Such is the pathetic plea for the ABSOLUTE EQUALITY in our American life of Black and White. We do not deny that there is a certain force in such words. To us the Negro seems handicapped with an undeniable inferiority, which, particularly in the commercial world, accumulates rapidly against him, as it were, at compound interest. And this is the seventh seal of his doom. But in science, in literature, in art, he receives all encouragement; his work is at an absurd premium. Take one illustration, _instar omnium_. In the advertisement of "Volumes by Paul Lawrence Dunbar," in "The Uncalled," his own publishers speak thus: "A poet who starts out by being handicapped by excessive praise suffers from it for a long time.... Just because he [Dunbar] happened to be a Negro, a vast amount of adulation was heaped upon him." Precisely the opposite of the picture drawn above! Compare, also, the history of the Negroes of Chatham, Ontario, and of other such early colonies. That they no longer meet with such extraordinary favour in the North is largely due to the fact that they have uniformly, when in numbers, sadly disappointed the hopes of their benefactors and well-wishers. It seems plain, moreover, that a really strong and highly endowed blood would triumph with equal ease over excessive favour and over unjust disfavour. Would any such discrimination keep down the Anglo-Saxon? Would he not "make by force his merit known"? And have twenty centuries of race prejudice and outrageous persecution availed to repress or depress the all-victorious sons of Israel? The generous explanation just offered must be rejected as utterly inadequate. Hence it is concluded (p. 307) that "no great weight can be attributed to the earlier rise of civilization in the Old World which is satisfactorily explained as a chance. In short, historical events appear to have been much more potent in leading races to civilization than their faculty, and it follows that achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other."