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 THE NEIGHBOR
 
 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 paturai l^istorp of Duman Contact^ 
 
 BY 
 
 N. S. SHALER 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 reW, CambriDge 
 1904
 
 COPYRIGHT 1904 BY N. S. SIIALER 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published April, 790*
 
 library 
 
 HT 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN this book I have endeavored to set forth some 
 matters concerning the intercourse of men with 
 their neighbors which have helped me, and which I 
 hope may be helpful to others who may desire to go 
 beyond the commonplace relation with their fellow- 
 men. The greater part of what I have said is, so 
 far as the facts go, familiar knowledge ; my effort 
 has been to shape this information in such a manner 
 that it will throw light on human relations. 
 
 What there is of novelty in this writing is mainly 
 limited to the effect of tribal institutions and states 
 of mil 11 1 on the development of the modern common- 
 wealth, and to the effects of the first contacts of 
 individuals on their subsequent relations. I have 
 endeavored to apply certain observations on those 
 contact phenomena to two serious race problems, 
 those presented by the intercourse of the Jews and 
 the Negroes with the people of our own race. In so 
 doing I have been compelled to set forth judgments
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 as to the character and qualities of these folk which 
 are likely to prove offensive to some of their mem- 
 bers. I realize that it is a serious and difficult mat- 
 ter to characterize races as a whole or to judge 
 them on the basis of any experience such as can 
 come to any one person. Where I have done this 
 task with the Israelites and the Americanized Afri- 
 cans it has been done from long and patient study 
 of those peoples. The questions as to their nature 
 which I have discussed have been hi my mind for 
 about forty years, so that if the judgments are hi 
 error the mistakes are not due to haste. 
 
 The plan of the book has required a restatement 
 of certain points more extendedly treated in a vol- 
 ume entitled, " The Individual : A Study of Life and 
 Death," which was published two years ago. The 
 repetition of this matter gives a certain look of 
 similarity to these works ; they are, however, essen- 
 tially dissimilar. " The Individual " is an essay to- 
 wards a better understanding of what the solitary 
 condition of man means in the order of nature ; this 
 on the natural history of the neighbor endeavors to 
 set forth some of the conditions of human contact 
 as they are influenced by the organic education of
 
 PREFACE vn 
 
 mankind. In effect the two pieces of work seek 
 essentially diverse, though in a way related, ends. 
 
 Although this book is in effect a plea for a larger 
 understanding of the differences between men, I 
 would have the reader approach it with some sense 
 of the significance of the questions it discusses. I 
 ask him if it is not evident that the antecedents which 
 determine the state of mind with which he meets an 
 alien man are of great importance hi determining 
 his judgments concerning him. I ask him further to 
 note that all our efforts to unite men in human asso- 
 ciations, societies, states, and nations, depend upon 
 the measure hi which we may be able to overcome 
 certain instinctive prejudices which grievously hinder 
 such union of men in the common endeavors which 
 advance mankind. If he will but see one instance of 
 this, that of the Negro problem hi the United States, 
 a type of what has to be faced the world about, he 
 will perceive how the question of the natural history 
 of the neighbor lies not only at the foundation of 
 morals, but of statecraft as well ; and that we need to 
 understand it in order to shape our commonwealth. 
 
 N. S. S. 
 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., 
 
 September, 1903.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPT1R PAOD 
 
 I. ON THE NATURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL ... 1 
 
 II. ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS or MAN 10 
 
 HI. ON THE NATURE OF HATRED 21 
 
 IV. ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 28 
 
 V. NATURE AND VALUE OF ETHNIC MOTIVES . . 51 
 
 VI. THE HEBREW PROBLEM 72 
 
 VII. THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 126 
 
 VTII. THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE IN HUMAN RELA- 
 TIONS 192 
 
 IX. THE CONDITIONS OF THE CONTACTS OF MEN . 204 
 X. TOE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY AND SPECIES 
 
 IN ORGANIC LIFE 236 
 
 XI. THE WAY OUT 260 
 
 INDEX . 337
 
 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 THE subject of the inquiries which are hereinafter 
 set forth may be shortly defined as follows. In the 
 case of mankind, as with all other organic groups, 
 we have a multitude of individuals all of which have 
 to establish more or less permanent relations with 
 their kindred of various degrees. These relations are 
 of the utmost importance to the persons concerned 
 in them, for they determine their lot. They are of 
 even more moment to the life of the group to which 
 they belong, for on them may depend its success 
 or failure in the struggle for existence. Such re- 
 lations between individuals, though they are of rela- 
 tively simple nature, exist among the units of the 
 lower inorganic realm. The atoms, molecules, crys- 
 tals, and celestial spheres act and react on one an- 
 other and have then: profit or loss from the exchange 
 of influences ; in fact, the visible universe, so far as 
 we know it, appears to be made up of such isolated 
 structures, each having for its share the task of
 
 2 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 receiving impressions from the others within the 
 limits of environment and of sending forth its influ- 
 ences to all the like individualities within the range 
 of its actions. 
 
 One of the noblest accomplishments of modern 
 science has been to show us something of this ex- 
 change of influences which goes on hi that vast 
 realm of atomic relations. We see, though as yet 
 but dimly, how the more or less temporary groupings 
 of these inconceivably small units give us all the va- 
 ried qualities of matter. In one order of arrangement, 
 in any set of atoms, we have a molecule which sends 
 forth a stream of actions that affects the realm about 
 it in a certain manner. If we change the grouping 
 of the association with no other alteration save that 
 brought about by the change in the number or 
 position of its units, the qualities it sends forth are 
 altered, it may be in effect infinitely, so that an in- 
 conceivable variety of properties can be produced by 
 what seems to be no more than a change of place 
 of the constituent units. Thus by a mere shifting of 
 the stations of the thirty atoms of carbon in a mole- 
 cule of a certain kind of alcohol, species of that 
 group may be produced in number so great as to 
 transcend the imagination. The sum of the hi no- 
 vations thus originated may far exceed a million 
 million, and each of the perturbations gives rise
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 3 
 
 to substances of new qualities, that is, to forms 
 of matter each of which has a peculiar influence 
 on its environment. It is evident that even hi 
 the relatively simple conditions of the atoms of a 
 molecule, what appear to be very slight alterations 
 in the relation of its atomic units to each other in 
 some inevitable way alter the quality of the action 
 which the association exercises on the individuals 
 about it. 
 
 Great as are the effects arising from the diversi- 
 ties in the groupings of units in the atomic field, 
 the value of such reciprocal influence on any part 
 of the inorganic realm is small as compared with 
 what it is in that of the organic. In all the living 
 associations of matter the physical and chemical 
 effects arising from changes in the position of the 
 units are exhibited quite as well as they are in those 
 which are inanimate ; but in addition to the proper- 
 ties due to atomic and molecular conditions, we have 
 in living things other higher and more varied quali- 
 ties due to the peculiar kinds of association which 
 come about with life. We need now to glance at 
 these characteristics of animate individuals. 
 
 I have elsewhere and hi more detail than is re- 
 quired for my present purpose endeavored to show 
 that the essential difference between the living or 
 organic and the inorganic or non-living realms con-
 
 4 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 sists in that fact that in the organic the qualities ex- 
 hibited by the individuals of any species as, for in- 
 stance, those of any particular kind of atom, molecule, 
 or crystals are, under the same environing condi- 
 tions, always precisely alike. Thus the atoms of the 
 farthest stars are evidently the same as those of the 
 earth, and a crystal of quartz formed in the Archaean 
 age, if built under like environment, in no wise dif- 
 fers from one we make in our laboratories. On the 
 other hand, because they inherit their experience 
 with environment from their ancestors and are much 
 affected by that experience, organic individuals are 
 in their generational succession in constant process 
 of modification. They are ever changing as regards 
 what they take from and give to their surroundings. 
 This is perhaps most clearly seen when we consider 
 the difference between the lowest living forms in the 
 series of beings which led to mankind, and the last 
 of the great procession, man himself. The quality of 
 the last term, man, that is, its capacity for influencing 
 its neighbors, of acting on and being acted on by the 
 environing individuals, is evidently vastly different 
 from the first. Moreover, this organic feature of in- 
 herited quality brings about changes not only from 
 generation to generation and from species to species, 
 but it is likely to change very much hi the lifetime 
 of each of the persons in the succession. Thus while
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 5 
 
 permanence of quality is a general feature in the 
 inorganic realm, in the organic we find an endless flux 
 in that quality, and a consequent variation in the 
 influences which the individual exercises on its en- 
 vironment. 
 
 Although the observer may, with very little study, 
 see enough of the order of nature to note the fact 
 that what is done hi the visible universe is, so far 
 as we can see, accomplished by individualities of va- 
 rious grades from the lowest of the physical to the 
 highest of the organic realm, it is not easy to see 
 far enough into the matter to recognize how, as the 
 development of the individualizing process goes on, 
 the value of the unit steadily gains. Although the 
 scope and variety of actions of an atom are evidently 
 great, probably far greater than we shall ever know, 
 they are relatively very limited as compared with 
 those of a molecule made up of many such units, 
 and the field of influential qualities in the lowest 
 living form must be vastly more extended than hi the 
 case of the highest of those which are not informed 
 by life. As we go up in the organic series, the influ- 
 ences which the creature receives from and sends forth 
 to the individualities about it steadily increase. This 
 advance is made even when the gain is in structure 
 alone, but it becomes very much more evident in the 
 series of animals which develop intelligence. Such
 
 6 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 creatures receive and send forth influences in pro- 
 portion to their intellectual capacity, and with each 
 increment of that power the scope of those reactions 
 is increased in an exceedingly rapid proportion. 
 
 The result of the system of evolving individuali- 
 ties of higher and higher grade attains, so far as the 
 naturalist discerns, its summit in man. It is highly 
 improbable that in human kind we have the actual 
 culmination of this evidently pervading motive of 
 advance, this most deep-seated and apparently uni- 
 versal impulse of the visible universe ; it is, indeed, 
 reasonable to suppose that it extends without limit 
 throughout the realm, and that there are at least as 
 many kinds of individuals of a higher grade as there 
 are of a lower grade than ourselves. For our prob- 
 lem, however, we need consider no more than the evi- 
 dent fact that by a process of evolution, which, so far 
 as we can see, is of universal application, we as men 
 have come by successive stages of advance lead- 
 ing through, perhaps, more than a hundred thousand 
 different organic species up to a station where we 
 have a singular capacity of receiving from the world 
 about us, and sending back to that world, a body of 
 influences in range and scope immeasurably greater 
 than those that came to or went forth from any of 
 the lower creatures whence our life was derived. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive the extent to which man
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 7 
 
 has become the recipient and the originator of influ- 
 ences. We see something of the dynamic value of 
 the creature when we behold the vast effect he has 
 had on the physical conditions of the earth : how he 
 has swept away forests, extirpated a host of animals, 
 and changed the nature of the life over wide areas 
 of its surface. In his battles with the beasts, with 
 his fellow-men, and with the nature that opposes his 
 desires, we see only the ruder and less important 
 side of his power ; the more important is discerned 
 by those alone who attend to what we may term the 
 moral side of his activities, to those actions which 
 influence for good or ill the well-being of the fellow- 
 creatures of his own or other kinds which share 
 life with him. Because these effects of the individ- 
 ual person or of those higher personalities created 
 where such units are merged into societies or states 
 are not visible to the eye, they are inevitably neg- 
 lected. Reflection, however, will show the student 
 of such matters that every human being is a centre 
 which receives an almost infinite array of moral im- 
 pulses and transmits a like host to other life. If by 
 some art we could render these movements visi- 
 ble, these persons would no longer seem as they now 
 do to be solitary, little affected and little affecting 
 things, but each would appear as a sun ruling and 
 being ruled by a host of like orbs, receiving influ-
 
 8 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 ences from millions of its kind and sending in re- 
 turn the like to each and all of its fellows. 
 
 The conception of the individual man as the pre- 
 sent summit of a series of advancing individualities, 
 each, in the measure of its advancement, the centre 
 of relations with the sources from which it receives 
 and to which it sends influences, helps us in many 
 ways to see the moral status of our kind. It is evi- 
 dent that, as the result of this evolution, human 
 beings have in effect become agencies by which 
 energy is transformed from its lower states of mani- 
 festation, such as it exhibits in the physical realm, 
 to the higher intellectual plane. What we do as 
 men is accomplished by the conversion of the forces 
 which come to us from the chemical and physical 
 fields, where they have operated from the beginning 
 of the present state of the universe, into action which 
 is guided by mind. All the energy which we apply 
 in any kind of thought is in no sense originated in 
 the thinking ; it is merely converted from the lower 
 to the higher use. So far as we can clearly discern, 
 this force when used commonly falls back into the 
 lower ancient plane of activity, but there is an evi- 
 dent and most important remainder which does not 
 thus return to the primal state but abides in the 
 higher plane in the influence which the thought- 
 guided actions have upon the conduct of other indi-
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 9 
 
 viduals. Thus, though the mere dynamic values of 
 the apparently temporary life fall back into the lower 
 ancient store, the qualities of that life which are really 
 its important part remain and are sent on to direct 
 the course of other individuals, which in turn are to 
 shape matter and energy to the task of living. 
 
 It should be understood that the limited view 
 just above suggested, as to the value of the indi- 
 vidual life as a source of influence in other lives, is 
 to be regarded as but the immediate judgment of 
 the naturalist working within the limits of his craft, 
 which allows him to deal with no more than the 
 evidently visible, or that which may be directly in- 
 ferred from observations of facts. He may suspect 
 or believe that there is something other than the 
 directing influence of the individual being that sur- 
 vives death, but under his limitations he cannot deal 
 with that question. It is clear that one of these sur- 
 vivals is that of directing power by which, to take 
 the most significant example, a Jewish peasant who 
 died near two thousand years ago shapes to this day 
 by his brief and simple life the ways of men. Thus 
 while the naturalist's way of looking at the matter 
 is narrow, and leaves aside a very momentous part 
 of it, the body of fact he has to consider is of 
 momentous importance.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MAN 
 
 THE proportion of the influences which the indi- 
 vidual of any species receives or sends forth varies 
 through an almost infinite range. In the inorganic 
 world the action of the unit under given conditions 
 is essentially invariable, it may be regarded as 
 mechanical in its nature ; in the organic field, at 
 least among animals, both the reception and trans- 
 mission of actions are affected by the operation of 
 some form of intelligence. For our present purpose 
 this intelligence may be regarded as a condition of 
 action in which the particular deed is qualified by 
 experience gained by the individual hi its own life or 
 that of its ancestors, and so stored in memory that 
 it may be used to qualify the otherwise machine-like 
 response to stimulus. Thus defined we may if we 
 please regard the relations of the plants to their en- 
 vironment as intelligent, for there can be no doubt 
 that in them there are inheritances from the experi- 
 ence of ancestors which are brought into the equa- 
 tion which determines their conduct, so that, unlike
 
 ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MAN 11 
 
 the inorganic units such as the atom or the crystal, 
 their individual deeds are, in a measure, determined 
 by those of the forms through which their life was 
 derived. 
 
 The result of the introduction of intelligence in 
 the shape of previously inherited experience is very 
 greatly to extend the range and scope of the inter- 
 actions of individuals. So long as the reaction to im- 
 pulse was mechanical, it was necessarily determined 
 by the dynamic equations of the moment in which it 
 took place. As soon as any form of memory entered 
 as a factor, the result became determined by new 
 and vastly extended conditions, and what we may 
 in the larger sense of the word term the moral 
 realm was entered on. In the lower life, that of 
 plants and the invertebrate animals, the reactions 
 to stimulus, due to inheritance and to environment, 
 though they may be much affected by the intellec- 
 tual forces, retain a certain kind of fatality, for the 
 reason that, even where there is evidence of a strong 
 individual will, the actions of the creature are con- 
 fined to certain determined paths; so that while 
 they are not in the true sense of the word mechani- 
 cal as in the lower physical realm, they are in large 
 measure what may be termed inevitable. With the 
 beginning of the vertebrate group organic life enters 
 on a series of changes, which in a tolerably continu-
 
 12 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 ous manner serves to elevate and aggrandize the in- 
 tellectual value of the individual, leading, in various 
 branches of the type, to a number of considerable 
 successes, and in man, to the supreme accomplish- 
 ment which this planet is to attain. 
 
 The peculiar success of the vertebrate animals ap- 
 pears to be due to two important structural features, 
 which are characteristic of the group, and consti- 
 tute important departures from the preceding lower 
 plans or systems of architecture in this kingdom. 
 First, or at least the most evident, of these, is that 
 the jointed skeleton, which hi all the lower groups 
 is effectively external, in the invertebrates is to be 
 internal. The result of this change is that those 
 hard parts which enable the creature to be sup- 
 ported and to apply muscular force, do not have to 
 be shed from time to tune in the process of growth, 
 as is the case with the crustaceans and the insects, 
 so that the creature can steadfastly increase hi size 
 while remaining continuously active. "With the ar- 
 ticulated animals, on the contrary, the process of 
 shedding the external hard parts makes it necessary 
 for them to be for a time without the protection and 
 support which they require for their activities. The 
 result of this is that while the crustaceans and the 
 kindred forms are in most ways supremely fortunate 
 animals, they are denied the chance of dominance
 
 ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MAN 13 
 
 by the fact that their skeletons have from time to 
 time to be cast away, which makes it impossible for 
 them to attain any considerable bulk. How effec- 
 tive this limitation has been may be judged by the 
 evident fact that the average weight of mature in- 
 sects is certainly less than one ten-thousandth that 
 of adult vertebrates. 
 
 The other peculiarity of the vertebrates is closely 
 related to the constitution of the vertebrated skele- 
 ton, for it led to the institution of that structure ; it 
 consists in the invention of a special tract, that of 
 the spinal cord, and later the brain, which is effec- 
 tively an addition to that series of parts existing in 
 the invertebrate group. In those lowlier forms all 
 the work of receiving impressions from without and 
 reacting on them, as well as the control of the func- 
 tions of the various parts of the body, is effected 
 in the simplest forms, such as the protozoa, by the 
 diffused nervous capacity which primarily exists in 
 organic matter ; higher up hi the several advancing 
 series there develop sets of nerves and ganglia, all 
 tied together in structure, so that the intellectual 
 and organic work are done by the same parts. The 
 essential peculiarity of the cerebro-spinal or ver- 
 tebrate nervous system is that, while it hi some 
 measure serves to direct the work of the body, its 
 principal function is to receive impressions from
 
 14 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 without, and to act as the seat of the intelligence. 
 It is, as regards the most important work, a bureau 
 of foreign affairs, and as such is the seat of the intel- 
 lectual powers of the creature. 
 
 In its initial stage the nervous system character- 
 istic of the vertebrates is no more than a simple 
 nerve supported by what is at first but a carti- 
 laginous rod, which is channeled to receive the 
 nerve. From this primitive simplicity of the Chor- 
 data, well shown by the lancelet, the advance to- 
 wards the characteristic skeletal arrangements of 
 the higher back-boned animals is made with singu- 
 lar speed, and as if to appointed ends. What was a 
 mere supporting rod soon incloses the spinal cord ; 
 it hardens, becomes jointed in the characteristic 
 manner of the back-bone, and deVelops the special- 
 ized head, or casing, for the enlargement of the tract 
 which forms the brain. From the joints of the ver- 
 tebrae double processes which are to become the ribs 
 extend downwards along the sides of the trunk ; and 
 others, single, grow upwards to form the spines of 
 the several segments. The whole is quickly shaped 
 so as to serve as an elastic framework by which the 
 muscles can swing the afterpart of the body in the 
 sculling motion by which most fishes swim. This is 
 the first and in the fish stage the only important 
 use of the jointed skeleton which has its beginning
 
 ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MAN 15 
 
 in that group. In the later developments it ceases 
 to have value, yet even among the higher mammals 
 the ancient habit of swinging the afterpart of the 
 body in the sculling movement remains, though it 
 serves, as in the dog, only as a means of expressing 
 a pleasurable sense of activity. 
 
 In the icthyc or earliest stage of the vertebrate 
 skeleton, while the only method in which progres- 
 sion could be accomplished was by the swinging tail, 
 the fore and hind limbs which were ever afterwards 
 to control the ways of vertebrate life began to form. 
 At first these structures, essentially fins, are so 
 slight and inefficient that it is unreasonable to at- 
 tribute their development to the process of natural 
 selection. At best they serve only as balancing 
 organs, in some measure preventing the rolling mo- 
 tion of the body which the strokes of the tail may 
 tend to produce. Those who know living fishes well 
 are likely to agree with me in the opinion that these 
 paired fins have no such functional value as would 
 by selective action lead to their development. Yet 
 there is an absolute justification for their existence 
 in that they are the beginnings of the fore and hind 
 limbs of all the higher vertebrates. Those parts 
 which have so far determined the bodies and minds 
 of the series of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mam- 
 mals, are in the end the inheritance of man.
 
 16 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 It is not our task to consider how the fins of the 
 fishes came to be, or in what manner the limbs of 
 the higher classes of the type were developed from 
 these lowly beginnings. For our purpose we need 
 only to note that the conditions under which these 
 structures arose in the first steps of the vertebrates 
 determined that there should never be more than 
 four of these instruments which the general skele- 
 ton affords for the uses of the will. Here and there 
 these limbs are supplemented by the jaws, or by 
 elongations of the lips, as in the elephant ; by horns 
 or antlers, as in the ruminants and some other 
 brutes ; but for all the higher work of the will the 
 vertebrate is limited to very few parts that are of 
 any efficiency. 
 
 The result of the curious limitation in the parts 
 which are subservient to the will of the vertebrate 
 is to lessen the value of inherited experience in their 
 actions, and correspondingly to increase that of indi- 
 vidual thought. In the bees and ants, on the one 
 hand, where the bodily parts are so arranged that 
 they afford apparatus accurately fitted for all the 
 needs of their wills, the result is that the mind oper- 
 ates in the automatic manner which we term in- 
 stinctive, where, though the action is other than 
 mechanical for the reason that it is guided by a mode 
 of memory, it is narrowly limited as are the deeds
 
 ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MAN 17 
 
 which we do in what is called an automatic way, as 
 the child sucks the mother, or as the eyelids close 
 when the eye is threatened. On the other hand, hi 
 the vertebrates, though there is something of the 
 mechanically operating instincts, the creature is con- 
 tinually being led by the limitations of its frame un- 
 consciously to contrive means for attaining its ends. 
 We see the effect of this need in all the series of 
 this type ; in the nest-building fishes ; in the amphi- 
 bians ; in certain reptiles ; extensively in the birds ; 
 but most abundantly in the mammals, where the 
 struggle of the will with imperfect instruments cul- 
 minates in the developed intelligence of man, an 
 intelligence which has been forced towards the hu- 
 man quality by the need of doing much with the 
 pair of hands that alone serve the behests of the 
 will. In a word, if man had been as amply pro- 
 vided with instruments suited to his needs as is the 
 bee, there is reason to believe that the quality of 
 his intelligence would have been no more rational 
 than that of the insects. He has, indeed, won to his 
 high estate because with a vigorous nervous sys- 
 tem and corresponding will his ancestry denied him 
 other than the most limited instruments for accom- 
 plishing his desires. 
 
 While the physical conditions which led to man 
 have served in large part to lift his intellect above
 
 18 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the plane of instinct and give it the quality of ration- 
 ality, the quality that reckons and judges, the result 
 has by no means been to extinguish the ancient 
 instinctive motives. In effect, the rational groups of 
 motives have been superadded to the more ancient 
 unconscious or emotional kinds of mind, with the 
 result that hi the higher groups of mammals, and 
 especially in the human genus, the impulses which 
 blindly lead to action are about as strong though 
 perhaps less definite than they are in the insects. 
 They appear to be more varied than hi any in- 
 vertebrates, perhaps for the reason that they are 
 all in some measure qualified by the higher intelli- 
 gence. Thus we recognize in man all the motives we 
 find exhibited in the bees ; love of offspring, of the 
 fellow-members of his society, the greed of acquisi- 
 tion, fear of enemies, rage, valor, in a word all of 
 those motives that are manifested by social insects 
 of the militant type. What other impulses appar- 
 ently of the instinctive order we may discern in our 
 genus can be accounted for by the cooperation of the 
 higher intelligence with the lower. Thus the motive 
 of personal sympathy with the fellow of the species, 
 which is found in some measure among very many 
 of the birds and mammals and is especially charac- 
 teristic of well-developed human beings, but which 
 apparently does not exist among the insects or other
 
 ON CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MAN 19 
 
 invertebrates, is not in its nature primal but sec- 
 ondary; it grows out of the intellectual capacity 
 to recognize the essential kinship with the brother, 
 which makes it possible to picture his sufferings as 
 our own. 
 
 We have come now to the purpose of this seeming 
 digression concerning the origin of man's intelli- 
 gence : it is that we may see even in the baldest out- 
 lines how it has come about that in man we have a 
 mingling of the ancient primal form of intelligence 
 which acts without consciousness, and is blindly 
 moved by the form of mental impulse we term in- 
 stinctive, and the higher rational quality which ap- 
 pears to be limited to the vertebrates alone. Even 
 those who are least skilled in the analysis of their 
 motives can clearly see how these two groups of 
 mental actions are combined in deeds. The inherited 
 hatreds, sympathies, and affections which are the 
 basis of human relations are of the ancient pre-human 
 order, but the conduct of life which gives them effi- 
 ciency is of the new, for it is guided by the con- 
 structive imagination, by the reason, and by know- 
 ledge acquired hi the lifetime of the individual. It 
 is the first object of education and the noblest re- 
 sult of civilizing culture to bring these two groups 
 of mental parts into a fit coordination so that they 
 together make the enlarged humanized man. It
 
 20 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 is hardly too much to say that all the important 
 errors of conduct, all the burdens of men or of soci- 
 eties are caused by the inadequacies in the asso- 
 ciation of the primal animal emotions with those 
 
 mental powers which have been so rapidly developed 
 
 
 
 in mankind.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ON THE NATURE OF HATRED 
 
 WHEN we examine into those inherited motives 
 of man derived from the life far below the human 
 plane, we find among the foremost, second only to 
 hunger in its intensity and constancy, that of hatred. 
 Sexual passion is perhaps more intense ; but among 
 most brutes it is developed only at certain sea- 
 sons, while the impulse of hate is ever ready to con- 
 trol activities and is quickened by slight accidents. 
 This emotion is evident in all the invertebrates 
 which exhibit any distinct mental capacity. It is ex- 
 hibited in the crustaceans, in the spiders, and the 
 true insects, as well as in the cephalopod mollusks. 
 In the vertebrate series it is apparently universal, 
 no well observed species failing to show some trace 
 of it. It is evidently a concomitant of activity, de- 
 veloping in every form that reacts vigorously on its 
 environment, and in some proportion to the energy 
 of that reaction. In man, the most intensely reac- 
 tive of all creatures, the one that receives the most 
 from the outer world and sends the most back to it,
 
 22 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the motive of hatred is evidently the most vigorous 
 and wide-ranging that we find in the animal king- 
 dom. In him the impulse is excited by more varied 
 conditions, and plays a larger part in the conduct of 
 the creature than hi any of the lower forms. 
 
 To understand how the large development of the 
 motive of hatred in man has come about we need to 
 look to the conditions of animal activity in the lower 
 groups, especially those which are hi or near the 
 series of forms where the primitive elements of hu- 
 man quality were shaped. A glance at this wide field 
 shows us that wherever the desires of any creature 
 become vigorous the will which seeks to enforce 
 them attains a proportionate intensity. The individ- 
 ual throws itself against its environment and the 
 unending game of chase and flight begins. As in 
 ourselves, the effort to capture or to escape com- 
 mands the utmost of the mental powers, and the 
 state of mind induced by this activity is the sim- 
 plest form of hatred. In mankind, the motive may, 
 and commonly does, become more or less compli- 
 cated with the rational powers ; even in the lower 
 life it may be mingled with other instincts such as 
 fear, but in its simplest expression it is the impulse 
 which leads to slaying, be it to gratify hunger, to 
 overcome the sexual rival, or to avoid the pursuer. 
 In one or another of these modes it is effectively a
 
 ON THE NATURE OF HATRED 23 
 
 permanent motive ; in all the vertebrate series it is 
 embodied in their mental activities during the whole 
 of their waking lives, when they dream it appears, 
 as in our dogs and barnyard fowl, to be present as it 
 is in ourselves. " 
 
 The result of the long education in hatred which 
 man brought with him from the lower life to his 
 human station was to start him in the work of that 
 higher plane with that motive singularly developed. 
 The gain in rational power led him to perceive more 
 clearly than his brutal ancestors how nearly all that 
 went on about him was inimical to bis desires. His 
 fellow-men were his rivals, the beasts he sought to 
 capture his foes. Soon the natural forces, so far as 
 they were harmful, were rationally conceived as due 
 to the will of unseen beings which contended against 
 him ; so it comes about that the primitive man is a 
 Philistine with his hand by birthright set against his 
 neighbor of all degrees, animate and inanimate. He 
 must slay when he can and propitiate when he can- 
 not slay, and all with hatred in his heart. If there 
 had been no corrective of this evil state man would 
 have been but one more beast in the world, keener 
 witted and more effective than any of his ancestors, 
 yet but another beast But there came to him with 
 the impulses of the brute the beginnings of another 
 emotion, the sympathetic, which was destined greatly
 
 24 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 to modify that of hatred, and in tune to qualify many 
 of the instincts which were sent up to him from the 
 lower life. Although there is much that we natur- 
 ally cannot explain in the development of the sym- 
 pathies, a certain and very important part of their 
 history is clearly to be discerned. This, briefly stated, 
 is as follows. 
 
 In the lower life of vertebrates that exhibit any 
 distinct motives, the mother shows, and sometimes 
 both parents show, a love of offspring. However much 
 we may doubt the efficiency of natural selection in 
 shaping the development of animals, it is hardly to 
 be questioned that as regards this instinct of paren- 
 tal love it has been most efficient ; for those stocks 
 which were by that emotion led to take the greatest 
 care of their young would as a matter of course have 
 had a decidedly better chance of survival than others 
 which in any measure lacked that motive. It is prob- 
 ably not by this process that the impulse of self-devo- 
 tion of parents was first instituted, but the intensifica- 
 tion of it was probably thus brought about hi all the 
 series which attain to any high degree of intelligence. 
 When the care of the progeny is distributed over a 
 host of eggs, as in the case of most of the fishes, the 
 affection is of an inadequate nature and can hardly 
 be classed with the sympathies. When, however, in 
 the succession which leads to man, the young are
 
 ON THE NATURE OF HATRED 25 
 
 not only born alive but come normally but one at 
 each gestation, the attention of the mother is fixed 
 upon the child with the result that it becomes the 
 object of hi tense love. We see something of the 
 effect of this limitation in our domesticated animals. 
 A cow or a mare is greatly distressed if parted from 
 its calf or foal, yet a sow, though belonging to a spe- 
 cies which appears to be endowed with much more 
 lively sympathies, cares relatively little for its off- 
 spring ; it does not note the loss of any one of its 
 large brood, and exhibits little sorrow if all of them 
 are taken away. 
 
 The extremely imperfect state of the human in- 
 fant at time of birth demands from the mother an 
 amount of care and devotion which serves yet fur- 
 ther to extend the love of it which other conditions 
 have served to implant. For about two years the 
 child engrosses the attention of the parents so that 
 the habit of affection becomes so well affirmed that 
 it is likely to continue till death ends the relation. 
 Moreover the development of the monogamic habit 
 has served to bring about a love of the father for 
 the child, which in the more advanced races attains 
 near to that which the mother feels. Even before 
 monogamy was instituted, as soon, indeed, as any 
 kind of marriage was established, this love of the 
 sire for his progeny the peculiar affection of man
 
 26 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 was often strongly developed ; so that the human 
 family appears to have been of a higher type than 
 that of any of the lower animals since the beginning 
 of man's estate. 
 
 Out of the assemblage of conditions which have 
 been all too briefly set forth came the first stage of 
 the sympathetic development which has lifted our 
 kind morally above the plane of the brutes. Begin- 
 ning with the love of parents for their children, 
 sympathy with the fellow-being was readily ex- 
 tended ; first to the remoter kindred, to known 
 kinsmen, then to those of more distant yet evident 
 consanguinity ; at a later stage still further to all 
 the members of the tribe or people which tradition 
 declared of common blood. Although this exten- 
 sion appears to have been brought about by the 
 spontaneous development of the sympathy with the 
 fellow-being which arose from parental relations, 
 the process was qualified by the intellectual motives. 
 Curious ideas as to the bond of common blood, as 
 well as the idea of protection from tribal gods, served 
 to give rational support to the essentially instinctive 
 enlargement of the motive. To the stage of the 
 sympathetic relations which we may term tribal, 
 all the races of man appear readily to attain. It is 
 doubtful, indeed, if there be any peoples that have 
 not won thus far on the way of enlargement. But
 
 ON THE NATURE OF HATRED 27 
 
 here they all tend to halt ; all indeed save the very 
 few elect of the host have gone no further, that 
 point being evidently the furthest to which they 
 are able to attain in their normal moral develop- 
 ment.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 
 
 THE fact that in all the several species of men 
 the tribal stage of sympathetic growth is readily 
 attained, that hi which all within the group are re- 
 garded as friends while all without are enemies, 
 and that very few peoples go further in the enlarge- 
 ment, is of the utmost importance to our inquiry. I 
 shall therefore have to consider the meaning of the 
 matter with some care, and in this consideration ask 
 the help of the reader, such as he will be able to 
 give from his own experience. All that he will be 
 called on to grant are such facts as occur hi the 
 common life of men. 
 
 First let us note what comes to mind when we 
 think of those who are near to us. It is evident that 
 at the beginning of our thought we picture them hi 
 our imagination as essentially like ourselves with 
 certain slight variations in the direction of what we 
 would be or would have them be. The most essen- 
 tial point we discern here is that the other person 
 is conceived hi terms of our experience with our
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 29 
 
 own personality. If this be not evident to the reader 
 let him suppose that in some manner it came to his 
 knowledge that his kinsman, for all the seeming 
 likeness to himself, for all the reactions which ap- 
 pear to prove the identities of spiritual movement, 
 was in fact utterly different in motive, so that while 
 the contacts were certain always to afford a perfect 
 accord, the essential nature of the creature was as 
 different from his own as it would be if the other 
 were an unconscious automaton. We readily per- 
 ceive that with the coming of this knowledge all 
 trace of sympathy would disappear and an instinc- 
 tive dislike would take its place. The true basis for 
 the affection which commonly exists between kin- 
 dred is not, hi modern life at least, based on any 
 distinct idea of common blood, but on the actual or 
 supposed likeness hi mental quality. We expect to 
 find in them qualities nearer to our own than we 
 would be likely to discover in strangers. 
 
 Passing from the experience we have with those 
 who are very near to us and with whom our sym- 
 pathetic relations are normally active, let us note 
 what takes place when we enter on relations with 
 strangers. The steps by which we make this ap- 
 proach to the unknown fellow-man are so familiar 
 that they have the quality of the commonplace and 
 as such do not exhibit themselves to consciousness.
 
 30 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 Yet if we attentively watch we find, first of all, that 
 the person is of our species. The process by which 
 this determination is made is really quite complex 
 though it appears to be perfectly simple. The com- 
 plexity can only be judged by those rare instances 
 in which we may have trouble in finding hi an 
 object sufficient evidence to show whether it be a 
 man or no. I recall an experience which served hi 
 a clear way to show me the manner hi which the 
 mind works when it seeks to determine that a par- 
 ticular object is or is not an individual of our kind. 
 I was walking on a foggy morning across the open 
 country on the western side of the crater-lake 
 known as Lago di Bolsena hi Tuscany ; before me 
 I saw at some distance an unclassifiable creature 
 which looked like a cow walking on its hind legs. 
 The first impression made on my mind was one of 
 intense curiosity mingled with a distinct sense of 
 fear, the ancient human and animal dread of all 
 living things that transcend experience. It was 
 some minutes before I came near enough to the 
 thing to find that it was a man clad in a cow's 
 hide, the skin of the hind legs covering his lower 
 limbs, that of the fore legs his arms, while that of 
 the beast's head served him as a cap. The instan- 
 taneous change hi my state of mind when the hu- 
 man nature of the object became evident was to
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 31 
 
 me a revelation concerning the familiar process of 
 recognizing a fellow of our species. The most inter- 
 esting point was the very sudden way in which the 
 sympathies which enter into human intercourse 
 came into activity when the process of classification 
 was accomplished. By this accident I was brought 
 to see that to our contacts with others of our kind 
 we instinctively and unconsciously bring a great 
 store of expectations and understandings as well as 
 of sympathies or hatreds which serve as the basis of 
 the relations to be established with them. 
 
 Some of my readers may have had similar and 
 almost as illustrative experiences as that above de- 
 scribed. Those who have shared in military cam- 
 paigns may have fallen on the common chance of 
 finding on the roadside what seems to be the dead 
 body of a man, yet on close examination life proves 
 to be in it. Now the state of mind with which we 
 come into contact with the dead differs widely from 
 that we bring to our relations with the living, how- 
 ever near death they may be. In such experiences 
 as these we have a chance to see something of the 
 mental conditions of our intercourse with the neigh- 
 bor. In yet other shape the matter is presented by 
 our effort to enter into relations with persons who 
 hi one way or another fail to give us tokens of like- 
 ness which we instinctively demand from those
 
 32 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 we assume to be like ourselves. Thus all sorely 
 wounded or very ill people are repugnant to persons 
 of undisciplined sympathies ; so, too, are the drunken 
 or insane. Even the much deformed afford at the 
 moment of contact an impression which is sharply 
 contrasted with that we receive from normal human 
 beings. Just here let me note, what I shall further 
 consider below, that the revolt we feel at the sight 
 of a man who is grievously wounded, or has any 
 sore affliction which makes him appear abnormal, 
 passes away as soon as we lay a helpful hand on his 
 body. Something of this dissipation of the instinc- 
 tive prejudice to the apparently inhuman nature of 
 the neighbor will take place when a person of well- 
 trained sympathies and the imagination that makes 
 them serviceable, vigorously goes forth to the suf- 
 ferer by an exercise of the will ; but the effect is 
 feeble as compared with that which comes from the 
 touch of hand, that blessed touch which awakens the 
 sense of kinship as nothing else does. 
 
 The effect which we experience when with our 
 hands we seek to help a sufferer is for our purpose 
 so important that I must again refer to my personal 
 experience for illustration. By nature I am led to 
 flee from the sight of a seriously wounded man or 
 any other who appears unnatural. The impulse is 
 evidently primitive, for it endures still and is as hi-
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 33 
 
 tense as it was in my childhood, when it led me 
 more than once to well- remembered shame. I recall 
 when I was about twelve years old that a surgeon 
 in a case of immediate need so insisted that I should 
 help him in a gruesome case that I dared not run 
 away. The fear that I had of approaching the suf- 
 ferer is yet distinct, although it was fifty years ago ; 
 so, too, the wonder that came over me when I found 
 that as soon as I touched him he became dear to me. 
 Since then the good and evil chances of life have 
 brought me beside very many wounded people, al- 
 ways to experience the same revolt at the sight of 
 them and the same sense of the brother at the touch 
 of hand. I have found that many of my friends 
 have had a like experience. The meaning of it seems 
 to be as follows. In the stages of the life we inherit 
 which were passed in the numerous species, proba- 
 bly several hundred, between the beginning of the 
 quadrumanous mammals and the human grade, the 
 creatures who were shaping our instincts were ac- 
 customed to gain the most of their information by 
 the sense of touch. At the very beginning of the 
 Quadrumana, and as their most characteristic fea- 
 ture, we find that the ancient narrow-rending claw, 
 characteristic of the other mammals, changes to the 
 thin broad finger-nail, the object of the change evi- 
 dently being to afford support and protection for the
 
 34 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 pads of the finger tips, which serve as instruments 
 of touch. Through all the ape-like species, the col- 
 lateral kindred of man and sharers with him in the 
 larger part of his education, we note that the eyes 
 and ears afford information enough to arouse fear 
 or its companion curiosity, but in general not 
 enough to move the sympathies. Their affections 
 are excited by caresses ; they evidently found their 
 way to human-like movements of the spirit by the 
 touch of the hand. 
 
 Although in that very brief part of our life which 
 we reckon as human many of our motives have been 
 in some measure changed, the primal impulses, as 
 regards the conditions of their excitation, have al- 
 tered hi no important way. The currents of our 
 fears, loves, hatreds, and other streams of instinct 
 flow in the ancient deeply carved channels which the 
 ages of life of our prehuman ancestors have worn. 
 So it is that while in the use of sight we have won 
 as men wide fields for the rational work, the older 
 instincts have been little changed by the knowledge 
 we have thus gained. The human mother's love for 
 the babe is, like that of the ape, mainly developed by 
 fondling it and not by the mere sight of its body. It 
 is true that in a secondary way sight helps us to 
 form an image of suff ering which may excite the 
 sympathies, but this is a roundabout and imperfect
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 35 
 
 process. We may look upon a host of wounded on a 
 battlefield with horror, but with little instinctive 
 sense of their woe, while we feel for the one in hand 
 as for ourselves. 
 
 While sight alone does not to any considerable 
 extent excite sympathy, at least in a direct way, 
 hearing has through our inheritances considerable 
 value in this regard. In all the vertebrate series 
 from the fishes to man the creatures which have 
 shaped our spirit have called to one another to tell 
 of their joy and pain, to keep in touch, to claim suc- 
 cor, or to give warning of danger if it were only by 
 the cry of death. We may assume that while the 
 mere sight of suffering is not of much moving in- 
 fluence on other than those whose sympathies are 
 highly developed and well linked with the reason, 
 the wails of suffering people are moving to all men. 
 There is little doubt that the movement of the spirit, 
 if in our kind, is of essentially the same nature as it 
 is in the lower Mammalia, where the cries of the 
 species are most exciting to all the members of the 
 kind. With the exception of the solitary predaceous 
 forms and those quite incapable of defense, the wail 
 of the afflicted normally awakens the sympathies of 
 the kindred. 
 
 The foregoing considerations help us to see some 
 of the circumstances which determine our contact
 
 36 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 with the fellow-man. It is evident that the condi- 
 tions of human contact are in certain ways different 
 from those which exist hi the lower animals. We 
 make the most of the judgment which begins inter- 
 course with the stranger by means of the eyes, 
 though for the reasons given above sight does not 
 tend to arouse the sympathies. Next we trust to the 
 sounds of the voice, but that instrument, originally 
 expressive of the sympathies, has come to be hi its 
 ordinary use a mere vehicle for the rational powers. 
 "We do not, for good and ancient reasons, come into 
 that bodily contact with the others of our kind such 
 as hi the lower animals affords the quickest means 
 of bringing about the sense of fellowship. The re- 
 sult is that th^e individual man, inevitably a solitary 
 being because of his individuality, is by his modes of 
 intercourse far more cut off from the fellows of his 
 species in all that relates to the sympathies than any 
 other creature of high estate. He has formed a set 
 of habits and customs which brings his first con- 
 tacts with his neighbors into a rational field from 
 which the ancient motives of affection are to a great 
 extent excluded. 
 
 The difficulty of the situation of men as regards 
 contact with the others of their species is still further 
 enhanced by speech and clothing. It is a fact, one 
 that the reader has most likely had occasion to
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 37 
 
 note, that the barrier of language puts a curious limi- 
 tation on the sympathies. The fact that we accost a 
 man in our mother tongue and are not understood, 
 at once checks whatever share of friendly emotion 
 began to go forth to him when we sought his ac- 
 quaintance. Even when the difference in speech is 
 no more than dialectic, there is a sense of shock of 
 the same order as that we receive when the language 
 is without meaning to us. The barrier is less consid- 
 erable if the speech-forms have been endeared to us 
 by literature as in the case of the Lowland Scotch, 
 or when it is amusing, as that of the Somersetshire 
 man, the Cockney, or the Irish. In such cases the 
 interest comes in a way to favor sympathy, yet the 
 sense of barrier remains to show that we instinctively 
 demand that the stranger be like ourselves. 
 
 There is yet another demand which we spon- 
 taneously and universally make of the stranger; 
 this is that the mental steps by which he approaches 
 us shall be essentially like those we take in ap- 
 proaching him. This process of mutual introduc- 
 tion by certain gradations of action may be ob- 
 served in the higher brutes as well as in man, 
 being particularly conspicuous in well-bred dogs, 
 but noticeable in all the mammalian groups. There 
 are, indeed, certain forms which among mammals 
 apparently have to be observed in order to pave the
 
 38 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 way to friendly intercourse, and the habit of using 
 them seems to be acquired. Thus while puppies will 
 boisterously approach one another and at once pro- 
 ceed to romp, adult dogs begin with certain deliber- 
 ate inquiries which seem to have the value of cus- 
 toms. It is only after a time then that they become 
 evidently friendly. Moreover, there appears often, 
 in the canine species at least, a distinct sense of the 
 station of their fellows. An adult dog whose con- 
 duct has become ordered by association with the 
 cultivated members of his kind will not assail a 
 puppy, however he may be irritated by his famil- 
 iarities. In several instances, I have observed that, 
 while in their prune, dogs will not resent the inva- 
 sions of their rights by the aged of their kind as 
 they would certainly do if the trespass were commit- 
 ted by one of fighting age. Thus an old dog may 
 without molestation range the premises guarded by 
 other dogs, taking food where he can find it, whereas 
 if he were of fighting age he would have to battle 
 continuously. The facts point to the conclusion that 
 these instinctively founded conditions of approach 
 to the fellows of the species long antedate the 
 coming of man, and that his formula was not al- 
 together shaped in the human plane, though it has 
 been made very much more extensive and compli- 
 cated than in any of the lower species.
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 39 
 
 Watching the conditions of introduction of one 
 man to another, we quickly see that the process is 
 not the simple thing that it seems to be ; it is, how- 
 ever, difficult to perceive its full complexity. In all 
 first contacts there is some element of suspicion of 
 the unknown being. It is one of the good results 
 of the civilized order to minimize this doubt as to the 
 other man, and in the best conditions of society it 
 remains a mere shadow which it is hard to discern. 
 But in the early brutal state of our series, as in the 
 plane of the brutes, the stranger was fitly the object 
 of suspicion ; for the reasonable, the only safe pre- 
 sumption was that he was an enemy. It was neces- 
 sary to ascertain his state of mind before disarming. 
 In these primitive conditions the points to be deter- 
 mined were simple ; in effect, no more was needed 
 save to know whether the stranger was friendly or 
 hostile. With the development of valued traditions 
 the question of whether he worshiped the same 
 gods and had the same rules of life became as im- 
 portant as his momentary state of mind. In other 
 words, the first effect of the human quality is to 
 introduce a wide range of more or less rational con- 
 siderations into the equation which determines the 
 relations with the neighbor. These limitations be- 
 come habitual, so that the hatreds due to differences 
 in religion, etc., become effectively as instinctive as
 
 40 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 those due to such diversities of odor as exist in the 
 case of hounds and foxes. 
 
 The foregoing view of the wide field of human 
 relations though but a glance at a vast tangle of 
 facts will make it easier to understand how it 
 has come about that, in all the manifold varieties 
 of man, the extension of sympathetic relations, at 
 first and for a certain distance very easily attained, 
 quickly reaches a point beyond which all the culture 
 of the enlightened ages accomplishes but a very slow 
 advance. The point first to be noted is that we seek 
 hi the neighbor ourselves ; whether we discern this 
 identity in the fellow-man, in petted animals, in 
 dolls, or idols, or in unseen gods, it does not matter. 
 It is the likeness to ourselves that awakens sym- 
 pathy and affords the basis of intercourse. With 
 the creatures below the human plane the tests of 
 identity were few hi number; general features of 
 shape, odor, even sounds or expressive attitudes 
 and grimaces, served as criteria for judgment as to 
 essential likeness or diversity. With man comes in 
 a host of other more rational bases of criticism, es- 
 pecially those dependent on speech, dress, and beliefs 
 that guide conduct. As these criteria of kinship 
 increase in number and in value as instincts, the 
 point is quickly attained where the evident diver- 
 sities found in the stranger make it commonly im-
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 41 
 
 possible to regard him as near enough to ourselves 
 to be sympathized with. Being a competitor and 
 unprotected by friendliness, he is naturally an object 
 of dislike ; indeed, of that quick and effective hatred 
 which has been the condition of success in the mili- 
 tant species through all the long schooling man has 
 had in the life of the brutes and of brutal men. 
 
 In a general way, the stage where with the in- 
 creasing complexity of human nature and what it 
 required of the fellow- man the sympathies ceased 
 to prevail over the hatreds, affords the bounds of the 
 ethnic group. In most cases, all within the bounds 
 are held to be of common blood. In all instances 
 they worship the same gods, have thereby like rules 
 of conduct, and speak the same language. Under 
 these conditions the ways of sympathy are kept 
 open. Within the tribal pale the tendency is to knit 
 firmer the bonds between man and man. If the 
 people be able they are certain to accumulate tra- 
 ditions. These take shape in literature, or in for- 
 mulas of religion or other activities which may be- 
 come the moral and intellectual life-blood of the 
 folk, maintaining their life in its pristine quality, as 
 in the case of the Jews through ages of trial, and 
 making their extirpation almost impossible. No one 
 can look upon the characteristic tribal or ethnic 
 group without feeling that in it we have the most
 
 42 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 characteristic and in many ways the noblest of all 
 the accomplished works of man. Our states and civ- 
 ilizations may in time attain to greater splendor, but 
 they are as yet unorganized and ephemeral things 
 compared with those primitive constructions. 
 
 As soon as an ethnic society is organized it takes 
 on many of the characteristics of the primitive ani- 
 mal individual, it lives for itself alone. Other groups 
 of like nature are its enemies to whom no faith of 
 any kind is owed. To plunder them is not theft, to 
 slay those who are of them is not murder, they are 
 outside the pale of all obligations whatever. The 
 more intense the common life of the ethnic group, 
 the more faithful its members to one another and 
 the more faithless they are apt to be towards all 
 who are not of their society. Thus among the an- 
 cient Jews, where the concepts of faith within the 
 tribe were of the highest attained by man, there was, 
 until a late stage of development, no idea of duty to 
 the alien because he was a man. As such, he pos- 
 sessed no rights whatever. 
 
