Read Ebook: Negroes and Negro Slavery: the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition. by Van Evrie John H

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 261 lines and 110368 words, and 6 pages

And when we contemplate the history of this continent, and compare the character of the early colonists, their history, and their influence over the present condition of things, it will be found that they remained stationary in exact proportion as they clung to the ideas and habitudes of the Old World; or advanced towards a better and higher condition just as they cast off these influences, and lived in natural accord with the circumstances that surrounded them. The Spanish conquerors were often the pets and favorites of the court, and always the faithful sons of the Church, and brought with them the pomps and vanities of the former, and the rigid ecclesiastical observances of the latter. When Cortez and Pizzaro took possession of a province, they pompously paraded the titles and dignities of the emperor before the wondering savages, and added vast multitudes of "Christian converts" to "Holy Church" with a zeal and fervor that the Beechers and Cheevers of our times might envy, but surely could not equal. The English colonists, on the contrary, were almost all disaffected, or at all events, were charged with disaffection to the mother country. This, it is true, was masked under religious beliefs and scruples of conscience, but was none the less hostile to the political order under which they had been persecuted and suffered so long. As soon, therefore, as they found themselves in a New World, and relieved from the tyranny of the Old, they abandoned, to a great extent, the forms, as they already had abandoned many of the ideas, of the latter. They recognized the nominal sovereignty of the mother country, or rather of the Crown; but from the landing at Jamestown, as well as at Plymouth, all the British colonists really governed themselves, made their own laws, provided for their own safety, and, except the governor, and occasionally some subordinate officials, elected their own rulers. The result was a corresponding prosperity; for not only did the discipline of self-reliance strengthen the character, and call out a higher phase of citizenship among the English colonists, but in casting off the habitudes of the old societies, and adopting those that were suited to the circumstances surrounding them, they soon exhibited a striking contrast to those of Spain and of other European powers, who clung to the ideas and habits of Europe.

The organic world is separated into two great divisions, animal and vegetable, or into animate and inanimate beings. In regard to the vegetable kingdom, as it is termed, it is not necessary to say a word; those desirous of obtaining a thorough knowledge of animal life, however, had better begin their studies with the more elementary and simple forms of vegetable being. Many persons suppose that the whole animate existence is linked together by connecting or continuous gradations. In a certain sense this may be said to be so; nevertheless, absolutely considered, each family or form of being is a complete and independent creation. There are resemblances and approximations as well as gradations, yet each is perfect in itself, and makes up an entire world of its own. The Almighty Creator, in His infinite wisdom, has provided against chance, or accident, or human caprice, and placed each and every one of His works in a position of such absolute independence, that one of them, or more, perhaps, might utterly perish, and yet the beauty and harmony of nature would remain unimpaired. It is certain that some species of animals belonging to the existing order have utterly disappeared, and it is quite probable that some species of men have perished; but the grand economy of nature is unaffected by it. It is thought that the aborigines of this continent will, in time, utterly perish, and yet no one supposes that that event will disturb the operations of nature or deface the fair form of creation. This shows that there is no continuous or connecting link even among species of the same family or form of being. If there were such--if all the forms of life were continuous and connecting gradations--then it is evident that the destruction of one of these connecting links would cast the whole economy of being into utter confusion. In a watch, or any other elaborate machinery of human contrivance, a single wheel, or cog, or link, however minute, torn from its place, involves the disruption, if not absolute destruction, of the whole machine. And so it is in the economy of individual life, for, though one organ may be disabled, another, to a certain extent, and for a given time, supplies its place; yet the vital forces are enfeebled from the instant of such accident, and life, if not interrupted, is always impaired. But a species, a genus, a class, perhaps, a great number of these, might disappear, utterly vanish from existence, and those remaining would preserve the integrity and completeness the Creator had endowed them with at the beginning. While each and every form of life is, therefore, perfect in itself and independent of all others, there are resemblances and approximations that must be regarded as of vital importance.

Naturalists have divided or separated the organic world into classes, orders, genera, species and varieties. Classes are those like the mammalia--that is, all animals where the female nourishes its offspring by mammary glands. Orders are those like the quadrumana--all those having four hands. A genus, or a family proper, is composed of species; and a species includes varieties, or possible varieties, of the same being under different circumstances. But these classifications are, to a considerable extent, arbitrary; and though they serve the purpose of facilitating our studies, they may also lead us astray, if too closely followed. Genera, or families proper, in many cases at least, are, however, susceptible of very exact definitions. So, too, are species. For example:--The simiadae, or monkey family, are so entirely distinct that they will not be or need not be confounded with anything else. Some ignorant or superficial persons, with the false notion of continuous and connecting gradations, have supposed the negro something midway between men and animals. But there is no such monstrosity in nature, for, as already observed, each form of being is a complete and independent creation in itself. A genus is composed of a given number of species, all different from each other, and, it need not be repeated, independent of each other. These genera are believed to be incapable of interunion with other genera, though this has been questioned in some cases. Species are capable of a limited interunion, though it may be doubted if such interunion ever occurs in a wild or savage state. And as each species is different in form and character from others, so the limited capacity for interunion varies, or in other words, hybrids--the product of different species--vary in their virility or power of reproduction. The given number of species of which a genus is composed, ascends or descends in the scale of being, that is, there is a head and base to the generic column. The one next above the most inferior has all the qualities of the latter, but these qualities have a fuller development, that is, the organization is more elaborate and the corresponding faculties are of a higher order. And indeed this is not confined to mere species or genera even, but is true of widely separated beings. Thus, the exalted and elegant Caucasian mother--the habitue of the Fifth avenue or St. Germain--nourishes her offspring by the same process common to the meanest of the mammalia. So, too, in the process of gestation, the function of mastication, deglutition, digestion, the sense of taste, of sight, etc.--the function is absolutely the same, but what a world of difference in the mode of its manifestation, that distinguishes the human being from the animal!

Investigations made by some French physiologists would seem to show that the mysterious problem of animal life might be simplified, and clearly grasped by the human intellect, by simply tracing this great fact to its elementary sources. It is said that the embryo foetus passes through all the forms of an innumerable number of lower gradations before it reaches its own specific development. And be this as it may, enough is seemingly established to demonstrate its truth in respect to a genus or family, and especially is it demonstrated in the human creation. At a certain stage of foetal development there is the cranial manifestation of the Negro, then the aboriginal American, the Malay, the Mongolian, and finally the broad expansion and oval perfection of the most perfect of all, the superior Caucasian. Nor can these demonstrations be mistaken, for it is not a mere question of size but of form. The negro brain is small and longitudinal--thus approximating to the simiadae and other animals. The aboriginal is larger and quadrangular, almost square in its general outline. The Mongolian pyramidal, and still larger than either of the others. Finally, at the period of complete gestation, there is the full and complete oval development, alone peculiar to the Caucasian. The force of these distinctions may be easily grasped by the non-scientific reader by bearing in mind that a female of either of these races or species could no more give birth to a child with the cranial development of a race different from her own, than she could to that of an inferior animal. The distinctions of nature, or the boundaries which separate even species from each other, are absolutely impassable; each has the hand of the Eternal impressed upon it forever, which neither accident nor time can modify in the slightest particular. They have, it is true, a limited capacity for interunion, and we sometimes witness the disgusting spectacle of a white woman with a so-called negro husband. But while the offspring of this unnatural connection is limited in number, they partake of the nature of both the parents, and thus the birth becomes possible, though at the expense of great physical suffering to the mother and perhaps in every case shortening her existence. In another place this subject will be more especially discussed; it is only referred to in this connection to show the perfect order and harmony in the economy of animal life. The primal steps--the process of reproduction--the starting-point of creation--being in complete harmony with the laws governing the being, man or animal, after it has reached its mature development.

The same eternal separation of all the forms of being and the same eternal approximations, however varied the manifestations may be at different periods, remain unaltered and unalterable. Linnaeus ventured to place "man" in the category or class mammalia, while at the same time he separated the mammalia from birds and other forms of being--thus assuming that the human creation had a closer union with pigs and dogs, than the latter have with birds, etc. At this every Christian and believer in a future state of being must revolt, for though there are certain approximations that cannot be disregarded, nevertheless it is absolutely certain that the human creation is separated by an interval wider than that separating any of the forms of mere animal life, and therefore his classification must be wrong.

It is not intended to make this a scientific work, but on the contrary, to popularize for the general reading of the people, some few elementary truths of zoology and physiology in order that they can better comprehend the subject really to be discussed, viz.:--the specific differences and specific relations of the white and black races. But the author feels himself conscientiously impelled to dissent from the classifications of Linnaeus, and those modern naturalists who follow him, not only as being untrue in point of fact, but pregnant with mighty mischief. Linnaeus placed "man" in the category mammalia, but made him an order, a genus and species by himself. This is false as a matter of fact, for in the entire world of animal existence there is no such fact as a single species. All the forms of life are made up of groups or families, properly genera, and each of these is composed of a certain number of species. These species, as already observed, differ from each other. They begin with the lowest, or simplest, or grossest formation, and rise, one above the other, in the scale of being, until the group is completed; so that they are all, not only specifically different from each other, but absolutely unlike each other in every thing, in the minutest particle of elementary matter as well as in those things palpable to the sense. Generally considered, they resemble each other, but specifically considered, they are absolutely distinct, and, it need not be repeated, the distinctions in each case or each individual species are also specific.

