1. See my Introduction to Count Gobineau’s “Renaissance” (Heinemann).

2. This dedication and the following preface apply to the whole work, of which the present volume contains the first book. The remaining books are occupied by a detailed examination of the civilizations mentioned at the end of this volume, and it is of these as well as the present book that the author is thinking, in his preface, when speaking of his imitators. A few passages in the dedication that relate exclusively to these books have been omitted.—Tr.

3. Amédée Thierry, La Gaule sous l’administration romaine, vol. i, p. 244.

4. By C. F. Weber, Lucani Pharsalia (Leipzig, 1828), vol. i, pp. 122–3, note.

5. Prichard, “Natural History of Man.” Dr. Martius is still more explicit. Cf. Martius and Spix, Reise in Brasilien, vol. i, pp. 379–80.

6. Balzac, Lettre à madame la duchesse de Montausier.

7. The power of the Tribunate was revived after Appius’s decemvirate in 450 B.C., but the office had been founded more than forty years before. On the other hand, consular tribunes were first elected after 450 (in 445); but the consular tribunate could hardly be described as a “great revolution.” The author may be confusing the two tribunates.—Tr.

8. Cp. Homer, “Odyssey,” XV, 415 sqq.

9. Augustin Thierry, Récits des temps mérovingiens; see especially the story of Mummolus.

10. Cæsar, the democrat and sceptic, knew how to hold language contrary to his opinions when it was necessary. His funeral oration on his aunt is very curious: “On the mother’s side,” he said, “Julia was descended from kings; on her father’s, from the immortal gods: for the Marcian Reges, whose name her mother bore, were sprung from Ancus Marcius, while Venus is the ancestress of the Julii, the clan to which belongs the family of the Cæsars. Thus in our blood is mingled at the same time the sanctity of kings, who are the mightiest of men, and the awful majesty of the gods, who hold kings themselves in their power” (Suetonius, “Julius,” p. 6). Nothing could be more monarchical; and also, for an atheist, nothing could be more religious.

11. Acts xxvi, 24, 28, 31.

12. The reader will understand that I am not speaking of the political existence of a centre of sovereignty, but of the life of a whole society, or the span of a whole civilization. The distinction drawn at the beginning of chap. ii must be applied here.

13. The celebrated physiologist (1771–1802), and author of L’Anatomie générale.—Tr.

14. This attachment of the Arab tribes to their racial unity shows itself sometimes in a very curious manner. A traveller (M. Fulgence Fresnel, I think) says that at Djiddah, where morals are very lax, the same Bedouin girl who will sell her favours for the smallest piece of money would think herself dishonoured if she contracted a legal marriage with the Turk or European to whom she contemptuously lends herself.

15.

16. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV.—Tr.

17. The Comte de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, has rightly shown that the party crushed by Cardinal Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism or the great aristocratic methods of government. Montmorency, Cinq-Mars, and Marillac tried to overthrow the State merely in order to obtain favour and office for themselves. The great Cardinal was quite innocent of the “murder of the French nobility,” with which he has been so often reproached.

18. A. von Humboldt, Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent, vol. ii, pp. 129–30.

19. See the articles of Gustave d’Alaux in the Revue des deux Mondes.

20. The colony of San Domingo, before its emancipation, was one of the places where the luxury and refinement of wealth had reached its highest point. It was, to a superior degree, what Havana has become through its commercial activity. The slaves are now free and have set their own house in order. This is the result!

21. Consult, on this subject, Prichard, d’Orbigny, A. von Humboldt, &c.

22. See above, p. 38.

23. Compare Carus, Über ungleiche Befähigung der verschiedenen Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung (Leipzig, 1849), p. 96 et passim.

24. Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 37. See also Squier, “Observations on the Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.”

