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One World One Tribe?
by Arthur Keith
24 November 2003
What brought about the collapse of the primitive
prehistoric world of which I have said so much? It was
brought about by the most fateful revolution which has
ever overtaken man's earthly pilgrimage. In the
prehistoric world man was the slave of Nature - driven
onward not by his head but by his heart, dependent for
his food on what fell from Nature's table. It was man
himself who initiated the revolution which brought
about the collapse of his ancient world. Somewhere
about ten thousand years ago, when our part of
Scotland was emerging from her last icy mantle, a
tribe or local community in the south-western corner
of Asia made the critical discovery that Nature could
be tamed; instead of being man's mistress, she could
be made his servant. The pioneers of the revolution
which brought in our modern civilization found out, by
the use of their heads, that a supply of food could be
assured by the domestication of animals and the
tilling of the soil. They introduced the rudiments of
agriculture, with the result that a tribal territory,
which in the prehistoric world provided only a
starvation subsistence to a handful of people, could
be made to yield enough to support a populous
community. From its centre of discovery the art of
agriculture spread slowly outwards in every direction,
bringing about , as it expanded, wave upon wave, a
complete transformation in man's mode of life.
Villages came into existence; wealth began to
accumulate; cities arose. And with cities came crafts,
industries, and commerce. As the revolution spread,
the prehistoric tribal world collapsed before it.
Commerce broke down tribal frontiers, thus destroying
Nature's original scheme for man's advancement. Out of
the tribal debris arose a long succession of
nationalities and empires - flourishing for a period,
but always carrying within them the seeds of their
ultimate dissolution. In the prehistoric world Nature
ruled; in the historic or modern world man seeks to
snatch the sceptre from her hand and become master of
her own destiny. What are his chances of success?
Do not think I am speaking of obscure events which
happened far away and long ago. They concern us here
and now. Scotland had her prehistoric period. Thanks
to the labours of my friend Professor James Ritchie
and of the archaeologists associated with him, we know
that human beings, much like ourselves, began to drift
into Scotland while glaciers still clothed her hills
and filled her valleys. Our history, like that of the
Nowegians and Swedes, began some ten or twelve
thousand years ago, as the last period of glaciation
came to an end. How slowly the revolution I have been
speaking of spread westwards will be evident when I
tell you that it was not until about two thousand
years before the Christian era that the first
rudiments of agriculture reached our shores. The
graves of the men who first brought this revolutionary
movement to our part of Scotland have been discovered;
my friends, Professor Robert Reid and Professor Alex
Low, have revealed to all the world the kind of men
and women these early Aberdonians were. They were
people of Baltic origin; their blood probably still
runs in the veins of some of us. No doubt at the time
of their arrival they were still in a tribal state of
organization. Since their coming, wave has succeeded
wave, each better equipped than its predecessor for
the modern or economic battle of life. As agriculture
improved, as industries and trade expanded, tribes
swelled in size, their frontiers gave way and out of a
welter of the tribal organization emerged our nation.
The tribal spirit became gradually expanded until it
covered the whole population of this island north of
the Tweed. Economic necessity forced the revolution on
our forefathers. It was an affair of the head rather
than of the heart. We can best realize the extent to
which the revolution of the last four thousand years
has affected Scotland if we fix our attention on this
small patch of land, between the mouths of the Dee and
the Don. Only a short while ago, as we students of
human evolution reckon time, it was the haunt of a few
tribesmen; by industry and enterprise this same patch
of land has become the site of a great city and
University, both taking their full part in the life of
the widest Empire the world has ever known. Our
"heads" have worked this miracle, but inside our
breasts beats the old tribal heart - the heart which
binds us together and compels us to think our own the
best. These feelings, sentiments, and prejudices I
mentioned to you in my introduction are parts of our
pehistoric heritage. What are we to do with it - scrap
it or use it?
