essay on the inequality of the human races

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Gobineau ’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races

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The most important promoter of racial ideology in Europe during the mid-19th century was Joseph-Arthur, comte de Gobineau , who had an almost incalculable effect on late 19th-century social theory. Published in 1853–55, his Essay on the Inequality of Human Races was widely read, embellished, and publicized by many different kinds of writers. He imported some of his arguments from the polygenists, especially the American Samuel Morton. Gobineau claimed that the civilizations established by the three major races of the world (white, Black, and yellow) were all products of the white races and that no civilization could emerge without their cooperation. The purest of the white races were the Aryans. When Aryans diluted their blood by intermarriage with lower races, they helped to bring about the decline of their civilization.

Following Boulainvilliers, Gobineau advanced the notion that France was composed of three separate races—the Nordics, the Alpines, and the Mediterraneans—that corresponded to France’s class structure. Each race had distinct mental and physical characteristics; they differed in character and natural abilities, such as leadership, economic resourcefulness, creativity, and inventiveness, and in morality and aesthetic sensibilities. The tall, blond Nordics, who were descendants of the ancient Germanic tribes, were the intellectuals and leaders. Alpines, who were brunet and intermediate in size between Nordics and Mediterraneans, were the peasants and workers; they required the leadership of Nordics. The shorter, darker Mediterraneans he considered a decadent and degenerate product of the mixture of unlike races; to Gobineau they were “nigridized” and “ semitized .”

Americans of this period were among Gobineau’s greatest admirers. So were many Germans. The latter saw in his works a formula for unifying the German peoples and ultimately proclaiming their superiority. Many proponents of German nationalism became activists and organized political societies to advance their goals. They developed a new dogma of “ Aryanism ” that was to expand and become the foundation for Nazi race theories in the 20th century.

Gobineau was befriended by the great composer Richard Wagner , who was a major advocate of racial ideology during the late 19th century. It was Wagner’s future son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain , writing at the end of the 19th century, who glorified the virtues of the Germans as the superrace. In a long book titled The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century , Chamberlain explained the history of the entire 19th century—with its European conquests, dominance, colonialism, and exploitation—as a product of the great accomplishments of the German people. Though English-born, Chamberlain had a fanatical attraction to all things German and an equally fanatic hatred of Jews . He believed Jesus was a Teuton, not a Jew, and argued that all Jews had as part of their racial character a moral defect. Fueled by rising anti-Semitism in Europe, race ideology facilitated the manufacture of an image of Jews as a distinct and inferior population . Chamberlain’s publications were widely disseminated in Germany during the turn of the 20th century. His speculations about the greatness of the Germans and their destiny were avidly consumed by many, especially young men such as Adolf Hitler and his companions in the National Socialist Party .

As this history shows, European intellectual leaders took the constituent components of the ideology of race and molded them to the exigencies of their particular political and economic circumstances, applying them to their own ethnic and class conflicts. Race thus emerged as a powerful denoter of unbridgeable differences that could be applied to any circumstances, particularly of ethnic conflict . The German interpretation of race eventually took the ideology to its logical extreme, the belief that a “superior race” has the right to eliminate “inferior races.”

Hereditarian ideology also flourished in late 19th-century England . Two major writers and proselytizers of the idea of the innate racial superiority of the upper classes were Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer . Galton wrote books with titles such as Hereditary Genius (1869), in which he showed that a disproportionate number of the great men of England—the military leaders, philosophers, scientists, and artists—came from the small upper-class stratum. Spencer incorporated the themes of biological evolution and social progress into a grand universal scheme. Antedating Darwin, he introduced the ideas of competition, the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest . His “fittest” were the socially and economically most successful not only among groups but within societies. The “savage” or inferior races of men were clearly the unfit and would soon die out. For this reason, Spencer advocated that governments eschew policies that helped the poor; he was against all charities, child labour laws, women’s rights, and education for the poor and uncivilized. Such actions, he claimed, interfered with the laws of natural evolution; these beliefs became known as social Darwinism .

The hereditarian ideologies of European writers in general found a ready market for such ideas among all those nations involved in empire building. In the United States these ideas paralleled and strengthened the racial ideology then deeply embedded in American values and thought. They had a synergistic effect on ideas of hereditary determinism in many aspects of American life and furthered the acceptance and implementation of IQ tests as an accurate measure of innate human ability.

“Race” ideologies in Asia, Australia, Africa, and Latin America

As they were constructing their own racial identities internally, western European nations were also colonizing most of what has been called, in recent times, the Third World , in Asia and Africa. Since all the colonized and subordinated peoples differed physically from Europeans, the colonizers automatically applied racial categories to them and initiated a long history of discussions about how such populations should be classified. There is a very wide range of physical characteristics among Third World peoples, and subjective impressions generated much scientific debate, particularly about which features were most useful for racial classification. Experts never reached agreement on such classifications, and some questions, such as how to classify indigenous Australians, were subjects of endless debate and were never resolved.

Race and race ideology had become so deeply entrenched in American and European thought by the end of the 19th century that scholars and other learned people came to believe that the idea of race was universal. They searched for examples of race ideology among indigenous populations and reinterpreted the histories of these peoples in terms of Western conceptions of racial causation for all human achievements or lack thereof. Thus, the so-called Aryan invasions of the Indian subcontinent that began about 2000 bce were seen, and lauded by some, as an example of a racial conquest by a light-skinned race over darker peoples. The Aryans of ancient India (not to be confused with the Aryans of 20th-century Nazi and white supremacist ideology) were pastoralists who spread south into the Indian subcontinent and intermingled with sedentary peoples, such as the Dravidians, many of whom happened to be very dark-skinned as a result of their long adaptation to a hot, sunny tropical environment . Out of this fusion of cultures and peoples, modern Indian culture arose. Such conquests and syntheses of new cultural forms have taken place numerous times in human history, even in areas where there was little or no difference in skin colour (as, for example, with the westward movements of Mongols and Turkish peoples).

