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PROOF OF NEGRO INFERIORITY

 

 

PROOF OF NEGRO INFERIORITY

By: Alexander Winchell, L. L. D.

THE theory of the Hamitic origin of Negroes, Hottentots, Australians and Papuans implies that four races out of seven have experienced a degeneracy. This sweeping backward movement of the work of an all-wise and all-beneficent Creator is appalling to contemplate; and it is not surprising that theorists have existed who could deny the inferiority of these races with the same naivete as any other indisputable fact of observation. Judging from intercourse with friends of the Negro, of the noisy and denunciatory stamp, I should think a large body of "philanthropists " must exist who maintain that it is mere lack of opportunity which causes the Negro to seem inferior to the white man. "Consider how, for two hundred years, he has dwelt in bondage; see him worked, late and early, in all weathers; sheltered, like stock, in inclosures too open for comfort or health, and subsisted on 'sides' and potatoes from January to December. The laws have even made it a crime to teach him to read a newspaper, or the Holy Bible. Think of the hardships which he has endured, and judge whether they are not sufficient to have crushed all intelligence and moral principle and manly spirit cut of a human being."

But, my good friend, I was not proposing to discourse of the Negroes of the 'United States. I am thinking of Africa, the continental home of the Negro. Yet, since the American Negro is suggested, allow me 'to inquire how far the Negro has descended below his native condition by being brought into contact with American civilization? Has he been sheltered in a more storm-riddled hut, or clothed in scantier attire, or subsisted on a leaner diet? Or has he associated with more degraded savages, or learned to practice a more superstitious worship, or been deprived of a more cultivated society?

The Negro, perhaps, is not, in America, what he would have been if left to his own mastery in the midst of civilized society. The condition of the northern Negro will settle this question. But has he not made more progress than his countrymen who were left behind? Can we appeal to the oppression of the American Negro as an apology for the condition of the Negro on the banks of the Senegal and the Congo?

The Israelites were in "the house of bondage" two hundred and sixteen years; and it is not supposable that bondage in the rude infancy of the world, and in heathen Egypt, was less depressing than bondage during the last two centuries in a Christian country. But were the Israelites ever reduced to the mental and moral condition of the Negro? The literature, laws and religion of the Mosaic period will supply the answer.

That the Negro race is an inferior race I shall show by an appeal to anatomical, physiological, psychical and historical facts. I have already pointed out the salient characteristics of the Negro race. Let me advert to those which establish his inferiority. Capacity of cranium is universally recognized as a criterion of psychic power.* No fact is better established than the... "The inferior races hare a less capacity than the superior. The cranial capacity seems to vary according to intellectual endowment." (Topinard, ANTHROPOLOGY, p. 229. general relation of intellect to weight of brain. Welker has shown that the brains of twenty-six men of high intellectual rank surpassed the average weight by fourteen per cent. Of course quality of brain is an equally important factor; and hence not a few men with brains even below the average have distinguished themselves for scholarship or executive ability. The Noachites at large possess a mean capacity of 1500 cubic centimeters. The capacity among the Mongoloids is 1450+ cubic centimeters; among the Negroes, 1360 cubic centimeters, and among the Australians 1276 cubic centimeters. The Noachites surpass the Negro 126 cubic centimeters, or 16 & one-half per cent. Assuming 100 as the average capacity of the Australian skull, that of the Negro is 111.6, and that of the Teuton 124.3"

In respect to the cephalic index, or form of the skull in a horizontal projection, we find that all the lower races are dolichocephalic, and all the higher races are mesocephalic or brachycephalic. The index, for instance, among the Noachites, ranges +from 75 to 83; among the Mongoloids, from 71 to 90; among the Negroes, from 69 to 76; and among the Australians, from 71 to 71.5. The broadest Negro skull does not reach the average of the Germans; nor does the best Australian skull reach the average of the Negro. Mean relative breadth of skull is found to be associated with executive ability.

