CHAPTER THREE

NURTURE? OR NATURE?

In the foregoing chapter we have propounded and answered the question as to the native inferiority of the Black race; and now the query arises, What more? Have we not already said that such is the end of the matter? But the subject is of transcendent importance, and we must not disguise from the reader that the considerations thus far adduced may not yet be admitted as perfectly conclusive by a certain highly intelligent class of thinkers. There is, namely, a very respectable school of anthropologists who will take nothing for granted and are disposed to call in question the most plausible assumptions and leave us no ground to stand on but what has been won by the severest logic. We can the less afford to pass by the contentions of these savants, since we think their principles are in the main correct, and we are in active sympathy with their general methods. In the present case, to be sure, we hold that they have not proved faithful to the pure reason, and that their skepticism will be found destitute of any sufficient warrant.

What, then, are the scruples of these critics? What niceties of demonstration, may they still insist, have passed unobserved? We shall use their own words as nearly as may be—the words of a "specially competent anthropologist."

(1) It is denied that any inference lies, in any particular case, from the brain to the mind. "No principle applicable to individuals can be laid down. Inspection of a brain, no matter how minute, will not permit a legitimate inference as to the intellectual status of the owner." This must be granted without reserve.

(2) Even in dealing with large groups, as of a thousand men, with brains averaging fifty-three and forty-six ounces, respectively, with corresponding physical proportions, "it is possible, but by no means certain, that the average mental capacity of the former would surpass that of the latter. But even such an inference would be based upon very scanty evidence." It seems plain that the word "possible" is here put incautiously for "probable." Otherwise the sentence is empty of meaning. As so corrected, it must stand. The only difference of opinion that could arise would concern the degree of probability. If we have read the evidence nearly aright, that degree would be very high, but it could not rise to certainty. To this extremely important matter we shall return at the proper place.

(3) With respect to "complexity of structure," which is supposed to condition or to indicate mental development, there is declared to be a "lack of any definite and certain knowledge as to the fundamental facts." This, also, seems true.

Quantitative information is wanting, but qualitative is at hand. We have no definite and certain knowledge as to the significance of the gyri and sulci in the brain; but this does not invalidate the general proposition that relates them in some way with mental power. The brain of a Helmholtz would almost certainly be deeply carved; the brain of an imbecile would almost certainly be uncommonly smooth. Between these extremes there lie relations infinite in variety and impossible to grade, so crossed and intercrossed are they with other elements. Nevertheless, the two opposite poles remain fixed, and the general indications of convolutions and of smoothness, other things being equal, cannot be mistaken.

(4) As to skull capacity, there are many difficulties in the way, and "the value of this evidence has come to be regarded as less than it was once considered to be, but still to a certain extent significant. In a general way it may be said to bear out the observations on the actual brains." We do not see how it could well be expected to do much more. Here, then, are three indicia—weight of brain, complexity of its structure, capacity of skull—each related directly, though indeterminately, to power of mind. If we call them x, y, z, then we may say, with some approach to truth, that mental strength depends upon their product, each taken with an unknown exponent, thus: x^p y^q z^r. This expression, to be sure, is not adequate; there are yet other factors, it may be many, as the post-pubertal extension of structural elements, and therewith of physiological connections, which we have no means of measuring or observing. But the real significance of these three is not, indeed cannot be, doubted. Thus, Manouvrier determined the skull capacity of thirty-two distinguished men to average 1663 cc., or 103 cc. above the general mean of 1560 cc.—an excess of nearly 7 per cent. Again, the mean weight of brain of thirty-four such men reached 1533 grammes—an excess of 163 over the average (1370), or almost exactly 12 per cent. No amount of reasonable allowance can rob these results of their import. It is no answer to say that the cranial capacity of forty-one murderers averaged 1593 cc., or 33 cc. (about two per cent.) above the mean. We see no reason why a murderer might not have more than ordinary intelligence, though many be degenerates; it is not at all unlikely that his central nervous system or some part of it should be highly developed. Unless we err widely, not a few of the greatest characters of history have been great criminals.

(5) What conclusions are recommended by "all these facts and factors"? "Truly, the results are meager. We are probably justified in saying that, anatomically, the brains of negroid races are somewhat less developed than those of Europeans." But it is held that "a little reflection shows the comparative insignificance of the distinction.... The most that can be said is that the European series will show more very large brains than the negroid, and the negroid series more very small brains than the Europeans." Precisely! And it is just this excess of "very large brains," or at least of its general correlate, very large minds, that has the profoundest "significance" for civilization, for all that is great and glorious in history and in humanity. Not only must we, in accordance with the law of Deviation from the Average, interpret this excess of "very large brains" as implying a higher general level, but the meaning and value of these exceptions are incalculable. [18] Who can estimate the import of the one brain in a million, when it is the brain of Moses or Mohammed, of Aristotle or Archimedes, of Vergil or Galilei, of Leibnitz or Voltaire, of Darwin or Washington? Such brains are the foci of the orbits of history; such men blaze out the pathways for the feet of their kind. Without them we wander round and round, lost in the erroneous wood. The race that can produce such "very large brains" is the race of advancement and culture; they shine like stars in the firmament of history, and the multitudes steer their courses thereby. It is these exceptions that mark out the line between progress and stagnation, between civilization and barbarism; a race that is deficient in such exceptions is a race already condemned.

It is altogether vain to interpose that this acknowledged anatomical defect is, after all, only slight. The difference between the brains of a fish-monger and of a Socrates may be only slight—an ounce or so in the scale, a line or so in depth of convolution; yet it corresponds to the interval between mediety and the vertex of genius. Such differences are vanishingly small, or inexpressibly great, according to the origin of reckoning. And herewith we uncover the fallacy that lies so snugly hidden away in the phrase "comparative insignificance." Undoubtedly! If we reckon from the amœba, the witling seems scarcely distinguishable from the wit; but if we reckon from the average of humanity, they start asunder like the poles. The summits of the Himalayas are only some four or five miles above the valley of the Ganges; estimated from the centre of the earth, this difference is little more than one-thousandth of the whole—a difference hardly appreciable to the eye, even when armed with a microscope; and yet it means the difference between the impenetrable jungle and the inaccessible minarets of the roof of the world. The difference between some "Rafael" and some imitation may be very slight and escape the uncritical eye, and yet make out the distinction between a masterpiece and a daub. Illustrations abound. It is a multitude of trifles that constitutes perfection; but perfection is not a trifle. That the recognized and constated superiority of the European brain is slight, by no means implies that the "mental expression" of this superiority may not be illimitably grand.

Since the question of brain-weights is extremely important, it does not seem fair to the reader to furnish him only vague, general statements. Accordingly, we here submit something more definite, even though it appear like a long parenthesis inserted in the body of our discourse.

