CHAPTER X.THE SENSES.
The senses are those special organisms that connect us with the outer world through which external impressions are received and transmitted to the brain—the great sensorium or centre of the nervous system. They are popularly designated as sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste, each having its own peculiar organism; some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate, and others, like taste, quite simple, being little more than a delicate expansion of nervous matter spread upon the tongue and lining the inner surface of the mouth. The nervous system includes the brain and the nerves, but is, in fact, an indivisible whole, of which the brain forms the centre, and the nerves the circumference, in exact proportion as we ascend in the scale of being. The centre of the nervous system is increased and the circumference diminished as the brain becomes larger and the nerves smaller. Among quadrupeds—the horse, for example—the nerves are enormously large in comparison with the brain of that animal; and this holds good throughout, so that an intelligent physiologist might determine the possible capabilities of any of the higher order of animals by a simple comparison of the brain and nerves. And in the human creation a single skull of a Mongol, or Malay, or Negro, and especially of the latter, should be quite sufficient to enable a physiologist to comprehend the essential character of the race to which it belonged. True, he might, as has often happened, mistake it for an abnormal specimen of the Caucasian,and thus display a vast amount of learned nonsense of the Gall-Spurzheim order, but if he knew it to be an actual negro skull, and then compared it with that of the Caucasian, he should be able not only to determine the intellectual inferiority, but the vastly preponderating sensualism of the former. He would see that the relatively small cerebrum, and the large cerebellum, must be united with a corresponding development of the senses, and a comparatively dominating sensualism. The mere organism of the senses, of sight, hearing, etc., though of course differing widely from those of the Caucasian, it is not necessary to describe, for even in animals of the higher class there is a certain resemblance, and the student of anatomy studies the mechanism of the eye in the ox or horse as satisfactorily as in that of the human creature.
The organisms while thus, in a sense, similar—of the eye, for example—in whites and negroes, is more elaborately and delicately constituted in the case of the former, and therefore it is also vastly more liable to disease, to congenital defects, to strabismus, etc., and especially short-sightedness. The negro, on the contrary, rarely suffers from these things, or even from inflammation of the eyes, so common among white people, and though, in keeping with the imitative instinct of the race, the negro “preacher” dons spectacles as well as white neck-cloth, it may be doubted if there ever was a case of near-sightedness in the typical negro. Though in extreme old age they doubtless lose the power of vision common to their youth, it is rare that negroes need spectacles at any age. The organism is supplied with a larger portion of nervous matter than in the case of the whites, and the function or sense is thus endowed with a strength and acuteness vastly greater than are the senses of the Caucasian. Travelers and others mingling among savages, Indians, negroes, etc., have observed the extraordinary power and acuteness of the external senses, and havesupposed that this was a result of their savage condition, which, calling for a constant exercise of these faculties, gave them an extraordinary development. And Pritchard, carrying this theory or notion to an extreme, inferred that men were originally created negroes, for the exigencies of savage life demanded, as he supposed, a black color as well as acuteness of the senses! Doubtless the civilized negro of America ordinarily displays less strength and acuteness of sense than his wild brother of Africa, but he is born with the same faculties, and were the surrounding circumstances changed so as to call them into more active exercise, he would exhibit similar characteristics.
The Almighty Creator, with infinite wisdom, has adapted all His creatures to the ends or purposes of their creation. The Caucasian or white man, with his large brain and elevated reasoning powers, is thus provided with all that is necessary to guard his safety and to increase his happiness. Inferior races, with smaller brains and feebler mental powers are endowed with strength and acuteness of the external senses which enable them to contend specifically with surrounding circumstances and to provide for their safety. This is strikingly manifest in the North American Indian who marks or makes a trail in the forest which he follows with unerring confidence, though the eye of the white man sees nothing whatever. The descriptions of Indian character in Cooper’s novels are in these respects perfectly correct and true to nature, as are all those of the Indianized white man, Leather-Stocking, Hawkeye, etc. The one depends upon his senses—his sight, hearing, etc., the other on his powers of reasoning or reflection, which in the end enable him to “sarcumvent” his Huron enemies and to win the victory. Each, according to his “gifts,” is able to fulfil the purposes of his creation, and while the superior intelligence of the Caucasian is spreading that race, withits benign and civilizing consequences, over the whole northern continent, the strength and acuteness of his senses have enabled the Indian to resist to a degree all these mighty forces for three hundred years.
