Among these doctors of the world I found some whose appearance was such that I was tempted to believe I had seen them before. Sometimes, when one or another of them gave me a cigarette, I got the feeling that at the next moment he would also offer me chocolate. He did not do this, however, for he believed I would then recognize him. And these were the most gentle of the convened doctors. And they were so affable and they knew their patient so well that they understood exactly in which of its limbs and body parts the world was weakest. And it was towards the weakest limbs and organs that they were the most gentle, almost gentler than they were by nature.
So, for example, they discussed in a special commission, although here also they spoke Latin, in what way one might assist the coloured races.
The coloured races — that is to say, in the language of this world, those people whose skin colour is not white but brown, black, yellow or reddish. And, although it should be clear and obvious to everyone that the colour of the human skin is as much intended by God as is the human face or the human form, people still believe that whatever their own colour might be, it is just through this colour that God has distinguished them from people of other colours. Whereas it is clearly written that God created man in His image: man, not his colour. He created grey, black, greenish and reddish trees and plants, and they are all trees and plants. He created grey, brown, red and yellow animals; silvery and golden fish; greenish, reddish and bluish waters; blue, green, silver and gold stars; clouds in all colours that our human eye can recognize and distinguish — yet they are all clouds, stars, waters, animals, fish and birds. And if the black raven could speak with reason and not only with its tongue it would not deny that the reddish-green parrot, although it is not black, is a bird like he, the black raven. This is because the animals, waters, clouds and plants are not delivered up to the Serpent, the First Serpent, the Antichrist. We humans, however, are delivered up to him, and thus a white man says he is superior to a black man and vice versa; whereas anyone of any colour would think it insanity if he heard someone say that a green room is better than a red one — is better and not that one person or another likes it more. Or if someone were to say the red leaves of autumn are better than the green ones of spring — and not that he likes them more.
And instead of thanking God for creating man in His image, and truly with the divine magnanimity that we praise in Him, in all possible colours, people deny Him by the very fact that they say He did not create everyone in His image. We do not know the colour of Adam, the first human. Since, however, in the history of creation not only does every word have its obvious meaning but also every omission, we must assume that Adam’s skin colour would have been mentioned if God had intended to give a preference to any particular one. But we do not speak of the colour of the first man from whom we are all descended any more than we speak of his mother tongue, his race or his nationality. Rather, we assume that he, who was the founder of mankind, contained within himself the source of all languages, all races, all peoples and all the variations of skin colour. And Adam was the crown of creation. God Himself took a full five long days to make him, and these were not our short human days, from sun-up to sun-down, but vast in extent, according to the time reckoning of eternity not of the calendar. It is a hardly comprehensible honour that God bestowed upon us in devoting such a long period of thought to us. Many differences distinguish we humans from the animals. But the most important is that God gave Himself five days to create man and that He breathed His breath into him alone — just humans, not humans of one or another colour. This is the only permissible pride we may feel that cannot be called a sin. But it is a double sin that we commit when we pervert our just pride at being people into a vile pride at being white, black, brown or red people. And as it is already deemed as disgraceful in our everyday world when an unworthy fellow denies his grandfather, so should it be a mortal sin and branded as such when a man denies Adam, the ancestor of us all. Thus one denies God Himself with whom our first bond is that He animated Adam with His divine breath.
God created man in his own image. We therefore blaspheme Him when we mock or disparage the hooked nose of the Jew, the slanted eyes of the Mongol or the large lips of the African. Since they are all human beings, each particular feature and each particular colour of every human race is to be found in the sublime and unfathomable countenance of God. Whoever insults the Jew’s nose or the African’s lips or the Mongol’s eyes or the white man’s pallor therefore insults the nose, the lips, the eyes and the colour of God. He also defames His breath, which was breathed into the first man. For in this breath were contained all the virtues of all future people. Within it were the wondrous singing voice of the African, the subtlety and also the fervour of the Mongol, the nobility of the Indian, the intelligence of the Jew — and so forth.
In the Commission on Colours I saw, however, that not only were the powerful arrogant towards the powerless but that the latter defended themselves with an equal arrogance towards the powerful. And because at this time white men happen to be more powerful than men of other colours, those among them who were still conscientious were striving for the emancipation of the coloured peoples. The Antichrist, however, was already living among both. And he led the coloured peoples, who were not yet freed, who were still enslaved by the whites, to mimic their morals and vices and pretensions. And so the brown and black and yellow men all lived apart, ate and drank apart. The brown men were proud of their brownness, the black of their blackness and the yellow of their yellowness. It was obvious that they did not regard themselves first and foremost as people, but rather as coloured people. They also demanded in all their speeches and uprisings not so much the liberties that truly characterize human dignity as the unworthy ones that power usurps as its prerogative. What they demanded, and what they ever repeated, was ‘We want to be masters in our own country.’ Yes, they wanted to be masters, nothing else. And in their own country. Instead of saying ‘We want to be people in all the countries of the world,’ they said that they wanted to be masters in their own countries. And I thereby recognized that the Antichrist was in control among them also.
I said this to one of them, a man with kind eyes and an agreeable voice. He came from India. He replied: ‘Since you came to us with violence and trickery and brought us your alcohol and syphilis, but we didn’t come to you with trickery and violence, to defend ourselves we must speak with the words that you have taught us and fight with the weapons that you use.’
To which I answered that he had spoken much foolishness in two phrases but that that he had revealed his great folly mainly through the use of a couple of little words — namely ‘your’ and ‘you’. Since I had unfortunately not seen his country I couldn’t object to his regarding mine as he regarded his own. I also looked upon his country as I looked upon mine. If, perhaps, I were to bring some disease or other evil into his country I could no doubt assume that there were other diseases and evils that were common and native to that place. For we are all a mixture of virtue and sin. And it was precisely because all men were comprised in the same way of virtue and sin, strength and weakness, goodness and malice, disease and health, that I couldn’t comprehend why every country should be jealous of exactly those frailties, evils and diseases that it imagined were special and peculiar to itself. As far as I was concerned, at that moment, as we conversed one man to another, was he, I asked him, speaking with me or with my skin colour? For he used the plural pronoun when speaking to me, although I was only one person.