But on recovery from the shock, the shining pageant of all the ages begins to file interminably before the imagination. The triumphs of the Indo-European and Semitic races, the stories of Babylon and Nineveh, of Thebes and Memphis, of Rome and Athens and Jerusalem, of Delhi and of Bagdad, of the Pyramids and of the Parthenon—the radiant names of Hammurabi and Zarathustra and Moses and the Buddha and Mohammed, of Homer and Plato and Phidias and Socrates and Pindar and Pythagoras, and the mightiest Julius, and the imperial philosophers, and their peers without number, the endless creations of art and science and religion and law and literature and every other form of activity, the full-voiced choir of all the Muses, the majestic morality, the hundred-handed philosophy, the manifold wisdom of civilization—all of this infinite cloud of witnesses gather swarming upon us from the whole firmanent of the past and proclaim with pentecostal tongue the glory and supremacy of Caucasian man. It seems impossible to represent in human speech, or by any symbols intelligible to the human mind, the variety and immensity of this consentient testimony of all historic time and place. Not to be overwhelmed and overawed, much more convinced, by such a prodigious spectacle of evidence, is to gaze at midnoon into the heavens and cry out, "Where is the sun?" For over against all these transcendent achievements, what has the West African to set? What art? What science? What religion? What morality? What philosophy? What history? What even one single aspect of civilization or culture or higher humanity? It would seem to be an insult to the reader's intelligence, if we should prolong the comparison.

Now can all this be accidental? Has it just happened that, in all quarters of the world and under all climatic and topographic conditions, East and West, North and South, beneath the tropics and within the frozen circles, by the sea and amid the mountains, in snow, in sand, in forest—that everywhere and everywhen the Caucasian has manifested the same all-conquering, overmastering qualities—not always good or kind or just, but always strong, always striving, always victorious? And that never, and nowhere, and under no circumstances, has the Black man displayed any such capacities as could bring him for a moment into consideration as the White man's equal? We answer, there can be no possibility of mistake. The achievement of the race, its total history both in time and in space, is the best possible index to its powers and potencies. Against this witness of history, even if other indications did plead, they would plead in vain. Even were the brain of the Negro as large as an elephant's, it would matter not. Says Hegel, "Nations are what their deeds are;" and with greater justice we may affirm that the race is what its life is and has been.

It is noteworthy that while the one knight-errant boldly declares that, "Nature knows no forward or backward races," the other more cautiously avoids the term "backward" and denies only inferiority for the Negro. Perhaps one might admit that he is backward and demand for him time and opportunity. However, the distinction is not really pertinent to the issue. As well say the monkey is not inferior, but only backward. It is only a difference of degree—a very great difference, to be sure, but it is idle to say, "Give the Negro time." He has already had time, as much time as the Europeans—thousands and ten thousands of years. And what opportunity has failed him? The power that uplifted Aryan and Semite did not come from without, but from within. No mortal civilized him; he civilized himself. It was the wing of his own spirit that bore him aloft. If the African has equal native might of mind, why has he not wrought out his own civilization and peopled his continent with the monuments of his genius? Or if the material was all there, ready to be ignited, needing only the incensive spark, why has it never, in hundreds of years, caught fire from the blazing torch of Europe? Why has century-long contact with other civilizations never enkindled the feeblest flame? For it is well known that intercourse with foreigners has in no degree elevated or improved the West African, but on the contrary has proved his curse and his doom. (See Ratzel, The History of Mankind, III., pp. 99-100, 102-103, 120, 134.) Moreover, it seems doubtful whether nearly forty [5] years of persistent and consecrated efforts at education, with the expenditure of hundreds of millions, have revealed yet in ten millions of Afro-Americans a single example of originative ability of notably high order. (Bright Mulattoes, like familiar instances, count little in this argument. It is well known (Mendel's Law) that offspring [6] do not exactly divide the qualities of parents, but often veer in this respect or in that far over to one side or to the other. Besides, the abilities of such men are apt to loom up unduly large in the popular imagination. We all wonder at a dancing bear, not because he dances well, but because he dances at all.)

Perhaps one of the most unerring indications of the native capacities and tendencies of a race is to be found in its ethnic religion, its mythology, its childlike, untutored attitude towards the riddles of the universe. For there can be but little or no question of outside influence or unequal opportunity. The sun, the moon, the stars, the firmament, the ocean, the plains, the mountains, the forests, the rivers, the seasons, eclipses and precessions, day and night, morning and evening, fire and frost, ice and vapour, wind and cloud, thunder and lightning, life and death, health and disease, dreams and shadows—all these multiform materials of construction have offered themselves in practically equivalent quantity and quality to the phantasy of every race and every age. The reactions have varied widely, and have boldly characterized the genius of each people. Tell me of their gods, and I will tell you of the worshippers. Tried by this standard, the case seems decided, even before it reaches the threshold of the court. For, putting aside the sublime and awful monotheism of the Hebrew, can any one for an instant set in line the august and imposing, if overgrown and superluxuriant, mythology of India, the stern and severe and tremendous religions of the Nile and the Euphrates, the sad and solemn but high-hearted and deep-thoughted musings of Scandinavia and Teuton-land, the infinitely varied and infinitely beautiful mythopœia of Hellas, or even the colorless but sharp-lined abstractions of Italy, with the degraded fetichism, the stock-and stone-service of the Niger and the Congo?

