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ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
SOME PRESS NOTICES 
 
 OP THB FIRST EDITION OF 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 By MEREDITH TOWNSEND. 
 
 Being Studies presenting the conclusions formed 
 by the Author in a long life devoted to the 
 subject of the relations between Asia 
 and Europe. 
 
 “If I could only afford to buy one book this summer I 
 should certainly choose Mr. Meredith Townsend's .’’ — British 
 Weekly. 
 
 “An extremely interesting book, full of knowledge and 
 enthusiasm and imagination, written in a singularly clear and 
 trenchant style, and with the method of a finished literary 
 artist. ... Its views are of the greatest possible interest to 
 serious students of Politics. Its range is wide. It extends 
 from general questions such as the influence of Europe on Asia 
 and the mental exclusion of India, the progress of savage races, 
 and the variety of Indian society to more detailed investigations, 
 such as the life of Mohammed, the core of Hindooism, and the 
 future of the negro." — Pilot . 
 
 “ The public interested in that country (India) will do well to 
 study the pages of this volume." — Aihcnaum. 
 
 “ It would be difficult to exaggerate the interest of this 
 remarkable book, in it Mr. Meredith Townsend deals with some 
 of the most poignant problems that confront the British people 
 as the ruler of the greatest and most Asiatic of the Empires of 
 Asia." — Spectator. 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 STUDIES PRESENTING THE CONCLUSIONS 
 FORMED BY THE AUTHOR IN A LONG 
 LIFE DEVOTED TO THE SUBJECT 
 OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 BY MEREDITH 
 TOWNSEND 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
 
Bdtlkr fc Tanner, 
 
 The Selwood Print ing Works, 
 Fromb, and London. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE «x 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA . . 19 
 
 ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA ... 43 
 
 WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA? 82 
 
 THE CHARM OF ASIA FOR ASIATICS . . .120 
 
 ENGLISH AND ASIATIC FEELING CONTRASTED . 129 
 
 THE REFLEX EFFECT OF ASIATIC IDEAS . . 137 
 
 THE MENTAL SECLUSION OF INDIA . . .146 
 
 THE GREAT ARABIAN 155 
 
 v 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RACE-HATRED IN ASIA 214 
 
 ARAB COURAGE 220 
 
 INDIAN ABSTEMIOUSNESS 227 
 
 THE ASIATIC NOTION OF JUSTICE . . .235 
 
 THE “STANDARD OF COMFORT” IN INDIA . . 244 
 
 THE CORE OF HINDOOISM 252 
 
 CRUELTY IN EUROPE AND ASIA . . . .261 
 
 THE VARIETY OF INDIAN SOCIETY . . .268 
 
 THE VASTNESS OF CALAMITIES IN ASIA . . 278 
 
 A TYPICAL ASIATIC 285 
 
 ALADDIN’S CAVE 293 
 
 THE ARABS OF THE DESERT 301 
 
 ASIATIC PATRIOTISM 309 
 
 • 3*5 
 
 FANATICISM” IN THE EAST 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 WILL CONQUEST VIVIFY ASIA? 
 
 WHY TURKEY LIVES 
 
 TROPICAL COLONIZATION 
 
 HINDOO “BARBARISM” .... 
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO 
 
 THE NEGRO PROBLEM IN AMERICA . 
 
 THE MINDS OF SAVAGES 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF SAVAGE RACES 
 
 THE CONTEMPT OF ASIA FOR EUROPE. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • 323 
 
 • 330 
 
 • 337 
 ■ 345 
 
 • 354 
 
 • 362 
 
 * • 370 
 
 • 378 
 . 385 
 
 393 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 SINCE the publication of the second edition of this 
 work an event has occurred which in the judgment 
 of the author almost proves the correctness of its 
 main thesis, namely that Asia , though it yields from 
 time to time to sudden impact from Europe as water 
 yields to a ship , always flows back after a ripple 
 more or less long drawn out , without having been 
 apparently affected. An Asiatic power , not of the 
 first-class either in area or population , has challenged 
 and beaten by sea and land a first-class European 
 state. Europe had watched for some years with great 
 intellectual interest the development of Japan, an 
 island kingdom with the area of Great Britain and a 
 population estimated at forty-five millions. "Travel- 
 lers and merchants reported that the Japanese while 
 possessing a separate and in its way admirable kind of 
 art , had assimilated many of the ideas and much of the 
 mechanical skill of Europe , had contrived to recon- 
 cile the theocratic and therefore absolute authority of 
 their sovereign with a kind of representative govern- 
 ment and a large measure of personal freedom , and 
 
 “ & 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 had organized an army which those Englishmen who 
 shared the dangers and exertions of the war with 
 China in 1901 pronounced to be singularly efficient , 
 and which the Sikh officers in the British service , 
 most unprejudiced and competent judges , admired as 
 distinctly superior to both the Russian and French 
 contingents in the strangely composite army which 
 took Pekin. Little attention was , however , paid to 
 these reports , and when , in February, \<qo\ffapan, to 
 the surprise of the Western world , declared war upon 
 Russia , the general opinion was that she had pre- 
 sumptuously undertaken a task beyona her strength. 
 
 The conceit of Europe was destined , however , to 
 receive the rudest shock that it has sustained for 
 centuries. The Japanese fleet destroyed the best 
 ships of the Russian squadron in Port Arthur , and 
 so successfully blockaded the remainder that they 
 were totally unable to arrest the descent of 
 a large army upon the mainland of Manchuria , 
 which , besides occupying Corea , defeated in re- 
 peated engagements the Russian army , supposed to be 
 200,000 strong , under General Kuropatkin , and , 
 after a victorious battle , which rivalled in slaughter 
 any of the battles of Napoleon , compelled it to en- 
 trench itself on the banks of the Shaho. There it has 
 since remained , awaiting the heavy reinforcements 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xi 
 
 without which it has no hope of victory. Meanwhile , 
 another army besieged Port Arthur , of which the 
 Russian engineers had made a fortified position cer- 
 tainly much stronger than Sebastopol , and believed by 
 all Russians and most foreign experts in fortification 
 to be impregnable except by famine. It was defended 
 with heroic tenacity for seven months , but during that 
 period the "Japanese , who showed themselves utterly 
 reckless of life and who possessed an amazing store 
 of the finest artillery , a store in great part manu- 
 factured by themselves during ten years of careful 
 preparation , carried by a series of assaults, which in 
 their daring and their persistence bewildered the most 
 experienced generals of Europe , fort after fort , and at 
 last , by the use of tunnels and dynamite compelled the 
 stubborn general commanding the defence , whose hero- 
 ism extorted admiration throughout Europe , and even 
 in Tokio itself to surrender — not indeed at discretion , 
 for the honours of war were conceded and the battle- 
 ships in the harbour were blown up , but in a complete 
 manner , 2y,oooRussians being sent prisoners to Japan. 
 Europe gasped. It had forgotten the history of the 
 Arabs under the generals of the early Khalifate and 
 of the Mongols under Jenghis Khan and was simply 
 astounded to hear of Asiatic soldiers who died as 
 recklessly as the best Russian or German troops , who. 
 
xii 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 to mention only one incident in a thousand , when four 
 times repulsed received the fifth order to advance with 
 shouts of delight , and who maintained their energy 
 and their discipline in night assaults as completely as 
 in skirmishes by daylight. 
 
 It was recognized at once that a new Great 
 Power had been born and that the history of Asia 
 had arrived at a turning point ; but some features of 
 this great event have still been missed by Europe at 
 large , though they begin to be perceived by a few of 
 the great professionals. One, perhaps the most striking 
 of these features, is that the "Japanese have accom- 
 plished their astonishing feats of war without any 
 of those special sources of strength which have 
 usually marked Asiatic successes. They have 
 moved to battle, to use Macaulay s well-known 
 words , with the precision of machines and the 
 enthusiasm of Crusaders, but they have not been 
 animated as the Arabs were by any new creed, 
 or led, as conquering armies have almost invari- 
 ably been, by men of exceptional genius for war. 
 Japan has produced no Alexander, no Jenghis 
 Khan, no Napoleon ; her generals have been com- 
 petent and marvellously persistent, but nothing 
 more. They have applied the old principles of 
 war in their fullest perfection, but they have evolved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xiii 
 
 nothing new and have repeatedly displayed a cer- 
 tain slowness , as if when a battle was won they 
 had to think out the next manoeuvres. The beaten 
 army on the mainland repeatedly had time to re- 
 form, and though the expenditure of life in the 
 different actions has been almost unprecedented , the 
 \ Pursuit has almost always been feeble or ineffec- 
 tual. This is probably due to a fact which differ- 
 entiates the Japanese army from almost all great 
 armies of Asiatics , the absence in their forces of 
 those masses of cavalry with which the Parthian 
 or Arab or Mongol leaders practically destroyed 
 the shattered regiments of their foes. It is, more- 
 over, to be noted that the Japanese have relied 
 upon what Europeans call science to a degree un- 
 precedented in Asiatic warfare. The letters of 
 Russian officers from the fields of battle are full 
 of complaints of the superiority of their artillery. 
 They invented early in the campaign a new and 
 more explosive powder for their shells. In the 
 siege of Port Arthur they kept up sometimes for 
 weeks such a continuous stream of fire that the 
 Russian soldiery could not sleep, and one so well 
 directed that during the last week of the siege a 
 Russian staff officer declares with pardonable ex- 
 aggeration that he could find no room for his foot 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 for the "Japanese shells. Moreover , the Japanese 
 have throughout shown most singular powers of 
 self-restraint , and though the men are for the 
 most part unfamiliar with war , and are in fact 
 peasants and coolies trained only for a few months, 
 there has been from first to last no rumour of 
 disobedience or of retreat while the officers remained 
 fighting. The telegrams from Tokio have been 
 truthful ; the proclamations of the Mikado and the 
 speeches of his ministers have been coldly reticent, 
 and the news of victory, even the startling victory 
 over Port Arthur , has been received without the 
 smallest disturbance of social equanimity. There 
 has, in fact, been something Roman, as Rome ap- 
 peared to Livy, in the demeanour of the Japanese, a 
 something evident also in the silent but irresistible 
 action of their conscription, which , as in Arabia 
 under the early Caliphs, or in Mongolia under the 
 chiefs who followed Jenghis , is enforced both by 
 opinion and the law. There is no resistance and no 
 wish to resist, for in Japan it seems certain that the 
 really governing philosophy is “ Bushido which may 
 best be translated by knightliness of thought. 
 
 It is clear that Japan is a great State, entitled to 
 a place among the civilized communities which now 
 claim the right to regulate the affairs of the world. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xv 
 
 'There is no state which will make war on it without 
 adequate provocation , or which , even if the provoca- 
 tion is severe will not hesitate to incur the losses and the 
 risks which any war with "Japan must involve to any 
 power. Her force is acknowledged, and the only 
 question for Europe now is what she will ultimately 
 do with it. The German Emperor and a great many 
 literary men have expressed a fear that she will 
 dominate China , and with the endless resources of that 
 over-numerous people repeat once again the victories 
 of the Tartar horsemen. It is, however, most un- 
 likely that the “ Yellow Peril f if a peril is to 
 develop, will take this form. An attack upon Europe, 
 even if successful, would hardly benefit Japan, and 
 success in so vast an enterprise would be exceedingly 
 improbable. Europe contains 200 millions of men, 
 half of whom will perish rather than submit to an 
 Asiatic domination. Her science has long since taken 
 a military trend, and she cannot be deprived, if united 
 for defence, of her command of the sea. The mere 
 feeding of the masses of men who would be required to 
 reach, say, Vienna, which the Mongols once threatened 
 but never took, would strain all the resources of the 
 Yellow Peoples, who, it must also be remarked, are 
 no longer , as the early Mongols were, the riding tribes 
 of the world. There is no doubt that Japan, if vie- 
 
XVI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 torious , will gradually develop great ambitions, as all 
 other victorious States have done , but much of her 
 ambition will be sated by the Protectorate of China , 
 which no one can keep from her , and by the conquest 
 and settlement of the great system of islands which 
 stretches down from Nagasaki to Australia. It has 
 been repeatedly asserted that , seeing her absolute neces- 
 sity for territorial expansion and the vastness and 
 weakness of Australia , the statesmen of Japan will 
 as time advances , make some great effort to conquer 
 and occupy the island continent of the Southern 
 Pacific. If Australia were left to itself \ this, judg- 
 ing by the usual course of historic events, would become 
 the permanent policy of the new Power. It would pos- 
 sibly also be a successful policy, for the Australians, 
 with a want of prudence which is almost inexplicable, 
 have discouraged European immigration ; they do not 
 themselves multiply rapidly ; and they are scattered 
 around the fringe of a vast continent full of harbours. 
 They are, compared with the Japanese, a feeble folk, 
 not one tenth their number. Although they are brave, 
 they have not been trained to war, they have as yet 
 organized no great armies, they object to waste money 
 on the huge arsenals which could provide a whole 
 nation with scientific weapons, and if attacked, as the 
 Japanese would attack them, their States being invaded 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xvn 
 
 one by one , they would probably in three years be hope- 
 lessly crushed and driven into the untenable interior. 
 No such catastrophe is, however, within calculable 
 distance, unless indeed Australia quarrels with Great 
 Britain. The British fleet is still irresistible ; it 
 would perish before Australia should be touched ; and 
 neither fapan nor China can hope to do what a coali- 
 tion of the older maritime powers shrinks from doing. 
 
 fapan, moreover, though naturally an expand- 
 ing power, because its people are too numerous and 
 because they are vain, has, like Great Britain, the 
 commercial instinct. She will seek in the first 
 place to obtain the control of the commerce of China, 
 and will then fill all the ports of Asia with her 
 merchantmen and her traders. It is more than 
 possible that her people, who are thoughtful and 
 anxious for gain, will seek to benefit by their victories 
 rather in commerce and manufactures than in terri- 
 torial acquisitions. Nevertheless, it may be taken 
 as certain that the victory of fapan will be pro- 
 foundly felt by the majority of European States. 
 With the exception of Austria, all European 
 countries have implicated themselves in the great 
 effort to conquer Asia, which has now been going on 
 for two centuries, but which, as this author thinks, 
 must now terminate . fapan cannot like, even if 
 
xviii 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 she imitates , the powers which , while professing 
 friendships unanimously refuse to admit Japanese 
 into their possessions , on the ground that they are an 
 inferiors or at all events an uncivilized people. In 
 Australia and in all North America the Japanese are 
 already unwelcomes and if they should try to populate 
 the thinly peopled and rich regions of South America 
 the haughty Spaniards would refuse them admittance 
 and be backed in their refusal by the supporters of 
 the Monroe doctrine. The dispositions therefores to 
 edge out intrusive Europeans from their Asiatic 
 possessions is certain to exist even if it is not 
 manifested in Tokio, and it may be fostered by a 
 movement of which , as yets but little has been said. 
 No one who has ever studied the question doubts that 
 as there is a comity of Europe , so there is a comity 
 of Asia s a disposition to believe that Asia belongs of 
 right to Asiatics , and that any event which brings 
 that right nearer to realization is to all Asiatics a 
 pleasurable one. "Japanese victories will give new 
 heart and energy to all the Asiatic nations and to tribes 
 which now fret under European rule , will inspire in 
 them a new confidence in their own power to resist , 
 and will spread through them a strong hnpulse to avail 
 themselves of Japanese instruction. It will take , 
 of course , many years to bring this new force into play , 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xix 
 
 for no Asiatic people , except the 'Turks , possesses 
 what Mr. Parnell called “ the plant of an armed 
 revolution ” ; but time matters nothing to Asiatics , 
 and they all possess that capacity for complete secrecy 
 which the Japanese displayed for the ten years 
 during which they were arming for their great 
 struggle with Russia. If, therefore, it is one of the 
 permanent conditions of history, as this writer believes, 
 that Pur ope should not permanently occupy Asia or 
 Asia conquer Europe , the rise of Japan into a 
 great Power must by degrees increase the difficulty 
 for Europe of remaining in profitable possession of 
 great sections of Asia. Remember , Asia contains 
 
 at least eighty millions of fighting men, of whom 
 the immense majority believe their position after death 
 to be tolerably secure, and therefore regard death with 
 a fearlessness which Europe has, in a measure, lost. 
 The operation of the new tendency might be delayed 
 for a century if Europe would gratify the pride of 
 Japan by a complete and full admission into the 
 European family ; but if history proves anything, 
 it proves that the colour prejudice, whether well 
 founded or not, is incurable, that even similarity of 
 creed will not bind together races radically distinct in 
 colour from each other ; and that the strange destiny 
 which has filled the three ancient continents with men 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of three separate colours has its root in some law of 
 the mind which never changes , or some decision of 
 Providence from which there can be no appeal. Asia , 
 strengthened by the leadership of Japan , will , as I 
 believe , recover the independence which she will in 
 all human probability once more misuse. 
 
Preface to the First Edition 
 
 I THINK it advisable to say that this volume , 
 though it consists — the Introduction excepted — of 
 reprints from the “ Contemporary Review the 
 old “ National Review and the “ Spectator w 
 not like many such reprints a bundle of disconnected 
 thoughts. All the papers are directed to one end, 
 a description of those inherent differences between 
 Europe and Asia which forbid one continent perma- 
 nently to conquer the other. The struggle between 
 Europe and Asia is the binding thread of history ; 
 the trade between Europe and Asia is the foundation 
 of commerce ; the thought of Asia is the basis of 
 all European religions : but the fusion of the 
 
 Continents has never occurred, and in the Author s 
 best judgement will never occur. It is rather a sad- 
 dening reflection that the thoughts of so many years 
 are all summed up by a great poet 1 in four lines : 
 
 The East bowed low before the blast , 
 
 In patient deep disdain ; 
 
 She let the legions thunder past , 
 
 Then plunged in thought again. 
 
 1 Matthetv Arnold 
 
 XXI 
 
XXII 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 But the insight of the poet always goes deeper than 
 the calculation of the thinker. 
 
 I have added two papers on the negro , of whose 
 destiny I am not hopeful. Crossed with Arab or 
 Hindoo j he may have a future , but uncrossed there 
 is some source of failure in him — probably a defect 
 of power to accumulate thought — which will leave 
 him far behind , as it has left him for three thousand 
 years on the Congo. 
 
 I must add that , as will be perceived , I have 
 said nothing of the possible influence of America 
 upon Asia — first, because it does not enter 
 into my subject ; and secondly , because I hardly 
 care to speculate on a future as to which history 
 can give no light. I may however just say here 
 that although America must by and by greatly 
 influence Asia , its influence will hardly be favour- 
 able to conquest. It will more probably be one of 
 the many which will make permanent conquest im- 
 possible. When once the Nicaragua Canal has 
 been cut the trade of the United States with Farther 
 Asia will be one of the greatest the world has seen , 
 and Asia will fill a large space in American 
 imaginations , always influenced by the spectacle of 
 the gigantic. All manner of traders will seek her 
 
 1 This is happening in Natal and Uganda. 
 
PREFACE xxiii 
 
 coasts , and all manner of concessionaires will rifle 
 the riches of the interior. All manner of mission- 
 aries will be attracted by her millions , and all 
 manner of educating agencies will make Asia their 
 field of operation. The suave and humorous 
 American will possibly become the most popular of 
 white men with Asiatics, and may be able to convey 
 to them ideas more acceptably than any other. 
 Nevertheless the American will not rule the Asiatic. 
 The fissure between the races is very wide , and as 
 yet has proved impassable. The American can 
 never like any one not of his own colour , he 
 will never mix on a footing of equality with any 
 other ; and the Chinaman in San Francisco no 
 more becomes an American than the Chinaman in 
 Calcutta becomes a Bengalee. Lastly , the American 
 has no interest in conquering Asia. He does not 
 wish for territory already occupied by masses of 
 people — he has ample room for settlement in his own 
 hemisphere — and he does not believe sovereignty 
 absolutely essential to trade. It will be easier to 
 acquire influence in Asia by protecting her from 
 conquest than to begin conquering ; and this , I 
 think , will in the end be the American line , as 
 indeed in China it already is. For reasons of trade , 
 for reasons of kindly regard and for reasons of 
 
XXIV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 jealousy the attitude of America will, I imagine , be 
 one of rather contemptuous guardianship. 
 
 I have to thank the Editors of the “ Contemporary 
 Review ” and “ Spectator ” for their kindness in 
 permitting reprint , and I only wish I could thank 
 the Editor of the old “ National .R. H. Hutton , 
 but alas ! he has passed to the majority. For forty 
 years his strongest approval was given to the drift 
 of these papers. 
 
 MEREDITH TOWNSEND 
 
Introduction 
 
 I AM emboldened to publish these Essays which 
 have all the same object, namely to make Asia 
 stand out clearer to English eyes, because it is evi- 
 dent to me that the white races under the pressure 
 of an entirely new impulse are about to renew their 
 periodic attempt to conquer or at least to dominate 
 that vast continent. Alexander of Macedon, the 
 supreme genius for war produced by the ancient 
 world, made the attempt in order to realize a vain- 
 glorious dream. The rulers of the Roman Republic 
 renewed it in pursuance of a steady policy of con- 
 quering as much of the world as they could reach, 
 and as might be expected to pay. The Crusaders 
 essayed the task once more in order to rescue the 
 birthland of Christianity from the infidel, and to 
 found amidst the debris of the Eastern Empire 
 kingdoms and principalities for highborn men, to 
 whom Europe afforded little hope of aggrandize- 
 ment or even maintenance. Then the idea slept for 
 five hundred years, during which Europe almost 
 forgot Asia, ceasing to record its history or even 
 to explore its vast divisions. At length in the 
 
2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 seventeens and eigh teens Russia and England 
 stirred, one seizing on the vast and secluded terri- 
 tory which extends through Northern Asia in an 
 unbroken block from the Ural to the North Pacific, 
 the other the equally vast and secluded Peninsula 
 which stretches southward from the Western Hima- 
 laya far down into the waters of the Indian Ocean. 
 Neither Russia nor England knew precisely what 
 they were doing ; they did not formulate to them- 
 selves any “ grand plan,” nor were they clearly 
 conscious of any impulse, both going steadily on- 
 ward, sometimes most reluctantly, as if driven for- 
 ward by an invisible power toward some end which 
 they did not pretend to see, but vaguely hoped would 
 in some way be advantageous. 
 
 Now, however, a greater movement is being 
 commenced from a motive which is at once clear 
 and conscious. The European peoples are tired 
 of the poverty in which, despite their consider- 
 able advance in civilization and their immense 
 advance in applied science, their masses are still 
 condemned to live. The white races, in obedience 
 to some law of which they know nothing, increase 
 with amazing rapidity , 1 and in Europe, which is 
 
 1 I call the rapidity “amazing” because we know nothing of 
 its causes. The popular notion is that population increases with 
 plenty, but it is unsupported by facts. A patriciat which eats and 
 drinks as much as it will, works at its own discretion, and lives in 
 healthy houses, almost invariably dies out — the reason why there 
 are now no pedigrees which cross the gulf between the new and 
 the old civilizations. Our own people in Elizabeth’s time were 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 3 
 
 not a very fertile continent, there is not enough 
 wealth to go round. There is uneasiness every- 
 where, suffering in all cities, strange outbursts of 
 envy and malice against the rich in all countries 
 except Great Britain. The rulers reign in con- 
 stant dread of explosions from below, the sub- 
 jects are penetrated with the idea that agriculture 
 is played out, and that the “ money ” which is 
 the foundation of comfort can only come from a 
 vast development of trade. Both are told by their 
 experts that great markets can only be found in 
 Asia, where the majority of the human race has 
 elected to dwell, and where it has aggregated itself 
 into masses so great, that commerce with them must 
 always produce a maximum of profit. It is better 
 to sell at ten per cent, to Hindoos or Chinese than 
 at forty per cent, to the people of Brazil. 
 
 These trades again, the experts say, must be pro- 
 tected by sovereign rights over the markets, for if not 
 
 fairly fed but scarcely increased, while the Irish poor, when suffer- 
 ing from terrible poverty, doubled their numbers. The natives of 
 India who are as a mass so poor that two years’ drought sweeps 
 them off in myriads, and the people of Russia who live on the 
 edge of misery, multiply like flies; while the Jews who are every- 
 where, and at least as prosperous as those around them, scarcely 
 increase at all. R. L. Stevenson’s marvellous picture of the decay 
 of the Marquesans, suggests that the cause of increase or decay is 
 in some way mental, and this view is strengthened by what we 
 know of the blight which falls on some savage races from the mere 
 presence of civilized man. But we know too little of mental pro- 
 cesses to make this conjecture the basis of a conviction. All 
 that is certain is that plenty or penury are not the main causes of 
 increase or decay. 
 
4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 the energetic Anglo-Saxon, with his skill in making 
 machines and his habitude of the ocean waters, will 
 monopolize the whole. Russia therefore rushes on 
 Manchuria, the splendid province which intervenes 
 between herself and the Pacific, and lays trains for 
 the conquest of Persia and Turkey. Germany tries 
 to assert herself in Anatolia, and does assert herself 
 in Shantung. Great Britain, already sovereign in 
 India, claims the giant valley of the Yang-tse. 
 France sighs to add Siam, Yunnan, Szechuen and 
 Hainan, to Indo-China, already counted among her 
 colonies. And America, taking the Philippines as a 
 dockyard and watchtower, loudly proclaims that 
 whoever is debarred from the profits of Asiatic 
 trade she will never be. So grand is the prize that 
 failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less alter 
 their conviction. If these movements follow historic 
 lines they will recur for a time upon a constantly 
 ascending scale, each repulse eliciting a greater 
 effort, until at last Asia like Africa is “ partitioned,” 
 that is each section is left at the disposal of some 
 white people. If Europe can avoid internal war, or 
 war with a much aggrandized America, she will by 
 a . d . 2,000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty as her 
 people think to enjoy. 
 
 I am unable with such light as I have from his- 
 tory to believe that this effort, the fourth within the 
 historic period, will be permanently successful, the 
 genius of the two continents being too distinct; but in 
 this introduction I only wish to point out clearly 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 5 
 
 the amazing magnitude of the task which Europe, 
 almost without reflection and entirely without study, 
 is declaring itself in many ways and through a mul- 
 titude of spokesmen willing to undertake. Asia is 
 no vast plain misused by a few dark tribes, whose 
 disappearance or whose misery will matter nothing 
 to the progress of the world. Asia is the largest of 
 the continents, forty-one times the size of France, and 
 owing to its higher mountains and loftier plateaus, and 
 immense expanses of river- made culturable swamp, 
 is among them all the most difficult to traverse. 
 Its plateaus are countries ; its deltas would hold, 
 indeed have held, great kingdoms. Empires have 
 risen, flourished, and died in comparatively small 
 divisions of its mass. Persia is in it but a province 
 it is possible to forget. Asiatic Turkey, the home 
 alike of ancient and modern empires is but one 
 fringe of the continent, the Chinese Empire is 
 but another. The great Mogul ruled only one 
 peninsula of its far South. Thibet, which is to most 
 white men but a name, is larger than France — a 
 France hung in the sky at an average height of 
 11,000 feet above sea level. Afghanistan, which 
 the English think of as a turbulent little kingdom 
 on the skirt of their own dominion, is 40,000 square 
 miles larger than France ; while Siam, of which they 
 hardly think at all except as a steamy province for 
 which French statesmen intrigue, exceeds all Ger- 
 many in size by more than 100,000 square miles. It 
 would take ten armies each of 100,000 men merely to 
 
6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 penetrate and in a military sense garrison Asia, which 
 is for the most part a huge mass far from the sea, with 
 few river inlets, and capable of subjugation only by 
 land armies. 
 
 Size, however, is not the most important ob- 
 stacle to conquest, for after all South America is 
 Spanish and Portuguese, but Asia holds at least 
 four times the population of Europe, sometimes no 
 doubt thinly scattered, but sometimes packed to a 
 point of which the packing of Belgium or Lanca- 
 shire gives but a faint idea . 1 We think of these 
 masses of men as feeble folk, but one single section 
 of them never seen outside their own peninsula, the 
 warrior races of India, outnumber all who speak 
 English ; while a single race of formidable fighters, 
 capable of discipline, in a group of islands off the coast, 
 the Japanese, are more numerous than the French. 
 When the Mongol, or rather a small federation of 
 tribes from among a division of the Mongols, first 
 burst out of his steppe he reached France, and on 
 the plain of Chalons nearly overthrew the Roman 
 Empire. When the Arabs, never fourteen millions 
 strong, debouched from their deserts, they defeated 
 both Eastern Rome and Persia, extirpated the Van- 
 
 1 The total population of Asia is and must remain uncertain, 
 but the best recent accounts bring it up to close on nine hundred 
 millions. Of these the Mongols, including of course the Chinese, 
 Indo-Chinese and Japanese, number more than five hundred 
 millions. Lord Auckland used to say, as matter for strange 
 thoughts, that the Emperor of China and himself governed half 
 the human race, and still found time for breakfast. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 7 
 
 dais of North Africa, conquered Spain, and after 
 their first energy had decayed, drove the picked 
 chivalry of Europe out of Palestine. When the 
 third Asiatic explosion took place, the Mongol 
 conquered China and India, which he kept, and 
 Russia, which he only lost after two centuries, and 
 made all Europe tremble lest by defeating Austria he 
 should acquire dominance through the whole west. 
 Intermediately, a little Asiatic tribe seated itself in 
 Anatolia, warred down the Eastern Empire of Rome, 
 threatened all Central Europe, and to this hour 
 retains the glorious provinces which it oppresses only 
 because, by the consent of all who have observed 
 him, the Turk is the best individual soldier in the 
 world. Three Asiatic soldiers, the Turk, the Sikh, 
 and the Japanese, have adopted European arms and 
 discipline, and no man can say if either of the three 
 encountered Russian armies which would be the 
 victor, yet Europe does not consider defeating 
 Russians a light task. Taking the figures of the 
 German conscription as our guide, there are in Asia 
 eighty millions of potential soldiers, of whom cer- 
 tainly one fifth know the use of weapons. 
 
 But these masses of humanity, even if capable 
 of battle, are, it is said, so incapable of the improve- 
 ments which constitute civilization, that except as 
 buyers of goods they hardly deserve respect from 
 Europeans. Is that quite true? These Asiatics 
 who are accounted so despicable have devised and 
 kept up for ages, without exhausting the soil or im- 
 
8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 porting food, a system of agriculture which sustains in 
 health and even comfort a population often thicker 
 than that of any European state. They understand 
 agricultural hydraulics perfectly, and have executed 
 hydraulic works, canals and tanks, which are the 
 admiration of European engineers. They have 
 covered entire provinces, Bengal for example, with 
 fruit trees which Englishmen pronounce equal to 
 their own. From the days of Babylon to the days 
 of Bombay they have covered their continent with 
 great cities, some of which contain marvels of archi- 
 tecture, while all have been warehouses for immense 
 trades, centres of great banking systems, or chosen 
 seats of men who have conquered or legislated for 
 or administered great empires . 1 
 
 Asiatics have selected all the sites of great cities in 
 Asia save two, and while Damascus is older than 
 Paris or London, Benares is as original as Venice, 
 and Jeypore more picturesque than Nuremberg. In 
 all those cities great populations, sometimes exceed- 
 
 1 There must be a great native banking system in China, or 
 internal trade could not go on, and to the existence of one in 
 India every Anglo-Indian can bear testimony. I myself received 
 for ten years thousands of native hoondees or cheques every year, 
 scraps of tissue paper covered with unknown characters. I never 
 knew one dishonoured. I once asked the manager of the greatest 
 European bank, who I knew was making great remittances in 
 native cheques to Bombay, if he were not occasionally afraid of 
 such paper. “ No more,” he said, “than I am afraid of Bank of 
 England notes.” I may add that Asiatic bankers seem to have 
 defeated forgery, and that they have devised a system of insurance 
 for river traffic, called in India “ beema,” which works excellently 
 well. 
 
INTR OD UCTION 
 
 9 
 
 ing that of any city in Europe up to 1800 have dwelt 
 — under it is true insanitary conditions nearly as bad 
 as those of Naples fifty years ago — but in peace and 
 security without insurrections or any grave danger, 
 save from their own rulers, to life and property. 
 Asiatics built the Alhambra and the Taj, the 
 temples above the ghauts of Benares, and the fan- 
 tastic towers of Nankin. Asiatics unassisted by 
 Europeans have carried all the arts, save sculpture 
 and painting, to a high degree of perfection, so that 
 learned men have written volumes to explain their 
 architecture; and while no pottery can excel Chinese 
 porcelain, no swordsmith a Damascus blade, no 
 goldsmith will promise to improve on a Trichino- 
 poly chain. 
 
 No doubt they have halted everywhere in their 
 march towards mastery of nature. Some strange 
 fiat of arrest, probably due to mental exhaustion, 
 has condemned the brown men and the yellow 
 men to eternal reproduction of old ideas. They 
 have treated earth as if they feared it. Dung 
 is burnt for fuel above unused coal-bearing strata. 
 Asiatics work in all metals, yet from end to end of 
 Asia great stores of iron or platinum and tin, of 
 copper, silver and gold lie untouched, waiting the 
 touch of the European spoiler. All must have been 
 found ages since, or whence the stores existing 
 before trade with Europe began, and if the energy 
 in digging which was there once had continued, 
 even the riches of Asia would by this time have 
 
10 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 been exhausted. Notwithstanding this great defect 
 the Asiatics have practised all necessary arts, and 
 except in machinery can make and do all that 
 Europeans can make and do . 1 They are in fact 
 civilized peoples, though their civilization has been 
 arrested, perhaps by the adoption of a belief not 
 unknown in Europe, that perfection has been 
 attained and that the path of wisdom for all, 
 whether thinker or artist or artisan, is incessant 
 repetition. That is the line of least resistance, and 
 it has been followed so contentedly and so far that 
 fashion, which in Europe is peremptory and end- 
 lessly capricious, is in Asia peremptory but unchange- 
 able. Europe condemns or despises, but the 
 question, “ If a thing is good and convenient why 
 change it ? ” is a rare conservator of energy. 
 
 But after all, man lives by thought, and are not 
 the thoughts of Asiatics feeble ? In one way, yes. 
 The Asiatic is the slave of superstition ; he can 
 believe in the teeth of evidence , 2 and he is possessed 
 by the fatal idea that falsehood is an exercise of the 
 intellect like another, to be judged of by its object 
 and its success. These three defects weaken his 
 
 1 Medicine is another exception. Asiatics have done little 
 even in surgery, though they have discovered some valuable 
 drugs, opium for example. Their failure, says the European 
 scientist, is the result of their incompetence. Is it ? or has it 
 sprung from their indifference alike to life and comfort ? 
 
 2 An Indian astronomer, noted for his calculation of eclipses, 
 told me that at heart he believed a dog swallowed the moon, and 
 should teach his children so. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ii 
 
 mind in all its applications, but nevertheless he has 
 great powers. He has organized great armies, and 
 though fearfully wasteful of life, so that the wounded 
 may be accounted dead, he has so furnished those 
 armies that they can wage long and often victorious 
 campaigns. The cavalry of Asia, for instance, is 
 better in everything except the actual shock of 
 battle than the same arm in Europe. 
 
 He has again remarkable power of recognizing 
 genius, whether for war, for instruction, or for liter- 
 ature. The great soldier rises rapidly to the top, 
 the great teacher is followed with blind devotion, 
 the great litterateur is regarded with a respect 
 hardly known in Europe. Hyder Ali or Runjeet 
 Singh cannot among us mount a throne. No 
 Europeans are capable of the devotion expressed by 
 Mahommed’s “ companions,” and no man’s written 
 “ words of wisdom ” have ever had the moulding 
 effect of those of Confucius, who did not even pre- 
 tend to be inspired. Asiatics have in fact an extra- 
 ordinary faculty both of detecting and following a 
 great man, sometimes under circumstances when 
 differences of origin, creed, and even colour seem 
 to make such recognition and obedience scarcely 
 possible. 
 
 Asiatics have bound together in intellectual 
 chains of custom tribes sometimes unintelligible 
 to each other, who nevertheless cohere for ages, 
 and display under the influence of their chains 
 a kind of identity of thought. They have 
 
12 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 invented dozens of systems of land tenure, and 
 the systems curiously varied suit the varied con- 
 ditions of agriculture, and secure for those who 
 follow them many of the great advantages of 
 strict association. It is hardly a proof of mental 
 feebleness to have so obviated or removed the per- 
 ennial discontent of the agricultural mind, a dis- 
 content which we all imagine inherent in those who 
 are fighting nature, so fearfully strong in Asia, that 
 great catastrophes like flood, or famine, or war, 
 make no permanent impression at all, and that the 
 moment the external pressure is removed the 
 village life is resumed by a population which when 
 not interfered with shows many signs of being dis- 
 tinctly happy. The grand whip — hunger renewed 
 every twenty-four hours — by which it has pleased 
 Providence to impart energy to the human race, is 
 borne in Asia contentedly, and produces instead of 
 murmurs a ceaseless industry, monotonous indeed, 
 but of which no one ever complains. If it be the 
 end of systems of life to produce contented ac- 
 quiescence the Asiatic systems must be held to have 
 succeeded. 
 
 Nor have they been wanting in the domain of 
 thought. They have accomplished little in science 
 except astronomy, being — to a degree scarcely in- 
 telligible until we remember that it marked our- 
 selves for ages — wanting in enlightened curiosity, and 
 they have neglected history with a carelessness 
 which, in view of their reverence for the past, it is 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 *3 
 
 most difficult to explain. They do not as a rule 
 travel, and are little interested in travellers’ obser- 
 vations, which indeed they usually disbelieve. But 
 they have devoted such mental force to the con- 
 sideration of the Whence and Whither, and the 
 relation of the visible to the invisible, that all the 
 creeds accepted by civilized and semi-civilized man- 
 kind are of Asiatic origin. All humanity, except 
 the negroes and the savage races of America and 
 Polynesia, regulate their conduct and look for a 
 future state as some Asiatic has taught them. Nor 
 is the teaching always feeble. 
 
 Europe having accepted with hearty confidence 
 the views of Peter and Paul, both Asiatics, about 
 the meaning of what their Divine Master said, re- 
 gards all other systems of religious thought with 
 contemptuous distaste, and sums them up in its 
 heart as “heathen rubbish.” Yet Confucius must 
 have been a wise man, or his writings could not 
 have moulded the Chinese mind ; while Mahom- 
 medanism has a grip such as no other creed, not 
 even Christianity, possesses except on a few in- 
 dividuals. Brahminism and Buddhism alike rest 
 upon deep and far reaching philosophies. 
 
 The truth is, the contempt is chiefly born of 
 neglect and ignorance. A Scotch Calvinist, who 
 believes very nearly the same thing, is annoyed by 
 belief in Kismet, though the greatest thinkers of all 
 ages have failed to separate the foreknowledge of ab- 
 solute power from absolute destiny. Englishmen 
 
14 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 cannot get rid of something to them ludicrous in the 
 notion of reincarnation, or as they usually call it 
 transmigration, and entirely fail to perceive that the 
 reason it attracts the Asiatic is because it solves 
 the endless puzzle which the European has given up 
 in despair, viz. the apparently unjust government of 
 the world by a just God. He says, “ Nay, it is a 
 just government. The bad man prospers because 
 he is being rewarded here on earth in a temporary 
 way for his good deeds in his last stage, while the 
 good man who is unfortunate is being punished for 
 the sins of a former existence. Both, when their 
 record is perfectly clear, will be reabsorbed into the 
 eternally happy All.” There is not an atom of evi- 
 dence for the doctrine which to be complete should 
 fix for ever the numbers of mankind, but it does, if 
 accepted, explain the visible phenomena, and there- 
 fore is the refuge of millions from thoughts which 
 might otherwise lead to atheism. In the same way 
 the Mahommedan moollah, tormented by the same 
 problem, explains it by his theory that God acts 
 because He wills, and not because He is bound by 
 His own nature. “ These to hell and I care not, 
 these to heaven and I reck not.” It seems to the 
 European an abominable explanation, but still, if 
 accepted, it does explain, and the conversion of a 
 Mahommedan is the missionary’s despair. 
 
 But, finally, the morality of Asia is said to be dis- 
 tinctly inferior. Let us examine that assertion a little 
 more closely. That the grand Christian rule, "Thou 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 i5 
 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” is not observed 
 in Asia is true, terribly and fatally true. It is of 
 course open to any one to say that it is not observed 
 in Europe either, but that is only an intellectual 
 quip. The European does care for his neighbour 
 to a certain extent, and does to a much greater 
 extent think that he ought to care. The Asiatic 
 does not. He cares for his family, his caste, his 
 clan, and sometimes his profession, but of his neigh- 
 bour he is little more regardful than one dog is of 
 another. He is not affected by his misfortunes, and 
 will help to inflict misfortunes on him with a serene 
 callousness which in Europe is for the most part 
 never found. The Asiatic who could not endure to 
 be an executioner out of sympathy for the victims 
 is probably non-existent. That want of the power 
 of sympathy is the root of all evil in him, the ulti- 
 mate cause of all the tyrannies, the massacres and 
 the tortures which from the first have disgraced 
 Asiatic life, and which, as we see alike in Turkey 
 and in China, still continue. 
 
 But we are bound to point out that sympathy 
 is of late development even in Europe, that 
 massacre has been frightfully common in Euro- 
 pean history, that we used, to persecute for the 
 faith as Asiatics do now, that it is hardly a cen- 
 tury since torture was disused, and not seventy 
 years since all Europe gave up all who were 
 called slaves to be treated as their owners would. 
 Even now, outside Great Britain, any educated 
 
i6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 man may be shot or stabbed by any one who 
 thinks himself insulted, and the murderer, even if 
 punishable by law, is unpunished by opinion. It 
 must however be allowed that the difference between 
 Asia and Europe in respect of the controlling power 
 of sympathy is enormous and entirely to the disad- 
 vantage of the Asiatic continent. But for the rest, 
 Asia and Europe are very much alike, both obeying 
 in theory the six non-theological commandments. 
 The fifth, for instance, is much better obeyed in 
 Asia than in Europe, reverence for parents with its 
 correlative regard for children exercising a binding 
 force. The son simply cannot and does not insult 
 his father, and the father almost invariably regards 
 the son as David regarded Absalom. The sixth is 
 held in Asia to be as binding as in Europe, and the 
 murderer is as readily punished with death. The 
 seventh is just as much reverenced in theory as in 
 Europe. Polygamy is no doubt not considered 
 adultery: the Mussulman formally sanctioning it, the 
 Hindoo allowing it if children are not forthcoming, 
 or as a special privilege to certain castes, and the 
 Chinese tolerating it as an indulgence to the rich 
 and powerful. But nevertheless chastity is the ideal, 
 and is enforced everywhere by severe laws, and is 
 probably as well observed as by the nations of 
 Southern Europe . 1 The eighth is enforced with a 
 
 1 The reason why this is not believed by Englishmen is that 
 Asiatics, while quite aware of the value of chastity, have never 
 conceived fully the notion of purity. They think of that as a 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 *7 
 
 terrible rigour which in Europe has died away. The 
 ninth is regarded as just, though disobeyed univer- 
 sally in practice; and for the tenth there is less 
 necessity perhaps than in any part of the world, the 
 fixed idea that Providence arranges society tending 
 greatly to extinguish envy. Men desire their neigh- 
 bour’s property as elsewhere, but the haunting pain 
 because others have and I have not is not in Asia 
 a moving force. 
 
 The continent Europe desires to conquer is not 
 therefore a continent occupied by savages, but one 
 full of great and small nations highly though imper- 
 fectly civilized, proficient in all arts except sculpture 
 and painting, with great cities, great laws, great 
 literatures and a great amount of social happiness, 
 perhaps greater than exists in Europe. I doubt if 
 the attempt will succeed, and certainly it will not 
 succeed without the infliction of a vast amount of 
 human misery, for which government by Europe 
 may or may not be a compensation. It certainly will 
 not be unless the races draw nearer, the first conse- 
 quence of which to both continents will be a decline 
 
 fad. They have no idea of reticence in words and very little of 
 pictorial decency. The Hindoos are probably the most decorous 
 of all the peoples of Asia, and when in Lord Dalhousie’s time a 
 Bill was drawn for the prevention of overt obscenity, it was neces- 
 sary to insert a clause that the Act should not apply to any 
 temple or religious emblem. I fancy the real origin of the differ- 
 ence is the survival throughout Asia ot an extremely old Nature 
 worship, the mystical side of which will be found wonderfully 
 well expressed in Sir Alfred Lyall’s poem on Siva. 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 from their present tone. The Italianized English- 
 man is bad enough, but the Asiaticized European 
 is intolerable, and the Europeanized Asiatic is — a 
 Pasha. 
 
The Influence of Europe on Asia 
 
 I T is the general opinion of the European 
 “man in the street” that Europe will presently 
 divide Asia as well as Africa, and will thencefor- 
 ward tax, govern, and, above all, “ influence ” the 
 peoples of that immense continent, which contains 
 more than half the population of the world. After 
 fifty years’ study of the subject, I do not believe 
 that, with the possible exception of a single move- 
 ment, Europe has ever permanently influenced Asia, 
 and I cannot help doubting whether in the future it 
 ever will. The possible exception is this. Man 
 really knows nothing of his earliest history, and 
 unless assisted by beings older than himself, who 
 must exist, though unrecognizable by him, he never 
 will know anything of it. As all the families of 
 mankind are capable of inter-breeding, and do 
 actually interbreed, there is, from the analogy of 
 the animal world, a violent probability that they 
 all spring from one original stock, but of the 
 circumstances under which that stock developed 
 strong contrasts of colour, and, possibly from a 
 repulsion produced by those contrasts, wandered 
 
 19 
 
20 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 to all parts of the earth, often, it seems clear, cross- 
 ing by unknown means broad stretches of sea, we 
 know absolutely nothing whatever. No one, for 
 instance, out of hundreds of competent inquirers, 
 has even a fixed hypothesis as to the peopling of 
 America by a race which either carried there or 
 developed there a shade of colour differing palpably, 
 however slightly, from the colour of any other of the 
 inhabitants of the globe. It is conceivable, there- 
 fore, that the energetic white family, audax Iapeti 
 genus , as Horace says, may have developed itself 
 originally in Europe, and, as it is probable that it 
 wandered first of all into China, there imparting to 
 a lower and darker aboriginal race some of its 
 energy and power of accumulating knowledge, and 
 certain that it so wandered into India, again raising 
 the character of most of the races previously dwell- 
 ing there, it is conceivable that Europe did once 
 permanently influence Asia. For myself I believe 
 the older theory that the white family came from 
 Asia ; but, even accepting the rival opinion, the 
 influence was soon lost, and the population which 
 emerged possessed all the distinctive characteristics 
 of the Asiatic. The white invaders were lost among 
 the dark tribes as completely as the Normans were 
 lost among the Irish. The permanent influence 
 remained with Asia, not with Europe. At all 
 events, from the beginning of authentic history, 
 Europe has received from Asia far more than she 
 has given. The people of the “ setting sun ” — that 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 21 
 
 seems the most probable explanation of the word 
 “ Europe ” — derived from Asia their letters, their 
 arithmetic, and their knowledge of the way to guide 
 boats out of sight cf land, a knowledge which, as 
 we shall shortly see, they never used as Asiatics 
 must have used it. The expeditions in which 
 early Asiatics must have reached the islands of 
 the South Pacific and America, and by which early 
 Hindoos conquered and civilized Java and Bali, and 
 early Malays conquered and thenceforth governed 
 Madagascar, and early Arabs reached China, would 
 have seemed to both Greek and Roman absurd 
 audacities. Europe, till the Greek power arose, 
 came in contact with Asia only because the Semites 
 were great traders, skilful organizers of Sepoy 
 armies, adventurous navigators, and, as compared 
 with Europeans, civilized men. When the Greek 
 power arose, it seemed for a moment as if the 
 process would be changed, and had Alexander not 
 been stopped by a mutiny, the separateness of Asia 
 might have ended ; for that marvellous man, whose 
 imagination was like insight, if he had become 
 master of India, would have pushed eastward, 
 and need not have stopped until he reached the 
 North Pacific. With him, however, the possibility 
 ended; and though the generals who derived renown 
 from him founded dynasty after dynasty within 
 Asiatic limits, the Greeks left in the end scarcely 
 an impression of themselves. Except on a thin 
 fringe of the great continent no vestige of them 
 
22 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 remains. Their civilization took no final root, for 
 though it lasted long it was not accepted, any more 
 than their successive creeds and philosophies, by 
 any Asiatic people. There is no people in the 
 entire continent of whom you can say that they 
 were fairly Grecized, even the Jews, who caught 
 their ideas best, finally rejecting them. No one 
 is so unlike a true Greek in mind as a true 
 Asiatic. 
 
 Then came the Roman, with advantages which 
 no predecessor had ever possessed. Of him one 
 would have thought that it might be truly said, 
 “ With bread and iron one can get to China.” He 
 knew how to conquer and to keep on conquering ; 
 he intended, consciously intended, the conquest of 
 the world, and he was to all appearance, as a soldier, 
 the superior of any Asiatic. Yet he did not pene- 
 trate even as far as Alexander did. A small Asiatic 
 tribe on the eastern border of the Mediterranean 
 raised the most difficult rebellion Rome ever had to 
 subdue ; Persia beat back Rome as she had never 
 beaten Alexander; and when in 125-30 Hadrian 
 gave up the game, and pledged Rome to a defen- 
 sive policy, she positively forgot Middle and Farther 
 Asia as if they had never existed. There remained 
 some small trade in luxuries, and the Myrrhine 
 vases may have been of porcelain ; but Rome not 
 only never interfered beyond the fringe of Asia 
 which touches the Mediterranean, but she knew 
 nothing about it. Not only did her fleets never 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 23 
 
 reach Southern and Eastern Asia, but she never 
 sent explorers there. There is no Roman Hero- 
 dotus. There was a lack of imagination in the 
 Roman, great as he was, which is apparent, I think, 
 in all his literature, and which acted as a limitation 
 on his efforts. He became as content as a Chinese. 
 Fancying he ruled the world, in which he ruled the 
 shores of one great lake, he made no effort to con- 
 quer further, or to explore, or to understand any- 
 thing beyond. He had ships, wealth, brave men 
 by the thousand, but he cared to utilize none of them 
 any more than if he had been a Chinaman. We 
 are accustomed to say and to think that he could 
 not help himself ; but what did he lack which the 
 Hindoo possessed when he conquered Java, or the 
 Malay when he conquered Madagascar, or the Ice- 
 lander when he reached America and lost a “ ship ” 
 there, or the Maori when from some far away island 
 he took possession of New Zealand — a wonderful 
 adventure, which, in a people who could write, 
 would have produced a crop of literature ? Having 
 enough, the Roman was not, we are told, driven to 
 any necessity for great adventures. That is true, 
 but he was also a very limited person, and though 
 he succeeded in Southern Europe he failed in Asia as 
 completely as in Britain, where, after reigning for four 
 hundred years, he stamped himself as little as we 
 should be found to have stamped ourselves if we 
 quitted India to-moriow. He made of the bold 
 barbarians of Gaul, and of the more stubborn bar- 
 
*4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 barians of Iberia, Romanized peoples, but of Asia- 
 tics he Romanized not one tribe. Something in 
 them rejected him utterly, and survived him ; and 
 at this moment, among the eight hundred millions 
 of Asia, there are not twenty among whom can be 
 traced by the most imaginative any lingering influ- 
 ence of Rome. 
 
 The “ barbarians,” as we call them, that is, the 
 great white tribes, who, pressed, it seems probable, 
 by an increase in their numbers inconsistent with 
 their way of life and their imperfect agriculture, 
 poured in successive swarms on the Roman Empire, 
 and at last destroyed it, never appear to have con- 
 templated conquests in Asia. They passed the 
 Mediterranean under a leader with a genius for 
 destruction, and stamped out Rome in Africa, but 
 they were baffled over and over again by the Lower 
 Empire which we so much despise, because, after a 
 history of heroism, it did not succeed, and in Asia 
 they made no serious attempt. Centuries after- 
 wards, their descendants, under a religious impulse, 
 did ; but Asia had then become too strong for them, 
 and the whole of the series of mighty efforts, which 
 we call the Crusades, were, so far as influence on 
 Asia was concerned, uselessly thrown away. Inter- 
 mediately, Asia had performed the feat which she 
 alone of the continents performs periodically. She 
 had produced a new creed ; and as — unlike Budd- 
 hism, Judaism, Confucianism, and Christianity — the 
 tenets of Mahommedanism were calculated to make 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 25 
 
 soldiers, she spewed Europe completely out of her 
 mouth. From 700 to 1757, more than a thousand 
 years, the ways of Asia remained exclusively Asiatic, 
 only a minute corner being even raided by the Cru- 
 saders. Not a province, not a tribe, I had almost 
 said not an individual, had become permanently 
 Europeanized. So far as one can see, not a Euro- 
 pean idea, not a European habit, not a distinctively 
 European branch of knowledge, ever penetrated 
 into Asia. The Asiatics did not even learn our 
 astronomy, which would have interested them, or 
 our method of fighting, for the Janissaries were 
 European followers of Mahommed. During that 
 long space of time it three times seemed as if Europe 
 might be subjugated by Asiatics, once by the Arabs, 
 once by the Turks, and once by the Tartars; but 
 some impulse — probably the exhaustion of energy, 
 which seems always to befall brown men — stopped 
 the conquerors, who would, however, have mocked 
 had they been told that the Asiatic was essentially 
 and by incurable law feebler than the European. 
 
 Then came the present movement against Asia, 
 which in one way has been more successful than 
 any which have preceded it. The north of the con- 
 tinent, with its vast area and thin population, has 
 fallen under the military control of the Slav people, 
 the great Indian Peninsula has succumbed to Anglo- 
 Saxon energy, and neither Greece nor Rome ever 
 ruled a third of the number of Asiatics who now 
 pay taxes to Great Britain and obey such laws as 
 
26 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 she chooses to impose. To the external world one 
 half of Asia appears to have become European. In 
 reality, however, neither Russia nor Great Britain 
 has as yet exercised any “ influence ” upon the mil- 
 lions she has conquered. In the north the tribes 
 are only held down by Russia, would rebel in a 
 moment if they dared, and show no sign of accepting 
 either her civilization, her ideas, or her creed. In 
 the south Great Britain has enforced a peace which 
 has produced manifold blessings, but she has neither 
 won nor converted any large section of her subject 
 populations. There is no province, no tribe, no 
 native organization in India upon which, in the 
 event of disaster, she could rely for aid. After 
 nearly a century of clement government there are 
 not ten thousand natives in India who, unpaid and 
 uncoerced, would die in defence of British sove- 
 reignty. The moment it was known in 1857 that, 
 owing to the shrinkage of the white garrison, the 
 enterprise was possible, the most favoured class in 
 the Peninsula, the Sepoys, sprang at their rulers’ 
 throats, and massacred all they could reach without 
 either mercy or regret. The war lasted three years, 
 and in spite of the splendid energy and courage of 
 the whites, had the dark peoples produced one 
 soldier of genius, a Jenghiz Khan, or even a Hyder 
 Ali, it could scarcely have terminated to European 
 advantage. As it was, the British remain masters ; 
 but beneath the small film of white men who make 
 up the “ Indian Empire ” boils or sleeps away a sea 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 27 
 
 of dark men, incurably hostile, who await with 
 patience the day when the ice shall break and the 
 ocean regain its power of restless movement under 
 its own laws. As yet there is no sign that the 
 British are accomplishing more than the Romans 
 accomplished in Britain, that they will spread any 
 permanently successful ideas, or that they will found 
 anything whatever. It is still true that if they 
 departed or were driven out they would leave behind 
 them, as the Romans did in Britain, splendid roads, 
 many useless buildings, an increased weakness in 
 the subject people, and a memory which in a cen- 
 tury of new events would be extinct. 
 
 I say nothing of China, for as yet all that Europe 
 has effected in China is to create an impression that 
 the white peoples are intolerably fierce and cruel, 
 that they understand nothing but making money, 
 and that from them there is nothing intellectual or 
 moral to be gained. Russia has acquired a “ route ” 
 on which to build a railway to the Pacific. France 
 holds a Chinese dependency where she expects re- 
 bellion, and Europe holds Pekin in temporary mili- 
 tary occupation ; but it is not even pretended that 
 China has been conquered. What she has lost has 
 been more than made up to Asia as a whole by the 
 rise of Japan, where a branch of the yellow people, 
 without in the least ceasing to be Asiatic, has 
 developed an unexpected energy which, if it is 
 ever directed to obtain leadership among the yellow 
 peoples may prove a final obstacle to the ascendency 
 
28 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of the whites. Europe, outside Russia at least, 
 greatly admires that change, and forgets entirely 
 that in its contest with Asia, which has lasted two 
 thousand years, a new and heavy weight has been 
 thrown within our own lifetimes on the defensive 
 side. We are told every day how Europe has in- 
 fluenced Japan, and forget that the change in those 
 islands was entirely self- generated, that Europeans 
 did not teach Japan, but that Japan of herself chose 
 to learn from Europe methods of organization, civil 
 and military, which have so far proved successful. 
 She imported European mechanical science as the 
 Turks years before imported European artillery. 
 That is not exactly “ influence,” unless, indeed, 
 England is “ influenced ” by purchasing tea of 
 China. Where is the European apostle or philo- 
 sopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made 
 Japan ? 
 
 So much for the past, now for the future. Europe 
 assumes that it will be very different ; but let us 
 look at the reasons for the assumption. I will speak 
 of comparative force by and by ; but let us at first 
 consider whether there is any evidence that the 
 separateness of the Asiatic mind is in any way 
 diminishing. I do not think that any one, whether 
 he is thoughtful statesman like Sir Alfred Lyall, or 
 poet like Rudyard Kipling, with insight into the 
 East, or average administrator, 'English or Russian, 
 will deny for a moment that the separateness exists, 
 that East and West, brown man and white man, are 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 29 
 
 at present separated by a gulf of thoughts, aspira- 
 tions and conclusions , and where is the evidence that 
 the gulf is closing up ? What the secret of that 
 separateness is has perplexed the thoughtful for 
 ages, and will perplex them for ages more — indeed 
 it can never be clear until we know something 
 definite of the primal history of man — but it must 
 ultimately have some relation to the grand fact that 
 every creed accepted by the great races of mankind, 
 every creed which has really helped to mould thought, 
 has had its origin in Asia. The white man invented 
 the steam engine, but no religion which has endured. 
 The vague mythology once current in Southern 
 Europe produced no dominant ideas — it was a 
 worship of beauty in Greece and of Rome in Rome 
 — and no code of laws, either ethical or social, and it 
 died away utterly, there being on earth now not one 
 man who believes in Jupiter. The truth is the 
 European is essentially secular, that is, intent on 
 securing objects he can see ; and the Asiatic essen- 
 tially religious, that is, intent on obedience to powers 
 which he cannot see but can imagine. We call these 
 thoughts “superstitions,” and no doubt many of 
 them are silly as well as baseless, but still they are 
 attempts to think about the unseen which the Euro- 
 pean usually avoids. The European, therefore, 
 judges a creed by its results, declaring that if these 
 are foolish or evil or inconvenient the creed is false. 
 The Asiatic does not consider results at all, but only 
 the accuracy or beauty of the thoughts generated 
 
3 ° 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 in his own mind. Macaulay’s great argument that 
 Roman Catholicism must be less true than Protes- 
 tantism because Roman Catholic countries are less 
 prosperous appears to the Asiatic to be a mere 
 absurdity. “ Is the end of religion,” he asks, “ to 
 produce comfort here ? The Divine Law is to be 
 obeyed even if it compels me to go without com- 
 fort through all my life.” He does not always or 
 often obey it, the flesh being weak, but that is what 
 he thinks. Even the Chinaman, the most secular 
 of all Asiatics, obeys his Emperor because he repre- 
 sents the Father, and rises into angry rebellion if he 
 thinks the spirits of the air or of the earth have been 
 affronted. If the Asiatic believed the rule of absti- 
 nence from work on Sunday to be Divine, he would 
 let his enemy kill him quietly, as the Jew, who was 
 an Asiatic, did in the siege of Jerusalem, while the 
 European would go on fighting, declaring that God 
 could not intend him to be killed. If Asiatics 
 held, like Roman Catholics, that Heaven had com- 
 mitted the definition of faith and morals to a caste, 
 they would obey that caste on every question of 
 faith and morals, as the Hindoo for the same reason 
 obeys a Brahmin decision, even if it makes of him 
 an outcast. The European, even when Catholic, 
 frets under the priestly domination, and passes laws 
 like the law of divorce, which are direct denials of 
 the claim of the caste to Divine authority. That 
 habitual and willing submission to the supernatural, 
 even when the decrees of the supernatural are not 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 31 
 
 utilitarian, which has always been the keynote of the 
 Asiatic mind, seems to me one cause of the separate- 
 ness of Asia, a separateness so complete that the 
 single Asiatic tribe which does not live in Asia has 
 borne for seventeen centuries, under horrible per- 
 secution, often involving death by torture, the 
 burden of an inconvenient and hampering law, 
 because its members hold it to be divine. 
 
 There is also in the Asiatic mind a special 
 political and a special social idea. It is not by 
 accident that the European desires self-government, 
 and the Asiatic to be governed by an absolute will. 
 The European holds government to be an earthly 
 business which he may manage as well as another, 
 if only he is competent, and accordingly he either 
 governs himself directly, or he frames a series of 
 laws which nobody, not even the King, is at liberty 
 to break through. The German Emperor is pretty 
 absolute, but he could no more will a man’s death 
 than the Lord Mayor could. Every indepen- 
 dent Asiatic sovereign can so will, and be obeyed. 
 The Asiatic, in fact, holds that power is Divine, and 
 that a good king ought to be enabled to “ crush the 
 bad and nourish the good,” to use the Brahmin 
 formula, without check or hindrance. He is then 
 himself relieved, like a good Catholic, from any 
 personal responsibility, even the trouble of thinking. 
 As a consequence, throughout history the Asiatic, 
 though frequently exempted from military pressure, 
 as for example the Chinese have been for ages, 
 
32 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 invariably sets up a despotism, and when, as rarely 
 happens, the despot strikes him down, bows to the 
 decree as we bow to the sentence of a surgeon who 
 prescribes a painful operation. We do not quarrel 
 with Providence because we are ill or liable to 
 immediate death, nor does the Asiatic under 
 oppression or unjust sentence quarrel with God’s 
 representative on earth. And lastly, the Asiatic, 
 believing, as he invariably does, that his social 
 system is Divine, is content with it, clings to it, 
 and resents interference with it with a passion that 
 leads to bloodshed wherever bloodshed is possible. 
 (It is because the English interfere so little with the 
 social life of their dark subjects that their reign over 
 dark peoples often lasts so long.) He is aware, 
 keenly aware, that white government, sooner or 
 later, involves revolution in his social system, and 
 he hates it with an undying hatred such as an Irish 
 peasant feels for the “ agent ” who may some day 
 evict him, and who meanwhile levies rent. Indeed, 
 I often think that the feeling of the Keltic Irishman 
 towards the Englishman, which appears to be 
 unchangeable, is the nearest analogue to that of the 
 Asiatic for the European. He regards him, if an 
 oppressor, as a formidable brute to be resisted with 
 any instrument at hand ; if a just man, as a dis- 
 agreeable, slow-witted, uncomfortable outsider, who 
 has no right to interfere with him, and who ought to 
 be driven to a distance as speedily and finally as 
 possible. And it must be remembered that the 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 33 
 
 European shares this feeling of separateness com- 
 pletely. Whatever the cause, whether, as he him- 
 self thinks, antagonism of colour, or, as I think, 
 difference in permanent ideals, the effect is the 
 same ; the European cannot merge himself in the 
 Asiatic without a sense of degradation, which is 
 almost invariably followed by its reality. He never 
 willingly accepts any position but one, that of 
 unquestioned ruler. It is not a question of creed, 
 for the Roman had the feeling as strongly as the 
 Englishman, and the Greek thought of “ Medizing ” 
 as of the sum of all possible offences against his 
 dignity and his nature. It is not a question of 
 laws, for legal equality under laws which he him- 
 self has made intensifies rather than diminishes 
 English abhorrence of the process. When in 1857 
 the English in India, by all the rules of politics and 
 warfare, were hopelessly lost, they exhibited before 
 all the world the true European feeling. They 
 asked no quarter, they suggested no compromise, 
 they discussed no terms among themselves, they 
 proposed no treaty, but fought on, clear only as to 
 one point, that they would either continue to rule or 
 they would go under and be forgotten. Asiatics, as 
 I believe, perceive this European decision very 
 clearly, and it is the ultimate cause of the massacres 
 to which, when they rise in insurrection, they invari- 
 ably resort. They know that their only chance of 
 victory is to kill the white people out. The 
 obnoxious race will never make terms, never merge 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 in the population, never be anything but rulers, and 
 therefore if their rule is to terminate they must be 
 exterminated. 
 
 But I shall be told that the spread of Christianity, 
 which is inevitable, will extinguish, probably very 
 speedily, the separateness of Asia, and with it all its 
 consequences. Will it ? Let us look at that belief 
 a little closely and without preconceived ideas. I 
 do not find in history that a common Christianity in 
 any degree removes hatreds of race or nationality, 
 or prevents continuous outbreaks of bitter hostility ; 
 but we may let that pass. What is the real ground 
 for believing that Asia will accept Christianity ? 
 Certainly there is no historic ground. No Asiatic 
 nation of any importance can be said to have accepted 
 it in the last seventeen hundred years. The Asiatic 
 race which knows the creed best, and has had the 
 strongest reasons for accepting it, reasons which 
 prevailed with the Germans and the Slavs when 
 pagan, still rejects it with a certain silent but very 
 perceptible scorn. What has changed in Asia that 
 the future should be so unlike the past ? There 
 are more teachers, no doubt, but there are not 
 one-tenth or one-hundredth so many as have en- 
 deavoured through the ages in vain to convert the 
 Jews. It is said that Christ gave an order to His 
 disciples to teach all nations ; that is true, and I for 
 one believe the order to be binding, and that the 
 Christian Church which sends out no missionaries is 
 a dead Church ; but where in the record has Christ 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 35 
 
 promised to those missionaries universal success ? 
 Is it not at least possible that the missionaries carry 
 in their hands the offer of eternal life, which a few 
 accept, while the rest “ perish everlastingly,” that is, 
 die like the flowers or the dumb creatures of God ? 
 This much, at least, is certain, that for eighteen 
 hundred years it has been no part of the policy 
 of Heaven — I write with reverence though I use 
 non-religious terminology — to convert Asiatics en 
 masse , and there is no proof that this absence of 
 Divine assistance to the teachers may not continue 
 for an equal period in the future. The truth is that 
 the Asiatics, like the Jews, dislike Christianity, see 
 in it an ideal they do not love, a promise they do 
 not desire, and a pulverizing force which must 
 shatter their civilizations. Eternal consciousness ! 
 That to the majority of Asiatics is not a promise 
 but a threat. The wish to be rid of consciousness, 
 either by annihilation or by absorption in the 
 Divine, is the strongest impulse they can feel. 
 Though Asiatic in origin, Christianity is the least 
 Asiatic of the creeds. Its acceptance would revo- 
 lutionize the position of woman, which is the same 
 throughout Asia, would profoundly modify all social 
 life, and would place by the side of the spiritual 
 dogma “ thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” which 
 every Asiatic accepts in theory, the far-reaching 
 ethica’ dogma, “ and thy neighbour as thyself,” 
 which he regards as an intolerable burden. I doubt, 
 too whether the beauty of the character of Christ 
 
3 & 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 appeals to the brown races as it does to the white, 
 whether they feel His self-suppression for others, as 
 Clovis and his warriors felt it, as something alto- 
 gether more beautiful and ideal than their own 
 range of conception. However that may be, it is 
 clear that while the Asiatic can be wooed to a 
 change of creed, as witness the success of both 
 Buddhism and Mahommedanism, whose teachings 
 are radically opposed to each other, they have not 
 been and are not equally moved to embrace Chris- 
 tianity. If they ever take to it, it will be from some 
 internal and self-generated movement of thought, 
 and not from any influence of Europe. 
 
 And lastly, as to the question of force. Europe 
 assumes with a certain levity that if it were only 
 united it could conquer Asia, and that for a time 
 is possibly true. If such an event happened it 
 would not affect my argument, for the huge mass of 
 Asiatics would remain uninfluenced, as the masses 
 of India have done, would “ let the legions thunder 
 past,” and wait patiently for the hour when it would 
 be possible to bid them depart again ; but even as 
 to the possibility there is some ground for doubt. 
 Can Europe unite in the work, or would Russia and 
 the West quarrel over it, and so render it imprac- 
 ticable ? That Europe is infinitely stronger for 
 defence than Asia may be instantly acknowledged. 
 As Sir Robert Giffen has pointed out, the white 
 men have multiplied enormously, and European 
 civilization has clothed itself in the enchanted armour 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 37 
 
 of science. All Asia, if furious with rage, could not 
 cross the Dardanelles if Europe in earnest forbade 
 the crossing. But for offensive transmarine war 
 Europe is not so strong, is not three hundred 
 millions, but rather at the utmost one million, which 
 million she could not waste on peril of conscription 
 breaking down, and which she could not transport, 
 provide with horses, supply with food and munitions, 
 and keep in movement over vast semi-tropical areas 
 without an expenditure and a consequent taxation 
 that her people would soon bitterly resent. The 
 work before this million would be enormous. They 
 would have to conquer five hundred millions of men, 
 of whom at least thirty millions, the Ottomans and 
 the tribesmen of the Northern desert and the Arabs, 
 are born soldiers, and four hundred millions are 
 semi-civilized Mongols, who once warned could 
 make and use rifles and light artillery as well as the 
 Europeans, and who would be guided and drilled 
 by a section of their own people which has assimi- 
 lated much of European science. Is there an army 
 in Europe which would regard the invasion of Japan 
 with a light heart, and what is there in the military 
 system of Japan which the Ottomans, the Arabs, 
 the Tartars and the Chinese, if pushed to extremity, 
 or if determined on insurrection, could not repro- 
 duce ? Grant victory to Europe at first, and think 
 of the lingering war, of the endless insurrections, of 
 the bitter quarrels among the Powers, of the huge 
 garrisons which must be kept up, and of the steady 
 
38 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 systematized cruelty which would be needed if Asia 
 adopted the perfectly simple expedient of refusing 
 to work for Europeans, a refusal which in India, 
 where all the preliminary conquering and garrison- 
 ing and organizing for revenue purposes has been 
 already done, would bring the Empire down in a 
 month. And all this terrible outlay of energy and 
 treasure and human life would be for what object ? 
 Simply to provide opportunities of manufacturing 
 prosperity for the European tribes, which oppor- 
 tunities would disappear as they arose under the 
 competition of the Asiatic factories which would 
 arise the moment order was secured. The masses 
 of Europe who rule in the last resort do not par- 
 ticularly care to conquer Asia, and would not con- 
 tinue for ages to pay taxes for that purpose. We 
 are all devoted to the “ Empire,” of which India is 
 the flower, but how long should we keep the Em- 
 pire if it cost us a hundred millions a year ? I do 
 not believe that Europe will make the effort now, 
 or that if she makes it some years hence she will 
 succeed — as I write she is shrinking from it in China 
 — or that if she does succeed she will even in count- 
 less ages seriously “ influence,” and thereby change 
 the masses of Asiatics. At some period, probably 
 not long distant, they will, as they always have 
 done, throw out the white men, not because they 
 are oppressors, not because they are inferiors, but 
 because they are intruders whose ideas they neither 
 accept nor can endure. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 39 
 
 What then, it will be asked, is to become of 
 Asia, now for the most part, as Poushkine sang, 
 “ in dotage buried ” ? The only possible reply is 
 what God wills, and not what Europe wills. Heaven 
 has tolerated the existence of that huge mass of 
 men who guide their lives by untrue creeds for 
 many thousands of years, and may continue to 
 tolerate it for many thousands more. Who knows 
 the purpose of the Ancient of Days, or what may 
 be the use of the imperfect yet productive spiritu- 
 ality of the Asiatic mind ? If I were to indulge in 
 the futile work of dreaming, I should say that there 
 were signs in China of latent but bitter dissatisfac- 
 tion with its civilization, leading to Taeping move- 
 ments, Reforming movements, anti-dynastic move- 
 ments, even, on the Western border, to movements 
 in favour of the creed Mahommed taught, and that, 
 as Asiatics rarely move save under a religious im- 
 pulse, the hour was approaching for the Mongolian 
 masses to evolve some new faith, with a new ruler 
 to enforce it. God grant, if that happens, that it be 
 not the Mussulman faith, for in that event Europe 
 will have an awful quarter of an hour. It is, how- 
 ever, much more probable that Asia, arming itself 
 with the rifle, re-learning the use of mounted 
 infantry, which Jenghiz knew before the Boer did, 
 and enforcing conscription laws, will stand on the 
 defensive against Europe, and otherwise remain 
 nearly unchanged, while Europe sees her own 
 ascendency transferred to the Western Continent. 
 
