Essay on the inequality of human races 9782367530291

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Essay on the inequality of human races Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau

Didot, Paris, 1884

Exported from Wikisource on October 19,

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ESSAY

ON INEQUALITY OF THE

HUMAN RACES, about

THE COUNT OF GOBINEAU, FORMER MINISTER OF FRANCE TO PERSIA, GREECE, BRAZIL AND SWEDEN, MEMBER OF THE ASIAN SOCIETY OF PARIS.

SECOND EDITION, Preceded by a foreword and a biography of the author.

PARIS, BOOKSTORE OF FIRMIN-DIDOT ET Cie, PRINTERS OF THE INSTITUTE, RUE JACOB, 56. 1884.

Dedication of the first edition (1854) Foreword to the second edition (1882) Authors biography 2

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BOOK FIRST. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; DEFINITIONS, RESEARCH AND EXPOSURE OF LAWS NATURAL STATES THAT GOVERN THE SOCIAL WORLD. FIRST CHAPTER. — The mortal condition of civilizations and societies results from a general and common cause. CHAPTER II. — Fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and irreligion do not necessarily lead to the downfall of societies. CHAPTER III. — The relative merit of governments has no influence on the longevity of peoples. CHAPTER IV. — What is meant by the word degeneration ; of the mixture of ethnic principles, and how societies are formed and unmade. CHAPTER V. — Ethnic inequalities are not the result of institutions. CHAPTER VI. — In progress or stagnation, people are independent of the places they inhabit. CHAPTER VII. — Christianity does not create or does not transform civilizing aptitude. CHAPTER VIII. — Definition of the word civilization ; social development results from a double source. CHAPTER IX. — Continuation of the definition of the word civilization, different characteristics of societies

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human; our civilization is not superior to those which existed before it. CHAPTER X. — Certain anatomists attribute multiple origins to humanity. CHAPTER XI. — Ethnic differences are permanent. CHAPTER XII. — How the races separated physiologically, and what varieties they subsequently formed through their mixtures. They are unequal in strength and beauty. CHAPTER XIII. — Human races are intellectually unequal; humanity is not infinitely perfectible. CHAPTER XIV. — Continuation of the demonstration of the intellectual inequality of races. Diverse civilizations repel each other. Mixed races have equally mixed civilizations. CHAPTER XV. — Languages that are unequal to each other are in a perfect relationship with the relative merit of the races.

CHAPTER XVI. — Recapitulation; respective characters of the three great races; social effects of mixtures; superiority of the white type, and, in this type, of the Ariane family.

SECOND BOOK ANCIENT CIVILIZATION RADIATION FROM CENTRAL ASIA TO THE SOUTH-WEST. 4

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FIRST CHAPTER. — The Hamites. CHAPTER II. — The Semites. CHAPTER III. — The maritime Canaanites. CHAPTER IV. — The Assyrians; the Hebrews; the Choreans. CHAPTER V. — The Egyptians; the Ethiopians. CHAPTER VI. — The Egyptians were not conquerors; why their civilization remained stationary. CHAPTER VII. — Ethnic relationship between the Assyrian nations and Egypt. The arts and lyric poetry are produced by the mixing of whites with black peoples.

BOOK THIRD. CIVILIZATION RADIATION FROM CENTRAL ASIA TOWARDS THE SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — The Arians; Brahmins and their social system. CHAPTER II. — Developments in Brahmanism. CHAPTER III. — Buddhism, its defeat; India current. CHAPTER IV. — The yellow race. CHAPTER V. — The Chinese. 5

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CHAPTER VI. — The origins of the white race.

BOOK FOUR.

SEMITIZED CIVILIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — History only exists among white nations. — Why almost all civilizations developed in the West of the globe. CHAPTER II. — The Zoroastrians. CHAPTER III. — The indigenous Greeks, the settlers Semites; the Arians-Hellenes. CHAPTER IV. — The Semitic Greeks.

BOOK FIFTH.

SEMITIZED EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION.

CHAP. IER. — Primitive populations of Europe. CHAP. II. — The Thracians. — The Illyrians. — The Etruscans. — The Iberians. CHAP. III. —Les Galls. CHAP. IV. — The aboriginal Italian peoples. CHAP. V. — The Tyrrhenian Etruscans. — Rome Etruscan. CHAP. YOU. — Roman Italianate.

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CHAP. VII. — Semitic Rome.

BOOK SIX. WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

CHAP. IER. — The Slavs. — Domination of some ante-Germanic Arian peoples. CHAP. II. — The German Arians. CHAP. III. — Capacity of native Germanic races. CHAP. IV. — Germanic Rome. — The Romano-Celtic and Romano-Germanic armies. — The German emperors. CHAP. V. — Last migrations of the Arians Scandinavians.

CHAP. VI. — Latest developments of the company Germano-Roman. CHAP. VII. — Native Americans. CHAP. VIII. — European colonizations in America.

General conclusion Contents

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DEDICATION FROM THE FIRST EDITION (1854).

TO HIS MAJESTY GEORGE V, KING OF HANOVER.

SIRE,

I have the honor to offer here to YOUR MAJESTY the fruit of long meditations and favorite studies, often interrupted, always resumed. The events considerable, revolutions, bloody, wars, overthrows of laws, which, for too many years, have acted on European states, easily turn imaginations towards the examination of political facts. While the vulgar do not considers only immediate results and does not admire or disapproves that the electric spark with which they strike the interests, more serious thinkers seek to discover the hidden causes of such terrible shocks, and, descending lamp in hand in the dark paths of the philosophy and history, they will ask for analysis of the human heart or upon careful examination of the annals the word

of an enigma which so disturbs both existences and consciences.

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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 marvelous purification of analytical methods, after having, under the hands of Niebuhr, revealed a Rome unknown to Livy, discovers and

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also explains 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 10

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now knows 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, spring up everywhere, arise from every grave, and stand before the hand of anyone who wants to question them, it is no longer possible to go, with the revolutionary theorists, to amass clouds to form fantastic men and give themselves the pleasure of artificially moving 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 do, 11

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in front of him, a trophy of some merits that he lacks. 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 wanted to respond immediately to History to confuse its accusations and its dark prognoses, if I had not been struck by this overwhelming consideration, that I was too hasty in putting forward a proposal 12

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devoid of evidence. 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 the 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 Anglo-Saxon 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 t 13

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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, to which I have come to lay homage at the foot of Your Majesty's throne. It was not up to me, and I did not think of it, to leave the elevated and pure regions of scientific discussion to descend to 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. By daring to trace these considerations here, I feel emboldened,

SIRE, by the protection that the vast and lofty spirit of YOUR 14

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MAJESTY grants to the efforts of intelligence and by the more particular interest with which She honors the works of historical erudition. 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.

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ESSAY ON INEQUALITY OF THE

HUMAN RACES. ___

SECOND EDITION.

________

FOREWORD.

This book was first published 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 determined many advances in detail.

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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 must necessarily be an illustrious people, and, on the contrary, a society which practiced too freely the active recruitment of lax consciences mercilessly brought about the ruin of Susa, 17

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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 efficiency, 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 we found ourselves led to admit that it was a fact resulting from the

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 kind

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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 content 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 confessio 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, a mediocre historian, an even more mediocre theologian, who wanted above all to prove that all races were equal, maintained that it was wrong to be afraid and gave himself 19

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fear to himself. 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 brought its principles and even entire parts into their works incognito, without admitting it, and, in short, Fallmereyer does not was not wrong to say that it was 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. It was the first time 20

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that we made this observation and that by bringing out the results from the social point of view, we presented this axiom that the mixture obtained was worth the value of the human variety produced by this mixture and that the progress and 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 k Darwin and Buckle thus created the derivations main streams that 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 21

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of the past are those of today, which have inclined neither to the right nor to the left, but which have remained as they had grown 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 scholarship which, under the name of prehistoric studies, has not failed to make 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 encumber it as we choose with such hypotheses which may be suitable and which we can place where we suppose the void. Then, 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 vague geological 22

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to 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 the resounding fanfares of an unparalleled pedantry, stupefies them in such an irresistible way 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 the date of this essential reform we will finally remove the flint axes and the obsidian knives in the hands of Professor Haeckel's anthropoids, people who make such bad use of them.

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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 claimed 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.

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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 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 strongly gripped by this maxim: “Know yourself, » I did not consider that I could know myself, without knowing what the environment was 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.

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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 that I saw and I wrote the History of the Persians, to show by the example of the Aryan nation, the most isolated of all its congeners, how many are powerless, for a change or curb the genius of a race, the differences in climate, neighborhood and the circumstances of the times. 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 its origin, of its aptitudes, its faults, of the fluctuations which acted on its destinies, and I wrote the history of Ottar Jarl, Norwegian pirate, and his descendants. This is how, after removing the green, thorny, thick shell of the nut, then the woody bark, I exposed the kernel. The path I have traveled does not lead to one of those steep promontories where the earth stops, but rather to one of those narrow meadows, where the road remaining open, the individual inherits the supreme results of the race, of 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 is supposed to be the product of science. In each era, it would like to devour a truth that bothers it. You shouldn't be frightened by it. Jupiter always escapes the voracity of Saturn, 26

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and the husband and son of Rhee, gods, both, reign, without being able to destroy each other, over the majesty of the universe.

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BIOGRAPHY.

Count de Gobineau died in Turin on October 13, 1882, without having been able to see the second edition of the book that we are reprinting. Born in Ville-d'Avray on July 14, 1816, he had just reached his sixty-seventh year; but age had not extinguished his ardor for work, and Amadis' poem , which will soon be published in full, will show the height at which this rare intelligence maintained itself until the end. Mr. de Gobineau was the son of an officer of the royal guard and descended from a branch of the great Norman de Gournay family which had established itself in Guyenne in the fourteenth century. His grandfather was part of the Bordeaux parliament. In a very curious book published in 1879 and entitled: History of Ottar Jarl and his descendants, he recounted the vicissitudes of his family. He spent his early years in Paris and the surrounding area. Around the age of twelve, he was sent for his education to Switzerland and lived mainly in Bienne. He had retained good memories of this small town, its lake and the island of SaintPierre made so famous by Rousseau's descriptions. 28

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It was there that his first readings charmed him, that he learned German, and that he began, as if by instinct, to reflect on the question of races. When he returned to France, it was to reach the depths of Brittany, where his father had retired, after leaving the service following the Revolution of 1830. He lived there for some time, in an environment of very respectable but very narrow provincial legitimism, which could only bore a young man already full of ardor and curiosity of mind. He therefore came to Paris as soon as he could, and like so many others he sought his way. His family's legitimist views prevented him from entering into a career. He had no fortune and one of his father's older brothers, quite rich and wealthy, was intermittent in his generosity. It was a difficult period which lasted until 1848. However, those who approached him already realized his great value. Literary works published in the Journal des Débats had been appreciated, and the family of Serre, the family of the two painters Ary and Henri Scheffer, and that of Alexis de Tocqueville, to name only the best known names, surrounded him of esteem and affection. Also when the latter became Minister of Foreign Affairs, he did not hesitate to appoint Mr. de Gobineau to the post of head of his cabinet.

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We know the history of this ministry which, as much and more than a famous English cabinet from the beginning of this century, would have deserved the name of "ministry of all talents". He took offense to Prince Louis-Napoleon, who waged silent war on him and ended up getting rid of him. M. de Tocqueville withdrew without wanting to give or ask for anything; but the acting minister of foreign affairs, General de La Hitte, a former comrade of Mr. de Gobineau's father in the royal guard, took an interest in his son and appointed him secretary of embassy in Berne. It was a happy choice. The material position of Mr. de Gobineau was assured. His career left him some leisure time. He devoted himself to work, and the book of which we are presenting the second edition to the public today was composed around this time in Bern, then in Hanover and Frankfurt where it was successively sent. The coup d'état of 1851 did not change his situation. He did not welcome him with the same displeasure as his friends did. He had a certain taste for strength, and the base and ferocious mixed-race populace of the big cities inspired him with a profound disgust. In Frankfurt he met two very different characters: the terrible future great chancellor who was preparing to bring sword and fire to the work of Mr. de Metternich, and Baron de Prockesh, the last disciple of the prudent statesman Austrian, who was to represent Austria in Turkey for so long with such wisdom and dignity. He did not maintain further relations with the first, but he became linked with 30

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the second of a friendship which never wavered and which is evidenced by a long correspondence of the greatest interest, which will perhaps be published one day. In 1834 he was appointed first secretary in Persia and left at the end of the year. He did not return to Europe until the spring of 1838. He had reached Tehran via Egypt and the Persian Gulf. On his return, he saw Armenia and Constantinople. This moment was the happiest of his life. The Orient had attracted him from his early youth. Before the age of twenty he studied the Persian language. He learned it thoroughly in Tehran and was able to maintain intellectual friendships with the most famous doctors and philosophers of Persia. Instead of indulging in futile amusements or ordinary complaints against a distant, little-seen post, he initiated himself deeply into this life, into these ideas so different from ours, and which our minds offended by the boasts of a century without good faith are wrong to disdain lightly. Returning to France, he published Three Years in Asia. This charming book exudes happiness. This was the impression of Mr. de Prockesh, who wrote to him on November 20, 1859: “I am in your Three Years in Asia. I haven't read anything fresher for a long time. It's a walk under the sycamores of Schoubra. It's walking through a meadow dotted with flowers like a Persian carpet and where the smells and colors (twin brothers of a young mother) garland you joyfully. »

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In 1861, A Voyage to Newfoundland, a book also full of joyful verve, was due to a mission given to him to deal with the question of the fisheries of the Newfoundland bank with the commissioners of the English government. That same year, in the fall, appointed minister, he returned to Persia where he remained for two years. On his return, he crossed all of Russia. He had with him in Tehran an attaché of a somewhat strange character, but full of audacity and liveliness of mind. Mr. de Rochechouart had a deep affection for his leader, and the book he later wrote on China, where he was in charge of affairs before going to die still young in SaintDominique, shows the influence that the ideas of M. de Gobineau had on his thoughts. At that time, Russia was not yet master of Central Asia. Between this invading power and England, long feared by Asian princes, there was a clear place for a great influence of France, which maintained the balance. Our prestige was still intact. Through his exceptional relationships with the custodians of Asian science, Mr. de Gobineau had the means to open the difficult path to the khanates of Central Asia for Mr. de Rochechouart who offered himself for this interesting mission. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused consent. The ideas of 32

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Mr. de Gobineau. The definitive word chimerical was undoubtedly pronounced about them ; then, too proud, too delicate to show off himself, Mr. de Gobineau perhaps neglected too entirely this art of staging which sometimes becomes necessary. Also, in 1864, instead of sending him to Constantinople where his knowledge of the Orient and Orientals could be of such great service, he was offered the secondary post in Athens. He spent four years there. He had sympathies for Greece; the marvelous horizons of Attica pleased his eyes. The Treatise on Cuneiform Inscriptions, the History of the Persians, the Religions and Philosophies of Central Asia date from this period and from this environment favorable to work. He also returned to poetry, which had been one of the joys of his youth, and Aphroessa was then composed. Not content with this literary activity and as if inspired by the remains of the great artistic period of Greece, he devoted himself to sculpture and quickly achieved results remarkable for the intensity of life and expression. In 1868 M. de Gobineau was sent to Rio Janeiro. He found in Brazil a very mixed race, an annoying climate. He was not sensitive to the beauty of tropical nature about which so many phrases have been made and which is so inferior to that of the temperate zone. He called these landscapes without stories “unpublished landscapes”. But it was a great compensation for him that the sovereign's so sympathetic personality. 33

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The Emperor of Brazil already knew M. de Gobineau through his works, he was happy to see him accredited to him. Authors often disappoint. This was not the case with Mr. de Gobineau, a sparkling witty conversationalist, yet a good listener, something so rare, he was irresistibly seductive. He charmed Don Pedro's open intelligence. A sincere friendship was formed between them. Every Sunday they met for long talks. After the departure of M. de Gobineau they began a constant correspondence; it was only interrupted during the stays they made together in 1871, 1876 and 1877, during the emperor's trips to Europe. This correspondence, which we have before our eyes, does the greatest honor to this sovereign who, through a phenomenon of happy atavism, seems to bring together in himself the most precious mental and physical qualities of the houses of Braganza and Habsburg. The stay in Rio had tested the temperament of Mr. de Gobineau. He took a leave of absence in the spring of 1870 and came to spend it at Trye Castle, which he had purchased in 1857, after the death of his uncle. He had become attached to this land which had once been part of the domains of Ottar Jarl's race. He was mayor of Trye, and member of the general council of Oise for the canton of Chaumont-en-Vexin. Our first defeats found him there. They distressed him without surprising him. He had faithfully served the Empire, which had even inspired him with much sympathy at its beginning; but for some time 34

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years ago he no longer had any illusions and clearly saw the abyss towards which a policy of adventure and caprice was leading France. The chants of the Marseillaise, the cries “to Berlin!” » were repugnant to his nature. He did not give the name patriotism to these unhealthy overexcitements too common among the Latin races. He saw fatal symptoms there. With great firmness, however, he tried to organize resistance around him; then, when the invasion arrived, remaining calm and dignified before the conqueror, reasoning with him, speaking his language, he obtained concessions which lightened the weight of the disaster not only for his canton, but for the entire department. At the armistice, the town of Beauvais voted to publicly thank him. We wanted to send it to the Chamber; later there was talk of carrying it for the Senate. He did not accept these applications. He did not even run again, subsequently, for the general council. He had seen up close much baseness, much cowardice, and the universal, crude suffrage, full of distrust for delicate and elevated characters, inspires them, in return, with an inevitable estrangement. The government of Mr. Thiers appointed Mr. de Gobineau minister in Sweden. He went there in 1872 and stayed there five years. Like everywhere else it was appreciated by the most intelligent element of society. The cordial welcome of a few elite souls consoled him for the sufferings of a bad 35

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health and many other sorrows. Encouraged by this sympathy, this stay in Stockholm was fruitful in new work. In the first part of the Amadis, he evokes the Middle Ages and the purest personification of the Aryan race; in the Renaissance, he brings the great figures of the Italian sixteenth century before us alive and well. In the very strange novel The Pleiades, into which he brought so many of his ideas about life, he represents for us the different ways in which an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman and a Slav envisage the passion of love. Finally, remembering the distant East, full of that desire for the sun that we experience during the sad twilights and long nights of the North, he wrote these Asian News sometimes so witty, sometimes so passionate, always with such exact observation. and which are one of the most exquisite jewels in its setting. A trip to Norway, at the time of the coronation celebrations of King Oscar in Drontheim, had been a pleasant relaxation for Mr. de Gobineau. He had encountered a fairly pure Aryan population there, and certain descriptions of Amadis show how much he had been struck by this wild nature of the north where the Ocean wages such harsh battles against the land. In 1876, authorized by his government, he accompanied the Emperor Don Pedro on an interesting trip to Russia, Constantinople and Greece. He had just returned to Sweden when, in February 1877, he was suddenly retired by Duke Decazes. 36

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We do not know the reasons for this measure which affected him in all the fullness of his talent. Incapable of complaining, of requesting, he made no observation against this injustice, but he retained a strong resentment. Towards those who governed mediocrely, and attempted a failed coup d'état without forethought and without energy, he maintained a disdainful and haughty attitude. At this time he was in great trouble. Absolutely disinterested, never counting, he had let his fortune disappear. He had to get rid of Trye Castle, and the transition from a wide to a restricted life was inevitably quite painful for him. His tastes, however, were so simple that he said he was made to be a dervish, and he was right; but he was sensitive to the pleasure of giving and it was odious to him to have to worry about small daily savings. After a short stay in Paris, Mr. de Gobineau came to settle in Rome, and it was there, apart from a few trips to the North in summer, that he spent the last years of his life. He found old friendships there and made new ones. He had returned to sculpture with extreme ardor; he also published Ottar Jarl and finished the second, then the third part of his beautiful poem Amadis. But his health was seriously compromised. The summer of 1879, spent entirely in Italy, had left him without strength against the morbid influences of the climate of Rome. He had always been severe towards the Latin race. He had trouble supporting contact so close to his charlatanry 37

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phraseable. He saw the predictions of his book come true; but far from delighting in his divination, the frightening rapidity of decadence filled him with sadness and disgust. He contemplated with horror the multitude, mixed by the yellows and the blacks, and running to attack the last fortresses of the Aryan institutions; England itself corrupted by the FinnishCeltic elements, weakened, and pushed towards ruin by the sonorous noise of the empty sentences of its criminal rhetoricians; the Slavic world perhaps soon united with the Chinese world and ready to make a formidable and final push on the degenerate West. These ideas may seem exaggerated to superficial observers, but they seemed indisputable to this powerful mind. Who can deny that nervous agitation and senile prostration have increased, with the expectation of an imminent crisis and the terror of a formidable unknown, in the year which has just passed since the death of M . by Gobineau? The winter of 1881 to 1882 was difficult for him to get through. To his other sufferings was added an eye disease which deprived him of the resource of reading, of that pleasure which is one of the most solid rewards of the worship of things of the spirit. In the spring he went to Bayreuth to see the great master Richard Wagner, for whom he had great admiration. He was welcomed there with the most attentive solicitude, but he was unable to stay. The doctors sent him to Gastein, where he felt better.

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From there, accompanied by a faithful friend who came from Italy to make this trip with him, he headed towards Auvergne. There he joined those of his friends who, among all, had been the most constantly devoted, the most closely united to him in spirit and feelings. It was thanks to them, during his last years, that his thoughts enjoyed a little calm and that his health was surrounded by loving care.

But the cold of a rainy autumn froze him. From day to day he asked in vain for a ray of sunshine. On October 11, he left for Pisa; on the 13th, a sudden and unexpected death stopped in a few hours this noble heart which had never beaten except for the Good and the Beautiful.

B. Paris, 1883.

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BOOK FIRST. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; DEFINITIONS, RESEARCH AND EXPOSURE OF LAWS NATURAL WHO GOVERN THE SOCIAL WORLD.

FIRST CHAPTER. — The mortal condition of civilizations and societies results from a general and common cause. CHAPTER II. — Fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and irreligion do not necessarily lead to the downfall of societies. CHAPTER III. — The relative merit of governments has no influence on the longevity of peoples. CHAPTER IV. — What is meant by the word degeneration ; of the mixture of ethnic principles, and how societies are formed and unmade.

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CHAPTER V. — Ethnic inequalities are not the result of institutions. CHAPTER VI. — In progress or stagnation, people are independent of the places they inhabit. CHAPTER VII. — Christianity does not create or does not transform civilizing aptitude. CHAPTER VIII. — Definition of the word civilization ; social development results from a double source. CHAPTER IX. — Continuation of the definition of the word civilization, different characters of human societies; our civilization is not superior to those which existed before it. CHAPTER X. — Certain anatomists attribute multiple origins to humanity. CHAPTER XI. — Ethnic differences are permanent. CHAPTER XII. — How the races separated physiologically, and what varieties they subsequently formed through their mixtures. They are unequal in strength and beauty. CHAPTER XIII. — Human races are intellectually unequal; humanity is not infinitely perfectible. CHAPTER XIV. — Continuation of the demonstration of the intellectual inequality of races. Diverse civilizations repel each other. Mixed races have equally mixed civilizations. CHAPTER XV. — Languages that are unequal to each other are in a perfect relationship with the relative merit of the 41

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races. CHAPTER XVI. — Recapitulation; respective characters of the three great races; social effects of mixtures; superiority of the white type, and, in this type, of the Ariane family.

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FIRST CHAPTER. The mortal condition of 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 43

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remains of civilizations that preceded ours, and not only of known civilizations, but also of several others of which we only know the names, and of some which, lying like stone skeletons in the depths of forests almost contemporary with the world[ 1] 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

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latent, of a general cause, and, starting from this certain principle of natural death independent of all cases of violent death, we see that all civilizations, after having lasted for a while, show intimate disturbances upon observation. , difficult to define, but no less difficult to deny, which bear an analogous character in all places and in all 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 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, supposed that 45

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their empire would never end. Rome, at the very moment when it began to sink, did not doubt the eternity of its own[2] . 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, like 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,

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guilty by them, end up 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 47

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the exposition of an indubitable theological truth, but which itself is another mystery, and for not having pushed his research to the point of observing facts falling under the domain of reason, at least cannot- We cannot accuse him of having ignored the magnitude of the problem by seeking solutions at ground level. To put it bluntly, she was content to nobly pose the question, and, if she did not resolve it or even clarify it, at least she did not make it a subject of error. 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 only perish 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 the events, they were so concerned to note before

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all the happy influence of virtue, the deplorable effects of crime and vice, that everything which went beyond this moral framework was of little importance to them, remained most often 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 the reproach of tyranny, fanaticism, and corruption was applied. 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

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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 single-handedly cause the irremediable catastrophe. 1. ÿ MA de Humboldt, Critical examination of the history of the geography of the new continent. Paris, in-8-. 2. ÿ Amédée Thierry, Gaul under Roman administration, t. I, p. 244.

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CHAPTER II. Fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and irreligion do not necessarily lead to the downfall 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 constitutions. 51

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policies. As I will only speak of fractions when my reasoning can be applied to the whole, I will use the word nation or people 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 imagine nothing more fanatical than a social state which, like this, rested on a religious basis, constantly watered with the blood of human butchery[1] .

It was recently denied[2]

,

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 this ferocity which a modern physiologist recognizes as the general character , of the races of the new world[3] they mercilessly massacred fellow citizens on their

altars, and without hesitation as without choice, which did not prevent them from being a powerful people, industrious,

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rich, and who would certainly have lasted for a long time, reigned, butchered, 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 53

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Romans[4]

.

We see nothing very edifying, and we are right, in these

patricians of the ancient rock who treated their women like slaves, their children like cattle, and their creditors like wild animals; 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 epochs, 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 islands

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Greeks[5] , they went about, rogue traffickers, villainous hosts, seducing women to make merchandise of them, and stealing here and there the commodities they were running to sell, their reputation was, without doubt, well and justly discrediting; 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 in Athens, in Babylon and in the great city imperial empire many more honest people 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 55

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as many effective virtues, solid piety, gentle regularity, fineness of conscience, as can be 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 he has stripped away this bitterness, this a 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 that in the time of Cincinnatus, and proportionately, Rome had possessed so many men

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eminent 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 virtue[6]

.

It would seem that in the ages

that followed, when the two races began to mingle, everything got worse, and that towards 57

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eighth and ninth centuries, the national territory did not present a picture from which we have much to boast of. 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 58

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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 therefore it is impossible to

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claim that all peoples who see their nationality destroyed thereby atone for 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 a real solution of continuity among any people in the world; 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.

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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 of this was 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, most enlightened men, 61

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the most firm in religious negation, not only publicly honor themselves by wearing the priestly robe, but they themselves, accustomed to turning the leaves of the book of Lucretius, manu diurna, manu nocturna, perform the most repugnant jobs of the worship, and not only performed it 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 am talking here about the great Jules[7]

.

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;

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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. All therefore came from these popular masses 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 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

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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[8]

.

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 felt so much

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of difficulties in triumphing over the small topical deities, that, on many points, the victory was less the work of conversion and persuasion than of address, 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 this 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, to luxury, to the corruption of 65

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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. 1. ÿ Prescott, History of the conquest of Mejico. In-8°, Paris, 1844. 2. ÿ C. F. Weber, M. A. Lucani Pharsalia. In-8°. Leipzig, 1828, t. I, p. 122123, note. 3. ÿ Prichard, Natural History of Man (trans. by M. Roulin. In-8°. Paris, 1843). – Dr Martius is even more explicit. See Martius und Spix, Reise in Brasilien. In-4°. Munich, t. I, p. 379-380. 4. ÿ Balzac, Letter to Madame la Duchesse de Montausier. 5. ÿ Odyssey, XV. 6. ÿ Augustin Thierry, Stories of Merovingian times. See, among others, l'histoire de Mummolus. 7. ÿ Caesar, a democrat and skeptic, knew how to put his language at odds 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. 8. ÿ Act. Apostle. XXVI, 24, 29, 31.

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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

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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 constantly escapes the most formidable, the longest , to the most devastating invasions of political suffering, of which illconceived laws and oppressive or negligent administration are the extremes[1] .

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 Mantchoux already have a more than centuries-old reign, they are at the 68

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ready to experience 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 time a little more 69

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distant, 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 obeying 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 most

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high, the most thorny of all, is so disproportionate to the weakness of man, that we cannot claim, in good faith, that, because of bad conduct, peoples 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 which the slightest study of history will suffice to demonstrate, that the government, however bad it may be, in the hands of which a people expires, is often better than any of the administrations which preceded it. .

1. ÿ We clearly understand that what is at stake here is not the political existence of a center of sovereignty, but the life of an entire society, the perpetuity of a civilization. This is the place to apply the distinction indicated above, p. 11.

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CHAPTER IV. Of what is meant by the word degeneration; of the mixture of ethnic principles, and how societies are formed and unmade.

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 The blows will not be fatal, and 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 feeling ended up feeling 72

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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 therefore of the circumstances of well-being or discomfort, we began to consider the constitution of societies in itself, and we showed ourselves disposed 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 was necessary to observe, could not fail to die, even if it were the best governed of peoples, absolutely like an exhausted horse falls 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? “ Degeneration, ” he replied;

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nations die when they are composed of degenerate elements. The answer was very good, etymologically and in any case; it was only a question of defining what was meant by these words: degenerate nation. This is where we were shipwrecked: we explained a degenerate people by a people who, poorly governed, abusing their wealth, fanatical or irreligious, 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 degenerate. 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. I therefore think that the word degenerate, when applied to a people, must mean and does mean that this people no longer has the 74

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intrinsic value that it once possessed, because it no longer has in its veins the same blood, the value of which successive alloys have gradually modified; 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 the degenerate man, is a different product, from an ethnic point of view, from 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 combated, 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, 75

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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 differences in value between human races? intrinsic really serious, 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 other 76

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by internal and external forms which succeeded one another, almost copying each other. 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 its needs and its strength increase, it finds itself in inevitable contact with other families, and, through war or peace, succeeds in incorporating 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

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helplessness, and live juxtaposed with each other and in relationships 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 it is incapable of overcoming the natural repugnance that man, like animals, feels towards crossing.

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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 that 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, masters also encounter a thousand reasons to tolerate and

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sometimes to serve this tendency, the mixing of blood ends up taking place, and men of the two origins, ceasing to be attached to distinct tribes, become 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 from 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 Granada[1]

.

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 there

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paralyze. 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 d 'all the more empire, that the 81

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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 virtue of having fallen into the hands of vigorous masters, called to share a n 82

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better destiny, as happened to the Saxons of England, when the Normans had subjugated 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 his 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 at home, in its capitals, in its great cities, in its ports, 83

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ample satisfactions, and the thousand attractions which it possesses establish in its midst the stay of numerous strangers. 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 that a formidable penalty watches around 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 distinguish oneself through useful discoveries or talents

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pleasant, was 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 85

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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 of it 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. 86

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and that they would have succumbed under well-combined assaults, under long pressure, or, more simply, under the 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, the comp 87

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Hinduism will nonetheless survive. A time will come when, in one way or another, India will begin to live publicly again according to its own laws, as it does tacitly, and, either through its present race or through mongrels, 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 con 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 belonging to the Phoenician stock, lower stock 88

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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 having assigned a meaning to the word degeneration, and having treated, with this help, the problem of the vitality of peoples, it is now necessary to prove what I had, for the clarity of the discussion, to advance a priori : that it There are significant 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.

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1. ÿ This attachment of Arab nations to ethnic isolation sometimes manifests itself in a very bizarre 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.

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CHAPTER V. Ethnic inequalities are not the result 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, of peoples, and this withdrawal towards themselves which all practiced at a more or less distant time, and from which a large number never left, we have not place 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 provided to each other

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to the others, we see in 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, more or less tenable as far as they are concerned, the mixed-race reasoners apply it to all the generations that have appeared, appear and will appear on earth, and they end up one day summarizing their feelings in these words, which , like the wineskin of Aeolus, contain so many storms: “All men are brothers[1] ! »

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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 be entitled to ask 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; 93

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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 what was practiced in times no less convinced than us, and for the same reasons, 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 talkativeness 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 Anglo-Norman 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 94

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adopts, So therefore, if, on the one hand, human families are said to be equal, and, on the other hand, some are frivolous, others sedate; those eager to gain, those eager to spend; some energetically in love with combat, many economical with their sorrows and their lives, it is obvious that these very different nations must have very diverse destinies, very dissimilar, let us say the word, 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. Is this force of persistence not, I ask, a very great prerogative assigned to this branch of the human family, a prerogative all the more

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precious that most of the groups that 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 96

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legislator seems, at first glance, the only source of the law, if we look closely, we will immediately be convinced that, through the effect of his own wisdom, the venerable master limits himself to rendering 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 the 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 can put up with him 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.

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False institutions and their effects, however, have played a big role in the world. When Charles I, 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 to try the government of intrigue that the coadjutor and his friends had desired[2], his efforts pleased no one, and also offended the nobility, the clergy, parliament and third parties. state. 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 this or that point of

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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 vigor

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ancient, 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 merit[3] .

But however, since James I, 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 the descendants, the result is that innovations, while always remaining quite 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 each other 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

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in the councils and in the camps, a taste for military life, for external conquests, very particular to the Celtic race, and the love of authority, infused in Roman blood, reigned. 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 101

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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 procedures 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 102

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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 collide 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 ch 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, have not dared to abandon ourselves too completely to the impulses of genius 103

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innovative, where we had somewhat considerable masses in front of 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

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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 beneficial influence, more calamitous from the point of view of humanity, because, at least, the Spanish Indians multiplied in a remarkable manner[4] ; 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 Anglo-Saxon 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 Domin 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.

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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, matters 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

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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, the easiest things 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 pra 107

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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 most recent maxims 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[5] .

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,

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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 that the newspapers have tired of us with 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 belong, without a doubt, more intelligence, a mind more open 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

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their grandfathers, at most, having known 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-too-distant result of such a situation will be to render desert a country whose fertility and natural resources

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once enriched generations of planters, and to abandon to wild goats the fertile plains, the magnificent valleys, the grandiose bleakness of the Queen of the Antilles[6] .

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 that an opulent land provides, at such little cost, would have returned

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in complete freedom to this despotically patriarchal organization so natural to those of its fellows whom the Muslim victors of Africa have not yet constrained. 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 have called as 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 is now an example of a completely different nature, which is

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offered by the attempts of the Jesuit fathers to civilize the natives of Paraguay[7] .

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 a certain ease in

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develop 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 will not say 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

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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.

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 regarding the doctrine of environments[8] , I have touched on it in passing, it would be leaving a real gap not to talk about it in depth.

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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 kinds 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 ( 2 )[9] . On the other hand, and as a consequence of this reasoning, we easily admit that tribes burned by the

1. ÿ

The man Of virtuous soul commands not, not obeys, Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton. Shelley. (Queen Mab.) 2. ÿ Mr. Count de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, very rightly demonstrated that the party crushed by Cardinal Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism nor 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. 3. ÿ Macaulay, History of England. In-8°, Paris, 1840, t. I. 4. ÿ M. Al. de Humboldt, Critical examination of the history of geography. of the N. C., t. II, p. 129-130. 5. ÿ See, for the most recent details, the articles published by M. Gustave d'Alaux in the Revue des Deux Mondes. 6. ÿ The colony of Saint-Domingue, before its emancipation, was one of the places on earth where the wealth and elegance of morals had pushed their refinements furthest. What Havana actually became

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of commercial activity, Santo Domingo also showed it. The freed slaves put things in order. 7. ÿ See, on this subject, Prichard, d'Orbigny, A. de Humboldt, etc. 8. ÿ See above, p. 61. 9. ÿ (2) Consult, among others, Carus: Ueber ungleiche Befaehigung der verschiedenen Menschheitstaemme für hoehere geistige Entwickelung, in-8o ; Leipzig, 1849, p. 96 et passim.

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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 regarding the doctrine of environments[1] , I have touched on it 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 kinds 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 ( 2 )[2] . 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, 118

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humanity would only be perfectible with the aid of material nature, and 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 (1)[3] , a nation which left 119

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remarkable traces of its presence. The remains of buildings, the inscriptions engraved on rocks, the tumulus (1)[4] , the 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 (1)[5] . 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

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sanctified by the majesty of the most sacred memories, in these regions where wheat, it is said, grows spontaneously (2)[6] , the soil is however so little productive in itself, that vast and courageous irrigation works alone were able to make it suitable for nourishing 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. 121

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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 was to be 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 unhappy fate, than the 122

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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.

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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 language related to 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 merchants (1)[7] .

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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 it.

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 from Rome the very title

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of capital to give 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 given point of a victorious or preponderant race. I mean it wasn't the place that

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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 to the territory its economic, moral and political value.

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 (1)[8] . 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 his fate (1)[9] .

1. ÿ See above, p. 61.

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2. ÿ (2) Consultant, entre autres, Carus: About unequal abilities of the different human tribes for higher spiritual development, in-8o ; Leipzig, 1849, p. 96 et passim. 3. ÿ (1) Prichard, Natural History of Man, t. II, p. 80 and above. See especially the research of EG Squier, recorded in his Observations on the aboriginal monuments of the Mississippi Valley, New York, 1847, and in several publications, magazines and newspapers which have recently appeared in America. 4. ÿ (1) The very particular construction of these mounds, and the numerous utensils and instruments that they contain, currently occupy much of the insight and talent of American antiquarians. 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 other 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. 5. ÿ (1) Ancient India required, on the part of the first settlers of the white race, very large land clearing works. See Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I. For Egypt, see what M. de Bunsen says, Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, of the fertilization of Fayoum, a gigantic work of the first sovereigns. 6. ÿ (2) Suncellus. Pherein de auton purous agrious ai krithas, ai ôxron, kai synsamon, kai tas en tois elesi phuomenas ridzas esthiesthai. 7. ÿ Salvador, History of the Jews. In-8°. Paris. 8. ÿ (1) M. Saint-Marc Girardin, Revue des Deux Mondes.

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9. ÿ Here, on the subject debated in this chapter, is the opinion, somewhat harshly expressed, of 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 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 this or that 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 has carried in its confined 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, History of the People of Israel, t. I, p. 259)

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CHAPTER VII. Christianity does not create or transform civilizing ability.

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 130

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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 has been claimed, parked in zones on the surface of the globe with their followers. 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 131

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to confuse, as is done daily, Christianity, the universal aptitude of men to recognize its truths, to practice its precepts, with the faculty, quite different, of an entirely different order, of an entirely 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, to rise to the state which we call civilization, a state of which the degrees mark the relationships 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 reasoning, and thus demand for soul a fullness

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of authority which, in a thousand applications, obviously works to the benefit 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

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he adopted none; he uses all, and is above all. Facts and evidence abound: I'm going to talk about it; but, beforehand, 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 called Christian 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, just as the rites and the faith are not possible without the people that 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

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are 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 language of each (1)[1] , 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 will glory in the Lord (1)[2] .

» 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

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effects which were to come out of it, that this law could rightly be called catholic, universal, because it does not belong to any civilization, it did not come to exclusively advocate any form of terrestrial existence, it does not reject any 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 of

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grace. 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 salvation. 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 the spirit 137

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to whom it is addressed are likely to rise and expand. 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 that what it is capable of, and does not take charge of assigning to it, in the political assembly of the peoples of

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the universe, a rank higher than that in which his faculties give him the right to sit. Consequently, 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 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, skillful mathematicians, artists of merit, in a word

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this elite of refined minds whose number and perpetual succession make up the strength and fertility of the dominant races, much more than the rare appearance of these offline geniuses who are not followed by the people, in the paths in which they follow. engage, only if these peoples are themselves conformed in such a way as to be able to understand them and move forward under their leadership. 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 through 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, who went out

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almost constantly, although not necessarily, from a nation more advanced than that to which they bring faith, will find themselves led of themselves, and as if by instinct, to reform the purely human habits of their neophytes, by at the same time that they will straighten 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, as happened among the Cherokees (1)[3] , 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.

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egalitarian, I do not imagine, observing these examples, that there could be any more striking of the general incapacity of races to enter a path that their own nature was not enough to make them find.

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 Mississippi (2) [4]

.

There is already, in the minds of those who claim to establish 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 nations Alleghanians only approach the Anglo-Saxons 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 M.

Gallatin (1)[5] , assures that the number of Cherokees goes 142

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increasing. 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 really has 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 students (2)[6 ] .

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.

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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 cardplaying 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. Without doubt, to my 144

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eyes, 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 besides, the Protestant missionaries, the indispensable link which connects the savage tribe to be converted to the initiating center, 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.

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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. -himself and without a guide (1)[7] . 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

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well adopted with our religious doctrines, that everything progresses by a movement as clean, as frank, as natural as we see in our States; a single place where printing produces effects analogous to what is in our country, where our sciences are perfected, where new applications of our discoveries are tried, where our philosophies give birth to other philosophies, political systems, a 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.

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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 h Once again, Christianity is not civilizing, and it is very right not to be.

1. ÿ Act. Apost., II, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11. 2. ÿ Apocryphal Gospels. History of Joseph the Carpenter, chap. I. In-12. Paris, 1849. 3. ÿ Prichard, Natural History of Man, t. II, p 120. 4. ÿ Id, ibid., t. II, p. 119 et al. 5. ÿ (1) Gallatin, Synopsis of the Indian tribes of North America. 6. ÿ (2) 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 work De la Démocracy enAmérique, expresses himself thus on the subject of the Cherokees: “ What particularly favored the rapid development of European habits among these Indians was the presence of 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 modify their social state and cha (On Democracy in America, 12vo; 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. 7. ÿ Carus, by reasoning on the lists of remarkable Negroes originally given by Blumenbach and which can be enriched, does very well

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notice 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, On the unequal ability of human tribes to develop spiritually, p. 24-25.

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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 Civilization in Europe, with a confusion of words from which arise rather serious positive errors. He states this thought that civilization is a fact. Or the word fact must be understood here in a much less precise and positive sense than common usage. 150

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requires it, 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 to characterize the notion included in the word civilization . Civilization is not a fact, it is a series, a sequence of facts more or less logically united to each other, and generated by a combination of often quite multiple ideas; 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 a state in which a human society finds itself placed, an environment in which it has succeeded in putting itself , which she created, which emanates from her, and which in turn reacts on her.

This state has a great general character that a fact never possesses; it lends itself to many variations that a fact could not undergo without disappearing, and, among other things, it is completely independent of East

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.

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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 a state, not an environment, but a fact ; 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 highlight the dominant thought. 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 civilization (1)[1]. »

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The first hypothesis is this: “Here is a people whose external life is sweet, comfortable: they pay few taxes, they suffer no; justice is well done 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 do not have the feeling of it, but compression. This is not without example. There are a large number of small aristocratic republics, where the subjects “were thus 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 seems in itself too violently paradoxical for the common feeling to which it is made 153

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appeal is willing to admit it, 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 differently governed, but of very related race, and only participated in a set of civilization. Thus, the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians, distant one from the other, were no less 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?

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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 sweet, less convenient, but bearable; whose moral and intellectual needs, on the other hand, have not been neglected; 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 humanity back; this is the state of the Hindus, for example (1)[2].” 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, the state of civilization is 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 the 155

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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 in this

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question, and only the passion of the parties will decide it. 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. Finally, many, 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 i 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 the internal feeling which exists. relates to it (1)[3]. » 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. Since civilization is acquired through a simple 157

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softening of morals, more than one wild people, and very wild ones, 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 a very good humor, which, however, we 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 imagines culture , and he declares that, through it, peoples, already softened, gain science and art (1)[4] .

According to this hierarchy, we find the world populated, in the second age (2)[5] , by affectionate and sympathetic beings, by more learned people, poets and artists, but, by the effect of all these qualities combined, foreigners to the crude tasks, to the necessities of war, as well as 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 laws 158

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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 to him beautiful and great, which indeed are, 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, to say a way, of understanding which spreads harmoniously on the sensitivity and the character the impressions which it receives from intellectual and moral activity as a whole (1)[6]. »

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 M. 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, quite obviously, to possess men who were very superior in certain respects to those whom

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we admire the most: the 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, prejudices and judgments. details 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 160

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that practice and experience can feel 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; it is not either, with Mr. G. de Humboldt, 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 with equal strength. 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, at

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most of the Negro tribes of the corresponding degree, the habits are active less than pensive, and the imagination gives more value to things which cannot be seen than to those which 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 162

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characterized tendency towards looting; in a word, wellbeing, 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, on very large 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 163

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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 other (1)[7] .

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, 164

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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 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. Civilization has not taken hold in these environme 165

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a utilitarian boom 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 temperament. brand new. 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. 1. ÿ M. Guizot, Histoire de la civilization en Europe, p 11 et passim. 2. ÿ M. Guizot, Histoire de la civilization en Europe, p. 11 et passim. 3. ÿ (1) WV Humboldt, About the Kawi language on the island of Java ; Introduction, t. 1, p. XXXVII, Berlin, in-4o « Civilization is the humanization of peoples in their external institutions and customs and the internal attitudes that relate to them. » 4. ÿ (1) GV Humboldt, About the Kawi language, introduction, p. XXXVII: « Culture adds science and art to this refinement of the social condition. » .

5. ÿ (2) C'est-à-dire sur le second degré de perfectionnement. 6. ÿ (I) WV Humboldt, ouvrage cité, p. XXXVII: « When we say education in our language, we mean something higher and more internal, namely the sensory system that arises from knowledge and

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Dem Gefûhle des gesammten geistigen und sittlichen Strebens harmonisch auf die Empfindung und dem Kharakter ergieszt. ". 7. ÿ (1) M. Klemm (Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, Leipzig, 1840) imagines a distinction of humanity into active races and passive races. 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.

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CHAPTER IX. Continuation of the definition of the word civilization ; different characters of human societies; our civilization is not superior to those which 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 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 them 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 well-being; female nations will be more concerned with the demands of imagination but, as long as, I repeat, 168

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multitudes enlist under a banner, or, what is more accurate here, from the moment 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 wellbeing which prevails, a chimera of stability. Varied, inconstant, changing every hour, it

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believes 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 above all recognizes an advanced social state (1)[1 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. 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 170

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intensity nor the same direction, their intelligence and their morals take, in their quality, very varying 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 work of this civilization is almost exclusively focused on 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.

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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 victors of the 5th century 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 dominated

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of peoples, 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 principal 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; there 173

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wealth, diversity, fecundity, which we honor 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 to 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 It 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, on the 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?

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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

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of human genius; however, with the exception of Greek rhetoricians, who provided the transcendental part, Syrian jurisconsults, who came to compose an atheistic, egalitarian and monarchical system of laws, rich men, engaged in public administration or in business enterprises. money, and finally people of leisure and pleasure, it had the misfortune of never being anything but suffered by the masses, given that the peoples of Europe understood nothing about its Asian and African elements, than those of Egypt did not have any more understanding of what it brought them from Gaul and Spain, and those of Numidia did not more 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

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demonstrative part of the intelligence they have. 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 efforts (1)[2] ; 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 (2)[3] , 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 abou Common instinct has the deepest horror of political upheavals. A very competent judge in this 177

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subject, who not only resided in Canton, but studied affairs there with the attention of a man interested in knowing them, Mr. John Francis Davis, commissioner of SM British 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 entirely composed of determined conservatives (1)[4] . 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 GrecoRoman 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 the 178

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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 the physical impossibility of failing on one side or the other, until the moment when vigorous 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 GrecoRoman 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. 179

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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 must be pointed out is that, while in China, Tibet and India, the notions most essential to the maintenance of civilization are familiar to all classes, this is by no means the case. even at home. 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 don't believe much in the promises 180

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laws, the beautiful semblances of institutions, much to what I have seen myself, and to 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 intrare of which, every day, the administration repeats the advice to its agents, 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, deep in their

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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 again where we must thank the 182

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Christian faith not to be exclusive and not to have wanted 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 that 26 million remain outside, we would be under-reporting the truth.

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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 (1) [5] , how different what they would call delicacy is 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, species, according to them,

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oppressed, weak, who must resort to cunning, but who also keeps her 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 equal today, at the very least, to what was observed among the nobility of the Middle Ages (1)[6] . 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 immobile waters, sleeping at the bottom of the abyss, will show themselves, one day, irresistibly dissolving. 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.

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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. To understand everything is to take everything. If it did not create the exact sciences, it at least gave them their exactitude and freed them from the ramblings of which, by a singular 186

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phenomenon, they were perhaps even more mixed than all other knowledge. Thanks to its discoveries, it understands 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 more 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

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absolutely and without reservation, I say no, because precisely she excels in almost nothing. 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 to destroy them or 188

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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 we call wellbeing belonged to relatively few people. I the

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believe: but, if it must be admitted, an incontestable fact, that the elegance of morals elevates the spirit of the multitudes of spectators as much as it ennobles the existence of favored individuals, and that it spreads throughout the country in which it there is a veneer of grandeur and beauty, which has become the common heritage, our civilization, essentially petty in its external manifestations, 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.

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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 clarify what I mean by the word race, and this will be the subject of the next chapter.

1. ÿ This is also where we find the main source of false judgments on 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. 2. ÿ (1) “There is still only China where a poor student can take the imperial competition and emerge as a great character. This is the brilliant side of Chinese social organization, and their theory is undoubtedly the best of all; unfortunately the application is far from perfect. I am not speaking here of errors of judgment and corruption of examiners, nor even of the sale of literary titles, an expedient to which the government sometimes resorts in times of financial distress..." (FJ Mohl, Annual report made to the Asiatic Society, 1846, p. 49.)

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3. ÿ (2) John F. Davis, The Chinese, in-16, London, 1840, p. 274. « Three or four volumes of any ordinary work of the octavo size and shape, may be had for a sum équivalent 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 litteratur is occasioned partly by the mode of printing, but party also by the low price of paper. » 4. ÿ (1) Ouvr. cité, p. 100 : « They are, in short, a nation of steady conservatives. » 5. ÿ (1) A nurse from Tours had put a bird in the hands of her infant, a three-yearold child, and encouraged him to tear off its 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. 6. ÿ (1) It was a question, very few years ago, of electing a churchwarden in a very small and very obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the ancient province that true Bretons call the Welsh 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, a very good Christian, rich and respected, was nevertheless a foreigner . We didn't give up, and yet this foreigner was born in the country, his father too; but we still remembered that his grandfather, who had been dead for many years and whom no one in the assembly had known, had come from elsewhere. — A daughter of a farmerowner becomes a misally 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?

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CHAPTER X. Some anatomists attribute multiple origins to humanity.

We must first question the word race in its physiological scope. The opinion of a large number of observers, proceeding from the first impression and judging on the extremes (1) [1] , declares that human families are marked by differences so radical, so essential, that we cannot make less than denying 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 large mask, a pyramidal skull, strongly oblique eyes, and the skin of the eyelids stretched so tightly towards the ex 193

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that the eye barely opens, with a fairly humble stature and heavy limbs (1)[2] , this observer recognizes a wellcharacterized, well-marked type, and of which it is certainly easy to keep the main features in the 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 to obesity (2) [3 ] 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 projects, the skull has this shape that has been called prognathous, 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 analogous (3) [4]. » .

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 is even less flattering than that of the Congo Negro's self-esteem. 194

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humanity. 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 background (1)[5] .

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 uglies ( 2)[6] ; 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 therefore seems more reasonable than to declare the families o 195

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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 an 196

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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 degrees (1)[7]. » 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. 197

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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 arrive at 198

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satisfactory, we must 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 you 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 your eye successively above the vertex of each person; 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 the narrowness of the “oval” contour presented by the vertex; or, finally, that they are found in the “flattened or convex configuration of the frontal bon 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 Camper . Indeed, the 199

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A first glance at two skulls, one of an orang, the other of a man, examined by 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 third (1)[9] . 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 M. Carus (2)[10] . Here is how he It consists :

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 whom these skulls belong appear superior (3)[11 ] . 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, to Mongols, to negroes, to American Red Indians 200

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from the North, and, blocking all the openings with cotton, except the foramen magnum, it filled completely the inside of carefully dried peppercorns; then he compared the quantities thus contained. This examination gave him provided the following table (1)[12] : Names of skulls

Average Maximum of figure

Peoples Mongols Malay yellow Skins-

of ability

ability Peoples white

of the number of the number

of

measures

Minimum of ability

52

87

109

75

10

83

93

69

18

81

89

64

147

82

100

60

29

78

94

65

red Negroes

The results entered in the first two columns are certainly very curious. On the other hand, I attach little price to those of the last two; because so that the violent disruption that they seem to bring to the observations of the second column were real, it would be necessary, first, that Mr. Morton had operated on a very large number more considerable number of skulls, and, then, that he had specified the social position of the people to whom the skulls would have belonged. So he was able to have quite beautiful subjects for them. whites and redskins: he obtained heads there 201

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having belonged to men above the quite 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 an Why, then, take 82 as the characteristic of a distinct race, and thus quite 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, as we see our planet passing through the four states of 202

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day, night, evening twilight and morning twilight, likewise, there must be in the human species, four subdivisions corresponding to these variations of light. He sees there a symbol (1)[13] , 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 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 breeds (1)[14] .

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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 Malayo-Polynesian mixed family, and they added that, if groups whose origin is common (2) [15 ] can 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 204

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local causes acting over a more or less long period of time [16] . 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 scholar, starting from the idea that the conformation of the pelvis necessarily influences that of the fetus, concluded that there were original differences (1)[17 Mr. Weber came to attack this theory; however, with little benefit. 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 205

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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 does not give a very serious reason (1)[18] . There are many mountain populations in the world, which are constituted quite differently from the Quichuas (2)[19] . 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; then, because color lends itself to the establishment of infinite gradations, through which we pass imperceptibly from white to 206

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yellow, from yellow to black, without being able to discover a sufficiently clear dividing line. This fact simply proves the countless existence of hybrids, an observation to which the Unitarians have 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 there is no reason to believe that the human species is exempt from this rule, nothing, until now, has been able to 207

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to shake the force of the objection which, more than all others, keeps in check the system of the adversaries of unity. It is true that it is affirmed that, in certain parts of Oceania, indigenous women, who have become mothers of European half-breeds, 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. 1. ÿ M. Flourens, Eulogy of Blumenbach, Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1847, in-4o , p. XIII. This scholar rightly speaks out against this method. 2. ÿ Prichard, Nat. History. of man, t. I, p 133, 146, 192. 3. ÿ Id., ibid, t. I, p 108, 134, 174. 4. ÿ Id., ibid, passim. 5. ÿ Prichard, cited work, t. II, p. 71 6. ÿ (2) It was because Meiners was extremely struck by this repulsive aspect of the majority of human varieties that he had imagined a very simple classification; it was composed of only two categories: the beautiful, that is to say the white race, and the ugly, which included 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. 7. ÿ Prichard, cited work, p. 152 8. ÿ Prichard, cited work, p.157. 9. ÿ Prichard, cited work, t. I,p; 60. 10. ÿ Carus, Ueber ungleiche Befaehigng etc., p. 19 11. ÿ Id., ibid, p 20. 12. ÿ Work cited, p. 19. 13. ÿ Carus, work cited, p. 12. 14. ÿ (1) There are slight ones which are nevertheless very characteristic. I would include among 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 some figures from the

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Flemish, in the Madonna by Rubens from the Dresden Museum, in the Satyrs and Nymphs from the same collection, in a lute player by Miéris, etc. No craniascopic method is able to detect such details, which nevertheless have their value in our mixed races. 15. ÿ (2) Prichard, cited work, t. II, p. 35. 16. ÿ Job Ludolf, whose data on this matter were necessarily very incomplete and inferior to those we possess today, nevertheless fights, in very piquant terms, and with unanswerable reasons for what concerns Negroes, the opinion accepted by Mr.

Prichard. Je ne résiste pas au plaisir de citer: "It is not our place to deal here with the blackness of the Ethiopians, most of them attribute it to the heat of the sun and torrid zones." It is true even within the orbit of the sun that people are given, if not completely white, at least not completely black. Many outside the two tropics lie farther from the middle line of the world than the Persians or the Syrians, living as it were on the Cape of Good Hope, and yet these are the blackest. If you wish to examine it only in Africa and the descendants of the Chams, the Malabars and Ceylons and other more remote peoples of Asia will be equally welcome. But if you refer the cause to the nature of the sky and the sun, do not white men who are reborn in those regions turn black? Or those who take refuge in hidden qualities would have done better if they did not know themselves, let them confess. - Jobus Ludolfus, Commentary on Ethiopian History, infol., Norimb., p. 56. - I'll add a passage from M. 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 the more temperate, and fertile parts of the Continent. » Thus, where there are fewer pure blacks, that is where 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, USN ; Philadelphia, 1848, in-4o 17. ÿ Prichard, Natural History. of man, t. 1, p. 166. 18. ÿ (1) Prichard, Natural History of Man, t. II, , flight. IX. p. 180 and passim. 19. ÿ (2) Neither the Swiss nor the Tyrolese, nor the Highlanders of Scotland, nor the Slavs of the Balkans, nor the tribes of the Himalayas offer the monstrous aspect of the Quichuas.

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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. 210

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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 what 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 Japhetides are the stock of European nations, the

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Semites occupy anterior 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 do we do with it? 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 (1) [1] ; who, however, will undertake the difficult thesis of observing 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 origin, diversity for everything else, and diversity so deeply established that it can only be lost through 212

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crossovers, 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 characters. 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 Arabian Nights, relates that certain negroes consider Adam and his wife black; that, these authors of humanity having been created in the image of God, God is also black, and the angels likewise, and that the prophet of God was

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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 explain, on the modest and narrow ground where I confine myself, accepting 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 opinion (1)[2] , given that the modifications in the constitution of races, since the beginning of historical times, under the influence of the circumstances here indicated, do not appear to have had the importance that should be given 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 furthermore, I place the first under the action of a cold climate, the second under 214

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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. It was even wanted that the Hottentots were a Chinese colony, as they resembled the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, an unacceptable assumption (1)[3] .

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 European nations 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.

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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 left, 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

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islands of the Indian Sea, 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 make and undo 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 have not preserved 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. So,

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It must be admitted 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 more slender in 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 (1)[4] . This, moreover, is an assertion diametrically opposed to Mr. Prichard’s sentiment. 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 (2)[5 ] . 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 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, 218

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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 rely (3)[6] . 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 ma Sakontala would be in Europe a very young girl, a child. The beautiful age of love for a woman from that country is 219

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from 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 (1)[7] 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 may 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 Zingaris (1)[8] . 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 retaining, with their ancient notions and habits, the appearance, the shape of the faces and the bodily proportions of the outcasts. 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 220

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physical changes to which the human constitution is subject (2)[9] . » This remark is very well founded, and I would not seek to refute it, limiting myself to adding only that it seems to contradict a little 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 when 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 the 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 the Jews and the 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 large lips, and that the recent discovery of the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad (1)[10 221

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already proclaimed the figured monuments of Persepolis, 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 o 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 They find and or heat ( 2)[11] . report, with good reason, blue eyes and blond hair among the Sinhalese (1)[12] ; they even observe a wide variety of complexions ranging from light brown to black. On the other hand, they admit that the Samoyeds and the 222

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Tongouses, although living on the shores of the Frozen Sea, are extremely swarthy (2)[13] .

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 among German Jews either. 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 were thus transformed (1)[14] . “In truth,” say the Unitarians, “some people have claimed that there had been mixing with the Greek, Georgian and Circassian families. But, they immediately add, these mixtures could only have been very partial: all the Turks

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were not 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 conquest (2)[15]. » 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 annalists (03)[16] , 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 , 224

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precisely the ancient and mysterious domain where many Germanic nations still lived at that time (1)[17] . 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 face (2)[18] . 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. So, despite linguistics, perhaps poorly applied (3)[19] , 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 prejudice, it is, at least, permitte 225

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to assume that the subjects were not more scrupulous. As their perpetual journeys gave them all the means to kidnap slaves on the vast territory they covered, there is no doubt that from the 13th century 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 wishe

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 the At the beginning of the 14th century, 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 European Turkey, then converted to Islamism, there were at least five hundred thousand heads of families who, in a period 226

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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; the most beautiful girl was exchanged for a boot (1)[20] .

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, second hand, what it had itself received from a foreigner. This is what we can observe about the ethnology of the Ottomans. I now move on to the Madjars.

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The Unitarians' claim 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 yellowish or dirty browns. However, the Madjars have a tall and well-built stature, long, supple and vigorous limbs, features similar to those of white nations and an 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 enormously (1)[21]. » 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 9th century and our time, 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 in the middle from which they live. 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.

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In a very well written notice, MA de Gérando (2)[22] has 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. In 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 dominated[23] 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

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roots and terminology completely foreign to their dominant species, absolutely as it was for the Yellow Scythians, who spoke an Arian , dialect[24] and for the Scandinavians of Neustria, who, after a few years

of conquest, had adopted the Celtic dialect. Latin of their subjects (1)[25] . 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 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 breeds are therefore very distinct branches of one or more lost primitive strains, which historical times have never known, of which we are in no way able to imagine even the most general characteristics; 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

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complexion, etc., only manage to lose their main features following and through the power of crossbreeding. 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 231

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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 If we stop considering it in isolation, we forget the long series which precedes and supports it, and which, strong and powerful, takes its place 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.

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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 forces[26] .

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[27]

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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 they weren't 233

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the only animals from whom it was necessary to dispute 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 and enclosed primitive families and made them feel its frightening domination heavily[28]. .

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.

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Cuvier affirms in his Discourse 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 our species has spent on earth, it has produced no change of any kind. importance, much less anything comparable to these fixed traits which have forever separated the different races[29]

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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.

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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 cite only one, Mr. Prichard speaks, according to Mr. Baker[30] , of the body, with the exception of the face, of a sort of dark-colored shell, , of a man covered all over similar to an immense, very strong wart. hard, insensitive and calloused, and which, when cut, gave no 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 236

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posterity enters into the common rule or soon dies out. 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 they have been known since, and he could

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to accomplish, under their pressure, ethnic modifications that have 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 nonblack 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 breed 238

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primitive Adamic 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.

1. ÿ Mr. Frédéric Cuvier, among others Annales du Muséum, vol. XI, p. 458. 2. ÿ (1) 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

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perpetually compare its position, vis-à-vis the forces of nature, to that of animals. 3. ÿ (1) It was Barrow who put forward this idea, basing himself on some similarities in the shapes of the head and on the complexion, in fact 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. 4. ÿ (1) Müller, Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, t. II, p. 639. 5. ÿ (2) Prichard, Natural History of Man, t. II, p. 249, et passim. 6. ÿ (3) Gen., XXI, 5. 7. ÿ (1) An exception must be made for Shakespeare, composing on Italian canvases. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet, this is how Capulet speaks: My child is yet a stranger in the world, She hath not seen the change of fourteen years, Let two more summers wither in their pride, Ere we may think her ripe to be a flange. To which Paris responds: Younger than she are happy mothers made. 8. ÿ (1) According to Mr. Krapff, Protestant missionary in East Africa, the Wanikas marry at twelve years of age with girls of the same age. (Journal of the German Morgenlœndische Gesellschaft , t. III, p. 317.) In Paraguay, the Jesuits had established the custom, which has been preserved, of marrying their neophytes, at 10 years old for girls, at 13 for boys. In this country we see widows and widowers aged 11 and 12. (A. d'Orbigny, 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, vol. I, p. 384.) 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. 9. ÿ (2) Prichard, ouvrage cité, t. II, p. 253. 10. ÿ (1) Botta, Monuments de Ninive ; Paris, 1850. 11. ÿ (2) Edinburgh Review, Ethnology or the Science of Races, October 1848, p. 444 et passim : < There is probably no evidence of original diversity of race which is so generally and unhesitatingly relied upon, as that derived from the colour of the skin and the charakter of the hair but it will not, we ... think, stand the test of a serious examination ... Among the Kabyles of Algier and Tunis, the Tuarikes of Sahara, the Shelahs or

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mountaineers of Southern Horocco and other people of the same race, there are very considerable difference of complexion (p. 448). » 12. ÿ (1) Ed. Rew., I. c, p. 453 : « The Cinghalese are described by Dr Davy, as varying in colour from light brown to black, the prévalent 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. » 13. ÿ (2) Ibid., I. c. : « The Samoiedes, Tungusians, and others living on the borders of the Icy sea have a dirty brown or swarthy complexion. » 14. ÿ (1) Ethnology, p. 439. 15. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 439. 16. ÿ (3) Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs, t. I, p. 2. 17. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. I, p. 433 et passim., p. 1115, etc. Tassen, Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, t, II, p. 65 ; Benfey, Encyclopædie de Ersch et Gruber. Indien, p. 12. M. le baron Alexandre de Humboldt, en parlant de ce fait, le signale comme une des découvertes les plus importantes de nos temps. (Asie centrale, t. II, p, 639.) Au point de vue des sciences historiques, rie 18. ÿ (2) Nouschirwan, whose reign fell in the first half of the sixth 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 Morgen I., t. I, p. 187.) The Schahnameh provides many facts of the same kind. 19. ÿ (3) Just as the Scythians, Mongol people, had accepted an 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 prince to the late Mr. Jean de Beaumont, whose complexion colored 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 of Turkish race not Mongolian. » 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 have of the Baburids, rulers of India. » (Central Asia, t. I, p. 248 et note.) 20. ÿ (1) Hammer, ouvrage cité, t. I, p. 448. — « The fight was hot (against the Hungarians), the spoils were great. Such a number of boys and girls were captured that the most beautiful slave for one

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Boots were exchanged so that Aaschikpaschazadeh, the historian, who himself fought and plundered, could later sell five slaves at Skopi for no more than five hundred aspers. » 21. ÿ (1) Ethnology, p. 439. — « The Hungarian nobility… is proven by historical and philological evidence to have been a branch of the great Northern-Asian stock, closely allied in blood to the stupid ann feeble Ostiaks and the untamable Laplanders. »

22. ÿ (2) Historical essay on the origin of the Hungarians, Paris, in-8o 23. ÿ , 1844. It would seem that there is much to modify, from now on, in the 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 (xerxis), present from the Turkish chagan Dithouboul to the ambassador Zémarch, sent by the emperor Justin II, in 569, she 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. (See Central Asia, t. I, p. 237 et passim., and t, II, p. 130-131). 24. ÿ Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 279 et passim. 25. ÿ (1) Aug. Thierry, History of the conquest of England; Paris, in-12, 1846; t. I, p. 155. 26. ÿ Lyell's, Principles of Geology, vol. I, p. 178. 27. ÿ Link, die Urwelt und das Alterthum, vol. I, p. 84. 28. ÿ Link, cited work, t. 1, p. 91. 29. ÿ Cuvier, Discourse on the Revolutions of the Globe. — Here, also, on these matters, is 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 in 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 positional relationships of our planet with a central body (the sun) began to almost exclusively determine the climates at various latitudes. It was also in these primitive times that the

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Elastic fluids, or volcanic forces from the interior, more powerful than today, emerged through the oxidized and poorly solidified crust of the planet. » (Central Asia, t. I, p. 47.). 30. ÿ Prichard, cited work, vol. 1, p. 124.

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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, have been 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 adopted by great minds of modern times, such as Georges Cuvier, that the different mountain systems must have served as points 244

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starting point for certain breed categories. 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 must have been born in the at least relative calm of nature, and, by the way, it is entirely 245

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contrary to notions of the 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. Moreover, this is the biblical notion (1)[1] , 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 more probable among imprudent, clumsy savages than among perfected nations. It is enough 246

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of a family embarked on a drifting raft, of 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 (1)[2] . 247

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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, a fortiori, less difficult for man (2)[3] . Terrestrial testaceans are swept into the sea by the destruction of cliffs, then carried to distant beaches by currents. The zoophytes, attached to the shells 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 15th century, washed up, after so many unobserved others, 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, insect eggs, 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, so that the temperature and the local circumstances which 248

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results are diverse, it is not necessary, even in the current state of the globe, that the places be located 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 in sight of the Simplon, no one is unaware of how much the temperature of Normandy is harsher than that of the 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 (1) [4 ]

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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! A single 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

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the ecliptic, disrupted 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 encounter these well-characterized races, only three in number: the white, the black and the yellow (1)[5] . 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, from the terminology in use, 250

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designations not absolutely good, but less defective than the others, and I decidedly prefer those which 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 into a field already quite embarrassed by itself. Thus, I warn, once and for all, that by white I mean those men who are also referred to as the Caucasian, Semitic, Japhetid race. I call black, the Hamites, and yellow, the Altaic branch, Mongolian, Finnish, Tatar. 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, at the points where their action was exercised, 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

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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 252

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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 that the combination has, in the end, become homogeneous, and that each individual of the species not having, in the veins, other blood 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 are both descended

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of 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

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constantly pushed her 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 savages (1)[6] .

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 type (2)[7] , the 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 in its veins

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from any source. 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, characters belonging to all the branches of the 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 ancestors (1) [8]

.

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.

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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 (2)[9 ] . 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 on the Spirit, and which consists of making the notion of beauty a purely artificial and variable idea. Let all those who might still have some scruples in this regard consult the admirable essay by M. Gioberti (1)[10] , they will have nothing left to dispute. Nowhere 257

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it has 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 white race 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 inde 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 vigor All these people tolerate (2)[11] . 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 the nations in mass, and judging them according to the

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amount of work that they endure without wavering, the palm belongs to our people 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 259

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die, the snows of Russia like the burning sands of Egypt.

1. ÿ (1) (1) Gen. II, 8 et passim: “Plantaverat autem Dominus Deus paradisum voluptatis a principio, in quo posuit hominem quem formaverat. — 10. Et fluvius egrediebatur de loco voluptatis, ad irrigandum paradisum. — 15. Tulit ergo Dominus Deus hominem, et posuit eum in paradiso voluptatis, ut operaretur et custodiret illum. » 2. ÿ (1) Lyell's, Principles of Geology, t. II, p. 119. 3. ÿ (2) Mr. Alexandre de Humboldt does not think that this hypothesis can be applied to the migration of plants. “What we know,” says this scholar, “of the deleterious action exerted by sea water in a journey of 500 to 600 leagues on the germinal excitability of most grains, is not in fact favor of the overly generalized system on the migration of plants by means of “pelagic currents. » (Critical examination of the History of the geography of the new continent, t. II, p. 78.) 4. ÿ Mr. Alexandre 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 as 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 do not become 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 espal

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5. ÿ (1) I will explain in their place the reasons which lead me not to count the savage 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. Besides, 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. 6. ÿ (1) Mr. Carus gives his powerful support to the law which I have established concerning the particular aptitude of civilizing races to mix, when he brings out the extreme variety of the human organism perfected 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 high and perfect expression of complete development. This is only a primitive and “elementary” development. » (Uebe 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. 7. ÿ (2) It is probably as a result of a typographical error that Mr. Flourens (Elog of Blumenbach , p . »

It is the black and the mongolic that the learned academician certainly meant. 8. ÿ (1) The physiological characteristics of the different ancestors are represented in the 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, American Man, vol. I, p. 143.) 9. ÿ (2) It should be noted that the happiest mixtures, from the point of view 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 261

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that a beautiful Radjeput is more ideally beautiful than the most accomplished Slav. 10. ÿ (1) Gioberti, Essay on Beauty, translation by M. Bertinatti, p. 6 and 25. 11. ÿ (2) See, among others, for the American natives, Martius and Spix, Reise in Brasilien, t. I, p. 259; for the Negroes, Pruner, der Neger, eine aphoristische Skizze aus der medicinischen Topographie von Cairo, in the Zeitsch.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.

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CHAPTER XIII. 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

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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, sufficiently prove 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 intellig However, is this moral life, placed deep in the conscience of each individual of our species, 264

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capable of expanding to infinity? 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 new. 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.

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A little more serious examination of the story does justice of these lofty pretensions. We are, in truth, more learned than the ancients. This is because we benefited from their discoveries. If we possess more 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 turn 266

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around the secret. 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 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, fa 267

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to announce 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; but criticism means classification, 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 re 268

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comparison since we decided to claim that between our current social order and the state of Greek antiquity, servitude creates a fundamental difference. The demagoguery was all the more profound, if you like, and that's 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 the 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 momen 269

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where its very defenders accepted, as the only system of defense, to refuse any prerogative by only demanding 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 old Spartacus, that the emperor could not make his power felt too much. Some provincials, on the contrary, asked for and obtained what we would call constitutional guarantees; while socialist opinions found no less interpreters than the Gallic Caesar C. Junius Posthumus, who exclaimed in his declamations: Dives et pauper, inimici, “the rich and the poor are born enemies. In short, every man with any pretension to participating in the enlightenment of the time strongly supported the equality of 270

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human race, the universal right to possess the goods of this earth, the obvious necessity of Greco-Latin civilization, its perfection, its gentleness, its future progress even greater than its current 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 (1)[1] .

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 repea 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 republics and 271

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Aristocrats of all forms and weighted according to the most varied methods existed in the new world as in the old. 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: Nil novi sub sole (1)[2] . 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 the practice respond to this? 272

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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 future[3] ! 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 with those of numerous families of birds and insects is not even likely to always inspire very consoling thoughts. on his 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 eggs a system of care, which naturalists think does not admit no variations or improvements[4] . 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 was open to metaphysicians for a long time 273

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to call animals machines, and to refer to God, anima brutorum, the cause of their movements. Today, when we study the morals of these so-called automatons with a slightly more careful eye, 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 ceremony[5] ; when I see this woman carrying her child, whom she will kill herself if he falls ill, or only if he bothers her[6] ; that suddenly, hunger making itself felt, this miserable group, in search of some game, stopped charmed in front of one of these dwellings of intelligent ants, set foot in the building, delighted in it and devours the eggs, then the meal 274

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done, retires sadly into a hollow of rock, I wonder if the insects which have just perished were not more favorably endowed 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

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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 fellows or with poverty, and, peaceful 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 intellectually and morally without losing physically, and he does not hold on to any of his conquests strongly enough to be sure of always keeping them.

We believe that our civilization will never perish, because we have printing, steam, gunpowder. Did printing, which is no less known in Tonquin, in the Empire of Annam and in Japan[7] than in present-day Europe, by chance, give the people of these countries a civilization even passable? 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 him[8] ? Where does this come from Only because printing is a means, and not 276

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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, by 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 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...

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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 whose wanton morals, poverty and passionate taste for pleasure are told in Petronius' Satyricon . When decadence was

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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 scientists and philosophers, coming from the pens of contemporaries, works hadliterary, 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 benefits made by this invention to religious and political interests 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, like printing, that they are great 279

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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 wellbeing has never been more than an external annex of civilization, and that we have never heard of a society that it had lived solely because it knew the ways to 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 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 thirty-eight 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 280

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leagues of distance. 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.

1. ÿ (1) Amédée Thierry, History of Gaul under Roman administration, t. 1, p. 241. 2. ÿ (1) We are sometimes inclined to consider the government of the United States of America as a completely original and particular creation of our time, and what we find especially remarkable is the restricted part abandoned in this society to the initiative and even to the simple intervention of the 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. Self -government is 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 tr 281

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more inhumanely by the Americans than the Gauls were by the leudes of Khlodowig. 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 will explain the beginnings of all the Arian societies, we will see that they all began 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 people, at Bolgari, near Kazan, had the habit of hanging witty people, as a preventive measure. We owe knowledge of this fact to the Arab traveler Ibn Foszlan. (A. de Humboldt, Central Asia, vol. I, p. 494.) In the other nation, living in Fazoql, when the king is no longer suitable, his parents and his ministers come to announce it to him, and it is pointed out to him that, since he no longer pleases men, women, children , oxen, donkeys, etc., the best he can do is to die, and they help him immediately. (Lepsius, Briefe aux Ægypten, Æthiopien und der Halbinsel des Sinai ; Berlin, 1852.) 3. ÿ Amédée Thierry, History of Gaul under Roman administration, t. I, p. 241. 4. ÿ Martius und Spix, Reise in Brasilien, t. III, p. 950 and passim. 5. ÿ Among several tribes of Oceania, this is how the institution of marriage was conceived: the man notices a girl. It suits him. 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. 6. ÿ Mr. d'Orbigny says that Indian mothers love their children excessively, that they cherish them to the point of truly being their 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, American Man, vol. II, p. 232.) 7. ÿ MJ Mohl, Annual report to the Asiatic Society, 1851, p. 92: “The indigenous Indian bookstore is extremely active, and the works it supplies never enter the European bookstore even in India. Mr.

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Sprenger says, in a letter, that there are in the town of Luknau alone thirteen lithographic establishments solely occupied in multiplying books for schools, and he gives a considerable list of works of which probably none has reached Europe. The same is true in Delhi, Agra, Cawnpour, Allahabad and other cities. » 8. ÿ The Siamese are the most shameless people on earth. They lie at the lowest level of Indo-Chinese civilization; however they all know how to read and write. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. III, p. 1152.)

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CHAPTER XIV. Continuation of the demonstration of the intellectual inequality of races. Diverse civilizations repel each other. Mixed races 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 debris from the 284

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oriental wisdom of primitive ages, the indispensable elements of a great society, and would certainly have found rivals among the Iberian populations then spread across the face of Italy, in the Mediterranean islands, in Gaul and Spain. as well informed as they are about ancient traditions, as experts in the necessary arts and in the 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 285

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tamed 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.

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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 287

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to increase 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 abandon everything, even 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. It allowed them to preserve their uses and their

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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 that we 289

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supposes to have once seen the establishments of the Alleghanians[1] . 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 will say

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that, if one of these tribes still holds ethnically to the old dominant type, it is through an indirect and very bastard link, without which the Cherokees would never have fallen into barbarism, and, as for the other peoples less well gifted, they only represent to me the depths of the foreign population, conquered, vanquished, agglomerated by force, on which the social state once rested. 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, as regards the exploitation of mines among the Iberians, the Aquitaines and the Bretons of the Cassiterides Islands, the secret of this science was in upper Asia, from where the ancestors of the Western populations had once brought it into 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,

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this blood is far from pure, 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 to be able, not to merge, which never happens, but only to strongly modify one another, to make rich reciprocal loans, to give birth to other civilizations composed of their elements; 4° that

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civilizations originating from races completely foreign to each other can only touch each other on the surface, never penetrate each other and always exclude each other. 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 morals, the form of governments, the direction given to the arts, the scope and intimate meaning of public worship, the private morals of nations intertwined on so many points nevertheless remained distinct. In Ecbatana, there was only one authority

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unique, hereditary, 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. If, in some sanctuaries, such as at Olympia, for example, or at Dodona, we would no longer like to recognize the adoration of one of the forces or elements of nature, but that of the cosmic principle itself. even, this kind of unity would only make the fractionation more remarkable, as being only practiced 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 294

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exposing oneself to public contempt, when one was young, rich, voluptuous and cosmopolitan, than wanting to imitate the ways of life of rivals 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

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mitigate, and why were they still able to establish this middle ground which became the normal state 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 Greco-Syrian 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-à-vis 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. 296

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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, was 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 all-encompassing glory 297

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Roman, and that one of its adventurers, like Philip, was even able to rise to the point of donning the 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 o 298

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the Mediterranean, all its recruits saturated in advance with this complicated combination. He soaked it in more. From 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[2] and Egyptian science . , its administration, from the first day, tolerant as 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 names. elders. 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 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 Greco-Syrian civilization, rejuvenated, revived by the breath of a rather short-lived genius, but newer, 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; 299

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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 more advanced degree towards the ideas of the white race, I am authorized to establish the inequality of intelligence among 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 lights of Christianity. When it comes to intellectual merit, I absolutely refuse this way of arguing which consists of 300

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say: Every Negro is inept[3] , 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 from such a person. 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 Mungo-Park or Lander gave some negro a certificate of intelligence, who tells me that another traveler, encountering the same phoenix, would not have based on his head a diametrically opposed conviction? So let's leave these

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puerilities, and let us 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 groups [4] . Here then is humanity divided into two very dissimilar, very unequal fractions, or, to put it better, into one

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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 indicated[5] : the approximate similarity of the main physical characteristics, and the general aptitude to express sensations and ideas by voice modulations. I have spoken at length about the first of these phenomena by containing it within 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.

1. ÿ Prichard, Histoire naturelle de l'homme, t. II, p. 78. 2. ÿ W. de Humboldt, About the Kawie language, introduction, p. CCLXIII : « Through the direction of this education and through internal tribal kinship they really become receptive to the Greek spirit and Greek language, since the Arabs were primarily attached only to the scientific results of Greek research. » 3. ÿ Le jugement le plus rigoureux peut-être qui ait été porté sur la variété mélanienne émane d'un des patriarches de la doctrine égalitaire. Voici comment Franklin définissait le nègre: «It's an animal that can get plus possible and work the months possible. » 4. ÿ I do not hesitate to consider as a specific mark, denoting 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 memoir inserted in the 10th volume of the Annals of Natural Sciences.

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5. ÿ See p. 142-144.

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CHAPTER XV. Languages, unequal among themselves, are in perfect relationship with the relative merit of 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 perfecting 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 forced to agree that the perfection of idioms is far from being everywhere. 305

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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 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 306

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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 does not offer 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 characteristics of race, of man finally, it begins with real nonsense, and continues infallibly in the same way. There is no ideal man, man does not exist, and if I am convinced that we do not discover him 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; but I don't know the absolute man . 307

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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 sensitivity[1]

.

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 exceed the limits of the most elementary and simple combinations. 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 [2] 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.

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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[3]

.

However, I do not reject the idea of attributing to male races a fairly marked aesthetic inferiority[4] , which would be reproduced in the construction of their idioms. I find the clue, not only in Chinese

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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 accords perfectly with the mediocrity of our civilization and that of the Celestial Empire, in 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 noises 310

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exteriors collected by the ear of man, 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 of i seems suitable for expressing dissolution; that of w, the physical and moral wave, the wind, the wishes; that of the m, the condition of motherhood[5]

.

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 unclear paths, where common sense soon goes astray.

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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 in 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 ordinary insight, that each language exists in great independence from the will of the men who speak it. Being closely linked 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 is

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remained the same, as little altered in substance as in form.

A more complete attempt was noted by M. Sylvestre de Sacy, about the balaïbalan language. This strange idiom had been composed by the Sufis, for the use of their mystical books, and as a means of surrounding with more mystery 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 creature[6]

.

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[7] .

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 313

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where the spirit of variety walks. 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 that is all the stronger as it has provided the more individuals to the emerging society[8] .

This is how, in our Western

populations, since the 13th century, Germanic dialects have had to give way, not to Latin, but to Roman[9] ,

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

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given, 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 most lively sonorities brought from the Peninsula, and to make triumph the rather dull eurythmy that he himself possessed. 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 Rhine[10] , 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 an idiom 315

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barbaric, to a sort of relative barbarism, stripping itself by degrees of its finest faculties, becoming impoverished in words, drying up in 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 (1)[11 ] .

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 that the Asiatics 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-to-appreciate 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 wild people in possession

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of an idiom superior to that of more civilized nations, carefully distinguishing whether the civilization of the latter belongs to them alone, or whether it only comes from an infiltration of foreign blood. 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 culture (1)[12] .

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 speech which the writers of India and Ionia made use of, so that language, while being, I believe, I admit, a 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.

In order not to leave this point doubtful, I will allow myself to discuss an opinion expressed by Mr. Baron Guillaume de Humboldt, on the subject of the superiority of the Mexican over the 317

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Peruvian (2)[13] , obvious superiority, he said, 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. Guillaume de Humboldt is, here, consistent with the way in which he defines civilization (1)[14] . 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 318

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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 (1)[15] . 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 imprint (2)[16] . 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 ca 319

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still presents to the admiration of 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; that others, much more tenacious, such as the Basques, the Berbers of the Atlas, the Ekkhilis of southern Arabia, speak until today as their most ancient relatives spoke, there are groups, the Jews for example 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

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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 very ancient language, mother of the oldest Arabic, legitimate heritage of the tribes allied, very closely, to the Black Hamites (1)[17] 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. Culture 321

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Hebrew broke with Athens as with Alexandria, and the language, the ideas of the Talmud, the teachings of the school of Tiberias were 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 (1 ) [18]

.

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 peoples (1)[19] .

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

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the main elements of which 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, for the making of which they contributed almost nothing. 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 cannot emphasize this point enough, 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 (1)[20] . At the same time as the old ethnic causes continue their work at the bottom of 323

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the social scale, they admit and allow to penetrate only weakly, and in a completely transitory way, the influences of the ruling national genius. 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 Latin (2)[21] must have first passed before coming together and ending up merging. . Saint Jerome and his contemporary Sulpicius Severus teach us, however, the first in his Commentaries on 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 one spoke two vulgar languages in Gaul: Celtic, preserved so pure on the banks of the Rhine, that the language of the Gallo-Greeks, removed from the motherland for six hundred years, resembled it in every way (1)[22] ; then what w 324

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Gallic, and who, in the opinion of one commentator, could only be a Roman already altered. But this Gaulish, different from what was spoken in Trier, was neither the language of the west nor that of Aquitaine. This 4th century dialect, 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 characte 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 characters 325

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are acquired by him, his direction is clearly indicated to him. It was indeed, from then on, in its different dialects, Limousin, Provençal, Auvergne, 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, than to rhyme satires, love songs, war challenges, and, in religion, to support heresies like that of the Albigensians, licentious Manichaeism, devoid of even literary value, of which an English author, little Catholic, congratulates the papacy for having delivered the Middle Ages (1)[23]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? The examination will prove that no, and, in any way that the fusion of Celtic, Latin elements, 326

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Germanic, was made, which we cannot fully appreciate (2)[24] , for lack 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 endowed with a character and a background of energy entirely 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 considerable again, to form compound words. We recognize, for the names, inflections indicated by affixes, and, as a consequence, an ease of inversion lost to us, and which the French language of the 16th century, having imperfectly inherited, only enjoyed at the expense of the clarity of speech. Its lexicology also contained numerous elements brought by the Frankish race (1)[25] . 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 of Mr. Littré, who was able to translate literally and verse for verse, into 13th century French, the first song of the Iliad, in turn of force impractical in our French today (2)[26] .

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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 disposition of the nation and the language the great rhymed compositions, especially Garin le Loherain, testimony, since denied, 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

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the apogee, and which would have been further perfected by following its path, began to decline and corrupt towards the end of the 13th century. In the 15th century, 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 century, the return of classical studies found French in this disrepair, 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 17th century, wiser, or realizing that it could not master the irresistible power of things, only occupied itself with improving, by itself, a language which was rushing forward every day. more towards the forms most natural 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 had, due 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. It lies in the different proportion of Celtic, Roman and Germanic elements which

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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 language spoken in Arras (1) [27] . As we advance beyond the Seine and below the Loire, the provincial idioms are more and more Celtic in nature. In Burgundian, in the dialects of the Pays de Vaud and Savoie, the lexicology itself, something very worthy of note, has preserved numerous traces, which are not found in French, where generally rustic Latin dominates ( 2 )[28] . I noted elsewhere (3)[29] how, from the 15th century, 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 population (4)[30] . 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 330

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centuries: if this were so, Ekkhili, Berber, Euskara, Lower Breton would have long since disappeared, and they live on. 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 singular examples 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, although they all belong to common origins variously combined (1) [31 ]

.

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

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Nations, even infinitely small ones, 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 relations with the particular nature of races, confirms 332

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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 if it should be considered as 333

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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 much as possible, not base anything on them alone (1)[32] . This rule is dictated by necessary caution. 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 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 pose this general axiom: The hierarchy of languages corresponds rigorously to the hierarchy of races.

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1. ÿ Mr. William of Humboldt, in one of his most brilliant pamphlets, expressed, in an admirable manner, the essential part of this truth: “Everywhere,” says this thinker of genius, “the work of time unites in the languages at 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 several peoples. . » (W. v. Humboldt's, Ueber das entstehen der grammatischen Formen, und ihren Einfluss auf die Ideenentwickelung.) 2. ÿ W. de Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache. Einl. 3. ÿ I would be inclined to believe that the monosyllabic nature of Chinese 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.) Which 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 promote 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 draw from it would only find itself corroborating what I 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 do

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means to order; a-hon, he ordered; Moses ordered, said to himself: a Moyses hôn. (See E. Meier's, hebraeisches Wurzelwœrterbuch, in-8o ; 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. 4. ÿ Goethe said in his novel by Wilhelm 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. » 5. ÿ W. de Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, Einleit., p. XCV: “Man cann hernach eine dreifache Bezeichnung der Begriffe unterscheiden: … 2). The designation that imitates not directly, but in a third quality that is common to the sound and the object. One can call this the symbolic , although the concept of the symbol in language goes much further . For the objects to be described, it selects sounds which, partly in themselves, partly in comparison with others, produce for the ear an impression similar to that of the object on the soul, such as standing, steady, rigid, the impression of solidity, the Sanskritic li, melt, diverge, that of the one who melts away, not, gnaw, envy that of the one who cuts off finely and sharply. In this way, similar impressions of objects are given words with predominantly the same sounds, such as blowing, wind, cloud, confusion, wish, in which all the swaying, restless movements, indistinct to the senses, through one another through what comes from the, in itself already dull and hollow and hardened w is expressed. This type of designation, which rests on a certain significance of each individual letter and entire genera of them, has undoubtedly exercised a great, perhaps exclusive dominance over the primitive word designation. » 6. ÿ A jargon semblable au balaibalan is probably this language nommée afnskoë qui se parle entre les maquignons et colporteurs de la Grande-Russie, surtout dans le gouvernement de Vladimir. Il n'y a que les hommes qui s'en servent. Les racines sont étrangères au russe ; Mais la grammaire est entièrement de cet idiome. (Voir Pott, Encyclopædie Ersch and Gruber, Indo-European. Sprachstamm, p. 110.) 7. ÿ Je ne résiste pas à la tentation de copier ici une admirable page de CO Müller, where this scholar, full of feeling and tact, clarified, in a

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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, the Etruscans, p. 65.) 8. ÿ Pott, Encycl. Ersch und Gruber, Indo-German. Sprachst., p. 74. 9. ÿ The mixture of idioms, proportional to the mixture of races in a nation, had already been observed when philological science did not, so to speak, yet exist. I will quote 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- 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 I, p. 73.) 10. ÿ Keferstein (Ansichten über die keltischen Alterthümer, Halle, 1846-1851; Einleit., 1, XXXVIII ) proves that German is only a mixed language composed of Celtic and Gothic. Grimm expresses the same opinion. 11. ÿ (1) W. de Humboldt, About the Kawi language, intro, p. XXXIV: "Supposedly crude and uneducated languages can and do possess outstanding excellences in their structure, and it would not be impossible for them to surpass more highly educated ones in this respect. Even the comparison of the Barman language, into which the Pali undeniably has woven a part of Indian culture, with the Delaware language, let alone with the Mexican language, should hardly leave the judgment about the preference of the latter in doubt. »

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12. ÿ (1) It is this difference in level which, marked between the intelligence of the conqueror and that of the subject peoples, gave rise, at the beginning of the new empires, to the use of sacred 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. 13. ÿ M. de Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, Einl., XXXIV. 14. ÿ (1) See p. 82. 15. ÿ (1) An interesting observation is to see, in languages originating from a middle language, certain derivatives present themselves in a form much closer to the primitive root than the word from which, in general, we suppose them to be formed or that which, in the nearest language, expresses the same idea. Thus FURY : all. Wuth, engl. mad, Sanskrit mada ; DESIRE, as an expression of passion: all. Begierde, French. rage, Sanskrit raga ; HOMEWORK : all. Pflicht, engl. Duty, Sanskrit dutia ; CREEK : all. rinnen, lat. rivus, Sanskrit arivi, Greek ÿÿÿ. (See Klaproth, Asia polyglotta, in-4o .) 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. who preceded them in the order of time. 16. ÿ (2) Ancient Greece, which had many dialects, did not, however, have as many as that of the 16th century, when Simeon Kavasila numbered seventy; and, a remark to be linked to what follows, in the 18th century, French was spoken throughout Hellas and especially in Attica. (Heilmayer, cited by Pott, Encycl. v, Ersch u. Gruber, Indo-Germanischer Spr 17. ÿ The Hebrews themselves did not call their language Hebrew ; they very aptly called it the language of Canaan, thus paying homage to the truth. (Isaiah, 19, 18). See, on this subject, Rœdiger's observations on the Hebrew Grammar of Gésénius, 16th edition, Leipzig, 1851, p. 7 and passim. 18. ÿ (1) This is also the feeling of MW Edwards, Physical Characters of human races, p. 101 et passim. 19. ÿ (1) There is still one case that can arise, that is where a population speaks two languages. In the Grisons, almost all the peasants of the Engadine use Romansh with equal ease in their relations between compatriots, and German when they address

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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. Ersch und Gruber, indo-germanischer Sprachstamm, p. 104.) 20. ÿ (1) See p. 96-98. 21. ÿ (2) The road was not so long from rustic Latin, lingua rustica Romanorum, lingua romana, from the novel, in a word, to corruption, as 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. 22. ÿ (1) Sulpitii Severi dial. 1, by Virt. monach. orient., Elzevir; in-12, 1665, p. 528, not. 23. ÿ (1) Macaulay, History of England, t. I, p. 18, ed. from Paris. The Albigensians are the object of a very special predilection on the part of revolutionary writers, especially in Germany (see on this subject Lenau's poem, 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. 24. ÿ (2) The preface to the Chanson de Roland, by M. Génin, contains, on this subject, some rather curious observations. (Chanson de Roland, in-8o Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1851.) 25. ÿ Consult the Fœmina, cited by Hickes in his Thesaurus litteraturæ septentrionalis and by the Literary History of France, vol. XVII, p. 633.(1) 26. ÿ (2) Revue des Deux Mondes. 27. ÿ (1) P. Pâris, Garin le Loherain, preface. 28. ÿ (2) It should however be noted that the Vaudois and Savoyard accent has something southern which strongly recalls the colony of Aventicum. 29. ÿ (3) See p. 70. 30. ÿ (4) Pott expresses very well how dialects are the spoken modifications which maintain the agreement between the state of composition of the blood and that of the language, when he says: "The dialects are the diversity in unity, the chromatic sections of the primordial One and unicolored light. » (Pott, Encycl. Erchs. und Grüber, p. 66.) – This is, undoubtedly, an obscure phraseology; but here she clearly indicates what she means. 31. ÿ (1) See the second volume.

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32. ÿ We must not lose sight of the fact that the precautions indicated here only apply 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.

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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 Many of his senses are developed with vigor 341

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unknown to the other two races: taste and smell mainly (1)[1] . 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 seem 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 the rapid appeasement of the one and the 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 quite a trait 342

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special, yet it is found more frequently among the yellow tribes than in the 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 (1) [2] ; 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, a 343

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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, 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 t 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 vigorous (1)[3] .

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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, either too disparate, or too numerous, or too tiny, have not had the time or the possibility of penetrating 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

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recognizing the undeniable predominance of those of our groups that 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

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mulatto, who can be made a lawyer, a doctor, a tradesman, 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 most beautiful races, now extinct, offered a more brilliant and nobler image of humanity, were above all more active, more intelligent agents of civilization and greatness, safer than the mixed-race populations, a hundred times mixed-race, of the current era, 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 disorder already existing in the elements.

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ethnic and only seemed to retain from its native excellence a greater power in the fertilization of 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, raise it and ennoble it, it is only at the expense of this humanity itself, since they degrade it, enervate it. , humiliate him, decapitate him in his noblest elements, and even if we would like to admit that it is better to transform myriads of tiny beings into mediocre men than to preserve races of princes whose blood, subdivided, impoverished, adulterated , becomes the dishonored element of a similar metamorphosis, there would still remain the 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, like that of Babel, leads to the most complete impotence, and leads societies to nothingness which nothing can remedy.

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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 to contest 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

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mixtures that they undergo, and to the extent of the 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 arrive at this point of multiplicity that it becomes impossible for them to harmonize, to tend, in a sensitive manner, towards a necessary homogeneity, and, consequently, to obtain, with a common logic, these instincts and these common interests, the sole and unique reasons for be of 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 unfold, in all their

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consequences, ethnic laws and their combination. 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 court. I said that the great human civilizations are only ten in number and that all of them came from the initiative of the white race (1)[4]. At the top of the list: I. Indian civilization. It advanced into the Indian Sea, into 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, the Nubians, and some small peoples living to the west of the oasis of Ammon. An Arian colony from India, established in the upper Nile valley, created this society.

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III. The Assyrians, to whom the Jews, the Phoenicians, the Lydians, the Carthaginians, the Hymiarites are linked, 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 it was 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 Hindu (2)[5] . VI. The ancient civilization of the Italic peninsula, from which Roman culture emerged, was an inlay of Celts, Iberians, Arians and Semites. VII. The Germanic races transformed, in the 5th century, 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, at least in part, to the 352

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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. 1. ÿ (1) “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, t. I, p. 133.) 2. ÿ Carus, Ueber ung., etc., p. 60. 3. ÿ (1) Mr. Martius notices that the European surpasses the colored men in the intensity of the nervous fluid. (Reise in Brasilien, t. I, p. 259.) 4. ÿ (1) I am even more generous than MJ Mohl. The learned professor 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 Asian 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.

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5. ÿ (2) As I have already had the opportunity to warn the reader, I sometimes find myself forced to pose a 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.

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SECOND BOOK. ANCIENT CIVILIZATION RADIANT FROM ASIA CENTRAL IN THE SOUTH-WEST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — The Hamites. CHAPTER II. — The Semites. CHAPTER III. — The maritime Canaanites. CHAPTER IV. — The Assyrians; the Hebrews; the Choreans. CHAPTER V. — The Egyptians; the Ethiopians. CHAPTER VI. — The Egyptians were not conquerors; why their civilization remained stationary. CHAPTER VII. — Ethnic relationship between the Assyrian nations and Egypt. The arts and lyric poetry are produced by the mixing of whites with black peoples.

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FIRST CHAPTER. The Hamites.

The first traces of certain history date back to a time before the year 5000 before the birth of Jesus Christ[1] . 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 Bolor[2] it reverberates, from echo to echo, up to 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 (1) Not content with the continent [3] . 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. So extraordinary that the fact can

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appear, such was, however, in the earliest ages, the fertility of this immense category of the human race (2)[4] . Whether it must be considered simple or compound (3)[5] , or whether it is considered 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 most 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 darkness (1)[6] .

While the central world was, far to the north-east, inundated by such swarms, the northern part of Asia, the edges of the Ice Sea and Europe, almost entirely, found themselves in the power of 'a completely different variety (2)[7] . It was the yellow race, which, escaping from the great continent of America, had advanced to the east and west on the shores of the two oceans, and spread, in a 357

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on one side, towards the south, where, through her hymen with the black species, it gave birth to the populous Malay family, and, on the other, towards the west, which led it 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 sowed its tombs and some of its instruments of hunting and war in the steppes of Siberia, as in the Scandinavian forests and the peat bogs of the British Isles (1)[8 ] . 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.

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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 again. It is, between the two worlds of the north and the south, and, to use the Hindu expression, between the southern country, the land of death, and the northern land, the region of riches (1)[9 ] , a series of plateaus which 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 ice (2)[10 ] .

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 359

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nothing that is said to excite, to develop, to create civilizing genius: this is the appearance 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 (3)[11] . 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 carried great similarities everywhere, which authorize and even force us to classify it, entirely, under the same 360

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denomination: that, a little vague and very incomplete, of white race. As, at the same time, its main ramifications reveal 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 to be learned, since the most advanced modern peoples have no other, except disI ? have only fragments of this ancient science consecrated In addition by religion (1)[12] . to these lights on the origins of the world, the whites kept the memory of the first ancestors, both of those who had succeeded the Noahides, as well as of the patriarchs prior to the 361

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latest 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 only race considered by them as truly human, that is- that is, theirs. 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 k 362

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also, weave fabrics (1)[13] for their clothing and lived together and sedentary in large villages (2)[14] , decorated with pyramids, obelisks and mounds of stone or earth.

They knew how to reduce horses to domesticity. Their mode of existence was pastoral life. Their wealth consisted of numerous herds of bulls and heifers (3)[15] . 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 themselves only little to agriculture ( 4 )[16] . 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-à-vis 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 numero 363

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virtue of an authority acquired over these humiliated rivals, since no notable contact has taken place, but already with all the height of civilizing aptitude over 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 under the name of Touran (1)[17] , and, attacking in the west the black races which blocked their passage, appeared outside the limits which they had never before touched or even never 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.

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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 brothers (1)[18] .”

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, as it were, summed up in the name of Nimrod (1) [19 ] .

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 not necessary to expect thoughtful participation in the work

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civilizing, and content to bend its members to become animated machines applied to social labor.

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 th 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 Lord (1)[20] . 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. So there was no change in the idea we had of the 366

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way and rights to reign. 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 immigrant tribes 367

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found in contact with the black multitudes, they had not been able to 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 i 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 the languages of the 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 368

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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; or yellow and white like, in the north, the English, the Germans, the Russians. So that the half-breeds, products of a so-called white father, whose original essence is already so modified, can in no way rise to the ethnic value possessed by the black Hamites.

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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 to an English father. 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 half-breeds even older than him, and whose history, too obscure and partly mythical, should not find place in these pages. These half-breeds 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,

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messengers of the divinity, no doubt, but rather dark than gentle, more 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 (1)[21] . When these robust creatures were united with the daughters of the Cainites, giants were born (2)[22] whose character we can judge by the oldest literary piece, perhaps, in the world, by this song, which said to his wives one of the descendants of Abel's murderer, probably a very close relative of these formidable half-breeds: “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[23] ! » 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.

1. ÿ The opinion of Klaproth (Asia polyglotta) does not postpone them further than 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 back to the year 4000. (Lepsius, Briefe über Ægypten, Æthiopien und der Halbinsel des Sinaï ; Berlin, 1852). I do not h

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not, moreover, to deal with such a problem. It doesn't matter about me. I only intend here to establish, more or less, the reader's thoughts. 2. ÿ I intend to designate the chain which, attaching itself to the northern Hindu-Kho, goes back to the north, cuts the Thian-Chan and inclines to the west towards Lake Kabankoul. (See Humboldt's MA, Central Asia, map.) 3. ÿ (1) It results from the most recent discoveries made in central and southern Africa that the populations of this part of the world have been strangely agitated and moved to unknown times. (See in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes and in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlændischen Gesellschaft, the works of Pott, Ewald and the Protestant missionary Krapf.) 4. ÿ (2) 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 Rajeh. It is, probably, a branch of the Thums of Nepal. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. II, p. 1044.) — In Assam, south of the district of Queda, live the Samang, savages with frizzy hair, resembling the Papuans of New Guinea (Ritter , cited work, vol. III, p. 1131.) — In Formosa, other negroes resembling the Haraforas. (Ritter, t. III, p. 879.) — Kæmpfer 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. 5. ÿ (3) It certainly had several varieties, since the previous note 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, vol. I, p. 390) that Asian Negroes do not have the woolly hair of Africans nor the protruding bellies of Pelagians. It is a very mixed race, an incontestable tertiary type and which is linked, in all respects, to African and Oceanian families. 6. ÿ (1) Deuteron., 2:9. " And encore dans le même livre : " 20. The land was reputed to be giants, and in it formerly dwelt giants whom the Ammonites call Zomzommim, 21. A great people, and many, and tall in length, like Enacim. » (Voir, plus bas, la note sur les Chorréens.) 7. ÿ (2) Les nègres affectionnent les généalogies qui beginnment, non pas au soleil, ni à la lune, mais aux bêtes. Les Sahos, sur la mer Rouge, non loin de Massowa, se disent descendus, à la treizième génération, d'un

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certain Aa'saor, ÿÿÿÿÿ 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 the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes. (t. V, p. 13.) 8. ÿ Prichard, Natural History of Man (trans. by M. Roulin), t . I, p. 259. 9. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I. 10. ÿ (2) A. de Humboldt, Central Asia, t. I. 11. ÿ (3) A. de Humboldt, Central Asia, t. I, p. 389. — “The research of recent years and the conviction that we have obtained of 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 to 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, rounded masses of gold, weighing 13, 16 and 24 pounds. It is quite probable that even larger 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. The treasures are abundant there and guarded by gnomes called Guhyakas (from guh, to hide), in whom we recognize the Finns, the miners with a squat waist. We will see them play the same role among the Scandinavians. (Lassen, Ind. Alterth., t. II, p. 62.)

12. ÿ (1) Following Ewald, the Semites recognize, as their common place of origin, the high country of the northeast, that is to say the place from which the Zoroastrians emerged. 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. Antiquity, t. I, p. 528 ; Ewald, History of the People of Israel, t. I, p. 304) 13. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 815. 14. ÿ (2) Id., ibid., t. I, p. 816. 15. ÿ (3) It seems that pastoral existence was first invented by the white species. What would indicate this is that several yellow families ignored the use of milk, and this in a state of advanced civilization. THE

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People in 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.) 16. ÿ (4) Methods that we used to draw, as it were, from nothing this information, which we could call prehistoric history, is not without analogy with the ingenious work of geologists, and, found by no less sagacity and of acuity of mind, they lead to results as precise, as incontestable, and such as the positive annals are far from always giving. 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. We were able to specify in the same way the way of life of primitive white populations. The examination of the languages that 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 a God ; the idea that the word king, that of leader, carried for them. The 374

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white 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.

17. ÿ (1) MA de Humboldt observes that the countries east of the Caspian are undergoing considerable depression (Central Asia, vol. I, p. 31). The passage is interesting; here it is in full: “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 highly precise measurements have corrected notions, undoubtedly also extends beyond the western shore of the Caspian; but going down from the Persian plateau by Tebriz and by Erivan (plateau of 600 to 700 toises of elevation), 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. » 18. ÿ (1) Genesis, ch. IX, v. 25: “Ait: Maledictus Chanaan, servus servorum 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 (Hebrew) and not ( 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

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in no way 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. 19. ÿ (1) Mr. Colonel Rawlinson thinks that Nimrod is a collective word, a 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.) 20. ÿ (1) Movers, das Phoenizische Alterthum, t. II, part 1, p. 271. 21. ÿ (1) Tels étaient, par exemple, les chérubins à tête de bœuf. Gesénius les définit ainsi : "(Hebrew) in the theology of the Hebrews they imagined a certain higher and heavenly nature whose form was composed of a human, a cow, a lion and an eagle (which three animals together with man are symbols of power and wisdom). ( Hebrew and Chaldean manual lexicon.) 22. ÿ (2) Gen., VI. 2, 4.: "When the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, they took wives for themselves from among all whom they had chosen... And there were giants on the earth in those days." For after the sons of God have come in to the daughters of men, and they have given birth to them, these are mighty men of renown for ever. » 23. ÿ Gen., IV, 23, 24: “Dixitque Lamech uxoribus suis Adæ et Sellæ: 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. » — The salt of this composition does not consist only in the harshness of the 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.

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CHAPTER II. The Semites.

While the Hamites spread far ahead throughout all of anterior Asia and along the Arab coasts as far as eastern Africa[1] , other white tribes, following in their footsteps, had won, west, the mountains of Armenia and the southern slopes of the Caucasus (1)[2] .

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 Chalde 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 forms (2)[3] ; she covered Asia Minor with her descendants. The Lycians, the Lydians, the Carians belong to him. Its colonies invaded Crete, from where they returned later, under the 377

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name of Philistines, 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 During this time, other Semites, the Joktanides (3)[4] , sent, as far as 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 of 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, held back by a natural repugnance, had perhaps resisted for some time the 378

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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 modestly 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, 379

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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 cities 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, Ascalon (1)[5] , and other cities as well, 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 (1)[6 ] . 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 contested (1) [7]

.

Chanaanite activity was too lively not to have drawn its birth from the

purest sources of Hamite emigration (2)[8] .

Everywhere in this society, in Babylon as in Tyre, there is a strong taste for gigantic monuments, the large number of available workers, their servitude and 380

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their abjection, made them so easy to raise. 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. It 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 Van (3)[9] still 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. Ordinary accompaniments of their largest 381

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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 the copy of which spans On their walls, historical volumes (1)[10 ] . 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 of jewelry and jewels, rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, 382

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canes of Indian rush or precious wood, finally, all the requirements, all the whims of a refinement pushed to the point of absolute softness: such were the habits of the Let us not forget that Assyrian half-breeds (2)[11 ] . 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 (1)[12] . 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 was developing 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. mysteries, reservations, exclusions and indecipherable myths, which he 383

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had become impossible for the truth, thus systematically denied to the greatest number, so as 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 log of wood or a 384

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ugly piece of stone, so as 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 soiled everything with 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 found itself much more degrading. All the vices met in the Assyrian countries. Alongside the luxurious 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, 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 disemboweled on the altars. They were proud to see their babies 385

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groaning and struggling 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, had appeared, 2,000 years before Jesus Christ (1)[13] , in the middle At of Hamite society and had even, in lower Chaldea (2)[14] , subjected to a dynasty resulting from their blood, the new principles whites thrown in the middle of 386

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masses had to regenerate and indeed did regenerate 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 exte 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.

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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 modify this state of affairs, the Chaldean conquerors initiated a series of negotiations and wars, most often successful, which made famous the genius of their race, under the characteristic name and duplicated by history of the Semiramis queens (1) [ 15] . 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. Gifted 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 388

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no less great results than conquest, for the unity of Asian civilization and the future of the Phoenician States (2)[16] . 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 Canaan (1)[17] . 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 (2 ) [18] . 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 of

another bed, wife of Abram (3)[19] , and Lot, his grandson, whose father 389

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Aran, had died a few years ago (4)[20] . 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 state (1)[21] . 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 being able to leave Mesopotamia (2)[22] . 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 well as that of herds (3)[23] . Which still had some importance, 390

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once he left the Assyrian countries and entered the almost deserted land of Canaan, the Semitic shepherd 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, He 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 king (1)[24 ] . This usually happens to those who, conveniently abandoning a barren land, bring courage, energy and the resolution to expand into a new country. 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 it like him (2)[25] . 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 391

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the crimes of the two cities where God had proven to him that there were He did not want his

not ten honest people (3)[26] .

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 (4)[27] , therefore his greatniece. Formerly he had been informed of the birth of this child (5)[28] . 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

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are misguided, they fail and disappear like so many Semitic groups whose disasters the Bible allows us to glimpse in flashes. 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 of which the Italian patricians of

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The Middle Ages were later used to discredit the soldier's profession (1)[29] . 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 fleets (2)[30 ] . Their merits were, however, less great than the irritation of those who paid them (3)[31] . 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 (1)[32 ] . The rest of the people worked. He enjoyed the products of his industry and commerce. When politics called for some boost of vigor, colonization, emigration, the kings and aristocratic councils, after having removed the scum of their populations by a forced press, gave it as guards 394

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and for supporting 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 Aryan-Zoroastrian 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.

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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 debris with the dialects of the blacks, a system which is known to us under the very questionable name of Semitic. Current philology divides the Semitic languages into four main groups (1)[33] : the first contains Phoenician, Punic and Libyan, of which the Berber dialects are derivatives (2)[34] ; the second contains Hebrew and its variations (3)[35] ; 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 Indo languages. -Germanic, 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 met around 396

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from them, in the languages they came to replace, powerful antipathies 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 (1)[36] .

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 able to benefit from the ease of inflection nor the multiplicity of nuances which are offered to it by grammatical theory (2)

[37]

.

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 from which it has made its imperfect borrowings (3)[38 ] .

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 conjugations (1)[39] . On the other hand, we no longer find these roots whose visible relationship with Indo397

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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 (2) [40] .

For Negro idioms, no trace, no possible suspicion of any alliance

with the languages of India and Europe; 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 stock (1)[41 ] . 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 set 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 to the west of Lake Tzana, Ilmorma, in use among several Galla tribes, Afar and its two dialects; the saho (2) [42] , the ssomal, the sechuana and the wanika (3)[43] .

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, are expanding 398

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now, for us, 5° further north, up to beyond Monbaz (4) [44] . 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 (1) [45] . 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 roots (2)[46] . 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 of the 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 399

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to exist at the bottom of the ethnic elements which compose it, that is to say in the effects of a white origin absorbed within an infinitely strong 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 reign (1) [47] . 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 a hypothesis.

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 reaching the black ideal, as the essence of

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those who possess it are 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 to 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, were pointing to 401

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barely 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 Arabia (1) [48] . 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,

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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 numerous Semites (1)[49] . 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 there under the names of Péleg, Réhou, Saroudj, Nachor and others ( 2) [50] . revered founder of several peoples, the most famous of which were the children of Jacob, then the Western Arabs, who, under the name of The son of Thare himself became the Ishmaelites, sharing with

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the Hebrew Joktanides and the Kuschite 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 Chamo-Semitic 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.

1. ÿ It is probable that very anciently, Hamite mixtures reached the blood of the Kaffir populations, towards the Monbaz meridian. 2. ÿ (1) Movers, the Phœniz. Antiquity, t. I, 2e game, p. 461 ; Ewald, Ges. d. Volkes Israel, t. 1, p. 332 3. ÿ (2) Ewald, work cited, t. I, p. 327 et passim. 4. ÿ (3) Id., ibid., t. I, p. 337. 5. ÿ (1) I use here these names of famous cities without claiming to assert 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. XVXVI.) — Likewise the capital of Sennacherib was at Kar-

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Dunyas, and not in Babylon (quoted work, p. XXXII), which is quite remarkable at this relatively low time, since Sennacherib reigned in 716 BC. BC only. However, Babylon had been built a long time ago; Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlinson, relying on the 13th verse of the 23rd chap. 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 Niebu Müller, of the Aufrechts. 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 critic must have more than noted its 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. 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 Turkish-Persian 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 dare hardly 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 with which such a competent judge

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give me 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. 6. ÿ (1) Movers, das Phœniz. Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 265; Ewald, Geschichte d. V. Israel, t. I, p. 367. 7. ÿ (1) Movers, t. II, Part 1, p. 302. 8. ÿ (2) Id. ibid., p. 31. — The opinion of this author is victoriously refuted by Ewald, Taber, Michaelis, etc. 9. ÿ (3) See the discoveries of Doctor Schultz. 10. ÿ (1) Botta, Monuments of Nineveh. 11. ÿ (2) Everything that concerned elegance and delicate luxury, what was caprice, fashion objects and, in a word, what responded to what today's commercial language calls article Paris, 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. 12. ÿ (1) 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 widespread throughout Africa and on the western coast as well. than to the east. To explain this particularity, Degrandpré, surprised to see Negroes tattooed, he says, in color, in the manner of Indians, points out that the natives quite often cross the entire width of their continent parallel to the equator, and that, In this way, we can explain that the inhabitants of Guinea practice what the people of Congo were able to learn from the navigators of India. (See Pott, Verwandtschaftliches Verhæltniss der Sprachen vom Kaffer und Kongo-Stamme untereinander in 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 tattooing themselves with 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,

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I conclude that tattooing is a habit specific to these two varieties and that they have introduced it to the white races most closely mixed with them. Thus, just as the Chamo-Semites and the Hindus, allied with the blacks, painted themselves, so 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. 13. ÿ (1) I give here the date indicated by Movers (Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, 1st, 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 the fourth dynasty of Lassen (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. 14. ÿ (2) The cuneiform inscriptions and Genesis agree in reporting the primitive establishment of a Semitic state in lower Chaldea, or in the neighboring country, Susiana. For a long time, 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 the assertion of Mr. Rawlinson, wh

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conquerors of the dynasty which I persist in considering as the fourth, a monarch whose name seems to read Amak-bar-bethkira, 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.) 15. ÿ (1) The Assyrians occupied Phenicia three times: the first time, 2,000 years BC; the second, around the middle of the thirteenth century; the third, in 750. (Movers, Das Phœn. Alterth., t. II, 1st part, p. 259.) 16. ÿ (2) 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, vol. II, 1st part, p. 261.) 17. ÿ (1) Gen., XI, 10: "Shem... begot Arphaxad... 12. Arphaxad... begot... Sale... 14. Sale begot Hebr... 16. Hebr begot Phaleg... 18. Phaleg... begot Reu... 20. Reu begot Sarug... 22. Sarug... begot... Nahor ... 24. Nahor... begat Thare. » 18. ÿ (2) Gen. 24, 6: "Take care that you never bring my son back there." " 19. ÿ (3) Gen., XX, 12 : " But another is truly my sister, the daughter of my father, and not the daughter of my mother, and I married her. 20. ÿ (4) Gen., 11, 31: "So Thare took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Aran, the son of his son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram, his son, and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Chanaan..." - 28: "And Aran died before Thare, his father, in the land of his birth in Ur of the Chaldeans. » 21. ÿ (1) Gen., 46, 3...: "They answered: We are shepherds of your servants' sheep, and we, and our fathers. » 22. ÿ (2) Gen. 11:32: "And the days of Thare were two hundred and five years, and he died in Haran." " 23. ÿ (3)

Gen., 12, 5: "He took... all the substance that they had possessed, and the souls that they had made in Haran. " 24. ÿ (1) Gen. 23, 6: "Hear us, Lord, you are the prince of God among us. " 25. ÿ (2) Gen., XIV, 13 : " Abram told the Hebrews who lived in the valley of Mambre the Amorites, the brother of Eschol and the brother of Aner; for these had made a covenant with Abram. " - XXI, 27... "And they both struck a covenant (with Abimelech). " 26. ÿ (3) Gen., 18, 32: "And he (God) said: I will not destroy because of ten. " 27. ÿ (4) Gen., XIV, 24...: "I am the daughter of Bathuel, the son of Nahor, whom she not Melcha. »

28. ÿ (5) Gen., 22, 20 : Melcha also bore children to her brother Nahor. »

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29. ÿ (1) Ewald, Gesch. d. V. Israel, I, 294. The Carthaginians did not show themselves more military than the Tyrians. They employed paid workers. 30. ÿ (2) 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 the leader of the army of Abimelech (Hebrew) Gen., XXI, 22), was probably a condottiere of this species. Later, David's guard was also made up of Philistines. All this proves how unmilitary the general morals were. 31. ÿ (3) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 294. 32. ÿ Isaiah. 33. ÿ (1) Gesenius, Geschichte der hebraeischen Sprache und Schrift, p. 4. 34. ÿ (2) The Berber and Amazigh nations, of Semitic origin, extend far to the south, into 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, vol. II, 2nd part, p. 363 et pass.) 35. ÿ (3) Gesenius, Hebraeische Grammatik, 16th edition, 1851, p. 12. There is little evidence of the existence of Hebrew dialects. The Ephraimites gave the Schin the pronunciation of Sin or Samech. It also appears, according to Nehemiah, that there was a particular language in Ashdod. 36. ÿ (1) Gesenius defines them thus: 1° Among the consonants, many gutturals; 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. (Hebraeische Grammatik, vol. I, p. 3.) 37. ÿ (2) Sylvestre de Sacy, Arabic Grammar, 2nd edition, vol. 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. 38. ÿ (3) Mr. Prisse d'Avennes recently made a very happy application of this principle, in his examination of the Persian grammar of M.

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Chodzko. Voir Revue orientale. 39. ÿ (1) Pott, Relationship between the languages of the Kaffir and Congo tribes, p. 11, p. 25. «For the sake of a more general characterization of current idioms, I also mention here their abundance of what Semitic grammar understands by conjugations ; I mean the multitude of special verbal forms which give and represent peculiar conceptual shades and secondary designations of the basic idea contained in each verb. However, these conjugations usually arise from additions at the back of the root. » Et page 138: « There are no root verbs that are not capable of similar modifications ; and by means of certain particles or adjuncts, each of these verbs, and all derived from them, indicates whether the action which they express is rare or frequent; whether there is difficulty, ease, excess or other differences. »

40. ÿ 2) Which is not the opinion of Mr. Rawlinson. See Journal of the RA Society, t. XIX part. 1, p. XXIII, the note on the pronoun kaga of the BiSoutoun inscription and the connection made by the learned colonel with the Pushtu word haga and the Latin hic. — See also, for the IndoGermanic 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. 41. ÿ (1) Ewald, Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Ueber die Saho-Language in Ethiopia, t. V, p. 410. 42. ÿ (2) The Sahos live not far from Mossawa, or better Massowa ÿÿÿÿ on the Red Sea. Until d'Abbadie, they had always been confused sometimes with the Gallas, sometimes with the Danakils. (Ewald, Ueber die SahoSprache, t. v, p. 412.) 43. ÿ (3) Ewald, loc. cit., p. 422, believes that Saho separated from other Semitic languages in immeasurable antiquity. He uses this

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separate word , because it 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 primitive history Semitic peoples and idioms! » Mr. Ewald is not mistaken, it is quite a revelation. 44. ÿ (4) Pott, open. cited, t. II, p. 8. 45. ÿ (1) Pott, op. cited, location. cit. 46. ÿ (2) This opinion, based on the work of missionaries and travelers, and in particular those of d'Abbadie and Krapf, finds vigorous proponents 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: Von der afrikanischen Ostküste (same collection, vol. III, p. 311), and Mr. Pott, whose authority is so great on such a subject. Ritter and Carus share the same opinion (Erdkunde; Ueber ungleiche Befæhigung der Menschheitsstæmme, p. 34.) 47. ÿ (1) At that time, Aramaic was already distinct from the language of Chanaan. (Gen., XXXI, 47): “Quem (tumulum) vocavit Laban Tumulum testis, et Jacob, Acervum testimonii, uterque juxta proprietatem lingum suit. » Aramaic words are (Aramaic) Hebrew words (Hebrew). 48. ÿ (1) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 337. — The arrival of the Joktanides and the founding of their principal states in southern Arabia predate the time of Abraham. 49. ÿ (1) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 63-70. — Between Abraham and Moses, Palestine had been the scene of considerable population movements. Moreover, numerous Abrahamid nations, non-Israelite, had established themselves there, such as the children of Cetura, the sons of Ishmael, those of 'Esau, those of Lot, etc. 50. ÿ (2) Ewald, G. d. V. Israel, t. I, p. 338.

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CHAPTER III. The maritime Canaanites.

At the time of Abraham, the Hamite civilization was in all the splendor of its improvement and its vices[1] of its most remarkable And .

territories was Palestine[2] 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 this fortunate circumstance, that no competitor still rivaled them for the immense profits from their fabric manufactures, their dyeing works, their navigation and their transit ( 1 )[3] .

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 (2)[4] . 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. 412

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They received and respected orders coming from the regions of the Euphrates (3)[5] . 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 bows of their long black ships came to touch the still so young beach of the Greek coasts or the shores of Italy, Africa, Spain, the crew there were only quite meager. profits. 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

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exchange of precious metals. 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.

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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 East (1)[6] . However, 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 415

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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 buy 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 (1)[7 ] . The white Hamites, poorly restrained by the conscientious delicacies of modern times, had probably had no difficulty in resolving to worship. But when the blood mingled, and the race 416

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pure, mulattoes succeeded everywhere, 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 history (1)[8] a very complete account of this double state of affairs. They had been ruled by Melkart and Baal, and later by the pontiffs of these superhuman beings (2)[9] .

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 indigenous (3)[10] . 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 stood 417

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their homes. 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 struggle, priestly, monarchical and absolute, the government of the Phoenician cities became aristocratic, republican and absolute, thus retaining only the last of the triad of forces which 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 never had more than mediocre

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developed power, 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 419

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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 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 houses (1)[11] . 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 420

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we will see it, with Semitic blood, penetrate the constitutions of almost all the peoples of antiquity, and even reach modern times, where it only retreats, provisionally, 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 Hamite 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 Negro in woolly hair. The Chaldean of the north, that of the mountains of Armenia (1)[12] , the Hebrew, finally, in the alloys undergone by his race, had had more participation in the white essence. This other, who came down from the regi 421

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neighboring the Caucasus, could already, directly or indirectly, bring into its 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 a population 422

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constantly increased had their unfortunate setbacks: they began by altering the political constitution in order 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 that of 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 hear the royal slaves, the eunuchs 423

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palaces, the favorites or those who tended to become so. 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, 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 auxiliaries were born inside the palaces which it strove to destroy. 424

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break down doors. 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 half-black 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, in this eternal exile, to form in their turn the patricians of the new colonies, and we have not heard that, despite their

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liberalism, they have never disobeyed this last order of the motherland.

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 Carthage (1)[13] ; 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 Canaan (2) [ 14 ]

.

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 expelled the nobles, who had gone to found a new city in Aradus, where trade and prosperity had taken refuge, to the detriment of the old city, which remained completely ruined (3)[15] . Tire soon suffered a similar fate.

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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 trading, 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 childhood (1)[16] .

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 through the centuries, resumed, in 427

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face of the subjects, all the Hamitic hardness 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 race 428

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dominatrix remained the same, and so much the same, that from now on it was she who colonized. At the end of the 8th century, it had establishments in Sardinia: it itself was not yet a hundred years old. Fifty years later, it captured the Balearic Islands. In the 6th century, she had Libyan settlers reoccupy all the formerly Phoenician cities in the West, which were too sparsely populated for her liking (1)[17] . 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 small number 429

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of years which 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 (1) [18] . 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. 430

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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 first of all simple temporary camps, summarily fortified to defend the ships against the depredations of the natives. When the place gained importance through the nature of 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 limited permanent population (1) [19] .

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 431

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protection, they adhered with fervor to the powerful homeland from which they came and which preserved their existence. Another very strong reason for this dedication 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 closing the doors of the world, and soon seeing 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 how its populations were always called Chanani (1) [20] , although the soil of Palestine never gave them

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belonged (2)[21] .

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 had seized Phenicia and Egypt, they claimed to consider Carthage as conquered ipso facto and legitimately united to the fate of its ancient 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, first 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, for reasons similar to those which, in the 17th and 18th centuries, led several European nations, wishing to maintain their relations with Japan and China, to undergo rather harsh humiliations. 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.

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Moreover, 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 (1)[22] . 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 manner, only tolerable,

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the peoples subject to his 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 overabundance of irreconcilable types, resulting from the various proportions between the mixtures, gave birth to chronic disorder, and brought social paralysis and this state

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of gregarious abasement where each day the power of the Melanian essence dominated more and more. 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 Cham and of Sem. 1. ÿ Ewald, G. d. V. Israel, t. I, p. 252. 2. ÿ Same work, p. 278. 3. ÿ (1) I do not mention the ports of Gaza and Ascalon, because they were only founded after the emigration from Crete, determined by the conquests of Hellene Minos, 1548 BC .-C. Moreover, the Assyrians, faithful to their system of freeing themselves from the Phoenician monopoly, very quickly seized these two cities and gave them a lot of power. (Ewald, cited work, vol. I, p. 294 and 367; Geschichte der hebraeischen Sprache, p. 14.) 4. ÿ (2) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum, vol. II-I, p. 298 and 378. Assyrian policy 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. 5. ÿ (3) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. III, p. 259 and 271, et passim. 6. ÿ (1) The Mahabharata does not know the names of Babylon or 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, vol. I, p. 858 et passim.) I will speak elsewhere of the Chinese porcelain vases found in Egyptian tombs of the oldest dynasties. 7. ÿ (1) The Negroes even give this title to the Mahalaselys, a Kaffir tribe, who seem to deserve this honor by their possession of cloth clothing and houses equipped with stairs. (Prichard, Natural History of Man, t. II, p. 21.) 8. ÿ (1) The Hamite annals appear to have been preserved with great care by those concerned. M. d’Ewald considers the XIVth chapter of the

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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, moreover, have served as a basis for the cosmogonic and genealogical part of Genesis, written by a Levite in time of Solomon. (Operation cited, p. 87 et passim.) 9. ÿ (2) We will see, when it comes to the Arian nations, all the reasons that exist for assimilating 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. 10. ÿ (3) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterth., t. II-I, p. 15. — This is what leads Mr. Movers to combat the testimony of Herodotus, and to maintain that the Phoenicians were not emigrants from Tylos. 11. ÿ (1) Movers, Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II-I. 12. ÿ (1) The man who came from the country of Arpaxad (Gen., X-22). — All the peoples who came out of Shem, in the first generation, are named in the order of their geographical position, beginning with 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.) 13. ÿ (1) Movers, the Phoenician Antiquity, t. II, 1st part, p. 352 et passim. 14. ÿ (2) Movers, t. II, Part 1, p. 369. 15. ÿ (3) Movers, loc. cit. 16. ÿ 1) Movers, t. II, Part 1, p. 367 et passim. 17. ÿ (1) Movers, t. II, part 2, p. 629. 18. ÿ (1) Movers, t. II, Part 1, p. 366. 19. ÿ (1) Strabo, book III — The city of this period, with a population that the great geographer could only compare to that of Rome, still only occupied the island. It had, however, been enlarged by Balbus. 20. ÿ (1) The Phoenicians gave their country the name of Chna or 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, vol. II, 1st part, p. 65. ) — Besides the Phoenicians, the race of Chanaan has many branches. Here is the enumeration given in Genesis, Amathæum... »

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21. ÿ (2) Still in the time of Saint Augustine, the common people of Roman Carthage gave themselves the name of Chanani. (Gesenius, Hebræische Grammatik, p. 16.) 22. ÿ (1) Nothing is more ridiculous than the philanthropic meaning attributed by some moderns to the myth of the Tyrian Hercules. The Semitic hero and his companions made mistakes against themselves and did not right those of others.

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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 everythin disputes.

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. 439

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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 Indo-Germanic occupies a greater place there (1)[1] . 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 IndoGermanic, would nevertheless bring me back towards a greater abundance of elements borrowed from Sem. I avoid it, I push ever further into the north-east, and the first Hindu areas immediately offer me the best known type of the languages of the white species, by presenting me with Sanskrit (2)[2 ] . 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 440

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white elements in a better state of purity and with 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 Semitic-Chaldean 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, either, with Movers, as Semitic-Chaldeans (1)[3], or with Ewald, as peoples Arians or Indo-Germans, depending on which side we prefer to consider the question (2)[4] .

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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 Not that I am second king of their dynasty, Zaratuschtra (3)[5] . tempted to confuse this monarch with the religious legislator: the former lived in a much older era; 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 was never very numerous, we will have the opportunity to demonstrate this later, and if, in the 8th century BC, it regained an authority over the Assyrian States lost since the year 2234 BC era, is that then it was powerfully helped by the final bastardization of the Chamo-Semitic races, by the complete absence 442

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of 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, among others Persian tribes. So that the Medes formed a sort of vanguard of the Ariane family. 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 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 to the side of 443

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east, towards the regions of India, towards the countries of the Punjab, where close relations of kinship, important memories, ancient habits, similarity of language, and even religious hatreds and the spirit of controversy , which is the natural continuation, carried forward 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.

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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 conte 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 extensions (1)[6] . 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 Rawlinson (2)[7], Mabudj rose on the Euphrates, Damascus and Gadara further west (3)[8] . The Semitic civilizers crossed the Halys, and organized on the coast of the Troad, in the Lydian countries, sovereignties which, later independent, took glory forever for having owed their birth to them (4)[9 ] .

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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 have utterly humbled themselves beneath the layers successive 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 446

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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 Ethiopians[10] .

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 Minor[11] 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 consumption (1)[12] .

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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 which 448

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was clean. 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 Solomon (1) [13] , were completely Tyrian, and therefore Ninevite. 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 kinship (2)[14] .

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 tribes (1)[15] . Then the 449

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patriarchs had been the first to violate the law. The Mosaic genealogies teach us that Sarah was her husband's half-sister, and therefore of pure blood (2)[16] . 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 Zelpha (3) [17]. The example given was followed by its offspring (4)[18] . In the following eras, we find other ethnic alliances, and, when we arrive at the monarchical era, it is impossible to enumerate them, so much have they become communities.

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 every pore 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 language (1)[19] . 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 apostasy (2)[20] . Hebrews and Gentiles were cut, in truth, on one and the same model. Finally, I 450

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gives this, all at once, as a proof and as a consequence: neither in the time of Joshua, nor under David or Solomon, nor when the Maccabees reigned, the Jews managed to exercise over the peoples of their surroundings, 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 his turn, when he wanted to build his temple, bringing architects, sculptors and embroiderers from Tyre, did not get the last word on the talents of his 451

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era. 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 even China, according to Isaiah (1)[21] , 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 type (2)[22] .

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 452

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remains 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 (1)[23] , and, a natural consequence in those times, he took, among the number of his wives, one of their wives, Oolibama, daughter of Ana, daughter of Sebeon, so that the sons he had, Jehus, Jhelon and Korah, found themselves very directly linked by their mother to the black race.

The Septuagint call these peoples the Choreans; the Vulgate less aptly names them Horreans, and they are mentioned in several places in the Scriptures (2)[24] . lived among the rocks and huddled in

They

caves. Their very name means troglodytes (3)[25]. 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. Excessively miserable, travelers feared them for their ferocity. But any description pales in comparison to the verses of Job, where M. d'Ewald (4)[26] recognizes their portrait. Here is the passage: “They mock me,

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the very ones whose fathers I would not have deigned to put with the dogs of my flock... “Out of scarcity and hunger, they stood apart, fleeing in arid, dark, desolate and deserted places. “They cut wild herbs near the shrubs and the roots of junipers for warmth. “They were driven out from among other men, and they shouted at them like a thief. “They lived in the hollows of the torrents, in the holes 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

lowered 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 454

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beings, like that of the Kaffirs on the Hottentots and of 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 we will say 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

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here is moreover a new principle which arises, and of which the succession of centuries will bring us endless demonstrations: never could these glorious ancestors be 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, Edomites[27] they 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 going down to the periods where they must find their place, there remain many facts for me to examine, among which those relating to Egypt

immediately demand attention.

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1. ÿ (1) A scholar of a reputation as great as it is deserved, M. de Saulcy, has put forward a new theory on the subject of the Persian, in which he discovers elements belonging to the Turkish 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, Analytical Research on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of the Median System, Paris, 1850.) 2. ÿ (2) Klaproth, Asia polyglotta, p, 65; see also, on the subject of medicine, Rœdiger and Pott, Kurdische Studien, in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, t. III, p. 12-13. 3. ÿ (1) Movers, Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 420. 4. ÿ (2) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 334. 5. ÿ (3) Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 753. 6. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 858 et al. — Movers, Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 272 et al. 7. ÿ (2) Movers, Das Phœnizische Alterthum, vol. II, Part 1, p. 265. 8. ÿ (3) Damascus was possessed, some time after Abraham, by an emigration of 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. 9. ÿ (4) The Sandonids of Lydia boasted of an Assyrian origin. (Ewald, History of the People of Israel, t. I, p. 329.) 10. ÿ Movers, t.reII,part, 1 p. 277. The Ethiopians, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Aithiôpes), Greeks, are the children of Kush. They are Arabs ÿÿÿ. This word ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Aithiôpes) indicates the black color of the faces, like that ÿ of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Phoinikes) indicates the coppery, reddish complexion of the Canaanites. re ÿ Movers, t. II, 1 part, p. 411. This natural alliance between the 11. 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 Cypriots

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The Greeks held for the Assyrians, the Semites for Tyre. (Movers, t. II, 1st part, 387.) 12. ÿ Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 411. 13. ÿ (1) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 87. 14. ÿ (2) Moreover, the family of Tharé's son itself was not only made up of 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 foreigners (Gen., XVII, 27): “Et omnes viri domus illius, tam vernaculi, quam emptitii et 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…” (12): “Omne masculinum in generationibus vestris; tam vernaculus quam emptitius circumcidetur..."

And (34, 15): "But in this we will be able to confederate, if you choose to be like us and let all the male sex be circumcised among you." "(13): "Then we will give each other your daughters and ours: and we will dwell with you, and we will be one people. » D'après un tel système, il était impossible que la purity des races se maintînt, quels que fassent les efforts que l'on pouvait faire d'ailleurs dans ce but. 15. ÿ (1) Gen., XV, 19; Sam., 1, 15, 6; Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 298 et passim. 16. ÿ (2)Gen., XX, 12: “Alias autem et vere soror mea est, filia patris mei; et non filia matris meæ et duxi eam in uxorem. 17. ÿ (3) Gen., XXIX, 3-13. 18. ÿ (4) I will only cite, of all the passages which establish it, that which relates to the descendants of Joseph. He was Israel's favorite son, the pure man par excellence; he had, however, married an Egyptian woman. - Gen. 46, 20: "And there were born to Joseph sons in the land of Egypt, whom Aseneth, the daughter of Putiphar, priest of Heliopoleos, bore to him: Manasses and Ephraim." » 19. ÿ (1) Isaiah calls Hebrew, the language of Canaan (XXXIV, 11, 13). 20. ÿ (2) Ewald, t. I, p. 71. 21. ÿ (1) Isaiah, XLIX, 12. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 857. 22. ÿ (2) Movers, Das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 302. 23. ÿ (1) Gen. XXXVI, 8: “Habitavitque Esau in monte Seir...” 24. ÿ (2) Sometimes the Vulgate says Horræi (Gen., XXXVI, 20, 21 and 29), and sometimes Horrhæi (Deuteron., II, 12). 25. ÿ 3) -- (Hebrew) hole, cave.

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26. ÿ (4) 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. 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 ---- (Hebrew) whose singular is --- (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 Zomzommim ---- (Hebrew). Le texte décrit ainsi leur pays et eux-mêmes. (Deutér., 2, 20): "The land of the giants was considered, and once upon a time there dwelt in it giants, whom the Animonites call Zomzommim, 21. A great and numerous people, and tall in stature, like the Enacim, whom the Lord destroyed from their face..." Gesenius rapporte la racine de ce nom de peuple au quadrilatère ususité : (Hebrew) (murmured, growled). Enfin les Chorréens, les Emim, les Zomzommim, ces hommes de terreur et de bruit, sont toujours comparés aux Enacim, les hommes aux longs cous, les géants par excellence. Ces derniers, avant l'arrivée des Israélites, habitient les environs d'Hébron. En partie exterminés, ce qui en survécut se réfugia dans les villes des Philistins, où on en rencontrait encore à une époque assez basse. Il n'est pas douteux que le célèbre champion qui combattit contre le berger David, Goliath (dont le nom signifie l'exilé, le refugeié), belonged to this proscribed family. 27. ÿ Deuteronomy, 2, 12 "But the Horrei dwelt in Seir first, whom the sons of Esau had driven out and destroyed, as Israel did in the land of his possession, which the Lord had given him." »

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CHAPTER V. The Egyptians, the Ethiopians.

Until now there has only been talk 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 terms of 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 type 460

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blanc (1)[1] . The head of the statue known in the British Museum as Young Memnon ( 2)[2] has often been cited with good reason, for the beauty and nobility of its features. 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 much (3)[3] . 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 hair (1)[4] . 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 found a definite 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

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and the features of white people. 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 ( 2)[5] . 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 affirming 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 (1)[6] . 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

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only a theory moves it. There is no choice here between the brilliant opinions of Mr. Bunsen and the more modest attitude 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 the Ægyptens Stelle in der Welt Geschichte, elevates the assertions of the learned Prussian diplomat to the height of an 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 18th dynasty, and that of the Diospolite of the 19th century, Rhamses III, the Mi-A-Moun of monuments, that is to say between the year 1740 and the year 1355 BC (2)[7] . 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

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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 several (1)[8] .

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 that we 464

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named 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 (1) [9 ] .

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 clue (2)[10] . However, it is not impossible for him

find props. 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 bordering the gulf through which immigration could have taken place, commercial ports existed on these shores, among others, Philoteras (1)[11], all connected to the fertile center where movement mainly took place. the populations, by means of stations established in the desert, Wadi-Djasous, for example, of which we know that the 465

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wells 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 18th 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. This last circumstance is sufficient, in itself, to give the right to attribute these monuments and their contents to a very ancient times (2)[12] . 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 466

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relations 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 (1)[13] .

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. On this point, I cited the authority of Juba, which recognizes the inhabitants of the Nile, from Syene to Meroe, as having Arab provenance (2)[14] . 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, after having abolished at the time of

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the old empire, under the first successors of Menes (3) [15] , 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 468

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adoration to what is most humble in both the plant kingdom and animal nature. Let us not speak here of the cobra di capello, whose symbolic cult, common to the populations of India and Egypt, was perhaps only an import from the Let's also leave out crocodiles mother country (1)[16] . 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 apotheoses (1) [17] . But, deep down in Egyptian sympathy for the bovine race, there is something 469

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something foreign to pure and simple fetishism. We must unscrupulously link it to the ancient pastoral habits of the white race, and, as with 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 detritus of the black tribes (1)[18] .

The Arabs devoted themselves entirely to the notions of the Hamites, and we do not find a trace, among them, of those in question. The latter therefore came directly from India, without 470

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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 such a stamp of originality that it gives every possible temptation to consider it as being 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 471

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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 black women, witness Amenoph I. 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 Finally, here are two final proofs, and these are certainly the strongest. The Egyptian annals give the date of the institution of castes and honor one of their first kings, the 472

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third of the 3rd dynasty, 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 (1) In [19] . 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, and 473

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although the number of castes does not correspond, the hierarchy is quite similar in the two territories (1) [20] .

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 country (2) [21]

. 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 route, such as the region of the Kuschite Arabs, the eastern coast of Africa and, perhaps, some of the large islands of the Ocean (3)[22] .

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 (4) [23] . 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 of 474

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Kousch (1)[24] , both in Upper Egypt and part of Middle Egypt as well as in 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 th 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. (2)[25] . All that is useful to note here is that there, 475

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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 (1) It is the Negro [26] . 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 ministers of the temples and learn in the sciences of the sanctuary (2) [ 27] . 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

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in 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 audacious 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 (1)[28] .