What we may call the historical argument, just presented, finds strong and decisive confirmation, even though it needs none, in the craniology, the physiognomy, and the general anatomy of the Negro. [7] Take him at his very best—does any one believe that the Olympian Zeus, an Apollo Belvedere, a Melian Venus, a Capitoline Juno, a Hermes of Praxiteles, or a Sistine Madonna could ever by any possibility have emerged from the most fertile fancy of an "Old Master" of the Congo? Perfect his type as you will, even as you perfect the type of a flower or a bird, does not the Sudanese remain at immense remove from the European? Of course, it is always possible to contend that beauty is only subjective, any way, that the hair and brow and nose and lips and jaw and ear of the West African would be just as beautiful as those of the Greek or Anglo-American, if we only thought so. But being what we are, we cannot think so now and still less the further we advance in organic development. Moreover, with equal reason we might say that the tiger-lily was as beautiful as the rose, the hippopotamus as pretty as the squirrel; nay more, we might abolish all distinctions of quality, and identify each pair of contradictories.

Does some one say that physical beauty is a poor, inferior thing at best—that beauty of soul is alone sufficient and only desirable? We deny it outright. Beauty of form and colour has its own high and inalienable and indefectible rights, its own profound significance for the history alike of nature and of man. Even if the intermingling of bloods wrought no other wrong than the degradation of bodily beauty, the coarsening of feature and blurring of coloration, it would still be an unspeakable outrage, to be deprecated and prevented by all means in our power. Moreover, we hold that every such degeneration of facial type will drag along with it inevitably a corresponding declension of spirit. Criminology is confident in its claim of some deep-seated, however obscure, relation between aberrations from the physical and from the mental norm. Though there may be many illustrious exceptions, which our defective knowledge cannot explain, yet the broad general principle may still be maintained:

Any general declination from type in the one, while it may not cause, will yet infallibly argue a corresponding declination from type in the other.

It is futile to reply that our own ancestors and the ancestors of the Greeks and all other historical peoples were once savages—were once not even men, and hardly manlike. Very true; but why stop here? Why not boldly urge that Plato might have traced back his lineage to an amœba,—yea, to star-dust and curdling ether? True, perhaps; but what of it? We may be cousins to the worm, at the billionth remove; but we are not brothers. We grant the abstract possibility that the bee or the ant may harbour in itself higher potentialities for development than even man himself. We even think it wholesome to bear this thought in mind. Nevertheless, such may-be's lie infinitely beyond the range of the practical vision; they cannot enter into our calculations of futurity. So, too, we grant that, in the centuries of milleniums to come, it is possible that the Negro's nature may receive some surpassing uplift: he may sprout eagle pinions, and far outfly the wildest dreams of Caucasian fancy. But such possibilities are altogether too remote for our reckoning now; they are decimals in the hundredth place. We may and we must neglect them, as we neglect the likelihood of a concussion of our planet with some extinct vagrant sun. We must act in the living present, and at present there rolls between the historical development of the black and the white species an impassable river of ten thousand years. Possibly the former might catch up in the course of ages, if only the latter stood still. But will they stand still? Can they afford to wait? Is there not every reason to hope that they will forge steadily ahead and widen still more and more the interval between? Is not such the obvious teaching of history? Does not the tree of life bud and bloom and put forth new boughs at the top? For our part, we believe in the Overman, Him who is to come—not, however, from the lower, but from the higher, humanity. Such, at least, seems of necessity our working hypothesis.

It would be unfair, however, to close this part of the discussion without noticing what our adversaries have been able to produce contra.

In The Souls of Black Folk, Prof. W. E. B. Dubois, of Atlanta, Ga., tells the tale, and it could not be better told, of the contributions made by the Negro to the civilization of our Union:

"Your country? How came it yours? Before the Pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song—soft, stirring melody in an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier that your weak hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit" (p. 262). The second of these "gifts" we dismiss at once; the Negro's labour was not voluntary, and was not a "gift" in any sense. [8] As well say the mule made "gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness." As to the "Spirit," Prof. Dubois means that the spectacle of African slavery aroused the "Spirit" in the people of our land, particularly in the Abolitionists—"out of the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst" (p. 263). Queer "gift", indeed! By the same token, the poverty, the distress, the injustice, the iniquity, the intemperance, even the crime—all that mar our civilization have been making it "the gift of the Spirit;" for have they not aroused our sense of right and duty and devotion to the good of others? Have they not called out of the nation's heart all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst? The gift of song, of the plaintive Negro melody—we freely allow it. How much of the same is really the product of the Negro soul seems to be a question by no means easy to answer. But let us allow the Negroid the benefit of the doubt and accord him the fullest credit. We are not musician enough to appraise this "gift" properly, nor yet to reckon its possible significance for the future of American music. But at the very most, it seems to us that this worth and this significance cannot be very high; especially since a whole generation has come and gone without any sign of larger development, but instead, Dubois himself being witness, with many signs of corruption and degradation. Even then, according to the rating of the chief of Negroids, their contribution to our civilization has been quite inconsiderable.

