I think I am right in concluding from these examples, which cover all
countries and ages, including our own, that the human race in all its
branches has a secret repulsion from the crossing of blood, a repulsion
which in many of the branches is invincible, and in others is only
conquered to a slight extent. Even those who most completely shake off
the yoke of this idea cannot get rid of the few last traces of it; yet
such peoples are the only members of our species who can be civilized at
all.
Thus mankind lives in obedience to two laws, one of repulsion, the other
of attraction; these act with different force on different peoples. The
first is fully respected only by those races which can never raise
themselves above the elementary completeness of the tribal life, while
the power of the second, on the contrary, is the more absolute, as the
racial units on which it is exercised are more capable of development.
Here especially I must be concrete. I have just taken the example of a
people in embryo, whose state is like that of a single family. I have
given them the qualities which will allow them to pass into the state of
a nation. Well, suppose they have become a nation. History does not tell
me what the elements were that constituted the original group; all I
know is that these elements fitted it for the transformation which I
have made it undergo. Now that it has grown, it has only two
possibilities. One or other of two destinies is inevitable. It will
either conquer or be conquered.
I will give it the better part, and assume that it will conquer. It will
at the same time rule, administer, and civilize. It will not go through
its provinces, sowing a useless harvest of fire and massacre. Monuments,
customs, and institutions will be alike sacred. It will change what it
can usefully modify, and replace it by something better. Weakness in its
hands will become strength. It will behave in such a way that, in the
words of Scripture, it will be magnified in the sight of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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