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. Barely were the greatest in the state noble enough to serve him 477

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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 vis-à-vis the 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 the countries where the black element was or is subject to the power of the whites, the authority borrows a constant character of atrocity, on the one hand, from the necessity of being obeyed by unintelligent beings, and, on the other hand, to the very idea that these beings have of the unlimited rights of power to t 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, in the country of their 478

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conquest, a rather 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. Supposing that they acquitted themselves with distinction, they seem to have put no less energy into oppressing their inferiors: I just indicated this earlier, and it is not wrong to do so. come back 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. Such is the testimony given to the state of the lower classes in Egypt by the writers of Greek antiquity (1)[29] . 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

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so we 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 pleasur 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 every century 480

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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 kings than those whose majesty we still admire on the sculptures of Beni-Hassan (1 ) [31] . 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 to exist 481

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that the sole influence of the Hindu type to which she owed her life, she would not have had the longevity that can be attributed to her, and long before Rhamses III, who ended the era of greatest splendor, long before the 13th century before AD, 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 rigorously on the nationality of the Hyksos, we cannot doubt that they belonged to a race allied to the white species (1)[32] . 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, caused the captives of Canaan, Assyria and Arabia to flock to the interior nomes, and their blood, although itself mixed, tempered somewhat the savagery of black blood, which the lower classes, and especially the neighborhood and intimate contact with the Abyssinian and Nubian tribes, continually poured 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 hordes 482

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half whites spread over the western coast of Africa, and the population which formed there later brought to the State of the successors of Menes a mixed race, in which Hindu blood did not exist, and which drew all its merit of the multiplied 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 (1)[33] , appeared at the head of the government of a nome, their triumph was short: it was only an elevation profitable to certain chiefs, an elevation resulting of the fortuitous games of politics, and which never inspired in those it glorified the temptation to use their omnipotence to establish this equality of rights sought by the groups, in fact approximately equal, who quarreled in the streets and squares of the towns of Phoenicia. This is how the causes of Egyptian stability become clear.

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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 19th dynasty, that is to say Menephthah (1480 BC), only at distant intervals presents monuments worthy of rivaling in the beauty of the execution, and never more in the grandiose, with those of previous ages (2)[34] , 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 home 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-elMandeb 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 484

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extensive trade in which they took part with India, a trade which seems to have determined on their coast the foundation of a Sanskrit city (1) [35] , it is quite probable that their own ideas must have received a certain Ariane tint, proportionate to the ethnic mixture that could have taken place between these merchants and 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 cities (1)[36] .

Following this decreasing proportion, the emigrants who crossed the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb and came to settle in Ethiopia, brought there only a fragmentary civilization, and the black races of Nubia and Abyssinia could not have 485

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be very seriously or for a long time affected, either in their physical type or in their moral value, if the neighborhood of Egypt had not one day made up, more largely than usual, for the poverty of ordinary gifts coming from 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 socalled 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 do not let them 486

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not easily surprising. 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 which I mention only to establish that they are not worth discussing (1)[37] . 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 17th century, and of which Scaliger was the author, only dates back to the time of Justinian the invasion of the Joktanides in this African country. Job Ludolf refutes it very well and rightly prefers the sentiment of Conringius. Without citing all his reasons, I will borrow two words from him: one, from an argument which at least fixes the mind on the very ancient antiquity of the Himyarite emigration (1)[38], and the other, from 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 the Abyssinian civilization. First, the first point: Ludolf very skillfully turns Scaliger's reasonings on the subject of the silence of Greek historians on the Himyarite emigration into 487

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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 possible. -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 group (2)[39] . 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 in the tongue

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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 Egyptian ( 1 ) [40] . Thus, without denying that the Himyarites brought to the language of Ethiopia marks of their white origin, we must nevertheless note that such remains could also have come from Egyptian importation and, in any case, took advantage of it 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 the 18th and 19th dynasties (from 1575 to 1180 BC), the Abyssinians were subject to the Pharaohs and paid tribute (2)[41] .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 (3)[42] . A leopard skin attached to the 489

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shoulders made 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 irregu 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 26th of Manetho, having dissatisfied the national army with his taste for Ionian-Greek and Carian-Semitic mercenaries, a large military emigration took place towards Abyssinia, and 240,000 soldiers, abandoning women and children, went into the south never to return (1)[43] . This is where it dates from 490

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the brilliant era of Abyssinia and we can now speak of monuments in this region, where one would look in vain for previous ones which were truly national (2)[44] . 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 race (1)[45 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 491

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was then completely extinguished. 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 owed to the proximity of the Arab tribes with whom some invasions, carried out under the emperor Justin (1)[46] , had strengthened their ancient ties, the adoption of certain Jewish ideas which were much noticed later, and which were agreed quite naturally with the Semitic portion of their blood (2)[47] .

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 peoples. 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 this is how Catholicism,

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so admirable in its diversity, so universal in its powers, so complete in its deductions, was no less armed to open the hearts of these companions of the gazelle, the hippopotamus and the tiger, that it was no longer late 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 contributed not a little to hastening the submergence of the merit of the Himyarites (1)[48] .

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 on the peninsula, they 493

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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 bosom 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

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wants him to have been 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 India (1)[49] . 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 495

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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,

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truest blacks and truest barbarians in the full scope of the expression.

1. ÿ (1) 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 the populations further south, along the Blue Nile, p. 220. 2. ÿ (2) AW v. Schlegel, Vorrede zur Darstellung der Ægyptischen Mythologie, von Prichard, übers. von Z. Haymann (Bonn, 1837), p. XIII. 3. ÿ (3) Lepsius (work cited, p. 220) says that the paintings executed in the hypogeums of the ancient empire represent Egyptian women with the color yellow. Under the 18th dynasty, they were reddish. 4. ÿ (1) Among the Negro nations represented and named on the monuments, the Toreses, the Tareao, the Ethiopians or Kush, present a very prognathous and woolly type, (Wilkinson, work cited, vol. I, p . 387- 388.) 5. ÿ (2) This is a truth which struck Mr. Schaffarik in his Slawische Alterthümer (t. I, p. 24). 6. ÿ (1) Mr. Lepsius, in agreement with Mr. Bunsen, expresses himself thus on the subject of Egyptian chronology: “When it comes to the monuments, sculptures and inscriptions of the 5th dynasty, we We are transported to an era of flourishing civilization which predated the Christian era by four thousand years. We cannot remember too much to ourselves and repeat to others this date which until now has been 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.) 7. ÿ (2) This concerns the period following the expulsion of the Hyksos, and which we call the new empire. The age of the pyramids is more remote, as we will see elsewhere. Mr. ChampollionFigeac places the advent of the 12th dynasty in the year 2200 BC. (Ancient Egypt, Paris, 1840.) 8. ÿ (1) A king, upon ascending the throne, began the erection of the pyramid which would one day serve as his tomb. He made it of medium size, in order to have time to finish 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 dead,

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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.) 9. ÿ (1) Mr. Baron d'Eckstein does not agree with this fact, which is very strong and too asserted 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 Indus basin the seat of the primitive civilization transported to the Nile valley. » (Historical research on primitive humanity, p. 76.) Mr. Wilkinson shares this opinion and considers the Egyptians as a Hindu colony (t. I, p. 3). 10. ÿ (2) We must not lose sight of the fact that the Coptic or Demotic language, the only help we have for translating hieroglyphic inscriptions, is only a dialect, a degeneration, a sort of mutilation of the language sacred, and it would be necessary to know if Sanskrit traces are not more abundant in this oldest idiom. — See Brugsch, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlændischen Gesellschaft, t. III, p. 266. 11. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 225 et al. 12. ÿ (2) Work cited, t.1, p. 231. 13. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t.1, p. 225 et al. 14. ÿ (2) Genesis finds Semites among the sons of Mesraim, son of Ham: “At vero Mesraim genuit Ludin and Anamim, and Laabim Nephtuïm and Phetrusim and Chasluim; de quibus egressi sunt Philistiim et Caphtorim (X, 13, 14). » 15. ÿ (3) Mr. de Bohlen found between the founder of Egyptian royalty and the mythical legislator of India, Manou, a great connection of names. 16. ÿ (1) Schlegel, Preface to Prichard's Egyptian Mythology , p. XV. — A difference with the Hindus that Mr. de Schlegel finds radical 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 parents

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of the victim's fiancée. The slightest sign of pain is considered dishonorable. Tetanus often kills the patient after a few days. 17. ÿ (1) The reader has perhaps already noticed that modern nations are the only ones who have known 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. 18. ÿ (1) At a fairly low time, the Arians pushed into these tribes. They only passed through and left no trace of their stay. (Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 533.) 19. ÿ (1) Schlegel, work cited, p. XXIV. 20. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 237 et al. In Egypt, there was no truly impure caste other than the subdivision of 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.

21. ÿ (2) One of the capitals of the old empire is Thebes, Tapou. It was founded by Sesortesen I, first king of the Theban dynasty, the 12th of Manetho, 2,300 years BC. (Lepsius, Briefe aus Ægypten, p. 272.) 22. ÿ (3) Rosellini found the name of Sesortesen (Mr. of Bunsen, Orsitasen 1st of 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. 23. ÿ (4) Movers, t. II, Part 1, p. 301. 24. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 4. Movers, vol. II, 1st part, 282. This name also applied to Nedj and Yemen. It still extended to the nearest part of Asia. Holy Scripture makes Nimrod a Kushite. 25. ÿ (2) Among the oldest pyramids, several are built of mud bricks, which almost identifies them with the burial mounds of primitive white peoples. (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 50.) 26. ÿ (1) The oldest names, in the ovals, are preceded by the title of priest instead of that of king. (Wilkinson, t. I, p. 19.) 27. ÿ (2) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 246. 28. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 250. 29. ÿ (1) Herodotus, 11, 47. 30. ÿ (1) The fate of the prisoners seems to have been less harsh. Mr Wilkinson says so. We do not see them, as on the Ninevite monuments, dragged

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by the winners by means of a ring passed through the lower lip. They were sold and became slaves. (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 403 et passim.) 31. ÿ (1) The type of Egypt was fixed under the third dynasty which, according to Mr. Bunsen, began ninety years after the first. (Bunsen, Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, t. III, p. 7.) 32. ÿ (1) In the hypogea of Beni-Hassan we see paintings representing fights of gladiators of a very light 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 Ægypten, 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. 33. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 140. — The two predecessors of Tirhakah, 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. 34. ÿ (2) Wilkinson, t, I, p. 22, 85 et passim, 165 et passim, 206 et passim, W. v. Humboldt, About the Kawi language, t. I, p. 60. 35. ÿ (1) This city was called Nagara. (Lassen, Indisch Alterth., t. I, p. 748.) 36. ÿ (1) It will perhaps one day be the most solid and real glory of our time that these admirable discoveries which come today transform and enrich, on all sides, the formerly so dry and restricted domain of primordial history. Considerable ruins and countless inscriptions have been discovered in southern Arabia. 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 expansion abroad, will not have

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less interest in all human chronicles than all the conquests of the same kind with which science is enriched elsewhere. 37. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 4. — This scholar speaks out without hesitation against the system beloved of the 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 joyful nature . I acquired the irrefutable (unabweissliche) conviction 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, henceforth, for one to claim to support on the testimony of ancient monuments the hypotheses concerning a glorious and ancient Meroe, of which the inhabitants would have been the predecessors and 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 7th century BC . only. 38. ÿ (1) J. Ludolf, Comm. ad. History. Æthiopic., p. 61. 39. ÿ (2) Prichard, Natural History of Man (German translation of Wagner, with annotations), t. I, p. 324. 40. ÿ (1) MT Benfey has brought together a large number of arguments and facts, both lexicological and grammatical, to shed light on this last truth. See his book entitled: Ueber das Verhæltniss der ægyptischen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamme, in-8o ; Leipzig, 1844. 41. ÿ (2) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 387 et passim. 42. ÿ (3) Id., ibid. 43. ÿ (1) Herodotus, II, 30. 44. ÿ (2) According to M. Lepsius, the dynasties driven out by the Hyksos took refuge on the border of Ethiopia and left some monuments there. (Briefe aus Ægypten, etc., p. 267.) 45. ÿ (1) At Abu-Simbel, on the left leg of one of the four colossi of Rhamses, the second going 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. 46. ÿ (1) Ludolf, Comm. ad Hist. Æthiop., p. 61. — CT Johannsen, Historia Jemanæ, Bonn, 1828, p. 80: “Ait deinde Hamza, Maaditis eum sororis filium Alharithsum b. Amru præfecisse, Meccam and Medinam

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that he had conquered, then returned to Yemen, embraced Judaism with his people, called the Jews to Yemen, and joined the Yemenites and the Rebites in a league. » 47. ÿ (2) Prichard, Naturgeschichte d. MG, t. 1, p. 324. 48. ÿ (1) Johannsen, History of Germany, p. 89 and elsewhere. — La domination des Abyssins dans l'Yémen fut d'une très courte durée, elle commencia en 529 de notre ère et finit en 589. (Ibid., p. 100.) 49. ÿ (1) Et aussi Tombouctou au Maroc. (Voir Journal asiatique, 1er janvier 1853; Lettre à M. Defrémery, sur Ahmed Baba, le Tombouctien, par M. A. Cherbonneau.)

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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 unites several small states under his domination 503

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until then 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. So far, no story. 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 marshes muddy, are too absorbed by the attacks which 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 man begins to enjoy this relative security towards which all his instincts lead him, and as a regular government, the organ of general feeling, is finally established; 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 in the 15th century. The consequence of this observation is that truly antehistoric times have little value, either because 504

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whether 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 (1)[1] . 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 505

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frankly moved from the figurative system to a conventional expression of sounds, an operation, no doubt, still imperfect, but which, nevertheless, allowed those who were content with it to bring together the elements of writing under a number of keys quite restricted. 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 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, to

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in turn, dominated by 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 Nile civilization.

As long as the country was subject only 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 the 2nd and 3rd dynasty, they only obtained, under the 18th and 19th, the softening of this harshness, and under the 29th, which preceded Cambyses, decadence is only expressed by 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 (1)[2] .

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.

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The Egyptian priesthood was dominating, without a doubt, friend of rest, enemy of innovations like all aristocracies. But what ! 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, 508

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authors of the oldest and most numerous invasions, were not 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 parties, of men placed in such a way as to exercise the dominating prerogatives of the white race, while sharing up to a certain not the feelings of the black girl. These men could only be 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

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monarch, says the abbreviator, it was established in law that the oxen Apis 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[3]

.

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, for the first time, introduced, but although it was officially recognized, being already ancient. 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 being 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 510

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bring together 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 illustration[4] .

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, definitive victory, nevertheless 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 of which he had 511

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brought, from the vicinity of the Ural and Altai mountains, 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 (1)[5] , all Egyptian greatness was over. We no longer lived except on the indications, each day fading, of ancient errors (2)[6] .

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 the text of my current considerations below the seventh century BC (3)[7 ] . 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, easily lets itself go

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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 bring them home in Memphis, still surrounded by the Thracians and those 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 some which must be attributed to sovereigns of the Nile, and in Nubia near Wadi Halfah, and in the Sinai peninsula ( 1)[8] .

But another monument, all the more famous because Herodotus 513

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mentioned, a monument still existing near Beirut, has been positively recognized, today, for the pledge of victory of an Assyrian triumphant (2) [9] . Besides, nothing Egyptian has ever been encountered above Palestine.

With all the reserve 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 (3)[10 ] .

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 distrust (1)[11] .

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 up to the 7th century, where one could 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. At 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 south (1)[12], 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.

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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 necessary (1 ) [13] . 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 515

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of ideas, dates, facts and peoples (2)[14] . Until the seventeenth century BC Egyptian influence, and always Africa excepted, had very little action; she had little prestige, she was barely known (3) [15]

.

Defense works of the kind that the kings had built on the eastern

borders to close the passage to the sands and especially to foreigners (1) [16] , are always the work of a people who, by guaranteeing themselves invasions, limits its territory itself. The Egyptians were therefore voluntarily separated from the eastern nations. Without all warlike or peaceful relations being 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 bring its wonders to the east or to the north, nor even in West Africa (2)[17] .

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 the Assyrian civilization, product of the white Hamites mixed with the peoples 516

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black, then from different branches of the Semites added to the whole, it resulted in the birth of thick masses which, pushing and penetrating each other in a thousand ways, 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 (1)[18] . 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 soc They succeeded, however, I believe; but for what 517

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result ? To imitate the work of Hellenic blood in Phoenicia. Like him, they contributed, united to black action, to hasten the dissolution of a race which, more numerous and arrived earlier, they would have made them live and regenerate. If, from

the first years when Menes reigned, with the Arian mixture, Hamite and black, a large dose of Semitic blood could have to add, Egypt would have been profoundly revolutionized and agitated. She would not have remained isolated in the world, and she would have found herself in direct and intimate communication with the Assyrian states. To judge this, it is enough to decompose the two groups of nations: Assyrians Fundamental element

noir Egyptians Fundamental Black Element

Chamites, in quantity Sufficiently dominant Arians, great being the Chamite element. For

on

fertilizing.

Semites, of several couches,

Chamites,

in

quantity

fertilizing.

singularly fertilizing. Blacks, Blacks, always dissolving. solvents. Grecs, solvent.

in

quantity Semites, solvent.

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And

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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 that it saw itself as its black and Ariane fusion; the virtues were exhausted every day, without anything com 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 having considered the situation of Egypt in the 7th century, an already very humble and desperate situation, we 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 conquerors and 519

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foreign settlers, 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 .

1. ÿ (1) Brugsch, magazine d. German Morgenl. society, t. III, p. 266 et passim. 2. ÿ (1) Wilkinson, t. I, p. 85 et passim, p. 206 ; Lepsius, 276. 3. ÿ Voici le texte et la traduction de M. de Bunsen : (If the oxen Apis in Memphis and Mneius in Heliopolis and the Mendesian goat were thought to be gods.)

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.) 4. ÿ It cannot be useless to recall here what was the prosperity which the States of the Nile valley achieved. 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 counts 18,000. Today's France, twelve times larger, has only 39,000. The population of

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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 Mr. de Bohlen's incredulity. (Das alte Indian, t. 1, p. 32 and elsewhere.)

5. ÿ (1) According to the chronology of Wilkinson, who recognizes this prince in the Rhamsès Amoun-Maï monuments, Diospolite king of the 19th dynasty, and who makes him reign in 1235 BC (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 83.) — Mr. Lepsius takes this Rhamses much further back and places him in the 20th dynasty, in the 15th century BC. (Briefe aus Ægypten, p. 274.) 6. ÿ (2) Under Osirtasen I (1740 BC, according to Wilkinson's calculation), the monuments are magnificent. Beni-Hassan's sculptures belong to this era, the most brilliant for the arts. (Wilkinson, t. 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. Wilkinson's Osirtasen I is the same as Mr. Bunsen's Sesortesen (t. II, p. 306.) 7. ÿ (3) Mr. Lepsius remarks that, throughout the duration of the ancient empire, 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.) 8. ÿ (1) Bunsen, t. II p. 307; Lepsius, p. 336 et passim; Movers _ Phoenix. Alterth., t. II, Part I, p. 301. 9. ÿ (2) Movers, t. II, Part 1, p. 281. This historian attributes the stele in question to Memnon, and makes it contemporary with the Trojan War. 10. ÿ (3) Mr. de Bunsen makes a very true and conclusive judgment on the 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 regions, 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 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, of Palestine, of Syria, where

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they could only run races? On the other hand, they would have kept themselves isolated from any contact with the countries of northern Africa! » (Ægypten's Stelle in der Welt-Geschichte, t. II, p. 311.) 11. ÿ (1) 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 of which a very natural inclination leads them to exaggerate the merits. One is the expression northern peoples, inscribed in the commemorative hieroglyphics of warlike expeditions and which easily directs thought towards the northeast; the other is the meeting 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 the monuments speak of Kanana, Lemanon and Ascalon, we recogniz (Wilkinson, t. I, p. 386.) But when, in the Kheta, we want to recognize the Getae, it is absolutely as if in the Gallas of Abyssinia we claim to find Celtic Gallas, and all the more so since the Getae or ÿÿÿÿÿÿ of the 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 of Kheta or Sheta has a certain sound connection with that of Getae, there is nothing to justify an identification of nations which certainly were very dissimilar . Same thing with the Tokhari. Egyptian paintings give them a regular profile, a slightly aquiline nose, and a hairstyle somewhat similar to the Persian mitre. We see them traveling in sort of carts with their wives and children. This is enough for Mr. Wilkinson to confuse them with the Tokhari known to the Greeks, the Tokkhara of the Mahabharata, inhabitants of Sogdiana and Bactria, on the upper Iaxarte and the Zariaspe. Mr. Lassen shares this opinion (Indisch. Alterth., vol. I, p. 852). Mr. Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlinson seems to me more inspired when, finding on an Assyrian cylinder the mention of an expedition of Sennacherib against the Tokhari who inhabit the valley of Salbura, he refuses to lead the troops of his Chaldean hero to 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 the real story

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would know what to gain by being strongly on guard against indefinite extensions of so-called conquests which are only justified according to evidence as fragile as resemblances of names and a few vague physiological resemblances. 12. ÿ (1) The first conquests in Ethiopia go back, according to Lepsius, to the ancient empire, and were authored by Sesortesen III, king of the 12th dynasty, who 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, t. II, p. 306 et passim.) 13. ÿ (1) Bunsen, t. II, p, 214 et passim. 14. ÿ (2) Movers, das Phœn. Alterth., t. II, Part 1, p. 298. 15. ÿ (3) Phoenicia alone took some account of it; the small Hebrew or Chanaanite nations 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 chariots is identical at Memphis and Khorsabad (Wilkinson, vol. I, p. 346; Botta, Monuments de Nineveh) ; the construction of the war places was extremely similar (loc. cit.), etc., etc. 16. ÿ (1) Bunsen, t. II, p. 320. 17. ÿ (2) In the 8th century BC, the Egyptians did not even have a 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 w (Movers, das Phœnizich Alterth., t. II, 1st part, p. 370.) — In short, the wars of the Egyptians on the side of Asia always had a rather defensive than aggressive character, and the influence even that the Pharaohs strove to win in the Phoenician cities was more intended to neutralize the action of the Assyrian governments than to pursue positive results. (Movers, ibid., p. 298, 299, 415 et passim.) 18. ÿ (1) I hear here of the Hyksos who overthrew the old empire. 523

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CHAPTER VII. Ethnic relationship between the Assyrian nations and Egypt. The arts and lyric poetry are produced by the mixing of whites with black peoples.

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.

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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 negative abilities. foreign 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 more regularizing, gentler, more peaceful, more positive spirit above all, of the weak Arian branch established in the valley of the Nile, we are inclined to give the whole family real superiority over the branches of Cham and 526

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Week. 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 com 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 were to be and were, in fact, the most

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apparent, the most real, the most constant of these times and places. In poetry reigns the complete abandonment of the soul to external influences. As proof, picked up at random, I want 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 wail 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 chest our tears flow (1)[1]. » 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 528

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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, either lyrical or didactic, coldly and weakly historical, and, in the latter case, pursuing no other aim than to enclose facts 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; she still doesn't have all her fire,

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all its brilliance, only 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 so that it could be studied and admired separately, it was not the same with its sister, a simple annex to the representation in relief, and which, devoid of chiaroscuro like 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 rank 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 and always wanting to be

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furthermore, 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 that have changed her doctrines several times. She has given up attributing the origins of Greek perfection to Egypt. Better informed, she looks for them 531

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now 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.

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than 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 which constantly accompanied it and which were its 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 533

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these shapeless stones, dressed in splendid clothes and saluted with the name of divinities in the temples of Syria, and from there we pass to the systematic and repulsive ugliness of the hieratic dolls of the Armeria of Turin, there is nothing, in all these aberrations, which are 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 on the theological, moral, political and

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social, we will wonder what was the cause, the first 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 similar has been represented. 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 535

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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 put Hindu civilization at their side, later than Sakya-Mouni; 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 no longer admit anything other than indirect inspirations and products of scholarly imitation, not available to 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 536

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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 doesn't know

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what Juno is, and this marble representation intended to render 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 uses. 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 much

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he remains foreign to these delicate conventions by which the European imagination has learned to ennoble sensations! In Paolino's charming aria from The Secret Wedding :

Before dawn breaks in the sky, 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 our instincts: enthusiasm, emotion, will be much different 539

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intense as our contained rapture 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: it seems that by curling up there, by bringing his limbs one under the other, he seeks, by the reduction in the extent of his surface, to concentrate more in his chest and in his head the tumultuous contractions of the furious well-being he experiences. Inarticulate sounds make an effort to escape from his throat, which is compressed by passion; big tears roll down her prominent cheeks; for another moment, he will shout: the music stops, he is overwhelmed with fatigue (1)[2] . 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 there where the ancient world of Rome encountered it even more curious and more intoxicating than 540

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everywhere else, it is still there that we moderns 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 aptitudes makes it completely unfit for the culture 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, completely 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 shou 541

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not think for a minute about the 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; because if nothing, like 542

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sublime, does not exceed 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, only marked 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

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when the southern Greeks appeared in world history. 1. ÿ (1) Blau, Zeitschrift der deutsch. tomorrow Sociable, t. III, p. 448. 2. ÿ (1) Le mot ku-teta means to speak in cafre, et en Swahili, se battre, parce que l'expression violente et criarde des Africans resembles a quarrel. (Krapf, Von der Afrikanischen Ostküste, dans la Zeitschrift der deutsch. morgenl. Gesellschaft, t. III, p. 317.)

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BOOK THIRD. CIVILIZATION RADIANT FROM CENTRAL ASIA TOWARDS THE SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — The Arians; Brahmins and their social system. CHAPTER II. — Developments in Brahmanism. CHAPTER III. — Buddhism, its defeat; India current. CHAPTER IV. — The yellow race. CHAPTER V. — The Chinese. CHAPTER VI. — The origins of the white race.

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FIRST CHAPTER. The Arians; 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 at 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 wrapped 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 start 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.

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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 547

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be 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 avantgarde 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 The countries belonged to the black type (1)[1] . 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 ebb towards the Vyndhia mountains and the Dekkhan (1)[2] , threw themselves into the middle of the Alpine gorges, a safe haven, since they have retained their individuality 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 going to 548

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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 possess these idioms, only one has gone to India, while the others have never approached 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 Celtic (2)[3] , 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 honorable (1)[4] ; thus, the Arian nations were nations of honorable men, of men worthy of esteem and respect, and probably, by extension, of men who, when they were not given what was due to them, knew the take. If this interpretation is not strictly in the word, we will see that it is found in the facts.

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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 sacred country, legal India, Arya-varta, the land of honorable men (2)[5] . 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 original name, claimed by the Iranian Arians, to whom the Medes belonged, was 'Aÿÿÿÿ. Another branch of this family, the Persians, had also begun by calling themselves 'Aÿÿÿÿÿÿ, and when they renounced it for the whole nation, they retained the root of this word in most of their men's names, such as Arta-xerxes, Ario-barzane, Artabaze, and thus lent them to the Scythian-Mongols converted to their language, and who later found renewed use of it in the use they made of their side the Sarmatian Arians (1)[6] .

In their cosmogonic ideas, the Iranians considered that the country was the first to create a region that they called Airyanem-Vaëgo, and they placed it far in the northeast, towards the sources of the Oxus and the Yaxartes (2)[They 7] . 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 land of men 550

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honorable people had 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 root ar followed 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 ÿAÿÿÿ, which personifies the honorable being par excellence, the god of battles, the perfect hero; in this other word, ÿÿÿÿÿ, 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 d'ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, 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 words arya, ayrianem, of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ , and of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ. 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 root ar, ir or er, 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 great place in the thoughts of the most beautiful of human races[8]

.

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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 well-deserved 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 very desirable restitution 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 all (1)[9] .

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As for the physical conformation, there is no doubt: it was the most beautiful that anyone had ever heard of (2)[10] . 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, nevertheless have an irresistible weight ( 3) [11] .

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 ( 4)[12] . 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 de 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 do not 553

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can forget the predilection that the Hellenes had for him: they did not imagine their noblest deities otherwise. All critics saw, in this caprice of a time when blond hair had become very rare 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 These pious stories show the legends (1)[13 ] . 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 7th century 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, ha 554

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continued to be characteristic of the high castes, leading us to believe 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 spirit (1) [14] .

She had to expend an inexhaustible amount of vivacity 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 villages (2)[15] , put at their head chiefs whose very limited power had nothing in common with the absolute omnipotence exercised by the sovereigns at home. black peoples or among yellow nations (3)[16] . The oldest Sanskrit name to express the idea of a king, of a director of the political community, is viç pati ; the zend viç païtis has preserved it perfectly, and the Lithuanian wiespati still indicates a landed lord today (4) [17]

.

The meaning is entirely in the ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿ 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, a most limited authority; as the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata also only know 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 one

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fairly weak delegation, perhaps even precarious, entirely in keeping with the taste of the Germanic organization prior to the kind of reform that Khlodowig made in our country (1)[18] . 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 The contrary is affectionate kinship (1)[19 ] . 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 (2)[20] . This squire, always present in Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian sculptures, in Greek or Sanskrit poems, in the Shah-nameh, in Scandinavian songs and chivalric epics of the Middle Ages, was also in India a military figure of a great importance. The Arians therefore warred among themselves (3)[21] , and like

they were not nomads (4)[22] , as they remained as long as possible in the homeland they had adopted, and their valiant audacity everywhere quickly put an end to the resistance of the natives, their most frequent expeditions , their longest campaigns, their 556

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The most complete disasters, as well as 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 the Italian poems where the buon Rinaldo He is also the great virtuoso of Ariosto. The most brilliant rewards were assured to the most energetic champions. They were called çoura, the celestials (5) [23] , 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 life could reserve, 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 in heaven the same place 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 (1)[24] . 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 557

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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 wounds 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 were not yet god, he would not be long in 558

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becoming it. 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 precisely white is religious Theological par excellence ideas (1)[25 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 Genesis (2)[26] . 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 world (1)[27] . 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. Unlike what happened 559

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later in India, and entirely in agreement with what we saw in Persia, and especially in Greece, these gods were of impeccable beauty (2)[28] . 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 root dou, which means to enlighten; he therefore created for them a luminous nature (3)[29] . 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. He was the Devas of the Hindus; the ÿÿÿÿ, the ÿÿÿÿ of the Hellenes; the Diewas of the Lithuanians, the Gallic Duz (4)[30] ; the Dia of the Celts of Ireland; the Tire of the Edda; the High German Zio ; the Slavic Dewana ; the Latin Diana . 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 the Al of the Melanian aborigines (1)[31] . The 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 the Deus and the Al got mixed up, which unfortunately happened too often, similar confusions arose in religious doctrine.

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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 the more Al prevailed in this union. On the contrary, did the Deus have the upper hand? Error has shown itself to be less vile, and, in the charm lent to it by admirable arts and learned philosophy, the mind of man, if it did not fall asleep without danger, at least could do so without shame. The Deus is 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 time (2)[32] .

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

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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 subduing 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 race

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melee. 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 watercourse difficult to recognize, but which is either the Yamouna or the Sarasvati (1) [33 ] .

This 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, was thus witness to the new splitting of the Ariane family, and the already more vivid clarity of history (2)[34] allows us to unravel quite well the circumstances of the debate which was the cause. 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 noting pale, but clearly recognizable, glimmers in the

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mixed 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 attributed to them among 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 gods (1)[35] .

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 thought and a 564

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foreign 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 triply venerable in the eyes of kings, warriors, and entire populations through the merits which manifested in his person from the point of view of religion, morality and science (1)[36] .

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,

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and, just as the purohita, by exclusively taking over a part of social activity, knew how to extract wonders from it that previous generations had not suspected, so too the head of the family, entirely vacant of the care earthly, perfected himself in the material arts of life, in the science of government, in that of war and in the aptitude for conquests.

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 allowed to be born, 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 warriors (1)[37] .

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.

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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, the gray anteriority of times ( 2 )[38] . The viç-pati understood that it would be good to no longer be, for their citizens, 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 purohitas (3)[39 ] 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 were not

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not 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 from being miserable or ridiculous, must, on the contrary, win for it the intimate sympathies of the genius of the race, and the observation made of it by the priests of this ancient era show, among them, a rare aptitude for the science of governmen

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than 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 conduct 569

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supreme 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 large 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 estab 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. Based on this observation established, for them, on irrefutable proof, that all superiority was on the side of the Arians, all weakness, all incapacity on the black side, 570

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They assumed, 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 founded their categories on this principle. These categories they called varna, which meant color, and which, since then, has taken on the meaning of caste (1)[40] . To form the first caste, they brought together the families of the purohitas in whom some merit shone, such as those of the Gautama, the Bhrigou, the Atri (2)[41] , famous for their liturgical songs, transmitted hereditarily like 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 this varna, to this white color 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 all what could lead to it, that is 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 science ; finally they declared themselves sacred, inviolable characters; they refused military employment, surrounded themselves with necessary leisure, and devoted themselves to meditation, study, and all the sciences of the mind, which excluded neither aptitude nor political science. (3)[42] . 571

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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 the men distinguished by their influence and their wealth, and they assumed, more or less correctly, that this class, this varna, this color, was already less frankly white than the their, had already contracted a certain mixture with the 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 over the vigor physical. It was a great, noble, illustrious race that could accept such a doctrine. To members of the military caste, the purohitas gave the name kschattryas or strong me 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 power (1) [43] . They declared that each varna conferred 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 castes 572

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lower (1)[44] . 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 (2)[45 ] . 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 state of To appreciate its 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 themselves, a military 573

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intelligent as well as brave, and who, if she could one day find, in the awakening of her ideas, excitement to combat the progress of the priesthood, found no less reason to be seduced by it, to smile at it and to favor them in the name of that instinctive sympathy which the mind inspires with the mind and talent with 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 the varna which came after the warrior caste. It was that of the vayçias, 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 being still obvious and indisputable, the new system considered them as elite men, twice-born men (dvidja), an expression consecrated to represent the excellence of the race vis-à-vis vis the aboriginal populations (1)[46] , and the people were formed, the bulk of the nation proper, above which 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, prouder, some of their title of strong, others of the newly acquired qualification of brahmans, remained the share of the third caste.

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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 existence should flow. vayçias. 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 land (1)[47] . 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 (2) [48] , and, in order to ensure their peaceful character the quiet enjoyment of the humble, prosaic but fruitful advantages which were granted to them, it was severely forbidden Brahmins, like the Kschattryas, to encroach on their attributions, to interfere in their work and to obtain either an ear of wheat or a manufactured object, other than through their intermediary. 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. (3)[49] .

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.

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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 return them the delicate and reasoned honors of others castes, surrounded them with a more blind admiration and served them with a 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 of the çoudras or dazas, servants , who received the 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.

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and to keep them from famine and other effects of poverty. The reading of sacred books was forbidden to them; they were not considered pure, and nothing more just, because they were not Arians (1)[50] .

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 it (1)[51] . 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 ( 2 )[52] .

People forgetting these obligatory formalities were excluded from Hindu society (3)[53] . Impure, even if they were born Brahmins from father and mother, they were called vratyas (4) [54] : brigands, plunderers, assassins, and it is very probable that, in order to live, these rejects of the law were often forced to 'arm against her. 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 before the subtlety, the incredible resources, the sustained energy, the irresistible patience employed by the

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brahmans 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 Gautama and 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 578

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had been fixed, the gradation, at first supposed, as to relative purity, soon became real; that the Brahmins 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 contemporary white tribes, 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 mongrel, I find them nothing more than a diminutive of sovereign virtues, and if the Brahmins present themselves thus fallen, all the more reason the

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kschattryas and, to an even greater degree, the vayçias were what can be called degenerate from the fundamental merits. 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 irremediable blow to his activity and his physical strength, and also, almost always, removes power and rights from the group resulting from this marriage, if not to shine much more than the white species and to think more deeply,

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less 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 enlig 581

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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 does not begin until after the great heroic wars of the Kouravas and Pandavas (1)[55] . Now, at that time, if Brahmanism had not yet reached all its developments, it existed in its main points. The caste plan was, if not strictly closed, at least outlined, and the period of the purohitas had long passed. Unfortunately the figure of 3102 years has something so enormous (2)[56] 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.

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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 century 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 3rd century BC, and to that of the first Assyrian civilization at different periods, among others in the 7th century. 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,

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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 so many centuries before the Kachemyrian era, it follows that it is not even necessary to speaking: she 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 likelihood, a perfect synchronism between the first developments of Brahmanism and the birth of civilization in the Nile valley, and finally that I postpone it to the 3rd century 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 figures

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The incomplete documents which are there in my hands still allow me to establish the following reasoning: Three societies being given, they are perpetuated 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 racemedicine 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.

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on general history, but much more honorable and 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 that the vigorous and intelligent 586

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The vayçia bourgeoisie has 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 herself, the difficulty of maintaining her 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 found in stifling it or even stopping its growth, caused by alloys which, although rare and often unnoticed, are no less certain and only show themselves too much in the bastardization. gradual rise 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,

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we cannot predict, until 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.

1. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., 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. 2. ÿ (1) According to Ritter, the Sanskrit peoples pushed back as far as Lanka (Ceylon) the negroes and the yellow and black half-breeds (Malays), who originally spread in the north. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. I, p. 435.) 3. ÿ (2) If one absolutely wanted to apply the names of nations to language groups, it would be more reasonable, however, to qualify the Arian branch as Hindu-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. 4. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 6; Burnouf, Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I, p. 461, note. 5. ÿ (2) The Manava-Dharma-Sastra, Haughton's translation, divides the national territory, outside of which a çudra, pressed by hunger, alone has the right to live, into several categories. Here is its classification (t. II, chap. II, § 17): “Between the two divine rivers Saraswati and Drishadwati, lies the tract of land, which the sages have named Brahmaverta, because it was frequented by Gods. » (This is the territory originally inhabited by the pure Arians of any black or yellow mixtu 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. » 6. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 6. 7. ÿ (2) Ibid., 526. We find, in historical periods, a large number of names of Arian peoples in this country, which the Orientals call Touran, and which, until now, have been falsely considered as if 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.

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(Burnouf, Comment. on the Yaçna, t.

I, p. CV-CVI, notes and

clarifications). 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. 8. ÿ The same root is found in the pa-zend hir or ir, which means master, in the Latin herus and in the German Herr. (Burnouf, Commentary on the Yaçna, vol. I, p. 460.) 9. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 516. — I will add to the opinion of Mr.

Let us be a great partisan of the physical unit and morale of the human spirit. Voici l'aveu qui échappe à M. Prichard: « These invaders (the Indo-Europeans) seem to have been superior to them (the allophylians) everywhere in spiritual gifts. Some Indo-European nations have actually retained or acquired many characteristic marks of barbarism and savagery; But with these they all had undoubted signs of early intellectual development, especially a higher culture of language. » (Prichard, Natural History of the Human Race, t. III, 1re partie, p. 11.) 10. ÿ (2) Lassen, p. 404. 11. ÿ (3) Lassen, p. 404 and 854. 12. ÿ (4) C'est ainsi que M. Lassen remarque fort bien que le climate ne saurait être rendu responsable du degré de coloration des populations Hindues, attendu que les Malabares sont plus bruns que les Kandys de Ceylan, et les gens du Guzarate que ceux du Carnatic (t. I, p. 407). 13. ÿ (1)Burnouf, Introduction to the History of Buddhism in India, t. I, p. 237,

314. 14. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 854. 15. ÿ (2) These villages were called among the Hindus, ÿÿÿÿÿ among the Greeks. 16. ÿ (3) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 807. 17. ÿ (4) We follow very well, in the Arian languages, the two parts of this compound word: viç, which means house, becomes, by extension, a collection of houses, and is found in the Latin vicus and its derivative here, the inhabitant of the vicus. Pati, the chief, in Sanskrit, it is in Armenian bod, in Slavic pod, in Latvian patin, in Polish pan, in Gothic faths. (Burnouf, Comment. sur le Yaçna, t. I, p. 461; Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 283.) 18. ÿ (1) The Manava-Dharma-Sastra (translation by Haughton; London, t. II) is much more devoted to the idea of monarchy 1825, in-4o

,

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absolue que les grands poèmes ; cependant il n’a pas encore, sur ce sujet, les notions des Asiatiques modernes. Après avoir dit magnifiquement (chap. VII, t. VIII, 1) : « A King, even though a child, must not be treated lightly, from an idea that he is a mere mortal : no ; he is a powerful divinity, who appears in a human shape, » verset qui, par parenthèse, pourrait bien avoir été dicté par un esprit d’opposition à des doctrines différentes et antérieures, le législateur ajoute (p. 37) : « Let the king, having risen at early dawn, respectfully attend to brahmens, learned in the three Vedas, and in the sciences of ethicks ; and by their decision let him abide ; » et § 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 braves ; who are skilled in the use of weapons et 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 counsellors, 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 momenteous 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. » 19. ÿ (1) Ce serait nier l’affirmation positive des hymnes védiques. (Lassen, Indisch. Alterthüm., t. 1, p. 734.) 20. ÿ (2) Dans le Zend-Avesta, l’homme the one on the cart. 21. ÿ (3) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 617. 22. ÿ 4) Lassen, ibid., p. 816. — Although shepherds par excellence, they were 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 The reason is that the soil and climate did not allow them to derive sufficient benefits from it. 23. ÿ (5) Ibid., p. 734. 24. ÿ Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I. 25. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 755. 26. ÿ (2) Here are the cosmogonic notions preserved by one of the hymns of the 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

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without breathing, alone with the relationship to himself contained within him. There was nothing more. Everything was shrouded 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 Alterth., 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. 27. ÿ (1) A god prior to Indra appears to have been Vourounas, or Vouranas ; it has since become, among the 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. 28. ÿ (2) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 771. 29. ÿ (3) Lassen, op. cited, t. I, p. 755. — Another etymologist derives the word dou from dhâ, to pose, to create. (Windischmann, Jenaïsche Litteratur-Zeitung, July 1834, cited by Burnouf, Comment. sur le Yaçna, t. I, p. 357.) 30. ÿ (4) Schaffarik, Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 58. 31. ÿ (1) Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 69. In Abyssinia, we do not use this expression. We say egzie and amlak, which simply mean lord, and which 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. morgenl. Gesellsch., t. V, p. 419. 32. ÿ (2) Another name, given by the Arian race to the Divinity, is the word Gott, in Gothic Gouth, which relates to the Greek ÿÿÿÿÿ, and to the Sanskrit Goûddhah. This word means the Hidden. — V. Windischmann, Fortschritt der Sprachen-Kunde, p. 20, and Eckstein, Historical Research on Early Humanity. — Burnouf is inclined to see the root of this word in the Sanskrit quaddhâta, the Uncreated. (Comment. on the Yaçna, vol. I, p. 554. 33. ÿ (1) Lassen, Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellschaft, vol. II, p. 200. 34. ÿ (2) It is here that truly begins the existence of the Hindu peoples. Philology rightly seeks them in their ethnic cradle, beyond the northern mountains; but their annals, poorly educated, declare them indigenous. It is 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

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the inferior race he had subjugated. — Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 511. 35. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 795. 36. ÿ (1) Lassen, loc. cit. This is about the time when they were composed the oldest hymns of the Vedas. 37. ÿ (1) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 812. 38. ÿ (2) Die graue Vorzeit. 39. ÿ (3) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 812. The royal consecration, of which there is so much talk in the Ramayana, has still been practiced in modern times. W.v. Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, vol. I, p. 430. 40. ÿ (1) Lassen, op. cited, t. I, p. 514. In Kawi, varna has retained its original meaning and has not acquired the derived meaning. — See W. v. Humboldt, Ueber die KawiSprache, t. I, p. 83. 41. ÿ (2) Lassen, op. cited, p. 804. 42. ÿ (3) 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. cited, p. 806. Alms, formerly optional, are today obligatory for 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. 43. ÿ (1) Nothing admirable like the prescriptions that the Manava-Dharma-Sastra (translation by Haughton, London, 1825, in-4o volume II) addresses to 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 which ensures their happiness. » § 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 loose hair covers his sight , nor he who, exhausted with fatigue, sat down on the earth, nor he who said: 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 ,

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not an actor in the fight, nor one who is grappling with another. » § 93: “Having always in mind the duty of the Arians, honorable men, let him never kill one who has broken his weapon, nor one who cries for a particular sorrow, nor one who has been seriously injured, neither the one who is afraid, nor the one 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. » 44. ÿ (1) Manava-Dharma-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. 45. ÿ (2) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 805. 46. ÿ (1) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 818. 47. ÿ (1) Lassen, op. cited, t. I, p. 817. 48. ÿ (2) 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. » 49. ÿ (3) The importance of this caste and the extralegal influence that it was capable of exercising did not at all escape the legislators of India. I read in the Manava-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 into confusion. » 50. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch., Alterth., t. I, p. 817 et al. 51. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introduct. 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. » 52. ÿ (2) Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap. II, § 26: “With auspicious acts prescribed by the Veda, must ceremonies 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

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design. 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 vaisya of engaging in mercantile business ; the investiture may be made in the fifth, sixth or eighth year respectively. » 53. ÿ (3) Manava-Dharma-Sastra, ch. II, § 38 : « The ceremony of the 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. » 54. ÿ (4) Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 821. Vrâta signifie une horde living on pillage and made up of people of all origins. 55. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, p. 507 et al. 56. ÿ (2) If one day we commonly accept the extraordinary dates of Egyptian history, we will have to put up with even more distant calculations for Brahmanical facts.

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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 apogee. 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 595

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to think 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 by this religious novelty that the Zoroastrian nations, making a split 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, retained, with greater ethnic purity, good reasons to refuse the establishment of a hierarchy. of birth, artificial from their point of view, and, therefore, without utility, 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.

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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 (1)[1] . In the sacred language of the Zoroastrian nations, the God of the Hindus, the Deva, became the Diw, the evil spirit (2)[2] , and the word maaniou received the meaning of celestial when its root, for the Brahmanical nations, retained that of fury and hatred (3)[3] . This would be the case here to apply the 101st verse of 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 preexcellent 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! 597

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But as yet they had only fought with one enemy, and many opponents had to 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 18th century of our era, and which, perhaps even, still continues obscurely as Brahmanism is perennial, 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 migration These newcomers, under the leadership (1)[4] . 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 called Panda ( 2 )[5] , As for the race to which these invaders belonged, there is no room fo The word that designates them means a white man THE (3)[6] . Brahmins recognize, without difficulty, these enemies as offspring 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 half-condemned oddity of the Romans, was only the continuation of the primitive customs of the white family (4)[7] . These Pandavas ate all kinds of meats, i.e., fed on oxen and cows, supreme 598

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an abomination to 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, south and east of the peninsula up to Videha. and Viçala, and as actors all the populations, both Arian and aboriginal (1)[8] . 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 (2)[9 ] .

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. T 599

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Punjab and vast surrounding areas remained under the control of the whiter invaders, and consequently more energetic than the Brahminical 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. This is because their ancestors come from the south (1)[10] .

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 priesthood (2)[11] , 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 that they had brought for a moment to the Brahmanical work. We can therefore observe this phenomenon here, that it was less than the

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purity of the race as well as the homogeneity of the ethnic elements which 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 (1)[12] . Below these disdained peoples, there were a very large number of impure ones, then came the aborigines (2)[13] . 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 else, who, worse still, had persisted in rejecting it. In this case, the appellation of vratya, thief, plunderer, was not enough to 601

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the indignant aversion of the true Hindu, and such people were described as dasyou, a term which carries a very 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 the zend dandyou, dakyou, dakhou (1)[14] , 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, in third place and even below these so hated dasyous , 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 wander in bands. 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 (2)[15] ? 602

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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 be done (1)[16] . 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 enough (2)[17] . The Brahmins gave to all the peoples of this sad category the general name of Mlekkhas (3)[18] , savages, or by Barbaras. 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 (4)[19] . 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

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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, vayçia (1)[20] . 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 castes (2)[21] . 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 604

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quadruple, 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 field 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 alliance (1)[2 The Brahmins proceeded quite differently, and their way alone constitutes the true taking possession of the country and serious conquests (2)[23] . 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 fell (1)[24] . But, for a hermit 605

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ten slaughtered came running, competing for the now sanctified sanctuary, and the venerable colonies, extending their ramifications more and more, irresistibly conquered the soil. 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 lives, we were seen as miserable as you were. By dint of virtues and degrees by degrees, we are at 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. Listen to us, believe, humble yourself, serve, and you will become what we are (2)[25]. » 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 suffered from the kings of the country taking 606

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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 another, the reproach of lacking purity has never stopped running and even reaching the Brahmins (1)[26] . It is indisputable that this reproach is well-founded, 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 Ayodhya (2)[27] . Thus again, in the 18th century, during the Hindu colonizations carried out among the yellow peoples, east of the Kali, in Nepal and Boutan, we saw the Brahmins mingling with the girls of the country and establishing their mixed-race offspring as castes. military (3) [28] .

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 theirs 607

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assigned, 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 was bound to cease, sooner or later, to be considered with a placid eye by the princes, and the Brahmins seem not to have spared enough, even according to the data of their own system, the mistrust and ambition 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 608

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Brahman. The episode of Visvamitra, in the Ramayana, has no other We would also mention the meaning (1)[29] . 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.

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.

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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 pushing aside 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, 610

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be accomplished. 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 Brahmin (1)[30 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 power (2)[31]. 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, in 611

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compose them 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 wa No heroic figure in Hindu epics has more gentleness, grace, tenderness and melancholy. It is the dedication of a woman in the indomitable heart of a hero (1)[32] . Once the principle was accepted, its applications became constant, and, outside of the four legal castes, the number of parasitic associations would become It became so much so, the immeasurable (2)[33] . 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 thus 612

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right now. As for the names imposed on these subdivisions, some indicate the special functions attributed to them, others are simply denominations of indigenous peoples extended to categories which, undoubtedly, had deserved to take them, by mingling with their real ones. owners (1)[34] .

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. Whoever saw them could launch the dogs

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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 on earth any hated monsters 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 them, 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 earlier 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. As we climb to the top of the social ladder, we find chandalas who are rich, happy and,

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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 gentleness of morals opposed to the theoretical fury of the law, it is of all time (1)[35] . 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. They are also, in general, the blackest of the Hindus, and as for their moral degradation, their cowardly perversity, it has no limits (2)[36] . 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 just need to have a 615

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appearance to begin with, and to establish their rules only 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 sight of the fact 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 the Kschattryas, than in those of 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 from exercising their warrior and royal rights, humiliated them in their personal independence, hampered them in the effervescence

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of their passions, by forbidding them to approach the daughters 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 patienc 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. (1)[37] . 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 whom he not to be confused with the hero of the Ramayana, came, after their triumphs, to establish themselves on the southern coast, and constituted a republican state there. The date of this event, which provides the beginning of the Malabar era, is the year 1176 BC. (1) [38 ] . There is a bit of boasting in this story. Generally the practice of the strongest is not to give up 617

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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

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was gaining in age and as a result the black blood of the aborigines of the west and south and the yellow type of the east and north were seeping more into his bosom, the religious needs which had to be met varied and were becoming 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, strange 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

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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 elevated minds who, in wanting to penetrate the most subtle mysteries, are 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 it circumvent its 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? 620

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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 an 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 under the care of a celestial master, and Kouvéra was invented , goddess made in such a way as to fully satisfy the taste of blacks (1)[39]

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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 sought from above, and, imagining powers, celestial entities superior to Indra, to Agni, he discovered Brahma, gave him the most sublime character that ever human philosophy could combine, and, in the world of creation above ethereal 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 higher existences, after having been gods themselves, all they hoped was to merge in its bosom and rest, for a time, from the fatigues of life, heavy for them to bear, even in the delights of celestial 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 622

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high sense of the kschattryas, who, remaining participants in Vedic science, had, without doubt, a less active piety than their contemplative adversaries, but possessed enough science with enough clarity of mind, not to clash head-on with a notion whose they appreciated the value 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, Vischnou (1)[40], and, setting up a metaphysical throne for him, 'raised 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 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 achieve everything, even during the course of current life, without having to

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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 624

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speak, because they do not have a directly ethnic character, added Siva (1)[41] , and, still later, a certain philosophical doctrine, having merged these three divine individualities into a trinity endowed with the character of creation, of conservation and destruction, brought back, by this detour, Brahmanical theology to the primitive conception of a single god enveloping the universe (2)[42] . 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 (1)[43] ; she settled 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 tim 625

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on some points in the north, in the east, and in the southern islands (2) [44] . 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 this, 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 Babylon (1)[45] .

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 the

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smallest part of herself what she accomplished that was positive and visible, and, in her eyes, her 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 627

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not equal. 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 passage of life. 'habit. 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.

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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 enjoyments, a part of the Brahmins soon devoted themselves to the sole task of providing themPoems, (1)[46] .elegies, stories of all kinds, came to be placed alongside the voluminous lucubrations of the On a stage austere sciences (2)[47] . 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 is proud (1)[48] . Alongside this illustrious man, several still created these masterpieces collected in part by the scholar Wilson, in his Indian Theater, and, in short, the love of intellectual pleasures, on the one hand, and that of the profits that he reported, 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 about thirty years, not quite in the same form as regards to the productions, but without the slightest difference as to the spirit (2)[49] . I only want to demonstrate this by a short anecdote which I will cite, in order to also open 629

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a glimpse into 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 to the elephant[50]. » 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.

1. ÿ (1) There are remnants of Brahmanical beliefs in Zend-Avesta which are not found in the current belief of the Parsis. Burnouf, Comment. on the Yaçna, t. I, p. 342.

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2. ÿ (2) The name Indra is also given by the Zoroastrians to an evil genius. — Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 516. 3. ÿ (3) Lassen, op. cited, t. I, p. 525. 4. ÿ (1) Lassen, op. cited, t. 1, 626 et pass. 5. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 652. 6. ÿ (3) Ibid., p. 664. 7. ÿ (4) Ibid., p. 822. 8. ÿ (1) Lassen, op. cited, t. I, p. 713. 9. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 689. — The Pandavas seem to have owed their victory mainly 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. 10. ÿ (1) The populations of Kachemyr and the Punjab had contacts of all kinds with the yellow peoples, as well as with the 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, t. 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, loc. cit., p. 544. 11. ÿ (2) This is how the famous classification made by Greek writers of Hindu nations into three classes: fishermen , farmers and mountain dwellers, can, obviously, only be applied to groups very little Arianized and inhabiting the western confines. 12. ÿ (1) “As for the Pandits (Kashmyrians), all caste bramins, they are grossly ignorant, 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 from V. Jacquemont. — Letter of April 22, 1831.) 13. ÿ (2) 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; AWV Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, vol. I, p. 169 et al. — If the Greeks did not know the

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Hindus only by approximation, they 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 very difficult to explain, because although it seems to designate generally western nations, it also applies to northern and even southern tribes. Jawa means to run, to invade. (W. de Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, vol. I, p. 65 et pass.; Burnouf, Nouveau journal Asiatique, vol. 238.) Later, Javana particularly 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 them Javanim. (Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum., vol. II, 1st part, p. 270.) Finally we find, in an inscription by Darius, Jouna which became 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, and, after adopting it for themselves, transmitted it to continental populations. (Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., vol. I, p. 730.) It was only very late that the Hindus consciously recognized the Greeks in the Javanas and the time was not earlier than the 5th century BCE. 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, and Zeitschrift für d. K. des Morgenl., t. III, p. 215.) 14. ÿ (1) Lassen, Zeitschrift für K. d. Morgenl., t. II, p. 49. 15. ÿ (2) Lassen, Indisch. Alterth., t. I, 364. – A tribe which even better recalls the sons of Anak is that which formerly lived beyond the southern bank of the Yamouna, in the desert of Dandaka, as far as Gadaouri. They were ferocious giants, always inclined to attack the hermitages of Brahmanical ascetics. (Operation cited, p. 524 et passim.) 16. ^ (1) Lassen, Indian. Alterth., t. I, p. 372. 17. ^ (2) Ibid., p. 377. 18. ^ (3) Mlekkha means weak. (Benfey, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, India, p. 7.) 19. ÿ (4) Barbara, varvara indicates a man who has frizzy hair; papoua 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., vol. I, p. 855.) Several nations, non-white, mixed-race or black, bear this name today. Thus the Barbaras, on the west coast of

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l'Indus (Lassen, magazine for the knowledge of the Orient, t. III, p. 215) ; les Barabras, sur le cours supérieur du Nil ; les Berbers d'Afrique, etc. (Meïer, Hebrew root dictionary, 1845.) 20. ÿ (1) Faults, 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 . 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.) 22. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 535. — It is doubtful whether Rama's campaign 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 . 23. ÿ (2) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 578. 24. ÿ (1) According to Brahmanical legends and poems, the ascetics were dealing with cannibals. (Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 535.) 25. ÿ (2) Manava-Dharma-Sastra, chap. X, § 62 : « Desertion of life, without 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. » 26. ÿ (1) « Of two telingas bramines, who came from the vicinity of Hyderabad, one was derived of 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.) 27. ÿ (2) Likewise in the terms of the Ramayana, one of the wives of the heroic king 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. 28. ÿ (3) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 443 and 449. 29. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 891.

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30. ÿ (1) Bournouf, Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 149.

31. ÿ (2) La Manava-Dharma-Sastra (chap. III) stipule, évidemment, une loi de tolérance que le système rigoureux n’admettait pas (§ 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, though in the greatest difficulty to find a suitable match. » — Aujourd’hui, toutes ces atténuations, en effet illogiques, ont été supprimées ; les alliances d’une caste à l’autre sont sévèrement interdites, et le Madana-RatnaPradipa dit expressément : « These marriage of twice born men with damsels not of the same class... these parts of ancient law were abrogated by Unfortunately, the defense came when the evil had already developed greatly. However, it is not useless. 32. ÿ (1) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 480. — The soutâ is the true prototype of the squire of errant chivalry, of the Gandolin or Gwendolin of Amadis. 33. ÿ (2) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 196. 34. ÿ (1) The law, however, sought to retain, while yielding; thus it is more or less 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 of the Sudra class, springs a creature, called Ugra, with a nature partly warlike and partly servile, ferocious in his manners, cruel in his acts. » (ManavaDharma-Sastra, chap. 35. ÿ (1) Count E. de Warren, English India in 1843. — In 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.) 36. ÿ (2) It is by this last trait that the Brahmins claim to recognize especially the impure castes: “Him, who was born of a sinful mother, and

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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 et 58.) 37. ÿ (1) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 719-720. 38. ÿ (1) Lassen, open. cited, t. I, p. 537. 39. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 771. — Moreover, the Brahmanical spirit struggled for a long time before coming to anthropomorphism, and this is how Mr. de Schlegel seems to have had every reason 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. » (AW v. Schlegel, Vorrede zur Darstellung der ægyptischen Mythologie von Prichard, übersetzt von Haymann. Bonn, 1837), p. XIII.) 40. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 781. 41. ÿ (1) In Lassen's judgment, this divinity is originally borrowed from some cult of the 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.) 42. ÿ (2) Ibid., t. I, p. 784. 43. ÿ (1) W. de Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache. 44. ÿ (2) The Arians have never possessed On several points, completely aboriginal populations still interrupt and isolate their establishments. The Dekkhan is almost absolutely deprived of their colonizations. (Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 391.) 45. ÿ (1) The vayçia sailed a lot. A Buddhist legend cites a merchant who had made seven voyages by sea. (Burnouf, Introduction to the history of Indian Buddhism, vol. I, p. 196.) — The Hindus could thus put themselves in communication with the Chaldeans, who had themselves a navy (Isaiah, XLIII, 14) and a colony at Gerrha on the western coast of the Persian Gulf, where a large trade with India was carried on. 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 Ariane 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

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were, at the same time, navigators. (Work cited, p. 537). It is very probable that, arriving early at the mouths of the Indus, they established their first empires there, such as that of Potâla. (Ibid., p. 543.) 46. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Ouvr. cited, t. I, p. 141. 47. ÿ (2) Literary criticism existed very early in India. Around the 11th century BCE, the Vedic hymns of Atharvan were collected and put in order. In the 6th century grammarians appeared, 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, either in the manuscripts or in the quotations, the slightest variation. (Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 739 and 750 et passim.) 48. ÿ (1) The Hindus did not have the same way as us of considering history, so that, well that 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; 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 which forms the heart, as the core of the history of what the chroniclers of most peoples neglect to content themselves with the bark. But, as Albirouni says: “They always neglected to write the chronicles of the reigns of their kings. » So 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.) 49. ÿ (2) It was probably at the school of these literati that poets of the type of the one who wrote the Hásyarnavah were trained (the Ocean of 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.) 50. ^ Burnouf, ouvr. city, t. I, p. 140.

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CHAPTER III. Buddhism, its defeat; present-day India.

We had arrived at a time which, according to the calculation Sinhalese, would agree with the 7th century BC[1] according to other

,

And

Buddhist calculations drawn up for northern India, would go down to the year 543 BCE [2]

.

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 achieve 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 (1)[3] .

Such a theory could overturn society. However, as it was presented only 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 gave birth to it were something more than the

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accidental discovery of a searching spirit, or very practical men became aware of it, 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 introduce the populations to the liberal nature of 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, one had 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,

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and Buddhism further complicated it by making it continue its path to the abyss of negation (1)[4] . 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 saddlebags, 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 doctrine (2)[5] . 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 the moment he had rejected most numerous proselytes (3)[6]From . the prescriptions of the Vedas, the separations of castes no longer existed for him, and he declared that he recognized no other superiority than that of virtue ( 4)[7] . 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 640

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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 (1)[8]. » 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 large 641

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dogmatic shaking, the threatened society was not seriously damaged (2) [9] . 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 brahmans precedence over their rivals (1)[10] , and the real war, the war of intolerance, persecution did not begin until the 5th century AD (2)[11] . Thus Buddhism had been able to live for nearly 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 the weapons.

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 work (3)[12] .

All these accessions gave relief to the sect by spreading it among the upper classes, and it was, in 642

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in short, as flattering as it is easy to glory in intimate and unnoticed virtues, to utter moral discourses, and immediately to be considered holy and free of the rest (1)[13] . Convents multiplied. Monks and nuns filled these asylums called viharas, and the arts, which the ancient civilization had trained and elevated, lent their aid to the glorification of the new sect (2)[14] . 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 asylums (1) [15 ]

.

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 5th century ended in the 14th (2)[16] .

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 denying one's pretensions to moral perfection 643

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by recruiting himself from all the lost people, he 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 they (3)[17] . 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; in the 11th century, 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 himself there at his ease, and,

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contrary to the opinion of some superficial critics, it must be admitted that the examination is not favorable and shows in a striking manner how little succeeds in producing, 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 in the opposite way to what is seen in true philosophies, instead of the moral law arising from ontology, it is, on the contrary, the ontology which arises from the moral law (1)[ 18 ] . 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 intelligences (2) [19] . 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.

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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 essential 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 successful rival (1) [20]

. 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.

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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. He

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It does not follow, it is true, that the long resistance of the 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 of our era, India had ceased to be this country closed to Western nations, of which the greatest of conquerors, Alexander himself, could only have suspected the wonders among impure peoples, among the Vratya nations of the west that he had fought (1)[21] . 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? 648

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not and have no dearer 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 15th century, it still continues its proselytism, and that he succeeds (1)[22] .

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.

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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 w 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 would have to reconstitute themselves, no doubt, after a more or less time less long, Brahmanism, the only social order which still offers, in this country, some

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solidity, a few unshakeable 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, by 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 Rajputs, he would not take long to find himself master of the most much of the ground it has lost over so many centurie Moreover, he is not inflexible in transactions, and, if he agreed, 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-mixed Hindus, would it not counterbalance, in its very bosom, 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.

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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 in 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

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repeated deviations, a decisive cause, which preserved the virtues and advantages of authority for the two upper classes of Hindu society. Then, if illegal infiltrations of foreign blood took place, through the influence of revolutions, into the veins of Brahmins 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 such descendants come out of these mixtures. robust than when it produced only 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 Chinese ideas lend, if necessary, some assistance to Brahmanical civilization. Such are the Mahrattes, such again, the Burmese.

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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 BhimSem. This god, son of Pandou, is the personification of the white race in the last great migration that it made to this side of the world (1)[23] .

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, the tribes of black savages are numerous, the forests are immense and impenetrable, and the use of dialects derived from Sanskrit almost ceases. 654

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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 have never grown so far, either by land or by sea, except in insufficient colonies (1)[24] .

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,

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and we saw, in his 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

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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 the 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, the results of which were only disfigured, gradually increased admiration for this mysterious country, although knowledge of it remained very imperfect.

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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

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Western States, 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. 1. ÿ Burnouf, Ouvr. cited, p. 287.

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2. ÿ Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 356 and 711. — It is at the time of 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, cited work, vol. I, p. 131.) 3. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introduction to history. of Budh., etc., t. I, p. 152 and passim and 211.

4. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 831; Burnouf, Introduction to the hist. of Indian Buddhism, t. I, p. 152 et passim. 5. ÿ (2) Burnouf, Introd. to history. of budh. Indian, t. I, p. 194. 6. ÿ (3) One of his main arguments against men of the lower 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 entering. (Burnouf, cited work, vol. I, p. 196.) 7. ÿ (4) Cited work, vol. I, p. 211. 8. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introd. to history, etc., t. I, p. 205. 9. ÿ (2) Revolutionary elements were not absolutely lacking in this 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 anything. — See Burnouf, Ouvr. cited, 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 Arians-Franks, as those of the Arians-Hindus, the same predilection for the philosophical part. of history, united with the same disdain for chronology. 10. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introduct. to history, etc., t. I, p. 395, note. 11. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 586. 12. ÿ 3) When the Brahmins reproached Sakya for surrounding himself with people belonging to impure castes or people of bad life, Sakya replied: “My law is a law of grace for all. » (Burnouf, cited work, 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 regime

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Brahmanism inflicts on its faithful, as a result of this idea that one can only be forgiven for the faults of current existence and make oneself worthy of moving to a higher rank, 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 either for royalty, neither 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 fault, which, moreover, made them very quickly arrive at instituting confession. (Ibid., p. 299.) 13. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introd. to history, etc., t. I, p. 196, 277. 14. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 287. 15. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Introduction to history, etc., t. I, p. 337. — Hindu Buddhism is today so degenerated 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 in Nepal are called vadjra âtchâryas. (Ibid.) 16. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 586. 17. ÿ (3) Burnouf, Introd. to history, etc., t. I, p. 144. — He did more than admit them in practice. He showed himself to be weak to the point of denying his claim to be a law of grace for all, by admitting that boddhissatvas could only incarnate in families of Brahmins or Kschattryas. (Ibid.) 18. ÿ (1) M. Burnouf very skillfully uses the posteriority of ontology in Buddhism to establish the age of this religious system (Ouvr. cited, vol. I, p. 132.) 19. ÿ (2) See the numerous details on this cylinder, widely used among the Mongols, in the Souvenirs of a trip to Tartary, Thibet and China, during the years 1844, 1845 and 1846 (Paris, 1850 ), by Mr. Huc, missionary 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 17th century. The Hindu spirit, of which little remained, was almost absolutely expelled by these innovations. 20. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Ouvr. cited, t. I, p. 339. — Buddha, considered as an incarnation of Vischnu, is an idea which does not go back further than the year 1005 of the era of Vikramâditya, 943 of ours. 21. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indian Antiquity, t. I, p. 353.

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22. ÿ (1) Ritter, Geography, Asia, t. III, p. 111 et passim. 23. ÿ (1) Ritter, Geography, Asia, t. III p. 115. 24. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indian Antiquity, t. I, p. 391.

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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 663

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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 quite rudimentary negligence and 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

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coarse as horsehair. This is the physical aspect of the yellow race (1)[1] .

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. Hence 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 665

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These views, a consequence of the absence of imagination, give yellow people more aptitude for crude sociability than Negroes possess. 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 yellow peoples have become quite skilled in certain trades, and it is not without surprise that we see them, from the earliest antiquity, leaving traces, as an irrefutable mark of their presence in a country. fairly large mining works. This, so to speak, is the ancient and national role of the yellow race (1)[2] .

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 civilizations (2)[3] .

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, before 666

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even in what we call the primitive ages, considerable masses of yellow populations had accumulated in the extreme north of Siberia, and from there had extended their camps and their hordes far into the western world, overlooking their first ancestors of very disreputable information. 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 667

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Zoroastrian; 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:

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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 some 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 Formosa (1)[4], 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 669

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invaders in 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 Island (1) [ 5] . 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 cluster of islands extended 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 varieti 670

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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.

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I have observed the practical faculties of the yellow race. However, by recognizing her aptitude superior to that of the black woman for the low functions of a cultured society, I denied her the capacity to occupy a glorious rank on the scale of civilization, and this because her intelligence, otherwise limited, it is no less narrow than that of the Negroes, and because its instinct for the useful 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

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The Malays are, moreover, one 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 the one, of the other icy insensitivity (1) [6]

.

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.

1. ÿ (1) Mr. Pickering adds, to all these characteristics, another trait which seems entirely specific to him: it is the feminine aspect 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 years 1838, 1839, 1843, 1841 and 1842, under the command of Charles Wilkes, USN ; vol. IX: The Races of man and their geographical distribution, by Charles Pickering, MD; Philadelphia, 1848 , in-4o .) — 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. 2. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 337. 3. ÿ (2) Lassen, Zeitschrift für d. K.d. Morgenl., t. II, p. 62; Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. II.

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4. ÿ (1) It is the inhabitants of the interior of the island who are completely black. 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. cit., p. 1131.) — This geographer admits that he cannot explain the extreme diffusion of the Melanian family 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. 5. ÿ (1) 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. 6. ÿ (1) To the testimonies on which I have already relied, I add 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. »

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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 facts (1)[1] . The most rational date on which the scholars of the Celestial Empire to judge their ancient state, it is the reign of Tsin-chi-hoang-ti, who, to cut short feudal conspiracies and save the unitary cause of which he was the promoter, wanted to stifle ancient ideas, made 675

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burn 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 criticism (1)[2] . 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 the times close to Tsin-chi-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 (2)[3 ] . 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 were to be their depositories, and yet all these peoples retained enough debris of their history

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so that, 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 beyond the 8th century AD (1)[4] . 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 anything (2)[5] which takes us even remotely back 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 677

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periods prior to Tsin-chi-hoang-ti, and we only collect 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. Indigenous historians assert that when the Chinese arrived, the Miao (1) [6] already 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 bundles, and we hid them under bushes (2)[7] . I will note, in passing, that here is indeed, in a historical reality, the primitive man of the philosophy of 678

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Rousseau and his followers; 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 monkeys (3) [8] , was therefore considered, and I dare to say it, 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 Honan (1)[ 9 ] . 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 679

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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 civilized (2)[ 10 ] .

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 ties of kinship with so many white nations, they would have done the same with these, if the separation had taken place at a relatively low epoch and in a time when, the civilization of India being already established, there was no longer any way of not noticing 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

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of a white people coming to perform in China, in Ho-nan, the same wonders that an equally Hindu branch had previously prepared in the upper valley of the Nile (1)[11] . 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.

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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 however accuse an Arian descent (1)[12] . 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 existence (2)[13] .

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 (1)[14] . Then came, to the east of the Ou-soun, the Khou-te (2)[15] .

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Higher up, north of the Ou-soun, west of Baikal, were the Ting-ling (3)[16] . The Kian-kouans, or Ha-kas, succeeded the latter and surpassed the Yenisei (4)[17] . Finally, further south, in the current region of Kaschgar, beyond Thianchan, extended the Chou-le or Kin-tcha, followed by the Yan-Thsai, Sarmatians-Alains, whose territory extended as far as the Caspian Sea (5)[18] . In this way, at a time relatively close to us, since it was in the 2nd century BC, and after so many great migrations of the white race which should have exhausted the species, there were still some, in Asia central, branches numerous and powerful enough to enclose Tibet and northern China, so that not only did the Celestial Empire possess, within the southern provinces, immigrant Arian-Hindu nations at the time when its beginnings began. history, 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 populations (1) [19]

.

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

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plausibility, the very necessity of frequent invasions and hence frequent mixtures (2)[20] . 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 directions (1)[21] .

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 Brahmanism itself had perhaps 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 an aspect rather male than female, rather political than religious, and, from this 684

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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

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reward, to adorn one's ancestors, in a country where all ancestors without distinction, being the object of an official and national cult, are quite respected and even adored. A retrospective title of nobility therefore adds little to the honors they enjoy. Let us therefore not look for in the Chinese idea what it seems to give, but rather an opposition to the Brahmanical doctrines, of which the immigrant kschattryas had a horror and which they wanted to combat. 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 very soil of India, it proves all the resistance encountered by the Hindu organization and the

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irreconcilable repulsions that it aroused. The triumph of the Brahmins is greater. I come back to China. If the creation of the retroactive nobility is to be reported as an anti-Brahminical institution, and, consequently, as a hateful memory for the motherland, 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 everything over the children brought into the world, fed and raised by him, the prince had full authority over his subjects, that, 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

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Ariane race, and, precisely, because, in this race, each isolated individual possessed an importance that it never seems to have had in the inert multitudes of the yellow and black peoples, the authority of the complete man, of the father of family, on its members, that is to say on the people grouped around its home, had to 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 Arian Hindu, 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 ; the 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

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authority closely monitored. 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 was a question of taming multitudes ill-disposed 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 a shadow of its pretensions there, and the castes, less perfect than in India, nevertheless surrounded themselves,

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especially the priestly castes, of certain immunities, of 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 respite, 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 individuals of each

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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 wellbeing. 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 degradation 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

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the rule, of order, their antipathy for abuses of 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 would was suffering, no doubt; but how excited people's heads were before such paintings! How well, deep down, the Semite understood the passionate exaggeration of the acts of omnipotence and how the most depraved ferocity still grew its gigantic image in his eyes! 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 willing background 692

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to understand better and better that the salvation of a State lies in the observance of laws, both on the social heights and 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 this general outcry, remains the master of pushing his fantasy to the end, 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 of 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-

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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 demanded, from all sides, the removal of Pao-sse, 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 Paosse 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

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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 domination of Y-kieou, who took the crown under the name of Ping-wang (1)[22] .

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 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 695

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when she addresses the Son of Heaven, custom does not allow him to express himself, on his own account, in such a pompous manner. 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 subjects (2)[23 ] . 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 allpowerful (1)[24] , and it is already a tyranny, in an emperor, to depart, for the smallest detail, from the custom followed by the ancestors. In short, the Son of Heaven can do anything, provided he wants nothing other than 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 (2)[25 ] . 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 affair of the 696

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power, and the two questions that prevailed elsewhere: war and diplomatic relations, were completely pushed to the background.

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 abstraction (1)[26] .

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 697

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barrier threatened to be crossed, the administration acted without pity and repressed innovations with unprecedented severity, confirmed by the constant dispositions of public opinion (2)[27] .

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 regarded 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, at all 698

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never, 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 ultimate good: economy, restraint, prudence, art to win and never lose. Chinese politeness is only an application of these principles. It is, to use the English word, a perpetual cant , 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 more of 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 is showing itself big 699

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friend of lights; 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 yet another powerful encouragement to learn (1)[28] . 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 700

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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, if he persisted, to 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 idea stranger never raises her head. It would be snatched away instantly with indignation (1)[29] . 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 maxims 701

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usual, the perfect observance of which would certainly be very meritorious, but which, by the childishly obscure and dryly didactic manner in which they are exposed and deduced, do not constitute a branch of knowledge very worthy of admiration (1)[30 ]. 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 documents (2)[31] . 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 only remain 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 702

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charged with correcting their observations and even working on their almanacs. In short, they like science in its immediate application part (1)[32] . 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. For having had, thirty years, eyes and ears; For having spent nine to ten thousand watches Knowing 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 703

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designed with the same feeling as their porcelain. For architecture, they prefer above all these eight-story pagodas whose invention does not come entirely from them, having something Hindu overall; 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 press (1) [ 33] .

In China, neither free assembly nor the dissemination of ideas is prohibited (1)[34] .

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.

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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 which no other ancient or modern nation has ever achieved (2)[35] ; popular education spread everywhere, well-being of subjects, complete freedom in 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 incontestable results of which the Chinese system can boast (1)[36] . It is impossible here to avoid the reflection that, if the doctrines of these schools which we call socialist were ever to apply and succeed in the States of Europe, the ne plus ultra of good would be to obtain this that the Chinese 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 induct their 705

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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 (2)[37] .

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, a

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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. 707

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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 708

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that, among the Malays, and especially among the more purely yellow peoples, if despotism is complete, it is, at least, tempered in its action and forced to refrain from useless excesses, for lack of imagination among the subjects to do so. to be more frightened than irritated, to understand and tolerate 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 Euphrates ( 1)[38] . Egypt, In 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 the unity of which,

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according to the Roman expression, the action is summed up in these two words: reges and greges. The Arians, proud victors of whom one does not easily make subjects, wanted, whenever they found themselves masters of the inferior races, 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 rights (2)[39], was installed and maintained from the invasion of the Kschattryas until the reign of Tsin-chihoang-ti, the year 246 BC, in other words, as long as the white race retained enough virtuality to keep its main aptitudes ( 1)

[40]

. 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 (2)[41] . 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 forms. 710

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governments, 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 yellow species (1)[42] . 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 It borrowed from the Finnish species (2)[43] . was also admitted that it was an imperial grace to send a saber to a disgraced mandarin so that he could put himself to death (3)[44] 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 would diminish in strength, 711

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they were blunted, the ability to grow and develop was taken away from them, and stagnation spread irresistibly. In the 13th century 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 a 712

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same standard and to make them compete for a while 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, capable

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so with 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 try 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 that drives them has pushed them right into Chinese weakness, a day comes when, without roots in the country, although born of its women, a push of the 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. 714

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In general, their savagery has been greatly exaggerated. Thus, the Huns, the Hioung-niou of the Chinese (1)[45] , 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 (2)[46] . 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

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indifferent masters, on the ground 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 were perfect identity between the two races, the Mantchous, who have 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 716

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confine themselves 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 as intruders. 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

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subdued 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 Tsinchi-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 masse 718

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modifying, and the ancient Chinese establishment, cruelly shaken, if not overthrown, will no longer recover; 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.

Even 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

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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, 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 720

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diverse 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 only modify 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.

1. ÿ (1) Nu-oua, sister of Fou-hi, and who succeeded him, was a spirit. She had collected, in a marsh, a little yellow earth , and, with the help of a rope, she made the first man. (Father Gaubil, Chinese Chronology, 4o , p. 7.) 2. ÿ (1) Father Gaubil, Chinese Chronology. 3. ÿ (2) According to Mr. Lassen, we should not ask the Chinese for positive history 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. AD (Indische Alterthumskunde, t. I, p. 751.) — We are far from the extraordinary dates of the Hindu, Egyptian and Assyrian annals. 4. ÿ (1) Gaubil, Chinese Chronology. 5. ÿ (2) We must exclude from this judgment certain colonization and drying works 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. 6. ÿ (1) Gaubil, ouvr.cité. 7. ÿ (2) Gaubil, Treatise on Chinese Chronology, p. 2, 80, 109; Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. III, p. 758; Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 454. 8. ÿ (3) The Miao did not fail to give themselves this genealogy. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. II, p. 273.) 9. ÿ (1) Gaubil, Treatise on Chinese Ch

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10. ÿ (2) Ritter, Geography, Asia, t. III, p. 716 ; Manava Dharma Sastra, ch. X, § 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. » 11. ÿ (1) Mr. Biot relates, according to Chinese documents, that the country was civilized, between the 30th century and the 27th B.C., by a colonization of foreigners coming from the northwest and generally designated, in the texts, under the name of black-haired people. This conquering nation is also called the Hundred 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., Avertiss., p. 2, and Introduct., p. V.) 12. ÿ (1) Such is the Alpine State of Gwalior, near Ladakh and Gherwal. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, 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 warlike freedom. (Huc, Memories of a trip to Tartary, Thibet and China, t. II, p. 467, et passim, and 482.) 13. ÿ (2) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. III. 14. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 433 et passim. 15. ÿ (2) Ritter identifies this nation with the Goths, and Baron A. de Humboldt accepts this opinion. (Central Asia, vol. II, p. 130.) However, it seems to me to be based only 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-eyed. » They numbered 120,000 families. (A. de Humboldt, Central Asia, vol. I, p. 393.) 16. ÿ (3) Ritter, loc. cit. 17. ÿ (4) The Ha-kas were very tall. They had red hair, white faces, green or blue eyes. They mixed with the Chinese soldiers of Li-ling, 97 years BC (Ritter, vol. I, p. 1115.)

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18. ÿ (5) Ibid. The Chinese designated these Arian nations, whose features differed so greatly from theirs, as "having long horse faces." » (Central Asia, t. II, p. 64.) 19. ÿ (1) The Chou-king, whose composition is traced back to more than 2000 years BC, attests that the population of China accepted mixtures. Thus, I read in Part 1, 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. » 20. ÿ (2) The ancient alloys were not the only ones which introduced the blood of the white species into the Chinese masses. There were some, at times very close to us, which significantly modified certain populations of the Celestial Empire. In 1286, Kubilai ruled and introduced large numbers of Hindu and Malay immigrants into Fo-kien. Also the population of this province, like that of Kouang-tung, 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, t. III, 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, of whom they make themselves feared and respected (Huc, Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartaire, le Thibet et la Chine, vol. II, p. 75.) — Finally, other Semites, Jews, also entered China at an unknown time during the Tcheou dynasty (from 1122 BC to 255 AD). They once exercised great influence and took on the first positions of leadership. the state. Today they are very fallen, and many of them have become Muslims. (Gaubil, Chinese Chronology, p. 264 et passim.) — These mixtures of blood resulted in significant modifications in the language. The southern dialects differ greatly from High Chinese, and the man from Fo-kien, Kuang-tung or Yun-nan has as much difficulty understanding Pekingese as an inhabitant of Berlin understands Swedish or Dutch. (KF Neumann, die Sinologen und Ihre Werke, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlændischen Gesellschaft, vol. I, p. 104.) 21. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. III, p. 714. 22. ÿ (1) Gaubil, Treatise on Chinese Chronology, p. 111.

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23. ÿ (2) JF Davis, The Chinese, p. 178. 24. ÿ (1) “In China, the empire did not pass from one people to another, and the traditions necessarily remained more familiar and penetrated more deeply into minds than with us. » (Jules Mohl, Report made to the Asian Society, 1851, p. 85.) 25. ÿ (2) I mentioned above that fairly significant white infiltrations 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 Chronology, 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 mixed race. (A. de Humboldt, Central Asia, vol. I, p. 27.) 26. ÿ (1) W. v. Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, vol. II, p. 214: “The idea of happiness is represented in China, as I am assured, by a dish of boiled rice and an open mouth; that of the government, by a bamboo cane and by a second character which means to agitate the air. » 27. ÿ (2) The vigilance of the Chinese police is incomparable. We know all the concerns that the Russians and the English inspire in the imperial cabinet 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 (Burnes, Travels, t. II, p. 233.) 28. ÿ (1) “The principle of admission to administrative functions is choice in the village, promotion in the district. Without these fundamental principles, it would be difficult to seek to govern the empire. » (Tcheou-li, Commentary Weï-kiao, on § 36 of book XI, t. I, p. 261.) 29. ÿ (1) Love of the mediocre is of principle. Here is the maxim: “The minister 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, vol. I, p. 197.)

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30. ÿ (1) There is no philosophy possible where rites have regulated in advance even the smallest details of life, and where all material interests equally 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, cited work, p. 727 et passim.)

31. ÿ (2) This judgment is not absolute, it includes exceptions, and we must make a notable one, for example, in favor of Matouan-lin. 32. ÿ (1) Thus, they understand utilitarian literature well. They have good guides (an Agricultural Encyclopedia), from which excellent information on mulberry cultivation and the breeding of silkworms has already been extracted and translated. (J. Mohl, Report made to the Asian Society of Paris, 185 — 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, vol. 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 details for which, in Europe, the most spiritual and 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, vol. I, p. 29.) 33. ÿ (1) Davis, the Chinese, p. 99 : « The people sometimes hold public 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. Honours are rendered to a just magistrate, and

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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 render necessary. If these are endangered, the process of the government is of course more summary than even an information filed by the attorney general. » — Le système chinois me semble s’accorder encore avec une autre idée adoptée par les écoles libérales d’Europe : c’est la sécularisation du système m 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.) 34. ÿ (1) 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 26th § of book XXXV of the Tcheou-li: “If the people say: Kill! the deputy in charge of the brigands kills. If the people say: Be gracious! then he gives mercy. " And another commentator, Wang-tchaoyu, 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 grant full and complete grace. Only lower penalties are applied, which are less than the first. » (Tcheouli, t. I. p. 323.) 35. ÿ (2) Tchingverse from khang-tching’s commentary on the 9 Book VII of the Tcheou-li gives an excellent formula of the Chinese city. Here it is: “A 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 principles male and female which govern movement an (Tcheou-li, vol. I, p. 145.) 36. ÿ (1) “Around the year 1070 (AD), the Prime Minister of Emperor Chin-tsong, named Wang-ngan-tchi, introduced changes in market rights and instituted 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.) 37. ÿ (2) “It is an astonishing system (the Chinese organization), based on a unique idea, that of the State in charge to provide for everything that can contribute to the public good and subordinating the action of each to this supreme goal. Tcheou-kong has surpassed, in his organization, everything that the It is

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The most centralized and bureaucratic modern states have tried, and in many things they have come close to what certain socialist theories of our time are attempting..." (J. Mohl, Report made to the Asian Society, 1851, p. 89.) 38. ÿ (1) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum, t. II, Part 1, p. 374. – I, Kings, 20, 24, 25. 39. ÿ (2) “Under the first three races, the empire was entirely composed of principalities, fiefs and hereditary appanages. The men who were invested with it had greater authority over their subordinates than that of fathers over their sons, or heads of families over their properties... Each chief governed his fief as his hereditary property. » (Ma-touan-lin, cited by ME Biot, see Tcheou-li, t. I, Introduct., p. XXVII.) 40. ÿ (1) The Chinese, who today form a great imperial democracy, did not enjoy the principle of equality in the 22nd 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, Introduct., p. LV, et pass.) — Thus the Chinese, like all other peoples, only had political equality following the disappearance of the great races. 41. ÿ (2) And it is only from this moment that the national political philosophy dates. 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 Chronology, p. 90.) — The means that Tsin-chi-hoang-ti used to destroy the seigneurial 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 whole nation was disarmed. The names of the old territorial districts were abrogated, and the country was divided into thirty-six departments administered by mandarins who 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 Chronology, p. 61.) 42. ÿ (1) An event then happened absolutely similar to that which took place here in 1789, when the innovative spirit considered the destruction of the old territorial subdivisions as a first necessity. In China, we abolish the constituencies which could recall ideas

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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. (Le Tcheou-li, t. I, Introduct., XXVIII.) 43. ÿ (2) Gaubil, Chinese Chronology, p. 46 et al. 44. ÿ (3) Ibid., p. 51. 45. ÿ (1) Ritter identifies the Hioung-niou, the Thou-kieou, the Uighurs and the 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, Asien, vol. I, p. 437.) 46. ÿ (2) Ritter, Geography, Asia, t. I, p. 744, p. 1114 et pass. ; 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, vol. I, p. 436.)

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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 norm, 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 Muslim (1)[1] , several of the islands of the archipelago, such as Bali (2)[2], 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 Sea of Nations archipelago India, so that, from island to island, from group to group, the Malay populations circulated until the 729

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Polynesia of Chinese or Hindu inventions, 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, and Bali, very ancient Brahmanical emigrations brought the type of culture particular to India and the caste system. 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 imperfect (1)[3] . Long before the arrival of the Arians, invasions of yellow peoples had come to modify the blood of the black aborigines, and the Malay half-breeds, 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 mixedrace 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 natural Malay, colder, more reasoning, more apathetic, did not adapt well to the 730

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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 BoroBudor, 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 has been 731

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adopted by the Koubo, which took great care to isolate its 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 new things. 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 (1)[4] . 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-chi-hoang-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 higher than Kaempfer

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notes the presence of blacks on an island to the 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 (2)[5 ] .This would explain the physiological and moral particularities which create Japanese originality (1)[6] . 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 allowed 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 (2)[7] .

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 o 733

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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 (1)[8] , the Annamite States (2)[9] , among the Burmese (3)[10] . 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 it cast. Chinese influence came early to fight 734

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in this field the genius of the Hindu family, 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 Hlassa (1)[11] . 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 great fame and with a power 735

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mediocre, 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 them (1)[12] , the spectacle of their large rooms devastated for years, half dismantled and without roofs or windows, yet all still full 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 (2)[13 ] .

Where could this perseverance, this good will for civilization, have come from among the warlike multitudes of the 16th century, 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 branches (3)[14] .

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. By these words, relatively recent, I indicate the 2nd century BC.

These nations all had subsequent destinies which are known.

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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 Ou-soun, quite far in the same direction, on the northern slope of the Thian-chan (1) [15] .

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 the Greek historians call the Getae or Hindo-Scythians. 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 wore

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this title that the Chinese transcription has pronounced kouen-mi or houen-mo, and in which we easily find the root of the Germanic word kunig The homes of (2)[16] .

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) ( 1 ) [17]

.

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 steppe of the Kyrgyz, where, in 619 AD, having fallen

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under the subjection of the Turks, he allied himself with his conquerors and disappeared (2)[18] . 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 Hoang-ho, other white peoples lived. The Ting-ling occupied the country west of Lake Baikal; the Khou-te held the plains west of the Ou-soun; 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 Yan-thsai, Alans-Sarmatians, touched the northern end of the Caspian Sea (1)[19] .

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

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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, in the countries of Europe, it went as far as Italy and Spain, which supposes the prior occupation of the north (2) [20] ; 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 the 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 dispute (1)[21] . I have given the main proofs of this elsewhere. It was, moreover, sedentary and, moreover, despite the considerable emissions of peoples which it had made outside its borders, several of its nations still remained in the north-west of China, long after the yellow race had succeeded in breaking the resistance of the main trunk, breaking it, dispersing it and advancing towards its 740

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place in southern Asia. However, the position occupied, in the 2nd century BC, by the Yue-tchi and the Ou-soun, on the left bank of the Hoang-ho, stretching towards the upper Gobi, that is to say on the direct route of the yellow invasions, towards the center of China, is 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 territory and more naturally placed, 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.

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The Cossacks, conquerors of Siberia at the end of the 16th 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 (1)[22] . In the vicinity of these burials, we noticed, moreover, extensive remains of circumvallations, massive ramparts, and, which is still of great use to the Russians today, innumerable mining works on all the points rich in gold, silver and copper (2)[23] . The Cossacks and imperial administrators of the 17th century would have paid little attention to these remains of unknown antiquities, except, perhaps, mine openings, 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 742

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upset without pity, not without profit, for in their bosom gold has been collected in profusion. The Cossacks soon took their part in these destructive operations; but Peter the Great, having learned of it, forbade melting or destroying the objects dug up in the excavations, and ordered them to be sent to him in Saint 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 called tchoudes or daours, a little deserved honor given to the Finns, due to lack of knowledge of the real 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 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 government of Tomsk, the countryside bristles with powerful accumulations of earth and stones.

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many still reveal colossal ruins (1)[24] . 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 (1)[25] . 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 says that above the Hindus remain 744

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the Arimaspes, and he describes the Arimaspes; but above the Arimaspes reside the Gryphons, further still the Hyperboreans. All these peoples are the same semifantastic nations with which the poets of India populate Uttara-Kourou (2)[26] . I see no reason to attribute to these ghosts, which moreover hide real people and, without a doubt, of the white race, what we should refer to real men. We would be closer to the truth if we saw in the Issedons, the Arimaspes, the Gryphons, the Hyperboreans, only fragments of the ancient white society, peoples related to the Zoroastrian Arians, to the Sarmatians (1)[27 ] . What supports this opinion is that until now geographers had placed these tribes in a circle around Sogdiana and not in the Siberian north. 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 Argippeans (1)[28] , would also have given more minute and more exact details on facts also 745

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striking than those whose existence the Chud monuments proclaim. It therefore seems in no way possible to me that in the 6th century BC the entire center of Asia was the possession of a large cultivated people, extending from the Yenisei to the Amur, of which neither the Chinese , neither the Greeks, nor the Persians, nor the Hindus would ever have had either 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 of halfmythological 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 see a saddle, a 746

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bridle, stirrups, coins marked with a rose, copper mirrors, an encounter so common among Chinese and Etruscan relics, so frequent still in Tongusan yurts where these instruments are used for magical operations. They are found abundantly in the poorest Daurian tombs (2)[29] . 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 (1)[30 ] . 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 stones (2)[31] . It well suits 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

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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 believed (1)[32], are therefore the country of which the Iranians speak, the Airyanemvaëgo , 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 times (2)[33] . 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 ( 3 )[34] .

Thus, here are four Arian peoples who, since the separation of the species, have never communicated together, 748

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and who agree to place the first stay of their families in the depths of the north, in the east of Europe. 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 materialist philosophers, the one whose constantly evoked specter serves to combat

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what is most respectable and most necessary in social institutions, by definitively hunting into the kraals of the Hottentots and to the depths of the Tongan huts, and beyond that, into the caves of the Pelagians, this miserable human creature which is not not one of us, and who calls herself daughter of the apes, forgetful of a better although disfigured origin, I do nothing other than accept what the discoveries of science bring as confirmation to 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 by virtue of blind whims, not at the whim of purely brutal passions, but in accordance with the pre-established rule, called by theologians natural law, and which has no other possible source than the 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

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man, and this city is named after Enoch, the grandson of Adam (1)[35] . 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 thronged, in the second century BC, in the north of present-day 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 Kamtschatka peninsula. 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 fellows of the two 751

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other species, and knowing neither the yellow hordes nor the black tribes, had no reason to suppose that there existed men other 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 branded the two inferior groups, especially the black peoples, with this name of 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. 1. ÿ (1) The beginning of the Javanese era of Aje-Saka carries memories back to the time of Sâliwâhana, and corresponds to the year 78 AD. It was an era of Brahmanical civilization, but not of first civilization of its kind. It was only the renewal and a sort of rejuvenation of a much older Hindu domination which had seen the island occupied by very stupid Pelagian negroes. The Fo-koue-ki tells that Chinese navigators found these aborigines 752

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horribly ugly and dirty, with hair like “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 century CE, the Javanese adopted Islamism. (W. v. Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, t. I, p. 10, 11, 15, 18, 43, 49, 208.) 2. ÿ (2) Brahmanical customs and religion were, until here, preserved in Bali pure of any Mohammedan or European mixture. It is, in Raffles' judgment, the living image of what Java was like before its conversion by the Muslims. (W. v. Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, vol. I, p. 111.)

3. ÿ (1) William of Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache. 4. ÿ (1) Kaempfer, History of Japan. — This traveler, also judicious, 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 end 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 forced them to disperse throughout the earth; when the Greeks, the Goths and the Slavons passed into Europe, others into Asia and Africa, others into America, that then, I say, the Japanese also left; that, to all appearances, after traveling several years and suffering many 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.) » 5. ÿ (2) Kaempfer, History of Japan, p. 81 et al. 6. ÿ (1) Mr. Pickering, judging on his personal observations, considers the Japanese to be identical in race with the Polynesian Malays (p. 117). — 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 Cha-po. 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, Archipelago, t. III, p. 465.) 7. ÿ (2) Mr. Jurien de la Gravière has done justice to the species from Arcadia that the English travelers had installed in

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Mondes, 1852.) 8. ÿ (1) 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 earlier than the era of the Vikramaditya (two centuries BC). AD). There were fairly recent immigrations of kschattryas, then Brahmanism was stifled for some time before being reestablished in the 17th century. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. III, p. 298 et pass.) 9. ÿ (2) The Siamese are, without doubt, the most degraded people on earth, among relatively civilized nations; and what is quite remarkable is that they all know how to read and write. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, vol. 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. 10. ÿ (3) Brahmanism extends to Tonkin; he is, in truth, very disfigured. (Ritter, ibid., p. 956.) 11. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. III, p. 238, 273 et pass., 744. The religious ideas of Tibet bear witness to the extreme mixture of the race. We notice Hindu notions, 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 Catholicism imported in the 16th century by European monks and accepted in the reform of Tsong-Kaba. (Memories of a trip to Tartary, Thibet and China, t. I.) — In the 10th century, a great invasion of Kalmucks and Dzungars had almost wiped out Buddhism. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. III, p. 242.) — Since this time, and particularly under the restorative reign of Srong-dzan-gambo, there have been some immigrations of religious people from northern India, that is to say, Bouran and Népaul. (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 Darawen-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.) 12. ÿ (1) This scholar had a way, very particular to him, of exploring the regions in 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

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comfortable 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.) 13. ÿ (2) Ritter, t. I, p. 744 et al. 14. ÿ (3) The Turkic and Mongolian languages, Tongusan and its derivative, Manchu, bear marks of this considerable fact. All these idioms contain a large number of Indo-Germanic roots. (Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. I, p. 436.) — From the physiological point of view, we still observe that blue or greenish eyes and blond or red hair are frequently encountered among certain current populations of Mongolia. (Ibid.) 15. ÿ (1) Ritter, t. I, p. 431 et al. 16. ÿ (2) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 433-434. 17. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asia, t. I, p. 433-434. 18. ÿ (2) Ritter, loc. cit. 19. ÿ (1) Ritter, t. I, p. 1110 and 1114. — The Kyrgyz absorbed, at the same time, the Ting-ling and the Ha-kas. 20. ÿ (2) Invasions in the west were extremely facilitated for the yellow race 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, vol. I, p. 55.) 21. ÿ (1) The Siberian territories that it occupied were vast enough to contain it, because they measure no less than 300,000 square leagues. (Humboldt, Central Asia, vol. 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, Hami, Kharachar, pomegranates and grapes are reaching maturity. (Central Asia, t. III, p. 20.) — “Beyond Jenisseï, east of the Sayansk meridian, and especially beyond Lake Baikal, Siberia itself takes on a mountainous and pleasantly picturesque character. » (Ibid., p. 23.) 22. ÿ (1) Ritter, Erdkunde, Asien, t. II, p. 332 et pass., p. 336. 23. ÿ (2) The limit of the Chud tombs and mines stops towards the north, at 58°; and, on the south side, it goes down to 45°. The eastern extension

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to the west goes from the middle Amur to the Volga, to the eastern foot of the Urals. (Ritter, ibid., p. 337.) 24. ÿ (1) Ritter, ibid., p. 325 et al. It would seem that monuments can be distinguished into two classes, and the one to which the greatest antiquity belongs also indicates the most complete civilization. (Ibid., t. II, p. 333.) 25. ÿ (1) 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.) 26. ÿ (2) 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.) 27. ÿ (1) It is incontestable that the Arimaspes bear, in the first syllable of their name, a sort of testimony to their white origin. Could we not still find in the north of Siberia the same root are with some of its ethnological consequences? Strahlenberg relates that the Wotiaks call themselves, in their language, Arr, and call their country Arima. 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. Strahlenberg, the North and East Theil of Europe and Asia, p. 76.) Note. — Are is the Mongolian word for man, as opposed to cam, woman. (Ibid., 137.) — Likewise, arion means pure, etc. 28. ÿ (1) Herodotus, IV, 23. 29. ÿ (2) Among the Buryats, there are few tents where we do not find these kinds of mirrors hanging from the pillars. The lama uses it by making 30. ÿ (1) WC Grimm, Ueber die deutschen Runen, in-12, p. 128; Strahlenberg, das Nord und-estliche Theil von Europa und Asia, in-4o ; 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 ; only traced characters

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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, meant to write, was mêljan or gameljan whose true meaning is to paint ; email, painting, and from there, writing; ufarmêli, inscrip Grimm, About the German Runes, p. 47.) 31. ÿ (2) “In the vestibule of the museum (at Barnaul) was a sphinx carved in 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 basreliefs representing the figures of men, not very prominent and also quite crudely executed. » (CF von Ledebour, Reise durch das Altaï-Gebirge und die soongorische Kirgisen-Steppe, 1er Theil ; Berlin, 1829, p. 371-372.) 32. ÿ (1) See above, p. 430 et seq. 33. ÿ (2) Lassen, Zeitschrift der deutsch. morgenl. Gesellsch., t. II, p. 59. 34. ÿ (3) Mannert, Germania, p. 2. 35. ÿ (1) 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, who flees 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, that is to say, kept annals 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.

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BOOK FOUR. SEMITIZED CIVILIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — History only exists among white nations. — Why almost all civilizations developed in the West of the globe. CHAPTER II. — The Zoroastrians. CHAPTER III. — The indigenous Greeks, the settlers Semites; the Arians-Hellenes. CHAPTER IV. — The Semitic Greeks.

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FIRST CHAPTER. History only exists among white nations. — Why 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 7th century BC . , in the turbulent arena where the majority of white peoples will rush,

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than 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 under foot since this era of the 7th century BC, a time of renewal and almost complete transformation of white influence in the affairs of the 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 vanity

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geographical that it is permitted for a nation or a group of nations to assume a central role on the globe. It is not even granted to claim the constant direction of civilizing interests and, in this regard, I allow myself to make a very radical criticism of the famous work of Mr. Gioberti [1] . 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 social world has always oscillated in the Western countries, without ever leaving them, having, according to 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, does not discover the 761

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traces only 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 preserving work continues with energy, 762

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with awareness of the danger and by means that one could call desperate, and which would be truly romantic, if they had not given such long-lasting practical results. 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, did not come 763

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only, when they attacked him, clashing sabers, but also 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 friction with the Arian foreigner has been reiterated, and we thus arrive at the

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western territory of the world, to anterior Asia, to 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 mixedrace 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 always seemed, to those who carried it out, most worthy of being observed, collected, recorded hour by hour, while 765

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other less tormented peoples did not consider it useful to keep much memory of a always uniform social existence, despite the victories won over more or less 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, where civil society seemed, to many people, inferior to what it was under the 766

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Caesars and the Augustans, however, redoubled their zeal and achieved greater success in 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, more active therefore than the palaces of ancient Rome had it.

known.

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.

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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 natural supremacy, a incommunicable, Trieste , to monopolize 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. Motives higher than the views of must and have govern its actions, and Providence has, from the dawn of the ages, thus established the rules of social gravitation, that the most important place on the globe is not necessarily best placed to buy or sell, to transport foodstuffs or to manufacture them, to collect or cultivate raw materials. It is the one where the white group lives, at a given moment. 768

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the purest, the most intelligent and the strongest. 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 seizing too much of the confidence of a public sensitive to the influence of sesquipedalia verba, elevates itself to the disastrous role of a true heresy by giving itself the appearance of dominating, of greedy, of accommodating in his views religion, 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 769

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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 it was only when they arrived on our continent that they encountered these yellow mixtures which led them towards the utilitarian ideas adopted with more reserved by the Ariane race and too little known in 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 p The Iranians, as we will see shortly, were more 770

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realistic, more masculine than the Semites, who, being more masculine than the Hamites, make it possible to establish this progression: Blacks, 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. , in the same way 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 regions of

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north are today the most perennial, when, for long centuries, the south, on the contrary, prevailed, thus there is not, in the west of the world, climates which have not had their days of brilliance 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, at different periods, takes more account of a nation as 772

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this nation dominates more, or, in other words, that its white origin is purer. Before tackling the study of the modifications introduced to the 7th century BC in Western societies, I had to observe the application of certain principles laid down previously and to 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.

1. ÿ (1) Civil and moral primacy of Italians ; in-8o

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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 (1)[1] . There the Hellenic tribes abandoned the mass of emigration and turned west, following the mountains and the lower edges of the Caspian. The Hindus and the Zoroastrians continued to live together and call each other by the same name of Aryas or Airyas (2)[2] for a fairly long period, until religious quarrels, which appear to have acquired a great character bitterness, led the two peoples to form distinct nationalities (3)[3] .

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 successively invaded from Sogdiana, Bactria and the country

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from the 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, made up of 775

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part, led, following the usage 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 (1)[4 ] . 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 them (2)[5] . 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, one thought oneself entitled to suppose, among all their tribes, an equal measure in the proportion of 776

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mixture, it would become difficult to clinically explain 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 East the mother of cities (1)[6] , the most powerful of the primitive Zoroastrians, was almost pure of Semitic alloys, and the Persian dialect, which does not enjoy this prerogative as much, nevertheless possessed it to a certain degree, superior to the Median, less Semitized in turn than the Pehlvi, so that the blood of the future conquerors of earlier Asia preserved , in the noblest of its southern branches, a character enough Arian to explain the superiority of these.

The Medes and especially the Persians were the successors of the ancient influence of the Bactrians, who, after having directed the first steps of the family in the ways of magism, had lost their preponderance in a manner 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 that the Medes and

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the Persians brought, upon entering the political scene of the world, it was their restricted number 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 the truthful 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 coming from the northwest mountains. From this time, relatively venerable religious doctrines are linked to the name of Zoroaster borne by the first king of this Ariane dynasty (1)[7] : there is no way of confusing the prince thus called with the religious reformer ; but the presence of such a name, at the date 2234 BC, may serve to show that the Medes and Persians of the 7th century retained the same monotheistic faith as their most ancient 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. (1)[8] . 778

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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 from this fact that in the 7th century it was better, despite its alterations, than polytheism, although less abject, adopted long ago by the Hell 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 formerly elected their viç-patis (1)[10] 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 (2 ) [11] . 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. T 779

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and warriors, remained free men, in all the force of the term, even during this period when their small numbers forced them to submit to the suzerainty of the Chaldeans, and, if their exaggerated spirit of independence, pushing them to fractionation and the antagonism of the 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. Beginning by subduing the related nations established in its neighborhood, among others, the Persians (1) [12] , 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 not seen, in these wars of earlier Asia, in these rapid conquests, in these States 780

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so quickly constructed, so suddenly overturned, as unconnected strokes of hand, a series of events devoid of deep causes, and therefore of significance. Let us not accept such a judgment. The last Semitic emigrations had ceased to descend the mountains of Armenia and 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 (2)[13] . 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. Se 781

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also recognizing incapable of fighting against the imperceptible power of of the themselves kings of the Greek pirates, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, Arians who called

sea, as did their relatives the Scandinavian Arians later, the Egyptians had resorted to the prudent resolution of sequestering themselves 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 close, however, that a completely unexpected actor, 782

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who suddenly came rushing onto the stage, did not completely disturb 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 it (1)[14] . 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 refuge. 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 (2)[15] . The Celts were fewer in number than their antagonists. They were beaten and dispersed. The Scythians 783

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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 success (1)[16] . 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, freed 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.

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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 remained only the single 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 too closely united; only a nuance was established between the rulers, and this did not last long; because the Persians understood the need to subdue their strength a little

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uneducated in the school of the more experienced Medes. Thus, it soon turned out that the kings of the house of Cyrus (1)[17] had no scruples about placing the most skillful of the latter in the first ranks. There was therefore a real sharing of power between the two sovereign tribes and the other more Semiticized Iranian peoples (2)[18] . 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 human beings and defiled the purity of the holy flame of the pyre (1)[19 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. We 786

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now took care of 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 Interests are more regularly treated, more regularly taken care of. 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 much (1)[20] . 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. Assyrian (2)[21] . 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

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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 large salaries. . However, the monarchs of so many regions, 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. Would they not have had a personal disposition to conceive beauty, since the masterpieces of previous dynasties were copied for them, and they themselves constructed immense buildings on all points of their vast possessions? of all kinds, they gave artists, if 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,

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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 peak, then it degenerated no less quickly, falling into the monstrosities into which the too-hasty Melanian predominance threw it. 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 castes, and the artistic feeling, which the first flow had developed, remained stationary, ceasing

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quickly to progress, and thus could take much longer than in Assyria to 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. To become truly strong, he had to wait for the coming of Sakya-mouni: as soon as the Buddhists, by calling the impure tribes to share the nirwana, had opened up access to some white families, the passion for the arts developed Salsette, with no less energy than at Nineveh, quickly reached, as there again, its zenith, and, always for the same cause, almost suddenly plunged into the follies that exaggeration, the predominance of the Melanian principle, brought on 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 back the bulk of the Assyrian nations 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.

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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 was only to last for 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 draws, in his VIIth book, this admirable picture of the army of Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, he 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 their backs 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 791

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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 by 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 (1)[22 ] . 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 little kingdoms beyond 792

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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 the effort of a campaign (2)[23] .

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 (1)[24] .

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,

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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 Persians took much account of the Assyrians and 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 true. 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, 794

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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 imagine that people are part of the ordinary disdain of vigorous and positive minds for artistic natures rather 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 in 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 on their side amassed results. 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, an exuberance

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hopeless 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, like the most ancient invaders, their tribes had been able to fight against the number of Semitic multitudes, this would not have been so. A 796

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brand new organization forming 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 Smerdis (1)[25] .

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

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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 maintains it nonetheless (2)[26] . 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. I am therefore going to leave the Iranian group to take care of the new Arian people, who appear to be its most worthy and even its only antagonist. END OF VOLUME ONE. 798

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1. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde. 2. ÿ (2) Burnouf does not doubt that the oldest and most authentic texts of the Zend-Avesta fix the primitive stay of the Zoroastrians at the foot of the Bordj, on the banks of the Arvanda, that is to say say in the western part of the Celestial Mountains. (Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I, additions and corrections, p. CLXXXV.) 3. ÿ (3) Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. I, p. 516 et passim. — The Zend-Avesta, the book of this Protestant law, itself recognizes that there was, in previous times, another faith. It is that of ancient men, the Pischdadians (Persian). 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 ZendAvesta the ancient men, as opposed to those who lived after the separation from the Hindus, and who are named in Zend nabânazdita (contemporaries) and, in Sanskrit, nabhanadichtra, d 'after one of Manu's sons, deprived of his share of the paternal inheritance, according to the Rigveda. (Burnouf, Commentary on the Yaçna, vol. I, p. 566 et passim.) 4. ÿ (1) Herodotus, Clio, XCVI. 5. ÿ (2) See Klaproth, Asia polyglotta, p. 62. — This philologist notes 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. (Cited work, p. 76.) — This assertion supports the system of interpretation of medical inscriptions proposed by M. de Saulcy. 6. ÿ (1) The Bactrians, in zend Bakhdi, are the Bahlikas of the Mahabharata. They 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, vol. I, p. 297; see also AF v. Schack, Heldensagen von Firdusi, in-8o , Berlin, 1851; Enleit., p. 16 and passim; see also Lassen, Zeitsch. fd K. d. Morgenl., who identifies the Bactrians with the Afghans, whose national name is Pouschtu, t. II, p. 53.) — The name Balk, (Persian) given to the city of the Bactrians, is not the oldest that this city has had. It was previously called Zariaspe. (Burnouf, Comment. on the Yaçna, notes and clarifications, t. I, p. CXII.) 7. ÿ (1) Lassen, Indische Alterth., t. 1, p. 753 et passim. 8. ÿ (1) Kaïanien, comes from Kaï, a syllable which precedes the names of several kings of this Zoroastrian dynasty: thus Kaï-Kaous and Kaï-Khosrou. This

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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, t. 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, through so many centuries, they produced numerous and enduring traditions which constitute the most notable part of the Shahnameh. 9. ÿ (2) Like all religions, in times of faith, magism was what we call, today, 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, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie (Dresden, In-8°, 1826), vol. I, p. 25 et passim.) 10. ÿ (1) The word used by the Schahnameh to designate the royal dignity vividly recalls the doctrines indepe Féridoun bears the title of schahr-jar, (Persian), (the friend of the city). — On the ante-Islamic sources from which Firdousi drew the traditions he uses, see AF de Schack, Einl., p. 52 et passim. 11. ÿ (2) All the facts which make up the history of the formation of the Median kingdom are related by Herodotus, with his power of ordinary coloring, Clio, XCVIII and passim. 12. ÿ (1) The Mahabharata knows the Persians, it calls them Parasikas. But at that distant time 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.) 13. ÿ (2) Movers, das Phœniz. Alterthum., t. I, 2nd part, p. 415. — This decadence was so profound, 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 for a moment the upper hand over their old and feared adversaries. In the 7th century, their influence prevailed in Phenicia. The Medes soon got the better of this relative energy. 14. ÿ (1) Movers, t. II, 1st part, p, 419. 15. ÿ (2) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterthum., t. II, Part 1, p. 401 et passim, and 419. 16. ÿ (1) Herodotus, Clio, CVI. 17. ÿ (1) The names of the first Persian sovereigns strongly suggest the primitive identity of Zoroastrian notions with the Hindus, and even

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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, as the tribe of dissident kschattryas, inhabiting the right bank of the Indus, the Kambodyas. (Lassen, Indische Alterth., vol. I, p. 598.) — It is curious to note that the inhabitants of Hindu Koh today call themselves Kamodje. Before the Afghan conquests, their territory went as far as the Indus. (Lassen, Zeitschrift fd K. d. Morgenl., t. II, p. 56 et passim.) 18. ÿ (2) It would even be necessary to admit that the Bactrians, this most anciently civilized branch of the Zoroastrian family, had their share of supremacy under the dynasty of Darius, if we adopted Mr. Roth's idea. This scholar argued that the Achaemenids were Bactrian vassals of the Persian kings. (Roth, Geschichte der abendlændischen Philosophie (Mannheim, 1846, in-8o ), t. I, p. 384 et passim.) However, this hypothesis needs to be further studied. 19. ÿ (1) Darius Hystaspes also forbids them from eating dog flesh. The 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: “Et 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, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, t. I, p. 373.) 20. ÿ (1) The successor of the false Smerdis expressed himself thus in the inscription of Bi-Soutoun: “Darius the king said: In all these provinces , I have given favor and protection to the laboring man. The lazy one, I punished him severely. » (Rawlinson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol . order. (Schack, Heldensagen von Firdusi, p. 11.)

21. ÿ (2) Layard, Niniveh und seine Ueberreste, Leipzig, 1850, p. 340. — I only had at my disposal Mr. Meissner's translation, which was excellent. The learned English traveler discusses in a rare manner the relationships of the Persian style with the models of Assyria and Egypt. 22. ÿ (1) Burnouf, Commentary on the Yaçna, t. I, p. 351. — This scholar, by citing the passage from Herodotus on which this opinion is based, raises some doubts as to its significance. I will limit myself to transcribing here

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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, or altars to the gods. On the contrary, they treat those who do it as foolish. This is, in my opinion, because they do not believe, like the Greeks, that the gods have human form. They are in the habit of sacrificing to Jupiter on the summits of the highest mountains, and give the name Jupiter to the entire circumference of the sky. They still make sacrifices to the sun, the moon, the earth, the fire, the water and the winds, and at all times only offer them to these deities. But they subsequently added the cult of Celestial Venus or Urania, which they borrowed from the Assyrians and Arabs. The Assyrians give Venus the name Mylitta, the Arabs that of Alitta, 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. (Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, vol. I, p. 27.) 23. ÿ (2) We have seen elsewhere the Egyptians defend themselves, or even sometimes attack, when absolutely necessary, by means of their mercenary troops. The Greeks made the nerve of it. (Wilkinson, Customs and Manners, etc., vol. I, p. 211.) 24. ÿ (1) It was the government's taste for foreign auxiliaries which had 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.) 25. ÿ (1) Herodotus, Thalia, LXXX et passim. 26. ÿ (2) Herodotus, Thalia, LXXX.

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CHAPTER III. The indigenous Greeks; Semitic settlers; the Arians Hellenes.

Primordial Greece appears half Semitic, half It was Semites who founded the aboriginal[1] . 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, is said to be born on the same soil, and forms the popular base of the newly emerged States. But the remarkable fact is that, in the primordial ages, we nowhere see the slightest historical trace of the Arian 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.

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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 ChamoSemitic 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. She 804

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terror at first and only grasped late. 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, attaching ourselves to other resources, see what Deucalion himself was, well recognized as Hellene , by later centuries, since it is proclaimed the very eponym of the breed. 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 tribes[2]

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: 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, made a people with the stones of the

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ground, it is difficult not to be reminded, when observing them, of the very similar myth from Chinese history, where Pan-Kou formed the first men with clay, although he was a man himself. Arian-Greek and ArianChinese thought has only found, at immense distances, 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 half-Semite, it seems, was the son of Prometheus and Klymene, from We the Ocean[3] .

feel very clearly here the deviation from the pure source, from which Prometheus came. If Deucalion becomes the eponym of his descendants, it is because 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

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believe, will not be able to combat this conclusion: the Arians Hellenes before Deucalion, the Arians Hellenes, still almost intact from all mixtures either Semitic or aboriginal, these are the Titans (1)[4 ] . The regularity of the parentage leaves nothing to be desired.

Until then, it has been irrefutably established that the Greeks are halfbreed 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 undoubtedly themselves, as we see, the Arians, and spoke a language whose remains, surviving within the

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Hellenic dialects, were undoubtedly close, in a very intimate way, to Sanskrit, Zend, Celtic, and 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 peoples (1)[5 ] . 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 (1) [6 ] .

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. melt (2)[7] .

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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 period, had left the Siberian homeland centuries ago 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 Arians Hellenes some proportion of yellow principles due only to the intermediary of nations tainted with a

more intimate contact with the Finnish peoples [8]

.

After the time of Deucalion, dating from the sixteenth century BC [9] the tribes settled in Macedonia, , Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, the north, in a word, united, to a degree very particular, the traits of the Arian character and were the first to make the name of the Hellenes known.

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There especially shone the warlike spirit. The Thessalian hero, the light-footed brave, always remains the prototype of Hellenic courage. As the Iliad shows us, he is a vehement warrior, friend of danger, seeking the fight for the sake of the fight, 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

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mercenaries to all of Asia and, on occasion, a great statesman to the Hellenic homeland. The blood of northern Greece had its border at Thebes [10]

.

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, the Iliad to characterize the genius, both Arian and Finnic, of the northern Greeks. I draw no less help from it when I seek to represent to myself the Arian-Semitic 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

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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: he himself 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, skillful in governing his passions as much as 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. Onne

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It is hardly 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 be no more difficult to discover a root of the same species in his than it is to identify him with Phra (1) [ 11 ]

.

The name Inachus has been compared to the word Anak, whose ethnic importance M. de Ewald and other Hebraists have highlighted. If this name were to have, as for the first king of Argolis, a racial significance, it 813

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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 Seir. 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 why, for the word Kabl, (in Arabic) frequent 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 (1)[12 ] .

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 special (1)[13] . To explain this competition of so many nationalities on a narrow peninsula 814

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and almost separated from the world, it is necessary never to lose sight of what enormous disturbances the agitations of the Finnish peoples were bringing 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 defeated and new victors, some tribes enslaved, others driven out, so that, after the fight, tumultuous crowds set out again, either to head west and reach Sicily, Italy, Illyria, or to return to the Asian coast and seek better fortune (2)[14] . 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 already the violent expulsions, the dispossessions of tribes 815

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whole, revolutions of all kinds have 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° 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° Phoenicians — Black Hamites; 5° Arabs and Hebrews — Very mixed Semites; 6° Philistines — Semites perhaps purer; 7° Libyans — almost black Hamites; 8° Cretans and other islanders — Semites quite similar to the Philistines. It This table needs to be commented (1)[15] . 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:

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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 more Assyrian, nothing more Egyptian, and, in place, a compromise 817

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for which I can find no other name than that of Asian. However, the main 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 callin 818

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entirely barbaric, apart from themselves, 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 were over, always and traditionally supported by the policy of the sovereigns of Assyria. However, on the fortune of the colonies depended that of the metropolises (1)[16] .

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 give reason for this contradiction 819

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apparent, I only have to recall a reservation listed 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 asid 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 Nothing of the spirit is more of independence guarded in the(1)[17 exercise of his power than Agamemnon, the king of kings; 820

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nothing more limited in his power than the able sovereign of Ithaca. Opinion is king in these large villages (2)[18] , where there are, undoubtedly, no newspapers (3)[19] , but where the ambitious, more or less eloquent, are not lacking in the business disruption. 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 Mountains (1) [20] . 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 bore their arrogance in the azure, and this memory remained so master of the thought of the following generations, that when black polytheism had 821

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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, not was nothing other than for the Olympians 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 it 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 at risk. 822

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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 her of Asian descent (1)[21] . 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 823

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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.

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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 after (1) [22] . 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 resources left: there was the slave, the formerly 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 the proclamation of the following principle: “The white man is only made for

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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, that is to say a man, to servitude and that oppression, when limited to individuals of the species black and yellow, 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 encountered 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 and black slaves, there were nevertheless mixed-race ones and then white ones, through 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 correct one is that by virtue of a very ancient extension, the inhabitants of the colonies, nor the allies, nor the peoples with

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which we had relations of hospitality; 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 serfdom (1)[23] . The essential difference was that the subject populations did not inhabit the dwellings (2)[24] of 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. These men, Perrhebes and Magnetes in Thessaly (1)[25] , and Periœkes in Laconia, 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.

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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 people's pastor. 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 times (2)[26] is 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: 828

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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, and it is the bad understanding of what is productive (1)[27] , 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 well-being 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. He was happy to take care of the trees in the orchard, prune them, prune them. In short, the work of the slaves was not accomplished without the participation of the warrior, while the women, gathered around the wife, weaved

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with her to 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 home. 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

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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 Asian immigrations and revolutions of all kinds occurring in the interior disturbed the original relations, and the Semitic instinct began to make itself felt more strongly, 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 the dawn of 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 dazed from the long milking that his 831

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male authors across so many countries and chances, had not yet found the leisure to refine themselves. 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 would 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 Asia (1)[28] .

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, thoughtless temperament, 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 consistent with its needs, and it was able, so strong was it, to leave its associate only appearances to satisfy this taste for freedom if

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indelible in white nature, that, when the thing does not exist, it is then above all that we seek to put the word in relief. 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 submitting to the regularity of dynastic heredity (1)[29] , he did not want an institution which, for him, had never drawn its origins from the free choice of the people, but always from conquest and violence, and, often, in foreign violence. I only make an exception for the Jewish kingdom. It was therefore imagined, in Greece, to create a fictitious person, the Fatherland (2)[30] , and the citizen was ordered, by all that man can imagine that is most sacred and most formidable, by law, the prejudice, the prestige of public opinion, to sacrifice to this abstraction one's tastes, one's ideas, one's habits, even one's most intimate relationships, even one's most natural affections, and this daily self-sacrifice, at all times, was only the small change of 833

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this other obligation which consisted of giving, on a sign, without allowing a murmur, one's dignity, one's fortune and one's 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 her own children, 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 never 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. entire

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guilty, 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. These are all the compensations, and even then I have not exhausted the list of charges (1)[31] .

The word homeland ultimately covered a pure theory. The homeland was not flesh and blood. She did not speak, she did not walk, she did not command verbally, and, 835

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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 now 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.

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Before going any further, it is essential to insert here an observation of great importance. All of the above applies to learned, civilized, half-and 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 it was necessary to reach Macedonia and Epirus to find itself in the amidst 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 837

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called the homeland. 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 their fellow populations before marching to conquer the Assyrian States. Thus, the Arian torch, I mean the political torch, really burned, although without flashes and without flashes, in the

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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, according to the Greek expression (1)[32] , and they exercised it naturally, as this absolute and unanswerable power could be exercised, with a harshness worthy of the Asian coast. 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 half-Semitic 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 d 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 found in a 839

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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, freely, 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 do so.

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miss. In the absence of ambition, he went for his own good and his head (1)[33] .

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 the 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 no less an assembly without restraint

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of ambitions, vanities, passions, human 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 just sense, the sole possessor of an absolute right is easily content with a certain share in this omnipotence, and finds both little pleasure and no point of interest in extendi 842

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prerogatives until they break. 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 this be so. Their reigns were a series of conspiracies and tortures. Rarely did they continue until their death, even more rarely did their children inherit their scepter (1) [34] . 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 (2)[35] .

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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 (1)[36] . The nobles, it is true, no longer possessed much nobility, since many of their fellow citizens had as much as them (2)[37] . Semitic blood predominated in the cottages: it had also spread to the palaces.

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Violent convulsions ensued, and the rich soon prevailed (3) [38] . 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 bulk of the citizens once again asked the question previously submitted to the leaders of the country (1)[39] , also found themselves worthy of governing and defeated 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 among themselves; 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. 845

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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 Semitic Greek element to be influenced by 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 expeditions of the Lacedaemonians (1)[40] succeeded, the end was for the vanquished to swell the herds of slaves of the

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triumphant. 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 defeats. disastrous (2)[41] . 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 allow Persian influence to grow without obstacle, to perpetuate 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 847

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terrible contraction of the spirit of each locality, the reunion of the race was made 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, like, according to it, everything that was done with a view to the homeland. 848

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was good, also nothing was good that 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 infamies, and shaped

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in advance, slaves that they were, to the acceptance of all turpitudes. On this I refer to the dialogues of Aristophanes' Demos with his servants (1) [42] . 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 best of times, between the Battle of Marathon and the Peloponnesian War, all eminent men inclined toward the vague opinion that today we would call conservative. They were not aristocrats, in the true sense of the word (1) [43] . 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 with more regularity than when it 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 of the Knights. But, ultimately, even if the government of the bourgeoisie and the rich had been consolidated, the radical vice of the system would not 850

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remained no less. 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 851

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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 character 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 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 now have 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 beauty and 852

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nobility, as well 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, c that is to say in the Ionian colonies and in Athens (1)[44] .

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 this question (2)[45] . But because the Greeks were much more steeped in the white and Arian principle than the black Hamites, the regulating force existing in their minds was also more considerable, and, besides the experience of their Assyrian predecessors, 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 we also knew among the 853

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Hellenes the 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. 854

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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 approximately calculate that the artistic and literary activity of the Semitized Greeks was born around the 7th century, at the time when Archilochus flourished, 718 years BC, and the two bronze casters Theodore and Rhœcus, 691 years BC. -C. The decadence began after the Macedonian era, when the Asian element decidedly prevailed, in other words towards the end of the 4th century, which gives a period 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 Aeginetans, and practiced throughout the Greece, or degenerations of this art in use on the Phoenician coast.

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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, from the beginning of the 7th century until the 5th, there was no originality, and the national genius strictly speaking only existed from approximately the year 420 until the year 322, the time of the death of Aristotle. 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.

years.

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. She predates Archilochus, since Homer lived in the 10th century.

I forget nothing. However, I do not invalidate my reasoning either, and I repeat that the great period of 856

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literary and artistic glory of Greece was that where 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, unskillful and uninspired on all the others (1)[46] . 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 singers (2)[47] , composed his stories at the time when the coast of Asia was covered by the very close descendants of the Arian tribes coming from the Greece. His supposed 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, a region which, of all the southern parts of Greece, later retained the utilitarian spirit, testimony to the Arian influence.

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During the period when this influence reigned, the abundance of his productions was extreme, and the number of lost works is extraordinary. For the Iliad and the Odyssey that we know, we no longer have the Aethiopics of Arctinus, the Little Iliad of Lesches, the Cypriot Verses, the Taking of Oechalia, the Return of the Victors from Troy, the Thebaid, the Epigones, Arimaspies (1)[48] , 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 remain forever without rival, because racial combinations similar to those which caused it can no longer be represented.

1. ÿ A few words about these aborigines whom historical times have 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 Phlegy

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Grote, History of Greece, t. I, p. 238, 262, 268, et t. II, p. 349; Larcher, 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. 2. ÿ The names of the different characters of the Arian-Hellenic genealogy, obviously symbolic, are rather qualifications representing the main trait, summarizing the history of the life 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 ÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Deukos) (unusual), new wine, and ÿÿÿÿ (aleô), old form of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (alindeô), to roll, l the man who rolls around (in the intoxication of) new wine. — The name ÿÿÿÿÿ (Purrha), which contains the meaning of red, does not present such a clear explanation. — Pandora, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Pandôra), the one to whom everything was given, 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. 3. ÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Prometheus) the foreseeing. He is the son of Iapetus, the common father of the 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. 4. ÿ (1) Hesiod derives the word ÿÿÿÿÿ, from ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ, those who stretch out their hands. This meaning was given the significance of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, and those to whom it had been attributed were made kings par excellence. Likewise the Zoroastrian Arians called their ancestors, probably contemporaries and brothers of the Titans, Kai, or Kava, th Pseudo-Orpheus and Diodorus represent the Titans as the first

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humans, typical men. (Diodorus, III, 57; V, 66.) — The Thessalian dialect had faithfully preserved the trace of the ancient idea, and ÿÿÿÿÿ designated the lord, the leader. (See Bœttiger, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie (Dresden, in-8o , 1826), t. II, p. 47 et passim.) 5. ÿ (1) It is very likelythat it can be considered a monument of titanic legislation these prescriptions of Busyges, which, it is said, were the source of the code of Draco. Three commandments made up 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 ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ or ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, in which the sacrificer, after having struck his victim, fled, abandoning the ax , who was on trial. (Bœttiger, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, t. II, p. 267.) 6. ÿ (1) 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-8o t. I, p. 7.) - This feature, and others, which identify them with the natives of Italy, will be used later to demonstrate that they could only be Celts or Slavs, and, perhaps, both. 7. ÿ (2) From there will emerge, with a thousand nuances, the Arians Hellenes, new people, in a certain sense, although in front of their energy to attenuated ancient elements. What this race had in particular is well represented by its religion, of the same age as itself. It 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, t.

I, p. 195.) 8. ÿ Very likely Greek contains Thracian and Illyrian roots 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.)

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9. ÿ We see at first glance how humble the most distant antiquities of Greece are in comparison with what we observe in India, in Assyria, in Egypt, even in China, and what Bactria could show. Thus Sicyone only dates from the year 2164 BC. It is a Chananean foundation, and the arrival of the Arians Hellenes, six centuries later, throws the still prehistoric childhood into the mature ages of primitive societies. of Hellas. 10. ÿ Thebes perfectly fulfilled the role of boundary between two races. 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, vol. I, p. 350.) — It is these mixtures of Asian, Hellenic-Arian and aboriginal traditions which for a long time made primitive 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. 11. ÿ (1) The existence of Egyptian colonies in early Greece today has many more adversaries than supporters. (See on this subject Pott, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, Indo-germanischer Sprachstamm, p. 23, and Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. I, p. 32.) — The latter does not think that before the 7th century there were ongoing relations between Greece and the land of the Pharaohs. 12. ÿ (1) The Chanaanite (Chanaanite) anak, which means a man remarkable for the elevation of the height and the length of the neck, that is to say a giant or a strong man, and hence a master , is 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 ÿÿÿÿ, given to the gods, mainly to Apollo, by Homer, and to the Dioscuri, ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ, 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 (Hebrew), anér, a designation given to themselves by the Canaanites, is the etymology of ÿÿÿÿ which, for the contemporaries of Pericles, meant a man, vir. (Bœttiger, vol. I, p. 206.) 13. ÿ (1) This state of antagonism never ended. It continued to be represented by the existence of countless dialects. — Needless to say, the classification into four branches, Ionic, Doric,

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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 specific to it. (Grote, vol. I, p. 318.) 14. ÿ (2) The race of Dardanus and Teucer, one of those who carried the Arian-Hellenic element into the Troad, was among the latter. 15. ÿ (1) I am of the opinion of Grote (Hist. of Greece, t. II, p. 350 et passim): I do not believe in the Pelasgians, as forming a distinct race or nation, and the word means ancient inhabitants too well for me to 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 the Casci , that is to say the elders, the ancestors and the aborigines, that is to say, primitive inhabitants. The name Pelasgians was 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 by 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 Crimea. » (Encyclop. Ersch u. Gruber, 2nd sect. 18th part., p. 18.) 16. ÿ (1) The fact which best demonstrates this state of affairs is the attitude of the majority of States Greeks 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 s 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.) 17. ÿ (1) “Between the different degrees of hellenic chivalry a certain equality at all times prevailed, which the fewness of their numbers comprises with the population amidst whom they dwelt and the hereditary pride of a dominant race, alike tended to preserve. We fin

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doric nobles, too, in after times, assuming to themselves the epithet of the Equals. » It is an entirely similar feeling and of a strictly similar ethnic origin, which made the name of peers, an exact translation of the Greek ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, so dear to the nobility of the Middle Ages. (W. Torrens Mc. Cullagh, The industrial History of free Nations (London, 1846, in-8o p. 3.)

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18. ÿ (2) 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, vol. II, p. 346.) 19. ÿ (3) Poets, like Hesiod and Homer, seem to have been outspoken against excesses and probably also the simple use of power. (Hesiod, Works and Days, p. 186.)

20. ÿ (1) See in the first volume the note on the Arian Vourounas, the Hindu Varouna and the Greek ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, and especially what was said about the Deus, then about the Titans. 21. ÿ (1) Certain Athenian families seem to have been able to bear this testimony truthfully. The Gephyres, from which Harmodius and Aristogiton descended, had a Chanaanite (Hebrew) name geber, geberim, the strong, the powerful, the leaders. (Bœttiger, vol. I, p. 206.) 22. ÿ (1) This doctrine must have been very solidly attached to the spirit of the Hellenic tribes, by the Arian 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 plight 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.) 23. ÿ (1) “As a birthright the Hellenes claimed both in peace and war, exclusive sway; and their kings are depicted as endowed with unlimited power over the earth-born multitude. » (Mc. Cullagh. t. I, p. 6.) 24. ÿ (2) These residences were chivalrous citadels surrounded by huts. 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, vol. I, p. 22.) — Let us say in this regard that in Italy we have for too long attributed to the aboriginal populations these vast and solid constructions called

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pelasgic or cyclopean. The agricultural tribes which made up these socalled indigenous 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 Tyrrhenians. The Mycenae Gate is also an essentially Hellenic construction. 25. ÿ (1) Grote, History of Greece, t. II, p. 370 et passim. 26. ÿ (2) Grote, t. II, p. 113. — The Greek woman of Homer is infinitely superior to the wife of civilized or Semiticized ages. See Penelope, Helen, in the Odyssey, 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.) 27. ÿ (1) The general prejudice of the Arian races also generates this incapacity: for them, the first notion of the right of property is conquest, and, as an English historian puts it very well, “the Hellenic idea of property was spoil whether acquired by land or sea. » (Mc. Cullagh, t. I, p. 18.) 28. ÿ (1) We have made immense progress in the understanding of Hellenic mythology. 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. 29. ÿ (1) “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, t. I, p. 21.) 30. ÿ (2) “In the days of the monarchy the word which subsequently was used to denote a city (ÿÿÿÿÿ) and finally a state, signified no mote than the castle of the prince. » (Mc. Cullagh, t. I, p. 22.) — Likewise, in our feudal era, we hardly used the word homeland, 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.

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31. ÿ (1) Modern admirers of Greek patriotism all expose it, more or less, like Mr. Mc. Cullagh. Here is the definition of this economist: “However they (the Greek states) might 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 contemner 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. 32. ÿ (1) They were also called, as among us, well-born people, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ. 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.) 33. ÿ (1) As long as all republics were aristocratic, and where they remained so, tyrants emerged from 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, t. I, p. 36.) — It is in the painting of popular despots that Aristophanes excels. See Knights, Peace , etc., etc. Tyranny was the leprosy from which all Greek governments had to suffer without ever being able to cure it. It was their essence. 34. ÿ (1) 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.) 35. ÿ (2) “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 Asiatic civilization, in southern Greece, is found in this, that the monetary system and weights and measures introduced

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in 947 by Pheidon, king of Argos, and which was called eginetics because it had 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.) 36. ÿ (1) This question was asked almost everywhere in Greece beyond 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, t. I, p. 31.) 37. ÿ (2) Gradually also, they had lost the preponderance given by the possession of the soil and the 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, were allied with them and thus degraded. (Ibid., t. I, p. 25.) 38. ÿ (3) 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 (ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ), was the college of nobles; the other, the boule (ÿÿÿÿÿ), the assembly of the rich. (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 26.) — These are the two chambers of the English parliamentary system. 39. ÿ (1) In Cumae, every man owning a horse had a voice in the assembly. In Ephesus and Eritrea, where a sort of representative regime was practiced, representatives of the people sat with the nobility. (Mac Cullagh, t. I, p. 25.) 40. ÿ (1) C’est ce qui rendait les naturalisations d’étrangers fort difficiles dans les États doriens. « A rigid exclusiveness characterised 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 said to have acted otherwise ; and the interest of Corinth, not to speak of less important mercantile states, tended in the like direction. » (Mac Cullagh, t. I, p. 256.) — Mixtures did not take place any less, 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.

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41. ÿ (2) Mr. Bœckh, a great supporter of Athenian freedom, paints the saddest picture 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 rebellious populations, and 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, it is the state of friendship that I have just depicted from the learned pages of M. Boeckh. Of the thousand allied cities that Aristophanes had in the Wasps, 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. (Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, vol. I, p. 443.) 42. ÿ (1) 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), 1st 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 since three hundred years on the relative merit of the different governments of antiquity. (See also Bœckh, die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, t. I, p. 35 et passim.) — This scholar goes into details which agree with Clarac's opinion. 43. ÿ (1) There are 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.)

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44. ÿ (1) Movers, das Phœnizische Alterth., t. II. Part 1, p. 413. 45. ÿ (2) Bœttiger, about the oldest way of representing, on monuments, the kidnapping of Ganymede, where the little boy is roughly carried away, all crying, by the hair clutched 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, hœchste Kraftaüsserung). This is clearly the Assyrian principle and the mark of its lessons. (Bœttiger, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, vol. II, p. 64.) 46. ÿ (1) “It is the epic poetry which forms at once both the undoubted prerogative and the solitary jewel of the earliest era of Greece. » (Grote, t. II, p. 158 and 162.) 47. ÿ (2) 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.” » The Iliad and the Odyssey seem only to be composed 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.) 48. ÿ (1) The loss of this poem is very regrettable. He would have taught us a lot about the Arians of Central Asia. (Grote, vol. II, p. 158 and 162.)

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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, entering into 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 is marked by numerous struggles between the aborigines, the Semitic settlers from 869

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long established and pouring in 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 most of the Greek nations were constituted in isolation (1)[1 ] . 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 (1)[2] . 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; It is enough for me to speak of their sons, the 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 at 870

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the archonship 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 Arian (2)[3] . The constitution of Lycurgus did not completely disappear until around 235, after a duration of 632 years (3)[4] . 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 reigned either the Pisistratides, or the thirty tyrants instituted by the 871

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Lacedaemonians. 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, into 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 half-Semitic 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. His giovenil furore gave no regard 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 have fun

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to replenish 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. (1)[5] . After as before the battle of Plataea, the situation find this one: 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.

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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. Flawless in their beauty. Both sisters of the same race (1)[6]. » 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 wake up as a Persian province, perhaps very happy to be so 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 numerous corps in their armies 874

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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 orator, 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, skilful 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, 875

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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, made a front to the Asians and showed them a brand new opponent. 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 pro 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 exist, in the form in which they had them. found.

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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. It is not necessary 877

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However, do not decide 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 eastern Iranians had not stopped contracting with 878

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blood alliances. 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 to 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 not be

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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 Greece had not been enslaved when the great king had been hers, she was now enslaved when she had marched towards him; she found herself absorbed in her own victory. Semitic blood engulfed everything. Marathon and Plataea were erased under the poisonous triumphs of Arbelles and Issus, and the Greek conqueror, the Macedonian king, transfiguring himself, had become the

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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 took moderation in the ideas of art, which led her to imitate the processes and forms 881

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Hellenic; 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 which makes its merit, is eclecticism; she constantly aspired to the secret of reconciling irreconcilable elements, debris of the societies whose death made her 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 882

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by words. From then on, to mark the highest possible degree of intellectual perfection, we became accustomed to using the term atticism, an ideal to which the contemporaries and compatriots of Pericles would have had difficulty aspiring. The name of Hellène was placed below; further down, derivatives such as Hellenizing, Hellenistic were arranged in order to indicate measures 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 the 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 conquerors of Troy, if they had returned from hell, would have sought in vain

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their descendants; they would have only seen bastards on the site of Mycenae and Sparta[7] . 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.

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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 honored the Athenian anarchy with 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 by 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 th 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 the road, and when asked 885

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the generating cause of the state of morals and ideas, he does not know how to 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 20th century BCE, formed, I imagine, of one third Arian blood, one third white Hamite blood and one third Negro, did not resemble an Egyptian of the 8th century, 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 8th century, although degenerate, nevertheless still had a nationality, an originality. He no longer possessed, without doubt, the virtuality of the ancestors of whom he 886

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was the representative; nevertheless the ethnic combination from which he came continued, in some way, to be particular to him. From the 5th century 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 formerly had created civilizations specific to these points on all the various points,

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or who, having received them already alive, had modified and sustained them, sometimes even improved them, had since then been absorbed into the corrupting mass of subordinate elements, and, having lost all vigor, left the national spirit without direction, without initiative, without force, alive, without 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. However, the different proportions in the combination of lower ethnic principles continued eternally where ancient civilizations had reigned. The Greek, the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Iranian of the 5th century were hardly the descendants of their homonyms of the 20th century: we saw them more closely related to each other by an equal shortage of active principles; 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.

