group is completed; so that they are all, not only specifically different from each other, but absolutely unlike each other in every thing, in the minutest particle of elementary matter as well as in those things palpable to the sense. Generally considered, they resemble each other, but specifically considered, they are absolutely distinct, and, it need not be repeated, the distinctions in each case or each individual species are also specific.

39

That Linnæus and other European naturalists, and especially the ethnologists, should make such a mistake, and suppose that the human creation is composed of a single species, is perhaps natural enough, for they saw but one—the two hundred millions of Europe, except a few thousand Laplanders, being all Caucasians. But then it is strange how those so ready to class men with animals should so widely depart from the spirit and order of their own classification. They must have known that in the whole world of animate existence there was no such fact as a single species, and therefore when assuming only a single human species, that they directly contradicted or ignored the most constant, universal and uniform fact in organic life, a fact underlying and forming the very basis of all with 40which they were dealing. This mistake, or misconception, or ignorance of European ethnologists, however, is of no particular importance. They saw no other and therefore could know of no other species of men except their own, and though its effect on ourselves has been mischievous, the cause of their misconception is so palpable to men’s common sense that it only needs to be pointed out to be utterly rejected. It is about as respectable as the assumptions of the northern Abolitionists, who, though not even venturing out of Massachusetts, affect to know, and doubtless really believe that they do know, more about the internal condition of South Carolina or Virginia than the people of those States themselves. But facts are stubborn things, and, as the Spanish proverb says, “seeing is believing.” It is impossible that the northern Abolitionist who never ventured out of New England can comprehend a condition of society that he has never seen. So, too, the authority of European writers, necessarily ignorant of the subject, will be rejected by those whose very senses assure them that negroes are specifically different from white men. And that mental dominion which, beginning with the early planting of European colonies on this continent, has continued long after political independence has been secured, only needs to be cast off altogether, to convince every one of the utter absurdity of European teachings on the subject.

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