Equality | Page 9

increase rather
than a decrease of the differences between the sexes. The differences
may be due to physical organization, but the structural divergence is
but a faint type of deeper separation in mental and spiritual constitution.
That which makes the charm and power of woman, that for which she
is created, is as distinctly feminine as that which makes the charm and
power of men is masculine. Progress requires constant differentiation,
and the line of this is the development of each sex in its special
functions, each being true to the highest ideal for itself, which is not
that the woman should be a man, or the man a woman. The enjoyment
of social life rests very largely upon the encounter and play of the
subtle peculiarities which mark the two sexes; and society, in the
limited sense of the word, not less than the whole structure of our
civilization, requires the development of these peculiarities. It is in
diversity, and not in an equality tending to uniformity, that we are to
expect the best results from the race.

V. Equality of races; or rather a removal of the inequalities, social and
political, arising in the contact of different races by intermarriage.
Perhaps equality is hardly the word to use here, since uniformity is the
thing aimed at; but the root of the proposal is in the dogma we are
considering. The tendency of the age is to uniformity. The facilities of
travel and communication, the new inventions and the use of
machinery in manufacturing, bring men into close and uniform
relations, and induce the disappearance of national characteristics and
of race peculiarities. Men, the world over, are getting to dress alike, eat
alike, and disbelieve in the same things: It is the sentimental complaint
of the traveler that his search for the picturesque is ever more difficult,
that race distinctions and habits are in a way to be improved off the
face of the earth, and that a most uninteresting monotony is
supervening. The complaint is not wholly sentimental, and has a deeper
philosophical reason than the mere pleasure in variety on this planet.
We find a striking illustration of the equalizing, not to say leveling,
tendency of the age in an able paper by Canon George Rawlinson, of
the University of Oxford, contributed recently to an American
periodical of a high class and conservative character.--["Duties of
Higher towards Lower Races." By George Rawlinson. Princeton
Re-view. November, 1878. New York.]--This paper proposes, as a
remedy for the social and political evils caused by the negro element in
our population, the miscegenation of the white and black races, to the
end that the black race may be wholly absorbed in the white--an
absorption of four millions by thirty-six millions, which he thinks
might reasonably be expected in about a century, when the lower type
would disappear altogether.
Perhaps the pleasure of being absorbed is not equal to the pleasure of
absorbing, and we cannot say how this proposal will commend itself to
the victims of the euthanasia. The results of miscegenation on this
continent--black with red, and white with black--the results morally,
intellectually, and physically, are not such as to make it attractive to the
American people.
It is not, however, upon sentimental grounds that we oppose this

extension of the exaggerated dogma of equality. Our objection is
deeper. Race distinctions ought to be maintained for the sake of the
best development of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual
reaction and play of peculiar forces between races which promise the
highest development for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may
suppose, that differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt
that either benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to
restore an assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresome
homogeneity.
Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied the
relations interchanged the higher the life. We want not only different
races, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.
A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the proper
destiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by a
recent colored writer,--["Africa and the Africans." By Edmund W.
Blyden. Eraser's Magazine, August, 1878.]--an official in the
government of Liberia. We are mistaken, says this excellent observer,
in regarding Africa as a land of a homogeneous population, and in
confounding the tribes in a promiscuous manner. There are negroes and
negroes. "The numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa
can no more be regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous
peoples of Asia or Europe can be so regarded;" and we are not to
expect the civilization of Africa to be under one government, but in a
great