CHAP. VI.
Are colored Americans , in point of intellect, inferior to white people?
This is a question of great importance for two reasons; first, the negative is resolutely assumed, and second, on account of the interests involved. If we are inferior we should be content to pass into the shade; but if not then we protest against the assumption of our opponents.
My position is that the notion of inferiority, is not only false but absurd, and therefore ought to be abandoned.
I shall now present a chain of facts to prove the notion of our inferiority to be false, and then in a short dissertation I shall endeavor to show it to be absurd. In discussing the question, however, it is to be understood,
- That in opposing this notion I do not intend to controvert the fact that we are inferior in attainment. If this was the question I should have to be content to yield it and go no further.
- I am not to be understood as denying the fact that some men are of less vigorous habits of study than others.
- Nor do I assert that the mind, under certain circumstances, does not lose both the habits of, and the taste for enlightened education.
- Nor yet do I mean to say that the human mind does not greatly vary in talents; talents I mean as distinguished from intellect.
- I do not know exactly what the advocates of this notion mean by inferiority, but from the popular sense of the word I shall take it for granted that they mean to hold that there is an inferior order of intellect, and that those of this order are radically and constitutionally inferior, so that no means can change that constitution or raise them from that order. I do not know but that many of the advocates will object to this statement; but I presume enough up on their modesty to believe that they do not mean more than I have stated for them; and if they mean less, the question is reduced to so small a compass as to be worth nothing to their purpose. Believing however, that their views are correctly embodied in my statement, I proceed to dispute them.
I. By facts and incidents from the history of our intellect.
- The first general fact is that the arts and sciences had their origin with our ancestors, and from them have flown forth to the world. They gave them to Greece, Greece to Rome, and Rome to others.
The question is not whether they gave perfect systems, nor whether those systems might not have been discovered by others; but I am only now concerned with the fact of their originating the arts and sciences. Many will seek to evade this fact by saying that we are not of Egypt; but I have shown from Herodotus that the Egyptians were black people, and from other facts that they are one with the Ethiopians in the great events of history.
- As to the state of the arts &c. among the native Africans, since the beginning of the slave trade, the reader is referred to such as Clarkson, Park, Wilson, Stedman, Lucas, Durand, Wadstroom, Falconhridge, Holben, Barbet, Dalrymple, Towne, and Borman. These have visited that country since it has began to be drenched with blood by the man stealer, and have seen the arts in a highly cultivated state. These have, also given accounts of their mien, their states, or kingdoms and resources, which cannot be abridged for a work like this.
[…]
My opponents of the Jefferson school always pitifully reply to the argument when pressed with cases, by answering that they are either whites, or so intermixed as to have the benefit of white intellect. Thus they beg the question. They either do this, or else immodestly deny that to be intellectual worth, which is admitted to be such by judges as respectable as themselves. Thus Mr. Jefferson says that the Dunciad are divinities compared with the muse of Philis Wheatly! He also reproaches a respectable colored writer of London, of having too much imagination! But has a horse any imagination? They also make false issues to avoid the force of these cases.
[…]
I have only to regret that Mr. Jefferson has so plainly discovered to the world the adverse influence of slavery on his great mind. O that he had reflected for a moment that his opinions were destined to undergo a rigid scrutiny by an improved state of intellect, assisted by the rising power of an unbiased spirit of benevolence. Had he done this, he would, as a wise man, have modified that ill judged part of his work which relates to the colored people. The most unfortunate thing for the memory of this man is, that he seems to have committed himself against our claims. He makes a labored effort to conclude his proof against us, and reasons throughout as if he intended to claim the case, but his conclusion is a budget of confusion. After taking exception to the case of every educated colored person to which his attention was directed, and alleging that notwithstanding many had been taught the handicraft arts, and that others might have improved by the conversation of their masters and mistresses, he submits it as an anomaly that he had never known of negro intellect to rise above narration! As if he did not know that slavery could produce anomalies, and as if he expected a man to learn as much from a tea table talk, by those who are studiously guarded in teaching even the Bible, lest too much light be seen, as from the lecture of a professor in his chair.
II. A dissertation on the main question of inferiority of intellect.
In this I am to be understood as disputing the idea of our inferiority by a direct effort of my own reasoning powers. My position is, that intellect is identical in all human beings, and that the contrary opinion is an absurdity. “NO MAN IS ANYTHING MORE THAN A MAN, AND NO MAN LESS THAN A MAN.” Intellect, is the grand distinguishing point between man and the brute creation. Take intellect from man and he is an animal only. But while this remains firmly in his constitution, as fixed by the God of his nature, man cannot, by any possible process in creation, be converted into a mere animal.
