PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS.                  449

but continue the race with increasing avidity as the millions
pile up, crushing with heartless brutality any who may
be so unfortunate as to be in the way.
  Everything has its price in gold. Families sell their an-
cestral titles and universities their coveted degrees.  Men
barter their honor and women their virtue. In fact Lecky's
description of another country in a different time fits Amer-
ica very well to-day; "Epicureanism  had  indeed  spread
widely over the empire, but it proved little more than a
principle of disintegration or an apology for vice, or at least
the religion of tranquil and indifferent natures animated by
no strong moral enthusiasm.
  In our own race it has taken the form of Industrialism or
Manual Training masquerading as an Aladdin's lamp whose
magic rays will dispel all the darkness that has fallen so
thickly athwart the Negro's path. This educational atavism
has added novelty and enthusiasm to our educational
problems and has done great good and may be ex-
pected to do still greater. Those, however who expect to
find in this philosophy a solution for our ethnic puzzles or a
panacea for citizenship denied, are doomed to disappoint-
ment. It is as true to-day as it was in Palestine two thou-
sand years ago, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Ma-
terialism as a practical life philosophy has proved a failure
with every race, in every age, in every country, and will
utterly fail to solve the Negro problem of America to-day.
It takes very little knowledge of human nature to enable one
to see that if the bread and meat proposition is to be made
"the paramount issues," increased industrial efficiency on
the part of the Negro will but accentuate the difficulties.
Surely this tree bears no fruit of consolation. Let us shake
another.
   The opposite doctrine of Idealism, or the belief that
thought is all in all, is as deficient, as a practical life philoso-
phy, as Materialism. Logically it leads to all kinds of meta-
physical nonsense. Religiously it leads to numberless




			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 1

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  01
Date:  07/1911