Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
Page 117
State has a right to prevent a railway from being made through his grounds. Still,
P: IJD
cB.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Colors
compulsory deprivation should be avoided as far as possible, even where it may
seem abstractly justifiable, on account of the violent resentment that it is likely to cause. (EP )
And with that, Part I of the Elements comes to an inconclusive close.
Sidgwick returns to the topic only one more time, briefly, in the chapter on
“Federal and Other Composite States.” There he reiterates his conviction
that the mother country must take a hand in regulating relations between
colonists and aborigines, since the “greater impartiality that may be rea-
sonably attributed to the home government seems to render it generally
desirable that the management of the aborigines should not be regarded as
an ‘internal affair’ of the colony, so long as there is any serious danger of a
conflict of races or persecution of the inferior race” (EP ). More alarm-
ingly, however, he also adds some further discussion of the case “where
the manual labour can never be in the main supplied by the superior race:
since here the composite character of the population must be regarded as
permanent unless the races blend.”
To a society so constituted the governmental structure sketched in the preceding
chapters is prima facie unsuited: but the extent and nature of the modifications that should be introduced into it must vary very much with the degree of civilisation actually reached by the inferior race, and its apparent capacity for further
improvement. It will be difficult to prevent a simple oligarchy of the superior race
from being tyrannical: on the other hand, it seems a desperate resource to give
equality of electoral privileges to members of the inferior race while admittedly
unfit to control the operations of government, in the mere hope that experience
may in time educate them up to a tolerable degree of fitness. So long as the com-
posite society presents this dilemma, it will probably conduce to its wellbeing as
a whole that the colony should remain a dependency; so that, even where the
business of government is mainly left in the hands of the colonists, the control of
the central government may prevent or mitigate any palpable oppression of the
inferior race. (EP )
What can be said on behalf of Sidgwick’s treatment of these ques-
tions, with all its dismal, disturbing talk of “lower” races and “higher”
grades of civilization? Against the overwhelming tide of neo-Darwinian
racism, he holds out somewhat, with an agnostic claim that no seriously
“debasing” inherent racial differences have been demonstrated scientifi-
cally, and thinks assimilation possible. Against the overwhelming realities
of British imperial expansion, he urges that actual spiritual expansion may
P: IJD
cB.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
not necessarily take the form of extended or enduring empire, and that
although colonization is often a good thing, the rights of semicivilised
and aboriginal peoples must be protected – especially from the less-than-
impartial colonists themselves. Despite his warm feelings about the spread
of his “higher” civilization, he favors the cosmopolitan ideal and clearly
hopes for more extensive and effective international law and custom to reg-
ulate all such relations and to help avoid war. His anti-Machiavellianism
and belief in external and internal sanctions and suasion for enhancing
world peace would thus appear to circumscribe – subject to utilitarian
calculation – any imperialistic ventures that the energetic “good people”
might take on. Indeed, Sidgwick recognizes how abysmally cruel the treat-
ment of native populations has been, by the “civilised” states, even when
statesmen were well-intentioned, and he thinks of denying independence
as in part a measure to ensure that the exploitation by the colonists is
not perpetuated. And against any educational program that would merely
underwrite the inferior social and economic position of the “lower races,”
he demands full educational opportunity to share in the benefits of “civil-
isation” – the “better religion” and “truer science,” as he elliptically puts
it. Again, colonial rule, in Sidgwick’s eyes, might advance the general hap-
piness of humanity, gradually undermining the prescientific superstitions
and institutions – such as slavery – that have contributed only to human
misery (not to mention the subjection of women).
On the other side, of course, is the breathtaking fatuity with which
Sidgwick designates unfamiliar peoples “lower” or “semi-civilised” or
“savage,” with perfect insouciance consigning their ways of life to ex-
tinction. How, given his own skeptical cast of mind and distance from
spiritual or political orthodoxy, could he have been so unreflectively Eu-
rocentric, so easily forgiving of what in other contexts he immediately
recognised as the phenomenon of missionaries rushing out to preach
things they did not know? And what did it mean, in practice, to be
so warmly appreciative of the greater impartiality of the home gov-
ernments, so that their benevolence was linked to maintaining British
dependencies? “Spiritual expansion” sounds deeply suspicious, even when
Sidgwick fails, in his all-too-evasive way, to give it much concrete content.
