these rapid conquests, in these States so quickly built, so suddenly overthrown, only unconnected coups de main, a series of events devoid of causes deep, and therefore far-reaching. Let us not accept such a judgment. The last Semitic emigrations had stopped coming down the mountains of Armenia and coming to regenerate the Assyrian populations. The regions bordering the Caspian and neighboring the Caucasus no longer had men to send abroad. Long ago, the traveling columns of the Hellenes had completed their passage, and the Semites, remaining in these regions, were no longer expelled by anyone. Assyria had therefore not renewed its blood for centuries, and the abundance of black principles, always in the process of assimilation, had brought about the decadence of the superimposed races.563.

In Egypt, something similar happened. But, as the caste system, despite its imperfections, still preserved this society in its constituent principles, the rulers of Memphis, feeling moreover too weak to resist all shocks, turned their policy to maintaining between themselves and the power Ninevite, which they feared above all else, a curtain of small Syrian kingdoms. Hidden behind this rampart, they continued, as best they could, to drag themselves in their accustomed ruts, descending the slope of civilization as the black mixture invaded them. If the Ninevites frightened them above all, these people were not the only ones to keep them in turmoil. Also recognizing themselves incapable of fighting against the imperceptible power of the Greek pirates, (Greek word) Arians who called themselvessea kings, as their relatives the Scandinavian Arians later did, the Egyptians had resorted to

prudent resolution to sequester itself by closing the Nile at its mouths. It was at the cost of such excessive precautions that the descendants of Rhamses still hoped to preserve their trembling existence for a long time.

Next to the two great empires of the Western world thus weakened, the Hellenes appeared in approximately the state that the Medes had known before the founding of the unitary monarchy. They demonstrated the same turbulence, the same love of freedom, the same warlike feelings, an equal ambition to one day command other peoples, and, held back by their fragmentation, they remained incapable of undertaking anything larger than colonizations already established at the mouths of the Euxine rivers, in Italy and on the Asian coast, where their cities, encouraged by Assyrian policy to compete successfully with the trade of the cities of Phoenicia, depended essentially, in this respect, on the sovereign power in Nineveh and Babylon. It was at this time, when none of the great ancient powers was any longer in a position to attack its neighbors, that the Medes presented themselves as candidates for the government of the universe. The occasion could not have been better chosen: it was very close, however, that a completely unexpected actor, who suddenly came rushing onto the stage, completely disrupted the distribution of roles.

The Kimris, Cimmerians, Cimbri or Celts, whatever you want to call them, white peoples mixed with yellow elements, of whom no one took any notice, suddenly emerged into lower Asia, coming from the Tauride, and, after having ravaged the Pontus and all the surrounding countries laid siege to Sardis and took it564. These fierce conquerors spread astonishment and terror in their wake. They would, no doubt, have asked for nothing better than to justify the high opinion that the mere sight of their swords gave rise to of their power. Unfortunately for them, they were repeating an accident that we have already observed. Victors, they were only vanquished: pursuers, they were fugitives. They only dispossessed

to find shelter. Attacked in the steppes, which later became Asiatic Sarmatia, by a swarm of Mongol or Scythian nations, and forced to give in, they escaped to places where the Semites trembled at their feet, but where, inevitably, their adversaries came to pursue them. So that earlier Asia had barely experienced the first devastation of the Celts when it fell into the hands of the yellow hordes. These, while continuing to wage war against the fugitives, attacked the cities and treasures of the invaded countries, undoubtedly much more attractive prey.565. The Celts were fewer in number than their antagonists. They were beaten and dispersed. The Scythians then continued, without competitors, the course of their victories, especially harmful to the designs of Median politics. Cyaxares had just invested Nineveh, and he only had to overcome this last obstacle to see himself master of Assyrian Asia. Angered by this unfortunate intervention, he raised the siege and came to attack the Scythians. But fortune did not support him, and, completely routed, he had to leave the barbarians, as he undoubtedly called them, free to continue their devastating courses. These penetrated to the edge of Egypt, where supplications and even more gifts obtained from them that they would not enter. Satisfied with the ransom, they took their violence elsewhere. This Mongolian bacchanal was terrible, and yet did not last long. Twenty-eight years saw the end of it. The Medes, beaten as they had been in a first encounter, were too truly superior to the Scythians to support their yoke indefinitely. They returned to the charge, and this time with complete success566. The yellow horsemen, chased by the troops of Cyaxares, fled into the country north of the Euxine. They went there to continue, with the peoples more or less mixed with Finnish blood, the anarchic struggles to which they are peculiar, while the Zoroastrians, rid of them, resumed their work at the point where it had been interrupted. The Celto-Scythian invasion repulsed, Nineveh was besieged again, and Cyaxares, an intelligent victor, entered its walls. From then on the domination of the southern Arian-Zoroastrian race was assured, to which I can henceforth give, without inconvenience, the geographical name of Iranian. There was only the question of knowing

which of the branches of this family would obtain supremacy. The Median people were not the purest. For this reason, he could not maintain predominance; but he was most civilized by his contact with Chaldean culture, and this is what had first given him the most eminent place. The first, he had preferred a regular form of government to sterile agitations, and his morals, his habits, were more refined than those of other related branches. However, all these advantages resulting from a certain affinity with the Assyrians, and which the state of the idiom accuses, had been purchased at the price of a hymen which, by altering the Persian blood, had also diminished its vigor vis-à-vis the Assyrians. towards another Iranian tribe, that of the Persians, so that, by right of ethnic superiority, the sovereignty of Asia was taken from the companions of Cyaxares, and passed to the branch which remained more Ariane. A prince who, through his father, belonged to the Persian nation, through his mother to the royal house of Dejoces, Cyrus, came to replace the direct line and give his compatriots superiority over the founding tribe of the empire and over all other consanguineous families. However, there was no absolute substitution: the two peoples found themselves united too closely; only a nuance was established between the rulers, and this did not last long; because the Persians understood the necessity of submitting their somewhat uneducated vigor to the school of the more experienced Medes. So it soon came to pass that the kings of the house of Cyrus567had no scruples about placing the most skilled of the latter in the front ranks. There was therefore a real sharing of power between the two sovereign tribes and the other more Semiticized Iranian peoples. 568. As for the Semites and other Chamitized or black groups forming the immense majority of the subject populations, they were only the common pedestal of Zoroastrian domination.

It must have been for the nations so degenerate, so cowardly, so perverted, and at the same time so artistic of Assyria, a very strange sight and sensation to fall under the harsh command of a warlike race, serious and given over to the inspirations of a simple, moral cult, as idealistic as their own religious notions were. With the arrival of the Iranians, the sacred horrors and theological infamies came to an end. The minds of the mages could not cope with it.

We had a very great and very singular proof of this intolerance when, later, King Darius, who had become master of Phenicia, sent forbidding the Carthaginians from sacrificing men to their gods, offerings doubly abominable in the eyes of the Persians in that they offended piety towards fellow men and defiled the purity of the holy flame of the pyre569. Perhaps it was the first time, since the invention of polytheism, that prescriptions emanating from the throne had spoken of humanity. This was one of the remarkable characteristics of the new government of Asia. From then on, the focus was on rendering justice to everyone and putting an end to public atrocities, under whatever pretext they took place. No less new particularity, the great king took care to administer. From this time on, the grandiose becomes lower, and everything tends to become more positive. Interest is more regularly paid for. There is calculation, and reasonable calculation, down to earth, in the institutions of Cyrus and his successors. To put it simply, common sense inspires politics, alongside and sometimes a little above tumultuous passions. Until then, the latter had talked too much570. At the same time as impetuosity decreases among rulers, and material organization progresses, artistic genius declines in a striking manner. The monuments of the Persian era are only a mediocre reproduction of the ancient style. Assyrian571. There is no longer any invention in the bas-reliefs of Persepolis. We do not even find the cold correction which usually survives the great schools. The figures appear awkward, heavy, crude. They are no longer the products of sculptors, they are the imperfect sketches of clumsy maneuvers; and since the great king, in his magnificence, did not obtain artistic pleasures comparable to those enjoyed by his Chaldean predecessors, we must necessarily believe that he had no desire for them, and that the mediocre representations displayed on the walls of his palace to celebrate his glory flattered his pride enough and were sufficient for his taste. It has often been said that the arts inevitably flourished under a prince who loved sumptuousness, and that when luxury was sought after, makers of masterpieces appeared from all sides, encouraged by the

prospect of delicate tributes and big salaries. However, the monarchs of so many regions, and who had the means to pay for the proudest reputations, were only able to establish around them very weak samples of the artistic genius of their subjects. Had they not had a personal disposition to conceive of beauty, since the masterpieces of previous dynasties were copied for them, and they themselves constructed immense buildings of all kinds on all points of their vast possessions, they gave to artists, if the artists had existed, all the desirable opportunities to stand out and to struggle in genius with extinct generations. Yet nothing springs from Minerva's fingers. The Persian monarchy was opulent, nothing more, and it resorted, on many occasions, to Egyptian decadence to obtain work of secondary value no doubt, but which nevertheless exceeded the faculties of its nationals. Let's try to find the key to this problem. We have already seen that the Ariane nation, inclined to the positive of facts and not to the disorder of the imagination, is not artistic in itself. Thoughtful, reasoning, reasoning and reasonable, she is; understanding to the highest degree, she still is; skilled in discovering the advantages of all things, even of what is most foreign to him, yes, we must also recognize this prerogative, one of the most fruitful of his sovereign right. But when the Ariane race is pure of any mixture with the blood of blacks, there is no artistic conception for it: this is what I have explained elsewhere in great abundance. I showed the core of this family composed of future Hindu, Greek, Iranian, Sarmatian societies, very unskilled in creating figurative representations of real merit, and, however great the ruins of the banks of the Yenisei and the hilltops of Altai, we do not discover any sign revealing a delicate feeling for the arts. If, then, in Egypt and Assyria, there was a powerful development in the materialized reproduction of thought, if, in India, this same aptitude did not fail to blossom, although later, the fact did not occur. explains that by the action of the black mixture, abundant and unrestrained in Assyria, limited in Egypt, more restricted on Hindu soil, and thus creating the three modes of manifestation of these different countries. In the first, art quickly reached its apogee, then it degenerated no less quickly, falling into monstrosities where the predominance

too hasty Melanian threw it away. With the second, as the Arian elements, sources of local life and civilization, were weak, numerically speaking, it was also quickly won over by the black infusion. However, it defended itself by means of a relative separation of the castes, and the artistic feeling, which the first flow had developed, remained stationary, promptly ceased to progress, and thus could take much longer than in Assyria to develop. degrade. In India, as a much more strong and solid barrier was opposed to the invasions of the Negro principle, the artistic character developed only very slowly and poorly within Brahmanism. It had to wait, to become truly strong, for the coming of Sakya -mouni: as soon as the Buddhists, by calling on the impure tribes to share the nirwana, had opened access to some white families, the passion for the arts developed in Salsette with no less energy than in Nineveh, quickly reaching , as there again, its zenith, and, always for the same cause, was almost suddenly lost in the madness that exaggeration, the predominance of the Melanian principle, brought to the banks of the Ganges as everywhere else.

When the Iranians took over the government of Asia, they found themselves in the presence of populations where the arts were completely invaded and degraded by black influence. They themselves did not have all the faculties that would have been necessary to revive this decaying genius,

It will be objected that, precisely because they were Arians, they brought back to the corrupt blood of the Semites the white addition intended to regenerate it and that thus, by a new infusion of superior elements, they were to bring the bulk of the Assyrian nations back towards a balance of ethnic principles comparable to that in which the black Hamites found themselves in their finest moment, or, better still, the Chaldeans of Semiramis. But the Assyrian nations were very large and the population of the dominant Iranian tribes was very small. What these tribes possessed, in their veins, of fertile essence, already damaged, moreover, could well be lost among the Asiatic masses, but not revive them, and, according to this incontestable fact, their very power, their political preponderance

should last only the short enough time when it would be possible for them to maintain an isolated national existence intact.

I have already spoken of their limited number, and I appeal to the authority of Herodotus on this point. When the historian traces, in his VII ebook, this admirable picture of the army of Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, it displays the magnificent enumeration of the nations called into arms by the great king, from all parts of his vast States. He shows us Persians or Medes commanding the herds of fighters who cross the two bridges of the Bosphorus, bending under the whips of their Iranian leaders. Apart from these leaders of noble essence, greedy slaves whom victory chained under their orders, how many soldiers does Herodotus list among the Medes proper? How many Zoroastrian warriors in this outcry that the son of Darius wanted to make so formidable? I only see 24,000, and what was such a mass in an army of seventeen hundred thousand men? From the point of view of numbers, nothing; to that of military merit, everything: because, if these 24,000 Iranians had not been paralyzed, in their movements, by the crush of their inert auxiliaries, it is very probable that the muse of Plataea would have celebrated other victors. In any case, since the ruling nation could not provide soldiers in greater quantities, it was insignificant and could not suffice for the task of regenerating the thick mass of the Asian populations. She therefore only had the prospect of one future: corrupting herself by soon being engulfed in their bosom.

We do not discover any trace of strong institutions, intended to create a barrier between the Iranians and their subjects. Religion could have served this purpose, if the Magi had not been animated by this spirit of proselytism particular to all dogmatic religions, and which earned them, many centuries later, the very special hatred of Muslims. They wanted to convert their Assyrian subjects. They managed to tear them away, in large part, from the religious atrocities of the ancient cults. It was an almost regrettable success: it was good neither for the initiators nor for the neophytes. These did not fail to stain Iranian blood with their alliance, and as for the better religion that was given to them, they perverted it, in order to accommodate their incurable spirit of superstition.572.

The end of the Iranian nations was thus marked very close to the day of their triumph. However, as long as their essence was not yet too mixed, their superiority over the civilized universe was certain and incontestable: they had no competitors. All of Lower Asia submitted to their scepter. The small kingdoms beyond the Euphrates, this rampart carefully maintained by the Pharaohs, were quickly included in the satrapies. The free cities of the Phoenician coast were annexed to the Persian monarchy, with the States of the Lydians. A day came when only Egypt itself remained, an ancient rival which, for the heirs of the Chaldean dynasts, might have been worth a campaign.573. It was before this aged colossus that the most vigorous Semitic conquerors had constantly retreated. The Persians did not retreat. Everything favored their domination. Egyptian decadence was complete. The country of the Nile no longer possessed personal resources for resistance. He still paid, in truth, mercenaries to guard around his obsolescence, and, incidentally, the general degeneration of the Semitic race had forced him to replace, almost absolutely, the Carians and the Philistines with Greek Arians. . That was the limit of what he could attempt. He no longer had enough flexibility or nerve to run to arms himself, and, beaten, to recover from a defeat.574. The Persians enslaved him and insulted, as best they could, to their heart's content, his worship, his laws and his morals.

If we consider with some attention the vivid picture that Herodotus has drawn of this period, we are struck to see that two nations treated the rest of the universe, whether defeated or to be conquered, with equal contempt, and these two nations, which are the Persians and the Greeks, also considered each other as barbarians, half forgetting, half neglecting their community of origin. It seems to me that the point of view they took, to judge other peoples so harshly, was almost the same. What they reproached them with was also lacking the sense of freedom, being weak in the face of misfortune, softened in prosperity, cowardly in combat; and neither the Greeks nor the

The Persians did not take much account of the Assyrians or Egyptians of the glorious past which had resulted in so many disgusting debilities. This is because the two contemptuous groups were then at the same level of civilization. Although already separated by the interferences which had modified their respective essences, and, therefore, their aptitudes, a state to which their languages bear witness, the common Arian principle which, among them, still dominated the alloys, was enough to make them consider in an analogous way the main questions of social life. This is why the pages of the old man of Halicarnassus represent so vividly this similarity of notions and feelings to which they testified. They were like two brothers of different fortunes, different in social rank, yet brothers in character and tendencies. The Arian-Iranian people held the position of eldest of the family in the West: they dominated the world. The Greek people were the youngest, reserved for one day carrying the scepter, and preparing themselves for this great destiny by a sort of isonomy vis-à-vis the ruling branch, an isonomy which was not entirely the same. independence. As for the other populations enclosed under the horizon of the two Arian branches, they remained, for the first, objects of conquest and domination, for the second, material to exploit. It is good not to lose sight of this parallelism, otherwise we would have little understanding of the shifts in power that occurred later.

Certainly, I can see why we are part of the ordinary disdain of vigorous and positive minds for artistic natures more dedicated to collecting appearances than to grasping realities. However, we must not forget either that, if the Persians and Greeks had every reason to disesteem the Semitic world, which had become their pasture, this world possessed the entire treasure of civilizations, of the experiences of the West, and the respectable memories of long centuries of work, conquests and glory. The companions of Cyrus, the fellow citizens of Pisistratus, had within themselves, I agree, the pledges of a future renovation of social existence; but this was not a reason why we had to lose what the black Hamites and the different layers of Semites and the Egyptians had for their part amassed. The harvest of the two western Arian groups, the harvest coming from their own funds, was still to be done: the wheat was only budding, the ears not yet ripe; while the sheaves of the Semitic nations filled the

barns and supplied the next reformers themselves. There is more: the ideas of Assyria and Egypt had spread wherever the blood of their inventors had penetrated, in Ethiopia, in Arabia, around the Mediterranean, as in the west of the Asia, as in southern Greece, with an opulence, a despairing exuberance for civilizations yet to be born, and all the creations of later societies would be forever forced to compromise with these notions and the opinions that emerged from them. Thus, despite their disdain for the Semitic nations and for the effeminate peace of the banks of the Nile, the Iranian Arians and the Greek Arians were soon to enter the great intellectual current of these populations withered by their ethnic disorder and by the exaggeration of their principles. melanians. The share of influence left to these proud Iranians, to these active Greeks, would thus be reduced, in the end, to throwing into the immense and stagnant lake of Asian multitudes a few temporary elements of movement, agitation and life . The Iranian Arians, and after them, the Greek Arians, offered to the world of Assyria and Egypt what the German Arians later gave to Roman society. When all of Western Asia was brought under the control of the Persians, there was no longer any reason for the primitive split between its civilization and that of Egypt to persist. The few efforts made in the Nile valley to reconquer national independence only counted as the convulsions of a dying resistance. The two primitive societies of the West tended to merge, because the races they contained were no longer distinguished clearly enough. If the Persians had been very numerous, if, in the manner of the most ancient invaders, their tribes had been able to fight against the number of Semitic multitudes, this would not have been so. A completely new organization being formed on the little-known debris of the old ones, we would have seen some of these debris isolate themselves, in the extremities of the empire, with the remains of the race, and constitute themselves separately, in such a way as to maintain between the inventions of newcomers and the abolished state of affairs, for the majority of subjects, a perceptible line of demarcation.

The Iranians, being only a handful of men, were barely in possession of power when the immense Assyrian spirit surrounded them on all sides, seized them, squeezed them, and communicated to them its vertigo. We can already realize under the son of Cyrus, under Cambyses, the share of kinship that the fatally superb and inflated nature of the Chamitized Semites could already claim with the person of the sovereign. Fortunately, this alloy had not yet become widespread. Herodotus' testimony proves to us that the Arian spirit held firm against the attacks of the domestic enemy. Nothing shows this better than the famous conference of the seven leaders after the death of the false Smerdis575.

It was a question of giving the delivered peoples a suitable form of government. The problem would not have existed for the Assyrian genius who, with the first word, would have proclaimed the eternal legitimacy of pure and simple despotism; but it was considered maturely and resolved, not without difficulty, by the dominating warriors who raised it. Three opinions were present. Otanès opined for democracy; Megabyzes spoke in favor of the oligarchy. Darius, having praised the monarchical organization, which he affirmed to be the inevitable end of all possible forms of government, won the votes to his cause. However, he was dealing with associates so crazy about independence that before handing over power to the elected king, they stipulated that Otanès and his entire house would remain forever free from the action of sovereign authority, and free, except respect for the laws. As in the time of Herodotus feelings of this energy hardly existed among the Persians, decidedly fallen from their primitive Arian value, the writer from Ionia wisely warns his readers that the fact he relates will appear to them strange: he still maintains it576.

After the extinction of this great pride, there were still a few illustrious years; then the Semitic disorder succeeded in encompassing the Iranians in the stagnant bosom of the slave populations. From the reign of the son of only a century and a half passed.

The history of Greece begins here to mingle more intimately with that of the Assyrian world. The Athenians and Spartans now meet in the affairs of the Ionian colonies. So I'm going to leave the Iranian group. to take care of the new Arian people, who appear to be their most worthy and even their only antagonist.

Book Four

Chapter III

The indigenous Greeks; Semitic settlers;

the Arians Hellenes.

Primordial Greece appears half Semitic, half aboriginal

. It was Semites who founded the kingdom of Sicyone, the first civilized point of the country, these are purely Semitic or autochthonous dynasties glorified by the characteristic names of Inachus, Phoronée, Ogyges, Agenor, Danaüs, Codrus , of Cecrops, names of which the legends establish the ethnic meaning in the clearest manner. Everything that does not come from Asia, in these distant times, 577

said to be born on the soil itself, and forms the popular base of the newly hatched States. But the remarkable fact is that, in the primordial ages, we nowhere see the slightest historical trace of the Arians Hellenes.

No mythical story mentions them. They are profoundly unknown throughout mainland Greece, especially in the islands. To meet them, we must go back to the days of Deucalion, who, with troops of Lélèges and Curètes, that is to say with local populations, therefore non-Arian, came, long after the creation of the States of Sicyone, Argos, Thebes and Athens, establish themselves in Thessaly. This conqueror arrived from the north. Thus, from the foundation of Sicyone, placed by chronologists, such as Larcher, in the year 2164 BC, until the arrival of Deucalion in 1541, in other words during a period of six hundred years, we do not see in Greece as aboriginal Antearian peoples and colonizers of the Chamo-Semitic race. So where did the Greek Arians live and do during this six hundred year period? Were they really still far from their future homeland? Tradition ignores them in such a complete way that one would be tempted to believe that they made their first appearance with Deucalion, suddenly, unexpectedly, and that, before this surprise, we had never heard of them. Then suddenly Deucalion, established on the lands of conquest, gives birth to Hellen; this one has for sons Dorus, Æolus, Xuthus, who, in turn, becomes father of Achæus and Ion: all the branches of the race, Dorians, Æolians, Achaeans and Ionians, enter into competition for territories formerly exclusively acquired from the natives and the Canaanites. The Arians Hellenes are found. We should not be surprised by this lack of precedents and transition. These are the ordinary mnemonic forms of the stories that people keep about their origins. However, there is not the slightest doubt that the invasions and establishments of the white multitudes are not accomplished in this way. A nation threatens a territory for a long time before being able to establish itself there. It circles around the borders of the coveted country without crossing them. It terrifies at first and only grasps

tardily. The Arians Hellenes did not proceed differently from their brothers: they were no exception to the rule.

Since before the establishment of Deucalion in Thessaly there is no question of the name of his people, let us stop searching for this name and, turning to other resources, see what Deucalion was. Himself, well recognized as Hellene, by later centuries, since he is proclaimed the very eponym of the race. Let us observe him in his ethnic value, and first, since we proceed from bottom to top, let us begin by specifying that of his sons, founders of the different Hellenic tribes578. They were all born, in the second degree, of Deucalion and Pyrrha, daughter of Pandora. Dorus began by establishing his tribes around Olympus, near Parnassus. Æolus reigned in Thessaly, among the Magnetes. Xuthus advanced as far as the Peloponnese. Hellen, father of these three heroes, had them from a daughter whose indigenous origin is sufficiently indicated by her name: the legend calls her Orséis,the mountain girl. Pandora also was not born of Hellenic stock. Made of silt, she happened to be of another species than the Arians: she was indigenous, she had married the brother of her creator. Thus, the patriarchs of the Hellenic family do not present themselves as being of pure race. As for Pandora, this Aboriginal woman married to a foreigner; as for his daughter Pyrrha, married to another foreigner; as for this last couple who, after the flood, created a people with the stones of the ground, it is difficult not to remember, while observing them, the very similar myth of Chinese history, where Pan-Kou forms the first men with clay, although he is a man himself. Arian-Greek and Arian-Chinese thought found, at immense distances, only the same mode of manifestation to represent two completely identical ideas, the mixture of an Arian branch with wild aborigines and the appropriation of the latter to social notions. Deucalion, the first of the Greeks, that is, the first of a mixed race, a halfSemite, it seems, was the son of Prometheus and Klymene, from the Ocean 579. We feel very clearly here the deviation from the pure source, from which Prometheus came. If Deucalion becomes eponymous of his

descendants is that he does not have the same composition, the same ethnic significance as his father. Nothing more obvious. However, the contributions of Semitic or aboriginal blood cannot constitute its originality: it is therefore in the paternal line that it must be sought, otherwise Deucalion would in no way be considered by Hellenic legend as the typical man, and, in the Greek stories of Semitic origin, he would be classified well after the Canaanite heroes who, in fact, preceded him in the order of time. Deucalion therefore draws all his special merit from his father, and thus it is his father's race that it is important to recognize. Now, Prometheus was a Titan, as was his brother Epimetheus, from whom the Arians Hellenes also descended through women. Consequently, no one, I believe, will be able to combat this conclusion: the Arians Hellenes before Deucalion, the Arians Hellenes still more or less intact from all mixtures, whether Semitic or aboriginal, are the Titans.580. The regularity of the parentage leaves nothing to be desired.

Until then, it has been irrefutably established that the Greeks are half-breed descendants of that glorious and terrible nation. However, we could still doubt that the Titans were themselves, these Hellenes, once separated from the Ariane family on the slopes of Imaüs, and whose long peregrination in the northern mountains we have felt, rather than seen. of Assyria, along the Caspian Sea. In truth, if the ascending genealogy of the Titans were completely lost, the fact would no less be established, with all possible certainty, by philology and physiological arguments: but, since the story here is so clear and with too rare a precision, I will certainly not reject the help it brings me, and I will complete my demonstration. The Titans were the direct sons of this ancient Arian god, already seen by us in India, with Vedic origins, of this Varounas, venerable expression of the piety of the authors of the white race, and of which the Hellenes did not even have disfigured the name by preserving it, after so many centuries, in the barely altered form of Ouranos. The Titans, sons of Ouranos, the original god of the Arians, were incontestably themselves, as we see, the Arians, and spoke a language of which the remains, surviving within the Hellenic dialects, were similar, without any

doubt, in a very intimate way, and from Sanskrit, and from Zend, and from Celtic, and from the most ancient Slavic.

The Titans, these haughty conquerors of the mountainous regions of northern Greece, these violent and irresistible men, left in the memory of the populations of Hellas, and, as a result, in that of their own descendants, exactly this same idea of their nature that the ancient white Hamites, that the first Hindus, that the Egyptian Arians, that the Chinese Arians, all conquerors, all their relatives, have left in the memory of other peoples581. We deified them, we placed them above the human creature, we admitted ourselves to be smaller than them, and, as I have already said sometimes, by such a way of understanding things, we did exact justice. and to the primitive nations of pure white race and the multitudes of mediocre valor who succeeded them. The Titans therefore occupied northern Greece. Their first successful movement towards the south was that over which Deucalion presided, leading in this enterprise troops of aborigines, that is to say people foreign to his blood.582. He himself, moreover, as we have seen, was a hybrid. So, we no longer have to deal with the Titans. They remain, they mingle, they die out in the northern regions of Hellas, in Chaonia, Epirus, Macedonia: they disappear, but not without transmitting and ensuring a very particular value to the populations among whom they exist. melt583.

These populations, any more than those of Thrace and Tauride, were not, as I have briefly indicated, of pure yellow race. The Celtic and Slavic nations had already undoubtedly pushed their marches as far as the Euxine, as far as the mountains of Greece, as far as the Adriatic. They had even gone much further. The great movements of northern white peoples, which, under the violent effort of the Mongol masses operating in the north, had determined the Arians living further south, on the Asian highlands, to descend along the crests of the Hindu-Koh, had been acting for a long time when the Titans appeared beyond Thrace. The Celts, who we find, in the seventeenth century BC, firmly established in Gaul, and the Slavs, who, for reasons to be given in their place, I see in

Spain prior to this time, had left the Siberian homeland for centuries and skirted the upper banks of the Euxine. For all these causes, a certain amount of mixtures undergone by the Titans had brought into the veins of the Arian Hellenes some proportion of yellow principles due only to the intermediary of nations tainted with more intimate contact with the Finnish peoples.584. After the time of Deucalion, dating from the sixteenth century B.C. 585, the tribes settled in Macedonia, Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, the north, in a word, united, to a very particular degree, the traits of the Arian character and were the first to make known the name of the Hellenes. There especially shone the warlike spirit. The Thessalian hero, the light-footed brave, always remains the prototype of Hellenic courage. As is'Iliadshows us, he is a vehement warrior, friend of danger, seeking the fight for the fight's sake, and, in his religion of loyalty, not compromising with the duty he imposes on himself. His noble feelings make him loved. The impetuous passions which ruin him make him pity. He is worthy of being compared to the winners of the Hindu epic, the Shahnameh and the songs of gesture. Energy was the trait of this family. This virtue, when intelligence illuminates and guides it, is everywhere designated in advance for the sovereign power. The north of Greece always supplies the south with its best, most intrepid, most numerous soldiers, and long after the rest of the country was smothered under the Semitic element, there were still breeding grounds for the hardy in this region. fighters. On the other hand, it must be admitted, the inhabitants of these countries, so skilled in fighting, in commanding, in organizing, in governing, were never able to shine in speculative work. Among them, there are no artists, no sculptors, painters, orators, poets, or famous historians. It was all that the lyrical genius could do to go from the south to Thebes to produce Pindar. He did not go further, because the race did not lend itself to it, and Pindar himself was a great exception in Boeotia. We know what Athens thought of the Cadmean spirit, which, although it did not have a loose tongue or flowery thoughts, nonetheless aroused soldiers

mercenaries to all of Asia and, on occasion, a great statesman to the Hellenic homeland. The blood of northern Greece had its border at Thebes586.

The north was therefore always distinguished by the military and even crude instincts of its citizens, and by their practical genius, a double character due incontestably to a hymen of the white Arian essence with yellow principles. The result was great utilitarian skills and little sensual imagination. We thus see, in the parts of Europe most anciently in the power of the Hellenes, the ethnic and moral antithesis of what we observed in India, Persia and Egypt. We will do the same in applying this contrast to the nations of southern Greece. The difference will be more salient as we move from the continent to the islands and from the islands to the Asian colonies. I used, only a moment ago, theIliadto characterize the both Arian and Finnish genius of the northern Greeks. I draw no less help from it when I seek to represent to myself the Ariansemitic spirit of the Greeks of the south, and it will suffice for me, for this purpose, to oppose the wise Odysseus to Achilles and Pyrrhus. This is indeed the type of the Greek steeped in Phoenician; here is the man who would certainly name, in his genealogy, more Chanaanite mothers than Arian women. Courageous, but only when necessary, astute by preference, his tongue is golden, and any unwary person who listens to his plea is seduced. No lie frightens him, no deception embarrasses him, no perfidy costs him. He knows everything. His ease of understanding is astonishing, and his tenacity in his projects is limitless. In this double respect, he is Arian. Let's continue the portrait.

The Semitic blood speaks again in him, when he shows himself to be a sculptor himself he carved his nuptial bed in an olive tree, and this work inlaid with ivory is a masterpiece. Thus eloquent, artistic, deceitful and dangerous he is a compatriot, an emulator of the pirate-merchant born in Sidon, of the senator who will govern Carthage, while ingenious in finding ideas, unshakeable in his views, skilled in governing his passions as much

only to temper those of others, moderate when he wants, modest because pride is a clumsy swelling of reason, he is an Arian. There is no doubt that Ulysses must prevail over Ajax, a true Arian Finn. The shade of Greek type to which the son of Laertes belongs is destined for a higher, faster, but also more fragile fortune than its opposite. The glory of Greece was the work of the Arian faction, allied to Semitic blood; while the great external preponderance of this country resulted from the action of the somewhat Mongolized populations of the north.

We know it: early on, and long before the first tribes of Greek Arians, coming from the mixture of the aborigines with the Titans, had descended into Attica and the Peloponnese, Chanaanean emigrants had already led their boats towards these beaches. It is no longer believed today, and for irrefutable reasons, that among these foreigners there were Egyptians. The people of Misr did not colonize: they stayed at home, and even, confined for a long time to the possession of the upper course of the Nile, they did not descend until quite late to the edges of the sea. The lower part of the Delta was occupied by people of Semitic or Hamitic race. It was the main route for expeditions to West Africa. If then, which I have no reason to dispute, certain bands, who came to populate Greece, left from this point, they were not Egyptians: they were fellows of these other invaders who, from common admission, came in large numbers from Phoenicia. All the names of the ancient heads of primitive Greek states, which do not present an aboriginal appearance, are uniquely Semitic: thus Inachus, Azeus, Phegeus, Niobe, Agenor, Cadmus, Codrus. We cite one exception, two at most: Phoronée, which we compare to the Egyptian Phra, and Apis. But Phoroneus is the son of Inachus, the brother of Phegeus, the father of Niobe. We find this hero, in his own family, surrounded by clearly Semitic names, and it would not be more difficult to discover a root of the same species in his than it is to identify him with Phra587. The name of Inachus has been compared to the wordAnak, whose ethnic importance has been highlighted by Mr. de Ewald and other Hebraists. If this name were to have, for the first king of Argolis, a racial significance,

it would indicate a kinship with the shamefully stupid tribe of these pure blacks who, dispossessed masters of Canaan, wandered in the bushes and haunted the caves of Seïr. But the likelihood of this is not great, and I do not believe that we should either confuse the name of Inachus with the word Anak, or, if we cannot avoid this connection, find in it a deeper meaning than 'a pure similarity of syllables. This is how, for the word Kabl, (Arabic word) common in the composition of Arabic names, it would be the greatest mistake to look for the father of the person carrying it among individuals of the canine species.588.

The colonies from the south and east therefore consisted exclusively of black Hamites and differently mixed Semites. The degree of civilization of each of them was no less nuanced, and the varieties of blood, created by these invasions in the Greek countries, were infinite. No country presents, in primitive times, more traces of ethnic convulsions, sudden displacements and multiplied immigrations. People came there in troops from all corners of the horizon, and often to just pass through or to see themselves so assailed that they were forced to immediately be confused among the victors and lose their name. While, at any moment, bands saturated in black were rushing either from the islands or from the continent of Asia, other populations mixed with yellow elements, Slavs, Celts, came down from the north under a thousand denominations imbued with ideas all special589. To explain this combination of so many nationalities on a narrow peninsula almost separated from the world, it is necessary never to lose sight of what enormous disturbances the agitations of the Finnish peoples brought to the northern parts of the continent. The warriors arriving from Thessaly and Macedonia in the vicinity of Acarnania had been the direct victims of repeated dispossessions step by step, and, in the same way, the black Hamites and the Semites coming from the east and the south were fleeing faced with similar events, and abandoned, to seek their fortune in Greece, their territories, which had become the domain of Hebrew or Arab, in a word, Chaldean invasions of different dates.

These armies of fugitives rejected, sword in hand, in the Peloponnese, Attica, Argolis, Boeotia, Arcadia, clashed one against the other and engaged in battle. There still resulted from these new conflicts new vanquished and new victors, tribes enslaved, others driven out, so that, after the fight, tumultuous crowds set off again, either to head west and reach Sicily, Italy, Illyria, or to return to the Asian coast and seek better fortune there590. Hellas resembled one of those deep abysses dug in the bed of rivers, where the waters, pressed by the current, rush in heavy masses and emerge in whirlwinds. No rest, no truce. The heroic times have barely opened, the epic stammers its most obscure stories, and, disdainful of men, notices the gods alone, that violent expulsions, the dispossessions of entire tribes, revolutions of all kinds have already begun. Then, when, dismounting, the Muse finally speaks in composure and in terms that reason can discuss, she shows us the Greek nations composed approximately as follows: 1° Of the Hellenes. – Arians modified by yellow principles, but with a great preponderance of the white essence and some Semitic affinities; 2° Aborigines. – Slavo-Celtic populations saturated with yellow elements;

3° Thracians. – Arians mixed with Celts and Slavs; 4° Of the Phoenicians. – Black Chamites;

5° Arabs and Hebrews. – Very mixed Semites; 6° Of the Philistines. – Semites perhaps purer;

7° Libyans. – Chamites almost black;

8° Cretans and other islanders. – Semites quite similar to the Philistines. This table needs to be commented591.It does not contain, strictly speaking, a single pure element. Out of seven, six contain, to different degrees, Melanian principles; two have yellow principles; two still contain the white element taken from the Hamitic branch, and therefore extremely weakened; three have it borrowed from the Semitic branch, two others from the Arian branch; three, finally, bring together the last two sources. I draw the following conclusions: The white principle, in general, dominates, and the Arian essence shares the influence there with the Semitic, given that the invasions of the Arian Hellenes, having been the most numerous, formed the basis of the national population. However, the abundance of Semitic blood is such, on certain points in particular, that we cannot refuse this blood a marked action, and it is to it that belongs an initiative tempered by the Ariane action supported by the contingent YELLOW. It goes without saying that this judgment concerns southern Greece, the Greece of Attica, the Peloponnese, the colonies, artistic and scholarly Greece. In the north, the Melanian elements are almost nil. Also, in the centuries close to the Trojan War, these regions aroused the concerns of the southern Greeks, much less than the Asian countries. This is because, in fact, at these times, and around the time when Herodotus was writing, Greece was itself an Asian country, and the policy which most interested it was developed at the court of the great king. Everything that had to do with the interior, enlarged, ennobled in our eyes by the admirable way in which the memory of it has been preserved for us, was nevertheless only very secondary in comparison with the external facts, the springs of which remained in the hands of the Persians. Since Egypt had fallen to the rank of a province joined to the Achaemenid States, there were no longer two civilizations in the Western world as before. The antagonism of the Euphrates and the Nile had ceased; nothing Assyrian anymore, nothing Egyptian anymore, and, in place, a compromise for which I can find no other name than that of Asian. However, the large place there

still belonged to the Assyrian principle. The Persians, too few in number, had not transformed this principle, had not even renewed it. Their arm had found itself strong enough to give it an impulse that the Chaldean dynasties had not been able to create to the same degree, and, under the reach of this rotting colossus, the feeble Egyptian caducity was reduced to dust and mixed with him. Was there a third civilization in the world to take the place of the ancient champions? Not at all: Greece did not represent, vis-à-vis Assyria, an original culture like the Egyptian, and although its intelligence had very special nuances, most of the elements which composed it were found, with the same meaning and the same value, among the Semitic peoples of the Mediterranean coast. It is a truth which needs no demonstration. In their own opinion, the Greeks paid much more attention to what they undoubtedly called, in their language, the conquests of civilization, that is to say the imports of gods, dogmas, and Asian rites. , and monstrous reveries coming from neighboring coasts, as well as the Ariane simplicity once professed by their religious male ancestors. They inquired with predilection about what had been thought and done in Asia. They mixed themselves as best they could in the affairs, the interests, the quarrels of the great continent, and, although imbued with their own importance, as every small people must be, although even calling the whole universe barbaric, outside from them, their gaze did not detach itself from Asia.