Some historians have advanced the notion that Rome was overrun by northern barbarians, similar to our North American Indians, but if the mighty hordes led by Alaric and Genseric to the conquest of Italy, had been Indians, not one would have escaped to tell the tale of their destruction. A high civilization, rotten at heart, falls an easy conquest to ruder and more simple communities of the same race—thus, the effete and corrupt Roman aristocracy fell before the simple and rude populations of Northern Europe, as the polished and scholastic Greeks had succumbed to the Romans, when the latter practised the simple and hardy virtues of their earlier history. In our own times we have seen Spain, long ruled over by an effete and worn-out aristocracy, sink from a first class to a fourth rate power, while France, relieved from the dead weight of “nobility,” has in half a century become the leading power of the world. And if the English masses have not sufficient vitality to cast off the mighty pressure of a diseased and effete aristocracy by an internal reform like that which the French passed through in 1789, then it is certain that, at no distant day, the nation will fall a conquest to some external power that has greater vitality than itself, however deficient it may be in wealth and learning, and those refinements that pass for high civilization. But while nations ruled over by privileged classes thus carry within them the seeds of their own destruction, and sooner or later fall a conquest to ruder and simpler societies, the intellectual superiority of the white man always enables him to conquer inferior races, whatever may be the disparity of numbers, and Clive with three thousand Europeans, attacking the Hindoo horde of one hundredthousand, or Cortez invading Mexico with five hundred followers, amply illustrates the natural supremacy of the Caucasian race. But, on the contrary, if the Aztecs had had the intellectual capacity of the Caucasian superadded to their own specific qualities—the strength and acuteness of the senses—common to the native race, not alone would Cortez have failed to conquer them, but it may be doubted if all Europe, combined together for that purpose, could have accomplished it.
There are no examples for testing the capabilities of negroes in these respects, for there is no instance in history where they have contested the supremacy of the white man, the insurrection in Hayti having been the work of the “colored people” and mulattoes, and the negroes only forced into it by their fears after the outbreak was complete. But we have the actual physical facts as well as our every-day experience of the negro qualities, and therefore can arrive at positive truth when comparing him with the superior race. The large distribution of nervous matter to the organs of sense and consequent dominating sensualism (not mere animalism), is the direct cause of that extreme sloth and indolence universal with the race. The small brain and limited reasoning power of the negro render him incapable of comprehending the wants of the future, while the sloth dependent on the dominating sensualism, together with strong animal appetites impelling him always to gross self-indulgence, render a master guide or protector essential to his own welfare. Indeed it may be matter of doubt which is the paramount cause of the negro’s inability to provide for future necessities—his limited reasoning power or his indolence—his small brain or his dominating sensualism. It is a statisticalfactthat “free” negroes do not produce sufficient for their support, and consequently that they tend perpetually to extinction, and when it is remembered that the small brain and feeble intellectual power render them incapable of reasoningon the future rewards of self-denial, and that the large distribution of nervous matter in the organs of sense, and the consequent sensualism impels them to gross indulgence of the present, and moreover that they are in juxtaposition, and must contend with white people, then it is plain enough to see that it could not be otherwise, and that the total extinction of these unfortunate beings is necessarily a question of time alone.
