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PROOF OF NEGRO INFERIORITY
By: Alexander Winchell, L. L. D.

THE theory of the Hamitic origin of Negroes, Hottentots, Australians and Papuans implies that four races out of seven have experienced a degeneracy. This sweeping backward movement of the work of an all-wise and all-beneficent Creator is appalling to contemplate; and it is not surprising that theorists have existed who could deny the inferiority of these races with the same naivete as any other indisputable fact of observation. Judging from intercourse with friends of the Negro, of the noisy and denunciatory stamp, I should think a large body of "philanthropists " must exist who maintain that it is mere lack of opportunity which causes the Negro to seem inferior to the white man. "Consider how, for two hundred years, he has dwelt in bondage; see him worked, late and early, in all weathers; sheltered, like stock, in inclosures too open for comfort or health, and subsisted on 'sides' and potatoes from January to December. The laws have even made it a crime to teach him to read a newspaper, or the Holy Bible. Think of the hardships which he has endured, and judge whether they are not sufficient to have crushed all intelligence and moral principle and manly spirit cut of a human being."

But, my good friend, I was not proposing to discourse of the Negroes of the 'United States. I am thinking of Africa, the continental home of the Negro. Yet, since the American Negro is suggested, allow me 'to inquire how far the Negro has descended below his native condition by being brought into contact with American civilization? Has he been sheltered in a more storm-riddled hut, or clothed in scantier attire, or subsisted on a leaner diet? Or has he associated with more degraded savages, or learned to practice a more superstitious worship, or been deprived of a more cultivated society?

The Negro, perhaps, is not, in America, what he would have been if left to his own mastery in the midst of civilized society. The condition of the northern Negro will settle this question. But has he not made more progress than his countrymen who were left behind? Can we appeal to the oppression of the American Negro as an apology for the condition of the Negro on the banks of the Senegal and the Congo?

The Israelites were in "the house of bondage" two hundred and sixteen years; and it is not supposable that bondage in the rude infancy of the world, and in heathen Egypt, was less depressing than bondage during the last two centuries in a Christian country. But were the Israelites ever reduced to the mental and moral condition of the Negro? The literature, laws and religion of the Mosaic period will supply the answer.

That the Negro race is an inferior race I shall show by an appeal to anatomical, physiological, psychical and historical facts. I have already pointed out the salient characteristics of the Negro race. Let me advert to those which establish his inferiority. Capacity of cranium is universally recognized as a criterion of psychic power.* No fact is better established than the...

"The inferior races hare a less capacity than the superior. The cranial capacity seems to vary according to intellectual endowment." (Topinard, ANTHROPOLOGY, p. 229. general relation of intellect to weight of brain. Welker has shown that the brains of twenty-six men of high intellectual rank surpassed the average weight by fourteen per cent. Of course quality of brain is an equally important factor; and hence not a few men with brains even below the average have distinguished themselves for scholarship or executive ability. The Noachites at large possess a mean capacity of 1500 cubic centimeters. The capacity among the Mongoloids is 1450+ cubic centimeters; among the Negroes, 1360 cubic centimeters, and among the Australians 1276 cubic centimeters. The Noachites surpass the Negro 126 cubic centimeters, or 16 & one-half per cent. Assuming 100 as the average capacity of the Australian skull, that of the Negro is 111.6, and that of the Teuton 124.3"

In respect to the cephalic index, or form of the skull in a horizontal projection, we find that all the lower races are dolichocephalic, and all the higher races are mesocephalic or brachycephalic. The index, for instance, among the Noachites, ranges +from 75 to 83; among the Mongoloids, from 71 to 90; among the Negroes, from 69 to 76; and among the Australians, from 71 to 71.5. The broadest Negro skull does not reach the average of the Germans; nor does the best Australian skull reach the average of the Negro. Mean relative breadth of skull is found to be associated with executive ability.

Among Whites, the relative abundance of "crossheads" having permanently unclosed the longitudinal and transverse sutures on the top of the head is one in seven; among Mongolians, it is one in thirteen; among Negroes, it is one in fifty-two. This peculiarity is supposed by some to favor the prolonged development of the brain. In any event, it is most frequent in the highest races. This completer development of the osseous tissues in the Negro cranium is probably related to that density and thickness of ossification which enables the Negro, both male and female, to fight by means of butting; and to support hard objects and great weights on the top of the head.

