With you to take their parts in earthly feasts,
With you to climb one heaven and sit immortal guests.
Statius, Thebaïd, tr. Kennett, Lib. XI.
I was fully convinced, that, whatever difference there is between the Negro and European in the conformation of the nose and the color of the skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of our common nature.—Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, (London, 1816,) Vol. I. p. 80, Ch. 6.
The word Man is thought to carry somewhat of dignity in its sound; and we commonly make use of this, as the last and the most prevailing argument against a rude insulter, “I am not a beast, a dog, but I am a Man as well as yourself.” Since, then, human nature agrees equally to all persons, and since no one can live a sociable life with another who does not own and respect him as a Man, it follows, as a command of the Law of Nature, that every man esteem and treat another as one who is naturally his equal, or who is a Man as well as he.—Pufendorf, Law of Nature and Nations, tr. Kennett, Book III., Ch. 2, § 1.
Carrying his solicitude still farther, Charlemagne recommended to the bishops and abbots, that, in their schools, “they should take care to make no difference between the sons of serfs and of freemen, so that they might come and sit on the same benches to study grammar, music, and arithmetic.”—Guizot, History of France, tr. Black, (London, 1872,) Vol. I. p. 239.