James Bryce

“ The social relations of two races which cannot be fused raise problems even more difficult, because incapable of being regulated by law. Law may attempt to secure equal admission to public conveyances or public entertainments. But the look of scorn, the casual blow, the brutal oath thrown at one who dare not resent it—these are injuries which cannot be prevented where the sentiment of the dominant race allows them. Impunity corrupts the ordinary man; and even the better sort suffer from the consciousness of their own superiority not merely in rank, but also in strength and volition. ”

“ This seems the more strange when one remembers how successful Islam has been in creating a sentiment of equality in those who obey it. The common faith of Muslims not only unites them against all who stand outside, but extinguishes distinctions of personal status among them, softening slavery, and making the free negro the equal of Arab or Persian or Turk. To what causes is this difference between the influence of the two great faiths to be ascribed? Can one of those causes be that Christianity achieved less because it aimed at more? ”

“ I have sought to call your attention to a great secular process in the history of the world, a process the steps in which are reckoned by centuries, and whose magnitude transcends the political or commercial questions that claim our thoughts from day to day. It is a process which has now entered a critical phase, and we see opening before us a long vista in which there appear possibilities of an immense increase in the productive powers of the earth and man, possibilities also of trouble and strife between races now being brought into a closer and more general contact. ”

“ At this moment there is living in the United States the son of a white father and negro mother, himself born in slavery, who is one of the most remarkable personalities and perhaps the most moving and persuasive orator in that nation of eighty millions. Mexico has been ruled for a quarter of a century with equal vigour and wisdom by a man of mixed Indian and Spanish blood who ranks among the five or six foremost figures of our time. ”

“ The nation will, in fact, be rather two nations than one, may waste its force on internal dissensions, may lose its unity of action at moments of public danger. Evils of this order tend to be more acute the more democratic a government becomes. Two courses are open, but each will have elements of danger. If political privileges are refused to the Backward race, the contrast between principle and practice, between a theoretic recognition of the rights of man as man and the denial of them to a section of the population, will be palpable and indefensible. ”

“ With this incomparably fuller and more exact knowledge of the families of Man there has come a far closer and more widespread contact of those various families with one another, and in particular of the more advanced and civilized races with the more backward, a contact so much closer and more widespread than ever in the past that it may be deemed to mark a crisis in the history of the world, which will profoundly affect the destiny of all mankind. It is of the phenomena of that contact and the problems which it raises that I propose to speak to you to-day. ”

“ Equality of rights might seem to be here also that which is fairest and most likely to make for unity and peace. But the Backward race may be really unfit to exercise political power, whether from ignorance, or from an indifference that would dispose it to sell its votes, or from a propensity to sudden and unreasoning impulses. The familiar illustration of the boy put to drive a locomotive engine might in some communities be no extreme way of describing the risks a democracy runs when the suffrage is granted to a large mass of half-civilized men. ”

“ When two races differing in strength, that is to say, either in numbers, or in physical capacity, or in mental capacity, or in material advancement, or in military resources, come into political or social contact some one of four possible results follows. Either the weaker race dies out before the stronger, or it is absorbed into the stronger, the latter remaining practically unaffected, or the two become commingled into something different from what either was before, or, finally, the two continue to dwell together unmixed, each preserving a character of its own. ”

“ Yet it does not seem desirable that they and the whites should become fused by intermarriage; nor do they themselves appear to desire that result.
The matter ought to be regarded from the side neither of the white nor of the black, but of the future of mankind at large. Now for the future of mankind nothing is more vital than that some races should be maintained at the highest level of efficiency, because the work they can do for thought and art and letters, for scientific discovery, and for raising the standard of conduct, will determine the general progress of humanity. ”

“ Where ordinary virtue fails, one may ask,—Why does not religion come in to bridge the gulf between two races, both of whom, as in the Southern States, worship the same God? Christianity has proclaimed in the most solemn and exalted terms the absolute equality and brotherhood of all men. ”

“ It is here that we find the greatest variety of phenomena and the most difficult problems. It is here that the interest of the future lies, because these stronger races will be factors in history for some generations or centuries to come.
The elements of strength present in two diverse races brought into contact need not be the same elements. One race may have physical strength and courage, the other may be strong through patient industry. One may be gifted with a highly developed brain and store of knowledge: the other may possess that prolific quality which ensures an abundant offspring. ”

“ But when Muslims and Christians or Jews dwell side by side, each race so cleaves to its own faith as to stand sharply apart from the other. Thus in the Turkish and Persian and Arab East there is practically no intermarriage, save when a Christian girl is abducted and forced into Islam. It is Religion that has in those regions forbidden the mixture of races, and created that apparently insoluble problem which we call 'The Eastern Question.' There, Religion becomes Race and Race means Religion. ”

“ It is worth remarking that in respect if not of their practical treatment of the Backward races, yet of their attitude towards them, Roman Catholics have been more disposed to a recognition of equality than have Protestants. The Spaniard is the proudest of mankind. He treated the aborigines of the New World as harshly as ever the Teutonic peoples have done. But he does not look down upon, nor hold himself aloof from, the negro or the Indian as the Teutons do. ”

“ The Backward race, being the weaker, is usually that which tries to protect itself by guile, while the more advanced race relies upon the prestige of its knowledge, the force of its will, and its ingrained habit of dominance. ”

“ But this result is largely due to religion, of which a word must now be said.
Religion, which in some countries has forbidden and in others has encouraged the mingling of diverse stocks, is an influence far less powerful than colour. It seldom creates a feeling of personal repulsion [4] . Like language, it can be changed; and when one race is so far beneath the other that the man can force the woman to embrace his faith, it becomes a very slight obstacle. In the ancient world people changed their gods lightly, because polytheism permits one to adopt new deities without abjuring the old ones. ”

