The supposed inferiority of the negro race is not a foregone conclusion. First it rests on the tacit assumption that there is a "negro race" which can be distinguished from the white race, not only by color but also by aptitudes, moral standards and habits of mind. Some experts in the South, who have studied the race as scientific men study the Indians of the Amazon, declare that they are unable to find any large body of traits which all Negroes possess; that they observe in no colored person characteristics which cannot be found in some Whites; and that they possess every variety of intellectual power and moral capacity. Then there is the question of the mulatto, who in his race mixture may be more white man than Negro. Is he to be included in the general indictment of inferiority? And, finally, what is to be argued from the men of power whom the negro race has displayed--a few in slavery days, and many in these later times? The most extravagant statement of negro inferiority is that the worst white man is better than the best Negro because of the supernal quality of the white race. A Southern writer talks of "The endless creations of art and science and religion and law and literature and every other form of activity, the full-voiced choir of all the Muses, the majestic morality, the hundred-handed philosophy, the manifold wisdom of civilization--all of this infinite cloud of witnesses gather swarming upon us from the whole firmament of the past and proclaim with pentacostal tongue the glory and supremacy of Caucasian man." Judged by their achievements from the dawn of history to the present moment, the white race has indubitably achieved immensely more than the black race, but it has also achieved more than its own ancestors whom Taine thus characterizes: "Huge white bodies, ... with fierce, blue eyes, ... ravenous stomachs, ... of a cold temperament, slow to love, home stayers, prone to brutal drunkenness: ... Pirates at first: ... seafaring, war, and pillage was their whole idea of a freeman's work.... Of all barbarians ... the most cruelly ferocious." After all, a race cannot be proved inferior by what it has not done; the United States as a war-making power has so far been inferior to the Germans and the Japanese, but its strength has not been tested. The real question is, does the Negro now, in the things that he is actually doing, show as much power as low and ignorant white people who have had no more than his opportunity? The Reconstruction governments, which are the stock in trade of those who decry the Negro, are little to the point, because they were to a considerable degree engineered by Whites, and because they lasted only from one to eight years. On the other hand, the great powers of a few select members of the race, and the excellent mentality and character of many others, are not proof that its average stamina is up to that of the white man; they must be tested by what they do.