“The backwardness of the Negro in Africa is not due directly to lack of mental capacity, but to unfavorable environment. If any other race had peopled Africa in early neolithic times, and remained there until now, it would have advanced no higher than the present culture-level of the Negro.” Africa lies almost wholly in the hot, humid zone of the Tropics, save for the vast Desert of Sahara to the north. There is, indeed, another vast area on the temperate side of the Tropic of Capricorn which, at sight, inspires hope for the development of a rich, virile civilization; but an examination of the isotherms reveals conditions uncongenial to the spontaneous development of a high type of civilization. Even as low as Natal and Cape Colony, the coastal belt produces tropical fruits like all the rest of Africa. In such environs the negro tribes lived in isolation from other races; cut off from the Mediterranean Empire by the Sahara Desert, and from Europe and Asia by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Whatever stimulus to development may come from contact with other peoples—and there is much—was denied to the Negro, save that which arose from inter-racial conflict among themselves, an unceasing bar to higher development for any race, and seemingly inseparable from racial isolation. And yet a distinct progress is clearly manifested through facts which stand out in eloquent boldness. On the one hand, we see the Pygmies, without organization or law or even language save the most meager, with scarce enough even of settled custom to fix any habits of moral life. On the other hand, the most advanced tribes of north and east Africa, like the Yorubas, the Zulus, and the Kaffirs, exhibit a marked degree of progress. Here are well-defined organizations; codes of laws which, however they fall short of ours, are actual codes sufficing for them; moral codes which, however far from the Christian standard, yet form codes to be obeyed and enforced; a language (in the case of the Kaffirs) “adequate for the expression of any ideas whatever”; industries sufficiently developed to meet backward needs; a highly developed aesthetic sense; enough of self-control to conserve courage; and a fair degree of steadfastness of purpose. Among the very highest type, is found the practice of the virtues of affection, kindness, and mutual helpfulness; of honesty in their own group, even to punishing the liar—and much more. Who can gainsay the fact of progress far too great to be overlooked? Who can say what might have been attained under more favorable conditions? Who can say what further progress—slow, very slow, and deliberate—awaits achievements, in view of that which, in the past, has been distinctly and, in many cases, wholly their very own? It is beside our purpose to make a comparison of races. Our study is of the Negro himself; and our findings prove, what naturally would have been expected of God’s creation, a people _worth while in themselves_.