It would not have been all gain. The superiority of the white race would
have been clearly shown, but it would have been bought at the price of
certain advantages which have followed the mixture of blood. Although
these are far from counterbalancing the defects they have brought in
their train, yet they are sometimes to be commended. Artistic genius,
which is equally foreign to each of the three great types, arose only
after the intermarriage of white and black. Again, in the Malayan
variety, a human family was produced from the yellow and black races
that had more intelligence than either of its ancestors. Finally, from
the union of white and yellow, certain intermediary peoples have sprung,
who are superior to the purely Finnish tribes as well as to the negroes.
I do not deny that these are good results. The world of art and great
literature that comes from the mixture of blood, the improvement and
ennoblement of inferior races—all these are wonders for which we must
needs be thankful. The small have been raised. Unfortunately, the great
have been lowered by the same process; and this is an evil that nothing
can balance or repair. Since I am putting together the advantages of
racial mixtures, I will also add that to them is due the refinement of
manners and beliefs, and especially the tempering of passion and desire.
But these are merely transitory benefits, and if I recognize that the
mulatto, who may become a lawyer, a doctor, or a business man, is worth
more than his negro grandfather, who was absolutely savage, and fit for
nothing, I must also confess that the Brahmans of primitive India, the
heroes of the Iliad and the Shahnameh, the warriors of Scandinavia—the
glorious shades of noble races that have disappeared—give us a higher
and more brilliant idea of humanity, and were more active, intelligent,
and trusty instruments of civilization and grandeur than the peoples,
hybrid a hundred times over, of the present day. And the blood even of
these was no longer pure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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