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Software Engineering A Practitioners Approach 7th Edition Pressman Solutions Manual download

The document provides links to download solution manuals and test banks for various editions of software engineering textbooks and other subjects. It also includes an overview of formal modeling and verification methods in software engineering, focusing on cleanroom software engineering and formal methods. The chapter discusses the importance of specifications, design, verification, and testing in creating high-quality software.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
13 views41 pages

Software Engineering A Practitioners Approach 7th Edition Pressman Solutions Manual download

The document provides links to download solution manuals and test banks for various editions of software engineering textbooks and other subjects. It also includes an overview of formal modeling and verification methods in software engineering, focusing on cleanroom software engineering and formal methods. The chapter discusses the importance of specifications, design, verification, and testing in creating high-quality software.

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jfryliget
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 21
Formal Modeling and Verification

CHAPTER OVERVIEW AND COMMENTS

The intent of this chapter is to provide an overview of two


important (but not widely used) methods for formal program
verification—cleanroom software engineering and formal methods.
The late Harlan Mills (one of the true giants of the first half century
of computing) suggested that software could be constructed in a
way that eliminated all (or at least most) errors before delivery to a
customer. He argued that proper specification, correctness proofs,
and formal review mechanisms could replace haphazard testing,
and as a consequence, very high quality computer software could
be built. His approach, called cleanroom software engineering, is the
focus of this chapter.
The cleanroom software engineering strategy introduces a radically
different paradigm for software work. It emphasizes a special
specification approach, formal design, correctness verification,
“statistical” testing, and certification as the set of salient activities
for software engineering. The intent of this chapter is to introduce
the student to each of these activities.
This chapter also presents an introduction to the use of formal
methods in software engineering. The focus of the discussion is on
why formal methods allow software engineers to write better
specifications than can be done using natural language. Students
without precious exposure to set theory, logic, and proof of correctness
(found in a discrete mathematics course) will need more instruction on
these topics than is contained in this chapter. The chapter contains
several examples of specifications that are written using various levels
of rigor. However, there is not sufficient detail for a student to learn
the language (supplementary materials will be required).

21.1 The Cleanroom Strategy

This section introduces the key concepts of cleanroom software


engineering and discusses its strengths and weaknesses. An outline of
the basic cleanroom strategy is presented. Students will need some
additional information on the use of box specifications and probability
distributions before they can apply this strategy for their own projects.

21.2 Functional Specification

Functional specification using boxes is the focus of this section. It is


important for students to understand the differences between black
boxes (specifications), state boxes (architectural designs), and clear
boxes (component designs). Even if students have weak understanding
of program verification techniques, they should be able to write box
specifications for their own projects using the notations shown in this
section.

21.3 Cleanroom Design

If you plan to have your students verify their box specifications


formally, you may need to show them some examples of the
techniques used later in this chapter. The key to making verification
accessible to students at this level is to have them write procedural
designs using only structured programming constructs in their
designs. This will reduce considerably the complexity of the logic
required to complete the proof. It is important for students to have a
chance to consider the advantages offered by formal verification over
exhaustive unit testing to try to identify defects after the fact.

21.4 Cleanroom Testing

This section provides and overview of statistical use testing and


increment certification. It is important for students to understand that
some type of empirical data needs to be collected to determine the
probability distribution for the software usage pattern. The set of test
cases created should reflect this probability distribution and then
random samples of these test cases may be used as part of the testing
process. Some additional review of probability and sampling may be
required. Students would benefit from seeing the process of
developing usage test cases for a real software product. Developing
usage test cases for their own projects will be difficult, unless they
have some means of acquiring projected usage pattern data.
Certification is an important concept. Students should understand the
differences among the certification models presented in this section as
well.
21.5 Basic Concepts

This section discusses the benefits of using formal specification


techniques and the weaknesses of informal specification techniques.
Many of the concepts of formal specification are introduced (without
mathematics) through the presentation of three examples showing
how formal specifications would be written using natural language. It
may be worthwhile to revisit these examples after students have
completed the chapter and have them write these specifications using
mathematical notation or a specification language (like OCL or Z).

Note: If your students have not completed a good course in discrete


mathematics, you may have to present a review of the mathematics
needed for the remainder of the chapter appears in this section.
Constructive set specification writing is a very important concept for
your students to understand, as is work with predicate calculus and
quantified logic. Formal proofs of set theory axioms and logic
expressions is not necessary, unless you plan to have your students do
correctness proofs for their specifications. Work with sequences may
be less familiar to your students, if they have not worked with files and
lists at an abstract level.

21.6 Applying Mathematical Notation for Formal Specification

This section uses mathematical notation to refine the block handler


specification from Section 21.5. It may be desirable to refine the other
specification examples from Section 21.5 using similar notation. If your
students are comfortable with mathematical proofs, you may wish to
present an informal correctness proof for these three specifications.
Having students write specifications for some of their own functions,
using notation similar to that used in this section may be desirable.

21.7 Formal Specification Languages

This section discusses the properties of formal specification languages


from a theoretical perspective. The next two sections use OCL and the
Z specification language to rewrite the block handler specification
more formally. You might have students try writing the specifications
for their own functions using a pseudocode type notation embellished
with comments describing semantic information.
Section 21.7.1 presents a brief overview of OCL syntax and semantics
and then applies OCL to the block handler example. The intent is to
give the student a feel for OCL without attempted to teach the
language. If time and inclination permit, the material presented here
can be supplemented with additional OCL information from the UML
specification or other sources.
Section 21.7.2 presents a brief overview of Z syntax and semantics and
then applies Z to the block handler example. The intent is to give the
student a feel for Z without attempted to teach the language. If time
and inclination permit, the material presented here can be
supplemented with additional Z information.

A Detailed Example of the Z Language

To illustrate the practical use of a specification language, Spivey 1


considers a real-time operating system kernel and represents some
of its basic characteristics using the Z specification language
[SPI88]. The remainder of this section has been adapted from his
paper (with permission of the IEEE).

*************

Embedded systems are commonly built around a small operating-system kernel


that provides process-scheduling and interrupt-handling facilities. This article
reports on a case study made using Z notation, a mathematical specification
language, to specify the kernel for a diagnostic X-ray machine.
Beginning with the documentation and source code of an existing
implementation, a mathematical model, expressed in Z, was constructed of the
states that the kernel could occupy and the events that could take it from one
state to another. The goal was a precise specification that could be used as a basis
for a new implementation on different hardware.
This case study in specification had a surprising by-product. In studying one
of the kernel's operations, the potential for deadlock was discovered: the kernel
would disable interrupts and enter a tight loop, vainly searching for a process
ready to run.
This flaw in the kernel's design was reflected directly in a mathematical
property of its specification, demonstrating how formal techniques can help
avoid design errors. This help should be especially welcome in embedded
systems, which are notoriously difficult to test effectively.
A conversion with the kernel designer later revealed that, for two reasons,
the design error did not in fact endanger patients using the X-ray machine.
Nevertheless, the error seriously affected the X-ray machine's robustness and
reliability because later enhancements to the controlling software might reveal
the problem with deadlock that had been hidden before.
The specification presented in this article has been simplified by making less
use of the schema calculus, a way of structuring Z specifications. This has made

1 Spivey, J.M., “Specifying a Real-Time Kernel,” IEEE Software, September,


1990, pp. 21 - 28.
the specification a little longer and more repetitive, but perhaps a little easier to
follow without knowledge of Z.

