Chapter 92
Race and nationality: peoples and races, their origins, mixture and differences; the idea of nationality and the claims made in its name.
689 passages · 253 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
The idea of race and nationality gathers the questions men ask about the peoples into which their kind is divided. Are all men of one stock or of many? Where did particular peoples come from, and how did they spread and mingle? Is a people’s character fixed in its blood or made by climate, custom and history? What makes a nation a nation, and what may be claimed in its name? These books treat the theme from the Psalms to the treaties of the United States, so they show it changing as it passes through them. A matter once settled by sacred genealogy and heroic legend became a matter for philology and natural history, and a sentiment of kinship became a political program. Freeman observed that the learned doctrine of race had produced national sympathies unknown a century before him1. The great books thus record both the birth of the modern idea and its first criticism.
The oldest answer to the first question is that mankind is one family. Paul tells the Athenians that God made every nation of men from one stock and fixed the bounds of their habitation2. Milton makes Adam the root of all mankind and Eve the “Mother of human race”3,4,5. Common descent did not always mean equality, however. Penn grants that God made all nations of one blood, yet he holds that God ranked them in subordination6. Marcus Aurelius grounds human kinship not in seed or blood at all but in shared intelligence7, and from that shared reason he concludes that the world is one state8. The moderns carried the argument into psychology. Descartes judged that the Chinese and the so-called savages reason as well as Europeans, and that national character comes from upbringing9. Hume held human nature uniform across nations and ages10. Rousseau found in the moral judgments of all peoples one common nature11, and Adam Smith thought natural differences of talent among men small, the effect of habit12. The same conviction led Locke and Channing to scorn those who treat servants or commoners as of another race13,14. From such premises More rejects the notion that a hill or river makes men born enemies15. Pope widens benevolence from country to the whole race16, Tennyson foresees a “Parliament of man”17, and Lowell affirms that the gain or loss of one race touches all18.
Against this unity stand the accounts of how men came apart. Milton has Babel scatter peoples into separate tongues and curse Ham’s race as servile19,20. In the Thousand and One Nights a black people traces itself to Adam through Ham21. Classical legend did similar work for Rome. Virgil derives the Romans from Troy and promises them unbounded dominion22, and he lets oracles correct the Trojans about their true homeland in Italy23. Dryden, reading Virgil, doubts the history of these ancestries and notes that Romans, French and British alike flattered themselves with Trojan descent24,25. A more inquisitive spirit appears in Herodotus. He reasons from skin, hair, circumcision and language that the Colchians are Egyptian26, and he reports Psammetichos’ experiment to learn which people was first-born27. Tacitus judges which tribes are German partly by their speech28, and he notes tribes that claimed German descent to escape resemblance to the Gauls29. The moderns turned the same curiosity on their own peoples. Voltaire and Harrison trace the English through Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman conquests30,31, and Emerson counts Celtic, Germanic and Norman-Roman stocks in them32,33. Darwin infers from geology an immense antiquity for the Indian race of South America34. Freeman contrasts the West, where migrating peoples were assimilated, with the East, where many races were left side by side35.
The doctrine of race proper finds its fullest statement in Taine. He holds that each people’s moral organization is as distinct as its physical structure36. Race, which he defines as innate hereditary disposition and likens to the breeds of animals37, is for him with environment and epoch the primitive motor of religion, art and society38,39,40. Emerson sets out the same doctrine of blood, with its examples of enduring traits41, and then limits it. Civilization and circumstance alter traits, races shade into one another, and pure races are a legend42,43. Mill goes further. He attacks the view that differences of race and sex are innate and indelible as a chief hindrance to improvement44. Freeman’s critique is the most analytic in these books. He argues that popular race doctrine came out of philology and confounds speech with blood45. Race, in his view, is physical and fixed, while language follows the will, so peoples adopt foreign tongues without foreign blood46,47. He concludes that kinship of blood among the Aryans cannot be proved48, and he warns that race sympathy, as in the Magyar-Turk fraternizing, may become dangerous in statesmen’s hands49,50. He does not discard race entirely, however. Language, he grants, remains a rough presumption of descent, and Celt, Teuton and Slav are real groups for history47,51. Darwin approaches the question as a naturalist. He rejects authors who divide the Indians into two primary races52, and he imagines the races of man as co-descended and diverging53.