An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races

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Original edition of Arthur de Gobineau's (1816-1882 CE) An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. 1853 CE. Library of the National Museum of Natural History, Paris .

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The Inequality of Human Races

Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines ( An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races ) (1853–1855) by Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was intended as a work of philosophical enquiry into decline and degeneration. It is today considered as one of the earliest examples of scientific racism. Warning: template has been deprecated. ( Index )

THE INEQUALITY

OF HUMAN RACES

BY ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

TRANSLATED BY ADRIAN COLLINS, M.A.

INTRODUCTION BY DR. OSCAR LEVY, EDITOR OF THE AUTHORISED ENGLISH VERSION OF NIETZSCHE'S WORKS

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LONDON MCMXV

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Gobineau on the inequality of races (1853)

Joseph-Arthur, Count de Gobineau (1816-1882), was a French aristocratic novelist, diplomat, and theorist whose ideas greatly influenced the development of racist thought in Europe and the United States. He rejected Enlightenment explanations for human diversity, including the impact of geography and cultural or political institutions, instead insisting on permanent and unequal racial characteristics passed down since the earliest days of humankind. He argued that human history was defined by the rise of pure races with superior characteristics who, through a process of mixing with inferior races, gradually lost their vitality and collapsed, leaving the stage clear for purer races to rise. In particular Gobineau championed Germanic “Aryans,” a concept borrowed from the study of ancient languages and then applied to an imagined, superior race with traces running throughout the white races.

He articulated these ideas in his lengthy Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853), which did not attract much attention until he became friends with the composer Richard Wagner and his daughter Cosima in the 1870s. They publicized his ideas within nationalist circles, forming an important link later to the Nazis, who appropriated much of Gobineau’s theory to suit their interests. A 1915 translation into English, excerpted here, really introduced Gobineau’s ideas to English-speaking nationalists and eugenicists. However, these later appropriations should not obscure the central focus of Gobineau’s work. Although German antisemites focused on Jews as the enemy of the Aryan race and American racists focused on the dangers of Black-White miscegenation, Gobineau had some positive, if also stereotypical, things to say about Jews and Blacks and their contributions to civilization, even as he firmly maintained the superiority of whites overall. Gobineau was far more worried about the threat posed to Aryans by other, inferior white peoples, Slavs and Celts in particular, whose traces could be seen among the lower classes. His frame of reference was the 1848 revolution and the threat posed by democracy, which had given him a glimpse of the collapse of European civilization.

In this excerpt, Gobineau defines “degeneracy” and establishes a basic narrative of how a conquering race loses vitality.

Jeff Bowersox

Here especially I must be concrete. I have just taken the example of a people in embryo, whose state is like that of a single family. I have given them the qualities which will allow them to pass into the state of a nation. Well, suppose they have become a nation. History does not tell me what the elements were that constituted the original group; all I know is that these elements fitted it for the transformation which I have made it undergo. Now that it has grown, it has only two possibilities. One or other of two destinies is inevitable. It will either conquer or be conquered.

I will give it the better part, and assume that it will conquer. It will at the same time rule, administer, and civilize. It will not go through its provinces, sowing a useless harvest of fire and massacre. Monuments, customs, and institutions will be alike sacred. It will change what it can usefully modify, and replace it by something better. Weakness in its hands will become strength. It will behave in such a way that, in the words of Scripture, it will be magnified in the sight of men.

I do not know if the same thought has already struck the reader; but in the picture which I am presenting -and which in certain features is that of the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Persians and the Macedonians – two facts appear to me to stand out. The first is that a nation, which itself lacks vigour and power, is suddenly called upon to share a new and better destiny – that of the strong masters into whose hands it has fallen; this was the case with the Anglo-Saxons, when they had been subdued by the Normans. The second fact is that a picked race of men, a sovereign people, with the usual strong propensities of such a people to cross its blood with another’s, find itself henceforth in close contact with a race whose inferiority is shown, not only by defeat, but also by the lack of the attributes that may be seen in the conquerors. From the very day when the conquest is accomplished and the fusion begins, there appears a noticeable change of quality in the blood of the masters. If there were no other modifying influence at work, then – at the end of a number of years, which would vary according to the number of peoples that composed the original stock – we should be confronted with a new race, less powerful certainly than the better of its two ancestors, but still of considerable strength. It would have developed special qualities resulting from the actual mixture, and unknown to the communities from which it sprang. But the case is not generally so simple as this, and the intermingling of blood is not confined for long to the two constituent peoples;

The empire I have just been imagining is a powerful one and its power is used to control its neighbors. I assume that there will be new conquests; and, every time, a current of fresh blood will be mingled with the main stream. Henceforth, as the nation grows, whether by war or treaty, its racial character changes more and more. It is rich, commercial, and civilized. The needs and the pleasures of other peoples find ample satisfaction in its capitals, tis great towns, and its ports; while its myriad attractions cause many foreigners to make it their home. After a short time, we might truly say that a distinction of castes takes the place of the original distinction of races.

Generally the dominating peoples begin by being far fewer in number than those they conquer; while, on the other hand, certain races that form the basis of the population in immense districts are extremely prolific – the Celts, for example, and the Slavs. This is yet another reason for the rapid disappearance of the conquering races. Again, their greater activity and the more personal part they take in the affairs of the State make them the chief mark for attack after a disastrous battle, a proscription, or a revolution. Thus, while by their very genius for civilization they collect round them the different elements in which they are to be absorbed, they are the victims, first of their original smallness of number, and then of a host of secondary causes which combine together for their destruction.

