370 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



by implication very nearly all that is included in our thought upon the 

 matter, is that "all men, when normal, possess the same capacity for 

 intelligence and the same ability to absorb culture and to become civi- 

 lized"; in other words, that all men are essentially alike mentally and 

 morally, when viewed in the large, notwithstanding physical and physio- 

 logical differences. The culture of any group of men, it is assumed, 

 may be adopted by, or forced upon any other group of men, without ef- 

 fecting any revolutionary change in the culture. It is tacitly thought 

 that while the processes of evolution have given one race a white skin 

 and another race a black skin, have made one race relatively resistant to 

 tuberculosis and the other relatively susceptible, and so on, the minds 

 of both are alike — have not diverged as their bodies have in the evolu- 

 tionary series — and that the mental processes of one may become, by 

 proper direction, the mental processes of the other. 



On conventional ethical grounds, the hypothesis of human equality 

 can not be assailed. The Christian world, particularly that part of it 

 which really thinks, is essentially altruistic, and this altruism demands 

 that all men be given the fullest and most equal opportunities to get the 

 best out of life. But it is seldom realized that this is an ideal, not a 

 working formula; that it is, further, an ethical ideal, not a scientific 

 one. Out of this misconception of the ideal of human equality have 

 sprung many grievous and oftentimes dangerous fallacies, chief among 

 which are two: (1) that all men possess the same potentialities for 

 culture; and (2) that a so-called "higher culture" may and ethically 

 should be substituted for a so-called "lower culture" whenever oppor- 

 tunity presents itself. 



As has been said, each of these ideas has a basis in ethical principles. 

 But both are fallacious when scientifically considered. Each assumes 

 too much, and each tries to make out of an ethical ideal the scientific 

 working formula for the uplifting of backward peoples. Neither takes 

 into account that culture and civilization are as much the products of 

 evolution as a white skin or a black skin. 



Culture, in its broadest sense, is a phenomenon of race. Even in our 

 more or less homogeneous western European and American culture, 

 racial differences are to be observed; if this were not true, why should 

 we take the trouble to call some people Germans and others Spaniards, 

 some Danes and others Italians ? Yet, despite these evident differences, 

 western European and American culture is a definite, characteristic 

 thing, and underlying it we recognize a common stock of traditions and 

 general ideas which have come down through the ages "in the blood," 

 so to speak. The white-skinned peoples of western Europe and America 

 all have approximately the same origin, in that through the remote mix- 

 ing of a few strains of blood the modern racial types were set ; and since 

 then the peoples of western Europe have given evidence of their bio- 

 logical kinship by displaying approximately similar reactions to similar 



