500 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



before Adam, though some of them are bo dis 

 tant that their light has been a hundred thou- 

 sand years in reaching us I " 



Prof. Wine-hell, of course, takes the 

 ground that the older or black race is of 

 an inferior type to the subsequent or, as he 

 calls them, the Adamic races; and to the 

 objection that the negro is not inferior to 

 the white man he makes the following reply : 



"1. If, when the sun is shining brightly, a 

 man tells me it is dark, I can only pronounce 

 him blind. The inferiority of the negro is a fact 

 everywhere patent. I imply here only inferior- 

 ity of intelligence, the instrument of self-help- 

 fulness and of all civilization. I need not argue 

 the fact ; circumspice. But when this inferiori- 

 ty is conceded, we always hear the appeal to 

 unfavorable conditions.' This leads me to 

 note, 2. The African Continent has always been 

 favorably conditioned. In the first place, it had 

 a land connection with Asia and the seats of 

 ancient civilization. It even had a'remote civil- 

 ization planted within its own borders ; and the 

 fires of Egyptian civilization have never been 

 extinct ; while for two thousand years the en- 

 lightenment of Europe has been within accessi- 

 ble distance. In the second place, the salubrity 

 of the climate, the fertility of the soil, the vast 

 hydrographic system of lakes and rivers, have 

 all conspired to give the interior of the conti- 

 nent natural conditions unsurpassed by those 

 of the site of any civilization which ever exist- 

 ed. Thirdly, the indigenous productions of 

 Africa have supplied other conditions of human 

 advancement. There exist two native cereals, 

 negro millet and Caffre corn, which supply ma- 

 terial for bread. There are the edible ' bread- 

 roots ' and also 'earth-nuts,' which are ade- 

 quate to supply the daily food of whole villages. 

 As to fruit-trees, there are the doom-palm, the 

 oil-palm, and the 'butter-tree.' Moreover, for 

 thousands of years the way has been open, as 

 wide as the continent, for the introduction of 

 the cereals of Asia. In fact, they have long 

 been known to the natives ; and maize, the 

 manioc-root, and sugar-cane, as well as wheat 

 and barley, have spread far toward the interior. 

 There, too, have been domesticated animals, re- 

 ceived, probably, from the Egyptians in a do- 

 mesticated state; but no native animal has ever 

 been domesticated. The Aryans of India em- 

 ployed the elephant as a beast of burden ; but 

 the African elephant was never utilized. These 

 are not the conditions under which a whole race 

 could be crushed into a process of degeneracy. 

 3. Comparison with other races shows the ne- 

 groes inferiority. The Egyptian civilization was 

 reared on the African Continent by the side of 

 the barbarous negro, and under the same con- 

 ditions. If the materials of civilization were in- 

 troduced from Asia, it was certainly easier for 

 the negro to introduce them from Egypt. Amer- 

 ica is not naturally superior in its physical con- 

 ditions to Africa. Its only cereal is maize. Its 

 principal edible roots are the mandioca and the 



potato ; and the feeble llama and vicuna are the 

 only native animals capable of domestication as 

 beasts of burden. Yet the civilization of the 

 Nahuatl nations of Mexico, the Quiches of Cen- 

 tral America, the Mayas of Yucatan, and the 

 Aymaras and Quichuas of Peru, had become, 

 both in respect to intellectual and industrial ad- 

 vances, and judicial, moral, and religious con- 

 ceptions, almost a stage of true enlightenment. 

 The glaring fact of negro inferiority in respect to 

 social conditions cannot be explained by any ap- 

 peal to adverse conditions. Such are the ethno- 

 logical facts and the coordinated circumstances. 

 But in proof of my position I make another 

 point : 4. The anatomical structure of the ne- 

 gro is inferior. The lean shanks, the progna- 

 thous profile, the long arms (which do not always 

 exist), the black skin, the elongated and oblique 

 pelvis these are all characteristics in which, so 

 far as the negro diverges from the white man, 

 he approximates the African apes. The skull 

 also is inferior in structure and in capacity, and 

 in the relative expansion of its different regions. 

 Among whites, the relative abundance of ' cross- 

 heads ' (having permanently unclosed the longi- 

 tudinal and transverse suture 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. Again, the prevailing form of the negro 

 head isdolichocephalous ; that of civilized races 

 is mesocephalous and brachycephalous. That 

 is, it lacks the breadth which we find associated 

 with executive ability. The broadest negro 

 skull does not reach the average of the Ger- 

 mans, nor does the best Australian skull, let me 

 add, reach the average of the negro. Finally, 

 the capacity of the negro cranium is inferior. 

 Assuming 100 as the average capacity of the 

 Australian skull, that of the negro is 111.6, and 

 that of the Teuton 124.8. Now, no fact is better 

 established than the 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. But 

 this does not abolis-h the rule ; nor does it prove 

 that the racial inferiority of the negro brain, in 

 respect to size, is not to be taken as an index 

 of racial inferiority in respect to intelligence 

 and the capacity for civilization; and this all 

 the more, since the quality of the negro brain is 

 also inferior. 



"I am not responsible for the inferiority of 

 the negro. I am responsible if I ignore the 

 facts. I am culpable if I hold him to the same 

 standard as the white man. My appeals to him 

 must be of a widely-different character from my 

 appeals to the Aryan Hindoo, or the Mongoloid 

 American savage. The ethnological facts have 

 their application in all missionary efforts." 



Of the subsequent discussion on "Pri- 