 It is evident that the greatest obstacle which has 
 retarded the advance of all races is the inevitable 
 limitation of the sympathies which the ethnic pale 
 imposes. Thus among the Jews, where the intellec- 
 tual and moral impulses attained a higher and more 
 enduring development than among any other peo-
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 43 
 
 pie, there is no trace of a sense of duty to the extra- 
 tribal neighbor until the prophet Jonah, and no dis- 
 tinct enunciation of the doctrine that all men are 
 brothers until it came from Christ 
 
 Although the ethnic motive is most distinctly 
 manifested hi the primitive tribe, where common 
 blood, religion, language, and customs exist, and has 
 accomplished its most characteristic work hi those 
 compact associations, it is to be observed at large hi 
 less distinct forms among all human societies. It 
 may take the form of social rank, of caste, of reli- 
 gious distinctions ; it is, in fact, an isolating motive 
 native to man which is continually seeking expres- 
 sion. Throughout all the lands I have traversed on 
 foot, including the greater part of Europe, I have 
 found evidences of it in the states of mind of peo- 
 ples even of the same stock who are parted from 
 one another by dialects, by religion, or even by slight 
 geographic barriers. Thus in German-speaking Swit- 
 zerland, certain Roman Catholic and Protestant par- 
 ishes hold sympathetically aloof; and in Italy I often 
 found the peoples of neighboring valleys, who were 
 parted by nothing more significant than a moun- 
 tain barrier, each regarding the other with a curious 
 suspicion and hatred. On the other hand, the most 
 significant peculiarity of the American people, that 
 which hi my opinion seta them more apart from the
 
 44 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 rest of the world than any other, is the relative 
 absence of the tribe-forming motive among them. 
 While in Europe there is a general tendency to 
 disbelieve in all men, even of the same race, who are 
 not well-known, a humor which is least, but still 
 discernible, hi Great Britain, and increases to the 
 lands about the Mediterranean, hi the United 
 States there is hardly more than a trace of this 
 humor, and that appears to be steadily lessening. 
 In general, the American is characterized by an al- 
 most unreasonable belief hi the likeness to himself 
 of the neighbor, however far parted by race, speech, 
 or creed. This is so strong that even the Civil War 
 did not shake it ; it served rather to affirm the mu- 
 tual confidence. Yet, as I shall note hereafter, there 
 are certain places in which the impulse distinctly 
 appears, in a manner to show that no people have 
 escaped this ancient tribe-making motive. 
 
 Looking at all the instances in which the tribal 
 motive has come nearest to extinction, we find them 
 first, as above remarked, hi the American Union, 
 and next, curiously enough, among the diverse peo- 
 ples who have been converted to the Mahometan 
 religion. In the American instance the result may 
 be attributable to a widespread common education, 
 much travel, and to the traditions of democracy, all 
 combined with an informal Christianity, which de-
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 46 
 
 spite its great variety of tenets holds fairly well to 
 the leading doctrine of Christ, that of the brother- 
 hood of man. It is not easy to conjecture how Ma- 
 hometanism has served to break down the ethnic 
 barriers among the peoples which have become sub- 
 jected to it. It is evident that the folk who have 
 adopted that belief are, as a whole, of a temper and 
 in a state inclining them to be extremely tribal ; yet 
 some quality of their faith brings them to recog- 
 nize the man of the other tribe who holds to it as 
 a brother far more effectively than Christianity has 
 ever done, though in the purpose of its founder this 
 was the main feature of his creed. Speaking under 
 correction, for I know nothing of Islam from near 
 view, it seems to me that the end is most likely at- 
 tained by the intensity of the monotheism of that 
 faith. Given the idea of one god and his one su- 
 preme prophet preaching the fellowship of man, there 
 is a convincing value in the belief which seems to be 
 strong enough to prevail over the walls of the tribe 
 high and strong as they may be. The like identify- 
 ing power should exist in Judaism, for all within the 
 faith are brethren, though their god is the god solely 
 of their own ethnic group. Yet in spirit they are as 
 opposed to proselyting as the Mahometans are in 
 favor of it, so they lost their chance of mastering the 
 world which their kindred in race and faith so nearly 
 attained.
 
 46 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 As for the failure of Christianity to break down 
 ethnic barriers, though that was the foremost object 
 of its founder, the reasons seem complex, perhaps 
 not all yet plain to us. It seems to me evident that 
 the foremost reason is to be found in the change 
 of motives which came through the diversion of the 
 Church from the purposes of its founder, whereby it 
 was converted into what is essentially a polytheism, 
 and in the centering of the attention on personal 
 salvation. All these unhappy consequences appear 
 to have been primarily due to the intermingling of 
 mystical Greek philosophy with the clear and sim- 
 ple teachings of Jesus. Be the cause what it may, 
 the lamentable fact is that the religion which more 
 than all others should have been effective in lessen- 
 ing the evils of the tribal spirit has been most im- 
 potent in that work. So far from having lessened 
 the evils due to the tribal motive, it, until modern 
 times, served to aggravate them. Even in these 
 days when the general advance of civilization has 
 done much to widen sympathies, we find the advance 
 in no considerable measure furthered by the religion 
 which, more than all others, should have led in the 
 on-going. 
 
 While we have to condemn the tribal spirit as hi 
 high measure harmful to the larger interests of man,
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 47 
 
 we should not overlook the fact that in all cases it 
 has afforded the beginnings of commonwealths. The 
 only possible way of forming a social unit larger 
 than the immediate family was by an enlargement 
 of the idea of kinship on which the family rests. 
 The only way in which the nascent tribe could have 
 gained motives which would have made it strong 
 enough to resist the impact of the disintegrating 
 forces of the savagery in which it originated, was by 
 means of all the bonds of common faith and form 
 that could be given to it. The dislike of unrelated 
 men which remained after the tribe was knit together 
 was no new evil, but the remnant of the hatred with 
 which the primitive men regarded their fellows. In 
 its fit time the tribe was an oasis in the desert of un- 
 sympathetic greed that encompassed the lonely pio- 
 neers of the work of men. It was not until by means 
 of the tribal organization men were lifted to the con- 
 cepts of order, mutual sacrifice, and action continu- 
 ing from generation to generation that it was possi- 
 ble to go further in the process of development. The 
 doctrine of Christ would have been out of place in 
 the time when the tribal organization was as inco- 
 herent and ill-affirmed as is our existing system of 
 the commonwealth. It was not until the ethnic unit 
 had shown how good it was for brethren to dwell 
 together in unity that the time came for the larger
 
 48 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 associations based on the recognition of the real kin- 
 ship of man. 
 
 There is yet another limitation which must be 
 made in the criticism and condemnation of the ethnic 
 motive, which it is the fashion of our time to make. 
 In the highly organized tribes we find, as in those 
 of Israel, an organic intensity and a moral control 
 of its elements such as has never been won and is 
 probably not winnable in any wider commonwealth 
 which has been established. It is evident that when 
 the concepts of common blood and faith are put 
 aside the bond that unites men is thereby enfeebled. 
 Those of us who believe in the commonwealth trust 
 to certain enlargements of the sympathies, and of 
 knowledge that will support them, to give us safety. 
 But we draw upon our confidence in the nature of 
 man rather than on history for our justification. 
 Thus, while the tribal motive is a distinct barrier to 
 the higher processes of civilization, it not only has 
 made that stage of development possible but it still 
 remains the most complete success that man has yet 
 attained in the field of social development. 
 
 It is also to be noted that the formal concept 
 of the tribal state, which is that those of com- 
 mon blood alone are fit for the common work of a 
 society, still remains as a postulate that cannot 
 lightly be dismissed. We hope to see a common-
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE TRIBE 49 
 
 wealth so organized that all sorts and conditions 
 of men may find shelter under a roof as wide as 
 the sky. I, for one, have enduring confidence in the 
 possibility of such an order, yet I have to confess 
 that the judgment is based on a reckoning of human 
 quality, and finds as yet insufficient support hi expe- 
 rience. It is to be wrought out from the existing 
 basis, of ethnic motives and will have to be shaped 
 by the enlargement of the accomplishments of that 
 form of human endeavors. The process by which 
 the larger commonwealth of man is being evolved 
 from the lesser is beset by difficulties. As in evolu- 
 tion of a new organic adjustment, the species which 
 afford the steps for the transition are temporary and 
 endure but briefly, thus seeming to be failures, so hi 
 this social progress the steps are tentative and often 
 apparently unsuccessful, but the naturalist trusts 
 them to lead to a great accomplishment. 
 
 We are now in danger of underestimating the im- 
 portance of those differences between groups of men 
 on which the tribal system rested. We are assuming 
 that in a state of the modern type we may effect the 
 same close relation between people of diverse stocks 
 that is brought about in a true ethnic group. In 
 other words, we are endeavoring to build states which 
 shall be no more than enlarged tribes, and we seek 
 to accomplish this suppression of the race or ethnic
 
 50 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 motive in a violent manner, though with a sem- 
 blance of law. I shall endeavor to show the fallacy 
 of this method, and something of its unhappy conse- 
 quences, hi considering the problem of the relations 
 between the Negroes and Indians and the whites of 
 North America. For our present purpose it is enough 
 to note that there is danger hi overlooking the obdu- 
 racy of the ethnic motive which is very deeply im- 
 planted hi man, being one of the most important 
 instincts which came to him from the lower life. 
 The worst failures in organizing modern states have 
 arisen from the belief that the tribal motives of iso- 
 lation were due to mere obstinacy, that they could 
 be easily crushed out, and that the people who were 
 moved by them might straightway be provided with 
 a brand-new array of motives which had been evolved 
 by their masters. It would be quite as reasonable 
 and merciful to seek a change hi the color of men's 
 hides by a process of flaying with a view to implant- 
 ing a new skin.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 NATURE AND VALUE OF ETHNIC MOTIVES 
 
 THE question now before us is to determine the na- 
 ture and value of those prejudices and prepossessions 
 which affect the relations of diverse peoples with one 
 another. It requires but a glance at the existing 
 conditions of men to show us that this matter is of 
 great importance. In fact, as reasonable men, know- 
 ing as we do the efficiency of scientific methods in 
 affording a basis for duty in the conduct of life, we 
 cannot justly go further with our tasks of govern- 
 ment without trying to understand what it means 
 that the tribes and races we are endeavoring to 
 bring together and merge hi harmonious common- 
 wealths fail to come into accord. I shall, therefore,, 
 seek in the manner of the naturalist to find what 
 the facts are, and then to see what guidance may 
 be had from them. The first step will be to note 
 many of the past and present features of the rela- 
 tions between races and tribes which have been 
 forced to dwell together and in some measure to 
 share the life of a commonwealth ; then to examine
 
 52 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 into the meaning of the tribal system so far as it 
 relates to association of such groups of men in larger 
 societies ; and finally to consider in the light of our 
 knowledge what should be the organization of a 
 state based on an understanding of the innate social 
 motives of its various elements. 
 
 The first point to note is that the natural, indeed, 
 the inevitable, social order is that of the tribe, the 
 enlarged family, and that in this state of organiza- 
 tion the greater part of the life of man has been 
 passed. It may now be assumed as certain that men 
 have been hi existence for some hundred thousand 
 years. We have no clear evidence as to the condi- 
 tions of their association for more than six or eight 
 thousand years, but the generality of the tribal sys- 
 tem indicates that they were at a very early stage 
 in their advance divided into separate groups, each 
 with all of its members hi friendly relations with 
 one another, while the individual groups were hi a 
 state of isolation and more or less hostile to every 
 other. Thus we may assume that after some kind 
 of family relation that of the tribe is the oldest 
 social feature of mankind. It evidently fits all the 
 diverse species of our genus and has been firmly 
 implanted by experience. Moreover, the tribal habit 
 of man is not an invention made by him. It evi- 
 dently was inherited from his ancestors of the lower
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 53 
 
 life, for among all the Quadrumana clearly to be 
 reckoned his collateral but near organic and psychic 
 kinsmen, this social habit prevails. The creatures 
 usually dwell in groups which are evidently held 
 together by a sympathetic bond, and are hi more 
 or less hostile relation to other groups of the same 
 or diverse species, so that we may regard the tribal 
 motive as even more affirmed than it could have 
 been by human experience. 
 
 The next point to note is that the development of 
 the militant spirit and the superior power of certain 
 tribes leads to conquests of other like units. So far 
 as we can judge by what we see in existing low- 
 grade peoples the usual fate of the conquered was 
 to be exterminated. At a later stage some part of 
 the defeated tribes, if not of a stock so remote as 
 to arouse race prejudices by great differences in 
 appearance, were adopted by the conquerors. Yet 
 later came the institution of slavery, when the cap- 
 tives were regarded as domesticated animals with 
 no human rights. Still further on, when the idea of 
 domination became more developed, conquered tribes 
 were allowed to exist as subjugated peoples for the 
 profit of their masters. At this stage the Roman 
 and medisBval type of state made up of one master- 
 ing folk and a number of subjugated tribes or states 
 took definite shape. Such associations had existed
 
 54 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 from the dawn of history and doubtless in unrecorded 
 tune, but the deliberate effort to organize something 
 like commonwealths on that basis is not evident 
 before the beginning of the Roman conquests. 
 
 The third and last stage in political development 
 is that in which we are now engaged, in which the 
 ideal is to unite diverse peoples, each retaining more 
 or less of their original ethnic motives, in one com- 
 monwealth, giving to them all a like chance in the 
 common life, allowing none of the inherited differ- 
 ences of quality or tradition to limit the rights and 
 opportunities of any of the individuals sheltered by 
 the state. This ideal has slowly developed since the 
 last great awakening of Occidental thought. It be- 
 gan with the movement of the Renaissance, it has 
 more or less affected the conditions of all the states 
 about the north Atlantic and the eastern Mediter- 
 ranean. It has been of most effect in the United 
 States, England, and Switzerland. It is still in what 
 we may term the experimental stage; in general, 
 it has proved successful when the original ethnic 
 diversities were not very great ; it is to be counted 
 as yet unsuccessful where the differences are of a 
 high order. So far as varieties of religion or of so- 
 cial custom are concerned, they seem reconcilable in 
 modern commonwealths. As to those larger differ- 
 ences such as are denoted by color, shape, or general
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 56 
 
 intellectual capacity, it evidently remains an open 
 question whether they can be accommodated in this 
 scheme of political association. 
 
 Looking at the results of the Roman type of state, 
 that in which the ethnic varieties included in the 
 association are at once subjugated and protected, 
 and where their tribal motives are respected, we find 
 a system which within certain limits works in an 
 admirable manner. The dominated folk are in gen- 
 eral left to the guidance of their ethnic motives, they 
 are taxed for the benefit of the conquering state, and 
 have to bear arms in its service, but they retain the 
 most precious of their rights. So long as the ideal 
 of a state is for the benefit of the few the Roman 
 method of combining people of varied ethnic motives 
 in one dynamic association is satisfactory. It may, 
 indeed, be held that, with one exception, never before 
 or since the latter centuries of Roman rule have such 
 diverse kinds of men been so effectively blended in a 
 state. That exception is the rule of England, where 
 within the last half century, by the extension and 
 bettering of the Roman system, yet more diverse 
 peoples have been brought under one control. 
 
 There are two difficulties connected with the Ro- 
 man method or its English adaptation. In the first 
 place it does not meet the demand for the conditions 
 of a democracy which is at the foundations of our
 
 56 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 modern politico-social endeavors ; and in the second 
 place it in no sense helps to the solution of the 
 gravest problem of the situation, which is as to the 
 ways in which diverse ethnic groups can dwell to- 
 gether in an intimate geographical as well as politi- 
 cal relation. The ethnic elements of the Roman 
 state were to a great extent separated from one an- 
 other, as those of England now are ; but the problem 
 of to-day, particularly in America, concerns the ways 
 in which the diverse peoples can be brought to dwell 
 side by side as contributors to a common life. Fel- 
 low-citizenship in the Roman sense can be easily 
 attained, for it meant no more than the right to the 
 protection of a state strong enough to give it effec- 
 tively. In the sense in which we would have it, 
 that is, an equal share of all the duties as well as the 
 benefits of the commonwealth, a chance to act with 
 no other limitation than that set by capacity, and 
 with the inborn powers of each developed to the 
 utmost, this end has not as yet been attained, but 
 it is the worthy goal that modern democracy has set. 
 It may here be noted that the Roman plan of the 
 state was in its time unique ; mere subjugation of 
 puny tribes is indefinitely old, but the idea of toler- 
 ance which permitted the dominated people to retain 
 a place as sharers of the commonwealth other than 
 as vassals, which set the gods of aliens beside their
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 57 
 
 own, was an innovation, one hitherto without paral- 
 lel in history. There is no trace of any such political 
 liberty among the Greeks, who, with all their con- 
 ceptions of life and action, never in politics escaped 
 from a rather narrow ethnic motive. The reasons 
 for this singular and rapid development of the Ro- 
 man type of confederacy are not evident They are, 
 perhaps, to be found hi part in the dutifulness of 
 the Roman spirit, a motive which made them pecul- 
 iarly willing to sacrifice prejudices for then* ideals 
 of the commonwealth, combined as it was with a re- 
 markably uncritical state of mind. They were so 
 little moved by the skeptic motive of the Greeks that 
 they never entered in any field of science, and hi the 
 arts no invention or considerable improvement came 
 from them. This lack of concern with things that 
 are not perfectly evident limited their interest hi 
 theology to the observance of inherited forms. They 
 had little or no sense of that devotion to spiritual 
 affairs which has so influenced the Hebrew people. 
 This combination of qualities served to make them 
 masterful men of business and they made their state 
 the noblest shop the world has ever known. Their 
 motive afforded no basis for ethnic prejudices, for 
 the fellow-man was but a bit of utility that should 
 be made despite his vagaries to fit into the polity 
 of the state ; if he did his citizenly duty it did not
 
 58 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 matter what was the color of his mind or hide. 
 Despite its manifold evils, in its best centuries the 
 Roman system is the noblest work that man accom- 
 plished in the way of government until the British 
 Empire came to its best estate, and in some ways it 
 transcends that great work. 
 
 One of the consequences of the Roman success 
 in the government of alien peoples is that it has 
 remained to this day as an ideal of imperial con- 
 trol. Nearly every government has had its concepts 
 of civil polity affected by an ill-understood sense of 
 how the Roman's work was done ; ill-understood be- 
 cause it was not perceived that without the spirit of 
 Gallic its work could not be done. All the many ex- 
 periments of reconciling and combining diverse peo- 
 ples under modern rulers has failed because those 
 rulers have been animated by their own ethnic or 
 tribal motive, which suggests that dominated peo- 
 ple must live and think in the manner of their mas- 
 ters and that existence is intolerable until they are 
 made to do so. If we look over the history of Europe 
 we find, with trifling exceptions, of which Switzer- 
 land is the most prominent, and even in a measure 
 there, that the impulse to insure uniformity in lan- 
 guage, mode of local government, and even less im- 
 portant features, has been the basis of never-ending 
 contentions. Further on in this book I shall give an
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 59 
 
 illustration of this in the case of the expatriated 
 Jews ; but if the reader knows no more than the out- 
 lines of the histories of the countries which were 
 once within the limits of Roman control, his memory 
 will supply a host of instances where the modern 
 ruling spirit has failed when that of the Empire 
 would have succeeded. Of these perhaps the most 
 indicative is that of English rule in Ireland, where 
 for near eight hundred years the effect of the ethnic 
 motive of rulers has been admirably and disastrously 
 exhibited, and where for all tune it has been shown 
 how, short of extermination, it is impossible to re- 
 duce a vigorous folk to acceptance of alien ideals of 
 life. 
 
 The whole story of European conquests since the 
 discovery of America is one vast illustration of the 
 impossibility of profitable subjugation of alien folk 
 on other than the Roman plan. Half a dozen states 
 have essayed it in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, 
 but the result has been that no peoples have ever 
 been brought to the habits of their conquerors. 
 Hundreds of tribal associations have been destroyed 
 in these modern conquests, but in no instance known 
 to me have any of those primitive societies been 
 effectively adopted into the life of the conquering 
 people. The nearest approach to success in this field 
 of endeavor has been with some of the tribes of
 
 60 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 North American Indians who have been brought to 
 dwell in amity with our people ; but in no case can 
 these reconciliations be deemed really successful, for 
 the remnants merely abide in our state, taking no 
 serviceable part in its life. 
 
 In the parts of the Americas and other countries 
 colonized by the Latin Europeans, the problem of 
 contact between the invaders and the indigenes has 
 been, in a way, settled by the amalgamation of the 
 diverse races. This is an ancient, and, so far, the only 
 successful plan of breaking down the barriers be- 
 tween widely parted ethnic groups. Where the 
 physical differences between such groups are but 
 slight, say of the value that exists between the vari- 
 ous stocks of Europe, or in general of less than race 
 importance, miscegenation has proved on the whole 
 advantageous ; but the evidence is overwhelmingly 
 to the effect that the admixture of the blood of 
 stocks as diverse as the Negroes and the Aryans, or 
 the South American Indians, has very evil results, 
 the hybrids generally being weaker than either 
 parent stock, rarely surviving to old age, and with- 
 out their more valuable mental and moral quali- 
 ties. It should, however, be noted that even where 
 the differences of race are as great as those be- 
 tween the American Indian and the European the 
 result of the cross-breeding may be fairly successful,
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 61 
 
 the half-breeds being men of good physique and 
 fair mental ability. The Cherokee chief Sequoia, one 
 of the most remarkable men this country has pro- 
 duced, was a half-breed. To him we owe the inter- 
 esting and most difficult invention of the Cherokee 
 alphabet or rather syllabary, which is still exten- 
 sively used. When we remember that this Cadmean 
 feat was accomplished by an essentially illiterate 
 person, it has to be reckoned as one of the most 
 noteworthy of recent times. 
 
 The simpler and more striking failures of conquer- 
 ing peoples hi appropriating alien tribes appear to be 
 due to the incapacity of primitive folk to endure the 
 continued stress of toil which is demanded in the 
 state of civilization. This social state depends mainly 
 on the abili ty of men and women to labor during the 
 period of vigorous life. While the greater part of 
 the impulses which serve to hold our society together 
 are derived from the life below the human plane, 
 those which lead to effective toil are of late origin. 
 In the series below our estate the creatures take no 
 account of needs to come ; they accumulate no store 
 of food and show no trace of forethought. The ran- 
 dom species of mammals which make any provision 
 for the future, such as the rodents, are all far away 
 from the series that lead to man. In the lowest men 
 now existing, presumably in culture much above
 
 62 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the most primitive, while there is some impulse 
 to accumulate wealth, it does not attain sufficient 
 strength to lead them to continuous labor. The habit 
 of toil appears to develop very slowly and not to be 
 well instilled until the tribal society attains a com- 
 plexity which admits of taskmasters, of men with 
 authority to enforce labor on subordinates. It seems 
 likely that the development of the labor habit has 
 been in some measure effected by natural selection, 
 those societies in which it became established win- 
 ning therefrom a better chance of survival in the 
 ages of conflict between tribe and tribe. In some in- 
 stances, as in the African Negroes, where the popu- 
 lation was relatively dense, the capacity for toil was 
 brought to a high development though the other 
 social conditions were relatively low. In other cases, 
 as with many tribes of North America, while the 
 people may have won far up hi other human quali- 
 ties, they have not developed the laboring habit. 
 
 Perhaps the best illustration of the difficulties 
 arising from the lack of development of toiling 
 capacity is found in our American Indians. The 
 people of this stock are, as regards their general in- 
 telligence, little, if at all, below the average of Eu- 
 ropeans. Their physical development is probably 
 rather above the plane of the so-called Aryan folk. 
 Excluding certain of the degraded tribes, such as the
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 63 
 
 Digger Indians, they are well-made creatures. When 
 stimulated by the war-humor or the excitement of 
 the chase they are remarkably enduring, but they 
 cannot stand steady toil. When this is enforced 
 upon them they break down. This lack of capacity 
 to apply energy in a continuous manner appears to 
 be due to some peculiarity of the nervous system ; 
 as is indicated by the common belief among the pio- 
 neers who have wrestled with Indians in combat, 
 that any white man can slay any Indian if he grap- 
 ples with him. 
 
 The fate of the Indian in contact with the peoples 
 of northern Europe appears to have been in large 
 measure determined by his inability to labor. Here 
 and there efforts were made to reduce him to slav- 
 ery. These efforts were occasionally successful in 
 so far as the mere subjugation was concerned, but 
 the folk quickly died in the new conditions. So far 
 as I have been able to find, they did not endure for 
 more than three generations, except where, as in 
 Mexico, their blood was mingled with that of their 
 conquerors. At best they can be brought to do suffi- 
 cient work to feed themselves ; but their productive 
 activity always remains very low. 
 
 It is interesting to compare this failure of the 
 able-minded and vigorous-bodied Indian to meet the 
 labor demands of civilization with the eminent sue-
 
 64 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 cess of the African races in that regard. The Ne- 
 groes of North America have been for many gener- 
 ations forced to toil as assiduously as any civilized 
 men, and their work has been done under conditions 
 of climate, food, and general environment utterly 
 different from those to which they were accustomed 
 in the regions where their qualities were acquired. 
 Yet they remain vigorous, fecund, and highly reac- 
 tive, having lost nothing of their pristine nature ; 
 they are as firmly implanted hi this extra-tropical 
 realm as any of our European stocks. Even as far 
 north as New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario 
 to the third or fourth generation they appear to 
 suffer no loss of vitality or laboring power. From 
 this contrast we see that the first condition deter- 
 mining the possibility of bringing alien races to- 
 gether in a state is that their capacities for toil shall 
 be alike well developed. It does not follow that the 
 whole of the accord needed for social efficiency will 
 be thus attained, but equality hi laboring power af- 
 fords the required foundation for all the other neces- 
 sary relations. 
 
 Next in importance to the capacity to work to- 
 gether with them on something like equal terms 
 comes the capacity of a conquered people to change 
 their ideals of life in such measure as is required to 
 fit the spirit of their masters. This ability to alter
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 65 
 
 the point of view is generally very small It is evi- 
 dently least where the folk are imbued with a reli- 
 gious faith of an intense order. Thus the Jews, who 
 have retained a religion perhaps the most intense 
 the world has known, have, though the difference 
 in faith is small, never become effectively recon- 
 ciled with any Christian society. On the other hand, 
 the Negroes, with a religion of a low and incohe- 
 rent kind, quickly accept, as far as their mental 
 powers enable them to do, the ideals of the Euro- 
 peans. There remains a somewhat greater tendency 
 to blind superstitions, but this seems to fade away 
 after a few generations of contact with the whites. 
 Thus it comes about that, so far from identity of 
 race being the gauge of the capacity of a subjugated 
 people to enter into the society of their conquerors, 
 such union may be the easier if hi their original con- 
 ditions they were far apart. The question seems to 
 be as to the intensity of the ethnic motive in the 
 included folk. When this, as in the Jews, is strong, 
 though the other ideals of the two peoples may be 
 very much alike and the races of a quality that 
 favors amalgamation of blood, they may remain 
 hopelessly separated. 
 
 In looking over the contact phenomena of the 
 militant races with the feebler tribes encountered 
 in their migrations, we come upon a number of in-
 
 66 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 stances in which some one point of difference has 
 apparently served as a barrier to effective union. 
 Thus with the Austrian monarchy the ideal of sep- 
 aration has made it impossible to unite Hungary, 
 Bohemia, and the other states of that association hi 
 a firm manner, for the reason that the ancient tribal 
 motive of autonomy has been so strong that no in- 
 terests of an economic kind could prevail over it. 
 That empire is likely to fall into ruin and its de- 
 tached peoples to come to a worse estate than that 
 hi which they now are, for the reason that each 
 struggles for the shadow of independence. In Swit- 
 zerland the same motive for a long time endangered 
 the safety of the union which alone safeguarded its 
 ancient freedom. We have seen the same autonomic 
 motive hi another form bring the American Union to 
 the verge of destruction. The facts justify us in as- 
 suming that there is hi human nature a permanent 
 tribal ideal which has to be in some manner gratified. 
 The least advanced peoples found their satisfaction 
 within the narrow limits of the clan; the Greeks 
 found it hi their city, for all their enlargement, 
 hardly at any time attaining to a wider ideal. With 
 their advancement a people may in their imaginations 
 compass a Roman or a British empire. In time we 
 may hope that the extension will lead men to the 
 point where the unit will be mankind.
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 67 
 
 Looking more closely at the problem of the auto- 
 nomic desire it appears to me plain that the breadth 
 of the impulse is to be measured by the capacity of 
 the minds of a given folk to include a wide range of 
 earth and men in the field of their sympathies. We 
 see that lads of a town are likely to be divided into 
 rather small bands each with a Philistinish humor 
 towards the other. As grown men, in accordance with 
 the breadth of view to which they have attained, the 
 whole town, the country, the state, or the nation 
 stands for their larger selves. In effect, a man's tribe 
 is so much of his kind as he can imaginatively unite 
 with himself. With some peoples, even where the 
 constructive fancy is large and the sympathies in- 
 tense, a strong prepossession such as the tenets of a 
 peculiar creed may, as in the case of the Jews, keep 
 the tribal motive within narrow limits. In other 
 instances, as in Russia of to-day, the sense of a com- 
 mon spiritual head may in a measure afford a bond 
 to an indefinite number of separate tribal centers, so 
 that with very great variation in the modes in which 
 it is expressed this sense of the governing unit of 
 their sympathies and understandings is to them the 
 real state. 
 
 It should not be supposed that the motive of the 
 tribe, the patriotic motive in fact, is, like many another 
 of the impulses derived from the lower life of beast
 
 68 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 and man, a thing that can lightly be put aside or of a 
 nature to disappear with advancing culture. If seen 
 correctly it will be recognized as an extension of the 
 instincts that hold kindred together, and as ineradi- 
 cable as the motive of the family. Those who have 
 known the American Indians or other primitive folk 
 in the various conditions of their contacts with the 
 whites must have seen hi the very aspect of the 
 people the mighty satisfaction which each individual 
 has in the sense that his tribe is strong, and the 
 sorrowful degradation which comes upon him when 
 he no longer feels its shelter. Thus the prosperous 
 Flatheads of Montana, who retain their tribal free- 
 dom because they have to a great extent avoided war 
 with the whites, or the Seminoles of the Everglades 
 of Florida, who have curiously managed to keep 
 their hold on that wilderness and have never known 
 an Indian agent, are still the ancient proud red men, 
 while the remnants of the once great tribes of the 
 plains are cowed and despondent. It is, indeed, evi- 
 dent that tribal affections may go far either to uplift 
 a man or to take away a part of the natural sym- 
 pathetic foundations of his life. We cannot expect 
 to replace those affections at our pleasure, giving in 
 exchange those of some other tribe or state to the 
 man who is grieved for the loss of his own. The 
 relation of human beings to their societies rests
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 69 
 
 upon primitive affections such as have engendered 
 our own patriotism. They are not rational motives 
 and are not readily to be qualified by reason. They 
 are to be respected because they are of the noblest 
 and largest part of man's inheritances. 
 
 The value of the ethnic or tribal motive in giving 
 a sense of efficiency to any society has been adverted 
 to. When civilized states come to reckon on this 
 value we may hope to see them make the inevitable 
 extensions of their domains without unnecessarily 
 disturbing the natural conditions of the peoples they 
 come to rule over. That it is possible thus to deal 
 with ancient societies is well shown by the history 
 of British India. By a series of accidents rather than 
 by design Great Britain has attained to a method of 
 government in the East which serves to maintain 
 order and to ensure the amplest commercial oppor- 
 tunities without destroying the sense of freedom 
 among the native people. In its present condition 
 this rule is a distinct improvement on the Roman 
 method, in that, aside from the cost of maintaining 
 the army of occupation and the pensions for its 
 officers and men there is no evident taxation for 
 other than local use. There is effectively no charge 
 upon these colonies that is not for the service of 
 their people. The result of this system since it was 
 cleared of its original iniquities has been that the
 
 70 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 states of India have prospered as never before in the 
 millenniums of their history. Various social evils 
 have been abolished or greatly dimmish ed, the peo- 
 ple have been free to follow out their indigenous mo- 
 tives ; to them the overlord appears in the quality of 
 a protector alone. 
 
 The most interesting feature in the unique suc- 
 cess of the British government in India is that it 
 has been the work of a people who by nature, as is 
 the case with all the English folk, have little sympa- 
 thetic interests with alien races. It is not improbable 
 that this task has been the more successful because 
 it has been done hi an unsympathetic way, without 
 any great effort to maintain that appearance of 
 friendship which cannot bridge the gap which sepa- 
 rates such alien peoples. This success, like that of 
 the Romans, has clearly been due to the fact that 
 the work of ruling has been done in a business-like 
 manner for very definite, limited ends, and with the 
 minimum of action that would attain them. As the 
 Romans succeeded in part by their lack of definite 
 religious conceptions, so the English by their Protest- 
 ant unwillingness to force their theology on other 
 folk have avoided the gravest dangers incident to 
 their task. 
 
 Summing up the results of this brief review of 
 race motives hi relation to government, we see that
 
 ETHNIC MOTIVES 71 
 
 perhaps the most frequent source of maladmin- 
 istration arises from a failure to understand the 
 value of the motives entering into the conditions 
 which determine the success of a commonwealth. 
 Even to this day the most enlightened states fail to 
 reckon with these impulses which are as evident 
 and inevitable as gravitation. In order that the mat- 
 ter which has been set forth in general terms in 
 the preceding chapters may be more conveniently ex- 
 hibited, I propose next to examine into two distinct 
 instances hi which alien races have been embodied 
 in our Occidental civilization. In each of these the 
 history is long enough to be illustrative and still 
 afford problems that await solution. The peoples to 
 be subjected to this inquiry are the Jews and the 
 Negroes.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 
 
 Is many ways the contact of the Jews with the 
 people of Europe is for my purpose the most instruc- 
 tive of all history. It tells more concerning the na- 
 ture of the tribe than any other, and though, as we 
 shall see, replete with shames, affords a better sense 
 of the capacity of the abler tribal organizations to 
 endure trials than is found elsewhere. If it had 
 been contrived for the purpose it could hardly have 
 been more effective. The story, though in a general 
 way known, is in its important features often mis- 
 understood. It is, indeed, very difficult to set forth 
 any account of it, for the record comes mainly from 
 persons who share the prejudices that led to the 
 misdeeds. Fortunately, hi this instance, we have for 
 a period of about six centuries various fragments 
 from Greek and Latin authors, many of whom ap- 
 pear to have looked upon the Jews as an interesting 
 people, about whom they wrote without religious 
 prepossessions. There have been several compila- 
 tions of these judgments, the oldest being that of
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 73 
 
 Alexander Polyhistor, made in the first century B. c, 
 and Josephus, " Contra Apion," which have been the 
 basis of most of the subsequent like undertakings. 
 Of these essays by far the most valuable is that 
 which we owe to Theodore Reinach. 1 He has brought 
 together more than two hundred extracts, taken 
 from more than one hundred authors, the greater 
 part of the matter serving to illustrate the impres- 
 sion which the Hebrew people made on the literary 
 men of other races who came in contact with them. 
 Many of these writers had evidently looked upon 
 this folk in the manner of intelligent publicists who 
 desired to see clearly and note with fairness what 
 they saw. Even when they evidently do no more 
 than render to us the general opinion of the socie- 
 ties hi which the Jews had been introduced, their 
 writings have value as indices of that opinion. Thus 
 we have the basis for the study of the contact 
 phenomena of the Israelites with the Aryans for 
 over half a thousand years without encountering 
 the peculiar difficulties we meet in the Christian 
 records. 
 
 For the history of the contact of the Jews with 
 the Christians of various sects, we have a great 
 body of literature which is naturally very untrust- 
 
 1 Theodore Reinach, Textet d'autewt greet et remains rtlatift au 
 Judaism : E. Leroux, Paris, 1895.
 
 74 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 worthy save to show the curiously malevolent spirit 
 developed by that intercourse. The best summary 
 account of this period comes to us, also, from Theo- 
 dore Reinach in his history of the Israelites. 1 In this 
 work the author has treated in a summary way the 
 history of his people in all the lands where they 
 have developed considerable societies. From it the 
 reader may attain a fair idea of the general relations 
 between the Jews and their masters of other faiths, 
 Mahometan and Zoroastrian as well as Christian. 
 What seems to me perhaps excessive attention is 
 given in this work to the matter of persecutions, 
 and hardly enough to the ordinary life of the un- 
 happy people ; but in a history of brutal wrongs it 
 is most natural that such episodes have claimed 
 much attention. They are indeed of a nature to 
 blind even a Christian observer to the larger ques- 
 tions as to the source of the invincible hatred which 
 those who deemed themselves followers of Christ 
 vented upon the race whence came their faith. 1 
 
 1 Histoire det Israelites depuis Vepoqtte de lew dispersion jusqu'b 
 nos jours, par Theodore Reinach : Paris, 1885, Hachette et Cie. 
 
 2 It should be understood that my personal knowledge of the 
 Israelites is limited to observations in the United States, and in 
 various European countries, and to considerable communication 
 with men learned in matters concerning that people. I have been 
 interested in these problems for more than thirty years, and have 
 taken every convenient opportunity, really all too few for the pur- 
 pose, to gain knowledge concerning them.
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 75 
 
 Before their dispersion, the Jews had for some 
 centuries occupied the Syrian part of the Anatolian 
 Peninsula, hi which the people had taken on their 
 tribal character. There had been periods of captivity 
 such as other folk of that time had to endure. Dur- 
 ing these, considerable numbers of the people had 
 been for generations held hi subjection hi Egypt or 
 hi Mesopotamia. These and other struggles with 
 their neighbor had served to intensify an ethnic 
 motive, which appears to have been originally strong, 
 making it the most intense this world has ever 
 seen. The conditions of the periods of captivity 
 were unlike those of the later slavery, such as de- 
 veloped in Greece and in Rome, hi that the folk 
 appear to have lived together, retaining their own 
 customs, not being dispersed hi a way calculated to 
 break up their tribal spirit. 
 
 During their long residence in Judea, the Israel- 
 ites were almost exclusively tillers of the soil and 
 herdsmen. It is doubtful if any similarly numerous 
 and civilized people were ever so little given to 
 manufacturing or to trade. Their domestic arts 
 were of the simplest, and they made no advances in 
 the fields of science or aesthetics. Their agriculture 
 evidently was of an excellent, intensive kind, for in 
 an arid region where only a small part of the soil is 
 tillable, they managed to maintain a denser popula-
 
 76 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 tion than could have been nourished without skill- 
 ful toil. Although a warlike people, the Hebrews 
 never developed an aggressive motive. This was 
 probably due to their lack of a proselyting spirit. 
 They hungered, as they have always done, for domi- 
 nation, but they instinctively sought that end by 
 the multiplication of their own stock and not by 
 adopting others into their tribal system. 
 
 This is not the place to consider the evolution of 
 the dominating monotheism which is a characteristic 
 if not the peculiar feature of the Jewish religion. It 
 is sufficient to say that it was not as peculiar as 
 it has been held to be, and that it alone does not 
 account for the marvelous integrity of the tribal 
 motive of that stock. So far as this was not a psy- 
 chologic accident, or, in other words, due to an inex- 
 plicable plexus of influences, it appears to have been 
 brought about, in part, at least, by the rigid system 
 of religious observances which served at once to 
 keep the faith ever present and to afford a very dis- 
 tinct bar to intercourse with other tribes. Moreover 
 in that faith there was an obsessing belief in the 
 speedy coming of a heaven-sent leader who should 
 set their people as rulers over all the earth. In these 
 conditions the Israelites developed a very compact 
 society animated by the most intense ethnic motive 
 of which we have a record. Their numbers, the rela-
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 77 
 
 tive isolation of their country, and their indisposi- 
 tion to interfere with their strong but distant neigh- 
 bors might have served to maintain the people in 
 peace for many centuries. Unhappily, two events 
 combined to make an end of their good fortune. 
 The founding of the Christian sect, followed by its 
 successful implantation in the countries about the 
 Mediterranean, and the nearly coincident rise of the 
 Roman power, together laid the foundations of two 
 thousand years of misfortune. Either of these two 
 happenings taken alone might not have been over- 
 whelming in its effects ; acting together, they were 
 to this unhappy people as the upper and nether mill- 
 stones. 
 
 The Israelites were well accustomed to sectarian 
 controversies in which the verity of Messiahs was 
 the subject. If the Christian sect had not spread to 
 other races it would either have converted the folk 
 to the new Judaism, or been suppressed, as other 
 schisms had been. They had endured three cap- 
 tivities and could doubtless have withstood that of 
 Rome, finding their chance of yet another return 
 when with their endurance they had survived the 
 strength of their conquerors. As it was, the Chris- 
 tianized Roman Empire proved to be the instrument 
 which was to crush the people that pagan Rome dis- 
 persed. As before noted, the Roman's theory of the
 
 78 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 state did not include the plan of exterminating sub- 
 jected peoples. He was perfectly willing to leave 
 a conquered folk on their ground, and with a full 
 right to worship their own gods, but he required 
 tribute and respect of the Roman laws. The inten- 
 sity of the tribal motive made it practically impos- 
 sible for the Israelites to submit to these limited 
 exaction's, so in the end the empire was forced to 
 destroy Jerusalem, and scatter its people hi such a 
 manner that they came into contact with alien folk 
 who were becoming imbued with the Christian faith. 
 It appears not improbable that the dispersion of the 
 Jews began with the first Roman conquest, for the 
 reason that some of the Jews of Spam claimed that 
 their ancestors had no share in the death of Christ, 
 as they were in exile before that event. They appear 
 to have been brought in considerable numbers into 
 Egypt, at the tune when Alexander founded the 
 city which bears his name. The li vely interest of the 
 Greek writers in Judaism from the tune of Aris- 
 totle, appears to indicate some contact with the 
 people of that faith. It is, however, probable that if 
 there were any Jews resident in other countries 
 than Judea they must have been captives, for the 
 reason that expatriation was abhorrent to the people. 
 The first appreciation of the Israelites by the 
 Greeks which has value for our purpose is in a
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 79 
 
 fragment from the writings of Theophrastus, a dis- 
 ciple of Aristotle, who died about the beginning of 
 the third century B. c. It is a citation by Porphyry 
 in his " De Abstinentia," from the laws of Theophras- 
 tus, which Reinach terms the first monument of the 
 science of justice. It is in effect an account of the 
 religious customs of the Jews, much in error as to 
 facts, but with no condemnation of their practices. 
 He speaks of them as a race of philosophers who 
 spend the day with the Lord, and the night in con- 
 templating the stars. Clearchus of Soli, another 
 pupil of Aristotle, relates a discourse of the master 
 concerning the Jews, in which they are said to be 
 descended from the philosophers of India. Further 
 the master himself praises them in much detail for 
 their admirable sobriety as well as for their conti- 
 nence. Again Megasthenes, who was sent by Seleu- 
 cus Nicator to India in the third century B. c., says 
 that all the opinions expressed by the ancients on 
 the subject of nature are to be found among the 
 philosophers outside of Greece, some of them with 
 the Brahmans of India, others in Syria among those 
 who call themselves Jews. Hermippus of Smyrna, 
 in the latter half of the third century B. c., declares 
 that Pythagoras borrowed much from the Jews, 
 especially in regard to his views as to the immortal- 
 ity of the soul.
 
 80 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 It is not until we come to Posidonius of Apamea, 
 who died about the middle of the first century B. c., 
 that we begin to find any criticism of the customs or 
 faith of the Jews. One or two writers of this period 
 comment on their unwillingness to defend them- 
 selves from their enemies on the Sabbath. Posi- 
 donius, himself a Syrian, speaks of the people hav- 
 ing established laws requiring that no one of them 
 should show any kindness to a stranger, and that 
 on this account the friends of Antiochus urged him 
 to destroy them. About the same tune, Apollonius, 
 a rhetorician of Rhodes, wrote a book against the 
 Jews, the first of the long series of such works. Lit- 
 tle of this appears to have survived, but from the 
 criticisms directed against it by Josephus and the 
 use of it made by Apion in his diatribe it appears to 
 have been animated by the same spirit as its multi- 
 tudinous successors, for they are termed atheists, 
 misanthropes, thieves, cowards ; it is indeed evident 
 that the battle against the unhappy people was be- 
 gun at least half a hundred years before the birth of 
 Christ. 
 
 Although the criticism of the Israelites becomes 
 more evident in the writings of the Greek authors 
 after the tune of Posidonius, it is not until the mid- 
 dle of the second century of our era that an author, 
 Celsus, exhibits like bitterness ; the greater part of
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 81 
 
 the fragments contains no more than passing com- 
 ments on Hebraic customs, showing no hatred of 
 that people. Celsus appears to have in some way 
 suffered from the exiled folk, for he prays "that the 
 herd may hereafter leave us in peace, having received 
 a fit punishment for their impudence ; people who 
 know not the Almighty, but who have been seduced 
 and fooled by the impostures of Moses." Still it is 
 evident that the weight of criticism is not distinctly 
 against the Jews down to the beginning of the third 
 century. Dion Cassius, a rather untrustworthy his- 
 torian, much influenced by fables, speaks of them at 
 some length, but with respect. He recognizes the 
 fact that "often repressed they have finished by 
 conquering the right to practice their religious cus- 
 toms." Up to this time the influence of the competi- 
 tion between the ancient faith and that of the Chris- 
 tians is not traceable in the Greek authors. When 
 they disliked the Jewish people or their customs it 
 was not in the least because of any prejudices de- 
 rived from Christian sources ; according to my reck- 
 oning, not more than one in ten of the authors 
 cited down to Julian the Apostate in the middle of 
 the fourth century displays any distinct prejudice 
 against the race. Those who show an active hatred 
 appear generally to have derived their state of mind 
 from Alexandria, where the Jews were naturally
 
 82 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 much disliked. There seems reason to believe that 
 the hatred of the Jews among intelligent pagans, 
 Greeks, or Romans of Greek culture, who did not 
 personally know them, was by no means common 
 until centuries after the dispersion. Yet the peo- 
 ple who came into intimate contact with the Israel- 
 ites evidently developed an active dislike for them, 
 and appear, after the manner of men, to have sought 
 in their habits and beliefs a reason for the antipa- 
 thy which was due to the immediate impressions of 
 contact. The opportunities which would have come 
 to men of letters for seeing the Jews near by 
 were probably small, for though there were many 
 thousand of them scattered through the Mediterra- 
 nean countries they were aggregated hi small iso- 
 lated communities. The evidence goes to show that 
 even when dispersed in the manner of slaves sold 
 from the markets they quickly came together in 
 their little aggregations, secluding themselves as far 
 as possible from their neighbors. Julian the Apos- 
 tate in his letters shows a high appreciation of the 
 Jewish faith, and while disposed to criticise some of 
 the teachings of their prophets valued the institu- 
 tions of Israel so highly that he hoped to rebuild 
 the temple. His affection for the ancient faith ap- 
 pears to have been connected with his apostasy 
 from Christianity.
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 83 
 
 Passing now to the authors who were definitely 
 Roman in spirit, we find the first of them to show 
 their estimation of the Hebrew character is Cicero 
 (106-43 B. c.) hi his " Pro Flacco." Flaccus had been 
 governor of Asia and was accused of having appro- 
 priated large sums of money which the Jews of Asia 
 Minor were accustomed to send each year to Jeru- 
 salem for religious contributions. Cicero hi his plea 
 calls to the knowledge of the judges " the nature of 
 the Jew, the numbers of his kind, how well they 
 hold together, and how powerful they are in the 
 assemblies." He says that he speaks in a low voice 
 for the reason that there are not wanting persons 
 disposed to excite these people against him and 
 against all good citizens. Although Cicero was given 
 to working on his own fears and those of the judges 
 before whom he was pleading, we may be sure that 
 as a very skilled advocate he safely counted on a fit 
 response from the men he addressed. The passage 
 goes to prove that about fifty years before Christ 
 the Jews were a considerable element among the 
 Roman plebs, and that they were disposed to react 
 on their environment. Cicero evidently hated the 
 Jews, for in another place he speaks of them as a 
 race ** born for slavery." 
 
 In M. Terentius Varro (116-27 B.C.) we find a note 
 of admiration for the Jewish faith with its absence of
 
 84 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 graven images. In Horace occurs a reference to the 
 newly awakened proselyting humor of the people. 
 Valerius Maximus states that Cn. Cornelius Hispalus, 
 prsetor in 139 B. c., compelled the Jews to return to 
 their own country because they corrupted Roman 
 manners by the worship of Dispiter Sabazius. It is 
 likely that the author blundered hi this statement, 
 confounding the god of the Hebrews with a Phry- 
 gian divinity. Yet it appears to show that the Jews 
 at this early date had incurred suspicion as propa- 
 gandists of their faith. 
 
 In Seneca, who died 65 B. c., we find a condemna- 
 tion of the Jewish religious customs, particularly the 
 Sabbath, for the reason that by its observance they 
 lost one-seventh of their laboring tune. " Neverthe- 
 less," he says, " the practices of this rascally nation 
 have so far prevailed that they are received through- 
 out the world : the vanquished have established the 
 laws for their conquerors." We thus have from the 
 sagest man of his time evidence that the Israelites 
 had won an unusually strong place among the Ro- 
 mans. A like critical note appears briefly in Petro- 
 nius and hi Lucian. 
 
 In Pliny the Elder we find a passage full of high 
 praise for the sect of the Essenes. He speaks also of 
 another sect devoted to magic who are followers of 
 Moses. This conception of Moses as a magician ap-
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 85 
 
 pears also in other authors. Quinctilian, who died 
 about 96 B. c., says it is a disgrace to its founder to 
 have organized a nation poisonous to other nations. 
 In Martial, who died about 104 A. D., and Juvenal, 
 who died about 138 A. D., we have again the bitter 
 note. In the latter we find once more the list of 
 iniquities concerning their treatment of the stranger 
 and their failure to take part on the seventh day hi 
 the duties of life. Here, too, there is reference to 
 conversions made by the Jews. 
 
 It is hi Tacitus, born about 55 A. D., that we find 
 the most extended and by far the most scathing 
 diatribe against the Jews that exists in any extant 
 Latin writing. What among other writers appears 
 as no more than dislike is by him set forth with a 
 rancorous hatred. He refers to the order of the sen- 
 ate in the year 19 by which four thousand Jews 
 were sent to fight the brigands in Sardinia, calling 
 them " libertines infected by this (Jewish) supersti- 
 tion ; " saying, further, that if they perished it would 
 be no matter for regret. He says of Christianity 
 that it is another execrable superstition which had 
 its origin in Judea. Then follows a general account 
 of the Jews, with a story of the siege of Jerusalem 
 by Titus. Though interesting on account of its style 
 it is worthless as history ; its value is found in the 
 light it throws on the state of mind of an able and
 
 86 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 judicious man who generally is trustworthy, but 
 who in this matter was provoked by rage to the 
 characteristic anti-semitic state of mind. 
 
 From the time of Tacitus onward to the end of 
 the period hi which the Roman motive, as distin- 
 guished from the Christian, found expression, the 
 few notable records indicate that the state of mind 
 concerning the Jews which we find hi Tacitus was 
 generally approved. The last of these authors worthy 
 of note, Rutilius Numatianus, is a poet born hi Gaul 
 who wrote in the first part of the fifth century. To 
 him we owe an interesting narration in verse, giv- 
 ing an account of a journey from Rome to Gaul. In 
 this he describes a Jew, with whom he came in con- 
 tact, hi the f ollowing terms :**... But the charm of 
 this delightful resting place was destroyed by the 
 rudeness of its keeper, a ruder host than Antipathus, 
 a filthy Jew who had charge of the place. . . . We 
 answered him with the curses which his miserable 
 race deserves, a shameless folk who practice circum- 
 cision. . . . Whose souls are even colder than their 
 religion : who pass hi shameful idleness one day hi 
 seven in imitation of their vile God. Their other be- 
 liefs are lying dreams of crazy slaves that a child 
 would not believe. Would it had pleased Heaven 
 that Judea had never been conquered by the wars of 
 Pompey and the arms of Titus. The uprooted evil
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 87 
 
 spreads the contagion abroad and the vanquished 
 nation oppresses its conquerors." The impression 
 we derive from the interesting poem of Rutilius, the 
 latest of the Roman poets, is that he was of very 
 gentle quality. His descriptions of scenery are near 
 to the best we find in that group of authors. That 
 he should have gone out of his way thus to heap in- 
 sults on the Jewish people shows that their presence 
 offended him sorely. 
 
