360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



own, but the negro who has passed through this state to the free- 

 dom of American citizenship is, as it were, a man without ances- 

 tral history. Instead of cherishing his past and trying to impress 

 its memories and ideals upon his children, he seeks rather to de- 

 stroy them. He reacts against his past and inhibits it. On the 

 other hand, he has not yet become sufficiently possessed of our 

 civilization to impart its mother-lore to his children. The absence 

 of social restraints, either in the form of crude superstitions or of 

 complex sentiments and ideals, explains perhaps the frequent 

 outbursts of ferocious passions on the part of negroes ; the same 

 condition insures also a primitive state of Nature in their chil- 

 dren. Scientific research affords proof of the fundamental unity 

 of mind, but it gives no less decisive proof of differences due to 

 ancestry and training. The negro child is psychologically differ- 

 ent from the white child. In automatic power he is superior, but 

 in the power of abstraction, of judgment, and analysis he is de- 

 cidedly inferior. This fact must be recognized in the school train- 

 ing. In purpose and in liberal provision the education of the 

 negro should be the same as that of white children. In detail and 

 method it should be adjusted to the racial plane on which he 

 stands. 



But to return to Isaiah. Vacation having ended, he was sent 

 back to school to resume the rehearsal of lessons that conveyed no 

 meaning to his mind. Fortunately, he made a venture for him- 

 self and secured the drummer's place in a band ; this occupied all 

 his spare time and afforded an outlet for his automatism, with a 

 pecuniary advantage besides. At the end of the year my persua- 

 sions added to his strong personal desire prevailed, and he was 

 allowed to quit vain repetitions and go to work. His place in the 

 industrial world is a humble one, for, in spite of the fact that his 

 parents have been willing to give him much more than the aver- 

 age time at school, he has not been raised above the rank of 

 unskilled laborers. This it seems to me is unpardonable. A 

 youth in whom perception, memory, and simple judgment are 

 active might, I am confident, in ten years have been raised a little 

 higher in the scale of independent being. If he had been at 

 Hampton or Tuskegee, the result would have been different, for 

 in these he would have been educated through experiences, social 

 and industrial. In the public schools within his reach he must 

 drill over the elements, to the arrest of development, or go for- 

 ward to abstract thought of which his mind was incapable. I 

 have dwelt upon a particular case because it is a psychological 

 type. It confirms what the laboratory indicates namely, if races 

 are to be developed by formal education, its processes must be 

 conformed to their conditions, not vice versa. 



