45. Emotional Bias
Inference from record to potentiality where the record of one’s own group is favorable, and failure to draw such inference where the achievement of other groups is superior, is a combination of mental operations that is widely spread because it arises spontaneously in minds not critically trained. Here is an instance:
One of the great achievements of science in the nineteenth century was Galton’s demonstration, in a series of works beginning with “Hereditary Genius,” that the laws of heredity apply to the mind in the same manner and to the same degree as to the body. On the whole this proof has failed to be recognized at its true importance, probably because it inclines adversely to current presuppositions of the independence of the soul from the body, and freedom of the will, propositions to which most men adhere emotionally.
From this perfectly valid demonstration, which has been confirmed by other methods, Galton went on to rate the hereditary worth of various races, according to the number of their men of genius. Here a fallacy enters: the assumption that all geniuses born are recognized as such. A great work naturally requires a great man, but it presupposes also a great culture. It may be that, historically speaking, a great genius cannot arise in a primitive degree of civilization. That is, the kind of concentrated accomplishment which alone we recognize as a work of genius is culturally impossible below a certain level. Biologically the individual of genius may be there; civilizationally he is not called forth, and so does not get into the record. Consequently it is unsound to argue from the historical record to biological worth. However, this Galton did; and his method led him to the conclusion that the negro rates two grades lower than the Englishman, on a total scale of fourteen grades, and the Englishman two lower than the fifth century Athenian.
This conclusion has never been popular. Most people on becoming familiar with Galton’s argument, resist it. Its fallacy is not easy to perceive—if it were, Galton would not have committed it—and the average person is habitually so vague-minded upon what is organic and what is social, that the determination of the fallacy would be well beyond him. His opposition to Galton’s conclusion is therefore emotionally and not rationally founded, and his arguments against the conclusion are presumably also called forth by emotional stimulus.
On the other hand, most individuals of this day and land do habitually infer, like Galton, from cultural status to biological worth, so far as the Negro is concerned. The same persons who eagerly accept the demonstration of a flaw in the argument in favor of Athenian superiority, generally become skeptical and resistive to the exposition of the same flaw in the current belief as to Negro inferiority. It is remarkable how frequently and how soon, in making this exposition, one becomes aware of the hearer’s feeling that one’s attitude is sophistical, unreal, insincere, or motivated by something concealed.
The drift of this discussion may seem to be an unavowed argument in favor of race equality. It is not that (§ [271]). As a matter of fact, the bodily differences between races would appear to render it in the highest degree likely that corresponding congenital mental differences do exist. These differences might not be profound, compared with the sum total of common human faculties, much as the physical variations of mankind fall within the limits of a single species. Yet they would preclude identity. As for the vexed question of superiority, lack of identity would involve at least some degree of greater power in certain respects in some races. These preëminences might be rather evenly distributed, so that no one race would notably excel the others in the sum total or average of its capacities; or they might show a tendency to cluster on one rather than on another race. In either event, however, the fact of race difference, qualitative if not quantitative, would remain.
But it is one thing to admit this theoretical probability and then stop through ignorance of what the differences are, and another to construe the admission as justification of mental attitudes which may be well founded emotionally but are in considerable measure unfounded objectively.
In short, it is a difficult task to establish any race as either superior or inferior to another, but relatively easy to prove that we entertain a strong prejudice in favor of our own racial superiority.