 With Rutilius we close the account of about ten 
 centuries of pagan Greece and Rome with the Isra- 
 elites, a period comparable in length to that which 
 has elapsed since the time of King Alfred. It is a 
 strange story. In the beginning, when they were 
 not personally known, and while their religion and 
 their customs were fairly well understood, they 
 were esteemed as philosophers. As soon, however, 
 as they began to appear in considerable numbers 
 on the northern shores of the Mediterranean they 
 became the objects of general abuse. It is not that 
 they were folk of curious aspect ; Greeks and Ro- 
 mans alike were used to such men ; and, so far as 
 I have been able to find, they in no wise revolted 
 even at the blackest Africans. They seem to have 
 welcomed all other kinds of men with an amiable 
 curiosity. I propose further on to examine into the 
 reasons for this prejudice, which, in the case of the
 
 88 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 Romans, appears almost to do violence to the essen- 
 tial sobriety of their nature and their business-like 
 way of looking upon the differences between men. 
 The main point for our immediate purpose is to note 
 that the judgment of many of the ablest men of the 
 pagan world, Greeks and Romans alike, was to the 
 effect that the Israelites were a very peculiar and 
 detestable people. 
 
 It is evident that the attitude of Christian Europe 
 towards the Jews was but a continuation of that 
 into which the earlier pagan Europe had been led 
 by its experience with that race. It should be noted 
 that the destruction of Jerusalem so far scattered 
 the Jewish population that in the second century 
 of our era it is said that there was no city of the 
 empire where some member of the race could not 
 be found. The evidence goes to show that the 
 Israelites, originally closely bound up with their 
 country, had begun to wander before the final de- 
 struction of their city. We do not know the number 
 sold into slavery after the campaign of Titus, but it 
 is likely to have amounted to more than a hundred 
 thousand. There are no statements that afford even 
 a basis for conjecture as to the number of Jews, or 
 the ratio of their folk to the other elements of the 
 population at the time when the Christian church 
 came to hold the temporal power.
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 89 
 
 It is a common supposition that the Jews entered 
 Europe altogether by way of the Mediterranean. It 
 appears probable that there was a considerable 
 movement into Occidental countries by way of By- 
 zantium and by even more northern routes. Thus 
 it appears that some time before the advent of 
 Mahomet, probably in the seventh century, a con- 
 siderable colony of Israelites was established on the 
 Volga, and that a king of the Kazans who held this 
 region was converted to the Jewish faith. There 
 seems to be no evidence as to the stock to which 
 these Kazans belonged, or their numbers. We know 
 no more of them save that in the tenth century 
 they were conquered by Russians from Kiev, and 
 that some of them found refuge hi the Crimea. Rei- 
 nach states that certain writers have held the Polish 
 Jews to be in part the descendants of the Kazan col- 
 ony. A more southern path to Transalpine Europe 
 was open to them by way of Byzantium and the 
 Danube. It appears not impossible that some por- 
 tion of the Jewish folk of Germany entered that 
 country by this road. 
 
 It should be noted that a large, if not the greater 
 part, of the voluntary migration of the Jews, after 
 the destruction of their city, was to the eastward 
 into Mesopotamia, a region better known to them 
 than the Occident. It is evident that they found
 
 90 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 there more favorable conditions than Europe af- 
 forded, for they were for a time so far exempt from 
 persecutions that after their ancient manner they 
 developed characteristic hostile sects. The conquest 
 of Irak by the Mussulmans, their kindred in race 
 and faith, was for a time advantageous to the devel- 
 opment of the Jews. About the year 1000 the dis- 
 like of the native people appears to have led to the 
 destruction of the Jewish colonies in Mesopotamia, 
 but the thousand years of their last experiences in 
 the valley of the Twin Rivers appears to have been 
 in many ways the happiest of their race, certainly 
 the most fortunate of their existence outside the 
 limits of Judea. 
 
 Next in importance to the settlements of the ex- 
 patriated Jews in Irak come those of Spain. As 
 before remarked, this colonization may, in part, date 
 back to the first destruction of the temple. It cer- 
 tainly was extensive before the downfall of the Ro- 
 man empire ; and it is here that the struggle with the 
 christianized peoples was the longest and most vio- 
 lent. The earlier of the Visigoth kings were followers 
 of Aryanism ; this was a form of the Christian faith 
 closely allied to modern Unitarianism, that is to say, 
 it was without the element of polytheism which was 
 established in the faith by the Council of Nice, and 
 which made it impossible to effect any reconcilia-
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 91 
 
 tion between the old and the new Judaism. So long 
 as this Aryan creed prevailed, the relations in Spain 
 between Jews and Christians were not seriously in- 
 imical, but when at the end of the sixth century 
 the kings became orthodox the trouble began which 
 was to end eight hundred years later in the expul- 
 sion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. It is 
 impracticable in this writing to give even in outline 
 the history of the conflict between the old and new 
 Judaism in Spam. So far as I have been able to 
 trace the march of that tragic series of events, the 
 facts go to show that the hatred of the Spaniards 
 for the Israelites was not altogether, perhaps not 
 mainly, because of religious differences, but was due, 
 at least in part, to difference in temper of the con- 
 trasted folk. That the treatment of the Jews in 
 Spain was more obdurately cruel than elsewhere, 
 though brutal enough in other countries, was per- 
 haps due to the survival of a certain cruel motive in 
 the Spanish blood which has continued to our day. 
 The most interesting feature in the social history 
 of the Spanish Jews is that we find there the first 
 clear evidence of a development in them of that 
 capacity for finance which has become so character- 
 istic of the race in all Occidental countries. Here, 
 as elsewhere, the establishment of this occupation 
 appears to have been due to the enforced separa-
 
 92 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 tion of the Jews from the land, and the limitation 
 of their employment to those occupations which 
 were deemed for one reason or another disgraceful. 
 Among these the early Christians reckoned the loan- 
 ing of money at interest, or, as it was termed, usury. 
 In other countries, as in France, we find it specifi- 
 cally required that the Jews shall serve as money- 
 lenders. Thus a people who by native impulse and 
 customary training were fundamentally soil-tillers 
 and herdsmen, and who evidently tended to be- 
 come agriculturists hi the Occidental countries to 
 which they were driven, were forced to peculiar 
 trades such as peddling, garbage-picking, and lend- 
 ing money. Notwithstanding their debased and op- 
 pressed condition, the Spanish Jews attained a 
 higher intellectual development than any of their 
 compatriots during the Middle Ages. 
 
 The incident of the expulsion of the Jews from 
 Spain is on many accounts the most tragic of all their 
 unhappy experiences since the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem. There is no definite information as to the num- 
 ber of people who were forced to leave the country, 
 but it has been reckoned at three hundred thousand. 
 Of these about eighty thousand found a temporary 
 asylum in Portugal, while the remainder were scat- 
 tered nearly as widely as were their ancestors at the 
 last destruction of the temple. Many were driven to
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 93 
 
 Africa ; some found refuge in Holland, including the 
 family of the philosopher Spinoza ; but it is likely 
 that a large part of the unhappy folk perished in 
 their wanderings in search of shelter, which most 
 lands denied them. It is some satisfaction in con- 
 templating this miserable situation that the loss 
 Spain suffered from the banishment of this ablest 
 part of its people proved to be irreplaceable ; it was 
 even more serious than that inflicted half a century 
 later by the destruction of the Armada. 
 
 The history of the Jews hi the several states which 
 now constitute France is, hi effect, a repetition of 
 that which developed in Spain, with certain differ- 
 ences due to diversities in the temperament of the 
 people. In Spain, after the torment began, it was 
 particularly enhanced by the secular and religious 
 atrocities which continued for eight or more centuries 
 until the final expulsion of the people. In France the 
 outbreaks came much later, and though more occa- 
 sional, were even more atrocious than south of the 
 Pyrenees. Down to the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century the situation of the Jews in France was, as 
 compared with that in Spain, on the whole tolerable. 
 In 855 their expulsion was ordered; but it was not 
 effected. The Merovingian kings repeatedly under- 
 took to enforce baptism on the race, but these actions 
 were fitful and led to no very serious consequences.
 
 94 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 It was a troubled time, and the Israelites probably 
 had no more than their share of griefs. 
 
 There seems reason to believe that something like 
 a reconciliation between the Christians and Jews of 
 northern Europe was in the eleventh century in pro- 
 cess of accomplishment. The resumption of perse- 
 cution came with that curious succession of national 
 excitements, apparently hysterical in their nature, 
 known as the Crusades, contagions of religious ex- 
 citement which appear to be due to the same condi- 
 tions as the well-known " revivals." The first of the 
 Crusades, that led by Godfrey de Bouillon, in 1096, 
 spread devastation throughout the valley of the 
 Rhine. The undisciplined, insane hordes began their 
 conquest of the Holy Land by despoiling and slay- 
 ing the Jews they encountered. It is estimated that 
 twelve thousand were slain. From Trves to Prague 
 this ruin seems to have been general. It does not 
 appear that the local governments or the native peo- 
 ple of this district shared hi these outrages ; in fact, 
 it is said that the Archbishop of Cologne sheltered 
 the Jews in his castle. Those who took part in this 
 crusade were in motive brigands ; in fact, all those ex- 
 peditions were little better than organized brigand- 
 age. 
 
 The Second Crusade renewed the attacks upon the 
 Jews of France and Germany. The Pope granted to
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 95 
 
 all who joined in the expedition a dispensation from 
 their debts to the money-lenders of Jewish race, and 
 the preaching monks called for their slaughter. One 
 of the leaders of the group, the Abbe Pierre de Cluny, 
 held that it was not worth while to go to the end of 
 the world, enduring a great loss of money and men, 
 and to leave behind dwelling in peace other infidels 
 a thousand tunes more to blame for the death of 
 Christ than the Mahometans. Here, again, the mag- 
 nates of the Church did much to restrain the fury 
 awakened by such priests. 
 The Third Crusade is notable for the outbreaks 
 
 against the Jews in England. Up to that time the 
 \ 
 
 people had been allowed to dwell peaceably in that 
 country, but when Richard Cceur de Lion was 
 crowned (1189) an outbreak began in London and 
 spread widely, to Norwich, Lynn, and even to York, 
 where five hundred were massacred. From the be- 
 ginning of Coeur de Lion's reign to that of Edward I. 
 the Jews of England and its continental provinces 
 were the subjects of much oppression, and in 1290, 
 after a century of suffering, all were driven out of 
 the English realm. They were not allowed to reen- 
 ter the country until the time of Cromwell, when 
 without formal abrogation of the law they were per- 
 mitted to return. 
 The condition of the Jews in France remained,
 
 96 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 on the whole, endurable long after the outbreak 
 of bitter persecutions in more northern countries. 
 The intolerance awakened by the frenzy of the Cru- 
 sades appears to have begun earlier and to have 
 been more intense in England and in Germany than 
 elsewhere, except, perhaps, in Spain. When, how- 
 ever, the persecuting motive among the French was 
 aroused in the fourteenth century, it quickly took 
 on the curious and brutal quality which has so often 
 been associated with the outbreaks of that people. 
 The events equal in their horror, if they do not 
 exceed, those of the Huguenot massacres, or those 
 of the "Terror" of the eighteenth century. They 
 serve to show, with other like phenomena, extending 
 over a duration of about eight centuries and down 
 to the present generation, that beneath the amiable 
 surface of this folk, there lies an enduring tiger-like 
 cruelty such as has never elsewhere resisted the 
 influences of civilization. I shall in the sequel have 
 occasion to discuss this diversity in the rate of sur- 
 vival of the savage motive, and the conditions of its 
 resurgence in different peoples. Just here it is not 
 necessary to do more than indicate the existence of 
 such variations ; and the fact that this savage impulse 
 seems more ineradicable among the French than in 
 any other variety of our species, a very brief state- 
 ment of the more brutal occurrences is sufficient to
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 97 
 
 show. In the town of Blois the whole of the Jewish 
 community, numbering more than fifty persons, were 
 burned alive. In the massacre of Beziers hi the war 
 against the Albigenses, in which twenty thousand 
 persons were slain, the Jews shared the fate of the 
 dissenting Christians. At Strassburg two thousand 
 were burned on one scaffold. The worst of these 
 persecutions were due to the notion that the Jews 
 were in some way responsible for the invasion of the 
 plague known as the Black Death. It should be said 
 that these persecutions were for a tune as common 
 in southern Germany as in France. It is the per- 
 manence of the state of mind hi the latter country 
 that is noteworthy. 
 
 It is not worth while to follow hi more detail 
 the fearful record of Jewish persecutions hi the 
 later centuries of the so-called Middle Ages. It may 
 be said in brief that from Poland to Portugal, and 
 from Scotland to Sicily, the people had been slain, 
 driven into exile, or reduced to a state far lower 
 than that to which any other civilized folk has ever 
 been reduced. In all countries they had been forced 
 to abandon agriculture and the mechanic arts, and 
 to betake themselves to employments deemed igno- 
 minious, including money-lending. They were com- 
 pelled to dwell in special quarters of the larger 
 towns, the Ghettos, where, owing to their fecundity,
 
 98 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 they lived closely packed in conditions so unsani- 
 tary that, but for certain religious rules of cleanli- 
 ness and an intense vitality, they probably would 
 have been exterminated. In this state they were so 
 far debased that, for a tune, even their religious mo- 
 tive seemed hi danger of extinction. They developed, 
 moreover, such mystical beliefs as clearly denoted a 
 degradation in their mental estate. Had these con- 
 ditions continued to the present day, it seems likely 
 that the potency of the race would have been under- 
 mined. The inexhaustible spirit of this people is well 
 shown by the fact that whenever there came a lull in 
 the storm which bent them down, we find that num- 
 bers of them quickly rose to stations of eminence as 
 physicians, translators, or ministers of finance, occu- 
 pations which showed that in the worst centuries 
 of their sufferings their ancient capacity lingered in 
 the stock. 
 
 The change from the mediaeval to the modern con- 
 ditions of the Jews evidently began with the Re- 
 naissance. That remarkable movement of the Euro- 
 pean spirit had for its most important effect the 
 introduction of the Greek motive of skepticism con- 
 cerning religious beliefs which led to the Reforma- 
 tion, and to the development of science. Although 
 this spirit is most evident hi literature, hi the writ- 
 ings of men who were more or less parted from
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 99 
 
 Catholicism, it penetrated all classes of educated 
 people, and in time so far affected the higher clergy 
 as to make the atrocities of earlier centuries well- 
 nigh impossible. It should be said that, with rare 
 exceptions, the popes and the magnates of the 
 Church had never been leaders in the persecution of 
 the Jews, and in many instances had determinedly 
 struggled against its more serious inflictions. Now 
 the penetrating motive of the Renaissance carried 
 the enlargement far enough abroad to effect a con- 
 siderable betterment in the condition of this unhappy 
 people. There were no more wholesale slaughter- 
 ings of communities, no more of the ravages such 
 as attended the Crusades; yet the laws and cus- 
 toms which served to debase the folk remained un- 
 changed, and in certain regions remote from the 
 centres of culture, as in Portugal, the auto da fe was 
 still possible as late as the eighteenth century. But 
 there was now a Montesquieu to arraign the inquisi- 
 tors, and a world of high-minded men to echo his 
 remonstrance in a way to daunt the followers of 
 Torquemada. 
 
 The first distinct movement in Germany for the 
 amelioration of the state of the Jews was begun 
 in the seventeenth century by Frederick William, 
 Elector of Brandenburg. He permitted certain Jews 
 to be educated in the Medical School of Frankfort.
 
 100 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 He and his successor Frederick, though on the 
 whole retaining the ancient oppressive laws, dealt 
 gently with the Israelites and gave them something 
 better than a chance of mere existence. From this 
 Berlin community came Moses Mendelssohn, who 
 was, in the manner of the prophets, to lead his peo- 
 ple to better days. Although there had been philoso- 
 phers of fame who were Jews before Mendelssohn, 
 none other had come at a time, or with the capa- 
 city, to enter into close intellectual relations with 
 the Christian world. His eminent ability and his 
 personal qualities together gave him a very high 
 place among German men of learning, and his inti- 
 mate friendship with Lessing helped him to gain 
 a hearing such as no Jew had won in seventeen 
 Christian centuries. The most striking and impor- 
 tant effect of Mendelssohn's work and that of his 
 friend of Christian origin, Lessing, was the awaken- 
 ing of the Jews of Germany to a sense of their capa- 
 city. Hitherto their sufferings had not been set be- 
 fore their tormentors, they had endured in silence. 
 In the school of Mendelssohn are to be counted 
 many men who were hardly heard ; though at first 
 to no sensible effect, their influence was hi tune po- 
 tent for good. 
 
 The first step in the legal emancipation of the 
 Jews came in France at the tune of the Revolution.
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 101 
 
 Except in Alsace and Lorraine, the last edict of ban- 
 ishment remained in effect ; but the Jews, after their 
 final expulsion from the rest of France, had been 
 allowed to remain in those provinces, and also at 
 Bordeaux and hi the colonies of the West Indies. 
 After much debate, the Assembly, under the leader- 
 ship of Mirabeau, but with the support of all the 
 higher spirits of the time, gave them the full rights 
 of citizens. Like many another reform hi France or 
 elsewhere, the results of the law were for a time 
 imperfect. During the "Terror" the Jews were 
 subjected to pillage. Under Bonaparte their faith 
 was denied the recognition given to that of Catho- 
 lics or Protestants. Nevertheless, at the end of the 
 struggle justice prevailed, and, for the first time 
 since the destruction of Jerusalem, the people dwelt 
 hi a European state, subjected to the same laws as 
 their fellow-citizens of the newer faith. 
 
 The example of France in emancipating the Jews 
 was hi tune substantially followed by all the states 
 of western Europe, so that with the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century the legal oppression of the 
 Jews may be said to have come to an end. Some limi- 
 tations of rights continued, but they were hi nature 
 trifling as compared with those which had existed 
 for near two thousand years. Since the decree of 
 the Assembly the question has been, not as to the
 
 102 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 legal status of the people in the states of western 
 Europe, but as to their social station and the condi- 
 tions of their contacts with the Christian folk with 
 whom they dwelt. It may be said hi general that 
 the betterment of the statutes helped hi no consid- 
 erable degree the social station of the Israelites. It 
 protected them hi a measure from outrages done 
 under the color of law, it gave them the rights of 
 citizens, but it gave them none of the privileges of 
 the societies hi which they dwelt. The gain they had 
 made was due to the rational motives of their some- 
 time masters and not to any diminution of the in- 
 stinctive prejudices which they have had to meet in 
 their contacts with Occidental peoples. In fact, the 
 instinctive dislike which fences the Jews from their 
 fellow-citizens of the newer faith appeared for some 
 time after their legal emancipation rather to increase 
 than to diminish. 
 
 The gain hi social status which the Jews have 
 made since the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 has been mainly due to the capacity of the people to 
 win eminence hi their modern calling of money- 
 lending, hi the scientific professions, and hi general 
 commerce. In these fields of action Germany, France, 
 England, and the United States have afforded them 
 large opportunities for winning past the ancient limi- 
 tations. The result has been that a host of individ-
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 103 
 
 uals have escaped from the moral Ghetto in which 
 their race has been so long imprisoned. In certain 
 communities, as in the southern part of the United 
 States, where the Jewish people consisted almost en- 
 tirely of educated folk who had, in a great measure, 
 parted from their race, they have been accepted as 
 social equals. Yet the startling fact remains that, 
 after a hundred years of emancipation, and a phe- 
 nomenal success in nearly all branches of high intel- 
 lectual and citizenly endeavor, the instinctive dislike 
 to the folk on the part of the Christians appears to 
 be lessened to no appreciable extent. We thus have 
 presented to us the most remarkable ethnic phe- 
 nomena that have been developed in history. How 
 extraordinary may be judged by a brief review of 
 the situation. 
 
 Although the foregoing very inadequate sketch of 
 the persecutions which have been inflicted on the 
 Jews is quite insufficient to set forth what is re- 
 corded of the sufferings of that unhappy people, it 
 may, with the help of the reader's imagination, en- 
 able him to form some conception of this most star- 
 tling series of events in the history of man. What 
 is of record, if compactly set forth, would doubt- 
 less fill several volumes of greater bulk than this, 
 though limited to a brief recital of the executions,
 
 104 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 murders, pillages, and expatriations of such mag- 
 nitude as could fitly be classed with the recent 
 Turkish outrages in Armenia or the massacres of 
 Russia which shocked the civilized world. This his- 
 tory would need to be supplemented by the vaster, 
 unrecorded sum of ills, the day by day inflictions 
 of wrong of which either the chroniclers have taken 
 no account, or the records of them have perished. 
 We have to conceive of this unhappy people, for 
 all their ability, and it is certainly greater than that 
 exhibited by any other, living as Pariahs, the sub- 
 jects of unending outrages which shame every Euro- 
 pean state which shame the very name of man. 
 The most important question in this inquiry is to 
 the meaning of these events, the source of the mo- 
 tives which have led to them. 
 
 The common opinion as to the origin of the Jew- 
 ish persecutions is that they are due to religious 
 prejudices alone. The fact that Christ was crucified 
 by the forefathers of the Israelites has, it is true, 
 been again and again used as a war-cry by the com- 
 mon folk ; but it has never appeared to have much 
 weight with the leaders among the Christians. Dull 
 as we may believe men to be, it is inconceivable 
 that any above the unthinking herd could have held 
 to this reason for a hatred which is shown to be irra- 
 tional by the tenet of the Church that Christ was
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 105 
 
 foreordained thus to suffer, that his mission could not 
 have been accomplished without the unhappy share 
 which his fellows of the orthodox Jewish faith were 
 fated to have in his death. Some have held that we 
 have in this history an example of the curious pas- 
 sion for the integrity and power of a people's God, 
 that the trouble has come from the curious tangle of 
 prejudices which we term religious. The incomplete- 
 ness of these explanations at once appears when 
 we consider the pre-Christian stages of this history. 
 We have seen that the Hellenes as well as the Ro- 
 mans, even before the sect of Christians was known 
 to them, were moved to a like hatred of the Jews. 
 Every important incident in the unhappy relations 
 of the Christian folk to the Israelites was paralleled 
 in the pagan centuries of Rome that followed the 
 destruction of Jerusalem. That the Roman's hatred 
 of the Jews was not due to any prejudice against 
 foreigners, or those of alien faith, is shown by their 
 accord with Egyptians and Pho3nicians, hi fact, as 
 before remarked, with all sorts and conditions of 
 men. The struggle with Carthage had been far 
 bitterer and more costly than that with Judea, yet 
 they dealt with the conquered remnant of that Afri- 
 can people in the Roman business-like way. No one 
 can go over the records which exhibit their state of 
 mind towards the Jews hi the seven centuries of
 
 106 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 contact with them and fail to see that something 
 else than religious prejudice was at the foundation 
 of the hatred which such men as Tacitus bore to 
 them. 
 
 There is still another gauge which serves to give 
 us an approximate measurement of the value of the 
 religious motive in determining the social status of 
 the Jews. This is found in the recent outbreak of 
 hatred of the race in Germany, France, and hi less 
 degree, yet evidently, in the United States ; traces 
 of the movement appear also in other countries. 
 Twenty years ago there were fair grounds for be- 
 lieving that the relations between the two races 
 were near to a satisfactory adjustment in all civi- 
 lized countries except Russia, and that the begin- 
 ning of the twentieth century would end the two 
 millenniums of shame. But in the last decade there 
 has been a startling revival of the ancient humor. 
 In Germany, the effort to embody in laws this reac- 
 tionary motive has so far failed of success, but the 
 social barriers between the people who have a share 
 of Jewish blood, whether of that faith or no, and 
 the other Germans are much stronger than they 
 were in the earlier decades of the last century. It is 
 hardly too much to say that the prejudice is twice 
 as Intense as it was then. The French who took 
 part in this singular movement, at least the intel-
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 107 
 
 lectual leaders of the mob, are about as separated 
 from Christianity as were Tacitus or Rutilius, yet 
 in the manner of those worthy pagans they show 
 a deep-seated and brutal hatred of a people from 
 whom they could have received no serious harm. 
 Thus we see that the basis of the ancient dislike 
 of the Aryan for the Israelite has not been due 
 essentially, or in any effective measure, to differ- 
 ences hi religious belief, but rests upon some more 
 fundamental basis of discord. 
 
 Recognizing, as I long have done, that the preju- 
 dice which parts these races is not founded on differ- 
 ences of faith, I have endeavored of late to note in 
 my personal experience, and through that of many 
 of my associates, the phenomena of contact between 
 the two peoples which gave rise to this dislike. It 
 seemed to me a fan* hypothesis that the trouble is 
 attributable mainly to something which takes place 
 in the intercourse between the individuals of the 
 diverse stocks. This is shown to be eminently prob- 
 able by the facts hereafter to be recounted con- 
 cerning the contacts between the whites and blacks 
 of this country, where we have excellent examples 
 of the repugnance which arises when folk of very 
 diverse aspect come together. At first, I sought to 
 explain the situation by examining into my own 
 state of mind when brought into relations, as I
 
 108 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 frequently am, with Jews. I found, however, that 
 while there seemed at first to be some slight trace 
 of an adverse mental attitude on my part towards 
 these people when I came into personal intercourse 
 with them, the state of mind was partly due to the 
 curiosity aroused by my inquiry which, for the 
 moment, denied me the natural sympathetic forth- 
 going to the neighbor. In other words, it was evi- 
 dent that I had so far won past the original state of 
 prejudice which once was strong, that I could not 
 observe in myself the features which I wished to 
 inquire into. I therefore selected two score of my 
 friends whose testimony seemed likely to be valua- 
 ble, and asked them to note with care their states of 
 mind when they were brought into what should 
 be neighborly relations with Jews, comparing their 
 emotions with those that were awakened by like in- 
 tercourse with persons of similar general quality 
 who were members of their own race. 
 
 The result of the above inquiry, insufficient as it 
 has been, distinctly indicates that there is something 
 very generally felt by people of the Aryan race hi 
 their contact with the Israelites which is peculiar. 
 All save one of these witnesses agree in the state- 
 ment that whenever the Semitic quality is evident 
 enough to identify the person with that people, they 
 experience a certain definite repulsion. In almost
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 109 
 
 all cases they are sure that this feeling is not due 
 to the fact that they are infected by the custom- 
 ary prejudice, they believe it to be an impression 
 awakened by the particular contact ; all agree that 
 this impression differs from that which is made by 
 persons of their own race of like social condition. It 
 is less clear, yet I think evident, that my helpers 
 generally have a somewhat like experience when 
 they come in contact with persons of any very alien 
 stock, as with American Indians, or, where they are 
 unused to them, with Negroes. Only in the case of 
 other races there is less repugnance, or, perhaps, no 
 definite sense of it, aroused by the contact, while 
 they all substantially agree that there is some share 
 of this feeling towards the Jews which is aroused at 
 the time when they hold converse with them. 
 
 I have been tempted to submit the question as to 
 this spontaneous or instinctive contact dislike to a 
 more extended statistical inquiry, but have deemed 
 it best not to do so for several reasons. In the first 
 place, the results would not have even indicative 
 value unless the statistician knew well the quality 
 of the persons from whom he sought help. Any wide 
 extension of the inquiry would do no more than 
 prove that the Jews were generally disliked, and 
 that, unhappily, does not need proof. In the second 
 place, my experience has shown me, what hardly
 
 110 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 needed to be proved, that very few persons are able, 
 in the naturally and fitly absorbing conditions of 
 human intercourse, to note their feelings in the man- 
 ner needed in this investigation. There is, indeed, 
 something unpleasantly near debasement in the pro- 
 cess. Lastly, I have found that it was only by much 
 questioning that I was able to bring out the infor- 
 mation I needed. Therefore, while the results of 
 this inquiry lack the numerical accumulation which 
 might easily have been given by a more extended 
 process, they seem to me to have distinct value in 
 suggesting at least some of the reasons for this dis- 
 like of the Aryan for the Semitic people. 
 
 The greater number of those who have helped me 
 as observers in this inquiry note that there is on 
 contact with those who are characteristic Jews a dis- 
 tinct and peculiar state of mind aroused by the in- 
 tercourse. They are conscious that the feeling is 
 other than what they experience when they meet 
 those of their own race, but there is, as might be 
 expected, no clear agreement as to the precise nature 
 of the impression. So far as I have been able to 
 gather, the state is emotional and instinctive, being 
 in effect the same as that which is always excited by 
 contact of racially different men. To support and 
 explain this primitive emotion there is a natural ef- 
 fort to find some peculiarities of aspect or demeanor
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 111 
 
 in the neighbor. As to what these idiosyncrasies are 
 there is a considerable difference of opinion. The 
 greater number of the observers agree that there is 
 a failure on the part of the Jews to respond in like 
 temper to the greeting which they send them ; they 
 agree further that there is generally a sense of avid- 
 ity, a sense of the presence of a seeking in the Jew 
 for immediate profit, a desire to win at once some ad- 
 vantage from the situation such as is not immediately 
 disclosed, however clear it might be in the mind of 
 an interlocutor of his own race. Several have stated 
 that the offense came from a feeling that the Jew 
 neighbor was smarter than themselves, having keener 
 wits and a mind more intent on gainful ends. Others 
 state that the Israelitic spirit makes a much swifter 
 response to the greeting the stranger gives them 
 than the Aryan, and that the acquaintance is forced 
 in such an irritating manner as to breed dislike. 
 
 This last noted feature in the contact phenomena 
 of Israelites and Aryans appears to me a matter of 
 much importance, especially as it accords with my 
 own experience and with observations formed long 
 before I began to devise and criticise theories on this 
 subject. As one of the Deans of Harvard University 
 I have been for ten years in a position where I have 
 to meet from year to year a number of young He- 
 brews. It has been evident to me from the first that
 
 112 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 these youths normally respond much more swiftly to 
 my greeting than those of my own race, and that 
 they divine and act on my state of mind with far 
 greater celerity. They are, in fact, so quick that 
 they are often where I am in my slower way about to 
 be before I am really there ; this would make them 
 at tunes seem irritating, indeed, presumptuous, were 
 it not interesting to me from a racial point of view. 
 To those who are hi no wise concerned with such 
 questions this alacrity is naturally exasperating, 
 especially when the movement is not only of the wits 
 but of the sympathies. We all know how disagree- 
 able it is to have the neighbor call on us for some 
 kind of affectionate response before we are ready to 
 be moved, and how certain is such a summons to 
 dry the springs which else might have yielded abun- 
 dantly. In our slow Aryan way we demand an in- 
 troductory process on the part of the fellow-man 
 who would successfully appeal to our emotions. Our 
 orators know this and provide ample exordiums for 
 their moving passages ; none ventures in the manner 
 of the Hebrew prophet to assume that his hearers 
 will awaken at a cry. 
 
 In observations made for me by young men, stu- 
 dents in Harvard College, and thus under my own 
 eyes, so to speak, I have confirmation of the hypo- 
 thesis that an important part of the difficulty of
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 113 
 
 social contact between these diverse people is due 
 to the difference in the way hi which their minds 
 work when they come together. It is an unhappy 
 fact that the last wave of anti-Semiticism, that which 
 led to the semblance of persecution hi Germany and 
 to the abominations of the Dreyfus incident in 
 France, swept across the Atlantic and affected to a 
 considerable extent the social position of the Jews 
 in the United States. They became unwelcome in 
 clubs and hi hotels; their daughters were not ad- 
 mitted to certain private schools: and hi various 
 ways the unhappy people were made to feel the 
 ancient burden as in this country it had not come 
 upon them before. Of this resurgence of dislike 
 the Hebrew students in Harvard College had some, 
 though not a serious, share. Thirty years ago, when 
 the Jews first began to be an appreciable element 
 among the students of this University, there was no 
 evidence whatever of dislike to them. They took 
 their place among their mates with no reference to 
 their race ; that, indeed, seemed so far as I could dis- 
 cern to be quite unnoted. Following on the last Eu- 
 ropean epidemic of hatred to the Israelites there has 
 developed among this body of students an evident dis- 
 like for their fellows of that race. The feeling is by no 
 means universal or intense ; it is condemned by the 
 greater part of the leaders of opinion among these
 
 114 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 young men ; yet it is sufficient to be noticeable and 
 to awaken keen regret in all those who love the cath- . 
 olio and humane motive which so long has inspired 
 that school. One of my helpers in the effort to find 
 the reason for this state of mind summed up his 
 acute observations in the statement that when one 
 spoke to a Jew kindly " the fellow climbed all over 
 you." Examining into this statement I found that it 
 showed, as my own experience had done, that very 
 swift response of the Hebrew to a greeting which is 
 so well fitted to shock the slower wits of the Aryan. 
 I have elsewhere, and in this book, noted certain 
 of the racial conditions which serve to influence and 
 determine social contact. The matter is of such mo- 
 ment that it may be said again in brief that the way 
 in which the neighbor meets us when we greet him 
 is of exceeding importance. Every such meeting is 
 a psychological crisis by which all the subsequent 
 relations of the persons are likely to be shaped. 
 We have only to observe our daily social experiences 
 to see that, in this instant of meeting, judgments 
 are necessarily and intuitively formed which guide 
 all our subsequent conduct as regards the persons 
 whom they concern. In our further intercourse 
 we may more or less deliberately modify this first 
 impression, but with most men as with the lower 
 animals, especially in the case of dogs, this almost
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 115 
 
 automatic and curiously swift decision as to liking 
 or disliking made at the moment of contact is essen- 
 tially unchangeable. This curious feature of inter- 
 course between individuals, brutes as well as men, 
 probably owes its origin, as also its swiftness and 
 intensity, to certain primitive and compelling needs. 
 It was evidently necessary to the life of all the an- 
 cestors of man, creatures which were always in the 
 presence of enemies, that they formed swift judg- 
 ments concerning other beings who could harm or 
 help them. The decision had to be quickly made and 
 acted on. The action served to stamp the judgment 
 on the mind so that a renewal of the experience 
 reawakened the original emotions. This condition, 
 together with the quality of mind in its prehuman 
 and human stages which requires the classification 
 of all objects, will account for the inveterate quality 
 of those opinions which we form of the neighbor 
 when we first come to take account of him. 
 
 Turning again to the question of what it is that is 
 presented by the Jew to his Aryan brother at the 
 moment of contact, let us see if we can come any 
 nearer to the solution of the problem by a deliberate 
 presentation of the facts as they are indicated hi 
 literature and by the observations which I have en- 
 deavored to make. Let us in the beginning state 
 what will have to be admitted by all who hate the
 
 116 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 Jews, provided that those peculiar persons are able 
 to form an honest opinion concerning the actual 
 qualities of the people. The first of these facts as to 
 the quality of the Jews is that they are clearly the 
 ablest folk the world has ever known. The Athe- 
 nians for four centuries surpassed them, but no other 
 stock has ever for one thousand years maintained 
 anything like the mental estate which the Hebrews 
 have held for several times as long throughout the 
 direst afflictions. They are of abiding moral quality 
 in the larger sense of the term, for to them the rul- 
 ing peoples of the world largely owe their guidance 
 in conduct, and to their own canons they have held 
 more firmly than any other race has ever held to a 
 faith. They are very humane, as is proved by the help 
 they give each other, the good help that has enabled 
 them to live through the ages of torment they have 
 endured. That this motive is not limited to their 
 own race is proved beyond peradventure by their 
 wide-ranging charity to those from whom they have 
 received nothing but evil. It is, indeed, evident that 
 when we meet our neighbor in a Jew the chance 
 is that he is an able, trustworthy man. How, then, 
 does it come about that to ninety-nine of the hun- 
 dred of our race the Israelites are in some measure 
 abhorrent? 
 Examining into the physical aspect of the Jews
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 117 
 
 we find there nothing sufficient to account for this 
 strange instinctive dislike that has been evident for 
 more than twenty centuries. There is a quality in 
 the features and in then* expression which is marked 
 and curiously universal, so that while the percen- 
 tage of Hebrew blood hi the so-called Jews of Ger- 
 many and elsewhere is probably not large, it gives 
 an impress to the countenance which is quite un- 
 mistakable. It is, indeed, one of the misfortunes of 
 these people that they are so easily identified that 
 the face is as a hostile flag tending to arouse pre- 
 judices against them. Yet when we dispassionately 
 examine their aspect we find there one of the shape- 
 lier varieties of our kind. Their countenances are 
 more prevailingly intellectual and to my eye kind- 
 lier than the average of those we see in the Aryan 
 race. The voice is good, it usually carries more in 
 its tones than our own. In the lowlier, those who 
 have felt the hand of oppression, there is often a fur- 
 tive look, but on the average there is as much good 
 human quality in their expression as I find in any 
 other race. Comparing their physical quality with 
 that of our own race we see that they are certainly 
 nearer to ourselves than the people of any other 
 stock. Thus while one might expect some trace of 
 the inter-tribal repugnance which is a part of man's 
 inheritance from the brute and brutal man, it should
 
 118 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 be at its minimum in this contact between Jew and 
 Aryan ; it should certainly be much less than that 
 which we experience in meeting Africans or Ameri- 
 can Indians, and we know well that in those in- 
 stances it is easily won by and disregarded. It is 
 evident that it is not the physique of the Jew that 
 makes the bar between his race and our own. 
 
 Recurring to the contact impressions which the 
 Hebrew makes upon his Aryan neighbor, let us see, 
 if we may, if these can be subjected to any further 
 analysis. First of these we may note the ancient 
 charge of servility mingled with the desire to clutch 
 at any profit which he may win from his fellow-man. 
 While the Jews were much oppressed it is likely 
 that this attitude may have been one of their char- 
 acteristics, but it is not so now, rather the reverse, 
 for when relieved from all legal oppression their na- 
 tive strength naturally tends to make them self-asser- 
 tive. This combined with the swiftness of their wits, 
 with what we may term their rate of thought, brings 
 about the froward quality they are apt to exhibit at 
 first contact with their alien neighbors, the quality 
 which, I am convinced, is the most important ele- 
 ment in arousing our dislike to them. Along with 
 this difficulty arising from the mental alacrity of the 
 Hebrew goes the gainful motive which is highly de- 
 veloped in them. I do not think that this motive is
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 119 
 
 less developed in the average Aryan, but our con- 
 ventional mode of thought prescribes that it shall 
 not be evident in the first stages of intercourse and 
 that in general it shall be kept apart from social 
 relations. We have a convention that the counting- 
 room humor shall be kept out of the household or 
 other places where friendliness should rule, or if it 
 be not thus limited that it shall be well dissembled. 
 It is otherwise with the Jew ; even hi the time of 
 his national prosperity the trade spirit was mingled 
 with more serious matters. It is apparent hi his 
 religion, where he has evidently a sense of doing 
 business with the Lord as party of the second part 
 in an ancient contract. The motive has probably 
 been intensified by ages of life in which contriving 
 for safety has had to be incessant ; where the man 
 who was not always intent on the chances of life 
 was likely to perish. 
 
 It appears to me from my own observations, from 
 those of the selected persons who have aided me, 
 as well as from the history of the Jews, that their 
 minds work in a somewhat different manner from 
 our own. Our habit is to separate the fields of ac- 
 tion so that we have a limited field for preliminary 
 intercourse with men, another for business relations, 
 yet another wherein the sympathies may enter. 
 With the Hebrew all the man's work is done in one
 
 120 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 field and all together ; he is at the same time friend, 
 trader, and citizen, all of his parts working simulta- 
 neously. There is a basis for much friction in this 
 diversity of mental habit. We are naturally offended 
 to find the business motive mingled with affections, 
 for the excellent reason that it is not our way to do 
 this ; therefore it appears out of the natural order ; 
 were we to change nature with the Jew the offense 
 would be none the less. 
 
 In considering the contact phenomena of Aryan 
 and Israelite, we should note the important fact, 
 hitherto unremarked, that the latter people have not 
 to any great degree that imitative faculty which is so 
 generally developed hi the lower races of man. This 
 faculty appears to lessen hi the higher grade stocks. 
 Although certain persons with Jew blood in their 
 veins have attained distinction as actors, the race as a 
 whole is evidently incapable of attaining to such ac- 
 commodation of manner as has so often helped to re- 
 concile captive peoples to their conquerors. The fact 
 is that they are most incapable of subjection, being in 
 this regard even more obdurate than the American 
 Indian or the Chinese. The reason of this quality, 
 as has been suggested, is probably to be found in 
 the autonomic character of the Hebrew mind which, 
 more than that of any other race, perhaps, appears 
 to be of an essentially inflexible nature. For more
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 121 
 
 than twenty centuries the most dominating peoples 
 of the world have endeavored to subject the race 
 of Israel so that they would fit hi some practicable 
 way into the mould of Aryan civilization. Every im- 
 aginable resource and all the energy that could be 
 applied hi the task have left this people unchanged. 
 It is instructive to contrast the lack of a tendency 
 to imitation hi the Jews with the excess of it among 
 the American Africans. Although I have watched 
 Jews closely for many years, I have never seen in 
 them the least disposition to adapt themselves to 
 their neighbors as a Negro quickly and instinctively 
 does. The black man at once becomes the mirror of 
 his superior whether the man above him is his 
 master or no. He so naturally imitates the tones, 
 gestures, and even the superficial aspects of thought 
 of our race, that those alone who have taken pains 
 to search behind the sympathetic mask perceive 
 that he is not a white man in a black skin, but that 
 his deeper nature in many and most important re- 
 gards is profoundly different from all the other peo- 
 ples with whom we have ultimate relations. This 
 spontaneous imitative humor has stood the Negroes 
 in good stead. It has enabled them to win past the 
 original antipathy which their physical peculiarities 
 tend to arouse in vastly greater measure than those 
 of the Hebrews, and to make the whites who are
 
 122 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 accustomed to them their friends. This curious iden- 
 tification, the most complete that has ever taken 
 place between two widely parted stocks, is clearly 
 due to the unpremeditated and singularly well-ac- 
 complished adoption by the Negroes of the white 
 man's ways. 
 
 The most remarkable part of the Negro's success 
 in adjusting his thought scale to that of his Aryan 
 masters is to be noted in his contact with his neigh- 
 bors. He has managed to bring himself into a state 
 of mind which perfectly reproduces that half-merry, 
 half -solemn manner with which we habitually meet 
 the neighbor of our race. I have never seen the 
 African on his own continent, but from what I have 
 known of the new-comers of the race hi the later im- 
 portations of slaves into the southern United States 
 and Cuba, it appears evident that this is not a natu- 
 ral but an acquired quality. Just after the Civil 
 War, I had, while engaged in some work for the 
 Government about the sea islands of Georgia and 
 South Carolina, a row-boat crew of five men who 
 had been brought from Africa a few years before. 
 Their manner was entirely different from that of 
 their people who had been for generations with us ; 
 they were distinctly wild men. It was difficult to 
 form or keep any sympathetic relations with them. 
 All my contacts with them were abrupt. There was
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 123 
 
 no common ground of intercourse, but a sense of a 
 gulf that kept us apart. The contrast between my 
 relations with these people and those I had with the 
 completely naturalized blacks was very great and 
 eminently instructive. The like conditions exist in 
 Cuba, where a considerable part of the Africans, be- 
 cause of their recent importation, or because they 
 have been kept apart from the whites, retain much 
 of their native quality. It is, indeed, only where the 
 blacks have had a chance to acquire in mass the 
 habits of their superiors and to form a society per- 
 vaded with the Aryan motives that we find this 
 imitation well developed. 
 
 The Negro is in his essential qualities far more 
 remote from the Aryan than the Jew. It is of 
 course not possible accurately to gauge such differ- 
 ences, but the impression made on my mind is that 
 the space which separates our essential nature from 
 that of the Israelite has not the tenth part of the 
 value of that which parts us from our African 
 neighbors. In all that enters into the field of re- 
 ligion, the family, and the activities of society, there 
 is essential identity between ourselves and the Jews. 
 Yet for the reason that the Jew cannot imitate our 
 manner of approach to the neighbor or divine his 
 motives just as we do, he remains remote from us, 
 while the Negro, an essential alien, comes easily very
 
 124 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 near. In his lack of adaptative motive, it should be 
 noted, the Jew is curiously like ourselves. All the 
 varieties of the Aryan race have the same tribal 
 strength that makes them able masters but unfit to 
 be imitative servants. Those of the English stock 
 have this spirit in singular intensity. In all places 
 and climes they keep their qualities without a shadow 
 of turning. It is indeed evident that if we had be- 
 come the oppressed in place of being the oppressors, 
 we should have failed, much as the Jews have done, 
 to reconcile ourselves to the lash. It is doubtful 
 whether the fates would have found in us the stuff 
 for twenty centuries of endurance, but with the Jew 
 on top and the English at the bottom, the dismal 
 story would have been much the same as we find it. 
 We should perhaps have been more easily broken, 
 but we would have been quite as hard to bend. 
 
 It may seem to the reader, it will certainly so 
 seem if he has the average share of dislike for the 
 Jews, that I have not done justice to the situation 
 hi that I have failed to take proper account of the 
 simple fact that they are to our race a very unplea- 
 sant people, as is well shown by ages of history in 
 which good folk as well as bad, pagans and Chris- 
 tians alike, have united in deeming them socially im- 
 possible. Let me say, in answer, that I entirely agree 
 with this criticism so far as it is warranted by the
 
 THE HEBREW PROBLEM 125 
 
 ancient canons of human intercourse. No reasonable 
 observer, whatever his individual opinion might be, 
 would venture to question this most striking and 
 universal of all ethnic judgments. I well remember 
 that before I became interested in the matter I was 
 in the same state of mind. I shall in the final chap- 
 ter of this book endeavor to show more completely 
 what is suggested in this, that our race has hith- 
 erto been controlled in its relations with the Jews 
 and other folk it has dominated, by certain primitive 
 tribal motives inherited from the brute and savage, 
 which we have to subjugate in order that we may 
 do our part as Christians and as developed men, and 
 that unless we set about this task of civilization 
 effectively, and in a large way, we shall fail to win 
 the best the world has to give in the way of a true 
 commonwealth.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 
 
 IT needs no argument to show that the matter of 
 the future of the Negroes in the United States affords 
 the greatest problems with which our commonwealth 
 has to deal. Certain of its simpler aspects have been 
 or are now before us. One of them led by seemingly 
 inevitable steps to the greatest of all civil wars; 
 other problems of no less magnitude now demand 
 solution, problems that are likely to lead to grave 
 perplexities before they are solved, if indeed they 
 are ever to be unraveled. In many ways the Afri- 
 can complex is the most peculiar of all the entan- 
 glements that the process of civilizing and utilizing 
 men has brought about. That we may see our way 
 to discuss so much of it as relates to the question 
 with which we are dealing, I shall very briefly set 
 forth the main features. 
 
 While the peoples of the Eurasian continent were 
 in process of social development in the ten thousand 
 years or more down to the end of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, those of Africa, except for the northern fringe
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 127 
 
 of that continent in the lower part of the Nile valley 
 and along the shores of the Mediterranean remained 
 apart. In a small way slaves came thence to be min- 
 gled with the populations of Eurasia, leaving no im- 
 portant traces of their stock hi the mixture. In this, 
 the great civilizing age of mankind, and probably 
 long before its beginning, Africa south of the Soudan 
 was the seat of very many varieties of the black 
 races. That their tribal isolations are ancient, and 
 that they have been for a very great period in the 
 agricultural state of their development, is evident 
 from the remarkable diversity of the varieties in the 
 several species of their cultivated plants, and from 
 the exceptional capacity of the folk to endure hard 
 labor, features which alike indicate that the pop- 
 ulation had long ago come to a state of geograph- 
 ical repose, and that the people had everywhere be- 
 come habituated to toil in a manner never found 
 hi savage men while they are in the stage of the 
 hunter. 
 
 I shall not enter on the difficult questions concern- 
 ing the ethnic relations of the Africans. It may, 
 however, be said that while we know little of this 
 matter, except through the doubtful criteria of lan- 
 guage, it is evident that the variety of the people is 
 great, and that under the common aspect given by 
 their dark color, peculiar hair, and somewhat similar
 
 128 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 features, there is hidden much wider ranging diversi- 
 ties than separate the European stocks. The range 
 of the variations is probably greater than what holds 
 apart Aryan and American Indian, for it includes 
 such extremes as the feeble pigmies of the central part 
 of the African continent, probably the nearest akin of 
 any existing forms to the primitive human, and the 
 sturdy tribes such as the Basutos and the Zulus, who 
 in mere vigor of mind and body are fit to be com- 
 pared with the European peoples. It is evident that 
 while the African tribes in general early won by the 
 simplest steps of culture, long ago coming, as before 
 remarked, to the stage of soil-tilling, none of them 
 have attained to anything like civilization. They de- 
 veloped no extended social or political structure, no 
 literature even to the stage of organized tradition, 
 no systems of laws, no aesthetic art, and no religion 
 beyond the most primitive stages of that motive. 
 As a whole, they probably had attained at the dawn 
 of history to about the same grade as that they 
 now occupy, and in that state it is likely they had 
 then abided for a period of great duration. 
 
 So long as the demand for slaves was well satis- 
 fied by the subjugation of conquered folk there was 
 no occasion for the Eurasians -to break into Africa 
 and deport its people. The slave markets about the 
 Mediterranean were generally glutted with more
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 129 
 
 salable wares than the Negro tribes afforded, and in 
 case of deficient supply it was easy then, as now, to 
 better commerce with arms. When, however, with 
 the advance of the Christian motive it gradually be- 
 came the custom no longer to enslave the conquered, 
 the trade in Africans became more active and that 
 continent was looked to as the source of supply of 
 merchantable men. At the end of the Middle Ages 
 vendable human beings were generally black. This 
 trade, at least in Europe, appears to have been lim- 
 ited, Negroes being used for domestic service alone, 
 and mainly to add a picturesque element to the trains 
 of important people. 
 
 The discovery of America was shortly followed 
 by an increased use of Africa as a source of supply 
 of slaves. At the outset of occupation of the new 
 world by Europeans a determined effort was made 
 to subjugate its indigenous peoples, and turn them 
 to use as laborers. This essay was made gener- 
 ally throughout South and Central America, the An- 
 tilles, and Mexico, and, in some measure, in the more 
 northern districts, but it everywhere proved a fail- 
 ure. For some reason the American Indian, though 
 as vigorous as the African folk, and on the whole more 
 intelligent, has, as before noted, never proved an en- 
 during laborer, having quickly perished when set to 
 the tasks of the slave. It at once became evident
 
 130 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 that the economic control of the regions to the west 
 of the Atlantic would have to be won by imported 
 labor. In this period, from the beginning of the six- 
 teenth to the end of the eighteenth century, the con- 
 ditions hi Europe did not admit of any considerable 
 emigration. At no point was the population press- 
 ing on the natural resources of the soil, and while 
 the outgoing spirit of the upper classes led many hi 
 eager quests of fortune the laboring people were not 
 tempted over the dreaded seas. The result was that 
 to Africa all the colonizing nations turned for the 
 " hands " which were to win the new empires. It is 
 true that some effort was made to force European 
 laborers to America as convicts or as indicted ser- 
 vants, but the number thus exported was inconsid- 
 erable. 
 
