Furthermore this declaration may quite as easily be turned against the position which it is intended to defend. Is it not precisely this facility of existence which has left many tribes stationary? Having wherewith to satisfy their primary needs without work, men may very easily have failed to experience that quickening of faculties which continued to lie dormant, whilst other peoples forced to wrest their daily existence from soil and climate, have been led to develop instincts and faculties which in turn have awakened others, and thus launched them upon the pathway of progress. The others, being “favored,” could live without exertion.
Then follow the arguments drawn from the attempts to educate certain African tribes, or from colonies of savages which, it is claimed, have been left to develop themselves in villages on their reservations. It may be that there have been unfruitful attempts at such education; that would prove no general conclusion, seeing that questions would arise as to what were the conditions under which these attempts were made, in what situation was the group experimented upon found, and whether causes of degeneracy had not been suffered to remain. These examples prove so much less since there are also instances of the contrary. The Iroquois of Canada are in every respect equal to the whites around them. The greatest geographer of Mexico is an Aztec, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that the “greatest warriors of the world” were neatly turned out of Mexico by the descendants of the “inferior races.” Many generations are necessary to render any new acquisition permanent; however great its powers of development no individual brain can, during the course of its single existence, go through that evolution which it required entire generations for the race to go through. Negative results in individuals, therefore, prove nothing, even granting the attempt to have been made under practical conditions, for they may be offset by many positive results just as the progress of the whites may be disputed on account of many instances of retrogression. Do not ethnographical works quote the cases of redskins, negroes, or other “savages” who have been successfully instructed, and who had attained a considerable degree of knowledge, but who, seized with contempt for what had been taught them, have thrown aside the garments of civilization to resume their nomadic existence?
That atavism may sometimes be more powerful than the faculty of perfectibility nobody denies; but such examples in nowise prove the imperfectibility of the race, since the same individuals subjected to European education did certainly, during that period of their existence, advance along the path marked out by their educators.
This same Herve, whom we once more quote, for it is by him that we have heard “the inferiority of races” best sustained, again instances the fact that the savage appears more apt in childhood than at an adult age. But what does that prove? The less developed the race the earlier must the little ones learn to provide for themselves, to evince an already dawning sagacity. As to the adults, if their cerebral development is arrested at an early age it does, indeed, involve the consideration of a physical fact, viz.: the obliteration of the cranial sutures. Contrary to the white races the consolidation first takes place in the anterior portions, so that the development of the brain is arrested, at the outset, in precisely the most active centers of intelligence. This early closing of the futures might be a proof of inferiority if it were proven that the white races had not passed through this stage. But it has been discovered by examination of prehistoric skulls that the sutures originally closed from the front backwards and at an early age, precisely as among our so-called inferior races. In our own days cases of atavism in which this same process occurs are instanced. What, then, remains of this argument?
The example of the republic of Haiti and its military revolutions is quoted for the purpose of turning it into ridicule; but need we go very far back in our own history to find similar examples less excusable since we pretend to be superior? At all events the Haitians reconquered their independence from the French: who were the superiors—those who regained their liberty or those who wanted to keep a people in slavery? Besides one must ignore history completely not to recognize progress among the Haitians, notwithstanding their Souloques, counterparts of our Badingues. When we reflect that the greater number of our self-styled civilized people suffer and die in misery to enrich a minority of idlers and parasites, when we remember that the exploited furnish the force which defends their exploiters, can we believe that we have the right to be very proud and brag of our superiority?
And as for the groups of savages which have been allowed to exist, can we believe that conditions have been procured for them which permit them to expand fully? Certainly we do not want to assert that all races are absolutely identical; but we are persuaded that all have certain aptitudes, certain moral, intellectual, and physical qualities, which, had they been allowed to evolve freely, would have enabled them to take their part in the labor of human civilization. Thus for example, did not these miserable Australians, so low in the scale of humanity, invent the boomerang, that projective missile with its curious power of returning to the thrower, which the Europeans, in spite of their ability, have not succeeded in imitating, and which all
