January 10th, 1951,/P>
To Miss S. Lynd, Feature Editor, Daily Worker.
Thank you for sending on to me your Scientific Correspondent’s remarks regarding my letter to you about Professor Haldane’s article of November 14th of last year. I am doubtful, however, if your correspondent is correct when he alleges that I deny the existence of races, that is, of peoples possessing a marked physiognomy distinctive to themselves and sometimes–but by no means a priori–a common psychological make-up.
Your correspondent states: “The fact is that peoples which have inhabited forests for many thousands of years are endowed with the faculty to find their way through forests, e.g. Red Indians. African Pygmies, Burmese Guerrillas, etc.” My emphasis. Your correspondent saves us a lot of trouble, he speaks more plainly than Professor Haldane, with greater naivete, stating that human beings are endowed with instincts, the result of long periods of particularity, that is, of being for countless generations engaged in one primary occupation, such as hunting. But, of course, considering himself a scientist he uses the language of the particular science he deals with, genetics, and substitutes for the rather old-fashioned term, instinct, – innate inheritance!
It has always been my view that man represented a qualitative departure from the lesser animals, that man is capable of transferring sensed knowledge into logical, stored-up knowledge, which accumulates unevenly according to the precise conditions of life–according to the method through which he sustains life– and which is passed on from one generation to another. For example, it took man a lengthy time-period to discover that the maple-trees contained a sweet-sap that could be transformed into sugar, but once having made that discovery it then became the property of all succeeding generations. Or take a pair of snow-shoes, Man suddenly made the discovery that deep snow could be overcome by them, once that initial step has been taken the snow-shoe became the common heritage of every succeeding generation. Is this not the result of conceptual thought? Or is your correspondent correct when he states that men come into the world endowed with a faculty for doing things expertly because their forefathers did those things for countless millennium?
I have been led to believe that a particular form of society shapes the individuals of that society, stamps its own psychology on them, moulds them to a common way of looking at things. I have also been led to believe that should the old form of society change, should, for example, a simple Irish peasant couple be plunged through migration into the whirl of life as it is found in U.S., their psychology would soon change to conform to their new surroundings; the male would, in all probability, become a less likeable individual, tuck his knowledge of nature and her ways deep within him, in fact attempt to forget them, for they have now become an impediment to getting along in his new surroundings. Similarly with his wife, deep differences in this new world would soon leave its imprint on her character. Yet, according to the theses presented in such a clear fashion by your correspondent, we must expect to find the children of this couple of ours, though born in Chicago, to have within themselves a faculty for hoeing potatoes, for following with the plow a slow-footed horse, for thatching a peasant cottage. Could anything be more daft?
But let me continue: “The special abilities of the Negro do not seem to be possessed by most of the white races. Thus, Welsh musical ability follows very much from tradition than from innate qualities.” Your correspondent offers no logical explanation of why the Negro people possess this lovely and useful natural gift. It seems that the tribesmen of the Sudan has it, the Nigerian of the distant west coast, the peoples who inhabit the vast region of the Congo; that it jumps the restless waves, and is equally at home in Trinidad, in the cotton-fields of the South, and is to be found flourishing among the industrial proletariat of the North! But the Welsh, a homogenous people, far more so, one would be inclined to think, than some of the peoples enumerated above, loving music passionately, must rely on tradition.
But possibly your correspondent forgot to mention the particular White races who also possess this remarkable innate gift? He may have thought of the Welsh because they are a people with whom we daily come into contact; perhaps he used them merely as an example of the effect tradition has on people. But in that case are we being vulgar if we ask him to mention those White races who also possess this musical gift in common with the far more widely scattered Negro people? And it would be well to remember that until comparatively recent travel and communication between peoples was difficult and hazardous, more, I would venture to say, for peoples living in savagery and barbarism than for civilised ones. Yet your correspondent asserts that the widely scattered races of Negroid peoples as a whole possess this gift of musical expression!
Yet even this is not all: he levels by inference the music of the savage, the barbarian and civilised man–and all intermediate grades–into one lump, and states that this lump is possessed solely –for that is what he is getting at!–by the Negro races. He thus denies the refinement of man’s sense organs and their link with his thinking brain. It is beyond the power of the savage to follow a symphony, inversely, it is within the power of a highly-civilised man to follow and make sense of the most primitive of musical arrangement.
To put it quite plainly: your correspondent is saying that the Negro possesses something unalterable, that defies vast lengths of time and innumerable social changes. If the Negro possesses such a substance then, ipso facto, other races possess equally unalterable substances. This is, without doubt, the exact position adopted by _______. And the substance? A particularised gene! All the talk of your correspondent, of Professor Haldane, of Dr. Julian Huxley, of re-combination, of crossing-over, of sex-linkage–and the rest of the verbiage used by modern genetics–cannot hide the fact that they are believers in fixed substances, that they deny qualitative change as it occurs under natural conditions in nature and in human society.
In short: they are god-worshippers.
I will pass over points three to six in the letter of your correspondent and merely touch on point eight. He states: “Your arguments on intelligence tests for children are not valid, since all experience of these tests has shown that the scores obtained are relatively independent of child’s background and that a child with an I.Q. of 120 at age 5 is likely to have an I.Q. of 120 at age 10 and age 15. It is true that the interests of a child tend to be conditioned by the interests and attitudes of its parents but this has only a small effect on actual intelligence. The same is true for certain abilities, such as mechanical ability.”
Do I have to tear this thing to pieces and show exactly where it leads? Is it not clear that the writer of the above thinks in terms of quantitative development, and substitutes mechanic movement for the real changes of life, which incorporates the latter but are of an abrupt qualitative character leading to the coming into being of things completely new. I am afraid your correspondent has learned only too well all Professor Haldane has to offer, and raises mathematics, a science of quantities, into a science that seeks to determine qualities.
Thank you again for sending on to me this stuff, and if it is possible to get a copy of the letter I wrote on Haldane’s article I would greatly appreciate it. Unfortunately, I failed to make a duplicate.