Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/581

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The common European estimate of the negro, according to Olivier, is that

My own experience compels me to accept Le Bon's estimate as applicable to our American pure negro in perhaps slightly less extreme form, and with occasional exception; but "devil" is no more applicable to him than to white "brutes." Le Bon's description would seem to describe fairly accurately the racial characteristics of the negroes. The opinion of many men with whom I have discussed this matter confirms me in this judgment. The average of the Caucasian race is by implication characterized by the opposite traits of the typical negro.

The negro differs from the Caucasian in several well-marked anatomical characteristics. Any one who has associated with negroes detects even more striking mental or temperamental differences. These are quite obvious to teachers of mixed schools, fairly common in certain northern states. Where negro, mulatto and white are jointly concerned the teachers are unequivocal in their opinion that mental alertness and the development of the higher psychical activities corresponds in degree quite uniformly with the amount of "white" blood as judged by color of the skin. Le Bon also is quite emphatic on this point:

Each race possesses a mental constitution as unvarying as its anatomical constitution (p. 6). and

The mental abyss that separates them (negro and white) is evident (p. 28).

This "mental constitution" is the source of a race's "sentiments, thoughts, institutions, beliefs and arts," its "soul."

Where does the mulatto stand with respect to negroes and whites? In general, as a race, approximately midway. But it includes types combining the best as well as the worst of both races. The former almost certainly predominate at the present time.

In Jamaica, according to Governor Olivier,

In practise it is the fact that the pure negro does not show the business capacity and ambition of the man of mixed race, and there are few, if any,