Perfectibility of the black race
[1]“Is the black race perfectible? According to some the question is judged and resolved negatively. If that is the case, if the race is devoted by God to an eternal inferiority it follows that it is useless to worry about the issue, limiting ourselves to see the black as a kind of domestic animal dedicated to the culture of sugar and cotton. However, humanity and social interest require a more detailed examination. That is what we try to do. Since a conclusion about the subject cannot be reached lightheartedly in one direction or another and must be based on serious thoughts we ask for permission to develop some preliminary considerations that will help to demonstrate once more that Spiritism is the only possible key to a number of insoluble problems with the support of data from Science. Phrenology will operate as our starting point. We will explain its foundations for a better understanding of the subject.
As it is well known, Phrenology is based on the principle that the brain is the organ of thoughts like the heart is of circulation, the stomach of digestion and the liver secrets the bile. Such idea is accepted by everybody because one cannot attribute thoughts to any other part of the body and each person feels that one thinks in the head and not in the arm or leg. Besides, there is an instinctive feeling that the seat of thoughts is located in the frontal rather than the occipital lobe: that is the place reached by the hand to indicate the occurrence of a new idea. Everybody believes that the development of the frontal part of the brain indicates more intelligence than a lower or depressed region.
On another hand anatomical and physiological experiences have clearly demonstrated the special role of certain parts of the brain on vital functions and the difference produced by a lesion of one region or another. Scientific researches leave no doubt with that respect. Those carried out by Mr. Flourens, in particular, demonstrated the specialization of the functions of the brain.
Therefore it is admitted in principle that all parts of the brain don’t have the same function. It is further recognized that neural cords that stem out from the brain, ramifying to all parts of the body like the filaments of a root, are affected in different ways, according to their destination. That is how the optical nerve that reaches the eye and spreads over the retina is affected by light and colors, transmitting that sensation to a particular region of the brain; that the acoustic nerve is affect by the sounds and the olfactory nerve by the smells. If any of these nerves lose their sensitivity for any given reason the sensation is terminated: one becomes blind, mute or insensitive to odors. Those nerves, consequently, have distinct functions and cannot be replaced absolutely although a more careful examination does not show the slightest difference in their texture.
Phrenology, based on these principles, goes further: it locates all the moral and intellectual faculties, assigning each one with a special place in the brain. That is how it affects an organ with a destructive instinct that in excess becomes cruelty and ferocity; another with firmness whose excess and without the balance of judgment results in stubbornness; another with maternal love; others with the memory of places, numbers, forms, poetic feelings, the harmony of sounds, colors, etc., etc.
This is not the place to make an anatomical description of the brain. We only say that a longitudinal section of the cerebral mass shows fibrous bunches departing from the base and spreading towards the surface, presenting more or less the appearance of a vertically chopped mushroom. Each bundle corresponds to one of the convolutions of the outer surface, from which it follows that the development of the convolution corresponds to the development of the fibrous bundle. According to Phrenology, since each bundle is the seat of a sensation or a faculty it follows that the energy of the sensation or faculty is proportional to the development of the organ.
The osseous cavity is not yet formed in the fetus; in the beginning it is just a film, a very flexible membrane which is molded, therefore, on the projecting parts of the brain and maintains the footprint, as it hardens by the deposition of calcium phosphate that is the foundation of bones. From the projections of the skull, Phrenology concludes the volume of the organ, and from the volume of the organ the development of the faculty.
That is in a few words the principle of the Phrenology science.
Although it is not our objective to develop it here a few words are still necessary with respect to the method of assessment. It would be a serious mistake to believe that one can surmise the absolute character of a person by the simple inspection of the projections of the skull. The faculties balance out or attenuate with respect to each other, so that in order to judge an individual one does need to take into account the degree of influence of each faculty, given its development, and then consider temperament, environment, habits and education.