About the Kernel

The kernel supports both background processes and interrupt handlers. There
may be several background processes, and one may be marked as current. This
process runs whenever no interrupts are active, and it remains current until it
explicitly releases the processor, the kernel may then select another process to be
current. Each background process has a ready flag, and the kernel chooses the
new current process from among those with a ready flag set to true.
When interrupts are active, the kernel chooses the most urgent according to a
numerical priority, and the interrupt handler for that priority runs. An interrupt
may become active if it has a higher priority than those already active and it
becomes inactive again when its handler signals that it has finished. A
background process may become an interrupt handler by registering itself itself
as the handler for a certain priority.

Documentation

Figures 9.15 and 9.16 are diagrams from the existing kernel documentation,
typical of the ones used to describe kernels like this. Figure 9.15 shows the kernel
data structures. Figure 9.16 shows the states that a single process may occupy
and the possible transitions between them, caused either by a kernel call from the
process itself or by some other event.
In a way, Figure 9.16 is a partial specification of the kernel as a set of finite-
state machines, one for each process. However, it gives no explicit information
about the interactions between processes—the very thing the kernel is required
to manage. Also, it fails to show several possible states of a process. For example
, the current background process may not be ready if it has set its own ready flag
to false, but the state "current but not ready" is not shown in the diagram.
Correcting this defect would require adding two more states and seven more
transitions. This highlights another deficiency of state diagrams like this: their
size tends to grow exponentially as a system complexity increases.
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and in perfect accord with the physical wants and moral necessities
of the race.
But the mere covering of the head, or the mere protection of the
brain, is not all that distinguishes the different races in these
respects. The beard is equally radical and universal, though not so
palpable a specialty as color, and in some respects it may be said to
be a more important one. The Caucasian alone has a beard, for
though all others approximate to it in this respect, it is the only
bearded race, and some writers on ethnology have been so impressed
with this imposing and striking distinction that they have sought to
make it the basis of a classification of races. And there certainly is no
physical or outward quality that so imposingly impresses itself on the
senses as a mark of superiority, or evidence of supremacy, as a full
and flowing beard. Color, when in repose, or when it does not give
expression to the inner nature, does not, in reality, constitute a
distinction at all, but the beard is an evidence of superiority, that,
however varied the action or whatever the circumstances, is equally
distinct and universal as an attribute of supremacy. This is
sufficiently illustrated in our own race and our every day experience.
The youth is beardless, and pari passu as he approaches to the
maturity of manhood there is a corresponding development of beard.
The intellect—the mental strength—the moral beauty, all the
qualities of the inner being, as well as those outward attributes
tangible to the sense, harmonize perfectly with the growth of the
beard, and when that has reached its full development, it is both the
signal and the proof of mature manhood—an exact admeasurement
and absolute proof of the maturity of the individual as well as the
type and standard of the race. This is equally true when applied to
different races. The Caucasian is the only bearded race, but all others
approximate in this respect, and the negro is furthest removed of all,
for the tropical woolly-haired African or negro, except a little tuft on
the chin and sometimes on the upper lip, has nothing that can be
confounded with a beard. People sometimes see negroes with
considerable hair on their faces, and hence conclude that they are as
likely to have beards as white men; but they forget that all in our
society who are not whites are considered negroes, and therefore
those bearded negroes have a large infusion, and doubtless
sometimes a vastly predominating infusion of Caucasian blood. The
beard symbolizes our highest conceptions of manhood—it is the
outward evidence of mature development—of complete growth,
mental as well as physical—of strength, wisdom and manly grace,
and the full, flowing, and majestic beard of the Caucasian, in contrast
with the negro or other subordinate races, is as striking and
imposing as the mane of the lion when compared with the meaner
beasts of the animal world. Like color or any other of the great
fundamental facts separating races, the beard is sufficient to
determine their specific character and their specific relations to each
other, and we have only to apply our every day experience as regards
this outward symbol of inner manhood to measure the relative
inferiority of the negro. The Abolitionists demand that the “equal
manhood” of the negro shall be recognized, and complain bitterly of
a government that refuses to respond to their wishes in this respect,
but if this “equal manhood” was actually revealed to them in the
person of the negro as it is in the persons of white men, and as God
has alone provided and ordained or permitted it to be revealed, they
would be overwhelmed with astonishment or convulsed with
laughter. A negro with a full and flowing beard, with this symbol of
perfect manhood or with this outward manifestation of the inner
(Caucasian) being, would be a ludicrous monstrosity, as impossible,
of course, as the Caliban of Shakespeare; but if such a supernatural
being should suddenly make his appearance in an Abolition
conventicle, the “friends of humanity” would be as much astonished
as if an inhabitant of another world had come among them. A youth,
with the majestic and flowing beard of adult life, if the monstrosity
did not shock and disgust us, would be irresistibly comical, and
equally so in the case of the childish and romping negro. Thus, were
the leaders of the “anti-slavery enterprise” busily engaged in
discussing the “equal manhood” of the negro, and in earnestly
denouncing those who, unable to see it, decline to admit such a
thing, and a negro should enter the room with the actual proof of its
existence—with the full, flowing beard of the Caucasian, and
therefore the outward symbol of an “equal manhood,” as the hand of
the Eternal has revealed it in the person of the former—the whole
Abolition congregation, if not paralyzed with horror, would burst
into uncontrollable laughter. The wrongs of the “slave,” the cruelties
of the master, the “hopes of humanity,” the most doleful stories and
the saddest tales of the suffering “bondmen,” would be interrupted
by screams of laughter at such a ludicrous spectacle as a negro with
the majestic and flowing beard of the white man. This outward
symbol of complete manhood, or this external indication which
typifies the high nature and lofty qualities of the Caucasian, is no
more impossible, however, to the negro than that “equal manhood”
which is demanded for him, and therefore were the “friends of
humanity” to vary their programme and demand an “equal” beard, or
that we shall grant the negro the full and flowing beard of the
Caucasian, they would render their performances more interesting
without giving up any of their “principles,” as the absurdity is exactly
the same in either case.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEATURES.

