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opinion he remains true in , regarding the Socialistic drift of the last
twenty years as a lamentable temporary divergence from the true and main
movement of political thought and fact.” Moreover, against any too-ready
acceptance concerning the drift toward secularism, Sidgwick rhetorically
asks whether it is “not a historical commonplace that the tendency towards
a practically secular view of human life has rarely been more marked than
it was in the educated class – including the clergy of the most civilised
country in Europe – in the age that preceded Luther?” (MEA )
The point, Sidgwick explains, is that “prophecies, based on analogous
historic cases” are always “very imperfect,” and though the history of
civilization is a history of change that is usually gradual, the change is
“still sufficiently rapid to establish profound differences between any two
stages separated by a considerable interval of time.” These doubts and
cautionaries – quintessential Sidgwick – lead him back to the question of
whether we have any real knowledge of the “fundamental laws of social
evolution as a whole,” since “only a positive answer to this question can
justify us in confidently forecasting the future of society for any consider-
able way ahead.” And of course, Pearson’s claims had rested on precisely
this argument, to the effect that it was often easier to forecast the big de-
velopments of social evolution than the nearer and more specific future.
“Fortunately,” Sidgwick argues, concerning whether there really is any
science of social dynamics worthy of the name, “there is a simple criterion
of the effective establishment of a science – laid down by the original and
powerful thinker who must certainly be regarded as the founder of the
science of society, if there is such a science – the test of Consensus of
experts and Continuity of scientific work.” This criterion, derived from
Comte, shows “that the social science is not yet effectively constructed –
at least so far as the department of ‘social dynamics’ is concerned – since
it is certain that every writer on the subject starts de novo and builds on
his own foundation.” (MEA )
Curiously, amazingly, Sidgwick does not directly address Pearson’s
racialist claims. One could read his review without appreciating what
Pearson’s fundamental worry actually was. Yet, with what were apparently
Pearson’s most firmly grounded claims now skilfully undercut, the reader
is left to imagine the havoc that Sidgwick’s considerations could make
with them. And what Sidgwick does do is to delicately divert attention
to a work on Social Evolution by Benjamin Kidd, which serves as the ob-
ject of a thoroughly effective, highly sarcastic assault on the mingling of
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biology and sociology. In fact, Kidd comes off as the kind of singularly
moronic camp follower of social Darwinism that the Spencers and Comtes
had left in their wake. Kidd is like a youthful student of history who gets
carried away by – infatuated with – vast generalizations, generalizations
that more mature study would end up loading “with qualifications and
reserves.” When it comes to the
general moral superiority of the Anglo-Saxon in his dealings with inferior races –
I think that any Anglo-Saxon who will study with strict impartiality the ‘wretched
details of ferocity and treachery which have marked the conduct of civilised men
in their relations with savages,’ is not likely to rise from the study thanking heaven that he is not a Frenchman or a Spaniard; but rather with a humble hope that the
page of history recording these details is now turned for West-European nations
generally, and that the future historian of the Europeanisation of Africa will have
a different tale to tell. (MEA –)
And the inevitable conclusion is, of course: “Scientific prevision of this
kind will perhaps be ultimately attained, as the slow fruit of long years of
labour yet to come; – but even that is one of the things which it would be
rash confidently to predict.”
Yet it is very difficult to know just what to make of this piece. Why did
Sidgwick avoid all mention of race? More Brycean prudence? Another
Mauricean dodge? After all, if Sidgwick casts aspersions on the supposed
moral superiority of Anglo-Saxons, he nonetheless still assumes that they
are dealing with “inferior races.” If he hopes that the Europeanization
of Africa will not be a repeat of the Europeanization of, say, America,
he nonetheless accepts the legitimacy of the Europeanization of Africa.
Against Pearson, or other segregationists, Sidgwick would quite clearly
insist on affording the “inferior races” every opportunity to “prove” them-
selves, particularly via education. But they would still be proving them-
selves, and the education would still be that designed by Sidgwick and
his colleagues. This is at the least highly Eurocentric, and quite possi-
bly racist. And if Bryce could contemplate the possibility of permanent
segregation in the United States, and Pearson do likewise with respect to
Australia, both of them duly impressing Sidgwick with their work, how
candid could the Elements have been, in stating that exclusion from the
franchise on grounds of race was a question for political societies “neces-
sarily different from that which has been generally contemplated in the
discussions of the present treatise”?
