Dr. Dors2y proceeded to ask what light history threw on this assumption, pointing out how the destinies of nations had been determined by purely fortuitous _circumtano2s. One of these big accidents was that, early in history, masses of men went wandering, and settled down in various part of ths world, and it was the fate of some to place themselves far outside the sphere favourable to progress.
There were natural reasons why the Australian aborigine stopped at a phase of development below that of ive of Am=rica quite a respectable stage of development. Traces of extinct civilizations in Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru gave evidence of highly organized states of society, and of engineering skill quite comparable in magnitude with any of the ancient works of Europe or Egypt. The Mexicans and Peruvians also developed s tyre of culture much more refined than that prevailing in northern Europe 3,000 years ago. When ths American came in contact with the European, and the same could be said with regard to Africa and Asia, he was at one tremendous disadvantage, viz., the disadvantage of meeting an antagonist who had focussed his attention on the perfection of death-dealing weapons. Thus they perished. The contact was too sudden, and too violent.
Europe was at the mercy of the East for a long time, the speaker continued, but the East did not care to do anything. At the time of the Crusades, Cairo was the most "advanced" city in the world, certainly as regarded mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences. Europe was then in a stage of development which Asia had long since passed. The lesson which history seemed to show was that certain groups of men had beea advantage ously placed, that fortuitous circumstances had determined the cultural direction taken by various groups.
The Call of the Wild.
Scientific examination and comparison of the brain of a white man and the brain of a negro revealed no structural difference and no suporjority. Taken in groups, the brain of the Congo negro was smaller than that of Europeans, but some negroes might be found' to have brains larger than those of a European. The point was that there was no fundamental difference. The capacity to develop was there, but the stimulus to development was Incking in the environment. The negro boy had no such urgent in-centimes to progress as the boy of New York or London. The nege> might be educated to a ozrtain point, but all the past history ai his race, and all his present environment, was against the desire or id24 of further progress. He might welt nod and yawn over his books when he felt the call of the wild.
Dr. Dorsey's conclusion was th>t science and history afford no pr sot that the white races are innately superior to the black, or brown, or red, or yellow races, and he further pointed out that there was no reason for believing that we had reached the highest phase of civilization ar.d should continus to possess certwn advantages which we now held.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.