Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/181

Gentium thus derived, then the distance between them becomes still less. If all the disabilities on the foreigners become removed, then the foreigners cease to be the lower class.

But, on the contrary, if the foreigners are allowed to keep up their own customs and laws, the tribalism of the society becomes perpetuated and thus creation of a caste system is facilitated. Democracies are usually extremely intolerant regarding foreign ways and manners; for the greater the amount of difference the greater is the difficulty of assimilation.

The ultimate result of tribalism is plain. The existing tribes will be more or less perpetuated and will give rise to a caste system. It is an inevitable result, from which there will be no escape.

The territorial societies, like the Englishmen, Americans, etc., in themselves have no different future: if they do not keep themselves on guard they also will become tribal societies. As long as man is freely migrating it is not the present condition of the society, whether territorial or tribal, which determines its character, but the insistence on the ideal, territorial or tribal. The so-called Anglo-Saxon communities, that is, Englishmen and the white Americans (the latter in fact have no more right to be called Anglo-Saxons than the American negroes have), are now developing a pride of their own and are showing a tendency to become tribes.

Danger to territorialism means the concourse on the same territory of races and tribes which will not fuse. Inasmuch as the fusion of peoples depends on similarity, enumeration of the danger to territorialism means enumeration of those dissimilarities which have a strongly separating influence.