Studies on Slavery, in Easy Lessons

by John Fletcher

It is a great popular error to suppose all of our own species to be born equals. It involves the proposition that each one also possesses the same faculties and powers, and to the same extent. Even every well-informed nursery-maid is furnished with a good refutation. The grades of physical development are proofs of grades of mind.

Through the whole animal world, as with man, mental action takes place, providing for the sustenance and security of life; and the amount of mental power each one possesses is ever in proportion to the development of the nervous system and animal structure. Upon this earth, the highest grade of such development is found among the Caucasian species of man. Physiologists assert that the African exhibits, in maturity, the imperfect brain &c. of a Caucasian fœtus some considerable time before its birth: so the Malay and Indian, the same at a period nearer birth; while the Mongolian, that of the infant lately born. See Lloyd’s Popular Physiology. The beard, among men the attribute of a full maturity, largest in the Caucasian, is scarcely found among the lower grades of the African.

Colour is also found darkest where the development is the least perfect, and the most distant from the Caucasian; and hence a philosopher of great learning makes the question pertinent, “May not colour then depend on development also? Development being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the negro, the skin may take on the colour as an unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization.” The different species and all the varieties of man are nothing but a short history of their different grades of organization and development. One fraction, by a long and more or less strict observance of the laws of nature, becomes, after many generations, quite improved in its organization. From an opposite course, another fraction has degenerated and sunk into degradation. It is now a well-known fact that Caucasian parents too nearly related exhibit offspring of the Mongolian type. So, a particular tribe of Arabs, now on the banks of the Jordan, from an in-and-in propagation have become scarcely to be distinguished from Negroes. This is only an instance, but is important when we notice the deteriorating influence such intercourse has among domestic animals. In short, every breach of the laws tending to the path of progressive improvement must have a deteriorating effect on the offspring. There was truth in the ancient adage, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

Every private habit and circumstance in life that enervates or deranges the physical system, or disturbs the balance of the mind, stamps its impress on the descendant. The moral and physical condition of the progeny, with slight exceptions the result of an elevating and upward movement, or a downward and deteriorating one, (as the case may be,) is the necessary result of the moral and physical condition of the parentage: and this influence is doubtless felt back for many generations.

But does God make man wicked? does he predestine to evil? These queries may seem pertinent to some, because we are in the habit of considering each individual by itself; whereas each individual is only a link in the chain of phenomena, which owe their existence to laws productive of good, and even of progressive improvement, but of necessity, in their breach, admit these evils, because such breach is sin. Our moral faculties are permitted to range in a wide field; but evil is the result of a disruption of the rules of action. It is the flaming sword elevated to guard our good, showing us the awful truth, the mere bad habit in the parent may become a constitutional inherent quality in the off spring.

We do not suppose these influences always very perceptibly immediate. Many generations are doubtless often required in the full development of an upward movement to a higher order of moral perception; and so in the opposite. Yet we cannot forbear to notice how often the immediate descendant is quite apt to prove its parentage.

Will the theologian object—“You contradict the Scripture. You make five species of man. Whereas they are all the descendants of Noah.” Have we not shown ample ground and time for their formation from his stock? Besides, we expect hereafter to prove by Scripture that Ham took a wife from the degenerate race of Cain; which, if so, would alone place his descendants in the attitude of inferiority and subjection.

No! but we advertise the theologian that we shall take the Scripture for our platform. We believe it, and hope to even hold him close to it.

But we now ask for the reflection of all, does not the degenerate man, degraded in constitution below the possibility of his emerging from the depth to which he has sunk, by any self-renovating power, still lingering about his reduced condition, require the aid of one of superior nature, of superior organization and mental development, to act as his adviser, protector, and master? Would not such a provision be a merciful one?

And may we not also inquire, whether the superior endowments here required do not also require to be exercised in bearing rule over the wayward energies of those more degenerate, as a necessary element in the school to a higher advance? And shall we not perceive that such a relation must produce a vast amount of improvement and happiness to both?