The features reflect the inner nature, the faculties or specific


qualities, and they are distinct or indistinct, developed or
undeveloped, as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. In the
simpler forms of animal existence, there is close resemblance to
vegetable life in this respect; but ascending to the vertebrata, and
especially the mammalia, there is a broad distinction between the
head and body, and instead of an undefined uniformity pervading
the whole exterior surface, the face becomes a centre in which the
essential character of the creature is written by the hand of Nature. It
is true, that the general form of the body is significant of the grosser
qualities. The muscular and motive forces of the horse are evidently
designed for swiftness; those of the lion, and the felinæ generally, are
designed both for strength and swiftness; while that of the ox and
other mammalia is adapted to a negative kind of strength which
results from a combination of all the physical forces, and not, as in
the former case, from an excessive muscular development. But the
higher qualities, even in animals, are legibly written in the face or
features. In the human creation, of course, this external reflection of
the inner nature in the features becomes vastly more distinct and
real, and in our own race not unfrequently does the face become a
very window of the soul, where may be read the sweetest and most
exquisite emotions of a sensitive and delicate nature, or, as
sometimes happens, the gross and sensual thoughts of a depraved
and perverted one. There are, indeed, countless and innumerable
variations in our own race in this respect. The white or Caucasian
men of Asia, of Africa, Europe, and America, are so modified by
climate, habits, government, religion, etc., that those ethnologists
who are not anatomists have sometimes confounded them, and
classed them as distinct species. Even on the same continent, in the
same country, sometimes the same family, these variations are so
marked that they always seem to belong to different species. The
globular head, broad forehead, oval cheeks, straight nose, and
distinct, well-defined lips and mouth, however, whatever may be the
expression, always remain the same, and can never be confounded
with any other race of men. And these modifications in the Caucasian
are not confined to the face, but pervade the whole surface. White,
black, and red hair, white skin and brown ones, blondes and
brunettes, are often found in the same family. It is even so in regard
to size—some are short and others tall—some pigmies while others
are giants—and not unfrequently in the same household, while the
same nation exhibits every possible variety in this respect. The
Caucasian race alone presents these variations—the other races great
uniformity; and the negro, lowest in the scale, presents an almost
absolute resemblance to each other. Of all the millions that have
existed on the earth, their hair not only in color but in form has been
absolutely the same, and such a being as a different-colored or
straight-haired, or long-haired negro never existed. On visiting a
plantation at the South, one sees a thousand negroes so nearly alike,
that except where wide differences of age exist, they are all alike, and
even in size rarely depart from that standard uniformity that nature
has stamped upon the race. The entire external surface, as well as his
interior organism, differs radically from the Caucasian. His muscles,
the form of the limbs, his feet, hands, pelvis, skeleton, all the organs
of locomotion, give him an outward attitude that, while radically
different from the Caucasian, approaches an almost absolute
uniformity of character in the negro. His longitudinal head, narrow
and receding forehead, flat nose, enormous lips and protuberant
jaws, in short, his flat, shapeless and indistinct features strikingly
approximate to the animal creation, and they are as utterly incapable
of reflecting certain emotions as so much flesh and blood of any
other portion of his body. The Almighty and All-Wise Creator has
made all things perfect, and adapted the negro features, as well as
those of the white man, to the inner nature, but if it were true that
the negro had certain qualities with which ignorance and delusion
would endow him, then it would be quite evident that the Almighty
Creator had made a fatal blunder in this case, for it is clearly a matter
of physical demonstration that the negro features cannot reflect
these qualities. The features of the animal are made to express its
wants, to reflect the nature God has given it. We witness this every
day among our domestic animals—the cat, the dog, the horse, all
exhibit their qualities, their wants, their moods, at different times
their anger, suffering, and affection, all that their natures are capable
of, are reflected in their faces, and we understand them. In our own
race, the transparent skin, the deeply cut and distinct features
become often a perfect mirror of the inner nature, and reflect the
nicest shades of feeling as well as the deepest emotions of the soul.
Envy, anger, pride, shame, scowling hate and malignant fear, as well
as gentle affection and the most exalted love, are written as legibly in
the face as if they were things of physical form, and their
innumerable modifications and variations are witnessed all about us,
and every day of our lives. How grandly this is displayed in the case
of the orator! This must have been apparent to those who heard Mr.
Clay in the Senate, and saw those wonderful changes of feature—one
moment convulsed with anger, then lit up with genius, or with pride
and pomp of conscious power, and in another reflecting, perhaps, all
a woman’s sweetness or a child’s gentleness. Color, of course, is
essential to this, for a display of the passions and emotions on the
dark ground-work of the negro skin would be as impossible as a
rainbow at midnight, but without the deeply cut and distinctly
marked features of the Caucasian, color would be comparatively
useless in reflecting the grander emotions of the soul. Any one
referring to his own experience for a moment will see how
impossible, as a mere physical matter, that the negro face can reflect
the qualities attributed to him by those who are ignorant of his real
nature. The narrow and receding forehead, the shallow eyes, flat
nose, almost on a level with the cheeks, the protruding and
enormous lips,—the only thing that really can be said to be distinct in
the negro face,—the tout ensemble without form or meaning when
contrasted with the white man, is, in connection with the color, the
dark ground of the negro skin, clearly incapable of reflecting certain
qualities of our own race. The negro has, of course, moral emotions,
as have all human creatures, and his face, like that of the Caucasian,
is capable of reflecting all his wants, his likes and dislikes, his hopes
and fears, but every one who has seen him must know that the
higher qualities of the Caucasian cannot find expression in the negro
features, and therefore he does not possess those qualities, or, as has
been said, the All-Wise and Almighty Creator of all has committed a
fatal mistake, and unjustly endowed him with qualities which he is
forever forbidden to express!
CHAPTER IX.
LANGUAGE.