(N.B.—It is not, however, the sociologist of Atlanta, but the seer of Concord, who has recognized most distinctly and celebrated with proudest pomp of mixed metaphor the clairvoyance and spiritual superiority of the tropical.

In the oft quoted "Voluntaries" we read:

Inasmuch, however, as these "avenues" of the far-sighted African are nothing but the blind alleys of Voodooism and devil worship, it may be just as well that they remain "hid" from the slow-paced European.)

In the Booklovers' Magazine for July, 1903, the same writer returns to this subject in an article on "Possibilities of the Negro—The Advance Guard of the Race." The conspicuous position and, the full illustrations given this paper show clearly at what a positive advantage the Black man stands in the world of literature—simply because he is black. We happen to know that the article has made some impression. Ten names are presented of Negroids that have done respectable work in various fields of intellectual labour. If Mr. Washington is easily the Herakles in this latter-day crew of Argo, Dr. Dubois, who has mustered them, is himself certainly Jason, the eleventh. But of these eleven we may at once dismiss eight, for their abundant white blood is apparent in their pictures and is not denied. Only the other three are claimed as "black"; pure black is not said, perhaps is not meant. These seem to be the electrician, the mathematician, the poet. For none of these can be claimed any very high order of merit; the light by which they shine conspicuous among their fellows would not illustrate them very especially among the Whites. That such abilities should occasionally show themselves, even in a quite inferior race, ought surely to be expected and to arouse the wonder of no one. The really significant thing is that eight out of eleven of these champions are confessedly of mixed blood; only 27 per cent. are "black." But these "Blacks" form 80 per cent. of the total Negroid population. Hence, in proportion to numbers, it appears that the Mulattoes are represented nearly eleven times as often as the "Blacks." In the face of such a fact, [9] it seems vain to deny that the mixed blood is notably more intelligent than the pure black; the necessary inference is that the white blood with which it was mixed is far more intelligent still.

The reader may naturally ask, Why devote space to such trivial arguments as those quoted, since they tell plainly, where they tell at all, against and not for the cause they would support? We answer, that our treatment must be thorough, if it be worth anything; that we desire to represent our opponents at their very best, and as far as possible in their own words; and that the weakness of their position is most clearly seen in their own efforts at defence.

The details of the anatomical argument, which Darwin said would undoubtedly lead the naturalist to classify Negro and European as distinct species, are matters of readily accessible knowledge. They have been presented frequently and with telling force. That in particular the cranial, the facial, and the appendicular skeletons of the dolichocephalic West African (the purest, the lowest, and the prevalent type on the plantation) deviate sensibly from the highest human towards the quadrumanal stamp, has been the common observation of naturalists from Blumenbach to Ratzel; nor can this have escaped the notice of intelligent and unbiased laymen.

Nevertheless, it may be well to record the authoritative statement made by A. H. Keane, professor of Hindustani, University College, London, in the article "Negro," in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XVII. [10]

"But wherever found in a comparatively pure state, as on the coast of Guinea (here apparently is to be met the most pronounced Negro type proper yet discovered), in the Gaboon, along the lower Zambesi, and in the Benua and Shari basins, the African aborigines present almost a greater uniformity of physical and moral type than any of the other great divisions of mankind. By the nearly unanimous consent of anthropologists this type occupies at the same time the lowest position in the evolutionary scale, thus affording the best material for the comparative study of the highest anthropoids and the human species. The chief points in which the Negro either approaches the Quadrumana or differs most from his congeners are:

  (1) The abnormal length of the arm, which in the erect position sometimes reaches the knee-pan, and which on an average exceeds that of the Caucasian by about 2 inches.

  (2) Prognathism, or projection of the jaws (index number of facial angle about 70, as compared with the Caucasian 82).

  (3) Weight of brain, as indicating cranial capacity, 35 ounces (highest gorilla 20, average European 45).

  (4) Full black eye, with black iris and yellowish sclerotic coat, a very marked feature.

  (5) Short flat snub nose, deeply depressed at the base or frontal suture, broad at extremity, with dilated nostrils and concave ridge.

  (6) Thick protruding lips, plainly showing the inner red surface.

  (7) Very large zygomatic arches—high and prominent cheek bones.

  (8) Exceedingly thick cranium, enabling the Negro to butt with the head and resist blows which would inevitably break any ordinary European's skull.

  (9) Correspondingly weak lower limbs, terminating in a broad flat foot with low instep, divergent and somewhat prehensile great toe, and heel projecting backwards ("lark heel").

(10) Complexion deep brown or blackish, and in some cases even distinctly black, due not to any special pigment, as is often supposed, but merely to the greater abundance of the coloring matter in the Malphigian mucous membrane between the inner or true skin and the epidermis or scarf skin.

