Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt00885)

"When anything occurs to prevent us from doing or saying exactly what 
we should like to do, we are in the habit of congratulating ourselves 
that thought at least is free. But this is only another of the many 
popular delusions. For the average man thought is by no means free; 
on the contrary it is conditioned by a large number of powerful 
limitations. It is bound by the prejudices of the nation, the 
religion, the class to which he happens to belong, and it is only by 
a determined and long-continued effort that he can shake himself free 
from all these influences, and really think for himself. 

These restrictions operate on him in two ways; they modify his 
opinion about facts and about actions. Taking the former first, he 
sees nothing as it really is, but only as his fellow-countrymen, his 
co-religionists, or the members of his caste think it to be. When we 
come to know more of other races we shake off our preconceptions 
concerning them. But we have only to look back a century to the time 
of Napoleon, and we shall at once perceive that no Englishman then 
could possibly have formed an impartial opinion as to the character 
of that remarkable man. Public opinion in England had erected him 
into a kind of bogey; nothing was too terrible or too wicked to be 
believed of him, and indeed it is doubtful whether the common people 
really considered him as a human being at all. 

The prepossession against everything French was then so strong that 
to say that a man was a Frenchman was to believe him capable of any 
villainy; and one cannot but admit that those who had fresh in their 
minds the unspeakable crimes of the French Revolution had some 
justification for such an attitude. They were too near to the events 
to be able to see them in proportion; and because the offscourings of 
the streets of Paris had contrived to seize upon the government and 
to steep themselves in orgies of blood and crime, they thought that 
these represented the people of France. It is easy to see how far 
from the truth must have been the conception of the Frenchman in the 
mind of the average English peasant of that period. 

Among our higher classes the century which has passed since then has 
produced an entire revolution of feeling, and now we cordially admire 
our neighbours across the Channel, because now we know so much more 
of them. Yet even now it is not impossible that there may be remote 
country places in which something of that old and strongly 
established prejudice still survives. For the leading countries of 
the world are in reality as yet only partially civilised, and while 
everywhere the more cultured classes are prepared to receive 
foreigners politely, the same can hardly be said of the mill-hands or 
the colliers. And there are still parts of Europe where the Jew is 
hardly regarded as a human being."

"The ordinary tourist is too often imprisoned in the triple armour of 
aggressive race-prejudice; he is so full of conceit over the supposed 
excellencies of his own nation that he is incapable of seeing good in 
any other. The wiser traveller, who is willing to open his heart to 
the action of higher forces, may receive from this source much that 
is valuable, both of instruction and experience. But in order to do 
that, he must begin by putting himself in the right attitude; he must 
be ready to listen rather then to talk, to learn rather than to 
boast, to appreciate rather than to criticise, to try to understand 
rather than rashly to condemn."

(Hiddenside of things, http://www.tphta.ws/CWL_HSOT.HTM )

It also shows that in the English of that time the word 'race' was 
applicable even to the Enghishmen and Frenchmen.

"A new race is born when in the scheme of evolution a new type a 
temperament is needed; a race dies out when all the egos who can be 
benefited by it have passed through it." - exactly the same thought 
which I quoted earlier from W.Q. Judge.