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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 only be established (I say could not, because the example has not yet presented itself in the history of the world) except by bringing about not only the degeneration of the multitudes, but their almost complete return to the normal abilities 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 recorded in history, the first two families from Central Asia descended so far to the west and south of Africa that we still do not know where. find the limit of their waves. However, we can attest, through the analysis of Semitic languages, that the black principle has

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everywhere gained the upper hand 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.

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to extend 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 invigorating 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 Parthians (1)[8] , an Ariane nation mixed with yellow, which, early Semiticized 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 891

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in the final consequences of the final bastardization, India was moving on its side, although with unparalleled slowness and resistance, towards 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. The victory, ringing with haughty fanfares, proclaimed the name of Latium and Rome showed up.

1. ÿ (1) Hellenic nations often claim to be autochthonous; 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 find half-natives, that is to say people who are neither entirely Arians nor

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entirely Semitic. Their genealogies go back to Lélex and the topical nymph Kleocharia. (See Grote, t. I, p. 133, 230, 387.) 2. ÿ (1) Cumae, Argos and Cyrene also retained the name of king (ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ) for their principal magistrate, usually invested with the command of the army and general presidency (ÿÿÿÿÿ). (Mac Cullagh, vol. I, p. 15.)

3. ÿ (2) 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 Poenestes, 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 migratio They had no mythical fame, and are not even named in the Iliad. 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. 4. ÿ (3) Mr. Mac Cullagh seriously attributes the decline and fall of Sparta to the 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, vol. I, p. 208 and 227.) — But Mr. Mac Cullagh, in his capacity as a freetrader antiquarian, has a particular horror of the Dorian race. I doubt he will overcome O's completely contrary preferences. Müller (die Dorier). The German scholar is a very tough antagonist. 5. ÿ (1) The dates are persuasive: the battle of Plataea was won on November 22, 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 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

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made 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; Bœckh, die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, t. I, p. 429.) 6. ÿ (1) Aeschylus, the Persians. 7. ÿ We follow, with great ease, the transformations of the Lacedaemonian population. At the battle of Plataea, the city of Lycurgus had put 50,000 combatants on line, namely: 5,000 Spartans and 7 Helots per Spartan, or 35,000 armed Helots, 5,000 hoplites 5,000 peltastes

Périœkes.

Total 50 000 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 ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (neodamôdeis). 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) 8. ÿ (1) They spoke Pehlvi and then substituted Parsi, to which a greater number of Semitic roots flowed, 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 calls Parada. He allies them with the Saka (Sacæ), certainly Mongols. The Parthians give, through their ethnic comparison, a fairly fair idea of what several Turanian races must have been like.

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BOOK FIFTH. SEMITIZED EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION.

CHAP. IER. — Primitive populations of Europe. CHAP. II. — The Thracians. — The Illyrians. — The Etruscans. — The Iberians. CHAP. III. —Les Galls. CHAP. IV. — The aboriginal Italian peoples. CHAP. V. — The Tyrrhenian Etruscans. — Rome Etruscan. CHAP. YOU. — Roman Italianate. CHAP. VII. — Semitic Rome.

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FIRST CHAPTER. Primitive populations of Europe.

For a long time it was considered impossible to discover between the Bosphorus of Thrace and the sea which borders Galicia, and from the Sund to Sicily, any point where men belonging to the yellow race, Mongolian, Ugrian, Finnish, in a word, to the race with slanted eyes, flat noses, obese and squat build, have ever found themselves established in such a way as to form one or more permanent nations. This opinion, so well accepted that it has hardly been controversial until recent years, was not based on any demonstration. It had no other reason for being than an almost absolute ignorance of the conclusive facts, the totality of which, today, overthrows and erases it. These facts are of different nature, belong to different orders of observations, and the body of evidence that they compose is completely rigorous[1] . A certain class of very irregular monuments, of very great antiquity, and occurring, almost, in all countries of Europe, has long preoccupied scholars. Tradition, for its part, attaches a number of legends to it. They are sometimes raw stones in the shape 897

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obelisks erected in the middle of a moor or on the edge of a coast, sometimes a kind of granite box made up of four or five blocks, one or two at most of which serve as a roof. These blocks are always of gigantic proportions, and only exceptionally bear traces of work. In the same category are piles of stones, often very considerable, or rocks balanced so as to vibrate under a very slight impulse. These monuments, most of them of an extremely striking form, even for the most inattentive eyes, have led scholars to propose several systems according to which honor should be given to the Phoenicians, or else to the Romans, perhaps to the Greeks. , better still to the Celts, or even to the Slavs. But the peasants, faithful to the beliefs of their fathers, reject, without knowing it, these very diverse opinions, and award the objects in dispute to the fairies and the dwarves. We will see that the farmers are right. It is with legendary stories as with the philosophy of the Greeks, in the judgment of Saint Clement of Alexandria. This Father compared it to nuts, initially harsh to the taste of the Christian; but if you know how to break the bark, you find a tasty and nourishing fruit.

The architectural creations of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, or even the Slavs offer nothing in common with the monuments in question here. We have works from all these peoples at different ages; we know the processes they used: nothing recalls what we have here before our eyes. Then, another reason

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otherwise powerful, and, even without reply, we find standing stones, cairns and dolmens in a hundred places where the conquerors of Tire and Rome, where the merchants of Marseille, where the Celtic warriors, where the Slavic laborers did not never happened. We must therefore consider the problem again and very closely. Starting from this unanimously recognized principle that all the antiquities of Western Europe called into question here are, in terms of their style, prior to Roman domination, we establish an assured chronological basis, and we hold the key to the problem. I insist on this circumstance that it is only a question here of the date of the style, and in no way of that of the construction of this or that monument in particular, which would complicate the overall difficulty with many uncertainties of detail. We must first stick to as general a presentation as possible, even if it means going into more detail later. Since the armies of the Caesars occupied all of Gaul and part of the British Isles in the first century BCE, the generating system of Gallic and Breton antiquities dates back to more ancient times. But Spain also has monuments perfectly identical to these (1)[2] . Now the Romans took possession of this country long before establishing themselves in Gaul, and, before them, the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians had sent there abundant imports of their blood and their ideas. The people who erected the Spanish dolmens cannot therefore have imagined them 899

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subsequent to the first Phoenician migration or colonization. In order not to deviate from even excessive caution, it is good not to use this certainty to its full extent. Let's go no further back than the third century BC. You have to be bolder in Italy. There is no doubt that the constructions similar to the Gallic and Spanish monuments found there predate the Roman period, and, what is more, the Etruscan period. Here they are pushed back from the third century to the eighth at the very least. But, because the antiquities that we have just seen in the British Isles, Gaul, Spain and Italy, derive from an absolutely the same type, they naturally inspire the thought that their authors belonged to the same race . As soon as this idea presents itself, we want to test its value by calculating the diffusion of this race according to that of the monuments which reveal its existence. We therefore cease to remain confined within the four countries named above, and we seek, outside their limits, if nothing similar to what they contain can be found elsewhere. We arrive at a result which at first frightens the imagination.

The area then open to view extends from the two southern peninsulas of Europe, covering Switzerland, Gaul and the British Isles, across the whole of Germany, envelops Denmark and the south of Sweden, Poland and Russia, crosses the Urals, embraces upper Siberia, passes the Behring Strait, encloses the meadows and forests 900

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North America, and will end towards the banks of the upper Mississippi, if it does not go lower (1)[3] . We will agree that, if it were necessary to award either to the Celts or to the Slavs, not to speak of the Phoenicians, nor the Greeks, nor the Romans, such a vast series of regions, we should, at the same time, expect to meet all the other categories of antiquities that these countries contain as identical to each other as are the monuments whose abundance leads to drawing these vast limits. Whether the aborigines of so many countries were Celts or Slavs, they will have left remains of their culture everywhere, easily comparable to those described in France, England, Germany, Denmark, Russia, and which we know, with certain science, can only be attributed to them. But, precisely, this condition is not On the same grounds as the raw stone constructions, deposits of all kinds abound, proof of human industry, which, differing radically from country to country, clearly accuse the sporadic existence of very distinct nationalities to which they belonged. So that we contemplate in the Gauls remains completely foreign to those of the Slavic countries, which are in turn to Siberian products, like these to American products.

Unquestionably, therefore, Europe possessed, before any contact with the cultivated nations of the banks of the Mediterranean, Phoenicians, Greeks or Romans, several 901

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layers of different populations, some of whom only held certain provinces of the continent, while others, having left similar traces everywhere, obviously occupied the entire country, and this at a time most certainly before the eighth century BC. The question which now presents itself is to know which are the oldest of the various classes of primitive antiquities, or those which are sporadic, or those which are widespread everywhere. Those which are sporadic show a degree of industry, technical knowledge and social refinement much higher than those which occupy the largest space. While the latter only exceptionally show traces of the use of metal instruments, the others offer two periods where bronze, then iron, present themselves in the most skillfully varied forms; and these forms, applied as they are, cannot leave the slightest doubt that they were the property here of the Celts, there of the Slavs; because the testimony of classical literature excludes any hesitation. Consequently, since the Celts and the Slavs are the last known owners of European land prior to the eighth century which preceded our era, the two periods called by skillful archaeologists the Bronze and Iron Ages also apply to these peoples. They embrace the last days of the primordial antiquity of our countries, and we must postpone 902

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beyond their limits an older era, rightly described as the Stone Age by the same classifiers (1) [4] It is to this that the monuments which are the subject of our study belong. .

One point still remains which might seem obscure. The ingrained habit of not seeing anything in Europe before the Celts and the Slavs can induce certain minds to be convinced that the three ages of stone, bronze and iron only mark gradations in the culture of the same races. It would be the still wild ancestors of the skillful miners, the industrious artisans whose works many recent discoveries allow us to admire, who would have produced the crude monuments of the most distant period. So much barbarity could be explained by a state of social childhood, still ignorant of the technical resources created later.

An unanswered objection overturns this hypothesis, which is also fundamentally unacceptable for many other reasons (1)[5] . Between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the only difference is the greater variety of materials used and the increasing perfection of the work. The governing thought does not change; it continues, modifies, refines, goes from good to better, but while remaining within the same data. On the contrary, between the productions of the Stone Age and those of the Bronze Age, we note, at first glance, the most striking contrasts; no transition from one to the other, as for the essential: the creative feeling is transformed from the whole to the whole. The instincts, the needs which are satisfied, are not

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do not match. Therefore the Stone Age and the Bronze Age are not in the same relationships of cohesion where In the first case, the latter is with the Iron Age (2)[6] . there is a transition from one race to another, while, in the second, there is only a simple progress within races, if not completely identical, at least very closely related. Now there is no doubt that the Slavs have been established in Europe for at least four thousand years. On the other hand, the Celts fought on the Garonne in the eighteenth century BC. So here we are, step by step, arriving at this conviction, the mathematical result of all the above: the Stone Age monuments predate, in terms of their style, the year 2000 BC; the particular race which constructed them occupied the countries where they are found before any other nation; and as, moreover, they appear in greater abundance as the observer, leaving the south, advances further towards the northwest, the north and the northeast, this same race was even more primitively and, in any case, more solidly sovereign in these latter regions. If we want to fix in an approximate way the probable time of the apogee of its strength, nothing prevents us from accepting the date of 3000 years BC, proposed by a Danish antiquary, as ingenious an observer as he is a profou What now remains to be positively determined is the ethnic nature of these primordial populations so widely distributed in our hemisphere. Well certainly they are linked in the most 904

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intimate to various groups of the yellow species, generally small, stocky, ugly, deformed, of very limited intelligence, but not zero, crudely utilitarian and endowed with very predominant male instincts (2)[8 ] . Attention has recently been focused, in Denmark (3)[9] and Norway, on enormous piles of oyster shells and shells, mixed with very brutally worked bone and flint knives. Skeletons of deer and wild boars are also exhumed from this detritus, from which the marrow has been removed by fracture. Mr. Wormsaae, in analyzing this discovery, regrets that research similar to that which led to it has not taken place until now on the coasts of France. He has no doubt that observations similar to those he had the opportunity to make in his homeland would emerge, and above all he thinks that Brittany would be explored with great advantage. He adds: “Everyone knows how common these piles of shells and bones are in America. They contain instruments no less crude (than those found in Danish and Norwegian rubbish), and attest to the stay of ancient aboriginal tribes. » These monuments are of such a particular type, and so little suited to striking the eye and attracting attention, that it is easy to explain the obscurity which has covered them for so long. The merit is all the greater for the observers to whom science is indebted for a present, certainly very curious, since it results at least in a strong presumption that the north of Europe has traces 905

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identical to those still offered by the beaches of the New World in the vicinity of the Behring Strait. It also allows us to comment on another find of the same kind, even more interesting, made a few months ago, near Namur. A Belgian scientist, Mr. Spring, removed from a cave in Chauvaux, a village in the commune of Godine, a pile of debris doubly buried under a layer of stalagmite and under another of silt, among which he recognized fragments of calcined clay, vegetable charcoal, then bones of oxen, sheep, pigs, deer, roe deer, hares, finally women, young men and children. A curious feature which is also noticed in the detritus of Denmark and Norway: all the marrow bones are broken, both those which belonged to individuals of our species and the others, and Mr. Spring rightly concludes that the authors of this edible deposit were cannibals (1)[10] . This is a taste foreign to all tribes of the white family, even the most fierce, but very frequently observed among American nations. Moving on to another type of observation, we find as remarkable objects certain earthen mounds which, by the roughness of their construction, have nothing in common with the Arian burials of upper Asia, any more than with these sumptuous tombs which we can still observe in Greece, in the Troad, in Lydia, in the Palestine, and which testify, if not to a very refined artistic taste among their builders, at least to a high 906

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conception of what greatness and majesty are (1)[11] . Those in question here only consist, as has just been said, of simple accumulations of clay or chalky earth, depending on the quality of the soil which supports them. This envelope contains unburned corpses, with several piles of ashes alongside them (2)[12] . Often the body appears to have been placed on a bed of branches. This circumstance recalls the sepulchral fagot of the aborigines of China. These are very elementary, very wild burials. They have been encountered almost everywhere within European regions. However, very similar constructions, offering the same particularities, also cover the upper Mississippi valley. ME-G. Squier claims that the skeletons buried in these tombs are so fragile that the slightest touch turns them into dust. This is a reason for him to attribute excessive antiquity to these corpses and to the monuments which contain them (1)[13] . Such mounds, always similar, erected in America, in the north of Asia and in Europe, reinforce the idea that these countries were once possessed by the same race, which could only be the yellow race. They are everywhere close to long earthen ramparts, sometimes double and triple, covering spaces of several miles in a straight line. There are such between the Vistula and the Elbe, in Oldenburg, in Hanover. Mr. Squier gives such precise details on those of North America, and, what is better, such conclusive drawings, that we cannot 907

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can retain the slightest doubt about the complete identity of the thought which governed these defense systems. We must infer from these sufficiently numerous facts and concordant: That the yellow populations coming from America and accumulated in the north of Asia, once overflowed over the whole of Europe, and that it is to them that we must attribute all of these crude monuments of earth or raw stone which everywhere testifies to the unity of the primordial population of our continent. We must give up seeing in such works results which could not have emerged from the sporadic culture, and moreover well known today to have been more developed, of the Celtic nations and the Slavic tribes. This point established, it still remains to follow the march of the Finnish people towards the West to see, with the means of action at their disposal, the details of the works which they carried out and which astonish us today. This will, at the same time, recognize the main features of the social condition in which the first inhabitants of our European land found themselves.

Moving slowly across the steppes and frozen marshes of the northern regions, their hordes had before them a path that was most often flat and easy. They followed the edges of the sea and the course of the great rivers, places where the forests were sparse, where the rocks and mountains lowered and provided passage. Devoid of energetic means to clear paths through obstacles that are too powerful, or at least unable to use them

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that with a great expenditure of time and individual strength, they applied to daily use only flint axes poorly fitted with a tree branch. To carry out their coastal navigation in the Arctic Ocean or along the river banks, or even in regions cut off by large swamps, they used canoes made of a single tree trunk felled and hollowed out with fire, then trimmed as well as possible. only poorly using their imperfect instruments. The peat bogs of England and Scotland contained and have delivered to modern curiosity some of these vehicles. Many are fitted with wooden handles at their ends, intended to facilitate carrying. There is one that measures no less than thirty-five feet in length. We have just seen that, when it came to throwing down a few trees, the Finns used the process still in use today among the wild peoples of their native continent. The woodcutters made slight cuts in an oak or fir trunk, using their flint axes, and made up for the insufficiency of these tools by a patient application of burning coals introduced into the holes thus prepared (1)[ 14 ] . Judging from the remains that exist today, the main settlements of the yellow men were along the sea and rivers. But this data cannot, however, provide a rule without exception. We find quite numerous and very important Finnic traces in the interior. Mr. Mérimée, clarifying this point, very judiciously pointed out

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the existence of monuments of this kind in central France (2)[15] . We see it even further. The emigrants of the primitive yellow race experienced, in terms of countries with difficult access, the solitudes of the Vosges, the valleys of the Jura, the banks of Lake Geneva. Their stay in these different parts of the interior is attested by vestiges which could only come from them. We can even recognize them with certainty in some parts of northern Savoy (1)[16] , and the skilful research of Mr. Troyon on very ancient dwellings, buried today under the waters of several lakes in the Switzerland, will probably one day put beyond doubt that the Finnish fishermen had placed the piles of their miserable cabins right on the shores of Lake Zurich (2)[17] . It is appropriate to quickly give a nomenclature of the main species of debris which can only have belonged to the aborigines of the yellow race, these debris which northern archaeologists unanimously consider to bear the stamp of the Stone Age. I have already mentioned the piles of edible shells, bones of quadrupeds and human beings, mixed with stone knives, bones and horn; I have also mentioned the axes, the flint hammers, the canoes made from a single tree trunk, and the remains of dwellings on stilts which have just been observed, for the first time, on the banks of several Swiss lakes. To this background, we must add arrowheads made of stone or fishbone, spear points and hooks for fishing at the same time. 910

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materials, buttons intended to secure skin clothing, pieces of amber, either pierced or raw, balls of clay dyed red to be threaded and used as necklaces (1)[18], finally pottery often very strong large, since there are some which serve as beer for entire corpses, alongside which food appears to have been placed. But what dominates everything else are the architectural productions, the particularly striking side of these antiquities. Their main and dominant feature, the one which creates their particular style, is the complete, absolute absence of masonry. In this method of construction, only large blocks are used. These are the menhirs, or peulvens, called in Germany Hunensteine (2)[19] ; obelisks of rough stone, of greater or lesser height, sunk into the ground, usually up to a quarter of their total elevation; cromlechs, Hunenbette, circles or squares formed by series of blocks placed next to each other, and covering an often quite extensive space. They are still dolmens, heavy huts, built of three or four fragments of rock joined together at right angles, covered with a fifth mass, paved with flat pebbles and sometimes preceded by a corridor in the same style. Often these monstrous hovels are open on one side; in other cases, they present no outcome. They can only be tombs. In certain parts of Brittany, they are counted in groups of thirty at a time; Hanover is not

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no less richly endowed (1)[20] . Most contain or did contain, at the time they were discovered, unburned skeletons. Both by their mass, which makes them the most visible monument that the Finnish race has produced, and by the debris they contain, the dolmens must be considered as one of the most conclusive testimonies to the presence of yellow peoples on a given point. The most careful excavations have never been able to reveal metal objects, but only those kinds of tools or utensils, as elementary in material as in form, which have been listed above. The dolmens still have a precious character, it is their wide distribution. We know them all over Europe. Now come the cairns, which are hardly less common. These are piles of stones of different dimensions (2)[21] . Several contain a corpse, still unburned, with a few bone or flint objects. There are examples where the body is placed under a small dolmen erected in the We also see one of these center of the cairn (3)[22] . monuments which has a solid base and seems to have only had a purely commemorative or indicative purpose. There are very small ones, but also enormous ones: that of New Grange, in Ireland, represents a mass of four million quintals. The combination of the dolmen and the cairn is only an imitation, often suggested by the nature of the terrain, of a similar meeting of the dolmen and the tumulus (1)[23] . On 912

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reports specimens of this species almost everywhere, among others in Latium, near Civita-Vecchia, twenty-two miles from Rome, not far from ancient Alsium and Santa Marinella. There is still one in Chiusa, another near Pratina, on the site of Lavinium (2)[24] .

The skeletons taken from the dolmens have made it possible to observe, among the first inhabitants of the land of Europe, certain talents that we would certainly not have been inclined, a priori, to suppose in them. They knew how to perform several surgical operations. American burial mounds had already offered proof of this by providing observers with heads containing false teeth. A recently opened dolmen, near Mantes, yielded the body of an adult man whose tibia, fractured like a flute, presents an artificial fusion.

It is all the more curious to find this type of knowledge among the yellow race, as, among the pure or mixed descendants of the Melanian variety, we do not see a vestige of it at the corresponding periods. The art of relieving suffering has hardly gone, among the latter, beyond the use of simple and external topicals. The interior of the human body and its structure were completely unknown to them. It is the continuation of the horror that the dead inspired in them, a horror entirely of imagination, born of the superstitious fears which long preceded respect, and which prevented any curiosity from venturing into a domain considered formidable. On the contrary, the yellows, defended by their phlegmatic temperament against the excess of impressions of this kind, very little considered

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solemnly the spoils of their conquests. Anthropophagy provided them with all the desirable opportunities to learn about the osteology of man. The very care of their sensuality by leading them to study the nature of bones, in order to know, at the right time, where to find the marrow, gave them practical experience. This is how the current inhabitants of southern Siberia show themselves to be so learned. Their anatomical knowledge, with regard to the different categories of animals, is as sure as it is detailed (1)[25] . From the habit of seeing skeletons, of handling them, of breaking them, to the idea of mending a broken limb or filling a cell, the passage is extremely short. It takes neither extraordinary intelligence nor a very advanced degree of general culture to overcome it. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that the Finns knew how to do it, because this explains a fact that has remained enigmatic until now, the filling of diseased teeth among the most ancient Romans, a habit to which an article in the law of the XII Tables. This medical process, unknown to the populations of Greater Greece, came from the Sabine tribes or the Rasenians, who could only have received it from the former yellow possessors of the peninsula. This is how good comes out of evil, and how osteology, with its beneficial applications, has its primary source in anthropophagy.

If we have any right to be surprised at having been able to draw such conclusions from the examination of the skeletons found 914

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in the dolmens, we were justified in expecting the means of physiologically specifying the ethnic character of the populations to which they belonged. Unfortunately the results obtained so far have not justified this hope: they are very poor. The first difficulty is that we have few whole bodies. Most often, corpses, altered by inevitable accidents following such long centuries of burial, offer only an object of very incomplete examination. Too frequently, too, the explorers, ignorant or clumsy, did not spare them enough when entering their asylums. In short, to this day, physiology has added nothing very conclusive to the evidence offered by other orders of knowledge concerning the primordial stay of the Finns on the entire surface of the continent of Europe. As this science has also not succeeded in demonstrating the typical identity of the skeletons found in different places, it cannot even be used to recognize whether or not the ancient population was very numerous. To form an opinion in this regard, we must return to the evidence provided by the monuments which, moreover, are found in such astonishing abundance.

Already the ubiquity of the dolmen tended to establish that the invaders had penetrated into the center, into the mountainous regions of our part of the world. Poorly provided with the material means to make these invasions easy, they must have only been determined to do so by a superabundance of numbers which made it impossible for them 915

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continue to live all clustered together at the first disembarkation points.

This powerful induction is further reinforced by a direct argument, a material argument which captures the conviction in the strongest way, by increasing the list of Finnic monuments with the description of the most vast, the most astonishing of which we have yet known (1 ) [26] .

The Seille valley, in Lorraine, occupied today by the towns of Dieuze, Marsal, Moyenvic and Vic, formed, before man set foot there, only an immense muddy swamp without bottom, created and maintained by a multitude of saline springs, which, piercing from all sides under the muck, did not leave a stable and solid place. Surrounded by heights, this corner of the country was, moreover, as inaccessible as it was habitable. A Finnish horde judged that it would be possible for it to retreat there, sheltered from all attacks, if it succeeded in creating terrain capable of supporting it.

To achieve this, she made, with clay from the surrounding hills, an immense quantity of pieces of earth kneaded by hand. We still find today, on those fragments that are exhumed from the mud, the recognizable traces of the fingers of men, women and children. Sometimes, to shorten his work, the wild worker has taken it into his head to take a block of wood and cover it with a thin layer of clay. All these fragments thus prepared were then subjected to the action of fire and transformed into bricks that could not be more irregular, whose

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The largest, which are also the rarest, are about 25 centimeters in circumference and approximately equal in length. Most have only much smaller dimensions. The materials thus prepared were transported to the marsh, and thrown pell-mell on the mud, without mortar or cement. The work extended in such a way that the artificial raft, covered today with a layer of solidified mud seven to eleven feet deep, is, in its thinnest parts, three feet high, and in the most thick about seven. Thus was created on the abyss a kind of crust which time has made very compact, and which is obviously very solid, since we see it supporting several cities, inhabited by a total population of twenty-nine to thirty thousand souls. The extent of this bizarre work, known in the country under the name of Marsal brickwork, appears to be, as far as the surveys carried out in the last century by the engineer La Sauvagère were able to make it known, of one hundred and ninety-two one thousand square toises under the town of Marsal, and eighty-two thousand four hundred and ninetynine toises under Moyenvic. By comparing the different measurements, Mr. de Saulcy calculated approximately, and taking care to moderate, even to the extreme, all his assessments, the number of arms and the duration of time essential to complete this singular monument of barbarism and patience, and he found that four thousand current workers, using the 917

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same processes, not having to worry about the extraction of clay, nor the transport of this material to the handling sites, nor the cutting, nor the transport of the wood necessary for cooking the bricks, nor finally that of these bricks on the immersion points, and operating for eight hours a day, would take twenty-five and a half years to reach the end of their task. From this we can judge the importance of the work carried out. It is hardly useful to say that it was not such conditions which governed the construction of the Marsal brickwork. It was not, I say, workers regularly and solely required to do their work who carried it out. It was brought to an end by families of barbaric workers, acting slowly, clumsily, but with an imperturbable perseverance that counted for nothing both time and trouble. It is also probable that, in the minds of those who were the first to get to work, bricklaying was not to acquire the extent that it did. It was only to the extent that the population, favored by the security of the place, was recruited and spread there, that the opportunity could be felt to make corresponding increases in the common residence. Several centuries therefore passed before the foundation was able to support masses of certainly respectable inhabitants, because so much effort was not spent to create empty spaces. If it were possible to organize intelligent excavations on this ground, and to probe with a little happiness the 918

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mud which covers it, or better still those whose abysses it hides, it is to be presumed that we would discover many more Finnish remains there than we could hope for anywhere else (1)[27 ] . These populations of men of yesteryear, these tribes whose remains are preferably found on the banks of seas, rivers, lakes, even within marshes, and which seem to have had a very particular attraction for the proximity of waters, must certainly appear very rude; However, we cannot deny them the instincts of a certain degree of sociability, nor the power of certain conceptions which are not devoid of energy, although they are totally devoid of beauty. The arts were obviously not the business of these people, judging by the very miserable drawings that we know of them. Ornamented pottery is found quite often in dolmens. Single, double or even triple spiral lines recur almost constantly. It is even rare that there is anything else there, apart from a few serrations. The appearance of these arabesques is completely reminiscent of the compositions with which the American natives still embellish their gourds. These spirals, the main feature of Finnic taste, and beyond which a sterile invention could hardly have gone, are seen not only on vases, but on certain architectural monuments which, being an exception to the general rule, bear some traces of cutting. . It is likely that these constructions 919

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belong to the most recent periods, to those where the aborigines had at their disposal either the instruments, or even the assistance of a few Celts, a very ordinary circumstance in times of transition. A large dolmen, at New Grange, in the Irish county of Meath, is not only decorated with spiral lines, it also has pointed entrances. Another, near Dowth, is even embellished with a few crosses inscribed in circles. It's the ultimate. At GavrInnis, near Lokmariaker, Mr. Mérimée observed sculptures or rather engravings of the same kind. There is also, in the Cluny museum, a bone on which the image of a horse has been cut quite deeply. All this is very poorly done, and without anything that reveals an imagination superior to the execution, an observation that we so often have reason to make in the worst works of the Melanian mongrels. Still, it is not certain that the last object is Finnic, although it was found in a cave and covered with a sort of stony matrix which seems to assign it a fairly distant antiquity. So far I have only demonstrated by way of comparison and elimination the primordial presence of yellow peoples in Europe. No matter how strong this method is, it is not enough. It is necessary to resort to more direct elements of persuasion. Fortunately they are not lacking. The oldest traditions of the Celts and Slavs, the first of the white peoples who inhabited northern and western Europe, and, therefore, those who kept 920

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the most complete memories of the old order of things on this continent, are rich in confused stories having as their objects certain creatures completely foreign to their races. These stories, by being transmitted from mouth to mouth, through the ages, and through several heterogeneous generations, have necessarily long lost their precision and undergone considerable modifications. Each century has understood a little less what the past has given it, and this is how the Finns, objects of what was at first only a fragment of history, have become heroes of blue tales, supernatural creations. They passed very early from the domain of reality into the cloudy and vague environment of a mythology very particular to our continent. They are now these dwarves, most often deformed, capricious, wicked, and dangerous, sometimes, on the contrary, gentle, caressing, sympathetic and of a charming beauty (1)[28] , however always dwarves, whose bands never cease not to inhabit the monuments of the Stone Age, sleeping during the day under the dolmens, in the heather, at the foot of the standing stones, at night spreading across the moors, along hollow paths, or even wandering at the edge of lakes and springs, among reeds and tall grass. It is an opinion common to the peasants of Scotland, Brittany and the German provinces that the dwarves mainly seek to steal children and place their own infants in their place (1)[29] . When they succeeded 921

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to fail the supervision of a mother, it is very difficult to snatch their prey. This can only be achieved by beating the little monster they have substituted. Their goal is to provide their offspring with the advantage of living among men, and as for the stolen child, legends are everywhere unanimous on what they want to do with it: they want to marry it to someone from them, with the specific aim of improving their race (2)[30] . At first glance, we are tempted to find them very modest in envying something of our species, since, through the longevity and supernatural power that we attribute to them, they are very superior and very formidable to the sons of Adam. But there is no need to reason with traditions: as they are, we must listen to them or reject them. The latter option would be unwise here, because the indication is precious. This ethnic ambition of the dwarves is none other than the feeling found today among the Lapps. Convinced of their ugliness and their inferiority, these people are never happier than when men of better origin, approaching their wives or daughters, give the father or the husband, or even the fiancé, the the hope of seeing his hut inhabited one day by a half-breed superior to him (3)[31] .

The countries of Europe where the memory of the dwarves has been preserved the most vividly are precisely those where the background of the populations has remained the most purely Celtic. These countries are Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Germany. The tradition has, on the contrary, weakened in the south of the 922

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France, Spain, Italy. Among the Slavs, who suffered so many invasions and upheavals from very different races, it did not disappear, far from it, but it was complicated by foreign ideas. All this is easily explained. The Celts of the north and west, subject mainly to Germanic influences, received them and lent them notions which could not completely eliminate the substance of the first stories. The same goes for the Slavs. But the Semitic populations of southern Europe were early acquainted with legends from Asia, which, completely disparate from those of ancient Europe, absorbed their attention and demanded almost all their interest. These little dwarfs, these child thieves, these beings so convinced of their inferiority vis-à-vis the white race, and who, at the same time, possess such beautiful secrets, immense power, profound wisdom, do not are no less held, by public opinion, in a most humble and even truly servile situation. Those are workers (1)[32] , and especially minor workers. They do not disdain to mint counterfeit money. Retreating into the bowels of the earth, they know how to manufacture, with the most precious metals, the finest weapons. However, it is never for heroes of their race that they intend these masterpieces. They make them for the men who alone know how to use them. It sometimes happened, says the Fable, that minstrels, returning late from a village wedding, encountered, on the moor, after midnight, a crowd of very busy dwarves. 923

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at the crossroads of sunken roads. Other rustic witnesses saw them moving in swarms at the foot of the dolmens, their usual residences, wielding heavy hammers and strong pincers, transporting blocks of granite, and pulling gold ore from the bowels. of the earth. It is especially in Germany that adventures of the latter kind are told. Almost always these industrious workers gave rise to the remark that they were singularly bald. It will be remembered here that weakness of the hair system is a specific trait among most Finns. On many occasions, it is no longer miners who have been caught busy at their nocturnal work, but decrepit spinners or even little washerwomen beating the laundry with all their heart, on the edge of the swamp. It is not even necessary for the Irish, Scottish, Breton, German, Scandinavian or Slavic villager to leave his home to have such encounters. Many dwarves huddle in the farmhouses, and are of great help in the laundry room, the kitchen, and the stable. Careful, clean and discreet, they do not break or lose anything, they help the servants and farm boys with the most meritorious zeal. But such useful creatures also have their faults, and these faults are great. Dwarves are universally thought to be false, treacherous, cowardly, cruel, greedy to excess, drunken to the point of fury, and as lascivious as Theocritus's goats. All the stories of undines in love, stripped of the ornaments that

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literary poetry attached to it, are as unedifying as possible (1) [33] . The dwarves therefore have, by their qualities as by their vices, the physiognomy of an essentially servile population, which is a mark that the traditions which concern them were originally formed at a time when, for the most part at least, they were already fallen under the yoke of white emigrants. This opinion is confirmed, as well as the authenticity of the stories of modern legend, by the very recognizable, very obvious traces that we find of all the facts that it indicates and attributes to the dwarves, of all, without any exception, in the highest antiquity. Philology, myths, and even the history of the Greek, Etruscan and Sabine eras, will demonstrate this assertion. Dwarves are known in Europe under four main names, as old as the presence of white peoples. These names belong, by their roots, to the most ancient of the languages of the noble species. These are, subject to a few minor alterations of form, the pygmy words fad, gen and nar. The first is found in a comparison from the Iliad, where the poet, speaking of the cries and tumult which rise from the ranks of the Trojans ready to begin the fight, expresses himself thus: “In the same way the clamors of the cranes rise to the sky, when, fleeing the winter and the incessant rain, they fly in 925

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shouting towards the Ocean River, and bringing murder and death to the pygmy men. » The fact alone that this allusion is intended to make the listeners of the poem clearly understand what was the attitude of the Trojans ready to fight, proves that we had, in Homer's time, a very general and very familiar notion of the existence of pygmies. These little beings, living on the side of the Ocean River, were to the west of the country of the Hellenes, and as the cranes went to look for them at the end of winter, they were to the north; because the migration of passing birds takes place at this time in this direction. So they lived in Western Europe. It is there, in fact, that we have until now recognized them by their works.

Homer is not the only one in Greek antiquity who spoke of them. Hecataeus of Miletus mentions them, and in fact they are tiny plowmen reduced to cutting their wheat with an axe. Eustathe places the pygmies in the boreal regions, towards the height of Thule. He makes them extremely small, and does not give them a very long life. Finally, Aristotle himself takes care of them. He declares that he does not consider them fabulous in any way. But he explains the minimal size attributed to them by rather poor reasons, saying that it is due to the comparative smallness of their horses; and as this philosopher lived at a time when scientific fashion wanted everything to come from Egypt, he relegated them to the sources of the Nile. After him the tradition becomes more and more corrupted in this direction, and Strabo, like Ovid, only gives information

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completely fantastic, and which could not find their place here.

The word for pygmy, ÿyÿÿÿÿÿÿ, indicates the length from fist to elbow. Such would have been the height of the little man; but it is easy to understand that questions of size and quantity, everything that requires precision, is especially mistreated by legendary stories. History, even the most correct, is not immune to exaggerations and errors of this kind. ÿyÿÿÿÿÿÿ is therefore the counterpart of Tom Thumb in French tales, and Daumling in German tales. Assuming this etymology is irreproachable for the historical eras, which knew how to give the word the form congruent with the idea they made it convey, there is no reason to be fully satisfied with it and to stick to it for which belongs to an earlier era, and, consequently, to healthier notions. From this point of view, the lost primitive form of ÿyÿÿÿÿÿÿ certainly derived from a root close to the Sanskrit pît, in the feminine pa, which means yellow, and from an expression close to the Sanskrit, zende and Greek pronominal forms, aham, azem, ÿÿÿÿ, which, containing above all the abstract idea of being, gave birth to the Gothic guma, man. ÿyÿÿÿÿÿÿ therefore means nothing other than yellow ma It is worthy of note that the pronominal root of this word guma, approaching, in Slavic languages, the Sanskrit expression gan, which indicates the production of being or generation, inserts an n where the other idioms d white origin currently known to have 927

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abandoned this letter. However, it survives in German, in a very old expression, which is gnome. The gnome is therefore perfectly identical in name and fact to the pygmy ; in its current form, this term basically means nothing other than a being ; it is because it is mutilated, a common fate of very ancient intellectual and material things.

After these Greek and Gothic names of pygmy and gnome, comes the Celtic expression of fad. The Galls called this the man or woman they considered to be It is the vates of inspired (1)[34] . the Italian peoples, and, by derivation, it is also this occult power of which the diviners had the power to Such penetrate the secrets, fatum (2)[35] . an original identification of the two words is not optional. Fad, which has become today, in the dialect of the Vaud region, fatha or fada, in the Savoyard dialect of Chablais fihes, in the Genevan faye, in the French fée, in the Berrichon fadet, in the feminine fadette, in the Marseilles fada , designates everywhere a man or a woman raised above the common level by supernatural gifts, and lowered below this same level by the weakness of reason. The fool, the fadet is both sorcerer and idiot, a fatal b Following this trace, we find the same notions united on the same being, in another lexicological form, among the white aboriginal races of Italy. It's faunus, feminine fauna. For a long time now, scholars have noticed as a singularity that these 928

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divinities are both one and multiple, faunus and fauni, fauna and faunas, and, moreover, that the name of the goddess is identical to that of her husband, a circumstance which, in fact, classical mythology cannot offer. -not be a second example. No other explanation is possible than to admit that what is at stake here is not the naming of people, but generic or national designations. Fauna and faunas have, in Greece, their equals in Pan and the pans, the ægipans, a transformation easy to explain with the same word. The permutation of p and f is too frequent for it to be necessary to justify it. The faun as well as the pan were beings grotesque in their ugliness, closely touching on animality, drunkards, debauched, cruel, crude in every way, but knowing the future and knowing how to reveal it (1)[36 ] . Who does not see here the moral and physical portrait of the yellow species, as the first white emigrants represented it? An invincible penchant for all superstitions, an absolute abandonment to the magical practices of sorcerers, spell casters, shamans, this is still the dominant trait of the Finnish race in all the countries where it can be observed. The mixed-race Celts and the Slavs, by welcoming into their theology, in times of decadence, the religious aberrations of their vanquished, very naturally called by the name of the latter their magicians, heirs or imitators of a barbaric priesthood. We see in the lasciviousness of the undines this vice so constantly reproached to women of the yellow race, and which 929

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is such that it is said that it gave rise to the use of mutilation of the feet, practiced as a paternal and marital precaution on Chinese girls, and that where it does not encounter the obstacles of a regulated society, it gives rise, as in Kamtschatka, to orgies too similar to the races of the Maenads of Thrace, for one not to be prepared to recognize in the fiery murderers of Orpheus, relatives of the current courtesan of Sou-Tcheou-Fou and Nanking (2)[37] . We notice no less among the fauns the absorbing taste of wine and pasture, this ignoble sensuality of the Mongolian family, and, finally, we note this aptitude for rural and household occupations (3) [38] than modern legends attributed to their peers, and which, in the time of the primitive Celts, could be obtained with ease from a utilitarian race essentially oriented towards material things.

The complete assimilation of the two forms, faunus and ÿÿÿ, does not present any difficulties. We have to push it further. It is also applicable, although initially less obviously, to the words khorrigan and khoridwen. This is how the Armorican peasants designate the magical dwarves of their country. The Welsh say Gwrachan (1) [39]

.

These expressions are both composed of two parts. Khorr and

Gwr are worth nothing other than gon and gwn, or gan (2)[40] , among the Latins genius, in French genius, used in the same sense. Let me explain. The letter r, in the primitive languages of the white family, was extremely weak. The Sanskrit alphabet 930

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has three times, and not a single one gives it the strength and place of a consonant. In two cases it is a vowel; in one, it is a half-vowel like l and w which , for our modern idioms, has retained an equal mobility through its ease of being confused, even graphically, with u or ou . This primordial r , so uncertain of accentuation, seems to have had the greatest connections with ain , the emphatic a of Semitic idioms, and it is only in this way that we can explain the marked taste for the ancient Scandinavian for this letter. We find it in a large number of words where Sanskrit put an a , such as, for example, in gardhr, synonymous with garta, enclosure, house, city. This organic weakness makes it more susceptible than any other of the numerous permutations of which the principal ones take place, as one should expect, with sounds of approximately equal weakness, with the l, with the v , with the s or the n, consonant in truth, but reproduced three times in Sanskrit, and, consequently, not clearly marked, finally with the g , as a result of the intimate affinity which unites this last sound to the w , mainly in the LANGUAGES Celtic (1)[41] . Citing too many examples of the application of this law of muability would be out of place here; but as it is not without interest for the very subject that I am treating, to allege a few, here are the main ones: ÿÿÿ and faunus are correlatives in form and meaning to the Persian peri, a fairy, and, in English, to fairy, and in French, to the general designation of faerie, and in Swedish to alfar, and in 931

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German to elfen (2)[42] . In the kymric, we have the adjective ffyrnig, wicked, cruel, hostile, criminal, which is in very remarkable etymological relationship with ffur, wise, learned, and furner, wisdom, prudence, from which our word finesse came ( 3)[43] . This is how gan, wen, khorr and genius, and fen, are altered reproductions of one and the same word. The gods called by the Italian aborigines, and by the Etruscans, genii, were considered superior to the most august celestial powers. They were greeted with the Celtic titles of lar or larth, that is to say lords, and of penates, penaeth, the first, the sublime. They were represented in the form of bald dwarves, very unprepossessing. They were said to be gifted with infinite wisdom and prescience. Each of them took care, in particular, of the salvation of a human creature, and the costume assigned to them was a sort of sleeveless bag, falling down to mid-legs. The Romans called them, for this reason, dii involuti, the enveloped gods. Imagine the crude Finns dressed in a dress of animal skins, and we have this little-sought-after outfit, the image of which the authors of certain engraved stones probably had in mind to reproduce (1)[44 ] . These genii, these larths, elemental spirits, do not need to be compared at length to the Finns for us to recognize them as the latter. Identity establishes itself. The great antiquity of this notion, its extreme 932

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generalization, its ubiquity, in all European regions, in the different forms of the same denomination, faunus, ÿÿÿ, gen or genius, fee, khorrigan, fairy, do not allow us to doubt that it is based on a perfectly historical background . There is therefore no need to dwell on it further, and we can move on to the last aspect of the question by examining the word nar. It is identical with nanus, or better still with the Celtic nan, following the law of permutation which was established above. In modern Tudescan dialects, it means a madman, as in the past, among the Italian peoples, fatuus, derived from fad. Neo-Latin languages used it to designate exclusively a dwarf, disregarding any idea of moral development. But, in antiquity, the two notions which are now separated were presented together. The nan or nar was a laborious being gifted with magical genius, but stupid, narrow-minded, deceitful, cruel and debauched, always of remarkably small stature, and generally bald. The casnar of the Etruscans was a kind of stunted, counterfeit, dwarfed punch, as stupid as it was wicked, greedy and prone to getting drunk. Among the same peoples, the nanus was a poor wretch without home or place, a wanderer, a situation which was certainly, on more than one point, that of the Finns dispossessed by the white or mixed-race conquerors, and, in this respect, these miserable provide the primitive annals of the West with the exact counterpart of what these sad Choreans, these 933

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Enakim, these giants, these wandering Goliaths, also stripped of their native heritage and refugees in the cities of the Philistines (1)[45] .

The feeling of contempt which was thus attached to the nan, reduced to wandering from place to place, was combined, in the Italic peninsula, with respect for the superhuman knowledge which was attributed to this unfortunate man. In Cortona, with pious veneration, the tomb of a nontraveler was shown (2)[46] . We had the same ideas in Aquitaine. The land of Neris revered a topical deity called Nen-nerio (3). [47] .

I note in passing that there seems to be in this expression a

pleonasm similar to that of the words korid-wen and khorrigan. Perhaps we should also understand both in a reduplicative sense intended to give these titles a superlative significance; they would then mean the gan or the nan par excellence.

From Aquitaine let us pass to the country of the Scythians, that is to say to the eastern region of Europe which, in the vagueness of its name, extends from Pontus Euxine to the Baltic. Herodotus shows sorcerers who were widely consulted and listened to, The and who bore the names of Enareas and Neures (4)[48] . white people among whom these men lived, while placing great confidence in their predictions, treated them with outrageous contempt, and, on occasion, with extreme cruelty. When the announced events did not come to pass, the clumsy diviners were burned alive. The science of the Aeneas came, they themselves said, from a disposition

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physical comparable to female hysteria. It is probable, in fact, that they imitated the nervous convulsions of the sibyls. Such diseases occur much more frequently among yellow peoples than among the other two races. It is for this reason that the Russians are, of all the mixed-race peoples of modern Europe, those who are most affected by it.

This being, encountered by all the ancient white nations of Europe across the entire continent, and called by them pygmy, fad, genius and nar, described with the same physical characteristics, the same moral aptitudes, the same vices, the same virtues, is obviously everywhere a primitively very real being. It is impossible to attribute to the collective imagination of so many diverse peoples who have never seen or consulted each other since the immemorial time of their separation in upper Asia, the pure and simple invention of a creature so clearly defined and which would be nothing short of fantastic. The most vulgar common sense refuses such a supposition. Linguistics does not agree with this either; we will see it by the last word which we still have to extract from it, and which will make it clear that what we are dealing with here, originally, is beings of flesh and blood, very real men.

Let us stop for a moment asking what special meaning the primitive Hellenes, perhaps even the Titans, attached to the word pygmy, the Celts to that of fad, the Italiots to that of genius, almost all to that of nan and nar . Let us consider these expressions only in themselves-

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same. In all languages, words begin by having a broad and poorly defined meaning, then, over the centuries, these same words lose their flexibility of application and tend to be limited to the representation of a single and unique nuance of 'idea. Thus Haschaschi meant an Arab subjected to the heretical doctrine of the mountain princes of Lebanon, and who, having received a death order from his master, ate hashish to give himself the courage to commit the crime. Today, an assassin is no longer an Arab, is no longer a Muslim heretic, is no longer a subject of the Old Man of the Mountain, is no longer a minion acting under the impulse of a master, n He's no longer a hashish eater, he's quite simply a murderer. Similar observations could be made on the word gentile, on the word frank, on a host of others; but, to return to those which concern us more particularly, we will find that all contain in their absolute meaning very vague applications, and that it is only the use of centuries which has fixed them little by little to a precise meaning. . Pit-goma would still be the one that could most escape this definition, because, formed of two roots, it particularizes, in the first aspect, the object to which it applies. It indicates a yellow man, therefore it applies well to a man of the Finnic race. But, at the same time, as it contains nothing that alludes to the particular qualities of this race, other than color, that is to say, to smallness, to sensuality, to superstition, to the utilitarian spirit , it is only weakly sufficient to designate it. 936

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Moreover, it does not stop at this incomplete phase of its existence: it undergoes a modification, and, becoming ÿyÿÿÿÿÿÿ, it takes on all the nuances which it lacked in order to specialize. A pygmy is no longer just a yellow man, he is a man equipped with all the characteristics of the Finnish species, and, from then on, the word could no longer be applied to anyone else. In the dialect of the Hellenes, the modification had focused on the letter t in order, by rejecting it, to contract the two words , Pit-goma into one and the same artificial root, because where there is

not a simple root , artificial or real, there is no precise meaning. But, in the extra-Hellenic region, the operation was done differently, and, to reach the concrete form of a root, the word pit was completely rejected, which would nevertheless have seemed to be considered essential, and, using only goma, very slightly altered, the Finns were designated by a form of the word man, dedicated to them alone, and the goal was achieved. Although gnome does not mean anything other than man, it cannot awaken any other idea than that applied by superstition to the wandering Finns hidden in rocks and caves.

It is perhaps more difficult to fully analyze the word fad. We must believe that, mutilated like pit-goma, by the need to make a root, it lost the part that gnome retained, and rejected that which the latter term kept. In this hypothesis, fad would be nothing other than pit, by virtue of mutations all the more admissible since the vowel, being long in the Sanskrit form, was fully prepared for 937

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receive a broader pronunciation according to another dialect.

With the word gen or gan or khorr, the same transformation modification as in gnome is found. The primitive meaning is simply descent, race , men , genus. It is also possible that the question is not so easy to resolve, and that instead of a mutilation, it is a question here of a contraction, today barely visible, but which nevertheless can be conceived. The affinity of the sounds p , f ,

In g , you

,

,

to , allows us to understand the following progression: pÿt-gen, fÿt-gen, fÿ-gen, fÿ-ouen, gÿn, find it fen.

This last word has nothing mythological, it is the ancient name of the true and natural Finns, and Tacitus testifies to it, not only by the use he makes of it but by the physical and moral description given by him of the people who wear it. His words are worth quoting: “Among the Finns,” he says, “amazing savagery, hideous misery; no weapons, no horses, no houses. For food, grass; for clothing, skins; for bed, floor. The only resource is arrows which, due to lack of iron, are armed with bone. And hunting feeds equally on men and women. They do not leave each other, and each takes their share of the spoils. For children, no other refuge from beasts and

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rains, than to shelter in some interlacing of branches. There the young people return; there the old men retire (1) [49]. »

Today this word Finnish has lost, in ordinary usage, its true meaning, and the people to whom it is given are, for the most part at least, Germanic or Slavic mongrels, of very different degrees.

With nar or nan, there is obviously mutilation. This word, for Sanskrit and Zend, also means man (2) [50] .

We still have in India the nation of the Nairs, as we had in Gaul, at

the mouth of the Loire, the Nannetes. Elsewhere the same name occurs frequently (3)[51] . As for the lost word, it is found with the help of two mythological names, one of which is applied by the Ramayana to the aborigines of Dekkhan, considered as demons, the Naïrriti, in other words the horrible, formidable men ( 4 ) [ 52] ; the other of which is the name of a Celtic divinity, adopted by the Germanic Suevi, residents of the Baltic. It is Nerthus or Hertha ; his cult was most savage and cruel, and everything we know about it tends to link it to the degenerate notions that the Druidic priesthood had borrowed from the yellow sorcerers.

Here are the aborigines of Europe, considered in person, described with their physical and moral characteristics. We have no reason to complain this time about the shortage of information. We see that testimonies and debris abound on all sides, and establish the facts with the full clarity of complete certainty. So that nothing

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is missing, all we need is to see antiquity deliver to us material portraits of these magical dwarves with which it was so preoccupied. We have already been able to suspect that the image of Tagès and others, which are found on the engraved stones, were suited to fulfilling this purpose. By desiring more, we almost ask for a kind of miracle, and yet the miracle takes place.

Between Geneva and Mont Salève, you can see, on a natural mound, an erratic block which bears on one of its faces a crude bas-relief, representing four standing figures, of stunted and squat stature, without hair, with a broad and physiognomy. flat, holding with both hands a cylindrical object whose length exceeds the width of the fingers by a few inches (1)[53] . This monument is still united in the country with the last remains of certain ancient ceremonies which are practiced there as in all the cantons where a Celtic population remains (2)[54] . This bas-relief has its analogues in the crude statues called baba, which so many hills on the banks of the Jenissei, the Irtisch, the Samara, the Sea of Azow, and all of southern Russia, still bear. It is, like them, clearly marked with the Mongolian type. Ammianus Marcellinus was proof of this circumstance; Ruysbock again noticed it in the 13th century, and in the 18th century, Pallas noted it (3)[55] . Finally, a copper cup, found in a tumulus of the government of Orenburg, is decorated with a similar figure, and, so that there does not remain the slightest doubt about the characters that we wanted to reproduce, one of the

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babas from the Moscow museum has the head of an animal, and thus offers the indisputable image of one of these Neures who enjoyed the ability to transform into wolves[56] . The two salient particularities of these human representations are the Mongolian nature, no less strongly emphasized on the bas-relief of Mount Salève than on the Russian monuments, and also this cylindrical object, of average length, which we notice there always held in place. two hands by the face. However, Breton legends consider as the main attribute of the Khorrigans a small canvas bag which contains horsehair, scissors and other objects intended for magical uses. To take it away from them is to throw them into the greatest embarrassment, and there is no effort they will not make to regain it.

We can only see in this bag the sacred pocket where current Shamans keep their magical objects, and which, in fact, is absolutely essential, as well as what it contains, to the exercise of their profession. The babas and the Geneva stone therefore undoubtedly give the material portrait of the first inhabitants of Europe[57] : they belonged to the Finnic tribes.

1. ÿ Schaffarik was one of the first to demonstrate the primordial presence and diffusion of Asian Finns in Europe; but he confined himself to the examination of the northern region, asserting only that the yellow race had descended much further towards the east and south than is generally supposed. (Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 88.) — Müller (Der ugrische Volksstamm, t. 399) indicates traces of Sámi I, p. settlements in the southernmost part of Scandinavia and as far as Schonen. — Pott (Indogerm. Sprachstamm, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, p. 23) posits the Asian origin of

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all the Finnish tribes of Europe, and think that, in very ancient times, this family extended far south. — Rask mixes with bolder opinions a number of suspect assertions. — Wormsaae is one of the authors who began with great sagacity and erudition to pose the question on the real ground. 2. ÿ (1) Borrow, The Bible in Spain, in-12, Lond., 1849, chap. VII, p. 35 : « Whilst toiling among this wilds waste, I observed, a little way to my left, a pile of stones of rather a singular appearance and rode up to it. It was a druidical altar and the most perfect and beautiful one of the kind which I have never seen. It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely larges and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner and thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something of the shape of scallop shells. These were surmounted by a very large flat stone, which slanted down towards the earth, where was a door. » — Bien peu d’observations ont été faites en Espagne sur cette classe de monuments. M. Mérimée a visité cependant, près d’Antequera, un souterrain clairement marqué des caractères pseudo-celtiques. 3. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ansichten über die keltischen Alterthümer, t. I, pass. — Ouvrage qui témoigne des plus laborieuses recherches et du plus grand dévouement à la science. C’est un véritable et indispensable manuel pour la connaissance des antiquités primitives. — Wormsaae, The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, translated by W. J. Thoms, Lond., in-8o Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, t. I. — Squier, Observations on the Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississipi Valley, New-York, 1847. — Abeken, Mittel Italien vor der Zeit der rœmischen Herrschaft, Stuttgart u. , 1849. Tübingen, etc., 1843. — Dennis, Die Stædte und Begræbnisse Etruriens, deutsch von Meissner, in-8o , Leipzig, 1852, t. I, pass., etc., etc.

— Concerning the monuments of Switzerland, I owe a lot to the obliging communications of Mr. Troyon, whose skillful and patient investigations enlarge the field of primitive archeology every day. 4. ÿ (1) Wormsaae, The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 8. 5. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ansichten, t. I, p. 451: “If we observe the progress of science and art in Europe, we see nowhere a gradual development, but rather a sort of fluctuation, and the condition of things rises or falls like the waves of the sea. Certain circumstances bring progress, others decline. It is impossible to discover any trace of the transition from completely savage peoples to the state of shepherds and hunters, then to sedentary inhabitants, then finally to farmers and artisans. So high that we go back in time

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primitive, beyond heroic periods, we find that sedentary and sociable nations have always been endowed with this character. » — I had the opportunity, at the end of the second book of this work, to demonstrate the accuracy of this assertion; as it goes against vulgar opinions, I never tire of supporting it with imposing testimonies. 6. ÿ (2) Wormsaae, The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 124 et seqq. 7. ÿ (1) Wormsaae, open. cited, p. 135: “If the Celts possessed settled abodes in the west of Europe more than two thousand years ago, how much more ancient must be the populations which preceded the arrival of the Celts? A great number of years must pass away before a people like the Celts could spread themselves in the west of Europe and make the land productive. It is therefore no exaggeration if we attribute to the stone period an antiquity of, at least, three thousand years. » 8. ÿ (2) I have expanded sufficiently elsewhere on the characteristic traits of the yellow race, as far as what is in the domain of physiology. The table drawn up by Mr. Morton gives all the desirable results as to the comparative value of this breed with regard to the two others. 9. ÿ (3) Moniteur Universel of April 14, 1853, No. 104, Mérimée, On so-called Celtic Antiquities. — Munch, Det norske Folkshistorie, deutsch von Claussen, in-8o , Lubeck, 1853, p. 3. 10. ÿ (1) Moniteur Universel of March 18, 1854, No. 77. Communication made by Mr. Spring to the Royal Academy of Belgium. 11. ÿ (1) Von Prokesch-Osten, Kleine Schriften, die Tumuli der Alten, t. V, p. 317.

12. ÿ (2) The absence of cremation of bones is generally considered to be one of the characteristics by which Finnic burials can be recognized, because the Celts and Slavs burned their dead. The observation is correct, but it cannot nevertheless be used to fix the age of the monument where it is applied. Mr. Troyon kindly communicates to me in this regard an opinion which I believe should be recorded here: “I believe,” this scholar wrote to me, “that we can state in fact that the first inhabitants of Europe buried their dead without burning them. Later, in the Bronze Age, the use was general, but many families of the primitive race continued their ancient mode of burial. This is how, in the canton of Vaud, we find all the bronze instruments, tumuli, rings, daggers, celts, pins, etc., in tombs built under the surface of the ground, next to folded or lying skeletons. on the back. The same fact is found in some parts of

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Germany and England, and we will notice it in many other countries when the observations are complete. » 13. ÿ (1) EG Squier, open. quoted. 14. ÿ (1) Wormsaae, open. cited, p. 13. This is not a hypothesis, but an observation confirmed by the facts. 15. ÿ (2) Moniteur Universel of April 14, 1853. It concerns the March, the country Chartrain, Vendômois, Limousin, etc. 16. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ansichten, t. I, p. 173 and 183. — Memoirs and documents of the Society of History and Archeology of Geneva, 8o , 1847, t. V, p. 498 et al. 17. ÿ (2) This discovery is very recent. It took place this year, first in Meilen, canton of Zurich, then on Lake Biel near Nidau, finally on Lakes Geneva and Neuchâtel. These remains consist of stilts that once supported dwellings built above the water surface. There are numerous fragments of pottery, and even small intact vases, animal bones, coals, stones intended for grinding and grinding, etc. As we also encounter here and there some bronze debris, it is likely that these dwellings date from the period when the Celts had already arrived in the country. — I owe these communications to Mr. Troyon.

18. ÿ (1) Wormsaae, open. cited, p. 17 and on. — Keferstein, t. I, p. 314. — A beautiful dolmen, discovered at La Motte-Sainte-Héraye (Loire-Inférieure), in 1840, contained, among other objects, one of these terracotta necklaces. 19. ÿ (2) Keferstein, open. cited, t. I, p. 265. The word hune does not mean the Huns, as is generally believed; it comes from the Celtic hen, ancient, old, or from hun, the sleeper. It passed into Frisian with the meaning of death. Thus Hunensteine must be translated as stones of the ancients, of the sleepers, or of the dead. Perhaps we should apply this observation to more than one passage in Sigebert and the Gaelic chronicles, where the intervention of the Huns, as horsemen of Attila, is entirely absurd. — Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 269. See a quote from Fordun where the Humber is called Hunne, and the mythical prince Humber is named Rex Hynorum. (Loc. cit., p. 267). — We also find in Geoffrey of Monmouth, II, 1: “Applicuit Humber, rex Hunnorum, in Albaniam. » — Germanic traditions, by mingling with native fables, did not hesitate to place in the word hun memories which were very present to them, and, consequently, to insert the name of Attila in the Irish-Milesian genealogies . 20. ÿ (1) Universal monitor already mentioned. Mr. Mérimée demonstrates the fact by a series of incontestable arguments.

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21. ÿ (2) Keferstein, open. cited, t. I, p. 132. This author lists the pseudoCeltic monuments of Hanover as follows: 290 stone constructions, 350 earthen groups, 135 isolated tumulus, 65 ramparts, etc. It reaches the figure of 7,000. 22. ÿ (3) Very frequently the corpse is not laid flat, but seated with the head resting on the bent knees. This custom is extremely widespread among American aborigines. — Wormsaae, open. cited, p. 89. 23. ÿ (1) The cairn was only used in stony regions. There are a lot of them in the southwest of Sweden, while none are found in Denmark. — Wormsaae, open. cited, p. 107. 24. ÿ (2) According to Varro, any sepulchral chamber marked with the characteristics of the dolmen was originally covered with an earthen tumulus, subsequently destroyed. This passage is most important in establishing the existence of the Finnish hordes in Italy. — Abeken, open. cited, p. 241. 25. ÿ (1) Huc, Memories of a trip to Tartary, Thibet and China, t. II. 26. ÿ (1) F. de Saulcy, Notice on an Inscription discovered in Marsal, Paris, 8o 1846. Also found in the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions. — This work is not one of the least ingenious nor the least sagacious by the learned academician. 27. ÿ (1) I do not have the intention or opportunity here to list absolutely all the categories of Finnic monuments widespread in Europe. I only focus on the main ones. I could have mentioned, among other things, certain excavations in the shape of dishes or discs noticed by Mr. Troyon on several erratic blocks of the Jura. They probably belong to the period when the Finns, having entered into contact with the white peoples, found themselves provided with some metal instruments which made this work possible for them. I refer below to this last circumstance. 28. ÿ (1) Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, — Robin Good Fellow in the Relics of Ancient English Poetry, by Thomas Percy, in-8o , Lond., 1847. Dwarfs abound among all the peoples of the Europe. —Wherever the dwarves are brave, benevolent and kind, we must recognize the influence of Scandinavian mythology or oriental fables. Italian, Celtic and Slavic intelligence constantly treats them with extreme severity. ,

29. ÿ (1) La Villemarqué, Popular songs of Brittany, t. I. See the ballad entitled The Supposed Child. “In his place a monster was put; his face is as red as that of a toad. » (P. 51.)

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30. ÿ (2) Ibid., Introduction, p. XLIX. 31. ÿ (3) Regnard, Journey to Lapland. 32. ÿ (1) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 210. The mountain Gaels of Scotland attribute the pseudoCeltic monuments of their country to a mysterious people, anterior to their race and whom they call drinnach, the workers. 33. ÿ (1) These tales are current in Germany, absolutely as in Scotland and Brittany. 34. ÿ (1) Memoirs and documents published by the Historical Society and of archeology of Geneva, t. V, p. 496. 35. ÿ (2) The name of fairies in Italian, fata, is closely related to them. It is probably the same from the Spanish hada. 36. ÿ 1) Pan was a sorcerer in the full force of the term: With this snow-wool gift, if it is worthy to be believed, Pan, the god of Arcadia, deceived you, Moon, by calling you captive in the high woods; nor did you turn away from the caller. Virg., Georg., III, 391-393. 37. ÿ (2) Callery and Ivan, l'Insurrection en Chine, in-12, Paris, 1853, 224. 38. ÿ (3) And you, gods present in the countryside, Fauns, Bring together, Fauniques, foot, and Dryads maidens I sing your gifts. Virg., Georg., (I, 10-12). Pan, keeper of sheep. Ibid., I, 17 39. ÿ (1) We also sometimes call the khorrigans, duz, the gods, it is a derivative of the Arian déwa. — La Villemarqué, open. cited, Introduct., t. I, p. XLVI. — See the article Dwergar, in the Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, sect. I, 28 th., p. 190 and above. — Dieffenbach, Celtica II, Abth. 2, p. 211. 40. ÿ (2) Gan is still a name very commonly applied by Breton peasants to khorrigans. In India, the gâni are also known to be evil demons of an inferior species. — Gorresio, Ramayana, t. VI, p. 125.

41. ÿ (1) Bopp, Comparative Grammar, p. 39 et pass. — Upright and Kirchhoff, Die umbrischen Sprachdenkmaeler, p. 97, § 256. — The Celtic word bara, pain, devenu panis, offers a certain example of the mutation of r into n .

42. ÿ (2) La première syllable al ou el n'est que l'article celtique. — Richter, die Elfen, Encycl. Ersch. u. Gruber, sect. 1, 33, p. 301 et seq.

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43. ÿ (3) Dieffenbach, Comparative Dictionary of the Gothic Language, Frankfurt a. M., 1851, in-8o t. I, p. 358-359. 44. ÿ (1) Such is the character of Tagès. The myth which concerns him is most significant. A Tyrrhenian plowman having one day dug a furrow of unusual depth, Tages, son of a genius Jovialis, of a divine genius, of a Gan, suddenly emerged from the earth and spoke to the plowman. The latter, frightened, uttered cries, and all the Tyrrhenians came running. Then Tages revealed to them the mysteries of aruspicin. He had barely finished speaking when he expired. But the listeners had listened carefully to his words, and the science of divination was acquired by them. Hence the augural power particular to the Etruscans. Tagès was the size of a child; his wisdom was profound. This was how the Raseni explained the priestly heritage bequeathed to them by the people who had preceded them in Italy. — Cic., of Div., 2, 23; Ovid., Metam. ; 15, 558; Festus, S.v. Tagès, Isid., Orig., 8. 9. 45. ÿ (1) Cf. t. I, p. 486, note. — Dennis, open. cited, t. I, p. XIX. 46. ÿ (2) The word cas-nar is itself composed of the two words nar and cas, Ariane root which in Sanskrit means to go, to walk. Benfey, Glossarium, p. 73. — See, on the tomb of Cortona, Dionys. Halic., Antiq. rom., I, XXIII. — Abeken, open. cited, p. 26. 47. ÿ (3) Barailon, Research on several Celtic and Roman monuments, 8o , Paris, 1806, p. 143. ,

48. ÿ (4) Herod., IV, 17, 67, 69, and elsewhere. 49. ÿ (1) From mor. Germ., XLVI. 50. ÿ (2) In Zend, it is, in the nominative case, nairya. 51. ÿ (3) I have before me four Greco-Bactrian or Greco-Indian medals, two of copper, two of silver. The first bears on one side a standing figure, turned in profile, dressed in a long dress; legend on the right, ÿÿÿÿ, on the left, erased. On the reverse, front figure, right arm extended, left arm raised towards the head, short tunic ; legend on the left, illegible. The second: face, haloed figure on an elephant, legend on the right, ÿAÿÿ; on the left, illegible. Reverse, haloed multiarmed divinity, standing, in profile, treated in the Greek style; saytic monogram, legend on the left: illegible. The third, silver medal: obverse, royal head in profile, turned to the right, legend on the right: AÿAÿ (?); left: ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿAÿ; on the reverse, two very faded figures, facing each other; saytic monogram ; middle: legend on the right ÿAÿ; left: ÿÿÿÿ. The fourth: face, royal head facing, right arm raised ; legend on the right: AÿAÿÿY (?); left: ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (?). — Office of HE Gen. Baron of Prokesch-Osten.

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52. ÿ (4) We also read Naïriti ; Gorresio, Ramayana, t. VI, introduction, p. 7, and notes, p. 402. 53. ÿ (1) Troyon, Hill of sacrifices of Chavannes le Veuron, in-4o London, 1854, p. 14. 54. ÿ , (2) This is where the first fire from the firebrands is lit, which serves as a “signal for the fire of other countries”. Ibid., note D. — These fires go back to the same pagan uses as the pyres of Saint-Jean in France, and the game of torches that are thrown into the air in Brittany. The torch races in the Ceramics, in Athens, also had not a Hellenic, but a Pelasgic origin. 55. ÿ (3) Ibid. 56. ÿ Hérod., IV, 105. 57. ÿ It is still obvious that I do not comment on the age of the stone of Mount Salève any more than on that of the Russian babas. It is enough for me to find in these monuments a representation, whether real or legendary, which applies, with complete accuracy, to the beings it is intended to represent.

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CHAPTER II. The Thracians — the Illyrians — the Etruscans — The Iberians.

Four peoples, worthy of the name of peoples, finally appear in the traditions of southern Europe, and come to dispute the possession of the land with the Finns. It is impossible to determine, even approximately, the time of their appearance. All that can be admitted is that their oldest establishments date back well before 2000 BC. As for their names, ancient Greek and Roman times knew and revered them, and even, in certain cases, honored them with religious myths. These are the Thracians, Illyrians, Etruscans and Iberians. The Thracians were, in their early days and probably while still residing in Asia, a great and powerful people. The Bible guarantees the fact, since it names them among the sons of Japheth (1)[1] . The yellow tribes, when we find them pure, being, in general, not very warlike, and the warlike feeling diminishing in a people as the proportion of their blood increases, there is reason to believe that the Thracians did not belong to their close relationship. Then the Greeks spoke of it very often in historical times. They 949

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employed, in conjunction with mercenaries from the Scythian tribes, as police soldiers, and, if they complain about their rudeness (2)[2], nowhere do they appear to have been struck by this bizarre ugliness which is the sharing the Finnish race. They would not have failed, if there had been reason, to tell us about the thinning hair, the lack of beards, the pointed cheekbones, the blunt noses, the slanted eyes, finally of the strange complexion of the Thracians, if those -these had belonged to the yellow race (3)[3] . From the silence of the Greeks on this point, and from the fact that they always seemed to consider these peoples as similar to themselves, except for rusticity, I further infer that the Thracians were not Finns.

If some certain figurative monument had been preserved from them for truly ancient periods, or even only fragments of their language, the question would be simple. But we are reduced to doing without the first class of proofs altogether. There is nothing. For the second, we only have a small number of words, most of them cited by Dioscorides (1)[4] .

These weak linguistic remains seem to allow us to assign an Ariane On the other

origin to the Thracians (2)[5] .

hand, these people seem to have felt a keen attraction for Greek customs. Herodotus confirms this. He sees in it the mark of a kinship which allowed them to understand the civilization which they were witnessing; but the authority of Herodotus is very powerful (3)[6] . We must also remember Orpheus and his labors. One must keep 950

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account of the deep respect with which the chroniclers of Greece speak of the most ancient Thracians, and from all this we must conclude that, despite an irremediable decadence brought about by mixtures, these Thracians were a mixed nation of white and yellow, where the White Arian had once dominated, then had faded a little too much, over time, within very powerful Celtic alluvial deposits and Slavic alloys (1) [7]

.

To discover the ethnic character of the Illyrians, the difficulties are not less, but they present themselves differently, and the means of approaching them are completely different. Of the worshipers of Xalmoxis (2)[8] nothing remained. From the Illyrians, on the contrary, today called Arnauts or Albanians, there remains a people and a language which, although altered, offer several graspable singularities. Let's talk about physical individuality first. The Albanian, in the truly national part of his features, stands out well from the surrounding populations. It resembles neither modern Greek nor Slavic. Nor does he have any essential relations with the Vlach. Numerous alliances, by bringing it physiologically closer to its neighbors, have considerably altered its primitive type, without causing its own character to disappear. We recognize, as fundamental signs, a tall and well-proportioned size, a vigorous frame, pronounced features and a bony face which, by its projections and its angles, does not precisely recall the construction of the Kalmyk facies, but brings to mind the system after which this facies is designed. We

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would say that the Albanian is to the Mongol as the Turk is to the latter, especially the Hungarian. The nose appears protruding, prominent, the chin broad and strongly square. The lines, beautiful indeed, are roughly traced as in Madjar, and in no way reproduce the delicacy of Greek modeling. Now, since it is indisputable that the Madjar is mixed with Mongolian blood as a result of his Hunnic descent (1)[9] , likewise I do not hesitate to conclude that the Albanian is an analogous product.

It would be desirable for the study of language to support this conclusion. Unfortunately this mutilated and corrupted idiom has not yet been able to be analyzed in a fully satisfactory manner (2)[10] . We must first prune out the words taken from Turkic, modern Greek and Slavic dialects, which have recently been amalgamated in quite large numbers. Then we will still have to discard the Hellenic, Celtic and Latin roots. After this delicate sorting, there remains a background that is difficult to appreciate, and of which until now nothing definitive has been able to be said, except that it is nothing less than related to ancient Greek. We therefore do not dare to attribute it to a branch of the Ariane family. Are we entitled to believe that this absent affinity is replaced by a relationship with Finnic languages? This is a so far unresolved question. It is therefore necessary to temporarily accommodate oneself to doubt, to reject all too hasty philological demonstrations and to limit oneself to those which I have previously drawn from physiology. I will therefore say that the Albanians are a white, Arian people, directly mixed

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of yellow, and that, if it is true that he accepted nations among whom he lived a language foreign to his essence, in this he only imitated a fairly large number of human tribes, guilty of the same wrong (1)[11] . The Thracians and Illyrians (2)[12] nobly maintained their Ariane origins enough not to be declared unworthy of it. The first had taken a large part in the invasion of the Arian Hellene peoples into Greece. The latter, by mingling with the Epirote, Macedonian and Thessalian Greeks, helped them climb to the domination of earlier Asia (3)[13]. If, in historical times, the two groups to which the names Thracians and Illyrians are given have always, despite their recognized energy and intelligence, been reduced, as nations, to a subordinate state, contenting themselves, at least for the latter, to provide an abundance of illustrious individuals first to Greece, then to the Roman and Byzantine empires, finally to Turkey, this phenomenon must be attributed to their fragmentation brought about by local marriages of different values, to the weakness relative of the groups, and their stay among prolific tribes, which, containing them in mountainous and infertile territories, never allowed them to develop there. In any case, the Thracians and the Illyrians, considered independently of their alloys, represent two human branches that are singularly well gifted, vigorous and noble, where the Arian essence can be very easily guessed. I am now transporting myself to the other end of Europe 953

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southern. I find the Iberians there, and with them, the historical obscurity seems to diminish. It would be pointless to recall all the efforts made so far to determine the nature of this mysterious people of which the current Euskaras or Basques are, with more or less correctness, considered to be the representatives. The name of this people having been found in the Caucasus, we sought to establish a sort of route by which they would have come from Asia to Spain ( 1)[14] . These hypotheses remained very obscure. It is better known that the Iberian family covered the peninsula, inhabited Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, a few points, if not the entire western coast of Italy. His children owned southern Gaul up to the mouth of the Garonne, thus covering Aquitaine and part of Languedoc.

The Iberians left no figurative monument, and it would be impossible to establish their physiological character if Tacitus had not spoken to us According to him, they

about it (2)[15] .

were brown-skinned and small. Modern Basques have not retained this appearance. They are visibly white mixed race people like the neighboring populations. I'm not surprised. Nothing guarantees the purity of the blood among the mountaineers of the Pyrenees, and I will not draw from the examination that we have been able to make the same results as for the Albanian warrior.

In this one I saw a marked difference, a notable contrast with the neighboring nations. Impossible to confuse Arnauts with Turks, Greeks,

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Bosnians. It is very difficult, on the contrary, to distinguish a Euskara among its neighbors of France and Spain. The Basque's physiognomy, certainly very pleasant, offers nothing special. His blood is beautiful, his organization energetic; but the mixture, or rather the confusion of mixtures, is evident in him. It does not have at all this trait of homogeneous races, the resemblance of individuals to each other, which occurs to a high degree among the Albanians.

How else could the Pyrenees Iberian be purebred? The entire nation was absorbed into Celtic, Semitic, Roman, Gothic mixtures. As for the core, taking refuge in the high valleys of the mountains, we know that numerous layers of vanquished people successively came to seek asylum around and near it. It cannot therefore have remained more intact than the Aquitaine and the Roussillon residents.

The Basque language is no less enigmatic than Albanian (1)[16] . Scholars have been struck by the obstinacy with which she refuses any annexation to any family. It has nothing Hamitic and little Arian. The yellow affinities seem to exist in her (2) [17] but hidden, and we only notice them approximately. The only well-proven fact , so far is that, through its polysynthesis, through its tendency to incorporate words into one another, it is close to American languages (3) [18] . This discovery gave birth to many novels, each more risky than the last. Men gifted with a vehement imagination 955

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are eager to pass the Strait of Gibraltar to the Iberians, to transport them along the western coast of Africa, to rebuild Atlantis, expressly for them, to push these poor people, whether they like it or not, and on dry ground, to the shores of the new continent. The enterprise is bold, and I would not dare to associate myself with it. I prefer to think that the American affinities of Basque can have their source in the mechanism originally common to all Finnic languages (1)[19] . But, as this point has not yet been clarified in such a way as to produce certainty, I especially prefer to leave it aside (2)[20] . Let us rely on what history teaches us about the habits and morals of the Iberian nation. We will find more guiding clarity there. Here, the light catches the eye, and with enough brilliance to destroy almost all uncertainties. The Iberians, heavy and rustic, not barbaric, had laws, formed regular Their mood was taciturn, societies (3)[21] . their habits were gloomy. They went dressed in black or dull colors, and did not experience this love of adornment so general among the Melanians (4)[22] . Their political organization was not very vigorous; because, after having occupied a certainly considerable extent of country, these peoples, driven out of Italy, driven from the islands and dispossessed of a good part of Spain by the Celts, were, still later and without much 'punishment, by the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians (1)[23] .

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Finally, and here is the main point: they were successfully engaged in mining work (2)[24] . This difficult work, this complicated science which consists of extracting metals from the bosom of the earth and subjecting them to quite numerous manipulations, is undoubtedly one of the manifestations, one of the most refined uses of human thought. No black people have known it. Among the whites, those who practiced it more, living in Asia, above the Arians, towards the north, received in their veins, for this very reason, the most considerable mixture of the blood of the yellows. By this definition we recognize, I think, the Slavs. I will add that the soil of Spain bore, in its Mons Vindius, the name which, according to Schaffarik, foreign nations, especially the Celts, have always given preference to these same Slavs, and I do not even know if, invoking the facility that the Wendish languages share with the Celtic and Italian dialects for turning syllables, we would not be entitled to recognize their national appellation par excellence, the word srb in the word ibr (3)[25] .

This etymology reaches out to the mysterious homonymous people relegated to the Caucasus, and adds one more appearance to the hypothesis that MW of Humboldt did not reject (1)[26] . The Iberians were therefore Slavs. I repeat the reasons here: melancholy people, dressed in dark clothes, not very belligerent (2)[27] , workers in the mines, utilitarian. There is not one of these traits that cannot be seen today in the masses of north-eastern Europe (3)[28] .

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Now come the Rasenians (4)[29] or, in other words, the Etruscans of first formation. As a result of Pelasgian invasions, this extremely interesting people found itself, at a time before the 10th century BC, composed of two main elements, one of which, the latest addition, gave the whole a civilizing impulse which produced important results. I am not talking, at the moment, about this second half. I am only focusing on the coarsest part of the blood, which is at the same time the oldest, and which alone, as such, must appear near the primordial populations, Thracians, Illyrians, Iberians.

The Rasene masses were certainly much thicker than those of their civilizers. This is, moreover, a constant fact in all invasions followed by conquests. It was also their language which stifled that of the victors, and erased from them almost all traces of the ancient idiom. Etruscan, as the inscriptions have preserved it for us, appears to be quite foreign to Greek and even Latin (1)[30] . It is remarkable for its guttural sounds and its harsh and wild appearance (2)[31]All . efforts to interpret what remains have remained almost in vain until now. Humboldt's MW was inclined to consider it as a transition from Iberian to other Italian languages (3)[32] . Some philologists have suggested that vestiges of it could be found in the Romansch of the Rhaetian mountains. Maybe they are right: however 958

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the three dialects spoken in the canton of Graubünden, in Switzerland, are patois formed from Latin, Celtic, German and Italian fragments. They appear to contain very few words from other sources, except place names, in very small numbers. Etruscan monuments are numerous, and of different ages. We discover more every day. In addition to the ruins of towns and castles, tombs provide valuable physiological information. The rasene individual, as represented in the round on the lid of stone or terracotta sarcophagi, is small He (4)[33] . has a large head, thick and short arms, a heavy and fat body, slanted, oblique eyes, brown in color, and yellowish hair. The chin is beardless, strong and prominent; the full, round face, the fleshy nose. A Latin poet, in four words, sums up the portrait: obesos and pingues Etruscos. However, neither this expression of Virgil, nor the images that it comments so well, apply, in the poet's thinking, to men of the purely Rasenian race. Images and poetic descriptions refer to the Etruscans of the Roman era, of mixed blood. This is a new proof, and conclusive proof, that civilizing immigration had been comparatively weak, since it had not significantly modified the nature of the masses. Thus it is enough to unite these two phenomena of the conservation of a language foreign to the white family, and of a physiological constitution no less distinct, to be entitled to conclude that the blood of the subject race has 959

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kept the upper hand in the fusion, and allowed itself to be guided, but not absorbed, by the winners of the best essence.

The demonstration of this fact emerges even better from mode of cultivation particular to the Etruscans. Once again, I am not talking here about the Raseno-Tyrrhenian ensemble; I only note what can help me discover the true nature of the primitive Rasene population.

Religion had its special type. Its gods, very different from those of the Semitic Hellenic nations, never descended to earth. They did not show themselves to men, and limited themselves to making their wishes known by signs, or through the intermediary of certain beings of a completely mysterious nature (1)[34] . Consequently, the art of interpreting the obscure manifestations of celestial thought was the principal occupation of the priesthoods. Aruspicin and the science of natural phenomena, such as storms, lightning, meteors (1)[35] , absorbed the meditations of the pontiffs, and created for them a much narrower and darker, more meticulous, more subtle superstition , more childish than this astrology of the Semites, which, at least, had the advantage of being exercised in an immense field and of devoting itself to truly splendid mysteries. While the Chaldean priest, mounted on one of the towers on which the relief of Babylon or Nineveh bristled, followed with a curious eye the regular march of the stars sown in profusion in the limitless heavens, and little by little learned to calculate the curve of their orbits, the Etruscan soothsayer, big, fat, short, broad-faced, wandering, sad and frightened, in the forests and

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the salt marshes which border the Tyrrhenian Sea, interpreted the sound of the echoes, grew pale at the rolling of lightning, shivered when the rustling of the leaves announced to his left the passage of a bird, and sought to give meaning to the thousand vulgar accidents of loneliness. The Semite's mind was lost in reveries that were absurd, no doubt, but as big as the whole of nature, and which carried his imagination on wings of the widest scope. The Rasène dragged his in the most petty combinations, and, if one bordered on madness by wanting to link the movement of the planets to that of our existences, the other razed the imbecility by seeking to discover a connection between the dance capricious with a will-o’-thewisp and such events that it was important for him to foresee. This is precisely the relationship between the errors of the Hindu creature, the supreme expression of the Arian genius mixed with black blood, and those of the Chinese spirit, the type of the yellow race animated by a white infusion. Following this indication, which gives the final term to the errors of the former dementia, and to the aberrations of the latter stupidity, we see that the Rasenes fall into the same category as the yellow peoples, weakness of imagination, tendency towards childishness. , fearful habits.

As for the weakness of imagination, it is demonstrated by this other circumstance that the Etruscan nation, so commendable in some respects, and endowed with a real historical aptitude (1)[36], produced nothing in literature properly so called. as treatises on divination and discipline

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augural. If we add rituals, establishing with the smallest details the complex sequence of religious services, we will have everything that occupied the intellectual leisure of an essentially formalist people (2)[37 ] . For its only poetry, the nation was content with hymns containing enumerations of divine names rather than outpourings of the soul. In truth, a fairly later period shows us in an Etruscan city, Fescennium, a mode of composition which, in dramatic form, long delighted the Roman population. But even this kind of enjoyment demonstrates an indelicate taste. Fescennin's verses were only a sort of dirty catechism, a tissue of invectives whose merit was virulence, and which borrowed none of its qualities from the charm of diction, nor, much less, from elevation of thought. Finally, poor as this unique example of poetic aptitude might be, we cannot yet completely attribute either the invention or the making of it to the Rasenes: because, if Fescennium was among their cities, it was mainly populated by foreigners, and, in particular, of Siculus (1)[38] . Thus, deprived of needs and satisfactions of spirit, we must seek the merit of the Rasenes on another ground. We must see them farmers, industrialists, manufacturers, sailors and great builders of aqueducts, roads, fortresses, useful monuments (2)[39] . Pleasures, and, to use an expression that has become technical, material interests were the great preoccupation of their society. They 962

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were famous, in ancient times, for their gluttony and their taste for sensual pleasures of all kinds (3)[40] . They were not a heroic people, far from it; but I imagine that, if it were to rise from its graves today, it would be, of all the nations of the past, the one which would most quickly understand the utilitarian part of our modern morals and would adapt to it best. . Yet annexation to the Chinese empire would suit it more Again.

In any case, the Etruscan seemed a ring detached from this people. In him, for example, this special virtue of the yellows is vividly presented, the very great respect for the magistrate (4)[41] , united with the taste for individual freedom, insofar as this freedom is exercised in the purely material sphere. . There is this among the Iberians, while the Illyrians and Thracians seem to have understood independence in a much more demanding and absolute way. We do not see that the Rasene populations, dominated by their aristocracies of foreign race, had a regular share in the exercise of power.

However, as we do not find among them either the unrestrained and remorseless despotism of the Semitic States, and since the subordinate there enjoyed a sufficient amount of rest, well-being, and instruction, the primordial instinct of the latter must have come much closer to the dispositions towards individual isolation, which characterize the Finnish species, than to the tendencies towards agglomeration

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black, and which deprive her just as much of the instinct for physical freedom as of the taste for moral independence. From all these considerations, I conclude that the Rasenes, when separated from the foreign element brought by the Tyrrhenian conquest, were an almost entirely yellow people, or, if you like, a moderately white Slavic tribe[42] .

I made a similar judgment on the Iberians, however different from the Etruscans in the number and quantity of mixtures. For their part, the Illyrians and the Thracians, each with special customs, presented me with strong appearances of Finnish alloys. It is a new demonstration, but this time a posteriori, and it will not be the last or the most striking, that the primitive background of the populations of southern Europe is yellow. It is very clear that this ethnic element was not found in its pure state among the Iberians, nor even among the Etruscans of first training. The degree of social improvement to which these nations had reached, although quite humble, indicates the presence of a civilizing germ which does not belong to the Finnish element, and that this element only has the power to serve to a certain extent .

Let us therefore consider the Iberians, then, after them, the Rasenians, the Illyrians and the Thracians, all nations less and less Mongolized, as having constituted the vanguards of the white race on the march towards Europe. They experienced the most direct contact with the Finns; they have acquired to the highest degree the special imprint which 964

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was to distinguish all the populations of our continent from those of the southern regions of the world. The first and second emigration, Iberians and Rasenians, forced to head towards the extreme West, given that South Asia was already occupied by Arian movements, pierced through thick layers of Finnic nations already scattered before their feet. As a result of inevitable alliances, they quickly became mixed race, and the yellow element dominated among them. The Illyrians, then the Thracians, in turn gravitated towards paths closer to the Black Sea. They thus had less forced, less numerous, less degrading contacts with the yellow hordes. Hence, a superior physical appearance and energy, and, while the Iberians and the Rasenians were early destined for enslavement, the Thracians maintained a suitable rank until the much later day when they melted away, not without honor still, among the surrounding populations. As for the Illyrians, they live today and are respected. 1. ÿ (1) Genesis calls them Thiras TRS (Hebrew). Herodotus affirms that after the Indians, the Thracians are the most numerous nation on earth, and that all they lack to be irresistible to other peoples is union. They were divided as much as possible. (V, 3.) 2. ÿ (2) Horace reproduces this opinion at the beginning of ode XXVII of the 1st book Born to the use of the cups of joy To fight the Thracian; remove the barbarous manner... 3. ÿ (3) Une anecdote conservée par les polygraphes donne lieu de supposer, au contraire, que le type du Thrace était fort beau. C'est celle

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which relates to young Smerdies, slave from this nation, loved by Polycrates of Samos and Anacreon. He was especially remarkable for his hair, which the tyrant had him cut off to make up for the poet. The very name of Smerdiès is Arian. 4. ÿ (1) Dioscorus. book eight Greek and Latin, in-12, Paris, 1589, 1 IV, chap. 15 — See also some words in Strabo: ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, scansores fumi ; ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, conditions ; ÿÿÿÿÿ, absque fœminis vives. (VII, 33, etc.) 5. ÿ (2) Mr. Munch finds in all Thracian words a decidedly Indo-European physiognomy. (All translation by Claussen, p. 13.) According to this author, they are easily linked to Latvian and Slavic roots. (ibid.) Several Thracian place names are clearly Arian, such as, for example, the word Hemus, correlative to the Sanskrit hima, snow. — According to Athenaeus, 13, 1, Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander, had married Meda, daughter of a certain ÿÿÿÿÿÿ, Thrace. — Stephen of Byzantium names this woman ÿÿÿÿÿ. Jornandès names the father Gothila, and the daughter Medopa. All these words are Arian, but the period in which they are found is quite low. 6. ÿ (3) He does not hesitate, for a moment, to confuse them absolutely with the Getae, incontestable Arians. (V, 3.) 7. ÿ (1) Rask makes Arians without giving any evidence to support his opinion. It does not take into account the notable differences existing between these peoples and the Hellenes, differences which seem to oppose, until now, not that we recognize a degree of affinity between them, but that we relates all of their origins to the same source. — Consult on this subject Pott, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, indo-germ. Sprachst., p. 25. — As an indication in support of the mixture of the Thracians with Celtic nations, I will point out how similar the names of the cities of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, a very ancient city of Thrace, and of Vesuntio, a Gallic city whose foundation is lost in the dawn of time. In truth, Byzantium was colonized by Megara, but certainly on the site of an indigenous village. The name has nothing Greek in it. 8. ÿ (2) The name of this divinity seems to be of Slavic origin, and to be linked to the word szalmas, helmet. — Munch, trans. german. by Claussen, p. 13. 9. ÿ (1) T. I, p. 221 et al. 10. ÿ (2) The work of M. de Xylander, die Sprache der Albanesen oder Schkipetaren, 1835, is rightly esteemed; but the book that Mr. de Hahn has just published, Albanesische Studien, 8o , Wien, 1853, is much more complete. Written on the spot and far from any scientific assistance, this excellent work will be of great help to

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philologists who want to bring Albanian into the circle of comparative studies. 11. ÿ (1) T. I, p. 329 and 344. 12. ÿ (2) Illyria changed its extent and limits very frequently. It embraced the most diverse races under the same denomination. It was first the country bordering the Adriatic, between the Neretwa to the north and the Drinus to the south. The Triballes formed the eastern border. Then, this district extended from the territory of the Celtic Tauriscas to Epirus and Macedonia. Moesia was included there. After the second century AD, Illyria, growing further, contained the two Norics, the two Pannonia, Valerie, Savoy, Dalmatia, the two Dacies, Moesia and Thrace. Finally Constantine detached these last two provinces, but united Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia, the two Epirus, Prævallis and Crete. At this time Illyria contained seventeen provinces. It is probably as a result of this administrative organization that at a certain moment the Thracians and the Illyrians were confused as being the same people. This opinion is also tenable; some Greeks formerly professed it. — Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 257. 13. ÿ (3) Pott, op. cited, p. 64. 14. ÿ (1) Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, t. I, p. 336. This scholar adds that the Iberians of the Caucasus must have belonged to the stock of Hebr. Which would make rapprochement with the Iberians of Spain impossible; but there is no evidence that the supposition is correct. — What gives value to the connection between the name of the Iberians of the Caucasus and that of the Iberians of Spain is the fact that a mountain in continental Greece was very anciently called the Pyrenees, while a river of Thrace was called Hebrew . These are milestones worth noting. 15. ÿ (2) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 10. However, Tacitus' passage is not very conclusive, and we can oppose other authorities to it, such as that of Silius Italicus, who makes the inhabitants of Spain blond. But in addition to these apparent contradictions it must be said that Spain contained, in the Roman era, populations of very diverse descents, and that it must already have been very difficult to meet an Iberian of pure race there. 16. ÿ (1) The Romans were extremely put off by his harshness. — Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2e Abth., p. 48-49. 17. ÿ (2) We believe we can see some Finnish roots in Basque. — Schaffarik, Slavic Antiquities, t. I, p. 35 and 293. 18. ^ (3) Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. III, p. 244, thus defines this idiomatic organization: “A system which bringing the

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greatest number of ideas within the smallest possible compass, condenses whole sentences into a single word. » — W.v. Humboldt, Examination of the Studies on the Original Inhabitants of Hispania, p. 174 et sqq. 19. ÿ (1) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 15 et seqq. 20. ÿ (2) M. Muller, Suggestions for the assistance of officers in learning the languages of the seat of war in the East, London, 1854, considers agglutination as the distinctive character of all Finnic languages. Perhaps there will be reason, on the one hand, to better explain the exact limits of agglutination, and, on the other, to investigate whether the Arian languages themselves do not have, from their own funds, this same process. The study of Finnic languages is unfortunately still very little advanced, and thus hinders any definitive knowledge of other families of idioms. 21. ÿ (3) W. v. Humboldt, examination of the investigations into the Urbewohner Hispaniens, p. 152 et al. 22. ÿ (4) Ibid., p. 158. 23. ÿ (1) In the time of Strabo, the intellectual development of the inhabitants of Baetica was much praised. It was said, among other things, that the Turdetains had poems and laws whose writing dates back 6,000 years. It would be wrong to attribute this remarkable literature to the Iberians. Existing on a very ancient Semitic site, it offered, without a doubt, only originals or at most copies of Chanaanite or Punic works. — Strabo, III, 1. — According to the geographer of Apamea, the Iberians were, in war, more cunning and more skillful than brave and strong. — W.v. Humboldt, open. cited, p. 153. 24. ÿ (2) Spain, in ancient times, produced in a few years 400 poods of gold, that is to say as much as Brazil and the Urals combined currently do in the most ancient times. prosperous. — A.v. Humboldt, Central Asia, t. I, p. 540. 25. ÿ (3) The open vowel completely disappears in the name of the river, Hebrew

26. ÿ (1) The connection between srb and ibr is no more laborious than that established by Schaffarik between ÿÿÿÿÿÿ and srb. As for the meaning of the word, I would happily find it in obr, giant, and by derivation, a strong and formidable man. It is admissible that the white emigrants took and retained this name as a contrast with the relative weakness of the Finnish natives, and we will see later that the Scandinavian and Germanic epics attributed to the Wendish heroes the same exaggeration of size with the talent of forging magic weapons. 27. ÿ (2) Schaffarik repeatedly emphasizes the profoundly peaceful and nonwarlike spirit of the Slavic nations. He praises them for showing themselves,

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the highest antiquity, peaceful and very laborious. — Schaffarik, t. I, p. 167. 28. ÿ (3) Rask only sees the Iberians as Finns, and he claims to base his demonstration on linguistics. (Ursprung der altnordischen Sprachen, p. 112-146.) 29. ÿ (4) This is the name that this group gave itself, according to O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 68. But Dennis, on the contrary, claims that this name belongs to the Tyrrhenian conquerors. (Die Stædte und Begræbnisse Etruriens, t. I, p. IX.) I believe that this opinion is ill-founded. 30. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker. See the Perugia monument and Vermiglioli sightings. The Romans called Etruscan a barbaric language, which they did not say about Sabine or Oscan. Proof that they didn't understand it. 31. ÿ (2) O. Muller, open. quoted. 32. ÿ (3) This opinion is adopted by O. Muller, Ouvr. cited, p. 68. 33. ÿ (4) Prichard, Hist. natur. of man, t. I, p. 257. — Verhandlungen der Academie von Berlin, 1818-1819, p. 2. — Abeken gives, in his work, tab. VIII, a drawing copied from a funerary painting which is part of the Berlin Museum. One of the characters in particular is remarkable for the crushing of the face, the protuberance of a very receding forehead, the extremely oblique arrangement of the eyes, the thickness of the lips, the massive shape of the body. — See also the representation of the statuette 2-a, 2-b, tabl. VII and 4 and 5 of the same table, for the pointed shape of the head, which is very reminiscent of certain American types. — Also consult Micali, Monuments antiques, infol., Paris, 1824, tab. XVI, fig. 1, 2, 4 and 8; tab. XVII, fig. 3; tab. LXI, fig. 9. 34. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 266. The native Etruscans did not know the cult of topical heroes, and, therefore, did not have eponyms like their conquerors, the Tyrrhenians, nor like the Greeks. Above all their divinities, even the greatest, Tinia, they placed these supernatural beings which the Romans called dii involuti, the enveloped gods. (Dennis, t. I, p. XXIV.) I talked about it above. 35. ÿ (1) Mineral springs and their hot exhalations were also a great object of religious terror: But the king, troubled by monsters, by the oracles of the Faun of Fate, goes, and consults Albunea under the high groves; of the forest, which sounds as the greatest sacred fountain, and exhales the dark mephitically.

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From here the Italian nations, and all the Enotrian region, seek answers to their doubts. Hither the priest brought the gifts, and under the night of silence he lay down in layers of skins of slaughtered sheep, and begged for sleep. En., VII, 81-91. 36. ÿ (1) Elle donna aux Romains le modèle de leurs annales; but il semble que ce n'était que des catalogs de faits sans autre liaison que la chronologie, et tout à fait dénués de grâces narratives. Valerius Flaccus, entre autres, et l'empereur Claude se servierent de chroniques etrusques pour composer leurs histoires. (Abeken, ouvr. cité, p. 20.) 37. ÿ (2) O. Muller, ouvr. cite, p. 281 and pass. 38. ÿ (1) O. Muller, ouvr. cite, p. 183. — Sur l'incapacité poétique des Étrusques, voir Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, t. 1, p. 88. 39. ÿ (2) O. Muller, ouvr. cite, p. 260. Abeken, p. 31 and 164, and pass. — On trouve des traces de ces travaux de mines si dignes de remarque, ethniquement parlant, à Populonia et à Massa Marittima. On en extrayait du cuivre. 40. ÿ (3) Idem, open. quoted. — The Etruscans employed women in divination and matters of worship. This is a Finnish custom, as we will see below. —Dennis, t. I, p. XXXII. 41. ÿ (4) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 375. 42. ÿ Abeken, quite unable to find a name for the Etruscan element of first formation, calls it pelasgic, and, when he wants to define what he means by this word, he does not know how to do it. to draw otherwise than by explaining it by the even more obscure and vague word urgriechisch (primitive Hellenic). For him, the definitive meaning seems to be to connect the native Etruscans to the Ariane stock. This opinion will seem, I have no doubt, quite unacceptable. (Abeken, Mittel-Italien vor der Zeit der rœmischen Herrschaft, p. 24.) — Moreover, as many scholars who have dealt with this question, so many opinions. In antiquity, Herodotus made the native Etruscans a Lydian people, and most historians agree with his opinion. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was the first to move away and declared them aborigines, but without saying what he meant by this word. Muller sees them as a race apart, among the Italian populations. Lepsius admits neither natives nor even later a Tyrrhenian conquest. In his eyes, the constituent element was made up of Umbrian peoples who, defeated by the Pelasgians, managed to dominate their

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masters, and thus created a new national combination which produced the Etruscans. Sir William Betham assures that the Rasenes, the Tyrrhenians, and other groups that can be distinguished among these people, are so many ghosts. He only sees Celts there, and lightly ignores the objections. Its aim is to give an illustrious kinship to the Irish. Dennis, after listing all these very diverse feelings, rallies purely and simply to the banner of Herodotus. (Dennis, die Stædte und Begræbnisse Etruriens, t. I, p. IX et pass.) Niebuhr brings the native Etruscans from the Rhaetian mountains. (Rœmische Geschichte, in-8o , Berlin, 1811, vol. I, p. 74 et pa

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CHAPTER III. The Roosters

Since the emigrations of the Iberians and the Rasenians, those of the Illyrians and the Thracians preceded any other establishment of white families in southern Europe, it must be considered as demonstrated that, when the Iberians crossed Gaul from north to south, and the Rasenians Pannonia and a corner of the Rhaetian Alps, to reach their known abodes, no nation of noble race was on their way to bar their passage. Iberians and Rasenians only formed bodies detached from the great Slavic multitudes already established in the north of the continent, and who were harassed in more than one place by other related nations, the Galls.

Since the Slavic family as a whole did not play any role of any importance in ancient times, it is useless to talk about it at this time. It is enough to have indicated its existence in Spain, in Italy, and to add that established, strongly along the Baltic Sea, in the regions included between the Krapacks mountains and the Urals, and even beyond, we will see soon some of its tribes were drawn into the middle of the Celtic torrent. With the exception of these details that the story will naturally give rise to, the personality of this

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people will remain in the shadows until the moment when history brings them entirely onto the stage. Determining, even vaguely, the time of the movement of the Galls towards the north and the west presents insurmountable difficulties. Here is all that can be said on this subject: In the 17th century BC, we see the Galls busy forcing the passage of the Pyrenees, defended by the Iberians. This is the first positive information on their existence in the west. However, they occupied the regions located between the Garonne and the Rhine, and had traveled and possessed the banks of the Danube, long before this time.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that when leaving Asia, they resigned themselves to advancing towards the west, much less attractive than the south, and, moreover, already occupied. by swarms of yellow peoples, only because the southern routes were visibly closed to them and prohibited by the congestion of Arians on the march towards India, anterior Asia and Greece. Therefore, their arrival in Western Europe, as ancient as it is supposed, is much later than the appearance of the Arians on the crests of the Himalayas and the Semites on the side of Armenia. Now we have roughly fixed, according to suitable data, the age of this appearance at the year 5000. It is therefore between this date and the year 2000 approximately, a period of 3,000 years, that we must look for the time of the establishment of the Celts in the west.

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The struggle between the Iberians and the Galls, on the Garonne side, in the 17th century, gave birth, as we have already seen, to the oldest story in the annals of the West. This is confirmed by the observation that history only ever results from the conflict of white interests. We find the Iberians, hardworking but relatively weak people, struggling with these multitudes of bold and turbulent warriors, who for a long time made the law in our part of the world.

The name of these warriors comes from Gall, strong. I relate its origin to an ancient root of the white race, still very recognizable in Sanskrit wala or walya, which has the same meaning. The Sarmatian nations and, subsequently, the Gothics remained faithful to this form, and called the Galls Walah. The Slavs altered the word further, and made it Wlach. The Greeks pronounced it ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ or ÿÿÿÿÿÿ, which the Romans made Celtæ, then commonly falling back to the more regular form Galli (1)[1] .

Besides this name, the Galls had another: that of Gomer, registered in the biblical genealogies, among the sons of Japheth (2)[2] . We thus have the measure of the ancient notoriety of such a powerful branch of the white family. At this very ancient period, when the Semitic populations were still accumulated in the mountains of Armenia, and leaned against the Caucasus, they were undoubtedly able to maintain direct relations with the Celts or Gomers, of whom several nations lived at the time. on the northern coasts of the Black Sea. However it is also likely that the Celts had contact with the

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Semites even before this time. The writers of Genesis undoubtedly drew more cosmogonic and historical information from the annals of the Canaanites[3] but nothing prevents them from having had the means to complete these stories , with memories which were specific to them, and whose source went back to the age when all the white species was gathered at the bottom of upper Asia.

These Gomers, traditionally known to the Chanaanite nations of the south, were known more directly to the Assyrians. At the end of the 13th century, there were conflicts and melee between the two peoples. Unable to leave to posterity monuments of their triumphs, the Celts lost the memory of them; but their Asian rivals, more careful, kept traces of exploits of which they were proud. Mr. Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlinson very frequently found in cuneiform inscriptions the name of the Gumiris, among others, on the stones of Bisoutoun[4]

.

It is therefore in Western Asia that we find the first mentions of the people who were to spread the furthest in Europe.

In addition to the Bible and Assyrian testimonies, Greek history also speaks of the Cimmerian invasion at the time of Cyaxares[5] . These Cimmerians, these Gumiris, who then did so much harm, and were so quickly dispersed by the Scythians, we follow them, from then on, beyond the Euxine where they return, and, ascending with them towards the west and the north-

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west, we no longer lose sight of their vast wanderings.

They penetrate as far as the regions neighboring the North Sea, and there they bear their name Kimbr or Cimri[6]

.

They occupy Gaul, and introduce it to the Kymris. They established themselves in the Po valley, and spread the glory of the Umbri, the In Scotland, we still know

Ambrones (1)[7] .

the Cameron clan; in England, the Humber and Cambria; in France, the towns of Quimper, Quimperlé, Cambrai, as, in the plains of the country of Posen, the memory of the Ombrons has remained attached, until today, to a territory called Obrz (2)[8 ] .

It was thought that this name of Gumiri, of Kymri, of Cimbri, could indicate a branch of the Celtic family, different from that of the Galls, just as in the Celts we did not know how to recognize the latter. But it is enough to consider how the two names of Gall and Kymri often apply to the same tribes, to the same peoples, to abandon this distinction. Moreover, the two words have the same meaning or almost: if Gall means strong, Kymri means valiant (3)[9] .

In reality, there is no reason to split the Celtic masses into two radically distinct fractions, but it would be no less wrong to believe that all the branches of the family were absolutely similar. These multitudes, accumulated from the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea (4)[10] to the Strait of Gibraltar, and from Ireland to Russia (1)[11] , differed notably from each other, depending on

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that they had more or less allied themselves here with the Slavs, there with the Thracians and the Illyrians, everywhere with the Finns. Although originally coming from the same stock, they had often retained only a simple and distant kinship of which the identity of language, altered moreover by infinite modifications of dialects, was the badge. Moreover, they occasionally treated each other as rivals and enemies, just as we later saw the Austrasian Franks waging war, with complete peace of conscience, against the Neustrian Franks. They therefore formed political meetings entirely foreign to each oth That they belonged to the white race in the original part of their essence, there is no doubt. Among them, the warriors had a solid build, vigorous limbs and a gigantic size (3)[13] , blue or gray eyes, blond and red hair. They were men of turbulent passions; their extreme greed, their love of luxury, made them willingly resort to arms. They were gifted with a lively and easy understanding, with a very alert natural mind, with an insatiable curiosity, very soft in the face of adversity, and, to crown it all, with a formidable inconsistency of temper, the result of 'an organic inability to respect anything or love anything for long (1)[14] . Thus made, the Gallic nations had very early reached a fairly elevated social state, whose merits as well as the faults represented well both the noble stock from which these nations took their origin, and the alloy 977

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Finnish which had modified their nature (2)[15] . Their political establishment presents the same spectacle that all white peoples gave us in their origins. We find there this severely feudal organization and this incomplete power of an elective leader in use among the primitive Hindus, among the Iranians, among the Homeric Greeks, among the Chinese of the most ancient period. The inconsistency of authority and the gloomy pride of the warrior often paralyze the action of the agent of the law. In the government of Wales, as in that of other peoples of the same stock, there are no vestiges of this senseless despotism of a table of brass or stone, strong in the abstraction that it represents, an aberration so familiar to the Semitic republics. The law was rather vague and poorly respected; the prerogative of the leaders uncertain. In a word, the Celtic genius maintained these haughty rights which the black element destroys wherever it manages to introduce itself. Let us not be mistaken here by attributing these undisciplined instincts and this tormented organization to a state of barbarism. We only have to look at the political situation in Africa today to be convinced that the most radical barbarism does not exclude, in societies, a monstrous development of despotism. To be free, to be a slave, at a given moment, these are facts which often derive, for a people, from a series of very long historical combinations; but, having a natural predisposition to one or the other of these 978

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situations, it is never just an ethnic result. The simplest examination of the manner in which social ideas are distributed among the races leaves no room for error. Next to the political system is naturally the military system. The Galls did not fight randomly. Their armies, like those of the Hindu Arians, were composed of four elements, infantry (1)[16] , cavalry, war chariots (2) [17] and fighting dogs, which held the place of elephants (3) [18] . These troops acted according to the laws of a strategy that was undoubtedly mediocre, if we want to consider it from the perfected point of view of the Roman legion, but which had nothing in common with the crude impulse of the brute rushing on its prey. We can judge this from the intelligent manner in which the great Celtic invasions were conducted and the mode of administration established by the conquerors in the occupied countries, an original regime which only borrowed details from the customs of the vanquished. GalloGreece presents this show. The weapons of the Kymris were made of metal (1)[19] , sometimes of stone, but, in this case, very finely worked using bronze or iron tools. It would even seem that the swords and axes of the latter species, which were found in tombs, were more emblematic or dedicated to sacred uses than to serious use. To the same category belonged, incontestably, swords and maces of baked clay weapons, richly gilded and painted, which cannot

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to have had only a purely figurative purpose (2)[20] . remains, it is

Of

also very probable that the men of the poorest plebs used everything as a weapon. It was cheaper and easier for them to fit a pierced stone into a stick than to obtain a bronze axe. But what establishes in an irrefutable manner that this circumstance in no way implies general ignorance of metals and inability to work with them is that the Gallic languages have their own words to name these products, words of which we does not find its origin in Latin, Greek or Phoenician. If some of these words have a marked affinity with their Hellenic correspondents, this does not mean that they were provided by the Massaliotes. These resemblances only prove that the Arians Hellenes, fathers of the Phocaeans and ancestors of the Celts, came from a common race.

Iron is called ierne, irne, uirn, jarann ; copar copper , and it was the metal most used among the Galls for the manufacture of swords; lead, luaid ; salt, hal, sal (3) [21]

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All these expressions are entirely Gallic, and this is an undeniable testimony to the antiquity of metalworking among the Kymris. It would be very strange, we will agree, if in this West where the Iberians were in possession of the art of mining, where the native Etruscans had the same advantage, the Galls had been deprived of it, having come the last from the northeastern country, classic land, native land of blacksmiths.

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The monuments of both the Bronze and Iron Ages have provided an enormous quantity of various tools, which still give a high idea of the aptitude of the Celtic nations for working with ore. These are swords, axes, spearheads, halberds, jambs, helmets, all of gold or gilt, bronze or silver, or iron, or lead, or zinc; baldrics, precious chains, intended for men to hang their swords, and for women to attach the housewife's keys; bracelets of metal wire turned into spirals, embroidery applied to fabrics, scepters, crowns for chiefs, etc. (1) [22]

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The Galls practiced a sedentary life. They lived in large villages which often grew into considerable towns. Before Roman times, many of the capitals of their most opulent nations had acquired a notable degree of power. Bourges then had forty thousand inhabitants (2)[23] . We can judge, from this fact alone, whether these cities were to be disdained in terms of their extent and their population (3)[24] , Autun, Reims, Besançon, in Gaul, Carrhodunum, in Poland, many other towns, were certainly not without importance and without brilliance (4)[25] .

Latin antiquity told us about the shape of houses. There are numerous remains in France and southern Germany (5)[26] . These are the kinds of excavations known to antique dealers under the name of copings. Several measure a hundred paces around. They are

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round and always joined two by two. One was used as a dwelling, the other as a barn. Some of these locations seem to have had a stone retaining wall, on which stood the building made of planks and cob, often covered with plaster. The Galls readily used, in their constructions, the combination of stone or mortar with wood (6)[27] . These old houses, still so common in almost all our provincial towns, as in Germany, and made up of exposed frames, the intervals of which are filled with stones or earth, are products of the Celtic system. There is no indication that the dwellings had several floors. They don't seem to have had much luxury inside. The Celts sought more than beauty, well-being. They had furniture worked in wood with enough care, works of bone and ivory, such as combs, head needles, spoons, playing dice, horns used as drinking vessels; then horse harnesses garnished and decorated with copper or gilded bronze plaques, and above all a large number of vases of all shapes, cups, amphoras, bowls, etc. Glass objects were no less common among them. We find white ones and colored ones in blue, yellow, orange. We also have necklaces made of this material. It is believed that these ornaments served as insignia for the Druidic priesthood to distinguish the degrees of the hierarchy (1)[28] .

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Fabric manufacturing took place on a large scale. We have often discovered, in the tombs, remains of woolen cloth of different degrees of fineness, and we know, from historical testimonies, that the Celts, if they were very eager to adorn themselves with metal chains and bracelets , were no less likely to dress in these colorful fabrics of which the Scottish tartans are a memory direct (2)[29] . From a very early age, this love of material pleasures had led the Celts to work, and from productive work was born a taste for commerce. If the Massaliotes prospered, it was because they found in the populations which surrounded them, and in those which covered the northern countries behind them, a mercantile instinct which, in its own way, responded to theirs, and which this instinct had created many elements of exchange. He also had at his disposal abundant and easy means of transportation. The Celts had a navy. These were not the wretched canoes of the Finns, but good high-end vessels, well built and solidly framed, armed with a strong mast and skin sails, supple and well sewn.

These ships, in Caesar's opinion, were better suited to navigating the ocean than the Roman galleys. The dictator used them for the conquest of the island of Brittany, and was able to appreciate them all the better because, in the war against the Veneti, his fleet almost succumbed to the superiority of that of this people. He

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also speaks with admiration of the quantity of buildings available to the nations of Saintonge and Poitou (1)[30] . So that the Celts had a powerful instrument of activity and fortune at sea. For so many reasons, their cities being not very brilliant, being large, populous and well endowed with wealth of all kinds, the warlike character of the race made them run frequent dangers. Most were fortified, and not summarily with a palisade and a ditch, but with all the resources of an engineering art which was not contemptible. Caesar does justice to the talent of the Gallic Aquitanians in attacking places by means of mines. It is not to be believed that the Celts, skilled in underground work, like the Iberians, were more clumsy than the latter in the military application of their knowledge (2)[31] .

The defenses of the cities were therefore very strong. They consisted of walls of wood and stone arranged in such a way that, while the beams paralyzed the use of the ram by their elasticity, the rubble stone obstructed the action of the fire (1)[32 ] . Besides this system, there was another, probably much older still, of which very curious vestiges have been found in several places in the north of Scotland; in Sainte-Suzanne, in Péran, in France; in Görlitz, Lusatia. These are large walls whose surface, melted by the action of fire, is covered with a vitrified crust which makes the entire work a single block of incomparable hardness (2)[33 ] . This method of construction 984

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is so strange that for a long time we doubted whether it was due to the action of man, and we took it for a volcanic product, in regions which, moreover, do not reveal a single trace of the existence natural fires. But we cannot deny the obvious. The camp of Péran shows its vitrified substructions under Roman masonry, and there is no doubt that this imperishable type of work is the work of the Celts. Antiquity is certainly one of the most remote. I see proof of this in the fact that in Roman times Scotland had fallen into decadence, and that such monuments were, in any case, beyond its needs and the resources at its disposal. We must therefore attribute them to a time when the Caledonian population had not yet suffered, to a degrading point, from mixing with the Finnic hordes which surrounded it (3)[34] .

Vitrified walls, built of large stones, imply the existence of fragmentary architecture. Indeed, the Celts, very different from the yellow peoples, did not limit themselves to juxtaposing sections of enormous rocks; they raised, one on top of the other, polygonal blocks which they kept raw, in order, it has been said, not to diminish their strength (1)[35] . This is the origin of the system known under the names We find them in Pelasgic and Cyclopean (2)[36] . France, as in Greece, as in Italy. To this order of constructions belong enclosures discovered in our provinces, and the sepulchral chambers of a large number of tumulus, which are thus clearly distinguished from the

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Finnic works, in which the blocks are never superimposed so as to form a wall (3)[37] . The extraordinary power of these massive debris has resisted, in more than one place, the outrage of centuries. The Romans used it as the ramparts of Sainte-Suzanne, and made it the basis of their own works. Then, the knights of the Middle Ages, in their turn, building their dungeons on this double antiquity, completed the material archives of military architecture in Europe. In addition to stone and wood, the Galls also used brick. They built very remarkable towers, some of which still survive, one, among others, on the Loire, and of unknown use, but probably religious (1) [38 ]

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The cities, thus well populated, well built, well defended, well supplied with furniture, utensils and jewelry, communicated with each other across the country, not by difficult paths and fords, but by regular roads and bridges. . The Romans were not the first to establish lines of communication in the Kymric countries: they found some that existed before them, and several of their most famous paths, because they were the most frequented, were not were only old national works maintained and repaired by them. As for the bridges, Caesar names some which he certainly had not built (2) [39]

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In addition to these communications, the Celts had organized even quicker ones for extraordinary circumstances. They had real telegraphy. Designated agents shouted from one to the other the news that had to be transmitted: in this way, an order or a notice leaving Orléans, at sunrise, arrived in Auvergne before nine o'clock in the evening, having traveled in this way eighty leagues of country (3)[40] . If the towns were numerous and had many inhabitants, the countryside appears to have been no less populated. This can be inferred from the considerable number of cemeteries discovered in the different regions of Celtic Europe. The extent of these burial fields is generally remarkable. We do not see any mounds there. This construction, when it contains a dolmen, belongs to the first Finnish inhabitants: there is no question here of this variety. When it contains a masonry sepulchral chamber, it belongs to the princes, the nobles, the rich of nations. Cemeteries are more modestly the last asylum of the middle or working classes. They only provide the observer with flat tombs, most of them carefully constructed, often cut into rock or established in beaten earth. The tombs there are covered with slabs. The bodies were almost always burned. Although this fact is not absolutely without exception, its frequency establishes a sort of further distinction between the corpses of the oldest natives, always whole, and those of the Celts. In 987

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in any case, the tumulus with burial chambers, pelasgic and cyclopean, monuments probably contemporary with the cemeteries, never contain intact skeletons, but always cremated bones contained in urns. Yet another difference exists between those of these burials which belong to the national period, and those which only date back to the Roman period: the objects found in the latter have a mixed character where the Hellenized Latin element is easily seen. Not far from Geneva, we see a cemetery of this type (1)[41] .

Besides the fact that the abundance of purely Celtic cemeteries gives a high idea of the scale of the populations who founded them, it still inspires reflections of another order. The care and, consequently, the costs which were employed there, the number, the nature and the richness of the various objects which the tombs contain, all this, taken together with the observation that in contemplating them one does not have before the eyes the resting place of the great and the chiefs, but only of the middle and lower classes, gives rise to a very high idea of the well-being of these classes, and consequently of the general opulence of the nations of which they formed the basi We are very far from the opinion so long spread, and so lightly adopted, on the complete barbarity of the Gallic tribes, an opinion which mainly took its support in the false allegation that the Finnic monuments were their work. It is not yet enough to avoid such serious errors: several important details which remain to be said will lengthen 988

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the distance. The Celts, skilled in so many diverse tasks, could not be foreign to the need to remunerate them and recognize a price for them. They knew the use of cash, and, three hundred years before the coming of Caesar, minted money for the needs of foreign trade. They had coins of gold, silver, gold-silver and copper, copper and lead, iron, copper alone, round, square, radiated, concave, spherical, flat, thick, thin, struck in hollow or in relief (2)[43] . A very large number of these coins were visibly produced under Massaliot, Macedonian or Roman influence (3)[44] . But others completely escape suspicion of this relationship. They are certainly the oldest: they go back well beyond the date I have just indicated. There are some, the radiates, which have their analogues in Etruria, either because the men of this country have borrowed them from the Umbrian peoples of their neighborhood, or because a great trade between the two nations, a trade which is not to be revoked in doubt, and which the frequent presence of succin in the oldest Tuscan tombs would suffice to demonstrate, early committed the two contracting groups to use perfectly similar means of exchange (1)[45 ] . Along with currency, the Celts still possessed the art of writing. Several inscriptions copied on Celtiberian medals, but so far undeciphered, bear witness to this from a distant era.

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Tacitus, for his part, points out a fact which seems to date back to an age at least as distant. It was said in his time that there existed, in Germany and in the Rhaetian Alps, ancient monuments covered with Greek inscriptions. It was added that these monuments had been erected by Ulysses, during his great northern wanderings, adventures of which we do not have the account (2)[46] . In reporting this tradition, Tacitus, very judiciously, expresses doubt that the son of Laertes ever traveled in the Alps and on the Rhine side; but his reserve becomes excessive when it extends from the person of the traveler to the existence of the inscriptions themselves (3)[47] . With the testimony of Tacitus comes that of Caesar, who, when he had defeated the Helvetians, found in their camp a detailed list of the emigrant population, warriors, women, children and old men. This register was, according to him, written in Greek letters (1)[48] . In another passage from the Commentaries, the dictator recounts that, for all public (2)[49] and private affairs , the Celts used Greek letters. By a singular anomaly, the Druids did not want to write anything about their doctrines or their rites, and forced their students to learn everything by heart (3)[50] . It was a strict rule. According to this information, it is beyond dispute that before having undergone Roman education, the Celtic nations were accustomed to the graphic representation of their ideas, and, what is particularly interesting here, the use which 'they made this science was quite different 990

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than that which the great Asian peoples of antiquity gave us the spectacle of. Among the latter, writing was mainly used by priests, was revered as a religious mystery, and passed into colloquial use with so much difficulty that until the time of Pisistratus, not even the poems of Homer, objects, however, of general admiration. Among the Celts, on the contrary, it is the sanctuaries which do not want the alphabet. Private life and secular administration take possession of it: it is used to indicate the value of currencies and for what is of personal or public interest. In a word, among the Celts, writing, stripped of all religious prestige, is an essentially popularized science. But Tacitus and Caesar add that these letters, that this widely used alphabet, the presence of which is now not in doubt in Germany (4)[51] , is certain in the Hispanic peninsula, the Gauls and Helvetia, that this alphabet , I say, is Hellenic, has nothing national, and comes from a Greek importation. Immediately, to explain this assertion, people who only want to see imported civilizations everywhere, turn to the Massaliotes. This is their great resource when they cannot turn a blind eye to the reality of a state of affairs foreign to barbarism in Celtic countries. But their hypothesis is no more admissible this time than on so many other occasions where healthy criticism has done justice to it.

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If the Massaliotes had had the power to act on the ideas of the Gallic nations in a manner constant enough, powerful enough, general enough to spread the use of their alphabet everywhere, all the more reason would they have had the attractive forms accepted of their weapons and their ornaments. This victory would certainly have been the easiest of all. However, they did not succeed. When the nations of Gaul imagined copying Greek currencies, they gave in to a positive feeling of usefulness which revealed to them all the advantages attached to the unity of the monetary system; but, from an artistic point of view, they went about it with a clumsiness and a crudeness which show in the most obvious way how little they knew the intentions of the people whose works they sought to counterfeit, and the little intellectual contact that they had. they had with him. One race does not borrow its alphabet from another without taking something more from it, religious beliefs, for example, and precisely the Druids did not want to hear about writing. So writing, among the Celts, was not the repository of any dogma. Or, sometimes, in the absence of theological doctrines, it could be a question of literary imports. No writer of antiquity has ever noticed the slightest trace of it (1)[52] . Finally, this use of the alphabet so widespread, so firmly established in the customs of the Gallic nations who had the least contact with each other, by what route would it have passed from the Helvetians to the people of Celtiberia? If they had been tempted to ask strangers for a graphic way to preserve the memory

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facts, they would certainly have turned to the side of the Phoenicians. However, the letteras desconocidas engraved on the indigenous medals of the Peninsula do not have the slightest connection with the Chanaanite alphabet; nor do they have any with that of Greece. This word will end the discussion regarding the material identity of the two families of letters. What is not true for the Celtiberians is also not true for most other Kymric nations. However, I do not claim that there was only one alphabet I for them all (1)[53] . stop at this limit that the system of arrangement and forms was identical in principle, although capable of offering very clear nuances and local variations. We will ask how it was possible that Caesar, so accustomed to reading Greek works, was mistaken about the appearance of the Helvetian registers, and saw Hellenic letters where there were none? Here is the answer: Caesar probably held these manuscripts in his hands, but it was an interpreter who gave him their meaning. They were drawn, according to this secretary, in Greek characters, that is to say in characters which closely resembled Greek, but the language was Gallic. The appearance was enough for the dictator, and, as he considered it unmistakable that the Italian and Etruscan alphabets were of Greek origin, despite their deviations of this type, when he saw a set which he did not understand, but where his eye unraveled the same Moreover, analogies, he concluded and said what he said (1)[54] . this explanation is not optional: there is no need to 993

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hesitate: the recently discovered monuments have made known the alphabets in use, prior to the Romans, among the Salasses of Provence, among the Celts of Saint-Bernard, among the mountaineers of Ticino: all these modes of writing are original, they have only distant affinities with Greek (2)[55] .

I do not in fact deny that, if the Celtic alphabet or alphabets are not Greek, they are placed, with regard to the Hellenic alphabet, in very intimate relationships, in a word, that they do not can all refer, they and him, to the same source. They are not copies, but they are formed on the same system, on a primordial mode, prior to themselves as well as to the Hellenic type, and which provided them with their common appearances, at the same time as an identical mechanism.

The ancient Greek alphabet, the one which, according to experts, was first used by the Hellenic Arian nations, was composed of sixteen letters. These letters have, it is true, Semitic names, and even have several points of resemblance with the Canaanite and Hebrew characters, but nothing proves that the origin of one or the other is local and was not brought from the north. is by the first emigrants of the white race (1)[56] . The primitive Greek alphabet was written sometimes from right to left, sometimes from left to right, and it was only late that its current course was fixed (1)[57] .

There is nothing unusual there. It has been demonstrated that Devanagari, which today follows our method, had been 994

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invented according to the needs of the contrary system. Likewise, the runes are placed in all ways, from right to left, from left to right, from bottom to top, or in a circle. We are even entitled to assert that there was initially no normal way of writing runes. The sixteen letters of the Greek model did not render all the sounds of the mixed language made up of aboriginal, Semitic and Aryan-Hellenic elements. They could not further respond to the need for the idioms of earlier Asia, which all have much more numerous alphabets. But perhaps they suited the idiom of these primitive inhabitants of the country, vaguely named Pelasgians, of whose Celtic or Slavic origin I have only indicated. What is certain is that the northern runes, which W. Grimm considers as not having been invented for the Teutonic dialects (2)[58] , also have only sixteen letters, also insufficient to reproduce all voice modulations in a Goth. W.

Grimm (3)[59] , comparing the runes to the characters discovered by Strahlenberg and by Pallas on the Arian monuments on the banks of the Jenissei, does not hesitate to see the original type in the latter. He thus transfers to the very cradle of the white race the origin of all our current alphabets, and starting from the ancient Greek alphabet itself, not to mention the Semitic systems. This consideration will become in the future, I have no doubt, the starting point of the most important studies for primit

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Keferstein, following in the footsteps of Grimm, notes, with great sagacity, that letters, most essential to Gothic dialects, are missing among the runes: these are the following: c, d, e, f, g, h, q , w, x.

Based on this observation, he complements his predecessor's remark very well, by concluding that the runes are none other than alphabets in THE Celtic use (1)[60] . Runic characters, thus returned to their true inventors, immediately find a very authentic analogue among a people of the same race: it is the very ancient Irish alphabet, called bobelot or beluisnon. It is composed, like the ancient prototypes, of only sixteen letters, and offers striking similarities with runes (2)[61] .

We must not lose sight of the fact that the system of all these modes of writing is absolutely the same as that of ancient Greek, and that the general relationships of forms with the latter never cease to exist. I end this general review by citing the Italian alphabets, such as Umbric, Oscan, Euganean, Messapian (3)[62] and the Etruscan alphabets (4) [63] , also related to Greek by their forms, and consequently its allies. All these alphabets are from a very ancient date, and, although they have great similarities between them, they present no less diversity. They possess letters which have nothing Hellenic about them, and thus enjoy a truly national physiognomy, of which it is very difficult for the most systematic criticism to strip them (1)[64] .

Furthermore, all except the Etruscans are Celtic, as will be seen later. 996

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For the moment, no one will doubt it regarding Euganean and Umbric.

The monuments which have preserved them for us appear, for the most part, to predate the invasion of Hellenism in the Italic peninsula. We must therefore conclude that these European alphabets, relatives of each other, parents of Greek, are not formed according to it; that they go back, like him, to a more ancient origin; that, like the blood of the white races, they have their source in the primitive establishments of these races in the depths of upper Asia; that, like the peoples who possess them, they are original and truly independent of any Greek imitation in the European territory where they were used; finally, that the Celtic nations, not having borrowed their type of social culture from Greece, nor their religion, nor their blood, did not owe their graphic systems to it either (2)[65 ] .

What is very striking about them is the completely utilitarian use that was made of written thought. We have not yet encountered anything similar in feminine societies elevated to a corresponding degree on the scale of civilization, and, our minds still full of the facts which the examination of the Asiatic world has furnished on the pages of the first volume , we must recognize ourselves here on completely new ground. We are among people who understand and experience the influence of a drier reason, and who obey the suggestions of a more mundane interest. earth. 997

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The Celtic nations were warlike and warlike, no doubt; but, ultimately, much less than is generally assumed. Their military fame is based on the few invasions with which they disturbed the tranquility of other peoples. We forget that these were temporary convulsions of a multitude that transitory circumstances threw out of their natural ways, and that, for very long centuries, before and after their great wars, the Celtic States deeply respected their neighbors. Indeed, their social organization itself needed rest to develop.

They were mainly farmers, industrialists and traders. If it happened to them, like all the nations of the world, even the most civilized, to bring war to others, their citizens occupied themselves, much more ordinarily, with grazing their oxen and their immense herds of pigs in the vast clearings of the oak forests which covered the country. They were without rival in the preparation of smoked and salted meats. They gave their hams a degree of excellence which made this article of commerce famous far and wide and as far away as Greece (1)[66] . Long before the intervention of the Romans, they sold in the Italic peninsula, as well as in the markets of Marseille, and their woolen fabrics, and their linen cloths, and their coppers, for which they had invented tinning. To these different products they added the sale of salt, slaves, eunuchs, dogs trained to 998

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the hunt ; they were masters in all kinds of carpentry, war chariots, luxury chariots and travel chariots (2)[67] . In a word, the Kymris, as I pointed out earlier, as avid merchants, to say the least, as intrepid soldiers, classify themselves, without difficulty, among the utilitarian peoples, in other words, male nations. We cannot assign them to any other category. Superior to the Iberians, militarily speaking, dedicated like them and more than them to lucrative work, they do not seem to have surpassed them in intellectual needs. Their luxury was above all of a positive nature: beautiful weapons, good clothes, beautiful horses. They also pushed this latter taste to the point of passion, and brought expensive couriers from overseas countries at great expense (3)[68] . However, they appear to have possessed literature. Since they had bards, they had songs. These songs exposed all the knowledge acquired by their race, and preserved the cosmogonic, theological and historical traditions. Modern criticism does not have at its disposal written compositions dating back to the true national era. However, there is, in the common fund of intellectual wealth belonging to Romanesque nations as well as to Germanic peoples, a certain corner marked with a very special origin, which can be claimed for the Celts. We also find, among the Irish, the mountain people of northern Scotland and the Bretons of

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Armorica, productions in prose and verse composed in local dialects. The attention of scholars has focused with interest on these works of the popular muse. It was sometimes due to them to recapture the traces of some lineaments of the ancient physiognomy of the Kymric world. Unfortunately, I repeat, these compositions are far from belonging to true antiquity. It is all that their most enthusiastic admirers can do, than to postpone a few fragments to the fifth century (1)[69] , a very young date to enable us to judge what Celtic works could have been at the time. pre-Roman, at the time when the spirit of the race was independent like its politics. Furthermore, we feel, when we look at these works, a mistrust which it is hardly possible to get rid of, if we want to keep our ears open to the voice of reason. Although their authenticity, as products of Welsh or Armorican bards, Irish or Gaelic sennachies, is incontestable, we are struck by their extreme resemblance to the Roman and Germanic inspirations of the centuries to which they belong. The most superficial comparison makes this truth all too notorious. The forms of thought, the material forms of poetry, are identical (2)[70] . The taste is very similar for enigmatic research, for the sententious turn of the story, for Sibyllian obscurity, for the ternary combination of facts, for alliteration. In truth, we can admit that these characteristic marks 1000

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are due precisely to primordial borrowings made from Celtic genius by the emerging Germanic world. Everything suggests, in fact, that, in the moral domain, the German Arians must have taken a lot from the Kymris, since, in terms of ethnic and linguistic facts, they allowed themselves to be so powerfully modified by them. But, while recognizing this starting point as admissible and even necessary, it is nonetheless very likely that the forms, the literary habits, now common, were able, following the invasions of the 5th century, to enter into the heritage of the Celts, and, this time, strongly developed and enriched by contributions due to the particular essence of the conquerors. The Kymris of the first four centuries of the Church had, as Kymris, fallen very low and become very little. Their intellectual life, stripped of its originality, was, like the blood of most of their nations, extremely altered by Roman influence. The question is not one regarding Gaul.

The compositions of the ovates had perished leaving few traces. These works were in no way the same as those of the Etruscans, who, although struck by unpopularity with the old Sabines by the alleged barbarity of the language, nevertheless maintained their importance and their dignity, thanks to their historical value. The genealogist and the antiquary found themselves forced to take them into account, to translate them, to bring them into mainstream literature, albeit by transforming them. Gaul did not 1001

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happiness. Its people consented to the almost complete abandonment of a heritage which they quickly learned to despise, and, in every aspect in which they could examine themselves, they managed to become as Latin as possible. I want the ideas of the land, perhaps even some old songs, translated and disfigured, to be preserved in the memory of the people. This fund, which remained Celtic from an absolute point of view, ceased to be so literaryly speaking, since it only lived on the condition of losing its forms. We must therefore consider, from the Roman era, the Celtic nations of Gaul, Germania, the Helvetian country, Rhaetia, as having become foreign to the special nature of their ancient inspiration, and limit ourselves to no longer recognize among them that traditions of fact and certain dispositions of mind which, persisting with the measure of the blood of the Kymris remaining in the new ethnic mixture, retained no other power than to predispose the new populations to one day take back some ways once familiar to the special intelligence of the Gallic race.

The Celts of the continent, thus exonerated long before the arrival of the Germans, it remains to be examined whether those of the islands of Brittany, of Ireland, have preserved some remains of the intellectual treasure of the family, and what they have of it could transmit to their Armorican colony. Caesar considers the natives of the big island to be very rude. The Irish were even more so. To the 1002

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Truth be told, both territories were considered sacred, and their sanctuaries were in veneration among the Druids. But hieratic science is one thing, profane science is another. I will indicate below the reasons which lead me to believe the first to have been very anciently corrupted and degraded among the Bretons. The second was obviously little cultivated by them, not because these islanders lived in the woods; not because their towns were nothing more than circumvallations of tree branches in the middle of forests; not because the harshness of their morals authorized, rightly or wrongly, to accuse them of cannibalism; but because the genetic traditions attributed to them contain too small a proportion of original facts.

The predominance of classical ideas is evident. She is obvious, and she does not even appear to us under the Latin costume; it is in the Christian form, in the monastic form, in the Germano-Roman style of thought, that it presents itself to our eyes (1)[71] . No observer in good faith can refuse to recognize that the pious cenobites of the 6th century, if not composed all his works, at least set the tone for their composers, even pagan ones. In all these books, alongside Caesar and his soldiers, we see the biblical stories appearing: Magog and the sons of Japheth, the Pharaohs and the land of Egypt; then the reflection of contemporary events: the Saxons, the grandeur of Constantinople, the feared power of Attila. From these remarks I do not draw the conclusion that there is absolutely no remnant of memory truly 1003

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old in this literature; but I think that it belongs, totally in its forms and almost entirely in substance, to the time when the natives were no longer the only ones to inhabit their territories, to the time when their race had ceased to be solely Celtic , to that where Christianity and the Germanic power, although still finding great resistance among them, were no less victorious, dominating, and capable of bending the intimidated intelligence of the most hateful enemies to their views.

All these reasons, by establishing that the groups speaking, since the Christian era, of Celtic dialects, had, for a long time, lost all their own inspiration, still support this proposition, put forward just now, that, if the Germanic genius is, at its origin, enriched with kymric contributions, it is under his influence, it is with what he gave back to the Gaelic, Welsh and Breton peoples, that the literature of these tribes, literature which from then on we are entitled to call modern.

This is no more than a derivative of multiple currents, not an original source. I will therefore not repeat, with so many philologists, that the Celtic inhabitants of England possessed, at the dawn of the feudal age, songs and novels purely taken from their own invention, and which went around the world. Europe; but, on the contrary, I will say that, just like the Irish monks, the Sculdees shone with a brilliance of theological knowledge, with an energy of proselytism that is entirely admirable and foreign to traditional habits.

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selfish and unenthusiastic of the Gallic races, likewise their poets, placed under the same foreign influences, drew from the conflict of ideas and habits which resulted from it, from the treasure of traditions so varied opened before their eyes, finally from the weak and obscure heritage which had been bequeathed to them by their fathers, this series of productions which was, in fact, successful throughout Europe, but which owed its vast success to the very reason that it did not reflect the trends absolutes of a special and isolated race: quite the contrary, it was at the same time the product of Celtic, Roman and Germanic thought, and hence its immense popularity.

This opinion would certainly not be tenable, it would even be opposed to all the doctrines of this book, if the purity of race which is generally attributed to populations still speaking Celtic were proven. The argument, and it is the only one used to establish it, consists in the persistence of the language. We have already seen several times, and particularly with regard to the Basques, how inconclusive this way of reasoning is (1)[72] . The inhabitants of the Pyrenees cannot be considered the descendants of a primitive race, even less of a pure race; the simplest physiological considerations oppose it. The same reasons make no less resistance to the Irish, the Highlanders of Scotland, the Welsh, the inhabitants of English Cornwall and the Bretons being considered as typical and unmixed peoples. Without doubt, we find, in general, among them, and among 1005

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Bretons especially, physiognomies marked with a very particular character; but nowhere do we see this general resemblance of features, the prerogative, if not of pure races, at least of races whose elements have been amalgamated long enough to have become homogeneous. I do not insist on the very serious differences that the neo-Celtic groups present when we compare them with each other. The persistence of the language is therefore not, here more than elsewhere, a certain guarantee of purity in terms of blood. This is the result of local circumstances, strongly served by geographical positions. What physiology shakes, history overturns. It is most positively known that the expeditions and settlements of the Danes and Norwegians in the islands scattered around Great Britain and Ireland began very early (1)[73 ] . Dublin belonged to populations and kings of Danish origin, and a most competent writer has firmly established that the chiefs of the Scottish clans were, in the Middle Ages, of Danish extraction, like their nobles; that their resistance to the crown was supported by the Danish rulers of Orkney, and that their fall, in the 12th century, was the consequence of that of these dynasts, their parents (2)[74 ] .

Dieffenbach therefore notes the existence of a very pronounced Scandinavian and even Saxon mixture among the Highlanders. Before him, Murray had recognized the Danish accent in the Buchanshire dialect, and Pinkerton, analyzing the idioms of the entire island, had also 1006

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pointed out, in a province which is usually considered essentially Celtic, Wales, such obvious and numerous traces of Saxon that he calls Welsh a Saxonised Celtic (3)[75] .

These are the main reasons which seem to me to oppose the possibility of considering Welsh, Ersi or Breton works as reproducing, even in an approximate manner, either the ideas or the taste of the Kymric populations of the Western Europe. To form a correct idea on this subject, it seems to me more accurate to choose a field of abstraction. Let us take Roman and Germanic productions as a whole; let us summarize, on the other hand, all that historians and polygraphists have transmitted to us in terms of insights and details on the particular genius of the Celts, and we will be able to draw the following conclusions.

The enthusiastic exaltation observed in the East was not the result of Welsh literature. Whether in historical works or in mythical stories, she loved accuracy, or, in the absence of this quality, those affirmative and precise forms which, in the imagination, take its place (1)[76 ] . She sought facts more than feelings; she tended to produce emotion, not so much through the way she said it, like the Semites, as through the intrinsic value, either sadness or energy, of what she expressed. It was positive, willingly descriptive, as required by the intimate alliance which brought it closer to Finnic blood, as we see the example in Chinese genius, and, by its intimate lack of warmth and expansion,

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willingly elliptical and concise. This austerity of form also allowed him a sort of vague and easily sympathetic melancholy which still constitutes the charm of popular poetry in our countries.

We will find, I hope, this assessment admissible, if we remember that a literature is always the reflection of the people who produced it, the result of its ethnic state, and if we compare the conclusions which emerge from this truth with all the qualities and defects that the content of the preceding pages has revealed in the mode of culture of the Celtic nations.

As a result, the Kymris could not have been intellectually gifted in the way that the Melanized nations of the south were. If this condition left its mark on their literary productions, it was no less sensitive in the field of the plastic arts. Of all the baggage that the Galls have left behind them in this genre, and that their tombs have given back to us, we can admire the variety, the richness, the good and solid craftsmanship: there is no reason to be ecstatic about the form. It is most vulgar there, and provides no trace that could make us recognize a mind amused, as in earlier Asia, in giving beautiful appearances to the smallest objects or feeling the need to please demanding eyes (1) [ 77 ] .

It is truly curious that Caesar, who dwells with enough complacency on everything he encountered in Gaul, and who praises with great impartiality what deserves it, shows himself in no way seduced by the value 1008

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artistic of what he observes. He sees populous cities, very well designed and executed ramparts: he does not once mention a beautiful temple (2)[78] .

If he speaks of

the sanctuaries seen by him in the cities, this aspect inspires him neither praise nor blame, nor expression of curiosity. It seems that these constructions were, like all the others, suitable for their purpose, and nothing more. I imagine that those of our modern buildings which are not copied from Greek, Roman, Gothic, Arabic, or any other style, inspire the same indifference to disinterested observers.