(11) Short, black hair, eccentrically elliptical or almost flat in section, and distinctly woolly, not merely frizzly, as Prichard supposed on insufficient evidence.

(12) Thick epidermis, cool, soft, and velvety to the touch, mostly hairless, and emitting a peculiar rancid odor, compared by Pruner Bey to that of the buck goat. [11]

(13) Frame of medium height, thrown somewhat out of the perpendicular by the shape of the pelvis, the spine, the backward projection of the head, and the whole anatomical structure.

(14) The cranial sutures, which close much earlier in the Negro than in the other races. To this premature ossification of the skull, preventing all further development of the brain, many pathologists have attributed the inherent mental inferiority of the blacks, an inferiority which is even more marked than their physical differences. Nearly all observers admit that the Negro child is on the whole quite as intelligent as those of other human varieties, but that on arriving at puberty all further progress seems to be arrested. No one has more carefully studied this point than Filippo Manetta, who, during a long residence on the plantations of the Southern States of America noted that 'the Negro children were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We necessarily suppose that the development of the Negro and White proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brain-pan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone.'" (La Razza Negra nel suo stato selvaggio e nella sua duplice condizione di emancipata e di schiava, Torino, 1864, p. 20).

This last point is one of such supreme importance that it seems well to strengthen it by additional testimony. Says the renowned Cesare Lombroso, in his "L'Uomo Bianco e L'Uomo di Colore" (1892), p. 28: "The development of the African baby is altogether different from ours. In its first days it does not show the dark color of the adult; the sutures of the head, which with us close up only late in life, with it ossify speedily, as in idiots and monkeys, and the anterior sooner than the posterior. Also its face becomes projecting and prognathous only after the first dentition; and only after the thirteenth year its head is seen to grow longer and its skin to grow darker. The same may be said of the mental (morale) development; for the Negro, precisely like the monkey, shows himself very intelligent up to puberty; but at that epoch, when our intellect spreads its wings for more daring flights, he stops and turns backward..." This profoundly significant arrest of development in the Negro is equally observable in school and out of it. Among many witnesses, hear one of the most unexceptionable, J. M. McGovern, in a symposium in the Arena (Vol. 21, p. 439): "My experience has shown me that, while at the start a negro child often shows ability quite equal to that of a white child at the same age, yet if the two children, one white and one coloured, each of average intelligence, are kept in the same class, in a short period the white child far outstrips the negro—at least in all those studies where diligent application and depth of thought are necessary for success." This testimony seems particularly valuable, since it is based solely on "experience" and is plainly independent of any doctrine concerning cranial sutures.

In the work already cited, Lombroso mentions several other minute yet important particulars in which the Negro anatomy diverges from the Caucasian toward the simian, but sufficient have been adduced. It may be replied that each and every one of these divergences may be found here and there among Caucasians. This is true, but the reply is no answer. All sorts of reversions to lower type are to be met with in higher species, but this by no means negatives the fact that some species are more and some are less developed. The well-formed type still exists in spite of the occasional malformations. Besides, it is not the presence of any single indication on which our argument is grounded, but the simultaneous presence of a great number of indications. It is these in their entirety that distinguish the Negro so notably, and remove him toward the anthropoids; and over against this fact the occasional aberrations among the Whites have no argumentative weight whatever.

That the Afro-Americans are by no means racially identical, though racially related, is a fact well known, but worth recalling. Some are racially very distinctly superior to others, even as were their ancestors in the African fatherland. On this point we submit the highly intelligent and unprejudiced testimony of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, the well-known professor of geology in Harvard University. In the Popular Science Monthly (Vol. 57), he attempts a classification of the Southern Blacks. First come those of the "Guinea type"—the purest Negro—who are "distinctly of a low type," and who number one-half of all. Those of the Zulu type are much higher, and number perhaps five per cent. of all. The Arab Negro, found in Virginia, is of a finer and more delicate mould, and numbers (say) one per cent. The Red Negroes, the Bongos and Mittus mentioned by Schweinfurth as "red-brown," like their native soil (Heart of Africa, Vol. I., p. 261), are Albinoidal, and number perhaps one per cent. The rest are of mixed types. The Guinea "folk are of essentially limited intelligence;" the Zulus are fit for anything that ordinary men of our own race can do; the Arabs are more educable, but of a sombre disposition; the red are inferior. The Mulattoes are of feeble vitality, rarely surviving beyond middle age. Professor Shaler's father, an able physician, had never seen a half-breed more than sixty years old. As the reputation of the Mulatto is generally bad, perhaps unjustly, "we may welcome the fact that this mixed stock is likely to disappear" (pp. 33-38). In a later article in the same volume, Professor Shaler contributes some valuable thoughts and estimates. Thus: "The simple yet valuable lessons of the soil-tiller they have had. For the greater number of their race, particularly those of the Guinea type, this grade of employment is as high as they may be expected to attain" (p. 148). "I feel safe in saying, from the basis of personal experience with the negroes, that somewhere near one-third of them are fit to be trained for mechanical employment of a fairly high grade" (p. 149). We do not see how it is possible to call in question either the competence or the fair-mindedness of this distinguished observer. It is worthy of special attention that he attests both the hopeless inferiority of the (pure Negro) Guinea type and at the same time its decisive numerical preponderance. The real question before us, then, concerns not so much the Negro in general, of whom there are notably superior varieties, as the very lowest Negro that West Africa has yet produced.