25. The special construction of these tumuli and the numerous instruments and utensils they contain are occupying the attention of many eminent American antiquaries. It is impossible to doubt the great age of these monuments. Squier is perfectly right in finding a proof of this in the mere fact that the skeletons discovered in the tumuli fall to pieces when brought into the slightest contact with the air, although the conditions for their preservation are excellent, so far as the quality of the soil is concerned. On the other hand, the bodies which lay buried under the cromlechs of Brittany, and which are at least 1800 years old, are perfectly firm. Hence we may easily imagine that there is no relation between these ancient inhabitants of the land and the tribes of the present day—the Lenni-Lenapes and others. I must not end this note without praising the industry and resource shown by American scholars in the study of the antiquities of their continent. Finding their labours greatly hindered by the extreme brittleness of the skulls they had exhumed, they discovered, after many abortive attempts, a way of pouring a preparation of bitumen into the bodies, which solidifies at once and keeps the bones from crumbling. This delicate process, which requires infinite care and quickness, seems, as a rule, to be entirely successful.

26. Ancient India required a vast amount of clearing on the part of the first white settlers. See Lassen, Indische Altertumskunde, vol. i. As to Egypt, compare Bunsen, Ägyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, as to the fertilization of the Fayoum, a vast work executed by the early kings.

27. “They say that it spontaneously produces wheat, barley, beans, and sesame, and all the edible plants that grow in the plains” (Syncellus).

28. Salvador, Histoire des Juifs.

29. M. Saint-Marc Girardin, in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

30. We may cite, on the subject treated in this chapter, the opinion of a learned historian, though it is rather truculent in tone:

“A large number of writers are convinced that the country makes the people; that the Bavarians or the Saxons were predestined by the nature of the soil to become what they are to-day; that Protestantism does not suit the South, nor Catholicism the North, and so on. Some of the people who interpret history in the light of their meagre knowledge, narrow sympathies, and limited intelligence would like to show that the nation of which we are speaking (the Jews) possessed such and such qualities—whether these gentlemen understand the nature of the qualities or not—merely from having lived in Palestine instead of India or Greece. But if these great scholars, who are so clever in proving everything, would condescend to reflect that the soil of the Holy Land has contained in its limited area very different peoples, with different ideas and religions, and that between these various peoples and their successors at the present day there have been infinite degrees of diversity, although the actual country has remained the same—they would then see how little influence is exerted by material conditions on a nation’s character and civilization.” Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. i, p. 259.

31. Acts ii, 4, 8, 9–11.

32. Apocryphal Gospels: “The Story of Joseph the Carpenter,” chap. i.

33. Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 41.

34. Ibid.

35. “Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America.”

36. I have discussed Prichard’s facts without questioning their value. I might, however, have simply denied them, and should have had on my side the weighty authority of A. de Tocqueville, who in his great work on “Democracy in America” refers to the Cherokees in these words: “The presence of half-breeds has favoured the very rapid development of European habits among the Indians. The half-breed shares the enlightenment of his father without entirely giving up the savage customs of his mother’s race. He is thus a natural link between civilization and barbarism. Wherever half-breeds exist and multiply we see the savages gradually changing their customs and social conditions” (“Democracy in America,” vol. iii). De Tocqueville ends by prophesying that although the Cherokees and the Creeks are half-breeds and not natives, as Prichard says, they will nevertheless disappear in a short time through the encroachment of the white race.

37. In discussing the list of remarkable negroes which is given in the first instance by Blumenbach and could easily be supplemented, Carus well says that among the black races there has never been any politics or literature or any developed ideas of art, and that when any individual negroes have distinguished themselves it has always been the result of white influence. There is not a single man among them to be compared, I will not say to one of our men of genius, but to the heroes of the yellow races—for example, Confucius. (Carus, op. cit.)

38. W. von Humboldt, Über die Kawi-sprache auf der Insel Java, Introduction, vol. i, p. 37.

39. I.e. the world in its second stage of improvement.

40. Klemm (Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit) divides the races of men into “active” and “passive.” I do not know his book, and so cannot tell if his idea agrees with my own. But it is natural that if we follow the same path we should light upon the same truth.

41. It is also in connexion with these that we find the main cause of the false judgments passed on foreign peoples. Because the externals of their civilization are unlike the corresponding parts of our own, we are often apt to infer hastily that they are either barbarians or of less worth than ourselves. Nothing could be more superficial, and so more doubtful, than a conclusion drawn from such premises.