Among Whites, the relative abundance of "crossheads" having permanently unclosed the longitudinal and transverse sutures on the top of the head is one in seven; among Mongolians, it is one in thirteen; among Negroes, it is one in fifty-two. This peculiarity is supposed by some to favor the prolonged development of the brain. In any event, it is most frequent in the highest races. This completer development of the osseous tissues in the Negro cranium is probably related to that density and thickness of ossification which enables the Negro, both male and female, to fight by means of butting; and to support hard objects and great weights on the top of the head.

The amount of prognathism is another marked criterion of organic rank. One method of expressing this is by means of auricular radii, or distances from the opening of the ear to the roots of the upper teeth1 and to other parts of the head. Among Europeans, the distance to the base of the upper incisors is 99, but among Negroes, it averages 114. On the contrary, the average distance to the top of the head is, among Europeans, 112; but among Negroes, 110. The distance to the upper edge of the occipital bone is, among Europeans, 104; among Negroes, 104. These measurements prove that the Negro possesses more face and particularly of jaws, and less brain above. Other measurements furnish a similar result; and show, also, that the development of the posterior brain, in relation to the anterior, is greater in the Negro. Prognathism is otherwise expressed by means of the "facial angle,11 or general slope the face from the forehead to the jaws, when compared with a horizontal plane. Among the Noachites, the facial line is nearest perpendicular, giving an angle of 770 to 810. Among the Negroes, it averages only 670; among the Hottentots and Bushmen, 600, and among the Australians, 680.

Among Negroes the forearm is longer, in proportion to the arm, than is the case with Whites. The same is true of anthropoid apes. The Negro's arm, when suspended by the side, reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is only four and three-eighths per cent of the whole length of the body. The white man's arm reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is seven and one-half per cent of the whole length of the body. This length of arm is again a quadrumanous characteristic. The Negro pelvis averages but 26 and one-half inches in circumference; that of the White race is 33 inches. In the Negro it is more inclined, which is another quadrumanous character. It is also more narrow and elongated; and this, as Vrolik and Weber have suggested, corresponds to the dolichocephalous head.

I present here views of the skeletons of an Adamite and of a Chimpanzee. Their contrasts are apparent at a glance. In every particular in which the skeleton of the Negro departs from that of the Adamite, it is INTERMEDIATE between that and the skeleton of the Chimpanzee.

illustration: two skeletons I

The average weight of the European brain, 'males and females, is 1340 grammes; that of the Negro is 1173; of the Hottentot. 974, and of the Australian, 907. The significance of these comparisons appears when we learn that Broca, the most eminent of French anthropologists, states that when the

European brain falls below 978 grammes (mean of males and females), the result is idiocy. In this opinion Thurman coincides. The color of the Negro brain is darker than that of the White, and its density and texture are inferior. The convolutions are fewer and more simple, and, as Agassiz and others long ago pointed out, approximate those of the Quadrumana. According to H. de Serres, the brain of the Caucasian, during embryonic development, presents in Succession the conformations seen in the Negro, the Malay, the American and the Caucasian. This statement rests on excellent authority, but I am not aware that it has been confirmed. Its significance is apparent, in view of the established principle in physiology, that the embryonic characters in any vertebrate resemble the adult characters of other vertebrates lower in rank. Again, the retreating contour of the chin, as compared with the European, approximates the Negro to the prehistoric jaw of La Naulette, and to the Chimpanzee and lower mammals. Finally, the slenderness of the Negro arms and legs is also quadrumanous. This character is still more striking in the structure of the Australians.

In activity and capacity for prolonged and intense effort, the Negro is notably inferior. This point, however, has been sufficiently presented.