From the autopsies of 405 Whites, Blacks, and intermediates, made by Surgeon Ira Russell, the following conclusions have been drawn by Dr. Sanford B. Hunt, surgeon of United States Volunteers in the Civil War: "(1) The standard weight of the negro brain is over five ounces less than that of the white. (2) Slight intermixture of white blood diminishes the negro brain from its normal standard, but when the infusion of white blood amounts to one-half (mulatto), it determines a positive increase in the negro brain, which, in the quadroon, is only three ounces below the white standard. (3) The percentage of exceptionally small brains is largest among negroes having but a small proportion of white blood." Of these 405, there were 141 Blacks, and only twenty-four Whites; the others were mixed. We may omit these latter, and may substitute the results of 278 other autopsies of Whites, and form this table:

Here we observe: Dr. Hunt's (1) does not seem warranted; the number (24) of White brains weighed seems too small. But the weights of the 278 Whites show that the smaller weight of the Negro brain is a fact. More extensive observation shows that the Black average is about four ounces below the White. The absence of very large brains among the Blacks comes out most distinctly. There were no Black brains weighing over fifty-six ounces, only five weighing so much as fifty-five; whereas, eight White brains weighed over sixty ounces, and forty weighed over fifty-five. Likewise of the twenty-four Whites, only one fell under forty-five ounces, but forty-one of the 141 Blacks; also, only forty-seven of the 278 Whites; it is plain, then, that large brains predominate among the Whites and small ones among the Blacks.

This, however, is not nearly all the evidence on this question. In the course of an elaborate article in the Philosophical Transactions for 1868, pp. 505 sqq., Dr. J. Barnard Davis makes this remark: "As a general conclusion, without analyzing the results of Tiedemann's gaugings of negro skulls, it may be unhesitatingly asserted that the brain-weight of negroes is positively below that of Europeans" (p. 522). "The general mean of our African races, as deduced from 113 skulls, 53 of men and 60 of women, a tolerably equal proportion, is 43.89 ounces, or 1244 grams. This is 3.23 ounces, or ninety-one grams, less than our European general mean" (p. 523). He also finds the mean internal capacity of 393 European skulls to be 92.3 cubic inches, and 113 African skulls to be 86.9 cubic inches—a defect of nearly 7 per cent. Morton found the average capacity of 62 native African skulls to be 83 cubic inches, and of 12 Afro-American skulls to be 82 cubic inches.

More recently (1880), Dr. Bischoff has published at Bonn a very thorough work on "Das Hirngewicht des Menschen," in which the present subject is handled minutely and very temperately. We translate some of his remarkably sane and judicial conclusions: "From all of this it follows that we are by no means justified in affirming outright the proposition that brain-weight and spiritual capacity and achievement keep equal pace and that a large and heavy brain of itself betokens a man highly endowed in both respects, a small and light brain a man niggardly equipped. But just as little justified would be the conclusions that size and weight of brain stand in no connection with spiritual gifts and accomplishments. Rather must we be convinced that both factors, brain-weight and spiritual capacity and achievement, are magnitudes too complex for their parallelism to appear to be proved so simply, although the same (parallelism) is none the less present" (p. 142).

The following seems to have been written with some foreboding of the more recent anthropology that "minimizes this difference" between European and Negroid, and regards "the mental gap as more apparent than real, and due rather to experience and training than to innate factors."

"The capacity for spiritual achievement is, I believe, as regards both magnitude and variety, always innate, a gift of Nature, and expressed in the magnitude and weight of the brain and the development of the convolutions, either in the whole or in the single parts. In it, aside from morbid alterations, the individual can bring about no change, neither by addition nor by subtraction. But the degree and the kind of the development of this endowment (Ausbildung dieser Anlage) depends on a thousand other conditions, partly quite beyond the insight and will of the individual—partly, however, subject thereto. All that we call education, culture, social position, example, and, on the part of the individual, good-will, industry, zeal, etc., work for the development of the endowment, and the achievement depends thereon. Endowment, as already said, is unalterable; but the degree of the development and achievement may vary a thousandfold" (p. 165).

On p. 169, Bischoff starts the interesting query, whether any enhancement of the endowment (Steigerung der Anlage) in general or in particular directions, through increase of the brain, in general or in particular parts, be actual or possible in the course of time, along the path of culture (auf dem Wege der Zuchtung). Broca thought that he had observed a change in the skull capacity of Parisians, in the lapse of centuries; but his results (thinks Bischoff) are very far from being sure. Thus far there is no proof of any such possibility. But even if this latter were conceded, Bischoff adds, the actuality of such a change would by no means follow. So great is the present endowment that all progress that can thus far be proved, may be explained through the development of this endowment, and such will, doubtless, for a long time yet, be the case as regards both the individual and the generations (p. 170). We may add that Bischoff has no doubt whatever either of the lesser brain-weight or of the lower mental capacity of the African Negro.

When, now, we ask what is the real significance of these weights, we are fortunately able to refer to the tables of Dr. H. Matiegka, given in Part I. of his researches "Ueber das Hirngewicht, die Schädelkapacität und die Kopfform, sowie deren Beziehungen zur psychischen Thätigkeit des Menschen" (Sitzb. d. kön. böhm. Ges. d. Wiss. 1902). He has arranged 235 brain-weights in six groups, according to occupation, proceeding from the lowest labourers at odd jobs, who could not learn a trade or find steady employment, up to men of notable intellectual power. Here is the table, showing the number in each group and the average weight of brain:

Here we observe that the excess of this average over that of the 141 Blacks is 4.24 ounces. Also we remark that the average of the lowest of Matiegka's groups, the shiftless and incompetent, is nearly 48.61 ounces, which is much above the average (46.96) yielded by Dr. Russell's 141 measurements of pure Blacks. Look at it another way. The defect of the day-labourer's brain, as compared with the scholar's, in Matiegka's groups, is precisely six per cent. Even if the average white brain weighed only fifty ounces, a defect of six per cent. would reduce it only to forty-seven ounces, which is still above the average of the Blacks. This latter, then, falls appreciably below the lowest white standard.

Once more, we now come to see clearly the immense significance of the admittedly "somewhat less developed Negroid brain." The famous lines of Browning seem to have been written especially for this occasion:

The difference between the averages of the highest and the lowest of the Matiegka groups is only six per cent.; and yet how infinite its moment for humanity and civilization! The difference meanwhile between the general averages of the White and the Black is little if any less than eight per cent. (52-48 = 4, that is, 1-13 or 7.7 per cent.). Who, then, can compute its import for the history of the race?

To be sure, it is easy to pooh-pooh the Bohemian's measurements and to scout his averages as reckoned from too scanty material. Nor would we attach to them any undue importance. We have never denied that there are many disturbing factors. Nevertheless, the general indication seems altogether unmistakable. Nothing can disguise or deeply obscure the broad patent fact that all the meridians of evidence converge towards one and the same pole, namely: The average Negroid brain is sensibly inferior to the average Caucasian; and even a slight defect or excess in average is correlated with the profoundest meaning for culture and for civilization.

What must be said, then, of such as proclaim: "This fable [of Negroid inferiority] has been repeated and gladly believed.... But there is absolutely no physiological basis for it so far as the best studies of brain structure go.... The arrogance of Anglo-Saxon and Caucasian supremacy must find its justification, if anywhere, in the bare will and brute power to have it so, rather than in any conclusions of science"? 'The Apostle' has already shaped the answer: "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for man, but not according to knowledge."

