The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

And the individual withers,

And the world is more and more.

Tennyson

The reader may find the foregoing discussion convincing; we think the unprejudiced reader will almost surely find it so, and yet he may not find it satisfactory. For he may urge that no solution has been propounded or foreshadowed for the problem, and that it is by no means enough merely to know what the problem is—its dangers, its difficulties, and its terrible threat. This objection is perfectly just. Up to this moment our sole concern has been to establish unshakably firm the central position, of the supreme and all-overshadowing importance of preserving the American-Caucasian blood pure and untainted and dedicated to the development of the highest humanity. But this accomplished, we have no disposition to shirk another task, to avoid another question, however delicate, disagreeable, or depressing. This question is: What has the future in store for the Negro? If social equality must be resolutely denied him forever, if he is to be treated as an outcast and a pariah because of his race and the weight of inheritance which he can never shake off from his shoulders, what hope remains? Where are the blessings of freedom? Is, then, emancipation but an apple of Sodom, turning to ashes on his lips? These are fearful questions, but we must not quail before them; we must confront them firmly, calmly, with eyes wide open to all the facts in the case, and with ears unclosed to all the teachings of history.

In the light of the foregoing, it is vain to appeal to Education. We know that many noble and excellent spirits expect wonders from this potent agency. As an educator ourself, we can have no interest or motive in unduly distrusting or minimizing its capabilities. The work that education may accomplish is undoubtedly great; and in spite of many discouraging disappointments, the task of educating the Negro will assuredly be bravely performed, in larger and larger measure, for all generations to come.

But it is a colossal error to suppose that race improvement, in the strictest sense of the term, can be wrought by education. [ [25] ] The reason is simple and easily understood: Race-improvement is organic; education is extraorganic. Any change or amelioration that affects the race, the stock, the blood, must be inherited; but education is not inherited, it is not inheritable. It must be renewed generation after generation in each individual. The Sisyphus-stone of culture is rolled with infinite toil up the steep ascent by the fathers; it thunders instantly back, and must be rolled up again with equal agony and bloody sweat by their children. All must start at the same centre of ignorance, and beat out a long and arduous path to the ever-widening circumference of the farthest knowledge. The son of the learned and the son of the unlearned have equal chance side by side in the race for learning. If the children of the cultured acquire more readily than their fellows, it is not because they have inherited parental culture, but only the inherited parental capacity for culture; not because their parents knew more, but because they had more inborn power to know. Had circumstances doomed the savant to ignorance, his children would not have suffered in their ability to learn. Nay more, if devotion to intellectual pursuits has any influence at all on the native quality of offspring, as it may possibly have in extreme cases, it would seem to be more probably hurtful than helpful; for, by impairing nutrition of the germinal cells, excessive intellectual activity may induce impotence and sterility; and the fecundity of the very highly cultured seems to have suffered measurably in Europe, if not in the United States. [ [26] ]

These propositions lie beyond possible contradiction. We need not raise the question of the general Weismannian theory of heredity; but we must recognize, as wholly undeniable, that the characters and qualities acquired by education are not in any degree inherited. The testimony of every-day observation is, on this point, so unanimous and so overwhelming that further insistence would seem superfluous. We may refer however, to the broad, patent, universally recognized fact that centuries of culture and most careful training have never been known to improve the breed, the stock, the inherent quality of any race of men or plants or domestic animals. Wherever any of these have been organically modified, it has been by other agencies, more especially by some form of natural or artificial selection. While the extra-organic development of civilization has gone on and still goes on, and apparently will go on apace indefinitely, under the guidance of science and invention, there is no evidence of any organic improvement in man in thousands of years, since the working of natural selection ceased to be progressive. The Mesopotamian of to-day is surely not the superior of his sculptured ancestors who observed and measured the precession of the equinoxes nearly 6,000 years ago. The Jew of to-day can boast nothing above the authors of the Psalms, and of Job, and of the prophecies of Isaiah. The modern Greek may or may not have descended from Homer or Pericles; but, surely, he has not ascended very far. It is needless to multiply illustrations. We believe firmly in the mutability of species; but the phenomenon of the permanence, even of sub-species and varieties, is far more universal and impressive.

Education, then, can do much; but its mission is to the present—it cannot stamp itself upon the future. The limits of its efficiency, though absolutely wide, are relatively narrow and are speedily reached. It plays with man the function of care and training, of cultivation and domestication, with the lower animals and with the products of the soil. By diligent tillage, by the spade, the hoe, the plough, by irrigation and fertilization, the planter may greatly increase the yield of his field or his orchard and even refine, in a measure, the quality of his fruit or his grain. By feeding, grooming, and the like, the horse-dealer may much improve the appearance and serviceability of his horses and may even add no little to their health, vigour, and value. It would be insanity in these men to neglect or despise such artificial helps and to trust their crops and their stock to grow and to take care of themselves. The farmer and the stockman know very well that only by the highest cultivation and the most watchful attention can they secure the best results in field or fold and maintain themselves in competition with wide-awake neighbours.

But they also know, not less certainly, that the maximal results of such instrumentalities are not far away but are hemmed within a very finite circle. Care and culture soon do their best and attain at least practically their ne plus ultra. For any progressive improvement, whether in animal or in plant, the agriculturist knows that he must look to the seed. This he must select with the utmost skill and caution—if he would even maintain the level of excellence already reached, if he would not have the "stock" lapse back to an ancient inferior average.

All this doctrine, which every one admits so instantly and unhesitatingly in its application to wheat, corn, and cotton; potatoes, apples, and oranges; grapes and melons; sheep, cattle, swine, and horses; bees, birds, and fishes—all holds with full force and with inconceivable significance when applied to men. Education is of exceeding importance. People that neglect it thereby doom themselves to hopeless subordination; they drop out of the race for the prizes of life; they surrender unconditionally to their rivals and commercial foes. Training and culture of the highest type are necessary to secure the realization of potentialities, to make the very best of the material offered at hand; necessary, not only now and here, but everywhere and all the time. Any neglect or indifference at this point must prove fatal. The husbandman dares not deprive his corn of a single "ploughing," or leave his herd one night unprotected from the wolf and the cold.