As long as the Assyrians were independent, the Greeks, weak and distant, counted for little in the world; but, as Hellenic development was contemporary with the great fortune of the Iranian Arians, it was at this time that, faced with the masters of earlier Asia, they had to choose between antagonism and submission. The choice was indicated by their weakness. They accepted the victorious, dominating, irresistible influence of the great king, and lived within the sphere of his power, if not as subjects, at least as protégés. Everything, I repeat, made it an obligation to them. Kinship with Asians was close; the civilization almost identical in its bases,

and, finally, without the goodwill of the Persians, the Ionian colonies, always and traditionally supported by the policy of the sovereigns of Assyria, were over. However, on the fortune of the colonies depended that of the metropolises592. There was thus an agreement between the Greek Arians and the Iranian Arians. The common bond was this vast Semitic element over which, each in his own home, they had dominated, and which, sooner or later, by one way or another, was to absorb them equally into its enlarged unity.

It may seem strange that I say that the Greek Arians would have ever dominated the Semitic principle among them, after having demonstrated that the greatest part of their civilization was made of it. To explain this apparent contradiction, I only have to recall a reservation mentioned above. In saying that Greek culture was mainly of Semitic origin, I reserved a certain earlier state which I will now examine, and which contains, with three entirely Aryan elements, the primitive history of epic Hellenism. These elements are: governmental thought, military aptitude, a very particular kind of literary genius. All three emerge from the hymen of these two Arian instincts, reason and the search for the useful. The foundation of the Arians Hellenes' governmental doctrine was personal freedom. Anything that could guarantee this right, to the greatest extent possible, was good and legitimate. What restricted him had to be pushed aside. This is the feeling, this is the opinion of Homer's heroes: this is only found at the origin of Arian societies. At the dawn of the heroic ages, and even long after, the Greek States were governed according to the data, the notions already observed in India, in Persia, and somewhat at the origin of Chinese society, i.e. that is to say provided with a monarchical government, limited by the authority of the heads of families, by the power of traditions and religious prescription. We notice there a great national dispersion, strong traces of this feudal hierarchy so natural to the Arians, a fairly effective preservative against the main disadvantages of fractionation, consequence of the spirit of independence593. Nothing more monitored in

the exercise of his power as Agamemnon, the king of kings; nothing more limited in his power than the able sovereign of Ithaca. Opinion is king in these large villages594, where there are, undoubtedly, no newspapers595, but where the ambitious, more or less eloquent, do not fail to disrupt business. To fully understand what it was like to be a Greek king struggling with governmental difficulties, there is nothing better than to study Ulysses' coup d'état against Penelope's lovers. We see there on what scabrous terrain the authority of the prince operated, even having law and common sense on his side.

In this lively, young, haughty society, the Arian genius richly inspired epic poetry. Hymns addressed to the gods were narratives or nomenclatures rather than effusions. The day of lyricism had not come. The Greek hero fought mounted on the Arian chariot, having at his side a squire of noble blood, often royal, very similar to the Brahmanical suta, and his gods were spirit gods, indefinite, few in number and easily reduced to a unity which, better than anything, felt its origin near the Himalayan Mountains596. At this very ancient moment, the civilizing, initiating power did not reside in the south: it emanated from the north. She came from Thrace with Orpheus, with Museum, with Linus. The Greek warriors appeared tall, white and blond. Their eyes carried their arrogance into the azure, and this memory remained so master of the thoughts of following generations, that when black polytheism had invaded, with the growing affluence of Semitic immigration, all countries as well as all consciences, and had substituted its sanctuaries for the simple places of prayer with which the ancestors were once content, the highest expression of beauty, of majestic power, was for the Olympians nothing other than the reproduction of the Arian type, blue eyes, blond hair, white complexion , tall, open, slender stature.

Another sign of identity no less worthy of note. In Egypt, Assyria, and India, people had the idea that white men were gods or could become so, and the possibility of combat and victory of white warriors against the celestial powers was accepted. The same notions are found within the primitive societies of Greece,

as I said about the Titans, and I repeat here about their immediate descendants, the Deucalionides. These brave men boldly fight supernatural beings and the personified forces of nature. Diomedes wounds Venus; Hercules kills the sacred birds of Lake Stymphalides, he suffocates the giants, children of the earth, and makes the roof of the infernal palaces tremble with terror; Theseus, traveling the world below with sword in hand, is a true Scandinavian. In a word, the Greek Arians, like all their relatives, have such a high opinion of the rights of vigor that nothing appears to them too far above their legitimate pretensions and permissible audacity.

Men so eager for honor, glory and independence were naturally inclined to put themselves above each other and to demand extraordinary consideration. It was not enough for them to limit the action of social power as best they could and to make this power dependent on their votes: they wanted to be counted, esteemed, honored, not only as Arians, free and warriors, but, in the mass warriors, free men, Arians, like elite individuals. This universal pretension obliged everyone to make great efforts, and since, to achieve the proposed ideal, there was no other way than to be as Arian as possible, to summarize as closely as possible the virtues of the race, Great importance was attached to the purity of genealogies. During historical times, this notion became perverted. We then considered ourselves sufficiently noble, when the family could call itself old. In this case, she took pride in accusing Asian descent597. But, at the beginning of the nation, having the right to boast of being a pure Arian was the unique guarantee of incontestable superiority. The idea of racial pre-excellence existed as complete among the primitive Greeks as among all other white families. It is an instinct which is only found fully in this circle, and which is altered there by mixing with the yellow and black races, to which it has always been foreign. Thus Greek society, still very new, was hierarchical according to superiority of birth. Compared to the freedom and jealous freedom of the Arians Hellenes, not a shadow of equality between the other occupants of the land and these daring masters. The sceptre, although given in principle to

the election, found, through the respect with which the great lineages were surrounded, a strong reason to be perpetuated exclusively in a few descendants. In certain respects even, the idea of supremacy of the species, consecrated by that of the family, led the Greek Arians to results comparable to those that we observed in Egypt and in India, that is to say that , they too knew the caste demarcations and the prohibitive laws of mixtures. There is more: they applied these laws until the last days of their political existence. We cite priestly houses which only allied with each other, and civil law was always harsh for the offspring of citizens married to foreigners. However, I hasten to say, these restrictions were weak. They could not have the same scope as the laws of the Nile and Arya-varta. The Ariane-Greek race, despite the awareness of its superiority in essence and faculties over the Semitic populations which penetrated it from all sides, had the disadvantage of being young in experience and knowledge, while the others were old in age. civilization. The latter enjoyed, to its detriment, an external superiority which did not allow one to disdain them and completely refuse the alloy. The caste system always remained in an embryonic state: it could not develop. Hellenism too often had an interest in allowing misalliances, and other times it saw itself forced to endure them. In this double respect, its situation closely resembled that of the Germans later. Whatever the case, the nobility idea proved extremely strong and powerful among the Greek Arians. The classification of citizens was only done according to the value of each descendant; individual virtues came later598. So I repeat: equality was completely prohibited. Everyone, feeling proud of their extraction, did not want to be confused in the crowd. And just as everyone claimed to be free, honored, admired, everyone also aimed to command as much as possible. It seems that such a tendency must have been difficult to achieve in such a society, that the king himself, the shepherd of the people, before expressing an opinion, had to inquire whether this opinion suited the gods, the priests , to people of high birth, to warriors, to the bulk of the people. Fortunately, there were still

resources: there was the slave, the former enslaved native, then finally the foreigners. Let us first see what the slave was.

Firstly, the creature reduced to this condition did not belong, in any case, to the city. Every man born on consecrated soil and of free parents had an inalienable right to live free himself. His servitude was illegitimate, had the character of a crime, did not last, did not exist. If we reflect that the primitive Greek city contained a nation, a particular tribe, and that this nation, this tribe, considering itself unique in its species, saw the world only in itself, we discover in this prescription fundamental is the proclamation of the following principle: “The white man is made only for independence and domination; he must not be subject, in the perpetration of his acts, to the direction of “others.” » This law, obviously, is not a local invention. We find it elsewhere, we see it again in all the social constitutions of the family which we can observe closely enough to realize the details. I draw the conclusion that, according to this opinion, it was not permitted to reduce a white man to servitude, that is to say aman, and that oppression, when limited to individuals of the black and yellow species, was not intended to constitute a violation of this dogma of natural law.

After the separation of the different white descendants, each nation having imagined itself, in its isolation in the midst of inferior or mixed multitudes, to be the sole representative of the species, had no scruples about using the prerogatives of force in their full extent, even on the relatives that we met and who were no longer recognized as such, from the moment that they belonged to other branches. Thus, although, in the rule, there should only be yellow slaves; and blacks, there were nevertheless some of mixed race and then whites, by a corruption of the unfortunate ancient prescription whose meaning had been involuntarily altered, by restricting its benefit to members of the city only.

An unanswerable proof that this interpretation is the right one is that by virtue of an extension very anciently applied, we also did not want as slaves the inhabitants of the colonies, nor the allies, nor the peoples with whom we had hospitality relationships; and, later still, following another rule which, from the point of view of the original law, and in an ethnic sense was only an arbitrary assimilation, this franchise was extended to all the Greek nations.

I see here proof that, in Central Asia, white peoples, at the time of their reunion, forbade themselves to possess their fellows, that is to say white men; and the Greek Arians, incorrect observers of this primordial law, did not consent either to enslave their congeners, that is to say their fellow citizens. On the other hand, the situation of the first possessors of Hellas, such as the Helotes and the Penestes, resembled serfdom599. The essential difference was that the subject populations did not inhabit the residences600of the warrior as well as the slaves: they lived under their private roofs, cultivating the soil and paying royalties, comparable, in this, to the serfs of the Middle Ages. To complete the resemblance, above these peasants was placed a species of bourgeoisie also excluded from the exercise of political rights, but better treated and richer than the peasant class. Those men,PerrhebesAndMagnetsin Thessaly601, and in LaconiaPeriœkes, certainly descended from different categories of vanquished people. Either they had formed the upper classes of the dissolved society, or else they had submitted voluntarily and by capitulation.

Domiciled foreigners had similar rights; but in short, slaves, penestes, periœkes, foreigners, bore the weight of Hellenic supremacy. Such were the institutions by which the Greek Arians, so in love with their personal liberty and so jealous of preserving it with respect to each other, found satisfaction, within the State and outside times of war. and conquest, their need for domination. The warrior shut up in his house was king there. His companion Ariane,

respected by everyone and by himself, also spoke frankly in front of the pastor of the people. Like Clytemnestra, the Greek wife was quite haughty. Offended in her feelings, she knew how to punish like the daughter of Tyndareus. This heroine of primitive times602is none other than the proud woman with blond hair, blue eyes, white arms, whom we have already seen alongside the Pandavas, and who we will find among the Celts and in the Germanic forests. For her, passive obedience was not for her.

This noble and generous creature, seated opposite her warlike husband, near the domestic hearth, appeared surrounded by children submitted until death inclusively to the paternal wishes. Sons and daughters marked, in the house, the first degree of obedience: representations on their part were not appropriate. But, once he left the home of his ancestors, the son would found another domestic sovereignty, and in turn practiced what he had learned. After the children came the slaves: their subordinate situation was not too difficult. Whether they had been purchased for a certain weight of silver or gold, or acquired by exchange for bulls and heifers, or whether the fate of war had thrown them into the hands of their conquerors as wrecks of 'a city taken by storm, the slaves were rather subjects than beings abandoned to all the whims of the owners. Moreover, one of the salient characteristics of young societies is the poor understanding of what is productive603, and this happy ignorance made the existence of Greek slaves quite pleasant. Whether, confused with the serfs, they tended the herds on the banks of the Peneus and the Achelous, or whether, inside the manor, they had to attend to sedentary work, what was required of them was minimal, because the masters themselves had few needs. Meals were promptly prepared. The head of the household was most often responsible for killing the oxen or sheep, and throwing their quarters into the brass cauldrons. He took pleasure in it. It was a courtesy to his guests not to leave the care of their wellbeing to servile hands. Was there work to be done in the field as a mason or carpenter, the master still did not disdain to handle the digger and the axe. Even if he had to look after the herds, he was not reluctant to do so. Caring for the trees

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

orchard, prune them, prune them, he took care of it willingly. In short, the work of the slaves was not accomplished without the participation of the warrior, while the women, gathered around the wife, weaved with her on the same cloth, or prepared the wool from the same fleeces.

Nothing therefore necessarily contributed to worsening the condition of the slave, since all work was honorable enough for the head of the house to take a constant part in it. Then there was identity of ideas and language at home. The warrior knew little more than his servants about the things of the world and life. If a poet, a traveler, a wise man arrived, who, after the meal, had a few stories to tell, the slaves, gathered around the hearth, had their share of the teaching. Their experience was like that of the noblest champion. The advice of their old age was as well received as if it had issued from a free and illustrious mouth.

So what did the master have left? He still had all the prerogatives of honor, and still positive advantages. He was the only man in the house, the pontiff of the household. He alone had the right to offer sacrifices. He defended the community, and, covered with his weapons, superbly dressed, took his share of the common freedom and the respect given to all the citizens of the city. But, once again, unless his character was exceptionally cruel, unless he exercised on those around him the action of a madman, neither greed nor custom led him to oppress his slave, who did not suffer no other real misfortune than that of being dominated. Had the gods given this servant any talent, beauty or wit, he became the advisor, stood up to everyone, and played the role of the Phrygian hunchback to Xanthus. Thus the Arian Greek, sovereign at home, free man in the public square, true feudal lord, unreservedly dominated his entourage, children, serfs and bourgeois. As long as the influence of the North reigned, things remained in this situation almost everywhere; but when the Asian immigrations, the revolutions of all kinds arriving in the interior had disturbed the

original relations, and the Semitic instinct began to make itself more strongly felt, the scene changed completely.

To begin with, religion became complicated. Simple Arian notions had long been abandoned. No doubt they were already altered at the time when the Titans began to penetrate Greece. But the beliefs which had succeeded them, still quite spiritualist, lost their footing more and more. Kronos, usurper, according to the theological formula, of the scepter of Ouranos, was in turn dethroned by Jupiter. Sanctuaries opened to infinity, pontificates previously unknown found believers, and the most extravagant rites seized general favor. In schools, this fever of idolatry is called dawnof civilization. I do not contradict this: it is certain that the Asian genius was as mature and even rotten as the Arian-Greek genius was inexperienced and ignorant of its future paths. The latter, still dizzy from the long journey that his male authors had just made through so many countries and chances, had not yet found the leisure to refine himself. However, I have no doubt that, if he had had enough time to recognize himself before falling under Assyrian influence, he would have acted better, and in such a way as to anticipate European civilization. He could have brought a greater part of his originality into the destinies of the Hellenic peoples. Perhaps he will have given less height to their artistic triumphs; but their political life, more dignified, less agitated, more noble, more respectable, would have been much longer. Unfortunately, the ArianGreek masses were not comparable in number to the immigrations from Asia604. I do not date the revolution wrought in the instincts of the Greek nations from the day when the mixtures took place with the Semitic colonizations, or the establishments of the Dorians in the Peloponnese, and, more anciently, those of the Ionians in Attica. I am content to start from the moment when the results of all these facts modified the weighting of the races. Then the old monarchical government ended. This form of royalty balanced with great individual freedom, by the agreement of the public authorities, no longer suited the passionate temperament,

thoughtless, incapable of moderation, of the mixed race then produced. Now something new was needed. The Asian spirit was able to impose on what remained of the Arian spirit a compromise in accordance with its needs, and it was able, so strong was it, to leave its associate only appearances to satisfy this so indelible taste for freedom. in white nature, that when the thing does not exist, it is then above all that we seek to highlight the word.

Instead of weighting, we wanted excess. The genius of Shem pushed for complete absolutism. The movement was irresistible. It was only a question of knowing in whose hands the power would reside. To entrust it, as we wanted to do it, to a king, to a citizen elevated above all others, was to ask the impossible of heterogeneous groups who did not have enough unity to come together. on such narrow terrain. The idea was repugnant to Arians' liberal traditions. The Semitic mind, for its part, had no strong reasons to hold to this: it was accustomed to the republican forms in force on the coast of Chanaan. Incapable, moreover, of complying with the regularity of dynastic heredity605, he did not want an institution which, in his country, had never drawn its origins from the free choice of the people, but always from conquest and violence, and, often, from foreign violence. I only make an exception for the Jewish kingdom. We therefore imagined, in Greece, creating a fictitious person, theCountry606, and the citizen was ordered, by everything most sacred and most formidable that man can imagine, by the law, the prejudice, the prestige of public opinion, to sacrifice his tastes, his ideas to this abstraction, his habits, even his most intimate relationships, even his most natural affections, and this self-sacrifice of every day, of every moment, was only the small coin of this other obligation which consisted of giving, on a sign, without allowing himself a murmur, his dignity, his fortune and his life, as soon as this same homeland was supposed to ask you for them. The individual, the country removed him from domestic education to deliver him naked, in a gymnasium, to the filthy lusts of masters chosen by it. When she became a man, she married him whenever she wanted. When she also wanted, she took his wife back from him to pass her on to another, or gave him children who were not his, or even his children

clean, she sent them to continue a family on the verge of extinction. If he owned a piece of furniture whose shape did not please the country, the country confiscated the scandalous object and severely punished the owner. Your lyre had one string, two more than the homeland found good, exile. Finally, the rumor spread that the sad citizen thus reprimanded obeyed too well the incessant, constantly renewed whims of his nervous and cantankerous despot; in a word, one could, not even prove, but think that he was immoderately honest man, the country, losing patience, put the bag on his back, had him seized and taken, a criminal of a new kind, to the nearest border, telling him: Go and don't come back! If, against so many and such terrible demands, the victim, however a little moved, tried to balk, even if only in words, there was death, often with torture, dishonor, the certain ruin of the family. whole of the culprit, who, rejected by all the people virtuous enough to be indignant at the crime, but not enough to incur the punishment of Aristide, must have considered herself very fortunate to escape the indignation, the stones and the knives of all crossroads patriots. As a reward for such great self-sacrifice, we ask whether the homeland granted sufficiently magnificent compensation? No doubt: it fully authorized everyone to say of themselves, deliriously proud: I am Athenian, I am Lacedaemonian, Theban, Argive, Corinthian, sumptuous titles, appreciated, above all others, throughout 'a radius of ten square leagues, and which, beyond and in the Greek country itself, could, under certain circumstances, be worth the whip or the rope to anyone who strutted about it. In any case, it was a guarantee of hatred and contempt. To add to his advantages, the citizen highly flattered himself that he was free, because he was not subject to a man, and because, if he groveled with unequaled servility, it was at the feet of the fatherland. . Third and final prerogative: if he obeyed laws which did not emanate from abroad, this happiness, entirely independent of the intrinsic merit of the legislation, was called possessing isonomy, and was considered incomparable. Here are all the compensations, and I have not yet exhausted the list of charges607.

The word homeland ultimately covered a pure theory. The homeland was not flesh and blood. She didn't speak, she didn't walk, she didn't command verbally, and when she was rude, you couldn't apologize speaking to her. The experience of all the centuries has demonstrated that there is no worse tyranny than that which is exercised for the benefit of fictions, beings by their nature insensitive, merciless, and of boundless impudence in their pretensions. For what ? This is because fictions, incapable of looking after their interests themselves, delegate their powers to agents. These, not being supposed to act out of selfishness, acquire the right to commit the greatest enormities. They are always innocent when they strike in the name of the idol of which they claim to be priests. Representatives were needed for the homeland. Arian sentiment, which had been unable to resist the importation of this Chananean monstrosity, was quite seduced by the proposal to entrust the supreme delegation to the noblest families of the State, a point of view consistent with its natural ideas. In truth, in the times when he had been left to his own devices, he had never admitted that the venerable distinctions of birth constituted an exclusive right to the government of citizens. From then on it was perverted enough to admit and submit to absolute doctrines, and whether one or two supreme magistrates were preserved in the new constitutions, sometimes called kings, sometimes archons, or whether the executive power resided in a council of nobles. , the omnipotence acquired in the homeland was exercised only by the heads of the great families; in a word, the government of the Greek cities was completely modeled on that of the Phoenician cities.

Before going any further, it is essential to insert here an observation of great importance. All of the above applies to learned, civilized, halfand even more than half-Semitic Greece. For northern Greece, dominant in the early ages, and, at this moment, falling back into the shadows, the facts that I expose do not concern it in any way. This part of the territory, which remained much more Ariane than the other, had seen its domains circumscribed.

The southern border, invaded by Semitic populations, had tightened. The further north one went, the more purity the ancient Greek blood had retained. But, in short, Thessaly itself was already defiled, and one had to reach Macedonia and Epirus to find oneself among ancient traditions. To the northeast and northwest, these provinces had also lost a friendly neighborhood. The Thracians and Illyrians, invaded and transformed by the Celts and Slavs, no longer counted themselves as Arians. However, the contact of their white elements, mixed with yellow, did not have for the northern Greeks the consequences both feverish and debilitating which characterized the Asian interferences of the south.

Thus limited, the Macedonians and the Epirotes maintained themselves more faithful to the instincts of the primitive race. Royal power was preserved among them: the republican form remained unknown to them as well as the exaggeration of power granted to the abstract dominator called the fatherland. The great Attic improvement was not practiced in these little-vaunted regions. On the other hand, we governed ourselves nobly with notions of freedom which had in real utility the equivalent of what they had less in arrogance. We didn't talk about ourselves so much; but we did not live an existence of catastrophes either. In short, even at the time when the southern Greeks, having little awareness of the impurity of their blood, wondered among themselves whether the Macedonians and their allies were really worth considering as compatriots and not as half- barbarians, they never dared to challenge these peoples' great and brilliant courage and sustained skill in the art of war. These little esteemed nations had yet another merit which was not noticed at the time, and which, later, was to become remarkable in itself: that is, while Semitic Greece could not, at the cost of torrents of blood, to weld together their scattered antipathetic nationalities, the Macedonians possessed a cohesion and a force of attraction which were exercised successfully, and, step by step, tended to enlarge the sphere of their power by incorporating neighboring peoples. On this point, they followed exactly, and for the same ethnic reasons, the destiny of their parents, the Iranian Arians, whom we saw similarly bring together and concentrate the

similar populations before marching to conquer the Assyrian States. Thus, the Arian torch, I mean the political torch, really burned, although without flashes and flashes, in the Macedonian mountains. By searching throughout Greece, we only see it existing there. I'm coming back to the south. The absolute power of the homeland was therefore delegated to aristocratic bodies,to the best of men, following the Greek expression608, and they exercised it naturally, as this absolute and unanswerable power could be exercised, with a harshness worthy of the coast of Asia. If the populations had still been Arian, great convulsions would have resulted, and, after a more or less prolonged period of trial, the race would have unanimously rejected a regime ill-suited for it. But the more than halfSemitic peat could not have these delicacies. It was never to attack the essence of the system, and never, in fact, was there in Greece, until the last days, the slightest insurrection neither of the great nor of the people against the arbitrary regime. The entire discussion remained limited to this secondary consideration of knowing to whom the omnipotent delegation should belong.

The nobles, arguing for the right of first occupant, based their claims on traditional possession, and they experienced how difficult this doctrine was to maintain in the face of a permanent danger, inherent in the very sources of the system, and which was born from absolutism. . Every violent thing has in itself a force of a special nature: this force, through its deviations or even its simple use, produces dangers which can only be averted at the cost of permanent tension. However, the only way to achieve this immobility is through energetic concentration. This is why the delegation of the unlimited powers of the fatherland constantly tended to be summed up in the hands of a single man. Thus, to combat a cloud of inconveniences, we placed ourselves perpetually under the influence of another embarrassment considered very formidable, very hated, cursed by all generations, and which we called tyranny.

The origin and foundation of tyranny were as easy to discover and predict as they were impossible to prevent. When, as a result of the state of

perpetual competition between cities, the homeland was in decline, it was no longer a council of nobles which found itself capable of facing a crisis: it was a single citizen who, willingly or unwillingly, absorbed government action. From that moment, everyone could wonder if, once the danger had passed, the savior would agree to let go of the delegation, and, instead of making everyone shudder, would return himself shuddering at the too great service he had rendered. to the homeland.

Another case: a citizen was rich, powerful, respected; his high position necessarily overshadowed the nobles. Impossible not to let him guess something of this distrust. Unless he was blind, he realized that one day or another a trap would be set for him, that he would fall into it, and that he would be the victim of a proscription proportionate in harshness to the brilliance of his merits, the importance of his fortune, the extent of his credit. The more means he had to overthrow legitimate authority and take its place, the more reason he had not to fail to do so. In the absence of ambition, he was going for his own good and his head609. It followed that the so-called republican state of the Greek cities was almost constantly eclipsed by the inevitable accident of tyrannies, and what should have been the exception became the rule.

As soon as a tyrant reigned, people complained of what was not noticed under legal government: they complained of excessive, arbitrary, degrading authority; and, with all reason, it was declared different from the regular organization of the Macedonians and Persians, where royalty, fixed and defined by laws, conformed to the morals and interests of the races governed. By being so severe about usurpation, we should have reflected that the power of tyrants was not an extension of the old power: it was nothing more than the rights with which the homeland remained invested at all times. The tyrant, however atrocious he may have been, would not have known how to practice anything which, one day or another, had not already been put into use by the normal administration. His prescriptions could seem absurd or vexatious; However, the homeland had the first taste of the invention. The tyrant did not venture down a single path that the republican councils had not already blazed.

We fell back on this, that the excesses of the usurper only benefited him, and that on the contrary, the sacrifices requested by the sovereigns with multiple heads amounted to the general good. The objection is quite empty. Legal governments, although composed of an aggregation of men, were nonetheless an unrestrained assembly of human ambitions, vanities, passions and prejudices. The oppression practiced by them was as beautiful and good as that of a single leader; she had the same moral vice, she degraded her victims just as much. I don't care if it's Pisistratus or the Alcmaeonides who, following their whim, can rob me, rape me, dishonor me, kill me; as soon as I know that such a terrible prerogative exists above my head, I tremble, I lower myself; my hands join in supplication; I no longer have the consciousness of being a man, subject to reason and fairness. Near Pisistratus, an unexpected fantasy can ruin me; among the Alcmaeonides, it is a chance of majority. With or without tyranny, the government of the Greek cities was execrable, shameful, because, into whatever hands it fell, it did not suppose the existence of a right inherent in the person of the governed, because it was above all natural law, because it came directly from Assyrian theory, because its primary roots, certain, although unnoticed, plunged into the degrading conception that the black races have of authority . It happened, but very often, that these tyrants, so execrated, so abhorred by the Greek peoples, nevertheless governed them with much more gentleness and wisdom than their political assemblies. Guided by a fair sense, the sole possessor of an absolute right is easily satisfied with a certain share in this omnipotence, and finds both little pleasure and no point of interest in stretching his prerogatives to the point of breaking them. . This happy reserve is never likely to be found in established bodies, always inclined, on the contrary, to enlarge their attributions, and in Greece everything invited the magistracies to this, nothing kept them away from it.

Nevertheless, despite the services that tyrants could render and the gentleness of their yoke, the point of honor demanded that they be cursed: it was therefore necessary that it be. Their reigns were a series of conspiracies and tortures. Rarely did they survive until their death, even more rarely did their children inherit their scepter.610.

This terrible experience did not prevent the very nature of things from constantly giving rise to successors to the dispossessed tyrants. This is how what I said earlier was verified: government was the rule, tyranny the exception, and the exception appeared much more frequently than the rule.

While the Greek countries were having so much difficulty maintaining or regaining their legal status, the Semitic current was still increasing there. It continued, accelerated and thus brought about, in the constitution of the State, modifications similar to those we observed in the Phoenician cities. Little by little, all the southern Hellenic countries were won over by its predominance. However, the points reached first were the establishments of the Ionian coast and Attica.611. No doubt, the great immigrations and compact colonizations had ceased a long time ago; but what had acquired in their place an enormous extension was the individual establishment of people of all classes and all states. The jealous exclusivism of the city, born from the confused instinct of ethnic pre-eminences, had tried in vain to reject any newcomer outside of political rights: nothing had been able to stop the invasion of foreign blood. It infiltrated the citizens' veins through a thousand different routes. The noblest families, already quite mixed, when they were not purely Chananean, like the Gephyres, were losing more and more of their genealogical merit. The greatest number, moreover, died out; the rest became impoverished and fell into the devouring flood of the mixed population. This would multiply everywhere, thanks to the movement created by commerce, pleasure, peace, war.

The aristocracy became infinitely weaker. The middle classes gained influence. One day people asked themselves why the nobles alone represented the homeland, and why the rich could not do the same.612.

The nobles, it is true, no longer possessed much nobility, since many of their fellow citizens had as much as they did.613. The blood

Semitic predominated in the cottages: it had also spread to the palaces. Violent convulsions ensued, and the rich soon prevailed.614. But barely were they masters of maneuvering in their turn the despotism of the homeland, barely had they undertaken, in place of their dispossessed rivals, the eternal and unfortunate defense of legal order against swarming tyranny, than the majority of citizens once again asked the question previously submitted to the leaders of the country615, also found himself worthy of governing and undermined the position of the Timocrats. And when once the simple people had set foot on this slope, the State could not hold back. It became clear that afterward the poor citizens were going to come and demand the half-citizens, the domiciled foreigners, the slaves, the peat. Let us stop here for a moment, and consider another side of the subject.

The only and often decisive excuse that an arbitrary and violent regime can present for its prolonged existence is the need to be strong in order to act against foreigners or to dominate within. Did the Greek system give at least this result? He had three difficulties to resolve: firstly that which emerged from his situation vis-à-vis the rest of the civilized world, that is to say Asia; then the relations of the Greek States with each other; finally the internal politics of each sovereign city.

We already know that the attitude of all Greece towards the great king was one of submission and humility. From Thebes, from Sparta, from Athens, from everywhere, embassies were only going to Susa or coming back, requesting or debating the judgments of the sovereign of the Persians on the disputes between the Greek cities. We didn't even run to the master. The protection of a coastal satrap was enough to ensure the politics of a locality had great preponderance over its rivals. Tissaphernes ordered, and, worried about the consequences of disobedience, the silent republics obeyed Tissaphernes. Thus this extreme force concentrated in the State did not counter the tendency of the element

Greek Semitic to undergo the influence of the Asian mass. If the annexation was delayed, it was because the remnants of the Arian blood still maintained sufficient grounds for national separation. But this condom was running out in the south. We could predict the day when Hellas and Persia would reunite.

With their violent isonomic prejudices, the Greek cities, clinging to their small patriotic despotisms, marched against Arian tendencies: there was no question for them of simplifying political relations by agglomerating several States into one. What was done in Macedonia found a perfect contrast in the work of the rest of Greece. No city dreamed of dominating a large territory. They all wanted to expand themselves materially, and had nothing to offer their neighbors other than annihilation. Thus, when the Lacedaemonian expeditions616were successful, the end was for the vanquished to swell the herds of slaves of the triumphants. We can imagine that everyone defended themselves to the last extremity. No merger possible. These elegant Greeks of the time of Pericles understood war like savages. The massacre crowned all victories. It was accepted fact that the vaunted devotion to the homeland could only lead each city to drag itself in a narrow circle of fruitless successes and disastrous defeats.617.

At the end of the first, the ruin of the enemy; at the end of seconds, that of the citizens. Not the slightest hope of ever getting along, and the certainty of not starting anything great.

And what did internal politics lead to? We have seen it: over ten years, six of tyranny, the rest of debates, quarrels, proscriptions and carnage between the aristocracy and the rich, between the rich and the people. When, in a city, one party triumphed, another wandered among neighboring cities, recruiting enemies for its overly fortunate adversaries. Always a Greek citizen returned from exile or packed up to go there. So that this government of demands, this perpetual establishment of the public force, this moral monstrosity presented by the existence of a political system whose glory was to respect nothing of the rights of the individual, resulted in what ? To let

Persian influence grows without obstacle, perpetuating the splitting of nationalities which, resulting from unequal combinations of ethnic elements, already prevented the Greek peoples from walking in step and progressing to the same extent. Thanks to a terrible contraction of the spirit of each locality, the reunion of the race was rendered impossible.

Finally, the annulled or paralyzed external power was also joined by the incapacity to organize internal tranquility. It was a sad assessment, and to make it the object of admiration for centuries, it required the admirable eloquence of national historians. For fear of appearing as monsters, these skillful artists were not free to discuss, much less to blame, the revolting despotism of the homeland. I do not even believe that the magnificence of their periods would have been sufficient in itself to mislead the common sense of modern times into a childish ecstasy, if the tortuous minds of pedants and the bad faith of theoretic dreamers had not combined to obtain this result and recommend Athenian anarchy in imitation of our societies.

The interest that renowned entrepreneurs took in this matter was very natural. Some found it beautiful because it was explained in Greek; the others, because it went against all the new ideas about the just and the unjust. All the ideas are not saying too much: because, to the table that I have just drawn, I still have to add what terrible effects patriotic absolutism produced on morals. By substituting the artificial pride of the citizen for the legitimate feeling of dignity of the thinking creature, the Greek system completely perverted moral truth, and, as, according to it, everything that was done with a view to the homeland was good, also nothing It was good who had not obtained the approval, the sanction of this master. All questions of conscience remained unresolved in the mind as long as one did not know what the country ordered one to think about them. We were not free to follow a more serious, more rigorous, less variable datum on this subject, which, in the absence of a purified religious law, Arian man would have once found in his reason.

So, for example, was respect for property, yes or no, a strict obligation? In general, yes; but, no, if one stole well, if, to disguise the theft, one knew how to properly and firmly add lies, ruse, deceit or violence. In this case, theft became a brilliant action, recommended, prized, and the thief did not pass for an ordinary man. Was it right to maintain marital fidelity? To tell the truth, it wasn't a crime. But if a husband became so attached to his wife that he took pleasure in living a little more under her roof than in the public square, the magistrate was concerned and an exemplary punishment threatened the guilty party. I will pass over the results of public education, I will say nothing about the competitions of young naked girls in the stadium, I will not insist on this official exaltation of physical beauty whose recognized aim was to establish for the State stud farms with cleanly cut, full-bodied and vigorous citizens; but I say that the end of all this bestiality was to create a collection of wretches without faith, without probity, without modesty, without humanity, capable of all infamy, and shaped in advance, slaves that they were, to the acceptance of all turpitudes. On this I refer to the dialogues of Aristophanes' Demos with his servants618. The Greek people, because they were Arian, had too much common sense, and, because they were Semites, had too much intelligence, not to feel that their situation was worthless and that there had to be better in terms of political organization. But because the content cannot embrace the container, the Greek people did not put themselves outside of themselves and did not rise to the point of understanding that the source of evil was in the stupefying absolutism of the governmental principle. He looked in vain for the remedy in secondary means. In the heyday, between the battle of Marathon and the Peloponnesian War, all eminent men inclined towards the vague opinion that we would today callconservative. They were not aristocrats, in the true sense of the word619. Neither Aeschylus nor Aristophanes wanted the reestablishment of the perpetual or ten-year archonship; but they believed that in the hands of the rich the government had some chance of functioning more efficiently.

regularity than when he was abandoned to the sailors of the Piraeus and the ragged idlers of the Pnyx.

They certainly weren't wrong. More enlightenment was to be found in the noble house of Xenophon than in the intriguing swindler of the comedy ofKnights. But, fundamentally, even if the government of the bourgeoisie and the rich had been consolidated, the radical vice of the system nonetheless remained. I want to believe that business would have been conducted with less passion, finances managed with more economy; the nation would not have become a single point better, its foreign policy more equitable and stronger, and its entire destiny different. No one noticed the real evil and could not perceive it, since this evil was due to the intimate constitution of the Hellenic races. All the inventors of new systems, starting with Plato, passed by without suspecting it; what did I say ? on the contrary, they took it as the main element of their reform plans. Socrates provides perhaps the only exception. By seeking to make the idea of vice and virtue independent of political interest, and to elevate the inner man alongside and apart from the citizen, this rhetorician had at least glimpsed the difficulty. So I understand that the country has not given him mercy, and I am in no way surprised to see that in all the parties, and especially among the conservatives, there were votes, among which the vote of 'Aristophanes, to demand his punishment and carry his condemnation. Socrates was the antagonist of absolute patriotism. As such, he deserved this system to hit him. However, there was something so pure and noble in his doctrine that honest people were concerned about it in spite of themselves. Once in the tomb, the wise man was regretted, and the people assembled at the theater of Bacchus burst into tears when the chorus of the tragedy of Palamedes, inspired by Euripides, sang these sad words: “Greeks, you have put to death the most learned nightingale of the Muses, who had done no harm to anyone, the most learned personage of Greece. » We mourned him thus disappearing. If heaven had suddenly resurrected him, no one would have listened to him any more. It was indeed the nightingale of the Muses that we missed, the eloquent man, skillful debater, ingenious logician. Artistic dilettantism cried, the heart

was grieved; as for the political sense, it was unconvertible, because it is an intimate, integral part of the very nature of races and reflects their faults as well as their qualities.