On mixture the books divide sharply. Tacitus holds the Germans indigenous and never intermarried, a people resembling only themselves54. Renan praises the Celts as a family unmixed with aliens55, and Schiller’s Swiss proclaim themselves one people, one blood56. Against them stands the praise of the composite nation. In Virgil, Jove settles that the Latins keep their name and speech while the Trojans are absorbed and a pious race rises from mixed blood57. Bacon contrasts Rome’s naturalizing of foreigners with Spain’s narrow native stock58. Shelley holds that no nation supersedes another without absorbing part of it59. Emerson finds the English a better race than any of their ancestors60. For Freeman no nation is physiologically pure and adoption ends the purity of race61,62, and Lowell and Whitman see America as absorbing all comers into “a teeming nation of nations”63,64. The opposite fear is just as old. Dante laments that newcomers from the countryside corrupted Florence65. Milton draws the giants from ill-mated marriages of godly and wicked lines66. The Psalmist faults Israel for mingling with the nations67, and Burke distrusts clubs made up of all tongues and nations68. Practice in the colonies was more pragmatic. Dana describes foreigners in California marrying natives and raising their children as Mexicans69. American treaties let ceded peoples choose their citizenship, yet they excluded “uncivilized native tribes”70,71.
National character is explained in two rival ways. Emerson’s English Traits refers English veracity, thoroughness and fair play to Teutonic and Norse blood72,73,74, and it declares that the fortunes of nations are written in traits of race75. Renan portrays the Celts as gentle, feminine, sad and faithful76,77,78. He nonetheless derives these traits partly from the Celts’ isolation79. Other writers look to environment and institutions. Bacon makes northern peoples martial through cold80, and Rousseau has a common way of life and climate fuse scattered men into nations81. Smith ascribes industry or idleness to the employment of capital, not to innate traits82. Pascal denies that some nations love more than others, since climate touches only the body83. Carlyle derives the Scottish character from Saxon stock together with Knox’s religion84. Stereotypes run through the whole tradition, from Virgil’s “true Ligurian”85 to Paré’s cruel Spaniard86. Browne answers them by condemning the reproach of whole nations as inferring a habit in all from a few87.
The contrast of civilized and barbarous peoples began as a matter of tongue and culture. Locke notes that the Greeks counted all others barbarians88, though Plato’s Socrates allows that wise men may be found among barbarous races89. Confucius holds that a gentleman’s presence removes the lowness of the wild tribes90. The moderns built a scale of progress. Rousseau explains European advantage by iron and corn91. Darwin finds the Fuegians hardly fellow-creatures92, and he ranks races by social organization93. Yet he also argues that acquirements do not prove superior mental capacity94. Mill allows despotism over barbarians for their improvement95, but he denies any community a right to force civilization on another96. The ranking had practical consequences. Columbus distinguished peoples in order to justify enslavement97, and Thoreau thought the farmer rightly displaced the Indian98. Darwin, on the other side, condemns Rosas’s war of extermination, rejects the excuse that the Indians are barbarians99, and records the hunting down of the Tasmanians100. Woolman refutes the slaveholders’ claim that negroes descend from Cain101, and Darwin scorns those who cite the negro’s gaiety to make slavery tolerable102.
The scriptures pose the question of election. The Psalms bless the nation whose God is Jehovah103 and give Israel the land of the nations104. Milton has God select one peculiar nation through Abraham105. Pascal marvels at a people sprung from one man and outlasting Sparta and Rome106,107. Lessing makes the Hebrews a rude, despised people chosen to be educated as teachers of mankind108,109. The universal answer also comes from scripture. Simeon hails a light to the Gentiles110, and Milton and Pascal extend the blessing to the sons of Abraham’s faith and to strangers who love God111,112. Pascal sets Moses, lawgiver of one nation, against Christ, given for all113. Rousseau rejects outright a God who chooses one people and proscribes the rest114.
What then makes a nation? Freeman’s answer is language, “the badge of nationality”115, though Switzerland is a true nation by free union, neither by blood nor by speech116. He traces race and nation to the family extended by adoption117,118, and he notes that in the East religion also defines nationality119. Pericles limited citizenship to those born of two Athenian parents120, whereas modern treaties made nationality a matter of choice121.
Last come the claims made in the nation’s name. Burns, Schiller and Byron invoke ancestors and native land for freedom122,123,124. Mazzini joins nationality to the solidarity of all nations125. Virgil and Emerson voice imperial destiny126,127, although Emerson also censures the “unflinching nationality” of English conceit128. Smith traces commercial restraints to national animosity129. Washington warns that habitual hatred or fondness toward particular nations enslaves a people130, and Goldsmith finds that blessings are dealt evenly among lands each of which thinks itself happiest131. Milton’s Samson answers Dalila that country cannot command what violates the law of nations132. Whether nations endure is left uncertain. Dante’s Fortune shifts power from race to race133, and Mill warns Europe of stagnation134. Emerson thinks steam and telegraph will make nations obsolete135, but Renan expects national individualities to revive136. The books leave open whether the unity of reason or the distinctness of peoples is the deeper truth, and whether race, the newest of these ideas, is a fact of nature or a learned legend.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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