This aspect of the matter is all important because it throws a further light on that all-important question of the sociality or anti-sociality of crossing races in a country situated as is South Africa at present.
It is clear that even in those instances in which no degradation or manifest anti-sociality on the part of descendants is the result of racial inter-breeding, and when, owing to education and happy surroundings, they become eventually some of the most cultured, valuable, and virtuous members of society; still, so great an amount of suffering is inflicted upon them and their descendants in societies constituted as ours are, that the original act which made possible their existence must be regarded as distinctly anti-social, though in this case the result has not been manifest human degradation, but merely unjustly inflicted and wholly unmerited human suffering.
Fully recognizing that many persons of mingled descent are of remarkable and even unusual mental power, of high social feeling, and allowing that there is a possibility that in the ages to come, when the great people of South Africa shall be fully formed, that if there be in that great people an infusion of the blood of the African races, it is possible, that instead, as is usually supposed, of that great race being hopelessly degraded, and rendered inferior to other races, because of its infusion of African blood, it may by crossing with the dark and more undifferentiated African races, with their possibly less developed nervous systems, and heavier animality, receive an increase of hardihood and vitality, and a greater staying power, which may enable such a mingled race actually to go further in the race of life, than others not so mingled.
As the modern gardener who has a rare and highly developed double rose, a Maréchal Neil or Cloth of Gold, if he wish it to be of exceptional beauty and sturdy growth, does not graft it on the stalk of another rare highly developed rose, but on a root of the old single wild rose, from which all roses descended, so it may be that the mingling with a more primitive type, under certain conditions, may fasten the roots of a race on earth: and that even the despised African may have some other mission towards humanity, as a whole, than the mere hewing of its wood and drawing of its water, even the building up of the rough physical basis of its life—allowing all this as possible, it is yet difficult to conceive the condition under which the action which originates a cross between the dark and light races in South Africa to-day shall not be anti-social, and its results almost unmitigatedly evil, whether the offspring be rendered anti-social by inheritance or circumstances; or, whether, rising in the scale of being, they attain to the highest point of development, and pay merely in unmerited suffering for the action of others.
Future ages may attain to a knowledge of the exact laws of inheritance, and may then know certainly what the result of such commingling of widely distinct human varieties will be; but for us, to-day, it is a racial leap in the dark which no man except under the most exceptional conditions has the right to make. What the Black man is we know, what the White man is we know: what the ultimate result of this commingling will be no man to-day knows.
Of all the anti-social actions which can take place in a country situated as South Africa is to-day, for cowardice and recklessness perhaps none equals the action of the man who in obedience to his own selfish passions originates such a cross of races[38]: for cowardice, because the pain and evil resulting from his action can never under any circumstances recoil on himself, but must be borne by others; for recklessness, because the results of his action must go on for generations after he has passed away, acting in ever-widening circles, in ways which he cannot predict, and producing results which cannot be modified.
For, let it never be forgotten, the crossing of human breeds differs entirely in one all-important point from that which is artificially carried on by the breeders of domestic animals. If such breeder makes a cross, and it be found to be undesirable, and injurious to his flock, he may set to work again to eliminate it; and though every experienced breeder will confess how difficult it is to accomplish this, how again and again the strain he seeks to eliminate will crop up; nevertheless, by the free use of destruction, and by rigorously preventing from perpetuating themselves all animals which show a trace of this cross, he may, after a certain number of generations, expunge the strain. But humanity has no such power over itself. We are unable either to destroy or to prevent from breeding such varieties in our societies as may appear undesirable; and if such a variety should have physical virility and fruitfulness, society would not only be incapable of repressing it, but it might ultimately even people down all more desirable forms.
Each society, as each age, has its own peculiar decalogue, applicable to its own peculiar conditions. For South Africa there are certain commandments little heard of in Europe, because the conditions of life raise no occasion for them, but which loom large in the list of social duties in this land. The first of these would appear to be—Keep your breeds pure!
In proportion as this commandment is accepted, and its injunction carried out by our black and white races in South Africa during the next fifty years, so probably, to a large extent, will be our healthy growth and development.[39]
We have now dealt, with such fullness as for the moment we are able, at the problem of Half-castism, which slavery has been mainly instrumental in bequeathing to South Africa.