I have shown myself to be little admirer of the Hellenes from the point of view of social institutions to have, now, the right to speak with boundless admiration of this nation, when it comes to considering it on a field where it shows itself the most witty, the most intelligent, the most eminent that has ever appeared. I bow with sympathy to the arts that she served so well, that she raised so high, while reserving my respect for more essential things. If the Greeks owed their vices to the Semitic portion of their blood, they also owed it their prodigious impressionability, their pronounced taste for the manifestations of physical nature, their permanent need for intellectual pleasures. The deeper we go towards the half-white origins of Assyrian antiquity, the more we find beauty and nobility, at the same time as vigor, in the productions of the arts. Likewise, in Egypt, the art is all the more admirable and powerful, as the mixture of Arian blood, being less ancient and less advanced, has left more energy to this moderating element. Thus, in Greece, the genius deployed all its force at the time when Semitic infusions dominated, without completely prevailing, that is to say under Pericles, and on the points of the territory where these elements flocked more, it is i.e. in the Ionian colonies and Athens620. There is no doubt today that, just as the essential bases of the political and moral system came from Assyria, so also the artistic principles were faithfully borrowed from the same country; and, in this respect, the excavations and discoveries of Khorsabad, by establishing an obvious connection between the Ninevite style bas-reliefs and the productions of the temple of Aegina and the school of Myron, now leave no obscurity remaining on that question621. But because the Greeks were much more steeped in the white and Arian principle than the black Hamites, the regulating force existing in their spirit was also more considerable, and, apart from the experience of their predecessors

Assyrians, the sight and study of their masterpieces, the Greeks had an excess of reason and a very compelling feeling for nature. They strongly and happily resisted the excesses into which their masters had fallen. They had merit in defending themselves because there was a temptation to succumb to it; because among the Hellenes we also knew hieratic dolls with movable limbs, the monstrosities of certain consecrated images. Fortunately the exquisite taste of the masses protested against these depravities. Greek art generally refused to admit either hideous or revolting symbols or childish monuments.

It has been criticized for this fact of having been less spiritualist than the sanctuaries of Asia. This blame is unfair, or at least based on a confusion of ideas. If we call all mystical theories spiritualism, we are right; but if, with more truth, we consider that these theories only take their source in surges of imagination freed from reason and logic, and only obeying the spurs of sensation, we will agree that the mysticism is not spiritualism, and as such it is unwise to accuse the Greeks of having followed sensualist paths by deviating from them. They were, on the contrary, much more exempt than the Asians from the main miseries of materialism, and, cult for cult, that of the Jupiter of Olympia is less degrading than that of Baal. I have, moreover, already touched on this subject. However, the Greeks were not very spiritualistic either. The Semitic idea reigned among them, although reduced, and was expressed by the power of the sacred mysteries, exercised in the temples. The populations accepted these rites, sometimes limiting themselves to mitigating them, depending on the feeling of horror that physical ugliness inspired. As for moral ugliness, we know that we were more accommodating.

This rare perfection of artistic feeling rested only on a delicate weighting of the Arian and Semitic element with a certain portion of yellow principles. This balance, constantly compromised by the influx of Asians into the territory of the Ionian colonies and continental Greece, was to disappear one day to give way to a very pronounced movement of decline.

We can roughly calculate that the artistic and literary activity of the Semitized Greeks began around the 7thecentury, when Archilochus flourished, 718 years BC, and the two bronze casters Theodore and Rhoecus, 691 years BC. The decadence began after the Macedonian era, when the Asian element decidedly won, in other words towards the end of IVecentury, which gives a span of four hundred years. These four hundred years are marked by uninterrupted growth of the Asian element. Theodore's style appears to have been, in the Juno of Samos, a simple reproduction of the statues dedicated to Tire and Sidon. Nothing indicates that the famous chest of Cypselus was of a different work; at least, the restitutions proposed by modern criticism do not seem to me to recall anything excellent. To find the artistic revolution which created Greek originality, we must go back to the time of Phidias, who was the first to emerge from the data, namely the great Assyrian taste, found among the Eginetes, and practiced throughout the Greece, or degenerations of this art in use on the Phoenician coast. Now, Phidias completed the Minerva of the Parthenon in the year 438 BC. His school began with him, and the ancient system was perpetuated alongside him. Thus Greek art was simply Semitic art until the friend of Pericles, and only really formed a special branch with this artist. Consequently, since the beginning of the VIIecentury until the 5the, there was no originality, and the national genius strictly speaking only existed from approximately the year 420 until the year 322, the time of Aristotle's death. It goes without saying that these dates are vague, and I only use them to enclose the entire intellectual movement, that of letters, like that of the arts, in a single reasoning. So I showed myself to be more generous than was reasonable. However, whatever I do, there is only a space of a hundred years from the year 420, when Phidias worked, to the year 322, when Alexander's tutor died. The golden age therefore lasted only a flash, and took place in a short moment when the balance was perfect between the constituent principles of the national blood. Once the hour had passed, there was no more creative potentiality, but only an often happy, always servile imitation of a past which did not resurrect.

I seem to absolutely neglect the best part of Hellenic glory, leaving out of these calculations the era of the epics. It predates Archilochus, since Homer lived in the 10th century.ecentury. I forget nothing. However, I do not invalidate my reasoning either, and I repeat that the great period of literary and artistic glory of Greece was that when people knew how to build, sculpt, cast, paint, compose lyrical songs, books of philosophy and credulous annals. But I recognize at the same time that before this time, a long time before, there was a moment when, without worrying about all these beautiful things, the Arian genius, almost free from the Semitic embrace, limited itself to the production of the epic, and showed himself to be admirable, inimitable on this grandiose point, as much as he was ignorant, inept and uninspired on all the others622. The history of the Greek spirit therefore includes two very distinct phases, that of the epic songs coming from the same source as the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Sagas, the Schahnameh, the songs of gesture: this is the Ariane inspiration. Then came, later, the Semitic inspiration, where the epic only appeared as archaism, where Asian lyricism and the arts of drawing absolutely triumphed.

Homer, whether it was a man, or whether this name sums up the fame of several singers623, composed his stories at a time when the coast of Asia was covered by the very close descendants of the Arian tribes from Greece. His alleged birth falls, according to all opinions, between the year 1102 and the year 947. The Aeolians had arrived in the Troad in 1162, the Ionians in 1130. I will make the same calculation for Hesiod, born in 944 in Boeotia, country which, of all the southern parts of Greece, later preserved the utilitarian spirit, testimony to the Arian influence. During the period when this influence reigned, the abundance of his productions was extreme, and the number of lost works is extraordinary. For'Iliadand theOdysseythat we know, we no longer have the Aethiopics of Arctinus, theLittle Iliadof Leschès, the Cypriot verses, thereCapture of Oechalia, THEReturn of the victors from Troy, there Thébaïde, the Epigones, THEArimaspies624, and a host of others. Such was

the literature of the most ancient past of the Greeks: it remained didactic and narrative, positive and reasonable, as long as it was Ariane. The powerful infusion of Melanian blood later led her towards lyricism, rendering her incapable of continuing in her first and most admirable ways.

It would be useless to dwell further on this subject. It is saying enough to recognize the superiority of the Hellenic inspiration of both periods over everything that has been done since. Homeric glory, no more than Athenian, has never been equaled. She achieved beauty rather than the sublime. Certainly, it will forever remain without rival, because racial combinations like those which caused it can no longer arise.

Book Four

Chapter IV

The Semitic Greeks.

I have gone far ahead of time and embraced, so to speak, the history of Hellenic Greece in its entirety, after having shown the causes of its eternal political debility. Now I go back, and,

returning to the domain of questions of state, I will continue to follow the influence of blood on the affairs of Greece and contemporary peoples. After having measured the duration of artistic aptitude, I will do the same for that of the different governmental phases. From this we will see clearly what terrible agitation the growing mixture of races brings into the destiny of a society. If we want to start with the arrival of the Arians Hellenes with Deucalion the heroic times when we lived more or less according to the mode of the ancestors of Sogdiana, under a regime of individual freedom restricted by very flexible laws, these Heroic times would have their beginning in the year 1541 BC. The primitive era of Greece was marked by numerous struggles between the aborigines, the long-established Semitic settlers who were arriving every day, and the Arian invaders. The southern territories were lost and recaptured a hundred times. Finally, the Arian Hellenes, overwhelmed by superior numbers and civilization, saw themselves driven out or absorbed, half into the aboriginal masses, half into the Semitic cities, and thus the majority of the Greek nations were formed in isolation.625. Thanks to the invasion of the Heraclides and the Dorians, the Mongolized Arian principle regained temporary superiority; but it still ended up yielding to Chanaanite influence, and the temperate government of kings, abolished forever, gave way to the absolute regime of the republic.

In 752, the first decennial archon ruled Athens. The Semitic regime began in the most Phoenician of Greek cities. It was only to be complete later, among the Dorians of Sparta and in Thebes . The heroic age and its immediate consequences, i.e. temperate kingship, had lasted 800 years. I say nothing about the much purer, much more Ariane era of the Titans; I just need to talk about their sons, the 626

Hellenes, to show that the governmental principle had long remained established in their hands. The aristocratic system did not have as much longevity. Inaugurated in Sparta in 867, and in Athens in 753, it ends for the latter city, the brilliant and glorious city par excellence, it ends in a regular and permanent manner to the archon of Isagoras, son of Tisander, in 508 , having lasted 245 years. From then until the ruin of Hellenic independence, the aristocratic party often dominated, and even successfully persecuted its adversaries; but it was as faction and alternating with the tyrants. The regular state since then, if indeed the word regularity can be applied to a horrible series of disorders and violence, has been democracy. In Sparta, the power of the nobles, sheltered behind a poor remnant of monarchy, was much more solid. The people were also more Arian627. The constitution of Lycurgus did not completely disappear until around 235, after a duration of 632 years628.

For the popular state in Athens, I do not know what to say about it, except that it heaps so many political shames alongside inimitable intellectual magnificence, that one might believe at first glance that it took many centuries to accomplish such a work. But, by starting this regime with the archonship of Isagoras in 508, we can only extend it until the battle of Chaeronea, in 339. The government undoubtedly continued later to be called a republic; However, the isonomy was lost, and when the people of Athens decided to take up arms against the Macedonian authority, they were treated less as enemies than as rebels. From 508 to 339, there are 169 years.

From these 169 years, it is appropriate to deduct all the years when the rich governed; then those where either the Pisistratides or the thirty tyrants established by the Lacedaemonians reigned. Nor should we understand the monarchical and exceptional administration of Pericles, which lasted around thirty years; so that barely half of the 169 years remain for the democratic government; yet this period was not in one piece. We see it constantly

interrupted by the consequences of the faults and crimes of abominable institutions. All his strength was used to lead Greece into servitude. Thus organized, thus governed, Hellenic society fell, around the year

504, in a very humble attitude in the face of Iranian power. Mainland Greece was shaking. The Ionian colonies had become tributary or subject.

The conflict was to break out due to the effect of the natural attraction of halfSemitic Greece towards the coast of Asia, towards the Assyrian center, and of the coast of Asia itself a little Arianized towards Hellas. We would see the success of the first annexation attempt. We were prepared for it; but it deceived everyone, because it was accomplished in the opposite direction to what had been expected.

The Persian power, so disproportionately large and feared, took bad measures. Xerxes behaved like Agramant. Hergiovenil furore paid no heed to the advice of wise men. Although the Greeks, abandoning each other, committed unforgivable cowardice and the heaviest faults, the king persisted in being more mad than they were clumsy, and, instead of attacking them with troops regularly, he wanted to amuse himself by feeding the eyes of his vanity with the spectacle of his power. For this purpose, he gathered a mob of 700,000 men, made them cross the Hellespont on gigantic structures, became irritated by the turbulence of the waves, and went to be beaten, to general amazement, by people more astonished than him. of their happiness and who never came back.

In the pages of Greek writers, this story of Thermopylae, of Marathon, of Plataea, gives rise to very moving stories. Eloquence has been embroidered on this theme with an abundance which cannot be surprising from such a spiritual nation. As a declamation, it’s exciting; but, speaking sensibly, all these beautiful triumphs were only an accident, and the natural course of things, that is to say the inevitable effect of the ethnic situation, was not in the least changed.629.

:

After as before the battle of Plataea, the situation is as follows:

The strongest empire must absorb the weakest; and just as Semitic Egypt was joined to the Persian monarchy, governed by the Arian spirit, so Greece, where the Semitic principle now dominates, must suffer the predominance of the great family from which the mothers of its peoples, because from the moment that there do not exist in Athens, in Thebes and even in Lacedaemon purer Arians than in Suze, there is no reason for the preponderant law of number and of the extent of the territory suspends its action. It was a quarrel between two brothers. Aeschylus was not unaware of this relationship when, in Atossa's dream, he made Xerxes' mother say:

“I seem to see two virgins in superb clothing. “One richly adorned in the fashion of the Persians, the other according to the custom of the Dorians. Both of them surpassing the other women in majesty. Sam fault in "their beauty." Both sisters of the same race630. »

Despite the unexpected outcome of the Persian War, Greece was forced by the Semitic power of its blood to rally sooner or later to the destinies of Asia, which had been under the influence of this country for so long. In truth the conclusion was such; but the surprises continued, and the result was produced in a manner still different from what we thought we had the right to expect.

Immediately after the retreat of the Persians, the influence of the court of Suze had resumed over the Hellenic cities; as before, royal ambassadors gave orders. These orders were followed. The local nationalities becoming exasperated in their mutual hatred, neglecting nothing to destroy each other, the moment was approaching when exhausted Greece would

waking up as a Persian province, perhaps very happy to be there and thus to know rest. For their part, the Persians, warned by their failures, behaved with as much prudence and wisdom as their smaller neighbors showed little. They took care to maintain in their armies numerous bodies of Hellenic auxiliaries; they endeared them to their service by paying them well and not sparing them honors. Often they used them profitably against the Ionian populations, and they then had the secret satisfaction of not seeing the callused conscience of their mercenaries become alarmed. They never failed to incorporate into these troops the banished people thrown under their protection by the incessant revolutions of Attica, Boeotia, Peloponnese; valuable men, because their hometowns were precisely those against which their courage and military talents were preferably exercised. Finally, when an illustrious exile, famous statesman, renowned warrior, influential writer, admired rhetorician, claimed to be the great king, the profusions of hospitality had no limits; and when a political change brought this man back to his country, he brought back to the depths of his conscience, even if involuntarily, a piece of chain whose end was riveted to the foot of the Persian throne. Such were the relations of the two nations. The reasonable, firm, skillful government of Asia had certainly retained more Arian qualities than that of the southern Greek cities, and the latter were on the verge of harshly atone for their parade victories, when the state of incredible weakness where they moaned was precisely what led to the most unexpected incident. While the Greeks of the south were deteriorating while becoming famous, those of the north, of whom no one spoke, and who passed for half-barbarians, far from declining, grew to such an extent, under the shadow of their monarchical system. , that one morning, finding themselves quite agile, firm and ready, they overtook the Persians, and, seizing Greece for their own account, faced the Asiatics and showed them a brand new adversary. But if the Macedonians laid their hands on Greece, it was in a manner and with forms which fairly revealed the nature of their blood. These newcomers differed completely from the Greeks of the south, and their political procedures proved it.

The southern Hellenes, after the conquest, hastened to turn everything upside down. Under the flimsiest pretext, they razed a town and transplanted the enslaved inhabitants into their homes. This was the same way the Semitic Chaldeans had acted at the time of their victories. The Jews had learned something of this during the forced journey to Babylon; the Syrians too, when entire bands of their populations were sent to the Caucasus. The Carthaginians used the same system. The Semitic conquest first thought of annihilation; then she fell back at most to transformation. The Persians had understood more humanly and more skillfully the benefits of victory. Without doubt, we note among them several imitations of the Assyrian notion; However, in general, they were content to take the place of national dynasties, and they allowed the States subjugated by their sword to subsist, in the form in which they had found them. What had been a kingdom kept its monarchical forms, the republics remained republics, and the divisions by satrapies, a means of administering and concentrating certain sovereign rights, only deprived the people of isonomy: the state of the Ionian colonies at the time of the war of Darius and at the time of the conquests of Alexander is sufficient proof of this. The Macedonians remained faithful to the same Arian spirit. After the battle of Chaeronea, Philip destroyed nothing, reduced no one to servitude, did not deprive the cities of their laws, nor the citizens of their morals. He was content to dominate a whole, of which he accepted the parts as he found them, to pacify it and to concentrate its forces in such a way as to use it according to his views. Moreover, we have seen that this wisdom in exploiting success had been preceded, among the Macedonians, by the wisdom in carefully preserving their own institutions. With every possible right to begin their political existence even further back than the founding of the kingdom of Sicyon, the northern Greeks arrived until the day when they subordinated the rest of Greece to themselves without ever having varied in their social ideas. It would be difficult for me to adduce greater proof of the comparative purity of their noble blood. They represented a

warlike, utilitarian people, not artistic, not literary, but gifted with serious political instincts.

We found an almost similar spectacle among the Iranian tribes of a certain period. However, this should not be decided lightly. If we compare the two nations at the time of their development, one when, under Philip, it overflowed into Greece, and the other, in an earlier time, when, with Phraortes, it began its conquests, the Iranians appear to us more brilliant and seem in many respects more vigorous. This impression is correct. From a religious point of view, the spiritualist doctrines of the Medes and Persians were better than Macedonian polytheism, although the latter, for its part, attached to what in the south were called the old divinities, remained more free from Semitic doctrines. than Athenian or Theban theologies. To be exact, it must nevertheless be admitted that what the religious doctrines of Macedonia lost in absurdities of imagination, they regained a little in half-Finnish superstitions, which, although darker than the Syrian fantasies, were not. hardly less disastrous. In short, the Macedonian religion was not equal to that of the Persians, worked as it was by the Celts and the Slavs. In terms of civilization, inferiority still existed. The Iranian nations, touching on one side the Vratya peoples, the refractory Hindus, enlightened by a distant reflection of Brahmanism, on the other the Assyrian populations, had seen their entire existence unfold between two luminous centers which had never allowed the shadow to thicken too much on their heads. Relatives of the Vratyas, the Iranians of the east had not ceased to contract blood alliances with them. Tributaries of the Assyrians, the Iranians of the west had also imbued themselves with this other race, and on all sides thus all the tribes borrowed from the civilizations which surrounded them. The Macedonians were less favored. They only touched refined peoples through their southern border. Everywhere else they only allied themselves with barbarism. They therefore did not have the friction of civilization at a

as great a degree as the Iranians, who, receiving it through a double hymen, gave it an original form due to this very combination.

Furthermore, Asia being the country where the treasures of the universe converged, Macedonia remained off the trade routes, and the Iranians grew rich while their future replacements remained poor.

Well, despite so many advantages formerly assured to the Medes of Phraortes, the struggle could not have been doubtful between their descendants, subjects of Darius, and the soldiers of Alexander. The victory belonged by right to the latter, because when the conflict began, there was no longer any possible comparison between the Arian purity of the two races. The Iranians, who already at the time of the capture of Babylon by Cyaxares were less white than the Macedonians, found themselves much more Semiticized when, 269 years later, the son of Philip crossed into Asia. Without the intervention of the genius of Alexander, who precipitated the solution, success would have hesitated for an instant, given the great numerical difference of the two rival peoples; but the final outcome could in no case be doubtful. The Asian blood under attack was condemned in advance to succumb before the new Arian group, just as it had formerly passed under the yoke of the Iranians themselves, now assimilated to the degenerate races of the country, who, too, had had their days of triumph. , the duration of which was measured by the conservation of their white elements.

Here presents a rigorous application of the principle of racial inequality. With each new release of white blood in Asia, the proportion has been lower. The Semitic race, in its numerous successive layers, had fertilized the Hamite populations more than the Iranian invasion, carried out by much smaller masses, could. When the Greeks conquered Asia, they arrived in even smaller numbers; they did not do precisely what we call colonization. Isolated in small groups in the middle of an immense empire, they were suddenly drowned in the Semitic element. The great mind of Alexander must have understood that after his triumph, Hellas was over; that his sword had just accomplished the work of Darius and Xerxes, by only reversing the terms of the proposition; that, if the

Greece had not been enslaved when the great king had been hers, she was now that she had marched towards him; she found herself absorbed in her own victory. Semitic blood engulfed everything. Marathon and Plataea faded away under the poisonous triumphs of Arbelles and Issus, and the Greek conqueror, the Macedonian king, transfiguring himself, had become the great king himself. No more Assyria, no more Egypt, no more Perside, but also no more Hellas: the Western universe now had only one civilization.

Alexander died; its captains destroyed political unity; they did not prevent the whole of Greece, and this time, with Macedonia compressed, invaded, possessed by the Semitic element, from becoming the complement of the Asian shore. A unique society, very varied in its nuances, united however under the same general forms, extended over this portion of the globe which, beginning in Bactria and the mountains of Armenia, embraced all of lower Asia, the countries of Nile, their annexes of Africa, Carthage, the Mediterranean islands, Spain, Phocaean Gaul, Hellenized Italy, the Hellenic continent. The long quarrel of the three parent civilizations which, before Alexander, had disputed over merit and invention, ended in a fusion of forces also of Semitic blood bringing too high a proportion of black elements, and from this vast combination was born a state things that are easy to characterize.

The new society no longer possessed the feeling of the sublime, the jewel of ancient Assyria as of ancient Egypt; nor did it have the sympathy of those nations that were too Melanian for the physically and morally monstrous. For good as for bad, the height had diminished by the double Arian influence of the Iranians and the Greeks. With the latter, she gained moderation in artistic ideas, which led her to imitate Hellenic processes and forms; but on the other hand, and as a hallmark of shortened Semitic taste, it abounded in the love of sophistic subtleties, in the refinement of mysticism, in the pretentious chatter and the crazy doctrines of the philosophers. In seeking brilliance, false and true, she had brilliance, sometimes struck the right vein, remained without depth and showed little genius. Its main faculty, the one that makes its merit, is eclecticism; she aspired

constantly the secret of reconciling irreconcilable elements, debris of the societies whose death made its life. She had a love of refereeing. We recognize this tendency in letters, in philosophy, in morality, in government. Hellenistic society sacrificed everything to the passion of bringing together and merging the most disparate ideas and interests, a very honorable feeling no doubt, essential in an environment of fusion, but without fertility, and which implies the somewhat dishonorable abdication of all vocation and all beliefs. The fate of these medium-term societies, formed of rubble, is to struggle with difficulties, to exhaust their meager strength, not to think, they have no ideas of their own; not to move forward, they have no goal; but to sew and re-sew, sighing, strange and worn shreds that cannot hold together. The first, slightly more homogeneous people who put their hand on their shoulder, easily tear the fragile and pretentious fabric. The new world understood the kind of unity that was being established. He wanted things to be represented by words. From then on, to mark the highest possible degree of intellectual perfection, we became accustomed to using the termatticism, an ideal to which Pericles' contemporaries and compatriots would have found it difficult to aspire. The name of Hellène was placed below; further down, we stage derivatives like hellenizing, hellenistic, in order to indicate measurements in the degrees of civilization. A man born on the coast of the Red Sea, in Bactria, within the walls of Alexandria of Egypt, on the shores of the Adriatic, considered himself and was considered a perfect Hellene. The Peloponnese had only territorial glory; its inhabitants did not pass for more authentic Greeks than the Syrians or the people of Lydia, and this feeling was perfectly justified by the state of the races. Under the first successors of Alexander, there no longer existed in the whole of Greece a nation which had the right to refuse kinship, I do not say identity, with the most obscure Hellenizers of Olbia or Damascus. Barbarian blood had invaded everything. In the north, the mixtures accomplished with the Slavic and Celtic populations attracted the Hellenized races towards the harshness and coarseness enthroned on the banks of the Danube, while in the south

Semitic marriages spread a purulent depravity similar to that of the coast of Asia; However, these were ultimately only differences that were not very essential, and which did not benefit the Arian faculties. Certainly, the victors of Troy, if they had returned from hell, would have searched in vain for their descendants; they would have only seen bastards on the location of Mycenae and Sparta631. In any case, the unity of the civilized world was established. This world needed a law, and where could this law be supported? From what source could it arise, when governments only presided over an immense pile of rubbish, where all the ancient nationalities had come to extinguish their virile strength? How can we draw from the Melanian instincts, which had now penetrated to the last recesses of this social order, the recognition of an intelligent and firm principle, and make it a stable rule? Impossible solution; and for the first time in the world we saw this phenomenon, which has since been reproduced twice more, of large human masses led without political religion, without defined social principles, and with no other aim than to help them live. The Greek kings adopted, for lack of anything better, universal tolerance in everything and for everything, and limited their action to demanding adoration of the acts emanating from their power. Whoever wanted to be a republic remained one; such a city held to aristocratic forms, this allowed; another, a district, a province, chose pure monarchy, there was no contradiction. In this organization, the sovereigns neither denied anything nor affirmed anything further. Provided that the royal treasury received its legal and extralegal income, and that the citizens or subjects did not make too much noise in the area where they were supposed to govern themselves as they pleased, neither the Ptolemies nor the Seleucids were people to find fault with it. The long period which this situation encompassed was not absolutely devoid of distinguished individualities; but it did not offer those who emerged a sufficiently sympathetic audience, and from then on everything remained mediocre. We have often asked ourselves why certain times do not produce a certain category of superiority: we have answered, sometimes that it is due to a lack of freedom, sometimes due to a lack of encouragement. Some have given honor to the Athenian anarchy of the merit of Sophocles and Plato, asserting, and consequently, that without the perpetual troubles of the

communes of Italy, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and especially Dante, would never have astonished the world with the magnificence of their writings. Other thinkers, on the contrary, attribute the greatness of the century of Pericles to the generosity of this statesman, the enthusiasm of the Italian muse to the protection of the Medici, the classical era of our literature and its laurels at the the beneficent influence of the sun of Louis XIV. We see that by attacking the ambient circumstances, we find opinions for all tastes, some philosophers transferring to anarchy what others give to despotism.

There is still one opinion: it is the one who sees in the direction taken by the customs of an era the cause of the preference of contemporaries for this or that type of work, which leads, as if inevitably, elite natures to distinguish themselves, whether in war, in literature, or in the arts. This last feeling would be mine, if it concluded; unfortunately he remains on his way, and when asked about the cause of the state of morals and ideas, he cannot answer that it is entirely in the balance of ethnic principles. It is, in fact, as we have seen so far, the determining reason for the degree and mode of activity of a population. When Asia was divided into a certain number of States delimited by real differences of blood between the nations which inhabited them, there existed on each particular point, in Egypt, in Greece, in Assyria, within the Iranian territories, a motive for a special civilization, for the development of its own ideas, for the concentration of intellectual forces on specific subjects, and this because there was originality in the combination of the ethnic elements of each people. What above all gave the national character was the limited number of these elements, then the proportion of intensity that each of them brought into the mix. Thus, an Egyptian of the 20thecentury BC, formed, I imagine, of one third Arian blood, one third white Hamite blood and one third Negro, did not resemble an Egyptian of the 8the, into whose nature the Melanian element entered for one half, the white Chamite principle for one tenth, the Semitic principle for three, and the Arian principle barely for one. I need not say that I am not aiming at exact calculations here; I only want to highlight my thoughts.

But the Egyptian of the VIIIecentury, although degenerate, nevertheless still had a nationality, an originality. He no longer possessed, no doubt, the virtuality of the ancestors of whom he was the representative; nevertheless the ethnic combination from which he came continued, in some way, to be particular to him. From the Vecentury it was no longer like this.

At this time the Arian element found itself so subdivided that it had lost all active influence. Its role was limited to depriving the other elements attached to it of their purity, and therefore of their freedom of action.

What is true for Egypt applies just as well to the Greeks, the Assyrians, the Iranians; but one could wonder how, since unity was established in the races, it did not result in a compact nation, and all the more vigorous since it had to dispose of all the resources coming from ancient civilizations melted into its bosom, resources infinitely multiplied by the incomparably more considerable extent of a power which saw no external rival. Why was all of anterior Asia, united with Greece and Egypt, unable to accomplish the least part of the wonders that each of its constituent parts had multiplied, when these parts were isolated, and, more, when they should often have been paralyzed by their internal struggles? The reason for this singularity, which is really very strange, lies in the fact that unity did exist, but with a negative value. Asia was gathered together, not compact; because where did the fusion come from? Only because the superior ethnic principles, which had formerly created on all the various points civilizations specific to these points, or which, having received them already alive, had modified and supported them, sometimes even improved them, had, since then , absorbed in the corrupting mass of subordinate elements, and, having lost all vigor, left the national spirit without direction, without initiative, without force, living, no doubt, however without expression. Everywhere the three principles, Hamite, Semite and Arian, had abdicated their former initiative, and no longer circulated in the blood of the populations except in extremely tenuous threads and more divided every day. Nevertheless, the

different proportions in the combination of lower ethnic principles perpetuated eternally where ancient civilizations had reigned. Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian, Iranian of the Vecentury were barely the descendants of their 20th century namesakese: we saw them closer together by an equal shortage of active ingredients; they were still so by the coexistence in their diverse masses of many more or less similar groups; and yet, despite these very true facts, general contrasts, often imperceptible, however certain, separated the nations. These could not and did not want very different things; but they did not get along among themselves, and from then on, forced to live together, each too weak to make their wishes prevail, which were barely felt elsewhere, they all tended to consider skepticism and tolerance as necessities, and disposition of soul that Sextus Empiricus praises under the name of ataraxia as the most useful of virtues. Among a people restricted in number, ethnic balance only succeeds in establishing itself after having destroyed all effectiveness in the civilizing principle, because this principle, having necessarily taken its source from a noble race, is always too scanty to be subdivided with impunity. However, as long as it remains in a state of relative purity, there is predominance on its part, and therefore no balance with the lower elements. What can happen, then, when the fusion only takes place between races which, having already passed through this first transformation, are consequently exhausted? The new equilibrium could not be established (I saycould not, because the example has not yet presented itself in the history of the world) that by bringing not only the degeneration of the multitudes, but their almost complete return to the normal aptitudes of their most abundant ethnic element. For Asia, this most abundant ethnic element was black. The Hamites, from the first steps of their invasion, had encountered it high up in the north, and probably the Semites, although purer, had, at their beginnings, also allowed themselves to be stained by it.

More numerous than all the white emigrations that history has mentioned, the first two families to come from Central Asia were

descended so far towards the west and south of Africa that we do not yet know where to find the limit of their waves. However, we can attest, through the analysis of Semitic languages, that the black principle everywhere took precedence over the white element of the Hamites and their associates.

The Arian invasions were, for the Greeks as for their brothers the Iranians, not very fruitful in comparison with the more than two-thirds melanized masses in which they came to immerse themselves. It was therefore inevitable that after having modified, for a more or less long time, the state of the populations they affected, they would in turn lose themselves in the destructive element in which their white predecessors had successively absorbed themselves before them. . This is what happened in Macedonian times; that’s what it is today.

Under the domination of the Greek or Hellenized dynasties, the exhaustion, undoubtedly great, was still far from resembling the current state, brought about by subsequent mixtures of extreme abundance. Thus, the final, fatal, necessary, increasingly strong predominance of the Melanian principle was the goal of the existence of earlier Asia and its annexes. We could affirm that since the day the first Hamite conqueror declared himself master, by virtue of the right of conquest, of these primitive heritages of the black race, the family of the vanquished has not lost an hour to retake its land and seize even his oppressors. Day by day, she achieves this with that inflexible and sure patience that nature brings in the execution of her laws.

From the Macedonian era, everything that came from earlier Asia or Greece had the ethnic mission of extending the Melanian conquests. I spoke of the nuances persisting within the negative unity of Asians and Hellenizers: hence, two movements in opposite directions which further increased the anarchy of this society. No one being strong, no one triumphed exclusively. We had to be content with the reign that was always faltering, always overthrown, always relieved by a compromise that was as essential as it was infertile. The single monarchy was impossible, because no race was capable of enlivening it and making it

last. It was no less impractical to create multiple States, living their own lives. Nationality was not manifested in any place in a way clear enough to be precise. We therefore put up with perpetual reorganizations of territory; we had instability, not movement. There were only two short exceptions to this rule: one caused by the invasion of the Galatians; the second by the establishment of a more important people, the Parthians632, an Ariane nation mixed with yellow, which, semiticized early like its predecessors, in turn plunged into the heterogeneous masses. In short, however, the Galatians and Parthians were too few in number to change the situation in Asia for long. If stronger action by white power had not been expected, the intellectual future of the world, its civilization and its glory had already been over at that time. While anarchy established itself permanently in anterior Asia, preluding with irresistible force the final consequences of final bastardization, India moved on its side, although with unparalleled slowness and resistance, facing the same destiny. China alone continued its normal course and defended itself with all the more ease against any deviation, as, having reached less height than its illustrious sisters, it also experienced less active and less destructive dangers. But China could not represent the world; she was isolated, lived for herself, limited above all to the modest care of regulating the feeding of her masses. Things were at this point when, in a remote corner of a Mediterranean peninsula, a light began to shine. Weak at first, it gradually increased, and, extending over an initially restricted horizon, illuminated the western region of the hemisphere with an unexpected dawn. It was in the very places where, for the Greeks, the god Helios descended every evening into the bed of the nymph of the Ocean, that the star of a new civilization rose. Victory, ringing with haughty fanfares, proclaimed the name of Latium and Rome showed itself.

[Books 5 and 6 in the second file - JMT.]

1See also Stephen Jay Gould,The mismeasure of man(nineteen eighty one) ; he

makes the link between the theories put forward by the authors of The Bell Curve and those of Gobineau. The content of this work is also analyzed by Albert Jacquard and Axel Kahn in:The future is not written, Bayard éditions, 2001.

2Ricki Lewis, “Race and Clinic: Good Science? The discovery of human genome virtually erases the idea of race as a biological factor,”The Scientist, February 18, 2002. 3Albert JACQUARD,Men and their genesed. Flammarion, 1994. The text of the Correspondence of Alexis de Tocqueville and Arthur de Gobineau was established and annotated by M. Degros. This edition is preceded by an excellent introduction by J.-J. Chevallier (Éditions Gallimard).

4

Quoted by Jean Gaulmier inGobineau spectrum.(Ed. Jean-Jacques Poor).

5

I am referring to the preface that Aragon made to Roger H. Guerrand's book:

6

Art Nouveau in Europe(at Plon)

MA from Humboldt,Critical examination of the history of geography of

7

new continent.Paris, in-8-.

Amédée Thierry,Gaul under Roman administration, t. I, p. 244.

8

Prescott,History of the conquest of Mejico. In-8°, Paris, 1844.

9

CF Weber,MA Lucani Pharsalia. In-8°. Leipzig, 1828, t. I, p. 122-

10

123, note.

Prichard,Natural history of man(transl. by Mr. Roulin. In-8°. Paris, 1843). – The DrMartius is even more explicit. SeeMartius und Spix, Reise in Brasilien.In-4°. Munich, t. I, p. 379-380.

11

Balzac,Letter to the Duchess of Montausier.

12

Odyssey, xv.

13

Augustin Thierry,Stories from Merovingian times.See, among others, the story of Mummolus.

14

Caesar, democrat and skeptic, knew how to disagree with his language with his opinions when the circumstance required it. Nothing curious like the funeral oration he delivered for his aunt: “The maternal origins of my aunt Julia,” he said, “go back to the kings; the paternal is linked to the immortal gods; for the Marcian kings, after whom his mother was named, were descended from Ancus Marcius, and it is from Venus that the Julius, the race to which our family belongs, come. Thus, in this blood, there was both the holiness of kings, the most powerful of men, and the adorable majesty (cerimonia) of the gods, who hold the kings themselves in their power. » (Suetonius,Julius, 5.) We are not more monarchical; but also, for an atheist, one is not more religious.

15

Act. Apost. XXVI, 24, 28, 31

16

We clearly understand that it is not a question here of the political existence of a

17

center of sovereignty, but of the life of an entire society, of the perpetuity of a civilization. This is the place to apply the distinction indicated above.

This attachment of Arab nations to ethnic isolation is manifested

18

sometimes in a very strange way. A traveler (Mr. Fulgence Fresnel, if I am not mistaken) relates that in Jiddah, where morals are very relaxed, the same Bedouin who refuses nothing to the slightest seduction of money, would find herself dishonored if she married in legitimate marriage either the Turk or the European to whom she lends herself while scorning him.

Mr. Count de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in theReview of

19

Two worlds,has very rightly demonstrated that the party crushed by the

Cardinal Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism or with the great aristocratic systems. MM. de Montmorency, de Cinq-Mars, de Marillac, only sought to upset the State to obtain honors and favors. The great cardinal is completely innocent of the murder of the French nobility, for which he was so blamed. Macaulay,History of England. In-8°. Paris, 1849, t. I

20

M. Al. from Humboldt,Critical examination of the history of geogr. of the N.

21

vs., t. II, p. 129-130.

The colony of Saint-Domingue, before its emancipation, was one of the

22

places on earth where the wealth and elegance of morals had pushed their refinements furthest. What Havana has become in terms of commercial activity, Santo Domingo also showed. The freed slaves put things in order.