40 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 This too, however, is a dream, for all we know for 
 certain is that Asia has always remained indepen- 
 dent of Europe, and now shows no desire for her 
 guidance, rather a resolution not to accept it. The 
 future will disclose itself by degrees, but if two 
 hundred years hence it shows Europe ruling, tax- 
 ing, and enlightening the great mass of Asiatics, 
 then have I, as is quite probable, read history 
 in vain. 
 
 In the present state of opinion and current ot 
 events, it may be advisable to end these few re- 
 flections by saying that none of them apply to 
 Africa or its black inhabitants. They are divided 
 off from Asiatics by two well-marked distinctions 
 and one more doubtful. In the first place they 
 seem incapable of even limited progress. The 
 dwellers by the Congo have all the advantages of 
 the dwellers by the Nile, but have remained for 
 thousands of years hopeless and by no means 
 happy barbarians. They cease to be so hopeless 
 when conquered by the white men, there being 
 perceptible advance even when, as in the Southern 
 States of the Union, the white men were by no 
 means intent on turning them into civilized people. 
 The Arabs have in many places taught them to 
 build habitable cities, to cultivate the ground and 
 to understand a rudimentary military discipline, and 
 it seems more than probable that the white peoples 
 can teach them even superior lessons — at least 
 that is the inference from the recent history of 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON ASIA 41 
 
 Uganda, and of Khama’s country. In the second 
 place the black peoples are nearly quite devoid of 
 that mass of beliefs, thoughts and experiences which 
 render Asiatics so incurably hostile to white influ- 
 ence. The broad idea of the negro is that the 
 white man is his superior, and when not intolerably 
 oppressive he is willing to accept his guidance 
 and his authority. The absence of great insur- 
 rections among the blacks of the Southern States, 
 the very faint resistance made by millions in 
 Western and Central Africa, and the ascendency 
 acquired by many Arabs all indicate a willingness 
 to accept external leadership which is absent in 
 the Asiatic. It seems as if the black leather bottle 
 would hold new wine without exploding. And, 
 lastly, there is no evident antipathy to Christianity, 
 which is received with a certain readiness — as 
 also no doubt is Mahommedanism — and which by 
 the testimony of disinterested observers does effect 
 a marked change in ideals and modes of life. No 
 doubt Europe may be disappointed about all these 
 things, for one of the forgotten facts of the situation 
 is the shortness of the time, barely two centuries, 
 during which the aggressive mind of Europe has 
 been in direct contact with the black mind. The 
 black man, even if Christianized, may retain im- 
 pulses which render the contiguity of the white 
 man intolerable to him — as is suggested to be the 
 case by most observers in Hayti. Still he may 
 remain submissive for a long period, as the Indians 
 
42 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of South America have done to the Spaniard, 
 and may, like them, when emancipated, show in 
 creed, thought, and capacity for political organiza- 
 tion decided traces of the white influence. The 
 problem is still unsolved, and may remain unsolved 
 for many generations yet ; but still there is hope 
 of a solution that will enable European and African 
 to live together in amity, the former occupying 
 a position akin to that of a good aristocracy, the 
 position the European longs for in Asia, but alas ! 
 does not attain. 
 
Islam and Christianity in India 
 
 O NE-FIFTH of the human race dwells in India, 
 and every fifth Indian at least is a Mahommedan, 
 yet many people contend that Islam is not a creed 
 which propagates itself vigorously in the great 
 Peninsula. Where do they imagine that the fifty 
 odd millions of Mussulmans in India came from ? 
 Not ten per cent, of them even claim to be the 
 descendants of immigrants, whether Arab, Persian, 
 or Pathan, and of that ten per cent, probably half 
 are descendants only by adoption, the warrior chiefs 
 who followed successful invaders allowing their 
 bravest adherents, if Mussulmans, to enrol them- 
 selves in their own clans. Almost all, moreover, 
 are half-breeds, the proportion of women who 
 entered India with the invaders having been 
 exceedingly small. The remainder — that is, at least 
 ninety per cent, of the whole body — are Indians by 
 blood, as much children of the soil as the Hindoos, 
 retaining many of the old pagan superstitions, and 
 only Mussulmans because their ancestors embraced 
 the faith of the great Arabian. They embraced it 
 too for the most part from conviction. There is a 
 
 43 
 
44 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 popular idea in this country that India was at some 
 time or other invaded from the North by a mighty 
 conqueror, who set up the throne of the Great 
 Mogul, and compelled multitudes to accept Islam at 
 the point of the sword ; but this is an illusion. 
 Mahommed authorized conversion by force, and 
 Islam owes its political importance to the sword, 
 but its spread as a faith is not due mainly to com- 
 pulsion. Mankind is not so debased as that theory 
 would assume, and the Arab conquerors were in many 
 countries resisted to the death. The pagan tribes 
 of Arabia saw in Mahommed’s victories proof that 
 his creed was Divine, and embraced it with a startling 
 ardour of conviction ; but outside Arabia the bulk 
 of the common people who submitted to the Khalifs 
 either retained their faith, as in Asia Minor, or were 
 extirpated, as in Persia and on the southern shore 
 of the Mediterranean. The Arabs colonized on an 
 enormous scale, and being careless what women 
 they took, mixed their blood freely, so that 
 in Syria, Egypt, the Soudan, and the enormous 
 territory stretching from Barca to Tangier the 
 population is essentially Arab with more or less 
 of crossing. The Tartars were persuaded, not 
 conquered, and they and the Arabs are still the 
 dominant races of the Mussulman world which has 
 converted no European race except a few Albanians 
 — with all their intellectual superiority and their 
 military successes, the Arabs never converted 
 Spain — and has gained its converts in China and 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 45 
 
 in Africa almost exclusively by preaching. It was 
 the same in India. Here and there, as in Sind and 
 Mysore, a small population may be found whose 
 ancestors were converted by persecution, and doubt- 
 less successful invaders occasionally terrified or 
 bought with immunities large groups of Indians. 
 But that the process was neither general nor steadily 
 pursued is proved by two broad facts — first, that 
 India is not a Mahommedan country, but a Hindoo 
 country in which Mahommedans are numerous ; and 
 secondly, that in no part of the Peninsula can the 
 distribution of faith be fairly considered territorial. 
 Mussulman villages are everywhere found among 
 Hindoo villages, and Mussulman families dwell 
 among Hindoo families in a way which, if 
 India had ever been “converted” systematically 
 would have been impossible. The early mission- 
 aries of Islam could not use force, and, as to 
 the invaders who conquered and remained, they 
 seldom or never wished to use it, for the sufficient 
 reason that it was not their interest. They wanted 
 to found principalities, or kingdoms, or an empire, 
 not to wage an internecine war with their own tax- 
 paying subjects, or to arouse against themselves the 
 unconquerable hostility of the warrior races of the 
 gigantic Peninsula, who were, and who remain, 
 Hindoo. The truth is that Mahommedan prosely- 
 tism by preaching began in India, then held to be 
 far the richest of the great divisions of Asia, within 
 three centuries from the Hegira, and has continued 
 
4 6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ever since — that is, for a period of probably nine 
 hundred years at least, during which the process, 
 now vigorous, now slackening, has never been 
 entirely intermitted. In other words, Islam, though 
 often assisted by authority, has taken three times the 
 time to convert a fifth of the people of India that 
 Christianity, though constantly suffering persecution, 
 took to convert the Roman Empire. Islam probably 
 never advanced with the speed of Christianity when 
 first contending with paganism, and certainly never 
 with the speed with which the faith spread in the 
 tenth century throughout Russia. 
 
 Yet the missionaries of Islam from the first had 
 many and great advantages. They were, if judged 
 by our modern standards, exceedingly numer- 
 ous. The more fervent Arabs, with their gift of 
 eloquence and their habit of teaching, after the long 
 battle with the outside world had ceased, took to the 
 work of proselytism with an ardour never displayed 
 by modern Christians, and as fast as they made 
 converts they raised up new missionaries, often by 
 villages at a time. Europeans habitually forget 
 that every Mussulman is more or less of a mission- 
 ary — that is, he intensely desires to secure converts 
 from non- Mussulman peoples. Such converts not 
 only increase his own chance of heaven, but they 
 swell his own faction, his own army, his own means 
 of conquering, governing, and taxing the remainder 
 of mankind. All the emotions which impel a 
 Christian to proselytize are in a Mussulman 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 47 
 
 strengthened by all the motives which impel a 
 political leader and all the motives which sway a 
 recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become 
 a passion, which, whenever success seems practic- 
 able, and especially success on a large scale, 
 develops in the quietest Mussulman a fury of 
 ardour which induces him to break down every 
 obstacle, his own strongest prejudices included, 
 rather than stand for an instant in a neophyte’s 
 way. He welcomes him as a son, and whatever 
 his own lineage, and whether the convert be Negro 
 or Chinaman or Indian or even European, he will 
 without hesitation or scruple give him his own child 
 in marriage, and admit him fully, frankly, and finally 
 into the most exclusive circle in the world. The 
 missionaries of such a faith are naturally numerous, 
 and when they first assailed India they found, as 
 they have done ever since, a large proportion of the 
 population ready at least to listen to their words. India 
 was occupied then, as it is occupied now, by a thick 
 population of many races, many tongues, and many 
 degrees of civilization, but all differentiated from the 
 rest of mankind in this. Cultivated or uncultivated, 
 they had all keen minds, and all their minds were oc- 
 cupied by the old problem of the whence and whither. 
 They were all religious in a way, and all afraid 
 of something not material. Hindooism was then, 
 as it is now, not so much a creed as a vast congeries 
 of creeds, of modes of belief as to the right method 
 of escaping an otherwise evil destiny rendered 
 
4 8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 inevitable, not only by the sins of this life, but by 
 the sins of a whole series of past and unremembered 
 lives. It is the belief in transmigration which 
 Europeans always forget, and which governs the 
 inner souls of the Hindoo millions, who believe in 
 their past existence as fervently as orthodox Chris- 
 tians believe in a future one. The efforts to solve 
 the problem and rescue themselves from destiny 
 were endless, and affected millions. Some heresies 
 involved whole peoples. One heresy, Buddhism, 
 almost became the creed of the land. Great heretics 
 made more converts than Luther. New cults rose 
 with every generation into partial favour. New 
 castes sprang up almost every year — that is, new 
 groups of persons separated themselves from the 
 rest of mankind in order, through new rules of cere- 
 monial purity, to ensure further their security against 
 a pursuing fate. The process which now goes on 
 endlessly then went on endlessly, till India was a 
 sweltering mass of beliefs, ideas, religious customs, 
 and rules of life all or nearly all instigated by fear, 
 by an acute dread that somehow, after so much 
 labour, so much self-denial, such hourly bondage to 
 ceremonial precaution, the end might ultimately be 
 missed. The essence of the life of Hindooism, if 
 not of its creeds, is fear — fear of the unknown result 
 which may follow upon error either in conduct or in 
 faith or in ceremonial. A single belief, the belief 
 in his pre-existence, which is firmly accepted by 
 every Hindoo, fills his mind with vague terrors 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 49 
 
 from which, while that conviction lasts, there cannot 
 be by possibility any full relief. He is responsible 
 for sins he knows nothing of, and who can say that 
 any punishment for them would be unjust or exces- 
 sive ? If misfortune comes to him, that is his due, 
 and a Hindoo, once unlucky, often broods like a 
 Calvinist who thinks he is not of the elect. The 
 modes of obtaining safety are infinite, but are all 
 burdensome, and all, by the confession of those who 
 use them, are more or less uncertain. 
 
 Amidst this chaos the missionaries of Islam 
 preached the haughtiest, the most clear- cutting, and 
 the least elevated form of monotheism ever taught 
 in this world — a monotheism which accounted for 
 all things, ended discussion, and reconciled all per- 
 plexities by affirming that there existed a Sultan in 
 the sky, a God, sovereign in His right as Creator, 
 unbound even by His own character, who out of 
 pure will sent these to heaven and those to hell, 
 who was Fate as well as God. This Being, lonely, 
 omnipotent, and eternal, had revealed through 
 Mahommed His will, that those who believed in 
 Him should have eternal bliss in a heaven which 
 was earth over again with its delights intensified 
 and its restrictions removed, and that those who 
 disbelieved should suffer torment for evermore. 
 Could anything be more attractive to a Hindoo ? 
 If he only accepted the great tenet, which, after all, 
 he suspected to be true, for the notion of the Supreme 
 lurks in Hindooism, and is always unconditioned, his 
 
 E 
 
5 © 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 doubts were all resolved, his fears were all removed, 
 his ceremonial burdens were all lifted off him, and 
 he stepped forward comparatively a free man. Year 
 after year, century after century, thousands turned 
 to this new faith as to a refuge, tempted, not by 
 its other and baser attractions, to be discussed 
 presently, but by what seemed to the converts 
 the intellectual truth of this central tenet, by which 
 the complexity of the world was ended, for all 
 things were attributed to a sovereign Will, whose 
 operation explained and justified the Destiny which 
 is to a Hindoo the ever present problem of his life. 
 Nothing goes as it should, yet all things must be 
 going as they should ; what better or easier recon- 
 ciliation of those facts than the existence of a 
 Creator who, because He created, rules all as He 
 will ? Monotheism explains the mystery of the 
 universe, and to the Hindoo dissatisfied with 
 Hindooism seemed perfect light. 
 
 In teaching this faith the missionaries of Islam 
 had some further advantages besides its simplicity, 
 though they are not those usually ascribed to 
 them. To begin with, whether Arabs or Pathans 
 or Persians or Indian converts, they and their 
 hearers were equally Asiatics, and had therefore 
 a profound, though hardly conscious, sympathy. 
 It may be hard to explain in what the comity 
 of Asia consists, but of its existence there can 
 be no reasonable doubt. Something radical, some- 
 thing unalterable and indestructible, divides the 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 51 
 
 Asiatic from the European. Stand in a great 
 Asiatic bazaar, with men of twenty races and ten 
 colours and fifty civilizations moving about it, and 
 every one is bound to every other by a common 
 distaste for the European, even if he is an ally. 
 There is not a European in Europe or America 
 who does not feel that between himself and the Jew 
 there is some dividing line which is independent 
 of creed or of culture or of personal respect. Of 
 all Christians, again, the most determined and, 
 politically, the most powerless is the Armenian, 
 but he is a true Asiatic, and accordingly, in the 
 deepest recesses of the Mussulman world, in Arabia 
 or in Afghanistan, w r here any other Christian would 
 be slain at sight, he passes along as safe, from all 
 save contempt, as any follower of Islam. Those 
 evidences seem unanswerable, but there is one 
 stronger still. The faith of the Moslem makes 
 him accept, and accept heartily, every convert, be 
 he Chinese or Negro or Indian, as a brother; but 
 he regards one convert with a dull, inactive, but 
 unsleeping suspicion, and that is the European 
 renegade. The missionaries of Islam were personally 
 acceptable in India because they were Asiatics, 
 and because, though the creed they taught was 
 universal, the rule of life by which it was accompanied 
 was Asiatic too. 
 
 I do not mean by this, as most writers do, that 
 the laxity of the sexual ethics taught by Mahommed 
 was especially attractive to the Hindoo. I doubt if 
 
52 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 such laxity is attractive to any men seeking light, or 
 has ever assisted greatly in the spread of any creed. 
 The chastity of Christianity did not stop its spread 
 in the dissolute society of the rotting Roman world. 
 Of all the greater faiths Islam is the least elevated 
 in this respect, for it allows not only polygamy, but 
 free divorce at the man’s will, and concubinage 
 limited only by his power of purchasing slaves. 
 It, in fact, consecrates the harem system, and, 
 except as regards adultery or unnatural crime, 
 legitimizes the fullest and most unscrupulous 
 indulgence of lust. Nevertheless, it has never 
 attracted the more lustful nations of Europe, such 
 as the French; it is rejected by the least continent 
 of mankind, the Chinese, and it has been accepted 
 by millions of women, on whose behalf it relaxes 
 nothing either in this world or the next. It is quite 
 clear that polygamy is not the attraction of Islam 
 for them, nor are they promised male houris in 
 Paradise, even if they have any chance of attaining 
 to Paradise at all. The truth is, that men desire 
 in a creed an ideal higher than their practice. The 
 most dissolute of European societies foisted upon 
 Christianity a restriction, celibacy, stronger than 
 any Christ had taught ; and even among male 
 Asiatics it is doubtful if laxity is so attractive 
 as is commonly supposed. Asiatics care, it is true, 
 nothing about purity, which, among Christians, is 
 as much valued as chastity, and more safeguarded 
 by opinion, the Asiatics holding that lust, like 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 53 
 
 hunger, is neither evil nor good, but a mere 
 appetite, the gratification of which under regula- 
 tion is entirely legitimate. They are, therefore, 
 tolerant of lustful suggestions even in their religious 
 books, care nothing about keeping them out of 
 literature or art, and do not understand, still less 
 appreciate, the rigid system of obscurantism by 
 which the European avoids the intrusion into 
 ordinary life of anything that may even accidentally 
 provoke sexual desire. But as regards the actual 
 intercourse of the sexes Asiatics are not lax. The 
 incontinence of the young is prevented by a careful 
 system of betrothals and early marriages ; even 
 Mahommedanism punishes adultery with death ; 
 Buddhism is in theory nearly as clean as Chris- 
 tianity ; and the Hindoo, besides being mono- 
 gamous, regards divorce as at once monstrous and 
 impossible. It is probable that the laxity of Islam 
 in its sexual ethics repelled rather than attracted 
 Hindoo men, while to Hindoo women it must have 
 been as disgusting as to Christians. The strongest 
 proof of the grip that Islam takes, when it takes hold 
 at all, is that in India women have been converted as 
 numerously as men, though the Hindoo woman in 
 accepting Islam loses her hope of heaven and the 
 security of her position on earth both together. 
 This repulsion, however, did not prevent con- 
 version. The Hindoo never regards the sexual 
 question as of high spiritual importance, and his 
 philosophy trains him to believe that all ethics 
 
54 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 are personal — that that which is forbidden to one 
 man may not only be allowed to another, but 
 enjoined upon him. It may be, for instance, 
 imperative on an ordinary Brahmin to restrict 
 himself to one wife, yet it may be perfectly right 
 for a Koolin Brahmin to marry sixty ; and though 
 infanticide is to Hindoos, as to Christians, merely 
 murder, there are tribes, often of the strictest purity 
 of the faith, in which the practice is considered 
 blameless. It is very doubtful if a Hindoo would 
 altogether condemn a Thug, quite certain that he 
 tolerates in certain castes practices he considers 
 infamous in certain others. The Hindoo convert 
 to Islam therefore accepted polygamy as allowed 
 by God, who alone could allow or disallow it, 
 and for the rest he found in the sacred Law or 
 Mahommedan rule of life nothing that was repellent. 
 
 That law, to begin with, allowed him to live the 
 caste life — to be, that is, a member of an exclusive 
 society maintaining equality within its own confines, 
 but shut off from the rest of mankind by an invisible 
 but impassable barrier or custom rigid as law. Such 
 a caste the Indian, always timid, always conscious of 
 being a mere grain in a sand-heap, and always liable 
 to oppression, holds to be essential to his safety, 
 secular and spiritual, and he gives it up with a 
 wrench which is to a European inconceivable. 
 Once out of caste he is no longer a member of a 
 strongly knit, if limited, society, which will protect 
 him against the external world, give him countenance 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 55 
 
 under all difficulties, and assure him all the pleasant 
 relations of life, but is a waif, all alone, with every 
 man’s hand against him, and with every kind of 
 oppression more than possible. Where is he to 
 seek a surety, and where a wife for his son ? The 
 missionaries of Islam did not, and do not, ask him 
 to abandon caste, but only to exchange his caste for 
 theirs, the largest, the most strictly bound, and the 
 proudest of all, a caste which claims not only a special 
 relation to God, but the right of ruling absolutely all 
 the remainder of mankind. Once in this caste the 
 Hindoo convert would be the brother of all within it, 
 hailed as an equal, and treated as an equal, even upon 
 that point on which European theories of equality 
 always break down, the right of intermarriage. 
 John Brown, who died gladly for the Negro slave, 
 would have killed his daughter rather than see her 
 marry a Negro, but the Mussulman will accept 
 the Negro as son-in-law, as friend, or as king to 
 whom his loyalty is due. The Negro blood in the 
 veins of the present Sultan affects no Mussulman’s 
 loyalty, and “ Hubshees,” who looked, though they 
 were not, Negroes, have in India carved out thrones. 
 The Mussulman caste, as a caste, attracts the Hindoo 
 strongly, and so does the family life of Islam, which 
 leaves him just the seclusion, just the household 
 peace, and just the sovereignty within his own 
 doors which are dear to his soul. He craves for 
 a place where he may be in society, and yet out of 
 society ; not alone, and yet free for a time from the 
 
56 
 
 ASM AND EUROPE 
 
 pressure and even from the observation of the outer 
 world, which beyond the confines of his own caste 
 is, if not directly hostile, at the best impure ; and 
 in Mahommedanism he finds his secluded home 
 untouched. Islam leaves him his old sacred 
 authority over his sons, an authority never ques- 
 tioned, far less resisted, and, what he values still 
 more, authority to dispose of his daughters in 
 marriage at any age he himself deems fitting. This 
 privilege is to him of inestimable value — is, indeed, 
 the very key-note of any honourable and therefore 
 happy condition of life. 
 
 It is necessary upon this matter to be a little 
 plain. Nothing can be finer than the relation of an 
 Indian father to his children, except perhaps their 
 relation to him. His solicitude and their obedience 
 know no end, and there is as a rule extraordinarily 
 little tyranny displayed in the management of the 
 young. The tendency indeed is to spoil them, but 
 there is one grand exception to this habit of tender- 
 ness. The highest spirited European noble is not 
 more sensitive about the chastity of his daughters 
 than the Indian of any class, but the ideas of the 
 two men as to the effectual method of securing it 
 are widely apart. The European trusts to his 
 daughter’s principles, to an invisible but unbreak- 
 able wall of stringent etiquettes, to an ignorance 
 fostered by a mother’s care, and to the compara- 
 tively late age at which for physiological reasons the 
 passions wake in Europe. The Indian knows 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 57 
 
 that every girl born in his climate may be a 
 mother at eleven, while she is still a baby in intel- 
 lect and in self control, knows that while still a 
 child her passions wake, knows that he cannot keep 
 her ignorant, and knows that he can no more at 
 that age trust her principles than he could trust her 
 not to play with toys or eat the sweetmeats before 
 her lips. The choice before him is early betrothal 
 at his discretion, not hers, for she is incompetent to 
 choose ; or the seclusion in a nunnery, which, if 
 early marriage is ever abolished in India, will be 
 the inevitable alternative, as it is now among the 
 better classes in France. He has decided for the 
 former course, and the new creed which approves 
 and ratifies that decision is to him therefore an 
 acceptable one. His notion of honourable life is 
 not upset by the notion of his teachers, who upon 
 all such points sympathize with him to the full. As 
 to the ceremonial restrictions involved in Mahom- 
 medanism, they are most of them his own restric- 
 tions, much liberalized in theory ; and one of them 
 receives his conscientious and most cordial approval. 
 Here again it is necessary to be plain. In the 
 present excited condition of English and American 
 opinion upon the subject of alcohol, it is vain to 
 hope that the unvarnished truth will be listened to 
 without contempt, but still it ought to be told. 
 There are temptations which tell differently on 
 different men, and which, innocent for one set, are 
 debasing — that is, utterly evil — for another. There 
 
58 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 are two moralities about drink, just as, if the effect 
 of opium were different on different varieties of 
 mankind, there would be two moralities about 
 opium. The white races do not suffer, except as 
 individuals, from alcohol. They do not as races 
 crave it in excess, and except in excess it harms 
 them only by causing an enormous and in great 
 part useless waste of their labour. The white races 
 which drink wine do not appear to have suffered at 
 all, and even the white races which drink spirits 
 have suffered very little. It is mere nonsense to 
 talk of either the French or the Scotch as inferior 
 peoples, and the Teutons in all their branches have 
 done in all departments of life all that men may do. 
 Individuals of all these races have suffered from 
 drink in such numbers as to produce an unnatural 
 average of crime, but the races have neither 
 perished nor grown weak, nor shown any tendency 
 to deterioration in intellectual power or in morale. 
 The Scotch are better than they were three centuries 
 ago ; and the Jews, who drink everywhere, remain 
 everywhere the same. It is different with the dark 
 races and the red races. Owing probably to some 
 hitherto untraced peculiarity of either their physical 
 or more probably their mental constitutions, alcohol 
 in any quantity seems to set most Asiatics — the Jews 
 are an exception — on fire, to produce an irresistible 
 craving for more, and to compel them to go on drink- 
 ing until they are sunk in a stupor of intoxication. 
 They appear to delight but little in the exhilaration 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 59 
 
 produced by partial inebriety, and to seek always a 
 total release from consciousness and its oppressions. 
 The condition of “ dead drunkness,” which few even 
 of drinking Northerners enjoy, is to them delightful. 
 “ I not drinkee for drinkee,” said the Madras man ; 
 “ I drinkee for drunkee.” Alcohol is therefore to 
 such races an intolerable evil, and its consumption 
 by them is in the eyes of all strict moralists an 
 immorality. It is the doing of a thing known to be 
 for that man evil. This desire to drink for drinking’s 
 sake probably became stronger when the Aryans 
 descended from the land of the grape to regions 
 where it cannot be obtained, yet where arrack can 
 be made in every village ; and their early legislators 
 therefore prohibited the use of alcohol with an abso- 
 lute rigour which produced in the course of ages 
 an instinctive abhorrence. No respectable Hindoo 
 will touch alcohol in any form ; and the Mahomme- 
 dan restriction, which it is said cost Islam the 
 adherence of the Russian people, seems to Hindoos 
 a supplementary evidence of the Divine origin of 
 the creed. 
 
 With their path thus cleared, with their great 
 numbers and with their persistent zeal, the mission- 
 aries of Islam ought long ere this to have converted 
 the whole population of India to their faith ; and it 
 is a little difficult to account for the slowness of 
 their progress. The best explanation probably is to 
 be found in the dogged resistance of the priesthood, 
 whose hold over the people is riveted by the superi- 
 
6o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ority of their blood and of their natural intelligence, 
 the Brahmin boy, for example, beating every other 
 boy in every college in the country ; in the conser- 
 vatism of the masses, which rejects innovation as 
 impiety ; and in the saturation of the Hindoo mind 
 with the pantheistic idea, which is utterly opposed 
 to Mahommedanism and to the whole series of 
 assumptions upon which that creed rests. It is 
 probable too that patriotism, or rather pride, has 
 had its weight; and that the Hindoos, vain of their 
 antiquity, of their intellectual acuteness, and of their 
 powers of resistance, have refused to break with the 
 past, which to them is always present, by accepting 
 an alien, though attractive, faith. Whatever the 
 cause, the fact is certain, Islam has advanced and is 
 advancing but slowly towards the destined end. 
 Even if there has been no natural increase of popu- 
 lation, the conversions cannot have exceeded 50,000 
 a year upon an average since proselytism first 
 began — a small number when the original successes 
 of the faith in Arabia are considered. It is prob- 
 able, however, that the conversions have been far 
 below that figure, and that even now, when prose- 
 lytizing energy has been revived by a sort of 
 Protestant revival in Arabia, they hardly reach 
 throughout the continent more than 50,000 a year. 
 Still they go on. Mahommedanism benefits by the 
 shaking of all Hindoo beliefs, which is the marked 
 fact of the day ; and it is nearly certain that, should 
 on new spiritual agency intervene, the Indian 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 61 
 
 peoples, who are already betraying a tendency to 
 fuse themselves into one whole, will at last become 
 Mahommedan. None who profess that faith ever 
 quit it ; the tendency towards physical decay visible 
 in so many Mussulman countries is not perceptible 
 in India, and in the later stages conversion will 
 probably be accelerated by a decided use of force. 
 
 Whether a Mahommedan is a better man than 
 a Hindoo it is impossible to decide ; for though 
 Islam is the higher creed, it is far more inimical 
 to progress — is indeed a mental cul de sac , allowing 
 of no advance — but that its disciples are higher 
 in the political scale and will ultimately hold the 
 reins is a truth almost self evident. They are only 
 one fifth of the population. They would have little 
 external aid except from a few Pathans and possibly 
 Soudanese, and they do not include the bulk of the 
 fighting races — the Sikhs, Rajpoots, Hindostanees, 
 Beharees and Mahrattas — but nevertheless few ob- 
 servers doubt that, if the English army departed, 
 the Mahominedans, after one desperate struggle 
 with the Sikhs, would remain supreme in the 
 Peninsula. They are all potential soldiers ; they 
 are all capable of self-sacrifice for the faith ; and 
 they are all willing to cohere and to acknowledge 
 one common and central authority. They know 
 how to make themselves obeyed, and, though cruel, 
 they do not excite the kind of hate which drives 
 subjects to despair. They have impressed them- 
 selves upon India as the ruling caste. Hindoos 
 
62 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 superior to themselves in martial qualities will yet 
 serve under them; and when, in 1857, Northern 
 India tried in one great heave to throw off the 
 European yoke, it was to Delhi and the effete house 
 of Timour that Hindoos as well as Mussulmans 
 turned for guidance and a centre. Brahmin Sepoys 
 murdered Christian officers in the name of a 
 Mahommedan Prince. In the light of that most 
 significant of facts it is difficult to doubt that, 
 though the process may be slow, India, unless all 
 is changed by the intervention of some new force, 
 must in no long period of time, as time is counted 
 in Asia, become a Mahommedan country, the 
 richest, the most populous, possibly the most civi- 
 lized, possibly also the most anarchical of them all. 
 Mahommedanism has never made a nation great, 
 nor have its civilizations endured long, and the 
 history of the Mogul Empire is not of good omen. 
 It produced some striking characters, many great 
 deeds, and a few magnificent buildings, one of which, 
 the Taj at Agra, is peerless throughout the world; 
 but it rotted very early, and it showed from first to 
 last no tendency to breed a great people. The 
 corruption was greater under Aurungzebe than under 
 Baber, and the ease with which the British conquest 
 was effected can only be explained by a thorough 
 exhaustion of Mussulman morale. They were the 
 ruling class, they held all the springs of power, 
 they had every motive for fighting hard, they were 
 certainly 20,000,000 strong ; yet all our great wars 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 63 
 
 were waged, not with Mussulmans, but with Hin- 
 doos, Mahrattas, Pindarees, Sikhs, and our own 
 Sepoys. Had they possessed in 1756-1800 one- 
 half the energy of the Khalsa or fighting section of 
 the Sikhs, the British would have been driven out 
 of India, or out of all India except Bengal, by sheer 
 exhaustion on the battlefield. Still if India becomes 
 Mahommedan, it may develop (as every other 
 Mussulman country has done) an energy which, 
 though temporary, may last for centuries ; and if its 
 dynasts are Arabs or native Mussulmans instead of 
 Tartars, it may rise to great heights of a certain 
 kind of Oriental civilization. 
 
 The intervening spiritual force which ought to 
 prevent this conversion of an empire to a false and 
 entirely non-progressive creed is of course Christi- 
 anity, and, now that the facts are better known, a 
 cry of alarm has risen from the Reformed Churches 
 at the slow progress of Christian proselytism in 
 India. Surely, it is argued, there must be some 
 defect in the system of bringing our faith before this 
 people, or there would be greater results from efforts 
 in themselves great, and supported by the entire 
 Christian world in Europe and America. Why are 
 the Christians so few, and why is there no sign that 
 any nation in India is embracing Christianity, or 
 that any indigenous Christian Church is attracting, 
 as Buddhism once did, millions of followers ? Many 
 writers, provoked by this cry, have endeavoured to 
 show that it is ill founded, and have published 
 
64 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 quantities of statistics intended to prove that Christi- 
 anity does advance more rapidly than any creed, but 
 no one who knows India will deny that the com- 
 plaint is essentially true. The number of Christians 
 in all India is larger than is commonly supposed. 
 There are 660,000 belonging to the Reformed 
 Churches, and the conversions, if we include the 
 aboriginal tribes, are becoming more numerous in 
 proportion than those of Mahommedanism ; but 
 Christianity has taken but a poor grip on Hindoo 
 India. The creed has, except in Tinnevelly, no 
 perceptible place in any one province. Its votaries 
 are nowhere really visible among the population. 
 Its thoughts do not affect the life, or perplex the 
 orthodoxy, of other creeds. No Indian Christian is 
 a leader or even a quasi-leader among the Indian 
 peoples, and a traveller living in India for two 
 years, and knowing the country well, might leave it 
 without full consciousness that any work of active 
 proselytism was going on at all. Christianity has 
 not failed in India as some allege, but it has failed 
 as compared with reasonable expectation and with 
 the energy expended in diffusing it, and it is worth 
 while to examine quietly and without prejudice the 
 probable reasons why. To do this more easily, 
 it is well to sweep away in the beginning one or two 
 popular fallacies. One of these is, that white 
 Christians in India are the conquering race, and that 
 Christianity is therefore detested as their creed. 
 That is not true. That the English in India are 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 65 
 
 regarded by large sections of the people as “ un- 
 accountable, uncomfortable works of God ” may be 
 true enough, but they are not despised, are not held 
 to be bad, and do not, in the majority of cases, in 
 any way disgrace their creed. To the bulk of the 
 native population they are little known, because they 
 are not visible, their numbers, except in the seaports 
 and a few garrison towns, being inappreciable, but 
 those who know them know and admit them to be 
 a competent people, brave in war and capable in 
 peace, always just, usually benevolent, though never 
 agreeable, and living for the most part steadily up to 
 such light as they have. Even if they were worse 
 it would make little difference, the Hindoo being 
 quite capable of distinguishing between a creed and 
 its professors, and seeing that his own people also as 
 well as the Mahommedans constantly fall in practice 
 behind the teaching of their own faith. As for the 
 position of the white Christians as a dominant caste, 
 that is in favour of their religion, for it shows either 
 that a great God is on their side, or that they enjoy, 
 in an unusual degree, the favour of Destiny. The 
 fact — which is a fact, and a very curious one — that 
 the white Christians, for the most part, do not wish 
 the Indians to be converted, has no doubt an influ- 
 ence, of which we will speak by and by, but in 
 general estimation among Indians this prejudice is 
 not counted to their discredit, but is rather held to 
 be a reason for trusting in their unsympathetic impar- 
 tiality. The Hindoo, too, though he has neither 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 reverence nor liking for the social system of his 
 conquerors, which is far too much based on indi- 
 vidualism for his taste, has a great respect for 
 their material successes and for their powers of 
 thought, which in many directions, especially in 
 governing and making laws, he is disposed to pre- 
 fer greatly to his own. Taking it broadly, it may 
 be affirmed that the fact that Christianity is the 
 conquerors’ creed makes no substantial difference 
 one way or the other. It is again affirmed that 
 Christianity is too difficult and complex a creed, that 
 it demands too much belief, and that its teachers 
 insist too much upon the acceptance by the neophyte 
 of its complexities and difficulties. I see no found- 
 ation whatever for that statement. The difficulties 
 of Christianity to Christians are not difficulties to 
 the Hindoo. He is perfectly familiar with the idea 
 that God can be triune ; that God may reveal 
 Himself to man in human form; that a being may 
 be at once man and God, and both completely ; that 
 the Divine man may be the true exemplar, though 
 separated from man by His whole Divinity ; and 
 that sin may be wiped off by a supreme sacrifice. 
 Those are the ideas the missionaries teach, and the 
 majority of Hindoos would affirm that they were 
 perfectly reasonable and in accordance with the 
 general and Divinely originated scheme of things. 
 There is nothing in Christian dogma which to the 
 Hindoo seems either ridiculous or impossible, while 
 no miracle whatever, however stupendous, in the 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 67 
 
 least overstrains the capacity of his faith. There 
 never was a creed whose dogmas were in them- 
 selves so little offensive to a heathen people as the 
 greater dogmas of Christianity are to the Hindoo, 
 who, moreover, while hinting that the second 
 commandment involved an impossibility in terms, 
 a material representation of the universal Spirit being 
 inconceivable, would allow that the ten constituted 
 a very fair rule of life. The road is smooth instead 
 of hard for the Christian theologian, and it is the 
 perfect comprehensibility of its dogmas which makes 
 the Hindoo’s unwillingness to believe harder to 
 understand. 
 
 The real difficulties in the way ©f the expansion 
 of Christianity in India are, I conceive, of three 
 kinds : one due to the creed itself, one to the social 
 disruption which its acceptance involves, and one to 
 the imperfect, it may even be said the slightly 
 absurd, method hitherto adopted of making pro- 
 selytes. 
 
 1. It is most difficult to make the theological 
 impediments to the spread of Christianity in India 
 clear to the English mind without being accused 
 either of irreverence or of presumption. Every 
 missionary has his own ideas of those difficulties — 
 often ideas he does not express, derived from great 
 experience — and he naturally thinks any other ex- 
 planation either insufficient or erroneous. The 
 attempt, however, must be made, the writer premis- 
 ing that his belief is based on conversations with 
 
68 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Brahmins of great acuteness, continued through a 
 period of many years, but with Brahmins exclusively. 
 No man not a Christian becomes a Christian to his 
 own earthly hurt except for one of two reasons. 
 Either he is intellectually convinced that Christianity 
 is true — a conviction quite compatible with great 
 distaste for the faith itself — or he is attracted by the 
 person of Christ, feels, as the theologians put it, 
 the love of Christ in him. The former change 
 happens in India as often as elsewhere whenever 
 the Christian mind and the Hindoo mind fairly 
 meet each other, but it does not produce the usual 
 result. The Hindoo mind is so constituted that 
 it can believe, and does believe, in mutually destruc- 
 tive facts at one and the same time. An astronomer 
 who predicts eclipses ten years ahead without a 
 blunder believes all the while, sincerely believes, 
 that the eclipse is caused by some supernatural dog 
 swallowing the moon, and will beat a drum to 
 make the dog give up the prize. A Hindoo will 
 state with perfect honesty that Christianity is true, 
 that Mahommedanism is true, and that his own 
 special variety of Brahminism is true, and that he 
 believes them all three implicitly. The relation 
 between what Dr. Newman calls “assent” and what 
 we call “faith” is imperfect with Hindoos, and con- 
 version may be intellectually complete, yet be for all 
 purposes of action valueless. Missionaries are con- 
 stantly ridiculed in India for saying that they have 
 hearers who are converts but not Christians, the 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 69 
 
 idea being that they are either deluding themselves 
 or dishonestly yielding to the English passion for 
 tangible results. They are in reality stating a simple 
 truth, which embarrasses and checks and, sooth to 
 say, sometimes irritates them beyond all measure. 
 What are you to do with a man whom you have 
 laboured with your whole soul to convince, who is 
 convinced, and who remains just as unconvinced 
 for any practical purpose as he was before ? The 
 Hindoo, be it understood, is not skulking or shrink- 
 ing from social martyrdom, or telling lies ; he really 
 is intellectually a Hindoo as well as a Christian. 
 Some of us have seen, it may be, the same position 
 of mind in the case of a few Roman Catholic 
 agnostics, but in Europe it is rare. In India it is 
 nearly universal, and the extent of its effect as a 
 resisting force to Christianity is almost inconceivable 
 to a European. The missionary makes no headway. 
 He is baffled at the moment of success by what 
 seems to him an absurdity, almost a lunacy, which 
 he yet cannot remove. The other obstacle is, how- 
 ever, yet more serious. The character of Christ 
 is not, I am convinced, as acceptable to Indians as 
 it is to the Northern races. It is not so completely 
 their ideal, because it is not so visibly supernatural, 
 so completely beyond any point which they can, 
 unassisted by Divine grace, hope to attain. The 
 qualities which seemed to the warriors of Clovis 
 so magnificently Divine, the self-sacrifice, the 
 self-denial, the resignation, the sweet humility, are 
 
7o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 precisely the qualities the germs of which exist in 
 the Hindoo. He seeks, like every other man, the 
 complement of himself, and not himself again, and 
 stands before Christ at first comparatively unat- 
 tracted. The ideal in his mind is as separate as 
 was the ideal in the Jews’ mind of their expected 
 Messiah, and though the ideals of Jew and Hindoo 
 are different, the effect is in both cases the same — a 
 passive dull repulsion, scarcely to be overcome save 
 by the special grace of God. I never talked frankly 
 with a Hindoo in whom I did not detect this feeling 
 to be one inner cause of his rejection of Christi- 
 anity. He did not want that particular sublimity 
 of character, but another, something more of the 
 sovereign and legislator. It may be said that this 
 is only a description of the “carnal man,” and so 
 it is, but the carnal man in each race differs, and 
 in the Hindoo it gives him a repugnance, not to 
 the morality of Christianity, which he entirely 
 acknowledges to be good, though incomplete as not 
 demanding enough ceremonial purity, but to the 
 central idea of all. This is, when all is said, and 
 there is much to say, the master difficulty of Chris- 
 tianity in India, and the one which will delay 
 conversion on a large scale. There is no Christ 
 in Mahommedanism. It will be overcome one day 
 when Christ is preached by Christians unsaturated 
 with European ideas, but till then it will be the 
 least removable of impediments, though it produces 
 this result also, that when it is removed the true 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 71 
 
 convert will display, does even now in rare cases 
 display, an approximation to the European ideal 
 of Christ such as in Europe is scarcely found, or 
 found only in a few men whom all the sects join 
 to confess as saintly Christians. 
 
 2. What may be called the social difficulty in the 
 way of Christianity is very great, and is exasperated 
 by the medium through which it is propagated. 
 The convert is practically required to renounce one 
 civilization and to accept another not in his eyes 
 higher than his own. He is compelled first of all 
 to “ break his caste,” that is, to give up irrecoverably 
 — for there is no re-entry into Hindooism — his per- 
 sonal sanctity, which depends on caste, and his fixed 
 position in the world, and his kinsfolk and his friends, 
 and to throw himself all bare and raw into a world 
 in which he instinctively believes nine-tenths of 
 mankind to be, for him, impure. He must eat and 
 drink with men of other castes, must hold all men 
 equal in his sight, must rely on friendship and not 
 on an association, must be for the rest of his life an 
 individual, and not one of a mighty company. 
 There is no such suffering unless it be that of a 
 Catholic nun flung into the world by a revolutionary 
 movement to earn her bread, and to feel as if the very 
 breeze were impiously familiar. Be it remembered, a 
 low-caste man feels the protection of caste as strongly 
 as a high-caste man, and the convert to Christianity 
 does not, like the convert to Mahommedanism, 
 merely change his caste ; he loses it altogether. 
 
72 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 There is in India no Christian caste, and there 
 never will be. Not to mention that the idea is in 
 itself opposed to Christianity, there can be no such 
 organization unless the Europeans will admit 
 equality between themselves and the natives, and 
 they will not. Something stronger than themselves 
 forbids it. They may be wrong or right, but their 
 wills are powerless to conquer a feeling they often 
 sorrow for, and the very missionary who dies a 
 martyr to his efforts to convert the Indians would 
 die unhappy if his daughter married the best 
 convert among them. In presence of that feeling 
 a Christian caste is impossible, for the Hindoo, a 
 true Asiatic, will not admit that with equality in 
 caste inequality in race can co-exist. It has often 
 been suggested that this obstacle to the spread of 
 Christianity is wilful, and that the converts might 
 keep their caste, but the plan has never been worked, 
 and never can be. I firmly believe caste to be a 
 marvellous discovery, a form of socialism which 
 through ages has protected Hindoo society from 
 anarchy and from the worst evils of industrial and 
 competitive life — it is an automatic poor-law to 
 begin with, and the strongest form known of trades 
 union— -but Christianity demands its sacrifices like 
 every other creed, and caste in the Indian sense 
 and Christianity cannot co-exist. With caste the 
 convert gives up much of his domestic law, the 
 harem-like seclusion of his home, much of his autho- 
 rity over wife and children, his right of compelling 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 73 
 
 his daughter to marry early, which, as explained above, 
 he holds part of his honour, most of his daily habits, 
 and even, in theory at all events, his method of 
 eating his meals. A Christian cannot condemn his 
 wife to eat alone because of her inferiority. Every- 
 thing is changed for him, and changed for the un- 
 accustomed, in order that he may confess his faith. 
 One can hardly wonder that many, otherwise ready, 
 shrink from such a baptism by fire, or that the 
 second generation of native Christians often show 
 signs of missing ancient buttresses of conduct. They 
 are the true anxieties of the missionaries, and it is 
 from them in nine cases out of ten that the ill-repute 
 of Indian Christians is derived ; but European 
 opinion about them is most unfair. They are not 
 converts, but born Christians, like any of our own 
 artisans ; they have not gone through a mental 
 martyrdom, and they have to be bred up without 
 strong convictions, except that Christianity is doubt- 
 less true, without the defences which native opinion 
 has organized for ages, and in the midst of a heathen 
 society in which the white Christians declare their 
 children shall not live. One such man I knew well, 
 who showed much of the quality of the European, 
 a big, bold man, though a Bengalee by birth, utterly 
 intolerable to his kinsfolk, and an outcast from all 
 native society. He fought his battle for a good 
 while hard, but he grew bitter and savage, became, 
 among other changes, a deadly enemy of the British 
 Government, and at last solved all the questions 
 
74 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 which pressed on him so fiercely by turning Mahom- 
 medan. A native Christian village in Canara some 
 years since followed the same course, and it may 
 hereafter be a frequent one. 
 
 3. The greatest obstacle, however, to the rapid 
 diffusion of Christianity in India is the method 
 adopted to secure proselytes. The Reformed 
 Churches of Europe and America have devoted 
 themselves to the old object with some zeal 1 and 
 commendable perseverance, but they have entirely 
 failed to secure volunteers for the work. Owing to 
 causes very difficult to understand, missionary work 
 in India scarcely ever attracts Europeans possessed 
 of even a small independence, and the number of 
 those who maintain themselves and work for the 
 cause, seeking no pecuniary aid from the Churches, 
 may be counted on the fingers of one hand. The 
 
 1 Some zeal. It is not very much. If we had the means of 
 deducting the contributions of about 2,000 families who are the 
 mainstay of all missionary bodies and of all charities, the amount 
 raised by the Churches would not appear large, and it is raised 
 with extreme difficulty. The Churches, pressed by home wants 
 and conscious of great ignorance, will, as a rule, give nothing 
 unless stimulated by special addresses, and the expense of that 
 stimulation takes a quite unreasonable percentage from mission 
 funds. The individual contributions so raised are exceedingly 
 small, and the demands of the contributors for immediate results 
 are ludicrously unreasonable. They will not wait for the oak to 
 grow, and a good many of them are as bad as the Scotch mer- 
 chant who at last rejected a request to support the Society for 
 the Conversion of the Jews. He paid once; he paid twice; but 
 
 on the third application he said, “D it, are thae Jews no’ a’ 
 
 convertit yet 1 ” 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 75 
 
 Churches, therefore, acting for the most part indepen- 
 dently, but still acknowledging a federal tie of good- 
 will which induces them to avoid interfering with 
 one another, have organized what is practically a 
 proselytizing “service” for India, consisting now of 
 about seven hundred men, differing, of course, 
 greatly among each other, but most of them as well 
 educated as average English or Scotch clergymen, 
 most of them married, and all of them honestly 
 devoted to their work. The charges sometimes 
 brought against them in England, but never in 
 India, are not only unfounded, but nonsensical. 
 Now and again a missionary, tempted by the high 
 rewards offered for his special knowledge, or detect- 
 ing in himself some want of true vocation, embraces 
 a secular career, and is thenceforward regarded by 
 his brethren as a backslider. Now and again a mis- 
 sionary, disenchanted or conquered by that disgust of 
 India which with some Europeans becomes a mental 
 disease, returns to the West to commence the ordi- 
 nary life of an Established or Dissenting clergyman. 
 Now and again, but very rarely, a missionary falls 
 a prey to some temptation of drink, or desire, or 
 gain, and is cast out, his comrades “ inquiring ” in 
 such cases with all the severity and more than the 
 care of any judicial court. But the Churches are, 
 for the most part, admirably served. The mis- 
 sionaries lead excellent and hard-working lives, are 
 implicitly trusted by the whole community, Euro- 
 pean and native, and rarely resign until warned by 
 
7 6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 severe illness that the period of their usefulness is 
 overpast. Many of them become men of singular 
 learning; many more show themselves adminis- 
 trators of high merit ; and all display on occasion 
 that reserve of energy and devotion which more 
 than any other thing marks that the heart of a 
 service is sound. Most pathetic stories are told of 
 their behaviour in the great Mutiny, but I prefer to 
 tell a little anecdote which is known to me to be 
 true, and is most characteristic. The Rev. 
 John Robinson was, in 1850 or 1851, an unpaid 
 missionary, recognized as such by the Baptist 
 Church, but maintaining himself as a translator. 
 He was suddenly summoned one day to the Leper 
 Asylum to baptize a dying convert. The message 
 was intended for his father, but the father was sick, 
 and my friend went instead, in fear and trembling, 
 baptized the dying man, consoled him, and then 
 was seized with a throe of mental agony. It is the 
 custom of many missionaries on receiving a neophyte, 
 especially if sick, to give him the kiss of peace. 
 Mr. Robinson thought this his bounden duty, but 
 he was terribly afraid of the possible contagion. 
 He hesitated, walked to the door, and returned to 
 kiss the leper on the lips, and then to lie for days 
 in his own house, prostrated with an uncontrollable 
 and, as experience has often proved, not unreason- 
 able nervous terror. A superstitious fool the 
 doctor thought him when he had wormed the 
 truth out of him during his fit of nervous horror. 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 77 
 
 True soldier of Christ, say I, who, when his duty 
 called him, faced something far worse than shot. 
 The body of the missionaries have that quality in 
 them, and those who depreciate or deride them do 
 not know the facts. But excellent as they are, it is 
 not for the work of proselytism that they are 
 adapted. 
 
 In the first place, they are too few. Every 
 missionary has a wife, a house, a conveyance, 
 children who must be sent home ; and must, being 
 so situated, live the usual and respectable European 
 life. That costs on the average ^500 a year per 
 house ;* and the Churches, which, if they are really 
 to reach all India, need at least 5,000 agents, 
 cannot, or at all events will not, provide for more 
 than 700. In the second place, the missionaries 
 are Europeans, divided from the people by a 
 barrier as strong as that which separates a China- 
 man from a Londoner, by race, by colour, by dress, 
 by incurable differences of thought, of habit, of 
 taste, and of language. The last named the 
 missionary sometimes, though by no means always, 
 overcomes, but the remaining barriers he cannot 
 
 1 I defy living man, not being secretary to a mission, to state 
 accurately what a missionary costs. His salary can be easily 
 ascertained, but in addition to this he receives an allowance for 
 his house, for his conveyance, and for passage money when sick. 
 Add the cost of his share of general expenses, the charitable 
 allowance for his widow, and the grant-in-aid to the school for 
 his children, and the total will, I feel assured, not be less than 
 the sum I have mentioned. 
 
78 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 overcome, for they are rooted in his very nature, 
 and he does not try. He never becomes an Indian, 
 or anything which an Indian could mistake for 
 himself : the influence of civilization is too strong 
 for him. He cannot help desiring that his flock 
 should become “ civilized ” as well as Christian ; 
 he understands no civilization not European, and 
 by unwearied admonition, by governing, by teach- 
 ing, by setting up all manner of useful industries, 
 he tries to bring them up to his narrow ideal. 
 That is, he becomes a pastor on the best English 
 model : part preacher, part schoolmaster, part ruler ; 
 always doing his best, always more or less success- 
 ful, but always with an eye to a false end — the 
 Europeanization of the Asiatic — and always acting 
 through the false method of developing the desire 
 of imitation. There is the curse of the whole 
 system, whether of missionary work or of education 
 in India. The missionary, like the educationist, 
 cannot resist the desire to make his pupils English, 
 to teach them English literature, English science, 
 English knowledge ; often — as in the case of the 
 vast Scotch missionary colleges, establishments as 
 large as universities, and as successful in teaching 
 — through the medium of English alone. He 
 wants to saturate Easterns with the West. The 
 result is that the missionary becomes an excellent 
 pastor or an efficient schoolmaster instead of a 
 proselytizer, and that his converts or their children 
 or the thousands of pagan lads he teaches become 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 79 
 
 in exact proportion to his success a hybrid caste, 
 not quite European, not quite Indian, with the 
 originality killed out of them, with self-reliance 
 weakened, with all mental aspirations wrenched 
 violently in a direction which is not their own. 
 It is as if Englishmen were trained by Chinamen 
 to become not only Buddhists, but Chinese. The 
 first and most visible result is a multiplication of 
 Indians who know English, but are not English, 
 either in intellectual ways or in morale ; and the 
 second is that, after eighty years of effort, no great 
 native missionary has arisen, that no great Indian 
 Church has developed itself on lines of its own 
 and with unmistakable self-dependent vitality, and 
 that the ablest missionaries say sorrowfully that 
 white supervision is still needed, and that if they 
 all retired the work might even now be undone, 
 as it was in Japan. Where 3,000 preaching friars 
 are required, most or all of them Asiatics, living 
 among the people, thinking like them as regards 
 all but creed, sympathizing with them even in their 
 superstitions, we have 700 excellent but foreign 
 schoolmasters or pastors or ruling elders. What 
 is wanted in India for the work of proselytizing 
 is not a Free Church College, an improved Edin- 
 burgh High School, teaching thousands of Brahmins 
 English, but an El Azhar for training native 
 missionaries through their own tongue, and in their 
 own ways of thought exclusively — a college which 
 should produce, not baboos competent to answer 
 
8o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 examination papers from Cambridge, but Christian 
 fanatics learned in the Christianized learning of 
 Asia, and ready to wander forth to preach, and 
 teach, and argue, and above all to command as 
 the missionaries of Islam do. Let every native 
 Church once founded be left to itself, or be helped 
 only by letters of advice, as the Churches of Asia 
 were, to seek for itself the rule of life which best 
 suits Christianity in India, to press that part of 
 Christianity most welcome to the people, to urge 
 those dogmatic truths which most attract and hold 
 them. We in England have almost forgotten those 
 discussions on the nature of God which divided 
 the Eastern Empire of Rome, and which among 
 Christian Indians would probably revive in their 
 fullest force. It is the very test of Christianity 
 that it can adapt itself to all civilizations and 
 improve all, and the true native Churches of India 
 will no more be like the Reformed Churches of 
 Europe than the Churches of Yorkshire are like 
 the Churches of Asia Minor. Strange beliefs, 
 strange organizations, many of them spiritual 
 despotisms of a lofty type, like that of Keshub 
 Chunder Sen, the most original of all modern 
 Indians, wild aberrations from the truth, it may 
 be even monstrous heresies, will appear among 
 them, but there will be life, conflict, energy, and 
 the faith will spread, not as it does now like a 
 fire in a middle-class stove, but like a fire in the 
 forest. There is far too much fear of imperfect 
 
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 81 
 
 Christianity in the whole missionary organization. 
 Christianity is always imperfect in its beginnings. 
 The majority of Christians in Constantine’s time 
 would have seemed to modern missionaries mere 
 worldlings ; the converted Saxons were for centuries 
 violent brutes ; and the mass of Christians through- 
 out the world are even now no better than indif- 
 ferents. None the less is it true that the race which 
 embraces Christianity, even nominally, rises with 
 a bound out of its former position, and contains in 
 itself thenceforward the seed of a nobler and more 
 lasting life. Christianity in a new people must 
 develop civilization for itself, not be smothered by 
 it, still less be exhausted in the impossible effort 
 to accrete to itself a civilization from the outside. 
 Natives of India when they are Christians will be 
 and ought to be Asiatics still — that is, as unlike 
 English rectors or English Dissenting ministers as 
 it is possible for men of the same creed to be, 
 and the effort to squeeze them into those moulds 
 not only wastes power, but destroys the vitality of 
 the original material. Mahommedan proselytism 
 succeeds in India because it leaves its converts 
 Asiatics still ; Christian proselytism fails in India 
 because it strives to make of its converts English 
 middle-class men. That is the truth in a nutshell, 
 whether we choose to accept it or not. 
 
 G 
 
Will England Retain India ? 
 
 T HE English think they will rule India for 
 many centuries or for ever. I do not think 
 so, holding rather the older belief that the Empire 
 which came in a day will disappear in a night ; 
 and it may interest some to consider for a moment 
 the pessimist view as stated by one who heartily 
 believes that the British dominion over the great 
 peninsula of Asia is a benefit to mankind. 
 
 It is customary with Englishmen, and especially 
 with Englishmen who have seen India, to speak of 
 the British domination there as “a miracle,” but 
 they seldom realize fully the import of their words. 
 The Indian Empire is not a miracle in the rhetori- 
 cian’s sense, but in the theologian’s sense. It is a 
 thing which exists and is alive, but cannot be 
 accounted for by any process of reasoning founded 
 on experience. It is a miracle as a floating island 
 of granite would be a miracle, or a bird of brass 
 which flew and sung and lived on in mid-air. It is 
 a structure built on nothing, without foundations, 
 without buttresses, held in its place by some force 
 
 the origin of which is undiscoverable and the nature 
 
 82 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETALN LNDLA t 
 
 83 
 
 of which has never been explained. For eighty 
 years at least writers by the score have endeavoured 
 to bring home to Englishmen the vastness of India, 
 but, so far as can be perceived, they have all failed. 
 The Briton reads what they say, learns up their 
 figures, tries to understand their descriptions, but 
 fails, for all his labour, to realize what India is — a 
 continent large as Europe west of the Vistula, and 
 with 30,000,000 more people, fuller of ancient 
 nations, of great cities, of varieties of civilization, 
 of armies, nobilities, priesthoods, organizations for 
 every conceivable purpose from the spreading of 
 great religions down to systematic murder. There 
 are twice as many Bengalees as there are French- 
 men ; the Hindostanees properly so called outnum- 
 ber the whites in the United States; the Mahrattas 
 would fill Spain, the people of the Punjab with 
 Scinde are double the population of Turkey, and I 
 have named but four of the more salient divisions. 
 Everything is on the same bewildering scale. The 
 fighting peoples of India, whose males are as big as 
 ourselves, as brave as ourselves, and more regard- 
 less of death than ourselves, number at least a 
 hundred and twenty millions, equal to Gibbon’s 
 calculation of the population of the Roman Empire. 
 There are four hundred thousand trained brown 
 soldiers in native service, of whom we hear perhaps 
 once in ten years, and at least two millions of men 
 who think their proper profession is arms, who 
 would live by arms if they could, and of whom we 
 
8 4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 in England never hear a word. If the Prussian 
 conscription were applied in India, we should, with- 
 out counting reserves or Landwehr or any force not 
 summoned in time of peace, have two and a half 
 millions of soldiers actually in barracks, with 800,000 
 recruits coming up every year — a force with which, 
 not only Asia, but the world, might be subdued. 
 There are tens of millions of prosperous peasants 
 whose hoardings make of India the grand absorbent 
 of the precious metals ; tens of millions of peasants 
 beside whose poverty Fellahs or Sicilians or Con- 
 naught men are rich ; millions of artisans, ranging 
 from the men who build palaces to the men who, 
 nearly naked and almost without tools, do the 
 humblest work of the potter. Every occupation 
 which exists in Europe exists also in India. The 
 industry of the vast continent never ceases, for 
 India, with all her teeming multitudes, with a popu- 
 lation in places packed beyond European precedent, 
 imports nothing either to eat or drink, and, but for 
 the Europeans, would import nothing whatever. 
 She is sufficient to herself for everything save silver. 
 Amidst these varied masses, these two hundred and 
 fifty millions, whose mere descriptions would fill 
 volumes, the tide of life flows as vigorously as in 
 Europe. There is as much labour, as much con- 
 tention, as much ambition, as much crime, as much 
 variety of careers, hopes, fears, and hatreds. It is 
 still possible to a moneyless Indian to become Vizier 
 of a dynasty older than history, or Finance Minister 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA ? 85 
 
 of a new prince whose personal fortune in hard cash 
 is double that of the late Emperor William, or abbot 
 of a monastery richer than Glastonbury ever was, 
 owner of an estate that covers a county, head of a 
 firm whose transactions may vie with those of the 
 Barings or Bleichroders. One man, Jutee Pershad 
 by name, fed and transported the army which con- 
 quered the Punjab. 
 
 I have failed like the rest, I see. Well, see for 
 a moment in imagination a Europe even fuller of 
 people, but full only of brown men, and then see 
 also this. Above this inconceivable mass of human- 
 ity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises 
 what we call here “ the Empire,” a corporation of 
 less than fifteen hundred men, part chosen by 
 examination, part by co-optation, who are set to 
 govern, and who protect themselves in governing 
 by finding pay for a minute white garrison of 65,000 
 men, one-fifth of the Roman legions — though the 
 masses to be controlled are double the subjects of 
 Rome — less than the army of Sweden, or Belgium, 
 or Holland. That corporation and that garrison 
 constitute the “ Indian Empire.” There is nothing 
 else. Banish those fifteen hundred men in black, 
 defeat that slender garrison in red, and the Empire 
 has ended, the structure disappears, and brown 
 India emerges unchanged and unchangeable. To 
 support the official world and its garrison — both, 
 recollect, smaller than those of Belgium — there is, 
 except Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. Not only 
 
86 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 is there no white race in India, not only is there no 
 white colony, but there is no white man who pur- 
 poses to remain. Lord Dufferin, whom in 1888 we 
 scarcely thought of as middle-aged, was possibly the 
 oldest, certainly among the oldest, of white men in 
 India. No ruler stays there to help, or criticize, or 
 moderate his successor. No successful white soldier 
 founds a family. No white man who makes a 
 fortune builds a house or buys an estate for his 
 descendants. The very planter, the very engine- 
 driver, the very foreman of works, departs before he 
 is sixty, leaving no child, or house, or trace of 
 himself behind. No white man takes root in India, 
 and the number even of sojourners is among those 
 masses imperceptible. The whites in our own 
 three capitals could hardly garrison them, and out- 
 side those capitals there are, except in Government 
 employ, only a few planters, traders, and profes- 
 sional men, far fewer than the black men in London. 
 In a city like Benares, a stone city whose buildings 
 rival those of Venice, a city of temples and palaces 
 beautiful enough and original enough to be a world’s 
 wonder, yet in which no white man’s brain or hand 
 has designed or executed anything, a traveller might 
 live a year talking only with the learned or the 
 rich, and, unless he had official business to do, 
 might never see a white face. And away from the 
 “ stations ” planted outside the native cities it is so 
 everywhere. There are no white servants, not even 
 grooms, no white policemen, no white postmen, no 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 87 
 
 white anything. If the brown men struck for a 
 week, the “ Empire” would collapse like a house of 
 cards, and every ruling man would be a starving 
 prisoner in his own house. He could not move or 
 feed himself or get water. I shall not soon forget 
 the observation of one of the keenest and most 
 experienced of all observers who arrived in India 
 during the Mutiny. He had just landed, and had 
 consented to drive with me to a house sixteen miles 
 out of Calcutta. On the road, as usual, he noted 
 everything, but at last turned to me with the ques- 
 tion, “Where, then, are the white men?” “No- 
 where,” was the only possible reply ; and it is true 
 of the entire continent. This absence of white men 
 is said to be due to climate, but even in “ the 
 Hills ” no one settles. Englishmen live on the 
 sultry plains of New South Wales; Americans, who 
 are only Englishmen a little desiccated, are filling 
 up the steamy plains of Florida ; Spaniards have 
 settled as a governing caste throughout the tropical 
 sections of the two Americas ; Dutchmen dwell on 
 in Java; but the English, whatever the temptation, 
 will not stay in India. No matter what the sacri- 
 fice, whether in money or dignity or pleasant occu- 
 pation, an uncontrollable disgust, an overpowering 
 sense of being aliens inexorably divided from the 
 people of the land, comes upon them, and they glide 
 silently away. It follows that even in the minute 
 official world and the minute garrison nothing is 
 permanent. The Viceroy rules for five years, and 
 
88 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 departs. The Councillor advises for five years, and 
 departs. The General commands for five years, 
 and departs. The Official serves thirty years, 
 probably in ten separate counties, and departs. 
 There is not in India one ruling man whom two 
 generations of Indians have known as ruling man. 
 Of all that in Europe comes of continuousness, 
 heredity, accumulated personal experience, or the 
 wisdom of old age, there is in India not one trace, 
 nor can there ever be. Imagine if in Europe no 
 Sovereign or Premier or Commander-in-Chief ever 
 lived six years ! Yet these men, thus shifting, thus 
 changing, do the whole work of legislating, govern- 
 ing, and administering, all that is done in the whole 
 of Europe by all the sovereigns, all the statesmen, 
 all the Parliaments, all the judges, revenue boards, 
 prefects, magistrates, tax gatherers and police officers. 
 They are “ the Empire,” and there is no other. 
 
 Nor is this the whole truth. The Imperial 
 Service — I use the expression recommended by the 
 Civil Service Commissioners, because it covers both 
 the civilians and the administering soldiers — have 
 displayed for a century a rigid respect for promises 
 and perfect pecuniary honour. Consequently, aided 
 by the rooted Indian idea, that, power being of God, 
 any one, however hostile, may honourably serve a 
 de facto ruler, they have always been able to hire 
 Indian agents of all kinds — soldiers, policemen, and 
 minor officials — in any numbers required. That 
 power, however, gives them no foothold. As 1857 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 89 
 
 showed, they have not secured even the loyalty of 
 the Indian soldiers bound to them by oath and 
 while actually in the service, and outside the ranks 
 of their paid servants they have nothing to depend 
 on. There is no nation or tribe or caste in India 
 which is certain in the hour of trial to stand by the 
 white man’s side ; which has, so to speak, elected 
 him as ruler ; which, were the garrison defeated or 
 withdrawn, could be trusted to die rather than the 
 Empire should fall. There is no native army that 
 the Imperial Service — which is, I repeat, the Empire 
 — could summon with confidence ; no tribe whom 
 they could arm en masse ; no native city whose 
 inhabitants would risk a storm to protect them from 
 beine slain. A strange offer which as I believe was 
 once made to Lord Canning by the Sikhs to become 
 on certain conditions the Janissaries of the Empire 
 was rejected ; a constantly repeated proposal to 
 import a Negro army which would be in as much 
 danger from insurrection as we are, has been — very 
 rightly, for moral reasons — put aside ; the device, 
 in which Sir Henry Maine said he believed, of 
 creating a caste whose single caste rule should be 
 obedience to the Queen has never been tried ; and 
 the Empire hangs in air, supported by nothing but 
 the minute white garrison and the unproved assump- 
 tion that the people of India desire it to continue to 
 exist. The remainder of this article will be devoted 
 to the question whether that assumption has any 
 foundation in fact. 
 
90 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 It is certainly notin accordance with a priori pro- 
 babilities. It may be said broadly that no people, 
 Asiatic or European, which recognizes its own 
 separateness is ever content to be governed by 
 foreigners even if they are of its race, creed, and 
 kind of civilization. The Italians could not endure 
 the Austrians, the Poles cannot tolerate the Russians, 
 the very Alsatians cannot bear the rule of their 
 German brothers. The feeling may be supposed 
 to be born of the love of freedom which is the 
 speciality of white men, but I know of no Asiatic 
 people except the Bengalee which has ever sub- 
 mitted to the stranger without a strenuous resist- 
 ance. The Chinese fought the Tartars, the Persians 
 struggled to the death with the Arabs, the Indians 
 fought, and in many cases defeated, the Mongol 
 invaders. Yet in these cases conquerors and con- 
 quered were all alike Asiatics, and Asiatics have a 
 comity of their own, and comprehend one another. 
 Englishmen and Indians are divided by a far deeper 
 chasm, by all that vast body of inherited proclivities, 
 ideas of life, and social habits which we are accus- 
 tomed to sum up in the one word “ colour.” 
 
 For more than a century past two powerful influ- 
 ences have been at work with Englishmen com- 
 pelling them to make little of the distinctions 
 included in this word. After seventeen centuries 
 of comparative neglect, the humanitarian side of 
 Christianity has come with a sort of rush to the 
 front, and divines have felt impelled to preach, not 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 9i 
 
 that Christianity is intended for all, but that in 
 Christianity all are equal, that men are brothers, 
 that it is almost sinful to speak of any distinctions 
 except those of faith and morals. “ There is no 
 colour,” is the universal doctrine, “ before the Lord,” 
 and from this it is deduced that there is no colour 
 at all — that the differences included in the word are 
 mere charges brought by the prejudiced and the 
 proud to cover profitable injustice. Democracy has 
 taken the same turn. It has based itself, not upon 
 common citizenship, or contract, or the right of free 
 men to govern themselves, but upon some ante- 
 cedent claim inherent in humanity, and its teachers 
 are therefore bound to say that colour is meaning- 
 less, that all would be alike but for oppression, and 
 that all have equally the capacities necessary for 
 self-government. The effect of the twofold pressure 
 exercised for many years, and now pervading all 
 teaching and all literature, has been to make English- 
 men forget some of the plainest facts of history. 
 What colour may be I do not pretend to know, and 
 neither physicists nor theologians will tell us ; 1 but 
 
 1 The physicists tell us little worth knowing about colour. 
 They talk about pigments, but do not say whence they come, or 
 why the Australasian of Tasmania, living in a climate like that of 
 England, was black, while the Spaniard living on the Equator has 
 for three centuries remained white. What, too, is the law of 
 the transmission of colour ? People fancy that the child of one 
 white and one dark parent is less white than the one and less 
 dark than the other, but it is not always so. Most of the half- 
 caste descendants of Portuguese in India are black, not brown, 
 and so, I am told, are the descendants of Spaniards by women of 
 
92 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 it is past question that it is an indication of differ- 
 ences physical, intellectual, and moral of the most 
 radical and imperishable kind. Throughout the 
 history of mankind, black men, brown men, and 
 white men have been divided from each other by 
 lines which have never been passed, and by dif- 
 ferences apparently wholly independent of their own 
 volition. None of the black races, for instance, 
 whether Negro or Australasian, have shown within 
 the historic time the capacity to develop civilization. 
 They have never passed the boundaries of their 
 own habitats as conquerors, and never exercised the 
 smallest influences over peoples not black. They 
 have never founded a stone city, have never built 
 a ship, have never produced a literature, have never 
 suggested a creed. If they all perished to-morrow 
 the world would be the richer by the whole resources 
 of Africa — probably the richest division of the globe 
 — which would then for the first time be utilized. 
 They have been the most seh-governed of man- 
 kind ; they hold some of the world’s most fertile 
 lands ; they sit on some of its most magnificent 
 rivers — everything the Egyptians on the Nile had, 
 the Negro on the Quorra or the Congo also had — • 
 and they have never advanced out of the foulest 
 savagery. There is no evidence whatever that if 
 
 the Philippine Islands. How does that happen? The subject 
 deserves investigation, for, if a white race intermixing with a 
 brown race can produce a black one, many theories of the descent 
 of man may require modification. 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 93 
 
 Africa were left to itself for ten thousand years it 
 would progress in the smallest degree ; and this 
 evidence against it, that, when liberated from the 
 pressure of the white man’s brain, the Negro, as in 
 Hayti and, I fear, Liberia, rapidly recedes. Black- 
 ness of skin may not be — indeed, cannot be — the 
 cause of this stagnation or imbecility — for it is 
 imbecility ; but blackness of skin is the most visible 
 evidence of the aggregate of incapacities manifested 
 throughout the history of the black race. The 
 white man, therefore, though he has no right to say 
 that the black man cannot be saved, God caring as 
 much for the worm as for the fly, has a right to say 
 that the black man will never civilize himself. So 
 also he has a right to say certain things, though 
 very different things, about the brown man. The 
 brown man of every shade 1 who now monopolizes 
 
 1 The Jews are the nearest white of any Asiatics, but no ex- 
 perienced eye can look closely at them without perceiving that, 
 like all other Arabs, they have suffered at some period a cross 
 of dark blood. They have, however, had an experience which 
 differentiates them mentally and physically from all other Asiatics. 
 They have given up polygamy and slavery for centuries, and in 
 their persecution of seventeen hundred years they have been 
 condemned to live in quarters so unhealthy or in climates so 
 unsuited to them — imagine a Jew in Russia ! — that the weak and 
 incompetent have been persistently killed out. The life of the 
 Jew is now as long as that of the European, and, though he rarely 
 takes to what we call “ exercise,” he is probably of all the world 
 the man least liable to any of the forms of miasmatic disease. He 
 is, too, as a rule, remarkably free from the habit of over-drinking, 
 which, though it does not seem to have affected either Scandi- 
 navians, or Romans, or Teutons, acts like a poison upon Asiatics. 
 
