s, we can see the
connection between races and classes. For it is generally held that the
castes of India originated in the conquests by an Aryan race of an
indigenous dark or colored race. And while the clear-cut race
distinctions have been blended through many centuries of amalgamation,
yet it is most apparent that a gradation in the color of the skin
follows the gradation in social position, from the light-colored,
high-caste Brahman to the dark-colored, low-caste Sudra, or outcast
pariah. Race divisions have been forgotten, but in their place religion
has sanctified a division even more rigid than that of race, for it is
sacrilege and defiance of the gods when a man of low caste ventures into
the occupation and calling of the high caste. India's condition now is
what might be conceived for our Southern states a thousand years from
now, when the black man who had not advanced to the lighter shades of
mulatto should be excluded from all professions and skilled trades and
from all public offices, and should be restricted to the coarsest kind
of service as a day laborer or as a field hand on the agricultural
plantations. Confined to this limited occupation, with no incentive to
economize because of no prospect to rise above his station, and with his
numbers increasing, competition would reduce his wages to the lowest
limit consistent with the continuance of his kind. Such a development is
plainly going on at the present day, and we may feel reasonably certain
that we can see in our own South the very historical steps by which in
the forgotten centuries India proceeded to her rigid system of castes.

There is lacking but one essential to the Indian system; namely, a
religion which ascribes to God himself the inequalities contrived by
man. For the Indian derives the sacred Brahman from the mouth of God, to
be His spokesman on earth, while the poor Sudra comes from the feet of
God, to be forever the servant of all the castes above him. But the
Christian religion has set forth a different theory, which ascribes to
God entire impartiality toward races and individuals. He has "made of
one blood all nations." It is out of this doctrine that the so-called
"self-evident" assertion in the Declaration of Independence originated,
and it is this doctrine which throughout the history of European
civilization has contributed to smoothen out the harsh lines of caste
into the less definite lines of social classes. For it must be
remembe