The face of the Caucasian reflects the character, the emotions, the instincts, to a certain extent the intellectual forces, and even the acquired habits, the virtues or vices of the individual. This, to a certain extent, depends on the mobility of the facial muscles, and the general anatomical structure and outline of the features; but without our color, the expression would be very imperfect, and the face wholly incapable of expressing the inner nature and specific character of the race. For example: What is there at the same time so charming and so indicative of inner purity and innocence as the blush of maiden modesty? For an instant the face is scarlet, then, perhaps, paler than ever in its delicate transparency; and these physical changes, beautiful as they may be to the eye, are rendered a thousand times more so by our consciousness that they reflect moral emotions infinitely more beautiful. Can any one suppose such a thing possible to a black face? that these sudden and startling alternations of color, which reflect the moral perceptions and elevated nature of the white woman, are possible to the negress? And if the latter cannot reflect these things in her face—if her features are utterly incapable of expressing emotions so elevated and beautiful, is it not certain that she is without them—that they have no existence in her inner being, are no portion of her moral nature? To suppose otherwise is not only absurd, but impious; it is to suppose that the Almighty Creator would endow a being with moral wants and capacities that could have no development—with an inner nature denied any external reflection or manifestation of its wants or of itself. Of course, it is not intended to say that the negress has not a moral nature; it is only intended to demonstrate the fact that she has not the moral nature of the white woman; and, therefore, those who would endow her inner nature with these qualities, must necessarily charge the Creator with the gross injustice of withholding from her any expression of qualities so essential to her own happiness, as well as to our conception of the dignity and beauty of womanhood. This same illustration is extensively diversified in regard to the other sex. It is seen every day in our social life, and confronts us at every step. The white man is flushed with anger, or livid with fear, or pale with grief. He is at one moment so charged with the darker passions as to be almost black, and the next so softened by sorrow or stricken by grief that the face is bloodless and absolutely white. All these outward manifestations of the inner nature—of the moral being with which God has endowed us—are familiar to every one. They form a portion of our daily experience, and constitute an essential part of our social life.
There are great differences among our people in regard to the general expression of the features. Some reflect in their faces all the emotions by which they are moved, while others are so stolid, or they have acquired such a control over themselves in these respects, as to appear impenetrable. But this has no connection with color, or any relation to that great fundamental and specific fact by which and through which the Almighty has adapted the character and revealed the relative conditions of the several human races. Like all the other great facts involved, color is the standard and exact admeasurement of the specific character. The Caucasian is white, the Negro is black; the first is the most superior, the latter the most inferior—and between these extremes of humanity are the intermediate races, approximating to the former or approaching the latter, just as the Almighty, in His boundless wisdom and ineffable beneficence, has seen fit to order it. Color is no more radical or universal, or no more a difference between white men and negroes, than any other fact out of the countless millions of facts that separate them. It is more palpable to the sense, more unavoidable, but no more universal or invariable than the difference in the hair, the voice, the features, the form of the limbs, the single globule of blood, or the myriads and millions of things that constitute the Negro being. It would seem that the Almighty Creator, when stamping this palpable distinction on the very surface, had designed to guard His work from any possible desecration, and therefore had marked it so legibly, that human ignorance, fraud, folly, or wickedness, could by no possibility mistake it. And indeed it is not mistaken, for those perverse creatures among us who clamor so loudly for negro equality, or that the negro shall be treated as if he were a white man, only desire to force their hideous theories on others, and would rather have their own families utterly perish from the earth than to practice or live up to their doctrine in this respect. The term “colored man,” or “colored person,” though natural enough to Europeans, or to those who had never seen negroes, or different races from themselves, could never have originated in a community having negroes in its midst, for it is not only a misnomer but an absurdity as gross as to say a colored fish or a colored bird. Finally, as color is the standard and the test of the specific character, revealing the inner nature and actual capabilities of the race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal physical condition of the individual. The highest health of the white man is distinguished by a pure and transparent skin, and exactly as he departs from this, his color is clouded and sallow; while that of the negro is marked by perfect blackness, and the departure from this is to dirty brown, almost ash-color—thus, as in everything else, revealing the eternal truth that life and well-being, social as well as individual, are identical with an exact recognition of these extremes, and that it is only when disease and unnatural conditions prevail, that a certain approximation to color or to equality become possible.