 There seems to have been little choice as regards 
 the source whence the Negroes were obtained. It is 
 evident, however, that the principal fields of supply 
 were the trading stations of the Portuguese on the 
 Guinea coast, yet it is certain that the importation 
 included many other stocks than those of the west- 
 ern equatorial section of Africa. For besides the de- 
 scendants of the relatively low grade tribes of the 
 people dwelling near the west coast we find among 
 the Negroes of the United States and the Antilles 
 very many who are clearly derived from the stronger
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 131 
 
 very distinct Basutic race and now and then a group 
 in which there is an evident infusion of Semitic blood. 
 As it was not the prevailing custom of Africans to 
 sell their own people, those exported from the slave 
 coast appear to have come not from the Ashantis 
 and other slave traders, but from the tribes further 
 to the East, mainly from the stock known as the 
 Mandingos, who probably are of the same race as 
 the Guinea coast peoples. 
 
 So far as can be determined by three centuries of 
 trial, this experiment of acclimating a large and va- 
 rted body of African people to the New World has 
 been perfectly successful. All the varied stocks have 
 retained their strength and fertility, not only in the 
 equatorial belt of the Americas but in extra-trop- 
 ical regions as well. In the United States, where the 
 Negro is the least intermingled with the European, 
 and where, in my opinion, based on much observa- 
 tion and the questioning of many intelligent phy- 
 sicians, not more than one-tenth of the people have 
 any admixture of white blood, the race is fecund and 
 enduring. It is true that the census reports show a 
 slightly higher death rate than that of the whites, the 
 ratio being about as 17 to 15, but this is probably ex- 
 plicable by the fact that the blacks are less well cared 
 for than the whites, and consequently the mortality 
 is larger. North of the limit of the old slave states
 
 132 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the death rate increases in a rapid manner, so that 
 the negro population would if unrecruited soon be- 
 come extinct. Yet even in the maritime provinces of 
 Canada there are acclimated families of blacks which 
 have remained hi good condition for more than a cen- 
 tury. It seems clear that from the equator to about 
 the parallel of 40 north and south latitude these 
 Africans may be regarded as successfully established, 
 and that they are to remain a part of the states hi 
 both American continents for all human time. 
 
 It is to be noted that this successful transplan- 
 tation of a people from one zone of climate to an- 
 other is the first instance of such a change that has 
 occurred hi historic ages. It is eminently proba- 
 ble that mankind originated within the tropics and 
 spread thence towards the poles, but this diffusion 
 was probably at a very slow rate and attended by an 
 adjustment to new conditions which was very gradu- 
 ally accomplished. Even the more vigorous stocks 
 of the Aryan race, notwithstanding numerous efforts 
 and with the aid of the resources of civilization, 
 have never been able to stand such a change. The 
 fact that the Negroes endured such transition with- 
 out any perceptible shock, passing at once from the 
 equator nearly half way to the poles, yet retaining 
 their full capacity for labor and exhibiting no defi- 
 nite liability to new diseases is a proof of their phy-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 133 
 
 sical endurance. 1 That their fecundity was in no 
 wise diminished by this migration affords equally 
 good evidence of their vitality which, judged by these 
 tests, is higher than has been found to be the case 
 with any other primitive people. 
 
 The accommodative capacity of the Negro's frame 
 is no greater than that of his spirit. He met the 
 grave trials due to a change in habits and beliefs as 
 easily as he did those of climate. Although it is said 
 that some of the new-made slaves evidently belong- 
 ing to the more militant stocks were unruly and 
 inclined to suicide, as a whole they retained the 
 cheerful simple view of life that characterized them 
 in their own country. As before remarked, their 
 capacity for adjustment by a process of imitation, 
 a power denied to the higher races, enabled them 
 quickly to adopt the manners of their new-found 
 masters and even to enter into their simpler states 
 of mind in a measure shown by no other primitive 
 people. They were able with singular rapidity to 
 acquire the English language. They had to adapt it 
 to their simpler thought by adding certain tenses to 
 the auxiliary verbs as in the forms "gone done," 
 
 1 It is frequently said, and perhaps with truth, that the Negroes 
 of the United States are more liable to tuberculosis than the whites : 
 yet as we do not know the measure of their original liability to this 
 group of diseases the fact cannot be used to show that they have 
 suffered from the migration.
 
 134 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 "gwine gone done," "done gwine gone done," yet 
 in general they speak the language more effectively 
 and with a keener sense of the import of its phrase 
 than is the case with the peasant class of England. 
 It is, indeed, evident that so far as their remarkable 
 imitative faculty has carried them they have come 
 nearer molding themselves on the mastering race 
 than has been the case with any other subjugated 
 people known to us. So complete is the likeness 
 which has been thus brought about, that, led by 
 their categoric motive, the desire to simplify the 
 complications of the world by a rough classifica- 
 tion of things, men very generally suppose that the 
 Negro is in his essential qualities what our own 
 kind would be if their skins were black. This ap- 
 pears to me to be a most erroneous conclusion ; one 
 that has already led to grave injustice to the black 
 people and certain if it stay uncorrected to lead to 
 yet greater evils. I shall, therefore, set forth what 
 seems to me to be the actual state of the Negro, the 
 ways in which the eminent good that is in him may 
 be made profitable to the commonwealth and the 
 serious evils of his inheritance in some measure 
 avoided. 
 
 Let us note again that before the Africans came 
 to us they had won a good way upward from the 
 estate of the most primitive men ; they had learned
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 135 
 
 to labor, to obey unseen rulers ; they had developed 
 the simpler manual arts, and they had accomplished 
 these tasks in immemorial antiquity. On the other 
 hand, they had developed no historic ability ; they 
 were, as regards their capacity for tradition, that 
 ability to knit the present with the past which is 
 the foundation of all civilization, at the base of the 
 human series. This lack is shown by the absence of 
 literature, of religion, and of social polity. These 
 facts appear to indicate that the folk for all their 
 ethnic variety had, in their African life, come to a 
 state of arrest in their development ; they had at- 
 tained to the point in that process beyond which they 
 were not fitted to go. This leads to the presump- 
 tion that any further progress must depend on an 
 imitation of a mastering race : it cannot come forth 
 from the innate motives of the folk. 
 
 There are those who hold a man to be a mere re- 
 ceptacle into which we may by the process of educa- 
 tion pour so much as we will of that distiDate of ex- 
 perience we term knowledge. The teacher, if he has 
 learned the most obvious truth of his trade, knows 
 that to have any value instruction must be educa- 
 tive, it must awaken inherited latencies, capacities 
 that are in the stock and which all his resources can 
 in no wise create. Given a mind hi which the poten- 
 tialities of thought and action exist, however deeply
 
 136 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 buried, teaching is profitable ; otherwise it is utterly 
 vain. The master of the art knows that his first 
 duty is to find what is hi the mind that may be 
 quickened: if he strives to awaken capacities that 
 do not exist, he and his pupil are seeking the im- 
 possible ; as the Greeks have it, " the one is milking 
 a he-goat, while the other holds a sieve." 
 
 The foregoing view as to the position of the Negro 
 as regards the motives which make for advance hi 
 the lines of culture that lead to civilization is cer- 
 tain to appear to most of my readers excessively 
 pessimistic ; they cite the development of many in- 
 dividual blacks, and take these instances, on the 
 general principle that where one man may set his 
 feet an army can go, as showing that the whole 
 race may be indefinitely uplifted. In my opinion 
 this argument has little value when balanced with 
 the facts derived from the history of the people in 
 Africa or in America. Here, as in the Old World, 
 the Negroes have not only failed to exhibit a capa- 
 city for indigenous development, but when uplifted 
 from without have shown an obvious tendency to 
 fall back into their primitive estate as soon as the 
 external support was withdrawn. The instances 
 that exemplify the ephemeral character of the Aryan 
 culture which is produced by the imitative humor 
 of the Negro are many and fairly indicative.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 137 
 
 First of these we may cite that of Hayti, where 
 the blacks have been longer in residence than in 
 any other part of America, their domestication on 
 that island having been begun near four centuries 
 ago. For more than two and a half centuries, or for 
 a longer period than slavery lasted within the body 
 of the United States, these Africans were under the 
 educative control of the Spaniards, subjected to an 
 able people, and completely under the influence of 
 Roman Christianity, a form of that faith that fits 
 well to their needs of spiritual help. The presumption 
 is that the civilizing process was about as effect- 
 ively applied to them as it was to their kindred in 
 the slavery of the United States, yet immediately 
 on attaining independence, the population began to 
 return to the African condition, and for a century 
 has been, without interruption save possibly by the 
 occasional control of tyrants, steadfastly retrograd- 
 ing. According to the testimony of Sir Spencer St. 
 John, long British minister to this so-called repub- 
 lic, the state of this population is now almost as 
 low as in Dahomey. Certain of the statements of 
 this author, as, for instance, that concerning the 
 occurrence of cannibalism in Hayti, have been ques- 
 tioned by various critics, none of whom however 
 appear to have had his opportunities for observa- 
 tion, or a more evident desire to state the truth.
 
 138 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 However it may be, with this evidence of a re- 
 turn to the lowest stage of savagery there can be 
 no doubt that this, the oldest body of Africans hi 
 the New World, has proved absolutely incapable of 
 maintaining a society of the Aryan type. 
 
 What is evident from the history of the island of 
 Hayti also appears with equal clearness, though 
 with less accent, elsewhere. During the lamentable 
 decade following the Civil War, the so-called period 
 of reconstruction, while the Negroes were in power 
 in the late rebellious states they were evidently 
 possessed by the Haytian motive, and, but for the 
 arrest of the process to which it led, would have re- 
 duced the country to much the same state of degra- 
 dation. Making all due allowance for the condition 
 of these newly emancipated folk, and the allowance 
 due is large, the history of this period shows us 
 that the Negro has as yet and as a race developed 
 no sense of political or social order beyond what 
 he brought with him from his native country. We 
 learn much to the same effect from a study of the 
 isolated aggregates of Negroes which here and there 
 are to be found in the Southern States. Whenever 
 such communities have remained apart from the 
 influence of the whites for a generation, they com- 
 monly show signs of a relapse towards their an- 
 cestral estate. All the facts we have point to the
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 139 
 
 same unhappy conclusion, that the Negro consid- 
 ered as a species is, by nature, incapable of cre- 
 ating or maintaining societies of an order above 
 barbarism, and that, so far as we can discern, this 
 feature of his nature, depending as it does on the 
 lack of certain qualities of mind, is irremediable. 
 Whatever we may inculcate into them in the way 
 of a commonwealth motive will remain essentially 
 foreign and will fall away as soon as the school- 
 master is forgotten. 
 
 Related to the lack of the larger social and politi- 
 cal motives, the Negro exhibits another deficiency 
 which is of much importance in determining his 
 future in our commonwealth. This is indicated by 
 his general inability to act with his fellows in co- 
 operative work. In our own Aryan race, as well as 
 in the Semitic, there is an element of confidence of 
 man in his fellows that leads to the association of 
 endeavor in business. To this the Negroes rarely 
 tend, and, so far as I have seen, the experiments 
 they make usually fail because they have not the 
 peculiar quality of mind required for effective co- 
 operation. Here again it may be, and doubtless will 
 be, urged that the state of slavery, however educa- 
 tive it may have been in certain limited ways, gave 
 no chance for the development of the associative 
 habit. The rejoinder is evident; it is that no such
 
 140 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 development took place in the ages of African life, 
 nor, as I learn from others, is there any sign of it in 
 the Haytian experiment. 
 
 Turning now from the larger matters of social 
 and political order, let us consider the Negroes from 
 the point of view of their individual nature. The 
 change will be most agreeable, for there is almost as 
 much to say hi praise of the black as a man as there 
 is to say hi blame of him as a citizen. First of all, 
 because it is of foremost importance, let us note that 
 the blacks with admirable generality have the whole 
 range of primitive sympathies exceedingly well de- 
 veloped. They have a singularly quick sympathetic 
 contact with the neighbor ; they attain to his state 
 of mind and shape themselves to meet him as no 
 other primitive people do. Those who have had a 
 chance to compare hi this regard the Negro and 
 the American Indian must have been struck by the 
 difference between the two peoples hi this most 
 important feature. The Indian, though really much 
 more nearly akin to us in spirit, is so slow to become 
 friendly that we rarely attain to any close relations 
 with him. The Negro comes even more quickly to 
 that attitude than the average man of our own race. 
 While in his method of meeting us he is affected by 
 his imitative humor, which instinctively leads him 
 to take the manner of his neighbor, the foundation
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 141 
 
 of good nature which underlies his moods is his 
 own. Be it said again, he is rich in the primitive 
 sympathies which came to us not only from hu- 
 manity but from the life below man. Left to them- 
 selves these admirable motives do not become well 
 organized ; helped in their shaping by contact with 
 good people of our own race, they readily become 
 creatures fit to compare hi moral quality with the 
 best we know. Thus, while she loves her offspring, 
 the Negro woman is apt to neglect them, but as a 
 nurse of her master's child she is likely to be abso- 
 lutely faithful. Again, though they sympathize in a 
 momentary way with the neighbors of their race, I 
 have never known an instance of lasting sacrificial 
 friendship between two blacks. Even the ties of 
 kinship are weak as compared with those of the 
 whites, yet the instances of devotion of black ser- 
 vants to their masters, as beautiful as any of fable, 
 are innumerable, and of themselves warrant my 
 contention that the race is richly endowed with 
 that faith which makes men. 
 
 How good the better Negroes are can only be 
 judged by those who have known them with the 
 beautiful friendliness which so often existed be- 
 tween the whites and blacks in the time of slave- 
 holding, and was the redeeming feature of that 
 institution. Every Southerner I have questioned
 
 142 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 concerning his recollections of that time has recalled 
 memories of men and women who hi their essential 
 human quality were fit to be placed with the best of 
 our own race. Nor were these admirable men very 
 exceptional. I am inclined to believe that they were 
 proportionately about as numerous among the blacks 
 as among the whites. Thus, while I have known at 
 least twenty tunes as many persons of my own race 
 as of the African, there are three blacks who well de- 
 serve a place among the score whom I remember, for 
 their eminent faithfulness. It may be supposed that 
 these, being youthful memories, are somewhat fanci- 
 ful ; but one of these men, the foremost of them, Jeff 
 Allen, a hotel porter in Frankfort, Kentucky, was 
 well known to me for thirty years, until indeed I 
 was a man of forty-five years of age. Something of 
 his station among men may be judged by the follow- 
 ing incident. Alighting from a tram in that town, I 
 was greeted by two of my friends, Jeff and another, 
 the then Governor of the Commonwealth. I took 
 the Negro's hand first, saying to his Excellency that 
 I always shook hands with Jeff first. "So do I," 
 said the Governor. 
 
 To those of us who knew the Negroes when they 
 were much more knowable than they now are, these 
 precious memories of simple, faithful men afford a 
 warrant of the human quality that is in the race
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 143 
 
 which may be fairly set against all the evidence that 
 goes to show the general incompetence of its peo- 
 ple for the peculiar tasks of the higher civilization, 
 for state building, and for the higher learning. Far 
 above all else that can be said of the quality of men 
 is what we know of their primary human nature, 
 their capacities for love and faith, their willingness 
 to trust and serve those to whom their good in- 
 stincts led them to turn for help. We need no 
 further evidence that these foundations of human 
 nature are firm set in the Negro character. The 
 history of slavery in this country shows in the clear- 
 est light that the Negroes are fit to be our col- 
 laborators in the most important work of society. 
 The existing prosperity of the states in which they 
 abound shows that they are effectively associated 
 with the whites in the most serious part of citi- 
 zenly endeavors, those that relate to bread- winning. 
 We shall have to leave the fringes of that life, so 
 much as relates to statecraft, to the higher learning 
 and other path-breaking work, for the present at 
 least, aside, with the assurance that if a hearty in- 
 dustrial cooperation can be maintained, it will afford 
 a fairly safe basis on which the blacks may establish 
 their life. 
 
 I confess myself somewhat puzzled to account for 
 the eminent fidelity so often seen in Negroes to
 
 144 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 masters who, from my point of view, seemed not 
 to deserve such faithful service. The feature may 
 be explicable in their case, as hi the similar but less 
 noticeable instances of like nature hi the lowlier 
 stocks of our own race, where we find an unques- 
 tioning devotion to a chief, who by some right of 
 succession, or by his power, impresses the minds of 
 his subjects and wins from them a love that they do 
 not and cannot give to their equals and inferiors, or 
 even to their own children. Be this as it may, there 
 can be no doubt that devoted faith is more easily 
 possible to the Negro than to any other known man 
 of his estate, and that on this foundation it is practi- 
 cable with due guidance to establish a social order. 
 How firm that relation may be made by proper man- 
 agement is well shown by the conduct of the Ne- 
 groes hi the slave-holding part of the United States, 
 especially during the period of the Civil War, as 
 compared with the experience hi Hayti. 
 
 It is well known that throughout the last half 
 century preceding the Rebellion there was much 
 effort made to incite the slaves of the Southern 
 States to revolt. So far as I have been able to find 
 hi no case was there any evident movement towards 
 a rising except hi the Nat Turner conspiracy of Vir- 
 ginia. Yet it is doubtful if that movement would, 
 even if let alone, ever have come to the point of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 145 
 
 action. As it was, it was a fiasco. When secession 
 was attempted, the institution of slavery was in the 
 state when, if ever, a revolt like that of Hayti 
 would have occurred. To a considerable extent the 
 method of great plantations had taken the place of 
 the relatively small farms, and a large part of the 
 blacks, perhaps one-fifth of the whole number, no 
 longer came in contact with the households of their 
 masters but knew only their overseers. The sale of 
 Negroes for profit, which in earlier days was deemed 
 unworthy of a well-born man, had become common 
 enough ; in a word, the institution which once had 
 a tincture of the patriarchal motive had been to a 
 considerable extent dehumanized. Yet during the 
 whole of the trials of the Civil War and the pe- 
 riod immediately following it the Negroes remained 
 faithful to their masters. There were no outbreaks, 
 though the way to them was easy and many efforts 
 were made to incite them. When in the later years 
 of the war the white men of the South were in the 
 armies, thousands of plantations were left to be 
 managed by women, but I have never, in answer 
 to much questioning made just after the surren- 
 der, heard of a single instance in which the Negroes 
 turned upon them or even contemned their author- 
 ity. The conduct of the slaves during the Civil War 
 is perhaps the most surprising and instructive event
 
 146 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 of that remarkable period. For my purpose it is of 
 great value for the reason that it shows, as all must 
 have seen who have considered it, how firm is that 
 foundation of affection and good faith in the Negro 
 on which we may hope to develop relations between 
 his own and our race. 
 
 It is important to note that this development of 
 good faith hi the Negroes took place under the con- 
 ditions of slavery. I am by no means an apologist of 
 that institution, although my ancestors held slaves 
 since it was established in this country and I was 
 heir to the traditions of that class. A part of these 
 traditions was that the system was an evil ; and so 
 far as possible I helped to overthrow it. Yet it is 
 evident to me that hi no part of the world and in no 
 other age has a people of lowly race ever for their 
 best interests been so well placed as in the Amer- 
 ican slave-holding States. Frequently they were ill- 
 treated, sometimes shamefully abused, but with a 
 generality rarely if ever before experienced with 
 enslaved people they were cared for by their mas- 
 ters, especially by the women, with an admirable 
 devotion for their moral welfare and with a sym- 
 pathy that is told in the true faith of the slaves 
 during the Civil War. The immediate and most 
 serious evil of slavery came not upon the black 
 people but upon the whites. To the slaves them-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 147 
 
 selves the relation was exceedingly helpful, for it 
 afforded them a training in human relations, in 
 household arts, and in religion, which could have 
 come to their race in no other way. It is likely that 
 the beneficial effects of slavery were, because of the 
 advancing commercialism, near their end before 
 the middle of the nineteenth century, for the rapid 
 development of large plantations diminished the 
 intercourse between the races. The abolition of 
 slavery and the effort to bring the ex-slaves at once 
 into the position of the citizen has for the time to a 
 great extent broken up the faith-breeding relation 
 between the two peoples. 
 
 As regards his other moral qualities it may be 
 said that the Negro is not as yet proved to be of 
 lower grade than whites of like station. That he is 
 prone to thieving in a small way is true, but this 
 vice, common to all primitive folk, was fostered 
 rather than hindered by the conditions of slavery, 
 when he had no chance to acquire a sense of right 
 in property. So far as I have been able to learn, a 
 large part of the race are, in this regard, faithful 
 where they are trusted, and they are, hi general, 
 learning to respect the law. They are rather less in- 
 clined than the low-grade whites to drunkenness, 
 and appear not to suffer as much from the effects of 
 alcohol. The testimony is to the effect that they
 
 148 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 rarely have delirium tremens. Considering their 
 exceedingly difficult position since their emancipa- 
 tion, the sudden deprivation of the moral control to 
 which they have been accustomed, they have shown 
 singularly little tendency to robbery or murder. 
 
 It is so commonly stated that it has come to be 
 assumed that the Negro is sexually a very brutal 
 creature who cannot be trusted in contact with 
 white women. It may be granted that his animal 
 passions are strong, and that in his native state of 
 mind, when not under the moral dominance of the 
 white people, he is less able to control himself than 
 the men of that race. Yet the history of blacks 
 during the period of slavery shows that their moral 
 control was as good as in our own race. I do not 
 remember ever hearing before the emancipation of 
 that crime, or even a suggestion or fear of it. Much 
 questioning of others who knew well the social con- 
 ditions of the slave-holding district has convinced 
 me that it rarely occurred. This fact is of much im- 
 portance, for it indicates at once that the Negro can 
 attain a moral state in which the sexual motive is 
 fairly well controlled as it is among civilized peo- 
 ple, not by fear but through the sympathies. It also 
 seems to indicate that his close relation with his 
 masters served to lift him to that plane. 
 
 That the assaults of Negroes on white women in
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 149 
 
 the South have increased since the emancipation 
 appears to be clear. There is, indeed, some reason 
 to believe that in the Northern States also they are 
 more prone to this crime than the average of white 
 men; but it is not yet evident that the Negro is 
 more apt to be guilty of such outrages than the 
 Aryan of the same low social position. Moreover, hi 
 judging the quality of the African in this regard we 
 have to bear hi mind the fact that hi our own race 
 for many centuries the men known to have been 
 guilty of this offense have been summarily dealt 
 with, so that their evil blood has been removed from 
 the stock. We may criticise our ancestors as bru- 
 tal, but their condign punishment of such malefac- 
 tors doubtless helped to elevate the race by a very 
 effective process of selection. Considering that the 
 Negro race has not passed through this process of 
 purification, and that he is now in a most unhappy 
 position, with his ancient external support with- 
 drawn and with no inheritances strong enough to 
 take their place, he has not 'done so badly. A fair 
 assessment of the situation leads to the conviction 
 that morally he is hopeful material for use hi our 
 society. 
 
 Having referred to the extirpating process as a 
 means of removing from a stock the strain of blood 
 that tends to crime, it seems necessary to say a word
 
 150 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 about the resort to lynch law in the case of Negroes 
 accused of criminal assaults. While I believe that 
 it is a sound and hi a large way humane policy 
 promptly to execute every person, white or black, 
 who is legally convicted of rape, I regard the lynch- 
 ing of these offenders, especially with the accom- 
 panying brutalities so usually practiced, as hardly 
 less shameful than the crimes they are designed to 
 punish. The law may pardon a man who in hot 
 blood slays the brute who is guilty of rape, yet if he 
 be a true citizen he will blame himself for his rage, 
 for he will know that the offender should have paid 
 his debt to the law. But when men take the crimi- 
 nal from the hands of the law to have vengeance on 
 him, they are murderers. Their detestation of the 
 culprit's offense in no wise lightens their own. Until 
 this American form of crime is eradicated we can- 
 not regard ourselves as a law-abiding people, and a 
 commonwealth without law that is held sacredly 
 inviolate is a mockery. 
 
 As for the more purely intellectual capacities of 
 the Negro people, we have again to begin with their 
 African history. This shows that all the stocks 
 which have afforded considerable elements of our 
 American blacks differ from the Aryans in many 
 regards, of which the following are the most impor- 
 tant. As before remarked, they originally lacked
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 151 
 
 the powers which lead to what we may term the his- 
 toric sense, that disposition to check present action 
 by the past and to treasure the history of the tribe 
 or state. This motive is evident among most peo- 
 ples even before they have attained to any effective 
 method of recording, all those methods being due to 
 the historic sense. We commonly find among sav- 
 ages a body of traditions and a system of handing 
 them down, or in their stead legends that embody a 
 perspective. So far as I can find all this is lacking 
 hi the tribes whence our blacks came. In general 
 their life is immediate, of the day, in a measure that 
 is not recognized without close study of their ways 
 and habitual thoughts. Those who believe that a 
 man is what his teachers make him may contend that 
 this state of mind is due to slavery, the slave not 
 being called on to look before and after, and so abid- 
 ing in the present ; but hi view of the history of the 
 race hi Africa and Hayti this seems a vain conten- 
 tion. 
 
 As regards his rational powers the Negro has a 
 low average capacity. With rare exceptions, his abil- 
 ity in the field of mathematics is far less than that 
 of the Aryan and the Semite. Yet it is to be remem- 
 bered that the Negro Banneker, 1 a pure black born 
 
 1 See Memoir of Benjamin Banneker, by John H. B. Latrobo, 
 African Repository, vol. xxi, 1845, p. 321.
 
 152 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 in Maryland in the eighteenth century, taught him- 
 self the art of computation, and for years published 
 an Almanac much used in the district south of New 
 York. We know nothing of this man's stock except 
 that his mother was the child of Africans, that his 
 father was from that country, and that both were 
 pure blacks. He may have been partly of Arab blood, 
 as appears to have been the case with quite a num- 
 ber of the Negro families of Virginia. In other rare 
 instances the Negro has shown a certain capacity for 
 arithmetic, for there have been "lightning calcu- 
 lators " of their race. Yet at most these exceptions 
 relate to arithmetical power ; they in no sense inval- 
 idate the general proposition that the mathematics 
 which require constructive ability of the higher kind, 
 as algebra and geometry, are generally beyond the 
 capacities of this people. Be it said that this is no 
 very grave indictment, for the lack is not uncommon 
 in many of the ablest men of our own race. 
 
 In the field of physical science the Negro seems 
 hardly more capable than in mathematics. As a stu- 
 dent he appears to be inept in all such matters, and 
 in no instance have men with more than a slight ad- 
 mixture of African blood made contributions of any 
 value to this branch of learning. Correlated with this 
 deficiency we find in the race a notable incapacity for 
 invention. So far as I have been able to learn they
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 153 
 
 rarely devise improvements in the method of doing 
 the work they have in hand. Their arts hi Africa were 
 of the simplest nature, and none of their tools or 
 arms have the least stamp of originality. It is doubt- 
 ful if any of them were devised by the tribes whence 
 our blacks came ; they appear to be altogether from 
 the common stock of primitive man. Against these 
 eminent deficiencies we may set certain capacities of 
 moment. 
 
 The Negro has a remarkable aptitude for lan- 
 guages. As before noted, he quickly compassed the 
 difficult English speech, and has effectively mastered 
 it, so that he uses it with more ability than the peas- 
 ant class of our own race. Elsewhere he has done 
 the like with all the tongues of southern Europe. 
 Considering how lean and poor in connotative words 
 his aboriginal speech was, this shows that the Negro 
 has great latencies of power hi this part of the field 
 of intelligence. It appears likely that his native abil- 
 ity in this regard is much above that of any people 
 known to us hi the group of lowly men ; it proba- 
 bly much exceeds that of our own race when it was 
 hi the savage state. 
 
 In the sesthetic field the Negro, as might be judged 
 from his African history, shows no measurable trace 
 of a sense of form, but he has a strong feeling for the 
 qualities of color. His only striking aesthetic capa-
 
 154 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 city is for music. His singing voice is on the average 
 much better than that of any other well known race. 
 How far this musical capacity extends, whether it 
 may lead them in the higher ranges of the art, is as 
 yet uncertain. In the development to which it at- 
 tained in Africa it shows little more than what may 
 be termed the orgy motive, that quality which ex- 
 cites the lower nature as in sexual or wizard dances. 
 In the United States little trace of this interesting 
 music has been preserved, for there was enough of 
 the puritanic spirit among the slaveholders to sup- 
 press it altogether. In Cuba, however, I have heard 
 certain dance music used by whites as well as blacks 
 in public balls which is said to be purely African. 
 It consists in a monotonous tom-tom basis with cu- 
 rious flares of the strings and wind instruments. 
 The effect is at first very irritating, but if submitted 
 to, it will awaken a singular primitive sense of ex- 
 citement, such as I have never found hi any other 
 sounds. The fact that the Negro has been able to 
 devise a moving kind of music, even though it be 
 essentially base, appears to indicate that the com- 
 posing power is in him. 
 
 The songs termed Negro which abound in this 
 country are so infected by the white man's music 
 that they cannot be regarded as in any distinct way 
 representing the musical spirit of the people. Yet if
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 155 
 
 these songs are closely watched, especially in their 
 refrains, we may detect the native movement, that 
 curious savage swing which moves the blood even 
 of the super-civilized. My observations lead me to 
 the conclusion that one of the most interesting ex- 
 periments that could be essayed would be to train 
 Negroes in the musical art. There is hardly any 
 question but that they would be successful as in- 
 strumentalists. Those who have heard the dance 
 music of Negro bands of the better sort and noted 
 the capacity of the untrained minds to work to- 
 gether for a common result, will not doubt that they 
 have orchestral capacity. "Whether they can attain 
 to the higher stages of interpretation is of course 
 uncertain, yet there is such a depth of sympathetic 
 motive in the folk that it may serve to open this 
 realm to them. So too in choral music there is a 
 promise of high success ; especially as the interpre- 
 tation there depends largely on the quality of the 
 voices and on the immediate sympathetic movement 
 of the singers. 
 
 While in summing up the qualities of the Negro 
 people it is necessary to regard them as they appear 
 hi mass, it is very important to keep well hi mind 
 the fact, before adverted to, that they are not of one 
 type but of very many types, the racial diversity 
 being greater than that of the European peoples.
 
 156 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 These original tribal and racial variations have hi 
 this country been hi large measure lost by inter- 
 breeding, yet, as I have elsewhere noted, 1 an atten- 
 tive observer of a considerable number of Negroes 
 may perceive the existence of several distinct groups 
 each with a definite race stamp; for in man, as 
 elsewhere hi the animal kingdom, there is a mani- 
 fest tendency of hybrid stocks to revert to one or 
 another of the stronger commingled types. I set 
 much hope hi the future of the Negro on the exist- 
 ence of these overlooked diversities. There, as hi 
 our own mixed blood, we may expect to find that 
 from the commingling there will come forth qualities 
 of strength which from lack of opportunity are not 
 now apparent. The question of the moment is, how- 
 ever, what have we in this ten million of blacks 
 which can be turned to the account of our common- 
 wealth, and how are we to convert it to that use? 
 
 First of all, it has been said before but it should 
 be said often, we have in the Negro capacities for 
 affection and good faith which of themselves alone 
 afford an important part of the foundations of soci- 
 ety. Next, and hardly second, an ability to toil which 
 is of a high order ; such, indeed, as has never else- 
 where appeared in a primitive people. Further, cer- 
 tain musical powers which may have high value, 
 
 1 See Journal of Popular Science, Ivi p. 513 ; Ivii. p. 29.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 157 
 
 and are sure to be serviceable, even if they are in- 
 capable of greater development than they now ex- 
 hibit, and along with these a curious disposition 
 to come near to, and to profit largely from, close con- 
 tact with our own people. Add to this list an en- 
 during body, a disposition which is perhaps more 
 cheerful, more kindly than that of any other race, 
 and we have the qualities with which we are to deal 
 in making this group of men very helpful to our 
 commonwealth. We, the whites of this society, have 
 essentially of ourselves to do this task; this man 
 cannot give us much help, for the motives that build 
 the state are not yet in him. All we know of his 
 history in Africa, all that can be judged from the 
 communities where he controls, shows that in him 
 the state-building capacities are lacking. Certainly 
 hi its present and for any foreseeable period the 
 mass of the blacks will have to be guided by the 
 whites on their way of advance, with what help may 
 be had from the stronger individuals of their own 
 race who may prove fit for leadership. 
 
 As for the steps by which the Negroes of this 
 country may be put on the way of attaining their 
 value to themselves and the community, only cer- 
 tain of them can be now discerned. It is a long and 
 difficult progress, and many judgments as to means 
 will have to be gained from experience. At the
 
 158 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 outset it may be said that at present there is little 
 hope that much aid can be had from the Federal 
 Government. So far as aid from legislation can be 
 helpful, which is not very far, it will have to come 
 from the several states so that it may fit the local 
 conditions. Thus in Kentucky, where the Negroes 
 are few, the laws bearing on these people, if such 
 are needed, may well be different from those of 
 Mississippi, where the blacks are in a majority. At 
 present the main point is to make an end of the 
 unhappy frictions which have come to separate the 
 races. To do this, it is necessary to take the mass of 
 the Negroes for a time out of politics, for so long 
 as the dominant whites are kept in fear of being 
 despoiled of their property and the blacks hi hope 
 of gaining power, class ill-will is certain to become 
 greater and there is danger that it be made per- 
 manent. Thus while I dislike the element of subter- 
 fuge in the new constitutions of the Southern States, 
 and would have much preferred to see a qualifi- 
 cation of education and of earning power applied 
 equally to all, white or black, who seek the franchise, 
 I welcome the change for the reason that for a 
 time, at least, it promises a truce to race hatreds. 
 
 To those who look upon an abandonment of uni- 
 versal suffrage as a blow at our democratic form of 
 government, where it has come to be assumed that
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 159 
 
 the franchise is a natural right, it should be said 
 that the founders of our American commonwealth 
 took no such view of the situation ; they held that 
 the office of the elector should be guarded by sun- 
 dry conditions, by requirements of sex, citizenly 
 quality, property and education. Sundry of them 
 are everywhere retained ; education has always been 
 required in Massachusetts and its extension to other 
 states is sound polity. In my opinion it would be 
 well if the franchise were universally subjected to the 
 further qualification that candidates for it should be 
 required to prove a certain amount of property or 
 of annual earnings in order to show that they were 
 contributors to the community. This in amount 
 should be sufficient decently to support a family. 
 There would be evils arising from the application of 
 such a law, yet they would be less serious than those 
 which now exist where a host of folk who are in no 
 wise helpful to the commonwealth have a share in 
 ruling it. 
 
 Before considering the steps which may be taken 
 to blend the social work of the Aryan and African 
 races, it will be well to consider two matters con- 
 cerning their contacts that are of critical importance. 
 First of these is the question as to the desirability 
 of mingling the blood of the two peoples so that the 
 natural antagonisms of race may be lost in the hy-
 
 160 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 brid product. The other is as to the extent to which 
 the tribal motive, commonly termed race prejudice, 
 may serve as a barrier to the intercourse required in 
 the interest of the commonwealth. As to the first 
 of these questions, we happily have a large body of 
 evidence which, though not hi a statistical form, 
 is clear enough to guide us to a decision. Modern 
 studies into the conditions of breeding have shown 
 that very generally, both in animals and plants, the 
 crossing of varieties of the same species, provided 
 they are not far apart, is often distinctly benefi- 
 cial, the resulting offspring gaining a strength and 
 acquiring an individual variety which on many ac- 
 counts are advantageous to organic forms. On the 
 other hand, the hybridization of groups so far apart 
 that they may be termed specifically distinct species 
 is almost always disadvantageous, for the progeny 
 of such unions are more or less sterile and usually 
 have not the vitality of either parent. There are 
 certain curious limitations to this rule, as in the hy- 
 brid of the horse and ass, where the resulting mule, 
 though almost absolutely sterile, is more enduring 
 to labor than either parent and is regarded as less 
 subject to diseases. Yet the fact that groups are 
 separated by that rather obscure interval which we 
 term specific is safely to be taken as indicating that 
 they should not be bred together.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 161 
 
 Quite apart from the investigations of modern 
 naturalists, we have the common judgment that 
 while stocks such as our own have profited by an 
 infusion of blood of other related groups, as the 
 Saxon with the Briton, the Celt, or even the Aryan 
 with the Semite, any union of stocks of more remote 
 affinities than those last named leads to degradation. 
 Now there can be no doubt that the African is sepa- 
 rated from the masterful races of the Eurasian con- 
 tinent, the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians, 
 by a wider interval than are those varieties of men 
 from one another. By all the tests the naturalist 
 applies in discriminating species he is specifically 
 very distinct; color, form of the hair, proportions of 
 the frame, odor of the skin secretions, all go to show 
 that the groups are about as far apart as the horse and 
 ass, the dog and fox, or the other normally separated 
 species hi the same genus. Therefore the presump- 
 tion is against a favorable result of an admixture 
 of the African with any of the races above named. 
 Experience so far as it has been subjected to any 
 kind of scientific analysis, which is not very far, 
 evidently supports this presumption. It is not only 
 a general belief that hybrids of blacks and whites 
 are less prolific and more liable to diseases than the 
 pure bloods of either stock, but also that they sel- 
 dom live so long. Statistics lacking in this point, I
 
 162 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 have questioned a large number of physicians well 
 placed for judgment on this matter. All of them 
 agree that the offspring of a union between pure 
 black and white parents is, on the average, much 
 shorter lived and much less fertile than the race of 
 either parent. My father, a physician of experience 
 and a critical observer, who had spent more than 
 half a century in Cuba and the slave-holding South, 
 stated that in his opinion he had never seen mu- 
 lattos, that is, a cross between pure white and pure 
 black, who had attained the age of sixty years, and 
 that they were often sterile. The judgment of medi- 
 cal men seems to be that when the blood of either 
 race preponderates, and in proportion as it verges 
 to one or the other, the longevity and fertility in- 
 crease or decrease. 
 
 It is a common opinion, held by the blacks as well 
 as the whites, that an infusion of white blood in- 
 creases the intelligence of the Negro, while at the 
 same tune lowering his moral qualities. On this 
 point we have no clear evidence. All we can say is 
 that in certain instances, as in the novelist Dumas, 
 a considerable proportion of Negro blood, probably 
 about one-fourth, was consistent with a marvelously 
 active fancy and much dramatic power. One of the 
 distinguished physiologists of the last century, a 
 man, indeed, of rare quality, was said to be an octo-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 163 
 
 roon, and this statement seemed to be verified by his 
 aspect. Almost all the Negroes of this country who 
 have shown marked capacity of any kind have had 
 an evident mixture of white blood. On the other 
 hand, Banneker, the one of the race who seems to 
 have been intellectually a really great man, is said 
 to have been a pure Negro. Therefore, while the evi- 
 dence, such as it is, points distinctly to the conclu- 
 sion that the body of these hybrids is weakened and 
 its fertility impaired, it remains uncertain whether 
 their mental and moral value is lessened or increased 
 by the mingling of blood. 
 
 There are other sufficient reasons why miscegena- 
 tion cannot be looked to as affording a way out of 
 the difficulties of organizing a commonwealth com- 
 posed of two races of widely different grade. One of 
 these is the existence of a deep-seated, intense and 
 apparently ineradicable prejudice on the part of the 
 whites against such unions, and the other that the 
 process as is shown in Hayti and elsewhere does not 
 lead to unification but to the establishment of a 
 third element of race discord, the people of mixed 
 blood setting themselves apart from the pure stocks 
 on each side. We know that differences of far less 
 moment are readily made the basis of social cate- 
 gories, so that a division between the hybrids and 
 the pure bloods might be expected to arise ; but the
 
 164 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 intensity of prejudice as it exists in Hayti is sur- 
 prising ; it shows not only the deep-seated nature of 
 these racial prejudices, but the practical impossibility 
 of avoiding them by any mingling of the blood short 
 of a complete mixture. We may, therefore, assume 
 that the Negroes and whites are to remain racially 
 as they are, and that laws prohibiting intermarry- 
 ings and those concerning bastards will tend to 
 prevent further mingling of their blood ; also, that 
 as the social condition of the Negro improves, the 
 death-rate, which now somewhat exceeds that of 
 the whites, will be likely to decrease so that the pop- 
 ulation of both races will augment at something like 
 the same rate. By the end of the present century 
 it is probable that the number of those of African 
 descent hi the United States will exceed the total 
 existing population of all stocks. 
 
 Turning to the measure of prejudice which will 
 have to be encountered in dealing with the Negroes, 
 it may be said that it is with most people of our race 
 very intense, far stronger as a natural impulse than 
 that awakened by any other race with whom we 
 come in contact, such as the American Indians or 
 the Chinese. This dislike is primarily instinctive, 
 and in no wise depends on opinions as to the quali- 
 ties of the Negro, as is indicated by the fact that 
 several of the most devoted friends of his race have,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 165 
 
 in answer to my questions, and confidentially, told 
 me that the first impression made on them by con- 
 tact with a black was one of painful repulsion. As 
 most people are very properly ashamed of this im- 
 pulse it is not easy to obtain evidence as to its 
 generality, but from much inquiry I am convinced 
 that where the black people are unfamiliar the be- 
 holding of them is inevitably painful, and often in 
 a high measure repellent. The reason for this effect 
 doubtless is that we form and continuously retain 
 images of how a human being should appear ; and 
 that these images include all the types with which 
 we are familiar. When a human shape comes to us 
 that does not fit these types it appears monstrous 
 and inhuman, arousing disgust or fear, or both. In 
 beasts as well as in man the shape of their kind is 
 dear to them and abnormalities offensive. In Europe 
 the black skin makes the same impression as with 
 us, but Europeans generally see more varieties of 
 men than we do and become more tolerant of the 
 variations of human kind. 
 
 Fortunately for the whites as well as the blacks 
 this impression of abnormality soon disappears. Let 
 a white man remain in friendly intercourse with 
 Negroes for a few months and he will no longer note 
 that they are black. It is much the same as with a 
 distorted face. At first it is abhorrent, but if we be-
 
 166 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 come friendly with the spirit behind it, we no longer 
 note the distortion; we may even forget in what 
 manner the countenance is misshapen. It is an in- 
 teresting fact, if my observations on the matter are 
 correct, that the instinctive dislike to the Negro 
 disappears much more quickly than the prejudice 
 against other races less remote in quality of body 
 from ourselves. I have never known an instance in 
 which it persisted, provided the contacts were inti- 
 mate. On the other hand, I have found many who 
 were, after a life-time of experience, offended by the 
 aspect of the Jew, who differs so little hi appearance 
 from the Aryan that we are often in doubt as to our 
 judgment concerning his race. This swifter recon- 
 ciliation with the Negro is probably to be attributed 
 to the fact that he has adopted the white man's ways, 
 as well as to his ready sympathies. In the regions 
 where the blacks are numerous enough to be familiar 
 we find no instinctive prejudice against them. On 
 the contrary, there is still a large measure of the 
 ancient good will between the races which devel- 
 oped hi the period of slavery, and with the fear 
 of danger arising from the Negro vote eliminated, 
 there is no evident reason why those good relations 
 may not be restored. The Negro instinctively tends 
 to seek the help of the stronger race ; he has the 
 sympathetic nature that will pay hi devotion for
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 167 
 
 that help ; it will be the white man's fault if they do 
 not abide together in amity. 
 
 In looking forward to the immediate methods 
 whereby the relations between the blocks and whites 
 may be bettered, it seems obvious that the first step 
 should be to develop the citizenly capabilities of the 
 blacks along those lines of endeavor for which their 
 peculiarities fit them. For the most part I do not 
 believe that the Negroes at present need or can 
 profit by much of what is ordinarily termed the 
 highest education. Save hi rare instances, there is 
 nothing to be gained by pushing them towards the 
 professions. Those thus trained cannot, at present, 
 expect to find their way to satisfactory employment. 
 Where a youth fit for professional work appears, he 
 should be trained in colleges with the whites. In 
 general, the only way up for this people is through 
 agriculture and the handicrafts. That is, indeed, 
 the sole way that a primitive folk have ever won 
 upward to better stations. 
 
 Although the Negro is less inventive than the 
 Chinaman, his imitative capacity is large and he can 
 be trained to be an excellent mechanic. He is a 
 lover of the soil and can make a good farmer. The 
 Negro overseers on the small plantations of the 
 South showed in this regard much ability. The 
 women, though naturally slovenly, are eminently
 
 168 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 trainable; they have, as is well-known, a capacity 
 for cooking; they have the instincts that fit them 
 to be nurses. It is to such training, with the neces- 
 sary rudimentary schooling, that we have to look for 
 the immediate development of this folk. The best 
 part of the present unhappy transitional state of the 
 Negroes is that this need of craft-education is begin- 
 ning to be appreciated by the people of this coun- 
 try. We owe much of this gain to General Arm- 
 strong and to Booker Washington, men who saw 
 the need and went straight forth to meet it; but 
 the schools and the masters are all too few. There 
 should be a quarter of a million youths of the race 
 now learning trades, while there is less than a hun- 
 dredth part of that number thus engaged. The ex- 
 penditure required for the effective trade education 
 of the Negroes would be large. Allowing the net 
 cost of pupils in technical schools to be no more 
 than two hundred dollars per capita, and the dura- 
 tion of the schooling to be two years, the annual 
 cost of training the above-mentioned number would 
 be fifty million dollars. Though this sum could be 
 profitably spent, it is perhaps impossibly large. The 
 question arises whether the end cannot in some 
 measure be accomplished by a return to the old sys- 
 tem of apprenticeship which has been so generally 
 abandoned hi our white communities. There are,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 169 
 
 however, serious objections to this method in the 
 fear the Negroes would most likely feel that there 
 was a taint of the old slavery in the relation ; more- 
 over the trade-unions generally refuse to admit the 
 blacks into shops where their members work. Ap- 
 parently the only immediately effective way rapidly 
 to extend this training is by establishing local day 
 schools of such trades as carpentry and blacksmith- 
 big in the towns, and by such training in farming as 
 can be given in schools of agriculture. 
 
 Although the Negro lacks any considerable eco- 
 nomic foresight he is fortunately rather acquisitive, 
 being in this regard as in most others better mate- 
 rial for the uses of civilization than the abler Ameri- 
 can Indian. Already many of them are accumu- 
 lating wealth. It is evident that in them the gainful 
 motive can be developed in something like the pro- 
 portion that it has among the whites. If the fran- 
 chise were made to depend upon the possession of 
 property it would greatly aid in stimulating this 
 motive. Dr. Johnson held that men were rarely so 
 well employed as when they were earning money. 
 His statement is particularly true with the Negro, 
 for more than any other man he needs the effects 
 of a full purse. From it he will win the sense of 
 station which is denied him in politics. Property 
 would, indeed, give him a place in the world that he
 
 170 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 can attain in no other way. In a community with 
 an average share of well-to-do blacks we may be 
 sure that the contempt of the whites for the capaci- 
 ties of the race the most menacing element in the 
 present situation will pass away, for the folk will 
 thereby prove themselves respectable. 
 
 To further the accumulation of property by the 
 Negroes it is most desirable that a system of savings 
 banks should be instituted in the Southern States. 
 The lamentable incident of the banks of the Freed- 
 man's Bureau, still well remembered, has made it im- 
 practicable to establish any like institution; more- 
 over, the general economic conditions of the South are 
 adverse to such an establishment. The only effective 
 way is to have the Federal Government take, through 
 the post-offices, the savings of the people, giving them 
 the ample security which it alone can offer. There 
 are objections to this plan, but the most serious 
 of these would pass if the rural postmasters were 
 well-selected and permanent officials. The needs are 
 such as should compel our Federal Government to 
 lend this help. At present the Negro who is inclined 
 to save is subject, while the money is hi his hands, to 
 the temptations of the moment. He rarely has the 
 fortitude to accumulate until he is able to make his 
 first payment for a bit of land. A chance to have 
 the Government his banker would greatly appeal to
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 171 
 
 him. For, while he has had little but disappointments 
 in the way of expectations of Federal aid, that power 
 still mightily appeals to his imagination. Here we 
 find the only practicable help that the Government 
 can, hi the present condition of affairs, afford to 
 offer the South ; the offering would not of course 
 relate to the Negro as a class, though the warrant 
 for it comes mainly from his needs. 
 
 It is highly desirable that a considerable part of 
 the Negroes should become land-owners, for thereby 
 they will be established as citizens, with an interest 
 hi the commonwealth. In the present state of their 
 ideals, however, it has to be confessed that there is 
 some danger in the development of a cotter class hi 
 the South, for, with rare exceptions, whenever a black 
 man owns a place he neglects it ; he is usually con- 
 tent with a dirty shanty, and while he has much nat- 
 ural faculty for the immediate tasks of the farmer, 
 his lack of foresight leads him to wear out his fields. 
 As is well known, the lands of the South have been 
 sorely taxed by bad agriculture, though of late years 
 there has been a very great improvement in this 
 regard. There is evidently reason to fear further 
 depredations from an extended possession of the soil 
 by the Negroes. Here we shall have to trust to the 
 imitative motives of the race and to the training 
 of a minority of them in the art of farming, with the
 
 172 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 hope that the contagion of example may help the 
 conditions. 
 
 While it is evident that the Federal and even the 
 State Governments can do little to better the situation 
 of the Negro, he should by no means be left alone to 
 " work out his own salvation." Unlike the most of 
 the people who come to us from Europe his race is 
 not provided with the motives that lead to safety. 
 His elevation and maintenance, so far as we can see 
 for all time, absolutely depend upon the help he is to 
 receive from the state building race. In larger part 
 this help will have to come from day-by-day precept 
 and example, as it came to him in the centuries of 
 slavery with another accent but with like efficiency. 
 In part it may best be given by means of local asso- 
 ciations, mainly composed of the whites, but admit- 
 ting the abler blacks, which shall, hi the manner of 
 the Village Improvement Association now so com- 
 mon in the North, undertake to care for the con- 
 ditions of conveniently limited districts. Without 
 legal power but with the support of public opinion, 
 such societies could do much to uplift the conditions 
 of the people within their fields of action. They 
 would better the sanitary condition of the Negro 
 settlements, which even in the rural districts is uni- 
 formly very bad. They would make a beginning in 
 various lines of improvement, as by f urnishing simple
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 173 
 
 architectural plans for cottages, so that the blacks, 
 and the lower class of whites as well, may have 
 dwellings that contribute to the ordinary decencies 
 of life. At a trifling net cost, which might not ex- 
 ceed three or four hundred dollars per annum, they 
 could establish small model farms on the cotter scale, 
 say of twenty or thirty acres in extent, where the 
 people could see the advantages of good methods of 
 tilling. Whenever a Negro man or woman rose above 
 the herd he or she should be associated in this 
 work. There could be no stronger incentive leading 
 to advancement than the hope of joining such an 
 association, and those so placed would be useful 
 helpers, for they would greatly influence their class. 
 It should not be supposed that it requires a large 
 number of distinctly public-spirited people to found 
 and maintain a betterment association. Experience 
 shows that there as elsewhere one man or woman of 
 leading quality leads, the others follow until the mo- 
 tive is established in the hearts of many, and the 
 continuance of the work is assured. 
 
