This question of colonization immediately brings up that of the so-called inferior races: for have not those actions of the whites that have led to the extinction of these conquered peoples been attempted to be justified by the argument of so-called race inferiority? Is this not, moreover, the same argument employed against the worker to justify the exploitation to which he is subjected by taxing him with belonging to the inferior classes? Does it mean, then, that for the capitalist, and even for certain savants, the worker is but a beast of burden whose sole role consists in creating prosperity for the “elect,” and reproducing other beasts of burden who in their turn may work out the happiness of the descendants of the “elect,” and so on? However, we workers do not believe ourselves lower than anybody else; we believe our brains to be quite as capable of cultivation as those of our exploiters if we but had the leisure and means for it. Why should it not be the same with races said to be inferior?

If it were nobody but the politicians who asserted the inferiority of races an attempt to refute their assertion would be quite unnecessary; at the bottom of their hearts they care very little whether the assertion be proven or disproven, since it is but a pretext anyway; if it were shown to be false they would not fail to find others. But certain savants have tried to bring science to the support of this theory and prove that the white race is a superior race. There was a time when man believed himself to be the centre of the universe; he not only thought that the sun and stars revolved around the earth, but he declared that all this had been so created with a sole view to his advent. This is called the anthropocentric theory. Long centuries of study were required to eradicate these vain illusions, and make man understand the insignificant place he held in nature. But his ideas of domination are so strong and tenacious, he renounces them with so much difficulty, that after having lost the sceptre which he claimed over the stars he fell back upon the declaration that the terrestrial globe with all its products had been made on purpose to serve as a cradle for him, the king of creation. Again dispossessed of this fictitious kingdom by science, which shows that he is but the product of evolution, the result of a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances, that there was nothing premeditated in his coming into being, and consequently, that nothing could have been created with a view to his advent, man’s spirit of domination was incapable of resolving to accept the facts as they are and consider itself an intruder; summing everything up it re-entrenched itself in this idea of superior races, and as a matter of course every race declared itself to be the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most perfect. It is in virtue of this declaration that the white race absorbs all others, and upon their elimination the savants base the declaration!

The savants have, moreover, endeavored to justify their opinion by propping it upon the three following supports:

First, the antiquity of the inferior races is explicitly recognized by the scientific world as equal to that of the white race; consequently the stationary condition of the former, whereas the latter have progressed, proves absolute inferiority;⁠—

Second, undeveloped peoples generally inhabit the most favored climates which ought to have helped to hasten their development;⁠—

Third, savage children whom it has been sought to bring up in European fashion have in nowise fulfilled the hopes of their educators.

Further examples are given in the cases of those agglomerations of savages penned up in villages, which have remained unchanged for hundreds of years, as well as the negro republic of Haiti with its endless revolutions.

One need not go very far into history to discover that the “universal concensus” is not always proof. Up to the time that Galileo proved that the earth revolved around the sun it had been almost universally believed that it was the sun which revolved around the earth. Universal consent, therefore, proves nothing if it be not supported by facts; and again, in the case cited above the apparent facts seemed to support the erroneous opinion. Do the facts corroborate the opinion that all races are of equal antiquity? This is what we want to know.

Upon the Egyptian monuments there have been found representations of certain African types still existing in our days, which would, indeed, prove a relative antiquity; it is also averred that these tribes, formerly subject to the Egyptians, do not appear to have progressed. At first glance this would seem to be in favor of the partisans of the inferiority of races, but a deeper examination would show this conclusion to be too hasty. As a matter of fact the admitted antiquity of the Egyptian monuments is about eight thousand years; let us put it in round numbers at ten thousand. Thus in ten thousand years these tribes do not appear to have progressed, while the white race has made that progress with which we are familiar. But at the epoch when these monuments were raised Egypt already represented a very advanced civilization; the difference between these backward tribes and the builders of the temples of Philae, Karnak, and Memphis was already enormous; the Egyptians had already passed through the prehistoric period which is estimated at hundreds of thousands of years.17 Slow indeed must have been the progress of man during the quarternary epoch, and the period of development is still longer if the existence of man during the tertiary epoch be admitted. The ten thousand years of stagnation of the tribes in question represent, then, but an insignificant amount in the history of the unfoldment of humanity, and it is probable that ten thousand years after he had cut the first stone the primitive Egyptian would have presented hardly any sensible improvement to the observer, and would also have appeared to be of a fundamentally inferior race. On the other hand these Egyptians, who made the great progress attested by their science and their monuments, are not whites; and this same people, which is classed among the “superior” races of antiquity, is now classed among the “inferior” races. Its English overlords have thoroughly demonstrated that. What a mass of contradictions! For the necessities of the argument the Egyptians are alternately both “superior” and “inferior.”