We have now reached the goal which I have had in view
throughout my address - a consideration of the spirit
of unrest which afflicts the modern world. That unrest
is not a disorder of the head, but of the heart.
Modern man is struggling to adapt his inheritance from
a prehistoric tribal past to the economic needs of the
modern world. Mankind is more in need of a racial
physician than in any of its many previous maladies.
The world today is a bed of sickness and there is no
lack of physicians standing round the patient. The
peoples of Scotland, England, and Ireland are on that
bed; all the nationalities of Europe are there; nay,
all mankind is on it. Let us listen first to our good
physicians; they assure us there can never be health
in our modern world until all mankind sleeps under the
same tribal blanket. Mankind throughout the world must
be massed until it forms a single united harmonious
tribe.
This proposal to weld the diverse peoples of the world
into a single tribe is one of the most glorious ideals
which has ever seized the imgination of man. Can it be
attained? Is it possible to wipe out the bad and
hating side of our tribal heart and leave only its
good and loving attributes? Would it be possible to
enlarge the compass of tribal affection until white,
yellow, brown, and black races all came within the
dominance of a single tribal spirit? If this could be
accomplished, not at once, but by the acceptance of a
common policy pusued over a long period of time, then
ultimately, there being no tribal enemy left to hate,
the bad side of the human heart must perish from
inanation. We should then have a universal
brotherhood. Every man could then dwell in safety
under his vine and under his fig-tree. Every sword
could be beaten into a plough-share and every spear
into a pruning-fork. We who live under the shadow of a
great war cannot shut our minds to the appeal which
this great ideal makes to our hearts. It was the
longing for a unitribal world that brought the League
of Nations into existence.
Can this dream of a unitribal world, free for ever
from war, be realized? Much of what has happened in
these past centuries justifies the expectations of the
idealist. Multitribal Caledonia has become unitribal
Scotland; a common tribal spirit has spread from the
Tweed to the English Channel, binding the separate
peoples of England into a single nationality. England
and Scotland, after wasting their substance in
centuries of war, linked their destinies under a
common tribal chief - James VI of Scotland - I of
England. This Union has not undone the tribal or
national spirit in either country; nay, I believe that
a sense of separate nationality is as strong in
Scotland and in England as ever it has been. The Union
was made possible and has prospered just because we
and our partners have been able to bring our tribal
inheritance sufficiently under the control of reason
for all workaday purposes. Now if we Britons have been
able to bring our national and racial instincts under
the control of reason, why should not the
nationalities of Europe succeed in doing the same
thing? If reason succeeded in obliterating the
national frontiers of Europe, why not cause the
movement to spread outwards into the world until it
extended from pole to pole, thus bringing all the
children of mankind into a common tribal fold. The
diverse races of today are, if we Darwinists are to be
trusted, the progeny of a common stock. Nature,
labouring in the womb of time, has brought them forth.
Why not undo Nature's handiwork and free the world for
ever from the antagonisms of nationality and of race?
The scheme of the ideal world I have outlined to you
is nursed in hearts which throb with the good or
compassionate side of our tribal nature. In
considering it, you must not let your hearts run away
with you overmuch; you must give your heads an
opportunity of measuring the possibilities of such a
scheme. To obtain universal and perennial peace you
must also reckon the price you will have to pay for
it. The price is the racial birthright that Nature has
bestowed on you. To attain such an ideal world,
peoples of all countries and continents must pool not
only their national interests, but they must also pool
their bloods. Black, brown, yellow, and white must
give and take in marriage and distribute in a common
progeny the inheritance which each has come by in
their uphill struggle through the leagues of
prehistoric time towards the present. If this scheme
of universal deracialization ever comes before you as
a matter of practical politics - as the sole way of
establishing peace and good will in all parts of our
world, I feel both head and heart will rise against
it. There will well up within you an overmastering
antipathy to securing peace at such a price. This
antipathy or race prejudice Nature has implanted
within you for her own ends - the improvement of
Mankind through racial differentiation. Race
prejudice, I believe, works for the ultimate good of
mankind and must be given a recognized place in all
our efforts to obtain natural justice for the world.