Moreover, just how lenient was he willing to be about lapses in interna-
tional duty or comity, when it came to “the duty” of spiritual expansion?
Was this like Greek love? And what, concretely, did he have in mind
when referring to such things as the different capacities for manual labor
P: IJD
cB.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Colors
and the possibility of “race degradation”? How did he construct racial
difference?
The frustrating feature of Sidgwick’s writings on this score is his ab-
stract way of describing the issues, the way in which he intentionally tries
to steer clear of too much concrete political reference, the better to foster
agreement on principle. Just which peoples did he suppose to be “savage”
and which “semi-civilised”? What was his list of the future cases where
the colonists were unlikely to engage in manual labor? What did he mean
by “race,” and which races did he think would be conquered or fused, and
which endure? Precisely why was Europe bound to “overcome” Chinese
civilization?
Clearly, a great deal of what Sidgwick said about aborigines – like a great
&nb
sp; deal of what he said about the lower classes – derived from his impressions
of the United States, Australia, South Africa, India, and New Zealand, and
his impressions of these countries were based entirely on indirect sources,
chiefly novels and a few select academic works, mostly those of his friends
and colleagues. As mentioned earlier, Bryce’s American Commonwealth was
another such work. It is worth dwelling on Bryce’s book at length, given
Sidgwick’s intimate acquaintance with and high regard for it. Bryce was,
of course, one of the old cohort, part of the group of academic liberals
and friends – including Sidgwick, Green, and Symonds – who had toured
Europe together back in the early sixties, arguing religion, philosophy,
and politics at every turn. He had accompanied Sidgwick on his fateful
trip to Italy, was a frequent houseguest, and a most welcome source of
political gossip. He became not only an influential academic, holding the
Regius Professorship of Civil Law at Oxford from until , but
also a dedicated and conscientious public servant – the Bryce Com-
mission on Secondary Education, which urged “a comprehensive central
authority to formulate policy and the constitution of local authorities to
administer secondary education,” was of the first importance for pushing
ahead the improved secondary education that would undergird the im-
provement of higher education. A longtime Liberal MP, he was invited
to serve on the India Council (but declined), though he did serve as chief
secretary to Ireland under Campbell-Bannerman, and as ambassador to
the United States, not to mention as president of the American Political
Science Association. An absolutely inveterate traveler, Bryce had experi-
enced firsthand not only the United States, which he knew quite well, but
also Canada, Australia, Egypt, South Africa, India, and any number of
P: IJD
cB.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
other lands, in addition to the Eurocentric circuit to which Sidgwick had
limited himself. He wrote about most of the places he visited, and it would
not be stretching matters to say that he served as Sidgwick’s “competent
authority” in chief when it came to factual information on the past and
present possessions of the British Empire. Both Sidgwick and Bryce, in
the nineties, would be viewed as remnants of the academic liberals of the
sixties. Both in due course had become members of the Synthetic Society,
with Sidgwick regarding his friend as in effect a fellow Apostolic inquirer,
one with whom he could share his excitement over developments in para-
psychology. And again, Sidgwick had followed Bryce in insisting on the
importance of the historical and comparative methods; he thought the
American Commonwealth a “great work.”
