Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/13

Rh a contact so much closer and more widespread than ever in the past that it may be deemed to mark a crisis in the history of the world, which will profoundly affect the destiny of all mankind. It is of the phenomena of that contact and the problems which it raises that I propose to speak to you to-day. Upon some points it is too soon to advance any positive conclusions, for the data are still insufficient. But data are daily accumulating, and though the time has not yet arrived for answering certain momentous questions, the time has arrived for formulating them. As the mists rise, the outlines of the landscape begin to appear, and we may venture to ask in what direction the movement of humanity will tend, and by what paths the obstacles that seem to bar or encumber its advance will be surmounted.

To describe the phenomena of race-contact in our own time as marking a crisis may seem a strong expression, for such contact has been never interrupted since our palaeolithic ancestors roamed hither and thither in search of wild fruits or wild creatures. There have been epochs, such as that of Alexander the Great, or that of Attila, or that which followed the discoveries made by Christopher Columbus, in which there was a great impingement of some peoples upon other peoples which created new relations between them by way of conquest or settlement. But our own time stands eminent and peculiar in this, that it marks the completion of a process by which all the races of the world have been affected, and all the backward ones placed in a more or less complete dependence upon the more