considered in any general scheme, and not of the exceptional individuals
--exceptions that will rapidly increase as the mass is lifted--who are
capable of taking advantage to the utmost of all means of cultivation,
and who must always be provided with all the opportunities needed.

Millions of dollars have been invested in the higher education of the
negro, while this primary education has been, taking the whole mass,
wholly inadequate to his needs. This has been upon the supposition that
the higher would compel the rise of the lower with the undeveloped negro
race as it does with the more highly developed white race. An examination
of the soundness of this expectation will not lead us far astray from our
subject.

The evolution of a race, distinguishing it from the formation of a
nation, is a slow process. We recognize a race by certain peculiar
traits, and by characteristics which slowly change. They are acquired
little by little in an evolution which, historically, it is often
difficult to trace. They are due to the environment, to the discipline of
life, and to what is technically called education. These work together to
make what is called character, race character, and it is this which is
transmitted from generation to generation. Acquirements are not
hereditary, like habits and peculiarities, physical or mental. A man does
not transmit to his descendants his learning, though he may transmit the
aptitude for it. This is illustrated in factories where skilled labor is
handed down and fixed in the same families, that is, where the same kind
of labor is continued from one generation to another. The child, put to
work, has not the knowledge of the parent, but a special aptitude in his
skill and dexterity. Both body and mind have acquired certain
transmissible traits. The same thing is seen on a larger scale in a whole
nation, like the Japanese, who have been trained into what seems an art