In all slave-owning communities--in Rome formerly, and in
Virginia yesterday--such was the accepted rule of law; the child
kept the condition of the mother, whatever that condition was;
nobody inquired as to the father; the law, once for all, assumed
that he could not be ascertained. Of course no remains exist which
prove this or anything else about the morality of pre-historic man;
and morality can only be described by remains amounting to a
history. But one of the axioms of pre-historic investigation binds
us to accept this as the morality of the pre-historic races if we
receive that axiom. It is plain that the wide-spread absence of a
characteristic which greatly aids the possessor in the conflicts
between race and race probably indicates that the primary race did
not possess that quality. If one-armed people existed almost
everywhere in every continent; if people were found in every
intermediate stage, some with the mere germ of the second arm, some
with the second arm half-grown, some with it nearly complete; we
should then argue--'the first race cannot have had two arms, because
men have always been fighting, and as two arms are a great advantage
in fighting, one-armed and half-armed people would immediately have
been killed off the earth; they never could have attained any
numbers.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152