faculties—to investigate the question—to study the differences existing among the general species of men, and compare their natures and capabilities with our own, to understand our true relations with them, and thus to secure our own happiness as well as their well-being, when placed in juxtaposition with them. All this is so obvious, and the remote and abstract question of origin so hypothetical and entirely non-essential, that it seems impossible that intelligent and conscientious men would ever seek to raise an issue on it, or that they would overlook the great practical duties involved in the question and engage in a visionary and unprofitable discussion about that of which they neither do nor can know anything whatever. Nevertheless, some few persons seem to be especially desirous to provoke an issue on this matter, not only with science but with common sense, and a certain reverend and rather distinguished gentleman has publicly and repeatedly declared “that the doctrine of a single human race underlies the whole fabric of religious belief, and if it is rejected, Christianity will be lost to mankind!” What miserable folly, if nothing worse, is this! It is a virtual declaration that we must believe or pretend to believe, what we know to be a lie, in order to preserve what we believe to be a truth. The existence of different species of men belongs to the category of physical fact—a thing subject to the decision of the senses, and belief neither has nor can have anything to do with the matter. It is true, the reverend gentleman in question may shut his eyes and remain in utter ignorance of the fact, or rather of the laws governing the fact, and while thus ignorant, may believe, or pretend to believe, that widely different things constitute the same thing—that white and black are identical—that white parents had at some remote time and in some strange and unaccountable manner given birth to Negro offspring; but 57what right has he to say, to those who are conscious of the fact of different species, and who know, moreover, that negroes could no more originate from white parentage than they could from dogs or cats, that they shall stultify themselves and dishonestly pretend to believe otherwise, on pain of eternal reprobation, or what he doubtless considers such, the loss of Christianity to the world? It is not the desire of the writer to either reconcile the merits of science with those peculiar interpretations of the Bible, or to exhibit any contradictions with those interpretations. An undoubting believer himself in the great doctrines of Christianity, he finds no difficulty whatever in this respect, and would desire to simply state the facts or what he knows to be truth, and leave the reader to form his own conclusions. But the seemingly 

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