The number of species of this genus—the crowning ultimate of animated things—may, in the present condition of our knowledge, be very imperfectly, if at all, determined. But enough is known to give us, at least, seven varieties of men—the Mongolian, the Malay, the Australian, the Indian, the Arctic, the Negro and the Caucasian—whose divisions are as well marked as the divisions which separate the spaniel from the hound, the tiger from the leopard, or the panther from the cat. Their variances are all diversified, are physical, mental and instinctive, and creative of different wants, so that as one spaniel seeks the water while another shuns it, so do the various species of men require different rules and forms, privileges and restrictions, for the regulation of their aggregation in associated life.
The American Indian shuns the cultivated field and populous city, and clings to his native forest. There, though his fare be humble, all the other wants of his nature are best supplied. Thus do his instincts act to their end. He finds a restraint in civilization which drives him to the forest, as heat drives the whale and the walrus to polar seas. This instinct is the opposite of the Caucasian’s, and, as a consequence, points to a specific line. It is fundamental in nature, and there must forever remain. Could it be overcome, the vast tribes who once occupied our country would not now be numbered with the past, but would be with us still in the character of civilized men.
Instincts mark the specific divisions with unerring certainty, but mentalities are equally patent to the observing mind. The Indian’s instinct contents him with his wigwam, but look to the outshoots of his mentality, and you will find the division between him and the Caucasian equally marked and legible. His man-of-war is a bark canoe; his artillery, a bow and arrow; and his capitol of state, the limbs of the forest which overhang the smoldering fire around which his chiefs assemble in council. What but an inferiority of mentality, coupled with a peculiarity of instinct, divides him thus from the loftier outshoots of the Caucasian mind? And as the division is fundamental, why is it not specific?
The Malay alone runs a muck. Why does he do so, if there be not implanted in his nature a latent madness which belongs to no other division of man? And as it so exists as a peculiarity, does it not mark a specific division as effectually as does the scent of one hound divide him from the sighting proclivities of another?
But let us not linger in discussion on either the Indian or Malay nature; but, in the emergency of time, turn to that division of man, which, with reference to your long and unceasing disquisitions, has been termed, and by no means inappropriately, the “Eternal Negro.”
He is the opposite of the white man in color, and, as we shall presently see, alike so in instinct and turn of mind. He also differs from the Indian, for, unlike him, he does not seek an exclusive independence, but inclines to the presence of his opposite race—the white man. He seeks it by choice, and wheresoever found with it, no matter what may be his condition before the law, equal or unequal, he will be found menial and of secondary rank. He will brush his hair, groom his horse, wait on his stables, dust his coat, and black his boots, and when held as a slave, will value himself, not by his own, but by his master’s worth. Why is this so, if nature does not give the disposition?
His brain is from ten to fifteen per cent. smaller than the Caucasian’s, and, at the same time, darker colored and differently disposed. His back brain, or cerebellum, is comparatively larger, while his fore brain, or cerebrum, the organ of thought, is much smaller. Thus is he inferior as well as differently molded in the organ of mind. Why, then, is he not below the white man in the scale of being, and designed by nature for a secondary rank in the great work assigned to man of “subduing the world?”
He is inferior as a mental being. But though less endowed in one particular, is higher favored in another; for, while his brain is smaller, his nervous system is larger, and, as a consequence, stronger. This gives him power where the white man not unfrequently fails. But it is a power which comes with greatest adaptability to his condition as a slave: for it fortifies him against the wounds of reproof, and aids his inferior mentality in overcoming the sting of degradation under which the white man pines when subjected to the lash.
Other properties of a defensive nature pertain to him in a similar way. He shows his keeping as does a horse, an ox or an ass. If he be well fed, he will be sleek, black, and glossy; but if ill fed, he will be of a dull, dirty or ashy color. Thus is he defended, for in this peculiarity of his nature is there a secret monitor telling the world of a master’s care or of a master’s neglect.
But returning from properties to structure, we find his feet larger and flatter than the white man’s, his arms longer, his head rounder, his lips thicker, his nose flatter, and his eyes smaller; and what is equally a mark of specific nature, we find his eyes and his hair, with its kinks, always of the same color—invariably black. These are marks of his being. But in descending the stream of reproduction, an even more important peculiarity is displayed in transmission. All of his offspring partake, in exact proportions, of these general characteristics. They are all black eyed and black haired—rigidly so fixed in nature. But no such uniformity follows the reproduction of the white man. On the contrary, his children are never exact copies of himself, nor, like beans, fac-similes of one another, but vary throughout—in the color of their hair and their eyes, and in the different shades and tinges of their complexions.