(discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine.)
in the letters of thomas jefferson is found the following passage:
"all eyes are open or opening to the rights of man. the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god."
this, which jefferson, over a hundred years ago, described as a "palpable truth," is still a long way from prevailing in the world. we are trying in this book not to take anything for granted, so we do not assume this truth, but investigate it; and we begin by admitting that there are many facts which seem to contradict it, and which make it more difficult of proof than jefferson realized. it is not enough to point out the lack of saddles on the backs, and of boots and spurs on the feet of newly born infants; for the fact is that men are not exploited because of saddles, nor is the exploiting accomplished by means of boots and spurs. it is done by means of gold and steel, banks and credit systems, railroads, machine-guns and battleships. and while it is not true that certain races and classes are born with these things on them, they are born to the possession of them, and the vast majority of mankind are without them all their lives, and without the ability to use them even if they had them.
the doctrine that "all men are created equal," or that they ought to be equal, we shall describe for convenience as the democratic doctrine. it first came to general attention through christianity, which proclaimed the brotherhood of all mankind in a common fatherhood of god. but even as taught by the christians, the doctrine had startling limitations. it was several centuries before a church council summoned the courage to decide that women were human beings, and had souls; and today many devout christians are still uncertain whether japanese and chinese and filipinos and negroes are human beings, and have souls. i have heard old gentlemen in the south gravely maintain that the negro is not a human being at all, but a different species of animal. i have heard learned men in the south set forth that the sutures in the negro skull close at some very early age, and thus make moral responsibility impossible for the black race. and you will find the same ideas maintained, not merely as to differences of race and color, but as to differences of economic condition. you will find the average aristocratic englishman quite convinced that the "lower orders" are permanently inferior to himself, and this though they are of the same anglo-saxon stock.
for convenience i will refer to the doctrine that there is some natural and irremovable inferiority of certain races or classes, as the aristocratic doctrine. i will probably startle some of my readers by making the admission that if there is any such natural or irremovable inferiority, then a belief in political or economic equality is a blunder. if there are certain classes or races which cannot think, or cannot learn to think as well as other classes and races, those mentally inferior classes and races will obey, and they will be made to obey, and neither you nor i, nor all the preachers and agitators in the world, will ever be able to arrange it otherwise. suppose we could do it, we should be committing a crime against life; we should be holding down the race and aborting its best development.
is there any such natural and irremovable inferiority in human beings? when we come to study the question we find it complicated by a different phenomenon, that of racial immaturity, which we have to face frankly and get clear in our minds. one of the most obvious facts of nature is that of infancy and childhood. we have just pointed out that if you are competing with a child, you do it in an entirely different way and under an entirely different set of rules, and if you fail to do this, you are unfair and even cruel to the child. and it is a fact of our world that there are some races more backward in the scale of development than other races. you may not like this fact, but it is silly to try to evade it. people who live in savage huts and beat on tom-toms and fight with bows and arrows and cannot count beyond a dozen—such people are not the mental or moral equals of our highly civilized races, and to treat them as equals, and compete with them on that basis, means simply to exterminate them. and we should either exterminate them at once and be done with it, or else make up our minds that they are in a childhood stage of our race, and that we have to guide them and teach them as we do our children.
there is no more useful person than the wise and kind teacher. but suppose we saw some one pretending to be a teacher to our children, while in reality enslaving and exploiting them, or secretly robbing and corrupting them—what would we say about that kind of teacher? the name of that teacher is capitalist commercialism, and his profession is known as "the white man's burden"; his abuse of power is the cause of our present racial wars and revolts of subject peoples. a fair-minded man, desirous of facing all the facts of life, hardly knows what stand to take in such a controversy; that is, hardly knows from which cause the colored races suffer more—the white man's exploitation, or their own native immaturity.
to say that certain races are in a childhood stage, and need instruction and discipline, is an entirely different thing from saying they are permanently inferior and incapable of self-government. whether they are permanently inferior is a problem for the man of science, to be determined by psychological tests, continued possibly over more than one generation. we have not as yet made a beginning; in fact, we have not even acquired the scientific impartiality necessary to such an inquiry.
in the meantime, all that we can do is to look about us and pick up hints where we can. in places like massachusetts, where negroes are allowed to go to college and are given a chance to show what they can do, they have not ousted the white man, but many of them have certainly won his respect, and one finds charming and cultured men among them, who show no signs of prematurely closed up skulls. and one after another we see the races which have been held down as being inferior, developing leadership and organization and power of moral resistance. the irish are showing themselves today one of the most vigorous and high-spirited of all races. the hindus are developing a movement which in the long run may prove more powerful than the white man's gold and steel. the egyptians, the persians, the filipinos, the koreans, are all devising ways to break the power of capitalist newspaper censorship. how sad that the subject races of the world have to get their education through hatred of their teachers, instead of through love!
of course, these rebel leaders are men who have absorbed the white man's culture, at least in part; practically always they are of the younger generation, which has been to the white man's schools. but this is the very answer we have been seeking—as to whether the race is permanently inferior, or merely immature and in need of training. it is not only among the brown and black and yellow races that progress depends upon the young generations; that is a universal fact of life.
in the course of this argument we shall assume that the christian or democratic theory has the weight of probability on its side, and that nature has not created any permanently and necessarily inferior race or class. we shall assume that the heritage of culture is a common heritage, open to all our species. we shall not go so far as the statement which jefferson wrote into the declaration of independence, that "all men are created free and equal"; but we shall assert that they are created "with certain inalienable rights," and that among these is the right to maintain their lives and to strive for liberty and happiness. also, we shall say that there will never be peace or order in the world until they have found liberty, and recognition of their right to happiness.