See, on this subject, Prichard, d'Orbigny, A. de Hurnboldt, etc.

23

The very particular construction of these tumulus, and the numerous utensils and instruments that they contain, at the moment greatly occupy the perspicacity and talent of American antique dealers. I will have occasion, in the fourth volume of this work, to express an opinion on the value of these relics, from the point of view of civilization; for the moment, I will limit myself to saying that their excessive antiquity cannot be cast into doubt. Mr. Squier is perfectly justified in finding proof of this in this fact alone, that the skeletons discovered in the mounds crumble into dust at the slightest contact with the air, although the conditions, as regards the quality of the soil, are of the best, while the bodies buried under the Breton cromlechs, and which are at least 1,800 years old, are perfectly solid. We can therefore easily conceive that between these very ancient owners of the soil of America and the Lenni-Lénapés tribes and others, there are no connections. Before closing this note, I cannot refrain from praising the industrious skill displayed by American scholars in the study of the antiquities of their great continent. Very embarrassed by the excessive fragility of the exhumed skulls, they imagined, after several others

24

unsuccessful attempts, to pour into the corpses, with incredible precautions, a bituminous preparation which, by immediately solidifying, preserves the bones from dissolution. It seems that this process, which is very delicate to use and requires as much skill as promptness, generally achieves complete success. Salvador,History of the Jews. In-8°. Paris.

25

Here, on the subject debated in this chapter, is the opinion, somewhat harshly

26

expressed, from a learned historian and philologist:

“A fairly large number of writers have allowed themselves to be persuaded that the country makes the people; that “the Bavarians or the Saxons had been predestined by the nature of their soil to become what they are today; that Protestant Christianity was not suitable for the southern regions; that Catholicism did not suit those of the north, and other similar things. Men who interpret history according to their meager knowledge, or even their narrow hearts and myopic minds, would also like to establish that the nation which is the subject of our stories (the Jews) possessed such or such a quality, well or poorly understood, for “having inhabited Palestine and not India or Greece. But if these great doctors, skilled in proving everything, wanted to reflect that the soil of the holy land carried in its narrow space the religions and ideas of the most different peoples, and that between these very varied peoples and their current heirs, there are still infinite nuances, although the country has remained the same, they would then see how little influence the material territory has on the character and civilization of a people. » (Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 259)

Act. Apostle, II, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11.

27

Apocryphal Gospels. Story of Joseph the Carpenter, chap. I. In-

28

12. Paris, 1849.

Prichard,Natural history of man, t. II, p. 120.

29

Id., ibid., vol. II, p. 119 et al.

30

Gallatin,Synopsis of the Indian tribes of North America.

31

I did not want to tease Mr. Prichard about the value of his assertions, and I discuss them without contradicting them. However, I could have limited myself to denying them completely, and I would have had on my side the imposing authority of MA de Tocqueville, who, in his admirable workOn Democracy in America, expresses himself thus on the subject of the Cherokees: “What singularly favored the rapid development of European habits among these Indians was the presence of the half-breeds. Participating in his father's enlightenment, without entirely abandoning the savage customs of his maternal race, the half-breed forms the natural link between civilization and barbarism. Wherever the half-breeds have multiplied, we have “seen the savages gradually modifying their social state and changing their morals. » (On Democracy in America, in-12; Brussels, 1837; t. III, p. 142.) MA de Tocqueville ends by predicting that, although they are mixed race, and not aboriginal, as Mr. Prichard asserts, the Cherokees and Creeks will nonetheless disappear, before long, before the invasions of the whites .

32

Carus, reasoning on the lists of remarkable Negroes given

33

originally by Blumenbach and which can be enriched, very well points out that there has never been either politics, literature, or superior conception of art among black peoples; that when individuals of this variety have stood out in any way, it has only ever been under the influence of whites, and that there is not a single one of them that we can compare , I will not say to one of our men of genius, but to the heroes of the yellow peoples, to Confucius, for example. Carus,Ueber die ungleiche Befæhigung der Menscheitsstæmmen zur geistigen Entwickelung,p. 24-25. Mr. Guizot,History of civilization in Europe, p. 11 and passim.

34

Mr. Guizot,History of civilization in Europe, p. 11 and passim.

35

Mr. Klemm (Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit,Leipzig, 1849) imagines a distinction of humanity into active races and races

36

passive. I have not had this book in my hands, and cannot know whether its author's idea is related to mine. It would be natural that by following the same paths, we would have come across the same truth.

This is also where the main source of false judgments about

37

the state of foreign peoples. From the fact that the exterior of their civilization does not resemble the corresponding part of ours, we are often led to hastily conclude either that they are barbarians or that they are our inferiors in merit. Nothing is more superficial, and therefore must be more suspect, than a conclusion drawn from such premises.

“There is still only China where a poor student can present himself in the “imperial” competition and emerge as a great character. This is the brilliant side of the social organization of the Chinese, and their theory is undoubtedly the best of all; unfortunately “the application is far from perfect. I am not talking here about errors of judgment and the "corruption of examiners, nor even the sale of literary titles, an expedient to which "the government sometimes resorts to in times of financial distress..." (FJ Mohl,Annual report made to the Asian Society, 1846, p. 49.)

38

A nurse from Tours had placed a bird in the hands of her

39

infant, child of three years, and excited him to tear off his feathers and wings. As the parents reproached him for this lesson in nastiness: “It’s to make him proud,” she replied. This response from 1847 descends from the educational maxims in force at the time of Vercingétorix.

It was a matter, very few years ago, of electing a churchwarden in a very

40

small and very obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the ancient province that true Bretons call theWelsh country.The factory council, made up of peasants, deliberated for two days without being able to decide to make a choice, given that the candidate presented, a very honest man, very good Christian, rich and respected, was neverthelessstranger.We. did not give up, and yet this strangerwas born in the country, his father also; but we

still remembered that his grandfather, who had been dead for many years and whom no one in the congregation had known, had come from elsewhere. – A daughter of a farmer-owner becomes estranged when she marries a tailor, a miller or even a hired farmer, even if he is richer than her, and the paternal curse often punishes this crime. Aren't these very strong opinions?

Mr. Flourens,Praise of Blumenbach, Memoirs of the Academy of science, Paris, 1847, in-4°, p. XIII. This scholar rightly speaks out against this method.

41

Prichard,Nat. History of man, t. I, p. 133, 146, 162.

42

Id., ibid., t. I, p. 108, 134, 174.

43

Id.,ibid., passim.

44

Prichard, cited work, t. II, p. 71.

45

This is because Meiners was extremely struck by this aspect rejecting the majority of human varieties, which he had imagined a very simple classification; it was only composed of two categories: thebeautiful,that is to say the white race, and theugly,which contained all the others. (Meiners,Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit.) It will be seen that I did not think it necessary to review all the ethnological systems. I only stopped at the most important ones.

46

Prichard, cited work, t. I, p. 152.

47

Prichard, cited work, t. I, p. 157.

48

Prichard, cited work, t. I, p. 60.

49

Carus, Ueber ungleiche Befæhigung,etc., p. 19.

50

Id.,ibid.,p. 20.

51

Work cited, p. 19.

52

Carus, work cited, p. 12.

53

There are slight ones which are nevertheless very characteristic. I would put

54

this number a certain swelling of the flesh alongside the lower lip which is found among the Germans and the English, I also find this indication of a Germanic origin in certain figures of the Flemish school, in theMadonnaof Rubens from the Dresden Museum, in theSatyrsAndNymphsfrom the same collection, in a lute player from Miéris,etc. No craniascopic method is able to detect such details, which nevertheless have their value in our mixed races.

Prichard, cited work, t. II, p. 35.

55

Job Ludolf, whose data on this matter were necessarily

56

very incomplete and inferior to those we have today, nevertheless combats, in very piquant terms, and with unanswerable reasons as far as Negroes are concerned, the opinion accepted by Mr. Prichard. I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting: “De nigredine Ethiopum hic agere nostri non est instituti, plerique ardoribus solis atque zonæ torridæ id tribuant. Verum etiam intra solis orbitam populi dantur, si non plane albi, saltem non prorsus nigri. Multi extra utrumque tropicum a media mundi linea longius obsunt quam Persæ aut Syri, veluti promontorii Bonæ Spei inhabitantes, et tamen isti surit nigerrimi. Si Africæ tantum et Chami posteris id inspectare velis, Malabares et Ceilonii aliique remotiores Asiæ populi æque nigri excipiendi erunt. Quod si causam ad cœli solique naturam referas, non homines albi in illis regionibus renascentes non nigrescunt? Aut qui ad occultas qualitates confugiunt, melius fecerint si se se nescire, fateantur. – Jobus Ludolfus,Commentarium ad Historiam Æthiopicam,in-fol., Norimb., p. 56. – I will add one more passage from Mr. Pickering; this passage is short and conclusive. Speaking of the stays of the black race, the American traveler expresses himself thus: “Excluding the northern and southern extremes with the tableland of Abyssinia, it

holds all themore temperate,and fertile parts of the Continent. » So, where there are fewer pure blacks, it is there that it is the least hot... Pickering,The Races of Man, and their geographical distribution, in the work entitled:United States exploring Expedition during the years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841 and 1842, under the command of Charles Wilkes, U.SN; Philadelphia, 1848, in-4°, vol. IX.

Prichard,Natural history of man, t. I, p. 168.

57

Prichard, Id., ibid., t. II, p. 180 and passim.

58

Neither the Swiss nor the Tyroleans, nor the Highlanders of Scotland, nor the

59

Slavs of the Balkans, nor the tribes of the Himalayas offer the monstrous aspect of the Quichuas. Mr. Frédéric Cuvier, among others,Annals of the Museum,t. XI, p. 458.

60

Unitarians constantly use, to support this thesis, the comparison of man with animals. I have just lent myself to this mode of reasoning. However, I would not want to abuse it, and I cannot do so, in conscience, when it comes to explaining the modifications of species by means of the influence of climates; because, on this point, the difference between animals and man is radical, and one could say specific. There is a geography of animals, like a geography of plants; there is no geography of men. There is a certain latitude where such plants, such quadrupeds, such reptiles, such fish, such molluscs can live; and man, of all varieties, exists equally everywhere. This is more than enough to explain an immense diversity of organization. I understand, without any difficulty, that species which cannot cross a certain degree of the meridian or a particular elevation of the relief of the earth without dying, submit with submission to the influence of climates and quickly feel the effects in their forms and their instincts; but it is precisely because man completely escapes this slavery that I refuse to perpetually compare his position, vis-à-vis the forces of nature, to that of animals.

61

It was Barrow who put forward this idea, based on some

62

resemblances in the shapes of the head and on the complexion, indeed yellowish, of the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. A traveler whose name escapes me even corroborated this opinion with the remark that the Hottentots generally wear a hairstyle which resembles the conical hat of the Chinese.

Muller,Handbook of the Physiology of Men, t. II, p. 639.

63

Prichard,Natural history of man, t. II, p. 249, et passim.

64

Gen., XXI, 5.

65

According to Mr. Krapff, a Protestant missionary in East Africa, the Wanikas marry at twelve years old with girls of the same age. (Zeitschrift of the German Morgenlændischen Gesellschaft,t. III, p. 317.) In Paraguay,

66

the Jesuits had established the custom, which has been preserved, of marrying their neophytes, at 10 years old for girls, at 13 years old for boys. In this country we see widows and widowers aged 11 and 12. (A. d’Orbignythe American Man,t. I, p. 40.) – In southern Brazil, women marry around 10 to 11 years old. Menstruation appears very early and passes in the same way. (Martius and Spix,Reise in Brasilien,t. I, p. 382.) We could multiply these quotations endlessly; I will only add one: it is that, in Yo-Kiao-li's novel, the Chinese heroine is 16 years old, and that her father is sorry that at such an age, she is not still married.

Prichard, cited work, t. II, p. 253.

67

Botta,Nineveh Landmarks;Paris, 1850.

68

Edinburgh Review, Ethnology or the Science of Races, 1848, p. 444 and

69

passim.

Ethnology, p. 439.

70

Ibid., p. 439.

71

Hammer,History of the Osmanischen Reichs, t. I, p. 2.

72

Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 433 et passim., p. 1115, etc. Tasse Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlands, t, II, p. 65; Benfey Encyclopediaby Etsch and Gruber.Indian,p. 12. Baron Alexandre de Humboldt, speaking of this fact, points out it as one of the most important discoveries of our times. (Central Asia, t. II, p, 639.) From the point of view of historical sciences, nothing is more true.

73

Nouschirwan, whose reign falls in the first half of the sixth

74

century AD, married Shahrouz, daughter of the Khakan of the Turks. She was the most beautiful person of her time. (Haneberg,Zeitsch fd K. des Morgenl., t. I, p. 187.) The Shahnameh provides many facts of the same kind.

Just as the Scythians, Mongol peoples, had accepted a

75

Arian language, there would be nothing surprising if the Oghouze were an Arian nation, while speaking a Finnish idiom; and this hypothesis is singularly supported by a naive sentence from the traveler Rubruquis, sent by Saint Louis to the sovereign of the Mongols: “I was struck,” said this good monk, “by the resemblance of the princewith the late Mr. Jean de Beaumont,“whose colored complexion had the same freshness. " Mr. Baron Alexandre de Humboldt, rightly interested in this remark, adds with no less sense: "This physiognomic observation deserves some attention, if we remember that the Tchinguiz family was probably from Turkish nonMongol breed. " And continuing this data, the judicious scholar corroborates the result with these words: "The absence of Mongolian features is also striking in the portraits that we possess of the Baburids, rulers of India. » (Central Asia,t. I, p. 248 and note.)

Hammer, work cited, t. I, p. 448.–

76

Ethnology,p. 439. –

77

Historical essay on the origin of the Hungarians, Paris, in-8°, 1844.

78

It would seem that there is a lot to modify now in the

79

received opinions about the peoples of Central Asia. Now that we can no longer deny that the blood of yellow nations is affected by more or less considerable mixtures with that of white peoples, a fact of which we did not previously suspect, all ancient notions are affected and subject to revision. Mr. Alexandre de Humboldt makes a very important remark on this subject, speaking of the Kirghiz-Kasakes, cited by Menander of Byzantium and by Constantine Porphyrogenito, and he shows, very rightly, that, when the first of these writers speaks of a Kyrgyz concubine (Greek word), present from the Turkish chagan Dithouboul to the ambassador Zémarch, sent by the emperor Justin II, in 569, it is a mixed race girl. She is the exact counterpart of the beautiful Turkish girls so praised by the Persians and who, more than this one, did not have the Mongolian type. (SeeCentral Asia, t. I, p. 237 et passim., et t, II, p. 130-131)

Schaffarik,Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 279 et passim.

80

Aug. Thierry,History of the Conquest of England;Paris, in-12,

81

1846; t. I, p. 155.

Lyell's,Principles of Geology,t. I, p. 178.

82

Link,die Urwelt und das Alterthum,t. I, p. 84.

83

Link, work cited, t. I, p. 91.

84

Cuvier,Speech on the Revolutions of the Globe. - Here is,also, on these matters, the opinion expressed by Baron Alexandre de Humboldt: "In the times which preceded the existence of the human race, the action of the interior of the globe on the solid crust, increasing by thickness, must have modified the temperature of the atmosphere and made the entire globe habitable to productions that we regard as exclusively tropical; since, through the effect of radiation and cooling, the relationships of “position of our

85

planet with a central body (the sun) began to determine "almost exclusively the climates at various latitudes." It was also in these primitive times that elastic fluids, or volcanic forces from within, more powerful than today, emerged through the oxidized and poorly solidified crust of the planet. » (Central Asia, t. I, p. 47.) Prichard, cited work, t. I, p. 124.

86

Gen. II, 8 et passim.

87

Lyell's,Principles of Geology, t. II, p. 119.

88

Mr. Alexandre de Humboldt does not think that this hypothesis can apply to plant migration. “What we know,” says this scholar, “of the deleterious action that sea water exerts in a journey of 500 to 600 leagues on the germinal excitability of most of the grains, is not moreover not in favor of the overly generalized system on the migration of plants by means of pelagic currents. » (Critical

89

examination of the history of the geography of the new continent, t. II, p. 78.)

Mr. Alexander de Humboldt exposes the determining law of this truth when he says (Central Asia,t. III, p. 23): “The first basis of climatology is the precise knowledge of the “inequalities of the surface of a continent. Without this hypsometric knowledge, we would attribute to the elevation of the ground what is the effect of other causes, which influence, in the lower regions, in a surface which has the same curvature with the surface of the ocean, on “the inflection of the isothermal lines (or equal summer heat). » By drawing attention to this great multiplicity of influences which act on the temperature of an indicated geographical point, the great Berlin scholar leads the mind to easily conceive that, in very neighboring places, and independently of the elevation of the ground, very diverse climatic phenomena are formed. Thus, there is a point in Ireland, in the north-east of the island, on the coast of Glenarn, which, in contrast to what is possible in the surrounding area, nourishes myrtles in the open ground, and also

90

vigorous as those of Portugal, under the parallel of Kœnigsberg in Prussia. “It barely freezes there in winter, and yet the heat of summer is not enough to ripen the grapes. The ponds and small lakes of the Faroe Islands are not covered with ice during the winter, despite their latitude of 62°... In England, on the coasts of Devonshire, the myrtles, the camelia japonica, the fuchsia coccinea and the boddleya globosa spend the winter without shelter in the open ground... In Salcombe, the winters are so mild that we have seen orange trees in espaliers bearing fruit and barely sheltered by the means of the estères (pp. 147-148). »

I will explain in their place the reasons which lead me not to count the

91

wild redskins of America among the pure and primitive types. I have already hinted at my opinion on this subject in Chapter X of this volume. Moreover, here I am only joining the opinion of Mr. Flourens, who also recognizes only three major subdivisions in the species: those of Europe, Asia and Africa. These names seem to me open to criticism, but the substance is correct.

M.Carus gives his powerful support to the law which I have established concerning

92

the particular aptitude of civilizing races to mix, when it brings out the extreme variety of the perfected human organism and the simplicity of the microscopic corpuscles which occupy the lowest degree of the scale of beings. From this ingenious remark he draws the following axiom: “Whenever between the elements of an organic whole there is the greatest possible similarity, their state cannot be considered as the highest and perfect expression. of complete development. This is only a primitive and “elementary” development. » (Ueber die ungl. B.d. versch. Menschheitst f. boeb. geist. Entwick.,p. 4.) Elsewhere, he adds: “The greatest diversity, that is to say possible inequality of the parts, joined to the most complete unity of the whole, appears everywhere as the measure of the highest perfection of an organism. » It is, in the political order, the state of a society where the governing classes, skillfully hierarchical, are strictly distinct, ethnically speaking, from the popular classes.

It is probably due to a typographical error that M. Flourens (Praise of Blumenbach,p.XI) gives the Polynesian race as “a mixture of two others, thecaucasianand the Mongolian. » It is the black and the mongolic that the learned academician certainly meant.

93

The physiological characteristics of the different ancestors are represented

94

in descendants following fixed rules. Thus we observe in South America that the products of a white man and a black woman can, in the first generation, have flat and supple hair; but, invariably, at the second, the frizzy wool appears. (A. d’Orbigny, the American Man,t. I, p. 143.)

It should be noted that the happiest mixtures, from the point of view

95

of beauty, are those which are formed by the hymen of whites and blacks. We only have to compare the often powerful charm of mulattos, capresses and quadroons with the products of yellows and whites, like Russian and Hungarian women. The comparison does not work to the advantage of the latter. It is no less certain that a handsome Radjeput is more ideally beautiful than the most accomplished Slav.

Gioberti,Essay on Beauty,translation by M. Bertinatti, p. 6 and 25.

96

See, among others, for Native Americans, Martius and Spix,Reise in Brasilien, t. I, p. 259; for the Negroes, Pruner, der Neger, an aphoristische Skizze aus der medicinischenTopography of Cairo, in theZeitsch.dl. deutsch. morgenl. Gesellsch., t. I, p. 131; for the muscular superiority of the whites over all other races, Carus, Ueber die hungl. Befæhigung, etc., p. 84.

97

Amédée Thierry,History of Gaul under Roman administration, t.

98

I, p. 241.

We are sometimes prepared to consider the government of the United States

99

United of America as a completely original and particular creation in our time, and what we note above all

remarkable is the limited part left in this society to the initiative and even to the simple intervention of governmental or administrative authority. If we want to look at all the beginnings of States founded by the white race, we will see the same spectacle. THEself-governmentis no more triumphant today in New York than it once was in Paris, in the time of the Franks. The Indians, it is true, are treated much more inhumanely by the Americans than the Gauls were treated by Khlodowig's leudes. But we must consider that the ethnic distance is much greater between the enlightened republicans of the new world and their victims than it was between the German conqueror and his vanquished.

Moreover, when, subsequently, I explain the beginnings of all the Arian societies, we will see thatallbegan with the exaggeration of independence vis-à-vis the magistrate and vis-à-vis the law. The political inventions of this world cannot, it seems to me, escape the two limits drawn by two peoples located, one in the north-east of Europe, the other in the countries bordering the Nile, at the extreme southern Egypt. The government of the first of these peoples, at Bolgari, near Kazan, was in the habit ofto hang witty people,as a preventative means. We owe knowledge of this fact to the Arab traveler Ibn Foszlan. (A. de Humboldt,Central Asia,t. I, p. 494.) Among the other nation, living in the Fazoql, when the king no longer suits, his parents and his ministers come to announce it to him, and it is pointed out to him that, since he no longer pleasesto men, to women, to children, to oxen, to donkeys,etc., the best he can do is to die, and he is helped to do so immediately. (Lepsius,Briefe aux Ægypten, Æthiopien et der Halbinsel des Sinai;Berlin, 1852.)

Amédée Thierry,History of Gaul under Roman administration,

100

t. I, p. 241.

Martius and Spix,Reise in Brasilien,t. III, p. 950 and passim.

101

Among several tribes of Oceania, this is how they conceived the institution of marriage: the man notices a girl. It suits him.

102

He obtains it from the father in exchange for a few gifts, among which a bottle of brandy, when the future has been able to offer it, holds the most distinguished rank. Then the pretender will hide in the corner of a bush or behind a rock. The girl passes without thinking of harm. He knocks her down with a blow of his stick; beats her until she is unconscious and lovingly takes her home, bathed in his blood. He is in good standing. The legal union is accomplished.

Mr. d'Orbigny says that Indian mothers love their children

103

excess, that they cherish to the point of truly being its slaves; that however, by an unexampled oddity, if the child comes to bother them one day, they drown him or crush him, or abandon him, without any regret, in the woods. (D’Orbigny,the American Man,t. II, p. 232.)

MJ Mohl,Annual Report to the Asian Society, 1851, p. 92: “The The indigenous Indian bookstore is extremely active, and the works it supplies never enter the European bookstore even in India. Mr. Sprenger says, in a letter, that there are in the “town of Luknau alone thirteen lithographic establishments solely occupied with” multiplying books for schools, and he gives a considerable list of works of which “probably none reached Europe. It is the same in Delhi, Agra, Cawnpour, Allahabad and other cities. »

104

The Siamese are the most shameless people on earth. They lie at lowest level of Indo-Chinese civilization; however they all know how to read and write. (Ritter.Erdkunde, Asia,t. II, p. 1152.)

105

Prichard,Natural history of man, t. II, p. 78.

106

W. of Humboldt,Ueber die Kawie-Sprache, Einleitung, p. CCLXIII.

107

Perhaps the most rigorous judgment that has been passed on the variety Melanian emanates from one of the patriarchs of the egalitarian doctrine. Here is how Franklin defined the Negro: “He is an animal who eats as much as possible and works as little as possible. »

108

I do not hesitate to consider it as a specific brand, denoting

109

intellectual inferiority, the exaggerated development of instincts which is noticeable among savage races. Certain senses acquire a development which only opens up to the detriment of the thinking faculties. See, on this subject, what Mr. Lesson des Papuans says, in a memorandum inserted in 10evolume ofAnnals of Natural Sciences.

See chapter XI.

110

Mr. Guillaume de Humboldt, in one of his most brilliant pamphlets, expressed, in an admirable manner, the essential part of this truth: “Everywhere,” says this genius thinker, “the work of time unites in languages with the work of national originality, and what “ characterizes the idioms of the warlike hordes of America and northern Asia, "did not necessarily belong to the primitive races of India and Greece. It is not possible to attribute a course perfectly similar and, in some way, imposed by nature, to the development either of a language belonging to a nation taken in isolation, or of another which will have served to several peoples. » (W. v. Humboldt's,Ueber das entstehen der grammatischen Formen, und ibrer Einflussh auf die Ideantwickelung).

111

W. of Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache. Einl.

112

I would be inclined to believe that the monosyllabic nature of Chinese does not

113

does not constitute a specific linguistic character, and, despite the salient nature of this particularity, it does not seem essential to me. If this were the case, Chinese would be an isolated language and would be linked, at most, to idioms which can offer the same structure. We know that this is not the case. Chinese is part of the Tatar or Finnish system, which has perfectly polysyllabic branches. Then, in groups of any other origin, we find specimens of the same nature. I won't dwell too much on othomi. This Mexican idiom, following du Ponceau, presents, in truth, the traces that I note here in Chinese, and yet, placed among the American dialects, like Chinese among the Tatar languages, Othomi does not. less part of their network. (See Morton,An Inquiry into the

distinctive characteristics of the aboriginal race of America, Philadelphia, 1844; see also Prescott,History of the conquest of Mejico, t. III, p. 245.) What would prevent me from attaching to this fact all the importance that it seems to carry is that one could claim that American languages, ultra-polysyllabic languages, since, alone in the world with Euskara, they push the faculty of combining sounds and ideas to the point of polysynthesis, will perhaps one day be recognized as forming only a vast branch of the Tatar family, and that consequently the argument that I would only find myself corroborating what I have said about the relationship of Chinese with ambient idioms, a relationship that in no way denies the particular nature of the language of the Celestial Empire. I therefore find a more conclusive example in Coptic, which one would hardly suppose to be allied to Chinese. There, too, all the syllables are roots and roots which are modified by simple affixes which are so mobile that, even to mark the tenses of the verb, the determining particle does not always remain annexed to the word. For example :hônmeans to order;a-hon, he ordered ;Moses commanded,says:a Moyses hôn. (See E. Meier's. Hebraeisches Wurzelwœrterbuch,in-8°; Mannheim, 1845.) It therefore seems to me that monosyllabism can occur in all families of idioms. It is. a sort of infirmity determined by accidents of a still unknown nature, but not a specific trait capable of separating the language which is clothed with it from the rest of human languages, by constituting to it a special individuality.

Goethe said in his novelWilhelm Meister: “Few Germans and perhaps few “men, in modern nations, possess the sense of an aesthetic whole. We only know how to praise and blame in pieces, we are only delighted in a fragmentary way. »

114

W. of Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, Einl., p.XCV.

115

A jargon similar to balaïbalan is probably this language namedafnskoëwhich is spoken among the horse dealers and peddlers of Great Russia, especially in the government of Wladimir. Only men use it. The roots are foreign to Russian;

116

but the grammar is entirely of this idiom. (See Pott, Encyclopedia Ersch and Gruber,Indogerman. Sprachstamm,p. 110.) I cannot resist the temptation to copy here an admirable page from C.

117

O. Müller where this scholar, full of feeling and tact, clarified, in a rare way, the true nature of language. “Our time,” he says, “has learned through the study of Hindu languages, and even more through that of Germanic languages, that idioms obey laws as necessary as do organic beings themselves. He learned that between the different dialects, which, once separated, develop independently of each other, mysterious relationships continue to exist, by means of which sounds and the connection of sounds are mutually determined. He knows moreover, from now on, that literature and science, while moderating and containing, it is true, the beautiful and rich development of this growth, cannot impose on it any rule superior to that which nature, mother of all things, imposed on him from the start. It is not that languages, long before the ages of fancy and bad taste, could not succumb to internal and external causes of disease and suffer profound disturbances; but, as long as life resides in them, their intimate virtuality is enough to heal their wounds, to repair their ills, to reunite their lacerated members, to reestablish a unity, a sufficient regularity, even though the beauty and perfection of these noble plants has already almost completely disappeared. » (CO Müller,die Etrusker,p. 65.)

Pott,Encyclopedia. Ersch and Gruber,Indo-German. Sprachst., p. 74.

118

The mixture of idioms, proportional to the mixture of races in a

119

nation, had already been observed when philological science did not, so to speak, yet exist. I will cite the following testimony: “We can lay down as a constant rule that in proportion to the number of foreigners who settle in a country, the words of the language they speak will enter into the language of that country. country there, and by degrees will naturalize there, so to speak, “and will become as familiar to the inhabitants as if they were of their own making. » (Kaempfer,History of Japan, in-fol., The Hague, 1729, book. Ier , p. 73.)

Keferstein (Ansichten über die keltischen Alterthümer,Hall, 18461851;Einleit.,1,XXXVIII) proves that German is only a mixed language composed of Celtic and Gothic. Grimm expresses the same opinion.

120

W. of Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, Einl., p. XXXIV.

121

It is this difference in level which, being marked between the intelligence of

122

conqueror and that of the subject peoples, gave rise, at the beginning of the new empires, to the use ofsacred languages.We have seen them in all parts of the world. The Egyptians had theirs, the Incas of Peru did the same. This sacred language, object of superstitious respect, exclusive property of the upper classes and often of the priestly group, to the exclusion of all others, is always the strongest proof that can be given of the existence of a foreign race dominating the soil where it is found.

Mr. Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, Einl., XXXIV.

123

An interesting observation is to see, in the languages from

124

of a middle language, certain derivatives present themselves in a form much closer to the primitive root than the word from which, in general, they are supposed to be formed or than the one which, in the closest language, expresses the same idea . Thus FURY: all.Wuth,Englishmad, Sanskrit mada; DESIRE, as an expression of passion: all.Begierde,franc. rage,Sanskritraga;HOMEWORK: all.Pflicht,EnglishDuty,Sanskritdutia. (See Klaproth,Asia polyglotta,in-4°.) We could infer from this fact that some races, after having undergone a certain number of mixtures, are partially brought back to a greater purity, to a more pronounced white vigor than others which have preceded them in the order of times.

Ancient Greece, which had many dialects, had none

125

however not as much as that of the 16thecentury, when Siméon Kavasila numbered seventy; and, a remark to be linked to what follows, in the 18th centuryecentury, French was spoken throughout Hellas

and especially in Attica. (Heilmayer, cited by Pott,Encyclopedia.v, Erseh und Gruber, Indo-German Sprachstamm,p. 73.) The Hebrews themselves did not name their language'Hebrew;they called it very rightlythe tongue of Canaan,thus paying homage to the truth. (Isaiah, 19, 18). See, on this subject, the observations of Rœdiger on theHebrew grammarof Gesenius, 16eedition, Leipzig, 1851, p. 7 and passim.

126

This is also the feeling of Mr. W. Edwards,Physical characteristics of human races,p. 101 et passim.

127

There is still one case that can arise, that is where a population speaks two languages. In Graubünden, almost all the peasants of the Engadine use Romansh with equal ease in their relations between compatriots, and German when they address foreigners. In Courland, there is a district where the peasants, to communicate among themselves, use Esthonian, a Finnish dialect. With every other person they speak Latvian. (See Pott,Encycl. Erseh und Gruber, Indo-German Sprachstamm,p. 104.)

128

The road was not so long from rustic Latin,lingua rustica Romanorum, lingua romana, from the novel, in a word, to corruption,

129

than from the elegant language, whose precise and cultivated forms presented more resistance. It should also be noted that, each foreign legionary bringing the patois of its provinces into the colonies of Gaul, the advent of a general and common dialect was hastened, not only by the Celts, but by the emigrants themselves.

Macaulay,History of England,t. I, p. 18, ed. from Paris. The Albigensians

130

are the object of a very special predilection on the part of revolutionary writers, especially in Germany (see on this subject the poem by Lenau,die Albigenser).However, the sectarians of Languedoc were recruited mainly from the chivalric classes and from ecclesiastical dignitaries. But their doctrines were antisocial: this is enough to make them forgive a lot.

The preface to theSong of Roland,by Mr. Génin, contains, at this subject, some rather curious observations. (Song of Roland,in-8°, Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1851.)

131

Consult theFemina, cited by Hickes in hisThesaurus literature

132

septentrionalisand by theLiterary history of France, t. XVII, p. 633.

Revue des Deux Mondes.

133

P. Paris,Garin le Loherain,preface.

134

It should be noted, however, that the Vaudois and Savoyard accent has some something southern which strongly recalls the colony of Aventicum.

135

Pott expresses very well how dialects are modifications

136

spoken which maintain the agreement between the state of composition of the blood and that of the language, when he says: “The dialects are diversity in unity, the chromatic sections of the primordial One “and of unicolored light . » (Pott,Encycl. Erchs. and Gruber,p. 66.) – This is, undoubtedly, an obscure phraseology; but here she clearly indicates what she means.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the precautions indicated here

137

apply only to the determination of the genealogy of a people, and not of a family of peoples. If a nation sometimes changes its language, this fact has never happened and could not happen for a whole group of nationalities, ethnically identical, politically independent. The Jews abandoned their language; all Semitic nations have never been able to lose their native dialects and cannot have others.

“Taste and smell are, in the Negro, as powerful as they are formless. He eats everything, and the most repugnant odors, in our opinion, are pleasant to him. » (Pruner, cited work, vol. I p. 133.)

138

Mr. Martius remarks that the European surpasses the colored men in intensity of the nervous fluid. (Reise in Brasilien,t. I, p. 259.)

139

I am even more generous than MJ Mohl. The learned professor

140

thus expresses his opinion on this subject: "When we reflect that there have been only three great civilizing impulses in the world, that given by the Indians, that given by the Semites and that given by the Chinese, that the history of the human spirit is only the development and struggle of these three elements, we then understand what importance, etc. » ( Annual report made to the Asiatic Society, 1851.) We will not see anything, moreover, in what I have to say which contradicts this very exact, but somewhat abstract, point of view.

As I have already had the opportunity to warn the reader, I see myself

141

sometimes forced to posea priori, as already demonstrated, facts which are discussed later. I ask forgiveness for this freedom without which it would be impossible for me to walk. All I can do is to restrict its use to truly compelling cases. The Arian origin of Egyptian and Chinese societies calls for demonstration, I do not hide it, and I will do my best to provide it.

Klaproth's opinion (Asia polyglotta) do not report them higher that the year 3000; but other chronologists are broader in their estimation, among others M. Lepsius, in his work on Egypt. He makes Klaproth's opinion completely unacceptable, since he dates an entire class of Egyptian monuments to the year 4000. (Lepsius, Briefe über Ægypten, Æthiopien und der Halbinsel des Sinai ; Berlin, 1852). I don't have to worry about such a problem. It doesn't matter about me. I only intend here to establish, more or less, the reader's thoughts.

142

I intend to designate the chain which, attaching itself to the Hindu-Kho northern, goes back to the north, cuts the Thian-Chan and inclines to the west towards Lake Kabankoul. (See Humboldt's MA,Central Asia, map.)

143

It results from the most recent discoveries made in the center and

144

southern Africa, that the populations of this part of the world have been

strangely agitated and displaced in unknown times. (See in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandsand in theTime of German Morgenlændischen Gesellschaft, the works of Pott, Ewald and the Protestant missionary Krapf.) On the black inhabitants of Kouenloun, see Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia; Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 391. There are still other blacks with frizzy and woolly hair in Kamaoun, where they are called Rawats and Raieh. It is, probably, a branch of the Thums of Nepal. (Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia, t. II, p. 1044.) In Assam, south of the district of Queda, live theSamang, savages with frizzy hair, resembling the Papuans of New Guinea (Ritter, cited work, t. III, p. 1131.) In Formosa, other negroes resembling the Haraforas. (Ritter, t. III, p. 879.) Kæmfer speaks of black inhabitants in the islands south of Japan (p. 81.) Elphinstone (Account of the kingdom of Cabul, p. 493) mentions in Sedjistan, on Lake Zareh, the presence of a Negro people, etc.

145

It certainly had several varieties, since the note above indicates negroes with frizzy hair in Kamaoun, in Assan, etc., while most Asian negroes have flat hair. Mr. Lassen was therefore wrong to say (Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 390) that Asian Negroes do not have the woolly hair of Africans nor the protruding bellies of the Pelagians. It is a very mixed race, an incontestable tertiary type and which is linked, in all respects, to African and Oceanian families.

146

Deuteron., II, 9. « Filiis Loth tradidi Ar in possessionem, 10. Enim

147

primi fuerunt “habitatores ejus, populus magnus, et validus, et tam excelsus, ut de Enacim Stirpe, 11. “Quasi gigantes crederentur. » And again in the same book: “20. Terra gigantum “reputata est, et in ipsa olim habitaverunt gigantes quos Ammonitæ vocant Zomzommim, “21. Populus magnus, et multus et proceræ lengitudinis, sicut Enacim. » (See, below, the note on the Choreans.)

Negroes are fond of genealogies that begin, not at the

148

sun, nor to the moon, but to beasts. The Sahos, on the Red Sea, no

far from Massowa, say they are descended, in the thirteenth generation, from a certain Aa'saor, (word in foreign alphabet) son of a lioness and inhabitant of the mountains. The choice of animal this time is quite noble, it must be admitted. The frequent contacts with the Arabs have produced some ennoblement of the imagination. (See Ewald,Ueber die Sahosprache in Æthiopien, in theZeitschrift für die Kunde der Morgenlander. (vol. II, p. 13.)

Prichard.Natural history of man(transl. by M. Roulin), t. I, p.

149

259.

Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I.

