Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought (Cambridge. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp.108-110.
[p. 108]The
classification of the major races proposed by Le Bon . . . distinguishes
four (not just three) degrees.
At the very
bottom
of the scale, we find the “primitive” races of the “the aboriginal
Australians are a case in point”; “no trace of culture” is found in the
primitive races, which “have remained in [a] state bordering on
animality” (The
Psychology of Peoples, p. 27O.
Their fate is the one Renan had already
evoked: “Experience proves that every inferior people which is
confronted with a superior people is inevitably condemned to disappear
at an early date” (p.51).
We are apparently dealing with a
natural process that may be justifiably accelerated to some extent: Le
Bon doe not spell out the means by which
the “disappearance” come about.
On the next rung of the
ladder, we find “the inferior races,” of which blacks are the chief
example.
As Renan these races are not
perfectible.
They are “capable of attaining to the
rudiments of civilization, but to the rudiments only” (p.27); their
members are “barbarians, condemned by their mental inferiority never to
shake off their barbarism” (p.104) . . .
The next race up, for
Renan, is the "intermediate" race – that is yellow:
Chinese
and Japanese, Tartars and Mongols. Once again, its characteristics are
derived from its name: it is capable of being civilized but only up to a
certain point; it is inherently incomplete, having gone from a period
of, infancy straight into old age without ever achieving true maturity.
China, that shriveled old child" (Histoire
du peuple d'lsraël
[History
of the People of lsrael], p. 33). In its turn China rejoins the nonhuman
part of humanity: “China is a sort of non-perfectible Europe. (
“Histoire de l’instruction publique en Chine," p. 577). . . . The value
judgment leaves no room for doubt: "China . . . has always been inferior
to our West even in its worst days" ("The Future of Religion in Modern
Society," p. 342). A given language and culture [p.109] are clearly
being measured here by the yardstick of another language and culture;
hence, every difference is perceived as a lack. But what justifies the
choice of one particular language and culture as a norm?
Renan does not linger over this; he is
dealing with self-evident facts, and he does not seek out supporting
arguments. . . .
At the top, for Renan, we have the "superior,"
or white, race, which has beauty on its side, subject, as was already
the case for Buffon, to absolute judgments. These two races, Aryan and
Semitic, "have in common, and are alone in possessing, the sovereign
characteristic of
beauty”
(Histoire
genirale, p. 576). These races have never known the savage state and
they have civilization in their blood. . . .
Civilization
is innate in some races, inaccessible to others: one could hardly ask
for a clearer way of disavowing the unity of the species and submitting
to the verdict of Providence. The proof, for Renan, is historical : only
the various representatives of the white race have contributed to the
development of world civilization.
.
. . The inferior races are thus relegated to a kind of subhumanity.
With Le Bon we find only one human group left at the top: “Only the Indo-European people can be classed among the superior races” (p.27) As was the case for Buffon, the criterion that makes this [p.110] classification possible for Le Bon is reason and its consequences, technological inventions. "Among the primitive and inferior races . . . . a greater or lesser incapacity to reason is always met with" (p. 29); among the superior races, on the contrary, we find "great inventions arts, the sciences, and industry . . . , it is they who have discovered steam and electricity" (p. 28). The difference between the top scale and the bottom is immense. Renan had already declared that ,”as for the inferior races . . . , an abyss separates them from the great families of whom we have just been speaking" (Histoire générale, pp. 580-581), and Le Bon repeats: "The mental abyss that separates them is evident" (The Psychology of Peoples, p. 28).