In addition to weapons and utensils, a very small number of figurative representations of man or animals were found. I even admit that I don't know of a very authentic example.

General taste, it would seem, did not incline manufacturers or artists to this type of work. The little we have is very crude and such that the slightest maneuver could do the same. The ornamentation of vases, objects in bronze or iron, ornaments in gold or silver, is similarly devoid of taste, unless they are copies of Greek or rather Roman works, a particularity which indicates, when It turns out that the observed object belongs to the period of the domination of the Caesars, or at least to a time which is quite close to it. In national periods, designs in single and double spirals or in wavy lines are extremely common: it is even the most ordinary subject.

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We have seen that the engravings observed on the most beautiful dolmens of Finnish construction usually affected this form. It would therefore seem that the Celts, while maintaining their superiority over the previous inhabitants of the country, felt themselves poorly equipped in terms of imagination not to disdain the lessons of these unfortunate people (1)[79 ] . But, as such borrowings only ever take place between related nations, finding the mark can serve to point out that in addition to the yellow mixtures, already suffered during the duration of the migration across Europe, the Celts in contracted many others with the builders of dolmens in most of the countries where they settled, if not in all. This conclusion is not unexpected for the reader's mind: powerful clues have already pointed it out. There are also others, and of a more elevated and more important nature than simple details of artistic education. This is the place to talk about it with some emphasis. When I said that the aristocratic system was in force among the Galls, I did not add, which is nevertheless necessary, that slavery also existed among them. We see that their mode of government was complicated enough to merit serious study. An elective leader, a body of nobility half priestly, half military, a middle class, in short the white organization, and, 1010

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underneath, a servile population. Except for the brilliance of the colors, we believe we find ourselves in India. In the latter country, the slaves, in primitive times, consisted of blacks subjugated by the Arians. In Egypt, the lower castes having also been made up, and almost entirely, of Negroes, we must conclude that they likewise owed their situation to the conquest or its consequences. In the Chamo-Semitic States, in Tire, in Carthage, it was like this. In Greece, the Lacedaemonian Helots, the Thessalian Poenestes and many other categories of peasants attached to the soil, were the descendants of the subjugated aborigines. It follows from these examples that the existence of servile populations, even with notable nuances in the treatment inflicted on them, always denotes original differences between national races.

Slavery, like all other human institutions, is based on conditions other than the fact of constraint. We can, without doubt, accuse this institution of being the abuse of a right; an advanced civilization may have philosophical reasons to bring to the aid of more conclusive ethnic reasons to destroy it: it is no less incontestable that in certain periods slavery has its legitimacy, and one would almost be authorized to affirm that it results as much from the consent of the one who suffers it as from the moral and physical predominance of the one who imposes it.

We do not understand that between two men endowed with equal intelligence this pact subsists for a single day without there being 1011

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have protest and soon cessation of an illogical state of affairs. But we are perfectly entitled to admit that such relationships are established between the strong and the weak, both having full awareness of their mutual position, and reducing the latter to a sincere conviction that his degradation is justifiable in healthy equity. Servitude is never maintained in a society whose various elements have merged somewhat. Long before the amalgam reaches its perfection, this situation changes, then disappears. Much less is it possible for one half of a race to say to its other half: “You will serve me,” and for the other to obey . Such examples have never occurred, and what the weight of arms could consecrate for a moment, never being ratified by the conscience of the oppressed, fragile and vacillating, would soon be annihilated. Thus, wherever there is slavery, there is duality or plurality of races. There are victors and vanquished, and the more distinct the races, the more complete the oppression. The slaves, the vanquished, among the Galls, were the Finns. I will not stop to combat the opinion which wants to see in the servile population of Celtic Iberian tribes strictly speaking. Nothing indicates that this Hispanic family ever occupied the provinces located north of the Then the differences were Garonne (1)[81] . not such between the Galls and the masters of Spain that the latter could have been lowered en masse to the role of slaves vis-à-vis their rulers. When shipments 1012

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Kymrics, penetrating the Peninsula, disturbed all previous relationships, we see the result of expulsions and mixtures; but everything shows that, once the war was over, there were, between the two contending parties, relations generally based on the recognition of a certain equality (2)[82] . It was absolutely the same for other half-white groups, closely related to the Iberians, and later to the Galls. These groups were made up of Slavs who, spread across several parts of the Celtic countries, lived there sporadically, side by side with the Kymris. The same reasons which prevented the Iberians of Spain, invaded by the Celts, from being reduced to slavery, assured these Wends, lost far from the bulk of their race, an attitude of independence. We see them forming a distinct nation in Armorica, and bearing their national name of Veneti These Veneti also had some of their own in present-day Wales (1)[83] , whose residence was Wenedotia or Gwineth. La Vilaine was called, according to them, Vindilis. The town of Vannes also keeps a trace of their memory in its name, and what is quite curious is that it keeps it in the form that the Finns give to the word Wende: Wane (2 ) [ 84 ] . A Gallic tribe, related to the Veneti, the Osismii, had Still a port which it named Vindana (3)[85] . far from there, on the Adriatic and right next to the Euganean Celts, resided the Veneti, Heneti or Eneti, whose nationality is a historically recognized fact, but who, 1013

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although speaking a particular language, had absolutely the same morals as the Galls, their neighbors. Several other Slavic populations, Celticized in varying proportions, lived in northeastern Germany and on the Krapack line, side by side with the Gallic nations. All these facts demonstrate that the Slavs of Gaul and Italy, like the Iberians of Spain, retained a fairly dignified rank and were numerous among the Kymric States with which they were allied. Without thinking of gratuitously dishonoring their memory, let us look for the servile race where it could have been: we only find the Finns. Their immediate contact must necessarily exert a deleterious influence on their conquerors, soon their parents. We find clear evidence of this. At the forefront we must put the use of human sacrifices, in the form in which they were practiced, and with the meaning that they were given. If the destructive instinct is the indelible character of all humanity, as of everything that has life in nature, it is certainly among the lower varieties of the species that it appears most acute. As such, yellow people have it just as well as black people. But, given that the former manifest it by means of a special apparatus of feelings and actions, it was also exercised among the Galls, affected by Finnic blood, in a different way than among the Semitic nations, imbued with the melanian essence. We did not see, in the Celtic cantons, things happening as on the banks of the Euphrates. Never, on altars publicly raised to

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In the middle of cities, in the centers of squares flooded with the light of the sun, the homicidal rites of the Druidic priesthood were performed impudently, with a sort of noisy, solemn, delirious rage, joyful to do harm. The morose and sorrowful worship of these priests of Europe was not intended to feed ardent imaginations with the intoxicating spectacle of refined cruelties. It was not learned tastes in the art of torture that were to be applauded. A spirit of dark superstition, lover of taciturn terrors, demanded more mysterious and no less tragic scenes. To this end, an entire people was gathered deep in the thick woods. There, during the night, howls uttered by invisible people struck the frightened ears of the faithful. Then, under the consecrated vault of damp foliage which barely allowed the doubtful light of a western moon to fall on a terrible scene, on a crudely fashioned granite altar, borrowed from ancient barbarian rites, the priests brought the victims forward. and silently thrust the bronze knife into their throats or sides.

Other times, these priests filled gigantic wicker mannequins with captives and criminals, and set everything on fire in one of the clearings of their great forests. These horrors were accomplished as if secretly; and, while the Chamite came out of his hieratic butcheries drunk with carnage, rendered senseless by the smell of blood with which his nostrils and brain had just been swollen, the Gall returned from his religious solemnities, worried and dazed. 1015

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of terror. This is the difference: to one, the active and burning ferocity of the Melanian principle; on the other, the cold and sad cruelty of the yellow element. The Negro destroys because he exalts himself, and exalts himself because he destroys. The yellow man kills without emotion and to satisfy a momentary need of his mind. I have shown, elsewhere, that in China the adoption of certain ferocious fashions, such as burying women and slaves with the corpse of a prince, corresponded to invasions of new yellow peoples in the empire.

Among the Celts, the entire cult also bore witness to this influence. It is not that the dogmas and certain rites were absolutely stripped of what they owed to the primitively noble origin of the family. Mythologists have discovered striking analogies with Hindu ideas, especially with regard to cosmogonic theories. The priesthood itself, dedicated to contemplation and study, shaped by austerities and fatigue, foreign to the use of weapons, placed above, if not outside of worldly life, and enjoying the right of guide, while having the duty to pay little attention to it, these are all traits which recall quite well the physiognomy of the purohitas.

But the latter did not disdain any science and practiced all the ways of perfecting their minds. The debased druids stuck to forever closed teachings and traditional forms. They did not want to know anything beyond that, nor especially to communicate anything, and the dangerous terrors with which they surrounded their 1016

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sanctuaries, the material perils that they accumulated around the forests or moors which served as their school, were even less forbidding than the moral obstacles they brought to the penetration of their knowledge. Necessities analogous to those which degraded the Hamitic priesthoods weighed on their genius.

They feared the use of writing. Their entire doctrine was committed to memory. Very different from the purohitas on this crucial point, they feared anything that could have their ideas appreciated and judged. They claimed, alone among their nations, to have their eyes open to the things of the future life. Forced to recognize the religious imbecility of the servile masses, and later of the half-breeds who surrounded them, they did not realize that this imbecility was affecting them, because they were half-breeds themselves. In fact, they had omitted what could alone have maintained their superiority over the secularists: they had not organized themselves into caste; they had taken no care to keep their ethnic value pure. After a certain time, the barbarity, from which they had doubtless believed to be protected by silence, had invaded them, and all the flat stupidities and the atrocious suggestions of their slaves had penetrated into the heart of their wellenclosed sanctuaries, slipping into the blood of their own veins. Nothing more natural.

Like all other great social facts, the religion of a people is combined according to the ethnic state. Catholicism itself condescends to bend, in terms of details, to the instincts, ideas, and tastes of its faithful.

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A church in Westphalia does not have the appearance of a Peruvian cathedral; but when it comes to pagan religions, as they come almost entirely from the instinct of races, instead of dominating this instinct, they obey it without reservation, reflecting its image with the most faithfulness. scrupulous. There is no danger, moreover, that they are inspired with partiality by the noblest part of the blood. Existing above all for the greatest number, it is to the greatest number that they must speak and please. If it is bastardized, religion conforms to the general decomposition, and soon strives to sanctify all its errors, to reflect all its crimes (1)[86] . Human sacrifices, such as were made by the Druids, provide a new demonstration of this truth. Among the Gallic nations of the continent, those most attached to this terrible rite were those of Armorica. It is, at the same time, one of the regions with the most Finnish monuments. The moors of this territory, the banks of its rivers, its numerous swamps, saw the independence of the natives of the yellow race preserved for a long time. However, the Norman Islands, Great Britain, Ireland and the archipelagos which surround it, were even more favored in this respect (2)[87] . In its interior provinces, England had Celtic populations inferior in every way to those of the Gaul (3)[88] , and who, later, having sent back inhabitants to Armorica to repopulate its deserted countryside, gave it this singular colony which, in the middle of the world 1018

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modern, has preserved the idiom of the Kymris. Certain Bas-Bretons, with their short and squat height, their large head, their square and serious face, generally sad, their eyes often slanted and raised to the extreme angle, betray, for the least trained observer, the undeniable presence Finnic blood in very high doses.

It was these mixed men, both from England and Armorica, who showed themselves for the longest time attached to the cruel superstitions of their national religion. Such rites were abandoned and forgotten by the rest of their family, who clung to them with passion. We can judge the degree of love they had for him by considering that they currently preserve, in their concern for the right of break, notions drawn from the code of morality honored among their ancient compatriots, the Cimmerians of Tauride.

The Druids had placed their favorite stay among these Armoricans. It was at home that they maintained their main schools (1)[89] .

In accordance with the most obstinate instinct of the white species, they had admitted women to the first rank of interpreters of the divine will. This institution, impossible to maintain in the southern regions of Asia, in the face of Melanian notions, had been easy for them to maintain in Europe. The yellow hordes, while pushing their mothers and daughters into a profound state of abjection and servility, still willingly employ them, even today, in magical works. The extreme nervous irritability of these creatures

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makes them suitable for these jobs. I have already said that they were, of the three races which make up humanity, the women most subject to hysterical influences and illnesses. From there, in the religious hierarchy of all the Celtic nations, these druidesses, these prophetesses who, either confined forever in a solitary tower, or gathered in congregations on an islet lost in the Northern Ocean, and whose approach was mortal for the profane, sometimes dedicated to eternal celibacy, sometimes offered to temporary marriages or to fortuitous prostitution, exercised an extraordinary prestige over the imagination of the people, and dominated them above all with terror.

It was by employing such means that the priests, flattering the yellow populace in preference to the less degraded classes, maintained their power by relying on instincts whose weaknesses they had cherished and idealized. There is therefore nothing strange in the fact that popular tradition has linked the memory of the Druids to cromlechs and dolmens. Religion was of all Kymric things the one which had the most intimate connection with the builders of these horrible monuments.

But she wasn't the only one. Primitive crudeness had penetrated from all sides into the customs of the Celt. Like the Iberian, like the Etruscan, the Thracian and the Slav, his sensuality, devoid of imagination, commonly led him to gorge himself on meats and spirituous liqueurs, simply to experience an increase in physical wellbeing. However, the documents say, this habit was all the more

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taken on the Gall that he was closer to the lower classes[90] .

The leaders only gave in half-heartedly. Among the

people, better assimilated to the slave populations, we often encountered men whose constant drunkenness had gradually led to complete idiocy. It is still today among the yellow nations that the most examples of this bestial habit are found. The Galls had obviously contracted it as a result of their Finnish alliances, since they were all the less subject to it as the blood of the individuals was more independent of these mixtures[91] . To all these moral or other effects, all that remains is to add the results produced in the language of the Kymris by the association of idiomatic elements coming from the yellow race. These results are worthy of consideration.

Although the physical conformation of the Galls, very similar to that which was later observed among the Germans, preserved for a long time among the former the irrefragable mark of a close alliance with the white species, linguistics did not arrive until very late to support this truth with his assent[92] .

Celtic dialects were so resistant to being assimilated to Arian languages that several scholars even believed they could be spoken from a different source. However, after more careful, more scrupulous research, we ended up overturning the first judgment, and important conversions decidedly revised the judgment. It is today recognized and established that Breton, 1021

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Welsh, Irish Erse, Scottish Gaelic, are indeed branches of the great Ariane stock, and parents of Sanskrit, Greek But how Celtic idioms and Gothic[93] . must be disfigured for making this demonstration so slow and laborious! How many heterogeneous elements must have mixed into their contexture to have given them an exterior so different from that of all the languages of their family! And, in fact, a considerable invasion of foreign words, numerous and bizarre mutilations, these are the elements of their originality. Such is the damage accomplished in the blood, the beliefs, the habits, the idiom of the Celts, by the slave population whom they had first subjugated, and who then, following custom, penetrated them from all sides and participated in its degradation. This population had not remained and could not remain for long relegated to its abjection, far from the beds of its masters. The Celts, through marriages contracted with her, gave birth early, from their own abasement, to new series of capacities, aptitudes, and as a result of facts, which have, in their turn, served and will serve as a motive and relevant to the entire history of the world. The antagonisms and mixtures of these hybrid forces have, over time, favored social progress and transitory or definitive decadence. Just as in physical nature the greatest oppositions mutually contribute to bring out each other, so here the special qualities of the yellow and white alloys 1022

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form a most energetic foil to those of white and black products. Among the latter, under their scepter, at the foot of their magnificent thrones, everything ignites the imagination, the splendor of the arts, the inspirations of poetry increase tenfold and cover their creators with the sparkling rays of unparalleled glory. The most senseless errors, the most cowardly weaknesses, the most filthy atrocities, receive from this perpetual overexcitement of the head and heart a shaking, a certain something favorable to vertigo. But, when we turn towards the sphere of the white and yellow mixture, the imagination suddenly calms down. Everything happens against a cold background.

There, we only encounter reasonable creatures, or, failing that, reasoning ones. We see only rarely, and as noted accidents, these boundless despotisms which, among the Semites, did not even need to be excused by genius. The senses nor the mind are no longer surprised by any tendency towards the sublime. Human ambition is always insatiable there, but in small things. What we call enjoying, being happy, is reduced to the most immediately material proportions.

Commerce, industry, the means of enriching oneself in order to increase a physical well-being regulated by the probable faculties of consumption, these are the serious affairs of the white and yellow variety. At different times, the state of war and the abuse of force, which is its result, could disrupt the regular course of transactions and obstruct the peaceful development of the happiness of these

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utility breeds. This situation has never been accepted by the general conscience as having to be definitive. All instincts were injured, and efforts to bring about modification lasted until success. Thus, profoundly distinct in their nature, the two great mixed varieties faced destinies that could not be less distinct. What is called duration of active force, intensity of power, reality of action, victory, the kingdom, must, necessarily, remain one day to beings who, seeing in a narrower way, touched, by that very fact, the positive and the reality; who, wanting only possible conquests and conducting themselves by a down-to-earth calculation, but exact, but precise, but rigorously appropriate to the object, could not fail to grasp it, while their adversaries mainly nourished their minds with puffs of exaggerations and nonsense.

If we consult the practical moralists best listened to by both categories, we are struck by the distance between their points of view. For Asian philosophers, submitting to the strongest, not contradicting those who can ruin you, being content with nothing to safely brave bad luck, this is true wisdom. Man will live in his head or in his heart, will touch the earth like a shadow, will pass through it without attachment, will leave it without regret. Western thinkers do not give such lessons to their disciples. They encourage them to enjoy life as best and for as long as possible. Hate 1024

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of poverty is the first article of their faith. Work and activity form the second. Distrusting the training of the heart and the head is the dominant maxim: enjoy, the first and last word.

By means of Semitic teaching, a beautiful country is made into a desert whose sands, encroaching every day on the fertile land, swallow up the future with the present. Following the other maxim, we cover the ground with plows and the sea with ships; then one day, despising the mind with its impalpable pleasures, we tend to put paradise here below, and finally to degrade ourselves.

1. ÿ (1) P. Wachter, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, Galli, p. 47. — Low Breton also uses the form Gallaouet, which keeps the original t of ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ. See, on this subject, the medals where we find the forms ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿÿÿÿÿ and others. — Vischer, Keltische Münzen aus Hunningen, in-4o , Basel, p. 17. — See also Schaffarik, Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 236. This author indicates some interesting forms of the name: Galedin, which the Belgians attributed to themselves and which is the obvious root of Caledonia ; Gaoidheal, in use among the Irish. The Anglo-Saxons made walah the Gothic vealh, faithfully preserved in our valet. The English have since abandoned this insulting derivation, for this other, gallant, which is linked to our valiant. Thus, depending on the praising or scornful mood of a given tribe of conquerors, the same ethnic root provided the praise and the insult. Another transformation of Gall is Walloon, applied to a people of Belgium. Yet another is Welche, in French Switzerland, etc. — Schaffarik, open. cited, t. I, p. 50 and above. — We observe the trace of the name of the Celts in certain names of modern localities, as in Chaumont = Kaldun, where the last syllable is translated; in Châlons, in the expression pays de Caux. See also the long and learned dissertation by P.-L. Dieffenbach, Celtica II, in-8o , Stuttgart, 1840, 1st Abth., p. 9 et seqq., which seems to me to exhaust the material. 2. ÿ (2) GMR (Hebrew) The Armenians, by transcribing this word in their chronicles, made it Gamir. I can't decide if they have it

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directly or if they simply borrowed it from foreign traditions. However, the first hypothesis is all the more tenable as they were themselves very closely allied with the Celts. There is more: to examine the name that the Bible applied to them, they are only a branch detached from these Gomers or Gamirs; they are called in Genesis (X, 3), Thogarma, TGRM (Hebrew) and are Gomer's own sons. This is the place to say a few words about the Japhethid genealogy. The Mosaic chronicle does not push it very far, and obviously only intends to provide, on this subject, quite fragmentary information. There is no question of the bulk of the Zoroastrian peoples, nor, even more so, of the Hindus. I only point out the two most apparent gaps. At the head of the sons of Japheth is Gomer. It is therefore, in biblical thought, the most important people, the most considerable in the family, in terms of power and number. In the time of Ezekiel, people still thought the same about Jerusalem and the prophet exclaimed: “Gomer and all his troops, the house of Thogarma, the sides of the Weatherlight and all his strength and his numerous peoples. » (38.6.) — Thus the Celts united with the Armenians, as forming only one race, are for the Hebrews the great Japhethid nation. After her comes Magog. These are the peoples of the Caucasian region, probably Arians, Gog being the Semitic transcription of Arian kogh. The holy book places them in a relationship of apposition or opposition with Gomer: because the leader who must lead the Cimmerian armies is called Gog. There is no hostility between Gog and Magog. (Ezek. 38, 2, 3, 4.) It is the first who must command Magog just like Gomer. Consequently, I see in Magog a nation geographically close to the Cimmerians, a nation of the same stock, white like them, able to unite with them; I see Slavs in Magog, and do not believe that we are justified in seeing anything else there. — After this people comes Madai, which is easily explained: these are the Medes, this fraction of the Zoroastrians, the oldest known, the only one known even to the black Hamites and the first Semites (t. I, p. 469) . It is natural that Genesis only cites her. After Madai is Javan. I have shown elsewhere (see volume I) the different destinies of this word. We cannot give it any other meaning here than that of Western. Thus Javan indicates neither the Ionians nor the Greeks, but only populations established to the west of Palestine, whether by this we mean the north, the northwest or simply the west. — Thubal succeeds Javan. Commentators see an insignificant people in Pontus, the Tibarenians. It is the same for Meschesch, placed between Iberia, Armenia and Colchis. These two groups may have had, very anciently, an importance wh

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like that of the Thiras, of the Thracians, of which I have spoken sufficiently in their place. This last name closes the list of products of the first generation of Japhet. After them come the sons of Gomer and the sons of Javan, that is to say the least unknown branches of the family. The sons of Gomer are Thogarma of whom I have already mentioned, the Armenians, cited (X, 3) the third and whom I cite first to finish with them, then Ashkenas and Riphath. Aschkenas has not yet offered any explanation. Rosenmuller is inclined to see there a tribe of some sort between Armenia and the Black Sea. It seems to me that this is to suppose that biblical geography dwells unnecessarily on a region which was not very close to its heart and where it had already placed sufficient inhabitants, if we are right to do so. already places Thubal and Meschesch. Since the Aschkenas are sons of Gomer, true Celts, and Gomer himself, that is to say the root of the nation, has already been recognized in his oldest home, on the coast of the Black Sea , the simplest course would perhaps be to admit that Aschkenas represents the groups of the same blood placed further west, indefinitely, perhaps the Slavs. As for Riphath, the inhabitants of the Riphean mountains, they are still Celts, lying on the northern side in cold, mountainous regions, vaguely glimpsed, and merging in the middle of the Carpathians with the Ashkenas. — If the sons of Gomer seem quite difficult to recognize, those of Javan, the Westerner, are no less difficult, as the name of their father promised. They appear four in number: Elischah, the inhabitants of continental Greece, either those of Elis or those of Eleusis, not Hellenes, but, much more likely, aborigines, Celts and Slavs. (See below, chap. IV.) Tharschisch, the Iberians of Spain and, perhaps also, of the neighboring islands. Kittim, in the most ordinary hypothesis, the inhabitants of Cyprus and the Greek archipelagos; but I doubt it, the first settlers of these islands seeming to have been Semites. Finally, Dodanim, the people of Epirus, hence the Illyrians. Consult, among others, on this subject, Rosenmuller, Biblische Geographie, in-8o , Berlin, 1823, t. I, p. 224 passes. ; more recently Delitsch, die Genesis, p. 284 et seqq. ; and Knobel, Giessen, 1850. Mr. Richers has also published a book on this subject, but I have not had it in my hands. We can draw from the above the following conclusions: the Japhethid geography of Genesis , based on the ancient memories of the Hamites and the knowledge acquired, very little in number, from the Semites of Chaldea, does not embrace, far from it, all the white nations of the north. The Arians only appear there throu

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second degree ethnic combination, the Illyrians. We can distinguish three parts in detail: 1° the names of Gomer , Magog , Thubal , Meschesch , Thiras and Aschkenas , are patronymic appellations given to peoples. They probably represent the products of the oldest tradition. 2° The words Javan, Kittim and Dodanim are collective names of peoples, acquired after the time of the first migrations. 3° Those of Madai, Riphath, Thogarma, Elischah and Thraschisch, true geographical names, indicate regions rather than peoples, and result from more experienced topographical knowledge. 3. ÿ T.I, p. 441.

4. ÿ L t -col. Rawlinson, Memoir on the babylonian and assyrian Inscriptions, 1851, p. XXI. 5. ÿ Volume II, p. 379. 6. ÿ The Celtic nationality of the oldest Cimbri is not contestable. They called the Ocean, on the shores of which they resided, Mori-Marusa. These are two kymric words which mean dead sea. They also gave it the name crow, reproduced in Latin in the formation cronium, another kymric expression which means frozen. When they came to attack Marius, one of their leaders was called Boiorix or the Boian chief, and, the Boians being incontestable Galls, there would be no motive which could have induced a Cimbri warrior to take a Celtic title, if he had not been Celt himself. We still find next to this same Boïorix a Lucius or better Luk, and this name, very well known to the Latins, had been transmitted to them by the Celtic Umbres of the Italic peninsula; he was therefore Gallic like his owners. 7. ÿ (1) It is a Celtic rule that the k and the g , two letters which seem to have been completely confused in pronunciation, often disappear before a vowel. — Aufrecht and Kirchhoff, Die umbrischen Sprachdenkmæler, Lautlehre, p. 15 and on. There are many examples: gwiper, viper ; win and gwin, wine ; gwir and fire, true ; gwell, which became English well ; alon and galon, foreigner etc. 8. ÿ (2) Schaffarik, open. cited, t. I, p. 51. 9. ÿ (3) Mr. Amédée Thierry, Hist. of the Gauls, t. I, Introduction. — The name remained in the Danish Kiemper, with the meaning of fighter. — Salverte, Essay on the origin of the names of men, peoples and places, 1821, in-8o , Paris, t. II, p. 108. 10. ÿ (4) I in no way assert that the Celtic flood stopped in Denmark. — “In the North (said Wormsaae), it is a very widespread opinion that the Celts inhabited southern Scandinavia, and, at

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In the absence of historical information, we rely on the resemblance of weapons, instruments and jewelry in bronze and gold, found in our burial mounds, with those which were discovered in England and France. This opinion has supporters in Norway, and the historians of this country have held it to be proven. » — Letter to M. Mérimée, Moniteur of April 14, 1853. See also Munch, Ouvr. cited, p. 8. 11. ÿ (1) By establishing the different ebbs and flows of the Slavic family, Schaffarik gives excellent indications on the extent of the Celtic establishments, the main competitors of the Wends. One of the points that emerges best from this examination is that, on more than one border, it is very difficult to distinguish the two groups (Schaffarik, cited work, t. I, p. 56, 66, 89 , 104, 207, 379.) 12. ÿ (2) The gold coinage minted by the Celtic States was only valid in the special territory of each nation, because the title was always particular. Although this observation can only be applied to the 4th century BC, as this period was a time of complete independence for the Celtic peoples, I conclude that there is evidence here to add to all those which, moreover, testify to the respective isonomy of the different Kymric peoples. — Mommsen, Die nordetruskischen Alphabete, dans les Mittheilungen der antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zurich, VII B., 8 Heft, 1853, p. 265.

13. ÿ (3) Wachter, open. cited, p. 64. 14. ÿ (1) Caesar thus portrayed the Gauls in politics who, claiming to use them, wanted to know both their strengths and their weaknesses. (Liv. II, 30; IV, 5, and VII, 20.) — Strabo, judging them as a disinterested writer, is much more lenient. He finds the Gauls good people and without malice, only getting angry when they are the strongest, and allowing themselves, moreover, to be easily persuaded. (Strab., IV, 4, 2.) 15. ÿ (2) Schaffarik, after having declared that he considers the Celts to be the first of the white peoples established in Europe, adds: “Already, from the most ancient times, they were not only extremely rich and powerful , but still extraordinarily cultivated (ungewœhnlich gebildet). They occupied a third of Europe, and, from the 3rd to the 2nd century BC, they extended on one side as far as the Vistula, on the other, on the lower Danube, as far as the Dniester. » — Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 89. — It shows, in more than one country, the Slavs dominated by the Celts, and living as subjects among them. 16. ÿ (1) They had excellent archers. (Cæsar, Comment. de Bello Gall., VII, 31.) 17. ÿ (2) The war chariot, covinus, was, like that of the Assyrians, the Homeric Greeks and the Hindus, mounted by a warrior and driven by

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a squire. Frequently the warrior, after throwing his javelins, dismounted to fight hand to hand. This is absolutely the same tactic that we have already observed in Asia. (Caesar, cited work, IV, 36.) 18. ÿ (3) Strabo, IV, 2. 19. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ansichten über die keltischen Alterthümer, t. I, p. 324 et passim. — Wormsaae, Primeval antiquities of Denmark, p. 23 et al. 20. ÿ (2) Ibidem. — Wormsaae gives the engraving of an ax of this type, which is very elegant. (Cited work, p. 39.) 21. ÿ (3) Keferstein, t. II, Erste Abtheilung, Verzeichniss. The words used today in the art of mining often have the advantage of providing very ancient notions. Keferstein makes this reflection for Germany, and finds in the current language of the underground workers of the Harz essentially Celtic forms and roots, which, at the same time as the processes and tools to which they are applied, passed from the Galls to the mongrels. Germanic. As for the etymology of the names of metals, we can note that the Celtic word aes, ais, which becomes aren in Breton and in Latin aes, with the inflection aeris, does not properly designate bronze, but rather, par excellence , the hardest metal. It is for this reason only that we find it used in ancient times to designate bronze. Sanskrit has it in the form ayas or ayasa, and gives it the meaning of iron. German similarly has Eisen, derived from the Gothic eisarn. Anglo-Saxon has iren, English iron, Irish iarn. Here we have the Celtic ierne, and we can see that in the jarann form it is not too far from aren . — Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, t. I, p. 243 et al. — See the very curious research of Dieffenbach on the meaning of the primitive root, Vergleichendes Wœrterbuch der gothischen Sprache, in-8o Frankfurt a. M., t. I, p. 14, 15, no. 18. The meaning of hard seems to be correlated here with the idea of fundamental. — This word also results in several more or less direct applications, such as those of metal in general, wealth, weapons, harness, harness. We discover it not only in Sanskrit, the Celtic and Gothic languages, but also in Pushtu or Afghan, Greek, Balouki, Ossetian, and we see it even in Chaldean HSN (Hebrew) , asina , ax . We notice it in Slavic languages, with a form which brings it closer to certain Gallic dialects. 22. ÿ (1) Keferstein, open. cited, t. I, p. 330 et al. 23. ÿ (2) Cæsar, de Bello Gallico, VII, 28. 24. ÿ (3) The Celts of Bourges, before revolting, burned, in a single day, twenty of their cities which they did not judge able to defend. He ,

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Berry is far from being so populated today. 25. ÿ (4) Carrhodunum was in the vicinity of Krakow. Another Celtic town in Pannonia recalls the name of the Carnutes of the Chartres region, it is Carnuntum. (Schaffarik, vol. I, p. 104.) 26. ÿ (5) They were also found in Brunswick and in Switzerland, first near Basel, later in Graubünden. (Keferstein, vol. I, p. 292.) 27. ÿ (6) They even very skillfully applied this system to military architecture. Caesar highly praises their way of building certain ramparts. (Comm. de Bello Gall., VII, 23.) In general, translators render this passage poorly. A historian of the city of Orléans seems to me to understand it better. Here is his version: “These beams are placed two feet apart from each other at right angles to the facing of the rampart. On the city side, they are linked using earth extracted from the ditch; outside, large stones fill the gap that separates them. On this first base we establish a second one, alternating in a chessboard with the stones, and so on. » (L. de Buzonnière, Architectural History of the City of Orléans, 1849, In-8°, vol. I, p. 2.) 28. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ouvr. cited, t. I, p. 321 et al. 29. ÿ (2) Tacitus describes them very well, with a single word: he names the Celtic sagum , versicolor. (Histor., II, 20.) 30. ÿ (1) De Bello Gall., III, 8, 9, 11. 31. ÿ (2) Caesar had to give up taking Soissons, because of the width of its ditches and the height of its walls. (De Bello Gall., II, 12.) 32. ÿ (1) Bourges also had towers covered in leather. (Cæsar, VII, 22.) 33. ÿ (2) Keferstein, t. I, p. 286. — Geslin de Bourgogne, Notice on the Péran enclosure, extract from the 18th volume of the Memoirs of the Society of Antiquaries of France, p. 6 et sqq., and 39. 34. ÿ (3) In the first century BC, England proper had two species of Celtic populations: one who claimed to be indigenous, and who inhabited the interior; the other was due to a successive immigration of Belgians or Germanized Galls, which took place around the 7th century in Rome. (Cæsar, de Bello Gall., V, 12.) — It is to these conquerors that the Celtic coins of England belong. These numismatic remains are imitated from those found from the Schelde to Reims and Soissons. The primitive type is the Macedonian stater. In this genre we have very crude examples of a gold coin, marked with the forked throat horse, weighing 6.1 gr. at 5.4 gr. — Mommsen, Die nord-etruskischen Alphabete, dans les Mittheilungen der antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich, VII B., 8 Heft, 1813, p. 245. — The Celts of the interior of England had become

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very barbaric. They went dressed in animal skins. Polyandry was almost general among them. They had already, by mingling with Belgian immigrants, communicated to them the custom of painting their bodies. The latter far surpassed them in refinement of habits and wealth. A population similar to that of the Bretons of the interior of the island, and perhaps even more degraded, were the Irish. It can be admitted as probable that at a very ancient time their island had received some Phoenician and Carthaginian colonizations; but, from what we have seen in Spain of similar establishments, it is doubtful whether their influence went beyond the limits of the counter. However, Mr. Pictet thinks he has discovered Semitic traces in the erse. Perhaps there were also Iberian or rather Celtiberian immigrations. Regardless, Strabo depicts the Irish as cannibals, eating their elderly parents. Diodorus of Sicily and Saint Jerome say the same things about them. Local traditions with their antediluvian colonies, commanded by Caesar, their Partholan, fifth descendant of Magog, son of Japheth, their Clanna, their Nemihidh, parents of this hero, their Fir-Bolgs, all from Thrace, finally their Milesians, sons de Mileadh, who came from Egypt to Spain, and from Spain to Ireland, are too obviously influenced by biblical and classical novelists for us to be able to give them much antiquity and, consequently, confidence. It is the counterpart of the stories of France beginning with Francus, son of Hector. It seems certain that the island only began to recover around the 4th century of the Christian era. She then had a navy. — Dieffenbach, Celtica II, Abth. 2, 371 et seqq., is perhaps the most complete writer on this difficult subject, which constitutes one of the chapters of the Celtic chronicles on which the most follies and the most monstrous extravagances have been recounted. To judge the spirit of those who implemented them, I will only cite one trait: starting from this point, that Ireland is a sacred land, a quality which in fact was recognized by the Druids, and that then maintained the Christian Sculdaea for her, O'Connor relates, in his Proleg., II, 75, that in the opinion of a German scholar, Erse was the only language inaccessible to the devil, as too holy for that he could never learn it, and that in Rome a possessed person, “aliis linguis locutum, at hibernice loqui, vel noluisse vel non potuisse. » On balance, however, it would be imprudent to reject Irish traditions altogether; here and there they contain facts worthy of observation. 35. ÿ (1) Keferstein, t. I. — According to Abeken, the most roughly fashioned walls of Italy are found in the Apennines. (Cited work, p. 139.) The constructions of the Aborigines, in Latium and central Ita

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made of very soft tuff, promptly showed traces of cutting. — Ibid. Dennis, open. cited, t. II, p. 571 et al. — The ruins of Saturnia, one of the oldest cities in Etruria, near Orbitello, contain an obviously Celtic tumulus. Now, Saturnia, before being owned by the Etruscans, belonged to the aborigines who founded it; it was an Umbric city. 36. ÿ (2) Abeken, open. cited, p. 139. This author calls uncut masonry pelasgic, those where the use of small stones to fill the gaps is most essential . He recalls that Pausanias uses this expression when describing the walls of Tyrinth and Mycenae. The Cyclopean walls would thus mark an improvement in the genre of polygonal block constructions. 37. ÿ (3) Keferstein, Ansichten, etc., t. IV, p. 287 This writer notes that there are very few Celtic masonry buildings in England and Scandinavia. His observation fully agrees with what Caesar says, that the Bretons of the interior of the island (not the immigrant Belgians) called a town a sort of entrenched camp made up of stakes and branches, in the middle of the woods. (De Bello Gall., V, 21.) — The countries where we find the most of them, either in the state of walls, or as tombs covered or having been covered with a mound of earth, are the countries that I have already named Bohemia, Wetteravia, Franconia, Thuringia, Jura, Asia Minor. See also, regarding the existence of Celtic burial mounds, Boettiger, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, c. II, p. 294. 38. ÿ (1) “Coram adire alloquique Velledam negatum. Arcebantur adspectu quo venerationis plus inesset. Ipsa edita in turre; delectus e propinquis consulta responsaque, ut internuncius numinis, portabat. » Tacitus, Hist., IV, 65. 39. ÿ (2) Keferstein, open. cited, t. I, p. 192. On several ancient mile markers, we find, in France, the indication of the Celtic league instead of the Roman mile. As for bridges, Orléans and Paris had them. Cæsar, de Bello Gall., VII, 11. 40. ÿ (3) Cæs., de Bello Gall., VII, 3. 41. ÿ (1) Keferstein, op. cited, t. I. 42. ÿ (1) Keferstein, t. I, p. 304. 43. ÿ (2) Id., open. cited, t. I, p. 341. 44. ÿ (3) The different categories of imitations appear to be limited to specific territories. Those whose object is Massaliote coins are found in Narbonnaise, on the upper course of the Rhône, in all of Lombardy, in Bern, in Geneva, in Valais, Ticino, Graubünden and the Italian Tyrol; but, in France, we have not yet encountered any above Lyon. — On the northern leaning of

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Pyrenees and the coasts of the Ocean, it was the Greek colonies of Rhodæ and Emporiæ which provided the types; they are found in the Garonne region, in Toulouse, in Poitou; we cite a copy discovered in Sologne. On the upper Loire, on the Rhine, on the Schelde, we see the crude counterfeits of the Macedonian staters of Philip II. Mommsen thinks that this habit of copying, as poorly as possible, Greek types for coinage, began in the 4th century BC, that is to say about three hundred years before Caesar's conquest. This is, without doubt, an indication of very extensive, well-continued commercial relations, such that one could hardly call them superior today. — Mommsen, Die nordetruskischen Alphabete, dans les Mittheilungen der antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zurich, VII B. 8e Heft., in-4o 1853, p. 204, 233, 236, 256. 45. ÿ (1) Abeken, op. cited, p. 284. — These canceled coins, of Etruscan origin, marked with the image of a wheel, have been discovered in Posen and in Saxony. They were found mixed with medals from Aegina and Athens from the 8th century BCE. 46. ÿ (2) Odyssey, XXIII, 267 et pass. 47. ÿ (3) Tacitus, de Moribus Germ., 3. — Mommsen considers it demonstrated that before the Roman era the use of writing extended beyond the Alps and the course of the Rhône, as far as to the Danube. (Die nordetruskischen Alphabete, p. 221.) 48. ÿ (1) Cæsar, de Bello Gall., I, 29. 49. ÿ (2) Cæsar, de Bello Gall., 6, 14: "In almost all other matters (public) and private accounts." » There is no certain pas for the public . Le mot semble interpolé, quoique la plupart des éditions le donnent. 50. ÿ (3) Cæsar, de Bello Gall., VI, 14. 51. ÿ (4) Mommsen (Die nordetruskischen Alphabete) regarde le fait comme undoubted for the regions below the Danube. 52. ÿ (1) I must say that Strabo, meeting this objection, affirms that the Gauls wrote their contracts in Greek, not only with the characters, but even in the language of Hellas: ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ (Strab., IV.) — But, it should be said with all possible respect for the authority of Strabo, this assertion is hardly admissible. If the Celts had sympathized with the Greeks to such an extent that they had made the latter's language the ordinary instrument of their transactions of all kinds, they would not have deserved the name of barbarians, which the classical writers did not spare them, but that of philologists, of consummate scholars; yet I am not aware of any learned personage, whether ancient or modern, not even Scaliger,

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who had fun executing civil documents, before a notary, in a learned language. All that can be granted is that Strabo, or rather Posidonius, will have seen in the hands of some Massaliote merchants Greek cedula drawn up by the latter, and subscribed by Gallic merchants. 53. ÿ (1) Mommsen counts up to nine different alphabets, collected by him in northern Italy and in the Alps. Here is the topographical list he gives: Todi, Provence, Etruria, Valais, Tyrol, Styria, Conegliano, Verona, Padua. — The deviations which can create the originality of each of these alphabets are considerable, as this eminent and judicious archaeologist himself declares. (Die nordetruskischen Alphabete, p. 221, taf. III.) 54. ÿ (1) Dionysius of Halicarnassus relates as an accepted fact that the alphabet had been brought to the Italiots by the Arcadian Pelasgians. It takes no account of the extreme differences that everyone can notice between Greek letters and those of the Peninsula. (Dionys. Halic., Antiq. rom., 1, XXXIII.) — It was a scientific axiom, indisputable for Greek and Roman scholars, that everything, good, evil, virtues and vices, boredom and pleasure, the art of walking, eating and drinking, had been invented in Hellas and had from there spread to the rest of the world. Homer and Herodotus, like Hesiod, are completely foreign to this puerile doctrine. 55. ÿ (1) Mommsen, Die nordetruskischen Alphabete. 56. ÿ (1) I cannot agree with the observation which has been made, that the Semitic alphabets can only be suitable for the languages to which they are adapted, because they do not include vowels properly speaking. These languages all have: ÿ, ÿ, ÿ, ÿ, as the Greeks have ÿ, ÿ, ÿ, ÿ, ÿ. The runes, undoubtedly intended for dialects which treat vowels quite differently from Semitic idioms, do not even have all these characters: they lack the e. The role of consonants attributed, in historical times, to the Chanaanite letters that I have just cited, in no way prevents us from admitting that, originally, they were considered from another point of view. — Consult the work of Gesenius, in the Encycl. Ersch und Gruber, Palæographie, 3rd section, IX Theil, p. 287. et pass. — The problem of the origin of alphabets is still far from being clarified as it is desirable for it to become. It focuses as closely as possible on ethnic questions, and is intended to lend great assistance to many detailed solutions. It is, moreover, complicated by an a priori conception, invented in the 18th century and which we come up against, at every moment, when it comes to the main features,

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main characters of human history. People who do what they call the philosophy of history have imagined that writing had begun with drawing, that from drawing it had passed to symbolic representation, and that to a third degree, to a third age, it had produced, as the final term of its developments, the phonetic systems. It is a very ingenious sequence, to be sure, and it is truly unfortunate that observation so completely demonstrates its absurdity. The figurative systems, that is to say those of the Mexicans and the Egyptians, became, or rather were, from the first moments of their invention, ideographic, because at the same time as we had to give the shape of a tree, a fruit or an animal, it was imperative to express through a graphic sign the intangible idea which motivated the representation of these objects. Now here is one of the two degrees of transition removed. As for the third, it does not seem to have necessarily occurred, since neither the Mexicans, nor the Chinese, nor the Egyptians produced an alphabet properly speaking from their hieroglyphs. The process which the last two of these peoples employ to render proper names is the greatest proof to offer that the principle on which their system of reproduction of language is based presents invincible obstacles to this supposed development. Ideographic writings are therefore necessarily symbolic, and, on the other hand, have no connection, neither past, nor present, nor future, with the method of elementary decomposition and abstract representation of sounds. They remain what they are, and do not achieve a goal logically contrary to the fundamental principle of their original construction. — Can we also affirm that the phonetic alphabets that we possess are not descendants of forgotten ideographic systems? To ask such a question is, I know, to confront axioms which have acquired the force of law, but which we judge for their value. We start from the Phoenician type as a paradigm, as the source of all phonetic writings, and we want X (Hebrew) to represent the neck and the shape of the camel ; (.X.), likewise, is supposed to perfectly recall an eye ; (.X.) a house or tent, etc. For what ? is that (.X.) and (.X.) are the initials of (.X.), of (.X.) and of (.X.). But (.X.) is also from (.X.), which means a well, from (.X.) which means a goat, and, if we agree to examine things without prejudice, we will agree that (.X.) resembles a well or a goat as much as a camel. We could find, without any difficulty, just as many analog All it takes is a little good will. This is the system that inevitably derives phonetic alphabets from ideographic series, and these are the powerful reasons on which it is based.

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It is therefore necessary to give it up, and as soon as possible.

All the better since current studies on the Assyrian alphabets are revealing a new graphic method which, however tortured, cannot in any way be compared to symbolic drawing. These clavate combinations certainly display the best justified claim to present thought only by means of abstract signs. Then, if necessary, we could also cite such modes of writing which are neither ideographic, nor phonetic, nor syllabic, but only mnemonic, and which are composed of strokes with no other meaning than that attributed to them by the writer. This last system, very imperfect, certainly, and deprived of the power to express words, only reminds the reader of certain objects or certain facts already known. Lenni-lenape writing is of this type. Here then, the question being taken roughly, are four categories of graphic resources used by men to keep track of their thoughts. These four categories are very unequal in merit, and achieve very differently the goal for which they were invented. They result from very special abilities in their creators, from very particular ways of combining the operations of the mind and of deducing the relationships of things. Their in-depth study leads to results full of interest, both on the societies which use them, and on the races from which they emanate. 57. ÿ (1) Bœckh, Ueber die griechischen Inschriften auf Thera, in-4o , Berlin, 1836, p. 17. — Generally, and apart from Roman influence, Oscan, Umbric and Etruscan inscriptions go from right to left; on the contrary, the Sabellian alphabet, in the only two examples known so far, follows the serpentine form. — Mommsen, Die nord etruskischen Alphabete, p. 222. 58. ÿ (2) WC Grimm, Ueber die teutsche Runen. 59. ÿ (3) WC Grimm, open. cited, p. 128. — Strahlenberg, Der nord und estliche Theil von Europa und Asia, p. 407, 410 and 356, tab. V. 60. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ansichten, etc., t. I, p. 353. — Verelius, in his Runographia, had already noticed, a long time ago, like Rudbock, the anteriority of the runes with regard to the civilization of the Aesir, and insisted on the faulty interpretation of Havamaal, which seems to attribute to Odin the invention of sacred letters, while this god can only claim that of poetry. Verelius, moreover, observed that the runes were all the better traced and better made the older they were. — Salverte, Essay on the origin of the names of men, peoples and places, t. II, p. 74, 75.

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61. ^ (2) Keferstein, p. I, p. 355. — Dieffenbach, Celtic II, 2nd Abth., p. 19. 62. ^ (3) Dennis notes the extreme similarity of all these alphabets. (T. I, p. XVIII.) 63. ÿ (4) There are several in which the number of letters varies. — Dennis, open. cited, t. II, p. 399. — See also Mommsen, Die nordetruskischen Alphabete. 64. ÿ (1) Niebuhr recognizes that the origin of the Etruscan and Greek alphabets is the same. He believes it to be Semitic, wrongly, according to me, if we want to admit, which seems debatable to me, that the Semitic writings are themselves foreign to the Arian invention and born on the very soil of earlier Asia after the great migrations. But the Prussian scholar declares very positively that, in his opinion, the Etruscan letters were not formed on the Greek type, and he gives quite conclusive reasons for this. (Roem. Geschichte, t. I, p. 89.) An argument in support of this assertion, which does not seem to me without value, is that the Celtic word, the Latin word and the Greek word which mean to write , have, with the same root, physiognomies so different, that they must have been formed on site and not come from a loan made in the ages when one of these peoples was able to exercise an action on the others . Thus, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, scribere, and the Welsh, crifellu, ysgriffen, ysgrifan, only resemble each other from a distance, and we will notice that the passage from ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ to scribere is quite well marked by the Celtic words, while scribere, on the contrary, n is not an intermediary between these words and the Greek expression. 65. ÿ (2) Caesar, after having said that the Celts used Greek characters, proves, moreover, himself, the inaccuracy of his information. He says that having to send a letter to one of his lieutenants, besieged by the Belgians, and not wanting it to be read on the way, he wrote it, not in Greek, but in Greek characters. So the Greek characters were unknown to his adversaries. (Cæs., de Bello Gall., V.) — All that is unsatisfactory in the assertion that the letters in use among the Celts were of Greek origin has, moreover, struck Caesar's commentators . To reconcile the numerous difficulties that were obvious to them, they had recourse to infinite subtleties, but with which they themselves showed themselves to be very mediocrely satisfied. — See the edition of Oudendorp, in-8o , Lipsiæ, 1805. — It is indeed unacceptable that the Celts, having national alphabets for the legends of their coins, as the medals demonstrate, used, in the details of their lives, foreign characters. 66. ÿ (1) Strabo, IV, 3.

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67. ÿ (2) Mr. Amédée Thierry, Hist. of the Gauls, Introduct. 68. ÿ (3) Cæs., de Bello Gall., IV, 2. 69. ÿ (1) La Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, t. I, p. XIV. 70. ÿ (2) See the Welsh song attributed to Taliesin. (La Villemarqué, vol. I, p. XIV). It is a true Christian sermon of the time. 71. ÿ (1) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 55. 72. ÿ (1) Vid. supra and book I. 73. ÿ (1) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 310 et al. — Tacitus already did not hesitate to recognize among the inhabitants of Caledonia the presence of a Germanic race: “Rutilæ Caledoniam habitium comæ, magni artus germanicum originem adseverant. » (Vita Agric., II) — I do not conclude from this that all the Caledonians were Germans; but there is nothing to prevent there being in fact German immigrants in Scotland at that time. 74. ÿ (2) Ibid. 75. ÿ (3) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 286. On the extreme impoverishment of Breton and the mutilations it has suffered in coming closer in its grammatical forms to modern French, see La Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, t. I, p. LXI. 76. ÿ (1) Mr. de La Villemarqué rightly notes, among the authors of popular songs of Europe, the habit of fixing as exactly as possible the place and date of the facts reported. (Barzaz Breiz, t. I, p. XXVI.) The goal of what he calls the nature poet “is always,” he says, “to render reality. » (P. XXVIII.) 77. ÿ (1) Keferstein, Ansichten, t. I p. 334. 78. ÿ (2) The fact that the Celts built sanctuaries in their cities, in Toulouse among others, proves that dolmens did not belong to their ordinary cult. Strabo, speaking of the ancient splendor of the Tectosages, relates that they deposited their treasures in the chapels, ÿÿÿÿÿÿ, or in the sacred ponds, ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ. If the dolmens had been these ÿÿÿÿÿ, their shape would have made them too remarkable for Posidonius not to have described them. (Strab., IV, 13.) 79. ÿ (1) Such is the persistence of tastes in races that in the vicinity of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, where we find many houses built in the Celtic manner, the designs with which these houses are decorated reproduce constantly the same spirals that are seen on the monuments of Gavr-Innis. 80. ÿ (1) It may be countered by the fact that in Russia, as in Poland, serfdom is a recent institution; but it must be observed, first of all, that the situation of the peasant of the empire hardly deserves this name; then, in the

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two countries, it quickly transforms into complete freedom, proof that it has never been suffered without protest. It will therefore only have constituted a transitory accident, a natural result of the superposition of differently gifted races; for, in Poland as well as in Russia, the nobility comes from foreign conquerors. Today, this line of ethnic demarcation disappearing or having disappeared, serfdom no longer has any reason to exist and proves it by dying out. 81. ÿ (1) The connection that can be established between the name of the mixed Hispanic nation of the Ligurians and that of the Loire River, Liger, would simply prove that the Ligurians had adopted the name of the paternal Austro-Celtic tribe, which seemed to them more honorable than that of any other people, Iberian in origin, from which they could also descend. The legacy of this part of their genealogy consisted of less brilliant memories. (Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 1st Abth., p. 22.) — See the same author again for the name of the Llœgrwys, which the Gaelic Triads connect to the primitive stock of the Kymris. (Ibid., 2nd Abth., p. 71 and 130.) 82. ÿ (2) The Celtiberians, product of the union of the two peoples, perhaps showed themselves a little superior to the families from which they came. I have already remarked that this fact was quite common in alloys of lower or secondary species. (See t. I, book I.) Dieffenbach (Celtica II, 2nd Abth., p. 47) makes this same observation, precisely with regard to the subject at issue here. 83. ÿ (1) Schaffarik, Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 260. 84. ÿ (2) Schaffarik, open. cited, t. I, p. 260. 85. ÿ (3) In Breton, Gwenet and Wenet. It is a curious rule that where the Hellenes put the digamma and where the modern Greeks place the C, the Celts, the Latins and the Slavs use the W. The digamma is confused with the rough spirit; the Gothic dialects, and even Sanskrit, replace the W with the H. (Shaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, vol. I, p. 160.) The root Vend is still found in France in several other place names in the west, such as Vendôme and Vendée. Strabo also names ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ or Vennones above Como, alongside the Rhaetians, not far, consequently, from the Veneti of the Adriatic. (L. IV, 6.) — Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 1st Abth., p. 342, 219, 220, 222. 86. ÿ (1) See volume I. 87. ÿ (2) It would not be impossible that in the time of Caesar, the islands located at the mouth of the Rhine were still occupied by purely Finnish tribes. The dictator says that the men who inhabited them were extremely barbaric and ferocious, and lived only on fish and

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bird eggs. It completely distinguishes them from the Belgians. (De Bello Gall., IV, 10.) As for the ethnic situation of the Celts of the western islands, we can judge how degraded it was, by the fact that certain tribes had adopted the very name of the yellows and were called the Fenians. We also find the indication of an avowed mixture in the characteristic name of Fin-gal. 88. ÿ (3) Strabo (IV, chap. v, 2) relates that several peoples of Great Britain were so crude that having a lot of milk, they did not even know how to make cheese. This detail borrows interest from the same incapacity reported among several yellow peoples. - To see further. 89. ÿ (1) The annual druidic meetings of the Chartrain country were not intended to deal with religious questions; these were only temporal matters. (Cæs., de Bello Gall., VI, 13.) — A singular opinion of the Druids was that the entire people of the Celts descended from Pluto. This doctrine, reproduced by a mouth and with Roman forms, could well be linked to Finnish ideas, and come close to those which constantly mix this small race with rocks, caves and mines. (Cæsar, de Bello Gall., VI, 18.) Perhaps it was also only a play on words on the name common to all the tribes: gal, which also means darkness, and which, in this sense , is the root of the Teutonic words: Hœlle and Hell, hell, like Latin: caligo, darkness.

90. ÿ Am. Thierry, Hist. of the Gauls, t. II, p. 62. — This love of debauchery should not be confused with the power of consumption with which the Greek Arians and the Scandinavians prided themselves. For these latter peoples, it was only a sign of strength in heroes. We see nowhere any allusion which could indicate that drunkenness was the result and seemed excusable. 91. ÿ In the populations of presentday Europe, drunkenness is especially widespread among the Slavs, the remnants of the Kymric race, the Slavic Germans of the south, and the Scandinavians mixed with Finns; but the Lapps are the most abandoned of all there. 92. ÿ It is good to note that numismatics favors this doubt. I will cite, among others, a gold medal of the Médiomatrices, the face of which bears a marked figure of the ugliest, most vulgar, most common type, and in which the Finnic influence is impossible to ignore. Our streets and our shops are filled today with this kind of faces. — Cabinet of HE General Baron de Prokesch-Osten.

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93. ÿ Pott, Encl. Ersch u. Gruber; Indo-German Sprachst., p. 87. — Mr. Bopp thinks that Celtic is second only to any European language in the abundance of words coming from the Indo-Germanic stock. (Ueber die keltischem Sprachen, and Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, 1838, 189.) He also adds that, for the designation of grammatical relationships, the Celtic dialects did not invent new non-Indo-Germanic forms, nor borrowed anything, in this same respect, from families of languages foreign to Sanskrit. All their idioms come only from mutilation and loss. (Cited work, p. 195.)

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CHAPTER IV. The aboriginal Italian peoples.

The preceding chapters have shown that the fundamental elements of the European population, yellow and white, were combined early on in a very complex way. If it remained possible to indicate the dominant groups, to name the Finns, the Thracians, the Illyrians, the Iberians, the Rasenians, the Galls, the Slavs, it would be completely illusory to claim to specify the nuances, to find the particularities, specify the proportion of mixtures in fragmentary nationalities. All that we are entitled to state with certainty is that the latter were already very numerous before any historical period, and this single indication will suffice to establish how natural it is that their linguistic state bears in its confusion the irrefutable trace of the ethnic anarchy of the blood from which they came. This is the reason which disfigures the dialects of Wales, and makes Euskara, Illyrian, the little we know of Thracian, Etruscan, even the Italian dialects, so difficult to classify. This problematic situation of idioms becomes even clearer when we consider more southern regions in Europe. 1043

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The immigrant populations, pushing towards this side and soon encountering the sea and the impossibility of fleeing further, retraced their steps, fell on top of each other, tore each other apart, enveloped themselves, finally mixed more confusedly than everywhere else, and their languages had the same fate. We have already seen this game in mainland Greece. But Italy especially was destined to become the great impasse of the globe. Spain did not come close. There were, in this last country, whirlwinds of peoples, but peoples large and whole in terms of number, while in Italy it was mainly heterogeneous bands which showed themselves and rushed from all sides. From Italy we passed into Spain, but to colonize a few scattered points. From Spain people came to Italy in diverse masses, as they came from Gaul, Helvetia, the Danube regions, Illyria, as they came from continental or island Greece. By the width of the isthmus which keeps it attached to the continent as well as by the extensive development of its eastern and western coasts, Italy seemed to invite all European nations to take refuge in its territories. such an attractive appearance and so easy to approach. It seems that no wandering people resisted this call.

When the time given to the obscure domination of the Finnish families was over, the Rasenians presented themselves, and, after them, those other nations which were to form the

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first layer of white mixed race, masters of the country from the Alps to the Strait of Messina. They separated into several groups which included more or less tribes. The tribes, like the groups, bore distinctive names, and among these names the first to appear is, absolutely as in primitive Greece, that of the Pelasgians (1 )[1] . Following them, the chroniclers soon bring other Pelasgians from Hellas, so that no place could be better chosen and no occasion more suitable for examining in depth these multitudes who, in the eyes of the Greeks and Romans, represented the primitively cultivated, traveling and conquering societies of their history. The name Pelasge has no ethnic meaning. It does not suppose a necessary identity of origin between the masses to which it is attributed (2)[2] . This identity may have existed; this is even, in certain cases, the plausible opinion, but certainly the whole of the Pelasgians escapes it, and, consequently, the word, as indicating a special nationality, is absolutely worthless (3)[ 3 ] .

From a certain point of view, however, it acquires relative merit. Like its aboriginal synonym, it was never applied, by ancient annalists, except to white or half-white populations, from Greece or Italy, which were supposed It is to be primitive (4)[ 4] . therefore provided, at least, with a geographical significance, which is not without utility in developing the clarific 1045

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the question of race. But that’s where the services to be expected from it end. If it's not much, it's still something.

In Greece, the Pelasgian populations played the role of the oppressed, first before the Semitic colonizers, then before the AryanHellenic emigrants. We must not exaggerate the misfortune of these victims: the subjection imposed on them had limits (1)[5] . In its greatest extent, it stopped at serfdom. The conquered and submissive aborigine became the lord of the country. He cultivated the land for his conquerors, he worked for their benefit. But, as this situation shows, he remained in control of part of his work and retained sufficient individuality (2)[6] . Subordinate as it was, this attitude was better, in a thousand respects, than the civil annihilation to which the yellow peoples were reduced everywhere. Then, the Pelasgians of Greece had not been indiscriminately enslaved. We have seen that most of the Semites, then the Arians Hellenes, established themselves on the site of the aboriginal villages, often preserved their ancient names, and allied themselves with the vanquished in such a way as to soon produce a new people. Thus the Pelasgians were not treated as savages. They were subordinated without annihilating them. They were given a rank consistent with the amount and type of knowledge and wealth they brought into the community.

This dowry was certainly of a crude nature: skills and agricultural products formed the basis. THE 1046

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poet of these aborigines, who is Hesiod, not as coming from their race, but because he especially considered and celebrated their work, shows us them very attached to rustic jobs. These shepherds are also skilled at raising large walls, building burial chambers, and piling up earthen mounds of an imposing extent (3)[7] . Now, we have already observed all these works in Celtic countries. We recognize them as similar, in terms of general features, to those which covered the soil of France and Germany, under the action of the first white mixed race.

Greek authors analyzed the religious ideas of the aborigines. They expressed their respect for the oak (1)[8] , the Druidic tree. They showed them believing in the prophetic virtues of this patriarch of the woods, and seeking in the solitude of the green forests the presence of the Divinity. These are habits, very Gallic notions. These same Pelasgians still had the habit of listening to the oracles of consecrated women, of prophetesses similar to the Alrunes, who exercised absolute domination over their minds (2)[9] . These soothsayers were the mothers of the sibyls, and, in a less elevated rank, they also had for posterity the magicians of Thessaly (3)[10] . We must also not forget that the scene of the superstitions least in conformity with the nature of the Asian spirit always remained fixed within the northern regions of Greece. The ogres, the lemurs, the entrance to Tartarus, all this sinister phantasmagogy was locked away

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in Epirus and Chaonia, provinces where Semitic blood only penetrated very late, and where the aborigines maintained their purity for the longest time. But if the latter seem, for all these reasons, to be counted among the Celtic nations, there are reasons to admit exceptions for other tribes. Herodotus recounted that several languages were spoken, in preHellenic times, between Cape Malea and Olympus (4)[11] . The historian's text, not very precise on this occasion, undoubtedly lends itself to ambiguities. He may have meant that there existed Chanaanite dialects and Kymric dialects in this space. However, such an explanation, being only hypothetical, is not inevitably imposed, and we are authorized to take it in another, no less probable, sense.

The religious customs of primitive Greece offer several particularities absolutely foreign to Kymric habits, for example, that which existed in Pergamum, in Samos, in Olympia, of building altars with the ashes of the victims mixed with piles of cremated bones. These monuments sometimes exceeded a height of one hundred feet (1)[12] .

Neither in Asia, among the Semites, nor in

Europe, among the Celts, have we encountered any trace of such a custom. On the other hand, we find it among the Slavic nations. There, there is not a ruin of a temple which does not show us its consecrated pile of ashes, and often even this pile of ashes, surrounded by a wall and a ditch, forms the entire sanctuary (2)[13 ] . It thus becomes very likely that 1048

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among the Kymric aborigines he also mixed with the Slavs. These two peoples, so frequently united with each other, had thus succeeded the Finns, who had formerly arrived in greater or lesser numbers on this point of the continent, and had allied themselves with them in different measures (3) [ 14] . I no longer find it impossible that, in the great revolutions brought about by the presence of Semitic settlers and Aryan-Titan conquerors, then Aryan-Hellenic conquerors, aboriginal fugitives of Slavic race could have crossed into Asia at different times, and carried there in Paphlagonia the Wend name of Enètes or Henètes[15] .

These unfortunate Pelasgians, Slavs, Celts, Illyrians or others, but always white mixed race, attacked by forces too considerable, and often strong enough however not to accept absolute slavery, emigrated on all sides, became plunderers in their turn, or , if you like, conquerors, and became the terror of the countries where they brought their warlike misery.

The Italic land was already populated by their peers, called, like them, Pelasgians or aborigines, similarly recognized to be the authors of large massive constructions in raw or imperfectly cut stones, also dedicated to agricultural work, having prophetesses or sibyls all similar, finally resembling them in every way, and consequently fully identified with them.

These Italian aborigines appear to have generally belonged to the Celtic family. However, they were not alone, any more than those of Greece, in occupying their 1049

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provinces. In addition to the Rasenes, whose Slavic character has already been recognized, we can still see other groups of Wendish origin, such as the Veneti[16] .

Nor are there any

reasons to deny Festus the Illyrian origin of the Peligni[17] . The Japyges, who came around the year 1186 BC, and established in the south-east of the kingdom of Naples, seem to have belonged to the same family. For his part, MW de Humboldt also gave too good reasons for us to be able to deny, after him, that Iberian populations lived and exercised a fairly notable influence on the soil of the Peninsula[18] . As for the Trojans of Aeneas, the question is more difficult. It seems more than probable that the ambition to be linked to this epic stock only came to the Romans following their relations with the Greek colony of Cumae, which made them feel its beauty. Here, from the start, is a fairly wide variety of ethnic elements. But, of all the most widespread, it was undoubtedly that of the Kymris or the aborigines, recognized by ethnographers, like Cato, to have belonged to a single race.

These aborigines, when the Greeks wanted to impose a special and geographical name on them, were first described as Ausonians (1)[19] . They were composed of different nations, such as the Oenotrians, the Oscans, the Latins, all subdivided into fractions of unequal power. This is how the name of the Osques united the Samnites, the Lucanians, the Apulians, the Calabrians, the Campanians (2)[20] .

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But, as the Greeks had only established their first relationships with southern Italy, the term Ausonian only designated all of the masses found in this part of the country, and the meaning did not extend to the inhabitants of the middle region.

The name which fell to the latter was that of Sabelliens (3)[21] . Beyond, towards the north, we still knew the Latins, then the Rasenes and the Umbres (4)[22] . This classification, arbitrary as it is, has the first and quite great advantage of considerably restricting the application of the vague title of aboriginal. In all circumstances, we believe we know what we have named. We therefore set aside the peoples already classified, Ausonians, Sabellians, Rasenes, Latins and Umbres, and we made a special category of those who only remained aboriginal because we had not had sufficiently intimate contact with them for their assign a name. Of this number were the Aeci, the Volsci and some tribes of Sabines (5) [23] . The disadvantages of the system were glaring. The Samnites, ranked among the Osci, and the Osci themselves, with all those of their tribes mentioned above, and then the Mamertines and others, were not strangers to the Sabellians. These groups held to the Sabine stock. Consequently, they had certain affinities with the people of middle Italy, and all, significantly, had emigrated, step by step, from the northern part of the Apennine mountains (1)[24 ] .

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in the north of the Peninsula, we arrived, from kinship to kinship, to the border of the Umbres, without having noticed a break in continuity in the dominant part of this sequence. It has long been said that the Umbres only date from the invasion of Bellovèse on the Peninsula, and that they had replaced a population which did not bear the same name as them. This opinion is now abandoned (2)[25] . The Umbres occupied the Po valley and the southern side of the Alps well before the irruption of the Kymris of Gaul. They were linked by their race to the nations which continued to be called aboriginal or Pelasgic, just like the Oscans and the Sabellians (3) and they were even recognized for the stock from which the [26] ,

Sabines were derived, and, with these, the Osci. The Umbres therefore, being the very root of the Sabines, that is to say of the Osques, that is to say again of the Ausonians, and thus finding themselves germans of the Sabellians (4)[27] and of all the populations called by the uncompromising name of aborigines, we would, by this alone, be authorized to affirm that the entire mass of these aborigines, descending from north to south, was of Umbric race, always with the exception of the Etruscans, the Iberians, Veneti and some Illyrians. Having spread across the Peninsula the same fashions and the same style of architecture, based on the same religious doctrine, showing the same agricultural, pastoral and warlike customs, this identification would seem sufficiently solidly justified not to have to be called into doubt ( 1 )[28] . This is not enough, however: the examination of 1052

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Italian idioms, as much as possible, still deprive the negative of its last resource. Mommsen in fact posits that the language of the aborigines offers a mode of structure prior to Greek, and he brings together in the same group the Umbric, Sabellian and Samnite idioms, which he distinguishes from Etruscan, Gaulish and Latin. But he adds elsewhere that between these six special families there existed numerous dialects which, penetrating each other, formed as many links, established the fusion and united the whole (2)[29 ] .

By virtue of this principle, he corrects his separatist assertion, and affirms that the Oscans spoke a language very close to Latin (3)[30] .

O. Muller notices, in this composite language, striking relationships with Umbric, and the learned Danish archaeologist whose judgment I have just invoked gives their true meaning and their full scope to these relationships, by affirming that Umbric is , of all the Italiote languages, the one which has remained closest to the aboriginal sources (1)[31] . In other words, Osque, like Latin, as presented to us by most monuments, dates from a time when ethnic mixtures had exercised a great influence and developed considerable corruption, while circumstances geographical having allowed Umbric to receive fewer Greek and Etruscan elements, the latter language had remained closer to its origin and had better preserved its purity. He deserves,

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consequently, to be taken as a prototype, when it comes to judging the essence of Italian dialects. We have therefore conquered this capital point: the aboriginal populations of Italy, with admitted exceptions, are fundamentally linked to the Umbres; and as for the Umbres, they are, as their name indicates, emissions of the Kymric stock, perhaps modified in a local manner by the measure of the Finnic infusion received within them.

It is difficult to ask the Umbric itself for confirmation of this fact. What remains is too little, and so far, what has been deciphered undoubtedly offers roots belonging to the group of idioms of the white race, but disfigured by an influence which has not yet been determined. in its true characters. Let us therefore turn first to the names of places, then to the only Italian language which is fully accessible to us, that is Latin. As for place names, the etymology of the word Italy is naturally offered by the Celtic talamh, tellus, the earth par excellence, Saturnia tellus, Œnotria tellus (2) [32] .

Two Umbric tribes, the Euganeans and the Tauriscis, have purely Celtic names (3)[33] . The two large mountain ranges which share and border Italian soil, the Apennines and the Alps, have names borrowed from the same THE

language (1)[34] . 1054

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towns of Alba, so numerous in the Peninsula and always of Aboriginal foundation, draw the etymology of their name from Celtic (2)[35] . Facts of this kind are abundant. I limit myself to indicating the trace, and I prefer to examine some Kymro-Latin roots. We notice, first of all, that they belong to this category of expressions forming the very essence of the vocabulary of all peoples, expressions which, being fundamentally rooted in the habits of a race, cannot easily be expelled. by passing influences. These are names of plants, trees, weapons. I would not be surprised, in any case, to see the Celtic dialects and those of the aborigines of Italy have similar roots for all these uses, since, even leaving aside the current question, it should always be recognized that also coming from white stock, they based their later developments on a unique basis. But, if the same words appear with the same forms, barely altered in Celtic and in Italian, it becomes very difficult not to confess the evidence of the identity of secondary origin.

Let's first look at the term used to designate oak. This is a subject worthy of attention. Among the Celts of northern Europe, among the aborigines of Greece and Italy, this tree played a great role, and, through the religious importance attributed to it, it was closely linked to the most intimate ideas of these three groups.

The Breton word is cheingen, which, by means of the local permutation of the n in r, becomes chergen, from which there is 1055

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a short way to the Latin quercus. The word war provides a no less striking connection. The French form reproduces almost pure Celtic, queir. The sabin queir keeps it whole. But, in addition to this word, in Celtic, having the meaning that I have just indicated, it also has that of spear. In Sabine, it is still the same, and hence the name and image of the heroic god Quirinus, worshiped in the form of a lance among the first Romans, still venerated among the Falisci, who had their Pater curis, and deified at Tibur, where the Juno Pronuba bore the epithet of Curitis or Quiritis (1)[36] .

Arm in Breton, airm in Gaelic, is equivalent to the Latin arma . The Welsh pill is the Latin pilum, the trait (2)[37] . The shield, scutum, appears in Gaelic sgiath ; gladius, the sword, in Welsh cleddyf and Gaelic cledd ; the arc, arcus, in the Breton archelte; the arrow, sagitta, in the Welsh saeth , the Gaelic saighead ; the chariot, currus, in the Gaelic car and the Breton and Welsh carr .

If I pass to the terms of agriculture and domestic life, I find the house, casa, and the first case ; ædes and the Gaelic aite ; cella and Welsh cell ; sedes and sedd of the same dialect. I find the cattle, pecus ; and the Gaelic beo ; because the livestock par excellence are bovine animals. I find the old Latin bus, the ox, and bo, Gaelic, or buh, Breton; the ram, aries, and reithe, Gaelic; the ewe, ovis, and the Breton ovein, with the Welsh oen ; the horse, equus, and the Welsh echw ; wool, lana, and the Gaelic olann, and the

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Welsh Gwlan ; water, aqua, and Breton aguen, and Welsh aw ; milk , lactum, and the Gaelic lachd ; the dog, canis, and the Welsh can ; the fish, piscis, and the Welsh pysg ; the oyster, ostrea, and the Breton oistr ; the flesh, caro, and the Gaelic carn, which presents the n of the inflections of caro ; the verb immolate, mactare, and the Gaelic mactadh ; wet, madeira, and the Welsh madrogi.

The verb plow, arare, and the Gaelic ra with the two Welsh forms aru and aredig ; the field, arvum, with Gaelic ar and Welsh arw ; wheat , hordeum, and the Gaelic eorma ; the harvest, seges, and the Breton segall ; the bean, faba, and the Welsh ffa ; the vine, vitis, and the Welsh gwydd ; oats, avena, and Breton havre ; cheese , caseus, and Gallic caise, with Breton casu ; butyrum, butter , and the Gaelic butar ; the candle, candela, and the Breton cantol ; beech , fagus, and erse feagha, with Breton fao and faouenn ; the viper, vipera, and the Welsh gwiper ; the serpent, serpens, and the Welsh sarff ; nut , nux, and Gaelic cnu, notable example of these sound reversals frequently suffered by monosyllables, in the transition from one dialect to another. Then I list pell-mell words like these: the sea, mare, Gaelic muir, Breton and Welsh mor ; to use, uti, Gaelic usinnich ; man, vir, Welsh gwir ; the year, annus, Gaelic ann ; virtue , Gaelic feart, which merges well with the word fortis, courageous (1)[38]; the river, amnis, Gaelic amba, amhuin ; return, retell, Welsh rhetu ; the king, rex, gaelic righ ; mensis, month , welsh

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put ; death , murn, Welsh, and die, mori, Breton marheuein. I will end with penates, which has no etymology other than in Celtic (1)[39] : this word only derives in a simple and completely satisfactory way from the Welsh penaf, which means high, and which has the superlative penaeth, very high, the highest (2)[40] .

These examples could be extended very far. The three hundred words alleged by Cardinal Maï, in volume V of his collection of classics published on Vatican manuscripts, would be outdated. However, it is enough, I am confident, to settle any indecision (3)[41] . We can choose verbs just as well as nouns: the results of the examination will be the same, and when we discover relationships as striking, as intimate between two languages, as indeed the forms of prayer are, for their part, perfectly identical, the case is judged: the Latins, descendants, in part, of the Umbres, were indeed, as their name indicates, closely related to the Galls, as well as their ancestors, and, therefore, the aborigines of Italy, no less than those of Greece, belonged, for a large part, to this group of nations.

It is thus, and only thus, that this sort of uniform tint is explained, this dull color which also covers, in the heroic ages, everything we know and understand about the facts and acts of the mass called pelasgic, as well as of the one who bears her real kymric name. We observe there a similar crude and soldierly appearance, a similar manner of a plowman and a shepherd of

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oxen. What ! it is a similar way of adorning and adorning oneself. We find no fewer bracelets and rings in the costume of the Sabines of primitive Rome than in that of the Arverni and Boians of Vercingetorix (1)[42] . Among both peoples, the brave appears to us under the same physical and moral aspect, fighting and working, austere and without anything pompous (2) [43] .

However, the works of the Italian aborigines were most considerable. There is not an old town in the Peninsula that has been in ruins for centuries where traces of their hands have not still been discovered. For a long time, some of their works were even attributed to the Etruscans. This is how Pisa (1), [44] , Saturnia, Agylla, Alsium, very anciently acquired from the Rasenes, had begun by being Kymric towns, cities founded by the aborigines. It was the same in Cortona (2) [45] .

In another type of construction, it seems certain that the part of the Appian Way which goes from Terracina to Fondi was of Kymric origin, and much earlier than the Roman route which brought this section into a general plan (3)[ 46 ] . But it was not in the power of the Italian races to maintain their purity in any way. Iberians, Etruscans, Veneti, Illyrians, Celts, engaged in permanent wars, all had to lose or gain ground at every moment. It was the ordinary state. This situation was made worse by the effect of social mores which had created, under the name of sacred spring, a powerful cause of ethnic confusion. 1059

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On the occasion of a scarcity or an increase in population, a tribe dedicated part of its youth to any god, put arms in their hands, and sent them to make a new homeland at the expense of the neighborhood. . The patron god was responsible for helping him (1) Hence perpetual [47] . conflicts which, finally, worsened by the effect and counter-effect of major events whose unknown source was hidden far away in the north-east of the continent. Tumultuous nations of trans-Rhineland Galls, probably driven out by other Galls who were disturbed by Slavs harassed by Arians or yellow peoples, invaded beyond the river, pushed on their fellows, entered into a share of their territories, and, willingly , reluctantly, collapsing with them, reached, arms in hand, as far as the Garonne, where their vanguard was established by force among the vanquished. Then the latter, unhappy with a domain that had become too narrow, moved en masse towards the Pyrenees, crossed them along the coast of the Bay of Biscay, and imposed on the Iberians a pressure very similar to that from which they had just suffered. themselves.

The Iberians, in their turn, mistreated, were shaken. After struggling and partly mingling with their conquerors, seeing their country insufficient for its new population, they left, no longer only Iberians, but also Celtiberians, exiting through the other end of the mountains, that is to say by the eastern beaches of the Mediterranean, and, around the year 1600 B.C., spread over the parts

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maritime areas of Roussillon and Provence. Then penetrating into Italy by the Genoese coast, showing themselves in Tuscany, finally passing where they could set foot, they taught these vast regions to know their new names of Ligurians and Sicules. Then, confused with aborigines of various tribes (1)[48], they sowed far and wide an element or rather an ethnic combination destined to play a considerable role in the future. In more than one respect, they added one more link to those which already united the Italiots with the transalpine populations.

What their presence caused above all were terrible shocks, the repercussions of which were felt in all parts of the Peninsula. The Etruscans, pushed back into the Umbrian provinces, suffered mixtures there which were probably not the first. Many Sabellians or Sabines, many Ausonians had the same fate, and the Ligurian blood itself infiltrated everywhere all the more before the mass of this immigrant nation, established mainly in the countryside of Rome (2 ) [49] , could never create a sufficiently large homeland for itself. She did not have the strength to prevail against all the resistance that was put against her. She was content to live, in a floating state in the regions where the aborigines, like the Etruscans, knew how to maintain themselves; so that the Ligurians, intruders and tolerated in more than one place, could only blend in with the plebs (3)[50] .

While they thus bore the consequences of their origin, seeing themselves forced, invaders as they were, 1061

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to remain in the rank of equals, sometimes inferiors, vis-à-vis the nations whose relations they came to disturb, another revolution was taking place, but almost in silence, at the other extremity, at the southern tip of the Peninsula. Around the 10th century BC, Hellenes, already Semitic, began to establish colonies there, and, although forming, compared to the Ligurian or Siculian masses, a contrast marked by their small number, we saw them deploying on those here and over the aborigines such a superiority of civilization and resources, that the conquest of everything they wanted to take seemed to be assured to them in advance.

They stretched out at their ease. They placed cities wherever they pleased. They treated the Italian Pelasgians as their fathers had treated their relatives in Hellas. They subjugated them or forced them to retreat, when they did not mix with them, as happened with the Oscans. These, affected, quite early, by the Semitic Hellenic alloy, bore witness to this situation in their customs as in their language. Several of their tribes ceased to be, strictly speaking, aboriginal. They presented a spectacle similar to that presented later, towards the middle of the 2nd century BC, the people of Provence subjected to the Roman hymen.

This is what we call the second Oscan formation (1) [51] .

But most of the Pelasgic nations experienced less happy treatment. Driven from their territories by 1062

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the Hellenic colonizers, they only had the alternative of going against groups of Sicules, established a little further north in Latium (2)[52] , and they mingled with them. The alliance, thus concluded, was gradually strengthened (3)[53] by new victims of the Greek colonists. In the end, this confused mass, tossed and pressed on all sides by rival gatherings, and especially by Sabines, remained more Kymris than the others, and, consequently, superior in warrior merit to the already Semiticized Osci, as well as to the semi-semitic Sicilians. -Iberians, like the half-Finnish Rasenians, this confused mass, I say, retreated step by step, and, about a thousand years before the Christian era, went to seek refuge in Sicily.

This is what we know, what we can see of the oldest acts of the primitive population of Italy, a population which, in general, escapes the accusation of barbarism, but which, like the Celts from the north, limited his social science to the search for material utility. Many wars divided it, and yet agriculture flourished there, its fields were cultivated and productive. Despite the difficulty of passing through mountains and forests and crossing rivers, its trade reached out to the most northern peoples of the continent. Numerous pieces of succin, preserved raw or cut into necklaces, are frequently found in his tombs (1)[54] , and the identity, already noted, as well as this fact, of certain Rasene coins with coins of Gaul, irresistibly demonstrates

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the existence of regular and permanent relations between the two groups (2)[55] . At this very remote time, the still recent ethnic memories of the European races, their ignorance of the southern countries, the similarity of their needs and their tastes, must necessarily tend to bring them together (3)[56 ] . From the Baltic to Sicily (4)[57] , a civilization existed incomplete, but real and the same everywhere, except for nuances corresponding to the ethnic nuances arising from the hymens, sporadically contracted, between groups originating from the two branches white and YELLOW. The Asian Tyrrhenians came to disturb this lackluster organization, and help the colonists of Magna Graecia in the task of rallying Europe to the civilization adopted by the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean (1)[58 ] . 1. ÿ (1) Mommsen, Die unter-italischen Dialekte, p. 206. 2. ÿ (2) See above. 3. ÿ (3) Herodotus, speaking of the Pelasgians of Dodona, remarks that they considered the gods as simple anonymous regulators of the universe, and in no way as being its creators. This is Arian naturalism. These Pelasgians therefore seem to have been Illyrian Arians, which other Pelasgians were not. (Herod., II, 52.) 4. ÿ (4) Abeken, Mittel-Italien vor der Zeit der rœmischen Herrschaft, p. 18 and 125: “If we consider this primitive Greek race that Italy shares with Hellas, it should be noted that it is recognized on both points, not only on the bases of the two languages, which are identical, but still in the oldest architectural remains. » — See also same work, p. 82. — O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 27 and 56. — Mommsen, Die unter-italischen Dialekte, p. 363. — Strabo, V, 2, 4. 5. ÿ (1) See above. 6. ÿ (2) See above. 7. ÿ (3) We must not forget that these constructions, formed of blocks piled up and fitted one on top of the other, according to their natural shapes,

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have nothing in common with Aryan-Hellenic buildings, where the stones are cut in a regular way. 8. ÿ (1) Bœttiger, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie, t. I, p. 203. This adoration continued for a long time among the agricultural populations of Arcadia. — “Habitæ Graiis oracula quercus. » (Georg., II, 16.) 9. ÿ (2) Bœttiger, loc. cit. 10. ÿ (3) Among other traces of the presence of the Celts in the primitive population of Greece, we can also note the very significant name of the country of Calydon, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, and of the Calydonians, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ , which live. The entire myth of Meleager also seems to be part of Aboriginal tradition. 11. ÿ (4) Voir plus haut. 12. ÿ (1) Pausanias, in-8o , Lips., 1823, t. II, chap. 13 - "Indeed, the altar of Jupiter of Olympias is at an equal distance from Pelops' and Juno's eaves ... It is congested from the ashes collected from the burnt thighs of the victims." Such also is the altar of Pergamum, such as that of Juno of Samia, indeed it is in no way more ornate than in Attica, which the Rudes call hearths. One hundred and more five-and-twenty rounds of the Olympic arena... » 13. ÿ (2) Keferstein, ouvr. cite, t. 1, p. 236 and pass. 14. ÿ (3) Les collines de sacrifices, de création slave se trouvent avec abondance jusqu'en Servie. M. Troyon pense qu'il faut en faire remonter l'époque au V et VIe siècle de notre ère seulement. En tout cas, c'est un mode de construction fort antique et tout à fait semblable aux autels d'Olympie et de Samos. 15. ÿ Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, t. 1, p. 159. - Tite-Live contains this passage worthy of note: "Then in various cases they sought Antenorus, with a multitude of Heneti, who had been driven from Paphlagonia by rebellion, and who had lost their seat and leader, King Pylemenes at Troy." - Liv. Gron., in-8o , Basel, 1740, t. 1, p. 8. 16. ÿ Herodotus confuses them with the Illyrians. Their territory extended, to the south, to the mouth of the Etsch, and, to the west, to the heights which go from this river to the Bacciglione. (O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 134.) 17. ÿ Abeken, Ouvr. cited, p 85. — However, Ovid ranks this nation among the Sabine tribes. Both opinions can be supported, and the Peligni are, like most Italian nations, only the result of numerous mixtures where Illyrian emigrants, probably Liburnes, will have had their place. To show how the work to which the ethnography of a people gives rise is thorny, and must tend rather first to reconcile than to reject traditions, even the most disparate, we only have to study this that Tacitus says of the Jews, when, in book V, ch. II

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Stories , he seeks their origin. He lists four opinions: the first makes them come from Crete, and derives the name Judaei from Mount Ida. Those who had given him this opinion confused all the inhabitants into a single race, and their opinion, correct in relation to the Philistines, was found to be inaccurate with regard to the Abrahamides. The second opinion made them come from Egypt, and accused them of descending from lepers expelled from this country whom they infected with their disease. Leaving aside the trait of national hatred, there is nothing but truth in this assertion. However, it does not destroy the value of the third, which makes the Jews a colony of Ethiopians. Only Tacitus seems to mean, by this word, the Abyssinians, and we know (see volume I) that, in ancient times, it was applied to the men of Assyria. This truth contributes to accepting at the same time the fourth opinion cited by the Roman historian, and which said the Jews were Assyrian in origin. They were, no doubt, as Chaldeans. I only wanted here to give an example of the sustained and scrupulous attention, of the prudent reserve which must guide elucidations and especially ethnological conclusions. 18. ÿ See Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens, p. 49. — Humboldt's MW derives the Latin word murus from Euskara murua. (Ibid., p. 3 et pass.) 19. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 27. 20. ÿ (2) Open. cited, p. 40. 21. ÿ (3) Mommsen, Unter-ital. Dialekte, p. 363. 22. ÿ (4) Ibid. Of which the three main subdivisions are essentially Celtic, as for the name: the Olombri, from ol, height, inhabited the Alps; the Isombri, from is, low, the plains of the Po valley; the Vilombri, from bel, the shore, presentday Umbria, on the Adriatic. 23. ÿ (5) Mommsen, open. cited, p. 324. 24. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 45 and on. 25. ÿ (2) O. Muller, open. cited, p. 58. 26. ÿ (3) O. Muller, open. cited, p. 56. — Abeken, p. 82. — Mommsen, p. 206. 27. ÿ (4) According to Mommsen, the alphabets discovered in Provence, Valais, Tyrol, Styria, are more closely related to the Sabellian alphabet than to all the others of Italy, i.e. that is, those of Etruria proper and Campania, and closer to the archaic Greek type. However, it establishes, between all these writing systems, a common c It is useful to refer here to what was said above about the Celtic alphabets in general. In a subject so difficult and complicated, the smallest facts help each other to rise to the rank of

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evidence, and it is essential to be able to count on the sustained attention of the reader. 28. ÿ (1) See the authorities listed by Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 1st Abth., p. 112 et seqq. 29. ÿ (2) Mommsen, open. cited, p. 364. 30. ÿ (3) Ibidem, p. 205. — Opici or Opsci. Their language was still in use in Rome in certain plays, sixty years after the beginning of the Christian era. (Strabo, V, 3, 6.) We find Oscan inscriptions in Pompeii, and, as the burial of the city only dates from the year 79 AD, we can understand, from this alone, what was the longevity of this idiom. Perhaps there would be great benefit in applying the current popular dialects of Italy to the decipherment of local inscriptions. We would achieve a result more surely than by using Latin, which, ultimately, was only the Frankish or Malay language, the Hindustani of the Peninsula. 31. ÿ (1) Mommsen, open. cited, p. 206. — This is why he also adds that the Volscian had greater relations with the Umbric than the Oscan (p. 322).

32. ÿ (2) Dieffenbach, Celtica II, 1st Abth., p. 114. 33. ÿ (3) Euganeans, from Aguen, water ; they were the residents of the lakes of Lugano, Como and Garda. The Taurisks, like the Taurini, take their name from tor, mountain. Niebuhr, to establish an intimate link between the Rhaetians and the Rasenians, was inclined to make the Euganeans Etruscans But he only expresses this idea timidly and as if driven by the need for his cause. (Rœmische Geschichte, vol. I, p. 70.) 34. ÿ (1) At pen gwin, the ridge, the white mountain. 35. ÿ (2) (2) Alb or Alp, elevation, mountain, hill; Albany, the mountainous region of Scotland; Albania, the mountains of Illyria; Albania, part of the Caucasus; Albion, the island of great cliffs, and the numerous towns of Alba, placed on eminences. We also knew, in Narbonnaise, the Albian Ligurians and the Albiæci, half-Celtic peoples. Alb also means white and gives the root albus . — Consult Dieffenbach, Celtica I, p. 18, 13, and Celtica II, 1st Abth., p. 310, 6. 36. ÿ (1) Bœttiger, Ideas on Art Mythology, t. I, p. 20 ; t. II, p. 227 et pass.

37. ÿ (2) Et le sanscrit pilu. — AV Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, t. I, p. 209.) — Moreover, MM. Aufrecht and Kirchhof, Die umbrischen Sprachdenkmæler, very well establish the relationship of Umbric with Sanskrit and the languages of the white race. See, Lautlehre, p. 15 and on. — Abeken expresses the same opinion: “As for the (Umbric) language,

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he said, it is as incomprehensible today as Etruscan; GOOD that in short we can disentangle a primitive Greek stock much better (we do not forget that for Abeken this compound word is synonymous with pelasgic). Umbric seems to be a sister language of Oscan and Latin. » (Cited work, p. 28.) 38. ÿ (1) This word feart is also close to the Greek ÿÿÿÿÿ and the root typical ar. (See volume 1.) 39. ÿ (1) Nothing could prove this better than reading the passage where Dionysius of Halicarnassus found in this ethnological name a meaning that escapes him, despite all his efforts, as well as his commentators. (C. XLVII.) 40. ÿ (2) I could have similarly and perhaps should have given a similar list for the Greek Kymris, and show the large number of Celtic words remained in the dialects of Hellas; but this care seems to me superfluous. I limit myself to referring the reader to the vocabulary of M. Keferstein (Ansichten, etc., t. II, p. 3); it contains no less than sixty pages, and, although several Greco-Welsh or Greco-Breton words are obviously of very modern import, the content is decisive and presents a picture even more curious, if possible, than this which results from the comparison I make here. 41. ÿ (3) However, I cannot ignore the names of numbers: nn Latin: Celtic: 1.

one,

one, one.

2.

two

dau.

3.

three,

4.

four, five

5.

three.

both. five. chuch.

6.

sex,

7.

septem,

saith.

8.

octo,

eight.

9.

nine, ten

now.

10.

ten.

Finally, I will make only one last observation: general links appear to have united quite closely the primitive languages of all Western Europe, whatever differences present themselves today, from each other, Iberian, Etruscan, Italian dialects and Kymric. We have seen that similar rules apply, in all these languages, to

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the permutation of consonants. It must be added that they practiced, with equal ease, the inversion of syllables, so familiar in Latin and which we find in the way of writing indifferently Pratica or Patrica, name of an aboriginal town, Lanuvium or Lavinium, Agendicum or Agedincum. The Slavic dialects are no less suitable than the Celtic ones for this evolution.

42. ÿ (1) Liv., I, 129: “Vulgo Sabini aureas armillas magni ponderis brachio lævo gemmatosque magna specie annulos habuerint”. 43. ÿ (2) Niebuhr points out among the aborigines of Italy this custom, completely foreign to the Semitic and Semitized races, of bearing permanent proper names, which maintained the genealogical notion of the fam This was probably the case among the first white inhabitants of Greece, but we no longer have any means of ascertaining this. This custom was preserved by the Romans. (Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, vol. I, p. 115. — Salverte, Essay on the origin of the proper names of men, peoples and places, vol. I, p. 187.) The author of this book seems to believe that the use of permanent proper names ceased around the 3rd century and was not resumed until around the 10th century. This is, I believe, an erroneous opinion, and I would be inclined to think that the habit was never completely abandoned among the Celtic strata of the population. There was a family of Paulins in Bordeaux in the 4th century. (See Élie Vinet, l'Antiquité de Bourdeaus et de Bourg, Bourdeaus, petitin-4o , 1554.) — Let us note in passing that this very convenient and very simple habit of keeping the father's name indefinitely for descendants seems to make part of the instincts of several yellow groups. The Chinese have practiced it since ancient times and with such tenacity that certain families originating from their country, who moved and settled in Armenia, may well have forgotten their original names by changing their language; but they have taken local ones and faithfully preserve them in the midst of a population which does not have any. These are the Orpelians, the Mamigonéans, and others. In Japan, the same custom exists, and, even more notable, it is immemorial among the European Lapps, the Buryats, the Ostiaks, the Baschkirs. (Salverte, cited work, t. I, p, 135, 141 and 144.) 44. ÿ (1) Two remarkable ruins are Testrina, the oldest Sabine city, located on a mountain above Amiternum. There we find remains of gigantic walls whose blocks, extracted from a fairly soft tuff, bear marks of a coarse size. (Abeken, Mittel-Italien, etc., p. 86 and 140.)

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45. ÿ (2) Abeken, Mittel-Italien, etc., p. 125. Cortona presents a remarkable singularity. Like other mixed cities, and among others Thebes, it had two legends: one probably Tyrrhenian, which attributed a Greek eponym to it; then another older one, and, whatever Abeken says, as easily kymric as rasene, which made it the place where this mysterious character called the Dwarf, the ÿÿÿÿÿ, traveler, had been buried. (Dionys. Halic., I, XXIII. Abeken, cited work, p. 26.) 46. ÿ (3) Abeken, ibid., p. 141. 47. ÿ (1) Dionysus. Halic., Ant. Romans 1:16 48. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 16. 49. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 10. 50. ÿ (3) Ibid., p. 11 and pass. 51. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 45. 52. ÿ (2) Ibid. 53. ÿ (3) Ammien Marcellin affirms (I, 15, 9) that les aborigènes du La were Celts. 54. ÿ (1) Abeken, Unter-Italien, p. 267. — See the description given by this author of the Alsium tumulus. 55. ÿ (2) Abeken, Unter-Italien, p. 282. — Aristotle assures that a road went from Italy to Celtic and Spain. 56. ÿ (3) Livy was able to write about King Mezentius: “Cœre opulento so, impervious to the town. »

57. ÿ (4) “The deeper I go into antiquity,” says Schaffarik, “the more I remain convinced of the complete falsity of the opinions expressed and received until now on the comparison of the ancient peoples of southern Europe ( Greeks and Romans) with those of the north, mainly those living along the Vistula and the Baltic, a comparison which seemed to convince the latter of savagery, harshness and misery, and to render inadmissible any idea of commercial relations between the two groups. » (Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, t. I, p. 107, note 1.) — Here, on the same subject, is a judgment from Niebuhr: “The aborigines are depicted by Sallust and Virgil as savages who lived in bands, without laws, without agriculture, feeding on hunting products and wild fruits. This way of speaking seems to be nothing but pure speculation intended to show the gradual development of man, from bestial brutality to a state of complete culture. This is the idea that, in the last half century, we have rehashed to the point of disgust, under the pretext of doing philosophical history. We have not even forgotten the so-called idiomatic poverty which reduces men to the level of animals. This method made a fortune, especially abroad (Niebuhr means in France). It relies on myriads of

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traveler stories carefully collected by these so-called philosophers. But they did not take note that there is not a single example of a truly savage people who passed freely to civilization, and that, where social culture was imposed from without, it had the effect of result in the disappearance of the oppressed group, as we saw recently for the Natticks, the Guaranis, the tribes of New California, and the Hottentots of the Missions. Each human race has received from God its character, the direction it must follow and its special imprint. Likewise, again, society exists before isolated man, as “Aristotle very wisely says; the whole is prior to the part and the authors of the system of successive development of humanity do not see that the bestial man is only a degenerate creature or originally a half-man. » (Roem. Geschichte, t. I, p. 121.) 58. ÿ (1) The Greek medals of the oldest period present, as well as some statues which have come down to us, a very strange type completely different from the Hellenic physiognomy, and which can only be attributed to the ancient Pelasgians. The nose is long, straight and pointed, curved inwards, in the middle, so that the tip rises slightly. The cheekbones are a little prominent; the eyes show a slight tendency towards obliquity; the mouth is large, and affects a sort of singular smile that one could say is pitiless. The head is oblong, the forehead low and rather receding, without excluding a certain fullness of the temples. There's no doubt this guy is pelasgic. Its center appears to have been in Samothrace and the surrounding countries, at Thasos, Lete, Orreskia, Selybria. The medals of Thasos present it united with the representation of a phallic scene which undoubtedly alludes to some tradition of kidnapping and violence analogous to that of which the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, expelled from Attica, were guilty towards the Hellenic women of Athens in the middle of the 12th century BC. We see it on the old coins of the city of Minerva, on those of Aegina, Arcadia, Argos, Potidaea, Pharsalus; then, in Asia, on those of Gergitus, Mysia, Harpagia, Lampsacus; finally, in Italy, on those of Velia; in Sicily, on those of Syracuse; perhaps even, in Spain, on a silver medal from Obulco. All these countries, except the last, have been historically occupied by populations either aboriginal or immigrant, belonging to pelasgic groups, and all the medals in question here and which stand out, in the most striking way, the most impossible to misunderstand, with the Hellenic character, which have nothing in common with its regularity, its beauty, all belong to the oldest era. Certain sculptures in S

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leaves no doubt about this correlation, these are the statues of the pediment of Aegina and some pre-Roman Italiote figures. — Cabinet of HE General Baron de Prokesch-Osten.

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CHAPTER V. The Tyrrhenian Etruscans — Etruscan Rome.

It seems unnatural, at first glance, to see positive memories in Etruria dating back only to the beginning of the 10th century BC. It's a very mediocre antique. This particularity can be explained in two ways which are not mutually exclusive. To begin with, the arrival of white nations in the western part of the world occurred after their appearance in the south. Then the mixing of whites with blacks gave, first of all, the birth of civilization that could be called apparent and visible, while the union of whites with the Finns only created a latent mode of culture. , hidden, utilitarian. For a long time, confusing appearances with reality, we only wanted to recognize social improvement where very salient external forms showed its presence less than a nature, than a way of being more adorned in its way of producing itself. . But, as it is not possible to deny that the Iberians and Celts had the right to say that they were regularly constituted in civil societies, we must recognize them, and, with them, all of Europe

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primitive of the west and the north, a legitimate rank in the hierarchy of cultivated peoples. However, I am far from treating with indifference what I call here a question of form, and just as I will never take as the type of social man the consummate industrialist, or the most skilled merchant in his field, and whom I will always place above them, but certainly at an incomparable height, whether the priest, the warrior, the artist, the administrator, or what we call today the man of the world, and that in the time of Louis XIV they called the honest man ; as, likewise, I will always prefer, in the order of elite men, Saint Bernard to Papin or Watt, Bossuet to Jacques Cœur, Louvois, Turenne, Ariosto or Corneille to all financial illustrations, I do not does not call active civilization, civilization of the first order, that which is content to vegetate obscurely, giving its followers only satisfactions that are ultimately very incomplete and too humble, confining their desires within a limited sphere, and rotating in this spiral of improvements limits of which China has reached the summit. Now, as long as a group of peoples is reduced, for any mixture, to the yellow element combined with white, it only acquires the qualities, capacities, aptitudes, whether mixed or new, that this hymen procreates. , nothing that attracts him into the necessary current of the feminine element, and makes him seek the divination of what is transcendentally useful in cultivating the enjoyments that pure imagination spreads over a society.

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If therefore the Western peoples had to remain limited to the combination of their first ethnic principles, it is more than probable that through effort they would have ended up arriving at a state comparable to that of the Celestial Empire, without however finding the same calm. There were already too many tributaries of various types, and above all too many white contributions. For this reason, the reasoned despotism of the Son of Heaven would never have been established. Military passions would have, at every moment, upset this society thus doomed to a mediocre culture and to long and useless conflicts.

But the invasions from the South came to bring to the European nations what they lacked. Without yet destroying their originality, this happy interference ignited the soul that made them walk, and the torch which, by illuminating them, led them to associate their existence with the rest of the world. Two hundred and fifty years before the founding of Rome (1) [1] , Semitized Pelasgian bands entered Italy by sea, and having founded,

among the conquered and subdued Etruscans, the city of Tarquinii, made it the center of their power. From there they spread, step by step, over a very large part of the Peninsula.

These civilizers, called more particularly Tyrrhenians or Tyrsenians, came from the Ionian coast, where they had learned many things from the Lydians, with whom they had allied themselves (2)[2] . They appeared before the eyes of the Rasenians covered in bronze armor, animating the battles with the sound of trumpets, having the flutes to brighten up their 1075

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banquets, and importing a form and elements of society unknown anywhere other than Asia and Greece, where the Semites had introduced similar ones. Instead of imitating the powerful but crude constructions of the Italian populations, the newcomers, more skillful because they were mixed with more cultured nations, taught their subjects to build on the heights, on the crests of mountains, fortified cities with a completely new art, impregnable refuges, feared areas, from where domination hovered over the surrounding countries (3)[3] . The first in the West, they cut, by means of the lead rule, blocks of stone which, fitting into each other through the skillfully arranged recessed and protruding angles (1)[4], formed walls thick and of a solidity of which we can still judge, since, in more than one place, they have survived everything (2)[5] .

After having thus created gigantic fortifications, formidable to their subjects as much as to rival peoples (3) the Tyrrhenians decorated [6]

,

their cities with temples, palaces, and their palaces and their

temples with statues and terracotta vases, in what we call the ancient Greek style, and which was none other than that of the coast of Asia This (4)[7] . is how a Pelasgic group found itself in a position, through its alliances with Semitic blood, to bring to the Rasenes what they lacked, not to become a nation, but to appear and reveal it to all who in the world held the same rank.

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It is probable that the number of the Tyrrhenians was small compared to that of the Rasenians. These victors therefore managed to give society, for its greatest honor, its external forms; however, they did not succeed in leading it to complete assimilation with Hellenism. They themselves only possessed it in a fairly small dose, not being Hellenes, but only Kymris, Slavs or Greek Illyrians. Then they easily agreed to share a number of essential ideas that the Semitic part of their blood had not destroyed in their own bosom. Hence, this continuity of the utilitarian spirit among the Etruscan race; hence, this predominance of ancient worship and beliefs over imported mythology; hence, in a word, the persistence of Slavic aptitudes. The bulk of the nation remained, with few differences, as it was before the conquest. However, as the victors found themselves, despite their concessions and their subsequent mixtures with the population, marked with a special stamp due to their half-Asian origin, the fusion was never complete, and numerous conflicts prepared the way for revolutions and divisions.

The Tyrrhenians, whom I will also call, according to their titles, the lars (1)[8] , the lucumons, the nobles, because, having lost the use of their primitive language, replaced by the idiom of their subjects , and having intermarried with the latter, they soon no longer constituted a separate nation, the nobles, I say, had preserved the taste for ideas

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Greeks, and, as a means of satisfying this, Tarquinii had remained This city served as their city of predilection (2)[9] . link to constant communications with the Hellenic nations (3)[10] . seat of natural culture We must therefore consider it as the in Etruria, and the fulcrum of the aristocracy and its power (1)[11] .

As long as the Rasenians had been abandoned to their instincts alone, they should not have been, for the other Italiot nations, rivals particularly to be feared. Busy mainly with their agricultural and industrial work, they loved peace and sought to maintain it with their neighbors. But, when a nobility of a warlike nature, finding itself at their head, had distributed weapons to them and built noble fortresses, the Rasenes were forced to also seek glory and adventure: they threw themselves into the life of conquest.

Italy had not yet become, far from it, a quiet region. In the midst of the incessant agitations of the aboriginal Italiots, the Illyrians, the Ligurians, the Siculians, in the midst of the displacements of tribes, caused by the invasions of the colonies of Magna Graecia, the Etruscans seized a capital role. They took advantage of all the heartbreaks to expand as they saw fit. They expanded at the expense of the Umbres throughout the Po valley (2)[12] . Preserving what the industry of this people had already produced in the three hundred cities that history attributes to them (3)[13] , they increased their own wealth and importance. Then (4)[14] , from the north turning 1078

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their arms towards the south and driving back the refractory nations or rather fragments of nations onto the mountains, they extended as far as Campania (1)[15] , taking the lower course of the Tiber as their western limit. Thus they touched the two seas (2)[16] . The Rasene State thus became the most powerful on the Peninsula, and even one of the most respectable in the civilized universe of the time. He did not limit himself to continental acquisitions: he seized several islands and established colonies on the coast of Spain (3)[17] . A maritime power, it imitated the example of the Phoenicians and Greeks by covering the seas with ships that were both traders and pirates (4)[18] . With such vast progress, the Etruscans, already mixed race and strongly mixed race, whether considered in their lower classes or breaking down the blood of their nobility, had not escaped more numerous mixtures. Subject to the fate of all the dominating nations, they had, with each of their conquests, annexed to their individuality the mass of the subdued populations, and Umbres, Sabines, Iberians, Siculians, probably also many Greeks, had come to join. confuse in the national variety, constantly modifying both its inclinations and its nature. Contrary to what usually happens, the alterations undergone by the Etruscan species were, in general, likely to improve it. On the one hand, the Italiote Kymric blood, by mingling with the Rasene elements, raised their energy; on the other, the semiticized Arian essence, brought by the Greeks,

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gave the whole a movement, an ardor, too weak to throw it into Hellenic or Asian frenzies, but sufficient to correct somewhat what the Western alloys were too absolutely utilitarian. Unfortunately these transformations took place mainly in the middle and lower classes, whose value was thus brought closer to that of the noble families, and this was not enough to maintain the political balance intact and the aristocratic power uncontested.

Then, this great variegation of ethnic elements created too many fragmentary mixtures and small separate groups. Antagonisms were established within the population, almost as in Greece, and the Etruscan empire could never achieve unity. Powerful for conquest, endowed with military institutions so perfect that the Romans later had nothing better to do than to copy them, both for the organization of the legions and for their armament, the Etruscans did not never knew how to concentrate their government (1) [19]

.

They always remained, in moments of crisis, to the Celtic

resource of the embratur, the imperator, who guided their confederate troops with absolute, but temporary, power. Beyond that, they only achieved confederations of main cities, drawing the lower cities into the orbit of their wishes. Each political center was the seat of a few great races, mistresses of the pontificates, interpreters of the laws, directors of the sovereign councils, commanders in war, controls of the public treasury. When one of these families acquired a

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decided preponderance over its rivals, there was, in a way, royalty, but always tainted by this original vice, this implacable fragility, which constituted in Greece the first punishment of tyranny. For a long time, it is true, the predominance that all the Etruscan cities agreed to leave to Tarquinii seemed to correct what was very weak about this federative constitution. But such salutary deference is never eternal – exposed to a thousand accidents, it perishes at the first shock. People retain respect for a dynasty, for a man, for a name longer than for a walled enclosure. We therefore see that the Tyrrhenians had implanted in Italy something of the vices inherent in the republican governments of the Semitic world.

Nevertheless, as they did not have the influence to completely model the minds of their populations on this dangerous type, they could not destroy a Finnish aptitude that I have already had the opportunity to note: the Etruscans professed for the person from chiefs and magistrates a completely unlimited respect (1)[20] .

Neither among the Arians nor among the Semites was anything similar ever encountered. In earlier Asia, power was excessively venerated and idolized, so to speak; we stand ready to bear all its whims as legitimate calamities. Whether the master is called king or country, we adore him to the point of madness. It is because we fear the possibility of constraint, and we prostrate ourselves before the abstract principle of absolute sovereignty. About the

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no one vested with the power and prerogatives of principle, we make no allowance for it. It is a notion common to servile nations and demagogies to consider the magistrate as a simple depositary of authority who, from the day when, by regular cessation or by violent dispossession, he is thrown from his office, does not is no more respectable than the lowest of men, and has no more rights to deference. From this feeling is born the oriental proverb which grants everything to the living sultan, nothing to the dead sultan, and again this axiom, dear to modern revolutionaries, by virtue of which we claim to honor the magistrate by covering the man with loud insults and declared outrages. .

The Etruscan notion, quite different, would have severely repressed in Aristophanes attacks against Cleon, head of state, or against Lamachus, general of the army. She judged the very person of the representative of the law to be so sacred that the august character of public functions could not be separated from it, could not be distracted from it. I insist on this point, because this veneration was the source of the virtue that was later rightly admired among the Romans.

In this system, it is admitted that power is, in itself, so salutary and so venerable, that it imposes a somewhat indelible character on the one who exercises it or has exercised it. We do not believe that the agent of sovereign power will ever again become the equal of the vulgar. Because he participated in the government of peoples, he remains forever above 1082

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two. To recognize such a principle is to place the State in a sphere of eternal admiration, to give an incomparable reward to the services rendered to it, and to offer its example to the noblest emulation. Thus we never accept that it is permissible to open, even respectfully, the judge's robe, to rub mud into the heart of the person who wears it, and we place an insurmountable barrier against the outbursts of this so-called freedom. , eager to dishonor those who command, in order to arrive with a more certain step in dishonoring the commandment itself.

The Etruscan nation, rich in its agriculture and its industry, enlarged by its conquests, seated on two seas, commercial, maritime (1)[21] , receiving, through Tarquinii and through the southern borders, all the intellectual advantages that its ethnic constitution allowed him to borrow from the race of the Hellenes, exploiting the wealth that his useful works and his territorial power earned him, for the benefit of the arts of pleasure, although, in a completely imitation measure (1) delivered to a great luxury, with a lively sensual drive towards [22] ,

pleasures of all kinds, the Etruscan nation did honor to Italy, and

seemed to have to fear for the perpetuity of its power only the essential defect of a federative constitution and the pressure from the great masses of Celtic peoples, whose energy could one day, in the north, deal terrible blows.

If this last danger had existed alone, it is probable that it would have been fought with advantage, and that after a few attempts at invasion vigorously foiled, the Celts of Gaul 1083

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would have been forced to submit to the ascendancy of a more intelligent people. The Etruscan variety certainly formed, taken as a whole, a nation superior to the Kymris, since the yellow element was ennobled there by the presence of alloys, if not always better in fact, at least more advanced in culture. The Celts would therefore have had no other instrument than their numbers. The Etruscans, already on the way to conquering the entire Peninsula, had enough forces to resist, and would have easily rebuffed the attackers in the Alps. We would then have seen accomplished, and much earlier, what the Romans did next. All the Italian nations, enlisted under the Etruscan eagles, would have crossed, a few centuries before Caesar, the limit of the mountains, and a result moreover similar to that which took place, since the ethnic elements would have been the same, would only have advanced the time of the conquest and colonization of Gaul. But this glory was not reserved for a people who had to let escape from their own bosom a fertile germ whose energy soon brought death to them.

The Etruscans, full of the feeling of their strength, wanted to continue their progress. Seeing to the south the brilliant centers of light that Greek colonization had lit in so many magnificent cities, it was there that the Tyrrhenian confederations especially sought to expand. They found the advantage of being in a more direct relationship than by sea.

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with the most related civilization. The lucumons had already carried the efforts of their weapons towards Campania. They had penetrated quite far to the east. To the west, they stopped at the Tiber. From now on they wanted to cross this river, if only to get closer to the strait, where Cumae attracted them just as much as Vulturnum.

It was not an easy undertaking. The left bank was bordered by the territory of the Latins, people of the Sabine confederation. These men had proven that they were capable of too vigorous a resistance to be dispossessed by open force. We preferred, before engaging in hopeless hostilities, to use these semi-peaceful means, familiar to all civilized people eager for the good of others (1)[23] .

Two Latin adventurers, bastards, it was said, of the daughter of a tribal chief, were the instruments with which Rasenian politics were armed. Romulus and Remus, those were their names, accosted by Etruscan advisors and a troop of settlers from the same nation, established themselves in three obscure towns, already existing on the left bank of the Tiber (2)[24] , no not by the sea, we did not want to make a port; not on the upper course of the river, we did not think of creating a place of commerce which would later unite the interests of the two northern and southern parts of central Italy, but indifferently on the point which we could seize, given that the result, for the promoters of this foundation, was only to pass the river to their establishments. They leave

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then left it to circumstances to develop this first advantage (1)[25] .

As it was necessary to enlarge three hamlets destined to become a town, the two founders called people from all sides without confession. These, too happy to create homes for themselves, and, for the most part, wandering Sabines or Siculians, formed the bulk of the new citizens. But it would not have been in accordance with the views of the directors of the company to allow foreign races to seize the bridgehead they were throwing into Latium. This agglomeration of wanderers was therefore given a truly Etruscan nobility. We recognize its presence by the significant names of Ramnes, Luceres, Tities (2)[26] . The local government bore the same imprint (3)[27] .

It was

severely aristocratic, and the religious, or, better to say, pontifical, element was strictly united with the military command, as required by the Semitic notions of the Tyrrhenians, so different on this point from Gallic ideas. Finally, the judicial power, confused with the other two, was also handed over to the hands of the patriciate, so that, following the plan of the organizers, it remained at the disposal of the kings, except the scraps of despotism, gleaned in the moments of crisis, than administrative action (1)[28] .

If the government was thus established entirely Etruscan, the external form of civilization, and even the appearance of the new city, A fashionable

was no less so (2)[29] .

stone citadel was built under the name of the Capitol 1086

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Tyrrhenian, sewers and monuments of public utility were built, such as the Latin populations did not know (3)[30] . For the imported gods, temples were erected decorated with vases and terracotta statues made in Fregellæ (4)[31] . Magistrates were created which bore the same insignia as those of Tarquinii, Falerii, and Volterra. The emerging city was lent weapons, eagles, military titles (5)[32] , it was finally given worship (6)[33] , and, in a word, Rome only distinguished itself from purely Rasenian establishments. by this intimate fact, very important moreover, that the bulk of its population, differently composed, had much more vigor and turbulence (1)[34] .

The plebeians there in no way resembled the peaceful and soft mass formerly subjected by the Tyrrhenians, without which the colonizers, happier, would have obtained from their clever combinations the results they promised. There was one element too many in this plebeian population, which had been mixed so much, perhaps with the intention of making it weak through lack of homogeneity. If this calculation governed, in fact, the method of recruitment adopted for it, we can say that the precautions of Etruscan policy went completely against their hope of securing easier domination. This was precisely what instilled in the young establishment the first instincts of emancipation, the first seeds and motives of future greatness, and this by a path so particular, so bizarre, that an analogous fact has not presented itself twice. in history.

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In the midst of the competition of people without confession, from all tribes, called to become the inhabitants of the city, we had Siculians. This mixed race and wandering nation had representatives everywhere. Several of the towns of Etruria had a majority among their plebs; entire parts of Latium were covered with them; the Sabine country contained multitudes of them. These people were, in a way, the common thread which brought the Hellenic element, more or less Semitic, into the new foundation. It was they who, by mixing their idiom with Sabine, created Latin proper, began to give it a strong Greek tincture, and thus posed the most vigorous obstacle to the Etruscan language ever crossing the Tiber (1) [ 35] . The new dialect, posing like a dam in front of the invading idiom, was always considered by Roman grammarians as a type of which Osque and Sabin, altered from their original value, had become varieties, but which stood in a disdainful distancing from the language of the Lucumons, treated as a barbaric idiom. Thus the Siculians, as plebeian inhabitants of Rome, were above all the adversaries of the genius of the founders, as the importation of their language must have been the greatest obstacle to the adoption of rasene.

It is undoubtedly unnecessary to point out that what is at stake here is only an organic, instinctive antagonism between the Siculians and the Etruscans, and in no way an open and material struggle. Certainly the latter would not have had any chance of success. This was Etruria itself 1088

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even who, despite herself, took it upon herself to throw the nascent Rome into the path of political agitation. The small colony was, from its first day, the object of the open hatred of the people of Latium. Although the attraction of the various advantages it had to offer, its Etruscan construction, its organization of the same vintage and the civilization of its patrician had supported some rather miserable peoples, the Crustumini, the Antemnati, the Cæninenses (2)[ 36 ] , and, a little later, the Albanians, blending in with its inhabitants, the true owners of Sabine soil viewed it with very bad eyes. They reproached its founders for being worthless people, for representing no nationality, and for having no other right to the homeland they had made for themselves than theft and usurpation. Thus severely judged, Rome was kept outside the confederation of which Amiternum was the main city, and exposed on the left bank of the Tiber, where it saw itself isolated, to attacks which very probably it would not have had the strength to repel. , if she had found herself without support.

In the interest of its salvation, it attached itself with all its strength to the Etruscan confederation of which it was an emanation, and, when civil discord had broken out within this political body, Rome could not think of remaining neutral: it had to take sides to keep active friends in the midst of his perils.

Etruria was at that political phase where the civilizing races of a nation show themselves to be lowered by mixing with the vanquished, and the vanquished raised somewhat. 1089

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little by these same mixtures. What contributed to hastening the arrival of this crisis was the presence of too large a number of more or less Hellenized Kymric elements, and perfectly capable of contesting the supremacy of the bastard descendants of the Tyrrhenian race. . As a result, a liberal movement developed in the Rasene cities which declared war on aristocratic institutions, and claimed to replace the prerogatives of birth with those of bravery and merit.

It is the constant character of all social decomposition to begin with the negation of supremacy by birth. Only the program of sedition varies according to the degree of civilization of the insurgent races. Among the Greeks, it was the rich who replaced the nobles; among the Etruscans, they were the brave, that is to say the boldest. The Raseno-Tyrrhenian half-breeds, mixed with the plebs, Umber subjects, Sabines, Samnites, Siculians, declared themselves candidates for sharing sovereign authority. The revolutionary doctrines obtained their most numerous supporters in the towns of the interior where the formerly vanquished abounded. Volsinii seems to have been the main rallying point for the innovators (1)[37] , while the center of aristocratic resistance was established at Tarquinii, where the Tyrrhenian blood had retained some strength while maintaining more homogeneity. The country was divided between the two parties. It is even likely that each city had both a majority and a minority serving both. What occupied the entire nomen etruscum had its impact

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natural in the trans-Tiberine colony, and Rome, obeying the reasons that I deduced above, took up the cause in the movement. We can already guess what kind of ideas she was going to support. The character of its population responded in advance to its liberal sympathies. Its Etruscan senate, already mixed with Sabines, was not in a position to contain general opinion in the camp of Tarquinii (1)[38] . The ambitious and ardent spirit of the Siculians, the Quirites and the Albans spoke too loudly there. The majority therefore decided for the innovators, and King Servius Tullius tried to bring about the revolution by moving Rome towards the regime of anti-aristocratic doctrines. The Servian constitution satisfied the popular element, by calling for a political role everyone who could bear arms (2)[39] . It is true that the member of the exercitus urbanus was asked for certain conditions of fortune, but not such as would constitute a timocracy in the Greek manner. It was rather a census of the type which, in the Middle Ages, was required of the bourgeois of several communes. The goal was not, in this last example, to create in the citizen guarantees of power or influence, but only of political morality. Among the plebeians of Roma-Quirium, it was even less: they only wanted to obtain warriors who were able to arm themselves properly and be self-sufficient during a campaign.

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This organization, supported by general sympathies, could however only sit alongside the Tyrrhenian institutions; she did not succeed in overthrowing them. There was still too much force in the way the military and priestly element was combined with legal power. The attack, moreover, was not long enough to break the beam and wrest power from the noble races. This could perhaps have been achieved by resorting to sudden violence. It seems that they did not want to use this means against men whom the pontificate had a sacred character. What well-lived societies hate most is impiety, and what they avoid the longest is sacrilege.

Servius Tullius and his supporters, therefore lacking what would have been necessary to completely defeat their Etruscan nobility, were content to place the new military code alongside the old, leaving the progress of their cause in the other Rasenian cities to take care of. provide the opportunity to go further. These hopes were disappointed. Soon the liberal opposition in Etruria, defeated by the aristocratic party, found itself reduced to submission. Volsinii was taken, and one of the most eminent leaders of the revolt, Coelius, found no other resource than to flee, to seek somewhere asylum for his most ardent supporters and for himself.

What could this asylum be, if not the Etruscan city which, after Volsinii, had shown the most devotion to the revolution, and very probably due to its territorial position 1092

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eccentric, to its isolation beyond the Tiber, to push its doctrines the furthest and to apply its ideas most openly? Rome thus saw Mastarna, Cœlius, and their people rushing; and the tuscus vicus, becoming the residence of these banished people (1)[40] , further enlarges the enclosure of a city which, from the point of view of its aristocratic founders, as well as that of the liberal reformers, was a kind of camp open to all those who were looking for a homeland, and were willing to take it within the negation of all nationalities.

But the arrival of Mastarna, no less than the reform of Servius Tullius (1)[41] , could not be facts indifferent to the victorious reaction. The Lucumons were not prepared to allow a city founded to open south-west Italy to them to become a sort of military place in the hands of their internal enemies. The nobles of Tarquinii took it upon themselves to quell the spirit of sedition in its last asylum. Coryphees of the party which had created national civilization and glory, they had remained its purest ethnic representatives and its most vigorous agents. They owed it to their more constant relations with Greece and Asia Minor to surpass the other Etruscans in wealth and culture. It was up to them to complete the pacification by destroying the work of the levelers in the Trans-Tiberine colony.

They succeeded. The constitution of Servius Tullius was overturned, the old regime reestablished. The Sabine part of the senate and the mixed population forming the plebs returned to 1093

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their passive state (2)[42] , a role in which Etruscan thought had always wanted to contain them, and the Tarquinians proclaimed themselves the supreme arbiters and regulators of the restored government. This was how liberalism saw its last asylum closed (3) [43] . We do not really know the history of the subsequent struggles of this party in the rest of the Rasene territory. It is, however, certain that he raised his head after a period of despondency. The ethnic causes which had given rise to it could only become more demanding as the subject races gained importance through the gradual extinction of Tyrrhenian blood. However, the Rasene race of the national fund being of mediocre value, it would have taken a long time for the egalitarian result to take place, even with the help of the vanquished, Umbres, Samnites and others. So that aristocratic resistance was likely to continue indefinitely in ancient cities (1)[44] .

But precisely the opposite of this situation was encountered in Rome. Besides the fact that the Etruscan nobles, natives of the city, even supported by the Tarquinians, were only a minority, they had against them a population which was worth infinitely more than the Rasenian plebs. The compression could only be maintained with difficulty. The ideas of revolution continued to take on an irresistible development based on the ideas of independence, and, one day or another, Rome would inevitably throw off the yoke. If, by a twist of fate, Populonia, Pisa or any other Etruscan city, possessing to the depths of its bowels

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only Tyrrhenian blood, but above all Rasenian blood, had succeeded in its campaign against aristocratic ideas, the use that the victorious city would have made of its triumph would have been limited to changing its internal political constitution, and, moreover, it would have been remained faithful to her race by not separating herself from the collective part, by continuing to hold to the nomen etruscum. Rome had no reason to stop at this point. Precisely the reasons which pushed her so strongly into the liberal party, which had made her apply its theories, which had designated her to serve, in some way, as a second capital of the revolution, these reasons, by their energy, took it well beyond a simple political reform. If she did not enjoy the domination of the lars and the lucumons, it was, above all, because they, with the best rights to call themselves her founders, her educators, her masters, her benefactors (1) [45 ] , did not have the ability to add that they were his fellow citizens. In the weakness of her first days, she had found great benefit, a real necessity, in being protected by them; but, nevertheless, his blood had not merged with theirs, their ideas had not become his, nor their interests his interests. Basically, it was Sabine, it was Siculian, it was Hellenized, then again it was geographically separated from Etruria: it was therefore, in fact, foreign to it, and that is why the reaction of the Tarquinians could only have a shorter time of success than in other, truly Etruscan cities, and why,

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once the Tyrrhenian aristocracy had been overthrown, it was to be expected that Rome would rush into novelties far beyond what the liberals of Etruria wished. Moreover, we will soon see the emancipated city return to liberal theories, the primary source of its young independence, and reestablish aristocracy in all its fullness. Revolutions, moreover, are full of such surprises. Thus Rome, after a time of submission to the Tarquinians, succeeded in carrying out a successful uprising (2)[46] . She expelled from her walls her rulers, and, with them, that part of the senate which, although born in the city, spoke the language of the masters and boasted of being of their kinship. In this way, the Tyrrhenian element almost disappeared from its colony, and no longer exerted more than a simple moral influence. From this time, Rome ceased to be an instrument directed by Etruscan policy against the independence of other Italian nations. The city is entering a phase where it will live for itself. Its relations with its founders will henceforth benefit its greatness and its glory, and this in a way that they had certainly never suspected. 1. ÿ (1) This date is that of O. Müller. Abeken postpones the arrival of the Tyrrhenians to the year 290 before Rome. (Abeken, Mittel-Italien vor der Zeit der rœmischen Herrschaft, p. 23.) 2. ÿ (2) Etruscan paintings show these Tyrrhenians as having perfectly white type. They resemble the Celts and the Greeks, and this resemblance is all the more salient as we see mixed with them the ancient Rasenians with their stature and their faces of Finnish

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(Abeken, cited work, tabl. IX and X.) In No. 7 of tabl. VII we can see the fusion of the two types. 3. ÿ (3) This was probably the type of merit which stood out the most in them, and earned them the nickname Tyrrhenians, the root of which seems to be found in the word turs, tour, fortitication, and to derive originally from tur or tor , elevation, mountain. — We could, moreover, draw certain names from the architectural habits of the different Pelasgic populations, or, conversely, take those of the nations out of their way of housing. Oppidum, the open village, would be in intimate correlation with the habits of the Opsci, the Osques, and arx, the closed fortress, with that of the Argives. Abeken, open. cited, p. 128-135.) 4. ÿ (1) O. Muller, lc 5. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 260. 6. ÿ (3) In several places, the Tyrrhenians had built their residences apart from those of the vanquished and in such a way as to keep the ancient city in check. Thus Fidenæ and Veii had citadels placed outside their walls. (Abeken, cited work, p. 152.) 7. ÿ (4) O. Muller, t. II, p. 247. 8. ÿ (2) Tarquinii, built on a rock on the banks of the Marta, was not a maritime city; but Gravisæ, which belonged to it, served as its port. (Abeken, cited work, p. 36.) Long after the fall of Etruria as an independent nation, Tarquinii was still valuable enough to supply the Roman fleets with sailcloth during the Second Punic War. (Liv., XXVIII, 45.) 9. ÿ (2) Tarquinii, built on a rock on the banks of the Marta, was not a maritime city; but Gravisæ, which belonged to it, served as its port. (Abeken, cited work, p. 36.) Long after the fall of Etruria as an independent nation, Tarquinii was still valuable enough to supply the Roman fleets with sailcloth during the Second Punic War. (Liv., XXVIII, 45.) 10. ÿ (3) These relationships were intimate, and Livy was able to put forward the idea that the house of Tarquin had a Hellenic origin. This very king, according to the historian, had consulted, by deputies, the oracle of Delphi. — Abeken points out numerous traces of Assyrian influence in vases, wall paintings and tomb ornaments at a time when this influence could only be exerted through the Hellenes. (Abeken, cited work, p. 274.) — I am not talking about the numerous Egyptian productions that we encounter in the Etruscan hypogeums; they all belong to the Roman period with the monuments which contain them. (Ibidem, p. 268. — Dennis, die Stædte und Begræbnisse Etruriens, t. I, p. XLII.)

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11. ÿ (1) The Etruscan Annals, from which the Roman Verrius Flaccus had drawn the elements of his Libri rerum memoria dignarum, affirmed that the hero Tarchon had founded Tarquinii, then the twelve Etruscan cities of the flat country, and furthermore, the whole nomen etruscum. Tarquinii was therefore the historic and illustrious city par excellence, in the eyes of the Tyrrhenian family. (Abeken, cited work, p. 20.) 12. ÿ (2) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 116. 13. ÿ (3) Or 358. — We already know, to ward off any astonishment on this side, how abundant and prolific the race of Celts was. (Keferstein, Views, etc., t. II, p. 323.) 14. ÿ (4) They founded Adria and Spezia between the Po and the Etsch. (O. Muller, open. cited, p. 140.) 15. ÿ (1) O. Muller, open. cited, p. 178. — They remained the predominant power in this province for a very long time, and were only expelled from Rome in the year 332 by the Samnites. 16. ÿ (2) There are Tyrrhenian monuments in Corsica and Sardinia. We still find them on the southern coast of Spain, and the name of Tarraco, Tarragona, is very likely a clue that is all the less to be neglected since, not far from this city, rises Suessa, which recalls the Campanian towns. of Suessa, Veseia and Sinuessa. (Abeken, cited work, p. 129.) Only, I am not as convinced as this author of the Tyrrhenian origin of the Sepolcri dei giganti in Sardinia. We can claim them, without great difficulty, for the Rasenes of the first formation, or for the Iberians. — With regard to the root Tur, Turs, Tusc, it should also be noted that we find it, even today, among the Albanians. Between Durazzo and Alessio there is a town called ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ. Yet another exists in the vicinity of Kroja, in southern Albania, which itself is called ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, and its inhabitants ÿÿÿÿÿÿ. (See Hahn, Albanesische Studien, p. 232, 233. This author derives this word from the arnaute ÿÿÿÿÿ, to run, to rush, from where ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, the runner, the invader.) 17. ÿ (3) O Muller, p. 109 et al. ; p. 178. 18. ÿ (4) Ibid., p. 105. 19. ÿ (1) Royalty existed in name among the Etruscans, but it remained in fact a very weakly constituted magistracy; in Veies, it was elective. (Niebuhr, Roman History, t. I, p. 83.) 20. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 375. 21. ÿ (1) The Tyrrhenians practiced piracy on a large scale, and put quite considerable fleets to sea to fight against the Greek cities. The Massaliotes only dared, because of them, to cross the western seas with armed convoys. (Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, vol. I, p. 84.)

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Etruria had concluded treaties of navigation and commerce with Carthage which were still in full effect in the time of Aristotle, around 430 in Rome. (Ibid., p. 85.) 22. ÿ (1) See, for details of the intellectual relations of the Tyrrhenians with the Greeks, Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, t. I, p. 88. 23. ÿ (1) The Italian populations were very keen that the Etruscans did not cross the river. There had been a treaty between the Latins and the Tyrrhenians which stipulated the defense: “Pax ita convenerat ut Etruscis Latinisque fluvius Albula, quem nunc Tiberim vocant, finis esset. » (Liv. I, 12.) 24. ÿ (2) Who therefore deserved the name Tuscum Tiberim given to him by Virgil (Georg., I, 499). — Following all probability, the two twins confined themselves on the Aventine, next to a town populated by Latins, prisci Latini, which previously occupied the Janiculum. (Abeken, Mittel-Italien vor der Zeit der rœmischen Herrschaft, p. 70.) — Another Latin establishment crowned the summit of the Palatine. — Etruscans later took possession of mons Cœlius. (Ibid. — Tac., Ann., IV, 65.) 25. ÿ (1) Denys d'Halicarnasse remarque que plusieurs historiens ont appelé Rome une ville tyrrhénienne. Ces historians avaient parfaitement raison de le faire, et ils exprimaient une vérité incontestable. The Romans, even the people of the writers, the city of Tyhnida, is too great. (I, XXIX.) 26. ÿ (2) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 381 et al. — This opinion seems to me to have every advantage over that of Abeken, who sees in the Ramnes the primitive inhabitants of the Palatine, in the Luceres those of the Cœlius, in the Tities those of the Capitol. (Cited work, p. 136.) The two opinions can, moreover, be reconciled, if we admit that the three names, also Etruscan, were given not to the bulk of the three populations, but only to their nobles. , which would be a conception perfectly consistent with Italian and Tyrrhenian ideas. (O. Muller, cited work, p. 381 ff.) 27. ÿ (3) Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, t. I, p. 181. 28. ÿ (1) Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, t. I, p. 206. — It was not essential that the kings were born in the city. We took them as we found them, or better, as they were imposed from outside. (Ibidem., p. 213 and 220.) 29. ÿ (2) Liv., I: “Me haud pœnitet eorum, sentiæ quibus et apparitores et hoc genus ab Etruscis finitimis unde sella curilis unde toga prætexta sumpta est, numerum quoque ipsum ductum est: and ita habuisse Etruscos

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quod, ex duodecim populis communiter creato rege, singulos singuli populi lectores dederint. » 30. ÿ (3) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 120. 31. ÿ (4) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 247. — See, on the statue of Turanius of Fregellæ which represented a Jupiter, what Bœttiger says, Ideen zur Kunstmythologie (t. II, p. 193.) 32. ÿ (5) The triumphal tunic, the baton of command of the dictator, in ivory, surmounted by an eagle, equestrian games, etc., etc. (O. Muller, cited work, p. 121.) — Until the expulsion of the kings, the military system, in Rome and in Etruria, was absolutely the same in detail as in general. (Ibidem, p. 391.) 33. ÿ (6) Livy declares that only one non-Etruscan divinity was admitted, it was that of the city of Alba to which the two nominal masters of the city had probably preserved their native devotion: “Sacra diis aliis, albano ritu, græco Herculi, ut ab Evandro instituta erant, facit. Hæc tum sacra Romulus una ex omnibus peregrina suscepit. » (Liv. I.) — However, this assertion by the historian of Padua seems to me not to be taken literally. It applies, no doubt, to official worship only; for it is very probable that the people of such diverse races who populated Rome had preserved, within their houses, their national divinities. Thus was prepared the vast confusion of cults which was to take place within imperial Rome. 34. ÿ (1) Virg., Georg., II, 167: Hæc genus acre virum Marsos, pubesque Sabellam, Adsuetumque malo Ligurem, Volscosque verutos Extulit.

35. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 66. — It is, in fact, very remarkable that Etruscan, which always remained for the Romans, and even in the time of the emperors, a kind of sacred language, was never able to spread among them. However, until around the time of Julius, the patricians learned about it and valued it as an instrument of civilization. Later she was abandoned to the omens. At no time could she have become popular. 36. ÿ (2) Liv., I, 28. — The Sabines of Tatius, fathers of the kidnapped women, of the Sabinæ mulieres, were not incorporated into the new State until after the three tribes that I have just named. 37. ÿ (1) According to Abeken, the mainly liberal cities would have been Arretium, Volaterræ, Rusellæ and Clusium; and thus would be explained, for the last of these States, the promptness with which its leader, the larth Porsenna, hastened to conclude peace with the Romans insurgent against the Tarquinians, after having allowed himself to be moved to begin it by

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a patriotic interest opposed to his party interests. (Cited work, p. 24.) — I will note, in passing, that the name Volaterræ is Latin; the Etruscans called this town Felathri, which is much closer to modern Velletri . This is one more argument in favor of studying the ancient languages of Italy using current local dialects. 38. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 316. 39. ÿ (2) Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, t. I, p. 252 et al. 40. ÿ (1) O. Muller, p. 116 et al. 41. ÿ (1) The Latin origin of Servius, the usurpation by which he succeeded to the Etruscan dynasty, the way in which he flattered popular interests made him very suitable to rally and protect all ideas hostile to Tyrrhenian supremacy . (Dionys. Halic., 4, I-XL.) 42. ÿ (2) Dionys. Halic., Antiq. Rom., XLII, XLIII. — The senate was renewed, and the fathers appointed by Tullius were expelled. The plebeians returned to their condition of primitive nullity. 43. ÿ (3) At this time, the party which conducted affairs in Tarquinii found itself very strong throughout the nomen etruscum. It held, on one side, its capital and Rome, then Veii, Cæræ, Gabii, Tusculum, Antium, and, to the south, relied on the sympathies of Cumae, a Hellenic colony which could not see without pleasure such efforts. supported to maintain Semitized civilization on the Peninsula. (Abeken, cited work, p. 24.) 44. ÿ (1) This is what was in fact, and, even at the time of Hannibal's war, the government of most of the Etruscan cities had remained intact in the hands of the nobility, although not without resistance. (Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, vol. I, p. 81.) Volsinii, the democratic city par excellence, succeeded in maintaining a revolutionary administration in the hands of the plebs, from the Pyrrhus campaign until the first Punic war. (Cited work, vol. I, p. 82.) 45. ÿ (1) In the war of Romulus against the Sabines of Quirium, the Roman king had been openly supported by an Etruscan army under the command of a lucumon of Solonium; the latter had shared authority with him. (Dionys. Halic., Antiq. Rom., 2, XXXVII) 46. ÿ (2) The domination of the Tarquinians had been, materially speaking, one could not have been happier for Rome. These nobles, full of genius, had greatly embellished it. They had imported construction in quadrangular stones without cement. (Abeken, cited work, p. 141.) They had extended its fortifications by enlarging its enclosure. (O. Muller, cited work, p. 120.) They had brought in skilled craftsmen from all the towns of Etruria: “Fabris undique ex Etruria accitis. » (Liv., I.) They had placed Rome at the head of the Latin confederation, destroyed in fact by the fall of Alba Longa. (Abeken, cited work, p. 52.) They

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increased this confederation by uniting forty-seven new cities, both on this side and on the other side of the Tiber. (Ibidem.) Finally, cities such as Circeii and Signia had been founded, or at least enlarged by them. Rome therefore made a very bad deal from the first moment when its separation from Tarquinii was consummated. The entire work of Tyrrhenian skill collapsed, moreover, at the same time. The confederation was dissolved and the aristocratic party very weakened throughout the extent of Etruscan domination. (O. Muller, cited work, p. 124.)

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CHAPTER VI. Roman Italian

I have already indicated that, if the Etruscan aristocracy had retained its preponderance in the Peninsula, nothing would have happened other than what happened in the world under the name of Rome. Tarquinii would have absorbed in the long run the independence of the other federated cities, and, its elements of pressure on the neighboring peoples, as on those of Spain, Gaul, Asia and the north of Africa, being the same as those available to Rome later, the final result would have remained the same. Only civilization would have benefited from developing earlier.

We must not hide it: the first effect of the expulsion of the Tarquinians was to considerably lower the social level in the thankless city (1)[1] .

Who possessed science in all forms, political, judicial, military, religious, augural? The Etruscan nobles, and almost no one with them. It was they who had directed these great constructions of royal Rome, several of which still survive, and which far exceeded anything that could be seen in the rustic capitals of other Italian nations. It was they who had raised the admired temples of the first age, they again who had

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provided the essential ritual for the worship of the gods. There was so much agreement that, without them, Republican Rome could neither build, nor judge, nor pray. For this last and important function of domestic as well as social life, their assistance always remained so necessary that, even under the emperors, when for a long time there had been no Etruria, when for centuries the Romans, absorbed by the Greek ideas, no longer even learned the language, venerable organ of the ancient civilization, it was still necessary, for many uses of the sanctuary, to entrust oneself to priests whom Tuscany alone instructed (2)[2 ] . But, at the last moment, it was only a question of rites; under Republican Rome, it was everything. By expelling the founders of the State, the most essential elements of public life were torn away, and we had no other resource, after having sufficiently congratulated ourselves on the freedom acquired, than to put up with poverty. and to praise it under the name of austere virtue. Instead of the rich fabrics in which the lords of royal Rome had dressed themselves, the patricians of republican Rome wrapped themselves in coarse robes. Instead of beautiful pottery, metal dishes, piled up on the tables, and full of sumptuous food, they only had a crude tableware, poorly made by themselves, on which they offered their chickpeas. and bacon. Instead of well-decorated houses (1)[3] , they had to make do with wild farms, where, among the pigs and chickens, lived the consuls and senators who judiciously praised themselves for such a life,

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unable to exchange it for a better one. In short, to make it clear, in a single line, how much Republican Rome was below its predecessor, let us remember that, when, after the invasion of the Gauls, the burned city was reestablished by Camillus, we had so well forgotten the necessities of a large capital, that houses are rebuilt at random, and without taking any account of the direction of the sewers built by the founders. We no longer even knew the existence of the cloaca maxima (2)[4] . This is because, thanks to these fierce morals, so admired since, the Romans of that time were far below their fathers, and just as much as their town was of the regular city once founded by the Etruscan nobility.

However, here is the civilization that left with the baggage of the Tarquinians. Did we at least have freedom, I mean this freedom of which the dreams of the middle classes of Etruria had believed to lay the germ in the system of Servius Tullius? I gave a glimpse that this was not the case, and, in fact, this could not be the case.

