LECTURE VII. 191 



teet]i. Such a condition facilitates the movements in a forward 

 direction ; whilst in skulls^ in which the sockets are deep and 

 narrow, the motion is more vertical. I am fully aware that this 

 explanation is not very satisfactory, and I ask myself whether 

 prognathism is not rather the expression of a relapse into the 

 animal form." 



(Thus far Pruner-Bey. On our part we have no doubt the 

 latter explanation is the correct. Everything is in harmony in 

 an organism, and we might as well say, the socket and the 

 head of the bone must be flat because the upper jaw projects 

 and the lower jaw is long, as to assume the reverse. More- 

 over, carnivora whose jaws move only in a perpendicular direc- 

 tion, possess very elliptical articulating heads of the lower jaw.) 



It is undeniable that the sudden metamorphosis which at the 

 time of puberty takes place in the Negro, is not only inti- 

 mately connected with psychical development, but is a repe- 

 tition of the phenomena occurring in the anthropoid apes. In 

 them also the skull presents, until the second dentition, a 

 remarkable resemblance to the human skull, the cerebral por- 

 tion being arched and the jaws but little projecting. From 

 that time the cerebral skull remains stationary, the internal 

 capacity no way increases ; the ridges and crests only are 

 developed together with the muzzle, which projects from under 

 the cranium until it acquires the form seen in old apes. And 

 with this the mental development -proceeds j^ari j)asst(,. Young 

 orangs and chimpanzees are good-natured, amiable, intelligent 

 beings, very apt to learn and become civihsed. After the 

 transformation they are obstinate savage beasts, incapable of 

 any improvement. 



And so it is with the Negro. The Negro-child is not, as 

 regards the intellectual capacities, behind the white child. All 

 observers agree that they are as droll in their games, as docile 

 and as intelligent as white children. Where their education is 

 attended to, and where they are not, as in the American Slave 

 States, intentionally brought up hke cattle, it is found that the 

 Negro children in the schools, not only equal but even surpass 

 the white children in docility and apprehension. But no sooner 

 do they reach the fatal period of puberty than, with the closure 