 I am so far convinced that the chance of better- 
 ment in the conditions of the Southern Negroes 
 largely depends upon the institution of associa- 
 tions such as I have suggested, unions that have 
 proved their value elsewhere, that I shall go a step 
 further and consider the ways in which the work
 
 174 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 may be begun. The main difficulty in the way of 
 a beginning is to convince the class of people on 
 which such work must fall of the advantages of the 
 method. The Southerners are a conservative folk 
 and look askance on innovations, especially when 
 they come from the North. Therefore it seems well 
 to begin the task by means of a little central asso- 
 ciation, composed of a few earnest persons from 
 both North and South, which shall have for its pur- 
 pose the fostering of such local improvement socie- 
 ties. This help should mainly consist of suggestions 
 and advice to collaborators who are willing to work 
 hi particular fields. In time it would be advanta- 
 geous if the central association could make small 
 money grants to supplement the means gathered by 
 the local societies for such expenses as would have 
 to be met in founding model farms. Grants of this 
 kind made by the State have proved in Massachu- 
 setts an effective means of furthering the establish- 
 ment and maintenance of efficient agricultural socie- 
 ties. Although in general it will be well here, as hi 
 all other work of like nature, to trust mainly to 
 local interest, it will be most likely advantageous to 
 have these societies united with the central board 
 meeting by delegates once each year. The cost of 
 administering such an association would be but 
 small, and the recompense perhaps greater than in
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 175 
 
 any other educational work called for by the states 
 of the South. 
 
 Although it is, on many accounts, desirable that 
 the abler Negroes come to be holders of land, it is 
 important that no artificial inducements be offered 
 to hasten this process, for it will bring with it a 
 certain risk. The effect will be, in a measure, to 
 withdraw the cotter class from that immediate con- 
 tact with the whites to which we have to look for 
 their further development. At present there is an 
 intermediate condition which, on the whole, is ad- 
 vantageous. In this the Negro leases his land from 
 a large proprietor and generally receives from him 
 plows, seed, etc., and sometimes an advance pay- 
 ment in the way of food ; at the end of the year the 
 crop is divided between landlord and tenant. It is 
 an ancient system, one much in use in the South 
 before the Civil War, when the lease-holders were 
 usually poor whites. In form it exactly corresponds 
 to the metayer system, commonly found in Italy, 
 save that there the relation becomes permanent and 
 the holding passes onward to the eldest son of the 
 tenant. From personal observation of these tenant 
 farmers in Tuscany, I am satisfied that the method 
 is on the whole better for them and for the land 
 than the French system where the laborer owns the 
 ground he tills. The fields are better cared for by
 
 176 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 well-trained stewards than they would be by peasant 
 proprietors, and the tenants keep in a wholesome 
 friendly touch with a superior class. If this relation 
 can be made such that the work of the Negro is 
 thus well supervised, and he is at the same tune 
 secure in his tenancy, it will be more helpful to him 
 than individual ownership can at present be. 
 
 There is evidently a tendency in the South to 
 fence the Negro around with certain social barriers. 
 This is commonly taken to indicate an immediate 
 dislike to his color, features, and peculiar specific 
 odor, which impress those who are not accustomed 
 to his presence, hi fact, it arises from a natural 
 desire to keep the two races socially apart. Within 
 reasonable limits, this is advantageous to the inter- 
 ests of both races, for with the assumption that in- 
 termarriage is impossible it is clearly best to establish 
 certain convenient lines of demarcation which shall 
 show that the societies are to be separate. It is, 
 however, desirable that these barriers be not made 
 hi the manner of those that limit the Hindu castes, 
 where to touch another means pollution, but that 
 they should be, like the other conventions of inter- 
 course, left as far as may be to the good sense of 
 individuals. It is, for instance, desirable to separate 
 the blacks and whites in public conveyances, but I 
 have been glad to see, even in the far South, that
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 177 
 
 where there was but one smoking car, the Negroes, 
 if well-behaved, were allowed to sit with the whites. 
 At present some of the fanatical spirits of the 
 South are much exercised over the matter of whites 
 eating with the Negroes, and to judge from their 
 fiery talk one would suppose that the preservation 
 of the white race depended on making this vile and 
 unnatural crime impossible. A little consideration 
 of the matter should convince these people that they 
 are unnecessarily disturbed. In the first place, if 
 they were really the heirs of the ancient traditions 
 of slave-holding days they would know that it was 
 common enough then for the master's children to 
 eat with the blacks and to slip away to some table 
 hi the quarter where they were sure of much more 
 importance than at the family board. I remember 
 having been well chastised when about twelve years 
 of age for breaking the rule that I should no longer 
 eat with the servants. This rule was not made to 
 secure social distinction, for no one of the slave- 
 holding class would have dreamed that there was 
 such a need, but to prevent the child from retain- 
 ing the Negro accent. In the South this evil had 
 to be guarded against, as in England the matter of 
 the Cockney forms of speech. In those days it would 
 not have occurred to a gentleman to eat with a Negro 
 any more than to ask a dirty white laborer in his
 
 178 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 shirt sleeves to sit with him at table. The "poor 
 whites " then, as now, held to this caste distinction 
 as sacred. But as I knew that interesting ancient, 
 the Southern gentleman, the only thing certain to 
 have led him to " eat with a nigger " would have 
 been the threat of being ostracized for the act. 
 
 There is a fair instance of the state of mind of 
 the Southern aristocrat in the matter of eating with 
 blacks, one that I commend to the attention of 
 people who think they are striving to uphold the 
 spirit of the olden days. "When the commissioners 
 charged with laying out the District of Columbia 
 at the end of the eighteenth century came to do 
 their task, they invited the almanac maker and sur- 
 veyor, Banneker, who dwelt not far from the area, to 
 take part hi the work. Banneker was a full-blooded 
 Negro, having been a slave hi the family of the 
 Elliots of Maryland, and it is said that when he pur- 
 chased an annuity of his master he reckoned the 
 price on a life table of his own computation. When, 
 as they worked together, it came to dinner time, 
 the commissioners asked their black guest to eat 
 with them. He sensibly asked to eat apart. These 
 commissioners were gentlemen from Virginia and 
 Maryland; it is evident that the Negro by nature 
 belonged in the same social class. So far as I have 
 been able to find, this incident led to no public
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 179 
 
 comment ; no one thought of blaming the white men 
 for doing the obviously right thing. 
 
 It must not be supposed that this tendency to set 
 off the Negroes as a caste is limited to the Southern 
 States. It is quite as evident in the Northern part of 
 this country and leads to some excesses not found 
 in the South. I have been warned by an agent not 
 to let a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a 
 worthy Negro, for the reason that it would gravely 
 harm the property, and experience proved that the 
 agent was right. I have known of a lady being re- 
 quested not to bring her black waiting-maid to a 
 Northern house where she was to visit, inquiry dis- 
 closing the reason to be that the owner would have 
 to refurnish the room where the maid was to sleep. 
 It is, in a word, evident that we are verging on the 
 establishment of a most absurd custom by which we 
 shall deny the very foundation of our modern life, 
 the plain Christian, common-sense truth that our 
 fellow-men are to be taken for what they are, and 
 that they are not to be offended if we can spare them 
 offense. It is not likely that any such caste system 
 can be approved in this country, for the reason that 
 the modern gentleman of the South, like his ances- 
 tors, is not a man to be dictated to ; he does not like 
 rules of conduct, and without his cooperation it will 
 be impossible to establish this iniquity.
 
 180 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 It is well to understand that the experiment of 
 combining in a democratic society, in somewhere 
 near equal numbers, two such widely separated 
 races as the Aryans and Negroes, has never been 
 essayed. Even under arbitrary governments the as- 
 sociation of less discrepant folk has proved imprac- 
 ticable. Thus many peoples of Europe have found 
 the Jews insufferable and have been willing to in- 
 cur the losses their expulsion has brought about; 
 within a decade Russia has taken this course. It 
 may as well be confessed that a true democracy, 
 social as well as political, is impossible in such con- 
 ditions, and that any adjustment which may be 
 effected must have many of the qualities of an oli- 
 garchy. There is some comfort hi the knowledge 
 that a complete democracy can be no more than 
 an ideal in any modern state ; it has never existed 
 in any society large enough properly to be termed 
 a state. In all effective commonwealths the con- 
 trol has resided in the few abler citizens who have 
 shaped for the weaker masses. The main ami of 
 our actual democracies is to give every man a chance 
 to win as far as his capacities allow him to go, care 
 being taken that his effort to get onward does not 
 harm his neighbor or the commonwealth. As to 
 the social status of the man, all but the most fla- 
 grant idealists hold that the state can take no account
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 181 
 
 of it. Moreover, the notion, originally French, that 
 the male citizen has, by birthright, a rightful share 
 in the political control of the commonwealth has 
 not been generally accepted. Although most of the 
 states of this Union have abolished, or not insti- 
 tuted, the qualification that electors should own 
 property, this has not been done so much for the 
 sake of justice as for expediency. Therefore the 
 changes in the suffrage in the Southern States, and 
 the further change introducing a property qualifi- 
 cation for the franchise, which in my opinion will 
 soon be required, though a departure from recent 
 usage, will not be an innovation hi our system of 
 government With a system in which the vote is 
 given to blacks and whites alike on the basis of edu- 
 cation and property, there is no reason why a trust- 
 worthy electorate cannot be obtained. 
 
 It should be observed that in the South at least 
 there has never been any general objection on the 
 part of white men to working with Negroes. In cot- 
 ton mills and other like establishments where the 
 operators are women and children such objection 
 exists, and blacks are not tolerated there save to do 
 the work of porters. But in the fields the two races 
 have always worked together and do so to-day with- 
 out any friction whatever. In certain instances the 
 white man may work under the control of the black
 
 182 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 and the relation excite no comment. Thus in a min- 
 ing property hi a Southern State, where iron ore is 
 taken from open pits by contractors, I found a Negro 
 "boss" supervising a gang in which there were 
 several white men, one of them known to me as an 
 ex-Confederate soldier of decayed gentleman stock. 
 I asked the superintendent of the property if the 
 relation had led to any trouble. He said that I was 
 the first person who had spoken of it to him, though 
 it had existed for some weeks. With the ordinary 
 business relations between the men of the two races 
 well established, it should be a matter of no difficulty 
 for them to unite their action hi the business of 
 government. This union, indeed, now effectively 
 exists. The so-called Democratic party of the South, 
 really the aristocratic party there, has never hesi- 
 tated to cooperate in citizenly work with the Ne- 
 groes. Unless the caste insanity should go far, we 
 may trust the good sense of the people to maintain 
 this wholesome relation. With this arrangement 
 the first stage of the commonwealth's work can be 
 accomplished. 
 
 When it comes to the matter of holding public 
 office, we find ourselves in face of the worst evi- 
 dence of the caste feeling that has appeared. Men 
 who are willing to work with the Negro hi the fields 
 and hi caucuses and to welcome him at the ballot-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 183 
 
 box are disposed to deny him all share of the other 
 service to the State in legislatures or offices filled by 
 appointment or election. It is not likely that this 
 limitation will commend itself to the sober judgment 
 of the Southern people. If the Negro is to be given 
 rights in the political work of the commonwealth at 
 all, and it is not openly proposed to withhold the 
 franchise if he meets the tests, then there can be no 
 just limitation of those rights on account of his race. 
 As regards all political offices, whether filled by 
 election or appointment, he should in justice stand 
 equally with the white man, on the basis of the 
 choice of the electorate or the judgment of the ap- 
 pointing and confirming power. To take any other 
 ground than this is to traverse either our birthright 
 or our sense of justice. 
 
 I note in the debates concerning certain recent 
 Federal appointments of Negroes that some of the 
 critics of those appointments take the ground that 
 they are properly objectionable to the whites, in that 
 they bring them into intimate relations with Ne- 
 groes. I know something of the necessary relations 
 with the two groups of public servants, postmasters 
 and revenue officers, and know that they are far less 
 intimate than those I have had with blacks who 
 served me in other ways. I cannot imagine a South- 
 ern gentleman really offended by the contacts he is
 
 184 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 required to have with such functionaries, though I 
 can well conceive that he would dislike a system 
 which gave 'such places of honor or profit to the 
 inferior race and not to his own. I am convinced, 
 however, that if he has not lost his ancient sense 
 of political expediency he will if it be necessary 
 accept this situation because of the hard logic that 
 supports it. It may be said, on the other hand, that 
 the appointment of Negroes to office is fitly to be 
 regarded as of doubtful expediency in any commu- 
 nity where a strong dislike to their presence in posi- 
 tions of control exists. If, for any reason, however 
 ill-judged, a white or a black man offends a notable 
 part of the people while an equally good man of an- 
 other color would offend none, the unobjectionable 
 man should be chosen. In other words, it is no part 
 of the business of a government to educate people 
 in matters of prejudice, and any effort to attain this 
 end is likely to increase the evil it tries to remedy. 
 It may be said that to deny a black man an appoint- 
 ment, because he is black, is to recognize the ine- 
 quality established by prejudices ; . but we have to 
 accept such inequalities, much as we may regret 
 them. We do so when a foreign court refuses to 
 receive an American minister who is a Jew, though 
 the court may do wrong to reject the man on that 
 account. The Southern whites do wrong to contend
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 185 
 
 against the appointment of a worthy Negro to a 
 Federal office, but it appears to me also an error of 
 judgment to put officials in places where their pre- 
 sence will prove exasperating to any part of the peo- 
 ple, be they white or black. The safe course is to 
 wait for the time of reason which is sure to come to 
 men. 
 
 The main point of my contention is that it is 
 necessary to avoid the existing risk of developing 
 a caste difference between the Negroes and the 
 Aryans. In every country class differences must ex- 
 ist, and they inevitably tend to become great Yet 
 amongst us, as in the slave-holding days, the con- 
 ditions need not prevent good human relationships 
 from existing between the two races, as a caste bar- 
 rier does, but may, by affirming the social interval, 
 make the development of understandings easier and 
 more helpful to both races. If political disturbances 
 are avoided there is good reason to hope that these 
 widely diverse peoples will, in part because of their 
 diversity, come into accord. This accord will be 
 more speedily attained if the steps leading to it are 
 left to be taken without much discussion, so that 
 the adjustment be as by a natural process. I should, 
 indeed, be glad if the whole matter could for a time 
 pass out of public debate, leaving aside the settle- 
 ment of all details until the main need of bringing
 
 186 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the two races into spontaneous citizenly cooperation 
 had been accomplished. 
 
 The few and scanty suggestions that I have felt 
 able to make concerning the Negro problem should 
 not lead the reader to suppose that it is simple and 
 to be easily solved. It is clearly not only the most 
 difficult our race has encountered, but of an order 
 of difficulty that has never been met in any other 
 commonwealth. There is in it an age of vexation 
 and trial, and doubtless much of failure, before a 
 wholesome solution can be attained ; the costs already 
 incurred may be manifolded before we are done. 
 Yet I am not with those who lament that this bur- 
 den is laid upon us, for I see that in bearing it we 
 may win to station such as no people has attained. 
 I believe that the capacity to deal with this matter 
 is in the Southern people. They did a like work 
 when they took the various stocks of Africans as sav- 
 ages and shaped their slavery so that those peoples 
 were swiftly lifted to a far better moral estate than 
 they have acquired elsewhere, making them, as we 
 know by the best of proof, their friends, while they 
 in turn gained from the task a quality as men and 
 citizens such as is won only by faithful service to 
 high aims. I know that they met in the Civil War 
 the gravest crises of modern tunes with a valiant 
 devotion. I differed with them hi purpose, but share
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 187 
 
 with all men in admiration of their devotion to 
 what they saw to be their duty. I believe, moreover, 
 that much of what these Southern people retained of 
 the race strength, and what of enlarged powers was 
 added to it, was due to the generations of care for 
 the primitive folk who had been committed to their 
 hands. The burden of the future is great, but there 
 are men to shoulder it. 
 
 Let me urge the point, that in considering the 
 patent ills of slavery we have generally overlooked 
 the good the institution wrought to master and slave 
 alikt : it lifted a savage race nearer and more rap- 
 idly towards civilization than had ever before been 
 accomplished, and it gave to the people who did the 
 work a peculiar moral training. We all recognize 
 the effect of leadership, of mastering and guiding in- 
 feriors ; we see its effects on parents, on captains of 
 every kind, and know that a man grows by his care 
 of others. As I remember the elders of the slave- 
 holding class, I recall something of their occasional 
 brutality and much of the odd mixture of degra- 
 dation and splendor which characterized them, but 
 the strongest impression is of men and women who 
 were sorely burdened by the grave responsibility of 
 keeping their hosts of semi-savages in decent ways 
 BO that they might live Christian lives. I see that 
 where there was the struggle to accomplish this dif-
 
 188 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 ficult task the Southern family held its place ; where 
 it was lacking it became debased and fell into the 
 unhappy state of the decayed gentry class. I recog- 
 nize that in no other social condition was the sur- 
 vival of the fittest so evident as in slave-holding, and 
 that as a result it developed a body of natural lead- 
 ers, strong men who had won their way by quality 
 of leadership handed down from generation to gen- 
 eration. 
 
 The result of these conditions of slavery is that 
 we have hi the South a body of men who are fitted 
 to take charge of a situation which is not very differ- 
 ent from that their fathers met. They are now, in- 
 deed, dealing with it in a fairly effective manner, for 
 despite all the rumors of class wars, the occasional 
 shocking incidents of lynch law, and the abomina- 
 tions of the peonage system in Alabama, the South 
 is at this moment laborious and prosperous, perhaps 
 more so than any other part of the world. These 
 leaders of inherited captaincy are effectively and 
 silently at work. They have no more desire to rees- 
 tablish slavery than have the sons of the abolitionists, 
 for they see that the Negro is a cheaper economical 
 agent as a free man than he was as a slave. I 
 know many of these men well, and their only pur- 
 pose is to make the best of the existing social order 
 with no thought of return to the old. I am con-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 189 
 
 vinced that if the proposition to restore slavery could 
 be submitted to the whites of the South it would 
 not obtain one per cent of the white vote. It is to 
 these men of the class educated in the management 
 of the Negroes that we have to look for the work 
 to be done. Personally I look to them for the doing 
 with great confidence, for what the forefathers have 
 shown of political wisdom may fairly be expected 
 from the sons. In my opinion the task has to be left 
 in their hands with such slight help as the people 
 of the North can lend, not by legislation, but out of 
 sympathy. 
 
 The need of abandoning Federal legislation con- 
 cerning the Negroes has, at length, after a genera- 
 tion of blundering, become apparent to our people, 
 as is evident from the neglect of a Republican Con- 
 gress to go further on the mistaken way. Each of 
 those enactments which were intended to help the 
 Negro onward has served to hinder his advance, for 
 the reason that they have diverted him from his im- 
 mediate duties and filled his mind with hopes of 
 some vague beneficence that was to better his lot. 
 Like all primitive folk, the Negro tends to look afar 
 in this world or the next for some miracle that may 
 help him out of all his troubles. The Civil War and 
 the Act of Emancipation have naturally led him to 
 believe that the Federal Government had god-like
 
 190 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 powers, and that having lately made him free it 
 would soon make him rich. They have still the 
 dream that the land is to be divided amongst them, 
 each to have forty acres, a horse, a cow, and a Utter 
 of pigs duly provided. White rogues have nourished 
 this fancy to their profit ; some years ago I heard of 
 one who sold to Negroes in Alabama at five dollars 
 each several carloads of gaily painted stakes such as 
 are used in the game of croquet, assuring them that 
 they were to be used to mark the corners of these 
 farms dropped from the sky. So long as this delu- 
 sion of help from afar inf ects the minds of the blacks 
 it will be impossible to bring them to the plain hard 
 work which they have to do, or to reconcile them to 
 the business of keeping on good terms with their 
 white neighbors. 
 
 Some of my readers are likely to find in what I 
 have said of the relations between the Negroes and 
 whites of the South a remnant of the old slave-hold- 
 ing view of the matter. I agree with them in this 
 judgment. I have, indeed, ventured on this writing 
 for the reason that while I am of the group of South- 
 erners who held for the abolition of slavery, I see the 
 good that was in it and the good which may be hoped 
 from the training it gave to whites and blacks alike. 
 I see, however, because I have studied the Negro 
 long and carefully, that he is not of a race that can
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN 191 
 
 yet stand alone, and doubt if he can ever so stand in a 
 civilization maintained by himself. I would not have 
 it supposed that I dislike or contemn the Negroes, 
 on the contrary, I am very much attached to them, 
 for I find that they are in their simple human nature 
 as likable a people as my own. They have, indeed, 
 more qualities which on first contact arouse the 
 sympathies. While they differ in certain important 
 ways from the whites, they are, as a whole, very 
 human ; they show the general qualities of mankind 
 better than our own race, where the primitive sym- 
 pathetic nature is too often overladen by the higher 
 reason. I believe that in the Negro, this relatively 
 simple species of our genus, we have a creature which 
 can with care be so placed in a modern state that it 
 will not seriously weaken its structure, and may add 
 much to the richness of its life. On the other hand, 
 if the Negroes do not come into and remain in accord 
 with the whites they may endanger the Republic. 
 With the care of the abler race they will make good 
 citizens ; without that they will give us the condi- 
 tions of the Haytian folk.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE IN HUMAN RELATIONS 
 
 IT is commonly supposed that the process of 
 classification is of a recondite nature to be used 
 only in learned inquiries. It is, hi fact, a necessary 
 part of all thinking, and is more trusted to by un- 
 trained simple minds than by those whose thoughts 
 are of a higher order. This desire for classification 
 which I shall, for brevity, term the categoric motive, 
 is recognizable in the lower animals, as well as hi 
 man. When a brute, as for instance a horse, sees a 
 large moving object which is unfamiliar, he is at once 
 frightened, and this for the reason that he has by 
 ages of ancestral experience learned to form a group 
 or category of such objects which it is profitable to 
 be afraid of, for the reason that enemies lie in that 
 group. If the thing is a sheet of paper blown by the 
 wind, or an automobile, and the creature is forced 
 to encounter it often, he will form a new category, 
 or rather a subdivision of the old, of moving things 
 with the particular features belonging to the paper 
 or the horseless carriage, of which the individuals
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE 193 
 
 are not harmful. Of course, all this process of cate- 
 gorizing objects performed by the lower animals, 
 and by lower man as well, is done without a trace of 
 consciousness of what they are about. They do it 
 after the manner of untrained men, for the rea- 
 son that it is the only way hi which intelligence can 
 deal with the practically infinite number and vari- 
 ety of things that come to its attention. They have 
 to divide these presentations of the universe into 
 groups, those that may include enemies, those hi 
 which their species belong, those good to eat, etc., 
 etc., and neglect all the rest as hi no wise concern- 
 ing them. The groups which are important to them 
 are evidently subdivided, so that they hold quite a 
 variety of genera and species in their limited minds. 
 When we observe the instinctive categoric motive 
 in man, we find that it works exactly as in the ver- 
 tebrates of lowlier estate, with the difference that it 
 is much more important, leading to the construc- 
 tion of far more divisions and to a better definition 
 of them. Thus while a horse has probably not more 
 than a score of categories, the lowliest savage can- 
 not do his work with his fellows or with the world 
 without, it may be, a thousand of them. Each of 
 these categories is represented in his mind by a 
 type, usually a composite image made from his 
 various seeings of objects included in it Naturally,
 
 194 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 -but not necessarily, there is a word or phrase by 
 which the group may be called to mind. It is easy 
 to see that success in life, in savage as in beast, de- 
 pends upon the sufficiency of these categories. They 
 must contain what needs be known for success and 
 no more ; they must be sharp, clear, and to the point ; 
 else some enemy, man or beast, not properly in- 
 cluded, may slay him, or some improperly classified 
 plant, unhappily categorized as good for eating, may 
 poison him. In fact, I fear that some of my exces- 
 sively Darwinian friends will, if they happen to note 
 these statements, proceed at once to show that the 
 survival of man has depended altogether on the fit- 
 ness of his categories. I am myself inclined to think 
 that the ability to classify effectively has had a con- 
 siderable share in the myriad influences which have 
 given our genus its marvelous success. 
 
 Assuming then the point that man does his think- 
 ing largely by the aid of his categories, let us note 
 certain features which necessarily characterize these 
 groups. First let us remark that in no case do these 
 mental pictures approach accuracy. Even the natu- 
 ralist, who with all his skill and patience sets down 
 his description of a species, knows that he has done 
 no more than describe certain salient points of the 
 group ; he is well aware that a life-time of observa- 
 tion on a single group would leave the task incom-
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE 195 
 
 plete. In our ordinary categories we evidently in- 
 clude no more than experience teaches us to do, 
 which is to regard only what immediately concerns 
 us. Here and there a wise man, and his is the su- 
 preme task of wisdom, sets to work to widen the 
 scope of his categories, particularly those which 
 relate to mankind. With the common folk, the cate- 
 gories into which they fit the kinds of men are as 
 gross as the others, such as may be denoted by good 
 or bad ; my sort or other sort, savage or civilized, 
 Jew, "nigger," gentleman, and by scores of other 
 words by which for our rude purposes we divide 
 up our fellow-men. 
 
 When a category has been made it is thereafter 
 recalled by some striking feature or features which 
 can be easily seized on by eye or other senses, and 
 becomes, so to say, the label of the thing, one that 
 can be seen at a distance and one not likely to be 
 mistaken. Thus the color of the skin is sufficient 
 to categorize the Negro, or the shape of the nose 
 the Jew. It does not seriously matter that an Arab 
 may be blacker than a true African ; for the reason 
 that all these groups have to be made in a rough- 
 and-ready way there is no time or skill for finished 
 work. The main point being not so much to exclude 
 all that should be put out, but to include all that 
 by any chance should go in. Thus, for instance, it
 
 196 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 is better for a horse in the wilds to shy at many 
 an innocuous object than to have the category of 
 dangerous things insufficient hi its extent. So with 
 men it is safer hi the various groups of enemies to 
 include objects that are not inimical, rather than to 
 leave any dangers out. So it comes to pass that 
 with the primitive man all others than his own tribe 
 are counted as enemies, or, with ourselves, all who 
 are black are reckoned as of one kind. The result 
 is that nearly all these groups which are the bases 
 of our thinking are taken as indicating universal 
 likeness among the included objects, while in fact 
 they may denote only some relatively unimportant 
 feature which conveniently serves as a sign of the 
 category. 
 
 As soon as a category is established in the ob- 
 servational way there begin to accumulate about 
 it certain emotional qualities; the states of mind 
 aroused by contact with the things included hi the 
 group come to be associated with the name of it. 
 This is true of inanimate objects, but it is vastly 
 more true of the categories we form of men. There 
 the traditional and literary impulses serve to gather 
 about the name of a human group a body of emo- 
 tions which awake when the word is spoken and 
 which prevent any change in its connotation. Thus 
 it is that such terms as Jew, "nigger," and the like
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE 197 
 
 become barriers to sympathetic advance. They are 
 to common people insuperable obstacles to further 
 understanding of the facts, and even to persons of 
 well-trained minds they are hard to clear away, for 
 they are founded not alone on human nature, but 
 on that of all intelligence of man and brute. It is 
 not too much to say that all social advance ulti- 
 mately depends on the extent to which we may be 
 able to break down these ancient barriers and re- 
 construct our primitive classifications hi the light of 
 inquiry. 
 
 With this brief account of the categorizing motive 
 in mind, let us look at certain of its applications to 
 the matter we have hi hand. Taking our common 
 idea of any group of men, let us see how it affects 
 our relations to them. For this end our American 
 Indians will serve well as an example. If we ex- 
 amine into what comes to mind when the name of 
 the people is spoken, or better what is awakened 
 by the sight of a member of this race, we shall find 
 that the image is relatively simple and that it is 
 made up of traditional views as to the nature of the 
 creature ; the stories of forays and massacres with 
 perhaps bits of memory of gentler tales. If one has 
 dwelt among Indians these emotions and judgments 
 are qualified by personal experience which leads to 
 some amendment of the popular view. In all cases,
 
 198 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 however, the state of mind is determined mainly 
 by tradition and not by personal experience. Thus 
 when you think you are dealing with a particular 
 red man, while you behold him with your outer 
 eyes as an individual, you inwardly see in him little 
 else than what the category sets forth. He is the 
 traditional Indian for all that his personality should 
 tell us. He is seen as belonging to a species of men 
 which is pretty much the same from one end of the 
 American continents to the other ; they are all to be 
 treated hi the same way for the reason that they 
 are all Indians. 
 
 Turn now to what we know of the facts, and com- 
 pare them with this gross category made as rudely 
 as the brutes make them. We know that the native 
 tribes of this continent differ among themselves far 
 more than do the peoples of Europe. These dif- 
 ferences are marked in language by the existence 
 of many score stocks, each apparently of origins so 
 separate that it is more than possible that they 
 were separately invented at different points by men 
 who were originally without speech. In customs 
 the variety is nearly as great. In traditions they 
 are equally far apart. In quality of mind, in gen- 
 eral ability and particular powers, they differ even 
 more than do the Sicilians and Scandinavians, and 
 among the members of the several tribes the indi-
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE 199 
 
 vidual quality of the persons, as regards all that 
 makes for nobility, is like what we find among ac- 
 quaintances of our own race. Yet knowing all this, 
 such is the dominating power of the categorizing 
 habit that the Indian, unless I hold myself up to my 
 knowledge, appears to me as he does to the fron- 
 tiersman as that kind of man who is good when he 
 is dead. So it is in all our contacts with our fellow- 
 men ; we have inherited from the lower lif e, that of 
 the brutes and brutal man, a habit which leads to 
 a classification of our kind, embodying hatreds as 
 animal in their nature as those which exist between 
 dogs and foxes such categories as are labelled 
 ** Vile Jew " and the like. 
 
 In the history of the relation of our people to the 
 American Indians we see some of the more evident 
 consequences of this evil of the category. In the 
 presence of this vastly diverse body of the indige- 
 nous folk there was need of action very diverse in 
 its nature and aims, but inevitably the category of 
 redskin was applied to them all, and there was but 
 one general method of dealing with them devised. 
 The contents of the category were of the simplest, 
 including no more than the ideas that all redskins 
 were lazy, treacherous, and menacing, therefore to 
 be put out of the way. So it has been in all man's 
 dealings with men of other races or tribes or classes.
 
 200 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 His classification has been the cloak of ignorance, 
 giving a false sense of certainty as to the basis of 
 action. So it is to-day in our own society, and will be 
 until the process of enlargement of men leads them 
 beyond this limitation. The way to this new and as 
 yet unwon freedom is plain. It is through the ex- 
 tension of the sympathies and understandings to the 
 point where we shall look upon all men as individu- 
 als, as we now look upon our lovers, our children, 
 and our friends. It is only through knowledge led 
 by the affections that the animal categoric way of 
 treating our fellows can be destroyed, and the mind 
 made ready to behold mankind from the larger hu- 
 man point of view. To attain this was an evident aim 
 of Christ. To those who may endeavor to practice 
 the art of Christian relations with the fellow-man 
 it is well to give a caution which I have noted more 
 in detail in the chapter on human contacts. This 
 is, that in the presence of the fellow-man we have 
 ever to contend with the ancient, inherited, categoric 
 method of dealing with the fellows of our kind. It 
 is one of the hardest of all moral undertakings to 
 keep from being controlled by this inheritance, so 
 that we may deal with the fellow, not as a mere 
 man with no more than his trifling value in the 
 classification, but as our brother in life seeing in 
 him ourselves.
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE 201 
 
 There can be no question that the tendency to dis- 
 place the categoric view of man by the sympathetic 
 is principally moral. It is equally beyond doubt that 
 it is the most essential element in all true religions. 
 It is also clear that there is some grave hindrance 
 which makes it difficult to put in practice views which 
 have been perfectly accepted by the intelligence, and 
 which command a large measure of support from 
 the emotions. Many a man has found that his reso- 
 lutions to deal with his neighbor largely, and in the 
 manner of the Samaritan, fall away when he is in 
 face of the need. What appears to him in his closet 
 as a living change of heart and of mind disappears in 
 the commonplace situation of dealing with the first 
 ill-conditioned fellow he meets, so he comes to the 
 conclusion that the higher view is fanciful and im- 
 practicable. The real difficulty lies in the fact that 
 
 
 
 the categoric motive is very deeply rooted, and from 
 its nature tends to command in certain situations so 
 strongly that nothing but a firm will combined with 
 much practice can change the habitual conditions 
 of contact. What is necessary is that we take with 
 us in meeting the neighbor a determination to look 
 upon him considerately, in the light of our bettered 
 understanding. 
 
 It is mightily interesting, as well as profitable be- 
 yond account, to enter determinedly on this practice
 
 202 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 of the sympathetic understanding through what, as in 
 all unaccustomed arts, has to be at first a deliberate 
 exercise of the will. There need be no fear that the 
 process will lead to a self-conscious mode of dealing 
 with our fellow-men, for sympathy will cure that 
 and lead us to forget ourselves. Whoever will essay 
 this task will be surprised to find how differently the 
 fellow-man appears hi the new light ; how changed 
 indeed is the whole world with the old scales fallen 
 from our eyes. There are no more common people, 
 "dogs of Jews," or "Indians good when they are 
 dead," but each stands before us in the dignity of 
 his manhood as a presentation of the hundred mil- 
 lion years of life of this world summed hi that mar- 
 velous personality of man. Whoever sees this hi his 
 fellow has seen into the promised land ; he has in 
 a true sense gained religion. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the enthusiasm of hu- 
 manity which comes with the first consciousness of 
 what man is when the ancient categoric limits are 
 swept away, will endure. It is the nature of such 
 impulses to be transient, but there will remain an 
 enlargement of motive in human intercourse which 
 is of great and permanent value. This aggrandize- 
 ment, however, is not limited to the understanding 
 of our kind, but insensibly extends to all our ways 
 of looking at the world. Having broken down the
 
 THE CATEGORIC MOTIVE 203 
 
 ancient cramping walls that limited our conceptions 
 in the human field, all the other like prisons of our 
 thoughts tend to weaken and give the sympathies a 
 chance to enter. 
 
 Looked at from a naturalist's point of view all 
 these changes I have described appear to me to be 
 the results of a widening of those affections which 
 are first shown in this world by the love of the 
 mother for her offspring and which have sponta- 
 neously extended to the brethren, to the tribe, and 
 thence, hi widening circles of influence, to mankind 
 and to the realm of nature. What understanding 
 does is to enforce that motive, to support it by 
 knowledge and place it safely on its way of develop- 
 ment. In this work it is but the guide of that love 
 which is past understanding.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE CONDITIONS OF THE CONTACTS OF MEN 
 
 IN the preceding pages I have often had to advert 
 to the conditions of human contact. As this matter 
 is of fundamental importance I shall now consider it 
 in some detail, though I shall limit the consideration 
 to those features which relate to matters of our in- 
 quiry. As we shall see, these carry us rather far. 
 
 The most important point to be kept in mind is 
 that men are strikingly individual beings, each sep- 
 arated from his fellows by gulfs that are hard to 
 bridge, and which, for all the efforts to obliterate 
 them, remain deep and wide. I have elsewhere dis- 
 cussed this matter hi much detail. 1 We now need 
 do no more than note that this individual quality of 
 man is but the summit of a series of natural actions 
 by which the universe as we know it has come to be 
 made up of separate units, each with its own distinct 
 life reacting on other centres of various grades. In 
 man we have the last and highest of the series of 
 
 1 See The Individual, a study of life and death, by N. S. Shaler, 
 D. Appleton & Co.
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 205 
 
 individuals of which the atom or the atomule is 
 the lowest of which we know anything whatever. 
 In man we have a vast host of subordinated indi- 
 viduals, atoms, molecules, etc., as well as semi-inde- 
 pendent organic forms like the several organs and 
 the white corpuscles of the blood, all united in the 
 bodily activities which constitute his animal life. In 
 his spiritual life we have a host of faculties, activi- 
 ties, and latencies which only in some very small 
 share originated with him, but have been accumu- 
 lated in all the life of his predecessors hi perhaps 
 a hundred thousand species, and individuals innu- 
 merable since his life began with the lowliest organ- 
 ism. All this vast inheritance along with his own 
 trifling experience is here for the moment working 
 together and striving to play a part through con- 
 tacts with the environment, particularly by means 
 of intercourse with the fellow-man. So when we 
 exchange greetings with the neighbor, we and he 
 are trying to bring our essentially parted natures 
 into contact He is seeking to convey a sense of him- 
 self to us, as we are to send our own self to him. 
 But across the gulf that parts us there is no bridge 
 by which we can really enter to one another. 
 
 "Wherever we behold the life of creatures allied 
 to ourselves, the mammals and birds, we find them 
 continually engaged in an effort to come to an un-
 
 206 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 derstanding with the neighbors of their kind by 
 means of sympathetic calls, gestures, or fondlings ; 
 they, too, are trying to escape from the loneliness 
 which is the sore burden of individuality. They 
 probably succeed far better, relatively, than man, for 
 the reason that they have little save a narrow range 
 of emotions to exchange ; the needed sympathy can 
 be aroused by mere sounds or gestures ; the signals 
 of kinship can be sent back to them by the same 
 simple means. With man it is different ; not only is 
 the scope of his emotional life really far greater than 
 in the lower species, but there is an indefinitely wide 
 range of ideas, more or less mingled with emotions, 
 which demand expression as a means of inducing 
 that sympathetic motive which he would arouse hi 
 the kinsman. 
 
 To set forth his state of mind to the neighbor, 
 man is engaged in ceaseless endeavors. He has in- 
 vented thousands of languages and words innumer- 
 able for no other purpose save to bridge the gulf 
 between these fearfully remote neighbors. He con- 
 trives dances and pageants, creates sculpture and 
 painting, makes endless plays and stories, all in the 
 ancient effort to come near to his kind. 
 
 Supposing that we have thus formed a picture, 
 which at best remains most imperfect, of the strange 
 isolation and loneliness of the individual man, let us
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 207 
 
 see what are the means at his command for gaining 
 access to his neighbor. By inheritance from the 
 lower life he has help from certain cries and a few 
 expressive gestures. As a man he has a face that 
 may tell much more than the countenances of the 
 lower animals, and yet nothing beyond the emotions 
 and only a few of these hi a clear manner. For the 
 part of him that is essentially man he has only the 
 device of language. That is for some portions of 
 the task of bridging the gulf a marvelous instru- 
 ment ; even with the lower peoples its value greatly 
 exceeds that of all the other means of intercourse 
 put together; yet it conveys slowly, and is, as we 
 readily see, most ineffective when the need of com- 
 municating with the neighbor is greatest. 
 
 Let us now consider what takes place when two 
 men, mere strangers to one another, come together. 
 The motive of classification, which I have considered 
 hi another chapter, leads each of them at once to 
 recognize the approaching object first as living, then 
 as human. The shape and dress carry the categoriz- 
 ing process yet further, so that they are placed hi 
 groups, as of this or that tribe or social class, and 
 as these determinations are made they arouse the 
 appropriate sympathies or hatreds such as by ex- 
 perience have become associated with the several 
 categories. Be it observed that these judgments are
 
 208 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 spontaneous, instinctive, and unnoticed. They are 
 made so by immemorial education in the art of con- 
 tact which man has inherited from the life of the 
 ancestral beasts and men; they have most likely 
 been in some measure affirmed by selection, for 
 these determinations as to the nature of the neigh- 
 bor were in the lower stages of existence in brute 
 and man of critical importance, the creatures lived 
 or died according as they determined well or ill, 
 swiftly or slowly. If we observe what takes place in 
 our own minds at such meetings we will see that 
 the action hi its immediateness is like that of the 
 eyelids when the eye is threatened. As we say, it is 
 done before we know it. 
 
 So far, in our contact with the fellow-man what 
 takes place is of animal generality, not essentially 
 human ; the next steps are of the higher order, for 
 they enter on the field of actions peculiar to our 
 genus. The stranger tries by speech to tell us of his 
 thought ; if his language is our own and he is clever 
 in using it we may get something from the words 
 which qualifies in a measure the idea of him that 
 the categorizing process forced on us ; but if we note 
 carefully we shall see that this amendment is slight. 
 Our preconceived idea, as of Jew or Negro, effect- 
 ively denies him access to us. From the tones of 
 the voice or the expression of the face or body may
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 209 
 
 come something to awaken sympathy, but rarely 
 from the sense conveyed by the speech. All the 
 ideas we thus receive are faint and of little weight, 
 compared with what we gain by the more ancient 
 tests as to the category in which the man belongs. 
 Moreover, speech is at best a clumsy instrument for 
 conveying thought ; even in the written form, where 
 everything can be well judged and amended at will, 
 it is most imperfect. Thus what I am here writing, 
 fairly well trained as I am in such work, and with 
 time to turn and weigh the phrase, will fail to bear 
 to the reader precisely what I would send to him. 
 The spoken words of strangers, as we easily note, 
 are very ineffective hi communicating any but the 
 simplest ideas; they have relatively little value hi 
 arousing sympathy except so far as they do so by 
 the quality of the voice or the intonation. 
 
 If I have made the point plain, we may now assume 
 that in meeting the fellow-man for the first time we 
 take with us habits of mental action which gravely 
 limit the probability of penetrating to his quality. 
 We instinctively put him into a category or group of 
 preconceived ideas of what he should be, and thus 
 lodged he is apt to be beyond the reach of our higher 
 sympathies. We do this, as before said, because the 
 methods of contact were determined in our lower 
 life of beast and man. The question now is, what
 
 210 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 can be done so far to destroy this inherited evil 
 that our sympathies in the presence of the neighbor 
 may operate as they do when we endeavor by the 
 stimulus of literature, religion, or music to awaken 
 the sympathetic motives we would have with us 
 when hi face of the fellow-man. Evidently the first 
 thing to do is to study the art of approaching this 
 isolation to which we would come near. Men have 
 long, in a dumb way, recognized that there was need 
 of such a process ; they have here and there devel- 
 oped fragments of what will doubtless some day be 
 made into a whole, but so far as I know there has 
 been no effort to discuss the matter of meeting the 
 neighbor from the point of view of philosophy or 
 of morals. This lack makes it difficult in the brief 
 space I can give to this problem effectively to dis- 
 cuss it. What I have to say should therefore be 
 taken as mere suggestions based mainly on my own 
 observations and experiments. 
 
 In considering the possible ways by which we may 
 better our contacts with our neighbors, it is well to 
 begin by taking account of the present state of the 
 process of intercourse, to see if in the existing essen- 
 tially instinctive methods there is any chance of 
 effecting improvements. It seems to me that much 
 can be done in this field of action. In the first place 
 it is evident that the primal methods of appeal to
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 211 
 
 the neighbor for sympathy, those of gesture, voice, 
 tone, and facial expression, no longer serve as they 
 primitively did to bridge the gulf between men. If 
 we watch our collateral kinsmen, the monkeys, we 
 see that before our ancestors came to man's estate 
 they trusted to grimace and gesture to convey emo- 
 tions, and by those means much was conveyed. It is 
 still the custom of the lower races to use these silent 
 means of awakening sympathy. The unconscious 
 habit of imitating the antics of their kindred among 
 the mammals and birds probably exhibits a low stage 
 of gesture language, for in that way the creature 
 puts itself in the same state of mind as its fellow 
 and gives him proof of it. This means of sympa- 
 thetic communication by movements of the body 
 passes from the lower life to man, and in the more 
 primitive races and in the children of the higher is 
 much used to signify and excite the sympathetic state. 
 Curiously enough, however, it tends among all peo- 
 ples in their social advance to undergo certain changes 
 which effectively destroy its value as a means of in- 
 tercourse. These changes deserve the attention which 
 I shall now give them. 
 
 The first step towards the loss of gesture language 
 appears to arise from the fact that it is made formal, 
 becoming what we call the dance, or it may be organ- 
 ized into a distinct sign language, such as was once
 
 212 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 in use among the American Indians. Either of these 
 specializations tends to take gesture out of associa- 
 tion with speech. Thus with our Indians, though 
 they have dances made by gesture most symbolic, 
 and a sign language far more perfect than any other 
 described, the ordinary speech is singularly monoto- 
 nous and without much help from grimace or ges- 
 ture. With the higher races the same effect is pro- 
 duced by the relegation of these ancient means of 
 expression to the stage when the actions had become 
 recognized as appropriate. Such things become the 
 properties of the actor, and any use of them save 
 on the stage is regarded as unfit. Even oratory, 
 which once retained its ancient rights of free ex- 
 pression, is now deprived of them; to say that a 
 public speaker behaves like an actor is to condemn 
 him. The curious motive of tabu common with men 
 of primitive folk is perhaps immediately responsible 
 for this banishment of a most important contrivance 
 for establishing relations with our fellows. 
 
 Something of the motive which has led to the aban- 
 donment of gesture is probably to be found in desire 
 of people of culture for exemption from bodily con- 
 tact with their neighbors, even when these are their 
 friends. The desire for this physical isolation is 
 such that no cultivated person can stand a slap on 
 the back or a punch hi the ribs, though both are in
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 213 
 
 the gesticulative language natural and very effective 
 means of coTnTminina.f-.inn. So, too, the modesty which 
 desires to have no public excitation of the sexual 
 motives counts for something hi this repression, as 
 does also the bashfulness which is in the same field of 
 emotions. It is likely that the modern ideal of the 
 soldier, that of a rigid unemotional man, has had its 
 influence in making all our movements formal and 
 mechanical In fact there is doubtless a great tangle 
 of influences which have served to make the original 
 man, who was evidently a very gesticulative crea- 
 ture, into the speaking machine he now is hi his best 
 estate. If we watch a group of Negroes in the South, 
 where they are free to put aside their semblance of 
 the whites, we may see something of the ancient 
 spontaneous sign language and note how much of 
 sympathy-conveying power has been lost by the civ- 
 ilizing process. 
 
 The change hi the dumb speech of gesture has its 
 parallel in the formalizing process which the voice 
 has undergone. We no longer permit its tones to 
 tell much of our feelings. Social custom requires 
 that it shall be kept as far as possible on one key, 
 whatever be the significance of the words it utters. 
 Here again, it is only the actor who has the ancient 
 scope, even the orator is condemned if he is dis- 
 posed to put much sympathetic quality in his voice ;
 
 214 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 he is apt, if he does so, to be regarded as theatrical. 
 It is only in children that we find the perfectly nat- 
 ural tones that fit with the emotion, but these pass 
 quickly as the imitative impulse leads them to shape 
 their habits of speech on those of their elders. This 
 change occurs in all peoples, but is most conspicuous 
 in the more civilized moderns, where the expression 
 of emotion has become in some measure shameful. 
 
 As regards the expression of the countenance, the 
 rule of least action has gone even further than in 
 the case of the other elements of dumb language. 
 There can be no doubt that the qualities of the 
 face were made for expression ; there are several sets 
 of muscles which are so connected with expressive 
 facial movements that we may fairly regard their 
 survival, if not their existence, to have been due to 
 the use that has been made of them for this pur- 
 pose ; in the primitive men they usually have an ex- 
 tended and free play. We see this mobility still in 
 the Negroes when merriment, dejection, and other 
 states of mind give rise to a far greater variation 
 of expression than hi the whites, it appears to me 
 to be several times as great, though it is habitu- 
 ally restrained, that it may conform to white usage. 
 In the present condition of civilized peoples the 
 face is so far controlled that it has lost nearly all of 
 its power to influence in first contacts with the
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 215 
 
 fellow-man, so that even the trained observer finds 
 little to interpret in its play. This is even more true 
 of the Hebrew face than of that of the Aryan ; they 
 both have what seems to be the inevitable mask 
 of civilization, but the Jew masks best. So far has 
 this abandonment of facial gesture gone, that even 
 actors appear to me to be abandoning the use of the 
 face as a means of influencing their audiences. 
 
 The rule that excludes dumb speech has gone so 
 far that a man must no longer weep save in pro- 
 found personal grief. To weep because another is 
 affected would seem to most men a sign of weak- 
 ness. If he can do so, the civilized man takes the 
 sorest blow unmoved. As regards laughter, it is still 
 tolerated because it is the least controllable of the 
 sympathetic movements. Yet it, too, is limited. We 
 rarely hear from a cultivated man a real laugh, 
 but only a mockery of that most human movement. 
 It is likely that with a little further advance we 
 shall conquer this, the last surviving of the primi- 
 tive modes of expression, and be reduced to mere 
 words uttered in such a manner as may best convey 
 their intellectual meaning. 
 
 My reason for dwelling on the loss of the original 
 means of communicating with the fellow-being is 
 that these means, mostly originating below man, are 
 the most natural resources whereby one being can
 
 216 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 come in contact with another. We see how primal 
 they are when we note our intercourse with dogs. 
 These creatures watch our gestures, expressions, 
 and tones of voice in the primitive way, and from 
 them obtain marvellously clear notions of our states 
 of mind. We are accustomed to use these grimaces 
 and gesticulations in dealing with them, so that one 
 can see and hear the natural man more clearly when 
 he is dealing with his dog than at any other time. 
 There was evidently a stage hi human intercourse 
 before speech began, when all that one man said to 
 another was told as we tell it to a dog, by move- 
 ments and tones, and the understanding was doubt- 
 less quickly sympathetic even though very unintel- 
 lectual. The reactions of spirit were effective be- 
 cause they were ancient and deeply founded. Then 
 came this device of articulate speech, with the 
 chance it gave to convey, not the ancient emotion, 
 but discreet, accurately stated thought. This method 
 of communication must at first have been to a very 
 great extent combined with the earlier mode of 
 expression, for speech grew slowly to language in 
 the sense hi which we know it. But in tune words 
 became so effective that they alone might serve. 
 The effect of this change is that when we come to 
 parley with the stranger we have no means of 
 bridging the gulf between us save the very unsym-
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 217 
 
 pathetic device of phrase, and this of the arid con- 
 ventional type. I bid him " good morning," ask the 
 time, comment on the weather, or what not, and go 
 my way ; so far as any sympathetic contact with that 
 isolation is concerned, it has not taken place. As I 
 have to form some opinion of him I do it by put- 
 ting him in one of the categories or groups of men 
 which are the common property of my race and 
 class, so that what comes to me is little more than 
 this empty form on which judgments are shaped. 
 