(6) As "minimizing this difference still further," it is observed that "the Eskimo even shows a brain weight and development well above the average of whites. Here again, however, the material is too scanty to permit of generalization." Altogether "too scanty," it would seem. Hardly half a dozen such brains (we speak under correction) have been weighed or examined. Besides, no one would maintain that weight alone is sufficient. That large brains generally go with great minds by no means implies the converse, that great minds generally go with large brains. If the Eskimo brain be really heavier than the European, which is by no means proved, and yet the Eskimo mind inferior, the meaning is that in some other unknown respect of organization the Eskimo brain falls so far behind the European as more than to overbalance its excess of weight. Such a state of case is no way improbable.

(7) "If we admit a real difference between the brains of Europeans and negroes," it is still impossible to grade the intermediate races satisfactorily. But this means nothing more than that numerous factors, known and unknown, enter into the final product in some complex fashion not yet understood. It is very far from meaning that the obvious factors, constated and admitted, have not the general significance commonly claimed.

Such are the anatomical concessions that this school of anthropologists feel themselves called upon to make. The reader must observe that, however much one may "minimize," it remains at the last impossible to evaporate the solid central fact that the "Negroid brain is somewhat less developed than the European." In this fundamental indication all the facts, so far as known, concur. But this is the very core of the whole controversy. What more do we ask? What more do we need? We have never been unduly prodigal of intensive adverbs; we have never asserted that "other races are so naturally and essentially inferior in their brain structure that they can never be expected to equal the white race nor to be competent for self-government." For "who can so forecast the years?" Not we, certainly, who are neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, nor a dealer in any such indefinitely remote futures. Our contention was and is and will be that now and here, nay more, that everywhere on the face of the earth and everywhen within recorded time, the Negro has shown himself in every definable respect incomparably inferior culturally to the Caucasian; hence it is concluded prima facie, since culture is "mental expression," that the Negro is mentally inferior to the Caucasian, and always has been so within historic, and even far back prehistoric, time. It is this historico-cultural argument that has been advanced to the forefront; and against it, where is there found, in the preceding hostile summary of anatomical facts, even the feeblest countervail? Indeed, the harmony of history and anatomy seems perfect; if neither proves or necessitates the other, yet indubitably each is about what might be expected from the other. Not one scientific fact has ever yet been adduced to weaken their mutual support.

It is precisely here, however, that another most important phase of the matter comes to light. The ingenious humanitarian fancies that he can turn the edge of the foregoing arguments completely. It was Theodor Waitz who, in his "Anthropology" (London, 1863), suggested that the relation between human culture and human faculty might be the inverse of what was commonly conceived. Instead of the culture resulting from the faculty, it might be the faculty that resulted from the culture. Accordingly, we should not say that the Greek civilization with its language, its art, its science, its philosophy, its eloquence, its literature, its civil and military life, was the outgrowth of the Greek genius, the native faculty of the Hellenic race, but rather that this genius, this spiritual faculty, this unrivalled intellectual-artistic endowment of the Greeks, was the continuous resultant at each moment in the history of the race of the collective culture-experiences through which, up to that moment, it had passed. We have tried conscientiously to state this doctrine, that race endowment is the reaction from race culture-experience, as forcibly and as plausibly as possible; but we cannot hope to have redeemed it from patent absurdity. Surely there was never a plainer case of the cart before the horse. No one denies or forgets that training and discipline do quicken and sharpen the intellectual faculties; they enable a man to make the most of himself, to realize his possibilities, to develop himself to the utmost. The power to solve a problem in algebra or geometry is the result, in part, of the previous training in those subjects. Here is the very partial and most familiar truth that lies hid away in Waitz's stupendous error. But was the ability to understand algebra and geometry given by the actual study of the same, given step by step? By no means. The knowledge necessary to understand the successive propositions does indeed grow thus step by step, but not the power. Open the book at the middle; there you may find a theorem whose proof you readily understand, because it implies very little previous knowledge. Newton at first thought Euclid's Elements a "light book," because it offered him no difficulty. But if you meet with some unfamiliar affirmation, then comes the question, why? The answer is found in some theorem already proved. Turn back to it; perhaps the proof involves some still more fundamental property, and again you ask, why? Again you must recur to some earlier theorem; and so on, until all your "whys" are answered with all possible clearness in irreducible axioms or postulates. He who has the mental ability will find this method of learning a theorem entirely practicable, and it may sometimes be found highly instructive. But it excludes all question of gradual growth of mental power through the successive "stages of culture" itself.

Consider, again, this most frequent observation. A boy will distinguish himself greatly in the high school, and perhaps in the first half of his college course. He seizes with avidity upon the elementary notions of mathematics, for instance; he revels in problems and "originals." But on approaching the steeper ascents, he finds his steps falter and his senses reel. The subtler theories and processes more and more elude his grasp; the more highly developed concepts become more and more unmanageable. Let him be never so thoroughly familiar with the mid-regions, the heights remain forever inaccessible. In such a case the honest teacher and the honest student will both admit that further pursuit would be well-nigh profitless; while something may still be learned in a way, yet real mastery is out of the question, and original work as impossible as flight to the moon. The limits of native power have been reached, and all attempts to transcend them are idle.

In music, in plastic art, in literature, in all higher forms of mental activity, even in the professions and in business, the same state of case is present. The mere technique may indeed be learned step by step, and it is by no means profitless or unimportant. But not all the "stages of culture" conceivable could ever arm the most persistent student with "faculty" to produce the Appassionata, or the Last Judgement, or Hamlet, or even a Wall Street corner in stocks. On the other hand, the inborn "faculty" speeds swiftly and easily through all such preparatory "stages of culture," or even flanks them altogether, boldly breaking new paths through unexplored regions. Nor needs it that these preliminaries should have been traversed by the ancestors of the richly endowed, who may have had no artistic or scientific experience whatever. At every point, then, this Waitzian notion of "faculty," as the efflux of culture, is seen to be an extreme distortion of the truth.

The later disciples have slightly modified the earlier view, but retain the essence. Thus it is said that "the mind of man manifests itself in different ways in different groups." Psychologically and sociologically the racial problem rests upon the explanation of these differences of mental manifestation. Two lines of reasoning are open. The differences depend either upon inherent differences of mental capacity or are due to influences of environment, using the word in its broadest sense. Either the savage represents a lower stage of mental development than his civilized relative or he does not. The answer to the question presented is not easy ... it is interesting to note that the trend of authoritative opinion is distinctly in the direction of minimizing the degree of difference of mental capacity between savage and civilized man and regarding the mental gap as more apparent than real and due rather to experience and training than to innate factors. To paraphrase a recent writer, "it is rather a question of mental contents than of mental capacities." Such is the latest statement of this school.

