We have now seen that social contact with whites, without any barrier between them and the inferior races, is not, in a moral point of view, a very desirable thing in any part of the world.  But if there is a moral consequence, we may also point to a mental one, which exercises an immense influence:  I mean the overwhelming sense of inferiority which is so apt to depress casteless races.  I believe, then, for savages, or for people in a low state of civilization, it is of the greatest importance that they should have points of difference which may not only keep them socially apart, but which may enable them to maintain some feeling of superiority when coming in contact with highly-civilized races.  Nor is it necessary that the feeling of superiority should be well founded.  An imaginary superiority will, I believe, answer the purpose equally well.  “We don’t touch beef, nor would we touch food cooked by Englishmen or Pariahs,” seem but poor matters for self-congratulation.  But if these considerations prevent a man from forming a poor opinion of himself, they should be carefully cherished.  On these points, at least, a feeling of superiority is sustained, and therefore the tendency to degradation is diminished.  But if on all points the white man makes his superiority felt, the weaker people speedily acquire a thorough contempt for themselves, and soon become careless of what they do, or of what becomes of them.  Their mental spring becomes fatally depressed, and this circumstance has probably more to do with the deterioration and extinction of inferior races than most people would be inclined to admit.[34] Nothing, then, I believe, chills the soul and checks the progress of man so much as a hopeless sense of inferiority; and, had I time, I might turn the attention of the reader to the universality of this law, and to the numerous instances that have been collected to prove the depressing and injurious effects that even nature, on a grand and overwhelming scale, seems to exercise on the mind and spirit of man—­how it makes him timid, credulous, and superstitious, and produces effects which retard his progress.  But to advance further on this point, however interesting it may be, would only tend to distract the attention of the reader from the subject with which we are mainly concerned.

If the remarks hitherto made are of any value, they undoubtedly tend to prove that all inferior races have a tendency, in the first instance, to adopt the vices rather than the virtues of the more civilized races they may come in contact with.  Assuming, then, as I think we have every right to do, that this statement is universally true, it is evident that the social separation maintained by caste has been of incalculable advantage.  On the other hand, however, a number of disadvantages have been indicated by various writers; but only one of them seems to me at all worthy of serious attention.  It has been asserted that this segregation has impeded advancement, that it has prevented