42. “It is still only in China that a poor student can offer himself for the Imperial examination and come out a great man. This is a splendid feature of the social organization of the Chinese, and their theory is certainly better than any other. Unfortunately, its application is far from perfect. I am not here referring to the errors of judgment and corruption on the part of the examiners, or even to the sale of literary degrees, an expedient to which the Government is sometimes driven in times of financial stress....” (F. J. Mohl, “Annual Report of the Société Asiatique,” 1846).

43. John F. Davis, “The Chinese” (London, 1840): “Three or four volumes of any ordinary work of the octavo size and shape may be had for a sum equivalent to two shillings. A Canton bookseller’s manuscript catalogue marked the price of the four books of Confucius, including the commentary, at a price rather under half-a-crown. The cheapness of their common literature is occasioned partly by the mode of printing, but partly also by the low price of paper.”

44. “Force them to enter.”

45. A nurse of Touraine put a bird into the hands of the three-year-old boy of whom she was in charge, and encouraged him to pull out its wings and feathers. When the parents blamed her for teaching such wickedness, she replied, “It is to make him proud.” This answer, given in 1847, goes back directly to the educational maxims in vogue at the time of Vercingetorix.

46. A very few years ago there was a question of electing a churchwarden in a little obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the old province which the true Bretons call the “Welsh,” or “foreign,” country. The church council, composed of peasants, deliberated for two days without being able to make up their minds; for the candidate before them, though rich and well esteemed as a good man and a good Christian, was a “foreigner.” The council would not move from its opinion, although the “foreigner’s” father, as well as himself, had been born in the district; it was still remembered that his grandfather, who had been dead for many years and had never known any member of the council, was an immigrant from another part of the country. The daughter of a peasant-proprietor makes a mésalliance if she marries a tailor or a miller or even a farmer, if he works for wages. It does not matter whether the husband is richer than she is; her crime is often punished, just the same, by a father’s curse. Is not this case exactly like that of the churchwarden?

47. This chapter was, of course, written before the appearance of the “Origin of Species” or the “Descent of Man”; see author’s preface.—Tr.

48. These views are quoted by Flourens (Eloge de Blumenbach, Mémoire de l’Académie des Sciences), who himself dissents from them.

49. This and the other illustrations in this chapter are taken from Prichard, “Natural History of Man.”

50. Meiners was so struck with the repulsive appearance of the greater part of humanity that he imagined a very simple system of classification, containing only two categories—the beautiful, namely the white race, and the ugly, which includes all the others (Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit). The reader will see that I have not thought it necessary to go through all the ethnological theories. I only mention the most important.

51. Prichard, op. cit. (2nd edition, 1845), p. 112.

52. Prichard, p. 116.

53. Ibid., pp. 117–18.

54. Carus, op. cit., from which the following details are taken.

55. There are some apparently trivial differences which are, however, very characteristic. A certain fullness at the side of the lower lip, that we see among Germans and English, is an example. This mark of Germanic origin may also be found in some faces of the Flemish School, in the Rubens Madonna at Dresden, in the Satyrs and Nymphs in the same collection, in a Lute-player of Mieris, &c. No craniological method can take account of such details, though they have a certain importance, in view of the mixed character of our races.

56. Job Ludolf, whose data on this subject were necessarily very incomplete and inferior to those we have now, is none the less opposed to the opinion accepted by Prichard. His remarks on the black race are striking and unanswerable, and I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting them: “It is not my purpose to speak here about the blackness of the Ethiop; most people may, if they will, attribute it to the heat of the sun and the torrid zone. Yet even within the sun’s equatorial path there are peoples who, if not white, are at least not quite black. Many who live outside either tropic are further from the Equator than the Persians or Syrians—for instance, the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope, who, however, are absolutely black. If you say that blackness belongs solely to Africa and the sons of Ham, you must still allow that the Malabars and the Cingalese and other even more remote peoples of Asia are equally black. If you regard the climate and soil as the reason, then why do not white men become black when they settle down in these regions? If you take refuge in ‘hidden qualities,’ you would do better to confess your ignorance at once” (Jobus Ludolfus, Commentarium ad Historiam Æthiopicam). I will add a short and conclusive passage of Mr. Pickering. He speaks of the regions inhabited by the black race in these words: “Excluding the northern and southern extremes, with the tableland of Abyssinia, it holds all the more temperate and fertile parts of the Continent.” Thus it is just where we find most of the pure negroes that it is least hot ... (Pickering, “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution.” The essay is to be found in the “Records of the United States’ Exploring Expedition during the Years 1838–42,” vol. ix).

