conscience owes its authoritativeness and even its very existence and with it the existence of the social sanctions that guarantee a permanent civilisation to a feeling of unity and social solidarity among all the members of the social order. But where there are two separate and autonomous groups this is impossible, and the logical result of such a situation would be the disintegration of the social order entirely if the forces here at work were allowed free play. A permanent social order is possible only where one or other of the two sets of social values represented by the two groups secures and maintains an undisputed supremacy, or where there is a fusion of the two groups through intermarriage. Race fusion, if this is possible without the destruction of the social heritage, alone makes it possible for all the members of the social order alike to attain that similarity of selfhood necessary to complete social solidarity and a common loyalty to common group ideals. Of nothing is it so true as of the sanctions of human conduct that "a house divided against itself shall not stand."

It was out of the exigencies of such a social situation that the "colour line" arose. Here, if anywhere, we are to find the justification of it and all the phenomena of race discrimination which it entails. When we eliminate the exhibitions of brutal race hatred which are usually taken by superficial and prejudiced

critics as typical of the entire situation the alternatives before the guardians of white civilisation are either the admission of the negro through intermarriage to complete social solidarity, which would eliminate entirely the dualism of the social mind in the most natural and complete fashion, or the setting aside of the negro in a group to himself and the insistence upon his recognition of the supremacy of the white group. The later alternative makes a modus vivendi possible. It seems hard that the negro should be required to attain selfhood as best he can outside the higher cultural possibilities of the white group and subordinated to that group, and yet what other alternative would the social philosopher offer us? He certainly would not ask of the white group the supreme sacrifice of its ethnic purity which is the bearer of its social heritage and, therefore, the ultimate guarantee of the continuity and integrity of its peculiar type of civilisation.

The philosophy of the colour line should enable us to understand why the full and complete social integration of the negro is impossible. Such social integration as does exist must be based upon mutual concessions and compromises. The conditions of the greatest harmony will be, as already suggested, where the weaker group accepts unconditionally the will of the stronger group. Conditions of friction will

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inevitably occur where the weaker group refuses to accept these conditions. "The most fruitful conditions of race friction may be expected where there is a constant insistence upon a theoretical equality of the weaker group which the stronger denies." 1 Starting with racial antipathy as a fixed and irreducible element in the problem, it is undoubtedly true that the farther we get from slavery and the nearer an approximation of the theoretical claims of democracy, the more difficult social integration appears. It has indeed been asserted that slavery is the only condition under which a weaker race of widely different traits can enjoy intimate social relations with a stronger without friction. It is doubtless true that in spite of fifty years of freedom, the negro, especially in the South, enjoys as a race fewer points of contact with the white and is less an integral part of the social order than he was in the days of slavery.

1 Stone, Studies in the American Race Question, p. 223.

2 Shaler, "Race Prejudice," Atlantic Monthly, 1886, p. 516.

CHAPTER VII

CREATING A CONSCIENCE

THE facts cited in the chapter on the "colour line " indicate that the social salvation of the negro for an indefinite period in the future must be worked out within his own group. It will be conditioned, therefore, by the traditions and ideals dominating that group. Since personality is the product of subtle forces at work from earliest childhood within the family, the school, the church, the club, or the community, the character of the average individual does not transcend the level of social values set by his group. The immediate task of the negro leader or reformer lies, therefore, in the preservation of fit group traditions and the creation of social habits within the home and elsewhere which shall insure the training of characters socially valuable. Only thus can the negro as a class hope to survive in the tense competitive life of our modern democracy.

The process of creating socially valuable traditions and habits is an affair of the group rather than of the individual. It has been observed "no individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a

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society to make it for him." That is to say, the ideas that form the sanctions of conduct in the life of the individual are not his own creation. They are the gift of society to him or rather they are the outcome in his own life of making himself social and solid with his fellows. Hence the moral ideals of the individual will be more or less of a reflection of those that dominate his group. The "average man" is after all the final arbiter of social and moral values. A group can hardly be said to have traditions and ideals until they are shared by the masses and not simply proclaimed by a few brilliant leaders. It is their general acceptance that secures their sanction. The social conscience is the conscience of the "average man." The salvation of a social group is ultimately a question of the salvation of the "average man."

"Deep in the breast of the Average Man

The passions of ages are swirled,

And the loves and the hates of the Average Man
Are old as the heart of the world-

For the thought of the race, as we live and we die
Is in keeping the Man and the Average high."

During slavery the social conscience of the white group included both races.

a subordinate and passive

Though the slave lived

existence, he still shared

in the white's civilisation. His ideals of home, morals,

1 T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 351.