94 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Asia — that is, a third of the total area of habitable 
 land upon the planet — is probably a half-caste, the 
 result of a long series of early crossings between the 
 dark and unimprovable aborigines, of whom a few 
 relics still survive, and the white man. We know 
 this to have been the case in India, and further 
 research will, I believe, prove it to have been the 
 case throughout Asia, even with the Mongolian 
 tribes, the crossed races everywhere deriving from 
 their trace of white blood the special faculty of the 
 white man — that of accumulating experience to 
 practical purpose . 1 The brown races obtain this 
 faculty in part only, but in such a degree that they 
 for a time advance, and have done some very great 
 things. The brown man has founded and held 
 together the largest and most permanent of human 
 societies. He has built splendid and original cities 
 — Benares, for example, Damascus, and old Granada 
 — without the white man’s help. He has perfected 
 a system of agriculture which, though Europe may 
 think it barbarous, maintains in plenty, acre for acre, 
 more people than any European system, and which 
 survives in its integrity close intercourse with the 
 agriculture of Europe. He invented letters, arith- 
 metic, and chess. He has carried many arts — ■ 
 architecture, for example, pottery in all its branches, 
 weaving, and working in metals — to a high degree 
 
 1 This was written before I had seen the work of the French 
 ethnologist, the Comte de Gobineau, who has explained and 
 justified the view in detail. 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA? 
 
 95 
 
 of perfection. He has solved the problem of recon- 
 ciling the mass of mankind to their hard destiny, so 
 that in Asia it is rarely the millions who rebel, and 
 that famine, flood, and hurricane produce no political 
 discontent. He has produced great conquerors — 
 though exclusively by land — great lawgivers, and 
 great poets. Above all, he has meditated so stren- 
 uously and so well on the eternal problem of the 
 whence and whither that every creed as yet accepted 
 by man, except possibly fetishism, is Asiatic, and 
 has been preached first of all by a brown man. On 
 the other hand, with these great gifts the brown 
 man has also great incapacities. The power of 
 accumulating thought, which he derives from his 
 trace of white blood, is easily and early exhausted, 
 and when it is exhausted his progress is finally 
 arrested ; he stereotypes his society, and his brain 
 seems paralysed by self-conceit. For three thousand 
 years he has made no new conquest over Nature, 
 carried science no higher, developed no new and 
 fructifying social idea, invented no new scheme of 
 life. The Arab, the Indian, the Chinese, is pre- 
 cisely what he was when the white man first became 
 conscious of his existence. He has never risen 
 above polygamy as an ideal, never, even in countries 
 partly monogamous, forbidding, or trying to forbid, 
 the harem as a luxury to the rich and powerful. In 
 other words, he has never conceived of woman except 
 as the pleasantest and most necessary of slaves. 
 He has never either developed the idea of pity. He 
 
y6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 is not, I think, cruel as his cousin the red man of 
 America is — that is, he takes no pleasure in inflict- 
 ing pain, but he is utterly callous to its infliction. 
 It does not move him that another suffers extremi- 
 ties of torture, and, if a point is to be gained, he will 
 make him suffer them without sympathy or remorse. 
 Whether, as in China, he cuts a prisoner into 
 snippets, or, as in Persia, he bricks up a footpad in 
 a wall, leaving the head uncovered and living for 
 days, or, as in India, burns delicate ladies alive on 
 their husbands’ pyres, he is equally unaffected. Of 
 the death of the suttee the Indian thought, perhaps, 
 something, for he has a reverence, in theory, for life, 
 but of her agony he never thought at all. He would 
 not burn a city to warm his hands, but he would not 
 in the least hate the man who did. The substantial 
 difference, said a great pundit once to me, “ between 
 the English and us is not intellectual at all. We 
 are the brighter, if anything ; but you have pity 
 [ doya ], and we have not ! ” Above all, he has never 
 developed the idea which lies at the basis of freedom 
 — the idea of right inherent in the quality of human 
 being. He has everywhere framed his social system 
 on the theory that power cannot be limited or 
 restrained except by religion. Not only has he never 
 thought of representative government, which even 
 with the white man was a late discovery, and, so to 
 speak, a scientific one, but he has never thought of 
 government at all except as an imitation of govern- 
 ment by Heaven or by the Destinies. He has from 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 97 
 
 the days of Saul, and earlier, preferred that his ruler 
 should be absolute, and there is not, and never has 
 been, a brown community in which the ruler had not 
 the right to inflict death on a private person at his 
 discretion. This has not been a result of accident 
 or of race oppression. Many of the brown races 
 have been self-governed for ages, and all have 
 enjoyed periods in which they could have set up any 
 government they would. The Emperor of Delhi 
 had only Indian agents ; the Shah of Persia is 
 surrounded only by Persians ; the Emperor of China 
 does not call in Tartar troops to defend his throne. 
 Either of them, if they gave offence to certain pre- 
 judices, would be overthrown, but they are not over- 
 thrown for despotism, and the reason is that their 
 subjects like it, that it strikes and soothes their 
 imaginations, that they think autocracy, wielded by 
 an individual who can fit his decision to each indi- 
 vidual case, the perfection of beneficial energy and 
 a reflex of the government of the Most High. Un- 
 less the law is Divine they dislike law as an instru- 
 ment of government, and prefer a flexible and 
 movable human will, which can be turned by 
 prayers, threats, or conciliations in money. 
 
 The chasm between the brown man and the white 
 is unfathomable, has existed in all ages, and exists 
 still everywhere. No white man marries a brown 
 wife, no brown man marries a white wife, without 
 an inner sense of having been false to some unin- 
 telligible but irresistible command. There is no 
 
 H 
 
9 8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 corner of Asia where the life of a white man, if 
 unprotected by force, either actual or potential, is 
 safe for an hour; nor is there an Asiatic State 
 which, if it were prudent, would not expel him at 
 once and for ever. There is therefore no a priori 
 reason for thinking that the myriads of brown men 
 in India, most of them very intelligent and brave, 
 would of themselves prefer to be governed by white 
 men. If they do it is an anomaly, a break in a 
 universal experience, only to be accounted for by 
 the fact that the white man in that particular corner 
 of the world gives something so pleasant to the 
 brown man that it overcomes his instinctive anti- 
 pathy and love of his own ways. Now, does the 
 white man give anything to India which can be 
 credited with producing this extraordinary effect ? 
 The Englishman says he does, and he has at first 
 sight some imposing evidence to produce. The 
 Imperial Service — which, I repeat once more, is the 
 Empire — enforces, in the first place, the Pax Bri- 
 tannica, the universal peace, beneath which India 
 sleeps, and the benefit of which, from the European 
 point of view, it is impossible to exaggerate. Not 
 only does it prevent invasion, but private war and 
 armed violence of every kind. On this point there 
 is in the mind of the Imperial Service no doubt, no 
 halfness, no hesitation. The prince shall not invade 
 his neighbour, under penalty of instant dethrone- 
 ment. The baron shall not attack his brother 
 baron, under penalty of lifelong imprisonment. The 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 99 
 
 Thug, the dacoit, the burglar, the highwayman, if 
 they take life, shall die, or, if they just stop short of 
 murder, shall labour for long periods in chains. 
 This is not merely a theory ; it is carried out in 
 daily life. The humblest man in India has, if his 
 relative is killed, the full aid of the Imperial Service, 
 which would wage ten wars rather than suffer a 
 murderer to escape. The proudest noble knows 
 that, if his retainers kill by his order, he is as liable 
 to trial as the meanest felon. The strongest prince, 
 if he moves a regiment outside his own boundary, 
 is certain that within six weeks he will be either a 
 prisoner or a fugitive. A war waged for two gene- 
 rations with the murderous organizations, of which 
 there were once nearly thirty — the Thugs being 
 only the best known — has nearly extirpated them, 
 and dacoity, as a system, has receded into the past. 
 Murders occur, and highway robberies, and of 
 course all varieties of crime commissible by indi- 
 viduals, but, speaking broadly, life and property are 
 as safe among that vast concourse of men as in 
 Europe — a change as great as if in the Middle Ages 
 the Truce of God had suddenly been made uni- 
 versal, permanent and effective. The gain in the 
 reduction of human misery from this one fact is 
 almost inconceivable. Moreover, civil justice, which 
 can hardly be said to have existed under the Mogul 
 domination, is secured in a certain way to all men. 
 It is very expensive, rather uncertain, and madden- 
 ingly slow, owing to a system of appeals intended 
 
IOO 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 to make its administration more perfect ; but still it 
 is offered to the meanest equally with the highest, 
 and through courts in which wilful injustice or bribe- 
 taking may fairly be said to be unknown. Lastly, 
 fiscal injustice, the original source of almost all 
 oppression in Asia, has been swept away. The 
 taxes may be too heavy — their weight varies in 
 reality in every province — or they may be badly 
 chosen, but the Treasury claims and takes nothing 
 but its legal due ; no tax is farmed out, and, if a 
 subordinate collector takes too much, the white 
 collector knows no higher pleasure than to make of 
 him a speedy and severe example. These are all, 
 as Europe thinks, grand gifts, and the Imperial 
 Service has given them — that is, has performed a 
 task which, the area being considered, is equal to 
 any ever performed by Rome — without the smallest 
 infringement of individual liberty. There are abso- 
 lutely no regulations of preventive police in India 
 except one, a statute authorizing the detention of 
 highly dangerous persons as State prisoners, a 
 statute of which ninety per cent., even of the upper 
 classes, have no knowledge. Every Indian is at 
 liberty, within the law, to say or do what he pleases, 
 to form any associations he likes, to rise to any 
 position not connected with the Government, to 
 accumulate any fortune, and to live any life, holy or 
 vicious, that to him seems best. Religious liberty 
 is even more perfect than in England or Switzer- 
 land, for the great European restriction, that a 
 
WILL ENGLAND EE TAIN INDIA? 
 
 IOI 
 
 religion must not sap morals, does not exist, and 
 the foulest sects are left to the punishment of 
 opinion. So jealous is the Service of any interfer- 
 ence with religion that, when Lord Dalhousie passed 
 an Act intended to repress obscenity, a special 
 clause in it exempted all temples and religious 
 emblems from its operation. 
 
 Personal liberty, religious liberty, equal justice, 
 perfect security — these things the Empire gives ; 
 but, then, are these so valued as to overcome the 
 inherent and incurable dull distaste felt by the brown 
 men to the white men who give them ? I doubt it 
 greatly. The immense mass of the peasantry, who 
 benefit most directly by the British ways of ruling, 
 are, it must be remembered, an inert mass. They 
 are the stakes in the game, not the players. It is 
 for the right of taxing them that all Indian revolu- 
 tions, wars, invasions, movements of all kinds, have 
 occurred. Lost in the peaceful monotony of their 
 village life, which, unless all evidence from history 
 is worthless, they must heartily love, they hardly 
 notice dynastic changes, and will accept any ruler if 
 only he leaves their customs alone, and takes no 
 more of their produce than they have been accus- 
 tomed from time immemorial to pay as tribute to 
 the strong. Even, therefore, if they approved the 
 British Government, their approval would be of little 
 political value ; but there is no evidence that they 
 do approve it. If they are transferred to a native 
 ruler, as happened in Mysore and many a smaller 
 
102 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 district, they make no remonstrance. The Sepoys, 
 who in 1857 sprang so eagerly at our throats, were 
 all peasants, and so were most of the men who made 
 up Tantia Topee’s recruits. They are known to 
 dislike exceedingly the inexorableness of our sys- 
 tem, its want of elasticity, its readiness to allow of 
 the one oppression — eviction — which they consider 
 intolerable, and hold to be more than an equivalent 
 to their exemption from sudden demands for money. 
 VVe may, however, leave them for the moment out 
 of the question. It is the active classes who have 
 to be considered, and to them our rule is not, and 
 cannot be, a rule without prodigious drawbacks. 
 One of these, of which they are fully conscious, is 
 the gradual decay of much of which they were 
 proud, the slow death, which even the Europeans 
 perceive, of Indian art, Indian culture, Indian mili- 
 tary spirit. Architecture, engineering, literary skill, 
 are all perishing out, so perishing that Anglo- 
 Indians doubt whether Indians have the capacity 
 to be architects, though they built Benares ; or 
 engineers, though they dug the artificial lakes of 
 Tanjore ; or poets, though the people sit for hours 
 or days listening to the rhapsodists as they recite 
 poems, which move them as Tennyson certainly 
 does not move our common people. Another is, 
 that the price of what they think imperfect justice 
 is that they shall never right themselves, never 
 enjoy the luxury of vengeance, never even protect 
 their personal dignity and honour, about which they 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 103 
 
 are as sensitive as Prussian officers. They may 
 not even kill their wives for going astray. And the 
 last and greatest one of all is the total loss of the 
 interestingness of life. 
 
 It would be hard to explain to the average 
 Englishman how interesting Indian life must have 
 been before our advent ; how completely open was 
 every career to the bold, the enterprising, or the 
 ambitious. The whole continent was open as a 
 prize to the strong. Nothing was settled in fact or 
 in opinion except that the descendants of Timour 
 the Lame were entitled to any kind of ascendency 
 they could get and keep. No one not of the great 
 Tartar’s blood pretended to the universal throne, 
 but with that exception every prize was open to any 
 man who had in himself the needful force. Scores 
 of sub- thrones were, so to speak, in the market. A 
 brigand, for Sivajee was no better, became a mighty 
 sovereign. A herdsman built a monarchy in Baroda 
 A body-servant founded the dynasty of Scindiah. 
 A corporal cut his way to the independent crown of 
 Mysore. The first Nizam was only an officer of 
 the Emperor. Runjeet Singh’s father was what 
 Europeans would call a prefect. There were liter- 
 ally hundreds who founded principalities, thousands 
 of their potential rivals, thousands more who suc- 
 ceeded a little less grandly, conquered estates, or 
 became high officers under the new princes. Each 
 of these men had his own character and his own 
 renown among his countrymen, and each enjoyed a 
 
104 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 position such as is now unattainable in Europe, in 
 which he was released from laws, could indulge his 
 own fancies, bad or good, and was fed every day 
 and all day with the special flattery of Asia — that 
 willing submissiveness to mere volition which is so 
 like adoration, and which is to its recipients the 
 most intoxicating of delights. Each, too, had his 
 court of followers, and every courtier shared in the 
 power, the luxury, and the adulation accruing to his 
 lord. The power was that of life and death ; the 
 luxury included possession of every woman he 
 desired ; the adulation was, as I have said, almost 
 religious worship. Life was full of dramatic 
 changes. The aspirant who pleased a great man 
 rose to fortune at a bound. The adventurer whose 
 band performed an act of daring was on his road to 
 be a satrap. Any one who could do anything for 
 “ the State” — that is, for any ruler — build a temple, 
 or furnish an army with supplies, or dig a tank, or 
 lend gold to the Court, became at once a great man, 
 honoured of all classes, practically exempt from law, 
 and able to influence the great current of affairs. 
 Even the timid had their chance, and, as Finance 
 Ministers, farmers of taxes, controllers of religious 
 establishments, found for themselves great places in 
 the land. For all this which we have extinguished 
 we offer nothing in return, nor can we offer any- 
 thing. We can give place, and, for reasons stated 
 elsewhere, it will be greedily accepted, but place is 
 not power under our system, nor can we give what 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA? 105 
 
 an Asiatic considers power — the right to make 
 volition executive ; the right to crush an enemy 
 and reward a friend ; the right, above all, to be free 
 from that burden of external laws, moral duties, and 
 responsibilities to others with which Europeans have 
 loaded life. We cannot even let a Viceroy be the 
 ultimate appellate court, and right any legal wrong 
 by supreme fiat — a failure which seems to Indians, 
 who think the Sovereign should represent God, to 
 impair even our moral claim to rule. This interest- 
 ingness of life was no doubt purchased at the price 
 of much danger and suffering. The Sovereign, the 
 favourite, or the noble could cast down as easily as 
 they raised up, and intrigue against the successful 
 never ended. The land was full of violence. 
 Private war was universal. The great protected 
 themselves against assassination as vigilantly as the 
 Russian Emperor does. The danger from invasion, 
 insurrection, and, above all, mutiny never ended. I 
 question, however, if these circumstances were even 
 considered drawbacks. They were not so con- 
 sidered by the upper classes of Europe in the 
 Middle Ages, and those upper classes were not 
 tranquillized, like their rivals in India, by a sincere 
 belief in fate. I do not find that Texans hate the 
 wild life of Texas, or that Spanish-speaking Ameri- 
 cans think the personal security which the domin- 
 ance of the English-speaking Americans would 
 assure to them is any compensation for loss of 
 independence. I firmly believe that to the immense 
 
io6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 majority of the active classes of India the old time 
 was a happy time ; that they dislike our rule as 
 much for the leaden order it produces as for its 
 foreign character ; and that they would welcome a 
 return of the old disorders if they brought back 
 with them the old vividness and, so to speak, 
 romance of life. 
 
 All this no doubt is d priori evidence. Now let 
 us look at something a little more positive. Of all 
 the active classes of India, the one which the 
 English treated best were the Sepoys, the Hindo- 
 stanee and Beharee peasants who for a hundred 
 years had followed the British standard in a career 
 of victory broken only once. Alone among the 
 soldiers of the world these men not only entered 
 the service of their own free-will, but were author- 
 ized to quit it at their own discretion. They could 
 not be sent abroad without their own consent — a 
 consent not infrequently refused. Their discipline 
 was so mild that it rather resembled that of police- 
 men than that of soldiers, and was in particular 
 wholly devoid of that element of worry which is the 
 true grievance of English soldiers when not in the 
 field. They were paid wages just double those 
 obtainable in civil life , 1 had many prizes in the shape 
 of promotion, and received their pensions as regu- 
 larly as dividends on State bonds. Their farms, 
 even in Native States, were specially protected, and 
 
 1 This is not true now. Wages have risen much more than 
 Sepoys’ pay. 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA? 107 
 
 the magistrates made it their duty to see that a 
 complainant who had been a Sepoy received a 
 speedy and, if possible, a favourable award. Even 
 the customary hauteur of the European disappeared 
 in favour of the Sepoys. Their officers liked and 
 petted them, and so resented any aspersion on them 
 as to impair, sometimes seriously, the necessary 
 freedom of inspecting generals. The Sepoys never 
 pretended to have grievances, for the greased- 
 cartridge story was an invention, dropped when 
 the Mutiny exploded, and the intercepted letters 
 spoke only of the fewness of the whites. Yet 
 these men not only mutinied, but slaughtered 
 our officers, whom individually they liked, and 
 even in many instances massacred our women and 
 children, and fought us for two years with a fury of 
 hate which made compromise impossible. Why ? 
 Because they were Asiatics, filled with the dull, 
 unconquerable, unmitigable distaste of Asiatics for 
 white men, and thought they saw a chance of 
 getting rid of them. The white grains, they said, 
 were few, and the black grains many, and they 
 shook the sieve that the white grains might dis- 
 appear. The great Mutiny was not a mutiny, but a 
 revolt, in which the armed class, as was natural, took 
 the leading share. The proclamation of the effete 
 dynasty at Delhi — a proclamation accepted by 
 Hindoos as well as Mussulmans — showed its true 
 object, which was to restore the India which had 
 been before the arrival of Europeans. In every 
 
io8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 emancipated province the old authority was replaced, 
 and it is the specialty of the Mutiny among revolts 
 that no new Sovereign, or Commander-in-Chief, or 
 general leader was so much as named. The history 
 of the Mutiny, carefully studied, is to my mind irre- 
 sistible evidence of Indian dislike for white rule ; 
 yet it is hardly stronger than many other incidents. 
 During the contest over the Ilbert Bill, Lord Ripon, 
 the reigning Viceroy, was understood to be to a de- 
 cided extent upon the native side. The belief was 
 exaggerated by the bitterness of Anglo-Indian feel- 
 ing, Lord Ripon caring little about the Bill, though 
 he thought it just in principle ; but it was accepted 
 throughout the brown worlds of India as indubitably 
 true, and when Lord Ripon resigned, after he had 
 ceased to be able to promote or punish any man, all 
 Northern and Western India, including the pick of 
 the fighting races, prostrated itself at his feet. His 
 journey from Simla to Bombay was a triumphal 
 march, such as India had never witnessed — a long 
 procession, in which seventy millions of people 
 sang hosanna to their friend. Lord Ripon had 
 done nothing, had taken off no tax, had removed 
 no burden, had not altered the mode of government 
 one hair’s breadth. He was only supposed to be 
 for the Indians and against the Europeans, and that 
 sufficed to bring every Indian in a fervour of friend- 
 ship to his side. Then take the native Press. 
 There are now hundreds of native newspapers in 
 India, most of them conducted by educated men, 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETALN INDIA ? 
 
 log 
 
 and all of them marked by a certain rhetorical 
 ability. Their circulation is seldom large, but their 
 conductors are content with little money ; they seek 
 and find audiences far wider than their lists of sub- 
 scribers ; and what is their almost invariable tone ? 
 Deadly dislike for the European regime, shown now 
 in rhetorical attacks, now in exaggerations of griev- 
 ances, again in misrepresentation of facts, most 
 frequently of all in savage criticisms on the agents 
 of authority — precisely the methods which at the 
 present moment find favour in Ireland. Are we to 
 imagine that the Indian Press alone in the world 
 represents precisely the ideas which its constituency 
 disapproves, or that Asiatic editors, unlike all other 
 Asiatics, quarrel with the powerful for the pleasure 
 of expressing a non-existent dislike ? And, finally, 
 regard the cleavage existing in India between Indian 
 and European ; is that reassuring? We have been 
 in India as rulers for a hundred and thirty years, 
 and by the testimony of all competent observers the 
 chasm between the colours is deeper than ever. The 
 objection to intermarriage is stronger than of old, 
 the intercourse of the races is more reserved and 
 more strictly confined to business, and both sides 
 are more conscious of the depth of an inner dislike. 
 Read the letters of Europeans to friends at home, 
 and you will be struck with their absolute ignorance 
 of all native life and interests, their profound, almost 
 unconscious, indifference to the masses among whom 
 their lives are passed. Read, on the other hand 
 
no 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 the letters of natives who profess to support the 
 Government, and they always end with a complaint 
 of the disagreeableness of the agents of authority, 
 their distance, their brusquerie, their inaccessibility 
 to Indian feeling. The cleavage has deepened, and 
 it will, as consciousness awakes more fully, deepen 
 farther yet. Every effort is made, on the European 
 side at least, to fill up the chasm, but without avail, 
 the truth, after all the talk, remaining true that the 
 Europeanized Indian ceases, for all good purposes, 
 to be an Indian at all, and that the Indianized 
 European is a lost man. The space between the 
 races is not made by any social habit, but by an 
 inherent antipathy, which is not hatred, but can at 
 any moment blaze up into it. 
 
 If I have succeeded at all in my intention, my 
 readers will perceive that the British Empire in 
 India depends upon a non-existent loyalty, and will 
 ask me how, as I conceive, the catastrophe which 
 I foresee to be inevitable will arrive? That is a 
 question to which, as it demands in answer a 
 prophecy, no man possessed of just distrust in him- 
 self will give a direct reply ; but it is possible, 
 nevertheless, to make some kind of answer. If we 
 are to take the history of Asia for our guide, the 
 British dominion in India should be overthrown by 
 external violence exerted by some Asiatic people ; 
 just as the Alexandrine Empire was overthrown by 
 the “ Parthian ” and the Roman by the Arab and 
 the Turk. But it is probable that precedent will, 
 
WILL ENGLAND DETAIN INDIA? 
 
 in 
 
 in this instance, be departed from. There is no 
 Asiatic Power remaining, except China, which can 
 attack India with any chance of success ; and China 
 has Russia to drive out of Northern Asia. The 
 statesmen of Pekin will no doubt watch diligently 
 for the first sign of weakness in Russia, and, prob- 
 ably during the throes of some revolution in her 
 system of government and society, will push masses 
 of riflemen, followed as usual by millions of culti- 
 vators, almost to the Caspian ; but they are unlikely 
 to threaten India. The possession of provinces not 
 Chinese and already full of cultivators is contrary to 
 their policy, and would involve the formation of a 
 great standing army. Persia, on the other hand, 
 the ancient foe of India, may be pronounced for the 
 present dead. Asiatic self-government has in 
 Persia nearly completed its perfect work, and the 
 very people, the cultivating and working population, 
 has almost ceased to exist. It is probable that 
 there are fewer people left in Persia, which should 
 have the population of France, than in Belgium, and 
 no force which they could produce would make any 
 impression upon India. The Arabs cannot cross 
 the sea in the presence of the British fleet, and the 
 only remaining Asiatic force, a Tartar tribe strong 
 enough for invasion, is not clearly proved to exist. 
 Mr. T. Prinsep, who had studied the subject, left 
 behind him a kind of prophecy that a Tartar tribe, 
 or coalition of tribes, descending through the 
 eastern Himalaya, might set up a throne on the 
 
I I 2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ruins of British power, but his vision remains as yet 
 unsupported by any evidence whatever. There may 
 be a tribe, or league of tribes, with 100,000 lives to 
 waste, and no doubt such a tribe might, if it would 
 die in heaps in an engagement or two, conquer 
 India, and, being accepted by the Indians, found a 
 splendid empire ; but I question its existence, and 
 hold this danger, though conceivable, to be outside 
 the range of calculation. No; the catastrophe in 
 India will arrive either in some totally unforeseen 
 manner, or through a general insurrection aided by 
 a voluntary transfer of power from European to 
 Asiatic hands. The insurrection will occur within 
 a month of our sustaining any defeat whatever 
 severe enough to be recognized as a defeat in the 
 Indian bazaars. Whether the enemy is an internal 
 one, as, for example, a Mussulman leader in the 
 Deccan ; or an external one, such as a Russian army 
 or even an Afghan army, a defeat within our own 
 territory or on our border would break the spell of 
 our invincibility, and would be followed by a spon- 
 taneous and universal insurrection led by the Sepoys 
 and armed police, directed, not to the support of a 
 new European conquest, but to the throwing off of 
 English dominion and the restoration of the older 
 and Asiatic method of Indian life. The white 
 garrison defeated, there is nothing with which to 
 continue the contest even for a day. A hundred 
 principalities would be created in a moment, with 
 Sovereigns in each and armies ; life would recom- 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETALN LNDLA ? 
 
 ”3 
 
 mence under its old conditions, and we should 
 have the work of the century to do over again. If 
 the British were favourably situated at home, if no 
 European Power raised troubles, and if popular 
 feeling was favourable to the effort, the Peninsula 
 might be re-conquered, and though the task of 
 governing it would be much more difficult both on 
 account of the treasure wasted and of the new hopes 
 begotten in every Indian breast, still an uneasy 
 tranquillity might continue for a generation, to be 
 broken again after thirty or forty years by a third 
 uprising. We shall not put down more than one or 
 two, and each time the work will be more difficult, 
 and will seem to opinion at home more profitless 
 and disagreeable. The British people have no 
 longer either the energy or the unscrupulousness to 
 maintain government by slaughter, and the sup- 
 pression of a general revolt in India would involve 
 slaughter on the Asiatic scale, and would of neces- 
 sity be followed by a different scheme of govern- 
 ment — one much harder, more suspicious, and less 
 merciful. 
 
 The disposition to re-conquer would, moreover 
 be greatly diminished by the previous disappearance 
 of any great object for such an effort. All who have 
 watched the progress of affairs for the last quarter of 
 a century, are aware that the previously formless 
 discontent of India is gradually finding voice in a 
 single cry — that office in India should be reserved 
 to Indians ; and that this cry is, though slowly, 
 
 I 
 
ii4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 still decidedly, being obeyed. The cry itself is a 
 very natural one. The Indians are not aware of 
 their own inferiority in morale , or disregard it, and 
 they are aware of their own equality in intelligence. 
 They can, they say, and say truly, pass any exam- 
 ination whatever that the Government or the 
 universities like to frame — pass it so well that, if 
 competitive examination is made the passport to 
 office, they will within fifty years hold ninety per 
 cent, at least of all the highest posts. They can, 
 they say, and say truly, as far as intelligence goes, 
 govern provinces — they do it in Native States — 
 can make excellent civil judges, can enforce a 
 revenue system, can occupy every office in the 
 police or any other administrative department. 
 Having the capability, they contend, with a vehem- 
 ence growing ever louder, that it is monstrous 
 to refuse them permission to display it, and the 
 Europeans find it every year more and more difficult 
 to refuse. They have themselves asserted that all 
 men are equal, thus barring themselves from plead- 
 ing any right as conquerors. They have them- 
 selves, by accepting, even in home affairs, the 
 principle of competitive examination, made of intelli- 
 gence the sole test of fitness for office. They 
 have themselves in all the colonies and in Ireland 
 laid it down as a dogma that those born on any 
 particular soil have a preferential claim to office paid 
 for by the produce of that soil, and have given up 
 the effort to provide a special and impartial ruiing 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 ”5 
 
 caste. They have left themselves no arguments to 
 adduce, and it is questionable whether in a few 
 years they will have the inclination to produce any. 
 For, whether for good or evil, a great change is 
 passing over Englishmen. They have become 
 uncertain of themselves, afraid of their old opinions, 
 doubtful of the true teaching of their own con- 
 sciences. They doubt if they have any longer any 
 moral right to rule any one, themselves almost in- 
 cluded. An old mental disease, the love of appro- 
 bation, has suddenly risen among them to the height 
 of a passion. Instead of being content to rule well, 
 to do justice and to love mercy, they are trying 
 themselves by a new standard, and desire to rule so 
 that the governed may applaud, or, as they phrase 
 it with a certain unconscious unctuousness, may 
 “love ’’them. That is the real root of the great 
 change which has passed over the management of 
 children, of the whole difficulty in Ireland, of the 
 reluctance to conquer, and of the whole of the new 
 philanthropic social legislation. Now, it is certain 
 that if the active classes of India are to be induced 
 to applaud or love the British dominion, they must 
 be regularly and speedily invested with all the 
 offices for which they show adequate intelligence — 
 that is, in practice, with all offices whatever. They 
 are qualified for them all in everything but their 
 morale , which is and will remain Asiatic. This is 
 their own desire, and it is not, from their point of 
 view, an unnatural one. It is easy for Englishmen 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 1 16 
 
 to ridicule the passion for place, but it governs 
 Frenchmen, Germans, and Irishmen quite as much 
 as Indians, and for the same reason. Everywhere 
 in the world except in England place gives dignity 
 as well as money, brings its owner within the great 
 corporation which is not harassed by policemen, or 
 overlooked by rulers, or treated with contumely by 
 the masses of mankind. Thirst of money alone is 
 not the motive, for Frenchmen and Germans will 
 accept starvation wages from the State; it is the 
 hunger for distinction. This hunger is intensified 
 in the Indian by his desire to rise to an equality 
 with the white man, and in his eagerness to gratify 
 it he will push aside every obstacle, and never rest 
 until every office is at his disposal. With their 
 eagerness, their early developed brains, and above 
 all their numbers, the Indians will, in the present 
 state of English opinion, prove irresistible, and will, 
 I venture to predict, constitute within fifty years the 
 whole Imperial Service — which, I for the last time 
 repeat, is the Indian Empire. The process has 
 begun already. It is just possible that English 
 feeling may change, for no other democracy enter- 
 tains it, Americans and Frenchmen, for instance, 
 entirely believing in their right to govern ; but it is 
 more probable that it will continue, and, if it does, 
 logic will prove irresistible. If the Englishman by 
 virtue of the superior morale of his race has not a 
 moral right to govern and administer India irre- 
 spective of the opinion of her peoples, then he has 
 
WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA ? 
 
 ”7 
 
 no right to remain there when she bids him go, no 
 right of any kind to office if an Indian can beat him 
 at the tests set up. The compromises suggested by 
 Service Commissions and the like are ridiculous as 
 well as unfair. If, as the last one suggested, Indians 
 ought to have one-sixth of all civil offices, they 
 ought to have all if they can win them, and all 
 military appointments too. Race being nothing, 
 morale nothing, and intelligence all in all, there is 
 no escape from the conclusion, and no hope that, in 
 their new conception of their duty, Englishmen will 
 resist it. In other words, Asia will shortly regain 
 her own, and the work of governing India will be 
 transferred from European and Christian to Asiatic 
 and Mussulman or pagan hands. The whole work 
 of the conquest will be undone, and the coldly im- 
 partial caste who now rule so disagreeably and so 
 thoroughly well will be superseded by men who 
 have every temptation to be, and will be, Indian 
 Pashas. They will seek, as every race naturally 
 does, to enjoy and to exercise power according to 
 their own ideas, and not according to ours, and, 
 being their own superiors, their own judges, and 
 their own public opinion, they will succeed. How 
 their new position will transmute itself into formal 
 independence I am careless to inquire, but in all 
 probability the abler and nobler among them will 
 insist that to refuse military careers to the people of 
 a whole continent is most unjust — which, if all men 
 are equal and morale does not signify, is true — and 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 118 
 
 will replace the British soldiers by native armies, or, 
 as they already suggest, by millions of volunteers. 
 Then the end will have arrived ; there will be 
 nothing left to fight for when the great Insurrec- 
 tion occurs and we are asked to go ; and India will 
 re-emerge as she was, shortly to be reduced to the 
 condition in which we found her. There will not 
 have been time to complete the one grand work of 
 civilization which the Imperial Service has begun — 
 the substitution of the idea of government by law for 
 the idea of government by human volition. It will 
 take three centuries more at least — the space of time 
 between Elizabeth and Victoria — for that idea to 
 filter in its full strength down to the Indian masses, 
 to wake them out of their torpor, and induce them to 
 compel their rulers to suppress their passion for 
 doing as they please. India, therefore, will fly in 
 pieces ; the ancient hostilities of race, and creed, 
 and history, none of which have we had time to 
 extinguish, will revive at once ; and life will again be 
 made interesting as of old by incessant wars, inva- 
 sions, and struggles for personal ascendency. The 
 railways, the only things we have built, will be torn 
 up, the universities will be scouted by military 
 rulers, the population will begin to decline, and, in 
 short, for one word expresses it all, India will once 
 more be Asiatic. Within five years of our departure 
 we shall recognize fully that the greatest experiment 
 ever made by Europe in Asia was but an experi- 
 ment after all ; that the ineffaceable distinctions 
 
WILL ENGLAND EE TAIN LNDLA ? 
 
 119 
 
 of race were all against it from the first ; and that 
 the idea of the European tranquilly guiding, con- 
 trolling, and perfecting the Asiatic until the worse 
 qualities of his organization had gone out of him, 
 though the noblest dream ever dreamed by man, 
 was but a dream after all. Asia, which survived the 
 Greek, and the Roman, and the Crusader, will 
 survive also the Teuton and the Slav. 
 
The Charm of Asia for Asiatics 
 
 E NGLISHMEN are often surprised at the pre- 
 ference which many Orientals display, and 
 which most, we think, feel at heart, for their own 
 life over the life of Europe. The latter seems to 
 them so much more varied, so much more interest- 
 ing, so much fuller both of change and of incident, 
 that they can hardly understand how a man who 
 has tasted both can deliberately prefer the former. 
 They think that to bring Orientals to Europe is to 
 make them European, to convince them that “ civil- 
 ization ” is a pleasing ideal, to plant in their minds 
 discontent with their own inferior method of life. 
 They expect Asiatics, even if not converted by 
 Europe, to enjoy its life as Americans do, or rather, 
 to absorb its ideas as Greeks — who always seem 
 slightly Asiatic to Englishmen, but who are au fond 
 intensely European, though not Teutonic — usually 
 do. The fact that there are Orientals who, having 
 tried both, prefer their own method of life, with all 
 its uncertainties and fears and defects of “ civiliza- 
 tion,” puzzles them beyond measure, and is usually 
 
 set down to the influence of polygamy, which exists, 
 
 120 
 
THE CHARM OF ASIA FOR ASIATICS 121 
 
 no doubt, but not to the degree commonly sup- 
 posed. There is another influence which has, we 
 believe, much more effect on Orientals in good 
 position — and few others try Europe — and that is 
 the absence of a certain form of social pressure 
 necessitating an endless taking of trouble. Not 
 only the mental atmosphere, but the social life of 
 Europe are based upon the idea that a man who 
 wishes for a pleasant life will show energy in its 
 pursuit, will take endless small trouble, will not feel 
 an exertion of mind or will any more than the 
 piston of a steam-engine feels rising or falling. 
 That, however, is not the basis of society in Asia, 
 where the root idea is that those who have not 
 to live by labour are to enjoy a certain exemption 
 from worry, to do as they please, and not as other 
 folks please, and while respecting certain immutable, 
 but few and definite laws, such as that which from 
 the Balkan to Pekin enforces, though in degrees of 
 wide divergence, the seclusion of women, are to be 
 released in great measure from the atmospheric 
 pressure of opinion. The Oriental is, whatever his 
 grade, to be in a way independent, released from 
 small obligations, left “ free ” in a sense explained 
 below. This idea, carried out as it is in daily life, 
 produces many of the least intelligible phenomena 
 of Asiatic society, — the democratic equality of all 
 men, which is so singularly combined with readiness 
 to endure and to inflict oppression ; the absence of 
 mauvaise honte , which is the secret of the much 
 
122 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 admired “ manner ” of most Asiatics, and which is 
 found too, for the same reason, in some classes of 
 Americans ; and the sense of ease always percep- 
 tible in a better class Oriental at home, and always 
 puzzling to the European, who thinks he knows 
 facts which should make his interlocutor uneasy. 
 In the new and very charming book in which 
 Mrs. Simpson has collected her father’s conversa- 
 tions with great Frenchmen, there occurs a very 
 striking and in its way attractive statement of the 
 difference, so far as it affects the mere details of 
 daily life. Mr. Senior, who, though at home 
 regarded as a rather hard official — he was hard, too, 
 intellectually, the quality peeping out perpetually in 
 these conversations — was in society, and especially 
 in foreign society, the most sympathetic of men, 
 and could by some rare talent coax the most 
 different of mankind into revealing their real 
 opinions, had, in i860, a long talk with Vefyk 
 Pasha, then Minister at Paris, recently, we believe, 
 the man who presided over the Ottoman Assembly. 
 He said of Paris — 
 
 What I complain of is the mode of life. I am oppressed not 
 by the official duties — they are easy, Turkey has few affairs — but 
 by the social ones. I have had to write fifteen notes this morn- 
 ing, all about trifles. In Turkey life is sans gene ; if a man calls 
 on you he does not leave a card ; if he sends you a nosegay he 
 does not expect a letter of thanks ; if he invites you he does not 
 require an answer. There are no engagements to be remembered 
 and fulfilled a fortnight afterwards. When you wish to see a 
 friend, you know that he dines at sunset ; you get into your 
 caique, and row down to him through the finest scenery in the 
 
THE CHARM OF ASIA FOR ASIATICS 123 
 
 world. You find him in his garden, smoke a chibouque, talk or 
 remain silent as you like ; dine, and return. If you wish to see a 
 Minister you go to his office; you are not interfered with, or even 
 announced ; you lift the curtain of his audience room, sit by him 
 on his divan, smoke your pipe, tell your story, get his answer, 
 and have finished your business in the time which it takes here to 
 make an appointment — in half the time that you waste here in an 
 antechamber. There is no dressing for dinners or for evening 
 parties ; evening parties, indeed, do not exist. There are no 
 letters to receive or to answer. There is no post hour to be 
 remembered and waited for, for there is no post. Life glides 
 away without trouble. Here everything is troublesome. All 
 enjoyment is destroyed by the forms and ceremonies and elabo- 
 rate regulations which are intended, I suppose, to increase it or 
 to protect it. My Liberal friends here complain of the want of 
 political liberty. What I complain of is the want of social liberty; 
 it is far the more important. Few people suffer from the despo- 
 tism of a Government, and those suffer only occasionally. But 
 this social despotism, this despotism of salons, this code of arbi- 
 trary little rtglements, observances, prohibitions, and exigencies, 
 affects everybody, and every day, and every hour. 
 
 Mark the idea which underlies that complaint, and 
 remember that it extends to every department of 
 life, and you catch, as no book can teach you, one 
 of the secrets of the Asiatic mode of living, and its 
 charm for Asiatics. You are in slippers, not in 
 shoes ; in a dressing-gown, not in a dress-coat. 
 The ways which we think duties they think worries, 
 — at once evidences of unrest, and needless obliga- 
 tions imposed on life to make it tiresome. When 
 observances are imposed by religion, that is another 
 matter ; but except by religion or superior power, 
 the will ought to be unrestrained. They feel that 
 life under a routine of duties, obligations, observ- 
 
124 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ances, is life only to be endured under coercion, is 
 life needlessly made miserable. Or rather, to use 
 an illustration many of our readers will understand 
 better, they feel the European scheme of life as 
 men who are by nature idle, or who have always 
 been masters of their own time, feel monotonous 
 daily work, as if that alone by itself took the sweet- 
 ness out of life. They do not, for example, want 
 servants, as Englishmen do, invisibly working the 
 household machine, and keeping everything to-day 
 as it was yesterday, but want personal attendants, 
 always visible, always at hand, always saving them 
 from minute trouble and effort. The feeling- is not 
 exactly indolence, though it looks so like it, and 
 though it has, in the course of ages passed in 
 climates where exertion is also effort, become mixed 
 up with it; but rather, as Vefyk Pasha says, a form 
 of the liking for liberty, or the desire for the gratifi- 
 cation in details of the strong self-will which gives 
 to all Asiatics without exception some character- 
 istics of spoiled children. They do not want to 
 dine out when they are asked, but to dine out 
 when they wish, and the mere notion that if they 
 dine out and have the whim to be silent they may 
 not be silent, is fatiguing. Life, to be delightful, 
 must be always afternoon, and afternoon in holiday. 
 Unfortunately for themselves, Asiatics carry this 
 spirit, which, if confined to social arrangements, 
 might produce nothing worse than simplicity, into 
 serious life, and apart altogether from bad morale , 
 
THE CHARM OF ASIA FOR ASIATICS 125 
 
 which we are not now discussing, allow a defect of 
 temperament to ruin administration. They will 
 not, under any provocation, burden themselves with 
 a sustained habit of taking trouble. You might 
 as well ask lazzaroni to behave like Prussian 
 officials. They issue orders, and punish terribly if 
 they are not obeyed, but that is their only notion 
 of securing obedience. As to “ hunting the order 
 down ” to its execution, they would not accept life 
 at the price of such a duty. Nothing can be 
 funnier than a contrast which happens to be drawn 
 in this book between Thiers’ idea on this matter 
 and Vefyk Pasha’s. We have given the Turk’s, 
 here is the Frenchman’s — 
 
 I used constantly to find my orders forgotten, or neglected, or 
 misinterpreted. As I have often said to you, men are naturally 
 idle, false, and timid ; tnenteurs, laches , paresseux. Whenever I 
 found that an employe supposed that because an order had been 
 given, it had been executed, or that because he had been told a 
 thing it was true, I gave him up as an imbecile. Bonaparte 
 nearly lost the battle of Marengo by supposing that the Austrians 
 had no bridge over the Bormida. Three generals assured him 
 that they had carefully examined the river, and that there was 
 none. It turned out that there were two, and our army was sur- 
 prised. When I was preparing for war in 1840, I sat every day 
 for eight hours with the Ministers of War, of Marine, and of the 
 Interior. I always began by ascertaining the state of execution 
 of our previous determinations. I never trusted to any assurances, 
 if better evidence could be produced. If I was told that letters 
 had been despatched, I required a certificate from the clerk who 
 had posted them or delivered them to the courier. If answers 
 had been received, I required their production. I punished in- 
 exorably every negligence, and even every delay. I kept my 
 colleagues and my bureaux at work all day, and almost all night. 
 
126 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 We were all of us half killed. Such a tension of mind wearies 
 more than the hardest bodily work. At night my servants un- 
 dressed me, took me by the feet and shoulders and placed me in 
 my bed, and I lay there like a corpse till the morning. Even my 
 dreams, when I dreamt, were administrative. 
 
 No Asiatic not an exceptional man will do that, yet 
 in Asia it is five times as necessary as in Europe, 
 because the subordinates, besides the regular desire 
 not to work over-much, of which Thiers complained, 
 feel the overwhelming desire for that which Vefyk 
 Pasha called “ liberty,” — a life not burdened with 
 peremptory but “ trifling ” duties. They want to 
 be “ gentlemen,” as the poor often understand the 
 word — that is, men released from imperative neces- 
 sities. One-half the weakness of every Oriental 
 government — we do not mean one-half the oppres- 
 sion, that has a different origin — arises from the 
 impossibility of finding men who will act as Thiers 
 did, or of supplying the absence of the lacking 
 spirit either by regulations or by punishments. An 
 Oriental household can be well ordered in its way, 
 but as to making it a machine as perfect as a 
 regiment, and self-acting as many European house- 
 holds are, it cannot be done. No punishment and 
 no reward will make a race in which this spirit is 
 inborn, or into which it has entered, exact, punctual, 
 or prompt. The southern slave-holders tried it 
 with negroes under the most favourable circum- 
 stances, and failed ; and no European that we can 
 recollect has ever thoroughly succeeded. That 
 
THE CHARM OF ASIA FOR ASIATICS 127 
 
 which can be neglected is neglected, not from a 
 wish that it should not be done, but from a detesta- 
 tion of the fatigue of doing it at an inopportune 
 moment — that is, at any moment when doing it 
 would break up the sense of the pleasant ease of 
 afternoon, which, in the Asiatic ideal, should con- 
 stitute the whole of life. Of course, with that 
 temper come its correlatives, indifference about 
 right and wrong — for if you are not indifferent, the 
 afternoon is always being broken — and a callous- 
 ness as to what happens to anybody, if the restful 
 ease do but remain undisturbed. Charles II., as 
 described by Macaulay, had the temperament to per- 
 fection, would, in fact, have been the most perfect 
 specimen of the Oriental, but that having a trace 
 of Scotland in his blood, he was liable to the curse 
 from which the Asiatic is usually free — the mental 
 low fever for which we have adopted the word 
 ennui. 
 
 We dare say we have failed in making this 
 temperament and its tendencies as visible to our 
 readers as it is to ourselves, but it is the peculiarity 
 which makes those Englishmen who best like the 
 East despair most of administrative reform. They 
 know that a certain rigour will produce honesty, 
 that oppression can be checked by giving certain 
 power of resistance, and that Asiatics who wish 
 well can be discovered, but they know also that 
 all this will not produce an effective governing 
 machine without the Western power of taking 
 
128 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 trouble perpetually. That is what first of all 
 makes them cry out for “ European assistance ” in 
 every department, and praise Asiatic rulers in pro- 
 portion to their readiness to take European advice. 
 They know — Sir Henry Layard, for instance, knows 
 — that besides the readiness to take bribes, and 
 the religious arrogance, and the sensuality, the 
 reformers have to contend with the desire for the 
 “afternoon life,” which, in the ruler, produces 
 cruelty, because only cruelty can get him his way 
 without endless trouble, and, in his subordinate, 
 neglect. They know that an Oriental regiment 
 will uninspected go to pieces, because the officers 
 want to avoid the harass of details ; that a depart- 
 ment will get to a dead-lock, because nobody will 
 worry like Thiers ; that a province will grow dis- 
 contented, because nobody will search into haras- 
 sing, trivial complaints. They know, in fact, that 
 civilization cannot be kept up if life all the while 
 is to be always afternoon ; and that an Asiatic is 
 like an average aristocrat, and regards that after- 
 noon as the summum bonum , to which all else may 
 expediently be sacrificed, and those who interfere 
 with it as “ unaccountable, uncomfortable works of 
 God.” The European is in Asia the man who 
 will insist on his neighbour doing business just after 
 dinner, and being exact when he is half asleep, and 
 being “ prompt ” just when he wants to enjoy, — and 
 he rules in Asia and is loved in Asia accordingly. 
 
English and Asiatic Feeling 
 Contrasted 
 
 [This was published in 1874] 
 
 LL Englishmen interested in the government 
 
 of India should read a private letter from 
 Lieutenant E. C. Yate, 1 which has been communi- 
 cated to the Times and was published in its outside 
 sheet on 14th Nov., 1874. Lieutenant Yate was then 
 Assistant Political Agent, or, as English officials 
 would put it, Secretary of Legation, at Oodeypore, 
 the modern capital of the leading State in Raj- 
 pootana ; and he writes, apparently to some relative, 
 a full account of the scenes which followed the 
 recent death of the Maharana. The word “ Ma- 
 harana ” is an older form of Maharajah, and its 
 feminine is “ Maharanee,” still the only word em- 
 ployed as the equivalent for “ Queen.” The letter 
 will well repay perusal for itself, being a most 
 truthful and picturesque account of a very excep- 
 tional scene ; and if the reader will only study it 
 carefully, and then glance at Colonel Tod’s “ Rajas- 
 than ” and that great Indian’s account of Oodeypore 
 and its Sovereigns, he will perhaps comprehend 
 why the English officer in India, though trusted and 
 
 1 Experience has taught Lieut. Yate, who is now Colonel Yate, 
 a distinguished “ Political ” with many decorations. 
 
 129 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 respected, is also hated with a vehemence which, 
 to the well informed Englishman who is aware 
 that the Government of India is perhaps the most 
 upright in the world, seems almost unintelligible. 
 Lieutenant Yate, to judge from his letter — the only 
 source of knowledge which we possess about him — 
 is a very good fellow, brave, calm and intelligent, 
 though unimaginative, standing right at the centre 
 of affairs in Oodeypore, and bound by his official 
 position not only to record, but also to understand 
 the scene before his eyes. He records it very well 
 indeed, as well as a Times reporter would have done, 
 or better, because in a more simple way, but he 
 understands it much as a Shah of Persia would 
 understand a great debate in the English House of 
 Commons. It is not too much to say that he is 
 an Englishman of so typical a kind that he is 
 incapable of understanding it — as completely barred 
 out from any true comprehension of its meaning as 
 an English squire is barred out from understanding 
 the ideas of the few thinkers like Delescluze, who 
 supported the Paris Commune. He is present at a 
 scene which to every Hindoo in India, and to a few 
 Englishmen, would have seemed one of the strangest 
 and most pathetic conceivable ; he watches it in all 
 its details most carefully and composedly, and the 
 only distinct impression made on his mind is that it 
 is very “ funny ” ; not, that is, very comic, but slightly 
 bewildering and unintelligible. His imagination is 
 not excited and therefore he remains impenetrable 
 
ENGLISH AND ASIATIC FEELING 
 
 *3i 
 
 to the meaning of half he sees, quite tolerant, fairly 
 just, but hopelessly unsympathetic and obtuse. 
 
 The Rana of Oodeypore bears to the vast organ- 
 ization which we call “ Hindooism ” a relation abso- 
 lutely unique, a relation for which there is no 
 equivalent whatever either in European or Asiatic 
 politics. He is not a Pope, for though he is the 
 highest Hindoo, and his fiat is necessary to the 
 consecration of any Hindoo sovereign — not to his 
 enthronement, mind, but only to his consecration — 
 he claims and exercises no religious power whatever, 
 except, we believe, in rare cases that of quashing 
 a Brahminical excommunication. That he exer- 
 cises this is certain, as Ranas of Oodeypore have 
 repeatedly removed by decree the degradation and 
 loss of caste suffered by Hindoo princes from com- 
 pulsory marriages with the daughters of Emperors 
 of Delhi ; and we think, under correction always 
 from Hindoo antiquarians, that he also claims it. 
 Still he is not a Pope, nor, though the origin of his 
 power is the same, does he hold the position of the 
 Mikado in Japan. The latter is the descendant 
 of the gods, and still the most trustworthy exponent 
 of their will ; while the former, though the repre- 
 sentative of Rama, and therefore, as Hindoos think, 
 the descendant of a king in whom Vishnu was incar- 
 nate and whose memory is so sacred that the mere 
 repetition of his name, whether by yourself or by a 
 parrot for you, is an act at once of merit and of 
 purification, derives from his divine ancestry only 
 
I 3 2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 a modified sanctity, more like the sanctity of the 
 Comte de Chambord in the eyes of an ultra- Legiti- 
 mist than the sanctity of the Mikado. The relation, 
 however, unique as it is, is close and real, so real 
 that an insult to the Rana would be a personal 
 shock to every Hindoo ; much more real than the 
 almost equally strange relation which the ruler of 
 Nepal, Jung Bahadoor’s nominal master, as the last 
 undefiled Hindoo king, the single one left who has 
 never submitted to the barbarian, bears to Hindoo- 
 ism, and the extinction of the race would be felt 
 as deeply by all Hindoos as the extinction of the 
 House of Othman would be by all Turks. The 
 line of the Ranas of Oodeypore has been broken by 
 adoption, though we see no certain proof that they 
 ever adopted outside the solar race, and though the 
 deceased Rana risked his safety in the next world 
 rather than adopt a son to the detriment of his 
 family; but in Hindoo estimation, and as a histori- 
 cal fact, the succession has remained unbroken from 
 Rama downwards, a period which writers like 
 Mr. Marshman, who is utterly and perhaps unduly 
 sceptical of Hindoo chronology, fix about 1200 b.c., 
 more than 3,000 years ago, and which no one except 
 Lieutenant Yate brings down far below 600 b.c. — 
 later, that is, than the expulsion of the kings from 
 Rome. The Popes are parvenus beside the Ranas 
 of Oodeypore, and the Bourbons compared with them 
 are adventurers of yesterday. The late Maharana 
 ruled only a small territory — 1 1,000 square miles, or 
 
ENGLISH AND ASIATIC FEELING 
 
 T 33 
 
 less than two Yorkshires, and barely a million and a 
 quarter of people, half of them aborigines outside 
 Hindooism — but he and his have ruled his tribe 
 first at Lahore and then in Oodeypore from the 
 time when the world was young and when the solar 
 race was possibly pure white — the Brahmins are our 
 kinsmen, though they crossed their blood early ; 
 have survived Alexander, in whose time they were 
 probably as “ old ” as the Cecils are now ; have 
 defied the Mussulman Emperors, with whose 
 daughters, as they boast, they never contracted a 
 contaminating alliance ; have outlived the Mah- 
 rattas ; and will, in their own belief and that of all 
 Hindoos, outlast the intrusive Mlechas (Barbarians), 
 who, “ for some mysterious purpose of the Allwise, 
 are permitted to make penknives and sell piece 
 goods and conquer the world,” and to interfere, with 
 their pother of civilization, with the Divinely ordered 
 scheme of Hindoo society. The death of a ruler of 
 this race is to all Hindoos an event ; to his imme- 
 diate subjects a catastrophe to be bewailed, as men 
 inside Europe wail only for their children and their 
 wives. He is so great in their eyes that, as in 
 Europe in the middle ages, his subjects scarcely 
 believe he has died naturally, and the first emotion 
 excited by his danger is the suspicion that witch- 
 craft has been at work. A whole community gives 
 itself up to the wildest emotion ; great nobles, 
 scarcely seen except in chain-armour, stand by the 
 palace gates beating their breasts ; the populace cry 
 
134 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 aloud with one voice ; the priests flock in from all 
 Rajpootana ; the women of the household, frenzied 
 with excitement, assert their right to share the 
 funeral pyre, and would execute themselves but for 
 the interference of the British ; and strangest and 
 most pathetic signal of all, a whole population — 
 among whom an insult to the beard is the signal for 
 instant and murderous vengeance — submit, in sign 
 of their despair, to the last earthly humiliation, and 
 shave their faces clean. Lieutenant Yate, in whose 
 letter there is no trace of an unkindly disposition, 
 sees it all, records it all, and judges it all as if it 
 were all acted at the Alhambra, as if it were all 
 spectacular tragedy, without depth or reality of 
 feeling. He says all the men in the palace “ were 
 howling and beating their breasts”; implies that the 
 women were merely acting their frenzy, and would 
 have jumped from their windows if only anybody 
 had held up awnings to jump into ; remarks that 
 the shaven population had “ the funniest appear- 
 ance ” ; describes “ the emblem of royalty, the 
 Hindoo Suruj, or Sun ” (it is the emblem of the 
 race, not of royalty ; the White Lily, not the Crown 
 of France) and the red umbrella as “ paraphernalia ” 
 — we wonder he did not write “ properties,” in true 
 theatrical phrase — and acknowledges, with the true 
 naivett of an Englishman, that he has forgotten the 
 exact date of the reign of Rama, but it is “ 1,500 
 years or so ago ” — a date which, considering that 
 the writer’s ancestors were then tattooed savages 
 
ENGLISH AND ASIATIC FEELING 
 
 i35 
 
 with a penchant for human sacrifice, were, in fact, 
 about on a level with Maoris, naturally appears 
 to him one of immeasurable antiquity. There is 
 nothing for him of the pathetic in the scene, nothing 
 suggestive — though, be it observed, he notes and 
 records with appreciation the loveliness of a view 
 across the neighbouring lake — no electric influence 
 from the grief of one of the most ancient communi- 
 ties in the world, nothing but a crowd of persons 
 intent, for some reason of their own, on unusual and 
 somewhat preposterous, though striking ceremonials. 
 The one thing that strikes him as wonderful is that 
 the two claimants for the throne, each with his 
 troop of armed followers, should obey the unaccom- 
 panied Political Agent, Colonel Wright, and await 
 passively the award of the far distant barbarian 
 Viceroy. That he evidently thinks marvellous, and 
 he returns again and again to the evidences of 
 Colonel Wright’s authority, never dreaming that 
 these Hindoo nobles, who to him are so “funny” 
 with their shaven faces, have a political instinct 
 equal to his own, and know as well as he does that 
 Colonel Wright represents a force before which 
 Oodeypore could not stand up for an hour. Be- 
 sides, why should they resist ? The succession is 
 not contested by any but the Children of the Sun, 
 and the Viceroy will not impeach their claim ; and 
 what else signifies, except to the individual claimants 
 of the throne ? If, indeed, there were a chance of a 
 departure from the line, if the race of Rama were 
 
136 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 about to be dethroned, then, indeed — well, then 
 London would have missed, for one thing, a very 
 picturesque account of a scene in an unknown world, 
 and Lieutenant Yate’s family, among a thousand 
 others, would have mourned a kinsman. 
 
The Reflex Effect of Asiatic Ideas 
 
 I T is a quarter of a century ago since the present 
 writer observed in the Spectator , when com- 
 menting on some fresh triumph of the mail service, 
 that the increase of communication between Europe 
 and Asia might produce unexpected results. We 
 all think of it as increasing the intellectual grip 
 of Europe on Asia, but it must also facilitate the 
 reflex action of Asiatic ideas on Europe. They 
 poured back on us in a flood during the Crusades ; 
 and why should they not pour again, to affect us 
 once more, either, as Christianity did, by conver- 
 sion, or, as Mahommedanism did, by recoil ? The 
 prophecy has not hitherto been accomplished. The 
 dividing barrier between the thoughts of the East 
 and the West has proved tenacious, and though, 
 to the surprise of mankind, Oriental art has made 
 a capture of the European mind, so that Asiatic 
 colouring and Asiatic decoration have permanently 
 affected all Western eyes, the special thoughts of 
 the East have made little visible impression. We 
 fancy, however, that the barrier is cracking. By 
 far the most startling fact in the biography of 
 
 187 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 138 
 
 Laurence Oliphant was the proof it afforded that 
 Western minds — for Oliphant was not alone — 
 could accept and act on a leading Asiatic idea, 
 that if a man could utterly dominate self, and make 
 the body a completely passive agent of the will, 
 he would wrest from Heaven, or Fate, or the 
 Universum, whichever it was, powers transcending 
 those known from experience to be possessed by 
 human beings. The possessor of those powers 
 could convert the world without the slow methods 
 of persuasion, perhaps enter into relation with 
 beings before whose wisdom that of men is ignor- 
 ant foolishness. That was the governing hope 
 which impelled Laurence Oliphant to his strange 
 life, with its victory, as he thought, over the flesh ; 
 and it will, by-and-by, probably impel much stronger 
 natures than his. The prize is so enormous, so 
 entirely transcending any usual reward for effort, 
 that the minds which can accept its possibility 
 will be strongly moved to the attempt, and will 
 waste years in an experiment which, though so 
 often made, and sometimes made successfully — for 
 there are faqueers and sunyasees and Buddhist 
 devotees who have conquered the body — has never 
 yet produced a spark of result in supernormal 
 power. Fortunately, those who try it will be few, 
 for the Western mind, unlike the Eastern, can 
 never be quite dominated by an idea, and always 
 applies to it some test which, in the case of a 
 theory like self-suppression, is sure, sooner or later, 
 
THE REFLEX EFFECT OF ASIATIC IDEAS 139 
 
 to be fatal. We shall see, however, a few trials, 
 witness the rise of some strange sects, and prob- 
 ably see a large diffusion of that Eastern idea, 
 the presence of the all-pervading universal spirit 
 in all things, good, evil, and indifferent, which, if 
 Mr. J. A. Symonds is a sound critic, is the govern- 
 ing thought, indeed the sole thought, of Walt 
 Whitman, and which his critic also believes to be 
 of the essence of democracy. It will liquefy morals 
 if it comes, and drive back civilization, so far as 
 civilization is dependent on a discipline of restraints; 
 but come it will in places, with its correlative, that 
 all material things, bad, good, and indifferent, if 
 placed in an intense light, are essentially evil. You 
 see both ideas filling Russian literature even now, 
 and the thought of the Slav, which differs from 
 all other thought in Europe by instantly producing 
 act, as thought does in children, has a great part 
 yet to play in moulding the West. 
 
 So has Buddhist thought. All that stuff about 
 Mahatmas is rubbish, unsupported by a trace of 
 evidence, a merely stupid expression of the desire 
 of so many minds for guidance either incapable 
 of error, or less capable than the guidance of 
 ordinary beings ; but the Mahatma notion is a mere 
 excrescence on a creed which has a big thought 
 embedded in it. We were surprised to perceive 
 that both the French Buddhists, and the English 
 as represented by Mrs. Besant, avowed a belief in 
 the doctrine of transmigration, or, as the latter 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 140 
 
 prefers to call it, of reincarnations. To most 
 Englishmen, that idea, which in one way or another 
 dominates the whole of non- Mussulman Asia, even 
 that comparatively small section of the Chinese 
 which is capable of rising above pure secularism, 
 has a slightly comic effect, derived, we fancy, 
 chiefly from an impression that to become an animal 
 — which could only be a result of continuous 
 degradation — would be an absurdity. The doctrine, 
 however, as really held in Asia, has an astonishing 
 charm for some subtle minds, and especially for 
 those which are never content to await future 
 solutions to the great perplexities of the world. 
 It does explain the inexplicable, and reconcile man, 
 not indeed to his destiny, but to his position in 
 the world. The whole notion of an injustice 
 inherent in the scheme of the universe, disappears 
 at once, and all that endless problem why some, 
 perhaps innocent, suffer, and some, perhaps guilty, 
 enjoy. There is no injustice if this life is but a 
 link in a long chain of past as well as future lives, 
 and the millionaire is being rewarded for his past 
 careers, and the pauper punished for his. Suffer- 
 ing, under that theory, is but expiation for your 
 own forgotten crimes, and will be fully repaid by 
 the cleanliness in which you will enter on the next 
 stage ; while enjoyment is but reward, moderated 
 by its concomitant, the temptation to let the flesh 
 win again, and so recommence the round. Nor 
 is equality possible, or inequality unjust, when 
 
THE REFLEX EFFECT OF ASIATIC IDEAS 141 
 
 grade is a sign of the favour won from the All, 
 and the prince is reaping reward, and the night- 
 soilman paying the penalty for the deeds of previous 
 existence. There is not a particle of evidence for 
 the hypothesis, which has against it, in a philosophic 
 sense, the want of purpose in the total of existence ; 
 but it does explain the visible phenomena, and 
 that in so modern a way that nothing would surprise 
 us less than to see it adopted by great crowds 
 who, in their passion of pity, accuse God of op- 
 pression because He suffers unearned pain to exist 
 among mankind. Why should a child which has 
 done nothing have epilepsy ? That is the perpetual 
 half-formulated query of modern philanthropy ; and 
 Buddhism, which leaves the greatest problems 
 unsolved — for instance, the use of the universe, 
 which under its theory, is an ever-revolving circle 
 of inutilities springing from the All and reabsorbed 
 into it — does resolve the problem which for a 
 moment, when the imagination of men has, as 
 it were, become raw, presses sharply upon the 
 excoriation. The theory rebuilds content with the 
 universe, and gets rid of puzzledom ; and but for 
 something in the average white mind which rejects 
 it, because, we fancy, it suggests such inconceivable 
 waste, a whole universe gyrating like a dancing 
 dervish to no end, it might become one of the 
 prevalent creeds of Europe. It is consistent with 
 the effort to be good, yet explains suffering and 
 imposes perfect resignation, — a great comfort to the 
 
142 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 majority who suffer. It will have its career, too, 
 if faith in a personal God dies out, for humanity 
 will always explore the whence and whither ; and 
 if the ultimate cause is either universal and eternal 
 matter, or intangible and undesigning spirit, the 
 central thought of Buddhism is as good an explana- 
 tion as man is likely to forge. There will come 
 a time, too, when the great experiment of demo- 
 cracy has failed, as it probably will fail with unex- 
 pected rapidity ; when men will ask the reason 
 of the failure, and many of them will find it in the 
 contradiction between the idea of equality and the 
 instinctive sense of justice which at least assigns 
 a superior reward to the good. Buddhism does 
 do that. 
 
 We wonder if the worst idea of Asia, that 
 morality has no immutable basis, but is a fluctuat- 
 ing law dependent upon some inexplicable relation 
 between the individual and the Creator, or the 
 individual and the All, will ever come over here. 
 The Indian holds that a line of conduct may be 
 right for one man, or indeed imperative, but wrong 
 for another, or indeed insufferable ; that a world- 
 wide law is unthinkable ; and that each man will 
 be judged because of his obedience to some law 
 external to himself, yet peculiar to his own per- 
 sonality. The king’s obligation to the Divine is 
 not the peasant’s ; the ordinary Brahmin must be 
 monogamous, while the Koolin Brahmin may have 
 sixty wives ; the trader may cheat where the carrier 
 
THE REFLEX EFFECT OF ASIATIC IDEAS 143 
 
 must keep contract ; the usual Hindoo must spare 
 life, while the Thug may take it and yet remain 
 sinless. That opinion subverts the very founda- 
 tions of morality and conduct ; yet there are subtle 
 minds that hold it, and Europe once showed a 
 curious tendency in the same direction. Different 
 moral laws were held to bind different classes, a 
 
 notion still surviving and active whenever the 
 
 conduct of clergymen is called in question. We 
 
 have never been able to trace the genesis of that 
 
 notion, which has been, as it were, intercalated into 
 Hindooism, and suspect it of not being a religious 
 idea at all, but one born of convenience and allowed 
 a religious sanction, because a non-religious idea, 
 an idea which is useful and received, yet excepted 
 from Divine sanction, is impossible to the Hindoo 
 mind. Nothing can be tolerable and yet outside 
 that system. We have little fear of the idea in 
 Europe, which recoils from it more and more, 
 tending always towards equality, at least in fetters, 
 be they for good or evil ; but we have some appre- 
 hension of the last Asiatic idea, which we shall 
 mention as likely to be imported. This is the 
 notion of man’s irresponsibility for anything but his 
 individual conduct, for the general system of things 
 as it exists around him. That, says and thinks the 
 Asiatic, is the work of superior powers, and no 
 more to be modified than the procession of the 
 seasons ; and but that human nature is weak, he 
 would no more resist it than a true Mussulman 
 
1 44 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 would effect an insurance on his ship. The sub- 
 missiveness of Asia to evils that could be remedied 
 springs ultimately from that, and is because of that 
 nearly incurable. The genuine Asiatic, uncorrupted 
 by white teaching, considers that which is as the 
 will of God, and leaves it to Him to alter. Why 
 put a lightning-conductor by the Mosque ? God, 
 if He pleases, can take care of His own ; and if He 
 does not please, of what use to try and thwart 
 His will ? The Mussulman avowedly holds that 
 theory, but there is not an Asiatic free of it, even 
 the strong-willed Chinaman yielding to it almost, 
 though not quite entirely. The combative energy 
 of the European, who when roused to consciousness 
 will put up with nothing, and who has the stimulus 
 of living on a continent in which the powers of 
 Nature are comparatively feeble, has kept him from 
 this soporific belief; but take away from him a 
 little hope — and the resistless strength of democracy 
 may take some away, as it is doing from Americans 
 — or increase by a little his impression that “ God 
 has no need of human aid ” — an impression of all 
 the more rigid Calvinists and Quakers — and he 
 would sink back, reluctantly but certainly, to the 
 submissiveness of Asia, amid which it is felt to 
 be wrong even to lament the flood when superior 
 forces made the waters swell. We shall not see 
 it in our time, for the energy of the white races, 
 whose reign is comparatively new, is still unex- 
 hausted, and they have the spirit of the Titans, 
 
THE REFLEX EFFECT OF ASIATIC IDEAS 145 
 
 who thought even Olympus might be stormed ; but 
 there are times when ideas which soothe are readily 
 received, and ideas which are readily received are 
 terribly strong. The dream of the right of all 
 men to everything they want, which is a mere 
 thought unsupported by evidence, or rather, denied 
 by the ever-present evidence that the earth yields 
 food only in return for human sweat, and that every 
 human being lives under sentence of capital punish- 
 ment, is already shaking the very foundations of 
 European society. Thought is stronger than armies, 
 even when it is as baseless as the main thought 
 of the Buddhist creed. 
 
