374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of his thought they will be profoundly modified, and they will take on 

 a different meaning in the Negro's consciousness from what they have 

 in the white man's consciousness. Concomitantly, these cultural ele- 

 ments will modify the brain of the Negro ; but this modification will not 

 follow the same pathways and will not give the same results as it would 

 in the untutored brain, say, of a white child. The modifying forces 

 acting upon the Negro's brain will have to start with an anatomical 

 structure already formed and set by heredity, an anatomical structure 

 different from that of the white race, which produced the modifying 

 forces in question, and the final result in the Negro's brain will be 

 determined and directed by this preexistent anatomical make-up. So 

 that the brain and the consciousness resulting from the absorption of 

 our culture by the Negroes will be a brain and a consciousness different 

 from our own to the same extent that the Negro differs from us in other 

 respects, and both will be characteristically Negroid in nature, not 

 European. 



It follows, therefore, that present ideals in regard to the " solution " 

 of our Negro problem (ideals, as has been pointed out and which it is 

 well to reiterate, resulting from the confusion of ethical and scientific 

 principles) are biologically fallacious, and impossible of attainment. 

 We can never make the Negro like the white man mentally. We can 

 never have a bi-racial state based upon an identity of ideas and political 

 philosophies in both races. 



The Negroes will continue to progress, undoubtedly. But they will 

 progress along the lines laid down by their evolutionary history. They 

 will take our cultural elements and make them part of themselves; but 

 they will modify these elements according to their nature, and when 

 they have assimilated them, they will be our cultural elements no 

 longer, but will be profoundly and permanently modified. The two 

 races will continue to develop side by side, but the development can 

 never be parallel — it must be divergent, even though its successive steps 

 may perchance maintain approximately the same level, as long as the 

 races remain pure. It will be like two men, thrown together by for- 

 tuitous circumstances, who start walking up the same slope toward the 

 same hill-top ; but because of differences in the nature of their interests, 

 one goes east while the other goes northeast; each step will carry them 

 closer to the top of the hill, but further and further apart. 



This fact, rather than ethical theory, should form the foundation 

 of American thought in regard to the Negroes and the Negro problem. 

 The Negro as an intellectual being should be studied as a Negro — 

 not as a potential white-man; and if we wish to help him, we should 

 at least try to be sure that he is allowed to develop as a Negro in the 

 freest, broadest manner possible, and to the full extent of his racial 

 potentialities. 