That Linnaeus and other European naturalists, and especially the ethnologists, should make such a mistake, and suppose that the human creation is composed of a single species, is perhaps natural enough, for they saw but one--the two hundred millions of Europe, except a few thousand Laplanders, being all Caucasians. But then it is strange how those so ready to class men with animals should so widely depart from the spirit and order of their own classification. They must have known that in the whole world of animate existence there was no such fact as a single species, and therefore when assuming only a single human species, that they directly contradicted or ignored the most constant, universal and uniform fact in organic life, a fact underlying and forming the very basis of all with which they were dealing. This mistake, or misconception, or ignorance of European ethnologists, however, is of no particular importance. They saw no other and therefore could know of no other species of men except their own, and though its effect on ourselves has been mischievous, the cause of their misconception is so palpable to men's common sense that it only needs to be pointed out to be utterly rejected. It is about as respectable as the assumptions of the northern Abolitionists, who, though not even venturing out of Massachusetts, affect to know, and doubtless really believe that they do know, more about the internal condition of South Carolina or Virginia than the people of those States themselves. But facts are stubborn things, and, as the Spanish proverb says, "seeing is believing." It is impossible that the northern Abolitionist who never ventured out of New England can comprehend a condition of society that he has never seen. So, too, the authority of European writers, necessarily ignorant of the subject, will be rejected by those whose very senses assure them that negroes are specifically different from white men. And that mental dominion which, beginning with the early planting of European colonies on this continent, has continued long after political independence has been secured, only needs to be cast off altogether, to convince every one of the utter absurdity of European teachings on the subject.

But there is an objection to the Linnaean classification infinitely more important than this misconception in regard to species. He places his one human species in the class mammalia, and therefore assumes that the human creation has a closer connection with a class of animals, than these animals themselves have with some other forms of animal life. For example: men approximate more closely to dogs and cats than the latter do to owls and eagles! It does not help the matter to say that this is only in their animal structures, for there is an invariable and imperishable unity between the material organization and the external manifestations or faculties, which is fixed forever, and the conclusion or inference from the Linnaean assumption is unavoidable--if men approximate more closely to a class of animals than these animals do to some other class, then it is absurd to suppose the purposes assigned them by the Almighty are so widely different as our reason and instinct alike impel us to believe. To hope for or to believe in immortality, or in a destiny so transcendent, while beings that closely resembled us perished with this life, in common with those still farther separated from themselves, was such a contradiction to reason, that men involuntarily shrunk from it, and the result has been to repel vast numbers of people from the study and investigation of this most essential element of all knowledge. The Materialists promptly accepted it, and wielded it with tremendous effect in advancing their gloomy and forbidding philosophy, while those impelled by that innate and indescribable consciousness of the soul itself, which, in its Godlike knowledge, rises high beyond the realms of reason and mere human will, and assures them of a life immortal and everlasting, shrunk from all study or investigation of the laws of physical life, as if it involved consequences fatal to that higher life of the soul. The former said, and said truly, if men have a closer union with the quadrumana than the latter have with birds, etc., then it is all nonsense to suppose that they have an eternity of life, while those separated by a still wider interval are limited to the present. And the only reply to their reasoning has been the refusal to investigate the subject or to study the laws of God, and to admit, inferentially at least, that there was a contradiction between the word and the works of the Almighty.

Nothing is more common than to find men of great intelligence on almost every subject except this, the most vital, indeed the foundation and starting-point of all real knowledge. Especially are clergymen ignorant, and those who assume to be the interpreters of the laws of God are not unfrequently the most ignorant of the most palpable and fundamental of these laws. This should not be so, and in all reasonable probability would not be so had it not been for the untruthful and unfortunate classification of Linnaeus. Instead of meeting the Materialists on their own ground, and showing them that however approximating to certain forms of animal life, the human creation was yet separated by an absolutely boundless as well as impassable interval--for the distinctions between them are utterly unlike those separating mere animal beings--they tacitly admitted the truth of their assumptions, and met it by a blind and foolish refusal to investigate the matter, indeed have generally cast their influence on the side of ignorance, and advised against the study of nature and the noblest works of God.

But there can be no contradiction; God cannot lie; and whatever seeming conflict there may be at times between His word and His works, a further search is alone needed to show their perfect uniformity. It is true that the physical resemblances between men and beings of the class mammalia seem closer than those of the latter and some other forms of life, but while there is also an eternal correspondence between structure and functions, it is rational and philosophical to suppose that the difference in the qualities or external manifestations is the safest standard of comparison. Or in other words, whatever may be the seeming physical resemblances, the differences in the faculties show that the former are not reliable. For example: in contemplating the intelligence of certain quadrupeds and birds, can any one suppose or believe for a moment that the difference between them in this respect equals or even approaches to that separating both from human beings? And in the present state of our knowledge, our ignorance of the elementary arrangement of organic life, it is surely safer and more philosophical to be governed by our reason rather than our senses--to accept the differences which separate human intelligence from the animal world as boundless and immeasurable when compared with the apparent physical approximations which seem to unite us with a class of the latter.

In conclusion, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that there is a fixed, uniform, and universal correspondence between structure and function, or between organism and the purpose it is designed to fulfil. We do not know nor need to know the cause of this or the nature of this unity. We only know, and are only permitted to know, that it exists, and are not bound to accept the dogma of the Materialists, that function is the result of organism; nor that of their opponents, who still more falsely imagine results without causes, or that there can be functions without, organism. Truth, in this instance, lies between extremes:--functions or faculties cannot exist without a given structure or organism, but they are not a result of that organism. They exist together inseparably, universally, eternally dependent on each other, but not a result of either. To see there must be eyes; to hear, ears; to walk, the organism of locomotion; to manifest a certain extent of intelligence there must be a corresponding mental organism, but there is no such thing proper as cause and effect, nothing but fact--the fact of mutual existence.

The Caucasian can be confounded with no other, for though in some localities, climate and perhaps other causes darken the skin, sometimes with a deep olive tint, and extending, as with the Bedouins and the Jews of the Malabar coast, to almost black, the flowing beard , projecting forehead, oval features, erect posture and lordly presence, stamp him the master man wherever found.

The Mongolian, though less distinctive, is, however, sufficiently so, for his yellow skin, squat figure, beardless face, pyramidal head, and almond eyes, can scarcely be confounded with any other form of man. The Malay is less known, and therefore more difficult to describe. They are darker than the Mongol, though in some islands of a bright copper color, and indeed, vary from light olive to dark brown, and as in the case of the Australians, to deep black, but with no other approximation to the Negro.

The vast populations known under the term Papuan, and mainly Malay, are doubtless extensively mixed with the Negro, for however remote the time, or whatever the form or mode, real negro populations have resided in tropical Asia, and left behind them these remains of their former existence. In some islands, like New Zealand, etc., the ruling dynasties or principal families have a considerable infusion of Caucasian blood, which is shown in their tall, erect form, more or less beard, fair complexion, and manly presence, and intellectually in their prompt and often intelligent acceptance of Christianity.

The Indian, American, or Aboriginal, needs no description; suffice it to say that, from the mouth of the Columbia River to Cape Horn, they are the same species. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that some species, formerly existing on this continent, have disappeared--utterly perished. The investigations of Dr. Tschudi warrant this belief, though his nice discriminations in regard to some of the bones of the head are of little or no importance, as all this might be, and doubtless was, the result of artificial causes. But crania discovered in Southern Mexico and Yucatan, as well as in Peru and Brazil, are sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that a still inferior race did once really inhabit this continent, but whether aboriginal or brought here by some superior race, may never be known. The remains of ancient structures in Yucatan, in Peru, in Mexico, in Brazil, all over the southern portion of the continent, show simply the traces of Caucasian intrusion. It has been generally supposed that Columbus and his companions were the first white men that ever visited this continent, but it may have been discovered, and to a certain extent, occupied, at least certain localities occupied, before even Europe itself, or before the period of authentic history. Any one visiting Mexico, Puebla, or other cities of Spanish America, is amazed and bewildered with the contrast between the vast and magnificent structures that meet his eye, and the existing population. He involuntarily asks himself, "Can these people be the authors of all this art, this beauty, strength and magnificence? Can these miserable, barefooted, blanketed, idle and stolid-looking creatures have built these palaces, these churches, these bridges, these mighty structures, which seem to have been built for eternity itself, so strong and secure are their foundations?" Some years hence this contrast would be still more palpable, and left to themselves, a time would come when it would be obvious that the existing population had nothing to do with these structures, for the mixed blood would have disappeared, and there would be only the simple, unadulterated "native American," as discovered by the Spaniards three centuries ago. And we have only to apply this to the antiquities of America to understand its history, at all events, to understand the meaning of those half-buried monuments so frequently found on its surface. Adventurers, often, doubtless, shipwrecked mariners, were cast upon the coasts of America. Possibly in some cases before Rome was founded, or Babylon itself was the mighty capital of a still more mighty empire, these enterprising or unfortunate men found themselves undisputed sovereigns of the New World. We know that Northmen found their way here in the eighth century, and doubtless they were preceded at intervals by numerous other Caucasians. Settling in some localities they reigned undisputed masters, built cities, organized governments, framed laws, and laid the foundations of a civilized society. But intermarrying with the natives, they were swallowed up by mongrelism, and, in obedience to an immutable law of physical life, doomed to perish, and at a given period, the white blood extinct, there remained nothing to denote its former existence, except the half-buried palaces and ruined monuments yet to be traced over large portions of the continent. The Toltecs, Aztecs, etc., are simply the remnants of these extinct Caucasians, just as the present population, if left alone in Mexico, the latest portion of it, with Caucasian blood, would be the ruling force, and perhaps retain somewhat or some portion of the Spanish habitudes.

The pure native mind is capable of a certain development, but that is fixed and determinate, and beyond which it can no more progress than it can alter the color of its skin or the form of its brain. Powhatan's empire in Virginia was undoubtedly aboriginal and probably called out the utmost resources and reached the utmost limit of the Indian mind. The Indian has, and does manifest to a certain extent, a capacity of mental action, but this is too feeble and limited to make a permanent impression on the physical agents that surround him, and therefore he can have no history, for there are no materials--nothing to record. The term, therefore, "Indian antiquities," is a misnomer and the great congressional enterprise under the editorship of Mr. Schoolcraft an obvious absurdity.