57. Prichard, p. 124.

58. Neither the Swiss nor the Tyrolese, nor the Highlanders of Scotland, nor the Balkan Slavs, nor the Himalaya tribes have the same hideous appearance as the Quichuas.

59. Annales du Muséum, vol. xi, p. 458.

60. The unitarians are continually bringing forward comparisons between man and the animals in support of their theory; I have just been using such a line of argument myself. It only applies, however, within limits, and I could not honestly avail myself of it in speaking of the modification of species by climate. In this respect the difference between man and the animals is radical and (one might almost say) specific. There is a geography of animals, as there is of plants; but there is no geography of man. It is only in certain latitudes that certain vegetables, mammals, reptiles, fishes, and molluscs can exist; man, in all his varieties, can live equally well everywhere. In the case of the animals this fully explains a vast number of differences in organization; and I can easily believe that the species that cannot cross a certain meridian or rise to a certain height above sea-level without dying are very dependent upon the influence of climate and quick to betray its effects in their forms and instincts. It is just, however, because man is absolutely free from such bondage that I refuse to be always comparing his position, in face of the forces of nature, with that of the animals.

61. Barrow is the author of this theory, which he bases on certain points of resemblance in the shape of the head and the yellowish colour of the skin in the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. A traveller, whose name I forget, has even brought additional evidence by observing that the Hottentots usually wear a head-dress like the conical hat of the Chinese.

62. Müller, Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, vol. ii, p. 639.

63. Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” 2nd edition, pp. 484 et sqq.

64. Genesis xxi, 5.

65. We must make an exception in the case of Shakespeare, who is painting a picture of Italy. Thus in Romeo and Juliet Capulet says:

To which Paris answers:

66. According to Krapff, a Protestant missionary in East Africa, the Wanikas marry at twelve, boys and girls alike (Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. iii, p. 317). In Paraguay the Jesuits introduced the custom, which still holds among their disciples, of marrying the boys at thirteen and the girls at ten. Widows of eleven and twelve are to be seen in this country (A. d’Orbigny, L’Homme américain, vol. i, p. 40). In South Brazil the women marry at ten or eleven. Menstruation both appears and ceases at an early age (Martius and Spix, Reise in Brasilien vol. i, p. 382). Such quotations might be infinitely extended; I will only cite one more. In the novel of Yo-kiao-Li the Chinese heroine is sixteen years old, and her father is in despair that at such an age she is not yet married!

67. Prichard, p. 486.

68. It has been since discovered that this fairness, in certain Jews, is due to a mixture of Tartar blood; in the 9th century a tribe of Chasars went over to Judaism and intermarried with the German-Polish Jews (Kutschera, Die Chasaren).—Tr.

69. Edinburgh Review, “Ethnology or the Science of Races,” October 1848, pp. 444–8: “There is probably no evidence of original diversity of race which is so generally relied upon as that derived from the colour of the skin and the character of the hair ... but it will not, we think, stand the test of a serious examination....”

70. Ibid., p. 453: “The Cingalese are described by Dr. Davy as varying in colour from light brown to black. The prevalent hue of their hair and eyes is black, but hazel eyes and brown hair are not very uncommon; grey eyes and red hair are occasionally seen, though rarely, and sometimes the light blue or red eye and flaxen hair of the Albino.”

