Pharaonic.  But whatever the origin of the Songhay empire, it became in time Mohammedan, and so continued to the end.  Mohammedanism seems, however, to have been imposed.  Powerful as the empire was, it was never free from tribal insurrection and internal troubles.  The highest mark of negro capacity developed in this history is, according to the record examined by Barth, that one of the emperors was a negro.

From all that can be gathered in the records, the mass of the negroes, which constituted the body of this empire, remained pagan, did not become, except in outward conformity, Mohammedan and did not take the Moslem civilization as it was developed elsewhere, and that the disintegration of the empire left the negro races practically where they were before in point of development.  This fact, if it is not overturned by further search, is open to the explanation that the Moslem civilization is not fitted to the development of the African negro.

Contact, such as it has been, with higher civilizations, has not in all these ages which have witnessed the wonderful rise and development of other races, much affected or changed the negro.  He is much as he would be if he had been left to himself.  And left to himself, even in such a favorable environment as America, he is slow to change.  In Africa there has been no progress in organization, government, art.

No negro tribe has ever invented a written language.  In his exhaustive work on the History of Mankind, Professor Frederick Ratzel, having studied thoroughly the negro belt of Africa, says “of writing properly so called, neither do the modern negroes show any trace, nor have traces of older writing been found in negro countries.”

From this outline review we come back to the situation in the United States, where a great mass of negroes—­possibly over nine millions of many shades of colors—­is for the first time brought into contact with Christian civilization.  This mass is here to make or mar our national life, and the problem of its destiny has to be met with our own.  What can we do, what ought we to do, for his own good and for our peace and national welfare?

In the first place, it is impossible to escape the profound impression that we have made a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as a race, in attempting to apply to him the same treatment for the development of character that we would apply to a race more highly organized.  Has he developed the race consciousness, the race soul, as I said before, a collective soul, which so strongly marks other races more or less civilized according to our standards?  Do we find in him, as a mass (individuals always excepted), that slow deposit of training and education called “character,” any firm basis of order, initiative of action, the capacity of going alone, any sure foundation of morality?  It has been said that a race may attain a good degree of standing in the world without the refinement of culture, but never without virtue, either in the Roman or the modern meaning of that word.