The most dangerous errors are those that contain a certain element of truth. The present is a case in point. Let it be noted, then, that the alternatives mentioned above are not alternatives at all; they are not mutually exclusive, but quite consistent and perhaps always co-existent. The "two lines of reasoning" do not intersect, but are parallel. The "differences depend," not "either ... or," but both "upon inherent differences of mental capacity" and "are due to influences of environment." The twain have undoubtedly acted and reacted upon each other. The divine law, to him that hath shall be given, from him that hath not shall be taken away, has found here the widest application. The process of evolving a civilization or a human type is a most complex one, and we by no means exclude or "minimize" the objective factors when we frankly recognize the subjective ones. Here lies the primal error of the prevalent humanitarianism. It perceives that education is much; it rashly concludes that education is all. But the homeliest wisdom knows far better.

No, a thousand times no! Environment is not all nor nearly all—nay, not nearly half. Says Lombroso: "The action of climate and circumstance is very slight by the side of heredity" (op. cit., p. 88). Saith Heraclitus, "Much learning does not teach to have mind"; saith Pindar, "His art is true who by nature hath knowledge," and he scorns the crows that have but learned. Let the outer impact be what it will, it is the "inherent" qualities that determine the response. Sing out the natural C; among a score of tuning-forks only one will reply. Nay more; different constitutions may make exactly opposite replies: "the roar of the lion scatters the sheep, but gathers the jackals"; the prayer of Clarence but hardens the heart of the first murderer, though it softens the soul of the second. All this, one would think, a child might understand. Nature blazons it on every leaf and every star, and proclaims it with a million tongues; but overhumane doctrinaires will neither see nor hear anything that impugns their sacrosanct dogma, that "all men are created equal". "The trend of authoritative opinion" insists on "minimizing the degree of difference of mental capacity" and regarding the mental gap as more apparent than real and due rather to experience and training than to innate factors—whereat the current philanthropy claps its hands and cries, "Eureka! Come, now! Let us train and experience the Negro and close up the mental gap in a jiffy"! But will some manufacturer or wholesale importer of "authoritative opinions" kindly inform us what "mental gap" has ever been closed up by "experience and training"?

Great, indeed, is the potence of "environment"; greater, by far, the potence of heredity. Fortunately we are not left quite in the dark as to their relative importance. In discussing "race suicide" an eminent scholar, who is always sage and sagacious, save only when celeri saucius Africo, declares: "That those who are intellectually the best in each generation should leave the fewest descendants is a serious thing; for all the recent work in anthropology teaches the importance of heredity, and tends to prove Galton's theory that genius is inherited." From a study of the one thousand most eminent men of history, but for whom "the world would have made little progress in learning, invention or wealth," Processor Cattell concludes that "heredity, including in that term both stability and variability of stock, is more potent than social tradition or physical environment." From a study of European royal genealogies, it is deduced by Dr. F. A. Woods, of Harvard, that "heredity has exercised in mental life a factor not far from nine-tenths, while from the moral side something over one-half."

Without placing implicit faith in such numerical estimates, and without pausing to inquire how one might best "exercise a factor", the reader will note the admitted dominance of heredity over all other forces. It will be observed that the deductions of Dr. Woods refer to the "mental life" and the "moral side" in general, and not merely to extraordinary manifestations or "genius," as in "Galton's theory". Surely there is little enough of the latter to be found in "all the royal families of Europe", and quite sufficient of something else. Besides, it seems clear that if genius be inherited, if marked deviations from the average in this direction or in that be transmitted, then a fortiori must also the general average character be itself in detail determined by inheritance. For every example of "inherited genius" there lie close at hand, under common and immediate observation, a thousand examples of inheritance of qualities physical, mental, and moral that fall within the bounds of the normal. Such qualities have beneath them a far solider substructure of age, a far more settled and less mutable organic habit of centuries, than do the new growths, the spontaneous mutations, that we call genius, or any marked eccentricity. If, then, the latter be inherited, far more so the former. And such is precisely the foundation on which the whole fabric of the foregoing argument has been reared.

Let the reader observe that the question, the only real question, regards the "mental gap" between the Negro and the Caucasian, for which we dare not substitute "between savage and civilized man". This matter is entirely another and entirely irrelevant. The "difference of mental capacity" between the savage Greek and the civilized Egyptian was indeed great, but was in favour of the savage youth and against the civilized ancient. So, too, the savage Teuton fully equalled or excelled in mental capacity his civilized Italian foeman. The defects of these savages were cultural, not mental proper, and culture was enough speedily to supply them. But where, we ask again, have real "mental gaps" been filled up by culture? Where have racial characteristics been transformed or abolished? Have equal opportunities raised the 150,000 Negroes in Pennsylvania to the white level? Or the 100,000 in New York? Or those in New England? Or in Chatham, Ontario? Or in Paris? When Greek culture led captive the Roman captor, did it arm him with Greek genius? Did it close up the "mental gap"? When the bow of Hellenic science fell into the hands of the Arab, was he quite able to bend it?

We recall our anthropologic and ethnologic disputants to the ridge of war, and ask, Do they really believe that the difference between the Niger and the Euphrates was one of "experience and training"? If so, pray tell us how many more years had the Sumerians lived seventy centuries ago than the citizens of Dahomey up to now? Did the former enjoy, like the latter, a contact for centuries with American missionaries and European civilization? And whence came the "experience and training" of Hammurabi and Sin-mubalit and their ancestors? Who trained their trainers? If indeed "it is a question of mental contents rather than of mental capacities," whence, we insist, came those "mental contents"? Did they fall out of the sky into the empty skulls of Nineveh? Why, then, did this meteoric shower powder Mesopotamia so densely and sprinkle a dust so impalpable over the Sudan? "Mental contents rather than mental capacities"? True, the word "capacities" is unluckily chosen; "faculties" would have been better, but, even as it stands, there was never a more manifest inversion of the truth. We have taught for a score of years and every year we see more clearly that the teacher is helpful mainly to the favoured few that do not need him. We appeal to the whole tribe of teachers, from Dan to Beersheba—what one has ever supplied "mental contents" in the absence of "mental capacities"? This is preëminently the age of education. Its agencies are all-embracing and bewildering in their complexity and universality. Everything is taught and everything is studied in the most thoroughgoing fashion, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall. If it be merely or mainly a question of "experience and training" and "mental contents," surely we have distanced our ancestors immensely;—we are altogether "out of sight". Genius should run riot on our streets. Homers, Platos and Euclids, Cæsars, Shakesperes and Newtons, Goethes and Kants, Pascals, Dantes and Titians, should be as plenty as blackberries. And yet such is not very notably the case. There is still some room at the top. The supply of abilities of the very highest order is nowhere markedly in excess of the demand.

Will anyone contend that "experience and training" and subcranial injection of "mental contents" have ever been able to close up the "mental gap" between individuals of the same race, or even of the same family? Why, then, imagine that they may close up the far wider gap between individuals of different races—between the races themselves? This doctrine of the all-sufficiency of "experience and training" and "mental contents" assumes, in fact, the proportions of an overgrown ironical joke and would grace the vacuous columns of Judge far better than the sober-minded pages of Anthropology. As a child we have sometimes wondered why the eagle should so far outfly the turkey-gobbler; it seems the mystery is now clearly resolved—the eagle has doubtless had more "experience and training".

