the domestication of the lower animals. Any who will read the descriptions of travellers, or the pages of Lombroso—L'Uomo Bianco e L'Uomo di Colore—must admit that the humanizing of the African in the South has proceeded surprisingly far. However elementary and contradictory may be his notion and his practice of morality now, on his native heath he has practically no morality at all. "It is more correct to say of the Negro that he is non-moral than immoral. All the social institutions are at the same low level, and throughout the historic period seem to have made no perceptible advance, except under the stimulus of foreign (in recent times notably of Mohammedan) influences.... Slavery continues everywhere to prevail ... cannibalism is practiced ... human flesh appears to be sold in the open marketplace" (Keane). All this talk, then, of the Negro's degradation, wrought by his American slavery, is the absolute inversion of the truth. .... ... ... But if the Black man has advanced so remarkably in Southern slavery, may we not expect him to advance still more remarkably, especially now that he is a free man? At first blush, this expectation may seem plausible; but a very little reflection and observation must show its vanity. The first sharp breath of winter lends a keen edge to the appetite; the continued cold does not make it keener and keener. The fagged-out man of business or leader of society retires to some cool and quiet health resort and reacts almost instantly. In a week he gains ten pounds, in two weeks fifteen, in a month twenty; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that this rate of gain could be maintained for any considerable time. The natural effect of the changed and improved conditions is soon exhausted, the limits set in the constitution of the subject are soon reached. So, too, in the domestication of plants and animals. A marvellous superficial alteration may be speedily brought about, but the bound is close at hand and is approached with rapidly decreasing velocity that soon becomes hardly perceptible. By no such means is any steady progress possible. Precisely so in the domestication, education, civilization of the lower races. These latter do undoubtedly possess undeveloped potentialities; they are capable of better things. The immediate result of subjecting them to new conditions that stimulate their powers may often be highly gratifying. But herein lies no promise whatever of any progressive amelioration. The boundaries are near by; nor can they be overstepped by any
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