seems to be a race between light and darkness, a battle between prejudice and intelligence, to see whether the lyncher, the opponent of enlightenment, and the narrow-minded sectionalist can resist the forces from without and from within which may break up the older thought-patterns and save the South from itself. Lynching is but one of the symptoms of intellectual and moral decay resulting from the closed mind which the South has assumed on many subjects. There is found the apotheosis—and the virus colours most of American thought on the race question of—James Harvey Robinson's characterization that ". . . most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do." Judge Lynch's absolutism will end completely only when open minds and scientific and health-giving scepticism replace not only the South's but America's and the white world's present attitude of snobbism, bigotry, and greed on the questions of colour and race.
