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 certainamount 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, thetout ensembleof 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, thetout ensembleof 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 insteadof 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 naturalstate, 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.