Page:The Atlantic Monthly vol. 69.djvu/734

724 close domestic relations with the white race will be accompanied with tendencies of relapse to the old fetich-worship and belief in magic; and this would be especially the case in the dark belt where the large plantations are found. Fetichism, as the elemental or first form of religion that arises among conscious beings,—animals cannot have even fetichism,—attributes arbitrary power to inanimate things, but does not arrive at the idea of one absolute Being. It remains in some of its forms even in the most advanced of religious peoples, as a limited belief in magic, faith in charms, amulets, lucky-bones, signs and omens, sacred places and times, etc. Even the high doctrine of Special Providence, so eminently Christian, easily passes over into fetichism (as the magical control of events through prayer), and is in fact blended with it in all minds devoid of scientific education.

Here is the chief problem of the negro of the South. It is to retain the elevation acquired through the long generations of domestic slavery, and to superimpose on it the sense of personal responsibility, moral dignity, and self-respect which belongs to the conscious ideal of the white race. Those acquainted with the free negro of the South, especially with the specimens at school and college, know that he is as capable of this higher form of civilization as in slavery he was capable of faithful attachment to the interests of his master.

The first step towards this higher stage which will make the negro a valued citizen is intellectual education, and the second is industrial education. By the expression "industrial education," I do not refer so much to training in habits of industry, for he has had this discipline for two hundred years, but to school instruction in arts and trades as applications of scientific principles. Nor do I refer even to manual and scientific training, valuable as it is, so much as to that fundamental training in thrift which is