71. Edinburgh Review, “The Samoyedes, Tungusians, and others living on the borders of the Icy Sea have a dirty brown or swarthy complexion.”

72. Ibid., p. 439.

73. Ibid., p. 439 (summarized).

74. Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs, vol. i, p. 2.

75. Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. i, pp. 433, 1115, &c.; Tassen, Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. ii, p. 65; Benfey, Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopädie, Indien, p. 12. A. von Humboldt calls this fact one of the most important discoveries of our time (Asie centrale, vol. ii, p. 639). From the point of view of historical science this is absolutely true.

76. Nushirwan, who reigned in the first half of the sixth century A.D., married Sharuz, daughter of the Turkish Khan. She was the most beautiful woman of her time (Haneberg, Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. i, p. 187). The Shahnameh gives many facts of the same kind.

77. Just as the Scythians, a Mongolian race, had adopted an Aryan tongue, so there would be nothing surprising in the view that the Oghuzes were an Aryan race, although they spoke a Finnish dialect. This theory is curiously supported by a naïve phrase of the traveller Rubruquis, who was sent by St. Louis to the ruler of the Mongols. “I was struck,” says the good monk, “by the likeness borne by this prince to the late M. Jean de Beaumont, who was equally ruddy and fresh-looking.” Alexander von Humboldt, interested, as he well might be, by such a remark, adds with no less good sense, “This point of physiognomy is especially worth noting if we remember that the family of Tchingiz was probably Turkish, and not Mongolian.” He confirms his conclusion by adding that “the absence of Mongolian characteristics strikes us also in the portraits which we have of the descendants of Baber, the rulers of India” (Asie centrale, vol. i, p. 248 and note).

78. Hammer, op. cit., vol. i, p. 448: “The battle against the Hungarians was hotly contested and the booty considerable. So many boys and girls were seized that the most beautiful female slave was exchanged for a jackboot, and Ashik-Pacha-Zadeh, the historian, who himself took part in the battle and the plunder, could not sell five boy-slaves at Skopi for more than 500 piastres.”

79. “Ethnology,” &c., p. 439: “The Hungarian nobility ... is proved by historical and philological evidence to have been a branch of the great Northern Asiatic stock, closely allied in blood to the stupid and feeble Ostiaks and the untamable Laplanders.”

80. Essai historique sur l’origine des Hongrois (Paris, 1844).

81. The current opinions about the peoples of Central Asia will, it seems, have to be greatly modified. It can no longer be denied that the blood of the yellow races has been crossed more or less considerably by a white strain. This fact was not suspected before, but it throws a doubt on all the ancient notions on the subject, which must now be revised in the light of it. Alexander von Humboldt makes a very important observation with regard to the Kirghiz-Kasaks, who are mentioned by Menander of Byzantium and Constantine Porphyrogenetes. He rightly shows that when the former speaks of a Kirghiz (Χερχις) concubine given by the Turkish Shagan Dithubul to Zemarch, the envoy of the Emperor Justin II, in 569, he is referring to a girl of mixed blood. She corresponds exactly to the beautiful Turkish girls who are so praised by the Persians, and who were as little Mongolian in type as this Kirghiz (Asie centrale, vol. i, p. 237, &c.; vol. ii, pp. 130–31).

82. Schaffarik, Slavische Altertümer, vol. i, p. 279 et pass.

83. Aug. Thierry, Histoire de la Conquête d’Angleterre, vol. i, p. 155.

84. Lyell, “Principles of Geology,” vol. i, p. 178.

85. Link, Die Urwelt und das Altertum, vol. i, p. 84.

86. Link, op. cit., vol. i, p. 91.

87. Cuvier, op. cit. Compare also, on this point, the opinion of Alexander von Humboldt: “In the epochs preceding the existence of the human race the action of the forces in the interior of the globe must, as the earth’s crust increased in thickness, have modified the temperature of the air and made the whole earth habitable by the products which we now regard as exclusively tropical. Afterwards the spatial relation of our planet to the central body (the sun) began, by means of radiation and cooling down, to be almost the sole agent in determining the climate at different latitudes. It was also in these primitive times that the elastic fluids, or volcanic forces, inside the earth, more powerful than they are to-day, made their way through the oxidized and imperfectly solidified crust of our planet” (Asie centrale, vol. i, p. 47).