It is fairly obvious that the time when the disappearances take place will vary considerably, according to circumstances. Yet it does finally come to pass, and is everywhere quite complete, long before the end of the civilization which the victorious race is supposed to be animating. A people may often go on living and working, and even growing in power, after the active, generating force of its life and glory has ceased to exist. Does this contradict what I have said above? Not at all; for while the blood of the civilizing race is gradually drained away by being parcelled out among the peoples that are conquered or annexed, the impulse originally given to these people still persists. The institutions which the dead master had invented, the laws he had prescribed, the customs he had initiated – all these live after him. No doubt the customs, laws, and institutions have quite forgotten the spirit that informed their youth; they survive in dishonoured old age, every day more sapless and rotten. But so long as even their shadows remain, the building stands, the body seems to have a soul, the pale ghost walks. When the original impulse has worked itself out, the last word has been said. Nothing remains; the civilization is dead.

It think I now have all the data necessary for grappling with the problem of the life and death of nations; and I can say positively that a people will never die, if it remains eternally composed of the same national elements.

But, if like the Greeks, and the Romans of the later Empire, the people has been absolutely drained of its original blood, and the qualities conferred by the blood, then the day of its defeat will be the day of its death. It has used up the time that heaven granted at its birth, for it has completely changed its race, and with its race its nature. It is therefore degenerate.

In this passage, Gobineau argues that racial differences are permanent.

Whatever side, therefore, one may take in the controversy as to the unity or multiplicity of origin possessed by the human species, it is certain that the different families are to-day absolutely separate; for there is no external influence that could cause any resemblance between them or force them into a homogenous mass.

The existing races constitute separate branches of one or many primitive stocks. These stocks have now vanished. They are not known in historical times at all, and we cannot form even the most general idea of their qualities. They differed from each other in the shape of and proportion of the limbs, the structure of the skull, the internal conformation of the body, the nature of the capillary system, the colour of the skin, and the like; and they never succeeded in losing their characteristic features except under the powerful influence of the crossing of blood.

This permeance of racial qualities is quite sufficient to generate the radical unlikeness and inequality that exists between the different branches, to raise them to the dignity of natural laws, and to justify the same distinctions being drawn with regard to the physiological life of nations, as I shall show, later to be applicable to their moral life.

In this passage, Gobineau sums up his argument.

I have shown the unique place in the organic world occupied by the human species, the profound physical, as well as moral, differences separating it from all other kinds of living creatures. Considering it by itself, I have been able to distinguish, on physiological grounds alone, three great and clearly marked types, the black, the yellow, and the white. However uncertain the aims of physiology may be, however meagre its resources, however defective its methods, it can proceed thus far with absolute certainty.

The negroid variety is the lowest, and stands at the foot of the ladder. The animal character, that appears in the shape of the pelvis, is stamped on the negro from birth, and foreshadows his destiny. His intellect will always move within a very narrow circle. He is not however a mere brute, for behind his low receding brow, in the middle of his skull, we can see signs of a powerful energy, however crude its objects. If his mental faculties are dull or even non-existent, he often has an intensity of desire, and so of will, which may be called terrible. Many of his senses, especially taste and smell, are developed to an extent unknown to the other two races.

The very strength of his sensations is the most striking proof of his inferiority. All food is good in his eyes, nothing disgusts or repels him. What he desires to eat, to eat furiously, and to excess; no carrion is too revolting to be swallowed by him. It is the same with odours; his inordinate desires are satisfied with all, however coarse or even horrible. To these qualities may be added an instability and capriciousness of feeling, that cannot be tied down to an single object, and which, so far as he is concerned, do away with all distinctions of good and evil. We might even say that violence with which he pursues the object that has aroused his senses and inflamed his desires is guarantee of the desires being soon satisfied and the object forgotten. Finally, he is equally careless of his own life and that of others: he kills willingly, for the sake of killing; and this human machine, in whom it is so easy to arouse emotion, shows, in face of suffering, either a monstrous indifference or a cowardice that seeks a voluntary refuge in death.

The yellow race is the exact opposite of this type. The skull points forward, not backward. The forehead is wide and bony, often high and projecting. The shape of the face is triangular; the nose and chin showing none of the coarse protuberances taht mark the negro. There is further a general proneness to obesity, which, though not confined to the yellow type, is found there more frequently than in others. The yellow man has little physical energy, and is inclined to apathy; he commits none of the strange excesses sos common among negroes. His desires are feeble, his will-power rather obstinate than violent; his longing for material pleasures though constant, is kept within bounds. A rare glutton by nature, he shows far more discrimination in his choice of food. HE tends to mediocrity in everything; he understands easily enough anything not too deep or sublime. He has a love of utility and a respect for order, and knows the value of a certain amount of freedom. He is practical, int he narrowest sense of the word. He does not dream or theorize; he invents little, but can appreciate and take over what is useful to him. his whole desire is to live int eh easiest and most comfortable way possible. The yellow races are thus clearly superior to the black. Every founder of a civilization would wish the backbone of his society, his middle class, to consist of such men. But no civilized society could be created by them; they could not supply its nerve-force, or set in motion the springs of beauty and action.

We come now to the white peoples. These are gifted with reflective energy, or rather with an energetic intelligence. They have a feeling for utility, but in a sense far wider and higher, more courageous and ideal, than the yellow races; a perseverance that takes account of obstacles and ultimately finds a means of overcoming them; a greater physical power, an extraordinary instinct for order, not merely as a guarantee of peace and tranquility, but as an indispensable means of self-preservation. At the same time, they have a remarkable, and even extreme, love of liberty, and are openly hostile to the formalism under which the Chinese are glad to vegetate, as well as to the strict despotism which is the only way of governing the negro.

The white race are, further, distinguished by an extraoridinary attachment to life. They know better how to use it, and so,a s it would seem, set a greater price on it; both in their own persons and those of others, they are more sparing of life. When they are cruel, they are conscious of their cruelty; it is very doubtful whether such a consciousness exists in the negro. At the same time, they have discovered reasons why they should surrender this busy life of theirs, that is so precious to them. The principal motive is honour, which under various names has played an enormous part in the ideas of the race from the beginning. I need hardly add that the word honour, together with all the civilizing influences connoted by it, is unknown to both the yellow and the black man.

