The Atlanta University Publications, No. 20
Seled Discussions
of
Race Problems
A Collection of Papers of Especial Use in Study of
Negro American Problems; with the Proceedings of
the Twentieth Annual Conference for Study of Negro
Problems, held at Atlanta University, May 24, 1915
Edited by
J. A. Bigham, A. M.
Professor of Economics and History in Atlanta University
The Atlanta University Press
ATLANTA, GA.
1916
A RGUMENTS for difference due to race,
sex and genius will henceforward need
to be based upon new data, really scientific¬
ally treated and not on the older statements.
—Mall.
WHEN the bulky literature of this sub¬
ject is carefully sifted, little remains
that will endure serious criticism; and I do
not believe that I claim too much when I
say that the whole work on this subject re¬
mains to be done. —Boas.
Select Discussions of Race Problems
Contents
Page
Program of the Twentieth Annual Conference 4
Preface ^ 5
Resolutions 7
A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences
and Social Studies 9
By Frederick H. Means
I. Races of Men 17
By W. E. B. Du Bois
II. Anthropological View of Race 24
By Felix von Luschan
III. Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 32
By Franklin P. Mall
IV. Racial Differences in Mental Traits 57
By R. S. Woodworth
V. The Mind of the Savage 75
By W. I. Thomas
VI. Old African Civilizations 83
By Franz Boas
VII. The Contribution of the Negro to Human
Civilization 86
By Alexander Francis Chamberlain
VIII. Race Problems in the United States 97
By Franz Boas
The Twentieth Annual Conference
A Review of Twenty Years' Study
PROGRAM
Monday, May 24, 1915
First Session, 10:00 a. m.
Gleanings from a Score of Years,
Rev. Frederick H. Means, Madison, Me.
The National League on Urban Conditions,
Dr. George E. Haynes, Director, Nashville, Tenn.
Second Session, 11:30 a. m.
(Separate meetings for men and women.)
Address to Women,
By Mrs. J. H. Whittaker, Tuskegee Institute, Ala.
Address to Men,
By Dr. L. B. Palmer, Atlanta.
Third Session, 3:30 p. m.
Annual Mothers' Meeting and Exercises by children of the Gate City
Free Kindergartens.
Address by Rabbi David Marx, Atlanta.
Fourth Session, 8:00 p. m.
Inter-racial Co-operation for Human Betterment in the South,
By Mrs. J. D. Hammond, Augusta.
Discussion, led by Mr. Philip Weltner, Atlanta.
Preface
Twenty years ago there was begun at Atlanta University
a series of studies of the Negro race problems in the United
States. The application of careful thought to race questions
was not at that time widely practiced; and even today, there
are not many serious students of the subject. Here and
there, however, a few of the ablest authorities have given
consideration to some of the fundamental phases of Negro
problems and some substantial material has accumulated. In
the leading of earnest attention into this field of study the
belief is possibly justified that the years of work carried on
here has had a share. Some of the products of these recent
researches on race questions are here presented in the hope
that they may prove helpful in working out practical and
satisfactory methods of meeting the many difficult race rela¬
tions.
Only those papers have been chosen which were con¬
sidered of unquestioned authority upon the topics treated
and which ought to be made easily accessible in their original
form to a wider circle of readers. The discussions of the
general race problems here found will help clarify the prin¬
ciples underlying the Negro race problem. The classroom
student, the social worker and the interested general reader
may, with the aid of these general discussions, be better able
to penetrate the hindering maze of biological and social theo¬
ries of race inferiority which the early enthusiasms over the
theory of the evolution of man left behind.
The present volume brings to an end the second ten-year
cycle of these studies. A review of the history of the whole
series is given within. The value of most of these studies
must be largely credited to Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, so long
6
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
their editor, and later to his associate, Mr. A. G. Dill. We
wish to express our thanks to the authors and publishers
who have so kindly given their consent to make reprints of
the papers appearing in this number.
In the future we plan to distinguish more sharply be¬
tween the Annual Conferences for the Study of Negro Prob¬
lems and the Atlanta University Publications. We shall con¬
tinue the Annual Conferences as a part of the Commence¬
ment Week program and publish the proceedings in the
Bulletin. The Atlanta University Publications will be issued
only upon the completion of further investigations of the
Negro problems involving original research. With the limit¬
ed resources at our disposal it is impossible to complete such
studies and provide for their publication annually. We
earnestly solicit aid from interested persons that the work
which has made such a valuable contribution to exact knowl¬
edge of Negro conditions may be carried vigorously forward.
Resolutions
The following resolutions are the expression of the mem¬
bers, delegates and attendants upon the session of the twen¬
tieth annual Conference:
As a series of practical conclusions that have been reached,
or emphasized anew from the Atlanta University Conferences
of the last ten years we mention the following:
1. With improvement in conditions of life, the death rate,
while higher than that of the white people in the United
States, has shown a tendency downward. There is no scien¬
tific basis, according to the best authorities, for believing
the Negro to be physically inferior to other races.
2. In spite of the hindrances to the Negro's economic
and industrial advance we note with pleasure his demonstra¬
tion of a growing fitness for the modern economic struggle,
by his increase in home ownership, economic co-operation in
business, and gradual entrance into better paid occupations.
3. The colleges of this country have done a great service
in sending forth five thousand Negro graduates, who by pre¬
cept and by example, have done much to improve the moral,
the social and the economic tone of the Negro American peo¬
ple. (Page 100 of Report No. 15 on "The College-Bred
Negro American.")
4. In spite of the gradual increase in the enrollment and
attendance of Negro children in the public schools of the
South, it is still true that over 50 percent of those from six
to fourteen years of age are not securing even a fair begin¬
ning of a common school education, indicating how great a
task in education of Negro children is yet before the South.
5. The ideals of the Negro are becoming more definite, and
his moral standards are being steadily raised.
8
Select Discussions of Race Problems
6. While criminal statistics are insufficient to prove that
there has been actual increase in the proportion of Negro crim¬
inals, we note that conditions which make criminals of Ne¬
groes are painfully neglected; but take courage in the evidence
of an awakening public conscience in this matter, and the ten¬
dency toward inter-racial co-operation for human betterment.
7. The faithful and able work put into the Annual Atlan¬
ta University Conferences and reports, and the comparative¬
ly small amounts of money expended upon them has been
proved to be abundantly worth while by the results.
8. These Social Studies have furnished one of the most
important contributions, in tested facts and scientific conclu¬
sions, towards a sound foundation for the advancement of the
Negro in the United States.
9. For the coming years, we would emphasize the impor¬
tance of continuing these studies and reports, and the neces¬
sity of increased practical efforts, for social, economic and spir¬
itual betterment of the Negro American.
Signed by the Committee on Resolutions,
Frederick H. Means,
George E. Haynes,
J. A. Bigham.
A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences
and Social Studies
By Rev. F. H. Means
These Conferences began in 1896. The investigation of social condi¬
tions upon which they are based began in 1895.
It was an auspicious beginning in two respects. The social studies
and proceedings of the Conference together put before the public most
valuable data bearing upon the advancement of the Negro. The co-opera¬
tion in this effort of graduates of Atlanta University, members of the
faculty, and the trustees and supporters brought many able minds to bear
upon these subjects.
First, then, for a word of history. At a public meeting in the interest
of Atlanta University held at Trinity Church in Boston, in 1895, the list of
speakers included, with President Bumstead, Mr. Richard R. Wright, Sr.,
and Rev. Joseph E. Smith, graduate trustees, then as now. In conversa¬
tion of these with another man to whom the Conferences owe much, Mr.
George G. Bradford of Boston, it was decided to begin these studies,
making them at first merely an "Investigation of City Problems." The
trustees gave their approval in July, 1895, and the first Conference was
planned to be held during the Atlanta Exposition in November, 1895, but
afterwards changed to the Commencement season of 1896. Officers of the
Conference were chosen, including Mr. Bradford, who had done much of
the work upon the first year's report, as the secretary.
Second, a word as to the object in view. Although limited in scope
at the start, these studies had a much broader and higher aim than first
appeared, like Pres. "Jim" Hill's first railroad, which bore some such name
as the St. Paul and Pacific, when it stretched only a score or two of miles
across the prairies. A large part of the purpose has always been to put
dealing with facts in the place of prejudice, scientific knowledge in the
place of guesswork, and carefully studied recommendations in the place
of haphazard and unrelated efforts.
Third, as to the line of subjects to be studied and discussed. The
first two were related subjects, "Mortality among Negroes in Cities,"
in 1896, and "Social and Physical Conditions of Negroes in Cities," in
1897. The papers presented at the first Conference were rather general
in character, but there were facts enough to establish one conclusion, at
least, namely that there had been "an alarming increase in the death
rate of the Negro population of cities and large towns, from such dis¬
eases as consumption and pneumonia, due in a great degree to ignorance,
poverty, negligence and intemperance."
10 A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences
It was decided to "continue the search for exact data on a larger
scale." Graduates of other institutions, especially of Fisk, Berea, Lin¬
coln, Spelman, and Howard, were invited to participate, and unlike the
first Conference, the report of the second contained papers written
almost exclusively by colored men and women. Among these were Mr.
Butler R. Wilson of Boston, Prof. Matthews of Atlanta, Mrs. Logan of
Tuskegee, Rev. Joseph Smith of Chattanooga, Rev. H. H. Proctor and
Dr. H. R. Butler of Atlanta, and many others.
Fourth. Before the second Conference was held, the U. S. Govern¬
ment, through its Department of Labor, Colonel Carroll D. Wright,then
Commissioner, took hold to help. The data gathered were tabulated and
turned over to the Department of Labor for printing in its May Bulletin.
This recognition and assistance helped to put the Conference squarely on
its feet, and at the same time gave a much wider circulation to the valu¬
able data secured. The conclusions and recommendations of the Confer¬
ence in 1897 made the principal causes of excessive mortality,—i.e. ignor¬
ance and neglect, — more plain. It took some of the blame off of envir¬
onment and placed it squarely on the Negro himself, and also made very
definite suggestions about ways of overcoming ignorance in sanitary mat¬
ters. The matter of home-training and support, the importance of day
nurseries, of kindergartens and of meetings for mothers first secured
treatment in this second Conference, and these and allied subjects have
been effectively treated at each of the Conferences since held, in the pro¬
grams of the "Annual Mothers' Meetings." No part of the Conference
has been of greater value locally than these inspiring, helpful and en¬
couraging sessions.
Fifth. With the preparation for the third Conference, to be held in
1898, and the issuing of the third report, published that same year, this
series of social studies entered upon a new phase. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois,
who became Professor of Sociology in 1897 in Atlanta University, was also
chosen that same year as Corresponding Secretary of the Atlanta Confer¬
ence. The topic for that year was "Efforts of American Negroes for their
own Social Betterment." Facts with regard to churches, secret and mutal
benefit orders, and more purely benevolent organizations were all consid¬
ered. Statistics classified in compact form, were made graphic by tables
and charts for display at the Conference, and valuable communications
were received from several forms of co-operative business. In all 236 typi¬
cal organizations were considered. The need and the difficulty of securing
co-operation in all these lines, among those who were either born in slav¬
ery or were the children of slaves, were made very clear, and explicit warn¬
ings and instructions were embodied in the resolutions adopted that year.
At the close of these we find the following remark: "Continued observa¬
tion of the Negro death rate in Southern cities shows that it is still exces-
A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences 1 1
sive. There is, however, no increase in the rate, and in many cases a
decrease is to be noted in the last three years."
Sixth. Two important studies were made for the fourth and fifth Con¬
ferences. In 1899 reports were made upon "Negroes in Business," and
published, along with the proceedings of the Conference, as usual. The
data furnished by this survey are said to have "greatly facilitated" the
formation of a large and influential business men's organization among
the Negroes and doubtless helped in other less conspicuous but equally
stimulating efforts.
More important than this, however, and perhaps most important to
the purpose of Atlanta University of any of the topics thus far, was the
study of "The College-Bred Negro" made and published in 1900. The
graduates of ten or more institutions for the higher education of the Ne¬
groes were united in making it. The conclusion reached was that "the
colleges of this country have done a great service in sending forth five
thousand Negro college graduates, who by precept and by example have
been' of great service in lifting the moral, social and economic tone of the
American people."
Seventh. The next investigation, limited in its first intent to the Ne¬
gro Teacher, was broadened to include the whole wide field of "The
Negro Common School." It was a great subject, adequately and thor¬
oughly treated, at a cost of $250, exclusive of the Conference and publi¬
cation costs. The report is a solid pamphlet of 120 pages entirely devoted
to presenting the data and establishing the conclusions of the Conference
which are printed with its program in a couple of supplementary pages.
The Resolutions (1) Call attention to the fact that only 1,000,000 out of
3,000,000 of Negro children of school age were then regularly attending
school, and only for a session of a few months. (2) Point out that in
spite of lack of opportunity to learn, their ignorance is made a barrier
to voting. (3) Declare the injustice of reducing "the already meagre
school facilities of Negroes," especially in view of the fact shown by the
Report that moneys paid in school taxes, direct or indirect, since the Civil
War by Negroes would suffice to repay what has been spent by the South
on the Negro school system during the same period. This report (on the
Negro Common School) fully justifies the claim made in connection with
the previous year's report, "We study the problem that others discuss."
How necessary it is to have such study appears in a glare of light when
we find the misstatements that are constantly being made.
Eighth. This is a good place to speak of the entire impartiality of
the Atlanta Conference studies. They are not undertaken to find support
for positions and propositions to which any one is already committed or to
buttress any special policy. "Special pleading" has been barred out and
all the facts bearing upon each subject have been sought.
12 A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences
Ninth. Thus it becomes all the more a matter of great significance
when the reports furnish conclusive evidence of certain great outstanding
features of an encouraging character with reference to the Negroes.
Two such were brought out in the study of the Negro Common School.
The table on page 43 of that report shows the actual increase in the
number of Negro children enrolled in the public schools of the South from
1866-1899. Starting at 90,000, it got above the half million mark in eleven
years, and in seven years more passed one million (1884). It has never
been below the million mark since 1884, but it has gone up from that only
very slowly, not reaching one millon and a half until 1898, a fifteen years'
climb. Not until 1904-05 did it pass 1,600,000, and 1,700,000 in 1908-09.
(This is enrollment, not average attendance.)
Negro illiteracy, as a natural result has shown a great decrease. In the
16 slave-holding states of the South, at the time of emancipation, 95 per
cent of the Negroes (of age of literacy and over) could neither read nor
write. At the time of the Conference of 1901, of which we have been
speaking, the percentage had been reduced to 44.5, and at the time of the
latest figures obtainable it is counted at 30.4.
Tenth. I must pass over rapidly the next three reports, those of
1902, '03 and '04,which took up respectively "The Negro Artisan," "The
Negro Church" and "Negro Crime." In the careful and thorough
handling of each and every one of these topics we can see the trained
skill and constructive leadership of Dr. DuBois. He remained until his
connection with the University ceased in 1910, the faithful and efficient
corresponding secretary of the Conference, and he then continued as
advisory director and editor, with the assistance of Mr. Augustus G.
Dill. Not only was the work of gathering, compiling and tabulating the
facts and publishing them done by Dr. DuBois or under his direction, but
two other important features or departments of this work, considered as
a whole, relied largely on his efforts.
Eleventh. One might be called the publicity department. To get
the reports circulated when once in print, to furnish facts and materials
to those who were all the time writing in for special information, to com¬
pile the elaborate bibliographies that were so necessary to give access to
the whole body of growing literature on these and allied topics, all this
made a great and a complicated task which was well performed. There
might also be added and included here, to make our picture complete,
the lectures that were given by Dr. DuBois or other members of the
faculty, both south and north, on topics that formed part of this pro¬
gram. At Pisk University, Hampton Institute, American Negro Acad¬
emy, at the American Academy of Political and Social Science and at
clubs in New York and Boston these addresses were delivered.
Twelfth. By all these methods and agencies, always hampered and
A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences 1 3
sometimes on the point of being severely curtailed for lack of funds, a
wide currency was being given to the results of all this labor. It won
the approval and support of a dozen or more of the leading college
presidents of the country including Presidents David Starr Jordan,
Stanley Hall, Franklin Carter of Williams, Harris of Amherst, and of
Presidents Hyde, Hadley and Eliot. A still wider currency and endorse¬
ment are well attested by the two words of commendation which follow,
the first being from the publications of the Southern History Association
in March, 1901: "The very best and most advanced work on the socio¬
logical conditions of the Negro, is being done by Atlanta University
through the courses of study, through its teaching corps, through its
publications and through its stimulus to the Negro Conference that meets
in that city." The other is from the London Spectator of March, 1900:
"The future of the Negro population of the United States is a problem
charged with such serious possibilities that any light which can be shed
upon it by an examination of present conditions and tendencies deserves
a most cordial welcome. This work is being done with much intelligence,
discrimination and assiduity, at the instance and under the inspiration of
the Atlanta University." Since both of these words were spoken within
five years of the holding of the first Atlanta Conference, we can see how
quickly and how surely it won its way into a place of esteem among stu¬
dents, thinkers and leaders, and that place has become more assured in
the fourteen years since.
Thirteenth. At the close of the first decade, in 1905, it was very
wisely decided to devote the Conference to a discussion of ' 'Results, Methods
and Plans for the Future." A new helper came to us that year, namely,
Prof. Walter F. Willcox of Cornell University. By way of review of the
ten years certain conclusions were formulated, among which we find
these facts stated. "The investigations of the last ten years seem on the
whole to indicate: (c) A large but slowly decreasing Negro mortality; (d)
An encouraging decrease of infant and child mortality; (h) A rapid de¬
crease in illiteracy, especially in cities, and a large percentage of success
among college-bred Negroes; (k) A large increase of crime up until 1895,
and a considerable decrease (in the decade) since that date."
The report for that year consisted of the most complete bibliography
of the Negro American ever published up to that date, covering 73 pages
of titles and including periodical literature as well as books and pamphlets.
The Mothers' Meeting for that year took up questions of child study
and the kindergarten, with a very immediate practical application to the
needs of Atlanta. As a result of Miss Gertrude Ware's leadership of the
"consultation" about "a colored kindergarten for the city," the Gate
City Free Kindergarten Association was organized and two free kinder¬
gartens opened in the city under its auspices, which number has since
been increased to five.
14
A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences
Fourteenth. The discussion of plans at this Conference of 1905 led to
the adoption for the studies of the next ten years of a cycle of topics
repeating in a general way the studies of the first ten years, making
them, however, more logical in order, more systematic and more compre¬
hensive. I have purposely devoted most of my time to gleanings from
the first ten years of the social studies and the Conferences to show their
genesis, their aim, their leadership and the conclusions reached and re¬
sults achieved. The work of the last ten years can be reviewed much
more briefly. This does not mean that it is less important. Far from it.
Experience added completeness to the work and each year's report,
besides being more full of data, had the added benefit of comparison with
the statements presented ten years before. Inaccuracies were corrected,
mistaken inferences were set right, and in all points an advanced standard
was maintained.
In 1907 the Carnegie Foundation contributed $500 towards the ex¬
penses of the Conference preparatory work and printing. From 1908 to
1913 inclusive, the John F. Slater Fund contributed largely to the cost,
and our great indebtedness to the trustees of that fund was indicated
each year by the addition to the title on the cover page of the words,
"Under the patronage of the Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund."
This present year, in the absence of any help from the Slater Fund,
$500 has been received from the Phelps-Stokes Fund. These "grants in
aid" are practically indispensable to the continuance of the Conference
social studies. They have made the standards of the last decade possible
of attainment.
The studies planned for the second decade were:
The Negro Physique 1906
The Negro Family 1907
Negro Organizations 1908
The Economic Development of Negroes . . 1909, 1910
The Education of Negroes 1911
The Political Power 1912
The Negro Church 1913
Crime Among Negroes 1914
Methods and Results 1915
This order and content of the studies has been modified somewhat in the
working out of the plan. The study of the Family was put off one year and
the topics for the two years following were put in ahead of it and also re¬
duced in time to one year, and in scope, to the topic of "Economic Co-opera¬
tion among Negro Americans." Education was expanded and given two
years' treatment, as before: the report on "The College-Bred Negro,"
1910, and that on "The Common School and the Negro American" in 1911,
taking the place of the single topic first planned. "The Negro American
Artisan" was put in place of "The Political Power of Negroes" for 1912,
A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences 1 5
and the report just issued on "Morals and Manners among Negro Ameri¬
cans" covers and includes the two topics originally assigned for the two
years 1912 and 1913.
The benefits of comparisons with earlier investigations are illustrated
by this instance. The average death rate of Negroes in the larger cities
was found to have decreased from 35.88 per thousand in 1890 to 34.08 per
thousand in 1900. But it was also discovered that nine-tenths of the
recorded Negro death rates in 1900 referred to city population, while
four-fifths of the Negroes live in the country. Where death rates in the
country districts were recorded they were found not to exceed 22 per
thousand. It thus became evident that although the Negro death rate
in the South does exceed that of the whites, it is not so far in excess as
had been supposed. These revised facts and others helped to correct the
conclusions drawn in books such as Hoffman's "Race Traits and Tenden¬
cies of the American Negro," that the race is inferior to others in phys¬
ical vitality. (See paragraph 5, Resolutions of 1906, page 110 of Re¬
port.) Dr. Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology in Columbia Univer¬
sity, gave the weight of his opinion strongly to the denial of Negro racial
inferiority and his approval to the resolutions of the Conference. Included
in these were encouraging statements as to hospitals and physicians
among the Negroes. The next year, 1907, the resolutions made a strong
appeal, based on a thorough inductive study, for more of "Economic Co¬
operation." The next year the college classes of 1909-1910 in Atlanta
University were given most of the task of studying prevailing conditions
of marriage and divorce, home and family life, and related questions.
The after effects of slavery were studied and existing evil conditions
were boldly faced, as in this statement: "The United States had in 1900
10.7 per cent of illiteracy, 46.5 per cent of home ownership, and perhaps
2 per cent of illegitimate births. The [American] Negro had in 1900, 44.5
per cent of illiteracy, 20.3 per cent of home ownership and probably,
though not certainly, 25 per cent of illegitimacy." The great importance
of right teaching and training was strongly emphasized.
Studies of Social Betterment in 1909 took a wide range and caused a
much greater variety of topics than the similar study in 1898. The organi¬
zations studied included the church, and the conclusion was reached that
more of institutional and reformatory work was called for, helped out by
trained social workers. The strong tendency in this direction in the
teaching and example of the present head of the sociological work in this
University are, it seems to me, to be strongly commended.
Two Conferences and reports on Education followed, and the resolu¬
tions, signed by an unusual number of leading educators, in the report on
"The College-Bred Negro," made very definite and specific recommenda¬
tions.
1 6 A Review of the Atlanta University Conferences
"The Negro Artisan" and "Morals and Manners among Negro Amer¬
icans" are the latest publications in this most important series of reports.
The latter study contains less of statistics, but much more of full reporting
from different states and localities. As the concluding paragraph states:
"With all its shadows and questions one cannot read this study without a
distinct feeling of hope and courage." The resolutions of 1913 stated,
over the signatures of Dr. DuBois, Mr. L. H. Williams of Macon, Ga.,
and Mr. Augustus G. Dill, that "the hope of the future in moral uplift
lies in thorough common school training for Negro children, respect and
protection for Negro women, widened industrial opportunity for Negro
men, and systematic effort to lessen race prejudice."
Standing, as we do today, at the close of these "Social Studies of a
Score of Years," we can have no hesitation in affirming:
1. That the faithful and able work put into these twenty annual
Conferences and eighteen reports, and the comparatively small amount
of money expended upon them (not over $1,200 per annum), have been
abundantly justified by the results.
2. That they have furnished one of the most important contributions,
in tested facts and scientific conclusions, towards a sound foundation for
the "Advancement of the Negro" in the United States.
I
Races of Men1
It is doubtful if many of the persons in the United Stales who are
eagerly and often bitterly discussing race problems have followed very
carefully the advances which anthropological science has made in the last
decade. Certainly the new knowledge has not yet reached the common
schools in the usual school histories and geographies. As Ripley says:
It may smack of heresy, to assert in face of the teaching of all our
textbooks on geography and history, that there is no single European or
white race of men; and yet that is the plain truth of the matter. Science
has advanced since Linnaeus' single type of Homo Europseus albus was
made one of the four great races of mankind. No continental group of
human beings with greater diversities or extremes of physical type ex¬
ists. That fact accounts in itself for much of our advance in culture.2
In our school days most of us were brought up to regard Asia as
the mother of European peoples. We were told that an ideal race of
men swarmed forth from the Himalayan highlands, disseminating cul¬
ture right and left as they spread through the barbarous west. The primi¬
tive language, parent to all of the varieties of speech—Romance, Teutonic,
Slavic, Persian, or Hindustanee—spoken by the so-called Caucasian or
white race, was called Aryan. By inference this name was shifted to
the shoulders of the people themselves, who were known as the Aryan
race. In the days when such symmetrical generalizations held sway
there was no science of physical anthropology; prehistoric archeeology
was not yet. Shem, Ham, and Japhet were still the patriarchal found¬
ers of the great racial varieties of the genus Homo. A new science
of philology dazzled the intelligent world by its brilliant discoveries, and
its words were law. Since I860 these early inductions have completely
broken down in the light of modern research; and even today greater
uncertainty prevails in many phases of the question than would have
been admitted possible twenty years ago.3
So, too, a leading Italian anthropologist says:
Whenever there has been any attempt to explain the origin of civil¬
ization and of the races called Aryan, whether in the Mediterranean or
1 Reprinted from the Atlanta University Publication No. 11, W. E. B. DuBois, editor.
2 Ripley, Races of Europe (New York, 1899), p. 103.
3 Ripley, pp. 452-3.
18
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
in Central Europe, all archaeologists, linguists, and anthropologists have
until recent years been dominanted by the conviction that both civiliza¬
tion and peoples must have their unquestionable cradle in Asia.1
As illustrating the former tendency, Sergi adds:
A celebrated anthropologist, when measuring the heads of the
mummies of the Pharaohs preserved in the Pyramids, wrote that the
Egyptians belonged to the white race. His statement meant nothing;
we could construct a syllogism showing that the Egyptians are Germans,
since the latter also are fair. De Quatrefages classified the Abyssin-
ians among the white races, but if they are black, how can they be
white?a
The new anthropology, while taking into account all the older race
insignia, like color, hair, form of features, etc., has added to these exact
measurements of the underlying bony skeleton and other carefully col¬
lected data. Of these new measurements the form of the head is being
most emphasized today.
The form of the head is for all racial purposes best measured by
what is technically known as the cephalic index. This is simply the
breadth of the head above the ears expressed in percentage of its length
from forehead to back. Assuming that this length is 100, the width is
expressed in a fraction of it. As the head becomes proportionately
broader—that is, more fully rounded, viewed from the top down—this
cephalic index increases. When it rises above 80, the head is called
brachycephalic, when it falls below 75, the term dolichocephalic is applied
to it. Indexes between 75 and 80 are characterized as mesocephalic.®
Based on the new measurements and discoveries, the chief conclusions
of anthropologists today as to European races are as follows:
1. The European races, as a whole, show signs of a secondary or de¬
rived origin; certain characteristics, especially the texture of the hair,
lead us to class them as intermediate between the extreme primary
types of the Asiatic and the Negro races respectively.
2. The earliest and lowest strata of population in Europe were ex¬
tremely long-headed; probability points to the living Mediterranean race
as most nearly representative of it today.
3. It is highly probable that the Teutonic race of northern Europe is
merely a variety of this primitive long-headed type of the stone age;
both its distinctive blondness and its remarkable stature having been ac¬
quired in the relative isolation of Scandinavia through the modifying in¬
fluences of environment and of artificial selection.
1 Sergi, The Mediterranean Race (London, 1901), p. 1.
2 Sergi, p. 35.
3 Ripley, p. 37.
Races of Men
19
4. It is certain that, after the partial occupation of western Europe
by a dolichocephalic Africanoid type in the stone age, an invasion by a
broad-headed race of decidedly Asiatic affinities took place. This in¬
trusive element is represented today by the Alpine type of Central Eu¬
rope.1
What was now this Mediterranean race whence the Europeans were
primarily derived? Sergi adds:
In opposition to the theory of a migration from the north of Europe
to the west and then to Africa, I am, on the contrary, convinced that a
migration of the African racial element took place in primitive times from
the south towards the north. The types of Cro-Magnon, L'Homme-Mort,
and other French and Belgian localities, bear witness to the presence of
an African stock in the same region in which we find the dolmens and
other megalithic monuments erroneously attributed to the Celts.2
He adds:
We have no reason to suppose that the movement of emigration in
the east of Africa stopped at the Nile valley; we may suppose that it
extended towards the east of Egypt, into Syria and the regions around
Syria, and thence into Asia Minor. It is possible -that in Syria this im¬
migration encountered the primitive inhabitants, or a population coming
from northern Arabia, and mingled with them or subjugated them.3
Sergi's conclusions are:
1. That the primitive populations of Europe originated in Africa.
2. The basin of the Mediterranean was the chief center of the move¬
ment whence the African migration reached central and northern Europe.
3. From this great Eurafrican stock came—
(a) The present inhabitants of northern Africa.
(b) The Mediterranean race.
(c) The Nordic or Teutonic race.
4. These three varieties of one stock were not "Aryan," nor of Asi¬
atic origin.
