Racial morals are simply a question of having and
spending within safety limits.
Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
cult, a law, or a religion.
And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
folk-ways.
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