Psychically, I have spoken of the Negro to considerable extent. In brief, he possesses a strong curiosity to gaze upon new sights, or even familiar ones; but it is the curiosity of the child; he has a feeble power of combining his perceptions and drawing conclusions. In abstract conceptions he is still more helpless; no American Negro has ever produced any original work in mathematics or philosophy; the imaginative and aesthetic powers are similarly dormant; poetry, sculpture, painting, owe almost nothing to Negro genius. "Never yet," says President Jefferson, "could I find that a black has uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw an elementary trait of painting or sculpture."*

* Jefferson, NOTES ON VIRGINIA.

In reference to this, Mr. James Parton says: "We cannot fairly deny that facts give support to the opinion of an inherent mental inferiority. It is ninety years since Jefferson published his 'Notes,' and we cannot yet name one Negro of pure blood who has taken the first, the second, the third or the tenth rank, in business, politics, art, literature, scholarship, science or philosophy. To the present hour, the Negro has contributed nothing to the intellectual resources of man. If he turns 'Negro minstrel,' he still imitates the white creators of that black art; and he has not composed one of the airs that have had popular success as Negro melodies.

These statements require slight qualification Phillis Wheatley is said to have been a Negro poetess a hundred years ago, but her poetry, Parton says, was very inferior. She is not mentioned in Tyler's History of American Literature, which, however, ends for the present with 1765. I am not informed respecting the purity of her racial character. Miss Edmondia Lewis is a sculptress of considerable merit, but I am informed that she has the benefit of about fifty per cent of Caucasian blood. It is also true that some of the more gifted Negroes possess a wonderful power of emotional eloquence, but I suspect that in all these cases some infusion of Caucasian blood exists, as in the case of the highly respected marshal of the District of Columbia, and one or two colored members of congress, and also a few colored pulpit orators. Nevertheless such qualifications do not invalidate the statement that "pure African blood, even under the influence of Caucasian civilization, has never achieved any valuable results in the realm of art." These statements have been made in reference to the American-born Negro. It is more appropriate to turn our attention to the Negro in his native haunts.   The physical aspect of many native Africans gives them, beyond question, a decidedly beastly look.

This has been remarked again and again. Professor Wyman says: "It cannot be denied, however wide the separation, that the Negro and Orang do afford the points where man and the brute, when the totality of their Organization is considered, most nearly approach each other." Here is Savage and Wyman, "Troglodytes Corilla," BOSTON JOURNAL OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1847, p. 27.

"Cuvier's description of the Bojesman woman, known as the "Hottentot Venus" who died in Paris on the 29th of December, 1815, and whose life-size figure I have examined in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes: "She had a way of pouting her lips," he says, "exactly like that we have observed in the Orang-Outang. Her movements had something abrupt and fantastical about them, reminding one of those of the ape. Her lips were monstrously large; her ear was like that of many apes, being small, the tragus weak, and the external border almost obliterated behind. These," he says, after having described the bones of the skeleton, "are animal characters." Again, "I have never seen a human head more like an ape than that of this woman." In reference to the fatty protuberances of the haunches, he says: "They offer a striking resemblance to those which exist in the females of the mandrill, the papions, etc., and which assume, at certain epochs of their life, an enlargement truly monstrous." And yet Cuvier was the champion of the opposers of Lamarck, who thought he saw a genetic, as well as a physiognomic and osteologic relation between this woman and the Quadrumana. Here, again, is Topinard's description of the Hottentot physiognomy: "The nose is frightfully broad and flat, the nostrils are thick, very divergent and exposed. Their prognathism is generally enormous, though it varies. The mouth is large, with thick, projecting and turned up lips."

