Excerpt from The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 15: A Quarterly International Record of Educational Literature Institutions and Progress, 1908

While, of course, these stages cannot be marked by definite periods, they serve to indicate a natural line of review in treating of some of the questions arising from racial intercourse. It is the purpose of this paper, after briefly reviewing the conditions and results of the earlier phases, as exemplified in some of the best known fields of colonial enterprise, and discussing more fully the present state of educational effort, to enquire into the methods best suited for the advancement of stagnant and backward races, in the light of the best researches of psychology and anthropology.

II. On the Psychic Unity of the Race

Even at the present day it is urged by many writers that certain races, because of their essential inferiority, their almost sub-human, or, at least, sub-Caucasian, mental endowment, are incapable of receiving more than a veneer of any higher culture. The question of the psychic unity of the human race is still an open one, and waxes warmest in this country, naturally, over the African. While it cannot here be discussed at length, mere mention may be made of the facts that seem overwhelmingly to argue against intrinsic difference. Many investigators, such as Peschel, Darwin, Haddon, de Quatrefages, and others, cite the prevalence, in widely sundered regions, of such customs as counting on the fingers, gesture-language, ratification of friendship by exchange of names, building of memorial cairns, couvade, and the widespread practice of circumcision. Darwin particularly emphasizes (Descent of Man, Pt. I, c. 7) the similarity between the races of man as shown by the universal pleasure afforded by the same amusements and by bodily decorations, as well as by the fact that the same emotions are similarly expressed in face, gesture, and cry, whereas different species of monkeys respond to the same stimulus quite differently. So, too, as to language, the essential point being not any particular form or derivation of speech, but the mere capacity for articulate expression of thought. Nor are even classifications according to cranial measurements decisive, for under the same cephalic index are grouped peoples that none would equate in other respects, as, for example, Bretons and Kalmucks, Turks and Javanese, while, on the other hand, in Scotland and in Switzerland, with races so similar in many respects, the cranial proportions are different enough to justify separate classification. No more can alleged pathological variations afford a final answer.

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