A few years since, an eminent historian, in a public lecture,


discussed the probabilities of a universal language as an instrument
of universal history, and as means for the universal civilization of
mankind! Another public lecturer discussing this subject, and on a
professedly scientific basis, held that language had a miraculous
origin, though the period when this supernatural gift was conferred
on man was left wholly to the imagination of his audience. Others,
and among them Buffon, Pritchard, and even several ethnologists,
have scarcely risen above this nonsense, while their uses or
application of this faculty have been vastly more injurious to science
than even their original misconceptions on the general subject.
Language is naturally divided into two distinct and widely
separated portions, having no necessary connection, though at
certain points or stages uniting and combining together. First, is that
universal capacity of expressing itself—its wants, its sufferings, and
its enjoyments—which God has given to all His creatures, from the
insect at our feet to the Caucasian man standing at the head of this
vast and innumerable host of living beings. In the second place, in its
structure and arrangement into parts or portions of speech; in short,
its grammatical construction. With the former it is alone or mainly
proposed to deal in this place, though it will be necessary
occasionally to refer to the latter. As has been said, all living or rather
all animal beings have the faculty of expressing their wants, and they
have a vocal organism in exact correspondence with these wants and
the purposes for which they are designed by the common Creator of
all. Except to a few laborious and enthusiastic students of natural
history, the vast world of insect life is a terra incognita, but each one
of these myriad of beings is adapted to some specific purpose and
beneficently designed by the Almighty Master of Life for the same
universal enjoyment which is so distinctly revealed as the end of
their existence in the more elaborately organized and higher
endowed classes of animal being. And millions of these minute and
often unseen creatures are daily and hourly singing praises to the
Almighty Creator for His infinite goodness, rendering the fields and
forests vocal with the music of their gratitude and the exuberance of
their enjoyment. As we ascend in the scale of animated existence, the
vocal faculty or language becomes still more distinctly revealed, with
a vocal apparatus or organism in exact correspondence with the
function or faculty that God has given to the being in question. The
pigeon, of course, cannot give us the notes of the canary bird, nor the
owl sing the songs of the nightingale. The serpent cannot exchange
his hiss for the growl of the tiger, nor the ass abandon its uncouth
utterances for the mighty roar or the majestic voice of the lion. Each
is permitted to express its wants, its sufferings, and its joys, and each
is provided with a vocal organism specific and peculiar to itself and
to its kind, and in accord with the universal law of adaptation which
inseparably unites organism with function. This, then, in its
elementary form, is language—a faculty common to the animal
world, and a necessity of animal existence. It differs in no essential
respect in regard to human beings, or it varies no more from that of
the animal world than other functions or faculties of the human
being. There is, it is true, a point of departure or divergence where
the analogies of the animal world are no longer applicable to human
beings, or where animal beings cannot furnish parallels for those
endowed with a moral nature and destined for immortality; but a
vocal organism with its corresponding faculty or function is
essentially the same thing in both, and differs only in form and
degree among the innumerable beings that compose or are
comprised within the vast world of animated existence. While
language, therefore, the voice or faculty by which animals as well as
human beings express their wants, is universal and only varied as the
structure and nature are varied, and while the vocal organism is in
exact harmony with the faculty or function in all cases and in every
phase of animated existence, there is also, and of necessity, a specific
modification of this faculty in the case of the several human races or
species. The vocal organs of the negro differ widely from those of the
white man, and of course there is a corresponding difference in the
language. The specific or the most essential feature of the negro
nature is his imitative instincts, or his capacity for imitating the
qualities and for acquiring the habitudes of the white man. This, of
course, is limited to his actual juxtaposition with the superior race,
for aside from that organic necessity which utterly forbids its being
otherwise, there is no historical fact better attested than that which
shows him invariably relapsing into savageism whenever he is left
without the restraining support of the former. But for wise and
beneficent purposes, God has endowed him with a capacity of
imitation, and he is enabled to apply it to such an extent that those
ignorant of the negro nature actually offer it as a proof of his equal
capacity! But with all his power to thus imitate the habits and to copy
the language of the white man, it is not possible that a single example
can be furnished of his success in regard to the latter. With us, and
especially at the North, all are negroes who are tainted with negro
blood, and thus many persons will imagine that they have seen
negroes who were as competent to speak our language as white men
themselves. But no actual or typical negro will be able—no matter
what pains have been taken to “educate” him—to speak the language
of the white man with absolute correctness. European ethnologists
have, notwithstanding, sought to make language the means for
tracing the history and determining the character of races, the
worthlessness and indeed the absurdity of which only needs a single
illustration to expose it. The negroes of Hayti have imitated or copied
the language of their former masters, the French, therefore they are
of the same race, and the future ethnologists would pronounce them
Frenchmen! As the negro cannot preserve anything that he copies
from the Caucasian beyond a certain period, the negroes of that
island are rapidly losing all that they obtained from their former
masters, and though the educated portion on the coasts, and
especially the mongrels, yet retain the French language, those in the
interior are rapidly relapsing into their native African tongue. And a
century or two hence, when the French is entirely extinct and the
existing negro population speak an African dialect, or what is far
more probable, speak our own, the ethnological enquirer would
decide that those led by Touissant and Christophe in the war of
“Independence” were Frenchmen instead of Negroes, because,
forsooth, the public documents of the time showed they spoke the
French language! Thus, while language is an important means for
tracing nationalities or varieties of our own race, as, for example, the
modern Spanish, French, Italian, etc., in connection with the great
Latin family of southern Europe, it is simply absurd to apply it to
distinct species like Caucasians and negroes. Each race or each
species, as each and every other form of life, is in perfect harmony
with itself, and therefore the voice of the negro, both in its tones and
its structure, varies just as widely from that of the white man as any
other feature or faculty of the negro being. Any one accustomed to
negroes would distinguish the negro voice at night among any
number of those of white men by its tones alone, and without regard
to his peculiar utterances. Tones or mere sounds are of course
indescribable, and therefore no comparison in this respect is
possible, but all those familiar with the tones of the negro voice know
that it is never musical or capable of those soft and sweet inflections
or modulations common to our own race. Music is to the negro an
impossible art, and therefore such a thing as a negro singer is
unknown. It is true that, a few years since, certain amiable people,
both at the North and in England, believed for a time that they had
secured a prodigy of this kind in the person of the “Black Swan,” but
after a careful and patient trial, it was found to be a mistake. She was
not even a negress, though perhaps of predominating negro blood,
and was aided and encouraged by every possible means, especially in
England, where she was actually placed under the care of Queen
Victoria’s music master, but without avail—Nature was superior to
art—the laws of God more potent than those of human invention—
and the “Black Swan” finally disappeared from public view. The
negro is fond of music, as are all other beings, and indeed all animal
beings of the more elevated classes, but music is to him merely a
thing of the senses. With the white race music is perceived as well as
felt—an intellectual as well as sensuous thing—and though it by no
means follows that intellectual persons, with minds above the
common average, should also have musical powers, that sensitive
and exquisite organization which is necessary to a musical genius
must be united with a brain of corresponding complexity. The brain
and the nerves constitute a whole—a system—however widely
portions of the latter may diverge in their especial functions, and it is
as impossible that the musical temperament, or that the elaborate
and exquisitely sensuous system of the Caucasian could be united
with the brain of the negro, as it would be to unite the color of the
former with the negro structure. The negro, therefore, neither
perceives nor can he give expression to music—he has neither the
brain nor the delicacy of nerve nor the vocal organism that is
essential to this faculty—all that is possible to him is a certain
approximation through his wonderful powers of imitation, but which
is less available to him in this respect perhaps than any other. His
brain is much smaller, but his nerves are much larger, and his senses
are consequently much more acute, and here is the cause of that
“musical power” with which ignorant and mistaken persons have
endowed him. Music is felt by the nerves rather than perceived by
the brain, in his feet as much as in his head, and with an intensity
unknown and unfelt by whites. His imitative instinct enables him to
rapidly acquire the language of his master, but he also loses it with
similar rapidity. The negroes imported to the West India Islands,
though living on large plantations, soon acquired the language of the
few whites, so far as words were concerned, but an organic necessity
compelled them to retain the structure of their original tongue. Thus,
those in British islands spoke English, in French islands, French,
etc., but the general structure remained the same in all, and now,
when the external force applied by the several European
governments has removed the control and guidance of the superior
race, they are rapidly losing the words of their former masters, and in
this as well as every other respect returning to their native
Africanism. In Hayti, where the imitative capacity has little or
nothing to stimulate it, this process is very rapid indeed, and could
they be entirely isolated, the utter extinction of the French language
would doubtless occur within the present century.
CHAPTER X.
THE SENSES.