Here, then, we let the anatomical argument rest for the present. A minuter treatment will be found in a more appropriate connection in a following chapter.

It is a favourite subterfuge of the champions of the Black man to ascribe his unamiable characteristics of mind and temper, if not of body, to the centuries of enslavement, debasement, and even persecution that he has passed on this continent. Now we have no apology whatever to offer for the "institution" of African slavery. We recoiled from it instinctively at the dawn of consciousness, and we regard it now as an unmitigated curse to the people that practise it. But we must not leave unexposed the gross error in the defence just mentioned. These centuries have indeed been centuries of enslavement, but certainly not of debasement nor any form of retrogression. For slavery is and has been, from time immemorial, practically universal in the fatherland of the Negro—slavery more cruel and degrading and inhuman than is known elsewhere on the globe. We enter into no details, unwilling to make our pages needlessly repulsive. In fact, the training of servitude in the South has worked mightily for the Negro's advancement—not unlike the domestication of the lower animals. Any who will read the descriptions of travellers, or the pages of Lombroso—L'Uomo Bianco e L'Uomo di Colore—must admit that the humanizing of the African in the South has proceeded surprisingly far. However elementary and contradictory may be his notion and his practice of morality now, on his native heath he has practically no morality at all. "It is more correct to say of the Negro that he is non-moral than immoral. All the social institutions are at the same low level, and throughout the historic period seem to have made no perceptible advance, except under the stimulus of foreign (in recent times notably of Mohammedan) influences.... Slavery continues everywhere to prevail ... cannibalism is practiced ... human flesh appears to be sold in the open marketplace" (Keane). All this talk, then, of the Negro's degradation, wrought by his American slavery, is the absolute inversion of the truth.

But if the Black man has advanced so remarkably in Southern slavery, may we not expect him to advance still more remarkably, especially now that he is a free man? At first blush, this expectation may seem plausible; but a very little reflection and observation must show its vanity. The first sharp breath of winter lends a keen edge to the appetite; the continued cold does not make it keener and keener. The fagged-out man of business or leader of society retires to some cool and quiet health resort and reacts almost instantly. In a week he gains ten pounds, in two weeks fifteen, in a month twenty; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that this rate of gain could be maintained for any considerable time. The natural effect of the changed and improved conditions is soon exhausted, the limits set in the constitution of the subject are soon reached. So, too, in the domestication of plants and animals. A marvellous superficial alteration may be speedily brought about, but the bound is close at hand and is approached with rapidly decreasing velocity that soon becomes hardly perceptible. By no such means is any steady progress possible.

Precisely so in the domestication, education, civilization of the lower races. These latter do undoubtedly possess undeveloped potentialities; they are capable of better things. The immediate result of subjecting them to new conditions that stimulate their powers may often be highly gratifying. But herein lies no promise whatever of any progressive amelioration. The boundaries are near by; nor can they be overstepped by any such extra-organic agencies. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that, in perhaps every such case, there is some sacrifice—it may be a fatal sacrifice—of the native vigour of the primitive stock.

This reflection is completely confirmed by the actual example of the Negro in a state of freedom. Unless all the statistical indications be grossly misleading, the movement of the Afro-American average in the last generation has been down and not up, backward and not forward. [12] Especially the physical decline has been measurable and ominous. In Haiti the same experiment has been carried much further, and with results proportionately more disastrous. A hundred years of internecine strife have witnessed nothing but a slow reversion to barbarism. The interest on the public debt remains unpaid, agriculture is most primitive, manufactures languish, the industries for which the island was once famous are dead or dying, the beautiful French language is Africanized into a structureless patois. [13]

Here, too, is the natural place for one of the most plausible and at the same time most sophistical arguments yet advanced for the essential comparability, if not the perfect equality, of the White and the Black—an argument frequent on the lips of the most conspicuous leader of his people, namely: that the Negro, and only the Negro, has been able to maintain himself against or in presence of the aggressive Anglo-Saxon (we do not pretend to reproduce his words, not having them at hand, but we do not misrepresent his idea). However, the Negro has not maintained himself against, but only with and for, the Anglo-Saxon. A century long the Blacks did greatly flourish, because they were greatly cherished, in the South, despite occasional cruelty, which rarely or never hindered development. Fatuously enough, the Whites fancied it to their own interest to warm up the Blacks into the most vigorous life. The ante-bellum slaves were, perhaps, the best-nurtured labouring population to be found anywhere in the history of mankind. Moreover, their stock was actually strengthened by artificial selection. No wonder, then, that the Black man more than maintained himself under conditions that were racially so extremely favourable. Of course, little credit or none at all goes to the humanity of the slaveholder. The best that could be said would be that he displayed a semi-enlightened selfishness. He considered his slaves

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

It is, indeed, a wide-spread paradox of civilization, that the possessors exhibit far deeper wisdom in the treatment of their possessions than in the treatment of themselves. They choose food for their children less rationally than for their cows. A royal weakling was gazing admiringly at a lordly bull, and exclaimed: "What a magnificent specimen he is!" "Yes," replied the bull, "if your ancestors had been selected as carefully as mine, you would be a magnificent specimen, too."