On the other hand, the immense superiority of the white peoples in the whole field of the intellect is balanced by an inferiority in the intensity of their sensations. In the world of the senses, the white man is far less gifted than the others, and so is less tempted and less absorbed by considerations of the body, although in physical structure he is far more vigorous.

Such are the three constituent elements of the human race I call them secondary types, as I think myself obliged to omit all discussion of the Adamite man. From the combination, by intermarriage, of the varieties of these types come the tertiary groups. The quaternary formations are produced by the union of one of these tertiary types, or of a pure-blooded tribe, with another group taken from one of the two foreign species.

Below these categories others have appeared – and still appear. Some the these are very strongly characterized, and form new and distinct points of departure, coming as they do form the races that have been completely fused. Others are incomplete, and ill-ordered, and, one might even say, anti-social, since their elements, being too numerous, too disparate, or too barbarous, have had neither the time nor the opportunity for combining to any fruitful purpose. No limits, except the horror excited by the possibility of infinite intermixture, can be assigned to the number of these hybrid and chequered races that make up the whole of mankind.

It would be unjust to assert that every mixture is bad and harmful. If the three great types had remained strictly separate, the supremacy would no doubt have always been in the hands of the finest of the white races, and the yellow and black varieties would have crawled for ever at the feet of the lowest of the whites. Such a state is so far ideal, since it has never been beheld in history; and we can imagine it only by recognizing the undisputed superiority of those groups of the white races which have remained the purest.

It would not have been all gain. The superiority of the white race would have bean clearly shown, but it would have been bought at the price of certain advantages which have followed the mixture of blood. Although these are far from counter-balancing the defects they have brought in their train, yet they are sometimes to be commended. Artistic genius, which is equally foreign to each of the three great types, arose only after the intermarriage of white and black. Again, in the Malayan variety, a human family was produced from the yellow and black races that had more intelligence than either of its ancestors. Finally, from the union of white and yellow, certain intermediary peoples have sprung, who are superior to the purely Finnish tribes as well as to the negroes.

I do not deny that these are good results. The world of art and great literature that comes from the mixture of blood, the improvement and ennoblement of inferior races – all these are wonders of which we must needs be thankful. The small have been raised. Unfortunately, the great have been lowered by the sam process; and this is an evil that nothing can balance or repair. Since I am putting together the advantages of racial mixtures, I will also add that to them is due the refinement of manners and beliefs, and especially the tempering of passion and desire. But these are merely transitory benefits, and if I recognize that the mulatto, who may become a lawyer, a doctor, or a business man, is worth more than his negro grandfather, who was absolutely savage, and fit for nothing, I must also confess that the Brahmans of primitive India, the heroes of the Iliad and the Shahnameh, the warriors of Scandinavia – the glorious shades of noble races that have disappeared – give us a higher and more brilliant idea of humanity, and were more active, intelligent, and trusty instruments of civilization and grandeur than the peoples, hybrid a hundred times over, of the present day. And the blood even of these was no longer pure.

However it has come about, the human races, as we find them in history, are complex; and one of the chief consequences has been to throw into disorder most of the primitive characteristics of each type. The good as well as the bad qualities are seen to diminish in intensity with repeated intermixture of blood; but they also scatter and separate off from each other, and are often mutually opposed. The white race originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength. By its union with other varieties, hybrids were created, which were beautiful without strength, strong without intelligence, or, if intelligent, both weak and ugly. Further, when the quantity of white blood was increased to an indefinite amount by successive infusions, and not by a single admixture, it no longer carried with its natural advantages, and often merely increased the confusion already existing in the racial elements. Its strength, in fact, seemed to be its only remaining quality, and even its strength served only to promote disorder. The apparent anomaly is easily explained. Each stage of a perfect mixture produces a new type of diverse elements, and develops special faculties. As soon as further elements are added, the vast difficulty of harmonizing the whole creates a state of anarchy. The more this increases, the more do even the best and reichest of the new contributions diminish in value, and b y their mere presence add fuel to an evil which they cannot abate. If mixtures of blood are, to a  certain extent, beneficial to the mass of mankind, if thy raise and ennoble it, this is merely at the expense of mankind itself, which is stunted,a based, enervated, and humiliated int eh persons of its noblest sons. Even if we admit that it is better to turn a myriad of degraded beings into mediocre men than to preserve the race of princes whose blood is adulterated and impoverished by being made to suffer this dishonourable change, yet there is still the unfortunate fact that the change does not stop here; for when the mediocre men are once created at the expense of the greater, they combine with other mediocrities, and from such unions, which grow ever more and more degraded is born a confusion which, like that of Babel, ends in utter impotence, and leads societies down to the abyss of nothingness whence no power on earth can rescue them.

Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious brach of our species.

Of the multitude of peoples which live or have lived on the earth, ten alone have risen to the position of complete societies. The remainder have gravitated round these more or less independently, like planets round their suns. If there is any element of life in these ten civilizations that is not due to the impulse of the white races, any seed of death that does not come from the inferior stocks that mingled with them, then the whole theory on which this book rests is false. On the other hand, if the facts are as I say, then we have an irrefragable proof of the nobility of our own species. Only the actual details can set the final seal of truth on my system, and they alone can show with sufficient exactness the full implications of my main thesis, that peoples degenerate only in consequence of the various admixtures of blood which they undergo; that their degeneration corresponds exactly to the quantity and quality of the new blood, and that the rudest possible shock to the vitality of a civilization is given when the ruling elements in a society and those developed by racial change have become so numerous that they are clearly moving away from the homogeneity necessary to their life, and it therefore becomes impossible for them to be brought into harmony and so acquire the common instincts and interests, the common logic of existence, which is the sole justification for any social bond whatever. There is no greater curse than such disorder, for however bad it may have made the present state of things, it promises still worse for the future.

Source : Arthur Count de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, translated by Adrian Collins (London: William Heinemann, 1915).

Gobineau on the inequality of races (1853) by Jeff Bowersox is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at  https://blackcentraleurope.com/who-we-are/ .