 It is something if we recognize these limitations 
 of our first contacts with men, and make due cor- 
 rection for then: utter insufficiency. It is more if we 
 change the state of mind in which these contacts 
 are made, and acquire habits which may wake us out 
 of the commonplace humor with which we meet 
 the neighbor. I have found by experience that this is 
 possible. For all that the fellow is trying as hard 
 as I am or harder, to hide himself in the citadel of 
 himself, he really longs to escape from his isolation. 
 He will resent any effort to break open his gates, 
 but after the manner of warders he is not likely to 
 object to a parley which will establish something 
 like human relations without the slow process of 
 siege. Experiment shows that the surest way to this 
 is by a frank, neighborly greeting that goes at once 
 beyond the outworks of the hold. I had my lesson
 
 218 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 in this way years ago, when, on a railway train, a 
 stranger, an intelligent man, entered to me and 
 went straight about discussing a rather recondite 
 question as if our conversation had been tempo- 
 rarily interrupted. In a moment my surprise van- 
 ished, and we were as near together as though I had 
 known him for years. The subject exhausted, I ques- 
 tioned him as to the manner of his greeting. He 
 said that he had deliberately adopted it as a means 
 of getting quickly near to men, and that it worked 
 well ; now and then it made a man "huffy," but such 
 a fellow was not worth knowing. 
 
 It is not everybody who has the address to prac- 
 tice the art of instantaneous f riendliness in the man- 
 ner above noted, but all can train themselves in 
 what is perhaps a more effective way of bettering 
 the contact with the neighbor. This is by insist- 
 ing that we shall be interested in him. In place of 
 allowing him to step by essentially unnoticed, scan 
 him so that you will know him again. Be sure that 
 in that little field of his countenance there is a 
 history worth reading. See his shape and what it 
 tells ; you will be mistaken in many things, but the 
 most you discern will be true. Above all, remember 
 that here before you is the supreme product of this 
 world, the most marvellous thing we know in the 
 universe, a man.
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 219 
 
 The history of the methods of meeting and greet- 
 ing shows that there has been a steady decline in 
 the formal part of the performance, but, as we get 
 an idea of it from the old plays, the ami of the an- 
 cient formality was very generally that of display. 
 It may well be doubted whether it provided any 
 better method of approach to the neighbor than the 
 abbreviated greetings of to-day, save that it kept 
 people longer under preliminary survey, so that they 
 had a better chance to judge one another. But un- 
 der the conditions of human nature all such actions 
 become familiarized and commonplace, and there is 
 no use trying to give them spiritual significance 
 after they have lost it. The only way to improve 
 the conditions of human contacts is by a deliberate 
 change hi the point of view. This is difficult, but so 
 far attainable that we may hope to do much in this 
 way. 
 
 As for the details of this process of bettering the 
 conception of the fellow-man so that our present 
 barren categories hi which we include the varieties 
 of men we meet may be enlarged, it is clear that 
 the end can only be attained by extending know- 
 ledge of the nature of man. Just so far as the 
 commonplace ideas which we habitually use can be 
 replaced by something nearer to what we now know 
 to be the truth, we shall provide a basis for better
 
 220 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 relations. Yet these facts of modern science which 
 so magnify our concepts of humanity are hi them- 
 selves mere information. Taken alone they can do 
 no more to change the point of view than our 
 knowledge of the physical realm serves to alter our 
 everyday state of mind concerning the weather or 
 stars. In his ordinary seeing of these spheres the 
 wisest student of nature does not perceptibly dif- 
 fer from the person who is uninformed in such 
 matters : it is only when his sympathetic imagination 
 quickens the heap of information that he sees widely 
 and far. 
 
 I cannot here enter on the large question as to 
 the ways hi which the deeper and most real value 
 of modern knowledge can be won through its asso- 
 ciation with the imagination. It may be said, how- 
 ever, that this will have to be accomplished by the 
 passage of this pure learning into the spiritual chan- 
 nels of religion and literature. The results of inquiry 
 are now, and hi their present condition must re- 
 main, spiritually inert to the masses of men, as they 
 are, indeed, to the greater number of the inves- 
 tigators who possess them. It is not to be hoped 
 or even desired that this body of knowledge shall 
 become a part of the store that all men share. It is, 
 hi fact, quite beyond possibility that as information 
 it can be appropriated by any one man, however
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 221 
 
 able and laborious he may be. But in the converted 
 form of religious beliefs and poetic understandings, 
 the more enlarging of these truths, especially those 
 relating to humanity, may find their place hi the 
 minds of men. There appears to be no chance that the 
 betterment will be attained by any formal teaching 
 of science ; of that there is now more than enough ; 
 for science is evidently displacing those forms of 
 education which helped to quicken the imaginative 
 sympathies of men on which all truly humane culture 
 depends. 
 
 With this view as to the conditions of human con- 
 tact, particularly of what occurs when men first 
 meet one another, let us glance at what takes place 
 hi nearer intercourse. We have seen that at the 
 beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is in- 
 evitably dealt with in the categoric way. He is taken 
 as a member of a group, which group is denoted 
 to us by a few convenient signs; as our acquaint- 
 ance with a particular person advances, this category 
 tends to become qualified. Its bounds are pushed 
 this way and that until they break down. It is to 
 be noted in this process that the category fights for 
 itself, or we for it, so that the result of the battle 
 between the immediate truth and the prejudice is 
 always doubtful. It is here that knowledge, espe- 
 cially that gained by individual experience, is most
 
 222 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 helpful. The uninformed man, who begins to find, 
 on the nearer view of an Israelite, that the fellow 
 is like himself, holds by his category in the prim- 
 itive way. The creature is a Jew, therefore the 
 evidence of kinship must not count. He who is bet- 
 ter informed is, or should be, accustomed to amend 
 his categories. He may, indeed, remember that he is 
 dealing with a neighbor of the race which gave us not 
 only Christ, but all the accepted prophets who have 
 shaped our own course, and his understanding helps 
 to cast down the barriers of instinctive prejudice. 
 
 At the stage of advancing acquaintance where 
 friendship is attained, the category begins to disap- 
 pear from our minds. We may, indeed, measure the 
 advance in this relation by the extent to which it 
 has been broken down. Looking attentively at our 
 mental situation as regards those whom we know 
 pretty well, we see that most of them are still, 
 though rather faintly, classified into groups. While 
 a few of the nearer stand forth by themselves, all of 
 the nearest to our hearts are absolutely individual- 
 ized, so that our judgments of them are made on the 
 basis of our own motives and what we of ourselves 
 discern. We may use categoric terms concerning 
 our lovers, spouses, or children, but they have no 
 real meaning ; these persons are to us purely indi- 
 vidual, all trace of the inclusive category has disap-
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 223 
 
 peared : they are, in the full sense of the word, our 
 neighbors, being so near that when we look upon 
 them we see nothing else, not even ourselves. 
 
 It is the aim of all true religions to bring men 
 to abandon the categoric way of dealing with the 
 fellow-man, and to take in its stead the individ- 
 ual method. The dictates of science approve of this 
 change for the reason that the method of consider- 
 ing objects by groups, while appropriate, indeed in- 
 dispensable, as regards all things beyond the reach 
 of the effective sympathies, is unfit in the field of 
 the affections. I cannot deal with my child, my 
 friend, or even with my dog in the categoric man- 
 ner, for the reason that the sympathies pertain to 
 individuals and not to groups. When they seem to 
 relate to categories we find on inspection that such 
 is not really the case. A man who thinks that he 
 sympathizes with the Indians, the Negroes, or other 
 unjustly treated people, is, if he is really in a state 
 of sympathetic movement, picturing some individual 
 sufferer or sufferers to whom his affections go forth, 
 or else he is mistaking for sympathy intellectual 
 condemnation of the wrong done to the group. The 
 task of science is the development of categories 
 through the exercise of the reason ; the task of the 
 sympathies is to break down these categories and to 
 deal with objects as individuals. It would be inter-
 
 224 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 esting to follow this and other contrasts of these two 
 groups of motives further, but it would be foreign 
 to my purpose to do so. 
 
 Summing up these considerations concerning hu- 
 man contact, it may be said that the world works by 
 a system of individualities rising in scale as we ad- 
 vance from the inorganic through the organic series 
 until we find the summit in man. The condition of all 
 these individuals is that of isolation ; each is neces- 
 sarily parted from all the others in the realm, each 
 receiving influences, and, in turn, sending forth its 
 peculiar tide of influences to those of its own and 
 other kinds. This isolation in the case of man is sin- 
 gularly great for the reason that he is the only crea- 
 ture we know in the realm who is so far endowed with 
 consciousness that he can appreciate his position and 
 know the measure of his solitude. In the case of all 
 individuals the discernible is only a small part of 
 what exists. In man the measure of this presenta- 
 tion is, even to himself, very small, and that which 
 he can readily make evident to his neighbor is an 
 exceedingly limited part of the real whole. Yet it 
 is on this slender basis that we must rest our rela- 
 tions with the fellow-man if we are to found them 
 upon knowledge. The imperfection of this method 
 of ascertaining the fellow-man is well shown by the
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 225 
 
 trifling contents of the categoric discriminations we 
 apply to him. While, as has been suggested, much 
 can be done by those who have gained in knowledge 
 of our kind by importing understandings into our 
 relations with men, the only effective way to the 
 betterment of those relations is through the sym- 
 pathies. 
 
 What can be done by knowledge hi helping us to 
 a comprehension of the fellow- man is at best merely 
 explanatory of his place in the phenomenal world, 
 of itself it has only scientific value. The advantage 
 of the sympathetic way of approach is that in this 
 method the neighbor is accounted for on the suppo- 
 sition that he is ourself in another form, so we feel 
 for and with him on the instinctive hypothesis that 
 he is essentially ourself. There can be no question 
 that this method of looking upon other individuali- 
 ties is likely to lead to many errors. We see exam- 
 ples of these blunders in all the many grades of the 
 personifying process, from the savage's worship of a 
 tree or stone to the civilized man's conception of a 
 human-like god. We see them also in the attribu- 
 tion to the lower animals of thoughts and feelings 
 which are necessarily limited to our own kind, but 
 in the case of man the conception of identity gives 
 a minimum of error and a maximum of truth. It, 
 indeed, gives a truer result than could possibly be
 
 226 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 attained by any scientific inquiries that we could 
 make, or could conceive of being effectively made, 
 and this for the following reasons. 
 
 When, as in the sympathetic state, we feel that 
 the neighbor of our species is essentially ourself, the 
 tacit assumption is that his needs and feelings are 
 as like our own as our own states of mind at diverse 
 tunes are like one another; so that we might ex- 
 change motives with him without experiencing any 
 great sense of strangeness. What we have in mind 
 is not the measure of instruction or education, not 
 the class or station or other adventitious circum- 
 stances, but the essential traits of his being. Now 
 this supposition is entirely valid. All we know of 
 mankind justifies the statement that, as regards 
 all the qualities and motives with which the primal 
 sympathies deal, men are remarkably alike. Their 
 loves, hates, fears, and sorrows are alike in their 
 essentials; so that the postulate of sympathy that 
 the other man is essentially like one's self is no idle 
 fancy but an established truth. It not only embod- 
 ies the judgment of all men hi thought and action 
 but has its warrant from all the science we can ap- 
 ply to it. 
 
 It is easy to see how by means of sympathy we can 
 at once pass the gulf which separates man from 
 man. All the devices of the ages in the way of
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 227 
 
 dumb or spoken language fail to win across the void, 
 and leave the two beings apart ; but with a step 
 the sympathetic spirit passes the gulf. In this 
 strange feature we have the completion of the series 
 of differences between the inorganic and the organic 
 groups of individualities. In the lower or non-living 
 isolations there is no reason why the units should do 
 more than mechanically interact. All their service 
 in the realm can be best effected by their remaining 
 forever completely apart. But when we come to the 
 organic series the units begin to have need of under- 
 standing their neighbors, in order that they may 
 form those beginnings of the moral order which 
 we find developing among the members even of 
 the lowliest species. Out of this sympathetic accord 
 arises the community, which we see hi its simple be- 
 ginnings in the earlier stages of life ; it grows with 
 the advance in the scale of being, and has its su- 
 preme success in man. Human society, the largest 
 of all organic associations, requires that its units be 
 knit together in certain common purposes and un- 
 derstandings, and the union can only be made effec- 
 tive by the ways of sympathy, by the instinctive 
 conviction of essential kinship. 
 
 Thus, while the work of building a commonwealth 
 can be greatly helped by knowledge, it cannot be be- 
 gun or continued except by that sympathetic under-
 
 228 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 standing which alone knits men together. Knowledge 
 may and should help by showing that the social sense 
 of kinship is necessary to this establishment, but it 
 cannot quicken the motive ; that is done by the com- 
 mon spirit of the race which is included in its lan- 
 guage, its traditions, and its religion. In so far as 
 they do their appointed task they convey to each 
 soul the tide of life ; of the higher life of the race, 
 which has its springs in the devotion and self-sacri- 
 fice of all its noble people. It is on this we have mainly 
 to depend for the betterment of the contacts of men. 
 What we may term the contact rate of differ- 
 ent tribes and races of men varies considerably, and 
 with certain peoples has changed much hi recent 
 centuries. In the British Isles we find the York- 
 shireman of the lower classes sullen, and disposed 
 to an ugly state of mind towards all strangers. 
 This humor betters among the more southern Eng- 
 lish, so that the preliminary greetings show a confi- 
 dence hi the unknown neighbor. The Irishman has 
 a very quick sense of the fellow-man, while his race 
 kinsman, the Highlander of Scotland, is more stub- 
 born in his instinctive doubts. In general, a large 
 admixture of Scandinavian blood, as in Western Eng- 
 land and Southern Scotland, appears to make contacts 
 more difficult. On the continent of Europe the more 
 southern peoples evidently have a quicker sense of
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 229 
 
 the fellow-man than the northern. It takes about 
 half the tune to gain a preliminary understanding 
 with a Frenchman or an Italian that it does with an 
 Englishman. In Germany the peoples of the south 
 are far more approachable than those of the north. 
 
 The differences hi the manner of contact among 
 various peoples appear to have little value as in- 
 dices of their attitude towards the neighbor. These 
 variations are, probably to a considerable extent, de- 
 pendent on the curious medley of motives that we 
 include under the term fashion. Thus the rigid- 
 ity of the Prussian seems to be the result of the 
 military motive and manner of the upper classes 
 which has been imitated by the lower ranks of the 
 people; while the half-surly way of the German 
 Swiss may be the product of the reaction against 
 aristocratic conditions. Yet there doubtless is in 
 these variations of behavior towards the neighbor 
 something of the habitual attitude of the man to- 
 wards himself. The independent self-centred state 
 of mind of the Scandinavian, where the fellow has a 
 certain pride hi his isolated self-sufficiency, causes 
 him to answer a neighbor's hail gruffly; while the 
 Frenchman, who evidently feels the need of his kind 
 more keenly, speaks him fairly. The Jews, for all 
 their bitter experiences hi contact with other than 
 their own people, have retained what appears to be
 
 230 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 an ancient racial or tribal capacity for quick respon- 
 sive contact with their fellow-men. I have, in a pre- 
 vious chapter, noted this feature in some detail. So 
 far however, from the kindliness of the first greet- 
 ing indicating the measure of the sympathetic mo- 
 tive, among Europeans at least, the deeper sense of 
 the fellowship of man appears to be the greater the 
 less its first manifestations. It is evident from his- 
 tory that the Germanic stocks are less innately cruel 
 than the Latin races, or perhaps they have more 
 effectively subjected the ancient cruelty motive. 
 
 The lessening of the motives which led to cruelty 
 in recent centuries among the Germanic peoples is 
 one of the most curious features in the moral history 
 of mankind. It is evident that in England the butch- 
 erly humor of antiquity continued in the hearts of 
 the folk down to the thirteenth century, as is shown 
 by the massacres of the Jews hi London, Norwich, 
 York, and other towns ; but from that time forth 
 the sympathies have been more masterful, and in 
 the course of five hundred years have made such 
 actions impossible. In Germany the progress, al- 
 though slower, has been steadily in the same direc- 
 tion, so that hi both these kindred peoples the moral 
 status in this regard is at present about the same. 
 Among the Germanic races in America the advance 
 in the humanizing process has been even more rapid
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 231 
 
 than in the related stocks of the Old "World. This, 
 as it seems to me, began to be shown in the conduct 
 of the native troops in the Revolutionary War ; and 
 it was admirably manifested in the Civil War, when 
 with very rare and limited exceptions, there was no 
 sign of the cruel motive. 
 
 Among the Latin races, or at least among the 
 French and Spaniards, the primitive blood-thirsty 
 motive which was universal in Europe until the end 
 of the Middle Ages has, for some inexplicable reason, 
 been retained to, or near to, the present time. The 
 Frenchman, in his quiet state a very gentle fellow, 
 becomes, when imbued with the war motive, in large 
 measure de-humanized; the impulse to massacre 
 holds in him much as it did in the Middle Ages, as 
 was shown in the outbreaks of the Commune, only 
 a third of a century ago. A part of this curious 
 phenomenon is that the horror and shame of it ap- 
 pear to make no significant impression on the minds 
 of the better people. They deprecate cruelty, but, so 
 far as I see in their histories, regard the exhibitions 
 of it in periods of excitement as something entirely 
 normal. In fact we have here, as elsewhere in the 
 French nature, most curious instances of retarded 
 development hi a people who are in certain other 
 ways exceptionally advanced. Among the Spanish 
 the primitive cruelty of man is retained, much as
 
 232 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 among the French, although it does not manifest 
 itself in wild mob furies, but in a more systematic 
 way, as in the treatment of prisoners, or of non- 
 combatants in civil war. In Italy the advance in 
 the humanizing process appears to have been almost 
 as effective as among the Germanic folk, the butch- 
 erly humor having steadfastly diminished since the 
 time of the Renaissance. 
 
 These over-brief statements of an important gen- 
 eral truth serve to indicate that the cruelty we note 
 hi the French and Spaniards is not peculiarly de- 
 veloped in them, but that it is a survival from a time 
 when the sympathy with the fellow-man was much 
 less keen than it is among the more advanced Ger- 
 manic stocks at the present tune. As for the reasons 
 for either the advance or retardation in this regard 
 we have nothing that is certain in the way of explana- 
 tion. 
 
 The blood-thirstiness of primitive men and the 
 general development of cannibalism among them 
 shows plainly that man came early by his more bru- 
 tal qualities. How he came by them is a perplexing 
 question, for, so far as we can see, none of his collat- 
 erals have a trace of the motive. The gorilla is 
 doubtless a fierce brute when at bay, but there is no 
 evidence of the desire to harm for the gratification 
 of other than momentary rage, and the like is true
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 233 
 
 of all the Quadrumana. In fact, save in a few car- 
 nivorous animals, such as the dog and wolf, none of 
 the mammals show a blood-thirsty disposition. The 
 dog and wolf will slay for the mere pleasure of the 
 activity. As man comes from a group mainly feed- 
 ing on fruits, nuts, and insects, and is for his size 
 singularly unfit for combat, he should not, and prob- 
 ably did not, inherit from his prehuman ancestors 
 any love of killing his neighbors ; he must have de- 
 veloped that motive hi his human estate. 
 
 That man on entering the human stage promptly 
 developed a disposition to assail his neighbors who 
 differed from his own tribe, is made plain by the fact 
 that all the varieties of men on all the continents 
 are lethal. Though the measure of their hunger for 
 the life of those whom they regard as enemies may 
 differ, it is always great. In fact, this desire to slay 
 for the sake of slaying is, as above noted, almost a 
 peculiarity of man ; and the impulse to torment the 
 enemy is the most original and unique of all the 
 characteristics of the genus. All the other qualities 
 of his mind have some likeness in the lower life, 
 but this is his alone. We wrong the beasts when 
 we speak of the slaughter during outbreaks such as 
 the u Terror " as brutal ; that is supremely human. 
 
 That this tendency to cruelty is a deep founded 
 element in human nature may be most easily proved
 
 234 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 by asking the reader to examine himself. It is cer- 
 tain that he will find evidence of it hi the deep lying 
 animal-nature desires of his own heart. He will 
 find there subjugated, yet alive, the motives that 
 lead to slaying for hatred's sake, and tormenting for 
 the sake of torment. We see it in children of the 
 gentlest breeding, however well-guarded by higher 
 training ; it is the motive hi war. So far as I know 
 there has been no extended study of the conditions 
 which lead to the cruel motive of man. It has been 
 accepted as a part of the human store and with- 
 out much comment. The fact that it is essentially 
 human seems to have escaped observation. I shall 
 therefore set forth what seems to be a possible ex- 
 planation of the matter. 
 
 Although I am less inclined than the most of 
 my brother naturalists to adduce the theory of nat- 
 ural selection hi order to account for the existence 
 of complicated organic conditions, especially for the 
 peculiarities of man, I am disposed to believe that 
 it may in a measure explain the widespread devel- 
 opment of the assailing motive hi mankind for the 
 following reasons. It is evident that primitive men 
 were divided into small tribes, as are their nearer 
 collateral kinsmen, the anthropoid monkeys. That 
 tribal motive is common among all the Quadru- 
 mana; it is, indeed, almost mammalian in its gen-
 
 THE CONTACTS OF MEN 235 
 
 erality. It is also evident that there is a certain 
 natural hostility among the herds, droves, or other 
 tribal divisions of the brutes; this rarely leads to 
 death, but merely to serious bodily injury, for gener- 
 ally they are not provided with the means of slay- 
 ing. When, however, the stage of man was attained, 
 the wits of the creature quickly made him master of 
 the lethal arts. The primitive spear, even when it 
 was no more than a pointed stick, was a more effec- 
 tive instrument of assault when guided by human 
 intelligence than any natural weapons such as teeth 
 and claws afford. With each advance hi arms and in 
 the motives that gave them efficiency the primitive 
 tribes which made those gains attained dominance 
 over their less inventive and less militant neighbors. 
 This condition has evidently persisted from a very 
 early stage in human development to the present 
 day, with the result that the originally rather in- 
 offensive creature has become through selection a 
 singularly brutal annual.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY AND SPECIES 
 IN ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 To understand the true nature of those variations 
 among men which are found in the physical and 
 mental differences exhibited by the tribes, races, and 
 species of our genus, it is necessary to take a some- 
 what wider view of the process of diversification of 
 peoples than we have as yet essayed. We need not 
 only to note that in this process of variation man- 
 kind is proceeding on a way which all organic life 
 necessarily pursues, but also to see, in part at least, 
 the nature of the process and its moral significance 
 in our own exceptional genus. 
 
 Organic individuals, as before noted, differ from 
 the inorganic hi that they are able to gain by ex- 
 perience and to transmit their acquisitions in a 
 cumulative way to their successors, while inorganic 
 individuals, even if they have the vast complexity of 
 structure and function of the celestial spheres, have 
 not that capacity of acquiring and transmitting profit 
 won from their surroundings. This is, indeed, the
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 237 
 
 essential difference between the living and the dead: 
 they both have the uniform changeless life of the 
 lower realm, but to the living shape is added the 
 capacity for endless education, for ceaseless change 
 in reference to environment. Just how this profit 
 of experience is handed on through a series of or- 
 ganic individuals is still a matter in debate. The 
 Darwinian school has fairly proved that it is in some 
 measure transmitted accumulatively from generation 
 to generation by selective processes, but only the 
 rasher followers of the great pathfinder hold that 
 this is the sole way by which the advance is attained. 
 The master held to no such narrow view. It is prob- 
 able that in this as in most other organic actions, 
 we might say inorganic as well, the result is brought 
 about through the combination of a vast complex of 
 influences of which the survival of the fittest is but 
 one, certainly the most recognizable, in many fields 
 of life the most dominant, yet but one among 
 many. 
 
 It is impossible in this writing to review the vari- 
 ous hypotheses concerning the conditions of organic 
 development. For my purpose it may be admitted 
 that in the realms of life below the level where 
 intelligence begins to play its part, the process of 
 natural selection or the survival of the fittest is 
 the dominant influence in determining the course of
 
 238 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 advance, or, it may be, the retrogression of a series 
 of organisms; it being understood that the primal 
 capacities of the original form set certain limits and 
 give a certain measure of direction to the changes 
 which are induced. It is when the intelligence at- 
 tains a stage where the individuals of a group have 
 to act together in order to live that we begin to 
 find serious trouble in accounting for their develop- 
 ment by any such mechanical actions as selection 
 implies. This feature of a common mind or intent 
 hi a group of animals has a wide range of manifesta- 
 tion. It may be relatively simple, as in the quickly 
 developed sympathetic fear that moves a herd to 
 flight ; but even in such lowly forms as the insects 
 it attains a high order of complexity. The facts of 
 associative action are indeed more clearly indicated 
 by structure and habits hi that group than in any 
 other organic series. 
 
 In order to set forth some of the features of 
 the common mind which may be developed in an 
 intellectual community, I shall note something of 
 the exhibition of it found in any group of social in- 
 sects. For this purpose I select, almost at random, 
 a species of moth which lays its eggs on the wild 
 cherry and a few other kindred Rosaceous plants, 
 in order that its offspring in the grub state may 
 feed on the young leaves until ready to enter on
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 239 
 
 the chrysalis state. In this species (Clisiocampa 
 americana^ Harris) the female lays its eggs in the 
 warm season, selecting the appropriate tree in un- 
 erring manner. These eggs are placed near the top 
 of the branches, and the nests, formed either by the 
 same female or by a number of females, are distrib- 
 uted over the branches, so that the colonies hatched 
 from them have an even chance of procuring food. 
 Rarely, if ever, are the nests so numerous that there 
 is not food enough to supply all the colonies which 
 they found. In some years of rather close observa- 
 tion of this species, during which tune I have ex- 
 amined perhaps five hundred trees in determining 
 the point, I have not found a clear instance in 
 which the young on any tree have failed to find 
 adequate sustenance from its leaves and been forced 
 to wander in search of food. It seems fairly certain 
 that the females exercise a certain restraint in order 
 to avoid crowding their offspring beyond the point 
 where they may have a chance to attain their full 
 development. 
 
 When the young caterpillars of a nest are hatched 
 and begin to feed, they quickly associate in build- 
 ing a nest of spun webs, each grub taking some part 
 in the work. At first this nest is no more than a 
 tangle of threads put together without apparent 
 order ; yet the place in which it is installed is com-
 
 240 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 monly well chosen, not only for the immediate needs 
 of the hundred or so tiny creatures, but also to 
 admit of the enlargement and change in the design 
 of the structure to accommodate the larvae which, 
 before they are mature, are to be at least fifty times 
 the size they had attained when the nest was begun. 
 At least ninety-five per cent of these constructions 
 are placed at a point where twigs about a fourth of 
 an inch hi diameter and to the number of three or 
 more branch hi several axes ; the result is that hi 
 the final state the housing has an even three-dimen- 
 sional space, sufficient to accommodate all members 
 of the temporary society. 
 
 Beginning when they are still not more than a 
 fifth of an inch hi length with such a slight struc- 
 ture as their web-producing capacity enables them 
 to spin, the larvae when they have grown to about 
 twice that size proceed to alter the plan of the 
 edifice. Apparently they feel that they are unduly 
 crowded as they cling hi the night or in bad weather 
 to the scattered threads of their webs, and so are in- 
 duced to change the form of the shelter. This they 
 do by building a sheet of the material so tied to the 
 branches that it is as taut as a drum, with each 
 surface near to a plane, and so dense and with such 
 an inclination that it will shed the rain. One or 
 more conveniently placed openings of suitable width
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 241 
 
 afford access to this enclosed space, while a series 
 of floors give the creatures a chance to lie at ease 
 within the cover. As the larvae still further in- 
 crease in bulk, other envelopes are built from tune 
 to time outside of the original sheeting, so that if 
 the colony is successful there may be four or more 
 of these, each separated from the other by a space 
 that just admits of the storage of the creatures and 
 of their ready passage to the branches where they 
 feed. It is to be noted also that from the nest to 
 the feeding places there is commonly a web-covered 
 path composed of a few strands of the fibre, which 
 serves to guide the larvae on their journeys to and 
 fro, as well as to smooth the way. This web appears 
 to be spun by the first that traverse the path. 
 In those seldom cases in which the nest of this 
 moth is so ill placed that it cannot be extended, it is 
 usually abandoned by the young grubs and another 
 site chosen that better fits their needs. It is prob- 
 able that the emigrants may in some instances find 
 refuge with another colony where there chances to 
 be room. That such is the case is shown by the 
 occasional presence of nearly mature individuals hi 
 a nest together with a set of larvae so small that 
 they could not have come from the same group of 
 eggs. In these migrations all the members of a 
 colony are apparently not guided by a like impulse,
 
 242 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 as is shown by the fact that now and then a nest 
 will be found which contains only two or three ma- 
 ture larvae, while the shed skins show that it origi- 
 nally held a hundred or more now being lodged with 
 other near-by groups to which they have betaken 
 themselves. 
 
 Those who know something of the history of the 
 lepidopterous insects will recognize the fact that 
 such phenomena of associative action between indi- 
 viduals are repeated, as described above, with many 
 variations in a host of species of the order. Spon- 
 taneously, with no chance of obtaining any instruc- 
 tion from the elders of their kind, these creatures 
 so react on one another that a common mental, 
 or, as we may term it, colonial, purpose is attained 
 which results in very complicated joint products in 
 the highest measure purposeful. This common mind 
 is hi certain respects as well ordered as that of an 
 individual, for those associatively built webs 'are as 
 artfully contrived, and as well adapted to the needs 
 of the creatures, as is the one built by a single spider 
 working quite alone. The same feature of association 
 is shown in other orders of insects ; in the Hymen- 
 optera, among the bees, and in the order to which 
 the Termites belong. I shall do no more than note 
 the fact that these several widely separated groups 
 show how the intellectual community is formed
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 243 
 
 wherever among the insects the needs of association 
 lead thereto. It is evident that hi the intelligence of 
 the articulated animals there is a latent capacity for 
 combining the work of a host of individuals, so that 
 from the association is developed something of the 
 nature of public opinion, we lack a better term for 
 it, which enables and requires all the cob'perators 
 to act in unison. 
 
 It is the usual practice to dismiss the intellectual 
 work of insects with the question-begging term u in- 
 stinct ; " to assume that they act in some automatic 
 manner that does not involve intelligence. I cannot 
 agree with this for many reasons, of which one must 
 here suffice. Granting that the mode of operation 
 of instinct differs from that of a conscious mind, it 
 still has to be assumed that such deeds as I have 
 described are in their essence mental, for they take 
 account of conditions beyond the body and adjust 
 the doing to varied necessities. It is not only to be 
 granted that the quality of this mind is specifically 
 and generically different from our own, but it has to 
 be admitted that it is of another type from that which 
 we possess. What we know of instinctive actions 
 hi our own selves goes to prove that psychologists 
 have erred in supposing that mind is of one general 
 nature. The facts taken at large hi the organic 
 realm clearly indicate that if we could visualize the
 
 244 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 diverse kinds of intelligence we should perceive them 
 to be quite as varied as the bodies in which they are 
 lodged. The assumption, generally tacit, that mind 
 is of one relatively invariable quality arises from 
 the fact that our means of observing its character 
 are exceedingly limited ; the advantage we have hi 
 watching it in bisects is that because of their small 
 size, their high degree of activity, and the capacity 
 for mechanical constructions afforded by their pecul- 
 iar frames, we have a better chance than elsewhere 
 hi the lower animals to measure and to determine 
 the character of certain of their mental qualities. 
 There is reason for believing that the same capacity 
 which we find in the insects for developing inter- 
 active instincts, that is to say, spontaneous, uncon- 
 scious modes of intellectual action between indi- 
 viduals of the same species, exists in the vertebrate 
 type up to and including man. 
 
 The best evidence that the higher vertebrates near 
 the series leading to man have capacity for instinc- 
 tive cooperation such as leads to the develop- 
 ment of a common mind guiding a social order 
 is found in the rodents. The social organization of 
 communities hi this group often attains the same 
 kind of perfection, though their work does not show 
 the eminent shapeliness that we find hi the webs, 
 honeycombs, and hilla of the insects. In the beaver
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 246 
 
 lodge the individuals are associated in an accord 
 that makes their work even more effective than that 
 of primitive men. By a consensus of the laborers, 
 evidently without leadership or instruction, they do 
 complicated work which is adjusted to very variable 
 conditions and effected in a varied manner. Thus, 
 though very rarely, they will, at times and places 
 when it is necessary for their purpose, dig canals on 
 which to float their timber if it is too far to drag 
 it over-land. Again they will abandon the habit of 
 dam-building and for generations betake themselves 
 for lodgment to holes in the river banks, and resume 
 their old habit of construction when the circum- 
 stances favor such action. Thus the beavers of east- 
 ern Virginia gave up long ago the habit of building 
 dams, because of the hunter; but in the Civil War, 
 when their persecutors were otherwise engaged, they 
 returned to that ancestral plan of life and once again 
 built dams. 
 
 The various genera and species of small rodents 
 commonly known as field mice have constructive 
 habits almost as remarkable as those of the beaver, 
 habits which exhibit the same insect-like instinct 
 combined with a share of vertebrate intelligence. 
 More than in the insects, the communal rodents 
 adapt their instinctive actions to varying conditions ; 
 yet the difference is one of degree, for even the larvas
 
 246 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 of the moths, as elsewhere described, vary their ac- 
 tions not a little to meet the needs that arise in the 
 course of their lives. It should be noted that while 
 these insects are in the grub state, there is certainly 
 no clear vision ; at most, they discern only the dif- 
 ferences hi light. They can take no account of their 
 webs by sight, their information must come by touch 
 alone ; and yet they manage to bring about results 
 which are quite like those attained by the Mammalia 
 with image-making eyes, each individual associating 
 its action with that of its fellows of the community 
 in a very perfect way. 
 
 Although there is no basis for accurate computa- 
 tion it may safely be estimated that there are now 
 in existence somewhere near a hundred thousand 
 species of animals, mostly insects, all of which, sub- 
 stantially without means of denoting their own in- 
 tentions or appreciating those of another of their 
 kind, are able to associate their action in such a way 
 that the community has a common mind. Wherever 
 a communal need arises we see that this mental com- 
 munism at once appears. In a word, the facts indi- 
 cate that it is characteristic of a species, at least 
 in the animal kingdom, that its members are capa- 
 ble of developing a peculiar mental understanding, 
 a consensus of thought and action, which is not pos- 
 sible among members of diverse species. That we
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 247 
 
 do not perceive the existence of this quality in the 
 greater number of genera and classes is due to the 
 fact that their habits do not call for its development. 
 It is unnoticeable in the greater number of insect 
 groups ; yet here and there, among very diverse or- 
 ders, coming into view suddenly wherever the habits 
 are such as to call for its exercise, the ability to 
 work together appears, giving us the perfection of 
 the ant-hill, the honeycomb, the webs of the social 
 larvsB, or the constructions of the beavers. 
 
 From the facts above noted we may fairly deduce 
 the conclusion that in the species of men we are 
 likely to find something of the special mental qual- 
 ity, the peculiar specific motive of the mind leading 
 to associative action found in the lower life. In other 
 words, it is to be expected that the mental differ- 
 ences in the several species of our genus will be at 
 least as great as the physical ; and that there will 
 be signs of a consensus or material understanding 
 among the members of each group which cannot 
 easily be attained by individuals of different groups. 
 That this condition exists in relation to the species 
 and varieties of mankind is amply proved, it is 
 indeed the very substance of human history. 
 
 I turn now to consider the process by which an 
 organic species or variety is established. Putting
 
 248 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 aside the debatable questions as to the influences 
 which make for such variations, there are many 
 facts which all naturalists accept as certain. First, 
 every existing species or variety has come into exist- 
 ence by changes in some way brought about in an 
 antecedent group whence its form has been derived. 
 The passage from the antecedent to the consequent 
 group is accompanied in practically all instances by 
 some change of shape or habits fitting the creatures 
 to conditions to which they were not before adapted. 
 The alteration is not only in bodily form, it is in 
 mental as well, for there is some modification of 
 motives associated with every bodily change. In 
 no instance as yet has the process of establishing a 
 new species been observed in the field of nature, but 
 we may obtain what seem to be fair semblances of 
 the course of events in our experiments with do- 
 mesticated animals and plants. Assuming that the 
 likeness is true, as hi all probability is the case, we 
 may proceed to state the process of variation as far 
 as it is visible. 
 
 When by selection or other means the descend- 
 ants of a preceding species, for instance, those 
 derived from the wild stock of our barnyard fowl 
 (Gattus bankivus) or the common parent of our do- 
 mesticated pigeons (Columba livia), are made to 
 vary much in shape from the original form, their
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 249 
 
 habits also undergo some change. Thus with our 
 common fowls, ducks, and geese we find that they 
 become instinctively bound up with man. However 
 neglected, they rarely if ever run wild, clinging 
 obstinately to human habitations. So too with the 
 domesticated pigeons; though they will become in 
 a way rangers, they cleave to peopled places, never 
 becoming, so far as I have been able to find, really 
 wild. They may in appearance return very nearly 
 to the shape and color of the original stock, yet the 
 peculiarities of their mental quality remain strong 
 enough to justify for them the name of a distinct 
 species. The like is the case with certain other of 
 our domesticated animals. So far as I have been 
 able to learn, the sheep, the dog, and probably the 
 goat, do not feralize, though all of them are quite 
 able to maintain themselves hi a wild state. It 
 is otherwise with horses, pigs and cattle. They 
 all, though rather unwillingly, will adopt a life in- 
 dependent of man. Thus about half of the spe- 
 cies which we have in common domestication show 
 clearly that a very considerable change has been 
 brought about in their mental quality, for the mo- 
 tives which make them cleave to man are certainly 
 important innovations in their original character- 
 istics. To my mind, these groups are hi their men- 
 tal features more specifically distant from their
 
 250 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 wild progenitors than they are in their physical 
 shape. So far as these relatively brief experiments 
 of man go to show the process of forming varieties 
 and species they indicate that the variations of the 
 mind are in general more easily instituted and are 
 more permanent than those of the body. If any 
 one doubts this proposition let him study the dog, 
 in which the intelligence has been in a way revo- 
 lutionized by a few thousand years of contact with 
 mankind. It matters not whether the creature be 
 derived from a wild species of the genus Canis or 
 whether his blood is a mingling of several species, it 
 is plain that great as have been the physical alter- 
 ations wrought by selection they are surpassed by 
 the mental changes which have been induced in the 
 stock. 
 
 There is evidence going to show that in the vari- 
 eties induced by artificial selection the peculiar forms 
 have a tendency, not always marked, to keep sepa- 
 rate from one another, at least when the conditions 
 favor their isolation. Thus if a number of very dif- 
 ferent breeds of sheep are allowed to roam in exten- 
 sive pastures, the several stocks will commonly herd 
 apart from each other. The evidence, though not 
 very clear, leads me to the belief that a distinct di- 
 versity of aspect in practically all cases leads diverse 
 breeds of our domesticated animals to group them-
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 251 
 
 selves separately. The motive is not so strong that 
 it will cause a single exceptional individual to keep 
 away from the others, but where there are a number 
 of each kind, males and females, they will tend to 
 herd apart. This feature is most apparent hi sheep, 
 and least so in horses. While this segregating mo- 
 tive is apparently not strong enough to prevent 
 interbreeding, it obviously tends to effect this end, 
 for the males of separate herds are likely to re- 
 sist the approaches of the males of other herds. In 
 other words, it seems to me that we observe in our 
 domesticated breeds of animals, though somewhat 
 indistinctly, the beginnings of that process of mental 
 isolation which is necessary to convert an inconstant 
 variety into the more firmly established species. 
 
 It is evident that as a new species is established 
 it normally becomes a competitor against others of 
 nearly related habits which occupy the same field. 
 It claims a share of the food and the other oppor- 
 tunities the field affords. Its success in the struggle 
 depends upon the vigor with which it contends with 
 its rivals for the chances of life, on the measure in 
 which it presses upon the competing forms. In the 
 vegetable kingdom and the lower series of the ani- 
 mals, this assault on the rival appears as a mere 
 blind insistence ; but as the scale of intelligence rises 
 a distinct hatred between the contestants is apt to
 
 252 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 develop, such as exists between the species of pre- 
 daceous animals when they are brought into contact. 
 It is with the individualized species as with the per- 
 sonal individual, each is the centre of actions and 
 has to maintain itself hi strife with its neighbors. 
 Hence the inevitable organic war that exists be- 
 tween all competing individuals and the societies 
 they form a war which is one of the marks of the 
 life that rises above the lower inorganic plane, and 
 continues unceasingly until the moral life begins 
 to develop hi the love of kindred and to widen in 
 the sympathies of enlarged men. For our purpose, 
 therefore, a species may be defined as an aggregate of 
 kindred creatures in which the sympathies bind the 
 individuals together so as to form a common mind, 
 but with the sympathies limited to the fellows of the 
 kind, all beyond the bound being disregarded, or, if 
 regarded at all, considered as enemies and the sub- 
 ject of active hatred. There is an exception to this 
 rule in the domesticated animals which, by a newly 
 developed or converted instinct, came to look upon 
 man as a master, and to depend on his presence 
 for a kind of moral support. There are other slight 
 exceptions where species appear to come into some 
 measure of sympathetic relations with others of very 
 different nature ; yet these do no more than accent 
 the grim truth that, hi proportion as varieties or
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 253 
 
 species are developed, and as a condition of their de- 
 velopment, enmity with their competing neighbors 
 necessarily arises. The process is indeed a part of 
 that great work of individualizing life which has led 
 to the personal independence and efficiency of man 
 and to the isolation of his communities. The bear- 
 ing of all this on the race problem which mankind is 
 now facing is evident. It will be further considered 
 in the closing chapter. 
 
 In considering the development of what may be 
 termed the specific motive in animals, it is well to 
 note the fact that it depends mainly on the sympathies 
 and hi very small measure on the rational part of the 
 mind. The individuals of each group are moved by 
 tokens which excite at once and strongly in all its 
 members, fear, rage, or other impulses, so that they 
 act in common. There is something very curious and 
 instructive in these contagions of excitement which 
 we behold hi our flocks and herds. They seem ever 
 to be penetrated by the mob spirit which appears 
 from time to time in man, and compelled to act to- 
 gether. In fact, this crowd motive, so far from being 
 peculiar to man, is in him a mere remainder of the 
 impulse which profitably guided the lower species 
 through which his life came to its higher estate. In 
 those lower forms where the spiritual individualiza- 
 tion could not, for lack of intelligence, go far, it was
 
 254 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 advantageous to have all the members of a commu- 
 nity act together on the lines of certain simple, blind 
 impulses ; for thereby the society attained a certain 
 rude strength, as men do in war. It is on these 
 massive and gross sympathies that the intellectual 
 isolation of species comes hi tune to be founded. It 
 is, indeed, not unlikely that on then* origination de- 
 pends in some measure the beginning of specific vari- 
 ation, and that among the higher animals a species 
 is not often firmly established until these motives 
 are so organized as to lead its members to act in a 
 cooperative manner against all competitors. 
 
 For the reason that the evident physical differences 
 between species blind us to the unseen mental varia- 
 tions, the observer needs carefully to attend to all 
 the facts which fairly lead him to infer the intellec- 
 tual differences between such groups. Those facts 
 seem to me amply to justify the conclusion that 
 among the higher animals at least the specific indi- 
 vidualizing of motives immediately accompanies the 
 physical diversification of the new group, if it does 
 not in general precede it, and that the mental iso- 
 lation of the group serves to preserve it from being 
 absorbed by interbreeding with the parent stock or 
 other related varieties. Still further, I find warrant 
 for the supposition that the minds of animals are 
 more readily variable than their bodies, and that by
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 255 
 
 these variations the creatures are impelled in some 
 undetermined measure to new habits of life, which 
 in diverse ways, under the control of natural selec- 
 tion, bring about changes in form and structure. This 
 view is hi effect a mingling of the Lamarckian and 
 the Darwinian hypotheses, two diverse views of the 
 same subject, each of which has in my opinion much 
 help to give us in interpreting organic changes. 
 
 The likeness of the specific, common mind to that 
 which we may term a tribal or national state of 
 mind is evident. The meaning of the resemblance is 
 to be found in the fact that a tribe or nation is nor- 
 mally a variety of a particular species of men, or of 
 those who are in conditions that lead to the forma- 
 tion of a new species. When these have attained to 
 a certain isolation and have developed an indepen- 
 dent group of motives and mutual understandings 
 they are on the way to become a separate species. 
 In olden times, when tribes or states were small and 
 the inter- migration non-existing or limited, the pro- 
 cess of differentiation went on swiftly, so that in a 
 few generations the variety was hi some measure 
 established. Under modern conditions, when nations 
 are usually great complexes composed of many differ- 
 ent stocks, the development is not so rapid nor is the 
 tribal motive of the same nature. In place of such 
 intense and narrow autonomic spirit as existed in
 
 256 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the little states of Greece, we have the broader spirit 
 of nationality, yet in its essence the condition of 
 mind is the same. It is that of sympathy with those 
 who are conceived to be of the community, even if 
 unseen and unknown, and a corresponding dislike 
 or even blind hatred for those who are of another 
 group. In a word, the tribal, or in its enlarged form 
 the national, motive is but the human shape of the 
 ancient communal impulse that served to keep re- 
 lated species apart. Not only does this view serve 
 to widen our understanding of organic processes, it 
 may also serve to account for much in the conduct 
 of human aggregates that would otherwise be inex- 
 plicable. 
 
 It needs but a glance at the doings of man to show 
 us that while the individual of our genus appears to 
 be, and in many respects is, a very isolated being, 
 he is after all strangely controlled by a vast and 
 mighty though invisible influence, the common 
 mind of his tribe, state, or class. This is best shown 
 when men, as in tunes of war or other excitement, 
 become possessed of what we call the mob spirit, a 
 condition in which for a time they are impelled by 
 an instinctive sympathy, such as sways the brutes, 
 impelling all the members of the group who are 
 near enough to be contagiously affected to like rage 
 or fear. In the ordinary routine of a human society
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 257 
 
 the diversities of individual action conceal from us 
 the abiding influence of the common mind; yet the 
 inquirer finds that it is there, influencing the course 
 of action of every person, continually changing from 
 generation to generation, and swaying the body of 
 folk with a strange might. Those who have not at- 
 tained a sense of the power of this great unseen have 
 failed to gain that without which it is impossible to 
 comprehend the meaning of society. Those who fail 
 to see that this controlling motive of our states is but 
 the enlargement of the common mind of the organic 
 tribe as we find it hi the stages of life below our 
 kind, are not in a position to comprehend one of the 
 most important conditions of human life. 
 
 This quality of life which leads to the union of 
 kindred individuals by the bonds of sympathy is 
 much talked about but little comprehended. We 
 commonly take sympathy to be an occasional out- 
 going of the mind to the neighbor ; to be a rather 
 seldom movement of the spirit, or a kind of exer- 
 cise of virtue. The truth is, that sympathy is a pri- 
 mal organic necessity which began to exist many 
 thousand species back in the series of man and has 
 grown mightily hi his estate. Along with it as a cor- 
 relative has grown hatred, in itself a kind of reversed 
 sympathy, each having its appropriate function hi the 
 lower life ; sympathy to unite the kind, hatred to keep
 
 258 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 it whole in the struggle for existence. In the state 
 of man as it is to be, sympathy is to expand, and to 
 expel hatred ; even now the two motives are in con- 
 flict with one another, with the higher steadfastly 
 winning in the contest. We are at a point where 
 the sympathy is indispensable and the hatred dis- 
 pensable. Every man has to shape his thoughts 
 with reference to other men seen or unseen. He 
 can hardly think except in terms that recognize the 
 fellow-man. What was hi the lower life an occa- 
 sional and limited quickening of the motive is with 
 him incessant. Hence arises that higher common 
 mind of our species which is but an enlargement of 
 what every variety of intellectual beings develops. 
 
 Seen as we may now behold it, the common bond 
 of mankind is hi effect an instinctive desire of each 
 individual to identify himself with what he conceives 
 to be his community. To accomplish this end he 
 swiftly and unconsciously catches the tokens which 
 show the motives of his fellows. In this task he 
 exhibits a skill which is primitive : the same skill 
 we find in the tent-making grubs or in the construc- 
 tive rodents. It has taken ages of training to endow 
 life with this singular capacity for a swift contagious 
 understanding of the neighbor, and the successes are 
 perhaps the most marvellous of organic accomplish- 
 ments.
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 259 
 
 Those who would shape men to their betterment 
 need to take more account of the natural history of 
 motives than they have done in the past. They need 
 to see that they are not dealing with the immedi- 
 ate will of man but with a body of instincts which 
 has been established by the ages, and can only be 
 opposed by motives of a high and controlling order. 
 Against these gross, unceasing, brutal sympathies 
 they must match other sympathetic motives of a 
 nobler sort. Fortunately in that great moral complex 
 there is a vast range of efficient dominant impulses 
 which can be turned to good account. Sympathy is 
 indeed not one thing, it is a host of diverse impulses, 
 some of which, as those th#t breed the mob, are of a 
 very ancient and lowly order ; others, such as the 
 impulses to self-sacrifice, are almost infinitely above 
 the brutal plane. Fortunately the motive of race 
 hatred, once necessary for the safety of species, is to 
 become, in the moral order towards which man is 
 approaching, like the survival of a bodily part the 
 use of which has ceased. Even now among civilized 
 people, those who have risen beyond tribal needs, 
 this motive may well be compared to the appendix 
 of the caecum, a remnant of a primitive estate which 
 is altogether evil, for it breeds disease.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE WAY OUT 
 
 THE aim of what has been set forth in the pre- 
 ceding chapters has been to array certain tolerably 
 evident facts concerning the conditions of devel- 
 opment and of contact of the diverse tribes and 
 races of men with a view to providing foundation for 
 some considerations as to the way in which various 
 grievous evils of human intercourse may be reme- 
 died. The phenomena adverted to are, from a scien- 
 tific point of view, very interesting, for they serve, 
 along with much else here unnoted, to show that 
 man is a part of the whole life of the planet ; that 
 into his field of action enter motives which were de- 
 veloped in the ages when in the lower life his form 
 and spirit were prepared for their tasks. Their prin- 
 cipal value, however, is to be found in their moral 
 significance, in the guidance they afford hi our con- 
 duct in relation to the neighbor, in the bettered defi- 
 nition which they enable us to make of our fellows 
 to the end that we may escape from the ancient 
 evils of hatred. In order to make use of these con-
 
 THE WAY OUT 261 
 
 siderations which have been set forth, necessarily 
 in a somewhat diffused manner, I shall now sum 
 them up in a brief statement, setting before the 
 reader what seems to be the position of man in rela- 
 tion to his organic inheritances, and what is his duty 
 by his kind. 
 
 We may assume as certain that man inherits all 
 the primal motives of his nature, along with all of 
 his bodily parts, from the vast numbers of species 
 through which his life has passed in the upward 
 march which began with the lowliest organic form. 
 "We may furthermore assume that the likeness of 
 his inherited mental parts to those of his brutal 
 kindred is nearly as close as is his bodily frame 
 to theirs. Knowing as we do that every component 
 part of that frame, bones, muscles, and organs, 
 was shaped hi the lower life, to vary only in 
 form and proportion in the higher, we may fairly 
 suppose that the mental powers have been passed 
 on in a similar way. We may grant that these have 
 been developed amazingly, so that it is here and 
 there difficult to recognize that they have sprung 
 from the ancient seed. Yet the facts tell that while 
 here and there man has gone far in aggrandizing 
 his inherited parts and qualities, many of them stay 
 almost unchanged. His gain has been mainly in his 
 rational power, and to a limited degree hi the emo-
 
 262 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 tional field; for except where emotions have been 
 qualified by reason, he is little changed. The primi- 
 tive loves, hates, and greeds are hi the body of man- 
 kind so little altered from their lower estate that 
 we see at a glance that they are not to be reckoned 
 as human but, more broadly, as animal. We see 
 further that the first task of man hi the manage- 
 ment of himself within the moral order, is to scan 
 those survivals of his pre-moral state and to bring 
 them into the control of his truly human powers. 
 
