RACIALISM.

By CLERICUS.

When the May number of the "Nineteenth Century" contains an article on a forgotten historian, and when the July number of the "Contemporary" contains another on the same man, the obvious comment is that he should not have been forgotten.

When Buckle, who wrote after this historian, does not mention him, and is taken to task by Acton for the omission; when Acton himself does not refer to him excepting in this one place where he finds fault with Buckle; when his name does not appear in the "Cambridge Modern History," nor in Gooch's "Historians of the Nineteenth Century," nor in the new edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," one feels that this writer was very much forgotten indeed. Yet he was one of the really formative thinkers of last century, and he aroused an immense amount of interest in France, and especially in Germany. He was a Frenchman, and his great book appeared in 1853. Yet Flint, in his famous review of the historians of France, Switzerland and Belgium never once names him. Surely, this is a paradox. A man so remarkable, and yet so forgotten as Count Goubineau stands almost alone; alone in his suggestive and original thinking and alone in his oblivion. Were one to try to trace the development of the spirit of modern Germany, the succession of names that occur to the mind are these:—Fichte, Gobineau, Wagner, Nietzsche, Chamberlain, Lichtenberger. They are the men who have so developed and applied the idea of "racialism" in history as to fill the modern German mind with its feelings of glory and its demands to capture a "place in the sun."

In 1806 after the battle of Jena, Germany lay crushed and divided under the feet of Napoleon. In 1809 Fichte delivered his "Discourses to the German People." In these thrilling addresses he preached unity and liberty and especially racialism. The Germans were the ''primitive people," the inheritors of progress and liberty, the natural aristocracy of mankind. Over against this vision of Germany as the, heaven-born he saw "foreign nations" as naturally and instinctively enslaved. The message was believed and accepted and Germany, under Stein and Hardenberg, Scharnhorst and Blucher, rose from her ashes, threw off the foreign yoke, and began her climb to the sun. But this success was really won by the leaders rather than by the people. The national life was repressed and thrown back after 1815. The racial optimism, however, still continued to grow, and Wagner became the successor of Fichte and the typical German optimist. In 1849 the progressive movement was crushed by the monarchy and the nobles, Wagner's position became intolerable, and he retired into a broken-hearted exile. From that time Wagner changed his gospel. He became, not a racial optimist, but a Christian pessimist. He preached in "Parsifal" the "hope for a regeneration of sinful man through resignation and asceticism." It is at this point, the time of the break in Wagner's life, that Gobineau appears on the scene. He, a Frenchman, a count, and a diplomat, had admired Wagner and his work, and when Wagner retired from the succession of racialists, Gobineau took up the message and produced his book.

Gobineau's great book is on "The Inequality of the Human Races," and was published in 1853. The book fell stillborn from the press. In France practically no one took any notice of it. In Germany it excited more comment, and gradually gained an increasing number of readers and disciples. In the "nineties" it became a special object of study, and the "Gobneau revival" took place. Now it has be come almost a classic among German readers. His position, summarised, amounts to this—All the development of human history depends, not on science or ideas, not on religion or morals, not on climate or environment, not on industry or economics, but on race. There are three distinct and primeval races—the black the yellow, and the white. The white are the natural Heaven-born conquerors, Then, among the white races, the northerner is the aristocrat, as against the man of the south. And amid the northern people, the Teuton, is the aristocrat, as against the Celt or the Sclav. So the German comes out top. Dr. Page, the new American ambassador to the United Kingdom has been speaking recently about the "prerogative of the Anglo-Saxon race," whom he regards as the "dominating" race, and the one chosen by Destiny for the leadership of mankind. But the true "racialist" does not put the Anglo Saxon first; he puts the Teuton, the pure German, first. Gobineau's theory went on to hold that all decay or degeneracy comes from racial, intermixture. "Fanaticism, luxury, immorality, irreligion, do not necessarily bring about the fall of nations." It is intermingling with inferior races, and that alone, which causes decay. This explains the full of Rome and Greece, of Portugal and Venice, of Egypt and India. But his next position is that this intermixture is inevitable, being the natural result of conquest and expansion. Hence, Gobineau lands himself in a pessimism so far as mankind as a whole are concerned. The natural aristocracies among men must be destroyed by crossing. History, after reaching a certain maximum point of progress, must thereafter be a record of degeneration. But, in the meantime, the white man, especially the northern European, headed by the German people, is in the ascendant, and he is so because he is the heaven-born; the King's son, the man of Asgard, the natural aristocrat among mankind.

