This is indeed the keynote to the elevation of the Colored Americans to
the high plane sought to be reached by all the nations of the earth, and
toward which they are surely drifting, in an unconscious fulfillment of
the designs of God to gather all nations and tribes together into one
great family.
Professor N. R. d’Alfonso, of Italy, laid before the Congress the most
profound thought that forms the basis of all progress and gives the key
to beneficial government:
“Speculative psychology teaches that the man, to whatever race he may
belong, has always the same psychological possibilities.
“Subject from childhood to certain conditions of climate, environment
and education, he can reach the highest and most complex grades of
civilization.
“=It is the action and reaction of the external world on the internal
world of the mind that issues in the creation of man.=
“If there are psychological differences between races they are the
outcome of the particular history of various peoples—a history that has
entailed a =different education=.
“=The psychological basis is the same in all men from whatever part of
the world they may come, and they may evolve in the same way and attain
the same psychic results.=
“In the same way racial hostilities and prejudices are not due to
organic heredity, but to tradition and education.”
So far as science has gone, it must be apparent that the learned men of
the age have returned to the Biblical account: Genesis, 1:26.
“26. And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’
“27. So God created man =in His own image, in the image of God created
He him; male and female created He them=.”
Again in Genesis 2:7, it is said:
“7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; =And man became a living soul=.”
Everywhere in Holy Writ, human beings are always referred to as “=Man=”
whenever he is considered as a being vested with a soul, a particular
psychological condition that makes him different from all other
creations.
In every movement toward human betterment, education, civilization,
development, and especially in the onward movement toward unification,
the human species is referred to as “=Man=” without any racial
distinctions whatever.