CHAPTER VIII.THE FEATURES.
The features reflect the inner nature, the faculties or specific qualities, and they are distinct or indistinct, developed or undeveloped, as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. In the simpler forms of animal existence, there is close resemblance to vegetable life in this respect; but ascending to the vertebrata, and especially the mammalia, there is a broad distinction between the head and body, and instead of an undefined uniformity pervading the whole exterior surface, the face becomes a centre in which the essential character of the creature is written by the hand of Nature. It is true, that the general form of the body is significant of the grosser qualities. The muscular and motive forces of the horse are evidently designed for swiftness; those of the lion, and the felinæ generally, are designed both for strength and swiftness; while that of the ox and other mammalia is adapted to a negative kind of strength which results from a combination of all the physical forces, and not, as in the former case, from an excessive muscular development. But the higher qualities, even in animals, are legibly written in the face or features. In the human creation, of course, this external reflection of the inner nature in the features becomes vastly more distinct and real, and in our own race not unfrequently does the face become a very window of the soul, where may be read the sweetest and most exquisite emotions of a sensitive and delicate nature, or, as sometimes happens, the gross and sensual thoughts of a depraved and pervertedone. There are, indeed, countless and innumerable variations in our own race in this respect. The white or Caucasian men of Asia, of Africa, Europe, and America, are so modified by climate, habits, government, religion, etc., that those ethnologists who are not anatomists have sometimes confounded them, and classed them as distinct species. Even on the same continent, in the same country, sometimes the same family, these variations are so marked that they always seem to belong to different species. The globular head, broad forehead, oval cheeks, straight nose, and distinct, well-defined lips and mouth, however, whatever may be the expression, always remain the same, and can never be confounded with any other race of men. And these modifications in the Caucasian are not confined to the face, but pervade the whole surface. White, black, and red hair, white skin and brown ones, blondes and brunettes, are often found in the same family. It is even so in regard to size—some are short and others tall—some pigmies while others are giants—and not unfrequently in the same household, while the same nation exhibits every possible variety in this respect. The Caucasian race alone presents these variations—the other races great uniformity; and the negro, lowest in the scale, presents an almost absolute resemblance to each other. Of all the millions that have existed on the earth, their hair not only in color but in form has been absolutely the same, and such a being as a different-colored or straight-haired, or long-haired negro never existed. On visiting a plantation at the South, one sees a thousand negroes so nearly alike, that except where wide differences of age exist, they are all alike, and even in size rarely depart from that standard uniformity that nature has stamped upon the race. The entire external surface, as well as his interior organism, differs radically from the Caucasian. His muscles, the form of the limbs, his feet, hands, pelvis, skeleton, all the organs oflocomotion, give him an outward attitude that, while radically different from the Caucasian, approaches an almost absolute uniformity of character in the negro. His longitudinal head, narrow and receding forehead, flat nose, enormous lips and protuberant jaws, in short, his flat, shapeless and indistinct features strikingly approximate to the animal creation, and they are as utterly incapable of reflecting certain emotions as so much flesh and blood of any other portion of his body. The Almighty and All-Wise Creator has made all things perfect, and adapted the negro features, as well as those of the white man, to the inner nature, but if it were true that the negro had certain qualities with which ignorance and delusion would endow him, then it would be quite evident that the Almighty Creator had made a fatal blunder in this case, for it is clearly a matter of physical demonstration that the negro features cannot reflect these qualities. The features of the animal are made to express its wants, to reflect the nature God has given it. We witness this every day among our domestic animals—the cat, the dog, the horse, all exhibit their qualities, their wants, their moods, at different times their anger, suffering, and affection, all that their natures are capable of, are reflected in their faces, and we understand them. In our own race, the transparent skin, the deeply cut and distinct features become often a perfect mirror of the inner nature, and reflect the nicest shades of feeling as well as the deepest emotions of the soul. Envy, anger, pride, shame, scowling hate and malignant fear, as well as gentle affection and the most exalted love, are written as legibly in the face as if they were things of physical form, and their innumerable modifications and variations are witnessed all about us, and every day of our lives. How grandly this is displayed in the case of the orator! This must have been apparent to those who heard Mr. Clay in the Senate, and saw those wonderful changes of feature—one moment convulsedwith anger, then lit up with genius, or with pride and pomp of conscious power, and in another reflecting, perhaps, all a woman’s sweetness or a child’s gentleness. Color, of course, is essential to this, for a display of the passions and emotions on the dark ground-work of the negro skin would be as impossible as a rainbow at midnight, but without the deeply cut and distinctly marked features of the Caucasian, color would be comparatively useless in reflecting the grander emotions of the soul. Any one referring to his own experience for a moment will see how impossible, as a mere physical matter, that the negro face can reflect the qualities attributed to him by those who are ignorant of his real nature. The narrow and receding forehead, the shallow eyes, flat nose, almost on a level with the cheeks, the protruding and enormous lips,—the only thing that really can be said to be distinct in the negro face,—thetout ensemblewithout form or meaning when contrasted with the white man, is, in connection with the color, the dark ground of the negro skin, clearly incapable of reflecting certain qualities of our own race. The negro has, of course, moral emotions, as have all human creatures, and his face, like that of the Caucasian, is capable of reflecting allhiswants, his likes and dislikes, his hopes and fears, but every one who has seen him mustknowthat the higher qualities of the Caucasian cannot find expression in the negro features, and therefore he does not possess those qualities, or, as has been said, the All-Wise and Almighty Creator of all has committed a fatal mistake, and unjustly endowed him with qualities which he is forever forbidden to express!