The amount of prognathism is another marked criterion of organic rank. One method of expressing this is by means of auricular radii, or distances from the opening of the ear to the roots of the upper teeth1 and to other parts of the head. Among Europeans, the distance to the base of the upper incisors is 99, but among Negroes, it averages 114. On the contrary, the average distance to the top of the head is, among Europeans, 112; but among Negroes, 110. The distance to the upper edge of the occipital bone is, among Europeans, 104; among Negroes, 104. These measurements prove that the Negro possesses more face and particularly of jaws, and less brain above. Other measurements furnish a similar result; and show, also, that the development of the posterior brain, in relation to the anterior, is greater in the Negro. Prognathism is otherwise expressed by means of the "facial angle,11 or general slope the face from the forehead to the jaws, when compared with a horizontal plane. Among the Noachites, the facial line is nearest perpendicular, giving an angle of 770 to 810. Among the Negroes, it averages only 670; among the Hottentots and Bushmen, 600, and among the Australians, 680.

Among Negroes the forearm is longer, in proportion to the arm, than is the case with Whites. The same is true of anthropoid apes. The Negro's arm, when suspended by the side, reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is only four and three-eighths per cent of the whole length of the body. The white man's arm reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is seven and one-half per cent of the whole length of the body. This length of arm is again a quadrumanous characteristic. The Negro pelvis averages but 26 and one-half inches in circumference; that of the White race is 33 inches. In the Negro it is more inclined, which is another quadrumanous character. It is also more narrow and elongated; and this, as Vrolik and Weber have suggested, corresponds to the dolichocephalous head.

I present here views of the skeletons of an Adamite and of a Chimpanzee. Their contrasts are apparent at a glance. In every particular in which the skeleton of the Negro departs from that of the Adamite, it is INTERMEDIATE between that and the skeleton of the Chimpanzee.

illustration: two skeletons I

The average weight of the European brain, 'males and females, is 1340 grammes; that of the Negro is 1173; of the Hottentot. 974, and of the Australian, 907. The significance of these comparisons appears when we learn that Broca, the most eminent of French anthropologists, states that when the

European brain falls below 978 grammes (mean of males and females), the result is idiocy. In this opinion Thurman coincides. The color of the Negro brain is darker than that of the White, and its density and texture are inferior. The convolutions are fewer and more simple, and, as Agassiz and others long ago pointed out, approximate those of the Quadrumana.

According to H. de Serres, the brain of the Caucasian, during embryonic development, presents in Succession the conformations seen in the Negro, the Malay, the American and the Caucasian. This statement rests on excellent authority, but I am not aware that it has been confirmed. Its significance is apparent, in view of the established principle in physiology, that the embryonic characters in any vertebrate resemble the adult characters of other vertebrates lower in rank. Again, the retreating contour of the chin, as compared with the European, approximates the Negro to the prehistoric jaw of La Naulette, and to the Chimpanzee and lower mammals. Finally, the slenderness of the Negro arms and legs is also quadrumanous. This character is still more striking in the structure of the Australians.

In activity and capacity for prolonged and intense effort, the Negro is notably inferior. This point, however, has been sufficiently presented.

Psychically, I have spoken of the Negro to considerable extent. In brief, he possesses a strong curiosity to gaze upon new sights, or even familiar ones; but it is the curiosity of the child; he has a feeble power of combining his perceptions and drawing conclusions. In abstract conceptions he is still more helpless; no American Negro has ever produced any original work in mathematics or philosophy; the imaginative and aesthetic powers are similarly dormant; poetry, sculpture, painting, owe almost nothing to Negro genius. "Never yet," says President Jefferson, "could I find that a black has uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw an elementary trait of painting or sculpture."*

* Jefferson, NOTES ON VIRGINIA.