The senses are those special organisms that connect us with the
outer world through which external impressions are received and
transmitted to the brain—the great sensorium or centre of the
nervous system. They are popularly designated as sight, hearing,
smelling, touch, and taste, each having its own peculiar organism;
some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate, and others, like taste, quite
simple, being little more than a delicate expansion of nervous matter
spread upon the tongue and lining the inner surface of the mouth.
The nervous system includes the brain and the nerves, but is, in fact,
an indivisible whole, of which the brain forms the centre, and the
nerves the circumference, in exact proportion as we ascend in the
scale of being. The centre of the nervous system is increased and the
circumference diminished as the brain becomes larger and the
nerves smaller. Among quadrupeds—the horse, for example—the
nerves are enormously large in comparison with the brain of that
animal; and this holds good throughout, so that an intelligent
physiologist might determine the possible capabilities of any of the
higher order of animals by a simple comparison of the brain and
nerves. And in the human creation a single skull of a Mongol, or
Malay, or Negro, and especially of the latter, should be quite
sufficient to enable a physiologist to comprehend the essential
character of the race to which it belonged. True, he might, as has
often happened, mistake it for an abnormal specimen of the
Caucasian, and thus display a vast amount of learned nonsense of the
Gall-Spurzheim order, but if he knew it to be an actual negro skull,
and then compared it with that of the Caucasian, he should be able
not only to determine the intellectual inferiority, but the vastly
preponderating sensualism of the former. He would see that the
relatively small cerebrum, and the large cerebellum, must be united
with a corresponding development of the senses, and a
comparatively dominating sensualism. The mere organism of the
senses, of sight, hearing, etc., though of course differing widely from
those of the Caucasian, it is not necessary to describe, for even in
animals of the higher class there is a certain resemblance, and the
student of anatomy studies the mechanism of the eye in the ox or
horse as satisfactorily as in that of the human creature.
The organisms while thus, in a sense, similar—of the eye, for
example—in whites and negroes, is more elaborately and delicately
constituted in the case of the former, and therefore it is also vastly
more liable to disease, to congenital defects, to strabismus, etc., and
especially short-sightedness. The negro, on the contrary, rarely
suffers from these things, or even from inflammation of the eyes, so
common among white people, and though, in keeping with the
imitative instinct of the race, the negro “preacher” dons spectacles as
well as white neck-cloth, it may be doubted if there ever was a case of
near-sightedness in the typical negro. Though in extreme old age
they doubtless lose the power of vision common to their youth, it is
rare that negroes need spectacles at any age. The organism is
supplied with a larger portion of nervous matter than in the case of
the whites, and the function or sense is thus endowed with a strength
and acuteness vastly greater than are the senses of the Caucasian.
Travelers and others mingling among savages, Indians, negroes, etc.,
have observed the extraordinary power and acuteness of the external
senses, and have supposed that this was a result of their savage
condition, which, calling for a constant exercise of these faculties,
gave them an extraordinary development. And Pritchard, carrying
this theory or notion to an extreme, inferred that men were originally
created negroes, for the exigencies of savage life demanded, as he
supposed, a black color as well as acuteness of the senses! Doubtless
the civilized negro of America ordinarily displays less strength and
acuteness of sense than his wild brother of Africa, but he is born with
the same faculties, and were the surrounding circumstances changed
so as to call them into more active exercise, he would exhibit similar
characteristics.
The Almighty Creator, with infinite wisdom, has adapted all His
creatures to the ends or purposes of their creation. The Caucasian or
white man, with his large brain and elevated reasoning powers, is
thus provided with all that is necessary to guard his safety and to
increase his happiness. Inferior races, with smaller brains and
feebler mental powers are endowed with strength and acuteness of
the external senses which enable them to contend specifically with
surrounding circumstances and to provide for their safety. This is
strikingly manifest in the North American Indian who marks or
makes a trail in the forest which he follows with unerring confidence,
though the eye of the white man sees nothing whatever. The
descriptions of Indian character in Cooper’s novels are in these
respects perfectly correct and true to nature, as are all those of the
Indianized white man, Leather-Stocking, Hawkeye, etc. The one
depends upon his senses—his sight, hearing, etc., the other on his
powers of reasoning or reflection, which in the end enable him to
“sarcumvent” his Huron enemies and to win the victory. Each,
according to his “gifts,” is able to fulfil the purposes of his creation,
and while the superior intelligence of the Caucasian is spreading that
race, with its benign and civilizing consequences, over the whole
northern continent, the strength and acuteness of his senses have
enabled the Indian to resist to a degree all these mighty forces for
three hundred years.
Some historians have advanced the notion that Rome was overrun
by northern barbarians, similar to our North American Indians, but
if the mighty hordes led by Alaric and Genseric to the conquest of
Italy, had been Indians, not one would have escaped to tell the tale of
their destruction. A high civilization, rotten at heart, falls an easy
conquest to ruder and more simple communities of the same race—
thus, the effete and corrupt Roman aristocracy fell before the simple
and rude populations of Northern Europe, as the polished and
scholastic Greeks had succumbed to the Romans, when the latter
practised the simple and hardy virtues of their earlier history. In our
own times we have seen Spain, long ruled over by an effete and
worn-out aristocracy, sink from a first class to a fourth rate power,
while France, relieved from the dead weight of “nobility,” has in half
a century become the leading power of the world. And if the English
masses have not sufficient vitality to cast off the mighty pressure of a
diseased and effete aristocracy by an internal reform like that which
the French passed through in 1789, then it is certain that, at no
distant day, the nation will fall a conquest to some external power
that has greater vitality than itself, however deficient it may be in
wealth and learning, and those refinements that pass for high
civilization. But while nations ruled over by privileged classes thus
carry within them the seeds of their own destruction, and sooner or
later fall a conquest to ruder and simpler societies, the intellectual
superiority of the white man always enables him to conquer inferior
races, whatever may be the disparity of numbers, and Clive with
three thousand Europeans, attacking the Hindoo horde of one
hundred thousand, or Cortez invading Mexico with five hundred
followers, amply illustrates the natural supremacy of the Caucasian
race. But, on the contrary, if the Aztecs had had the intellectual
capacity of the Caucasian superadded to their own specific qualities
—the strength and acuteness of the senses—common to the native
race, not alone would Cortez have failed to conquer them, but it may
be doubted if all Europe, combined together for that purpose, could
have accomplished it.
There are no examples for testing the capabilities of negroes in
these respects, for there is no instance in history where they have
contested the supremacy of the white man, the insurrection in Hayti
having been the work of the “colored people” and mulattoes, and the
negroes only forced into it by their fears after the outbreak was
complete. But we have the actual physical facts as well as our every-
day experience of the negro qualities, and therefore can arrive at
positive truth when comparing him with the superior race. The large
distribution of nervous matter to the organs of sense and consequent
dominating sensualism (not mere animalism), is the direct cause of
that extreme sloth and indolence universal with the race. The small
brain and limited reasoning power of the negro render him incapable
of comprehending the wants of the future, while the sloth dependent
on the dominating sensualism, together with strong animal appetites
impelling him always to gross self-indulgence, render a master guide
or protector essential to his own welfare. Indeed it may be matter of
doubt which is the paramount cause of the negro’s inability to
provide for future necessities—his limited reasoning power or his
indolence—his small brain or his dominating sensualism. It is a
statistical fact that “free” negroes do not produce sufficient for their
support, and consequently that they tend perpetually to extinction,
and when it is remembered that the small brain and feeble
intellectual power render them incapable of reasoning on the future
rewards of self-denial, and that the large distribution of nervous
matter in the organs of sense, and the consequent sensualism impels
them to gross indulgence of the present, and moreover that they are
in juxtaposition, and must contend with white people, then it is plain
enough to see that it could not be otherwise, and that the total
extinction of these unfortunate beings is necessarily a question of
time alone.
But it is not the mere predominance of the senses, or the strength
and acuteness of the sense which so broadly and radically separates
whites and negroes. They are entirely different in the manifestations
of these qualities. As has been observed, there are few if any near-
sighted negroes, or negroes with other defects of vision, and the
sense of smell in negroes permits them to discriminate and to
indicate the presence of the rattle snake, or other venomous
serpents. And in respect to the sense of touch or feeling, the
peculiarity of the negro nature is perhaps most remarkable of all.
This sense in the white person, though universal of course, is mainly
located in the hand and fingers. Sir Charles Bell, an eminent English
surgeon, has written an interesting work—one of the Bridgewater
treatises—on the flexibility and adaptation of the human hand, and
other volumes might be given to the world without exhausting the
subject. The universal law of adaptation, indeed, demands that the
sense of touch, the flexibility of the hand, the delicacy of the fingers,
should be in accord with the large brain and commanding intellect,
otherwise the world itself would long since have come to a stand-still,
and human invention ended with the antediluvians. It is true the
structure—the arrangement of the bones, muscles, tendons, etc., in
short, the mere mechanism of the hand, is essential, but without the
sense of feeling, or that delicacy of touch found only in the fingers of
the Caucasian, the mechanical perfections of the hand would be
comparatively useless.
All the nice manipulations in surgery, in the arts, in painting,
statuary, and the thousands of delicate fabrics seen every day and all
about us, demand both intellect and delicacy of hand, and these, too,
in that complete perfection found alone in the Caucasian. The sense
of touch, on the contrary, in the negro is not in the hand or fingers,
or only partially so, but spreads all over the surface and envelops the
entire person. The hand itself, in its mere mechanism, is
incompatible with delicate manipulation. The coarse, blunt, webbed
fingers of the negress, for example, even if we could imagine delicacy
of touch and intellect to direct, could not in any length of time or
millions of years be brought to produce those delicate fabrics or work
those exquisite embroideries which constitute the pursuits or make
up the amusements of the Caucasian female. The mechanism of the
negro hand, the absence or rather the obtuseness of the sense of
touch in the fingers, and the limited negro intellect, therefore, utterly
forbid that negroes shall be mechanics, except it be in those grosser
trades, such as coopers, blacksmiths, etc., which need little more
than muscular strength and industry to practice them. But the sense
of touch, though feeble in the hand or fingers, is none the less largely
developed as are the other senses of the negro, and spreads over the
whole surface of the body. This is witnessed every day at the South,
where whipping, as with Northern children, is the ordinary
punishment of negroes. As in all other foolish notions that spring
from the one great misconception—that negroes have the same
nature as white people, the “anti-slavery” people of the North and of
Europe labor under a ludicrous mistake in respect to this matter.
They take their notions of flogging from the practice of the British
army and the Russian knout, where strong men are cut to pieces by
the “cat” or beaten to death by clubs, and they suppose that precisely
similar barbarity is practiced on the “poor slave.” And the runaway
negro has doubtless added to these notions, perhaps, without
meaning it. At Abolition conventicles he is expected, of course, to
horrify the crowd with awful tales of his sufferings, but having always
had plenty to eat and never overworked, he has really nothing to fall
back on but the “cruel whippings,” which the imaginations of the
former readily transform into their own notions, but which, in fact,
correspond to that which they deal out to their own children without
a moment’s compunction. The sensibility of the negro skin closely
resembles that of childhood, and while there are doubtless cases of
great barbarity in these respects, as we all know there are in cases of
children, the ordinary flogging of negroes is much the same as that
which parents, guardians, teachers, etc., deal out to white children,
and the “terrible lash” so dolefully gloated over by the ignorant and
deluded usually dwindles down into a petty switch in reality. But it is
painful to the negro, perhaps more so than hanging would be, for
while the local susceptibility of the skin makes him feel the slightest
punishment in this respect, the obtuse sensibility of the brain and
nervous system generally would enable him, as is often manifest, to
bear hanging very well. Those who can remember being flogged in
childhood will also remember the great pain that it gave them,
though now in their adult age they would laugh at such a thing. The
negro is a child forever, a child in many respects in his physical as
well as his mental nature, and the flogging of the negro of fifty does
not differ much, if any, from the flogging of a child of ten, and while
the British soldier or Russian would receive his three hundred lashes
without wincing, the big burly negro will yell more furiously than a
school-boy when he receives a dozen cuts with an ordinary switch.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BRAIN.

