BARBARISM, CULTURE, EMPIRE, UNIOK 429 



firm the Koran, they need not be preserved ; if they oppose the Koran, 

 they should not be preserved." The Greeks called Egyptians, Latins, 

 Hebrews, Hindus, alike barbarians, and disclosed their own barbarism 

 in so doing. The Jews were to Jews the chosen people of God. To 

 the Chinese the Chinese alone are Celestials. To us of the United 

 States our own land alone is God's country. The possession of these 

 lofty and complex ideals but emphasizes the inability of their possessors 

 to transcend them. 



Barbarism may be either naive or conscious. Incapacity to share 

 in the desires of others may be betrayed either by ignoring them or by 

 aiming to thwart them. We associate the attitude of indifference with 

 the lower animals, and call it brutal; the attitude of frowardness with 

 evil spirits, and call it devilish. The one betokens vacuity of mind, 

 the other perversity of heart. 



Beyond both indifference and frowardness, but barbaric like both, 

 stands the spirit of empire; the impulse to impose my will, irrespective 

 of what I will, upon others, irrespective of what they will. This atti- 

 tude of mind is barbaric, for it reveals my inability to take to heart 

 what others have at heart; but it is more than brutal barbarism, for it 

 takes the wills of others into account; and it is more also than devilish 

 barbarism, for it builds my own will as well as destroys theirs. It is 

 neither dumb, like animal selfishness, nor is it outspoken in the words 

 of Mephistopheles : " I am the spirit that denies ; " but in the words of 

 Napoleon : " I was born to bend the wills of other men to mine." The 

 instinct of empire is a social attitude in its external recognition of 

 others; it is imsocial, in failing to make that recognition an inward 

 fact. 



Such an external recognition of another's purposes is compatible, be 

 it said, with unlimited instruction concerning them. For all intel- 

 lectual apprehension of taste is knowledge about it; we must feel in 

 order to know taste itself. The external attitude is even fostered by 

 instruction ; since knowing so much we may easily fancy we know all. 

 We become pedants of culture, mistaking its cognitive shell for its 

 sensitive kernel. However rich our information concerning the ideals 

 of another, unless in some degree we share them, our culture as far as 

 he is concerned is nil. Looking on without taking part, perceiving 

 without experiencing, we remain essentially barbarian. 



Culture, the actual assimilation of the ideals of other people, re- 

 places the spirit of empire by a spirit which may be called that of 

 union. The spirit of empire is a simple intention, namely, the estab- 

 lishment of my will, because mine, in place of other wills, because 

 other than mine. The spirit of union proves to contain a triple inten- 

 tion. The penetration of another mind has three effects upon mine: 

 the awakening of certain desires of the other in me, the missing of 