The skulls and jawbones of Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, and Naulette, which date back to a remote epoch, present characteristics so simian that while studying them the anthropologists were in doubt whether to class their possessors among the ancestors of man or among the large anthropoid apes. In the presence of such humble beginnings are we happy in designating ourselves “the phoenix of humanity”? And by what right do we speak of the inferiority of other races when their present condition proceeds from our barbarous persecutions? Thus the present inferiority of the red-skinned race proves nothing; for let it not be forgotten that the aboriginal civilizations which were developing at the time of the European conquests were destroyed by their invaders; and the descendents of the aborigines, hunted, despoiled, massacred, were compelled little by little to retreat and be annihilated before the conqueror. Highly flourishing civilizations thus disappeared, no one knowing what they might have brought forth; we cannot judge of them by the brutalized and degenerate natives which the United States is in the course of wiping out. I will not instance in example the Empire of Mexico nor that of the Incas; upon the arrival of the Spaniards these empires were already on the highway to decay. For that very reason they were unable to resist. The Hurons, the Iroquois defended themselves with much greater energy than the Aztecs and Peruvians.

One might suppose that in order to prove the equal antiquity of races there remained one last resource⁠—that of making researches in as yet unexplored strata and comparing the age of the skeletons which would certainly be found therein. But this resource is illusive; no possible means of establishing the exact concordance of the formation of earthy strata in the divers parts of the world exists. How then can we discover a perfect concordance between the remains found in these strata? To sum up, this question of the equal antiquity of races is an insoluble one and quite without value in the solution of the problem of virtual equality. Has it the least importance to those who consider all progress derived from the incessantly changing influence of environments?

“Undeveloped peoples generally inhabit the most favored countries,” declared Prof. G. Herve, one of the partisans of the theory of inferiority of races, in one of his courses on zoological anthropology at the Anthropological College. This declaration remains to be proven. Can it be applied to the Eskimo or the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego; to the Redskins, destitute of all those animals which they might have domesticated; or to the negroes who live in the region of the marshes of the Nile, or the endless forests of the Congo; or to the Tungus of the Siberian steppes; or to the Bushmen of the waterless deserts of Kalahari? One should not distort the truth so violently. And besides there remains to be decided the momentous question: which are the most favored countries, those which require labor or those which do not?

Furthermore this declaration may quite as easily be turned against the position which it is intended to defend. Is it not precisely this facility of existence which has left many tribes stationary? Having wherewith to satisfy their primary needs without work, men may very easily have failed to experience that quickening of faculties which continued to lie dormant, whilst other peoples forced to wrest their daily existence from soil and climate, have been led to develop instincts and faculties which in turn have awakened others, and thus launched them upon the pathway of progress. The others, being “favored,” could live without exertion.

Then follow the arguments drawn from the attempts to educate certain African tribes, or from colonies of savages which, it is claimed, have been left to develop themselves in villages on their reservations. It may be that there have been unfruitful attempts at such education; that would prove no general conclusion, seeing that questions would arise as to what were the conditions under which these attempts were made, in what situation was the group experimented upon found, and whether causes of degeneracy had not been suffered to remain. These examples prove so much less since there are also instances of the contrary. The Iroquois of Canada are in every respect equal to the whites around them. The greatest geographer of Mexico is an Aztec, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that the “greatest warriors of the world” were neatly turned out of Mexico by the descendants of the “inferior races.” Many generations are necessary to render any new acquisition permanent; however great its powers of development no individual brain can, during the course of its single existence, go through that evolution which it required entire generations for the race to go through. Negative results in individuals, therefore, prove nothing, even granting the attempt to have been made under practical conditions, for they may be offset by many positive results just as the progress of the whites may be disputed on account of many instances of retrogression. Do not ethnographical works quote the cases of redskins, negroes, or other “savages” who have been successfully instructed, and who had attained a considerable degree of knowledge, but who, seized with contempt for what had been taught them, have thrown aside the garments of civilization to resume their nomadic existence?

That atavism may sometimes be more powerful than the faculty of perfectibility nobody denies; but such examples in nowise prove the imperfectibility of the race, since the same individuals subjected to European education did certainly, during that period of their existence, advance along the path marked out by their educators.

This same Herve, whom we once more quote, for it is by him that we have heard “the inferiority of races” best sustained, again instances the fact that the savage appears more apt in childhood than at an adult age. But what does that prove? The less developed the race the earlier must the little ones learn to provide for themselves, to evince an already dawning sagacity. As to the adults, if their cerebral development is arrested at an early age it does, indeed, involve the consideration of a physical fact, viz.: the obliteration of the cranial sutures. Contrary to the white races the consolidation first takes place in the anterior portions, so that the development of the brain is arrested, at the outset, in precisely the most active centers of intelligence. This early closing of the futures might be a proof of inferiority if it were proven that the white races had not passed through this stage. But it has been discovered by examination of prehistoric skulls that the sutures originally closed from the front backwards and at an early age, precisely as among our so-called inferior races. In our own days cases of atavism in which this same process occurs are instanced. What, then, remains of this argument?

