SOUTHERN RACE PROBLEMS 373 



nature from a scientific point of view, and almost nothing is known 

 about their potentialities. 



Taking as a fact these mental differences, let us for a moment con- 

 sider the possibility of their modification. It has been pointed out that 

 mental differences must ultimately depend upon material anatomical 

 differences in brain- structure ; if we deny this, we instantly remove racial 

 psychology from the field of science to that of metaphysics, and contro- 

 vert all the observed data of physiological psychology; there must be 

 some structural differences between the brain of a Negro and that of a 

 white man, though such differences are admittedly very hard to detect 

 by present methods. We know that it is impossible for us to modify 

 anatomical structures at will; we can undoubtedly change them (within 

 narrow limits, by selection of characters already present and the accentu- 

 ation of these), but we can not make any two differing anatomical char- 

 acters become exactly alike. Why, then, should we assume that we can 

 modify at will the mental processes of a race, since these mental proc- 

 esses are expressions of a certain definite anatomical and physiological 

 organization, which we know can not be altered save by the crossing of 

 bloods or by the laborious and infinitely slow processes of evolution? 



Yet, north and south, we wish to do this very thing, and to do it in 

 its extreme form. For we are not merely trying to change the direction 

 of the Negro's peculiar mental characteristics, and to improve them by 

 selection among the elements already present — we are trying, on the 

 contrary, to deprive the Negro of his own racial mental characteristics, 

 and to substitute our own in their place, at the same time keeping him 

 anatomically a Negro. That this is an impossibility follows after the 

 former argument. 



It will undoubtedly be said, by way of refutation, that the Negroes 

 of the southern states have advanced and advanced considerably since 

 they have been in this country. This is unreservedly true. But it is 

 often forgotten that they have advanced as Negroes, not as anything else. 

 They have adopted the form of our civilization and to a certain extent 

 (due principally to the influence of language), the mould of our thought. 

 But however much the form of the civilization and the mould of the 

 thought resemble our own, the substance of both is different. The 

 Negro has received much from us, and has profited greatly therefrom; 

 but all that he has received he has modified in accordance with his 

 racial mental-set, and his psychical reactions to the influences of our 

 civilization are entirely different from our own, and will necessarily 

 remain so as long as the Negro is a Negro. No matter how much we 

 educate him, no matter how much we better his position in society, he 

 will remain a Negro psychically as long as he remains a Negro physi- 

 cally. We may cause him to absorb the full, rich store of our cultural 

 elements, but by the time these elements have gone through the channels 