The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, the
mental organism. The “school men” believed that mind, intellect, the
reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had no locality or
organism, but, on the contrary, was some impalpable, shadowy,
unfixed principle that existed as much in the feet or hands as in any
other portion of the body. And even Locke and Bacon, while they
promulgated the great truths of inductive philosophy, were not
sufficiently grounded in its elementary principles to understand
clearly the foundation of their own doctrines. Nor did Dugald Stuart,
Dr. Brown, or even the great Kant, of more modern times,
understand any better the fixed truths on which rest the vast and
imperfect systems of philosophy which they labored so assiduously
to build up in their day. It remained for Gall, Spurzheim, and their
followers to do this—to demonstrate certain great elementary truths
which form a foundation, eternal as time itself—for the mental
phenomena to rest upon, and whatever advance may be made
hereafter in the study of these phenomena, its basis is immovable.
Metaphysicians were wont to shut themselves up in their libraries
and to analyze their own emotions, etc., which when noted down,
became afterwards the material for ponderous lectures or the still
more ponderous volumes inflicted on society. Rarely, perhaps, were
these speculations connected with the brain—indeed it is a rare thing
to find a physiologist indulging in metaphysical speculation, while
the most famous among the “philosophers” were profoundly
ignorant of that organ, though they fancied they knew all about its
functions! The man that should undertake to write a treatise on
respiration, and at the same time was utterly ignorant of the
structure of the lungs, or to give a lecture on the circulation, while he
knew nothing of the blood vessels, would certainly be laughed at, and
yet innumerable volumes have been written, and continue to be
written, on the functions of the brain or on “moral and mental
philosophy,” by men who never saw a human brain in all their lives!
Gall and Spurzheim did, therefore, a great good to the world when
they began their investigations of the laws of the mind, by the study
of the brain itself as the first and absolutely essential step to be taken
in these investigations. It is true, they, and especially their followers,
sought to set up a fancy science under the name of Phrenology, and
the former thus, to a great extent, neutralized a reputation which
otherwise would have secured the respect of the scientific world. And
it is also true that others before them had recognized the same truths
with more or less distinctness, but it is certain that Gall and
Spurzheim demonstrated and placed beyond doubt the great, vital,
and essential truth that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that
the mental capacity, other things being equal, is in exact proportion
to the size of the brain relatively with the body. This truth holds good
throughout the animal world, and the intelligence of any given
animal or species of animal, is always in keeping with the size of the
brain when compared with the size of the body.
The brain is composed of anterior and posterior portions—of the
cerebrum and the cerebellum—the first the centre of intelligence, the
latter of sensation, or the first the seat of the intellect, and the latter
of the animal instincts, and the proportions they bear to each other
determines the character. As the anterior portion is enlarged and the
posterior diminished the creature ascends, or as the anterior portion
is diminished and the posterior portion enlarged it descends, in the
scale of being. These are the general laws governing men and
animals. There is intelligence in proportion to the size of the brain
compared with that of the body, and in the former there is
intellectual capacity—latent or real—in proportion to the enlarged
cerebrum and diminished cerebellum. It is true we see every day
seeming contradictions to the laws in question, but they are not so,
not even exceptions, for they are not general but universal. Every day
we meet people with small heads and great intelligence, with large
heads and large stupidities, but a closer examination may disclose
the truth that the seemingly small head is all brain, all cerebrum, all
in front of the ears, while the large one is all behind, and only reveals
a largely developed animalism. And even when this is not sufficient
to explain the seeming anomaly, there is a vast and inexhaustible
field for conjecture—of accident—where misapplied or undeveloped
powers have been the sport of circumstances. A man may have a
large brain, great natural powers, in truth, genius of the most
glorious kind, and the world remain in total ignorance of the fact,
and among the countless millions of Europe doomed generation after
generation to a profound animalism, there doubtless have been
many “mute inglorious Miltons,” who have lived and died and made
no sign of the Divinity within. On the contrary, there have been men
of much distinction—of great usefulness to their fellows and to the
generations after them, who, naturally considered, were on the dead
level of the race, but by their industry, perseverance, and energy have
left undying names to posterity. Then, again, circumstances have
made men great. An epoch in the annals of a nation—great and
stirring events in the life of a people—stimulate and call into exercise
qualities and capacities that make men famous, who otherwise would
not be heard of. Our own great revolutionary period furnished
examples of this, and still later, we have Jackson, Webster, Clay,
Calhoun, and their senatorial cotemporaries, who many doubtless
think will never be equalled, though their equals in fact are in the
senate now, and only need similar circumstances to manifest that
equality.
The organism of the race—the species—whether human or animal,
never changes or varies from that eternal type fixed from the
beginning by the hand of God; and men, therefore, are now, in their
natural capacities what they always have been and always will be,
whatever the external circumstances that may control or modify the
development of these capacities. And the brain being the organ or
organism of the mind, as the eye is of the sight or the ear of the sense
of hearing, it may be measured and tested, and its capabilities
determined, with as entire accuracy as any other function or faculty.
Not, it is true, as the phrenologists or craniologists contend, that the
brain reveals the character of individuals of the same species, but the
character of the species itself, and its relative capabilities when
contrasted with other races or species of men. This is beyond doubt
or question, or will be beyond doubt or question with all those who
understand it, and taking the Caucasian as the standard or test, the
capabilities of the Mongol, the Malay, the Aboriginal American, or
negro, may be determined with as absolute certainty as the color of
their skins or any other mere physical quality. The brain of the
Caucasian averages ninety-two cubic inches, that of the negro
seventy-five to eighty-five inches, while the bodily proportions can
scarcely be said to vary. There are great variations among whites as
to size—there are giants as well as dwarfs, and quite as great variety
in the form,—from the “lean and hungry Cassius,” to the rounded
proportions of a Falstaff or Daniel Lambert. But on a Southern
plantation of a thousand negroes, sex and age are the only difference
or the principal difference that one sees, and a stranger would find
some trouble to recognize any other, or at all events to distinguish
faces. The brain of the negro corresponds in this respect with the
body, and though there are doubtless cases where there is some
slight difference, there seems to be none of those wide departures
witnessed in these respects among whites.
The material, the fibre or texture of the brain itself is little
understood, and though it is quite likely that what we call genius is
