CARLYLE ON THE NEGRO.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 476, 31 May 1890, Page 6

CARLYLE ON THE NEGRO.

He Found Some Good Points in the

Poor Black Man.

A word or two may here be thrown in as to Carlyle’s relation to the * nigger question,’ writes Professor Tyndall in the ‘ Fortnightly Review'.’ He undoubtedly rated the white man above the black. The capacity of rising to a higher blessedness and of suffering a deeper woe he deemed the prerogative and doom of the white. Hence his sympathy with the yellow coloured weavers of Lancashire as against ‘ black Quashee over the seas.’ Even among ourselves he insisted on indelible differences. Wise culture could make the cabbage a good cabbage and the oak a good oak, but culture could not transform the one into the other. It is interesting to observe how Locke’s image of a sheet of white paper, on which education could write everythjßg at will, laid hold of even powerful minds. I had many discussions with the late Mr Babbage upon this snbject. His belief in the all-potency of education as applied to the individual I could not share. Brains differ, like voices, and the voice organ of a great singer must be the gift of nature, so the brain organ of the great man must also be a natural gilt. Nobody who knew Carlyle could dream for a moment that he meant to be unfair, much less cruel, towards the blacks. ‘Do I then hate the negro ? No ; except when the soul is killed out of him I decidedly like poor Qaashee. A swift, supple fellow ; a merryhearted, affectionate kind of creature, with a good deal of melody and amenability in his composition.’ It was not the guilt of ‘ a skin not coloured like his own,’ bus the demoralising idleness of the negro amid his pumpkins that drew down the condemnation of Carlyle. His feelings towards the idle, pampered white man were more contemptuous and unsparing than toward the black. ‘ A poor negro overworked on the Cuba sugar grounds, he is sad to look upon ; yet he inspires me with sacred pity, and a kind of human respect is not denied him. But with what feelings can I look upon an over-led white flunkey, if I know his ways ? Pity is not tor him, or not a soft kind of it; nor is any remedy visible except abolition at no distant date.’ In ‘ Sartor ’ he writes : ‘ Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toil-worn craftsman that, with earth made implement, laboriously conquers the earth and makes her man’s. A second man I honour, and still more highly : Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily bread, but the bread of life.’ Still it must be admitted that Carlyle estimated the whites as of greater value than the blacks, and he deprecated the diversion towards the African of power which might find a more profitable field of action at home. Perhaps he saw too vividly, and repented too warmly, mistakes sometimesmade by philanthropists, whereby their mercies are converted into cruelties. We see at the present moment a philanthropy, which would be better named an insanity, acting in violent opposition to the wise and true philanthropists who are aiming at the extinction of rabies among dogs and of its horrible equivalent, hydrophobia, among men. Reason is lost on such people, and instead of reason Carlyle gave them scorn.