The Polar or Esquimaux race has been least known of all, and prior to the explorations of that true hero and true son of science, the late Dr. Kane, was scarcely known except in name. It is both Asiatic and American, but which continent is its birth-place is matter of doubt. The facilities for passing from one continent to the other were doubtless much greater at some former period than at present, and not only men but animals may have done so with ease. Except a few well-known species of animals and vegetables, which are essential to the well-being of the Caucasian, and which have accompanied him in all his migrations, each species has its own centre of existence, beyond or outside of which it is limited to a determinate existence. The Arctic animals are quite numerous, and differ widely from all others, but they are absolutely the same in Asia as in America, and therefore must have passed from one to the other, and man, however subordinate or inferior to other races endowed by nature with ample powers of locomotion and migration, could meet with only trifling obstacles in passing from one continent to the other. This race, though thus far of little or no importance, is doubtless superior to the Negro, for the necessities of its existence, the terrible struggle for very life in those bleak and desolate regions, infer the possession of powers superior to those of a race whose centre of life is in the fertile and luxuriant tropics, where nature produces spontaneously, and where the idle and sensual Negro only needs to gather these products to exist and multiply his kind.

But enough--all Americans know--for they cannot avoid knowing--that negroes are negroes and specifically different from themselves; they know, moreover, that they differed just as widely when first brought to this continent, and all who understand the simplest laws of organization know that they must always remain thus different from ourselves, and therefore they know that they were made so by the act and will of the Almighty Creator, while when, or how, or why they are thus, is beyond the province of human enquiry, and of no manner of importance whatever.

The white or Caucasian is the only historic race--the race which is alone capable of those mental manifestations which, written or unwritten, leave a permanent impression behind. What was its first or earliest condition upon the earth? This, except the meagre account given by Moses, is unknown, nor is it of much importance that it should be known, for though it never was nor could be savage or barbarous, as these terms are understood in modern times, still its intellectual acquisitions were doubtless so limited that if really known to us, they would be of little or no service. Moses scarcely attempts any description of social life before the time of Abraham, and that then presented does not differ very materially from what exists in the same locality at the present day. The pastoral habitudes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the sale of Joseph to the Ishmaelites by his brethren, his purchase in Egypt, and sudden exaltation at the court of the Egyptian Monarch, is an almost exact counterpart of scenes witnessed now, and with little varieties in the same lands, for the last four thousand years. The starting-point--the locality where the race first came into being, is equally hidden as the time or period of its creation. Biblical writers have usually supposed somewhere in Asia Minor, on the banks of the Euphrates, while ethnologists are inclined to believe that the high table-lands of Thibet and Hindoo Koosh may have been the cradle of the race. Nor is a knowledge of this material, or indeed of the slightest consequence, except as an aid in determining its true centre of existence--that is, its physical adaptation or specific affinities for a certain locality. But this is determined by experience; and it is demonstrated beyond doubt that while the elaborate and relatively perfect structure of the Caucasian Man enables him to resist all external agencies, and to exist in all climates capable of supporting animal life, he can only till the soil or perform manual labor in the temperate zones. It is, therefore, immaterial when or where he first came into being, or what was the starting-point of the race--its centre of existence is alike in all the great temperate latitudes of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. The history of the race may be said to be divided into three great cycles or distinct periods; all, however, connecting with each other, and doubtless mainly resembling each other in their essential nature, however widely different in their external manifestation. The first period, beginning with its actual existence on the earth, may be said to terminate in the era of authentic history. The second, or historic era, may be assumed as extending to the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the so-called northern barbarians, or, perhaps, to what is usually termed the dark ages. And finally, there is another grand cycle in human destiny, which, beginning with the restoration of learning, comes down to and includes our own times. In regard to the first, we actually know little of it, for, leaving out of view the Sacred Scriptures, we have only a few imperfect glimpses of the actual life of the countless millions that preceded the historic period. What little knowledge we have depends on tradition and mythology, sometimes, perhaps, true enough, but the greater portion thus transmitted to our times we know is false, because conditions are assumed that are in contradiction with the laws that govern our animal being. If the race, however, was created in Asia, we know that portions of it migrated to Africa, at a very remote period; indeed, leaving the Bible out of view, the first knowledge we have of its existence, or the earliest traces of its existence, is in Africa. Caucasian tribes or communities entered the valley of the Nile possibly before the delta of the lower country was sufficiently hardened to admit of cultivation, as they evidently occupied localities considerably removed from the outlet of that great river. These early adventurers conquered the aboriginal population, subjected them to their control, compelled them to labor for them, built magnificent cities, temples, palaces, founded a mighty Empire and advanced, to a certain extent, in civilization. But wealth and luxury, with their effeminate consequences, probably, too, injustice and crime in the rulers, and certainly, and worst of all, interunion and affiliation with the conquered races, tempted purer and hardier branches of the race to invade them, and indeed the delicious climate and fertile soil must have always tempted Caucasian tribes into the Valley of the Nile, from the earliest periods, and whenever they felt themselves strong enough to attack the existing community. Of course we can only deal in conjecture, in regard to this matter, but it is probable that numerous invasions took place, each passing through much the same course as its predecessors. First came conquest, then the erection of a mighty Empire, followed by a grand civilization; then came effeminacy, affiliation with the subject races, debauchment and debility inviting a new conquest by pure Caucasians, and they, in their turn, going through the same round of glory and decay, of conquest and degradation. Such seems to have been the condition of Egypt when the Romans invaded it, and made it a province of that great Empire. The effete remains of these Egyptian populations afterward, became known to the Roman writers, and, to a certain extent, may be said still to exist. The great Asiatic empires were doubtless similar to the Egyptian, except in respect to the debauchment of blood. The Assyrians, Persians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Hebrews, etc., each in their turn, were conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, but their downfall, in one essential respect, differed widely from those of Africa. They were pure, unmixed Caucasians, for at that time the Mongol element was unknown in that portion of Asia, and the Negro, except a few household servants, never existed on that continent. The Mongolian race was first known about five hundred years anterior to the Christian Era, and whether originally it existed in a more northern region, or had not reached a full development as regards numbers, can not be known, on account of our limited knowledge of the earth at that time. The old Caucasian populations of Asia knew nothing of it, and had no admixture of Mongolic blood. But all is conjecture, mystery, doubt and uncertainty, in regard to these ancient and extinct Empires. We know that they existed--that they were white men--beings like ourselves--our own ancestors, with the same wants, the same instincts, in short, the same nature that we have, and therefore, in the main, acted, as we do now. Of course we call them heathens, pagans, savages, barbarians, etc., but were they thus?

