Can the masses of the negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and example of the aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilised from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The talented tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress; and the true historical mistakes which have hindered that progress were the thinking first that no more could ever rise save the few already risen; or
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