 L 
 
The Mental Seclusion of India 
 
 T HE Times , in a leader upon that wonder- 
 ful record the new “ Census of India,” the 
 details of which have just come home, calls atten- 
 tion once more to one of the greatest puzzles 
 presented to observers by this perplexing world. 
 The English have held the first position in India 
 for 1 24 years, taking Plassey as our date, and 
 have governed it for seventy-eight years, taking 
 Assaye as the commencement of recognized ascend- 
 ency. Never 100,000 in number, including soldiers, 
 the Anglo-Indians now tax, guide, and govern 
 250,000,000 of human beings, a fifth of the 
 population of the world, so quietly that the most 
 trumpery riot sets all India in commotion, and that 
 a habit has grown up of recording border forays by 
 telegraph, as if they were important, or were even 
 heard of in the endless Indian world. The Anglo- 
 Indians dwell among these people, they talk their 
 tongues, they do all manner of business with them, 
 they govern them in all external relations of life, 
 they fill their houses with them, they live by giving 
 them advice and orders, and yet they know next to 
 
 146 
 
THE MENTAL SECLUSION OF INDIA 147 
 
 nothing about them. In the whole century of 
 intercourse no Anglo-Indian, whether official or 
 adventurer, has ever written a book which in the 
 least degree revealed to his countrymen the inner 
 character, or wishes, or motives of any considerable 
 section, or any great single class, of this immensely 
 numerous people. Nobody has explained their 
 special ideas of justice, or of property, or of a 
 pleasant social life, or described what they expect 
 or what they deprecate, or even what they think 
 about the people which rules them, in its ignorance, 
 with such apparent ease and acquiescence. That 
 Europeans are, with personal exceptions, by nature 
 and the will of God, stupid, is the single broad idea 
 which has ever clearly emerged from the sea of the 
 native mind. It is as certain as any fact of the 
 kind can be, that any Anglo-Indian who wrote a 
 book perceived to be a “ revealing ” book about 
 Indians, or any section of them, would, as his 
 reward, receive fortune, reputation among his 
 contemporaries, fame with posterity ; and yet no 
 Anglo-Indian has ever done it, or, so far as appears, 
 ever will do it. Considering the temptation, and 
 the number and variety of Englishmen in India, 
 and the extraordinary success of many of them in 
 work apparently requiring as its necessary datum 
 a comprehension of the people, the only possible 
 explanation of that reticence is that the Anglo- 
 Indians do not understand, and know that they do 
 not understand, the people whom, nevertheless, they 
 
148 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 govern successfully. And what is the solution of 
 that mystery ? That it exists is past all question 
 and also that it exists in the same degree in India 
 alone. The Chinese are not so hidden from us as 
 are the Indians of Asia ; while the Indians of 
 Spanish America, though hidden from us, are not 
 hidden from the Spaniards, who live among them. 
 
 We have no full answer to give, for the problem, 
 after thirty years of thought about it, remains to us 
 as impenetrable as ever ; but we can, we think, 
 contribute some facts, or ideas about facts, which 
 may make its existence a little less wonderful and 
 bewildering. In the first place, the suggestion that 
 because the Anglo-Indian governs successfully, 
 therefore he understands the people he governs, 
 is, we believe, fundamentally erroneous. The 
 British Empire in India is not a marvellous example 
 of the possibility of one race fitting its ideas to those 
 of another race, adapting means to ends, or making 
 laws specially suited to those who obey them, at all, 
 but something widely different. It is the most 
 marvellous example the world has ever seen of the 
 possibility of governing human beings through 
 abstract principles, when those principles include 
 impartial justice, perfect tolerance, and the most 
 absolute respect, not only for personal freedom, but 
 for personal idiosyncrasy. The great Civilian who 
 suddenly, and by a sort of magic, pacifies a newly- 
 acquired province, till three millions of swordsmen 
 not only obey him, but honour and in a way love 
 
THE MENTAL SECLUSION OF INDIA 149 
 
 him, very often does not understand the hearts of 
 the men he governs in the least degree, and will 
 admit to intimate friends that he does not under- 
 stand them. They will, he believes, do so and so ; 
 but “ there is an element of the unknown or the 
 capricious, if you like, in all native minds, never to 
 be quite left out of the account. ” What he does under- 
 stand thoroughly are justice, tolerance, mercy, and 
 the use of firmness ; and he applies those principles 
 steadily, fearlessly, and with a certain respect for 
 logic seldom displayed by his own caste in Europe. 
 Every Indian is guaranteed his life, his liberty, his 
 property, and his honour ; every man who breaks 
 the law is hunted down, every man who observes 
 the law is let alone, let him do or say or believe 
 whatsoever he may. As the native universally 
 approves those principles when applied, he desists 
 from dangerous opposition and becomes, so rapidly 
 that the change is almost scenic, a quiet citizen ; 
 and the intellectual qualities of the Civilian who has 
 tamed him are extolled to the skies. They have 
 done very little for him, nevertheless. It is the 
 moral qualities which have prevailed, and which 
 gave as quick a result to Clive, who could speak no 
 word of any native tongue, as to the last competi- 
 tion-wallah who boasts, perhaps with truth, that he 
 could play at a native gaming-table and never be 
 known for a white man. The problem is, therefore, 
 reduced by this, that the Anglo-Indian ruler does 
 not show at one and the same time knowledge and 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 iS® 
 
 ignorance, that he rules successfully by knowing 
 other things than the inner minds of the population, 
 which he is confessedly so unable to interpret. He 
 is simply ignorant, and not a thoroughly instructed 
 man who is also an ignoramus. 
 
 This truth, however, though it renders the problem 
 far less unique, and, as it were, mysterious, still does 
 not reduce its size. The Anglo-Indian ruler lives 
 among the people longer than Mr. Hamerton lived 
 among Frenchmen, or Mr. Ford among Spaniards, 
 or Mr. Finlay among Greeks, lives often thirty 
 years, knows the language, passes six hours a day 
 in conversation with natives, resides among them, in 
 fact, and still does not understand them. How is 
 that ? The true answer is that all this does not 
 happen in the sense the words suggest, that the 
 Civilian or adventurer does not reside among the 
 Indian people at all, but only on the spot where 
 the Indian people also abide, — a very different 
 thing. There is he, and there are they, but they 
 are fenced off from each other by an invisible, 
 impalpable, but impassable wall, as rigid and as 
 inexplicable as that which divides the master from 
 his dog, the worshipping coach-dog from the wor- 
 shipped horse, the friendly spaniel from the acquies- 
 cent cat. The wall is not, as we believe, difference 
 of manners, or of habits, or of modes of association, 
 for those difficulties have all been conquered by 
 officials, travellers, missionaries, and others, in 
 places like China, where the external difference is 
 
THE MENTAL SECLUSION OF INDIA 15 1 
 
 so much greater. They have, indeed, been con- 
 quered by individuals even in India itself, where 
 many men — especially missionaries, who are not 
 feared — do live in as friendly and frequent inter- 
 course with Indians, as they would with their own 
 people at home. The wall is less material than 
 that, and is raised mainly by the Indian himself 
 who, whatever his profession, or grade, or occupa- 
 tion, deliberately secludes his mind from the 
 European, with a jealous, minute, and persistent 
 care, of which probably no man not gifted with an 
 insight like that of Thackeray could succeed in 
 giving even a remote idea. He will talk easily, 
 familiarly, and if he likes his interlocutor, most 
 pleasantly, showing constantly a disposition towards 
 humour, playfulness, and even rough jocularity, 
 which, somehow, travellers never suspect, and, as 
 far as we know, have never described in natives of 
 India. A woman now and then has perceived it 
 among women, and has mentioned it : but, so far as 
 we know, no man has recorded this, the pleasantest 
 of all the many specialities in the native mind, — 
 an inexhaustible amount of grave, sweet, easily- 
 moved humorousness. But in his most facile 
 moments the Indian never unlocks his mind, never 
 puts it to yours, never reveals his real thought, 
 never stands with his real and whole character 
 confessed, like the Western European. You may 
 know a bit of it, the dominant passion, the ruling 
 temper, even the reigning prejudice, but never the 
 
X S2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 whole of it. After the intercourse of years, your 
 Indian friend knows you better, perhaps, than you 
 know yourself, especially on your weaker side ; but 
 you only know him as you know a character in a 
 second-rate novel, that is, know as much as the 
 author has been able to reveal, but never quite the 
 whole. In exceptional cases, quite exceptional, you 
 may know as much as you know of Hamlet, know 
 so much, that is, that you could write a book of 
 reflections upon the character ; but you will still be 
 aware of the supreme puzzle, that you know all of 
 Hamlet but Hamlet. This seclusion of the mind is 
 universal, runs through every grade, exists under any 
 intimacy, and is acknowledged by every thoughtful 
 European in India about those natives upon whom 
 he relies, often justifiably, with a confidence as 
 profound as his reliance upon the most trustworthy 
 of his English friends ; and we believe, on the 
 testimony of one of the few cultivated Europeans 
 who ever lived happily with a native wife, that it 
 extends to both sexes. The why of this mental 
 seclusion, the cause which induces a native of India, 
 intelligent, inquisitive, and hungry for knowledge, 
 not only able to converse, but eager to converse, 
 to keep his mind in a casket, is the single puzzle 
 of the situation which so perplexes the Times , and 
 every one of the very few Europeans who has 
 so far overcome the sense of despair and bewilder- 
 ment always excited by the immensity of the native 
 problem, as to look the perplexity fairly in the face. 
 
THE MENTAL SECLUSION OF INDIA 153 
 
 We certainly cannot solve it, though we are 
 going to state in all humility a theory in 
 which we believe, which, if correct, partly explains 
 it, and which will, at least, interest the dreamier 
 minds among our readers. We doubt if any Euro- 
 pean ever fully realizes how great the mental effect 
 of the segregativeness, the separation into atoms, of 
 Indian society, continued, as it has been, for three 
 thousand unbroken years, has actually been. We 
 speak of that society as “ divided into castes,” but it 
 is, and has always been, divided into far more 
 minute divisions or crystals, each in a way complete, 
 but each absolutely separated from its neighbour 
 by rules, laws, prejudices, traditions, and principles 
 of ceremonial purity, which, in the aggregate, form 
 impassable lines of demarcation. It is not the 
 European to whom the Indian will not reveal him- 
 self, but mankind, outside a circle usually wonder- 
 fully small, and often a single family, from whom he 
 mentally retreats. His first preoccupation in life is 
 to keep his “ caste,” his separateness, his ceremonial 
 purity, from any contact with any other equally 
 separate crystal ; and in that preoccupation, per- 
 manent and all-absorbing for thousands of years, he 
 has learnt to shroud his inner mind, till in revealing 
 it he feels as if he were revealing some shrine which 
 it is blasphemy to open, as if he had earned from 
 Heaven the misfortune he thinks sure to follow. 
 It is not “ timidity,” as the Times suggests, 
 which impels him, but an instinct of segregation, 
 
J 54 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 created partly by timidity, partly by superstition, 
 and partly by a kind of mental shrinking, the result 
 of ages, during which he has been taught, and has 
 fully believed, that only in segregation can cere- 
 monial purity, and, therefore, the favour of the 
 Superior Powers, and, therefore, Heaven, be 
 secured. The words involve a contradiction in 
 terms, but if we could imagine a Catholic priesthood 
 hereditary for two thousand years, yet always 
 trained as priests are in a good seminary, we should, 
 we fancy, find men with instinctive mental reserves, 
 reticences, concealments, silences, such as Europeans 
 note in natives of India, and such as so often render 
 even a native opinion on a native character or career 
 quite nugatory. The crystal can touch the crystal, 
 but neither can get rid of the facets which so abso- 
 lutely prohibit junction. That is true, no doubt, of 
 all minds. The loneliness of each mind is one of 
 the burdens humanity must bear with resignation ; 
 but that loneliness has been increased in the Indian 
 by the discipline of ages, until it is not an incident, 
 but the first essential of his character. 
 
The Great Arabian 
 
 The Life of Mahommed. By W. Muir, B.C.S. London : 
 Smith, Elder & Co. 
 
 ITH these two volumes Mr. Muir has 
 
 review of the former half of the work we com- 
 mented slightly on its obvious defects, an occasional 
 indifference to sound canons of evidence, and a 
 tendency to overrate the undoubted value of 
 unbroken tradition. But, reading his work as a 
 whole, we are half disposed to retract even those 
 gentle animadversions in our keen appreciation of 
 the duty he has so successfully performed. His 
 book is a distinct addition, if not to human at 
 least to English learning ; and the books of which 
 that can be said are so few, that the inclination 
 to criticize, however just, is almost forgotten in 
 the rich pleasure of new and perfected knowledge. 
 Our business just now is not with Mr. Muir, 
 but with the great Arabian whose life he has 
 undertaken to narrate, and we may therefore state 
 at once in what we conceive the special merit of 
 this biography to consist. It is not a history of Ma- 
 hommedanism, or a diatribe against Mahommed, or 
 
 worthily completed a great task. In a 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 156 
 
 even an analysis of the special influence Mahommed’s 
 opinions have exercised on the world. There are 
 books of that sort enough and to spare, and the 
 effect of them all has been to shroud the life of 
 their hero in that dim cathedral gloom which covers 
 as with a mist the lives of all great religious 
 teachers, and through which their forms and acts 
 are only fitfully apparent. The real life of the 
 man, the successive steps by which he attained 
 power, the influences which produced his opinions, 
 and the circumstances which, if they did not pro- 
 duce hhn, at least allowed full scope for his grand 
 and consecutive action, are lost in a cloud of opinions 
 till the bewildered Englishman falls back on 
 Gibbon’s imperfect but lucid narrative a.s a relief 
 from the deluge of mere commentary. It is as 
 difficult to extract any notion of Mahommed’s actual 
 life from the majority of books about him, as to 
 compile a life of Kant from the libraries written on 
 the Kantian philosophy. Mr. Muir has avoided 
 that gross mistake. His work is a real life, a life 
 as minute, as reasonable, and, with an exception 
 here and there, as impartial, as if Mahommed had 
 been only a king, a great politician, or a successful 
 leader of revolution. The development of the man 
 is shown as much as his full maturity. The slow 
 and painful efforts by which he rose to power in 
 Medina, the almost as slow operations by which 
 he first subdued and then amalgamated the clans 
 of the desert into one mighty and aggressive 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 157 
 
 dominion, are set forth with a patient accuracy, 
 which rather increases than weakens their native 
 dramatic force. The reader sees clearly, without 
 being directly taught, how far Mahommed was 
 indebted to existing circumstances, and how far 
 to his own genius, and discerns for the first time 
 the true influence of that strange personnel , slaves 
 and chiefs of clans, relatives and hereditary foes, 
 among whom the prophet had to pass his daily 
 and outer life. He comes to regard Mahommed at 
 last in his true light, as a great man, instead of a 
 mere abstraction, to predict his action in his own 
 mind as a new obstacle reveals itself, to feel some- 
 thing of that glow of personal interest with which 
 a clever boy traces the conquests of Alexander, or 
 exults and desponds with the alternating fortunes of 
 Cortez or Christopher Columbus. 
 
 To create such an impression about any man is 
 no mean triumph ; but to elicit it of Mahommed is a 
 positive gain to the generation among whom it is 
 produced. In the whole compass of knowledge, 
 looking down all that stately line of figures whose 
 mere names serve as the best landmarks of human 
 history, there is not one whose life better deserves 
 to be known, to become, as some of Shakespeare’s 
 characters have become, an integral part of thought 
 rather than a subject for thought, than that of the 
 great Arabian. That a man’s opinions should 
 circulate widely, survive himself, and help to modify 
 human action for ages after he is forgotten, is, 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 158 
 
 though a wonderful, not an infrequent, phenomenon. 
 That a man, obscure in all but birth, brought up 
 among an unlettered race, with no learning and no 
 material resources, should by sheer force of genius 
 extinguish idolatry through a hundred tribes, unite 
 them into one vast aggressive movement, and, dying, 
 leave to men who were not his children the mastery 
 of the Oriental world, — even this career, however 
 wondrous, is not absolutely unique. But that a man 
 of this kind, living humbly among his equals, should 
 stamp on their minds the conviction that he whom 
 they saw eat, and drink, and sleep, and commit 
 blunders, was the vicegerent of the Almighty ; 
 that his system should survive himself for twelve 
 centuries as a living missionary force ; 1 that it 
 should not merely influence but utterly remould 
 one-fourth of the human race, and that fourth the 
 unchangeable one ; that it should after twelve 
 centuries still be so vital that an Asiatic, base 
 to a degree no European can comprehend, should 
 still, if appealed to in the name of Mahommed, start 
 up a hero, fling away life with a glad laugh of 
 exultation, or risk a throne to defend a guest ; that 
 after that long period, when its stateliest empires 
 have passed away, and its greatest achievements 
 
 1 Mahommedanism is still widely propagated in India and Africa. 
 In Africa it is marching south, and in India its gains are supposed 
 to counterbalance its losses everywhere else. In Bengal alone the 
 converts number thousands yearly, and one of the most serious 
 dangers of the Government arises from the frantic zeal of the new 
 converts made by the Ferazee Mussulmans. 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 J 59 
 
 have been forgotten, it should still be the only 
 force able to hurl Western Asia on the iron civiliza- 
 tion of Europe ; this indeed is a phenomenon men 
 of every creed and generation will at least be wise 
 to consider. What this Mahommed was, and what 
 he did, is a question the masters of the second 
 Mahommedan kingdom may well think as important 
 as Pompey’s intrigues or Diocletian’s policy, and it 
 is this which Mr. Muir has enabled them for the 
 first time fully to comprehend. There is much to 
 be told besides, and libraries will yet be exhausted 
 in the description of all the effects which this man’s 
 life produced on the world ; but of the life itself, of 
 the manner of man Mahommed was, of the deeds 
 he really did, and of the things he can be proved 
 to have said, no man who can read Mr. Muir’s 
 book need henceforward remain ignorant. We 
 shall, we believe, best serve our readers if we 
 reduce for them, into a few pages, some idea of 
 the life of the great man who is here presented. 
 Our object in so doing, like Mr. Muir’s, will not 
 be to analyse opinions, except so far as they are 
 indispensable to a true comprehension of his acts, 
 but to give succinctly an accurate account of his 
 career, passing somewhat lightly over the history 
 already well known to Europeans, and depicting 
 more in detail those facts which intervened between 
 his assumption of supernatural knowledge and the 
 complete success of his mission — an interval of which 
 the popular histories make one unintelligible jumble. 
 
i6o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Throughout, it is as the great Arabian — the character 
 in which he is not known, and not as the prophet, 
 the character in which he is known — that we intend 
 to consider him. 
 
 Mahommed was born at Mecca in the autumn of 
 the year 570 a.d. ; the posthumous son of Abdallah, 
 a younger son of the hereditary chief of the Koreish 
 clan, and therefore of the highest and purest blood 
 possible in Arabia, of the only blood, in fact, in 
 which resided any claim, however slight, to supe- 
 riority throughout the entire peninsula. English- 
 men, deceived by the epithet “ camel-driver,” so 
 often applied to Mahommed, are accustomed to con- 
 sider him low-born, and, indeed, so greatly underrate 
 both his own position and that of his country, that 
 it is necessary to expend a few words in showing to 
 what he really was born. Arabia, then, is not what 
 Englishmen habitually conceive it to be, a mere 
 sandy desert, flat as sands generally are, traversed 
 by bands of half-starved horsemen, with two little 
 but sacred cities, and a port which an English 
 frigate can reduce to reason by a bombardment. It 
 is a vast, though secluded, peninsula, with an area 
 100,000 square miles greater than that of Europe 
 west of the Vistula — greater, that is, than the terri- 
 tories of four of the five Powers, with Germany, 
 Spain, Portugal, Greece, Scandinavia, Poland, and 
 Italy added thereto. This enormous region, so far 
 from being a mere sandy plain, is traversed by high 
 ranges of mountains, filled with broad plateaus, 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 161 
 
 many of them as wide as European kingdoms, and 
 full of magnificent, though dreary and awe-inspiring, 
 scenery. The highest Arab tribes — and the point 
 is one too often forgotten — are mountaineers ; share 
 in the fervid imagination, the brooding and melan- 
 choly thought, which have in all ages distinguished 
 men bred on the higher regions of the earth. Even 
 the aridity of the soil of Arabia, though great, is, as a 
 political fact, seriously exaggerated, partly because the 
 districts nearest to civilization are the worst, partly 
 because travellers select the winter for explorations 
 — a time when even the fertile plains of Upper India 
 look hideously desolate ; but chiefly because the 
 European mind has a difficulty in realizing territorial 
 vastness, or comprehending how enormous may be 
 the aggregate of patches of cultivation spread over 
 a peninsula like Arabia. When, some few years 
 ago, the Governor of Aden was permitted to visit 
 Lahej, he, filled like all other Englishmen with the 
 “ idea ” of Arabia, was startled to find himself, only 
 a few miles from his own crackling cinders, amidst 
 pleasant corn-lands and smiling villages, in which 
 dwelt a population showing every sign of prosperity 
 and content. There are thousands of such spots in 
 Arabia, to which the eternal boundary of the desert 
 blinds all but the keenest observers. In such oases, 
 scattered over the broad plateaus and down the arid 
 slopes, and amidst the half-watered valleys, dwelt, 
 in the time of Mahommed, a series of clans, divided 
 politically as much as the modern nations of Europe. 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 What the aggregate of their numbers may have 
 been is a point which for ages to come must 
 remain uncertain. Orientals object to counting, and 
 similes derived from the stars and the sands by the 
 sea-shore satisfy only the imagination. Burckhardt 
 believed them to be fourteen millions, and, tried by 
 the only test observers can apply, that number is 
 within the truth. It is nearly certain, that at one 
 time during the second great outflow to conquer the 
 world, Arabia had more than a million and a hah 
 of her children scattered over Western Asia and the 
 shores of the Mediterranean. They colonized 
 wherever they conquered ; and from Syria to 
 Tetuan, through a belt of country a thousand miles 
 in depth, the basis of the population is still Arabian. 
 It may be affirmed safely that no race that ever 
 existed ever sent ten per cent, of its resident popula- 
 tion to battle at once. The convention, when France 
 was in its death-grapple with all Europe, never mus- 
 tered, on paper, more than a million of men round 
 her standards, or four per cent, of her population. 
 Allowing for the impulse of poverty as stronger in 
 Arabia than in France, we cannot set the population 
 of the peninsula at less than fifteen millions, while it 
 is more than probable that it greatly exceeded that 
 number. This population dwelt, when it could, in 
 fenced cities and strong defensible villages, a section 
 only living in tents and the desert. The clans 
 fought, and negotiated for plunder or territory ; but 
 their wars, though constant and bloody, were not 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 163 
 
 internecine, and it was an understood rule that 
 conquerors should not injure property more than 
 they could help, fill wells, or cut down palm-trees. 
 They had, moreover, some strong bonds of national 
 cohesion. The tribes all spoke one tongue. The 
 great majority either were, or fancied themselves to 
 be, of one blood. They had one form of worship 
 — a cult, not a creed — which compelled them to 
 regard Mecca as sacred, and the Koreish, as the 
 guardians of the sacred territory, as the highest 
 among mankind. Above all, they had but one 
 character and one social system. They were not 
 divided by the democratic idea and the aristocratic 
 idea, by religious feeling or sceptical feeling, by an 
 antagonism of races or a conflict of classes. Every 
 Arab was, in essentials, like every other : full of 
 poetry and sentiment, with the greediness which, 
 among poverty-stricken races, is a passion ; with a 
 knowledge of traditionary history, and consequently 
 an ingrained reverence for pedigree ; brave, accus- 
 tomed to arms, and carrying the point of honour — 
 revenge for insult or injury to the clan — almost to 
 ferocity. All united, too, in the moral necessity of 
 maintaining the neutrality of Mecca, and in respect- 
 ing the blood of Maadd, the chieftain who, just one 
 thousand years before, had rebuilt the power of a 
 house which stretched back straight to Ishmael, and 
 dying, left Mecca to the descendants whom the 
 Arabs call the Koreish. 
 
 Mahommed, therefore, as the son of Abdallah son 
 
164 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of Abdul Mutalik, chief of the clan Koreish, was 
 simply a cadet of the highest aristocracy in a land of 
 aristocrats, a man of the only tribe from which 
 princes could be expected to come ; a man at least 
 as well born as the descendants of any house in 
 Europe not actually on a throne. Poverty, it must 
 be remembered, does not in Asia affect pedigree. A 
 Brahmin begging is greater than a Sudra reigning ; 
 and, though born poor himself, Mahommed stood 
 from his birth armoured in wealthy relatives and 
 highly placed kinsmen. The child was born after his 
 father’s death, and, according to a custom still pre- 
 valent in Arabia among the population of the cities, 
 was sent at once into the desert to breathe a freer 
 air, and lived for five years with a wandering tribe 
 called by the Arabs the Sons of Saad. In the fifth 
 year, Halima, his foster-mother, though fond of the 
 child, was frightened by some symptoms of epilepsy, 
 and restored him to his mother Amina; but Ma- 
 hommed never forgot the kindness he had received. 
 Thirty years afterwards, when he had become com- 
 paratively wealthy, he raised Halima from her 
 poverty, and, after the lapse of half a century, the 
 appeal of his foster-father instantly sufficed to release 
 his clan, while his adopted relatives were offered 
 wealth and position at their will. The only recorded 
 incident of his childhood, apart from legends, was a 
 visit to Medina with his mother ; a visit which 
 stamped itself so strongly on his memory, that at 
 fifty he remembered every detail. On her return she 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 165 
 
 died, leaving Mahommed, still a child, to the care of 
 his grandfather, Abdul Mutalik. The latter speedily 
 followed, and all power in Mecca passed to another 
 branch of the Koreish, and away from his own imme- 
 diate connexions. A wealthy and powerful uncle, 
 however, Abu Talib, took charge of the boy, and 
 became so attached to him that, after a life passed 
 in struggles on his behalf, his last words were a 
 prayer to his kinsmen to protect his nephew. With 
 this uncle he made a journey into Syria, then a 
 nominally Christian country, and took some part in 
 a feud called the Sacrilegious War, because it began 
 in the holy month, and violated, in the end, the 
 sacred territory. Every year, too, he was present 
 at the annual fair attended by Christians from Syria, 
 Jews from the neighbourhood, and representatives 
 of all the tribes of Arabia ; and listened, as he tells 
 us in the Koran, to the eloquent preaching of the 
 Syrian Bishop Koss, and to the orators of the tribes 
 as they contended with each other for the palm of 
 eloquence. He was present also at a scene which, 
 if he had not himself proscribed all art, his followers 
 in after ages would have loved to paint. Owing to 
 the absence of any central authority, Mecca was full 
 of disorder, and the heads of four sub-clans of the 
 Koreish, tired of the misery before them, met to- 
 gether at night, with Mahommed in their midst, and 
 swore “by the avenging Deity to take the part of 
 the oppressed, and see his claim fulfilled so long as 
 a drop of water remained in the ocean, or to satisfy 
 
i66 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 the claim from their own resources.” Mahommed in 
 after life declared that he would not lose the recol- 
 lection of having been present when that oath was 
 taken for the choicest camel in all Arabia. Though 
 thus admitted to council in right of his birth, his 
 daily work was that of a shepherd, an office then 
 deemed honourable, and, by his own account, he 
 was singularly free from vice of every kind. The 
 silent, lonely life must have done much to strengthen 
 a mind naturally tender, and increase that habit of 
 brooding thought to which he was addicted through 
 life, and for which he had presently an ampler 
 opportunity. 
 
 Mahommed was twenty-five years old before any 
 change took place in his career ; and there is no 
 reason to believe that his opinions were in the 
 smallest degree in advance of those entertained by 
 the same class of his countrymen. He was then 
 asked by his uncle to take charge of a caravan, 
 which Khadijah, a wealthy widow of their house, 
 was about to despatch to Syria. He accepted the 
 office, and travelled to Bostra, a place about sixty 
 miles beyond the Jordan, whence he returned with- 
 out adventure, and with a fair but moderate profit 
 of cent, per cent, on the caravan. None of this profit 
 was for himself; but during the journey he had 
 gained something more valuable than his salary. 
 That royal sweetness of nature which from boyhood 
 distinguished Mahommed had so impressed a slave 
 attached to the caravan, that, on his return, he 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 167 
 
 besought his leader to present himself to the widow, 
 with the tidings of his successful merchandise. The 
 slave himself never tired of sounding the praises of 
 the handsome agent, and Khadijah, a comely widow, 
 fell deeply in love with him. She is said by Arabs 
 to have been forty ; but as she subsequently bore 
 him six children, her age has been probably exag- 
 gerated. She gained her father’s consent while he 
 was tipsy, and offered Mahommed marriage, and his 
 instant acceptance raised him at once to a place 
 among the wealthy men of the city. The union was 
 a happy one for thirty years. Khadijah left him 
 entirely to his meditations, relieving him of all cares 
 of business ; and Mahommed, giving full swing to his 
 natural temperament, wandered incessantly among 
 the mountains which overlook Mecca, feeding his 
 heart with reverie. None but those who have lived 
 long among Asiatics can understand how an Oriental 
 mind can brood over an idea. It is perhaps the 
 most marked distinction between him and the 
 Western man : the European thinks, the Oriental 
 only reflects, and if left to himself the idea, turned 
 over and over endlessly in his mind, hardens into 
 the consistency of steel. Thenceforward it is part 
 of the fibre of his mind, something on which argu- 
 ment is lost, on which he at all times, and in all 
 circumstances, bases immediate action. Mahommed 
 had not, as the popular histories aver, given himself 
 up to inquiries into Christianity and Judaism, nor is 
 there any evidence that he ever talked with a 
 
i68 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Christian monk named Sergius or Nestorius, nor 
 had he ever been taught by a follower of the Jewish 
 Scripture ; but he had from his earliest days been 
 surrounded by the Jewish tribes settled in Arabia, 
 and had learnt vaguely and imperfectly their more 
 imaginative traditions, derived, it would seem, from 
 the source whence Josephus derived his antiquities. 
 We conjecture this from the frequent recurrence of 
 names which exist in Josephus’s account, and not in 
 the Law he professed to follow. He had also talked 
 with Christian slaves, particularly an acute Greek, 
 who became a disciple ; and his mind brooded over 
 the possibility of reconciling these creeds with the 
 pagan cult of Arabia. Gradually, perhaps very 
 early, a horror of idol-worship arose in his mind, a 
 belief in one true, impersonal, and absolute Deity, 
 so strong and vivid as to colour his entire future 
 life. How long his faith was in development, he 
 has not informed us ; but, once developed, it took 
 entire possession of his mind. Brooding for months 
 in solitude on the tops of the Hira range, he gradu- 
 ally obtained that ecstatic conviction, which in better 
 creeds their followers term conversion, and with 
 that conviction came the impression that it had 
 been given for a purpose ; that he had been selected 
 to become the Messenger of the Most High, to 
 preach the unity of the Godhead unto all mankind. 
 Thenceforward he esteemed himself a specially 
 chosen instrument, one whose reveries were revela- 
 tions ; and throughout his further life, under the 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 169 
 
 most extreme temptation, and in the darkest adver- 
 sity, Mahommed never for a moment swerved from 
 his central belief : “ God is the God : I am the Sent 
 of God.” When, years after, he lay hidden in a 
 cave, with the footsteps of his pursuers sounding 
 overhead, and Abu Bekr his only companion, he 
 cheered his friend with the calm assurance that 
 though they were but two, God was the third. 
 When a great tribe offered to follow him, and give 
 him the sway of a third of Arabia if he would leave 
 to its chief some section of authority, he calmly 
 answered, “ Not one green date.” How could 
 authority be shared with the Messenger of the Most 
 High ? This, and not the doctrine ot conversion 
 by the sword, was what he announced to his house- 
 hold ; and it is perhaps the most marvellous fact in 
 his history, that the three nearest to him, nearer 
 than any valet ever was to his master, accepted his 
 assurance of Divine commission. Khadijah his 
 wife, Ali his nephew, and Zeid his freedman, 
 believed in his mission, treasured up the bursts of 
 mystic poetry in which his first convictions were 
 expressed, and after twenty years of suffering, pro- 
 tracted through every conceivable variety of disaster, 
 remained steadfast in the faith that this man was 
 verily sent of God. 
 
 It was in the forty-fourth year of his age (a.d. 
 614) that Mahommed first announced to the sneering 
 Meccans that God had elected him Prophet of a 
 Faith, which as its first step involved their secular 
 
170 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ruin. Their importance depended on their char- 
 acter as hereditary guardians of Ozza and Lat, the 
 two idols of the sacred shrine. If idolatry were a 
 crime their office ended, and with it their rank in 
 Arabia, the rich tribute of the tribes, the gains of 
 the central mart, and the incalculable advantage 
 of the one city which no Arab dared attack. In 
 exchange for this they were offered an idea ; for the 
 elevation of Mecca was not Mahommed’s original 
 intention — he rather leaned to Jerusalem. They 
 sneered carelessly, for Mahommed was too strongly 
 protected to be attacked, but they rejected him 
 without any very great excitement or attention. 
 Some few, however, chiefly among his own con- 
 nexions, confided in him, ignorant that many, in 
 accepting his statements, accepted also thrones and 
 places in the front rank of human history. Abu 
 Bekr, a chief of the Beni Saym, a sub-clan of the 
 Koreish, listened to the new revelation gladly, and 
 lived and died — refugee, soldier, vizier, and caliph 
 — always the bosom friend and believing disciple ol 
 his kinsman. Saad, the next disciple, was a nephew 
 of Mahommed’s mother, Amina ; Zoheir, the next, a 
 nephew of Khadijah ; Othman, the next, a grandson 
 of Abdul Mutalik, Mahommed’s grandfather; and 
 Abdul Ruhaman, the fifth, was of the Beni Zohra, 
 Amina’s clan. Numerous slaves also announced 
 their adhesion to the new opinions. Abu Bekr 
 exhausted great wealth for an Arab in purchasing 
 slaves who had been persecuted for their admira- 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 171 
 
 tion of Mahommed, and from that day to this Islam 
 has been distinguished by its adherence to one high 
 principle. The slave who embraces Islam is free ; 
 not simply a freed man, but a free citizen, the equal 
 of all save the Sultan, competent de facto as well as 
 de jure to all and every office in the state. The 
 total number was few, not five score ; but after four 
 years of preaching it had become sufficient to 
 arouse discontent and enmity. The Koreish dared 
 not attack Mahommed himself, for he was protected 
 by his relatives ; but they jeered at him, and 
 threatened the disciples, who one by one dropped 
 into the little house where he preached, still called 
 the House of Islam, and took the oath of allegiance 
 to the one God and his Messenger. So fierce 
 became the persecution, that Mahommed sent some 
 of his followers to Abyssinia, and even tried by a 
 momentary concession to idolatry to gain them pro- 
 tection from assault. The Meccans heard with 
 delight that he had named Ozza and Lat, the two 
 great idols, as intercessors before the Throne ; but 
 the weakness lasted only a few days, and the storm, 
 intensified by disappointment, raged more violently 
 than ever. His uncle, Abu Talib, was compelled to 
 threaten all who should attack him with death ; and 
 when, in the sixth year of his preaching, two power- 
 ful citizens, Omar and Hamza, professed themselves 
 disciples, even his influence could not restrain the 
 Koreish from proceeding to extremities. They 
 solemnly placed all the descendants of Hashim, 
 
172 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Mahommed’s great-grandfather, under the ban, re- 
 fused to intermarry with them, or trade with them, 
 or supply them with food, and drove then en masse 
 into the quartier occupied by the relatives and 
 descendants of Abu Talib. There they were cut off 
 from the city, none venturing to sell them anything 
 except by stealth, and none of them daring to go 
 out except during the holy month, when Mecca was 
 a sanctuary to all Arabs. In this imprisonment the 
 Prophet and his followers remained three years, until 
 his enemies, wearied out, accepted the accidental 
 destruction of the paper on which the ban was 
 written as a sign that God willed the interdict to 
 be lifted. The release, however, was followed by 
 the deaths of Khadijah and Abu Talib, and at the 
 end of the tenth year of his ministry Mahommed 
 found himself with his means diminished, his band 
 of followers not increased, his protector dead, and the 
 Koreish at last apparently at liberty to extirpate his 
 disciples. In this extremity he resolved on an 
 enterprise which, we agree with Mr. Muir, would 
 alone suffice to prove his own belief in his mission. 
 Followed only by Zeid, he set out for Tayif, a city 
 sixty or seventy miles from Mecca, inhabited by 
 pagans of a peculiarly bigoted character, and boldly 
 appealed to its people for aid, protection, and belief. 
 They stoned him out of the city, and he returned 
 to Mecca wounded and defeated, calmly repeating 
 to himself, “ Thy anger, O Lord, alone I dread.” 
 The Koreish were exulting in the certainty of 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 173 
 
 victory, when aid suddenly appeared in another 
 quarter. 
 
 In the season of pilgrimage, a.d. 620, Mahommed, 
 who always preached to the crowds which at that 
 season gathered from all parts to Mecca, had 
 attracted the regard of a few pilgrims from the rival 
 though inferior city of Medina. The Jews were 
 powerful in Medina, and the idolaters there had 
 gathered from them a vague idea that a mighty 
 prophet was at hand, whom it was advisable for the 
 idolaters speedily to conciliate. Five or six of them 
 took Mahommed to be the prophet expected, and they 
 promised on the next pilgrimage to bring him more 
 of their brethren. Time is nothing in the East, 
 where nothing ever occurs ; but that year must have 
 been a weary one to the Prophet and his followers. 
 It passed away, however, and at the next pilgrimage 
 the number of the Medinese was doubled, and twelve 
 converts took the oath of allegiance to Mahommed. 
 Again they were sent home, and again Mahommed, 
 with the stolid patience which in Europe belongs 
 only to the greatest, and in Asia to everybody, 
 waited through the year in peace. He even inter- 
 mitted preaching, keeping his followers in heart by 
 occasional revelations, and confirming his own 
 authority by the distinct announcement, “ Whoso 
 obeyeth not God and His Prophet, verily to him shall 
 be the fire of hell,” — a declaration almost superb in 
 its pride when the circumstances are considered. 
 The men who were to obey it were his own kins- 
 
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 men, men who had known him from his youth up, 
 who lived with him almost in imprisonment in Abu 
 Talib’s quartier, among whom he ate and slept, and 
 had begun to marry wives, to whom his demeanour 
 in every hour of the day was thoroughly known. 
 Twelve years of Mahommed’s preaching, eight of 
 their fidelity, had brought them nothing except 
 injury to their substance, and the hatred of their 
 relatives ; they had no conceivable chance of earthly 
 power, and most of them little chance of escaping 
 the Koreish. Yet here, in the midst of their tribu- 
 lation, while still sick with longing for aid from a dis- 
 tant and inferior city, Mahommed asserted authority 
 without limit or bound, and was cheerfully, even 
 eagerly, obeyed. The year passed at last, and this 
 time a numerous band, seventy-three men in all, met 
 him from Medina, and in the dead of night, in the 
 stony valley of Akaba, swore to obey Mahommed, and 
 protect him with their lives. Great precautions had 
 been taken to insure secrecy ; but the Koreish heard 
 of the meeting, and pursued the retiring Medinese. 
 They returned, however, from a fruitless expedition, 
 and in a few days Mahommed gave the command, 
 “ Depart unto Medina.” 
 
 Secretly, by twos and threes, his disciples left the 
 city ; and as house after house was deserted, and 
 quartier after quartier became vacant, the Koreish 
 looked on with amaze. Themselves an aristocracy, 
 they could not comprehend the faith which induced 
 wealthy men of high blood to go forth penniless 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 175 
 
 to a distant and usually hostile city, 250 miles away, 
 at the bidding of one no greater than themselves. 
 Mahommed stayed to the last ; and it was not till a 
 rumour reached him that the Koreish had resolved 
 on his death, that he and his faithful Abu Bekr fled 
 from Mecca. Fearful of pursuit, they ascended the 
 mountain Thaur, and there lived three days, hunted 
 by the Koreish, who at one time passed over the 
 cave in which they lay concealed, and fed by a 
 shepherd formerly in Abu Bekr’s employ. On the 
 third night, June 23, 622, the Prophet commenced 
 his ride, and reached Medina in safety with his 
 friend. His family, and that of Abu Bekr, remained 
 in Mecca, protected by the strong clans to which 
 they belonged, until they also set out for Medina, 
 and the Hegira — the Flight, from which one-sixth 
 of the population of earth compute time — was at 
 last complete. Eight years of public preaching 
 and teaching the unity of God had ended in this, 
 the flight of the Prophet from the city in which his 
 ancestors reigned, with the loss of his patrimony 
 and that of his scanty following. 
 
 The points on which this narrative differs from 
 those commonly circulated will be at once perceived. 
 The legendary element is in the first place entirely 
 struck out. The miraculous light which shone from 
 Amina, the long conversations with Nestorius, the 
 spider’s web woven across the entrance of the cave 
 on Mount Thaur, and a hundred stories of like 
 character, which only distract attention from the 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 176 
 
 true facts of his career, are entirely omitted. On 
 the other hand, the element of time, which figures 
 so strongly in real life, and has so little influence 
 on fiction, is once more restored to its legitimate 
 place. Mahommed was for three years assured of his 
 own mission before he ventured to preach, and four 
 before he had made a convert beyond Khadijah, 
 Ali and Zeid. He was six years striving in vain 
 to convince the citizens of Mecca before he made 
 any offer to the men of Medina, and then he waited 
 two more to organize their assistance, and fled at 
 last rather for the sake of his followers and his faith 
 than for his own. His own life was probably in 
 
 no especial danger. Had he been put to death, all 
 the sons of Abdul Mutalik, and all the descendants 
 of Hashim, all the relations of Khadijah, and all 
 the kinsmen of Abu Bekr, four strong houses out of 
 the ruling clan, would have pursued the murderers 
 to the destruction of themselves and their kinsmen. 
 A sense of this danger was never wholly absent 
 from the minds of the Koreish, who, moreover, 
 always received the slightest concession from Ma- 
 hommed with undisguised exultation. The real 
 marvel is not in his safety, which was protected by 
 the social system of Mecca, but in the amazing con- 
 stancy which induced him year after year through 
 the whole maturity of manhood to struggle on, pro- 
 claiming his Divine mission, preaching the unity of 
 God, and demanding obedience to His prophets, 
 confirming the faith of his followers, strengthening 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 177 
 
 the weak, speaking kindly to the few backsliders, 
 every day building up a dominion over their hearts 
 which, in all the changes of his career, never grew 
 feeble, which induced them, as we shall see, to pour 
 out their lives like water, and, most wonderful of 
 all, compelled them after his death to sacrifice them- 
 selves in defence of the truth of his pretensions. 
 To suppose that such influence was ever wielded 
 by a man who did not believe in himself, is to us 
 an absurd stretch of credulity, and his personal 
 power indicates at once the character Mahommed 
 must have borne. Authority of that kind is given 
 only to one class of men, the leader in whom immu- 
 table will makes the manner gentle and the speech 
 kindly, while it confers also that grave dignity and 
 that consistent habit of thought before which the 
 mass of men bend as easily as clay to the potter. 
 And this we find to have been the character univer- 
 sally ascribed to Mahommed. Mr. Muir, who is no 
 apologist, speaks repeatedly of the gentle stateliness 
 which was his first obvious attribute, as it is that 
 of all men whom God intends for princes — 
 
 A remarkable feature was the urbanity and consideration with 
 which Mahommed treated even the most insignificant of his fol- 
 lowers. Modesty and kindness, patience, self-denial and gene- 
 rosity, pervaded his conduct, and riveted the affections of all 
 around him. He disliked to say No ; if unable to reply to a 
 petitioner in the affirmative, he preferred to remain silent. . . . 
 He possessed the rare faculty of making each individual in a 
 company think that he was the most favoured guest. When he 
 met any one rejoicing, he would seize him eagerly and cordially 
 
 N 
 
1? 8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 by the hand. With the bereaved and afflicted he sympathized 
 tenderly. Gentle and unbending towards little children, he would 
 not disdain to accost a group of them at play with the salutation 
 of peace. He shared his food, even in times of scarcity, with 
 others ; and was sedulously solicitous for the personal comfort of 
 every one about him. A kindly and benevolent disposition 
 pervades all these illustrations of his character. 
 
 Ten years of command and self-restraint do not 
 diminish dignity ; and Mahommed rode into Medina, 
 in all things fulfilling the highest Oriental ideal of 
 the true king. Tall and spare, and of amazing 
 strength, with his cheek still ruddy, and his beard 
 falling in black waves just streaked with silver to 
 his waist, his manner soft to feminine grace, his eye 
 black, restless, and slightly bloodshot, and his gait 
 that of one who ascends a hill, i.e. firm but spring- 
 ing, he must have looked as fit to be a leader of 
 men as any the Arabs had ever seen. Add to these 
 advantages, birth derived from the sacred race, the 
 unhesitating devotion of a small but long-tried band, 
 a widespread fame throughout Arabia, some political 
 popularity in Medina, and a claim to authority men 
 could not even examine, much less question, and we 
 have some idea of the true position of Mahommed 
 as the so-called “ powerless fugitive ” rode into the 
 city, which had turned out its population in mingled 
 curiosity and awe. 
 
 The first half of the life of Mahommed was com- 
 pleted, and also the first half of his religion. Up to 
 this time he preached only a faith, but henceforward 
 he was to pile upon this a cult, a series of observ- 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 179 
 
 ances, and many laws which had no necessary bear- 
 ing upon religion at all. He merged the prophet in 
 the legislator, and it is as the legislator that in 
 Europe he has been most harshly judged. His 
 creed, as evolved at Mecca, had a majestic sim- 
 plicity, lost to Europeans in their unconscious con- 
 fusion between creed and laws. It may be summed 
 up in a dozen lines. Mahommedanism, stripped of its 
 accessories, is pure theism, enjoining justice, brother- 
 hood among the faithful, abstinence from breaches 
 of the universal moral law, the sexual law partially 
 excepted, and persistent and regular public prayer. 
 That is the substance of Islam, the only creed 
 essential to Mussulman salvation, the only law 
 binding upon the soul. An active Moslem ought 
 also to perform his social duties, to obey the Caliph, 
 to defend the faith by arms, to bind himself under 
 some few ceremonial laws. But all the doctors 
 agree that he who observes only the precepts just 
 quoted, as, for example, a cripple, will still be saved; 
 that the remainder are the ornaments of Islam rather 
 than its foundation. The notion of an inevitable 
 fate, of a power before which human effort is power- 
 less, and which is now universal in the Mahommedan 
 world, was no idea of the prophet. He doubtless 
 caused it by the excessive rigour with which he 
 pressed upon his followers the notion of the 
 immediate and incessant application of the Divine 
 power to earthly affairs, — a notion which makes the 
 strong Puritan doubly energetic, but inclines the 
 
i8o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 weaker Asiatic to indolent acquiescence, — but it 
 was no theory of the Koran. 
 
 Europeans will readily perceive wherein this 
 scheme falls short of perfect religious harmony. 
 As a religion for the soul, Mahommedanism is too 
 negative, fails to meet the inherent sense of sin, 
 and entirely omits the great correlative of benevo- 
 lence, love to God, as a motive to action. By 
 Asiatics, however, who consider that love and 
 obedience are not so much cause and effect as 
 absolutely synonymous, this deficiency is rarely 
 felt; and in all other respects Islam, as a creed, 
 is an enormous advance, not only on all idolatries, 
 but on all systems of purely human origin. It 
 utterly roots out idolatry, and restores the one ever- 
 living God to His true place, if not in the heart at 
 least in the imagination and reverence of mankind. 
 It establishes the principle, not indeed of benevo- 
 lence towards all God’s creatures, but of benevolence 
 towards all who have deserved it by expressing their 
 faith in the one true Deity. It prohibits all the 
 universally recognized crimes save one, makes 
 temperance a religious obligation, and finally re- 
 leases its followers at once and for ever from the 
 burden of a cult, of a law which made ceremonial 
 observance a source or condition of salvation. 
 Prayer does not become a ceremony because it is 
 fixed for stated times, and the Koran never intended 
 it should degenerate into a form. Other ceremony 
 in Islam there was none, circumcision being nowhere 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 181 
 
 ordained, and only retained by the Moslem in imi- 
 tation of their pagan ancestors. It is doubtful 
 whether Mahommed was circumcised himself ; and 
 the learned reasons assigned by commentators for 
 Mahommed’s adoption of this rite are just so many 
 exercises of mistaken ingenuity. 
 
 There remains one other point which in Europe 
 is considered, justly enough, a dogma of Islam, — 
 the duty of extending the faith by force. This, 
 however, formed no part of the doctrine as preached 
 at Mecca. It is very doubtful whether Mahommed 
 had ever thought out his terrible sentence, — the 
 sword is the key of heaven and hell ; the dogma 
 which, chiming in as it does with the fierce 
 courage of the bravest Asiatic races, and adding 
 to “ the triumph and the vanity, the rapture of the 
 strife,” the grandeur of moral well-doing, has proved 
 the political safeguard of the Mussulman tribes, 
 urging them onwards perpetually to broader 
 dominion, and enabling them, when defeated, to 
 die fighting in the assured hope of a sensual immor- 
 tality. It is quite certain that at Mecca Mahommed 
 never issued the command in any distinct form, and 
 that he hoped against hope, for twelve long years, 
 to succeed by the simple massiveness of his doctrine 
 and the eloquence of his own tongue. It was in all 
 probability not till the resort of the Koreish to force 
 made him doubt whether argument would hence- 
 forward be even accessible to them, that the thought 
 of compulsion, of arguments addressed to the fears 
 
182 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 instead of the reason, flashed across his mind. The 
 idea, however, was developed fullgrown, for the 
 Sura which recommended the first war with Mecca 
 promised also paradise to him who fell in arms; and 
 of all the revelations this was the one most eagerly 
 believed. It is to this day the last which a sceptical 
 Mahommedan doubts, and it exercises a power over 
 inferior races almost as extraordinary as the sway 
 Christian truth can sometimes obtain. It is related 
 of Tippoo’s Hindoo converts, 70,000 of whom were 
 made Mussulmans by force in a single day, that this 
 was the doctrine they accepted with their hearts ; 
 and at the siege of Seringapatam they courted death 
 in scores : men utterly lost to every call of honour, 
 or patriotism, or family affection, whose only occu- 
 pation is eating, and whose only recreation is 
 woman, still thrill with excitement at the summons 
 for the faith, and meet death with a contempt the 
 Red Indian could only envy. In the recent war in 
 Upper India even the Highlanders wavered as the 
 Ghazees flung themselves on their bayonets ; and 
 the Moplahs have been known to yell with exulta- 
 tion as the bayonets passed through them far 
 enough to allow their short knives to stab deep. 
 The promulgation of this order marked the com- 
 pletion of a political rather than a religious position. 
 Mahommed could add nothing to his power as prince : 
 no compact with his people, no conceivable subtilty 
 of legislation, no fanaticism of loyalty, could invest 
 him with anything but a faint shadow of the 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 183 
 
 despotic power which must appertain to a recognized 
 vicegerent of God. But the additional belief that 
 death in war is an instant passport to heaven turned 
 all his followers into willing conscripts, and war into 
 the most solemn and most sacred of ordinary duties. 
 Imagine the Puritan soldiers convinced, not only 
 that their cause was favoured of God, but that 
 Cromwell was His vicegerent, and that the Day of 
 Judgement could never arrive for the soldier slain 
 in battle, and we gain some idea of the spirit in 
 which the first followers of Mahommed advanced 
 to the conflict with the infidels. 
 
 Mahommed arrived in the outskirts of Medina on 
 June 28, a.d. 622, and after a halt of a few days to 
 ascertain the state of opinion in the town, he entered 
 the city on a Friday — a day thenceforward set apart 
 for public worship throughout the Moslem world ; 
 and throwing the reins on the neck of his camel, A 1 
 Caswa, bade her seek her resting-place through the 
 rejoicing crowds. A 1 Caswa halted in an open 
 courtyard, and Mahommed descended and marked 
 out the site for his first house, and the mosque in 
 which pilgrims to Medina still recall his flight. He 
 did not, of course, though it is often asserted, 
 assume any power over Medina. The dislocated 
 social condition universal throughout Arabia enabled 
 him to exercise the direct and sole sovereignty over 
 his own followers ; and their attachment, his own 
 popularity, and the mysterious awe with which he 
 began to be regarded, gave him vast influence over 
 
184 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 the inhabitants ; but of direct authority he had 
 scarcely any. Each tribe governed itself. The 
 two strongest, the Beni Khazraj and the Beni Aws, 
 were passively favourable, but he had frequently to 
 conciliate them, and Abdallah, the chieftain of the 
 first-named clan, regarded him with strong jealousy 
 and disfavour. He would have been prince of 
 Medina but for Mahommed’s arrival, and though he 
 remained through life an ally, he pressed his influ- 
 ence arrogantly, and has the honour of being the only 
 man who ever turned Mahommed from a declared 
 purpose. The remaining tribes seem to have been 
 friendly, with the exception of the Jews, who were 
 numerous and powerful, and who gradually became 
 objects of intense dislike to Mahommed. He had 
 once entertained the idea of taking them into his 
 religious system, and he made on his arrival a 
 covenant with one tribe, granting them privileges 
 very similar to those enjoyed in aftertimes by the 
 Jews of Cordova. He soon, however, when in 
 actual contact with them, discovered what so many 
 princes had discovered before, that Judaism cannot 
 by its very nature coalesce with any other creed, and 
 the revelations gradually became hostile to their 
 claims. The Jews fell back entirely; and as Ma- 
 hommed had not discovered the second truth, that 
 force applied to Jews is waste of power, he assumed 
 a position of open hostility to the tribes. 
 
 This, however, is an anticipation. For the first 
 six months after his arrival he busied himself with 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 185 
 
 the organization of his faith. The practice of lus- 
 tration was regularly introduced. The daily prayers 
 were reduced to five. The first Kebleh Jerusalem 
 was exchanged for Mecca, thus linking Islam with 
 the ancient pagan cult instead of Judaism, and the 
 month Ramadhan was selected as the period of 
 annual fasting. The day of fast-breaking was also 
 appointed, and finally Mahommed, in obedience to a 
 dream related by a disciple, bade a Negro slave 
 ascend to the top of a lofty house, and there cry 
 aloud at the appointed times, “ Prayer is better than 
 sleep ; prayer is better than sleep.” Even Alex- 
 ander the Great is in Asia an unknown personage 
 by the side of the slave Billal, whose cry to this day 
 summons at the same hours a sixth of the human 
 race to the same devotions. As soon as the mosque 
 was completed Mahommed recommenced his personal 
 teaching, preaching from the top of the steps of a 
 high pulpit, in the modern Protestant style. The 
 religious life of Islam was then complete, and to the 
 day of his death the Prophet added only to what 
 may be called the dogmas of jurisprudence. For 
 nearly two years he continued this course of life, 
 slowly the while building up his personal authority. 
 Abdallah, chief of the Beni Khazraj, was trouble- 
 some, and the Jews very sarcastic; but day by day 
 the number of his followers increased. The people 
 came over to his side. Each man as he joined him 
 gave up his ties of tribe and kinsmanship, and bound 
 himself a subject to Mahommed alone. He began, 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 186 
 
 also, to use his followers to arms, organizing small 
 expeditions against the Koreish caravans ; and 
 although these were at first unsuccessful, they 
 accustomed the faithful to the idea of hostilities with 
 the sacred clan, and to habits of military obedience. 
 In three of these forays he commanded in person, 
 and in three the command passed with the Prophet’s 
 white banner to his nominee. This was at first 
 always a Medinese chief, and it was not till the 
 third expedition that he ventured to select a com- 
 mander solely for devotion to himself, and intrust 
 the white banner to the faithful Zeid. The uniform 
 escape of the Koreish induced Mahommed at length 
 to suspect treachery ; and on the seventh expedi- 
 tion, in November, 623, he sent a Meccan named 
 Abdallah in command, with sealed instructions. 
 This expedition succeeded, but the success was 
 gained in the holy month, and Mahommed for some 
 days had the booty laid aside. At last he relented, 
 his delay having fully established the principle that 
 the disposal of booty rested with him ; and reserv- 
 ing one fifth for his own use, or rather that of the 
 State, he divided the spoil. It was shortly after this 
 success that the series of revelations commenced, 
 declaring war against the infidel a main duty of the 
 faithful ; and the rich spoil and the splendid future 
 proved too much for the men of Medina. Thence- 
 forward open opposition within the city disappeared; 
 and when, in January, 624, Mahommed once more 
 raised his standard, he was followed by the Medi- 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 187 
 
 nese as readily as by his own people. He nomi- 
 nated a governor during his absence, as if the city 
 belonged to himself alone ; and mustering his force 
 outside the walls, found that it had increased from 
 the eighty refugees to three hundred and five. 
 
 His object was to intercept the caravan which, 
 with Abu Sofian, chief of the Koreish, at its head, 
 was crawling from Syria down the coast of the Red 
 Sea on its way to Mecca. With this view he 
 marched rapidly to Badr, where the Meccan road 
 strikes the great Syrian route ; but he had, as usual, 
 been betrayed by some secret friend of the Koreish 
 among the Medinese. Abu Sofian hurried on a 
 swift messenger to Mecca imploring aid, while he 
 himself, leaving the coast-route, struck with his 
 caravan direct for the city, which he reached in 
 safety. The Koreish, however, were weary of Ma- 
 hommed’s audacity, and though still divided among 
 themselves as to his claim of kindred, pushed their 
 army of relief forward to Badr, determined to make 
 a signal example. Mahommed was equally eager, and 
 his followers, when consulted, pledged themselves 
 to follow him to the world’s end. Fanaticism had 
 destroyed their remembrance of the ties of kindred, 
 and they prayed openly for the destruction of their 
 relatives. They arrived first upon the field, a sandy 
 valley traversed by a small spring which feeds a 
 series of small cisterns. Mahommed filled them all 
 except the one nearest to the enemy, and bade his 
 followers stand on the defensive, and regard that 
 
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 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 cistern as their citadel. The Koreish crossed the 
 low hills in front of this position on January 13, 
 624, and began the action in the true Arabian and 
 Homeric style. Three warriors stepping forward 
 challenged the whole of the faithful, and Mahommed, 
 accepting the challenge, ordered three of his rela- 
 tives, Ali, Hamza, and Obeida, to stand forward. 
 The combat ended in their favour, and the Mahom- 
 medans, maddened with excitement, and favoured by 
 the wind, which blew a storm of dust in the faces 
 of the Koreish, charged upon a force three times 
 the number of their own with irresistible effect. 
 The Koreish maintained their reputation ; but the 
 Moslem craved death as much as victory, and acts 
 such as are ordinarily only dictated by despair 
 signalized their hope of heaven. Omeir, a lad of 
 sixteen, flung away the dates he was eating with a 
 vow to eat the next in paradise ; and Muadz ibn 
 Amr, with his arm cut through at the shoulder, tore 
 off the limb as it hung by the skin, bound the 
 wound, and fought on unmindful. Against men of 
 this temper ordinary courage was unavailing, and 
 the Koreish, abandoning forty-nine bodies and the 
 same number of prisoners, all their animals and all 
 their baggage, fled precipitately on the road to 
 Mecca. Six of the prisoners were executed as 
 avowed enemies of Mahommed or his creed, but the 
 remainder were treated with a kindness they pub- 
 licly acknowledged, and most of them embraced the 
 faith. Every man in the army had at least two 
 
THE GEE AT AR ASIAN 
 
 189 
 
 camels out of the spoil, and Mahommed averred 
 boldly that Badr was the visible seal of Islam, a battle 
 won by the immediate interposition of the Almighty 
 on behalf of his Prophet. On his return he assumed 
 the full authority of a prince over the city : ordered 
 Asma, a Jewess who had published satirical verses 
 against him, to be put to death, slew a Jew guilty 
 of the same offence, and besieged the Beni Cainucaa, 
 a Jewish tribe of Medina, in their own faubourg. 
 The Jews, after a siege of fifteen days, submitted at 
 discretion ; and Mahommed, who held them to be 
 rebels and infidels, at once ordered them to execu- 
 tion. He was compelled, however, to yield to the 
 remonstrance of Abdallah, the chief of the Beni 
 Khazraj, and patronus of the Jewish clans, and still 
 too powerful to be safely or irremediably offended. 
 Expedition now followed on expedition. The Beni 
 Suleim and the Beni Ghatafan were successively 
 attacked and plundered ; a roving band of the 
 Koreish, headed by their leader, Abu Sofian, were 
 repulsed ; and at last the annual Meccan caravan, 
 laden with bars of silver for the purchase of goods 
 in Syria, was captured, yielding to every man in the 
 army 800 dirhems, a fortune in a country where a 
 dirhem a day was considered fair pay for the gover- 
 nor of a great city. Every expedition increased the 
 confidence of Mahommed’s followers, and developed 
 the habit of obedience, until at length the Prophet’s 
 whisper was sufficient sentence of death, and the 
 Moslem exulted in their willingness to slay their 
 
190 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 own brothers at his command. A central authority 
 thus obeyed doubled the active force of Medina. 
 There alone in Arabia a single man of commanding 
 ability could plan without counsellors, and command 
 without explaining his objects. There too alone in 
 Arabia was at work the strangely vivifying principle 
 which, for want of a better term, we must style 
 equality. 
 
 The operation of this principle as one of the many 
 causes which favoured the development of Islam has 
 been too frequently overlooked. Despotisms very 
 often, though not always, produce an imperfect 
 equality. In Russia, for example, though the favour 
 of the Czar can raise a serf into a prince, still the 
 prince has under all other circumstances the advan- 
 tage over the serf. Under Mahommed, however, 
 there sprang up ex necessitate rei a form of demo- 
 cratic equality more absolute than the world has 
 elsewhere seen. Claims of birth and wealth could 
 be of no value in the presence of a master whose 
 favour implied the favour of the Deity. The 
 proudest Arab could not murmur if God chose a 
 slave like Zeid to be leader of armies, and visibly 
 confirmed His choice with the seal of victory. It 
 was a principle also of the new sect that Islam extin- 
 guished all relations. The slave, once a Moslem, 
 was free ; the foe, once a Moslem, was dearer than 
 any kinsman ; the pagan, once a Moslem, might 
 preach, if the Prophet bade, to attentive listeners. 
 Mahommed was enabled, therefore, at all times to 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 191 
 
 command the absolute aid of every man of capacity 
 within his ranks. No officers of his threw up their 
 commissions because they were superseded. If he 
 selected a child, what then ? — could not God give 
 victory to a child ? Moreover, all the latent forces 
 which social order restrains were instantly at his 
 disposal. Every strong man, kept down by cir- 
 cumstances, had an instinctive desire to believe in 
 the faith which removed at a stroke every obstacle 
 to a career. To this hour this principle is still of 
 vital importance in all Mahommedan countries. A 
 dozen times has a Sultan utterly ruined stooped 
 among his people, found, in a water-carrier, a tobac- 
 conist, a slave, or a renegade, the required man, 
 raised him in a day to power, and supported him 
 to save the empire. If the snuff-dealer can rule 
 Egypt, why should he not rule Egypt ? He is as 
 near to God as any other Mussulman, save only the 
 heir of the Caliphate ; and accordingly Mehemet Ali 
 finds birth, trade, and want of education no obstacles 
 in his path. The pariah who in Madras turns 
 Christian is a pariah still ; but if he turns Mussul- 
 man, the proudest Mussulman noble will, if he rises, 
 give him his daughter, or serve him as a sovereign, 
 without a thought of his descent. Mahommed, like 
 all real kings, knew men when he saw them ; gave 
 power to Omar, the man of the blue blood, or Zeid, 
 the slave, indifferently, and found therefore invari- 
 ably that the special talent he wanted was at his 
 command. 
 
192 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 These immense advantages could not, however, 
 preserve Mahommed invariably from disaster. In the 
 middle of January, 625, years after he had reached 
 Medina, the Koreish determined once for all to end 
 the quarrel with their dangerous adversary. Sum- 
 moning all their allies, and devoting all the treasure 
 saved in Abu Sofian’s caravan to military purposes, 
 they raised what was then, in Arabia, a formidable 
 force. Neither then nor at any other time were the 
 Arabs exclusively or mainly cavalry. They admired 
 and cherished horses, and most men could ride ; but 
 the possession of a horse was a sign of wealth, and 
 among the mountaineers and citizens by no means 
 a common one. The army, therefore, though 3,000 
 in number, comprised only 200 horse, and its prin- 
 cipal reliance was on 700 footmen equipped in mail, 
 and in the archers, who did duty, as in feudal 
 Europe, for light troops. Mahommed, though at first 
 inclined to stand on the defensive, yielded to the 
 ardour of his younger followers, and marched out 
 of Medina with a force which victory, conversions, 
 and new hope had swelled from the 300 of Badr to 
 1,000 strong. Of this force, however, 300, com- 
 manded by Abdallah, chief of the Beni Khazraj, 
 indignant at Mahommed’s hostility to the Jews, 
 deserted and returned to Mecca ; the remainder, 
 though not a fourth of their enemies in number, 
 determined to give them battle, and accordingly 
 took up their position on a small stony plain, above 
 which rose arid and red the frowning rocks of the 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 1 93 
 
 mountain Ohod. The battle began, as usual, in a 
 series of single combats, in which, of course, those 
 who believed death only an entrance to paradise 
 had signally the advantage. Excited by perpetual 
 small successes, and perhaps rendered imprudent 
 by their confident hope of Divine aid, the Mussul- 
 mans pressed on too rapidly, pierced the enemy’s 
 line, and began plundering the baggage. The rear- 
 guard joined in this exciting game, and the Koreish 
 horse, seeing their opportunity, swept down on the 
 Moslem from behind. There was a panic, a mad 
 flight, and a rally round the person of the Prophet. 
 Mahommed was felled to the ground, and for a few 
 minutes the course of history was doubtful ; but his 
 personal friends protected his body, raised him, and 
 with the broken army made for the rocks and defiles 
 of Ohod. The victors approached, and taunted their 
 defeated enemies ; but a charge up the rocks, in the 
 teeth of Moslem soldiers, was beyond their courage, 
 and they retired slowly to their own city. The 
 Moslem also returned to Medina, to find every 
 element of disaffection at full work. Seventy-four 
 of the army had fallen, and every man was in an 
 Arab tribe known and classed like an English noble. 
 The charm of invincibility which attached to the 
 Prophet was shattered, the Jews were sarcastic, and 
 the Medinese openly murmured that if Badr were 
 the seal of Islam, Ohod showed the visible wrath 
 of the Almighty. The refugees, however, had seen 
 worse days than these. The Prophet stood, as 
 
194 
 
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 usual in disaster, firm and gentle. He passed over 
 Abdallah’s desertion, ordered a mock pursuit of the 
 Koreish, which gave the talkers something to dis- 
 cuss, and, in a thundering Sura, comforted the 
 faithful, and threatened the wrath of God on the 
 disaffected. “ Who am I,” he said, “ that I should 
 not be defeated ? ” 
 
 Mahommed is no more than an Apostle, as other Apostles that 
 have gone before him. What ! if he were to die or be killed, must 
 ye needs turn back upon your heels ? He that turneth back upon 
 his heels injureth not God in the least degree ; but God will reward 
 the thankful. 
 
 ‘Furthermore, no soul dieth but by the permission of God, as 
 it is written and predestined. . . . 
 
 ‘ How many prophets have fought against those that had multi- 
 tudes on their side. And they were not cast down at that which 
 befell them fighting in the way of God, neither did they become 
 weak, nor make themselves abject ; and God loveth the perse- 
 vering.’ ” 
 
 The magic eloquence of the leader completed the 
 work ; and never was Mahommed stronger with his 
 followers than a month after the defeat of Ohod. 
 
 The remainder of the year (625) passed in expe- 
 ditions of various issue. The Beni Asad, a power- 
 ful clan who were connected with the Koreish, and 
 raised the standard against Medina, were plundered 
 and dispersed ; but on the other hand, seventy 
 Moslem were decoyed by the Beni Amar into their 
 hands, under pretext of desiring teachers for the 
 faith, and treacherously put to death. The Beni 
 Nadhir, a Jewish tribe, were driven from their pos- 
 sessions, and their estates divided among the refu- 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 *95 
 
 gees, who thus rose into instant affluence. With 
 1,500 men Mahommed maintained his camp for eight 
 days at Badr, waiting attack from the Arab world ; 
 and next year he advanced by a march of more than 
 a month along the border of Syria. The Beni 
 Mustalick had, it would seem, menaced him ; but 
 the tribe was surrounded, and the prisoners, after 
 a short hesitation, embraced the creed of Medina. 
 These petty expeditions were, however, only the 
 preparations for a new danger. 
 
 The Koreish could neither forgive Mahommed, 
 nor escape the idea that he was to them an imminent 
 and ever-pressing peril. They resolved on an effort 
 which gives a high idea at once of their strength 
 and weakness. Summoning all their allies, they 
 advanced, in February, 627, on Medina, and besieged 
 it with an army of 10,000 men. Such a force 
 menaced the city with destruction, but its hour had 
 not arrived. Mahommed had in his ranks a man 
 who knew something of Roman fortification, and 
 when the Meccans arrived under the walls they 
 found themselves confronted by a deep ditch. They 
 exclaimed loudly against the cowardice of the device, 
 but they could not pass the ditch, and fell back on 
 stratagem. They made an agreement with the 
 strongest Jewish tribe left in the city, the Koreitza, 
 to attack Mahommed from behind, while they them- 
 selves essayed to pass the trench. Mahommed, how- 
 ever, discovered the plot, and by a clever device — 
 which Mr. Muir must pardon us for saying is quite 
 
196 
 
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 within allowable military expedients, and was imi- 
 tated by Major Edwardes with effect at the siege 
 of Mooltan — he contrived to make each party think 
 the other was watching to betray them. The grand 
 attack therefore failed ignominiously ; a few Koreish 
 only leaping the trench, to be speared without mercy. 
 An Arab army had no commissariat. Provisions 
 ran short, the weather was wretched, and at last, 
 after fifteen days of the siege, Abu Sofian, irritated 
 to madness by personal discomfort, leaped on his 
 horse, and rode away to Mecca. The great army 
 melted away, and Mahommed turned on his domestic 
 foes. He besieged the Koreitza in their faubourg, 
 and after a brief resistance they surrendered at dis- 
 cretion. The Beni Aws begged hard for their lives 
 as old allies, and Mahommed promised the doom of 
 the Jews should be fixed by a man of the allied 
 clan. He selected Sad ibn Muadz, who accepted 
 the office, and took an oath from the people to stand 
 by his decision. To the dismay of his kinsmen, 
 rearing his mighty figure above the crowd, he pro- 
 nounced the awful sentence — the men to death, the 
 women to slavery ; and the doom was accepted by 
 Mahommed. The Koreitza, eight hundred in number, 
 were slain in batches, and the bodies buried, while 
 the women were carried away. “ Islam has cut all 
 ties,” was the stern comment of the allies of the 
 murdered tribe. This was the worst deed ever 
 sanctioned by Mahommed, but there is a word to be _ 
 said in his defence. He undoubtedly regarded these 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 *97 
 
 men as traitors as well as rebels, and there is not 
 the slightest evidence that the Koreitza, even by 
 European codes, had not deserved their doom. 
 They had plotted against their own allies on the 
 battlefield, and there is no European general who 
 would not have pronounced them worthy of death, 
 however strongly the modern respect for life might 
 have modified his actual sentence. In this affair, as 
 in the execution of one or two private individuals, 
 Mahommed acted simply as an Oriental prince, neither 
 better nor worse ; and we shall presently see how 
 little personal enmity ever influenced his decisions. 
 
 The fifth year of the Hegira, a.d. 627, passed 
 away in comparative tranquillity. Mahommed still 
 seemed far from his aim — the mastery of Arabia ; 
 but his expeditions continued, and every foray 
 brought him wealth, disciples, and increase of repu- 
 tation. In one of these raids his men punished 
 some prisoners guilty of treachery in a manner so 
 barbarous, that Mahommed published a revelation 
 making death by the sword, cord, or crucifixion, the 
 only capital punishments a Moslem could lawfully 
 inflict. The mutilation of the hand was alone 
 retained for larceny, a punishment certainly cruel ; 
 but not so especially cruel in relation to the crime as 
 Europeans will be apt to believe. All Asiatics hold 
 larceny a crime only second to murder. English- 
 men of the educated class, rich in all necessaries, 
 and habitually careless, cannot even conceive the 
 irritation the practice of small theft creates in a 
 
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 poverty-stricken community, to whom everything 
 is valuable, and by whom everything is remembered. 
 They will not endure it ; and to this day the first 
 charge of a native of India against the British 
 Government is its leniency to larceny, and the second 
 most frequent cause of murder is the determination 
 of the people to punish theft with corporal chastise- 
 ment carried to an extreme. Mr. Muir rightly con- 
 demns mutilation ; but when he styles the law one 
 which reflects discredit on Mahommed, he should 
 remember that it is not sixty years since English 
 bankers clamoured for the retention of death as the 
 only true punishment for forgery. 
 