The next great period in the history of the race--the historic era--is supposed to be entirely within the province of real knowledge. It begins with the history of the Greeks--not the symbolic but the real--that grand and glowing intellectualism which, in many respects, may be said to equal the intellectual development of our own times. The history of Greece and Rome is in truth the history of the race, of the world, of mankind. There were cotemporary nations of great power, extent and cultivation, but the Greeks and Romans, and the subject or servile populations that acknowledged their supremacy, made up the larger portion of the race. It is true the Persians were then pure Caucasians, and, in respect to numbers, largely surpassed the Greeks, but while they did not differ much in their general character, they were on the decline before the Greeks had reached their full national development. The latter always referred to Egypt as the source of their civilization, but it is more probable that they borrowed from Asia most of those things supposed to be of foreign origin. It is, however, quite possible that the earliest civilization was developed in Africa, that it receded from thence to Asia, as we know it afterwards did from the latter to Europe, and as we now witness it, passing to America. But what is civilization? It is, or it may be defined as, the result of intellectual manifestation. A nation or people who have most deeply studied and understood the laws of nature or the nature of things, and applied their knowledge to their own welfare, are the most civilized or we might say, in a word, that the nation that has the most knowledge is the most civilized. The Greeks, certainly, surpassed all cotemporary nations in the most essential of all knowledge, yet even this seems to have been rather a thing of chance than otherwise. Political intelligence, or a knowledge of men's social relations to each other, is the most vital they can possess. The Greeks may be said both to have possessed this knowledge and to have been entirely deficient in it. Athens, with thirty thousand citizens all recognized as political equals, was a Democracy, but this so-called Democracy, with, perhaps, a hundred thousand slaves, was a burlesque on a democratic government. The Helots of Greece, the servile and subject population of which history gives no account, except to refer to them, were white men--men with all the natural capacities of Socrates, Demosthenes, or Alcibiades, but the Greek orators and writers of the day never even seemed to imagine that they had any rights whatever. They had much the same relation to the Greeks that the Saxons had to the Normans, that the Irish have to the English, and yet with all their political enlightenment and high intellectual development, the Greeks gave them no rights, and treated them as different and subordinate beings. The notion, therefore, taught in our schools, that the Greeks were the authors of political liberty, is unsound--they neither practised nor understood liberty, and the external forms mistaken for democracy had no necessary connection with it. Aristotle could not form even a conception of a political system that did not rest upon slavery, and this was doubtless the general condition of the Greek mind. It was merely accidental that the Greek States assumed a democratic form, or rather approximated to a democratic form; but while they were utterly ignorant of individual relations they certainly had clear views of the relations of states and the duties that independent communities owe to each other. The Asiatic nations seem to have had no conception whatever of these duties--conquest or slavery were the only alternatives. A nation must conquer or be conquered--a dynasty must destroy all others, or expect to fall itself--and the Asiatic character still partakes largely of these habitudes. Except, therefore, in the mere externals or outward arrangements of political society, the Greeks can hardly be said to have done anything for political liberty or to advance political science. The Romans did more--vastly more--but they had little or no conception of democracy or of individual liberty. The proud boast, "I am a Roman citizen," unlike the idea of the American democrat, partook of the spirit of a British aristocrat of our own days, claiming the privileges of his order. The men who founded the city of Rome, though doubtless fillibusters and adventurers, perhaps even outcasts of the neighboring populations, were assumed to be superior to the later emigrants, and their descendants especially claimed exclusive privileges. And when Rome expanded into a mighty empire and ruled the world, the senatorial order ruled the empire--at all events, until Caesar crossed the Rubicon and seized the supreme power. The change from a republic to an empire had little or no bearing upon the question of liberty, for the condition of the great body of the people remained the same. Rome conquered all, or nearly all, the then known world, for, except the Persians, and perhaps some few populations in the far North, the whole Caucasian race recognized the Romans as their rulers. The Parthians, so often waging desperate war with the Romans, were doubtless a mixed people, something like the modern Turks, and very possibly their ancestors. Following the rude code of early times, the Romans enslaved the conquered populations. All the prisoners of war were deemed to have forfeited their lives, and were parceled out among the Roman conquerors, while the rural populations were compelled to pay tribute to the Roman civil officers. It is quite probable that the Romans conquered some of the inferior races, but except the Numidians, Lybians, Ethiopians, etc., of Africa, Roman writers are silent on the subject. It has been said that the history of the Romans was the history of the Caucasian race, and that was the history of the world. This is literally true, for though we cannot suppose that the conquered populations were the miserable barbarians that the Roman writers represent them to have been, Rome was the most advanced portion of the race, and therefore the embodiment of its civilization and intellectual life. At this moment Paris represents all France; and the city of Rome bore a somewhat similar relation to the populations that composed the empire, however distant they may have been from the capital. It was not an unusual thing for the same general that commanded in Britain or that had conquered in Gaul, to administer the government of the African provinces or to conduct a campaign against the Persians on the bank of the Euphrates. And however much the vanity of Roman authors may have been gratified by assuming that they alone were civilized, it is altogether irrational to suppose that the conquered populations, with the same nature and same capacities as themselves, and moreover, in frequent and often intimate intercourse with themselves, could have differed widely or remained barbarians, even if such when conquered. The Romans advanced far beyond the Greeks in political knowledge, but with them also the state was every thing and the individual nothing. As with the Greeks, the great majority were slaves; and Roman citizenship, or the rights claimed by a Roman citizen, was at best a special privilege; and prior to the advent of Christianity, the idea of individual rights, of equality, of democracy, seems never to have dawned upon the intellectual horizon of the race. Nor did the primitive Christians accept it in theory, though they lived it out in practice. Their mental habits were formed under the old social order, and though the spirit of the new doctrine impelled them to live it out in practice, few, if any, ever adopted it in theory. Christ had said, "love each other," and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," that is, "grant to others the rights claimed for yourselves," but while they often lived together, owning things in common like the modern communists and socialists, perhaps not one in a million ever thought of applying their doctrines to the state, or even supposing for a moment that the artificial distinctions which separated classes could ever be altered or modified. Even the forced and unnatural relation of master and slave, which necessarily violated the fundamental doctrine of their religion, was clung to and respected in theory, and it needed several centuries of practice and faithful obedience to the spirit of the new faith before this ancient barbarism was finally obliterated from the Roman world. The conquest of Rome, by the so-called northern barbarians, was followed by an eclipse of learning--by a mental darkness in Western Europe at least, that is fitly enough denominated the dark ages. Was this irruption of the northern nations into Italy the true cause of this darkness? For several centuries previous there had been an immense and almost continuous emigration from Asia, not of individuals, as we witness in the present day, to America, but of tribes, communities, whole nations. History is indeed imperfect, if not altogether silent, in respect to the cause of these mighty migrations which so long pressed upon Europe. But there can be little doubt that the Mongolian race about this time changed, to a considerable extent, its location, and pressing down on the old Caucasian populations of Asia, impelled those vast masses to seek shelter and safety, if not homes and happiness, in Europe. In the mighty invasions of Italy in the fifth century by Attila, the truth of this is certainly demonstrated. He himself was doubtless a white man, and so were his chiefs; but the mighty populations he ruled over, and which extended from the Danube to the frontiers of China, were mainly Mongolian. But no Mongolians settled permanently in Europe--none but Caucasians, and except the modern Turks, none but pure Caucasians--and, being the same men as the Romans themselves, why should they be barbarians? They were conquerors; a pretty good proof that, though not so refined perhaps, certainly not so effeminate as the Romans had become, they could not have been barbarians. Other things being equal, the nation that has made the greatest advance in knowledge will be able to conquer, because it has only to apply its knowledge to this object to succeed. There can be no doubt that we ourselves surpass all the nations of our times in knowledge, or in our capacity to apply our knowledge to the purposes of material existence. Our railroads, canals, public works, our ship-building, commerce, etc., prove this, and we have only to apply this knowledge to purposes of offence or defence, to invade others or to defend ourselves, to demonstrate our immense superiority. Nevertheless, if we should conquer Spain, or any other ancient and effete empire, doubtless their writers would take their revenge in calling us barbarians, as indeed the poor, feeble, and adulterated hybrids of Mexico actually did thus represent us when in possession of their capital. Nothing, therefore, can be more improbable than the theory of Gibbon and others, that the nations that conquered Rome were barbarians, and that the dark ages were the result of that conquest. But there was a cause for the subsequent darkness which so long spread over the European world much more palpable. Christianity had become generally accepted, and bad and ambitious men, in the then general ignorance of the masses of the populations, might wield it with stupendous effect in advancing their ambition and securing their own personal objects. The assumption that Christ had delegated a power on earth to interpret the will of Heaven, both as to temporal as well as religious interests, was enough; of course all human investigation and mental activity terminated, and was denounced as impiety.

The subordinate clergy were often, perhaps generally, faithful to the great truths transmitted by the primitive Christians, but, dependent on tradition, and subject to the rule of their sacerdotal superiors, they in vain resisted these influences, and these truths became in time so corrupted as scarcely to retain any resemblance to the original faith. It is believed that, except in these "dark ages," the Caucasian mind has never retrograded or indeed remained stationary. Progress is the law, the instinct, the necessity of the Caucasian mind, and however much some branches or some nations may decline, there is always some portion, nationality, or community, that embodies the wants of the race, and that moves forward in pursuit of that indefinite perfectability which is its specific and distinguishing characteristic. But it is easily understood how this might have suffered an eclipse under the circumstances then existing. A great proportion of the so-called barbarian conquerors of Rome were ignorant of Christianity, and when they became the converts of the conquered Romans, they naturally exalted their teachers as beings almost superhuman in their superior knowledge; and the general ignorance of the times favored any pretension of the priests, however absurd it might be. In fact a body of men claiming to be, and universally believed to be, the interpreters of the will of the Almighty, necessarily interrupted all inquiry into the laws of nature , and though some monks themselves, immured in their cells, continued to think, to experiment, to acquire knowledge, as well as in many instances to preserve that already acquired by others, the great mass of the people as well as the great body of the clergy looked upon everything of the kind as wicked, impious, and heretical. And we have only to suppose an intellectual activity and freedom corresponding with our own times throughout these dark centuries, to realize the stupendous evil inflicted on the world by this priestly arrogance and ambition.

The races, so-called, that figured most prominently during the period beginning with authentic history and terminating in the dark ages, are first, the Semitic, which included the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Persians, Syrians, Hebrews or Jews, Saracens, Arabians, etc., indeed under the term Semitic may be included all the Orientals, except the Parthians, who were doubtless a mixed people, and those northern tribes, historically known as Scythians, afterwards the conquerors of Egypt and the progenitors of that extraordinary military autocracy known in modern times by the name of Mamelukes. The second great branch was the Pelasgian, which included the Macedonians, the Romans, the Hellenic tribes, Dorians, Thracians, etc., and of which the Romans were for nearly two thousand years the main representatives. Between these great branches of the Caucasian--for they were both doubtless, typical Caucasians, though Agassiz thinks that the Semitic constituted a separate species--there was almost constant war, from the very beginning of history to the capture of Constantinople. The Greek and Trojan war was doubtless a collision of this kind--and so were the wars of the Greeks and Persians--the conquests of Alexander, which, for a time, almost annihilated the Persian empire--the terrible life-and-death struggle of the Romans and Carthaginians, and finally the invasion and conquest of Spain by the Arabians, with their ultimate defeat by the Franks under Charles Martel. Indeed, coming down to more modern times, we find the Crusades, when nearly all Europe, in a fit of uncontrollable phrensy, precipitated itself on Asia; and in the collapse which followed, Asiatic hordes, though not exactly Semitic, again seeking to penetrate into Europe, and actually conquering the remains of the old Roman empire, in the eastern capital of which they are now firmly established. Historians are wont to magnify the results of these contests, especially the defeat of Hannibal and the overthrow of the Carthaginians by the Romans, and the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, as of vital importance to the world and the best interests of mankind; but it is quite possible that they over-estimate these things, especially the victory of the Romans over the Carthaginians. They were both of the same species of men, both branches of the Caucasian, with the same nature, the same tendencies, and, under the same circumstances, the same beings. The Carthaginians were, for the time, highly civilized. They were the heirs of the Egyptian and Asiatic civilizations, as Rome was of that of the Greeks. They were a great commercial people, with boundless wealth, science, arts, manufactures, everything but a warlike spirit; while Rome, at the time without commerce, poor and torn by factions, was a mere military aristocracy, and the capital itself little more than a military encampment. Why, then, should the defeat of the former have been beneficial to the progress of the race, or to the general interests of mankind?

In regard to the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, the case is altogether different. They were the same species, and doubtless, at that time, more advanced than the Europeans, but they were Mohammedans, and in the full flush of enthusiasm for their faith, which they invariably propagated by the sword. And if they had overrun Europe as they did Asia, somewhat similar results would doubtless have followed, for though it is altogether improbable, indeed, in view of its Divine origin, impossible, that they could have exterminated the Christian religion, they would have done it and the general cause of civilization incalculable injury. But both of these great branches of the race have long since disappeared from history. The Semitic element can scarcely be said to exist at all. In Africa it is adulterated by the blood of the Negro, and perhaps the blood of some race or races not so low in the scale as the Negro. In Asia it is mixed with the Mongolian blood, and though the Arab and Persian populations of our day are mainly white, there is more or less taint pervading all the Asiatic communities. The great Pelasgian branch has long since disappeared and been swallowed up in the more modern branches of the race, and though the modern Italian claims to be, and doubtless is, the lineal descendant of the ancient Roman, no portions of the race are wider apart than the ancient Roman and his modern descendant, a striking proof that accidental consanguinity does not affect the universality of the race.