The example of the republic of Haiti and its military revolutions is quoted for the purpose of turning it into ridicule; but need we go very far back in our own history to find similar examples less excusable since we pretend to be superior? At all events the Haitians reconquered their independence from the French: who were the superiors⁠—those who regained their liberty or those who wanted to keep a people in slavery? Besides one must ignore history completely not to recognize progress among the Haitians, notwithstanding their Souloques, counterparts of our Badingues. When we reflect that the greater number of our self-styled civilized people suffer and die in misery to enrich a minority of idlers and parasites, when we remember that the exploited furnish the force which defends their exploiters, can we believe that we have the right to be very proud and brag of our superiority?

And as for the groups of savages which have been allowed to exist, can we believe that conditions have been procured for them which permit them to expand fully? Certainly we do not want to assert that all races are absolutely identical; but we are persuaded that all have certain aptitudes, certain moral, intellectual, and physical qualities, which, had they been allowed to evolve freely, would have enabled them to take their part in the labor of human civilization. Thus for example, did not these miserable Australians, so low in the scale of humanity, invent the boomerang, that projective missile with its curious power of returning to the thrower, which the Europeans, in spite of their ability, have not succeeded in imitating, and which all their science of ballistics is unable to explain? To be sure the invention of the boomerang has been of no great profit to the history of humanity, but since the ingenuity of its inventors was able to express itself in an object absolutely peculiar to themselves, while the lance, the tomahawk, and the arrow have been known to all other races, who will tell us that, under other conditions, this faculty might not have evolved in more important directions? But no; the white race⁠—aided by the Jewish race which has become white by the necessities of the case⁠—wants to invade all, exploit all. Wherever it has intruded itself the retarded races have had to disappear. In face of the ruins which its conquering fury has heaped up in the presence of the massacres which its exploitations have brought about, one may well inquire whether its role has not been quite as much pernicious as beneficent.

One hundred and fifty thousand years, perhaps, were required for us to emerge from animality; and ten thousand years have witnessed the extinction of the Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Roman, Hindu, and Mauritanian civilizations, whilst the Mongolian race was continuing a parallel development. Today we witness the beginning of the decadence of the Latin races, which will shortly become a death-agony unless a social transformation occurs in time to rejuvenate the physical and moral decay entailed by the capitalistic system. Perhaps, if the nations continue to entrench themselves behind their frontiers, our prestige may be taken from us by the Slavic races, which appear younger to us, having more lately come into the current of European civilization. But how long will that period last? What will come after? What will be the regenerating current which will come to restore our anaemiated race, exhausted by the excesses of a badly directed civilization? Every civilization, in its decline, has seen a new race surging in, which, being capable of assimilating the knowledge of the race it replaced, yielded in exchange a new brain, new aptitudes, young and vigorous blood; and this disappearance of civilizations would seem to show that every race has but a certain amount of energy and ability to expend, after which it disappears or remains stationary.

Relative to the foregoing, however, some friends object that today there are no more races, that the civilized world is divided into States, (remains of a past which is in discord with present reality) but constituting an indissoluble whole⁠—civilization from France to Russia and from America to Australia being the same civilization everywhere; that there are no longer any opposing races, but opposing classes. Assuredly we also are convinced that, given facilities of locomotion from one country to another, the enormous extension of international relations, races are bound to disappear by fusing, mixing with each other through intercrossings; that is the very reason we are choked with indignation at seeing entire tribes disappear before they have been able to contribute to our civilization the original share which they may have potentially possessed. When we reflect upon the massacre of inoffensive tribes, on whole races vanished or about to disappear, our thoughts overflow with sadness and melancholy; for we ask ourselves if these “inferior” brothers did not possess some of those qualities, so many of which are lacking in us. The white race could not understand the retarded races; it has broken them. If it had sought to bring them up to a higher phase of development, it could only have done so after the course of a long evolution; but it has never desired to educate; it has desired to exploit, and exploitation becomes extermination in the long run.

To sum up: in view of our rage for mastery let us ask ourselves whether the civilization of the Iroquois, for example, was much inferior to ours. Are we right in proclaiming ourselves superior to the Incas, who had at least learned how to secure food and shelter to all the members of their society, while poverty gnaws our modern civilization? Nothing justifies the theory of the alleged “inferior races;” it serves only to justify the crimes of the alleged “superior” races.