ruler was always killed on the night after his induction into office. For a long time there have been no claimants to the throne of Kabinda.

Yet at Gatri, on the Benue River, a tributary of the Niger, where the number of years a king was to reign was settled by the electors, although the candidate knew that after a limited time he would be made drunk on guinea-corn beer and then speared, such is the inertia of negro custom and such the fatalism which accompanies the typical negro disposition, that there is no record of the royal stool standing

vacant.

In ancient times the Ethiopian kings of Meroë were worshipped as gods. Yet their lives were at the mercy of the priests, who, when it pleased them, used to send a messenger to the king to say that an oracle of the gods had decreed his death. Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy IV, was the first king to disobey this order. When the message arrived he took a body of soldiers to the temple and put the priests to the sword. Ergamenes had received a Greek education which must have endowed him with a small amount of resolution necessary for so elementary an effort at self-preservation. And his example does not seem to have had a lasting effect. In some tribes of Fazokl, in the very same region, down to modern times the king had to administer justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness or any other cause he failed to discharge this duty for three successive days, he was hanged on that tree in a noose which contained two razors so arranged that when the noose was drawn tight by the weight of his body the razors cut his throat. The people of Meroë have from the time of Herodotus been of mixed race, with the negro element always growing stronger down to the present time.

Of other restrictions on the liberty of action of persons of royal or chiefly rank in negro Africa it is necessary to mention only a few. The fetish king Kukulu, of whom we have heard before, lived alone in a wood; he must not leave his house; he must not touch a woman; he must not even leave his chair; he must sleep in it sitting, because if he lay down no wind would blow and navigation would be stopped. Among the Evhe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, the king, who was also the high priest, could leave his house only by night. Only his representative to the people, the so-called "visible king," together

with the three chosen elders, might speak to him and then only when seated upon an ox-hide with their backs turned to him. He was not allowed to see any European or to look at the sea. The kings of Dahomey and of Loango were subject to the same prohibition with regard to the sea. In Loango as in Uganda, the king must not be seen eating, on pain of death to the beholder. As a general rule the purpose of these restrictions, like those which caused great chiefs to be put to death, is in some way or other to preserve unimpaired the powers of the chief which direct or sympathetically affect the forces of nature which it is desired to control.

It is not claimed, of course, that this kind of institution is peculiar to the negro. The institution of the divine chief with his taboos is known also, for example, especially in Fiji and Polynesia. Something not unlike it may even have obtained at one time among our own ancestors. But among the people from whom our civilization in this country is chiefly descended, whatever divinity may once have hedged a king was, as far back as we can trace the institution, counterbalanced by checks and restrictions which had a political rather than a religious bearing. The system had in it the germ which made possible the further development of individual and social freedom, as distinct from a system like that of the negro, which by its very nature was a closed one-incapable of further useful development. The restrictions binding the negro chief and his people in their relations to him could only perpetuate superstition and submission to blind forces. It is true that restrictions of a political kind on the power of the chief were also present. The foreign and domestic policies of negro states were often subject to control by a council of elders. But this only tended to throw power into the hands of an oligarchy who could use the supernatural or magical qualities attributed to the king and to themselves for the maintenance of their own power. In other cases this political limitation of the supreme power was made futile by the fact that the ruler by magical or divine right had absolute power of life and death over all his subjects and could also confiscate their property.

It has been said that the power of inhibition involved in the observance of innumerable taboos binding not only the chiefs but their subjects also is not consistent with feebleness of will and the conse

quent lack of persistence in effort. Such taboos commonly prohibited various kinds of food and also on certain occasions any contact with women. In view of the well-known uxoriousness of the negro, it is claimed that abstinence of the second kind esecially shows that he could exert considerable will power. But it has to be remembered that such taboos were enforced by what was for the negro a very real terror. As between the penalty for the infraction of a taboo, which was often death, and a merely temporary abstinence, there was not, one would think, much difficulty of choice.

