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PROFESSOR TIEDEMANN ON THE BRAIN OF THE NEGRO. 
recession of the chin, the flat form of the nose-bones, the projecting 1 and strong lower 
jaw, the position of the foramen occipitale magnum, the relative greater length of the 
ossa humeri and the bones of the foramen, the flat foot, and in the length, breadth, 
shape, and position of the os calcis. 
Such are the similarities with the Ape mentioned by those authors who have paid 
more particular attention to the growth and anatomy of the Negro, as Camper, 
Soemmerring, Cuvier, White, Lawrence, and Virey. These points certainly distin- 
guish many Negro tribes from the Europeans, but they are not common to all the 
Negroes of the interior of Africa ; the greater number of which are well made, and 
have handsome features. 
Some Remarks on the Intellectual Faculties of the Negro. 
The brain is undoubtedly the organ of the mind. It is the part of our body which 
gives us the consciousness of our own existence, and through which we receive the 
impressions made upon the external senses, conducted to the brain by the nerves. 
Here the perceptions are compared and combined so as to produce ideas. In this 
organ we think, reason, desire, and will. In short, the brain is the instrument by 
which all the operations called intellectual are carried on. It is proved by facts and 
observations that animals partake of feelings, sensations, and intellectual faculties in 
a higher degree, and approach more nearly to mankind in proportion as their brain 
resembles more the human brain. An intimate connexion between the structure of 
the brain and the intellectual faculties in the animal kingdom cannot be doubted. 
As the facts which we have advanced plainly prove that there are no well-marked 
and essential differences between the brain of the Negro and European, we must con- 
clude that no innate difference in the intellectual faculties can be admitted to exist 
between them. This has been denied by philosophers *, naturalists^, and tra- 
vellers, who assert that the Ethiopian race is naturally inferior to the European 
in intellectual and moral powers. The data upon which such an opinion is based 
are either erroneous suppositions and false deductions from anatomy and physiology, 
or superficial observations on the intellectual and moral faculties of the Negroes, 
made by partial or prejudiced travellers. Very little value can be attached to these 
researches, when we consider that they have been made for the most part on poor 
and unfortunate Negroes in the Colonies, who have been torn from their native 
country and their families, and carried into the West Indies, and doomed there to 
a perpetual slavery and hard labour in the sugar plantations. Such is the nature 
* Hume (Essays, vol. i. p. 21, Nat. M. p. 512.) and Meiners. 
f Lawrence (1. c. p. 493.) says, “ I deem the moral and intellectual character of the Negro inferior, and 
decidedly so, to that of the European ; and as this inferiority arises from a corresponding difference of organi- 
zation, I must regard it as his natural destiny.” Mr. Lawrence speculates only on the inferior character of 
the Negro ; he has given us no proof of the lower organization of the Negro’s brain. 