There are yet other considerations, as the linguistic, of much weight, but of subtile or else of delicate nature, into which at present we forbear to enter. However, one further reflection of a very general nature must not be omitted. The diversities of type found even among Europeans, still more among other Caucasians, are remarkable and universally recognized. Norwegian and Italian, Russian and Spaniard, Cretan and Scot, can hardly be confounded, not to contrast Dane and Hindu, Teuton and Arab, Irishman and Jew. These diversities affect not merely or mainly the body, but still more the mind, all its products and institutions. Moreover, they are very persistent, maintaining and asserting themselves in scarcely diminished force from generation to generation, sometimes even under levelling conditions of highly composite intermixture. "We have seen how tenaciously they have clung to the type of their ancestors throughout all the vicissitudes of ages" (Ripley, Pop. Sci. Mon., March, 1898, p. 608).

The thread of national character, though interlaced and interwoven with bewildering perplexity, is found to stretch itself unbroken through the ages. In continuous illustration of this truth we may cite the great work of Lapouge, L'Aryen, and the researches of the school he so brilliantly represents. Furthermore, these differences are not merely sidewise, right and left, this way and that, in the same plane of quality. They are at least three-dimensional; they are up and down, higher and lower. The one race is distinctly superior, the other inferior, in some given particular. While all branches of this great family are very highly endowed, yet they are by no means equally endowed. Each has its points of excellence, but these points are not the same in number or importance. Even among these members of the same family, there is by no means equality; there are favourites of nature. Now even the protagonist of the Black man does not controvert Mr. Darwin, does not deny that the distinction between Negro and European is apparently great enough to mark off two species; it merely says the distinction is not of superior and inferior. But how can this be? Will any one deny that the Greek was measurably superior to the Mede in a host of important particulars? That he has excelled all other sons of men in certain respects? That he has fallen markedly below the Jew and the German in others? If, then, distinctions of inferior and superior do undoubtedly obtain between stems so closely knit physiologically and genetically, with what show of reason can it be held that varieties, like Negro and European, distinct enough for "true and good species," are yet not to be distinguished as inferior and superior? In what respect, pray then, are they distinguishable? Possibly some one may say that black, as a color for man, is neither better nor worse than white—we doubt it, but let it pass; that a broad, flat nose and thick, everted lips are neither inferior nor superior to the straight, clean-cut nose and lips curved like the bow of Phœbus. But even if we do not dispute about such tastes, the list of such regards is a very short one, and when we come to the profounder mental, moral, and social differences, we can find no other terms than greater and less to describe the relative endowments of the widely sundered races. The one breed of dogs does not differ from the other merely in length of hair or shape of head and face; it is superior or inferior in size, strength, courage, agility, endurance, ferocity, fidelity, docility, intelligence. Can we say less, must we not say more, of the varieties of men? We should really like to know, if the Greeks were neither superior nor inferior to the Bushmen, what was the real distinction between them?

Once again, if millennial contact and intermingling of such near affinities as Teuton and Alpine Kelt have not availed to efface their distinguishing features, either of body or of mind—if the wonted ancestral fires still live in the remote descendants—how can we hope for aught else from the mixture of European and African? Will not the slumberous apathy in which the Dark Continent broods away its æons surely fall upon the people that drink its blood into their own veins? Not to anticipate such a result is to scorn analogy, to despise science, to defy history.

We now come to the second question: Will intermingling with inferiors really lower the superior stock? It seems very hard to believe that any sober-minded man can long hesitate to answer, Yes. Does any breeder of horses or cattle or dogs or pigeons, or any cultivator of grains or flowers, or any student of heredity in either plants or animals, entertain any doubt whatever? We trow not. We need not, however, appeal to general principles, or to common sense, or to universal observation of the lower planes of life. The mingling of races is no new thing on our planet; it has been widely diffused, and the results are matters of record. We shall content ourselves with citing a single authority, than whom there is none higher—whom not even the most suspicious will suspect of Southern ignorance and prejudice. We allude to the distinguished author of "The American Commonwealth," and the "Assimilation of Races in the United States."