The next apostle in the movement is Nietzsche. He had been a Wagnerian optimist, but he revolted when Wagner began to preach resignation and redemption through sacrifice. He became acquainted with Gobineau's writings about 1877, and seems to have known him personally. "Nietzsche put Gobineau into poetry, and was able to complete him by making the ideas dear to the latter known throughout the world." He was an aristocrat, worshipping the gospel of the "will to power," hating "Christianity, the democratic movement, the pessimism of Schopenhauer, the romanticism of Wagner" as so many manifestations of decadence and of a weakening vitality. He was also a preacher of German ascendancy. Yet Germany rejects him. He voices her aspirations. He seems to cry "Amen" to every speech the Kaiser makes. Yet says Lichtenberger—"The outside observer is clearly convinced that Nietzsche cannot stand as the typical mouthpiece of the aspirations which are to-day predominant in Germany." It seems strange that Germany and Nietzsche have fallen out with each other. He is "out of season" there. Germany is too prudent, too bourgeois, too Christian to appreciate his wild, philippics against Christianity, and every other religious ideal. Germany is practical and positive, and dislikes extremes. So Nietzsche, who represents the very spirit of the Kaiser and of German racialism, is condemned.

What Nietzsche could not do, because he was so wild in his thinking, two other men have done very successfully. These two are Chamberlain, an Englishman and Lichtenberger, a Frenchman. Chamberlain, like Acton, is a Europeanised Englishman. He is the son in law of Wagner and can be regarded as almost more German than English. His remarkable book the "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century," appeared in 1899 and has become the present day exposition of Gobineau and of racialism. Chamberlain quotes Gobineau repeatedly and criticises him freely calling some of his positions absurd and showing how far behind he is when judged by the historical knowledge of to-day. That is all very well. It helps the reader to grasp that Chamberlain is by no means a mere repeater or imitator of Gobineau. He is am independent thinker. Yet their message is the same. It is an aristocratic racialism, with the "German" at the top. Chamberlain, by a singular confusion includes the Sclav and the Celt under what he calls the "German"—thus being not quite so distinct in his thinking as apparently his master was. In some passages however Chamberlain clearly holds that the Sclav and the Celt must give place to the superiority of the Teuton. Lord Redesdale in his introduction to the English translation of the book says: "The leitmotif which runs through the whole book is the assertion of the supremacy of the Teuton family to all the other races of the world." Chamberlain's racialism is is bitterly Anti-Semitic as it is pro-Teuton and it is not surprising to hear the rumour that the Kaiser is doing his best to spread his book among the loyal and Imperialistic Germans.

Last comes Lichtenberger a Frenchman who in his "Germany and Its Evolution in Modern Times," published in 1912, also seems to be a disciple of a moderate racialism. Lichtenberger is a follower of Nietzsche although in a chastened and modified form. He sympathises with his master in his teaching that the will to power is "the fundamental fact of the life of the universe" and he maintains that "German reason has proved herself a force of the first magnitude and a peerless instrument of power." He writes also of the "feeling of astonishment in the presence of that prodigious development which German power underwent during the course of the last century." He finds in the German people a passion for power, together with an extraordinary fecundity. These two forces lead to the expansion and the gradual ascendancy of the nation. But Lichtenberger is more an impartial historian than any of the preceding racialists. In fact he is more a Nietzschean than a pure racialist. But that fallout between Germany and Nietzsche which arose from the wild extravagance of the latter is made up in the writings of the Frenchman. Notwithstanding his moderation, his philosophy, and his limitations of view, Lichtenberger is in the succession. He is really the last of the German racialists, who began the century with Fichte. The whole succession is certainly remarkable, but Gobineau—some of whose works are about to be translated into English—is the high priest of the movement.

The Argus 30 August 1913,