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For despite his doubts, how could Sidgwick have said what he said,
without being all-too-impressed by Pearson’s quasi-Nietszchean perfec-
tionist remnant and Balfour’s racial progressivism and brutal attitudes? Is
this not simply another facet – or possible facet – of the much-sought-after,
reinvigorating new religion?
A fundamental question remains, however. It is very far from plain that
these different figures actually held anything even faintly resembling a co-
herent biological notion of race, or even the same one, however confused.
Balfour’s notion of race, for instance, was an odd mix of Lamarckian spec-
ulation and ethnic bigotry, linked to a virtually mystical notion of national
character. And Bryce, in his Romanes Lecture on “The Relations of
the Advanced and Backward Races of Mankind,” at least admitted that
“[a]ll the great peoples of the world are the result of a mixing of races”
and allowed that some “of the races now deemed backward may show a
capacity for intellectual and moral progress greater than they have been
credited with. The differences between them and the a
dvanced races lie
not so much in intelligence as in force of will and tenacity of purpose.”
True, he again seemed to envision the possible advisability of permanent
segregation in some cases, and to view race repulsion as virtually inerad-
icable. Upon revisiting the United States in later years, however, he was
led to produce an additional chapter, “Further Reflections on the Negro
Problem,” in which his old views were further moderated. Now, he held
that the progress of blacks was indisputable, and if there was something
to the claim that they were inefficient workers, the cause was probably
environmental. He was much moved by DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk,
and he concluded by wondering, when “the sentiment of a common hu-
manity has so grown and improved within a century as to destroy slavery
everywhere, may it not be that a like sentiment will soften the bitterness
of race friction also?”
Consider in this context a most illuminating letter from Dicey to Bryce,
dated Christmas , which conveys in short compass a keen sense of the
shifting utilitarian perspective on race:
Your subject for the Romanes Lectures which I am delighted to hear you are going
to deliver is an excellent one. “The Contest Between Civilized and Uncivilized
Races” is perhaps the most important of the time and will become more and
more important as the century goes on and happily as yet it has not become a
party question. Accidental circumstances have recently called my attention to it.
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There is a terrible danger that, as we cannot talk of human equality with the same
confidence with which the best men of the th and the earlier th century spoke
of it, and as we are compelled to attach more importance than they did to race, we
may come to give up faith in the truth, of which I think they had a firm hold, that
the qualities which races have in common are at least as important as (I should
say more important than) the characteristics in which they differ. Then the whole
matter is complicated to my mind by the growth of an idea, which I think may
be true that the races with different ideals and different moralities had best live
apart. I cannot myself feel at all sure that the cry for a “White Australia” is not
at bottom a sound one. But all I want at present to urge is the great advantage of
your taking up this topic and dealing with it in your lecture.
Dicey, the old Benthamite, here regretfully insists on the increasing im-
portance of race as a political issue, expressing some doubts as to whether
Pearson might not be right about keeping Australia white. But this comes
as part of a congratulatory message to Bryce for his willingness to tackle
head-on a baffling subject that needs thinking through, made the more
poignant by the manifest confusion of race with something closer to ethnic
identity.
Perhaps something akin to these Diceyan and Brycean notes are im-
portant for considering Sidgwick, marking as they do the slightly more
moderate, slightly more agnostic attitude amid a veritable sea of grotesque
prejudice. Indeed, Sidgwick goes well beyond all these figures in keeping
matters of race far in the background, and this may well have been, not
only the retreat to the private sphere described by Hobsbawm, but also, at
least in part, that characteristic Sidgwickian silence when doubtful. If his
doubts did not end up effectively neutralizing his racist presuppositions,
they at least moderated them somewhat.
