Page:The inequality of human races (1915).djvu/78

Rh have certainly had a long time for reflection, and, what is more striking still, have had every reason to imitate the customs of their betters; why then have they never thought of a more fruitful way of alleviating their wretchedness than mere brigandage on the high seas? Why, in the Indian archipelago, which seems created for trade, and in the Pacific islands, where intercommunication is so easy, are nearly all the commercial advantages in the hands of foreigners—Chinese, Malays, and Arabs? And where half-caste natives or other mixed races have been able to share in these advantages, why has the trade at once fallen off? Why is the internal exchange of commodities carried on more and more by elementary methods of barter? The fact is, that for a commercial state to be established on any coast or island, something more is necessary than an open sea, and the pressure exerted by the barrenness of the land—something more, even, than the lessons learned from the experience of others; the native of the coast or the island must be gifted with the special talent that alone can lead him to profit by the tools that lie to his hand, and alone can point him the road to success.

It is not enough to show that a nation's value in the scale of civilization does not come from the fertility—or, to be more precise, the infertility—of the country where it happens to live. I must also prove that this value is quite independent of all the material conditions of environment. For example, the Armenians, shut up in their mountains—the same mountains where, for generations, so many other peoples have lived and died in barbarism—had already reached a high stage of civilization in a very remote age. Yet their country was almost entirely cut off from others; it had no communication with the sea, and could boast of no great fertility.

The Jews were in a similar position. They were surrounded by tribes speaking the dialects of a language cognate with their own, and for the most part closely connected with them in race; yet they outdistanced all these tribes. They became warriors, farmers, and traders. Their method of government was extremely