CHAPTER VI.
FIGURE.
To consider and properly contrast the attitude or the general outline of the negro form with that of the Caucasian, needs a large space to do the subject justice. But a few brief points are sufficient to grasp its essential features and enable every one to add or to fill up the details from his own experience. Cuvier, the great French zoologist, it is said might pick up a bone of any kind, however minute, in the deserts of Arabia, and from this alone determine the species, genus, and class to which it belonged. This at first seems almost incredible, but a moment’s reflection shows not only its practicability, but the ease and certainty with which it may be accomplished. Indeed we have recently witnessed a still more remarkable instance of this tracing the life and defining the relations of organized beings from a minute and remote point. Agassiz has been able, from a single scale of a fish, to determine the specific character of fishes, and those, too, which he had never before seen! A bone is picked up at random by the zoologist; he soon discovers that it is a bone of the thigh of some animal, and this necessarily leads to the fact that it belonged to a quadruped, and it, in its turn, leads to other facts equally connected and dependent on each other, for that great fundamental and eternal law of harmony or adaptation which God has stamped on the organic and material universe permits of no incongruities or contradictions to mar its beauty or deface its grandeur. Thus an anatomist, who had given a certain amount of attention to the subject, might select the smallest bone, a carpal or bone of the finger, for example, and determine from among millions of similar ones, whether it was that of a white man or of a negro, with perfect certainty and the greatest ease. He would know that such bone formed part of a hand with a limited flexibility—that the bony structure was in accord with the tendons and muscles that moved it, and gave it, compared with that of the Caucasian, a restricted capacity of action, of susceptibility, etc., and he would necessarily connect this hand with an arm of corresponding structure, and going on multiplying the connections and relations, he would be led to the final result, and without possibility of mistake, that the bone in question belonged to a negro. But while the analysis of a single bone or of a single feature of the negro being is thus sufficient to demonstrate the specific character or to show the diversity of race, that great fact is still more obviously and with equal certainty revealed in the form, attitude, and other external qualities. The negro is incapable of an erect or direct perpendicular posture. The general structure of his limbs, the form of the pelvis, the spine, the way the head is set on the shoulders, in short, the tout ensemble of the anatomical formation, forbids an erect position. But while the whole structure is thus adapted to a slightly stooping posture, the head would seem to be the most important agency, for with any other head or the head of any other race, it would be impossible to retain an upright position at all.
The form or figure of the Caucasian is perfectly erect, with the eyes on a plane with the horizon, and the broad forehead, distinct features and full and flowing beard, stamp him with a superiority and even majesty denied to all other creatures, and relatively to all other races of men. On the contrary, the narrow and longitudinal head of the negro projecting posteriorly, places his eyes at an angle with the horizon, and thus alone enables him to approximate to an erect position. Of course, we are not to speculate on what is impossible or to suggest what might happen if the negro head had resembled that of the Caucasian, for the slightest change of an elementary atom in the negro structure would render him an impossible monstrosity. But with the broad forehead and small cerebellum of the white man, it is perfectly obvious that the negro would no longer possess a centre of gravity, and therefore those philanthropic people who would “educate” him into intellectual equality or change the mental organism of the negro, would simply render him incapable of standing on his feet or of an upright position on any terms. Every one must have remarked this peculiarity in the form and attitude of the negro. His head is thrown upwards and backwards, showing a certain though remote approximation to the quadruped both in its actual formation and the manner in which it is set on his shoulders. The narrow forehead and small cerebrum—the centre of the intellectual powers—and the projection of the posterior portion—the centre of the animal functions—render the negro head radically and widely different from that of the white man. This every one knows, because every one sees it every day, and the universal and all pervading law of adaptation which God has eternally stamped upon the structure of all His creatures enables the negro to thus preserve a centre of gravity and comparatively an upright posture. But were it true that men can make themselves, can push aside the Almighty Creator Himself, as taught by certain “reformers” of the day, and vastly improve the “breed” and, as the “friends of humanity” hold, that the negro can be made to conform in his intellectual qualities to those of the white man, then