The following is Lichtenstein's description of a Bojesman (Bushman) : "One of our present guests who appeared about fifty years of age, who had gray hair and a bristly beard, whose forehead, nose, cheeks and chin were all smeared with black grease, having only a white circle round the eye, washed clean with the tears occasioned by smoking - this man had the true physiognomy of the small blue ape of Caffraria. What gave the more verity to such a comparison, was the vivacity of his eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows, which he worked up and down with every change of countenance. Even his nostrils, and the corners of his mouth, nay, his very ears, moved involuntarily, expressing his hasty transitions from eager desire to watchful distrust. There was not, on the contrary a single feature in his countenance that evinced a consciousness of mental powers, or anything that denoted emotions of the mind of a milder species than what belong to man in his mere animal nature. When a piece of meat was given him, and, half rising, he stretched out a distrustful arm to take it, he snatched it hastily, and stuck it immediately into the tire, peering around with his little keen eyes, as if fearing lest some one should take it away again. All this was done with such looks and gestures that any one must have been ready to swear he had taken the example of them entirely from the ape. He soon took the meat from the embers, wiped it hastily with his right hand upon his left arm, and tore out large half-raw bits with his teeth, which I could see going entire down his meager throat.

The comparisons made between Africans and Quadrumana must not be understood as intended to imply human descent from Quadrumana. Entirely apart from questions of blood relationship, the morphological and physiognomical resemblances exist; and they are cited for the purpose of showing that, just as far as the African diverges from the style of a white man, he approximates the lower animals.

* Lichtenstein. TRAVELS IN SOUTH AFRJCA, Vol. II, p. 224.

I have thus far confined myself chiefly to points of inferiority inherent in Negro and Hottentot personality. Let us turn to history, and consider the nature of the results which have proceeded from four thousand years of Negro existence and activity. We are apprised, from the Egyptian monuments, that the Negro was In existence at least as early as the Sixth Dynasty; which, according to Lepsius, was 2967 B.C., and according to Strong 2080 B.C. At that date his race was numerous enough to be the object of hostile expeditions from Egypt; and powerful enough to confer honor upon conquest over him. The Negro race has consequently had national existence in Africa from 4000 to 5000 years. What has it accomplished? It has never yet invented an alphabet (1) by which the fugitive vocalizations of its lips could be fixed in a permanent record. It has not preserved one sentence of the history of four thousand years. It has written neither science, philosophy nor poetry. It has created neither. It has left us none of the productions of fine art. (2) It has developed only some of the simplest of the useful arts. (3) it has built no cities; erected no durable monuments; excavated no canals; transformed no topography, nor removed any natural obstacles to...

1 Unless the Veys, closely related to the Mandingoes, can be regarded as full-blooded.

2 The Bushmen are said to have painted the cliffs, from the Cape of Good Hope to beyond the Orange river, with figures of men and animals, in red, bronze, white and black colors; or etched them in light tints on a dark ground. These are said to have been done with great firmness of hand; and copies of them show a fidelity to nature equal to some of the Egyptian delineations.

3 The Fantis on the Gold Coast, under European tuition, have made considerable progress in manufactures, and in learning to read and write (English). One or two of the Congo tribes is said to have acquired the art of ship building. the efficient cultivation of the soil. It has organized only the rudest civil societies; and has often marked the administration of authority by oppression, cruelty and bloodshed. It has sold its own blood and flesh into slavery, and made a commerce of human merchandise. (1) it has organized no religious associations, nor risen, generally, in the practice of religious worship, above the grade of dancing, divination, idolatry and fetichism. It has founded no benevolent asylums, nor formed any charitable associations. Its life has been a continuous scene of personal self-seeking and public administration of the rule of brute force. It has been a struggle - to judge of the past from the present - whose constant aim was material comfort and bodily gratification.

There have been organized communities and seats of justice and judgment: but these, in every instance, are the fruits of Caucasian blood. There have been maternal devotion and filial love; but these, however beautiful and admirable, are only nature's indispensable provisions for the material well-being of the race. (2)

1 "Dahomey may perhaps claim the evil fame of being the most savage and cruel organized government on the face of the earth." Brace, RACES OF THE OLD WORLD, p. 272.