We sometimes see it attempted to strengthen the plea for the essential equality of the Negro by reference to the Japanese, who are declared not inferior, though "they would have been called an inferior, a hopelessly submerged race, half a century ago. But they have made a sudden change. This has been no slow Darwinian development, but a per saltum evolution of a new intellectual type—if we may not rather call it a spring blossoming out of ages of winter. There is now every appearance that a similar efflorescence is coming with the negro race—only they have begun with utter ignorance and slavery, and have more to learn, and find less encouragement". Now, in this notion of "efflorescence" there is an element of truth. There are bloom-periods in the life of the race, as of trees and of men. We speak of the Periclean, the Augustan, the Elizabethan age. "For greater dooms do greater doles obtain," [19] was said in the ancient mystery. "Spirits are not finely touch'd but to fine issues". Extraordinary junctures and crises in the life of the individual and of the race may rouse slumbering powers into vehement activity. But that such admitted facts will bear the weight of inference thrown upon them, we must stoutly deny. The thorn and the thistle may indeed bloom and fructify, but they will not bear grapes or figs. They will bring forth fruit after their kind. Greeks were Greeks before Marathon or Salamis, before even Homer or Agamemnon. Witness the outburst of Arabic genius after Mohammed! Yet Bagdad and Granada could never become like unto Athens or Alexandria. But why multiply illustrations? Efflorescence is one thing, transmutation is another. "We seem to see such a paroxysmal impulse now taking possession of the negro race in this country"! We gravely doubt this "sudden start upward"; we strongly suspect things are not what they seem. We label all such statements "important, if true". [20]

The illustration from the Orient will not serve its purpose. We by no means admit that Japan does yet "take a front rank among the strong and intellectual nations of the world". One swallow does not make it spring. We are used to parallels between Sophocles and Ibsen. A Harvard junior declared Demosthenes to be the Edward Everett of Greece. But in any case it is not true that "they have made a sudden change". It was only gross ignorance that would have called them "hopelessly submerged half a century ago". They were then, even as they are now and as they were hundreds of years before, an artistic, ingenious, enterprising people, with a well-developed culture—language, literature, religion, social and civic and military life. [21] Contact with Western civilization has indeed aroused them and spurred their ambition, and turned their ancient powers into modern channels; but we can by no means say it has really augmented those powers or begotten any new ones. It is far from clear that this contact will prove ultimately beneficial. The Oriental grain is not improved to every eye by a cheap veneering of Occidental science and commercialism. We have read of a boy who was gilded from head to foot, to represent an angel at a church festival. The experiment was eminently successful: it turned him not only into an apparent angel, but also into a real one. A similar result may be anticipated as the ultimate issue of all attempts, however well-meant, to engraft alien civilization upon the really backward races of mankind. They will finally be civilized off the face of the earth, or at least from all regions habitable and healthful for the civilizing race.

It seems to be of interest, however, and the dictate of fairness, to recall that, according to a very high and recent, though perhaps not infallible, authority (Professor Ripley), the roots of the great European race-tree are two: [22] the broad-headed Kelt from Asia and the long-headed Teuton from Africa. If so, then this latter stock, though now the fairest among the sons of men,

was once the very darkest! What combined agencies, as of climate and selection, have wrought out this marvellous depigmentation, we need not here inquire. Suffice it that, on the one hand, this fact, if it be a fact,—non nobis est componere tantas lites—would seem to ground the bare possibility that even now such combined agencies might in the same lapse of time bring about a similar transfiguration of the West African. And this we readily grant—if the physiologic nature of the Negro be as plastic now as it was a hundred thousand years ago—which we cannot disprove, but which we have no right to assume. Be this as it may, we have never denied this or any other abstract possibility of negritic evolution. We merely maintain that probability is the guide of life, and that there is no appreciable probability of any such evolution.

On the other hand, if the bright-haired children of the snow and foam be really sprung from such sable prognathous ancestors, then their divergence from the ancestral type most certainly began untold millenniums ago, and the present organic departure from that type is measured, as it were, by the measureless chasm of years that divides them from their African forebears. Now, if nature and the tide of time have spent such centuries of centuries in chiseling out this chasm, how infinitely preposterous to suppose that man can close it up in a generation with the filmy webs of common culture and social equality and civil rights and partisan legislation and caricatured religion and the political spoils of the country post-office! As well expect to rise from the floor to the roof without ever traversing the intervening space.

CHAPTER FOUR

PLEA AND COUNTERPLEA

By far the ablest plea yet made for the "backward races" is to be found in the address of Dr. Franz Boas on Human Faculty as Determined by Race, published (at least, printed) in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1894. This distinguished anthropologist, now of Columbia University, New York City, speaks from the pinnacles of science, and his words must not go unregarded. We shall notice every salient point in his twenty-six pages, and shall quote him verbatim as far as possible. Such a formal defence seems to call for an equally formal rejoinder.

He objects to the argument from the superiority of the White civilization to the superiority of the White race as involving two errors: (a) "the achievement and the aptitude for an achievement have been confounded", (b) "every deviation from the white type is considered a characteristic feature of a lower type" (p. 302). It is declared that "these two errors underlie our judgments of races;" but why and whether they are really errors, or in what measure, here at least no attempt is made to show. This will not do. Such plausible assumptions are neither disproved nor discredited by merely labeling them "errors." However, there follows: "It might be objected that although achievement is not necessarily a measure of aptitude, it seems admissible to judge the one by the other" (pp. 302-3). But why "objected"? Has any reason been opposed against which one could "object"? None whatever. We do object very seriously to the implication that already there has been advanced some argument. The word "objected" should be changed to "argued."

Hear now the answer to this "objection." "It seems desirable to enter into these questions somewhat fully. Let our mind go back a few thousand years until it reaches the time when the civilizations of eastern and of western Asia were in their infancy. As time passed on, these civilizations were transferred from one people to another, some of those who had represented the highest type of culture sinking back into obscurity, while others took their places. During the dawn of history, we see civilization clinging to certain districts, in which it is taken up now by one people, now by the other. In the numerous conflicts of these times the more civilized people were often vanquished. The conqueror, however, learned the arts of life from the conquered and carried on the work of civilization. Thus the centres of civilization were shifting to and fro over a limited area and progress was slow and often interrupted. At the same period the ancestors of the races, who are now among the most highly civilized, were in no [?] way superior to primitive man as we find him now in regions that have not come into contact with modern civilization.

Was the culture attained by the ancient civilized people of such character as to allow us to claim for them a genius superior to that of any other race?"

Such is not the question; it is not about "any other race," but about the present backward races—African especially and Australian. It should have been said, "Was Greek civilization such as to indicate that the Athenian was superior to the Senegambian or the Hottentot?" Will any one hesitate for an answer?

"First of all, we must bear in mind that none of these civilizations was the product of the genius of a single people."

Here the cards are conveniently shuffled and the terms changed from "race" to "people." The question, however, is not about "peoples" proper, but about "races." While notable differences hold among "peoples" of the same "race," yet the one race it is, the Caucasian, that is held to be superior. This one race has produced all the civilizations in question; the Mongol comes next, at a far remove. And of Caucasians, the Aryan shines like the moon amid the stars.