 In the sixth year of the flight, a.d. 628, Mahommed 
 determined to bring himself once more in contact 
 with the representatives of all Arabia, by attending 
 the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. He started with 
 a powerful force, hoping, apparently, that the 
 Meccans would be too jealous for the prerogative of 
 their city to refuse entrance even to him. He was 
 disappointed, and in his anxiety to be once more 
 enabled to visit the city he so greatly loved, he 
 signed a treaty of amity with his determined foes. 
 Under its provisions, which were to be valid for ten 
 years, all Arabs who chose were to join him without 
 opposition from the Koreish, and all Moslems who 
 chose were to abandon him without punishment. 
 The Meccans, moreover, were to give the shrine up 
 to his followers for three days in every year. En- 
 trance for that year was, however, refused, and 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 199 
 
 Mahommed returned to send ambassadors abroad to 
 four of the sovereigns whose reputation had reached 
 Arabia. Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, then 
 in the full tide of victory over Chosroes, received 
 the summons to embrace Islam and obey the Pro- 
 phet in a plainly worded letter, which, of course, he 
 laid aside ; Siroes, King of Persia, tore up his mis- 
 sive, provoking from Mahommed the exclamation, 
 that his kingdom should be similarly torn in pieces ; 
 Mukoukas, the Roman, or rather Greek, Governor 
 of Egypt, had a nearer view of the power of his 
 strange correspondent. He answered kindly, and 
 sent to Mahommed a present of two Coptic slave- 
 girls, one of whom, Mary, is the heroine of many a 
 Mussulman legend, and would, had her son Ibrahim 
 lived, have been in all probability regarded to this 
 day as the sainted mother of dynasties. The Prince 
 of Abyssinia alone, it is said, obeyed the missive, and 
 even that solitary concession rests upon no evidence 
 but Mahommedan tradition, and Abyssinia remains 
 Christian to this day. The embassies are curious 
 proofs of Mahommed’s absolute confidence in his 
 own empire, and as the only positive indications of 
 that vast ambition which the achievements of his 
 successors reflected back upon his character. Every 
 creed claims to be universal ; but that Mahommed 
 ever contemplated distinctly the conquest of the 
 world is to our minds more than doubtful. He 
 hoped, perhaps, for Syria, but his distinct policy was 
 limited to Syria, and the first mighty outflow of 
 
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 Arabia upon civilization was caused by the necessity 
 of finding occupation for the tribes who groaned and 
 fretted under the yoke of his successor. 
 
 We must pass more briefly over one or two years 
 studded with incident and adventure, to arrive at 
 the crowning achievement of Mahommed’s life. In 
 the same year, a.d. 628, he conquered Kheibar, one 
 of the richest valleys in Arabia, occupied by Jews, 
 and divided the lands among his followers. It was 
 a woman of this tribe who, by giving him a poisoned 
 shoulder of mutton, laid, in Mussulman ideas, the 
 foundation of the disease which afterwards proved 
 mortal. Mahommed, however, was now sixty years 
 old, and it seems clear that he never swallowed any 
 of the poison, which was probably the well-known 
 datura , or juice of the hemlock. In the following 
 year he completed his pledge of visiting Mecca, and 
 the Koreish, tired with contest, adhered to their 
 agreement. For three days he was placed in pos- 
 session of the shrine, and there for the first time he 
 fulfilled all the rites of Islam in the appointed centre 
 of the faith. He retired on the expiration of the 
 three days ; but the appointed hour was drawing 
 near when the labour of a life was to be crowned 
 with the full measure of success. The Prophet was 
 growing old, and had as yet done little which could 
 survive his death. He was master of Medina, it is 
 true, general of a powerful army, suzerain of nume- 
 rous tribes, and with a reputation which extended 
 wherever the Arab orators contended for eloquence ; 
 
THE GREAT ARABIAN 
 
 201 
 
 but he was still only a local notability. The Arabs 
 still looked to Mecca as the pivot on which the 
 politics of the peninsula ought to turn ; till Mecca 
 was gained, Arabia as a whole was unsubdued, and 
 the conquest of the sacred city became an object of 
 intense burning desire. He resolved to make a 
 final effort to secure it, and the Koreish gave him a 
 fair opportunity. They allowed an allied sept to 
 harry a small Meccan clan because they adhered to 
 Mahommed, and thus, whether wilfully or otherwise, 
 broke the treaty of amity. The injured family, the 
 Beni Khozaa, applied to Mahommed for redress, 
 which he promised with a solemn asseveration. He 
 at once raised his standard, and summoning his allies 
 found himself at the head of eight thousand men. 
 With this army he marched suddenly on Mecca, 
 where a great change had apparently occurred. 
 Abu Sofian had either been wearied out, or was 
 aware that resistance was hopeless, while the 
 Koreish may be presumed to have become doubtful 
 of the wisdom of further war. They made no pre- 
 parations for resistance, and Abu Sofian, who had 
 gone out to reconnoitre, was taken, apparently a 
 willing prisoner, to Mahommed. The scene which 
 followed is probably as true as most historical anec- 
 dotes, and is exquisitely illustrative at once of Arab 
 manners and Mahommedan legendary style. 
 
 “ 1 Out upon thee , Abu Sofian /’ cried Mahommed, as the Kore- 
 ishite chief drew near. ‘ Hast thou not yet discovered that there is 
 no God but the Lord alone ? ’ ‘ Noble and generous sire ! Had 
 
202 
 
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 there been any God beside, verily he had been of some avail to 
 me.’ ‘ And dost thou not acknowledge that I am the Prophet of 
 the Lor d? ’ continued Mahommed. ‘ Noble sire ! As to this thing 
 there is yet in my heart some hesitancy.’ ‘ Woe is thee ! ’ ex- 
 claimed Abbas ; ‘ it is no time for hesitancy, this. Believe and 
 testify at once the creed of Islam, or else thy head shall be severed 
 from thy body ! ’ It was, indeed, no time for idle pride or 
 scruple ; and so Abu Sofian, seeing no alternative left to him, 
 repeated the formula of belief in God and in His Prophet. What a 
 moment of exultation it must have been for Mahommed when he 
 saw the great leader of the Koreish a suppliant believer at his 
 feet ! ‘ Haste thee to Mecca ! ’ he said ; for he knew well when 
 
 to show forbearance and generosity. ‘ Haste thee to the city : no 
 one that taketh refuge in the house of Abu Sofian shall be harmed. 
 And hearken ! speak unto the people, that whoever closeth the 
 door of his house, the inmates thereof shall escape.’ Abu Sofian 
 hastened to retire. But before he could quit the camp, the forces 
 were already under arms, and were being marshalled in their re- 
 spective columns. Standing by Abbas, he watched in amazement 
 the various tribes, each defiling, with the banner given to it by 
 Mahommed, into its proper place. One by one the different clans 
 were pointed out by name, and recognized. ‘ And what is that 
 black mass,’ asked Abu Sofian, ‘ with dark mail and shining 
 lances ? ’ ‘ It is the flower of the chivalry of Mecca and Medina,’ 
 
 replied Abbas ; ‘ the favoured band that guards the person of the 
 Prophet.’ ‘ Truly,’ exclaimed the astonished chief, ‘ this kingdom 
 of thy uncle’s is a mighty kingdom.’ ‘Nay, Abu Sofian, he is 
 more than a king — he is a mighty Prophet ! ’ ‘ Yes ; thou sayest 
 
 truly. Now let me go.’ ‘Away!’ said Abbas. ‘Speed thee to 
 thy people ! ’ ” 
 
 On the following morning the army divided into 
 four columns, and entered the city on all sides, 
 unopposed except by a few fanatics, who endeavoured 
 on one side to keep up a running and ineffectual 
 fight ; and Mahommed stood at last lord of the city 
 from which eight years before he had fled a hunted 
 
THE GREAT ARAB/AH 
 
 203 
 
 fugitive. It was still filled with enemies, but the 
 magnitude of his triumph had softened his heart, 
 and he spared all save four, the exceptions being 
 men who had injured or insulted him or his family, 
 and a woman who had circulated satirical verses — 
 an offence Mahommed never forgave. The effect of 
 this generous conduct was instantly apparent. The 
 Meccans gave in their adhesion in a body, and 
 Mussulman writers record with admiration that 
 among them, when they did at last give way, there 
 were no disaffected. The strength thus added to 
 Mahommed was important, but before using it Mecca 
 was to be cleared of idolatry. The pictures of 
 angels within the shrine had been removed on his 
 first entry, and now Mahommed ordered the idols to 
 be hewn down : Ozza and Lat fell with a terrible 
 crash, and Mahommed, as he stood gazing on the 
 destruction, an old man, with the work of twenty years 
 at last accomplished, must have felt that he had not 
 lived in vain. With Ozza and Lat, though he knew 
 it not, crashed down the whole fabric of Arabian 
 idolatry ; and the land, though for twelve hundred 
 years rent with strife, though the tribes whom he 
 bound together have fallen asunder, and all other 
 traditions have revived, has never gone back — 
 never showed the desire to go back — to pagan 
 worship. That one work, small or great, terminated 
 then ; but to Mahommed it seemed as if too much was 
 still left to do. 
 
 Scarcely had Mecca been purified when the Pro- 
 
204 
 
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 phet summoned its subject clans, and with an army 
 swelled to 12,000 men set out to subjugate Tayif, 
 the city which had stoned him when, alone and 
 unarmed, he visited it to demand obedience in the 
 name of the Most High to a banished and powerless 
 member of the Koreish. On his road he was met 
 by the Beni Hawazin, the powerful tribe settled 
 round Tayif, and narrowly escaped defeat. The 
 Hawazin charged down a defile, and the army of 
 Islam, taken by surprise, fell into a panic, and 
 commenced a precipitate retreat. Mahommed, how- 
 ever, knew that no army existed in Arabia compe- 
 tent to face his own, and standing firm, he ordered 
 a follower of stentorian lungs to summon the Medi- 
 nese to his standard. They rallied round him in- 
 stantly, and the dismayed Mahommedans, re-forming 
 behind them, charged upon the Beni Hawazin. 
 The victory was complete, and the Prophet passed 
 on unmolested to Tayif. He failed, however, before 
 the city, chiefly from the Arab impossibility of 
 keeping an army together without commissariat, and 
 he returned to Mecca. The property of the Hawa- 
 zin was, however, divided, and Mahommed exhausted 
 his personal wealth in enriching his new allies. So 
 lavish were his gifts, indeed, that the Medinese 
 murmured, and Mahommed had, for the fiftieth time, 
 to appeal to his rare gift of eloquence to allay their 
 discontent. Readers of Parliamentary debates will 
 perhaps catch in this scene a glimpse of the true 
 orator. 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 205 
 
 “ He then addressed them in these words : * Ye men of Medina, 
 it hath been reported to me that ye are disconcerted, because I 
 have given unto these chiefs largesses, and have given nothing 
 unto you. Now speak unto me. Did I not come unto you 
 whilst ye were wandering, and the Lord gave you the right 
 Direction? — needy, and He enriched you? — at enmity amongst 
 yourselves, and He hath filled your hearts with love and unity ? ’ 
 He paused for a reply. ‘ Indeed, it is even as thou sayest,’ they 
 answered ; ‘ to the Lord and to His Prophet belong benevolence 
 and grace.’ ‘ Nay, by the Lord ! ’ continued Mahommed, ‘ but ye 
 might have answered (and answered truly, for I would have veri- 
 fied it myself), — Thou earnest to Medina rejected as an impostor , 
 and we bore witness to thy veracity ; thou earnest a helpless fugitive , 
 and we assisted thee ; an outcast , and we gave thee an asylum ; desti- 
 tute, and we solaced thee. Why are ye disturbed in mind because 
 of the things of this life, wherewith I have sought to incline the 
 hearts of these men unto Islam, whereas ye are already steadfast 
 in your faith ? Are ye not satisfied that others should obtain the 
 flocks and the camels, while ye carry back the Prophet of the 
 Lord unto your homes? No, I will not leave you for ever. If 
 all mankind went one way, and the men of Medina another way, 
 verily I would go the way of the men of Medina. The Lord be 
 favourable unto them, and bless them, and their sons, and their 
 sons’ sons for ever ! ’ At these words all wept till the tears ran 
 down upon their beards ; and they called out with one voice — 
 ‘ Yea, we are well satisfied, O Prophet, with our lot ! ’ ” 
 
 Tayif did not escape. A converted chief agreed 
 to keep the inhabitants within their walls ; and tired 
 out by a blockade which seemed endless, the citizens 
 gave way. They asked privilege after privilege — 
 exemption from obedience, exemption from prayer, 
 the safety of their idols ; but Mahommed could not 
 yield ; and stipulating only for the safety of a 
 hunting-forest, they surrendered themselves into his 
 hands. He was by this time at home in Medina, 
 
206 
 
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 whence he sent forth his collectors throughout the 
 tribes which acknowledged his rule to collect the 
 tithes. A new income-tax of ten per cent, would be 
 felt as onerous even in England ; but the collectors 
 were only once resisted, and usually welcomed with 
 acclamation. He, moreover, either from policy or 
 really alarmed, as he alleged, at a rumour that the 
 Greek emperor was about to march on him, ordered 
 a general levy of his followers. His power was not 
 consolidated even in the Hejaz, and many of the 
 Arabs refused to obey. The Medinese, weary with 
 exertion, stayed at home ; but still the gathering 
 proved that the fugitive had become a mighty 
 prince. An army such as had never been seen 
 in Arabia, an army of 20,000 foot and 10,000 
 cavalry, followed him to the Syrian border, and 
 subdued for him the whole of the Christian or 
 demi-Christian tribes in the North. The Prophet 
 felt that the time was come. All Arabs, save of the 
 faith, were solemnly interdicted from Mecca, and a 
 new revelation declared that the object of Islam was 
 the extirpation of idolatry. Conversions now flowed 
 in fast, and the tenth year of the Hegira was a year 
 of embassies. The “ king ” of Oman surrendered 
 all authority to Mahommed’s lieutenant, Amru. 
 The princes of Yemen, the Himyarte dynasty (the 
 foundations of whose palaces Captain Playfair has 
 just turned up at Aden), accepted the new faith. 
 The Hadhramaut followed the example ; and as 
 each tribe gave way, assessors, armed with the new 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 207 
 
 code, entered their territory, terminated mildly all 
 existing authorities, and bound the district fast to 
 Islam and Mahommed. The great tribe of the Beni 
 Aamir was almost the last to yield ; but it yielded, 
 and in 630 the Prophet, master of Arabia, uttered 
 his final address to the representatives of the penin- 
 sula, assembled on pilgrimage at Mecca. Mahommed 
 had lived for twenty years a life which would have 
 hardened the heart and ulcerated the temper of 
 almost any man now living — a life such as that which 
 in seven years made Frederick of Prussia a malicious 
 despot. But there are natures which trouble does 
 not sear ; and Mahommed, in this his last address, 
 solemnly proclaimed throughout Arabia a law of 
 universal brotherhood. Though inartistic in form, 
 we do not know in literature a nobler effort of the 
 highest kind of oratory, of the rhetoric which con- 
 veys at once guidance and command. 
 
 “ ‘ Ye People ! Hearken to my words ; for I know not 
 whether, after this year, I shall ever be amongst you here again. 
 
 ‘Your Lives and Property are sacred and inviolable amongst 
 one another until the end of time. 
 
 ‘ The Lord hath ordained to every man the share of His 
 inheritance : a Testament is not lawful to the prejudice of heirs. 
 
 * The child belongeth to the Parent : and the violator of Wed- 
 lock shall be stoned. 
 
 ‘ Whoever claimeth falsely another for his father, or another for 
 his master, the curse of God and the Angels, and of all Mankind, 
 shall rest upon him. 
 
 ‘ Ye People ! Ye have rights demandable of your Wives, and 
 they have rights demandable of you. Upon them it is incumbent 
 not to violate their conjugal faith nor commit any act of open 
 impropriety ; — which things if they do, ye have authority to shut 
 
208 
 
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 them up in separate apartments and to beat them with stripes, yet 
 not severely. But if they refrain therefrom, clothe them and 
 feed them suitably. And treat your Women well : for they are 
 with you as captives and prisoners • they have not power over 
 anything as regards themselves. And ye have verily taken them 
 on the security of God : and have made their persons lawful unto 
 you by the words of God. 
 
 ‘ And your slaves ! See that ye feed them with such food as 
 ye eat yourselves ; and clothe them with the stuff ye wear. And 
 if they commit a fault which ye are not inclined to forgive, then 
 sell them, for they are the servants of the Lord, and are not to be 
 tormented. 
 
 ‘Ye People ! hearken to my speech and comprehend the same. 
 Know that every Moslem is the brother of every other Moslem. 
 All of you are on the same equality ’ (and as he pronounced 
 these words, he raised his arms aloft and placed the forefinger of 
 one hand on the forefinger of the other). ‘Ye are one brother- 
 hood. 
 
 ‘ Know ye what month this is ? — What territory is this 1 — What 
 day V To each question the People gave the appropriate answer, 
 viz. ‘ The Sacred Month, — the Sacred Territory, — the great day 
 of Pilgrimage.’ After every one of these replies, Mahommed 
 added : ‘ Even thus sacred and inviolable hath God made the Life 
 and the Property of each of you unto the other , until ye meet your 
 Lord. 
 
 ‘ Let him that is present, tell it unto him that is absent. 
 Haply, he that shall be told, may remember better than he who 
 hath heard it.’ ” 
 
 This was the last public appearance of Mahommed. 
 In the eleventh year of the Flight, while still only 
 sixty-three, he issued orders foi a levy to subjugate 
 the Syrian desert, and invested Osma, a lad, but the 
 son of Zeid, with the supreme command ; but his 
 hour had arrived. In the beginning of Safar a 
 deadly fever came upon him, and he announced 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 209 
 
 to the weeping congregation assembled in the 
 mosque at Medina his own approaching decease. 
 The exertion increased the disease, and after four 
 days of suffering, during which the burden of his 
 speech was always of suffering as an expiation for 
 sin, he gradually sank, retaining, however, to the 
 last somewhat of the ancient fire. With a quaint 
 touch of satiric humour, he punished all his wives 
 for giving him physic by making them take it too, 
 and on Monday he even joined in the prayers for 
 his own recovery in the mosque. This, however, 
 was his last effort; and on the 8th June, 632, 
 exclaiming at intervals, “ The Lord grant me 
 pardon,” “ Pardon,” “ The blessed companionship 
 on high,” he stretched himself gently, and was 
 dead. 
 
 The events which followed his death — the election 
 of Omar, the revolt and subjugation of the Arabs, 
 the pouring out of the tribes to the conquest of the 
 world, the long and marvellous story of the Caliphs 
 — are better known than those of his own life. Our 
 only remaining duty is to sum up his character, and 
 record his special influence as a legislator. Upon 
 his character as a prince, a leader of men, there will, 
 we imagine, be little controversy. No man in 
 history ever rose to dominion with fewer heavy 
 stains upon his character ; none ever exhibited more 
 constancy, or a more serene, unwavering wisdom. 
 In the first test of greatness, wealth of loving 
 friends, none ever approached Mahommed. Alex- 
 
 p 
 
210 
 
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 ander had friends of a sort, but Hephsestion was not 
 of the stamp of Abu Bekr, and the majority of 
 heroes have been lonely men. It is as a Prophet 
 only that he will be seriously condemned, and 
 doubtless his prophetical pretensions coloured his 
 whole life. We can but state a strong conviction 
 when we affirm that a series of minute facts leave no 
 doubt on our mind that Mahommed was from first 
 to last absolutely sincere. He really believed that 
 any strong conviction, even any strong wish, that he 
 entertained was borne in upon him by a power 
 external to himself; and as the first and most 
 memorable of these convictions was faith in God, 
 he believed that power to be God, and himself its 
 Messenger. The mode of expressing his convic- 
 tions was undoubtedly an invention ; but that the 
 basis of his faith in himself was sincere, admits, to 
 our mind, of little question. This strength of 
 conviction extended even to his legislative acts, and 
 we cannot better conclude this brief notice of his 
 career than by a glance at his true position as a 
 legislator. Politically, it is easy to understand his 
 position. Believing himself the Messenger of the 
 Almighty, no position save that of despot was 
 possible to him, and he made on this point no 
 provision for the future. The Mahommedans deduce 
 from his opinions the idea that the Caliph is vice- 
 gerent of God, and of course absolute ; but no such 
 theory is laid down in the Koran, and the Waha- 
 bees, the strictest of Mussulman sects, acknowledge 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 21 I 
 
 no such dogma. Its adoption was the accidental 
 result of the movement which followed his death, 
 and which compelled the Arabs to entrust despotic 
 authority to their chief. Mahommed settled nothing 
 as to his successors, and it is therefore only in social 
 questions that his legislation is still operative. And 
 even here we are almost without the means of 
 knowing what were the principles he intended to lay 
 down. The living law of Mahommedanism is not 
 to be found in the Koran, but in the commentators 
 — a set of the most vicious scoundrels who ever 
 disgraced humanity, whose first object seems to 
 have been to relax the plain meaning of the original 
 edicts as far as practicable. The original code is on 
 most points just enough. The law as regards pro- 
 perty differs nothing in essentials from that which 
 prevails in Europe. Property is sacred, and is 
 pretty fairly divided among relatives. Life is held 
 in reverence, and theft is prohibited, even with 
 cruelty. Truth is strongly inculcated, and adherence 
 to treaties declared an obligation binding on the 
 conscience. Adultery is punished with death, 
 though that provision is hampered by a curious law 
 of evidence ; and reverence for parents is sedulously 
 inculcated. The law, in fact, except on one point, 
 differs little from that of the Twelve Tables ; but 
 that one has modified all Asiatic society for evil. 
 We must give a few words to an unpleasant topic. 
 
 It will be observed that we have said nothing of 
 Mahommed’s private life, of which all biographers 
 
212 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 descant so much — of his eleven wives and two slave 
 girls, of the strangely relaxed law of the sexes 
 which he established, and of his own departures 
 even from that loose code. The omission was 
 intended, for we conceive too much has always been 
 made of that point in Mahommed’s career. In 
 early life, temperate to a marvel for Arabia, he was 
 undoubtedly in his later years a man loving women. 
 We do not say “ licentious ” advisedly, for though 
 all things good and bad are recorded of Mahommed, 
 we hear of no seduction, no adultery , 1 no interfer- 
 ence with the families of his followers. He was 
 simply a man loving women, and heaping up wives, 
 as if he had been exempted from the law he himself 
 laid down. He probably thought he was, as his 
 followers undoubtedly did, and personally he was no 
 worse than thousands whom modern Europe prac- 
 tically condones. He was no better, but it is mere 
 folly to say that his legislation was exceptionally 
 licentious. What he did as regards his followers 
 was simply this : he left the question exactly as he 
 found it — did not rise one hairbreadth above the 
 general level of Oriental opinion. That opinion is 
 doubtless an evil one. The true law of chastity, 
 the adherence of one man to one woman as long as 
 they both live, is written in a revelation older than 
 any book — in the great law which makes the 
 numbers of the sexes equal. That law, however, 
 has never yet reached the Oriental mind. It is the 
 1 Zeinab was given to him, not taken. 
 
THE GEE AT ARABIAN 
 
 213 
 
 fixed opinion of Asiatics that the relation of the 
 sexes is a purely physical one, and not subject to 
 any inherent law at all ; modifiable, it is true, by 
 external legislation, but not in itself a subject of 
 necessary and inevitable moral restraint. Ma- 
 hommed made no attempt to alter that opinion. He 
 fixed a limit to the number of wives, but it was 
 not intended as a moral protection, for he formally 
 assigned all female slaves to the mercy of their 
 masters. He left a monstrous evil without a remedy, 
 and for so doing he is doubtless to be condemned. 
 But that he introduced a new evil is untrue ; 
 and badly as the system he sanctioned works, it is 
 rather among the rich and the powerful than among 
 the mass of his followers that it produces utter 
 corruption. 
 
Race-hatred in Asia 
 
 T HE question of race-hatred in India, which has 
 again been opened by Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, 
 is, politically, not so important as it seems to him 
 and to most Englishmen to be. It is a little like 
 the question of Socialism in a country like France 
 or the United States, where the immense majority 
 of the potential wielders of bayonets own property — 
 that is, it is a question of high intellectual and 
 social interest, but not exactly a “ burning” one. 
 The Government of India rests primarily on its 
 ability to crush instantly and infallibly any move- 
 ment taking the form of armed insurrection, even if 
 it be a movement among its native soldiery ; and, 
 secondly, on the acquiescence of enormous numbers, 
 almost inconceivable numbers, of industrious and 
 peaceable peasants holding their own land at a quit- 
 rent. These peasants feel no race-hatred — that is, 
 though they may hate the Government, and in 
 certain districts and at certain times do hate it, they 
 do not hate it because its agents are white, or 
 Christian, or bad-mannered. The majority of them 
 hardly see Europeans during their whole lives, any 
 
 214 
 
RACE-HATRED IN ASIA 
 
 **5 
 
 more than English labourers see dukes, never come 
 into contact with them socially, and are aware of 
 them only in those capacities, viz. as magistrates, 
 judges, and revenue collectors, in which they are 
 least obnoxious. The peasants are not idiots, and 
 are quite aware, as they showed repeatedly in the 
 Mutiny, that the white men’s laws are just and 
 justly administered. Race-hatred, so far as it exists, 
 is confined to the great towns, which have not in 
 India the weight they have in Europe, and to the 
 minute class educated in European learning, which, 
 as yet at least, does not seriously influence the 
 country. Still, even within those limits an increase 
 of race-hatred is to be regretted ; and we wish those 
 who lament it would give the English people a little 
 more light as to their idea of the practical way of 
 preventing it. They have given us none yet, if, as 
 they say, race-hatred increases amidst all the 
 changes of late years ; and we confess we doubt 
 seriously the value of the main theory upon which 
 they found their arguments. They all, though 
 using different modes of expression, assert that the 
 remedy is ultimately to be found in more and freer 
 intercourse. Mr. Blunt deplores the absence of 
 social intimacies, and the reluctance of the two races 
 to visit each other’s houses, even regretting, as we 
 understand him, the disappearance of the old native 
 mistresses, who, though they taught their lovers the 
 language, so poisoned the fount of justice that Lord 
 Dalhousie, when organizing the Punjab and Burrnah. 
 
2l6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 took a kind of pledge from officers he selected not 
 to fall into the old rut. Other observers propose 
 united Athenaeums, others make a practice of hold- 
 ing mixed receptions, and others, again, start clubs 
 in London where the cultivated of both races may 
 learn to understand one another. The remedy 
 suggested is, in fact, more association ; and we are 
 not certain that it is not altogether the wrong one, 
 and whether more seclusion from each other would 
 not be more profitable advice. 
 
 It is very difficult, of course, for an Englishman, 
 conscious of his own rectitude of purpose and 
 benevolence of feeling, to believe that he will not be 
 more liked when he is better known ; but a good 
 many facts seem to show that it is so. He is not 
 seen and talked to anywhere by men of a different 
 race so much as he is in Ireland, and he is not hated 
 quite so much anywhere else. He is decidedly 
 much more disliked in Egypt since he appeared 
 there in such numbers. He is more hated in the 
 sea-coast towns of India, where he is prominent, 
 busy, and constantly talked to, than he is in the 
 interior where he is rarely seen ; much more de- 
 tested in the planter districts than in the districts 
 where he is only a rare visitor. If there is con- 
 tempt for him anywhere in India, it is in the great 
 towns, not in the rural stations where he is so 
 nearly invisible ; and contempt is of all forms of 
 race-hatred the most dangerous. It may be said 
 that the Englishman in great cities is often a low 
 
RACE-HATRED IN ASIA 
 
 217 
 
 fellow, but that is not a sufficient explanation. The 
 officers of the old Army were not low fellows. The 
 broadest of all facts bearing on this suggestion of 
 more intercourse is the fate of that Army. No class 
 of natives knew the Europeans so well as the 
 Sepoys knew their officers, and among no class was 
 that knowledge in itself so little irritating. They 
 were notoriously better treated than the men of any 
 army, the etiquette was always to listen to their 
 complaints, there was a feeling in many regiments 
 that the relation between men and officers should be 
 filial and paternal, and everywhere the officers had 
 been true leaders in battle — yet the Sepoys slaugh- 
 tered the officers out, killing also their wives and 
 children. Association had in that case only deep- 
 ened race-hatred. It certainly does not extinguish 
 it in the Southern States of America, the Nor- 
 therners who do not live with the Blacks, being far 
 more disposed to do them justice, though, when they 
 emigrate southwards, they often display a harder 
 and more bitter contempt. The Indian who, of all 
 the heroes of the Mutiny, showed the most bitter 
 enmity to the British race as distinguished from the 
 British Government, was Azimoollah Khan, who 
 had lived years among them, and knew English 
 perfectly ; while no white dwellers in the tropics are 
 quite so just and benevolent towards dark races as 
 English Members of Parliament, who never saw 
 them. The two hundred years during which Span- 
 iards and Indians have dwelt together in South 
 
2x8 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 America have not softened their mutual antipathy ; 
 and the Arab who has lived in Paris is, when he 
 returns to his tribe, the one foe to be dreaded in 
 Algeria. In truth, if we are to take facts as evi- 
 dence, it might fairly be said that the less the white 
 and the coloured races come into contact with each 
 other the less is the development of race-hatred, 
 which only tends to become dangerous when they 
 are interspersed, and mutually comprehend one 
 another’s strength and weakness. 
 
 We suspect that it is in reserve rather than 
 association that protection against race-hatred 
 should be sought, and would, if it were of the 
 slightest use to write on such a subject, impress 
 upon all Europeans in Egypt, as well as in India, 
 in every place indeed where they are brought in 
 contact with the dark races, a change, not of habits, 
 but of manners. It ought to be an inexorable 
 etiquette for every European to treat every native 
 acquaintance or interlocutor — we are not speaking 
 of friends — with a grave and kindly but distant 
 courtesy, not unlike that of the native himself in his 
 best mood. The European’s familiarity is sure to 
 be offensive, his proclivity to “chaff” is disgusting, 
 and his habitual impatience — a foible of which most 
 Englishmen are scarcely conscious — is always mis- 
 taken for anger. Silence, not speech, is in Asia the 
 mark of breeding, and a laugh the one indulgence 
 into which the superior is never, except among his 
 closest intimates, betrayed. All Asiatics attribute 
 
RACE-HATRED IN ASIA 
 
 219 
 
 to almost all Englishmen atrocious manners, chiefly 
 because Englishmen are so impatient of loss of time ; 
 and we are all more irritated by habitual ill-manners, 
 and especially ill-manners indicating contempt, than 
 by any ordinary oppression. Nine-tenths of the 
 feeling Mr. Blunt deplores, and wisely deplores, 
 proceeds from the unintentional ill-manners of the 
 ruling caste, which can only be modified, if at all, 
 by the adoption of an inexorable etiquette, any 
 breach of which Society should punish. There is, 
 we fear, little hope of the adoption of such a rule, 
 the Englishman being unable to rid himself of the 
 feeling that among all other people he has a right 
 to be unbuttoned, or to be, at all events, himself ; 
 but it is in this direction, and this only, that a 
 genuine advance towards friendly relations is to be 
 made. No native of India who comes in contact 
 with Lord Dufferin will feel race-hatred towards 
 him, or would, even if the result of the interview 
 were an order for his execution. 
 
Arab Courage 
 
 W HAT a flood of light these skirmishes on the 
 Red Sea throw upon Mahommedan history, 
 and especially upon those two most obscure series 
 of events, — the early conquests of the Arabian 
 Caliphs, and the successive failures of the Crusading 
 armies to turn Palestine into a European province ! 
 Writer after writer has attempted to account for the 
 defeat of the Roman armies, still the best disciplined 
 in the world, by Arabs less numerous and less dis- 
 ciplined than themselves, and has failed ; and, 
 conscious of failure, has consoled himself either 
 by depreciating the Roman troops as effete and 
 enfeebled by luxury, or by raising “ fanaticism ” into 
 a military quality of almost supernatural force. 
 Even Sir William Muir is forced to explain the 
 marvellous battle of Yakusa — the battle which 
 prostrated Heraclius and deprived the Eastern 
 Empire of Syria — by hinting that, what with their 
 new creed and their hunger for booty, and their 
 desire for the female captives, who were after each 
 victory distributed among them, Khalid’s soldiers 
 had become, as it were, transformed into the 
 
ARAB COURAGE 
 
 22 1 
 
 greatest warriors of the age. It was, no doubt, 
 a marvellous battle. Heraclius, at last alarmed for 
 the Roman dominion — which, we must remember, 
 seemed to him, and to all of his generation, a part 
 of the divinely imposed order of mankind — had 
 despatched a great army of 90,000 Regulars, assisted 
 by clouds of auxiliaries, chiefly Bedouins, exceeding 
 
 150.000 in number, to make a final end of the new 
 and threatening power. They encamped on the 
 bank of the Yermuk, in Syria, under the command 
 of the Emperor’s brother Theodoric, and his cele- 
 brated General Bahan, the Armenian, and so 
 alarmed the Moslem Sheikhs, who controlled only 
 
 40.000 men, that at first they avoided battle. 
 They counted their enemies, and would not attack. 
 Khalid, however, made a forced march across the 
 Desert — his picked men living for five days on 
 water extracted from slaughtered camels — induced 
 the Sheikhs to entrust to him the supreme com- 
 mand, and in one tremendous day in September, 
 a.d. 634, utterly destroyed the Roman hosts. After 
 a skirmish, in which four hundred Arabs taken by 
 surprise vowed to die, and died sword in hand, 
 Khalid ordered a general advance : — 
 
 The Romans too advanced, and the charge was met on both 
 sides with the sword. All day the battle raged. Fortune varied ; 
 and the carnage amongst the Moslems, as well as the Romans, 
 was great. Ikrima’s gallant company, holding their ground firm 
 as a rock in front of Khalid’s tent, bore the brunt of the day ; 
 they were slain or disabled almost to a man. So fierce were the 
 Arabs, that even the women joined their husbands and brothers 
 
222 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 in the field ; and Huweiria, daughter of Abu Sofian, inheriting 
 the spirit of her mother Hind, was severely wounded in an en- 
 counter with the enemy. Towards evening the Romans began to 
 falter. Khalid, quickly perceiving that their horse were declining 
 from the infantry, launched his centre as a wedge between the 
 two. The cavalry, with nothing behind them but the precipice, 
 made a fierce charge for their lives ; the Moslem troops opened 
 to let them pass, and so they gained the open country and never 
 again appeared. The Moslems then turned right and left upon 
 the remaining force cooped up between the ravine and the chasm ; 
 and, as they drove all before them, the Romans on both hands 
 “ were toppled over the bank even as a wall is toppled over.” 
 The battle drew on into the night, but opposition was now in 
 vain. Those that escaped the sword were hurled in a moving 
 mass over the edge into the yawning gulf. “ One struggling 
 would draw ten others with him, the free as well as chained.” 
 And so, in dire confusion and dismay, the whole multitude 
 perished. The fatal chasm Yacfisa engulfed, we are told, 100,000 
 men. Ficar, the Roman General, and his fellow-captains, unable 
 to bear the sight, sat down, drew their togas around them, and, 
 hiding their faces in despair and shame, awaited thus their fate. 
 
 The “ chained ” men were picked soldiers, who 
 chained themselves together to make charges in 
 mass. Sir Gerald Graham would, we think, under- 
 stand that story, and account for the Moslem victory 
 by military reasons, the simple explanation being 
 that the Arabs fought then, as they fight now, with 
 a fury, a perseverance, and a contempt of death 
 which hardly any troops in the world have ever 
 surpassed. They were personally the Romans’ 
 superiors in battle ; and they killed them out, 
 retreat being impossible, by sheer bravery and hard 
 fighting. Without entering into the difficult ques- 
 tion whether the Roman soldier had degenerated 
 
ARAB COURAGE 
 
 223 
 
 at all — a question on which the evidence is most 
 conflicting — it may be taken as certain that the 
 Englishman of to-day is a better man, and as 
 nearly certain that, but for the Gardners and the 
 rifles — that is, but for the terrible armour that is 
 forged for us by science — the Arab, with his 
 superior numbers, would wipe him out on the 
 shores of the Red Sea as completely as Khalid’s 
 tribesmen did the Roman. Khalid’s men poured 
 on Bahan’s regulars exactly as Osman Digna’s men 
 poured on the Berkshires and Marines — the very 
 incident of the women charging being repeated — 
 and but for the rifles Osman’s might have been 
 as successful. Every correspondent, at all events, 
 thinks and says so. Why ? Sir W. Muir speaks 
 of fanaticism, and greed, and lust all conspiring 
 together to make heroes ; but as a matter of fact,, 
 these motive-powers did not operate until Khalid 
 joined the troops, and, splendid strategist though 
 he was, trusted the battle to the magnificent daring 
 of his Desert soldiery. That this courage was 
 inflamed by “ fanaticism ” — that is, by a sure and 
 certain hope of reaching heaven if they died in 
 battle — is true enough ; but even that faith would 
 not have so operated except upon men of excep- 
 tional personal daring. It does not so operate upon 
 millions of convinced Mahommedans. The simple 
 truth is that the Arab of the Desert, whether of 
 the pure blood of Ishmael or of that blood crossed 
 with the negro, was then, and is now, by nature one 
 
224 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of the warrior-races, the superior of the Roman, 
 even when Roman battalions were “ stiffened ” with 
 barbarians, and the equal, as he showed subse- 
 quently in the Crusades and in Spain, of any 
 Northerner whatever — Saxon, or Frank, or Teuton, 
 or Visigoth — a man who can fight-on when beaten, 
 and die hard even when left alone. When he first 
 came out of the Desert, he dared face the Roman ; 
 five hundred years later, he faced the mail-clad 
 soldiers of Europe, and he is facing English soldiers 
 to-day, and always in the same manner, with the 
 most reckless personal valour and a contempt for 
 death which scarcely any Europeans possess. Our 
 soldiers call him a brute because, when wounded, 
 he courts death by slashing at his captors ; but if 
 Tommy Atkins knew he must die in agony — there 
 are no doctors or ambulances with Osman Digna — 
 and believed that if he could only get killed he 
 would go straight to Heaven, he would in all 
 probability do precisely the same thing. 
 
 We press this point of the personal valour of 
 Arabs over and over again, not because anybody 
 is just now doubting it, but because the successes 
 of Europe for the last century tend to make 
 Englishmen mistaken in their views of history. So 
 many large Asiatic armies have been overthrown 
 by small European armies, that we have come to 
 doubt whether any Asiatics are brave, whether the 
 Turks, whose courage is undeniable, have not 
 acquired it in European air, and whether Europe 
 
ARAB COURAGE 
 
 225 
 
 could not, if it pleased, rule all Asia with a very 
 small exertion of its military strength. We have 
 come to doubt whether the Roman and the Byzan- 
 tine, and the Barbarian and the Southern European, 
 all of whom the Arab mastered, can have been 
 much of a fighter after all, and to question whether 
 the comparatively small Greek garrison which de- 
 fended Constantinople against Asia for two cen- 
 turies so heroically must not have been “ effete.” 
 We suspect that although luxury set in, and the 
 numbers of ruling races, like the Italian and the 
 Greek, greatly diminished, the extension of slavery 
 eating-out free men, much of the success of the 
 Arab was due to personal superiority in battle, akin 
 in degree, though not in kind, to that of the modern 
 European. The Crusader certainly thought him 
 the fiercest of infidels, and so did all Europeans 
 of the Mediterranean down to the time when 
 Admiral Pellew blew away with his cannon-balls 
 the charm which for centuries had hung around the 
 Moorish name. The difficulty is to understand 
 why the Arab ever lost his control of the Mussul- 
 man world ; but we believe it was mainly because, 
 moved by the dislike of the later Caliphs, who 
 could not endure his simple and, indeed, democratic 
 ways, and by his own instinct for independence, he 
 returned to his deserts, there to live his own life 
 until the opportunity should once more offer for a 
 charge upon the Asiatic world. He does not fear 
 the Turk even now. The Desert, as Mr. Disraeli 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 detected, preserves the Arab. We will not say that 
 the life of cities and of agriculture kills-out his 
 higher qualities, for the evidence is imperfect ; but 
 it is probable that this is occasionally the case. 
 While the Arab of Algiers remained deep into this 
 century a formidable soldier because he lived the 
 independent life of his desert, the settled Arab of 
 Egypt has lost his fighting qualities, which also 
 must have declined in the Arab of Southern Spain 
 before he was finally driven out. No doubt the 
 Spaniards multiplied, and the Arabs did not ; but 
 in the later battles, before the fall of Granada, the 
 Christians displayed the higher fighting-power. At 
 all events, the Arabs of the Desert remain among 
 the bravest of mankind, facing battle, in which, if 
 wounded, they must die of torture or starvation, 
 with a fierce delight not wholly explicable by a 
 revival in them of the faith which the Indian 
 Mussulman also holds, but does not die for. Men 
 who talk glibly of ruling the Soudan should read 
 a little of Arab history, and consider for five minutes 
 how many soldiers it would take to keep, say, only 
 two millions of Khalid’s men in permanent and 
 orderly subjection. They will find that, in fighting- 
 fury at all events, there has been little change in 
 the Arab. 
 
Indian Abstemiousness 
 
 O NE of the graver newspapers — we think it 
 was the St. James's Gazette — has made 
 the paradoxical remark that a main difficulty in 
 the way of improving the condition of workwomen 
 in the East End of London arose from one of 
 their virtues. They are so steadily and rigidly 
 abstemious, that they can live by wages upon 
 which men, or less abstemious women, would ac- 
 tually starve. Many of the class of sempstresses, 
 for example, contrive to reduce their weekly outlay 
 to the absolutely lowest point consistent with living 
 at all, by dispensing with all luxuries whatever, 
 and with many of what are considered by the 
 more fortunate simple necessaries. They touch no 
 alcohol, they dress in rags, they buy only the food 
 which is the cheapest. They live, in fact, on 
 bread, a little fat, and water, or, when hot water 
 is procurable, a little, a very little, tea. This ab- 
 stemiousness, said the St. James’s Gazette , injured 
 them greatly, for it was only in consequence of it that 
 the “ sweaters ” were able to apply the competition 
 screw in its full force. If the women had more 
 
 227 
 
228 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 wants, they would, in the end, have more money. 
 The remark struck us as most subtle, and recurred 
 to our memories with a new significance on 
 reading Sir John Gorst’s Indian Budget The 
 main reason why Indian finance is so difficult, 
 and new taxation in India so impossible, or so 
 full of risk, is that the Indian peoples have acquired, 
 or have developed in abnormal proportions, two 
 virtues which European moralists are never tired 
 of praising. There is no abstemiousness in the 
 world, and no thrift, like the thrift and abstemious- 
 ness of the average native of India. Almost alone 
 among the working men of the world, he has 
 raised himself nearly above wants, has stripped 
 himself of all the impedimenta of luxury. Millions 
 of men in India, especially on the richer soils and 
 in the river deltas, live, marry, and rear apparently 
 healthy children, upon an income which, even 
 when the wife works, is rarely above two shillings 
 a week, and frequently sinks to eighteenpence. 
 The Indian is enabled to do this not so much 
 by the cheapness of food — for though it is cheap, 
 a European who ate the same food would want 
 five times the money merely to feed himself — as 
 by a habit of living which makes him independent 
 of the ordinary cares of mankind. He goes nearly 
 without clothes, gives his children none, and dresses 
 his wife in a long piece of the most wretched 
 muslin. Neither he nor his wife pay tailor or 
 
 milliner one shilling during their entire lives, nor 
 
INDIAN ABSTEMIOUSNESS 
 
 229 
 
 do they ever purchase needles or thread, which, 
 indeed, it is contrary to a semi-religious etiquette 
 ever to use. The poorer peasant inhabits a hut 
 containing a single covered room of the smallest 
 size, with an earthen platform or two outside it ; 
 and as he constructs and repairs his own dwelling, 
 he virtually pays no rent, except for the culturable 
 land. He never touches alcohol, or any substitute 
 for it. There is an idea in England that he eats 
 opium or hemp ; but he, as a rule, swallows neither, 
 — firstly, because he regards them with as much 
 moral antipathy as any English gentleman ; and 
 secondly, because he could not by any possibility pay 
 for articles which in India, as everywhere else, 
 are exceedingly expensive. He eats absolutely no 
 meat, nor any animal fat, nor any expensive grain 
 like good wheat ; but lives on millet or small rice, 
 a little milk, with the butter from the milk, and 
 the vegetables he grows. Even of these he eats 
 more sparingly than the poorest Tuscan. Once 
 a quarter, perhaps, he will eat enough, during some 
 festival ; but as a rule, he knows accurately what 
 will sustain him, and would be enraged with the 
 wife who cooks for him if she prepared more. He 
 is assisted in this economy by a religious rule 
 which we have never seen a Hindoo break, and 
 which is undoubtedly, like the rule against killing 
 oxen, a survival from a military law or custom of 
 the most remote antiquity. The leaders of the 
 people, when Indians were nomads or invaders, 
 
230 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 made it a grand crime to kill the only beasts 
 available for transport or for agriculture, and re- 
 fused permission to cook more than once a day. 
 The Hindoo, therefore, must wait till nightfall for 
 his second meal, and has contracted a fixed habit 
 of not eating, except occasionally fruit, more than 
 twice in the twenty-four hours. Even this does 
 not exhaust his capacity of abstemiousness. It is 
 impossible to say what proportion of the Indian 
 people eat only once in a full day, but in some 
 districts it is a perceptible one, and even on the 
 most fertile lands of Bengal the present writer has 
 occasionally come across evidence which has shown 
 him that most respectable men, quite on a level, 
 except as to knowledge, with our Northern unskilled 
 labourers, were living, and had lived for years, on 
 one meal a day. Such men, even when they eat 
 twice, are beyond “ wants,” and are the despair 
 of the Chancellors of the Exchequer. You cannot 
 tax men’s skins. They consume nothing and seek 
 nothing which can be taxed except salt, and, ac- 
 cordingly, that has been taxed probably from the 
 days of Porus, certainly from days long antecedent 
 to the Mussulman conquest of the Peninsula. There 
 is absolutely nothing else except the food itself, 
 and to tax that would involve the extinction of 
 the people. 
 
 We shall be told that we have drawn a painful 
 picture of poverty, but that it indicates no virtue. 
 Well, we do not know. It is a little difficult to 
 
INDIAN ABSTEMIOUSNESS 
 
 231 
 
 make the ideas of one race clear to men of another ; 
 but we believe few of the Settlement officers, who 
 of all men best know the real people of India, 
 would deny that their abstemiousness was in part 
 a virtue. The mental habit which enables Indians 
 to abstain from pleasant things may have been 
 generated in them by ages of continuous want ; 
 but that there is a mental habit which makes 
 abstemiousness easier to them is certain. They are 
 like English women, who like nice things occasion- 
 ally, but who do not give to eating and drinking 
 and comfort generally the prodigious place in life 
 which English men, and especially English work- 
 men and philanthropists, now do. Millions of 
 natives, helped no doubt by the ascetic teaching 
 of their creed, do not care much about comfort 
 for their bodies, and would rather have comfort 
 in other directions, — say, through leisure or accu- 
 mulation. They will not be worked to death for 
 their stomach’s sake. They will accumulate if they 
 see a chance, however their insides may clamour 
 to be comforted. There is no thrift like native 
 thrift, and abstemiousness is its root. Peasants 
 who have begun to save constantly continue the 
 way of living we have described for years on end, 
 and not unfrequently adhere to it after they have 
 grown positively rich. They always, when in 
 misfortune, meet it by complete personal self-denial. 
 They waste on marriages and festivals, and on 
 expenses, often legal, which they deem essential 
 
2 3 2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 to honour, or which satisfy their pride ; but they 
 do not waste on themselves, even in copper coins, 
 — though they have at least one taste, that for 
 sweetmeats, which is nearly as strong as that of 
 the Briton for beer, or that of the Frenchman for 
 a satisfying meal. It seems to us that self-restraint 
 influences the abstemious native, as well as his 
 poverty ; and that self-restraint of this daily and 
 persistent kind, often involving great resistance to 
 temptation, and always involving slight but con- 
 tinuous suffering, must be at least of the nature of 
 virtue. It is so all the more because the native 
 neither parades his economy, nor sulks under it, 
 nor hates the man who has no necessity to practise 
 it. He regards it, as he does darkness or death, 
 as part of a Divinely appointed life, thinks about 
 other things, and though very rarely a joyous man, 
 is frequently an exceedingly humorous, and con- 
 stantly a placid one. 
 
 If it is admitted, as we should certainly admit, 
 that abstemiousness is a virtue in the Indian, it is 
 a little melancholy to think that, as in the working 
 woman of the East End, it produces so little result 
 of any beneficial kind. Character does not seem 
 to be strengthened by it. The imbecile weakness 
 of these very men, when custom, or the priests, 
 or family pride demand mad waste, has been re- 
 marked ever since we entered the country, and is 
 a perpetual theme of objurgation to native social 
 reformers. They pay, too, unjust demands from 
 
INDIAN ABSTEMIOUSNESS 
 
 2 33 
 
 tax-gatherers, from money-lenders, from powerful 
 enemies, in as weak a way as the self-indulgent 
 do, never resisting extortions which would drive 
 Englishmen of the same type half-frantic. Nor 
 do they make their country wealthy. It is a 
 curious problem for the teetotallers and vegetarians 
 and lecturers on thrift, that the Indians, who do 
 not drink, who avoid meat, and who save cash with 
 persistent care, have not made India, which is in 
 the main a fertile continent, very rich, nor raised 
 the average of wages very high, nor developed the 
 wants which generate what we call comfort. To 
 all appearance, the grand results of their splendid 
 abstemiousness are that the minimum rate of wages 
 is the lowest, prices being considered, in the world, 
 and that the continent contains perhaps a hundred 
 millions more people than is quite good for it. It 
 looks, as it looks also in the case of the working 
 women of the East End, as if there were resultless 
 virtues, or even virtues with an evil result, as if 
 profusion developed energy, and as if energy pro- 
 duced more positive good than mere abstinence. 
 It is conceivable not only that part of the wealth 
 of Britain is due to a base desire for beef and 
 porter, but that some of the spirit of enterprise in 
 the people, some of the readiness to spend them- 
 selves in furious working, is due to it too. We 
 will not say that abstemiousness in a whole popu- 
 lation produces as much harm as good, for we do 
 not know enough to venture such an opinion ; but 
 
234 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 we will say that fanatics and faddists may study 
 Indian virtues and their results with a good deal 
 of instruction. A little badness might be good 
 for them. There are signs, for instance, we are 
 told, as yet faint, that native abstemiousness and 
 thrift may yield to one strong temptation now 
 pressing very closely upon them. They all like 
 tea, and may by degrees, like English sempstresses, 
 like it enough to crave it, though its consumption 
 — now confined to medicine — would greatly disturb 
 the economy of their households. If that ever 
 happened, Indian Chancellors of the Exchequer 
 would jump for joy, and we feel by no means sure 
 that the wealth of the people would not be greater. 
 Tea is as much pure waste, except in the pleasure 
 it gives, as alcohol, perhaps it is even more so ; 
 but then, the desire for tea produces the energy 
 necessary to obtain it, and so far as appears, the 
 countervailing consequence of abstemiousness is 
 deficient energy. 
 
The Asiatic Notion of Justice 
 
 HE opposition offered by Riza Pasha and 
 
 others of the higher officials to judicial reform 
 in Egypt is usually set down in this country to 
 corrupt motives. They want bribes, it is said, for 
 protecting unworthy suitors, or they desire the 
 opportunity of oppressing their enemies, or their 
 dependents’ enemies, through the agency of the 
 police. The charge is probably true in part, most 
 Orientals desiring irregular rewards, just as Bacon 
 did, and thirsting for irregular power and the abject 
 deference and sense of authority which irregular 
 power speedily produces ; but they could, if they 
 were perfectly articulate, make a better defence for 
 themselves than Englishmen imagine, a defence, 
 too, in which the suitors before them would cordi- 
 ally concur. There are just Asiatics as well as 
 unjust, though they are usually few, and Asiatics, 
 too, whom no man could bribe ; and as they and 
 their suppliants would resist Mr. Scott’s reforms as 
 stiffly as their corrupt compatriots, it may be of 
 some interest to a few observers of human nature 
 to state the reasons why. The popular notion that 
 

 236 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Asiatics do not care for justice, or even positively 
 dislike it, is, of course, entirely without foundation. 
 The approval of justice is almost as instinctive as 
 the idea of difference between right and wrong, and 
 an Asiatic submits more humbly to a just sentence 
 than a European. The agent of God, he thinks, 
 has found him out, which it was his especial busi- 
 ness in this world to do, and which is evidence, 
 among other things, of the reality of his commission, 
 and vindictiveness on that account would be only a 
 new crime, — an idea asserted by English gaol- 
 keepers to be also entertained by the convicts in 
 their charge. The idea that an Asiatic does not 
 desire a just decision on the merits of the case as 
 between plaintiff and defendant, or accuser and 
 accused, is utterly without foundation. The only 
 differences in that respect between the races are 
 that the Asiatic is not convinced of the inherent 
 equality of men, holding that the great and those 
 invested with sanctity ought to have some favour 
 shown them, and that as regards fitting punish- 
 ments, he belongs to the fifteenth century, and 
 would have no kind of feeling about torture, muti- 
 lation, or breaking on the wheel. The highest 
 Egyptian expositor of the law did, indeed, in this 
 very discussion, lay it down as a cardinal dogma 
 that a brigand should suffer the amputation of his 
 hands, a penalty which no European Government 
 dare attempt to enforce for any offence whatever. 
 It is not as regards justice in itself, but as regards 
 
 
THE AS/AT/C NOTION OF JUSTICE 237 
 
 the method of distributing it, that the Asiatic parts 
 company from the European. The latter in all 
 countries insists on a specially qualified Judge, 
 definite rules of evidence which often exclude 
 evidence, and a mode of procedure as well known 
 and as rigid as the law itself. He always employs 
 expert intermediaries to attack or to defend, and he 
 has usually an inexplicable desire that the place for 
 doing justice should, so to speak, be consecrated to 
 that business only, a sentence delivered out of Court 
 striking him as something abnormal, suspicious, and, 
 in some way not defined, irreverent. The result of 
 these feelings is, that the Englishman, American, or 
 German secures justice, but only after an expensive 
 and tedious process, excessive interruption to 
 ordinary business, and, in civil cases, great differ- 
 ences between the amount of his just claim and 
 the amount which, after the lawyers are paid, 
 actually comes into his hands. All that is to the 
 Asiatic utterly detestable. He thinks that when he 
 is wronged, it is the business of the ruler, or his 
 executive delegate, to right him at once, without 
 delay, without expense, fully and finally. He 
 appeals to him loudly in the market-place, in the 
 road, or in his hall of audience, indifferently, and 
 expects justice either there and then, or if wit- 
 nesses must be summoned from a distance, at a 
 fixed time, not to be altered without the gravest 
 cause. The decision thus given is to be just, 
 inexorably just, but is to be reached irrespective 
 
238 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of any rules of evidence, any customs, or any laws 
 not directly religious ; and even that last qualifica- 
 tion is only for the sake of form. So intense is this 
 feeling, that the gravest charge an Asiatic can bring 
 against his ruler is that, though outside his palace, 
 he refused to hear him, or that, having given a 
 decision, he failed to make it instantly executive. 
 Moreover, the ruler is entirely of his subjects’ 
 opinion in the matter. There never has been an 
 Asiatic Sovereign, however bad, or however accus- 
 tomed to profound seclusion, who would not have 
 admitted that this was his duty, which he sinned in 
 neglecting, or who, if caught unawares, say on a 
 hunting party, would not have fulfilled it to the 
 best of his ability. Aurungzebe, the great 
 Emperor of Delhi, who assumed the manner rather 
 of a deity than a monarch, and used to receive his 
 Court seated on crossed stone girders in the roof of 
 his audience- hall, twenty feet above all heads, would 
 hear the raggedest wretch in his dominions, and 
 give a decision, often strangely astute, there and 
 then ; and woe to the courtier, however powerful, 
 who barred the execution of a decree so pro- 
 nounced. The Oriental, in fact, desires suddenness, 
 inexpensiveness, and finality in the distribution of 
 justice, and therefore looks for it — as that unhappy 
 Sikh is doing who was always getting imprisoned 
 because he wanted to ask the Queen in person to 
 restore his land, forfeited by some Court’s wrongful 
 decision — only from the executive power. No 
 
THE ASIATIC NOTION OF JUSTICE 239 
 
 other can be so quick, or so final, or so cheap, 
 and the notion of depriving it of its first function 
 is, in the eyes of subject and ruler alike, positively 
 immoral. The Khedive has just given away this 
 right, and but that he is supposed to be in durance 
 to the infidel, and no longer possessed of free-will, 
 he would be held by every subject to have given 
 away also his moral right to reign. 
 
 Of course, as a matter of fact, the system works 
 horribly ill, worse, perhaps, than any system what- 
 ever, except that of Spain, where you institute the 
 suit and your grandson gets the decree. The ruler 
 gets bored with the work, and delegates his power, 
 which is again sub-delegated, until there is at last 
 an ignorant and corrupt official, intent on money- 
 making, who can give an absolute order, and enforce 
 it with the whole power of the State, and who, being 
 the Sovereign’s representative, is independent of 
 evidence, laws, and every other restraint, except 
 the one remote chance that if a suitor, palpably 
 oppressed beyond bearing, can reach his Sovereign’s 
 ear and convince him, an order may come for that 
 oppressor’s head. So strong is tradition, that we 
 think even the Sultan under those circumstances 
 would give that kind of redress ; but except in 
 extraordinary cases when the ruler will work like 
 Frederick the Great, or in the more frequent cases 
 when the dread of him is so acute that the oppressor 
 is paralysed by the threat of personal appeal to the 
 Throne — this is actually the case in Afghanistan at 
 
240 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 this moment — the reserved power of the Sovereign 
 is no protection, and justice suffers such deprava- 
 tion, that but for two checks very curious in their 
 operation, society would go to pieces. Most suits 
 and plaints are between equals, or persons nearly 
 equal, and bribery in such cases ameliorates tyranny, 
 the wronged man being willing to make the larger 
 pecuniary sacrifice. And there is a point of injustice 
 hard to ascertain, but indubitably existing, beyond 
 which an official Asiatic, when sitting in judgement, 
 must not go. If he does, the universal conscience 
 revolts ; he is boycotted in a style that even he 
 feels, and the atmosphere of respect for power 
 which in the East clothes and protects the power- 
 ful, ceases to guard his life. As for the police, 
 under this system they degenerate into fiends. 
 They cannot prevent access to the official’s pre- 
 sence ; but they collect the evidence, they arrest 
 the accused — and keep him just as long as they 
 like — and they carry out or do not carry out the 
 ultimate decree ; and every one of these operations 
 is an excuse for a fresh bribe. The official cannot 
 punish them, and except under superior order never 
 does, for either he shares the bribes, or he is depen- 
 dent on them for the collection of taxes, the one 
 duty he dare not fail in, or he is positively afraid of 
 them, the latter a case constantly occurring in 
 Egypt, and, it is said, in the interior of China. 
 The oppression of the police throughout Asia, 
 outside India, is something quite awful, and almost 
 
THE ASIATIC NOTION OF JUSTICE 241 
 
 as great a cause of human misery as even slavery. 
 Indeed, it would desolate whole States, but that at 
 a certain point of endurance the populace takes 
 arms, the police are killed everywhere at sight, and 
 society, which as a rule detests breaking up, re-forms 
 itself again under the protection of Vigilance Com- 
 mittees. The Asiatic knows how to organize them 
 well enough, but never will do it in good time or 
 persistently, and when he has done it, usually falls 
 under the temptation to use his new power in 
 brigandage. 
 
 Nevertheless, for all its bad results, there is 
 something lofty in the Asiatic notion of the proper 
 distribution of justice, and it does sometimes, under 
 very favourable circumstances, as in one or two of 
 the smaller States of India, produce an extra- 
 ordinary harmony between ruler and ruled, the 
 former appearing every day as a beneficent person 
 who redresses wrong as a deity would, at once and 
 by a fiat which executes itself ; but there is, even 
 under such circumstances, a drawback to it too 
 seldom noticed. It checks prosperity too much. 
 Anglo-Indians often lament that the Asiatic system 
 is not tried in India, where we could secure just 
 satraps ; but just satraps are of little use as Judges 
 except in a simple state of society. The moment 
 commerce comes in with its complexities, the just 
 satrap is an injurious nuisance. Solomon was a 
 great Judge, no doubt, though a very cruel one, 
 cruel as the first Shah of the Kajar family, who 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ripped open a soldier to see if he had stolen some 
 milk ; but if Solomon had one day decided contracts 
 according to the English rule, that the buyer must 
 take care of himself, and the next day according to 
 the Mussulman rule, that there is always an implied 
 warranty, commerce would have become impossible. 
 To make a country prosperous, civil suits must be 
 decided not only with justice, but with justice 
 according to a rule which never swerves, is never 
 forgotten, and is always known beforehand, — that 
 is, in practice, they must be decided by experts in 
 accordance with written law. It seems a clumsy 
 system, because of the expense and delay it neces- 
 sarily involves ; but it is the only one which will 
 work when affairs have grown in the least degree 
 complex or many-sided. The will of the just man 
 armed with all power seems a grand instrument ; 
 but it is of no use whatever in deciding whether 
 unbleached shirtings are up to sample, or whether 
 such-and-such documents establish agency or not. 
 You must have written law, and there is no written 
 law in Asia except the religious ones ; and among the 
 religious ones, not one pays the smallest attention — 
 very properly — to such questions as arise in com- 
 merce. There must not only be law, but positive law, 
 case law, and therefore experts to advise, and there- 
 fore trained tribunals, and therefore that separation 
 of law from the executive which the Asiatic mind 
 detests. The process is inexorable, and produces 
 exactly the same conclusion as the degradation of 
 
THE ASIATIC NOTION OF JUSTICE 
 
 243 
 
 justice which follows, slowly but inevitably, on per- 
 fect despotism, — viz., that if a country wants civiliza- 
 tion, or prosperity, or unbroken order, it must put 
 up with Courts. 
 
 1 
 
The “ Standard of Comfort ” in India 
 
 S IR AUCKLAND COLVIN, the Lieutenant- 
 Governor of the North-West Provinces — the 
 great region between Bengal and the Punjab — 
 made a speech at Lucknow which, if its teaching 
 were only accepted by the people, would work a 
 social revolution. As most of our readers know, 
 though few of them probably quite realize, the “stand- 
 ard of comfort ” among the masses of India is almost 
 the lowest, or perhaps is even the very lowest, among 
 the semi-civilized peoples of the world, distinctly 
 lower, for instance, than that of the Chinese. A 
 fairly contented Indian peasant or artisan usually 
 seems to Western eyes to possess no comforts at all. 
 His cottage, or rather hut, consists practically of 
 a single room, often built of dried mud instead of 
 brick, with no floor, no attempt at a chimney, the 
 fuel used being charcoal, and no furniture except 
 sometimes a “charpoy” or two — i.e. the simplest 
 form of trestle-bed — two or three brass lotahs, and 
 some unglazed earthen cooking-pots. There are no 
 chairs, no carpets, no tables for eating, no bedding 
 in the English sense, nothing, indeed, whatever on 
 
 244 
 
THE “ STANDARD OF COMFORT" IN INDIA 245 
 
 which a British pawnbroker would, in an hour of 
 expansiveness, advance 3.?. The owner’s clothing 
 may be worth 5^. if he has a winter garment, and 
 his wife’s perhaps 10s. more, her festival robe, 
 usually diaphanous, though sometimes as thick as 
 an ordinary English shirt, having a distinct value. 
 The children wear nothing at all. The man never 
 sees or thinks about meat of any kind. He never 
 dreams of buying alcohol in any shape. The food 
 of the household costs about 6 s. a month, and 
 consists of roasted rice or unleavened cakes, fish if 
 procurable, vegetables, milk, and a little clarified 
 butter, the whole being made tasteful with cheap 
 country spices ; and his only luxury is sugar made 
 up, sometimes cleverly, sometimes horridly, accord- 
 ing to the “ way ” of each district, into sweetmeats. 
 He has practically no medical aid, though his wife 
 is helped in her confinements by a midwife nearly 
 as ignorant as herself, and never dreams of the 
 purchase of anything of any sort — with an exception 
 to be mentioned by-and-by — which can by any 
 stretch of imagination be described as portable 
 property. He could fly into the jungle with his 
 whole possessions, his farm or hut of course 
 excepted, at five minutes’ notice, and carry them 
 all himself. This method of life, with insignificant 
 variations, consisting chiefly in an additional number 
 of rooms, extends from the bottom of society up 
 through the whole body of the poorer peasantry and 
 the artisans, until you reach a grade which in Europe 
 
246 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 would be certainly ranked with the middle class, the 
 absence of comfort existing as a permanent fact in 
 at least twenty millions of households, or a popula- 
 tion of a hundred millions. (We should ourselves 
 put the figures much higher, but we do not want a 
 statistical dispute.) Sir Auckland Colvin, like most 
 Europeans, considers this state of affairs detestable ; 
 he calls on the people to want more comforts, and 
 he holds it one of the duties of the English in India 
 to break down the Indian indifference to personal 
 comfort in all matters of daily life. He wants the 
 Indians, in fact, to house themselves better, to clothe 
 themselves more fully, to buy more furniture, and 
 generally to desire more strongly those necessary 
 articles which, like shoes and stockings in London, 
 are classed by many reasoners as among the neces- 
 sary conditions and most palpable evidences of true 
 civilization. Is he right or wrong ? 
 
 Be it remembered he is not, as so many kindly 
 men who do not know India will immediately assert, 
 talking optimist nonsense, or suggesting changes 
 hopelessly impossible on account of the poverty of 
 the people. There is a poor class of workers in 
 India as everywhere else, and in a land where 
 everything is on the Asiatic scale — that is, immoder- 
 ately large — that class is numerous enough to make 
 a people ; but a majority of the masses whose living 
 we have described, and about whom the Lieutenant- 
 Governor was talking, could live otherwise if they 
 chose. The man in a waist cloth and nothing else 
 
THE “ STANDARD OF COMFORT ” IN INDIA 247 
 
 has always a hoard of some kind, often a hoard so 
 large that its multiplication by millions nearly 
 explains that drain of silver to India which has 
 worried economists ever since our reign began, and 
 which remains one of the most inexplicable facts in 
 commercial history, the silver disappearing as if it 
 fell through into a hidden reservoir. The woman with 
 a thin sheet for her only covering tinkles at every 
 step she takes, her ankles and arms being loaded 
 with silver bangles, which are not unfrequently 
 supplemented with a waist belt of valuable coins, — 
 English sovereigns sometimes in the north, when 
 the harvest has been immense, or prices in Europe 
 tempt speculators to ship wheat in such quantities 
 that the very rivers are overweighted with traffic. 
 The child who runs about without a rag on is 
 burdened with silver anklets, and on festival days 
 tempts every scoundrel to murder her merely for 
 the value of her heavy ornaments. The “ poor ” 
 men of India possess a mass of jewels which, if 
 applied to that purpose, would in a few years house 
 them comfortably — that is, solidly — while the sums 
 they waste on festivals and the marriage ceremonies 
 of children would provide more furniture than the 
 parents could ever use. It is not poverty which 
 prevents the growth of the thirst for comfort in 
 India, but luxury, — if hoarding and jewel-buying be 
 luxuries, — thrift carried unhesitatingly to its logical 
 consequence, that money shall not go out of the 
 house, and the “ indifference ” of which Sir Auckland 
 
248 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Colvin speaks in terms of reprobation, and would 
 use the influence of the dominant race finally to 
 dispel. 
 
 We ask again, is he right in his wish ? Most 
 Europeans, full of their inbred conviction that 
 comfort and civilization are identical, will answer at 
 once, “ Certainly he is ; ” but we are not quite so 
 sure. There is a civilization which is independent of 
 furniture, and even of clothes, not to speak of many- 
 roomed houses ; and the Indian very often indeed 
 possesses that. It is not, of course, a Christian 
 civilization, nor has it reached the level of civiliza- 
 tion attained by the freemen in the old pagan 
 countries on the shores of the Mediterranean ; but 
 still, it is a very different thing from savagery or 
 Socialism. His self-respect is not in the smallest 
 degree wounded by his want of “ comforts,” nor is 
 he conscious why, standing there in his loin cloth 
 he should not take pride in himself, his wife, his 
 home, or any of his belongings. As a rule, he is a 
 respectable man even according to English ideas of 
 respectability, — that is to say, he commits no crimes, 
 is faithful to his wife, pays all he owes, is the best of 
 fathers, performs all small civic duties that fall to 
 his lot with growling accuracy, and so long as 
 expenditure is not asked of him, is an unusually 
 helpful and steadfast friend. He usually knows 
 who his great-grandfather was, which the European 
 of his class does not, and often is as full of the 
 pride of race, and that in its better form, as ever was 
 
THE “ STANDARD OF COMFORT ” IN INDIA 249 
 
 Sir Francis Doyle’s drunken private of the Buffs 
 who died rather than surrender his pride of caste. 
 He is one of the most industrious of mankind ; he 
 will no more steal than an English maid servant 
 will ; and he is, for all his ignorance, which no doubt 
 is fathomless, as sensitive about what he considers 
 his honour as any old English squire. He is not a 
 bad fellow at all in ordinary times, though there is 
 a bad drop in his pagan heart which shows itself on 
 provocation ; and he derives much of his good 
 qualities from his sense of a personal dignity independ- 
 ent of material circumstances. A life long struggle 
 for nice furniture would demoralize rather than 
 raise his character, as would also waiting for mar- 
 riage until he possessed a carpet, or working for pay 
 amidst an impure crowd in order to enrich his mess 
 of food. He is an aristocrat of a sort, and in urging 
 him into the race for physical comfort, which at 
 present he does not regard at all, you are at least 
 running the risk, or, as we should say, incurring the 
 certainty, of breaking down the aristocratic or 
 haughtily independent side of his character, which 
 is its strongest buttress. He would descend from 
 the yeoman or self-managing artisan who lives in 
 his own house, and can make marvels almost with- 
 out tools, into a member of an over- numerous pro- 
 letariat, all struggling with each other, and gradually 
 placing comfort before dignity, independence, or any 
 other ideal of civilized life. It would be wise, the 
 economists say, to spend his hoard on furniture, but 
 
25 ° 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 then his sense of security would be gone ; and wise 
 to melt his wife’s jewels, but then where would be 
 her social pride ? — no mean preservative, be it re- 
 membered, in a non-Christian land. We are no pas- 
 sionate admirers of Thoreau as he was, or even of 
 the man Thoreau wished to seem to be ; but an 
 unconscious Thoreau, wholly unaware of effort, and 
 respecting the bareness of his hut because it was 
 bare too in his forefathers’ time, seems to us nearly 
 the equal in character of the smug Englishman who, 
 owing all the civilization he has to Christianity, 
 often glibly dismisses the teachings of that creed as 
 “ talk good enough for parsons.” In inspiring the 
 Indian with the thirst for comfort, we may do his 
 character much disservice ; while as to his happi- 
 ness, we question if any comfort except one, medical 
 attendance, would add to it one jot, — the best proof 
 perhaps, being that many of his countrymen, when 
 they have attained to position, and even large 
 wealth, live precisely as he does, buying, no doubt, 
 good houses, and occasionally English furniture, but 
 living, in their own offices and their women’s rooms, 
 as simply as peasants or artisans. The Indian 
 poor man is not harassed by the climate of Europe ; 
 he has plenty of easy society, he has no employer 
 to fear, and as he sits on the estrade of baked earth 
 round his house, drinking the soft, sweet air, and 
 watching his children, he is as full of humour, often of 
 the gayest and most satirical kind, as any Parisian 
 artisan. To exchange his religion, with its endless 
 
THE “ STANDARD OF COMFORT ” IN INDIA 251 
 
 terrors about the past and for the future, for the light 
 of Christianity; to alter his moral code till he becomes 
 pitiful and forgiving ; to enlarge his mind till 
 intellectual interests fill some space in his life, and 
 his talk is not eternally of pence and trifles, — these 
 seem to us great objects ; but to “ raise his standard 
 of comfort,” and so fill all India with discontent, in 
 order that furniture dealers and clothiers and con- 
 fectioners may make great businesses, — we confess 
 that this effort to revolutionize the habits of a con- 
 tinent seems to us hardly worth while. Our success 
 in such a task would be good for the Indian revenue, 
 no doubt, and therefore for the useful machinery of 
 administration ; but it would not be equally good 
 for the people, who are at present, amid much 
 suffering from ignorance, at least free of that burden 
 of endless wants and strugglings which make up so 
 much of the system we vaunt as Western civilization. 
 