In his Romanes Lecture of June 7, 1902, on "The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind," Mr. Bryce says (p. 24): "Where two races are physiologically near to one another, the result of intermixture is good. Where they are remote, it is less satisfactory, by which I mean not only that it is below the level of the higher stock, but that it is not generally and evidently better than the lower stock.... But the mixture of whites and negroes, or of whites and Hindus, or of the American aborigines and negroes, seldom shows good results. The hybrid stocks, if not inferior in physical strength to either of those whence they spring, are apparently less persistent, and might—so at least some observers hold—die out if they did not marry back into one or other of the parent races. Usually, of course, they marry back into the lower." (N.B. Mr. Bryce, it appears, is so "provincial, unintelligent and unchristian" as to assume that the Whites are superior—a higher stock, and the Negroes inferior—a lower stock!) Again, p. 26: "... the two general conclusions which the facts so far as known suggest are these: that races of marked physical dissimilarity do not tend to intermarry, and that when and so far as they do, the average offspring is apt to be physically inferior to the average of either parent stock, and probably more beneath the average mental level of the superior than above the average mental level of the inferior." Again, p. 35: "Should this view be correct, it dissuades any attempt to mix races so diverse as are the white European and the negroes." And on p. 36: "The matter ought to be regarded from the side neither of the white nor of the black, but of the future of mankind at large. Now for the future of mankind nothing is more vital than that some races should be maintained at the highest level of efficiency, because the work they can do for thought and art and letters, for scientific discovery, and for raising the standard of conduct, will determine the general progress of humanity. If therefore we were to suppose the blood of the races which are now most advanced to be diluted, so to speak, by that of the most backward, not only would more be lost to the former than would be gained to the latter, but there would be a loss, possibly an irreparable loss, to the world at large." Lastly, p. 39: "The moral to be drawn from the case of the Southern States seems to be that you must not, however excellent your intentions and however admirable your sentiments, legislate in the teeth of facts.... Nevertheless, the general opinion of dispassionate men has come to deem the action taken in a.d. 1870 a mistake."

Now, we are quite willing to concede that possibly, even probably, there are exceptions to the general conclusions of this eminently fair-minded investigator. We feel sure there are many cases in which the Mulatto is raised distinctly above his coal-black parent; we believe there are some cases, relatively rare, absolutely frequent, in which he rises measurably above the median line, towards his white parent. The law of Mendel, or any other plausible law of inheritance, would lead us to expect such a result. And yet, the extreme difficulty of organic ascent, whether of the individual or of the race, as compared with the fatal facility of descent, prepares us to expect, in general terms, precisely what Mr. Bryce affirms. It is so easy to fall ill! It is so hard to get well! In any case, that the average of cross-breeding between widely separate races, like Black and White, rises above the mid-line or approaches the superior, is a proposition that runs squarely against all evidence and all reason, nor will anything but invincible prepossession maintain it.

True it is, that a great authority, a stalwart champion of the Black man, whose attention we had called to these extracts, declares in reply that he is "not at all affected by Mr. Bryce's statements." He thinks we have here, in the United States, a much broader basis of induction than the Englishman has (as if Mr. Bryce, the author of "Assimilation of Races in the United States" [1892], of all men, could neglect or ignore this important example!); he has in mind a case of triple mixture, reaching back several generations, yet the family are vigorous and of excellent character; and he refers to thousands of Mulattoes that are perfect physically—all of which may be true and yet not enlightening. We sometimes meet with not uncultured persons who are firmly persuaded that the moon controls the weather. Tell them that the most minute and accurate observations, extending through half a century and designed to test the matter, have failed to reveal any connection between the weather and the moon's phases; point out to them the insuperable obstacles in the way of their opinion—and they reply that they are "not at all affected by your statements", that they and their ancestors have observed for generations that changes in the weather coincide accurately with changes in the moon, that the broadest induction in their own neighbourhood shows clearly that beans will not flourish if planted in the dark of the moon, and that it would be madness to plant potatoes in the light. If any other facts or observations seem not to conform to this theory—why, so much the worse for them!

The general inferiority of the mixed stock has passed into a proverb even in Africa, where it is said: "A god created the whites; I know not who created the blacks; certainly a devil created the mongrels." So reports Livingstone (quoted by Lombroso), and adds that he had seen but one Portuguese Mestizo of robust health. In Brazil it is held that the mingling of Indian with Latin blood has not produced evil results, [14] but everywhere else such remote crossings have been more or less disastrous. Strikingly is this the case with the Zambos—the mixture of Indian and Negro; they are mainly degenerates and degraded. Thus E. G. Squier, writing of Honduras in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XII., says: "A small part of the coast, above Cape Gracias, is occupied by the Sambos, a mixed race of Indians and Negroes, which, however, is fast disappearing." In Mexico, Central and South America, the half-breeds are everywhere stationary or declining. In India the Eurasians (20,000 in Calcutta) "touch a level of degradation which is far lower than any reached by the pure heathen about them. They inherit defects more conspicuously than virtues from both races from which they spring" (Pop. Sci. Mon., Nov., 1892). In Japan the inferior Ainos are passing away before the superior Japanese. The hybrids are never healthy or vigorous, and vanish with the third or fourth generation. Here, in the United States, the testimony is all against the Mulatto. In a report of the Provost-Marshal General, the opinions of physicians stand eleven to one against the Mulatto as "scrofulous and consumptive," "degenerated physically," and the one favourable judgement reposes on only two instances. The anthropometry of the Mulatto is decidedly against him. His average lung capacity, the most significant of measurements, was found by Gould to be only 158.9 cubic inches against 163.5 for the pure Black, and 184.7 for the White. His respiration rate was equally unfavourable, being 19 per minute against 17.7 for the pure Black, and 16.4 for the White. We refer, also, to the testimony of Dr. Shaler (p. 52), that he had never known a Mulatto to pass threescore. The writer remembers the first use he ever heard of the word "cachectic;" his father spoke of it as a term generally applicable to Mulattoes.

