Bremer adds, with that charming simplicity so peculiarly Swedish (Jenny Lin’d, Ole Bull
&c., have familarized Americans with its philanthropical self-sacrifices): — “ It thus appears
as if Liberia and Sierra Leone would become the nurseries from which the new civilization
and more beautiful future of Africa would proceed. I cannot believe but that these
[mulatto] plants from a foreign land must, before that time, undergo a metamorphosis —
must become more African.” 5*8
The most inveterate anthropologist could not better foreshadow Liberian destinies !
And, as concerns the “ beautiful” likely to arise in Africa when
the half-civilized mulatto becomes re-ahsorhed into the indigenous
Negro population, let me add, that, were authority necessary at this
day to rebut the good-natured Abbé Grégoire’s testimony in favor of
mulatto-poesies, (and such posies!) ethnography might begin with
Mr. Jefferson’s. His Notes on Virginia contain this sentence : —
“ Never yet could I find that a Black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration
; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or of sculpture.”
I have looked in vain, during twenty years, for a solitary exception
to these characteristic deficiencies among the Negro race. Every
Negro is gifted with an ear for music; some are excellent musicians;
all imitate well in most things ; but, with every opportunity for culture,
our Southern Negroes remain as incapable, in drawing, as the
lowest quadrumana.
As before stated, the plan of this work does not permit a complete anatomical comparison
of races ; and I have merely selected such illustrations as I deem sufficient to demonstrate
plurality of origin for the human family. A few others are subjoined, with a brief commentary.
The “ Caucasian,” Mongol, and Negro, constitute three of the most prominent
groups of mankind ; and the vertical views of the following crania (Figs. 336-338) display,
at a glance, how widely separated they are in conformation. How they differ in size and
in facial angle has been already shown. So uniform are these cranial characters, that the
genuine types can at once be distinguished by a practised eye.
If, as we have reiterated times and again, those types depicted on
the early monuments of Egypt have remained permanent through all
subsequent ages — and if no causes are now visibly at work which
can transform one type of man into another — they must be received,
in Natural History, as primitive and specific. When, therefore, they
are placed beside each other {e.g. as in Eigs. 336-338) such types speak
for themselves; and the anatomist has no more need of protracted
comparisons to seize their diversities, than the school-boy to distinguish
turkeys from peacocks, or pecaries from Guinea-pigs.
Our remarks on African types have shown the gradations which,
ever ascending in caste of race, may be traced from thé Cape of
Good Hope northward to Egypt. The same gradation might be
followed through Asiatic and European races up to the Teutonic ;
and with equal accuracy, were it not for migrations and geographical
displacements of these last, to which aborigines in Africa have been
less subjected.
FIG. 336.5» Fig. 337.550 Fig. 838.551
Although I do not believe in the intellectual equality of races, and
can find no ground in natural or in human history for such popular
credence, I belong not to those who are disposed to degrade any-type
of humanity to the level of the brute-creation. Nevertheless, a man
must be blind not to be struck by similitudes between some of the
lower races of mankind, viewed as connecting links in the animal
kingdom ; nor can it be rationally affirmed, that the Orang-Outan
and Chimpanzee are more widely separated from certain African and
Oceanic Negroes than are the latter from the Teutonic or Pelasgic
types. But the very accomplished anatomist of Harvard University,
Dr. Jeffries Wyman, has placed this question in its true light: —
“ The organization of the anthropoid quadrumana justifies the naturalist in placing them
at the head of the brute-creation, and placing them in a position in which they, of all the
animal series, shall be nearest to man. Any anatomist, however, who will take the trouble
to compare the skeletons of the Negro and Orang, cannot fail to be struck at sight with the
wide gap which separates them. The difference between the cranium, the pelvis, and the
conformation of the upper extremities, in the Negro and Caucasian, sinks into insignificance
when compared with the vast difference which exists between the conformation of the same
parts in the Negro and the Orang. Yet it cannot be denied, however wide the separation,
that the Negro and Orang do afford the points where man and the brute, when the totality
of their organization is considered, most nearly approach each other.” 552
The truth of these observations becomes popularly apparent through
the following comparative series of likenesses. There are fourteen of
them; and, by reference to the works whence they are chosen, the
reader can verify the fidelity of the major portion. Eor the remainder,
taken from living nature, the authors are responsible when
vouching for their accuracy.
58