enerally of common blood and
language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are
both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the
accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life.

Turning to real history, there can be no doubt, first, as to the
widespread, nay, universal, prevalence of the race idea, the race
spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most
ingenious invention for human progress. We, who have been reared and
trained under the individualistic philosophy of the Declaration of
Independence and the laisser-faire philosophy of Adam Smith, are loath
to see and loath to acknowledge this patent fact of human history. We
see the Pharaohs, Caesars, Toussaints and Napoleons of history and
forget the vast races of which they were but epitomized expressions. We
are apt to think in our American impatience, that while it may have been
true in the past that closed race groups made history, that here in
conglomerate America _nous avons changer tout cela_--we have changed all
that, and have no need of this ancient instrument of progress. This
assumption of which the Negro people are especially fond, can not be
established by a careful consideration of history.

We find upon the world's stage today eight distinctly differentiated
races, in the sense in which History tells us the word must be used.
They are, the Slavs of eastern Europe, the Teutons of middle Europe, the
English of Great Britain and America, the Romance nations of Southern
and Western Europe, the Negroes of Africa and America, the Semitic
people of Western Asia and Northern Africa, the Hindoos of Central Asia
and the Mongolians of Eastern Asia. There are, of course, other minor
race groups, as the American Indians, the Esquimaux and the South Sea
Islanders; these larger races, too, are far from homogeneous; the Slav
includes the Czech, the Magyar, the Pole and the Russian; the Teuton
includes the German, the Scandinavian and the Dutch; the English include
the Scotch, the Irish and the conglomerate American. Under Romance
nations the widely-differing Frenchman, Italian, Sicilian and Spaniard
are comprehended. The term Negro is, perhaps, the most indefinite of
all, combining the Mulattoes and Zamboes of America and the Egyptians,
Bantus and Bushmen of Africa. Among the Hindoos are traces of widely
differing nations, while the great Chinese, Tartar, Corean and Japanese
families fall