The yellow race is the exact opposite of this type. The skull points
forward, not backward. The forehead is wide and bony, often high and
projecting. The shape of the face is triangular, the nose and chin
showing none of the coarse protuberances that mark the negro. There is
further a general proneness to obesity, which, though not confined to
the yellow type, is found there more frequently than in the others. The
yellow man has little physical energy, and is inclined to apathy; he
commits none of the strange excesses so common among negroes. His
desires are feeble, his will-power rather obstinate than violent; his
longing for material pleasures, though constant, is kept within bounds.
A rare glutton by nature, he shows far more discrimination in his choice
of food. He tends to mediocrity in everything; he understands easily
enough anything not too deep or sublime.[145] He has a love of utility
and a respect for order, and knows the value of a certain amount of
freedom. He is practical, in the narrowest sense of the word. He does
not dream or theorize; he invents little, but can appreciate and take
over what is useful to him. His whole desire is to live in the easiest
and most comfortable way possible. The yellow races are thus clearly
superior to the black. Every founder of a civilization would wish the
backbone of his society, his middle class, to consist of such men. But
no civilized society could be created by them; they could not supply its
nerve-force, or set in motion the springs of beauty and action.
We come now to the white peoples. These are gifted with reflective
energy, or rather with an energetic intelligence. They have a feeling
for utility, but in a sense far wider and higher, more courageous and
ideal, than the yellow races; a perseverance that takes account of
obstacles and ultimately finds a means of overcoming them; a greater
physical power, an extraordinary instinct for order, not merely as a
guarantee of peace and tranquillity, but as an indispensable means of
self-preservation. At the same time, they have a remarkable, and even
extreme, love of liberty, and are openly hostile to the formalism under
which the Chinese are glad to vegetate, as well as to the strict
despotism which is the only way of governing the negro.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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