150

A. of Humboldt,Central Asia, t I.

151

A. of Humboldt,Central Asia, t. I, p. 389. “The research of recent years and the "conviction that we obtained from the metallic wealth that boreal Asia still possesses today, even in the region of the plains, leads us almost involuntarily to the Issédons, the Arimaspes and these griffins, guardians of gold, to whom Aristaeus of Proconnesus and, two hundred years after him, Herodotus, gave such great fame. I visited these valleys where, on the southern slope of the Urals, we found, only fifteen years ago, a few inches under the grass, and very close to each other, masses “rounded with gold, weighing 13, 16 and 24 pounds. It is quite probable that even more voluminous masses once existed on the very surface of the ground, furrowed by running water. How can we be surprised that this gold, similar to erratic blocks, “was collected by hunting or pastoral peoples, etc.? » This is Hataka, the land of gold in Hindu mythological geography. Treasures are abundant there and guarded by gnomes called Guhyakas(ofguh, hide), in which we recognize the Finns, the miners with their short waists. We will see them play the same role among the Scandinavians. (Lassen,Ind. Alterth., t. II, p. 62.)

152

According to Ewald, the Semites recognize, as their common place

153

of origin, the high country of the northeast, that is to say the place from which the

Zoroastrians. There also exist, between the first peoples of Inner Asia and the Arians, common traditions which anticipated the formation of the respective idiomatic systems, such as the four ages of the world, the ten primitive ancestors, the flood, etc. (Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 528; Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 304)

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 815.

154

Id.,ibid.,t. I, p. 816.

155

It seems that pastoral existence was first invented by the species white. What would indicate this is that several yellow families ignored the use of milk, and this in a state of advanced civilization. People in some parts of China and Cochinchina never milk their cows. The Aztecs did not even practice animal domestication. (See Prescott,History of the conquest of Mejico, t. III, p. 257; and A. de Humboldt,Political essay on New Spain, t. III, p. 58.)

156

The methods that we used to draw, as it were, from However, this information, which we could call antehistorical history, is not without analogy with the ingenious work of geologists, and, found by no less sagacity and acuity of mind, it leads to equally precise results. , as incontestable, and such as the positive annals are far from always giving them. Thus, from the fact that we find the use of the war chariot among all the peoples that I have listed, we conclude, and with all reason, that this warlike fashion was practiced by the white branches from which the Egyptians descended. , Hindus, Galls. Indeed, the idea of fighting in a car is not one of those essential notions which, like those of eating and drinking, come to all creatures indifferently, without consultation or prior agreement. On the other hand, it is one of those complicated discoveries which, once made and until replaced by more fortunate ones, or hampered in their application by local circumstances, persist in nations and contribute to their luxury as well as their strength.

157

We were able to specify in the same way the way of life of primitive white populations. The examination of the languages which we call Indo-Germanic has revealed in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic and Slavic dialects, a perfect identity of terms for everything relating to pastoral life and political habits. It is by considering words closely and in their roots that we learned from which ideas the simple or complex notions that these words were responsible for reproducing derived. It was found that, to name an ox, a horse, a cart, a weapon, primitive whites had expressions which remained unshakably attached to the lexicon of most languages of the same family. Warrior and pastoral habits therefore had deep roots among them. At the same time, we noticed, in all these languages, the diversity of forms used for everything that comes from agriculture, such as the names of plants and agricultural implements. Working the land is therefore an invention subsequent to the separations of the large family, etc. By continuing the same etymological work, we have also known what the primitive whites understood by aGod;the idea that the word carried for themking, that ofchief. The comparative study of idioms has thus given three major results to history: 1° proof of the kinship of the white nations most separated by geographical distances; 2° the common state in which these nations lived prior to their migrations; 3° the demonstration of their early sociability and its characters.

MA de Humboldt observes that the countries east of the

158

Caspian are experiencing considerable depression (Central Asia, t. I, p. 31). The passage is interesting; here it is in its entirety: “These two great masses (the Anglo-Hindu world and the Russian-Siberian world) or political divisions have communicated, for centuries, only through the lower regions of Bactria, I could say through the depression of the ground which surrounds the Aral and the eastern edge of the Caspian between Balkh and Astrabad, as well as between Tashkend and the isthmus of Trukhmenes. It is a strip of land, partly very fertile, through which the Oxus has "traced its course... It is the path from Delhy, from Lahore and Kabul to Khiva and "Orenburg... The depression of Asian soil, on which very recent and “highest precision” measurements have

rectified the notions, extends “without doubt also beyond” the western shore of the Caspian; but going down from the Persian plateau via Tebriz and Erivan (plateau 600 to 700 toises high), towards Tiflis, we encounter the Caucasus chain almost touching the basin of the two seas and offering a very busy military route. , which is 7530 feet high. » Genesis, ch. IX, v. 25: “Ait: Maledictus Chanaan, servus servorum

159

erit fratribus suis. »

Chanaan's expression has never indicated a Negro or even completely black people. It applies, historically, to mixed populations inclined, undoubtedly, towards the Melanian element, but not identical with it, and the Vulgate has perfectly established the fact by rigorously reproducing the Hebrew term (in Hebrew) and not (in Hebrew) so that it is not even possible to misunderstand the meaning of the passage. Moreover, if we want a comment, it is clear and precise in chap. XX, v. 5, of Exodus, where it is said: “Ego sum Dominus Deus tuus fortis, zelotes,visitans iniquitatem patrum in filios,in tertiam et quartam generationem eorum qui oderunt me. »The punishment of the guilty in the decadence of their family is too frequently recounted in the holy books for me not to be exempt from providing here all the examples. I conclude that the Bible does not declare that Ham, personally, will be black, nor even a slave, but only that Chanaan, that is to say one of Ham's sons, will one day be degraded in his blood, in his nobility, and reduced to serving his cousins. I will add one last observation. The posterity of Ham was not limited to Canaan alone. The patriarch had three more sons, besides this one: Chus, Mesraim and Phuth (Gen., X, 6), and the text in no way says that they were affected by the curse. Is there not something singular in a story which respects the real culprit and the greater part of his posterity, to bring the vengeful effects of the crime on only one member of the family, Chanaan, on the very one who found himself in territorial and religious competition with the children of Israel? It would therefore be much less a question here of a physiological question than of political hatred.

Mr. Colonel Rawlinson thinks that Nimrod is a collective word,

160

regular passive participle of an Assyrian verb, and means: those who are found or the settlers, the first possessors, that is to say, here, the first white inhabitants of lower Chaldea, (Rawlinson,Report of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1852, p. XVII.)

Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 271.

161

Such were, for example, the ox-headed cherubim. Gesenius defines thus: “(Hebrew word) in Hebræcorum theologia natura quædam sublimior et cœlestis cujus formam ex “humana, bovina, leonina et aquilina (quæ tria animalia cum homine potentiæ et sapientiæ “symbola sunt), compositam sibi fingebanl. » (Lexicon manuale hebraicum and chaldaicum.)

162

Gen., VI. 2, 4.: “Videntes filii dei filias hominum quod essent

163

pulchræ, acceperunt sibi « uxores ex omnibus quas elegerant... Gigantes autem crant super terram in diebus illis. “Postquam enim ingressi sunt filii Dei ad filias hominum, ilæque genuerunt, isti sunt “potentes a sæculo viri famosi. »

Gen., IV, 23, 24: “Dixitque Lamech uxoribus suis Adæ et Sellæ:

164

Audite vocem meam, uxores Lamech, auscultate sermonem meum. – Quoniam occidi virum in vulnus meum et adolescentulum in livorem meum, septuplum ultio dabitur of Cain; of Lamech vero septuagies septies. " THEsaltof this composition does not consist only in the harshness of feeling. There is still more pride there than a spirit of vengeance. God, in condemning Cain, however, did not want to punish him with death, and he covered him with his protection, declaring that whoever killed him would be punished sevenfold. Lamech put himself above even his ancestor, the object of the family's veneration, by promising seventy-seven times more punishment to his attackers.

It is probable that very anciently, Hamite mixtures

165

reached the blood of the Kaffir populations, towards the Monbaz meridian.

Movers, das Phœniz Alterth., t. I, 2epart, p. 461; Ewald,Gesch.,

166

Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 332.

Ewald, work cited, t. I, p. 327 and passim

167

ID., ibid., t. I, p. 337.

168

I use these names of famous cities here without claiming to assert

169

that they were the first to serve as metropolises for the Hamite or even Semo-Chamite states. Long before these great cities, the Bible and cuneiform inscriptions reveal the existence of other capitals, such as Niffer, Warka, Sanchara (probably the Lanchara of Berossus). The famous city where the Hamite king Chedarlaomer, king of Elam (Gen., XIV), resided, although less ancient, nevertheless flourished before Nineveh. (See Lieut.Colonel Rawlinson, Report of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1852, p. XV - . BC only. However, Babylon had been built a long time ago; Lieutenant Colonel Rawlinson, relying on the 13everse of 23echap. of Isaiah (I admit that I do not understand very well the motives of the famous antiquary), thinks that we can consider the thirteenth century BC as the time of foundation of this city. (Cited work, p. XVII.)

The reason which leads me to stick to the most widespread notions is the still imperfect state of modern knowledge on the history of the Assyrian States. There is no doubt that the discoveries of Botta, of Layard, of Rawlinson, and those which are currently being pursued, with so much zeal, energy and skill, by the French consul in Mosul, Mr. Place, will lead to , in what we know of the primitive peoples of Asia, a revolution even more considerable and followed by happier and more brilliant results than that which was carried out, a few years ago, in the annals of ancient Italy by the learned works of Niebuhr, O. Müller, Aufrecht. But we are still only at the beginning, and it would be rash to want to make too much use of results, hitherto fragmentary and often so unexpected, so moving for

the coldest imagination, that before using them, a severe criticism must have more than noted their value. When the learned Colonel Rawlinson gives, from two terracotta cylinders, the complete history of the first eight years of the reign of Sennacherib with the account of the campaign of this monarch against the Jews (Outlines of Assyrian history,collection from the cuneiform inscriptions, p. XV), it is the least that we do not give way too easily to the inevitable charm that this autobiography exerts on the mind where the king tells his defeat and compares the story of the Bible. A great reserve does not seem to me any less obligatory, when the tireless scholar offers us an even more surprising discovery. In terracotta tablets found on the lower Euphrates and sent to London by Mr. Loftus, a member of the Joint Commission for the delimitation of the TurkishPersian frontiers, Mr. Rawlinson thinks he has discovered acknowledgments of the treasure of an Assyrian prince for a certain weight of gold or silver, deposited in the public coffers, recognitions which would have had, in the hands of individuals, legal tender. Mr. Mohl, in reporting this opinion, adds cautiously: “It would be a first test of conventional values at a time when certainly no one would have suspected it, and this supposition has something so surprising that we hardly dare hope that it will be verified. » (Report to the Asian Society, 1851, p. 46.) I hope that no one will blame me for imitating the discretion which such a competent judge gives me as an example. The more progress we make in the reading of cuneiform inscriptions, the more ruins we discover in these vast provinces, whose unexplored soil seems to be covered with them, the more miracles we will accomplish, I am convinced, by bringing to life already dead facts. and forgotten during the time of the Greeks. But it is precisely because there is reason to expect a lot from the future that we must not compromise it by embarrassing the present with too hasty, unnecessarily hypothetical and often erroneous assertions. I will therefore continue to stand preferably on known and solid grounds, and this is why I invoke the names of Nineveh and Babylon as being those which, until now, best personify the Assyrian splendors.

Movers, das Phœniz. Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 265; Ewald,

170

Geschichte d. V. Israel, t. I, p. 367.

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 302

171

Id.ibid.,p. 31. The opinion of this author is victoriously refuted by

172

Ewald, Taber, Michaelis, etc.

See Dr. Schultz's findings.

173

Botta,Monuments of Nineveh.

174

Everything that concerned elegance and delicate luxury, that which was whim,

175

fashion objects and, in a word, what responded to what today's commercial language callsParis article, was manufactured in the great Mesopotamian capitals. See Heeren,Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der vornehmsten Vœlker der alten Welt, t. I, p. 810 et al.

Wilkinson, Customs and Manners of the ancient Egyptians, t. I, p. 386. Egyptian paintings bear witness to this curious fact, and what completely establishes the Melanian origin of the custom they denounce is to see this same custom spread throughout Africa and on the western coast as well as to the East. To explain this particularity, Degrandpré, surprised to see Negroestattooed, he said,in color, like the Indians, points out that the natives quite often cross the entire width of their continent parallel to the equator, and that, in this way, it can be explained that the inhabitants of Guinea practice what the people of the Congo were able to learn from the navigators of India. (See Pott, Verwandtschaftliches Verhæltniss der Sprachen vom Kaffer und Kongo-Stamme untereinanderin the Zeitschrift der deutsch. morgenl. Gesellschaft, t. II, p. 9.) This is a somewhat painful demonstration, for which I substitute the following: As there is no people in the world who tattoo themselves using paints, applied only to the skin or penetrating under the epidermis by incision , which does not belong, very closely, to the black or yellow species, I conclude that tattooing is a habit specific to these two varieties and that they have made the white races most strongly mixed with them adopt it. So, just as

176

the Chamo-Semites and the Hindus, allied with the blacks, painted themselves, likewise the Celts allied with the yellows did the same for a very similar reason. We must therefore consider tattoos as a mark of mixed race origin and take great care to study them from an ethnological point of view. This is what American scientists have understood very well. The shapes and characters of the drawings traced in a tribe of the new continent or of Polynesia, on the face or body of warriors, often served to recognize the descent, by revealing relationships with another people, often very distant. I myself was able to notice the fact in the beautiful collection of plasters of Mr. de Froberville. These prints reproduce the heads of Negroes from the eastern coast of Africa. On the forehead of several of these specimens, we find a series of longitudinal points raised by an artificial swelling of the flesh, an ornament of the most bizarre nature, but completely identical to what we see practiced in several groups. Pelagians of Oceania. The learned ethnologist, whose kindness enabled me to make this observation, did not hesitate to discover there the proof of a primitive identity of origin between the two barbarian families separated by an immense sea.

I give here the date indicated by Movers (Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1D, part, p. 259). Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 752) mentions a dynasty existing at this time, but does not comment on its ethnic origin. Colonel Rawlinson (Outlines of Assyrian history, p. XV) does not know of a Semitic empire before the thirteenth century which preceded our era. It was then that he found in the inscriptions the mention of a king honorarily named Derceto, or Semiramis, but whose real name he had not yet been able to decipher. He believes that Nineveh was built under this monarch. Mr. Rawlinson seems to me here to take Lassen's fourth dynasty (Ind. Alterth., I, p. 752) and Movers (loc. cit.) for the first. In any case, its date is too low and does not agree with biblical chronology.

177

Cuneiform inscriptions and Genesis agree to point out

178

the primitive establishment of a Semitic state in lower Chaldea, or in the neighboring country, Susiana. Long, the place of origin of their race,

that is to say upper Chaldea, the region of the mountains, was for the Semitic sovereigns of Assyria a dangerous point from which competitors emerged who had to be subdued in advance, and I easily believe in the assertion of Mr. Rawlinson, who remarks that one of the most illustrious conquerors of the dynasty which I persist in considering as the fourth, a monarch whose name seems to be read Amak-barbethkira, directed the effort of his arms towards the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, in Armenia and throughout the surrounding northern region. (Outlines of Assyrian history, p. XXIII.)

The Assyrians occupied Phenicia three times: the first time,

179

2,000 years BC; the second, around the middle of the thirteenth century; the third, in 750. (Movers,Das Phœn. Alterth, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 259.)

This is how we must understand the mythical story of Semiramis, personification of a Chaldean invasion. Before becoming queen, she began as a servant. (Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 261.)

180

Gen., XI, 10: “Sem... genuit Arphaxad... 12. Arphaxad... genuit...

181

Sale... 14. Sale genuit Hebr... 16. Hebr genuit Phaleg... 18. Phaleg... genuit Reu ... 20. Reu genuit Sarug... 22. Sarug... genuit... Nachor ... 24. Nachor... genuit Thare. »

Gen., XXIV, 6: “Cave, ne quando, reducas filium meum illuc. »

182

Gen., XX, 12: “Alia autem et vere soror mea est, filia patris mei, et

183

non filia matris meæ, “et duxi eam in uxorem. »

Gen., XI, 31: “Tulit itaque Thare Abram filium suum, and Lot filium Aran, filium filii sui, “et Saraï nurum suam, uxorem Abram, filii sui, et eduxit eus de Ur Chaldæorum ut isent in “terram Chanaan…” 28: “Mortuusque est Aran ante Thare, patrem suum, in terra nativitatis suæ in Ur “Chaldæorum. »

184

Gen., XLVI, 3...: “Responderunt: Pastores ovium sumus servi tui, et

185

nos, and patres “nostri. »

Gen., XI, 32: “Et facti sunt dies Thare ducentorum quinque annorum and mortuus is in “Haran. »

186

Gen., XII, 5: “Tulit... universam substantiam, quam possessederant, et animas, quas fecerant “in Haran. »

187

Gen., XXIII, 6: “Audi nos, dominate, princeps Dei es apud nos. »

188

Gen., XIV, 13: “Nunciavit Abram Hebræo qui habitabat in convalle

189

Mambre Amorrhæi, “brothers Eschol and brothers Aner; hi enim pepigerant foedus cum Abram. » « XXI, 27... « Percusseruntque ambo (cum Abimelech) foedus. »

Gen., XVIII, 32: “Et dixit (Deus): Non delebo propter decem. »

190

Gen., XIV, 24...: “Filia sum Bathuelis, filii Nachor, quem peperit ei Melcha. »

191

Gen., XXII, 20: “His ira gestis, nunciatum est Abrahæ, quod Melcha

192

quoque genuisset filios Nachor fratri suo. » Ewald,Gesch. d. V. Israel, I, 294. The Carthaginians did not show themselves

193

no more military than the Tyrians. They employed paid workers.

Ewald, work cited, t. I, p. 293 et al. These mercenary troops played a very large role in all the Hamite and Semitic states of Asia and Africa. Even the Egyptians enlisted them. In the time of Abraham, the small principalities of Palestine relied on them for their defense. Phicol, whom Genesis calls theleader of Abimelech's army(Hebrew word) Gen., XXI, 22), was probably a condottiere of this species. Later, David's guard was also made up of Philistines. All this proves how little the general morals were military

194

Ewald, Id.ibid., t. I, p. 294.

195

Isaiah.

196

Gesenius,Geschichte der hebraeichen Sprache und Schrift, p. 4

197

The Berber and Amazigh nations, of Semitic origin, extend very far before to the south, in the African Sahara, and, in the west, to the Canary Islands. The Guanches were Berbers. Semitic invasions were repeated on the western coast of Africa for at least a thousand years. (Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 2epart, p. 363 et pass.)

198

Gesenius,Hebrew Grammatik, l6eedition, 1851, p. 12. We don't have there is little evidence of the existence of Hebrew dialects. The Ephraimites gave toSchinthe pronunciation ofsinorSamech. It also appears, according to Nehemiah, that there was a particular language in Ashdod.

199

Gesenius defines them as follows: 1° Among the consonants, many

200

guttural; vowels only play a very subordinate role; 2° most of the roots, triliterates; 3° in the verb, two tenses only; a singular regularity regarding the formation of modes; 4° in the name, two genders, no more; extremely simple case designations; 5° in the pronoun, all oblique cases determined by affixes; 6° almost no compound either in the verb or in the noun (except in proper nouns); 7° in syntax, a simple juxtaposition of the members of the sentence, without much periodic coordination. (Hebrew Grammatik, t. I, p. 3.)

Sylvestre de Sacy,Arabic grammar, 2eedition, t. I, p. 125 et passim. This learned philologist, contrary to the opinion of several national grammarians, finds the use of the last forms so rare that he reduces the total number to thirteen, including the radical conjugation of the triliterate primitive.

201

Mr. Prisse d'Avennes recently made a very successful application of this principle, in his examination of Mr. Chodzko's Persian grammar. See Oriental magazine.

202

Pott, VerwandtschaftlichesVerhæltniss der Sprachen vom Kafferund

203

Kongo-Stamme, p. 11, p. 25. “Noch erwæhne ich hier behuf allgemeinerer Charakterisirungs gegenwærtiger “Idiome ihre Ueberfülle an dem, was die semitische Grammatik unter Conjugation“versteht ; Ich meine die Menge besonderer Verbum liegenden “Grundgedankens abgeben und darstellen. These Conjugationen entshehen aber, in der “Regel, durch Zusætze hinten an der Wurzel. » And page 138: “Es giebt gar keine “Wurzelverba, die nicht æhnlicher Modificationen faehig wären; und vermittelst gewisser “Partikeln oder Zusætze zeigt ein jeder dieser Verba, und alle daraus abgeleiteten, an, ob “die Handlung, die sie ausdrücken, selten oder haüfig ist; ob sich Schwierigkeit, “Leichtigkeit, Uebermaas oder andere Unterschiede dabei finden. »

Which is not Mr. Rawlinson's opinion. See journal of the RA Society, t. XIX art. 1, p. XXIII, the note on the pronounkagaof the inscription of Bi-Soutoun and the connection made by the learned colonel with the word pouschtohagaand Latinhic. See also, for the Indo-Germanic affinities of Assyrian, the work of Rawlinson, cited above, p. XCV. There is no longer any doubt that the oldest class of cuneiform inscriptions covers a Semitic language. MM. Westergaard and de Saulcy, the late Mr. Burnouf, put the fact out of question. And in this regard, allow me to place here the expression of the deep regrets that the premature loss of Mr. Burnouf inspires in all friends of science. A rare man, of incredible erudition, of sagacity that bordered on prodigy, of marvelous prudence, England and Germany rightly envied us. He had done preparatory work on the Assyrian writings which he did not have time to complete and the fruit of which is thus lost for us. Perhaps it will be a long time before the eminent place of this great spirit is occupied again.

204

Ewald,Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Ueber die SahoSprache in Aethiopian,t. V, p. 410.

205

The Sahos live not far from Mossawa, or better Massowa

206

(foreign alphabet) on the Red Sea. Until d'Abbadie, they had always been confused sometimes with the Gallas, sometimes with the Danakils. (Ewald,Ueber die Saho-Sprache, t. v, p. 412.)

Ewald, loc. cit., p. 422, thinks that the saho wasseparatedothers Semitic languages in immeasurable antiquity. He uses this separate word because he assumes that the Semitic home is in Asia. However, struck by the world of ideas that the examination of black languages raises, he exclaims: "What new clarity is presented to us by the existence of such languages on the African continent, from the point of view of history primitive of “Semitic” peoples and idioms! » Mr. Ewald is not mistaken, it is quite a revelation.

207

Pott, open. cited, t. II, p. 8.

208

Pott, open. quoted,loc. quote.

209

This opinion, based on the work of missionaries and travelers, and in particular those of d'Abbadie and Krapf, find vigorous propagators in M. de la Gabelentz,Zeitschrift dm Gesellsch., t. I, p. 238; Mr. Ewald, in his beautiful memoir on the Saho language; Mr. Krapf, directly, in an essay entitled:From the African Ostküste(same collection, t. III, p. 311), and Mr. Pott, whose authority is so great on such a subject. Ritter and Carus share the same opinion (Erdkunde;Ungleiche Befæhigung der Menschbeitsstæmme, p. 34.)

210

By this time, Aramaic was already distinct from the language of Canaan.

211

(Gen., XXXI, 47): “Quem (tumulum) vocavit Laban Tumulum testis, et Jacob, Acervum testimonii, uterque juxta proprietatem lingum suit. » Aramaic words are (in Aramaic) Hebrew words (in Hebrew).

Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 337. The arrival of Joktanids and the founding of their major states in southern Arabia predate the time of Abraham.

212

Movers,das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 63-70. Between Abraham and Moses, Palestine had been the scene of considerable population movements. Moreover, many non-Israelite Abrahamid nations had established themselves there, such as the children of Cetura, the sons of Ishmael, those of Esau , those of Lot, etc.

213

Ewald,G.d. V. Israel, t. I, p. 338.

214

Ewald,G.d. V. Israel, t. I, p. 262

215

Same work, p. 278.

216

I do not mention the ports of Gaza and Ascalon, because they do not

217

were founded only after the emigration from Crete, determined by the conquests of Hellene Minos, 1548 BC. Moreover, the Assyrians, faithful to their system of freeing themselves from the Phoenician monopoly, seized very promptly from these two cities and gave them much power. (Ewald, work cited, t. I, p. 294 and 367; Gesenius, Description of the Hebrew Sprache, p. 14.)

MoversPhœnizische Alterthum, t. II-I, p. 298 and 378. Politics

218

Assyrian rule made the Canaanite States tremble; when there was no direct domination, the influence remained enormous and, mingling with the quarrels of the parties, supporting the weak to ruin the strong, gave rise to incessant quarrels and made peace even more formidable than war. Mr. Movers very well describes the play of these ancient combinations, and proves that the principal aim of the statesmen of Assyria concerned commercial questions. Movers,das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II-I, p. 259 and 271, et passim.

219

The Mahabharata does not know the names of Babylon or the Chaldea. However, there had always been a great trade between the Hindu Arians and the Western world through the Phoenicians, either before or after they left Tylos and Aradus in the Persian Gulf. (Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 858 et passim.) I will speak elsewhere of Chinese porcelain vases found in Egyptian tombs of the most ancient dynasties.

220

The Negroes even give this title to the Mahalaselys, a Kaffir tribe, who

221

seems to deserve this honor by the possession of cloth clothes and houses equipped with stairs. (Prichard,Natural history of man, t. II, p. 21.)

The Hamite annals appear to have been preserved with great

222

care by those concerned. M. d'Ewald considers the XIVechapter of Genesis and other fragments of the same book as borrowings from these stories. (Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 71.) In his opinion, these works of the Canaanite peoples would also have served as the basis for the cosmogonic and genealogical part of Genesis, written by a Levite in the time of Solomon. (Operation cited, p. 87 et passim.)

We will see, when it comes to the Arian nations, all the reasons which exist to assimilate the gods of Assyria to the ancient white heroes. It does not appear doubtful to Mr. Rawlinson that the fish god and the goddess Derceto, represented on the sculptures of Khorsabad and Bi-Soutoun, were the images of the patriarchs who escaped the last flood.

223

Movers,das Phœnizische Alterth., t. II-I, p. 15. This is what carries

224

Mr. Movers to combat the testimony of Herodotus, and to maintain that the Phoenicians were not emigrants from Tylos.

Movers,Das Phœnizische Allerthum, t. II, 1Dgo.

225

The man from the country of Arpaxad (Gen., X-22). All people

226

coming out of Shem, in the first generation, are named in the order of their geographical position, starting from the south and ending with the northwest: Elam, beyond the Tigris, near the Persian Gulf;

Ashur, Assyria, going up the Tigris, towards the north; Arpaxad, Armenia, leaning to the west; Lud, Lydia; Aram descends towards the south with the course of the Euphrates. (Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I.)

Movers,das Phœnizische Atterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 352 et passim.

227

Id.ibid.,p. 369.

228

Movers,loc. quote.

229

Movers, t. II, 1D, part, p. 367 et passim.

230

Movers, t. II, 2epart, p. 629.

231

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 366.

232

Strabo, book III The city of this era, with a population that the

233

great geographer could only compare to that of Rome, still only occupied the island. It had, however, been enlarged by Balbus.

The Phoenicians named their countryChnaor land of Chanaan par excellence; but this claim was not recognized by the other nations even of the family, who did not attribute a collective name to all the States of the Syrian coast (Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 65.) Besides the Phoenicians, the race of Canaan has many branches. Here is the enumeration given in Genesis, Samaræum and Amathæm..."

234

Still in the time of Saint Augustine, the common people of Carthage

235

Roman gave itself the name ofChanani. (Gesenius,Hebrew Grammatikp. 16.)

Nothing is more ridiculous than the philanthropic meaning attributed by a few

236

modern to the myth of the Tyrian Hercules. The Semite hero and his

companions made mistakes against each other and did not right those of others.

A scholar with a reputation as great as it is deserved, M. de Saulcy, formulated a new theory about the medic, in which he discovered elements belonging to the Turkic languages. By adopting this very interesting hypothesis, it would undoubtedly become essential to add one more constituent part to the medic. But the relationships also existing within this idiom, between Indo-Germanic and Semitic, and which I point out, would not be disturbed. (See F. de Saulcy,

237

Analytical research on the cuneiform inscriptions of the medical system, Paris, 1850.)

Klaproth,Asia polyglot, p, 65; see also, regarding medicine, Rœdiger and Pott,Kurdish Studio, in theZeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlands, t. III, p. 12-13.

238

Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 420.

239

Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel,t. I, p. 334.

240

Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 753

241

Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 858 et al. Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 272 et al.

242

Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 265.

243

Damascus was possessed, some time after Abraham, by an emigration

244

Semites from Armenia. Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 367. Later, another invasion from the same source overthrew the national dynasty of Ben-Hadad, and replaced it with a family which bore the title of Derketade, ibid., p. 274. In Greek and Roman times, the Damascenes, by a pretension which is rarely found among peoples as among individuals, denied the extreme antiquity of their city, and claimed for it the honor of having been founded by Abraham.

The Sandonids of Lydia boasted an Assyrian origin. (Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 329.)

245

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 277. The Ethiopians, (in Greek), Greeks,

246

are the children of Kush. They are Arabs this word (in Arabic) indicates the black color of the faces, like that of (in Greek) indicates the coppery, reddish complexion of the Canaanites.

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 411. This natural alliance between Assyrians and Greeks, competitors of the Phoenicians, is very well characterized by what was happening in Cyprus. There was a double population there early on; one Semitic, the other Greek. The Greek Cypriots stood for the Assyrians, the Semites for Tyre. (Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, 387.)

247

Movers,das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 411.

248

Ewald,Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 87.

249

Moreover, the family of Tharé's son did not only consist of

250

people from the same stock. When he formed a covenant with the Lord and had circumcised all the males in his house, they all became Hebrews, although the text expressly says that among them there were slaves bought with money and of strangers (Gen., XVII, 27): “Et omnes viri domus illius, “tam vernaculi, quam emptitiiand alienigenæ, pariter circumcisi sunt. » We must also conclude from the express words of the holy book that Israelite nationality resulted much less from descent than from circumcision. Here are the express words (Gen., XVII, 11): “Et “circumcidetis carnem præputii vestri ut sit in signum fœderis inter me et vos…” (121: “Omne masculinum in generationibus vestris; tam “vernaculus quam emptitius circumcidetur. ..” And (XXXIV, 15): “Sed in hoc valebimus “fœderari, si volueritis esse similes nostri et circumcidatur in vobis omne masculini “sexus.” (13): “Tunc dabimus mutuo filias vestras ac nostras: et habitabimus vobiscum, "erimusque unus populus." According to such a system, it was impossible for the purity of races to be

maintained, whatever efforts could be made elsewhere for this purpose. Gen., xv, 19; Sam., 1, 15, 6; Ewald,Description of the VolkesIsrael, t. I, p. 298 et passim.

251

Gen., XX, 12: “Alias autem et vere soror mea est, filia patris mei; And non filia matris meæ et duxi eam in uxorem.

252

Gen., XXIX, 3-13.

253

I will cite, of all the passages which establish it, only the one which has

254

relation to the descendants of Joseph. He was Israel's favorite son, the pure man par excellence; he had, however, married an Egyptian woman. Gen., XLIV, 20: “Natique sunt joseph filii in terra Ægypti, quos “genuit ei Aseneth, filia Potiphare sacerdotis Heliopoleos: Manasses and Ephraim. »

Isaiah calls the Hebrew,language of Canaan(XXXIV, 11, 13).

255

Ewald, t. I, p. 71.

256

Isaiah, XLIX, 12. Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 857.

257

Movers,Das Phœnizische Alterthum,t. II, 1Dpart, p. 302.

258

Gen. XXXVI, 8: “Habitavitque Esau in monte Seir...”

259

(In Hebrew) hole, cave.

260

Sometimes the Vulgate saysHorræi(Gen., XXXIV, 20, 21 and 29), and sometimes

261

Horræi(Deuteron., II, 12).

Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 273. The Choreans had occupied, in earlier times, both banks of the Jordan as far as the Euphrates towards the northeast and south as far as the Red River.

262

Moreover, there is quite frequent mention of these black tribes in Genesis, Deuteronomy and the Paralipomena, everywhere, in fact, where aborigines appear. They are not only known by one name. Called Choreans in Genesis, Deuteronomy also names them Emim (in Hebrew) whose singular is (in Hebrew) which means terror. The Emim would therefore be the terrors, the people whose aspect of terror (Deuter., II, 10 and 11). We still find a particular tribe, formerly established in the territory of Ar, since assigned to the Ammonites. The latter called them the Zomzommin (in Hebrew) The text thus describes their country and themselves. (Deuter., II, 20): “Terra gigantum “reputata est et in ipsa olim habitaverunt gigantes, quos Animonitæ vocant Zomzommim,” 21. Populus magnus et multus et proceræ longitudinis, sicut Enacim, quos delevit “Dominus a facie eorum.. ." Gesenius relates the root of this people's name to the unusual quadrilateral: (in Hebrew) (murmuravit, fremuit). Finally, the Choreans, the Emim, the Zomzommim, these men of terror and noise, are always compared to the Enacim, the men with long necks, the giants par excellence. The latter, before the arrival of the Israelites, inhabited the surroundings of Hebron. Partly exterminated, what survived took refuge in the cities of the Philistines, where they were still encountered at a fairly low time. There is no doubt that the famous champion who fought against the shepherd David, Goliath (whose name means the exile, the refugee), belonged to this proscribed family.

Deuteron., II, 12 “In Seir autem prius habitaverunt Horræi quibus expulsis atque deletis, “habitaverunt filii Esau, sicut fecit Israel in terra possessionis suæ, quam dedit illi “Dominus. »

263

Wilkinson,Customs and manners of the ancient Egyptians,t. I, p. 3. – This author believes the Egyptians to be of Asian origin. He cites the passage from Pliny (VI, 34) who, according to Juba, notes that the residents of the Nile, from Syene to Meroe, were Arabs. Lepsius (Briefe aus Ægypten, Æthyopien,etc.; Berlin, 1852) asserts the same fact for the entire Nile valley as far as Khartoum, perhaps even for populations further south, along the Blue Nile, p. 220.

264

AW v. Schlegel,Vorrede zur Darstellung der Ægyptischen Mythology,von Prichard, übers. von Z. Haymann (Bonn, 1837), p. XIII.

265

Lepsius (work cited, p. 220) says that the paintings executed in the Hypogeums of the ancient empire represent the Egyptians with the color yellow. Under the 18th centuryedynasty, they are reddish.

266

Among the Negro nations represented and named on the monuments, the Toreses, the Tarcao, the Ethiopians or Kush, present a very prognathous and woolly type (Wilkinson,work cited,t. I, p. 387-388.)

267

This is a truth that struck Mr. Shaffarik in hisSlawish Alterthümer(t. I, p. 24).

268

Mr. Lepsius, in agreement with Mr. Bunsen, expresses himself thus on the subject of

269

Egyptian chronology: "When it comes to the monuments, sculptures and inscriptions of the 5e"dynasty, we are transported to an era of flourishing civilization which anticipated the "Christian era offour thousand years.We cannot remember too much to ourselves and repeat to others this date hitherto considered so incredible. The more criticism is solicited on this point and forced into more and more severe research, the better it will be for the question. » (Briefe aus Ægypten,etc., p. 36.)

This is the period after the expulsion of the Hyksos, and we call itnew empire.The age of the pyramids is more remote, as we will see elsewhere. Mr. Champollion-Figeac places the advent of the 12edynasty. (Ancient Egypt, Paris, 1840.)

270

A king, upon ascending the throne, began the erection of the pyramid which would one day serve as his tomb. He made it of mediocre size, in order to have time to complete it if he survived the first construction, he covered it with a covering of stone which made it grow in thickness and height. This work completed, he undertook a similar one, and continued in this way until the end of his days. Him

271

dead, the covering started was only completed; but the successor, starting to work on his own account, did not add others. (Lepsius,Briefe aus Ægypten,p.42.) Baron d'Eckstein does not agree with this fact very strongly and too affirmed by Mr. de Bohlen. However, he recognizes, in the most explicit way, the Hindu origin. Here are his very expressions: “Although Coptic is the antipodes of Sanskrit, a thousand reasons nevertheless seem to me to conspire to find in the basin of the Indus the seat of the primitive civilization transported to the valley of the Nile. » (Searchhistories of primitive humanity,p. 76.) Mr. Wilkinson shares this opinion and considers the Egyptians as a Hindu colony (vol. I, p. 3).

272

We must not lose sight of the fact that Coptic or Demotic language, the only

273

The help we have for translating hieroglyphic inscriptions is only a dialect, a degeneration, a sort of mutilation of the sacred language, and we should know if Sanskrit traces are not more abundant in this oldest idiom. – See Brugsch, Zeitschrift of the German Morgenlændischen Gesellschaft,t. III, p. 266.

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 225 et al.

274

Id.Ibid.,p.231.

275

Id.ibid., p. 225 et al.

276

Genesis finds Semites among the sons of Mesraim, son of Ham

277

: “At vero Mesraim “genuit Ludin and Anamim, and Laabim Nephtuïm and Phetrusim and Chasluim; of quibus “egressi sunt Philistiim, and Caphtorim (X, 13, 14). »

Mr. de Bohlen found between the founder of Egyptian royalty and the mythical legislator of India, Manu, a great connection of names.