From the convergence of all such testimony, which may be multiplied indefinitely, there seems no escape whatever. We must concede, with Lombroso: "It is impossible to contemplate these facts without admitting that marriages between some human races are much less fertile and happy than between others;" and especially unfortunate are those between such extremes as Whites and Negroes. When such anthropologists as Waitz, Serres, Deschamps, Bodichon, anticipate a millennium from universal miscegenation, it is only sentimentalism or else forgetfulness of the distinction drawn so properly by Topinard (Eléments d'Anthropologie générale, 1885) between the intermingling of nearly related and of distantly related races. In the first case the result is, in general, certainly good; in the latter, it is quite as certainly bad.

But let us now, merely for the moment and for the sake of argument, admit that both our premises are in doubt; that, perhaps, after all the Negro is not inferior organically—mentally, morally, or physically—to the Caucasian, and that interfertility might, perhaps, work no deterioration; would the case be essentially altered? Assuredly not. For even then the most extreme negrophilist must still admit that there is, at least, a reasonable doubt; even if the Negro be not proved inferior, yet he is certainly not proved equal, and there is a large body of at least apparent evidence against him; even if it be not certain that miscegenation would work deterioration, it is at least very possible and seemingly probable. Who, then, would have the foolhardihood to make this experiment of race amalgamation—an experiment which, once made, is made forever; whose consequences could never be undone—when there is at least and at the very lowest an undeniable possibility, not to say certainty, that those consequences would be disastrous in the extreme? Can we imagine a more wanton folly? Would such an experiment beseem any other place so well as the madhouse?

But some one will say that we are fighting "bogies"; that no one in the North, much less in the South, desires any such amalgamation. Do not believe it! The intense, the supreme yearning of large bodies of Negroes is for social recognition among the Whites—more especially for intermarriage with their haughty, old-time despisers. Who does not know this, simply does not understand the dominant facts of Southern life. [15] True, there may be no longer anyone in the North that openly advocates miscegenation—no one that would welcome or even tolerate it in his family, though we remember to have read years ago a distinct declaration, by no mean authority, that it might be a positive advantage to pour the strong, rich blood of the Black man into the languid veins of the Southern Whites! However, granted that all would now [16] disavow such a sentiment—and let us accept the disavowal unreservedly—the fact remains that the highest authorities in the North, the factors that form public opinion and guide legislation, have never yet to our knowledge raised their voices against miscegenation in the South. What means this expressive silence? In this momentous, all-overshadowing controversy, there is no middle ground. He that is not against amalgamation is for it. Who so does not oppose must ipso facto favour it. Only ciphers are neither plus nor minus.

Moreover, we affirm that he who denies our two cardinal theses, who denies the racial inferiority of the Negro, and the racial deterioration of the Mulatto, must consistently hold that mongrelization of the South is positively desirable; and we should esteem him not the less, but the more, for boldly defending it. [17] For if such miscegenation involves no declination from the Caucasian standard, then there is no reason whatever against it. On the other hand, there are strong reasons that favour it (as Bryce himself admits, p. 27, it "has two great merits"); in particular, it would bring about speedily and permanently a settlement of the race question, and a settlement far more amicable than is otherwise possible. There is no escape from this conclusion; and no disclaimer, however honest, can be adequate. The inference of approval, from non-hostility to miscegenation, is immediate and unavoidable; and we may justly hold our opponents to the logical consequence of their teachings, however earnestly they may reject it.

Herewith, then, for the present, we sheathe the sword for lack of argument; for it seems scarcely worth while to point out that when we demonstrate the racial inferiority of the Negroids, and insist upon the necessity of an impassable social chasm, we by no means excuse or extenuate any form of cruelty or injustice or oppression or inconsideration, political or other. Replies to our arguments are not pertinent when they fail to note this distinction, even though they may quote passages from the "Apostle of Heredity," written nearly a generation before his call to that apostolate. The humane man resents the maltreatment of inferiors no less quickly because he recognizes their inferiority; it is they that especially move his compassion. The ancient Hindu knew and felt this when he wrote: "He who needlessly tramples upon a worm in his path, that soul is darkly alienate from God."

This remark conducts us very near to certain semi-political phases of the matter; which, however, we leave to the politician, the pulpit, and the press. These are careful and troubled about many things; but there is one thing needful—that the rights of the generations unborn be guarded, that the Caucasian race integrity be preserved.