44. Evidence from the Cultural Record of Races
An entirely different method of approach to the problem of race capacity is that of examining the cultural record, the achievements in civilization, of groups. While this approach is theoretically possible, and while it is often attempted, it is subject to little control and therefore unlikely to yield dependable conclusions.
First of all, the culture history record of a people must be known for considerable periods before one may validly think of inferring therefrom anything as to the faculties of that people. The reason is that active civilization, as a productive process, is slow to grow up, slow to be acquired. Mere momentum would normally keep the more advanced of two peoples ahead of the other for a long time. In proportion as not nations but groups of nations were involved, the momentum would continue for still longer periods. Civilization flourished for some thousands of years in the Near East, and then about the Mediterranean, before it became established with equal vigor and success in northern Europe. Had Julius Cæsar or one of his contemporaries been asked whether by any sane stretch of phantasy he could imagine the Britons and Germans as inherently the equals of Romans and Greeks, he would probably have replied that if these northerners possessed the ability of the Mediterraneans they would long since have given vent to it, instead of continuing to live in disorganization, poverty, ignorance, rudeness, and without great men or products of the spirit. And, within limits, Cæsar would have been right, since it was more than a thousand years before northern Europe began to draw abreast of Italy in degree and productivity of civilization. Two thousand years before Christ, a well informed Egyptian might reasonably have disposed in the same sweeping way of the possibility of Greeks and Italians being the equals of his own people in capacity. What had these barbarians ever done to lead one to think that they might yet do great things? To-day we brush Negroes and Indians out of the reckoning with the same offhandedness.
In general, arguing from performance to potentiality, from accomplishment to achievement, is valid under conditions of set experiment—such as are impossible for races—or in proportion as the number and variety of observations is large. A single matched competition may decide pretty reliably as between the respective speed capacities of two runners. But it would be hazardous to form an opinion from a casual glimpse of them in action, when one might happen to be hastening and the other dallying. Least of all would it be sound to infer that essential superiority rested with the one that was in advance at the moment of observation, without knowledge of their starting points, the difficulty of their routes, the motive or goal of their courses. It is only as the number of circumstances grows, from which observations are available, that judgment begins to have any weight. The runner who has led for a long time and is increasing his lead, or who has repeatedly passed others, or who carries a load and yet gains ground, may lay some claim to superiority. In the same way, as between races, a long and intimate historical record, objectively analyzed, gives some legitimate basis for tentative conclusions as to their natural endowment. But how long the record must be is suggested by the example already cited of Mediterranean versus Nordic cultural preëminence.
The fallacy that is most commonly committed is to argue from what in the history of great groups is only an instant: this instant being that at which one’s own race or nationality is dominant. The Anglo-Saxon’s moment is the present; the Greek’s, the age of Pericles. Usually, too, the dominance holds only for certain aspects: military or economic or æsthetic superiority, as the case may be; inferiorities on other sides are merely overlooked. The Greek knew his venality, but looked down on the barbarian nevertheless. Anglo-Saxon failure in the plastic and musical arts is notorious, but does not deter most Anglo-Saxons from believing that they are the elect in quality, and from buttressing this conviction with the evidences of present industrial, economic, and political achievements—and perhaps past literary ones.