Great Britain -- Social conditions; Moral conditions; Social problems
It is, therefore, no difference of aboriginal outfit, but a difference
in the chances of migration and situation, which accounts for the
cultural diversity of races. Yet we must not at once infer that any
lower race can, on this account, be drawn from its isolation and
lifted to the higher level. There is reason to believe that a race
loses its educability if it remains unprogressive for too long a
period. The physiological reason may be that the skull closes firmly,
at a relatively early age, over the brain in a people in which
expansion of brain after puberty has not been encouraged. Take the
three "lower races" of Australasia. The Tasmanian was one of the
oldest and least cultured branches of the human family, and he died
out within a century after contact with the whites. The Maori of New
Zealand is the most recent and most advanced of the three aboriginal
races. With the Polynesian, he is closely related to the European or
Caucasic race, and is certainly educable. The Australian black comes
between the two in culture and in the period of his isolation.
Australian scientific men who have made the most sympathetic efforts
to uplift the black tell me that they have failed, and the race seems
to be doomed.
These scientific principles have discredited the old legendary notions
about the lower races, but we must not as yet make dogmas of them.
Nothing but candid and careful experience will show which races are
educable and which ineducable. It is very probable that such peoples
as the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, the Aetas of the Philippines, the
Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, and some of the Central African groups,
will prove ineducable. Other races which have been considered
"savage" are already proving educable, either as a body or in
large numbers of instances. Many peoples have not been tested at all.
We are only just at the fringe of this vast and interesting problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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