“ This has been the case over most of Spanish America, and is to a great extent true also of Algeria. But where the races live in the same towns and villages, and follow the same pursuits, antagonism is sure to arise. It arises from Inequality, because as one of the races is stronger in intelligence and will, its average members treat members of the weaker race scornfully or roughly, when they can do so with impunity. It arises from Dissimilarity of character, because neither race understands the other's way of thinking and feeling, so that each gives offence even without meaning it. ”

“ The race that accepts an alien type may be the stronger race in everything but intelligence and culture. Sometimes strength, if it take the form of a dogged persistence in its ancient ways, is the undoing of a people. Many of the Red Indian tribes have perished off the earth because they could not or would not adjust themselves to the conditions which the advent of the whites imposed. The black man submits and survives.
Through these two processes of Extinction and Absorption an enormous change has passed upon the population of the globe. ”

“ But it is not safe to assume that the process by which the huge political aggregates we now see have been built up during the last few centuries will also continue. Causes may even be imagined which would break up existing nations into smaller political units.
Questions relating to the future of the great religions lead us into a still vaster and still darker field of uncertainty, a field in which forces reign whose action we can neither calculate nor foretell. Conceive what a difference it might make if Islam were within two centuries to disappear from the earth! ”

“ It must, however, be admitted that in all or nearly all the countries where white men and black men dwell together, Christianity, though it has brought from without not only devoted missionaries but such a band of noble and self-sacrificing women as went after the war to the Southern States to teach the newly liberated negroes, has failed to impress the lesson of human equality and brotherhood upon the whites established in the country. ”

“ Broadly speaking, one may say that while the phenomena of Spanish and Portuguese America are enough to show that the admixture of advanced European peoples with races very far behind them in the arts of life, and also (as regards the negro but not the Indian) in natural mental force, is one of the results which may follow a contact of races, and a result that may go even further in the future, the phenomena of those vast regions which are ruled by Teutonic peoples in Asia, Africa, and America show that this result is unlikely to arrive in other and still more populous areas. ”

“ When the educated sections of the dominant race have come to realize how essential it is to the future of their country that the backward race should be helped forward and rendered friendly, their influence will by degrees filter down through the masses of the people and efface the scorn they feel for the weaker race. The philosopher may say, 'Let who will make the laws if I make the manners'; for where manners are wholesome, the laws will be just, and will be justly administered. Manners depend upon sentiment, and sentiment changes slowly. ”

“ The Malays and Chinese intermarry in the Eastern Archipelago with one another, and apparently also with the darker races. The Berbers of North Africa, and the mixed race formed from Arab and Berber blood, unite themselves with the blacks of Sudan and Central Africa. In Morocco one sees every type of feature and every shade of colour, from the light yellowish-brown pure Arab to the jet-black negro, and all seem to stand on the same social level. ”

“ We may pass by the question of what constitutes racial difference, merely observing that stress must not be laid upon linguistic affinities; nor need we inquire how far the present backwardness of a race indicates inferior natural capacity, being content to take the existing state of things as we find it. Let us go straight to the facts and problems which the contact of diverse races brings into being. ”

“ Discontent appears and social friction is intensified, not only because occasions for it grow more frequent, but because the temper of each race is more angry and suspicious. These phenomena, present even where the races are not very diverse in habits of life or level of culture, as is the case with Greeks, Armenians, and Turks in various parts of the East, or with Moors and Jews in Morocco, may become of graver import as between races so far apart as whites and negroes in the Gulf States of North America, or whites and Malays in the Philippine Isles, or Europeans and native fellahin in Egypt. ”

“ When they have attained a measure of independence, when they speak the tongue and read the books and begin to share the ideas of the dominant race, they resent the inferiority, be it legal or social, to which they find themselves condemned. ”

“ The Backward race ought to receive all such private civil rights as it can use for its own benefit. It ought to have as full a protection in person and property, as complete an access to all professions and occupations, as wide a power of entering into contracts, as ready an access to the courts, as the more advanced race enjoys. ”

“ Our first impulse is to condemn such a course, partly because it is apt to be accompanied (as in California) by rough treatment of the strangers, partly because it seems prompted by scorn or hatred of a branch of our fellow men, partly because we have a feeling that the whole earth belongs to mankind as a whole, who should be suffered to move freely over it, and that restrictions on the natural movements of population are prima facie wrong. Nature may be supposed to know better than we do; and the efforts of man to check her have been often foolish and mostly ineffective. ”

“ If therefore we were to suppose the blood of the races which are now most advanced to be diluted, so to speak, by that of those most backward, not only would more be lost to the former than would be gained to the latter, but there would be a loss, possibly an irreparable loss, to the world at large. ”

“ The various white races are, however, by no means equally averse to such unions. Among Arabs and Turks the sense of repulsion from negroes is weakest, partly no doubt owing to the influence of Islam, on which a word must be said hereafter. The South European races, though disinclined to such unions, do not wholly eschew them. In the ancient world we hear little of any repugnance in the Roman Empire to the dark-skinned Africans, for the contemptuous references to Egyptians seem to spring from dislike rather to the character and religion than to the colour of that singular people. ”

“ Where two races stand in contact, and neither the barrier of Colour nor that of Religion keeps them apart, the natural tendency to union has its way, and there is formed by intermarriage a third race in which the component elements are undistinguishably blent and lost. ”

“ They prefer to develop it as a separate people, on its own lines, though of course by the help of the whites. The negro race in America is not wanting in intelligence. It is fond of learning. It has already made a considerable advance. It will cultivate self-respect better by standing on its own feet than by seeking blood alliances with whites, who would usually be of the meaner sort [9] .
In India, some sections of the native population are equal in intellectual aptitude to their European rulers, and may pride themselves upon even longer traditions of intellectual culture. ”