Take a man whose organ of destruction is very pronounced, showing atrophy of the organs associated to the moral and affective faculties. He will be miserably ferocious. However if benevolence, love and intellectual faculties are added destruction will then be neutralized, having the effect of giving more energy to that person who can then be a much dignified person, while a superficial observer led to judge him only based on the first organ will take him by a murderer. It then becomes clear all changes in character that may result from the influence of other faculties, like shrewdness, circumspection, self-esteem, courage, etc.
The sensation of color will make the colorist but not the painter; the sensation of forms alone will not make the drafter; the two together will make good copyist if not added by the feeling of idealism and poetry, plus the faculties of analysis and comparison.
This is enough to show that the practical observations of Phrenology present great difficulties and are based on philosophical considerations that are not available to everybody.
Having these preliminaries established, let us see the subject from another point of view.
Since the beginning two radically antagonist systems divided the Phrenologists into materialists and spiritualists. By not admitting anything beyond matter the former say that thought is the product of the cerebral substance; that the brain secrets thoughts as the salivary glandules secret saliva and the liver secrets bile. Now, as the amount of secretion is generally proportional to the volume and quality of the organ they say that the amount of thoughts is proportional to the volume and quality of the brain; that each part of the brain secretes a particular kind of thoughts and that the multiple feelings and skills are in direct proportion to the organ that produces them.
We will not contest this monstrous doctrine that converts man into a machine, without any responsibility for his bad actions and without any merit for his good qualities and whose genius and virtues are serendipitous attributes of his physical organization.
[2] With a similar system every punishment is unfair and every crime is justified.
The spiritualists, on the contrary, say that the organs are not the cause of the faculties but the instruments of their manifestations; that the thought is an attribute of the soul and not of the brain; that since having multiple aptitudes, the predominance of this faculty upon the other entails the development of the correspondent organ like the exercise of an arm determines the development of the muscles of that arm. It then follows that the development of an organ is an effect and not a cause. Therefore, a man is not a poet because he has the organ of poetry. He carries the organ because he is a poet, and that is very different.
This brings, however, another difficulty that stops the Phrenologist: if spiritualist he will say that the poet carries the organ of poetry because he is a poet but he does not say why the person is a poet; why, instead of a brother, although both were educated in the same conditions? And the same applies to all other skills.
Only Spiritism can provide the explanation.
In fact had the soul been created at the same time as the body and the soul of the scholar from the Science Institute would be as new as that of the uncivilized savage. Then, why do we find on Earth savages and members of the Institute of Sciences? You will say that it depends on the environment that surrounds them. Be it but then why do we have people who are born in the most hostile environments that become geniuses whereas there are others who feel the taste of science from breastfeeding and are stupid?
Don’t the facts widely demonstrate that there are instinctively bad and good, intelligent and stupid people? Thus, it is necessary the existence of a seed in the soul. Where does it come from? Can we reasonably say that God has made it of all kinds and that some come without effort whereas others never do even after a systematic work? Would there be goodness and justice in that? Evidently not.
There is only one possible solution: the pre-existence of the soul; its existence before the birth of the body; the acquired development in accordance with an actual lived time span and the multiple migrations of the soul.
Thus, on uniting to the body, the soul brings along the good or bad qualities that were acquired. Hence the instinctive predispositions that allow us to say with certainty that the one that was born poet had already cultivated poetry; the one who was born a musician had already cultivated music and the other who was born criminal had already been worse. Such is the source of the innate faculties that produce in the organs affected by its manifestations an inner, molecular work that determines its development.
This leads us to the analysis of the important issue of the inferiority of certain races and their perfectibility. To begin with we establish as a principle that all faculties, passions, feelings, and skills are part of nature; they are necessary to the general harmony because God does not create anything useless; wickedness is the result of the abuse and lack of counter weight among the multiple skills. Since the faculties don’t develop simultaneously it results that the equilibrium is only established slowly; that the lack of balance produces imperfect people momentarily dominated by wickedness.
