Page:The processes of history (IA processesofhisto01tegg).pdf/18

  the knowledge is a commonplace, we tend, in forming judgments of our contemporaries, to forget that, not many generations back, our own progenitors fought with crude weapons, wore skins, and painted their bodies, We tend, for example, to forget that even in the eighteenth century the civilization of China was regarded by European travellers as superior to their own. 'We ignore the consideration that our religion was derived from a land we now regard as 'backward,' and the fundamentals of our thought from a people whose present representatives we are disposed to patronize.

Nevertheless, the conflict has already had the result of lessening the exclusiveness and selfconfidence of the western European, and has induced in him an awakening appreciation of the manhood and common human quality of outlying peoples. In truth, a new current of feeling has made itself felt, and we come to regard the differences and contrasts among men, not as a basis for disparagement, but as something to be explained. And here we may discern the nature of the problem with which we are confronted. Every human group, white, black, or yellow, entertains precisely the same attitude of superiority