In reference to this, Mr. James Parton says: "We cannot fairly deny that facts give support to the opinion of an inherent mental inferiority. It is ninety years since Jefferson published his 'Notes,' and we cannot yet name one Negro of pure blood who has taken the first, the second, the third or the tenth rank, in business, politics, art, literature, scholarship, science or philosophy. To the present hour, the Negro has contributed nothing to the intellectual resources of man. If he turns 'Negro minstrel,' he still imitates the white creators of that black art; and he has not composed one of the airs that have had popular success as Negro melodies.

These statements require slight qualification Phillis Wheatley is said to have been a Negro poetess a hundred years ago, but her poetry, Parton says, was very inferior. She is not mentioned in Tyler's History of American Literature, which, however, ends for the present with 1765. I am not informed respecting the purity of her racial character. Miss Edmondia Lewis is a sculptress of considerable merit, but I am informed that she has the benefit of about fifty per cent of Caucasian blood. It is also true that some of the more gifted Negroes possess a wonderful power of emotional eloquence, but I suspect that in all these cases some infusion of Caucasian blood exists, as in the case of the highly respected marshal of the District of Columbia, and one or two colored members of congress, and also a few colored pulpit orators. Nevertheless such qualifications do not invalidate the statement that "pure African blood, even under the influence of Caucasian civilization, has never achieved any valuable results in the realm of art." These statements have been made in reference to the American-born Negro. It is more appropriate to turn our attention to the Negro in his native haunts.

The physical aspect of many native Africans gives them, beyond question, a decidedly beastly look.

This has been remarked again and again. Professor Wyman says: "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." Here is Savage and Wyman, "Troglodytes Corilla," BOSTON JOURNAL OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1847, p. 27.

"Cuvier's description of the Bojesman woman, known as the "Hottentot Venus" who died in Paris on the 29th of December, 1815, and whose life-size figure I have examined in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes: "She had a way of pouting her lips," he says, "exactly like that we have observed in the Orang-Outang. Her movements had something abrupt and fantastical about them, reminding one of those of the ape. Her lips were monstrously large; her ear was like that of many apes, being small, the tragus weak, and the external border almost obliterated behind. These," he says, after having described the bones of the skeleton, "are animal characters." Again, "I have never seen a human head more like an ape than that of this woman." In reference to the fatty protuberances of the haunches, he says: "They offer a striking resemblance to those which exist in the females of the mandrill, the papions, etc., and which assume, at certain epochs of their life, an enlargement truly monstrous." And yet Cuvier was the champion of the opposers of Lamarck, who thought he saw a genetic, as well as a physiognomic and osteologic relation between this woman and the Quadrumana. Here, again, is Topinard's description of the Hottentot physiognomy: "The nose is frightfully broad and flat, the nostrils are thick, very divergent and exposed. Their prognathism is generally enormous, though it varies. The mouth is large, with thick, projecting and turned up lips."

The following is Lichtenstein's description of a Bojesman (Bushman) : "One of our present guests who appeared about fifty years of age, who had gray hair and a bristly beard, whose forehead, nose, cheeks and chin were all smeared with black grease, having only a white circle round the eye, washed clean with the tears occasioned by smoking - this man had the true physiognomy of the small blue ape of Caffraria. What gave the more verity to such a comparison, was the vivacity of his eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows, which he worked up and down with every change of countenance. Even his nostrils, and the corners of his mouth, nay, his very ears, moved involuntarily, expressing his hasty transitions from eager desire to watchful distrust. There was not, on the contrary a single feature in his countenance that evinced a consciousness of mental powers, or anything that denoted emotions of the mind of a milder species than what belong to man in his mere animal nature. When a piece of meat was given him, and, half rising, he stretched out a distrustful arm to take it, he snatched it hastily, and stuck it immediately into the tire, peering around with his little keen eyes, as if fearing lest some one should take it away again. All this was done with such looks and gestures that any one must have been ready to swear he had taken the example of them entirely from the ape. He soon took the meat from the embers, wiped it hastily with his right hand upon his left arm, and tore out large half-raw bits with his teeth, which I could see going entire down his meager throat.

The comparisons made between Africans and Quadrumana must not be understood as intended to imply human descent from Quadrumana. Entirely apart from questions of blood relationship, the morphological and physiognomical resemblances exist; and they are cited for the purpose of showing that, just as far as the African diverges from the style of a white man, he approximates the lower animals.