n that the racial antipathy which prevails to-day will remain
unaffected by this admission, seeing that this racial animosity is
caused not by alleged mental disparity but by unalterable physical
difference between the two races.

It is important that this distinction be grasped for it goes to the root
of the matter. It is the marked physical dissimilarity of the black man
that rouses the fear and jealousy of the white man, and not any inherent
mental inferiority in him. And we must take human nature as we find it,
inscrutable and immutable as it is; wherefore we must reckon with, and
not hastily condemn, the imponderable purpose of a fundamental instinct
which is older than speech and deeper than thought, so that, although we
admit that this racial antipathy is not justified by logical reasoning,
we may nevertheless recognise it as a feeling grounded in man's inner
nature--in his heart, so to speak--hardening it against other men whom
he feels he cannot receive and entreat as brothers; in other words, we
may say that this feeling is not the result of ratiocination but of
forces that are deeper and more elemental than reason; that it is a
hardening of heart rather than a mental conviction, in which sense we
may apply the words of Pascal "Le caeur a ses raisons que la raison ne
connait pas."

Now if I am right in thinking that this racial feeling is engendered
instinctively by physical dissimilarity only then we may not expect it
to be removed or even lessened by the increased and general advancement
of the Natives, for although we may hope that the whites will gradually
come to recognise the abstract justice of the civilised Natives' claim
to full racial equality we must, at the same time, remember that the
increasing competition of the black man in every walk of life is bound
to bring into play and accentuate the natural race prejudice of the
white man whereby the tolerance and good feeling that might otherwise
result from a growing recognition of the civilised Natives' mental and
moral worth will be more than negatived. The present state of affairs in
the Southern States of America is a warning against easy optimism in
this respect. We must expect clashing and growing ill-will rather than
social serenity to be the outcome of a continued policy of drift.

To condemn the wrong of repression would to-day be like preaching to the
converted. Most people now admit that the Africans are entitled, no less
than the Europeans