it is certain that their difficulties would become greater than ever. That the cerebrum or anterior portion of the brain is the centre, the seat, the organism, in fact, of the intellectual nature, is as certain as that the eye is the organ of sight, and that in proportion to its size relatively with the cerebellum—the centre of the animal instincts—is there mental capacity, however latent it may be in the case of individuals, is equally certain. And should these would-be reformers of the work of the Almighty change the intellectual nature of the negro, they would necessarily change the organism through which, and by which, that nature is manifested, and thus enlarging the anterior and diminishing the posterior portion of the brain into correspondence with their own, it is perfectly evident that they would destroy the harmony which exists between the negro head and the negro body, and instead of a black-white man, or a being with the same intellectual nature as ours, they would render him as utterly incapable of locomotion or of an upright position at all as if they had cut off his head, instead of re-creating it on the model of their own! The whole anatomical structure, the feet, the hands, the limbs, the size and form of the head, the features, the hair, the color, the tout ensemble of the negro being, as it is revealed to the sense, embodies the negro inferiority when compared with other races; and as regards the white man or Caucasian, it presents a contrast so striking and an interval so broad and unmistakable that it seems impossible any one’s senses could be so blunted, or his perceptions so perverted as to be rendered incapable of perceiving it. The flexible grace of the limbs, the straight lines of the figure, the expressive features, the broad forehead and transparent color, and flowing beard, all combine to give a grace and majesty to the Caucasian that stamps him undisputed master of all living beings, and even the creatures of the animal world perceive and acknowledge this supremacy. It is not an uncommon thing in India for a tiger, rendered desperate by hunger, to suddenly leap into a crowd and to carry off a man, but instead of a European he invariably selects a native, and while such a thing as the seizure of a white man is unknown, the negroes in Sierra Leone are frequently carried off and eaten by lions. The instinct of the animal leads it to attack the inferior, and therefore feebler being, as even our domestic animals are far more likely to attack children than adults. The negro actually has nothing in common with the animal world that other races have not, but those things common to men and animals are much more prominent in him. Thus, while there is an impassable and perpetual chasm between them, there is a certain resemblance between the negro and the ourang-outang. The latter is the most advanced species of the simiadæ or ape family, while the negro is the lowest in the scale of the human creation, and the approximation to each other, though of course eternally incomplete, is certainly striking. As stated elsewhere, the author does not belong to that gloomy and forbidding school of materialism which would make the faculties and even our moral emotions the mere result of organism. But there is an inseparable connection which necessarily renders them the exact admeasurement of each other, and though neither cause nor result, and their ultimate relation eternally hidden from the finite mind, they are, in this existence at least, inextricably bound up together. The approximation, therefore, of the negro to the ourang-outang, while there is a boundless space within the circle of which there can be no resemblance—for the negro is absolutely and entirely human—and within which it is not proposed to enter, is exactly revealed in the outward form and attitude. The negro, from the structure of his limbs, his head, etc., has a decided inclination to the quadruped posture, while the ourang-outang has an equal tendency to the upright human form. The latter often walks partially erect, and sometimes even carries a club, while the typical negro in Africa or Cuba, or anywhere in his natural state, is quite as likely to squat on his hams as to stand on his feet. Thus, an anatomist with the negro and ourang-outang before him, after a careful comparison, would say, perhaps, that nature herself had been puzzled where to place them, and had finally compromised the matter by giving them an exactly equal inclination to the form and attitude of each other.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HAIR.
Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as the hair, or nothing that reveals the specific difference of race so unmistakably as the natural covering of the head. The hair of the Caucasian is a graceful and imposing feature or quality, of course in perfect harmony with everything else, but sometimes, and especially in the case of females, it is an attribute of physical beauty more striking and attractive than any other. Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the dazzling hues of black, purple, and auburn tresses, has been the theme of poets from time immemorial, while its luxuriance, and silky softness, and graceful length will continue to be the pride of one sex and the admiration of the other as long as the perception of beauty remains.