attended by a corresponding delicacy or fineness of texture in the
nervous mass, and future exploration in this abstruse matter may
reveal to us important truths, at this time little is known in regard to
the brain except the great fundamental and universal law that, in
proportion to its size relatively with that of the body is there
intellectual power, actual or latent. Many, doubtless, fancy that there
are immense differences in men in this respect—that a Webster, or
Clay, or Bonaparte are vastly superior to common men—but they
have only to remember that the brain is the organ of the intellect, to
see its fallacy. The notion has sprung from the habitudes of
European society, where a man clothed in the pomp and parade of
high rank is supposed to be vastly and immeasurably superior to his
fellows, while, in truth, most of these, or, at all events many of these
are absolutely (naturally) inferior to the base multitudes that
prostrate themselves in the dust at their feet. Nevertheless, there are
striking differences in these respects; not more so, however, than in
strength of body, beauty of features, difference of hair, complexion,
etc. But in the case of the negro there is an eternal sameness, a
perpetual oneness, the same color, the same hair, the same features,
same size of the body, and the same volume of brain. All the physical
and moral facts that make up the negro being irresistibly lead to the
conclusion that the Almighty Creator designed him for juxtaposition
with the superior white man, and therefore such a thing as a negro
genius—a poet, inventor, or one having any originality of any kind
whatever—is totally unnecessary, as they are totally unknown in the
experience of mankind. Some, with more or less white blood, have
exhibited more or less talent, possibly even have shown eccentric
indications of genius, but among a million of adult typical negroes,
there probably would not be a single brain that would vary from the
others sufficiently to be detected by the eye, and therefore not an
individual negro whose natural capacities were so much greater than
those of his fellows as to be recognized by the reason.
Such are briefly the leading and fundamental facts that constitute
the mental organism and distinguish the intellectual character of
races, that separate white men and negroes by an interval broader
and deeper than in any other forms of humanity, and render an
attempted social equality not merely a great folly but a gross impiety.
As has been stated, in exact proportion to the volume of brain,
relatively with the size of body in men and animals, there is
intelligence, and as the cerebrum or anterior portion predominates
over the cerebellum or posterior portion, there is a corresponding
predominance of intellectualism over animalism in the human races.
The negro brain in its totality is ten to fifteen per cent. less than that
of the Caucasian, while in its relations—the relatively large
cerebellum and small cerebrum—the inferiority of the mental
organism is still more decided; thus, while in mere volume, and
therefore in the sum total of mental power, the negro is vastly
inferior to the white man, the relative proportion of the brain and of
the animal and intellectual natures adds still more to the Caucasian
superiority, while it opens up before us abundant explanations of the
diversified forms in which that superiority is continually manifested.
There are no terms or mere words that enable us to express the
absolute scientific superiority of the white man. We can only
measure it, or indeed comprehend it, by comparison, but this will be
sufficiently intelligible when it is said that the past history and
present condition of both races correspond exactly with the size and
form of the brain in each. The science, the literature, the progress,
enlightenment and intellectual grandeur of the Caucasian from the
beginning of authentic history to this moment, and which have
accompanied him from the banks of the Nile to those of the
Mississippi, are all fitting revelations of the Caucasian brain, while
the utter absence of all these things—the long night of darkness that
enshrouds the negro being, and which is only broken in upon when
in juxtaposition and permitted to imitate his master, is the result or
necessity of his mental organism.
There being nothing superior to the Caucasian, it may be said that
he is endowed with unlimited powers; that is, while the mental
organism remains the same, his powers of acquisition and the
increase of his knowledge have no limit. A generation in the exercise
of its faculties acquires a certain amount of knowledge; this is
transmitted to the next; it, in turn, adds its proportion, and so on,
each generation in its turn accepting the knowledge of its progenitors
and transmitting with its own acquisitions the sum total to its
successors. This is called civilization, and we can suppose no limit to
it, except it be in the destruction of the existing order and a new
creation. On the contrary, the negro brain is incapable of grasping
ideas, or what we call abstract truths, as absolutely so as the white
child, indeed as necessarily incapable of such a thing as for a person
to see without eyes, or hear without ears. In contact with, and
permitted to imitate the white man, the negro learns to read, to
write, to make speeches, to preach, to edit newspapers, etc., but all
this is like that of the boy of ten or twelve who debates à la Webster
or declaims from Demosthenes. People ignorant of the negro mistake
this borrowed for real knowledge, as one ignorant of metals may
have a brass watch imposed on him for a golden one. The negro is
therefore incapable of progress, a single generation being capable of
all that millions of generations are, and those populations in Africa
isolated from white men are exactly now as they were when the
Hebrews escaped from Egypt, and where they must be millions of
years hence, if left to themselves. Of course this is no mere opinion or
conjecture of the author. It is a necessity of the negro being—a
consequence of the negro structure—a fixed and eternally
inseparable result of the mental organism, which without a re-
creation—another brain—could no more be otherwise than water
could run up hill, or a reversal of the law of gravitation in any respect
could be possible. But people, ignorant of the elementary principles
of science as well as of the nature of the negro, fancy that this is quite
possible; that, however inferior the organism of the negro in these
respects, it is the result of many centuries of savagery and “slavery,”
and therefore if he were made “free,” given the same rights with the
same chances for mental cultivation, that the brain might gradually
alter and become like that of the white man! This involves gross
impiety, if it were not the offspring of ignorance and folly, for it
supposes that chance and human forces are more potent than the
Almighty Creator, whose work is thus the sport of circumstances.
They would seek by stimulating the mind to add ten per cent. to the
negro brain—then to add to the cerebrum while they diminished the
cerebellum—certainly a work of much greater magnitude than
changing the color of the negro skin; but even the most ignorant or
the most impious among these people would scarcely undertake the
latter operation. If reason could at all enter into the matter, it would
surely be more reasonable to suppose that mind might be changed by
acting on matter, rather than the reverse, and therefore it would be
better to change the color of the skin, as the first, as it would also be
the most practicable, step to be taken in this grand undertaking of
setting aside the Creator and re-creating the negro. But, after all,
their labors would fail—after they had changed the color, after they
had increased the volume of the brain and duly modified its relations
as well as altered its texture—in short, when they had turned him
into a white man, then all would be in vain, for such a brain could no
more be born of a negress than an elephant could be!
CHAPTER XII.
GENERAL SUMMARY.