Once the Tyrrhenians were expelled, the population found itself composed in large majority of Sabines, rough, austere, warlike people, who, very likely to develop in the material sense, very capable of resistance against aggression, very capable of imposing their notions by force, were not prepared to cede their rights of supremacy at once to the more spiritual, but less vigorous, Siculians, to the Rasenians descended from the soldiers of Mastarna, in short, to the chaos of so many races which had

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representatives in the streets of Rome (1)[5] .

So that

after getting rid of the Etruscan part of the nation, the liberals found themselves having the Sabine part on their hands, and this was strong enough to attract all the power to itself.

According to the minds of the whites, the love and cult of the family were very strong among the Sabines, and, despite being poorly dressed, poorly fed and quite ignorant, the nobles of this descent were no less aristocratically inspired than the lucumons the most proud. The Valerians, the Fabians, the Claudians, all of Sabine race, did not allow anyone other than their equals to share with them the care of the government, and the only satisfaction they left to the plebeians was to abolish this royalty which they themselves would have hardly suffered. Moreover, they did their best to imitate the dispossessed masters by concentrating all social prerogatives under their jealous hands (2)[6] .

However, they were not in this position of complete superiority in which the Tyrrhenians, Semitized Pelasgians, had found themselves vis-à-vis the Rasenes, so that the plebeians did not very explicitly recognize the legitimacy of their power, and did not supported the yoke only by murmuring. The embarrassment did not end there: they themselves, however illustrious and powerful they were, kept a secret memory of the splendors of royalty which made them wish for supreme power, and fear that competitors would seize it before them. , so that the

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republic began its career with all the following difficulties:

A very degraded civilization; An aristocracy that wanted to govern alone; A people, tormented by it, who refused to do so (1)[7] ; Imminent usurpation by any nobleman; Revolt no less imminent among the plebs; Perpetual accusations against all who rose above the vulgar level by talent or service; Incessant tricks among the people below to overthrow those above without using force opened.

Such a situation was worthless. Roman society, placed in such conditions, only subsisted with the help of a permanent compression of everyone; hence a despotism which spared no one, and this anomaly that, in a State which based its dearest principle on the absence of the government of a single person, which proclaimed its jealous love for a legality emanating from the general will, and which declared all patricians equal, the ordinary regime was the authority of a dictator, without limits, without control, without remission, and borrowing from its supposedly transitory character a degree of haughty violence unknown to the administration of any monarch confessed. In the midst of the terrible eruption of political fury, we are nevertheless surprised to see this Rome, thus made 1107

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that it seemed an offering to discord, not representing what was observed among the Greeks. If the passion for power torments all heads, it is a passion which tends among the ambitious, patricians or plebeians, to seize the law to give it a regulatory form consistent with this or that notion of the useful; but we do not have the disgusting spectacle, so constantly displayed in the public squares of Athens, of a people rushing madly into the horrors of anarchy with a sort of awareness of this abominable tendency. These Romans are honest, they are men; they often misunderstand good and turn left, but at least it is obvious that they then believe they are walking right. They lack neither disinterestedness nor Let's examine loyalty (1)[8] . the question in detail. Patricians assume a native right to govern the state exclusively. They are wrong. The Etruscans could claim this prerogative; the Sabins, no, because there is no clearly proven ethnic superiority on their side over the other Italiots who surround them and who have become their nationals. At most, the Fabians, the great families, possess a higher degree of purity than the plebs. By granting it, we cannot yet assume this merit is sufficiently clear-cut to confer the power of the civilizer over the vanquished and dominated people (2)[9] . not, in There were Republican Rome, two races placed in unequal relationships, but only a group more numerous than the 1108

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others. This kind of hierarchy was likely to disappear quite quickly. The defeat of the Roman patriciate was therefore not an abnormal revolution violating ethnic laws, but an unfortunate and inopportune event, as the fall of an aristocracy constantly is. The struggle of the Greek parties constantly revolved around extreme theories. The rich of Athens tended only to govern themselves, to absorb the advantages of authority; the people of Athens only aimed at the squandering of public coffers by the hands of democratic scum. As for impartial people, they imagined doctrines that were entirely literary, all imaginative, and wanted to solidify dreams to correct facts. In all parties, from all points of view, all they wanted was a clean slate, and tradition and history counted for nothing on a land where the feeling of respect was absolutely unknown.

We have no right to be surprised. With the ethnic ginning which formed the basis of Athenian society, with this complete dissolution of the race which brought together, without ever having been able to fuse them, the most diverse elements, with this predominance, above all, of the spiritual element, but insane, of the Semites, that was indeed what had to happen. Only one thing floated amid the anarchy of political notions, the absolutism of power embodied in the word homeland . But in Rome it was very different, and the parties necessarily had other appearances. The races were 1109

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especially utilitarian. They possessed a practical sense foreign to the Greek imagination, and all understood, through the passions engaged in the defense of what was supposed to be the true good of the State, an equal horror for anarchy. It is this feeling which very often threw them back into the extreme resource of dictatorship; because natively, it must be recognized, they were sincere, and much more so than the Greeks, when they protested their hatred for tyranny. Mixtures of white and yellow, they had a taste for freedom, and, despite the almost permanent sacrifices of this kind that the necessities of social salvation imposed on them, we can still find the mark of their native spirit of independence in the role that the feeling also called by them love of the fatherland played in the midst of their political virtues.

This passion, as strong as among the Hellenic nations, did not have the same brittle despotism. The delegation that the country made to the law of its powers gave to the Roman cult of this divinity something much more regular, much more serious, and, in short, more moderate. The homeland undoubtedly reigned, but did not govern, and no one dreamed, as among the Greeks, of justifying the caprices of the factions, their enormities and their exactions by covering them with this single word: the will of the homeland (1) [ 10] . The law, for the Greeks, made and undone every day, and constantly in the name of the higher power, the law had neither prestige, nor authority, nor force. On the contrary, in Rome, the law was, so to speak, never repealed; She 1110

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was always alive, always active, we met her everywhere, she alone gave orders, and, in fact, the homeland remained in its state of abstraction, and did not have the right, although very honored, to be infatuated all the time. mornings of some bad new revolutionary, as happened all too often on the Pnyx. There is nothing better, to understand what the omnipotence of the law was in Roman society, than to see the power of augural conventions being perpetuated until the end of the republic. When we read that in the time of Cicero, the announcement of a meteorological prodigy was still enough to break up the comitia and adjourn the session, while politicians made fun not only of prodigies, but of the gods themselves, we find there certainly an irrefutable indication of great respect for the law, even considered absurd (1)[11] . The Romans were thus the first people in the West who knew how to turn to the benefit of their stability, at the same time as their freedom, these kinds of defects in legislation which are either organic or produced by changes occurring in morals. They noted that there were two necessary elements in political constitutions, real action and comedy, a truth so well recognized and since exploited by the English. They knew how to overcome the disadvantages of their system by their patience in searching and their skill in discovering the means of paralyzing the vices of legislation, without ever touching this great principle of boundless veneration which they had made their 1111

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palladium, an obvious mark of sound reason and great depth of judgment. Finally, nothing of all the examples that could be accumulated would make the differences between Greek and Roman freedom clearer than this simple word: the Romans were positive and practical men, the Greeks artists; the Romans came from a male race, the Greeks had become feminized; and this is why the Italian Romans were able to lead their successors, their heirs to the threshold of the empire of the world with all the means to complete the conquest, while the Greeks, from a political point of view, had only the glory of having pushed governmental decomposition as far as it can go before encountering barbarism or foreign servitude.

I return to the examination of the state of the people of Rome, after the expulsion of the Etruscans, and the study of its destinies. The Sabines were, we recognized, the most numerous and most influential portion of this chance nationality. The aristocracy came from them, and it was they who directed the first wars. They did not spare themselves; this justice is due to them (1)[12] . As a Kymric branch, they were naturally bold. They were easily carried to military enterprises. They were very suitable to preside over the perilous work of a republic which saw little around its territory other than hatred or, at the very least, malevolence.

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animadversion of the Latin tribes. They found in this collection of warriors only renegades from all the nationalities of the Peninsula, people without faith or law, bandits who had to be exterminated, and all the more detestable because they were close relatives. All these peoples, thus animated, were under arms against Rome, or rea put.

Formerly, in the time of kings, the Etruscan confederation had constantly taken up the cause of its colony; but, since the expulsion of the Tarquinians, friendship had given way to completely different feelings (1)[13] . Thus, having no more allies on the right bank of the Tiber than on the left bank, Rome, despite its courage, would have succumbed, if the most fortunate diversion had not been made in its favor by powerful masses who , certainly, did not think of her; and here comes one of those great periods of history which religious interpreters of the human annals, such as Bossuet, are accustomed to consider with holy respect as the admirable result of the long and mysterious combinations of Providence. The Galls from beyond the Alps, making an aggressive movement outside their territory, suddenly flooded northern Italy, enslaved the country of the Shadows, and came to present battle to the Etruscans (2)[14 ] . The diminished resources of the Rasenian confederation were barely enough to resist such numerous antagonists, and Rome, without its main adversary, took as many 1113

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leisure time that he needed to respond to his enemies on the left bank.

She succeeded: she lowered them. Then, when on this side her arms had assured her, not only rest, but domination, she took advantage of the inextricable difficulties into which the efforts of the Galls plunged her former masters, and, taking them from behind, won triumphs over them. which, without this circumstance, would probably have been better disputed and very uncertain.

While the Etruscans, overthrown in the north by the aggressors emerging from Gaul, fled in frightened bands to the depths of Campania (1)[15] , the Roman army, with all its order and its paraphernalia formerly imitated from his victims today, crossed the river and did his hand on what suited him. She was not the ally of the Gauls, fortunately, because, not having to share the spoils, she kept all of it; but she combined her enterprises from afar with theirs, and, to better secure her blows, only struck them at the same time. She found yet another profit there.

The Tyrrhenian Rasenians, attacked from all sides, defended their independence as long as possible. But when the last hope of remaining free had disappeared for them, they had to reasonably think to which winner it would be better to surrender. The Gauls, we cannot emphasize this little-known truth enough, had not acted like barbarians, because they were not. After abandoning themselves, in the first heat of the invasion, to

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sacking Umbrian cities, they in turn founded cities, such as Milan, Mantua and others (2)[16] . They had adopted the dialect of the vanquished and, probably, their way of life. However, in short, they were foreigners to the country, greedy, arrogant, brutal. The Etruscans undoubtedly hoped for a less harsh fate under the domination of the people who owed them their lives. We therefore saw cities opening their citadels to consuls, and declaring themselves subjects, It was the sometimes allies, of the Roman people (3)[17] . best course to take. The Senate, in its serious and cold policy, had for a long time the wisdom to spare the pride of the subject nations. Once Etruria was annexed to the possessions of the republic, as the nations closest to Rome had, during this time, suffered the same fate one after the other, the strongest, the most difficult of the Roman theme was found, and, when the Gallic invasion had been driven far from the walls of the Capitol, the conquest of the entire Peninsula was only a question of time for Camille's successors. In truth, if there had then existed in the West an energetic nation, descended from the Ariane race, the destinies of the world would have been different: we would soon have seen the wings the eagle falling broken; but the map of contemporary States only shows us three categories of people in a position to struggle with the republic. 1° The Celts — Brennus had found his master, and his bands, after having subdued the half-breed Kymris of Umbria and 1115

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the Rasenians of middle Italy had to stop there. The Celts were divided into too many nations, and these nations were each too small, for them to be able to recommence considerable expeditions. The migration of Bellovèse and Sigovèse was the last until that of the Helvetians in the time of Caesar. 2° The Greeks - As an Ariane nationality, they had no longer existed for a long time, and the brilliant armies of Pyrrhus would not have been able to make a breakthrough in the middle of the formidable Kymric bands defeated by the Romans. What can you claim against the Italians? 3° The Carthaginians — This Semitic people, based on the black element, could not, in any supposition, prevail against an average quantity of Kymric blood. The preponderance was therefore assured to the Romans. They could only have lost it if their territory, instead of being located in the West of the world, had made them neighbors of the Brahmanical civilization of the time, or, again, if they had already had on their hands the Germanic populations who did not come until the 5th century. While Rome thus marched towards immense glory by relying on the respected force of its constitutions, the most serious crises took place within its walls, I will not say without material violence, because there was some. a lot, but without destruction of the laws. The triumphant riot only ever modified, and never overthrew the legal edifice from top to bottom, so that this patricianism so odious to the plebs, from the day after 1116

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the expulsion of the Etruscans continued until the emperors, constantly hated, constantly attacked, weakened by perpetual attacks, but not assassinated: the law did not tolerate it (1)[18] .

These struggles, these quarrels had as their true causes the ethnic modifications constantly undergone by the urban population, and as a moderator the more or less distant kinship of all the tributaries; in other words, the institutions were modified because the race varied, but they did not transform completely, they did not pass from one extreme to the other, because these variations of race, being still only relative , revolved approximately in the same circle. This is not to say that the perpetual oscillations thus maintained in the State were not felt or understood. The patriciate was perfectly aware of the harm that the incessant additions of foreigners were causing to its influence, and it took as a fundamental maxim to oppose it as much as possible, while the people, on the contrary, were equally enlightened on what they gained in number, in wealth, in knowledge, by holding the gates of the city wide open before newcomers who, rejected by the nobility, had nothing to do but join them, the people, the plebs , showed himself to be a declared supporter of people from outside (2)[19] .

She always aspired to attract them, and thus made eternal the principle which had once fortified the nascent city, and which consisted of inviting to the feast of its greatness all the wanderers of the known world (1) [20 ] .

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could fail to become the source of all social illnesses (2)[21] .

This immoderate thirst for aggrandizement would have seemed monstrous in the Greek cities, because it resulted in terrible attacks on the doctrines of exclusivity of the homeland (3) [22] .

Multitudes always offering, always ready to confer the right of

citizenship to anyone who wished it, did not have a jealous patriotism. The great historians of the imperial centuries, those panegyrists so proud of ancient times and their customs, are in no way mistaken. What they celebrate in their masculine and emphatic periods on ancient freedom is the Roman patrician, and never the man of the plebs (4)[23] . When they speak with adoration of this venerable citizen whose years have passed in serving the State, who bears on his body the scars of so many battles won against the enemies of Roman majesty, who has sacrificed not only his limbs, but his fortune, that of his family, and sometimes his children, and, sometimes even, killed his sons with his own hand for a breach of the austere laws of civic duty; when they represent this man of ancient ages, once honored with the triumphal robe, once or twice consul, quaestor, aedile, hereditary senator, and preparing, with that same hand which never found the sword and spear too heavy, the raves of his supper (1)[24] , then, with this rectitude of judgment, this cold reason so useful to the republic, calculating the interests of its usurious loans, moreover contemptuous of the arts and letters, and those who cultivate them, and the Greeks who

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love: this old man, this venerable man, this ideal citizen, he is never anything other than a patrician, an old sabin. The man of the people is, on the contrary, that active, bold, intelligent, cunning character, who, to overthrow his leaders, first seeks to take away their judicial monopoly, achieving this, not by violence, but by infidelity and theft; who, exasperated by the energetic resistance of the nobles, finally decides, not to attack them, the law does not want that, and it would be necessary to kill them all without hope of making a single one of them give in, but the decision to go away and only return after having profitably commented on the fable of the limbs and the stomach. The Roman plebeian is a man who does not love glory as much as profit (2)[25] , and freedom as much as its advantages; he is the preparer of great conquests, of great additions through the extension of civil rights to foreign cities; it is, in a word, the practical politician who will later understand the necessity of the imperial regime, and will find himself happy to see it blossom, willingly exchanging the honor of governing himself, and the world with himself, for more solid merits of a better ordered administration. Writers with great feelings have never had the slightest intention of praising this plebeian, always selfish in the midst of his love for humanity, and so mediocre in his greatness.

As long as Italian blood, or even Gallic blood, or even that of Magna Graecia, found itself alone in satisfying the needs of plebeian politics, by flocking to Rome and the annexed cities, the republican constitution and

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aristocratic did not lose its main features. The plebeian of Sabine or Samnite origin desired the enlargement of his role without wanting to completely abrogate the regime of the patriciate, whose ethnic ideas on the relative value of families, whose reasonable doctrines in matters of government made him appreciate the irreplaceable advantages. The dose of Hellenic blood which crept into this amalgam enlivened the whole, and had not yet succeeded in dominating it.

After the coup that ended the Punic Wars, the scene changed. The old Roman feeling began to alter in a notable way: I say alter, and no longer modify. After the African wars came the Asian wars. Spain had already joined the republic. Magna Graecia and Sicily fell into its domain, and what the interested hospitality of the plebeian party (1)[26] henceforth caused to flow into the city, it was no longer more or less altered Celtic blood, but elements Semitic or Semitized. Corruption accumulated in great floods. Rome, entering into close communion with Eastern ideas, increased, with the number of its constituent elements, the already great difficulty of ever amalgamating them. From there, irresistible tendencies towards pure anarchy, despotism, irritation, and, to conclude, barbarism; from there, hatred more pronounced every day for what the old government had that was stable, consistent and thoughtful.

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Sabine Rome had been marked, vis-à-vis Greece, with a marked originality in its physiognomy; henceforth its ideas, its morals, gradually lose this imprint. It in turn becomes Hellenistic, like Syria and Egypt in the past, although with particular nuances. Until then, very modest in all things of the spirit, when her arms commanded the provinces, she had remembered with deference that the Etruscans were the cultivated nation of Italy, and she had persisted in learning their language, to imitate their arts, to borrow from them scholars and priests, without realizing that, on many points, Etruria repeated the lesson of the Greeks quite poorly, and moreover that the Greeks themselves treated it as outdated and out of date. of fashion which the Etruscans continued to admire on the basis of ancient models.

Gradually Rome opened its eyes to these truths, it renounced its ancient habits towards the enslaved descendants of its founders. She no longer wanted to hear about their merits, and took an upstart craze for everything that was carved, sculpted, written, thought or said in the depths of the Mediterranean. Even in the century of Augustus, it never lost, in its relations with disdainful Greece, this humble and stupid attitude of the provincial become rich who wants to pass as a connoisseur.

Mummius, conqueror of the Corinthians, sent paintings and statues to Rome, telling the carriers that they would have to replace the masterpieces damaged on the road. This Mummius was a true Roman: an object of art had no 1121

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him than the market price. Let us salute this worthy and vigorous descendant of the Confederates of Amiternum. He was no dilettante, but had Roman virtue, and people only laughed quietly in the Greek towns that he knew how to take so wel Latin, until then, had retained a strong resemblance to the Oscan dialects (1)[27] . It inclined more towards Greek, and so rapidly that it varied almost with each generation. There is perhaps no example of such extreme mobility in an idiom, just as there is no example of a people so constantly modified in their blood. Between the language of the Twelve Tables and that spoken by Cicero, the difference was such that the learned orator could not recognize himself in it. I'm not talking about the Sabine songs, that was even worse. Latin, since Ennius, took pride in forgetting its italics. Thus, no truly and only national language, an increasingly pronounced enthusiasm for literature, the ideas of Athens and Alexandria, Hellenic schools and teachers, Asian-style houses, Syrian furniture, profound disdain for local customs: this was what had become of the city which, having begun with Etruscan domination, had grown under the Sabine oligarchy: the moment of Semitic democracy was not far away now.

The crowds packed into the streets surrendered entirely to the embrace of this element. The age of free institutions and legality was about to end. The era that followed was one of violent coups d'état, of great massacres, of great 1122

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perversities, great debauchery. We believe ourselves transported to Tyre, to the days of its decadence; and in fact, with a larger areal space, the situation is the same: a conflict of the most diverse races unable to mix, unable to dominate each other, unable to compromise, and having no possible choice other than between despotism and anarchy. In such moments, public pain often finds an illustrious theorist to understand it and to invent a system supposedly capable of putting an end to it. Sometimes this well-intentioned man is just a simple individual. He then becomes nothing more than a writer of genius: such was Plato among the Greeks. He sought a remedy for the ills of Athens, and offered, in divine language, a summary of admirable reveries. Other times, this thinker finds himself, by his birth or by events, placed at the head of affairs. If, saddened by such a disastrous situation, he is naturally honest, he sees with too much horror the evils and ruins accumulated under his feet to accept the idea of making them even bigger, he remains powerless. Such people are doctors, not surgeons, and, like Epaminondas and Philopoemen, they cover themselves with glory without repairing anything. But there appeared once, in the history of peoples in decadence, a man malevolently indignant at the degradation of his nation, perceiving with a piercing glance, through the vapors of false prosperity, the abyss towards which the general demoralization dragged down the public fortune, and who, master of all means of action, birth, wealth, talents, personal illustration, great jobs, found himself

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to be, at the same time, strong with a bloodthirsty nature, determined not to shy away from any resource. This surgeon, this butcher, if you like, this august scoundrel, if you prefer, this Titan, appeared in Rome at the moment when the republic, drunk with crimes, domination and triumphant exhaustion, eaten away by leprosy of all vices, went rolling on itself and towards the abyss. It was Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

A true Roman patrician, he was steeped in political virtues (1)[28] , empty of private virtues; without fear for himself, for others; for others no more than for himself, he had no weakness. A goal to grasp, an obstacle to remove, a will to achieve, he saw nothing outside it. The number of things or men that had to be broken to create a bridge did not enter into his calculations. Arriving was everything, and then getting back on track.

The merciless dispositions of his blood, of his race, had moreover been strengthened by the odious contact of this soldier whom, in the bestial person of Marius, the popular party opposed to its designs.

Sulla had not sought in ideal theories the plan of the regenerative regime which he proposed to impose. He simply wanted to restore patrician domination in its entirety, and, by this means, restore order with discipline to the strengthened republic. He soon realized that the most difficult thing was not to rout the riots or even the plebeian armies, but to find an aristocracy worthy of the great task he wanted to deliver.

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He needed Fabiuses, he needed Horaces; Although he called them, he did not bring them out of these luxurious houses where their images resided, and, as he would stop at nothing, he wanted to recreate the nobles whom he no longer found. We then saw him, more formidable to his friends than to his rivals, pruning and reshaping with a merciless arm the tree of Roman nobility. To restore virility to an impoverished body, he made heads fall by the hundreds, ruined, exiled those he did not put to death, and treated with the utmost ferocity much less the people of the plebs, frank enemies, than the great ones. , direct obstacles to his designs by their inability to serve them. By repurposing the old trunk, he imagined he would get new buds from it, carrying as much juice as those of the past. He hoped that after having pruned the unworthy branches, he would succeed, by dint of frightening, in making brave people, and that thus democracy would receive from his hand, to be subdued forever, inflexible leaders and resolute masters.

It would be hard to have to admit that such means were found to be good. He himself stopped believing it. At the end of a long career, after efforts whose intensity is measured by the violence they accumulated, Sulla, despairing of the future, sad, exhausted, discouraged, himself laid down the ax of dictatorship, and , resigning himself to live unoccupied in the middle of this patrician or plebeian population that the mere sight of him still made shudder, he proved at least that he was not a vulgar ambitious person, and that having recognized the inanity of his hopes, he did not hold

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to maintain sterile power. I have no praise to give to Sylla, but I leave it to those who are not struck with respectful admiration by the spectacle of such a man, failing in such an enterprise, to reproach him for his excesses.

There was no way he was going to succeed. The people he wanted to bring back to the customs and discipline of the old ages bore no resemblance to the republican people who had practiced them. To be convinced of this, it is enough to compare the ethnic elements of the times of Cincinnatus with those which existed at the time when the great dictator lived.

(1) When, under Nero, it was a question in the Senate of restricting the rights of the freedmen, much opposition was encountered based on reasons very worthy of being reported here as full confessions on the part of the patricians: "It was argued against that the fault of the few must be fatal to them, nothing

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universorum juri derogandum; quippe late fusum id corpus; hinc plerumque tribes, decurias, ministeria magistratibus et sacerdotibus, cohorts etiam in urbe conscriptas; et plurimis equitum, plerisk senatoribus, non aliunde originem betrayed. If separarentur libertini, manifestata fore penuriam ingenuorum. » (Tac., Ann., XIII, 27.) Already in the time of Cicero, the custom had been introduced of freeing a slave after six years of good service and good conduct. From the same time, a Roman of the rich class made it his duty when dying to give freedom to his entire household, and public opinion considered this act as a matter of conscience. (Zumpt, loc. cit., p. 30.) It seems to me very difficult not to conclude from these facts that the decadence of slavery in any country is corresponding to the confusion of races, and

results directly from the relationship of closer and closer between masters and serv

It is impossible to bring into the same framework two nations which, under the same name, resemble each other so little (1)[29] . However, fairness is not as severe for Sulla's work as was its author. The dictator was right to lose heart, because he compared his result to his plans. He had nonetheless given the patrician an artificial vigor, reinforced, it is true, by the terror which paralyzed the opposing party, and the republic owed him several years of existence which it would not have had without him. After the death of the reformer, the Cornelian shadow still protected the senate for some time. She stood behind Cicero, when this rhetorician, now consul, so meagerly defended the public cause against the impulsive audacity of factions. Sulla therefore succeeded in hindering the race which was leading Rome towards incessant transformations. Perhaps, without him, the period which passed until Caesar's death would have been only a

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a much more lamentable sequence of proscriptions and brigandages than a perpetual struggle between premature Antonies and Lepids, nipped in the bud by his fierce intervention.

This is the part to be given to him; but it is incontestable that the most terrible genius cannot stop the action of natural laws for very long, any more than the works of man can prevent the Ganges from making and unmaking the ephemeral islands with which this river populates its spacious bed. [30] . It is now a matter of contemplating Rome with the new nationality that ethnic alluvial deposits have given it. Let us see what she became when an increasingly mixed blood had given her a new direction with a new character.

1. ÿ (1) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 259. — The possessions of Rome stopped at this time at the Janiculum. She had lost everything else. Servius had divided the people into thirty tribes; there were only twenty left in 271 of the city. (Abeken, cited work, p. 25.) 2. ÿ (2) Tac., Ann., XI, 15: "He (Claudins) then reported to the senate over the aruspic college that the most ancient discipline of Italy should not perish through neglect: often provoked by the adverse times of the republic, by whose admonition the ceremonies should be restored and conducted more correctly for posterity ; and the chiefs of Etruria, either of their own accord, or under the influence of their Roman fathers, retained the knowledge, or propagated it in their families; that it should now be done more lazily, because the public is anxious about good arts, and because external superstitions are on the rise; but to the kindness of the gods we should return the grace, lest the sacred rites, amid the ambiguities of worship, should be forgotten by success. - After he was consulted by the senate, the pontiffs would see what was to be retained and strengthened. » 3. ÿ (1) Un des griefs les plus violents de la population romaine contre Tarquin le Superbe était qu'il employait la plebe à construire des palais, des temples et des portiques afin d'embellir la ville. (Dionys. Halic., Antiq. Rom., 4, 44, 61, etc.)

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4. ÿ (2) O. Muller, die Etrusker, p. 259. 5. ÿ (1) O. Muller, ouvr. cite, p. 204. 6. ÿ (2) Id., ibid., p. 204. 7. ÿ (1) Liv., 1: "The city itself was burning with hatred between the fathers and the common people, especially because of ties due to foreign interests." They grumbled that they were fighting abroad for liberty and government, but at home were captured and oppressed by the citizens, and that the liberty of the people was safer in war than in peace, among enemies than among citizens. " - Tac., Ann., 6, 16 : " Indeed, the old city was a bad funeral, and the most frequent seditions and discords cause. » 8. ÿ (1) See in Livy the violent insurrection appeased by the consuls P. Servilius and Ap. Claudius, and the affair of the Sacred Mountain. (Liv., I.) 9. ÿ (2) From the time of the kings, there had been very important modifications in the ethnic constitution of the patriciate. Tarquin the Elder had called the entire equestrian order there en masse. (Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, t. I, p. 239.) So that in the first days of the republic, the plebeians were justified in considering themselves as of the same blood or of blood equal in value to that of their rulers. Even better, many plebeian families competed in recognized nobility with the proudest senatorial houses, and formed, united with the equestrian order, a class in reality aristocratic, eager to seize jobs, and yet forced to make common cause with the plebs . (Ibid., vol. I, p. 375.)

Many plebeian houses, such as the Marcians, the Mamilians, the Papians, the Cilnians, the Marrucinians, were in the same relationship with the patriciate as in Venice, in modern times, the nobles of the mainland were with -towards the nobles of Saint-Marc. 10. ÿ (1) Nothing shows this better than the great civil commotion which led the plebeians to withdraw to the Sacred Mountain, leaving the patricians with their clients and their slaves in the city. This whole affair is admirably explained in its causes and its conduct by Niebuhr. (Roem. Geschichte, t. I, p. 412.) It is one of the most remarkable pieces that have ever been written on antiquity. The elevation of thought, like its accuracy, by giving the style of the great historian an unexpected beauty, this time makes him escape the otherwise fair judgment of Mr. Macaulay: “Niebuhr, a man who would have been the first writer of his time, if his talent for communicating thoughts had borne any proportion to his talent for investigating them. » (Lays of Ancient Rom. Preface.) 11. ÿ (1) M. d'Eckstein (Historical Research on Primitive Humanity) has successfully painted the immobility of Roman ideas. His words are mainly addressed to religion, but we can easily make them

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application to the law. “While we live,” says this writer, “in a more or less happy inconsistency of our works and our thoughts, the old people often pushed the spirit of consequence to the last limits of the absurd... Only the Greeks were able to free themselves to a certain point from this tyranny even in their religious times; never the Romans, absolute slaves of their rites and the sacred forum. » (P. 63.) 12. ÿ (1)

XXXI. For Romans in Rome’s quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son, nor wife, nor limb, nor life, In the brave days of old. XXXII. Then none was of a party ; Then all were for state, etc. Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rom. Horatius. 13. ÿ (1) “The Tarquinians even seem to have for a moment rallied against the Romans, renegades from Etruria, as far as the liberal cities: Clusium, for example. — Liv., I: “Incensus Tarquinius non dolore solum tantæ ad irritum cadentis spei, sed etiam odio iraque... bellum aperte moliendum ratus, circumire supplex Etruriæ urbes; orare maxime Veientes Tarquiniensesque, ne se ortum ejusdem sanguineis... perire sinerent. » 14. ÿ (2) O. Muller, open. cited, p. 165. — This author very well highlights the necessity that the Etruscans found themselves, following the Gallic invasion, to tolerate the expansions of Rome. He shows them forced to allow Veia to be taken, to see, without intervening, the submission of the Sabines, the Latins and the Osci, and yet serving as a rampart for this cruel rival against the enemies who were devouring them themselves. 15. ÿ (1) O. Muller, open. cited, p. 162. 16. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 139. 17. ÿ (3) Ibid., p. 128-130. — The last breath of independent Etruria was taken by the consul Marcius Philippus, who triumphed in 471 over Rome. However, the nationality was maintained until the time of Sulla. This dictator flooded the country with Semitic colonies. Caesar continued, Octavius finished, and the sack of Perugia sealed the dispersal of the race. 18. ÿ (1) I do not need to add that the patricianship remained, but not the noble Sabine races, except a very small number. They were gradually replaced by plebeian families. Under Tiberius, Gallus could say with truth in the senate: “Distinctos senatus et equitum census, non quia diversi natura, sed ut locis, ordinibus,

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They are opposed to condescensions and to other things which are prepared for the rest of the soul and the health of the body. (Tacit., Ann., II, 33.) 19. ÿ (2) Amédée Thierry, Hist. de la Gaule sous l'admin. rom., t. 1, p. 3. 20. ÿ (1) "In order that the greatness of the city should not be in vain, for the sake of the crowded population... the place which is now a fence between the two groves opens the Asylum." From the neighboring peoples, the whole crowd, without distinction whether they were free or slaves, fled, eager for new things. " (Liv., I.) L'horreur que les gens de tous les ordres prirent de très bonne heure pour le mariage regular ne contribua guère moins que la guerre à detruire la population de souche italiote. En 131 avant J.-C., Q. Métellus Macédonicus, censeur, porte plainte aux senators, et un décret engage les citoyens à renoncer au celibat. Ce ne fut pas le seul effort de la loi; and there was no success. (Zumpt, cited work, p. 25.) We must also take into account the custom which allowed parents to expose their children, a powerful cause of depopulation. 21. ÿ (2) In principle, only citizens could enter the legions. During the Second Punic War, freedmen were admitted there. Marius received all the proletarians there indiscriminately. (Zumpt, cited work, p. 23 and 27.) 22. ÿ (3) Dionysius of Halicarnassus highlights the difference between the Hellenic and Roman points of view, and gives, as is fitting for a man of his time, all praise and every advantage to the method which had conferred upon him his rank as a citizen. (Antiq. Rom., 2, XVII.) 23. ÿ (4) We must not be mistaken when we read in Tacitus: “Igitur, verso civitatis statu, nihil usquam prisci et integri moris: omnes, exuta æqualitate , jussa principis adspectare. » (Ann., l. I, 4.) This equality is patrician equality which has only inferiors and no masters. 24. ÿ (1) ..............................

I would like to report to Camoena with gratitude,

and Fabricius This, and Curtius' untidy hair, He took advantage of the war, and Camillus

Poor poverty, and a fit grandfather When the farm is lare.

Hor., Od. I, 12, 39. 25. ÿ (2) We must not lose sight for a single moment, when it comes to Italian Rome, the profoundly utilitarian spirit of its population. The laws concerning debtors, usury, the sharing of spoils and conquered lands, this is the basis, this is the essence of its constitutions, and the real causes of more than one of its political agitations. (Niebuhr, Rœm. Geshichte, t. I, p. 394 et pass. ; t. II, 22, 231, 310, etc.)

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26. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under Roman administration, Introduct., t. I, p. 62: “It would undoubtedly be unjust to place all the odiousness of these abominable excesses (the rapines of Verrès and his ilk) on the men of the patrician party. The popular party certainly possessed neither so much disinterestedness nor so much virtue; but, as the accusations against public thefts and the claims in favor of the provincials almost always came from his ranks, as he promised many reforms, as the support he had given to the Italians before and since the social war inspired confidence in his word, the provinces attached themselves to him. They returned him promise for promise, hope for hope. Between them and the agitators of the last days of the republic, links were formed similar to those which had, a century earlier, compromised the Latin allies in the Gracchi's enterprises. We can remember with what heroism Spain adopted and defended with its blood the last leaders of Marius' party. Catiline himself managed to enroll the Gallic Cisalpine province under his flag, and he was already leading some parts of the Transalpine, also reduced to provinces. » — The democratic party in Rome, apart from the fact that it aimed essentially at the destruction of the republican form, a result which it obtained, was also fervently what modern phraseology would call the party of the foreigner. 27. ÿ (1) Meier's book presents this truth in a truly striking light. (See Meier, Lateinische Anthologie.) 28. ÿ (1) Dion. Cass., Hist. rom., Hamb. CIÿIÿCCL, in-fol., t. I, p. 47, fragm. CXVII: ÿÿÿÿÿ (ÿÿÿÿÿÿ) ÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ... — Dion Cassius is a very democratic writer and a strong enemy of the dictator. 29. ÿ (1) Denys d'Halicarnasse rend très bien compte de cette situation et de ses consequencias : But the barbarians mingled, through whom the city learned many of the ancient exploits, while they were happening. and it is a wonder that so many, if the glory of the 20s is counted, how did not I become overwhelmed, Opics and hypodexamene, and Marses, and Saunites, and Tyrrhenians, and Brettians, Umbrians, and Lygians, and Iberians, and Celts frequent massiad, a say to them so many nations, those from this Italy, those from other places, a myriad of people, neither of the same language, nor of the same language. as neither voice nor diet, and being disturbed by the violence of the gathering, from this dissension many of the old world of the city were neochmosi ekhos. (Antiq. Rom., 1, LXXXIX.) 30. ÿ Niebuhr is indignant against modern writers who, claiming to point out, in the 7th century in Rome, the existence of patrician factions in

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this State, forget or ignore that Sulla was the last legitimate expression of this order of ideas. (Niebuhr, Rœm. Geschichte, vol. I, p. 375.)

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CHAPTER VII. Semitic Rome.

From the conquest of Sicily until quite early in Christian times, Italy continued to receive numerous, innumerable contributions from the Semitic element, so that the entire south was Hellenized and the The flow of Asian races going north only stopped in the face of the Germanic invasions[1] . But the movement of retreat, the point where the alluvium from the south stopped, went beyond Rome. This city always lost its primitive character. There was undoubtedly a gradation in this decline, never a real time of stopping. The Semitic spirit stifled its rival without remission. Roman genius became foreign to the first Italian instinct, and received a value where the Asian influence is easily recognized. I do not include among the least significant manifestations of this imported spirit the birth of a literature marked with a particular seal, and which lied to the Italian instinct already by the very fact that it existed. Neither the Etruscans, as I have said, nor any tribe of the Peninsula, no more than Wales, had had any real literature; because we cannot call rituals, divination treatises, some epic songs serving to 1134

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preserve the memories of history, catalogs of facts, satires, trivial jokes whose malignity of the Fescennins and the Atellans amused the laughter of the idle. All these utilitarian nations, capable of understanding from a social and political point of view the merit of poetry, had no natural tendency to it, and, as long as they were not strongly modified by Semitic mixtures, they lacked the faculties necessary to acquire anything of this kind (1)[2] . Thus it was only when Hellenistic blood dominated the ancient alloys in the veins of the Latins that the vilest plebs, or the most humble bourgeoisie, exposed above all to the action of Semitized contributions, emerged the most beautiful geniuses who brought glory to Rome. Certainly, Mucius Scévola would have held in very low esteem the slave Plautus, the Mantuan Virgil, and Horace, Venusian, the man who threw down his shield in battle and told the anecdote to make Pompeius Varus laugh (1)[ 3 ] . These men were great minds, but not Romans when it came to chemistry. In any case, literature was born, and with it a good part, without doubt, of national illustration, and the cause of the noise that the rest made; for we will not disagree that the Semitic mass from which the Latin poets and historians emerged owed to its impurity alone the talent to write with eloquence, so that it was the learned emphases of the collateral bastards which put us on the spot. way of admiring the great deeds of ancestors who, if they had been able to revise and consult their genealogies, would have had nothing to do with

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more eager to do than to disown these respectful descendants (2)[4] .

Along with books, the taste for luxury and elegance were new needs which also testified to the changes occurring in the race. Cato disdained them, but he showed affectation in them. With all due respect to the glory of this wise man, the so-called Roman virtues with which he adorned himself were even more conscientious among the ancient patricians, and yet more modest (3)[5] . In their time, there was no need to show off to stand out; everyone was wise in their own way. On the contrary, after having received the blood of Eastern mothers and Greek or Syrian freedmen, the merchant, who became a knight, rich from his trafficking or his extortions, understood nothing, for his part, of the merits of primitive austerity. He wanted to enjoy in Italy what his southern ancestors had created at home, and he transported it there. He pushed the wooden bench where Dentatus had been sitting under his table; he replaced such miseries with lemon tree beds inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory. He needed, like the satraps of Darius, vases of silver and gold to contain the precious wines on which his intemperance feasted, and crystal dishes to serve the stuffed boars, the rare birds, the exotic game that he devoured. his sumptuous gluttony. He was no longer content, for his private residences, with constructions that people of old would have found splendid enough to house the gods; he wanted immense palaces with colonnades of marble, granite, porphyry, statues,

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obelisks, gardens, farmyards, fishponds (1) [6], and, in the midst of this luxury, in order to enliven the appearance of so many picturesque creations, Lucullus circulated multitudes of idle slaves , freedmen and parasites whose basely interested servility had nothing in common with the martial devotion and serious dependence of clients of another age.

But, in the midst of this overflow of splendors, there persisted a singular stain which, even in the opinion of contemporaries, attached itself to everything, made everything ugly. The glory and the power, the power to make profusions and the will to abandon oneself to it belonged, most of the time, to people unknown the day before (2 )[7] . from which so many opulent people came (3)[8] , and We didn't know in turn, whether it was the flatterers or the envious who spoke, Trimalcion was attributed the most illustrious or the most foul origin (1) [9 ] . This entire brilliant society was, moreover, a collection of ignoramuses or imitators. Basically, she invented nothing, and took everything she knew from the Hellenic provinces. The innovations she added were alterations, not embellishments. She dressed in the Greek or Phrygian style, wore a Persian miter on her head, and even dared, to the great scandal of the praisers of the past, to wear Asian-style drawers under a dubious toga; and what was all this? Borrowings from Hellenism, and what more? Nothing, not even the new gods, the Isis, the Serapis, the Astartes, and, later, the Mithras and the Elagabalus that Rome saw 1137

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impatronize in its temples. All he could see on all sides was this feeling of a transplanted Asian population, bringing into the country which imposed itself on it the customs, the ideas, the prejudices, the opinions, the tendencies, the superstitions, the furniture, the utensils, clothes, hairstyles, jewelry, food, drinks, books, paintings, statues, in a word, the entire existence of the homeland.

The Italian races had melted into this mass brought by its defeats to the bosom of the victors whom its weight finished suffocating; or else the noble Sabines, little known, languished in the darkest depths of the populace, dying of hunger on the streets of the city illustrated by their ancestors. Did we not see the descendants of the Gracchi earning their bread, circus drivers (1)[10] , did the emperors not have to pity the degrading abjection into which the patrician had fallen? By law,

and not

they refused matrons from old families the right to live by prostitution (2) [11] . Moreover, the land of Italy itself was treated like its natives by the vanquished who had become all-powerful. It was no longer among the regions worthy of feeding men. It no longer had farms, furrows were no longer plowed there, it no longer produced wheat (3)[12] . It was a vast garden dotted with country houses and pleasure castles. We will soon see the day when Italiots were even forbidden to bear arms (4)[13]. But let's not get ahead of the times.

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When Asia, thus predominating in the population of the City, had finally brought about the imminent necessity of the government of a master, Caesar, to illustrate skillful leisure, went to conquer Gaul. The success of his enterprise had ethnic consequences quite opposite to those of other Roman wars. Instead of bringing Gauls to Italy, the conquest carried mainly Asiatics beyond the Alps, and although a certain number of families of Celtic race have since contributed their blood to the terrible pandemonium which mixed and fought in the metropolis, this always restricted immigration did not have an importance proportionate to that of the Semitic colonizations which were thrown across the transalpine provinces.

Gaul, Caesar's future prey, did not have the extent of present-day France, and, among other differences, the south-east of this territory, or, following the Roman expression, the Province, had long suffered the yoke of the republic, and was no longer really part of it.

Since the victory of Marius over the Cimbri and their allies, Provence and Languedoc had become Italy's advanced post against attacks from the North (1)[14] . The Senate had indulged in this foundation all the more easily since the Massaliotes, with their various colonies, Toulon, Antibes, Nice, had spared nothing to prove its usefulness to it. They hoped to gain, from this novelty, a deeper rest and a notable extension of their commerce. 1139

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There is also no doubt that the populations originally from Phocaea, but very Semitic, established at the mouth of the Rhône and in the surrounding area, have modified, in the long run, the Gallic and Ligurian populations of their immediate neighborhood. by mingling with them. The tribes of these countries therefore appear to be the least energetic of all their relatives. Roman statesmen had firmly annexed all these territories to the domain of the republic, by sending colonies there, by establishing veteran legionaries there, by creating, in short, a multitude as Roman as possible. It was, certainly, the best way to become masters of it forever. But with what elements were these people of the Province created, or, as they called themselves, these true Romans? Two centuries earlier, their blood could have been composed of an Italian mixture. From then on, the Italian mixture itself being almost absorbed in the Semitic contributions, it was mainly from the latter that the new population was formed. There were crowds of former soldiers recruited in Asia or Greece. They came, with their families, to dispossess the inhabitants of the land, take their cottages and their crops, and try, with this won fortune, to found a line of honest people for the future. The Gallic towns were given as Roman a physiognomy as possible; the inhabitants were forbidden to preserve what Druidic practices were too violent; they were forced to believe that their 1140

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gods were none other than the Roman or Greek gods disfigured by barbaric names, and, by marrying the young Celts to the daughters of colonists and soldiers, soon obtained a generation who would have blushed to bear the same names as their paternal ancestors and who found the Latin names much more beautiful. With the Semitic groups attracted to Gallic soil by the direct action of the government, there were still several classes of individuals whose temporary stay or fortuitous and permanent establishment helped to transform the Gallic blood. The military and civilian employees of the republic brought, with their easy morals, great causes for renewal in the race. Merchants and speculators also arrived; those who traded in slaves did not become less active, and the moral defeat of the Galls was completed, as is today that of the natives of America, by contact with a civilization unacceptable to those to whom it was offered, as long as their blood remained pure, and therefore their intelligence closed to foreign notions. Everything that was Roman or mixed Roman became absolute master. The Celts either went to seek morals similar to theirs among their relatives in central Gaul, or else fell into the crowd of rural workers, a type of men who were supposed to be free, but who in reality led the life of slaves. In a few years, the Province found itself transfigured and Semitized as well as

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Today we see the city of Algiers having become, after twenty years, a French city. What was henceforth called Gauls no longer designated a Gall, but only an inhabitant of the country formerly possessed by the Galls, just as, when we say an Englishman, we do not mean to indicate a direct son of the Saxons with long red beards, oppressors of the Breton tribes, but a man from a mixture of Breton, Frisian, English, Danish, Norman, and, consequently, less English than mixed race. A Provincial Gaul represented, taking things literally, the Semitic product of the most disparate elements; a man who was neither Italian, nor Greek, nor Asian, nor Gallic, but a little of all these, and who carried in his nationality, formed of irreconcilable elements, this light spirit, this erased and changing character, the stigma of all degenerate races.

The man of the Province was perhaps the worst specimen of all the alloys made in the bosom of Roman fusion; he showed himself, among other examples, to be very inferior to the populations of the Hispanic coast. These at least had more homogeneity. The Iberian background had married with a very powerful supply of directly Semitic blood where the dose of Melanian elements was strong. Deep in the provinces that ancient invasions had made Celtic, the ability to embrace Hellenized civilization always remained weak; but, on the coast, the opposite inclination was found to be very marked. The colonies established by the Romans, coming from Asia and

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Greece, perhaps still from Africa, found a welcome quite easily, and, while retaining a particular character assured by the Iberian and Celtic mixtures, deposited at the bottom of its nature, the group of Spain rose to an honorable level. of Romano-Semitic civilization (1)[15] . Even, at a certain moment, we will see him ahead of Italy on the literary path, for the reason that the neighborhood of Africa, by constantly renewing the Melanian part of his essence, pushed him vigorously on this path. It is therefore not surprising that southern Spain was a superior country to the Province, and maintained its precedence as long as Semitic civilization had the upper hand in the Western world.

But, because Roman Gaul was becoming Semitic, Celtic blood, far from serving to rectify what the Asian feminine essence brought in excess in the Italic peninsula, was obliged, on the contrary, to flee before its power, and this This leak was never to end (1)[16] .

Caesar therefore, having as a point of support the Province, completely Romanized (2)[17] , undertook and successfully completed the conquest of Upper Gaul. He and his successors continued to hold the Celts under the feet of southern civilization. All the colonies, in such large numbers, which descended on the country, became real garrisons, acting vigorously for the diffusion of Asian blood and culture. In these Gallic municipalities where everything, from the official language to costumes,

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down to the furniture, was Roman, where the native was so considered a barbarian that it could be a subject of vanity for a great man to owe the day to his mother's intrigue with a man from Italy (1 ) [18] ; in these streets lined with houses in Greek and Latin fashion, no one was surprised to see, guarding the country and circulating everywhere, legionnaires born in Syria or Egypt, cataphract cavalry recruited from the Thessalians, light troops arriving of Numidia, and the Balearic slingers. All these exotic warriors, with copper complexions of a thousand shades or even black, constantly passed from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, and modified the race at all social levels.

While demonstrating the impotence of Celtic blood and its passivity throughout the Roman world, we must not push things too far and ignore the influence retained by Kymric civilization on the instincts of its mongrels. The utilitarian spirit of the Galls, although acting in the shadows, which was only favorable to it, continued to grow and support agriculture, commerce and industry. Throughout the imperial period, Gaul had perpetual success in this genre, but in this genre alone. Its common fabrics, its worked metals, its chariots, continued to enjoy general popularity. Focusing his intelligence on industrial and mercantile questions, the Celt had kept and even perfected his ancient skills. Above all, he was brave, and he was easily made into a good soldier, who would garrison the

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more ordinarily in Greece, in Judea, on the banks of the Euphrates. On these different points, he mingled with the indigenous population. But there, in terms of disorder, everything had been in place for a long time, and a little more, a little less alloy in these innumerable masses, did not change anything in their inconsistency, on the one hand, in the fundamental predominance melanized elements, on We will not forget that it is only episodically if I speak of Gaul at this moment, and only to explain how its blood had no action to prevent Rome and Italy from becoming semitic. At the same time, I showed what this province itself had become after its conquest. I enter the current of the great Roman river. Pure Italian races therefore no longer existed in Pompey's time in Italy: the country had become a garden. However, for some time still, the formerly defeated multitudes, glorified by their defeat, did not dare to propose for the government of the universe men born in their dishonored countries. The old force of impulse remained, although dying, and it was on the ground sacred by victory that people were still able to seek the universal master. As institutions only ever arise from the ethnic state of peoples, this situation must be well established before the institutions are established and above all complete each other. In the past, Italy had only obtained Roman city rights long after the complete invasion of Rome by the Italiots. It was also only when the 1145

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the most complete disorder in the city and the Peninsula had erased the influence of their national populations that the provinces were admitted en masse to civil rights, and that we saw the Arab in the depths of his desert, the Batavian in his marshes , to be titled, but without too much pride, Roman citizen.

Nevertheless, before we got there, and the state of the facts had been confessed by that of the law, the ethnic incoherence and the disappearance of the Italian races had already been displayed in the most considerable act that could be bring politics, I say, into the choice of emperors. For a society that arrived at the same point as the Assyrian agglomeration, the Persian royalty and the Macedonian despotism, and which only sought tranquility, and, as much as possible, stability, one can be surprised that the empire did not not, from the first day, accepted the principle of monarchical heredity. Certainly, it was not the cult of an overly prudish freedom that made him disgusted in advance. His repugnance came from the same source which had elsewhere prevented domination over the Greco-Asiatic world from being perpetuated in the family of Olympias' son.

The Ninevite and Babylonian kingdoms were able to inaugurate dynasties. These States were led by foreign conquerors who imposed a certain form on the vanquished, without any consent, and thus the constitutive law was not based on a compromise, but on force. This fact is so true that dynasties do not

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succeeded no other than by the right of victory. In the Persian monarchy, it was the same. Macedonian society, itself the result of a pact between the various nationalities of Greece, and encompassed from its first step in the anarchy of Asian ideas, did not function in such an easy or simple manner. She could not found anything unitary or even stable, and, in order to live, she had to agree to scatter her forces. However, its influence still acts strongly enough on the Asians to determine the foundation of the different kingdoms of Bactria, the Lagides, the Seleucids. There were dynasties there, doubtless only mediocrely regular, as regards the domestic observation of the rights of succession, but at least unshakeable in the possession of the throne, and respected by the native race. This circumstance clearly shows the extent to which the ethnic supremacy of the victors and the rights resulting from it were recognized. It is therefore an incontestable fact that the MacedonianArian element managed to maintain its superiority in Asia, and, although heavily fought and even canceled on most points, remained capable of producing practical results of quite notable importance. (1)[19] . But it could not be the same among the Romans. Since there had never existed in the world a Roman nation, a Roman race, there had never been, for the city which united the world, a peacefully predominant race. In turn, the Etruscans, mixed with yellow blood, the Sabines, 1147

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whose kymric principle was less brilliantly modified than the Arian essence of the Hellenes, and finally the Semitic peat had gained the upper hand in the urban population. The Western multitudes were loosely united by the common use of Latin; but what was the value of this Latin, which from Italy had overflowed into Africa, Spain, the Gauls and the north of Europe, following the right bank of the Danube, and sometimes going beyond it? It was in no way the counterpart of Greek, even corrupted, widespread in earlier Asia as far as Bactria, and even as far as the Punjab; it was barely a shadow of the language of Tacitus or Pliny; an elastic idiom known as lingua rustica, here merging with Oscan, there pairing with the remains of Umbric, further borrowing from Celtic and words and forms, and, in the mouths of people which aimed at politeness of language, getting as close as possible to Greek. A language of such undemanding personality suited admirably to the detritus of all nations forced to live together and choose a means of communicating. It was for this reason that Latin became the universal language of the West, and that at the same time it will always be difficult to decide whether it expelled the indigenous languages, and, in this case, the time when it replaced them, or if he limited himself to corrupting them and enriching himself with their remains. The question remains so obscure that in Italy it has been possible to maintain this thesis, true in many respects, that modern language has always existed in parallel with the cultivated language of Cicero and Virgil.

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Thus this nation which was not one, this mass of peoples dominated by a common name, but not by a common race, could not have and did not have monarchical heredity, and it was rather chance that a consequence of ethnic principles which, by initially placing the command in the family of Jules and the houses of its relatives, conferred on a sort of dynasty that was too imperfect, but derived from the City, the first honors of absolute power. It was a coincidence, because nothing prevented, in the last years of the republic, a master of Italian, Asian, or African extraction from successfully asserting the rights of genius (1) [20] . Also, neither the conqueror of Gaul, nor Augustus, nor Tiberius, nor any of the Caesars, thought for a moment of the role of hereditary monarch. Vast as the empire was, we would not have recognized ten leagues from Rome, we would neither have admitted nor understood the illustration of a Sabine race, and much less the universal rights that its supporters would have claimed to make of it. result. In Asia, on the contrary, the old Macedonian strains were still known, and neither the superior glory nor the dominating prerogatives were contested.

The principate was not a dignity based on the prestige of the past, but, on the contrary, on all the material necessities of the present. The consulate brought him its contingent of forces; the tribunitian power added its enormous rights; the praetorship, the quaestorship, the censorship, the different republican functions came in turn

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in turn blending into this mass of attributions as heterogeneous as the masses of people on which they were to be exercised (1)[21] , and when later one wanted to join the brilliant, imposing it on the useful as a crowning achievement necessary, we could award the master of the world the honors of apotheosis, we could make him a god (2)[22] , but we never succeeded in enthroning his born or unborn sons in the regular possession of his rights. Heap clouds of honor on his head, make prostrate humanity trample under his feet, concentrate in his hands all that political science, religious hierarchy, administrative wisdom, military discipline had ever created of forces to bend the wills: these miracles were accomplished, and no complaint arose; but it was on a man that all these powers were lavished, never on a family, never on a race. Universal feeling, which no longer recognized ethnic superiority anywhere in the degenerate world, would not have consented to this. We could believe for a moment, under the first Antonines, that a dynasty sacred by its benefits would be established for the happiness of the world. Caracalla suddenly appeared, and the world, which had only been carried away, not yet convinced, resumed its old doubts. The imperial dignity remained elective. This form of command was definitely the only possible one, because, in this society without fixed principles, without certain needs, finally, in a word that says it all, without homogeneity of blood, one could not live, whatever one had, that by always leaving the door open to

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changes, and lending a willing hand to instability (3)[23] .

Nothing better demonstrates the ethnic variability of the Roman Empire than the catalog of emperors. First, and by the rather ordinary chance which placed the genius under the brow of a democratic patrician, the first princes came from the Sabine race. How power was perpetuated for a time in the circle of their alliances, without real heredity ever being established, is what Suetonius relates perfectly. The Julius, the Claudius, the Nero each had their day, then soon they disappeared, and the Italian family of Flavius replaced them. She quickly faded away, and who did she make room for? To Spaniards. After the Spaniards, came Africans; after the Africans, of whom Septimius Severus showed himself to be the hero, and the lawyer Macrinus representing him, not the craziest, but the vilest, appeared the Syrians, soon supplanted by new Africans, replaced in their turn by an Arab, dethroned by a Pannonian. I am not pushing the series any further, and I am content to say that after the Pannonian there was everyone on the imperial throne (1)[24] , except a man from We must also consider the way in which the world

Roman did this to form the spirit of his laws (2)[25]. Was he asking the ancient instinct, I won't say Roman, since there was never anything Roman, but at least Etruscan or Italic? Not at all. Since he needed compromise legislation, he sought it in the country which, after the Eternal City, had the largest population. 1151

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mixed: on the Syrian coast, and he surrounded, with good reason, with all his esteem the school from which Papinien emerged. In matters of religion, he had long been broad in his views (1)[26] . Republican Rome, before possessing a pantheon, had reached out to all corners of the earth to obtain gods (2)[27] . There came a day when, in this vast eclecticism, we were still afraid of having put ourselves too narrowly, and, so as not to seem exclusive, we invented this vague word Providence, which is, in fact , among nations thinking differently, but enemies of quarrels, the best to put forward. Not meaning much, it cannot shock anyone. Providence became the official god of the empire (3)[28] .

The peoples found themselves thus spared as much as possible in their interests, in their beliefs, in their notions of law, in their repugnance to always obey the same foreign names; in short, it seemed that they lacked nothing in terms of negative principles. They had been given a religion which was not one, legislation which did not belong to any race, sovereigns provided by chance, and who claimed only momentary strength. And, however, if we had stopped there in terms of concessions, two points could still have hurt. The first, if the old trophies had been preserved in Rome: the provincials would have revived the memory of their defeats there; the second, if the capital of the world had remained in the same places from which the victors had flown

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disappeared. The imperial regime understood these delicacies and gave them full satisfaction. The craze of the last days of the republic for Greek, Greek literature and the glories of Greece, had been pushed to the extreme. In the time of Sulla, there was no good man who did not affect to consider the Latin language as a crude dialect. Greek was spoken in self-respecting households. Intelligent people were on the attack of atticism, and lovers who knew how to live said to each other, in their meetings: ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ, instead of anima mea (1) [29] .

After the empire was established, this Hellenism grew stronger; Nero became the fanatic. The ancient heroes of the City were considered rather sad wretches, and the Macedonian Alexander and the lesser sword-bearers of Hellas were loudly preferred to them. It is true that a little later there was a reaction in favor of the old patricians and their rusticity; but we can suspect this enthusiasm of having been only a literary fashion: its organs, at least, were no doubt very eloquent men, but very foreign to Latium, the Spaniard Lucan, for example.

As these unexpected praisers could not disturb the general concerns, the trend continued to push towards Greek or Semitic illustrations. Everyone felt more attracted, more interested in them. What the government did best to please these instincts was accomplished by Septimius Severus, when that great prince erected rich monuments to the memory of Hannibal, and

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his son Antonin Caracalla erected a large number of triumphal statues for this same winner of Cannes and Trebie (1)[30] . What must be admired more is that he filled Rome itself with them. I have said elsewhere that, if Cornelius Scipio had been defeated at Zama, the victory could not have changed the natural order of things, and brought the Carthaginians to dominate the Italian races. Likewise, the triumph of the Romans, under the friend of Laelius, did not prevent these same races, once their work was accomplished, from being engulfed in the Semitic element, and Carthage, the unfortunate Carthage, a wave of this ocean, was also able to savor his hour of joy in the collective triumph, and in the posthumous outrage applied to the cheek of old Rome.

It seems that, on the day when the worm-eaten simulacra of Fabius and Scipio saw the one-eyed man of Numidia obtain his marble in their midst, there must no longer have been found in the entire empire a single humiliated provincial: each of its citizens could freely sing the praises of topical heroes. The Getule, the Moor celebrated the virtues of Massinissa, and Jugurtha was rehabilitated. The Spaniards praised the fires of Saguntum and Numantia, while the Gaul extolled the valor of Vercingetorix higher than the clouds. No one now had to worry about the urban glories insulted by these people who called themselves citizens, and the most prickly part is that these Roman citizens themselves, half-breeds and bastards that they were with regard to all the old races, had no more rights to

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appropriating the merits of the barbarian heroes they were pleased to claim as their own, rather than shaming the great patrician shadows of Latium (1)[31] . There remains the question of supremacy for the City. On this article, as on the others, the world of vanquished people sheltered under the imperial eagles was perfectly treated. The Etruscans, builders of Rome, had no foresight of the lofty destinies that awaited their colony. They had not chosen its territory with the aim of making it the center of the world, nor even of making it easy to approach. Also, from the reign of Tiberius, it was understood that, since the imperial administration was responsible for monitoring the universal interests of the amalgamated nations, it had to get closer to the countries where life was most active. These countries were not the Gauls, devoid of influence, were not depopulated Italy: they were Asia, where the stagnant but general civilization, and above all the accumulation of enormous masses of inhabitants, made incessant surveillance by authority necessary. Tiberius, in order not to break with old habits at once, was content to settle at the end of the Peninsula. It had then been more than a century since the outcome of the great civil wars and the solid results of victory were no longer acquired there, but in the East, or, at the very least, in Greece.

Nero, less scrupulous than Tiberius, lived as much as possible in the classical land, so kind to this terrible friend of the arts. After him, the movement which led to the 1155

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rulers towards the east became stronger and stronger. Such emperors, like Trajan or Septimius Severus, spent their lives traveling; others, like Heliogabalus, barely visited the eternal city as strangers. One day, the true metropolis of the world was Antioch. When northern affairs took on major importance, Trier became the ordinary residence of heads of state. Milan then received the official title, and, however, what became of Rome? Rome kept a senate to play a sad, passive role in affairs, such as a great imbecile lord, adulterous product of the freedmen of his ancestors, but protected by the memories of his name, can still have. In fact, this senate served little purpose. Sometimes, when people thought about it, they asked him to recognize the emperors born from the will of the legions. Formal laws prohibited members of the curia from the profession of arms, and like other laws, apparently benevolent, excluded all Italiotes from active military service, these honest senators, who moreover had nothing in common with the conscript fathers of times past (1)[32] , would not have met soldiers who knew them, if they had wanted to force themselves to become leaders of an army. Reduced for any occupation to the most mediocre intrigue, they found no one in the world but themselves to believe in their importance.

When, through misfortune, some prince employed them in his schemes, their borrowed authority never failed to lead them to some abyss. Unhappy men, arrived by chance, old men without dignity, they still liked to parade around in their idle sessions,

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combining periods and playing on eloquence in those terrible days when the empire belonged only to the strong wrists.

These powerless senators could have admitted to themselves one more fault, which later, moreover, brought them great harm, namely their affectation of literary tastes, when no one else cared anymore to know what a book was. book. Rome counted among its civil illustrations very pretentious amateurs; but, on this point again, Rome was no longer the fertile field of Latin literature. Let's also admit that she never was.

Counting all the fine geniuses who have illustrated the Ausonian muses, poets, prose writers, historians or philosophers, since old Ennius and Plautus, few were born within the walls of the City or belonged to urban families. It was a sort of decided sterility, cast like a curse on the soil of the warlike city, which nevertheless, it must be done justice, always welcomed nobly, and in a manner consistent with the utilitarian genius of the first Italic spirit, all which could enhance its splendor. Ennius, Livius, Andronicus, Pacuvius, Plautus and Terence were not Romans. Neither were: Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Vitruvius, Cornelius Nepos, Catullus, Valérius Flaccus, Pliny. Much less this Spanish host who came to Rome with or after Portius Latro, the four Senecas, the father and the three sons, Sextilius Hena, Statorius Victor, Sénécion, Hyginus, Columella,

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Pomponius Méla, Silius Italicus, Quintilien, Martial, Florus, Lucain, and a long list encore (1) [33] . Urban purists always found something to complain about with the greatest writers. Those of the latter who came from Italy had too much of the flavor of the land, which made their style provincial. This reproach was even more deserved by the Spaniards. However, no one's popularity was diminished, and the merit, whatever has been said about it for a hundred years among us, was just as recognized among the poets of Cordoba as if they had written precisely like Cicero. We cannot judge too much the scope of the criticisms addressed to the Paduan Livy, but we are perfectly able to ascertain the truth of those which persecuted Seneca, and Lucan, and Silius Italicus. These reviews relate too well to the subject of this book not to touch on a word about it. The Spanish school was therefore accused of displaying to a shocking degree what I call the Semitic character, that is to say the ardor, the color, the taste for the grandiose pushed to the point of emphasis, and a vigor degenerating into bad taste and harshness.

Let's accept all these attacks. We have already noticed how much they were deserved by the genius of Melanized peoples. There is therefore no reason to reject them when it comes to the works of this genius on Spanish soil, because we do not lose sight of the fact that we are observing here a poetry and literature that only flourished in the Iberian Peninsula. where there was largely infused black blood, that is to say on the southern coast. Consequently, returning the fact

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to bring it into the rank of my demonstrations, I observe again how poetry, literature, are stronger, and at the same time more defective by exuberance, wherever Melanian blood is found abundantly, and, following this vein , we only have to pass to the province which marked the most in letters after Spain, it was Africa (1)[34] .

There, around Roman Carthage, the cultivation of the imagination and the mind was a habit and, so to speak, a general need. The philosopher Annæus Cornutus, born in Leptis, Septimius Severus, of the same city, the Adrumetan Salvius Julianus, the Numidian Cornelius Fronton, tutor of Marcus Aurelius, and finally Apuleius, raised the glory of Africa to the highest point in the pagan period, while the Church Militant owed to this country very powerful and very illustrious apologists in the person of Tertullian, Minutius Felix, Saint Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius, Saint Augustine.

Even more remarkable: when the Germanic invasions covered the face of the Western world with their regenerating masses, it was on the points where the Semitic element remained strong that Roman letters obtained their last successes. I therefore name this same Africa, this same Carthage, under the government of the Vandal kings (1) [35]

.

Thus, Rome was never, neither under the empire, nor even under the republic, the sanctuary of the Latin muses. She felt it so well that, within her own walls, she 1159

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did not give any preference to his natural language. To educate the urban population, the imperial tax authorities maintained Latin grammarians, but also Greek grammarians. Three Latin rhetoricians, but five Greeks, and, at the same time, as Latin-speaking men of letters found honors and a salary and an audience everywhere other than in Italy, so Hellenic writers were attracted and retained in Rome by similar advantages: witness Plutarch of Chaeronea, Arrian of Nicomedia, Lucian of Samosata, Herod Atticus of Marathon, Pausanias of Lydia, all of whom came to compose their works and shine at the foot of the Capitol.

Thus, with every step we take, we sink deeper into the accumulated proofs of this truth that Rome had nothing of its own, neither religion, nor laws, nor language, nor literature, nor even serious and effective precedence, and that This is what today has been proposed to be considered from a favorable point of view and approved as a happy novelty for civilization. Everything depends on what we love and seek, on what we blame and disapprove (2)[36] .

Detractors of the imperial period, for their part, point out that, throughout the entire face of the Roman world since Augustus, no illustrious individuality any longer stands out. Everything is erased; no more honored grandeur, no more withered baseness; everything lives in silence. Ancient glories only excite rhetorician declaimers at school time; they no longer belong to anyone, and the heads

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only empty ones can catch fire for them. No more big families; all are extinct, and those which, occupying their place, try to play their role, emerged from the peat this morning, will return there this evening (1 )[37] . Then this ancient patrician freedom which, with its disadvantages, also had its beautiful and noble sides, is over with it. No one thinks about it, and those who, in their books, still throw theoretical incense before his memory, seek, as good courtiers, the friendship of the powerful of the time, and would be sorry if we took them at their word. their regrets. At the same time, nationalities take off their insignia. They bring to each other the disorder of all social notions, they no longer believe in themselves. What they have kept personal is the thirst to prevent one of them from escaping general decadence. With the forgetting of the race, with the extinction of the illustrious houses whose examples once guided the multitudes, with the syncretism of theologies, came in crowds, not the great personal vices, shared by all times, but this universal relaxation of ordinary morality, this uncertainty of all principles, this detachment of all individuals from public affairs, this skepticism sometimes laughing, sometimes morose, indifferently focused on what is not of interest or daily use, finally this frightened disgust for the future, and these are misfortunes that are much more degrading for societies. As for political eventualities, ask the Roman crowd. nothing more to him 1161

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repugnant, nothing surprises him anymore. They have lost even the idea of the conditions that homogeneous peoples demand from those who want to govern them. Yesterday it was an Arab who ascended the throne, tomorrow it will be the whip of a Pannonian shepherd who will lead the people. The Roman citizen of Gaul or Africa will console himself by thinking that after all this is not his business, that the first ruler who comes is the best, and that it is an acceptable organization that where his son, if not himself, can in turn become emperor.

This was the general feeling in the third century, and for sixteen hundred years, all those, pagan or Christian, who reflected on this situation did not find it beautiful. Politicians like poets, historians like moralists, have poured out their contempt on the filthy populations who could not be made to accept another regime. This is the process that eminent minds, men of vast and solid erudition, are striving today to have revised. They are unknowingly carried away by a very natural sympathy which ethnic connections only explain too well.

It is not that they do not agree with the accuracy of the reproaches addressed to the multitudes of the imperial era; but they counter these defects with so-called advantages which, in their eyes, redeem them. What are we complaining about? a mixture of religions? The result was universal tolerance. From the relaxation of the official doctrine on these

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materials? It was nothing but atheism in the law (1)[38] . What do the effects of such an example from so high up matter? From this point of view, the degradation and destruction of great families, and even of the national traditions they preserved, are acceptable results. The middle classes of the time could not have failed to welcome this holocaust when it was thrown onto their altars. To see men heirs to the most august names, men whose fathers had given the country a thousand victories and a thousand provinces, to see these men, to earn their living, reduced to carrying the ball and playing gladiators; seeing matrons, nieces of Collatinus, reduced to the bread of their lovers, these are not sights to be disdained for the sons of Habinas, any more than for the cousins of Spartacus. The only difference is that the coffin maker staged by Petronius wants to get there slowly and without violence, while the beast of the ergastules better enjoys the misery that she herself, in person, has caused, especially if she is bloodied . A State without nobility is the dream of many eras. It does not matter that the nationality loses its columns, its moral history, its archives: everything is good when the vanity of the mediocre man has lowered the sky within the reach of his hand.

What does nationality itself matter? Is it not better for different human groups to lose everything that can separate them, differentiate them? As such, in fact,

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The imperial age is one of the most beautiful periods that humanity has ever experienced. Let’s move on to the actual benefits. First, it is said, a regular and unitary administration. Here it is necessary to examine. If the praise is true, it is great; However, its accuracy can be doubted. I understand clearly that in principle everything led to the emperor, that the smallest civil and military officers had to wait hierarchically for the order descended from the throne, and that, on the vast periphery as in the center of the State, the word of the sovereign was supposed to be decisive. But what did she say, this word, and what did she want? Only one and the same thing: money, and, provided that it obtained it, intervention from above took no concern for the internal administration of the provinces, of the kingdoms, and even more so of the towns and villages, which, organized on the old municipal plan, had the right to be governed only by their curia. This right survived, enervated in truth, because the caprice from above disrupted its exercise on a thousand occasions, but it existed alone, deprived of many advantages and offering all the disadvantages of parochialism.

Democratic writers make much of the title of citizen conferred on the entire universe by Antonin Caracalla. I'm less enthusiastic about it. The finest prerogative only has value when it is not lavished. When everyone is illustrious, no one is any more, and this was what happened to the innumerable crowd of provincial citizens (1)[39] .

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All of them were required to pay tax, all of them became liable to the penalties that imperial jurisprudence applied; and, without worrying about what the civis romanus of yesteryear would have thought of this innovation, they were subjected to torture when the slightest legal temptation presented itself. Saint Paul had owed his civic quality, which was rightly demanded, a treatment of honor; but the confessors, the virgins of the primitive Church, although decorated with the right of citizenship, were nonetheless led as slaves. It was now common practice. The edict of leveling could therefore one day please the subjects, by showing them lowered those whom they formerly envied; but, for them, he did not raise them: it was simply a great prerogative abolished and thrown into the water (2)[40] .

And as for the municipal senates, masters, supposedly, of administering their cities according to the opinion of the locality, their felicity was not as great as we are led to believe (3)[41 ] . I want their action to remain fairly free in small matters. We must not forget, as soon as it came to requests from the tax authorities, no more deliberation, no reasoning, purse loose! However, these requests were frequent and not very discreet (1)[42] . For a few emperors who, in a long principate, found the leisure to regulate their appetite, how many more have we not seen who, in a hurry to sit down at the world's table, only had time to devour what their hands could grasp? And again, among the princes favored by a beautiful reign, how many were there that almost incessant wars did not

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forced to devour the substance of their people? And finally, among the peaceful, how many more can we cite whose finest years were not spent directing the best resources of the empire against the constantly resurgent waves of usurpers, who, for their part, carried away the cities all that was to be taken? The tax authorities were therefore almost never, except under the Antonines, in a position to accommodate their demands; and thus the municipal magistrates had as their main function, their primary concern, to throw money into the imperial coffers, which took away much of the merit of their quasi-independence over the rest, or rather reduced it to nothing.

The decurion, the senator, the venerable members of the curia, as they called themselves, because these people, descended from some wicked freedmen, from slave traders, from colonized veterans, decided against the patrician and the old Quirite, n were not always able to remit to the tax agent the share that he was ordered to demand. Voting was nothing, it was necessary to collect money, and when the commune was exhausted, at the end of its tracks, ruined, the Roman citizens who composed it could undoubtedly be beaten to the point of forceful extinction by the porters and police guards of the town. locality; but to hope for sesterces was illusory. So the imperial officer, himself a victim of his superiors, did not hesitate for long. He, in turn, appealed to his own lictors, and without ceremony asked the venerable, illustrious senators to

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complete from their own funds the amount necessary to establish their accounts. The illustrious senators refused, finding the demand misplaced, and then, putting aside all respect, they were inflicted with the same treatment, the same ignominies with which they were so lavish towards their free citizens (1)[43 ] .

It happened under this regime that soon the curiales, disillusioned with the merits of a toga which did not protect them from bruises, tired of sitting in a capitol which did not protect their homes from home visits and spoliation, frightened by the threats of the riot which, without bothering to seek the legitimate objects of its anger, rushed on them, sad instruments, these miserable curiales agreed in thinking that their honors were too heavy and that it was better to prefer an existence less in view, but quieter. There were those who emigrated and settled as simple citizens in other cities. Some joined the militia, and when Christianity became a legal religion, many became priests.

But it wasn't the taxman's account. The emperor therefore issued laws to deny the curiales, under the most severe penalties, the right to ever abandon the place of their functions. Perhaps it was the first time that unfortunate people were nailed, by law, to the pillory of greatness (1)[44] . Then, just as, to degrade and degrade the Senate of Rome, its members were forbidden to engage in war, so, in order to keep the senators in the tax office

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provincials and the exploitation of their fortunes, these were forbidden to become soldiers, and by extension to leave the profession of their fathers, and, by extension again, the same law was applied to the other citizens of the empire; so that, by the most singular combination of political conveniences, the Roman world, which no longer had different races to isolate from each other, did what Brahmanism and the Egyptian priesthood had decreed; he claimed to create hereditary castes, he, the true genius of confusion! But there are times when the need for salvation forces States and individuals to commit the most monstrous inconsistencies. Here are the curiales who cannot be soldiers, nor merchants, nor grammarians, nor sailors; they can only be curial, and, a more monstrous tyranny in the midst of the passionate fervor of nascent Christianity, we see, to the great contempt of conscience, the law preventing these wretches from entering sacred orders, always because the tax , holding in them the best of his pledges, did not want to let them go (1)[45] . Such extremes cannot occur among nations where a somewhat noble ethnic genius still breathes its inspirations to the multitudes. The shame falls entirely, not on the governments, which the debasement of the people forces to resort to it, but on these degenerate peoples (2)[46] . They were comfortable living under this yoke. It is true that in the Roman world there were some partial insurrections, caused by 1168

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the excess of evils; but these excesses, stimulated by the flesh in revolt and not based on anything generous, were always only an increase in scourges, an occasion for pillage, massacres, rapes, and arson. The majorities only learned of the explosion with legitimate horror, and, once the revolt had been suppressed in blood, everyone congratulated themselves, and was right to do so. Soon, no longer thinking about it, we continued to suffer as patiently as possible; and, as nothing takes hold more quickly than the customs of servitude, it soon became impossible for the tax people to obtain payment of taxes without resorting to violence. The curiales got nothing out of their most solvent citizens except by knocking them out, and, in their turn, they rarely let go unless they received blows from the rods.

A particular morality very understood in the East, where it forms a sort of point of honor. Even in ordinary times and under pretexts of local utility, the curiales managed to rob their fellow citizens, and the imperial magistrates left them free, only too happy to know where to find the money in times of need.

Until now, I have very freely admitted that the emperor's people remained immaculate from general corruption; but the supposition was gratuitous. These men had just as much rapacity as the former proconsuls of the republic. Moreover, they were much more numerous, and when the exhausted provinces claimed to claim from the common master, we can judge whether the thing was easy. Holding the administration of the imperial posts,

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directing a numerous and active police force, having the sole right to grant passports, the local tyrants made it almost impossible for accusing representatives to leave. If all these preliminary precautions were foiled, what did obscure provincials, served by all the friends, by the creatures, the protectors of their enemy, come to do in the prince's palace? Such was the administration of imperial Rome, and, although I readily concede that everyone there enjoyed the title of citizen, that the empire was governed by a single leader, and that the cities, mistresses of their internal regime, could call themselves autonomous as they pleased, mint coins, erect statues and whatever else one wishes, I do not understand the good that resulted for anyone (1)[47] .

The supreme praise addressed to this Roman system is therefore to have been what we call regular and unitary. I said what regularity; now let's see what unit. It is not enough for a country to have a single master for fractionalization and its disadvantages to be banned. As such, the former administration of France would have been unitary, which is not in anyone's opinion. The empire of Darius would also have been unitary, something else very contradictory, and, at this price, what we had known under such an Assyrian monarchy was also unity. The union of sovereign rights on a single head is therefore not enough; the action of power must spread in a normal manner to the last extremities of the body politic; that the same breath circulates throughout this being and

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sometimes makes him move, sometimes sleep in just rest. However, when the most diverse countries each administer themselves according to the ideas that suit them, only financially and militarily reporting to a distant, arbitrary, poorly informed authority, there is no real cohesion, no real amalgamation. . It is an approximate concentration of political forces, if you like; it’s not unity. It is still an essential condition for unity to be established and to demonstrate the regular movement which is its main merit; it is that the supreme power is sedentary, always present on a designated point, and from there diverges its concern, by means, by routes, as uniform as possible, on the cities and provinces. Only then do institutions, good or bad, function like a well-engineered machine. Orders circulate with ease, and time, this great and indispensable agent of everything serious in the world, can be calculated, measured and used without unnecessary prodigality, as well as without disastrous parsimony. This condition was always lacking in the imperial organization. I showed how most of the masters of the State had, from the very beginning, abandoned Rome, to settle sometimes in the southern extremity of Italy, sometimes in the Asian territories, sometimes in the north of Gaul, while others traveled throughout their reign. What could be an administration whose agents did not know where to find the leader from whom their emanation came? 1171

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power, and whose orders they were only supposed to carry out? If the emperor had remained constantly at Antioch, it would undoubtedly have taken a long time to send his instructions to the praetoriums of Cadiz, Trier or the island of Brittany; however, taking everything into account, we could have calculated on this distance the constitution of these distant provinces, the extent of the responsibility granted to the magistrates to govern and defend them: we would thus have succeeded, as best we could, in giving them a regular organization.

But when a messenger who had gone from Paris or Italica to take orders, slowly arrived at Antioch, and learned there that the emperor had left for Alexandria; that, when the provincial representative arrived in this city, a new departure would bring him to Naples, and could take him beyond the Rhine towards the decumatic limits; in what way, I ask, did such an organization have a unitary character? To affirm it is to support the absurd; the emperor had to leave, and in fact did leave, to the initiative of the prefect and the generals an independence of action from which resulted the most serious consequences, both for the good administration of the territory and for the highest questions, the imperial heredity, for example.

If the government had been unitary, its strong forces being gathered around the throne, it would have been at the court of the deceased prince that the capacity for succession would have been debated; it was by no means so. When the emperor died in Asia, his heir revealed himself perfectly in 1172

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Illyria, in Africa or in the island of Brittany, depending on whether, in one or the other of these provinces, a sovereign was improvised who had known how to attach more interests to his cause, and who thus enjoyed more extensive power. Each large district of the State had in its main city a miniature court where the power, however delegated, took on the appearance of a supreme and absolute authority, disposed of everything accordingly, and interpreted the laws themselves, going so far as to confiscate the tax, without concern for the treasury. I do not deny that the lightning of the mortal god, of the sovereign hero, sometimes burst upon the heads of the daring; yet, in most cases, it was only after a long tolerance from which the excuse of abuse was born. Moreover, it was not extremely rare for the recalcitrant magistrate, sending the lightning back where it had come from and declaring himself emperor, to demonstrate the ridicule of this phantom of monarchical unity which sought, without achieving it , to embrace and fertilize a world subjected by its sole dejection. Thus, I cannot grant any of the theoretical sympathy and praise that is now demanded for the imperial era. I limit myself to being exact; this is why I end by admitting that, if the regime inaugurated by Augustus was in itself neither beautiful, nor fruitful, nor laudable, it had a much preferable type of superiority: that in the face of populations multiple fallen to the power of the eagles, he was the only one possible. He made every effort to govern with reason and honor the masses entrusted to him. He failed. The fault was not his: it fell on these populations themselves.

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If the government made its religion a worthless theological formula, a word completely devoid of meaning, I absolve it. He had been forced to do so by the need to remain impartial between a thousand beliefs. If, abolishing local legislation in his courts of appeal, he replaced them with an eclectic jurisprudence whose three bases were servility, atheism and approximate equity, it was because he felt dominated by the same need for leveling. If he had, finally, subjected his administrative procedures to a complicated, lax, poorly balanced balance between indolence and violence, it was because, in the intelligence of the subject masses, he had not found any help. to support a nobler regime. Nowhere now existed the slightest trace of any understanding of serious duties. The governed were not engaged in anything with the rulers: must we therefore accuse the leader, the head of the empire, of the impotence of the body (1)[48] ?

His faults, his vices, his weaknesses, his cruelties, his oppressions, his failures, and, once again, his furious intoxication with domination, his insane efforts to bring heaven down to earth, and place it under the feet of his power. that no one ever imagined huge enough, deified enough, surrounded by enough prestige, obeyed enough, who, with all that, could not manage to simply give themselves heredity, all these madnesses came from nothing other than the appalling ethnic anarchy dominating this rubble society.

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Words are as powerless to convey it as thought is to imagine it. Let us, however, try to get an idea of it by recapitulating in broad strokes the main ones, only the main alloys which had resulted in the Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Carthaginian, Etruscan decadences, and the colonizations of Spain, Gaul and Illyria; because it was from all this detritus that the Roman Empire was formed. Let us remember that in each of the centers that I indicate there were already almost innumerable mergers. Let us not lose sight of the fact that, if the first alliance of black and white had given rise to the Hamitic type, the individuality of the Semites, of the oldest Semites, had resulted from this triple hymen of black, white and again white, 'where a special breed had emerged; that this race, taking another contribution of black, or white, or yellow elements, had, in the affected part, modified so as to form a new combination. So to infinity; so that the human species, subject to such variability of combinations, was no longer separated into distinct categories. It was now in juxtaposed groups, whose economy was disrupted at every moment, and which, constantly changing physical conformation, moral instincts and aptitudes, presented a vast collection of individuals that no common feeling could no longer unite, and that violence alone managed to make them walk in step (1)[49] .

I applied the name Semitic to the imperial period. This word should not be taken as indicating a human variety identical to that which resulted from ancient Chaldean and Hamite mixtures. I only have 1175

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claimed to indicate that, in the multitudes spread with the fortune of Rome over all the countries subject to the Caesars, the major part was affected by a more or less large alloy of black blood, and thus represented, to infinite degrees, a combination, not equivalent, but analogous to the Semitic fusion. It would be impossible to find enough names to mark its innumerable nuances, each endowed with its own individuality which the instability of alliances combined at any moment with some other. However, as the black element appeared in greater abundance in most of these products, some of the fundamental abilities of the Melanian species dominated the world, and it is known that, if contained within certain limits of intensity , and paired with white qualities, they serve the development of the arts and the intellectual improvements of social life, they are not very favorable to the solidity of a serious civilization.

But the division of races did not only result in making regular government impossible, by destroying the instincts and general aptitudes from which only the stability of institutions results; this state of affairs attacked, in another way, the normal health of the social body by giving rise to a crowd of individuals fortuitously endowed with too much strength, and exerting a disastrous action on all the groups of which they were a part. How would society have remained seated 1176

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and peaceful when, at any moment, some combination of ethnic elements in perpetual peregrination and fusion created at the top, at the bottom, in the middle of the scale, and more often at the bottom than elsewhere, because there is more room for chance pairings, individuals who were born armed with faculties powerful enough to act, each in a different direction, on their neighbors and their contemporaries?

In times when national races combine harmoniously, men of talent shine more brightly because they are rarer, and they are rarer because, as they come from a homogeneous mass, they cannot, that reproduce aptitudes and instincts very widespread around them, their distinction does not come from the disparateness of their faculties with those of other men, but from the greater opulence in which they possess the general merits. These creatures are therefore truly great, and, as their superior power consists only in better unraveling the natural ways of the people around them, they are understood, they are followed and make people make, not brilliant sentences, no not even always very illustrious things, but things useful to their group. The result of this perfect, intimate concordance, of the ethnic genius of a superior man with that of the race he guides, is manifested by this, that, if the people are still in the heroic age, the leader is more confused later, for the annalists, with the population, or the population with the leader (1)[50] .

This is how we speak of the Tyrian Hercules alone without mentioning the companions of 1177

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his travels, and, conversely, in the great migrations, we generally forgot the name of the guide and only remembered that of the masses being led. Then, when the light of history, having become too intense, prevents such confusions, it is always difficult to distinguish, in the actions and successes of an eminent sovereign, what constitutes his personal work from what belongs to the intelligence of his nation. At such moments in the life of societies, it is very difficult to be a great man, since there is no way to be a strange man. The homogeneity of the blood opposes this, and to distinguish oneself from the vulgar one must, not be made differently from them, but, on the contrary, by resembling them, surpass all their proportions. When you are not very tall, you always get lost more or less in the multitude, and mediocrities are not noticed, since they only reproduce the common physiognomy a little better. Thus the elite men remain isolated, like tall trees in the middle of a thicket. Posterity, discovering them from afar in their immense stature, admires them more than their analogues at times when too numerous and poorly amalgamated ethnic principles brought out individual power from completely different facts. In these latter cases, it is no longer solely because a man has superior faculties that he can be declared great. There is no longer an ordinary level; the masses no longer have a uniform way of seeing and feeling. 1178

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It is therefore sometimes because this man has grasped a salient side of the needs of his time, or even because he has taken his time in reverse, that he makes himself glorious. In the first alternative, I recognize Caesar; in the second, Sylla or Julien. Then, thanks to a very composite ethnic situation, myriad nuances develop within human instincts and faculties; from each of the groups forming the masses, some superiority necessarily emerges. In the homogeneous state, the number of men noticed was limited; here, within a society made up of disparate groups, this number suddenly appears very considerable, variegated in a thousand ways, and from the great warrior who extends the boundaries of an empire to the violin player who succeeds in making grinding two hitherto enemy notes in an acceptable manner, legions of people acquire fame. All this crowd rushes above the multitudes in perpetual fermentation, pulls them to the right, pulls them to the left, abuses their fatally acquired impossibility of discerning the true, even of having a truth above them, and causes the causes of disorder to swarm. It is in vain that serious superiorities strive to remedy the evil: either they die out in the struggle, or they only succeed, at the cost of superhuman efforts, in building a temporary dam. They had barely left the place when the flood broke loose and carried away their work.

In Semitic Rome, there was no shortage of grandiose natures. Tiberius knew, could, wanted and did. 1179

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Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Adrian, I would count in crowds the Caesars worthy of the purple, but all of them, and the great Septimius Severus himself, recognized themselves powerless to cure the incurable and gnawing disease of an incoherent multitude, without definite instincts or inclinations, rebellious at allowing herself to be directed towards the same goal for a long time, and yet hungry for direction. Too imbecile to understand anything about herself, and moreover poisoned by the successes of the tiny coryphees who, first creating an audience, then a party, arrived at the end where it pleased heaven: several to eminent jobs, the majority to the abundant opulence of informers, not enough to the scaffold. We must also distinguish in these subordinate superiorities two classes exercising a very different action: one followed a civilian career, the other took the military uniform and entered the camps. From a social point of view, I can only praise this one (1)[51] .

Indeed, the unique necessity, to use the expression of an ancient Celtic song (2)[52] , allows for only one mode of organization for armies, 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

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energetic as those around him, immobile, like a factitiously homogeneous people. One day, it will be the only healthy and therefore active part of This means the nation (3)[53] . that after a lot of movement, cries, complaints, songs of triumph soon stifled 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 homeland, but its rebellious members, who are the masses.

In the Roman Empire, the legions were thus the only cause of salvation which prevented civilization from being swallowed up too quickly in the midst of the convulsions constantly determined by ethnic disorder. It was they alone who provided the first-rank administrators, the generals capable of maintaining good order, of suppressing revolts, of defending the borders, and, in short, these generals were the nursery from which the emperors emerged, most of them certainly even less considerable by their dignity than by their talents or their character. The reason is transparent and easy to penetrate. Almost all coming from the lower ranks of the militia, they were, by virtue of

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some great quality, rising from grade to grade, had surpassed the common level by some happy effort, and, carried to the vicinity of the last and most sublime degree, had measured themselves before crossing it with rivals worthy of them and emerging from the same tests. There were exceptions to the rule; but I have the imperial catalog before my eyes, and I will not let myself be told that the majority of the names do not confirm what I am putting forward.

The army was therefore not only the last refuge, the last support, the only torch, the soul of society, it was also the one which, alone, provided the supreme guides, and generally gave them good results. By the excellence of the eternal principle on which all military organization is based, a principle which is moreover only the imperfect imitation of this admirable order resulting from the homogeneity of the races, the army turned to the general advantage the merit of his superiorities of the first rank, and contained the action of others in a manner still profitable through the influence of hierarchy and discipline. But, in the civil order, it was quite different: things did not go so well.

There, a man, the first to come, whom a fortuitous combination of ethnic principles accumulated in his family made somewhat superior to his father and his neighbors, most often began to work in a narrow and selfish sense, independent of good social. The literate professions were naturally the den where these ambitions lurked, because there, to captivate attention and stir up the world, all you need is a sheet of paper, a

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ink horn and a mediocre academic background. In a strong society, a writer or an orator does not gain credit without being of high caliber. No one would stop to listen to massacres, because everyone has the same bias on everything and lives in an intellectual atmosphere that is more or less delicate, but always severe. It is not the same in times of degeneration. Everyone, not knowing what to believe, nor what to think, nor what to admire, willingly listens to the one who challenges him, and it is no longer even what the histrion says that pleases, it is as he says it, and not if he says it well, but if he presents it in a new way, and not even new, but strange, only unexpected. So that, to obtain the benefits of merit, it is not necessary to have any, it is enough to affirm it, as we are dealing with impoverished, numb, depraved, dazed minds.

In Rome, for centuries and like decaying Greece, also in the Semitic period, the career of any adolescent without fortune and without courage was that of the grammarian. The job consisted of composing pieces of verse for the rich, of giving public readings, of lending his pen to factums, petitions, and memoirs intended for the curiales, even the provincial prefects. The reckless risked libels, at the risk of one day seeing their backs and their muse feel the bad humor of a not very literary court (1)[54] . Many more became informers. Most of these grammarians led the life of Encolpus and Ascyltus, the scruffy heroes of Petronius' novel. We met them in the public baths,

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perorating under the colonnades (1)[55] , among the people who gave supper, and more regularly in the bawdy houses, of which they were the usual guests and often the introducers. They led this capricious and shameless life that modern euphemism calls the life of an artist or a bohemian (2)[56] . They entered wealthy families as tutors, and did not always give their students the best moral lessons (3) [57] .

Later, those who did not stop at the beginnings of this fantasy existence, either happier or more skillful, became public professors, certified rhetoricians in some municipality (4)[58 ] . So they acted like civil servants, and added their own commentary to the thousands of glosses already published on the authors. From this category came the simple pedants; they married and held their place within the bourgeoisie. But the majority did not emerge in these laborious and envied, although modest, functions; it was therefore necessary to continue to live outside of social classifications. Lawyers, nothing distinguished Roman beginners from men of the same profession in all times and all countries (1)[59] . Those who knew how to make their mark by the brilliance of their words or the solidity of their doctrine emerged from the obscure bars and could claim the august functions of the praetorium. More than one hero was found among these. The others fed on lawsuits and filled the basilicas with sophisms and quibbles (2) More [60] . 1184

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lawyering, teaching, the profession of libellist, this was not what especially attracted the crowd of scholars, it was the profession of philosopher. In terms of morals, there was no longer any distinction between the different schools: a philosopher was the man wearing a beard, a bag and a Greek-style coat. Even if he was born in the extreme mountains of Mauritania, a Greek-style coat was essential for the true sage. Such clothing infallibly gave that capable air which attracted the respect of amateurs. Besides, we were Platonists, Pyrrhonians, Stoics, Cynics; the doctrines of Proclus, Fronto or, more often, their commentators were developed under the porticos of the cities, today ignored, then fashionable, it did not matter; the essential thing was to know how to occupy the idle and deserve the admiration of the city dweller, the contempt of the soldier (3)[61] . Most of these philosophers were confirmed atheists, and preached doctrines that led there, or not far away. Some, gifted with extraordinary eloquence, managed to please great people, and, living at their expense, acted on their resolutions or their conscience. Many, after having professed that there was no God, not finding their profession lucrative enough, became Isiacs, or priests of Mithras, or serving other Asian divinities discovered by them and that they had the air of invention. It was the dominant taste among the upper classes to throw at the heads of idols, unknown the day before, waves of superstitious adoration which no longer knew where to spread, since regular worship was no longer in existence.

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no less discredited by fashion than other national traditions. All these philosophers, all these scientists, all these Semitic rhetoricians were most often people of intelligence. They generally held in a corner of their brain a system capable of regenerating the social body; but, through an unfortunate misfortune which paralyzed everything, so many heads, so many opinions, so that the multitudes whose intellectual life they dreamed of regulating were plunged more and more, with them, into an inextricable chaos.

Then, as a natural effect of the lowering of ethnic powers and the irritation of strong races, literary and artistic abilities had been declining every day. What one was forced, by poverty, to consider as merit, became very miserable. The poets rehashed what the ancients had said and retold. Soon the supreme talent limited itself to copying as closely as possible the form of this or that classic. People came to rave about the centons. The poetic profession became more difficult. The prize belonged to who knew how to compose as many verses as possible with hemistics taken from Virgil or Lucan. There has long been no more shadow in theaters. Mimes once dethroned comedy; acrobats, gladiators, roosters and chariot races had silenced the mimes.

Sculpture and painting had the same fate: these two arts deteriorated. From a public without ideas there were no longer any real artists. Do we want to know in what type of writings the last spark of original composition took refuge? In history ; and by whom was it best written? By 1186

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military. It was soldiers who, above all, wrote the Augustan History. Outside the camps, there were also undoubtedly writers of genius and rare elevation, but these were inspired by a superhuman feeling, illuminated by a flame which is not earthly: these were the Fathers of the Church.

It will perhaps be argued, from the works of these great men, that, despite the above, there were still firm and honest hearts in the empire. Who denies it? I am talking about multitudes, not individuals. Quite certainly, in the midst of these waves of misery, there still remained here and there, swimming in the vast abyss, the finest virtues, the rarest intelligences. These same fortuitous conjunctions of dispersed ethnic elements created, and, as I noted in the first volume (1)[62] , in very considerable numbers, the most respectable men by their solid integrity, their innate talents or acquired. We found some of them in the senates, we saw them under the legionaries' vestments, they were encountered at court. The episcopate, the service of the basilicas, the monastic meetings fed them in droves, and already bands of martyrs had certified with their blood that Sodom still contained many righteous people.

I do not claim to contradict this evidence; but, I ask, what use did so many virtues, what so many merits, what so much genius serve to the social body? Could they stop his rot for one minute? No ; the noblest minds did not convert the crowd, did not give them

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of the heart. If the Chrysostoms and the Hilaires reminded their contemporaries of the love of the homeland, it was of that above; they no longer thought of the miserable earth that their sandals trod on. Certainly we could have counted many people of virtue who, too convinced of their powerlessness, either lived as best they could while knowing how to adapt to the times, or else, and these were the most nobly inspired, abandoned the world to its decrepitude. and went to ask the practice of Catholic heroism and the desert for the means to free themselves without weakness from a gangrenous society. The army was also an asylum for these wounded souls, an asylum where moral honor was preserved under the fraternal aegis of military honor. There were found there in abundance of wise men who, with helmets on their heads, swords at their sides and spears in their hands, went in cohorts, without regret, to offer their throats to the sacrificial knife.

Also, what could be more ridiculous than this opinion, however established, which attributes the ruin of civilization to the invasion of the barbarians from the North! These unfortunate barbarians were made to appear in the 5th century as delirious monsters who, rushing like hungry wolves on the admirable Roman organization, tearing it to pieces, breaking it for the sake of breaking it, ruining it only to create rubble!

But, even accepting, a fact as false as it is well admitted, that the Germans had these brute instincts, there were no disorders to be invented in the 5th century. All 1188

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already existed of this type; of its own accord, Roman society had long since abolished what had once been its glory. Nothing could compare to his daze, except his helplessness. From the utilitarian genius of the Etruscans and the Kymris Italiotes, from the warm and lively imagination of the Semites, all that remained was the art of still solidly constructing tasteless monuments, and of flatly repeating, like an old man rambling, the beautiful things once invented. In place of writers and sculptors, we only knew pedants and masons, so that the barbarians could not stifle anything, for the conclusive reason that talents, spirit, elegant morals, everything had long since disappeared (1 ) [63] . What was, physically and morally, a Roman of the Third Man of average height, weak in constitution and appearance, generally swarthy, having in his veins a little of the blood of every imaginable race; believing himself to be the first man in the universe, and, , you IVe , of the 5th century? A to prove it, insolent, rampant, ignorant, thief, depraved, ready to sell his sister, his daughter, his wife, his country and his master, and gifted with a fear unrivaled in poverty, suffering, fatigue and death. Moreover, not doubting that the globe and its procession of planets were made for him alone.

Faced with this contemptible being, what was the barbarian? A man with blond hair, a white and rosy complexion, broad shoulders, tall in stature, vigorous like Alcides, reckless like Theseus, dexterous, flexible, fearing nothing in the world, and death less than the rest. This

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Leviathan had ideas about all things, right or wrong, but reasoned, intelligent and which needed to be expanded. He had, in his nationality, nourished his mind with the juices of a severe and refined religion, a sagacious policy, a glorious history. Skilled in reflection, he understood that Roman civilization was richer than his own, and he sought the reason why. He was by no means the rowdy child that we usually imagine, but an adolescent well aware of his positive interests, who knew how to go about feeling, seeing, comparing, judging, preferring. When the vain and miserable Roman opposed his deceitfulness to the rival cunning of the barbarian, who decided the victory? The fist of the second. Falling like a mass of iron on the skull of Remus' poor nephew, this muscular fist told him which way the force had gone. And how then did the crushed Roman take revenge? He wept, and cried out in advance to future centuries to avenge the oppressed civilization in his person. Poor worm! He resembled the contemporary of Virgil and Augustus as Schylock resembled King Solomon. The Roman lied, and those who, in the modern world, out of hatred of our Germanic origins and their governmental consequences in the Middle Ages, amplified these nonsense, were not more truthful. Far from destroying civilization, the man of the North saved the little that survived. He neglected nothing to restore this little and restore its shine. It is his intelligent concern which transmitted it to us, and which, 1190

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giving for protection his particular genius and his personal inventions, taught us to draw from them our mode of culture. Without him, we would be nothing. But his services don't start there. Far from waiting for the time of Attila to rush, a blind and devastating torrent, upon a flourishing society, he had already been for five hundred years the sole support of this society which was becoming more obsolete and more degraded every day. In the absence of its protection, its arm, its weapons, its talent for governing, it would have fallen, from the 2nd century, to the miserable point to which Alaric reduced it, the day he so rightly fell from a ridiculous throne the runt who was lounging there. Without the barbarians of the North, Semitic Rome would not have been able to maintain the imperial form which made it survive, because it would never have succeeded in creating this army which alone retained power, recruited its sovereigns, gave it its administrators, and, here and there, knew how to light up the last rays of glory which made his old age proud.

To tell the truth and without exaggerating anything, almost everything good that imperial Rome knew came from a Germanic source. This truth extends so far that the best plowmen of the empire, the bravest artisans, one could affirm, were these barbarian letes colonized in such large numbers in Gaul and in all the northern provinces (1)[ 64 ] .

When at last the Gothic nations came as a body to exercise a power which, for centuries, had belonged to their compatriots, to their poorly Romanized children, were1191

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Are they guilty of an iniquitous revolution? No ; They seized with justice the fruits ripened by their care, preserved by their labors, and which the bastardization of the Roman races left too corrupt. The taking of possession by the Germans was the legitimate work of a favorable necessity. For a long time, edgy democracy had only existed thanks to the perpetual delegation of absolute power to soldiers. This arrangement ended up no longer being enough, the general reduction had become too great. God then, to save the Church and civilization, gave to the ancient world, no longer a troop, but nations of guardians. These new races, supporting and kneading him with their large hands, made him undergo the rejuvenation of Eson with complete success. Nothing is more glorious in human annals than the role of the peoples of the North; but, before characterizing it with the accuracy that it requires, before showing how wrong it was to close Roman society on the day of the great invasions, since it still lived long afterwards under the aegis of the invaders, it is appropriate to pause and search one last time for what the reunion of the ancient ethnic elements of the Western world, in the vast basin of Romanity, had, ultimately, offered something new to the universe. We must therefore ask ourselves if the Roman colonist had been able to rework in such a way what previous civilizations had bequeathed to him, that he had brought out principles unknown until him, and constituting what we would have the right to call a Roman civilization.

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The question asked, let us enter the fields of observation that it immediately opens, vast fields, disproportionate like the territories added one to the other that it takes the eyes to explore. All are deserted. Rome, having never had an original race, has never developed a thought that was original either. Assyria had a special imprint; Egypt, Greece, India and China likewise. The Persians had once revealed principles to the eyes of the populations subdued by their sword. The Celts, the Italian aborigines, the Etruscans also had their heritage, in truth not very brilliant, not worthy of exciting admiration, but real, but solid, but positive and well characterized.

Rome attracted a little, a corner, a scrap of all these creations, at times when they were already old, dirty, worn out, almost out of service. Within its walls, she installed, not a workshop of civilization where, with a superior genius, she had ever worked on works stamped with a stamp specific to her, but a store of rags where she piled up without choice all that which she easily hid from the helpless old age of the nations of her time. Impressive as was the weakness of those around her, she was never imposing enough to combine anything general, even if it was only a compromise extended everywhere and to everything. She didn't even try it. In various localities, she left religion, morals, laws, political constitutions, more or less as she had found them, to stand.

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content to annoy what could have hindered the dominating control that necessity led her to reserve for herself. Driven by this unique model, however, it sometimes had to deviate more seriously from its habits of inert tolerance.

The extent of his possessions constituted a fact which, in itself, created a new situation and obligations. It was therefore on this ground that, willingly or unwillingly, she had to show her know-how. He was small. She invented very little; she acts like the gardener who prunes orange trees and boxwoods so as to make them take certain shapes, without otherwise worrying about the natural laws which direct the growth of these trees.

The particular action of Rome was confined to administration and civil law (1)[65] .

I do not know to what

extent it would ever be possible, by limiting ourselves to these two specialties, to give rise to truly civilizing results in the broad sense of the word. The law is only the written manifestation of the state of morals. It is one of the major products of a civilization, it is not civilization itself. It does not enrich a society materially or intellectually; it regulates the use of its forces, and its merit is to bring about a better dispensation; she does not create them. This definition is indisputable among homogeneous nations. However, it must be admitted that it is not presented in such a clear, so immediately obvious manner, in the particular case of Roman law. It could be, at a pinch, that the

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elements of this code collected from a multitude of aged nations, and therefore experienced, summarize a more general wisdom than did each of the previous legislations in its particular, and from the theoretical observation of this possibility, we are easily induced to conclude, without look more closely, that in fact it was realized in Roman law. This is the generally accepted opinion today. This opinion admits, very lightly, that imperial law arises from a conception of abstract equity, free from any traditional influence, a perfectly gratuitous hypothesis. The philosophy of Roman law, like the philosophy of all things, was created after the fact. It was above all inspired by notions completely foreign to antiquity, and which would have greatly surprised the legalists to whose works it is linked.

Although the sources of this case law are numerous, they are not infinite, and they are very positive. Analytical doctrines must have influenced them; but these doctrines themselves, being only emanations of the Italian spirit or the Hellenistic imagination, could not introduce anything more general. As for Christianity, it has been little guessed by jurists, because one of the remarkable characteristics of their monument is religious indifference. Certainly such a fact is most antipathetic to the natural tendencies of the Church, and she testified to this by the way in which she reformed Roman law, making it canon law.

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Rome, foreign within its own walls, could, from its origin, only have borrowed laws. In its very first period, its legislation was modeled on that of Latium, and, when the Twelve Tables were instituted to respond to the views of an already composite population, some ancient stipulations were preserved, supporting them with a sufficient dose of articles chosen from the codes of Greater Greece. But this was still not satisfying the needs of a nation which was constantly changing its nature and, consequently, its aims. The immigrants abounding in the City did not want this compilation of decemvirs, foreign in turn or in part to their national ideas of justice. The ancient inhabitants, who, for their part, could not modify their law with the same speed as their blood, instituted a special magistrate responsible for settling conflicts between foreigners and Romans, and foreigners among themselves. This magistrate, the praetor peregrinus, had the distinctive obligation of taking his jurisprudence outside the provisions of the Twelve Tables.

Some authors, deceived by the favor enjoyed, in the last days of the republic, the quality of Roman citizen among the subject populations, believed that this concern had always existed, and they wrongly assumed it for earlier periods. This is a serious mistake. The concession of Latin or Italian law was not, originally, a mark of inferiority left by the senate to its vanquished. It was, on the contrary, an act dictated by a prudent reserve towards peoples who were willing to submit 1196

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to the political supremacy of the Romans, but not to their legal system. These nations held on to their customs. They were left to them, and the praetor peregrinus, who was to judge those of their citizens domiciled in the City, did not have the mission, leaving aside the local law, to search in his imagination for a fantastic ideal of equity, but to apply as best he could what he knew of the principles of positive justice in use among the Italiotes, the Greeks, the Africans, the Spaniards, the Gauls brought, for the protection of their interests, before his tribunal.

And, in fact, if this magistrate had had to call upon his strength of invention, it would have immediately appealed to his conscience. Now he was Roman, he had the notions of his country on the just and the unjust; he would have argued in Roman and, quite fluently, applied the prescriptions of the Twelve Tables, the most beautiful in the world in his eyes. This was precisely what he was commanded to avoid. It only existed so as not to pronounce it like that. He was therefore quite naturally forced to inquire about the ideas of his litigants, to study them, to compare them, to appreciate them, and to draw, for his own use, from the results of this research, an official conviction, which became for him natural law, international law, jus gentium. But this potpourri of positive doctrines thus combined by an isolated individual, today a magistrate, tomorrow nothing, had nothing obviously just or true about it. So he changed with the praetors. Each of them arrived in charge with his own, which was contradicted at the end of the year of exercise by that of another. Depending on which judge 1197

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understood or knew better a particular foreign legislation, that of Athens or of Corinth, of Padua or of Taranto, it was the custom of Athens, of Corinth, of Padua or of Taranto which made up the best part of what, this year There, in Rome, we called the law of nations.

When the Romanized mixture was at its height, we were rightly bored with this poor mobility. The praetores peregrini were forced to judge according to fixed rules, and, to obtain these rules, they had recourse to the only admissible resource: they studied, compiled, amplified articles of law taken from all the codes from which they could acquire knowledge, and thus a legislation without any originality was produced, a legislation which perfectly resembled the mixed and exhausted races which it was called to govern, which had retained something of all, but something indecisive, uncertain , barely recognizable, and which, in this state, was found to suit the whole of society so well that it stifled the Sabine spirit remaining in the Twelve Tables, incorporating what it could retain of it , little, and extended his empire on all sides up to the points where the Roman roads ended in the last outpost of the legions.

However, an objection remains. Couldn't the great jurists of the Belle Epoque have succeeded in extracting from all these disparate shreds, from all these members torn from often antipathetic codes, a brand new juice which had become the vital element of this body of doctrines so laboriously combined? , and give to its whole a value that its

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parties did not have? I will answer that the most eminent among the jurisconsults did not apply themselves to this task. To fulfill it, they would have had to step out not only from themselves, but above all from the society that absorbed them. It is a figure of speech to say that a man is greater than his century; It is not given to anyone to have eyes so piercing that they go beyond the horizon. The ultimate in genius is to see clearly everything that this horizon contains. Special men could only acquire and had notions that existed around them. It was not open to them to lend to their work an originality which was not available anywhere. They did marvelous work in appropriating the materials at their disposal, in the art of drawing from them the practical consequences that the most subtle folds of the text could contain. This is what made them great, nothing more, and that is enough.

But, add some, have you forgotten this supreme praise deserved by Roman law: its universality? What does that mean? It was universal in the Roman Empire, yes. He was, he is, in high esteem among Romanized peoples of all times, I agree. But, outside this circle, no mind has ever shown the slightest inclination to admit it. When he reigned with all his plenitude under the protection of the eagles, he did not make a conquest outside his borders. The Germans saw it practiced, even protected it among their subjects, and never took it. Much of today's Europe, America, studies it and does not adopt it. That, in schools, such a doctor dedicates his

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admiration is a matter of controversy; but in a thousand places, in England, in Switzerland, in certain parts of Germany, morals reject it. In France and Italy itself, we cannot accept it without profound modifications. It is therefore not the written reason, as has been ambitiously said. It is the reason for a time, a place, vast no doubt, but far from being as vast as the earth. This is the special reason for an agglomeration of men, and not for the majority of men; in a word, it is a local law, like all those that have existed until now. It is therefore, in no way, an invention which deserves the name universal. It is not sufficient to win over all consciences and regulate all human interests. Therefore, since she is so far from being able to justly claim such a character; since, moreover, it contained nothing that did not come from a source which, in its purity, did not belong to Rome; since it has nothing whole, living, original, Roman law is not endowed with a more powerful civilizing action than that of other legislations. It is therefore no exception, it is only a result and not a cause of social culture; it cannot in any way be used to characterize a particular civilization. If the law was thus devoid of truly national principles, the same can be said of the administration, as I have shown elsewhere, and what is blamed today, with so much reason, in modern Asian empires, this deep indifference for the governed, who does not know the 1200

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governing and is only known to him in connection with the tax and the militia, existed absolutely to the same degree in Republican Rome and in Imperial Rome. The hierarchy of officials and their way of proceeding were similar, with an added nuance of despotism, to that which governed the Persians, a model which the Romans imitated much more often than has been said. Moreover, both the administration and civil justice remained subject, in practice, to commonly received notions of morality. It is on these points that we recognize how far the empire of the Caesars is from having produced anything new, from having put into circulation an idea or a fact which was not prior to it.

An honest Roman man, as I have said in more than one place, was certainly not an undiscoverable phoenix (1)[66] . In all social situations, we found in abundance, in the decline of the empire, beautiful and noble characters naturally inclined to good and asking nothing better than to do it. But the honest man, in every society, directs himself towards the particular ideal created by the civilization at the center of which he finds himself. The virtuous Hindu, the upright Chinese, the Athenian of good morals, are types who are alike above all in their common desire to act well, and, just as the different classes, the different professions, have special duties which often exclude, in the same way the human creature is everywhere dominated, depending on the environments it occupies, by a preexisting theory on the subject of worthy perfections

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to be sought after. The Roman world was subject to this law like the others; he had, like them, his ideal of good. Let us examine it, and see if it contained this new principle which we are pursuing, and which until this moment has always escaped us.

Alas! it is the same here as when it came to legislation; we only see borrowed and abbreviated doctrines. Just as philosophy came largely from the Greeks, and only abounded more particularly towards stoicism, a dogma, ultimately, despite its beautiful appearances, crude and sterile, only under the influence of Celtic-Italian blood, likewise the Sabine virtues, gradually Semiticized, contained nothing that was well known to the first European races. The most honest and gentle man did not think he was doing wrong by exposing his offspring. He would have considered deception and madness to practice or even to feel these beautiful movements of self-sacrifice which form the basis of Germanic and chivalrous morality, and from which Christianity took such great advantage.

No matter how much I look, I do not see a single feeling developing in Roman society, a single moral idea whose origin I cannot find, either in the ancient harshness of the aborigines, or in the utilitarian culture of the Etruscans, either in the composite refinement of the Semitized Greeks, or in the spiritual ferocity of Carthage and Spain.

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accumulated in his hands did not produce any improvement, quite the contrary. But if we want to talk about the dispersion of notions and beliefs, then we must use a very different language. Rome carried out a truly extraordinary action in this sense. Only the Semites and the Chinese would be admissible to contest its pre-eminence. Nothing could be more true, nothing more obvious. If Rome did not enlighten or enlarge the fractions of humanity that had fallen into its orbit, it powerfully hastened their amalgamation. I have stated the reasons which prevent me from applauding such a result: to name it again is to sufficiently indicate that I am far from bowing before the majesty of the Roman name. This majesty, this grandeur owed its life only to the common prostration of all ancient peoples. A shapeless mass of expiring or exhaled bodies, the force which sustained it during half of its long and painful march was borrowed from what it hated most, from its antipode, from barbarism, to use its expression. Let us accept, if we wish, both this name and the insulting intention attached to it. Let the Roman peat rise on its pedestals; it is no less true that it was only as this protective barbarity further enlarged both its influence and its action that we saw the emergence and finally reign of notions whose germ was no longer found anywhere in the ancient Western world, neither among the learned fellow citizens of Pericles, nor under the Assyrian ruins, nor among the first Celts.

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This action began early and continued for a long time. Just as, in fact, there had been an Etruscan Rome, an Italian Rome, a Semitic Rome, there must have been and there was a Germanic Rome.

1. ÿ The last Hellenistic immigrations into the kingdom of Naples, Sicily, lower Italy were Byzantine and Arab. In 1461, 1532 and 1744, more Albanians came to Sicily and Calabria. 2. ÿ (1) Dyon. Halicarn., Antiq. Rom., 1, LXXIII : Palaehos me oÿn neither author nor logographer is a Roman. from ancient words of speech preserved in sacred scrolls, each one who received them wrote them down. — Sans me faire le champion de la confiance vaniteuse d'Ennius dans son propre mérite, je suis tout disponible à croire avec lui qu'avant le temps où il se mit à écrire, en cherchant l'imitation des chefs-d'œuvre grecs , il y avait des chants, mais pas de poésie dans le Latium : « Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat, nec dicti studiosus erat. » 3. ÿ (1)

With thee I felt the swift flight of the Philippians, leaving not a little one unwell, When my broken strength and threatening shame only touched my chin. Hor., Od., II, 7, 9. 4. ^ (2) See, on the richness of the Latin annals, and the difference existing between them and the Greek histories, Niebuhr, Rœm. Histories, t. II, p. 1 and pass. — The Hellenic method offers the transition from the Hindu and Persian epics, completely void in relation to chronology and material accuracy, to the Italiote fastes, which, on the contrary, had only these two qualities. 5. ÿ (3) Polybus does full justice to the sordid avarice of the Roman spirit: ÿAÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿ. (Fragm., book 32, ch. 12.) 6. ÿ (1) "Why should I stop the premium and begin to reduce the fold to the custom?" Are the villages infinite spaces? number of families and nationalities? the weight of silver and gold? Are there any miracles of the tablets? (Tac., Ann., III, 53.) 7. ÿ (2) Am. Thierry, la Gaul sous l'adm. Rome Introd., t. 1, p. 145. 8. ÿ (3) Petron., Satyr., 37: "The wife, he says, of Trimalchio, is called Fortunata, who "measures coins by the measure. "-" He does not know what he has

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he is so zaplutus (ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ). "-" More silver lies in that host than anyone has in his fortunes. Family indeed, father! father do not believe me, I think it is a tenth part that knows its master, etc., etc. " - 38: " But be careful not to despise the rest of his colberts, they are very juicy. Do you see him who is reclining at the bottom? Today he owns his eight hundred; grew from nothing; he used to carry the wood by his own neck. » 9. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, ibid., t. I, p. 208: "This new society which was then being formed, and which, in Italy, since the social war, was no longer recruited except among the freedmen. There is nothing surprising in the fact that men of this quality would gladly repeat with Trimalcion: "Amici et servi homines sunt, et æque unum lactem biberunt." (Petron., Satyr., LXXI.) They were no better for this, and no less wrote on the door of their house, like this same financier: Every slave who, without my permission, shall go out of here, he will receive a hundred blows. "Quisquis servus sine Dominico jussu foras exierit, accipiet plagas centum." » (Petron., Satyr., XXVIII.) 10. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Hist. of Gaul under the administration. rom., t. I, p. 181. 11. ÿ (2) "Eodem anno, gravibus senatus decretis libido feminarum coercita, cautumque ne quæstum corpore faceret cui avus, aut pater aut maritus eques romanus fuisset. Nam Vistilia, praetoria familia genita, licentiam rape apud ædiles vulgaverat. " (Tacit., Ann., II, 85.) 12. ÿ (3) "At, Hercules, nemo refert quod Italia externæ opis indiget quod vita populi romani per incerta maris et tempestatum quotidie volvitur, ac, nisi provinciarum copiæ et dominis et servitiis et agris subvenerint, nostra nos scilicet nemora nostræque villæ tuebuntur! (Tac., Ann., III, 54.) 13. ÿ (4) In the Flavian war, Antonius treated the praetorians dismissed by Vitellius and collected by him very disdainfully, when, reminding them that they were born in Italy, unlike the legionnaires of his army, Germans or Gauls, he calls them pagani, peasants. (Hist., III, 24.) It was in this special guard, which never left the imperial residences and carried very few weapons, that the Italiotes continued to serve for a certain time; but, in the end, the emperors got tired of them, and replaced them with real soldiers raised in the North. 14. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under the administration. rom. Introduction, t. I, p. 119. 15. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under the administration. rom. Introduction, t. I, p. 115 et pass., 166, 211. 16. ÿ (1) At this time, there is hardly any mention of independent Celtic nations beyond the Rhine. Consequently, the race of the Kymri no longer occupied, w

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above the Province, Helvetia and the British Isles. All these countries were certainly very populated, but they could not be compared in this respect with the empire. Rome alone had at least two million inhabitants. Alexandria had 600,000 (58 BC). Jerusalem, during the siege of Titus, lost 1,100,000 people, and 97,000 having been reduced to slavery by the Romans, this multitude, which moreover represented approximately the population of all Judea, must be considered as having formed, before the war, 1,200,000 to 1,300,000 souls for this very small province. The empire, under the Antonines, numbered 160 million souls, and Gibbon, for the same period, attributes only 107 to the whole of Europe. There was therefore no proportion between the resistance that the Gallic nations could offer and the numerical energy that Rome had against them. — See Zumpt, in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1840, p. 20. 17. ÿ (2) A special word was invented under the emperors to express the heterogeneous whole of the Roman universe: it was that of romanity, romanitas ; it was opposed to barbaria, which included all the nations, whether from the south, from the north, from Asia, from Europe, the Parthians as well as the Germans, living outside this confusion. — See Amed. Thierry, Hist. of Gaul under the administration. rom. Introd., t. I, p. 199. 18. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Hist. of Gaul under the administration. rom., t. I, p. 13. — Tac., Hist., IV, 55: “Sabinus, super insitam vanitatem, falsæ stirpis gloria incendebatur: proaviam suam divo Julio, per Gallias bellanti, corpore atque adulterio placuisse. » What made this claim even more bizarre was that Sabinus only asserted it to make his rights to lead an insurrection against Roman power better felt. 19. ÿ (1) Hellenism still had enough individuality for the Seleucids to be led by religious fanaticism to persecute the Jews. (See Bœttiger, cited work, t. I, p. 28.) 20. ÿ (1) The Italian noble population began to disappear from Rome around the second Punic war. In 220 BC. BC, two years before the opening of hostilities, the census had given 270,213 Roman citizens. In 204, there were only 214,000 left; However, 8,000 slaves had been freed so that they could be incorporated into the legions. (Zumpt, cited work, p. 13.) After the war, it turned out that eight legions had been annihilated at Cannes, and two others, with the Italian allies, so well massacred in the Litana forest that there were none. only ten men had escaped. These terrible voids were filled by means of foreigners, and the plebeian families of ancient extraction passed into the senate and into the equestrian order. (Ibidem, p. 25.) We see to what extent old houses

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d'origine sabine devaient être devenes rares parmi les patriciens au temps des premiers Césars. 21. ÿ (1) "The power of ... the tribune... Augustus found this term of the highest pinnacle, so that he would not assume

the name of king or dictator, and still preside over some other empires by his appellation." " (Tac., Ann., III, 56.) 22. ÿ (2) " ...

A leader carrying all the functions of the law and the magistrate...”

(Tac., Ann., XI, 5.) - Suet., Dom., 13: "The Lord and our God commands it to be done in this way." » 23. ÿ (3) It is often said that it is wars which disturb the conscience of people, bring them back to ignorance and prevent them from creating a fair idea of their needs. Now, from the battle of Actium until the death of Commodus, there was no other outcry within the empire than the struggle of the Flavians against Vitellius. Material prosperity was very great; but the power remained irregular, retained its inconsistency, and national intelligence continued to decline. (See Am. Thierry, History of Gaul under Roman administration, vol. I, p. 241.)

24. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under Roman administration. Introduction, t. I, p. 163 et pass. 25. ÿ (2) Caesar had desired a code established on a unitary principle. He died too early to carry out his project. (Am. Thierry, Gaul under Roman administration. Introd., vol. I, p. 73.) I also believe that the time had not yet arrived. He would have had to overcome resistance which, a little later, no longer existed. (See Am. Thierry, Hist. of Gaul under the Roman adm. Introd., t. I, p. 253 et pass.) — Savigny, Geschichte des rœmischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, t. I, p. 4 and pass. : “Very quickly,” remarks the illustrious writer, “Roman law ceased to be animated by a true creative spirit. The great jurisconsults of the time of Caracalla and Alexander were almost the last who were able to breathe life into the doctrine. » This opinion is still too favorable. 26. ÿ (1) The astonishment of the not very idealistic republicans of Sabine Rome must not have been small when they saw Hannibal put forward theological grievances against him. The Carthaginian presented himself as an apostle of Milytta, and, in the name of this Chanaanite divinity, he destroyed the Italian temples and melted the metal idols. (See Bœttiger, Ideen zur Kunst-Mythologie, vol. I, p. 29.)

27. ÿ (2) Mr. Am. Thierry warmly congratulates Adrien for the fact that, in his perpetual travels across the empire, the tourist-administrator studied all religions, and, to fully understand their spirit and merits, had all their mysteries revealed to them by accepting all their initiations. (Gaul under Roman administration. Introd., t. I, p. 173.) — Petronius, Satyr.,

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XVII, says excellently: “Nostra regio tam præsentibus plena est numinibus, ut facilius possis deum quam hominem invenire. » 28. ÿ (3) Before the invention of Providence , which offered the political advantage of not deciding any question, the Semitized Greeks had felt the same need as the Romans and for the same causes, to bring together the cults recognized in the sphere of political action; but, instead of accepting them equally, they had sought quarrel with everyone. Two rhetoricians, Charax and Lampsacus, took pains to reduce all myths to a rational explanation. Evhémere generalized this method, and for him there was nothing left in the divine stories except very ordinary facts, or poorly understood, or disfigured; finally, in his opinion, all religions were based on misunderstandings of the most petty nature. He had discovered that Cadmus was a cook to the king of Sidon, who had fled to Boeotia with Harmonia, the same monarch's flute player. (Bœttiger, Ideen zur Kunst-Mythologie, t. I, p. 187 et pass.) The great pitfall of evhemerism is to put forward explanations which need proof as much as the facts they take into account. part. 29. ÿ (1) Petronius, Satyr., XXXVII: “Nunc nec quid nec quare in coelum abiit et Trimalchionis tapanta est (ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿ). » 30. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under the administration. rom. Introduct., t. I, p. 187 and pass.

31. ÿ (1) Les gens réfléchis se rendaient bien compte de cette indignité des populations nouvelle vis-à-vis de la gloire des anciennes: « Cn. Pison, they accuse Germanicus indirectly, lui reprocha d'avoir, à la honte du nom romain, montré trop de bienveillance, non pour les Athéniens, éteints par tant de désastres, mais pour l'écume des nations qui les avait replaced. " (Tac., Ann., II, 55.) 32. ÿ (1) "In the same days, Caesar (Claudius) enrolled in the number of patricians the oldest, each one of the senate or of those whose parents had been famous; to the few remaining families whom Romulus had called the greater and L. Brutus the lesser nations; having exhausted also what the dictator Caesar read Cassius and the prince Augustus read Sænia, to read. (Tac., Ann., XI, 25.) Claude venait de déclarer que, l'ancienne coutume de la république étant de s'adjoindre tous les chefs des peuples conquis, les Gaulois pouvant être reçus dans le sénat, et il y avait admis les Édu (Ibidem, 24.) It should be noted that the oldest houses of Rome, the most illustrious, were barely six hundred years old, and there were very few in this case, such was the fusion of the Italian races. fast.

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33. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under Roman administration, t. I, p. 200 and pass. 34. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under the administration. rom. Introd., t. I, p. 182 and following

35. ÿ (1) Meyer, Lateinische Anthologie, t. II. 36. ÿ (2) Savigny (Geschichte des rœmischen Rechtes im Mittelalter) expressed the ancient opinion very well by reasoning it: “When Rome was small,” said this eminent man, “and when it placed under its dependence some Italian cities by the granting of its civic rights, one could suppose between the latter and the conquering city a sort of equality, and it is on this notion that the free constitution of these cities was based. But when the empire had extended over three parts of the world, this equality ceased completely, so that local freedom had to diminish. Then came the pressure of the imperial administration, which, by imposing the same level of obedience everywhere, gradually made the differences that existed between Italy and the provinces disappear. The Peninsula, formerly the most favored part of the territory, lost its individual value, the formerly conquered lands recovered somewhat, then finally everything sank together into an incurable weakening. For Rome itself, this irritation is obviously..." (T. I, p. 31.)

37. ÿ (1) Am. Thierry, Gaul under the administration. rom. Introd., t. I, p. 181: “The party of republican and aristocratic ideas soon had only new men as its leaders; neither Corbulon, nor Paetus Thraseas, nor Agricola, nor Helvidius, belonged to the ancient patricianship. From the second century, and especially in the third, the senatorial families were for the most part foreign to Italy. » 38. ÿ (1) Tiberius had issued this very modern maxim: “Deorum injurias diis curæ. » (Tacit., Ann., lib. I, 73.) It was about the law on crimes of lèse-majesté, the effects of which he sought to extend, not for the gods, but for himself. 39. ÿ (1) Nothing was changed by the constitution of Caracalla in the mode of administration of the cities, no new advantage was introduced, and Savigny saw only a simple evolution of the personal state of the governed. (Geschichte des rœmischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, t. I, p. 63.) 40. ÿ (2) To cite only one example, see what Suetonius says about

Vespasian's financial administration. (Vesp., 16.) 41. ÿ (3) Consult, on municipal organization during the imperial era, the History of municipal law in France, by M. Raynouard, Paris, 1829, 2 vols. in-8o and the Critical History of Municipal Power in France, by C. Leber, Paris, 1829, in-8o, — Although specially .

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intended for the examination of Gallo-Roman institutions, these two works contain a large number of general observations. Mr. Raynouard, a cabinet man of Provençal origin, is an enthusiastic admirer of Roman ideas and processes. Mr. Leber, a scholar of immense knowledge, but at the same time a practical administrator, and born in a less completely Romanized province than Mr. Raynouard, is infinitely more cautious in his praise, and often this prudence extends to blame. These are two curious works, although the second is superior to the first. I have used it a lot in these pages; but as, unfortunately, I do not have them in front of me, I am reduced to quoting from memory. — Savigny, Geschichte des rœmischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, in-8o ,Heidelberg, 1815, t. I, p. 18 and on. 42. ÿ (1) I would not dare here to show myself as severe, although I may seem very severe, as a writer whose help was quite unexpected to me in a fight against opinions of which Mr. Amédée Thierry is the main propagator . I will cover myself with his very powerful authority in this meeting. Here is what he says: “Under the human pretext of gratifying the world with a flattering title, an Antonine called in his edicts the names of Roman citizens the tributaries of the Roman empire, these men whom a consul could legally torture , beat with blows, crushed with corvées and taxes. Thus the power of this once inviolable title was denied, and before which the most shameless tyranny stopped; thus perishes that old cry of protection which made the executioners retreat: I am a Roman citizen. » (Augustin Thierry, Ten years of historical studies, in-12, Paris, 1846, p. 188.) 43. ÿ (1) Savigny, Geschichte des rœmischen 25. — Certain dignitaries of the municipal curies enjoyed fortunate privileges from the point of view of corporal punishment, to which they were not subject like their colleagues; but, on the other hand, we were entitled to impose heavier fines on them. (Ibid., p. 71.) 44. ÿ (1) See, for the quasi-aristocratic situation of the ordo decurionum under the emperors, Savigny, Geschichte des rœmischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, t. I, p. 22 et seqq. In the same place, the details of the miserable life of the curiale. The author I cite is of the opinion that nothing can give a more accurate idea of the internal decomposition of the State under Christian principalities than the Theodosian constitutions relating to municipal curiae. Not only did the curiales not want to be serfdom, but they even preferred serfdom, and a law was needed to close this refuge to them. We even came to this strange resource of condemning people prosecuted for crime to the status of decurions. In truth, a

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Imperial restricted the use of this singular penalty to the punishment of unworthy ecclesiastics, and of soldiers who, through cowardice, had evaded the orders of their leaders. (Savigny, loc. cit.) 45. ÿ (1) Tacitus was able to put with complete truth these words into the mouth of Arminius: “Aliis gentibus, ignorantia imperii romani, inexperta esse supplicia, nescia tributa. » (Ann., 1. I, 59.) 46. ÿ (2) In the midst of his declamations, always unfavorable to the supreme power, Tacitus once indulges in a singular confession. He relates that after having eavesdropped on the deliberations of the senate, Tiberius went and sat in a corner of the praetorium and watched the judgments; then he adds: “Many decrees, as a result of his presence, were rendered contrary to the intrigues and prayers of the powerful; but while equity was saved, liberty was lost. » (Ann., I, 75.) Freedom of what? the freedom to hang the innocent and ruin the poor? When a nation is at the point of the Romans of the empire, its first need is a master; only a master can save him from incessant convulsions. The genius of Tiberius made up for the shameful ineptitude of the senate and the people; his ferocity was at least excusable by the bloodthirsty abjection of both. What he killed was hardly worth pity, and he would undoubtedly have spared more men who would not have deserved from him this reflection imbued with the deepest disgust, and which escaped him every time he left the senate: “O homines ad servitutem paratos! » (Tac., Ann., III, 65.) 47. ÿ (1) Local magistrates were, in principle, supreme dispensers of law throughout the territory; but, in fact, they only exercised judgment in first instance; the appeal was made to the imperial officers, and even they only applied their jurisdiction in minimal matters not exceeding a certain sum. Disputes between cities, between the authorities of the same city, criminal judgment, etc., came under the jurisdiction of the sovereign's courts. (Savigny, Geschichte des rœmischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, t. I, p. 35 et seqq.) 48. ÿ (1) “ Every nation has the government it deserves. Long reflections and long experience, paid dearly, have convinced me of this truth as of a mathematical proposition. Any law is therefore useless and even fatal (however excellent it may be in itself), if the nation is not worthy of the law and made for the law. » (The Count of Maistre, Unpublished Letters and Pamphlets, t. I, p. 215.) 49. ÿ (1) In this jumble, the northern elements were undoubtedly less numerous than those which came from the southern regions. However, they deserve to be noticed more than has been done so far. Many slaves of the Wendish race were widespread in Italy as well as in

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Greece well before the last century of the republic. The names given to servile characters by the poets of the new comedy and by the Latin school of Plautus and Terence bear witness to this. We can also attribute to Romanized Slavs certain inscriptions, engraved on tombs or on instruments, which Mommsen and Lepsius cited and which Mr. Wolanski interpreted in an exact manner through Slavic. I only believe that Mommsen, like Mr. Wolanski, attributes far too high an antiquity to these monuments, which are also curious in themselves. — See Mommsen, Die unter-italischen Dialekte, and Wolanski, Schriftdenkmale der Slawen. 50. ÿ (1) Thus the mythological stories of Greece speak of the exploits of Hercules without ever mentioning his companions, and the leaders of different traveling peoples are none other than the personification of the nations themselves; Leck or Tschek, according to the legends, directed the exploits of the Lecks, Suap those of the Swabians, Saxneat those of the Saxons, Francus those of the Franks, etc. (Schaffarik, Slawische Alterthümer, vol. I, p. 235.) 51. ÿ (1) People will object to the disturbances that military revolts often brought to the empire. I will answer that the army, capable of everything, often abused it, and that this is a disadvantage of omnipotence; but I refer to the very spectacle of these commotions, for example, to the bloody struggles of the legions of Germania against the Flavians in Rome, so that we have to convince ourselves that the soldiers were, despite their brutality, much superior in every way to the civilian population. I only want their strange loyalty to Vitellius as a guarantee. (Tac., Hist., III.) 52. ÿ (2) La Villemarqué, Popular songs of Brittany, t. I, p. 1. 53. ÿ (3) However, the army will have no real merit, apart from greater subordination, which is, after all, a negative value, however indispensable it may be, only if it is composed of better ethnic elements as well as the social body to which it lends its support. This is precisely what happened to the legions of Rome, as I explain in a useful place. Likewise, in our time, the Manchu troops are certainly superior to the Chinese populations; but, as they are also recruited a little too much from these populations, their military merit leaves much to be desired. What is excellent in the law of camps can only neutralize to a certain extent the bad consequences of mixtures. 54. ÿ (1) Suet., Dom., 8: “Scripta famosa, vulgoque edita, quibus primores viri ac feminæ notabantur, abolevit non sine auctorum ignominia. » 55. ÿ (1) Bormanni, T. Petron., Satyr., VI: “Ingens scholasticorum turba in porticum venit. »

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56. ÿ (2) Ibid., 10: "What should I, a most foolish man, have done when I was dying of hunger?... You are much more disgraceful than me, Hercules, who, while dining abroad, praised a poet." And so, bursting into laughter from the most wretched lyre, we retired more peacefully to the rest. » 57. ÿ (3) Ibid., 85. 58. ÿ (4) Ce furent les méthodes d'enseignement adoptues par ces éducateurs d'enfants dont un personnage de Pétrone, rhéteur lui-même, parle en ces termes : those that we have in use either hear or see. But pirates standing on the shore with chains, and tyrants writing edicts by which they order their sons to cut off the heads of their fathers; but the answers given in the pestilence were that three or more virgins should be sacrificed; but honeyed balls of words and all said and done as if sprinkled with poppy seeds and sesame seeds. (T. Petronius A., Satyricon, I.)

59. ÿ (1) Petron., Satyr., 15: "However, the lawyers, already almost at night, who wanted to make a profit of the cloak, demanded that both be deposited with them, and that the next day the judge would look into the complaint... The kidnappers were pleased, and I do not know which one of the preachers, a bald man with a very tuberous forehead, who sometimes also used to do business, had invaded the mantle, and asserted that it would be exhibited on the morrow. » 60. ÿ (2) Petron., Satyr., V : He gives the first verses of the years, and Maeonium drinks the fountain with a happy breast; Soon, with a flock full of Socrates, Liber will change the reins and shake the mighty arms of the great Demosthenes. 61. ÿ (3) Petron., Satyr., III: "The least in these exercises do the teachers sin, who necessarily have to rage with the insane." For, as Cicero says, unless they have said what the youth will prove, they will be left alone in the schools; as false sycophants, when they catch a rich man at dinner, think of nothing before that which they think will be most agreeable to the hearers (for they will not otherwise obtain what they ask, unless they make certain traps in their ears): so is the master of eloquence, unless, like a fisherman, he puts bait on his hook, which when he knows that the little fish are hungry, he lingers on the rock without hope of prey. » 62. ÿ (1) Voir tome Ier. 63. ÿ (1) Au temps de Trajan, on avait déjà contracted l'habitude de se servir des anciennes statues pour glorifier les contemporains. On se contentait de changer les têtes, ce qui épargnait beaucoup de peine et d'invention. — See, among others, the statue of Plotina, from the Louvre Museum, no. 692. part, p. 238.) (Clarac, Manual of the History of Art, 1

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speaks several times of the profound decadence of the arts and especially of painting, caused by the exclusive love that his contemporaries had for profit: “Nolito ergo mirari, si pictura deficit, quum omnibus diis hominibusque formosior videatur massa auri, quam quidquid Apelles , Phidiasve, Græculi delirantes, fecerunt. » (Satyr., LXXXIX.) 64. ÿ (1) Next Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterth., p. 305 et pass., the letes formed an intermediate class between free men and slaves. Schaffarik (t. I, p. 261, note 1) considers them to be originally descended from the Lettes, Latvians or Lithuanians. The German word, Leute, to which Mr. Aug. Thierry reports this etymology, which would only be its derivative. We said læti Franci, læti Batavi, læti Suevi, etc., probably to indicate the origin of these different lètes. (Guérard, Polyptique d'Irminon, t. I, p. 251. — Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1 1852, p. 934 and 948.) 65. ÿ (1) Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. 66. ÿ (1) See volume 1

is

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BOOK SIX. WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

CHAP. IER. — The Slavs. — Domination of some ante-Germanic Arian peoples. CHAP. II. — The German Arians. CHAP. III. — Capacity of native Germanic races. CHAP. IV. — Germanic Rome. — The Romano-Celtic and Romano-Germanic armies. — The German emperors. CHAP. V. — Latest migrations of the Scandinavian Arians. CHAP. VI. — Latest developments of the company Germano-Roman. CHAP. VII. — Native Americans. CHAP. VIII. — European colonizations in America.

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FIRST CHAPTER. The Slavs. — Domination of some pre-Germanic Arian peoples.

From the 4th century until around 50 BC, the parts of the world which considered themselves exclusively civilized, and which made us share this opinion, that is to say the countries of Hellenic blood and customs , the countries of Italo-Semitic blood and customs, had little apparent contact with the nations established beyond the Alps. One would have believed that the only ones who had ever seriously threatened the South, the Gauls, had sunk into the bowels of the earth. Little word of what was happening at home spread to their neighbors. To know that they were still alive and even very much alive, one had to be, like the Massaliotes, involuntarily subject to the repercussions of their discords, or, like Posidonius, to have traveled in these regions which, somewhat voluntarily, had once been populated with terrors more fantastic than real.

The Celtic invasions were no longer repeated. Their devastating river, which had once led to the founding of the Galatian states, had dried up. The descendants of Sigovèse had assumed such modest demeanors that, a few bands of them having peacefully moved to the upper 1216

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Italy, with the intention of cultivating vacant lands, they left there on a simple injunction from the senate, after having seen the most humble supplications fail. This rest which the Gauls no longer dared to disturb among other peoples, they did not enjoy it themselves. The period of three hundred years which preceded Caesar's conquest was a time of sorrow for them. They practiced, they experienced thoroughly the most miserable phases of political decadence. Aristocracy, theocracy, hereditary or elective royalty, tyranny, democracy, demagoguery, they tasted everything, and everything was transitory (1)[1] . Their agitations did not succeed in producing good fruit. The reason is that the generality of the Celtic nations had reached this point of mixture, and therefore of confusion, which no longer allows national progress. They had passed the culmination of their natural and possible improvements; they could now only go down. However, these are the masses which serve as the bases of our modern society, associated in this employment with other multitudes, no less considerable, who are the Slavs or Wends.

These, at the time in question, were even more depressed, in most of their nations, and had been so for much longer. By the topographical position that their main branches occupied and still occupy, they are obviously the last of all the great white peoples who, in upper Asia, gave way under the efforts of the Finnic hordes, and especially those

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who were most constantly in direct contact with them (2)[2] . This is said while ignoring some of their bands, drawn into the traveling whirlwinds of the Celts, or even ahead of them, such as the Iberians, the Rasenians, the Veneti from the different countries of Europe and Asia. But, as for the bulk of their tribes, expelled from the primitive homeland after the departure of the Galls, they only found places to settle in the north-eastern parts of our continent, and there never the degrading proximity of the yellow species ceased for them (3)[3] . The more families they have absorbed, the more they have been constantly disposed to abound in new hymens of the same kind (1)[4] . Also their physical characteristics are easy to decipher; here they are, as Schaffarik describes them: “Head approaching a square shape, wider than long, flattened forehead, short nose with a tendency to concavity; eyes horizontal, but hollow and small; thin eyebrows close to the eye at the internal angle, and therefore rising. General feature, little hair (2)[5]. » The moral aptitudes were in perfect agreement, and have never ceased to remain there, with these external marks. All their main tendencies lead to mediocrity, to the love of rest and calm, to the cult of an undemanding well-being, almost entirely material, and to the most ordinarily peaceful dispositions (3)[6 ] . Just as the genius of the Chamite, a cross between black and white, had drawn from the vehement aspirations of the Negro the sublimity 1218

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plastic arts, likewise the genius of the Wende, a hybrid of white and Finnish, transformed the taste of the yellow man for positive enjoyments into an industrial, agricultural and commercial spirit (4)[7 ] . The oldest nations formed by this alloy became nests of speculators, less ardent no doubt, less vehement, less actively rapacious, less generally intelligent than the Canaanites, but just as laborious and just as rich, although in a duller way. .