The most straightforward comments that Sidgwick makes on the sub-
ject would seem to support this reading. Thus, crucially, The Development
of European Polity does not contain any specific projections about race to
speak of, though surely this is where Sidgwick would have put them, out
of all his major works. He does discuss the future of federation, with an
eye to Home Rule, explaining how in Croatia
there has been since a separate Parliament which legislates on a part of those
matters that are not regarded as common to the whole of the territories of the Hungarian Crown, the rest of such matters being legislated on in the Hungarian
Parliament at Buda Pest, to which Croatia sends deputies; the Croatian deputies
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voting in the Hungarian Parliament not on all matters, but only on such matters
as are not legislated on separately in the Croatian Parliament. (DEP )
There is much disputing with Maine over the evolution of patriarchy,
custom, and law in ancient Greece and Rome, but China, India, Africa,
and even Australia are nearly absent even as counterpoints. There is the
stock point – “competent judges hold that it might have prevented serious
mistakes in our government of India, if the governing statesmen had had
before their minds the historical development of land-tenure, as we now
conceive it to have taken place in European countries” – which Sidgwick
repeated in a half-dozen different works to illustrate how the past might
afford “instructive analogies.” But there is little effort to demonstrate any
serious familiarity with non-European states or any serious reliance on
the concept of race, after the manner of Pearson. The reason for this is
embedded in the very structure of the book. As Sidgwick explains in his
opening chapter, he is going to confine his attention “mainly to the political
institutions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and of Western Europe
and its colonies in post-Roman times.” Thus,
Though there are societies – groups of gregarious men – in which the ‘differenti-
ation’ into governors and governed is barely perceptible, such societies constitute
a very insignificant portion of humanity: it is almost universally true that a man
is a ‘political animal’ in the sense of being either ruler or ruled, either obeying or constituting a government of some kind. But there is a sense in which higher political development has originated almost exclusively in, and is still mainly confined
to certain portions of the white, or – as some still call it – Causcasian race. They
alone have developed, along with the development of their civilisation, governing
organs of which the members are accustomed ‘to rule and obey alternately’ –
whether () the supreme ruler is merely elected by the citizens for a limited time,
and then gives up power and may be formally called to account for his exercise of
it, or () the supreme rule is in whole or in part exercised collectively by a body
of citizens meeting from time to time.
In the history of political institutions these forms interest us most, not only as
citizens of a modern West-European State, but as students of P
olitical Science:
just as the highest forms of life have a special interest for the biologist. I shall
accordingly confine my attention mainly to the nations who have shown a power
of developing them. And among them the most important and conspicuous of
those whose history is known to us are certainly the Greeks, Romans, and West-
Europeans. They stand pre-eminent among the civilised portions of humanity as
having developed, up to the highest point that their civilisation has yet reached, not
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only political ins titutions, but constitutions and constitutional ideas and theories.
(DEP )
Obviously Sidgwick is here simply taking for granted the prejudices of
his time, since he plainly knew nothing whatsoever of, say, the Iroquois
nation or the Arapesh. Yet what is noteworthy, in addition, is that he is
working with a fairly etiolated biology of race, comparatively speaking,
such that few features of “national character” appear to be attributable to
it. Development in fact gives one of Sidgwick’s clearest and most extensive
statements on the subject:
Some explanation is required of these notions of ‘race’ and ‘family of nations.’
Firstly, in speaking of the ‘white race,’ I do not mean to imply that there are four
or five original stocks of human beings, distinguishable by colour and other marks,
as ‘white,’ ‘brown,’ ‘yellow,’ and ‘black’ races. In the present state of anthropology there is no ground for assuming any such original differences of stocks; and the
physical differences actually existing are more numerous and complicated, and
shade off into each other more gradually, than the popular nomenclature suggests.
And since all varieties of human beings are zoologically of one species – inter-
marriage between any two generally producing fertile offspring – the physical
differences of race historically presented may be to an indefinite extent referable
to crossing of breeds. A special instance of this is perhaps presented by the marked
differences we find between the fair whites, prevalent in Northern Europe, and
the dark whites prevalent in Southern Europe and parts of Asia; – as the latter