The Core of Hindooism 
 
 MONG the great creeds which have influenced 
 
 masses of mankind, there is none the inner 
 strength of which it is so difficult to discern, as 
 Hindooism. Its governing tenets are so overlaid 
 with superstitions, its central thoughts so obscured 
 by a meanly gorgeous ritual, its essentials so smoth- 
 ered in what to its teachers seem non-important 
 details, that many observers doubt if it has any inner 
 life at all. Ninety in a hundred of the Europeans 
 in India, including, unfortunately, many Mission- 
 aries, regard it as a mass of absurdities, foisted by 
 cunning priests upon an ignorant population, and 
 intended first of all to secure the ascendency and 
 the easy living of a single hieratic corporation, 
 recruited by hereditary descent, and trained in col- 
 leges which are in fact schools for the cultivation of 
 ceremonial laws. A few Europeans of course have 
 discerned that no faith of which this could be justly 
 said, could have maintained its dominion over 
 millions of intelligent men for tens of centuries, and 
 have endeavoured from time to time to inform 
 Europe of the ideas which, under an almost crushing 
 
 252 
 
 
THE CORE OF HINDOOISM 253 
 
 weight of overgrowth, have kept Hindooism alive, 
 which have given its general principles victory in a 
 hundred revolts, and which to this day enchain some 
 of the subtlest and most disinterested thinkers that 
 the world has produced. As a rule, however, these 
 European exponents of Hindooism have found but 
 thin audiences. They have either been distrusted 
 as controversialists sworn to a particular view, or 
 have been overweighted with repellent learning, or 
 have lost all clearness of utterance in the effort to 
 reconcile the practice of Hindooism with the inner 
 faith of its devotees. The Hindoos themselves 
 have helped them very little. Asia is not given to 
 explanations such as Europeans understand ; and so 
 far as we know, there is no apology for Hindooism 
 written in a European tongue by a Hindoo, to which 
 any attention has been paid. It is therefore with 
 some surprise, as well as much interest, that we 
 have read a pamphlet written in English by a 
 Madras Brahmin named Swami Vivekanandd, and 
 published at three-farthings a copy, which is intended 
 to supply this great deficiency. It was read, we 
 believe, originally before the “ Parliament of Re- 
 ligions ” held at Chicago, and is certainly a remark- 
 able performance. The writer is far too brief ; he 
 omits altogether to give us the Hindoo view of the 
 relation of religion to morality, and he is obscure — 
 probably with intention — as to the Hindoo concep- 
 tion of what he calls “ God ” ; and though he knows 
 English as well as we do, he cannot entirely rid 
 
254 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 himself of the Asiatic tendency to an interjectional 
 style, with all its assumptions and inflations. Still, 
 his little pamphlet has merits not to be denied. He 
 really understands at least part of what is wanted 
 of him, and succeeds in telling any Englishman 
 who will read him patiently, what the essential 
 thought of Hindooism is. 
 
 There are, we believe, more than fifty accepted 
 external forms of Hindooism, ranging from a wor- 
 ship which is hardly higher than fetishism — indeed, 
 Swami Vivekananda gives it that opprobrious appel- 
 lation — up to the worship of the highest Sunyasees, 
 which is free from any formulas or any kind of 
 ritual, whether low or high, is indeed a service of 
 pure thought or rapt contemplation of the Infinite ; 
 but every Hindoo, whatever his intellectual grade, 
 is aware of and accepts certain philosophic dogmas. 
 One of these is that spirit exists as well as matter, 
 and is of necessity, under laws which to Hindoos 
 seem self-evident, inherently above matter. As a 
 fact, for which no one can account, spirits are im- 
 prisoned in bodies, but spirit is nevertheless above 
 matter, is deathless, as most European thinkers also 
 believe, but, as none of them believe, is also without 
 origin. The spirit, say the Hindoos, or “ soul,” to 
 use our Western terminology, can by no conceivable 
 possibility have been created, for if created it would 
 be liable to die, and that which dies cannot be a 
 spirit. Swami Vivekananda puts this dogma for- 
 ward in the simplest language, not as a matter of 
 
THE CORE OF HINDOOISM 
 
 2 55 
 
 argument, but as a fact which, to all who reason, 
 must be self-evident. He says : “ Here I stand, 
 and if I shut my eyes and try to conceive my exist- 
 ence, * I,’ ‘ I,’ ‘ I,’ what is the idea before me ? The 
 idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combi- 
 nation of matter and material substances ? The 
 Vedas declare, ‘ No.’ I am a spirit living in a body. 
 I am not the body. The body will die, but I will 
 not die. Here am I in this body, and when it will 
 fall still will I go on living. Also I had a past. 
 The soul was not created from nothing, for creation 
 means a combination, and that means a certain future 
 dissolution. If, then, the soul was created, it must 
 die. Therefore, it was not created.” The soul 
 being uncreated must be an emanation from some- 
 thing self-existent, and that can only be God or the 
 self-existent spirit which is in all things and contains 
 all things, being in truth the only reality of which 
 everything else is a phenomenal manifestation. 
 Being an emanation, the soul is always struggling 
 to get back to its source, to liberate itself from the 
 fetters of matter, and in regaining unity with the 
 Infinite to regain at one and the same moment free- 
 dom and “ bliss.” The freedom from matter is 
 self-evident, and so, asserts Swami Vivekanandd, is 
 the bliss. He knows quite well that to the highly 
 individualized Western this notion of absorption 
 being bliss, seems almost absurd, or at least an asser- 
 tion that torpor is bliss, and he meets that difficulty 
 with almost childlike directness : — “We have often 
 
256 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 and often read about this being called the losing of 
 individuality as in becoming a stock or a stone. I 
 tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness 
 to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must 
 be more happiness to enjoy the consciousness of 
 two bodies, or three, four, or five — and the ultimate 
 of happiness would be reached when this sense of 
 enjoyment would become a universal consciousness.” 
 As the spirit or soul is uncreated and cannot die, 
 and struggles always to regain its habitat, and as 
 clearly a great many men are not fit to regain it at 
 once, it follows almost as a matter of course that 
 the soul lives repeatedly in a conscious being, that 
 is, is “ transmigrated,” a fact of which the memory 
 of most men gives them no consciousness — any 
 more, says the Madrassee Brahmin smilingly, than 
 a Madrassee’s memory gives him his English be- 
 fore he wants it and compels it to come to his mind 
 — but which is nevertheless a fact proved by two 
 arguments. If we have no past, our misfortunes 
 are injustices, and God is a cruel tyrant, which is 
 impossible ; and moreover certain “ Rishis ” — 
 “ saints ” will do as a translation — have positively 
 remembered many lives, or even all their lives, — a 
 huge conception, which the Swami nevertheless 
 asserts may be true of all men : — “ This is direct and 
 demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect 
 proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown 
 to the world by our Rishis. We have discovered 
 the secrets by which the very depths of the ocean 
 
THE CORE OF HIND001SA1 
 
 257 
 
 of memory can be stirred up — follow them and you 
 will get a complete reminiscence of your past life.” 
 “ Freedom ” then being the end, how is freedom 
 to be obtained ? It may be obtained, says the 
 Hindoo, by all men, by the Christian no less than 
 by himself, if only he will become “ pure ” ; and it 
 is in this effort after “purity” that Hindooism as we 
 see it arises. Each sect, each caste, each subdi- 
 vision of a caste, strives for it in its own way, and 
 so long as the way tends to subordinate matter to 
 spirit, no way is wrong. Swami Vivekananda 
 rejects utterly, as we understand him, the idea 
 that any worship can be sinful, and regards all as 
 strugglers, some, like children, requiring images and 
 ritual to wake the consciousness of spirit in them ; 
 but all pressing forward, though with many fallings 
 back, to a goal that must ultimately be attained. 
 “ Ye are the children of God,” he says, “ the sharers 
 of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye, 
 divinities on earth, sinners ? It is a sin to call a 
 man so. It is a standing libel on human nature. 
 Come up, O lions ! and shake off the delusion that 
 you are sheep — you are souls immortal, spirits free 
 and blest and eternal, ye are not matter, ye are not 
 bodies. Matter is your servant, not you the servant 
 of matter. ... If a man can realize his divine 
 nature most easily with the help of an image, would 
 it be right to call it a sin ? Nor, even when he has 
 passed that stage, should he call it an error. To 
 the Hindoo, man is not travelling from error to 
 
 s 
 
258 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher 
 truth. To him all the religions, from the lowest 
 fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many 
 attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the 
 Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its 
 birth and association ; and each of these religions, 
 therefore, marks a stage of progress, and every soul 
 is a child-eagle soaring higher and higher, gather- 
 ing more and more strength till it reaches the 
 Glorious Sun.” 
 
 This, then, is the inner Hindooism, the belief 
 which every Hindoo accepts, and which sanctifies to 
 him every act which he thinks or fancies or dreams 
 may be worship. The lowest forms of idolatry, the 
 most prejudicial rules of caste, the most cruel acts 
 of self-maceration all help him on, as he believes, 
 towards that “ liberation ” from the chain of matter 
 which is to him the ideal and the perfect condition. 
 No Hindoo, however low, is wholly without this 
 belief, and, as we suspect, no Hindoo, even if he 
 becomes a Christian, shakes himself in one genera- 
 tion wholly free from its influence. It is not our 
 business, of course, to reply to Hindoo advocates, — 
 to point out that their theory presupposes an end- 
 less cycle organized rather by Fate than God ; that 
 the impossibility of the creation of a spirit is a denial 
 of omnipotence ; that there is no particle of evidence 
 for transmigration ; or that their heaven, when 
 attained, is only sleep, however blissful, even if it 
 be not, as regards individual existence, simple anni- 
 
259 
 
 ) 
 
 THE CORE OF HIND 00 ISM 
 
 hilation. All we wish to point out to-day is that 
 the Hindoos have behind their apparent creed 
 another, which cannot fairly be denounced as either 
 savage or ignoble, and that this creed is in its essence 
 more hostile to Christianity than even sincere Chris- 
 tians are apt to believe. It rests on a totally 
 different conception of the nature of the Supreme 
 Being, who, says Swami Vivekananda, with all 
 thinking Hindoos, cannot be an individual, or 
 possess “ qualities ” ; on a radically separate concep- 
 tion of the soul, which in Hindooism is practically 
 self-existent, and on a method of struggling towards 
 heaven which may be in the highest minds a lofty 
 dominance of matter by spirit, but may also be in 
 average men nothing but a low formalism adopted, 
 no doubt, with an idea of rising, but no more calcu- 
 lated to make a man rise than any form of the 
 fetishism to which our Brahmin compares it. His 
 tolerance, of which he is so proud, is hardly distin- 
 guishable from indifference to truth, and we wish he 
 would tell us in a pamphlet as brief as this one, what 
 his ideas as to the final division between right and 
 wrong really are, and how far Hindooism actually 
 asserts what it always seems to assert, that that may 
 be right in one man, one caste, or one nation which 
 is hopelessly wrong in another. As we read his 
 present pamphlet we understand him to say that 
 anything done with the idea of getting higher is a 
 virtuous act. Does he, in so teaching, recognize 
 the existence of a sovereign and universal consci- 
 
26 o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 ence, be it instinctive or be it revealed, or not ? 
 We have tried for years, as patiently as a European 
 may, to decide what Hindoos like the Swami think 
 on that point, and we remain in a fog still. We 
 cannot, that is, perceive how great Hindoo doctors 
 permit polygamy in one caste — not to mention much 
 worse things — and denounce it in another, yet keep 
 up any unalterable distinctions based on the teach- 
 ing of the inner light. And without that light how 
 does a Hindoo know what will raise him higher ? 
 
Cruelty in Europe and Asia 
 
 I N considering the differences, radical or acci- 
 dental, which divide, and, as we believe, 
 always will divide, Asiatics from Europeans, one 
 of the most perplexing is the different estimates 
 they apparently form of cruelty. The horror 
 naturalis for that form of criminality which un- 
 doubtedly marks Englishmen, and in a less degree 
 all European peoples, seems not to extend to 
 Asiatics at all. The Chinese officials constantly 
 sentence political offenders to the most awful tor- 
 tures, — to be killed, for example, by a slow chopping 
 into little bits. The King who ruled in Burmah in 
 1850 habitually sentenced the women of any family 
 whose head was convicted or suspected of treason, 
 to be ripped up — the great American missionary, 
 Dr. Kincaid, saw it done, and risked his own life 
 by felling the executioner — and their children to be 
 pounded up in the mortars used for pounding grain. 
 The wife of Theebau, the King whom we dethroned, 
 is said to have delivered fearful sentences, which 
 we do not recount because the evidence is still so 
 
 imperfect and so impaired by the wish to attribute 
 
 261 
 
262 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 extra cruelty to a dethroned House. The charge 
 against the late Guicowar of having offenders 
 stamped to death by elephants, appears however 
 to be true ; while every traveller in Persia relates 
 horrible stories of brigands and others being built 
 alive into stone walls, the head alone protruding. 
 Jung Bahadoor, we all know, shot with his own 
 hands a large company of his opponents beguiled 
 into a royal hall ; and a few years ago telegrams 
 were received asserting that a Khan of Khelat 
 had slain three thousand of his subjects — not in 
 battle — and had “ murdered ” sixty-five persons 
 of distinction, including five of his own wives, 
 and had in consequence been deposed by the 
 Government of India. There are scores of such 
 stories, most of them true ; and the point we 
 wish to discuss is why punishment so seldom fol- 
 lows from within ? Why do not the people depose 
 these bloodthirsty rulers for themselves ? It is 
 certainly not because they are afraid. Nobody is, 
 or can be, braver than a Mahratta or a Persian. 
 They insurrect, if they are moved to insurrect, when- 
 ever they choose, often, as in the Bab insurrection, 
 when they have no chance at all ; and must be aware 
 that they are giving their lives for a cause lost 
 beyond redemption. Nor is it because insurrection 
 is hopeless. In most of the countries specified, and, 
 indeed, in all countries throughout Asia except 
 Turkey and, of late years, China, the armed people, 
 if in earnest, could master their rulers speedily 
 
CRUELTY IN EUROPE AND ASIA 
 
 263 
 
 enough ; while, in all, if the army rebelled, the 
 Sovereigns would have no alternatives but submis- 
 sion, flight, or suicide. Yet popular insurrection 
 against cruelty is an unheard-of event. The truth 
 is, the people do not care ; and the point we want 
 to arrive at is the ultimate reason why. Is it that 
 they feel some singular indifference to the murder 
 of others, or that they are inherently callous, or 
 that cruelty in some inexplicable way rather con- 
 tents than horrifies them ? All these explanations 
 so constantly put forward are in a measure true, 
 but behind them all is another probably more potent 
 than them all put together. That Asiatics regard 
 life differently from Europeans is, of course, a patent 
 fact. If it were not, all Asiatics could not have 
 adopted creeds in which contempt for life, amount- 
 ing often to a distaste for separate consciousness, is 
 a cardinal dogma. The Buddhist and the Hindoo 
 alike base their creeds upon the latter feeling ; while 
 the Mahommedans, without exception, hold death 
 for the faith the one direct passport to immortal 
 bliss. It is also true that Asiatics are callous, lack- 
 ing that side of the imagination which we call sym- 
 pathy, and which has become so dominant among 
 ourselves, that we are apt to forget how compara- 
 tively recent its development has been. It is not two 
 hundred years since Englishmen allowed untried 
 prisoners to die of typhoidal disease, produced by 
 starvation and neglect ; not fifty years since Eng- 
 lishmen across the water maintained the Black 
 
264 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Code ; and not two months or two days since the 
 same people in the Western States defended and 
 practised burning alive as the fitting penalty for 
 strongly suspected rape. Sympathy is still imper- 
 fect even among white men ; and in Asia, with 
 individual exceptions of the most extraordinary kind 
 — inexplicable, indeed, if there be no such thing as 
 prevenient grace — sympathy has yet to be born. 
 Nor should we deny that among Asiatics cruelty, 
 and especially cruelty in putting to death, does excite 
 a certain kind of admiration as a conspicuous and 
 unmistakable exhibition of energy. Mr. Morier, 
 who probably understood Persians as no other 
 European ever understood them, takes great pains 
 in all his books to assert and reassert this trait in 
 Persian character ; and it comes out strongly in the 
 Sikh admiration for Runjeet Singh, and the Afghan 
 reverence for Abdurrahman Khan. Still, after 
 making these admissions, there remains something 
 else ; which is this. The Asiatic substitute for law 
 is the will of the ruler, a will which, believing that 
 power comes from God, he reverences even in his 
 thoughts. We are apt to think that he only sub- 
 mits to a tyranny which he cannot help ; but, as a 
 matter of fact, when he can help it, he does not do 
 it. There have been more revolutions in Asia than 
 in Europe ; but there has never been a case in 
 which the brown man or the yellow man has 
 deprived his new ruler of the power of inflicting 
 death by fiat. He regards his will as law in its 
 
CRUELTY IN EUROPE AND ASIA 
 
 265 
 
 true sense, and is no more offended when he orders 
 executions than the Frenchman was offended when 
 traitors were broken on the wheel, than the Spaniard 
 was offended when relapsed heretics were burned, 
 or than Englishmen were offended when criminals 
 were hanged for larceny or breaches of the revenue 
 law. The law, as the Asiatic understands it, has 
 sentenced those whom the Sovereign dooms, and 
 he is satisfied, even though the law, in its severity 
 or capriciousness, should threaten himself. So may 
 the lightning or the smallpox ; yet both of them are 
 the manifestations of a will that cannot err, resist- 
 ance to which is futile and, in some sense, impious. 
 It is not that he approves murder, or does not fear 
 murder. He sets up governments, and pays taxes 
 first of all to be protected against murder ; but when 
 the murderer is the ruler he submits, as we submit 
 to law. We are not sure whether the same senti- 
 ment, though it sprang from a different origin, did 
 not once prevail in Europe, — whether, that is, the 
 Roman did not hold the murderous fury of an 
 Emperor like Nero or Valentinian to be a legal 
 fury, something which, proceeding from the rightful 
 possessor of the dictatorship, became from that fact 
 alone legally right and incontestable. We do not 
 find that Romans bore wrongs from each other, 
 much less murders, without complaint, nor were 
 they always cowed by the Praetorians. 
 
 Why the brown man and the yellow man thus 
 exalts the ruler’s will is, we confess, still to us a 
 
266 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 nearly unsolved mystery. It is not altogether 
 because he is Asiatic, for the average Russian — 
 who is as purely white as we are, that talk of his 
 Tartar origin having no historic basis — did it too, 
 and regarded Ivan the Terrible as a Monarch of 
 singular force of character and ability. Nor is it 
 from any deficiency of intelligence. The Asiatic 
 restrains the Monarch completely upon the points 
 he chooses — religion, for instance, and general taxa- 
 tion — and he not only comprehends a regime of 
 written law, but he is of all men the most ready to 
 take advantage of it. Only he never likes it ; and 
 from the days of Saul to the days of Rajah Brooke, 
 whenever he has accepted a King, he has wished 
 his authority to be unrestrained. He will change 
 the ruler if he is intolerable, but he never chains 
 him, — though he could chain him easily enough, 
 ordering him to respect his subjects’ lives as he 
 respects their religious ceremonials. The Asiatic 
 says himself — or at least we have heard a great 
 Asiatic thinker say so a hundred times — that a 
 regime of law is a regime of injustice, that no law 
 can meet individual cases ; and that, in particular, 
 no law can be constructed so as to reward the good, 
 which is half the work to be accomplished. But 
 we are not sure that this is his real belief. The 
 religious law is open to precisely the same objec- 
 tions ; yet he reverences that and reduces it to 
 writing, and in most countries invents a “ case 
 book ” for its further application and explanation. 
 
CRUELTY IN EUROPE AND ASIA 
 
 267 
 
 We suspect he is much more influenced in his 
 strange practice, from which in three thousand 
 years he has never deviated, by a wish to make 
 the State as like the universe as he can — the uni- 
 verse which is controlled by some irresponsible, self- 
 depending deity or spirit or fate, whose will, as seen 
 in action, it is often impossible to explain. The 
 bolt strikes the tiger or the lamb ; and as is the bolt, 
 so is the will of the ruler strong enough to keep 
 his throne. The fact that the lamb is dead is no 
 argument against the system of the universe ; it is 
 only an argument that we do not understand it. 
 We all acknowledge that in theory ; but with the 
 Asiatic his theory is a practical guide in life, and he 
 no more considers his ruler’s cruelty immoral, unless 
 indeed specially directed against himself, than he 
 considers the earthquake or the flood. 
 
The Variety of Indian Society 
 
 T H E grand difficulty, as any experienced Anglo- 
 Indian will tell you, of talking to an English- 
 man about India, is that he always forms a picture 
 of the place in his mind. It may be accurate or 
 inaccurate, but it is always a picture. He thinks 
 of it either as a green delta, or a series of sun-baked 
 plains, or a wild region with jungle and river and 
 farms all intermixed ; or a vast park stretched out 
 by Nature for sportsmen, and sloping somehow at 
 the edges towards highly cultivated plains. It never 
 occurs to him that as regards external aspect, there 
 is no India ; that the peninsula so called is as large 
 as Europe west of the Vistula, and presents as many 
 variations of scenery. East Anglia is not so differ- 
 ent from Italy as the North-West Provinces from 
 Bengal, nor are the Landes so unlike Normandy as 
 the Punjab is unlike the hunting districts of Madras. 
 There is every scene in India — from the eternal 
 snow of the Himalayas, as much above Mont Blanc 
 as Mont Blanc is above Geneva, to the rice swamps 
 of Bengal all buried in fruit trees ; from the wonder- 
 ful valleys of the Vindhya, where beauty and 
 
 268 
 
 
THE VARIETY OF INDIAN SOCIETY 269 
 
 fertility seem to struggle consciously for the favour 
 of man, to the God-forgotten salt marshes by the 
 Runn of Cutch. It is the same with indigenous 
 Indian society. The Englishman thinks of it as an 
 innumerable crowd of timid peasants, easily taxed 
 and governed by a few officials, or as a population 
 full of luxurious princes, with difficulty restrained 
 by scientific force and careful division from eating 
 up each other. In reality, Indian society is more 
 complex and varied than that of Europe, comprising 
 it is true, a huge mass of peasant-proprietors, but 
 yet full of Princes who are potentates and Princes 
 who are survivals, of landlords who are in all 
 respects great nobles, and landlords who are only 
 squireens, of great ecclesiastics and hungry curates, 
 of merchants like the Barings and merchants who 
 keep shops, of professors and professionals, of 
 adventurers and criminals, of cities full of artificers, 
 and of savages far below the dark citizens of Hawaii. 
 Let any one who thinks Indian society a plain, 
 study for an hour Sir Roper Lethbridge’s Golden 
 Book of India , just issued by Messrs. Macmillan, 
 and he will give up that absurdity at least. It is 
 not a perfect book by any means, as its editor him- 
 self perceives, but rather the foundation of a book 
 to be improved into completeness ; but at least it 
 will teach any reader that Indian society is not a 
 democracy, that amidst all these peasants and offi- 
 cials stand hundreds, or rather thousands, of families 
 as distinct from the masses as the Percys from 
 
270 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 English labourers, three hundred of them ruling 
 States large or small — one is bigger than the British 
 Isles ; one only two miles square — three thousand of 
 them perhaps who on the Continent would be 
 accounted nobles, some with pedigrees like those of 
 the Massimi or the Zichys, some only of yesterday ; 
 but all as utterly separated from the people as a hill 
 from the river at its base. And behind them stand 
 other thousands of squires, each with his own family 
 traditions, each with hereditary tenantry, each with 
 some position and character and specialty which, 
 within fifty miles of his home, are as well known as 
 those of the Egertons in Cheshire, or the Luttrells 
 in West Somerset. And behind them again are 
 millions — literally millions — of families, country and 
 urban, with modest means, and little wish for advance- 
 ment, yet freeholders to a man, with histories often 
 which trace back farther than those of the Lords, 
 with a pride of their own which is immovable, 
 and with characters that for five miles are known 
 and reckoned on, and, so to speak, expected , as regu- 
 larly and as accurately as if they were Hohenzollerns 
 in Brandenburg. Ask the Settlement officers — who 
 alone among Indian officials, except sometimes the 
 highest, really know the people — and they will tell 
 you that, above the very lowest, no two Indian 
 families are alike in rank or character or reputa- 
 tion, or even, though that seems so impossible, in 
 means. 
 
 India is socially the very land of variety, for in 
 
THE VARIETY OF INDIAN SOCIETY 271 
 
 addition to all that divides men in Europe, there 
 are three sources of reverence which in Europe are 
 dying away — the reverence felt for power, power in 
 its direct sense, the power to order you to be beaten, 
 the reverence felt for pedigree, and the reverence 
 felt for that which is, as certain to have been decreed 
 either by God, or by that unintelligible and immu- 
 table Fate which even He may not resist. The 
 reverence for all is absolutely genuine — that is, is 
 without the alloy of European scepticism and dislike 
 of the great ; and all three reverences are mingled 
 in a way which we despair of conveying to the 
 Western mind. There are three hundred Native 
 rulers in India, possessed, in theory at all events, of 
 the power of life and death ; certain that, if they 
 give the order, its object will fall headless before 
 them, or be spirited away to a dungeon, there to 
 remain till the lord’s humour changes. Every 
 one of those men is believed by his people, be they 
 many or few, to have a right to that power, and to 
 be entitled to use it at his own discretion. For his 
 own sake he should use it wisely, lest he should find 
 the next world disagreeable, or, lest his subjects 
 should rebel ; but the right is never denied even in 
 the heart. The British Government controls it, 
 sometimes, though not so often as Englishmen 
 think ; but the subjects never, except by rebellion, 
 which is not a declaration that the power is bad, but 
 the user of the power. The late Gaekwar was not 
 unpopular, though he is said to have made his 
 
272 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 elephants tread out men’s bowels, often for inade- 
 quate offence. Power is of God, and to have such 
 power the ruler must, in a former life, have heaped 
 up virtues ; and the little Mahrattas, brave as steel, 
 bowed their heads in genuine loyalty and devotion. 
 And this, though the Gaekwar bears a name, “ the 
 Herdsman,” which, a hundred and fifty years ago, 
 was, we would deferentially suggest to Sir Roper 
 Lethbridge, neither more nor less than the nickname 
 of the leader of a troop of patriot brigands such as 
 followed the founder of the House of Anjou. This 
 reverence for power is the true root of the astound- 
 ing variety of names which the Princes have gradu- 
 ally adopted. “Nizam” is only “ Administrator,” 
 but it suffices to the most powerful King in India. 
 “ Dewan ” is only “ Finance Minister,” but it is the 
 title of several rulers. “ Gaekwar,” as we have said, 
 is only “ Herdsman,” but the reigning Prince of 
 Baroda is as willing to be called that as Maharaja. 
 The power being clear, nothing else matters, save 
 only birth, and on this the Indian holds, and holds 
 hard, by both theories. Want of pedigree does not 
 interfere with the position of the Gaekwar, or Sindia, 
 or Holkar, as it did not interfere with the reverence 
 felt for Hyder Ali, a corporal’s son, or for Runjeet 
 Singh, a village officer ; and yet, if pedigree be not 
 the main factor in Indian life, all observers alike are 
 at fault. The Maharana of Udaipur (Oodeypore) 
 is first among Hindoos, because, whether he descends 
 from Rama or not, it is eighteen hundred years or 
 
THE VARIETY OF INDIAN SOCIETY 273 
 
 more since he, even then head of a family which had 
 resisted Alexander, settled down in Rajpootana to 
 reign till the Black Era should disappear in the 
 endless progress of time. The Maharaja of 
 Travancore certainly reigned, as even Sir Roper 
 Lethbridge allows — and he is careful to understate 
 legendary pedigrees — in 352 a.d., and we see no 
 reason for doubting the local belief, which asserts 
 that even then he sprang of the Emperors of Mala- 
 bar, a family lost in the night of time, and because 
 of that descent he is in his own dominions almost 
 divine. The Maharaja of Calicut, whom the Natives 
 and English alike used to call the “ Zamorin,” that 
 is, “ the Admiral,” because he reigned, like the Deys 
 of Algiers, over a pirate fleet, is nearly or quite as 
 old ; and so is another Prince, eighty-eighth sove- 
 reign of his comparatively obscure dynasty. But 
 why should we multiply instances when caste itself 
 hangs on pedigree, and when in 1857 every 
 mutinous Brahmin Sepoy who sprung to arms pro- 
 claimed the Emperor of Delhi, a powerless Mahom- 
 medan voluptuary, the birth-lord, and therefore 
 rightful lord, of India from Herat to Adam’s Bridge ? 
 As to the third source of reverence, how are we to 
 describe it, unless we quote the Highland story of 
 the woman, whose husband falling under feudal dis- 
 pleasure, said to him, with an embrace and a sigh, 
 “ Gang up and be hangit, Donald, and dinna anger 
 the laird.” There spoke the true Indian when 
 face to face with the irresistible ; and in that tran- 
 
 T 
 
274 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 quillity under suffering, if only it is customary, and 
 therefore ordained, is a source of distinctions of 
 grade such as Europe can hardly conceive. A man 
 may rise in India, by the sword or by favouritism 
 or by chicane, even more rapidly than in Europe ; 
 but if he does not rise, he accepts the effect of a 
 violent difference of grade as English labourers 
 accept the seasons. Who is he, to resist what 
 Nature has decreed ? And finally, right across 
 these distinctions come the ecclesiastical ones, 
 cutting them, as it were, into bits, yet leaving them 
 entire. No power, no character, no pedigree, can 
 make the Hindoo Prince the equal of any Brahmin 
 in his dominion. The Maharaja of Nepal, absolute 
 as deity, or the Maharaja of Travancore, with his 
 matchless pedigree, or the last Sindia, with the 
 floors of his harem apartments bursting with their 
 treasures in metal, is alike a mere dog by the side 
 of the Brahmin whom he could order to be tortured 
 for an impertinent word. 
 
 There is not, that we see, the faintest chance that 
 this extreme variety in the conditions and rank of 
 Indians will ever fade away. The English have 
 tried hard for a hundred years to drag the steam- 
 roller of their doctrine of equal rights over the sur- 
 face of Indian society, but their success has been 
 very slight. They have smitten down the Emperor 
 of Delhi and a few Princes, but three hundred men 
 remain beyond the law ; and they have crippled the 
 nobles without effacing them, have, indeed, as Sir 
 
THE VARIETY OF INDIAN SOCIETY 275 
 
 Roper Lethbridge points out, added to their number. 
 If they remain, they will be afraid, indeed, they are 
 already afraid, to level the whole of Native society, 
 lest the whirlwind should some day upheave the 
 grains of sand, and leave them for ever buried in 
 the dunes. They will maintain rank, if not privilege, 
 as long as they can ; and as for the Natives, differ- 
 ences of rank are to them almost sacred. They will 
 die for precedence, slaughter for position, and wage 
 war for generation after generation for recognized 
 power among their fellows. Why not? Where 
 God is believed to have made caste, equality is 
 nonsense, as much nonsense as election must be 
 where power is held to spring from God alone. The 
 All may speak, no doubt, through the shout of a 
 mob ; but he may also speak through the sword, or 
 descent, or ecclesiastical fiat ; and, in either case, he 
 who is chosen is, while he retains the Divine protec- 
 tion as evidenced by his keeping his throne, absolute 
 and irresponsible save to the All alone. It is not 
 that the idea of equality has not penetrated into 
 India, as so many say, for every idea has penetrated 
 there, and rank is even now independent of occupa- 
 tion — the Raja, as we have seen with our eyes, 
 sweeping the dust from the Koolin clerk’s feet with 
 his own forehead — but that it has penetrated and 
 has been deliberately rejected as inconsistent with 
 the whole scheme of the universe. How can there 
 be equality when one man may have lived fifty lives 
 of virtue, and another fifty of vice, and the one be 
 
276 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 justly rewarded by being the slave or prisoner of 
 the other ? There never will be equality in India, 
 even in the desire of the people, unless the Mussul- 
 mans restore their Empire ; and even the Mussul- 
 mans have been deeply touched by the Hindoo 
 genius, and allow to antiquity and pedigree and 
 position claims utterly inconsistent with the social 
 teaching of the Prophet, who made a black slave 
 Commander-in-Chief of a great army. 
 
 We have hardly left ourselves space to discuss 
 the question whether the English have acted wisely 
 in introducing into India their own ideas of rank. 
 Sir Roper Lethbridge, who has had much informa- 
 tion given him from the Indian Foreign Office, 
 seems to think they have. We always bow before 
 real experts, but our own impressions tend to a con- 
 trary conclusion. The Star should, we think, have 
 been reserved for Europeans who comprehend the 
 meaning of such a decoration ; and the Government 
 should have used, as, indeed, it does use, the system 
 of native rank lying ready to its hand. It should, 
 that is to say, when it wished to reward a man, have 
 conferred on him a native title, whether personal, 
 hereditary, or — an innovation we strongly advise — 
 continuative, that is, heritable while any descendant 
 of the new noble, who was alive at the time of his 
 creation, shall survive. The title should usually be 
 Raja, or Nuwab, not Maharaja, which implies terri- 
 tory — but the Foreign Office should take some 
 trouble to grant the precise title the recipient most 
 
THE VARIETY OF INDIAN SOCIETY 277 
 
 desires. Even in France a “Vidame” does not 
 want to be called Marquis, and so lose half his 
 history ; and in India the name bestowed by the 
 masses is often the most acceptable title that can be 
 found. The matter is not of much importance, 
 perhaps, but it is desirable to keep up grade in a 
 land where grades are universally considered right, 
 and we might, we think, do it without inflicting on 
 those we honour, barbarous names which the body 
 of the people to be impressed can neither pronounce 
 nor understand. They desire, as we believe, pre- 
 cedence among each other, not precedence among 
 the white intruders into the secluded land. The 
 Prince who sat on his star gave vulgar expression 
 to a feeling which can hardly be absent from a 
 Native mind : “ Who are these barbarians of yester- 
 day that they should think us honoured with the 
 decorations of their chilly island ? ” 
 
The Vastness of Calamities in Asia 
 
 E VEN in Asia, where everything is immoderate, 
 where a forest covers kingdoms, a river 
 deposits a county in a decade, and man grows feeble 
 from an abiding sense that Nature is too strong for 
 him, there has been no calamity in our time at once 
 so terrible and so dramatic as the bursting of the 
 Yellow River on September 27, 1887. It exceeds 
 in its extent, if not in the separateness of its horror, 
 the submerging of the island of Deccan Shahbaz- 
 pore in 1876, when a storm-wave in two hours 
 swept off three hundred thousand human beings. 
 The Yellow River, larger and swifter than the 
 Ganges, and containing more water perhaps than 
 five Danubes, bears to the immense province called 
 Honan, which is ten thousand square miles larger 
 than England and Wales, much the relation borne 
 by the Po towards the Lombard Plain, at once a 
 blessing and a scourge. Its waters originally created 
 the lowlands of the province by depositing silt 
 through ages, and they are now their torment. The 
 alluvial land, once above the water, is rich with a 
 richness of which Englishmen have no experience, 
 being covered with a thick pad of yellow mould a 
 
 278 
 
THE FASTNESS OF CALAMITIES IN ASIA 279 
 
 hundred feet or more deep, on which everything will 
 grow, from the teak tree to the pineapple, yielding, 
 when planted with rice, one hundred and sixty fold, 
 and in places producing, almost without manure and 
 with light ploughing, two full crops a year. No 
 people living by agriculture can resist the temptation 
 of such a soil, and for ages the Chinese — of all races 
 in the world the most instinctively agricultural — 
 have swarmed to these lowlands, to find that, in 
 spite of all their profits, they must embank the river 
 or perish. The surplus water of autumn, probably, 
 like that of the Ganges, nine times the regular out- 
 flow, rushing down in huge masses from the hills at 
 a speed of twelve miles an hour, pours its overspill 
 over whole counties, drowning everything not ten 
 feet above the river-level, and when it retires, leaves, 
 besides a deposit fatal to one year’s crop, an unen- 
 durable variety of fever. Down go whole popu- 
 lations at once, not dead, but paralysed for work and 
 with their constitutions ruined. The Chinese, who 
 in their courage for labour are a grand people, fought 
 the river, embanked it, and for two thousand years 
 at least reaped enormous harvests from the pro- 
 tected soil. Every two centuries or so, however, 
 the river, rising in its strength like a malignant 
 genius, swept every barrier away, cut for itself a 
 new bed — nine such beds are known — and ruined 
 a province ; but the people swarm in again, the new 
 work is easier at first, and the land is again recovered 
 from the vast lagoons. The last outburst occurred 
 
28 o 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 twenty-five years ago ; but the Chinese still perse- 
 vered, immense dykes were completed, and the 
 province once more became a garden. 
 
 There is, however, a difficulty in embanking any 
 river carrying huge deposits. The Times corres- 
 pondent blunders about this. He talks of it as a 
 specialty of the Yellow River, but every river carry- 
 ing much pulverized soil from the mountains pre- 
 sents the same perplexity to engineers. The water 
 not only deposits silt where it debouches, but all 
 along its course ; and if it is shut in by embank- 
 ments, the bed of the river incessantly rises higher, 
 until at last it is far above the plain. The bed of 
 the Po, for example, is in places forty feet above the 
 rice-lands, and some of the dykes of the Mississippi 
 are like artificial hills. The Yellow River, from the 
 enormous rapidity of its volume when swollen by 
 melted snow, is the worst of offenders in this respect ; 
 its new bed, even in twenty-five years, has risen far 
 above the plain, and as the dykes grow from hillocks 
 into hills, from mere walls into ranges of earth- 
 works like fortress-sides, hundreds of miles long, the 
 effort overtaxes the skill of the engineers, and the 
 perseverance even of Chinese labourers. The 
 ablest engineers in India were beaten by the 
 Damoodah, though it is, compared with the Hoang- 
 Ho, like a trumpery European stream, and though 
 the labour available could hardly be exhausted. 
 The truth of the matter is that, in all such cases, 
 the upper sections of the dykes cost too much for 
 
THE VASTNESS OF CALAMITIES IN ASIA 281 
 
 complete repair, and tend to be inadequate ; and 
 when the Yellow River, gorged with water from the 
 mountains till it forms in reality a gigantic reservoir, 
 averaging a mile broad, from three to five hundred 
 miles long, and seventy feet deep, all suspended in 
 air by artificial supports, comes rushing down in 
 autumn, the slightest weakness in those supports is 
 fatal. On September 27 the river was at its fullest, 
 its speed was at its highest, there was almost cer- 
 tainly a driving wind from the West, a bit of dyke 
 gave way, the rent spread for 1,200 yards, and — our 
 readers remember, for Charles Reade described it, 
 the rush into Sheffield of the Holmfirth reservoir. 
 Multiply that, if you can, by two thousand, add 
 exhaustless renewals of the water from behind — five 
 Danubes pouring from a height for two months on 
 end — and instead of a long valley with high sides 
 which can be reached, think of a vast, open plain, 
 flat as Salisbury Plain, but studded with three 
 thousand villages, all swarming as English villages 
 never swarm : and you may gain a conception of a 
 scene hardly rivalled since the Deluge. The torrent, 
 it is known, in its first and grandest rush, though 
 throwing out rivers every moment at every incline 
 of the land, had for its centre a stream thirty miles 
 wide and ten feet deep, travelling probably at twenty 
 miles an hour — a force as irresistible as that of lava. 
 No tree could last ten minutes, no house five, the 
 very soil would be carried away as by a supernatural 
 ploughshare ; and as for man, — an ant in a broken 
 
282 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 stop-cock in a London street would be more power- 
 ful than he. Swim ? As well wrestle with the 
 Holyhead express. Fly ? It takes hours in such 
 a plain to reach a hillock three feet high, the water 
 the while pouring on faster than a hunter’s gallop. 
 There is no more escape from such a flood than 
 there is escape from the will of God, and those 
 Chinese who refused even to struggle were the 
 happiest of all, because the quickest dead. Over a 
 territory of ten thousand square miles, or two York- 
 shires at least (for the Missionaries report a wider 
 area), over thousands of villages — three thousand 
 certainly, even if the capital is not gone, as is 
 believed — the soft water passed, silently strangling 
 every living thing, the cows and the sheep as well 
 as their owners ; and for ourselves, who have seen 
 the scene only on a petty scale, we doubt whether 
 the “ best-informed European in Pekin ” is not right 
 when he calculates the destruction of life at seven 
 millions, and whether the Times reporter is not too 
 fearful of being taken for a romancer when he re- 
 duces it to one or two. These great villages are 
 crammed with population, and alive with children ; 
 the whole water of the Hoang- Ho has been pouring 
 on them for two months, none reaching the sea; 
 and even by the highest estimate the dead are fewer 
 than those who died of starvation a few years ago in 
 the famine of the two Shans. In Asia, kingdoms 
 and capitals have perished of pestilence, as Cam- 
 bodia probably, and Gour certainly did ; and there is 
 
THE VASTNESS OF CALAMITIES IN ASIA 283 
 
 no reason, the physical conditions being favourable, 
 why equal multitudes should not perish in a flood. 
 
 What is the remedy ? What is the remedy for an 
 earthquake ? There is no remedy. In that division 
 of Honan, a generation has been swept away by a 
 fiat stronger than man’s, which has concentrated into 
 two months the natural and inevitable slaughter of 
 fifty years. The Chinese Government, which can 
 be stirred by some things, and which, when stirred, 
 has an elephantine energy, has given .£500,000 from 
 the central treasury to repair the dykes, and, as we 
 read the orders, the whole revenue of Honan till the 
 work is completed; has stopped 32,000,0001b. of 
 rice on its way to the capital and given it to the 
 survivors, and has ordered all who are ruined, but 
 not dead, to work at once on the dykes under mili- 
 tary discipline. The labourers will not be paid, but 
 they will be fed ; the Chinese engineers understand 
 hydraulics fairly well ; the channel being new, the 
 embankments need not be cyclopean at first — 
 though, be it remembered, the river of itself rises 
 certainly twenty feet in autumn ; — and at the cost of 
 about as many lives as were sacrificed on the Suez 
 Canal, and which will fall victims to the malaria 
 developed as the waters retire, the Yellow River 
 will for another generation be chained up once more. 
 The old attraction will then prove irresistible ; all 
 husbandmen without land for three hundred miles 
 on each side of the river will silently steal in to 
 settle on the alluvium, fruit trees will be planted, 
 
284 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 rice will be sown, and in five years life in Honan will 
 be proceeding exactly as before, as it does on the 
 slopes of Vesuvius after an eruption. For the past, 
 therefore, there is no remedy, and for the future little 
 hope. Nothing, if the river is simply dyked, can 
 prevent its destroying the dykes when they reach a 
 certain height ; for the work, increasing every year, 
 must at some point overpower the resources of any 
 State. If the Chinese Government could cut a 
 broad and deep canal for three hundred miles to the 
 ocean, or build, amid the hills from which the water 
 flows, a reservoir vast as an inland sea, or construct 
 a second line of dykes on each side five hundred 
 yards from the water, the overspill of the Yellow 
 River might be drained away in sufficient time to 
 arrest grand catastrophes ; but that Government is 
 at once too fatalistic and too weak for such gigantic 
 efforts, and will be content if it can only secure 
 safety for its own generation, leaving the next to 
 suffer or escape, as may please the unknown powers. 
 It is useless for Europeans to advise, or even to 
 mourn, for they can do nothing, except, indeed, 
 reflect that for the safety of their own civilizations, 
 perhaps for part of the greatness of their own minds, 
 they are indebted to the pettiness of scale on which 
 their temperate dwelling-place has been constructed. 
 We owe everything to the comparative insignificance 
 of the works of Nature in Europe. One can dyke 
 the Thames, but not the Yellow River; tunnel the 
 Alps, but not the Himalayas. 
 
A Typical Asiatic 
 
 F EW careers have ever been more instructive to 
 those who can see than that of the Maharaja 
 Dhuleep Singh, who died in Paris in 1893 of 
 apoplexy. He finished life a despised exile, but no 
 man of modern days ever had such chances, or had 
 seen them snatched, partly by fate, partly by fault, 
 so completely from his lips. But for an accident, if 
 there is such a thing as accident, he would have 
 been the Hindoo Emperor of India. His father, 
 Runjeet Singh, that strange combination of Louis 
 XI. and Charles the Bold, had formed and knew 
 how to control an army which would have struck 
 down all the Native powers of India much more 
 easily than did any of the Tartar conquerors. 
 Without its master at its head, that army defeated 
 the British, and but for a magnificent bribe paid to 
 its general (vide Cunningham’s History of the Sikhs ) 
 would have driven the English from India and 
 placed the child Dhuleep Singh upon the throne of 
 the Peninsula, to be supported there by Sikh and 
 Rajpoot, Mahratta and Beharee. Apart from the 
 English there was nothing to resist them ; and they 
 
 285 
 
286 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 were guided by a woman, the Ranee Chunda Kour, 
 who of all modern women was most like Mary of 
 Scots as her enemies have painted her, and of 
 whom, after her fall, Lord Dalhousie said that her 
 capture would be worth the sacrifice of a brigade. 
 How Dhuleep Singh would have reigned had 
 Runjeet Singh’s destiny completed itself is another 
 matter — probably like a Hindoo Humayoon — for 
 even if not the son of Runjeet Singh, who, be it 
 remembered, acknowledged him, he inherited ability 
 from his mother ; he was a bold man, and he was, 
 as his career showed, capable of wild and daring 
 adventure. He fell, however, from his throne 
 under the shock of the second Sikh war, and began 
 a new and, to all appearance, most promising career. 
 Lord Dalhousie had a pity for the boy, and the 
 English Court — we never quite understood why — 
 an unusually kindly feeling. A fortune of ^40,000 
 a year was settled on him, he was sent to England, 
 and he was granted rank hardly less than that of 
 a Prince of the Blood. He turned Christian — 
 apparently from conviction, though subsequent 
 events throw doubt on that — a tutor, who was quite 
 competent, devoted himself to his education, and 
 from the time he became of age he was regarded 
 as in all respects a great English noble. He knew, 
 too, how to sustain that character, — made no social 
 blunders, became a great sportsman, and succeeded 
 in maintaining for years the sustained stateliness of 
 life which in England is held to confer social dig- 
 
A TYPICAL ASIATIC 
 
 287 
 
 nity. Confidence was first shaken by his marriage, 
 which, though it did not turn out unsuccessfully, 
 and though the lady was in after-life greatly liked 
 and respected, was a whim, his bride being a half 
 Coptic, half English girl whom he saw in an 
 Egyptian schoolroom, and who, by all English as 
 well as Indian ideas of rank, was an unfitting bride. 
 Then he began over-spending, without the slightest 
 necessity, for his great income was unburdened by 
 a vast estate ; and at last reduced his finances to 
 such a condition that the India Office, which had 
 made him advance after advance, closed its treasury 
 and left him, as he thought, face to face with ruin. 
 Then the fierce Asiatic blood in him came out. 
 He declared himself wronged, perhaps believed 
 himself oppressed, dropped the whole varnish of 
 civilization from him, and resolved to make an 
 effort for the vengeance over which he had prob- 
 ably brooded for years. He publicly repudiated 
 Christianity, and went through a ceremony intended 
 to readmit him within the pale of the Sikh variety 
 of the Hindoo faith. Whether it did readmit him, 
 greater doctors than we must decide. That an 
 ordinary Hindoo who has eaten beef cannot be 
 readmitted to his own caste, even if the eating is 
 involuntary, is certain, as witness the tradition of 
 the Tagore family ; but the rights of the Royal are, 
 even in Hindooism, extraordinarily wide, and we 
 fancy that, had Dhuleep Singh succeeded in his 
 enterprise, Sikh doctors of theology would have 
 
288 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 declared his readmission legal. He did not, how- 
 ever, succeed. He set out for the Punjab intending, 
 it can hardly be doubted, if the Sikhs acknowledged 
 him, to make a stroke for the throne, if not of 
 India, at least of Runjeet Singh ; but he was 
 arrested at Aden, and after months of fierce dis- 
 pute, let go, on condition that he should not return 
 to India. He sought protection in Russia, which 
 he did not obtain, and at last gave up the struggle, 
 made his peace with the India Office, took his 
 pension again, and lived, chiefly in Paris, the life 
 of a disappointed but wealthy idler. There was 
 some spirit in his adventure, though it was unwisely 
 carried out. The English generally thought it a 
 bit of foolhardiness, or a dodge to extract a loan 
 from the India Office ; but those who were respon- 
 sible held a different opinion, and would have gone 
 nearly any length to prevent his reaching the 
 Punjab. They were probably wise. The heir of 
 Runjeet might have been ridiculed by the Sikhs 
 as a Christian, but he might also have been 
 accepted as a reconverted man ; and one successful 
 skirmish in a district might have called to arms all 
 the “ children of the sugar and the sword,” and set 
 all India on fire. The Sikhs are our very good 
 friends, and stood by us against any revival of the 
 Empire of Delhi, their sworn hereditary foe ; but 
 they have not forgotten Runjeet Singh, and a 
 chance of the Empire for themselves might have 
 turned many of their heads. 
 
A TYPICAL ASIATIC 
 
 289 
 
 Dhuleep Singh, though treated fairly enough by 
 the Court and by the India Office, received too 
 hard a measure from English opinion ; our country- 
 men judged him as if he had been an English 
 noble, and forgot that an Asiatic has in his blood 
 hereditary qualities which education cannot destroy, 
 and which differentiate him materially from the 
 European. The first of these qualities is the power 
 of his will in proportion to his mind. The will of 
 an Asiatic, once fairly roused, closes on its purpose 
 with a grip to which nothing in the mind of a 
 European can compare, though Miss Wilkins declares 
 that the same peculiarity exists in New England, — 
 a grip which seems too strong for the conscience, 
 the judgement, and even the heart. The man is 
 like one possessed, and cannot, if he would, change 
 his own self-appointed course. If his will is for a 
 small thing, we call it a “ whim,” and wonder that 
 a man so keen should be so childish. If it is to 
 beat down resistance by cruelty, he becomes a 
 tyrant capable of acts such as are attributed, perhaps 
 falsely, to Wellington’s Maharaja of Coorg. He is 
 utterly mastered by something within himself, and 
 will do acts which seem to Europeans evidences of 
 insanity. A quiet Hindoo trader, as respectable 
 and ordinary as any man in Fleet Street, being 
 moved thereto by an internal impulse, will resolve 
 to go to Benares, and there sit a naked Sunyasee, 
 living on alms, and will carry out that resolve for 
 twenty years, unflinchingly, uncomplainingly, till 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 death releases him from his sufferings. He may 
 half disbelieve all the while ; but his will has closed, 
 and, happen what may, earthquake included, there 
 he will sit, unmoved, until his resolve has been 
 fulfilled. It is this potency of the will which is the 
 first secret of all the strange penances of India, — 
 of suttee, of sitting in dhurna, as well as of half 
 the “ wild ” acts which stud the history of the native 
 dynasties, and sometimes for Europeans take all 
 interest out of those marvellous romances, their 
 heroes appearing to the better balanced minds of 
 the West beings too unaccountable to be interest- 
 ing, — a whole series, as it were, of Charles the 
 Twelfths, who was just one of their kind. The 
 man, for instance, who moves a capital suddenly 
 from one spot to another by bare fiat, because it 
 is his will to move it, though the moving ruins a 
 whole population, is inconceivable to Europe ; and 
 the notion that when his will has not closed he may 
 be a cool and successful statesman is rejected as 
 absurd ; yet that has occurred in India over and 
 over again. A similar “ possession ” is seen con- 
 stantly in private families ; producing the strangest 
 dramas of love, vengeance, adventure, and, though 
 that may seem bathos, sometimes of cupidity, — as 
 witness the history of the Koh-i-noor. Nothing 
 would stop an Indian whose will had closed on 
 obtaining possession of a jewel from obtaining it, 
 except sheer physical impossibility. The late 
 Maharaja, as we believe, felt just this impulse, 
 
A TYPICAL ASIATIC 
 
 291 
 
 modified probably in strength by his knowledge of 
 its hopelessness, but irresistible nevertheless, and 
 the pardon which was ultimately accorded him was, 
 morally, only just. 
 
 It is this which constitutes the inner perplexity of 
 the education of the Princes of India. We may 
 teach them as lads all we like, send them to 
 Europe, give them European habits as second 
 natures, turn them out apparently fit to be English 
 nobles ; and then the tutor who has devoted his 
 life to them will shake his head and acknowledge 
 the presence, perhaps in his most promising pupil, 
 of something he knows nothing about, which is 
 stronger than all his teaching, and which will 
 always to the end of life render the results of his 
 devotion absolutely uncertain. The lad who seems 
 so like an Etonian may turn out a saint or a Nana. 
 What is certain is, that if his will closes, he will 
 obey the dictate of that will, be it what it may, 
 and be the consequences as the Destinies shall 
 choose. It is as if each man had, like Socrates, 
 his daimon outside himself, whom he was bound, 
 by something stronger than himself, to obey. Had 
 Dhuleep Singh reigned in the Punjab, he would 
 have burst out some day just as he did here, and 
 have been declared a hero or a madman by sober 
 Europeans, according to his success. That is no 
 reason why we should cease from educating — we 
 speak, of course, without reference to methods of 
 doing it — for we can but go on according to our 
 
292 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 best lights ; but it is a reason why we should not 
 hope for too much, and why we should not be 
 surprised when we fail. The essential difference 
 between a Maharaja Dhuleep Singh and a Duke of 
 Norfolk is deeper than we dream, and is not curable 
 except in ages by any discipline. Nor is the differ- 
 ence altogether to be scouted as an evil fact. The 
 English think of the Maharaja’s great escapade as 
 if it were a mere relapse into savagery, — indeed, 
 one of the evening papers says so, comparing him 
 to Mr. Grant Allen’s Fantee clergyman — but sup- 
 pose he had succeeded, and then imagine, if that 
 be possible, how a Sikh historian would have 
 written of his mind and his career ! 
 
Aladdin’s Cave 
 
 I F Mr. J. C. Robinson’s account of the Sultan’s 
 Treasury is correct, the world must, we fear, 
 surrender any lingering hope of finding any 
 unknown collection of ancient art treasures any- 
 where in the world. There is no place remaining 
 in which to look. The great collections in Windsor 
 Castle, the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, the 
 Green Vault at Dresden, and the Vatican, are all 
 well known ; as are the collections in the great 
 museums, in the houses of wealthy nobles, and in 
 the various residences of the Rothschild family, who 
 have, however, rather skimmed the known collections 
 offered for sale than made any original collection 
 of their own. The latter operation requires time, 
 and the Rothschilds are not old. There must be a 
 o-lorious collection of treasures of a kind in the 
 
 o 
 
 Imperial Palace at Pekin, for the curiosities and 
 valuables of the Further East have flowed in there 
 for centuries, and have not been sold out ; but those 
 would hardly be art treasures. There may be, prob- 
 ably are, splendid stones, especially stones of unusual 
 size, like the sapphire taken from the Summer 
 
 293 
 
294 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Palace by General Montauban, — [by-the-way, what 
 became of that stone ? when we saw it, it was larger 
 than a man’s thumb, of a gloriously deep blue, and 
 the “asking price” was .£30,000] — magnificent 
 specimens of jade, crystal, and aqua marina, and 
 vases of old Chinese china, such as even now, when 
 the mania has declined, would set all the millionaires 
 of two Continents agog to purchase. Nothing 
 European, however, would be carried to China, and 
 Chinese connoisseurs have never shown any desire 
 for art-work not produced by their own people, or 
 stamped with the peculiar impress of Turanian 
 taste. We are not quite certain, again, that the 
 treasures of Samarcand are dispersed. The plunder 
 of a world was collected there once ; and though it 
 is improbable, the Khans of Bokhara may still 
 possess articles forwarded by Jenghiz and his 
 sons’ couriers to that strange capital at the back 
 of the world on which every road in Asia is said to 
 have once converged. Orientals will keep together 
 a treasure of the kind for a long time, holding it 
 dishonourable to sell ; but Russians have keen eyes 
 for valuable things, and we fear Mr. J. C. Robinson, 
 if he could get into the Bokhara palace would not 
 find much to repay his pains. There would be fine 
 old armour, stolen originally from Saracens, but 
 probably little else. In Bankok there can be little 
 except glorious china, some first-rate gold work, and 
 a few rubies ; and we question if General Prender- 
 gast will discover a great deal in Mandelay. There 
 
ALADDIN'S CAVE 
 
 2 95 
 
 ought to be a priceless collection of rubies and 
 sapphires in the Palace, for Burmah is their native 
 land, and the dynasty has monopolized all fine 
 stones for a hundred years. They may, however, 
 have been sold gradually ; though Theebau’s queer 
 little whine, that he hoped the English people 
 would allow him to keep the ruby on his finger and 
 the diamonds on his sister-wife’s neck, would sug- 
 gest to any one acquainted with the ways of 
 Asiatics, that he was exulting to himself over far 
 larger possessions, and had either concealed, or was 
 then carrying about, some immense store of gems. 
 There is nothing artistic, however, in Mandelay. 
 We know what exists in Teheran. The Kajar 
 dynasty has plundered Persia pretty closely ; and 
 Mr. Murray, the British Ambassador, when he 
 received permission to enter the Treasury, plunged 
 his arm into “ buckets ” of rubies, emeralds, pearls, 
 and diamonds. The Shahs, however, sell their 
 jewels on emergencies ; the late Shah, for ex- 
 ample, having paid for his grand tour in that 
 way, and the Kajars have had no time. They 
 are quite a new dynasty, even according to the 
 calculations of Europe, where parvenus like the 
 Bourbon and Hapsburg families, with scarcely ten 
 centuries behind them, are accounted old, and they 
 have never conquered the countries where art trea- 
 sures could be obtained. There is, we believe, no 
 great family left in Asia Minor of wealth unbroken 
 from antiquity, and we see no evidence for those 
 
2g6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 legends of art treasures in the Lebanon which so 
 moved the imagination of Mr. Disraeli. The 
 wealth of Antioch, once the queen city of art and 
 pleasure for the whole south of the Mediterranean, 
 may have gone up there, and Rustem Pasha, or 
 a man in the like position, might have ascertained 
 the truth ; but it is more probable that all have 
 perished, though we confess we should like to see 
 some millionaire — say an energetic member of the 
 Rothschild family — spend a few thousands in a 
 good dig into the sands of the Orontes and tinder 
 the crypts upon which the Temple of Delphi 
 stood. He could spare the money, and if he 
 hired Schliemann, or some obstinate treasure-seeker 
 of that calibre, he might be richly rewarded. 
 
 By far the best chance, however, was the Treasury 
 of the Seraglio. The House of Othman pillaged 
 Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, and, Con- 
 stantinople itself, while they were still full of the 
 work of that elder world which feudal Europe in its 
 madness suffered them — mere barbarians out of 
 Central Asia — to conquer and to keep. Constanti- 
 nople, in particular, when it fell, was a museum 
 choked with the art treasures accumulated for nine 
 hundred years by three civilizations — that of Greece, 
 that of Rome, and that of Western Asia. Nothing 
 like the Palace of the Palaeologi can ever have 
 existed, and one would have thought that the Sul- 
 tans, swordsmen as they were, would have taken care 
 of their own. They were of the temper to decapi- 
 
ALADDIN'S CAVE 
 
 297 
 
 tate any one who touched property of theirs ; they 
 are an unbroken though an enfeebled race ; and 
 they have had, from first to last, men around them 
 who would slay or die if they but received the 
 order. We doubt if they have lost much by theft. 
 Thieves do not succeed, even in Europe, in entering 
 palaces, and they dread the summary justice which 
 in the East overtakes those who rob Princes, and 
 who can be slain without troubling either juries or 
 men of law. The Seraglio Treasury, we take it, is 
 intact ; but then, if Mr. Robinson is well informed, 
 there is comparatively nothing in it. There are 
 valuables, of course, in plenty, gold thrones 
 bestudded with jewels and inlaid with mother-of- 
 pearl, and vases of jade and onyx, and marvel- 
 lous jewelled robes — the authenticity of which 
 Mr. Robinson doubts — and gold tankards, of which 
 one is crusted with some two thousand large 
 diamonds set flat, and vases full of coins — seldom 
 gold, says cynical Mr. Robinson — and pearls, and 
 uncut stones — not equal to the old gems on the 
 thrones and swords — and porcelain bowls, and 
 inlaid armour of all ages and all varieties of beauty. 
 There may be, say, half a million’s worth of jewels 
 and bric-a-brac ; but of the things a historian would 
 expect to find, the statues, and the pictures, and the 
 mosaics, and the tables, and the vases of an older 
 world, which possessed higher ideas about art than 
 that of sticking diamonds into tankards like bits of 
 glass into a brick wall, there are no traces. There 
 
298 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 are not even, moans Mr. Robinson, specimens of 
 old European bijouterie, though the Sultans must 
 for hundreds of years have been receiving presents 
 from European Courts. We do not care for old 
 bijouterie, but we do care for any specimens that 
 the rulers of Byzantium — once, be it remembered, 
 autocrats of the whole Roman world — may have 
 saved from the far past, and there are none. The 
 barbarians who entered Constantinople with the 
 destructive instincts of children, and the art know- 
 ledge of ourang-outangs, did their work too well. 
 All that was beautiful was useless or unholy ; the 
 Asiatic troops were mad with slaughter and the 
 lust of destruction, and everything, except the great 
 church and a column or two, perished for ever. 
 “Where the Turk’s foot is planted, grass never 
 grows again,” or civilization either ; and the most 
 precious relics of antiquity perished at the bidding 
 of men who would have pronounced a Venus by 
 Praxiteles either a useless or an unholy image, and 
 have lighted cooking-fires above a mosaic a thou- 
 sand years old and worth their evil lives a million 
 times over. Some few things may have been 
 saved from the wreck. The crypts of St. Sophia 
 have never been searched by civilized men, and it 
 is quite possible that the thirty guardians of the 
 Treasury showed the inquisitive infidel, whom they 
 would have liked to cut down, only the less filled 
 rooms of the great storehouse, and kept the most 
 valuable articles unpolluted by his gaze. There 
 
ALADDIN'S CAVE 
 
 299 
 
 must be a secret treasure-house as well as the more 
 open one, and in it may be things worth seeing, — 
 the plunder of Armenia, for instance ; but it is more 
 probable that it contains only a treasure in metals and 
 stones, and nothing which the world would value. 
 There has been in the world’s history no besom of 
 destruction for all that is noble in man or splendid 
 in art like a Turkish conquest, which effaces all 
 things save the lowest taxpayer, and makes of him 
 a slave. 
 
 We should like to know why Mr. Robinson, who 
 entered the Sultan’s library of manuscripts, and saw 
 them all ranged — three thousand of them — in leather 
 cases upon the wall, thinks they have been examined. 
 There is no record of such examination, and no a 
 priori reason to believe that Turks could either 
 have performed the work or would allow it to be 
 performed. Why should they learn infidel learning, 
 or what can there be in a book, unless it is a French 
 novel, which is not in the Koran ? The Sultan’s 
 Library should be searched through as the first 
 condition of the next loan made to Turkey — if 
 there ever is another — and permission demanded 
 to hunt for that older and more valuable store of 
 manuscripts believed or known to be stored in the 
 crypt of St. Sophia, and protected by the one useful 
 superstition of the Turk, — his reluctance to destroy 
 writing, lest perchance it should contain the name 
 of God. That is the last place left where we shall 
 be likely to make a great literary find ; and it 
 
300 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 should be searched before the great day when the 
 destiny of the Ottomans is completed, and Con- 
 stantinople once more sinks down, a mass of blood- 
 stained ruins, fired by its possessors before they 
 commence their final retreat to the desert from 
 which, in the mysterious providence of God, they 
 were suffered to emerge, in order to destroy the 
 Eastern half of the civilized world. The only other 
 chance is in the Shereefal Palace at Morocco, and 
 it is uncertain if a library exists there. Sir John 
 Hay Drummond says it does not ; and although he 
 would be easily deceived on such a point, and 
 though the Cordovan manuscripts ought to be 
 there, and though Mahommedans never destroy 
 writing, still it is possible that for once he has 
 been told the truth. 
 
The Arabs of the Desert 
 
 LANCING through a new volume of poems 
 
 which the author rather absurdly calls The 
 Love Sonnets of Proteus , we came upon this very 
 fine and suggestive address to the Bedouins — 
 
 Children of Shem ! Firstborn of Noah’s race, 
 
 But still forever children ; at the door 
 Of Eden found, unconscious of disgrace, 
 
 And loitering on while all are gone before ; 
 
 Too proud to dig ; too careless to be poor ; 
 
 Taking the gifts of God in thanklessness, 
 
 Not rendering aught, nor supplicating more, 
 
 Nor arguing with Him when He hides His face. 
 
 Yours is the rain and sunshine, and the way 
 Of an old wisdom by our world forgot, 
 
 The courage of a day which knew not death. 
 
 Well may we sons of Japhet in dismay 
 Pause in our vain mad fight for life and breath, 
 Beholding you. I bow and reason not. 
 
 The “ many-charactered ” poet bears one character 
 among others, we believe, which specially entitles 
 him to judge of Arabs, and certainly in this sonnet 
 he has touched with a ringing spear the central 
 peculiarity of the Bedouin position. There is no 
 puzzle in the world, either to the ethnologist or the 
 
 301 
 
302 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 psychologist, quite equal to the Arab, whether he 
 dwells in a tent, half- nomad, half- robber, or abides 
 in a city of Nejd or South Arabia, the oldest, most 
 tranquil and proudest of republicans. Why is he, 
 of all men in the world, the one who changes so 
 little, that the person who, of all mankind, most 
 resembles Sheikh Abraham in ways and habits and 
 bearing, and, as the best observers say, in habit 
 of thought, is his collateral kinsman, ninety genera- 
 tions removed, a Sheikh of Syria or Nejd ? What 
 induces the Arab to seclude himself in a dreary 
 peninsula, in poverty such as no European con- 
 ceives, and there live the life of a remote antiquity ; 
 a life without object, or hope, or fear ; a life so 
 persistent that a thousand years hence, if Europe 
 does not conquer him, the Arab will be as to-day ? 
 It is not his race, for the Jew is as purely Arab 
 as himself, sprung from the same ancestor as him- 
 self, and, like himself, has never mixed his blood. 
 And yet the Jew has changed. The least receptive 
 of mankind has become the most receptive — so 
 receptive, that he is more German, more French, 
 more Italian than Italian, German, or Frenchman ; 
 the most isolated seeks cities by choice, preferring 
 Brighton infinitely to the desert ; the purely agricul- 
 tural people have grown into money-changers, and 
 the most religious even of Asiatics have become, 
 with magnificent individual exceptions, utterly 
 earthy. The Arab who wanders has changed 
 altogether, while the Arab who remains is as he 
 
THE ARABS OF THE DESERT 
 
 3°3 
 
 was in the days of Jethro, even his new creed — for 
 Mahommedanism is parvenu before the Arab — being 
 rather an expression of himself than an influence 
 modifying his mind. Christianity changed the 
 Norseman, but the Arab was Mahommedan before 
 Mahommed. 
 
 What has made the latter so unchangeable ? It 
 is not any defect of intellect, or want of force of 
 character. All who have studied the Arabs in their 
 tents or their secluded cities attribute to them the 
 old qualities — the instinct for poetry and romance, 
 and, so to speak, literature ; a command of their 
 magnificent tongue, such as no uncultivated Euro- 
 pean has of his own language ; a separate energy ; 
 a special capacity for comprehending argument, and 
 even for managing affairs. As soldier, the Arab 
 is first in Asia, though, from his excessive individu- 
 ality, he is beaten in the aggregate by an inferior 
 people like the Turks — “ mud bricks,” as he himself 
 says, “ being better for building than diamonds.” 
 The Arab who wanders forth as soldier, as states- 
 man, as trader, or, curiously enough, as sailor, 
 almost invariably succeeds ; and if the English 
 quitted India, it is a question whether a Sikh, a 
 Mahratta, or an Arab would rebuild the throne of 
 the Great Mogul. It is not energy that is wanting 
 to him. His forefathers conquered the world, and, 
 unarmoured, defeated even the armoured Barbarians 
 who lived only for battle, founded three empires at 
 least, and did not retreat after centuries ol contest 
 
3°4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 before the Crusaders, the picked warrior emigrants 
 of a dozen Christian lands. All the men of iron of 
 Europe failed to tear Jerusalem from the Arab. 
 To this day the Arab intriguer rises most swiftly at 
 Constantinople, the Arab trader penetrates furthest 
 into Africa, the Arab missionary in Bengal, in 
 Central Asia, in the furthest recesses of Central and 
 Western Africa, makes the most numerous and the 
 most faithful converts. The enervated Hindoo of 
 Dacca, the dissolute pagan of the Gold Coast, 
 becomes, when under the *Vrab spell, the dangerous 
 Ferazee or the warlike Houssa. No one who 
 knows the Arab doubts his enterprise, and yet he 
 lives on in the Syrian desert, or in his vast, secluded 
 peninsula — Arabia is as large as India, or Europe 
 west of the Vistula — unchanged, seeking no advance, 
 complaining of no suffering, living his life, such as it 
 is, straight on, and accepting death as a destiny 
 neither to be sought nor feared. As it was, is now, 
 and ever shall be, world without end — that is his 
 conception of human life. Time is nothing to the 
 Arab ; progress has no attraction for his mind ; 
 wealth, though when abroad he seeks it zealously, 
 has no charm to tempt him thither. Poverty is 
 nothing to him, for the man who is contented with 
 his skin can never be poor. Buckle might say it 
 was his geographical position, but that did not 
 prevent him from conquering half the Roman world. 
 It is his creed ? In what does his creed differ from 
 that of the Jew, except in certain precepts which 
 
THE ARABS OF THE DESERT 
 
 3°5 
 
 should send the Arab forth to conquer, not seclude 
 him in the islands of the desert ? It is his poverty ? 
 About all other men we say, and say truly, that 
 poverty is a stimulus to advance, that clans of brave 
 men able to fight will not remain poor. It is his 
 individualism ? That is but pushing the question a 
 step backwards, for what is it that makes the Arab, 
 who abroad founded Bagdad and Granada, and who 
 at home constructs petty States as truly Republican 
 as Uri, unable to found a kingdom or a society 
 which shall advance men to the “civilized ” Oriental 
 level ? What gives the Arab alone, even among 
 Asiatics, that perfection of mental content which 
 asks nothing even from God, and is so full, as 
 “ Proteus ” says, of “ the courage of a day which 
 knew not death ” ? 
 