5. The primitive civilization of Europe is Afro-Mediterranean, becom¬
ing eventually Afro-European.
6. Greek and Roman civilization were not Aryan but Mediterranean.4
This primitive race was a colored race:
If, therefore, as all consistent students of natural history hold today,
the human races have evolved in the past from some common root type,
this predominant dark color must be regarded as the more primitive. It
is not permissible for an instant to suppose that 99 per cent of the human
1 Ripley, pp. 457-470.
2 Sergi, p. 70.
3 Sergi, p. 144.
4 Sergi, pp. v-vii.
20
Seledl Discussions of Race Problems
species has varied from a blond ancestry, while the flaxen-haired Teuton¬
ic type alone has remained true to its primitive characteristics.1
The types of Greek and Roman statuary:
Do not in the slightest degree recall the features of a northern race;
in the delicacy of the cranial and facial forms, in smoothness of surface,
in the absence of exaggerated frontal bosses and supra-orbital arches, in
the harmony of the curves, in the facial oval, in the rather low foreheads,
they recall the beautiful and harmonious heads of the brown Mediterran¬
ean race.2
Of the part of this great stock which remained in North Africa, Sergi
says:
The area of geographical distribution of these African populations is
immense, for it reaches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, from the equa¬
tor, and even beyond the equator to the Mediterranean. In this vast area
we find, when we exclude racial mixtures, that the physical characters of
the skeleton, as regards head and face are uniform, but that the physical
characters of the skin and intermediate parts, that is to say, the develop¬
ment and form of the soft parts, vary. This uniformity of the cranio¬
facial skeletal characters, which I consider the guiding thread in anthro¬
pological research, has led me to regard as a single human stock all the
varieties distributed in the area already mentioned. In the varying cuta¬
neous coloration I see an effect of temperature, of climate, of alimenta¬
tion, and of the manner of life.3
The Negro Race
It has usually been assumed that of all races the Negro race is, by
reason of its pronounced physical characteristics, easiest to distinguish.
Exacter studies and measurements prove this untrue. The human spe¬
cies so shade and mingle with each other that not only indeed is it impos¬
sible to draw a color line between black and other races, but in all physi¬
cal characteristics the Negro race cannot be set off by itself as absolutely
different. This was formerly assumed to be the case even by scientists
and led to the queer reductio ad absurdum that very few real pure Ne¬
groes existed even in Africa. As Ratzel points out:
The name "Negro" originally embraces one of the most unmistak¬
able conceptions of ethnology—the African with dark skin, so-called
"woolly" hair, thick lips and nose; and it is one of the prodigious, nay
amazing achievements of critical erudition to have latterly confined this
(and that even in Africa, the genuine old Negro country) to a small dis-
1 Ripley, p. 465.
2 Sergi, p. 20.
3 Sergi, pp. 248-9.
Races of Men
21
trict. For if with Waitz we assume that Gallas, Nubians, Hottentots,
Kaffirs, the Congo races, and the Malagasies are none of them genuine
Negroes, and if with Schweinfurth we further exclude Shillooks and Bon¬
gos, we find that the continent of Africa is peopled throughout almost its
whole circuit by races other than the genuine Negro, while in its interior,
from the southern extremity to far beyond the equator it contains only
light-colored South Africans, and the Bantu or Kaffir peoples.
Nothing then remains for the Negroes in the pure sense of the word
save, as Waitz says, "a tract of country extending over not more than
10 or 12 degrees of latitude, which may be traced from the mouth of the
Senegal river to Timbuctoo, and thence extended to the regions about
Sennaar." Even in this the race reduced to these dimensions is permeat¬
ed by a number of people belonging to other stocks. According to La¬
tham, indeed, the real Negro country extends only from the Senegal to
the Niger. If we ask what justifies so narrow a limitation, we find that
the hideous Negro type, which the fancy of observers once saw all over
Africa, but which, as Livingstone says, is really to be seen only as a sign
in front of tobacco-shops, has on closer inspection evaporated from almost
all parts of Africa, to settle no one knows how in just this region. If we
understand that an extreme case may have been taken for the genuine and
pure form, even so we do not comprehend the ground of its geographical
limitation and location; for wherever dark woolly-haired men dwell, this
ugly type also crops up. We are here in presence of a refinement of
science which to an unprejudiced eye will hardly hold water.1
Three things have been especially emphasized as characteristic of
Negroes: their color, hair and features. As to color in human beings,
Ripley says:
One point alone seems to have been definitely proved: however
marked the contrasts in color between the several varieties of human
species may be, there is no corresponding difference in anatomical
structure discoverable.
Pigmentation arises from the deposition of coloring matter in a
special series of cells, which lie just between the translucent outer skin
or epidermis and the inner or true skin known as the cutis. It was
long supposed that these pigment cells were peculiar to the dark-
skinned races; but investigation has shown that the structure in all
types is identical. The differences in color are due, not to presence
or absence of the cells themselves, but to variation in the amount of
pigment therein deposited. In this respect, therefore, the Negro dif¬
fers physiologically, rather than anatomically, from the European or
the Asiatic.2
1 Ratzel, The History of Mankind; tr. from 2d German ed. by A. J. Butler (London, 1897),
vol. 2, p. 313. 2 Ripley, p. 58.
22
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
The cause of this physiological difference is climate, the rays of the
sun, humidity, and such natural forces:
The best working hypothesis is ... . that this coloration is due to
the combined influences of a great number of factors of environment
working through physiological processes, none of which can be isolated
from the others. One point is certain, whatever the cause may be—
that this characteristic has been very slowly acquired, and has today be¬
come exceedingly persistent in several races.1
Sergi says of the Mediterranean race:
We may therefore conclude that as residence under the equator has
produced the red-brown and black coloration of the stock, and residence
in the Mediterranean the brown colour, so northern Europe has given
origin to the white skin, blond hair, and blue or grey eyes. I believe
we may consider this a beautiful example of the formation and variation
of external characters among a section of the human race which from
time immemorial has been diffused by migration between the equator
and the arctic circle, and has formed its external characters according
to the variations of latitude and the concomitant external conditions.2
As to hair, we are told that—
The two extremes of hair texture in the human species are the
crisp, curly variety so familiar to us in the African Negro; and the stiff
wiry straight hair of the Asiatic and the American aborigines. These
traits are extremely persistent; they persevere oftentimes through gen¬
erations of ethnic inter-mixture. It has been shown by Pruner Bey and
others that this outward contrast in texture is due to, or at all events
coincident with, morphological differences in structure. The curly hair
is almost always of a flattened, ribbon-like form in cross section, as
examined microscopically; while, cut squarely across, the straight hair
more often inclines to a fully rounded or cylindrical shape. Moreover,
this peculiarity in cross section may often be detected in any crossing of
these extreme types. The result of such intermixture is to impart a
more or less wavy appearance to the hair, and to produce a cross section
intermediate between a flattened oval and a circle. Roughly speaking,
the more pronounced the flatness the greater is the tendency toward
waviness or curling, and the reverse.3
Anthropologists today are putting less stress on the development of
the soft parts of the human frame—the skin, nose, cheeks and lips, but
have come to regard the cranio-facial skeletal characteristics as "the
1 Ripley p. 62.
2 Sergi, p. 254.
3 Ripley, p. 457.
Races of Men
23
guiding thread in anthropological research."1 Even here the matter of
absolute size and weight is of minor importance:
Equally unimportant to the anthropologist is the absolute size of the
head. It is grievous to contemplate the waste of energy when, during
our civil war, over one million soldiers had their heads measured in re¬
spect of this absolute size; in view of the fact that today anthropolo¬
gists deny any considerable significance attaching to this characteristic.
Popularly, a large head with beetling eyebrows suffices to establish a
man's intellectual credit; but like all other credit, it is entirely depend¬
ent upon what lies on deposit elsewhere. Neither size nor weight of the
brain seems to be of importance. The long, narrow heads, as a rule,
have a smaller capacity than those in which the breadth is considerable,
but exceptions are so common that they disprove the rule. Among
the earliest men whose remains have been found in Europe, there was
no appreciable difference from the present living populations. In many
cases these prehistoric men even surpassed the present living population
in the size of the head. The peasant and the philosopher can not be dis¬
tinguished in this respect. For the same reason the striking difference
between the sexes, the head of the man being considerably larger than
the head of the woman, means nothing more than avoirdupois, or rath¬
er it seems merely to be correlated with the taller stature and more
massive frame of the human male.2
Great stress used to be put on the facial angle, but we are told now
that—
Prognathism, that is to say the degree of projection of the maxil¬
lary portion of the face, is a characteristic trait of certain skulls; how¬
ever, it does not seem to play so important a part in the classification of
races- as anthropologists had thought twenty or thirty years ago. It
presents too many individual varieties to be taken as a distinctive
character of race.3
We have, then, in the so-called Negro races to do with a great va¬
riety of human types and mixtures of blood representing at bottom a
human variation which separated from the primitive human stock some
ages after the yellow race and before the Mediterranean race, and
which has since intermingled with these races in all degrees of admix¬
ture so that today no absolute separating line can be drawn.
The real history of the human races is unknown. A probable theory
would be that the first great division of men took place at the roof of
1 Sergi, p. 249.
2 Ripley, p. 43.
3 Denniker, p. 93.
24
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
the world, the Asiatic Himalaya mountains; that here the primitive
brown stock of men divided—those to southward gradually through ages
becoming long-headed and tall, and those to northward broad-headed
and shorter. From the southern long-headed variety developed in ages
the closely allied Negro and Mediterranean races and from the Mediter¬
ranean race and the invading Asiatics came modern Europeans.
II
Anthropological View of Race1
By Dr. Felix von Luschan
Professor of Anthropology in the University of Berlin
Coloured people are often described as savage races, but it is com¬
paratively rare to find any attempt to give a proper definition of "col¬
oured" and "savage."
A certain order issued by a European Governor in Africa once stat¬
ed what Negroes, Arabs, Hindus, Portuguese, Greeks, and other col¬
oured people, had to do on meeting a white man, and in the German
Reichstag one of the successors of Bismarck once spoke of the Samo-
ans as a "handful of savages." Again, many books have been writ¬
ten on the differences between races of men, and serious scientists
have tried in vain to draw up an exact definition of what really consti¬
tutes the difference between savage and civilised races. It is very easy
to speak of "Greeks and other coloured people"; but some assign the
ancient Greeks to the group of civilised races, and are so severe in their
division as to exclude from that group the ancient Romans as half-bar¬
barians.
The division of mankind into active and passive races is an old one.
Since then an attempt was made to put "twilight" races between the
"day" races and the "night" races, and the Japanese were included in
this "Dammerungs-Menschen"—the Japanese, who are now in the van
of human civilisation in Asia, and who have, perhaps, saved the mental
freedom of Europe at Tshushima and on the battle-fields of Manchuria.
Still weaker and more objectionable is the division as to colour. We
now know that colour of skin and hair is only the effect of environment,
and that we are fair only because our ancestors lived for thousands, or
1 Reprinted from Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, edited by G. Spiller. London: P. S.
King & Son, and Boston: The World's Peace Foundation, 1911, pp. 13-22.
Anthropological View of Race 25
probably tens of thousands, of years in sunless and foggy countries. Fair¬
ness is nothing else but lack of pigment, and our ancestors lost part of
their pigment because they did not need it. Just as the Proteus sangui¬
neus and certain beetles became blind in caves, where their eyes were
useless, so we poor fair people have to wear dark glasses and gloves,
when walking on a glacier, and get our skin burned when we expose it
unduly to the light of the sun.
It is therefore only natural that certain Indian races and the Singha¬
lese are dark; but it would be absurd to call them "savage" on that ac¬
count, as they have an ancient civilisation, and had a noble and refined
religion at a time when we had a very low standard of life.
Some men say that coloured people are "ugly." They should be re¬
minded that beauty is very relative, and that our own idea of beauty is
subject to changes of fashion. We know, too, that artists so refined as
the Japanese find our large eyes and our high noses horrid.
It is also said of the primitive races that they are not as cleanly as
we are. Those who say this, however, forget the dirt of Eastern Europe,
and are ignorant that most primitive men bathe every day, and that the
Bantu and many other Africans clean their teeth after every meal for
more than half an hour with their msuaki, while, on the contrary, mil¬
lions of Europeans never use a tooth-brush.
So it is with dress. Ethnography teaches us that primitive man can
have a highly developed sense of modesty, though naked, and we all
know how immodest one can be in silk and velvet.
The same can be said of the lack of written language. It is true
that most primitive men are Analphabets, but so are 90 per cent, of the
Russians; and we know that memory is generally much stronger with the
illiterates than with us. It may well be that the very invention of writ¬
ing led to a deterioration of our memory.
Most frequently "savages" are accused of being weak in abstract
thinking, like children. To show how such opinions originate, I beg to re¬
late a single case lately reported to me by one of my friends. A young
colonial officer buys a basket and asks the name of it in the native lan¬
guage. The first native says, "That is of straw"; another native says
that they also make them of rushes. One of the two seemed to have
lied, so each of them received twenty-five lashes. A third native is called.
He says, "This basket is plaited," and gets twenty-five also. The next
native affirms that the basket is nearly new, and gets twenty-five. The
next, that he does not know whose basket it is, &c. The final result of
this scientific investigation is two hundred lashes; and the white man
writes in his notebook: "These natives here are brutes, not men." The
black man says to his friends, "This fellow belong white is not proper in
his save box," and thinks it safer to keep at a good distance from him;
and a certain scientist at home gets a splendid illustration of his theory of
the poor intellect of savage man and of his weakness in abstract thinking.
26
Select Discussions of Race Problems
I once personally witnessed how a would-be linguist tried to learn
Kurdish from a Kurd, with whom he could only just speak by means of
a Turkish and French interpreter. He began with one of the famous
phrases in Ahn's Grammar, in the style of "my brother's pocketknife is
prettier than your mother's prayerbook," and wanted to have it trans¬
lated into Kurdish. The result was rather poor, and my pseudo-linguist
soon gave it up, saying that the Kurds were so stupid that they did not
even know their own language. My own private impression was some¬
what different, and I took great care afterwards to convince my Kurdish
friend that not all Europeans were so silly and impatient as his first inter¬
viewer.
In former times it was not so much the mental and material culture
of foreign races, as their anatomical qualities, which were taken as the
starting-point, in showing their inferiority. Especially in America, be¬
fore the war, Anthropology (or what they called by that name) was en¬
gaged in showing that the Negro, with his black skin, his prognathism,
his blubber-lips and his short and broad nose, was no real human being
but a domestic animal. How to treat him was the owner's private affair;
it was nobody else's business, any more than the treatment of his cattle
and horses.
Even to-day there are scientists who claim a separate origin for the
various human types, and who link one palaeolithic race to the Gorilla
and another (or perhaps the same) to the Orang. The author of Anthro-
pozoon biblicum goes still further and wants us to believe that the
dark races are the descendants of incestuous intercourse between "Ar¬
yans" and monkeys. But the great majority of our modern authorities
now claim a monogenetic origin for mankind.
So the question of the number of human races has quite lost its rai-
son d'etre, and has become a subject rather of philosophical speculation
than of scientific research. It is of no more importance now to know
how many human races there are than to know how many angels can
stand on the point of a needle. Our aim now is to find how ancient and
primitive races developed from others, and how races have changed or
evolved through migration and interbreeding.
We do not yet know where the first man began to develop from earlier
stages of zoological existence, and we know nothing of his anatomical
qualities. The Pithecanthropus erectus from Java was for some time
considered to be such a first man or "missing link"; but he proved to be
only an enormous Gibbon. The oldest known remains of real man have
been found in Western Europe. They do not show one single trait that
is not found in one or other modern skull or skeleton of aboriginal Aus¬
tralians; even the mandible of Mauer-Heidelberg, primitive as it is, has
a typical human dentition. So we shall probably not be far from the
truth if we state that the palaeolithic man of Europe was not essentially
different from the modern Australian. If we are allowed to draw conclu-
Anthropological View of Race 27
sions as to the soft parts from the qualities of the skeleton, our palaeo¬
lithic ancestor had dark skin, dark eyes, and dark, more or less, straight
hair. His home was probably in some part of Southern Asia; but we
find similar types even now among the Toala of Celebes and the Veddas
of Ceylon. In fact, millions of dark men in India belong to the same
stock, and so do all the dark tribes of Afghanistan and Beluchistan.
So we can trace an early and primitive type of mankind from Gibral¬
tar, Moustier, Spy, Neanderthal, Krapina, &c., to Ceylon, Celebes, and
Australia. This certainly is a wide area, but every year is now bringing
fresh proofs of this direct' continuity of a distinct human type from the
earliest palaeolithic ages to irjodern times.
The question naturally arises how it is that our Australian brothers
have remained for fifty or a hundred thousand years, or longer, in such
a primitive state of mental and material culture, while we Europeans
have reached the height of modern civilisation. The answer is not diffi¬
cult. Australia was isolated from the rest of the world through an early
geological catastrophe soon after the immigration of palaeolithic man.
Every impulse and incentive from without ceased, and human life began
to petrify.
It was quite otherwise in Europe and in Western Asia. The thou¬
sand advantages of the environment, the broken coastlines, the many is¬
lands, the navigable rivers, and especially the constant passing from Asia
to Europe and from Europe to Asia and Africa, the ready exchange of
inventions and discoveries and acquisitions, the incessant trade and traffic,
have made us what we are.
This primitive but uniform human type began to change chiefly in
two directions. To the south-west of the line connecting Gibraltar with
Australia, man, in some way or other, developed curly and woolly hair,
and so became what we now call Protonigritian. We find his descendants
in Melanesia and in Africa. The Pygmies form a very old branch of this
protonigritic group; and we find them in South Africa (Bushmen), in
many parts of Tropical Africa and of South-Eastern Asia, and even in
some islands of the Pacific. We do not know where they became small,
whether in their original home or later on, after their dispersion. The
first theory is certainly the simpler; but the second is not without analogy.
We know that the Ammonites began to unroll themselves quite indepen¬
dently of each other in distant oceans, but more or less in the same geo¬
logical period.
On the other side of this line, in Northern Asia, primitive man ac¬
quired, during many thousands of years, straight hair and a shorter or
broader skull. The modern Chinese and the typical, now nearly extinct,
American Indian are at the end of this north-eastern line of development,
while the typical Negro represents the south-western end.
We have thus three chief varieties of mankind—the old Indo-Euro¬
pean, the African, and the East-Asiatic, all branching off from the same
28
Select Discussions of Race Problems
primitive stock, diverging from each other for thousands, perhaps hun¬
dreds of thousands, of years, but all three forming a complete unity, in¬
termarrying in all directions without the slightest decrease of fertility.
From these three varieties came all the different types of modern
mankind, generally by local isolation, A very interesting example of
such mutation is found in the earliest known inhabitants of Western Asia.
This is the land of those extremely narrow and high-arched noses, we
generally call Jewish or even Semitic. These remarkable noses, however,
do not belong to the Semitic invaders, of whom Abraham is the eponymic
hero, but to the pre-Semitic population which might be called Hittite or
Armenoid, as the modern Armenians are their direct descendants.
These old Hittites or Armenoids emigrated in very early times to
Europe, where the "Alpine Race" descended from them. In the most
out-of-the-way valleys of Savoy, Graubiinden, Tyrol, and Carinthia more
than half of the modern population has the head-form and the nose of
this second immigration from Asia to Europe, and from the mingling of
this short-headed "Alpine Race" with the descendants of the long-headed
Palaeolithic or Neanderthal or proto-Australian Race, all the great mod¬
ern European races have sprung. Only the Turks and the Magyars repre¬
sent a later immigration from Northern Asia, and of the Magyars in par¬
ticular we know that they settled in their present home in Hungary only
a thousand years ago, and that their grammar is most intimately related
to the grammar of the real Turkish languages. Perhaps the Slavonic
races also were more or less influenced by later immigrations from North¬
ern Asia.
Thus the European races can only be understood by considering Eu¬
rope as a small peninsular annex to ancient Asia, and for the understand¬
ing of the non-European races it is necessary to remember that the
boundaries of water and land and glaciers have altered immensely in the
course of the many hundreds of thousands of years of human existence.
While the first varieties of primitive man were certainly formed and
fixed by long isolation, later variations and races were caused by migra¬
tion and colonisation, as might perhaps best be shown by sketching the
anthropology of Africa and of the Pacific Islands.
Just as Madagascar was peopled about 900 or 1000 A. D. by the In¬
donesian colonists, coming from Sumatra, so untold ages ago the first
inhabitants of Africa came from a place somewhere in Southern Asia on
the great line from Gibraltar to Australia. ,No skulls or skeletons of these
earliest Africans are as yet known, but we may hope to find them sooner
or later, as we already now know a good many sites of palaeolithic im¬
plements in various parts of Tropical and Southern Africa.
The anatomical qualities of these first Africans will certainly be found
to differ little from those of aboriginal Australians; but in tens or hun¬
dreds of thousands of years the palaeolithic African developed into a real
Negro. He exists in two varieties: a tall variety, like the modern Nigri-
Anthropological View of Race
29
tian from the coast of Upper Guinea, and a small one, like the Bushmen
and the Pygmies, now known in so many places in Central Africa. But
I have already stated that we are as yet quite ignorant of the real home
of these small races.
To these two oldest elements in Africa was added, ages afterwards,
but still in prehistoric times, a third one, the Hamitic. It is descended
from the same ancient "Gibraltar-Australia-line," but was in a higher
stage of civilisation. These Hamites had already a greatly refined lan¬
guage, with an admirable grammar, closely related to that of the Semitic
and Indo-germanic languages. In Egypt they created, more than six
thousand years ago, the marvelous civilisation which we now admire as
the mother of our own. Ancient Hamitic influences can be traced all
through Africa; in Abyssinia, in Galla-, Somal-, and in Masailand, we
find even now Hamitic languages, or at least Hamitic grammar and Ham¬
itic types.
In Central Africa, in the region of the great lakes, we have the Hima
and Tusi, generally as chiefs, reigning over Bantu tribes, often with face
and figure like those of the old Pharaohs of Egypt. Even in South Afri¬
ca nearly 1 per cent, of the actual Bantu population have high and narrow
noses, thin lips, and fine, large, and orthognathous skulls of the Hamitic
type, and all the Hottentot languages and dialects have a pure Hamitic
grammar. Also the pastoral habits of many African tribes, long-horned
cattle, their spiral basket-work, &c., are Hamitic, and we can thus trace
Hamitic influence from the Nile to the Cape of Good Hope.
In the West of Africa, also, the Hausa and many other Hamitic tribes
have been of the greatest importance in the progress of African civilisa¬
tion and the formation of new tribes.
In later historic times Arabic, Persian, and Indian influences were at
work in Eastern Africa. The periodic occurrence of Passat and Monsoon
had already led to occasional visits and perhaps even to some colonisation
at a very early stage of human history; the zebu, the goat, and a great
many domestic plants, were brought from India to the Swahili coast, and
from there to the interior of Africa; but we do not know when. We
know only that Islam came from Arabia comparatively late—Islam that
is now the prominent religion throughout vast regions of Africa, and
will probably remain so for many centuries to come.
The Mediterranean coast of Africa also has always been open to for¬
eign influences. The Vandals who came to Africa in 429 A. D. certainly
had forerunners even in prehistoric times. The trepanning of skulls
which was known in the late palaeolithic cave dwellings in France, was
performed on the Canary Islands, and is even now found among some
tribes in Southern Algeria. The modern pottery of Adamaua shows a
close relation to the pottery of the Hallstatt period and of ancient Sardi¬
nia, and some modern armlets and bronze daggers in the Western Sudan
look as if they might belong to the European Bronze Age. We do not
30
Select Discussions of Race Problems
know where the art of casting in bronze (the cire perdue process of the
French, the casting with cera perduta of the Italians) had its real origin;
probably it came from Egypt or from Babylonia. We are also ignorant
of the way it took in coming from there to Europe and to the Western
Sudan, but we see from the prehistoric character of many African bronze
daggers, armlets, &c., that the art of casting must have come to Ada-
maua not later than the sixth century B. C.
Six centuries before the historic invasion of the Vandals, Hannibal
sent his soldiers from Africa to Europe and from Europe to Africa, and
we know that in the early Middle Ages African Mohammedans reigned
in Spain for more than five hundred years.
Thus there was a constant coming and going between North Africa and
Western Europe, and we cannot be astonished to find so many blue eyes
among the Berbers of Morocco, and even among the Ful and other tribes
in the Sudan.
In fact, the natives of Africa, who were considered not long ago to
be a homogeneous mass, now turn out to be in reality a most complicated
mixture of quite different elements, the outcome of immigration at dif-
lerent periods and from different parts of the globe.
Not much less complicated is the anthropological structure of Oceania.
Here we have real pygmies, and the Melanesians, who are very similar to
the African Negroes with dark curly and often spiral hair, dark skin,
long skull, prognathous face, broad nose, and thick lips. They are found
nearly pure on the Fiji Islands and in some parts of New Caledonia and
in the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. In other parts of the
Western Pacific they are more or less mixed with the old pygmy races
and form what are now generally called the Papuan elements of Oceania.
The greatest possible contrast to these Melanesians and Papuans is found
in the Polynesian type, which is found in its purest form in Tonga and
Samoa, but partly also in the Eastern Group of Polynesia. The real and
pure typical Polynesian has a skin not much darker than that of many
Sicilians or Spaniards; his hair is dark and straight, the skull is extreme¬
ly short, but very broad and high; the face is orthognathous, the nose
narrow, the lips sometimes very thin, never as thick as those of the Mel¬
anesians. Many Polynesians might easily be taken for full-blooded Euro¬
peans; others, especially some of the females, resemble types from Indo¬
nesia or from Siam and Cambodja, except that they are, as a rule, much
taller than any tribes of South-Eastern Asia. On the whole it is evident,
without any recourse to linguistics and ethnography, merely by studying
their physique that the Polynesians came from Asia and that they came
by way of Indonesia. This is also shown by their cosmogonical system
and their eschatology.
These two races, the Melanesians and Polynesians, different from
each other as they are, have intermarried on many groups of the Pacific
Islands for at least many centuries. On some islands, e. g., in New
Anthropological View of Race
31
Zealand, a sort of real mixture of types has taken place, on others the
two types have remained quite distinct, so that in accordance with Men¬
del's law, always a certain proportion of the people belong to the one,
and another proportion to the other type, and only one-half (or less) of
the inhabitants have the qualities of both types mixed.
Wherever we try to investigate in this way the natural history of
man, we always find inter-connection and migration, often over more
than half of our globe. We can trace Turk languages from the Medi¬
terranean all through Asia to the vicinity of Kamtschatka, and Malayan
languages are spoken eastwards as far as Rapanui or Easter Island, the
ultima Thule of the Pacific; westward we find the Hova of Madagascar,
descendants of old Indonesian colonists who probably came from Sumatra
about a thousand years ago, still preserving their type, their Indonesian
language and their old material culture. Hamitic grammar and Hamitic
type can be traced right through Africa.
The religions of Buddha and of Christ have each conquered more than
500 millions of men, and Islam spreads from Arabia as far as the West
Coast of Africa, and eastward all through Asia, as far as the Indonesian
Archipelago. We find carvings in New Ireland that can be traced back
to the famous Greek marble representing the rape of Ganymede, and we
know that the religious style of Buddhist art goes back to ancient Greece,
just as the Japanese No-masks are the direct descendants of the masks in
ancient Greek and Roman plays.
In the same way our own domestic animals and plants, our corn and
grains, can be traced round the globe, and in a few centuries American
plants have spread so universally in Africa, that to the non-botanist they
seem to be indigenous in the Dark Continent.
In former times ethnologists used to admire the apparent unity in
the direction of the human mind, and to wonder how it was that in all
parts of the earth men had similar ideas and ways. Now this "Volker-
gedanken" theory is nearly abandoned, and we are forced to admit the
real unity of mankind. Fair and dark races, long and short-headed, intel¬
ligent and primitive, all come from one stock. . Favourable circumstances
and surroundings, especially a good environment, a favourable geographi¬
cal position, trade and traffic, caused one group to advance more quickly
than another, while some groups have remained in a very primitive state
of development; but all are adapted to their surroundings, according to
the law of the survival of the fittest.
One type may be more refined, another type may be coarser; but if
both are thoroughbred, or what we call "good types," however they may
differ, one is not necessarily inferior to the other. In this sense I could
once say in one of my University lectures that the only ' 'savages" in
Africa are certain white men with ''Tropenkoller." I am afraid I owe
perhaps to this paradox the honour of being invited to take part in this
Congress, and I feel it therefore my duty to declare most formally that
32
Select Discussions of Race Problems
I am still seriously convinced that certain white men may be on a lower
intellectual and moral level than certain coloured Africans. But this is
a mere theoretical statement and of little practical value, except for the
Colonial Service. In the Colonies, naturally, a white man with a low
moral standard will always be a serious danger, not only for the natives,
but also for his own nation.
Ill
On Several
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain
Said to Vary according to Race and Sex, with
Especial Reference to the Weight
of the Frontal Lobe*
By Franklin P. Mall
Prom the Anatomical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University
A survey of the literature on the peculiarities of the brain in men of
genius, in women and in the lower races indicates that some anatomists
have thought they could determine, almost at a glance, whether or not
a given specimen came from a great man, a woman or from a Negro. I
refer especially to the older works of Huschke and of Parker and to the
more recent ones of Spitzka and of Bean.