In very respectable antiquity, an enormous influx of various foodstuffs from the countries occupied by the Slavs called numerous Semitic and Greek colonies to the Black Sea basin. The amber collected on the shores of the Baltic, and which we have seen figure in the trade of the Gallic peoples, also passed into that of the Wendish nations. They passed it on from one to the other, bringing it to the mouth of the Borysthenes and other rivers in the region. This precious product thus spread prosperity among its various makers, and brought to them a part of the metallic treasures and manufactured objects of earlier Asia. This transit was joined by other no less important branches of speculation, that of wheat, for example, which was cultivated on a very large scale in the regions of Scythia ( 1)[8] and up to impossible latitudes. to be precise, reached, by means of river navigation organized and operated by the natives, up to the foreign warehouses of the Euxine. We

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As you can see, the Slavs did not deserve the reproach of barbarism any more than the Celts (2)[9] . Nor are these peoples who can be said to have been civilized, in the high meaning of the word. Their intelligence was too obscured by the extent of the mixture into which it had been absorbed, and, far from having developed the native instincts of the white species, they had, on the contrary, largely blunted or lost them. Thus, their religion and the naturalism which provided its fabric had been reduced to a lower level than was seen even among the Galls. Their Druidism, which was certainly not a doctrine exempt from the corrupting influences of the Finnic alliance, was however less penetrated by it than the theology of the Slavs. It was in this that the source of the most grossly superstitious opinions was revealed, the belief in lycanthropy, for example. They also supplied sorcerers of all desirable species (1)[10] .

This superstitious contemplation of nature, which was no less absorbing for the minds of the northern Slavs than for that of their parents, the Rasenians of Italy, held a very large place in the whole of their notions. The numerous monuments they left, while attesting to a certain degree of skill among them, and above all a patient and laborious genius, are not worth what we find on Celtic lands, and, which sets the seal on the demonstration of their inferiority is that they have never been able to act on other families in a dominating manner. The life of conquest was constantly unknown to them. They don't have

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not even able to create for themselves a truly strong political state (2)[11] .

When, in this prolific race, the tribe became somewhat populous, it split. Finding the government of too many heads together and the administration of too many interests too difficult for its dose of intellectual vigor, it hastened to send outside its limits one or more communities over which it only claimed to retain a sort of maternal precedence, leaving them complete freedom to govern themselves as they wish. The Wende's political dispositions, essentially sporadic, did not allow it to understand, let alone practice, the necessarily complicated government of a vast and compact empire. Living as a citizen of a municipality as small as possible was his dream. Proud conceptions of domination, influence, external action undoubtedly found little value there; but, precisely, the Slav did not know them. The expansion of his direct and personal well-being, the protection of his work, assistance for his physical needs, the satisfaction of his attachments, a keen feeling in this gentle and affectionate, although cold, being, all this was assured to him by its municipal regime, with an ease, a freedom, an abundance that a more perfected social state could never produce, it must be admitted. He therefore stuck to it, and the moderation of these very humble tastes must deserve him, at least, the homage of moralists, while politicians, more difficult to satisfy, consider 1221

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The results were deplorable. The ancient government of the white race, so naturally suited to serving all the provisions of independence, the most dangerous as well as the most useful, allowed itself to be easily irritated by such weakness. We wanted him to become more and more weak and uncertain; he lent himself to it. The magistrates, fictitious fathers of the commune, continued to owe only to election a temporary authority, strictly limited by the incessant assistance of a sovereign assembly composed of all the heads of families. It is quite obvious that these rural and merchant aristocracies made up the republics least exposed to usurpations of power that the white species has ever achieved; but they were, at the same time, the weakest, the most incapable of resisting internal troubles as well as foreign aggression.

It is not without probability that the numerous inconveniences of this petty isolation did not sometimes make those who loved its sweetness desire a change of state resulting from the conquest of a more skilful people. This calamity, in the midst of the damage that it necessarily entails, was to bring them in a no less certain manner several advantages capable of striking them, of pleasing them, and, up to a certain point, of closing their eyes to the loss of their independence. We can include in this number the increase in material benefits, an easy consequence of an increase in population and territory. An isolated municipality has few resources; two combined have more. The fall of political barriers

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too close facilitates relations between border countries; she often even creates them. Foodstuffs and products circulate more abundantly, go further; gains and profits accumulate, and the commercial instinct, amazed, seduced, won, renouncing its prejudices against competition to surrender entirely to the charm of possessing a larger market, renounces an excess in order to throw itself in the other, and becomes the most ardent apostle of this universal fraternity which somewhat nobler sentiments, which more clairvoyant opinions reject as being nothing other than the pooling of all vices and the advent of all easements. But the conquerors of the Slavs in primitive times were not in a position to push the agglomeration system to excess. Their groups were too small in number and too poorly equipped with intellectual or material means to carry out such gigantic mistakes. They did not even imagine them, and their subjects, who would undoubtedly have accepted the worst consequences, could still, quite reasonably, rejoice at the extension gained to their economic work. Then, under the law of a victor dispensing such benefits, their less free existence was, ultimately, better guaranteed. While national isolation had always left them, almost defenseless, to all attacks from outside, their new constitution, under vigorous masters, protected them from this type of scourge, and the invaders now encountered, between their thirst for 1223

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plunder and the plowmen they wanted to despoil, the bow and sword of a jealous ruler. Therefore, for many reasons, the Wends were inclined to be patient with political subjection, just as they had ignored and rejected the means of escaping it. And, moreover, this subjection which they did not have the pride or even the pride to hate, time took care, as always, to soften its rough edges. As long cohabitation led to inevitable alliances between foreigners and their humble tributaries, minds began to come together. Mutual relations lost their original rigor; protection was felt better, and command much less. In truth, the conquerors, victims of this game, gradually became Slavs, and, sinking in their turn, also suffered foreign domination, which they no longer knew how to remove either from their subjects or from them. -themselves. But the same motives incessantly pursuing their action, with a regularity very similar to the movements of the pendulum, constantly brought about identical effects, and the Wend races did not learn, and even, Arianized to the mediocre point to which they could be, n have never learned except in an imperfect way the need and the art of organizing a government which was both national and more complex than that of a municipality. They have never been able to escape the necessity of submitting to a power foreign to their race. Far from having fulfilled a sovereign role in the ancient world, these families, the most anciently degenerate of the white groups of Europe, never even had, in the

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historical epochs, an apparent role[12] , and it is all that the most sagacious erudition can do to perceive their masses, however numerous, so prolific, behind the handfuls of happy adventurers who govern them during distant periods. In a word, as a result of the immoderate yellow alloys from which this eternally passive situation resulted for them, they were more poorly divided, morally speaking, than the Celts, who, at least, apart from long centuries of independence and isonomy , had a few very short moments, it is true, but well marked, of preponderance and brilliance. The subordinate situation of the Slavs in history, however, should not mislead their character. When a people falls into the power of another people, the narrators of their miseries generally feel no scruple in pronouncing that one is valiant and the other is not. When one nation, or rather one race, devotes itself exclusively to the work of peace, and another, predatory and always armed, makes war its sole profession, the same judges boldly proclaim that the first is cowardly and softened, the second virile. These are judgments rendered lightly, and which give the consequences that we draw from them as much clumsiness as inaccuracy. The peasant of Beauce, full of aversion to military service and love for his plow, is certainly not the scion of a heroic stock, but he is, without doubt, more truly brave than the Arab warrior from around 1225

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Jordan. He will be easily led, or, to put it better, he will himself, if necessary, to carry out actions of admirable intrepidity to defend his homes, and, once regimented, his flag, while the The other will rarely attack with equal force, will only face the smallest danger, and he will even avoid this small danger without shame, repeating to himself the favorite adage of the Asian warrior: “Self to beat is not to be killed. » However, this circumspect man makes an almost exclusive profession of handling the rifle. In his opinion, this is the only lot suitable for a man, which does not prevent him, for centuries, from letting himself be subjugated by anyone who wants to take the trouble.

All peoples are brave, in the sense that they are all equally capable, under direction appropriate to their instincts, of facing certain perils and of exposing themselves to death. Courage, taken in its effects, is not the particular character of any race. It exists in all parts of the world, and it is wrong to consider it as the consequence of energy, even more so to confuse it with energy itself: it is essentially different from it.

It's not that energy doesn't also produce it, but in a very recognizable way. Above all, this faculty is far from having only this way of manifesting itself. Consequently, while all races are brave, not all are energetic, and, fundamentally, only the white race is so. We only find in her the source of this firmness of will, produced by the certainty of judgment. An energetic nature strongly wants, by

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reason that she has strongly grasped the most advantageous or most necessary point of view. In the arts of peace, his virtue is exercised as naturally as in the fatigues of a warlike existence. If the white races, an incontestable fact, are more seriously brave than other families, it is in no way because they have less regard for existence, on the contrary; it is that, just as obstinate when they expect a valuable result from intellectual or material work as when they claim to tear down the walls of a city, they are above all practically intelligent, and perceive their goal most distinctly. Their bravery results from this, and not from the overexcitement of the nervous organs, as among peoples who have not had or who have allowed this distinctive merit to be lost.

The Slavs, too mixed, were in the latter case. They are still there, and perhaps more so than before. They displayed a lot of warrior valor when necessary, but their intelligence, weakened by Finnic influences, only rose within a too narrow circle of ideas, and did not show them often enough or clearly enough the great necessities which impose on the life of illustrious nations. When combat was inevitable, they marched into it, but without training, without enthusiasm, without any other desire than that of withdrawing much less from the danger than from the fatigues, fruitless in their eyes, with which the state of war bristles. They subscribed to everything to end it, and returned with

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joy in work in the fields, in commerce, in domestic occupations. All their predilections were concentrated there. This race, thus made, therefore possessed its isonomy only in a very obscure way, since this isonomy was only exercised in centers too small to still be visible through the darkness of the ages, and it is hardly that through its association with its more gifted conquerors that we succeed in seeing it and judging its qualities as well as its faults. Too weak and too gentle to arouse long-term anger in the men who invaded her, her ease in accepting the secondary role in the new States founded by conquest, her laborious nature which made her as useful to exploit as she was easy to govern, all these humble faculties made him retain ownership of the land, while allowing him to lose the high domain.

The most ferocious aggressors quickly rejected the thought of needlessly creating solitudes which would have brought them nothing. After sending a few thousand captives to the distant markets of Greece, Asia, and the Italian colonies, a moment arrived when the submission of their vanquished exhausted their fury[13] .

They took pity on this good-

natured worker who put up so little resistance, and from now on they let him cultivate his fields. Soon the fertility of the Slavic had filled the gaps in the population. The former inhabitant was more solidly established than ever on the ground left to him, and, as long as his sovereigns retained the favors of victory, he gained ground with them; because he pushed obedience to the point of being 1228

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intrepid for their benefit, when he was ordered to do such virtue. Thus, indissolubly married to the land from which nothing could tear them away, the Slavs occupied in the east of Europe the same role of mute and latent, but irresistible, influence that the Semitic masses fulfilled in Asia. They formed, like the latter, the stagnant swamp into which, after a few hours of triumph, all ethnic superiorities were swallowed up. Immobile like death, active like it, this marsh devoured in its dormant waters the warmest and most generous principles, without experiencing any other modification, as for itself, than here and there a relative elevation of the bottom, but to finally return to a more complicated general corruption.

This large mixed fraction of the human family, thus prolific, thus patient in the face of adversity, thus obstinate in its utilitarian love of the soil, thus attentive to all means of conquering it materially, had very early extended the living network of its thousands of small communities over an enormous expanse of country. Two thousand years before Christ, Wend tribes cultivated the regions of the lower Danube and the northern shores of the Black Sea, covering, as far as we can judge, in competition with Finnish hordes, the entire interior of Poland and Russia. Now that we have recognized them in the true nature of their abilities and

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their historical task, let us leave them to their humble labors, and consider their various conquerors. In the first place it is appropriate to place the Celts. In the very ancient times when these people occupied the Tauride and made war against the Assyrians, and, even in the time of Darius, they had Slavic subjects in these regions[14] . Later they also had them on the Krapacks and in Poland and probably in the regions watered by the Oder. When they made, coming from Gaul, the great expedition which carried the tectosage bands to Asia[15] they sowed throughout the valley of the Danube, and in the countries of the Thracians , and the Illyrians, numerous groups of nobility which remained at the head of the Wendish peoples, until new invaders came to subdue them themselves with them[16] .

On several

occasions the Kymris had exerted, and they still exerted towards the end of the 3rd century BC, victorious pressure on one or another of the Slavic nations. However, if they must be named at the forefront, it is mainly because neighborhood reasons increased the number of retail incursions. They were neither the most powerful, nor the most visible, nor, perhaps even, the oldest of the rulers that the Slavs saw abound among them. This supremacy belongs above all to various very famous nations which, under their various names, all belong to the Arian race. These were the nations which operated with the greatest force and authority in the Pontic regions, and even beyond towards the most extreme north. It is of them that the annals

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of this country are mainly discussed, and it is on them that attention must be focused here for more serious causes Again.

The fact that, despite the mixtures which successively determined the fall and disappearance of most of them, these nations originally belonged to the noblest fraction of the white species would already be of a nature to merit them the keenest interest; but such a great motive is further reinforced by this circumstance that it was from their bosom, from the midst of their multitudes, and from the purest and most powerful, that the groups emerged from which the Germanic nations emerged. . Thus recognized in their original close intimacy with the generating principle of modern society, they appear as more important for us, and as more sympathetic, in the general sense of history, than even groups of similar origin can be. founders or restorers of other civilizations of the world.

The first of these peoples to penetrate into Europe, at extremely obscure times, and when groups of Finns, perhaps even Celts and Slavs, already occupied some regions of northern Greece, appear to have been the Illyrians and the Thracians. These races necessarily underwent the most considerable mixing; also their preponderance has left the fewest vestiges. It is only really useful to discuss it here to show the approximate extent of the earliest expansion of the extra-Hindu and extra-Iranian Arians. Towards

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in the west the Illyrians and Thracians then occupied as masters the valleys and plains, from Hellas to the Danube, and, pushing as far as Italy, they were especially strongly established on the northern slopes of the Hemus[17] .

Soon they were followed by another branch of the family, the Getae, who settled next to them, often in their midst, and finally much further than them, towards the northwest and north [ 18] .

The Getae considered themselves immortal,

says Herodotus. They believed that the passage to the world below, far from leading them to nothingness or a suffering condition, led them to the celestial and glorious abodes of Xamolxis[19] .

This dogma is purely Arian.

But the establishment of the Getae in Europe is so ancient that it is barely possible to glimpse them there in their pure state. Most of their tribes, as they are named in the oldest annals, had been profoundly affected already by Slavic, Kymric, or even yellow alloys. The Thyssagetes or giant Getae, the Myrgetes or related to the Finnic tribe of the Merjans, the Samogetes to the race of the Suomis, as the Finns call themselves, formed, by their own admission, so many mixed tribes which, having united the most beautiful blood of the white species with Mongolian essence, bore the penalty of the relative inferiority into which they had fallen compared to their purer parents. The Jutes of Scandinavia, the Iotuns, to use the expression of the Edda, appear to have been the most northerly, and, from the moral point of view, the most degraded of all the Getae[20]

.

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On the Asian side, on the Caspian side, lived other branches of the same nation, which Greek and Roman historians knew under the name of Massagetae[21] . Later they were called Scytho-Getae or Hindu-Getae. Chinese writers called them Khoute [22] and the , authenticity, the perfect accuracy of this transcription is guaranteed in

a rare way by the decisive testimony of the Hindu poems which, at an infinitely older period, produced it under the form of the word Kheta. The Khetas are a Vratya people, refractory to the laws of Brahmanism, but undeniably Arian and living north of the Himalayas[23] .

In the 2nd century AD, those of the Getic tribes who had remained in upper Asia moved to Sihoun, then to Sogdiana, and had the glory of substituting an empire of their foundation for the Bactro-Macedonian state. This success, however, was little, compared to the brilliance that their name acquired in the 4th and 5th centuries in Europe. A group descended from their emigrant brothers, and which we will find shortly with their genealogy, then left from the eastern shores of the Baltic and the south of the Scandinavian country to erase everything great that their namesakes had been able to do. The vast confederation of the Goths raised its radiant standard in Russia, on the Danube, in Italy, in southern France, and over the entire face of the Hispanic peninsula. That the two forms, Goth and Geta , are absolutely identical is best demonstrated by a national historian well informed in the antiquities of his country.

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breed, Jornandès. He did not hesitate to entitle the annals of the Gothic kings and tribes, Res geticæ. Alongside the Getae and a little less anciently, there is another people also Arian on the Propontis and in the surrounding regions. These are the Scythians, not the plowing Scythians, true Slavs[24] but the warlike Scythians,

,

the invincible Scythians, the royal Styches, whom the writer of Halicarnassus depicts to us as men of war par excellence. According to him, they speak an Ariane language; their cult is that of the most ancient Vedic, Hellenic and Iranian tribes. They worship the sky, the earth, the fire, the air. These are indeed the different manifestations of this deified naturalism among the oldest white groups. They add to this the veneration of the genius who inspired the battles; but, disdaining anthropomorphism, like their ancestors, they are content to represent the abstraction they conceive by the symbol of a sword planted in the ground. The territory of the Scythians in Europe extends in the same direction as that of the Getae, and, for Italo-Greek knowledge, merges with this region, as the two populations merged in reality[25] Des Celto.

Scythians, Thraco-Scythians, this is what the oldest geographers of Hellas know in northern Europe, and they are not as wrong as they have been accused of in modern times. However, their terminology was neither clear nor precise, it must be admitted, and, well

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that it applied fairly correctly to the real state of things was unknown to them: the vagueness served their ignorance and did not lead it astray.

In the direction of the east, the warlike Scythians joined hands with their brothers, the peoples of northern Media, whom the Greeks were wrong to consider as their authors, but whom they were right to consider as their parents. They extended as far as the Armenian mountains where they were called Sakasounas. Then, north of Bactria, they merged with the Indo-Scythians, called by the Chinese the Szou. They received there a slightly altered denomination and obviously offered by this last name, and became for the Romans the Sacae ; then, taking up the written traditions of the Celestial Empire, it was these Hakas, still established, at a fairly low time, on the banks of the Jenissei[26]

.

We can only see in them the Sakas of the

Ramayana, of the Mahabharata, of the laws of Manu: vratyas rebellious to the sacred prescriptions of the Arya-varta, like the Khetas, but, like them too, incontestably relatives of the Arians of the India[27] .

They were in the same way and in a manner as recognized as those of Iran; and, if there could remain any doubt that all these Scythian horsemen from Asia and Europe, these Scythians whom the Chinese saw wandering on the banks of the Hoang-Ho and in the solitudes of the Gobi, whom the Armenians recognized as masters over several points of their country[28] , and that the shores of the Baltic, that the provinces

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Kymriques[29] feared just as much; that these Scythians, I say, wandering in Turan[30] and in Pontus, these Skolotes[31] as they called themselves, were , absolutely of the same origin in the most diverse points where they were showed, on the Hemus, as much as on the Bolor, there would still be the decisive testimony of the epigraphists of Persia. The Achaemenid inscriptions in fact know two nations of Sakas, one residing in the vicinity of Iaxartes, the other in the vicinity of the Thracians[32]

.

This ancient name of the Sakas lasted no less long and covered even more regions than that of the Khetas. During the times of the Germanic migrations, it was

applied to the noble country par excellence, Skanzia, Scandinavia, the island or peninsula of Sakas. Finally, a final transformation, which at this moment is the pride of America, after having shone in upper Germany and in the British Isles, is that of Saxna, Sachsen, the Saxons, true Sakasunas, sons of the Sakas of the last eras[33] .

The Sakas and the Khetas constitute, in fact, one and the same chain of primitively Arian nations. Whatever may have been, here and there, the type and degree of ethnic degradation suffered by their tribes, these are two great branches of the family which, less happy than those of India and 1236

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Iran, found in the division of the world only territories already heavily occupied, relative to what their brothers had had, and above all much inferior in beauty. Long embarrassed to fix their existence tormented by the Finns of the north, by their own divisions and by the antagonism of their more favored relatives, most of these peoples perished without having been able to found more than ephemeral empires, soon publicized, absorbed or overthrown by too powerful neighbors[34] .

Everything that we see of their existence in these vague and unlimited regions of Touran, and of the Pontic plains, the European Touran, which were their places of passage, their inevitable stations, reveals as much misfortune as courage, a

ardent intrepidity, the most chivalrous passion of adventures, more ideal grandeur than lasting success. Apart from those of these nations which succeeded, but much later, in dominating our continent, the Parthians were still one of the luckiest among the Arian tribes of the west[35] .

It is not enough to show by facts that the Khetas, the Sakas, and the Arians, taken as a whole and at their origins, are all one. The three names, analyzed in themselves, give the same result: they all three have the same meaning; they are only synonyms: they mean equally honorable men, and, applying to the same objects, clearly show that the same idea resides under their different appearances[36] .

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This point established, let us now follow in the ascending phases of their history the best predestined tribes of this agglomeration of masters whom Providence gradually brought among the peoples of the ancient world, and, first of all, the Slavs.

There was among them a particular and very extensive branch of nations of very pure essence, at least at the time when they arrived in Europe. This important circumstance is guaranteed by the documents; I'm talking about the Sarmatians. They descended, said the Greeks of Pontus, from an alliance between the Sakas and the Amazons, in other words, the mothers of the Aesir or Arians[37] .

The Sarmatians,

like all the other peoples of their family, recognize each other as brothers in the most distant lands. Several of their nations lived north of the Paropamise, while others, known to the geographers of the Celestial Empire under the names of Suth, Suthle, Alasma and Jan-thsaï, came, in the 2nd century BC, to occupy certain cantons eastern Caspian[38] . The Iranians measured themselves many times with these swarms of warriors, and the excessive fear they had of their martial obstinacy was perpetuated in Bactrian and Sogdian traditions. This is where Firdousi conveyed them in his poem[39] .

These vigorous populations, arriving in Europe for the first time, a thousand years before our era, no more[40] , had set foot in the Western world with customs very similar to those of the Sakas, their

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cousins and their main antagonists. Clad in the heroic outfit of the champions of the Schahnameh, their warriors already resembled quite well these paladins of the Germanic Middle Ages, of whom they were the distant ancestors. A metal helmet on the forehead, on the body a scaly armor of copper or horn plates, fitted like a dragon's skin, the sword at the side, the bow and quiver on the back, in the hand a spear disproportionately long and heavy[41], they traveled through the solitudes on heavily caparisoned horses, escorting and monitoring immense carts covered with a large roof. In these vast machines were contained their women, their children, their old people, their wealth. Gigantic oxen dragged them heavily, making their solid wooden wheels wobble and scream on the sand or the short grass of the steppe. These houses on wheels were similar to those that the darkest antiquity had seen transporting the families of the first Arians to the Punjab, the opulent country of the five rivers. These were the same as those mobile constructions with which, later, the Germans formed their camps; it was, in austere forms, the true ark carrying the spark of life to unborn civilizations and rejuvenation to energized civilizations, and, if modern times can still provide some image capable of evoking the memory of it, it is certainly the powerful cart of American emigrants, this enormous vehicle, so well known in the west of the new continent, where it constantly brings

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all the way beyond the Rocky Mountains, the daring Anglo-Saxon land clearers and the intrepid viragos, companions of their fatigues and their victories over the barbarism of the desert. The use of these carts decides a story point. It establishes a radical difference between the nations which adopted it and those which preferred the tent. The first are travelers; they are not reluctant to absolutely change horizons and climates; the others alone deserve the qualification of nomads. They only have difficulty leaving a fairly limited territorial constituency. It is nomadic to imagine the unique type of dwelling which, by its nature, is eternally mobile and presents the most striking symbol of instability. The cart can never be a permanent home. The Arians who used them, and who, for a more or less long time, or even never, were unable to create other shelters, did not have and did not want tents. For what ? This is because they traveled, not to change place, but, on the contrary, to find a homeland, a fixed residence, a house. Driven by contrary or particularly exciting events, they did not succeed in seizing any country in such a way as to be able to build there definitively. As soon as this problem was resolved, the mobile home attached itself to the ground and never moved. The mode of residence still in use in most European countries which have had Arian establishments offers proof of this: the 1240

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the national house is nothing other than a stopped cart. The wheels were replaced by a stone base on which the wooden building stands. The roof is massive, advanced, it completely envelops the house, which can only be reached by an external staircase, narrow and very similar to a ladder. It's good, with very few modifications, the old Arian cart. The Swiss chalet, the hut of the Muscovite moujik, the home of the Norwegian peasant, are also the wandering home of the Saka, the Geta and the Sarmatian, whose events finally made it possible to unharness the oxen and remove the wheels[42]

.

To

arrive at this point was the permanent instinct, if not the avowed wish, of the warriors who dragged this venerable residence to so many places and so far for the heroic memories it recalls. Despite their numerous wanderings, sometimes centuries long, these men never agreed to accept the definitively mobile shelter of the tent; they abandoned it to peoples of inferior species or formation.

The Sarmatians[43] , ,the latest arrivals from the Arians, in the 10th century BC, and consequently the purest, did not take long to make the ancient conquerors of the Slavs feel the superior strength of their arm and their intelligence, in the disputes which did not fail to rise. Soon they made a big place for themselves. They dominated between the Caspian and the Black Sea, and began to threaten the northern plains. [44]

.

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remained their point of support. It was in the defiles of this great chain that, several centuries later, when they had lost the exclusive empire of the Pontic regions, those of their tribes which had not emigrated sought refuge among some related tribes more anciently established They owe to in these gorges[45] . this circumstance, fortunate for the maintenance of their ethnic integrity, the honor which they enjoy today of having been chosen by physiological science to represent the most accomplished type of the white species. The current nations of these mountains continue to be famous for their bodily beauty, for their warrior genius, for this indomitable energy which interests the most cultured and softened peoples in the chances of their fights, and for an even more difficult resistance to this a breath of degradation which, without being able to touch them, reaches the Semitic, Tatar and Slav multitudes around them. Far from degenerating, they contributed, in the proportion where their blood was mixed with that of the Osmanlis and the Persians, to warming these races. We must not forget either the eminent men they provided to the Turkish empire, nor the powerful and romantic domination of the Circassian beys in Egypt. It would be out of place here to claim to follow in detail the innumerable movements of Sarmatian groups towards Western Europe. Some of these migrations, like that of the Limigantes, went to dispute Poland with Celtic nobility, and, on their 1242

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enslavement, founded states which, among their main cities, included Bersovia, modern Warsaw. Others, the Iazyges, conquered eastern Pannonia, despite the efforts of the former victors of the Thracian or Kymric race, who already dominated the Slavic masses there. These invasions and many others are of interest only in special stories[46] . They were not executed on a large enough scale nor with sufficient forces to affect in a lasting manner the active value of the subjugated groups. It is not the same for the movement as a vast association of tribes of the same family, coming from the great branch of the Alani, Alani, perhaps, more primitively, Arani or Arians, and bearing as a federative name that of Roxolans[47] , operated near the sources of the Dwina, in the regions watered by the Wolga and the Dnieper, in a word in central Russia, around the 7th or 8th century before the Christian era[48]

.

This era, marked

by great changes in the ethnic and topographical situation of a large number of Asian and European nations, also constitutes for the northern Arians a new point of departure, and therefore an important date in the history of their migrations.

It was barely two to three hundred years since they arrived in Europe, and this period had been filled entirely by the violent consequences of the antagonism which opposed them to neighboring nations. Delivered without reservation to their national hatreds, absorbed by the unique care of 1243

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attack and defense, they undoubtedly had not had time to perfect their social state; but this disadvantage had been largely compensated, from the point of view of the future, by the ethnic isolation, a sure guarantee of purity, which had been the consequence. Now they were forced to move to a new station. This station was assigned to them, exclusively to any other, by imperative necessity.

The propulsion which threw them forward came from the south-east. It was given by fellow humans, obviously irresistible, since we could not resist them. There was therefore no way that the Arians-SarmatiansRoxolans would take their march against this direction. They could no longer advance indefinitely towards the west, because the Sakas, the Getae, the Thracians, the Kymris, had remained there too strong, and above all too numerous. It would have meant facing a series of inextricable difficulties and embarrassments. Tilting to the northeast was no less difficult. In addition to the Finnish accumulations which operated on this point, the still considerable Arian nations, the yellow Arian half-breeds which increased in importance every day, had to very legitimately push back the idea of a retrograde march towards the former lodgings of the white family.

The northwest access remained. On this side, the barriers, the obstacles were still serious, but not insurmountable. Few Arians, many Slavs, Finns, in smaller numbers than in the east, there were greater chances of conquest there than anywhere else.

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The Roxolans understood this; success proved them right. In the midst of the diverse populations that their preserved traditions still make known to us under their significant names of Wanes, Iotuns and Alfars, or fairies, or dwarves, they succeeded in establishing a stable and regular state whose memory, whose last splendors still project, through the darkness of times, a bright and glorious radiance on the dawn of the Scandinavian nations.

This is the country which the Edda called Gardarike, or the city empire of the Arians[49]

.

The Sarmatian Roxolans

were able to unharness their traveling oxen there and store their carts there. They finally experienced leisure activities that they had not had for many centuries, and took advantage of them to establish themselves in permanent homes. Asgard, the city of the Aesir or Arians, was their capital. It was probably a large village decorated with palaces in the style of the ancient residences of the first conquerors of India and Bactria. His name was not pronounced for the first time in the world. Among other applications that were made of it, there existed for a long time, not far from the southern shore of the Caspian, a medical establishment also called Açagarta[50] .

The traditions concerning Asgard are numerous and even minute. They show us the fathers of the gods, the gods themselves, exercising with grandeur in this royal city the fullness of their sovereign power, dispensing justice, deciding peace or war, treating with splendid hospitality both their warriors and their guests. .

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Among these we see some wane[51] princes and iotuns, even Finnish chiefs. The necessities of the neighborhood, the hazards of the war forced the Roxolans to rely sometimes on some, sometimes on others, to maintain themselves against everyone. Ethnic alliances were then contracted and were inevitable[52] .

However, the number, and

consequently the importance, remained minimal, as the Edda demonstrates, because the state of war, less constant than in the past, when the Roxolans resided in the surroundings of the Caucasus, was nonetheless very ordinary. , and especially because the Gardarike, although having thrown much light on the primitive history of the Scandinavian Arians, lasted too short a time for the race which possessed it to have had time to become corrupted by it. Founded from the 7th to the 8th century BC, it was overthrown around the 4th[53] , despite the courage and energy of its founders, and they were once again forced to give in to the fortune that led them through so many catastrophes to the empire of the universe, put their families and their goods back in their chariots, remounted their steeds, and, abandoning Asgard, plunged, through the desolate marshes of the northern regions, to meet of this series of adventures which was reserved for them, and of which certainly nothing could make them predict the astonishing adventures and the final success.

indigenous, declared them the last born of all the peoples of the earth and gave them an antiquity of approximately fifteen hundred years BC. (Book IV, 5.) The second, provided by the Greeks of Pontus, making them descend from Hercules and a local nymph, assigns them only thirteen hundred and a few years before our era. (Book IV, 8.) The third, due

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to Aristaeus of Proconnesus, who had brought it back from his travels in Central Asia, has nothing mythical, and simply brings the Scythians from the east, from where they had been chased by the Issedons, fleeing to their turn in front of the Arimaspes. It would not be at all difficult to show the point of concordance of these three ways of considering the same fact. As for the formation of the Sarmatian peoples, born of the Scythians and the Amazons, I have already indicated it. They spoke an Arian dialect, different from that of the Skolotes. (Book IV, 17.) Pliny, Pomponius Mela and Ammianus Marcellinus make the Sarmatians much younger than I think I have to admit here with Herodotus. They suppose that the first groups of their tribes were established on the Don by the Scythians, upon returning from their expedition to Asia, towards the end of the 7th century BC . Basically, such questions are not very real: 1° because the Sarmatians are only a simple variety of the Sakas; 2° because their nations, coming from the east, in the direction of Turan, succeeded one another at very close periods, and there is no reason to choose one to the exclusion of the others to serve to ephemeris. 1. ÿ (1) Cæs., by Bell. Gall., VI. 2. ÿ (2) Schaffarik, Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 57. 3. ÿ (3) Open. cited, t. I, p. 74. — Schaffarik considers as forming the first extension of the Slavs in Europe, the region located between the Oder, the Vistula, the Niemen, the Bug, the Dnieper, the Dniester and the Danube. But these limits have changed very often. 4. ÿ (1) Open. quoted. — Slavic, provided with the necessary original affinities with other Arian languages, shows the trace of a great influence exercised by the Finnish family on its constituent elements. (T. I, p. 47.) 5. ÿ (2) Open. cited, t. I, p. 33. 6. ÿ (3) Ibidem, t. I, p. 66, 167. 7. ÿ (4) Ibidem, t. I, p. 1, 59. 8. ÿ (1) Open. cited, t. I, p. 271. — Schaffarik brings a large part of this production from the countries located behind the Karpathians. But there was also further down, in the southeast direction, a half-Wendish nation, that of the Alazons, which engaged in the same trade. (Herod., IV, 17.) 9. ÿ (2) They lived in villages, like the pure white people, their ancestors. (Schaff., vol. I, p. 59.) If it were necessary to give proof of this, we would find it in the name of a Slavic tribe, the Budini, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, whose root is budy, house ; hence, men who dwell in houses, permanent abodes. This name of Budini recalls one of the most singular errors that science has been able to make.

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please. Herodotus relates that the people so named were ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ; all the translators understood and said that they ate vermin, or more clearly lice. This circumstance, which spoke little in favor of the Budini, did not prevent German scholars and Slavists from arguing about this people, some claiming them as German, others as Wend. Larcher, Mannert, Buchon, and many others, have repeated that the Budini ate lice; finally Ritter, referring to the abbreviator of Tzetzés, and guided by common sense, demonstrated that, like many current populations of the extreme north, they fed on fir tree sprays ; but the habit of the absurd is so well established that Passow himself, in his dictionary, while giving the two versions shows a marked predilection for the older one. 10. ÿ (1) Schaffarik, open. cited, t. I, p. 195. 11. ÿ (2) Id., ibid., t. I, p. 167. 12. ÿ Schaff., op. cited, t. I, p. 128. 13. ÿ Schaff., op. cited, t. I, p. 211. 14. ÿ Herodotus (IV, 11) clearly indicates this situation, when he relates that at the moment when the Scythians came to attack the Cimmerians, they consulted each other on what should be done. The kings were of the opinion to resist, the people wanted to emigrate; the two parties came to blows, and, as they were equal in number, the battle was bloody; finally the people had the upper hand, that is to say the Slavs, and, after burying the dead, they fled before the Scythians. — This passage gives the meaning of this other from the same book (102) where the Scythians, attacked by Darius, ask for help from their neighbors. Then the kings of the Taures, the Agathyrses, the Neures, the Androphages, the Melanchlenes, the Gelons, the Boudini and the Sauromates gathered together . The word kings, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, must be understood here as in § 11. It indicates the noble, foreign tribes which reigned over the Celtic Taurs, the Slavic Agathyrses, the Neures, the Androphages, the Finnish Melanchlenes, the Gelons, the Boudini, the Slavic Sauromats. In the latter, it should be noted that it was Sarmatian Satages or servants who formed the lower layer of the population. These Satages, although having already taken the name of their masters, were undoubtedly of Wendish race. — A king of the Agathyrses has an Arian name: his name is Spargapithès (IV, 78). 15. ÿ Schaff., I, 243. 16. ÿ It was to the Kymric invasions that the poets of Greek comedy owed the names of Davus and Geta, so often applied by the

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names originally belonged to the upper class of the vanquished Slavic nations, and came from another primary source. (Schaff., t. I, p. 244.) — This same author thinks that the extension of the Celts, at this last period, went as far as the Sava and the Drava in the east, and as far north as at the sources of the Vistula and the Dniester. (T. I, p. 397.) 17. ÿ Schaffarik (I, 271) believes he recognizes vestiges of their domination as far as Bessarabia. 18. ÿ Pliny (Hist. natur., IV, 18) places a nation of Getae after the Thracians, north of Hemus. 19. ÿ Herod., IV, 93. — It should be noted that, in this same paragraph, there is a complete identification of the Getae with the Thracians, which can serve as an additional argument to support the Arian origin of these last. — The medals help here. All those belonging to the nations located north of the Hemus and west of the Caspian show often very crude types of expression as well as execution; most are obviously Arians, a few are Slavs, none show the slightest trace of the Finnish physiognomy. I will cite, among others, the coins of Cotys V, Slavic type; those of the city of Panticapaea, Arian type, etc. 20. ÿ From a physical point of view, they remained very vigorous and very large, since they are compared to giants. (Schaff., I, 307.) — Wachter, who also considers the Jotuns to be a mixed-race people, believes them to come from a Celtic and Finnish mixture. (Encycl. Ersch u. Gr., 83.) — It is more than probable that over time all kinds of alloys took place in the blood of the different Getae tribes; but that the first base was Ariane, it is not possible to doubt. 21. ÿ The Chinese very regularly called them Ta-Yueti, great Getae ; It is

ta is the exact translation of massa or maha, large. (Ritter, 7 Buch,

Th., 3

It is

Fifth Band., page 609.) — See the two notes which follow. 22. ÿ See volume 1 23. ÿ .

The Chinese also named certain Getic nations, and probably the most numerous groups, Yueti or Yuei-tchi. The first of these forms is very close to Jotun, which seems to indicate that, although the latter is mainly known to us by the Scandinavians, it was already used in ancient times in the depths of upper Asia. — (Ritter, Asien, 7 Th., 3 Band., p. 604.) The very important information Book, V given by the writers of the Celestial Empire on the Arian nations of upper Asia borrows one more nuance of interest from this fact than 'they only date from the 2nd century BC, which proves that even at that time, and, consequently, for a long time It is

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after the departure of the peoples from whom the Scandinavians, then the Germans, emerged, there were still large white masses in western China, and these masses partly bore the same names as their European parents, probably well forgotten by them, would illustrate, a few centuries later, on the Rhine and the Danube. — We can thus get an idea of the happy influence that these invasions and the latent infiltrations of these peoples had on the yellow or Malay races of China. 24. ÿ The word ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ used by Herodotus marks, by common consent, a category of populations which were subject to military tribes, and, consequently, an inferior class, a different and subject race. It is not without interest to note that it was found among other Arian nations, the Sarmatians, for example. They were Slavs everywhere, either pure or mixed with remnants of nobility subjugated with them. (Schaff., t. 1, p. 181-185, 350.) An example of the latter situation existed in the 3rd century AD in Dacia, where the Yazygous Sarmatians dominated Getic tribes, and, as a result, the Slavs who formed its social base. (Schaff., I, 250.) 25. ÿ The countries located on the Baltic and on the Gulf of Finland were called, long before Ptolemy, Scythia. Pytheas called them that, and he was right, as we will see below. (Schaff., I, 221.) 26. ÿ Westergaard, in his studies on cuneiform inscriptions of the second species, observes that the word Saka must be read there with two k, to express the hard palatal with the aspirated s, that the Persians had none. This brings Haka even closer to Saka, and seems to indicate that the Arian tribes of the north had preserved a harsher dialect, which readily confused sibilant with aspiration. (P. 32.) — The Sakas or Hakas are also named, in Chinese annals, Sse. (Ritter, lc, p. 605 et pass.) 27. ÿ On this common origin, openly accepted by the Brahmanical tradition, I can only give the passage from the Ramayana which explains it; I use M. Gorresio's admirable translation: "Again she (the cow Sabalâ) produced the proud Saci, mixed together with Yavani harvests." From these Saci, mixed with Yavans, the earth was flooded. They were slippery, very robust, condensed, in bunches like lotus fibers; they carried bipencils and long swords, they had weapons and armor of gold. (Gorresio, Ramayana, t, VI, Adicanda, cap. LV, p. 150.) Here is a description which, with justice, makes the Sakas something quite different from a miserable fringe of Mongol raiders. — See also Manava-Dharma-Sastra, ch. X, 44. 28. ÿ Sharon-Turner, Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, t. I.

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29. ÿ One of the advanced stations, not the most advanced, of the Arians towards the southwest, was, in the 8th century BC, that of the Sigynns, who, dressed like the Medes and living, it was said, in chariots, called themselves a Persian colony in the time of Herodotus. They were neighbors of the Veneti of the Adriatic. (V, 9.) 30. ÿ Spiegel, Benfey and Weber have recently taken ca meaning of the Persian word ÿÿÿÿÿ, zend, tuirya, Sanskrit, tûrya. He is of great interest to clarify, in fact, whether this name, which gave rise to such strong ideas of hatred and fear in the minds of Hindus and Iranians, contains a notion of ethnic difference between these peoples and their adversaries. It seems that this is not the case, tûrya only means enemy. — See Spiegel, Studien über das Zend-Avesta, Zeitschrift d. deutsch. morg. Gesellsch., t. V, p. 223. 31. ÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, Herod., IV, 6. — This word seems to be formed from Saka and lot, or from a relative root of this Sanskrit expression which means to be beside oneself, exalted, furious ; the Saka lota would have been Sakas with inspired, reckless, boundless courage, similar to the Scandinavian Berserkars. 32. ÿ Westergaard and Lassen, Inscription. of Darius, p. 94-95. — Herodotus, Pliny and Strabo pronounce in the same sense. The last one is even more peremptory, since it clearly confuses the Sakas with the Massagetes and the Dahae: ÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿÿÿ ÿ' ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, ÿÿÿÿ ÿ' ÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ. — Thus it is well agreed for Strabo that, on the shores of the Caspian, the Dahae and the Scythians are one and the same people; that to the east of these countries, the Massagetes and the Sacs are in equal relations of identity, and that, moreover, the name of Scythe suits one as well as the other of these groups. — I hesitated for a long time to classify the Scythians; the Skolotes as they must be, among the Aryan and not Mongol groups, though supported by the imposing authority of such men as M. Ritter and MA de Humboldt. I was loathe to break into a visor, without well-demonstrated necessity, to a strongly established opinion, and, in the first volume of this work, I even reasoned in the routine sense; but I had to surrender myself to the evidence, and understand that an exaggerated complacency would throw me into too serious errors and nonsense. So I resigned. Having already alleged several of the reasons on which I base my opinion, I will confine myself above all, in order to establish their force, to summarizing the state of the matter. With an almost unanimous voice, modern science considers the Scythians Skolotes

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like Finns. It has three reasons for this: first, that Hippocrates describes them as such; then that the Greeks called the whole of northern Europe Scythia, and made no distinction between the populations of this country; finally that, since she has spoken once, she does not want to change her mind. Respectfully leaving aside the third reason, I will only deal with the first two. It is quite true that Hippocrates describes men living on the banks of the Propontis as having the physiological character of the Finnish race, and these men he describes as Scythians. But from the way he uses this name, it is obvious that he only means people settled in Scythia among many others who did not resemble them. Now, in the time of Hippocrates, that is to say two hundred years after Herodotus, yellow tribes could have descended to the vicinity of the Propontis, and, living there pell-mell with many other races , had there received from the Greeks the name of Scythians, there is nothing there that is very natural and very admissible. It does not necessarily follow that at an earlier time these same people were already in the country. Herodotus speaks a lot about the Scythians, he had visited them, he had conversed with them, he knew their history; nowhere does it testify that they had the slightest trait of Finnic nature; on the contrary, when he describes this nature, during the account he gives of the morals of the Argippeans, he admits that he himself did not see these bald men, with flat noses, elongated chins and that everything he brings back he only knows from the tradition of merchants and travelers. And not only does he not indicate by a single word, he, such a careful and attentive observer, that the Scythians had the slightest feature different from the Greek or Thracian physiognomy, but no writer from Athens, from this city of Athens, where the police guard was composed, in part, of Scythian soldiers, never made the slightest allusion to a particularity which could, at least, have provided the material for a joke to Aristophanes, who introduced a strong Scythian rude in one of his plays. That's not all: Herodotus, speaking of Scythia, protests against the custom of his compatriots of considering it as being in one piece and inhabited by a single race; he declares, on the contrary, that the number of Skolotes there is relatively very small; with them he names a large number of nations which are in no way related to them (IV, 20, 21, 22, 23, 46, 57, 99). He considers them as the dominant people of the Pontic region, and, moreover, as the most intelligent (IV, 46). He attributes to them a Median language, and, in fact, according to all the words and names that he alleges, the Scythians incontestably spoke an

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the Iranians. Much later, this is still Strabo's opinion. It is inevitable from now on to come to terms with it and to agree, in the present case, as in many others, that it is a bad system to never want to see in a country only one race; to attribute the first type to this race, despite the claims of better informed people, and we must give reason, in the present case, to the most recent historian of Norway, Mr. Munch, who, in the admirable preamble to his story, shows the Pontic regions, before the 10th century which preceded our era, as incessantly traveled and dominated by nations of Arian horsemen who succeeded one another, bending the Slavic, Finnic and mixed populations under their breath, as the east wind bends the ears of corn under its own. (Munch, Det norske folk Historie, German translation p. 13.) — Finally, finally, we must believe the medals of the Scythian kings, who never bear in their effigies the shadow of a Mongolian feature, as one can easily convince oneself by taking a glance at the coins of Leuko I, Phascuporis I, Gegaepirés, Rhaemetalcés, Rhescuporis, etc. All these medals show the Ariane physiognomy perfectly evident, which constitutes a material demonstration to which there is no reply. — See also the entire series of demonstrations based on facts and historical testimonies, drawn from Greek, Roman and Chinese writers. Ritter, Asien, 1st Th., 6th Buch, West-Asian, Band. V, p. 583 to p. It is

716.) I have borrowed numerous details from this admirable and fruitful accumulation of research. 33. ÿ Usually, the name Saxon is derived from the word sax or scax, knife. This etymology is all the less appropriate since the Saxons were noted for the size of their swords, and moreover used battle axes preferentially: “Securibus gladiisque longis,” says Henry of Huntingdon. — Kemble produces a passage from an ancient document which similarly rejects this opinion: “Incipit linea Saxonum et Anglorum descendens ab Adamo linealiter usque ad Sceafum de quo Saxones vocabantur. » — Mullenhoff does not seem at all well-founded to me in the criticism he makes of this text. (See Zeitschrift für dd Alterth., t. VII, p. 415.) — Sceaf is such an ancient character, according to Germanic legend, that he is placed at the head of Odin's ancestors. The Christian Scandinavians expressed this idea by having it born in Noah's ark. Mullenhoff himself considers the adventures attributed to this character as a myth of the arrival by sea of the Roxolans in Sweden. (Loc cit., p. 413.)

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34. ÿ However, there are many cities in these States, often reduced to a very small area. We note the presence of royal families highly respected for their antiquity, developed agriculture and above all the connection of famous vineyards, the breeding of superb breeds of horses, a great reputation for military bravery, a commercial skill whose Chinese annalists , excellent judges in this matter, are very concerned, and what is even more honorable, with the existence of a national literature and one or more particular alphabets. (Ritter, loc. cit., pass.) — I will recall that the physiological distinctive features of all these peoples, in the eyes of Chinese writers, are to have had blue eyes, blond and thick beards and hair, and prominent nose. (Loc. cit.)

35. ÿ The medals of the barbarian kings, the Saka kings, who overthrew the Greco-Macedonian empire, do not allow us to doubt that the conquerors spoke an Arian language, that they had an Arian cult, and finally that their features were entirely those of the white family, with nothing reminiscent of the Mongolian type. (Benfey, Bemerkungen über die Gœtter-namen auf Indo-skythischen-münzen, Zeitsch. ddm Gesellsch., t. VIII, p. 450 et seqq.) 36. ÿ I have already spoken elsewhere of the normal change from r to s in Arian languages, and of the cause of this law. I will only give a few examples here, brought up by the subject, and to show that it is carried out everywhere equally. In the Achaemenid inscriptions of the second kind, Westergaard observes that the word asa can also be read arsa ; thus Parsa or Posa. The Indianist scholar adds that the Medic did not admit the r before a consonant and deleted it (pp. 87, 115.) We are involuntarily reminded here of the complex way in which Ammianus Marcellinus and Jornandés transcribed the names of the Scandinavian gods: instead of ases, they say anses or anseis. (We know how frequent the mutation of r into n is.) This form ansi was known to the Chinese, who say asi and ansi indifferently. (Ritter, loc. cit., pass.) — Among the Dorians, the same mobility took place between the s and the r. We read, in the decree of the Spartans against Timothy, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ for ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, etc. — Among the Latins, same observation, but in the opposite direction; thus genus, generis, majosibus, majoribus, plurima, plusima, Papisius, Papirius, arbos, arbor. We find traces of it in a French dialect, Poitevin, where we say: il ertait pour: il estait, and in the novels of the 12th century. — So, Arya and Asa are the same. Asia, Asia, is the land of the Arians. Sak or hak means to honor. (Lassen and Westergaard, p. 25.) — Ket, ...., in modern Persi

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37. ÿ The word mother is, in Sanskrit, âmaba. This is a shorter dialectical form. 38. ÿ See Volume I 39. ÿ The three sons of Féridoun are Iredj, Tour

.

and Khawer. These are the personifications of the three white branches of Persia, Iran, properly speaking, then the interior of Asia, then the western countries of the world. The relationship of these three groups is thus rigorously recognized. We will not fail to find in the Khawer form a very natural transcription of the ancient expression of Yavana. This is further testimony to the antiquity of the information used by Firdousi. (See volume I — Schaffarik, Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 350-351.) 40. ÿ Herodotus provides three traditions on the origin of the Scythians and one on that of the Sarmatians. The first, considering the Scythians as 41. ÿ These details of is

costume and weaponry are found in Roman and Greek writers who spoke of the Sarmatians in .

detail. As for the general equipment of other peoples of the same family, we saw above that the Ramayana attributed to the Sakas golden armor, heavy axes and long swords. Herodotus, in perfect agreement with this book, shows the Massagetes with baldrics, breastplates and helmets covered with gold, and using copper to forge the points of their spears, their javelins and their arrows. (Herodotus, II, 215.) — In the expedition of Xerxes, the Persian Arians had iron breastplates worked from fish scales. (Herodotus, VII, 61.) This custom, says the historian, had been borrowed from the Medes. (Book VII, 62.) — The Cissian Arians also followed her. (Ibidem), as well as the Hyrcanian Arians. (ibid.). It was the same with the Parthians, the Chorasmians, the Sogdians, the Gandarians, the Dadices and the Bactrians. (Ibidem., 64 and 66.) - There is therefore no possible doubt that complete metal armor in the form of scales was in general use among all the Arian nations designated by the Hindus under the name of Sakas. 42. ÿ Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen in dem Mittelalter, Wien 1851, p.

337. — A. de Haxthausen, in his excellent work on Russia, makes a remark which leads to the same result: “The ornaments,” he says, “and the cutouts which adorn the roofs (of the houses of Russian peasants around Moscow ), the galleries and the staircase leading inside, recall the dwellings of the Alps, and particularly Swiss chalets. » (T. I, p. 19-20.)

43. ÿ This name is formed from the two roots sâr and mat, which mean destroyer of peoples. One, sar, is a doctor. (Westergaard, p. 81.)

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The other, mat, responds to the Sanskrit verb to tear. — I believe I have already said, but I repeat it again, that it is not a question of finding, for Turanian words, a direct source in Sanskrit, but only dialect analogies which can provide a glimpse of the meaning through the inconsistent form of words. — The word sâr, inhabitant, is the same which appears in the name of the capital of Lydia, ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ, from sâr and dhâ, Sarda, the place where inhabitants are established, the colony. 44. ÿ Schaffarik, Slaw. Alterth., t. I, p. 120-121, 141. 45. ÿ The Ossetians of the Caucasus, named, in the old Russian annals, Iasi or Osi, and by Plan-Carpin, in the 13th century, Alani and Asses, attributed to themselves the title of 'Iron, and to their country that of Ironistan. This is a new example of permutation of r into s. (Schaff., Slaw. Alterth., t. I, 141, 353.) 46. ÿ Schaffarik recognizes some faint remains of a tribe of Iazygous Sarmatians in the population today sparse on the left bank of the Pialassa. They have a very brown complexion, dress in black, and maintain customs different from those of the races around them. They speak White Russian, but with a Lithuanian accent. They are called by the locals Iatwjèses or Iodwezaj. It is a group of completely fallen mongrels. (Schaff., Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 338, 340, 343, 349.) 47. ÿ Munch (Det Norske Folk Historie (German translation), p. 63) seeks rather painfully to establish the etymology of this word. He wants that, just as the Germans are called by the Slavs Njemzi, mute, because we do not understand what they say, these same Slavs, better instructed in the language of the Sarmatians, gave them the name Ruotslaine , Rootslaine, from the root rot, the people of those who speak. 48. ÿ Munch, p. 14, 52-53. 49. ÿ Garta is used in the Vedas in the double sense of chariot and house. We see the cause. On an Achaemenid inscription, karta means castle. In this sense, it is part of the composition of the name of several Asian capitals, among others Tigranocerta, the castle of Tigrane. In Latin, in Gothic, and in all the languages derived from this double source, hortus, gard, gardun, gurten, giœrd, giardino, jardin, garden, mainly means an enclosure, and this is, certainly, the intimate meaning the word. (Dieffenbach, Vergleichendes Wœrterbuch der gothischen Sprache, t. II, p. 382.) — Lassen and Westergaard, Die Achem. Cuneiform inscriptions, p. 29 et 72. — Weinhold, The German Women in the Middle Ages, Vienna, 1851, p. 327. — Pott (Etymological Research, th. I, p. 144) joins very well the Greek ÿÿÿÿÿÿ and the Italian word chors. I'm there

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I will add the military term of the same origin cohors, which keeps the primitive t in its inflections . 50. ÿ Ptolemy names the people of this country ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ. A Persian inscription collected by Niebuhr, I, tabl. XXXI, also mentions it. Herodotus counts eight thousand Sagartes in Darius' army (VII, 85). (Lassen and Westergaard, Achem. Keilinschriften, p. 54.) 51. ÿ the Edda places the Aesir, the Roxolans, on the eastern bank of the Don, while the independent Wendish nations occupy the western bank. (Schaffarik, vol. I, p. 134, 307, 358.) 52. ÿ Follow the trace and indication of these mixtures in the Edda, mainly in the Vœluspa. The mythical form of the story in no way prevents us from seeing the historical core. 53. ÿ Munch attributes the ruin of Gardarike to the pressure of the Sakas nations who had replaced the Sarmatians in the regions of the Caucasus, and who were themselves dispossessed by the Achaemenids. (P. 61.)

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CHAPTER II The German Arians

Arriving at a certain point on its route, the emigration of the noble Roxolane nations separated into two branches. One headed towards present-day Pomerania, settled there, and from there conquered the neighboring islands of the coast and southern Sweden[1]

.

For the first time the Arians became navigators and took up a mode of activity in which it was reserved for them to one day surpass, in audacity and intelligence, everything that other civilizations had ever been able to carry out. The other branch, which, at its time, was no less remarkable nor less fulfilled in this way, continued to walk in the direction of the Frozen Sea, and, arriving on these sad shores, made a bend, skirted them, and , then descending towards the south, entered this Norway, Nord-wegr, the northern path[2] , a sinister country, unworthy of these warriors, the most excellent of beings. Here the group of tribes which stopped abandoned the denominations of Sarmatians, Roxolans, Aesir, which until then had served to distinguish it among the other races. He took back the title from Sakas. The country was called Skanzia, the peninsula of the Sakas. Very probably these nations had always continued to give themselves the title of men

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honorable, and, without too much concern for the word which conveyed this idea, they were called indifferently Khetas, Sakas, Arians or Ases. In the new residence, it was the second of these denominations which prevailed, while, for the group established in Pomerania and the adjacent lands, that of Kheta became common use (1)[3 ] . Nevertheless, the neighboring peoples never admired this last modification, the simplicity of which they undoubtedly did not understand, and with a tenacity of memory most precious for the clarity of the annals, the Finnic peoples still continue to call the Swedes today Ruotslaine or Rootslane. while the Russians are for them only Wænalnine or Wænelane, Wends (2)[4] .

The Scandinavian nations were barely established on their peninsula when a traveler of Hellenic origin came for the first time to visit these latitudes, a homeland feared by all horrors, in the opinion of the nations of Greece and Italy. The Massaliote Pythias pushed his travels to the southern coast of the Baltic.

He still found in present-day Denmark only Teutons, then Celtic, as their name indicates (3)[5] . These peoples possessed the kind of utilitarian culture of other nations of their race; but to the east of their territory were the Guttons, and with these we see the Khetas again; it was a fraction of the Pomeranian colony (4) [6]

.

The Greek navigator visited them in an inland basin of the sea

which he named Mentonomon. This basin is, to what it 1259

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seems, Frische-Haff, and the town which rises on its banks, Kônigsberg (1)[7] .

The Guttons then extended very little towards

the west; up to the Elbe, the country was divided between Slavic communes and Celtic nations (2)[8] .

Below the

river, as far as the Rhine on the one hand, as far as the Danube on the other, and beyond these two watercourses, the kymris reigned almost alone. But it was not possible that the Sakas of Norway, that the Khetas of Sweden, of the islands and of the continent, with their entrepreneurial spirit, their courage and the bad territorial lot which had fallen to them, would leave the two masses of white mixed race who lined their borders in quiet possession of an isonomy that was not too difficult to disturb.

Two directions opened up to the activity of the northern Arian groups. For the Gothic branch, the most natural way to proceed was to act on the south-east and the south, to attack again the provinces which had formerly been part of the Gardarike and the regions where previously so many Arian tribes of all denominations had come to command the Slavs and the Finns and had suffered the inevitable depreciation that mixtures brought. For the Scandinavians, on the contrary, the geographical inclination was to advance in the south and the west, to invade Denmark, still Kymric, then the unknown lands of central and western Germany, then the Netherlands, then Gaul. Neither the Goths nor the Scandinavians failed in the advances of fortune (3)[9] .

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From the second century BC, the Norwegian nations gave irrefutable evidence of their existence to the Kymris, whose closest neighbors they were. Fearsome bands of invaders, escaping from the forests, came to awaken the inhabitants of the Cimbrian Chersonese. and, crossing all barriers, crossing ten nations, crossed the Rhine, entered Gaul, and only stopped at the height of Reims and Beauvais (1) [10]

.

This conquest was rapid, happy, fruitful. However, she didn't move anyone. The victors, too few in number, had no need to expel the former owners from the land. They were content to make them work for their profit, as their entire race was accustomed to doing among submissive white half-breeds. Soon even, a new mark of the thinness of this layer of arrivals, they mingled sufficiently with their subjects to produce these Germanized groups so much celebrated by Caesar, as representing the most vibrant part of the Gallic populations of his time, and who had preserved the ancient kymric name of Belgians (2)[11] .

This first alluvium did great good to the nations it penetrated. It restored their vitality, attenuated among them the influence of Finnic alloys, restored to them for a certain time a conquering activity, which earned them part of Gaul and the eastern cantons of the island of Brittany; in short, it gave them such a marked superiority over all the other Galls that, when the Cimbri and Teutons,

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setting off in their turn, crossed the Rhine, these emigrants passed next to the Belgian territories without daring to attack them, they who fearlessly faced the Roman legions. This is because they recognized relatives on the Escaut, the Somme and the Oise who were almost equal to them. The character of fury and rage displayed by these antagonists of the Marines, their incredible audacity, their heavy greed are entirely worthy of note, because none of this was any longer in the habits or in the means of the Celtic peoples. strictly speaking. All these Cimbric and Teutonic tribes had been, even more particularly than the Celts, fortified by Scandinavian accessions. Since the northern Arians lived in their immediate vicinity and began to make their presence more actively felt, since the Jotuns also entered their domains, they had undergone great transformations, which set them above the rest of their former family. They were still Celts fundamentally, but regenerated Celts.

In this capacity, however, they had not become the equals of those who had communicated to them a part of their power; and when the Scandinavians, one day leaving their peninsula in sufficient numbers, came to claim not only sovereign supremacy, but the direct domain of these mestizos, the latter were forced to make way for them. This is how a large part of them, leaving a country which no longer had their

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offer that poverty and subjection, composed these exasperated bands which renewed for a moment in the Roman world the vision of the disastrous days of ancient Brennus. Not all the Teutons, not all the Cimbri without exception resorted to this violent course and did not throw themselves into exile. It was the boldest, the noblest, the most Germanized who did it. If it is in the instincts of warrior and dominant families to abandon en masse a country where the attraction of their ancient rights no longer retains them, this is not the case for the lower strata of the population, dedicated to agricultural work. and political submission. There is no example that they have ever been either expelled en masse or absolutely destroyed in any country. This was the case of the Cimbri and their allies. The Germanized layer disappeared, to make way for a layer more homogeneous in its Scandinavian value. The Celtic structures mixed with Finnish elements were preserved. The modern Danish language clearly reveals this (1)[12] .

It has preserved deep traces of Celtic contact, which could only have taken place at this time. A little later we still find, among the various Germanic nations of these countries, numerous Druidic beliefs and practices.

The time of the expulsion of the Teutons and the Cimbri constitutes a second displacement of the Arians from the north, already more important than the first, the one which had created the Belgians of the second formation. This resulted in three major consequences, the counter-effects of which the Romans experienced. 1263

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blows. I have just cited one: it was the cimbrical convulsion. The second, by giving a foothold to the Norwegian Scandinavians on the southern shore of the Sund, brought new peoples of mixed race, more Arianized than the Belgians, to arrive in northern Germany, and little by little as far as the Rhine. , for the most part, because they brought new national denominations to the heart of the Celtic masses that they conquered. The third effect was to bring, in the 1st century BC, to the center of Gaul, a well-characterized, very clear Germanic conquest, one of which Ariovistus showed himself to be the only apparent leader. These last two facts require some attention, and, dealing first with the first, let us note how little the dictator knows the trans-Rhine nations of his time. For him, as formerly for Aristotle, these are no longer Kymric populations, but groups speaking a very particular language, and whose merit, which he was able to judge by personal experience, makes very superior to the degeneration to which the people are prey. Contemporary Gauls.

The nomenclature given by him of these families, so worthy of interest, is not richer than the details he reports on their customs. He only knows and cites a few tribes; and even if the Treviri and the Nervians declare themselves Germanic by origin, as they had the right to do up to a certain point, he no less legitimately ranks them among the Belgians. The Boians defeated with the Helvetii are in his eyes half-German, but in a different way from the Remi; And he is not wrong. The Suevi, despite the Celtic origin of their name, seem to be able to be compared

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to the warriors of Ariovistus (1)[13] . Finally, he absolutely places in this last category other bands, also originating from across the Rhine, who a little before his consulate had penetrated, sword in hand, into the heart of the country of the Arverni, and who, being established in lands granted willingly, or rather by force, by the natives, had then called a large enough number of their compatriots to form there a colonization of approximately twenty thousand souls. This trait is enough, by the way, to explain this terrible resistance which, among the angry inhabitants of Gaul, made the subjects of Vercingetorix rival the courage of the boldest champions of the North (1)[14 ] .

It was to this little information that, in the 1st century BC, the knowledge that we had in the Roman world of these valiant nations which would one day exercise such a great influence on the civilized universe was limited. I'm not surprised: they had just arrived or barely formed, and had only half revealed their presence. We would be entitled to consider these incomplete details as almost null, with regard to the judgment to be made on the special nature of the Germanic peoples of the second invasion, if, by the special description that the author of the Gallic war left of the camp and in the person of Ariovistus, he fortunately did not find himself having supplemented, to a useful extent, what his other observations were too vague to authorize a conclusion.

Ariovistus, in the eyes of the great Roman statesman, is not only a band leader, he is a conqueror 1265

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politics of the highest kind, and this judgment, without doubt, does honor to the one who deserved it. Before entering into struggle with the people-king, he had inspired a very strong idea of his power in the senate, since the latter had thought it necessary to already recognize him as sovereign and declare him friend and ally. These sought-after titles, so appreciated by the rich monarchs of Asia, did not ingratiate him. When the dictator, before coming to blows with him, seeks to study it and, in an astute negotiation, tries to discuss his right to introduce himself into Gaul, he responds aptly that this right is equal and all the same to that of the Roman himself, that he came, like him, called by the people of the country, and to intervene in their discords. He maintains his position as legitimate arbiter; then, tearing with pride the hypocritical veils in which his competitor seeks to shroud and hide the serious nature of the situation: “It is not a question,” he said, “neither for you nor for me, of protecting the Gallic cities, nor of arrange their debates, as disinterested peacemakers. We both want to enslave them. »

By speaking thus, he places the debate on its true ground and declares himself worthy of disputing the prey. He knows the affairs of the country well, the parties which divide it, the passions, the interests of them. He speaks Gaulish with as much ease as his own language. In short, he is no more a barbarian by his habits than a subordinate by his intelligence.

He was defeated. Fate ruled against him, against his army, but not, as we know, against his race. His men, 1266

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who did not belong to any of the nations bordering the Rhine, dispersed. Those whom Caesar, dazzled by their valor, could not take into his service, went to mingle, silently, with the mixed tribes which covered the ground behind them. They brought new elements to their martial genius. It was they, although they were not a nation, but only an army (1) [15] , who were the first to make the name of the Germans known in the West. It was from the more or less great resemblance that the Treviri, the Boians, the Suevi, the Nervians had with them, either in bodily appearance, or in morals and courage, that Caesar had granted to them. here is the honor of finding something Germanic in them. It is therefore about them that we must inquire about what this glorious name means, which I have already used while waiting for the real opportunity to explain it.

Since the people of Ariovistus were not a people and only constituted a troop on an expedition, traveling, following the custom of the Arian nations, with their women, their children and their goods, they had no reason to adorn with a national name; perhaps, as has often happened to their fellows since then, they had been recruited from many different tribes. Thus deprived of a collective name, what could they say to the Gauls who asked them: Who are you? Warriors, they necessarily replied, honorable men, nobles, Arimanni , Heermanni, and following the Kymric pronunciation, Germanni. This was in fact the name

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general and common that they gave to all champions of free birth (1) [16] .

The synonymous names of Saka,

Khéta, Arian, had ceased to designate, as before, all of their nations; certain particular branches and certain tribes applied them exclusively (2)[17] . But everywhere, as in India and Persia, this name, in one of its expressions, and more generally in that of Arian, continued to be applied to the most numerous class of society or to the most preponderant. The Arian among the Scandinavians was therefore the head of the family, the warrior par excellence, what we would call the citizen. As for the leader of the expedition in question here, and who, like Brennus, Vercingetorix and so many others, seems to have received from history only his title, and not his proper name, Ariovistus , he was the host of the heroes, the one who fed them, paid them, that is to say, according to all traditions, their general. Ariovistus is Ariogast, or Ariagast, the host of the Arians.

With the second century of the Christian era begins this era when Scandinavian emissions having already multiplied in Germany, the instinct for initiative has become patent there and arouses all the concerns of Roman statesmen. Tacitus's soul is prey to poignant anxieties, and he does not know what to hope for for the future. “That it persists,” he cries, “that it lasts, I adjure all the gods, not the affection that these people have for us, but the hatred with which they tear each other apart. A company such as

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ours has nothing better to expect from fortune than the discord of its neighbors (1)[18]. » These very natural terrors were, however, deceived by the event. The Germans, bordering the empire at the time of Trajan, were, despite their frightening appearances, to render the most eminent services to Roman affairs and take little part in its future transformation, if indeed they took any. It was not to them that the glory of regenerating the world and constituting the new society was promised. Energetic as they were compared to the men of the republic, they were already too affected by Celtic and Slavic mixtures to accomplish a task which required so much youth and originality of instincts. The names of most of their tribes disappear without fanfare before the 10th century. A very small number still appears in the history of the great migration; yet they are very far from appearing in the front ranks. They had let themselves be won over by Roman corruption.

To find the true focus of the decisive invasions which created the germ of modern society, one must travel to the Baltic coast and the Scandinavian peninsula. This is the country that the oldest chroniclers rightly name, and with ardent enthusiasm, the source of peoples, the matrix of nations (1)[19] . We must also associate with him, in such an illustrious designation, these eastern cantons where, since the departure of the Gardarike from Asaland, the Arian branch of the Goths had 1269

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fixed its principal residences. At the time we left them, these peoples were fugitives and forced to make do with miserable territories. We find them at this time all-powerful, in immense regions conquered by their weapons.

The Romans began to experience not all their forces, but those of the extreme provinces of their empire, in the war of the Marcomanni, in other words, of the men of the border (2)[20] . These populations were, in truth, contained by Trajan; but the victory was very costly, and was by no means definitive. She did not prejudge anything against the future destiny of this great Germanic agglomeration, which, although already touching the lower Danube, still plunged its roots into the most northern lands, and therefore the most frank, the purest, the most invigorating of the family (3)[21] .

Indeed, when, around the 5th century, the great invasions began, completely new Gothic masses presented themselves, at the same time as along the entire line of the Roman limits, from Dacia to the mouth of the Rhine, peoples, barely known until recently, and who have gradually made themselves formidable, become irresistible. Their names, indicated by Tacitus and Pliny as belonging to tribes extremely remote to the north, had appeared to these writers only very barbarous; they had considered the peoples who wore them as the least likely to arouse their concern. They were wrong about everything at all.

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They were, as I have just said, and in the front line, the Goths, arriving en masse from all corners of their possessions, from where the power of Attila expelled them, supported even more by Arian or Arianized races. than on his Mongol hordes (1)[22] . The empire of the Amalungs, the domination of Hermanarik, had collapsed under these terrible assaults. Their government, more regular, stronger than that of the other Germanic races (2)[23] , and which undoubtedly reproduced the same forms based on the same principles as that of ancient Asgard, had not been able to save from inevitable ruin. However, they had performed wonders of valor. Defeated as they were, they had retained their entire grandeur; their kings did not degenerate from the divine stock to which their house dates back, nor from the brilliant name it earned them, the Amâls, the Celestials, the Pure (3)[24] ; finally, the supremacy of the Gothic family was, in a way, avowed among the Germanic nations, for it is evident in all the pages of the Edda, and this book, compiled in Iceland from Norwegian songs and stories, famously mainly the Visigoth Theodorik. These extraordinary honors were completely deserved. Those to whom they were returned aspired to all kinds of glory. They understood much better than the Romans the importance and the price of monuments of all kinds coming from the ancient civilization; they exercised the noblest influence throughout the West. They were rewarded with lasting glory; in the 12th century, a

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French poet still took pride in being descended from their blood (1) [25] , and, much later, the last stirrings of Gothic energy inspired the pride of the Spanish nobility.

After the Goths, the Vandals would hold a distinguished rank in the work of social renewal, if their action had been able to be sustained and last longer. Their numerous bands were not purely Germanic, neither by the recruits from whom they were reinforced, nor by the very origin of the core: the Slavic element tended to dominate (2) [26] .

Soon fortune threw them into the midst of populations far more

civilized than they were, and infinitely more numerous. The particular alloys which took place were all the more pernicious, for the Germanic part of their essence, because foreign to the first combination of Vandal elements, these alloys created and developed more disorders. A fundamentally Slavic, yellow and Arian mixture, accepting step by step, in Italy and Spain, the Romanized blood of different formations to then take on all the melanized nuances spread on the African coast, could only degenerate all the more quickly as it soon ceased to receive any Germanic tributary. Carthage saw the Vandals eagerly accept its decrepit civilization and die as a result. They disappeared. The Kabyles, who are claimed to be descended from them, have in fact preserved something of the northern physiognomy, and this all the more easily than the sporadic habits in which

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their decadence has caused them to fall, placing them at the level of neighboring peoples, continuing to maintain a certain balance between the ethnic elements of which they are currently formed. But, examined with some attention, they reveal that the few Teutonic traits surviving in their physiognomy are contrasted by many others belonging to local races. And yet these degenerate Kabyles are still the most hardworking, the most intelligent and the most utilitarian of the inhabitants of West Africa.

The Longobards defended their purity better than the Vandals; they also had the advantage of being able to dip themselves several times in the source from which their blood came; also they lasted longer and exerted a greater action. Tacitus had barely noticed them around the Baltic, where they lived in his time. They still touched the common cradle of the noble nations of which they were a part. Then descending further south, they reached the middle regions of the Rhine and the upper Danube, and they stayed there long enough to imprint themselves with the nature of the local races, to which the Celtic character of their dialect bears witness (1)[27 ] . Despite these mixtures, they had in no way forgotten what they were, and long after they had established themselves in the Po valley, Prosper of Aquitaine, Paul Deacon and the author of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf saw still in them primitive descendants of the Scandinavians (2)[28] .

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The Burgundians, formerly placed by Pliny in Jutland, undoubtedly shortly after they had just arrived there, belonged, like the Longobards, to the Norwegian branch (3)[29 ] ; they had headed south, after the 3rd century, and having dominated southern Germany for a long time, they had intermarried with the Celticized Germans of previous invasions, as well as with all the various elements, Kymric and Slavic, who could be found there in fusion. Their destiny resembled in many points that of the Longobards, with this nuance however that their blood was able to preserve a little more.

They had the good fortune to find themselves directly, from the 7th century, under the influence of a Germanic group whose purity corresponded to that of the Goths, the nation of the Franks. If they were quickly reduced to obeying these superiors, they owed them very favorable ethnic interference. The Franks, who outlasted as a powerful nation almost all other branches of the common stock, even that of the Goths, had only been barely glimpsed, in the core of their race, by the Roman historians of the first century of our era (1)[30] . Their royal tribe, the Merowings, lived then and until the 6th century still had representatives on a fairly limited territory, located between the mouths of the Elbe and the Oder, on the banks of the Baltic, above the former residence of the Longobards. It is obvious, from this geographical location, that the Merowings came from JVorwège, and did not belong to the Gothic branch (2)[31] . They acquired a great 1274

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preponderance in the history of Gallic territories after the 5th century. However, none of the divine genealogies that we have today mention them and do not allow them to be linked to Odin, an essential circumstance however, at the discretion of the Germanic nations, to found the rights to royalty, and which fulfilled, as well as the Gothic Amalungs, the Danish Skildings, the Swedish Astings, and all the dynasties of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy (1)[32] . Despite this silence in the documents, there is no doubt, seeing the undisputed preeminence of the Merowings among the Franks, and the glory of this nation, that the divine origin, the Odinic descent, in other words the condition of Ariane purity , was not lacking in this family of kings, and that it is only through the destructive effect of time that its titles have not come down to us.

The Franks had descended fairly promptly to the lower Rhine, where the poem of Beowulf shows them in possession of both banks of the river, and separated from the sea by the Flemings, Flaemings, and Frisians, two peoples with whom their alliance was close ( 2)[33] . There, they found under their feet only extremely and long-term Germanized races (3)[34] , and as a result, united with their late departure from the most Arian countries, they took with them powerful guarantees of strength and duration for the empire they were going to found. However, on the last point, more favored than the Vandals, than the Longobards, than the Burgundians, and even than the Goths, they were less so.

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than the Saxons, and, if they had more brilliance, they yielded to them in longevity. These were never carried by their external conquests in the lively parts of the Roman world (1)[35] . As a result, they had no contact with the most mixed races, the most anciently cultivated, but also the most weakening. They can hardly be counted among the invading peoples of the empire, although their movements began almost at the same time as those of the Franks. Their main efforts were focused on eastern Germany and the Breton islands of the Western Ocean. They therefore made no contribution to regenerating the Roman masses. This lack of contact with the living parts of the civilized world, which at first deprived them of much illustration, was advantageous to them to the highest degree. The Anglo-Saxons represent, among all the peoples who left the Scandinavian peninsula, the only one who, in modern times, has preserved a certain apparent portion of the Arian essence. It is the only one which, strictly speaking, still lives today. All the others have more or less disappeared, and their influence is only exerted in a latent state.

In the table I have just drawn, I have left out the details. I have not stopped to describe the innumerable small groups which, always on the move, constantly crossing and recrossing the paths of larger masses, contribute to giving the invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries this feverish and tormented appearance which is not one of the least causes of their greatness. He

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To do this well, it would be necessary to imagine vividly and in an incessant tumult these myriads of tribes, armies, bands on expeditions, which, pushed by the most diverse causes, sometimes the pressure of rival nations, sometimes the increase in population , here famine, there a suddenly awakened ambition, other times the simple love of glory and booty, set in motion, and, seconded by victory, brought about step by step the most terrible upheavals (1) [ 36] . From the Black Sea, from the Caspian to the Atlantic Ocean, everything was in turmoil. The Celtic and Slavic background of the rural populations constantly overflowed from one country to another, carried away by the Arian impetuosity; and, in the midst of a thousand throngs, the Mongol horsemen of Attila and his allies, making themselves visible through these forests of swords and these startled herds of plowmen, traced indelible furrows in all directions. It was an extreme mess. If on the surface great causes of regeneration appeared, in the depths fell new ethnic elements of degradation and ruin which the future would have a lot of fun developing.

Let us now summarize all the Arian movements in Europe, I mean movements which led to the formation of Germanic groups and their descent to the borders of the Roman Empire. Around the 8th century BCE, the Sarmatian Roxolan tribes headed towards the Volga plains. In the 4th century, they occupied Scandinavia and a few points on the Baltic coast towards the

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South East. In the 3rd century, they began to flow back in two directions towards the middle regions of the continent. In the western region, their first layers meet Celts and Slavs; to the east, in addition to the latter, quite numerous Arian detritus, coming from the very ancient invasions of the Sarmatians, the Getae, the Thracians, in short collaterals of their own ancestors, without counting the last nations of noble race which continued to emerge of Asia. Hence, marked superiority among the Gothic tribes, which such mixtures could not weaken. Little by little, however, equality, the ethnic balance between the two currents is re-established. As the first Western broadcasts are covered by purer news, the Scandinavian invasion rises to the most majestic proportions; so that, if the Sicambres and the Cherusci had promptly ceased to be equivalent to the men of the Gothic empire, the Franks may boldly be considered as the worthy brothers of the warriors of Hermanrik, and even more so the Saxons of the same era are entitled to the same praise.

But, at the same time as so many great races were flocking towards southern Germany, Gaul and Italy, the Hunnic catastrophes, tearing the Goths and the last Alans from their Slavic subjects, transferred them en masse to the points where the other nations Germanics also tended to concentrate. The result was that the east of Europe, almost stripped of its Arian forces, was returned to the power of the Slavs and invaders.

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of Finnic race, which were to definitively plunge the latter into the irremediable degradation from which nobler rulers had never had the influence to save them. It also resulted from this that all the forces of the Germanic essence tended to accumulate in an almost exclusive manner in the most western parts of the continent, even in the northwest. From this arrangement of ethnic principles should result the entire organization of modern history. Now, before going any further, it is appropriate to examine in itself this Germanic Ariane family whose stages we have just followed. Nothing is more necessary than to specify exactly its value before introducing it in the midst of Roman degeneration.

1. ÿ Munch, open. cited, p. 61. 2. ÿ Munch, p. 9 and 61. — He gives, by extension, to the word Norwegian the meaning of people who walk towards the north, and, by induction, of people who walk towards the north relative to their compatriots, Swedes and Pomeranians, or, in other words, Goths remaining in the south. 3. ÿ (1) Munch, open. cited, p. S9. 4. ÿ (2) Ibid., p. 56. 5. ÿ (3) The name Teut, which the Germans give themselves today, is of very ancient use among the nations of the Kymris, and has absolutely nothing Germanic about it. We find in aboriginal Italy Teuta for the original name of Pisa. The inhabitants were called Teutanes, Teutani or Teutæ. (Pliny, Hist. natur., III, 8.) — The warriors of Gaul had established in Cappadocia the tribe of Teutobodiaci, in Pannonia, the city of Teutobourgion, in the north of Greece, the Teutai (Id., ibid .) — We know a host of names of Celtic men in whose composition includes this word, Teutobochus, Teutomalus, etc. (Dieffeubach, Celtica II, I Abth, p. 193, 338.) — Munch considers the Thjust of Smaaland to be Celts of origin. (P. 46.) — Deutsch does not appear to have been taken collectively before the 9th century AD. 6. ÿ (4) They had established themselves on the lands of the Slavic nations which they had forced to share, and whose nob

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(Schaffarik, Slav. Alterth., t. I, p. 106.) 7. ÿ (1) Pythias, Ptolemy, Mela and Pliny showed the Goths tending towards the Vistula. This was their border for a long time. There they came into contact with Arian peoples who were called the ScythoSarmatians, and who, although of the same stock as them, were part of another invading group. (Munch, 36-37, 52-53.) 8. ÿ (2) Munch, loc. cit., 31. 9. ÿ (3) This separation of the first truly Germanic nations into Scandinavians and Goths seems to me to be dictated by the facts, and I prefer it to the genealogical traditions preserved for us by Tacitus and Pliny. These descend the northern races from a typical man, called Tuisto, and his three sons, Istsewo, Irmino and Ingævo. Everything proves that this myth never existed in purely Germanic countries, and developed especially in central and southern Germany. It therefore appears to be of Celtic origin, although it was adopted and perhaps modified in some parts by the mixed-race German Muller to find in the names of Tuisto, Ingaevo, Irmino and Istaevo nicknames of Scandinavian gods is certainly not very happy. (Altdeutsche Religion, p. 292 et seqq.) — As an example of the changes that this tradition has undergone over time, we can present the table given by Nemnius (ed. Gunn, p. 53-34), where, at place of Tuisto, in which we cannot, in any case, recognize that Teut, transformed into the eponym of the Celtic race, the chronicler gives Alanus, and as for the names of the three heroes sons of this Alanus, he writes them Hisicion, Armenon and Neugio. 10. ÿ (1) Munch, open. cited, p. 18. 11. ÿ (2) What then happened among the Celtic populations of the West was what had been happening for centuries, in the East of Europe, to other Celts and especially to the Slavs. Arian masters began by imposing themselves on them, then accepted their national name by mingling. This is one of the reasons which led the Romans for so long to confuse the two groups and Strabo to propose this singular etymology of the word Germanus, coming, he said, from what the Gauls call them Brothers, Germanoï . (VII, 1, 2.) They were brothers, in fact, at the time when the geographer of Apamea observed them, but not brothers by origin. (See Wachter, Encycl. Ersch u. Gruber, Galli, p. 47. — Dieffenbach, Celtica II, p. 68.) — Just as the first Germanic clans of the East, those who came from Norway, mixed to the Celts, whom they found on their way, likewise the first Gothic expeditions contracted alliances which profoundly modified them. Thus the Gothini of Silesia had adopted the language of their r

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kymric. Tacitus says this expressly. (Germ., 43.) I insist all the more strongly on facts of this kind, because they form the essential part of history, because they explain a multitude of enigmas, hitherto insoluble, and that we have never taken them into consideration. 12. ÿ (1) Munch (cited work, p. 8) does not think that before the 8th century AD it can be said that the Danish populations were Germanic. The extreme north of Jutland appears to have supported a large number of diverse populations, first Finns, then Celts, then Slavs, then Jotûns, finally Scandinavians. — Wachter (Galli) considers the Danes to be a primitive mixture of Finns and Celts. 13. ÿ (1) The Suevi had a very great reputation among the Germanic half-breeds. They were not, however, purebred. Their political organization was that of the Kymris, their religion was Druidic. They lived in towns, which no Scandinavian or Gothic nation did; they even cultivated the land, according to Caesar. 14. ÿ (1) It appears that before the time of Caesar the nations of Gaul, the most considerable, had resorted, to increase their power, to this means familiar to peoples in decadence, of colonizing foreigners in their own country. under the condition of military service. What the Arverni had done, perhaps with a little force, their rivals, the Aedui, had tried with good grace. 15. ÿ (1) Ariovistus told Caesar that in the fourteen years since his campaigns in Gaul had begun, neither he nor his men had slept under a roof. This remark clearly indicates the absolutely military situation of this leader's people. 16. ÿ (1) Savigny, D. Rœmische Recht im Mittelalter, t. 1, p. i93. — Until the 9th and 10th centuries we said Germanus and Arimannus indifferently, to indicate a free man among the Germanic populations of Italy. (Ibidem, p. 166.) There are even examples in the 12th century. Arimannia was then called all the free men of the same district and also the free property of an ariman. (Ibid., 170-171.) 17. ÿ (2) Besides the Sarmatian Oses, who still inhabited Pannonia, but were very degenerate and dependent on other Sarmatians and the Germanic Quades, we had the Osyls in the Baltic; they were original Roxolans. (Munch, p. 31.) We thus had Germanic Arii beyond the Vistula (Tac, 43), Guttes, Chattes, Gutones, etc., etc. Pliny, Strabo, Ptolemy and Mela would, if necessary, give all the elements of a long list.

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18. ÿ (1) "Let it remain, I pray, and endure for the nations, if not our love, then certainly its hatred; when the fates of the empire are pressing, nothing can be done by fortune more than the discord of the enemy. » (Germ., 33). 19. ÿ (1) Jornandès, c. 4: "Scandia is an island, like a factory of nations, or a velut vagina nationum. » 20. ÿ (2) Munch, p. 31 and 38. 21. ÿ (3) Ibid., p. 40. — Keferstein, Keltische Alterth., t. 1, p. XXXI. 22. ÿ (1) Mr. Amédée Thierry, in his work on the 5th century, was the first to enter a path which sheds entirely new light on the political facts of these periods. We cannot praise enough the method used by this writer to study and judge Attila's action. — Schaffarik, Slaw. Alterth., t. I, p. 124. — The great migration was mainly composed of the Vandals, the Suevi and the Alans, in terms of the invading masses, but not in terms of the direction given to them. (Munch, p. 40.) 23. ÿ (2) It is to Tacitus that we owe this remark. 24. ÿ (3) Strahlenberg {Der nœrdl. u. oestl. Theil Europas u. Asians, p. 104) had already noticed that the Visigolhs called the sky Amal. — Schlegel Ind. Library., t. 1, p. 233) observed, after him, that the word amala, which in Gothic means pure, without stain, has exactly the same meaning in Sanskrit. — The Amala, in Anglo-Saxon, Amalunga, in the Nibelungenlied, Atnalungen, the Amalungs descended from Géat or Khéta. According to W. Muller (Alt. deutsche Religion, p. 297), Geat is a nickname for Odin. I am rather inclined to see in this name an ancient form of the national name of the Goths, as Séaf is a form of Saka. (See a previous note.) The Amalungs thus descended from the purest Arian stock. 25. ÿ (1) Rigord, who died around 1209, describes himself, in his chronicle: “Magister Rigordus, natione Gothu. » (Hist. litt. de France, t. XVII, p. 7.) 26. ÿ (2) Schaffarik (Slaw. Alterth., t. I, p. 163) thinks that the Slavs, in their establishments located between the Vistula and the Oder, having received interference from the Suevi (Germanized Celts), gave birth to the Vandals. The ending il, ul, al indicates a derivative. Among the Vandals there were several bands whose purely Germanic origin is indisputable. However, these bands were few in number. 27. ÿ (1) Munch, p. 46 and 48. 28. ÿ (2) Ibid. 29. ÿ (3) Keferstein (Keltische Alterth., t. I, p. XXXI) indicates in their composition, at the time they arrived on the Rhine, mixtures of Gothic and Vandal. There is, in fact, nothing more likely. I only hear about their initial state here. 30. ÿ (1) Pliny knows these people.

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31. ÿ (2) This is the country called by the anonymous Ravenna, Maurungania, the land of the Mérowings. —The Beowulf poem clearly establishes the relationship between the Merowings and the Franks when it says, v. 5836: Us waes toSyddan Merewionigas Milts un-gyfede. “Since that time, the benevolence of the Merowings has always been refused to us,” that is to say since the Franks have been at war with the speaker. (Kemble, Anglo-Saxon Poëm of Beowulf, p. 206. — Ettmuller, Beowulfslied, 21. — J. Bachlechner, Zeitschrift fd Alt., t. VIII, p. 326.) — Keferstein clearly shows how, by the route they followed in their migration from the extreme north, the Franks were able to arrive as far as Gaul without having been in any way mixed with the Slavs and almost not with the pure Celts. (T. I, p. xxxiv.) 32. ÿ (1) The heroic genealogies which have been preserved for us, either in the Edda, or in the annals compiled by monks, or in the preambles of the different codes, constitute one of the most important sources that we can consult for the Germanic history of the most ancient periods. (See on this subject Grimm, W. Muller, Ellmuller, etc.) The form of the names, the order in which they are placed, the number of ancestors given to Odin himself, finally the traces of alliteration which are found in the prose compilations are all features worthy of being observed with the most extreme attention for the important results to which they lead. I especially notice three names among Odin's ancestors, Suaf, Heremod and Géat ; these are all ethnic memories relating to the great national denominations of Saka, Arya, and Khéta. We can point out two others, indicating mixtures which certainly took place: Hwala, Gall, and Funi, Fenn. 33. ÿ (2) The Frisians were formerly called Eotenas,_Eolan or Jutæ, they were Germanized Jotuns. (Ettmuller, Beowulfslied, p. 36) 34. ÿ (3) Among those who were the least, we can count the Ubians.

But the Celtic element had nevertheless been very strongly weakened in this nation by the mixtures of another nature which the Romans had brought. (Dieffenbach, Celtica I, p. 68.) The Sicambres, whose name plays a role in our first annals, were necessarily Germanized to a very high degree, their geographical location requiring it so. However, their name is Celtic and recalls that of the Segobrigi, a nation which very anciently was known to the Phocaean colony of Marseille. This name seems to mean the illustrious Ambers or Kymris.

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35. ÿ (1) Keferstein, open. cited, t. I, p. xxxiv. 36. ÿ (1) Of this number are the Astings, the Scyrres, the Ruges, the Gepids and especially the Heruli. All these groups, who, like the people of Ariovistus, constituted armies, or even expeditionary bands, rather than peoples in search of shelter, returned, very often to the North after having greatly frightened the South. . (Munch, p. 44.)

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CHAPTER III. Capacity of native Germanic breeds.

The Arian nations of Europe and Asia, taken as a whole, observed in their common and typical qualities, have also amazed us by this imperious and dominating attitude that they constantly exercised over other peoples, even over mixed-race and white people among whom or near whom they lived. From this aspect alone, it is already difficult not to recognize their real supremacy over the rest of the human species; for in such matters what appears necessarily exists. However, we should not misunderstand the nature of this supremacy and seek it or claim to find it in facts that do not belong to it. Nor should we believe it to be obscured and called into question by certain details which shock vulgar prejudices about the generally accepted idea of superiority. That of the Arians does not lie in an exceptional and constant development of moral qualities; it exists in a greater supply of the principles from which these qualities flow.

We must never forget that, when we study the history of societies, it is in no way a question of morality in 1285

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herself. It is neither by vices nor by virtues that civilizations are essentially distinguished from one another, although, taken as a whole, they are better in this respect than barbarism; but this is a purely incidental consequence of their work. What essentially makes up their physiognomy are the abilities they possess and develop.

Man is the evil animal par excellence. His more multiplied needs harass him with more goads. In his species, he has all the more needs, starting from suffering, starting from excitements towards evil, as he is more intelligent. It would therefore seem natural that his evil instincts would increase as a direct result of the need to break through more obstacles to achieve a state of satisfactio But, by a happy return, this is not so. Reason, more perfected at the same time as it aims higher and is more demanding, enlightens the creature it leads on the material disadvantages of too absolute an abandonment to all the suggestions of interest. Religion, even imperfect or false, which this being always conceives in a somewhat elevated way, prohibits him from giving in on any occasion to his destructive inclinations. This is how the Arian is always, if not the best of men from the point of view of moral practice, at least the most enlightened on the intrinsic value of this kind of acts he commits. His dogmatic ideas are always the most developed and complete in this matter, although closely dependent on the state of his fortune. As long as he is 1286

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the toy of an overly precarious situation, his body remains armored and his heart the same; harsh towards his own person, nothing less surprising than that he is merciless towards others, and it is in this inflexible fact that he practices this justice whose integrity Herodotus praised in the warlike Scythian. The merit here consists in the loyalty with which a law which is perhaps so fierce is accepted, and which is softened only to the extent that the surrounding social atmosphere itself succeeds in tempering itself.

The Arian is therefore superior to other men, principally in the measure of his intelligence and energy; and it is through these two faculties that, when he succeeds in conquering his passions and his material needs, it is also given to him to arrive at an infinitely higher morality, although, in the ordinary course of things, one can find in him just as many reprehensible acts as in the individuals of the two other lower species.

This Arian now presents himself to our observation in the western branch of his family, and there he appears to us as vigorously built, as beautiful in appearance, as warlike of heart, as we once admired him in India (1 ) [1] and in Persia, as in Homeric Hellas. One of the first considerations to which the aspect of the Germanic world gives rise is again this, that man is everything there and the nation little.

We see the individual before seeing the associated mass, a fundamental circumstance, which will excite all the more 1287

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the interest that we will take more care to compare it with the spectacle offered by the aggregations of Semitic, Hellenic, Roman, Kymris and Slav mongrels. There we see almost only the multitudes; the man counts for nothing, and he disappears all the more as, the ethnic mixture to which he belongs being more complicated, the confusion has become more considerable.

Thus placed on a sort of pedestal, and freeing himself from the background on which he acts, the Arian Germain is a powerful creature, who first draws attention to himself before allowing it to be brought to bear on the environment which surrounds him. 'surrounded. Everything this man believes, everything he says, everything he does, thus acquires major importance. In matters of religion and cosmogony, here are its dogmas: nature is eternal, matter infinite (2)[2] . However, the gaping void, gap gunninga, chaos, preceded all things (3)[3] .

“At that time,” said the Vœluspa, “there was

neither sand, nor sea, nor soft waves. The earth was nowhere, nor the sky enveloping. From the bosom of darkness came twelve rivers, which as they flowed froze. » Then the sweet air which came from the south, from the land of fire, melted the ice; its drops of water came to life, and the giant Imir, personification of animated nature, appeared. Soon he fell asleep, and from his open left hand, and from his mutually impregnated feet, came the race of giants (4)[4] . However, as the ice continued to thaw, the cow Audhumbha came from it. It is the symbol of organic force, 1288

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who gives movement to all things. At that moment, a being named Buri again emerged from these drops of water, and he had a son, Börr, who, uniting with the daughter of a giant, gave birth to the first three gods, the oldest, the most venerable, Odhin, Vili and Ve (1)[5] .

This trinity, thus coming when the great cosmic creations were already completed, only had to carry out organizational work, and in fact this was its task. She ordered the world, and from two tree trunks washed up on the shore of the sea, she fashioned the harsh authors of the human species. An oak became the man, a willow became the woman (2)[6] .

This doctrine is still only Arian naturalism, modified by ideas developed in the far North (3) [7] .

Living and intelligent matter, still represented by the entirely

Asian myth of the Audhumbha cow, remains above the three great gods themselves. They were born after her: nothing is less surprising that they are not co-sharers of her eternity. They must perish; they must disappear one day, defeated by the giants, by the organic forces of nature, and this organization of the world of which they are the organizers is destined to be swallowed up with them, with men their creatures, to make way for new ones. orderers, to a new arrangement of all things, to new generations of mortals. Once again, the ancient sanctuaries of India knew the essentials of all these notions (1)[8] .

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Transitory gods, however great they were, were not too distant from man. So Arian Germain had not lost the habit of rising up to them. His veneration for his ancestors readily confused them with the higher powers, and effortlessly changed into adoration. He liked to believe that he was descended from someone greater than himself, and just as so many Hellenic races were linked to Jupiter, to Neptune, to the god of Chryse, so the Scandinavian proudly traced his genealogy back to Odin, or to the other celestial individualities that the natural consequences of symbolism caused to rise without difficulty around the primitive trinity (2)[9] , Anthropomorphism was completely foreign to these native notions (3)[10] ; he only joined it very late and under the irresistible influence of ethnic mixtures. As long as the son of the Roxolans remained pure, he liked to see the gods only in the mirror of his imagination, and was reluctant to make tangible images of them. He liked to imagine them hovering half-hidden in the heart of the clouds reddened by the glow of the setting sun. The mysterious sounds of the forests revealed their presence to him (4)[11] .

He also believed he found and venerated an emanation of their nature in certain objects precious to him. The Quadi took oaths on swords, which the Thracians had already done. The Longobards honored a golden serpent; the Saxons, a mystical group made up of a lion, a dragon and an eagle; the Franks also had similar uses (5)[12] .

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But alliances with European mixed race people later made them accept, in whole or in part, the material pantheon of the Slavs and Celts. They then became idolaters. Among the Suevi, they admired the wild cult of the goddess Nerthus and learned to ride, once a year, her veiled statue in a chariot (1)[13] . boar, a favorite symbol Freya's of the Galls, was adopted by most Germanic nations, who topped the crest of their helmets with it, and made it shine on the gables of their palaces. Formerly, in purely Arian times, the Germans had not even known about temples. They ended up having some, where they piled up monstrous idols (2)[14] . As had happened to the ancient Kymris, they had to please, in their turn, the most tenacious instincts of the inferior races among whom they had established themselves (3)[15] . It was the same for the forms of worship, however with more measure in the degeneration. Originally Arian German was his own unique priest, and even long after national pontiffs had been established, each warrior retained priestly power in his homes (4)[16] . It even remained annexed to landed property, and the alienation of a domain entailed that of the right to sacrifice there (5)[17] . When this state of affairs was changed, the Germanic priest only exercised action for the whole tribe. Moreover, it was never anything other than what the purohita had been among the Hindu Arians, in pre-Vedic times. He did not form a distinct caste 1291

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like the Brahmins, a powerful order like the Druids, and, no less severely excluded from the functions of war, it was not left the slightest possibility of dominating, nor even of directing the social order. However, out of a feeling imbued with great and profound wisdom, the Arians had barely recognized public priests when they entrusted them with the most imposing civil functions, charging them with maintaining order in the political assemblies and execute criminal justice decisions.

Hence among these peoples what were called human sacrifices (1) [18] . The condemned person, after hearing his sentence, was cut off from society and handed over to the priest, that is to say, to the god. A sacred hand, inflicting the last torture on him, appeased the heavenly anger on him. He fell, not so much because he had offended humanity as because he had irritated the divinity protecting law. The punishment was thus less shameful for the dignity of the Arian and, it must be admitted, more moral than our legal customs make it, where a man is slain simply in compensation for having slain another, or, according to an even narrower opinion, simply to force him to stop there (2)[19] .

It has been asked, with more or less reason, whether the Semitic nations originally had a very clear idea of the other life. In no Arian race is this doubt possible. Death was never for everyone but a narrow passage, in truth, but insignificant, open to another

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world. They glimpsed various destinies, which, moreover, were not determined by the merits of virtue or the punishment that vice should have received. The man of noble race, the true Arian, arrived by the sole power of his origin to all the honors of Valhalla, while the poor, the captives, the slaves, in a word, the half-breeds and the beings of an inferior birth , fell indistinctly into the icy darkness of Niflheimz (1)[20] .

This doctrine was obviously only in place during times when all glory, all power, all wealth was concentrated in the hands of the Arians and when no Arian was poor at the same time as no half-breed was rich. But when the era of ethnic alliances had completely disrupted this primitive simplicity of relationships, and we saw, what would have been considered impossible previously, people of noble extraction in poverty, and Slavs and Kymris, and even from the Chudes, from the opulent Finns, the dogmas relating to future existence were modified, and opinions were accepted more in conformity with the contemporary distribution of moral qualities in individuals ( 2)[21] .

The Edda divides the universe into two parts (3)[22] .

At

the center of the system, the earth, the residence of men, formed like a flat disk, as Homer described it, is surrounded on all sides by the Ocean. Above it stretches the sky, home of the gods. To the north opens a dark and icy world, where the cold comes from; to the south, a world of 1293

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fire, where heat is generated. To the east is Jotanheimz, the land of the giants; to the west, Svartalfraheimz, home of the dark and wicked dwarves. Then, in a vague situation, Vanaheimz, the region inhabited by the Wends (1)[23] . If we stop here this description, where cosmogonic ideas are united with simple geography, we have the exact reproduction of the system of the seven Brahmanical divisas, or, what is the same, of the seven Iranian kischwers (2)[ 24 ] , and, as we will see, a complete world, from the point of view of the first German Arians. The Scandinavian territory occupies the center: it is excellently the country of men. The empyrean reigns above. The north pole sends it cold; the southern regions, the little heat that reaches it. To the east, that is to say stretching towards the Baltic coast, are the main tribes of the mixed Getae; to the west, between southern Sweden and the coast of the Northern Ocean, the Lapps, almost everywhere, Wends and Celts, rightly confused with each other. The positive knowledge of the time does not allow us to add anything. But the national cosmographers, in the work of their ideas, did not stick to these old notions; they wanted to have nine climates, nine divisas, nine kischwers, instead of seven that their ancestors had known, and, to achieve this figure, they imagined two new heavens, placed above that of the gods, and named them, one Liôsâlfraheimz or Andlanger, the other Vidhblacên (1)[25] .

Both are populated by luminous dwarves. This conception would be absolutely arbitrary and 1294

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useless, if it was not based, in some way, on the distinction that the oldest Arians of upper Asia seem to have made between the immediate atmosphere of the globe and the sky proper, the empyrean, where the stars move (2)[26] .

Such were the opinions which Arian Germain entertained on the objects of the highest consideration. He easily gained a high idea of himself and his role in creation, especially since he saw himself not only as a demigod, but as an absolute possessor of a portion of this Mitgardhz, or middle earth, which nature had assigned to him as his home. He had constituted his landed property in a manner entirely consistent with his proud instincts. Two modes of ownership were in use with him.

The oldest is undoubtedly the one to which he brought the constitutive idea of Upper Asia, it was the odel (3)[27] . This word carries with it the two ideas of nobility and possession so intimately combined, that one is very embarrassed to discover whether the man was an owner because he was noble, or the other way around (1[28]) . But there is little doubt that the primordial organization, recognizing only Arian as a true man, also saw regular and legal property only in his hands and did not imagine an Arian deprived of this advantage.

The odel belonged without any restriction to its master. Neither the community nor the magistrate had the authority to exercise the strongest claim on this type of possession. 1295

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light, the most minimal duty. The odel was absolutely free of any charge; he didn't pay taxes. It constituted a true sovereignty, sovereignty unknown today, where bare ownership, usufruct and high domain were absolutely confused. The priesthood was inseparable from it, and also inseparable jurisdiction at all its degrees, civil as well as criminal. The Arian Germain sat at his hearth, disposed of the allodial earth and everything that inhabited it as he pleased. Women, children, servants, slaves, recognized only him, lived only through him, reported only to him, who reported to no one. Whether he had built his residence and cultivated his fields on deserted land, or whether his own strength would have been enough for him to rob the Finn, the Slav, the Celt or the Jotun, all people who were natively outside the law, his prerogatives had no limits.

It was not quite the same when, in company with other Arians, acting under the common direction of a war chief, he found himself participating in the conquest of a territory of which a large portion or small, had been awarded to him. This other situation created another completely different system of tenure; and as it was realized almost alone when the great migrations came to the continent of Europe, we must look there for the true germ of the main political institutions of the Germanic race. But to be able to clearly explain what this form of property was and the consequences

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that it entailed, we must first make known the relations of the Arian man with his nation. As he was head of the family and owner of an odel, these relationships amounted to very little. In agreement with the other warriors to preserve public peace, he elected a magistrate, whom the Scandinavians called drottinn, and whom other peoples born of their blood called graff (l)[29] . Chosen from the oldest and noblest races, from those which could claim a divine origin, this exact counterpart of the Hindu viçampati exercised a most restricted, if not the most precarious, authority. His legal action closely resembled that of the chiefs among the Medes before the time of Astyages, or that of the Hellenic kings in Homeric times. Under the empire of this easy rule, each Arian, within his odel, was hardly more linked to his neighbor of the same nation than the different States forming a federative government are to each other.

Such an organization, admissible in the presence of populations that were numerically weak or completely subjugated by the consciousness of their inferiority, was in no way compatible with the state of war, nor even with the state of conquest in the midst of resistant masses. The Arian, who, in his adventurous mood, lived mainly in one or other of these difficult situations, had too much practical good sense not to see the remedy for the evil and to seek the means of reconciling it. application with the ideas of personal independence which, above all, him

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were close to their hearts. He therefore imagined that at the moment of entering the campaign, very particular, very special relationships, completely foreign to the regular organization of the body politic, must intervene between the leader and the soldiers; here is how the new order of things was based: A known warrior presented himself at the general assembly, and proposed himself to command the planned expedition. Sometimes, especially in cases of aggression, he even revealed the first idea. In other circumstances, he simply submitted a plan of his own and applied it to the situation. This candidate for command took care to base his claims on his previous exploits, and to highlight his proven skill; but, above all things, the means of seduction that he could use with the most happiness, and which assured him preference over his competitors, was the offer and the guarantee, for all those who would come to fight under his orders. , to assure them of individual advantages worthy of tempting their courage and their lust. A debate and bidding war was thus established between the candidates and the warriors. It was only by conviction or by seduction that they could be led to engage with the entrepreneur of exploits, glory and booty.

We understand that a lot of eloquence and a somewhat esteemed past were absolutely necessary for those who wanted to command. They were not asked, like the drottinns, like the graffiti artists, about the greatness of their birth; but what they absolutely needed,

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it was military talent, and even more so, boundless generosity towards the soldier. Otherwise there would have been nothing but dangers in following their flag, with no hope of victory or remuneration.

But once the Arian had allowed himself to be persuaded that the man who solicited him had all the required qualities, and that after having made his conditions he had committed himself to him, immediately a completely new state intervened between them (1)[30] . The free Arian, the absolute sovereign Arian of his odel, abdicating for a given time the use of most of his prerogatives, became, except for the respect of reciprocal commitments, the man of his leader, whose authority could go so far as to dispose of his life, if he failed in the duties he had contracted.

The expedition began; She was happy. In principle, the spoils belonged entirely to the leader, but with the strict and rigorous obligation to share it with his companions, not only to the extent of the promises exchanged, but, as I have just said, with extreme lavishness. Failure to comply with this law would have been as dangerous as it was impolitic. Scandinavian songs intentionally call the illustrious war leader “the enemy of gold,” because he must not keep any; “the host of heroes,” because he must take pride in lodging them in his home, in gathering them at his table, in lavishing them with long banquets, amusements of all kinds and rich presents. These are the means, and the only ones, to maintain their friendship, to ensure their support, and therefore to maintain

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his fame with his power. A miserly and selfish leader is immediately abandoned by everyone, and he returns to nothingness (2)[31] .

I have just shown there what use the victorious general could make of movable booty, money, weapons, horses, slaves. But when, with these advantages, there was still possession of a country, the principle of generosity necessarily received different applications. In fact, the conquered country took the name of rik, that is to say absolutely governed country, subject country; title that the truly Arian territories, the countries with odels, made it a point of honor to reject, considering themselves as essentially free (1)[32] . In the rik, the defeated populations were placed entirely under the control of the war chief (2)[33] , who adorned himself with the qualification of konungr, a military title, a guarantee of an authority which belonged neither to the drottinn nor to the graff, and which the sovereigns of the extreme North only dared to seize very late, because they governed provinces which, not having been acquired by the sword to their crown, did not give them the right to take it .

The konungr therefore, the German könig , the Anglo-Saxon king , the king, to put it bluntly (3)[34] , in his narrow obligation to make his men participate in all the advantages that he himself reaped, granted them land. But as the warriors could not take this type of gift with them, they only enjoyed it as long as they remained faithful to their leader, and this situation

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entailed for their status as owners a whole series of duties foreign to the constitution of the odel. The domain thus possessed on condition was called feud. It offered more advantages than the first form of tenure for the development of Germanic power, because it forced the independent Arian temper to surrender greater authority to the ruling power. He thus prepared the advent of institutions capable of bringing the rights of the citizen and those of the State into harmony, without destroying one for the exclusive benefit of the other. The Semiticized peoples of the south had never had the slightest idea of such a combination, since it was the rule among them that the State must absorb all rights.

The institution of the feud also brought lateral results which deserve to be recorded. The king who granted it, like the warrior who received it, were equally interested in not letting its commercial value decline. In the eyes of the first, it was a temporary gift, which could come into his hands in the event that the usufructuary died or broke off his commitment to seek adventure under another leader, a fairly common circumstance. In this forecast, the domain had to remain worthy of serving as bait for a replacement. For the second, owning land was only an advantage as long as that land was profitable; and as he had neither the taste nor the time to take care of the cultivation of the soil himself, he never failed to deal, under the guarantee of his boss, with the former owners, to whom he abandoned the whole and

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peaceful possession of one part, giving them the rest as a farm. It was a wise operation that the Dorians and Thessalians had practiced very well in the past. The result was that the Germanic conquests, despite the excesses of the first moments, probably a little exaggerated moreover by the eloquent cowardice of the writers of the Augustan history, were, in the end, quite mild, mediocrely feared by the people and, without no comparison, infinitely more intelligent, more humane and less ruinous than the brutal colonizations of the legionnaires and the ferocious administration of the proconsuls at the time when Roman policy was in all the flower of its civilization (1)[35 ] .

It would seem that the feud, reward for the work of war, striking proof of happy courage, had everything it took to win the favor of public opinion among warlike races who were very sensitive to gain; However, this was not the case. Military service in the pay of a leader was repugnant to many men, especially those of high birth. These arrogant spirits found it humiliating to receive gifts from the hands of their equals, and sometimes even from those whom they considered their inferiors in purity of origin. Nor did all the imaginable profits blind them to the disadvantage of allowing the full action of their independence to be suspended for a time, if not to be lost forever. When they were not called upon to command themselves, due to an incapacity of some kind, they preferred to take part only in truly

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national or those that they felt able to undertake with the sole strength of their odel. It is quite curious to see this feeling come before the stop

severe of a learned historian who, in his felt hatred towards the Germanic races, bases himself mainly on the conditions of military service, and takes the liberty of refusing to the Goths of Hermanrik, as to the Franks of the first Mêrowings, any true notion of political freedom. But it is no less certain to see the Anglo-Saxons of today, this last branch, very disfigured it is true, but still somewhat resembling the ancient German warriors, the undisciplined inhabitants of Kentucky and Alabama, defying both the verdict of their proudest ancestors and that of the learned editor of the Polypticus of Irminon.

Without believing that they were in the slightest attack on their principles of savage republicanism, they enlisted in crowds in the pay of the pioneers who offered to allow them to try their fortune among the natives of the new world and in the most dangerous prairies of the This is 'West (1)[36] . certainly enough to respond, in a sufficient manner, to ancient and modern exaggerations. Possessor of an odel, or enjoying a feud, the Arian German appears to us equally foreign to the municipal sense of the Slav, the Celt and the Roman. The high idea of his personal value, the taste for isolation which is its result, absolutely dominate his thinking and inspire his institutions. The spirit of association cannot therefore be familiar to him. He knows how to escape it even into military life, because 1303

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for him this organization is only the effect of a contract made between each soldier and the general, ignoring the other members of the army. Very stingy with his rights and prerogatives, he never abandons them, not even the slightest bit; and if he agrees to restrict, to suspend its use, it is because he finds in this temporary concession a direct, present and very obvious advantage. He has his eyes wide open to his interests. Finally, perpetually preoccupied with his personality and what relates to it in a direct way, he is not materially patriotic, and does not feel a passion for the sky, the ground, the place where he was born. He attaches himself to the beings he has always known, and does so with love and fidelity; but things, no, and he changes province and climate without difficulty. This is one of the keys to chivalrous character in the Middle Ages and the reason for the indifference with which the Anglo-Saxon of America, while loving his country, easily leaves his native land, and, likewise, sells or exchanges the land he received from his father. Indifferent to the genius of places, Arian Germain is also indifferent to nationalities, and only has love or hatred for them according to the relationships that these inevitable environments have with his own person. At first glance he considers all foreigners, even if they are his own people, in a more or less equal light, and apart from the superiority he arrogates to himself, a certain partiality for his fellows also excepted, he is quite free. of native prejudices against those who approach it, from whatever distant country they may

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come ; so that, if it is given to them to highlight real merits in his eyes, he will not refuse to recognize their benefits. From this it comes that, in practice, he very early accorded to the Kymris and the Slavs who surrounded him an esteem proportionate to what they could show him in terms of warlike virtues or domestic talents. From the first days of his conquests, the Arian led the servants of his odel into war, and even more willingly the men of his feud. While he was the warlord's hired companion, this lower-ranking retinue fought under his leadership and shared in all his profits. He allowed him to collect honor, and recognized this honor nobly when it was well acquired; he recognized the illustration where it was found; he did better: he let his vanquished become rich, and thus led him, for all these reasons, to a result which could not fail to happen and which happened, that this vanquished became with time his equal. Even before the invasions of the 5th century, these great principles and all their consequences had acted and borne fruit (1)[37]. We will see the demonstration.

The Germanic nations were originally composed only of Roxolans and Arians; but at the time when they still inhabited the Scandinavian peninsula, more or less compactly, the war had already brought together three classes of people in the odels: the Arians proper, or the jarls: they were the masters (2) [ 38 ] ; the karls, farmers, resident peasants, jarl's tenants, men from mixed-race white families, Slavs, Celts or Jotuns (1)[39] ;

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then the traëlls, the slaves, a swarthy and deformed race, in which it is impossible not to recognize the Finns (2)[40] .

These three classes, formed as spontaneously, as necessarily in the German States as among the ancient Hellenes, first composed the entire society; but the mixtures, promptly carried out, gave rise to numerous hybrids; the freedom that Germanic customs gave to the Karls to march to war, and, consequently, to enrich themselves, benefited the half-breeds that this class of peasants had produced by allying themselves with the ruling class; and while the pure race, exposed above all to the chances of battle, tended to decrease in number in most tribes, and to limit itself to the families which were called divine, and among which custom alone allowed the choice of drottinns and the graffiti, the half-Germans saw emerge from their ranks innumerable rich, valiant, eloquent, popular leaders, and who, free to propose to their fellow citizens expedition plans and adventure projects, found no less than companions ready to listen to them as heroes of a nobler extraction could. Results of all kinds came to be, the most divergent, the most disparate, but all equally easy to understand.

In certain countries, where purity of descent, always valued, had become extremely rare, the title of jarl took on enormous value, and ended up being confused with that of konuugr or king; but here again the latter was quickly equaled by the qualifications, initially strong

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modest, fylkir and hersir, which had initially been worn only by captains of a lower rank. This mode of confusion took place in Scandinavia, and in the shadow of the truly regular government, according to the direction of the race, of the ancient drottinns. There, on this essentially Arian terrain, the jarls, the kouungrs, the fylkirs, the hersirs were in fact only unemployed heroes and, as we would say in our administrative language, generals on standby. All that public sentiment could grant them was an equal share of the respect which the nobility of blood obtained, although they did not all have it; but there was no temptation to give them command over the population. Also it was very difficult for the military monarchy, which is the modern monarchy, resulting from Germanic warlords, to establish itself in the Scandinavian qays. She only achieved this through time and struggle, and after having eliminated the crowd of kings, among whom she was as if drowned, kings of land, kings of sea, kings of bands. Things happened quite differently in the countries of conquest, such as Gaul and Italy. The quality of jarl or ariman, which is all one, no longer being supported there by the free forms of national government, nor enhanced by the possession of the odel, was quickly lowered under the fact of military royalty, who governed the defeated populations and commanded the victorious Arians. Therefore, the title of ariman (1)[41] , instead of increasing in importance as in Scandinavia, was lowered, and soon only applied to warriors of free birth, but of a rank

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lower, the kings having surrounded themselves in a more immediate way by their most powerful companions, men forming what they called their truste, their faithful, all people who, under the name of leudes, or owners of odels , domains fictitiously constituted according to the old form by the will of the sovereign, represented alone and exclusively the high nobility. Among the Franks, the Burgundians, the Longobards, the ariman, or, according to the Latin translation, the bonus homo, came to be nothing more than a simple rural owner; and to prevent the lord of the fief from reducing the legal, but no longer ethnic, representative of the ancient Arians to serfdom, the authority of more than one council was required, which moreover did not always prevail against the force of circu In short, in all originally Germanic countries, as in those which only became Germanic by conquest, the principles of the rulers were identically the same, and extremely generous for the vanquished races. Apart from what we can call social crimes, state crimes, such as treason and cowardice in the face of the enemy, Germanic legislation would seem to us today lenient and gentle to the point of weakness. It did not know the death penalty (1)[42] , and for the crimes of murder only applied the monetary composition. It was certainly a very remarkable leniency, among men of such excessive energy and whose passions were certainly very ardent. We praised them, 1308

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they were blamed for it; but we have perhaps examined the question a little superficially. To establish a definitive opinion with full knowledge of the facts, it is necessary to distinguish here between justice rendered under the authority or rather under the direction of the drottinn, and later, by assimilation, of the konuugr, or military king, and that which, exercising in the odels, emanated, in a much more powerful and entirely uncontested way, from the absolute will and initiative of the Arian, head of the family. This distinction is not only in the nature of things, but necessary for understanding the generating theory of money composition in criminal judgments.

The owner of the odel, supreme master of all the inhabitants of his land and their judge without appeal, certainly followed in his judgments the suggestions of a mind natively rigid and inclined to the doctrine of retaliation, this most natural law of all. , and whose very refined wisdom, based on the experience of very complex cases, alone teaches us to recognize injustice. There is no doubt that in this circle of domestic jurisdiction an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were asked. There would not even have been a way of resorting to pecuniary composition, because nothing establishes that the lower members of the odel had the personal right of property in truly Arian times.

But when the crime, occurring outside the inner circle governed by the head of the family, had a free man as its victim, repression was suddenly complicated by those limiting difficulties which always frustrate recovery. 1309

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of the wrongs of a sovereign towards his equal. It was admitted in principle, in the obvious interest of social bonds, that the community, represented by the assembly of free men under the presidency of the drottinn or the graffiti, had the right to punish offenses against public tranquility, a state that these powers had the mission to maintain their best. The difficult point was to determine the extent of this right. To circumscribe it, within the narrowest possible limits, there were as many wills as there were impartial judges, that is to say Arians Germans, attentive to safeguarding the independence of each against possible encroachments. from the community. We were thus led to consider the position of the guilty in a compromise light and to replace, in the greatest number of cases, the idea of punishment with that of approximate reparation. Placed on this ground, the law considered the murder as an accomplished fact, to which there was no longer any need to return, and of which it had only to limit the consequences for the family of the deceased. She pretty much ruled out any tendency towards vindictiveness, assessed the damage materially, and, in exchange for what she judged to be an equivalent for the loss of the man whom the homicidal action had wiped out from the number of the living and taken from those among which he lived, she ordered forgiveness, forgetting and the return of peace.

In this system, the higher the rank of the deceased, the more considerable the loss was estimated. The war leader was worth more than the simple warrior, the latter more than the plowman, and certainly a German should be held at a higher price than one of his vanquished. 1310

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Over time, this doctrine, practiced in the camps as well as in the Scandinavian territories, became the basis of all Germanic legislation, although it was originally only a result of the inability of the law to reach those who made the law. It stifled the custom of odels as they diminished in number and then saw their privileges restricted, as the independence of the members of the nation became less absolute, as the feud became the most ordinary mode of tenure. , the kings gained more empire, and finally that the multitudes aggregated by the conquest and recognized as owners of the soil became able to compensate for their offenses and their crimes, like the noblest personages, like the men of the highest lineage for theirs. The Arian German did not live in the cities; he hated the stay there, and, as a result, had little esteem for the inhabitants. However, he did not destroy those of which victory made him master, and, in the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy still listed ninetyfour main cities between the Rhine and the Baltic, ancient foundations of the Galls or Slavs, and still occupied by them In (1)[43] . truth, under the regime of the conquerors from the north, these cities entered a period of decadence. Created by the imperfect culture of two mixed-race peoples, quite narrowly utilitarian, they succumbed to two all-powerful, although indirect, effects of the conquest they had undergone. The Germans, by attracting indigenous youth to adopt their customs, by inviting the 1311

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warriors of the country to take part in their expeditions, leaving for their honors and their spoils, promptly gave the Celtic nobility a taste of their way of life. This tended to mingle closely with them. As for the merchant class, as for the industrialists, more homebodies, the imperfection of their products could only with difficulty compete against those of the manufacturers of Rome, who, established very early on the decumate limits, delivered goods to the Germans Italian or Greek ones much cheaper, or at least infinitely more beautiful and better than theirs. This is the double and constant privilege of an advanced civilization. Reduced to copying Roman models to suit the tastes of their masters, the workers of the country could only hope for real profit from this work by placing themselves directly at the service of the owners of odels and feuds, the latter having a natural tendency to bring together in their immediate clientele and under their control all the men who could be of some use to them. This is how the towns gradually became depopulated and became obscure towns.

Tacitus, who absolutely wants to see in the heroes of his pamphlet only estimable savages, has distorted everything he says about them He in matters of civilization (1)[44] . represents them as philosophical bandits. But, without taking into account that he contradicts himself quite often, and that other contemporary testimony, of at least equal value to his own, makes it possible to reestablish the truth of the facts, we must only contemplate the results of the excavations. operated in the 1312

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oldest tombs of the North to convince oneself that, despite the emphatic declamations of Agrippa's son-in-law, the Germans, these heroes whom he rightly celebrates, were neither poor, nor ignorant, nor barbarians (2) [ 45] . The odel's house did not resemble the sordid dwellings, half buried in the earth, which the author of Germania so delights in describing in stoic colors. However, these sad retreats existed; but it was the shelter of the barely Germanized Celtic races or of the peasants, the Karls, cultivators of the estate. Their analogues can still be seen in parts of southern Germany, and especially in the Appenzell region, where people claim that their traditional method of construction is particularly suitable for protecting them from the rigors of winter. This was the reason already alleged by the ancient builders; but the free men, the Aryan warriors were better housed, and above all less cramped (1) [46] .

When one entered their residence, one first found oneself in a vast courtyard, surrounded by various buildings, devoted to all the uses of agricultural life, stables, laundry rooms, forges, workshops and outbuildings of all kinds, all more or less considerable, depending on the fortune of the master. This collection of buildings was surrounded and defended by a strong palisade. In the center stood the palace, the odel itself, which was supported and decorated at the same time by strong wooden columns, painted in various colors. The roof, bordered by sculpted friezes, gilded or decorated with shiny metal, was usually surmounted by a consecrated image,

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of a religious symbol, such as, for example, Freya's mystical boar (1) [47] .

The largest part of this palace was

occupied by a vast room, decorated with trophies and of which an immense table occupied the middle. It was there that the Arian German received his guests, gathered his family, administered justice, sacrificed to the gods, gave his feasts, held council with his men and distributed his gifts to them. When, at nightfall, he retired to the interior apartments, it was there that his companions, rekindling the flame of the hearth, lay down on the benches which surrounded the walls, and fell asleep with their heads resting on their shields ( 2 )[48] .

We are undoubtedly struck by the resemblance of this sumptuous residence, its large columns, its high and decorated roofs, its large dimensions, with the palaces described in the Odyssey and the royal residences of the Medes and Persians. Indeed, the noble manors of the Achaemenids were always located outside the cities of Iran and composed of a group of buildings assigned to the same uses as the outbuildings of the Germanic palaces. It also housed all the rural workers on the estate, a host of artisans, saddlers, weavers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, and even poets, doctors and astrologers. Thus, the castles of the Germanic Arians described by Tacitus, those of which the Teutonic poems speak in such detail, and, even more anciently, the divine Asgard on the banks of the Dwina, were the image of the Iranian Pasagard, at least in general forms, if not in the perfection of

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the artistic work (3)[49] , (1) [50] .

nor in the value of materials

And after so many centuries since the Arian Roxolan had

lost sight of the brothers he had left in Bactria and perhaps even much higher in the north, after so many centuries of journeys pursued by him across so many of countries, and, what is still more remarkable, after so many years spent having, it is said, only the roof of his wagon for shelter, he had so faithfully preserved the primitive instincts and notions of culture specific to his race, which we saw reflected in the waters of the Sund, and later in those of the Somme, the Meuse and the Marne, monuments built according to the same data and for the same morals as those whose magnificence the Caspian and even the Euphrates had reflected (2)[51] .

When Arian Germain stood in his great hall, seated on a high seat, at the high end of the table, dressed in rich clothes, his sides girded with a precious sword, forged by the skillful and esteemed magical hands of the workers jotuns, Slavs or Finns, and that surrounded by his braves, he invited them to rejoice with him, to the noise of the cups and drinking horns, garnished with silver or gilded on the edges, neither of the slaves, nor even of the vulgar servants, were not admitted to the honor of serving this valiant assembly. Such functions seemed too noble and too elevated to be abandoned to such humble hands; and just as Achilles himself took care of his guests' meals, so the Germanic heroes made it an honor to

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preserve this distant tradition of courtesy particular to their family. With swords at their sides, they went to collect, they placed on the tables the meats, the beer, the mead; then they sat freely, and spoke without fear, as their thoughts inspired them. They weren't all on the same footing in the house. The master esteemed above all others his orator, his swordbearer, his squire, and, when he was still young, his foster father, the one who had taught him the use of weapons and had prepared him for the experience of trade in These various characters, and especially the last, had precedence among their companions. Special consideration was also given to the elite champion who had accomplished offline feats. The feast had begun. The first hunger subsided; the cups were quickly emptied, words and joy circulated like fire in all these violent heads. The war actions recounted from all sides inflamed these combustible imaginations and multiplied the bravado. Suddenly a guest stood up noisily; he announced his desire to undertake such a hazardous expedition, and, with his hand outstretched on the horn which contained the beer, he swore to succeed or fall. Terrible applause broke out from all sides. The assistants, excited to the point of madness, clashed their weapons to better celebrate their joy; they surrounded the hero, congratulated him, kissed him. These were the lions' romps.

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Then moving on to other ideas, they began to play, a dominant and deep passion in minds that love adventure, eager for chance, who, in their way of abandoning themselves, without reserve and without measure, to all forms danger, often came to play themselves and face slavery, more formidable in their ideas than death itself. It is understandable that long sessions thus employed could give rise to terrible storms, and there were times when the lord of the place had to be careful to avert even the opportunity. Taking these active imaginations from one of their most accessible sides, he had recourse to the stories of travelers, always listened to with equally lively and intelligent attention; or else he proposed riddles, a favorite amusement (1)[52] ; or finally, taking advantage of the incalculable influence which poetry enjoyed, he ordered his poet to fulfill his office. Germanic songs had, in their ornate forms, the character and scope of history, but of passionate history, concerned above all to maintain eternally the pride of days of glory, and not to let the memory of outrages perish. and the desire to avenge them (2)[53] . She also offered the great examples of her ancestors. There are few traces of lyricism. They were poems in the style of Homeric compilations, and, I even dare to say it, the mutilated fragments which have come down to us exude such grandeur with such enthusiasm, are clothed with such a curious skill of 1317

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forms, that in some respects they almost deserve to be compared to the masterpieces of the cantor of Ulysses. The rhyme is unknown there; they are rhythmic and alliterate (1)[54] . The antiquity of this system of versification is indisputable. Perhaps we could find traces of it in the most primitive eras of the white race.

These poems, which preserved the memorable features of the annals of each Germanic nation, the exploits of the great families, the expeditions of their braves, their journeys and their discoveries on land and sea (2)[55], everything in short which was worthy to be sung, were not only listened to in the circle of the odel, nor even of the tribe where they were born and which they celebrated. Depending on their superior merit, they circulated from people to people, passing from the forests of Norway to the marshes of the Danube, teaching the Frisians and the riverside residents of the Weser the triumphs obtained by the Amalungs on the banks of the rivers of Russia, and spreading among the Bavarians and the Saxons the feats of arms of Longobard Alboin in the distant regions of Italy (3) The interest that Arian

[56] .

German took in these productions was such that one nation often asked another to lend it its poets and sent its own. Opinion even rigorously demanded that a jarl, an ariman, a true warrior, should not limit himself to knowing the handling of weapons, the horse and the rudder, the art of war, of all the sciences certainly the first ( 1)[57] ; he still had to have learned by heart and be able to recite the compositions which

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interested his race or who had the most fame in his time. He also had to be skilled in reading the runes, writing them and explaining the secrets they contained (2)[58] . Let us judge the powerful sympathy of ideas, the ardent intellectual curiosity which, possessing all the Germanic nations, linked together the most distant odels, neutralized in their proud possessors, and in the noblest relations, the the spirit of isolation, prevented the memory of the common origin from dying out, and, however hostile the circumstances might make them, constantly reminded them that they thought, felt, lived on the same common fund of doctrines, of beliefs , hopes and honor. As long as there was an instinct that could be called Germanic, this cause of unity did its job. Charlemagne was too great to ignore it; he understood all the force of it and the advantage he had to draw from it. Also, despite his admiration for Romanism and his desire to restore Constantine's world from head to head, he never had the slightest inclination to break with these traditions, although despised by the sad Gallo-Roman pedantry. He brought together national poems from all sides, and it was not his fault that they escaped destruction. Unfortunately, necessities of a higher order forced the clergy to behave differently. It was impossible for him to tolerate that this literature, essentially pagan, constantly disturbed the uncertain consciences of neophytes, and, making them regress towards their childhood affections, slowed down the 1319

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triumph of Christianity. She displayed such passion, such hateful obstinacy in celebrating the gods of Walhalla and in advocating their proud lessons, that the bishops could not hesitate to declare war on her. The struggle was long and painful. The old attachment of the populations to the monuments of past glory protected the enemy. But finally, the victory having remained for the good cause, the Church showed no desire to push its success to the point of total extermination. When she no longer had anything to fear for the faith, she herself tried to save the now harmless debris. With this tender consideration that she has always shown for the works of the intelligence, even those most opposed to her feelings, a noble generosity for which we do not appreciate her enough, she did for Germanic works exactly what she did for the secular books of the Romans and Greeks. It was under his influence that the Eddas were collected in Iceland. It was monks who saved the poem of Beowulf, the annals of the AngloSaxon kings, their genealogies, the fragments of the Traveler's Song, the Battle of Finnesburh, and Hiltibrant (1)[59] .

Other religious people compiled all that we have of the traditions of the North, not included in the work of Saemund, the chronicles of Adam of Bremen and the Saxon grammarian; others, finally, transmitted to the author of the Nibelungenlied the legends of Attila which the 10th century saw put into practice[60]

.

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to be able to directly connect the original parts of modern literature, the inspirations which do not absolutely come from Hellenistic or Italian influence, to ancient Arian sources, and thereby to the great epic memories of primitive Greece, India, Bactrian Iran and the Generating Nations of Upper Asia.

The Odinic poems had had exalted defenders, but among these women especially stood out. They had demonstrated a particularly stubborn attachment to old customs and old ideas; and, contrary to what is generally supposed about their predilection for Christianity, an opinion that is true in Romanized countries, but devoid of foundation in Germanic countries, they proved that they loved from the bottom of their hearts a fairly austere religion and customs. perhaps, but who, attributing to them a sagacious mind and penetrating to the point of divination, had surrounded them with this respect and armed with this authority which the paganisms of the South so disdainfully refused them under the empire of the ancient cult. Far from being considered unworthy of judging high things, they were entrusted with the most intellectual care: they were responsible for preserving medical knowledge, practicing, in competition with professional thaumaturges, the science of spells and magicians. magical recipes. Instructed in all the mysteries of the runes[61] they communicated them to the heroes, and their prudence had the right to direct, hasten, delay the effects of the courage of their husbands or their

,

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brothers. It was a situation whose dignity was designed to please them, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that they did not at first believe they had to gain from the change. Their opposition, necessarily limited, manifested itself in their stubbornness for Germanic poetry itself. Having become Christians, they readily excused its heterodox faults; and these mutinous dispositions persisted so well among them that, long after having renounced the cult of Wodan and Freya, they remained the appointed depositories of the songs of the skalds. Even under the blessed vaults of the monasteries, they maintained this reprobate habit, and a council of 789 could not even succeed, by fulminating the most absolute defenses and the most frightening threats, in preventing the undisciplined spouses of the Lord from transcribing, learn by heart and circulate these ancient works which breathed only the praises and advice of the Scandinavian pantheon (1) [62] .

The power of women in a society is one of the most certain guarantees of the persistence of Arian elements. The more this power is respected, the more we have the right to declare the race which shows itself subject to it closer to the true instincts of the noble variety; however, the Germaines had nothing to envy of their sisters from the ancient branches of the family (2)[63] .

The oldest name applied to them in the Gothic language is quino ; it is the correlative of the Greek gunè. These two words come from a common radical, gen, which means to The woman was therefore give birth {3)[64] . 1322

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essentially, in the eyes of the primitive Arians, the mother, the source of the family, of the race, and from there came the veneration of which she was the object. For the two other human varieties and many decadent mixed races, although very civilized, woman is only the female of man.

Just as the appellation of the Arian German, of the warrior, jarl, ended up, in the northern homeland, by rising to the meaning of ruler and king, so the word quino gradually exalted, became the exclusive title companions of the sovereign, those who reigned at his side, in a word, queens . For common wives, a name which was hardly less flattering succeeded it: it is frau, frouwe, a word deified in the celestial personality of Freya (1)[65] . After this word, there are still others which are all stamped with the same stamp. The Germanic languages are rich in designations of woman, and all are borrowed from what is noblest and most respectable on earth and in heaven (2)[66] .

It was undoubtedly as a result of this native tendency to highly value the influence exerted on him by his companion that the northern Arian accepted, in his theology, the idea that each man was from his birth placed under the special protection of a female genius, whom he called fylgja. This guardian angel supported and consoled, in the trials of life, the mortal entrusted to him by the gods, and, when the latter approached the supreme hour, he appeared to him to warn him (3) [67 ] .

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Cause or result of these deferential habits, morals were generally so pure that in none of the national dialects is there a word to express the idea of courtesan. It would seem that this situation was only known to the Germans following contact with foreign races, because the two oldest names of this kind are the Finnish kalkjô and the Celtic lenne and laënia (4)[68] .

The Germanic wife appears, in traditions, as a model of majesty and grace, but of imposing grace. She was not confined in a jealous and degrading solitude; custom dictated, on the contrary, that when the head of the family treated illustrious guests, his companion, surrounded by his daughters and her attendants, all richly dressed and adorned, came to honor the celebration with her presence. It is with a very characteristic enthusiasm that scenes of this kind are described by poets (l)[69] .

“The heroes’ pleasure was at its height,” sang the author of Beowulf. The great hall resounded with loud words. Then Wealthéow, the wife of Hrôdhgâr, entered. Graceful to her husband's men, the noble creature, adorned with gold, cheerfully greeted the warriors seated at the table. Then, charming woman, she first offered the cup to the protector of the Danish odels and with kind words encouraged him to rejoice and treat his faithful well. “The magnanimous leader joyfully grasps the cup. Then the daughter of the noble Helmings greeted, all around, those of the guests, young or old, whose valor had merited 1324

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illustrious gifts; at last she stopped, the beautiful sovereign, covered with precious bracelets and chains, the generous lady, before Beowulf's seat. She saluted him for the support of the Goths and poured him the ale. Full of wisdom, she took the sky to witness the wishes she formed for him, because she only had faith in this valiant champion to punish Grendel's crimes (2)[70]. »

After having fulfilled her duties of courtesy, the mistress of the house sat next to her husband and took part in the discussions. But before the banquet reached its most animated period, and when the fumes of drunkenness began to reach the heroes, she withdrew. This is still how it is used in England, the country which has best preserved the remains of Germanic uses.

Withdrawn into their interior, domestic care, needle and spindle work, the preparation of pharmaceutical compositions, the study of runes, that of literary compositions, the education of their children, intimate conversations with their spouses, composed for women a circle of occupations which lacked neither variety nor importance. It was in the particularly intimate living room of the bridal chamber that these family sibyls delivered their oracles, which were listened to by the husband. In this life of mutual trust, it was judged that serious and well-founded affection based on free choice was not too much; girls had the right to marry only at their convenience. That was the rule; and, when politics or other reasons transgressed it, he was not without

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example that the victim brought into the house that was imposed on him an implacable resentment and did not excite those storms which sometimes ended, according to numerous legends, with the complete ruin of the most powerful families, so great and indomitable was the pride of the Germanic wife.

This is not to say, however, that feminine prerogatives did not have their limits (1)[71] .

If there is more than

one example of women's participation in war work, the law held them, in principle, incapable of defending the land (2)[72] ; therefore, they did not inherit the odel. Even fewer could they claim to be substituted for the rights of their deceased spouses over the feuds (3)[73] . They were believed to be fit for advice, unfit for action. If, moreover, the divinatory spirit was admitted among them, they could not be entrusted with priestly functions, since the sword of the law was joined to them. This exclusion was so absolute that in several temples the rites required the pontiff to wear the clothes of the other sex; nevertheless he was still a priest. The German Arians were only able to accept with this modification the cults that the Celtic nations among which they lived had made them adopt (1)[74] .

Despite these and other restrictions, the influence of Germanic women and their position in society was considerable. Compared to their peers in Semitized Greece and Rome, they were true queens in the presence of servants, if not slaves. When they

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arrived with their husbands in the southern countries, they found themselves in the best conditions to transform family relationships, and consequently most other social relationships, to the advantage of general morality. Christianity, which, faithful to its disinterestedness of all forms and all temporal combinations, had accepted the absolute subjection of the oriental wife, and which had nevertheless known how to ennoble this situation by bringing into it the spirit of sacrifice, Christianity, who had taught Saint Monica to make marital obedience one step higher towards heaven, was far from repugnant to the new notions, and obviously much purer, that the German Arians introduced. However, we must not lose sight of what we observed earlier. The Church initially had little to praise for the spirit of opposition which animated the Germans. It seemed that the last instincts of paganism were entrenched in the civil institutions which concerned them. Without speaking of chivalry, whose ideas on this matter often called for the disapproval of councils, it is curious to see all the difficulty that the clergy experiences in having its intervention in the celebration of marriages accepted as indispensable (1)[75 ] .

Resistance still existed, among certain Germanized populations, in the 16th century (2)[76] .

They only wanted

to consider the marital bond as a purely civil contract, where religious action did not have to be exercised.

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In combating this oddity, the causes of which reveal a very singular depth, the Church lost none of its benevolence for the very noble conceptions to which it was attached. By purifying them, it lent itself to this, and contributed not a little to preserving them in successive generations where now ethnic mixtures tend to make them disappear, especially among the peoples of southern Europe.

Let's stop here. This is enough about the customs, opinions, knowledge, and institutions of the Germanic Arians to make it clear that in a conflict with Roman society the latter would end up having the upper hand. The triumph of the new peoples was infallible. The consequences were to be much more fruitful than the victories of the legions under Scipio, Pompey and Caesar. How many ideas, not born yesterday, very ancient on the contrary, but long since disappeared from the southern regions, and forgotten along with the noble races who had once practiced them, were going to reappear in the world! So many instincts diametrically opposed to the Hellenistic spirit! Virtues and vices, faults and qualities, everything in the arriving races was combined in such a way as to transform the face of the civilized universe. Nothing essential had to be destroyed, everything had to be changed. Even words would lose their meaning. Freedom, authority, the law, the homeland, the monarchy, even religion, gradually stripping themselves of worn-out costumes and insignia, would for several centuries possess others, much more sacred.

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However, the Germanic nations, proceeding with the slowness which is the first condition of all solid work, should not begin with this radical restoration; they began by wanting to maintain and conserve, and they accomplished this honorable task on the largest scale.

To witness the manner in which it was carried out, let us return once again to the time of the first Caesar, and we will see unfold before our eyes this state of things which was announced at the end of the previous book: we will contemplate Germanic Rome.

1. ÿ (1) "L'inclito mio filglio Rama dagli occhi del color del loto » {Ramayana, t. VII, Ayodhyacanda, cap. m, p. 218.) 2. ÿ (2) W. Muller, Altdeutsche Religion, p. 163. 3. ÿ (3) Vœluspa, 3. 4. ÿ (4) W. Muller, p. 164. 5. ÿ (1) W. Muller, p. 163. — It is useless to give here the further developments of this theological formula, which ends up containing twelve great gods and a host of celestial personalities of all orders and origins; for there were wane gods, jotuns and nanis, as there were Aesir gods. 6. ÿ (2) W. Muller, open. cited, p. 164. — Vœlusp, st. 17. — I only develop here the broadest features of Scandinavian theology and cosmogony, stopping above all only at the most ancient parts. The New Edda shows numerous traces of myths which are not originally Arian or which were developed in the far North after the arrival of the Roxolans. — The most venerable Scandinavian document, the Vœluspa, was composed in the first half of the 8th century AD. Mr. Dietrich sees traces of five different poems there, much more ancient. (Dietrich, Alter der Vœluspa, in the Zeitschr. f. deutsch. Alterth., vol. VIII, p. 318.)

