Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/34

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
30
THE NEGRO

logical attributes of man—of men, mankind,—the existing differences among various representatives of the genus Homo in these respects in all parts of the world, as applied to the individual or to the race or group, are simply immeasurable in many instances. Throughout the entire history of the world, dating as far back as we can follow it with certainty and accuracy, both men and women have exhibited differences in regard to culture, refinement, knowledge and mental capacity. They have also exhibited differences with respect to their philosophical calibre, and the ability to employ the reasoning faculty in its varied fields as applied to logical ends and to the solutions of practical and theoretical questions of every imaginable character. Gauged thus, the plane occupied by the greatest individual in all spheres of activity in which men and women have engaged since the dawn of civilization, of the highest callings in life,—mankind upon that plane, I say,—is as much above the one occupied by the lowest savage races of the world throughout history, as the loftiest mountain-peak on the earth is above the bottom of the deepest part of its deepest ocean. Linnæas, Von Humboldt, Huxley, Darwin, and other great minds are just as much of the animal world as the lowest Yorubas, Bushmen or Australian natives. No one of the whole knows one whit more of the probabilities of a life beyond the present one than another, and were such a future existence possible in any form whatever, the greatest philosopher that ever lived would have no higher claim to it, than the most degraded savage that ever skulked through his native forests. Here all are upon the same plane, but intellectually and psychologically, using those