Huschke1 cut the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain at the line
of the coronal suture, that is he removed that portion of the cerebrum
which is covered by the frontal bone and compared it with the rest of the
brain. The result showed a decidedly greater amount of frontal lobe,
fully one per cent (!) in the male than in the female. The fresh brains
that were studied by Huschke were simply cut with a knife along the line
mentioned above. He further states that the central sulcus is straighter,
more perpendicular and nearer the front end in the female brain, the dif¬
ference in position being about 12J per cent of the brain length.2 The
latter figures were obtained from wax casts of brains.
Huschke also expresses himself regarding the Negro brain as follows:
"Aus allem diesen geht hervor, dass das Negerhirn, sowohl das grosse wie
das kleine, ja auch das Riickenmark, den Typus des kindlichen und weib-
lichen Hirns eines Europaers besitzt und ausserdem sich dem Typus des
Hirns der hoheren Affen nahert," etc.
* Reprinted, by permission of the author and the publisher, from The American Journal
of Anatomy, Vol. IX, No. 1.
1 Huschke. Schadel, Hirn und Seele. Jena, 1854.
2 The misprint in Huschke, p. 153, has been copied by Eberstaller, p. 41. The number
given is 86.1 per cent, it should be 56.1 per cent.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain
33
It is admitted by Huschke that it is extremely difficult to recognize
a difference in the convolutions due to sex, but, "es ist aber keine Frage, dass
sie existiren." He further generalizes, as has often been quoted, that
in the male there is more frontal lobe: "Das Weib istein homo parietalis
und inter'parietalis, der Mann ein homo frontalis, und das Weib hat
deshalb auch ein runderes Gehirn, als der Mann." According to his
measurements it was found that in seven women the frontal lobe, i. e.,
the portion of the brain covered by the frontal bone, contains 23.9 per
cent of the brain weight. In fifteen men it contains 24.4 per cent. So
it was actually determined by weighing the parts of the brain that the
frontal lobe in men is one per cent heavier than in women. This difference
he believes corresponds with the differences of the areas of the surface
of the brain as well as with that of its volume. It may be noted that the
individual frontal lobes given in his tables range from 21.8 per cent to
26.1 per cent, the values being often recorded to the second decimal place
(e. g., 24.49 per cent).
Meynert5 examined 157 brains from insane individuals by separating
the mantle from the brain stem which included the basal ganglia and
some of the gray substance of the island. He then cut the mantle
through the central sulcus with a-scissors which gave him the frontal
lobe composed of the brain tissue in front of the fissure of Rolando minus
the basal ganglia. This portion was then compared with the rest of the
brain mantle. He concludes that in men as contrasted with women there
is relatively more brain substance in front of the central sulcus than
behind it—a conclusion which, it seems to me, is not justified by his own
figures. They are as follows. (Note especially the summary in the third
table.)
According to Donaldson,4 Broca divides the cerebrum into three lobes,
one of which is the frontal, limited behind by the central sulcus and
including below its share of basal ganglia. The average weight of
Broca's frontal lobe is 43.5 per cent for men and 43.7per cent for women,
thus contradicting what has been asserted by Huschke and by Meynert.
When the brain is distorted, due to artificial deformity of the skull, this
Male
Age in Years
Weight of Mantle.
Grams
Weight of Frontal
Lobe. Grams
Per Cent, of
Frontal Lobe
No. of Specimens
Examined
1-19
866
380
43.8
4
21-29
1030
428
41.5
15
30-39
1035
428
41.3
21
40-49
1034
426
4L1
26
50-59
969
402
41.3
23
60-69
1(20
424
41.5
12
70-79
948
384
40.5
1
3 Meynert. Das Gesammtgewicht und die Theilgewichte des Gehirns, etc., Vierteljahrs-
schrift fur Psychiatric, Bd. 1, 1867.
4 Donaldson. Growth of Brain. London. 1895.
34 Select Discussions of Race Problems
Female
20-29
922
390
42.3
10
30-39
910
374
40.1
16
40-49
916
380
41.4
17
50-59
919
378
41.1
8
60-69
9X7
363
40.0
2
70-79
846
358
42.3
1
80-89
894
390
43.6
1
Weight of the Frontal Lobe per 1000
Male
Female
During development
416
425
During middle age
414
416
During old age
412
410
During all ages
414
415
percentage remains practically unchanged.® I have been unable to con¬
sult Broca's original papers, but Professor Donaldson has kindly sent me
the necessary data which I append in a foot-note.6
It would seem as if the above statements settled the question of the
relative size of the frontal lobe in men and women, but the following
remarks are of historical interest. # It is noted above that Huschke
believed he had shown the central sulcus to be more perpendicular and
not as far back in the female as in the male, thus making the frontal lobe
smaller in the former.
Rudinger7 studied the brains of twin foetuses and believed that he
5 Ambialet. La Deformation Artificielle de la Tete, etc. Toulouse, 1893.
6 In Broca's collected papers, Memoires Anthropologiques, T. V., page 131, under the title,
"Sur le poid relatif des deux hemisphere cerebreux et de leur lobes frontaux," he gives a
brief statement to the effect that he weighed (1) the entire encephalon, (2) bulb, (3) cere¬
bellum, (4) pons, and then separated each hemisphere by "deux coupes" into three lobes. In
this manner he treated 440 cases.
There is every reason to think that he uses the term "hemisphere" in its technical
sense, as he knows the difference between that and the mantle. This would involve the
basal ganglia in the lobes as he records them.
Further, in the Bulletin Societe d'Anthropologie, T. VI, 1871, page 113, in the article
entitled "Sur la deformation toulousaine du crane," he gives numerical statements which
lead to the same conclusion. The hardened brain in question weighed
825 grams
Cerebellum 109 grams
Left hemisphere 339 grams
Right hemisphere 351 grams
Total 799 grams
leaving the difference between that and the weight of the entire encephalon, 26 grams for
the pons and medulla. These 26 grams are not too much for the weight of the pons and bulb,
and on the other hand are not nearly enough to cover the basal ganglia, see "Growth," etc.,
page 101. It seems probable therefore that his hemispheres included the basal ganglia.
If we take now his analysis of the right hemisphere, weight 35 L grams, he gives the
frontal lobe 159 grams, occipital lobe 45 grams, and parieto-temporal lobe 147 grams, total 351
grams. Thus his three lobes equal the weight of his hemisphere, and his hemisphere contains
the basal ganglia, and I believe that it is by reasoning similar to this that I arrived at the
conclusion expressed on page 181 of my book, to which you refer.
7 Rudinger. Verhandl. d. Anatom. Gesell., 1894.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 35
demonstrated that the development in the male is more advanced than in
the female and that the frontal lobe is larger in the male. Recently his
question has been thoroughly tested by Waldeyer8 who found that the
development of the brain of the male is more advanced in the majority of
specimens of twin foetuses of opposite sexes, but that in individual speci¬
mens this was not always the case, "so dass wir noch keinesweges in der
Lage sind, von einem 'gesetzmassigen Verhalten' wie es Riidinger tut,
sprechen zu konnen." My own experience confirms Waldeyer's, for while
the male of twin pregnancies is often markedly larger than the female it is
by no means always so. Of course, this does not mean that the frontal
lobe is relatively larger in the male.
More extensive measurements were made by Passet0 who studied
with great care the brains of 17 adult males and 12 females. He found
the position of the central sulcus much the same in both sexes, if any¬
thing a little further back in the male than in the female. He shows by
a diagram (Fig. 6) that there is a great deal of variation of the position
of this sulcus in different brains, its angle with the sagittal plane ranging
from 46° to 79°. The average is 62° for the male and 64° for the female.
He states that the central fissure is shorter and straighter in the female
and lies farther forward. Although his work was done with the greatest
of care his methods are too crude, the number of specimens studied too
small, and the degree of variation so great, that nothing is proved re¬
garding the relative size of the frontal lobe in the two sexes.
Eberstaller10 in the discussion of the above question in his excellent
monograph on the frontal lobe concludes that there are no differences
due to sex in the angle that the central suleus of the brain makes with
its sagittal median plane. His measurements included 300 hemispheres
and he found that the above mentioned angle varies constantly between
70° and 75°. He further found that the central sulcus when extended
intersected the sagittal border of the mantle at 65.4 per cent of the
distance from the olfactory trigonum to the occipital pole in men and at
66 per cent in women. If this means anything it indicates that the frontal
lobe in the brain of women is relatively larger than it is in men. The
objections to the conclusions of Huschke. and Passet regarding the per¬
centages of brain in front and behind the central suleus are fully dis¬
cussed by Eberstaller, who points out the weaknesses of their observa¬
tions as well as the objections to their conclusions.
Cunningham11 confirms fully the conclusions of Eberstaller in the
examination of 86 brains of various ages. "At no period in its growth
does the fissure of Rolando exhibit in its position what we might safely
8 Waldeyer. Sitzung-sber, cL K. P. Akad., 1907.
® Passet. Arch. £. Anthropologic.'XIV, 1883.
1,1 Eberstaller. Das Stirnhirn. Wien, 1890.
11 Cunningham. Jour. Anat. and PhysioL, Vol. 25, 189L
36
Select Discussions of Race Problems
regard to be sexual differences." Mingazzini12 seems to be of different
opinion. Regarding his statement, Waldeyer sounds a warning as fol¬
lows: "Des weiteren mochte ich herzu noch bemerken, dass es mir sehr
misslich erscheint, Schliisse aus Untersuchungen zu ziehen, die auf
wenige beobachtete Falle sich erstrecken." He further remarks that
his own experience agrees with the results of Eberstaller and of Cun¬
ningham.
It seems to me that it is quite apparent that with the methods used
by the above named investigators it cannot be definitely concluded that
there is a marked difference between men and women in the relative
amount of brain in front of the central sulcus. The variations in various
brains are so great that an approximately correct percentage can only be
obtained from a very large number of specimens and those have been sup¬
plied only by Eberstaller and by Cunningham. Furthermore, the personal
equation of the investigator plays a very important role in studying a
question of this kind, and even if Eberstaller and Cunningham have
proved that there is no difference in the position of the central sulcus due
to sex, they have not proved that the weight of the frontal lobe does not
show such a difference. In fact the methods employed to determine the
relative weight of the frontal lobe are so crude that unless the differ¬
ences found are constant and marked we must challenge the statements
of those who assert that differences due to sex exist. I would like to
ask them to separate a collection of 100 brains (50 of men and 50 of
women) each of the same weight and see how well they can do it. Until
their "guesses" prove to be correct in over 50 per cent of the specimens
examined we must conclude that the "differences," like those of Huschke,
a^j«j|gely due to the personal equation of the investigator.
While these various attempts, which we consider unsuccessful, have
been made to show that there is an unlike distribution of the brain sub¬
stance in women and in men, attempts have been made to show that in
the brains of Negroes as well as in those of men of genius similar dis¬
tinctions can be found. In general the differences in weight between
each of these three classes of brains is fully 100 grams, and if it were
shown that the proportion of their parts is different in each class it
would be a discovery of great importance. The smaller frontal lobe in
women and in Negroes, and the larger in men of genius would prove, it
is believed, that this portion of the brain is the chief seat of a good
mind. It appears, however, that no such unequal distribution of brain
substance exists.
A few years ago the startling announcement was made by Spitzka18
that the area of the cross section of the corpus callosum was larger in
eminent than in ordinary men, that of Leidy being 10.6 sq. cm. Since
12 Mingazzini. Lezione di Anat. clinica dei centri nervosi. Torino, 1905.
13Spitzka. Connecticut Magazine, 1905, and Proc. Amer. Assoc. Anat., Amer. Jour.
Anat., 1905.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 37
the corpus callosum is associated mainly with the frontal lobe the obser¬
vation, if correct, would be of great significance. The question was im¬
mediately tested u by comparing in over 150 white and Negro brains the
area of the cross section of the corpus callosum with the brain weight
and it was found that these characters varied with each other (see Bean,
Chart V)15. Since the average weight of the brain of eminent men is
about 100 grams heavier than the average brain weight of ordinary men,
and since the average Negro's brain is 100 grams lighter, the error of
Spitzka is easily explained, for in making his comparison he did not take
brain weight into consideration. According to Spitzka the brains of
"notable men possessing large capacity for doing and thinking much
more than their fellows," "compared with ordinary men, individually and
collectively, have larger callosa. The callosum of Joseph Leidy exceeds
in cross-section that of any other in this series or recorded in literature.
Here again, then, we have an index in somatic terms of how we may.
distinguish the brain of the genius or talented man from that of persons
of only ordinary abilities" (p. 303). What he says regarding the callosum
of Leidy is true, but regarding the rest he is in error. All the rest of the
callosa of notable men given by Spitzka are not above the average for
brains of the same weight, and the callosa given in his group of ordinary
men (which are from electrocuted criminals) are very much below the
average (compare Spitzka's Tables A and B with Bean's Chart V and
with the data given in my table). In fact many Negroes of lighter brain
weight have larger callosa than most of Spitzka's eminent men. Cope's
callosum as measured by Spitzka is far below the average of brains
weighing over 1500grams. Comparing Spitzka's records with Bean's and
mine it would be more correct to state that criminals have callosa much
smaller than the average.
Furthermore, Bean believed that he had shown that the genu is rela¬
tively larger and the splenium is relatively smaller in the Negro, an asser¬
tion which is even more striking than Spitzka's. From this as well as
from other data Bean deduced that the frontal lobe is smaller in Negro
brains than in white. This is in apparent contradiction to the results he
obtained by comparing the position of the central sulcus, which in 126
hemispheres holds about the same position in the two classes of brains.
If anything, it lies more posterior in the female Negro (Table IVa., p.
381) which would indicate that her frontal lobe is relatively the largest
of all.
All of Bean's measurements are made from a brain axis which passes
in the sagittal plane between the two hemispheres immediately above the
u Bean. Amer. Jour. Anat., Vol. 5, 1906.
I5 Spitzka has not mentioned Bean's observation in his last monograph in the Trans, of the
Amer. Philosoph. Soc., XXI, 1907. Bean compares area of. the corpus callosum with the
volume of the brain, which is statistically objectionable, but the point made is strong enough
to question seriously Spitzka's statement.
38
Select Discussions of Race Problems
anterior commissure and just below the splenium. As a rule this line
(the axis) passes parallel with the longest axis of the corpus callosum
and just below it. From this line he erected two perpendiculars, one just
in front of the genu and one just behind the splenium. The distance
between the two perpendiculars was then divided into ten parts, the first
three, including the genu, he calls the genu, the second three the body,
the next two the isthmus and the last two, including the large rounded
splenium, the splenium. He then compared the area of the genu with
that of the splenium, using the former as ordinates and the latter as
abscissas in the construction of his Chart VII. It was found by this
treatment that the Negro brains separated almost completely from the
white brains, in Bean's Chart VII, and this line of separation I have in¬
serted at the proper place in my chart, Fig. 1.
I have tabulated as Bean did the area of the genu with that of the
splenium in 106 brains and do not find that the symbols for the brains of
the two races separate. Most of the Negro brains in my chart are inter¬
mixed with the white brains above the line which separates them in Bean's
chart. My measurements were all made by tracing the outline of the
corpus callosum with the very accurate projecting apparatus made by
Hermann of Zurich, while Bean's were made with a less precise instru¬
ment borrowed from the Smithsonian Institution. The areas of both
Bean's and my own were made with a Conradi planimeter whose mini¬
mum registration is 10 sq. mm. and its probable error was found to be
10 sq. mm. In order to exclude my own personal equation, which is an
item of considerable importance in a study like this, all of the tracings as
well as the measurements of all of the areas were made without my
knowing the race or sex of any of the individuals from which the brains
were taken. The brains were identified from the laboratory records just
before the results were tabulated.
Tabulation of the brain weight with the area of the cross section of
the corpus callosum confirms what Bean found, that is, the area increases
with the brain weight. The same is true when the area of the corpus
callosum minus that of the splenium is tabulated with the weight of the
frontal lobe. However, there are great individual variations, but they
seem to be of like extent in both the white and the Negro brains. The
female records separate somewhat from the male, but this is due no
doubt to the lighter weight of the former.
My figures do not confirm Bean's result that the genu is relatively
larger and the splenium relatively smaller in the white than in the Negro
brain. The specimens I examined include 18 brains which Bean studied,
and I find that the measurements I made of the areas of the genu and
splenium in them do not agree altogether with his. Ten of the specimens
are white and eight Negro brains. In making the comparison a deviation
of 10 sq. mm. is overlooked, for this error is to be expected from the
planimeter we employed. The genu is larger in Bean's tables than in
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 39
mine in 7 white brains and one black brain and smaller in 4 black and
2 white. The splenium is larger in 7 black and 4 white and is not smaller
than mine in a single instance in Bean's tables. This discrepancy between
our figures is sufficient to account for the racial differences in the corpus
callosum found in Bean's tables but not in mine, although the individual
deviations in both our charts are very great. I think my chart (Fig. 1)
shows conclusively, as far as possible with the method I employed, that
there is no variation in either genu or splenium of the corpus callosum
due to either race or sex.
In order to determine the relative weight of the frontal lobe in white
and in Negro brains I made numerous tests in separating this lobe from
the rest of the cerebrum to develop first an accurate method. It was
found that it is quite easy to break the cerebrum after it has been
hardened in formalin through the central sulcus along the motor tract
down through the basal ganglia with considerable precision. The real
test of the accuracy was made by comparing the results obtained on the
right side with those on the left. If the half brains are of equal weight
the frontal lobes should be also of equal weight if the method is a reliable
one. It was found in over two-thirds of the brains that the two frontal
lobes weighed practically alike, i. e., within 5 grams of each other, a
variation which could be accounted for by a slight difference 'in the
amount of drainage and evaporation of water from the specimens. In
the remaining one-third of the brains the difference between the two sides
averaged 10 grams, which in rough equals the weight of half of the pre-
central gyrus. Expressed differently the probable observational error in
the weight of the frontal lobe compared with the whole hemisphere is
less than one per cent of its weight, so a deviation, in the weight of the
frontal lobe due to race or sex would have to be fully two per cent in
order to be detected.
Another source of error might be due to the fact that only hardened
brains were broken, or could be broken, with precision through the central
sulcus. It is well known that formalin causes the brain to swell, and it
has been shown by Hrdlicka16 that there is an unequal expansion of the
brain, due to both its age and its size. So it is possible for the frontal
lobe at first to expand more rapidly than the rest of the brain, and later
to shrink more quickly. This, of course, would affect the percentage of
the frontal lobe and is a source of error to be reckoned with. The pres¬
ence of a second preservative like common salt, alum or carbolic acid,
which was used in a number of my specimens, is also to be taken into
account, for they influence very much the change of volume of the brain.
In order to test this question I weighed the pieces of 5 brains a num¬
ber of times during a period of nearly a year and found that there was
much fluctuation in the brain weight, but the percentage value of the
frontal lobe remained very constant, usually within one-half of 1 per cent.
!6 Hrdlicka. Brains and Brain Preservatives. U. S. Nat. Mus., XXX, Washington, 1906.
40 Select Discussions of Race Problems
Fig. 1. Showing the relation of the area of the cross section of the genu (ordinates) to
that of the splenium (abscissas). The figures represent square millimeters. The diagonal
line is in the position which separated the whites from the Negroes in Bean's Chart VII.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain1
41
The figures are as follows. The first weighing was made.as soon as
the brain was fairly hardened at the end of about a week, so the weights
of the parts when fresh were not obtained. Those marked with a star
(*) are the weights recorded in the Table and in the Figures:
No.
1907
1908
March 19
May 1
June 4
Nov. 8
Jan. 25
2861
1110
1190
1120*
1035
1040
gm, of cerebrum.
44
44
44—
44—
43.5
% value of frontal lobe.
2864
1250
1215*
1190
1150
1150
gm.
44+
44-
44
44-
44
%
2865
1300
1325
1460*
1210
1235
gm.
44.5
45
45
44.5
44.5
%
2867
830
870
875*
765
780
gm.
42
43.5
43-
43
43
%
2878
1170
1240
1205*
1080
1090
gm.
43—
43.5
43.
43.5
43.
%
No special care was taken to keep the strength of the formalin con¬
stant, in fact it was often changed, and this accounts for the fluctuations
in the weight of the whole brain. In all cases the parts of each brain
were kept together in a single jar in order to subject them to the same
strength of formalin from weighing to weighing.
I also weighed the parts of a number of well hardened brains a second
time after they had been in formalin for another year. In these the
fluctuations of the weight are less marked and the deviation of the per¬
centage value of the frontal lobe is, if anything, less than in the first
set. The data are as follows. The figures given in the first column are
the ones entered in the charts.
As said above, my personal equation was excluded entirely because
all of the breaks and weighings were made without my knowing the race
or sex of the individual from which the specimen came.
No.
Jan., 1907
Jan., 19D8
1521
1035
1045
weight of cerebrum.
44.5
45
ft value of frontal lobe.
1697
780
775
weight
45—
45+
%
1720
1030
1025
weight
43+
43.5
ck
1836
950
895
weight
45-
45-
1840
1140
1130
weight
44.5+
44.5-
%
2621
1015
1025
weight
45—
45-
c/r>
2660
960
1020
weight
42
43
2665
830
825
weight
41—
41+
2667
895
885
weight
44
43.5
%
4x
930
950
weight
41
42
%
42 Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
Fig. 2. Showing the relation of the brain substance lying in front (ord mates) of the
sulcus centralis to that lying behind it (abscissae). Each symbol represents a half brain.
The figures are in grams. The long diagonal lines, 38-50, indicate the percentage of the
precentral brain weight. The lines marked 400-700 indicate the weights of the hemicerebra.
The weights given are reduced to those of the fresh brain.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 43
In general I used Broca's method to divide the frontal lobe from the
rest of the cerebrum and found as he did that the mean weight of the
frontal lobe in both men and women is between 43 and 44 per cent. The
same is true for both the Negro and the white. This bears out what I
have found by measuring the area of the genu and splenium and leads to
the conclusion that it is incorrect to state that the frontal lobe of the
Negro brain is relatively lighter than that of the white.
All of my figures are given in the table at the end of this article and
their bearing upon the percentage of the frontal lobe is given in the two
charts. In the first chart, Fig. 2, the weight of each hemisphere is treated
toy itself and the weights are all reduced to their weight in the fresh state.
Of course, only those brains in which the weight when fresh is known
could be included in this chart. In making the chart the weights of the
frontal lobe are given in ordinates and those of the rest of the hemisphere
in abscissas. Thus each symbol gives an individual half brain. The
diagonal lines give the percentage of the frontal lobes and the diagonal
lines at right angles to them the weight of the hemi-cerebra. The sym¬
bols in the first block and to the left represent hemi-cerebra, between 400
and 500 grams, the next block between 500 and 600 grams, etc.
It is noticed that the weights of the hemi-cerebra range from less
than 400 to over 700 grams and that the percentage of the frontal lobes
fluctuates from 38 per cent to 49 per cent. The mean is about 43.5 per
cent. If in each block the black and the white, and the male and the
female are compared it is seen that the distribution is quite even and
that on an average the percentage of the frontal lobe is the same in
both races and sexes.
In order to give the question another and possibly a better test, I
tabulated all the brains in which both halves were weighed, but did not
reduce the figures to those of the fresh weight, for in a number of speci¬
mens this is not given. Then the combined weight of both sides was
divided by two, thus giving the average weight of the frontal lobe of each
brain and that of each hemicerebrum behind the central suleus. In this
chart, Fig. 3, each symbol represents a whole cerebrum divided by two,
and in it more of the symbols are shifted to the left, for in general there
is more shrinkage of the brains due to the long action of formalin and
carbolic acid. The individual deviations are not as great as they are in
Fig. 2 (39 per cent to 48 per cent) but the mean is about the same (43.5
per cent). Again there is no separation of the brains due to race or sex.
I must therefore conclude that with the methods at our disposal it is
impossible to detect a relative difference in the weight or size of the
frontal lobe due to either race or sex, and that probably none exists.
My weighings of the frontal lobe were made in three series and each time
I did not know the race or sex of the individual whose brain was being
tested until it had been broken and weighed. There were 6 white and 6
Negro brains in the first series and the racial difference found in it was
44 Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
Fig. 3. The same as Fig. 2 with the exception that each symbol represents the average
of the two sides of the brain. Each, therefore, represents a whole brain. The weights given
are those of hardened brains.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 45
very marked,—41 per cent of frontal lobe in Negro brains and 44 percent
in white brains. In the next series of the brains, the white and the
Negro brains came closer together and in the third series of about 10
brains this difference was lost altogether. It is evident, as Schwalbe and
Pfitzner17 have pointed out, that a percentage to be of any significance
must not change as the records increase in number.
As it is generally believed that the brains of men of genius are of
complex configuration, so it is also believed that the brains of lowly races
are of a simple and embryonic type. Thus Parker38 says that the Sylvian
fissure in the Negro is f inches (16 mm.) shorter than in the white and
the central sulcus is simpler, straighter and less undulated. He also
found a Negro brain in which there was a complete connection between
the fissures of Sylvius and Rolando. He states that the occipital fissures
are ape-like with a well marked perpendicular fissure. The Negro brain
as it presents itself in this country, he says, bears an unmistakably
nearer relation to the ape type than does the white, being also more
foetal in character.
To anyone who is familiar with the Negro brain the statements of
Parker appear to be careless and superficial. His observations upon the
length and form of the fissures of Sylvius and Rolando can not be taken
seriously in the light of recent studies of these fissures, and they strike
one rather as an opinion supported by a strong personal prejudice, as are
so many of the observations upon the gyri of sulci. Furthermore, other
students of the Negro brain found no such difference and state that they
are practically like the white (see Tiedemann, Luschke and Marshall.)
Schwalbe,19 who reviews the work of Parker, states expressly that racial
differences in the Negro brain are in all probability due to similar racial
peculiarities of the skull. The same statement is also made by Hrdlicka
and has been fully tested by Bean. However, such differences are but
slight, for a variation in the shape of the skull influences only the main
outlines of the brain and not its gyri. The flattening over the anterior
association area, as first observed by Hrdlicka, was fully confirmed by
Bean and can be seen in most full-blood Negro brains, certainly in mere
than one-half. One precaution must always be taken in these cases and
that is to compare whites and Negroes of the same type of form of the
skull. The majority of Negroes are dolichocephalic and these should be
compared only with dolichocephalic whites.
In order to make a preliminary test of this question I attempted to
assort a collection of Negro and white brains, calling those with the pecu¬
liar narrowing and flattening of the upper surface of the frontal lobe,
Negro, and those in which it was more convex, white brains. The brains
tested were a mixed lot which happened to be on one shelf in the brain
"Schwalbe and Pfitzner. Morph. Arbeiten, Vol. 3.
IS Parker, A. J. Cerebral convolutions of the Negro. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1878.
l9Schwalbe. Neurologic, 1881, p. 575.
46 Select Discussions of Race Problems
room. After they had been assorted according to the character above
mentioned I found that there were 60 Negro and 30 white brains and that
their assortment was correct in exactly 75 per cent of the cases. Had all of
the brains been dolichocephalic I think the test would have fallen out
better, and Dr. Hrdlicka informs me that this is also his opinion.
I then mixed the brains again, added to their number, and assorted
them a second time according to the richness of the gyri and sulci, using
as a standard the two illustrations given on Plate 54 in Retzius' Menschen-
hirn. In case the configuration was complex, of the Gauss type, it was
called stenogyrencephalic, and in case it was simple, of foetal type, it was
called eurygyrencephalic. Doubtful specimens, and there were many of
them, were at first set aside and in case it was impossible to render a
decision regarding them by a second effort they were excluded altogether.
The results of this test, based upon brains of unknown origin at the
time it was made, are given below.
The percentage of eurygyrencephaly and stenogyrencephaly is there¬
fore about the same in both races.
In order to make a further comparison the brains pictured in Retzius'
Menschenhirn were arranged into two classes to correspond with his types
given on Plate 54. This is, of course, more difficult to do and a large
number of doubtful ones were necessarily excluded. The classification of
Negro
Male
Female
Eurygyrencephaly
Stenogyrencephaly
Eurygyrencephaly
Stenogyrencephaly
32 brains
15 brains
12 brains
7 brains
68%
32%
64%
36%
White
19 brains
10 brains
1 brain
1 brain
66%
34%'
50%
50%
the pictures into two groups was made independently by Dr. Melius, Dr.
Sabin and myself, none of us knowing at the time whether the illustra¬
tions in question were of the brains of men or of women. Our results
are given in the following table:
Male
Female
Eurygyrence¬
phaly
Stenogyrence¬
phaly
Eurygyrence¬
phaly
Stenogyrence¬
phaly
Dr. Mall
29 brains
(53%)
26 brains
(47%)
12 brains
(60%)
8 brains
(40%)
Dr. Sabin
29 brains
(58%)
23 brains
(42%)
10 brains
(62%)
6 brains
(38%)
Dr. Melius
23 brains
(64%)
14 brains
(36%)
7 brains
(54%)
6 brains
(46%)
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 47
Although our results vary considerably they are substantially similar.
In general stenogyrencephaly is a little more common in the Swedish
brains pictured by Retzius than in the 97 Negro and white brains of
Baltimore used in constructing the first table. Unless one attempts to
separate brains into complex and foetal types he does not realize the diffi¬
culties in doing it and I think the deviation in a second attempt might
be fully zt 10 per cent of the first determination. If the personal equa¬
tion were added the deviation might be much greater.
