[39]. I.e. the world in its second stage of improvement.
[40]. Klemm (Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit) divides the races of men into “active” and “passive.” I do not know his book, and so cannot tell if his idea agrees with my own. But it is natural that if we follow the same path we should light upon the same truth.
[41]. It is also in connexion with these that we find the main cause of the false judgments passed on foreign peoples. Because the externals of their civilization are unlike the corresponding parts of our own, we are often apt to infer hastily that they are either barbarians or of less worth than ourselves. Nothing could be more superficial, and so more doubtful, than a conclusion drawn from such premises.
[42]. “It is still only in China that a poor student can offer himself for the Imperial examination and come out a great man. This is a splendid feature of the social organization of the Chinese, and their theory is certainly better than any other. Unfortunately, its application is far from perfect. I am not here referring to the errors of judgment and corruption on the part of the examiners, or even to the sale of literary degrees, an expedient to which the Government is sometimes driven in times of financial stress....” (F. J. Mohl, “Annual Report of the Société Asiatique,” 1846).
[43]. John F. Davis, “The Chinese” (London, 1840): “Three or four volumes of any ordinary work of the octavo size and shape may be had for a sum equivalent to two shillings. A Canton bookseller’s manuscript catalogue marked the price of the four books of Confucius, including the commentary, at a price rather under half-a-crown. The cheapness of their common literature is occasioned partly by the mode of printing, but partly also by the low price of paper.”
[44]. “Force them to enter.”
[45]. A nurse of Touraine put a bird into the hands of the three-year-old boy of whom she was in charge, and encouraged him to pull out its wings and feathers. When the parents blamed her for teaching such wickedness, she replied, “It is to make him proud.” This answer, given in 1847, goes back directly to the educational maxims in vogue at the time of Vercingetorix.
[46]. A very few years ago there was a question of electing a churchwarden in a little obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the old province which the true Bretons call the “Welsh,” or “foreign,” country. The church council, composed of peasants, deliberated for two days without being able to make up their minds; for the candidate before them, though rich and well esteemed as a good man and a good Christian, was a “foreigner.” The council would not move from its opinion, although the “foreigner’s” father, as well as himself, had been born in the district; it was still remembered that his grandfather, who had been dead for many years and had never known any member of the council, was an immigrant from another part of the country. The daughter of a peasant-proprietor makes a mésalliance if she marries a tailor or a miller or even a farmer, if he works for wages. It does not matter whether the husband is richer than she is; her crime is often punished, just the same, by a father’s curse. Is not this case exactly like that of the churchwarden?
[47]. This chapter was, of course, written before the appearance of the “Origin of Species” or the “Descent of Man”; see author’s preface.—Tr.
[48]. These views are quoted by Flourens (Eloge de Blumenbach, Mémoire de l’Académie des Sciences), who himself dissents from them.