Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/170

 154 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a slave, to whom the message is given, and who, after being treated to liberal drafts of palm-wine, is then dispatched as mes- senger to the other world in the most blissful of moods.

In view of the barbarous customs which continue to exist among the negro population, many investigators have entirely denied the capacity of the negro to advance in the scale of civiliza- ton. The physical reason assigned for this inability is the fact that the cranial sutures of the negro close at a very early age. Negro children, it is admitted, are exceedingly bright and quick to learn; remarkable instances of precocious intelligence among them are frequently observed. Thus, the young son of Behanzin, the exiled king of Dahomey, carried off all the honors at the Parisian lycee to which he had been sent from Martinique. But after the age of puberty development soon ceases, the expecta- tions raised by the earlier achievements are disappointed, and no further intellectual progress is to be looked for. It is true, many investigators claim that the negro continues his mental growth in adult life, although the sutures of his brain have closed; but the proofs given in support of this favorable view relate rather to increased cunning and craftiness in trade than to the growth of the general intellectual capacities ; no one would deny that negroes accumulate experience in later life, but organic development of the faculties seems to cease at an early stage. Even if we accept this unfavorable view, however, it does not necessarily follow that the negro race is permanently uncivilizable. When we look at the low stage of civilization among the African negroes, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it is due rather to social, political, and climatic conditions than to the physiological, per- sonal incapacity of the negro. The difference between the average negro and the average European does not explain, nor is it at all commensurate to, the difference between their respective civiliza- tions. The social conditions that have kept the negro from acquiring a higher organization lie in the fact of the constant shifting of the African populations, which are not held in place by the physical conformation of territory such as that of Greece and Italy. The African societies were thus not given time to strike roots and to acquire a national tradition and history the