"Ideas and inventions were carried from one to the other; and, although intercommunication was slow, each people which participated in the ancient civilization added to the culture of the others. Proofs without number have been forth-coming which show that ideas have been disseminated as long as people have come into contact with each other and that neither race nor language nor distance limits their diffusion. As all have worked together in the development of the ancient civilizations, we must bow to the genius of all, whatever race they may represent: Hamitic, Semitic, Aryan or Mongol."

But to all in equal measure? Or to some in far higher measure? That is the question. We must not think of the Senate, where all states vote alike; but of the House of Representatives, where "Little Rhody" vanishes by the side of New York or Texas. Even if all races did contribute to the sum total, which is far from true, there is an immense difference between contributions that may vary from a penny to a pound. The English language "bows to the genius" of all, from the Teuton to the Mongol; but the former element is vital, the latter is inappreciable.

We have quoted these paragraphs in full and for several reasons: We would represent our opponent as correctly as possible; they are a fair sample of his argumentation; and, especially, as argument they are to us incomprehensible—hence we would not attempt to condense them. Possibly our readers may understand them better. So far as we can make out, the savant has deceived himself by conjuring with the words "people" and "race." The question was, whether the Caucasian, "the white race," the great civilization-building race, in any or in all of its "peoples," is superior to the "races" African, Australian, and the like, that have produced no civilizations? If not, "why, then, did the white race alone develop a civilization which is sweeping the whole world, etc.?" To this, his own question, these paragraphs contain no element of answer, much less answer itself. They seem to forget all about "races," and turn aside to slightly varying "peoples" of the same "white race." They ask (in effect): Does the civilization of the Greek indicate that he was superior to the West African? And they reply (in effect) that the Hellenic culture was very composite—part Doric, part Æolic, part Ionian, with a sprinkling from the Nile and the Euphrates. Surely this is not argument; it is hardly the simulacrum of argument. Such a mingling of bloods of varying virtues and tendencies is now actually going on in our midst; but they are all of the same "white race," neither physiologically nor psychologically very far apart; and such a mingling may very well make for higher evolution. When it is affirmed that our "ancestors" "were in no way superior to Hottentots and Guinea Negroes" (the long phrase is a mere euphemism) "at the same period," "during the dawn of history," we protest earnestly. The affirmation assumes everything in dispute. The evidence is all against it. Their language, their mythology, the fact that they were of the White race which "did alone develop a civilization," the fact that they took fire immediately when touched by the torch of culture, their bodies and particularly their skulls—all cry aloud against this complacent assumption. More than a "few thousand years" ago the Sumerians had observed the precession of the equinoxes; at "the dawn of history" in Germany, Augustus cried vainly to Varus, "Give me back my legions." Arminius in no way superior to a Sudanese! The Babylonian legislators and astronomers "in no way superior" to the cannibals of the Niger!

"Did no other races develop a culture of equal value?" (p. 304). He shrinks from a positive yea or nay, but holds "that the civilizations of ancient Peru and of Central America may well be compared with the ancient civilization of the Old World," "that the general status of their culture was nearly equally high." Herewith this great savant seems to place himself beyond the pale of argument. Does any one believe that Greek or Roman civilization would have gone down without a blow at the mere breath of Pizarro or Cortés? And where are the Peruvian or Aztec Homer and Thales, Apelles and Euclid, Cicero, Vergil, and Trajan? On this there is no need to dwell longer.

"What then is the difference between the civilization of the Old World and that of the New World? It is only a difference in time. The one reached a certain stage three thousand or four thousand years sooner than the other" (p. 304).

This is mere assertion. There is not the shadow of evidence that the Peruvian or Mexican would ever have approached the Greco-Roman civilization, either in four thousand or in forty thousand years. What has been done in the last four hundred years, under the stimulus of Spanish contact? We cannot have the slightest interest, logical, sentimental, or other, in depreciating or in anywise underrating the New World civilizations. For how could it possibly affect the question of Caucasian and Negro, even if it were found that the bud of Cuzco and Anahuac was fairer than the flower of Rome or Athens? And why might it not have been? We are very far from regarding either Aristides or Marcus Aurelius as perfect. It is only as a mere matter of fact that we call the American superiority or equality so seriously in question. Admire as you will, appraise as high as you will, the art and the astronomy of Tezcuco, the social organization, the agriculture, and the engineering of the amautas, it seems impossible even for the enthusiasm of a Carli, combined with the race pride of an Ixtlilxochitl and a Garcilaso, to discover in the culture of the Yncas or of the Aztecs or even of the Toltecs any principle or augury of progress. To us it is difficult in the extreme to detect any hope of higher development where despotism was absolute, where free agency was outlawed, and where the object of war was to procure human sacrifices. We hold that by every token these civilizations had culminated, that they were already as elaborated and petrified as the Chinese, and that the centuries to come would have witnessed no marked advance, but rather a retrogression. It should be added that the physical inferiority of these peoples was notable. The Peruvian and Aztec stature ranged from five feet to five and one-half feet. Now this is very close to the border line of the Dwarfs—who, according to Sir William Flower, include such races as do not exceed five feet three inches. The Ynca skull is better than others of South America, yet it has but a low facial angle.

Dr. Boas thinks four thousand years but a trifle in the history of a race—but a watch in the night. Perhaps it is. He thinks the mere fact that a race is forty centuries behind does not argue that it is less gifted. May be not. We have often wondered whether the bee might not yet overtake the man. Theoretically all forms of life are still in the race, which cannot end while the planet is habitable. Practically, however, four thousand years is eternity. A race that is more than a hundred generations behind is not worth considering. The reflections in the paragraph under consideration all strike wide of the mark.

It is next urged (p. 304) "that civilization originated among few of its [the White race's] members," and "that the cognate tribes" might not have developed so swiftly but for help from the others. True, the Germans (e.g.) profited greatly from contact with Greco-Romans, but for whom they might now be savages. But they profited because they were of the same stock; they were of nature to profit. The Greek applied the torch, but the German material was inflammable; else it would never have burned. When the same torch has been applied to other materials, they have not caught fire.

The next paragraph (p. 305) itself raises these questions: "But why did these tribes so easily assimilate the culture that was offered them, while at present we see primitive people dwindle away and become degraded before the approach of civilization, instead of being elevated by it? Is not this a proof of a higher organization of the inhabitants of Europe?" We have just rendered answer simple, natural, satisfactory. But none such can be accepted! "I believe the reasons for this fact are not far to seek and do not necessarily lie in a greater ability of the races of Europe and Asia. First of all, these people were alike in appearance to civilized man of their times."

What perverse ingenuity! Likeness in appearance was a reason, but likeness in reality—in blood, in brain, in nature, in origin—this was no reason! Penny wise, pound foolish. Now the fact is that the likeness in reality was far stronger than in appearance.

"Therefore the fundamental difficulty for the rise of primitive people, namely, that an individual which has risen to the level of the higher civilization is still looked upon as belonging to an inferior race, did not prevail."