REASON AND PREJUDICE
Thus I come deliberately to the opinion that race
prejudice has to be given a recognised place in our
modern civilization. I have asked you to count the
price you must pay for a deracialized world. In turn
you may demand of me whether I have reckoned the cost
of maintaining our racialized world. Yes, I have. It
means a continuation of Nature's old scheme of
intertribal rivalries and eternal competition. Without
competition Mankind can never progress; the price of
progress is competition. Nay; race prejudice and, what
is the same thing, national antagonism, have to be
purchaesd, not with gold, but with life. Nature
throughout the past has demanded that a people who
seeks independence as well as peace can obtain these
privileges only in one way - by being prepared to
sacrifice their blood to secure them. Nature keeps her
human orchard healthy by pruning; war is her
pruning-hook. we cannot dispense with her services.
This harsh and repugnant forecast of man's future is
wrung from me. The future of my dreams is a warless
world. As s gardener, Nature has two sides, a good and
a bad. She plants and she also prunes. If we accept
her, we have to accept her altogether. Sooner or later
she brings the false prophet to book.
My ominous forecast of man's future is not based
solely upon my studies of the prehistoric world nor on
my analysis of the inheritance which has come down to
us from that world. It is supported by what is now
happening in every part of our globe. There is a
movement on foot now which is the reverse of the one
which brought the League of Nations into being. The
leaguist movement seeks for the universal dominance of
the good or altruistic side of our tribal nature.
Self-determination, on the other hand, encourages the
power to hate as well as the power to love. It seeks
to resuscitate the tribal heart with all its
prejudices; its likes and its dislikes. This
separatist (self-determinist) movement is stirring the
blood of peoples in every part of the world at the
present time. A century ago it spread through South
America and established in that continent a dozen
warring nationalities, each in search of freedom to
work out their separate destinies. It is afoot today
in India, China, Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and in other
parts of Africa, in the Balkans, Central Europe,
Europe, and in the lands which surround the Baltic. It
has led to part of Ireland separating itself from
ourselves; there are symptoms of self-determination in
Wales and in Scotland. In every instance you will see
that a people which embarks on the policy of
self-determination is not moved by a commercial
spirit. Self-determination is not good for business.
Always in the forefront is placed the demand of
independence - as if any people in this modern world
can be really independent! A self-determined people is
one which has resolved to take its own fate in its own
hands for better or for worse. It isolates itself by
barriers of tariff, speech, literature, coinage, and
laws. Patriotism becomes dominant in the heart; the
heart sways the head. In such a nation we see a
resurrection of the spirit of independence which
dominated every tribal unit of Nature's ancient realm.
Is, then, self-determination a policy which will heal
the sores of our modern world? That depends on the
extent to which it is carried. There is a latent
spirit of self-determination in Aberdeenshire;
Yorkshire has the same hidden desire. If the movement
were given a free rein, Europe would speedily become a
vast conglomeration of warring tribal states. Even if
carried out to a less degree, small nationalities
which embark on a policy of self-determination can
control only their internal affairs; they can share in
determining their outside affairs only so far as their
great neighbours may permit them. Theirs is a
guaranteed security. Nevertheless the policy of
determinism has certain great advantages. It
encourages the development of a local spirit and of
native talent. A people which assumes nationality and
sets out to develop its own mental, moral, and
material resources, strengthens its self-reliance, its
faith in its destiny, its belief and pride in the
tradition, customs, and literature of its country.
I have led you a long way to reach this point of my
argument. I began by drawing attention to certain
local and national pejudices which cling to us. To
explain the origin and significance of these
prejudices I had to carry you into man's prehistoric
world, the scene of his evolution. Then I had to trace
the break-up of the prehistoric world and the rapid
establishment of the one in which we now live - a
world of diverse races, of vast cities, immense
centres of industry, and great highways of commerce.