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An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races: The hidden causes of revolutions, bloody wars, and lawlessness. Paperback – July 12, 2016

• Print length 240 pages
• Language English
• Publication date July 12, 2016
• Dimensions 5 x 0.55 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 1535241179
• ISBN-13 978-1535241175
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 12, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1535241179
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1535241175
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.55 x 8 inches
• #832 in Political Commentary & Opinion

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Science News

Anténor firmin challenged anthropology’s racist roots 150 years ago.

The Haitian scholar showed that science didn’t support white supremacy

By Sujata Gupta

Social Sciences Writer

May 17, 2023 at 11:00 am

When Anténor Firmin joined one of the first anthropological societies in Europe, racist views had become foundational to the field.

History and Art Collection/Alamy

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At the end of the 19th century, one of the hottest debates among anthropologists was whether human beings originated from a single ancestor or many (the answer: just one). Members of both camps, though, largely agreed that whatever their origins, some races were superior to others. Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin knew that premise to be false.

“Human beings everywhere are endowed with the same qualities and defects, without distinctions based on color or anatomical shape,” Firmin wrote in French in his 1885 book, The Equality of the Human Races . “The races are equal.”

Firmin was ahead of his time. Today, genetic research confirms that human populations cannot be divided into distinct racial groups.

But few scholars in the nascent field of anthropology, or any other contemporaries, read his treatise. Instead, leaders in the field were deeply influenced by the French white supremacist Arthur de Gobineau’s four-volume Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races , published in the 1850s. Against that backdrop, in 1859, Paul Broca, a French physician and brain researcher interested in the study of human origins, founded the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, one of the first anthropological societies in Europe. Broca believed he could use skull measurements to identify human populations, which could then be categorized into a racial hierarchy. When Firmin joined that society in the 1880s, such racist views had become foundational to anthropology.

Few anthropologists outside of Firmin’s native Haiti have heard of The Equality of the Human Races, anthropologist Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban of Rhode Island College in Providence wrote in American Anthropologist in 2000 . “This is hardly surprising since most of the early [Black] pioneers of anthropology have only recently been brought to light.”

Those leaders include many other Haitians, such as doctor and writer Louis-Joseph Janvier, who wrote The Equality of Races in 1884, and politician Hannibal Price, who wrote On the Rehabilitation of the Black Race by the Republic of Haiti in 1900. American abolitionist Martin Delany wrote Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color in 1879.

Firmin would probably still be languishing in near-total obscurity if not for an English translation of his book that came out in 2000. Following that publication, a small number of anthropologists and other social scientists began calling for Firmin to be recognized as a founding father of anthropology. His arguments, after all, predated by several decades similar arguments by the German-American scholar Franz Boas, often considered the father of modern anthropology. Like Firmin, Boas argued that race was a cultural construct.

Firmin was among the first to view anthropology as the study of all humankind, rather than the more divisive approach common in his day, says Fluehr-Lobban, who wrote the introduction to the English translation.

Firmin also brought to his book a deep scientific rigor that was not yet common in the field. His highest priority was that “the case be made on the facts,” Fluehr-Lobban says.  

No evidence for racial hierarchies

Firmin was born in the northern town of Cap-Haitien in 1850 to a working-class family. He grew up at a time of tremendous national pride. Haiti achieved independence from France in 1804, making it the first free Black republic in the world and the first independent nation in the Caribbean. 

As a young adult, Firmin studied law, which led to a career in politics. He served as the inspector of schools in Cap-Haitien and as a Haitian government official in Caracas, Venezuela. He married his neighbor, Rosa Salnave, in 1881. In 1883, Firmin became Haiti’s diplomat for France and moved to Paris.

Firmin, like many scholars of his day, read across fields, Fluehr-Lobban says. That led him to become interested in the study of humankind. While in Paris, Firmin spoke of this interest with French physician Ernest Aubertin, who invited him to join the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris.

It did not take long for Firmin to question his membership in a group openly hostile to people who looked like him. Faced with such a tough environment, Firmin remained silent at meetings. He acknowledges this reluctance to strike up a debate with other society members in his book’s preface: “I risked being perceived as an intruder and, being ill-disposed against me, my colleagues might have rejected my request without further thought.”  

Instead, Firmin penned his 451-page rebuttal, using a title that clearly contradicted de Gobineau’s influential work.

On a general level, Firmin takes aim at the nonscientific tenor of many society members’ arguments. “On the one hand, there is a dearth of solid principles in anthropological science at this point; on the other hand, and precisely for this reason, its practitioners, with their methodical minds, are able to construct the most extravagant theories, from which they can draw the most absurd and pretentious conclusions,” Firmin writes in a chapter devoted to dismantling the then-popular classification of races using cranial measurements.

Firmin uses the bulk of the book, though, to flesh out his argument in precise detail. For instance, Firmin conducts a thorough analysis of the physical factors that were purported to separate the races, such as height, size, muscularity and cranium shape. He then painstakingly combs through the data to debunk prevalent theories of racial hierarchies.

“What can we conclude here from these observations? Can we find here any indication of hierarchy at all?” he queries at one point in reference to a chart on brain volume. The question is rhetorical. The measurements of supposedly distinct racial groups instead often overlap. Nor do the measurements conform to established racial hierarchies. “It is all so very anarchic,” he concludes.  

The power of Firmin’s writings stem from his deep commitment to following the evidence, says Niccolo Caldararo, an anthropologist at San Francisco State University. “His criticism of European, especially French scientists, was so careful, was so precise, was so perfectly defined that he undermined their practice as bias rather than empiricism.”

Firmin’s modern-day relevance

The translation of Firmin’s text came out of a chance encounter between Fluehr-Lobban and a Haitian student in her Race and Racism class in 1988. That student approached Fluehr-Lobban and asked if she had ever heard of Firmin. She had not but was intrigued.

In collaboration with Asselin Charles, a Haitian-born literary scholar then at neighboring Brown University, the duo set out to find a copy of the book. That turned out to be no easy feat. “There were three copies in the United States,” Fluehr-Lobban says. “One of them was in the Library of Congress.”