However near a brute may approach to a man in bodily form and instinct, yet the grand point cannot be passed. A mere animal is not a man because it has no intellect, and it never can be identical with man because it cannot be, by any possible process, supplied with intellect; and man cannot become a mere animal because he cannot be divested of intellect. If I am required to say what I intend by intellect, I reply, I mean those powers of the human soul, as distinct from mere instinct, which alone enable man to reason and reflect. Now if the absence of intellectual intelligence in the brute constitutes the difference between man and brute, then intellectual intelligence cannot be predicable of a brute or mere animal in any possible degree. And if the possession of intellectual intelligence be that thing which raises man above the brute or mere animal, this must be the dividing line; nor can we conceive of more than one such line. To talk about another dividing line is to talk about a species between man and brute, which is false and absurd.
If man be thus qualified then by the possession of intellectual intelligence, as distinguished from brute instinct, then man is totally distinct from every species of mere animal, is he not?
If this be just, then our question has a fair and distinct boundary, below which it is not honorable to descend. He who in discussing the nature of man, can stoop to talk about monkies, apes, and ourang outangs, offers insult to the majesty of his own nature, for which he might to be ashamed.
The rational consideration to which I appeal for the truth of my position that human intellect is identical, are that it has been produced, improved and perfected in identically the same way.
- Intellect in all human beings has been produced in the same way, and therefore it is inconceivable that there should be inferior orders of intellect radically so considered.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Gen. ii. 7. Here is the production of the human soul, and consequently of all that we understand by mind and intellect. To this we may also add the text Acts xvii. 26. “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth.”
This creature of God so produced, was destined to propagate his kind, and it is said of his son that he was “in his own likeness, and after his own image.” Hence propagation does not involve power to produce any change in the intellect. But if this be true of the first father, it is no less so of the second, and so on down to the present time. I think it likely I may be reproached for introducing this sentence, and I would not be ready to avail myself of the bad example of my opponents, concerning indelicate paragraphs in their writings, but I may be permitted to say, in anticipation, that they are very copious with their indelicacies.
God is not only the all-glorious author, then, of the black man’s mind as well as of that of the white man, but he has produced it in the same way identically. That wonderful thing in each called mind or soul, is nothing less in its nature, than the breath of the Almighty God. The author of their being is the author of ours also, and the father of their spirits is the father of ours also. We sustain those important relations in the same sense and in the same degree, since they were constituted by the same act on his part.
The design of God in that action was to produce intelligence, and at the same time to constitute a relation between himself and that intelligence. That was an action in itself. It was an Almighty action. And the effect of that action corresponded to the design of the Almighty actor.
[…]
Take the common school system. Now the inquiry is this, is this an intellectual system? Does it develop intellect and do all who master this system experience this effect? If this is an intellectual system it is an evidence of intellect to master it.
But if it be an evidence of intellect to master this system, then all who master it must have their minds improved in that identical way and degree which this system is adapted to. Hence, so far as this system is concerned, all minds, then, are improved by the same method. And they are improved to the same degree. The common school system is the first educational measure by which the intellectual powers are tried. It is called the elementary, or primary system, because it is the foundation of all acquirement. It is the first gate way to the temple of knowledge. he who can not lay this stone cannot build. He who does not enter this gate cannot ascend to the interior of the temple. But who lays this stone in a masterly manner, can surely lay another on the top of it, another on the top of that, and so onward, can he not? Whoever sees his way through this gate, may pass through the second and then the third, until he finds the gorgeous interior. But this is the way our intellects are improved. A man who did not need process, was never known. Adam, though created an adult, was not without the need of maturity. These men talk, however, as if they had never had to learn to say, a, b, c, and bla, and baker. As if they never had to learn how many 2 and 3 make, and what the amount of 5 and 5 is when added together ! 1 mean of course those men who claim an order of intellect superior to that of the writer. Let them remember the rock whence they have been hewn and the hole of the pit whence they were digged.
[…]
Who then, is the idolater? Who is the blasphemer? Who is the Sabbath breaker? Who is the murderer? Does it matter in the sight of God and in His dispensation of rewards and punishments, whether he is of Africa, Asia, Europe or America? Does God slacken his hand upon the idolatrous colored man? Does the sword of justice fall more lightly upon him for his sin of idolatry than upon the European, or upon the American? Nay his law “is truth,” Psalm cxix. 142, and “the Judge of all the earth does right.” Gen. xviii. 25.
God cannot be accused of injustice in the providential administration of his law over all nations of people with an equally rigid hand. In this department of his holy work, God is continually working with men, among them, and over them. He works with men by making instruments of them, or so controling their conduct as to make them subserve his purposes. He brings one man from infancy and moulds him every step till he gets him on the stage. He appears to let another find his way up, and then he just picks him up from among others and makes his use of him. One man comes upon the stage of action and appears to create himself the circumstances by which he is to be made prominent. Another comes forward and finds all of his materials at hand waiting for him. One man dawns into life, and his course seems to lay by the nearest cut through the world. His work is soon done and he is gone. If he brings a blessing to his species it is short and sweet. If he brings a curse, it is short and severe. Another man’s course seems to stretch from the eastern to the western horizon. If this man brings a curse it is the curse of ages; if he brings a blessing, he is a welcome visiter to generations.
[…]