The above tables are given to show how unreliable the statements re¬
garding the complexity of the gyri and sulci maybe, and that with the pres¬
ent crude methods the statement that the Negro brain approaches the foetal
or the simian brain more than does the white is entirely unwarranted.
In this connection the recent statement of Elliott Smith regarding
racial peculiarities in the brain should also be considered. It relates to
the so-called Affenspalte. Smith20 says: "It often happens (especially
in the brains of lowly human races, such as Negroes and aboriginal Aus¬
tralians, and in the anthropoid apes) that the sulcus occipitalis anterior,
together with the sulcus occipitalis inferior form a large arc (parallel
to the sulcus lunatus) forming the anterior limit of a great tongue of
cortex, the tip of which often reaches the upper end of the sulcus tempor¬
alis superior in those cases in which there is no temporo-parietaljs. The
presence of this great arcuate sulcus explains much of the misleading
literature relating to the search for an 'Affenspalte' in the human brain."
The "Affenspalte" first described by Riidinger has caused anatomists
much trouble and its presence in all human brains was often questioned.
A few years ago Elliott Smith21 demonstrated that a marked occipital
operculum which is identical with that of the gorilla's brain is often
present in the brain of the Egyptian fellah. However, the operculum is
not always well marked, but its bounding sulcus, which Smith calls the
sulcus lunatus, can be seen in every human brain. Smith's studies are di¬
rected rather towards the homology of the Affenspalte which he has fully
demonstrated with the aid of the structure of the cortex, i. e., the extent
of the stripe of Gennari.22 At first he showed that the Affenspalte (sulcus
lunatus) is present in all Egyptians brains23 and later he found it present
in Negro, Syrian, Turkish and Greek brains and with a study of literature
he concluded that it is a normal feature of the adult human brain. It
would have been easy for Smith to draw a wrong conclusion regarding
this sulcus, for he began his study of it with the Egyptian brain; however,
he did not end there.
It may also be noted that Parker states that he found a Negro brain
with a gyrus cunei on the surface as is the case in the simian brain.
Since Parker gives no illustrations it is difficult to ascertain whether or
20 E. Smith. Jour. Anat. and Phys., Vol. 41, 1907. 21 Smith. Anat. Anz., 24,1904, p. 74.
22Smith. Anat. Anz., XXIV., p. 437. 23smith. Anat. Anz.,XXIV,p.216.
48 Select Discussions of Race Problems
not he saw only an annectent gyrus partly on the surface, as described
and pictured in Quain's Anatomy.24 This latter condition I have also
observed in both Negro and white brains. Until it is thoroughly inves¬
tigated in a large number of specimens its meaning still remains an open
question. Probably it will fall, as do other anatomical peculiarities of
the Negro when they are fully investigated.
I wish to add a remark regarding the anatomy of the Negro. One is
often led to believe2" that there are more anatomical anomalies in the
Negro than in the European body. I have new had considerable experience
in the dissection of the Negro and "have yet to observe that variations are
more common in the Negro than in the white. In fact it seems as if
excessive development of facial muscles and other variations is more
common in the white, but until a large number of statistics are collected
no definite statement can be made. However, we have made many
thousands of records of nerve variations and find in them no racial pecu¬
liarities. 26 The misleading statements are based upon a few dissections
of Negroes in which the variations found are given as peculiarities of the
race. An equal number of variations will be found in any corresponding
series of white cadavers.
The hope has often been expressed that through the study of the
brains of men of genius anatomical conditions would be found which may
account for their eminence. In fact one of the first studies included the
brain of Gauss27 and showed that this particular brain was unusually rich
in gyri and sulci. Since then the brain of Gauss has often been used as
a type representing the highest development. But Wagner says that
higher intelligence may exist in individuals with brains either rich or poor
in gyri, but the normal brain must be of a certain weight, a certain rich¬
ness of gyri and sulci as well as certain thickness of cortex. Since Wag¬
ner's time quite a large number of brains of distinguished persons have
been studied and in general the conclusion has gradually been reached
that with the methods at our disposal we are unable to detect in their
anatomy conditions to account for great mental ability. The recent
studies of Retzius28 all point in this direction, for he was unable to detect
anything remarkable in the brains of distinguished individuals, and no one
is more competent than this investigator to deal with this subject.
Within a year the report on the brains of Mommsen, Bunsen and
Menzel has been published by Hansemann29 who has also given an account
24Quain's Anatomy, Tenth Edition, Vol. 3, p. 144 and Fig. 102.
25 For example, Duckworth. Morphology and Anthropology, 1904.
26 In tabulating these nerves Bardeen and Elting (Anat. Anz., XIX, 1901, p. 132) say that
race seems to play no very marked part as a cause in the number or kind of variations (see
also Anat. Anz., XIX, p. 217.) In his later and more extensive publication Bardeen does not
consider race in the tabulation of nerve variations, presumably because it did not seem to
influence them (Amer. Jour. Anat., VI, 1907.)
27 Wagner. Vorstudien zu einer Wissenschaft. Morphol. d. Menschl. Gehirns, etc., 1862.
^Retzius. Biol. Unt., VIII, 1898, IX, 1900.
29 Hansemann. Ueber die Gehirne von Mommsen, Bunsen und Menzen, Stuttgart, 1907.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain 49
of the anatomical findings in the brain of Helmholtz. Hansemann also
concludes his study with a healthy scepticism, for he says that within
physiological limitations we cannot tell the brain of a distinguished person
from that of an ordinary one. He then falls back on the analogy that
muscular men are not necessarily athletic, but under proper conditions
could easily become so. Furthermore, he predicts that individuals with
unusual qualities in one direction, but who are otherwise quite inferior,
like mathematical prodigies or remarkable chess players, may possess
brains with portions unusually well developed. The recent study by
Stieda80 of the brain of a man who spoke fifty languages gave a negative
result, for nothing peculiar was found in it. However, Hansemann states
that we should expect to find a morphological basis to account for geniuses
of the first rank, for they possess qualities peculiar to themselves. In
fact the configurations of the brains of Helmholtz and Menzel showed some
peculiarities which may support this theory.
The one ray of hope in the study of the peculiarities of the configura¬
tion of the gyri and sulci comes from the comparison of brains of mem¬
bers of the same family which often show many similarities. This im¬
portant discovery was made by Spitzka,31 who observed that there were
hereditary resemblances in the brains of three brothers. This was fully
confirmed by Karplus 32 in studying the brains of 21 groups of relations in
each of which he found a marked similarity of the gyri and sulci. The
configuration of the right side has a tendency to repeat itself on the right
side, and the left on the left, but peculiarities on the right side are not
found on the left in near relatives. There is an hereditary tendency in
the fissuration of the brain as there is in the other features.
Nevertheless, even if we should find that the brains of two eminent
men of the same family were much alike we have by no means shown
that the genius has an anatomical basis. Furthermore, it seems to have
been established that anatomical variations often show different percent¬
age in different communities. Schwalbe and Pfitzer33 have shown, for
instance, that the absence of the psoas minor is as follows:
Men
Women
No. of
Cases
No. of
times
absent
Per Cent
No. of
Cases
No. of
times
absent
Per Cent
St. Petersburg. . .
Strassburg ....
Boston
England
900
386
400
210
405
219
223
125
45.
56.7
55.8
59.5
600
175
208
130
326
99
145
93
54.3
56.6
69.7
71.5
30 Stieda. Zeit. f. Morph. u. AnthropoL, XI, 1907.
31 Spitzka. American Anthropologists, VI, 1904.
32 Karplus. Obersteiner's Arbeiten aus d. Neurol. Inst., XII. Wien, 1905.
33 Schwalbe and Pfitzer, Morph. Arbeiten, Bd. 3.
50
Select Discussions of Race Problems
In each group the percentage had reached a constant value, that is
with an increase of the number of cases the percentage in a given locality
did not change. The same condition may exist in brain configuration,
and Merkel34 states that the brains from cadavers used for dissection in
Gottingen, and which come from Brunswick, of which Gauss was a
native, were often very rich in gyri and sulci. On the other hand, in
Mecklenburg, where Merkel also had had a large experience, brains of
the Gauss type were never seen in the dissecting room, but-instead a very
simple type prevailed.
It certainly would be important if it could be shown that the com¬
plexity of the gyri and sulci of the brain varied with the intelligence of
the individual, that of genius being the most complex, but the facts do
not bear this out, and such statements are only misleading. I may be
permitted to add that brains rich in gyri and sulci, of the Gauss type, are
by no means rare in the American Negro.36
While there seems to be no evidence to show that the configuration of
the brains of genius is different from that of other brains, there is some
evidence in favor of the statement that there are slight differences due to
sex. It is often said that the brains of women are of a simple type, but
if their weight is not considered it is questionable whether a collection of
brains could be assorted according to sex with any degree of certainty.
Furthermore, even the more pronounced differences of eurygyrencephaly
and stenogyrencephaly are not easily recognizable because they are not
easily measured. Of course, when gyri of the simple type are twice as
broad as those of the complex type, as pictured on Plate 54 in Retzius'
Menschenhirn, it is not difficult, but there are many intermediate stages
and the observer can only express an opinion, for there is nothing that
can be weighed or measured. Waldeyer states that to determine whether
a brain came from a man or woman is much like identifying the sex of the
individual from which a given skull came. I am not so optimistic and
would rather take my chances with the skull.
In the article by Schwalbe and Pfitzer mentioned above many ana¬
tomical variations are tabulated and there do not seem to be more varia¬
tions in the male than in the female, but the percentage of variations is
by no means always alike in the two sexes. If there is a percentage
difference according to sex in a special variation it tends to remain con¬
stant in various sets of statistics and does not become the same as the
records are increased in number. Moreover, "bei den weiblichen Fallen
werden in der Regel die Werthe viel rascher constant als bei den
34 Merkel. Top. Anat., I, Braunschweig, 1885-1890.
35Spitzka. Amer. Phil. Soc.,Vol. 21, has arranged a number of figures in plates showing
the evolution of the complexity of the gyri. For example, in his Fig. 8 the gorilla with a
simple brain is below, the brain of a Bushwoman is in the middle and that of Gauss, the most
complex, is above. In another plate, Fig. 10, the brain of Gambetta holds the lower position,
Altmann the middle and Skobeleff the upper. Comparing Figs. 8 and 10 it appears that Gam-
betta's brain resembles the gorilla's more than it does that of Gauss.
Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain
51
mannlichen.'' In other words, a smaller number of records are required
in the female than in the male to obtain the true percentage of variations.
How much this indicates is by no means clear, but this conclusion should
be that there is not a simpler type, but less variations in the female,
which appears to be the opinion of Retzius regarding the female brain.
We have tested this difference by grouping the illustrations of brains
in the great Atlas of Retzius under simple and more complex types,
without knowing whether the picture of a brain in question was from a
man or from a woman and obtained the result given on page 46. In the
first line in the table my estimates are found with the percentages below
them. In the second line another estimation by Dr. Sabin is given, and
in the third line one by Dr. Melius. In general the opinion expressed in
these estimations does not bear out the notion that the configuration of
the brains of women is of a simpler type than in those of men.
This, however, is only our opinion regarding the complexity of the
gyri and sulci of pictures of brains. But Retzius has tabulated in an
excellent way a number of concrete data of 100 brains which can easily be
tested in other specimens. These include a number of variations, such
as the central sulcus communicating with the fissure of Sylvius, regard¬
ing which there can be little difference of opinion. There are in all 73
such records, 19 being of the norm and 56 of variations. Each of these
records can be entered a second time by substracting its frequency in
percentage from 100. Thus, if the central sulcus communicates with the
fissure of Sylvius in 3 per cent of the cases it is called a variation in 3 per
cent of the cases, while in the remaining 97 per cent it is normal. In this
way I obtained a column of 73 records, representing the norm as well as
the variations for each hemisphere both of the male and the female. The
average of these figures is as follows:
Men
Women
Right Side
Left Side
Right Side
Left Side
Norm
Variations
Norm
Variations
Norm
Variations
Norm
Variations
78%
22%
75%
25%
81%
19%
81%
19%
This table indicates that the brain of woman is not nearer the norm
but varies less than does that of man. Could all the variations found be
grouped together in single brains, leaving the rest as perfectly normal,
then 76 brains of men and 81 of women out of our 100 would be exactly
normal in the arrangement of the gyri and sulci.
Retzius has done us a great service in pointing out the way by which
this problem can be attacked by the statistical methods. A few remarks
regarding his conclusion may be made, but before they can be criticised
properly it will be neeessary to tabulate many other brains, as he has
done, of both men and women.
Table of Brains Studied
v-n
KJ
No.
1405
1451
1452
1458
1454
1457
1458
1478
1485
1489
1493
1510
15193
1521
1527
1591
1682
1683
1686
1690
1696
1697
1699
1707
1716
1720
1728
1787
1788
1789
1790
1811
1835
1836
Length
of
body
Color
Sex
Weight of
Brain
Weight of Parts of the Brain
(Hardened)
Right Side
Left Side
Anterior
Posterior
Anterior
Posterior
cm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
170
W.
M.
290
340
153
B.
M.
265
335
265
345
158
B.
P.
250
330
240
320
162
B.
M.
212
319
201
304
160
B.
M.
205
265
200
270
173
w.
M.
230
300
2201
2951
173
W.
M.
270
345
270
330
178
B.
M.
220
295
2152
2802
162
W.
f.
170
230
160
220
191
W.
M.
240
305
245
295
158
B.
f.
205
250
205
250
170
W.
f.
205
290
210
285
130
B.
M.
190
250
194
245
158
B.
f.
225
295
2854
2804
158
W.
f.
185
255
200
225
165
W.
M.
220
290
220
300
165
w.
M.
245
805
240
300
173
w.
M.
1410
210
295
205*
275®
165
B.
f.
185
252
195
242
168
W.
M.
262
835
270
332
178
W.
M.
1440
250
350
250
830
158
w.
f.
1000
175
215
175
215
163
B.
M.
1230
235
815
240
305
160
w.
M.
1300
1906
2306
200
260
168
w.
M.
1320
235
310
280
820
186
w.
M.
1430
225
280?
220
8057
168
B.
M.
1393
230
815
280
810
B.
M.
1200
205
290
200
280
175
B.
M.
1470
170
B.
M.
1210
205
275
210
260
168
B.
M.
1280
2358
300
250
2858
168
B.
f.
1195
210
280
210
275
175
W.
M.
1420
260
330
260
830
165
B.
M.
1190
215
265
210
260
180
170
160
166
160
160
170
170
130
145
160
155
150
135
120
180
165
160
128
182
180
110
155
150
150
170
150
210
190
175
155
170
170
160
» 2
ft
a®
(t> 3
3 r*
CO*
p 9
£,[d
9 a
® &
Is
Wo
+23
+
+12^2
- 2
+26
+ 6
+20
+13
+ 1
+ 9
+ 4Y2
+ 4
+ 5
+ 7
Area of Section of
Corpus Callosum
6.8
5.5
5.9
5.9
5.8
2.7
6.9
5.4
'4.3
6.6
6.4
6.9
6.6
6.4
7.0
4.9
6.1
4.2
5.6
7.1
5.9
6.1
'5.8
5.9
6.2
5.8
6.3
8.0
2.4
2.1
2.8
2.3
.6
2.8
2.3
1.7
2.5
2.1
2.7
2.5
2.8
2.4
2.2
2.5
1.4
2.5
2.3
2.5
2.0
1.9
2.8
2.1
2.5
2.2
A £
o,.?
1.6
1.4
1.3
1.6
1.8
1.3
1.4
1.2
1.0
1.6
1.7
1.5
1.5
1.7
2.0
1.0
1.5
1.0
1.4
2.0
1.5
1.4
1.4
1.3
1.5
1.4
1.2
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Table of Brains Studied.—Continued
No.
Length
of
body-
Color
Sex
Weight of
Brain
Weight of Parts of the Brain
(Hardened)
Cerebellum
Area of Section of
Corpus Callosum
Right Side
Left Side
Whole
Genu
a) £
n.2
w a
Anterior
Posterior
Anterior
Posterior
cm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
gm.
sq. gm.
sq. cm.
sq. cm
2697
155
B.
F.
1150
225
310
230
309
160
- 7
4.3
1.8
1.0
2703'
167
B.
M.
1350
240
335
245
337
170
+ 2
7.4
2.9
1.6
2719
B.
M.
230
355
235
353
182
6.1
2.2
1.6
2722
B.
F.
207
286
19818
30215
159
5.0
2.2
1.1
2731
W.
M.
225
297
217
305
157
7.2
2.7
L7
3732
B.
M.
225
298
227
302
165
4.5
2.0
1.3
2743
W.
F.
227
360
242
340
152
2746
W.
M.
240
29516
237
315
170
4.9
1.9
1.2
2748
w.
M.
280
345
275
340
290 (?)
5.1
2.0
1.3
2751
B.
F.
230
250
225
250
155
5.0
2.2
1.2
2752
W.
M.
210
277
210
285
130
4.6
2.0
1.0
2753
B.
F.
202
275
202
270
135
2759
B.
M.
262
345
262
352
165
5.4
'2.3
1.'2
2762
B.
M.
230
335
235
320
165
5.8
2.4
1.4
2789
B.
M.
255
320
250
330
185
5.4
2.0
1.6
2796
W.
M.
1500
295
368
285
380
170
5.3
2.7
1.2
2801
164
B.
F.
1500
245
317
250
300
195
5.2
2.1
1.1
2807
167
B.
M.
1250
235
300
235
300
170
4.6
1.9
1.0
2810
150
B.
F. .
1200
245
305
240
315
160
4.6
1.8
1.2
2826
162
B.
M.
1450
280
370
280
375
170
- 2
6.2
2.4
1.3
2828
155
B.
M.
1500
310
375
290
365
180 .
- 1
7.3
3.0
1.8
2829
180
W.
M.
1650
335
420
320
430
195
- 3
7.5
3.1
1.4
2833
161
B.
M.
1400
275
360
280
355
170
— 3
6.6
2.8
1.5
2834
170
B.
M.
1500
290
410
300
400 •
195
5.9
2.2
1.8
2837
180
B.
M.
1370
270
385
280
375
170
5.5
2.2
1.4
2842
167
B.
M.
1320
265
335
260
325
160
6.7
2.5
1.8
2861
B.
M.
1250
270
345
265
340
205
5.6
2.4
1.6
2864
185
W.
M.
1440
270
340
265
340
160
6.6
2.4
1.7
2865
167
W.
M.
1440
330
400 '
330
400
220
6.9
2.5
1.7
2867
167
B.
F.
970
185
250
190
250
155
5.3
2.0
1.4
2878
169
W.
M.
1330
250
350
265
340
195
5.5
2.5
1.4
.8
105
Infant
B.
F.
170
206
15716
21916
137
3.8
1.9
108
Infant
B.
F.
90
120
90
120
55
1.3
.2
.4
Ui
CO
JL
!T
o
PO
P3
O
a>
o
£
rT
3
Cfl
169
193
196
3x
4x
1538
1839
1969
2668
2670
175
163
175
168
W.
B.
W.
B.
B.
B.
W.
W.
W.
W.
B.
W.
W.
W.
B.
W.
B.
W.
W.
w.
M. (?)
M.
M.
M.
M.
F.
M.
M.
M.
M.
M.
F.
M.
M.
F.
M.
M.
M.
F.
M.
1110
950
1200
1130
1200
1200
1520
195
160
250
230
190
210
230
235
240
240
260
230
240
250
205
325
300
28017
273
305
295
325
315
320
310
320
210
170
250
230
200
209
230
225
240
240
265
230
230
270
220
325
290
260"
276
305
305
315
315
315
305
320
150
130
170
195
155
160
165
180
169
170
180
140
3.4
1.8
.6
4.2
1.7
1.1
6.4
2.9
1.4
4.6
2.0
1.0
5.0
1.9
1.3
4.8
2.0
1.4
5.8
2.2
1.5
7.0
2.6
1.4
4.7
1.8
1.1
4.2
2.0
1.1
5.8
1.9
1.8
>
3
o
3
o
5L
n
tr
03
0>
o
NOTE TO THE PRECEDING TABLE
The data given in the preceding table have been arranged in a great variety of ways, but only three of these
bear upon the subject under discussion. They are given in Figs. 1 to 3. The individual records are appended
to enable those who are interested in the subject to make further comparisons with those given by Bean and
by Spitzka, as well as for further use to those who may collect new data.
The genu and splenium were outlined by Bean's method, given on pages 37 and 38.
FOOTNOTE TO THE TABLE
1 Pia on left side. 2 Pi^i off on left side. 3 Boy. 4 Break not even on left side. 5 Pia off on left side. 6 Ventricle on right side greatly
dilated. 7 Break unsatisfactory. 8 Sulci on both sides very irregular. 9 Pia off on right side. 10 The posterior left is decidedly larger than
the posterior right. U Left operculum is very large and right parietal convolutions are very atrophic. 12 Curious interlacing of fiber bundles
below central fissure on the left side. 13 Boy. 14 Central fissure seems to be double on both sides. 15 Break unsatisfactory. 1® Large cavity
in right brain; break also unsatisfactory; break on left side is not accurate. 17 Breaks unsatisfactory. 18 Insane murder.
ET
n>
X
c
3
03 -
3
CD
5'
56
Select Discussions of Race Problems
In the first column of figures in Retzius' table regarding the fissure
of Sylvius both the norm and the variation is given, but the missing
figures can easily be obtained by subtracting the given percentage from
100. In case the average of a given record is more than 50 in both male
and female, it is called normal, while when it is less it is called a varia¬
tion. Thus the central sulcus anastomoses with the sulcus precentralis
superior in 18 per cent of the cases and therefore these do not anastomose
in 72 per cent. It may be remarked that the number of brains of men
studied by Retzius is somewhat small, while that of women is decidedly
too small, for in the latter each single record equals 8 per cent when
reduced to the scale of 100.
The data given by Retzius regarding differences in thegyri and sulci
due to sex may be criticized from two standpoints. Those in which there
is a marked difference between the brains of men and women may be
tested by other records. For instance, according to Retzius the anterior
branch of the fissure of Sylvius is divided and forms an operculum frontale
intermedium in 82 per cent of the brains of men and in 100 per cent in
those of women. At this point woman's brain forms a perfect norm,
being richer in all cases in gyri and sulci. However, only four specimens
of brains of women without an intermediary operculum would have made
the results for the two sexes exactly alike. No doubt a larger number of
records would have shown, even in Stockholm, that the operculum
frontale intermedium is not always present in the female brain. I notice
that Karplus, in the article mentioned above, figures four brains of women
without the operculum frontale intermedium, and states expressly that
it is missing in those four specimens which were found in a relatively
small number of brains. His record will bring the chief difference, given
by Retzius, pretty close to the male average of 82 per cent. The second
criticism can only be made by collecting many more statistics along the
lines laid down by Retzius in his great monograph.
At any rate what has been written by Karplus is to the point: "Auf
die von den Autoren angegebenen einzelnen Geschlechtsmerkmale der
Gehirne, die ja von vielen bestritten werden, will ich hier nicht naher
eingehen. Auch hier muss zunachst viel mehr Material gesammelt werden,
bisher bin ich nicht davon iiberzeugt, dass sich aus dem Furchenbild eine
Inferiority, t des weiblichen Gehirns ableiten liesse."
The question of the type of the female brain, a subject which has
been discussed so much, is therefore still far from being solved in a satis¬
factory manner.
Furthermore, it is by no means established that there are male and
female types of the brain due to the form and arrangement of the gyri
and sulci, as has been so frequently asserted. Each claim for specific
differences fails when carefully tested, and the general claim that the
brain of woman type is foetal or of simian type is largely an opinion
without any scientific foundation. Until anatomists can point out specific
Racial Differences in Mental Traits
57
differences which can be weighed or measured, or until they can assort a
mixed collection of brains, their assertions regarding male and female
types are of no scientific value. It may turn out, however, that variations
in the gyri and sulci will not be of the same percentage in both men and
women and that the constant value in the latter will be found more
readily, as is the case with other anatomical variations (Schwalbe).
In this study of several anatomical characters said to'vary according
to race and sex, the evidence advanced has been tested and found want¬
ing. It is found, however, that portions of the brain vary greatly in
different brains and that a very large number of records must be obtained
before the norm will be found. For the present the crudeness of our
method will not permit us to determine anatomical characters due to race,
sex or genius and which if they exist are completely masked by the large
number of marked individual variations. The study has been still further
complicated by the personal equation of the investigator. Arguments for
difference due to race, sex and genius will henceforward need to be based
upon new data, really scientifically treated and not on the older state¬
ments.
IV
Racial Differences in Mental Traits1
By R. S. Woodworth
Professor of Psychology in Columbia University
One of the most agreeable and satisfying experiences afforded by
intellectual pursuits comes from the discovery of a clean-cut distinction
between things which are superficially much alike. The esthetic value
of such distinctions may even outweigh their intellectual value and lead
to sharp lines and antitheses where the only difference that exists is one
of degree. A favorite opportunity for this form of intellectual exercise
and indulgence is afforded by the observation of groups of men. The
type of man composing each group—that is what we should like to find;
and we hear much of the "typical" scientist, the typical business man,
the typical Englishman or Frenchman, the typical southerner, the typical
Bostonian. The type of any group stands as a sort of ideal within the
group, and, more or less caricatured, as the butt of the wit of other
groups. There is one peculiar fact about these types: you may have to
search long for an individual who can be taken as a fair example. And
when you have at last found the typical individual, you may be led to
ask by what right he stands as the type of the group, if he is a rarity
amidst it.
1 Reprinted by permission of the author and editor, from Science, N. S. Vol. XXXI, pp.
171-186.
58
Select Discussions of Race Problems
If we would scientifically determine the facts regarding a group of
men, we should, no doubt, proceed to examine all the individuals in the
group, or at least a fair and honest representation of them. The first
fact that meets us when we proceed in this way is that the individuals
differ from each other, so that no one can really be selected as repre¬
senting the whole number. We do find, indeed, when we measure the
stature or any bodily fact, or when we test any native mental capacity,
that the members of a natural group are disposed about an average, many
of them lying near the average, and few lying far above or far below it;
and we thus have the average as a scientific fact regarding the group.
But the average does not generally coincide with the type, as previously
conceived, nor do the averages of different groups differ so much as the
so-called types differ. Moreover, the average is itself very inadequate,
since it does not indicate the amount of variation that exists within the
group—and this is one of the most important facts to be borne in mind
in understanding any collection of individuals. It is specially important
in comparing different groups of men, since the range of variation within
either group is usually much greater than the difference between the
averages of the groups. The groups overlap to such an extent that the
majority of the individuals composing either group might perfectly well
belong to the other.
No doubt statements like this will be readily accepted as far as con¬
cerns the different nations belonging to the same race. One could not
seriously doubt that the nations of Europe, though they might differ
slightly on the average, would so much overlap one another that, except
for language and superficial mannerisms, the great majority of the mem¬
bers of one nation might be exchanged with a majority from another
nation without altering the characteristics of either. But when we ex¬
tend our view to all the peoples of the earth, the case would at first appear
quite changed. Certainly whites and Negroes do not overlap, to any ex¬
tent, in color of skin, nor Negroes and Chinamen in kinkiness of hair,
nor Indians and Pygmies in stature. Such specialization of traits is,
however, the exception. Whites and Negroes, though differing markedly
in complexion and hair, overlap very extensively in almost every other
trait, as, for example, in stature. Even in brain weight, which would
seem a trait of great importance in relation to intelligence and civiliza¬
tion, the overlapping is much more impressive than the difference; since
while the brain of Negroes averages perhaps two ounces lighter than the
brain of Europeans, the range of variation within either race amounts to
25 ounces.
Our inveterate love for types and sharp distinctions is apt to stay
with us even after we have become scientific, and vitiate our use of sta¬
tistics to such an extent that the average becomes a stumbling-block
rather than an aid to knowledge. We desire, for example, to compare
the brain weights of whites and of Negroes. We weigh the brains of a
Racial Differences in Mental Traits
59
sufficient number of each race—or let us at least assume the number to
be sufficient. When our measurements are all obtained and spread before
us, they convey to the unaided eye no clear idea of a racial difference, so
much do they overlap. If they should become jumbled together, we should
never be able to separate the Negroes from the whites by aid of brain
weight. But now we cast up the average of each group, and find them
to differ; and though the difference is small, we straightway seize on it
as the important result, and announce that the Negro has a smaller brain
than the white. We go a step further, and class the white as a large-
brained race, the Negro as a small-brained. Such transforming of differ¬
ences of degree into differences of kind, and making antitheses between
overlapping groups, partakes not a little of the ludicrous.
We seem to be confronted by a dilemma; for the group as a whole
is too unwieldy to grasp, while the average, though convenient, is treach¬
erous. What we should like is some picture or measure of the distribution
of a given trait throughout the members of a group; and, fortunately,
such measures and pictures can be had. Convenient and compact meas¬
ures of variability are afforded by the science of statistics, and are of no
less importance than the average. But still better, because closer to the
actual facts, are graphic or tabular pictures of the distribution of the
trait, showing the frequency with which it occurs in each degree. The
distribution of a trait is for" some purposes more important than the
average. Let us suppose, for instance, that two groups were the same
in their average mental ability, but that one group showed little variation,
all of its members being much alike and of nearly the average intelli¬
gence, while the other group showed great variability, ranging between
the extremes of idiocy and genius. It is evident that the tw.o groups,
though equal on the average, would be very unequal in dealing with a
situation which demanded great mental ability. One master mind could
supply ideas for the guidance of the group, and his value would far out¬
weigh the load of simpletons which the group must carry.