But it is not the mere predominance of the senses, or the strength and acuteness of the sense which so broadly and radically separates whites and negroes. They are entirely different in the manifestations of these qualities. As has been observed, there are few if any near-sighted negroes, or negroes with other defects of vision, and the sense of smell in negroes permits them to discriminate and to indicate the presence of the rattle snake, or other venomous serpents. And in respect to the sense of touch or feeling, the peculiarity of the negro nature is perhaps most remarkable of all. This sense in the white person, though universal of course, is mainly located in the hand and fingers. Sir Charles Bell, an eminent English surgeon, has written an interesting work—one of the Bridgewater treatises—on the flexibility and adaptation of the human hand, and other volumes might be given to the world without exhausting the subject. The universal law of adaptation, indeed, demands that the sense of touch, the flexibility of the hand, the delicacy of the fingers, should be in accord with the large brain and commanding intellect, otherwise the world itself would long since have come to a stand-still, and human invention ended with the antediluvians. It is true the structure—the arrangement of the bones, muscles, tendons, etc., in short, the mere mechanism of the hand, is essential, but without the sense of feeling, or that delicacy of touch found onlyin the fingers of the Caucasian, the mechanical perfections of the hand would be comparatively useless.
All the nice manipulations in surgery, in the arts, in painting, statuary, and the thousands of delicate fabrics seen every day and all about us, demand both intellect and delicacy of hand, and these, too, in that complete perfection found alone in the Caucasian. The sense of touch, on the contrary, in the negro is not in the hand or fingers, or only partially so, but spreads all over the surface and envelops the entire person. The hand itself, in its mere mechanism, is incompatible with delicate manipulation. The coarse, blunt, webbed fingers of the negress, for example, even if we could imagine delicacy of touch and intellect to direct, could not in any length of time or millions of years be brought to produce those delicate fabrics or work those exquisite embroideries which constitute the pursuits or make up the amusements of the Caucasian female. The mechanism of the negro hand, the absence or rather the obtuseness of the sense of touch in the fingers, and the limited negro intellect, therefore, utterly forbid that negroes shall be mechanics, except it be in those grosser trades, such as coopers, blacksmiths, etc., which need little more than muscular strength and industry to practice them. But the sense of touch, though feeble in the hand or fingers, is none the less largely developed as are the other senses of the negro, and spreads over the whole surface of the body. This is witnessed every day at the South, where whipping, as with Northern children, is the ordinary punishment of negroes. As in all other foolish notions that spring from the one great misconception—that negroes have the same nature as white people, the “anti-slavery” people of the North and of Europe labor under a ludicrous mistake in respect to this matter. They take their notions of flogging from the practice of the British army and the Russian knout, where strong men are cut to pieces by the“cat” or beaten to death by clubs, and they suppose that precisely similar barbarity is practiced on the “poor slave.” And the runaway negro has doubtless added to these notions, perhaps, without meaning it. At Abolition conventicles he is expected, of course, to horrify the crowd with awful tales of his sufferings, but having always had plenty to eat and never overworked, he has really nothing to fall back on but the “cruel whippings,” which the imaginations of the former readily transform into their own notions, but which, in fact, correspond to that which they deal out to their own children without a moment’s compunction. The sensibility of the negro skin closely resembles that of childhood, and while there are doubtless cases of great barbarity in these respects, as we all know there are in cases of children, the ordinary flogging of negroes is much the same as that which parents, guardians, teachers, etc., deal out to white children, and the “terrible lash” so dolefully gloated over by the ignorant and deluded usually dwindles down into a petty switch in reality. But it is painful to the negro, perhaps more so than hanging would be, for while the local susceptibility of the skin makes him feel the slightest punishment in this respect, the obtuse sensibility of the brain and nervous system generally would enable him, as is often manifest, to bear hanging very well. Those who can remember being flogged in childhood will also remember the great pain that it gave them, though now in their adult age they would laugh at such a thing. The negro is a child forever, a child in many respects in his physical as well as his mental nature, and the flogging of the negro of fifty does not differ much, if any, from the flogging of a child of ten, and while the British soldier or Russian would receive his three hundred lashes without wincing, the big burly negro will yell more furiously than a school-boy when he receives a dozen cuts with an ordinary switch.