The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races: With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of MankindGobineau, Arthur, comte de
Philosophy
The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races: With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of Mankind
This is what the whole course of history teaches us. Every race has its
own modes of thinking; every race, capable of developing a civilization,
develops one peculiar to itself, and which it cannot engraft upon any
other, except by amalgamation of blood, and then in but a modified
degree. The European cannot win the Asiatic to his modes of thinking; he
cannot civilize the Australian, or the Negro; he can transmit but a
portion of his intelligence to his half-breed offspring of the inferior
race; the progeny of that half-breed and the nobler branch of his
ancestry, is but one degree nearer, but not equal to that branch in
capacity: the proportions of blood are strictly preserved. I have
adduced illustrations of this truth from the history of various branches
of the human family, of the lowest as well as of the higher in the scale
of intellectual progress. Are we not, then, authorized to conclude that
the diversity observable among them is constitutional, innate, and not
the result of accident or circumstances--that there is an absolute
inequality in their intellectual endowments?
FOOTNOTES:
[181] The word _Arab_ is here used instead of the more common, but less
correct, term _Saracen_, which was the general appellation bestowed on
the first propagators of the Islam by the Greeks and Latins. The Arab
civilization reached its culminating point about the reign of Harun al
Rashid. At that time, it comprised nearly all that remained of the arts
and sciences of former ages. The splendor and magnificence for which it
was distinguished, is even yet the theme of romancers and poets; and may
be discerned to this day in the voluptuous and gorgeous modes of life
among the higher classes in those countries where it still survives, as
well as in the remains of Arab architecture in Spain, the best preserved
and most beautiful of which is the well-known Alhambra. Though the Arab
civilization had a decidedly sensual tendency and character, it was not
without great benefits to mankind. From it our forefathers learned some
valuable secrets of agriculture, and the first lessons in horticulture.
The peach, the pear, the apricot, the finer varieties of apples and
plums, and nearly all of our most valued fruits were brought into
Western and Central Europe by the returning crusaders from the land of
the Saracens. Many valuable processes of manufacture, and especially of
the art of working metals, are derived from the same source. In the
science of medicine, the Arabs laid the foundation of that noble
structure we now admire. Though they were prevented by religious
scruples from dissecting the human body, and, therefore, remained in
ignorance of the most important facts of anatomy, they brought to light
innumerable secrets of the healing powers in the vegetable kingdom; they
first practised the art of distillation and of chemical analysis. They
were the beginners of the science of Chemistry, to which they gave its
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