The prehistoric world, in which man's tribal heart was
fashioned, was organized by Nature for the evolution
of new and better races of Mankind. Man has organized
the modern world for his material progress - for
increase of knowledge, comfort, and wealth. Man's
tribal heart finds itself at war with the conditions
of modern civilization and seeks to reassert itself.
Two cures are proposed for its restoration, Leaguism
and Determinism. Both remedies, I believe, are more
difficult to tolerate than the disorders they are
called in to cure. What then do I advise? This: Give
our prejudices a place in our civilization, but keep
them under the control of reason.
In conclusion, permit me to outline the policy which
appeals to me - not as an anthropologist, who should
be devoid of all national bias, but as a Scotsman. I
am for the nonce a Scotsman speaking to Scotsmen.
Local and national prejudices are as strongly grafted
in the nature of us Scotsmen as in that of any People.
Their strength has been our strength - just because we
have never permitted our hearts to overmaster our
heads. Far from rooting them out, I would advise you
to tend and protect them, being ever mindful to pay as
much attention to the decisions of your heads as to
the dictates of your hearts. We cannot forget, even if
we would, what our forefathers have done for Scotland
and for the upbuilding of the confederated
nationalities which Britain has flung round the world.
We share in a great and common heritage and have given
- in common with England, Wales, and Ireland - our
hostages to fortune. We are partakers in the most
momentous enterprise which has ever been undertaken by
any people - an enterprise fraught with dangers and
responsibilities. Presently these responsibilities and
dangers will devolve on you of the rising grneration.
You will work for peace, I know; the English-speaking
peoples become more and more the custodians of peace.
I am not afraid of the future of our English-speaking
league if all its members realize the part which
prejudice plays in determining the fate of mankind.
You will find as time goes on that the spirit of
self-determination, far from weakening, will grow in
strength in all parts of the Empire - in England,
Wales, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -
just as in our time it has overwhelmed Southern
Ireland. You need not fear the development of a local
spirit. It may work - nay, it will work - for the
health of a nation. But there is an important proviso
- the national heart must never master the national
head. Prejudice has a place, a very important place,
in the development of peoples; it binds and will
continue to bind British nationalities together. But
if union between our nationalities is to withstand the
stresses of conflicting interest, the heart has to be
strengthened by clear-sighted intelligence. The place
of prejudice in our modern civilization should be that
of servant, not of master. It may be a national
prejudice on my part, but I believe that Scotland in
this respect has been exemplary in her conduct; she
has always shown a willingness to sacrifice her own
immediate interests for the welfare of the
confederation. I have still a hope that some day our
brethren of Southern Ireland will follow our example
and join wholeheartedly in the British League, where
head and heart are balanced - how much does that spell
for the security and peace which the world so longs
for.
In conclusion, let me quote a sentence which our
philosopher, Thomas Reid, wrote in the autumn of his
days and in the ripeness of his wisdom. His final
counsel to the men of his time was this: "As far as
the intention of Nature appears in the constitution of
Man, we ought to comply with that intention and act
agreeably to it." Is it not strange that he, pursuing
a totally different course in life, should reach, in
the latter half of the eighteenth century, identically
the same conclusion that I have reached in the earlier
half of the twentieth century, with the wealth of
knowledge that modern anthropology has placed at my
disposal? For Thomas Reid's gospel is that which I
have preached to you. Even in the modern world we must
listen to the voice of Nature. Under the control of
reason, prejudice has to be given a place in the
regulation of human affairs.
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If you have found this interesting, take a look at:
http://www.mankind.org - anthropology, genetics, psycology etc.
http://thescorp.multics.org/ - an independent
jourmal of European thought; opposed to globalism and in favour of the preservation of indigenous human cultures.
ARTHUR KEITH
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