The greatest point of superiority of our civilization, over all preceding and contemporaneous ones--a point which Mr. Gobineau has omitted to mention--is the high rank which woman occupies in the modern structure of society. The boasted civilizations of Greece and Rome, if superior in others, are vastly inferior to us in this respect. And this glorious superiority we owe to the pure and chaste manners of our forefathers.
Representative government, trial by jury, and all the discoveries in political science upon which we pride ourselves most, are the necessary development of their simple institutions, to which, indeed, they can be distinctly traced.
I have purposely selected these two characteristics of the German races--respect for woman, and love of liberty, or, what is more, a capacity for establishing and preserving liberal institutions. The question now resolves itself into this: Does woman occupy the highest rank, do liberal institutions best flourish where the Germanic race is most pure? I will not answer the question, but beg the reader to compare the more Germanic countries with those that are less so--England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Northern Germany, with France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Russia; the United States and Canada, with Mexico and the South American republics.
Mr. Gobineau speaks of the utilitarian character of the Germanic races, but furnishes no proofs of his assertion. I shall therefore endeavor to supply the deficiency.
Those countries which ethnology tells us contain the most Germanic populations, viz: England, the northern States of Europe, including Holland, and the United States, have the entire commerce, and nearly all the manufacture of the whole world in their hands. They have given to mankind all the great inventions which shed an everlasting lustre over our era. They, together, possess nine-tenths of all the railroads built in the world, and the greater part of the remaining tenth was built by _their_ enterprise and capital. Whatever perfection in the useful arts one of these countries attains, is readily adopted by all; slowly only, and sometimes never by any of the others.
On the other hand, we find that the polite arts do not meet, in these countries, with a very congenial soil. Artists may flock thither, and, perhaps, reap a harvest of gold; but they seldom stay. The admiration which they receive is oftenest the mere dictate of fashion. It is true that England, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, and the United States, have produced some eminent artists, but the mass of the population do not exhibit that innate taste, that passionate fondness for the arts, which we find among all classes in Italy, Spain, and to some extent in France and Southern Germany.