Here again there is quietly assumed everything in dispute. We deny outright that such is "the fundamental difficulty." In a measure it has no existence at all, annulled by the prevalent doctrine of the equality of all men. In wide circles these superior "primitives" (i.e., Negroes) are petted and flattered and extraordinarily favoured. No proof of the assertion in question is so much as hinted.

"Thus it was possible that, in the colonies of ancient times, society could grow by accretion from among the more primitive people. Furthermore, the devastating influences of diseases which nowadays begin to ravage the inhabitants of territories newly opened to the whites were not so strong on account of the permanent contiguity of the people of the Old World who were always in contact with each other and therefore subject to the same influences. The invasion of America and Polynesia, on the other hand, was accompanied by the introduction of new diseases among the natives of these countries. The suffering and devastation wrought by epidemics which followed the discovery are too well known to be described in full."

True, but most inadequate; for why did not the contact with the new peoples affect the invaders as well as the invaded with new diseases? Especially, why did these invaders not yield to the new local or climatic distempers to which the invaded had long since become measurably immune? The near-lying fact that the invaders were stronger, more viable, more resistant to disease, in every way more vigorous—the very fact that made them invaders—this all-important fact has been entirely overlooked.

"In addition to this it may be said that the contrast between the culture represented by the modern white and that of primitive man is far more fundamental than that between the ancients and the people with whom they come in contact. Particularly, the methods of manufacture have developed so enormously that the industries of the primitive peoples of our times are exterminated by the cheapness and large quantity of the products imported by the white trader; because primitive man is unable to compete with the power of production of the machines of the whites, while in olden times the superior hand product rivalled with a hand product of a lower type."

To what uses may not the doctrine of Protection be turned! For a generation we were taught that it was necessary to protect by a high tariff the machine products of the United States against the competition of the hand products of the Old World; now we are told that not only has the competition of the machine products "exterminated" the hand industries, but it has even prevented the "primitive" from learning the new "methods of manufacture" and so becoming civilized and saving himself from extermination! The reader may be safely left to perceive the irrelevance and the emptiness of such "may-be-saids." Let him further reflect that the great bulk of this extermination, begun in America nearly four hundred years ago, was accomplished in three hundred years, before the modern era of machine products. To attribute the disappearance of the Indian to the overthrow of his industries by the competition of cheap calicoes and wooden nutmegs sounds more like jest than earnest. Why, the curiosity of the "invaders" actually supplied and still supplies a new market for the aboriginal wares.

The next remark, "that in several regions, particularly in America and in parts of Siberia, the primitive tribes are swamped by the numbers of the immigrating race," seems hardly worth quoting in full. But from all of this it is concluded (p. 306) "that the conditions for assimilation in ancient Europe were much more favorable" than where modern civilization has overtaken the "primitives," and that therefore there is no "need to assume that the ancient Europeans were more gifted than other races" that disappear before modern civilization. The reader must see that, even if there were granted everything claimed for these reasons, the question as to the fact of European superiority would not be touched.

For corroboration, appeal is made (p. 306) to the Arabs and the Sudanese. In the second half of the eighth century, the Sudan was invaded by "Hamitic tribes" and "Mohammedanism." "Large empires" came and went "in struggles with neighboring states," and "a relatively high degree of culture has been attained." The invaders intermarried with the natives, and the mixed races, some of which are almost purely negro, have risen high above the level of other African negroes." We submit that such "corroboration" is little stronger than weakness itself. "Relatively high culture" is too vague a term to argue with, and a thousand years of such history "of north Africa" is not worth a brief generation of European history. If the infusion of "Hamitic" blood and civilization has appreciably helped the Sudanese, we are not surprised; but who will infer from that fact that these infusers are not superior?

"Why, then, have the Mohammedans been able to civilize these tribes and to raise them to nearly the same standard which they had attained, while the whites have not been capable of influencing the negro in Africa to any considerable extent?" Mark you, the word "nearly"—a bridge broad enough to span the straits of Gibraltar, the chasm between Bagdad or Granada and Dahomey, between Averroës and the Mad Mullah. Some would, perhaps, hold that in the United States the Negro has attained "nearly" to the Caucasian level. But since it was at best only "nearly" and not quite, it follows that the mixture of Hamite and Negro did, after all, work a debasement of the former. And how was this possible, if the latter was not inferior?

"Evidently, on account of the different method of introduction of culture. While the Mohammedans influence the people in the same manner in which the ancients civilized the tribes of Europe, the whites send only the products of their manufactures and a few of their representatives into the negro country. A real amalgamation between the higher types of the whites and the negroes has never taken place. The amalgamation of the negroes by the Mohammedans is facilitated particularly by the institution of polygamy, the conquerors taking native wives and raising their children as members of their own family."

Such is the programme for "influencing" the Negro! Such is the way to introduce "culture," whereby, in a thousand years, the "mixed race" may "nearly" attain the present Caucasian standard! That is, the only successful "method of introduction of culture" is to introduce blood, to introduce a new stock, a new germinal principle. Then comes a race of mongrels, of average mental powers higher than the lower breed, with exceptions little lower than the higher. Since the forms of civilization are easily imposed on inferior breeds, the resulting mongrels do what one may be pleased to call "nearly attaining" to the standard of the higher. Bear witness the West Indies, and Mexico, and Central and South America. What interest has any one in contesting such statements? To our mind they give away the case entirely; out of their own mouths such speakers are unappealably condemned. Bornu [23] and Haiti may have attractions for some; but for us, none whatever.

"When, finally, we consider the inferior position held by the negro race of the United States, who are in the closest contact with modern civilization, we must not forget that the old race-feeling of the inferiority of the colored race is as potent as ever and is a formidable obstacle to its advance and progress, notwithstanding that schools and universities are open to them. We might rather wonder how much has been accomplished in a short period against heavy odds. It is hardly possible to say what would become of the negro if he were able to live with the whites on absolutely equal terms" (p. 307).

Such is the pathetic plea for the absolute equality in our American life of Black and White. We do not deny that there is a certain force in such words. To us the Negro seems handicapped with an undeniable inferiority, which, particularly in the commercial world, accumulates rapidly against him, as it were, at compound interest. And this is the seventh seal of his doom. But in science, in literature, in art, he receives all encouragement; his work is at an absurd premium. Take one illustration, instar omnium. In the advertisement of "Volumes by Paul Lawrence Dunbar," in "The Uncalled," his own publishers speak thus: "A poet who starts out by being handicapped by excessive praise suffers from it for a long time.... Just because he [Dunbar] happened to be a Negro, a vast amount of adulation was heaped upon him." Precisely the opposite of the picture drawn above! Compare, also, the history of the Negroes of Chatham, Ontario, and of other such early colonies. That they no longer meet with such extraordinary favour in the North is largely due to the fact that they have uniformly, when in numbers, sadly disappointed the hopes of their benefactors and well-wishers. It seems plain, moreover, that a really strong and highly endowed blood would triumph with equal ease over excessive favour and over unjust disfavour. Would any such discrimination keep down the Anglo-Saxon? Would he not "make by force his merit known"? And have twenty centuries of race prejudice and outrageous persecution availed to repress or depress the all-victorious sons of Israel? The generous explanation just offered must be rejected as utterly inadequate.

