[163] “The smallest admixture of Negro blood, even though the subject be brought from a more northerly state, seems to be a potent antidote against the morbid poison.”—Nott, Southern Journal of Medicine, February, 1847. “The coloured people resisted the epidemic influence better than the whites; and, I believe I may hazard the observation, that their degree in resistance was in proportion to the admixture of white blood.”—Bryant, American Journal, April, 1856, p. 301. Compare Hirsch, Handbuch, § 36.
[164] See Mémoires de Médecine et de Chirurgie Militaire, November and December 1863; Société d’Anthropologie, meeting of 19th March, 1864.
[165] M. d’Eichthal, Lettres sur la Race noire, 1839, p. 15.
[166] [“The Arabs say that Mohammed, whilst on the road from Medina to Mecca, one day happened to see a widow woman sitting before her house, and asked how she and her three sons were; upon which the troubled woman (for she had concealed one of her sons on seeing Mohammed’s approach, lest he, as is customary when there are three males of a family present, should seize one and make him do porterage), said, ‘Very well; but I’ve only two sons!’ Mohammed, hearing this, said to the woman, reprovingly, ‘Woman, thou liest! thou hast three sons; and for trying to conceal this matter from me, henceforth remember that this is my decree,—that the two boys whom thou hast not concealed shall multiply and prosper, have fair faces, become wealthy, and reign lords over all the earth; but the progeny of your third son shall, in consequence of your having concealed him, produce seedis as black as darkness, who will be sold in the market like cattle, and remain in perpetual servitude to the descendants of the other two.’” This is the Arab theory of the Negro’s origin, mentioned in What led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, by J. H. Speke, p. 341, London, 1864.—Editor.]
[167] Othello, Act I, Scene 3. [Othello was, however, a Moor, not a Negro, and capable of a far higher delicacy of mental perceptions than the veritable “unbleached African.” Perhaps one of the most absurd theatrical errors was committed when the part of Othello was acted by a genuine Negro, Ira Aldridge.—Editor.]
[168] Edmond About, Le Progrès, 1864, p. 15.
[169] These are Negroes of whom he is speaking.
[170] “De l’Unité de l’Espèce Humaine,” Biblioth. Univ. de Genève, nouv. ser., vol. liv, p. 145, 1844.
[171] Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 59. Carus has observed, that among the remarkable Negroes mentioned by Blumenbach, not one of them was distinguished either in politics, literature, or in any high conception of art. Compare Gobineau, De l’Inégalité des Races Humaines, vol. i, p. 122, 1853.
[172] See De Maillet, Telliamed, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 187, Amsterdam, 1748. For want of those passages of the Korán to which he refers, we give the whole of Maillet’s remark on the subject:—“Mohammed was so struck with the difference between white and black men, that he did not hesitate to say, that God had made the first with white earth, and the latter with black. He did not imagine that men so different, not only in colour but in figure and inclination, could possibly be of one and the same origin. He observes, in another place, that although there have been prophets of all other nations, there was never one among the blacks; which shows that they have so little mind, that the gift of foresight,—the effect of natural wisdom, which has sometimes been honoured with the name of prophecy,—has never fallen to the lot of any of them.” This passage is, besides, remarkable; because this custom of prophecy seems to be a special attribute of the Semitic race (compare Renan, Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques, 8vo, p. 8, Paris, 1855), and Mohammed, in making this distinction, declared almost a specific characteristic. In the translation of the “Évangile de l’Enfance,” by G. Brunet (Evangiles Apocryphes, 12mo, Paris, 1849), there is this curious document (Jesus had just changed some children into rams in the sight of some women, who asked for their pardon), “The Lord Jesus having answered, that the children of Israel were, among other nations, like the Ethiopians; the women said,” etc. This is merely a proof of the contempt which overwhelmed this unhappy race in the east.