In the Mongol, Malay, or Indian, as well as the Negro, it remains the same through all the stages of life, and it is only in extreme old age that it becomes gray or silvery white, or even falls off from any portion of the head. The coarse, stiff, black hair of the Indian child is that also of its parents—and a gray-headed or bald-headed Indian, except in some cases of extreme old age, is as rare perhaps as that of a bald-headed negro. But the child of the Caucasian, with perfectly white or flaxen hair, expands into the maiden with clustering ringlets of auburn or perhaps raven black, to be threaded with silver, in middle life perhaps, and though less common than with the other sex, a few years later it becomes again, as in early childhood, perfectly white. But there are no exceptions to the uniform color of the hair in other races. Such a thing as a flaxen-haired or a light-haired negro child never existed. There may be sometimes a slight approximation in this respect among Mongols, but the hair of the negro, except in some cases of extreme old age, remains absolutely the same at all periods, from the cradle to the grave. The elementary structure as shown by the elaborate microscopical observations of Mr. Peter A. Browne, of Philadelphia, differs as widely as the external or superficial modifications. The popular notion that it is wool instead of hair that covers the negro head is like many others, founded on a mere external resemblance, without any actual correspondence. It is hair, but sui generis, or rather specific and common to the negro alone, and however widely different from that of white people, it is no more so than any other quality or feature of the negro nature. The variations of this feature in the white race are almost unlimited. Hair dressing even has been elevated to the respectability of an art, if not to the dignity of a science. For many generations the kings of France kept artistes of this character, who often received a salary equal to the ministers of the crown, and one of them, Oliver Le Dain, became in fact, if not in form, the actual ruler of the kingdom. But it was the princesses and ladies of the court that exalted this “art” to its highest pitch of extravagance and display. Marie Antoinette—one of the most unhappy women that ever lived—made it an important part of every day’s employment, and exacted the same labor from her attendants. Even in our own more sensible times, the Empress Eugenie changes the fashions in this respect almost every month, and the styles or modes of dressing their hair is an extravagant though amiable weakness of our own fair countrywomen. There is in fact no mere physical quality of the female so attractive, or that is capable of being rendered so charming, as the hair, and the elaborate dressings, the time and labor spent on its decoration, proceed as much perhaps from that delicate perception of the beautiful innate in woman as it does from female vanity or the love of display. But with this “wealth of beauty” of the Caucasian woman, what an immeasurable interval separates her from the negress! Is it possible for any who sees the latter, with her short, stiff, uncombable fleece of seeming wool, to endow her with the attribute of beauty or comeliness? And though somewhat less palpable in the other sex, the hair is an essential element of manly beauty as well as dignity, and the “love locks” of the cavaliers and even the “soap locks” of more modern times, are identified with certain conceptions of manly grace. Can any one form such conceptions in respect to the hair of the negro? Can he identify any of these things with the crisp, stiff, seeming wool that covers the head of that race? Can the sentiment of beauty, grace or dignity, or indeed any idea whatever—except as a necessary provision of nature for covering the negro head—attach to the hair of the negro? This is all that is possible to the mind of a white person in actual juxtaposition with the negro, and therefore while the European Abolitionist may fancy his head adorned by “ambrosial curls,” our own native Abolitionists are wholly unable to conceive of any use or purpose whatever for that dense mat of wiry and twisted hair which covers the negro head, except as a provision of nature for its protection. The protection of the head, or rather of the brain, is the purpose or the function of the hair in all races, but while that, in our race, is identified with elevated and striking qualities, it is the sole purpose in the case of the negro. The short, crisp, dense mass that covers the negro head, like every other quality or attribute of the negro nature, is in perfect harmony with the climatic and external circumstances with which God has surrounded him. The popular notion that the negro skull is much thicker than that of the white man originated from this peculiarity of the covering of the negro head. The hair is so dense, so curled and twisted together, and forms such a complete mat or net work as to be wholly impenetrable to the rays of a vertical sun, and to furnish a vastly better protection for the brain than the thickest felt hat does to that of the white man. Thus, though negroes on our southern plantations, with the imitative instincts of their race, copy after the whites and wear hats, it is merely a “fashionable folly,” and dictated by no natural want, nor in the slightest degree adds to their happiness. And beside the protection from the fierce heats of the tropics, the hair of the negro protects his head in other respects. It is so hard and wiry, and in fact triangular in form, that a blow from the hand of a master would doubtless injure the latter vastly more than it would the head of the negro, and the common practice among them of butting each other with their heads, though knocking them off their feet, and the concussion heard at considerable distances, never results in injury, for the dense mat of semi-wool that covers the head protects it from mischief. The negro hair is then designed solely for the protection of the negro head, and not only differs widely from that of the Caucasian, but from that of all other races, for the negro is a tropical race, and the hair, like all other attributes of the negro being, physical and moral, is adapted to a tropical clime, and in perfect accord with the physical wants and moral necessities of the race.