Hence it is concluded (p. 307) that "no great weight can be attributed to the earlier rise of civilization in the Old World which is satisfactorily explained as a chance. In short, historical events appear to have been much more potent in leading races to civilization than their faculty, and it follows that achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other."

We submit that there has not been offered, for these conclusions, any semblance of proof whatever. Let our readers judge;—we have quoted very fully. Notice, moreover, the phrase "earlier rise of civilization in the Old World." But who knows that it rose earlier in the Old World? Or who cares? Who argues therefrom? The point is, that it rose higher, immeasurably higher, in the Old World; but this, the kernel, is not mentioned. All this was mere "chance"! Yes, perhaps; in the same sense that the higher rise of the Himalayas than of the Andes was mere "chance"; that the richer fauna and flora of the Old World were mere "chance"; that the greater energy and stature and cranial capacity of the Aryan were mere "chance"; in the same sense that everything in Euclidean space is a mere "chance". In order to justify any assertion, it will suffice to enlarge sufficiently the meaning of your terms. But we do not think that the cause of truth is prospered by such methods.

Some one may ask, however, is there not some grain of correctness in this contention that capacity cannot always be measured by achievement? We grant it cheerfully, and we applaud our opponent and his school for calling this connection in question, and bidding the current assumption answer for itself. We, too, would "test all things," but we would also "hold fast the good." The savant has been unscientific in his procedure; he has gone too far; he has thrown out the baby with the bath. He has neglected the central principles of the doctrine of probability. If there be two members of two families, and one succeeds greatly in life, along this path and that, while the other fails here, there, everywhere, we are strongly tempted to ascribe higher faculty to the one than to the other. Yet we may very well be wrong. The latter might put up a plausible defence. He might reason as this school has done. He might say that the game was called too soon, that various circumstances continually favoured his rival, that in a perfectly fair field he would have shown himself at least equal. All, then, that we could say would be, that the Inverse Probability was somewhat against him. His failure is a fact: it may have been due to lower faculty, it may have been due to something else; but it stands against him, and it raises a certain probability of inferiority. No such failure stands against the other. No such probability of inferior faculty is suggested, though it remains barely possible that he was really inferior.

But now, suppose there are a million or a trillion in each of the two families; and of these the one trillion attain varying but splendid success along every line of endeavour, while the other trillion fail, more or less completely, along the same lines. What, then, shall we say? What, then, must we say? Unhesitatingly, that there must have been a very decided difference of average faculty. While we might admit the measurable possibility that chance and time and circumstance played a conspicuous and even a determining part in the fortunes of the one pair, yet we could by no means admit the like for any great number of pairs; and when the number of pairs becomes enormously great, the possibility in question becomes vanishingly small—too small to be dealt with in any system of our thought. Here is the given effect: success of the one class, failure of the other. What the cause? Is it mainly, at least, an (average) uniform difference of faculty? This cause is simple and intelligible and self-repeating; if it worked in one case, it would work in all cases and explain everything as easily as any one thing. But the other cause, the conspiracy of chance and time and circumstance, is not self-repeating, and however great the likelihood of a single such chance combination, the likelihood of innumerable such repetitions is inexpressibly small—on the same principle that the chance of throwing heads once is one-half, but the chance of throwing them consecutively twice is only one-fourth, and thrice is only one-eighth, and so on. We need not parade here the mathematical formulæ for the reckoning of the so-called inverse probability of each of these two hypotheses. Common sense tells us at once that the difference of faculty is practically certain, the chance-effect or coincidence-effect is practically impossible.

Now, such is the case really presented. On the one side, the generations of generations of Caucasians; all have distinguished themselves by high and varied achievements along every line of activity yet opened up to man. On the other hand, the primitives—the backward races of Australia, particularly of Africa; they seem scarcely yet quite conscious. Not one has done anything historical. The failure is complete and universal. That this uniform and immense diversity is a mere accident, the age-long result of a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, or ascriptible to any such trivialities as those enumerated, is almost incalculably improbable, except we expand the term accident to include the laws of gravitation and the conservation of energy. We might as well say that the different behaviours of two bodies of oxygen and hydrogen were to be "explained as a chance," and did not argue any greater mass in the average molecule of the former.

This conclusion would hold, even if the higher faculty of the Caucasian were antecedently extremely improbable; the a priori unlikelihood would become a posteriori, in view of the facts of history, a practical certainty. However, the case is immeasurably stronger. For a difference in faculty, not merely in kind, but also in degree of faculty, is not only not improbable a priori—it is probable almost to certainty. All nature around us is one endless spectacle of such diversities. Equality is absolutely unknown. This observation is altogether too trite to dwell on. Will any one deny that the degrees of faculty are often inexpressibly apart in members of the same family? Did any amount of opportunity serve to raise any other member of the Bonaparte family quite to the level of the first Napoleon? If, then, such inherent disparities in individuals be undeniable, is parity among tribes or races to be expected? Is it not, in fact, antecedently incredible? To us it seems no more unlikely that one race should be superior to another than that one man should be taller, or one mountain range higher, or one ocean deeper, than another. The question of equality or inequality between two races of men is a mere question of present facts, to be settled without any bias, now and here, precisely as you would settle the like question between the Numidian lion and the Colorado cougar. And when some one pleads for the backward "primitives" that they need only a little more time, a few millenniums, we answer once more: Very possibly; but time may be all that the jaguar needs to surpass the tiger, or the ant to rival the eagle.

So much, then, for the historical argument. As already brought forward in our Chapter Two, it is shaken by the scruples presented even as an oak is shaken by a zephyr.

Let us now pass to the anatomical argument (p. 308). "There is no doubt that great differences exist in the physical characteristics of the races of man." But these cannot, of themselves, decide the question of superiority. While skin, hair, lips, and nose "distinguish the African negro clearly," yet Americans (aboriginal) have occasionally skin, lips, nose, but not hair, mistakable "for those of a negro." In general, variations in any race over-lap variations in another, showing that "existing differences are not fundamental" (whatever that may mean). It is held that the varying proportions of the body may be rather cultural than racial, like the differences between wild and domesticated animals (Fritsch). "The differences which cannot be explained by functional causes are few in number and they are not of such a character as to stamp one race as lower than the other." Conceded. But notice here the logical process. Whatever can be explained functionally "must" be explained functionally; a functional cause that is possible is held to be ipso facto certain; racial causes are antecedently so extremely improbable as to be admissible only under extreme compulsion. Now this is altogether vicious. The case is just the reverse. It is the functional causes that are pressed into service, that remain mere possibilities. Even at the utmost they refuse to explain all the differences. Some "few" are admitted to be racial. But, as some are certainly racial, then all or at least most may be racial, the invocation of supposed functional causes becomes unnecessary, and the cultural explanation improbable. We may apply the razor of Occam: Entia non multiplicanda sunt præter necessitatem.