62 



CHAPTER V. 



INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 



FROM time immemorial, common sense has enlightened man- 

 kind upon the intellectual differences which make one nation 

 differ from another, and one race from another. Almost all na- 

 tions, in admitting that they are superior to their neighbours, 

 acknowledge thereby a characteristic difference between them- 

 selves and those whom they thus place below their own level. 

 An overweening sense of vanity may possibly cause deception 

 in this case ; but this belief is, at least, based on a veritable 

 fact, intellectual inequality. There are, indeed, sensible and 

 manifest differences, which no one will deny, especially those 

 who seek in the literary monuments of a race for the history 

 of its ideas and its tendencies, and those who have mingled with 

 other nations, and who have examined their manners, their 

 customs and their religion. "It is sufficient to have seen the 

 blacks," says their most enthusiastic defender,* tf to have lived 

 some time with them, to feel that there is in them a humanity 

 quite different to that of the white man."f Some persons have 



* M. d'Eichthal, Lettres sur la Race noire, 1839, p. 15. 



f [" The Arabs say that Mohammed, whilst on the road from Medina to Mecca, 

 one day happened to see a widow woman sitting before her house, and asked 

 how she and her three sons were ; upon which the troubled woman (for she 

 had concealed one of her sons on seeing Mohammed's approach, lest he, as is 

 customary when there are three males of a family present, should seize one 

 and make him do porterage), said, ' Very well ; but I've only two sons !' 

 Mohammed, hearing this, said to the woman, reprovingly, ' Woman, thou liest !' 

 thou hast three sons ; and for trying to conceal this matter from me, hence- 

 forth remember that this is my decree, that the two boys whom thou hast 

 not concealed shall multiply and prosper, have fair faces, become wealthy, 

 and reign lords over all the earth ; but the progeny of your third son shall, in 

 consequence of your having concealed him, produce seedis as black as darkness, 

 who will be sold in the market like cattle, and remain in perpetual servitude 

 to the descendants of the other two.' " This is the Arab theory of the 

 Negro's origin, mentioned in What led to the Discovery of the Source of the 

 Nile, by J. H. Speke, p. 341, London, 1864. EDITOR.] 