To Fluehr-Lobban’s surprise, upon receiving her request, library staffers sent her the book. Charles served as translator. “As a result of this book coming out in English, it had a whole new life,” Fluehr-Lobban says. Still, she adds, the book has yet to get its due: “It has not gotten into the canon of anthropology.”

Fluehr-Lobban hopes that will change, especially given the book’s modern-day relevance. Despite clear evidence that race has no biological basis, some scientists still use the concept as an organizing principle. And racism remains prevalent.

“This was a critical race theory book [written] in 1885,” Fluehr-Lobban says.

Firmin, however, remained optimistic that science would eventually get the last word. “Truth is like light: one may hide it for as long as human intelligence can conceive, it will still shine in the cellar where it has been related; at the least opportunity, its rays will pierce the darkness and, as it shines for all, it will compel the most rebellious minds to bend before its laws,” he wrote. “Science owes all its prestige only to this power, to this intransigence of the truth.”  

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Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau

(1816—1882) Comte de, French writer and anthropologist

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French diplomat and scholar, the intellectual founder of racism. His most famous book, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853–55), put forward the thesis that the races are innately unequal and that the White Aryan race is not only the purest but also superior to all others. His writings had a sinister influence on the German Nazi theorists, for whom they became a justification for anti-Semitism.

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An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races: The hidden causes of revolutions, bloody wars, and lawlessness. Paperback – 12 July 2016

• Print length 240 pages
• Language English
• Publication date 12 July 2016
• Dimensions 12.7 x 1.4 x 20.32 cm
• ISBN-10 1535241179
• ISBN-13 978-1535241175
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (12 July 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1535241179
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1535241175
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 1.4 x 20.32 cm
• 105,828 in Society, Politics & Philosophy

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Project Gutenberg Presents

The inequality of human races, by arthur gobineau, translated by adrian collins, contrib. by oscar levy.

Project Gutenberg Release #69751 Select author names above for additional information and titles

This catalog page is provided by The Online Books Page , and the literature by Project Gutenberg .

Arthur De Gobineau, an Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-55)1

Primary Source 13.1

ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU, AN ESSAY ON THE INEQUALITY OF THE HUMAN RACES (1853-55)1

Arthur de Gobineau (1816–82), a French man of letters, formulated an early theory about race, which he propounded as “scientific,” but like all such theories was in fact pseudo- scientific. He also first posited the superiority of the “ Aryan ” people, an idea later taken up by the Nazis to justify their goal of world domination. According to de Gobineau, humans experience two major impulses in their collective development: attraction and repulsion. Those communities governed by attraction toward other groups gain strength through mixing. Yet most peoples tended historically to obey repulsion by intermarrying only within their group. The white Indo-European race, he asserted, was the first in world history to mingle widely with various peoples, thus giving birth to civilization. De Gobineau then went on to argue that further merging with other races and peoples would cause (and indeed was already causing) the downfall of Western civilization. The passage below, which is excerpted from his major work on the race question, An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, mainly focuses on the superiority of the Aryan race , although it also discusses the “yellow” race and the “black” race. Be advised that the text is deeply offensive and in many respects preposterous. Yet de Gobineau’s ideas had powerful and often miserable historical effects. For a link to the text, click here.

CHAPTER XVI

RECAPITULATION; THE RESPECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE GREAT RACES; THE SUPERIORITY OF THE WHITE TYPE, AND, WITHIN THIS TYPE, OF THE ARYAN FAMILY

I have shown the unique place in the organic world occupied by the human species, the profound physical, as well as moral, differences separating it from all other kinds of living creatures. Considering it by itself, I have been able to distinguish, on physiological grounds alone, three great and clearly marked types, the black, the yellow, and the white. However uncertain the aims of physiology may be, however meagre its resources, however defective its methods, it can proceed thus far with absolute certainty. The negroid variety is the lowest, and stands at the foot of the ladder. The animal character, that appears in the shape of the pelvis, is stamped on the negro from birth, and foreshadows his destiny. His intellect will always move within a very narrow circle. He is not however a mere brute, for behind his low receding brow, in the middle of his skull, we can see signs of a powerful energy, however crude its objects. If his mental faculties are dull or even non-existent, he often has an intensity of desire, and so of will, which may be called

1 Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races. trans. Adrian Collins (London: Heinemann, 1915), 205– 212. 2 terrible. Many of his senses, especially taste and smell, are developed to an extent unknown to the other two races. The very strength of his sensations is the most striking proof of his inferiority. All food is good in his eyes, nothing disgusts or repels him. What he desires is to eat, to eat furiously, and to excess; no carrion2 is too revolting to be swallowed by him. It is the same with odours; his inordinate desires are satisfied with all, however coarse or even horrible. To these qualities may be added an instability and capriciousness3 of feeling, that cannot be tied down to any single object, and which, so far as he is concerned, do away with all distinctions of good and evil. We might even say that the violence with which he pursues the object that has aroused his senses and inflamed his desires is a guarantee of the desires being soon satisfied and the object forgotten. Finally, he is equally careless of his own life and that of others: he kills willingly, for the sake of killing; and this human machine, in whom it is so easy to arouse emotion, shows, in face of suffering, either a monstrous indifference or a cowardice that seeks a voluntary refuge in death. The yellow race is the exact opposite of this type. The skull points forward, not backward. The forehead is wide and bony, often high and projecting. The shape of the face is triangular, the nose and chin showing none of the coarse protuberances that mark the negro. There is further a general proneness to obesity, which, though not confined to the yellow type, is found there more frequently than in the others. The yellow man has little physical energy, and is inclined to apathy; he commits none of the strange excesses so common among negroes. His desires are feeble, his will-power rather obstinate than violent; his longing for material pleasures, though constant, is kept within bounds. A rare glutton4 by nature, he shows far more discrimination in his choice of food. He tends to mediocrity in everything; he understands easily enough anything not too deep or sublime. He has a love of utility and a respect for order, and knows the value of a certain amount of freedom. He is practical, in the narrowest sense of the word. He does not dream or theorize; he invents little, but can appreciate and take over what is useful to him. His whole desire is to live in the easiest and most comfortable way possible. The yellow races are thus clearly superior to the black. Every founder of a civilization would wish the backbone of his society, his middle class, to consist of such men. But no civilized society could be created by them; they could not supply its nerve-force, or set in motion the springs of beauty and action. We come now to the white peoples. These are gifted with reflective energy, or rather with an energetic intelligence. They have a feeling for utility, but in a sense far wider and higher, more courageous and ideal, than the yellow races; a perseverance that takes account of obstacles and ultimately finds a means of overcoming them; a greater physical power, an extraordinary instinct for order, not merely as a guarantee of peace and tranquility, but as an indispensable means of self-preservation. At the same time, they have a remarkable, and even extreme, love of liberty, and are openly hostile to the formalism under which the Chinese are glad to vegetate, as well as to the strict despotism which is the only way of governing the negro.