2 Of the Mandingoes, however, it is stated by Brace (RACE, OF THE OLD WORLD, p. 267): "They possess well-ordered governments and public schools; their leading men can all read and write (the Arabic); agriculture has been carefully pursued by them; and in manufactures, they are very skillful in weaving and dyeing cloth, and tanning leather, and working up iron into various instruments. Their merchants are very enterprising and industrious, and exercise great influence through northern Africa.

In religion, the Mandingoes are zealous Mohammedans, though a few hold to the old pagan belief." They are described as having "a deep black color, woolly hair, thick lips, broad, flat nose and tall powerful frame, and a similar force of temperament and character." It is not impossible that exception should be made of this great nation. But their religion and language imply close connection with Semites. They have, themselves, a tradition that they were derived from Egypt, and M. D'Eichthal has presented many analogies between their language and the Coptic. All the west coast tribes, it may be added, have been long under the influence of intercourse with Europeans. Such are the Mandingoes, Fantis and Ashantis, as well as the Kaffirs and Bechuanas of the south. The interior tribes, remaining in a state of isolation from foreign aid, have failed totally to attain even the lowest grade of civilization. The remarkable King Mtesa, of the Uganda, having his capital near the northern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, is highly eulogized by Stanley, and deservedly so - (THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT, Vol. I, chapters ix and xi); but he and his subjects are of a dark red-brown complexion, and are described in terms which do not apply to Negroes. They seem closely related to the Fulah and Nuba, and are undoubtedly a hybrid stock.

It cannot be said that this almost universal backwardness in all individual and social advances based on Intelligence, is attributable to unfavorable circumstances. The conditions of civilization have been favorable. I doubt if it can be shown that any other continental area has been blessed with climate soil, topography, and other adjuvants, equally favorable for human progress. The climate ranges from the warm temperate of the north to the warm temperate of the south: It has an equal distribution of the sun's annual heat over the parts lying north and south of the central line. No portion of the continent is given over to eternal frosts nor insufferable seasons. The genial sky spares its forethought, labor and time of provision against severe and protracted winters. Over most of the continent, rains are adequate in supply and in distribution through the year. The vast interior, including nearly all south of the Sahara, is an undulating plateau, averaging 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea level, with numerous mountain ranges attaining 10,000 to 16,000 feet. The tropical climate is, therefore, fairly attempered to human endurance certainly to Negro endurance. Only the Sahara and Nubian portions suffer from intense heat. The climates are also salubrious, save portions of the low borders, especially on the west coast. Salt is plentifully distributed, with local exceptions.

Copper exists in large quantities in the center of South Africa, and iron is more widely known. Diamonds are abundant in the district of the Vaal and Orange rivers, north of Cape Colony. Abundance of forest growths cover much of the interior; and farther from the equatorial line fine parks and pasture lands invite the presence of agriculture and herding. Great rivers drain the continent, which, after the passage of the falls, which occur on the borders of the great plateau, furnish navigable channels of communication between all parts of the productive interior. The navigable river and lake system is unsurpassed in extent by that of any country in the world. The mixed races have utilized these advantages to considerable extent. The delta of the Niger is much more extensive than that of the Nile. The Congo - the Mississippi of Africa - is from one to three miles in diameter, and discharges 2,000,000 cubic feet of water per second. The great lakes Victoria and Albert cover each about 30,000 square miles. Many other lakes of fresh water exist, which add to the resources of the interior, in the same manner as the great lakes of North America. The considerable elevation of these lakes, and the discharge of vast volume of water, must supply to the regions between them and the sea level a surprising amount of water-power.