278

Schlegel,Preface to Egyptian Mythologyby Prichard, p. XV. – A difference with the Hindus that Mr. de Schlegel finds radical,

279

this is circumcision. The Hindus did not know this usage practiced in Egypt and in which we see, wrongly, a Judaic custom. Like tattooing, it is an originally Negro idea and entirely consistent with the notions of this species. The hygienic goal, by which we seek to justify or explain it today, seems to me hardly admissible, whether circumcision takes place on men only or on men and women without distinction, as we see in several African tribes. I only recognize in the origin of this custom the desire to create a distinctive mark, or, perhaps even, only a simple derivative of the native taste for mutilation, which, depending on the times and places, the populations which have adopted and explained as they wish. Among the Ekkhilis, circumcision is practiced on adults and in an atrocious manner. The operator tears off the skin from the foreskin, in the presence of the victim's parents and fiancée. The slightest sign of pain is considered dishonorable. Tetanus often kills the patient after a few days. The reader has perhaps already noticed that modern nations are the the only ones who knew how to draw an exact barrier between respect and adoration. Whether it comes from fear or love, respect for peoples mixed strongly with black or yellow easily goes to the extreme. In some, it creates divinization pure and simple; among others, the superstitious cult of ancestors.

280

At a fairly low time, the Arians pushed into these peoples. They only passed through and left no trace of their stay. (Lassen.Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 533.)

281

Schlegel,work cited,p. XXIV.

282

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 237 et al. In Egypt, there was no caste

283

truly impure than the subdivision of the swineherds. According to Herodotus, there were seven classes; according to Diodorus, three or five. Strabo names three; Plato, in the Timaeus, six, with subdivisions of trades, arts, etc.

One of the capitals of the ancient empire is Thebes,Tapou. She was founded by Setortesen 1er, first king of the Theban dynasty, the 12th eby Manetho, 2,300 BC. (Lepsius,Briefe aus Ægypten,p. 272.)

284

Rosellini found the name Sesortesen (M. de Bunsen, Orsitasen 1er by Wilkinson), on a stele in Nubia, near Wadi-Halfa. This same prince had also invaded the Sinai peninsula. (Bunsen, vol. II, p. 307. See also Lepsius,Briefe aus Ægypten,etc., p. 336 et pass.) – The exploitation of the copper mines of Sinai began under the old empire. It was then that it had the most importance.

285

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 301.

286

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 4. Movers, vol. II, 1Dpart, 282. This name applied also in Nedj and Yemen. It still extended to the nearest part of Asia. Holy Scripture makes Nimrod a Kushite.

287

Among the oldest pyramids, several are built in

288

mud bricks, which almost identifies them with the mounds of primitive white peoples. (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 50.)

The oldest names, in the ovals, are preceded by the title of priest

289

instead of that of king. (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 19.)

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 246.

290

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 250.

291

Herodotus, 11, 47.

292

The fate of the prisoners seems to have been less harsh. Mr Wilkinson

293

affirms it. We do not see them, as on the Ninevite monuments, dragged by the victors by means of a ring passed through the lower lip. They were sold and became slaves. (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 403 et passim.)

The type of Egypt was fixed under the third dynasty which, following

294

Mr. Bunsen began ninety years after the first. (Bunsen, Ægyptens Stars in the World,t. III, p. 7.)

In the Beni-Hassan hypogea we see paintings representing gladiator fights of a very fair complexion, with blue eyes, beard and reddish hair. Mr. Lepsius considers these figures to be the images of men of Semitic race, probably ancestors of the Hyksos (Lepsius,Reise in Egypt,etc., p. 98.). – Before overthrowing the ancient empire and forcing the Egyptian dynasties to seek refuge in Ethiopia, the Hyksos had initially established themselves peacefully in the country, and most likely had mixed with the indigenous population. – I will note, in passing, that, according to the testimony of the monuments that I cite, the countries of earlier Asia had, in the age of the Pharaohs, certain groups of populations that were much whiter than today. They were, so to speak, only coming down from the northern mountains and had as yet contracted only a limited number of alliances with the Melanian species.

295

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 140. – The two predecessors of Tirhakah,

296

Ethiopians like him were Sabakoph and Shebek. Tirhakah, moreover, paid homage to the Egyptian genius by returning, of his own accord, to Ethiopia (Lepsius, p. 275). A species of Mantchou, he had never reigned, as well as his predecessors of the same blood, except in the ancient way of the country.

Wilkinson, t, I, p. 22, 85 et passim, 165 et passim, 206 et passim, W. v. Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache,t. I, p. 60.

297

This city was called Nagara. (Lassen,Indisch Alterth.,t. I, p. 748.)

298

It will perhaps one day be the most solid and real glory of our time than these admirable discoveries which today come to transform and enrich, on all sides, the formerly so dry and so restricted domain of primordial history. Considerable ruins and countless inscriptions have been discovered in Arabia

299

southern. The Himyarite annals emerge from nothingness where they were almost entirely buried, and, before long, what we will know of this antiquity, not only distant, but more foreign to us than that of Nineveh and even of Thebes, because it was more absolutely local and turned towards India in its external expansion, will have no less interest in all human chronicles than all the conquests of the same kind with which science is enriched by elsewhere.

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 4. – This scholar speaks out without hesitation against the

300

system beloved of negrophiles. Mr. Lepsius is no less peremptory. Speaking of the pyramid of Assur, he pronounces the following judgment: “The most important result of our examination, carried out half by the light of the moon, half by that of the torches, was not precisely of the most “rejoicing. I acquired the irrefutable conviction ( unabweissliche) that, in this monument, “the most famous of all those of ancient Ethiopia, I had before my eyes only the remains” of a relatively very modern art. » (Briefe aus Ægypten, etc., p. 147.) And a few lines further down: “It would be in vain, from now on, for one to claim to support on the testimony of ancient monuments the hypotheses concerning a glorious and ancient Meroe, whose inhabitants would have been the predecessors and the masters of the Egyptians “in civilization. » (Cited work, p. 184.) Mr. Lepsius does not think that the oldest Ethiopian constructions go beyond the reign of Tirhakah, a prince who had received his royal education in Egypt and who flourished in the 7thecentury BC only.

J.Ludolf,Comm. ad. History. Aethiopic., p. 61.

301

Prichard,Natural history of man(German translation of

302

Wagner, with annotations), t. I, p. 324.

MT Benfey has brought together a large number of arguments and facts both

303

lexicological as well as grammatical, to bring this last truth to light. See his book entitled:Ueber das Verhæltniss der ægyptischen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamme,in-8°; Leipzig, 184.

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 387 et passim.

304

Id.,ibid.

305

Herodotus, II, 30

306

According to M. Lepsius, the dynasties driven out by the Hyksos took refuge on the edge of Ethiopia and left some monuments there. (Briefe aus Ægypten,etc., p. 267.)

307

At Abou-Simbel, on the left leg of one of the four colossi of

308

Rhamses, the second going towards the south, we find a Greek inscription and several Chanaanite inscriptions commemorating the pursuit of the fugitive warriors by the Greek and Carian soldiers in the pay of Psammatik. – Lepsius,Briefe aus Ægypten,p. 261.

Ludolf,Comm. ad Hist.Æthiop.,p. 61.–CT Johannsen,History Jemanæ,Bonn, 1828, p. 80: “Ait deinde Hamza, Maaditis eum sororis

309

filium Alharithsum b. Amru præfecisse, “Meccam et Medinam expugnasse, tum ad Jemanam reversum judaismum cum populo suo “amplexum, Judæos in jemanam vocasse, atque jemanenses et Rebiitas fœdere “conjunxisse. »

Prichard,Naturgeschichte d. Mr.G., t. I, p. 324.

310

Johannsen,Historia Jemanæ, p. 89 et passim. – The domination of Abyssinians in Yemen was of very short duration, it began in 529 AD and ended in 589. (Ibid.,p. 100.)

311

And also Timbuktu in Morocco. (SeeAsian newspaper,1erJanuary 1853;Letter to Mr. Defrémery, on Ahmed Baba, the Timbuktien,by MA Cherbonneau.)

312

Brugsch,Zeitschrift d. deutsch Morgenl. Geselisch., t. III, p. 266 and

313

passim.

Wilkinson, t. I, p. 85 and passim, p. 206; Lepsius, 276.

314

Here is the text and the translation of Mr. de Bunsen: (Phrase in French foreign) Kaiechos... Unter ihm wurde die goettliche Verehrung der Stiere, des Apis in Memphis und des Mnævis in Heliopolis, so wie des mendesischen Bockes eingeführt. (Bunsen, II, p. 103.)

315

It cannot be useless to recall here what the prosperity was which reached the States of the Nile valley. We know that, in its greatest extent, this region is not 50 German miles wide, and that in length, from the Mediterranean Sea to Syene, it is approximately 120. In this narrow space, Herodotus places 20,000 towns and villages, at the time of Amasis. Diodorus into account 18,000. Today's France, twelve times larger, has only 39,000. The population of Thebes, in the time of Homer, can be calculated at 2,800,000 inhabitants, and when I think of that which, in later periods, reached Syracuse, much less rich and less powerful, I in no way share the surprise and the disbelief of Mr. de Bohlen. ( Das alte Indian,t. I, p. 32 et passim.)

316

According to the chronology of Wilkinson, who recognizes this prince in the

317

Rhamsès Amoun-Maï of the monuments, diopolite king of the 19e dynasty, and which made him reign in 1235 BC (Wilkinson, t. I, p. 83.) – Mr. Lepsius reports this Rhamses much higher and places him in the 20edynasty, in the 15th century BCE. (Briefe aus Ægypten, p. 274.)

Under Osirtasen Ier(1740 BC, according to Wilkinson's calculation), the

318

monuments are magnificent. Beni-Hassan's sculptures belong to this era, the most brilliant for the arts. (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 22.) This is the beginning of the new empire. These are no longer the most colossal constructions; so, although art is in all its beauty, it has already passed its period of growth. The Osirtasen Ierby Wilkinson is the same as the Sesortesen of M. le Chevalier Bunsen (t. II, p. 306.)

Mr. Lepsius notes that, throughout the duration of the ancient empire, the

319

civilization was essentially peaceful; he adds that the Greeks never even suspected the existence of this period of glory and power prior to the domination of the Hyksos. (Lepsius,Briefe aus Ægypten, etc.) The new empire, whose establishment was determined by the expulsion of the Hyksos, began 1700 years BCE, and Amosis was its first king. (Lepsius, p. 272.)

Bunsen, t. II p. 307; Lepsius, p. 336 et passim; Movers, das Phœniz.

320

Alterth., t. II, lDpart, p. 301.

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p. 281. This historian attributes the stele to

321

question to Memnon, and the contemporary event of the Trojan War.

Mr. de Bunsen makes a very true and conclusive judgment on the

322

alleged expansions of Egyptian power towards Asia. Here are the terms in which he expresses himself: “It seems risky to us to declare the names of the peoples indicated on these monuments (the tomb of Neropt at Beni-Hassan) as Asian, as northern, whenever known countries, such as Chanana and Naharaim (Chanaan and Mesopotamia) are not indicated, and to pretend to look among these names for new lists of nations, in Iran and Turan. Is it then the south that is northern Libya, Cyrenaica, Syrtica, Numidia, Getulia, in a word, the entire northern coast of Africa? Is it even a country of Negroes (nahao)? Or did the Egyptians only have to think of the northern countries of Asia, Palestine, Syria, where they could only run errands? On the other hand, they would have kept themselves isolated from any “contact with the countries of northern Africa!” » (Egypt's Star in the World, t. II, p. 311.)

Two causes seem to me above all to induce Egyptologists to give in to their enthusiastic admiration for the illustrious people whose history they study and whose very natural inclination leads them to exaggerate the merits. One is the expressionnorthern peoples,inscribed in the commemorative hieroglyphs of warlike expeditions and which easily carries the thought towards the northeast; the other is the meeting

323

of certain ethnic or geographical names that we find a way to bring together the names of several known Asian peoples. It is quite simple, no doubt, that when monuments speak of Kanana, ofLemanonand D'Ascalon, we recognize areas of the Syrian coast. (Wilkinson, t. I, p. 386.) But when, in theKheta, we want to recognize the Getae, it is absolutely as if in the Gallas of Abyssinia we claimed to find Celtic Gallas, and all the more so since the Getae or (in Greek) Greeks were barbarian peoples, while the Kheta are represented, on Egyptian monuments, as a very civilized nation. The paintings of Medinet-Abou show us them dressed in long robes of brilliant colors falling to the ankle, with thick beards and straight eyes. They are therefore not, in all cases, men of the yellow race. They fought in very good order, the soldiers armed with swords in the first rank, the pikemen in the second. The Memnonium of Thebes also represents their fortresses surrounded by a double moat. (Wilkinson, t. I, 384.) Also, although the name ofKheta on Shetahas a certain relationship of sound with that ofGestures, there is nothing there to justify an identification of nations which were certainly very dissimilar. Same thing ofTokhari.Egyptian paintings give them a regular profile, a slightly aquiline nose, and a hairstyle somewhat similar to the Persian miter. We see them traveling in sort of carts with their wives and children. This is enough for Mr. Wilkinson to confuse them withTokhariknown to the Greeks,Tokkharaof the Mahabharata, inhabitants of Sogdiana and Bactria, on the upper Iaxarte and the Zariaspe. Mr. Lassen shares this opinion (Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 852). Mr. Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlinson seems to me to be better inspired when, finding on an Assyrian cylinder the mention of an expedition of Sennacherib against theTokhari who inhabit the valley of Salbura, he refuses to lead the troops of his Chaldean hero as far as the Oxus, and limits himself to looking for these famous Tokhari in the south of Asia Minor ( Report of the RAS,p. XXXVIII).I believe that true history would only benefit from being strongly on guard against indefinite extensions of so-called conquests which are only justified by evidence as fragile as resemblances of names and a few vague physiological resemblances.

The first conquests in Ethiopia date back, according to Mr. Lepsius, to the old empire, and were authored by Sesortesen III, king of the 12e

324

dynasty, which founded the ramparts of Semleh and later became a topical deity. (Briefe aus Ægypten, p. 259.) – Mr. Bunsen sends Sesortesen II not only to the Sinai peninsula, but to the entire northern coast of Africa as far as Spain; he then brings it back to Asia and Europe as far as Thrace. It's a lot. (Bunsen, cited work, vol. II, p. 306 et passim.)

Bunsen, t. II, p, 214 et passim.

325

Movers,das Phœn. Alterth.,t. II, 1Dpart, p. 298.

326

Phoenicia alone took some account of it; small nations Hebrew or Chanaanite groups showed an almost absolute predilection for Assyrian ideas. I explained it above: these small border states were subject to a lot of consideration, at the same time as a lot of seductions, and there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that, in the immediate vicinity of Egypt, there are some traces of the influence of this country. In any case, it would be wrong to accept the idea too easily. More than one supposedly Egyptian custom is just as easy to claim for other origins. The shape of the tanks is identical at Memphis and Khorsabad (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 346; Botta,Nineveh Landmarks) ; the construction of the war places was extremely similar (loc. quote.), etc., etc.

327

Bunsen, t. II, p. 320.

328

In the VIIIecentury BC, the Egyptians did not even have

329

navy, although at that time they had included the Delta in their empire. The Chanaanite, Semitic or Greek peoples were the only navigators who could have animated the commerce of their country; They attached such secondary importance to this advantage that, to defend themselves against the insults of the pirates, they did not hesitate to close the entrance to the Nile with dams which made it impassable to all ships. (Movers, dasPhœnizich Alterth.,t. II, 1Dpart, p. 370.) – In

In short, the wars of the Egyptians on the Asian side always had a rather defensive character than an aggressive one, and the very influence that the Pharaohs strove to gain in the Phoenician cities was rather aimed at neutralizing the action of the Assyrian governments than pursue positive results. (Movers,ibid,p. 298, 299, 415 et passim.)

I hear here about the Hyksos who overthrew the old empire.

330

Blue,Zeitschrift der deutsch. Morgenl. Geselisch, t. III, p. 448.

331

Wordku-tetameans in Kaffirtalk, and in Suahili,to fight, because that the violent and screaming expression of the Africans resembles a quarrel. (Krapf,From the African Ostküste,in theZeitschrift der deutsch. morgenl. Gesellschaft,t. III, p. 317.)

332

Lassen,Indisch. Atterth.,t. I, p. 853; see note 1 p. 229 of this volume. The Himalayas contain numerous remains of black or mulatto populations who are certainly aboriginal.

333

According to Ritter, the Sanskrit peoples pushed back to Lanka (Ceylon) the negroes and the yellow and black half-breeds (Malays), who originally spread in the north. (Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. I,

334

p. 435.)

If we absolutely wanted to apply names to language groups

335

of nations, it would be more reasonable, however, to qualify the Arian branch asHindu-Celtic. We would at least thus have the designation of the two geographical extremes, and we would indicate the two most different sides of the system; but, for a thousand reasons, this name would still be detestable.

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 6; Burnouf,Commentary on the

336

Yaçna, t. I, p. 461, note.

THEManava-Dharma-Sastra, translation by Haughton, shares the

337

national territory, outside of which a çoudra, pressed by hunger, has

only the right to live, in several categories. Here is its classification (t. " (This is the territory originally inhabited by the Arians pure of any black or yellow mixture.) Now come §§ 21 and 22, which are expressed thus: "That country which lies between Himawat and Vindhya, to "the east of Vinasana and to the west of Prayaga, is celebrated by the title of “Medhyadesa, or the central region. » §22: “As far as the eastern, and as far as the “western Oceans between the two mountains just mentioned, lies the tract which the wise “have named Aryaverta, or inhabited by respectable men. »

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 6.

338

Ibid., 526. We find, in historical periods, a large number of

339

names of Aryan peoples in this country, which the Orientals call Touran, and which, until now, has been falsely considered as inhabited exclusively by yellow hordes. Thus, we see there, with Pliny, the Ariacæ, the Antariani, the Aramæi, who so strongly recall the word zend aïryaman. (Burnouf,Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I, p. CV-CVI). Burnouf also notices that obviously Arian place names are those where we find the words: Açp, horse, arvat or aurvat, water, pati, master. Ptolemy cites them in Scythia and even in Serica, Açpabota, Açpacara, Açparatah.

The same root is found in pa-zendhirOrir, which means master, in Latinherusand in GermanHerr. (Burnouf,op. quote., t. I, p. 460.)

340

Lassen,Indisch., Alterth.,t. I, p. 516. – I will add to the opinion of Mr. Lassen that of a great supporter of the physical and moral unity of the human species. Here is the confession that escapes Mr. Prichard: “Diese Eindringlinge (die indo-Europæer) scheinen ihnen (den Allophylen) “überall an geistigen Gaben überlegen gewesen zu seyn. Einige indoeuropæische Nationen “haben wirklich viele charakteristische Kennzeichen von Barbarei und Wildheit “zurückbehalten oder

341

bekommen; aber mit diesen verbanden sie alle, unzweifelhafte “Zeichen von frühzeitiger inteIlectueller Entwickelung, besonders eine hœhere Kultur der “Sprach. » (Prichard,Naturgeschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts,t. III, 1Dpart, p. 11.) Lassen, p. 404.

342

Lassen, p. 404 and 854.

343

This is how Mr. Lassen very clearly points out that the climate cannot be held responsible for the degree of coloring of the Hindu populations, given that the Malabars are browner than the Kandys of Ceylon, and the people of Guzarate than those of Karnatik (t. I p. 407.)

344

Burnouf,Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 237,

345

314.

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 854.

346

These villages were calledForamong the Hindus, (in Greek) among the

347

Greeks.

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 807.

348

We follow very well, in the Arian languages, the two parts of this word

349

compound :viç, which meansHouse,becomes, by extension, a collection of houses, and is found in thevicusLatin and its derivative above, the inhabitant ofvicus. Pati,the chief, in Sanskrit, it is in Armenianpod,in Slavicpod, in Latvianskate,in Polish bang, in the gothicfaths.(Burnouf,How. on the Yaçna,t. I, p. 461; Schaffarik,Stawische Alterthümer,t. I, p. 283.)

THEManava-Dharma-Sastra(Haughton's translation; London, 1825, in-4°, t. II) is much more devoted to the idea of absolute monarchy than the great poems; However, he does not yet have the notions of modern Asians on this subject. After having said magnificently (chap. VII, t. VIII, 1): “A King, even though a child, must not be

350

treated “, lightly from an idea that he is a mere mortal: no; he is a powerful divinity, who appears “in a human shape,” a verse which, parenthetically, could well have been dictated by a spirit of opposition to different and earlier doctrines, the legislator adds (p. 37): “Let the “king, having risen at early dawn, respectfully attended to brahmens, learned in the three “Vedas, and in the sciences of ethics; and by their decision let him abide; » and § 54: “The king must appoint seven or eight ministers, who must be sworn by touching a “sacred image and the like; men whose ancestors were servants of kings; who are versed “in the holy book; who are personally brave; who are skilled in the use of weapons and “whose lineage is noble. » § 56: “Let him perpetually consult with those ministers on “peace and war, on his forces, on his revenues, on the protection of his people, and on the “means of bestowing aptly the wealth which he has acquired. » § 57: “Having ascertained the several opinions of his counselors, first apart and then collectively, let him do what is most beneficial for him in public affairs. » § 58: “To one learned “Brahmen, distinguished among them all, let the king impart his momentous counsel, “relating to six principal articles. » § 59: “To him, with full confidence, let “him intrust” all transactions; and, with him, having taken his final resolution, let him begin all his “measures.” » This would deny the positive affirmation of the Vedic hymns. (Lassen, Indisch. Alterthüm.,t. 1, p. 734.)

351

In Zend-Avesta, the man of war is calledratbâestâo,the one

352

which is on the cart.

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 617.

353

Lassen,ibid.,p.816. – Although pastors par excellence, they were not not absolutely foreign to agricultural work either, and I would be tempted to believe that, if, in their first part, they did not devote themselves more to it, it is because the soil and climate did not allow them to derive sufficient benefits from it.

354

Ibid., p. 734

355

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I.

356

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 755.

357

Here are the cosmogonic notions preserved by one of the hymns of the

358

Rigveda: “Then there was neither being nor non-being. No universe, no atmosphere, nor anything above; nothing, nowhere, for the good of anyone, enveloping or enveloped. Death was not, nor was it immortality, nor the distinction between day and night. But THIS throbbed without “breathing, alone with the relationship to itself contained within it. There was nothing more. Everything “was veiled in darkness and immersed in indiscernible water. But this mass thus veiled “was manifested by the force of contemplation. Desire (kama, love) was born first "in its essence, and it was the original, creative seed, which the wise, who recognized it in their own hearts, through meditation, distinguished, in the heart of nothingness, "as being the link of Existence. » – Lassen,Indisch. Atterth.,t. I, p. 774 It is deeper and more vigorously analyzed than the language of Hesiod and the Celtic songs; but it's no different.

A god before Indra seems to have beenVourounas,OrVouranas;he has since become, among primitive Hindus,Varouna,and among the most ancient Greeks,Ouranos; “it is physically the sky that covers the earth. » – Eckstein,Historical research on primitive humanity, p. 1-2.

359

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 771.

360

Lassen,open. quoted,t. I, p. 755. – Another etymologist derives the wordfrom whereofdha,pose, create. (Windischmann,Jenaïsche Litteratur-Zeitung,July 1834, cited by Burnouf,How. on the Yaçna,t. I, p. 357.)

361

Schaffarik,Slawische Alterth.,t. I, p. 58.

362

Ewald,Gesch. Volkes Israel,t. I, p. 69. In Abyssinia, we do not use not this expression. One saysegzieAndamlak,which simply mean lord,and who probably made the original word disappear as a result of an idea similar to that which makes the Jews substitute the word Adonai for that of Jehovah, when they encounter it in reading the Bible. – Ewald,Ueber die Saho-Sprache,in the Zeitschrift der d. morgent. Gesellsch.,t. V, p. 419.

363

Another name, given by the Ariane race to the Divinity, is the wordGott,

364

in GothicGouth,which relates to Greek (Greek word), and Sanskrit Gouddhah.This word meansCache. –V. Windischmam,Fortschritt der Sprachen-Kunde,p. 20,and Eckstein,Historical research on primitive humanity. –Burnouf is inclined to see the root of this word in Sanskrit quaddhâta,the Uncreated. (How. on the Yaçna,t. I, p. 554.)

Lassen,Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellschaft, t. II, p. 200.

365

It is here that the existence of Hindu peoples truly begins.

366

Philology rightly seeks them out in their ethnic cradle, beyond the northern mountains; but their annals, poorly educated, declare them indigenous. It is to be believed that, in Vedic times, Brahmanism had not yet imitated the Chanaanites, the Greeks and the peoples of Italy, by accepting as its own the tradition of the inferior race which it had subjugated. – Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 511.

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 795.

367

Lassen,loc. quote. This is about the time when the oldest hymns of the Vedas.

368

Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 812.

369

Die graue Vorzeit.

370

Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 812. The royal consecration, of which he is so strong

371

question in the Ramayana, has still been practiced in modern times. W.v. Schlegel,Indische Bibliothek,t. I, p. 430.

Lassen,open. quoted,t. I, p. 514. In Kawi,varnaretained its original meaning and has not acquired the derived meaning. – See W. v. Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache,t. I, p. 83.

372

Lassen,open. quoted,p.804.

373

Lassen,Indisch. Alterthüm.,t. I, p. 804 et al. – Burnouf, Introduction to history. of Indian Buddhism,t. I, p. 141. The essential trait of Brahmins is being able to read mantras. – Lassen, open. quoted,p.806. Alms, formerly optional, is today obligatory with regard to Brahmins. The good that is done to a man of ordinary caste acquires simple merit; to a member of the priestly caste, double merit; to a student of the Vedas, merit is multiplied by a hundred thousand, and if it is an ascetic we are talking about, then it becomes immeasurable.

374

Nothing admirable like the prescriptions that theManava-DharmaSastra(translation by Haughton, London, 1825, in-4°, t. II) addresses the military caste and probably compiles older regulations. I cannot resist the pleasure of translating this page, animated by the purest chivalrous spirit. Chap. XII, § 88: “Never quit the fight, protect the people and honor the priests, such is the supreme duty of kings, the one who ensures felicity. » § 89: “These masters of the world, who, eager to defeat each other, deploy their vigor in battle without ever turning their face, ascend, after their death, directly to heaven. » § 90: “Let no man, while fighting, strike his enemy with sharp weapons handled with wood, nor with wickedly barbed arrows, nor with poisoned arrows, nor with fiery darts. » § 91: “That, mounted on a chariot or riding a steed, he does not attack an enemy on foot, nor an effeminate man, nor one who asks for life with joined hands, nor one whose hair is loose. covers the sight, nor he who, exhausted with fatigue, sits on the earth, nor he who “says: I am your captive. » § 92: “Neither he who sleeps, nor he who has lost his coat of mail, nor he who is naked; neither the one who is disarmed, nor the one who is a spectator and not an actor in the fight, nor the one who is grappling with another. » § 93: “Having

375

Translated from French to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

always in mind the duty of Arians, honorable men, that he never kill one who has broken his weapon, nor one who cries for a particular sorrow, nor one who has been seriously wounded, neither he who is afraid, nor he who turns his back. » § 98: “Such is the ancient and irreproachable law of warriors. From this law, no king must ever deviate, when he “attacks his enemies in battle. » Manava-Dbarma-Sastra, chap. VII, § 123: “Since the servants of the king, whom he has "appointed guardians of districts, are generally knaves, who sixteen what belongs to other "men, from such knaves let him defend his people. » This article was inspired, in all likelihood, by the feudalism of the kschattryas.

376

Lassen,open.quoted,t. I, p. 805.

377

Lassen,open. quoted,t. I, p. 818.

378

Id.ibid.,p. 817.

379

Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap. X, § 1: “Let the three twiceborn classes, remaining firm in “their several duties, carefully read the Veda; but a brahman must explain it to them, not a “man of the other two classes: this is an established rule. » – Chap. X. but, with a view to the next life; the duties... are almsgiving, reading, “sacrificing.” »

380

The importance of this caste and the extralegal influence it had able to exercise did not at all escape the legislators of India. I read in theManava-Dharma-Sastra,ch. VIII, § 418: “With vigilant care should the king exert himself in compelling merchant and mechanics “to perform their respective duties;for, when such men swerve from their duty, they throw this“world in confusion.»

381

Lassen,Indisch., Alterth.,t. I, p. 817 et al.

382

Burnouf,Introduction. to the history of Buddhism. Indian,t. I, p. 155. – Manava-Dharma-Sastra,chap. X, § 5: “In all classes they, and they only, who are born, in a direct order, of wives “equal in classes and virgins at the time of marriage, are to be considered as the same in “class with their father. »

383

Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap. II, § 26: “With auspicious acts

384

prescribed by the Veda, “ceremonies must over conception and so forth, be duty performed, which purify the “bodies of the three classes in this life, and qualify them for the next. » Thus it was not only for the happiness of this life that it was necessary to provide oneself with the consecration of one's caste, it was also to ensure one's future fate in the other. Then the ceremonies began from the presumed moment of conception. These were, strictly speaking, those which constituted the Hindu, independently of the idea of caste. This second condition was fulfilled in a more complete manner a few years later. Chap. II, p. 37: “Should a brahman, or his father for him, be “desirous of his advancement in sacred “knowledge; a cshatriya, of extending his power; or a Vaishya of engaging in mercantile “business; the investiture may be made in the fifth, sixth or eighth year respectively. »

Manava-Dharma-Sastra, ch II, § 38: “The ceremony of the

385

investiture hallowed by the “gayatri must not be delayed, in the case of a priest, beyond the sixteenth year, not in that “of a soldier, beyond the twenty second; nor in that of a merchant, beyond the twenty “fourth. » § 39: “After that, all youths of these three classes, who have not been invested “at the proper time, become vratyas, or outcasts, degraded from the gayatri, and contemned “by the virtuous.

Lassen,Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 821.Vratameans a living horde

386

of pillage and made up of people of all origins.

Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 507 et al.

387

If we one day accept, commonly, the extraordinary dates of

388

Egyptian history, we will have to put up with more detailed calculations

still distant for Brahmanical facts. There are remnants of Brahmanical beliefs in Zend-Avesta which are not found in the current belief of the Parsis. Burnouf, How. on the Yaçna, t. I,p. 342.

389

The name Indra is also given by the Zoroastrians to a bad

390

genius. – Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 516.

Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 525.

391

Lassen,open. quoted, t. 1,626 et al.

392

Ibid, p. 652.

393

Ibid., p. 664.

394

Ibid, p. 822.

395

Ibid, p. 713.

396

Ibid, p. 689. – The Pandavas seem to have owed their victory above all to reinforcements from the northern regions, such as the Kulindas, established in the east towards the sources of the Ganges. The Mahabharata considers them a pure race, but very outside of Hindu culture.

397

The populations of Kachemyr and Punjab had contact of

398

all species with yellow peoples, just as well as with black or mulatto tribes. In more modern times, they were invaded by the Bactrian Greeks and the Sacians, then by the Arabs, the Afghans, the Baloukis. F. Lassen,Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes,III, p. 208: Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 404. It results from such a state of affairs that the Hindu country which first saw the Arian tribes dominate is today one of those where the latter have suffered the most mixtures. In epic times, the Dârâdas of the Punjab were already counted among the reprobate peoples. – Lassen,location.cit.,p.

544.

This is how the famous classification that writers made Greeks of Hindu nations into three classes: thefishermen,THE farmers and themountain people,can, obviously, only apply to groups that are

399

very little Arianized and inhabit the western confines.

“As for the Pandits (Kashmyrians), all caste bramins, they are

400

of gross ignorance, and there is not one of our Hindu servants who does not consider himself to be of a better caste than them. They eat everything except beef, and drink arak; In India it is only people from the infamous castes who do it. » (Correspondence of V. Jacquemont. –Letter of April 22, 1831.)

The populations attacked by Alexander were half-Arian, but considered vratyas by true Hindus. These were the Mali (Malavas) and the subjects of Porus (Pourou). The Malavas were numbered among the Bahlikas, with the Ksudrakas (Oxydraques). Their Brahmins were considered irregular, and the Manava-DharmaSastra accuses them of neglecting religious teaching. – Lassen, Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 197; To WV Schlegel,Indische Bibliothek,t. I, p. 169 et al. – If the Greeks only knew the Hindus by approximation, the latter were no less ignorant towards them. In the most ancient times, men from beyond Sindh had called the populations of the west, Hamites and Semites, with whom they had commercial relations,Javana,A word that is very difficult to explain, because if it seems to generally designate Western nations, it also applies to tribes from the north, and even the south.Jawameansrun, invade.(W.by Humboldt, Ueber die KawiSprache,t. I, p. 65 et pass.; Burnouf,New Asian newspaper,t. X, p. 238.) Later,javanaparticularly designated the Arabs. The Bible, taking this expression, applies it to the Semitic inhabitants of Cyprus and Rhodes, and even to the Turdetans of Spain, and calls themJavanim.(Movers,das Phœnizische Allerthum,t. II, 1Dpart, p. 270.) Finally we find, in an inscription of Darius,Jounabecame the name of the island Greeks, and, as the use of this word among the Hellenes dates back to Homer, it is believed that the colonists of the coast received it from the Persians,

401

and, after adopting it for themselves, transmitted it to continental populations. (Lassen,Indisch. Alterth.,t. I, p. 730.) It was only very late that the Hindus knowingly recognized the Greeks in the javanas and the time is not earlier than the Ve century BC. The Mahabharata, in its later books, thus names the Macedonian-Bactrians, and praises them as part of a brave and learned people. (Lassen,ibid.,p.862, andZeitschrift für d. K. des Morgenl.,II, p. 215.) Lassen,Zeitschrift für K. des Morgenl., t. II, p. 49.

402

Lassen,Indiscb. Alterth.,t. I, 364. – A tribe which still recalls

403

best sons of Anak is the one who once lived beyond the south bank of the Yamouna, in the desert of Dandaka, up to Gadaouri. They were ferocious giants, always inclined to attack the hermitages of Brahmanical ascetics. (Open. quoted,p. 524 et passim.)

Lassen,Ibid.,p.372.

404

Ibid., p. 377.

405

Mlekkbameansweak. (Benfey,Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, Indian, p.

406

7.)

Barbara, Varvara indicates a man who has frizzy hair; papua has the same meaning. (Benfey, loc. cit.) As the word barbarian is used in all the languages of our society, we must conclude that the first non-white peoples known to the Arians were blacks, which agrees with what has been said. noticed the enormous diffusion of this breed towards the north. (Lassen, Indisch Alterth., t. I, p. 855.) Several nations, non-white, mixed-race or black, bear this name today. Thus the Barbaras, on the western coast of the Indus (Lassen, Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, t. III, p. 215); the Barabras, on the upper course of the Nile; the Berbers of Africa, etc. (Meïer, Hebraisches Wurzelwœrterbuch, 1845.)

407

Faults and crimes produced the same effect in the opposite direction: “ As the son of a Sudra “may thus attain the rank of a Brahman, and as the son of a Brahman may sink to a level “with Sudras, even so must it be with him who springs from a Chsatriya; even so with him, “who was born of a Vaisya. » (Manava-Dharma-Sastra,chap. X, § 65.)

408

The most ancient times offer examples of this policy

409

tolerant. Thus the Angas, the Poundras, the Bangas, the Souhmas and the Kalingas, aboriginal populations of the south-east, having converted, were first declared to be surrendered en masse. Then the king of the Angas, Lomapada, having obtained the hand of the daughter of the Arian sovereign of Ayodhya, his descendants were considered sons of brahmanis and kschattryas. (Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde,t. I, p. 559.)

Lassen,Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 535. – It is doubtful that the campaign

410

of Rama against the Raksasas, black demons of the south, determined the establishment of the Arians in Lanka or Ceylon. The winner, after having dethroned Ravana, gave the empire to one of the brothers of this giant and returned towards the north. –Ramayana

Lassen,open cited,t. I, p. 578

411

According to Brahmanical legends and poems, ascetics had deal with cannibals. (Lassen,Indische Alterth., t I, p. 535.)

412

Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap. X, § 62: Desertion of life, without

413

reward, for the “sake of” preserving a priest or a cow, a woman or a child, may cause the beatitude of those base-born “tribes. »

“Of two telingas bramines, who came from the vicinity of

414

Hyderabad, one was derived from “intermixture with the white race. This man stated that his cast intermarried with the “bramins of the Dekkan; but not with those of Bengal or Guzerat. All the Mahrattas “bramins I meet with appeared to be of unmixed white descent; but one of them said that “the Telinga bramins were highly respected, while the Pendjaub, Guzerat, Cutche and “Cashmere bramins were regarded as impure. » (Pickering, p. 181.)

Likewise in the terms of the Ramayana, one of the wives of the heroic king

415

Dasaratha belongs to the Kêkaya nation. This people, in truth, were Arian; but living beyond the Sarasvati, outside the limits of the sacred territory, he was considered refractory or vratya.

Lassen,open. quoted., t. I, p. 443 and 449.

416

Burnouf,Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 891.

417

Bournouf,Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 149.

418

ThereManava-Dharma-Sastra(chap. III) stipulates, obviously, a law of

419

tolerance that the rigorous system did not admit (§ 12): “For the first marriage of the twice born classes, “a woman of the same class is recommended; but for such as are impelled by inclination to “marry again, women in the direct order of the classes are to be preferred. » – § 13: “A “Sudra-Woman only must be wife of a Sudra; she and a Vaicya, of a Vaicya; they two and “a Kshatriya of a Kshatriya; those two and a Brahmany of a Brahman. » – § 14: “A woman of the servile class is not mentioned, even in the recital of any ancient story, as the first wife of a Brahman or of a Kshatriya, although in the greatest difficulty to find a suitable match . » – Today, these mitigations, indeed illogical, have been removed; alliances from one caste to another are severely prohibited, and theMadana-RatnaPradipaexpressly says: “These marriage of twice born men with damsels not of “the same class... theseparts of ancient lawwere repealed by wise legislators. » Unfortunately, the defense came when the evil had already developed greatly. However, it is not useless.

Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 480.–- The soutâ is the true prototype of the squire of the errant chivalry, of GandoIin or Gwendofin of Amadis.