If groups of men differ in average intelligence, this difference would
have an influence on their effectiveness in mental work, and so, no doubt,
on their advance in civilization. If groups differ in variability, this would
probably have a still greater influence. There is one respect in which
groups certainly do differ. They differ in size, and size is an important
consideration, even from a purely biological point of view. The more
numerous the individuals born into a group, the greater the absolute
number of gifted individuals to be expected; and in some respects it is
the absolute rather than the relative number of able men that counts.
Besides this, the larger the group, the greater the chance of its producing
a truly effective genius, just as, in the experiments of Burbank and other
breeders, a vast number of plants are grown, in order to increase the
chance of sports occurring.
One further consideration of this partly biological, partly statistical,
60
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
nature should be brought forward before passing from preliminary re¬
marks to the consideration of actual data. When the individuals com¬
posing a group are measured or tested in several traits, it is found that
those who rank high in one trait do not always rank high in others. On
the whole, there is more correspondence than opposition; an individual
who ranks well in one trait is rather apt to rank well in others. The
correlation, as we say, is positive, but it is far from perfect. The indi¬
viduals most gifted with ability in war are not altogether the same
individuals who are ablest in government, or in art or literature, or in
mechanical invention. This fact is not only of importance in reaching a
just conception of a group, but it should be considered in comparing
different groups. The circumstances surrounding a group call for certain
special abilities, and bring to the fore the individuals possessing these
abilities, leaving in comparative obscurity those gifted in other directions.
Judging the group largely by its prominent individuals, we get the im¬
pression that the group is gifted in certain lines; and deficient in others.
A nation whose circumstances call for industrial expansion and the ex¬
ploitation of natural resources gives prominence to those of its members
who are successful in these pursuits, and leaves in obscurity many who
have native capacity for military leadership. Should war come to such a
community, time and bitter experience are often necessary before the
leadership can be transferred from the previously eminent men to those
obscure and often despised individuals who are capable of doing best serv¬
ice in the new direction. This lack of perfect correlation between various
abilities makes it difficult to judge of the capacity of a group of men by
casual observation; and we must accordingly discount largely the appear¬
ance of specialization of mental traits in different peoples.
All in all, the discovery of true inherent differences between races
and peoples is an intricate task, and if we now turn to the psychologist
to conduct an examination of different groups, and to inform us regard¬
ing their mental differences, we must not allow him to present a hasty
conclusion. His tests must be varied and thorough before we can accept
his results as a serious contribution to this difficult subject. The psy¬
chologist may as well admit at once that he has little to offer; for,
though the "psychology of peoples" has become a familiar phrase, and
though books have been written on the subject, actual experimental work
has so far been very limited in quantity.
One thing the psychologist can assert with no fear of error. Start¬
ing from the various mental processes which are recognized in his text¬
books, he can assert that each of these processes is within the capabili¬
ties of every group of mankind. All have the same senses, the same
instincts and emotions. All can remember the past, and imagine objects
not present to sense. All discriminate, compare, reason and invent. In
all, one impulse can inhibit another, and a distant end can be pursued to
the neglect of present inclinations. Statements to the contrary, denying
Racial Differences in Mental Traits 61
to the savage powers of reasoning, or abstraction, or inhibition, or fore¬
sight, can be dismissed at once. If the savage differs in these respects
from the civilized man, the difference is one of degree, and consistent
with considerable overlapping of savage and civilized individuals. The
difference of degree calls for quantitative tests. But besides the tradi¬
tional classification of mental powers, there is another of perhaps greater
importance in studying differences between men. One individual differs
from another not so much in power of memory, or of reasoning, or of
attention, or of will, as in the sort of material to which he successfully
applies these processes. One gives his attention readily to mathematics;
he remembers mathematics easily; he reasons well on mathematical sub¬
jects; his will is strong in excluding distracting impulses when he is in
pursuit of a mathematical goal. He may show none of these powers, in
a high degree, in relation to music, or business, or social life; whereas
another, totally inefficient in mathematics, may show equal powers of
mind in another subject. The capacity to handle a given sort of subject
matter is in part determined by native endowment, but is very responsive
to training, and therefore is hard to test, because only individuals with
equal training in any subject can be fairly tested and compared as to their
native capacity to handle that subject. Thus it becomes hard to contrive
a test for musical or mathematical or mechanical endowment which could
fairly be applied to races having diverse trainings in these lines. This
difficulty, moreover, infects our tests for such general powers as memory
or reasoning, for a test has to deal with some sort of material, and suc¬
cess in passing the test depends on the familiarity of the material as well
as on the power of mind which we design to test. We may suppose,
indeed, that all of our tests, founded as they are on material which is
familiar to us, will be more or less unfair to peoples of very different
cultures and modes of life. The results of our tests need to be discounted
somewhat—exactly how much we can not say—in favor of the primitive
peoples tested.
We are now, it would seem, sufficiently entrenched in precautions
and criticisms to admit the psychologist to our councils, and hear the
results of his tests.
First, as to the senses. The point of special interest here is as to
whether the statements of many travelers, ascribing to the "savage"
extraordinary powers of vision, hearing and smell, can be substantiated
by exact tests. The common opinion, based on such reports, is, or has
been, that savages are gifted with sensory powers quite beyond anything
of which the European is capable; though Spencer explains that this is a
cause of inferiority rather than the reverse, because the savage is thus
led to rely wholly on his keen senses, and to devote his whole attention
to sense impressions, to the neglect and atrophy of his intellectual powers.
Ranke, however, on testing natives of Brazil, a race notable for its feats
of vision, found that their ability to discern the position of a letter or
62
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
similar character at a distance, though good was not remarkable, but fell
within the range of European powers. The steppe-dwelling Kalmuks,
also renowned for distant vision, being able to detect the dust of a herd
of cattle at a greater distance with the naked eye than a European could
with a telescope, have also been examined; and their acuity was indeed
found to be very high, averaging considerably above that of Europeans; yet
only one or two out of the forty individuals tested exceeded the European
record, while the great majority fell within the range of good European
eyes. Much the same result has been obtained from the Arabs, Egypt¬
ians and quite a variety of peoples. Among the most reliable results are
those of Rivers on a wholly unselected Papuan population. He found no
very exceptional individual among 115 tested, yet the average was some¬
what better than that of Europeans. I had myself, through the kindness
of Dr. McGee, the opportunity of testing individuals from quite a variety
of races at the St. Louis Fair in 1904, and my results agree closely with
those already cited, though I did not find any cases of very exceptional
powers among about 300 individuals. There were a number who exceeded
the best of the 200 whites whom I had also tested under the same condi¬
tions, but none who exceeded or equaled the record of a few individuals
who have been found in the German army. Indians and Filipinos ranked
highest, averaging about 10 per cent better than whites, when all indi¬
viduals of really defective vision were excluded. The amount of over¬
lapping is indicated by stating that 65-75 per cent of Indians and Filipinos
exceeded the average for whites. It did not seem possible, however, to
assert anything like a correspondence between eyesight and the degree
of primitiveness or backwardness of a people; since, for instance, the
Negritos of the Philippine Islands, though much more primitive than the
Malayan Filipinos in their mode of life, and, indeed, the most primitive
group so far tested, were inferior to the Filipinos, and, in fact, as far as
could be judged from the small number examined, no whit superior to
whites. Nor does it seem possible, from results hitherto reported, to
believe in a close correspondence between keen sight and dark skin,
though it is true that pigment is important in several ways to the eye,
and that therefore, as Rivers has suggested, the amount of pigmentation
might be a factor in vision. But it does not seem to be specially the
darkest races that show the keenest vision. We may perhaps conclude
that eyesight is a function which varies somewhat in efficiency with differ¬
ence of race, though with much overlapping. No doubt, however, the
results as they stand need some qualification. On the one hand, inclusion
of individuals with myopia and similar defects would lower the average
of Europeans considerably more than that of most other races; so that
the actual condition of eyesight differs more than the results show. On
the other hand, it would not be fair to include near-sighted individuals,
if what we wish to discover is native differences between peoples; for the
different prevalence of myopia is certainly due to the differing uses to
Racial Differences in Mental Traits
63
which the eye is put. And this matter of use may have considerable
influence on the individuals not classed as near-sighted, and so admitted
to the comparison. Rivers has made an observation in connection with
the test for eyesight, which I am able to confirm, and which is perhaps of
much importance. He found that when the letter or character used in
his test, the position of which had to be recognized at the greatest possi¬
ble distance, was removed from him beyond the distance at which he felt
that he could judge it, he could still guess it right nearly every time,
though without confidence. By such guessing, one's record in this test
can be bettered considerably; and careful study enables one to see the
slight and blurred indications of position which form the basis of the
guessing. Now it may well be that the occupations of civilized life breed
a habit of dependence on clear vision, whereas the life of those who must
frequently recognize objects at a great distance breeds reliance on slight
indications, and so creates a favorable attitude for the test of eyesight.
When this possibility is taken in connection with the deterioration of
many European eyes from abuse, and in connection with the observed
overlapping of all groups tested, the conclusion is not improbable that,
after all, the races are essentially equal in keenness of vision. Even if
small differences do exist, it is fairly certain that the wonderful feats of
distant vision ascribed to savages are due to practise in interpreting
slight indications of familiar objects. Both Rivers and Ranke, on testing
some of the very individuals whose feats of keen sight seemed almost
miraculous, found that, as tested, they had excellent but not extraordinary
vision. A little acquaintance with sailors on shipboard is enough to dis¬
pel the illusion that such feats are beyond the powers of the white man.
The hearing of savages enjoys a reputation, among travelers, similar
to that of their sight; but there can be little doubt that the cause is the
same. In fact, the tests which have so far been made tend to show that
the hearing of the whites is superior. Such was the result of Myers on
the Papuans, and of Bruner in his extensive series of measurements made
at the St. Louis Fair. Only 15 per cent of 137 Filipinos tested did as well
as the average of whites; other groups made a somewhat better showing,
but all seemed inferior on the average to whites. In spite of the expe¬
rimental results, there is perhaps reason to doubt that the hearing of
whites is essentially and natively much superior to that of other races.
Civilized life protects the ear from some forms of injury to which it is
exposed in more primitive conditions; and, then, the question of cleanli¬
ness must be considered in regard to the meatus. Besides, the ear is
known to be highly susceptible of training in the perception of particular
sorts of sound—as overtones and difference tones—and it is likely enough
that the watch ticks and similar clicks used in the tests are not equally
within the repertory of all peoples.
Much the same can be said regarding keenness of smell. On account
of the high olfactory powers of dogs and some other lower animals, it has
64
Select Discussions of Race Problems
often seemed natural and proper that this sense should be highly devel¬
oped among savages; and feats of primitive folk have been reported quite
analogous to those already referred to under sight and hearing. No
doubt here again, special interests and training are responsible, since
what few tests have been made tend to show no higher acuity of smell
among Negroes and Papuans than among Europeans.
The sense of touch has been little examined. McDougall found
among the Papuans a number with extremely fine powers of discrimina¬
tion by the skin. The difference between two points and one could be
told by these individuals even when the two points were brought very
close together; on the average, the Papuans tested excelled Europeans
considerably in this test. On the other hand, Indians and Filipinos, and
a few Africans and Ainu, tested in the same manner, seem not to differ
perceptibly from whites.
The pain sense is a matter of some interest, because of the fortitude
or stolidity displayed by some races towards physical suffering. It may
be, and has been conjectured, that the sense for pain is blunt in these
races, as it is known to be in some individuals who have allowed themselves
to be burned without flinching, and performed other feats of fortitude.
The pain sense is tested by applying gradually increasing pressure to
some portion of the skin, and requixing the person tested to indicate when
he first begins to feel pain. Now, as a matter of fact, the results
of McDougall on the Papuans, and those of Dr. Bruner and myself on
Indians, Filipinos, Africans and Ainu, are in close agreement on this
point. Greater pressure on the skin is needed to produce pain in each of
these races than in whites. This is the average result, but in this test
the distribution of the cases is specially important. Though most whites
feel pain at or about a certain small pressure, there is quite a respectable
minority who give no sign till much higher pressures are reached, their re¬
sults corresponding very closely to those of the majority of Indians. And
similarly, a minority of Indians feel pain at much lower pressures than
the bulk of their fellows, falling into the ranks of the white man. In each
group, the distribution is bimodal, or aggregated about two points instead
of one; but whites are principally aggregated about the lower center, and
Indians and other races about the higher center. Introspection comes to
our aid in explaining this anomaly, for it shows that there is some diffi¬
culty in telling just when the pressure becomes painful. If one is satis¬
fied with slight discomfort, a moderate pressure will be enough; but if a
sharp twinge is demanded, the pressure must be considerably increased.
Most whites, under the conditions of the test, are satisfied with slight
discomfort, while my impression in watching the Indians was that they
were waiting to be really hurt. The racial difference would accordingly
be one in the conception of pain, or in understanding the test, rather than
in the pain sense.
On the whole, the keenness of the senses seems to be about on a par
Racial Differences in Mental Traits 65
in the various races of mankind. Differences exist among the members
of any race, and it is not improbable that differences exist between the
averages of certain groups, especially when these are small, isolated and
much inbred. Rivers has in fact found such small groups differing con¬
siderably from whites in the color sense. One such group showed no
cases of our common color blindness or red-green blindness, while another
group showed an unusually large percentage of color-blind individuals.
In the larger groups, the percentage of the color-blind is, very likely,
about constant, though the existing records tend to show a somewhat
lower proportion among Mongolians than among whites. Very large
numbers of individuals need, however, to be tested in order to determine
such a proportion closely; even among Europeans, the proportion can not
yet be regarded as finally established. One thing is definitely shown by
the tests that have been made for color blindness in various races: no race,
however primitive, has been discovered in which red-green blindness was
the universal or general condition; and this is a fact of some interest in
connection with the physiology of color vision, for it seems probable that
red-green blindness, since it is not by any means a diseased condition,
represents a reversion to a more primitive state of the color sense. If
this is so, no race of men remains in the primitive stages of the evolution
of the color sense; the development of a color sense substantially to the
condition in which we have it, was probably a pre-human achievement.
In the actual history of the discussion of the color sense in various
races, quite a different view of the evolution has been prominent. Itwas
Gladstone who first, as an enthusiastic student of Homer, was struck by
the poverty of color names in ancient literature, and who suggested that
the Greeks of the Homeric age had a very imperfectly developed eye for
color. He was especially impressed by the application of the same color
name to blue and to gray and dark objects. Geiger, adhering to the same
sort of philological evidence, broadened its scope by pointing out the ab¬
sence of a name for blue in other ancient literatures. It is indeed curious
that the sky, which is mentioned hundreds of times in the Vedas and the
Old Testament, is never referred to as blue. The oldest literatures show
a similar absence of names for green. Geiger found that names for
black, white and red were the oldest, and that names for yellow, green
and blue have appeared in that order. He concluded that the history of
language afforded an insight into the evolution of the color sense, and
that, accordingly, the first color to be sensed was red, the others follow¬
ing in the same order in which they occur in the spectrum. Magnus
found that many languages at the present day were in the same condition
as that shown in the ancient Greek, Hebrew and Sanscrit. Very many,
perhaps the majority, have no specific name for blue, and a large propor¬
tion have none also for green. A smaller number are without a name for
yellow, while nearly all have a name for red. It seemed that the back¬
ward races of today had just reached the-stage, in the matter of color
66
Select Discussions of Race Problems
sensation, which was attained by other races some thousands of years
ago. The underlying assumptions of this argument are interesting—the
notion that the list of sensations experienced by a people must find ex¬
pression in the vocabulary; and the conception of certain peoples now
living as really primitive. Fortunately, Magnus submitted this theory to
the test of facts, by supplying travelers and traders with sets of colors,
by which various peoples were tested, first, as to their ability to name
the colors in their own languages, and second, as to their power to recog¬
nize and distinguish the colors. The results of this inquiry were that
names were often lacking for blue and green, but that every people was
able to perceive the whole gamut of colors known to the European. This
was a severe blow alike to the philological line of argument and to the
ready assumption that early stages of evolution were to be found repre¬
sented in the backward peoples of today. Accepting the facts as they
stood, Magnus still felt that there must be some physiological or sensory
reason for the curious lack of certain color names in many languages;
and he therefore suggested that blue and green might be less vividly pre¬
sented by the senses of many tribes, and that, being duller to their eyes
than to Europeans, these colors did not win their way into the language.
The theory was, however, practically defunct for many years till Rivers
recently took it up, as the result of tests on several dark-skinned peoples.
His test called for the detection of very faint tints of the various colors,
and the result was that, as compared with twoscore educated English
whom he also tested, these peoples were somewhat deficient in the de¬
tection of faint tints of blue—and also of yellow—but not of red. One
group, indeed, was superior to the English in red. The results made it
seem probable to Rivers that blue was indeed a somewhat less vivid color
to dark-skinned races than to Europeans, and he suggested that pigmen¬
tation, rather than primitiveness, might be the important factor in pro¬
ducing this difference. A blue-absorbing pigment is always present in
the retina, and the amount of it might very well be greater in generally
pigmented races. The suggestion is worth putting to a further test; but,
meanwhile, the difference obtained by Rivers in sensitiveness to blue
needs to be received with some caution, since the Europeans on whose
color sense he relies for comparison were rather few in number, educated
and remarkably variable among themselves. We were able, at St. Louis,
to try on representatives of a number of races a difficult color matching
test, so different indeed from that of Rivers that our results can not be
used as a direct check on his, with the result that all other races were
inferior to whites in their general success in color matching, but that no
special deficiency appeared in the blues. We also could find no correla¬
tion between ill success in this test and the degree of pigmentation. On
the whole, the color sense is probably very much the same all over the
world.
That linguistic evidence is a very treacherous guide to the sensory
Racial Differences in Mental Traits
67
powers of a people is well seen in the case of smell. Certainly many odors
are vivid enough, yet we have no specific odor names. Only a psycholo¬
gist would require a complete vocabulary of sensations; practical needs
lead the development of language in quite other directions.
When we turn from the senses to other functions, the information
which the psychologist has to offer becomes even more scanty.
Some interest attaches to tests of the speed of simple mental and
motor performances, since, though the mental process is very simple,
some indication may be afforded of the speed of brain action. The reac¬
tion time test has been measured on representatives of a few races, with
the general result that the time consumed is about the same in widely
different groups. The familiar "tapping test," which measures the rate
at which the brain can at will discharge a series of impulses to the same
muscle, was tried at St. Louis on a wide variety of folk, without dis¬
closing marked differences between groups. The differences were some¬
what greater when the movement, besides being rapid, had to be accur¬
ate in aim. The Eskimos excelled all others in this latter test, while the
poorest record was made by the Patagonians and the Cocopa Indians—
which groups were, however, represented by only a few individuals. The
Filipinos, who were very fully represented, seemed undeniably superior
to whites in this test, though, of course, with plenty of overlapping.
The degree of right-handedness has been asserted to vary in different
races, and the favoring of one hand has been interpreted as conducive to
specialization and so to civilization. We were, however, unable to detect
any marked difference in the degree of right-handedness in different races,
as tested by the comparative strength, quickness or accuracy of the two
hands. The Negritos, the lowest race examined, had the same degree of
right-handedness as Filipinos, or Indians, or whites.
We are probably justified in inferring from the results cited that the
sensory and motor processes, and the elementary brain activities, though
differing in degree from one individual to another, are about the same
from one race to another.
Equitable tests of the distinctly intellectual processes are hard to
devise, since much depends on the familiarity of the material used. Few
tests of this nature have as yet been attempted on different races.
There are a number of illusions and constant errors of judgment
which are well known in the psychological laboratory, and which seem to
depend, not on peculiarities of the sense organs, but on quirks and twists
in the process of judgment. A few of these have been made the matter
of comparative tests, with the results that peoples of widely different
cultures are subject to the same errors, and in about the same degree.
There is an illusion which occurs when an object, which looks heavier
than it is, is lifted by the hand; it then feels, not only lighter than it
looks, but even lighter than it really is. The contrast between the look
and the feel of the thing plays havoc with the judgment. Women are, on
68
Select Discussions of Race Problems
the average, more subject to this illusion than men. The amount of this
illusion has been measured in several peoples, and found to be, with one
or two exceptions, about the same in all. Certain visual illusions, in
which the apparent length or direction of a line is greatly altered by the
neighborhood of other lines, have similarly been found present in all
races tested, and to about the same degree. As far as they go, these
results tend to show that simple sorts of judgment, being subject to the
same disturbances, proceed in the same manner among various peoples;
so that the similarity of the races in mental processes extends at least
one step beyond sensation.
The mere fact that members of the inferior races are suitable subjects
for psychological tests and experiments is of some value in appraising
their mentality, Rivers and his collaborators approached the natives of
Torres Straits with some misgivings, fearing that they would not possess
the necessary powers of sustained concentration. Elaborate introspec¬
tions, indeed, they did not secure from these people, but, in any experi¬
ment that called for straight-forward observation, they found them
admirable subjects for the psychologist. Locating the blind spot, and
other observations with indirect vision, which are usually accounted a
strain on the attention, were successfully performed. If tests are put
in such form as to appeal to the interests of the primitive man, he can
be relied on for sustained attention. Statements sometimes met with
to the effect that such and such a tribe is deficient in powers of attention,
because, when the visitor began to quiz them on matters of linguistics,
etc., they complained of headache and ran away, sound a bit naive.
Much the same observations could be reported by college professors, re¬
garding the natives gathered in their class rooms.
A good test for intelligence would be much appreciated by the com¬
parative psychologist, since, in spite of equal standing in such rudimentary
matters as the senses and bodily movement, attention and the simpler
sorts of judgment, it might still be that great differences in mental effi.
ciency existed between different groups of men. Probably no single test
could do justice to so complex a trait as intelligence. Two important
features of intelligent action are quickness in seizing the key to a novel
situation, and firmness in limiting activity to the right direction, and
suppressing acts which are obviously useless for the purpose in hand. A
simple test which calls for these qualities is the so-called "form test."
There are a number of blocks of different shapes, and a board with holes
to match the blocks. The blocks and board are placed before a person,
and he is told to put the blocks in the holes in the shortest possible time.
The key to the situation is here the matching of blocks and holes by their
shape; and the part of intelligence is to hold firmly to this obvious neces¬
sity, wasting no time in trying to force a round block into a square hole.
The demand on intelligence certainly seems slight enough; and the test
would probably not differentiate between a Newton and you or me; but
Racial Differences in Mental Traits
69
it does suffice to catch the feeble-minded, the young child, or the chim¬
panzee, as any of these is likely to fail altogether, or at least to waste
much time in random moves and vain efforts. This test was tried on
representatives of several races, and considerable differences appeared.
As between whites, Indians, Esquimos, Ainus, Filipinos and Singhalese,
the average differences were small, and much overlapping occurred. As
between these groups, however, and the Igorot and Negrito from the
Philippines and a few reputed Pygmies from the Congo, the average
differences were great, and the overlapping was small. Another rather
similar test for intelligence, which was tried on some of these groups,
gave them the same relative rank. The results of the test agreed closely
with the general impression left on the minds of the experimenters by
considerable association with the people tested. And, finally, the relative
size of the cranium, as indicated, roughly, by the product of its three
external dimensions, agreed closely in these groups with their appearance
of intelligence, and with their standing in the form test. If the results
could be taken at their face value, they would indicate differences of
intelligence between races, giving such groups as the Pygmy and Negrito
a low station as compared with most of mankind. The fairness of the
test is not, however, beyond question; it may have been of a more
unfamiliar sort to these wild hunting folk than to more settled groups.
This crumb is, at any rate, about all the testing psychologist has yet to
offer on the question of racial differences in intelligence.
In the absence of first-hand study of the mental powers of different
races, folk psychology resorts to a comparison of their civilizations and
achievements. This is the method by which we habitually compare the
intelligence of individuals, judging capacity by performance, the tree by
its fruits; and such judgments, though subject to occasional error, are
probably in the main reliable. Why should we not extend the method to
the comparison of groups, and say that a group possessing a high civili¬
zation has probably a high average intelligence, while a wild savage race
is mentally poorly endowed? The first difficulty in employing the method
is to obtain a just estimate of the cultures to be compared. First im¬
pressions regarding alien folk, derived from the reports of travelers, are
usually wide of the mark. Only the patient and prolonged labors of the
ethnologist can inform us as to what a tribe does and thinks; and where
such studies have been made, it is found that a backward culture, such
as that of the natives of Australia, has much more substance, and affords
much wider scope for mental activity, than the early reports indicated.
The difficulty of inferring the mental endowment of a group from
its stage of culture is well brought out by applying this method to the
comparison of different epochs in the history of a nation. German culture
today is much advanced from the days of Caesar; shall we infer that the
mental endowment of the Germans has advanced in like measure?
Biologically, the interval, measured in generations, is not long, and from
70 Select Discussions of Race Problems
all biological considerations it is improbable that any advance in mental
endowment has occurred. The difference in material civilization does not
mean that the German of today is, on the average, gifted with more
native inventiveness or business ability than his ancestors sixty genera¬
tions ago. The difference in the arts and sciences does not mean that the
German of today is naturally more studious, or scientific, or musical.
The more settled condition of society does not imply greater native capacity
for industry or government. The disappearance of old superstitions
does not imply that later generations were born without the tendencies
to superstition which characterized their fathers. We are still not many
generations removed from witchcraft, curses, magic and the like savage
beliefs and practices, and we can not reasonably believe our recent fore¬
fathers to have been naturally more savage than we are. When, for
psychological purposes, we compare the culture of Europe with that of
Africa, we should not leave out of account the Children's Crusade, or the
Inquisition, or the Wars of the Roses. And if we attempt to use the
state of civilization as a measure of racial intelligence, we must somehow
adapt the method so that it shall give the same results, whether earlier
or later stages in the culture of a group be taken as the basis for study.
In reality, the civilization possessed by a generation can not be used
as a measure of the intelligence of that generation any more than an
individual's property can be taken as a measure of his business ability.
The greatest part of the civilization of a generation is bequeathed to it,
and only the increase which it produces can be laid to its credit. If we
could compare the rate of progress in different groups, this might serve
as a measure of intelligence; and certainly some peoples are more pro¬
gressive than others. Before adopting such a test, we should understand
the mechanism of progress—a matter which belongs only in part to
psychology.
Progress depends first of all on human inventiveness—so much will
probably be allowed. Under the head of inventions should be included,
not only mechanical devices, but works of art and government, business
enterprises and changes in custom, so far as any of these demand orig¬
inality in their producers. Science and all increase in knowledge should
also be included, since the process of discovery differs but little from the
process of invention. In both the essential mental act seems to be a
bringing together of things that are found apart, or a pulling apart of
what occurs together. In fact, both of these processes, the combining
or associating, and the analytic or discriminating, go on together, since
we see something new in a thing when we are reminded by it of some¬
thing else and different. There ib a suggestion of the accidental in all
invention, since it depends on "happening to notice something," or
"happening to be reminded of something." You can not be sure that
a person will make a discovery, even when you supply him with the ele¬
ments which would combine to produce it. Oftentimes, in reading the
Racial Differences in Mental Traits 71
history of scientific progress, one is suprised that a certain discovery was
not made by some man who had apparently everything before him to lead
to it. Invention is of the nature of a spontaneous variation, and this
accidental character is very important in understanding the mechanism
of progress.
On the other hand, since one can not be reminded of things entirely
unknown, invention depends on previously acquired knowledge, and the
inventiveness of an individual must take a direction prepared for him by
the social group among which he lives. A large share of the inventive¬
ness of the Australian natives seems to be directed into the channels of
magic and ceremony. The finished product of one mind's inventiveness
becomes raw material for another, and invention of all sorts is distinctly
a cooperative enterprise.
Invention is said to be mothered by necessity; and the proverb is no
doubt true in the main, though curiosity and experimentation belong
among the play instincts. But, in any case, the necessity must not be too
dire, for some degree of leisure is demanded if anything novel is to be
thought of, and rapid progress is only possible when individuals can be
allowed to accumulate the special knowledge which may serve as the raw
material for their inventive activity. Divisions of labor, guilds, univer¬
sities, legislatures, . investigating commissions, permanent research
bureaus—each of which is, genetically, a series of inventions—are de¬
pendent for their existence on a certain degree of leisure, while they in
turn provide more leisure and opportunity for further advance. They are
inventions which accelerate the progress of invention. There are thus
many factors besides the intellectual endowment of a generation which
go to determine the progress which it shall make. The spur of necessity,
the opportunity afforded by leisure, the existing stock of knowledge and
inventions and the factor of apparent accident or luck have all to be con¬
sidered.
A still further factor is the size of the group, which is deserving of
renewed attention. Not only does a large group afford more opportunity
for division of labor and special institutions for research, but the biologi¬
cal consideration already mentioned should be emphasized. The contri¬
butions to progress of the average man are small, the inventions of mo¬
ment arising in the brains of a small fraction of the group. A large
group provides a greater number of inventive minds, and it is rather the
absolute number of such than their proportion to the whole population
that determines the progress of invention within a group. The "group"
needs to be redefined from the point of view of invention. If knowledge
and inventions pass back and forth between two nations or races, the
inventive minds of both are brought into cooperation, and the group is
by so much enlarged. From the point of view of progress, however, the
question is not simply how many inventive minds are brought into co¬
operation, but how free and rapid the communication is between them.