2 The deceased and decomposing carcass of an animal. 3 Unpredictable and impulsive in nature. 4 A greedy eater. 3

The white races are, further, distinguished by an extraordinary attachment to life. They know better how to use it, and so, as it would seem, set a greater price on it; both in their own persons and those of others, they are more sparing of life. When they are cruel, they are conscious of their cruelty; it is very doubtful whether such a consciousness exists in the negro. At the same time, they have discovered reasons why they should surrender this busy life of theirs, that is so precious to them. The principal motive is honour, which under various names has played an enormous part in the ideas of the race from the beginning. I need hardly add that the word honour, together with all the civilizing influences connoted by it, is unknown to both the yellow and the black man. On the other hand, the immense superiority of the white peoples in the whole field of the intellect is balanced by an inferiority in the intensity of their sensations. In the world of the senses, the white man is far less gifted than the others, and so is less tempted and less absorbed by considerations of the body, although in physical structure he is far the most vigorous. Such are the three constituent elements of the human race. I call them secondary types, as I think myself obliged to omit all discussion of the Adamite5 man. From the combination, by intermarriage, of the varieties of these types come the tertiary groups. The quaternary formations are produced by the union of one of these tertiary types, or of a pure-blooded tribe, with another group taken from one of the two foreign species. Below these categories others have appeared—and still appear. Some of these are very strongly characterized, and form new and distinct points of departure, coming as they do from races that have been completely fused. Others are incomplete, and ill-ordered, and, one might even say, anti-social, since their elements, being too numerous, too disparate, or too barbarous, have had neither the time nor the opportunity for combining to any fruitful purpose. No limits, except the horror excited by the possibility of infinite intermixture, can be assigned to the number of these hybrid and chequered races that make up the whole of mankind. It would be unjust to assert that every mixture is bad and harmful. If the three great types had remained strictly separate, the supremacy would no doubt have always been in the hands of the finest of the white races, and the yellow and black varieties would have crawled forever at the feet of the lowest of the whites. Such a state is so far ideal, since it has never been beheld in history; and we can imagine it only by recognizing the undisputed superiority of those groups of the white races which have remained the purest. It would not have been all gain. The superiority of the white race would have been clearly shown, but it would have been bought at the price of certain advantages which have followed the mixture of blood. Although these are far from counterbalancing the defects they have brought in their train, yet they are sometimes to be commended. Artistic genius, which is equally foreign to each of the three great types, arose only after, the intermarriage of white and black. Again, in the Malayan6 variety, a human family was produced from the yellow and black races that had more intelligence than either of its ancestors. Finally, from the union of white and yellow, certain intermediary peoples have sprung, who are superior to the purely Finnish tribes as well as to the negroes.

5 The nature of humanity at the time of the human creation (that is, of Adam and Eve). 6 Those inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula in Southeast Asia . 4

I do not deny that these are good results. The world of art and great literature that comes from the mixture of blood, the improvement and ennoblement of inferior race—all these are wonders for which we must needs be thankful. The small have been raised. Unfortunately, the great have been lowered by the same process; and this is an evil that nothing can balance or repair. Since I am putting together the advantages of racial mixtures, I will also add that to them is due the refinement of manners and beliefs, and especially the tempering of passion and desire. But these are merely transitory benefits, and if I recognize that the mulatto ,7 who may become a lawyer, a doctor, or a business man, is worth more than his negro grandfather, who was absolutely savage, and fit for nothing, I must also confess that the Brahmans8 of primitive India , the heroes of the Iliad9 and the Shahnameh ,10 the warriors of Scandinavia—the glorious shades of noble races that have disappeared—give us a higher and more brilliant idea of humanity, and were more active, intelligent, and trusty instruments of civilization and grandeur than the peoples, hybrid a hundred times over, of the present day. And the blood even of these was no longer pure. However it has come about, the human races, as we find them in history, are complex; and one of the chief consequences has been to throw into disorder most of the primitive characteristics of each type. The good as well as the bad qualities are seen to diminish in intensity with repeated intermixture of blood; but they also scatter and separate off from each other, and are often mutually opposed. The white race originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength. By its union with other varieties, hybrids were created, which were beautiful without strength, strong without intelligence, or, if intelligent, both weak and ugly. Further, when the quantity of white blood was increased to an indefinite amount by successive infusions, and not by a single admixture, it no longer carried with it its natural advantages, and often merely increased the confusion already existing in the racial elements. Its strength, in fact, seemed to be its only remaining quality, and even its strength served only to promote disorder. The apparent anomaly is easily explained. Each stage of a perfect mixture produces a new type from diverse elements, and develops special faculties. As soon as further elements are added, the vast difficulty of harmonizing the whole creates a state of anarchy. The more this increases, the more do even the best and richest of the new contributions diminish in value, and by their mere presence add fuel to an evil which they cannot abate. If mixtures of blood are, to a certain extent, beneficial to the mass of mankind, if they raise and ennoble it, this is merely at the expense of mankind itself, which is stunted, abased, enervated,11 and humiliated in the persons of its noblest sons. Even if we admit that it is better to turn a myriad of degraded beings into mediocre men than to preserve the race of princes whose blood is adulterated and impoverished by being made to suffer this dishonorable change, yet there is still the unfortunate fact that the change does not stop here; for when the mediocre men are once created at the expense of the greater, they combine with other mediocrities, and from such unions, which grow ever more and more degraded, is born a