The native productions of Africa, suited to the wants of man, are quite numerous. The date palm thrives throughout all the desert regions, wherever a moderate supply of water can be had. It furnishes the bread of the desert, and supports not only man, but camel and horse. Wine is produced from the sap. South of the Soudan, the Eaobab or monkey-breakfast takes the place of the date. Here abounds, also, the oil palm. Other vegetable resources of the continent are the doom-palm and the butter-tree. There are two native cereals, Negro millet and Kaffir-corn, which supply farinaceous food. There are also the edible bread-roots and earth-nuts, which are adequate to supply the daily food of whole villages. Moreover, for thousands of years the way has been open as wide as the continent, for the introduction of the cereals of Asia. These, indeed, are not entirely unknown to the natives; and maize, the manioc root and sugar cane, have been introduced from America by Europeans, and have begun to spread toward the interior.

The domesticable and useful animals of Africa are not inconsiderable in number. Perhaps the ninety-four species of Quadrumana peculiar to Africa are more noisy and curious than useful. The continent is well stocked with fur-bearing animals, whose skins, If not needed by the natives, would be valuable for export. The quagga and the mountain zebra represent the horse family in the southern parts; while Burchell's zebra is widely scattered over the plains as far as Abyssinia and the west coast; and the aboriginal wild ass is indigenous to northeastern Africa. The domestic horse has not been introduced into inter-tropical Africa. The single-humped camel, or dromedary, is employed over all north Africa; and the Indian buffalo has also been introduced in the north. Other native bovine and ovine species are extensively distributed, while Africa is the peculiar country of the antelope and the giraffe. Lastly, the African elephant ranges abundantly from Cape Colony throughout central Africa; but, strange to say, it has never been, like the Indian elephant, domesticated. The only gallinaceous bird is the guinea-fowl, but this exists in great abundance; and partridges and quails are distributed over most parts of the continent. *

It is pertinent to inquire if such a continent, so outfitted with resources for food, clothing, transportation, intercommunication and commerce, is a situation suited to cramp the manhood of an indigenous race. Are these the conditions under which the grade of humanity would sink from the level of Adam and Noah to that of a naked black-skin, driveling in filth and wretchedness on the banks of the Congo or the Zambesi; while under the climatic vicissitudes of western Asia and Europe, the same type has risen perpetually through all grades of advancing civilization? The indigenous African has nowhere taken more than the first steps toward civilization. Some...

* Mr. Henry M. Stanley has given a catalogue of articles observed by himself in one of the common markets of southern central Africa. It was at Nyangwe on the upper Lualaba. The following is the list: "Sweet potatoes, yams, maize, sesamum, millet, beans, cucumbers, melons, cassava, ground-nuts, bananas, sugar-cane, pepper (in berries), vegetables for broths, wild fruit, palm butter, oil palm nuts, pine-apples, honey, eggs, fowls, black pigs, goats, sheep, parrots, palm-wine, pombe (beer), mussels and oysters from the river fresh fish, dried fish, white bait, snails (dried), salt, white ants, grasshoppers, tobacco (dried leaf), pipes, fishing nets, basket work, cassava-bread, cassava-flour, copper bracelets, iron wire, iron knobs, hoes, spears, bows and arrows, hatchets, rattan cane staves, stools, crockery, powdered camwood grass cloths, grass mats, fuel, ivory, slaves.~ Here is a list which might satisfy the wants even of the luxurious. It is true that many of these articles have originated in the superior knowledge of the Arabs, who hold intercourse with the lake region; but all the vegetable and animal productions are reared in the country, and nearly all are indigenous (Stanley, THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT, Vol. II, chap. iv.)

...of the tribes have, indeed, learned the art of producing iron; but it is the greater wonder that they have not discovered in it the resources of civilization. It has been said the African elephant is incapable of domestication; but its close affinity with the Asiatic species renders the statement incredible. Indeed the conviction already exists in south Africa that it is "equally well adapted for labor and there can be no doubt, would be as easily tamed as his Indian congener. That this is the case, is amply proved by the docile and submissive state into which both male and female elephants have been brought in zoblogical gardens and menageries.* Nor have any of the equine species been domesticated. Some domesticated animals introduced from Asia are known to the most advanced Africans, but no native species has ever been domesticated.