420

Lassen,ibid., p. 196.

421

The law, however, sought to retain, while yielding; so she is not almost lenient only for unions contracted between castes close to each other, and here is what it says, for example, of the product of a warrior with a woman of the servile class: "From a "Kshatrya with a wife or the Sudra class, springs a creature, called Ugra, with a nature “partly warlike and partly servile, ferocious in his manners, cruel in his acts. » (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap.

422

Earl E. of Warren,English India in 1843. –In the times

423

ancient times, we have already seen men who, without being of the warrior caste, could become sovereigns. The oldest empire established in the south was that of Pândja, of which Madhûra was the capital. It had been founded by a vayçia from the north, after the time of the wars of Rama. (Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde,t. I, p. 536.)

It is by this last trait that the Brahmins claim to recognize

424

especially the impure castes: “Him, who was born of a sinful mother, and consequently in a low class, but is not openly “known, who, though worthless in truth, bears the semblance of a worthy man, let people “discover by his acts. – Want of virtuous dignity, harshness of speech, cruelty, and habitual “neglect of prescribed” duties, betray in this world the son of a criminal mother. » (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap. X, §§ 57 and 58.)

Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 719-720.

425

Lassen,open. quoted, t. I, p. 537.

426

Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde,t. I, p. 771. – Moreover, the mind

427

Brahminism struggled for a long time before coming to anthropomorphism, and this is how Mr. de Schlegel seems to have been right to say that Hindu monuments cannot compete in antiquity with those of Egypt. He is not as correct when he adds: “And those of Nubia. » (AWV Schlegel,Vorrede zur Darstellung der

Egyptian Mythologyvon Prichard, übersetzt von Haymann. Bonn, 1837), p. XIII.) LassenIndische Alterth.,t. I, p. 781.

428

In Lassen's judgment, this divinity is originally borrowed from

429

some cult of black aborigines. In the south, it is worshiped in the form of the Linga, and a Brahmin never accepts employment in the temples where it is found. (Indische Alterth.,t. I, .p. 783 et passim.)

Ibid.,t. I, p. 784.

430

W. of Humboldt,About the Kawi-Sprache.

431

The Arians never possessed a compact territory in India. On At several points, completely aboriginal populations still interrupt and isolate their settlements. The Dekkhan is almost absolutely deprived of their colonizations. (Lassen,Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 391.)

432

The vayçia sailed a lot. A Buddhist legend cites a

433

merchant who had made seven voyages by sea. (Burnouf,Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism,t. I, p. 196.) - The Hindus could thus put themselves in communication with the Chaldeans, who themselves had a navy (Isaiah, XLIII, 14) and a colony at Gerrha on the western coast of the Persian Gulf, where a large trade was carried out with the India. The Phoenicians, before and after their departure from Tylos, took part in it. – The Ophir of the holy books was on the coast of Malabar (Lassen,Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 539), and, as the Hebrew names of the goods which came from there are Sanskrit and not Dekkhanian, it follows that the high castes of the country were Arian at the time when Solomon's ships visited them. (Ibid.) It should also be noted here that the oldest Arian colonizations, in southern India, took place on the sea coast, which clearly indicates that their founders were, at the same time, navigators. (Work cited,p.537). It is very likely that they arrived early

at the mouths of the Indus, they established their first empires, such as that of Potâla. (Ibid.,p.543.) Burnouf,open. quoted,t. I, p. 141.

434

Literary criticism existed from a very early date in India. To the

435

XIecentury BCE, the Vedic hymns of Atharvan were collected and put in order. In VIecentury appeared grammarians, who studied and classified the language of all the nations inhabiting the sacred territory or its borders. This philological work and the results it provides are of the most precious assistance to ethnology. At this same time, the language of the Vedas was so perfectly fixed that we do not find, neither in the manuscripts nor in the quotations, the slightest variation. (Lassen, Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 739 and 756 et passim.)

The Hindus did not have the same way as us of considering history, so that, although having preserved for us the most remarkable memories of the facts, characters and habits of their most ancient ancestors, they do not provide us with a truly methodical work on this subject. Mr. Jules Mohl has very well noted and appreciated this remarkable particularity: “We know,” says this admirable judge of Asian things, “that India has not produced a historian, nor even a chronicler. Sanskrit literature does not lack historical data for this reason; it is richer, perhaps, than any other literature in information on the moral history of the nation, on the origin and development of its ideas and its institutions, finally on everything that forms the heart, as the core of "the history of what the chroniclers of most peoples neglect in order to be satisfied with "the bark. But, as Albirouni says: “They have always neglected to write the chronicles of the reigns of their kings. » So that we never know exactly when their dynasties began and when they ended, nor over which countries they ruled. Their genealogies are in bad order and their chronology is rubbish. » (Annual report made to the Asiatic Society,1849, p. 26-27.)

436

It was probably at the school of these writers that the poets like the one who wrote theHásyarnavah(the Ocean of

437

jokes).It is a very biting comedy directed against kings, court men and priests. Some are treated as useless lazy people and others as hypocrites. (W, v. Schlegel,Indische Bibliothek, t. III, p. 161.)

Burnouf, open. quoted, t. I, p. 140.

438

Burnouf,open. quoted, p. 287.

439

Lassen,Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 356 and 711. – It is at the time of

440

Cyrus. Around the same time, Scylax made his journey to the Erythraean Sea, and brought back to the West the first notions about the Hindu countries that Hecataeus and Herodotus had collected through the intermediary of the Persians. – India was, at this time, at the height of its civilization and its power. (Burnouf, open. quoted, t. I, p. 131.) Burnouf,op. quote., p. 152 et passim. and 211.

441

Lassen,Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 831; Burnouf,Introduction to history. of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 152 et passim.

442

Burnouf, Introd. to history. of budh. Indian, t. I, p. 194.

443

One of his main arguments aimed at bass men

444

castes was to tell them that, in their previous existences, they had been among the highest, and that, by the simple fact that they listened to him, they were worthy of returning there. (Burnouf,open. quoted,t. I, p. 196.)

Work cited, t. I, p. 211.

445

Burnouf,Introduction.to history., etc., t. I, p. 205.

446

Revolutionary elements were not absolutely lacking in this

447

Hindu world where the middle classes, the heads of trades, the merchants, the heads of sailors, had acquired an extraordinary importance. But the building was so well cemented that it could withstand

asset. – See Burnouf,open. quoted,t. I, p. 163, where mention is made of a Buddhist legend which clearly highlights the power of the bourgeois vayçia at the time when Buddhism was formed. I will note here that, for these times of Hindu history, the legends of the Buddhas have the same kind of historical interest as, for us, the lives of the saints, when it comes to the ages of Merovingian domination. These productions, equally lively in piety, although differently applied, are very similar. They relate the customs, the customs of the time when the venerable character they deal with lived, and both have, those of the AriansFranks, as those of the Arians-Hindus, the same predilection for the philosophical part. of history, united with the same disdain for chronology. Burnouf,Introduction.hashistory,etc., t. I, p. 395, note.

448

Ibid., p. 586.

449

When the Brahmins criticized Sakya for surrounding himself with people

450

belonging to impure castes or people of bad living, Sakya replied: “My law is a law of grace for all. » (Burnouf, open. quoted,t. I, p. 198.) – This law of grace very quickly became a sort of easy religiosity which recruited supporters in the upper classes, among men disgusted with all the restrictions that the Brahminical regime inflicts on its faithful, as a result of this idea that one can only be forgiven for the faults of current existence and make themselves worthy of moving to a higher rank, only at the cost of the most formidable austerities. Thus, a young ascetic, after long abstinence in the depths of a forest, feeds himself to a tigress, who has just given birth, exclaiming: "How true it is that I am not giving up life nor for royalty, nor for the enjoyments of pleasure, nor for the rank of sakya, nor for that of sovereign monarch, but rather to arrive at the supreme state of perfectly accomplished Buddha! » (Burnouf, ibid.,p. 159 et passim.) – The Buddhists took things in a more convenient way. They condemned these personal rigors as useless, and substituted for them simple repentance and

the confession of the fault, which, moreover, made them very quickly arrive at instituting the confession. (Ibid., p. 299.)

Burnouf,Introd. to history., etc., t. I, p. 196, 277.

451

Ibid., p. 287.

452

Burnouf,Introduction to history,etc., t. I, p. 337. – Buddhism

453

Hinduism is today so degenerate in the distant provinces where it still vegetates, that religious people marry, a practice diametrically opposed to the spirit of the fundamental faith. These married religious people are named in Nepalvadira âtcharyas.(Ibid.)

Burnouf,Introd. to history,etc., t. I, p. 586.

454

Ibid., p. 144. – He did more than admit them in practice. He showed himself

455

weak to the point of giving the lie to its claim to be a law of grace for all, by admitting that boddhissatvas could only incarnate in families of brahmans or kschattryas. (ibid.)

Mr. Burnouf uses very skillfully the posteriority of ontology in Buddhism to establish the age of this religious system (Open. quoted, t. I, p. 132.)

456

See the numerous details on this cylinder, widely used among Mongols, in theMemories of a trip to Tartary, Tibet and China, during the years1844, 1845 and 1846 (Paris, 1850), by M. Huc, missionary

457

priest of the congregation of Saint-Lazare. – See also, in the same work, what relates to the modern reform of Lamaic Buddhism, called the reform of Tsong-Kaba, and which dates from the 17thecentury. The Hindu spirit, of which little remained, was almost absolutely expelled by these innovations.

Burnouf,open. quoted, t. I, p. 339. – Buddha, considered as a

458

incarnation of Vischnu, is an idea which does not go back further than the year 1005 of the era of Vikramâditya, 943 of ours.

Lassen,Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 353.

459

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia, t. III, p. 111 et passim.

460

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III p. 115.

461

Lassen,Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 391.

462

Mr. Pickering adds, to all these characteristics, another trait which seems to him

463

quite specific: it is the feminine appearance that the lack of a beard gives to yellow peoples. On the other hand, he does not consider the obliquity of the eye to be essential. I believe that here he does not take enough account of the black interference which often, and even in very light doses, could have been enough to make this particularity disappear. (United States exploring Expedition during the years1838, 1839, 1843, 1841and 1842, under the command of Charles Wilkes, USN;flight. IX:The Races of man and their geographical distribution, by Charles Pickering, MD;Philadelphia, 1848,in-4°.) – Mr. Pickering thinks that the yellow race currently covers two-fifths of the surface of the globe. It obviously includes, in this classification, many hybrid populations.

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. I, p. 337.

464

Lassen, Zeitschrift für d. K.d. Morgenl., t. II, p. 62; Ritter, Erdkunde, Asian, t. II.

465

It is the inhabitants of the interior of the island who are completely black.

466

The coastal men belong to the Malay species and have many relationships with the Harafora. (Ritter, vol. III, p. 879.) – The number of Negro tribes is quite considerable in transgangetic India. We can cite among others the Samangs, retired in the southern part of the district of Queda, in the country of Siam. It is a small race, with frizzy hair, without fixed abodes and feeding on raw reptiles and worms. (Ritter,loc. quote., p. 1131.) – This geographer admits that he cannot explain the extreme diffusion of the family

Melanian in Asia. The fact would, in fact, be incomprehensible if it were to be considered as posterior to historical times; but it becomes very simple when we admit that it took place at a very primordial time, when Negro immigrants found the country deserted.

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. II, p. 1046. Pickering, p. 135. This excellent observer does not hesitate to declare that in his eyes the Ovahs of Madagascar are unrecognizable Malays.

467

To the testimonies on which I have already relied, I attach that of Ritter, confirmed by Finlayson and Sir Stamford Raffles: “The Malays, according to the great German geographer, are of average height and rather small. They have a lighter complexion than the people beyond the Ganges. Their skin tissue is soft and shiny. Their willingness to fatten is remarkable. The musculature is soft, loose, sometimes very bulky, generally without elasticity. The hips are very strong, giving them a heavy appearance. Faces are broad and flat, with prominent cheekbones. The eyes are spaced and very small, sometimes straight, most often raised at the external angle. The occiput is tightened; the hair, thick, coarse, tending to crimp, is planted very low and restricts the forehead. The foramen magnum is often very posterior. The very long arms are reminiscent of those of a monkey. » (Ritter, III, p. 1145.) – To these details I will add one more which I owe to the interesting observation of a traveler: “When the Malay sailors employed on European ships climb the ropes, they stand hold on not only by the hands, but also by the toes, which they have very large and very vigorous. A white man could not do the same. »

468

Nu-oua, sister of Fou-hi, and who succeeded him, was a spirit. She had

469

picked up, in a marsh, a little earthYELLOW,and, with the help of a rope, she made the first man. (Father Gaubil, Chinese timeline, in-4°, p. 7.)

Id.ibid.

470

According to Mr. Lassen, we should not ask for a positive story from Chinese before the year 782 which preceded our era. However, this same scholar confesses that the advent of the first human dynasty can be postponed, with great probability, to the year 2205 BC. (Indische Alterthumskunde,t. I, p. 751.) – We are far from the extraordinary dates of the Hindu, Egyptian and Assyrian annals.

471

Gaubil,Treatise on Chinese chronology.

472

Certain colonization and construction work must be excluded from this judgment.

473

drying out on the banks of the Hoang-ho, which appear to date back to very remote times. These are not, strictly speaking, monuments. It is a route made and redone a hundred times since its creation.

Gaubil,Treatise on Chinese chronology.

474

Gaubil,open. quoted,p. 2,80, 109; Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III, p. 758; Lassen,Indische Alterth.,t. I, p. 454.

475

The Miao did not fail to give themselves this genealogy. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia,t. II, p. 273.)

476

Gaubil,open. quoted.

477

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III, p. 716;Manava-Dharma-Sastra,ch. X,

478

§ 43, p. 346: “The “following races of Kshattryas, by their omission of holy rites and by seeing no brahmens, “have gradually sunk among men, to the lowest of the four classes. – 44: Paunidracas, “Odras and Draviras; Cambojas, Vavanas and Sacas; Paradas, Pahlavà, CHINAS, “Ciratas, Deradas and Chasas. – 45: All those tribes of men who sprang from the mouth, “the arm, the thigh and the foot of Brahma, but who became out casts by having “neglected their duties, are called Dasyus, or plunderers, whether they speak the language “of Mlechchas or that of Aryas. »

Mr. Biot says, according to Chinese documents, that the country was civilized, between the XXXecentury and the XXVIIebefore our era, by a

479

colonization of foreigners coming from the northwest and generally designated, in the texts, under the name ofblack-haired people.This conquering nation is also called thehundred families.What mainly results from this tradition is that the Chinese admit that their civilizers were not indigenous. (Tcheou-li or Rites of the Tcheou, translated for the first time,by the late Edouard Biot; Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1851, in-fol.,Warning,p. 2,AndIntroduction, p. V.)

This is the alpine state of Gwalior, near Ladakh and Gherwal. (Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III.) – These are still certain populations of eastern Tibet, where we find, with certain physical characteristics of the white species, customs which can be said to be completely contrary to the habits of the yellow nations: the feudal regime and a great spirit of belligerent freedom. (Hue,Memories of a trip to Tartary, Tibet and China,t. II, p. 467, and passim and 482.)

480

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. II.

481

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. I, p. 433 et passim.

482

Ritter identifies this nation with the Goths, and Baron A. de Humboldt accepts this opinion. (Central Asia,t. II, p. 130.) However, it only seems to me to be based on a vague resemblance of syllables. – The Ou-soun, living in the northwest of China, are reported by Vensse-kou, the commentator on the Annals of the Han dynasty, translated by Mr. Stanislas Julien, as being a blond people “with a red beard and blue eyes. » They numbered 120,000 families. (A. de Humboldt,Central Asia,t. I, p. 393.)

483

Ritter,loc. cit.

484

The Ha-kas were very tall. They had red hair, white face, green or blue eyes. They mixed with the Chinese soldiers of Li-ling, 97 years BC (Ritter, vol. I, p. 1115.)

485

Ibid. The Chinese designated these Arian nations, whose features

486

differed so greatly from theirs, as “having long horse faces. » (Central Asia, t. II, p. 64.)

The Chou-king, whose composition is traced back to more than 2000

487

years BC, attests that the population of China accepted mixtures. So, I read in the 1Dpart, chap. II, § 20: “Kao-Yao. Foreigners stir up trouble. » And chap. III, § 6: “If you are diligent in business, foreigners will come and submit to you with obedience. »

Ancient alloys were not the only ones that introduced blood of the white species in the Chinese masses. There were some, at times very close to us, which significantly modified certain populations of the Celestial Empire. In 1286, Koubilai ruled and introduced large numbers of Hindu and Malay immigrants into Fo-kien. Also the population of this province, like that of Kouangtung, differs quite notably from that of the other countries of China. She is more innovative, more inclined towards foreign ideas. It supplies the most people to this enormous emigration, which is no less than 3 million men, and which today covers Cochinchina, Tonkin, the Sunda Islands, Manila, Java, extending among the Burmese, in Siam, on Prince of Wales Island, in Australia, in America. (Ritter, vol. II, p. 783 et passim.) – There also came to China, previously, under the Thang dynasty, which began in 618 and ended in 907, many Muslims who mixed with the yellow population and which we call today Hoeï-hoeï. Their appearance has become completely Chinese, but their spirit has not. They are more energetic than the masses around them, from whom they make themselves feared and respected (Huc, Memories of a trip to Tartary, Tibet and China, t. II, p. 75.) – Finally, other Semites, Jews, also entered China at an unknown period of the Tcheou dynasty (from 1122 BC to 255 AD). They once exercised a very great influence and took on the first positions of state. Today they are very fallen, and many of them have become Muslims. (Gaubil,Chinese timeline, p. 264 et passim.)– These blood mixtures resulted in modifications

488

important in language. The southern dialects differ greatly from High Chinese, and the man from Fo-kien, Kuang-tung or Yunnan has as much difficulty understanding Pekingese as an inhabitant of Berlin understands Swedish or Dutch. (KF Neumann,die Sinologen and Ihre Werke, Zeitschrift of the German Morgenlændischen Gesellschaft, t. I, p. 104.)

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia, t. III, p. 714.)

489

Gaubil,Treatise on Chinese chronology, p. 111.

490

JF Davis,The Chinese, p. 178.

491

“In China, the empire did not pass from one people to another, and the

492

traditions have necessarily remained more familiar and have penetrated more deeply into minds than among us. » (Jules Mohl, Report to the Asian Society, 1851, p. 85.)

I mentioned above that white infiltrations, quite important, had reached China at different times. However, the advantage in numbers always remains with the yellow race, firstly because the primitive background belongs to it, then because Mongolian immigrations have taken place at all times, which have increased the strength of the national mass. This is how a Tartar invasion, considered the first, took place in 1531 BC (Gaubil, Chinese timeline, p. 28.) – This is also how the Wei dynasty came from Siberia, in 398 AD. I do not insist too much on this last fact, which could well be covered by an interference of white and yellow mongrels. (A. de Humboldt,Central Asia, t. I, p. 27.

493

W.v. Schlegel,Indische Bibliothek,t. II, p. 214: “The idea of happiness

494

is represented in “China, as I am assured, by a dish of boiled rice and an open mouth; that of “government, by a bamboo cane and by a second character which meansshake“the air.»

The vigilance of the Chinese police is second to none. we know all the concerns that the Russians and the English inspire in the imperial cabinet

495

in the southwest. The traveler Burnes gives an example of the precautions that are taken: the description and even the portrait of any suspicious foreigner is sent to the towns of upper Turkestan with the order to kill the original, if it is seized beyond the border. Moorcroft had been so well represented on the walls of Yarkend, and his English physiognomy so perfectly captured, that it was enough to make the most daring of his compatriots recoil from being exposed to the consequences of a confrontation. (Burnes,Travels,t. II, p. 233.)

“The principle of admission to administrative functions is the

496

choice in the village, “promotion to the district. Without these fundamental principles, it would be difficult to seek to “rule the empire.” » (Tcheou-li,Weï-kiao commentary, on § 36 of book XI, vol. I, p. 261.) Love of the mediocre is of principle. Here is the maxim: “The minister

four hundred ninety seven

of China Kao-yao made known the different punishments and said: “The people are united in the golden mean. Thus, “it is through punishment that we teach men to keep the golden mean. » There is no student who does not consider himself duly warned and avoids having more wit than is appropriate. » (Tcheou-li, t. I, p. 197.) There is no philosophy possible where the rites have settled in advance

498

down to the smallest details of life, and where all material interests also conspire to stifle thought. Mr. Ritter notes very well that China arranged itself in such a way as to form a world of its own and that nature served this thought. From all sides, the country is difficult to access. The government did not want to change this situation by creating roads. Apart from the neighborhood of Peking, two roads between Kuang-tung and Kiang-si, the passages of Tibet and a few imperial roads in very small numbers, the means of communication are absolutely lacking, and not only does politics not want to relations with other countries on earth, but it even opposes, with persistent energy, all relations between the provinces. (Ritter,open. quoted, p. 727 et passim.)

This judgment is not absolute, it includes exceptions, and we must

499

make a notable move, for example, in favor of Matouan-lin.

Thus, they understand utilitarian literature well. They have good drivers

500

(an Agricultural Encyclopedia), from which excellent information on the cultivation of the mulberry tree and the breeding of silkworms has already been extracted and translated. (J. Mohl,Report made to the Asian Society of Paris, 1851, p. 83.) – Mr. Baron A. de Humboldt was able to truly praise, on the subject of geography and history, the Chinese documents, “whose surprising riches embrace an immense expanse of the continent (Central Asia, introduction, t. I, p. XXXIII)", and he says again very well: "In the great monarchies, in China as in the Persian empire, divided into satrapies, the need for descriptive works, for these statistical tables, was felt early on. detailed for which, in Europe, the most "spiritual and most literate peoples of antiquity showed so little inclination. A government pedantically regulated in the smallest details of its administration, embracing so many tribes of diverse races, required, at the same time, numerous offices of interpreters. As early as 1407, there were colleges established in the large border towns, where eight to ten languages were taught at a time. Thus the vast extent of the empire and the demands of a despotic and central government simultaneously favored geography and linguistic literature. » ( Central Asia, t. I, p. 29.)

Davis,the Chinese, p. 99: “The people sometimes hold public

501

meetings by advertisement, “for the express purpose of addressing the magistrate and this without being punished. The “influence of public opinion seems indicated by this practice; together with that frequent “custom of placarding and lampooning (though of course anonymously) obnoxious “officers. Honors are rendered to a just magistrate, and addresses presented to him on his “departure by the people; testimonies which are highly valued... It may be added, that "there is no established censorship of the press in China, nor any limitations but those "which the interests of social peace and order seem to make necessary. If these are "endangered, the process of the government is of course more "summary than even an "information filed by the attorney general. » – The Chinese system seems to me to agree with another idea adopted by the liberal schools of Europe: it is the

secularizationof the military system. They only know the national guard or the landwehr. I am not speaking here of the Manchus, but only of the true natives of the empire. The Manchus, being all soldiers by birth, are supposed to be more skilled in the handling of weapons. (Davis, p. 105.) The people are consulted on very serious occasions, for example, in matters of criminal justice. Thus, I read in the commentary of Tchingkhang-tching, on the 26e§ of book XXXV ofTcheou-li: “If the people say: Kill! the deputy in charge of the brigands kills. If the people say: Have mercy! then he gives mercy. » And another commentator, Wangtchaoyu, adds: “When the people think that the guilty person must be executed, higher penalties are applied without uncertainty... When the people think that a pardon must be given, we do not do not grant full and complete grace. Only lower penalties are applied, “which are less than the first.” » (Tcheou-li, t. I.p. 323.)

502

Tching-khang-tching's commentary on the 9everse from book VII ofTcheou-ligives an excellent formula of the Chinese city. Here it is: “A

503

kingdom is constituted by the establishment of the market and the palace in the capital. The emperor establishes the palace; “the empress establishes the market. It is the symbol of the perfect concordance of the two “male and female principles which govern movement and rest. » ( Tcheou-li, t. I, p. 145.)

Around the year 1070 (CE), the Prime Minister of Emperor Chintsong, named “Wang-“ngan-tchi, introduced changes in market rights andestablished a“new system of grain advances made to farmers. » These are ideas entirely analogous to those which, for only sixty years, have been declared in Europe to dominate, in importance, all other political notions. (See Tcheou-li, t. I, introd., p. XXII.)

504

“It is an astonishing system (the Chinese organization), based on a

505

unique idea, that of “the State responsible for providing everything that can contribute to the public good and subordinating “the action of each person to this supreme goal. Tcheou-kong has gone beyond, in his organization, everything “what

the most centralized and bureaucratic modern states have tried, and it “came close in many things to what certain socialist theories of “our time” are attempting” (J. Mohl,Report made to the Asian Society, 1851, p. 89.) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum,t. II, 1Dpart, p. 374. – I,Kings,

506

20, 24, 25.

"Under the first three races, the empire was composed entirely of

507

principalities, fiefs and hereditary prerogatives. The men who were invested with it had greater authority over their subordinates than that of fathers over their sons, heads of families over their properties... Each chief governed his fief as his hereditary property. » (Ma-touan-lin, cited by ME Biot, seeTcheouli,t. I,Introduction., p. XXVII.)

The Chinese, who today form a great democracy imperial, did not enjoy the principle of equality in the XXIIe century BC, in the feudal era. The people were in complete serfdom, they were not able to own real estate. The Tcheou admire him for sharing low-level jobs up to the rank of prefect. Previously, he did not have the right to acquire education. ( Tcheou-li,t. I,Introduction,p.LV, et pass.) – Thus the Chinese, like all other peoples, only had political equality following the disappearance of the great races.

508

And it is only from this moment that political philosophy dates national. Confucius, and later Meng-tzu, were also centralizers and imperialists. The feudal system is no less odious to them than to the political schools of present-day Europe. (Gaubil, Chinese timeline, p. 90.)–The means that Tsin-chihoang-ti used to destroy the lordly families were most energetic. They began by burning the books: they were the archives of the sovereign rights of the nobles and the annals of their glory. The particular alphabets of the provinces are abolished. The entire nation was disarmed. The names of the old territorial districts were abrogated, and the country was divided into thirty-six departments administered by

509

mandarins that we took care to frequently change positions. One hundred and twenty thousand families were forced to come and reside in the capital, with the prohibition of leaving without permission, etc., etc. (Gaubil, Chinese timeline,p. 61.)

An event then happened absolutely similar to that which took place at

510

us, in 1789, when the innovative spirit considered as a first necessity the destruction of the old territorial subdivisions. In China, we abolish the constituencies which could recall ideas of nationalities or sovereignties. Purely administrative provinces and districts were created. However, I notice a fairly serious difference. The Chinese departments were very extensive and ours very small. Matouan-lin claims that his country's method was not without its drawbacks, making the supervision and good management of imperial magistrates more difficult. On the other hand, our system has raised many criticisms. (THETcheou-li, t. i, Introduction., XXVIII.)

Gaubil,Chinese timeline, p. 46 et al.

511

Ibid, p. 51.

512

Ritter identifies the Hioung-niou, the Thou-kieou, the Uighurs and the

513

Hoei-he. Of all these peoples, he made Turkish nations. This opinion, perhaps well-founded with regard to certain tribes, seems to me very open to criticism for the whole. (Erdkunde, Asia,t. I, p. 437.)

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. I, p. 744, p. 1114 et al. ; t. II, p. 116. Schaffarik,Slawiche Alterthümer,t. I, p. 68. – The Turkic, Mongolian, Tongusan and Manchu languages contain a large number of IndoGermanic roots. (Ritter, t. 1, p. 436.)

514

The beginning of the Javanese era of Aje-Saka postpones the memories at the time of Sâliwâhana, and corresponds to the year 78 A.D. It was an era of Brahmanical civilization, but not the first civilization of this kind. It was only the renewal and like a rejuvenation of a much more Hindu domination

515

ancient who had seen the island occupied by very stupid Pelagian negroes. The Fo-koue-ki relates that the Chinese navigators found these aborigines horribly ugly and dirty, with hair similar to “new grass.” » They fed on vermin. The Brahmanical law of Java has preserved the memory of this state of things by the formal prohibition it addresses to people of high rank not to eat dogs, rats, snakes, lizards or caterpillars. It would seem that Brahmanism was never able to establish itself in its pure state on the island. Buddhism was no happier. At the beginning of the 17th centuryecentury AD, the Javanese adopted Islamism. (W. v. Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache,t. I, p. 10, 11, 15, 18, 43, 49, 208.) Brahmanical customs and religion have, until now, been

516

preserved in Bali pure of any Mohammedan or European mixture. It is, in Raffes' judgment, the living image of what Java was like before its conversion by the Muslims. (W. v. Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache,t. I, p. 111.)

William of Humboldt,Ueber die Kawi-Sprache.

517

Kaempfer,History of Japan. –This traveler, moreover judicious,

518

sacrifices, as was the fashion of his time, to the mania of bringing all peoples from Assyria, and he thus traces, in a rather curious manner, the itinerary of his Japanese: "But, to finish this chapter , it follows that, shortly after the flood, when the confusion of languages at Babel "forced the Babylonians to abandon their desire to build a tower of extraordinary height and obliged them to disperse by all the earth; when the Greeks, the Goths and the Sclavons passed into Europe, others into Asia and Africa, others into America, then, I say, the Japanese also left; that,by all appearances,“after having traveled several years and suffered several inconveniences, they “encountered this distant part of the world; that, finding its situation, its fertility very much to their liking, they resolved to choose it for the place of their residence, etc., etc. (p. 83.) »

Kaempfer,History of Japan,p.81 et al.

519

Mr. Pickering, judging from his personal observations, holds the Japanese for racially identical with the Polynesian Malays (p. 117).

520

– It is not impossible that before any Hindu invasion in Java, the Japanese had establishments there. One of the ancient names of the island is Chapo. There are two districts called, one Ja-pan and the other Ji-pang. We know, moreover, that at a very distant time, the Japanese sailed throughout the archipelago. (W. v. Humboldt.Ueber die Kawi-Sprache,t. I, p. 19; Crawfurd,Arcbipelago, t. III, p. 465.)

Mr. Jurien de la Gravière has done justice to the species of Arcadia that the

521

English travelers had settled in these islands. (Revue des DeuxMondes,1852.)

The civilization of this country affects Brahmanical forms. The Kings claim to be descended from the gods of India; but they do not date their annals further back than the Vikramaditya era (two centuries BC). There were fairly recent immigrations of kschattryas, then Brahmanism was stifled for some time before being reestablished in the 17th century.e century. (Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III, p. 298 et pass.)

522

The Siamese are, without doubt, the most degraded people on earth, among

523

relatively civilized nations; and what is quite remarkable is that they all know how to read and write. (Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III, p. 1152.) This would seem very contrary to the opinion of English and French economists, who have, by common agreement, adopted this type of knowledge as the most irrefutable criterion of the morality and intelligence of a people.

Brahmanism extends to Tonkin; it is, in truth, very

524

disfigured. (Ritter,ibid., p. 956.)

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. III, p. 238, 273 et pass., 744. Ideas nuns of Tibet bear witness to the extreme mixture of the race. We notice Hindu notions there, traces of the ancient idolatrous cult of the country, then Chinese inspirations, finally, if we are to believe a modern missionary, Mr. Huc, probable traces of

525

Catholicism imported in the 16th centuryecentury by European monks and accepted in the reform of Tsong-Kaba. (Memories of a trip to Tartary, Tibet and China, t. I.) – Atecentury, a great invasion of Kalmucks and Dzungars had almost wiped out Buddhism. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. III, p. 242.) – Since this time, and particularly under the restorative reign of Srong-dzangambo, there have been some immigrations of religious people from northern India, that is to say from Bouran and Nepal. (Ritter,ibid., p. 278.) But, from now on, it is the Chinese sense which dominates and progresses more every day. The dual origin of the current civilization of Tibet is very well symbolized by the story of the marriage of Srong-dzan-gambo. This monarch married two women, one whom the chronicles call Dara-Nipol, the White, and who was the daughter of the sovereign of Nepal; the other, named Dara-wen-tching, the Green, who came from the imperial palace of Peking. Hlassa was founded under the influence of these two queens, and the architecture of the monuments of this city is both Chinese and Hindu. (Ritter,ibid.,p.238.)

This scholar had a way, very particular to him, of exploring the

526

countries on which his erudition was to be carried out. He established himself as best he could in a town or village, and surrounded himself with all the comforts available. Then he sent a corporal and thirty Cossacks to explore, and gravely recorded in his notes the observations that these learned military men reported to him. (Ritter,ibid., p. 734.)

Ritter, t. I, p. 744 et al.

527

Turkic and Mongolian languages. Tongouse and its derivative, Manchu, bear marks of this very considerable fact. All these idioms contain a large number of Indo-Germanic roots. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia,t. I, p. 436.) – From a physiological point of view, we still observe that blue or greenish eyes, blond or red hair are frequently encountered among certain current populations of Mongolia. (Ibid.)

528

Ritter, t. I, p. 431 et al.

529

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 433-434.

530

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 433-434.

531

Ritter,loc. quote.

532

Ritter, t. I, p. 1110 and 1114. – The Kyrgyz absorbed, at the same time, the Ting-ling and the Ha-kas.

533

Invasions into the west were extremely racially facilitated yellow by the configuration of the terrain. Mr. Baron A. de Humboldt remarks that, from the banks of the Obi, at 78° longitude, to the heaths of Lüneburg, Westphalia and Brabant, the country presents exactly the same aspect, sad and monotone. (Central Asia,t. I, p. 55.)

534

The Siberian territories that it occupied were large enough for contain, because they measure no less than 300,000 square leagues. (Humboldt,Central Asia,t. I, p. 176.) The resources these countries presented for the food of considerable masses were also very sufficient. The plains of present-day Mongolia, called by the Chinese the Land of Grasses, offered immense pastures to the numerous herds of an essentially pastoral human family. Rye and barley are very successful in the north. In Kaschgar, in Khoten, in Aksou, in Koutché, in the parallel of Sardinia, cotton and silkworms are cultivated. Further north, in Yarkand, in Hami, in Kharachar. pomegranates and grapes are ripe. (Central Asia,t. III, p. 20.) – “Beyond the Jenisseï, to the east of the Sayansk meridian, and especially beyond Lake Baikal, Siberia itself takes on a mountainous and pleasantly picturesque character. » (Ibid.,p. 23.)

535

Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. II, p. 332 et pass., p. 336.

536

The limit of the Chud tombs and mines ends towards the north, at the 58°; and, on the south side, it goes down to 45°. The eastern extension

537

to the west goes from the middle Amur to the Volga, to the eastern foot of the Urals. (Ritter,ibid.,p. 337.)

Ritter,ibid., p. 325 et al. It would seem that monuments can

538

distinguish themselves into two classes, and that to which the highest antiquity belongs also indicates the most complete civilization. (Ibid.,t. II, p. 333.)

Mr. Ritter here makes an observation full of meaning and depth. How, he said, could it be that yellow populations, that Kalmyks, these men absolutely devoid of imagination, had given rise to the myth of the Gryphons, and, becoming the Arimaspes, were surrounded by so many peoples so singularly fabulous? Indeed, Finnish genius does not achieve such results. (Ritter,ibid., p. 336.)

539

Lassen,Zeitschrift für d. K.d. Morgenl.,t. II, p. 62 and 65.The Greeks had drawn their semi-romantic knowledge of the peoples of Central Asia from the Bactrian source almost identical with that of the Mahabharata. Uttara-Kourou, the primitive country of the Kauravas, the Attacori of Pliny, was also Hataka, the land of gold. Near there lived the Risikas who, having wonderful horses, very resemble the Arimaspes. (Herodotus, IV, 13 and 17.)

540

It is incontestable that the Arimaspes carry, in the first syllable of their name a sort of testimony to their white origin. Could we not still find the same root in northern Siberia today? arewith some of its ethnological consequences? Strahlenberg says that the Wotiaks are called, in their language,Arrr,and call their countryArima. It would not follow, undoubtedly, that the Wotiaks were a people of Ariane race; but we could conclude that they are white and yellow half-breeds who have retained the name of part of their ancestors. StrahlenbergThe North-Eastern Europe and Asia, p. 76.)Note. –Areis the Mongolian word forman, as opposed tocam, wife. (Ibid., 137.) – Likewise,arianmeans pure, etc.

541

Herodotus, IV, 23.

542

Among the Buryats, there is little time when we do not encounter these kinds of mirrors hanging from the pillars. The lama uses it by reflecting the image of the Buddha on it; then he pours water over it which, flowing from there into a vase, is supposed to carry away the divine image and becomes consecrated. (Ritter,Erdkunde, Asia,t. II, p. 119-120.)

543

WC Grimm,Ueber die deutschen Runen,in-12, p. 128; Strahlenberg,das Nordund-estliche Theil von Europa und Asia,in-4°; Stockholm, 1730. The Swedish captain, the first author to speak about Chud monuments, makes a very interesting remark: he says that in Iceland, in ancient times, they wrote on fish bones with an indelible red color ; that characters traced with the same material are found among the Permians and on the banks of the Yenisei, then at the source of the Irbyht, and elsewhere still (p. 363). We can easily see the conclusions to be drawn from such a remarkable fact, and it is time to remember here that the word which, among the Gothic nations, meantto write,wasmêljan or gameljanwhose true meaning isto paint;email,painting, and from there, writing;ufarmêli, registration. (WC Grimm,Ueber die deutschen Runen,p.47.)

544

“In the vestibule of the museum (in Barnaul) was a sphinx carved into

545

stone, resting on a “square block, and four feet long by a foot and a half wide. This monument was, for me, of great interest, having been discovered in a Chud tomb. The work “was, in truth, crude; but finding in this place a production of such great antiquity “struck me greatly. I also saw several sepulchral stones, also from Chud tombs, decorated with bas-reliefs representing the figures of men, not very prominent and also quite crudely executed. » (CF von Ledebour,Reise durch das Altaï-Gebirge and die soongorische Kirgisen-Steppe,1Dpart ; Berlin, 1829, p. 371-372.)