The history of the negro in the New World shows that even where he has been removed from the surroundings in which his own institutions were developed the mental disposition out of which those institutions grew has persisted unchanged in essentials. He still leans upon forces outside of himself. The fetishism of which the institutions which we have been considering are the most highly developed expression still persists. In the British colonies in the New World it is still necessary to keep in the laws severe penalties against obeahmen, whose influence remains strong. This in spite of the fact that the negroes have been subjected to the influence of European civilization for three hundred years, and that during a great part of that time ministers of numerous Christian sects have worked diligently to root out superstition. In Haiti for more than a century the negro has had the opportunity to work out his own salvation under leaders of his own race; and it is precisely in Haiti that we find voodooism and political oppression and corruption dividing the field of authority between them. In the United States and elsewhere on this side of the Atlantic such limited progress as the negro has made is due to white philanthropists and to leaders of mixed race. These are his external superior forces and he knows it, and he leans on them.

So far as the evidence from history is concerned the peculiar mental disposition of the negro is unchanged, and it seems unchangeable. This mental disposition keeps him backward and we have no reason to suppose that in comparison with the white man he will ever be anything else.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA,

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

ARE THE RACES POTENTIALLY EQUAL?

BY ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER

(Read April 25, 1924.)

Mr. Hall has just regaled us with delightful bits of negro magic. There is no denying the interest and quaintness of the data he has presented. But what is the bearing of this folk-loristic panorama on the question of racial equality or ability?

As an anthropologist Mr. Hall need not be told that even in the very field of magic he has so thoroughly scanned, modern man can not by any means boast of a clean slate. We have heard of the supernatural powers attributed to negro kings. But how about the kings of Europe-today (or shall we say yesterday)? When some two generations ago the imperial train carrying Alexander III. and the royal family was derailed with tragic consequences, but their majesties suffered no injury, the event was hailed throughout Russia as a manifestation of Divine Providence. Needless to say, the ruler of All the Russias lost no time making capital of this special sign of supernatural favor. Or shall I remind you of William II. who made no secret of his belief that his ideas and acts were directly inspired by the Creator? And in this faith he did not stand alone.

With us, moreover, as with the African negroes, supernaturalism is not by any means restricted to royalty. Women no longer believe that the eating of a twin banana will result in a similar multiplication of offspring, but many of them, when about to become mothers, still frequent concerts and libraries in the fond hope and expectation of thus imparting to their issue the qualities of musicianship and scholarliness.. We may not see as many visions as was man's wont in earlier days, or when we do, discount them; but we still dream dreams, and many there are among us who do not shrink from ascribing to dreams the significance of omens and prognostications. Charms and amulets, mysteriously acting stones and the evil eye, symbolic numbers, lucky and unlucky days, mental action at a dis

tance (and this is the very kernel of magic!)—all these are still with

us. . . .

But let us waive this issue and glance at the problem of racial comparability in somewhat more systematic fashion.

First, then, comes man physical or biological. Are the physical differences between the races such as to permit a grading into a progressive series from the animal upward? The answer is a decisive no. When white man is examined as an integral specimen, his pale skin, his refinement of feature, his harmoniously symmetrical development and, last but not least, his æsthetic appeal to our senses, seem to prejudge the case at once in his favor. Surely no other race has reached a physical development so remote from that of the animal and otherwise so satisfactory, both anatomically and æsthetically! But if abandoning this impressionistic approach, one examines man feature by feature, the conclusion can hardly be the

same.

Take, for instance, the red external lips, a trait distinctly human, for animals, even the highest, are devoid of it. Now no one can deny that in this particular feature the Negro race has traveled far ahead of the others and therefore furthest away from its animal prototype. Or, take hairiness of the face and of the body generally. From the standpoint of this feature, the Negro, Mongol and American Indian would justly claim a certificate of advanced humanity, for their hairiness, a trait characteristic of most animals, is but slight. The Australian, on the other hand, is in comparison quite animalistic, for he is very hairy indeed. In this, however, he is like one other race, namely white man, who is as hairy as the Australian.

And so on with other features. There is no possibility of a serial grading from animal to man as far as the actually existing races are concerned. They must be regarded as specialized developments from the animal, proceeding in different directions.

Then, there is man neurological and psychological. How does the case stand here? It is, of course, obvious that the general development of higher animals culminating in man, is accompanied by a progressive increase in the relative weight and size of the nervous system and in particular of the brain. But when the level of humanity is once reached, the case is no longer so simple.