[1] This idea is embodied in the doctrine of Salvation confined to the few, and contains perhaps a similar error. But it has a _prima facie_ truth.
_(b)_ This being so, it seems to follow that the object of our ethical idea of humanity is not really mankind as a single community. Putting aside the impossibilities arising from succession in time, we see that no such identical experience can be presupposed in all mankind as is necessary to effective membership of a common society and exercise of a general will. It does not follow from this that there can be no general recognition of the rights arising from the capacities for good life which belong to man as man. Though insufficient, as variously and imperfectly realised, to be the basis of an effective community, they may, as far as realised, be a common element or tissue of connection, running through the more concrete experience on which effective communities { 330} rest. Such a relation as that of England and India brings the matter home. Englishmen cannot make one effective self-governed community with the Indian populations. It would be misery and inefficiency to both sides. But our State can recognise the primary rights of humanity as determined in the life of its Indian subjects, and enforce or respect these rights, whether India be a dependency or an independent community. The problem is not unlike that raised by the idea of a universal language. As a substitute for national languages, it would mean a dead level of intelligence unsuited to every actual national mind, the destruction of literature and poetry. As an addition to existing languages, or more simply, if it became customary for every people to be acquainted with the tongues of other nations, there would be a common understanding no less firm, and a vast gain of appreciation and enjoyment, a levelling up instead of levelling down. The recognition of human rights through communities founded on organic unity of experience may be compared in just these terms to the idea of a universal society including the entire human race.
_(c)_ The contrast between humanity and mankind has always uttered itself through a dichotomous mode of expression--Jew and Gentile, Greek [1] and barbarian, Mussulman and infidel, Christian { 331} and heathen, white civilisations and the black and yellow races. It will be noted at once that some of these divisions contradict each other, and this fact may suggest the probability that to every people its own life has seemed the crown of things, and the remainder of mankind only the remainder. Such a suggestion may have a real bearing on our problem, and we will return to it. In the meantime, however, it is plain that humanity [2] as an ethical idea is a type or a problem rather than a fact. It means certain qualities, at once realised in what we take to be the crown of the race, and including a sensibility to the claims of the race as such. Sensibility to the claims of the race as such, is least of all qualities common to the race as such. The respect of States and individuals for humanity is then, after all, in its essence, a duty to maintain a type of life, not general, but the best we know, which we call the most human, and in accordance with it to recognise and deal with the rights of alien individuals and communities. This conception is opposed to the treatment of all individual human beings as members of an identical community having identical capacities and rights. It follows our general conviction that not numbers but qualities determine the value of life. But qualities, of course, become self-contradictory if they fail to meet the demands imposed on them by numbers.