C&e Li&rarp of t|>r (Elntoerisitp of Bout Carolina THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROl C SOCIETIES CB 195 .G52 V S ' TY ° F NC AT CHAp r n!| ,^. EL HILL 10000725477 ft LIBRARY on This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS If not on hold it the last date stamped under "Date Due." may be renewed by bringing it to the library. DATE DATE RET. RET. DUE DUE DE5J6"<flj — '6 ?004 TErr^w MAY 2 7 2W NOV 2 5 20 » r' 20Q ! wy ' warns "> JUL v VLUUl Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://www.archive.org/details/inequalityofhumapOgobi THE INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES THE RENAISSANCE By ARTHUR, COUNT GOBINEAU. With an Introductory Essay on Count Levy. Gobineau's Life-Work by Dr. Oscar net One Vol., Demy 8vo, Illustrated 10s THE YOUNG NIETZSCHE By FRAU FORSTER NIETZSCHE. One Volume, Demy 8vo, Price 15s net THE LONELY NIETZSCHE By FRAU FORSTER NIETZSCHE. One Volume, Royal 8vo. Price 15s net NIETZSCHE By GEORGE BRANDES One Volume, Demy 8vo, 6s net HEINEMANN LONDON : WILLIAM THE INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES BY ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU TRANSLATED BY ADRIAN COLLINS, M.A. INTRODUCTION BY DR. OSCAR LEVY, EDITOR OF THE AUTHORISED ENGLISH VERSION OF NIETZSCHE'S WORKS \<&> WILLIAM HEINEMANN LONDON MCMXV London William Heinemann 1915 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGB INTRODUCTION vii FROM THE AUTHOR'S DEDICATION xi AUTHOR'S PREFACE xvii I. THE MORTAL DISEASE OF CIVILIZATIONS AND SOCIETIES PROCEEDS FROM GENERAL CAUSES COMMON TO THEM ALL i II. FANATICISM, LUXURY, CORRUPTION OF MORALS, AND IRRELIGION DO NOT NECESSARILY LEAD TO THE FALL OF SOCIETIES 7 III. THE RELATIVE MERIT OF GOVERNMENTS HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE LENGTH OF A NATION'S LIFE 19 IV. THE MEANING OF THE WORD " DEGENERATION " ; THE MIXTURE OF RACIAL ELEMENTS; HOW SOCIETIES ARE FORMED AND BROKEN UP 23 V. RACIAL INEQUALITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF IN- STITUTIONS 36 VI. NATIONS. WHETHER PROGRESSING OR STAGNATING ARE INDEPENDENT OF THE REGIONS IN WHICH THEY LIVE S4 VII. CHRISTIANITY NEITHER CREATES NOR CHANGES THE CAPACITY FOR CIVILIZATION 63 VIII. DEFINITION OF THE WORD ** CIVILIZATION " ; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT HAS A TWO-FOLD ORIGIN 77 IX. DEFINITION OF THE WORD " CIVILIZATION " (con- tinued); DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS OF CIVI- LIZED SOCIETIES; OUR CIVILIZATION IS NOT SUPERIOR TO THOSE WHICH HAVE GONE BEFORE 89 X. SOME ANTHROPOLOGISTS REGARD MAN AS HAVING A MULTIPLE ORIGIN 106 rr O O Q cv O CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XI. RACIAL DIFFERENCES ARE PERMANENT 117 XII. HOW THE RACES WERE PHYSIOLOGICALLY SEPA- RATED, AND THE DIFFERENT VARIETIES FORMED BY THEIR INTER-MIXTURE. THEY ARE UN- EQUAL IN STRENGTH AND BEAUTY 141 XIII THE HUMAN RACES ARE INTELLECTUALLY UN- EQUAL ; MANKIND IS NOT CAPABLE OF INFINITE PROGRESS • 154 XIV. PROOF OF THE INTELLECTUAL INEQUALITY OF RACES {continued). DIFFERENT CIVILIZATIONS ARE MUTUALLY REPULSIVE; HYBRID RACES HAVE EQUALLY HYBRID CIVILIZATIONS 168 XV. THE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES ARE UNEQUAL, AND CORRESPOND PERFECTLY IN RELATIVE MERIT TO THE RACES THAT USE THEM 182 XVI. RECAPITULATION j THE RESPECTIVE CHARAC- TERISTICS OF THE THREE GREAT RACES ; THE , SUPERIORITY OF THE WHITE TYPE, AND, WITH- IN THIS TYPE, OF THE ARYAN FAMILY 205 — INTRODUCTION TO GOBINEAU'S ''INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES" Though many people have accused this age of irreligion, there is at least one point of similarity between modern Europe and that pre-Christian Era to which our present religion is due. Just as in ancient Palestine, there are living amongst us two kinds of prophets—the prophets of evil and disaster, and those of bliss, " or, as Europe likes to call it, of progress." As in Palestine of old the public usually sides with the lighter, the optimistic, the more comfortable sort of people, with the prophets of bliss, while Time and Fate invariably decide in favour of the sterner and gloomier individuals, the prophets of evil. In the world to-day as well as in Palestine of old, the prophets of bliss are the false prophets ; the prophets of evil, to-day as of yore, are the true ones. Such a true prophet was Count Arthur de Gobineau. Even his friends—those few friends whom he gained at the end of his life—still thought him unduly pessimistic. Old Wagner, who introduced him to the German public, thought of brightening his gloom by a little Christian faith, hope, and charity, in order to make the pill more palatable to that great public, which he, the great Stage-manager, knew so well. Other Germans—Chamberlain, Schemann, and the Gobineau school poured a great deal of water into his wine, sweetened it with patriotic