In America, under conditions certainly no more favorable, a semi-civilization had grown up indigenously. The only cereal native to America is maize, and until the occupation by Europeans no Asiatic cereal was accessible. The principal edible roots of America are the mandioca and the potato, while the feeble llama, and vicuna are the only native animals capable of domestication as beasts of burden. These have been utilized from time immemorial. In contrast with Africa, the civilization of the Nahuati nations of Mexico, the Quiches of central America, the Mayas of Yucatan, and the Quichuas of Peru, had become, both in respect to intellectual and industrial advances, and judicial, moral and religious conceptions, almost a stage of true enlightenment. Our wonder at the stationary savagism of virgin...

* NATURE, No. 478, Nov. 21, 1878, p. 54, referring to The Colonies and India, of Nov. 2.

Africa is greatly enhanced when we reflect on the relations of civilized peoples to that continent. Ever since the dawn of Accadian civilization in western Asia an open highway of communication has existed between the continents - not to speak of actual communications across the strait of Babel-Mandeb. More than this, Asiatic civilization entered Africa, and spread itself over the valley of the Nile and the Mediterranean border, at a period so remote as to be obscured by the twilight of human history. It brought with it the cereals and finally the domesticated animals of Asia. It introduced the arts of industry and the rudiments of the sciences. It established a religious cult which was monotheistic, and remarkably pure and elevated. It opened commercial intercourse, not only with Arabia, Palestine and Babylonia, but with the tribes of the upper Nile and the Libyan region. It engaged in extensive mining operations, not only in the Sinaic peninsula, but in the far southern countries of the Nahsi (Negroes). It worked quarries of limestone and granite on an enormous scale. It tilled the soil in the presence of the most forbidding obstacles to be found in habitable Africa It sent warlike expeditions not only into Asia Minor and Assyro-Babylonia, but into Nubian Ethiopia; and even the armies of a civilized people inevitably sow the germs of civilization among barbarians. The Negroes have been in contact with these people for 4000 years, and save through infusion of blood they have not yet learned the first lesson in civilization.

Are these the people whom adverse circumstances have crushed from the grade of Adamic civilizability, and forbidden to rise, even while the hands of Egypt and Libya, and Assyria and Arabia were outstretched to lift them up? The thought is inadmissible. Constitutional, aboriginal, deep-seated incapacity is the only explanation of these amazing phenomena.

We may further contrast the immobility of the Negroes in conflict with civilization, with the facile and eager improvement of the once savage and anthropophagous Maories of New Zealand. The Maories belong to a type sometimes distinguished as Polynesian, It is perhaps a hybrid of Malay and Papuan; they reached their islands about 1400 A.D., and the English took possession in 1769. In 1853 they had made such advancement that Governor Sir George Grey reported that '1both races already form one harmonious community, connected by commercial and agricultural pursuits, possessing the same faith, resorting to the same courts of justice, joining in the same public sports, standing mutually and indifferently to each other in the relation of landlord and tenant, and thus, insensibly, forming one people." Mr. Edwin Norris says: "They now (1855) vie with Englishmen in many of their pursuits; they are expert riders, and breeders of horses; they understand perfectly how to make a bargain; they erect buildings, cultivate land, and form good roads far beyond the limits of the English settlements.

The more opulent among them become ship-owners, landlords and millers, the latter being especially a favorite occupation; the poorer people make roads, till the ground, tend cattle, build houses and ships, fish for whales, and navigate ships generally. According to good authority, the most regular, clean and orderly of all the coasting vessels plying between Auckland and the Bay of Islands, is owned and manned wholly by natives, and is preferred by the public, as a conveyance for passengers, before all others. They resort readily to the English law courts, becoming even annoyingly litigious, and their favorite conversation is said to be 'religious and political discussion, and the general news of the day.'" * Yet even the Maories are described as quite inferior, intellectually, to Englishmen. I need only refer to the familiar history of the Sandwich Islands to further enforce the significance of the comparison. In fact, all Polynesia is fairly represented by these examples.