 To begin with the inheritances of the instinctive 
 order, we see that in man we have, first, the ancient 
 organic motives which relate to the preservation 
 of his individual life, hunger for food, fear of the 
 enemy, hatred of the rival; and along with them, 
 sexual greed, and the sense of property hi the male. 
 The former, the most fundamental of organic mo- 
 tives, are all selfish ; they relate only to the satis- 
 faction of the individual ; there is no sympathetic 
 quality in them. With the characteristic feature of 
 organic life, reproduction, the sympathetic series be- 
 gins. The reason why this group of motives should 
 have its origin in the relation of the generations is 
 easily seen. The young of nearly all animal species 
 are born in a feeble state and need the care of a 
 parent, or of both parents, in order to bring them to 
 such maturity that they may care for themselves.
 
 THE WAY OUT 263 
 
 In the lower forms this parental help is given by 
 provisions and contrivances of a mechanical sort, 
 though the actions of the parents probably are 
 guided by emotions that relate to the unborn. With 
 the advance to the plane of the Mammalia the care 
 of the mother becomes more immediate, for the rea- 
 son that she suckles her offspring. As has been well 
 set forth by several discerning students of life, 
 this relation is peculiarly well suited to develop 
 those higher sympathies which begin in the mother's 
 love. As we advance in the grade of the Mammalia 
 who are near our ancestral line, and especially in 
 the higher forms of the series, the Quadrumana, we 
 see that the male comes to share in some varying 
 degree hi the affection of the mother for the young. 
 More commonly the sense of solicitude hi the male 
 relates to the larger aspect of the family, that of 
 the drove or the herd ; it is not until we attain to 
 man that there is the discernment which makes 
 recognition of paternity possible, that sense being 
 peculiarly human, developed, most likely, at a rather 
 late stage in the evolution of the genus. 
 
 It is altogether probable that the first sense of 
 true sympathy in the .Mammalia begins hi the ma- 
 ternal relation. In the birds, however, a group 
 remote from our own succession, for our common an- 
 cestors are probably as low down as the Amphibia,
 
 264 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 conjugal affection appears almost as soon as the 
 maternal, and the mutual love of male and female, 
 as among the pigeons and parrots, is as devoted as 
 in man, and in some forms more ineradicable. In 
 the pre-human Mammalia the love of the sexual 
 mate appears in few, if in any cases, to be well deter- 
 mined, or to rise above the plane of hunger or the 
 sense of possession. In none of the species of this 
 class do we find the survivor pine away on the death 
 of the spouse, as is the case with some species of in- 
 tensely monogamous birds. In our own series below 
 the human plane, therefore, we have the personal 
 sympathies limited at first to the love of the female 
 for the offspring, and the less intense, but often de- 
 voted love of the male for the herd or class, or even 
 for its kind. This love for the community is some- 
 times evident hi the females as well as the males. 
 The cry of distress of a pig will arouse both sexes 
 to sympathy, but the motive appears to be far more 
 intense hi the males. So far as I have been able to 
 find, there is no evidence to show that any animal 
 below man, save the dog and the elephant, shows 
 any distinct sympathy with the creatures of other 
 species than its own, and these exceptions are so 
 affected by the peculiar conditions of domestication 
 that they do not invalidate the rule. The fact before 
 noted, that sundry other species which have been
 
 THE WAY OUT 265 
 
 subjected by man cling to his dwelling-places, may 
 safely be set down to habit and not regarded as 
 in any way due to sympathy. We thus see that 
 nothing in the way of sympathy has been brought 
 over from the lower life to that of man, except those 
 affections which have grown up in the family, the 
 original love of mother for child, with the diffused 
 love for all the members of the family, and, its larger 
 shape, the tribe. 
 
 The peculiar part of man hi relation to the sym- 
 pathies has consisted in his work of combining and 
 associating them with his rational endeavors. Com- 
 ing to understand, as the beasts did not, the relation 
 of the father to the child, he evolved the idea of 
 kinship with his children and developed the love 
 of the father for his own offspring, a form of the 
 parental motive which is peculiarly human. This ad- 
 vance was not only in itself an enlargement of great 
 significance, but it led immediately to the develop- 
 ment of a rational basis for the tribe, and gave that 
 institution at once a sympathetic foundation which 
 has made it the basis of all ethnic development. 
 The tribe in the primitive sense is a unit by virtue 
 of the recognized blood-kinship of all its members. 
 This extremely ancient conception, the first large 
 social idea that man appears to have formed, has 
 shaped history as none other of his constructions.
 
 266 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 Coming upon the notion of blood-relationship as the 
 basis of sympathetic relations man has amplified 
 it with his imagination, linked it with his religion, 
 with his statecraft, with his social ideals, so that it 
 has ever been the very foremost element hi his com- 
 munal life. 
 
 The obvious tendency of modern society as dis- 
 tinguished from the ancient is to diminish the atten- 
 tion of men to blood-relation. Many things have 
 helped in this noticeable change. At an early stage 
 in the advance of men the conquests of the tribe 
 made it necessary to come to some understanding 
 with extra-tribal folk. The original, simple method 
 of slaying the conquered gave place to the plan of 
 enslaving them in order that their services might 
 be profitable to the tribe. The presence of aliens, 
 even as slaves, was, however, enlarging, for it served 
 to extend the conception of a common humanity 
 to extra-tribal people. Thus the first considerable 
 betterment of the tribal motive came, as a host of 
 others have come, through the economic spirit. 
 Along with the custom of enslaving the conquered 
 arose the curious habit of adopting the captive alien 
 who had won esteem because he exhibited valor 
 in war or endurance of torture. The fact that he 
 was not of the conqueror's tribe was, with curious 
 generality, met by a ceremony hi which his blood
 
 THE WAY OUT 267 
 
 was mingled with that of some one of his captors. 
 By this fiction, one of many relating to the blood, 
 the rule of consanguinity as the basis of the com- 
 munity was maintained. In time the rite fell into 
 disuse, but the idea of adoption still holds in the 
 laws and customs of civilized states, hi the legal 
 process by which an alien may be made a member 
 of the enlarged family. 
 
 If space allowed, an interesting story could be 
 told of the conditions of the tribes of all primitive 
 peoples known to us, going to show the singular 
 generality of the rule that these primitive commu- 
 nities were shaped on the human discovery of what 
 consanguinity signifies, and on the assumed bond of 
 blood which it institutes among kindred even of the 
 remotest degree. An essential feature of it all is 
 that this early view of man concerning himself and 
 his relations usually assumes that the folk of his 
 tribe have a peculiar position in the world from the 
 fact that they are hi some way descended from the 
 ruling god, while those of other tribes have no such 
 divine right. This relation to the tribal god may 
 be by direct generation, or it may be that it is the 
 result of the creative will of that power. In either 
 case, however, it appears one of the bases for the 
 peculiar contempt and hatred for extra-tribal folk 
 which is so characteristic of the primitive commu-
 
 268 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 nities and so ineradicable even in most civilized 
 men. An inspection of the facts leads to the conclu- 
 sion that the abundant fictions serving to sustain 
 the isolation of the tribe are but contrivances of 
 man's intelligence to help out the primitive, irra- 
 tional motive which developed hi the lower stages 
 of life and led each kind to limit its sympathies 
 to those of its stock. Many like examples could be 
 cited to show that the commonest misuse of the 
 reason and the imagination is to devise notions to 
 support an irrational motive which is strong enough 
 to be mastering, yet is felt to need explanation. 
 
 With the embodiment of the tribe in the modern 
 state a number of influences came into action which 
 tend to break down that primitive community. The 
 concepts of the state or nation, though they rest 
 to a certain extent on early-developed motives, are 
 due mainly to human desires. The concepts of the 
 tribe, to a great extent pre-human, are hi a measure 
 taken over into the state. The exclusive motive 
 of the lower association is often adopted, but the 
 enlargement of the purpose in this modern form of 
 the commonwealth tends to destroy the grossest 
 evils of the tribal condition. Mainly by the oppor- 
 tunities of commerce, in the larger sense of that 
 word, the modern commonwealth tends to subju- 
 gate the tribal impulses which continue to abide
 
 THE WAY OUT 269 
 
 in it. Religion has unhappily proved ineffective 
 in this work, because in the tribal shape, to which 
 it inevitably tends, it serves to promote exclusive- 
 ness. Such tribal divisions as subsist in modern 
 states coincide to a great extent with differences 
 of faith, so that the motive which more than any 
 other should serve for union helps to keep alive 
 the impulse towards separation. Trade has done 
 much to help on the unification of men by bring- 
 ing them in some measure together, yet from the 
 essentially selfish nature of business, the contacts 
 it brings about do not serve to effect a real union. 
 The condition of the relations of the Israelites to 
 the Christians hi all countries, except, perhaps, Eng- 
 land, clearly shows that commercial intercourse can- 
 not alone be relied on to do more than mitigate the 
 evil of the tribal hatred which remains a menace to 
 commonwealths, even where trade relations have 
 subsisted for a thousand years or more. It is indeed 
 clear that some new and larger way of approach to 
 the solution of this problem needs to be essayed. 
 
 The failure of our commonwealth spirit to win 
 past the tribal motives and prejudices and the per- 
 sistence of those impulses despite the fact that the 
 main purpose of Christ was to destroy them, show 
 that they are rooted in the substance of human 
 nature, and, if not, indeed, ineradicable, that they
 
 270 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 will have to be expurgated by some agency that 
 has not yet been applied to them. Clearly, the only 
 way open to us for a new essay is by means of the 
 understanding, by knowledge, which, married to 
 the sympathies, shall give them a measure of con- 
 trol over our feelings not attainable in other ways. 
 The purpose of this closing chapter is to urge upon 
 the shaping class of our states such a union of mod- 
 ern learning with the Christian motive as may 
 serve to array the whole of man's spirit against this 
 ancient ill. 
 
 It should be noted that in the opinion of certain 
 students of the mind the primitive emotions are not 
 held to be influenced by knowledge. Against this 
 opinion I have to contend. I hold that the whole 
 history of human advancement is one long story 
 of the qualification of the originally inherited im- 
 pulses derived from the lower life in man and beast 
 by the influence of knowledge, knowledge brought 
 into contact with the primal impulses through the 
 exercise of the mastering will. In this path of ad- 
 vance man has gone far to subjugate the original 
 polygamous instinct, replacing it by the monogamous 
 motive. The cruelty which he inherited from his 
 lower human stages has been so far sublated that it 
 is little seen save hi organized war. The greed for 
 gain has been limited by the development of the
 
 THE WAY OUT 271 
 
 sense of property ; and in the field of the aesthetic, 
 learning has vastly extended the range and scope of 
 the inborn sense of beauty. So too in religions, the 
 rational has at every turn, though often only hi a 
 limited way, served to modify and better the field of 
 action. What we have gamed as men in the way 
 of enlargement has mainly been won by just such 
 an application of knowledge to native impulse as 
 we should now seek to bring about in the further 
 eff acement of the tribal evil. Those who would go 
 with me in the quest for a better relation with the 
 neighbor should take with them a clear sense of 
 the history and station of the organic individual 
 and of the advance of that relation in the series lead- 
 ing to man. The burden of these considerations is 
 not small, but the most important part of it may 
 be summed up in a few statements, each of vast 
 importance. 
 
 First, each person in the organic series is necessa- 
 rily a strangely solitary being, who for a brief tune 
 is the keeper of the lif e of its kind ; its part is, to 
 gain what it may of profitable experience and to 
 transmit of this what it can. This isolated state 
 of the individual, apparently complete in the lower 
 stages of being, is, everywhere hi the advance to- 
 wards man, relieved by a union of the separate per- 
 sons hi some form of communal life. The result
 
 272 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 is that from the separate organic units a new unit, 
 that of the society, is evolved, a new kind of in- 
 dividual, which lives enduringly and can store in it- 
 self something of the profit won by its evanescent 
 members. In this social organization in the stages 
 below man, the essence of the tribal motives is fixed ; 
 upon its firm establishment the enduring qualities 
 of varieties and species has intimately depended. 
 
 The next point is that man, attaining rationality, 
 and so endowed with the power to criticise his ac- 
 tions, is forced by his reason to take account of the 
 situation developed by his instincts and his moral 
 and rational needs. Among the first of his duties 
 is to inspect these ancient transmittenda to see 
 what of the store he shall retain for its good, and 
 what because of its evil he shall seek to cast away. 
 This task has been that of man since he began his 
 upward human march. The work hitherto has been 
 done instinctively, with no recognition of its larger 
 meaning, and without the sanctions that knowledge 
 affords. It is now for us, with the aid of all that 
 learning gives to help us to means and ways of bet- 
 terment, to go on with the process. 
 
 Unless the reader feels the obligation to apply 
 all the resources of knowledge to the criticism and 
 improvement of the society which he serves, he can- 
 not take the part in that work which belongs to a
 
 THE WAY OUT 273 
 
 man of his day. Some part for good or evil he must 
 necessarily take, for his life enters into the com- 
 munal life of his people to abide here while that 
 life endures. He may dully limit that part to what 
 it was in the species below man's estate, but in do- 
 ing so he will not be a dutiful man of the present 
 time, for he will have put aside all that knowledge 
 has given hi the way of help for his task. Suppos- 
 ing that we are willing to act up to the measure of 
 our knowledge, evidently the first thing to do is to 
 examine into our inheritances to determine which 
 of them are evil. This is an ancient quest; from 
 the time our ancestors began to have a glimmering 
 of the moral law men have been engaged at it. To 
 them the ancient brutal lusts were the instigations 
 of the devil. They are none the less the devil to 
 us because of our understanding that they are the 
 remnants of the old laws of animal life that have to 
 be broken down and cast away in order that the new 
 moral order may rule the hosts of our kind. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how early the moral- 
 ists who began the modern life of man seized upon 
 the evils of tribal prejudices and hatreds as the 
 very first of the evils to be cleared away in order 
 to make room for the higher life, and how persist- 
 ently the spirit of the tribe has fought against their 
 revelations, neglecting or distorting their teachings
 
 274 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 in order to hold to those innately dear ills. This 
 secular battle of the ancient man against the new is 
 seen in several religions, but nowhere so plainly as 
 in that of Christ. It is evident that while Christ set 
 his face against all the sins of the flesh, he above 
 all opposed the motive of tribal pride and hatred. 
 With a clearness of understanding which puts him 
 immeasurably above all other leaders he saw straight 
 to the centre of the ills that beset mankind; saw 
 that they lay in the lack of friendliness for the neigh- 
 bor of every estate. He sought the cure where we 
 have to seek it, in the conviction that whatever be 
 the differences between men, they are trifling com- 
 pared with the identities which should unite them 
 in universal brotherhood. 
 
 The sense of the situation of man to which Christ 
 attained was won on a different path from that 
 which we, as moderns, are able to take. He found 
 the way to his conclusion as the seer finds it, through 
 the emotions, by the power of irrational penetration, 
 which we as naturalists have to confess a true way, 
 even though it be not that on which the spirit of 
 our time bids us journey. The reason why this 
 way has not led men in general to betterment is 
 that it has to be illuminated by a spiritual light de- 
 nied to most of them. Ever since Christ taught, 
 the capacity for seeing as he saw has been lessening,
 
 THE WAY OUT 275 
 
 probably because the rational, the Greek mode of 
 interpreting nature, has been gaining over the primi- 
 tive religious mode. The two methods of interpre- 
 tation have for centuries been hi conflict, and the 
 contention has lessened in both of them the power 
 they should have had for improving the moral and 
 social state of our kind. On the basis of Christ's 
 teachings, having love for its only motive, it was 
 possible to organize a community ; with science in 
 its present condition it might have been practicable 
 to have contrived a working commonwealth with- 
 out Christianity. With the two antagonistic views 
 confusing the minds of men it seems impossible, to 
 judge from experience, to make any head against the 
 tribal motives with the resulting race hatreds and 
 warfare. 
 
 There seems to be but one way out of our trouble, 
 and that is by the union of the influences of both 
 religion and science for complete understanding of 
 human qualities, so that all the help of both groups 
 of motives shall enter into our daily life. It is ap- 
 parently out of the question to expect this effective 
 union to come by the adoption into religion of the 
 body of learning that science has gathered, for it 
 unhappily appears that religion inevitably becomes 
 formal, and ordinarily rests upon assumptions that 
 science cannot grant. But the organic motive of re-
 
 276 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 ligion, at least of Christianity, that discernment of 
 the Master as to the essential kinship of all men 
 and of the love they owe one another, is a scientific 
 fact that should find its place for its full value in the 
 store of natural learning. It may be granted that 
 there is much else in Christianity besides the doc- 
 trine of human kinship and the duty of love, but 
 that else is not in a shape to be transferred to the 
 storehouse of science for the reason that it cannot 
 be tested by scientific criteria. 
 
 The reason why the concept of Christ as to the 
 proper relation of man to man fits into the system 
 of natural science, is that it is seen to rest on the 
 organic history of the human group, indeed, we may 
 say of organic life. The Master found it after the 
 manner of the prophet, and based his insistence on 
 it upon the ancient faith of men in their seers. Sci- 
 ence discerns the truth in its way by observing that 
 the sympathy or love of related beings for one an- 
 other is the result of a slowly expanding growth, 
 a growth that has gone on in the chain of species 
 which led the life of our kind up the long way to- 
 wards the moral stage of life. Next to life itself, 
 this love of individuals for one another is the no- 
 blest result of the evolutionary processes. As be- 
 fore remarked, it is the correlative of the process by 
 which personal individuality and the resulting iso-
 
 THE WAY OUT 277 
 
 lation is developed ; the unit is merged in the kind 
 and made a sharer in its wider life. This process, 
 while it has its greatest value in its moral signifi- 
 cance, is none the less a scientific truth ; for moral 
 truths are as fitly to be reckoned by science as those 
 which are mathematical. Clearly existing, observ- 
 able, computable, they are fitly a part of natural 
 learning. 
 
 Accepting the principle that the phenomenon of 
 love for the neighbor as understood by Christ is to 
 be regarded as belonging in the store of science, we 
 thereby attain a wider meaning of the science of 
 mankind than has commonly been given to it. With 
 that enlarged meaning we are entitled to say from 
 the point of view of the new learning that whoever 
 would act rationally hi his dealings with his fellows, 
 whoever would bring into those relations the best 
 help that knowledge can give, must first of all take 
 with him love. If he does that he is hi the way of 
 light ; if he fails so to do, he is in the way of dark- 
 ness. To some people the adjuration to conform to 
 the higher trends of organic development will not 
 seem to have any imperative value, and this for the 
 reason that nature is to them an undiscerned realm, 
 they have no sense of the history of our kind, and 
 the story when told to them is mere words. But 
 this view as to man's responsibility to the order of
 
 278 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the realm is steadfastly gaining, and although we are 
 hi the beginning of the advance, there are many who 
 feel it, and we may be sure that it is soon to be the 
 common property of all who shape our societies. 
 
 Turning now to the use which may be made of the 
 state of mind that comes to us from a study of the 
 natural history of man, let us see what should be 
 the ideals of our contact with our neighbor. First 
 let us note that the fit conception of him is that he 
 is as a man a kinsman. This view is but an exten- 
 sion of the tribal motive which gives consideration 
 to the fellow-tribesman in the conception of kinship, 
 but denies it to other men on the theory of their 
 separate origin. From the point of view of science, 
 the identities existing between the most diverse 
 kinds of men are vastly greater than the diversities. 
 The uniting features are essential, they include all 
 the intellectual and moral qualities that distinguish 
 human beings from the brutes. As such, the indi- 
 vidual man who stands before us is, whatever his 
 estate, our neighbor in that he is of the strangely 
 elect of all living kinds. 
 
 So far as we can we should bring to the meeting 
 with this kinsman a sense of the place he occupies 
 in the realm. I am, by painful experience, aware 
 how hard it is to win past the deeply founded com-
 
 THE WAY OUT 279 
 
 monplace state of mind with which we meet the 
 neighbor. It is impossible to take into that contact 
 much of the large understandings we may gain as to 
 the estate of man ; yet I know by the same test that, 
 through dwelling on this conception until it becomes 
 an imbedded part of our thought, there is developed 
 a change hi the way of looking on the neighbor which 
 greatly helps us hi regarding him as he should be 
 regarded. Here as elsewhere the art is to bring the 
 state of mind bred of large thinking into the routine 
 of life. The matter of that thought is necessarily for 
 the closet, but the spirit of it should be made to fill 
 and direct the stream of emotions which attend and 
 guide our action in common deeds. There is no nov- 
 elty in this prescription, it is that of the sages and 
 saints of all time. 
 
 An important part of this method of clearing 
 away the evils of tribal prejudice or the other in- 
 fluences which lessen the dignity of our intercourse 
 with the neighbor, is to put aside all trace of sus- 
 picion of him. There is an obvious tendency for all 
 sentient creatures to approach others of their kind 
 with a certain fear of harm. This motive is one of 
 the indelible marks in ancient experience of brute 
 and brutal man. Any one who is trained in studying 
 his own hidden motives may detect the impulse at 
 the moment of contact with the stranger. If his ex-
 
 280 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 perience supplies him with the means of comparison 
 he will readily note that his state of mind is like 
 that of the soldier in an enemy's country ; fainter but 
 essentially the same. In the olden life it was the 
 necessary state of the individual, for until man con- 
 ceived of the moral law it was himself against the 
 world. In our time, it is a disease-breeding remnant 
 of what once served a purpose, a moral appendix 
 that now profits death alone. 
 
 By putting away our own suspicion of the neigh- 
 bor, we at once destroy what of that motive he has 
 towards us. This fact has been well illustrated by 
 my experience with men in many countries and 
 under varied conditions, most recently by contacts 
 with the people in the long-harassed rural districts 
 of Central Cuba, where the unfortunate folk have 
 become so imbued with the war spirit that the 
 countryman rides armed like a trooper. Frequently 
 as I approached I could see that he loosened his 
 pistol in his holster, usually keeping his hand on 
 the butt. It was evident, however, that I was quite 
 unarmed, and as I paid no attention to the attitude 
 of combat of these men, they were at first rather 
 disconcerted ; but in a moment their excellent hu- 
 man nature broke through the restraints of custom 
 and they became friendly. It needs no wide-ranging 
 experience to show that with all sorts and condi-
 
 THE WAY OUT 281 
 
 tions of men, even with the professional villain, 
 confidence in their sympathetic motive inevitably 
 awakens a like emotion. The reaction is, indeed, as 
 certain as that which arouses fear or hate. It may 
 be as safely assumed as any other natural phenome- 
 non. I have tried this method of approaching men 
 for many years, often hi situations which to the 
 doubter would have seemed perilous ; yet so far as 
 I can discern I have been by it so well protected 
 that I have never been near to danger. I am sure 
 that the manhood of the other man has given me a 
 better defense than precautions could have afforded. 
 Thus the approach to the neighbor should be with 
 confidence hi his essential kinship with ourselves, 
 for the sense of this relation is native and deep 
 founded in all men ; however overladen with evil or 
 crime, it is there, and the duty of the true man is to 
 find it. 
 
 Those who unhappily lack the capacity for imme- 
 diate sympathy with the neighbor, our supercivil- 
 ization breeds many such, will do well to practice 
 themselves in studying men. It is a noteworthy 
 fact, one of the mysteries of the commonplace habit 
 of mind, that most people, for all their contacts with 
 their kind, never as observers attend to them. They 
 see them pass in endless procession, but note only 
 those things which have to be seen in order to do
 
 282 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the business of the moment. It is not difficult, if 
 one has a trace of the inquirer's spirit, to change 
 this state of mind, and in its place to develop a 
 keen curiosity concerning the fellow-man. Most of 
 us know that we can become intensely interested in 
 plants or animals, music, bric-a-brac, philosophy, or 
 what not, great or small, so that each feature of our 
 coUection will have a personal value. Yet where we 
 find a thousand collectors of objects or impressions 
 in the peripheral fields, we hardly find one who is a 
 collector of men. Now this collecting of men, this 
 study of individuals in the way of the zealous pro- 
 fessional student, is the most fascinating and profit- 
 able of all the amassing habits which can be formed, 
 for with each specimen that is appropriated the col- 
 lector as well as the cabinet is definitely enlarged. 
 
 The art of observing men is best begun by the 
 study of faces. Very much can be had from the mere 
 contemplation of human countenances, for by this 
 process we may form the practice of noting what is 
 written hi the fleeting expressions, or what is deeply 
 concealed by the habits of the mind. Those who 
 would approach the study of their kind by way of 
 these faces will do well to lay a foundation for their 
 work by familiarizing themselves with the coun- 
 tenances of the lower animals. Taking first the 
 head parts of the articulates and the cephalopods,
 
 THE WAY OUT 283 
 
 it may be noted that while there is a certain kind 
 of expression in those shapes, it has no relation to 
 that of man. In all the vertebrates, however, we 
 feel that their heads suggest those of our own kind 
 in a measure somewhat proportionate to their ge- 
 netic nearness to our genus. From the fish upwards, 
 the likeness of the face to our own increases. In the 
 reptiles and birds it departs from the type that 
 leads towards man. In all of the higher mammals 
 we can see traces of the expression which we com- 
 monly believe to be characteristically human. The 
 mother-love for a child, fear, rage, even contempt, 
 are legible to those skilled in reading such in- 
 scriptions. In the higher monkeys we may discern 
 nearly all the emotional signs that we find in the 
 faces of the lower men. On this foundation of the 
 geological history of the countenance it is easy to 
 build a systematic study of the human face. Such is 
 the tangle of records on that bit of the body that no 
 one can hope to attain any great skill hi interpret- 
 ing character from what he discerns, but the study, 
 if gone about systematically, will give the intellec- 
 tual pleasure which always comes from classifying 
 objects. More than that, and nearer to my purpose, 
 it will serve to endear these objects to the observer, 
 and so to give him a basis for the sympathy to 
 which he would not otherwise attain.
 
 284 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 With the study of faces should go a like study of 
 voices, for to the skilled ear, and most persons can 
 attain the needed measure of discernment, the voice 
 is even as interesting as the facial record of the 
 mind. Here again it will serve to lay a broad foun- 
 dation for comparison by noting the history of the 
 voice in the lower stages of life. We find at once 
 that there is no voice in any of the invertebrates. 
 Some crabs click their claws together as a signal to 
 males or foes, and a host of insects rasp out noises, 
 but the true voice made by the breath is found in 
 the vertebrates alone. It is clearly traceable in 
 many fishes and reptiles as an inarticulate sound. 
 It attains a singular range in the birds, but only 
 in the series leading towards man does it show 
 the peculiar human timbre or quality. This is sin- 
 gularly developed in the Amphibia through which 
 our succession has passed, for the common bullfrog 
 when frightened will occasionally give forth a sound 
 strangely like the wail of the human infant. When 
 we come to the higher monkeys, the nearest collat- 
 erals of man, the tones and modulations are much 
 the same as in our genus. But while the general 
 quality of the voice was determined in the brutal 
 stages of our series, we have in our kind the emi- 
 nent peculiarity that the tone is about as character- 
 istic of each person as is his countenance. So far
 
 THE WAY OUT 285 
 
 as I have been able to discover, the personal vari- 
 ation in this regard among the lower animals is 
 so small as to be essentially unnoticeable, except in 
 the case of the humanized dog, where a like indi- 
 vidual quality is noticeable. There are probably 
 slight differences, such as enable a ewe to know her 
 own lamb by its bleat, but they are very much less 
 than among men. The human notes are most alike 
 in inf ancy. They begin to be diversified hi childhood, 
 but take their full individual stamp at puberty. 
 
 It is perhaps worth while incidentally to remark 
 that this feature of personal difference between 
 men is a fair index of the extent to which, as com- 
 pared with the lower forms, they are individualized. 
 There is no basis for quantitative determinations, 
 but it may, in my opinion, be taken as certain that 
 the modulus of variation in the intellectual fea- 
 tures of men is scores of tunes as great as in the 
 nearest of his brute kindred. Physically, men of 
 the same variety differ more one from the other 
 than do any equally related wild animals ; but those 
 variations of form are trifling compared with the 
 diversities of spirit. 
 
 It is for each person to seek the best way in which 
 he can form the habit of coming near to the neigh- 
 bor and to determine the tests of his success. In 
 general the test that is most trustworthy is that
 
 286 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 which is afforded by one's state of mind at the mo- 
 ment of contact. If at this moment the self is put 
 aside and the neighbor takes its place then the task 
 is well done. Such is evidently the end towards 
 which the process of sympathy is tending to develop ; 
 such is the attainment in the love of the mother for 
 her child, the hero for his cause, or friend for friend. 
 That it is winnable is proved by those seldom expe- 
 riences of lofty souls which point to the high way 
 of man. It is not to be supposed that it can be read- 
 ily won, but it is the goal to which life is striving in 
 mankind. 
 
 Let us bring this ideal of the neighbor, the actual 
 ideal of the good Samaritan of twenty centuries ago, 
 into our dealings with men. Let the first experiment 
 be with the Israelite for the reason that for two thou- 
 sand years he has been opprobrious to the folk of our 
 Aryan age hi all its civilizations, and may therefore 
 stand as the type of the human shape which most 
 arouses our tribal prejudices, and which will put our 
 bettered understanding to an effective test. We 
 will not take our example from the cultivated mod- 
 ernized member of the race who is so like our own 
 people that analysis is required to show him alien, 
 but rather the ancient " dog of a Jew " who by his 
 face, mien, and phrase almost justifies, in our eyes,
 
 THE WAY OUT 287 
 
 the shame of our ancestors' conduct. If you al- 
 low the primitives in you to control, you inevita- 
 bly revolt against the creature, and are as ready 
 to harry the unfortunate as a thirteenth century 
 Christian. But look at him with an eye that takes 
 account of what lies behind his miserable aspect and 
 behold a transformation. In that rude shape is the 
 vastest accomplishment we know hi the universe, a 
 man. He may seem the lowliest of his kind, yet in 
 that same form he laid the moral foundations of our 
 civilizations by work done from one to two hundred 
 generations ago. In his race is the stuff that made 
 Christ and all the men we know as the prophets, 
 and he has for millenniums withstood the tortures 
 of hell to keep his noble faith as his fathers held 
 it. He may be all that his enemies charge, yet there 
 is hi him and his kind the most solid substance of a 
 man that the world has ever known. He has worn 
 out the dynasties and empires of his persecutors, and 
 stands ready with the spirit of youth to face what- 
 ever the world sends. Look behind that offensive 
 manner, particularly offensive because it happens 
 not to be of our fashion, and you find the faithful, 
 kindly man, the trustworthy citizen, the good father, 
 the far-seeing inquirer, the soul which is the quick- 
 est to harmonies. Set all this over against the judg- 
 ment to which we are led by the instinctive preju-
 
 288 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 dice and judge what is the value of such a motive 
 in estimating the quality of the fellow-man. 
 
 While any one who knows the history of the Isra- 
 elitic folk even hi outline, and has taken a little pains 
 to find out the general quality of their private life, 
 cannot justify the patently erroneous view to which 
 instinctive prejudice leads men of our race con- 
 cerning that people, he is likely to take refuge hi 
 his instincts, and to comfort himself with the notion 
 that because natural guides they are true ; in effect, 
 he thinks that he should loathe a Jew because he is 
 moved to loathe him. The answer to this is plain. It 
 is that where we trust to our instincts for guidance 
 they lead us straightway to shame. The thief, the 
 murderer, in fact any kind of criminal can make this 
 plea in justification of his offense. A nearer instance 
 of the value of this excuse is to be found in the re- 
 volt which substantially all people feel at the sight 
 of a mangled human being. This instinctive repul- 
 sion extends in many instances to those who are 
 seriously deformed. It is evident that this horror of 
 those who, by their maimed state, have seemingly 
 been dehumanized is of the same order of emotions 
 as that which the sight of the very alien produces. In 
 both cases there is such a contrast between the crea- 
 ture and our notion of the kinsman that it arouses 
 a sense of repulsion. "What is our judgment of a
 
 289 
 
 man who trusts his instincts and runs away when 
 he sees a wounded neighbor dying for need of help ? 
 Yet the excuse is as rational as is that so often given 
 for avoiding the Jew. 
 
 It seems self-evident that the duty of a man is to 
 bring to his contacts with the neighbor all that he 
 has of understanding. There is no other human 
 business that is so important as this intercourse be- 
 tween man and man. A vast deal of what makes for 
 human advance or degradation comes about when for 
 the moment these solitary creatures come into touch. 
 Clearly what is done at those times is eminently the 
 work of the world. In the task which is then before 
 us, vague " instincts," which are generally mere pre- 
 judices acting alone, have no right to attention save 
 as they move us to do what we know to be fitting. 
 What we need is the very best which reason and 
 sympathy acting together can provide for the duty. 
 
 Turning now to the other instance of race preju- 
 dice which immediately concerns us, we will con- 
 sider the conditions of contact of the African and 
 the Aryan. In this association we find that the pre- 
 judice due to the aspect of the alien is apt to be 
 much more decided than it is in the case of the Isra- 
 elite, for while the Semitic differs from the Aryan in 
 shape of countenance, there is no such unusual mark
 
 290 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 as betokens the difference at a glance. With the Ne- 
 gro there is in the face, in the character of the hair, 
 and, above all, in the hue of skin something which is 
 in striking contrast with what we are accustomed to 
 take as the rule for men. So far as those features 
 are concerned, the man is the antithesis of ourselves. 
 Such contrasts are naturally, and, in a way, fitly, 
 shocking to those persons who have not become ha- 
 bituated to the differences of men. The disgust is not 
 due to the fact that the Negro has this or that pecul- 
 iarity of body, but that he, like the maimed or de- 
 formed person, violates our ideal of the human form. 
 This ideal, which remains in the subconscious part of 
 the mind along with a host of other ruling concepts, 
 only makes itself known to us when it is pained by 
 some impression that does violence to it. We see a 
 more abstract instance of the same general nature 
 as that above set forth when in a new place we 
 suddenly notice that the sun appears to rise in the 
 West. We then find, what was before unnoticed, that 
 our ideal as to where it should come up is dear to 
 us. Many instances could be cited to show how our 
 concepts of peculiar phenomena, though when philo- 
 sophically considered they are seen to be mere catego- 
 ries, are in fact intensely real parts of ourselves which 
 may be wounded even as our bodily parts. So it is 
 with all peoples, the sight of another species of their
 
 THE WAY OUT 291 
 
 genus naturally offends them. It is probable that the 
 hatred of the dog for the fox or wolf is of this order, 
 there being enough of likeness in the alien to the 
 creature's ideal of his kind to indicate kinship, and 
 at the same time so much that denies the kinship 
 as to arouse the impulses of race hatred. 
 
 There can be no question that so long as the Ne- 
 gro is so unfamiliar that the white beholder has not 
 had a chance to modify his category of human beings 
 so as to include him, he is instinctively offensive. 
 This I was able to prove by an interesting experi- 
 ence. In eastern Kentucky there is an area of about 
 ten thousand square miles with a population of nearly 
 two hundred thousand where Negroes are unknown. 
 Through my camping in this district with my ser- 
 vants, great numbers of people came to have their first 
 sight of a black. From the faces of these people, as 
 well as by questioning, I learned that one and all 
 were painfully startled by the aspect of the creatures. 
 Although these mountain folk were devoted Union- 
 ists in the Civil War, and are still generally Repub- 
 licans, their dislike for the Negroes is so great that 
 they rarely allow any of them to dwell in the district. 
 The result of this is that in parts of the South where 
 the agricultural conditions made slavery unprofita- 
 ble, the Negro is not often found, and apparently is 
 not likely to be allowed a place among the people.
 
 292 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 The same instinctive social dislike which affects 
 the uneducated whites of the southern Appalachian 
 district exists among the cultivated folk of New 
 England. As before noted, a number of persons 
 who sympathize in theory with the blacks on ac- 
 count of their oppressed condition have, in answer 
 to my questions, stated that they experienced a dis- 
 tinct and painful shock on the near approach to 
 them of a member of that race, and that no amount 
 of habituation served to deaden this impression. I 
 have naturally been unable to obtain like good evi- 
 dence as to the state of mind of Negroes on first 
 seeing a white man, but the accounts of travellers 
 in equatorial Africa clearly suggest that the- alarm- 
 ing sense of strangeness at the aspect of the man of 
 the white race is as intense with them as the oppo- 
 site is with us. It may therefore be assumed that 
 this state of mind is normal and has to be reckoned 
 with in the intercourse between very alien peoples. 
 
 In contending against the moral repulsion which 
 the aspect of the person of an alien race makes upon 
 us, we should have sufficient help from our reason, 
 which is able to break down the yet greater dislike 
 with which the deformed or maimed man impresses 
 us. A simple prescription for this disease of the 
 sensibilities may be had from the familiar experi- 
 ence of those who come into contact with such suf-
 
 THE WAY OUT 293 
 
 fering; it is to go at once to the sufferer and lay 
 the helping hand upon him. Let me hi this matter 
 once again import my personal experience, which I 
 think is illustrative. It has been my chance to help 
 many wounded men. In all such cases when I first 
 look upon the sufferer I am filled with a disgust 
 which impels me to seek protection in flight. There 
 is, of course, sorrow for the afflicted, but this is over- 
 mastered by the intense desire to spare myself the 
 pain due, so far as I can see, to the shock to my ideal 
 of what a man should be. The moment I touch the 
 sufferer all that horror immediately vanishes and he 
 becomes that dear thing, the actual neighbor. The 
 fact seems to be that the impressions of sight have 
 little awakening effect upon the sympathies as com- 
 pared with those of touch. This appears to be re- 
 cognized in the mode of greeting by clasp of hand. 
 So too in various ceremonies in which there is a 
 laying on of hands. At any rate, the effect of per- 
 sonal contact with the neighbor who hi his suffering 
 revolts us is most indicatively effective. It shows 
 that the need is to get near to him. 
 
 It is obviously out of the question for us to greet 
 the stranger by any kind of embrace, but it is im- 
 portant for us to recognize the fact that in merely 
 beholding him we really do not enter to him but re- 
 main afar off. We should take this condition into
 
 294 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the difficult reckoning we have to make in our re- 
 lations with our fellow-man and do what we can to 
 remedy the matter. What we should especially do 
 is to make a thorough study of the way hi which we 
 should perform the sacred office of approaching the 
 neighbor, and at the time of meeting keep in mind 
 the obsessing effect of the commonplace spirit which 
 blinds us to the true nature of all human relations 
 not illuminated by love. 
 
 It is well attentively to consider the fact that 
 the only human intercourse which does not ordina- 
 rily fall at once into the pit of the commonplace is 
 that between lovers or between mother and child. 
 In these relations alone as yet is the spirit of man 
 Hf ted above the lowly automatic plane, that which 
 he learned to occupy in the prehuman stages of his 
 development. If we note what happens in our usual 
 contacts with the neighbor we perceive that our in- 
 tercourse is guided by a group of instinctive, organic 
 habits essentially uninfluenced by emotions. 
 
 If we watch the behavior of children we may see 
 that certain habits of approaching the neighbor are 
 born in them and are but slowly affected by educa- 
 tion. The stranger is to the infant at first an object 
 of suspicion, as he is to the adult. All the training 
 which a lifetime of wholesome experience may give 
 does not eradicate this ancient, inborn instinct of
 
 THE WAY OUT 295 
 
 fear of the alien. The only way in which it can be 
 overcome is by love. We note that in infants this 
 primitive fear of the newly seen person lessens as 
 experience shows that the new shape is not really 
 to be feared ; with them, as with the lower animals, 
 it becomes commonplace, but there is evidently 
 always in the mind the reservation that the stranger, 
 not being friendly, may be inimical. So long as he 
 does not come over-near it may be neglected, yet he 
 has to be watched. The attitude of latent hostility 
 changes only when the new-comer into the child's 
 life gives some evidence of real friendliness which 
 leads it to place him in the category of creatures to 
 be loved. It may be no more, it commonly is no 
 more, than some touch of kindliness in expression 
 or in tone which serves the ready instincts of the 
 child and awakens its love. Thus with young chil- 
 dren there are but two distinct categories for people ; 
 friends and enemies. As they grow to maturity the 
 third, that of indifferent people, who may be consist- 
 ently disregarded, is formed to include the greater 
 part of mankind. 
 
 It is to be observed that the category of common- 
 place folk is a product of civilization, the result of 
 crowding, and of the safety which the law affords in 
 well-organized societies. In the tribal state the divi- 
 sion remains much as it is among children. The new
 
 296 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 figure, if not recognized as a tribesman and therefore 
 entitled to affection and confidence, is naturally re- 
 garded as an enemy. Nothing but evil is to be ex- 
 pected of him, no faith is owed to him. The idea of 
 any common bond due to the fact that he is a man 
 is, in this state of society, impossible, even though 
 the tribe be of the highest quality of such organiza- 
 tions. A good instance of this is seen hi the ancient 
 Jews, where the alien could claim nothing on the 
 score of his humanity. It was, as elsewhere noted, 
 the peculiar work of Christ to insist upon the kin- 
 ship of all men, and to protest against the tribal mo- 
 tive of his people. 
 
 Because the category of the commonplace or indif- 
 ferent man is relatively new, the usages associated 
 with it are much less well defined than are those re- 
 lated to the other groups. "We all know by ancient 
 experience how to treat those we love or those we 
 hate, but as to the method of dealing with those for 
 whom we do not care there is no end of variety. In 
 the old days when an unknown neighbor was to 
 be feared, policy dictated that he should be treated 
 with a propitiative courtesy if of station that indi- 
 cated that he might be dangerous, or with conde- 
 scension if his state was evidently much inferior to 
 one's own. But when, with the greater safety of our 
 modern society, the danger or profit to be reckoned
 
 THE WAY OUT 297 
 
 from the stranger has become negligible, he is gen- 
 erally neglected. If we watch the conditions of con- 
 tact hi those places where men are thrown closely 
 together, as on crowded streets, it is easy to perceive 
 that they generally take no note of each other's ex- 
 istence except so far as is necessary to avoid physi- 
 cal accidents. In this condition the fellow-man is no 
 more than a moving object which has to be avoided 
 as one would avoid a rolling stone. While this neg- 
 atively brutal relation with the neighbor hi a throng 
 is necessary, it must be regarded as the greatest of 
 the many evils arising from the crowding of people 
 in those social congestions of our great towns, for it 
 breeds a habit of disregard of the fellow-man. We 
 may manage by sanitary precautions to avoid the 
 bodily dangers which arise from our social conges- 
 tions, but there is little chance that we shall ever be 
 able to accomplish any betterment of the spiritual 
 ills that it entails. 
 
 If we observe what takes place hi ourselves when 
 in a throng any one accosts us, we may see a little 
 further into the peculiar state of mind of people in a 
 crowd and note that each is curiously and for de- 
 fense withdrawn into his cell. Even if the person 
 who addresses us is a well-known friend whom we 
 should have instantly recognized had he been iso- 
 lated, we are likely to find that we have trouble in
 
 298 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 remembering him, we have to work out of our prison 
 before we can really see him. It is indeed evident 
 that except we deliberately and with some difficulty 
 force ourselves into a sympathetic attitude towards 
 those who are driven into contact with us we in- 
 stinctively seek protection by avoiding all conscious- 
 ness of their presence. This is a most unwhole- 
 some state of mind ; one that goes contrary to the 
 primitive human instincts which lead us to take 
 account of every creature that has the shape of our 
 kind, accounting him friend or foe. Even enmity to 
 the neighbor is better than this trained indifference 
 which the conditions of our massed societies induce. 
 In watching the behavior of a throng of people 
 we readily perceive that there is a very considera- 
 ble range in the phenomena of contact they severally 
 exhibit. The man from the country who is unaccus- 
 tomed to adjust himself to the conditions of a crowd 
 retains his instinctive sense of the neighbors: he 
 goes forth to them with merriment or hostility. On 
 the other hand, the townsman keeps himself spirit- 
 ually aloof even if buffeted hi the press. Now and 
 then we may note the curious phenomenon of the 
 mob spirit, which shows us how artificial is the iso- 
 lation which men may establish in order to protect 
 themselves from their neighbors. If there happen 
 to be some common interest to move them, some
 
 THE WAY OUT 299 
 
 rage or affection that impels them all to the same 
 purpose, the host at once becomes strangely united. 
 It is no longer composed of men who seek isolation, 
 but the units join like raindrops in a current that 
 sweeps them on. This change may take place with 
 wonderful suddenness and bring about very singu- 
 lar results, some of which are of value to our in- 
 quiry and need the discussion which I shall now give 
 them. 
 
 Observant persons who have been in a crowd when 
 the mob spirit has suddenly developed will probably 
 agree with me as to certain features of those strange 
 contagions of motive. The most evident point is the 
 quickness with which a spirit of association is devel- 
 oped: the movements, however aimless, are made 
 hi common, so that the throng, without willing it, 
 acts as a united body. Another less evident but most 
 important feature is that the motives of action are 
 always of a very primitive kind. In the milder in- 
 stances of the contagion, the common impulse may 
 be affection for a hero such as leads his admirers to 
 carry him on their shoulders. In the more distinctly 
 mob- like action a rude, sportive impulse may be the 
 guide. In the real mob, however, when we mean all 
 that the word implies, the motive is often that of 
 rage which is not satisfied with mere slaying but re- 
 quires for its gratification the utmost cruelty that
 
 300 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 can be invented. The most singular part of the pro- 
 cess which develops the mob is that it leads to the 
 immediate overthrow of all those sympathies which 
 characterize the isolated and independently acting 
 men, bringing them, for the time, into the state of 
 the primitive brutes. While possessed of this spirit 
 a body of men or even of women, who acting indi- 
 vidually would be fairly merciful, unable even when 
 enraged to torture an enemy, become changed to 
 demons. We see, hi a word, that people associated 
 in passionate action constitute a new land of human 
 being, one that has a primitive animal nature, if so 
 to term it be not injustice to the brutes. 
 
 It is characteristic of the mob spirit that it gen- 
 erally endures but for a short time, and, further, 
 that it does not develop except when considerable 
 numbers of persons are associated. The psychologi- 
 cal crisis rarely endures for more than a few hours. 
 The longest assault of this nature appears to have 
 been that of the "Terror" of the French Revolution 
 of 1793, when it appears to have continued for some 
 months. In fact the Gallic mind, as is shown by the 
 numerous, long continued attacks of mob-madness, 
 appears to be curiously prone to obstinate and ter- 
 rible fits of this nature. I am not aware of any in- 
 stances among the English or Teutonic folk where 
 this crowd-madness has endured as much as a week.
 
 THE WAY OUT 301 
 
 As for the numbers required to afford the conditions 
 suited to the development of the mob spirit it may 
 be said that the throng must be great enough to in- 
 spire its members with a sense of power ; the idea 
 of multitude appears necessary for its awakening. 
 
 It should be here said that although the mob 
 motive is usually associated with lynchings, it is 
 not necessarily a part of such actions. In many in- 
 stances of rude frontier justice, where men have been 
 compelled to act in unlawful ways hi order to obtain 
 protection against criminals, that action has been in 
 no wise influenced by what I have termed crowd- 
 madness ; it has indeed been distinctly parted from 
 it by the fact that it was judicially conceived, and 
 carried out in the manner of stern men who were in 
 no measure possessed by the torturing spirit which 
 is characteristic of the true mob. 
 
 Those who have had a chance to observe people 
 who were possessed of the ancient devil of the mob 
 are likely to have noted that they acquire a singu- 
 lar and uniform expression, their faces have a kind 
 of pinched, staring look, which reminds one of peo- 
 ple who are hypnotized. They respond to sugges- 
 tions in the automatic, insensate manner of hypnosis. 
 It appears to me quite probable that they are hi 
 some measure hypnotized and have thereby been 
 brought into a state in which only a part of their
 
 302 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 several natures is active and that the lower part. 
 Their look and behavior clearly indicate the state 
 designated of old as "possession," which is now 
 generally recognized as induced by or related to the 
 hypnotic condition. 
 
 It appears evident that the phenomena of crowd- 
 madness are by no means limited to what is exhib- 
 ited by an ordinary mob. In many other ways we 
 see the same impulse due to this state of mind. 
 Thus in an army we may often see the contagion 
 affect large bodies of men who are still under the 
 control of discipline ; the greater part of the heroic 
 work of battle as well as its most shameful panics 
 are impelled by this motive. The successful orator 
 commonly effects his end not by an appeal to the 
 intelligence of his audience as individual men; by 
 his - art, particularly by the quality of his voice and 
 by certain incantation-like modes of speech, he con- 
 verts the many into a united whole over which 
 even irrational suggestions will have a great sway- 
 ing power. Those who have beheld the old-fash- 
 ioned religious revivals have seen good examples of 
 this hypnotic and suggestive action. An excellent 
 example of the same nature may be found in the 
 political history of this country. In the democratic 
 national convention held in 1896, a clever orator, 
 marvellously endowed with this swaying power, so
 
 THE WAY OUT 303 
 
 moved the delegates to crowd-madness that quite 
 against their judgment they made him their can- 
 didate for the presidency. This singular capacity, 
 vulgarly but not inaptly termed "spell binding," 
 enabled that clever rhetorician to retain control of 
 nearly half the voters of the United States for at 
 least five years. History affords many instances of 
 a like captivating power which has enabled its pos- 
 sessors to determine the conduct of men by putting 
 their wits to sleep, but hi no other modern example 
 has this curious ability been displayed on so vast a 
 scale among an intelligent people. 
 
 The contagion which finds its most intense ex- 
 pression hi the ferocity of a mob passes, by insen- 
 sible gradations, through the admixture of other 
 motives, into fields of action where its existence 
 would hardly be suspected. Thus the movements of 
 what is called public opinion are evidently in large 
 measure affected by the emotions which tend to 
 make men hi contact think alike. Although I am 
 not a believer hi what is termed thought transfer- 
 ence, the experiments on which others rest their 
 belief show clearly the intense and instinctive de- 
 sire of people to shape their concepts on those of 
 their neighbors. Most men contend against their 
 own native individuality because they hunger for a 
 sympathetic mergence with their kind, and if the
 
 304 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 throng hates Jews or Negroes, or adores this or 
 that of art, they must share in the motive. In this 
 we have a lowly, herd-like stage of that sympathy 
 which hi its higher estate gives us the best the 
 world affords in the relations of men. In this primi- 
 tive level its results are mostly evil for the reason 
 that in all forms of crowd-madness, however much 
 they may have of nobility in the impulse which 
 guides in the action, the result has something of 
 the quality of the mob's work. It is irrational, and 
 therefore tends to fall into the plane of the lower 
 motives. 
 