72 Select Discussions of Race Problems
At the present time, a discovery originating anywhere in Europe or its
colonies is quickly known by specialists in all parts, and may promptly
fructify the mind of a distant investigator, leading to a fresh advance.
The invention of printing and of rapid means of communication must be
credited with a large share of the rapid progress which has been made by
the last few generations. Much also must be credited to the invention
of steam power, which has vastly multiplied the size of the European
group, in an economic sense, and set free many minds of ability for
productive thinking. The very idea of the advancement of science and
invention as an end to be striven for is to be classed as an invention, and
a rather recent one; and it too is an accelerator.
Such considerations provide at least a partial explanation of the differ¬
ent rates of progress in different generations, and among different races.
Whether they explain everything could perhaps only be determined by a
drastic experiment, which it will do no harm to imagine, though the
question will never be settled in this convincing way.
Let two or more habitats, isolated from each other and from the rest
of the world, and as nearly as possible alike, be chosen, and peopled by
two equal groups of children, selected from some highly civilized nation,
and so selected as to represent fairly the distribution of mental and phys¬
ical traits among that nation. For every individual in the first group, let
there be a practically identical individual in the second. Let these groups
of children be introduced into their new homes in infancy, and, by some
quasi-miraculous means, let them be all preserved to maturity, and then
let them, and their descendants, be left entirely to their own devices,
without fire, or a language, or other modern improvements. To watch
such a spectacle from afar would be thrilling, if not too pitiful. We can
readily grant that the infant communities would begin at the very zero
of civilization, and that their progress, for many generations, would seem
excessively slow. But the real point of the experiment is to inquire
whether these two equal groups, alike in numbers, in heredity and in
environment, would remain alike, and progress at equal rates. Probably
they would not. We must allow for a large element of chance in the
mating of males and females within each group, and consequently for
changes and inequalities in the distribution and correlation of traits—
changes which need not alter the average of either group. We must
allow for spontaneous variation in the offspring, another accidental factor
by virtue of which a really inventive and effective individual, or conjunc¬
tion of such, would almost certainly arise in one group earlier than in the
other, and give the advance of one group an impetus which might be felt
through many generations, and carry this group far ahead of the other.
And we must allow also for the accidental factor in invention. Even
though the genius of one group was paired by an equal genius in the
other, it is improbable that both would invent the same things. One
might invent a hunting implement, and the other a fishing implement;
Racial Differences in Mental Traits
73
and by this accident the direction of development might be settled for
each group. If we closed the experiment after a thousand generations,
we should probably find two peoples of different languages, different
customs, and cultures divergent in many respects. The supposed result
may be taken as an assertion of the importance of accident in determin¬
ing the destiny of peoples. Obscure causes are no doubt at work beneath
the accidents, but we can not trace them, nor reasonably state them in
terms of racial superiority and inferiority!
It would seem that size of groups, and accidental factors, exert so
much influence on the rate of advance in civilization that differences of
culture could possibly be explained without supposing the mental endow¬
ments of the races to differ. Whether the existing races of men do or
do not differ in such a trait as inventiveness is another and more difficult
problem, the settlement of which must be left to time and educational
experiments. The experiments must be continued for several generations,
in order to equate social traditions. Regarding the Negroes of the
South, I am informed by a gentleman who has spent twenty years in
educating them that a distinct advance is perceptible during this period,
especially among the children of educated parents. These have more
educational ambition, enter school earlier and have less to unlearn. The
educational experiment, as far as it has gone, thus shows that much time
will be needed before a clear result is reached.
Meanwhile it may be allowed to add one more general consideration
by asking whether causes of a biological nature can be seen to be at work
in human history, such as would differentiate the races intellectually,
and, in particular, such as to raise up, in some part of the world, a race
superior to the stock from which it sprang.
Natural selection has been suggested as such a cause. Life in the
tropics, it has been said, is too easy to demand much inventiveness or
forethought, but a migration to colder regions, where the banana does
not grow, would make mental activity imperative, and select those indi¬
viduals who were able to respond, so producing a superior race. There
is a difficulty here, since we should expect natural selection to begin by
lopping off the most poorly endowed fraction of the population, with the
result, finally, that the lower range of intelligence should disappear from
the higher races. The lowest grade of intelligence in Europe should
accordingly be higher than the lowest grade in Africa. But this is prob¬
ably not the case; the range of intelligence reaches as low in one as in
the other. The distributions of intelligence in the two also overlap to
quite an extent. Extensive experiment has shown that Africans can
maintain existence in the temperate zone.
Sexual selection, or, more" properly, mating customs, furnish a more
promising factor. If a tendency could be detected in any population for
the most intelligent members to mate with each other, the result would
be, not indeed a raising of the average intelligence, since the less intelli-
74
Select Discussions of Race Problems
gent would also mate with each other, but an increase of the variability,
and greater chance of the birth of very superior individuals. A caste
system might operate in this way, since the founders of aristocratic
families probably won admission to the caste partly by virtue of intelli¬
gence, and their descendants would tend, by heredity, to exceed the
average intelligence of the population. Marriage confined to the caste
would thus tend to mate superior individuals with each other, and might,
in the course of generations, raise the upper limit of intelligence. Cus¬
toms of mating within one's rank obtain among the aristocracy and roy¬
alty of Europe, and may have been a factor in increasing the number of
superior intelligences. But too much can not be attributed to this factor,
since the selection has been by classes, and not by individuals. Royalty,
while marrying within its rank, has not usually chosen the most gifted
individual available. Its selection has been relatively inefficient from the
standpoint of royal eugenics. Certainly the upper reach of European
intelligence has not been the result of breeding by castes; for, though
royalty has indeed produced a disproportionate number of high intelli¬
gences, equally able individuals have, as a matter of fact, risen from
humble birth. Moreover, marriage in all parts of the world is largely
governed by considerations of family standing and wealth, so that the
same sort of influence toward variability is everywhere operative. The
dead level of intelligence, which is sometimes supposed to obtain among
backward races, is not borne out by psychological tests, since individual
differences are abundantly found among all races, and, indeed, the
variability of different groups seems, from these tests, to be about on
a par.
Selection by migration is also to be considered. When individuals
leave their group and go to a new country, it would seem that those who
emigrate must differ, on the average, from those who remain behind.
An adventurous and enterprising spirit, perhaps, would be characteristic
of the emigrants, and so of the new people which they helped to form.
On the other hand, the ne'er-do-well and the criminal might also be
induced to emigrate. The selective influence of migration would not be
all in one direction, and the net result could not easily be predicted.
Since we are now witnessing, though little comprehending, this process
of migration as it contributes to form a people of the future, information
regarding the kind of selective influence exerted by migration would have
a practical value. Wisdom would dictate that the nation which is
in process of formation should exert some selective influence on
its own account, but, from all the facts in hand, the part of wisdom
would be to select the best individuals available from every source, rather
than, trusting to the illusory appearance of great racial differences in
mental and moral traits, to make the selection in terms of races or
nations.
V
The Mind of the Savage1
By W. I. Thomas
Professor of Sociology in the University of Chicago
* * * * We have been accustomed to think that there is a great gulf
between ourselves and other races; and this persists in an undefinable way
after scores of J apanese have taken high rank in our schools, and after
Hindus have repeatedly been among the wranglers in mathematics at Cam¬
bridge. It is only when one of the far eastern nations has come bodily
to the front that we begin to ask ourselves whether there is not an error
in our reckoning.
The instinct to belittle outsiders is perhaps at the bottom of our delu¬
sion that the white race has one order of mind and the black and yellow
races have another. But, while a prejudice—a matter of instinct and
emotion—may well be at the beginning of an error of this kind, it could
not sustain itself in the face of our logical habits unless reinforced by an
error of judgment. And this error is found in the fact that in a naive
way we assume that our steps in progress from time to time are due to
our mental superiority as a race over the other races (that is, to a supe¬
rior brain structure) and to the mental superiority of one generation of
ourselves over the preceding.
In this we are confusing advance in culture with brain improvement.
If we should assume a certain grade of intelligence, fixed and invariable
in all individuals, races, and times—an unwarranted assumption, of
course—progress would still be possible, provided we assumed a charac¬
teristically human grade of intelligence to begin with. With associative
memory, abstraction, and speech men are able to compare the present
with the past, to deliberate and discuss, to invent, to abandon old pro¬
cesses for new, to focus attention on special problems, to encourage
specialization, and to transmit to the younger generation a more intelli¬
gent standpoint and a more advanced starting-point. Culture is the
accumulation of the results of activity, and culture could go on improving
for a certain time even if there were a retrogression in intelligence. If
all the chemists in class A should stop work tomorrow, the chemists in
Class B would still make discoveries. These would influence manufac¬
ture, and progress would result. If a worker in any specialty acquaints
himself with the results of his predecessors and contemporaries and
1 Extracts reprinted, by arrangements with the publishers, from Source Book for Social
Origins, pp. 156-169. Copyright (1909) by University of Chicago Press. The price of the
volume is four dollars and a half.
76 Select Discussions of Race Problems
works, he will add some results to the sum of knowledge in his line.
And if a race preserves by record or tradition the memory of what past
generations have done, and adds a little, progress is secured whether the
brain improves or stands still. In the same way, the fact that one race
has advanced farther in culture than another does not necessarily imply
a different order of brain, but may be due to the fact that in the one case
social arrangements have not taken the shape affording the most favora¬
ble conditions for the operation of the mind.
If, then, we make due allowance for our instinctive tendency as a
white group to disparage outsiders, «and, on the other hand, for our tend¬
ency to confuse progress in culture and general intelligence with biologi¬
cal modification of the brain, we shall have to reduce very much our
usual estimate of the difference in mental capacity between ourselves
and the lower races, if we do not eliminate it altogether; and we shall
perhaps have to abandon altogether the view that there has been an
increase in the mental capacity of the white race since prehistoric times.
The first question arising in this connection is whether any of the
characteristic faculties of the human mind—perception, memory, inhibi¬
tion, abstraction—are absent or noticeably weak in the lower races. If
this is found to be true, we have reason to attribute the superiority of
the white race to biological causes; otherwise we shall have to seek an
explanation of white superiority in causes lying outside the brain.
In examining this question we need not dwell on the acuteness of the
sense-perceptions, because these are not distinctively human. As a mat¬
ter of fact some of them are better developed in the animals than in man,
and we usually allow that the savage has greater acuity of the senses
than the white man. But this is probably an error in the other direction.
Bruner has recently determined that the sense of hearing in the savage
is actually duller than in the civilized. In his Hearing of Primitive Peo¬
ples he says: "Not only the intellectual but sensory possibilities are to be
stated in terms of the variety of motor response of which the individual
is capable. Other things being equal, those individuals or races possess¬
ing the greatest complexity and variety of reactions to elements in their
respective environments likewise will be gifted with keener and more
acute sensory mechanisms." And the superiority of the savage in track¬
ing is not due to superior eyesight but to a skill in interpreting marks,
similar to the facility we acquire in reading a badly printed or illegibly
written page. On this score, at any rate, we cannot assume a difference
between the savage and the civilized unless it is in those cases where
different ways of life make the one or the other less habitually attentive
and consequently less practiced. The memory of the lower races is also
apparently quite as good as that of the higher. The memory of the Aus¬
tralian native or the Eskimo is quite as good as that of our "oldest inhabi¬
tant;" and probably no one would claim that the modern scientist has a
better memory than the bard of the Homeric period.
The Mind of the Savage
77
There is, however, a prevalent view, for the popularization of which
Herbert Spencer is largely responsible, that primitive man has feeble
powers of inhibition. Like the equally erroneous view that early man is a
free and unfettered creature, it arises from our habit of assuming that,
because his inhibitions and unfreedom do not correspond with our own
restraints, they do not exist. Sir John Lubbock pointed out long ago
that the savage is hedged about by conventions so minute and so manda¬
tory that he is actually the least free person in the world. But, in spite
of this, Spencer and others have insisted that he is incapable of self-
restraint, is carried away like a child by the impulse of the moment, and
is incapable of rejecting an immediate gratification for a greater future
one. Cases like the one mentioned by Darwin of the Fuegian who struck
and killed his little son when the latter dropped a basket of fish into the
water are cited without regard to the fact that cases of sudden domestic
violence and quick repentance are common in any city today; and the
failure of the Australian blacks to throw back the small fry when fishing
is referred to without pausing to consider that our practice of extermin¬
ating game and denuding our forests shows an amazing lack of individual
self-restraint.
The truth is that the restraints exercised in a group depend largely
on the traditions, views, and teachings of the group, and if we have this
in mind, the savage cannot be called deficient on the side of inhibition.
It is doubtful if modern society affords anything more striking in the way
of inhibition than is found in connection with taboo, fetish, totemism, and
ceremonial among the lower races. In the great majority of the Ameri¬
can Indian and Australian tribes a man is strictly forbidden to kill or eat
the animals whose name his clan bears as a totem. The central Austra¬
lian may not, in addition, eat the flesh of any animal killed or even
touched by persons standing in certain relations of kinship to him. At
certain times also he is forbidden to eat the flesh of a number of animals,
and at all times he must share all food secured with the tribal elders and
some others.
A native of Queensland will put his mark on an unripe zamia fruit,
and may be sure it will be untouched and that when it is ripe he has only
to go and get it. The Eskimos, though starving, will not molest the
sacred seal basking before their huts. Similarly in social intercourse the
inhibitions are numerous. To some of his sisters, blood and tribal, the
Australian may not speak at all; to others only at certain distances,
according to the degree of kinship. The west African fetish acts as a
police, and property protected by it is safer than under civilized laws.
Food and palm wine are placed beside the path with a piece of fetish
suspended near by, and no one will touch them without leaving the
proper payment. The garden of a native may be a mile from the house,
unfenced, and sometimes unvisited for weeks by the owner; but it is im¬
mune from depredations if protected by fetish. Our proverb says, "A
78
Select Discussions of Race Problems
hungry belly has no ears," and it must be admitted that the inhibition of
food impulses implies no small power of restraint.
Altogether too much has been made of inhibition, anyway, as a sign
of mentality, for it is not even characteristic of the human species. The
well-trained dog inhibits in the presence of the most enticing stimulations
of the kitchen. And it is also true that one race, at least—the American
Indian—makes inhibition the most conspicuous feature in its system of
education. From the time the ice is broken to give him a cold plunge
and begin the toughening process on the day of his birth, until he dies
without a groan under torture, the Indian is schooled in the restraint of
his impulses. He does not, indeed, practice our identical restraints,
because his traditions and the run of his attention are different; but he
has a capacity for controlling impulses equal to our own.
Another serious charge against the intelligence of the lower races is
lack of the power of abstraction. They certainly do not deal largely in
abstraction, and their languages are poor in abstract terms. But there
is a great difference between the habit of thinking in abstract terms and
the ability to do so.
The degree to which - abstraction is employed in the activities of a
group depends on the complexity of the activities and on the complexity
of consciousness in the group. When science, philosophy, and logic, and
systems of reckoning time, space, and number, are taught in the schools;
when the attention is not so much engaged in perceptual as in deliberate
acts; and when thought is a profession, then abstract modes of thougTfE^
are forced on the mind. This does not argue absence of the power of
abstraction in the lower races, or even a low grade of ability, but lack
of practice. To one skilled in any line an unpracticed person seems very
stupid; and this is apparently the reason why travelers report that the
black and yellow races have feeble powers of abstraction. It is gener¬
ally admitted, however, that the use of speech involves the power of
abstraction, so that all races have the power in some degree. When we
come further to examine the degree in which,they possess it, we find that
they compare favorably with ourselves in any test which involves a fair
comparison.
The proverb is a form of abstraction practiced by all races, and is
perhaps the best test of the natural bent of the mind in this direction,
because, like ballad poetry and slang, proverbial sayings do not originate
with the educated class, but are of popular origin. At the same time,
proverbs compare favorably with the mots of literature, and many pro¬
verbs have, in fact,, drifted into literature and become connected with the
names of great writers. Indeed, the saying that there is nothing new
under the sun applies with such force and fidelity to literature that, if we
should strip Hesiod and Homer and Chaucer of such phrases as "The
half is greater than the whole," "It is a wise son that knows his own
father " (which Shakespeare quotes the other end about), and "To make
The Mind of the Savage
79
a virtue of necessity," and if we should further eliminate from literature
the motives and sentiments also in ballad poetry and in popular thought,
little would remain but form
On the side of number we have another test of the power of abstrac¬
tion; and while the lower races show lack of practice in this they show
no lack of power. It is true that tribes have been found with no names
for numbers beyond two, three, or five; but these are isolated groups,
like the Veddahs and Bushmen, who have no trade or commerce, and
lead a miserable existence, with little or nothing to count The directions
of attention and the simplicity or complexity of mental processes depend
on the character of the external situation which the mind has to manipu¬
late. If the activities are simple, the mind is simple, and if the activities
were nil, the mind would be nil. The mind is nothing but a means of
manipulating the outside world. Number, time, and space conceptions
and systems become more complex and accurate, not as the human mind
grows in capacity, but as activities become more varied and call for more
extended and accurate systems of notation and measurement. Trade and
commerce, machinery and manufacture, and all the processes of civiliza¬
tion involve specialization in the apprehension of series as such. Under
these conditions the number technique becomes elaborate and requires
time and instruction for its mastery. The advance which mathematics
has made within a brief historical time is strikingly illustrated by the
words with which the celebrated mathematician, Sir Henry Savile, who
died in 1616, closed his career as a professor at Oxford:
"By the grace of God, gentlemen hearers, I have performed my
promise. I have redeemed my pledge. I have explained, according to
my ability, the definitions, postulates, axioms, and the first eight propo¬
sitions of the Elements of Euclid. Here, sinking under the weight of
years, I lay down my art and my instruments."
From the standpoint of modern mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and
the Bushmen are both woefully backward; and in both cases the back¬
wardness is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state of the
science.
In respect, then, to brain structure and the more important mental
faculties we find that no race is radically unlike the others. Still, it
might happen that the mental activities and products of two groups were
so different as to place them in different classes. But precisely the con¬
trary is true. There is in force a principle called the law of parallelism
in development, according to which any group takes much the same steps
in development as any other. The group may be belated, indeed, and
not reach certain stages, but the ground-patterns of life are the same in
the lower races and in the higher. Mechanical inventions, textile indus¬
tries, rude painting, sculpture, poetry, and song, marriage and family
life, organization under leaders, belief in spirits, a mythology and some
form of church and state exist universally. At one time students of
80 Select Discussions of Race Problems
mankind, when they found a myth in Hawaii corresponding to the Greek
story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or an Aztec poem of tender longing in
absence, or a story of the deluge, were wont to conjecture how these
could have been carried over from Greek or Elizabethan or Hebraic
sources, or whether they did not afford evidence of a time when all
branches of the human race dwelt together with a common fund of senti¬
ment and tradition. But this standpoint has been abandoned, and it is
recognized that the human mind and the ouside world are essentially alike
the world over; that the mind everywhere acts on the same principles;
and that, ignoring the local, incidental, and eccentric, we find similar
laws of growth among all peoples.
The number of things which can stimulate the human mind is some¬
what definite and limited. Among them, for example, is death. This
happens everywhere, and the death of a dear one may cause the living to
imagine ways of being reunited. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice may
thus arise spontaneously and perpetually, wherever death and affection
exist. Or, there may be a separation from home and friends, and the
mind runs back in distress and longing over the happy past, and the state
of consciousness aroused is as definite a fact among savages as among
the civilized. A beautiful passage in Homer represents Helen looking out
on the Greeks from the wall of Troy and saying:
"And now behold I all the other glancing-eyed Achaians, whom well
I could discern and tell their names; but two captains of the host can I
not see, even Kastor tamer of horses and Polydukes the skilful boxer,
mine own brethren whom the same mother bare. Either they came not
in the company from lovely Lakedaimon; or they came hither indeed in
their sea-faring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of warriors,
for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine."
When this passage is thus stripped of its technical excellence by a
prose translation, we may compare it with the following New Zealand
lament composed by a young woman who was captured on the island of
Tuhua and carried to a mountain from which she could see her home:
"My regret is not to be expressed. Tears, like a spring, gush from
my eyes. I wonder whatever is Tu Kainku [her lover] doing, he who
deserted me. Now I climb upon the ridge of Mount Parahaki, whence is
clear the view of the island of Tuhua. I see with regret the lofty Tanmo
where dwells [the chief] Tangiteruru. If I were there, the shark's tooth
would hang from my ear. How fine, how beautiful should I look! . . . .
But enough of this; I must return to my rags and to my nothing at all."
The situation of the two women in this case is not identical, and it
would be possible to claim that the Greek and Maori passages differ in
tone and coloring; but it remains true that a captive woman of any race,
will feel much the same as the captive woman of any other race when her
thoughts turn toward home, and that the poetry growing out of such a
situation will be everywhere of the same general pattern.
The Mind of the Savage
81
Similarly, to take an illustration from morals, we find that widely
different in complexion and detail as are the moral codes of lower and
higher groups, say the Hebrews and the African Kafirs, yet the general
patterns of morality are strikingly coincident. It is reported of the Kafirs
that they possess laws which meet every crime which may be commit¬
ted." Theft is punished by restitution and fine; injured cattle, by death
or fine; false witness, by a heavy fine; adultery, by fine or death; rape,
by fine or death; poisoning or witchcraft, by death and confiscation of
property; murder, by death or fine; treason or desertion from the tribe,
by death and confiscation. The Kafirs and Hebrews are not at the sam$
level of culture, and we miss the more abstract and monotheistic admoni¬
tions of the higher religion—"thou shalt not covet; thou shalt worship no
other gods before me "—but the intelligence shown by the social mind in
adjusting the individual to society may fairly be called the same grade of
intelligence in the two cases.
When the environmental life of two groups is more alike and the
general cultural conditions more correspondent, the parallelism of thought
and practice becomes more striking. The recently discovered Assyrian
Code of Hammurabi (about 2500 B. C.) contains striking correspondences
with the Mosaic code; and while Semitic scholars probably have good and
sufficient reasons for holding that the Mosaic code was strongly influenced
by the Assyrian, we may yet be very confident that the two codes would
have been of the same general character if no influence whatever had
passed from one to the other.
The institutions and practices of a people are a product of the mind;
and if the early and spontaneous products of mind are everywhere of the
same general pattern as the later manifestations, only less developed,
refined, and specialized, it may well be that failure to progress equally
is not due to essential unlikeness of mind, but to conditions lying outside
the mind.
Another test of mental ability which deserves special notice is me¬
chanical ingenuity. Our white pre-eminence owes much to this faculty,
and the lower races are reckoned defective in it. But the lower races do
invent, and it is doubtful whether one invention is ever much more diffi¬
cult than another. On the psychological side, an invention means that
the mind sees a roundabout way of reaching an end when it cannot be
reached directly. It brings into play the associative memory, and in¬
volves the recognition of analogies. There is a certain likeness between
the flying back of a bough in one's face and the rebound of a bow, between
a serpent's tooth and a poisoned arrow, between floating timber and a
raft or boat—and water, steam, and electricity are like a horse in one
respect—they will all make wheels go around, and do work.
Now, the savage had this faculty of seeing analogies and doing things
in indirect ways. With the club, knife, and sword he struck more effec¬
tively than with the fist; with hooks, traps, nets, and pitfalls he under-
82
Select Discussions of Race Problems
stood how to seize game more surely than with the hands; in the bow
and arrow, spear, blow-gun, and. spring-trap he devised motion swifter
than that of his own body; he protected himself with armor imitated
from the hides and scales of animals, and turned their venom back on
themselves. That the savage should have originated the inventive pro¬
cess and carried it on systematically is, indeed, more wonderful than that
his civilized successors should continue the process; for every beginning
is difficult.
When occupations become specialized and one set of men has contin¬
ually to do with one and only one set of machinery and forces, the constant
play of attention over the limited field naturally results in improvements
and the introduction of new principles. Modern inventions are magnifi¬
cent and seem quite to overshadow the simpler devices of primitive times;
but when we consider the precedents, copies, resources, and accumulative
knowledge with which the modern investigator works, and, on the other
hand, the resourcelessness of primitive man in materials, ideas, and in
the inventive habit itself, I confess that the bow and arrow seems to me
the most wonderful invention in the world.
Viewing the question from a different angle, we find another argu¬
ment for the homogeneous character of the human mind in the fact that
the patterns of interest of the civilized show no variation from those of
the savage. Not only the appetites and vanities remain essentially the
same, but, oh the side of intellectual interest, the type of mental reaction
fixed in the savage by the food-quest has come down unaltered to the man
of science as well as to the man of the street. In circumventing enemies
and capturing game, both the attention and the organic processes worked
together in primitive man under great stress and strain. Whenever, in¬
deed, a strain is thrown on the attention, the heart and organs of respira¬
tion are put under pressure also in their effort to assist the attention in
manipulating the problem; and these organic fluctuations are felt as
pleasure and pain. The strains thrown on the attention of primitive man
were connected with his struggle for life; and not only in the actual
encounter with men and animals did emotion run high, but the memory
and anticipation of conflict reinstated the emotional conditions in those
periods when he was meditating future conflicts and preparing his bows
and arrows, traps and poisons. The problem of invention, the reflective
and scientific side of his life, was suffused with interest, because the
manufacture of the weapon was, psychologically speaking, a part of the
fight
The fundamental explanation of the difference in the mental life of
two groups is not that the capacity of the brain to do work is different,
but that the attention is not in the two cases stimulated and engaged
along the same lines. Wherever society furnishes copies and stimulations
of a certain kind, a body of knowledge and a technique, practically all its
members are able to work on the plan and scale in vogue there, and
Old African Civilizations
83
members of an alien race who become acquainted in a real sense with the
system can work under it. But when society does not furnish the stimu¬
lations, or when it has preconceptions which tend to inhibit the run of
attention in given lines, then the individual shows no intelligence in these
lines
VI
Old African Civilizations1
By Franz Boas
Professor of Anthropology in Columbia University
* * * * The achievements of races are not only what they have done
during the short span of two thousand years, when with rapidly increasing
numbers the total amount of mental work accumulated at an ever increas¬
ing rate. In this the European, the Chinaman, the East Indian, have far
outstripped other races. But back of this period lies the time when mankind
struggled with the elements, when every small advance that seems to us
now insignificant was an achievement of the highest order, as great as the
discovery of steam power or of electricity, if not greater. It may well
be, that these early inventions were made hardly consciously, certainly
not by deliberate effort, yet every one of them represents a giant's
stride forward in the development of human culture. To these early ad¬
vances the Negro race has contributed its liberal share. While much of
the history of early invention is shrouded in darkness, it seems likely
that at a time when the European was still satisfied with rude stone tools,
the African had invented or adopted the art of smelting iron.
Consider for a moment what this invention has meant for the advance
of the human race. As long as the hammer, knife, saw, drill, the spade
and the hoe had to be chipped out of stone, or had to be made of shell or
hard wood, effective industrial work was not impossible, but difficult. A
great progress was made when copper found in large nuggets was ham¬
mered out into tools and later on shaped by melting, and when bronze was
introduced; but the true advancement of industrial life did not begin until
the hard iron was discovered. It seems not unlikely that the people that
made the marvelous discovery of reducing iron ores by smelting were the
African Negroes. Neither ancient Europe, nor ancient western Asia, nor
ancient China knew the iron, and everything points to its introduction from
Africa. At the time of the great African discoveries towards the end of the
past century, the trade of the blacksmith was found all over Africa,-from
north to south and from east to west. With his simple bellows and a
charcoal fire he reduced the ore that is found in many parts of the conti¬
nent and forged implements of great usefulness and beauty.
1 Extracts reprinted from Atlanta University Leaflet No. 19, a Commencement Address
delivered by Dr. Boas at Atlanta University, May 31, 1906.
84
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
Due to native invention is also the extended early African agricul¬
ture, each village being surrounded by its garden patches and fields in
which millet is grown. Domesticated animals were also kept; in the agri¬
cultural regions chickens and pigs, while in the arid parts of the country
where agriculture it not possible, large herds of cattle were raised. It
is also important to note that the cattle were milked, an art which in ear¬
ly times was confined to Africa, Europe and northern Asia, while even
now it has not been acquired by the Chinese.
The occurrence of all these arts of life points to an early and energetic
development of African culture.
Even if we refrain from speculating on the earliest times, conceding
that it is difficult to prove the exact locality where so important an inven¬
tion was made as that of smelting iron, or where the African millet was first
cultivated, or where chickens and cattle were domesticated, the evidence
of African ethnology is such that it should inspire you with the hope of
leading your race from achievement to achievement. Shall I remind you
of the power of military organization exhibited by the Zulu, whose kings
and whose armies swept southeastern Africa. Shall I remind you of the
local chiefs, who by dint of diplomacy, bravery and wisdom united the scat¬
tered tribes of wide areas into flourishing kingdoms, of the intricate form
of government necessary for holding together the heterogeneous tribes.