It would be proper to raise the question whether the Negro is capable of appreciating, desiring and conserving the benefits of civilization. The inertia of the Negro in a state of servitude; his scarcely improved condition, and certain diminution in numbers, since enfranchisement in the United States; his political and social career in Hayti 2; his massacre of the agents, and destruction of the agencies of civilization in St Thomas; his helplessly subordinate station in the northern states of our Union and in Canada; his indifference to the benefits of civilization in Liberia 3; the persistent vitality of Voudouism among American Negroes, in the close environment of a high civilization, and the Negro's facile relapses, as in the Congo nation,

* Edwin Norris, in Prichard's NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN, II, p. 453-4! 4th ed. See also Sir George Grey, POEMS, TRADITIONS AND CHANTS OF THE MAORIES, Wellington, 1853; Arthur S. Thomson, THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND, 2 vols., London, 1859.

2 "The stagnant condition of the West Indian colonies since the emancipation of the Negro, and the commercial descent of Hayti since it became an independent Negro state, evidence the tendency of that race not merely to suspend progress, but also to relapse into their barbarous habits of apathy and indolence." (McCausland, ADAM AND THE ADAMITE, pp. 73-74.)

3 "The history of that colony [Liberia] does not justify bright expectations of its future." (Dr. 0. P: Fitzgerald, in NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, Jan. 18, 1879, p. 8).

into a state of abject barbarism, as soon as the props of foreign aid are removed, constitute a set of facts for grave reflection. If the Negro is constitutionally incapable of availing himself of Caucasian civilization, how many lives shall we sacrifice, and how marry millions shall we lavish, in attempts to foist it upon him?

I hope I shall not be set down as unfriendly to the Negro. Should any person deem me so, I extend to him all the pity deserved by ignorance and error. I shall not feel hurt. I have no special occasion for unfriendliness toward the Negro. The world would be better if he were an efficient factor in enlightened humanity. The country would be better if he were an elevating and progressive influence instead of a depressing and barbarizing one. I should like to see him capable of coping with his white rival,

or at least of profiting by his example and aid. I will do all possible to make him so; but the work must be prosecuted with a clear view of the facts; we defeat the end by proceeding blindfolded. I am not responsible for the inferiority which I discover existing; I am only contemplating a range of facts which seems to prove such inferiority. I am responsible if I ignore the facts and their teaching, and act toward the Negro as if he were capable of all the responsibilities of the White race. I am responsible, if I grant him privileges which he can only pervert to his detriment and mine; or impose upon him duties which he is incompetent to perform, or even to understand.

The similar inferiority of other Black races it would not be difficult to prove. The measurements already given show the Australian to possess an organism quite inferior to that of the Negro. In intelligence he is said to be so low as to be unable to count over four or five.

Of the Aetas of the Philippines De la Geronniere says that they gave him the impression of being a great family of monkeys; their voices recalled the short cry of these animals, and their movements strengthened the analogy. Buchner says that the toes of these savages, who live partly in grottoes, partly on trees, are " very mobile, and more separated than ours, especially the great toe. They use them in maintaining themselves on branches and cords, as with fingers.9! According to Buchner, the language of

the savages of Borneo is rather a kind of warbling or croaking than a truly human mode of expression.'1 The Veddahs of Ceylon, says Sir Emerson Tennant, communicate among themselves almost entirely by means of signs, grimaces, guttural sounds, resembling very little true words or true language." "The Dokos of Abyssinia," according to Krapf, "are human pygmies; they are not more than four feet high; their skin is of an olive brown. Wanderers in the woods, they live like animals, without habitations, without sacred trees, etc. They go naked, nourishing themselves by roots, fruit, mice, serpents, ants, honey; they climb trees like monkeys. Without chief, without law, without arms, without marriage, they