88. Second edition, pp. 92–4. The man was born in 1727.

89. See Genesis ii, 8, 10, 15.

90. Lyell, “Principles of Geology,” vol. ii, p. 119.

91. Alexander von Humboldt does not think that this hypothesis can apply to the migration of plants. “What we know,” he says, “of the deleterious action exerted by sea-water, during a voyage of 500 or 600 leagues, over the reproductive power of most grains, does not favour the theory of the migration of vegetables by means of ocean currents. Such a theory is too general and comprehensive” (Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent, vol. ii, p. 78).

92. Alexander von Humboldt gives the law determining these facts in the following passage (Asie centrale, vol. iii, p. 23): “The foundation of the science of climatology is the accurate knowledge of the inequalities of a continent’s surface (hypsometry). Without this knowledge we are apt to attribute to elevation what is really the effect of other causes, acting, in low-lying regions, on a surface of which the curve is continuous with that of the sea, along the isothermic lines (i.e. lines along which the temperature is the same).” By calling attention to the multiplicity of influences acting on the temperature of any given geographical point, Von Humboldt shows how very different conditions of climate may exist in places that are quite near each other, independently of their height above sea-level. Thus in the north-east of Ireland, on the Glenarn coast, there is a region, on the same parallel of latitude as Königsberg in Prussia, which produces myrtles growing in the open air quite as vigorously as in Portugal; this region is in striking contrast with those round it. “There are hardly any frosts in winter, and the heat in summer is not enough to ripen the grapes.... The pools and small lakes of the Faroe Islands are not frozen over during the winter, in spite of the latitude (62°).... In England, on the Devonshire coast, the myrtle, the camelia iaponica, the fuchsia coccinea, and the Boddleya globosa flourish in the open, unsheltered, throughout the winter.... At Salcombe the winters are so mild that orange-trees have been seen, with fruit on them, sheltered by a wall and protected merely by screens” (pp. 147–48).

93. I will explain in due course the reasons why I do not include the American Indian as a pure and primitive type. I have already given indications of my view on p. 112. Here I merely subscribe to the opinion of Flourens, who also recognizes only three great subdivisions of the species—those of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The names call for criticism but the divisions are in the main correct.

94. Carus gives his powerful support to the law I have laid down, namely that the civilizing races are especially prone to mix their blood. He points out the immense variety of elements composing the perfected human organism, as against the simplicity of the infinitesimal beings on the lowest step in the scale of creation. He deduces the following axiom: “Whenever there is an extreme likeness between the elements of an organic whole, its state cannot be regarded as the expression of a complete and final development, but is merely primitive and elementary” (Über die ungleiche Befähigkeit der verschiedenen Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung, p. 4). In another place he says: “The greatest possible diversity (i.e. inequality) of the parts, together with the most complete unity of the whole, is clearly, in every sphere, the standard of the highest perfection of an organism.” In the political world this is the state of a society where the governing classes are racially quite distinct from the masses, while being themselves carefully organised into a strict hierarchy.

95. Flourens (Eloge de Blumenbach, p. xi) describes the Polynesian race as “a mixture of two others, the Caucasian and the Mongolian.” Caucasian is probably a mere slip; he certainly meant black.

96. The physiological characteristics of the ancestors are reproduced in their descendants according to fixed rules. Thus we see in South America that though the children of a white man and a negress may have straight soft hair, yet the crisp woolly hair invariably appears in the second generation (A. d’Orbigny, l’Homme américain, vol. i, p. 143).

97. It may be remarked that the happiest blend, from the point of view of beauty, is that made by the marriage of white and black. We need only put the striking charm of many mulatto, Creole, and quadroon women by the side of such mixtures of yellow and white as the Russians and Hungarians. The comparison is not to the advantage of the latter. It is no less certain that a beautiful Rajput is more ideally beautiful than the most perfect Slav.