It is this character, quality, habit, the result of a slow educational process, which distinguishes one race from another.  It is this that the race transmits, and not the more or less accidental education of a decade or an era.  The Brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say that the departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individual character, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture.  It was perhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in Ecclesiastes said there is no “knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.”

It is by this character that we classify civilized and even semi-civilized races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slow accumulation of inherent quality in the evolution of the human being from lower to higher, that continues to exist notwithstanding the powerful influence of governments and religions.  We are understood when we speak of the French, the Italian, the Pole, the Spanish, the English, the German, the Arab race, the Japanese, and so on.  It is what a foreign writer calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul.  As it is slow in evolution, it is persistent in enduring.

Further, we recognize it as a stage of progress, historically necessary in the development of man into a civilized adaptation to his situation in this world.  It is a process that cannot be much hurried, and a result that cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by any superimposition of knowledge or even quickly by any change of environment.  We may be right in our modern notion that education has a magical virtue that can work any kind of transformation; but we are certainly not right in supposing that it can do this instantly, or that it can work this effect upon a barbarous race in the same period of time that it can upon one more developed, one that has acquired at least a race consciousness.

Before going further, and in order to avoid misunderstanding, it is proper to say that I have the firmest belief in the ultimate development of all mankind into a higher plane than it occupies now.  I should otherwise be in despair.  This faith will never desist in the effort to bring about the end desired.

But, if we work with Providence, we must work in the reasonable ways of Providence, and add to our faith patience.

It seems to be the rule in all history that the elevation of a lower race is effected only by contact with one higher in civilization.  Both reform and progress come from exterior influences.  This is axiomatic, and applies to the fields of government, religion, ethics, art, and letters.