Such, briefly considered, is an imperfect summary or outline of the history of our race, the only race that has a history or that is capable of those mental manifestations whose record constitutes history. It is a favorite theory of most historians to represent the mental development of the race as divided into distinct categories, not as the author has ventured, into historic periods, but into different phases of intellectual manifestation. They have supposed that men were first hunters and lived wholly by the chase--that after a while they became shepherds, and lived on their herds or flocks--that then they made another advance and became cultivators, and finally artisans, merchants, etc. Each of these conditions, it has been supposed, were dependent on, or were associated with, a corresponding mental development. The hunter had intellect enough to run down the stag or wit sufficient to entrap the game necessary for his support, but had not sufficient capacity to take care of his flocks or sense sufficient to till the earth! This notion has doubtless arisen from observing the habits of the subordinate races of men, though it is quite possible that our own race has passed through some such stages as those suggested. But there has never been any variations in its actual intellectual powers. The mental capacities given it in the morning of creation were just what they are now, and what they will be millions of years hence. Thus is explained the seeming anomaly that in the very dawn of history there were men like Homer, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and others, with a breadth and depth of intellect corresponding to the most intellectual men of our own times. Mental power, like physical strength, remains always the same through all ages and mutations of human society, while knowledge, or the uses made of the intellectual forces, is constantly varying from age to age, and changing from one country to another. The miserable Italian organ-grinder under our window, it is somewhat difficult to suppose, embodies the high intellect and powerful will, which two thousand years ago, made his ancestors masters of the world, but such is the fact, however latent, unknown or unfelt by himself may be these powers. The amount or extent or degrees of knowledge, the perceptions of external things, their relations, the laws that govern them, their uses, their influences on our well-being or the contrary, in short, our capacities for acquiring knowledge, for comprehending ourselves and the things about us, are limitless, and therefore progress and indefinite perfectibility are the specific attributes of the Caucasian. Each generation applies its capabilities and acquires a certain amount of knowledge which the succeeding one is heir to, and which, in turn, transmits its acquisition to those following; thus its march is ever onward, and except during the "dark ages" it is believed that the great law of progress which God has imposed on the race as a duty as well as given it as a blessing, has never been interrupted.

But the inferior races of mankind present a very different aspect in this respect. The Negro, isolated by himself, seems utterly incapable of transmitting anything whatever to the succeeding generation, and the Aboriginal American, Malay, etc., doubtless approximate to him in these respects. The Aztecs and Peruvians, at the time of the Spanish conquest, however, had advanced to the grade of cultivators, and were therefore, doubtless, capable of a limited or imperfect transmission of their knowledge. The Malay is probably capable of still greater development in these respects; but its limitations are too decided to be mistaken. The Mongolian, on the contrary, approximates much closer to ourselves, and while it cannot be said to have a history in any proper sense, it is doubtless capable of transmitting its knowledge to future generations to a much greater extent than others, but it, too, is at an immeasurable distance from the Caucasian in this respect. The Chinese, it is true, pretend to trace back their history to a period long anterior to our own, but this claim is itself sufficient proof of its own worthlessness. No one will suppose that the individual Chinaman has a larger brain or greater breadth of intellect than the individual Caucasian, and if not, what folly to suppose that the aggregate Chinese mind was capable of doing that which is impossible to the aggregate Caucasian intellect! The truth is, what is supposed to be Chinese history is a mere collection of fables and nonsensical impossibilities, and it may be doubted if they can trace back their annals even five hundred years with any certainty or with sufficient accuracy to merit a claim to historic dignity. There can be no doubt, however, that at some remote period, a considerable portion of the Chinese population was Caucasian, as indeed a portion is still Caucasian, and it is perhaps certain that Confucius and other renowned names known to the modern Chinese, were white men, and what shadowy and uncertain historical data they now possess are therefore likely to have originated from these sources. The Mongolian race was in fact unknown to ancient writers, though there has doubtless been contact with these races from a very early period.

It is supposed by Hamilton Smith and others, that the Mongolian formally existed much further North than at present, and that its immense development in regard to numbers finally pressed so heavily on the Caucasian populations of Central Asia, that it displaced them, and hence that those mighty migrations into Europe, a short time after the beginning of the Christian era, were the results of this pressure in their rear. Be this as it may, it is certain that those vast inundations which at times swept over the Asiatic world, and also threatened Europe with their terrible results, were mainly composed of Mongolic elements. Attila was of pure Caucasian blood, and his chiefs were doubtless also white men or of a predominating Caucasian innervation; but it is equally certain that the larger portion of his terrible hordes were Mongolians. His seat of empire was on the Danube and somewhere near the modern Buda, from which he threatened France as well as Rome and the Italian Peninsula, while his dominion extended to the frontiers of China, and embraced the vast regions and almost countless populations intervening between these widely separated points. His invasion of France, and his repulse if not defeat at Chalons, is one of those transcendent events that, for good or evil, change the order of history, and for centuries affect the fortunes of mankind. Had this not happened--had his march been uninterrupted--had his terrible legions swept over Western as they already had over Eastern Europe, and a vast Mongolian population become permanently settled there, the destinies of mankind would have been widely different. But his repulse--his desperate retreat and his subsequent death, which occurred soon after--changed the current of events, and his desolating hordes instead of effecting a permanent lodgement in the heart of Europe, vanished so utterly that, except a few thousand Laplanders, they have left no trace or evidence of their terrible invasion of the European world.

Genghis Khan, in the twelfth century, was the next great conqueror and mighty leader of those vast Mongolic hordes which, at various times, have inundated the ancient world, and in their desolating march swept away numerous empires and extinguished whole populations. Genghis Khan, though of predominating Caucasian blood, was mixed with Mongolian, but his successors for several centuries after were mainly Caucasians or the children of Caucasian mothers. Finally, the last and the greatest of these terrible conquerors, Tamerlane, in the sixteenth century, made a conquest of nearly the whole of Asia, penetrating even into Africa and conquering Egypt, while his defeat of Bajazet, the Emperor of the Turks, then at the zenith of their power, opened Europe to the march of his desolating hordes, and could his life have been extended a few years longer, it is quite possible that he would have accomplished what seems to have been the object of Attila, and subjected the European as well as the Asiatic world to his terrible sway. As it was, he invaded and conquered India as well as Egypt, and the master of, or wearer of twenty-eight crowns, he reigned over the whole of Asia to the borders of China, except the Turkish dominions, and even here he was the recognized master though he gave back the empire to the sons of Bajazet. The character of his conquests--the death and desolation that marked his path--was the most terrible as well as the most extensive ever witnessed before or since, and many of the largest and most powerful empires of Asia were as utterly blotted from the earth as if it had opened and swallowed them up. He himself was of pure Caucasian extraction, and doubtless his generals and chiefs were the same, and the Caucasian Tartars formed a very considerable portion of his forces. There was doubtless also a large mixed or mongrel element, for of the throngs of female captives taken in these Mongolian invasions, few ever returned to their homes, but becoming the wives of Mongolian chiefs, those numerous and often powerful dynasties which have ruled over the Asiatic populations had their origin. Nevertheless a vast majority of these almost countless hordes led by Tamerlane were unmixed Mongolian, and, therefore, though the leader was himself a Caucasian or white man, the bloody and desolating character of his conquests were stamped by the cruelty and ferocity of that race. Perhaps no better illustration of the Caucasian and Mongolian character could be presented than the contrast between Alexander's invasion of Persia and India and similar invasions of Tamerlane. The first, though a "Pagan" several centuries before the Christian era, was humane and merciful to the conquered, and except in battle shed no blood, while the latter not content with the enforcement of the Moslem rule of tribute or death or the religion of the Prophet, slaughtered whole populations after the battle was over, and for the gratification of his ferocious hordes. His conquest of Bagdad and his pyramid of ninety thousand heads is one of those terrible things that historians are generally puzzled with, for not only is there nothing resembling it in history, but there seems to be no motive or sufficient cause for it. It was the result, the offspring of Mongol ferocity and apathetic cruelty, such as we now witness in India and China, and springs as much, perhaps, from a low grade of sensibility or incapacity to feel or sympathize with suffering, as from a sentiment of cruelty.

This, then, is the history of the Mongolian race--the race nearest our own--all the history we have of it, and indeed all the history there is of it, for however brief or imperfect our own knowledge of the race, it is doubtless better and more reliable than is its own pretended history of itself. As has been said, unlike the Negro, whose capacities cannot go beyond the living or actual generation, and with whom millions of generations are the same as a single one, the Mongolian mind may perhaps, with more or less correctness, grasp the life of a few generations, but in no proper sense is it capable of acting, and consequently of writing history.

Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to account for or to show the "cause" of color, not of the Negro alone, but in the case of our own race. They have generally supposed that the pigmentum nigrum, a substance lying immediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle, constituted that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark, blonde or brunette, just as the "coloring" matter might happen to be dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless true, but to speak of it as a cause is an abuse of terms, for it is simply a fact, and no more a cause than it is an effect. Cause and causes in natural phenomena are known only to Omnipotence, and why the Caucasian color is white or the Mongol yellow, or the Negro black, is as absolutely hidden from us as the cause of their existence at all--as wholly beyond the scope of human intelligence, and therefore of rational inquiry, as the cause of the return of the seasons, or why men and animals at a certain time arrive at maturity or finally decay and die. The divine wisdom and perfect fitness of the fact itself, however, are clearly appreciable, and we are able to see, not only its transcendent importance, but the utter impossibility of its being otherwise. There is in all the works of God perfect harmony, as well as perfect wisdom, and, therefore, such a monstrosity as a "colored man"--or a being like ourselves in all except the color of the negro--is not merely absurd, but as impossible in fact, though not so palpable to a superficial intelligence, as a white body with a negro head on its shoulders, or indeed as a dog with the head of any other animal or form of being.