In the several preceding chapters, those outward characteristics


that specifically distinguish the negro have been briefly considered.
It has been shown that color, the hair, the figure, the brain, etc., are
simply facts out of many millions of facts that separate the races; that
each and all of them are original, invariable, and everlasting, and the
exception, or the absence of any of them, or of any of the associated
facts not enumerated, at any time, in the case of a single individual
or any generation, or under any possible circumstances of time,
climate, or external agencies whatever, is, or would be, necessarily
impossible. Nature is always true to herself, and even in those
abnormal specimens sometimes presented to our observation—those
so-called monstrosities—there is, properly speaking, no departure
from her original designs, or from those fixed and eternal laws that
govern organic life. We sometimes see Albinos, but except a certain
tinge to the color, itself totally unlike any color in other races, the
absolute negro, that is the millions of facts that constitute the negro
being, are untouched. We witness all kinds of abnormal development
in our own race, in animals, in the vegetable world, in all the
innumerable beings and things that surround us. For example—let
any one spend an autumn day in the forest, and turn his attention to
the strange and often ludicrous sights that surround him. It often
seems as if nature delighted herself in creating odd and uncouth
shapes, as if intended for relaxation and relief from her graver and
grander labors. But even here there is no violation of the higher law—
the order of nature though very often interrupted by accident, is
never contradicted—the abnormal development, the most uncouth
and monstrous consequences are still pervaded by the eternal decree
stamped upon the whole universe, that forbids forever any change in
the minutest atom of this mighty mass of life. The Albino, the
deformed or monstrous Negro, the seemingly wide departure from
the normal standard, still obeys the higher law. All the peculiarities
that distinguish him from his race are sui generis, without any
approximation or resemblance to the white man. So, too, with the
latter, and so, too, with all monstrosities in the lower animals. The
things that constitute the monstrosity, that separate the creature, or
seem to do so, from his own kind, separate him also from other
species, whether of men or animals. The eternal gulf, the impassable
barrier, the decreed limits fixed by the Creator himself, are never
passed. A negro, with the color, or the hair, or the language, or the
brain, or the sense of touch, or taste, or sight of the Caucasian, would
not be a monstrosity but an impossibility. He might differ very
widely from his own race in any one of these things, as we actually
witness in the case of Albinos, in fact might retain scarcely any
outward resemblance to his kind, and yet exist; but none has ever
had, or ever will have, an existence that has any thing in common
with the white man, for that would contradict the universal order of
God himself.
Such being the fact, all that is external or tangible to the sense
being thus widely, immeasurably, and indestructibly different from
the Caucasian or white man, it is obvious that, in all beyond the outer
surface, the same relative differences must exist. It was originally
intended to demonstrate this in detail—to show the actual
anatomical facts and structural differences in the organs, the tissues,
the systems, down to the minutest atom of the bodily structure. It
was designed to present the reader with numerous plates, showing
all this—the minutest particle, the single globule of blood, even,
painted after the employment of the microscope, being sufficiently
palpable to the sense, to show that the primordial atoms of the negro
structure are as specifically, and relatively as widely, different from
the white man’s as the color, the hair, or any of those outward
qualities that confront us daily in the streets. But this would have
added so much to the expense of the work, as to often place it out of
the reach of the day laborer and working man, those who alone, or
mainly, need to understand the great “anti-slavery” imposture of our
times, and the world-wide conspiracy against their freedom,
manhood and happiness, which has so long held them in abject
submission to its clamorous pretences of philanthropy and
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