Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/97

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THE NEGRO
83

are controlled by laws, by causes and effects, and by circumstances and conditions, the nature of which we hardly know anything about, though we do know that the produced organism, in the form of the particular child could not have been, even to the last atom in its composition, other than it was or turned out to be, from the various forces in operation to produce it. At any particular instant in the life and career of any adult there is always an exact reason why he or she has such and such features, such and such an organization, such and such traits of mind and character, and so on to the ultimate composition of the entire being. There is no matter of chance in all this, we are all resultants at any instant of our lives of certain laws, causes and effects, and could not be otherwise than we are even if we tried ever so hard to be so. In the next chapter I shall touch more fully on this question as it bears upon hybridization, and point out a little more clearly why it is that in so many white people in our Southern States one can so frequently recognize a faint, subtle feature of the Ethiopian type in their faces and forms.