The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-01

of glorious self-satisfaction that you are so much more well informed. lib- eral and tolerant than your opponent The way the word prejudice" Is usual ly used shows an entire misapprehen- sion of It's meaning. The most com mon use is that of the expression of an unwarranted feeling against some thing or somebody. But it Is evident that there may be an unfounded opin- ion in favor of anything as well as against it. A person may, unjust or without reason. be in favor of some- thing just as he may ignorantly dis like or disfavor it. It therefore be- comes important to ascertain what prejudice" means and how the word should be used.
 The word prejudice" comes from two Latin words-"pro" or pre-" be- forehand. and 'judico." judge. There fore, ''prejudlce' means the forming of an opinion beforehand or before knowledge. To form an opinion or de- clare Judgment concerning any sub ject without. or ignoring, knowledge is prejudice" An opinion formed after lifelong acquaintance and experi- ence. and after thorough investigation and study, may be erroneous, but can not properly be styled prejudice .' When the teaching and experiences of the world are disregarded, when the facts of history and science are ig- nored or denied, the conclusions or opinions thus arrived at must not only be mistaken. but they must be the re- suit of prejudice. An apt illustration occurs:
 William Lloyd Garrison, who never in his whole life had any opportunity or acquaintance, much less intimate association, with any large masses Of negroes, who had probably never spoken to 500 or observed 5000 to- gether for any length of time. declared in 1867, at the table of Lord Houghton (Rfchard Monckton Milnes) that lin g. few years the blacks would be the sovereign race In the Southern States m wealth, intelligence and power"
 On the other hand, Mir. Meridetb Townsend, who has devoted the best years of his life to the study of races. who went to India in 1S4S, stayed there for twelve years as sub-editor. editor and proprietor of The Friend of India. one of the most influential and respected newspapers of the country. and who has since 1861 been co-editor of The Spectator, writes in his care fully thought out book, Asia and Eu- rope," of the negro. of whose destiny he is not hopeful:
 OEOSSSu NlJn ATdD UT 1muOO He may have a future. but uncrossed, there is some source of failure in him, probably a defect of power to accumu- late thought, which will leave him far behind, as it has left him for 5000 years on the Congo.
 What color may be I do not pre- tend to know, and neither physicists nor theologians will tell us; but it is past question that 1t Is an indication of differences physical. intellectual and moral of the most radicad and imper- ishable kind. Throughout the history of mankind. black men, brown men and white men have been divided from each other by lines which have never been passed, and by differences apparently independent of their own volition.
 None of the black races, whether negro or Australian, have shown with in historic time the capacity to develop civilization. They have never passed the boundaries of their own habitats as conquerors, and never exercised the smallest influences over people not black. They have never founded a stone city; have never built a ship; have never produced a literature; have never suggested a creed. If they all perished tomorrow the world would be the richer by the whole resources of
 
 the globe-which would then, for the first time, be civilized. They have been the most self-governed of nations; they hold some of the worlds most fertile lands; they sit on some of it's most magnificent rivers. Everything the Egyptians on the Nile had. the negroes on the Quorra or the Congo also had, and they have never advanced out of the foulest savagery. There Is no evil dence whatever that If Africa was left to itself for 10000 years 1t would pro gress to the smallest degree, and this evidence against 1t that when liberated from the pressure of the white mans brain, as in Haiti and I fear Liberia, | 1t would rapidly recede. Black ness of skin is the most visible evil dence of the aggregation of incapacities manifested throughout the history of the black races. Left to him self. the negro. to the human eye. re- mains where he was. or, as in Haiti, lretrogrades. It is a distinct retrogra- dation and not mere pause for Q race who had abandoned cannibalism to go back to 1t, and Voodooism Is at least as low as fetichism. We do not see in the negro the operation of any self generated law of progress"
 Whikh of the two foregoing opinions | is the more prejudiced? Which Is ig- norant fanaticism crying down opposi- tion by shouting prejudice. and which l. is the scientific investigation of expe- rience, history and knowledge? Which should be the more rightfuI opinion on which to base legislation and Govern ment?
 A A