PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS.                 451

world. Some private distinctiveness of thought is necessary
to produce personality in an individual, and without person-
ality human units are not persons but things,-pawns in the
game of life-driftwood of society--derelicts in the sea of
time--footballs of circumstance--slaves of fashion--hewers
of wood and drawers of water.         So with  the  races.
One that tries to conform the education of its mem-
bers to the ideas set by another race, however friendly
that race may be, can never evolve those distinctive racial
traits that make for ethnic entity. A race must produce
philosophers of its own blood to formulate for it an ethnic
consciousness before it can win the respect of mankind, and
count one among the tribes and peoples of the earth.
  This ethnic consciousness must be evolved from within
the race: it cannot be superimposed from without. Grecian
philosophers and statesmen made Greece; Romans made
Rome; the British made Britain; the Japanese made Japan;
and if China ever awakens Chinamen will awake her. It is
an inevitable and inexorable law of nature. The conclusion
is inevitable that if the American Negro ever reaches true
citizenship in this country, it will come from the enlightened
teachings of wise men of Negro blood, whose racial person-
ality is strong enough to enable them to face life and its
problems as men, not as the imitations of the men of some
other race. All puerile rhodomontade about social equality
will then die of inanition, for the Negro will then regard
the society of his own upper circles as the acme of social
privilege. The white man seeing this will cease to bar and
guard a door that no one is seeking to enter.
  The question then arises, what form of teaching will en-
able us as individuals to form a correct life philosophy that
will unite us into a race with tribal ego-an ethnic con-
sciousness that WE are THE people?
  Philosophic Dualism is that system. Let us examine the
history, teachings and applications of this philosophy; for
if its teachings can open to us a path of racial evolution that




			

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