If you wish to understand the possibilities of the African under the
stimulus of a foreign culture, you may look towards the Soudan, the re¬
gion south of the Sahara. When we first learn about these countries by
the reports of the great Arab traveller Iben Batuta, who lived in the 14th
century, we hear that the old Negro kingdoms were early conquered by
the Mohammedans. Under the guidance of the Arabs, but later on by
their own initiative, the Negro tribes of these countries organized king¬
doms which lived for many centuries. They founded flourishing towns in
which at annual fairs thousands and thousands of people assembled.
Mosques and and other public buildings were erected and the execution
of the laws was entrusted to judges. The history of the kingdom was re¬
corded by officers and kept in archives. So well organized were these
states that about 1850, when they were for the first time visited by a white
man, the remains of these archives were still found in existence, not¬
withstanding all the political upheavals of a millennium and notwithstand¬
ing the ravages of the slave trade.
I might also speak to you of the great markets that are found through¬
out Africa, at which commodities were exchanged or sold for native mon¬
ey. I may perhaps remind you of the system of judicial procedure, of
prosecution and defense, which had early developed in Africa, and whose
formal development was a great achievement notwithstanding its grue¬
some application in the persecution of witchcraft. Nothing, perhaps, is
more encouraging than a glimpse of the artistic industry of native Africa.
I regret that we have no place in this country where the beauty and dainti-
Old African Civilizations
85
ness of African work can be shown; but a walk through the African mu¬
seums of Paris, London and Berlin is a revelation. I wish you could see
the scepters of African kings, carved of hard wood and representing ar¬
tistic forms; or the dainty basketry made by the people of the Kongo
river and of the region near the great lakes of the Nile, or the grass mats
with their beautiful patterns. Even more worthy of our admiration is
the work of the blacksmith, who manufactures symmetrical lance heads al¬
most a yard long, or axes inlaid with copper and decorated with filigree.
Let me also mention in passing the bronze castings of Benin on the west
coast of Africa, which, although perhaps due to Portuguese influences,
have so far excelled in technique any European work, that they are even
now almost inimitable. In short, wherever you look, you find a thrifty
people, full of energy, capable of forming large states. You find men of
great energy and ambition who hold sway over their fellows by the weight
of their personality. That this culture has, at the same time, the instabil¬
ity and other signs of weakness of primitive culture goes without saying.
* * * * This picture of native Africa will inspire strength, for all the
alleged faults of your race that you have to conquer here are certainly
not prominent there. In place of indolence you find thrift and ingenuity,
and application to occupations that require not only industry, but also in¬
ventiveness and a high degree of technical skill, and the surplus energy of
the people.does not spend itself in emotional excesses only
To those who stoutly maintain a material inferiority of the Negro
race and who would dampen your ardor by their claims, you may confi¬
dently reply that the burden of proof rests with them, that the past his¬
tory of your race does not sustain their statement, but rather gives you
encouragement. The physical inferiority of the Negro race, if it exists
at all, is insignificant when compared to the wide range of individual va¬
riability in each race. There is no anatomical evidence available that
would sustain the view that the bulk of the Negro race could not become
as useful citizens as the members of any other race. That there may be
slightly different hereditary traits seems plausible, but it is entirely arbi¬
trary to assume that those of the Negro, because perhaps slightly differ¬
ent, must be of an inferior type.
The arguments for inferiority drawn from the history of civilization
are also weak. At the time when the early kingdom of Babylonia flour¬
ished the same disparaging remarks that are now made regarding the
Negro might have been made regarding the ancestors of the ancient Ro¬
mans. They were then a barbarous horde that had never made any con¬
tribution to the advance of that civilization that was confined to parts of
Asia, and still they were destined to develop a culture which has become
the foundation and an integral part of our own. Even later the barba¬
rous hordes of northern Europe, who at the time of the ancient Romans
were tribal groups without cultural achievements, have become the most
advanced nations of our days. -
VII
The Contribution of the Negro to Human
Civilization1
By Alexander Francis Chamberlain, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.
* * * * Only individuals immune to the teachings of evolution could
imagine that a race, millenniums old, and numbering today after centuries
of more or less brutal contact with the whites, more than 150,000,000, could
have existed or could continue to exist, without in the slightest influencing
the currents of human thought and action. It is with eyes blind to the
results of the most recent investigations of the origin and the develop¬
ment of Negro culture in Africa, and to the achievements of the race in
other parts of the globe that such people content themselves with repeat¬
ing words of prejudiced origin, which have long since lost significance, and
with seeing in the Negro only a beast or a half-man. There are various
ways of estimating or judging the capacities of a race for progress and
its contributions to our human civilization. Here we shall content our¬
selves with three, viz., (1) the appearance of individual Negroes, or of
individuals with admittedly Negro blood, from time to time, in the midst
of cultures not of native African origin; (2) the debt of mankind to the
Negroes in the matter of industry, inventions, art, etc., in the achieve¬
ments of the Black Race as such in the various branches of human civili¬
zation; (3) the achievements of Negroes removed from their home-land in
childhood and educated under European auspices, etc. Under each of
these three heads there is now a considerable amount of data available
which can be but briefly set forth here.
I
The contributions of the Negro to human civilization are innumerable
and immemorial. Let us first get some glimpses of him, chiefly as an
individual, in contact with the past of other cultures than his own. An¬
cient Egypt knew him, both bond and free, and his blood flowed in the
veins of not a few of the mighty Pharaohs. Nefertari, the famous Queen
of Aahmes, the King of Egypt, who drove the Hyksos from the land and
founded the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1700 B. C.), was a Negress of great
beauty, strong personality, and remarkable administrative ability. She
was for years associated in the government with her son, Amen-hotep I,
who succeeded his father. Queen Nefertari was highly venerated and
1 Extracts reprinted, by permission of the editors, from The Journal of Race Develop¬
ment, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 482-500.
Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization 87
many monuments were erected in her honor; she was venerated as "an¬
cestress and founder of the 18th Dynasty" and styled "the wife of the
god Ammon," etc. Another strain of Negro blood came into the line of
the Pharaohs with Mut-em-ua, wife of Thothmes IV, whose son, Amen-
hotep III, had a negroid physiognomy. Amen-hotep III was famous as a
builder and his reign (ca. 1400 B. C.) is distinguished by a marked im¬
provement in Egyptian art and architecture. He it was who built the
great temple of Ammon at Luxor and the colossi of Memnon. Besides
these marked individual instances, there is the fact that the Egyptian
race itself in general had a considerable element of Negro blood, and one
of the prime reasons why no civilization of the type of that of the Nile
arose in other parts of the continent, .if such a thing were at all possible,
was that Egypt acted as a sort of channel by which the genius of Negro-
land was drafted off into the service of Mediterranean and Asiatic cul¬
ture. In this sense Egyptian civilization may be said, in some respects,
to be of Negro origin. Among the Semitic peoples whose civilizations
were so numerous and so ancient on the shores of the Mediterranean and
throughout western Asia, the Negro, as in Egypt, made his influence felt,
from the lowest to the highest walks of life, sometimes as a slave, some¬
times as the freest of citizens. As cup-bearer, or confidential adviser, he
stood next to kings and princes and as faithful eunuch he enhanced and
extended the power of the other sex in lands where custom confined them
to the four walls of their dwellings or restricted to the utmost their ap¬
pearance and their actions in public. And women from Ethiopia, "black
but comely," wives of favorite slaves of satraps and of kings, often were
the real rulers of Oriental provinces and empires. Nor have the Negroes
in these Asiatic countries been absent from the ranks of the musician
and the poet, from the time of Solomon to that of Haroun al Raschid and
beyond in the days of Emirs and Sultans. %One must not forget the Queen
of Sheba, with her dash of Negro blood, said, together with that of the
great Solomon, to have been inherited by the sovereigns of Abyssinia.
When under the brilliant dynasty of the Ommiades (661-750 A. D.), the
city of Damascus was one of the glories of the world, its galaxy of five
renowned poets included Nosseyeb, the Negro. And we can cross the
whole of Asia and find the Negro again, for, when, in far-off Japan, the
ancestors of the modern Japanese were making their way northward
against the Ainu, the aborigines of that country, the leader of their
armies was Sakanouye Tamuramaro, a famous general and a Negro.
Passing down European history, we find find traces of the Negro in
many high places. In France, during the reign of Louis XVI, we meet
with the Chevalier Sainte-Georges, knighted by that monarch. Later on,
the mulatto, Lislet Geoffroy, a corresponding member of the French
Academy. In 1874, the doors of the Institut de France opened wide to
Alexandre Dumas (fils), whose great-grandmother was a pure-bred
Haitian Negress. Her grandson was also a distinguished man of letters.
88
Select Discussions of Race Problems
Among the favorites of Peter the Great and his famous consort
Catharine, was an Abyssinian Negro educated in France, to whom was
attached the name of Hannivalov, who became a general and received
other honors from the Russian government. He married the daughter of
a Greek merchant, and his son became a general of artillery, who built
the harbor and fortress of Cherson. The grandson of Hannivalov was A.
S. Pushkin (1799-1837) perhaps the greatest of all Russian poets.
In Spain, where, besides, some diluted Negro blood came in with the
Moors, we find a remarkable remembrancer of the black man in the field
of art. In one of the churches of Seville are to be seen four beautiful
pictures (Christ bound to a column, with St. Peter kneeling at his side;
St. Joseph; St. Anne; Madonna and Child), the work of the mulatto,
Sebastian Gomez, the slave, then the pupil, the companion and the equal
of his master, the great painter Murillo, who had him made a free citizen
of Spain, and at his death (1682), left him part of his estate. And, in
their voyages and travels the Spaniards in the New World had the ser¬
vices of the Negro. The first man to reach the land of the Seven Cities
of Cibola, and open the Southwest of what is now the United States of
America, was the Negro Estevancillo; and the vessel of Captain Arellano
(1564-1565), the first to make the return voyage across the Pacific from
the East Indies to Mexico was steered by a mulatto pilot
II
Now let us turn more particularly to achievements of race en masse.
In comparing the achievements of the African Negroes with those of the
European and Asiatic whites, it must be remembered that the latter have
had continuously the advantage of the best possible environment in the
world, and the former as continuously the disadvantage of the worst. In
other words, the whites have been notably bonused by nature at the
start; and the number and character of historical experiences which they
must inevitably have undergone, quite regardless of their intellectual or
other endowments, have been entirely in their favor.
The tremendous effect of a favorable environment is seen in the his¬
tory of the white race in the region of the Mediterranean. Europe, Asia
and Africa have furnished there examples of culture of a high grade in
which all varieties of the so-called Caucasian type seem to have partici¬
pated. Indeed, any people, sufficiently numerous to have established
somewhat large fixed communities, was reasonably sure of being an im¬
portant member of the Mediterranean series of great cities, kingdoms,
empires, etc., and of being remembered for something of value in the
• civilization which the world has inherited from the nations of the Medit¬
erranean past and present. From prehistoric times to our own day and
generation, one race only, the Negro, by reason, probably, of being cut
off by desert or sea, during a long period of its existence, and, therefore
secluded in Africa beyond the "thin line" of the white race on the north,
Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization
89
seems never to have intruded into the Mediterranean area (or to have
settled there in any locality) in sufficiently large numbers to have under¬
gone the same historical experience, and to have submitted to the same
genial influences of environment so stimulating to the other races, which,
in that region, reached so remarkable a stage of social, political, religious
and intellectual evolution. Out of the coming and going of peoples in the
Mediterranean area, from the necessities of intercommunication among
its innumerable centers of culture, arose things, which the more or less
monotonous and secluded African land-areas seemed not to suggest or
to demand. Thus the appearance of the alphabet was as natural in the
Mediterranean region at a comparatively early period, as it was improb¬
able and unexpected in prehistoric Negroland. So, too, the very same
phenomena permitted an earlier disappearance from white civilization of
many ideas and institutions, the retention of which among the African
Negroes is more a natural result of their seclusion than an index of their
intelligence. Such causes and factors of the retardation of Negro cul¬
ture as slavery, polygamy, the belief in witchcraft, etc., are among
these. Here, again, we must be just in our denunciation of these evils.
Our own escape from the institution of slavery is still too recent to make
us very honest boasters (and less than ten years ago we gave it a new
lease of life under our flag in the Sulu Islands)
Political and Social Organization
That some of the Negro peoples of Africa possess actual genius for
social and political organization has been demonstrated again and again,
particularly in the Sudan (both before and after Arab influence), and
among the Bantu peoples further to the South. An opinion long held in
certain quarters that these developments of Negro civilization were
entirely due to the Arab and Mohammedan influences of the period be¬
ginning with about 750 A. D., and to earlier Egyptian and Semitic con¬
tacts, can no longer be sustained. That there has been at the bottom of
them a basis of real Negro culture is now apparent from the archeologi-
cal and ethnological researches of German, French and English investi¬
gators in the Sahara, the Sudan and West Africa. What a few travel¬
lers at the close of the Middle Ages reported they had seen has now been
confirmed by unimpeachable evidence. "Negro culture" is now no more
to be denied than the existence of the Pigmies, which once rested almost
solely on the statements of Herodotus. The very recent investigations
and studies of Desplagnes, von Luschan, Frobenius, Weule, etc., are
adding more and more to the culture phenomena, -which the Negroes
may be said themselves to have originated, or having borrowed from
other peoples, to have skilfully adopted or improved for their own uses.
Back of the stone figures of Sherbro, the megaliths of the Gambia, the
bronzes of Benin, and other little known aspects of West African art and
architecture, as well as behind the organized political developments in the
90
Select Discussions of Race Problems
Sudan, etc., lie things that are not easily to be explained as merely waifs
from Egypt or later unintentional gifts from the white race. Here, again,
the view may open wide and far. Frobenius, who believes that a Negro
culture of a rather high type, once existed in West Africa, christens it
"Atlantic," and is inclined to think that the Egyptian and Mediterranean
legends immortalized in the "Atlantis" of Plato may have had a very
real foundation in distorted accounts or forgotten memories of this Afri¬
can culture, which some day may have its Odyssey corroborated as Schlie-
mann did for Troy. And West Africa is the real Negro country from
which so many of the slave ancestors of the Afro-Americans were stolen
away. Liberia, too, lies in this land, and her hopes of the future ought
to be touched by some reflection from this great past.
Long before the Mohammedan advent, kings and empires existed in
Negro Africa. It seems, too, that, subsequently, when the first rush of
Arab contact was over, the pure Negro element again came into control
in many cases and carried on indigenous culture, with the skilful adapta¬
tion of foreign elements, to still higher stages of development. The
comparison of Negro Africa with contemporary Medieval Europe is most
interesting and convincing here. The sociological and political phenomena
in both regions of the globe at that time are strikingly similar. Parallels
for the feudal system, the rise and development of the judiciary, the
evolution of international law, the role of the market and the fair, and
many other things could as well be studied in the one as in the other.
The rise of innumerable small states and their ultimate consolidation into
large kingdoms and extensive empires are equally characteristic of both.
Negro Africa, too, at this period, and since then also, has in like manner
produced kings and political organizers, who have been men of genius
possessing great personalities, and ranking in character and ability with
the princes and sovereigns of Europe at the time. Such, e. g., were the
men who ruled the great kingdoms and empires of the Sudan, some of
which lasted down to the middle of the 19th century, when the European
mass-contact with this part of the Dark Continent practically began. If
anyone really wants to know (to use the words of Dr. F. Boas), "what
the Negro has done in Africa," let him look into the history of the Negro
kingdoms of Ghana and Songhai, the Empire of Lunda, Bornu, the King¬
dom of Katsena, etc. Let him read of the great cities with Negro
Africa, such as Engornu (in Bornu) and Timbuktu, etc., with their from
30,000 to 50,000 inhabitants; Kanain Haussa-land, etc. Barth, the Ger¬
man traveler, who visited this part of Negro Africa in 1851-1855, has left
on record his impressions of its civilization and of the men who created
and sustained it. Men like King Askia of Songhai and Bello, the Sultan
of Katsena, who has been called "the Napoleon of the Sudan" deserve
rank among the great figures of the world's history. They are the unde¬
niable proof that the Negro race is thoroughly human in its ability to
produce men of genius. In personal character, in administrative ability,
Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization 91
in devotion to the welfare of his subjects, in open-mindedness towards
foreign influences, and in wisdom in the adoption of non-Negro ideas
and institutions, King Askia, who ruled over Songhai in the early part of
the 16th century, was certainly the equal of the average European mon-
archs of the time and the superior of many of them. Among the Bantu
peoples of South Africa (e. g., the Zulus, etc.), great capacity for sur¬
vival by means of political and social organization has been shown in
some cases and also considerable advance toward the ultimate creation of
a Christian Negro nation at some time in the future. One of the Bantu
peoples, the Ovampo, has already proceeded so far along the road to self-
government, after our own ideas, that it has got rid of its old line of
hereditary kings and setup a sort of republic.
Commerce, etc.
At the period of early contact with the whites, the great skill and
finesse of the African Negroes in matters of trade were constantly in
evidence and became a thing to be described epigrammatically in proverbs,
one of which ran to the effect that a Negro could beat a Jew or an Ar¬
menian. And in the chronicles for the period of European advance, we
meet frequently the question, what will happen "if the blacks got full
possession of our culture," seeing they can already outdo us with their
own? It has been said epigrammatically on this point that "the Afri¬
can's weakness is not in getting wealth, but in keeping it." The insti¬
tution of the market and the fair, e. g., among the Negro peoples of the
Sudan and the development out of it of the village, the town and the city,
are one of the most interesting phenomena in all the history of human
culture. Among the questions involved in the evolution of the market
and the fair are: the greater share of women in public and semi-public
activities; the breaking down of the narrowness of mere tribal boundaries
and clan-instincts, consequent upon the gathering together of so many
people at repeated intervals; the movement toward abolition of war
through the institution of the market-peace and the prohibition of all
hostile acts during the time of prevalence of fairs, markets, etc.; the
amalgamation of peoples resulting from the ultimately permanent char¬
acter of these markets and fairs, and the absorption of those conducting
them more or less into the general population by the consolidation of the
temporary city without the walls with the old city within them; the
influence upon the general honesty and morality of the community of the
increasing importance of the right of asylum, the protection of the
stranger within and without the gates, the necessity of honest weights
and measures; the autonomy of the market, the market-tax with its
corollary of protection or free-trade; the question of the laborer and his
hire; the market-holiday and its relations to religious and other festivals
and ceremonial occasions, etc. Indeed, as one looks over the long list of
questions here at issue, one sees that practically no question that is at
92
Seledl Discussions of Race Problems
present a matter of discussion among ourselves, or has been such in the
progress of our civilization, can be mentioned, which has not been involved
in the commercial and the economic development of Negro Africa.
Domesticated Animals
Africa is undoubtedly the home of the wild ancestors of several spe¬
cies of domestic animals and likewise the continent which saw the first
shaping of some of them under the hands of man. And it is quite reason¬
able to suppose that in certain cases the beginnings of such domestication
are to be traced to the Negro peoples, whose achievements in this field
were added to and given wide extension by the Egyptians, especially, and
by the races of other lineage who took part in the civilizations of the
Mediterranean and of Western Asia. Cattle-keeping and cattle-breeding
is an art ancient and now widespread in Negro Africa. With some tribes
cattle have entered into the economic and the ideal life of the people as
has the horse, or the sheep with certain Semitic and Aryan nations, and,
as with them, given a distinct color and tone to language and literature.
The skill attained by some of the Bantu tribes in the maintenance and
the utilization of domestic cattle is remarkable. Cattle-milking, an ac¬
complishment, which is far from being universally human, either in the
individual or in the race, is old in parts of Negro land. And here, it is
worth noting that a civilization as ancient and as important as that of
China has not yet added to its common factors of economic survival
the dairy and its attendant developments. And the same might be said
of the younger civilization of the Japanese, as*it could also have been
said of more than one of the ancient civilizations of the Occident, whose
range of culture did not include the employment of the milk of the cow
in human economy
Art, etc.
Far from possessing no art, the African Negroes have created some
of the most beautiful art-objects to be found in any museum in the wide
world. We have not yet, as Dr. Boas has pointed out, in this country a
museum to illustrate fully and adequately the art of the native Africans,
but in several of the European museums, these are admirably, if not ex¬
haustively, represented. Dr. Frobenius, in his study of African civiliza¬
tions, says: "The real African need by no means resort to the rags and
tatters of bygone European splendor. He has precious ornaments of his
own, of ivory and feathers, fine plaited willow-ware, weapons of superior
workmanship. Nothing more beautiful, for instance, can be imagined than
an iron club carefully wound round with strips of metal, the handle covered
with snake-skin." And Dr. Boas has recently called attention to the
"dainty basketry" of the Congo and the Nile Lakes, the "grass mats of
most beautiful patterns" made by some of the Negro tribes, and "the
beautiful iron weapons of Central Africa, which excel in symmetry of form,
and many of which bear elaborate designs inlaid in copper, and are of ad-
Contribution of tHe Negro to Human Civilization 93
mirable workmanship." The famous bronzes of Benin, about which there
has recently been so much discussion, have, perhaps, been stimulated in
form and in the figures designed by Portuguese and Hindu art, but they
"are far superior in technique to any European work (Boas)," and their
existence indicates an artistic past for certain regions of West Africa
hitherto quite unsuspected.
Musical Instruments, etc.
While the question of our musical instruments is as yet far from be¬
ing satisfactorily settled, it would be strange indeed if so musical a race
as the African Negroes had had nothing to do with their origin or their
development. Negro Africa possesses many varieties of drums, and of
stringed instruments akin to the harp and the violin, etc. Indeed all
stages necessary for the development of the harp from the simplest form
to the instrument as we find it among the ancient Egyptians previous to
its dispersal over Asia and Europe are to be met with on African soil,
and the attribution of its invention to some Negro people is quite reason¬
able, on the evidence in hand. And the same thing, with somewhat less
certainty, perhaps, may be said of the violin. In the characteristically
African marimba, or xylophone, we may have the beginnings of the piano
and closely related musical instruments, in which case, one of its names,
"the Negro piano" assumes a new significance. The "pot drum" so-
called, and perhaps another'variety or two of that instrument, originated
also in Negro Africa. The goura of certain South African peoples is a
curious musical instrument which still awaits adoption or modification by
civilized man.
Iron=Smelting, etc.
The ars artium, however, of Negro Africa is the use of iron. The
question of the origin of the art of iron-smelting is now being treated in
detail by ethnologists, and, while general agreement has not been reached,
the mass of evidence so far disclosed, has convinced eminent men of
science like Boas and von Luschan that the smelting of iron was first dis¬
covered by the African Negroes, from whom, by way of Egypt and Asia
Minor, this art made its way into Europe and the rest of the Old World.
Among the arguments in favor of this view are the fact that, at the time
of the contact of the African Negroes with white men for the first time,
iron-smelting was common and widespread among them, the work of the
smith having almost every where reached a somewhat high degree of per¬
fection; the evidence in the hieroglyphic records and elsewhere in ancient
Egypt of the derivation of iron from the south at a comparatively late
stage of civilization; and the comparative lateness also of its appearance
in the ancient cultures of Asia, the Mediterranean region and Northern
and Occidental Europe. It should check our racial pride a little to con¬
sider the possibility, perhaps, rather, the certainty, that "at a time when
our own ancestors still utilized stone implements or, at best, when bronze
94
Select Discussions of Race Problems
implements were first introduced, the Negro had developed the art of
smelting iron," and that "his race has contributed more than any other
to the early development of the iron industry" (Boas)
Ill
The achievements of individual Negroes, taken from Africa in child¬
hood and educated in lands where the Negro was looked upon as a man
like the rest is another source of valuable information on our subject.
In illustration of the point at issue the following cases may be cited:
Miguel Kapranzine. In 1631 the Portuguese finally established as
chief of the Kalanga, a Bantu tribe, of Southeast Africa, a native con¬
vert, who, a few years before, had been proclaimed by the army and the
Dominican missionaries, "Manuza, Emperor of Monomotapa." The
Christian forces were completely successful in a great battle, and among
the captives taken was the young son of Kapranzine, really the rightful
claimant to the throne. This boy was sent to Goa, technically a prisoner,
and handed over to the Dominicans of that city to be educated at the ex¬
pense of the crown. He was baptized by the name of Miguel, became a
member of the order of the Dominicans, devoted himself arduously and
successfully to study, and won fame as one of the greatest preachers in
Portuguese India, in 1670, when he was still in the prime of life, the
General of the Dominican Order conferred upon him the degree of Master
in Theology, which would correspond to our D. D. When he died, he held
the position of Vicar of the convent of Santa Barbara in Goa. As Mr.
Theal, the historian of South Africa, observes, "fiction surely has no
stranger story than his." From a Kaffir kraal to high office in the relig¬
ious life of a city, of which the saying went, "If you have seen Goa, you
do not need to see Lisbon!" 11
J. E. J. Captein. The story of Jacques Elisa Jean Captein is cer¬
tainly one of the most interesting in all the long annals of human educa¬
tion. When only seven years of age, he was taken from his home on the
Andreas River, in Western Africa, by a slave-trader, who presented him
to a friend. This man, when he returned to Holland, brought the Negro
boy with him, had him baptized as a Christian, and made arrangements
for his education in the best manner of the times. Young Captein proved
an excellent scholar, and soon obtained a good knowledge of Latin, Greek,
Hebrew and Chaldean. At the University of Leyden he studied theology,
obtaining his degree there, in that faculty, in.4742. Afterwards he went
as missionary to Elmina in Guinea, a settjement which since 1637, had
been in possession of the Dutch. The title of his thesis is worth quoting
in full: Dissertatio politico-theologica de servitute libertati christianae
non contrariaf quam sub praesjj. van den Honert, publ. disput. subj. J.
E. J. Capt/nn, afer. Lugd. Bat. 1742. This thesis, in which slavery is
defendedas not contrary to Christian liberty is said to be learned and
skilful even for the days in which it was written. Captein also wrote a
Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization 95
Latin elegy on the death of the Rev. Mr. Manger of The Hague, his
friend and instructor. He was likewise the author of an appeal to the
heathen to accept Christianity, and of a volume of sermons in Dutch, de¬
livered by him at different times in various cities of the country.
A. W. Amo. Even more remarkable was the career of a native of
Axim on the Gold Coast, West Africa, known as Anton Wilhelm Amo.
When quite young, he was brought as a slave in 1707 to Amsterdam, and
was soon afterwards presented by Duke Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig
to his son, August Wilhelm, who provided for his education in generous
fashion. He attended both the Universities of Halle and Wittenberg.
At Halle, he took his degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a dissertation,
Dejure Maurorum, which is praised in the programme by the Dean of
the Philosophical Faculty in these words: Excussis tam veterum quam
novorum placitis, optima quaeque selegit, selecta enucliate ac dilucide
interpretatus est. He was also spoken of as "vir nobilissimus et claris-
simus." After taking his degree, he seems to have qualified as a Uni¬
versity lecturer, or professor, and to have delivered regular courses. The
title of his Inaugural Address at Wittenberg is as follows: Dissertatio
inauguralis philosophica de humanae mentis APATHIA, seu sensionis
vel facultatis sentiendi in mente humana absentia, et earum in corpore
nostro organico ac vivo praesentia, quam praes. etc. publ. def. autor Ant.
Guil. Amo, Guinea-Afer, phil. etc. Mag. Wittenbergae 1734. It is inter¬
esting that this Negro should have chosen "Apathy" as the subject of
his discourse. He was also the author of other philosophical treatises in
Latin. Like Captein, Amo was noted for his linguistic attainments. He
is said to have been able to speak Dutch, German, Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, and was certainly able to write several of these tongues. The
Prussian government of the time conferred upon him the high honor of
" Geheim-Rat," something over and above his merely scholastic achieve¬
ments. The death of his benefactor, the Duke of Brunswick, seems to
have affected him deeply, and, after some thirty years' residence in
Europe, he returned to his home in Africa. There he found that his father
and sister were still alive. Amo himself was still living there in isolation
in 1753, when he was visited by Dr. D. H. Gallaudat. Here, again, from
a Negro hut on the Gold Coast to a degree from one German University
and a position in the Faculty of another, and the title of "Excellency"
from the Government of the country that was soon to dominate all Central
Europe, is a career almost incredible. No wonder Gregoire, in his mono¬
graph in defence of the Negro, published at the beginning of the nine¬
teenth century, and the German anatomist, Tiedemann, in his work on
the brain of the Negro (1837), cited the cases of Captein and Amo as
settling the question of the intellectual capacity of the black man.
Negroes at the Universities of Portugal and Spain. The history of
Angola under the rule of the Portuguese shows that many Negroes from
that part of Africa studied successfully at Coimbra. It may not be out
96
Select Discussions of Race Problems
of place to mention here also the fact that among the distinguished
graduates of this ancient institution of learning is to be counted A. C. G.
Crespo (1846-1883) poet and man of letters, with both an American and a
European reputation, and at one time a member of the Portuguese
Chamber of Deputies. His father was a white man, his mother a black
slave in Brazil. The University of Seville in Spain is said to have had at
one time a Negro as a member of the Faculty, viz., Don Juan Latino, a
noted professor of Latin. It is probable that a complete record of the
activities of the Universities of Latin Europe would reveal other inter¬
esting instances of the participation of Negroes in the academic world.