7. ÿ (3) Caesar thinks that the Germans, recognizing as gods only the natural forces which manifested themselves in their sight, worshiped only the sun, the moon and fire, Sol, Luna, Vulcanus . (De Bello gall., VI, 21.) 8. ÿ (1) W. Muller, Ouvr. cited, p. 175.

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9. ÿ (2) The noblest families, remembering the Gardarike, represented their ancestors as having lived in Asgard, which tradition had deified. (Munch, cited work, p. 53.) 10. ÿ (3) W. Muller, open. cited, p. 64 et seqq. — Tac, Germ., 9, 43. 11. ÿ (4) Tac, Ann., XIII, 55; Germ., 45. — They did not have and did not admit temples, while the Celtic populations of Gaul and Germany had them. 12. ÿ (5) W. Muller, open. cited, p. 67, 70 et pass. 13. ÿ (1) All the cults indicated by Roman writers bear the trace and reveal the power of Celtic influence. Nerthus, mater deum, is found in the Welsh nerth, strength, help, and in the Gaelic neart, which has the same meaning. — The custom of consecrating islands primarily as sanctuaries is entirely Celtic. (W. Muller, cited work, p. 37.) This author points out religious customs of Slavic origin among the Danes (p. 37). — The Isis of which Tacitus speaks, and which he was surprised to find among the Suevi, was Hesu or Hu, Celtic divinity par excellence. (Tac, Germ., 9.) 14. ÿ (2) Adam of Bremen speaks of a statue of Wodan, which was in his time in the Upsala temple. (W. Muller, p. 195.) 15. ÿ (3) It even happened that a god considered in Scandinavia as one of the most powerful, Wodan, for example, was almost unknown among the halfGermanized tribes of southern Germany. The Bavarians did not know it, or, to put it better, what Germanic they had in their blood had not preserved it. (W. Muller, p. 76.) 16. ÿ (4) W. Muller, open. cited, p. 52, 81, 83. 17. ÿ (5) Under Celtic, Slavic and Finnic influence, the functions and, as we would say today, the religious or only superstitious specialties developed, over time, in a manner very overabundant. At the same time that there were high priests among the Goths, among the Thuringians, among the Burgundians, among the Anglo-Saxons, who even ended up exercising a certain political action, mainly among the Burgundians, there were also diviners, sorcerers, enchanters, sshamans of all kinds. Some explained dreams, others penetrated the future by means of knotted ropes. These latter were called caragni, from the Welsh carai, a cord. (W.

Muller, open. cited, p. 83.) But all this does not concern the Germanic nations. 18. ÿ (1) W. Muller, open. cited, p. 52. 19. ÿ (2) Human sacrifices are attested by positive testimonies among the Goths, among the Heruli, among the Saxons, among the Frisians, among the Thuringians, among the Franks, at the time when the latter were Already

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Christians. (W. Muller, cited work, p. 75-79.) — The sacrifice of horses was also, in the most ancient Germanic times, like asvamédha, among the Hindu Arians, one of the most solemn and religious ceremonies. the most meritorious. 20. ÿ (1) This notion was preserved for a very long time among the Arians of India. In the heroic age, she still reigned, as the following passage proves. "He who was born from a rift like yours, cannot go to the lowest place; for which you, deprived of the earthly seat, go to the worlds where Stella the neltar. » {Ramayana, t. VI, Ayodhyacanda, chap. LXVI, p. 394.) 21. ÿ (2) W. Muller, open. cited, p. 410. 22. ÿ (3) Vœluspa, st. 2. 23. ÿ (1) Vœluspa, pass. — We find in the names of the dwarves given by the Vœluspa, very significant designations, such as Nar, Nain, st. 11; Nori, Ann and Anar, then Nar again , then Nyzardz, st. 12; Nali, and Hanar, st. 13; Alfr, st. 14, Funiar and Guinar, st. 16. — It should be noted that the dwarves, any more than the giants, were not created by the gods like man, but are the direct product of the forces of nature. 24. ÿ (2) It is even to this part of the cosmogony of the primitive Arians that it is appropriate to connect that of the Scandinavians, legitimate and direct descendants of the horsemen of Touran. When we want to follow the lineage of Arian ideas, it is important to never lose sight of the fact that the Hindus, who have, in truth, preserved the richest treasure to this day, are however not the intermediary through whom we owe them. Marching towards the Ganges valley, they could do nothing to enlighten the West; It is especially to the Arian groups of Sogdiana and the countries above that we are indebted for what we possess, in our Germanic antiquities, of the ancient fund of primordial knowledge. Unfortunately, philology, rightly seduced, moreover, by the importance of the Vedas, is entirely busy, especially in France, in ignoring this truth, and does not even hesitate to make the Germans emigrate from the banks of the Yamouna, which, in itself, constitutes an absurdity in the first place. 25. ÿ (1) W. Muller, work cited, p. 163. 26. ÿ (2) When the Scandinavian doctrines have been compared more rigorously than has yet been done with the Iranian ideas, we will undoubtedly recognize that great relationships unite the celestial inhabitants of Liôsâlfraheimz and Adlanger with the Ireds and to the Amschespends of Zend-Avesta.

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27. ÿ (3) This word is one of the oldest that can be found, and the notion it represents is as old as it. This is the Latin ædes. — See, for the different forms and meanings in the Gothic languages, Dieffenbach, Vergleichendes Wœrterbuch der gothischen Sprache, 1. 1, p. 56. 28. ÿ (1) Among the Anglo-Saxons it even happened that the loss of the odel led to the loss of political rights, and consequently of the quality of free man. (Kemble, t. I, p. 70-71 et seqq.) We can see, moreover, with all reason, in this close union of the legal capacity of Arian with that of owner, to what extent the instincts of the race were far removed from the dispositions towards a nomadic life. 29. ÿ (1) Palsgrave was completely right to say that royalty did not exist, in the forms and with the power that it was known after the 5th century, in truly Germanic times. (The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, in-4o , Lond., 1832, t. I, p. 553.) He is less well inspired when he sees in the word king only a loan made from Celtic languages. It is, from ancient times, a title worn by the military leaders of the Arian nations. We saw it among the Ou-douns. (See volume I). It is the kava of the first Iranian period. (Westergaard and Lassen, Die Achem. Keilinschriften, p. 122), the ku of medical inscriptions (ibid., p. 57). It is quite remarkable that it was not given to the regular and ordinary magistrates of the tribes. — As for the title of graff, or gerefa, among the Anglo-Saxons gravio, it is not very certain that we can relate it to a Germanic root. Perhaps we should look for its origins among the Celts or the Slavs. 30. ÿ (1) The right of the free man to choose his leader was preserved for a very long time in Anglo-Saxon laws. This is what the Domesday-Book commentators call Commendatio. (Palsgrave, Rise and Progress of the Englisch Commonwealth, 1. 1, p. 15.) 31. ÿ (2) There is perfect similarity between the virtues required of a war leader and the ideal of head of an Arian-Hindu family, as described in the Ramayana: “Capi di famiglia que vissero casti colle lor consorti, coloro che donarono con larghezze vacche, oro, food, e terre, quelli che diedero altrui sicuranza e coloro che furon veridici. » (Gorresio, cited work, t. VI, p. 394.) 32. ÿ (1) Norway never bore the title of rik, nor Iceland either, while there had been the Gardarike and all the Germanic conquests in the rest of Europe bore this denomination . (Munch, cited work, p. 112 and note 2.) 33. ÿ (2) Savigny, D. Rœm. Recht im Mittelalter, 1. 1, p. 220.

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34. ÿ (3) However, we must not lose sight of the fact that this king had in no way the physiognomy of the Celtic or Italiot king, although he resembled a little better the Macedonian basileus of periods before Alexander. A king, in Boewulf's poem , is called: folces hyrde, shepherd of the people, as in the Iliad. (Kemble, The Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf, v. 1213, p. 44.) — The Gothic theodr and the Anglo-Saxon theoden similarly mean the one who leads the people. These are all military titles, rather than administrative ones. 35. ÿ (1) In general thesis, the claims of the Germans, arriving in the regions of Roman domination, were limited to taking a third of the lands. (Savigny, D. Rœm. Recht im Mittelalter, t. I, p. 289.) — The Burgundians were among the harshest. They wanted to have half of the house and the garden, two thirds of the cultivable land, a third of the slaves; the forests remained in common. The Roman was called Burgundian hospes . Any warrior endowed elsewhere by the king had to abandon to his host the land to which he was entitled, and, if he wanted to sell what belonged to him from the fund, the host was the first legal purchaser. (Ibid., p. 254 et seqq.) 36. ÿ (1) The man who takes into his service several hunters, plowmen or clerks, and leads them into the deserts, is called by them by the military title of captain, although whether, basically, a merchant or a forest clearer. 37. ÿ (1) See volume I. — I refer to this passage, where I indicated the double law of attraction and repulsion which governs ethnic mixtures, and which is, in its first part, at the same time the index of the aptitude for civilization in a race and the agent of its decadence. 38. ÿ (2) Rigsmal, st. 23-31. 39. ÿ (1) Rigsmal, st. 14-18. 40. ÿ (2) Ibid., st. 2-7. 41. ÿ (1) Among the Anglo-Saxons, we said sokeman. (Palsgrave, cited work, t. 1, p. 15.) 42. ÿ (1) Even for the murder of the king, among the Anglo-Saxons, composition in silver was accepted. We were content to take it to the highest level. (Kemble, vol. I, p. 123.) — However, the sovereigns of this Germanic branch had arranged to unite on their heads under the title of theedr, or military leader, that of dryht, or civil magistrate, what did not make the leaders of the Goths or the Franks. (Ibid., t. II, p. 23.) 43. ÿ (1) H. Léo, Vorlesungen ûber die Geschichte des deutschen Volkesund und Reiches ; in-8o , Hall, 1854, t. 1, p. 194. 44. ÿ (1) Entre autres assertions contestables, on remarque celle-ci: "The secrets of letters are as ignorant of men as of women." (Germ., 18.) -

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This passage can only be explained by applying it only to a few very mixed and exceptionally poor tribes. — All the words which relate to writing are Gothic, and if modern German has borrowed from Latin the expression schreiben, to write, it is because the Germans are not of Germanic essence. — We find in Ulfila spilda, a board for tracing runic characters; truths, a slit, a letter formed by incision; méljan, gameêljan, to write, to paint ; bôka, a book made of beech bark, etc. (WC Grimm, Uber deutsche Runen, p. 47.)

45. ÿ (2) They had had their bronze period before arriving in the North, and probably before conquering Gardarike. (Munch, cited work, p. 7.) — All the antiquities of this age found in Denmark are Celtic, (Ibidem. — Wormsaae, Letter to M. Mérimée, Moniteur Universel of April 14, 1853.) — Moreover, if the Germans had enough taste to appreciate the products of arts, it is certain that they themselves, so richly gifted in the field of poetry, did not have the inspiration for plastic works. Mr. Wormsaae rightly said: “It will be observed that the influence of the arts of Rome is evident to the careful observer who examines our Iron Age antiquities. Even before the great Norman expeditions, the Scandinavians imitated Roman models, while giving a particular character to their weapons and jewelry through manufacturing. » — It is useless to repeat here that the most gifted races only become artists through some contact with the Melanian essence; the Scandinavians had not had it. 46. ÿ (1) We can easily find the mention of a certain number of Germanic palaces or castles in Latin authors. — The Scopes-Vidsidh also names Heorot, in the country of the Hadubards (Ettmuller, Beowulflied, Eprileit, p. xxxix); then Hreosnabeorh, in the country of the Geates; Finnesburh, among the Frisians; Headhoraemes and Hrones-næs, in Sweden. — The Beowulf poem also mentions all these residences. 47. ÿ (1) Tacitus (Germ., 45) speaks of this wild boar; the Edda likewise, in the Hyndluliodh, st. 5. — This emblematic figure was called hildisvin or hildigœltr, the fighting pig. (Ettmuller, cited work, introd., p. 49.) — Charlemagne had an eagle placed on the ridge of his imperial palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. 48. ÿ (2) Weinhold, Die deutsche Frauen im Mittelalt., p. 348-349. 49. ÿ (3) We have, in the descriptions which remain to us of Ecbatana and its palace, the exact reproduction of an Arian residence in the extreme north of Europe in the 6th century . Nothing is missing from the portrait: the Persian building was made of wood, made up of large r

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varied colors; Not even the metal friezes at the top of the walls are missing, nor the silver and gold plates to form the roof. This type of construction, opposed to that of Persepolis and the cities of the Sassanid period, both of which are Assyrian imitations, is essentially Arian. (Polybius, his story can be similar to the fabulous.

50. ÿ (1) The palace of Ecbatana was built entirely of cypress and cedar wood, and all the rooms were painted, gilded and silvered. (Polybius, loc. cit.) — Ritter makes the very right observation that the Persian palaces of the modern era are very close to this style. (WestAsian, t. VI, 2nd Abth., p. 108.) I will add the Chinese palaces. 51. ÿ (2) This meeting of agglomerated buildings, which we do not know, in our Romano-Celtic language, to call otherwise than the word farm, and which thus awakens for us a false idea, is what the Germans very rightly call hof . This expression applies to any hereditary patrimonial residence, to that of kings as well as that of nobles and even peasants. It is exactly the Persian word ivan, which relates to the same root and has absolutely the same meaning wherever Firdousi uses it, as, for example, in this verse: “You are safe in my ivan. » Moreover, Firdousi's poem, apart from the Muslim veneer, and in its primitive elements, can be considered, for the morals, the characters, the actions that it celebrates, as being par excellence a Germanic poem. 52. ÿ (1) This taste for enigmas is one of the main traits of the Ariane race, and, as has already been noted elsewhere, it is united with the mysterious character of the sphynx or griffin, whose primitive personality is incontestably the Central Asia ; it is from there that he descended on the Cytheron with the Hellenes, after having inhabited the Bolor with the Iranians, who called him Simourgh. The riddles are part of the national genius of the Scythians and the Massagetae in Herodotus, and it is from there that they continued to live in the preoccupations of the Germanic genius. 53. ÿ (2) Tac, Germ., 2. — W. Muller, Ouvr. cited, p. 207. 54. ÿ (1) Wackernagel, Geschichte, dd Litleratur, p. 8 et seqq. — Alliteration ceases to be used in Germany in the 9th century. It is found in Gothic, Vandal, Burgundian, Longobard, Trankes, Anglo-Saxon genealogies, in ancient legal formulas, in some incantation recipes. It is a mode of poetic harmony that could not be older among the white race; the names of the three eponyms

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Ingoevo, Irmino and Istaewo, cited by Tacitus, are alliterated. It would not be impossible to find vestiges of it in biblical genealogies. 55. ÿ (2) The Goths had poems which sang of their first departure from the island of Scanzia and the great deeds of the ancestors of their leaders, the annals Ethrpamara, Hanala, Fridigern, Vidicula or Vidicoja. (W. Muller, cited work, p. 297.) 56. ÿ (3) Mr. Amédée Thierry has eloquently and exactly described this ubiquity of Germanic poems and, consequently, of the great actions which were devoted to them. (Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1, 1852, p. 844-845, 883. — Munch, cited work, p. 43-44.) 57. ÿ (1) Germanic tactics had the wedge as their principle ; the invention was attributed to Odin. (W. Muller, Altdeutsche Religion, p. 197.) 58. ÿ (2) Rigsmal, st. 39-42: “Then the sons of the jarl grew up; they tamed stallions, painted shields, sharpened arrows, carved spear woods. Komer, the youngest, knew how to read the runes, understood the alphabets and divinatory characters. By this he learned to tame men, to blunt swords, to contain the seas. He knew the language of birds, knew how to quell the fire, calm the waves, heal sorrows. Sometimes he was also able to have the strength of eight men. He fought with Rigr (the god) in the science of the runes and in all kinds of spiritual talents; he won. Then it was given to him, it was granted to him to be called Rigr himself, and to be learned in all things of intelligence. » — This hyperbolic painting of everything that a jarl, or noble, had to know to be worthy of his title, is certainly not of a barbarian race. 59. ÿ (1) In its present form, the Beowulf poem dates from around the 8th century. (Ettmuller, Beowulfslied, Einl. LXIII.) The events he reports do not occur after the year 600; and even the death of Hygelak, of which he mentions, is placed by Gregory of Tours between 515 and 520. This poem seems to have been formed from several different songs; we notice some kind of sutures there. 60. ÿ Am. is December 1854, p. 845. Thierry, Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1 61. ÿ Weinhold, Ouvr. cited, p. 86. — WC Grimm, Deutsche Runen, p. 51. 62. ÿ (1) Weinhold, op. cited, p. 91. — The canons of Chalcedon had forbidden women to approach the altar and to perform any function there. Pope Gelasius renewed this ban in his decrees, because of the frequent breaches made by the Germanized populations.

63. ÿ (2) A singular mark of the power that the Germanic races attributed to women is imprinted in this very late tradition that

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Charlemagne, dejected by the defeat at Roncesvalles, raised, according to the advice of an angel, an army of fifty-three thousand virgins, which the pagans did not dare to resist. (Weinhold, cited work, p. 44.) 64. ÿ (3) Gothic: ginan, genûm, gen ; it is the Latin gignere, and the Greek gennan, gunè. He is a very old radical. 65. ÿ (1) Sanskrit: pri ; zend ; fri ; gothic: frijô, I like it. (Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik, p. 123.) 66. ÿ (2) Weinhold, op. cited, p. 20. — The expression muine, ancient feminine of mann, is not Germanic. It appears to be of Celtic origin. It has only been preserved as indicating a female demon, in the compounds murmuine, mermaid, and wuldmuine, dryad. (W. Muller, Altdeutsche Religion, p. 366.) 67. ÿ (3) Weinhold, op. cited, p. 49. 68. ÿ (4) Ibid., p. 291. — Crimes against women did not always even find an excuse in the heat of the conquest, and, during the sack of Rome by Alaric, a Goth of high birth, having raped the daughter of a Roman, was condemned to death, despite the king's resistance, and executed. (Kemble, t. I, p. 190.) 69. ÿ (1) Ettmuller, Beowulfslied, Einl., p. XLVII. 70. ÿ (2) Kemble, The anglo-saxon Poem of Beowulf, v. 1215 et seqq., n. 4345.

71. ÿ (1) The consideration given to women was more religious than civil, more passive than active. They were considered weak in body and great in spirit. We consulted them, but we did not entrust them with the action. (Weinhold, p. 149.) 72. ÿ (2) Weinhold cites, according to Luitprand and Jornandés, a host of cases where Germanic women took up arms. (Cited work, p. 42.) 73. ÿ (3) The Germanic notion on the exercise of political rights was that only he was admitted who could fulfill all the duties of the community. The law therefore excluded children, slaves, the vanquished and women, all for reasons inherent to their situation. (Weinhold, cited work, p. 120.) 74. ÿ (1) W. Muller, Altdeutsche Religion, p. 53. — Nerthus himself had a priest, not a priestess. 75. ÿ (1) The double marriages of the Merowings, which regularly produced all their civil effects, certainly took place without the participation of the Church. — Until the 15th century, it was very difficult to get German populations to accept the intervention of a priest in marriage ceremonies. Often even, when his presence was required, it only took place in the middle of the celebration and without there being any question of

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go to church. — The ecclesiastical blessing is also admitted after the consummation of the marriage. (Weinhold, cited work, p. 260.) 76. ÿ (2) We still cite, in 1551, a case of marriage in the Protestant upper bourgeoisie in which no religious action took place. (Weinhold. cited work, p. 263.) — The bigamy of Philip of Hesse could be defended from this point of view.

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CHAPTER IV. Germanic Rome. — The Romano-Celtic and RomanoGermanic armies. — The German emperors.

The ethnic role of the northern populations in the 1st century BC importance.

began to take on a general and well-marked

This was the time when the dictator thought it necessary to treat the Gauls, these ancient enemies of the Roman name, in such a favorable manner. He made them the direct supporters of his government, and his successors, continuing on the same path, testified as best they could that they had understood all the services that the nations living between the Pyrenees and the Rhine could render to a power. essentially military. They had noticed that it was a sort of instinct among them to devote themselves without reservation to the interests of a general, especially when he was foreign to their blood.

This condition was essential, and here is why: the Celts of Gaul, animated by a very frank spirit of locality, and full of turbulence, were much more attached, in the affairs of their cities, to questions of people than to questions of fact. The politics of their nations had taken on, in this habit, a liveliness of pace which was hardly

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proportionate to the size of the territories. Perpetual revolutions had exhausted most of these peoples. Theocracy, overthrown almost everywhere, first erased before the nobility, then, at the moment when the Romans went beyond the limits of Provence, democracy and its inseparable sister, demagoguery, making an invasion in their turn, had attacked the power of the nobles. The presence of these kinds of ideas clearly announced that the mixing of races had reached the point where ethnic confusion creates intellectual confusion and the absolute impossibility of getting along. In short, the Gauls, who were not barbarians, were people on the path to decadence, and, if their good times had infinitely less brilliance than the periods of glory in Sidon and Tyre, it is not no less indubitable that the obscure cities of the Carnutes, the Remi and the Aedui died from the same disease which had ended the existence of the brilliant Chanaanean metropolises (1)[1] .

The Gallic populations, mixed with some Slavic groups, had variously allied themselves with the Finnish aborigines. Hence the fundamental differences. This resulted in the sharpest primitive separations of tribes and dialects. In the north, some peoples had been relieved by contact with the Germans; others, in the southwest, had suffered that of the Aquitaine; on the Mediterranean coast, the mixture had taken place with Ligurians and Greeks, and for a century the Semitic Germans occupying the Province had come to further complicate this disorder. The development of the disease was also favored

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by the sporadic arrangement of these tiny societies, where the intercession of the slightest new element developed its consequences almost instantly. If each of the small Gallic communities had found itself suddenly isolated, at the very moment when the ethnic principles which composed it had reached the apogee of their struggle, order and rest, I am not saying high faculties, could have been establish themselves, because the weighting of merged races is accomplished more easily in a smaller space. But when a fairly small group receives continual supplies of new blood before having had time to amalgamate the old ones, the disturbances become frequent, and are more rapid as well as more painful. They lead to final dissolution. This was the situation in the States of Gaul when the Roman legions invaded them.

As the populations there were brave, rich, provided with many resources and, among other things, strong and numerous places of war, they did not lack the desire to resist; but what they lacked, we see, was cohesion, not only between nations, but also between fellow citizens. Almost everywhere the nobles betrayed the people, when the people did not sell the nobles. The Roman camp was always crowded with defectors of all opinions, blindly eager to stab their political enemies across the throat of their homeland. There were dedicated men, generous intentions; it was without result. The Germanized Celts saved almost alone

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the ancient reputation. Arverni, they rose to prodigies; Belgians, they were almost declared indomitable by the winner; but as for the populations renowned as the most illustrious, as the most intelligent, those precisely where the revolutions did not cease, the Remi, the Aedui, those either barely resisted, or else immediately gave in to generosity conquerors, or finally, entering without shame into foreign projects, joyfully received, in exchange for their independence, the title of friends and allies of the Roman people.

In ten years Gaul was tamed and forever subjugated. Armies well worth those of Rome have not obtained such brilliant successes among the barbarians of Algeria in our days: a sad comparison for the Celtic populations.

But these people who were so easy to subjugate immediately became irresistible instruments of compression in the hands of the emperors. Or had seen them in their cities, arrogant patricians or envious democrats, spending the greater part of their lives in sedition; In Rome they showed the most useful devotion to the principal. Accepting the yoke and the goad for themselves, they served to shape others, seeking in return for their complacency only soldierly honors and the emotions of the barracks. They were also lavished with these goods.

Caesar had composed his guard of Gauls. He had maliciously given him the prettiest emblem of lightness and carelessness, and the Kymri legionnaires of Alauda, who 1342

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displayed so proudly on their helmets and on their shields the figure of the lark, agreed with all their fellow citizens to cherish the great man who had rid them of their isonomy and made them an existence so suited to their tastes.

They were therefore very satisfied; but it would not do justice to the Gauls to suppose that they were constant and unwavering in their love of Roman authority. Many times they revolted, but always to return to obedience, under the pressure of an inexorable impossibility of getting along. The habit of being governed by a master never taught them respect for a law. To rebel, for them, was the least of difficulties and perhaps the greatest of pleasures. But as soon as it was a question of organizing a national government in place of the foreign power that had just been broken, as soon as it was a question of returning to any rule and obeying someone, the idea that the sovereign prerogative was going to belong to a Gaul froze everyone's minds. It would have seemed that this was the true aim of the insurrection; but no, the most ingenious combinations strove in vain to circumvent this terrible pitfall; all were broken there. The assemblies and councils discussed the question furiously, and separated tumultuously without succeeding in getting past it. Then the timid people, who had kept themselves apart until then, all the secret friends of imperial domination, took courage; we would repeat with them that the power of eagles could be a

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evil, but that after all Petilius Cerialis was right to tell the Belgians that it was a necessary evil and that otherwise there was only ruin. That said, we returned with bowed heads to the Roman fold. This singular incapacity for independence was revealed in all its aspects. It seemed as if fate took pleasure in pushing her to the limit. One day the Gauls had an emperor of their own. A woman had given it to them, and only asked them to support it against the competitor from Italy. This emperor, Tetricus, had to fight against the same impossibilities in which previous insurrections had broken down, and, although supported by the Germanic legions, who maintained him against the ill will or rather against the chronic levity of his people, he thought he was doing well, and undoubtedly did well, to exchange his diadem for the prefecture of Lucania. The ephemeral States returned to their duty, perhaps murmuring, deep down very satisfied at not having let go an inch of their municipal jealousies.

Daily experience therefore demonstrated it: the Gauls of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD only had martial qualities; but they had them to a higher degree. It was for this reason that, powerless in their own cause, they exercised such considerable momentary influence over the Semiticized Roman world.

Certainly the Numidian was a skillful horseman, the Balearic an unparalleled rebellious person; the Spanish provided infantry which defied all comparison, 1344

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and the Syrians, still infatuated with the memories of Alexander, gave recruits with a reputation as great as it was justified. However, all these merits paled in comparison to those of the Gauls. His rivals for glory, swarthy and small, or at least of medium height, could not fight in a martial appearance with the large body of Trévire or Boïen, fitter than anyone to carry lightly on his broad shoulders the enormous weight whose discipline regimental charged the infantryman of the legions. It was therefore right that the State sought to increase enlistments in Gaul, and especially in Germanized Gaul. Under the twelve Caesars, while political action was still concentrated among the southern populations, it was already the North which was mainly responsible for maintaining the rest of the empire by force of arms.

However, it is remarkable that this esteem, which facilitated for soldiers of Celtic race access to great military dignities, or even to the senatorial chair, did not make them participants in the open competition for the sovereign purple. The first provincials who achieved this were Spaniards, Africans, Syrians, never Gauls, except for the irregular and not very encouraging examples of Tetricus and Posthumus. The Gauls clearly had no governmental skills, and if Otho, Galba, Vitellius could make them excellent supporters of revolt, it did not occur to anyone to make administrators or statesmen from them. . Gay and restless, they were neither educated nor inclined to become so. Their schools,

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fertile in pedants, provided very few truly distinguished minds. The first rank was therefore not accessible to them, and this throne which they guarded so well, they were not fit to ascend.

This impotence attached to the Celtic element completely ceased to weigh on the northern armies as soon as they began to recruit much less from the Germanized Gauls, soon affected, like the others, by Roman leprosy, than from the southern Germans, although the latter themselves were quite far, for the most part, from being of pure blood. The effects of this modification became evident in the year 252, with the accession of Julius Verus Maximinus, who was the son of a Goth warrior. Roman depravity, in its irremediable progress, had instinctively recognized the only means of prolonging its life, and while continuing to curse and denigrate the barbarians of the North, it consented to let them take all the positions which dominated it. itself and where it could be taken from.

From this moment, the Germanic essence eclipses [2] all others in She animates the Romanity (1) .

legions, holds high military positions, decides in sovereign councils. The Gallic race, which moreover was only represented in relation to it by northern groups, those which were already related to it, absolutely gave way to it. The spirit of the jarls, warlords, takes over practical government, and we are already entitled to say that Rome is Germanized, since the principle

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Semitic falls to the bottom of the social ocean and allows itself to be visibly replaced on the surface by the new Ariane layer.

A revolution so extraordinary, although latent, this unnatural superposition of an enemy race, which, more often defeated than victorious, and officially despised as barbarian, thus came to depress the national races, such a strange anomaly had in vain been carried out by the force of things, it had too many difficulties to overcome not to be accompanied by immense violence.

The Germans, called to lead the empire, found in him an exhausted and dying body. To keep this great body alive, they were constantly obliged to combat the demands of a temperament different from their own, or the whims born of general malaise, or the exasperations of fever, equally fatal to the maintenance of public peace. Hence the severities which were all the more extreme as those who deemed them necessary, being imperfectly informed about the complex nature of the society they were treating, easily pushed the use of reactive methods to the point of abuse. They exaggerated, with all the intolerant passion of youth, the proscription in the political order and the persecution in the religious order. This is how they showed themselves to be the most ardent enemies of Christianity. They who were later to become the propagators of all his triumphs, began by misunderstanding him; they allowed themselves to be taken in by the slander that pursued him. Convinced that they held in this new cult one of the most threatening expressions

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from philosophical incredulity, their innate love of a defined religion, considered as the basis of all regular government, made it odious to them at first; and what they hated in him was not him, but a ghost that they thought they saw. We are therefore less tempted to blame them for the harm they themselves did than the much more considerable harm they allowed to be done to the Semitic supporters of the ancient religions. However, we should also be afraid of asking too much of them. Could they quell the inevitable consequences of a rotten civilization they did not create? Reforming Roman society without overthrowing it would undoubtedly have been beautiful. Substituting gently, imperceptibly, Catholic purity for pagan depravity without breaking anything in the process would have been the ideal good: but, come to think of it, such a masterpiece would only have been possible farewell.

It is up to him to separate light from darkness and water from silt with a gesture. The Germans were men, and undoubtedly richly gifted men, but without any experience of the environment to which they were called; they did not have this power. Their work, from the middle of the 3rd century to the 5th, was limited to preserving the world as it was, in the form in which it had been given to them.

By considering things from this point of view, which is the only true one, we no longer accuse, we admire. Likewise again, recognizing under their togas and their Roman armor Decius, Aurelian, Claudius, Maximian, Diocletian, 1348

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and most of their successors, if not all, up to Augustulus, for Germans and sons of Germans, we agree that history is completely distorted by these writers, both modern and ancient, whose invariable system is to represent like a monstrous fact, like an unexpected cataclysm, the final arrival of the entire Tudescan nations within Romanized society.

Nothing, on the contrary, could be better announced and easier to predict, nothing more legitimate, nothing better prepared than this conclusion. The Germans had invaded the empire the day they became its arms, its nerves and its strength. The first point they had taken was the throne, and not by violence or usurpation; the indigenous populations themselves, recognizing themselves at the end of their path, had called them, had paid them, had crowned them.

To govern as they pleased, as they undoubtedly had the right and even the duty to do, the emperors thus installed surrounded themselves with men capable of understanding and executing their thoughts, that is to say, men of their race. They only found in these improvised Romans the reflection of their own energy and the ease necessary to serve them well. But whoever said Germain, said soldier. The profession of arms thus became the primary condition for admission to major jobs. While in the true Roman, Italic and Semitic Roman conception, the war had been only an accident, and those who waged it only citizens momentarily diverted from their regular functions, the war was for the

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imperial magistracy the natural situation, on which the education and spirit of the statesman had to be shaped. In fact, the toga gave way to the sword. In truth, the profound good sense of the men of the North never wanted this predilection to be officially avowed, and such was its discreet and wise reserve in this regard that this convention was maintained throughout the Middle Ages, and went beyond it for come to us. The Romanized German warrior understood well that the at least fictitious preponderance of the civilian element was important to the security of the law and could alone maintain existing society.

The emperor and his generals therefore knew, if necessary, to hide the armor under the administrator's robe. Yet the disguise was never so complete that it could deceive malicious people. The sword still showed its tip. The people were scandalized. Half concessions did not bring them back. The protection they received did not arouse their gratitude. The political talents of their rulers found them blind. They laughed at it with contempt, and murmured, from the Rhine to the deserts of the Thebaid, the ever renewed insult of barbarian. We cannot say that they were entirely wrong, according to their lights.

If the Germanic men admired the whole of the Roman organization, a feeling which is not in doubt, they did not have as much goodwill for such details which precisely in the eyes of the natives made it the most precious adornment and constituted excellence. of the

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civilization. The crowned soldiers and their companions asked for nothing better than to preserve moral discipline, obedience to magistrates, to protect commerce, to continue the great works of public utility; they still consented to favor the works of intelligence, as long as they produced appreciable results for them. But fashionable literature, but grammar treatises, but rhetoric, but lipogrammatic poems, and all the kindnesses of the same kind which were the delight of the fine minds of the time, these masterpieces found them, without exception, colder than ice; and as, ultimately, the graces came from them, and that all the favors tended to be concentrated, after the soldiers, on the lawyers, the civil officials, the builders of aqueducts, of roads, of bridges, of fortresses, then on the historians, sometimes on the panegyrists burning their incense, in compact clouds, at the feet of the master, and that they hardly went further, the literate classes or socalled such were in some way justified in supporting that Caesar lacked taste. Certainly they were barbarians, these harsh rulers who, nourished by the nervous songs of Germany, remained insensitive to the reading or to the sight of these madrigals written in the shape of a lyre or vase, before which good people swooned with admiration. raised from Alexandria and Rome. Posterity should have judged otherwise, and pronounced that the barbarian did indeed exist, but not under the armor of the German.

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Another circumstance further wounded the Roman's self-esteem. Its leaders, mostly ignorant of its past wars, and judging ancient Romans according to their contemporaries, did not seem to take the slightest concern and it was very hard for people who considered themselves so strong. When Nero had honored Greece more than the city of Quirinus, when Septimius Severus had raised the glory of the one-eyed Trasymene above that of the Scipios, these preferences had at least not left the national territory. The blow was more severe when we saw such emperors of new rank, and the armies which had given them the purple, not caring more about Alexander the Great than about Horatius Cocles. We knew Augustians who in their lives had never heard of their prototype Octavian, and did not even know his name. These men undoubtedly knew by heart the genealogies and actions of the heroes of their race.

It nevertheless resulted from this fact, as from so many others, that in the 3rd century AD the armed and healthy Roman nation and the peaceful and dying Roman nation did not get along at all; and, although the leaders of this combination, or rather of this juxtaposition of two very heterogeneous bodies, bore Latin or Greek names and dressed in the toga or the chlamys, they were fundamentally, and very fortunately for this sad society, good and authentic Germans.

This was their title and their right to dominate.

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The core that they formed in the empire had initially been very weak. The two hundred horsemen of Ariovistus that Julius Caesar took into his pay were the germ of it. Rapid developments followed, and we notice them especially since the years, mainly those which had their cantonments in Europe, established in principle to accept only Germanic recruits. From then on the new element acquired a power all the more considerable as it was constantly re-tempered in its sources. Then every day new causes appeared and came together to drag him into Roman territories, no longer in relatively small quantities, but in masses. Before moving on to examine this terrible crisis, we can pause for a moment before a hypothesis whose realization would have seemed very attractive to the Roman populations of the 5th century. Here it is: let us suppose for a moment the Germanic nations which at that time were bordering on the empire much weaker, numerically speaking, than they actually were; they would have been very quickly absorbed into the vast social reservoir which never tired of demanding strength from them. After a given time, these families would have disappeared among the Romanized elements; then general corruption, continuing its course, would have resulted in a chronic degeneration which today would barely allow Europe to maintain any sociability. From the Danube to Sicily, and from the Black Sea to England, we 1353

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would be approximately at the point of powdery decomposition where the southern provinces of the Kingdom of Naples and most of the territories of anterior Asia have reached. On this hypothesis we graft a second one. If the yellow and halfyellow, half-Slavic, half-Arian nations beyond the Urals had been able to retain possession of their steppes, the Gothic peoples, in their turn, retained the regions of the northeast until 'to the Hercynian gorges on the one hand, to the Euxine on the other, would have had no reason to cross the Danube. They would have developed a very special civilization there, enriched with very weak Roman borrowings, delivered by the inevitable absorption that they would have made over time of the trans-Rhine and trans-Danubian colonies. One day, taking advantage of the superiority of their active forces, they would have felt the desire to expand for the sake of expanding; but it would have been very late. Italy, Gaul and Spain would no longer have been, as they were for the victors of the 5th century, instructive conquests, but only annexes capable of being exploited materially, as is today Algeria.

However, there is something so providential, so fatal in the application of the laws which bring about ethnic mixtures, that what would have resulted from this difference, which seems so considerable at first sight, is nothing more than a simple disturbance of synchronisms. A type of culture comparable to that which reigned from around the 10th to the 13th centuries would have begun much earlier and lasted longer 1354

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long, because the purity of Germanic blood would have resisted more. She would nevertheless have ended up exhausting herself in the same way by experiencing contacts absolutely similar to those which irritated her. The social upheavals would have been transferred to other dates; they would nonetheless have taken place. In short, by another path, humanity would have arrived identically to the result it obtained. Let us come to the establishment of the Germans in large masses within Romanity, to the way in which it took place and to the way in which it must be judged. The emperors of Teutonic race had at their disposal, to provide the State with defenders of their blood, an infallible means, which had been taught to them by their Roman predecessors. They had learned it from the government of the republic, which had taken it from the Greeks, who, through the example of the Persians, had borrowed it from the policy of the most ancient Ninevite kingdoms. This means, coming from so far away and with such general use, consisted of transplanting, among populations whose loyalty or military aptitude were doubtful, foreign colonizations intended, depending on the circumstances, to defend or contain.

The Senate, in its finest days of skill and omnipotence, had made frequent applications of this system; the first Caesars, just as much. The whole of Gaul, the island of Brittany, Helvetia, the decumate fields, the Illyrian provinces, Thrace, had ended up being covered with bands of soldiers released from service. Is the

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had married, they were provided with agricultural instruments, they were given land properties, then they were shown that the preservation of their new fortune, the security of their families and the solid maintenance of Roman domination in the region, it was all one. Nothing could be easier to understand in fact, even for the most restive minds, based on the way in which the rights of these new inhabitants to possession of the land were established. These rights resided only in the expression of the will of the government which expelled the former owner and put the veteran in his place. The latter, forced to steel himself against the demands of his predecessor, felt strong only in the benevolence of the power which supported him. He was therefore in the best imaginable disposition to maintain this benevolence at the cost of boundless devotion.

This combination of effects and causes appealed to the politicians of antiquity. Their wisdom approved it, and, if the people who had to suffer from it could complain about it, public morality accepted, without further scruples, a system deemed useful to the solidity of the State, a system consecrated by the laws , and which moreover had the excuse of having been always and everywhere practiced by the nations whose examples a cultivated mind could invoke.

From the time of the first Caesars, it was felt necessary to make some modifications to the brutal simplicity of this mechanism. Experience had proven that the colonizations of Italian, Asian or even Gallic veterans 1356

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southerners, did not sufficiently protect the northern borders from incursions from too formidable neighbors. The Romanized families were ordered to move away from the extreme limits, then all the Germans seeking fortune were offered, and the number was not mediocre, the free disposal of the land remaining vacant, the title a little oppressive sometimes from friends of the Roman people and, what seemed to promise more, the support of the legions against possible attacks by the enemies of the empire.

It was thus that, by the own will, by the free choice of the imperial government, Teutonic nations were entirely installed on Roman lands. Such great advantages were hoped for from this method of proceeding that soon prisoners of war were joined to the adventurers. When a tribe of Germans was defeated, they adopted it and formed a new band of border guards, taking care only to disorient them.

The other barbarians did not witness the spectacle of such a favored situation without jealousy. Without even needing to realize the superior advantages to which these artificial Romans could claim, nor seeing clearly the brilliant spheres where this elite disposed of the destinies of the universe, they saw their peers endowed with properties for a long time in good state of cultivation; they saw them in contact with opulent commerce, and in the enjoyment of what social improvements were most enviable for them. It was enough for the attacks

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redouble their impetuosity and frequency. Obtaining imperial lands became the stubborn dream of more than one tribe, tired of vegetating in its marshes and woods. But, on the other hand, as the attacks became harsher, the situation of the colonized Germans also became more precarious. Rivals found them too rich; They didn't feel at ease. They were often exposed to the temptation of reaching out to their brothers instead of fighting them, and, to obtain peace, to league with them against the true Romans, placed behind their dubious protection. The Germanized imperial administration judged the danger; she understood the full extent of it, and, in order to divert it by redoubled the zeal of the auxiliaries, she found nothing better than to propose the following modifications to their legal status: They would no longer be considered just as settlers, but as soldiers on active duty. Consequently, to all the advantages which they were already in possession of, and which would not be withdrawn from them, they would see the addition of a military pay. They would become an integral part of the armies, and their leaders would obtain the ranks, honors and pay of Roman generals. These offers were accepted with joy, as they should be. Those who were the objects of it only thought of exploiting as best they could the weakness of an empire which was reduced to such expedients. As for the tribes of 1358

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outside, they became even more possessed by the desire to obtain Roman lands, to become Roman soldiers, provincial governors, emperors. It was no longer a question, in civilized society, such as the course of events had made it, of anything other than antagonisms and rivalries between the Germans from within and those from without.

The question thus posed, the government was led to endlessly extend the network of colonizations, and soon from frontiers they also became interior. By choice or by force, the peoples responsible for defending the limits, and who in case of danger were often forced to abandon themselves, these peoples made frequent transactions with the attackers. The emperor had to end up ratifying these agreements, the first cause of which was his weakness. New soldiers were enlisted in the pay of the State; they had to find the land they had been promised. Often a thousand considerations opposed their being assigned to them on borders which, moreover, were cluttered with their likes. Then, it was not there that one had the chance of meeting manageable owners, willing to let themselves be dispossessed without resistance. We looked for this good-natured species where we knew it to be, in all the interior provinces. By a sort of immunity resulting from the supremacy of the past, Italy was exempted as long as possible from this charge; but we did not bother with Gaul. Teutons were placed in Chartres; Bayeux lives with Batavians; Coutances, Le Mans, Clermont

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were surrounded by Suevi; Alans and Taïfales occupied the surroundings of Autun and Poitiers; Franks settled in Rennes (1)[3] . The Romanized Gauls were people of good composition; they had learned submission with the imperial collectors. A fortiori they had nothing to oppose to the Burgundian or the Sarmatian, presenting in a peremptory tone the legal invitation to give way.

We must not forget for a minute that these changes in ownership were, according to Roman notions, perfectly legitimate. The State and the Emperor, who represented it, had the right to do everything in the world; there was no morality for them: it was the Semitic principle. So from the moment that the giver had the right to give, the barbarian who benefited from this concession had a perfectly regular title to claim. From one day to the next he found himself the owner, according to the same rule to which the Romanized Celts themselves had once been able to claim by the will of the sovereign.

Towards the end of the 4th century, almost all Roman countries, except central and southern Italy, because the Po valley was already conceded, had a notable number of colonized northern nations, most receiving pay. and known officially as troops in the service of the empire, with the obligation, moreover rather poorly fulfilled, to behave peacefully. These warriors quickly adopted the morals and habits that they saw practiced by the Romans; they showed themselves strong

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intelligent, and, once yielded to the consequences of a sedentary life, they became the most interesting, the wisest, the most moral, the most easily Christian part of the population. But until then, that is to say until the 5th century, all these colonizations, both internal and border, had only brought the Germans to the lands of the empire in groups. The immense mass accumulated over the centuries in the north of Europe had still only flowed in comparatively thin jets through the dikes of Romanity. Suddenly he collapsed them, and rushed all his masses, made all his waves roll and foam over this miserable society which only escapes of his genius had kept alive for three centuries, and which finally could go no further. It needed a complete overhaul. The pressure exerted by the Uralian Finns, by the white and black Huns, by enormous populations where the Slavic, Celtic, Arian and Mongol elements presented themselves almost pure, in all degrees of combination; this pressure had become so violent that the ever-shaky balance of the Teutonic States had been completely overturned in the East. The Gothic establishments having collapsed, the remains of the great nation of Hermanaric descended on the Danube, and in turn formulated the ordinary demand: Roman lands, military service and pay. After quite long debates, as they did not obtain what they wanted, they provisionally decided to 1361

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take. Making a point from Thrace to Toulouse, they fell like a flock of hawks on Languedoc and northern Spain, then left the Romans perfectly free to drive them out, if they could.

They were careful not to try. The manner in which the Visigoths had just settled was a little irregular; but an imperial patent did not take long to repair the damage, and from that moment the newcomers were as legitimately established on the lands they had taken as the other subjects in theirs. The Franks and Burgundians had not waited for this good example to first give themselves and then be granted similar advantages; so that twenty northern nations, in addition to the ancient border guard tribes, which had disappeared under this thick alluvium, were therefore accepted and adopted by military personnel throughout the European territory. Their leaders were consuls and patricians.

We had Patrice Théodorik and Patrice Khlodowig (1)[4] . Absolute masters of everything, the Germans established in the empire could now do everything, assured that their whims would be irresistible laws. Two options were available to them: either break with the habits and traditions preserved by their predecessors of the same blood; abolish the cohesion of territories, and form from all this debris a certain number of distinct sovereignties, free to constitute themselves according to the convenience of the age which was beginning; or remain faithful to the work consecrated by the care of so many emperors from the new race, but

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by modifying this work with a certain addition of anomalies which have become essential. In this last system, the organization of Honorius remained essentially intact. Romanity, that is to say, following the firm conviction of the times, civilization, continued its course. The barbarians recoiled from the idea of harming something so necessary; they persisted in the conservative role, adopted by the emperors of barbarian origin, and chose the second party; they did not divide the Roman world into as many pieces as there were nations. They left it intact, and, instead of becoming its destroyers by claiming possession, they only wanted to have the usufruct of it. To put this idea into practice, they inaugurated a seemingly extremely complex political system. There we saw in operation both rules borrowed from ancient Germanic law, and imperial maxims, and mixed theories formed from these two orders of conceptions. The king, the konungr, because it was in no way a question here of either the drottinn or the graff, but rather of the war leader, leader of invasion and host of warriors, took on a dual character. For the men of his race, he became a perpetual general (1)[5] ; for the Romans, he was a magistrate appointed under the authority of the emperor. Compared to the former, its successes had the consequence of enlisting and retaining more fighters around its 1363

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flags; vis-à-vis the latter, to extend the geographical limits of its jurisdiction. Moreover, the Germanic konungr in no way considered itself the sovereign of the countries that had fallen into its power. Sovereignty belonged only to the empire; it was inalienable and incommunicable; but as a Roman magistrate, acting by means of a delegation of supreme power, the konungr disposed of properties with absolute freedom. He took full advantage of the right to colonize his companions there, which was simple in everyone's eyes. He distributed to them, according to the customs of his nation, a part of the rental lands, and thus accorded Roman use with Germanic use; In this way he organized a mixed system of new tenures of reversible benefits under Germanic principles and Roman principles, what was and is still called feuds; or even he constituted allodial lands at will, with this fundamental difference, however, which completely distinguished these concessions from the ancient odels, that it was the royal will which made them, and not the free action of the owner (1 ) [6] . Whatever the case, feud or odel, the leader who gave them to his men had the right of ownership over the province, or rather of free disposal, as delegate of the emperor, but not the high domain. Such was the situation of the Merowings in Gaul. When one of them was on his deathbed, it could not occur to him to give provinces to his son, since he 1364

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didn't have one himself. He therefore established the distribution of his inheritance on completely different principles. As a Germanic leader, he only had the command of a more or less considerable number of warriors, and certain rural properties which he used to maintain this army. It was this band and these domains which gave him the quality of king, and he did not have it elsewhere. As a Roman magistrate, he had only the proceeds of taxes collected in the different parts of his jurisdiction, according to the data of the imperial land register.

Faced with this situation, and wanting to equalize the shares of his children as best he could, the testator assigned each of them a residence surrounded by men of war belonging, as much as possible, to the same tribe. This was the Germanic domain, and a farm and twenty champions would have been enough to authorize the young Mérowing, who would not have obtained more, to bear the title of king.

As for the Roman domain, the dying chief divided it up with even less scruple, since it was only a question of securities. He therefore distributed in various portions, to several heirs, the revenues from the customs of Marseille, Bordeaux or Nantes.

The Germans did not have the main goal of saving what we call Roman unity. In their eyes, this was only a way of maintaining civilization, and that is why they submitted to it. Their efforts, for this meritorious goal, were most extraordinary, and exceeded

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even what we had been able to observe in this sense among a large number of emperors. It would seem that since the mass establishment within Romanity, barbarism repented of having given too little attention to the very stupidities of the social state that it admired. All literati were assured of the most honorable welcome at the court of the Vandal, Goth, Frank, Burgundian and Longobard kings. The bishops, these true repositories of the poetic intelligence of the time, did not write only for their monks. The race of conquerors itself began to wield the pen, and Jornandès, Paul Warnefrid, the anonymous Ravenna, many others whose names and works have perished, sufficiently testified to the taste of their race for education. Latin. On the other hand, more particularly national knowledge was not forgotten. Runes were carved by King Hilperik[7] , who, worried about the imperfections of the Roman alphabet, occupied his spare time reforming it. The poems of the North were maintained in honor, and the exploits of the ancestors, faithfully sung by the new generations, served to prove that the latter had not abdicated the energetic qualities of their race[8]

.

At the same time, the Germanic peoples, imitating what they observed in their subjects, actively took care of regularizing their own legislation, according to the needs of the time and the environment in which they found themselves placed. If their attention was aroused by the work of others, it was by no means in a servile manner, nor in

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the method nor in the results, which proceeded their intelligence.

Having imposed upon themselves the obligation to respect and, consequently, to recognize the rights of the Romans, this was a reason for them to take a very accurate account of theirs, and to establish a sort of concordance or better parallelism between the two systems that they intended to bring to life opposite each other. The result of this duality, so frankly accepted and even cultivated, was a principle of great importance whose influence has never been completely lost. It was to recognize, to note, to stipulate that there was no organic distinction between the various tribes, the various nations coming from the north, wherever they were established and whatever names they might bear, from moment that they were Germanic[9] . Thanks to certain alliances, a small number of more than half-Slavic groups managed to be accepted into this great family, and later served as a pretext, an intermediary to attach, with even less foundation, several of them. their brothers. But this extension has never been well felt nor well accepted by the Western mind. The Slavs are as foreign to it as the Semitic peoples of earlier Asia, with whom it is linked in almost the same way through the populations of Italy and Spain.

As we see, the Germanic genius was as generalizing as that of the ancient nations was. Although it started from an apparently narrower base than the institutions 1367

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Hellenistic, Roman or Celtic, and that the rights of the free man, taken individually, were for him what the rights of the city were for others, the notion he had of them, and which he extended with a such superb improvidence, led him infinitely further than he himself thought he would go. Nothing could be more natural: the soul of this personal right was movement, independence, life, easy appropriation to all surrounding circumstances; the soul of civil right was servitude, just as its supreme virtue was self-sacrifice.

Despite the profound ethnic disorder in the midst of which Arian Germain appeared, and although his own blood was not absolutely homogeneous, he took all his care to circumscribe, to specify two large ideal categories in which he confined all the masses subject to his rule. arbitration; in principle, he only recognized Romanity and barbarism. This was the established language. He endeavored to adjust as little as possible these two elements which were now constitutive of Western society, and whose work over centuries was to round off the angles, soften the contrasts, and bring about fusion. That such a plan, that the seeds deposited therein were superior in fertility and prepared more beautiful fruits for the future than the most dazzling theories of Semitic Rome, it would be pointless to discuss. In this last organization, we have seen, a thousand rival peoples, a thousand enemy customs, a thousand fragments of discordant civilizations waged an internal war. Not the slightest tendency existed to go out

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of such monstrous confusion, without running the danger of falling into another even more horrible. For all links, the land register, the tax leveling regulations, the negative impartiality of the law; but nothing superior which prepared, which forced the advent of a new morality, a community of views, a unanimous tendency among men, nor which announced this sagacious civilization which is ours, and which we do not would never have obtained if Germanic barbarism had not brought the most precious grafts and had not taken the responsibility of making them succeed on the feeble stem of Romanity, passive, dominated, constrained, never sympathetic.

I have recalled sometimes in the course of these pages, and it was not unnecessarily, that the great facts that I describe, the important developments that I point out, do not take place as a result of the express and direct will of the masses. or this or that historical personage. Causes and effects, everything develops on the contrary most ordinarily without the knowledge or against the views of those who contribute to it. I am in no way concerned with retracing the history of political bodies, nor the good or bad actions of their leaders. Entirely attentive to the anatomy of races, it is only their organic springs that I take into account and the predestined consequences which result from them, not disdaining the rest, but leaving it aside when it does not serve to explain the point under discussion. Whether I approve or blame, my words only have a comparative and, so to speak, metaphorical meaning. In reality, it is not a

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moral merit for the oaks to raise their majestic fronts throughout the centuries, crowned with a green diadem, just as it is no shame for the grasses of the lawns to wither in a few days. Both only hold their place in the plant series, and their power or their humility also contribute to the designs of the God who made them. But I also do not hide from myself the fact that the free action of organic laws, to which I limit my research, is often delayed by the interference of other mechanisms which are foreign to it. We must pass over these momentary disturbances without surprise, which cannot change the substance of things. Through all the detours where secondary causes can lead to ethnic consequences, the latter always end up finding their way back. They strive for it imperturbably and never fail to succeed. This is how it happened with the conservative feeling of the Germans towards Romanity. It was fought in vain and often obscured by the passions which accompanied it; in the end he accomplishes his task. He refused to destroy the empire as long as the empire represented a body of peoples, a set of social notions different from barbarism. He was so firm in this will and so impregnable that he maintained it even during the space of four centuries when he saw himself forced to suppress the emperor in the empire.

This situation of a despotic State subsisting without having a head was not, moreover, as strange as it might be. 1370

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seem at first. In an organization like the Roman one, where monarchical heredity had never existed and where the election of the supreme leader, indifferently accomplished by the predecessor, by the senate, by the people or by one of the armies, drew its validity from the the sole fact of its maintenance; faced with such an order of things, it is not the regularity of successions to the throne which can make it known that the political body continues to live, much less the social body. The only admissible criterion is the opinion of contemporaries in this regard. And it does not matter whether this opinion is based on special facts, such as, for example, the continuation of secular institutions, something historically unknown in a society in perpetual reorganization, or the residence of power continued in the same capital, which had not happened either; it is enough that the existing conviction on this subject results from the sequence of ideas, even transitory and disparate, but which, generating one from the other, create, despite the rapidity of their succession, an impression of duration for the environment rather vague in which they develop, die and are constantly replaced.

This was the normal state in Romanity, and this is why when Odoacer declared the character of a Western emperor useless, no one thought, any more than he did, that as a result of this measure the Western Empire ceased to be. However, it was judged that a new phase was beginning; and just as Roman society was first governed by leaders who did not designate any title, it 1371

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there were others who had decorated themselves with their name of Caesar, others who had established a distinction between the Caesars and the Augustians, and, instead of imposing a single direction on the body politic, had provided it with two, then four, in the same way we put up with seeing the empire do without a representative very direct,of Constantinople, and superficially, and only for form, from the throne obey without dissolving, and always remaining the empire of West, to Germanic magistrates, who, each in the countries under his jurisdiction, applied to the populations the special laws formerly instituted for their use by Roman jurisprudence. Odoacer had therefore only accomplished a pure palace revolution, much less important than it appeared; and the most palpable proof that can be given is the conduct that Charlemagne later took and the way in which the restoration of the imperial crown-bearer was accomplished in his person.

The king of the Heruli had deposed the son of Orestes in 475; Charlemagne was enthroned, and ended the interregnum in 801. The two events were separated by a period of nearly four centuries, and four centuries filled with major events, well capable of erasing from the memory of men all memory of the ancient form of government. What is the time, moreover, when it would not be insane to want to resume an order of things which has been interrupted for four hundred years? If Charlemagne was able to do it, it was because in reality he was not resurrecting the substance or even the form of institutions,

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it was because he was only reestablishing a detail that we had been able to neglect for a time without danger, and which we were resuming without anachronism. The empire, Romanity, had constantly supported itself in the face of barbarism and by its care. The coronation of Pépin's son only restored to her one of the cogs that, along with so many others, gone forever, she had once seen working in her bosom. The incident was remarkable, but there was nothing vital about it; This is clearly demonstrated by examining the reasons which had prolonged the interregnum for so long.

After having considered it reasonable, previously, that the head of Roman society should come from a Latin family, we soon agreed to take him in any part of Italy, then finally and exclusively in the camps, and then we did not inquired more about its origin. However, it had always remained agreed, and on this point common sense could hardly weaken, that the emperor must have at least the external forms of the populations he governed, bear one of the names familiar to their ears, dress like them and speak the everyday language, the language of decrees and diplomas, as best they can. At the time of Odoacer, the external distinctions between the victors and the vanquished were still too marked for the violation of these rules not to cause a scandal in the eyes of even those who might have wanted to try it for their own benefit.

For the Germanic chiefs, for the kings born of the blood of the Amales or the Mérowings, to have themselves instituted patricians and 1373

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consuls, these were permissible and even necessary ambitions: the government of the people was at this price. But, apart from the fact that the taking possession of the Augustal purple by a barbarian chief, dressed and living according to the customs of the North, surrounded by his trust, in a wooden palace, would have been liable to ridicule, the misguided ambitious man who had made the attempt would have experienced the greatest difficulty in having his supreme dignity recognized by numerous adversaries, all his rivals, all equal to him, or believing to be so, through the illustration, all almost equally strong than him. The coalition of a thousand vanities, of a thousand wounded interests would soon have reduced him to the common rank, and perhaps lower. Impressed by this evidence, the most powerful Germanic monarchs did not want to face the dangers (1)[10] . For some time they imagined the means of giving to one of their Roman servants this dignity which they did not dare to assume themselves, and, when the unfortunate model pretended to try a little independence, a word, a gesture, made it disappear. All the advantages seemed to come together in this combination. By dominating the emperor we dominated the empire, and this without giving ourselves the appearance of too daring a usurpation; in a word, it was a well-imagined expedient. Unfortunately, like all expedients, it wore out quickly. The truth peeked through too easily beneath the lies. The Merowing cared no more about recognizing Odoacer's servant as his sovereign than Odoacer himself. 1374

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Everyone protested, everyone rejected this constraint, then each, having consulted their forces, did themselves justice in silence, modestly executed: the interregnum was proclaimed, and we waited until the balance of forces had ceased to recognize the one which would definitely win the right to restart the series of emperors.

It was only after four hundred years that all the difficulties were ironed out. At the beginning of this new period, the most complete facilities appeared to all eyes. Most Germanic nations had allowed themselves to be weakened, if not incorporated, by Romanism; several had even ceased to exist as distinct groups. The Visigoths, matched with the Romans in their territories, no longer retained between themselves and their subjects any legal distinction which recalled ethnic inequality. The Longobards maintained a more distinct situation, still others did the same; However, it was incontestable that the barbarian world had only one serious representative left in the empire, and this representative was the nation of the Franks, to which the invasion of the Austrasians had just restored a degree of energy. and power obviously superior to that of all other parent races. The problem of supremacy was therefore resolved for the benefit of this people.

Since the Franks dominated everything, since at the same time the marriage of barbarism and Romanity was already sufficiently advanced for the contrasts of the past to have become less shocking, the empire found itself in 1375

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situation of giving oneself a leader. This leader could be a German, German in fact and form; this chosen one must only be a Frank; among the Franks, only an Austrasian, only the king of the Austrasians, and therefore only Charlemagne. This prince, accepting all the past, stood for the successor of the emperors of the East, whose scepter had just fallen into a distaff, which Western custom could not admit according to him. This is by what reasoning he restored the past. Moreover, the acclamations of the Roman people and the blessings of the Church did not refuse him their assistance (1) [11] .

Until him, barbarism had faithfully continued its system of conservation with regard to the Roman world. As long as she existed in her true and native essence, she did not depart from this idea. Since, as before the arrival of the first great Teutonic peoples, until the advent of the middle ages around the tenth century, that is to say during a period of approximately seven hundred years, social theory, more or less clearly developed and understood, remained this: Romanity is social order. Barbarism is only an accident, a victorious and ruling accident, in truth, but ultimately an accident, and, as such, of a transitory nature.

If the wise men of that time had been asked which of the two elements should survive the other, absorb the other, annihilate it, they would undoubtedly have answered and they actually responded by celebrating the eternity of the Roman name. Was this belief wrong? Yes, in that we represented the incorrect image of a future that was too 1376

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similar to the past and much too close; but, fundamentally, it was only erroneous in the manner of Christopher Columbus's calculations regarding the existence of the new world. The Genoese navigator was wrong in all his calculations of time, distance and extent. He was wrong about the nature of his future discoveries. The terrestrial globe was not as small as he supposed; the lands he was going to approach were further from Spain and larger than he imagined; they were not part of the Chinese empire, and no Arabic was spoken there.

All of these points were radically wrong; but this series of illusions did not destroy the accuracy of the main assertion. The protégé of the Catholic kings was right to maintain that there was an unknown country in the west. Likewise, the general thought of Romanity was wrong in considering the mode of culture of which it preserved the shreds as the treasure and the last word of possible improvement; it was still so by seeing in barbarism only an anomaly destined to quickly disappear; it was even more so by announcing as imminent the complete reappearance of an order of things that we imagined to be admirable; and yet, despite all these considerable errors, despite these dreams so brutally flouted by the facts, the public conscience correctly guessed in this that, Romanity being the expression of human masses infinitely more imposing in their number than barbarism, this Romanity was, in the long run, to wear down his dominatrix as the waves wear away the rock, and he

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survive. The Germanic nations could not avoid dissolving one day in the accumulated and powerful detritus of the races which surrounded them, and their energy was condemned to be extinguished there. This was the truth; this is what instinct revealed to the Roman populations. Only, I repeat, this revolution had to take place with a slowness whose troubles human imaginations do not like to measure, given the difficulty they experience in supporting themselves in the middle of somewhat large spaces. It must also be added that it could never be so radical as to bring society back to its Semitic starting point. The Germanic elements were to be absorbed, but not to disappear to this extent. They are nevertheless absorbed, and in a constant manner from now on. Their breakdown within the other ethnic elements is very easy to follow. It provides the reason for all the important movements of modern societies, as we can easily judge by examining the different orders of facts which serve to manifest it.

It has already been established previously that all society was based on three primitive classes, each representing an ethnic variety: the nobility, a more or less resembling image of the victorious race; the bourgeoisie, made up of mixed-race people close to the great race; the people, slaves, or at least very depressed, as belonging to an inferior human variety, Negro in the south, Finnish in the north.

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These radical notions were blurred everywhere very early. Soon we knew more than three ethnic categories; therefore, many more than three social subdivisions. However, the spirit that founded this organization has always remained alive; he still is; he has never denied himself, and he is today as severely logical as ever.

As soon as ethnic superiorities disappear, this spirit does not tolerate for long the existence of institutions made for them and which survive them. He does not admit fiction. It first abrogates the national name of the victors, and makes that of the vanquished dominate; then he destroys aristocratic power While he thus destroys from above all appearances which no longer have a real and material right to exist, he only admits with increasing repugnance the legitimacy of slavery ; he attacks, he shakes this state of things. He restricts it, finally he abolishes it. It multiplies, in an inextricable disorder, the infinite nuances of social positions, bringing them closer every day to a common level of equality; in short, lowering the heights, raising the depths, that is his work. Nothing is more likely to help us understand the different phases of the amalgamation of races than the study of the state of people in the environment we observe. So, let us take this side of Germanic society from the 5th to the 9th centuries, and, beginning with the highest points, consider the kings.

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As early as the 2nd century BC, free-born Germans recognized differences in extraction among themselves. They described as sons of the gods, sons of the Aesir, the men from their most illustrious families, those who alone enjoyed the privilege of providing the tribes with these little obeyed, but highly honored magistrates, whom the Romans called their princes (1 ) [12] . The sons of the Aesir, as their name indicates, descended from the Arian stock, and the mere fact that they were set apart from the entire body of warriors and free men proves that one recognized in the blood of the latter the existence of an element which was not originally national and which assigned them a place below the first. This consideration did not prevent these men from being very important, from possessing the odels, from even having the right to command and become war leaders. This means that it was open to them to pose as conquerors and to make themselves more truly kings than the sons of the Aesir, if the latter agreed to remain confined in their grandeur deep in the Scandinavian territories.

That was the principle; but it does not appear that the great Germanic nations of the far north, those which renewed the face of the world, ever, as long as they were Arian, abandoned their most important establishments to men of a common birth (1) [13]

.

They had too much purity of blood, when they appeared in the

middle of the Roman empire, to admit that their leaders could lack it. Everyone thought of this 1380

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respect, like the Heruli, and acted in the same way. They placed at the head of their bands only pure Arians, only Aesir, only sons of gods. Thus, after the 5th century, we must consider the royal tribes of the Teutonic nations as being of pure extraction. This state of affairs did not last long. These elite families did not only ally with each other and did not follow very rigid principles in their marriages; their race suffered from this, and, in its decadence, reduced them at the very least to the rank of their warriors. The ideas they possessed, losing at the same time their absolute value, underwent similar modifications. The Germanic kings became accessible to notions unknown to their ancestors. They were extremely seduced by the forms and results of Roman administration, and much more inclined to develop them and put them into practice than favorable to the institutions of their people. These only gave them a precarious authority, difficult and tiring to maintain; they only conferred on them rights bristling with restrictions. They imposed on them at all times the duty to reckon with their men, to take their opinions, to respect their wishes, to bow to their repugnances, their sympathies or their prejudices. In each circumstance, it was necessary for the amalung of the Goths or the merowing of the Franks to test opinion before acting, to take the trouble to flatter it, to persuade it, or, if it violated it, to fear explosions which were authorized by the law to consider regicide only as the maximum of ordinary murder. Lots of pain, worries, fatigue, forced exploits,

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generosity, these were the harsh conditions of command. Were they well and duly fulfilled, they were worth petty honors, dubious respects which did not protect the person to whom they were paid from the brutally sincere admonitions of his faithful. On the Roman side, what a difference! what advantages over barbarism! Veneration for the scepterbearer, whoever he was, was boundless; severe laws, pressed like a rampart around his person, punished with the last torture and infamy the slightest offense to this radiant majesty. Wherever the master's gaze fell, prostration, absolute obedience; never contradictions, always haste. There was indeed a social hierarchy. We could see senators and plebs; but this was an organization which did not produce, like that of the Germanic tribes, strong individuals capable of resisting the will of the prince. On the contrary, the senators, the curiales, existed only to be the passive springs of general submission. The fear of the material power of the emperors did not alone develop or maintain such doctrines. They were natural to Romanity, and, taking their source in Semitic nature, they believed themselves ordered, imposed, by the public conscience. It was not possible for an honest man, a good citizen to repudiate them, without immediately breaking the rule, the law, the custom, the whole theory of political duties, thus without hurting the conscience. 1382

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The Germanic kings, contemplating this painting, undoubtedly found it admirable. They understood that the most satisfactory of their attributions was that of Roman magistrate, and that the ideal would be to make the Germanic character disappear in themselves and in those around them in order to achieve nothing more than the happy possessors of authority. clean and simple, and very attractive, since it was unlimited. Nothing is more natural than this ambition; but for it to be realized, the Germanic elements had to become more flexible. Time alone, bringing about this result of ethnic mixtures, could do anything about it.

In the meantime, the kings showed marked favor to their respectful Roman subjects, and they brought them as close as possible to their persons. They very willingly admire them in this intimate circle of companions whom they called their trustee, and this favor, ultimately worrying and hurtful for the national warriors, does not however seem to have produced such an effect. According to their way of seeing, the chief had the right to hire into his service all those he deemed suitable. It was an original principle with them. Their complete tolerance, however, had even deeper reasons.

The free-born champions, who were no longer the equals of their leaders by birth and did not belong to the pure lineage of the Aesir, at least for the most part (1 )[14] , since they had already undergone some ethnic changes before the 5th century CE, naturally were willing to accept new ones. Some laws

1383

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Local authorities, in truth, put up some barriers to this danger. Such national tribes were not authorized to contract marriages between themselves (2)[15] , the code of Ripuaries, by allowing it between the populations it governed and the Romans, however stipulated a forfeiture for the products of these hymens mixed (3)[16] . He stripped them in advance of Germanic immunities, and, subjecting them to the regime of imperial laws, threw them back into the crowd of subjects of the empire. This logic and this way of proceeding would not have been disavowed in India; but, in short, these were only very imperfect restrictions; they did not have the power to neutralize the attraction that Romanity and barbarism exerted on each other. Soon the concessions of the law increased, the reserves disappeared, and, before the extinction of the Merowings, the classification of the inhabitants of a territory under this or that legislation had ceased to be based on origin (1)[ 17 ] . Let us recall that among the Visigoths, who were even more advanced, any legal distinction between barbarian and Roman had even ceased to exist (2)[18] .

Thus the vanquished rose up everywhere; and, since they could claim Germanic honors, that is to say, to be admitted among the king's leudes, among his aides, his confidants, his lieutenants, it was very natural that the German, in his turn, could have reasons to aspire to their alliance. The Gauls and Italians thus found themselves on an equal footing with their rulers, and, moreover, they showed them again that they possessed a jewel worthy of

1384

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to compete with all theirs: that was episcopal dignity. The Germans understood wonderfully the grandeur of this situation; they ardently desired it, they obtained it, and we thus saw at the same time that men emerging from the dominated mass became the antrustions of the son of Odin, while several of the dominators, stripping the ornaments and weapons of the heroes Germanic people to take the crozier and pallium of the Roman priest, established themselves as the mandataries and, as it was said, the defenders of a Roman population, and, accepting with it the most complete fraternity, repudiated their native law to accept its own.

At the same time, on another point of social organization, another innovation was being accomplished. The ariman, the homo bonus, who, in the first days of the conquest, professed to hate and despise living in the cities, gradually allowed himself to leave the fields to become a city dweller. He came to sit next to the curial church.

The latter's position, terrible under the iron rod of the imperial praetoriums, had improved in every way (1)[19] . The less regular, if not less frequent, abuses had become more bearable. The bishops, charged with the heavy burden of protecting the cities, endeavored to make the local senates capable of assisting them. They had pleaded the cause of these aristocracies with the sovereigns of Germanic blood, and the latter, finding nothing but natural in them committing the administration of the interests of their fellow citizens, gave them the opportunity to become infinitely more important.

1385

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. It is, moreover, the usual

that they had never been[20]

result of all conquests carried out by military nations, the increase in influence of the defeated rich classes in the municipalities. With the consent of the barbarian patricians, the curiales replaced the numerous varieties and categories of imperial officials, who disappeared. The police, the justice system, everything that was not expressly sovereign fell into their power[21] ; and as industry and commerce enriched the cities, it was in the cities that religion and studies had their seat, that the most venerated sanctuaries attracted and fixed a devout or speculating crowd, without counting the criminals who gathered there by the hundreds to benefit from the right of asylum, a thousand considerations brought about this change of ideas and mood among the Arimans which would have so outraged their ancestors. We saw them taking pleasure in the cities, establishing a foothold there, settling there; and this is how they also became curiales there, this is how, under their influence, this Latin name was abandoned to make way for those of rachimbourgs[22] and scabins.

Scabins of Lombard, Frankish and Visigothic origin were established, as were Scabins of Roman origin (1) [23]

.

While the princes, chiefs and freemen of Romanity and barbarism were coming together, the lower classes were doing the same, and what's more they were ascending. The imperial regime had previously established the existence of several intermediate situations between complete slavery and 1386

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complete freedom. Under the Germanic administration these nuances multiplied, and absolute slavery initially lost a lot of ground. It had been attacked for many centuries by general instinct. Philosophy had waged bitter war against it since pagan times; the Church had committed even more serious attacks on him. The Germans showed no inclination either to restore it, or even to defend it; they left complete freedom to the freedmen, they readily declared, with the bishops, that keeping Christians, members of Jesus Christ, in chains was in itself an illegitimate act.

But they were in a position to go much further, and they did so. The politics of antiquity, which consisted mainly of acting within the walls of cities, and which had only created its main institutions for urban populations, had always shown itself to be poorly concerned with the fate of rural workers. The Germans have a completely different starting point, and, passionate about the life of the fields, considered their governed in a more impartial way; they had no theoretical preference for any category of them, and by this very fact were more likely to regulate the destinies of all in an equitable manner.

Slavery was therefore virtually abolished under their administration They transformed it into a mixed condition (2)[24] . in which man had the free disposal of his body guaranteed by civil laws, the Church and public opinion. The rustic worker became capable of owning; he was still able to enter sacred orders. The road of more 1387

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high and most envied dignities was opened to him. He was able to aspire to the episcopate, a position superior to that of an army general, in the thinking of the Germans themselves. This concession transformed in a very favorable way the situation of the servile people inhabiting the private domains; but it exerted an even more powerful action on the slaves of the royal domains. These fiscalins, fiscalini, could become and very often became merchants of great opulence, favorites of the prince, leudes, counts commanding warriors of free extraction. I am not talking about their daughters, whom the whims of love elevated more than once to the throne itself.

The smallest classes thus found themselves having gained the rank of another Roman series, the colonists, who rose at the same time in an equal proportion. In the time of Julius Caesar, they had been free farmers; under the deleterious influence of the Semitic era, their position had become very sad. The constitutions of Theodosius and Justinian had indissolubly attached them to the soil. They were given the right to acquire real estate, but not to sell them. When the land changed owners, they changed with it.

Access to public functions was strictly closed to them. They were even forbidden to take legal action against their masters, while the latter could punish them corporally at their discretion. With a final stroke, we

1388

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had forbidden them to carry and use weapons; it was, in the ideas of the time, to dishonor them (1)[25] . Germanic domination abolished almost all these provisions, and those which it neglected to make disappear, it tolerated the constant violation. Under the Merowings, we saw colonists owning serfs themselves. A very lively enemy of the institutions and races of the north admitted that their condition at that time was by no means bad (1)[26] .

The work of the Teutonic elements, acting in the empire, thus tended for four centuries, from the 5th to the 9th, to improve the position of the lower classes, and to raise the intrinsic value of Romanity. It was the natural consequence of the ethnic mixture which caused the blood of the victors to circulate deep within the multitudes. When Charlemagne appeared, the work was sufficiently advanced for the idea of resuming imperial errors to govern the conceptions of this strong head; but he did not realize, any more than anyone else, that the facts which seemed at first sight to favor a restoration announced, on the contrary, a great and profound revolution, bringing about the complete advent of new relationships in society.

There was no will or genius in the world that could prevent the explosion of causes which had silently reached their full maturity.

Romanity had regained energy, but not everywhere in equal doses. Barbarism had almost disappeared as a body, but its influence dominated in more than one way. 1389

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countered, and on these points, although it had been annihilated under the Latin element, it was, on the contrary, the latter which had been reabsorbed in it. This resulted everywhere in imperative sporadic dispositions, and the power to realize them. In southern Italy there was deeper confusion than ever. The ancient populations, weak barbarian debris, incessant Greek alluvial deposits, then crowds of Saracens, maintained the excess of disorder with the Semitic preponderance. No thought was general there, no force was great enough to impose itself for long. It was a country forever doomed to foreign occupation, or to more or less well-disguised anarchy. In the north of the Peninsula, the domination of the Lombards was undisputed. These Germans, little assimilated into the Romanized population, did not share its indifference for the supremacy of a Germanic race different from theirs. As they were not very numerous, Charlemagne could defeat them: that was all, he could not suppress their nationality (1)[27] .

In Spain, the entire south and center no longer belonged to the empire; the Muslim invasion had made it an annex of the Caliph's vast states. As for the northwest, where the descendants of the Suevi and the Visigoths were confined, it presented in the lower masses many more Celtiberian elements than Roman ones. Hence a special imprint which distinguished these people from the inhabitants of southern France such as the Moors, although a little less.

1390

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The blood of Aquitaine, endowed with some affinity with that of the Navarrese and the men of Galicia by its originally indigenous elements, also had a very rich Roman alluvium, and a barbarian alluvium of some thickness, without equivalent to that of the Northern Spain.

In Provence and Languedoc, the Roman layer was so considerable, the Celtic background on which it had been established was so strongly influenced by it, that one could have believed oneself there in central Italy, all the more so because the Saracen invasions maintained a Semitic infiltration there which was not without power (2)[28] . The Visigoths, after a stay where their blood had become much obliterated, were partly withdrawn to Spain, partly in the process of being definitively absorbed into the native population. Towards the east, Burgundian groups, and everywhere some Franks, directed this rather non-homogeneous group, but were not its absolute masters. Burgundy and western Switzerland, including Savoy and the valleys of Piedmont, had preserved many Celtic elements. In the first of these countries, in truth, the Roman element was the strongest, but it was less so in the others, and above all the Burgundian element had brought a lot of Celtic detritus from Germany which had become quite easily allied with the old funds of the country. Franks, Longobards, Goths, Suevi and other Germanic remnants, even Slavs (1)[29] , prevented these countries from presenting a good whole 1391

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homogeneous; They nevertheless had more relationships with each other than with their neighbors. On their northern borders, they closely resembled the peoples who remained in Germany.

Central France was mainly Gallo-Roman. Of all the barbarians who had entered there, the Franks alone reigned. The first populations there did not have such a Semitic color as in Provence; they more closely resembled those of upper Burgundy. There was moreover, in the general mixture, the difference of merit in the Germanic elements of the two countries, the Franks being worth more than the Burgundians; moreover, the Franks, although in small numbers among the latter, took precedence over them Again.

To the west of central Gaul opened Little Britain. The barely Romanized populations of this peninsula had received, and several times, emigrations from the big island. They were not purely Celtic, but of Belgian origin, therefore Germanized, and, over time, other Germanic alloys had further modified their essence. The mainland Bretons represented a mixed group where the Celtic element had the upper hand without being as completely free of alloy as is commonly thought.

Beyond the upper Seine and in the countries which followed one another as far as the mouth of the Rhine on one side, on the other as far as the Mein and as far as the Danube, with Hungary as a border to the east, multitudes gathered where 1392

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the Germanic elements exercised a more uncontested, but not uniform, preponderance. The part between the Seine and the Somme belonged to considerably Celticized Franks, with a relatively poor proportion of Semitized Roman alloy. The country bordering the sea had kept, perhaps regained, the Kymric name of Picardaich. Inland, the Gallo-Romans mixed with the Neustrian Franks were barely distinguishable from their neighbors to the south and east; they were, however, a little less energetically constituted than the latter, and especially than those of the north. The closer one got to the Rhine and then moved in the direction of the ancient Decumate boundaries, the more one found oneself surrounded by true Franks of the Austrasian branch, where the ancient Germanic blood existed at its highest degree of verdure. We had arrived at his home. We can therefore easily recognize, by examining the accounts of history, that there was the brain, the heart and the marrow of the empire, that there resided the strength, that there the destinies were decided. Any event that was not planned on the Middle Rhine, or in the surrounding area, had and could only have a local impact with few consequences.

Going up the river in the direction of Basel, the Germanic masses, returning to become more Celtic, approached the Burgundian type; in the east, the Gallo-Roman mixture was complicated, from Bavaria, by Slavic nuances which were reinforced up to the confines of the Hungary and Bohemia, where, becoming more marked, they 1393

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eventually took over, and then formed the transition between the nations of the west and the peoples of the northeast and southeast to the Byzantine region. The Western groups thus owed to the Teutonic element, which animated them all to varying degrees, a disjunctive force that the enervated nations of the Roman world had not possessed. The era was ending when the barbarians could and had to see in the ethnic base governed by them only a mass opposed to their mass. Now mixed with it, they had acquired another point of view: they were only struck by completely new dissimilarities, splitting the whole of the multitudes of which they themselves now found themselves a part. It was therefore at the very moment when Romanity believed it had conquered barbarism that it experienced precisely the most serious effects of the Germanic accession. Until Charlemagne, it had kept all the exteriors at the same time as the reality of life. After him, the material form ceased to exist, and, although its spirit did not disappear from the world any more than the Assyrian spirit and the Hellenistic spirit, it entered a phase comparable to the trials of Eson's rejuvenation.

Be that as it may, I repeat, his spirit does not perish. This genius, which represented the sum of all the ethnic debris until then amalgamated, resisted, and, during the time when it remained forced to postpone very obvious external manifestations, it at least maintained its place by a means which did not allow than to be worthy of having his mention here. It was a phenomenon quite opposite to that which had 1394

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took place between the time of Odoacer and that of Pepin's son. During this period, the empire had existed without the emperor; here the emperor subsisted without the empire. His dignity, relating as best he could to Roman majesty, strove for several centuries to preserve the appearance of successor and heir. It was again the Germanic populations who, deploying in this encounter the instinct, the obstinate taste for conservation which is natural to them, gave a new example of this logic and this tenacity that their brothers in India did not possess. to a higher degree, although applying it in another way.

We now have to see the typical virtues of the race practiced by the last Arian branches that Scandinavia sent south: these were the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons.

1. ÿ (1) Tacitus, such a great admirer of the Germans, although often in a somewhat romantic manner, treats the Gauls of his time with extreme severity. {Germ., 28, 29.) 2. ÿ (1) “Roman Pannonia and Moesia... were, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the nursery of the legions, and, through the legions, that of the Caesars. » Amédée Thierry, Revue des Deux-Mondes, July 15, 1854.) 3. ÿ (1) In the island of Brittany, the very numerous barbarian settlers did not bear the ordinary name of læti, they were called gentiles. (Palsgrave, Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, t. I, p. 355.) 4. ÿ (1) These two leaders owed their Roman titles to the emperor Anastasius, who in fact was nothing in the West; but we will see shortly by what fiction the barbarian kings insisted on considering him as national emperor. 5. ÿ (1) The right of commendatio, which was maintained for so long among the Anglo-Saxons, the faculty of freely choosing one's leader, was lost very early among the Franks. The leudes, antrustions or tideles, were required to remain attached to their king, and could not, without incurring losses.

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legal research, transfer to the service of another. (Savigny, D. Rœm. Recht im Mitelalt., t. I, p. 186.) This important modification to Germanic freedom had taken place under the influence of Roman law. 6. ÿ (1) It was probably as a consequence of the importation of the alleux that certain owners of land were exempted by the kings from the power of the counts. It was a memory of the ancient freedom of the Arian in his odel. But this immunity was never complete, and the possessor of the alleu was always responsible before the common court, before the count, for the crimes of murder, kidnapping and arson. (Savigny, Das Rœm. Recht im Mittelalt., t. I, p. 278.) 7. ÿ The Moeso-Gothic translation of the gospels by Ulfila is from the 4th century. 8. ÿ Theodorik III and his successors promulgated several laws with the aim of protecting the monuments of Rome against destruction. It was not the barbarians who attacked them, but the Romans, either out of religious zeal or to take building materials. — The greatest devastation was wreaked under Constant II. (Clarac, Manual of the history of art among the ancients, part. II, p. 857.) — The Romans greatly sought after marble statues, in order to make lime from them. The Visigoth kings and the popes, despite the most severe prescriptions, could not prevent the greatest number of objects of art from perishing in this way. (Cited work, p. 857.) — Athalaric endeavored to reorganize the law school of Rome. (Cassiod., Var., IX, 31.) — The Visigoth kings, not content with defending the destruction of the monuments, even allocated funds for their maintenance. (Clarac, cited work, part. II, p. 837.) 9. ÿ (1) It was acting in accordance with the indications of race, language, civil law, and Palsgrave said with truth: “ Like their various languages which are in throth but dialect of one mother tongue, so their laws are but modifications of one primeval code… even now we can mark the era when the same principles and doctrines were recognized at Upsala and at Toledo, in Lombardy and in England. » (Cited work, vol. I, p. 3.) 10. ÿ (1) However, it cannot be denied that the temptation to do so existed for them very strongly and that they sometimes gave in to it in part. Klodowig, according to Gregory of Tours (II, 38), was even given the title of Augustus. Theodorik the Great even played the role of Anastasius' colleague. But these were rather pretensions than realities, and these two circumstances are little more than historical curiosities, as they were so little followed by effects. 11. ÿ (1) The politicians of the time did not even want to admit that the new emperor was restoring an ancient throne. They claimed that he

1396

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succeeded, not Augustulus, but the Eastern Emperor, Constantine V. Throughout the interregnum, this theory had, in fact, been accepted, that the sovereign sitting in Constantinople had become the nominal head of the entire romanity. His power was limited to granting investitures when asked. When Charlemagne wanted to take the purple, we broke with this fiction, substituting another: this was to imagine that, with the accession of Irene, the Eastern Empire having fallen into disarray, that of the West could not follow the same fate, because the law of the Salians was opposed to it, as if the law of the Salians had something to say in a case of Roman heredity, which even legally escaped the rules of civil jurisprudence. It should, moreover, be noted that this is the first application which was made of the doctrine of the inability of women to succeed to the crown of France, and, in this case, of support for the law governing the tenure of the Salic domain. It has been wrongly disputed that there is a real correlation between these two points. 12. ÿ (1) One of the characteristic signs by which a man of divine race was recognized was the extraordinary brilliance of his eyes. The same particularity attaches, in India, to celestial incarnations. (H. Leo, Vorlesungen, vol. I, p. 40.) 13. ÿ (1) Hence the respect with which certain royal tribes were surrounded: the Skillinga among the Swedes, the Nibelungs, Franci nebulones, among the Franks, the Herelinga, etc. 14. ÿ (1) Among the Franks, Khlodwig had all the men of Salic race slaughtered, so that after his reign there was no longer anyone in the Germanic bands of the Gallic region who could compete for nobility with the Merowings . (H. Leo, Vorlesungen, etc., vol. I, p. 156.) 15. ÿ (2) Weinhold, Die deutsch. Frauen im Mittelalt., p. 339 et seqq. —In these nations alliances with the Romans were considered less reprehensible. 16. ÿ (3) The children of a barbarian and a Roman woman were Romans. (Ibid.) — In the 9th century, Saxon law pronounced the death penalty against men guilty of an illegal marriage. But it should be noted that this is a very late period, and that there is nothing to indicate that this law was very old. In any case, it didn't last. (H. Leo, Vorlesungen, etc., t. I, p. 160.) 17. ÿ (1) Although the ecclesiastics were automatically placed under Roman jurisdiction, they were not everywhere forced to accept it . Among the Lombards, priests and monks of the communities preferred and received the barbaric law. There are examples of this fact as far back as the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. (Savigny, cited work, vol. I, p. 117.) The freedmen acquired the law of the peoples from which they came. Among the Ripuaires, they needed

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follow either riparian law or Roman law, at the choice of their boss. (Ibidem., p. 118.) Among the Lombards, they remained under the law of the boss. (Ibid.) Natural children chose their law as they pleased. (Ibid., p. 114.) Above Roman law as well as barbarian law, there was in each Germanic territory a general rule which applied indifferently to all the inhabitants of the country, and which, having as its object the most general interests, derived from a compromise between the various legislations. The Capitulars are the codification and development of this supreme rule. (Ibid., p. 113.) 18. ÿ (2) Savigny, open. cited, p. 266. 19. ÿ (1) Savigny, open. cited, t. I, p. 250 et seqq. — Here is how Mr. Augustin Thierry, such a pronounced adversary, moreover, of the Germanic race and action, expresses himself on this subject; “The curia, the body of decurions, ceased to be responsible for the collection of taxes owed to the fisc. The tax was raised by the count alone and according to the last act of contributions drawn up in the city. There was no other guarantee of the accuracy of the taxpayers than the more or less know-how, activity and violence of the count and his agents. Thus municipal functions ceased to be a ruinous burden, no one wanted to be exempt from them anymore, the clergy entered them. The list of members of the curia ceased to be invariably fixed; the old property conditions, necessary for admission, were no longer maintained; simple notability is enough. The bodies of merchandise and trades, until then distinct from the municipal corporation, entered it at least through their summit, and tended more and more to merge with it... The intervention of the entire population of the city in his affairs became more frequent; there were large assemblies of clerics and lay people under the presidency of the bishop..." (Considerations on the history of France, in-12°, Paris, 1846, vol. I, p. 198-199. ) 20. ÿ There were even points where the Roman provincial administration was preserved by the barbarians: in Rhaetia, for example, and in the Burgundian countries, there were, for several centuries more, a præses and patrices, in place of the Germanic counts. (Savigny, cited work, vol. I, p. 278.)

21. ÿ In 543, the Senate of Vienna authorized the founding of a convent. — In 373, the municipal magistrates of Lyon opened and recognized the testament of Saint Nicetius. — In 731, in Sémur, the abbot of Flavigny, Widrad, speaks, in his will, of the curia and the defender. The case is all the more worthy of attention since Sémur was not a city proper, but a simple castrum. — Other facts similar to

1398

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in Paris in the 8th century in all Tours in the 8th century, Angers in the 6th and 9th , northern and central Italy in the 10th, etc. (Savigny, cited work, pass.) — It is not possible to doubt that the municipal organization never ceased to exist, at any time in the Middle Ages. 22. ÿ The rachimbourg is the same as the homo bonus ; the two terms are used interchangeably in the texts. It is the friling of the continental Saxons, the freeman of the Anglo-Saxons, also called by them friborgus. 23. ÿ (1) With this difference, that all the Romans of free birth were not at first fit to be curiales, while all the barbarians of the same category did not admit of any difference between them. Moreover, this equality also ended up winning over the Romans. ,

,

24. ÿ (2) See, on this subject, Guérard, Polyptique de l'abbé Irminon, in-4o , Paris, 1844, t. I, p. 212 et seqq. — The author of this book is doubly to be accepted as arbiter in this question, first for his great and profound knowledge, then for the conscientious and unexampled hatred with which he pursues the Germanic populations. The good things he is obliged to say about their administration cannot be suspect. 25. ÿ (1) The middle ages did not even entirely preserve this reserve: first they recognized the serfs themselves capable of fulfilling certain public functions; they had servi vicarii and servi judices. In this capacity they were granted the right to carry the lance and to wear a spur. Among the Visigoths and the Lombards, they were even fully armed, and they were called upon to contribute to public safety. (Guérard, cited work, vol. I, p. 335.) — Compare this state of affairs to the Roman organization. 26. ÿ (1) Guérard, Polyptique d’Irminon, t. I, pass. 27. ÿ (1) Savigny observes, with truth, that the number of groups provided with personal rights is much more considerable in Italy than in France in the 7th century. He wisely concludes that the different races are completely represented there. (Ouvr. cited, t. 1, p. 104.) 28. ÿ (2) Reynaud, Invasions of the Saracens in France, in Savoy and in the Suisse, Paris, 1836, in-8o 29. ÿ (1) Traces of it are found in the canton of Valais, in Granges (Gradec), in the villages of Krimenza (Kremenica), Luc (Luka), Visoye, Grava, etc. The local Germans call them Huns. (Schaffarik, Slawiche Alterth., vol. I, p. 329.) — Lake Thun was called, in the 7th century, lacus Vendalicus ; it was later named Wendensee. (Ibid., p. 420, note 4.) .

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1400

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CHAPTER V. Last Arian-Scandinavian migrations.

While the great nations that left Scandinavia after the 1st century AD successively gravitated towards the south, the still considerable masses that remained in the peninsula or its surroundings were far from devoting themselves to rest. We must distinguish them into two large fractions: that produced by the Anglo-Saxon confederation; then another cluster whose emissions were more independent of each other, began earlier, finished later, went much further, and to which it is appropriate to give the qualification of Norman, which the men who composed it attributed to themselves -themselves.

Although, from the 1st century BC until the action of these two It is

In ,

groups was felt several times even in the Roman regions, there is

no need, on this ground, to speak in detail; this action is confused, in every way, with that of other Germanic peoples. But, after the 5th century, the consequences of Attila's domination put an end to these ancient relationships, or at least relaxed them very significantly[1]. It is

.

Slavic multitudes, driven by the ethnic convulsions of which the Teutons and the Huns were the main agents, 1401

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were thrown between the Scandinavian countries and southern Europe, and it is from this moment alone that we can date the distinct personality of the Arian inhabitants of the extreme north of our continent.

These Slavs, victims once again of the catastrophes which agitated the superior races, arrived in the countries known to their ancestors, many centuries ago; perhaps they even advanced further than they had done two thousand years before our era (1)[2] . They crossed the Elbe again, met the Danube, and appeared in the heart of Germany. Led by their nobility, formed of so many Gete, Sarmatian, Celtic mixtures, by which they had formerly been enslaved, and confused with some of the Hunnic bands which pushed them, they occupied, in the north, all of Holstein until the Eider (2)[3] . To the west, gravitating towards the Saale, they ended up making it their border; while to the south they spread into Styria, Carniola, touched the Adriatic Sea on one side, the Mein on the other, and covered the two archduchies of Austria, such as Thuriuge and Swabia (3) [ 4] . Then they went down to the Rhineland regions, and entered Switzerland. These Wendish nations, always oppressed until then, thus became, willingly or unwillingly, conquerors, and the mixtures which distinguished them did not at first make this profession too difficult for them. Circumstances, acting energetically in their favor, brought matters to such a point that the Germanic element was considerably weakened throughout Germany, and

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remained somewhat compact only in Friesland, Westphalia, Hanover and the Rhineland regions from the sea to Basel. This was the state of things in the 8th century. Although the Saxon invasions and the Frankish colonizations of the three or four centuries which followed modified this situation somewhat, it nevertheless remained certain, subsequently, that the mass of local nations found themselves forever stripped of their principal arian elements. It was not only the Slavic invasions of the Hunnic era that contributed to this transformation; it was largely brought about by the intimate constitution of the Germanic groups themselves. Essentially mixed and far from having only warriors of noble origin, they dragged in their wake, as we have seen, numerous servile bands, Celtic and Wends. When their nations emigrated or perished, it was above all the illustrious part which, in them, was struck, and the remaining traces of their occupation were found infallibly in the persons of the karls and the traells, two classes which political catastrophes did not reach. only by repercussion, but which possessed a very small proportion of the Scandinavian essence. On the contrary, if the Slavic nations lost their nobles, they only became more emancipated from this Arianized influence which diverted them from their true nature. For these two reasons, the disappearance of the Germans on the one hand, and on the other the exhaustion of the Wend aristocracies, the populations of Germany, moreover composed on different points of the same ethnic doses in

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special quantities, which is also the origin of their weakly sporadic dispositions, were definitely found to be very little Germanized. Everything bears witness to this: commercial institutions, rural habits, popular superstitions, the appearance of dialects, physiological varieties. Just as it is not rare to find in the Black Forest, or around Berlin, perfectly Celtic or Slavic types, it is also easy to observe that the gentle and not very active nature of the The Austrian and the Bavarian have none of this fiery spirit which animated the Frank or the Longobard (1)[5] . It was on these populations that the Saxons and the Normans had to act, exactly as the Germans had acted on more or less similar masses. As for the scene of the new exploits which took place, it was identically the same, with this difference that, the forces employed being less considerable, the geographical results remained more limited. The Normans first took over the work of the Gothic tribes. Also bold navigators, they pushed their main expeditions into the east, crossed the Baltic, came to land on the beaches where the ancestors of Hermanarik had started, and, crossing, sword in hand, all of Russia, went, from on one side, establishing war relations, sometimes alliances, with the emperors of Constantinople, while, on the other, their pirates astonished and terrified the residents of the Caspian (1)[6 ] .

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They familiarized themselves so well with the Russian countries, they gave such a high idea of their intelligence and their courage, that the Slavs of this country, making the official confession of their impotence and their inferiority, almost unanimously implored their yoke. . They founded important principalities. They restored, in a way, Asgart, and Gardarike, and the empire of the Goths. They created the future of the most imposing of the Slavic states, the most extensive, the most solid, by giving it their Arian essence as the first and indispensable cement. Without them Russia would never have existed (2)[7] .

Let us weigh this proposition carefully, and examine its bases: there is a great Slavic empire in the world; it is the first and only one that has defied the test of time, and this first and only monument of political spirit undoubtedly owes its origin to the Varangian, in other words Norman, dynasties. However, this political foundation is only Germanic in the very fact of its existence. Nothing could be easier to conceive. The Normans did not transform the character of their subjects; they were too few in number to obtain such a result. They were lost among the populous masses which only increased around them, and in which the Tatar invasions of the Middle Ages constantly and without measure increased the enervating influence of Finnic blood. Everything would have ended, even the instinct of cohesion, if a providential intervention had not brought this empire back in time under the action which had given birth to it: this action was enough

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until now to neutralize the worst effects of Slavic genius. The accession of the German provinces, the advent of German princes, a crowd of German, English, French, Italian administrators, generals, professors, artists, craftsmen, emigration which took place slowly, but without interruption, continued to keep national instincts under the yoke, and to reduce them, in spite of themselves, to the honor of playing a great role in Europe. Everything in Russia which presents any political vigor, in the sense in which the West takes this word, everything which brings this country closer, in forms at least, to Germanized civilization, is foreign to it.

It is possible that this situation will persist for a more or less long time; but, basically, it changed nothing in the organic inertia of the national race, and it is gratuitous that we suppose the Wendish race dangerous for the freedom of the West. We wrongly imagined her to be a conqueror. Some deluded minds, seeing it little capable of rising to original notions of social improvement, took it upon themselves to declare it new, virgin and full of sap which has not yet flowed. These are all illusions. The Slavs are one of the oldest, most worn out, most mixed, most degenerate families that exist. They were exhausted before the Celts.

The Normans gave them the cohesion they did not have in themselves. This cohesion was lost when the invasion of Scandinavian blood was absorbed; foreign influences have restored it and maintain it; but they

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The same are, ultimately, worth little: they are rich in experience, accustomed to the routine of civilization; but, stripped of inspiration and initiative, they cannot give to their students what they do not possess. With regard to the West, the Slavs can only occupy a completely subordinate social situation, and reduced, from this point of view, to the condition of annexes and schoolchildren of modern civilization, they would play a almost insignificant character in future history as in past history, if the physical situation of their territories did not assure them a job which is truly most considerable. Placed on the borders of Europe and Asia, they form a natural transition between their western parents and their eastern parents of the Mongolian race. They connect these two masses who believe they ignore each other. They form innumerable masses from Bohemia and the surroundings of Petersburg to the borders of China. They thus maintain, between the yellow half-breeds of different degrees, this uninterrupted chain of ethnic alliances which today goes around the northern hemisphere, and through which a current of analogous skills and notions circulates.

This is the share of action devolved to the Slavs, that which they would never have acquired, if the Normans had not given them the strength to take it, and which has its main focus in Russia, because that is where the A more considerable dose of activity was implemented by these same Normans who must now be followed on other battlefields. 1407

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I will be brief in listing their deeds; it is especially a matter of consideration for political history. Pushed back from the center of Germany by the crowd of fighters who were already crowding there, held in check by the Saxons their equals (1)[8] , the Normans nevertheless continued until the 8th century to make incursions there, but with no other noticeable result than increasing the disorder. Frightening the western seas by the number and especially by the audacity of their piracy, they went as far as the Mediterranean, plundering Spain, at the same time as, through more fruitful work, they colonized the neighboring islands of England. , established themselves in Ireland and Scotland, populated the valleys of Iceland.

A little later, they did better; They established themselves permanently in this England which they had so worried, and removed a large part of it from the Britons, and especially from the Saxons who had preceded them on this land. Later still, they renewed the blood of the French province of Neustria, and gave it a very appreciable ethnic superiority over other regions of Gaul. She kept it for a long time, and still shows some remains of it. Among their most dazzling titles of glory, and which were not without great results either, we must especially include the discovery of the American continent, made in the 10th century, and the colonizations that they carried out in these regions in the 11th and perhaps -be until the 13th century. Finally I will speak in its place of the total conquest of England by the French Normans.

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Scandinavia, from which these warriors came, still occupied in the heroic period of the middle ages the most distinguished rank among the memories of all the dominant races of Europe. It was the country of their venerated ancestors, it would still have been the country of the gods themselves, if Christianity had permitted it. We can compare the great images that the name of this land evoked in the thoughts of the Franks and the Goths to those which for the Brahmins surrounded the memory of Ultara-Kourou. Nowadays, this fertile peninsula, this sacred land is no longer inhabited by a population equal to those that its generous bosom has for so long and with such profusion spread over the entire surface of the continent of Europe (1 ) [9] .

The more purebred the ancient warriors were, the less tempted they were to remain lazily in their odels, when so many wonderful adventures led their emulators towards the southern countries. Very few remained there. However, some returned. There they found the Finns, the Celts, the Slavs, either descendants of those who had formerly occupied the country, or sons of the captives whom the chances of war had brought there, fighting with some advantage against the remains of the blood of the Aesir. However, there is no doubt that it is still in Sweden, and especially in Norway, that we can today find the most physiological, linguistic and political traces of the vanished existence of the noble race par excellence. , and the history of recent centuries is there to attest to this. Neither Gustavus Adolphus, nor Charles XII, nor their people are unworthy successors of Ragnas Lodbrog and Harald

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with beautiful hair. If the Norwegian and Swedish populations were more numerous, the spirit of initiative which still animates them could not be without consequences; but they are reduced by their numbers to a real social impotence: we can therefore affirm that the last seat of Germanic influence is no longer among them. He traveled to England. It is there that he still deploys with the most authority the part he has retained of his former power.

When the Celts were discussed, we already saw that the population of the British Isles at the time of Caesar was made up of a primitive layer of Finns, of several Gallic nations differently affected by their mixture with these natives, but certainly very degraded. by their contact, and moreover a considerable immigration of Germanized Belgians, occupying the coast of the east and the south.

It was with the latter especially that the Romans had to deal, both for war and for peace. Alongside these tribes of foreign origin, purer Germans, called by Welsh documents Coritanians (1)[10], were placed very early, if they were not already there when Caesar arrived. ] . From this moment, the invasions and partial immigrations of Teutonic groups did not cease until the year 449, a date usually, although incorrectly, assigned to the beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon period. Under Probus, the imperial government colonized many Vandals on the island; some time later, he brought there Quades and Marcommans (2)[11] . Honorius 1410

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established in the northern cantons more than forty cohorts of barbarians who brought with them women and children. Then Tungres, in considerable numbers, received more land. All these accessions were important enough to cover the west coast with a new population, and necessitate the creation of a special official who, in the Roman hierarchy of the island, bore the title of prefect of the Saxon coast . This title demonstrates that, long before there was talk of the two heroic brothers Hengest and Horsa, many men of their nation were already living in England (1)[12] . Thus the Breton population was affected by Germanic interference from a very long time ago. There is little doubt that the less endowed tribes, those who occupied the central provinces, were gradually obliged to merge with the surrounding masses, or to withdraw to the depths of the northern mountains, or finally to emigrate into the island of Ireland, which thus became the last asylum of the pure Celts, if indeed there were any such left. Soon the Roman population had become significant in turn. During the Boadicea revolt, seventy thousand Romans and allies were slain by the rebels in the three cantons of London, Verulam and Colchester alone. The causes which had brought these southerners to Great Britain still continued to operate, new arrivals soon filled the voids produced by

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the insurrection, and the number of island Romans continued to follow an upward progression. In the 3rd century, Marcien counted fifty-nine first-rate cities in the country (2)[13] . Many were populated only by Romans, an expression that should not be understood in the sense that these inhabitants only had blood from overseas in their veins, but in this, that all, of Breton or foreign, followed and practiced Roman custom, obeyed imperial laws, built in abundance these monuments, aqueducts, theaters, triumphal arches, which were still admired in the 14th century (1)[14], in short, gave to the whole flat country has an appearance very similar to that of the provinces of Gaul.

However, a big difference remained. The inhabitants of Great Britain evinced an exuberance of political energy altogether greater than that of their continental neighbors, quite disproportionate to the extent of their own territory, and in manifest contradiction with their topographical situation which , throwing them back onto the flank of the empire, seemed to deny them the hope of being able to influence its destiny. But here is yet another clear proof of the little influence that the geographical question has on the power of a country. The halfGermans of Great Britain were the greatest makers of emperors, recognized or refused, that there ever was in the Roman world. It was with them and with their assistance that the

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big ambitious plots. It was from their shore and with their cohorts that the rulers of Romanity set out almost in bands, and, still finding this glory insufficient, they dared to undertake the task in which their neighbors the Gauls had so many times failed: they claimed to give themselves particular dynasties, and they succeeded. Since Carausius, they held only weakly to the great Roman body (2)[15] ; They formed a separate political center proudly constituted on the model and with all the insignia of the mother country. They already stood out in their fogs by this aureole of severe and somewhat selfish freedom which still gives glory to their nephews.

I will not name the British-Roman emperors Allectus (l)[16] , Magnentius, Yalentinius, Maximus, Constantine, with whom Honorius was forced to make a pact; I will say nothing about this Marcus who, in name and in fact, established the isolation of his country forever (2) I [17] . only wanted to show to what antiquity this imperial title given by modern Englishmen to their State and their Parliament dates back. Roman forms prevailed in the country for about four hundred and fifty years. This bygone period saw the start of civil wars between the Germanized Britto-Romans and the purer Saxons, already established for many years in several parts of the country, but who, pushed and reinforced by swarms of compatriots rushing from the continent, from where they were expelled the attacks of the Slavs, suddenly claimed full possession

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from the island. Historians have often shown us these sons of the Scandinavians, these Sakaï-Suna, or sons of the Sakas, arriving from the tip of the Cimbrian Chersonese and neighboring islands mounted on leather boats. They saw in this mode of navigation proof of the greatest barbarity, and were wrong. In the 5th century, northerners had large ships on the Baltic. They had long been accustomed to seeing Roman galleys sail in their seas, and the astonishing expedition of the Franks who returned from the Black Sea to Frisia, mounted on ships taken from the imperial fleet, would have been enough, if anything. had been necessary, to teach them to build buildings of this kind; but they didn't want it. Boats that draw very little water, and can be easily transported by hand, were better suited to these intrepid men for passing from the sea into rivers, from rivers into smaller rivers; They could go up in this way to the heart of the provinces, which would have been very difficult for them with large ships, and this is how they completed the conquest to the extent that was useful to them. Then began again the fusion of races, and the conflict of institutions (1)[18] .

The Britto-Roman population, infinitely more energetic than the Gallo-Romans because of its largely Germanic origin, maintained a much prouder and much better position in the face of its conquerors (2)[19 ] . A part remained almost independent, except the vassalage; another, making its municipalities a species of 1414

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republics, limited itself to a pure and simple recognition of the high Saxon domain and the payment of a tribute (3)[20] . The rest fell, in truth, into the subordinate situation of the iarl, of the ceorl, following the dialects of the new masters; but there he was supported and relieved by the very laws of these, and accession to landed property, the bearing of arms, the right of command, or of choosing his leader, remained acquired by him. The British-Roman population could therefore arrive or predict that it would reach the rank of nobles, iarls, ceorls.

The same feeling which led the Frankish kings to preferably surround themselves with Gallic leudes also induced the princes of the Heptarchy to recruit their domestic bands among the BrittoRomans. They therefore took on important positions at the court of these monarchs, sons of the Aesir (1)[21] . They taught them Roman laws (2)[22] ; they made them appreciate the governmental advantages, they introduced them to ideas of domination that the Anglo-Saxon warriors would certainly not have helped to spread. But, and in this the British-German advisors differed essentially from the Gallic or Merowing leudes, they did not save the exterior of Roman morals from destruction, given that they themselves had never possessed it more than imperfectly, and they did not deposit in the administration the germ of feudalism, because their country had only been very temporarily affected by the regime of beneficial laws (3) [23] . England therefore found itself placed

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part, from the 5th century, of the mode of existence which would prevail throughout the rest of Europe. What the British-Roman ceorls very much inspired in the descendants of Wodan and Thor was the desire to collect the entire succession of national emperors. We see with some astonishment the most skillful and strongest Anglo-Saxon princes, surrounding themselves with Roman marks of sovereign power, striking medals in the style of the she-wolf and the twins, appropriating Roman laws for the use of their subjects, take pleasure in maintaining intimate relations with the court of Constantinople, and take on a double title, that of bretwalda, vis-à-vis their Anglo-Saxon and Breton subjects, that of basileus, in their written documents in Latin language (4)[24] . This term of basileus , to which the Frankish, Visigothic and Lombard kings never dared claim, gave a very particular situation of grandeur and independence to the sovereigns who wore it. On the island, as on the continent, its significance was perfectly understood, because when Charlemagne took over from Constantine V, he very well described himself, in a letter to Egbert, as emperor of the Eastern Christians, and saluted its corresponding title of emperor of Western Christians (1)[25] .

The racial relations existing between the Britto-Romans and the Germanic tribes coming from Jutland (2)[26] served powerfully to bring about a compromise between them which was necessarily based, on the side of the vanquished, on the abandonment of most imports. from the south, on the acceptance of 1416

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Germanic ideas, and, on the side of the victors, on certain concessions to be made to the needs of a more severe and more strongly constituted administration than that of which they had until then prided themselves on carrying the easy yoke (3) [27 ] We saw the establishment of institutions still very closely linked .

to the Scandinavian origin. Land tenure in the form of odel and feud, the use of political rights based exclusively on territorial possession, the taste for agricultural life, the gradual abandonment of most towns (4)[28 ] , the increase in the number of villages, especially isolated farms, the solid maintenance of the franchises of the free man, the sustained influence of representative councils, these were all features by which the Arian spirit gave itself to recognize and testified to its persistence, while phenomena of a completely opposite nature, the increase in the number of cities, the growing indifference for participation in general affairs, the decrease in the number of absolutely free men marked on the continent the progress of 'an order of ideas of a completely different nature.

It is not surprising that the rather dignified appearance of the AngloSaxon ceorl, who was later the yeoman, pleased the thoughts of several modern historians, happy to see him free in his rustic life at a time when his analogues from the continent, the karl, the ariman, the homo bonus, had contracted obligations that were often very harsh and lost almost all resemblance with him. But, taking the point of view of these writers, it is necessary, to be completely

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just, also consider what must constitute for them the bad side of the question. The organization of the middle classes, under the Saxon kings as under the first Norman dynasts, being only the result of a combination of completed ethnic circumstances, did not lend itself to any kind of improvement (1)[29] . English society at that time, with its advantages and disadvantages, presented a complete whole which was susceptible only to decadence. Individual existence was neither without nobility nor without wealth incontestably; but the almost total absence of the Romanized element left it without luster and distanced it from what we call our civilization. As the various alloys of the population merged further, the Celtic elements, very imbued with Finnish essence, remained in the Breton background, those that Anglo-Saxon immigration had thrown into the masses, those that the Danish invasions brought again, tended to invade the Germanic elements, and we must not forget that, however abundant these were, they greatly diminished their energy by continuing to combine with a heterogeneous essence. At the same time their freshness went away with their heroic qualities, just like a fruit that passes from hand to hand loses its flower and withers while retaining its pulp. Hence the spectacle that England presented to Europe in the 11th century. Alongside remarkable political merits, shameful poverty in the field of intelligence; extremely developed utilitarian instincts and which had already accumulated extraordinary wealth on the island, but

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no delicacy, no elegance in morals; ceorls, happier than the French peasants, successors of the boni homini ; but complete slavery and quite harsh slavery, which almost no longer existed elsewhere (1) [30] . clergy that ignorance and base and basely sensual morals

And

were slowly leading to heresy or, at the very least, to schism; sovereigns who, having continued to govern a great kingdom as formerly they had done their odel and their truste, had retained, without delegating it, the administration of justice, and made themselves pay for the concession of their seal by a prevarication which was found to be legal (2)[31] ; finally the extinction of all the great pure races, and the accession to the throne of the son of a peasant, these were, at the time of the Norman conquest, unfavorable shadows whose picture was notably ugly.

England had the good fortune that the accession of William, without taking away anything of what was organically good about it (1)[32] , brought it, in the form of a Gallo-Scandinavian invasion, a number limited number of romanized elements. These did not react in a ruinous manner against the preponderance of the Teutonic background; they did not take away its utilitarian genius, its political spirit, but they infused it with what it had lacked until then to associate itself more intimately with the growth of the new civilization. With the Duke of Normandy arrived Frenchified Bretons, Angevins, Manceaux, Burgundians, men of all

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parts of Gaul. These were so many links which attached England to the general movement of the continent and which took it out of the isolation in which the character of its ethnic combination confined it, since it had remained too Celtic-Saxon at a time when the rest of the European world tended to strip itself of Germanic nature.

The Plantagenets and the Tudors continued this civilizing march by propagating its impetus. In their time, the importation of romanized gasoline did not take place in dangerous proportions; it did not directly reach the lower strata of the nation; it acts mainly on the superiors, who everywhere are subject, and were there as elsewhere, to incessant agents of withering and disappearance. It is with the infiltration of a civilized race, although corrupt, among the energetic but crude masses, as with the use of poisons in small doses in medicine. The result can only be beneficial. So that England slowly perfected itself, purified its morals, polished its surfaces somewhat, moved closer to the continental community, and, at the same time, as it continued to be mainly Germanic, it never gave feudalism the direction servile which was impressed upon him by his neighbors (1) [33] ; it did not allow royal power to exceed certain limits set by national instincts; she organized the municipal corporations on a plan which bore little resemblance to Roman models; she didn't stop

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making its nobility accessible to the lower classes, and above all it attached the privileges of rank only to the possession of land. On the other hand, she soon returned to showing little sensitivity to intellectual knowledge; she always betrayed a marked disdain for what was not of material use, and paid very little attention, to the great scandal of the Italians, to the culture of the arts of pleasure (2)[34 ] .

In the whole of human history there are few situations analogous to that of the populations of Britain from the 10th century to the present day. We have seen elsewhere Arian or Arianized masses bringing their energy into the midst of multitudes of different composition and endowing them with power at the same time as they received an already great culture, which their genius was responsible for developing in a new direction: but we have not contemplated these elite natures, concentrated in superior numbers on a narrow territory and only receiving the interference of races more perfected by experience, although subordinate in rank, in quite mediocre quantities. It is to this exceptional circumstance that the English owed, with the slowness of their social evolution, the solidity of their empire; he was certainly not the most brilliant; neither the most humane nor the noblest of European states, but it is still the most vigorous.

This circumspect and profitable march, however, accelerated from the end of the 17th century. 1421

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The result of the religious wars in France had brought a new influx of French elements into the United Kingdom. This time they no longer dared to enter the aristocratic classes, the effect of commercial relations, which was growing everywhere, threw a large proportion of them into the heart of the plebeian masses, and the Anglo-Saxon blood was seriously damaged. The birth of large-scale industry further increased this movement by calling onto national soil workers of all non-German races, crowds of Irish, Italians, Slavic Germans or those belonging to populations strongly marked with Celtic character.

Then the English could really feel themselves drawn into the sphere of Romanized nations. They ceased to occupy, as imperturbably, this medium which previously had kept them as close at least to the Scandinavian group as to the southern nations, and which, in the Middle Ages, had made them sympathize especially with the Flemings and the Dutch, their equals. in many respects. From that moment on, France was better understood by them. They became more literary in the artistic sense of the word. They experienced the attraction for classical studies; they accepted them as they did on the other side of the strait; they took a taste for statues, paintings, music, and, although minds long ago initiated, and endowed, by habit, with a more demanding delicacy, accused them of still carrying a sort of harshness. and barbarity, they knew how to collect, in this kind

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of work, a glory that their ancestors had neither known nor envied.

Continental immigration continued and grew. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes sent many inhabitants of our southern provinces to join the posterity of the former refugees in the British cities (1)[35] . The French revolution was no less influential, nor in this sad sense less generous, and, without mentioning this recently formed current which now transports part of the population of Ireland to England, the other ethnic contributions multiplying relentlessly , instincts opposed to Germanic sentiment have indefinitely continued to abound within a society which, once so compact, so logical, so strong, so unliterary, could not once have witnessed the birth of Byron without horror (2 )

[36]

.

The transformation is very noticeable; she walks with sure step and betrays herself in a thousand ways. The system of English laws has lost its solidity; reformers are not far away, and the Pandects are their ideal. The aristocracy finds adversaries; democracy, once unknown, proclaims pretensions which were not invented on AngloSaxon soil. The innovations that find favor, the ideas that germinate, the dissolving forces that organize themselves, everything reveals the presence of a cause of transformation brought from the continent. England is on its way to entering the world of Romanism.

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1. ÿ Schaffarik, Slawiche Allerth., t. I, p. 326 et seqq. — Amédée Thierry, Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1 is December 1832, pass. We cannot know too much praise this beautiful appreciation of the Hunnic confederation. 2. ÿ (1) Schaffarik, Slawische Alterth., t. I, p. 166; t. II, p. 411, 416, 427, 443, 503, 526, 565. — Kefestein, Keltische Altherth., t. 1, p. XLV, XLVII, L et seqq. 3. ÿ (2) Schaffarik is even inclined to think that the Huns known in the Edda are all Slavs. This opinion is a bit absolute. (T. I, p. 328.) 4. ÿ (3) Schaffarik, t. II, p. 310 et seqq. — In this direction, the Slavs and their nobility acted under special pressure from the Avars, a half-Mongol, half-Arian nation. Many of the latter remained with them in Carniola and Styria. (P. 327.) 5. ÿ (1) Haxthausen, Studies on the internal situation, national life and rural institutions of Russia, Hanover, 1817, in-8o t. 1, p. III. — By searching for the origin of several customs which exert a decisive influence on agricultural existence in Germany, this author demonstrates that we immediately arrive at a Slavic inspiration. — As for modern German dialects, the presence of abundant Celtic elements in their context is not called into question. (See Grimm, Geschichte der teutschen Sprache, t. 1, p. 287; Mone, Th. p. 353; Keferstein, Keltische Alterth., t. I, p. XXXVIII, etc.) ,

6. ÿ (1) Memoirs of the Academy of Saint Petersburg, 1848, vol. IV, p. 182 and pass.

7. ÿ (2) Ljudbrand of Ticino, bishop of Cremona, died in 979, says that the people called Russian by the Greeks are called Norman by the Westerners. (Munch, cited work, p. 55.) In the 10th century, the Russians, and by this name we must understand the dominant portion of the nation, spoke Scandinavian. The territory of this language included the plains of Lake Ladoga, Lake Ilmen and the upper Dnieper. (Schaffarik, cited work, vol. I, p. 143.) The Russian Normans were more particularly called Warègues. It is as ancient as the name of Aesir, Goth and Saxon, and goes back like them to pure Arian stock. The Greeks knew in Drangiana a Sarmatian nation called by them Saraggoï, and which called itself Zaranga or Zaryanga, whose Zend form is Zarayangh. Pliny transcribed this word as Evergetæ. (Westergaard and Lassen, Achemen Keilinschriften, p. 55. — Niebuhr, Inscript, pers., tabl. I, XXXI.) This name of Saraggoï, Zaranga, Evergetae, or Waregh, was also brought to France, where it left traces which survive to this day in the names of Varange, Varangeville and others . — It is very important not to neglect anything that demonstrates to what extent the

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Northern Arians remained, as long as they lived, close together, despite the distances from their original stock. 8. ÿ (1) The Saxons of the continent mixed so quickly with the Celtic or Slavic populations which surrounded them, that, although their ancestors still inhabited the Cimbrian Chersonese in the 5th century and they only invaded Thuringia In the 6th century, a tradition known today calls them indigenous to the Harz. They claim to have been born suddenly in the middle of the rocks and forests of this country, at the edge of a fountain, with their king Aschanes. This is a confusion of Scandinavian myths with Aboriginal notions. (W. Muller, cited work, p. 298.) 9. ÿ (1) The language of the runic inscriptions differs considerably, as also the Gothic of Ulfila, from the current Scandinavian languages. (Keferstein, Keltische Alterth., vol. I, p. 351.) The latter have numerous marks of alloy with Finnic elements. (Schaffarik, cited work, vol. I, p. 140.) 10. ÿ (1) Kemble, die Sachsen in England, übers. von Chr. Brandes, Leipzig, in-8o , 1853, t. I, p. 7. — Ptolemy calls this population Korianoi (II, 3). She lived in the present counties of Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Nottinghani and Derby. — See also Dieffenbach, Celtica I. 11. ÿ (2) Kemble, ouvr. cité, p. 9. 12. ÿ (1) Palsgrave, the Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, t. I, p. 355. 13. ÿ (2) Palsgrave, op. cited, t. I, p. 237. many of these towns were populated only by Roman settlers. We know what is meant by this name from an ethnic point of view. — Caesar said two contradictory things about the cities of Britain. In one passage he states that they are only stockaded camps. In another (V, 13), he describes “creberrima aedificia fere gallicis consimilia. » — He means that the Bretons of the interior, the crudest, only had retreats in the woods, but that the Germanized Belgians who came from Gaul had towns like their brothers on the continent. There is no doubt, in fact, that they should have retained this custom, since they minted coins according to Belgian types, and moreover, forty years after the Roman occupation, under Agricola, there were, by Ptolemy's calculation, fifty-six cities in the country. These were obviously, for the most part, national cities. 14. ÿ (1) Palsgrave, op. cited, t. I, p. 323. — Tacitus, very severe for the Gauls because of the ease with which they had given in to Roman corruption, is no less severe for the Bretons of the great island at

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this same point of view. They had adopted in their cities the entire municipal organization of the empire. (Palsgrave, cited work, vol. I, p. 349.) 15. ÿ (2) Palsgrave, open work. cited, t. I, p. 375. 16. ÿ (1) Allectus maintained his power absolutely as true emperors supported theirs. He colonized a large number of Franks and Saxons on his island. (Palsgrave, cited work, vol. I, p. 377.) 17. ÿ (2) This Marcus was elected emperor with the special task of resisting the Saxon invasions. It was then in 407. (Palsgrave, cited work, vol. I, p. 386.) 18. ÿ (1) Prosper of Aquitaine fixes the definitive conquest by the Anglo-Saxons at the year 441. This taking of possession differs from that of Gaul by the Franks in two ways: first, the Saxons did not receive imperial investiture and did not have to receive one, since Great Britain formed a country entirely independent fact; then, as a consequence of this first fact, their leaders never had the idea of seeking the titles of patricians and consuls, since they did not have to play the character of Roman magistrates. 19. ÿ (2) The Bretons, in their battles against the Saxons, used the Roman tactic. (Palsgrave, cited work, vol. I, p, 404.) 20. ÿ (3) Kemble, Die Sachsen in England, vol. II, pp. 231 et seqq. 249, 254. 21. ÿ (1) In the oldest Anglo-Saxon documents, we see a large number of Breton names appearing among the dignitaries. (Kemble, cited work, t. I, p. 17.) 22. ÿ (2) They themselves had this science from the best source, since Papinien had been head of the administration of the island. (Palsgrave, vol. 1, p. 322.) 23. ÿ (3) Palsgrave, op. cited, t. I, p. 495 et seqq. 24. ÿ (4) Palsgrave, open. cited, t. 1, p. 420, 488, 563. — The title of bretwalda entailed domination, at least nominal, over the independent Breton nations of the island. Several of these nations, like that of Cornwall, for example, had a nobility of Germanic origin in the 10th century. (Palsgrave, 1. 1, p. 411.) 25. ÿ (1) William the Conqueror still bore the title of basileus. It seems that he was the last English sovereign who used it. (Palsgrave, cited work, vol. I, p. CCCXLIII.) 26. ÿ (2) The title of Anglo-Saxons, applied to the conquerors of England of a certain period, does not imply the idea that all these men were of a single nation. They had among them Waregs, Juthungs, Thuringian Saxons, etc. (Kemble, cited work, vol. I, p. 50 and Anhang. A.) Inspection of place names in England shows

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also that, just as in Western Europe, the most diverse tribes composed their contingents of the invading armies. 27. ÿ (3) Palsgrave insists with great sagacity on the original relationships which existed at all times between the various strata of the inhabitants of England, and he draws the conclusions from this. (Cited work, t. 1, p. 35.)

28. ÿ (4) Kemble, Die Sachsen in England, t. II, p. 259 et seqq. — It happened for the Breton cities of England what had happened for the Celtic cities of Germany. They were not rich enough nor strong enough to resist the hostile influence of the environment in which they found themselves placed. Little by little their Roman institutions became Germanized, and from then on agricultural life, invading them, tended to dissolve their bourgeoisie, or at least to transform them. 29. ÿ (1) And it was not very strong. The people of the king's retinue, and who were called in Gaul, under the Merowings, the antrustions, were not authorized to possess alods. Even their weapons should, upon their death, return to the chief. (Kemble, work cited, t. I. p. 149.) 30. ÿ (1) Palsgrave, work. cited, t. I, pp. 21.30. — Kemble, Die Sachsen in England, t. I, p. 150 et seqq. — At the time of the Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Saxons were still in the first phase of serfdom, which had been surpassed in France since the last Merowings. — The Scandinavian traell was called in Great Britain lazzus and laet, dio and theow, and finally wealh. The first two names indicate the Slavic descent of the first slaves, probably brought from Germania; the last indicates the Bretons. (T. I, pp. 150, 151, 172 et seqq.) 31. ÿ (2) Palsgrave, open. cited, t. I, p. 651. — This fact must serve as a commentary, in some way justifying, on certain forms of abuses by William the Roux and John Lackland. These sovereigns were only applying old Anglo-Saxon customs. 32. ÿ (1) Palsgrave, open. cited, t. I, p. 653. — This declaration of one of the most learned publicists of Anglelerre is certainly worthy of being recorded. It is based, in fact, on decisive considerations. William did not touch the representative organization; he does not abolish it; in 1070, he himself convened a parliament, witanegemot, in which the Saxons appeared, according to legal rule. In the trial against the Norman Earl Odon and Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, it was a Saxon court which tried the case, at Pennenden Heath, under the direction of an English witan, versed in the knowledge of the laws, and of Egilrik , Bishop of Chicester. Finally the town of Exeter declared to William that in virtue of its rights, it would pay him the tribute, gafol, amounting to eighteen pounds of silver, and that, for war subsidies, it would st

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the sum of land attributable by law to each term of five hydes of land; that she also did not refuse to pay the rents of the marshes belonging to the royal domain, but that the bourgeois did not owe her the oath of homage, that they were not her vassals, and that they did not were not obliged to let him enter their walls. —These privileges, which Exeter had in common with Winchester, London, York, and other towns, were not repealed by the Norman Conquest. (Palsgrave, cited work, vol. I, p. 631.) 33. ÿ (1) Palsgrave, open work. cited, t. I, p. VI: “Allen, with profound erudition, has shown how much of our monarchical theory is derived, not from the ancient Germans but from the government of the Empire. » — This monarchical theory never developed strongly, and always remained exotic and treated as such by the national instinct, while on the continent it ultimately acquired full indigenousness, and stifled what resisted it. In short, the rights of English kings have always wavered between the different nations of the Romans, the Britons and the Germanic nations, but with a preponderance of the latter. (Palsgrave, vol. I, p. 627.) 34. ÿ (2) Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, t. III, p. 389: “The AngloSaxon nation... did not attain a general or striking eminence is literature. But society wants other blessings besides these. The agencies that affected our ancestry took a different course. They impelled them towards that of political improvement, the great fountain of human improvement. » 35. ÿ (1) Mr. Weill's research has established that more than a hundred thousand French Protestants found, at different times, a refuge in England. 36. ÿ (2)

If..... Of the great poet-rire of Italy I dare to build the imitation rhyme Harsh runic copy of the south’s sublime. (Byron, Dedication of the Prophecy of Dante.)

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CHAPTER VI. Latest developments in German-Roman society.

Let us return to the empire of Charlemagne, since it is there, of all necessity, that modern civilization must be born. The non-Romanized Germans of Scandinavia, northern Germany and the British Isles lost, through friction, the naivety of their essence; their vigor is now without flexibility. They are too poor in ideas to obtain great fertility nor, above all, a great variety of results. The Slavic countries add to this same disadvantage the human nature of their abilities, and this cause of incapacity will prove so strong that, when some of them find themselves in close contact with Eastern Romanity, with the Greek empire, nothing will come out of this hymen. I am wrong ; it will result in combinations even more miserable than the Byzantine compromise.

It is therefore within the provinces of the Western Empire that we must travel to witness the advent of our social form. The juxtaposition of barbarism and Romanity no longer exists in a pronounced manner; these two elements of the future life of the world began to penetrate each other, and, as if to make the completion of the task more rapid, the work was subdivided; he stopped doing

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in common across the entire extent of Imperial territory. Rudimentary amalgams hastened to stand out everywhere from the great mass; they lock themselves within uncertain limits, they imagine approximate nationalities; the large city is splitting on all sides; fusion denatures the various elements that bubble within it.

Is this a new spectacle for the reader of this book? No way ; but it is a more complete spectacle than what was already shown to him. The immersion of strong races within ancient societies took place at such distant times and in regions so far removed from our own that we only follow its phases with difficulty. Hardly sometimes can we grasp more than the final catastrophes at such distances and times and places, multiplied by the great contrasts of intellectual habits existing between us and other groups. History, which is poorly supported by an imperfect chronology, and which is often disguised by mythical forms, history, which, distorted by intermediary translators as foreign to the nation involved as to ourselves, history, tells -I, reproduce much less the facts than their images. Yet these images come to us through a succession of refracting mirrors, the shortcuts of which are sometimes difficult to correct.

But when it comes to the civilization that affects us, what a difference! It is our fathers who tell the story, and who tell the story as we would do it ourselves. To read their stories, we sit in the very place where they 1430

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wrote; we only have to raise our eyes, and we contemplate the entire scene of the events which they have described. It is all the easier for us to fully understand what they tell us and to guess what they are not telling us, since we ourselves are the results of their works; and, if we find it difficult to give ourselves an exact and true account of the whole of their action, to follow its developments, to test its logic, to unravel its consequences exactly, far from being able to accuse the shortage of information, it is on the contrary the embarrassing opulence of details that our weakness must blame. We remain as if overwhelmed under the heap of facts. Our eye distinguishes them, separates them, penetrates them with extreme difficulty, because they are too numerous and too dense, and it is by trying to classify them that our main errors are made and lead us astray.

We are so directly at stake in the sufferings or the joys, in the glories or humiliations of this paternal past, that we have difficulty in preserving in studying it this cold impassivity without which there is however no accuracy of shot. of eye. Finding in the Carlovingian capitularies, in the charters of the feudal age, in the ordinances of the administrative era, the first traces of all these principles which today excite our admiration or arouse our hatred, we do not know the most often contain the explosion of our personality.

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However, it is not with contemporary passions, it is not with the sympathies or repugnances of the day, that it is appropriate to approach such a study. Although it is not forbidden to rejoice or to be saddened by the pictures it presents, although the fate of the men of the past should not leave the men of today indifferent, we must nevertheless know how to subordinate these thrills of the heart in the nobler and more august search for pure reality. By imposing silence on one's predilections, one is only just, and therefore more human. It is not just a class, it is no longer a few names, which are now of interest, it is the entire crowd of dead people; thus this impartial pity which all those who live, which all those who will live have the right to excite, attaches to the actions of those who are no longer, whether they have worn the crown of kings, the helmet of nobles, the hood of the bourgeoisie or the cap of the proletarians. To achieve this serenity of view, there is no other way than to cool down by speaking of our fathers to the same degree as we are by judging less directly related civilizations. Then these ancestors no longer appear to us, and this is already establishing the true measure of things, as the representatives of an agglomeration of men who underwent precisely the action of the same laws and who went through the same phases to which we we have seen the other large societies, now dead or dying, subjugated.

According to all the principles exposed and observed in this book, the new civilization must develop first, 1432

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in its first forms, on the points where the fusion of barbarism and Romanity will possess, on the side of the first, the elements most charged with Hellenistic principles, since the latter contain the essence of imperial civilization. Indeed, three countries morally dominated all the others from the 9th century to the 13th: upper Italy, the middle regions of the Rhine, northern France.

In upper Italy, the Lombard blood is found to have retained an energy awakened at different times by the immigrations of Franks. This condition fulfilled, the country has the necessary vigor to serve future destinies well. On the other hand, the indigenous population is loaded with Hellenistic elements as much as can be desired, and, as it is very numerous compared to the barbarian colonization, the fusion will quickly bring it to preponderance. The Roman communal system was maintained and developed rapidly. The cities, Milan, Venice, Florence at their head, take on an importance that, for a long time to come, cities will not have elsewhere. Their constitutions affect something of the demands of the absolutism specific to the republics of antiquity.

Military authority weakens; Germanic royalty is only a transparent and fragile veil thrown over everything. From the 11th century, the feudal nobility was almost completely destroyed; it barely existed except in a state of local and Romanized tyranny; the bourgeoisie replaced it, in all the places where it dominated, with a patrician in the ancient manner; the right 1433

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imperial is reborn, the sciences of the mind reappear; commerce is respected; a brilliance, an unknown splendor radiates around the Lombard league. But we must not misunderstand it: the Teutonic blood, instinctively hated and pursued in all these populations who rush furiously towards the return to Romanity, is precisely what gives them their lifeblood and animates them. It loses ground every day; but it exists, and we can see the proof of it in the long obstinacy with which individual right is maintained, even among men of the church, on this soil which so eagerly seeks to absorb its regenerators (1)[1 ] .

Many States model themselves as best they can, although with innumerable nuances, after the Lombard prototype. The poorly united provinces of the kingdom of Burgundy, Provence, then Languedoc, southern Switzerland, resemble it without having its brilliance. Generally the barbarian element is too weakened in these countries to lend so much strength to Romanity (2)[2] . In the center and south of the Peninsula, it is almost absent; so we only see agitations without results and convulsions without grandeur. On these territories, the Teutonic invasions, having only been temporary, produced only incomplete results, and only acted in a dissolving direction. The ethnic disorder has only become more considerable. Numerous returns of the Greeks and Saracen colonizations were not likely to remedy this. For a moment, Norman domination gave an unexpected value to the end of the Peninsula and to Sicily.

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Unfortunately this current, always quite minimal, soon dried up, so that its influence would die out, and the emperors of the house of Hohenstauffen exhausted the last veins.

When the Germanic blood had almost completed, in the 15th century, its division into the masses of upper Italy, the country entered a phase similar to that which southern Greece went through after the Persian wars. She exchanged her political vitality for a great development of artistic and literary skills. From this point of view, it reached heights that Roman Italy, always bent on copying Athenian models, had not reached. The originality lacking in this predecessor was acquired to a noble extent; but this triumph was as short-lived as it had been among Plato's contemporaries: as with them, it barely lasted a hundred years, and when it was extinguished, the agony of all the faculties began again. The 17th and 18th centuries added nothing to the glory of Italy, and certainly took away a lot.

On the banks of the Rhine and in the Belgian provinces, the Roman elements were numerically superior to the Germanic elements. Moreover, they were natively more affected by the utilitarian essence of Celtic detritus than could be the native masses of Italy. Local civilization followed the direction consistent with the causes which produced it. In the application made there of feudal law, the imperial system of benefits showed itself

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not very powerful; the links by which it attached the owner of the fief to the crown were always very relaxed, while on the contrary the independent doctrines of the primitive Germanic legislation were maintained enough to preserve for a long time for the owners of castles a free individuality which they had not had. more elsewhere. The chivalry of Hainaut; that of the Palatinate deserved, until the 16th century, to be cited as the richest, most independent and proudest in Europe. The emperor, their immediate suzerain, had little control over them, and the second-rate princes, much more numerous than elsewhere in these provinces, were powerless to make them bend their necks. The progress of Romanity nevertheless took place, because Romanity was too vast not to be irresistible in the long run; they brought about, although very laboriously, the imperfect recognition of the main rules of Justinian's law. Then feudalism lost most of its prerogatives, but it nevertheless retained enough for the revolutionary explosion of 1793 to find more to level in these countries than in any other. Without this reinforcement, without this foreign aid brought to the local opposing elements, the remains of the feudal organization would have defended themselves for a long time to come in the western electorates, and they would have proven as solid as in other parts of Germany. , where only in recent years have their destruction been consummated.

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Faced with this nobility so slow to succumb, the bourgeoisie created its masterpiece by erecting the Hanseatic edifice, a combination of Celtic and Slavic ideas in which the latter dominated, but which was always animated by a sufficient amount of Germanic firmness. Covered by imperial protection, we did not see the associated cities, impatient with tutelage, protesting against this yoke in every way like the cities of Italy. They willingly abandoned the honors of the high domain to their sovereigns, and only jealously supervised the free administration of their communal interests and the advantages of their commerce. Among them, there are no internal struggles, no tendencies towards republican absolutism, but the prompt abandonment of exaggerated doctrines, which only appear within their walls as an accident. The love of work, the thirst for profit, a little passion, a lot of reason, a faithful attachment to positive freedoms, this is their nature. Disdaining neither the sciences nor the arts, associating themselves in a crude but active way with the taste of the nobility for narrative poetry, they had little awareness of beauty, and their intelligence, essentially attached to practical conquests, hardly offers the brilliant sides of Italian genius in its different eras. However, the pointed architecture owes its most beautiful monuments to them.

The churches and town halls of Flanders and western Germany still show that this was the favorite and particularly well understood form of art in these regions; this form seems to have corresponded

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directly to the intimate nature of their genius, which hardly deviated from it without losing its originality. The influence exercised by the Rhineland was very great over all of Germany; it extended into the extreme north. It was in them that the Scandinavian kingdoms long saw the nuance of southern civilization which, coming closer to their essence, suited them best. To the east, towards the duchies of Austria, the dose of Germanic blood being lower, the measure of Celtic blood less great, and the Slavic and Roman layers tending to exercise a preponderant action, imitation turned out to be good. hour towards Italy, but not without being sensitive to the examples coming from the Rhine, nor even, moreover, to Slavic suggestions. The countries governed by the House of Habsburg were essentially a land of transition, like Switzerland, which, in a less complicated way undoubtedly, divided its attention between the Rhineland models and those of Upper Italy. In the former Helvetian territories, the halfway point of the two systems was Zurich. I will repeat here, to complete the picture, that as long as England remained more particularly Germanic, after it had more or less absorbed the French contributions of the Norman conquest and before the Protestant immigrations had begun to rally it to for us, it was the Flemish and Dutch forms that were most sympathetic to him. They distantly linked his ideas to those of the Rhine group.