See above, p. 430 et seq.

546

Lassen, Zeitschrift der deutsch. morgenl. Gesellsch., t. II, p. 39.

547

Mannert,Germania, p. 2.

548

Gen., IV, 17: “Cain... ædificavit civitatem, vocavitque nomen ejus ex nomine filii sui, “Henoch. » The rest of the story is no less curious, and agrees no less with what I have said about the primitive morals of the white race and its habits: 20. “Genuit Ada “Jabel, qui fut pater inhabitium in tentoriis , arch pastorum. » 21. « Et nomen fratris ejus « Jubal; ipse fut pater canentium cithara et organo. » 22. “Sella quoque genuit Tubalcain, “qui fut malleator et faber in cuncta opera æris et ferri” Thus, five generations after Cain, founder of the first city, the people led a pastoral life, knew the art of singing, c that is to say, they kept records and knew how to work metals. I have not drawn different results from the series of physiological, philological and historical testimonies that I have examined so far in these pages.

549

Civil and moral primacy of the Italiani;in-8°, Brussels.

550

Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde.

551

Burnouf has no doubt that the oldest and most

552

authentic Zend-Avesta records the primitive stay of the Zoroastrians at the foot of the Bordj, on the banks of the Arvanda, that is to say in the western part of the Celestial Mountains. (Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I,additions and corrections, p. CLXXXV.)

Lassen,Indische Alterth., t. i, p. 516 et passim. The Zend-Avesta, book

553

of this Protestant law, himself recognizes that there was, in previous times, another faith. It is that ofancient men, the Pischdadians (foreign alphabet). I doubt that this ancient doctrine was Brahmanism. Rather, it was the source from which Brahmanism arose, the cult of the purohitas, perhaps even of their predecessors. The Pischdadians are clearly called by the Zend-Avesta theancient men, as opposed to those who lived after the separation from the Hindus, and who are

named in Zendnabânazdita(contemporaries) and, in Sanskrit, nabhanadichtra, according to one of Manou's sons, deprived of his share of the paternal inheritance, according to the Rigveda. (Burnouf,Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I, p. 566 et passim.)

Herodotus, Clio, XCVI.

554

See Klaproth,Asia polyglotta, p. 62. This philologist remarks

555

the extreme fusion of all the idioms of earlier Asia either with Arian or Semitic principles, or also with Finnic elements. He notes this last circumstance for ancient Armenian, which, according to him, has a lot of connection with the languages of northern Asia. (Open. quoted, p. 76. This assertion supports the system of interpretation of medical inscriptions proposed by Mr. de Saulcy.

The Bactrians, in ZendBakhdi, are the Bahlikas of the Mahabharata. They

556

were parents, according to this poem, of the last of the Kouravas and of Pandou. Thus their profoundly Arian character is well and duly established. (Lassen,Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 297; see also A F. v. Schack,Heldensagen von Firdusi, in-8°, Berlin, 1851;Enleit., p. 16 and passim; see also Lassen,Zeitsch, f. K..d.Morgenl., which identifies the Bactrians with the Afghans, whose national name is Pouschtu, t. II, p. 53.) The name Balk, (foreign alphabet) given to the city of the Bactrians, is not the oldest that this city has had. She was previously calledZariaspe. (Burnouf,How. on the Yaçna, notes and clarifications, t. I, p. CXII.

Lassen,Indische Alterth., t. 1, p. 753 et passim.

557

Kaïanien, comes from Kaï, a syllable which precedes the names of several kings

558

of this Zoroastrian dynasty: thus Kaï-Kaous and Kaï-Khosrou. This word appears to have been the title of monarchs. In Zend, it has the form Kava, and is identical with the Sanskrit Kavi (sun). Perhaps it is not without interest to compare this meaning to that of the Egyptian Phra. (See Burnouf, Commentary on the Yaçna, vol. I, p. 424 et passim.) These Kainian kings gave the first impetus to the separatist nationality of the Zoroastrians. They certainly cast a great spotlight, since, at

Through so many centuries, they have produced numerous and enduring traditions that make up the most notable part of the Shahnameh.

Like all religions, in times of faith, magism was this

559

which we call, nowadays, intolerant. He hated polytheism in all its forms. Xerxes removed the idol of Bel, which was enthroned in Babylon, and destroyed or devastated all the temples he encountered in Greece. Thus Cambyses in Egypt only obeyed the general spirit of his nation when he so badly mistreated the religions of the country. (See Bœttiger,Ideas for Kunstmythologie(Dresden, In-8°, 1826), t. I, p. 25 et passim.)

The word used by the Shahnameh to designate royal dignity

560

vividly recalls the independent doctrines of the primitive Arians. Féridoun bears the title of schahr-jar, (foreign alphabet), (the friend of the city). On the ante-Islamic sources from which Firdousi drew the traditions that he combines, see AF de Schack,Einl., p. 52 et passim.

All the facts that make up the history of the formation of the kingdom

561

medicine are recounted by Herodotus, with his ordinary power of color,Clio, XCVIII and passim.

The Mahabharata knows the Persians, it calls themParasikas.But at

562

this distant era of the wars of the Pandavas and the sons of Kourou this small nation still had no reputation. This is why, in the Hindu poem, it has the simple honors of a mention. (Lassen, Zeitschrift fd K. des Morgenl., t. II, p. 53.)

Movers,das Phœniz. Alterthum., t. I, 2epart, p. 415. This decadence was so deep, and so obviously caused by ethnic anarchy, that the Egyptians, no less degenerate, but more compact because there were fewer constituent elements at stake in their blood, took the upper hand for a moment over -against their old and feared adversaries. In VIIecentury, their influence prevailed in Phoenicia. The Medes soon got the better of this relative energy.

563

Movers, t. II, 1Dpart, p, 419.

564

Movers,das Phœnizische Alterthum., t. II, 1Dpart, p. 401 and passim,

565

and 419.

Herodotus,Clio,CVI.

566

The names of the first Persian rulers strongly smell of primitive identity of Zoroastrian notions with the Hindus, and even with the other Arian branches. This is how the father of the Achaemenids was called Kourou, like the leader of the white Kouravas whom we saw invade India at a very ancient time. Later, Cambyses is named, in the cuneiform inscription of Bi-Soutoum,Ka( m)budya,like the tribe of dissident kschattryas, inhabiting the right bank of the Indus, the Kambodyas. (Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 598.) It is curious to note that the inhabitants of HinduKoh today call themselves Kamodje. Before the Afghan conquests, their territory went as far as the Indus. (Lassen,Zeitschriht fd K. d. Morgenl., t. II, p. 56 et passim.)

567

It would even be necessary to admit that the Bactrians, this most anciently civilized of the Zoroastrian family, had their share of supremacy under the dynasty of Darius, if we adopt Mr. Roth's idea. This scholar argued that the Achaemenids were Bactrian vassals of the Persian kings. (Roth,Geschichte der abendlædischen philosophy(Mannheim, 1846, in-8°), t. I, p. 384 et passim.) However, this hypothesis needs to be further studied.

568

Darius Hystaspes also forbids them from eating dog flesh. There

569

Phoenician custom of hieratic massacres, which, at the time of public calamities, led the Carthaginians to slaughter hundreds of children at once, on their altars, a custom which made Ennius say: “And Poinei “solitei sos sacrificare puellos ,” resumed when the influence of the Persians fell. The Greeks sought in vain to persuade the Carthaginians to renounce such monstrosities. They still existed secretly in the time of Tiberius, and had been transmitted, with Semitic blood, to the Roman colony. (Bœttiger,Ideas for Kunstmythologie, t. i, p. 373.)

The successor of the false Smerdis expressed himself thus in the inscription of

570

Bi-Soutoun “Darius the” king said: In all these provinces, I have given favor and protection to the industrious man. The lazy one, I punished him with severity. » (Rawlinson,Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, flight. XVI, part. I, p. XXXV.) This Darius who spoke thus bore in his name the expression of a utilitarian idea:Daryawusmeansthe one who maintains order. (Schack,Heldensagen von Firdusi, p. 11.) Layard,Nineveh and Seine Ueberreste, Leipzig, 1850, p. 340. I don't have I had at my disposal only the translation of Mr. Meissner, excellent indeed. The learned English traveler discusses in a rare manner the relationships of the Persian style with the models of Assyria and Egypt.

571

Burnouf,Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I, p. 351 This scholar, citing the passage from Herodotus on which this opinion is based, raises some doubts as to its scope. I will limit myself to transcribing here the assertion of the Greek historian; it is entirely sufficient for my purpose: “ Clio, “CXXXI: Here are the customs observed, to my knowledge, by the Persians. Their use “is not to raise statues, temples, altars to the gods. On the contrary, they treat those who do it as “insane.” This is, in my opinion, because they do not believe, like the Greeks, that the gods have a human form. They are in the habit of sacrificing to Jupiter on the summit of the highest mountains, and give the name of Jupiter to the entire circumference of the sky. They still make sacrifices to the sun, the moon, the earth, fire, water and the winds, and at all times only offer them to these deities.But they subsequently attached the“cult of Celestial Venus or Urania, which they borrowed from the Assyrians and Arabs.The “Assyrians give Venus the nameMylitta, the Arabs that ofAlitta, and the Persians “call it”Mitra”..Thus this cult of Mithras, which later infected the entire Roman West, began by seizing the Persians. This is, in a way, the hallmark of the invasion of Semitic blood. Bœttiger says that, under the reign of Darius Ochus, magism had already come very close to Hellenism and fetishism through the adoption of the cult of Anaïtis. (Ideas for Kunstmythologie, t. I, p. 27.)

572

We have seen elsewhere the Egyptians defending themselves, or even sometimes

573

attack, when absolutely necessary, with their troops

mercenaries. The Greeks made the nerve of it. (Wilkinson,Customs and Manners, etc., t. I, p. 211.)

It was the government's taste for foreign auxiliaries that had

574

determined the emigration of the national army to Ethiopia. In 362-340, Nectanebo II sent Mentor the Rhodian with 4,000 Greeks to the aid of the Canaanites, revolting against the Persians. This condottiere betrays him. (Wilkinson,Customs and Manners of the ancient Egyptians, t. I, p. 211.)

Herodotus,Thalia, LXXX and passim.

575

Herodotus,Thalia, LXXX.

576

A few words about these aborigines that historical times have to

577

barely glimpsed. All the primitive memories of Hellas are filled with allusions to these mysterious tribes. Hesiod calls the oldest populations of Arcadia autochthonous, described as pelasgic. Erechtheus, Cecrops, were recognized indigenous leaders. It was the same with the following nations: the generality of the Pelasgians, the Lelegians, the Kuretes, the Kaukons, the Aones, the Temmikes, the Hyantes, the Thracian Boeotians, the Telebes, the Ephyres, the Phlegyans, etc. (See Grote,History of Greece , t. I, p. 238, 262, 268, et t. II, p. 349; The Archer,Chronol. of Herod., t. VIII; Niebuhr,Rœmische Geschichte, t. I, p. 26 to 64; O. Müller,die Etrusker, Einleit., p. 11 and 75 to 100.) On the rapidity with which the aboriginal populations disappeared as soon as the Arians Hellenes appeared among them, consult Grote, t. II, p. 351. Hecataeus, Herodotus and Thucydides agree on this point, that there was an ante-Hellenic era when different languages were spoken between Cape Malea and Olympus. (Grote, t. II, p. 317.) From the year 771 BC, we no longer find any trace of unmixed settlements of Hellene Arians in all of Hellas. As for the ethnic nature of the aborigines, I am obliged to refer the reader to the following book, which deals with the absolutely primitive populations of Europe.

The names of the different characters in the Ariane genealogy Hellenic, obviously symbolic, are rather qualifications

578

representing the main feature, summarizing the life story of each of these eponyms; it is constantly thus, among all nations, with regard to these genetic beings. Thus Deucalion, not only the author of the Hellenic race, but the patriarch who concentrates on his head the summary of ancient cosmogonic memories, the witness of the flood (in the Semitic-Greek tradition, Ogyges fulfills this role), Deucalion, who responds to the fish god, to the Noh of the Assyrians, to the Hebrew Noah, is named thus from the ancient word (Greek word) (unusual),new wine, and to (Greek word) old shape of(Greek word)to roll, the man who rolls(in the intoxication of)new wine. The name of (Greek word) which contains the meaning ofred, does not present such a clear explanation. Pandora, (Greek word)the one to whom we gave everything, is indeed, in fact, a product without its own individuality; it is the woman who belongs to the one who created her, or civilized her. (Greek word)the foreseeing. He is the son of Iapetus, the common father of the

579

white family, according to Hesiod and Apollonius, His mother was Asia. This is a very clear declaration of its ethnic value and its first stay. Yet another strain is given which I would also accept. He would be, according to some commentators, son of Ouranos. I will explain more about this below.

Hesiod derives the word (Greek), from (Greek words)those who extend the

580

hands. This meaning was given the meaning of (Greek word) and those to whom it had been attributed were made theKingspar excellence. Likewise the Zoroastrian Arians called their ancestors, probably contemporaries and brothers of the Titans,Kai, OrKava, THE Kings, Pseudo-Orpheus and Diodorus represent the Titans as the first humans, the typical men. (Diodorus, III, 57; v, 66.) The Thessalian dialect had faithfully preserved the trace of the ancient idea, and (Greek word) designatedthe lord, the leader. (See Bœttiger,Idea for Kunstmythotogie(Dresden, in-8°, 1826), t. II, p. 47 et passim.)

It is very likely that we can consider as a monument

581

of titanic legislation these prescriptions of Busyges, which, it is said, were the source of the code of Dracon. Three commandments formed the whole preserved throughout the centuries: “Honor your

parents ; offers the first fruits of the earth to the gods; don't hurt the bull. » This is obviously all Hindu and Zoroastrian law, it is the pure Arian spirit. We know that the Greeks were only able to get rid of their traditional respect for beef with difficulty. When they indulged in sacrificing this animal, they imagined, as a palliative for the bad action they were committing, the ceremony of the (Greek word) or (Greek word), in which the sacrificer, after having struck his victim, He fled, abandoning the axe, and was put on trial. (Bœttiger,Ideas for Kunstmythologie, t. II, p. 267.) Who, moreover, were not barbarians. They appear to have had a respectable degree of utilitarian culture. These aborigines plowed the soil, claimed to have invented the appropriation of the ox for agricultural work and the use of the wheat mill. (Mac Torrens Cullagh, The Industrial History of free Nations(London, 1846, in-8°, t. I, p. 7.) This trait, and others, which identify them with the natives of Italy will later serve to demonstrate that they could only be Celts or Slavs, and, perhaps, one and the other 'other.

582

From there will emerge, with a thousand nuances, the Arians Hellenes, a people

583

new, in a certain sense, although in front of its energy attenuated old elements. What this race had in particular is well represented by its religion, of the same age as him. This was the cult of Zeus, of which Heyne, in a note from Apollodorus, was able to say with truth: "Inde a Jove novus mythorum ordo initium habet vere Hellenicus." » (Bœttiger, vol. I, p. 195.)

Very likely the Greek contains Thracian roots and

584

Illyrians coming from the very ancient contact of the Arians Hellenes and even the Titans with the populations speaking these idioms. O. Müller rightly notes that the Hellenes brought their primordial poetry and civilization back to the Thracians. The country north of the Hemus was, for the admirers of Orpheus, the cradle of moral culture. (Pott, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, p. 65.)

We see at first glance how the most common antiques distant Greece are humble in comparison to what we

585

observed in India, in Assyria, in Egypt, even in China, and from what Bactria could show. Thus Sicyone, dates only from the year 2164 BC. It is a Chananean foundation, and the arrival of the Arians Hellenes, six centuries later, throws back childhood to the ages of maturity of primitive societies. prehistory of Hellas. Thebes perfectly fulfilled the role of boundary between two races.

586

It displayed its dual origin by recounting two legends about its foundation: one Ariane, which attributed the fact to Amphion and Zethus; the other Semitic, and by which the Canaanite Cadmus was its first king. (Grote,History of Greece, t. I, p. 350).) It is these mixtures of Asian, Hellenic-Arian and aboriginal traditions which for a long time made early Greek history and mythology almost incomprehensible. The learned eras have increased the disorder through the mania for symbolism, allegory, and ephemerisms of all kinds. Then came the moderns, who, by generalizing the notions, succeeded in making them ultimately absurd.

The existence of Egyptian colonies in early Greece matters

587

today many more adversaries than supporters. (See on this subject Pott, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber,Indo-germanischer Sprachstamm, p. 23, and Grote, Hist. of Greece, t. I, p. 32.) The latter does not think that before the VIIe century there were ongoing relations between Greece and the land of the Pharaohs.

The Canaanite (Chanaanite)anak, which means a remarkable man by the elevation of the height and the length of the neck, that is to say a giant or a strong man, and hence amasteris the true root of this name or rather this title of Inachus, then considered as an appellative, as was done with Brennus, Boiorix, Vercingetorix and so many other words of the same kind. The Semitized Greeks of the south faithfully preserved it in the title (in Greek), given to the gods, mainly to Apollo, by Homer, and to the Dioscuri, (in Greek) then to military leaders. We can also note, as a trace, among many others, of the enormous influence of the Semites on the Greek mind that

588

(foreign alphabet),anér, a designation given to themselves by the Canaanites, is the etymology of (in Greek) which, for the contemporaries of Pericles, meanta man, vir. (Bœttiger, vol. I, p. 206.) This state of antagonism never ended. He continued to be represented

589

by the existence of countless dialects. Needless to say, the classification into four branches, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic and Attic, is an artificial work of grammarians and in no way reproduces a state of affairs in which each small subdivision of territory had, at the very least, idioms which were absolutely clean. (Grote, vol. I, p. 318.)

The race of Dardanus and Teucer, one of those who carried the element

590

Arian-Hellenic in the Troad, was in the latter.

I agree with Grote (Hist. of Greece, t. II, p. 350 and passim): I

591

do not believe in the Pelasgians, as forming a distinct race or nation, and the word means too wellformer inhabitants, so that I remove this vague meaning and give it a more special one. We meet the Pelasgians in so many places and with such different characters that it seems impossible to attribute to them a single nationality. (See, on this subject, Grote, vol. II, p. 349.) Pott expresses his feeling in a way which deserves to be reproduced here: “The Pelasgians,” he says, “are, whatever one does , a simple smoke and devoid of any "historical" reality, as well as theCasci that is to say theold, THEancestorsand the aborigines“that's to say primitive inhabitants. The name of Pelasgians has been wrongly taken for a name “of people and race.” It only applies chronologically to the early ages of Greece and to the tribes which then inhabited this country, without distinction of origin. If, later, we thought we still found here and there peoples who we judged fit to take on this designation of Pelasgians, it is through a connection very similar to the idea accepted in the last century that the Goths were Scythians, Gestes, etc. It was then believed that “there were remnants of this Germanic nation in the Crimea. » (Encyclop. Ersch u. Gruber, 2esect. 18epar., p. 18.)

The fact which best demonstrates this state of affairs is the attitude of the

592

majority of the Greek states during the Persian War. At the Battle of Plataea, 50,000 infantrymen and a large number of Hellenic cavalry fought in the ranks of the great king, against the Athenians and their allies. These troops were provided, not by the Ionians, whom I set aside, but by the Boeotians, the Locrians, the Malians, the Thessalians, that is to say all of eastern Greece. We must also add the Phocaeans. The latter sent 2,000 men to the Persians. Consequently, the Peloponnese and Attica were all that resisted. Since then, this campaign of a minority against the majority of Greece has been made into national glory. (Zumpt,Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, Ueber den Stand der Bevœlkerung und die Volksvermehrung im Alterthum, p. 5.)

“Between the different degrees of Hellenic chivalry a certain equality

593

at all times prevailed, "which the fewness of their numbers understands with the population amidst whom they "dwelt and the hereditary pride of a dominant race, alike tended to preserve. We find the “doric nobles, too in after times, assuming to themselves the epithet ofthe Equals. » It is a completely similar feeling and of a strictly similar ethnic origin, which made the name ofpeers, exact translation from Greek (Greek word). (W. Torrens Mc. Cullagh,The industrial History of free Nations(London, 1846, in-8°, t. I, p. 3.)

Athens began as an aggregation of several hamlets. Sparta was a compound of five towns and was never a city; Mantinea also; Tegea had eight; Dyme in Achaia, and Elis likewise; likewise Megara and Tanagra. Until the battle of Leuctra, most of the Arcadians also only had villages, and the Epirotes imitated them. (Grote, t. II, p. 346.)

594

Poets, like Hesiod and Homer, seem to have had their frank speak against excesses and probably also the simple use of power. (Hesiod,Works and days, p. 186.)

595

See in the first volume the note on the Arian Vourounas, theVarouna

596

Hindu and the Greek (Greek word), and especially what was said on theGod, then on the Titans.

Some Athenian families seem to have been able to surrender, with

597

truth, this testimony. The Gephyres, from which Harmodius and Aristogiton descended, had a Chanaanite name (in Chanaanite)geber, geberim, the strong, the powerful, the leaders. (Bœttiger, vol. I, p. 206.)

This doctrine must have been very firmly attached to the spirit of the Hellenic tribes, by the Ariane part of their blood, since, in the democratic period and in Athens itself, birth will always retain value. Mr. Mc. Cullagh recognizes this without difficulty: “Regard for ancient lineage was, through every change of light and policy, fast rooted in “the Ionic mind. The old families remained everywhere, and even in the most democratic states, preserved certain political privileges and what they doubtless prized still more, certain social distinction. » (T. I, p. 239.)

598

“As a birthright the Hellenes claimed both in peace and war,

599

exclusive sway; and their “kings are depicted as endowed with unlimited power over the earth-born multitude. » (Mc. Cullagh. t. I, p. 6.)

These residences were chivalrous citadels surrounded by cabins. They dominated the heights and were built from enormous fragments of rocks. It is very likely that the cities, strictly speaking, were only the work of Canaanite colonists. (Mc. Cullagh, t. I, p. 22.) Let us say in this regard that in Italy these vast and solid constructions called pelasgic or cyclopean have been attributed for too long to the aboriginal populations. The agricultural tribes which made up these so-called autochthonous races were in no way capable of conceiving or carrying out such work, and we are all the more authorized to defer the merit either to the Arians Hellenes, or even to their fathers, the Titans. , that, in the Peninsula, the memory of the Cyclopean walls is intimately united with that of the

600

Tyrrhenians. The Mycenae Gate is also an essentially Hellenic construction. Grote,History of Greece, t. II, p. 370 et passim.

601

Grote, t. II, p. 113. Homer's Greek wife is infinitely

602

superior to the wife of civilized or Semiticized ages. See Pénélope, Hélène, in theOdyssey, and the queen of the Phaeacians. She has, all at the same time, more gravity, consideration and freedom. This first institution was somewhat preserved among the Macedonians, judging by the role that Olympias plays in Alexander's affairs. Also compare the morals of the Dorians of Sparta. (Bœttiger, vol. II, p. 61.)

The general prejudice of the Arian races also generates this incapacity: for them, the first notion of property rights is conquest, and, as an English historian says very well, “the Hellenic idea of property was spoil whether acquired by land or sea. » (Mc. Cullagh, vol. I, p. 18.)

603

We have made immense progress in understanding mythology Hellenic. The distinction is perfectly established between dogmas, cults and rites coming from Asia and those which had their sources in European notions. What remains to be done now is of great difficulty, but also of great interest. We know that the Cabiri and Telchine mysteries are Semitic, and that the Dodonian oracle is, basically at least, of northern institution. What is needed now is to separate the Arian data from the Finnish mixtures. The proportion of these various religious elements, Semitic, Arian, Finnic, would give the exact composition of Greek blood.

604

“The heroic notion of the unity of the state being centered in the royal line was already « shaken. Many of the less potent nobles saw, in the greater distribution of authority, a “pathway opened to their ambition. » (Mc. Cullagh, vol. I, p. 21.)

605

“In the days of the monarchy the word which subsequently was used to denote a city (Greek word) and finally a state, signified no mote than

606

the castle of the prince. » (Mc. Cullagh, vol. I, p. 22.) Likewise, in our feudal era, we hardly used the wordcountry, which only really came back to us when the Gallo-Roman layers raised their heads and played a role in politics. It was with their triumph that patriotism began to be a virtue again. Modern admirers of Greek patriotism all expose it, little by little close things, like Mr. Mc. Cullagh. Here is the definition of this economist: “However they (the Greek “state) may differ in internal forms, the but of all was to make every free man feel himself a “part of the state and so to organize the state as to concentrate its power, when required, in “favor of the least of its injured members or for the punishment of the most powerful” condemner of the law. » (Mc. Cullagh, t. I, p. 142.) These principles can be written or said; but no one with common sense is unaware that they are impracticable, and therefore not worth what they cost.

607

We also called them, as with us, thewell-born people, (Greek word) These nobles left some names. We still know the Codrids, the Medontids, the Alcmaeonids, the Gephyrs of Athens, the Penthelides of Mitylene, the Basilids of Eritrea, the Neleids of Miletus, the Bacchiades of Corinth, the Ctesippides of Epidaurus, the Eratids of Rhodes , the Hippotads of Cos and Cnidus, the Aleuades of Larisse, the Opheltiades and the Kleonymids of Thebes; the Deucalionides, who had reigned at Delphi since the arrival of their namesake. (Mc. Cullagh, vol. I, p. 15.)

608

As long as all republics were aristocratic, and where they were

609

remained, the tyrants left the noble houses. The regime of democracy gave birth to tyrants among the liberal leaders, those who were called the Aesymnetes, people of intelligence for the most part, fine talkers, friends of the arts, possessed of the taste for building, but who had no desire to take justice from the jealous and preferred to take the lead over the latter. With demagoguery, tyrants emerged from the mud. (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 36.) It is in the painting of popular despots that Aristophanes excels. See theKnights, therePeace, etc., etc. There

Tyranny was the leprosy from which all Greek governments had to suffer without ever being able to cure it. It was their essence.

We do not cite a single case of tyranny transmitted to the third generation. the Cypselides kept it for seventy-three years; the Orthagorids, ninety-nine. It's the longest thing we have. (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 40.)

610

“With the industrial growth of the commonwealth, the resident aliens, or, as they were "termed,metoeci, grew in number and consideration. They were more numerous at Athens than in any other state. » (Mac Cullagh, t. I, p. 253.) A very striking proof of the omnipotence of Asian civilization, in southern Greece, is found in this, that the monetary system and weights and measures introduced in 947 by Pheidon, king of Argos, and who was calledeginetichaving been practiced for a long time in Aegina, was completely identical to that known to the Assyrians, the Hebrews, etc. Bœckh has firmly established this. (Grote, History of Greece, t. II, p. 429.)

611

This question was asked almost everywhere in Greece beyond the Thessaly; but the middle classes did not achieve victory everywhere. In the north, in Thespiae, in Orchomenus, in Thebes, after bloody conflicts, the nobility maintained its supremacy. In Athens, on the contrary, she betrays herself. It will be noted that the towns I name were much less Semitic than those in the far south. (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 31.)

612

Gradually, too, they had lost the preponderance that gives possession of land and supremacy of wealth. However, the law had long guaranteed them the first point, and in many States, at Miletus, at Corinth, at Samos, at Chalcis, at Aegina, they had, early on, admitted that doing commerce was not was not to deviate. This principle was, however, never accepted in a general way (Mac Cullagh, t. I, p. 23.) Very quickly also, the great Hellenic families, considering the influence and the large incomes of certain plebeian races, had allied to them and thus degraded. (Ibid., t. I, p. 25.)

613

On some points, this victory did not take place without transition, and we saw certain cities create a constitution where power was handed over to two councils: one, the ghérousie (Greek word), was the college of nobles; the other, theball(Greek word), the assembly of the rich. (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 26.) These are the two chambers of the English parliamentary system.

614

In Cumae, every man who owned a horse had a voice in the assembly. In Ephesus and Eritrea, where a sort of representative regime was practiced, people's deputies sat with the nobility. (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 25.)

615

This is what made the naturalization of foreigners very difficult in the Dorian States. “A “rigid exclusiveness characterized several Greek communities, the most opposites in almost “every other political sentiment.” The people of Megara boasted that they had never “conceded the right of citizenship to any foreigner but Hercules. But Sybaris and Athens “are told to have acted otherwise; and the interest of Corinth, not to speak of less “important mercantile states, tended in the like direction. » (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 256.) Mixtures nevertheless took place, although more slowly, among the nations of the Doric race. The constitutions and isonomy of these peoples lasted only a little longer than those of others.

616

Mr. Bœckh, great supporter of Athenian freedom, does the saddest thing table of the consequences of the Hellenic league formed under the presidency of the city of Minerva, and which the policy of the Pnyx wanted to turn to the advantage of the State, as it was then understood. The common treasure, first deposited in the temple of Delos, was brought to Athens. The annual contributions of the allied cities were used to pay the people hungry for assemblies; monuments were built from it, statues were made from it, paintings were made from it. Quite naturally, little time was allowed to pass without declaring the contributions insufficient. The Confederate cities were burdened with taxes, and, to put it bluntly, plundered. In order to make them flexible, the people of Athens assumed the right of life and death over them. There were revolts; we massacred what we could of the rebel populations, and the

617

The rest were thrown into slavery. Several nations, disgusted with this kind of life, embarked on their ships and fled elsewhere. The Athenians, charmed, populated the vacant lands as they pleased. This is what was called, in Greek antiquity, the protectorate and the alliance; because, make no mistake, this is the state of friendship that I have just described from the learned pages of Mr. Bœckh. Of a thousand allied cities that Aristophanes counts in theWasps, only three remained free at the end of the Peloponnesian War: Chios, Mytilene of Lesbos and Methymna. The rest were not assimilated to their masters, not the same subject, but enslaved in all the rigor of the word. (The State House of Athener, t. I, p. 443.)

It is easy to judge the results that the democratic regime had brought to Athens. At the time of Cecrops, Attica is said to have had 20,000 inhabitants. Under Pericles, it had something less, and when, with the Macedonians, the true isonomy had been replaced by foreign domination, the city presented, in the enumerations, the following figures: 21,000 citizens, 10,000 metoecs or foreigners domiciled, and 400,000 slaves. (Clarac, Manual of the history of art among the ancients(in-12, Paris, 1874), lD part, p. 318.) This statistical information, like what I will have occasion to say later about the situation of royal Rome compared to consular Rome, does, in itself, justice to all the opinions that have been current among us for three hundred years on the relative merit of the different governments of antiquity. (See also Bœckh, The State House of Athener, t, I p. 35 et passim.) This scholar goes into details which agree with Clarac's opinion.

618

There are some interesting observations on this point in the introduction which Mr. Droysen put at the head of his translation of Aeschylus. (Aschylosis Werke, in-12, zw. Aufl. ; Berlin, 1841.)

619

Movers, das Phœnizische Alterth., t. II. 1Dpart, p. 413.

620

Bœttiger, about the oldest way of representing, on the

621

monuments, the kidnapping of Ganymede, where the little boy is roughly carried away, all crying, by the hair held tightly to the claws of

the eagle, notes that the characteristic features of primitive Greek art are liveliness, violence and the search for the expression of force ( Heftigkeit, Gewaltsamkeit, boechste Kraftaüsserung). This is clearly the Assyrian principle and the mark of its lessons. (Bœttiger, Ideas for Kunstmythologie, t. II, p. 64.)

“It is the epic poetry which forms at once both the undoubted

622

prerogative and the solitary “jewel of the earliest aera of Greece. » (Grote, vol. II, p. 158 and 162.)

Wolf's opinion is based on decisive considerations, Homer, when he speaks of a singer, of Demodocus, for example, never considers the poems with which he charms the listeners as being fragments of a great whole. He said, “He sang this, or he sang that.” " L'Iliadand theOdysseyonly appear to be compounds of separate ballads. In the first of these works, observes a historian, by isolating books I, VIII, XI to XXII, we obtain a complete Achilleid. (Grote, vol. II, p. 202 and 240.)

623

The loss of this poem is very regrettable. He would have given us a lot

624

learned about the Arians of Central Asia. (Grote, vol. II, p. 158 and 162.)

Hellenic nations often claim to be autochthonous;

625

but when we come to the proof, we generally find that they are descended from a god, when it is not from a topical nymph. In the first case, I see an Arian or Semitic ancestor; in the second, an initial mixture with the aborigines. Thus, I understand that we can call the Canaanite pirate Inachus son of Ocean and Tethys. He had emerged from the sea. Thus again Dardanus was son of Jupiter, of Zeus, of the Arian god par excellence. He was therefore Arian himself, and came from Samothrace, Arcadia or even Italy, in short from the north. In Laconia, before the Dorian invasion, we encounter semiautochthonous people, that is to say people who are neither entirely Arians nor entirely Semites. Their genealogies go back to Lélex and the topical nymph Kleocharia. (See Grote, t. I, p. 133, 230, 387.)

Cumae, Argos and Cyrene also retained the name of king (Greek word) to

626

their principal magistrate, usually invested with the command of the army and the general presidency (Greek word) (Mac Culagh, t. I, p. 15.)

They had a certain relationship with the Thessalians. At least the Aleuades called themselves Heraclides like the kings of Sparta, and we observe great analogies between the servile organization of the Helotes and the Periakes of the one and that of the Phœnestes, the Perrhoebes and the Magnetes of the others. The Dorians, much superior to other Hellenic tribes from a social point of view, were also the men of a recent migration. They had no mythical fame, and are not even named in theIliad. They are species of Pandavas. (Grote, vol. II, p. 2.) They appear to have invaded the Peloponnese by sea, as the Hindu Arians did in southern India. (Ibid., p. 4.) In this regard, it is curious to observe how the Arians, a nation so Mediterranean in origin, always easily became intrepid and skillful sailors.

627

Mr. MacCullagh seriously attributes the decline and fall of Sparta to the

628

unfortunate persistence of aristocratic institutions. He also has words of pity for these unfortunate Dorians of Crete, whose constitution will remain unshakeable for many centuries. The comparison of the dates indicated here should have consoled him; or at least, if he wanted to persist in complaining about the lack of longevity of the laws of Lycurgus, maintaining only the short space of 632 years, he could have reserved the greatest part of his sympathy for Athenian democracy, even though died more quickly. (Mac Cullagh, t. I, p. 208 and 227.) But Mr. Mac Cullagh, in his capacity as a free-trade antiquarian, has a particular horror of the Dorian race. I doubt he will overcome O's completely contrary preferences. Muller (die Dorier). The German scholar is a very tough antagonist.

The dates are persuasive: the battle of Plataea was won on the 22nd November 479 BC and the intoxication of the Greeks still lasts and is perpetuated in our colleges. But, apart from the fact that the greater part of Greece had been the ally of the Persians, Sparta, the strongest of their

629

antagonists, hastened to conclude a separate peace in 477, that is to say two years after the victory. If Athens resisted this natural training longer, it was because it found profit in maintaining the confederation in order to have allies to oppress and pillage. (Mac Cullagh, t. I, p. 157.) We can judge the character of this policy by the decree issued on the proposal of Pericles and by virtue of which the Athenian people declared that they owed no account of the use of the common funds of the league. (Ibid., p. 161; BoeckhThe State House of the Athener, t. I, p. 429.) Aeschylus,The Persians.

630

We follow, with great ease, the transformations of the population Lacedaemonian. At the battle of Plataea, the city of Lycurgus had put 50,000 fighters in line, namely:

631

5,000 Spartans and 7 Helots per Spartan, i.e. 35,000 armed Helots,

5,000 hoplites

5,000 peltasts Total 50,000

Periœkes.

On the battlefield of Leuctra, only 1,000 Spartans remained. For a long time, the State had only supported its external wars by means of freed Helots (Greek word). In 370 BC, when Epaminondas invaded Laconia, it was still necessary to give freedom to 6,000 Helots to be able to defend themselves. A hundred years later, there were only 700 citizen families left, and only 100 owned land; the rest was ruined. An aristocracy was then reformed with Periœkes, foreigners and Helots. In Sellasia, all of this new bourgeoisie was exterminated by King Antigone and the Achaeans, except 200 men. Machanidas and his successor Nabis

used the ordinary means to revive the republic: there was a vast promotion of citizens. But soon after, despite this resource, Sparta, still defeated and discouraged, melted into the Achaean line. This history is that of all the Greek states, of Argos, of Thebes, as well as of Athens. (Zumpt, p. 7 et passim) They spoke Pehlvi and then substituted Parsi, where an influx of

632

a greater number of Semitic roots, resulting from the long stay of the Arsacids in Ctesiphon and Seleucia. According to Justin, the original background is Scythian; but the Scythians spoke an Arian dialect. The Mahabharata knows the Parthians, whom it namesParada. He combines them with saka(Sacæ), certainly Mongols. The Parthians give, through their ethnic comparison, a fairly fair idea of what several Turanian races must have been like.

Presentation Let's try to capture Gobineau in motion. It is very curious that we must – for once – study an author based on his posthumous fortune and no longer the other way around: it is because Gobineau – who never had much luck in his life, we must to be fair – was the most unlucky of romantic writers. One says ! The Pleiades! – and it really feels like we’ve said it all. It turned out that the worst imbeciles, the lunatics and the criminals of our time were completely wrong about him, taking his lyricism for science, his personal confessions for objective proof, his intimate torments for scientific demonstrations: Gobineau always carried out a thousand tasks at once, he was a man of turbulent nature, but who had only one fixed point in life, which was the sourness that rose to his throat when he saw the gallery of famous men of his time pass before the eyes of his memory. Hubert June

Completed digitization This ePub format was produced on October 20, 2012 on behalf of StvPress & Kinoscript editions EANePub: 9782367530291