Adjai Crowther. In 1812 there was born at Uchugu, in the Yoruba
country of West Africa, a boy named Adjai, whose life is significant for
the interpretation of Negro capacities and achievements. At the age of.
seven, he was carried off by slave traders, passing from hand to hand
until 1822, when he was rescued by the Captain of a British frigate, and
given over for the purposes of education, to the missionary authorities at
Bathurst, the chief place of Gambia, then a part of the colony of Sierra
Leone. After three years' study, he became a Christian, adding to his
native appellation of Adjai, the name of Samuel Crowther,.a clergyman
of the Anglican Church. He was afterwards connected with the mission
school at Regent's Town and the Fourah Bay College. He also served in
Nigeria, and was with the first Niger Expedition in 1841. In 1842 he
went to England, and, having studied a year at the Church Missionary
College at Islington, was ordained a clergyman of the Anglican Church
by the Bishop (Blomfield) of London. Returning to Africa, he labored
among his own people at Abbeokuta, etc. He took part in the second and
third Niger Expeditions of 1854 and 1857, and, from this time on, con¬
tributed much to our knowledge of the geography and the philology of
West Africa. While on another visit in 1864 to England, he was conse¬
crated Bishop of the Niger Territory and, when he returned to the scene
of his missionary labors, he gathered round him a corps of native assis¬
tants and continued active until his death, which occurred, in 1891.
Besides being remembered as a missionary and teacher, Bishop Crowther
deserves fame as an explorer and geographer, and also as a philologist.
The journal of his Niger explorations contains some of the first reliable
information concerning the peoples of that region, and, in 1879, the Royal
Geographical Society of London, on the motion of Dr. R. N. Cust, voted
him a gold watch for his services to geographical science. In 1881 he
made a linguistic map of the Niger Region, which was used to good advan¬
tage by Mr. Cust in the preparation of his monograph on The Modern
Languages of Africa. It is to Bishop Crowther that we owe the first
knowledge of the existence of some of the numerous languages and dia¬
lects of this region of West Africa. He is the author of several religious
tracts, school-books, etc., and also of a translation of the Bible and the
Prayer-Book in the Yoruba language, his mother-tongue. In 1882 he
Race Problems in the United States
97
again visited England, being received with the honors due him. To have
read a paper before a distinguished audience, under the auspices of the
Royal Geographical Society, was a great distinction for one who had been
a slave in far-off West Africa. To receive the degree of D. D. from the
famous University of Oxford was one still greater. Many of the details
of this man's remarkable life may be read in his autobiography, published
at London, in 1888, under the title of the Slave boy who became Bishop.
Dr. Cust does not hesitate to say that he was "fully the equal of the
European in intellect," and his achievements surely lifted him far above
the average. The same thing might be said also of some of his colleagues
and co-adjutors, such, e. g., as Archdeacon Johnson, etc.
The cases of individuals like Miguel Kapranzine, Captein, Amo and
Crowther show what had been accomplished when the Negro has been
treated as a man, even when the things to be done, and the criteria of
judgment concerning their accomplishment and value belong not to his
own, but to our race. Such things as these, together with the facts to
be won from the study of Negro culture in Africa itself, and with the
undoubted evidence of progress displayed by the Negro in America since
the days of slavery, prove alike the generically human endowment of the
black race and its capacity for specific culture-development
VIII
Race Problems in the United States1
By Franz Boas
Professor of Anthropology in Columbia University
We will now turn to the question what these results of our inquiry
teach us iri regard to the problems that confront our modern civilization,
particularly our nation. The development of the American nation through
the amalgamation of diverse European nationalities, the presence of the
Negro, Indian, and Chinese, and the whole ever-increasing heterogeneity
of the component elements of our people, involve a number of problems
to the solution of which our inquiries contribute important data.
Our previous considerations make clear the hypothetical character of
many of the generally accepted assumptions, and indicate that not all of
the questions involved can be answered at the present time with scientific
accuracy. It is disappointing that we have to take this critical attitude,
because the political question of dealing with all these groups of people is
of great and immediate importance. However, it should be solved on the
basis of scientific knowledge, not according to emotional clamor. Under
present conditions, we seem to be called upon to formulate definite an-
1 Reprinted, by permission of the author and publisher, from The Mind "of Primitive Man,
pp. 251-278. Copyright (1911) by The Macmillan Co., New York.
98
Select Discussions of Race Problems
swers to questions that require the most painstaking and unbiased inves¬
tigation; and the more urgent the demand for final conclusions, the more
needed is a critical examination of the phenomena and of the available
methods of solution.
Let us first represent to our minds the facts relating to the origins of
our nation. When British immigrants first flocked to the Atlantic coast
of North America, they found a continent inhabited by Indians. The pop¬
ulation of the country was thin, and vanished comparatively rapidly be¬
fore the influx of the more numerous Europeans. The settlement of the
Dutch on the Hudson, of the Germans in Pennsylvania, not to speak of
other nationalities, is familiar to all of us. We know that the foundations
of our modern state were laid by Spaniards in the Southwest, by French
in the Mississippi Basin and in the region of the Great Lakes, but that the
British immigration far outnumbered that of other nationalities. In the
composition of our people, the indigenous element has never played an
important rdle, except for very short periods. In regions where the set¬
tlement progressed for a long time entirely by the immigration of un¬
married males of the white race, families of mixed blood have been of
some importance during the period of gradual development, but they have
never become sufficiently numerous in any populous part of the United
States to be considered as an important element in our population. With¬
out any doubt, Indian blood flows in the veins of quite a number of our
people, but the proportion is so insignificant that it may well be disre¬
garded.
Much more important has been the introduction of the Negro, whose
numbers have increased many fold, so that they form now about one-eighth
of our whole nation. For a certain length of time the immigration of
Asiatic nations seemed likely to become of importance in the development
of our country, but the political events of recent years have tended to de¬
crease their immediate importance considerably, although we do not ven¬
ture to predict that the relation of Asiatics and white Americans may not
become a most important problem in the future. These facts, however,
are familiar to all of us, and stand out clearly to our minds.
More recent is the problem of the immigration of people representing
all the nationalities of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. While
until late in the second half of the nineteenth century the immigrants con¬
sisted almost entirely of people of northwestern Europe, natives of Great
Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and
France, the composition of the immigrant masses has changed complete¬
ly since that time. With the economic development of Germany, German
immigration has dwindled down; while at the same time Italians, the va¬
rious Slavic peoples of Austria, Russia, and the Balkan Peninsula, Hun¬
garians, Roumanians, East European Hebrews, not to mention the num¬
erous other nationalities, have arrived in ever increasing numbers.
There is no doubt that these people of eastern and southern Europe repre-
Race Problems in the United States
99
sent physical types distinct from the physical type of northwestern Eu¬
rope; and it is clear, even to the most casual observer, that their present
social standards differ fundamentally from our own. Since the number of
new arrivals may be counted in normal years by hundreds of thousands, the
question may well be asked, What will be the result of this influx of types
distinct from our own, if it is to continue for a considerable length of time?
It is often claimed that the phenomenon of mixture presented in the
United States is unique; that a similar intermixture has never occurred
before in the world's history; and that our nation is destined to become
what some writers choose to term a "mongrel" nation in a sense that has
never been equalled anywhere.
When we try to analyze the phenomenon in greater detail, and in the
light of our knowledge of conditions in Europe as well as in other conti¬
nents, this view does not seem to me tenable. In speaking of European
types, we are accustomed to consider them as, comparatively speaking,
pure stocks. It is easy to show that this view is erroneous. It is only
necessary to look at a map illustrating the racial types of any European
country—like Italy, for instance—to see that local divergence is the char¬
acteristic feature, uniformity of type the exception. Thus Dr. Ridolfo
Livi, in his fundamental investigations on the anthropology of Italy, has
shown that the types of the extreme north and of the extreme south are
quite distinct,—the former tall, short-headed, with a considerable sprink¬
ling of blond and blue-eyed individuals; the latter short, long-headed and
remarkably dark. The transition from one type to the other is, on the
whole, quite gradual; but, like isolated islands, distinct types occur here
and there. The region of Lucca in Tuscany, and the district of Naples,
are examples of this kind, which may be explained as due to the survival
of an older stock, to the intrusion of new types, or to a peculiar influence
of environment.
Historical evidence is quite in accord with the results derived from
the investigation of the distribution of modern types. In the earliest
times we find on the peninsula of Italy groups of heterogeneous people,
the linguistic relationships of many of which have remained obscure up
to the present time. From the earliest prehistoric times on, we see wave
after wave of people invading Italy from the north. Very early Greeks
settled in the greater part of southern Italy, and Phoenician influence was
well established on the west coast of the peninsula. A lively intercourse
existed between Italy and northern Africa. Slaves of Berber blood were
imported, and have left their traces. Slave trade continued to bring new
blood into the country until quite recent times, and Livi believes that ht
can trace the type of Crimean slaves who were introduced late in the mid¬
dle ages in the region of Venice. In the course of the centuries, the mi
grations of Celtic and Teutonic tribes, the conquests of the Normans, th<
contact with Africa, have added their share to the mixture of people 01
the Italian peninsula.
100 Select Discussions of Race Problems
The fates of other parts of Europe were no less diversified. The
Pyrensean Peninsula, which at present seems to be one of the most iso¬
lated parts of Europe, had a most checkered history. The earliest inhab¬
itants of whom we know were presumably related to the Basques of the
Pyrenees. These were subjected to Oriental influences in the pre-Myce-
naean period, to Punic influences, to Celtic invasions, Roman colonization,
Teutonic invasions, the Moorish conquest, and later on to the peculiar se¬
lective process that accompanied the driving-out of the Moors and the
Jews.
England was not exempt from vicissitudes of this kind. It seems
plausible that at a very early period the type which is now found princi¬
pally in Wales and in some parts of Ireland occupied the greater portion
of the islands. It was swamped by successive waves of Celtic, Roman,
and Anglo-Saxon migration. Thus we find change everywhere.
The history of the migrations of the Goths, the invasions of the Huns,
who in the short interval of one century moved their habitations from the
borders of China into the very centre of Europe, are proofs of the enor¬
mous changes in population that have taken place in early times.
Slow colonization has also brought about fundamental changes in
blood as well as in diffusion of languages and cultures. Perhaps the most
striking recent example of this change is presented by the gradual Ger-
manization of the region east of the Elbe River, where, after the Teu¬
tonic migrations, people speaking Slavic languages had settled. The
gradual absorption of Celtic communities, of the Basque, in ancient times
the great Roman colonization, and later the Arab conquest of North
Africa, are examples of similar processes.
Intermixture in early times was not by any means confined to
peoples which, although diverse in language and culture, were of fairly
uniform type. On the contrary, the most diverse types of southern Eu¬
rope, northern Europe, eastern Europe, and western Europe, not to men¬
tion the elements which poured into Europe from Asia and Africa, have
been participants in this long-continued intermixture.
There is, however, one fundamental difference in regard to the early
European migrations and the modern transatlantic migration. On the
whole, the former took place at a period when the density of population
was, comparatively speaking, small. There is no doubt that the number
of individuals concerned in the formation of the modern types of Great
Britain were comparatively few as compared with the millions who come
together to form a new nation in the United States; and it is obvious
that the process of amalgamation which takes place in communities that
must be counted by millions differs in character from the process of
amalgamation that takes place in communities that may be counted by
thousands. Setting aside social barriers, which in early times as well as
now undoubtedly tended to keep intermingling peoples separate, it would
seem that in the more populous communities of modem times a greater
Race Problems in the United States
101
permanence of the single combining elements might occur, owing to their
larger numbers, which make the opportunities for segregation more fav¬
orable.
Among the smaller communities the process of amalgamation must
have been an exceedingly rapid one. After the social distinctions have
once been obliterated, pure descendants of one of the component types
decrease greatly in number, and the fourth generation of a people con¬
sisting originally of distinct elements will be almost homogeneous. I shall
revert to this phenomenon later on.
It might be objected to this point of view, that the very diversity of
local types in Europe proves the homogeneity of race types—as, for in¬
stance, of the northwestern European type, the Mediterranean type, the
East European type, or the Alpine type, —but it must be remembered that
we have historical proof of the process of mixture, and that the relative
number of component elements is sufficient to account for the present
conditions.
I think we may dismiss the assumption of the existence of a pure
type in any part of Europe, and of a process of mongrelization in America
different from anything that has taken place for thousands of years in
Europe. Neither are we right in assuming that the phenomenon is one
of a more rapid intermixture than the one prevailing in olden times. The
difference is based essentially in the masses of individuals concerned in
the process.
If we confine our consideration for the present to the intermixture of
European types in America, I think it will be clear, from what has been
said before, that the concern that is felt by many in regard to the con¬
tinuance of racial purity of our nation is to a great extent imaginary.
The history of Europe proves that there has been no racial purity any¬
where for exceeding long periods, neither has the continued intermixture
of European types shown any degrading effect upon any of the European
nationalities. It would be just as easy to prove that those nations that
have been least disturbed have Jacked the stimulus to further advance,
and have passed through periods of quiescence. The history of Spain
might be interpreted as an instance of an occurrence of this kind.
The question as to the actual effects of intermixture will not, however,
be answered by a generalized historical treatment such as we have
attempted here. The advocates of the theory of a degradation of type by
the influx of so-called "lower" types, will not be silenced by reference to
earlier mixtures in Europe, the course of which can no longer be traced
in actual detail; for we do not know to what extent actual intermarriages
have taken place, and what the development of families of mixed de¬
scent as compared with those of pure descent has been. It seems neces¬
sary that the problems should be approached from a biological standpoint.
It has seemed well, however, to gain first a clearer view of the histori¬
cal relations of our problem. A knowledge of the events of the past
102
Select Discussions of Race Problems
tends to lay our apprehensions, that make the problem exciting, and which
for this reason fill the observer with a strong bias for the results which he
fears or desires.
Two questions stand out prominently in the study of the physical
characteristics of the immigrant population. The first is the question of
the influence of selection and environment in the migration from Europe
to America. The second is the question of the influence of intermixture.
We have been able to throw some light upon both of these.
We found that the types which come to our shores do not remain
stable, but show such important modifications, that many of the differ¬
ences of the human types of Europe seem rather ephemeral than per¬
manent, determined more by environment than by heredity. The char¬
acteristics which belong to influences of environment belong to the most
fundamental traits of the body. Stature, form of head, and size of face,
seem to be equally subject to these influences; and the modifications are
the more marked, the less developed the organ in question at the time of
birth, the longer it is therefore subject to the influences of environment.
This fact allows us to assert with a high degree of confidence that men¬
tal traits as well as physical traits will be modified by the effect of envi¬
ronment. When, furthermore, we recall that we could not discover any
proofs of the superiority of one type over another, we may feel safe
when we state that the dangers to the vigor of the American nation, due
to an influx of alien European types, is imaginative, not real.
A number of data have also been obtained for a better understanding
of the significance of race-mixture. Let us recall that one of the most
powerful agents modifying human types is the breaking-up of the con¬
tinuance of certain strains in small communities by a process of rapid
migration, which occurs both in Europe and in America, but with much
greater rapidity in our country, because the heterogeneity of descent of
the people is much greater than in the countries of Europe.
What effect these processes may have upon the ultimate type and
variability of the American people cannot be. determined at the present
time; but no evidence is available that would allow us to expect a lower
status of the developing new types of America. Much remains to be
done in the study of this subject; and, considering our lack of knowledge
of the most elementary facts that determine the outcome of this pro¬
cess, I feel that it behooves us to be most cautious in our reasoning, and
particularly to refrain from all sensational formulations of the problem
that are liable to add to the prevalent lack of calmness in its considera¬
tion; the more so, since the answer to these questions concerns the
welfare of millions of people.
The problem is one in regard to which speculation is as easy as
accurate studies are difficult. Basing our argument on ill-fitting analo¬
gies with the animal and plant world, we may speculate on the effects of
intermixture upon the development of new types—as though the mixture
Race Problems in the United States
103
that is taking place in America were in any sense, except a sociological
one, different from the mixtures that have taken place in Europe for
thousands of years; looking for a general degradation, for reversion to
remote ancestral types, or towards the evolution of a new ideal type—as
fancy or personal inclination may impel us. We may enlarge on the
danger of the impending submergence of the northwest European type, or
glory in the prospect of its dominance over all others. Would it not be
a safer course to investigate the truth or fallacy of each theory rather
than excite the public mind by indulgence in the fancies of our specula¬
tion? That these are an important help in the attainment of truth, I do
not deny; but they must not be promulgated before they have been sub¬
jected to a searching analysis, lest the credulous public mistake fancy for
truth.
If I am not in a position to predict what the effect of mixture of distinct
types may be, I feel confident that this important problem may be solved
if it is taken up with sufficient energy and on a sufficiently large scale.
An investigation of the anthropological data of people of distinct types, —
taking into consideration the similarities and dissimilarities of parents
and children, the rapidity and final result of the physical and mental
development of children, their vitality, the fertility of marriages of differ¬
ent types and in different social strata,—such an investigation is bound to
give us information which will allow us to answer these important ques¬
tions definitely and conclusively.
The final result of race-mixture will necessarily depend upon the fer¬
tility of the present native population and of the newer immigrants. It
has been pointed out repeatedly that the birth-rate of Americans has
declined with great rapidity, and that in the second and third generations
of descendants of immigrants the same decline makes itself felt. It will
therefore be important to know what the fertility of different types
may be.
If the fertility of foreigners continues high without a corresponding
higher death-rate of children, we may anticipate a gradual increase of
the physical influence of the more fertile type. The immigration of the
divergent types of southern and eastern Europe is, however, so recent,
that this question cannot be answered until at least twenty years more
have elapsed.
No less important than the fertility of each immigrant type by itself
is the question in how far they tend to intermarry. The data presented
in our census reports do not give a clear insight into this tendency among
various nationalities. The difficulties of collecting significant statistics
on the problem are very great. They appear particularly clearly in the
case of Italians. Married men from Italy come to the United States,
earn some money, and go back to rejoin their families. They may come
again, and, when conditions are propitious, they may finally send for their
families to follow them. Thus we find among the Italian immigrants
104
Select Discussions of Race Problems
very large numbers who were married before they came here. It seems
almost impossible to separate the contingent of couples married before
their arrival here from those married after their arrival, and the chief
point of interest to us lies in the intermarriages of children born in this
country. It is natural that in large cities, where nationalities separate
in various quarters, a great amount of cohesion should continue for some
time; but it seems likely that intermarriages between descendants of
foreign nationalities are much more common than the census figures
would make it appear. Our experience with Americans whose grand¬
parents immigrated into this country is, on the whole, that most social
traces of their descent have disappeared, and that many do not even
know to what nationalities their grandparents belonged. It might be
expected—particularly in Western communities, where a rapid change of
location is common—that this would result in a rapid mixture of the
descendants of various nationalities. This inquiry, which it is quite feasi¬
ble to carry out in detail, seems indispensable for a clear understanding
of the situation.
It is somewhat difficult to realize how rapidly intermixture of dis¬
tinct types takes place if the choice of mates is left entirely to accident.
I have made this calculation, and I find that in a population in which two
types intermingle, and in which both types occur with equal frequency,
there will be in the fourth generation less than one person in ten thous¬
and of pure descent. When the proportion of the two original types is
as eight to one, there will be among the more numerous part of the popu¬
lation less than thirty in one thousand in the fourth generation that will
be of pure blood. Taking these data as a basis, it is obvious that inter¬
mixture, as soon as the social barriers have been removed, must be ex¬
ceedingly rapid; and I think it safe to assume that one hundred years
from now, in the bulk of our population, very few pure descendants of the
present immigrants will be found.
Unfortunately, however, we do not know the influence of racial co¬
hesion. Obviously this is one of the fundamental points that ought to be
known in order to gain a clear insight into the effect of recent immigra¬
tion. Without this information, the whole discussion of the effect of
intermixture remains speculative. The results of the present census will
give us a certain amount of much-needed information on these points.
In these remarks on the problems of European immigration I have
confined myself entirely to the biological problem, because all our con¬
siderations have shown conclusively that mental life is so plastic, that no
hereditary inability can be assumed to exist in any of the peoples of
Europe.
When we turn our attention to the Negro problem as it presents
itself in the United States, we must remember our previous considera¬
tions, in which we found that no proof of an inferiority of the Negro type
could be given, except that it seemed possible that perhaps the race would
Race Problems in the United States
105
not produce quite so many men of highest genius as other races, while
there was nothing at all that could be interpreted as suggesting any-
material difference in the mental capacity of the bulk of the Negro pop¬
ulation as compared to the bulk of the white population.
Much has been said about the shorter period of growth of the Negro
child as compared to the white child, but no convincing data have been
forthcoming. Considering the great variation in the duration of growth
and development in different individuals and in various social classes, ac¬
cording to the more or less favorable nutrition of the child, the informa¬
tion that we possess in regard to the Negro child, is practically without
value. We have not even evidence that would prove that a shorter
period of development must be unfavorable in its results. Neither do we
know at what period and in what manner develop the typical Negroid
features, which are much less pronounced in the new-born than in adults.
It is surprising, that, notwithstanding their importance, no attempts
have been made to gain a better insight into these anatomical and physi¬
ological problems, some of which might be solved without much difficulty.
As it is, almost all we can say with certainty is, that the differences
between the average types of the white and of the Negro, that have a
bearing upon vitality and mental ability, are much less than the individual
variations in each race.
This result is, however, of great importance, and is quite in accord
with the result of ethnological observation. A survey of African tribes
exhibits to our view cultural achievements of no mean order. To those
unfamiliar with the products of native African art and industry, a walk
through one of the large museums of Europe would be a revelation.
None of our American museums has made collections that exhibit this
subject in any way worthily. The blacksmith, the wood-carver, the
weaver," the potter,—these all produce ware original in form, executed
with great care, and exhibiting that love of labor, and interest in the
results of work, which are apparently so often lacking among the Negroes
in our American surroundings. No less instructive are the records of
travelers, reporting the thrift of the native villages, of the extended
trade of the country, and of its markets. The power of organization as
illustrated in the government of native states is of no mean order, and
when wielded by men of great personality has led to the foundation of
extended empires. All the different kinds of activities that we consider
valuable in the citizens of our country maybe found in aboriginal Africa.
Neither is the wisdom of the philosopher absent. A perusal of any of
the collections of African proverbs that have been published will demon¬
strate the homely practical philosophy of the Negro, which is often proof
of sound feeling and judgment.
It would be out of place to enlarge on this subject, because the essen¬
tial point that anthropology can contribute to the practical discussion of
the adaptability of the Negro is a decision of the question how far the
106
Select Discussions of Race Problems
undesirable traits that are at present undoubtedly found in our Negro
population, are due to racial traits, and how far they are due to social
surroundings for which we are responsible. To this question anthropology
can give the decided answer that the traits of African culture as observed
in the aboriginal home of the Negro are those of a healthy primitive peo¬
ple, with a considerable degree of personal initiative, with a talent for
organization, and with imaginative power, with technical skill and thrift.
Neither is a warlike spirit absent in the race, as is proved by the mighty
conquerors who overthrew states and founded new empires, and by the
courage of the armies that follow the bidding of their leaders. There is
nothing to prove that licentiousness, shiftless laziness, lack of initiative,
are fundamental characteristics of the race. Everything points out that
these qualities are the result of social conditions rather than of hereditary
traits.
It may be well to state here once more with some emphasis that it
would be erroneous to assume that there are no differences in the mental
make-up of the Negro race and of other races, and that their activities
should run in the same lines. On the contrary, if there is any meaning
in correlation of anatomical structure and physiological function, we must
expect that differences exist. There is, however, no evidence whatever
that would stigmatize the Negro as of weaker build, or as subject to in¬
clinations and powers that are opposed to our social organization. An
unbiased estimate of the anthropological evidence so far brought forward
does not permit us to countenance the belief in a racial inferiority which
would unfit an individual of the Negro race to take his part in modern
civilization. We do not know of any demand made on the human body or
mind in modern life that anatomical or ethnological evidence would prove
to be beyond the powers of the Negro.
The traits of the American Negro are adequately explained on the
basis of his history and social status. The tearing-away from the African
soil and the consequent complete loss of the old standards of life, which
were replaced by the dependency of slavery and by all it entailed, followed
by a period of disorganization and by a severe economic struggle against
heavy odds, are sufficient to explain the inferiority of the status of the
race, without falling back upon the theory of hereditary inferiority.
In short, there is every reason to believe that the Negro, when given
facility and opportunity, will be perfectly able to fulfill the duties of cit¬
izenship as well as his white neighbor. It may be that he will not pro¬
duce as many great men as the white race, and that his average achieve¬
ment will not quite reach the level of the average achievement of the white
race; but there will be endless numbers who will be able to outrun their
white competitors, and who will do better than the defectives whom we
permit to drag down and retard the healthy children of our public schools.
The anthropological discussion of the Negro problem requires also
a word on the "race instinct" of the whites, which plays a most import-
Race Problems in the United States
107
ant part in the practical aspect of the problem. Ultimately this phe¬
nomenon is a repetition of the old instinct and fear of the connubium of
patricians and plebeians, of the European nobility and the common people,
or of the castes of India. The emotions and reasonings concerned are
the same in every respect. In our case they relate particularly to the
necessity of maintaining a distinct social status in order to avoid race-
mixture. As in the other cases mentioned, the so-called instinct is not a
physiological dislike. This is proved by the existence of our large mulatto
population, as well as by the more ready amalgamation of the Latin
peoples. It is rather an expression of social conditions that are so deeply
ingrained in us that they assume a strong emotional value; and this, I
presume, is meant when we call such feelings instinctive. The feeling
certainly has nothing to do with the question of the vitality and ability
of the mulatto.
Still the questions of race-mixture and of the Negro's adaptability to
our environment represent a number of important problems.
I think we have reason to be ashamed to confess that the scientific
study of these questions has never received the support either of our
government or of any of our great scientific institutions; and it is hard
to understand why we are so indifferent toward a question which is of
paramount importance to the welfare of our nation. The anatomy of the
American Negro is not well known; and, notwithstanding the oft-repeated
assertions regarding the hereditary inferiority of the mulatto, we know
hardly anything on this subject. If his vitality is lower than that of the
full-blooded Negro, this may be as much due to social causes as to hered¬
itary causes. Owing to the very large' number of mulattoes in our coun¬
try, it would not be a difficult matter to investigate the biological aspects
of this question thoroughly. The importance of researches on this subject
cannot be too strongly urged, since the desirability or undesirability of
race-mixture should be known. Looking into a distant future, it seems
reasonably certain that with the increasing mobility of the Negro, the
number of full-bloods will rapidly decrease; and since there is no intro¬
duction of new Negro blood, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the
ultimate effect of the contact between the two races must necessarily be
a continued increase of the amount of white blood in the Negro com¬
munity.
This process will go on most rapidly inside of the colored community,
owing to intermarriages between mulattoes and full-blooded Negroes.
Whether or not the addition of white blood to the colored population is
sufficiently large to counterbalance this levelling effect, which will make
the mixed bloods with a slight strain of Negro blood darker, is difficult to
tell; but it is quite obvious that, although our laws may retard the influx
of white blood considerably, they cannot hinder the gradual progress of
intermixture. If the powerful caste system of India has not been able
to prevent intermixture, our laws, which recognize a greater amount of
108
Seledt Discussions of Race Problems
individual liberty, will certainly not be able to do so; and that there is
no racial sexual antipathy is made sufficiently clear by the size of our mu¬
latto population. A candid consideration of the manner in which inter¬
mixture takes place shows very clearly that the probability of the infusion
of white blood into the colored population is considerable. While the
large body of the white population will always, at least for a very long
time to come, be entirely remote from any possibility of intermixture with
Negroes, I think that we may predict with a fair degree of certainty a con¬
dition in which the contrast between colored people and whites will be less
marked than it is at the present time. Notwithstanding all the obstacles
that may be laid in the way of intermixture, the conditions are such that
the persistence of the pure Negro type is practically impossible. Not
even an excessively high mortality and lack of fertility among the mixed
type, as compared with the pure types, could prevent this result. Since
it is impossible to change these conditions, they should be faced squarely,
and we ought to demand a careful and critical investigation of the whole
problem.
It seems to my mind that the policy of many of our Southern States
that try to prevent all racial intermixture is based on an erroneous view
of the process involved. The alleged reason for this type of legislation
is the necessity of protecting the white race against the infusion of Negro
blood. As a matter of fact, this danger does not exist. With very few
exceptions, the unions between whites and Negroes are those of white
men and Negro women. The increase of races, however, is such that the
number of children born does not depend upon the number of men, but
upon the number of women. Given, therefore, a certain number of Negro
women, the increase of the colored population will depend upon their
number; and if a considerable number of their children are those of
white fathers, the race as a whole must necessarily lose its pure Negro
type. At the same time no such infusion of Negro blood into the white
race through the maternal line occurs, so that the process is actually one
of lightening the Negro race without corresponding admixture in the
white race.
It appears from this consideration that the most important practical
questions relating to the Negro problem have reference to the mulattoes
and other mixed bloods,—to their physical types, their mental and moral
qualities and their vitality. When the bulky literature of this subject is
carefully sifted, little remains that will endure serious criticism; and I
do not believe that I claim too much when I say that the whole work on
this subject remains to be done. The development of modern methods of
research makes it certain that by careful inquiry definite answers to our
problems may be found. Is it not, then, our plain duty to inform ourselves,
that, so far as that can be done, deliberate consideration of observations
may take the place of heated discussion of beliefs in matters that concern
not only ourselves, but also the welfare of millions of Negroes?
• I • . , - " . .a - . v ** -ry » ; j i
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