There are great differences among our people in regard to the general expression of the features. Some reflect in their faces all the emotions by which they are moved, while others are so stolid, or they have acquired such a control over themselves in these respects, as to appear impenetrable. But this has no connection with color, or any relation to that great fundamental and specific fact by which and through which the Almighty has adapted the character and revealed the relative conditions of the several human races. Like all the other great facts involved, color is the standard and exact admeasurement of the specific character. The Caucasian is white, the Negro is black; the first is the most superior, the latter the most inferior--and between these extremes of humanity are the intermediate races, approximating to the former or approaching the latter, just as the Almighty, in His boundless wisdom and ineffable beneficence, has seen fit to order it. Color is no more radical or universal, or no more a difference between white men and negroes, than any other fact out of the countless millions of facts that separate them. It is more palpable to the sense, more unavoidable, but no more universal or invariable than the difference in the hair, the voice, the features, the form of the limbs, the single globule of blood, or the myriads and millions of things that constitute the Negro being. It would seem that the Almighty Creator, when stamping this palpable distinction on the very surface, had designed to guard His work from any possible desecration, and therefore had marked it so legibly, that human ignorance, fraud, folly, or wickedness, could by no possibility mistake it. And indeed it is not mistaken, for those perverse creatures among us who clamor so loudly for negro equality, or that the negro shall be treated as if he were a white man, only desire to force their hideous theories on others, and would rather have their own families utterly perish from the earth than to practice or live up to their doctrine in this respect. The term "colored man," or "colored person," though natural enough to Europeans, or to those who had never seen negroes, or different races from themselves, could never have originated in a community having negroes in its midst, for it is not only a misnomer but an absurdity as gross as to say a colored fish or a colored bird. Finally, as color is the standard and the test of the specific character, revealing the inner nature and actual capabilities of the race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal physical condition of the individual. The highest health of the white man is distinguished by a pure and transparent skin, and exactly as he departs from this, his color is clouded and sallow; while that of the negro is marked by perfect blackness, and the departure from this is to dirty brown, almost ash-color--thus, as in everything else, revealing the eternal truth that life and well-being, social as well as individual, are identical with an exact recognition of these extremes, and that it is only when disease and unnatural conditions prevail, that a certain approximation to color or to equality become possible.

Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as the hair, or nothing that reveals the specific difference of race so unmistakably as the natural covering of the head. The hair of the Caucasian is a graceful and imposing feature or quality, of course in perfect harmony with everything else, but sometimes, and especially in the case of females, it is an attribute of physical beauty more striking and attractive than any other. Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the dazzling hues of black, purple, and auburn tresses, has been the theme of poets from time immemorial, while its luxuriance, and silky softness, and graceful length will continue to be the pride of one sex and the admiration of the other as long as the perception of beauty remains.

A few years since, an eminent historian, in a public lecture, discussed the probabilities of a universal language as an instrument of universal history, and as means for the universal civilization of mankind! Another public lecturer discussing this subject, and on a professedly scientific basis, held that language had a miraculous origin, though the period when this supernatural gift was conferred on man was left wholly to the imagination of his audience. Others, and among them Buffon, Pritchard, and even several ethnologists, have scarcely risen above this nonsense, while their uses or application of this faculty have been vastly more injurious to science than even their original misconceptions on the general subject.

The senses are those special organisms that connect us with the outer world through which external impressions are received and transmitted to the brain--the great sensorium or centre of the nervous system. They are popularly designated as sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste, each having its own peculiar organism; some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate, and others, like taste, quite simple, being little more than a delicate expansion of nervous matter spread upon the tongue and lining the inner surface of the mouth. The nervous system includes the brain and the nerves, but is, in fact, an indivisible whole, of which the brain forms the centre, and the nerves the circumference, in exact proportion as we ascend in the scale of being. The centre of the nervous system is increased and the circumference diminished as the brain becomes larger and the nerves smaller. Among quadrupeds--the horse, for example--the nerves are enormously large in comparison with the brain of that animal; and this holds good throughout, so that an intelligent physiologist might determine the possible capabilities of any of the higher order of animals by a simple comparison of the brain and nerves. And in the human creation a single skull of a Mongol, or Malay, or Negro, and especially of the latter, should be quite sufficient to enable a physiologist to comprehend the essential character of the race to which it belonged. True, he might, as has often happened, mistake it for an abnormal specimen of the Caucasian, and thus display a vast amount of learned nonsense of the Gall-Spurzheim order, but if he knew it to be an actual negro skull, and then compared it with that of the Caucasian, he should be able not only to determine the intellectual inferiority, but the vastly preponderating sensualism of the former. He would see that the relatively small cerebrum, and the large cerebellum, must be united with a corresponding development of the senses, and a comparatively dominating sensualism. The mere organism of the senses, of sight, hearing, etc., though of course differing widely from those of the Caucasian, it is not necessary to describe, for even in animals of the higher class there is a certain resemblance, and the student of anatomy studies the mechanism of the eye in the ox or horse as satisfactorily as in that of the human creature.

The organisms while thus, in a sense, similar--of the eye, for example--in whites and negroes, is more elaborately and delicately constituted in the case of the former, and therefore it is also vastly more liable to disease, to congenital defects, to strabismus, etc., and especially short-sightedness. The negro, on the contrary, rarely suffers from these things, or even from inflammation of the eyes, so common among white people, and though, in keeping with the imitative instinct of the race, the negro "preacher" dons spectacles as well as white neck-cloth, it may be doubted if there ever was a case of near-sightedness in the typical negro. Though in extreme old age they doubtless lose the power of vision common to their youth, it is rare that negroes need spectacles at any age. The organism is supplied with a larger portion of nervous matter than in the case of the whites, and the function or sense is thus endowed with a strength and acuteness vastly greater than are the senses of the Caucasian. Travelers and others mingling among savages, Indians, negroes, etc., have observed the extraordinary power and acuteness of the external senses, and have supposed that this was a result of their savage condition, which, calling for a constant exercise of these faculties, gave them an extraordinary development. And Pritchard, carrying this theory or notion to an extreme, inferred that men were originally created negroes, for the exigencies of savage life demanded, as he supposed, a black color as well as acuteness of the senses! Doubtless the civilized negro of America ordinarily displays less strength and acuteness of sense than his wild brother of Africa, but he is born with the same faculties, and were the surrounding circumstances changed so as to call them into more active exercise, he would exhibit similar characteristics.

The Almighty Creator, with infinite wisdom, has adapted all His creatures to the ends or purposes of their creation. The Caucasian or white man, with his large brain and elevated reasoning powers, is thus provided with all that is necessary to guard his safety and to increase his happiness. Inferior races, with smaller brains and feebler mental powers are endowed with strength and acuteness of the external senses which enable them to contend specifically with surrounding circumstances and to provide for their safety. This is strikingly manifest in the North American Indian who marks or makes a trail in the forest which he follows with unerring confidence, though the eye of the white man sees nothing whatever. The descriptions of Indian character in Cooper's novels are in these respects perfectly correct and true to nature, as are all those of the Indianized white man, Leather-Stocking, Hawkeye, etc. The one depends upon his senses--his sight, hearing, etc., the other on his powers of reasoning or reflection, which in the end enable him to "sarcumvent" his Huron enemies and to win the victory. Each, according to his "gifts," is able to fulfil the purposes of his creation, and while the superior intelligence of the Caucasian is spreading that race, with its benign and civilizing consequences, over the whole northern continent, the strength and acuteness of his senses have enabled the Indian to resist to a degree all these mighty forces for three hundred years.

Some historians have advanced the notion that Rome was overrun by northern barbarians, similar to our North American Indians, but if the mighty hordes led by Alaric and Genseric to the conquest of Italy, had been Indians, not one would have escaped to tell the tale of their destruction. A high civilization, rotten at heart, falls an easy conquest to ruder and more simple communities of the same race--thus, the effete and corrupt Roman aristocracy fell before the simple and rude populations of Northern Europe, as the polished and scholastic Greeks had succumbed to the Romans, when the latter practised the simple and hardy virtues of their earlier history. In our own times we have seen Spain, long ruled over by an effete and worn-out aristocracy, sink from a first class to a fourth rate power, while France, relieved from the dead weight of "nobility," has in half a century become the leading power of the world. And if the English masses have not sufficient vitality to cast off the mighty pressure of a diseased and effete aristocracy by an internal reform like that which the French passed through in 1789, then it is certain that, at no distant day, the nation will fall a conquest to some external power that has greater vitality than itself, however deficient it may be in wealth and learning, and those refinements that pass for high civilization. But while nations ruled over by privileged classes thus carry within them the seeds of their own destruction, and sooner or later fall a conquest to ruder and simpler societies, the intellectual superiority of the white man always enables him to conquer inferior races, whatever may be the disparity of numbers, and Clive with three thousand Europeans, attacking the Hindoo horde of one hundred thousand, or Cortez invading Mexico with five hundred followers, amply illustrates the natural supremacy of the Caucasian race. But, on the contrary, if the Aztecs had had the intellectual capacity of the Caucasian superadded to their own specific qualities--the strength and acuteness of the senses--common to the native race, not alone would Cortez have failed to conquer them, but it may be doubted if all Europe, combined together for that purpose, could have accomplished it.