 We suppose the secret must lie, like the secret of 
 the Irish peasant’s homesickness, in some charm 
 which the life he leads, with its exemption from 
 wants, and from changes, and from uncertainties, 
 has for him ; but that is certainly a strange lesson 
 for the breathless race of Japhet. The most quali- 
 fied of the races of Asia, having conquered a world 
 and its wealth, and built cities and devised creeds, 
 and composed a literature, shrinks back contentedly 
 to live a changeless life of dreary poverty, in the 
 one section of the world which to the European 
 is utterly repellant. The Arabs do not believe one 
 word of all that Mr. Bright gives to the world as 
 solidly sensible advice, and they are content, and 
 
 x 
 
3°6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 among their rivals noble. They despise industry, 
 put wealth by as meaningless, keep the tradition of 
 the past as a possession, and, without decay as with- 
 out progress, live on for ever, as they were in ages 
 of which history tells us nothing. What explanation 
 of them has the Comtist, with his dream of perfected 
 humanity, to offer ? or where is his proof that the 
 Parisian, with all his modern vigour and activity of 
 brain, and mastery over all the secrets of Nature 
 which conduce to comfort or to the diffusion of 
 intelligence, will survive the Arab, who was before 
 the Pharaohs in all essentials what he is now ? 
 Durability, at all events, is not lacking to the race 
 which, of all others, is furthest from the modern 
 ideal. May it not just be possible that the races 
 which halt and wait, as calmly indifferent to the 
 strife outside as if their habitats were planets, may 
 conserve energy more than the races which advance, 
 and in advancing must expend force of some kind ? 
 That it is force perpetually renewed by the expendi- 
 ture may be true ; but also it may not, for the Greek 
 has not reproduced Phidias, or /Eschylus, or Archi- 
 medes, nor do we find in Scandinavia the energy 
 which once threatened and repeopled so much of 
 the world. Suppose Shem lasts and not Japhet, 
 that Mecca survives Manchester, that when Europe 
 is a continent of ruins, the Arab shall still dwell 
 in the desert, “ too proud to dig, too careless to be 
 poor,” “ not rendering aught or supplicating more,” 
 but living on like the Pyramids, whose foundations 
 
THE ARABS OF THE DESERT 
 
 3°7 
 
 he saw laid. It seems impossible to Mr. G. O. A. 
 Head, with his bottled electric force, carried about 
 in a valise, but the Arab stood at the gates of On 
 and saw the “ magicians ” and their feats, and stood 
 below the walls of Constantinople and saw the 
 Byzantine pour out his liquid fire, and despised both 
 Egypt and Rome, and went back to the herbless 
 land ; and he lives on still, not advanced, not 
 degenerate, the ablest though the most useless of 
 his kind. Birmingham is great, but it has not yet 
 discovered every truth about the destiny of Man ; 
 and there are fractions of humankind whose govern- 
 ing impulses Western Europe as little comprehends 
 as it foresees the future. Imagine a clan wjiich 
 prefers sand to mould, poverty to labour, solitary 
 reflection to the busy hubbub of the mart, which 
 will not earn enough to clothe itself, never invented 
 so much as a lucifer match, and would consider 
 newspaper-reading a disgraceful waste of time. Is 
 it not horrible, that such a race should be ? more 
 horrible, that it should survive all others ? most 
 horrible of all, that it should produce, among other 
 trifles, the Psalms and the Gospels, the Koran and 
 the epic of Antar ? 
 
Asiatic Patriotism 
 
 W E know of no subject upon which the opinion 
 of experts in Asiatic affairs is so hopelessly 
 divided as that of Oriental Patriotism. A great 
 number of the keenest of them, and especially of 
 the men whose experience is entitled to respect, say 
 that such a feeling as patriotism does not exist in 
 any Asiatic. He can and will die for his creed, or 
 for his tribe, or caste, or for his dynasty ; but of 
 patriotism he has no conception. He very rarely 
 or never has a word in his language to express the 
 virtue, his public opinion does not require it as a 
 condition of political life, and under temptation he 
 never finds in it any source of strength. An Asiatic, 
 such observers say, can be very loyal to a ruler, or 
 to an ally, or to an idea, but his loyalty to what we 
 term his “ country ” is of the feeblest character. 
 He may speak of patriotism in words, especially 
 when talking to Europeans; but his impelling 
 motive is always either ambition, or pride, or fana- 
 ticism, and not, especially under temptation, love of 
 country. He will sell his country in order to rule it, 
 and sometimes for mere lucre, especially when he is 
 
 308 
 
ASIATIC PATRIOTISM 309 
 
 out of spirits, and thinks Destiny has declared 
 against the Virtues. Those observers who think 
 thus believe in their own view very firmly, point to 
 the case of Tej Singh, who sold victory, as General 
 Cunningham reports, for ,£220,000, and ridicule the 
 notion that a man like Arabi Pasha can be governed 
 by anything like “Nationalist ” feeling. He may be, 
 they admit a Mussulman fanatic, or a devotee of the 
 Khalifate — which is not quite the same thing — or 
 even an “Asiatic,” that is, a man who loathes Euro- 
 pean ascendency ; but he cannot care enough for 
 Egypt to make Egyptian interest, as he conceives it, 
 the guiding-star of his policy, — cannot, in fact, be in 
 any sense a patriot. 
 
 We should say that, on the whole, this was the 
 more general opinion, especially among those experts 
 who have come much in contact with prominent 
 Asiatic statesmen, the men, that is, who are not 
 Sovereigns, but have risen either by serving or by 
 opposing Sovereigns. At the same time, a minority 
 of observers, equally experienced, and we think, as 
 a rule, possessed of more sympathy and insight, 
 though not of greater force, utterly reject this view. 
 They say that Asiatics not only can feel, but do feel 
 the sentiment of patriotism as strongly as Euro- 
 peans ; that the want of a word to express the idea 
 is an accident, which, curiously enough, is repro- 
 duced in England, where, though every one 
 understands “ love of country,” the only single 
 word which expresses that sentiment is borrowed 
 
3 xo 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 from the French; and that an Arab, a native of 
 India, or a Chinaman, when a good man, is as 
 strongly moved by the idea of “ country,” and all 
 which it implies, as an Englishman or an Ameri- 
 can. He is more likely to be deficient in that virtue 
 than a European, as he is more likely to be deficient 
 in any other of the active virtues, his whole nature 
 being feebler, and, so to speak, more feminine ; yet 
 he not only recognizes, but, unless overpowered by 
 strong temptation, acts on it. He very often, for 
 example, submits to invasion when a European 
 would resist, but he never submits willingly, still 
 less permanently. He never adopts the invader, 
 never forgets that his own country is separate, and 
 never ceases to hope that in God’s good time the 
 invader will be compelled to depart, or, if such 
 extreme good-fortune may be, will be slaughtered 
 out. As to self-sacrifice for his country, he fills up 
 the national army readily enough, and this in coun- 
 tries like Afghanistan, which have no conscription ; 
 he serves as a soldier, say, in Turkey, with wonder- 
 full self-suppression; and he will, and does constantly, 
 risk his fortune, rather than give an advantage to 
 the national enemy. No foreign Government in an 
 Asiatic State is ever able quite to trust the people, 
 while it is a universal experience that if a rising 
 occurs, the people enter into a silent conspiracy to 
 give it aid. They may not rise, but the foreigner 
 hears nothing of the plot till it explodes, finds no 
 one to betray the leaders, and is conscious of living 
 
ASIATIC PATRIOTISM 
 
 3 1 1 
 
 in an atmosphere of deadly hostility. In the excep- 
 tional case of small States separated by any cause 
 from their neighbours, like that of the Afghans, 
 the Burmese, or the Druses, patriotism is a burning 
 passion, to be as fully relied on as the same passion 
 in any European country. Men who think thus 
 declare that Arabi Pasha, though governed by 
 mixed motives, still does feel the Nationalist feel- 
 ing ; tha^ his followers, though moved by many 
 emotions, still do seek the independence of Egypt ; 
 and that a good many of those whom we consider 
 dangerous fools, actuated by bloodthirsty race 
 hatred, honestly believe that in rioting they are 
 risking life in order to be rid of enemies to their 
 country. 
 
 We confess we agree with the second party, 
 though it is needful to make a reserve. We do not 
 believe that, as a rule, patriotism is as strong in 
 Asia as in Europe. Its influence there has been 
 surperseded in part by other ideas ; by the claims of 
 religion — fervent Ultramontanes are, even in Europe, 
 seldom patriots before all things — by the feeling of 
 race, which is as strong almost everywhere in Asia 
 as in Ireland; and by the passion of “loyalty” in 
 the technical sense, which constantly leads Asiatics 
 to postpone everything, even independence, to the 
 interests of a dynasty ; but it exists almost pre- 
 cisely in the degree and form in which it existed 
 among Europeans in the Middle Ages. The people 
 of an Asiatic State like their country, and are proud 
 
3!2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of it ; are prepared to do something, though not very 
 much, in its defence ; and are passively, but implac- 
 ably and permanently, hostile to the foreigner who 
 invades it. They are not, outside some portions of 
 Arabia, Democrats in any sense, but they are 
 universally “ nationalists,” and prefer, distinctly 
 prefer, bad government by themselves and through 
 themselves, to good government by the foreigner. 
 They may prefer one foreigner to another, as the 
 Bengalees undoubtedly prefer Englishmen to Sikhs, 
 and the Peguans prefer them to Burmese ; but if 
 they had the choice they would prefer each other to 
 anybody else. Nobody, we suppose, doubts this 
 about Armenians, who, though white, are recognized 
 throughout the continent, from Shanghai to the 
 Bosphorus, as true Asiatics, and can go in safety 
 where no European would be spared; or about Arabs, 
 Afghans, or about Chinese ; and it is true of far 
 feebler races. There is not a Bengalee who is not 
 proud of the old glories of Gour, or gratified when a 
 European acknowledges the intellectual capacity of 
 his countrymen, or sad when he admits that his 
 desk — i.e. patria , as well as land — has constantly 
 been conquered. There was not an Indian on the 
 vast continent who did not consider the Sepoys 
 Nationalists, and did not, even if he dreaded their 
 success, feel proud of their few victories. An old 
 Hindoo scholar, definitely and openly on the English 
 side, actually cried with rage and pain, in the writer’s 
 presence, over a report that Delhi was to be razed. 
 
ASIATIC PATRIOTISM 313 
 
 He had never seen Delhi, but to him it was “ our 
 beautiful city, such a possession for our country.” 
 The Egyptians are not a strong people, but it is 
 quite useless to tell an Egyptian that the Europeans 
 bring him prosperity and light taxes, as useless as to 
 tell a true Irish Nationalist the same thing about the 
 English. He does not trouble himself to deny 
 the facts, nay, very often believes them ; but, all the 
 same, he wants the intruders gone, if wealth and 
 comfort go with them. It is true the feeling is not 
 acute, and does not take the European form. The 
 Asiatic’s mind is full of bewildering cross-lights, of 
 feelings about his creed, and his history, and his 
 hates, and his personal interests, which, if they con- 
 flict with patriotism, often prove the stronger ; but 
 to say that is to say he is morally weak or intellectu- 
 ally crotchetty, not to say he is unpatriotic. He 
 knows what he is selling when he sells his country 
 well enough, and if anybody else sells it will pour 
 mental vitriol on his head. A “ traitor,” in the 
 English sense, has not in Asia a pleasant time of it 
 with posterity. Patriotism with him is not an over- 
 mastering idea. He has too many notions about 
 destiny, and about the sanctity of power as granted 
 by God, and about the necessity of obedience when 
 extorted by adequate force, to be a Washington, or 
 anything like a Washington ; but his country has his 
 sympathies, nevertheless, which, whenever there is 
 a chance for their display, have to be reckoned with 
 by politicians. The Egyptians have always obeyed 
 
3M 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 foreigners, and, if the English conquered them, 
 would be very fair subjects ; but we have no doubt 
 that the majority of them, though quiescent, would 
 much rather that Egyptians succeeded in this 
 struggle than that Europe did, and a little rather 
 that Egyptians conquered than that Turks did. 
 The Turk is a foreigner, but he is a Mussulman and 
 an Asiatic. It may be said that the emotion is only 
 one of hate, and, indeed, this is almost always said 
 by the makers of telegrams, but it is not strictly true. 
 The hatred exists, like the hatred for England in 
 Ireland, but it is in great part the result of a feeling 
 indistinguishable, at all events, from patriotism, a 
 feeling compounded of national pride, national 
 exclusiveness, and desire for national independence. 
 If the Egyptian were a fighting man, like the 
 Afghan, we should all understand him, but the possi- 
 bility of sentiments or virtues in a passive state is 
 always more or less incredible to the Englishman. 
 Such sentiments exist, nevertheless, as the English- 
 man would remember, if he ever bethought himself 
 that he himself holds it part of his duty to turn his 
 cheek to the smiter— honestly and sincerely holds 
 it — though, when the hour comes, he turns his 
 fist, instead. 
 
“ Fanaticism ” in the East 
 
 T HE English middle-class of to-day is singu- 
 larly free from Fanaticism. It has its little 
 enthusiasms, no doubt, and can grow eager for or 
 against a cause ; but of true fanaticism, of a liability 
 to religious emotion such as carries its subjects 
 completely out of themselves, away from facts, and 
 beyond laws, it seldom displays a sign. The 
 mind of the class is marked by steady and rather 
 cold, though often very ignorant, judgement, and 
 a certain repugnance for religious emotions strong 
 enough to lead to immediate action. It is for this 
 reason, we suppose, that English people just now 
 are so inclined to regard fanaticism outside England, 
 and especially in the East, as so great and pervad- 
 ing a force, — as the explanation of every unaccount- 
 able action, and the motive of every unusual display 
 of activity. It is an impulse they do not feel 
 themselves, and which rather puzzles them, and 
 they, therefore, set down to its influence every 
 phenomenon they do not quite comprehend or very 
 greatly dislike. They find that slatternly mode of 
 thinking so convenient that they are gradually 
 making of fanaticism the motive-power of the East, 
 
 815 
 
316 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 and using it as if one word could bear half-a-dozen 
 separate meanings. Sometimes fanaticism is the 
 equivalent of religious enthusiasm, sometimes of 
 mere fury, sometimes of hatred, very often of 
 lunacy, now and again of mere Orientalism, and 
 constantly of physical courage. All Mussulmans in 
 particular are assumed to have fanaticism, as if it 
 were some separate mental peculiarity belonging 
 to the Mahommedan faith, which accounted for 
 everything, and especially for any very marked 
 impulse. When Californians attack Chinamen, or 
 English labourers pommel Irishmen, or Marseillais 
 artisans wound Italians, Englishmen explain their 
 conduct by race hatred, or trade jealousy, or political 
 feeling ; but when Arabs in Alexandria kill Euro- 
 peans, they attribute the outburst to “ fanaticism.” 
 The Turks are said to be fanatics if they evince 
 any sympathy with Arabi, or any wish that their 
 own fellow-subjects should defeat intrusive strangers 
 from the West. When any of Arabi’s soldiers show 
 decent courage, they are described as “ fanatics,” 
 and the Times positively asserts that Arabi’s suc- 
 cess or defeat depends upon that unknown quantity, 
 the fanaticism he inspires among his soldiers. 
 Scores of correspondents assert every day that 
 Europe is in danger, because Asia has once more 
 grown “fanatic”; and France in particular is 
 bidden to beware of that burst of fanaticism which 
 may within the next few months deprive her of her 
 ascendency in North Africa. 
 
“ FANATICISM " IN THE EAST 
 
 3*7 
 
 Well, there is fanaticism in the East, more 
 especially among Mussulmans. Every Eastern 
 creed, Christianity included, with the solitary excep- 
 tion of Confucianism, puts the interest of the next 
 world above the interest of this, and calls upon its 
 devotees to obey the Divine law, even when such 
 obedience is unsafe, or contrary to the dictates of 
 common-sense. Among so many scores of millions 
 w'ho are thus exhorted, it would be strange if there 
 were not a few who obeyed ; and, as a matter of 
 fact, a great many are fairly obedient. Christians 
 who are so are said to be “ pious,” or devoted, or 
 at least persons of right mind ; and so whenever, 
 by a rare chance, they happen to be noticed, 
 Hindoos and Buddhists also are. The virtues of 
 those three creeds tend to self-abnegation, and 
 therefore, except under most unusual circumstances, 
 as when Sepoys in the Red Sea, in their zeal for 
 ceremonial purity, throw aw r ay a bucket of water 
 because an officer has drunk a spoonful of it, they 
 excite no hostility. The virtues of Mahommedans 
 are, however, of a different kind. Every Mussul- 
 man is taught, directly or implicitly, that he ought 
 to fight for his faith, that he should assert himself 
 as one of a favoured people, and that it is wrong 
 for him to endure, if he can help it, a direct and 
 visible assertion of Infidel superiority. Of the 
 millions so taught, a proportion believe the teach- 
 ing, and a few believe it so strongly that they will 
 rather die than allow the Infidel to get above them 
 
ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 3i8 
 
 in any visible way. There is, therefore, in Mussul- 
 man countries religious enthusiasm, sometimes rising 
 to fanaticism, that is, breaking loose from the con- 
 trol of the judgement ; and, of course, when dogma 
 is very much preached or events bring the obliga- 
 tions of their creed clearly home to the children of 
 Islam, there is a good deal of it. But there is 
 much less in quantity, and what there is, is much 
 less energetic in kind, than Europeans seem at this 
 anxious moment inclined to believe. The majority 
 of Orientals are no more religious than the majority 
 of Europeans. They believe the teaching of the 
 Koran as Neapolitans believe the teaching of their 
 priests, or as Londoners believe the precepts of the 
 Bible, but they do not act on it. All Mussulmans 
 accept the idea that if they perish in battle with 
 the Infidel, they go to heaven, just as all Christians 
 accept the idea that they ought to forgive their 
 enemies, and love those who despitefully use them ; 
 but very few act on their belief, in either case. We 
 question if the proportion of true fanatics among 
 Mahommedans — that is, of men who die fighting 
 a hopeless battle for the faith — is much greater than 
 that of true upholders of the doctrine of non-resist- 
 ance among ourselves. If it were — if, that is, the 
 majority of Mussulmans were ready to die on the 
 field as the readiest path to heaven — we should 
 never beat a Mussulman army without destroying 
 it. We do beat Mussulman armies, and we do not 
 destroy them, or any appreciable proportion of 
 
“ FANATICISM ” IN THE EAST 
 
 3i9 
 
 them. They never die in masses voluntarily, even 
 when, as in the first war in Malacca, the Jehad or 
 religious war has been properly proclaimed. In 
 every Mussulman army there are a few men of 
 convinced minds, “who think through Unbelievers’ 
 blood lies the directest path a few more who are 
 exceptionally brave, and profess readiness to die 
 for the faith as an honourable way of parading that 
 fact ; and a few more who are aware that hemp, 
 eaten at the proper time, will give them all the 
 advantages of courage. These men are very for- 
 midable for a few minutes in a charge, for they will 
 go on, and men who will go on with a rush are 
 difficult to kill out ; but still, they are not more 
 dangerous than any other soldiers who can be urged 
 forward against odds. What is to make them so ? 
 Fanaticism is not a rabies, so that the bite of 
 fanatics should be poisonous. As for the majority, 
 they believe it right to fight, and salvation to be 
 killed in fighting ; but the belief is not held in a 
 way which elevates them above either selfishness 
 or fear, or even indisposition for severe exertion. 
 It is held as Englishmen hold that doctrine about 
 turning the other cheek. If Mussulmans do not 
 see the road to victory, they “ run away,” or 
 “retreat,” or “retire fighting,” like other soldiers, 
 according to their courage or discipline, or their 
 confidence in their commanders. Their fanaticism, 
 such as it is, is not an overmastering impulse, but 
 only a passive belief, and but little helpful when the 
 
320 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 hour of danger arrives. Nor, on the other hand, 
 does it lead them, as so many Europeans believe, 
 to massacre. Mahommedanism does not order, or 
 indeed justify massacre, unless the Infidels resist. 
 Even at Delhi, the Mahommedan Doctors warned 
 the Emperor in 1857 that in sanctioning the mas- 
 sacre of the helpless, he was breaking the law and 
 bringing down the vengeance of Heaven ; and the 
 Alexandria case was infinitely worse than that, was, 
 in fact, a massacre of guests. Massacre in the East 
 does not proceed from fanaticism, but from the 
 cause which recently induced French artisans to 
 attack Italian artisans, — a boiling dislike of strangers 
 who speak another tongue, act on other rules, and 
 are horribly in the way. Of course, the hatred of 
 the Asiatic for the European is much more bitter 
 than anything we find in Europe, though the 
 Russian hatred for the Jew is akin to it ; because 
 the European in Asia, unlike any other stranger in 
 the world, takes the top place, and tries to drive 
 the majority his way. Let groups of Chinamen 
 come here, and take all good appointments, and 
 tax us, and tell us that we are barbarians, and try 
 to compel us to wear pigtails and eat puppies, and 
 we venture to say their paganism will not have 
 much to do with the treatment they will receive. 
 If the creed had anything to do with the matter, 
 Arabi’s followers would kill out both Armenians 
 and Copts ; whereas the former are only killed 
 casually, when wearing too European a dress, and 
 the latter are not killed at all. 
 
“ FANATICISM ” IN THE EAST 
 
 321 
 
 There are plenty of motives for murder in the 
 East, without imagining a non-existent fanaticism ; 
 which, again, is not the irrestrainable and, as it 
 were, explosive quality it is popularly believed to 
 be. It yields readily to law. The Russians have 
 had little trouble with their Mussulman subjects, 
 nor have we. A report arrives now and then that 
 a Mussulman “fanatic” on the Indian frontier has 
 murdered an officer, but it will generally be found 
 either that he belonged to a tribe that had been 
 punished, or that he found himself refused justice 
 in some suit ; that, in short, he is very like an Irish 
 agrarian assassin, only not so cruel. Up to 1852, 
 there used to be a fanatic outbreak every year in 
 Lucknow, in the great street, the two sects of 
 Mahommedans killing and wounding one another 
 freely. It was supposed impossible to stop this, 
 but in that year, Captain Hayes, the Acting Resi- 
 dent, thought the slaughter had better end, and 
 obtained permission to plant two pieces of cannon 
 at the end of the street, and to proclaim that, if 
 a sword were drawn, he should open fire. Every- 
 body knew he would do it, the street was crammed, 
 and the quiet harmony of the two sects was 
 heavenly. Fanaticism, the dreaded spiritual power, 
 yielded instantly to the fear of death, just as it does 
 upon the battle-field. 
 
 We have often been asked how far Mussulman 
 “fanatics,” or indeed any pious Mussulmans, expect 
 victory from the interposition of Heaven, as Crom- 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 well’s Ironsides, for example, expected it. We 
 cannot answer the question, and never met any 
 one who could. It is almost inconceivable that 
 good Mussulmans should not expect Divine help, 
 and equally inconceivable that if they did expect it, 
 they should not advance to battle with more confi- 
 dence, and should not persist in fighting a little 
 longer. They certainly expect the ultimate ascend- 
 ency, though not, we see reason to think, the 
 universal acceptance of Mahommedanism, and they 
 must see in each battle a step to that ascendency. 
 They do not, however, if they have any such expec- 
 tation, feel it strongly ; they never fight, if they can 
 help it, without advantage in numbers, and their 
 Doctors maintain that to declare war without 
 reasonable hope of success is positively irreligious. 
 There is not much “ fanaticism ” in that view, nor 
 in any other which the majority of Mussulmans 
 take of events around them. We should say that 
 while Mussulman fanatics undoubtedly exist, fana- 
 ticism was as little a motive force in the East as it is 
 in most Christian countries, and distinctly less so 
 than it is among the peasantry of Russia. 
 
Will Conquest Vivify Asia ? 
 
 S PEECHES delivered in India are rarely re- 
 ported here, and still more rarely reported 
 well ; but we have before us the textual version 
 of one of rather unusual interest. It is an address 
 to the University of Madras, and contains the 
 opinions which the Governor, Mr. Grant Duff , 1 now 
 near the end of his term of office, has formed of 
 the position of the higher, or, rather, the better 
 educated, classes in Southern India. Local opinion 
 differs a little as to Mr. Grant Duffs success as 
 a Governor, one side pointing to his promptitude 
 in executive work, especially in organizing the 
 expedition to Mandelay, and another side hinting 
 that he reflects too much, and allows questions of 
 importance to stand over far too long. That 
 practice, however, is traditional in Madras, where 
 the Government has been distinguished for a century 
 by a patience worthy of the Roman Curia, and 
 by a certain inability to believe in forcing progress 
 which drives the more sanguine rulers of Bengal 
 half-crazy with impatience. Be that as it may, Mr. 
 
 1 Now Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. 
 
 393 
 
324 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Grant Duff’s power of reflection, and of almost 
 judicial comment on affairs, are well known to us 
 all, and his summary of one side of the situation 
 is most serious. He finds that the higher education 
 which is imparted and tested in the Madras Uni- 
 versity remains in a singular degree sterile. The 
 graduates, of many of whom he speaks with all 
 respect, do nothing with their acquirements ; or, 
 rather, they do only two things, — they talk Radical 
 politics, and they seek Government appointments, 
 which accordingly they eagerly desire both to 
 multiply and to throw open to themselves. That 
 is a futile ambition for an entire class to entertain, 
 for, as the Governor tells them, if every remaining 
 appointment were placed in their hands — they are 
 very few, and “a few must belong to Europeans, 
 not in virtue of their being the descendants of 
 conquerors, but in virtue of that education of ages 
 which has made the Aryan of the West what he 
 is ” — it would be nothing among so many ; but, as 
 yet, it is their only one. The beautiful Presidency, 
 which in scenery is to Northern India what Switzer- 
 land is to Prussia, one- third larger than Italy, with 
 its 90,000 artificial lakes, called locally by the name 
 of “ tanks,” a word productive of endless misappre- 
 hension, is languishing for engineers, and especially 
 hydraulic engineers ; but the graduates do not 
 become engineers, though the whole history of 
 Southern India shows that they possess not only 
 engineering capacity, but distinct originality for 
 
WILL CONQUEST VIVIFY ASIA f 
 
 325 
 
 such undertakings. The population gives an eager 
 welcome to doctors ; but though hundreds are 
 needed, especially of the class we used to call 
 apothecaries, only three graduates in all Southern 
 India have adopted that profession. Agriculture 
 promises any reward to native agriculturists of skill; 
 but with an exception here and there, no educated 
 man devotes himself to improving the productive- 
 ness of the soil. The want of Madras is wealth, 
 there is plenty of room for manufacturers, and the 
 openings for internal commerce are endless ; but 
 it is not to commerce or to manufactures that the 
 educated betake themselves. While Bengal and 
 Bombay are alive with plantations and factories, 
 Madras remains the poorest Presidency. Nor do 
 they devote themselves to social development, for 
 which South India offers an unequalled field, her 
 social systems being far less stereotyped than those 
 of the North, and her great Turanian population 
 — nearly half the whole — offering entirely new 
 problems for solution ; nor to philosophy, though 
 the Eastern Aryans at least, if not the Turanians 
 also, are born philosophers ; nor to studies like 
 philology, nor to art, though there are arts, like 
 architecture, for which their genius is undoubted ; 
 nor to research, though such a field for research 
 as Southern India, more especially in the anti- 
 quarian direction, scarcely exists in the world. If 
 the British rulers wish to decipher old inscriptions 
 in Madras, they are compelled to “ send thousands 
 
326 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 and thousands of miles away and hunt up some 
 scholar in the valley of the Danube.” The edu- 
 cated, in fact, seek neither material wealth nor the 
 improvement of their knowledge, nor philosophical 
 culture, but only status and pay in the service of 
 the State. All the work which a people beginning 
 to be cultivated would naturally do, and which in 
 some half-civilzied countries is done with passionate 
 zeal, is in Southern India left undone, and this 
 both by its Aryan population and its Dravidian 
 or Turanian, to whom the Governor, with perfect 
 historical accuracy, but somewhat grotesque effect, 
 addresses this singular argument : — “ The constant 
 putting forward of Sanskrit literature, as if it were 
 pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride 
 of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Canarese. You 
 have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. 
 Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known 
 to speak of natives of India as ‘ niggers,’ but they 
 did not, like the proud speakers, or writers, of 
 Sanskrit, speak of the people of the South as 
 legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, 
 not Europeans, who lumped-up the Southern races 
 as Rakshasas — demons. It was they who deli- 
 berately grounded all social distinctions upon Varna , 
 colour.” 
 
 This picture, that of a population of thirty-one 
 millions in which the class most eager to be in- 
 structed, is when instructed sterile, is a painful 
 one, and will be held by many minds to justify 
 
WILL CONQUEST VIVIFY ASIA 7 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 those, of whom the present writer was one, who, 
 a generation ago, bestirred themselves to resist 
 the idea of Macaulay, that culture should be diffused 
 in India through English studies. They maintained 
 that true instruction would never be gained by an 
 Oriental people through a Western language, that 
 education in English would be productive of nothing 
 but a caste, who, like the “ scholars ” of the Middle 
 Ages, would be content with their own superiority, 
 and would be more separated from the people 
 than if they had been left uneducated ; that, in 
 short, English education, however far it might be 
 pushed, would remain sterile. They pressed for 
 the encouragement and development of the indi- 
 genous culture, and would have had High Schools 
 and Universities, in which men should have studied, 
 first of all, to perfect the languages, and literature, 
 and knowledge of their own land. They fought 
 hard, but they failed utterly, and we have the 
 Baboo, instead of the thoroughly instructed Pundit. 
 They probably did not allow enough for the in- 
 fluence of time, and they certainly did not admire 
 enough the few remarkable men whom the system 
 has produced ; but so far, they have been right, 
 and they may be right throughout. English educa- 
 tion in India may remain sterile for all national 
 purposes. It is not a pleasant thought, but it is 
 an unavoidable one, that the conquest of the East 
 Aryans by the West Aryans, though it has brought 
 such marvellous blessings in the way of peace and 
 
328 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 order and material prosperity, though it has given 
 to millions, as Mr. Grant Duff says, all the results 
 of political evolution without the wearying struggle 
 for them, may have brought also evils which over- 
 balance, or almost overbalance, all its gifts. Not 
 much is gained to the world because under the 
 shadow of the Empire Bengalees increase like flies 
 on a windless day. It is no time yet for con- 
 clusions, for the work of conquest has but just 
 ended, and that of sowing seed has but just begun ; 
 but that decay of varieties of energy, that torpor 
 of the higher intellectual life, that pause in the 
 application of art knowledge, from architecture 
 down to metal work and pottery, which have been 
 synchronous with our rule in India, these are to 
 the philosophic observer melancholy symptoms. 
 Why is not the world yet richer for an Indian 
 brain ? There was a Roman peace once round the 
 Mediterranean, under which originality so died 
 away that it is doubtful whether, but for the 
 barbarian invasion, society would not have stereo- 
 typed itself, and even Christianity have grown 
 fossil ; and our rule, much nobler though its motive 
 and its methods be, may be accompanied by the 
 same decay. In the two hundred years during 
 which Spaniards have ruled in the New World, 
 but one Indian name has reached Europe, and 
 Juarez was only a politician. We have only to 
 hope and to persevere ; but it is impossible, when 
 the results are from time to time summed up by 
 
WILL CONQUEST VIVIFY ASIA 1 
 
 329 
 
 cool observers like the Governor of Madras, not 
 to feel a chilling doubt. We think little of the 
 political childishness of educated natives on which 
 Mr. Grant Duff is so serenely sarcastic, for that 
 is a mere symptom of unrest, possibly healthy 
 unrest ; and we utterly disagree with him in his 
 assertion that only a wealthy community can be 
 well governed, holding Switzerland to be better 
 governed than F ranee ; but the want of spontaneous 
 effort in all directions, the limitation of ambition 
 to a salary from the State, seem to us symptoms 
 either of intellectual torpor or intellectual despair. 
 We know quite well the tendency of Asia to stereo- 
 type herself, but we had hoped that British dominion 
 would revivify her ; and as yet — except possibly 
 in the important domain of law, a reverence for 
 which is slowly filtering down — the signs are very 
 few. The Codes will, as Mr. Grant Duff believes, 
 materially influence Indian thought ; but then, the 
 Codes were the work not of Eastern Aryans, but 
 of those who conquered them. We want original 
 Indian work; and as yet we have only men who 
 will take any post, provided that its salary is 
 guaranteed by the State and its work ordered and 
 controlled regularly from above. 
 
Why Turkey Lives 
 
 T HE meeting of the German Kaiser and the 
 Sultan in Constantinople on November 2, 
 1889, was from any point of view a most picturesque 
 event, but to us, we must confess, the more interest- 
 ing figure in the unprecedented interview is the 
 Asiatic one. The greatness of the European 
 monarch is too intelligible. William II. of Germany 
 is the armed man of modern civilization, strong in 
 the possession of knowledge, of scientific appliances, 
 of an army organized till it will move on any 
 enemy at the word of command like an intelligent 
 machine. The guest is the concrete outcome of his 
 century, and that he should be great is no wonder ; 
 what is wonderful is that his host should be great 
 too, that in this age the head of a Tartar clan which 
 is still only encamped in its dominions, himself a 
 man as ignorant as a child, and as nervously appre- 
 hensive as a hysterical woman, should still be a 
 great potentate, a Sovereign in three continents, 
 absolute lord in the best situated city of the world 
 and in some of the richest provinces of the globe, 
 more potent, in fact, through richer and wider lands 
 
WHY TURKEY LIVES 
 
 33i 
 
 than the mighty Emperor who gazed with such 
 astonishment on the scene. We know why the 
 German Empire exists, but it takes thought to 
 comprehend why the “ Turkish Empire ” still 
 endures. The dominion of the Ottoman clan, 
 which should have been a mere passing pheno- 
 menon, like the similar dominion of another Tartar 
 clan in Russia, owes its continuance, as we read its 
 history, to three causes, two of them intellectual. 
 The first is the extraordinary, indeed the abso- 
 lutely unrivalled force displayed through ages by 
 the descendants of Othman, the Tartar chief from 
 Khorassan. The old line, “ An Amurath, an 
 Amurath succeeds,” has been substantially true. 
 Sprung originally from a stock welded into iron 
 by the endless strife of the great Asiatic desert, 
 mating always with women picked for some separate 
 charm either of beauty or captivation, the Sultans, 
 with the rarest exceptions, have been personages, 
 great soldiers, great statesmen, or great tyrants. 
 Mahmoud the destroyer of the Janissaries, who 
 only died in 1839 — that is, while men still middle- 
 aged were alive — was the equal in all but success 
 of Amurath I., who organized, though he did not 
 invent, that terrible institution ; and even the pre- 
 sent Sultan, in many ways so feeble, is no Romulus 
 Augustulus, no connoisseur in poultry, but a timid 
 Louis XI., who overmatches Russians and Greeks 
 in craft, who terrifies men like his Ottoman Pashas, 
 and who is obeyed with trembling by the most 
 
33 2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 distant servant of his throne. The terrible Emir 
 of Afghanistan, whose satraps, while ruling pro- 
 vinces and armies, open his letters “white in the 
 lips with fear,” is not regarded with more slavish 
 awe than Abdul Hamid, the recluse who watches 
 always in his palace against assassination or mutiny. 
 We have only to remember what the Hohenzollerns 
 have been to Prussia, to understand what the family 
 of Othman, defended as they have been against 
 revolution by the Mussulman belief that “when 
 Othman falls Islam falls,” has been to a fight- 
 ing clan. 
 
 The second cause of the continuance of the 
 Ottoman dominion has been less accidental. Like 
 the early Caliphs, and indeed all able Mussulman 
 dynasties except the Persian, the ruling house of 
 Turkey has for all these centuries maintained 
 unbroken the principle that apart from creed, 
 ability is the only qualification for the highest 
 service. Outside the Navy, a Turkish grandee 
 must be a Mussulman ; but that granted, there is 
 no obstacle of birth, or cultivation, or position stand- 
 ing in any man’s path. Even slavery is no barrier. 
 Over and over again, a Sultan apparently at the 
 end of his resources has stooped among the crowd, 
 clutched a soldier, a slipper-bearer, a tobacconist, a 
 renegade, given him his own limitless power, and 
 asking of him nothing but success, has secured it in 
 full measure. Equality within the faith, which is a 
 dogma of Islam, and next to its belief in a “ Sultan 
 
WHY TURKEY LIVES 
 
 333 
 
 of the sky,” its grand attraction to inferior races, 
 has in Turkey been a reality as it has been in no 
 other Empire on earth, and has provided its 
 Sovereigns — who, be it remembered, fear no rival 
 unless he be a kinsman, an Arab, or a “ Prophet ” — 
 with an endless supply of the kind of ability they 
 need. The history of the Grand Viziers of Turkey, 
 were it ever written, would be the history of men 
 who have risen by sheer force of ability, — that is, 
 by success in war or by statesmanship, or, in fewer 
 instances, by that art of mastering an Asiatic 
 Sovereign and his seraglio in which fools do not 
 succeed. The Sultans have rarely promoted, rarely 
 even used, men of their own house, — which is the 
 Persian dynastic policy, — have hated, and at last 
 destroyed, the few nobles of their Empire ; and 
 capricious and cruel as they have been, have often 
 shown a power of steadily upholding a great ser- 
 vant such as we all attribute to the founder of the 
 new German Empire. This equality, this chance 
 of a career of great opportunities, great renown, and 
 great luxury, brings to Constantinople a crowd of 
 intriguers, some of them matchless villains ; but it 
 also brings a great crowd of able and unscrupulous 
 men, who understand how to “ govern ” in the 
 Turkish sense, and who have constantly succeeded 
 in restoring a dominion which seemed hopelessly 
 broken up. Every Pasha is a despot, an able 
 despot is soon felt, and he has in carrying out the 
 method of Turkish government, which is simply the 
 
334 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 old Tartar method of stamping out resistance, an 
 advantage over Europeans which is the third cause 
 of the continuance of the Ottoman Empire. He is 
 tormented with no hesitations in applying force as 
 a cure for all things. The man who resists is to 
 die, or purchase life by submission. A European 
 of our day, however determined, can hardly carry 
 out that policy consistently. His intellect and his 
 conscience alike revolt. He hates the necessary 
 destruction, — destruction, if a province or an island 
 revolts, like Titus’ destruction of Judea; he cannot 
 bear his own doubts as to his own righteousness in 
 so slaughtering. The Ottoman has no such enfee- 
 bling hesitations. To destroy all non-Mussulmans 
 who resist is precisely what the Prophet ordered ; 
 and to destroy Mussulmans who rebel is in accord- 
 ance with the Prophet’s practice, and every tradition 
 of his faith. He has, therefore, no hesitation, no 
 halfness, no repinings, but uses force when required 
 in its extreme form, the form in which, if it be but 
 sufficient, it always succeeds in procuring submis- 
 sion. The true Turkish sentence is death, and 
 death poured out in buckets bewilders an Opposi- 
 tion. There is but one case in Europe in which 
 force is thus habitually employed, force, that is, 
 implying capital punishment, by men who have no 
 doubts or compunctions or remorse in applying it 
 and that is the maintenance of discipline in a con 
 script army. The officers are few, and the men 
 many, but a mutiny in a conscript army is as yet 
 
WHY TURKEY LIVES 
 
 335 
 
 an unknown event. There is probably in all the 
 Sultan’s dominion not one man, not an Ottoman or 
 an Albanian, who would not give five years of his 
 life that that dominion should be overthrown ; but 
 there is no mutiny without foreign assistance, the 
 dread of force, unhesitatingly applied by men who 
 have no doubts, over-mastering hate, just as it does 
 with the fiercest conscripts in all the armies of the 
 Continent. 
 
 Even now, when we all talk of the Turkish 
 Empire as moribund, it is doubtful if it will perish 
 under any decay from within. The subject races 
 do not grow stronger, as witness recent scenes in 
 Armenia, where a single tribe, with only tolerance 
 from the Sultan, keeps a whole people in agonies of 
 fear. The Arabs, full-blooded and half-caste, who 
 might succeed in insurrection, find the strength of 
 civilized Europe right across their path, and are 
 precipitating themselves, in a fury of fanaticism and 
 greed, upon the powerless States of the interior of 
 Africa. The European subjects of the Sultan are 
 cowed, and without foreign assistance will not risk a 
 repetition of Batouk. The army for internal pur- 
 poses is far stronger than ever, the men being the 
 old Ottoman soldiers, brave as Englishmen, abste- 
 mious as Spaniards, to whom the Germans have 
 lent their discipline and their drill. No force 
 within the Empire outside Arabia could resist the 
 reorganized troops who defiled on Sunday before 
 the Emperor, or hope to reach, as no doubt the first 
 
336 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Mahdi if left alone might have reached, Constanti- 
 nople itself. The financial difficulties of the Trea- 
 sury are great, but the Sultans have recently risked 
 and have survived complete repudiation, and the 
 revenue is enough, and will remain enough, to keep 
 the Army together and supply the luxury of the 
 Palace. There is one weak place in the interior of 
 the Empire, the slowly decaying force of the House 
 of Othman, which now has a deep taint in its veins 
 unknown to the earlier Sultans ; and this may bring 
 the dynasty to an end. The Mussulman system of 
 succession is, however, the strongest yet devised by 
 man, prohibiting as it does the accession of a woman 
 or a child, and an adequate successor may still follow 
 Abdul Hamid. Failing that continuous decay, the 
 Empire will last, and probably remain great, until it 
 goes down before outside force, which again, in the 
 endless jealousies of the Powers, may not be applied 
 in its full weight for many years to come. The 
 land attack on Constantinople is more difficult, 
 whether to Slav or Austrian, than ever ; and the 
 maritime Powers cannot settle, cannot even, to all 
 appearance, think, who shall be reversionary heir to 
 the gateway of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. 
 We may hope for better things ; but there is no 
 visible ground for certainty that if the German 
 Kaiser’s grandson visits Constantinople, he will 
 witness, as Frederic Barbarossa did, high mass 
 repeated by Christian priests in the restored 
 Cathedral of St. Sophia. 
 

 Tropical Colonization 
 
 W E wish we could heartily agree in the views 
 of Mr. Frederick Boyle, but history, we 
 fear, forbids. That gentleman, who has much and 
 varied experience of tropical lands, argued, in the New 
 Review , that the English belief as to the impossibility 
 of Europeans colonizing tropical countries was a 
 baseless, as well as an embarrassing, prejudice. We 
 shall have to do it, he says, for the temperate 
 regions are either getting full, or being closed to 
 immigrants by the jealousy of their occupants ; and 
 we may therefore as well reconsider the objections 
 to settling in the tropical or, to be more exact— for 
 the description which includes Northern India in 
 the tropics is a little vague — in the hotter regions of 
 the globe. Mr. Boyle finds most of them unreal. 
 That man as a being does not degenerate physically 
 in the hot countries seems to him certain, and we 
 should admit that the evidence is for the most part 
 wholly on his side. The Bengalees may be allowed 
 to be “ a feeble folk ” — though there is great 
 exaggeration even about this — but the Arabs, the 
 Soudanese, the Southern Chinese, and almost all 
 
 337 
 
 z 
 
338 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 negroes are remarkable for muscular strength, power 
 of enduring fatigue, and physical energy in general. 
 They have less perhaps of the habit of living than 
 Northern Europeans — though half the centenarians 
 of the world are negroes — but that probably results 
 from special circumstances, the English from the 
 twelfth to the eighteenth century having died at 
 least as fast as any dark tribe. If they had not, 
 they would have increased in numbers at a much 
 quicker rate. The dark peoples are, in fact, as 
 “strong” as Europeans; while as to courage, the 
 Soudanese broke a British square, the West Indian 
 negro soldiers can be trusted anywhere, and if 
 the daring of the South Chinaman is doubtful 
 except when he is a pirate, no one has ever ques- 
 tioned that of the Malay, either in battle or in the 
 wild adventures which led him to Madagascar and 
 the islands of the Pacific. Nor is there much 
 evidence of intellectual decay, for if the world owes 
 nothing to the negro, she takes all her creeds from 
 the men of the hotter lands, and the clearest-sighted 
 professor in Europe is not superior in power of 
 subtle thought to the Brahmin of Madras. If, then, 
 man as a genus does not necessarily degenerate in 
 the tropics, why should the white man, his most 
 energetic species, degenerate either ? As a matter 
 of fact, there are families of Jews which, without 
 mixing their blood, have retained all energies, in 
 Persia, Bombay, and even Bengal, for centuries ; 
 while the people of Costa Rica, who are “ nearly 
 
TROPICAL COLONIZATION 
 
 339 
 
 white,” are a singularly hardy peasantry, and we 
 may add the Copts, who, if not white, are as nearly 
 white as the Jews, are still the most competent race 
 in the valley of the Nile. Neither the Ptolemies 
 nor their soldiers degenerated in Egypt, and there 
 are Spanish families in Mexico as strong and as 
 able as ever their progenitors were in Old Spain. 
 Why then, asks Mr. Boyle, should not some State 
 try the experiment of a tropical colony, which, if it 
 succeeded, would open such vast regions to Euro- 
 pean immigration, nay, might even produce a race 
 greater than any now existing, for Mr. Boyle 
 sympathizes a little with the naturalist, Mr. Bates, 
 who, after years spent in the forests of Brazil, 
 chiefly in the valley of the Amazon, found himself 
 so fascinated by the vigour of Nature in the tropics 
 that he wrote : — “ The well-balanced forces of nature 
 maintain here a land surface and a climate that 
 seem to be typical of mundane order and beauty. 
 
 . . I hold to the opinion that, though humanity 
 
 can reach an advanced degree of culture only by 
 battling with the inclemencies of nature in high 
 latitudes, it is under the equator alone that the race 
 of the future will attain to complete fruition of man’s 
 beautiful heritage, the earth.” 
 
 It is a splendid dream, because it opens up new 
 and almost infinite possibilities for the white race 
 now dominating, though it does not colonize, all the 
 continents ; but we fear a dream only. History 
 is opposed to Mr. Boyle. To begin with, that must 
 
34 ° 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 have been a powerful instinct or a most operative 
 law which originally divided mankind, so that the 
 white race was confined to Europe, that the black 
 race populated Africa, and that the huge bulk of Asia, 
 the most fertile and tempting of all the continents, 
 was filled with yellow and brown men. A scientific 
 theorist would certainly say that some immutable 
 law of convenience alone could have produced that 
 result, which, amidst all the endless mutations of 
 history, has remained substantially unchanged. 
 Europe and Asia have fought for ever, but the bulk 
 of the populations have remained European and 
 Asiatic, while the great Roman invasion of Northern 
 Africa and the Vandal invasion which followed it, 
 alike ended in the triumph, more or less complete, 
 of the brown races. Historians suggest no expla- 
 nation of this cardinal fact, nor is any we think 
 possible, except that, whatever the meaning of the 
 mysterious law of race — and science in no way 
 accounts even for colour — the white peoples flourish 
 best within strictly temperate regions. They can 
 flourish in the highlands of the tropics, but they do 
 not reach their highest level, and tend, when 
 attacked for ages by autochthons, to recede, as they 
 have done in Egypt, and are doing in many parts 
 of Spanish America. It is probably true that they 
 can labour in the tropics, for the white mechanics of 
 the Southern States of the Union live and work 
 there, and possible that, as governing castes, they 
 would in the tropics develop marvellous energy ; but 
 
TROPICAL COLONIZATION 
 
 34i 
 
 they at most certainly would not advance as rapidly 
 as in Europe. Englishmen are, we think, for some 
 unknown reason, habitually unfair to Spanish 
 Americans, who, whether pure or crossed, have 
 produced men of singular daring, energy, and power 
 of endurance ; who have built great cities and 
 reclaimed great regions of the earth ; and who have 
 besides a power of absorption and attraction acknow- 
 ledged by all who settle in Spanish America, Italians 
 more especially ; but it would be foolish to say that 
 the owners of Brazil or Central America or Mexico 
 show any symptoms of developing into the superior 
 race of mankind. Pure or crossed, an optimist 
 would hardly say of them that they were better 
 than their ancestors in Old Spain or Portugal. A 
 “ Southern gentleman ” of English blood is often 
 a very fine man ; but he is not so much nobler than 
 an English gentleman that he can be quoted to 
 prove the truth of Mr. Bates’ dream. That the hot 
 lands are not fatal to energy may be true ; but 
 certainly they do not, with all their natural advan- 
 tages, ever tend to produce it. If they did, the 
 most glorious of all tropical countries, Ceylon, would 
 have produced a grand race ; and it has not done it. 
 There, with land of all altitudes, and all kinds of 
 powers of production, amidst perpetual summer and 
 scenes which, if the theorists are right, should have 
 bred in them an abnormal sense of beauty, dwells a 
 race which we have no wish to decry, but which is 
 certainly not more distinguished than, say, the 
 
342 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Belgian or the Swede for any high qualities what- 
 soever. Whether an admixture of white blood 
 would have altered the result, as we understand 
 Mr. Boyle to half believe — at least if he does not 
 believe it, we do not quite comprehend the drift 
 of his remarks on the cross-breeds — is still an 
 unsettled question ; but it is clear that in the 
 Southern States of the Union, in Spanish America, 
 and in India, such admixture has not developed 
 any markedly superior race. Mr. Bates’ hope is a 
 dream. 
 
 We should say, on a review of the whole evidence, 
 that it pointed to this result. It is probably much 
 more possible for white men to colonize a tropical 
 country than is imagined, especially if the colony 
 was so organized that sanitary laws could be en- 
 forced from the very first ; but the first generation 
 would suffer terribly from unaccustomed diseases — 
 low fever, for example — from the depressing effect 
 of a change of climate, and from the shock involved 
 in a violent change of daily habitudes as to diet, 
 hours of labour, and general social life. This suffer- 
 ing, involving much mortality, would discourage the 
 average colonist to such a degree that he would not 
 remain for the time which even Mr. Boyle admits 
 to be necessary to secure complete acclimatization. 
 No generation of men will devote itself in this way 
 for the benefit of its successors, and every experi- 
 ment will therefore end either in failure, or in the 
 importation of races able to relieve the colonists 
 
TROPICAL COLONIZATION 
 
 343 
 
 of all severe or exhausting toil. The second alter- 
 native may succeed — has, for example, succeeded in 
 Louisiana ; but that is not colonization by white 
 men. It is “ settlement ” — a very different matter, 
 and one which cannot be said to have been as yet 
 fairly tried. We can quite conceive of both the 
 world and the whites being benefited by the settle- 
 ment of a tropical region, in which dark men shall 
 labour, and white men, few comparatively in number, 
 shall guide their labour, and, while reaping a profit 
 out of their exertions, shall deliberately endeavour 
 to keep up among them a high and improving 
 standard of civilization. A body of white colonists 
 working as a hieratic caste, and governing in the 
 interest of the labourers as well as their own, might 
 produce, under favouring circumstances, such results 
 as the world has never seen, a civilization in which 
 poverty, disease, and crime were almost entirely 
 absent, and the whole community exulted in strug- 
 gling forward to some lofty ideal. The experiment, 
 however, has never been made, except by the 
 Jesuits in Paraguay, and it is difficult to imagine 
 how it could succeed. The guides become arbitrary 
 or the guided rebellious, or in the end some adroit 
 man avails himself of human foibles to seize the 
 reins of power, and we have, as under Dr. Francia 
 and his heir, a pure despotism which advances 
 nothing, because in the interest of the despotism 
 individuality must be put down. We rather 
 wonder, however, that the experiment has never 
 
344 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 been tried by laymen, who, with a healthy African 
 district before them, and two regiments of black 
 freedmen from America, might achieve, for a time 
 at least, a considerable result, and would certainly 
 add considerably to the knowledge of mankind. A 
 good many phalansteres have been started from time 
 to time, and a philanthropic Baron Hirsch might try 
 that one with some faint hope of success. It would, 
 however, be a faint hope, the law of ages being 
 clearly that Europeans and Asiatics and Africans 
 will not, unless coerced by irresistible circumstances, 
 work in continuous harmony together. 
 
Hindoo “ Barbarism ” 
 
 N educated Hindoo, who signs himself “ A 
 
 Member of the Brahmo - Somaj,” and is 
 therefore no Hindoo by creed, but a Theist, writes 
 to the Times to complain that Indian pomp 
 should be described by the word “ barbaric.” He 
 evidently confuses the word with “ barbarous,” and 
 goes on to a general defence of the civilization of 
 India as compared with that of England, which is 
 out of place, as he might have met the attack in a 
 much more direct fashion. It is very doubtful 
 whether the Indian pomp, of which we hear so much 
 during the Prince’s visit that Englishmen will fancy 
 Indian life all reception, procession and elephant — 
 can fairly be described as “ barbaric,” even in the 
 limited sense in which the Times declares that it 
 has used the word, as expressing only splendour 
 without taste. The native of India is by no means 
 specially addicted to that particular fault. He is, as 
 a rule, rigidly simple in dress, habitually using white 
 for his costume, and when he departs from it, choos- 
 ing colours with an eye for restrained effect, that 
 secures results which are admired by Europeans in 
 
 346 
 
346 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 exact proportion to their artistic knowledge. And 
 it is natural that it should be so. Living in a 
 country where the air is filled with a painful wealth 
 of penetrating life, such as men bred in our climate 
 can scarcely realize, he loves shade and dusk and 
 quiet colours, builds halls of reception in which a 
 perpetual twilight reigns, plants his house in a grove 
 of broad leaved trees in order to enjoy the shade, 
 and dresses himself by preference in white — the 
 white, be it observed, being not the glaring white of 
 this paper, but white toned by the dusky skin just 
 seen beneath the muslin, till it has something of the 
 cream-like effect which is the distinction of Satsuma 
 ware. Even when he desires splendour and employs 
 bright colours, their garishness, made so obvious by 
 the lighted atmosphere, pains and annoys him, till 
 he has learnt, by the observation of centuries, to 
 combine them into a flat brilliancy which is the 
 despair of European artists. It is the positive pain 
 received by the eye in that climate from garishness 
 which has taught the native to combine insufferably 
 gaudy colours into the Cashmere shawl, the Mirza- 
 pore carpet, the marble work of his floorings, and 
 the broad-brimmed, coloured turban of full dress, 
 often a marvellous specimen of art, and always, 
 unless injured by some caste rule or family tradition, 
 producing an effect of subdued splendour as little 
 barbaric as the newest French ribbon in teints 
 degrades. The dress of a great native magnate, 
 the account of which reads so “ splendiferous,” is 
 
HINDOO “BARBARISM 
 
 347 
 
 usually a marvel of restrained effect, and no more 
 barbaric — that is, no more wanting in essential 
 harmony with its end — than that of the great Parisi- 
 enne, who, like the native noble, employs gems to 
 set off her raiment and show her wealth. If, indeed, 
 “ gold and pearl ” be in themselves “ barbaric,” as 
 Milton said — he only meant “ foreign,” as the Greeks 
 did when they used the word — then the Times is 
 right, but that is surely not true taste. It is bright- 
 ness out of place which is barbaric, not brightness 
 itself. Who doubts the artistic accuracy of the most 
 blazing of all jewels — a lady’s collar of tiger-claws 
 set in gold and rubies ? It is true, a native noble 
 prefers his gems uncut, but that arises from reasons 
 which are not barbaric, and will appeal to many 
 connoisseurs. You cannot imitate the uncut stone, 
 with its strange, momentary revealings of colours, and 
 that sort of mystery of light hidden in it which 
 touches a native imagination, and is the secret of 
 his delight in the half-translucent gems, in the opal, 
 in the cat’s-eye — which is worth in India many 
 times its value in Europe, and is invested with all 
 manner of weird attributes — and in the unrevealing 
 depth of the larger carbuncles, which seem to emit 
 instead of receiving light, till the native asserts that 
 they actually do it. In his management of a cere- 
 monial or a procession, the Hindoo, who holds the 
 ceremonial in a hall filled with one broad shadow, 
 and begins his procession in half-light, is not seeking 
 garishness, or an exhibition of mere wealth, but an 
 
348 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 effect which in Europe, in theatres and opera-houses, 
 we all profess to enjoy, an effect of splendour with 
 which reality has nothing to do. The truth about 
 him on this side of his head is not that he is barbaric, 
 but that he is histrionic to excess, and when the mood 
 is on him he will seek his theatrical result by means 
 which, to Europeans, who assume the necessity of 
 tinsel on the stage, but forget it in India, seems 
 grotesque or barbarous. The painting of animals’ 
 heads, the adornment of elephants with gold bracelets, 
 and all the like exhibitions, are not efforts at display, 
 as the Times fancies, but efforts to realize a picture 
 existing in the native’s mind, as it exists in that of 
 the scene-painter, and we may add, is very often 
 realized. The gold and the paint, we say, are out 
 of place, but they are no more so in intention than 
 the blacklead with which we darken the coats of 
 funeral-horses, or the spangles with which a dancer 
 tries to give her dress a coruscating effect. The 
 evil is not want of true taste, which in such matters 
 a Hindoo has, but a histrionic disregard for reality 
 when in search of impressions. “ A Member of the 
 Brahmo-Somaj ” is right enough when he points to 
 the English lady’s chignon as more barbaric than his 
 pomp, for the wearer of the chignon does not when 
 wearing it postulate in her mind a stage-effect, as the 
 Hindoo does. 
 
 “A Member of the Brahmo-Somaj ” might have 
 made a better case for his countrymen’s pomps, and 
 when he passes to the general question of compara- 
 
HINDOO “ BARBARISM 
 
 349 
 
 tive civilizations, he makes a muddle between 
 civilization and morality, and to be even intelligible 
 should have added definitions. What does he 
 understand by civilization ? We understand by it 
 that state of society in which the will, the interests, 
 and the passions of the individual are restrained by 
 irresistible law for the protection of the whole 
 community, or it may be, for its advancement 
 towards an end deemed by that community in its 
 wisest moments permanently desirable. There can 
 be no doubt that, so defined, civilization exists in 
 Western Europe ; and as little that, so defined, it 
 exists in part in India. A native is bound in every 
 action of his life by codes and laws, and customs 
 having the force of law, which he never violates, 
 and the majority of which are intended either to 
 benefit the community, or to advance towards an 
 ideal, or to maintain intact the Divinely-appointed 
 order of society. Nevertheless, civilization in the 
 East and West is not the same thing. The differ- 
 ence, the radical difference, is not only, as the Times 
 says, that the Western civilization is progressive 
 and the Eastern stationary — for any civilization, 
 however lofty, with which its subjects were thor- 
 oughly content would be stationary, and we have no 
 proof that progress is to last for ever — but that in 
 India breaks are allowed in the grand chain which 
 often render it feeble, or seem to destroy it alto- 
 gether. Three doors always stand open in India 
 for the reintrusion of barbaric individualism. Any 
 
 
35 ° 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 man who professes that his religion justifies or 
 enjoins a particular act is thereby exempt from 
 “ civilization,” — that is, from the general polity made 
 in the interest of all. The Hindoo moral code is, 
 in substance, the same as our own ; but if a sept 
 declares that its creed or its caste-rule enjoins 
 infanticide, as among Rajpoots ; or unlimited poly- 
 gamy, as among Koolin Brahmins ; or abnormal 
 sexual laws, as among some sections of the Sivaites ; 
 or murder, as among the followers of Bhowani ; or 
 defiance of all rules of decency, as among the Jains, 
 Jogees, and some other sects, authority drops its 
 sword, and even opinion ceases to act. The 
 absolute right of the individual, as against civiliza- 
 tion, is restored, and however abhorred or however 
 noxious he is not effectively condemned. If a 
 Government alien from the people chooses to sup- 
 press abnormal religious practices, the people neither 
 resent nor resist ; but the Indian civilization of itself 
 by the law of its being, cannot suppress suttee, 
 female infanticide, Thuggeeism — though self-defence 
 may order the killing of the individual Thug — 
 phallic worship, or the unrestricted wandering of 
 naked devotees of both sexes in front of palaces 
 tenanted by all-powerful persons, who, whether 
 moral or immoral themselves, hold on all these 
 subjects the same ideas of civilization as Europeans. 
 The chain of civilization breaks before the claim of 
 religious freedom, and admits a rush of barbarism 
 which affects all external as well as all internal life 
 
HINDOO “BARBARISM 
 
 35 1 
 
 in India, every caste professing some tenet or main- 
 taining some privilege intended to operate for its 
 own advantage against the general good of the 
 community. Another break, and quite as potent a 
 one, is the liberty allowed to the ruler. His duty, 
 on the Hindoo theory, is precisely his duty on the 
 English theory ; but he is unbound by law, and 
 consequently, if he is bad, civilization ends. The 
 will of the ruler, or of those he appoints, is not 
 subordinated to the interest of the community, but 
 is allowed to act against it without punishment, and 
 except in very extreme cases, without serious 
 reproach. All Hindoo thought condemned a life 
 like that of the late ruler of Baroda, but it is nearly 
 certain he would not have been upset, and quite 
 probable that he was popular. The power of the 
 ruler being great, his individualism, thus left free, 
 may and frequently does break up civilization, 
 makes commerce, for instance, impossible, or 
 throws counties out of cultivation, or arrests 
 the whole course of education for a gener- 
 ation. Those evils do not happen in Western 
 Europe, even when what is here called absolutism 
 has been vested in the ruler. His will is not really 
 released even if, like the Kings of Denmark, he is 
 declared by the Constitution “ absolute throughout 
 his dominions.” And finally, there is a third break 
 in the chain, in the one-sidedness with which the 
 doctrine that the individual is to give way to the 
 community is applied. The doctrine — allowing for 
 
35 2 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 the two great exemptions we have mentioned — is 
 held in theory as a prohibitory law as strongly as 
 in Europe, but as a stimulating law it is not held at 
 all. No Hindoo holds himself at liberty to hurt the 
 community, but no Hindoo holds himself bound to 
 benefit it to his own effacement. For instance, any 
 Hindoo would deny that he had a right to rob the 
 village Treasury, and if a decent man he would not do 
 it, any more than an English clergyman would steal 
 his sacramental plate. But no Hindoo who could 
 avoid the tax paid to that Treasury would think 
 himself morally wrong in avoiding it. The man who 
 would not murder for the world is not bound in his 
 own mind to warn the traveller of the approaching 
 Thug. The man who would not steal for the world 
 — and there are millions of Hindoos just as likely to 
 steal as the Archbishop of Canterbury — does not 
 feel obliged to prevent a theft. Individualism is 
 rampant on this side, the right to tolerate anything, 
 until India has been conquered by successive hosts 
 of foreigners. It is alleged that Hindoos have no 
 patriotism, and many Europeans will assert that no 
 such idea as that of “ country ” even has ever 
 entered their minds. We utterly disbelieve it, — 
 believe, on the contrary, that Hindoos have a 
 patriotism of a sensitive kind, a profound belief that 
 India is, and ought to be, and ultimately will be, for 
 them ; that invasion is unjust, and that the invader 
 ought to depart. But that he who thinks so 
 individually ought to risk life, property, or freedom 
 
HINDOO “ BARBARISM 
 
 353 
 
 in making the intruder depart, he does not think ; 
 and so, unless he can gain by the effort, he leaves 
 him to conquer at his will. India is, in fact, a 
 civilized country, in which the community is above 
 the individual, except when the latter pleads religion, 
 when the latter is a ruler, and when the duty to be 
 observed is positive, and not negative ; and those 
 three exceptions make its civilization so imperfect, 
 that careless observers are almost justified in calling 
 it “ barbaric.” 
 
The Future of the Negro 
 
 I T is difficult for men who study history to read 
 the discussion now raging on the progress of 
 Islam in Africa without recurring to the old ques- 
 tion — which so greatly interested the last generation, 
 and is now so seldom started — the question of what 
 the Negro is really like. There are not many left 
 among us, we imagine, though there are some here 
 and there, who doubt whether he is a man at all ; 
 but the conflict of opinion about him is of the most 
 extreme kind, so extreme as to be almost unintel- 
 ligible. One set of observers, with whom Captain 
 Burton, as we understand his writings, agrees in 
 the main, hold that he is a nearly irreclaimable 
 savage, a being who cannot be ruled except by 
 terror, and who is by nature incapable of rising to 
 the level attained by the white, and even in many 
 respects by the yellow and the brownish man. 
 They think his savagery instinctive, his laziness 
 incurable, and his sensuality far in excess of any- 
 thing observable in Europe. They declare Africa 
 an accursed continent chiefly because of the Negro, 
 and welcome frightful narratives, like Mr. St. John’s 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO 
 
 355 
 
 account of Hayti, as demonstrating past all question 
 the accuracy of their theory. Other observers, 
 again, including many missionaries and some ex- 
 plorers, are friendly to the Negro, think that the 
 repulsion caused by his external aspect makes or- 
 dinary men unjust to him, and declare that he is, 
 when not oppressed, essentially a docile creature 
 indisposed to vindictiveness, and though not clever, 
 fairly ready to receive instruction, which, they further 
 add, may occasionally be carried up to any point 
 attainable by the white man. Such observers, 
 among whom we should class keen-eyed Mrs. 
 Trollope, who had rare opportunities of studying 
 the race, and keener-eyed Mrs. Stowe, think the 
 Uncle-Tom kind of Negro not rare, and evidently 
 hold that when bad, he is vicious as a European 
 may be, rather than innately savage. A third class 
 maintain that the Negro, if carefully observed, is 
 found to be exactly like everybody else, with the 
 same passions, the same aspirations, and the same 
 powers, with one most remarkable exception. He 
 cannot rise in the scale beyond a certain point. 
 The originating power of the European and the 
 imitating power of the modern Asiatic are not in 
 him, or not in the same degree ; and he remains 
 under all circumstances more or less of a child, bad 
 or good like other children, but never quite a man. 
 It is added by this class, and in part by the one 
 mentioned before it, that the Negro woman is, on 
 the whole, better than the Negro man, with more 
 
35 6 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 industry, more fidelity, and decidedly more capacity 
 for the gentler virtues. The third opinion is, so 
 far as we know, that of the majority of missionaries, 
 of most residents in the West Indies not being 
 employers of labour, and of all Americans, and they 
 have been many, to whom we have opened the 
 subject. Americans seem to us, as a rule, to think 
 most kindly of the Negro, to be entirely free from 
 fear of him, to be annoyed with oppression practised 
 on him, but to be quite hopeless about his future. 
 He will not advance, they think, and would recede 
 but for the white man. 
 
 History certainly bears these Americans out. 
 Throughout its whole course, in the old world as 
 in the modern one, under the most extreme variety 
 of circumstances, no Negro of the full blood has 
 ever risen to first-class eminence among mankind. 
 Not only has there been no Negro philosopher, or 
 inventor, or artist, or builder; but there has been 
 no Negro conqueror, nor, unless we class Said, 
 Mahommed’s slave, as one, and Toussaint l’Ouver- 
 ture as another, any Negro general above the rank 
 of a guerilla chief. There seems to be no reason 
 for this except race. People talk of the seclusion 
 of the Negro; but he has always been in contact 
 on the Nile with the Egyptian, or the Greek, or the 
 Roman, in South America with the Spaniard, and 
 in North America with the English-speaking Teuton, 
 and he has learned very little. It is objected that 
 he has been always a slave ; but so was everybody 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO 
 
 357 
 
 else in the Roman period, most modern Italians, for 
 example, being the descendants of the white slaves 
 of the Roman gentry. Moreover, why does the 
 Negro put up with that position, when the China- 
 man, and the Red Indian, and even the native of 
 India will not? It is said that he has been buried 
 in the most “ massive ” of the four continents, and 
 has been, so to speak, lost to humanity ; but he was 
 always on the Nile, the immediate road to the 
 Mediterranean, and in West and East Africa he 
 was on the sea. Africa is probably more fertile, 
 and almost certainly richer than Asia, and is pierced 
 by rivers as mighty, and some of them at least as 
 navigable. What could a singularly healthy race, 
 armed with a constitution which resists the sun and 
 defies malaria, wish for better than to be seated on 
 the Nile, or the Congo, or the Niger, in numbers 
 amply sufficient to execute any needed work, 
 from the cutting of forests and the making of 
 roads up to the building of cities ? How was 
 the Negro more secluded than the Peruvian ; 
 or why was he “ shut up ” worse than the 
 Tartar of Samarcand, who one day shook himself, 
 gave up all tribal feuds, and, from the Sea of 
 Okhotsk to the Baltic, and southwards to the Ner- 
 budda, mastered the world ? One Tartar family 
 was reigning at one time over China, Tartary, India 
 and Russia. Why has the Negro, who is brave as 
 man may be, alone of mankind never emerged from 
 his jungles and subdued neighbouring races ? Why 
 
358 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 has he never invented a creed of the slightest 
 spiritual or moral merit, never, in fact, risen above 
 fetishism ? Above all, why has he remained in 
 Africa for three thousand years at least, without 
 forming empires or building stone cities, or employ- 
 ing a common medium of intercommunication ? Mr. 
 Blyden says he has formed cities full of busy life 
 and commerce ; but have they ever been better 
 than encampments, and why have they not lasted ? 
 We who write certainly do not believe in the incur- 
 able incapacity of the race, for we know of Bishop 
 Crowther and Mr. Blyden, and have talked with 
 Negroes apparently as thoughtful and as well in- 
 structed as any Europeans ; but we confess that 
 the history of the race remains to us an insoluble 
 puzzle, except upon the theory that there are breeds 
 of mankind in whom that strangest of all pheno- 
 mena, the arrestment of development, occurs at a 
 very early stage. The Negro went by himself far 
 beyond the Australian savage. He learned the 
 uses of fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the 
 value of shelter, the use of the bow and the canoe, 
 and the good of clothes ; but there to all appearance 
 he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race 
 like the Arab, to advance a step. He did not die, 
 like the Australian. He did not sink, like one or 
 two varieties of the Red Indian, and of the abori- 
 gines of South Africa, into a puny being hardly like 
 a man ; but he stopped at a point as if arrested by 
 a divine will. There is not a shadow of proof that 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO 
 
 359 
 
 the Negro described by Werne differs in any way 
 from the Negro of the time of Sesostris. It is not 
 quite certain even that the race, when started again, 
 would, as a race, go on improving. TheHaytians, 
 who are Christians, who are free, and who are in 
 the fullest contact with great white races, are believed 
 to be retrograding ; and only the hopeful would 
 believe in the future of American slaves, if they 
 were to be expelled, as De Tocqueville thought 
 they would ultimately be, to the islands, or, as is 
 infinitely more probable should the war of races 
 ever break out, to Central America. 
 
 As far as we see, nothing really improves the 
 Negro except one of two causes — cross-breeding, 
 and catching hold of some foreign but superior 
 creed. The cross-breeds of the Soudan and of 
 South Africa seem to have some fine qualities — 
 matchless courage, for example — and under a strict 
 but vivifying white rule might, we fancy, be brought 
 in a century or two up to the Asiatic level. They 
 produce generals, at all events, and chiefs with 
 some tincture of statesmanship, and have poetry and 
 a folk-lore of their own. Those Negroes, again, 
 who have embraced Islam do show a certain manli- 
 ness, a capacity for aggregation, and a tendency, at 
 all events, to form kingdoms, and organize armies, 
 and obey laws, which are the first steps towards 
 a higher civilization. It is not a high civilization, 
 for when all is said, a Mahommedan Negro is not 
 an ideal of humanity towards which Europeans can 
 
360 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 look with any feeling of enthusiasm ; but still, it is 
 higher, far higher, than the condition of the African 
 pagan. The Negro who embraces Christianity, 
 again, while he remains in contact with the white 
 man, distinctly advances. “Uncle Tom” is an 
 abnormal specimen, it may be, and we are not 
 inclined to place the moral condition of the Negroes 
 of the Southern States very high ; but still, they 
 have displayed a perfectly wonderful absence of 
 vindictiveness towards the former slave-owners, 
 obey the ordinary laws with fair regularity, and 
 keep themselves above starvation by the labour of 
 their own hands. The best of them, moreover, 
 rise far beyond this point, the South containing 
 both doctors and lawyers who, by the admission 
 of the whites, are thoroughly competent men ; and 
 it may be said of the whole body that, though not 
 equal to any European community of the same 
 extent, they are far superior to any four millions of 
 pagan Negroes who could be selected in Africa. 
 As they cannot owe this rise in the scale to slavery, 
 which at the best could only drill the Negroes to 
 industry, and at the worst must beget a permanent 
 distaste for labour, the change must be owing to 
 Christianity, plus the operation of laws based upon 
 that faith. It follows that the largest group of 
 Negroes under civilized observation, the descend- 
 ants, as is believed, of four widely distinguished 
 tribes, have been raised in the scale of humanity 
 by embracing a rude form of the Christian faith. 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO 
 
 361 
 
 The total conclusion, therefore, as yet justified by 
 evidence, is that intermarriage, especially with the 
 Arab, improves the Negro tribes, that they gain in 
 manliness by embracing Islam, and that they gain 
 in the social virtues by embracing Christianity, the 
 latter to a degree measured by the depth and 
 earnestness of their faith. At home, when uncon- 
 quered and unconverted, they do not advance, and 
 the point still doubtful is whether, when left to 
 themselves, they will not, even when converted, 
 again recede or stop. The Abyssinians, who are 
 Semites, have been Christians for ages. The con- 
 clusion is not very satisfactory ; but it is certain 
 that races of imperfect powers exist — e.g., the Aus- 
 tralian aborigines — and that Providence does, for 
 unknown purposes, occasionally waste even fine 
 races — e.g., the Maoris, who will, to all appearance, 
 die out, having fulfilled no function at all, not even 
 that of preparing the way for the ultimate occupants 
 of their country. 
 