syrups, adulterated it with their own pleasant inventions, which were all too readily swallowed by a gullible and credulous generation. But stern old Gobineau knew the world better than his young and cheerful offspring. He had seen through all that boisterous gaiety of the age, all its breathless labour, all its technical advancement, all its materialistic progress, and had diagnosed, behind it that muddle of moral values which our forefathers have bequeathed to us and which in our genera- tion has only become a greater muddle still. The catastrophe which Gobineau had prophesied to an Aristocracy which had vii INTRODUCTION forgotten its tradition, to a Democracy which had no root in reality, to a Christianity which he thought entirely inefficient, is now upon us. Under the stress of the present misfortunes, we frequently hear that all our previous opinions need revision, that we have to forget many things and to learn afresh still more, that we must try to build up our civilization on a safer basis, that we must reconsider and re-construct the values received from former ages. It is therefore our duty, I think, to turn back to those prophets who accused our forefathers of being on the road to destruction, all the more so as these prophets were likewise true poets who tried as such to point out the right road, endeavouring to remedy, as far as their insight went, the evil of their time. This is the best, and I trust a perfectly satisfactory, reason for the translation of " The Inequality of Human Races." This book, written as early as 1853, is no doubt a youthful and somewhat bewildering performance, but it gives us the basis of Gobineau's creed, his belief in Race and Aristocracy as the first condition of civilization, his disbelief in the influence of environ- ment, his distrust in the efficacy of religion and morality. The latter kind of scepticism brings him into relationship with Nietzsche, who has even accentuated Count Gobineau's sus- picions and who has branded our morality as Slave-Morality, and consequently as harmful to good government. What a Europe without Masters, but with plenty of Half-masters and Slaves, was driving at, Gobineau foresaw as well as Nietzsche. I sincerely hope that no intelligent reader will overlook this sceptical attitude of Gobineau towards religion, because that is a point of great importance at the present time, when our faith will certainly thrive again on a misfortune, which, by the pro- pagation of slave-values, it indirectly has caused. It is this scepticism against the Church and its Semitic values, which separates a Gobineau from Disraeli, to whom otherwise—in his rejection of Buckle, Darwin, and their science, in his praise of Race and Aristocracy, and in his prophecy of evil—he is so nearly related. Disraeli still believed in a Church based upon a revival viii INTRODUCTION of the old principles, Gobineau, like Nietzsche, had no hope whatever in this respect. It is the great merit of both Nietzsche and Gobineau, that they were not, like Disraeli, trying to revive a corpse, but that they frankly acknowledged, the one that the corpse was dead, the other that it was positively poisoning the air. The occasional bows which Gobineau makes to the Church cannot, I repeat, mislead any serious critics of his work, especially if they likewise consult his later books, about which, by the way, I have spoken at greater length elsewhere.* Both Spinoza and Montaigne had the same laudable habit, and they did not mean it either. For the first business of a great free- thinker is not to be mistaken for a little one ; his greatest misfor- tune is to be "understood " by the wrong class of people, and thus an occasional bow to the old and venerable Power—apart from the safety which it procures—protects him from an offensive handshake with enthusiastic and unbalanced disciples and apostles. OSCAR LEVY Geneva, July 1915 " * See my Introduction to Count Gobineau's " Renaissance (Heinemann). — FROM THE AUTHOR'S DEDICATION (1854)* TO HIS MAJESTY GEORGE V, KING OF HANOVER The great events—the bloody wars, the revolutions, and the breaking up of laws—which have been rife for so many years in the States of Europe, are apt to turn men's minds to the study of political problems. While the vulgar consider merely im- mediate results, and heap all their praise and blame on the little electric spark that marks the contact with their own interests, the more serious thinker will seek to discover the hidden causes of these terrible upheavals. He will descend, lamp in hand, by the obscure paths of philosophy and history ; and in the analysis of the human heart or the careful search among the annals of the past he will try to gain the master-key to the enigma which has so long baffled the imagination of man. Like every one else, I have felt all the prickings of curiosity to which our restless modern world gives rise.