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ON NEGRESSES.




Negroes and Negresses both exhibit great lasciviousness, though the latter carry it to an extent unknown in our climates, a characteristic which may be deduced from some peculiarities of structure, as well as from observation. It is this temperament which is supposed to render them attractive in the eyes of Europeans, when the disgust which at first arises wears off.




In several countries of Africa, the time of puberty is very early and corruption is carried to a monstrous excess. Among the inhabitants of Darfur incest is very common, and chastity is considered as the result of ugliness or inferiority, prostitution being received as a proof of worth. 




Although the extreme lasciviousness of negro women opposes the propagation of the human species, yet their fecundity is undoubtedly augmented by their simple and animal mode of living: for it has been asserted that the more men and women are civilized, and cultivate their mind and intellect, the more unfit they become to propagate. Almost all the vital power is carried to the brain and senses at the expense of the other organs.




When nature made the negro inferior to the white man in intellect, it indemnified him in another way. If we enjoy greater pleasures from the mind, Africans are more pleased through their senses. Our greatest delight consists in towering to high thoughts, acquiring knowledge, and enjoying the charms of social intercourse. Negroes find their greatest pleasures in being devoted to material objects. If we seek after glory, riches, power, they on the contrary, prefer an indolent obscure life, and believe that riches cannot make up for any sacrifice; to work is more intolerable to them than misery; they do nothing, unless compelled by necessity. A European must have wealth, consideration, a thousand objects of luxury, or particular comfort —his whole life is spent in seeking after enjoyment, and still he is never satisfied. A negro, on the contrary, lives on, without attempting to better his condition. He would rather forego any thing that might benefit him, than take the trouble of procuring it, and is satisfied in his nothingness. We require excitement; the negro rest. What constitutes our pleasures, are his troubles; and that apathy, which is a suffering to us, is to him a source of the greatest delight.




Let the white man study the celestial bodies, and rate their course; let him travel over the globe, to discover the mysteries of nature; and the Almighty’s nameless and stupendous works—the dull Hottentot stretches himself on the ground, smokes his pipe, eats and sleeps; he laughs at our activity, which he calls folly and excessive misery; he thinks we are pursued every where by the demon of necessity.




We see very evidently, from the narrowness of his brain, that the intellect of the negro is not so active as ours. Even the savages of Florida, and Carribeans, reduce to slavery all the negroes they have carried off from European settlers. All over the globe, negroes in the vicinity of another human race, are very soon subjected. On the contrary, not one of the other races has ever been enslaved by them. In fact, it would be unnatural to suppose that the less intelligent should rule. This alone proves the constant inferiority of the negro species among all other races. 




If man exists by the intellectual faculties, the negro beyond doubt will, on that account, be an inferior man; he will approach nearer to the brute, as we see him more subject to the wants of his stomach, and to all sensual gratification, than to the dictates of his reason. He does not love his idols, but he worships them through fear. Such a degradation is still more apparent in the Hottentot; no human being can be more stupid, brutal and dull than he is. If we compare him with the most perfect monkeys, the distance between them will appear comparatively trifling, and he is next to them in his organization; witness the grinning projecting mouth of the Hottentot, the small size of the internal volume of brain, the posterior position of the occipital hole, the inflexion of his dorsal vertebrae, his pelvis also in an oblique position, the curve of his stomach smaller, his knees half bent, the distance between his toes, and the flat position of the soles of his feet as in monkeys. The Hottentot feels a difficulty in speaking; his voice is like the clacking of a turkey, and presents an evident affinity to the Orang-Outang, which has a kind of hollow clacking, owing to the membranous bags of the larynx in which his voice is immediately lost. 




There is a real gradation of organization and faculties in all the bodies of Nature; for we may descend by degrees from the white man to the Negro, and from the Negro to the Hottentot: from the Hottentot to the Orang Outang the transition is very great, as the first among the monkeys is still very inferior to the last among men. From the monkeys we are led by progressions hardly perceptible, to the whole class of quadrupeds; from the latter to birds, reptiles, fishes, molluscas, crustaceous; insects, worms, zoophytes.