Sadly, Bryce was also a veritable fund of the offensive racial stereotypes
characteristic of the late Victorian era, and often these come through with
special clarity in his discussions of African Americans. Thus, a number
of key passages in his chapter on the “Present and Future of the Negro,”
in the American Commonwealth, yield a series of perfectly idiotic claims
concerning both African and Native American civilizations. Summing up
the “character and gifts of the Negro,” he writes:
He is by nature affectionate, docile, pliable, submissive, and in these respects most unlike the Red Indian, whose conspicuous traits are pride and a certain dogged
inflexibility. He is seldom cruel or vindictive – which the Indian often is – nor
is he prone to violence, except when spurred by lust or drink. His intelligence
is rather quick than solid; and though not wanting in a sort of shrewdness, he
shows the childishness as well as the lack of self-control which belongs to the
primitive peoples. A nature highly impressionable, emotional, and unstable is in
him appropriately accompanied by a love of music, while for art he has – unlike
the Red Indian – no taste or turn whatever. Such talent as he has runs to words;
he learns languages easily and speaks fluently, but shows no capacity for abstract
thinking, for scientific inquiry, or for any kind of invention. It is, however, not
so conspicuously on the intellectual side that his weakness lies, as in the sphere
of will and action. Having neither foresight nor ‘roundsight,’ he is heedless and
unthrifty, easily elated and depressed, with little tenacity of purpose, and but a
feeble wish to better his condition. Sloth, like that into which the Negroes of the
Antilles have sunk, cannot be generally charged upon the American coloured man,
partly perhaps because the climate is less enervating and nature less bountiful.
Although not so steady a workman as is the white, he is less troublesome to his
employers, because less disposed to strike. It is by his toil that a large part of the
P: IJD
cB.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Colors
cotton, rice, and sugar crop of the South is now raised. But anyone who knows
the laborious ryot or coolies of the East Indies is struck by the difference between
a race on which ages of patient industry have left their stamp and the volatile
children of Africa.
It was, he argues emphatically, a mistake, an excess of the American fa-
naticism about identifying citizenship and voting, to have precipitously
granted Negros the vote in , when generations of slavery had rendered
them totally unfit to exercise it effectively.
Bryce goes on to consider the ways in which schools, churches, litera-
ture, industry, and business are “moulding the Negro,” and his conclusions
are less than optimistic. He thinks that there “is something pathetic in the
eagerness of the Negroes, parents, young people, and children, to obtain
instruction. They seem to think that the want of it is what keeps them be-
low the whites.” And as for religion, “Among the Negroes, it took a highly
emotional and sensational form, in which there was little apprehension
of doctrine and still less of virtue, while physical excitement constantly
passed into ecstasy, hysterics, and the other phenomena which accom-
pany what are called in America camp meetings.” Furthermore, in some
of “the pure Negro districts further south,” there have “been relapses
into the Obeah rites and serpent worship of African heathendom. How
far this has gone no one can say. There are parts of the lower Mississippi
valley as little explored, so far as the mental and moral condition of the
masses is concerned, as are the banks of the Congo and the Benué.”
Bryce also suggests that the former slaves have witnessed an “increase
of insanity, marked since emancipation, and probably attributable to the
increased facili
ties which freedom has given for obtaining liquor, and to
the stress which independence and education have imposed on the unde-
veloped brain of a backward race.” And he also buys into white fears of
black criminality and sexuality, noting “the large amount of crime. Most
of it is petty crime, chiefly thefts of hogs and poultry, but there are also a
good many crimes against women.”
Furthermore, because the “most potent agency in the progress of the
humbler and more ignorant sections of a community has always been their
intercourse with those who are more advanced,” and as this presupposes
the absence of “race repulsion” and the possibility of intermarriage, the
American Negro faces special problems: “The day of his liberation was
also the day when the whites began to shun intercourse with him, and when
P: IJD
cB.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
opinion began to condemn, not merely regular marriage with a person of
colour, for that had been always forbidden, but even an illict union.” The
problem of lynching has become serious, rendering the whites cruel and
lawless and the “docile Negroes” increasingly distrustful of their former
masters.
Bryce recognizes that the problem of the color line in America is in
many ways unique, “a new one in history.” The “relations of the ruling
and subject races of Europe and Asia supply no parallel to it.” Thus,
In all such cases . . . though one race or religion may be for the moment dominant, there is no necessary or permanent distinction between them; and there is, if the
religious difficulty can be overcome, a possibility of intermarriage. Other cases
may be suggested where a fusion is improbable, as between the British and the
natives in India, or the colonists and the natives in South Africa. But the European
rulers of India are a mere handful in comparison with the natives, nor do they settle in India so as to form a part of its permanent population. In New Zealand, the