The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

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.