But the mere covering of the head, or the mere protection of the brain, is not all that distinguishes the different races in these respects. The beard is equally radical and universal, though not so palpable a specialty as color, and in some respects it may be said to be a more important one. The Caucasian alone has a beard, for though all others approximate to it in this respect, it is the only bearded race, and some writers on ethnology have been so impressed with this imposing and striking distinction that they have sought to make it the basis of a classification of races. And there certainly is no physical or outward quality that so imposingly impresses itself on the senses as a mark of superiority, or evidence of supremacy, as a full and flowing beard. Color, when in repose, or when it does not give expression to the inner nature, does not, in reality, constitute a distinction at all, but the beard is an evidence of superiority, that, however varied the action or whatever the circumstances, is equally distinct and universal as an attribute of supremacy. This is sufficiently illustrated in our own race and our every day experience. The youth is beardless, and pari passu as he approaches to the maturity of manhood there is a corresponding development of beard. The intellect—the mental strength—the moral beauty, all the qualities of the inner being, as well as those outward attributes tangible to the sense, harmonize perfectly with the growth of the beard, and when that has reached its full development, it is both the signal and the proof of mature manhood—an exact admeasurement and absolute proof of the maturity of the individual as well as the type and standard of the race. This is equally true when applied to different races. The Caucasian is the only bearded race, but all others approximate in this respect, and the negro is furthest removed of all, for the tropical woolly-haired African or negro, except a little tuft on the chin and sometimes on the upper lip, has nothing that can be confounded with a beard. People sometimes see negroes with considerable hair on their faces, and hence conclude that they are as likely to have beards as white men; but they forget that all in our society who are not whites are considered negroes, and therefore those bearded negroes have a large infusion, and doubtless sometimes a vastly predominating infusion of Caucasian blood. The beard symbolizes our highest conceptions of manhood—it is the outward evidence of mature development—of complete growth, mental as well as physical—of strength, wisdom and manly grace, and the full, flowing, and majestic beard of the Caucasian, in contrast with the negro or other subordinate races, is as striking and imposing as the mane of the lion when compared with the meaner beasts of the animal world. Like color or any other of the great fundamental facts separating races, the beard is sufficient to determine their specific character and their specific relations to each other, and we have only to apply our every day experience as regards this outward symbol of inner manhood to measure the relative inferiority of the negro. The Abolitionists demand that the “equal manhood” of the negro shall be recognized, and complain bitterly of a government that refuses to respond to their wishes in this respect, but if this “equal manhood” was actually revealed to them in the person of the negro as it is in the persons of white men, and as God has alone provided and ordained or permitted it to be revealed, they would be overwhelmed with astonishment or convulsed with laughter. A negro with a full and flowing beard, with this symbol of perfect manhood or with this outward manifestation of the inner (Caucasian) being, would be a ludicrous monstrosity, as impossible, of course, as the Caliban of Shakespeare; but if such a supernatural being should suddenly make his appearance in an Abolition conventicle, the “friends of humanity” would be as much astonished as if an inhabitant of another world had come among them. A youth, with the majestic and flowing beard of adult life, if the monstrosity did not shock and disgust us, would be irresistibly comical, and equally so in the case of the childish and romping negro. Thus, were the leaders of the “anti-slavery enterprise” busily engaged in discussing the “equal manhood” of the negro, and in earnestly denouncing those who, unable to see it, decline to admit such a thing, and a negro should enter the room with the actual proof of its existence—with the full, flowing beard of the Caucasian, and therefore the outward symbol of an “equal manhood,” as the hand of the Eternal has revealed it in the person of the former—the whole Abolition congregation, if not paralyzed with horror, would burst into uncontrollable laughter. The wrongs of the “slave,” the cruelties of the master, the “hopes of humanity,” the most doleful stories and the saddest tales of the suffering “bondmen,” would be interrupted by screams of laughter at such a ludicrous spectacle as a negro with the majestic and flowing beard of the white man. This outward symbol of complete manhood, or this external indication which typifies the high nature and lofty qualities of the Caucasian, is no more impossible, however, to the negro than that “equal manhood” which is demanded for him, and therefore were the “friends of humanity” to vary their programme and demand an “equal” beard, or that we shall grant the negro the full and flowing beard of the Caucasian, they would render their performances more interesting without giving up any of their “principles,” as the absurdity is exactly the same in either case.