s political,
intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong. He has,
consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to
believe intensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and to
speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an
already dawning to-morrow.

Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human
beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme
types of the world's races have met, and the resulting problem as to the
future relations of these types is not only of intense and living
interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind.

It is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding our
future development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but
smaller questions of separate schools and cars, wage-discrimination and
lynch law, to survey the whole question of race in human philosophy and
to lay, on a basis of broad knowledge and careful insight, those large
lines of policy and higher ideals which may form our guiding lines and
boundaries in the practical difficulties of every day. For it is certain
that all human striving must recognize the hard limits of natural law,
and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest, which is
against the constitution of the world, is vain. The question, then,
which we must seriously consider is this: What is the real meaning of
Race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what
lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising
Negro people?

When we thus come to inquire into the essential difference of races we
find it hard to come at once to any definite conclusion. Many criteria
of race differences have in the past been proposed, as color, hair,
cranial measurements and language. And manifestly, in each of these
respects, human beings differ widely. They vary in color, for instance,
from the marble-like pallor of the Scandinavian to the rich, dark brown
of the Zulu, passing by the creamy Slav, the yellow Chinese, the light
brown Sicilian and the brown Egyptian. Men vary, too, in the texture of
hair from the obstinately straight hair of the Chinese to the
obstinately tufted and frizzled hair of the Bushman. In measurement of
heads, again, men vary; from the broad-headed Tartar to the
medium-headed European and the narrow-headed Hottentot; or, again in
language, from the highly-inflected Roman tongue