some extinct vagrant sun. We must act in the living present, and at present there rolls between the historical development of the black and the white species an impassable river of ten thousand years. Possibly the former might catch up in the course of ages, if only the latter stood still. But will they stand still? Can they afford to wait? Is there not every reason to hope that they will forge steadily ahead and widen still more and more the interval between? Is not such the obvious teaching of history? Does not the tree of life bud and bloom and put forth new boughs at the top? For our part, we believe in the Overman, Him who is to come—not, however, from the lower, but from the higher, humanity. Such, at least, seems of necessity our working hypothesis. 

 It would be unfair, however, to close this part of the discussion without noticing what our adversaries have been able to produce contra. 

 In The Souls of Black Folk, Prof. W. E. B. Dubois, of Atlanta, Ga., tells the tale, and it could not be better told, of the contributions made by the Negro to the civilization of our Union: 

 "Your country? How came it yours? Before the Pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song—soft, stirring melody in an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier that your weak hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit" (p. 262). The second of these "gifts" we dismiss at once; the Negro's labour was not voluntary, and was not a "gift" in any sense.   [8]  As well say the mule made "gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness." As to the "Spirit," Prof. Dubois means that the spectacle of African slavery aroused the "Spirit" in the people of our land, particularly in the Abolitionists—"out of the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst" (p. 263). Queer "gift", indeed! By the same token, the poverty, the distress, the injustice, the iniquity, the intemperance, even the crime—all that mar our civilization have been making it "the gift of the Spirit;" for have they not aroused our sense of right and duty and devotion to the good of others? Have they not called out of the nation's heart all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst? The gift of song, of the plaintive Negro melody—we freely allow it. How much of the same is really the product of the Negro soul seems to be a question by no means easy to answer. But let us allow 

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