THE INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY VOLUME VIII. SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER, 1903. BURLINGTON, VERMONT, 1903. QUARTERLY September-December MDCCCCIII BLACK AND WHITE IN AFRICA JOHN M. ROBERTSON LONDON I. N the whole history of mankind, thus far, the relations of forward I and backward races have subsisted without control from scientific thought. No science of such relations yet exists. In other words, the "crucible of the races" is still boiled by the elemental fires of animal instinct and calculating egoism, as in the time when the old empires of Asia and Egypt, Carthage and Rome, exploited peoples as peoples exploit nature. Latterly, indeed, there is more counterplay than anciently of the force of sympathy, though that was perhaps never wholly lacking. A Mesopotamian emperor would be apt to have some care for the well being of peoples embodied in his realm, and extortionate Roman governors were liable to impeachment in the public interest, in both republican and imperial days. In the modern world, however, the special machinery of Christian missions has set up a more constant pressure of sympathy with conquered races, from the Spanish American conquests onwards. Still, this counterplay of the forces of egoism and sympathy has never evolved a science of the subject in hand, and the pressures of philanthropy are obviously weak as against the steady energy of self-seeking among colonists, frontiersmen, and ruling castes of aliens of the "inferior" races. Any one who has noted attentively the general tone of such classes towards the indigenes must have been struck by its primeval egoism. As Copyright, 1903, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved. |