But it is not the mere predominance of the senses, or the strength and acuteness of the sense which so broadly and radically separates whites and negroes. They are entirely different in the manifestations of these qualities. As has been observed, there are few if any near-sighted negroes, or negroes with other defects of vision, and the sense of smell in negroes permits them to discriminate and to indicate the presence of the rattle snake, or other venomous serpents. And in respect to the sense of touch or feeling, the peculiarity of the negro nature is perhaps most remarkable of all. This sense in the white person, though universal of course, is mainly located in the hand and fingers. Sir Charles Bell, an eminent English surgeon, has written an interesting work--one of the Bridgewater treatises--on the flexibility and adaptation of the human hand, and other volumes might be given to the world without exhausting the subject. The universal law of adaptation, indeed, demands that the sense of touch, the flexibility of the hand, the delicacy of the fingers, should be in accord with the large brain and commanding intellect, otherwise the world itself would long since have come to a stand-still, and human invention ended with the antediluvians. It is true the structure--the arrangement of the bones, muscles, tendons, etc., in short, the mere mechanism of the hand, is essential, but without the sense of feeling, or that delicacy of touch found only in the fingers of the Caucasian, the mechanical perfections of the hand would be comparatively useless.

All the nice manipulations in surgery, in the arts, in painting, statuary, and the thousands of delicate fabrics seen every day and all about us, demand both intellect and delicacy of hand, and these, too, in that complete perfection found alone in the Caucasian. The sense of touch, on the contrary, in the negro is not in the hand or fingers, or only partially so, but spreads all over the surface and envelops the entire person. The hand itself, in its mere mechanism, is incompatible with delicate manipulation. The coarse, blunt, webbed fingers of the negress, for example, even if we could imagine delicacy of touch and intellect to direct, could not in any length of time or millions of years be brought to produce those delicate fabrics or work those exquisite embroideries which constitute the pursuits or make up the amusements of the Caucasian female. The mechanism of the negro hand, the absence or rather the obtuseness of the sense of touch in the fingers, and the limited negro intellect, therefore, utterly forbid that negroes shall be mechanics, except it be in those grosser trades, such as coopers, blacksmiths, etc., which need little more than muscular strength and industry to practice them. But the sense of touch, though feeble in the hand or fingers, is none the less largely developed as are the other senses of the negro, and spreads over the whole surface of the body. This is witnessed every day at the South, where whipping, as with Northern children, is the ordinary punishment of negroes. As in all other foolish notions that spring from the one great misconception--that negroes have the same nature as white people, the "anti-slavery" people of the North and of Europe labor under a ludicrous mistake in respect to this matter. They take their notions of flogging from the practice of the British army and the Russian knout, where strong men are cut to pieces by the "cat" or beaten to death by clubs, and they suppose that precisely similar barbarity is practiced on the "poor slave." And the runaway negro has doubtless added to these notions, perhaps, without meaning it. At Abolition conventicles he is expected, of course, to horrify the crowd with awful tales of his sufferings, but having always had plenty to eat and never overworked, he has really nothing to fall back on but the "cruel whippings," which the imaginations of the former readily transform into their own notions, but which, in fact, correspond to that which they deal out to their own children without a moment's compunction. The sensibility of the negro skin closely resembles that of childhood, and while there are doubtless cases of great barbarity in these respects, as we all know there are in cases of children, the ordinary flogging of negroes is much the same as that which parents, guardians, teachers, etc., deal out to white children, and the "terrible lash" so dolefully gloated over by the ignorant and deluded usually dwindles down into a petty switch in reality. But it is painful to the negro, perhaps more so than hanging would be, for while the local susceptibility of the skin makes him feel the slightest punishment in this respect, the obtuse sensibility of the brain and nervous system generally would enable him, as is often manifest, to bear hanging very well. Those who can remember being flogged in childhood will also remember the great pain that it gave them, though now in their adult age they would laugh at such a thing. The negro is a child forever, a child in many respects in his physical as well as his mental nature, and the flogging of the negro of fifty does not differ much, if any, from the flogging of a child of ten, and while the British soldier or Russian would receive his three hundred lashes without wincing, the big burly negro will yell more furiously than a school-boy when he receives a dozen cuts with an ordinary switch.

The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, the mental organism. The "school men" believed that mind, intellect, the reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had no locality or organism, but, on the contrary, was some impalpable, shadowy, unfixed principle that existed as much in the feet or hands as in any other portion of the body. And even Locke and Bacon, while they promulgated the great truths of inductive philosophy, were not sufficiently grounded in its elementary principles to understand clearly the foundation of their own doctrines. Nor did Dugald Stuart, Dr. Brown, or even the great Kant, of more modern times, understand any better the fixed truths on which rest the vast and imperfect systems of philosophy which they labored so assiduously to build up in their day. It remained for Gall, Spurzheim, and their followers to do this--to demonstrate certain great elementary truths which form a foundation, eternal as time itself--for the mental phenomena to rest upon, and whatever advance may be made hereafter in the study of these phenomena, its basis is immovable. Metaphysicians were wont to shut themselves up in their libraries and to analyze their own emotions, etc., which when noted down, became afterwards the material for ponderous lectures or the still more ponderous volumes inflicted on society. Rarely, perhaps, were these speculations connected with the brain--indeed it is a rare thing to find a physiologist indulging in metaphysical speculation, while the most famous among the "philosophers" were profoundly ignorant of that organ, though they fancied they knew all about its functions! The man that should undertake to write a treatise on respiration, and at the same time was utterly ignorant of the structure of the lungs, or to give a lecture on the circulation, while he knew nothing of the blood vessels, would certainly be laughed at, and yet innumerable volumes have been written, and continue to be written, on the functions of the brain or on "moral and mental philosophy," by men who never saw a human brain in all their lives! Gall and Spurzheim did, therefore, a great good to the world when they began their investigations of the laws of the mind, by the study of the brain itself as the first and absolutely essential step to be taken in these investigations. It is true, they, and especially their followers, sought to set up a fancy science under the name of Phrenology, and the former thus, to a great extent, neutralized a reputation which otherwise would have secured the respect of the scientific world. And it is also true that others before them had recognized the same truths with more or less distinctness, but it is certain that Gall and Spurzheim demonstrated and placed beyond doubt the great, vital, and essential truth that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that the mental capacity, other things being equal, is in exact proportion to the size of the brain relatively with the body. This truth holds good throughout the animal world, and the intelligence of any given animal or species of animal, is always in keeping with the size of the brain when compared with the size of the body.

The brain is composed of anterior and posterior portions--of the cerebrum and the cerebellum--the first the centre of intelligence, the latter of sensation, or the first the seat of the intellect, and the latter of the animal instincts, and the proportions they bear to each other determines the character. As the anterior portion is enlarged and the posterior diminished the creature ascends, or as the anterior portion is diminished and the posterior portion enlarged it descends, in the scale of being. These are the general laws governing men and animals. There is intelligence in proportion to the size of the brain compared with that of the body, and in the former there is intellectual capacity--latent or real--in proportion to the enlarged cerebrum and diminished cerebellum. It is true we see every day seeming contradictions to the laws in question, but they are not so, not even exceptions, for they are not general but universal. Every day we meet people with small heads and great intelligence, with large heads and large stupidities, but a closer examination may disclose the truth that the seemingly small head is all brain, all cerebrum, all in front of the ears, while the large one is all behind, and only reveals a largely developed animalism. And even when this is not sufficient to explain the seeming anomaly, there is a vast and inexhaustible field for conjecture--of accident--where misapplied or undeveloped powers have been the sport of circumstances. A man may have a large brain, great natural powers, in truth, genius of the most glorious kind, and the world remain in total ignorance of the fact, and among the countless millions of Europe doomed generation after generation to a profound animalism, there doubtless have been many "mute inglorious Miltons," who have lived and died and made no sign of the Divinity within. On the contrary, there have been men of much distinction--of great usefulness to their fellows and to the generations after them, who, naturally considered, were on the dead level of the race, but by their industry, perseverance, and energy have left undying names to posterity. Then, again, circumstances have made men great. An epoch in the annals of a nation--great and stirring events in the life of a people--stimulate and call into exercise qualities and capacities that make men famous, who otherwise would not be heard of. Our own great revolutionary period furnished examples of this, and still later, we have Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and their senatorial cotemporaries, who many doubtless think will never be equalled, though their equals in fact are in the senate now, and only need similar circumstances to manifest that equality.

The organism of the race--the species--whether human or animal, never changes or varies from that eternal type fixed from the beginning by the hand of God; and men, therefore, are now, in their natural capacities what they always have been and always will be, whatever the external circumstances that may control or modify the development of these capacities. And the brain being the organ or organism of the mind, as the eye is of the sight or the ear of the sense of hearing, it may be measured and tested, and its capabilities determined, with as entire accuracy as any other function or faculty. Not, it is true, as the phrenologists or craniologists contend, that the brain reveals the character of individuals of the same species, but the character of the species itself, and its relative capabilities when contrasted with other races or species of men. This is beyond doubt or question, or will be beyond doubt or question with all those who understand it, and taking the Caucasian as the standard or test, the capabilities of the Mongol, the Malay, the Aboriginal American, or negro, may be determined with as absolute certainty as the color of their skins or any other mere physical quality. The brain of the Caucasian averages ninety-two cubic inches, that of the negro seventy-five to eighty-five inches, while the bodily proportions can scarcely be said to vary. There are great variations among whites as to size--there are giants as well as dwarfs, and quite as great variety in the form,--from the "lean and hungry Cassius," to the rounded proportions of a Falstaff or Daniel Lambert. But on a Southern plantation of a thousand negroes, sex and age are the only difference or the principal difference that one sees, and a stranger would find some trouble to recognize any other, or at all events to distinguish faces. The brain of the negro corresponds in this respect with the body, and though there are doubtless cases where there is some slight difference, there seems to be none of those wide departures witnessed in these respects among whites.

