A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY. 359 



itself to the number that fell to it ; in other words, here his mind 

 instantly formed new associations. It would be absurd to com- 

 pare the results of these experiments with those of Prof. Munster- 

 berg already alluded to. The latter were performed upon adult 

 subjects who were in training for the work, thoroughly possessed 

 of its purposes, and supplied with instruments of precision for 

 signaling, record, etc. Nevertheless, one can hardly fail to note 

 that while the average time required by Isaiah for learning a 

 series was from two to three times that allowed the trained 

 students, his percentage of errors was on the whole less than their 

 average. To realize exactly what the results indicate, one should 

 try to see how many colors of a series he can replace after view- 

 ing them less than a minute. 



I have given here a record of memory tests that were pursued 

 systematically for a short time. Circumstances soon changed, 

 and I was only able to make an occasional experiment with more 

 complicated material ; but one point was established to my satis- 

 faction namely, that Isaiah was endowed with the germs of 

 mental life, perception, association, and memory. The question 

 remained why these were not active in that most important of all 

 school exercises reading. The answer is to be found partly in 

 the negroes' quick response to sense impressions. All persons 

 familiar with their habits have noticed this susceptibility, but I 

 believe Mr. R. Meade Bache is the first to bring it to proof in the 

 laboratory. 



The results of his experiments, presented in the Psychological 

 Review of September, point very clearly to the conclusion that 

 the negro race is superior to the white in automatic power. Here, 

 I believe, we have the key to Isaiah's success in reproducing an 

 impression received through the senses, and also, in general, to 

 the ease with which children of his race go through the elementary 

 process of learning to read. Speech is a power that comes to most 

 of us unconsciously, and the first stages of reading require little 

 more than the visual recognition of signs that stand for familiar 

 things. But, this stage passed, every word is a generalization, 

 back of which lie traditions, customs, experiences, sentiments, and 

 ideas, which are the heritage of a race. They are the stuff of the 

 mind transmitted from generation to generation through the myr- 

 iad channels of family, of social, of school, of church, and of business 

 life. It is obvious that to a race wanting in our own experiences 

 a large part of our vocabulary must be meaningless. Analogous 

 experiences, of course, give insight into a foreign tongue, but here 

 the colored child is at a peculiar disadvantage. The traditions of 

 African savagery, even if they had reached him, offer no likeness 

 to the history of the Anglo-Saxon. Slavery was a state with laws 

 and customs and ceremonies bearing certain resemblances to our 



