ibalism, the
devil-worship of the whole world, including that of Hayti, which Mr.
Froude predicts will be adopted by us Blacks in the West Indies, shall
no more encumber and scandalize the earth.

But Mr. Froude should, at the same time, be reminded that cannibalism
and the hideous concomitants which he mentions are, after all,
relatively minor and restricted dangers to man's civilization and moral
soundness. They can [229] neither operate freely nor expand easily.
The paralysis of horrified popular sentiment obstructs their
propagation, and the blight of the death-penalty which hangs over the
heads of their votaries is an additional guarantee of their being kept
within bounds that minimize their perniciousness. But there are more
fatal and further-reaching dangers to public morality and happiness of
which the regenerated current opinion of the future will take prompt
and remedial cognizance. Foremost among these will be the circulation
of malevolent writings whereby the equilibrium of sympathy between good
men of different races is sought to be destroyed, through misleading
appeals to the weaknesses and prejudices of readers; writings in which
the violation of actual truth cannot, save by stark stupidity, be
attributed to innocent error; writings that scoff at humanitarian
feeling and belittle the importance of achievements resulting
therefrom; writings which strike at the root of national manliness, by
eulogizing brute force directed against weaker folk as a fit and
legitimate mode of securing the wishes of a mighty and enlightened
people; writings, in fine, which ignore the divine principle [230] in
man, and implicitly deny the possibility of a Divine Power existing
outside of and above man, thus materializing the mind, and tending to
render the earth a worse hell than it ever could have been with faith
in the supremacy of a beneficent Power.

NOTES

221. *"Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."--Ovid.

BOOK IV: HISTORICAL SUMMARY

[233] Thus far we have dealt with the main questions raised by Mr.
Froude on the lines of his own choosing; lines which demonstrate to the
fullest how unsuited his capacity is for appreciating--still less
grappling with--the political and social issues he has so confidently
undertaken to determine. In vain have we sought throughout his bastard
philosophizing for any phrase giving promise of an adequate treatment
of this important subject. We find paraded ostentatiously