As an example let us take the instinct of destruction. It is necessary since nature requires that everything be destroyed in order to renovate. That is why every living species is simultaneously a destructive and reproductive agent. However, in isolation the instinct of destruction is blind and brutal. It dominates primitive peoples, savages whose souls have not yet acquired their own reflective faculties to regulate destruction at the right measure.
Will the savage acquire the missing faculties in one existence only? Regardless of the education they receive since birth can you make a St. Vincent, a scientist, a lecturer or an artist out of them? No, because that is physically impossible. However, that savage person has a soul. What is the fate of that soul after death? Is it punished for the barbarian acts that were reproached by nobody? Is it leveled with the soul of a good man? One is not more rational than the other. Is that soul then condemned to remain in a mixed state which is not that of happiness nor disgrace? That would not be fair since the achievement of further perfection was beyond that soul.
Such a dilemma cannot be solved without admitting the possibility of progress. However, how can that soul progress without other existences? One could say that the soul could progress as a spirit, without returning to Earth. But then why do we, the enlightened and civilized, are born in Europe and not in the Oceania? As white people instead of bearing black bodies? Why such a different starting point if one can only advance as a spirit? Why has God spared us from the long route endured by the uncivilized savage? Would our souls be different from theirs in nature? Why trying to make them Christians? If you make them Christians it is because you see them as equals before God. If they are equals before God why has God privileged you?
However much you try you will not reach a solution unless admitting a previous progress to us and a future progress to them. If the soul of the uncivilized must progress in the future it means that they will catch up with us. If we have progressed earlier it means that we were savages also given the fact that if the starting points were different then there is no justice and if God is not just then it is not God.
We then forcibly have two extreme existences: that of the uncivilized savage and that of the super civilized. However, wouldn’t there be a midpoint between these two extremes? Check out the scale of the peoples and you will see that there is an unbreakable chain, without interruption. Once more, all these problems are unsolvable without the plurality of the existences. Say that the aborigines will reborn in a little less barbarian people and so on up until civilization and everything is explained; that instead of climbing the steps of the stairway he jump over and without a transition he arrives at our level he will provide the hideous spectacle of a Dumollard who is a monster among us but who would not be so abnormal among the tribes of Central Africa from where he should not perhaps have never left. That is how everything is darkness if limited to a single existence, everything is an unsolvable problem, whereas with reincarnation it is all clarity and everything has a solution.
Let us go back to Phrenology. It admits special organs to each faculty and we think that it is correct. But we go further. We saw that each organ of the brain is formed by a bunch of nervous fibers. We think that each fiber corresponds to a nuance of the faculty. It is true that this is just a hypothesis but that can open up the door to further observations. The hearing nerve receives the impressions of the sound and transmits that to the brain but how can a single nerve distinguish so many different tones? It is then licit to admit that each nervous fiber is affected by a different sound, in a certain way vibrating in synchronism like the strings of a harp. All sounds are part of nature. Let us imagine a hundred of them, from the highest to the lowest pitch. A person who had one hundred corresponding fibers would detect all of them; another who only had fifty would be able to detect half of them, letting go the others that would go unnoticed. The same applies to the vocal chords to express sounds, with the optical fibers to observe colors and with the olfactory fibers to feel the odors. The same train of thoughts may be applied to all kinds of perceptions and manifestations.
Every animated body carries, unarguably, the principle of all organs although in certain individuals some are found in such a rudimentary state that are not susceptible to development and consequently as if they did not exist. Therefore these individuals cannot present manifestations and perceptions corresponding to those organs. With respect to these faculties those individuals are like the blind before light and the deaf before music.
The phrenological exam of not so much advanced peoples demonstrate the predominance of instinctive faculties and the atrophy of the organs of intelligence. Something that is an exception to the most advanced peoples is the rule to certain races. Why? Would that be an unfair preference? No, it is wisdom since nature is always provident; there is nothing useless. It would be useless to provide a complete instrument to someone that would be unable to use it. That savage spirits are still children if we can say so. They still have many latent faculties. What would an uncivilized savage do in the body of an Arago? It would be like someone completely ignorant of music standing before an excellent piano. Now, the flip side would be what the spirit of Arago would do in the body of an uncivilized savage? It would be like Liszt before a piano with just a few broken strings from which his talent would never be able to produce nice sounds. Arago’s genius amongst the savage would be as intelligent as a savage can be and nothing else. He would never be a member of the Institute under a black skin. Would his spirit entail the development of the organs? The weak organs, yes; not the rudimentary ones.