The material, the fibre or texture of the brain itself is little understood, and though it is quite likely that what we call genius is attended by a corresponding delicacy or fineness of texture in the nervous mass, and future exploration in this abstruse matter may reveal to us important truths, at this time little is known in regard to the brain except the great fundamental and universal law that, in proportion to its size relatively with that of the body is there intellectual power, actual or latent. Many, doubtless, fancy that there are immense differences in men in this respect--that a Webster, or Clay, or Bonaparte are vastly superior to common men--but they have only to remember that the brain is the organ of the intellect, to see its fallacy. The notion has sprung from the habitudes of European society, where a man clothed in the pomp and parade of high rank is supposed to be vastly and immeasurably superior to his fellows, while, in truth, most of these, or, at all events many of these are absolutely inferior to the base multitudes that prostrate themselves in the dust at their feet. Nevertheless, there are striking differences in these respects; not more so, however, than in strength of body, beauty of features, difference of hair, complexion, etc. But in the case of the negro there is an eternal sameness, a perpetual oneness, the same color, the same hair, the same features, same size of the body, and the same volume of brain. All the physical and moral facts that make up the negro being irresistibly lead to the conclusion that the Almighty Creator designed him for juxtaposition with the superior white man, and therefore such a thing as a negro genius--a poet, inventor, or one having any originality of any kind whatever--is totally unnecessary, as they are totally unknown in the experience of mankind. Some, with more or less white blood, have exhibited more or less talent, possibly even have shown eccentric indications of genius, but among a million of adult typical negroes, there probably would not be a single brain that would vary from the others sufficiently to be detected by the eye, and therefore not an individual negro whose natural capacities were so much greater than those of his fellows as to be recognized by the reason.

Such are briefly the leading and fundamental facts that constitute the mental organism and distinguish the intellectual character of races, that separate white men and negroes by an interval broader and deeper than in any other forms of humanity, and render an attempted social equality not merely a great folly but a gross impiety. As has been stated, in exact proportion to the volume of brain, relatively with the size of body in men and animals, there is intelligence, and as the cerebrum or anterior portion predominates over the cerebellum or posterior portion, there is a corresponding predominance of intellectualism over animalism in the human races. The negro brain in its totality is ten to fifteen per cent. less than that of the Caucasian, while in its relations--the relatively large cerebellum and small cerebrum--the inferiority of the mental organism is still more decided; thus, while in mere volume, and therefore in the sum total of mental power, the negro is vastly inferior to the white man, the relative proportion of the brain and of the animal and intellectual natures adds still more to the Caucasian superiority, while it opens up before us abundant explanations of the diversified forms in which that superiority is continually manifested. There are no terms or mere words that enable us to express the absolute scientific superiority of the white man. We can only measure it, or indeed comprehend it, by comparison, but this will be sufficiently intelligible when it is said that the past history and present condition of both races correspond exactly with the size and form of the brain in each. The science, the literature, the progress, enlightenment and intellectual grandeur of the Caucasian from the beginning of authentic history to this moment, and which have accompanied him from the banks of the Nile to those of the Mississippi, are all fitting revelations of the Caucasian brain, while the utter absence of all these things--the long night of darkness that enshrouds the negro being, and which is only broken in upon when in juxtaposition and permitted to imitate his master, is the result or necessity of his mental organism.

The third figure is an American--a white man of to-day--whose intellectual development, refinement of mind and manners, costume and habitudes are widely different; nevertheless, the physical qualities and specific capabilities are the same as those of his Oriental ancestors of by-gone generations.

The fourth figure is an American Negro, but a typical Negro without taint or admixture with other races. His features, moulded and softened by juxtaposition with the Caucasian, present a great improvement, certainly, over the isolated or African type, but the organism, the actual physical and mental nature remains the same.

The white man is least and the negro most affected by external agents, such as climate, time, systems of government, etc. The fourth figure in contrast with the isolated negro of Africa, exhibits a certain degree of improvement, progress, or advance that illustrates the actual capabilities of the race when placed under circumstances favorable to its development. The size of the brain, the actual organism and absolute nature, of course, remains unaltered, just as all these things remain unchanged and unchangeable in the uneducated white laborer of our own times; but the negro, in juxtaposition with the superior race, becomes educated, and all his latent capabilities fully developed. Thus, while the color, the hair, the entire organism is just what it was thousands of years ago, and what it must be forever, or as long as the present order of creation continues, there is a certain modification in the features and still greater changes in the expression. The uncouth and uneducated European laborer contrasted with the educated classes, or with the generality of Americans, exhibits a wide difference, not so much in the features as in the expression; and though the negro in Africa is in a far more natural position, relatively considered, than the European laborer, the negro in our midst exhibits, perhaps, even a greater difference over his isolated brother. And if we suppose, for a moment, that the masses of English laborers were educated, fed on the same fare, and subject to the same circumstances as the English nobles, then we may form a reasonable estimate of the relative advance of the American over the African negro. The former would differ in no respect whatever from the privileged and educated class, and if all the negroes of Africa were brought here or were placed in juxtaposition and natural relation with the superior race, they would exhibit the same characteristics common to our so-called slaves, and the fourth figure in this plate would doubtless present a typical illustration of them. A good many people, ignorant of the laws of organism, suppose that our negro population have made a great advance over the wild and barbarous tribes of Africa, and, as shown by the second and fourth figures in the plate, this is so, but it is only in the outward expression, while the essential nature is ever the same. The negro infant, for example, brought from Africa and placed under existing circumstances in Mississippi, would be represented by the fourth figure, while the infant born here and carried to Africa to grow up with the wild tribes of the interior, would, on the contrary, be illustrated by the second figure of the plate.

In speaking of negro education, of course no such meaning as that applied to white people is intended. Reading, writing, arithmetic, etc., have no relation or connection with the development of the negro powers. He simply needs to be in a position where the imitative capacity with which God has so beneficently endowed him is most completely called into action, and, as has been observed, he then becomes an industrious, moral, and well-behaved creature, or he is idle, sensual, vicious and worthless, just as the master or overseer pleases to make him. There are doubtless exceptional instances, but with all the wide-spread and boundless effort of the ignorant and deluded people in England and America to seduce them from their homes, there are probably but few negroes--real negroes--who ever abandoned their masters, unless their education had been neglected. The instinct of the negro is obedience to his master, and the strongest affection of his nature--far above that for his wife or offspring--is for the master who feeds, guides, and cares for him, indeed is his Providence; and his utter horror of migration, unless it be with his master, these qualities, so dominant in the negro, would be or might be made a barrier of protection against outside seductions, were they properly understood and appreciated by those having them in charge. This negro education, civilization, progress in fact, which the negro is capable of when in his normal condition, and his imitative capacities are permitted a healthy development, of course is rapidly lost when isolated from the white man. If the four millions now in our midst were suddenly left to themselves, but a few years--probably within fifty--everything that now distinguishes them--that is, all that they have imitated from the superior race--would become extinct.

Leaving out of the consideration mulattoes and mongrels, and taking into view simply the negro--the four millions of negroes of untainted blood which now exist in our midst--it is reasonable to say that, fifty years hence, there would not be one that would speak his present language, that would be a Christian, that would retain his name, or any other thing whatever which he now possesses and has imitated from his masters. This may seem a startling declaration to many who live in daily contact with these people, while by those ignorant and deplorably deluded parties who fancy that they are engaged in a work of humanity when seeking to undo the work of the Almighty Creator, by turning black into white and the negro into a Caucasian, it will scarcely be understood; but it involves a truth that may be easily and plainly illustrated. A very large portion of our negroes are the children and grandchildren of those brought from Africa, and not a few, perhaps, were themselves brought in by the "slave trade," which it will be remembered was continued down to 1808.

Now of all these there probably is not one that can speak the language of his progenitors, not one that retains his African religion or the slightest relic of African history or tradition, not one with even an African name, and if they have thus rapidly lost all that they possessed of their own, that was original and specific, of course, if isolated from their masters, they would still more rapidly lose that which they have imitated from a superior race.

The instance already referred to, where hybridity was thus presented, was as follows:--The mule, as is well-known, is the offspring of the horse and ass. It does not, in its turn, reproduce itself, therefore the horse and ass were different species. Prichard and others applied this test, or marked this test, in the case of human beings, of whites and negroes, and proved by it that they were of the same species. It was seen that white men cohabited with negro women, and the offspring in turn, reproduced itself, and consequently that the parents were of the same species. Or, as this has passed as current coin hitherto, and seemed perfectly satisfactory, indeed wholly unanswerable to naturalists and men of science as well as others, it is best, perhaps, to place it in distinct and categorical terms before the reader. 1st. It is universally admitted by naturalists that incapacity in the offspring to reproduce itself demonstrates the different species of the progenitors, while, on the contrary, a capacity in the offspring to beget offspring in its turn demonstrates similarity of species in the progenitors. 2d. The mule, or the offspring of the horse and ass, does not reproduce itself, therefore the horse and ass are different species. 3d. The mulatto offspring of the white man and negro woman does beget offspring, therefore the white man and negro woman are of the same species.

Hybridity, as has been said, is not a unit, is not a fixed, uniform law or principle. A moment's consideration is sufficient to convince any intelligent mind of this truth. Each form of life has necessarily its own character, its own specific qualities, and the laws governing its reproductive powers must be in correspondence, and just as differently manifested as any of its specific qualities. To suppose that the laws of the phenomena governing the reproductive functions of the horse and ass are exactly similar to those manifested in the case of human beings, is as absurd as to suppose that the term of gestation, the length of life, the mode of their locomotion, or any other qualities--should be exactly the same in both cases. But nothing more need be said. It is perfectly obvious that the laws of reproduction must be radically different in the human creatures, and therefore the inference of Pritchard and others, that whites and negroes were of the same species, because the mulatto, unlike the mule, did reproduce itself, is simply absurd. But they were still further and still more vitally mistaken in respect to their assumptions of fact. The mulatto, literally speaking, or in the ordinary sense, does beget offspring, but mulattoism is as positively sterile as muleism. The phenomenon of hybridity is manifested, as has been stated, in conformity with the nature of the beings concerned, and as the human creatures are separated by an almost measureless as well as impassable distance from the horse and ass, the laws of hybridity are, of course, correspondingly different. Instead of a single generation, as in the animals referred to, sterility in the human creatures is embraced within four generations, where a boundary is arrived at as absolutely fixed and impassable as the single generation in the case of the former.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet