inable act, but with an unconscious
impulse, a subconscious impulse possibly, with an illogical,
unreasonable but powerful and in-explainable reaction of which the
white man himself is scarcely conscious and yet which he feels to be
stronger than all the impulses created in him by reason and logic.
What is its origin? Is there such a force? I think most will agree
there is such an instinctive aversion or dislike.

I am inclined to carry it back into the beginnings of the race, back
to the period of pre-historic law and to that psychological origin
which antedates the records of history, in the strict sense, to that
part of racial history indeed where men commonly act rather than
write. The idea of prehistoric law is that obligation exists only
between people of the same blood. Originally, charitable and decent
conduct was expected only of people of the same family. Even though
the family was by fact or fiction extended to include some hundreds or
even thousands of people, the fact was still true. The law which bound
a man limited his good conduct to a relatively few people. Outside the
blood kin he was not bound. He must not steal from his relatives, but
if he stole from another clan, his relatives deemed it virtue. If he
committed murder, he should be punished within his clan, but
protected, if possible, by his clan, if he murdered someone outside
it. The blood kin became the definite limitation of the ideas of right
and responsibility. This was true between whites. All whites were not
members of any one man's blood kin.

Palpably more true was this distinction between the Negro and the
white man. The Negro could not by any fiction be represented as one of
the blood kin. The Romans extended the legal citizenship to cover all
white men in their dominions. It was the fictitious tie of the blood
kin, but its plausibility was due to the fact that they were all
white. I do not remember to have seen any proof that the Negro
inhabitants of the Roman African colonies were considered Roman
citizens. This is one of the oldest psychological lines in human
history; the rights which a man must concede to another are limited by
the relationship of blood. _Prima facie_ there could be no blood
relationship between the Negro and the white man. There could
therefore be no obligation on the white man's part to the Negro in
prehistoric law. This notion has, I think, endured in many ways down
to the present day as a subconscious, unconsc