I.

THOUGH it can hardly be denied that the ambitions of individuals or nations have been the chief conscious motives in imperialism, it is possible to maintain that here, as in other departments of human history, certain large hidden forces operate for the progress of humanity.

The powerful hold which biological conceptions have obtained over the pioneers in the science of sociology is easily intelligible. It is only natural that the laws of individual and specific progress, so clearly discerned in other parts of the animal kingdom, should be rigorously applied to man; it is not unnatural that the deflections or reversals of the laws of lower life by certain other laws, which attain importance only on the higher psychical levels of the genus homo, should be underrated, misinterpreted or ignored.

The biologist who enters human history often finds himself confronted by intellectual antagonists, who regard him as an interloper and seek to raise a barrier between human and animal development. Indeed, from the ranks of the biological profession itself, scientists of such eminence as Huxley and A.R. Wallace have lent themselves to this separatism, distinguishing the ethical or spiritual progress of the human race from the general cosmic process, and endowing men with qualities and with laws of action different in kind from those which obtain in the rest of the animal kingdom.

A reaction against the abrupt dogmatism of this position has led many others to an equally abrupt and equally dogmatic assertion that the laws of the lower forms of physical struggle and selection, which explain or describe progress in lower animals, are sufficient for all purposes of sociology. Sociologists have in some cases shown themselves eager to accept this view, and have applied it to defend the necessity, the utility, and even the righteousness of maintaining to the point of complete subjugation or extermination the physical struggle between races and types of civilization. Admitting that the efficiency for combat of a nation or a race requires a suspension of intestine struggle, at any rate in its most intense form, the crude struggle on the larger plane, it is held, must be maintained. This serves, indeed, two related purposes. A constant struggle with other races or nations is demanded for the maintenance and progress of a given race or nation; abate the necessity of this struggle and the vigor of the race flags and perishes. Thus it is to the real interest of a vigorous race to be “kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races, and with equal races by the struggle for trade routes and for the sources of raw material and of food supply.” “This,” adds Professor Karl Pearson, “is the natural-history view of mankind, and I do not think you can in its main features subvert it.”

Other philosophers, taking the wider cosmic standpoint, insist that the progress of humanity itself requires the maintenance of a selective and destructive struggle between races which embody different powers and capacities, different types of civilization. It is desirable that the earth should be peopled, governed and developed as far as possible by the races which can do their work best, that is, by the races of highest “social efficiency”; these races must assert their right by conquering, ousting, subjugating or extinguishing races of lower social efficiency. The good of the world, the true cause of humanity, demands that this struggle – physical, industrial, political – continue until an ideal goal is reached, where the nations of greatest social efficiency rule the earth, in accordance with the several kinds and degrees of this quality which they manifest. This principle is clearly enunciated by M. Edmond Demolins,who describes it as being “as indisputable as the law of gravitation.”

When one race shows itself superior to another in the various externals of domestic life, it inevitably in the long run gets the upper hand in public life and establishes its predominance. Whether this predominance is asserted by peaceable means or feats of arms, it is none the less, when the proper time comes, officially established, and afterwards universally acknowledged. I have said that this law is the only thing which accounts for the history of the human race and the revolutions of empires, and that, moreover, it explains and justifies the appropriation by Europeans of territories in Asia, Africa and Oceanica and the whole of our colonial development.

The western European nations, with their colonies, represent in various degrees the socially efficient nations. Some American and English writers, such as Professor Giddings and Mr. Kidd, believe that the Teutonic races, and in particular the Anglo-Saxon branches, represent the highest order of efficiency, in which notion they are supported by a little group of Anglophil Frenchmen.

This genuine and confident conviction of our “social efficiency” must be taken as the chief moral support of imperialism. Human progress requires the maintenance of the race struggle, in which the weakest races go under while the socially efficient races survive and flourish; we are a socially efficient race. So runs the imperialist argument.

When the argument is thus concisely stated, the meaning of the term “socially efficient” becomes evident. It is simply the antithesis of “weak,” and is equivalent to “strong in the struggle of life.” At first sight it suggests moral and intellectual virtues of some broad general kind, and afterwards it is taken to imply such qualities. But in the “natural-history” sense which we are at present considering it signifies nothing more or less than capacity to beat other races, which, from their failure, are spoken of as “lower.” It is merely a different form of the phrase “survival of the fittest,” the meaning of which is clear when the question is put: “Fittest to do what?” and the answer follows: “Fittest to survive.”

Giving then the proper value to the terms, the view of human progress simply comes to this: “In the history of man, as throughout nature, stronger races have continually trampled down, enslaved and extinguished other races.” The biologist says: “This is so deeply rooted in nature, including human nature, that it must go on.” He adds: “It has been the prime condition and mode of progress in the past, therefore it is desirable and should go on. It must go on, it ought to go on.” So easily do we glide from natural history to ethics, and find in utility a moral sanction for the race struggle.

Now imperialism is nothing but this natural-history doctrine regarded from the standpoint of one’s own nation. We represent the socially efficient nation; we have conquered and acquired dominion and territory in the past: we must go on; it is our destiny – one which is serviceable to ourselves and to the world – our duty. Thus emerging from natural history, the doctrine soon takes on a large complexity of ethical and religious finery, and we are wafted into an elevated atmosphere of “imperial Christianity,” a “mission of civilization,” in which we are to teach the arts of good government and the dignity of labor.