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Now have the third center of civilization, which had its home in Paris. Frankish colonization had been powerful around this city. Romanity there was composed of Celtic elements at least as numerous as on the banks of the Rhine, but much more Hellenized, and, in short, it dominated the barbarian action by the importance of its mass. Early on, Germanic ideas retreated before it (1)[3] . In the oldest poems of the Carlovingian cycle, the Teutonic heroes are mostly forgotten or depicted in odious colors, for example, the knights of Mainz, while the paladins of the west, such as Roland, Olivier, or even the midi, like Gérars de Roussillon, occupy the first places in general esteem. The traditions of the North only appear more and more disfigured under Roman garb. The feudal custom practiced in this region is inspired more and more by imperial notions, and, circumventing with tireless activity the resistance of the contrary spirit, excessively complicates the state of people, deploys a wealth of restrictions, of distinctions, of obligations of which we had no idea either in Germany, where the tenure of fiefs was freer, or in Italy, where it was more subject to the prerogative of the sovereign. It was only in France where we saw the king, suzerain of all, able to be at the same time the rear-vassal of one of his men, and, as such, theoretically subject to the obligation of serve him against himself, under penalty of forfeiture. 1439

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But the victory of the royal prerogative was at the bottom of all these conflicts, for the reason that their incessant action favored the elevation of the lower classes of the population, and ruined the authority of the chivalric classes. Everything that did not possess personal or territorial rights was entitled to acquire them, and, conversely, everything that had one or the other to In this (2)[4 critical any degree saw them gradually diminish ] . situation for everyone, antagonisms and conflicts broke out with extreme vivacity and lasted longer than elsewhere, because they arose earlier than in Germany and ended later than in Italy. The category of free farmers, independent men of war, gradually disappeared in the face of the general need for protection. Likewise, we see less and less knights obeying only the king. By giving up part of their rights, each wanted and had to buy the support of those stronger than themselves. From this universal chain of fortunes resulted many inconveniences for contemporaries and for their descendants, an irresistible path towards universal leveling (1)[5] . The communes never reached a very high degree of power. The great fiefdoms themselves would eventually weaken and cease to exist. Great personal independence, strong and proud individualities, constituted so many anomalies, which sooner or later would give way to the very natural antipathy of Romanity. What persisted the longest was the 1440

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disorder, the last form of protest by the Germanic elements. The kings, instinctive leaders of the Roman movement, still had great difficulty in overcoming these supreme efforts. General and terrible convulsions, universal pain, tore these heroic times apart. No one was safe from the worst blows of fortune. How can we not put a grain of contempt in the smile, seeing today what is called philanthropy believing it legitimate to pity what the lower classes were like then, to count the destroyed cottages, and to calculate the damage of ravaged harvests? What good sense, what truth, what justice to relate the things of the 10th century to the same extent as ours! These are indeed harvests, cottages and unhappy peasants! If we have tears in reserve, it is to society as a whole, it is to all classes, it is to the universality of men that we owe them. But why tears and pity. These times do not call for compassion. This is not the feeling that a careful reading of the chronicles gives rise to, whether one stops on the austere and bellicose pages of Ville-Hardouin, on the marvelous stories of the Aragonese Raymond Muntaner, or on the memories full of serenity, cheerfulness, courage, of the noble Joinville, whether we browse the passionate biography of Abelard, the more monastic and calmer notes of Guibert de Nogent, or so many other writings full of life and charm which have remained to us from these times, the imagination is confounded by the 1441

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expenditure of heart, intelligence and energy which is done on all sides. Often more enthusiastic than dryly reasonable in its applications, the thinking of the time is always vigorous and healthy. It is inspired by curiosity, by boundless activity; she leaves nothing untouched. At the same time as it has inexhaustible strength to relentlessly fuel foreign and domestic war, and still half-faithful to the Frankish predilection for the sword, it maintains the clash of arms from kingdom to kingdom, from city to city. to city, from village to village, from manor to manor, she finds the taste and the time to save the treasures of classical literature, and to meditate on them in a way that is perhaps erroneous from our point of view, but suddenly sure original. This is, in all things, a supreme merit, and, in this particular case, a merit all the more striking because we have benefited from it, and because it constitutes the entire superiority of modern civilization over ancient Romanity. . This had not invented anything, had only taken, as best it could, and with all its hands, the results of products elsewhere withered by time. We created new concepts, we created a civilization, and it is to the Middle Ages that we are indebted for this great work. Feudal ardor, tireless in its work, does not limit itself to persevering as best it can in the conservative spirit of the barbarians when it comes to the Roman legacy. She pulls herself together again, she constantly retouches what she can find from the traditions of the North and Celtic fables; she composes the unlimited literature of her poems, her novels, her

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fabliaux, of his songs, which would be incomparable if the beauty of the form responded to the unlimited richness of the content. Crazy for discussion and polemic, she sharpens the already subtle weapons of the Alexandrian dialectic, she exhausts theological themes, extracts new formulas from them, gives birth to the most daring and firmest minds in all genres of philosophy, adds to the natural sciences, enlarges the mathematical sciences, sinks into the depths of algebra. Shaking off as best she can the complacency for the hypotheses in which Roman sterility took pleasure, she already feels the need to see with her eyes and touch with her hands before pronouncing. Geographical knowledge powerfully and exactly serves these dispositions, and the small kingdoms of the 13th century, without material resources, without money, without these accessory and petty excitements of lucre and vanity which determine everything in our days, but drunk with religious faith and youthful curiosity, know how to find Plan-Carpins, Maundevilles, Marco-Polos among them, and push in their footsteps swarms of intrepid travelers towards the most remote corners of the world, which neither the Greeks nor the Romans had even never thought of going to visit.

This era may have suffered a lot, I wish; I will not examine whether his lively imagination and his imperfect statistics, commented on by the disdain that we like to feel for everything that is not us, have not significantly exaggerated the miseries. I will take the plagues in all the true or false extent attributed to them, and

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I will only ask if, in the midst of the greatest disasters, we are really very unhappy when we are so lively? Do we see anywhere that the oppressed serf, the despoiled noble, the captive king have ever turned their last weapon against themselves in despair? It would seem that what is really to be pitied are the degenerate and bastard nations which, loving nothing, wanting nothing, being able to do nothing, not knowing where to find their way amid the overwhelming leisure of a civilization which is in decline, regard with mournful indulgence the bored suicide of Apicius. The special proportion of Germanic and Gallo-Roman mixtures in the populations of northern France, by bringing through painful but sure paths, agglomeration at the same time as the withering away of forces, provides the different political and intellectual instincts with the means to reach an average height, it is true, but generally high enough to attract the sympathies of the two other centers of European civilization at the same time. What Germany did not possess, and which was found in too great abundance in Italy, we had in restricted proportions which made it understandable to our northern neighbors; and, on the other hand, such provenances of Teutonic origin, very mitigated by us, seduced the men of the south, who would have rejected them, if they had reached them more complete.

This kind of weighting developed the great credit where we saw, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the French language reaching the peoples of the north as well as those of the south, 1444

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Cologne as in Milan. While the Minnesingers translated our novels and poems, Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, wrote in French, and likewise the editors of the memoirs of the Venetian Marco Polo. They considered our language as the only language capable of spreading throughout Europe the new knowledge that they wanted to propagate. During this time, the schools of Paris attracted all the learned men and studious minds in the world. Thus the feudal ages were especially for France beyond the Seine a period of glory and moral grandeur, which was in no way obscured by the ethnic difficulties with which it was plagued (1)[6] .

But the extension of the kingdom of the first Valois towards the south, by increasing in a considerable proportion the action of the Gallo-Roman element, had prepared and began, with the 14th century, the great battle which, under the cover of the wars English, was again delivered to Germanized elements (2)[7] . Feudal legislation, increasingly burdening the obligations of landowners towards royalty, and diminishing their rights, soon proclaimed, with complete frankness, its predilection for even more purely Roman doctrines. Public morals, associating themselves with this tendency, dealt chivalry a terrible blow by transforming against it the ideas hitherto accepted by itself on the subject of the point of honor.

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Honor had formerly been among the Arian nations, had almost still remained for the English and even for the Germans, a theory of duty which accorded well with the dignity of the free warrior. We can even wonder if, under this word of honor, the immediate gentleman of the Empire and the tenant of the Tudors did not understand above all the high obligation to maintain his personal prerogatives above the most powerful attacks. In any case, he did not admit that he had to make the sacrifice to anyone. The French gentleman was, on the contrary, summoned to recognize that the strict obligations of honor required him to sacrifice everything to his king, his property, his freedom, his limbs, his life. In absolute devotion consisted for him the ideal of his quality as a noble, and, because he was noble, there was no aggression on the part of royalty which could relieve him, in strict conscience, of this boundless self-sacrifice. This doctrine, like all those which rise to the absolute, certainly did not lack beauty or grandeur. It was embellished by the most brilliant courage, but it was really only a Germanic veneer on imperial ideas; its source, if we want to research it thoroughly, was not far from Semitic inspirations, and the French nobility, in accepting it, must in the end fall into habits very close to servility.

The general feeling left him no choice. Royalty, the lawyers, the bourgeoisie, the people, imagined the gentleman indissolubly devoted to the kind of honor 1446

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that was invented: the armed owner began to no longer be the basis of the State; there was barely any support left. It tended to become above all its decoration. It is useless to add that, if he allowed himself to be degraded in this way, it was because his blood was no longer pure enough to make him aware of the wrong done to him, and to provide him with sufficient strength for resistance. . Less Romanized than the bourgeoisie, who in turn was less Romanized than the people, he was nevertheless very much so; his efforts attested, by the dose of energy that can be seen there, the extent to which he still possessed the ethnic causes of his primitive superiority (1)[8] . It was in the regions where the main Frankish establishments had existed that chivalrous opposition was most evident; beyond the Loire, there was not, in general, such a persistent desire. Finally, over time, with slight variations, a level of submission spread everywhere, and Romanness began to reappear, almost recognizable, as the 15th century ended.

This explosion of the old social elements was powerful, extraordinary; she used with empire the Germanic alloys which she had succeeded in taming and turning, as it were, against themselves; she employed them to undermine the creations that they had formerly produced in common with her; she wanted to rebuild Europe on a new plan more and more in line with her instincts, and openly admitted this pretension.

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Southern and central Italy found themselves at approximately the same height as fallen Lombardy. The relations that this latter country had, a few centuries ago, maintained with Switzerland and southern Gaul were very relaxed; Switzerland was more inclined towards Rhineland Germany, southern Gaul towards the middle provinces. And what was the common link between these connections? The Roman element for sure, but, in this composite element, more particularly the Celtic essence which reappears on its side. The proof is that, if the Semitic side had acted in this circumstance, Switzerland and southern Gaul would have strengthened their old relations with Italy, instead of making them less intimate.

The whole of Germany, acting under the same Celtic influence, sought itself out and united its formerly so sporadic interests more closely. The Romano-Gallic element, in its resurrection, found little difficulty in combining with Slavic principles, by virtue of the ancient analogy. The Scandinavian countries became more attentive to a country which had had the time to establish already sufficiently considerable non-German ethnic relations with them. In the midst of this universal tightening, the Rhineland regions lost their supremacy, and it must necessarily have been so, since it was Gallic nature which henceforth had the upper hand.

Something crude and common, which belonged neither to the Germanic element nor to the Hellenized blood, infiltrated everywhere. Chivalrous literature 1448

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disappeared from the fortresses which border the course of the Rhine; it was replaced by the mocking, basely obscene, heavily grotesque compositions of the urban bourgeoisie. The populations indulge in the trivialities of Hans Sachs. It is this gaiety that we so rightly call Gallic gaiety, and of which France produced, at this same period, the most perfect specimen, as, in fact, it had the innate right to do so, by giving rise to high-brow pranks . , compiled by Rabelais, the giant of jokes.

All of Germany found itself capable of competing in merit with the Rhineland towns in the new phase of civilization of which this rebellious good humor was the sign. Saxony, Bavaria, Austria, even Brandenburg, were placed almost on the same level, while on the southern side, with Burgundy serving as a link, the whole of France, of which England was able to taste genius, France felt in more perfect harmony of mood with its neighbors to the north and west, from whom it then received almost as much as it gave them.

Spain, in its turn, was affected by this general assimilation of instincts on the way to conquering all the countries of the West. Until then this land had only borrowed from its northern neighbors to transform them in an almost complete way, the only way to make them accessible to the special taste of its populations combined in such a particular way. As long as the Gothic element had had some externally manifested force, the relations of the Iberian Peninsula had been at least as

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more frequent with England than with France, while remaining mediocre. In the 16th century, the Romano-Semitic element gaining power, it was with Italy, and southern Italy, that the kingdoms of Ferdinand got along best, although they also held to us through the Roussillon link. Having only a fairly weak Celtic tinge, the kind of trivial spirit of the northern bourgeoisies found it difficult to gain a foothold here, as also in the other peninsula; However, he did not fail to show himself there, but with a dose of energy and swelling that was entirely Semitic, with a local verve which was not the muscular force of Germanic barbarism, but which, in its kind of delirium African, still produced very great things. Despite these remains of originality, we clearly feel that Spain had lost the best part of its Gothic strengths, that it felt, like all the other countries, the restored influence of Romanity, by the sole fact that it came out of his isolation.

In this renaissance, as it has rightly been called, in this resurrection of the Roman foundation, the political instincts of Europe showing themselves more flexible as we advanced among populations more freed from instinct. Germanic, it was there that we found fewer nuances in the state of people, a greater concentration of governmental forces, more leisure for subjects, a more exclusive concern for wellbeing and luxury, hence more of civilization in new fashion. The centers of culture therefore moved. Italy, taken as a whole, was once again

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recognized for the prototype on which it was necessary to strive to settle. Rome returned to first place. As for Cologne, Mainz, Trier, Strasbourg, Liège, Ghent, Paris itself, all these cities, previously so admired, had to be content with the employment of more or less happy imitators. We no longer swore only by the Latins and the Greeks, the latter, of course, understood in the Latin way. Or redoubled his hatred for everything that came out of this circle; we no longer wanted to recognize either in philosophy, nor in poetry, nor in the arts, what had Germanic form or color, it was an inexorable and violent crusade against what had been done for a thousand years. Christianity was barely forgiven.

But if Italy, through its examples, managed to remain at the head of this revolution for a few years, when it was still a question of acting only in the intellectual sphere, this supremacy escaped it as soon as the inevitable logic of The human spirit wanted to move from abstraction to social practice. This much-vaunted Italy had once again become too Roman to be able to serve even the Roman cause; it quickly collapsed into a nullity similar to that of the 4th century, and France, its closest relative, continued, by right of birth, the task that its elder could not accomplish. France continued the work with a vivacity of procedures that it could employ alone.

She directed, chiefly executed the absorption of high social positions within a vast confusion of all ethnic elements that their incoherence and their 1451

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splitting left him defenseless. The age of equality had returned for the greater part of the populations of Europe; the rest would not stop gravitating as best they could towards the same end, and this as quickly as the physical constitution of the different groups would allow. This is the state we have reached today (1)[9] . Political tendencies would not be enough to characterize this situation with certainty; they could, strictly speaking, be considered transitory and coming from secondary causes. But here, apart from the fact that it is hardly possible to attribute only passing importance to the persistent direction of ideas over five or six centuries, we still see marks of the future reunion of Western nations, within a new Romanity, in the growing resemblance of all their literary and scientific productions, and especially in the singular mode of development of their idioms. They both strip themselves, as much as possible, of their original elements and come closer together. Old Spanish is incomprehensible to a Frenchman or an Italian; modern Spanish hardly offers them any lexicological difficulties. The language of Petrarch and Dante abandons words and non-Roman forms to dialects, and, at first glance, no longer has any obscurities for us. We ourselves, once rich in so many Teutonic terms, have abandoned them, and, if we accept without too much reluctance expressions 1452

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English is that, for the most part, they came from us or belong to a Celtic stock. For our neighbors across the Channel the proscription of Anglo-Saxon elements is working quickly; the dictionary loses them every day. But it is in Germany that this renovation is accomplished in the strangest manner and by the strangest means. Already, following a movement similar to what we observe in Italy, the dialects most loaded with Germanic elements, such as, for example, Frisian and Bernese, are relegated among the most incomprehensible for the majority. Most provincial languages, rich in kymric elements, are closer to the usual idiom. This, known as Modern High German, has relatively few lexicological similarities with Gothic or the ancient northern languages, and increasingly close affinities with Celtic; he also mixes in, here and there, Slavic borrowings.

But it is especially towards Celtic that he inclines, and, as it is not possible for him to easily find its native remains in modern usage, he approaches with effort the compound which is closest to it, that is to say French. He takes from him, without apparent necessity, series of words whose equivalents he could easily find in his own collection; he seizes entire sentences which produce the most bizarre effect in the middle of the speech; and, despite its grammatical laws, whose primitive flexibility it also seeks to modify in order to get closer to our stricter and stiffer forms, it is romanized in all ways.

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the paths he can open up; but it is Romanized according to the Celtic nuance which is most within its reach, while French abounds as best it can in the southern nuance, and takes no fewer steps towards Italian than the latter takes. towards him. Until now I have felt no scruples in using the word Romanity to indicate the state to which the populations of Western Europe are returning. However, in order to be more precise, it must be added that under this expression it would be wrong to understand a situation completely identical to that of any period of the ancient Roman universe. Just as in the appreciation of this I used the words of Semitic, of Hellenistic, to determine approximately the nature of the mixtures towards which it abounded, warning that it was not absolutely a question of ethnic mixtures. similar to those which had formerly existed in the Assyrian world and in the extent of the Syro-Macedonian territories, likewise here we must not forget that the new Romanity has ethnic nuances of its own, and consequently develops unknown aptitudes old. A completely the same background, a greater disorder, an increasing assimilation of all the particular faculties by the extreme subdivision of the originally distinct groups, this is what is common between the two situations and what brings, every day, our societies towards the imitation of the imperial universe; but what is specific to us, at least at this moment, and what creates the difference, is that,

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in the fermentation of the constituent parts of our blood, many Germanic detritus still act and in a very special way, depending on whether they are observed in the North or in the South: here, among the Provençals, in dissolving quantities; there, on the contrary, among the Swedes, with a remainder of energy which delays the pronounced movement of decadence. This movement, operating from south to north, has brought, for two centuries already, the masses of the Italic peninsula to a state very close to that of their predecessors of the 3rd century AD, except for the details. The high country, with the exception of certain parts of Piedmont, differs little. Spain, saturated with more directly Semitic elements, enjoys in its races a sort of relative unity which makes ethnic disorder less blatant, but which is far from giving the upper hand to male or utilitarian faculties. Our southern French provinces are canceled; those of the center and the east, with the southwest of Switzerland, are shared between the influence of the South and that of the North. The Austrian monarchy maintains as best it can, and with an awareness of its situation that could be called scientific, the preponderance of the Teutonic elements which it has over its Slavic populations. Greece, the Turkey of Europe, without strength in front of Western Europe, owes to the inert neighborhood of Anatolia a remainder of relative energy, due to the infiltrations of the Germanic element which on different occasions the middle ages have there brought. The same can be said of the small states neighboring the Danube, with the difference that they owe the little interference

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arianes which seem to still animate them in a much older era, and that, among them, ethnic disorder is at its most painful period. The Russian Empire, land of transition between the yellow races, the Semitic and Romanized nations of the south and Germany, essentially lacks homogeneity, has never received more than too small contributions of the noble essence, and cannot amount only to imperfect appropriations of borrowings made on all sides from the Hellenic nuance, as from the Italian nuance, as from the French nuance, as from the German conception. Yet these appropriations do not go beyond the epidermis of the national masses.

Prussia, taken from its current extent, has more Germanic resources than Austria, but in its core it is inferior to this country, where the strongly Arianized group of Madjars tips the scales, not according to the measure of civilization, but according to that of vitality, which is what this book is all about, we cannot fully fathom it.

In short, the greatest abundance of life, the most considerable agglomeration of forces, finds itself today concentrated and struggling disadvantageously against the infallible triumph of Roman confusion in the series of territories embraced by an ideal contour which, hence of Torneo, enclosing Denmark and Hanover, descending the Rhine a short distance from its right bank to Basel, envelops Alsace and upper Lorraine, restricts the course of the

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Seine, follows it to its mouth, extends to Great Britain and joins Iceland to the west (1)[10] . In this center remain the last wrecks of the Arian element, very disfigured, very bare, very withered no doubt, but not yet completely vanquished. It is also where the heart of society, and therefore modern civilization, beats. This situation has never been analyzed, explained or understood until now; nevertheless it is keenly felt by the general intelligence. It is so good that many minds instinctively make it the starting point of their speculations about the future. They foresee the day when the ice of death will have seized the regions which seem to us the most favored, the most flourishing; and, perhaps even supposing this catastrophe to be more imminent than it will be, they seek from there the place of refuge where humanity can, according to their desire, regain a new luster with a new life. The current successes of one of the States located in America seem to them to presage this much-needed era. The Western world is the immense stage on which they imagine that nations will emerge which, inheriting the experience of all past civilizations, will enrich ours and accomplish works that the world has so far only been able to do. dream. Let us examine this fact with all the interest it entails. We will find, in the in-depth examination of the various races which populate and have populated the regions

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American, the most decisive reasons for admitting or rejecting it.

1. ÿ (1) Sismondi, History of the Italian republics. — This author, completely inattentive to questions of race, gives with an accuracy which is all the more striking a host of ethnic indications in the sense indicated here. But the best we can read in this regard is the poem of a contemporary, the monk Gunther (Ligurinus, sive de rebus gestis imperatoris Caesaris Friderici Primi Aug., cognomento Ænobarbi libri X, Heydelbergæ; 1812, in -8o ). This poem is also found printed in collections. He paints with admirable truth, and which is neither without grandeur nor beauty, the violent and irreconcilable antagonism of Roman and barbarian groups. — See also Muratori. Script, rerum Italy. 2. ÿ (2) In all these countries, Germanic settlements of very small extent have preserved their individuality until our days. What the Republic of Saint-Martin and the VII and VIII Communes are in eastern Italy, the Teutons of Mount Rosa and Valais are also. — Scandinavian debris is also found in certain parts of the small cantons. 3. ÿ (1) The last traces of it are visible in Garin's novels. See on this subject the learned dissertation of Mr. Paulin Pâris in his edition of part of the poem, and some ideas put forward by Mr. Edelestand du Méril at the beginning of La Mort de Garin. — See also Dom Calmet, History of Lorraine ; Wusseburg, Antiquities of Gaul Belgium, book. III, p. 157. 4. ÿ (2) Guérard, the Polyptych of Irminon, t. I, p. 251: “From the end of the 9th century, the colon and the lide became increasingly rare in documents concerning France, and these two classes of people did not take long to disappear. They are, in part, replaced by that of the colliberti, which does not have a long existence. The serf, in his turn, appears less frequently, and it is the villanus, the rusticus, the homo potestatis who succeed him. » From this we see what rapidity of modifications, all favorable to Romanness, took place in this merging society. (See also, same work, t. I, p. 392.) 5. ÿ (1) Palsgrave's assessments of the political constitution of Gaul in the first part of the Middle Ages are, in large part, what More truthful and clearer writing has been written on this seemingly O complicated subject. It shows very well: 1 that the idea of studying France then in its extent today is an error, and that no institution

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then could not aim to satisfy such a set, since it did not exist not ; 2 O he establishes that modern communes never began, because the Gallo-Roman and Gallo-Frank communes never fini. (Palsgrave, the Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, t. I, pp. 494, 545 et seqq.) — See also C. Leber, History of Power municipal in France, Paris, 1829, in-8o . Excellent work and which was used more often than borrowers admitted. — Raynouard, History of municipal law in France, Paris, 1829, 2 vols. in-8o All-Roman book. .

6. ÿ (1) In the 13th century, an accomplished knight was required to perform the same intellectual perfections that the Scandinavians once imposed on their jarls. Above all, he must have known several languages and the poems that illustrated. William of Nevers spoke with equal ease the Burgundian, French, Flemish and Breton. In Germany, we brought masters from France to instruct noble children in the language they should not ignore. The following verses from Berthe great feet confirm this usage: “Straight to the time that I am describing to you There was a custom in the Tyois country That all the great lords, the tales and the marches Had, around us, all the French people, To learn about their daughters and their sons, Their kings and la royne and Berte where the cleric lives Know near as well the françois of Paris As if he had been born el bour in Saint-Denis » «

... François knew Aliste... It's the girl at the Serve »

(Paulin Pâris, li Romans de Berte aux grans pies, Paris, 1836, in-12, p. 10.)

7. ÿ (2) The fusion of the south and the north of France was ensured by the mixture ethnic which took place after the Albigensian War. In a parliament held in Pamiers in 1212, Simon de Monfort had it decided that widows and the daughters heirs of noble fiefs, in the defeated provinces, do not could only marry French people during the ten years that went follow. From there, transplantation of a large number of Picardy families, Champagne, Tourangelles in Languedoc, and extinction of many old gothic houses.

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8. ÿ (1) The ethnic decomposition of the French nobility began from the day when the Germanic leudes were allied to the blood of the GalloRoman leudes; but it had progressed quickly, partly because the Germanic warriors had died out in large numbers in the incessant wars, and because frequent revolutions had replaced them with men from lower down. This is how, on the authority of a chronicle (Gesta Consul. Andegav., 2), Mr. Guérard notes one of the main phases of this degeneration: “In the midst of the troubles and upheavals of society, he raised new men everywhere under the reign of Charles the Bald. Small vassals set themselves up as large feudatories and the public officers of the kingdom as almost independent lords. » (Ouvr. cited, tI, p. 205.) 9. ÿ (1) Amédée Thierry, History of Gaul under Roman administration, t. I, Introd., p. 347: “We ourselves, Europeans of the 19th century, what idioms do we mostly speak? What stamp is our literary genius marked? Who provided us with our theories of art? What system of law is written in our codes, or is found at the bottom of our customs? Finally, what is the religion of all of us? The answer to these questions proves to us the vitality of these Roman institutions whose imprint we still bear after fifteen centuries, an imprint which, instead of being erased by modern action, is, in a way, only reproducing itself more and more. clearer and more striking, as we emerge from feudal barbarism. » 10. ÿ (1) To grasp the true meaning of the opinion expressed here, we must remember that we are only talking about an approximate agglomeration. Arian debris, more or less well preserved, is still found on all the routes followed by the Germanic races. Just as we can notice very small vestiges in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, wherever the configuration of the soil favored the formation and conservation of these deposits, so they are also found in Tyrol, in Transylvania, in the mountains of Albania, in the Caucasus, in Hindu Koh, and to the bottom of the easternmost high valleys of Tibet. It would even be imprudent to assert that we could no longer discover some of them in upper Asia. But these are already heavily obliterated specimens for the most part, powerless, barely perceptible, which only escape an, so to speak, instantaneous disappearance, thanks to the inaction in which they remain, and which fortunately prevents them from any contact.

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CHAPTER VII. Native Americans. In 1829, Cuvier did not find himself sufficiently informed to express an opinion on the ethnic nature of the indigenous nations of America, and he left them out of his nomenclatures. The facts collected since then allow us to be bolder. Numerous, they become conclusive, and, if none provides complete certainty, an absolutely unanswerable affirmation, the whole allows the adoption of certain completely positive bases.

There will no longer be a somewhat informed ethnologist who can claim that American natives form a pure race, and who applies to them the name red variety. From the pole to Tierra del Fuego, there is not a shade of human coloring that does not manifest itself, except the decided black of the Congo and the pinkish white of the English; but, apart from these two complexions, we observe specimens of all the others (1) [1] .

The natives, according to their nation, appear olive brown, dark

brown, tan, pale yellow, copper yellow, red, white, brown, etc. Their stature varies no less. Between the not gigantic, but high, size of the Patagon, and the smallness of the Changos, there are the largest measures. 1462

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more multiplied. The proportions of the body present the same differences: some peoples have very long busts, like the tribes of the Pampas; others, short and wide, like the inhabitants of the Peruvian The Andes (2)[2] . same goes for the shape and volume of the head. Thus physiology provides no means of establishing a unique type among the American nations. Turning to linguistics, same result. However, you have to look closely. The vast majority of idioms each have an incontestable originality in the lexicological parts; from this point of view, they are strangers to each other; but the grammatical system remains the same everywhere. We notice this salient feature of a common disposition to agglutinate words, and of several sentences to form only one word, a faculty certainly very particular, very remarkable, but which is not enough to achieve unity among the American races. , especially since the rule does not go without the exception. Or we can oppose othonis, very widespread in New Spain, and which, by its clearly monosyllabic structure, contrasts with the fusional dispositions of the idioms which surround it (1)[3] .

Perhaps we will later encounter other proofs that all American syntaxes are not derived from the same type, nor come uniformly from a single principle (2)[4] .

There is therefore no longer any way of classifying among the main divisions of humanity a so-called red race which obviously only exists in the state of an ethnic nuance, that 1463

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as the result of certain blood combinations, and which can therefore only be taken as a subgenre. Let us conclude with Mr. Flourens and, before him, with Mr. Garnot, that there does not exist in America an indigenous family different from those which inhabit the rest of the globe. The question thus simplified nevertheless remains very complicated. If it is certain that the peoples of the new continent do not constitute a separate species, a thousand doubts arise as to how to relate them to the known types of the old world. I will try to illuminate this darkness as best I can, and, to achieve this, reversing the method I used earlier, I will consider whether, alongside the profound differences which oppose we recognize among the American nations a particular unity, there are also no similarities which indicate in their organization the presence of one or more similar ethnic elements. I do not need to add without doubt that, if the fact exists, it can only be in very varied measures.

Since black and white families are not seen in their pure state in America, it is easy to see, if not their total absence, at least their erasure to a notable degree. It is not the same with the Finnish type; it cannot be challenged in certain peoples of the northwest, such as the Eskimos (1)[5] . This is therefore a point of junction between the old and the new world; we cannot do better than to choose it as the starting point of the examination. After leaving the Eskimos, going south, we 1464

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soon arrives at the tribes usually called red, the Chinooks, the LenniLenapés, the Sioux; these are the peoples who for a moment had the honor of being taken for the prototypes of the American man, although, neither in number nor in the importance of their social organization, they had the slightest subject to claim it. It is easy to see close kinship relationships between these nations and the Eskimos, hence the yellow peoples. For the Chinooks, the question is not for a moment doubtful; for others, it will no longer present obscurities as long as we stop comparing them, as we too often do, to the Malay Chinese of the south of the Celestial Empire, and as we confront them with the Mongols. So we will find under the coppery complexion of the Dahcota an obviously yellow background. We will notice in him the almost complete absence of a beard, the black color of the hair, their dry and stiff nature, the lymphatic disposition of the temperament, the extraordinary smallness of the eyes and their tendency to obliqueness.

However, we should also be careful, these various characters of the Finnic type are far from appearing among the red tribes in all their purity. From the regions of Missouri we descend towards Mexico, where we find these specific signs even more altered, and nevertheless recognizable under a much tanner complexion. This circumstance could mislead criticism if, by a luck which is rarely reproduced in the study of American antiquities, history itself did not take it upon itself to affirm the kinship of the Astecs, and their

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predecessors the Toltecs, with the hordes of black hunters from Colombia (1)[6] .

It is from this river that the

migrations of both people towards the south started. The tradition is certain: the comparison of languages fully confirms it. Thus the Mexicans are allied to the yellow race through the Chinooks, but with stronger interference from a foreign element (2)[7] .

Beyond the isthmus begin two large families which are subdivided into hundreds of nations, several of which, having become imperceptible, are reduced to twelve or fifteen individuals. These two families are that of the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and that other which, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Rio de la Plata, covers the empire of Brazil, as it formerly possessed the Antilles. The first includes the Peruvian peoples. They are the brownest, closest to the black color of the entire continent, and, at the same time, those who have the least general relationship with the yellow race. The nose is long, projecting, strongly aquiline; the receding forehead, compressed on the sides, tending to the pyramidal shape, and yet we still find Mongolian stigmata in the arrangement and oblique cut of the eyes, in the protrusion of the cheekbones, in the black hair, coarse and smooth. This is enough to keep the attention alert and prepare it for what will be offered to it by the tribes of the other southern group which embraces all the Guarani peoples. Here the Finnic type reappears with force and becomes evident.

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The Guaranis, or Caribs or Caribs, are generally yellow, so much so that the most competent observers have not hesitated to compare them to the peoples of the eastern coast of Asia. This is the opinion of Martins, d'Orhigny, and Prescott. More varied perhaps in their physical conformation than the other American groups, they have in common "the yellow color, mixed with a little very pale red, proof, by the way, of their migration from the northeast and from their relationship with the hunting Indians of the United States; very massive shapes; a non-receding forehead; full, circular face, short, narrow nose (generally very thick), eyes often oblique, always raised at the outer angle, effeminate features (1)[8]. »

I would add to this quote that the further east we advance, the darker the complexion of the Guaranis becomes and moves away from reddish yellow. Physiology therefore tells us that the peoples of America have, in all latitudes, a clearly Mongolian common background. Linguistics and physiology confirm this data as best they can. Let's see the first.

American languages, whose lexicological dissimilarities and grammatical similarities I noted earlier, differ profoundly from the idioms of Eastern Asia, nothing could be more true; but Prescott adds, with his usual finesse and sagacity, that they are no less distinguishable from each other, and that, if this reason were sufficient to reject any kinship of the natives of the new continent with the Mongols, it would also be necessary to

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admit it to isolate these nations from each other, an impossible system. Then, the othonis takes away its absolute significance. The relationship of this language with the monosyllabic languages of Eastern Asia is obvious; philology cannot therefore, despite many obscurities, many doubts, which study will resolve as it has resolved so many, refuse to admit that, however corrupted they may be by foreign interference and long internal work, American dialects are in no way opposed, in their current state, to a kinship of the group which speaks them with the Finnish race.

As for the intellectual dispositions of this group, they present several characteristic features that are easy to discern from the chaos of divergent trends. I would like, remaining in strict truth, to say neither too much good nor too much bad about the American natives. Some observers represent them as models of pride in independence, and as such forgive them some cannibalism (l)[9] . Others, on the

And

contrary, by loudly declaiming against this vice, reproach the race affected by it for a monstrous development of selfishness, from which result the most madly ferocious habits (2)[10 ] .

With the best intention of remaining impartial, we cannot, however, ignore the fact that the severe opinion has on its side the support, the admission of the oldest historians of America. Eyewitnesses, struck by the cold and inexorable wickedness of these savages who are otherwise made to be so noble, 1468

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and who are, in fact, very proud, wanted to recognize them as the descendants of Cain. They felt them more deeply evil than other men, and they were not wrong.

The American is not to blame, among other human families, because he eats his prisoners, or tortures them and refines their agonies. All peoples do or have done almost the same, and are only distinguished from each other in this respect by the motives which lead them to such violence. What makes the ferocity of the American particularly remarkable compared to that of the most passionate Negro, and the most basely cruel Finn, is the impassivity which makes it the basis and the duration of the paroxysm, as long as its life. It would seem that he has no passion, so capable is he of moderating himself, of constraining himself, of hiding from all eyes the hateful flame that consumes him; but, even more certainly, he has no pity, as demonstrated by the relationships he maintains with strangers, with his tribe, with his family, with his women, even with his children (1) [11 ] .

In a word, the American native, unsympathetic to his fellows, only approaches them to the extent of his personal usefulness. What does he consider to fit into this sphere? Material effects only. He has no sense of beauty or the arts; he is very limited in most of his desires, generally limiting them to the essential physical necessities. Eating is his big business, dressing afterwards, and this is a small matter, even in cold regions. Nor the notions 1469

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social aspects of modesty, adornment or wealth, are not highly accessible to him. Let us be careful not to believe that this is due to a lack of intelligence; he has it, and applies it well to the satisfaction of his form of selfishness. His great political principle is independence, not that of his nation or his tribe, but his own, that of the individual himself. Obeying as little as possible so as to have little to give in to one's laziness and one's tastes is the great concern of both the Guarani and the Chinook. Everything that is noble in the Indian character comes from there. However, several local causes have, in some tribes, made the presence of a chief necessary, indispensable. We therefore accepted the leader; but he is only granted the smallest possible measure of submission, and it is the subordinate who sets it. Even the scraps of such slim authority are disputed with him. We only grant it for a time, we take it back whenever we want. The savages of America are extreme republicans.

In this situation, men with talent or those who believe they are, the ambitious of all kinds, use the intelligence they possess, and I said that they had it, to first persuade their people the indignity of their competitors, then their own merit; and, as it is impossible to form what is elsewhere called a solid party, by means of these individuals so fierce and so scattered, they must use daily recourse, perpetual recourse to persuasion and influence. eloquence for

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maintain this influence so weak and so precarious, the only result to which they are allowed to aspire. Hence this mania for discourse and peroration which possesses savages, and contrasts in such an unexpected way with their natural taciturnity. In their family gatherings and even during their orgies, where there is no personal interest involved, no one says a word.

By the nature of what men find useful, that is to say to be able to eat and to fight against the bad weather of the seasons, to maintain independence, not to use it to seek an intellectual goal, but to yielding without control to purely material inclinations, by this indifferent coldness in relations between close people, I am authorized to recognize in them the predominance, or at least the fundamental existence of the yellow element. This is indeed the type of the peoples of Eastern Asia, with this difference, for the latter, that the constant and marked infusion of white blood has modified these narrow aptitudes.

Thus psychology, like linguistics and especially like physiology, concludes that the Finnish essence is widespread, in greater or lesser abundance, in the three great American divisions of the north, southwest and southeast. It now remains to find what ethnic causes, penetrating these masses, have altered, varied, circumvented their characters almost infinitely, and in such a way as to separate them into a series of isolated groups. To achieve a properly demonstrated result, I will continue to observe

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first the external characteristics, then I will move on to the other modes of ethnic manifestation. The modification of the pure yellow type, when it takes place by the interference of white principles as among the Slavs and the Celts, or even among the Kyrgyz, produces men the likes of which I do not find in America. Those of the natives of this continent who would be closest, externally, to our Gallic or Wend populations, are the Cherokees, and yet it is impossible to misunderstand them. When a mixture takes place between yellow and white, the second mainly develops its influence by the new measurement of the proportions which it gives to the members; but, as far as the face is concerned, he acts mediocre and only moderates the Finnish nature. Now it is precisely through facial features that the Cherokees are comparable to the European type. These savages do not even have eyes as slanted, nor as oblique, nor as small as the Bretons and most of the Eastern Russians; their noses are straight and deviate notably from the flattened shape that nothing effaces in the yellow and white mongrels. There is therefore no reason to admit that the American races saw their Finnish elements originally influenced by alloys from the noble species.

If physical observation pronounces this way on this point, it indicates, on the other hand, with insistence, the presence of black interferences. The extreme variety of American types corresponds, in a striking manner, to the no less great diversity that it is easy to observe between 1472

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the Polynesian nations and the Malay peoples of Southeast Asia. We will be all the more convinced of the reality of this correlation the more we dwell on it. We will discover, in the American regions, the exact counterparts of the northern Chinese, the Celebes Malay, the Japanese, the Mataboulai of the Tonga Islands, the Papuan itself, in the types of the northern Indian, the Guarani, the 'Aztec, Quichna, Cafuso. The more we go down to nuances, the more analogies we will encounter; all of them, certainly, will not correspond in a rigorous manner, it is very easy to predict this, but they will indicate their general link of comparison so well that we will agree without difficulty on the identity of the causes.

In the darkest subjects, the nose takes the aquiline shape, and often in a very accentuated manner; the eyes become straight, or almost straight; sometimes the jaw develops forward: such cases are rare. The forehead ceases to be rounded and affects the receding shape. All these clues taken together denounce the presence of black interference in a Mongolian background. Thus all the aboriginal groups of the American continent form a network of Malay nations, insofar as this word can be applied to very differently graded products of the Finno-Melanian mixture, which no one disputes for all the families which extend from Madagascar to the Marquesas, and from China to Easter Island.

Let us now inquire by what means the communication between the two great types black and yellow was 1473

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could establish itself in the east of the southern hemisphere? It is easy, very easy to reassure the mind in this regard. Between Madagascar and the first Malay island, which is Ceylon, there is at least 12°, while from Japan to Kamtschatka and from the coast of Asia to that of America, via the Behring Strait, the distance is insignificant. We have not forgotten that, in another part of this work, the existence of black tribes on the islands north of Niphon has already been reported for a very modern period. On the other hand, since it was possible for Malay peoples to pass from archipelago to archipelago as far as Easter Island, there is no difficulty in the fact that, having reached this point, they continued to the coast of Chile, located opposite them, and arrived there, after a crossing made quite easy by the islands strewn along the route, Sala, Saint-Ambroise, Juan-Fernandez, a circumstance which reduces two hundred leagues the shortest journey from one of the intermediate points to the other. However, we have seen that accidents at sea frequently take native boats more than twice this distance. America was therefore accessible, from the west, through its two northern and southern ends. There are still other reasons not to doubt that what was materially possible actually took place (1)[12] .

The brownest tribes of aborigines being located on the western coast, we must conclude that there were made the main alliances of the black or rather Malay principle with the fundamental yellow element. In the presence of this explanation, we no longer have to worry about demonstrations based on the alleged climacteric influence for 1474

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explain how the Aztecs and the Quichnas are more swarthy, although inhabiting relatively very cold mountains, than the Brazilian tribes wandering in flat countries and on the banks of rivers. We will no longer dwell on this bizarre solution that, if these savages are straw yellow, it is because the shelter of the forests preserves their complexion. The peoples of the western coast are the brownest, because they are the most imbued with Melanian blood, given the proximity of the archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean. This is also the opinion of psychology.

Everything that has been said above about the nature of the American man agrees with what we know about the capital dispositions of the Malay race. Deep selfishness, nonchalance, laziness, cold cruelty, this identical background of Mexican, Peruvian, Guarani, Huron customs, seems drawn from the types offered by the Australian populations. We also observe a certain taste for the useful, poorly understood, an intelligence more practical than that of the Negro, and always the passion for personal independence. Because we have seen in China the mixed variety of the Malay superior to the black and yellow races, we also see the populations of America possessing male faculties with more intensity than the tribes of the African continent (1)[ 13 ] . It was possible to develop among them, under a superior influence, as elsewhere among the Malays of Java, Sumatra, and Bali, very ephemeral civilizations no doubt, but not devoid of merit.

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These civilizations, whatever their creative causes, only had the necessary spark to form where the Malay family, existing with the greatest amount of Melanian elements, presented the least rebellious material. We should therefore expect to find them on the closest points of the Pacific archipelagos. This prediction is not mistaken: their most complete developments are offered to us on Mexican territory and on the Peruvian coast.

It is impossible to ignore a prejudice common to all American races, and which is obviously linked to an ethnic consideration. Everywhere the natives admire the low, receding foreheads as beauty. In several localities, extremely distant from each other, such as the banks of the Columbia and the ancient country of the Peruvian Aymaras, the practice of obtaining this much appreciated deformity was practiced or is still practiced, by flattening the skulls of young children by a compressive device made up of tightly tightened strips (2)[14] .

This custom is not, moreover, exclusively particular to the new world; the elder has seen examples of it. This is how, among several Hunnic nations, of extraction partly foreign to the Mongolian blood, the parents used the same process as in America to repeat the heads of the newborns, and later give them an artificial resemblance to the aristocratic race. However, since it is not admissible that the fact of having the forehead 1476

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receding could respond to an innate idea of beautiful conformation, we must believe that the American natives were led to the desire to retouch the physical appearance of their generations by some clues which led them to consider receding foreheads as proof of a development enviable of active faculties, or, what amounts to the same thing, as the mark of any social superiority. There is no doubt that what they wanted to imitate was the pyramidal head of the Malay, a mixed form between the arrangement of the skull of the Finn and that of the Negro. The custom of flattening the foreheads of children is thus further proof of the Malay nature of the most powerful American tribes; and I conclude by repeating that there is no race of America strictly speaking, then that the natives of this part of the world are of the Mongolian race, differently affected by interference either from pure blacks or from Malays. This part of the human species is therefore completely mixed race.

There is more ; it has been so for incalculable times, and it is hardly possible to admit that the care of maintaining themselves pure has ever worried these nations. Judging by the facts, the oldest of which are unfortunately still quite modern, since they do not rise above the th century AD, the three American groups, with rare X

exceptions, have not, in no time, made the slightest scruple about

mixing their blood. In Mexico, the conquering people united the vanquished through marriages to enlarge and consolidate their domination. Peruvians, ardent

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proselytes, claimed to increase in the same way the number of sun worshipers. The Guarani, having decided that the honor of a warrior consisted in having many wives foreign to his tribe, relentlessly harassed their neighbors with the main aim, after having killed the men and children, of attributing the wives to themselves. (1)[15] . This habit resulted in a rather bizarre linguistic accident among the latter. These new compatriots, importing their languages into their adopted tribes, formed, within the national idiom, a feminine part which was never for the use of their husbands (2)[16] .

So many mixtures, constantly being added to an already mixedrace background, have brought about the greatest ethnic anarchy. If we further consider that the most gifted of the American groups, those whose fundamental yellow element is most charged with Melanian contributions, are however and can only be fairly humbly placed on the scale of humanity, we will understand even better that their weakness is not youth, but rather decrepitude, and that there has never been the slightest possibility for them to offer any resistance to the attacks coming from Europe.

It will seem strange that these tribes escape the ordinary law which leads nations, even those which are already mixed, to be reluctant to mix, a law which is exercised with all the more force as the families are composed of crude ethnic elements. . But excess confusion destroys this law among the vilest groups

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as among the noblest; we have seen many examples of this; and, when we consider the unlimited number of alloys that all American peoples have undergone, there is no reason to be surprised at the avidity with which the Guarani women of Brazil seek the embraces of the Negro. It is precisely the absence of any sporadic feeling in sexual intercourse which demonstrates most completely to what low level the families of the new world have descended in terms of ethnic depravity, and which gives the most powerful reasons for admitting that the beginning of this state of affairs dates back to an extremely distant time (3)[17] . When we studied the causes of the primitive migrations of the white race towards the south and west, we found that these movements were the consequences of a strong pressure exerted in the northeast by innumerable multitudes of yellow peoples. Even before the descent of the white Hamites, the Semites and the Arians, the Finnic flood, finding little resistance among the black nations of China, had spread among them, and had pushed its conquests very far. , therefore its mixtures. In the devastating, brutal dispositions of this race there was necessarily an excess of spoliation. Facing merciless dispossession, large bands of blacks fled and scattered wherever they could. Some gained the mountains, others the islands of Formosa, Niphon, Yeso, the Kuriles, and, passing behind the masses 1479

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of their persecutors, came in turn to conquer, either remaining pure or mixed with the blood of the aggressors, the lands abandoned by them in the West of the world. There they united with the yellow stragglers who had not followed the great emigration.

But the path to thus pass from northern Asia to the other continent was fraught with difficulties which did not make it attractive; then, on the other hand, the great causes which expelled from America the enormous multitudes of the yellows had not allowed many of the tribes of these to retain the old domicile. For these reasons, the population always remained quite weak, and never recovered from the terrible unknown catastrophe which had pushed these native masses to desertion. If the Mexicans, if the Peruvians presented some respectable counts for the observation of the Spaniards, the Portuguese found Brazil sparsely inhabited, and the English had before them, in the north, only wandering tribes lost in the heart of the solitudes. The American is therefore only the scattered descendant of outcasts and stragglers. Its territory represents an abandoned residence, too vast for those who occupy it, and who cannot absolutely call themselves the direct and legitimate heirs of the primordial masters.

Attentive observers, who all, with one accord, recognized among the natives of the new world the striking and sad characteristics of social decomposition, believed, for the most part, that this agony was that of a 1480

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society once established, was that of aged intelligence, of a worn-out spirit. Point. It is that of adulterated blood, and even then having only been originally made up of tiny elements. The impotence of these people was such, at this very moment when national civilizations were enlightening them with all their lights, that they did not even have knowledge of the soil on which they lived. The empires of Mexico and Peru, these two marvels of their genius, almost touched each other, and we have never been able to discover the slightest connection between one and the other. Everything suggests that they were unaware of each other. However, they sought to extend their borders, to grow as best they could. But the tribes which separated their borders were so poor conductors of social impressions that they did not propagate them even the shortest distance. The two companies therefore constituted two islands which neither borrowed nor lent each other anything.

However, they had been cultivated there for a long time, and had acquired all the strength they were ever to have. The Mexicans were not the first civilizers of their country. Before them, that is to say before the tenth century of our era (1)[18] , the Toltecs had founded large establishments on the same soil, and before the Toltecs the age of the Olmecas was further postponed, who would be the true founders of these large and imposing buildings whose ruins sleep buried deep in the forests of the Yucatan. Enormous walls made of immense stones, courtyards of astonishing extent, give these monuments an aspect of majesty to which melancholy

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grandiose and the plant profusions of nature add their charms. The traveler who, after several days of walking through the virgin forests of Chiapa, his body tired by the difficulties of the road, his soul moved by the awareness of a thousand dangers, his spirit exalted by this endless succession of centuries-old trees , some standing, others fallen, still others hiding the dust of their dilapidation under mounds of lianas, greenery and sparkling flowers; the ear filled with the cry of beasts of prey or the shivering of reptiles; this traveler who, through so many causes of excitement, arrives at these unexpected remains of human thought, would not deserve his fortune if his enthusiasm did not assure him that he has before his eyes incomparable beauties.

But when a cold mind then examines in the study the sketches and stories of the exalted observer, it has the duty to be severe, and, after mature reflection, it will undoubtedly conclude that it is not the work of an artistic people, nor even of a greatly utilitarian nation that we can recognize in the remains of Mitla, Izalanca, Palenquè, and the ruins of the Oaxaca valley.

The sculptures traced on the walls are crude, no idea of high art breathes there. We do not see there, as in the works of the Semites of Assyria, the happy apotheosis of matter and force. These are humble efforts to imitate the form of man and animals. The result is creations which, by far, do not reach the ideal; and yet they could not have either

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been ordered by the feeling of utility. Male races are not in the habit of taking so much trouble to pile up stones; nowhere do material needs require such work. Also there is nothing similar in China; and, when Europe in the Middle Ages erected its cathedrals, the Romanized spirit had already given it, for its use, a notion of beauty and an aptitude for the plastic arts which the white races can well adopt, which they encourage to a unique perfection, but which alone and of themselves they are not capable of conceiving. There is therefore a Negro in the creation of the monuments of Yucatan, but a Negro who, by exciting the yellow instinct and leading it to move beyond its earthly tastes, did not succeed in making it acquire what the The initiator himself did not have the taste, or, to put it better, the true creative genius (1)[19] .

We must draw one more conclusion from the sight of these monuments. This is because the Malay people by whom they were built, apart from the fact that they did not possess artistic sense in the high meaning of the word, were a people of conquerors who sovereignly disposed of the arms of enslaved multitudes (2)[20 ] . A homogeneous and free nation never imposes such creations on itself; he needs foreigners to imagine them, when his intellectual power is mediocre, and to accomplish them, when this same power is great. In the first case, he needs Hamites, Semites, Iranian or Hindu Arians, Germans, that is to say, to use terms understood among all peoples, gods, half-

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gods, heroes, priests or omnipotent nobles. In the second, this series of masters cannot do without servile masses to realize the designs of their genius. The appearance of the ruins of Yucatan therefore leads us to conclude that the mixed populations of this region were dominated, when these palaces were built, by a mixed race like them, but to a slightly higher degree, and above all more affected by the melanian alloy.

The Toltecs and Aztecs can also be recognized by the narrowness of the forehead and the olive color. They came from the northwest, where their native tribes can still be found in the area around Nootka; they settled among the indigenous peoples, who had already experienced the domination of the Olmecas, and they taught them a kind of civilization well suited to astonish us; because it has preserved, as long as it has lived, the characteristics resulting from the life of forests alongside those of which the existence of cities makes the necessary refinements. Detailing the splendor of Mexico at the time of the Aztecs, we notice sumptuous buildings, beautiful fabrics, elegant and sophisticated customs. In the government we see this monarchical hierarchy, mixed with priestly elements, which is reproduced wherever popular masses are subjugated by a nation of victors. We still see military energy among the nobles, and very marked tendencies to understand public administration in a way entirely specific to the yellow race. The country was not without literature either.

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Unfortunately, Spanish historians have not preserved anything for us that they have not disfigured by amplifying it. There is, however, Chinese taste in the moral considerations, in the regulative and edifying doctrines of Aztec poetry, as this same taste also appears in the circumvented and enigmatic research of expressions. The Mexican chiefs, similar in this respect to all the caciques of America, showed themselves to be great talkers, and cultivated this bombastic, cloudy, seductive eloquence, which the Indians of the northern prairies know and practice so well according to the novelists who described them today. I have already indicated the source of this kind of talent. Political eloquence, firm, simple, brief, which is only the exposition of facts and reasons, ensures the greatest honor to the nation which uses it. Among the Arians of all ages, as also among the Dorians and in the old Sabine senate of Latin Rome, it is the instrument of freedom and wisdom. But ornate, verbose political eloquence, cultivated as a special talent, raised to the height of an art, eloquence which becomes rhetoric, is something entirely different. We can only consider it as a direct result of the splitting of ideas within a race, and of the moral isolation into which all minds have fallen. What we saw among the southern Greeks, among the Semitized Romans, I was going to say in modern times, sufficiently demonstrates that the talent of speech, this ultimately crude power, since its works can only be preserved on the rigorous condition of passing into a form superior to that in which they produced their effects; who has

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with the aim of seducing, deceiving, leading, much more than convincing, can only be born and live among scattered peoples who no longer have a common will, a defined goal, and who hold each other together, so uncertain are they of their ways, at the disposal of the last who speaks to them. So, since the Mexicans honored eloquence so highly, it is proof that their aristocracy itself was not very compact, very homogeneous. The people, without doubt, did not differ from the nobles in this respect.

Four major gaps weakened the brilliance of Aztec civilization. Hieratic massacres were considered as one of the bases of social organization, as one of the main goals of public life. This normal ferocity killed without choice, as if without scruple, men, women, old people, children; she killed in herds, and took ineffable pleasure in it. It is useless to point out how these executions differed from the human sacrifices which the Germanic world introduced us to.

We understand that contempt for life and the soul was the degrading source of this usage, and resulted naturally from the double black and yellow current which had formed the race. The Aztecs had never thought of reducing animals into domesticity; they did not know the use of milk. It is a singularity which is found here and there among certain groups of the yellow family (1)[21] .

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to the hieroglyphics themselves. This method was used to preserve the memory of major historical facts, to transmit government orders and information provided by magistrates to the king. It was a very slow, very inconvenient process; However, the Aztecs did not know how to do better. They were inferior in this respect to the Olmécas, their predecessors, if indeed we must take them, with Mr. Prescott, for the founders of Palenquè, and admit that certain inscriptions observed on the walls of these ruins constitute phonetic signs ( 1)[22] .

Finally, the last chronic defect of Mexican society, it is certain, although hardly credible, that these people bordering the sea, and whose territory is not deprived of waterways, did not practice navigation, and used only very poorly constructed canoes and even more imperfect rafts.

This was the civilization overthrown by Cortez: and it is good to add that this conqueror found it in its flower and in its novelty; because the founding of the capital, Tenochtitlan, only dates back to the year 1325. How short and not very tenacious were the roots of this organization! All it took was the appearance and stay of a handful of white mixed-race people on her land to immediately plunge her into nothingness. When the political form had perished, there was no longer any trace of the inventions on which it was based. Peruvian culture did not appear any more solid.

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The domination of the Incas, like that of the Toltecs and the Aztecs, followed another empire, that of the Aymaras, whose main seat had existed in the high regions of the Andes, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The monuments that can still be seen in these places make it possible to attribute to the Aymara nation faculties superior to those of the Peruvians who followed it, since the latter were only copyists. Mr. d'Orbigny rightly observes that the sculptures of Tihuanaco reveal a more delicate intellectual state than the ruins of later ages, and that we even discover there a certain propensity towards ideality entirely foreign to them ( 1)[23] .

The Incas, a weakened reproduction of a more civilizing race, arrived from the mountains, covering all the slopes towards the west, occupying the plateaus and agglomerating under their leadership a certain number of peoples. It was in the 11th century AD that this power was born (2)[24] , and, a true singularity in America, the ruling family seems to have been extremely concerned about preserving the purity of its blood. In the palace of Cuzco, the emperor only married his legitimate sisters, in order to be more assured of the integrity of his descendants, and he reserved for himself, as well as for a small number of very close relatives, the exclusive use of a sacred language, which was probably Aymara (3)[25] .

These ethnic precautions of the sovereign family demonstrate that there was much to be said about the genealogical value of the conquering nation itself. THE 1488

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Incas far from the throne had only the slightest scruple about taking wives wherever they pleased. However, if their children had the country's aborigines as maternal ancestors, tolerance did not extend to admitting into employment the paternal line descendants of this subject race. The latter were therefore little attached to the regime under which they lived, and this is one of the reasons why Pizarro so easily overthrew the entire upper layer of this society, all the crowning institutions, and why the Peruvians never tried to find it again. nor to revive the remains of it.

The Incas did not taint themselves with the homicidal institutions of Mexican Anahuac; on the contrary, their diet was very gentle. They had turned their main ideas towards agriculture, and, better advised than the Aztecs, they had tamed numerous herds of alpacas and llamas. But among them, no eloquence, no verbal struggles: passive obedience was the supreme law. The fundamental formula of the State had indicated a route to follow to the exclusion of all others, and did not admit of discussion in its means of government. In Peru, we did not reason, we did not own, everyone worked for the prince. The chief function of the magistrates consisted of distributing among each family a suitable share of the common labor. Everyone arranged themselves so as to tire themselves as little as possible, since the most strenuous application could never provide any exceptional advantage. We didn't think about it e 1489

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superhuman was not capable of advancing its owner in social distinctions. We drank, we ate, we slept, and above all we prostrated ourselves before the emperor and his attendants; so Peruvian society was quite silent and very passive.

On the other hand, she was even more utilitarian than the Mexican. In addition to the great agricultural works, the government had magnificent roads built, and its subjects knew the use of suspension bridges, which is so new to us. The method they used to fix and transmit thought was very elementary, and perhaps we should prefer the paintings of Anahuac to the quipos.

No more than among the Aztecs, shipbuilding was known. The sea which bordered the coast remained deserted (1) [26] .

With its qualities and its faults, Peruvian civilization inclined towards the soft concerns of the yellow species, while the ferocious activity of the Mexican more directly accuses the Melanian kinship. We understand quite well that in the face of the profound ethnic confusion of the races of the new continent, it would be an untenable pretension to want today to specify the nuances which emerge from the amalgam of their elements. It remains to examine a third American nation, established in the northern plains, at the foot of the Alleghani Mountains, at a very obscure time. Considerable remains of work and numberless tombs are being made 1490

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seen within this region. They are divided into several indicative classes of very different dates and races. But uncertainties are accumulating on this question. So far nothing positive has been discovered yet. To focus on a problem that is still so little and so poorly studied would be to plunge gratuitously into inextricable hypotheses (1) [27] . Alleghanians absolutely So I will leave the nations aside, and I will immediately move on to the examination of a difficulty which weighs on the birth of their mode of culture, whatever its degree, just as on that of the culture of the empires of Mexico and Peru of different ages. One must ask why a few American nations have been induced to rise above all others, and why the number of these nations has been so limited, while their relative greatness has, in fact, remained so mediocre. ?

It is already an answer to observe, as we have been able to do from the previous remarks, that these partial developments had been determined in part by fortuitous combinations between the yellow and black mixtures. Seeing how the abilities resulting from these combinations were ultimately limited, and the singular gaps which characterize their work and their works, we were able to convince ourselves that American civilizations did not rise in detail, much above this that the best Malay breeds of Polynesia have succeeded in producing. However, it should not be 1491

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nor to conceal, however defective the Aztec and Quichna organizations appear to us, there is nevertheless in them something essentially superior to the social science practiced in Tonga-Tabou and on the island of Hawaii; we see there a more strongly tense national bond, a clearer awareness of a goal which is, in itself, of a more complex nature; so that we are entitled to conclude, despite many contrary appearances, that the most gifted Polynesian mixture does not yet quite manage to equal these civilizations of the great western continent, and, consequently, we are led to believe that, to determine this difference, the local intervention of a more energetic, nobler element than those available to the yellow and black species was necessary. However, there is only the white species in the world that can provide this supreme quality. There is therefore, a priori, reason to suspect that infiltrations of this pre-excellent essence somewhat invigorated American groups, where civilizations existed. As for the weakness of these civilizations, it can be explained by the poverty of the veins which gave rise to them. I insist on this last idea.

The white elements, if they appeared to create the main parts of the social framework, are in no way revealed in the structure of the whole. They provided the aggregative force, and almost nothing more. Thus they did not succeed in consolidating the work that they made possible, since nowhere did they ensure its duration. The Anahuac empire only dates back to the 10th century, at most; that of Peru,

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11th; and nothing demonstrates that previous societies sink very far into the mists of time. It is the opinion of Mr. Humboldt that the period of the social movement in America did not exceed five centuries. Whatever the case, the two great states that the violent hands of Cortez and Pizarro destroyed already marked the era of decadence, since they were inferior, in Anahuac, to that of the Olmecas, and, on the plateau of the Peruvian Andes, to that which the Aymaras had formerly founded (1)[28] .

The presence of a few white elements made necessary, automatically affirmed by the state of things, is confirmed by the double testimony of American traditions themselves, and other stories dating from the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th century , which are transmitted to us by the Scandinavians. The Incas declared to the Spaniards that they got their religion and their laws from a foreign white man. They even added this very characteristic observation, that these men had long beards, a completely abnormal fact among them. There would be no reason to reject a traditional story of this kind, even if it were isolated (2)[29] .

This gives it irresistible strength. The Scandinavians of Iceland and Greenland held, in the 10th century, that there was no doubt that very ancient relations had existed between North America and Iceland. They had all the more reason not to doubt the possibility of the facts that the people told them in this regard.

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inhabitants of Limerick, that several of their own expeditions had been driven back by storms either on the Icelandic coast, on their way to America, or on the American coast, on their way to Iceland. They therefore related, according to what had been told to them, that a Welsh warrior called Madok, who left the island of Brittany, had sailed very far to the west (3)[30] . That having encountered an unknown land there, he had made a short stay there. But, back in his homeland, he had no other thought than to go and settle in the transmarine country whose mysterious nature had pleased him; he had gathered colonists, men and women, made provisions, armed ships, left, and never returned. This story had taken such a development among the Scandinavians of Greenland that in 1121 (1) [31] Bishop Eric set sail to bring, it is supposed, to the ancient Icelandic colonization the consolations and the help of religion, and maintain them in the faith, where we liked to believe that they had remained firm.

It was not only in Greenland and Iceland that this tradition was established. From Iceland, where it had evidently seen the light of day, it had passed into England, and had gained so much credence there, that the first British settlers of Canada were no less actively seeking, in their new possession, the descendants of Madok, that the Spaniards, under Christopher Columbus, had sought the subjects of the great khan of China in Hispaniola. It was even believed to have found the posterity of

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Welsh emigrants to the Mandan Indian tribe. All these stories, once again, are undoubtedly obscure; but their antiquity cannot be disputed, and there is even less reason to doubt their perfect and irreproachable accuracy.

This results for Icelanders, but very probably for Icelanders of Scandinavian origin, a certain halo of adventurous courage and a taste for distant undertakings. This opinion is supported by the incontestable circumstance that in 795 navigators from the same nation had landed in Iceland, still unoccupied, and had established monks there (2)[32] . Three Norwegians, the sea king Naddok and the two heroes Ingulf and Iliorleïf, followed this example, and brought to the island, in 874, a colony made up of Scandinavians nobles who, fleeing before the despotic pretensions of Harald with the fair hair, were looking for a land where they could continue the independent and proud existence of the ancient Aryan odels. Accustomed as we are to considering Iceland in its current state, sterilized by volcanic action and the increasing invasion of ice, we imagine it, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, sparsely populated as we see it today, reduced to the role of annex of the other Norman countries, and we do not understand the activity of which it was then the focus. It is easy to correct such false preconceptions.

This land, chosen by the elite of Norwegian nobles, was a center of large companies where an abundance of 1495

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constantly all the energetic men of the Scandinavian world (1)[33] . Every day, expeditions left there to fish for whales and search for new lands, sometimes in the extreme northwest, sometimes in the southwest. This restless spirit was maintained by the crowd of learned skalds and monks who, on the one hand, had brought the science of northern antiquities to the highest level and made their new residence the poetic metropolis of the race, and who, on the other hand, the other, constantly attracted knowledge of southern literature, and translated into everyday language the main productions of the Romanesque countries (2)[34] .

Iceland was therefore, in the 10th century, a very intelligent, very populous, very active, very powerful territory, and its inhabitants clearly demonstrated this by the fact that, having arrived and established themselves on their island in 874, they founded their first Greenlandic settlements in 9S6. We have only had an example of such exuberance of forces among the Carthaginians. This is because Iceland was, in fact, like the city of Dido, the work of an aristocratic race having reached, before acting, its full development, and seeking in exile not only to maintain itself, but again the triumph of its rights.

When the Scandinavians had once established a foothold in Greenland, their colonizations followed one another, increased rapidly, and at the same time voyages of discovery began towards the south ( 1)[35] . America was thus found by the kings of the sea, as if the 1496

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Providence had willed that no glory should be lacking in the noblest of races. We know very little, very poorly, very obscurely, the history of Greenland's relations with the western continent. Only two points are established with the ultimate evidence by some domestic chronicles that have come down to us. The first is that the Scandinavians had penetrated, in the 19th century, as far as Florida, to the south of the country where they found vines, and which they called Vinland. In the neighborhood was, according to them, the ancient country of the Irish settlers, which their documents call Hirttramanhaland, the country of the whites : this was the expression which the Indians, the first authors of this information, had used, and which those who received it did not hesitate to translate with the word: Island it mikla, the great Iceland (2)[36] .

The second point is this: until 1347 communications between Greenland and Lower Canada were frequent and easy. The Scandinavians were going to load construction timber there (3)[37] .

Around the same time a remarkable change took place in the state of the Greenlandic and Icelandic populations. The ice, gaining more ground, makes the climate too harsh and the land too barren. The population is decreasing rapidly, so much so that Greenland suddenly finds itself absolutely abandoned and deserted, without it being possible to say what has become of its inhabitants. However, they were not suddenly destroyed by convulsions of the

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nature. We can still contemplate today the remains of numerous houses and churches which have obviously been abandoned, and are only collapsing under the action of time and abandonment. These remains reveal no trace of a cataclysm which would have engulfed those who once inhabited them. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the latter, by deserting their homes, have sought another stay elsewhere. Where did they go ? We desperately wanted to find them individually, one by one, in the states of northern Europe, and we forgot that these were not isolated men, but real populations who, arriving en masse in Norway, in Holland, in Germany, would have excited an attention of which the accounts of the chroniclers would have preserved the trace, which is not the case. It is more admissible, it is more reasonable to believe that the Greenlandic Scandinavians and a part of the men of Iceland, having for many years known the fertile and well-wooded territories, the mild and attractive climate of Vinland, and having become a habit of traveling the western seas, gradually exchanged for this residence, in every way preferable, countries which were becoming uninhabitable to them, and they emigrated to America, absolutely as their compatriots from Sweden and Norway had formerly passed from their northern rocks in Russia and Gaul (1)[38] .

This is how the aboriginal races of the new continent were able to enrich themselves with some contributions of white blood, and those who had mixed races among them 1498

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Icelanders or Scandinavians of mixed race saw themselves endowed with the power to create civilizations, a glorious task for which their less fortunate congeners were natively and remained perpetually unskilled. But, as the tributary or tributaries of noble essence put into circulation among the Malay masses were too weak to produce anything vast or lasting, the societies which resulted were few in number, and above all very imperfect, very fragile, very ephemeral, and, as they succeeded one another, less intelligent, less marked with the seal of the element from which they came, so that, if the new discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, instead of accomplished in the 15th century, had only been carried out in the 19th, our sailors would probably have found neither Mexico City, nor Cuzco, nor temples of the Sun, but forests everywhere, and in these forests ruins haunted by the same savages who cross them to American civilizations were so stupid that they crumbled into dust at the first shock. The specially gifted tribes which supported them dispersed without difficulty before the saber of an imperceptible victor, and the popular masses who had suffered them, without understanding them, found themselves free to follow the directions of their new masters or to continue their ancient barbarism. Most preferred to take the latter course; they rival in stupidity the best we see of this kind in Australia. Some even have the consciousness of their 1499

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degradation, and they accept all the consequences. Of this number is the Brazilian tribe, which was made, for its celebrations, a dance tune of which here are the words:

When I am dead, Do not cry for me; There is the vulture Who will cry for me. When I'm dead. Throw me into the forest; There is the armadilla Who will bury me. We are not more philosophical (1)

[40]

; beasts of prey

are accepted gravediggers. The American nations have not therefore obtained only at one time, and in one light well dark, the civilizing light. Now here they are returned to their normal state: it is a sort of half-nothingness intellectual, and nothing can tear them away from it except death physique (2)[41] . I am wrong. Many of these nations seem, at least on the contrary, sheltered from this miserable end. It is not, for enter into the taste of supporting it, than to consider the question under a new face. Just as the mixtures made between the natives and Icelandic and Scandinavian settlers were able to create half-breeds relatively civilizable, likewise the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, by marrying women from the countries occupied by them, gave birth to 1500

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a mixed race superior to the ancient population. But, if we want to consider the fate of American natives from this aspect, we must at the same time take into account the depression manifested, by the fact of this hymen, in the faculties of the European groups who consented to contract it. If the Indians of the Spanish and Portuguese countries are, here and there, a little less debased, and above all infinitely more numerous (1)[42] than those of the other parts of the new continent, it must be considered that this improvement in the state of their abilities are very minimal, and that the most practical consequence has been the debasement of the dominant races. South America, corrupted in its Creole blood, now has no way of stopping its mixed race of all varieties and classes from falling. Their decadence is without remedy.

1. ÿ (1) A. d'Orbigny, American Man, t. I, p. 71 et seqq. 2. ÿ (2) I said elsewhere that we sought to explain the extraordinary development of the bust among the Quichnas, which is in question here, by the elevation of the range where they live, and I showed for why this hypothesis was unacceptable. (See volume 1) Here is a reason of another kind: the Umanas, placed in the plains which border the upper course of the Amazon, have the same conformation as the mountain Quichnas. (Martins u. Spix, Reise in Brasilien, t. III, p. 1255 3. ÿ (1) Prescott, History of the conquest of Mexico, t. III, p. 245. 4. ÿ (2) Id., ibid., t. III, p. 243. 5. ÿ (1) M. Morton (An Inquiry into the distinctive characteristics of the aboriginal race of America, Philadelphia, 1844) disputes the kinship of the Eskimos with the Lenni-Lenapé Indians; but his arguments cannot prevail against those of Molina and Humboldt. His design is to establish that the American race, except the polar peoples, whose identity with Asian groups he cannot deny, and which, for this reason, he sets apart, is unitary, which is obvious, but more special to the continent it inhabits. (P. 6.)

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6. ÿ (1) Pickering, p. 41. 7. ÿ (2) For the Californians, Mr. Pickering expresses himself thus: “The first glame of the Californians satisfied me of their Malay affinity. » (P. 100.) 8. ÿ (1) D’Orbigny, Ouvr. cited, t. II, p. 347. According to this scholar, the Botocudos closely resemble the Mongol of Cuvier “Short nose, large mouth, no beard, eyes raised to the external angle. We can, he says, consider them as the type of the Guarani race. » — Martins u. Spix, open. cited, t. II, p. 819: “The Macams-Crans and the Aponeghi-Crans of the province of Mavanhâo, the most beautiful of the natives of Brazil, fall absolutely into the same class. » .

9. ÿ (1) This favorable opinion is mainly propagated by novelists Americans. 10. ÿ (2) Martins u. Spix, Reise in Brasilien, t. I, p. 379, et t. III p. 1033. — Carus, Ueber ungleiche Befæhigung der verschiedenen Menschheitsstæmme fur næhere geislige Entwickelung, p. 35. — See especially the ancient Spanish authors. 11. ÿ (1) D’Orbigny, open. cited, t. II, p. 232 et al. 12. ÿ (1) Morton disputes the possibility of the arrival of Malay groups as far as the coast of America, because, he says, the easterly winds most commonly reign in these parts. (Cited work, p. 32.) In pronouncing himself thus, he forgets the incontestable fact of the colonization of all the islands of the Pacific by the same race coming from the west, and this more particular circumstance, which he himself points out (p. 17), that in 1833, a Japanese junk was thrown by the winds on this same coast of America which he declares, a little further down, inaccessible on this side. He himself saw porcelain vases from this junk, and he adds: “Such casualties may have occurred in the early period of American history. » 13. ÿ (1) D'Orbigny (cited work, t. I, p. 143) declares that the mixture of American aborigines, and it is especially the very Mongolized Guaranis that he observed, gives products superior to the two guys who provide them.

14. ÿ (2) The current Aymaras do not have the flattened head of their ancestors, because Spanish influence made them renounce this usage. (D'Orbigny, cited work, vol. I, p. 315.) It only began with the domination of the Incas, around the 14th century. (Ibid., p. 319.) The Chinooks of Colombia still maintain it with great care. A traveler, chosen as the godfather of a child, was unable to persuade the parents not to put back the pressure strips as soon as the infant had been waved by a missionary. 15. ÿ (1) D’Orbigny, open. cited, t. I, p. 153. — In the South, women are sold so dearly by their parents that young men, proceeding with

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economy, prefer to get it with the puzzle in hand. (Ibid.) 16. ÿ (2) D’Orbigny, Ibid. 17. ÿ (3) Martius u. Spix. open. cited, t. III, p. 905. — These travelers go so far as to assert that, in the province of Para, there is perhaps not a single Indian family that has allowed a few generations to pass without crossing paths, either with whites or with blacks. 18. ÿ (1) Prescott (cited work, t. III, p. 255) only dates the arrival of the Toltecs back to the 10th century. 19. ÿ (1) D'Orbigny observes that it is among the Peruvian Aymaras that we can find, in architectural works, the most ideality; still it's never beautiful. (Ouvr. cited, t. I, p. 203 et seqq.) We tried to discover the age of the monuments of Palenqué according to the nature of the stalactites deposited on some walls, according to the concentric layers formed by the vegetation on very old trees and by observing layers of rubbish accumulated to a height of nine feet in yards. This method did not give results under a sky as fertile as that of the Yucatan. (Prescott, cited work, t. III, p. 254.) 20. ÿ (2) In one of the courtyards of Uxmal, the granite pavement, on which figures of turtles are depicted in relief, is almost united by the footsteps of ancient populations. (Prescott, ibid.) 21. ÿ (1) See above. 22. ÿ (1) Prescott, open. cited, t. III, p. 253. 23. ÿ (1) D’Orbigny, op. cited, t. I, p. 325. 24. ÿ (2) D’Orbigny, open. cited, t. I, p. 296. — This is the time when Manco-Capac appeared. 25. ÿ (3) D’Orbigny, open. cited, t. I, p. 297. 26. ÿ (1) D’Orbigny, op. cited, t. I, p. 215. — The Guaranis or Caribs, conquerors of the Antilles, themselves only had canoes made from a hollowed-out tree trunk. (Ibid.) 27. ÿ (1) Monuments of different kinds, but extremely crude, are widespread as far as New Mexico and California. (LG Squier, Extract from 1848.) Several of these constructions date back to an extremely remote period, and do not concern current American breeds. It is to the primitive Finns that we must refer them; therefore it is not to this class that allusion is made here. — The Alleghanians appear to have transmitted to the current Lenni-Lenapes this mode of mnemonic writing which consists of arbitrary signs traced on a board with the aim of recalling the details of a story to those who know it and to prevent them from making mistakes in the order of succession of ideas. It is in this system that the mythical song entitled: Wolum-Olum, the

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Creation, given by EG Squier, in the Historical and mythological traditions of the Algonquino, p. 6. 28. ÿ (1) Jomard, American Antiquities from the point of view of geography, p. 6. 29. ÿ (2) Pickering, p. 113. — The same tradition, with the same details, is found among the Muyscas, in Bogota, therefore at a considerable distance from Mexico.

30. ÿ (3) "That the Cambro-Britons, there, in the year 1170, were granted by the Duke Madocus, is considered proven by some, and that other Europeans, both before and after this time, had knowledge of the land, is no longer considered absurd or improbable." Rafu, Antiq. American Hafnia, 1837, i III-IV.) 31. ÿ (1) Rafn, Antiq. America, p. 262: "Excerpts from the annals of the Islands: ann. 1121 : Eiriker Biskup af Greenlandi for at leita Vinlands. » 32. ÿ (2) A. de Humboldt, Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du new continent, t. II, p. 90 and above. 33. ÿ (1) Evidence abounds everywhere in the annals of the Scandinavian kingdoms, but it is especially the Icelandic chronicles which present the most vivid picture of the facts. You just have to look through them to be convinced. 34. ÿ (2) Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter, p. 187 and elsewhere. 35. ÿ (1) MA de Humboldt remarks that eastern Greenland is so close to the Scandinavian peninsula and the north of Scotland that there is only a distance of two hundred from one point to the other. sixty-nine nautical leagues, a journey which, with a fresh and continuous wind, can be covered in less than four days of navigation. (Cited work, t. II, p. 76.) 36. ÿ (2) Chronicle of Iceland, entitled Isldingabok, composed around 1030 or 1090; Antiquity. america, p. 211. 37. ÿ (3) Antiquity. america, p. 265. 38. ÿ The Scandinavians of Iceland and Greenland, living under the regime of the odels, were much more concerned with the history of families than with that of the nation. So most of the documents I used are only domestic chronicles and songs intended to celebrate the exploits of a hero. In this state of affairs, it is understandable that almost all travel relations were lost and disappeared along with the families they glorified. We only have a little left that relates to the race of Erik le Roux. It is therefore extremely possible that, if the sailors of this house were always preoccupied with Vinland, which they had discovered and which was for them a sort of possession, others would have headed preferably to various points belonging to them in the same title. It is a hypothesis, no doubt, but it is natural, and

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here is what supports it: an Icelandic planisphere from the end of the 13th century divides the earth into four parts: Europe, Asia, Africa, and a fourth which alone occupies an entire hemisphere and which is called Synnribigd ; or southern region of the inhabited earth. This map has already been published on several occasions. It is not, moreover, unique, and demonstrates that the Icelanders attributed a very large extent towards the south to the American continent: therefore they were not limited to visiting the northern hemisphere. 39. ÿ (1) A. de Humboldt, op. cited, t. I. — The illustrious author places the state of civilization, known to the Aztecs and the Incas, between the time of the Scandinavian expeditions and the 15th century. These two supreme efforts of American sociability were, according to him, very weak and very inferior to those which had preceded them by about five hundred years o This is the place to say a few words about a very widespread and very admissible hypothesis which attributes to the populations of Eastern Asia, Chinese and Japanese, a great influence on the birth of the civilizations of the ancient continent. A. de Humboldt (View of the Cordilleras), Prescott, in his third volume of his history of the conquest of Mexico, Norton and most of today's archaeologists, either strongly support or barely discuss the possibility of the facts. Nothing could be more natural, in fact, that fortuitous or even premeditated communications took place on this side, and it will perhaps one day be demonstrated in a satisfactory manner that the country of Fon-dang, cited by some Chinese writers as existing to the west is none other than the continent of America. However, I did not believe it necessary to directly link my demonstrations to this system, considering it as susceptible, as far as Japan is concerned, to very considerable developments which it is dangerous to prevent. When the fact is established, it will result that America, in addition to what it received from the Scandinavians, has still collected through the intermediary of Malay adventurers, weakly Arianized, a small portion more of noble essence. None of the principles laid down here will be shaken. 40. ÿ (1) This song in the general language is given by Martins. u. Spix, open. cited, t. III, p. 1085. 41. ÿ (2) Humboldt, Critical History, etc., t. II, p. 128. — The observations of this writer apply especially to the hunting peoples of the northern hemisphere. 42. ÿ (1) MA de Humboldt even demonstrates that the indigenous population of the Spanish regions is in the process of prosperity and increase, to the detriment, of course, of the descendants of the conquerors immersed in this mass. (Cited work, vol. II, p. 129.) This state of affairs greatly disturbs the security of conscience of American observers in the

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countries from which a completely opposite phenomenon manifests itself. It almost shakes their confidence in what we call the benefits of civilization, and Mr. Pickering, confounding all reasonable notions, asks himself this question: “By an exception to the usual tendency of European civilization, there are grounds for questioning whether Peru bas altogether gained by the change. »(P. 31.) — It is rather with regard to the tribes of Lennis-Lenapés that the American scholar should raise this doubt.

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CHAPTER VIII. European colonizations in America.

The relations of the American natives with European nations, following the discovery of 1495, were marked by very different characteristics, determined by the measure of primitive kinship between the groups involved. Talking about the kinship between the nations of the new world and the navigators of the old will initially seem risky. By thinking about it better, we will realize that nothing is real anymore, and we will see the effects.

The overseas peoples who have had the greatest impact on the Indians are the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French and the English.

From the beginning of their establishment, the subjects of the Catholic kings became intimately close to the people of the country. No doubt they pillaged them, beat them, and very often massacred them. Such events are inseparable from any conquest, and even from any domination. It is no less true that the Spaniards paid homage to the political organization of their vanquished, and respected it in what was not contrary to their supremacy. They granted the rank of gentleman and the title of don to their princes; they used imperial formulas when they

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addressed Montezuma; and even after proclaiming his forfeiture and carrying out his death sentence, they only spoke of him using the word majesty. They received his parents in the rank of their greatness, and did the same for the Incas. According to this principle, they married without difficulty the daughters of caciques, and, from tolerance to tolerance, came to freely combine a family of hidalgos with a family of mulattoes. One could believe that this conduct, which we would call liberal, was imposed on the Spaniards by the need to attract populations that were too numerous not to be spared; but in such countries where they only had to deal with savage and sparse tribes, in Central America, in Bogota, in California, they acted absolutely the same. The Portuguese imitated them without reservation. After having cleared a certain radius around Rio Janeiro, they mingled without scruple with the former possessors of the country, without being scandalized by the stupidity of the latter. This ease of morals came, without a doubt, from the points of attraction that the composition of the respective races left between masters and subjects.

Among the adventurers who came from the Hispanic peninsula, and who belonged for the most part to Andalusia (1)[1] , Semitic blood dominated, and a few yellow elements, coming from the Iberian and Celtic parts of the genealogy, gave these groups a certain uneasy significance. His white principles were there in the minority before

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the melanian essence. A real affinity therefore existed between the victors and the vanquished, and the result was a fairly great ease of getting along, and, consequently, a propensity to mingle.

For the French, it was almost the same, although from another side, and not at all from this side. In Canada, our emigrants very frequently accepted the alliance of the aborigines, and what was always quite rare on the part of the Anglo-Saxon colonizers, they often and without difficulty adopted the lifestyle of their wives' parents. The mixtures were so easy that we find few ancient Canadian families who have not touched, at least from a distance, the Indian race; and yet these same French people, so accommodating in the north, never wanted, in the south, to admit the possibility of an alliance with the Negro species as something other than a stigma, nor to see mulattoes as nothing more than reprobate abortions. The cause of this apparent inconsistency is easy to explain. Most of the families who were the first to settle, both in Canada and in the West Indies, belonged to the provinces of Brittany or Normandy. An affinity existed, for the Gallic part of their origin, with the very yellow Malay tribes of Canada, while their whole nature was reluctant to contract an alliance with the black species on the lands where they found themselves close to it, very different in this, as we have seen, of the Spanish colonists, who, in South America, Central America, Mexico, are found today, thanks to mixtures of all kinds

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which they easily accepted, under conditions of unfortunate concordance with the indigenous groups who surround. It would certainly be unfair to claim that the citizen of the Mexican republic, or the improvised general who appears at every moment in the Argentine confederation, are on the same level as the cannibalistic Botoendo; but we cannot deny either that the distance which separates these two terms of the proposition is not indefinite, and that, in many aspects, the relationship can be discovered. All these Indian people living in the forests, gold prospectors, half white, casual soldiers, half native mulattoes; Everyone, from the president of the state to the last wanderer, understands each other wonderfully and can live together.

We can see this, moreover, by the way in which the fierce horseman of the pampas goes about handling the European institutions that our propagandistic madness has induced him to accept. The governments of South America are hardly comparable except to the empire of Haiti, we must now agree to realize this, and these are the men who formerly applauded with the most passion the so-called emancipation of these peoples, and who expected the most beautiful results, these are the very people who today, having become precisely incredulous about a future that they have so hastened with their wishes, their writings and their efforts, predict the highest that these masses of mongrels need a yoke, and that foreign domination can only give them the strong education they need. In

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speaking thus, they point, with a satisfied smile, to the point on the horizon from which the predestined invaders are already coming; they show the Anglo-Saxons of the United States of America. This name Anglo-Saxons seems to flatter the imagination of the inhabitants of the great transatlantic confederation; despite the increasingly equivocal right that the current population may have to claim it, let us begin by giving it to them for a moment, if only to facilitate the examination of the early days of the aggregation of which the English colonists form the core .

These Anglo-Saxons, these people of British origin, represent the furthest shade from both the blood of the aborigines and that of the African Negroes. It is not that we could not find in their essence some traces of Finnic affinities; but they are counterbalanced by the Germanic nature, in truth ossified, a little withered, stripped of its grandiose sides, yet still rigid and vigorous, which survives in their organism. They are therefore, for the pure or mixed representatives of the two great lower varieties of the species, irreconcilable antagonists. This is their situation on their own territory. With regard to the other independent countries of America, they make up a strong State in the face of dying States. The latter, instead of opposing the American Union, the lack of a somewhat compact ethnic organization, at least a certain experience of civilization, and the apparent or transitory energy of a despotic government, only possess anarchy to

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all degrees; and what anarchy, since it unites the disparate elements of Malay America with those of Romanized Europe!

The Anglo-Saxon core existing in the United States therefore has no difficulty in being recognized as the living element of the new continent. It is placed, vis-à-vis other populations, in this attitude of overwhelming superiority where all the branches of the Ariane family once were, Hindus, Chinese Kchattryas, Iranians, Sarmatians, Scandinavians, Germans, with regard to the mixed-race multitudes. . Although this last representative of the great race is greatly fallen, it nevertheless offers a rather curious picture of its feelings for the rest of humanity. The Anglo-Saxons behave like masters towards inferior nations or even only those foreign to their own, and it is not without utility to take advantage of this opportunity to study in detail what the contact of a strong group with a weak group. The distance of time and the obscurity of the annals have not always allowed us to grasp with the accuracy that is now offered to us the lineaments of this table.

The Anglo-Saxon remnants in North America form a group which does not doubt for a single moment its innate superiority over the rest of the human species, and the birthrights which this superiority confers upon it. Imbued with such principles, which are still instincts rather than notions, and dominated by needs much more demanding than those of the centuries when civilization existed only in the state

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aptitude, this group was not even willing, like the Germans, to share the land with the former possessors. These he stripped, he drove them from solitude to solitude; he bought from them by force and at a low price the land that they did not want to sell, and the miserable scrap of field that, by solemn and repeated treaties, he guaranteed to them, because it was nevertheless necessary that these wretches could set foot somewhere, he was quick to take it from them, impatient, no longer with their presence, but with their lives. His reasoning nature and friend of legal forms made him find a thousand subterfuges to reconcile the cry of equity with the even more imperious cry of boundless rapacity. He invented words, theories, declamations to exonerate his conduct. Perhaps he recognized, deep in the last withdrawal of his conscience, the impropriety of these sad excuses. He nonetheless persevered in exercising the right to invade everything, which is his first law, and the most clearly engraved in his heart.

Towards the Negroes he shows himself no less imperious than with the aborigines: the latter, he strips them to the bone; these he bends without hesitation down to the level of the ground that they work for him; and this way of acting is all the more remarkable because it is not in agreement with the principles of humanity professed by those who practice it. This inconsistency requires an explanation. At the point where it is pushed, it is brand new on earth. The Germans did not set an example; content with a portion of the land, they guaranteed the free use of 1513

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remains with their vanquished. They had too few needs to feel the urge to invade everything. They were too crude to conceive the thought of imposing on their subjects or on foreign nations the use of liquors or pernicious materials. This is a modern idea. What neither the Vandals, nor the Goths, nor the Franks, nor the first Saxons dreamed of doing, the civilizations of the ancient world, which, being more refined, were also more perverse, had however not thought about it further. It is not the Brahmin, it is not the magician who felt the need to make everything around them that was not associated with their thoughts disappear with perfect precision. Our civilization is the only one that has possessed this instinct and at the same time this homicidal power; she is the only one who, without anger, without irritation, and believing herself, on the contrary, to be excessively gentle and compassionate, by proclaiming the most unlimited leniency, works incessantly to surround herself with a horizon of tombs. The reason is that she only lives to find what is useful; that everything that does not serve her in her tendencies harms her, and that, logically, everything that harms is condemned in advance, and, when the moment arrives, destroyed.

The Anglo-Americans, convinced and faithful representatives of this mode of culture, acted in accordance with its laws. They are not reprehensible. It was without hypocrisy that they believed they had the right to join the concert of complaints raised by the 18th century against any kind of political constraint, against black slavery in particular. Parties and nations enjoy, like

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women, of the advantage of defying logic, of associating the most surprising intellectual and moral disparates, without lacking sincerity. The fellow citizens of Washington, in declaiming energetically for the emancipation of the Negro species, did not believe themselves obliged to set an example; like the Swiss, their theoretical emulators in the love of equality, who still know how to maintain the legislation of the Middle Ages against the Jews, they have treated the blacks attached to their soil with the utmost rigor, with the utmost contempt. More than one hero of their independence has given them the example of this instinctive disagreement between maxims and actions. Jefferson, in his relationships with his black slaves and the children who came from them, left memories which, on a small scale, do not bear a bad resemblance to the excesses of the first white Hamites.

The Anglo-Saxons of America are religious: this trait has remained fairly well imprinted on them by the noble part of their origin. However, they accept neither the terrors nor the despotism of the faith. Christians, we undoubtedly do not see them, like the ancient Scandinavians, dreaming of climbing the sky, nor fighting on an equal footing with the Divinity; but they discuss it freely, and, a truly typical feature, by always discussing it, again similar in this to their Aryan ancestors, they never deny it, and remain in this remarkable environment which, touching on superstition on the one hand, on the other the atheism of the other maintains itself with equal disgust, with equal horror, above these two abysses.

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Possessed with the thirst to reign, to command, to possess, to take and to always expand, the Anglo-Saxons of America were originally farmers and warriors; I say warriors, and not soldiers: their need for independence opposes this. This latter feeling was, at all times, the basis and motive of their political existence. They did not acquire it following their break with the mother country; they always owned it. What they gained from their revolution is considerable, since from that moment they found themselves, as regards their external action, absolute masters and free to use their forces as they pleased to expand indefinitely. But, as regards the essentials of their internal organization, no new germ has appeared. With or without the participation of the metropolis, the peoples of the present United States were so constituted as to develop in the communal direction in which we see them acting. Their elective and temporary magistracies, their jealous surveillance of the head of state, their taste for federative fragmentation, well recall the vicampatis of the primitive Hindus, the separation by tribes, the leagues of the related peoples, former dominators of northern Persia, of Germany, of the Saxon Heptarchy. It is not even the constitution of landed property that does not still have many features of the theory of the odel.

We therefore usually attach inconsiderate importance to the crisis in which Washington shone. Certainly it was a considerable evolution in the destiny of the group 1516

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Anglo-Saxon transplanted to America; it was a brilliant and at the same time strengthening phase; but to perceive there a birth, a founding of the nationality, is to harm both the glory of the companions of Penn or the gentlemen of Virginia, and the exact appreciation of the facts. Emancipation was only a necessary application of already existing principles, and the true climacteric year of the United States has not yet arrived.

This republican people demonstrates two sentiments which contrast completely with the natural tendencies of all democracies resulting from excess mixtures. It is first of all the taste for tradition, for what is ancient, and, to use a legal term, for precedents; a penchant so pronounced that, in the order of affections, it even defends the image of England against numerous causes of animosity. In America, institutions are being modified a lot and constantly; but there is, among the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, a marked repugnance to radical and sudden transformations. Many laws imported from the mother country, at the time when the country was a subject, have remained in force. Several even exude, in the midst of the modern emanations that surround them, a flavor of dilapidation which is combined in us with feudal memories. Secondly, the same Americans are much more concerned about social distinctions than they admit; only, everyone wants to possess them.

The name of citizen is no more popular among them than the chivalrous title of squire, and this concern 1517

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instinctive personal position, brought by settlers of the same stock as them in Canada, determined the same effects there. We read very clearly in the Montreal newspapers, on the advertisements page, that M***, grocer, gentleman, keeps such and such a commodity available to the public.

This is not an indifferent usage; it indicates among the democrats of the new world a disposition to enhance themselves which makes a complete contrast with the completely opposite tastes of the revolutionaries of the old. Among the latter, the tendency is, on the contrary, to descend as low as possible, in order to reduce the highest and least numerous ethnic essences to the level of the lowest, which, by their abundance, set the tone and direct everything.

The Anglo-Saxon group therefore does not perfectly represent what we mean, on this side of the Atlantic, by the word democracy. It is rather a general staff without troops. They are men suited to domination, who cannot exercise this faculty over their equals, but who would willingly make their inferiors feel it. They are, in this respect, in a situation analogous to that of the Germanic nations shortly before the 5th century. They are, in a word, aspirants to royalty, to nobility, armed with the intellectual means to legitimize their views. It remains to be seen whether the surrounding circumstances will be conducive to this.

Whatever it may be, today we want to face up and examine at our ease the feared man who is called a barbarian in the language of the degenerate peoples who call him a barbarian. 1518

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fear? Let us stand next to the Mexican, listen to him speak, and, following the direction of his frightened gaze, we will contemplate the Kentucky hunter. This is the last expression of German; This is the Frank, the Longobard of our days! The Mexican is right to describe him as a barbarian without heroism and without generosity; but it must undoubtedly not be without energy and without power.

Here, however, whatever the frightened populations say, the barbarian is more advanced in the useful branches of civilization than they themselves are. This situation is not without precedent. When the armies of Semitic Rome conquered the kingdoms of lower Asia, the Romans and the Hellenized people found themselves having drawn their mode of culture from the same sources. The people of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies believed themselves infinitely more refined and more admirable, because they had languished longer in corruption and because they were more artistic. The Romans, feeling more utilitarian, more positive, although less brilliant than their enemies, augured victory. They were right, and the event proved it.

The Anglo-Saxon group is authorized to see the same perspectives. Either by direct conquest or by social influence, the North Americans seem destined to spread like masters over the entire face of the new world. Who would stop them? Their own divisions perhaps, if they came to light too soon. Apart from this danger, they have no

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nothing to fear ; but it must also be admitted that it is not without seriousness. We have already noticed that, to obtain a clearer view of the degree of intensity to which the action of the people of the United States could achieve on the other groups of the new world, only race has been discussed. who founded the nation, and that, by a completely gratuitous supposition, I considered this race to be still preserved today in its special ethnic value and to persist there indefinitely. However, nothing could be more fictitious. The American Union represents, on the contrary, among the countries of the world the one which, since the beginning of the century, and especially in recent years, has seen the greatest mass of heterogeneous elements flock to its territory. This is a new aspect which can, if not change, at least seriously modify the conclusions presented above. Without doubt, the considerable alluvium of new principles brought by emigrations are not likely to create any inferiority for the Union visà-vis other American groups. These, mixed with the natives and the Negroes, are very resolutely depressed, and, however low the value of some of the contributions coming from Europe, the latter are still less tainted by degeneration than the background of the Mexican populations or Brazilians. There is therefore nothing, in the observations which follow, which invalidates what has been said previously about the moral preponderance of the States of northern America vis-à-vis other political bodies of the same continent; but

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with regard to the situation of the Republic of Washington vis-à-vis Europe, it is quite different. The Anglo-Saxon descendants of the former English settlers no longer make up the majority of the inhabitants of the region, and, provided that the movement which pushes the Irish and Germans, by the hundreds of thousands, onto American soil each year is still sustained. some time, before the end of the century, the national race will be partly extinct. Moreover, it is already greatly weakened by the mixtures. It will undoubtedly continue for some time to give the appearance of impulse; then this appearance will disappear, and the empire will be entirely in the hands of a mixed family, where the AngloSaxon element will only play a most subordinate role. I will notice incidentally that the bulk of the primitive variety is already moving away from the sea coast, and moving into the west, where the way of life is better suited to its activity and its adventurous courage. But what are the new arrivals? They represent the most varied samples of those races of old Europe from which there is the least to expect. They are the products of the trash of all times: Irish, Germans, so many times mixed race, a few French who are no less mixed, Italians who surpass them all. The union of all these degenerate types gives and will necessarily give rise to new ethnic disorders; there is nothing unexpected about these disorders, nothing new; they will not produce any combination that has not already occurred 1521

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or cannot be on our continent. Not a fertile element can emerge from it, and even the day when products resulting from indefinitely combined series between Germans, Irish, Italians, French and Anglo-Saxons will also come together, amalgamate in the South with the blood composed of Indian, Negro, Spanish and Portuguese essence which resides there, there is no way of imagining that from such horrible confusion there results anything other than the incoherent juxtaposition of the most more degraded. I am witnessing with interest, although with mediocre sympathy, I admit, the great movement that the utilitarian instincts are taking place in America. I do not ignore the power they display; but, all things considered, what unknown results? and what do they even present that is seriously original? Is there something happening there that is fundamentally foreign to European conceptions? Is there a determining reason there to which the hope of future triumphs for a young humanity which is yet to be born can be linked? Let us weigh the pros and cons carefully, and we will not doubt the inanity of such hopes. The United States of America is not the first commercial state in the world. Those who preceded him produced nothing resembling a regeneration of the race from which they came. Carthage cast a brilliance that will be difficult to match by New York. Carthage was rich, great in every way. The entire northern coast of Africa 1522

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development, and a vast part of the interior region, were under his control. It had been more favored at its birth than the colony of the Puritans of England, because those who had founded it were the scions of the purest families of Canaan. Everything that Tire and Sidon lost, Carthage inherited. And yet Carthage did not add the value of a grain to Semitic civilization, nor prevent its decadence for a day.

Constantinople was in turn a creation which seemed likely to erase in splendor the present, the past, and transform the future. Enjoying the most beautiful location on earth, surrounded by the most fertile and populous provinces of Constantine's empire, it seemed free, as one would imagine for the United States, from all the impediments that the The middle age of a country complains of having received from its childhood. Populated by scholars, full of masterpieces of all kinds, familiar with all the processes of industry, possessing immense factories and absorbing limitless trade with Europe, with Asia, with Africa, what rival ever did Constantinople have? For what corner of the world will heaven and men ever be able to do what was done for this majestic metropolis? And what price did she pay for so much care? She did nothing, she created nothing; none of the evils that the centuries had accumulated on the Roman universe she was able to cure; not a single remedial idea came from its population. There is no indication that the United States

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of America, more vulgarly populated than this noble city, and especially than Carthage, must show themselves more skilful. All the experience of the past comes together to prove that the amalgamation of already exhausted ethnic principles cannot provide a rejuvenated combination. It is already a lot to foresee, a lot to grant, to suppose in the republic of the new world a long enough cohesion for the conquest of the countries which surround it to remain possible. This great success, which would give them a certain right to compare themselves to Semitic Rome, is hardly even probable; but it is enough that it is so that it must be taken into account. As for the renewal of human society, as for the creation of a superior or at least different civilization, which, in the judgment of the masses concerned, always amounts to the same thing, these are phenomena which are only produced by the presence of 'a relatively pure and young breed. This condition does not exist in America. All the work of this country is limited to exaggerating certain aspects of European culture, and not always the most beautiful, to copying the rest as best it can, to ignoring more than one thing (1)[2 ] .

This people who call themselves young are the old people of Europe, less restrained by more complacent laws, not better inspired. In the long and sad journey which throws the emigrants to their new homeland, the air of the Ocean does not transform them. As they left, so they arrive. The simple transfer from one point to another does not regenerate more than half-exhausted races.

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1. ÿ (1) There is an exception to be made in favor of the European population of Chile. Most of it came from northern Spain, it mixed less with the aborigines; it is therefore very naturally superior to the inhabitants of neighboring republics, and its political state suffers from this. 2. ÿ (1) An observation by Pickering gives a curious clue to the crudeness of the genius of the Anglo-Saxons of America in matters of art. He assures that most of the popular songs, so few in number, that his compatriots have were borrowed by them from Negro slaves, for lack of anything better. (Pickering, p. 185.) There is a great connection between this fact and the imitation which the Kymris formerly made of the spiral designs invented by the Finns.

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GENERAL CONCLUSION.

Human history is like a huge canvas. The earth is the loom on which it is stretched. The assembled centuries are the tireless artisans. They are born only to immediately grab the shuttle and make it run along the frame; they only put it down to die. Thus, under these busy fingers, the large fabric grows in size.

The fabric does not have a single color; it is not composed of a single material. Far from the inspiration of the sober Pallas having decided the designs, the appearance rather recalls the method of the Kachemyr artists. The strangest variegations and the most bizarre windings are constantly complicated by the most unexpected whims, and it is only through diversity and richness that, contrary to all the laws of taste, this work, incomparable in grandeur, also becomes incomparable in beauty.

The two inferior varieties of our species, the black race, the yellow race, are the coarse ground, the cotton and the 1526

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wool, which the secondary families of the white race soften by mixing their silk with it, while the Arian group, circulating its thinner threads through the ennobled generations, applies to their surface, in a dazzling masterpiece, its arabesques silver and gold.

This is how history is one, and so many of the anomalies it presents can find their explanation and fall within common rules, if the eye and the thought, ceasing to concentrate with unreflective obstinacy on isolated points, agree to embrace the whole, to collect similar facts, to bring them together, to compare them, and to draw a rigorous conclusion from the better studied and therefore better understood causes of their fundamental identity; but the mind of man is by its nature so feeble that when approaching the sciences, his first instinct is to simplify them, which usually means mutilating them, diminishing them, ridding them of everything that hinders them. and disconcerts his weakness, and, when he has succeeded in disfiguring them for eyes which would be more clairvoyant than his own, it is at this moment alone that he finds them beautiful, because they have become easy, however, stripped of part of their treasures, they could only yield remains too often deprived of life. He barely notices it.

History is not a science differently constituted than the others. It is composed of a thousand apparently heterogeneous elements, which, under multiplied intertwining, hide or disguise a root plunging to great depths. Pruning out what clouds the view is

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perhaps bring out a little more clarity on the debris that we have preserved; but it also inevitably alters the measure and hence the relative importance of the parts, and makes it impossible ever to penetrate the real meaning of the whole.

To obviate this evil which strikes all knowledge of sterility, we must resolve to renounce such means, and to accept the task with its native difficulties. If, fully resolved to do so, we first limit ourselves to seeking without omitting anything the main sources of the subject, we will discover with certainty that there are three from which emerge the phenomena most worthy of attracting attention. attention. The first of these sources is the activity of man taken in isolation; the second is the establishment of political centers; the third, the most influential, the one which vivifies the other two, is the manifestation of a given mode of social existence. If we now add to these three sources of movement and transformation the fact of the mutual penetration of societies, the general contours of the work will be traced. History with its causes, with its motives, with its main results, will be enclosed in a vast circle, and we will be able to approach the details of the most minute analysis without fear of having prepared ourselves, by an indiscreet dissection, the inevitable crop of errors that results from other ways of proceeding.

Man's activity, taken in isolation, is expressed through the inventions of intelligence and the play of passions. Observation of this work and the dramatic results it 1528

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brings exclusively the attention of common thinkers. These only apply themselves to seeing the creature agitated, yielding or resisting its inclinations, directing them wisely or falling swallowed up in their fiery torrents. Nothing moving, undoubtedly, like the vicissitudes of such a struggle between man and himself. In the two alternatives posed before his steps, who could doubt that he would act as a master? The God who contemplates him, and will judge him according to the moral good he has done, the moral evil he has repelled, in no way according to the measure of genius he has received, weighs down his freedom on him, and the spectator of his hesitations, comparing the acts he observes with the code opened in his hands by religion or philosophy, only gets lost in the interest he takes in them when he assumes in them an extent of action that the efforts of isolated man cannot usurp.

These efforts only ever operate within a narrowly limited sphere. Let us imagine the most powerful of men, the most enlightened, the most energetic: the length of his arm always remains a small thing. Bring forth the highest thoughts imaginable from Caesar's brain; they cannot encompass the entire circumference of the globe in their flight. Their works, limited to certain places, reach at most only a restricted number of objects; they can only affect, for a given time, the organization of one or at most a few political centers. In the eyes of contemporaries, this is a lot; but for history it most often only results

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imperceptible effects. Imperceptible, I say; because, even during the lifetime of their authors, we see most of them disappear, and the following generation searches in vain for traces. Let us consider the largest spheres that were ever abandoned to the will of an illustrious prince, whether the immense conquests of the Macedonian, or the superb states of this Spanish monarch where the sun never set. What did Alexander's will do? What did that of Charles V create? Without enumerating the causes independent of their genius which united so many scepters in the hands of these great men, and allowed the least favored of the two to pick up more than he snatched, the essential part of their role consisted ultimately to be only the docile leaders or abandoned contradictors of these multitudes who are supposed to be subject to their empire. Carried away by an impulse that they did not give, their greatest success was to have followed it; and, when the latter of the two, armed with all his glory, claimed in his turn to guide the torrent, the torrent which carried him swelled against his defenses, grew against his threats, collapsed all his dikes, and, continuing its course, overthrew him in his shame, and too well convinced of his weakness, on the dark square of Saint-Just.

It is not great men who believe themselves to be omnipotent; it is too easy for them to measure what they do against what they would like to do. They know well, those whose size exceeds the common level, that the action permitted to their authority has never reached in its greatest expansion 1530

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the extent of a continent; that, in their very palace, people do not live as they wish; that, if their intervention delays or hastens the pace of events, it is in the same way that a child thwarts the stream which he cannot prevent from flowing. The best part of their stories is made not of invention, but of understanding. There ends the historical power of man acting in the most favorable conditions of development. It does not constitute a cause, nor is it a term, it is sometimes a transitory means; most often we can only consider it as an embellishment. But, such as it is, it must nevertheless recognize the supreme merit of calling upon the progress of humanity this general sympathy which the picture of purely impersonal evolutions would never have aroused. The different schools have attributed to him an omnipotent influence, while grossly ignoring his real incapacity. However, until now it has been the sole motive of this irrational attraction which has led men to collect the relics of the past.

We have just seen that the immediate limit before which it stops is provided by the resistance of the political center within which it moves. A political center, a collective meeting of human wills, would therefore have a will in itself; undoubtedly this is so. A political center, in other words a people, has its passions and its intelligence. Despite the multiplicity of heads that form it, it has a mixed individuality, resulting from the bringing together of all the notions, of all the

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trends, of all the ideas, that the mass suggests to him. Sometimes it is the average, sometimes the exaggeration; sometimes he speaks like the minority, sometimes the majority leads him along, or else it is a morbid inspiration which was not expected and is admitted by no one. In short, a people, taken collectively, is, in many functions, a being as real as if we saw it condensed into a single body. The authority at his disposal is more intense, more sustained, and at the same time less certain and less lasting, because it is rather instinctive than voluntary, because it is rather negative than affirmative, and because, in all cases , it is less direct than that of isolated individuals. A people is exposed to changing its aims ten times or more in the interval of a century, and this is what explains false decadence and false regenerations. In an interval of a few years, it shows itself capable of conquering its neighbors, then of being conquered by them; loving its laws and being subject to them, then breathing only revolt only to aspire a few hours later to servitude. But, in discomfort, boredom or misfortune, we hear him constantly accusing his rulers of what he suffers; clear proof that he has the feeling of an organic weakness which resides in him, and which comes from the imperfection of his personality.

A people always needs a man who understands their will, summarizes it, explains it, and leads them where they need to go. If man errs, the people resist, and then rise up to follow the one who is not mistaken. It's the brand 1532

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obvious of the need for a constant exchange between the collective will and the individual will. For there to be a positive result, these two wills must unite; separated, they are infertile. Hence it is that monarchy is the only rational form of government. But we easily see that the prince and the nation united never do anything other than highlight aptitudes or capacities, never do anything other than ward off harmful influences coming from a domain external to both. . In many cases where a leader sees the path his world would like to take, it is not his fault that this world lacks the necessary strength to accomplish the indispensable task; and in the same way a people, a multitude cannot give itself the understandings that it does not have and that it should have, to avoid catastrophes towards which it runs while conceiving them, while fearing them, while moaning. However, the most terrible misfortune has fallen on a nation. The improvidence, or the madness, or the impotence of its guides, conjured with its own wrongs, bring about its ruin. It falls under the saber of a stronger one, it is invaded, annexed to other States. Its borders are fading, and its torn standards will triumphantly enlarge with their tatters the standards of the victor. Does his destiny end there? According to the annalists, the assertion is not in doubt. Any subjugated people no longer counts, and, if these are remote and somewhat dark times, the pen of 1533

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the writer does not even hesitate to remove him from the number of the living, and to declare him materially extinct. But if, with just disdain for such a superficial conclusion, we set out in search of reality, we will find that a nation, politically abolished, continues to exist without any other modification than to bear a new name; that it retains its own appearance, its spirit, its faculties, and that it influences, in a manner consistent with its ancient nature, on the populations to which it is united. It is therefore not the politically aggregative form which gives intellectual life to multitudes, which makes them a will, which inspires them with a way of being. They have all this without having their own borders. These gifts result from a supreme impulse that they receive from a realm higher than themselves. Here these unexplored regions open up where the horizon expanded to an incomparable extent no longer reveals to view only the limited territory of such a kingdom or such republics, nor the narrow fluctuations of the populations which inhabit them, but displays all the perspectives of the society which contains them, with the great cogs and powerful motives of the civilization which animates them. The birth, the developments, the eclipse of a society and its civilization constitute phenomena which transport the observer well above the horizons that historians usually show him. They bear, in their initial causes, no imprint of human passions or popular determinations, materials too fragile to

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take its place in such a long-lasting work. Only the different modes of intelligence assigned to different races and their combinations are recognized. Yet we only perceive them in their most essential parts, the most free from the authority of free will, the most native, the most rarefied, in a word, the most fatal, those that man or the nation cannot can neither give nor withdraw, and the use of which they cannot prohibit or command themselves. Thus there are deployed, above any transitory and voluntary action emanating either from the individual or from the multitude, generating principles which produce their effects with an independence and an impassibility that nothing can disturb. From the free, absolutely free sphere, where they combine and operate, the caprice of man or of a nation cannot bring about any fortuitous result. It is, in the order of immaterial things, a sovereign environment where active forces move, invigorating principles in perpetual communication with the individual as well as with the mass, whose respective intelligences, containing some particles identical to the nature of these forces are thus prepared and eternally disposed to receive the impulse.

These active forces, these vivifying principles, or, if we want to conceive them under a concrete idea, this soul, which has remained unnoticed and anonymous until now, must be placed among the cosmic agents of the first degree. It fulfills, within the intangible world, jobs similar to those that electricity and magnetism carry out.

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on other points of creation, and, like these two influences, it allows itself to be observed by its functions, or more precisely, by some of its functions, but not to grasp, describe and appreciate, in itself, in its own and abstract nature, in its totality.

Nothing proves that it is an emanation of man and political bodies. She apparently lives through them, she certainly lives for them. The measure of vigor and health of civilizations is also the measure of its vigor and health; but, if we observe that it is at the very time when civilizations are disappearing that it often reaches its highest degree of expansion and strength in certain individuals and in certain nations, we will be led to conclude that it can be compared to a breathable atmosphere which, in the plane of creation, only has reason to exist as long as the society it envelops and animates must live; that it is, fundamentally, foreign to it as well as external, and that it is its rarefaction which brings the death of this society despite the supply of air that it could still have, and whose source is however dried up.

The appreciable manifestations of this great soul start from the double base that I have elsewhere called masculine and feminine. We remember, moreover, that I only had in mind, in the choice of these denominations, a subjective attitude, on the one hand, and, on the other, an objective faculty, without correlation to any idea of supremacy of one of these homes over the other. It spreads from there, in two currents of different qualities, down to the smallest fractions, 1536

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down to the last molecules of the social agglomeration that its incessant circulation directs, and these are the two poles towards which they gravitate and from which they move away in turn.

The existence of a society, being, in the first instance, an effect which it does not depend on man to produce or prevent, does not entail for him any result for which he is responsible. It therefore does not contain morality. A society is, in itself, neither virtuous nor vicious; she is neither wise nor foolish; she is. It is not from the action of a man, it is not from the determination of a people that the event which founds it emerges. The environment through which it passes to arrive at positive existence must be rich in the necessary ethnic elements, absolutely like certain bodies, to use another comparison which is constantly represented in the mind, absorb easily and abundantly the electrical agent , and are good at dispersing it, while others have difficulty letting it penetrate them, and have even more difficulty making it radiate around them. It is not the will of a monarch or his subjects that modifies the essence of a society; it is, by virtue of the same laws, a subsequent ethnic mixture. A society finally envelops its nations as the sky envelops the earth, and this sky, which the exhalations of the marshes or the jets of flame from the volcano do not reach, is still, in its serenity, the perfect image of the societies that their content cannot affect his tremors, while

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that irresistibly, although in an insensitive way, they soften it to all their influences. They impose their ways of existence on populations. They circumscribe them between limits from which these blind slaves do not even feel the desire to escape, and would not have the power to do so. They dictate to them the elements of their laws, they inspire their wills, they designate their loves, they stir up their hatreds, they direct their contempt. Always subject to ethnic action, they produce local glories by this immediate means; by the same way they implant the germ of national misfortunes, then, as it happens, they lead victors and vanquished down the same slope, which only a new ethnic action can prevent them themselves from going down indefinitely.

If they hold the members of peoples with so much energy, they no less govern individuals. By leaving them, and without any reservation, this point is of all importance, the merits of a morality whose forms they nevertheless regulate, they manipulate, they knead in some way their brains at the moment of birth, and, indicating to them certain ways, close off others from which they do not even allow them to see the exits.

Therefore, before writing the history of a distinct country and pretending to explain the problems with which such a task is sown, it is essential to probe, to scrutinize, to know well the sources and the nature of the society of which this country is only a fraction. It is necessary to study the elements of which it 1538

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is composed, the modifications it has undergone, the causes of these modifications, the ethnic state obtained by the series of mixtures admitted into its bosom. Or will thus establish itself on positive soil containing the roots of the subject. We will see them grow, bear fruit and bear seed by themselves. As ethnic combinations are never spread in equal doses over all the geographical points included in the territory of a society, it will be necessary to further particularize its research and to control its discoveries more strictly as we get closer to its object. All the efforts of the mind, all the aid of memory, all the suspicious perspicacity of judgment are necessary here. Punishment upon punishment, nothing is too much. It is a question of bringing history into the family of natural sciences, of giving it, by basing it only on facts borrowed from all orders of notions capable of providing them, all the precision of this class of knowledge, finally to remove it from the interested jurisdiction whose political factions impose it arbitrarily until today.

To make the muse of the past leave the doubtful and oblique paths to lead her chariot along a broad and straight path, explored in advance and marked out by known stations, is to take nothing away from the majesty of her attitude, and that is much to add to the authority of his advice. Certainly she will no longer come, with childish moans, to accuse Darius of having caused the loss of Asia, nor Perseus the humiliation of Greece; but we won't see her

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no longer madly salute, in other catastrophes, the effects of the genius of the Gracchi, nor the oratorical omnipotence of the Girondins. Disaccustomed to these miseries, it will proclaim that the irreconcilable causes of such events, hovering high above the participation of men, are of no interest to party polemics. She will say what combination of invincible motives gives rise to them, without anyone regarding them having any blame to receive or praise to ask for. It will distinguish what science can only observe from what justice must grasp.

From his superb throne will therefore fall final judgments and salutary lessons for good consciences. Whether we like or disapprove of a particular evolution of a nationality, its judgments, by reducing the part that man can take in moving a few dates, in irritating or softening inevitable wounds, will make the free arbiter of each person severely responsible for the value of all acts. For the bad guy, no more of these vain excuses, of these artificial necessities with which we today claim to ennoble crimes that are all too real. No more forgiveness for atrocities; so-called services will not exonerate them.

History will tear away all the masks provided by sophistic theories; She will arm herself, to brand the guilty, with the anathemas of religion. The rebel will no longer be before his tribunal than an impatient and harmful ambitious man: Timoleon, only an assassin; Robespierre, a filthy scoundrel.

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To give the annals of humanity this breath, these appearances and this unusual scope, it is time to change the way in which we compose them, by entering courageously into the mines of truth that so many laborious efforts have just opened. Poorly reasoned mistrust would not excuse hesitation. The first calculators who glimpsed algebra, frightened by the depths whose openings it revealed to them, attributed to it supernatural virtues and the most rigorous of sciences formed the envelope of the wildest imaginations. This vision made mathematics suspect to sensible minds for a time; then serious study pierced the bark and took the fruit. The first physicists who noticed the fossil bones and marine debris washed up on the mountain peaks did not fail to indulge in the most repugnant ramblings. Their successors, rejecting dreams, made geology the genesis of the exposition of the three kingdoms. It is no longer permitted to discuss what she asserts. It is with ethnology as with algebra and the science of Cuvier and Beaumont.

Enslaved by some to the complicity of the stupidest philanthropic fantasies, it is rejected by others, who confuse in the injustice of the same contempt the charlatan, and his drug, and the precious aromatic which he a Without doubt, ethnology is young. However, she is past the age of the first stutters. It is advanced enough to have a sufficient number of demonstrations 1541

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solid on which we can build in complete safety. Every day brings richer contributions to it. Between the various branches of knowledge which compete to provide it, the emulation is so productive that it is hardly possible to collect and classify the discoveries with the same rapidity as they accumulate. Would to heaven that his progress were only hampered by this type of obstacle! But she encounters worse ones. We still refuse to clearly appreciate its true nature, and consequently we do not treat it regularly using the only methods that suit it. It is to strike it with sterility to base it with predilection on an isolated science, and mainly on physiology. This domain is open to him, without a doubt; but, for the materials it borrows from it to acquire the necessary degree of authenticity and take on its special character, it is almost always essential that it subject them to the control of testimonies from elsewhere, and that comparative study languages, archaeology, numismatics, tradition or written history, have guaranteed their value, either directly or by induction, a priori or a posteriori. Secondly, a fact cannot pass from one science to another without presenting itself in a new light, the nature of which must still be noted before being entitled to take advantage of it; therefore ethnology can only consider as incontestably entering its domain those physiological or other documents which have undergone this

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last event of which it alone has the direction and the criteria. As it does not only have matter as its object, and as it embraces at the same time the manifestations of the most intellectual species, it is not permitted to confine it for a single minute in a foreign sphere and especially in the physical sphere, without losing it in the middle of gaps that the most daring and vain hypotheses will never succeed in filling. In reality, it is none other than the root and the very life of history.

It is artificially, arbitrarily, and to the great detriment of the latter that we manage to separate it from it. Let us therefore maintain it on all grounds where history has the right to strike its tithe.

Let us not distract it too much from positive work, by asking it questions about which it is not very certain that the spirit of man has the power to pierce the darkness. The problem of unity or multiplicity of primitive types is of this number. This research has so far given little satisfaction to those who have been absorbed in it. It is so devoid of elements of solution that it seems intended rather to amuse the mind than to enlighten judgment, and it should hardly be considered scientific. Rather than getting lost with her in dead-end daydreams, it is better, until further notice, to keep her away from all serious work, or at least only give her a very subordinate place there. What is only important to note is to what extent the varieties are organic and the extent of the line that separates them. If

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any causes can bring the different types into confusion, if, for example, by changing food and climate, a white person can become a Negro, and a Negro a Mongolian, the entire species, whether it comes from several million completely dissimilar fathers, must be declared unitary without hesitation, it has the main and truly practical feature. But if, on the contrary, the varieties are confined in their present constitution, in such a way that they are incapable of losing their distinctive characters other than by hymns contracted outside their spheres, and if no external or internal influence is capable to transform them in their essential parts; if finally they possess in a permanent manner, and this point is no longer in doubt, their physical and moral particularities, let us cut short frivolous ramblings, and proclaim the result, the rigorous and only useful consequence: even if they were born from a a single couple, the human varieties, eternally distinct, live under the law of the multiplicity of types, and their primordial unity cannot and does not exercise the most imponderable consequence on their destinies. Thus, to satisfy with dignity the pressing needs of a science which has reached its virility, one must know how to limit oneself and direct one's research towards affordable goals while repudiating the rest. And now, placing ourselves at the center of the true domain of true history, of serious and not fantastical history, of history made up of facts, and not of illusions or opinions, let us examine, for the last

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times, in large masses, not what we believe we can be, but what with certain knowledge our eyes see, our ears hear, our hands touch.

At a very primordial period in the life of the entire species, an era which precedes the stories of the most distant annals, we discover, by placing ourselves in imagination on the plateaus of the Altai, three masses of immense, moving peoples, each composed of different shades, formed, in the regions extending west around the mountain, by the white race; to the northeast, by the yellow hordes arriving from American lands; to the south, by the black tribes having their main home in the distant regions of Africa. The white variety, perhaps less numerous than its two sisters, moreover endowed with a combative activity which it turns against itself and which weakens it, sparks with superiorities of all kinds. Driven by the desperate and accumulated efforts of the dwarves, this noble race is shaken, overflows its territories towards the south, and its vanguard tribes fall into the middle of the Melanian multitudes, burst into debris, and begin to mingle to the elements circulating around them. These elements are crude, unpleasant, fleeting; but the ductility of the element which approaches them manages to grasp them. It communicates to them, wherever it reaches them, something of its qualities, or at least strips them of part of their faults; above all it gives them the new power to coagulate, and soon, instead of a series of families, of uncultured and enemy tribes which disputed the soil without

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to take no advantage, a mixed race spreads from the Bactrian countries over Gedrosia, the Gulfs of Persia and Arabia, well beyond the Nubian lakes, penetrates to unknown latitudes towards the central regions of the continent of Africa, runs along the northern coast beyond the Syrtes, beyond Calpé, and, over this entire expanse, the Melanian variety variously affected, here completely absorbed, there absorbing in turn, but above all modifying the white essence to infinity and being modified by she loses her purity and some traits of her primitive characters. Hence certain social aptitudes which are manifested today in the most remote parts of the African world: these are only the distant results of an ancient alliance with the white race. These abilities are weak, inconsistent, indecisive, just as the link itself has become, so to speak, imperceptible.

During these first invasions, while these first generations of mulattoes were developing on the African side, a similar work was taking place across the Hindu peninsula, and was complicated beyond the Ganges, and even more so, the Brahmaputra, passing from the black tribes to the yellow hordes, who have already reached, more or less pure, even in these regions. Indeed, the Finns had multiplied on the beaches of the China Sea even before being able to determine any serious movement of white nations into the interior of the continent. They had found it easier to embrace, to penetrate the other inferior race. They had mingled with her as best they could.

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The Malay variety had then begun to emerge from this union, everything was happening neither without effort nor without violence. The first mixed-race products first filled the central provinces of the Celestial Empire. Over time, they were formed step by step throughout eastern Asia, in the islands of Japan, in the archipelagos of the Indian Sea; they touched the east of Africa, they enveloped all the islands of Polynesia, and, placed in this way opposite American lands, in the north as in the south, on the Kuriles as on Easter Island, they returned fortuitously, in small, few bands, and landing at the most diverse points, in these almost deserted regions where only the sparse descendants of a few stragglers detached from the rearguard of the yellow multitudes, to whom, a mixed race that they were, these Malays owed in part their birth, their physical appearance and their moral aptitudes.

On the west side, and stretching indefinitely towards Europe, no Melanian peoples, but the most forced, the most inevitable contact between the Finns and the whites. While in the south, the latter, happy fugitives, forced everything to bend under their empire and allied themselves as masters with the indigenous populations, in the north, on the contrary, they began the marriage as oppressed. It is doubtful that the Negroes, masters of choice, would have greatly envied their physical alliance; it is not so that the yellows ardently desired it. Subject to the direct influence of the Finnic invasion, the Celts, and especially the Slavs, who were

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distinguished with difficulty, were assailed, tormented, then forced to transport their stay to Europe, by gradual movements. So, willingly or unwillingly, they began early to ally themselves with the little men who came from America; and, when their subsequent wanderings made them encounter new establishments of the same creatures in different Western countries, they had all the less reason to be reluctant to their alliance.

If the entire white species had been expelled from its primitive domains in Central Asia, the bulk of the yellow peoples would have had nothing to do but take their place in the abandoned domains. the Finn would have erected his wigwam of branches on the ruins of the ancient monuments, and, acting according to his nature, he would have sat there, numb, asleep, and the world would have heard no more of his inert masses. But the white species had not deserted the original homeland en masse. Broken under the terrible shock of the Finnish masses, it had, in truth, taken the bulk of its people in different directions; but quite a few of its nations had nevertheless remained which, by incorporating over time into several, most of the yellow tribes, communicated to them an activity, an intelligence, a physical strength, a degree of social aptitude quite fact foreign to their native essence, and thereby made them capable of continuing indefinitely to pour into the surrounding regions, even in spite of fairly strong resistance, the abundance of their ethnic elements.

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In the midst of these general transformations which affect all pure races, and as a necessary result of these alloys, the ancient culture of the white family disappears, and four mixed civilizations replace it: the Assyrian, the Hindu, the Egyptian. , the Chinese ; a fifth is preparing its not-so-distant advent, the Greek, and we are already entitled to affirm that all the principles which will possess the social multitudes in the future have been found, because the subsequent societies adding nothing to them, neither have only ever presented new combinations.

The most obvious action of these civilizations, their most remarkable, most positive result, is none other than having continued without ever slowing down the work of ethnic amalgamation. As they expand, they encompass nations, tribes, families previously isolated, and, without ever being able to appropriate them all to the forms, to the ideas from which they themselves live, they nevertheless succeed in making them lose the character of its own individuality.

In what we could call a second age, in the period of mixtures, the Assyrians ascended to the limits of Thrace, populated the islands of the Archipelago, established themselves in lower Egypt, fortified themselves in Arabia, insinuated among the Nubians. The people of Egypt spread into central Africa, pushed their establishments into the south and west, branched out into the Hejaz, into the Sinai peninsula. The Hindus dispute the ground with the Arab Hymyarites, land in Ceylon, colonize Java, Bali, continue to mingle with the Malays across the Ganges. THE

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Chinese marry people from Korea, Japan; they reach the Philippines, while the black and yellow mixed race, trained throughout Polynesia and faintly impressed by the civilizations they see, circulate from Madagascar to America what little they can understand.

As for the populations relegated to the Western world, as for the whites of Europe, the Iberians, the Rasenians, the Illyrians, the Celts, the Slavs, they are already affected by Finnic alloys. They continue to assimilate the yellow tribes spread around their establishments; then, among themselves, they marry again, and again to the Hellenes, halfbreeds, who flocked to their coasts from all sides.

Thus mixing, mixing everywhere, always mixing, this is the clearest, most assured, most lasting work of great societies and powerful civilizations, the one which, without doubt, survives them; and the more the former have territorial extent and the latter the conquering genius, the further the ethnic waves that they raise will seize other primitively foreign waves, which also alters their nature and their own.

But for this great movement of general fusion to embrace even the last races of the globe and not leave a single one intact, it is not enough for a civilizing environment to deploy all the energy with which it is endowed; it is still necessary that in the different regions of the world these ethnic workshops are established in such a way as to act on the spot, 1550

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without which the general work would necessarily remain incomplete. The negative force of distances would paralyze the expansion of the most active groups. China and Europe exert only a weak influence on each other, although the Slavic world serves as an intermediary. India never had a strong influence on Africa, nor Assyria on North Asia; and, in the event that societies had forever retained the same centers, Europe could never have been directly and sufficiently grasped, nor completely drawn into the whirlwind. It was so because the elements for creating a civilization capable of serving general action had been spread in advance on its soil.

With the Celtic and Slavic races, it in fact possessed, from the earliest ages, two amalgamating currents which allowed it to enter, at the necessary moment, into the great whole.

Under their influence, she had seen the yellow essence and white purity disappear in complete immersion. With the highly Semitic intermediary of the Hellenes, then with the Roman colonizations, it gradually acquired the means to associate its masses with the Asian compartment closest to its shores. This, in turn, received the repercussions of this development; because, while the groups of Europe were tinged with an oriental nuance in Spain, in southern France, in Italy, in Illyria, those of the East and Africa took something of the Roman West on the Propontis, in Anatolia, in Arabia, in Egypt. This rapprochement made, the effort of

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Slavs and Celts, combined with Hellenic action, had produced all its effects; he could not go beyond; he had no way of going beyond new geographical limits; the civilization of Rome, the sixth in the order of time, which was intended to bring together the ethnic principles of the Western world, did not have the strength to do anything alone after the 3rd century AD.

To henceforth enlarge the enclosure where so many multitudes were already combining, the intervention of an ethnic agent of considerable power was necessary, an agent which resulted from a new hymen of the best human variety with the races already civilized. In a word, an infusion of Arians was necessary in the social center best placed to operate on the rest of the world, without which sporadic existences of all degrees, still spread over the earth, would continue indefinitely without encountering any more waters of 'amalgamation.

The Germans appeared in the middle of Roman society. At the same time, they occupied the extreme northwest of Europe, which gradually became the pivot of their operations. Successive marriages with the Celts and the Slavs, with the GalloRoman populations, multiplied the force of expansion of the new arrivals, without too quickly degrading their natural instinct for initiative. Modern society was born; she devoted herself, without stopping, to perfecting on all sides, to pushing forward the aggregative work of her predecessors. We saw her, almost in our own day, discovering America, uniting with the races there

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natives or pushing them towards nothingness, we see it forcing the Slavs back into the last tribes of Central Asia, by the impulse it gives to Russia; we see it falling among the Hindus, the Chinese, knocking at the doors of Japan; ally ourselves, all around the African coasts, with the natives of this great continent; in short, increase on its own lands and extend throughout the globe, in an indescribable proportion, the principles of ethnic confusion whose application it now directs.

The Germanic race was equipped with all the energy of the Ariane variety. This was necessary so that she could fulfill the role to which she was called. After her, the white species no longer had anything powerful or active to give: everything in its bosom was almost equally soiled, exhausted, lost. It was essential that the last workers sent into the field did not leave anything too difficult to finish; because no one existed anymore, apart from them, who was capable of taking charge of it. They took it for granted. They completed the discovery of the globe; they took possession of it through knowledge before spreading their mongrels there; they went around it in all directions. No corner escaped them, and now that it is only a question of pouring the last drops of Ariane essence into the diverse populations, which have become accessible from all sides, time will sufficiently serve this work which will continue. -itself, and which does not need an additional new impulse to improve itself.

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Faced with this fact, we can explain, not why there are no pure Arians, but the uselessness of their presence. Since their general vocation was to produce the connections and the confusion of types by uniting them to each other, despite the distances, they have nothing more to do from now on, this confusion having been accomplished as to the principal, and all the arrangements having been made for the accessory. This then is the existence of the most beautiful human variety, of the entire white species, of the magnificent faculties concentrated in both, that the creation, development and death of societies and their civilizations , the marvelous result of the play of these faculties, reveal a great point which is like the height, like the summit, like the supreme goal of history.

All this is born to bring the varieties together, develops, shines, is enriched to accelerate their fusion, and dies when the ruling ethnic principle is completely melted into the heterogeneous elements that it unites, and consequently when its local task is sufficiently accomplished. . Furthermore, the white principle, and especially the Arian principle, scattered across the face of the globe, is confined there in such a way that the societies and civilizations that it animates ultimately leave no land, and, consequently, no group outside. of its aggregative action. The life of humanity thus takes on an overall meaning which fits absolutely into the order of cosmic manifestations. I said that it was comparable to a vast canvas made up of different textile materials, and displaying the most differently contoured and variegated designs; it is still a chain of

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mountains raised into several summits which are the civilizations, and the geological composition of these summits is represented by the various alloys to which the multiple combinations of the three great primordial divisions of the species and their secondary nuances have given rise. This is the dominant result of human labor. Everything that serves civilization attracts the action of society; everything that attracts it extends it, everything that extends it carries it geographically further, and the final end of this march is the accession or suppression of a few more blacks or a few more Finns in the heart of the masses. already amalgamated. Let us state as an axiom that the definitive goal of the fatigue and suffering, of the pleasures and triumphs of our species, is to one day arrive at supreme unity. This acquired point will tell us what we still need to know.

The white species, considered abstractly, has now disappeared from the face of the world. After having passed the age of the gods, where she was absolutely pure; the age of heroes, where mixtures were moderate in strength and number; the age of the nobility, where faculties, still great, were no longer renewed by dried up sources, it moved more or less quickly, depending on the place, towards the definitive confusion of all its principles, as a result of its heterogeneous hymens. Therefore, it is now only represented by hybrids; those who occupy the territories of the first mixed societies naturally had the time and opportunities to deteriorate the most. For the masses who in Western Europe and in

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North America, currently represent the last possible form of culture, they still offer quite beautiful semblances of strength, and are in fact less fallen than the inhabitants of Campania, Susiana and Iemen. However, this relative superiority constantly tends to disappear; the part of Arian blood, already subdivided so many times, which still exists in our countries, and which alone supports the edifice of our society, is moving every day towards the extreme terms of its absorption.

This result obtained will open the era of unity. The white principle, held in check in each man in particular, will be there vis-à-vis the other two in the ratio of 1 to 2, a sad proportion which, in all cases, would be enough to paralyze its action in an almost complete, but which appears even more deplorable when we reflect that this state of fusion, far from being the result of the direct marriage of the three great types taken in their pure state, will only be the caput mortuum of an infinite series of mixtures, and consequently of wilting; the last term of mediocrity in all genres: mediocrity of physical strength, mediocrity of beauty, mediocrity of intellectual abilities, one can almost say nothing. This sad inheritance, each will own an equal portion; no reason exists for one man to have a richer lot than another; and, as in these Polynesian islands where the Malay half-breeds, confined for centuries, share equally a type of which no infusion of new blood has ever disturbed the first composition, the men will all resemble each other. Their size,

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their features, their bodily habits, will be similar. They will have the same dose of physical forces, similar directions in the instincts, similar measures in the faculties, and this general level, once again, will be of the most revolting humility.

The nations, no, the human herds, overwhelmed by a dreary drowsiness, will henceforth live numb in their nothingness, like the buffalo ruminating in the stagnant puddles of the Pontine marshes. Perhaps they will consider themselves the wisest, most learned and most skillful of beings who ever were; ourselves, when we contemplate these great monuments of Egypt and India, which we would be so incapable of imitating, are we not convinced that our very impotence proves our superiority? Our shameful descendants will have no difficulty in finding some similar argument in the name of which they will dispense their pity to us and be honored by their barbarity. This, they will say, pointing with a disdainful gesture to the tottering ruins of our last buildings, this was the senseless use of the forces of our ancestors. What to do with these useless follies. They will, in fact, be useless to them; for vigorous nature will have reconquered the universal domination of the earth, and the human creature will no longer be a master before it, but only a guest, like the inhabitants of forests and w This miserable state will not last long either; because a side effect of indefinite mixtures is to reduce populations to increasingly minimal numbers. 1557

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When we look back at ancient times, we realize that the earth was then covered by our species much differently than it is today. China has never had fewer inhabitants than at present; Central Asia was an anthill, and we no longer meet anyone there. Scythia, according to Herodotus, was full of nations, and Russia is a desert. Germany is well supplied with men; but it was no less so in the 2nd, 4th and 5th centuries AD, when it threw, without exhaustion, oceans of warriors, followed by their wives and children, upon the Roman world. France and England do not seem empty or uncultivated to us; but Gaul and Great Britain were not more so at the time of the Kymric emigrations. Spain and Italy no longer have a quarter of the men who covered them in antiquity. Greece, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, were overflowing with people, the cities crowded there as numerous as ears of corn in a field; they are mortuary solitudes, and India, although still populous, is in this respect only a shadow of itself. West Africa, this land which nourished Europe and where so many metropolises displayed their splendors, now only has the sparse tents of a few nomads and the moribund towns of a small number of merchants. The other parts of this continent languish in the same way wherever Europeans and Muslims have brought what they call, some progress, others faith, and there is only the interior, where no one has almost penetrated, which still retains a nucleus

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very compact. But it's not going to last. As for America, Europe is shedding what blood it has; she becomes poorer if the other becomes richer. Thus, at the same time as humanity degrades, it fades away.

We cannot claim to rigorously calculate the number of centuries that still separate us from the certain conclusion. However, it is not impossible to glimpse something more or less. The Ariane family, and even more so, the rest of the white family, had ceased to be absolutely pure at the time when Christ was born. Assuming that the current formation of the globe was six to seven thousand years prior to this event, this period was sufficient to wither in its germ the visible principle of societies, and, when it ended, the cause of all decrepitude had already taken root. the upper hand in the world. By the fact that the white race had become absorbed in such a way as to lose the flower of its essence in the two lower varieties, these had undergone corresponding modifications, which, for the yellow race, had extended much earlier. In the eighteen hundred years which have since elapsed, the work of fusion, although incessantly continued and preparing for its later conquests on a more considerable scale than ever before, has not been so directly effective. But, in addition to creating means of action for the future, it has greatly increased ethnic confusion within all societies, and, consequently, hastened the final hour. of the perfection of the amalgam. This time is therefore far from having been lost; and, since he prepared the future, and

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that moreover the three varieties no longer possess pure groups, it is not exaggerating the speed of the result to give it a little less time to produce than it took for its preparations to arrive to the point where they are today. We would therefore be tempted to assign to the domination of man on the earth a total duration of twelve to fourteen thousand years, divided into two periods: one, which has passed, will have seen, will have possessed youth, vigor , the intellectual greatness of the species; the other, which has been started, will experience its faltering march towards decrepitude.

By stopping even at the times which must somewhat precede the last sigh of our species, by turning away from these ages invaded by death, where the globe, having become mute, will continue, but without us, to describe in space its impassive orbs, I don't know if we are not right to call the end of the world this less distant era which will already see the complete degradation of our species. Nor will I affirm that it would be very easy to be interested with a remnant of love in the destinies of a few handfuls of beings stripped of strength, beauty, intelligence, if we only remembered that At least they will still have religious faith, the last link, the only memory, the precious heritage of better days.

But religion itself has not promised us eternity; but science, by showing us that we have begun, always seemed to assure us also that we must finish. There is therefore no reason to be surprised or to

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to be moved by finding confirmation of more than one fact which could not be considered doubtful. The saddening forecast is not death, it is the certainty of arriving there only degraded; and perhaps even this shame reserved for our descendants could leave us insensible, if we did not experience, through a secret horror, that the rapacious hands of destiny are already placed on us.

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CONTENTS.

BOOK FIRST. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; DEFINITIONS, RESEARCH AND EXPOSURE OF LAWS NATURAL STATES THAT GOVERN THE SOCIAL WORLD. FIRST CHAPTER. — The mortal condition of civilizations and societies results from a general and common cause. CHAPTER II. — Fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and irreligion do not necessarily lead to the downfall of societies. CHAPTER III. — The relative merit of governments has no influence on the longevity of peoples. CHAPTER IV. — What is meant by the word degeneration ; of the mixture of ethnic principles, and how societies are formed and unmade. CHAPTER V. — Ethnic inequalities are not the result of institutions. CHAPTER VI. — In progress or stagnation, people are independent of the places they inhabit.

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CHAPTER VII. — Christianity does not create or does not transform civilizing aptitude. CHAPTER VIII. — Definition of the word civilization ; social development results from a double source. CHAPTER IX. — Continuation of the definition of the word civilization, different characters of human societies; our civilization is not superior to those which existed before it. CHAPTER X. — Certain anatomists attribute multiple origins to humanity. CHAPTER XI. — Ethnic differences are permanent. CHAPTER XII. — How the races separated physiologically, and what varieties they subsequently formed through their mixtures. They are unequal in strength and beauty. CHAPTER XIII. — Human races are intellectually unequal; humanity is not infinitely perfectible. CHAPTER XIV. — Continuation of the demonstration of the intellectual inequality of races. Diverse civilizations repel each other. Mixed races have equally mixed civilizations. CHAPTER XV. — Languages that are unequal to each other are in a perfect relationship with the relative merit of the races.

CHAPTER XVI. — Recapitulation; respective characters of the three great races; social effects of mixtures;

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superiority of the white type, and, in this type, of the Ariane family.

SECOND BOOK ANCIENT CIVILIZATION RADIATION FROM CENTRAL ASIA TO THE SOUTH-WEST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — The Hamites. CHAPTER II. — The Semites. CHAPTER III. — The maritime Canaanites. CHAPTER IV. — The Assyrians; the Hebrews; the Choreans. CHAPTER V. — The Egyptians; the Ethiopians. CHAPTER VI. — The Egyptians were not conquerors; why their civilization remained stationary. CHAPTER VII. — Ethnic relationship between the Assyrian nations and Egypt. The arts and lyric poetry are produced by the mixing of whites with black peoples.

BOOK THIRD. CIVILIZATION RADIATION FROM CENTRAL ASIA TOWARDS THE SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST.

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FIRST CHAPTER. — The Arians; Brahmins and their social system. CHAPTER II. — Developments in Brahmanism. CHAPTER III. — Buddhism, its defeat; India current. CHAPTER IV. — The yellow race. CHAPTER V. — The Chinese. CHAPTER VI. — The origins of the white race.

BOOK FOUR.

SEMITIZED CIVILIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

FIRST CHAPTER. — History only exists among white nations. — Why almost all civilizations developed in the West of the globe.

CHAPTER II. — The Zoroastrians.

END OF THE TABLE OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

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CONTENTS. _____

BOOK FOUR. SEMITIZED CIVILIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST. (Suite.)

CHAPTER III. — The indigenous Greeks, the settlers Semites; the Arians-Hellenes. CHAPTER IV. — The Semitic Greeks.

BOOK FIFTH. SEMITIZED EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION.

CHAP. IER. — Primitive populations of Europe. CHAP. II. — The Thracians. — The Illyrians. — The Etruscans. — The Iberians. CHAP. III. —Les Galls. CHAP. IV. — The aboriginal Italian peoples. CHAP. V. — The Tyrrhenian Etruscans. — Rome Etruscan. CHAP. YOU. — Roman Italianate.

CHAP. VII. — Semitic Rome.

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BOOK SIX. WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

CHAP. IER. — The Slavs. — Domination of some ante-Germanic Arian peoples.

CHAP. II. — The German Arians. CHAP. III. — Capacity of native Germanic races. CHAP. IV. — Germanic Rome. — The Romano-Celtic and Romano-Germanic armies. — The German emperors. CHAP. V. — Latest migrations of the Scandinavian Arians. CHAP. VI. — Latest developments of the company Germano-Roman. CHAP. VII. — Native Americans. CHAP. VIII. — European colonizations in America.

GENERAL CONCLUSION.

END OF THE TABLE OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

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Lanthier Verdy p Jahl de Vautban M0tty Yland Hsarrazin Yann Remacle

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kilom691 Wisdood ManuD Aroche Moyogo The sky is above the roof Lepticed7

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