[3]Thus, nature has adapted the bodies to the degree of advancement of their incarnating spirits. That is why the spirits of the primitive races have less vibrating strings than those of the most advanced ones. A man then has two very distinct beings: the thoughtful being, the spirit, and the body, the instrument for the manifestation of thoughts, more or less complete, potentially rich in its capabilities, according to the needs.
We now arrive at the perfectibility of the races. In a way this issue is resolved by the preceding one: we only have to deduce a few consequences. The races are perfectible by the spirit that develops through several migrations, gradually acquiring the missing faculties in each one of them. However, as the faculties amplify the spirit requires an adequate instrument, like a growing child that demands larger clothes. Now, since the actual bodies are no longer sufficient given their primitive state the spirits need to incarnate in better conditions and so forth, according to the progress.
The races are physically perfectible but it is only through cross marriages with more advanced races that bring new elements, so to speak, implanting the seeds of new elements. Such cross combination takes place in the migrations, wars and settlements. Under this point of view the races are like families that bastardize when there is no injection of new blood. As a consequence one cannot say that there is a pure primitive race for without cross-marriages that race will be always the same and since its state of inferiority depends on its nature. After certain time it would degenerate and disappear instead of advancing.
People say about the black slaves: “
These are brute creature, very little intelligent, and it would be useless to try to educate them. That is an inferior race, unchangeable, profoundly incapable.” The theory above allows us to look at it from a different prism. Regarding the improvement of the races we must always take two forming elements of man into account: the corporeal and the spiritual. It is necessary to get to know both and only Spiritism can clarify us with respect to the nature of the spiritual element, the most important one since that is the one that thinks and outlives the body which in turn disappears.
Thus, as a physical organization the blacks are always the same. As spirits they are undoubtedly an inferior race that is primitive. They are true children to whom very little can be taught. However, through intelligent means it is always possible to modify certain habits, certain tendencies, representing an actual progress that will be carried to the next existence, later on allowing them to take an envelope in better conditions. Working towards their betterment one works less for their present than their future and however little is achieved it is always an acquisition to them. Each progress is a step forward that facilitates new progresses.
Given the same physical structure, that is, the same instruments of manifestation, the races are only perfectible within narrow limits for the very reasons given above. That is why the black race, while black race, physically speaking, will never reach the levels of the Caucasian races but that is a different story from the point of view of the spirit: they can become and will become what we are. It is just a matter of time and better instruments. That is why the savage races, even in contact with civilized races, are always savage. However, the savage races diminish as the civilized races advance, up until their total disappearance, like the disappearance of the Caribbean, the Guanche and others. The bodies disappeared but what has been made of the spirits? Some may perhaps be among us.
We have said so and repeat: Spiritism unveil new horizons to all sciences. When the scientists consider the spiritual element in the phenomena of nature they will be surprised by the disappearance of great difficulties like from a magic touch. However, it is likely that many will require a renovation of habits. On their way back they will have had time to think and will bring new ideas. They will find things different here on Earth. The spiritist ideas that they repel today will have been sprout everywhere and will the basis of every social institution. They will themselves be educated and fed by that belief that will open new horizons to their geniuses for the advancement of science. While they wait, while they are still here, may they seek the solution to the following problem: Why the authority of their knowledge and denials do not halt, at least for a moment, the ever faster march of the new ideas?
[1] See the July 1860 issue of the Spiritist Review: Phrenology and Physiognomy
[2] See the March 1861 issue of the Spiritist Review: Garibaldi’s head.
[3] See the Spiritist Review, October 1861 – The mentally challenged (cretinism)
