Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society — John Shaqi
Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political societyBagehot, Walter
Philosophy
Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society
Bagehot, Walter
Evolution; Nationalism; Political science
circumstances in distant countries were afterwards to develop into like
forms. But anyhow it is impossible not to trace the supremacy of
Teutons, Greeks, and Romans in part to their common form of government.
The contests of the assembly cherished the principle of change; the
influence of the elders insured sedateness and preserved the mould of
thought; and, in the best cases, military discipline was not impaired
by freedom, though military intelligence was enhanced with the general
intelligence. A Roman army was a free body, at its own choice governed
by a peremptory despotism.
The MIXTURE OF RACES was often an advantage, too. Much as the old world
believed in pure blood, it had very little of it. Most historic nations
conquered prehistoric nations, and though they massacred many, they did
not massacre all. They enslaved the subject men, and they married the
subject women. No doubt the whole bond of early society was the bond of
descent; no doubt it was essential to the notions of a new nation that
it should have had common ancestors; the modern idea that vicinity of
habitation is the natural cement of civil union would have been
repelled as an impiety if it could have been conceived as an idea. But
by one of those legal fictions which Sir Henry Maine describes so well,
primitive nations contrived to do what they found convenient, as well
as to adhere to what they fancied to be right. When they did not beget
they ADOPTED; they solemnly made believe that new persons were
descended from the old stock, though everybody knew that in flesh and
blood they were not. They made an artificial unity in default of a real
unity; and what it is not easy to understand now, the sacred sentiment
requiring unity of race was somehow satisfied: what was made did as
well as what was born. Nations with these sort of maxims are not likely
to have unity of race in the modern sense, and as a physiologist
understands it. What sorts of unions improve the breed, and which are
worse than both the father-race and the mother, it is not very easy to
say. The subject was reviewed by M. Quatrefages in an elaborate report
upon the occasion of the French Exhibition, of all things in the world.
M. Quatrefages quotes from another writer the phrase that South America
is a great laboratory of experiments in the mixture of races, and
reviews the different results which different cases have shown. In
South Carolina the Mulatto race is not very prolific, whereas in
Louisiana and Florida it decidedly is so. In Jamaica and in Java the
Mulatto cannot reproduce itself after the third generation; but on the
continent of America, as everybody knows, the mixed race is now most
numerous, and spreads generation after generation without impediment.
Equally various likewise in various cases has been the fate of the
mixed race between the white man and the native American; sometimes it
prospers, sometimes it fails. And M. Quatrefages concludes his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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