 Here the reader may naturally ask whether this 
 condemnation does not extend to all the sympathies 
 which move great masses of folk to common action. 
 Whether, for instance, patriotism in its belligerent 
 expressions does not come under the category of 
 crowd-madnesses. The answer seems to me inevi- 
 tably clear. It is that all the teachings of experi- 
 ence go to show how social movements determined 
 by sympathies not greatly qualified by reason so 
 far qualified that they are essentially rational 
 are necessarily evil. Thus the patriotic motive, pro- 
 vided it rests upon the judgment of a man, may be 
 the noblest that awakens in him, for at its best it 
 embodies more lofty qualities than any other. But 
 where the motive is but the wild spirit of the tribe
 
 THE WAY OUT 305 
 
 which sets up its success in contending with other 
 tribes as the most desirable thing in the world, it is, 
 from the point of view of the enlarged man, essen- 
 tially ignoble because it is irrational. The patriotism 
 which lifts us in this day is that which considers 
 before it moves ; it takes into account many things 
 beside the primitive wild cry that finds expression 
 in such a phrase as " our country, right or wrong," 
 and leads men straight away to do the devil's work 
 in the name of the Lord. It is high time that we 
 should sit down to consider what patriotism really 
 is, so that we may purge it of the mob spirit which 
 now often masquerades under its name. Whoever 
 does this task with reason for his guide will find 
 that his true allegiance is due, not to bits of earth 
 or prejudices of tribes, but to large purposes ; to the 
 great movements for the advance of mankind, and 
 to the over-ruling order of this world. If it happens 
 that this enlarged faith leads him away from his 
 people, even makes him seem to the vulgar a traitor, 
 it should not halt his steps. He knows that the day 
 of the tribe is past and that it is his part to act for 
 larger purposes than it embodies. 
 
 What we have seen above of the effect of the 
 motives of the throng in the gradations from mere 
 fashion to the crowd-madness of the mob is help- 
 ful to our purpose, for it serves to explain certain
 
 306 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 features of the complex motives which constitute 
 race hatreds. We best see the application by con- 
 sidering what would happen in case we reared and 
 soundly educated a youth in conditions which would 
 permit him to come into contact with those of alien 
 race without any acquaintance with the prejudices 
 concerning such people which he normally acquires 
 through literature or tradition. Coming, we will 
 suppose, into contact with Jews, this youth would 
 pretty surely note that they differed from his kin- 
 dred in certain notable ways. Some of these ways 
 would offend him, but he would be accustomed to 
 like offenses from his own kind and would learn, as 
 we all have to, that men are to be taken in sum, 
 their good set against their bad qualities. Against 
 the carnality and greed of the Jew he would set his 
 essential kindliness, untiring industry, and faith that 
 answers faith. By forming a fresh and independent 
 judgment concerning the Semite he would be able 
 to do what men of the Aryan race hi twenty-five 
 centuries of intercourse have not done. He would 
 have a chance to escape from the control of tradi- 
 tion which necessarily embodies, along with much 
 that is good, the lowest motives of his people, its 
 rages, hatreds, and other uncleanliness, a chance 
 which is denied the best of us who are soaked in 
 this excretion known as " public opinion."
 
 THE WAY OUT 307 
 
 The lesson we learn from the study of crowd- 
 madness is that the supreme need in our life is for 
 clean individual thought and action hi all that re- 
 lates to the alien neighbor. We may fairly, and hi 
 the main, trust to the tribal state of mind for 
 guidance hi all that concerns those who are by 
 birthright near to us, for there the sympathies are 
 so far quickened by training that they act when 
 and as they should ; but for all that relates to the 
 remote man, these impulses of the throng, because 
 they were shaped in the ancient, lowly life, are far 
 from helpful, hi fact, they hinder our way to right 
 doing. For this new life we need the new light 
 that comes to us through the discerning sight of 
 Christ, and from our larger knowledge of what life 
 means. These show us that we need to deal. with 
 our neighbors not, as our inheritances of custom dic- 
 tate, hi the categoric way, but as individuals, and 
 this because we are individually responsible for the 
 justice and mercy which is the neighbor's due. 
 
 What has been set forth hi the preceding parts 
 of this book has been presented somewhat diffusely. 
 This matter of human contacts is indeed so vast that 
 any effort to discuss it in an orderly way would have 
 led to a formality of statement which would have de- 
 feated the object which I had hi view. Yet hi order
 
 308 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 to attain my end I shall sum up these considerations 
 In this final chapter and try to show how they should 
 affect our relations with the fellow-man. 
 
 First let me ask the reader to give over so far as 
 he can the commonplace trivial view of himself which 
 comes from the momentary nature of his self-con- 
 sciousness, and to see that self as it is now clearly 
 discernible as the most marvellous product of the 
 ages which this world can ever disclose. He should 
 understand that what he holds is the inheritance 
 from incalculably numerous ancestors ; that perhaps 
 a hundred thousand species have helped to build 
 and transmit life to him. Over this store of the past 
 his personal self has control ; not of it all, for the 
 most that goes on hi his individuality, both in the 
 body and in the mind, is as unknown to him as 
 though the action were in another planet, but enough 
 is consciously his own to afford the ample resources 
 of joy and duty which it is his privilege to know. 
 
 The second point we should attend to is that the 
 foremost duty of man is to take account of what has 
 come to him hi the way of inheritance, and to part 
 the evil from the good. The province of moral action 
 consists mainly in this criticism of that which has 
 come to us from the past, and in the rejection of all 
 that does not fit the higher life of man. Whoever 
 does this task faithfully advances towards the higher
 
 THE WAY OUT 309 
 
 stages of existence that open before his kind ; who- 
 ever fails of this duty remains in the bondage of the 
 brute and the brutal man. 
 
 The third consideration is that the solitary indi- 
 vidual man cannot find his life within himself 
 all but the lowliest part of it is won by friendly 
 relations with his fellows. On the measure of the 
 sympathy which he gives to his kindred depends his 
 fullness as a man ; depends also the station he attains 
 hi the higher lif e towards which, hi part by the laws 
 of that life, hi part by the action of his will, he is 
 striving. The development of this sympathy hi the 
 lower grades of human society has been limited by 
 the physical conditions of men, by the narrowness 
 of the family, and afterwards of the clan or tribe 
 which came from it. Ages ago in all the developed 
 races the stage of the limited tribal sympathies was 
 passed, but the limitation has been maintained by a 
 combination of motives so strong that it has effec- 
 tively defeated the main purpose of Christ, even 
 among those who regard themselves as his most 
 faithful disciples. 
 
 The fourth point is this. Inasmuch as the highest 
 form of religion in the keeping of that race which 
 must be accounted the noblest has, for near two 
 millenniums, signally failed to make head against 
 the tribal motive, or to bring about any distinct ad-
 
 310 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 vance in the relation of individual men to each other, 
 we have to consider whether the task has not to be 
 abandoned as beyond human power to accomplish. 
 The answer to be made to this is that we have yet 
 to essay a reinforcement of the sympathetic motive 
 with the vast addition which modern knowledge af- 
 fords. We have yet to see what the understandings 
 of man can do for his advancement on the ways to 
 which his higher sympathies direct him. It is evi- 
 dent that hi certain fields great advances have been 
 made in human relations by the combination of rea- 
 son and altruistic motives, and this gives us ground 
 to hope that the association is able to accomplish 
 the even more difficult work which is before it. We 
 see that in the system of organized society this asso- 
 ciation of rationality and impulse has really bettered 
 the relations of man. It is true that this betterment 
 has not gone far in matters which affect the personal 
 relations of man with man ; nevertheless, they have 
 broken down the ancient system of tribal rights, 
 and there is no good reason to doubt their ability, 
 with an added measure of rationality, to break down 
 the remainder of the primitive motives such as now 
 shames our civilization and degrades our common- 
 wealths. 
 
 If the reader would attempt this method of better- 
 ment he should see that the only way to success is
 
 THE WAY OUT 311 
 
 through himself, by the reformation of his own hab- 
 its of thought and action. Let him in this task face 
 the peculiar difficulties due to the fact that all which 
 can be done has to be effected within his own soul, 
 wherein lies the most important difference between 
 the betterments of human contacts and the advance- 
 ment of social or political order. In this latter work 
 we seek to make others do that which we see to 
 be fit ; in the former it is ourself we have to com- 
 pel. Unhappily there is a mighty difference between 
 these two modes of action. Notwithstanding some 
 slight and insecure gains, the most potent influence 
 that has ever come to man hi the form of organized 
 sympathy, the Christian religion, has failed to sway 
 man to this domination of himself. It may indeed 
 be reasonably held that we are not much nearer the 
 end than we were at the birth of Christ. There is 
 no use hi glossing over the difficulties of this situa- 
 tion or of allowing the sympathies to lead us to 
 such idle hopes of swift conquests as have beguiled 
 the faithful for nineteen centuries. We have to sit 
 down before this ancient stronghold of evil prepared 
 for a hard siege. 
 
 The prime need in this endeavor to better our re- 
 lations with the neighbor is to keep in mind what 
 we know of our human history, and by so doing to 
 restrain the influence of the commonplace state of
 
 312 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 mind which leads us to look upon him as an alien. 
 My experience shows me that this task, though by 
 no means easy, is entirely possible. The help will 
 not come by mere knowledge of what the fellow-man 
 really is and what he means to us, knowledge such as 
 I have endeavored to set forth in this writing, for all 
 that of itself is mere information and as such has 
 no compelling power in shaping relations. It has by 
 meditation to be fused with the sympathies, so that 
 it acquires what, for lack of a better word, we may 
 term the religious motive, that union of the whole 
 spirit in fervent noble desire for the betterment of 
 man, which is the essence of all higher faiths. 
 
 Perhaps the most encouraging part of the help 
 which the modern learning can give us in our quest 
 is that relating to the history of the sympathetic 
 bond. When we behold the steadfast way in which, 
 through the ages, the necessarily sundered individ- 
 uals have steadily tended to unite themselves in 
 the larger whole of societies, and how man is effect- 
 ively man because of his great advance hi this pro- 
 cess of union, we feel ourselves on a clearly de- 
 fined way, which is the easier for this definition. 
 Wherever a man turns hi action he finds that he 
 has to push against the walls of obstacles that sur- 
 round him, has indeed to hurl himself against 
 them. Here, however, is a place of least resistance,
 
 THE WAY OUT 313 
 
 the barrier yields as an unbarred door, and lets 
 him easily forth into the wide realm where he may 
 with further contention force his way on. I have 
 found that so far as I have been able to fuse what 
 I have of acquired knowledge with the primal sym- 
 pathies the way has been made easy. The main 
 difficulty is that the understanding came at a tune 
 when the barriers of acquired habit reinforced those 
 of an inherited nature, so that the task has been 
 harder than it would have been hi youth. 
 
 One of the most serious difficulties that those who 
 fare on this way to enlargement have to face arises 
 from the state of our traditions and literature re- 
 lating to contacts with the neighbor. Although 
 this body of transmittenda is full of nobility, of self- 
 sacrifice, of tender care for fellow-men, hi aspirations 
 for their betterment, it is curiously lacking in illus- 
 tration that relates to contact with the fellow-man 
 and skill in entering to his needs. Those who know 
 in a general way something of literature are likely 
 to recall but few instances of men or deeds hi which 
 this side of human action is nobly portrayed. The 
 sayings of Christ, especially the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan, Sidney's " cup of water," and some others 
 less indicative, are all that I recall. Few of them 
 take account of the deep that parts man from man^ 
 or of the cry for succor that comes over it as from
 
 314 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 the shipwrecked to their comrades for help. The 
 truth is that the effects of the individualizing pro- 
 cess on the status of man, the loneliness it brings 
 and the obligation of mutual help that it entails, 
 have not yet entered into our thought. We need the 
 poet and the seer to give this lesson a support that 
 science alone cannot give. 
 
 As this matter of bettering the mode of contact 
 of men with men is, from the point we are viewing 
 it, essentially a scientific undertaking, the inquirer 
 would best set about it in the fit manner of an in- 
 quirer. It will be well first for him to note, as he 
 may readily do in the endlessly repeated experiment 
 of ordinary life, how far a friendly or sympathetic 
 attitude to the nearest of his neighbors, the mem- 
 bers of his household, contributes to his enlargement. 
 In proportion as he goes forth to them sympatheti- 
 cally he feels that he is out of prison, while even a 
 trifling disagreement puts him sensibly hi chains. 
 When in his ugly humor the world is valueless, its 
 wealth comes back on the tide of affection. When 
 we observe this phenomenon, as all men have had 
 a chance to do since our genus was evolved, the 
 wonder is that as a mere following of this path of 
 least resistance, and for no more than evident profit, 
 kindliness has not become a firmly established habit 
 of man. A little further observation will show that
 
 THE WAY OUT 315 
 
 there is in us the more ancient, and, in its time, 
 profitable habit of self -regarding, a mighty devil 
 which contends against the newer and higher na- 
 ture we know as the Lord. Thus in the commonest 
 of our experiences we are brought experimentally 
 hi contact with the very heart of the great moral 
 problem that we all have to face. 
 
 To develop the path of experiment, the inquirer 
 will do well to seek contact with some person be- 
 longing to a group which he feels to be far remote 
 from him, for instance, a common laborer. Observ- 
 ing first that this man, because of his aspect, and, 
 more than that, because of the prejudices with which 
 we conceal his visible quality, seems exceedingly 
 remote, the student should proceed to explore him 
 with that open mind which it is the bounden duty 
 of the naturalist to take with him in his work of 
 research. From much experience I can be perfectly 
 sure that the result, provided the exploration is 
 complete, will be a conviction that this particular 
 form of the alien is in all essentials, in all that goes 
 to make a man, a true kinsman. The differences are 
 of no more than atomic weight compared with the 
 planetary mass of likeness. If this task is well done, 
 the discovery of kinship thus attained is fit to be 
 ranked with the greatest that the naturalist's ex- 
 perience can give, and among the most profitable.
 
 316 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 The inquirer must not suppose that he can 
 go straight about the exploration of his neighbor 
 which he is here advised to make. The matter, like 
 most profitable inquiries into the unknown, is one 
 of much difficulty, and requires the ingenuity of the 
 true experimenter. The specimen must be caught 
 and kept under conditions which will permit obser- 
 vation. He cannot be captured hi a fly net and 
 fixed with a pin in a favorable attitude for study, as 
 some sociologists essay to do. He must be caught 
 in the net of sympathy and explored by friendli- 
 ness, else it will not be possible to see him clearly 
 enough to make out his likeness to ourselves. This 
 task is difficult enough, but it is one of the most 
 rewarding that can be undertaken. At first sight 
 the reader may be offended at the very idea of culti- 
 vating friendly relations with one essentially alien 
 for the deliberate purpose of experiment. I confess 
 that in the statement it does appear revolting. Yet 
 the offense, as will be found in the endeavor, is but 
 fanciful, for the relation at once, and of necessity, 
 becomes perfectly human, diff ering from other friend- 
 ships only in the fact that scientific curiosity a 
 perfectly worthy motive stands beside the union, 
 noting what makes for wisdom. Of all the host of 
 motives that lead men to come near to one another, 
 this is among the wholesomest. Even if the person
 
 THE WAY OUT 317 
 
 who is thus approached comes in time to know that 
 he was chosen as a subject for inquiry, he will, if he 
 has become friendly with the inquirer, be hi no wise 
 troubled. Friendship is an ample mantle that easily 
 covers far worse offenses than this. 
 
 Having extended his conceptions of what consti- 
 tutes a man, by satisfying himself that the most out- 
 lying members of his own stock are essentially like 
 himself, the inquirer should then apply the same 
 method of closely sympathetic yet observant con- 
 tact to some distinctly alien race. History shows 
 with almost appalling certainty that the Jews afford 
 the best, if not the only instance, hi which we can 
 readily find contacts on terms of perfect intellectual 
 equality with a very alien people. Judged by the 
 evidence, what we may call the modulus of alienity 
 of these people from our own is to be reckoned 
 as greater than in the case of the Chinese, or the 
 American Indians, or indeed any other of the high 
 races. We may be certain that in proportion as the 
 Jew is comprehended, he will exasperate the Aryan, 
 and this feeling will grievously interfere with the 
 inquiry. But if he be a true observer, it will stimu- 
 late his curiosity, for he will find himself in the pre- 
 sence of a most interesting subject of inquiry, and 
 will, after the manner of the true naturalist, surely 
 fall in love with the instructive specimen.
 
 318 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 If the Hebrew who serves for the inquiry be a 
 characteristic example of his race, the observer will 
 discover that while the former has all the character- 
 istic qualities of the Aryan, each in essentially the 
 same form and in about the same ratio, they work 
 together hi a way so different that the effect is 
 baffling. Just here he finds himself upon the track 
 of the explanation as to the dislike of these races 
 for each other. They are near enough alike to sug- 
 gest an identity of spirit which makes close rela- 
 tions possible, but the differences are such as hinder 
 the two kinds of men from matching their humors 
 in a friendly way. They feel that unhappy condition 
 termed in the law of divorce an " incompatibility of 
 temper " and so hasten apart. The observer may be 
 inclined to abandon the attempt, but, once again, he 
 will, if he be a true inquirer, reckon with his testy 
 humor as he will with his bad eyes or clumsy hand, 
 and set about the task of finding out whether these 
 differences are really such as to prevent friendly 
 association. If his result is what my experience 
 indicates, it will be that, once we give over the 
 instinctive yet insensate demand for the neighbor 
 to be ourself in another skin, and are prepared to 
 make a manly allowance for differences in men, the 
 Jew appears as a very admirable, though in certain 
 instances, perhaps, somewhat disagreeable, species of
 
 THE WAY OUT 319 
 
 our genus. In a word, as soon as we bring into the 
 assemblage of motives which operate in human in- 
 tercourse the tolerant spirit of inquiry, of catholic 
 appreciation for what the world offers, these varia- 
 tions from what we have been in the habit of con- 
 sidering the normal man, these variations, which, 
 acting on the clumsy wits of common men, have 
 shamed this earth, become little more to us than 
 the differences hi the faces of our friends, some of 
 which may offend us though they all are dear. 
 
 If the exploration of the Jew is made with care 
 on a number of good examples and in the light of 
 the history of that people, the observer will be likely 
 to come to the conclusion that perhaps they have 
 the right, from the naturalist's point of view, to 
 be regarded as the type or highest species of the 
 genus homo, while we Aryans must content our- 
 selves with the second place in the series. Measured 
 in terms of organic endurance, so well proved by the 
 trials to which our species has subjected them, by 
 the stamping power of their blood, or by their in- 
 tellectual and moral achievements, they are clearly 
 entitled to this superior station. Against this array 
 of Semitic capacities we can set only the construc- 
 tive power of our own race as it is manifested in 
 the government-shaping ability, together with the 
 capacity for research into nature and into the me-
 
 320 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 chanic arts, in all of which fields the Jew is infe- 
 rior to the Aryan. The conclusion of the inquirer is 
 likely to be that the Semite is, on the whole, the 
 ablest type of man the world has known, but a type 
 which is somewhat archaic for the reason that its 
 powers are not those most intimately related to the 
 life of the genus in its present stage or hi its fore- 
 seeable future, because they do not take hold on the 
 natural realm. 
 
 If, after studying the peculiarities of the Jew, the 
 student of human nature turns to the Negro, he will 
 find a subject of inquiry no less interesting though 
 very different. He will find that in the Jew we have 
 a singularly fixed type of the highest quality, one so 
 fixed that despite its exceeding range and scope the 
 essential nature is always marked. Moreover, as 
 before noted, the observer has to learn that the Jew 
 has, as one of his most characteristic and unfortu- 
 nate traits, an eminent incapacity for imitating any 
 other kind of man. In the Negro, on the other hand, 
 the student will find a singularly elusive group 
 in which it is almost impossible to see anything 
 that we can call a type. It is true he may take 
 if he pleases, as is commonly done, the dark skin 
 and woolly hair as criteria, but a little knowledge 
 of anthropology shows that such indices are very
 
 THE WAY OUT 321 
 
 deceptive, for, using them as a basis for classifica- 
 tion, we should make a rare hodge-podge of peo- 
 ples ; but if he seeks for race characteristics of the 
 spirit, as our inquiry demands that he should, he 
 is sure to be puzzled. To make the matter more 
 difficult, the people known in this country as Ne- 
 groes have a curious quality of imitativeness not 
 found in like measure among other folk save the 
 native Africans, and strangely in contrast with the 
 incapacity for imitation characteristic of the Jews. 
 The result is that the inquirer will find that the 
 blacks do not, or rather cannot, easily reveal them- 
 selves to us as they really are. 
 
 As the observer breaks his way through the diffi- 
 culties which he will encounter after he has found 
 that the Negro is not an Aryan in a black skin, 
 he discovers the most interesting type of primitive 
 man left in this world, and learns how very good 
 this primitive may be. Perhaps the most notable 
 of the qualities he will perceive is that of devotion 
 to the strong man who is recognized as the overlord. 
 Some of this humor is in all men, even in our own 
 folk, despite all the ages of culture to which they 
 have been subjected, but in the Negro it is primally 
 strong, for the creature cannot grow to his normal 
 state without such support. As a further result of 
 the same quality, he is in a simple way intensely
 
 322 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 religious. That ancient sense of peopled spaces, 
 which has been expelled from our kind, abides in 
 him and gives him a life that is denied to us. This 
 religious humor is in all lowly people but slenderly 
 connected with morality, a union which is recent 
 history hi our own race, but hi the Negroes it is 
 united with the whole life in a way that should 
 make it possible to turn it into that channel. The 
 other primal motives which go to make a man, such 
 as lust, greed, sense of the droll shown hi simple 
 humor, are readily discerned. They appear to exist 
 hi the Negro with far less relation to each other 
 than in us, so that the man is shaped by his moods 
 and less by interacting motives. The only evident 
 lack is the curiosity which leads to inquiry. As far 
 as we can speak of the Negro as a race it may be 
 said that this impulse hardly exists. 
 
 Owing to the fact that the Negroes of this country 
 are a confused jumble of many varieties of what in 
 the fullness of knowledge may have to be regarded 
 as several distinct races, the study leaves on the ob- 
 server no such distinct categoric impression as does 
 the inquiry into the Jews. Some of the many Negro 
 types afford specimens which in essential human 
 quality are fit to be classed with the best this world 
 affords. Other stocks are distinctly brutal, so low, 
 indeed, that they are not the material for the uses
 
 THE WAY OUT 323 
 
 of civilization, but should be rejected as incapable of 
 improvement by any resources which we yet know. 
 The commonest elements which the observer will 
 find in this exceedingly varied folk are the tendency 
 to adhere to any masterful man with whom they 
 come into contact, and a fondness for music of such 
 simple order as fits to songs or to the dance. These 
 motives, combined with enduring bodies and with a 
 willingness to labor, will convince the inquirer that 
 he is in contact with a folk who can be turned to 
 good account in a commonwealth. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting result gained from 
 a close study of the Negro, or even from mere inti- 
 mate contact with his kind, is a curious affection- for 
 them. So far as I can find, this feeling apparently 
 does not in the same degree spring from relations 
 with any other alien stocks; certainly it does not 
 come in like measure from any which are so essen- 
 tially alien to us. Nothing of this nature develops 
 from an acquaintance with the distinctly alien Jews, 
 with American Indians, or with Chinese, though in 
 all those folk we find qualities far more akin to our 
 own. The reason for this difference probably is to be 
 found in the very strong, though unconscious, desire 
 of the Negro to shape himself on the masterful race, 
 and the lack of any such close-knit, stubborn race- 
 character as we find in other peoples. This feature
 
 324 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 makes them the most domesticable of all the lowly 
 stocks, for it gives them a sure way to the hearts of 
 all sympathetic persons who come to know them. 
 
 When the observer has compassed the quality of 
 two or three diverse kinds of men, he will, if he have 
 a trace of the naturalist in him, become addicted to 
 such inquiries. There is indeed no field of research 
 which so opens the way to largeness of understand- 
 ing as this, for in it we find not only the satisfaction 
 of scientific curiosity, but also a quickening of the 
 human sympathies such as is denied the student 
 elsewhere in the realm. It has the charm of history 
 with the added pleasure of having the living text 
 before our eyes. At the same time, while the study 
 of diverse races is, in the largest measure, helpful in 
 clearing away the instinctive prejudices, it is well 
 that the inquirer should not limit himself to the di- 
 versities of stock alone. He should also learn some- 
 thing of the variety that exists in his own race. One 
 of the most unhappy results of the segregating action 
 of a high social order is that men commonly know 
 only those who are of about their own grade. They 
 would be larger if they sought the chance to make 
 acquaintance with the whole gamut of their folk, 
 those who are in the prisons as well as those in the 
 palaces. In fact, a man remains shamefully ignorant,
 
 THE WAY OUT 325 
 
 famed though he may be for learning, if he has not 
 such a range and scope of knowledge concerning his 
 people. Personally I value what I have been so for- 
 tunate as to gain of acquaintance with very diverse 
 sorts of men more highly than all else that I have 
 won hi the way of knowledge. Such will be the con- 
 clusion to which the inquirer who faithfully seeks to 
 know mankind will surely come, for he will find that 
 the lessons help him further on the path of duty than 
 any other this good world affords. 
 
 Nothing so well shows the obsessing effect of the 
 commonplace as the neglect of all deliberate study 
 of men. Psychologists inquire into their mental 
 parts, romancers seek from them situations, now 
 and then some melancholy Jacques looks a bit into 
 their sad ways, but not one hi a million of us tries 
 to see what these most interesting of all things are. 
 I have known many students, but never one who 
 gave any considerable part of his powers to the 
 study of men in their human quality with a view to 
 seeing the measure of their diversities and their fit- 
 ness for the work of the commonwealth. We cannot 
 perhaps hope to see any considerable results from 
 such study, though, fortunately, it does not need to 
 go far in order to win the end hi view. As soon as 
 we begin to take men in the way of inquiry the old 
 brutal attitude towards them disappears. Habit will
 
 326 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 lead to many fallings from the grace it brings, but 
 the fact that it is a relapse into the old iniquity 
 will be at once evident, and they will occur no 
 oftener than the other assaults of the devil upon a 
 truly moral man. To him there will be no more 
 a "dog of a Jew" or a "damned nigger" or other 
 accursed shapes of men, but each with its measure of 
 nobility will go to make up the splendor of the world. 
 So far from the diversity being exasperating, as it 
 necessarily was in the tribal state of mind, it be- 
 comes hi this view an enrichment of existence. We 
 are no longer limited to one quality of the wine of 
 life, we come to know and to love all its vintages. 
 
 To apply this to the question of race contacts hi 
 this country we should see that the most important 
 feature of the American commonwealth consists in 
 the Ultimate mixture hi its society of exceedingly 
 diverse races. Other states have had a like variety 
 of men within their bounds, but in those instances 
 the various peoples have been geographically seg- 
 regated so that the interaction has been between 
 masses of folk, each keeping something like a tri- 
 bal isolation. Where, as in certain of the European 
 states, they were blended in a common life, the vari- 
 ous kinds have, with rare exceptions, been of the 
 same race. In those instances where by chance of 
 conquest diverse stocks have been brought into con-
 
 THE WAY OUT 327 
 
 tact, as with the Moors in Spain and the Jews in 
 many fields, there has been continuous trouble, gen- 
 erally resulting in the expulsion of the weaker folk. 
 It is, hi a word, evident that hi this country we are, 
 at the price of our national life, to accomplish the 
 task, which historically seems impossible, of merging 
 all these discrepant elements hi a close-knit society. 
 The question is, how can it be done ? 
 
 It is evident that it is a condition precedent to 
 any success hi the American problem of govern- 
 ment, based as it is on a great human complex, that 
 our people quickly and effectively rid themselves of 
 tribal prejudices so that they can face their task 
 with reason, sternly, as needs be, yet with under- 
 standing and sympathy for the folk who are com- 
 mitted to their hands. Taking the large view of the 
 situation, it appears that the first step should be to 
 minimize this task by not allowing it to become any 
 greater than it now is. The ways to this limitation 
 are evident. They are to avoid additions of trouble 
 through immigration and through the annexation 
 of countries peopled by folk of alien stocks. As for 
 the limitation of resort to this country, it should be 
 so contrived that it may keep out those varieties of 
 men who are proved by their history to be unfit for 
 the service of our state. It would take us too far 
 afield to discuss this limitation in detail, but it is
 
 328 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 clear that the list should include those who are not 
 of our race except the Jews, although the degraded of 
 these should be excluded together with such com- 
 posite folk as the southern Italians and those from 
 the lower Danube and the Balkan Peninsula. As 
 for the annexation of alien populations, it should be 
 at once arrested, and so far as possible the addi- 
 tions made of late should be so disposed of that they 
 may no longer burden the attention of our people. 
 We have indeed none of that to spare. 
 
 So far as concerns the Aryan and Semitic people 
 now with us, or who are to come, it is evident that 
 we may reasonably hope that they will blend in 
 such a measure as will make a safe common element 
 of population. The conditions of our life greatly 
 favor such a union. A century of experience shows 
 that our system of education, through the social life 
 even more than through schooling, serves well to 
 bring this result about, and that the result of the 
 admixture is physically and mentally good provided 
 the original material is not degenerate. The need 
 here is to contend against a manifest tendency of 
 these aliens to segregate into communities hi a man- 
 ner that prevents their effective union with the body 
 of our folk. This has been and still is productive 
 of evils, the last instance of it being that of the 
 Pennsylvania Germans, who, although two centuries
 
 THE WAY OUT 329 
 
 on the soil, have to this day remained in large part 
 an isolated people but little nearer to our life than 
 when they came from the lower Rhine valley. An- 
 other clear case is that of the Canadian French, 
 whose separation hinders the development of the 
 Canadian Dominion and is a serious menace to its 
 future. Of the same nature are the Irish and Ger- 
 man aggregations in our great cities, where the ten- 
 dency is to keep the stocks parted from the life of 
 the country so that the generations born here may 
 for many steps retain their alien character. There 
 are no evident means by which this evil may be 
 restrained through enactment, but now that there 
 are no public lands to be occupied by colonies from 
 abroad it is only in our cities that it is likely to be 
 increased. To break up the score or more of such 
 foreign plantations which now exist, the law should 
 require the English language to be the only means 
 of official communication. If German or other for- 
 eign tongues are taught in the public schools it 
 should not be to perpetuate their use but because of 
 their value in education. 
 
 All the other difficulties of our race problem, how- 
 ever, are insignificant compared with that which 
 arises from the presence of ten millions of Negroes 
 in this country. In dealing with this mighty ques- 
 tion there are certain primary considerations which
 
 330 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 have to be faced. The first is that these Africans 
 are ineradicably alien, in that it is not possible to 
 unite their blood with that of our race. The results 
 of centuries of experiment show beyond all question 
 that this union cannot be effected without the loss 
 of the qualities which give our Aryan race its singu- 
 lar value. The conditions demand that the blood of 
 the races be kept entirely apart. Such is clearly the 
 judgment we have to make even in face of the fact 
 that some able men have arisen who are of the 
 mixed race. The next point seems to me even as 
 clear ; the body of our African people, though fit for 
 the simpler duties of citizenship, are not yet fit for 
 the task of government, for which indeed, as the ex- 
 perience of ages shows, few peoples even of our own 
 race are suited. It is unhappily evident that the 
 presence of this unenfranchisable folk will make 
 it necessary to limit the suffrage within a large 
 part of this country in a way that would not other- 
 wise be necessary, in a way that is in itself very 
 undesirable. The right to vote will have to rest 
 on education or on the possession of property ; or, 
 perhaps, it will be expedient to require both these 
 qualifications. 
 
 By the adoption of the qualification of education no 
 new principle will be introduced into our system, 
 for it rests on the assumption that the citizen is a
 
 THE WAY OUT 331 
 
 literate person, and the requirement of proof is in ac- 
 cordance with this theory. Moreover, this is already 
 the law in some of the states of this Union. The 
 institution of a property qualification would be a re- 
 turn to a system which was general in the early days 
 of this country. It was abandoned without much con- 
 sideration, partly from the conviction, then not un- 
 reasonable, that the electorate body would be trust- 
 worthy, even if those on the verge of pauperism 
 were admitted to it. There can be no question that 
 there are great evils attendant on the possession of 
 the franchise by some millions of our people who 
 have given no evidence of fitness for citizenship 
 and who are not at all subject to taxation. Taking a 
 rational view of the state, it may in the main fairly 
 be regarded as a corporation for the management of 
 property, so that the right to vote logically inheres 
 in the stockholders, and not in those who incident- 
 ally share in the advantages it affords. A state is 
 else than a corporation, but that else is, with the 
 advance in the general social order, steadily becom- 
 ing less important. Except we hold to the ancient 
 preposterous notion that a male human at one and 
 twenty years of age suddenly becomes endowed with 
 a right to share in ruling the commonwealth, we 
 can see no right that could be infringed by a re- 
 quirement that the voter should prove either that
 
 332 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 he earns a fair wage or holds a certain amount of 
 property. On these accounts it does not seem a seri- 
 ous breach with our traditions to limit the suffrage 
 in the manner hi which it evidently has to be limited 
 in order to exclude so much of the essentially alien 
 population of this country, Negro and other, as is 
 necessary to insure its safety. We may regret the 
 change, but cannot regard it as in any way break- 
 ing with our most valuable traditions. 
 
 While a limitation of the suffrage by educational 
 or property qualification or both may not be harm- 
 ful, may even be advantageous, any system which 
 makes it depend upon race would be hi the highest 
 manner destructive to our institutions. It would 
 strike at the heart of the principle of equal opportu- 
 nity for equal talent which is the organic centre of 
 our commonwealth. Therefore while I am hi favor 
 of the changes in the constitutions of the Southern 
 States which have limited the franchise, I regard the 
 purpose of disfranchising the ignorant Negroes, while 
 leaving the equally ignorant whites still in possession 
 of the suffrage, as so far a restoration of the tribal 
 system which it has been the task of our common- 
 wealth to overthrow. As for the miserable subter- 
 fuge commonly known as the " grandfather clause," 
 by which this end was accomplished, I am ashamed 
 that it should have been invented by Americans.
 
 THE WAY OUT 333 
 
 Although the people of the late slaveholding states 
 have, in the difficult situation due to the presence 
 of the freedmen, made some serious blunders, still 
 there is good reason to hope that they will soon find 
 the way to a satisfactory adjustment of the rela- 
 tions of the two races. We may found this hope on 
 the fact that the people of this part of the country 
 have a rare capacity for the tasks of government. 
 That part of the stock which is from the origi- 
 nal Southern Colonies, especially from Virginia, has 
 shown more genius and devotion in such work than 
 any other people. The history of slavery in these 
 states indicates that in general the whites under- 
 stand the Xegro and are able to win his devotion 
 hi a measure not found elsewhere. For a generation 
 there has been much confusion, as was to be ex- 
 pected as a consequence of the very great social revo- 
 lution due to the Civil War and to the emancipation 
 of the slaves ; but when the history of these condi- 
 tions comes to be written, the marvel will be that, 
 taken as a whole, the social and public order of the 
 country has been so well preserved. Not only has 
 there been no approach to a war of races, but the 
 economic condition has steadily and swiftly bettered, 
 until at the present time the district which thirty- 
 five years ago was the most impoverished ever occu- 
 pied by an English people is perhaps the most pros-
 
 334 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 perous of its fields. This alone proves the organizing 
 capacity of the Southern folk, and affords a happy 
 augury for their future management of the great 
 problem. 
 
 To obtain the full value of the Negroes to the 
 commonwealth, it is necessary to shape action hi 
 reference to them with a clear understanding of 
 the diversity of their nature due to the very great 
 variety of stocks and even of races which exists 
 among them. It is my conviction, based on much 
 study of the black people, that a considerable part 
 of them will be found very well fitted for the more 
 serious duties of citizenship, and that with fit help 
 in education and incentive somewhere near half of 
 them can be uplifted to a plane where they will con- 
 tribute to the quality of the state. Of the remainder, 
 the most that can be hoped is that they will make 
 useful laborers. In this lower group there is a rem- 
 nant, probably not five per cent of the whole black 
 population, which retains so much of the primitive 
 brute that it cannot be turned to account. It is from 
 this very small part of the folk that comes the class 
 of outrages which constitute the real menace of the 
 situation. It is doubtful if the proportion of this 
 primitively brutal element of the Negro popula- 
 tion exceeds much, if at all, the corresponding de- 
 generate and otherwise base material in the whites,
 
 THE WAY OUT 335 
 
 but it seems probable that it is more inclined to 
 crimes against the person, particularly to assaults on 
 women. Naturally these atrocities excite rage, but 
 this is too often visited unreasonably on the unof- 
 fending body of the blacks, who, if in close social 
 contact with the whites, are, as is well proved by 
 the history of the people in slavery, no more given 
 to such offenses than those of our own race. It 
 would be quite as reasonable to condemn the Eng- 
 lish stock for the offenses of its criminals as to con- 
 demn the Negroes as a whole for such crimes, which 
 probably do not occur in one in ten thousand of 
 that people, and hi only the lowest part of the very 
 mixed stock. Here, as in our own race, this class of 
 malefactors should be weeded out. There is good 
 reason why assailants of women should receive the 
 highest punishment of the law, that they may 
 not propagate their kind; but there is no reason 
 whatever for allowing these miscreants to preju- 
 dice our conduct towards a valuable body of folk 
 who are akin to them only in the color of their skins. 
 It may be said, however, that the Southern people 
 have never shown any general disposition to take 
 this course. 
 
 The Southern people may be trusted to find the 
 value of the Negro in his new condition as they did 
 in the old. They recognize that hi this vigorous,
 
 336 THE NEIGHBOR 
 
 very human folk, they have a supply of labor which 
 is absolutely necessary in fields which do not tempt 
 white people. They know, or must learn, that the 
 value of this population can be had only by devel- 
 oping and suitably promoting those of the blacks 
 who show themselves fit for advancement. There is 
 no other way open to us except to trust the future 
 of the Negro to the white people with whom he is 
 in contact. All the expedients of the reconstruc- 
 tion period resulted in hindering the advance of the 
 work it was intended to accomplish, for the reason 
 that it set the races over against each other; it 
 broke up the old friendly relation which had effaced 
 the most serious of the tribal prejudices, and set 
 those persons in flame. Any further effort to force 
 an adjustment will be likely to result hi something 
 like race war. That we best trust, and may fairly 
 trust, to the South to contrive safety and justice out 
 of the situation has happily become evident to the 
 whole people. By putting the burden on those who 
 are best fitted to bear it we shall sooner and more 
 surely bring them to deal with it in the manner 
 in which men of our race are accustomed to deal 
 with grave social problems painstakingly and with 
 justice.
 
 INDEX
 
 IOTDEX 
 
 ABNORMALITY of stranger offen- 
 sive, 165. 
 
 Affection, basis in mental quality, 
 29. 
 
 Alien, lack of rights of, 42 ; im- 
 possibility of profitable subjuga- 
 tion, 59 See also, Stranger. 
 
 Animal independence, 249. 
 
 Assaults on women by Negroes, 
 148. See also, " outrages by 
 Negroes, 334. 
 
 Associative action among men, 
 247. 
 
 Atomic field, groupings of units 
 in, 3. 
 
 Atoms, changes of, 1, 3, 4. 
 
 Auto da /<*, 99. 
 
 Automatic action, 16. 
 
 Autonomic motive and American 
 Union, 66. 
 
 Banneker, 151, 163, 178. 
 
 Beavers, constructive habits of, 
 
 244. 
 Blood relationship and religion, 
 
 266. 
 
 British government in India, 70. 
 Brute qualities, early appearance 
 
 of in man, 236. 
 
 Care of offspring, effect of on sur- 
 vival of, 24. 
 
 Categoric motive, 134; in animals, 
 192: in man, 193. 
 
 Categoric view, replaced by sym- 
 pathetic, 201. 
 
 Categories, necessity of revision 
 of, 197; revision of, through af- 
 fection, 200 ; broken down by 
 knowledge, 221 ; modification or, 
 to include Negroes, 291. 
 
 Cherokee alphabet, 61. 
 
 Christ and the tribal spirit, 274. 
 
 Commonwealth, ideal of, 54. 
 
 Communism, mental, in animals, 
 246. 
 
 Consanguinity, significance of, 267. 
 
 Contact, with the neighbor, way 
 of bettering, 218, 314 ; not to 
 
 be gained through science, 221: 
 manner of, and attitude toward 
 the neighbor, 229. 
 
 Contacts, human, effect of speech 
 and clothing on, 36. 
 
 Cooperation, imitative, in verte- 
 brates, 244. 
 
 Cross-breeding, effects of, 160 ; ef- 
 fects on Negro, 162. See also, In- 
 termarriage and Miscegenation. 
 
 Crowd-madness, in armies, 302 ; 
 lesson from, 307. 
 
 Crowd motive, evolution of, 253. 
 See also, Mob and Throng. 
 
 Cruel motive essentially human, ' 
 234. 
 
 Cruelty, of Spanish, 91; of French, 
 96; tendency to, deep-founded, 
 233; natural selection and, 235. 
 
 Cruelty motive, lessening of among 
 Germanic peoples, 230. 
 
 Crusades, 94. 
 
 Darwinian and LaMarckian hypo- 
 theses, 253. 
 
 Dead, contact with, 31. 
 Democracy, ideal of, 180. 
 Difference, importance of, 49. 
 Duty of man, 261, 308. 
 
 Educational and property qualifi- 
 cations for voters, 331. 
 
 Emotions and categorizing, 196. 
 
 English modification of Roman 
 rule, 56. 
 
 Ethnic barriers, broken by Ma- 
 hometanism,45 ; failure or Chris- 
 tianity to break, 46. 
 
 Ethnic group, bonds of, 41. 
 
 Ethnic motive, in primitive tribe, 
 43; obduracy of, 50; in political 
 development, 54; treatment of 
 by Roman method. 55 ; intensity 
 of, in Jews, 65; value of, 69; re- 
 sult of failure to understand it. 
 71. 
 
 Experience, inherited, 4, 16. 
 
 Experiment, value of, In under- 
 standing man, 315.
 
 340 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Family, basis in ideal of kinship, 
 47 ; origin of affection for, 265. 
 
 Feralizing of domestic animals, 
 249. 
 
 Field-mice, constructive habits of, 
 245. 
 
 Future, mammals which make pro- 
 vision for, 61. 
 
 Gallio, 58. 
 
 Gesture language primal, 216. 
 
 Hatred, in lower animals, 21 ; modi- 
 fied by reason, 22 ; result of, 23 ; 
 modified by sympathy, 23 ; escape 
 from, 260 ; tribal, and commercial 
 intercourse, 269. 
 
 Hayti, Negroes in, see Negroes. 
 
 Hebrew, see Jews. 
 
 Identification with community, de- 
 sire of individual for, 258. 
 
 Immigration, limitation of, 327. 
 
 Incapacity of primitive folk to en- 
 dure toil, 61. 
 
 India, success of British in, 70. 
 
 Indians, success in civilizing, 59 ; 
 toiling capacity of, 62 ; productive 
 activity, 63; relation to tribe, 68; 
 social prejudice against, 197 ; 
 dances symbolic, 212. 
 
 Individual, separation of, from his 
 fellows, 204, 271 ; influence of com- 
 mon mind on, 256. 
 
 Individual quality of man, summit 
 of a series, 204. 
 
 Individuals, as source of influence, 
 9 ; grades of solitary condition of, 
 36. 
 
 Inheritances of man, 261, 308. 
 
 Inherited experience, 4; lessening 
 of, 16. 
 
 Inherited quality, organic features 
 of, 4. 
 
 Insects, social habits of, 238. 
 
 Instincts, meaning of, 243. 
 
 Instinctive action, 16. 
 
 Instinctive cooperation in verte- 
 brates, 244. 
 
 Intellect and evolution, 8. 
 
 Intelligence, definition of, 10; re- 
 sult of introduction of, 11 ; pri- 
 mal and rational in man, 19. 
 
 Intermarriage, of Negroes with 
 whites, laws relating to, 164, 176, 
 328 ; undesirability of Negroes 
 with Aryans, 330. See also, Mis- 
 cegenation and Cross-breeding. 
 
 Jewish persecutions, origin of, 104. 
 
 Jews, intensity of religion of, 65 ; 
 
 Greek and Latin authors on, 72 ; 
 
 agriculture of, 75 ; causes of mis- 
 fortunes of, 77 ; Roman conquest 
 of, 78 ; Greek comments upon, 
 78 ; early dislike of, 82 ; Roman 
 authors on, 83 ; attitude of Chris- 
 tian Europe towards, 88 ; en- 
 trance into northern Europe, 89 ; 
 capacity for finance, 91 ; as 
 money-lenders, 92 ; expulsion of, 
 from Spain, 92 ; outbreaks 
 against, in France, 93, 96 ; out- 
 breaks against, in England, 95 ; 
 affected by Renaissance, 98 ; 
 amelioration of condition of, in 
 Germany, 99 ; legal emancipation 
 of, in France, 100 ; social station 
 of, 102 ; religious motive in social 
 status of, 106 ; Aryan feeling of 
 repulsion for, 108 ; the world's 
 ablest folk, 116, 287 ; physical as- 
 pect of, 116 ; desire for profit, 118; 
 not skillful actors, 120, 321 ; in- 
 ability to adapt themselves to 
 neighbor, 121. 
 
 Kazans, 89. 
 
 LaMarckian and Darwinian hy- 
 potheses, 253. 
 
 Language, purpose of, 206. 
 
 Lessmg, 100. 
 
 Lethal quality of man, 233. 
 
 Love in human relations, 294. 
 
 Love of both parents for offspring, 
 26. 
 
 Love, of males for offspring, 263 ; 
 for the community, 264 ; mo- 
 ther's, see Mother-love. 
 
 Lynch law in South, 150, 188 ; mob 
 spirit in, 301. 
 
 Maimed persons, instinctive horror 
 Of, 288. 
 
 Man, dynamic value of, 7 ; ner- 
 vous system in, 17 ; motives of 
 lower animals, 18 ; categoric mo- 
 tives in, 193 ; individual quality 
 of, 204 ; lethal quality of, 233 ; 
 early appearance of brute quali- 
 ties in, 236 ; inheritances or, 2C1, 
 308 ; duty of, 261, 308 ; value of 
 sympathy to, 309 ; value of ex- 
 periment in understanding, 315. 
 
 Mediaeval type of state, 53. 
 
 Mendelssohn, 100. 
 
 Mental isolation, effect of, on evo- 
 lution of species, 251. 
 
 Mental understanding in animals, 
 246. 
 
 Metayer system, 175. 
 
 Militant spirit, development of, 53. 
 
 Militant type of insects, 18.
 
 INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 Mind, animal, variability of, 254. 
 
 Miscegenation, results of, 60. See 
 also, Intermarriage and Cross- 
 breeding. 
 
 Mob-spirit, in animals, 253 ; endu- 
 rance of, 300; hypnotism and, 
 301. See also, Crowd and Throne. 
 
 Modification of motives with bod- 
 ily changes, 248. 
 
 Monogamic habit, development 
 of, 25. 
 
 Moral life, origin of, 252. 
 
 Moral truths, a part of natural 
 learning, 277. 
 
 Mother-love of offspring, in lower 
 vertebrates, 26 ; developed by 
 touch, 34 ; evidence of, 283. 
 
 Motive, ethnic, see Ethnic motive. 
 
 Motive of tribe, see Tribal motive. 
 
 Motives in man, 18. 
 
 Motives, need of understanding 
 natural history of, 259. 
 
 Natural selection, effect of, on 
 labor habit, 62 ; theory of, in ac- 
 counting for cruelty in man, 235. 
 
 Negroes, capacity to endure work, 
 62, 127, 132, 133 note ; death rate 
 of, 131 ; ability to acquire Eng- 
 lish language, 133 ; lack of his- 
 toric sense, 135; in Hayti, 137; 
 slight sense of political order, 
 139, 157, 191 ; business incapacity, 
 139 ; development of sympathies, 
 140 ; faithfulness of, 141, 321 ; dis- 
 inclined to drunkenness, 147 ; as- 
 saults by, 148,335; incapacity for 
 invention, 152 ; aptitude for lan- 
 guages, 153 ; aesthetic capacity, 
 153; disenfranchiseinent of, 158, 
 166, 181, 330; and the professions, 
 
 f. 167: savings banks for, 170; so- 
 cial barriers against, 176 ; in pub- 
 lic office, 182 ; federal legislation 
 for, 189 ; ability to adapt them- 
 selves to neighbor, 121; violate 
 ideal of man, 290; dependence of 
 on higher race, 321, 323; value to 
 the commonwealth, 334. 
 
 Neighbor, seeking of ourselves in, 
 40; importance of manner of 
 meeting with, 114. 
 
 Nervous system in man, 17 ; of ver- 
 tebrates, 14. 
 
 Offspring, care of, 24. 
 
 Organic and inorganic groups of 
 
 individuals, difference between, 
 
 3, 10, 227, 236. 
 
 Patriotism, is it crowd-madness? 
 304. 
 
 Personality seen in other person 
 our own, 28. 
 
 Political ideal, development of, 52. 
 
 Primal impulses. 34. 
 
 Primitive folk, incapacity to en- 
 dure toil, 61. 
 
 Race problem, 253, 329. 
 
 Race war, possibility of, 336. 
 
 Rationality and instinctive motive, 
 18. 
 
 Religion, truly gained by sympa- 
 thy, 202; breaks down categories, 
 223; where ineffective, 269; and 
 science, 275 ; failure of, against 
 tribal motive, 309, 312. 
 
 Reproduction and sympathy. 262. 
 
 Roman method of rule, 65, 57; its 
 ideal imperial control, 58. 
 
 Roman system, estimates of, 58. 
 
 Science and religion, relation of, 
 275. 
 
 Selection, artificial, effect of, 250. 
 
 Sequoia, 61. 
 
 Skepticism, its relation to the Re- 
 formation and to science, 98. 
 
 Species, origin of, 247 ; definition 
 of, 252. 
 
 Specific motive in animals, 253. 
 
 State, controlling motive of, 257 ; 
 concept of, 268. 
 
 Stranger, entering on relations 
 with, 29 ; an object of suspicion, 
 39 ; mental demand made on, 38. 
 See also, Alien. 
 
 Studying of men, value of, 281. 
 
 Subjugation of aliens on other than 
 Roman plan, 59. 
 
 Suffering, effect of, on sympathies, 
 35. 
 
 Suspicion, importance of putting 
 away of, 279. 
 
 Sympathetic way of approach, 225. 
 
 Sympathy, evolution of, 18, 20, 263 ; 
 tribal, 26 ; towards the sufferer, 
 32 ; limited by language, 37 ; com- 
 munication of, by bodily move- 
 ment, 211 ; primal organic neces- 
 sity, 257 ; value of, to man, 309. 
 
 Tabu, 212. 
 
 " Terror " supremely human, 233. 
 
 Throng, behavior of, 298. See 
 also, Crowd and Mob. 
 
 Tribal habit inherited, 62. 
 
 Tribal ideal, permanence of, 66. 
 
 Tribal motive, extinction of, in 
 America, 44 ; barrier to civiliza- 
 tion, 48 ; endurance of, 68 ; bet- 
 terment of, 266. 
 
 Tribal spirit harmful, 46.
 
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