7 A person born to one white parent and one black parent. 8 Brahmins were the traditional Hindu social and cultural elite. 9 An ancient Greek epic poem written by Homer, who lived in the eighth century B.C. 10 A Persian epic poem written by Ferdowsi (940–1020A.D.). 11 To cause someone to feel weakened. 5 confusion which, like that of Babel,12 ends in utter impotence, and leads societies down to the abyss of nothingness whence no power on earth can rescue them. Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of our species. Of the multitude of peoples which live or have lived on the earth, ten alone have risen to the position of complete societies. The remainder have gravitated round these more or less independently, like planets round their suns. If there is any element of life in these ten civilizations that is not due to the impulse of the white races, any seed of death that does not come from the inferior stocks that mingled with them, then the whole theory on which this book rests is false. On the other hand, if the facts are as I say, then we have an irrefragable13 proof of the nobility of our own species. Only the actual details can set the final seal of truth on my system, and they alone can show with sufficient exactness the full implications of my main thesis, that peoples degenerate only in consequence of the various admixtures of blood which they undergo; that their degeneration corresponds exactly to the quantity and quality of the new blood, and that the rudest possible shock to the vitality of a civilization is given when the ruling elements in a society and those developed by racial change have become so numerous that they are clearly moving away from the homogeneity necessary to their life, and it therefore becomes impossible for them to be brought into harmony and so acquire the common instincts and interests, the common logic of existence, which is the sole justification for any social bond whatever. There is no greater curse than such disorder, for however bad it may have made the present state of things, it promises still worse for the future.

Note−The “ten civilizations” mentioned in the last paragraph are as follows. They are fully discussed in the subsequent books of the “Inequality of Races,” of which the present volume forms the first. I. The Indian civilization, which reached its highest point round the Indian Ocean, and in the north and east of the Indian Continent, south-east of the Brahmaputra.14 It arose from a branch of a white people , the Aryans . II. The Egyptians, round whom collected the Ethiopians, the Nubians,15 and a few smaller peoples to the west of the oasis of Ammon.16 This society was created by an Aryan colony from India, that settled in the upper valley of the Nile. III. The Assyrians,17 with whom may be classed the Jews , the Phoenicians,18 the Lydians,19 the Carthaginians,20 and the Hymiarites.21 They owed their civilizing qualities to

12 A city of ancient Babylon located in Mesopotamia, mentioned in the Bible as where a tower was built to reach the heavens. 13 Irrefutable. 14 One of the major rivers of Southeast Asia , running through Tibet, the Himalayas, Bangladesh, and India. 15 An ethnic group from southern Egypt and northern Sudan depicted by the Egyptians as very dark skinned. 16 The capital of an ancient civilization that thrived from c. 1000 to 332 B.C., the site of Amman, the capital of modern-day Jordan. 17 A Semitic kingdom located in the ancient Near East, which lasted from 2500 to 605 B.C. 6 the great white invasions which may be grouped under the name of the descendants of Shem and Ham.22 The Zoroastrian23 Iranians who ruled part of Central Asia under the names of Medes,24 Persians, and Bactrians,25 were a branch of the Aryan family. IV. The Greeks, who came from the same Aryan stock, as modified by Semitic26 elements. V. The Chinese civilization, arising from a cause similar to that operating in Egypt. An Aryan colony from India brought the light of civilization to China also. Instead however of becoming mixed with black peoples, as on the Nile, the colony became absorbed in Malay and yellow races, and was reinforced, from the north-west, by a fair number of white elements, equally Aryan but no longer Hindu. VI. The ancient civilization of the Italian peninsula, the cradle of Roman culture. This was produced by a mixture of Celts,27 Iberians,28 Aryans, and Semites. VII. The Germanic races, which in the fifth century transformed the Western mind. These were Aryans. VIII-X. The three civilizations of America, the Alleghanian,29 the Mexican,30 and the Peruvian.31 Of the first seven civilizations, which are those of the Old World , six belong, at least in part, to the Aryan race, and the seventh, that of Assyria, owes to this race the Iranian Renaissance , which is, historically, its best title to fame. Almost the whole of the Continent of Europe is inhabited at the present time by groups of which the basis is white, but in which the non-Aryan elements are the most numerous. There is no true civilization, among the European peoples, where the Aryan branch is not predominant. In the above list no negro race is seen as the initiator of a civilization. Only when it is mixed with some other can it even be initiated into one. Similarly, no spontaneous civilization is to be found among the yellow races; and when the Aryan blood is exhausted stagnation supervenes.

18 An ancient Semitic civilization located in the coastal region of the Near East, which flourished in 1200–539 B.C. 19 A kingdom located in western Asia Minor, which lasted from 1200 to 546 B.C. 20 A Semitic empire founded by the Phoenicians in the region of present-day Tunisia in 750 B.C. 21 A kingdom in ancient Yemen which lasted from 110 B.C. to 525 A.D. 22 Shem and Ham were sons of Noah in the Hebrew Bible. 23 An ancient Iranian religion that divides the universe into competing forces of good and evil. 24 People of the Median Empire in ancient Iran , existing from 678 to 549 B.C. 25 Ancient inhabitants in an area between India and China. 26 An ethnic and language family from Western Asia. 27 A group of tribal societies who once encompassed most of Europe but were gradually confined to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Northeast France . 28 A group of peoples from the Iberian Peninsula. 29 Referring to the Native American tribes settled in the regions around the Alleghany Mountain range. 30 The Aztec. 31 The Inca.