“Civilization,” CW XVIII, p. 122.
17
In fact, in the context of describing life in West Africa, Robert W. July writes that:
18
In Africa, labor was never performed in isolation; cooperation, companionship, and
friendly competition were concomitants that frequently added social and sportive
aspects to work tasks, transforming potential drudgery into festive as well as
productive occasions. (A History of the African People, 2 ed. (New York: Charles
nd
Schribner’s Sons, 1974), 134-5.)
See for example Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism” Cultural Diversity and
19
Political Theory (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 2000), pp. 40–7; “Decolonizing Liberalism,” The
Page -8-
same cause which prevented the lions and tigers from long ago extirpating the race
of men—incapacity of co-operation. It is only civilized beings who can combine. All
combination is compromise: it is the sacrifice of some portion of individual will, for
a common purpose. The savage cannot bear to sacrifice, for any purpose, the
satisfaction of his individual will. His social cannot even temporarily prevail over his
selfish feelings, nor his impulses bend to his calculations.
17
Mill, then, takes “savages” to be entirely unable to cooperate. It is worth stressing that he never
says that the Africans taken into captivity as slaves fit this characterization. (And also, perhaps,
worth stressing that they decidedly did not. ) In fact, Mill never tells us where, specifically, he
18
thinks these “savages” are to be found. He does not seem to regard their existence as a mere
hypothetical possibility; his very description of the type implies that he thinks instances of it are to
be met with somewhere, and in fact he says as much in a passage quoted below. Yet realistically
speaking, people this unwilling to work together could never survive. Several critics have taken
Mill to task for a failure to appreciate non-Western cultures, and his willingness to believe that
“savages” answering to this description are to be found in the world does lend credence to this
objection.
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Convention