Second:
“Thomas, himself a Negro, asserts that the sexual impulse constitutes the main incitement of the race, and is the chief hindrance to its social uplifting.”[259]
In these two temperate utterances, as put, Professor Hart conveys what might be understood as disapproval; yet it can be urged in defense of Thomas’ criticism of his race in the last particular, that it is paralleled by the assertion of Professor Lombroso, himself an Italian, concerning Italians, when contrasting them with the English; while, with regard to the first, it would be difficult to find a paragraph framed by Thomas more suited for quotation by anti-Negro writers, than the following in Professor Hart’s book:
“The Negro preachers are universally believed to be the worst of their kind, and very often are. If things that are regularly told by the white people and sometimes admitted by the colored, are true, the majority of the Southern Negroes, rural and urban are in a horrible state both physically and morally.”[260]
Yet whatever the Negro preachers may have been, there is good reason to believe that, in the cities, their moral tone is improving, and there, now, high exemplars of morality can be found.
Again, despite his apparent pessimism, the future holds for Thomas a hope denied to not a few, who are impatient of his probe. Where can be found anything rising higher in optimism that the following:
“We believe American Christianity has in the person of the Negro, an unmeasured wealth of latent spiritual energy which will be aroused and consecrated, when the notion of sacerdotalism is scattered from before his clouded vision, when transmitted ethnic fetichism is eradicated from his religion and the virility of his nature, bared of empty forms of righteousness, is breathed upon by the spirit of God, himself.”[261]
The truth concerning this matter is, that Thomas had gone too deeply into it to be readily understood by those who have not had their powers of perception quickened by that daily contact, which teaches so much. Therefore, while Thomas’s book may seem extremely pessimistic; yet, when his philosophy is boiled down, it is not very different from what Dr. Washington is thought to have preached, that God helps him who helps himself, or as Thomas puts it:
“Every endowment of manhood and womanhood is within the reach of every human being, who puts integrity before material gain, and self respect before mendacious folly.”[262]
“When, therefore, the Negro race acquires in the broadest and best sense an industrial education, there will come a radical regeneration of Southern social economy, and Negro education will stand then for home life, domestic industry, public integrity and national welfare.”[263]