That the power to do anything constitutes a right and even a duty to do it, is perhaps the commonest, the most “natural,” of temperamental fallacies. Even Professor Pearson does not avoid it, when, after an able vindication of the necessity of intra-race selection and of race struggle, he speaks of “our right to work the unutilised resources of earth, be they in Africa or in Asia.” This belief in a divine right of force, which teachers like Carlyle, Kingsley, Ruskin did so much to foster, is primarily responsible for the transmutation of a law of natural history into a moral enthusiasm.

Elsewhere I have dwelt with so much insistence on the more sordid and calculating motives which direct the imperialistic movement that I am anxious here to do justice to the nobler aspects of the sentiment of imperialism interpreted through a naïve rendering of science into a gospel of arduous chivalry. These are revealed in the charming nature and buoyant career of Hubert Hervey, of the British South Africa Chartered Company, as described by his fellow-adventurer, Earl Grey. Here we have imperialism at its best in action, and, what is better for our purpose, a most ingenuous and instructive attempt to set forth the gist of the imperialist philosophy.

Probably every one would agree that an Englishman would be right in considering his way of looking at the world and at life better than that of the Maori or Hottentot, and no one will object in the abstract to England doing her best to impose her better and higher view on those savages. But the same idea will carry you much further. In so far as an Englishman differs in essentials from a Swede or Belgian, he believes that he represents a more perfectly developed standard of general excellence ... Yes, and even those nations nearest to us in mind and sentiment – German and Scandinavian – we regard on the whole as not so excellent as ourselves, comparing their typical characteristics with ours. Were this not so our energies would be directed to becoming what they are. Without doing this, however, we may well endeavour to pick out their best qualities and add them to ours, believing that our compound will be superior to the foreign stock. It is the mark of an independent nation that it should feel thus. How far such a feeling is, in any particular case, justified, history alone decides. But it is essential that each claimant for the first place should put forward his whole energy to prove his right. This is the moral justification for international strife, and for war, and a great change must come over the world and over men’s minds before there can be any question of everlasting universal peace in the settlement of all international differences by arbitration. More especially must the difficulty caused by the absence of a generally recognised standard of justice be felt in the case of contact between civilised and uncivilised races. Is there any likelihood of the gulf between the white and the black man being bridged within any period of time that we can foresee? Can there be any doubt that the white man must and will impose his superior civilisation on the coloured races? The rivalry of the principal European countries in extending their influence over other continents should lead naturally to the evolution of the highest attainable type of government of subject races by the superior qualities of their rulers.

Here is the undiluted gospel of imperialism; the fact of physical struggle between white races, the fact of white subjugation of lower races, the necessity based upon these facts, the utility based upon the necessity and the right or duty based upon the utility. As a statement of the best spirit of imperialism it is not to be bettered. The Englishman believes he is a more excellent type than any other man; he believes that he is better able to assimilate any special virtues others may have; he believes that this character gives him a right to rule which no other can possess. Mr. Hervey admits that the patriotic Frenchman, the German, the Russian feels in the same way his sense of superiority and the rights it confers on him; so much the better (and here Mr. Hervey is in line with Professor Pearson), for this cross conviction and these cross interests intensify the struggle of white races and ensure the survival and progressive fitness of the fittest.

So long as we regard this imperialism exclusively from the standpoint of the English, or any other single nation, its full rationale escapes us. It is essential to the maintenance of that struggle of nations which is to quicken vigor and select the fittest or most efficient that each competitor shall be stimulated to put forth his fullest effort by the same feelings regarding the superiority, the destiny, the rights and imperial duties of his country as the English imperialist entertains regarding England. And this is just what we seem to find. The Englishman is genuinely confident of the superior fitness of England for any work she may essay in the civilization of the world. This is the supreme principle of the imperialist statesmen, well expressed in Lord Rosebery’s description of the British empire as “the greatest secular agency for good the world has ever seen.” Of the superior competence of Englishmen for all purposes of government, quite irrespective of climatic, racial or any other conditions, there is no touch of doubt in the average man. “Why, I suppose you imagine we could undertake to govern France better than Frenchmen can govern her,” I heard put as an ironical poser in a discussion on British capacity. The triumphant retort, “Why, of course I do,” was no rhetorical paradox, but a perfectly genuine expression of the real conviction of most Englishmen. Now the French chauvinist, the German colonialist, the Russian pan-Slavist, the new American expansionist, each entertains the same general conviction, with the same intensity, regarding the capacity, the destiny, the rights of his own nation; these feelings have perhaps come more clearly into the forefront of national consciousness with the British than with any other nation, but events are rapidly educating the same imperial aspirations in all our chief industrial and political competitors.

In our own day Victor Hugo declares France “the saviour of nations” and bursts out “Non, France, l’univers a besoin que tu vives. Je le redis, la France est un besoin des homines.” Villari, echoing the illustrious Gioberti, claims for Italy the primacy among nations. The Kaiser tells his people, “Der alte gute Gott has always been on our side.” M. Podbyedonostseff points to the freedom of Russia from the shibboleths of a decadent civilisation, and looks to the young and vigorous Slavonic stock as the residuary legatee of the treasures and conquests of the past. The Americans are not less confident than in the days of Martin Chuzzlewit, that it is their mission to “run this globe.”

Nor are these barren sentiments; in various parts of the world they are inspiring young soldiers and politicians and missionaries to a practical direction of the resources of France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States towards territorial expansion.