The Negro Problem in America 
 
 O those who interest themselves in the condi- 
 
 tion of the dark races, there is no problem 
 at once so attractive and so insoluble as the 
 future of the negroes in the United States. It is 
 not only that they are already seven millions, and 
 will before the end of the century be twenty 
 millions — a great nation camped, as it were, on the 
 territory of a still greater nation which dislikes and 
 despises them ; but that they have all the advantages 
 the possession of which would, in the opinion of 
 most philanthropists, redeem any black race from 
 its age-long position of degradation among mankind. 
 Some of the ablest among us are never tired of 
 proclaiming that if all Africans could be released 
 from oppression, if they all became Christians, if 
 they all possessed the means of education, and if 
 they were all drilled by a steady habit of labour out 
 of their habits of indolence, they would at once 
 advance, if not to the level of the highest 
 Europeans, at least to that of the Russian moujiks, 
 or of the better Asiatics. Those ideals have in the 
 case of the American negroes all been realized. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM IN AMERICA 363 
 
 They are all not only free from servitude, but 
 possessed of the same voting powers as the whites 
 around, able as their rivals wherever they can 
 obtain a majority to legislate, to impose or remit 
 State taxes, to elect their own rulers, and to 
 exercise all those functions of government — and they 
 are very large functions — reserved by the Constitu- 
 tion to individual States. There is nothing what- 
 ever in the laws of the Union to prevent a negro 
 from becoming President, as a full-blooded Indian 
 became the legal as well as effective President of 
 Mexico. They are all nominally or really Chris- 
 tians, and if the Christianity is not of a lofty kind, 
 and is shot with many degrading or puerile super- 
 stitions, the same reservations must be made as 
 regards most of the Christian peoples which are 
 white. They have all the means of education, and 
 some of them have become really educated men, 
 able to pass any examinations or practise any of the 
 learned professions. Finally they have, as a race, 
 endured for more than a century — that is, for genera- 
 tion after generation — the severest drilling in 
 industry ever borne by any dark race, or, indeed, 
 with the possible exception of the Jews, by any 
 race whatever. They have all, for at least four 
 generations, been compelled to work, and to work 
 steadily, from boyhood to late old age, as hard as 
 any workmen anywhere. 
 
 Yet no one, whether visionary or man of experi- 
 ence or statesman, professes to be satisfied with the 
 
3 6 4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 result, alleges that the mass of American negroes 
 are the equals of any equal mass of white men, or 
 even of Asiatics, or asserts that the races are now 
 living together on satisfactory conditions. Rather 
 the cleavage between them grows deeper instead of 
 more shallow. The whites dislike and despise the 
 negroes more than ever they did. They cannot 
 endure to see them vote, and practically prevent 
 them voting by an unhesitating use of force. They 
 will not bear negroes as officials if their terms of 
 office enable them to rule white men. They defend 
 themselves against their claim to equality by a wall 
 of etiquettes, and defend that wall when it is 
 threatened by an immediate and often cruel use of 
 lead and steel. They hate, and, when they can, 
 prohibit legal marriage between the races. They 
 are ready to burn alive, and, as a matter of fact, 
 they often do burn alive, any black man who 
 ravishes any white woman. They will not sit at 
 table with them, or travel in the same cars, or, 
 except in the rarest instances, receive the Sacrament 
 before the same altar. The idea of a negro pastor 
 to a white church is to them unthinkable. They, in 
 fact, even when they will not fully admit it, regard 
 the negroes as men who may be men, and as such 
 may be entitled to certain rights, but who may, 
 nevertheless, be regarded even by the good with 
 something of instinctive disgust. The negroes, on 
 the other hand, regard the whites with a mingling of 
 dislike and fear. They resent their own treatment 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM IN AMERICA 365 
 
 as unfair, and when they dare, avenge themselves by 
 what are really small insurrections or assassinations, 
 both of which are put down, not by appeals to the 
 law, or even by the use of troops, but by fierce 
 risings of armed mobs with which the officials are 
 either unwilling or unable to deal. There is, in 
 fact, in all the Southern States of the Union a fire 
 of race hatred always smouldering which might on 
 any sudden provocation — if an invader, for instance, 
 appealed successfully to the negroes for aid — break 
 into a devastating flame. The whites in the case 
 supposed — a most improbable case, of course — would 
 not hesitate at extirpation. The flame rarely breaks 
 out now, first because the whites are really the 
 superior race, combine more readily and have far 
 abler leaders ; and secondly, because superior force 
 is so evidently on the white side. The North would 
 not tolerate a negro victory even in one State, and 
 hopelessness of ultimate success helps to restrain 
 the black men, even where they possess a majority, 
 from putting out their full strength or attempting to 
 renew the experiment which has so grievously 
 failed in Haiti. 
 
 With every million added to the negro crowd, how- 
 ever, the negro fear of the whites will tend to dimin- 
 ish, and it is not surprising that cool observers, in the 
 States and outside, regard the situation with alarm, 
 and discuss with interest every proposition which 
 appears to contain a remedy. Yet what is that re- 
 medy to be ? Some observers rely on the influence 
 
3 66 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 of time, saying, the races being both free will grow 
 accustomed to each other ; but all history denies the 
 truth of that pleasing impression. Real differences 
 of race never lose their separating force. The Jews 
 of Russia and Roumania have probably been there 
 for fifteen hundred years, have certainly been there 
 for three hundred, and but for official intervention 
 the scenes of Kishineff would be repeated all over 
 Russia. Except under the influence of some new re- 
 ligious emotion, about which it is vain to utter fore- 
 casts, the whites will not change their mental atti- 
 tude, nor the blacks, who are among the vainest 
 of mankind, cease to feel that this attitude is for 
 them at once a menace and an insult. A whole- 
 sale elevation of the blacks in the scale of humanity 
 might do much for them, but it would probably 
 deepen the white distaste for any resulting equality, 
 and is in itself exceedingly improbable. Even in 
 Europe a real elevation of the proletariat is a slow 
 process consuming centuries ; and while in Europe 
 aristocrat and workman are essentially of the same 
 breed, the black in America has to shake himself free 
 of tendencies inherited from the earliest time, to- 
 wards which — as he has shown in Haiti — he has an 
 inexplicable tendency to revert. The tendency is 
 not universal, for the American negroes are not all 
 of one race, but are descended from many tribes, 
 one or two of which were probably of far better 
 morale and intellectual capacity than the others. 
 That is, we believe, the true ultimate explanation 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM IN AMERICA 367 
 
 both of “ Uncle Tom ” and of Mr. Washington 
 Booker ; but the masses when segregated from the 
 whites do not advance at all, and on many points, 
 especially obedience to sexual restrictions, remain 
 African rather than American. 
 
 There seems to be little hope in cross-breeding. 
 Shortly after the great Civil War the word “ misce- 
 genation ” was in all men’s mouths ; but the races 
 mix less than they did in the slave-holding period, 
 and the dislike felt for the hybrid is stronger in the 
 white than his dislike for the negro. (That this 
 feeling is not so acute with the Southern European 
 as with the Anglo-Saxon is true, but is probably 
 the result of Roman Catholicism rather than of any 
 difference in instincts.) 
 
 The more desperate remedies may, we think, be 
 put quietly aside as practically out of the question. 
 M. de Tocqueville evidently thought the extirpation 
 of the negro quite possible ; but he expected it as 
 the result of a Haytian rising, and gained his expe- 
 rience when the negroes were slaves and less than 
 three millions in number. The extirpation of seven 
 millions of free men, still more of twenty millions, is 
 only a dream, and one which, even if a servile war 
 broke out, Americans would refuse to realize. They 
 would not attempt it, whatever the consequences. 
 Expulsion is a gentler method ; but it is very doubt- 
 ful if the negroes would consent to be expelled, and 
 perfectly certain that such a movement, executed as 
 an act of violence, would be beyond the power of 
 
3 68 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 any nation. The shattering of all labour relations 
 would of itself involve ruin too complete for the 
 generation which had to bear it. Besides, where 
 are the negroes to go ? “The islands,” perhaps, 
 might hold them ; but the larger islands, Cuba only 
 partially excepted, do not belong to the Union ; and 
 for Americans to waste a generation in forcibly ex- 
 porting 250,000 negroes a year, and providing for 
 them when exported till they could settle as peasants, 
 is inconceivable. Mexico will not take them, and a 
 proposal to give them four or five of the Southern 
 States, and so purify the remainder, would probably 
 provoke another civil war, besides leaving the prob- 
 lem only half solved. 
 
 No one can predict the future, but our own im- 
 pression as historians is very strong that no com- 
 plete solution of the negro question is to be expected. 
 It will remain unsolved, like the Irish question, and 
 the Polish question, and the Socialist question, and 
 many another, for generations — never quite unman- 
 ageable, but always a source of trouble to the nation 
 and a source of vexation to those who believe, in 
 the teeth of experience, that for every evil there is 
 a remedy. The negroes will throw up from time to 
 time persons so exceptionally intelligent that hope 
 among all who watch them will revive ; but the ma- 
 jority even with a tincture of education will remain, 
 as the French peasantry remained for centuries, 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water — an inferior 
 proletariat, usually quiescent, and always productive 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM IN AMERICA 369 
 
 of other men’s wealth, but liable at times to burst 
 out in jacqueries and to swell the undying yet 
 seldom successful army of the discontented. The 
 greater numbers will probably become peasants, 
 slowly acquiring the land and living on it in a poor 
 but continuous way, making customs for themselves 
 which, as in Asia, will have the force of laws, as all 
 the dark races hitherto have done, whether governed 
 by soldiers or by an irresistible white caste. It is 
 not a glowing prospect, but then glowing prospects 
 are usually imaginary; and Americans, irresistible 
 as their strength may become and mighty as their 
 collective prosperity will undoubtedly be, cannot 
 hope to escape the internal troubles which have 
 hampered, and to a certain degree trained, every 
 other people. Long habit will teach them what to 
 do and what to avoid, but it will not alter the con- 
 ditions, the first of which as regards the negroes is 
 that a few among them have in them the power to 
 become the equals of any men ; but that to raise the 
 mass, say, to the mental position of the races of 
 Upper India, will take many centuries of patience 
 and exertion. Nothing that man can do will acce- 
 lerate the process, and to the Providence of God, 
 time, as men count time, is clearly nothing. Con- 
 fucius died more than two thousand years ago 
 and we have still only the Chinese. 
 
 B B 
 
The Minds of Savages 
 
 W E do not yet know all there is to be known 
 about the earliest savage life of which we 
 have any proof. We can trace with some approach 
 to accuracy the mode of life in the Bronze Age, 
 and even in the Stone Age ; but we know but 
 little of the minds of the men who lived then, of 
 the extent or limits of their knowledge, or of the 
 powers of thought which they possessed. It is 
 quite possible that, as regards the latter, we habitu- 
 ally underrate them. No less than three distinct 
 and perceptible influences tend to make modern 
 observers sceptical, or even contemptuous, as to 
 the intellectual powers of savages. Civilization, 
 to begin with, of itself produces scorn, often an 
 overweening scorn, for barbarism, and especially 
 barbarism of the rougher, or, to speak more de- 
 finitely, the hunting type. It seems to the dweller 
 in Paris or London, himself cultivated till he hardly 
 knows what in him is natural and what acquired, 
 as if the savage who faces the weather naked, 
 who lives in a cave on the side of a hill, and who 
 grows nothing, could hardly have a mind at all. 
 
 370 
 
THE MINDS OF SAVAGES 
 
 37i 
 
 If he had one, why did he not make himself 
 comfortable, build a hut, grow corn, and, above all, 
 put on clothes ? Then there is just now an uncon- 
 scious wish among most scientific men to prove 
 the truth of evolution by showing that man was 
 once mentally of a very low type, and thus to 
 diminish the gulf, otherwise so impassable, which 
 separates him from the animal world. If they 
 could only prove that he was once incapable not 
 only of expressing, but of forming an abstract idea, 
 they would secretly be all delighted. And, thirdly, 
 a system has grown up of interpreting one race 
 of savages by another which directly tends to lower 
 our judgement of the powers of all. The philo- 
 sophers know with a certain intimacy one class 
 of savages, the Negroids of the Australasian Pacific, 
 in whom mental power is extraordinarily small ; 
 and because they live much as European savages 
 lived, they assume that both must have reached 
 about the same mental standard. Yet in a thou- 
 sand years, the relics remaining of the fishermen 
 of Devon and those remaining of the clam-eaters 
 of the Australian coast will be almost indistinguish- 
 able. It is at least equally possible that the 
 differences produced by what we call race were as 
 pronounced in the Stone Age as they are now, 
 that the minds of whole tribes may have been as 
 separate as the minds of nations now are, and that 
 mental capacity may in some races and under some 
 circumstances have reached a higher level than we 
 
372 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 fancy, before man devoted his powers to becoming 
 comfortable at all. A naked troglodyte Newton 
 maybe unthinkable, because the word “Newton” 
 embodies certain moral qualities ; but a naked 
 troglodyte philosopher or student of physics is not 
 unthinkable at all. Diogenes, according to the 
 legend, nearly was one ; and a Jain teacher pro- 
 bably exists who would puzzle most undergraduates, 
 and who lives naked in a mat hut. While caves 
 were warm and easily made, there was in Europe 
 little reason to build huts ; the notion of growing 
 cereals probably came late, for no beast plants 
 them, and the idea that a seed will grow if you 
 bury it, must without experience have seemed hope- 
 lessly wild ; and as to clothes, whole races still 
 think them an almost unendurable restraint and 
 burthen. A negro, or an Australian, or a Kaffir 
 of Dr. Moffatt’s country, even when semi-civilized, 
 is conscious of an almost irresistible impulse to 
 throw his clothes away, and restore himself to his 
 original liberty of motion. If mind in the Stone 
 Age of Europe had not advanced beyond its pre- 
 sent level among Melanesians, how are we to 
 account for facts such as those detailed by 
 Mr. Horsley at the Royal Institution in a lecture ? 
 The ignorance of the darker savages of to-day of 
 almost all operations of surgery, is absolutely 
 marvellous ; yet Mr. Horsley showed on conclusive 
 evidence that in France, savages who used only 
 stone, dwelt in caves, and probably had no idea 
 
THE MINDS OF SAVAGES 
 
 373 
 
 of clothes, constantly performed the delicate opera- 
 tion on the skull called trephining, or, as it used 
 to be called by the unlearned, trepanning. They 
 cut and raised the fractured bone of the skull 
 successfully. No less than sixty skulls and frag- 
 ments of skulls upon which this operation has been 
 performed exist in the museums of France, and 
 it is clear that it was one of the best known and 
 most frequently practised. Mr. Horsley, finding 
 that the fracture was almost always on the vertex 
 of the skull, suggests that it produced epilepsy, 
 and that trephining was performed to prevent this 
 result, as well as to alleviate frightful headaches ; 
 but there is another possible explanation. The 
 regular tribal or household punishment may have 
 been a downright blow on the skull with a thick 
 club, a punishment selected because it precludes 
 resistance to the decree on the part of the victim. 
 It is still regularly inflicted among Australians, the 
 victim being stunned by a cracking blow down- 
 wards on the skull with the short club known as 
 the “ waddy.” As the strikers did not intend 
 death, and as it was inconvenient that a mere 
 secondary punishment should produce either death 
 or idiotcy, a practice of cutting and raising the 
 fractured bones grew up and gradually became a 
 known art, probably practised by the medicine-men, 
 or priests, or other officials of the tribe. Whatever 
 the motive, the fact is certain, and indicates that 
 the savages who learned such an art were men 
 
374 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 who could pity — for no man can trephine his own 
 skull — who could understand cause and effect, and 
 who could learn from repeated experience almost 
 as well as we can. A mental chasm, the bridge 
 over which is nearly inconceivable, separated them 
 from the animals. 
 
 It is quite possible, of course, that the knowledge 
 of this art of trephining, and of many others, was 
 confined to a very few. In spite of much that 
 we see around us every day — kill out a picked ten 
 per cent, of Englishmen, and where would English 
 civilization be ? — we all are accustomed to doubt, 
 or perhaps forget, how easily a comparatively 
 cultured clan may arise amidst a nearly complete 
 savagery around. We know this to have been 
 the case in civilizations like the Egyptian and the 
 Mexican, and it is the only presumption which 
 reconciles the otherwise conflicting facts of the 
 earlier history of Ireland and Western Scotland, 
 where great ecclesiastics and scholars went out from 
 the midst of kerns as savage as the Maories of 
 to-day. It is at least as possible that a caste knew 
 the mystery of trephining as that a tribe did. That 
 is a point which will probably never be determined, 
 for it is one where we encounter the grand diffi- 
 culty of early history, — the imperfection of its 
 means of record. Until writing was invented, the 
 record of an idea was almost a physical impossi- 
 bility, except so far as subsequent observers may 
 deduce it from a fact. If, for instance, we find 
 
THE MINDS OF SAVAGES 
 
 375 
 
 sacrificial stones, knives, and relics of victims, we 
 may safely infer that those who built the altars, 
 made the knives, and slew the victims, believed 
 in invisible beings or forces who would be either 
 reverenced or propitiated by offerings. But that 
 deduction gives us scarcely a clue to the idea 
 entertained by that tribe of what we call religion. 
 Its God may have been Jehovah, as he appeared 
 to Abraham, or Huitzilopochtli, as he appeared to 
 Mexicans ; and they may have believed in a future 
 state, as all Red Indians do, or have disbelieved 
 in it, as up to the Captivity all but the higher 
 Israelitish minds probably did. Or the sacrifices 
 may have had nothing to do with the people at 
 all, but have belonged exclusively to a minute 
 caste, embedded among them as Englishmen are 
 embedded among Indians. All deductions as to 
 the religion of Calcutta from Calcutta Cathedral 
 made two thousand years hence would be essenti- 
 ally wrong. Of laws or civil polity it is nearly 
 impossible that any trace should survive, or of any 
 knowledge not requiring imperishable instruments. 
 We may deduce a knowledge of commerce from 
 certain things discovered, — for instance, we know 
 from coins found in tombs that very early Norsemen 
 traded with Rome ; but without writing, we could 
 not have a record of the knowledge of medicine 
 as distinguished from surgery. There is evidence 
 of a sort that the early Scandinavian fighters 
 understood the brain-maddening power of hemp, 
 
376 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 and used it before going into battle ; but they may 
 have known fifty other potent drugs, and their 
 knowledge could not be recorded. The Stone Age 
 savages may have observed astronomical facts as 
 closely as the Chaldaeans ; but all record of their 
 knowledge, if they possessed any, has passed away 
 as completely as all knowledge of the Chaldaean 
 processes, or of the extraordinary accident, or series 
 of accidents, or induction which led to the discovery 
 by the lowest of savages of the most scientific and 
 unexpected of all weapons, the Australian boome- 
 rang. As Mr. Horsley says, we know that the 
 savages of France possessed caves, because there 
 they are ; but if they had possessed also perishable 
 houses, they would have passed away. Extinguish 
 writing, and if the English quitted India, there 
 would in five thousand years be no evidence what- 
 ever that they were ever there, except, indeed, 
 imperishable fragments of broken beer-bottles. 
 Nothing that they have built would resist natural 
 forces for a century ; and how would their dis- 
 tinctive ideas of justice, mercy, and the supremacy 
 of law, be made visible to their successors ? The 
 truth is, evidence as to a long-past cycle must, 
 in the absence of writing, be hopelessly imperfect ; 
 and we may, as regards any particular tribe, 
 unfairly depreciate its mental standpoint through our 
 own ignorance. If we examined the “ traces ” of 
 the monks of the Thebaid as we examine those 
 of savages, what should we deduce ? That certain 
 
THE MINDS OF SAVAGES 
 
 377 
 
 persons, sex unknown, probably pagans, and 
 certainly uncivilized, constructed certain cells, and 
 probably lived in them. The theory that they 
 were fishers in the river, about as high in the 
 mental scale as Aleutians, would explain the visible 
 facts just as completely as the truth. 
 
The Progress of Savage Races 
 
 W E wish Sir John Lubbock, or some other man 
 with the necessary knowledge and lucidity 
 of expression, would deliver a special lecture on the 
 rate of savage progress. He might be able in the 
 course of it to resolve one or two problems pre- 
 sented by savage life which are, to us at least, grave 
 perplexities, weakening the hold on us of the general 
 theory of progress. Sir John holds, as we under- 
 stand his writings and his abominably reported lec- 
 ture on the subject at Toynbee Hall, not only that 
 some savages have progressed, which is past ques- 
 tion, many people, now civilized being the descend- 
 ants of true savages, but that all savages, like the 
 rest of mankind, tend to progress. Now, is that 
 quite true, or being true, is the rate of progress such 
 that man has any right to hope that savages will, 
 during any period about which it is profitable to 
 speculate, become civilized human beings ? Sir 
 John Lubbock tells us that modern savages are 
 not like primitive savages, modern savages having 
 placed themselves in many cases under the yoke of 
 elaborate and complex customs which are signs in 
 
 378 
 
THE PROGRESS OF SAVAGE RACES 379 
 
 their way of progress. We suppose the deduction 
 is true, for though civilized man shows a tendency 
 to abandon custom, or to hold it lightly, semi- 
 civilized man clings to it as his sheet-anchor, the 
 Chinese, for instance, obeying certain rules with a 
 rigidity equal to that of the modern savage. If, 
 therefore, the Chinese were ever savages, which on 
 the theory is certain, their devotion to rigid custom 
 is either a sign of progress or a corollary of it. It 
 is not a sign of rapid progress, devotion to custom 
 being merely a rude way of preserving the accu- 
 mulated result of experience or the ideas held to be 
 true ; but still, it is a sign of advance beyond the 
 true childlike stage. The Chinese certainly have 
 progressed, and as certainly are custom-worshippers. 
 But why is Sir John Lubbock so sure of his datum 
 that primitive savages were less under the yoke of 
 custom than modern savages are ? How do we 
 know what savages were like in those early times, 
 when observers could distinguish nothing except the 
 broadest facts, and travellers described a savage 
 tribe much as English sailors would now ? May 
 not an aboriginal race of b . c . 2000 have been 
 governed by a clan system as elaborate as that of 
 Australia, no trace of which has come down to us ? 
 It is not likely ; but the wisest know nothing about 
 it, and in building a theory on primitive absence of 
 restraint, we are building in reality on a plausible 
 assumption. Then is it clear that the progress, if 
 there is progress, goes on at a rate which affords any 
 
3 8 ° 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 hope of great advance during the lifetime of man 
 upon the planet ? Take Sir John’s Australians, for 
 example. He knows better than we do the nearly 
 irresistible evidence which exists — and was published 
 some six years ago — for the antiquity of the Austra- 
 lian aborigines. Either the mounds of clam shells on 
 his coast were put there by some tricksy spirit intent 
 on deceiving savants , or the native must have lived 
 where the mounds are, fishing and eating, breeding 
 and dying, for some thousands of years. If that 
 savage has progressed, why has his progress been so 
 purposeless, or his rate of progress differed so much 
 from the rate recorded in European and Asiatic 
 annals ? To all appearance, he would not become 
 civilized at that rate in scores of thousands of years, 
 and why should he become civilized at all ? Because 
 there is a law of progress ? Well, grant it as 
 regards certain races, where is the positive evidence 
 of it as regards others ? May not the Veddahs be 
 old ? It is difficult to argue without going behind 
 history ; but does Sir John Lubbock see proof, 
 unquestioned proof we mean, that the black races 
 of Africa have progressed — except, of course, under 
 conquest — throughout the history of man ? As it 
 seems to us, there are grounds for the belief that 
 they have not, that the law of progress as regards 
 the Negro is either non-existent or dependent upon 
 this, — that he shall come in contact with some 
 more progressive and more vigorous of the tribes 
 of men. The Arab, who gives him Mahommed- 
 
THE PROGRESS OF SAVAGE RACES 381 
 
 anism, improves him, and so does the Anglo- 
 Saxon, who gives him Christianity ; but left to 
 himself, the Negro, to the human eye, remains 
 where he was, or, as in Hayti, retrogrades. It is 
 distinct retrogression, and not mere pause, for a 
 race which had abandoned cannibalism to go back 
 to it ; and Vaudooism is at least as low as fetishism. 
 We do not see in the Negro the operation of any 
 self-generated law of progress, or in the Red Indian. 
 It may be there; but where is the proof of it so 
 strong that we should build on it a theory of the 
 world ? We wish to believe in permanent progress 
 and self-generated progress, for that would make 
 many theological difficulties much less ; but as yet 
 the facts seem to show that two or three families of 
 men, notably the Aryan, Arab, and Mongol, have 
 advanced up to a point — a point in the Aryan’s 
 case still susceptible of further progress — and have 
 compelled or persuaded other families to advance 
 with them ; but that these others, if left alone, either 
 do not advance, or advance by gradations so like 
 those of glaciers that the historian cannot follow 
 them, and that the observer has little right to be 
 certain that they occur at all. There are black 
 tribes in the Upper Valley of the Nile, described 
 by the surgeon Werne, who certainly are no advance 
 on the blameless Ethiopians of whom the Greeks 
 knew, or thought they knew. It may be that con- 
 ditions have been unfavourable ; but then, that 
 answer is an answer also to the general theory of 
 
382 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 progress, which ought to be possible under any 
 conditions not fatal to human life. Besides, what 
 are the conditions which make Tasmania, with its 
 English climate, so unfavourable to progress, that 
 while the Piet developed into a civilized man, the 
 Tasmanian did not develop at all, but remained 
 always a little higher than the monkey, till God in 
 His mercy ended the effort and his race? 
 
 It seems to us that modern cheeriness has slightly 
 infected scientific men, and that in their eager hope 
 to show that natural science presages a great future 
 for man, they leave out of view some unpleasant 
 facts which militate against their theory. They 
 take time into their account at one point, and not 
 at another. They will assert that the development 
 of man from a monkey, or a reptile, or whatever is 
 the latest theory about his ancestor, must have occu- 
 pied cycles of centuries, and that cycles more passed 
 before man could use tools or make fire ; and then 
 they expect, or write as if they expected, another 
 enormous advance within some trumpery period 
 marked in recorded history, — for example, some two 
 or three thousand years. Why ? Where is the 
 evidence that the man of the Niger would not take 
 a million or so of years before he, unassisted, 
 attained to civilization, especially if he passed 
 through that period of “ arrestment ” which has 
 certainly struck some races, and the duration of 
 which is as uncertain as the duration of the world ? 
 Scientific men are conscious of the greatest of the 
 
THE PROGRESS OF SAVAGE RACES 3S3 
 
 marvels of the universe, the astounding way in 
 which productive or creative energy is wasted, 
 generations of creatures perishing uselessly before 
 the creature to survive is born, and forests decaying 
 that a few trees may live ; but they seem unwilling 
 to expect such waste of men. Why not? Is it 
 because of the value of sentient beings in the 
 economy of the universe ? If humanity all perished 
 to-morrow through some vast calamity, say, by the 
 emission from all volcanic regions of some poisonous 
 vapour — a thing believed to have occurred on a 
 minute scale — the loss would be far less than the 
 loss of babies which has occurred since the begin- 
 ning of the world, and would be less, indeed, than 
 the loss of stillborn children only. If Nature, or 
 Law, or Providence can afford to waste human 
 beings, even Aryan beings, at that prodigious rate, 
 why should it not waste whole races of savages ? 
 It has wasted two within quite a short period, the 
 Caribs of Cuba and the Tasmanians ; and it is 
 wasting two more quite visibly, the Australians of 
 the mainland and the Maories. Why should it not 
 waste the remainder, leaving the world altogether 
 to men of some higher type, or other type, as has 
 happened with some animals ? We do not see, we 
 confess, though we wish to see, why, on the scien- 
 tific theory of the universe, we should expect so 
 much progress in savages, or why a Digger Indian, 
 say, should gradually advance until he can count 
 up to the numbers which astronomers are accus- 
 
3§4 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 tomed to use. Why should he not perish, or, if 
 his vitality is strong, as is the case with some Negro 
 tribes, why should he not survive as a kind of half- 
 developed man ? He has done so for ages in Aus- 
 tralia, and why should the ages end ? We can see 
 a hope for him in the Christian theory, which 
 assigns to the Negro, as to Newton, two lives ; 
 but on the scientific one, we see nothing for him, 
 if he remains unconquered and of unmixed blood, 
 except a doubtful probability of advance at a rate 
 which the human mind can scarcely discern, and 
 which, as a factor in history, it is useless even to 
 consider. Judged by Christianity, the savage has 
 a future ; but judged by history and science, the 
 best thing that could happen to him would be to 
 disappear as rapidly as possible, and make room 
 for the useful peoples, who two centuries hence will 
 have scarcely room to breathe. 
 
The Contempt of Asia for Europe 
 
 HE contempt of Asiatics for Europeans is a 
 
 little difficult to understand and most difficult 
 to explain. Their hatred is natural enough, for the 
 European is usually a conqueror, and always an 
 intruder who threatens to disturb the mode of life 
 which they think at once obligatory and delightful ; 
 but their contempt seems unreasonable or even 
 absurd. It does not spring from want of respect as 
 we commonly understand that word. The Asiatic 
 usually acknowledges the European to be his 
 superior, and this not only in physical power, but 
 in many departments of life which require thought. 
 He does not question, for instance, that the white 
 man is his superior in science, or in the military 
 art, or in medicine, or in those branches of know- 
 ledge which require, like astronomy for example, 
 careful observation. He never dreams of rivalling 
 him as a mechanician, and has doubts, only doubts, 
 of his own comparative capacity as an engineer. 
 He will even allow that he is a thinker of a sort, 
 and has virtues of a kind, and can rule in a way, 
 especially as regards taxation, to which he himself 
 
 385 
 
 c c 
 
3 86 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 makes no pretension. Nevertheless, he regards 
 the European as a barbarian, wanting in the 
 essentials of civilization, and inferior to himself 
 from sheer deficiency of brain-power. This feeling 
 is the more remarkable because it is not based, like 
 the scorn of the Greek for the Roman, which in 
 some degree resembled it, upon any actual superi- 
 ority. In all but the capacity of ruling — of course, 
 a magnificent exception — in thought, in poetry, in 
 art, in all the faculties which might ultimately have 
 developed scientific attainment, the Roman was the 
 inferior of the Greek, and knew it so well that the 
 more cultivated he grew the more he became 
 “ Grecised,” until in the Western Empire he 
 merged his own civilization in that of his subject, 
 and became in all essentials a Greek. It is probable, 
 too, that the surrender improved him, and that 
 during the first six centuries of its existence 
 Constantinople was more civilized, in the modern 
 sense, than old Rome ever became. The Asiatic 
 has not that justification for his scorn, yet no one 
 who has penetrated even a little into the true life of 
 the East doubts that he feels it, and this so strongly 
 as to make of his own submissiveness a source of 
 self-contempt which gives energy and edge to his 
 vengeance when he has once risen in revolt. He 
 holds his master, in fact, to be a dense person who, 
 as a rule, cannot be resisted, but who can always be 
 outwitted, deceived, guided into a path on which 
 he does not wish to tread. Why is that ? Why, 
 
THE CONTEMPT OF ASIA FOR EUROPE 387 
 
 for instance, does the Hindoo or the Chinaman, or 
 in a lesser degree the Turk, always fancy that he 
 can lie to the European without detection and with- 
 out consequences, that if force is eliminated from 
 the struggle he will not only win, but win with a 
 certain ease and absence of exertion ? 
 
 We believe that the serious answer to the ques- 
 tion is the one which the European, judging as he 
 always does by the concrete results, never will 
 accept. The Asiatic has of the two the brighter 
 intelligence. He is the more quickwitted, especially 
 in reading character ; he anticipates his interlocutor’s 
 thought more rapidly, he invents with far more 
 ingenuity, and he is more capable of purely abstract 
 reasoning. He, not the white man, thought out 
 and founded all the successful creeds. When he 
 condescends to discuss, or dares discuss frankly, 
 which is very seldom, he is the philosopher talking 
 with the average and slightly stupid man. He 
 perceives this himself, all the more keenly because 
 the perception is of little use to him, and he has 
 usually to give way. He is like a clever woman 
 talking to an ordinary man, arriving at conclusions 
 by intuition rather than thought, seeing before the 
 man has begun to open his eyes, and as a result in- 
 dulging in a thin scorn which does not produce 
 resistance, but does produce a bitterness, gentle 
 enough in the woman if she is womanly, but not 
 gentle in the Asiatic. This is the main cause of 
 the contempt, the underlying root from which it 
 
3 88 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 springs, but there are other subsidiary causes of 
 much efficacy. One is that the manners of the 
 European always strike the Asiatic as plebeian. He 
 expects in an equal or superior a kind of smooth- 
 ness which few Europeans possess, and which they 
 never display in their intercourse with the coloured 
 races, whose want of frankness, and tendency to be 
 deferential, and general failure to secure the results 
 which Europe desires, slightly irritate them. The 
 Asiatic thinks that want of frankness essential to 
 politeness, is always reserved unless he intends to 
 be insolent, and looks upon familiarity, especially if 
 there is any difference of grade, as offensive, pre- 
 suming, and, in a word, rude. Very few Europeans 
 appear to him to be gentlemen, and those few only 
 when they are not familiar. The European’s laugh, 
 in especial, is to him as disagreeable as the laugh 
 of the uncultivated is to the refined European, and 
 European “chaff,” persiflage, humour, is to him 
 absolutely unendurable. It is, he thinks, the very 
 quintessence of vulgarity, and reminds him perpetu- 
 ally that he is being civil or submissive to one who 
 is essentially, when the mask is off, a barbarian. 
 This feeling, which is universal and incurable, 
 greatly increases his sense of his opponent’s 
 stupidity, which again is deepened by his percep- 
 tion that the opponent is fettered in using his 
 intellect by all manner of non-intellectual restrictions, 
 is apt, for example, to resent a cruel or immoral 
 suggestion, does not employ falsehood when false- 
 
THE CONTEMPT OF ASIA FOR EUROPE 389 
 
 hood clearly would be convenient, and does not 
 detect falsehood if it is plausible as a quick-witted 
 man should. Long observation has convinced us 
 that the Asiatic who lies to the European despises 
 the European so much for accepting the falsehood 
 that he often out of sheer contempt makes his 
 falsehood less artistic than he could. Anything, he 
 thinks, will do for a mind so dense as that. He is 
 vexed, too, when his lie is too roughly exposed, 
 vexed not, as an ordinary European is, because he 
 has been detected, but as a diplomatist is vexed 
 when his smooth arguments are not put aside as 
 smoothly. He ought not to be told that he is lying, 
 but only to be shown as lightly as may be that the 
 falsehood has not succeeded. Any other conduct 
 he classes as the result of ill-mannered, not to say 
 brutal, stupidity, and despises in his heart as the 
 gentleman despises the scolding of the rough. So 
 likewise he despises the European’s liability to 
 “ lose his temper ” without getting into a rage. 
 The Asiatic can feel rage, and display it too, but 
 “ bad temper,” which is much commoner among 
 Europeans than they think, disgusts and offends 
 him as a mark of barbarian want of self-control. If 
 the bad temper lasts, and induces the European, as 
 it often does, to take the bit in his teeth and act in 
 defiance of remonstrance, the Asiatic “bows low 
 before the blast,” but it is verily “ in patient, deep 
 disdain,” as of a diplomatist who is dealing with 
 some half-savage whom he cannot for the moment 
 
39 ° 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 control. Talleyrand always regarded Napoleon in 
 that light. 
 
 Behind all these feelings there remains the mutual 
 unintelligibility, which produces contempt in the 
 Asiatic as it produces it also in the European. We 
 are all apt to despise what we do not understand, 
 and some invisible but impassable barrier arrests 
 perfect comprehension between the East and West. 
 The European familiar with the East always recog- 
 nizes this source of error in himself, and sometimes 
 tries to overcome it, declaring with a sigh that the 
 Eastern is always a sealed book, but he seldom 
 recognizes also that for the same reason the Asiatic 
 despises him. His innate pride, and that supreme 
 self-confidence which Asia has lost in the ages, but 
 which modern Europe is still too young to lose— 
 we were tattooed savages when the East was just 
 beginning to decay from age — prevents the thought 
 from growing into a conviction, but nevertheless it 
 is well founded. The Asiatic often watches the 
 “ antics ” of the European as we watch those of 
 animals, with a sense of amusement which has no 
 other explanation than that he does not understand. 
 How can he, when to each other the two are so 
 nearly dumb ? The clearness of the European’s 
 brain never tells him when the revolt of the Asiatic 
 is near at hand, and all the subtlety of the Asiatic 
 never tells him when a threat will make the 
 European halt, and when it will pass him like the 
 idle wind. Nothing, to use the best known illustra- 
 
THE CONTEMPT OF ASIA FOR EUROPE 391 
 
 tion, will ever convince the average European that 
 the religion of the Asiatic, which governs the habits 
 of his life, though not his whole conduct, is anything 
 but tomfoolery ; and nothing will convince the 
 average Asiatic that a European has any religion 
 at all worthy of the name. The one despises the 
 other as a fool, the other despises the one as a bar- 
 barian too dense to believe a creed. The difference 
 is that the European perceives his own contempt, but 
 never dreams of attributing it to his rival, while the 
 rival, fully aware of his own feeling, is only too con- 
 scious that it is reciprocated to the full. “ What a fool 
 he really is 1 ” says the European of the Asiatic ; and 
 “ How can God have created a thing like that ? ” 
 says the Asiatic of the European. As the European 
 has never to obey, his contempt is often kindly ; as 
 the Asiatic has always to yield, his contempt is 
 often vitriolic. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 * 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Abdallah, Chief of Beni Khazraj, 
 184, 189, 192 
 
 Abdallah, Mahommed’s father, 
 160, 163 
 
 Abdul Hamid, 331, 336 
 Abdul Mutalik, Mahommed’s 
 grandfather, 164, 165, 176 
 Abdul Ruhaman, disciple of 
 Mahommed, 170 
 Abdurrahman Khan, Afghan 
 reverence for, 264 
 Abu Bekr, 169, 170, 175, 176 
 Abu Sofian, leader of caravan, 
 187, 189, 192, 196 
 Taken prisoner, 201 
 Abu Talib, Mahommed’s uncle, 
 165, 171, 172 
 Abyssinia, 171 
 Prince of, 199 
 Abyssinians, 361 
 /Eschylus, 306 
 Afghanistan, 310 
 Appeal to throne in, 239 
 Size of, 5 
 Afghans, 31 1, 314 
 Africans, distinctions between 
 Asiatics and, 40 
 Akaba valley, 174 
 Aladdin’s cave, essay on Seraglio 
 Treasury, 293 seqq. 
 
 Albanians, 335 
 Alcohol and Hindoos, 57 
 Aleutians, 377 
 
 Alexander of Macedon, 157 
 Attempts to conquer Asia, 1, 21 
 Alexandrian massacre, 320 
 Alexandrine empire overthrown 
 by “ Parthians,” 1 10 
 Alhambra, 9 
 
 Ali, Mahommed’s nephew, 169 
 Alsatians’ attitude towards Ger- 
 mans, 90 
 
 America, peopling of, 20 
 America takes Philippines, 4 
 Amina, Mahommed’s mother, 164, 
 170, 175 [206 
 
 Amru, Mahommed’s lieutenant, 
 Amurath I., 331 
 Anatolia, 7 
 
 Anglo-Indian government, 146 
 Antar, epic of, 307 
 Antioch, wealth of, 296 
 Arabs : — 
 
 Character, 163 
 Content, 205 
 Courage, 220 seqq. 
 
 Defeat Romans, 220 
 
 “ Fanaticism,” 316 
 
 In Algeria, 218 
 
 In China, 21 
 
 Make no progress, 95 
 
 Mountaineers, 161 
 
 Negro and, 40 
 
 Of Algiers, 226 
 
 Of Desert, 223, 226, 301 seqq. 
 
 Of S. Spain, 226 
 Soldiers, 222 
 Victories, 6 
 
 393 
 
394 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Arabi Pasha, 309, 31 1 
 Soldiers of, 316, 320 
 Arabia, account of, 160 
 Oases, 161 
 
 Population, 162 [163 
 
 Bonds of national cohesion, 
 Tribal government, 184 
 Arabian Caliphs, early conquests 
 of, 220 
 
 Archimedes, 306 
 Armenia, 335 
 Plunder of, 299 
 Armenians, 320 
 
 Mussulmans and, 51 
 True Asiatics, 312 
 Asia — 
 
 Barbarians and, 24 
 Cruelty in, 261 seqq. 
 
 Effect of increase of com- 
 munication with Europe, 137 
 European in, 320 
 European influence on, 19 seqq. 
 Greek power and, 21 
 Law in, 242 
 
 Oppression of police, 240 
 Population, 6 and note 
 Race-hatred in, 214 
 Romans and, 22 
 Separateness of, 21, 28, 34, 90 
 Size, 5 
 
 Vastness of calamities in, 278 
 Will conquest vivify ? 323 seqq. 
 
 ( See also Asiatics, Hindoo, and 
 India) 
 
 Asiatic Turkey, 5 
 Asiatics — 
 
 A typical, 285 seqq. 
 Achievements, 8, 9 
 “Afternoon life,” 127, 128 
 Basis of society, 12 1 
 Cavalry, 11 
 
 Characteristics, 10 seqq ., 29, 31, 
 124, 143, 150, 263 
 Christianity and Mahommedan- 
 ism, 34 
 
 Asiatics ( continued ) — 
 
 Comity, 50 
 Contempt for life, 263 
 Creeds, 13, 24,35, 95- (^ ee also 
 Mahommedanism and Hin- 
 dooism) 
 
 Distinctions between Africans 
 and, 40 
 
 Distinctions between Euro- 
 peans and, 167, 261 
 English feeling contrasted with, 
 129 seqq. 
 
 “ Fanaticism,” 315 
 Hatred for Europeans, 320 
 Ideas : reflex effect of, 157 seqq. 
 Limitations, 9, 10 and note 
 “ Loyalty,” 3 1 1 
 Morality, 14, 142 
 Muscular strength, 337 
 “ Nationalists,” 312 
 Notion of justice, 235 seqq. 
 Patriotism, 308 
 
 Preference for oriental life, 120 
 seqq. 
 
 Soldiers, 7 
 
 Systems of land tenure, 12 
 “ Traitor,” 313 
 
 Vigilance committees, 241. ( See 
 also Hindoo, Chinese, Arabs) 
 Asma, 189 
 Assaye, 146 
 
 Aurungzebe, Emperor of Delhi, 
 62, 238 
 
 Australia, clan system, 379 
 Australians, trephining, 373 
 Azimoollah Khan, enmity to 
 British, 217 
 
 B 
 
 Bab insurrection, 262 
 Baber, 62 
 Baboo, 327 
 Badr, 187 
 
 Mahommed’s camp at, 195 
 Bagdad, 305 
 
INDEX 
 
 395 
 
 Bahan, Armenian general, 221 
 Balin conquered by Hindoos, 21 
 Bankok treasures, 294 
 “ Barbarians ” and Asia, 24 
 “ Barbarism,” Hindoo, 345 
 Baroda, monarchy in, 103 
 Bates, — in forests of Brazil, 339 
 Batouk, 335 
 
 Bedouin auxiliaries, 221 
 Bedouins, address to, 301 
 Beharees, 61 
 Benares, 86, 94, 102 
 Site of, 8 
 
 Bengal, plantations and factories, 
 325 
 
 Bengalees, 83, 90 
 “ A feeble folk,” 337 
 Increase of, 328 
 Prefer Englishmen to Sikhs, 312 
 Proud of Gour, 312 
 Beni Aamir, 207 
 Beni Amar, 194 
 Beni Asad, 194 
 Beni Aws, 184, 196 
 Beni Cainucaa besieged, 189 
 Beni Ghatafan, 189 
 Beni Hawazin, 204 
 Beni Khazraj, 184 
 Beni Khozaa, 201 
 Beni Mustalick, 195 
 Beni Nadhir, 194 
 Beni Saym, 170 
 Beni Suleim, 189 
 Beni Zohra, 170 
 
 Besant, Mrs., and transmigration, 
 
 139 
 
 Billal, Mahommed’s slave, 185 
 Black races and civilization, 92 
 Blunt, Wilfrid, on race-hatred in 
 India, 214 
 
 Blyden — on negro, 358 
 Bokhara palace, 294 
 Bombay, plantations and factories, 
 325 
 
 Bostra 166 
 
 Boyle, Frederick, 337 
 Brahminism, 13 
 Brahmin : 
 
 Attitudetowards Christianity, 68 
 Begging, 164 
 Of Madras, 338 
 Sanctity of, 274 
 Brahmo-Somaj, 345 
 Brazil, forests of, 339 
 Bright, John, 305 
 Bronze Age, mode of life in, 370 
 Brown races in Asia, 93 
 Capabilities, 94 
 Incapacities, 95 
 
 Buddhism, 13, 36, 48 [14 1 
 
 Leaves great problems unsolved, 
 Buddhist, 317 
 Devotees, 138 
 Thought, 139, 142, 145 
 Burckhardt, on population of 
 Arabia, 162 
 Burmese, 31 1 
 
 Burton, Captain, on negroes, 354 
 C 
 
 Calamities in Asia, vastness of, 
 278 seqq. 
 
 Californians and Chinamen, 316 
 Caliphs, story of, 209. 
 
 Cambodia, 282 
 
 Canara, native Christian village 
 in, 74 
 
 Canning, Lord, Sikhs offer to, 89 
 Caribs of Cuba, 375 
 Cashmere shawl, colours in, 346 
 Chaldaeans, 376 
 Chalons, battle of, 6 
 Charles II., his temperament, 127 
 Chignon, 348 
 China, 5 
 Arabs in, 21 
 
 Difference between European 
 and natives, 150 
 Europeans in, 27 
 Russia and, 1 1 1 
 
396 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chinese, 357 
 Banking system, 8 note 
 Make no progress, 95 
 Porcelain, 9 
 Savages and, 379 
 Struggle with Tartars, 90 
 Work on Yellow river, 279, 283 
 Christianity and Asia, 34 
 Christianity in India. ( See under 
 India) 
 
 Civilization in East and West, 349 
 Clive, principles of government, 
 149 
 
 Clovis, 36, 69 
 
 “ Colour,” 90, 91 and note, 326 
 Columbus, Christopher, 157 
 Colvin, Sir Auckland, speech at 
 Lucknow, 244, 246 
 Comtist-dreams, 306 
 Confucius, 11, 13 
 Conquerors and conquered, 90 
 Constantinople, land attack on, 
 336 
 
 Constantinople, treasures in, 296 
 Copts, 320 
 Cortez, 157 
 Costa Ricans, 338 
 Creeds of Asiatic origin, 13, 24, 
 35) 95- (See also Hindooism, 
 Mahommedanism) 
 Cromwell’s Ironsides, 322 
 Cross-breeds of Soudan and S. 
 
 Africa, 359 
 Crowther, Bishop, 358 
 Cruelty in Europe and Asia, 261 
 seqq. 
 
 Crusades, 137 
 Crusaders and Asia, 24 
 Cunningham, General, 309 
 
 D 
 
 Dacoity, 99 
 Dalhousie, Lord — 
 
 Act to repress obscenity, 101 
 On Ranee Chunda Kour, 286 
 
 Dalhousie, Lord ( continued ) — 
 Organizes Punjab and Burmah, 
 
 215 
 
 Damascus, 94 
 Site of, 8 
 Sword blades, 9 
 Damoodah river, 280 
 De Tocqueville, 359 
 Deccan Shahbazpore island sub- 
 merged, 278 
 Delescluze, 130 
 Delhi, 313 
 Delhi massacre, 320 
 Dewan, meaning of, 272 
 Dhuleep Singh. {See Maharaja 
 Dhuleep Singh) 
 
 Digger Indian, 383 
 Diocletian’s policy, 159 
 Diogenes, 372 
 
 Drummond, Sir John Hay, 300 
 Druses, 31: 
 
 Dufferin, Marquis of, 86 
 Manner to natives, 219 
 
 E 
 
 Edwardes, Major, 196 
 Egyptian civilization, 374 
 Egyptians, 313 
 Emir of Afghanistan, 332 
 Emperor of Delhi, 273, 274 
 Emperors of Malabar, 273 
 England — • 
 
 Claims Valley of Yang-tse, 4 
 Territory in Asia, 2, 26 
 English — 
 
 And Asiatic feeling contrasted, 
 129 seqq 
 
 And Indians, chasm between, 90 
 Manner to natives, 218 
 Rule in India, 82 seqq., 146 
 Ethiopians, 381 
 Europe — 
 
 Attempts to conquer Asia, 1, 17 
 Cruelty in, 261 seqq. 
 
INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 Europe ( continued ) — 
 
 Effect of increase of communi- 
 cation with Asia, 137 
 Increase of population, 2 and 
 note 
 
 Influence on Asia, 19 seqq. 
 Prospects of war in Asia, 37 
 European — 
 
 And Asiatic morality, 14 
 Characteristics, 29 
 In Asia, 320 
 Society, basis of, 121 
 
 F 
 
 “ Fanaticism” in East, 315 
 Faqueers, 138 
 Ferazee, 304 
 
 Ficar, Roman general, 222 
 Finlay, life among Greeks, 150 
 Florida, Americans in, 87 
 Ford, life among Spaniards, 150 
 France covets possessions in Asia, 
 4 
 
 Francia, Dr., 343 
 Frederick the Great, 139 
 French Buddhists, 139 
 F rench savages had caves, 376 
 
 G 
 
 Gaekwar, meaning of, 272 
 German Kaiser and Sultan meet, 
 330 
 
 Germany in Anatolia and Shan- 
 tung, 4 
 
 Ghazees as soldiers, 182 
 Gibbon’s narrative of Mahommed, 
 156 
 
 Giffen, Sir Robert, 36 
 Gobineau, Comte de, work on 
 ethnology, 94 note 
 Gorst, Sir John, Indian budget, 
 228 
 
 Gospels, 307 
 Gour, 282, 312 
 Graham, Sir Gerald, 222 
 
 Granada (Old), 94, 305 
 Fall of, 226 
 
 Grant Duff, Sir Mount-Stewart, 
 328 
 
 Address at Madras, 323 
 Greek power and Asia, 21 
 Green vault, Dresden, 293 
 
 H 
 
 Hadhramaut, 206 
 Hadrian’s defensive policy, 22 
 Halima, Mahommed’s foster- 
 mother, 164 
 
 Hamerton, life in France, 150 
 Hamza, 171, 188 
 
 Hashim, Mahommed’s great 
 grandfather, 171, 176 
 Hayes, Captain, and fanaticism 
 at Lucknow, 321 
 Hayti, 41, 355, 381 
 Negroes in, 93 
 Haytians, 359 
 Head, G. O. A., 307 
 Hegira, 175 
 
 Hemp used by Scandinavians, 
 
 375 
 
 Hephsestion, 210 
 Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, 
 199 
 
 Defeated by Arabs, 220 
 Himyarte dynasty, 206 
 Hindooism : 
 
 A congeries of creeds, 47 
 And Rana of Oodeypore, 131 
 Core of, 252, seqq. 
 
 Dogmas of, 254 
 Essence of, 48 
 External forms of, 254 
 “ Freedom,” 257 
 Hindoos, 317 
 And alcohol, 57 
 Attitude towards Christianity, 
 68 
 
 “ Barbarism,” 345 
 Early conquests, 21, 23 
 
398 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hindoos ( continued ) — 
 
 Moral code, 350, 352 
 Of Dacca, 304 
 Suruj or Sun, 134 
 Hindostanees, 61, 83 
 Hira mountains, 168 
 Hirsch, Baron, 344 
 Hoang-Ho river, 280, 282 
 Honan province, 278, 283 
 Horace quoted on white family, 
 20 
 
 Horsley, on savages, 372, 376 
 Houssa, 304 
 
 Huitzilopochtli appears to Mexi- 
 cans, 375 
 Haweiria, 222 
 Hyder Ali, 11, 272 
 
 I 
 
 Ilbert Bill, 108 
 
 Imperial palace, Pekin, treasures 
 in, 293 
 India — 
 
 Abstemiousness of natives, 227 
 seqq. 
 
 Agriculture, 325 
 As Mahommedan country, 59, 
 62 
 
 Careers formerly open to na- 
 tives, 103. 
 
 Caste life, 54, 71, 153 . 275 
 Catastrophe probable, no, 118 
 ‘ Census of India,” 146 
 Characteristics of natives, 151 
 Chasm between Englishmen 
 and natives, 90, 97, 109, 137, 
 150, 261. 
 
 Christian proselytism in, 63 
 seqq. 
 
 Difficulties in way of expan- 
 sion, 67, 71, 74 
 Reason of failure, 81 
 Christianity and Mahommedan- 
 ism in, 43 seqq. 
 
 Civil justice in, 99 
 
 India ( continued ) — 
 
 Codes, 329 
 
 “ Colour,” 90, 91 and note , 326 
 Decay of Indian art, culture 
 and military spirit, 102 
 Drawbacks to English rule, 
 102, 106 
 
 Early marriages, 57 
 Education in, 326 
 Education of princes, 291 
 English rule in, 82 seqq. 
 
 Principles of, 148 
 Eviction, 102 
 Imperial service, 88, 98 
 Industries, 84 
 Interestingness of life, 103 
 Liberty under English rule, 100 
 Life and property safe under 
 English rule, 99 
 Mental seclusion of, 146 seqq. 
 Missionaries and natives, 15 1 
 Missionaries in, 74 seqq. 
 
 Native banking system, 8 note 
 Character, 249 
 Desire for tea, 234 
 Difference between English 
 and, 96 
 
 Dislikes Englishman, 216 
 Engineers needed, 324 
 Jewels, 247 
 
 Makes no progress, 95 
 Morale , 114 
 
 Passion for place, 113, 116 
 Press, 108 
 
 Respect for pedigree, 272 
 Soldiers, 83, 89 
 Sources of reverence, 271 
 Struggle with Mongols, 90 
 Thrift, 231 
 
 Need for mission training col- 
 leges, 79 
 
 Negro army proposed for, 89 
 No white men settle in, 86 
 Peasantry, 101 
 Peasants’ clothing, 245 
 
INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 India ( continued )— 
 
 Peasant’s hut, 244 
 Population, 83 
 Race-hatred in, 214 
 Salt tax, 230 
 Sepoys, 106 
 
 Service commissions, 117 
 “ Standard of comfort” in, 244 
 seqq. 
 
 Star of, 276 
 “ Tanks,” 324 
 Taxes, 100 
 
 “ The Empire,” 85, 88, 98 
 Foundations of, 89, no, 214 
 Variety of scenery, 268 
 Variety of society, 268 seqq. 
 Vastness, 83 
 
 Warrior races of, 6. ( See also 
 
 S. India, Hindoos, Asia and 
 Asiatics) 
 
 Indian abstemiousness, 227 seqq. 
 Indian Mutiny, 26, 33, 62, 102 
 Anecdote of missionary in, 76 
 Object of, 107 
 
 Indian society, variety of, 268 
 seqq. 
 
 Indians of S. America and Span- 
 iards, 42 
 
 Indians of Spanish America, 148 
 Irish Nationalists, 313 
 Irish peasant’s homesickness, 305 
 Islam. ( See Mahommedanism) 
 Italian attitude towards Austrians, 
 90 
 
 Ivan the Terrible, 266 
 
 J 
 
 Jain teacher, 372 
 Janissaries, 25 
 Japan, rise of, 27 
 Japanese military system, 37 
 Japanese soldier, 7 
 Java conquered by Hindoos, 21, 
 23 
 
 Java, Dutchmen in, 87 
 
 Jehad (religious war), 319 
 Jehovah appears to Abraham, 375 
 Jenghiz Khan, knowledge of 
 mounted infantry, 39 
 Jerusalem, 170 
 Jesuits in Paraguay, 343 
 Jewish ideal of Messiah, 70 
 Jews, 93 note , 302, 338 
 Mahommed and, 184 
 Jeypore, site of, 8 
 Josephus, source of antiquities, 
 168 
 
 Juarez, 328 
 Judea destroyed, 334 
 Jung Bahadoor, 262 
 Jutee Pershad, 85 
 
 K 
 
 Kantian philosophy, books on, 
 156 
 
 Keshub Chunder Sen, 80 
 Khadijah, Mahommed’s wife, 166, 
 167, 169, 176 
 Death, 172 
 
 Khalid defeats Romans, 221 
 Khama’s country, 41 
 Kheibar conquered, 200 
 Kincaid, Dr., in Burmah, 261 
 Kings of Denmark, “ absolute," 
 35i 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 28 
 Koh-i-noor, 290 
 Koolin Brahmin, 142, 350 
 Koran, 180, 210, 307 
 Commentators, 2x1 
 Teaching of, 318 
 Koreish, 163 
 
 Attitude towards Mahommed, 
 171, 172, 174, 176, 181, 192, 
 195, 200 
 
 Koreish caravans, Mahommed’s 
 expeditions against, 186 
 Koreitza tribe, 195 
 
 Besieged and slain, 196 
 Koso, Syrian bishop, 165 
 
4oo 
 
 INDEX 
 
 L 
 
 Lahej, Governor of Aden visits, 
 161 
 
 Lat, fall of, 203 
 Guardians of, 170, 17 1 
 Layard, Sir Henry, 128 
 Lethbridge, Sir Roper, 273, 275, 
 276 
 
 Golden Book of India , 269 
 Liberia, negro in, 93 
 Life of Mahommed, by Sir W. 
 
 Muir, review of, 155 segq. 
 London sempstresses, abstemious- 
 ness of, 227 
 Londoner, 370 
 
 Louisiana, colonization in, 343 
 Love Sonnets of Proteus quoted, 
 301 
 
 Lubbock, Sir John, lecture on 
 savages, 378 
 
 Lucknow, fanatic outbreaks in, 
 321 
 
 Lyall, Sir Alfred, 17 note, 28 
 M 
 
 Maadd, chieftain, 163 
 Macaulay, Lord, on — 
 
 English Studies in India, 327 
 Roman Catholics, 30 
 Madagascar conquered by 
 Malays, 21, 23 
 
 Madras University, Sir Mount- 
 Stewart Grant Duff’s address 
 
 to, 323 
 
 Madras, want of wealth, 325 
 Maharaja Dhuleep Singh, sketch 
 of, 285 segq. 
 
 Maharaja of Calicut, 273 
 Maharaja of Coorg, 289 
 Maharaja of Nepal, 274 
 Maharaja of Travancore, 273, 274 
 Maharana” of Oodeypore, ac- 
 count of scenes on his death, 
 129 segq. 
 
 Mahatmas, 139 
 
 Mahmoud destroys Janissaries, 
 
 33i 
 
 Mahommed , Sir W. Muir’s Life 
 of reviewed, 155 segq . — 
 Address to men of Medina 
 quoted, 205 
 
 Aims at conquering Arabia, 197 
 Anecdote quoted illustrative of 
 Arab manners, 201 
 Arrives at Medina, 183 
 As legislator,' 1 79 
 As prophet, 169, 179 
 Attends pilgrimage to Mecca 
 198 
 
 Besieges Koreitza, 196 
 Character, 177 
 Collects tithes, 206 
 Conquers Kheibar, 200 
 Death, 209 
 Descent, 163 
 Development, 156, 168 
 Disciples, 170, 174 
 Embassies, 199, 206 
 Expedition to Tayif, 172 
 Hegira, 175 
 Hostilities, 186 
 Jews and, 184 
 Marches on Mecca, 201 
 Marches on Tayif, 204 
 Organizes faith, 185 
 Personal appearance, 178 
 Private life, 21 1 
 
 Proclamation of universal broth- 
 erhood quoted, 207 
 Relations of sexes and, 212 
 Repulsed by Koreish, 193 
 Sketch of career, 160 segq. 
 Visits Mecca, 200 
 Mahommedanism, 13, 36, 137 — 
 Capital punishments, 197 
 Converts, 158 and note 
 Dogmas, 179, 181, 183, 185 
 Equality, 190 
 In India, 43 segq. 
 
 Inimical to progress, 61 
 
INDEX 
 
 401 
 
 Mahommedanism ( continued ) — 
 Living law of, 21 1 
 Monotheism of, 49 
 Object of, 206 
 Rise of, 24 
 Slaves and, 171, 191 
 Sexual ethics, 52 
 Social teaching of, 276. ( See 
 
 also Mussulman) 
 
 Mahrattas, 61, 63, 83, 272 
 Maine, Sir Henry, device for 
 caste, 89 
 
 Malacca, first war in, 319 
 Malays conquer Madagascar, 21, 
 
 23 
 
 Manchester, 306 
 Manchuria, 4 
 Mandelay expedition, 323 
 Mandelay palace, 295 
 Maoris, 135, 361, 374, 383 
 Take possession of New Zea- 
 land, 23 
 
 Marshman, on Hindoo chrono- 
 logy, 132 
 
 Massacre in East, 320 
 Mecca, 163, 170, 200, 306 
 A sanctuary, 172 
 Pilgrimages to, 173 
 Taken by Mahommed, 202 
 Medina, 156 
 
 Besieged by Koreish, 195 
 Converts from, 173 
 Mahommed visits, 164, 183 
 Mehemet Ali, 191 
 Melanesians, 372 
 Mexican civilization, 374 
 Mikado, position of, 131 
 Milton : use of “ barbaric,” 347 
 Minds of savages, 370 
 Mirzapore carpet, colours in, 346 
 Missionaries in India, 74 seqq. 
 Mississippi dykes, 280 
 Moffatt, Dr., 372 
 Mogul empire, history of, 62 
 Mongol victories, 6, 7 
 
 Montauban, General, takes sap- 
 phire from Summer Palace, 
 294 
 
 Mooltan, siege of, 196 
 Moplahs as soldiers, 182 
 Morier, on Persian character, 264 
 Mount Thaur, cave on, 175 
 Muadz ibn Amr, 188 
 Muir, Sir W. — 
 
 Life of Mahommed reviewed, 
 155 seqq. 
 
 On Arab soldiers, 223 
 Mukoukas, Governor of Egypt, 
 199 
 
 Mussulman — 
 
 Caste, 55 
 
 Characteristics, 61 
 Converts, 182 
 Equality, 332 
 Fanaticism, 316 
 In India, 43 seqq. 
 
 Missionaries, 46, 49, 50 
 Reason of success, 81 
 Slow progress, 59 
 Negro, 359 
 Myrrhine vases, 22 
 Mysore, iox 
 Crown of, 103 
 
 N 
 
 Nankin, towers of, 9 
 Negro, 380 
 And Arabs, 40 
 And civilization, 92 
 Condition of, in United States, 
 362 
 
 Future of, 354^7^. 369 
 In Hayti, 93 
 Mussulman, 359 
 None of first class eminence, 
 356 
 
 Problem in America, 362 
 Race Hatred, 365 
 Remarkable for muscular 
 strength, 338 D D 
 
402 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Negroids of Australasian Pacific, 
 37i 
 
 Nepal, ruler of, 132 
 Nestorius or Sergius,. 168, 175 
 New Review : Frederick Boyle’s 
 article in, 337 
 
 New South Wales, Englishmen 
 in, 87 
 
 Nizam, meaning of, 272 
 Norsemen trade with Rome, 375 
 Northern Africa, Roman and 
 Vandal invasions of, 340 
 
 O 
 
 Obeida, 188 
 
 Ohod, Mahommed defeated at, 
 193 
 
 Oliphant, Laurence, leading idea 
 of, 138 
 
 Omar, 171, 191 
 Election of, 209 
 Ooaeypore, 129 
 Rana of, 13 1 seqq. 
 
 Osma invested with supreme com- 
 mand, 208 
 Osman Digna, 223 
 Othman, disciple of Mahommed, 
 170 
 
 Descendants of, 331 
 Othman, house of, 296 
 Decaying, 336 
 
 Ottoman empire : causes of its 
 endurance, 331, 332 334 
 Ottoman soldiers, 335 
 Ozza, fall of, 203 
 
 Guardians of, 170, 171 
 
 P 
 
 Paraguay, Jesuits in, 343 
 Parisian, 370 
 
 “ Parliament of Religions,” 253 
 Pashas, despots, 333 
 Pax Britannica, 98 
 Peguans prefer Englishmen to 
 Burmese, 312 
 Pellew, Admiral, 225 
 
 Persia, 5 
 
 Beats back Rome, 22 
 State of, hi 
 S truggle with Arabs, 90 
 Phidias, 306 
 Pindarees, 63 
 Plassey, battle of, 146 
 Playfair, Captain, 206 
 Po and Lombard plain, 278 
 Bed of, 280 
 
 Poles’ attitude towards Russians, 
 90 
 
 Polygamy, 52 
 Pompey’s intrigues, 159 
 Poushkine quoted, 39 
 Prendergast, General, in Mande- 
 lay, 294 
 
 Prinsep, T., prophecy on Tartar 
 tribe, in 
 Psalms, 307 
 Pundit, 327 
 
 R 
 
 Race-hatred in Asia 214 
 Rajpoots, 61, 350 
 Ramadhan, annual fast, 185 
 Rana of Oodeypore, relation to 
 “ Hindooism,” 131 
 Scenes on his death, 130, 133 
 Ranee Chunda Kour, 286 
 Red Indian, 357, 358 
 Belief in future state, 375 
 Reincarnations. (See Transmigra- 
 tion) 
 
 Ripon, Lord, and Ilbert Bill, 108 
 Riza Pasha opposes judicial re- 
 form, 235 
 
 Robinson, J. C., account of Sul- 
 tan’s treasury, 293 
 Robinson, Rev. John, anecdote 
 of, 76 
 
 Roman empire overthrown by 
 Arabs and Turks, no 
 Roman iack of imagination, 23 
 Romans and Asia, 22 
 
INDEX 
 
 403 
 
 Runjeet Singh, 11, 285 
 Father a prefect, 103 
 Sikh admiration for, 264 
 Runn of Cutch, salt marshes, 269 
 Russia — 
 
 Hatred for Jew, 320 
 In N. Asia, 2, 26, 11 1 
 Railway to Pacific, 27 
 Seizes Manchuria, 4 
 Russian literature, 139 
 Rustem Pasha, 296 
 
 S 
 
 Saad, Mahommed’s disciple, 170 
 Sad ibn Muadz, 196 
 Said, Mahommed’s slave, 356 
 St. John, account of Hayti, 354 
 St. Sophia, cathedral of, 336 
 Crypts of, 298 
 Samarcand treasures, 294 
 Sanskrit literature, 326 
 Satsuma ware, 346 
 Savage races, progress of, 378 
 Savages, minds of, 370 
 Scandinavians knew power of 
 hemp, 375 
 
 Scindiah dynasty, 103 
 Senior, Mr., 122 
 Sepoys, 106 
 And officers, 217 
 In Red sea, 317 
 “ Nationalists,” 312 
 Seraglio Treasury, 296, 297 
 Sergius or Nestorius, 168, 175 
 Seringapatam, siege of, 182 
 Settlement officers, 231, 270 
 Shah of Persia, 295 
 Shereefal palace, Morocco, 300 
 Siam, size of, 5 
 Sikh— 
 
 As soldier, 7, 61, 63 
 Offer to Lord Canning, 89 
 War (second), 286 
 Simpson, Mrs., 122 
 Sirves, King of Persia, 199 
 
 Sivaites, 350 
 Sivajee, 103 
 
 Slaves and Mahommedanism, 
 171, 191 
 
 Socialism in France, 214 
 Sons of Saad, 164 
 Soudanese courage, 338 
 South India — 
 
 Need for engineers, 324 
 Social systems, 325 
 Southern States of Union, white 
 mechanics of, 340 
 Spaniards and Indians of S. 
 America, 42, 217 
 
 Spaniards in N. and S. America, 87 
 Spaniards of Mexico, 339 
 Stone Age, mode of life in, 368, 
 370, 372, 376 
 
 Stowe, Mrs., on negro, 355 
 Sudra, 164 
 Suez canal, 283 
 
 Sultan and German Kaiser meet, 
 330 
 
 Sultan’s library, 299 
 Sunyasees, 138 
 Sura, 182 ; quoted, 194 
 Swami Vivekdnandd, pamphlet 
 253 seqq. 
 
 Symonds, J. A., criticisms of Walt 
 Whitman, 139 
 Syria, 199 
 
 Mahommed visits, 165 
 T 
 
 Tagore family tradition, 287 
 Taj at Agra, 9, 62 
 Tanjore, artificial lakes of, 102 
 Tantia Topee’s recruits, 102 
 Tartar of Samarcand, 357 
 Tasmanian, 382, 383 
 Tayif, 172 
 
 Blockaded, 205 
 Teheran treasures, 295 
 Tej Singh, 309 
 Texas^ wild life of, 105 
 
404 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Thebaid, monks of, 376 
 Theebau, King, 261 
 Theodoric, 221 
 Thibet, 5 
 
 Thiers, quoted on administrative 
 work, 125 
 Thoreau, 250 
 Thuggeeism, 350 
 Thugs, 99, 143 
 Times — 
 
 Letter from “ A Member of 
 Brahmo-Somaj ” in, 345 
 Letter of Lieut. E. C. Yate in, 
 129 seqq. 
 
 On “ Census of India,” 146 
 Timour the Lame, descendants 
 of, 103 
 
 Tinnevelly, Christian converts in, 
 64 
 
 Tippoo’s Hindoo converts, 182 
 Titus’ destruction of Judea, 334 
 Tod, Colonel, “Rajasthan,” 129 
 Toussaint l’Ouverture, 356 
 Transmigration, 139 
 Belief in, 14, 48 
 Trephining, 373 
 Trichinopoly goldsmiths, 9 
 Trollope, Mrs., on negro, 355 
 Tropical colonization, 337 
 Truce of God, 99 
 Turanians, 325 
 
 Turk, a Mussulman and an Asiatic, 
 314 
 
 As soldier, 7 
 Turkey — 
 
 Financial difficulties, 336 
 History of grand viziers, 333 
 Why she lives, 330 seqq. 
 Turkish social life, 122 
 
 U 
 
 Uganda, 41 
 
 Upper India, plains of, 161 
 Upper valley of Nile, black tribes 
 in, 381 
 
 V 
 
 Vatican collections, 293 
 Vaudooism, 381 
 Veddahs, 380 
 Vefyk Pasha, 124, 125 
 On “ Liberty,” 126 
 On life in Paris and Turkey, 
 122 
 
 Vesuvius, 284 
 Vindhya valleys, 268 
 
 W 
 
 Wahabees, strictest Mussulman 
 sect, 210 
 
 Weme, description of negro, 359, 
 
 381 
 
 White colonists in Tropics, 342 
 White races, special faculty of, 94 
 Whitman, Walt, 139 
 Wilkins, Mary, on “ grip,” 289 
 Windsor castle, 293 
 Winter palace, St. Petersburg, 293 
 Wright, Colonel, 135 
 Writing, invention of, 374 
 
 Y 
 
 Yakusa, battle of, 220, 222 
 Yate, Lieut. E. C., letter in Times , 
 129 seqq. 
 
 Yellow river, inundation, 278 
 seqq. 
 
 Yemen, princes of, 206 
 Yermak river, 221 
 
 Z 
 
 Zeid, Mahommed’s freedman, 169, 
 172, 186, 190, 191 
 Zoheir, disciple of Mahommed,i7o 
 
 Eutler & Tanner, The elwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. 
 

 
 
 
 
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