Page:An essay on the origin and relative status of the white and colored races of mankind.djvu/18

 were both black? Or, how can either be occounted for, if Adam was white and Eve black? Or vice versa. A response to these questions must irresistibly force us to the conclusion that each of those races is sui generis and derived from separate creations. It is true that the black race, in some instances, have white children, called "Albinos," who retain their white complexion during life; but they are exceptional cases of lusus naturce—being, probably, less than one to 100,000—and they are evidently freaks of nature—their organism seems to be imperfect; they cannot endure a strong light; because the pigmental membrane, back of the pupil of their eyes, is wanting; and the stratum of rete mucosom underlying the scarf skin, in others, is absent in them; and their complexion is, therefore, an unnatural sickly white; and, like "white black-birds," they do not increase or perpetuate their kind, by consecutive propogation. Thus we see, that, if our first Parents were both white, it shuts out the black man's claim to lineage from them; If they were both black, it shuts out the white man's claim; and if they were of an intermediate complexion, it shuts out the claims of both the white end black man; and hence, the advocates of the unity of the black and white Races, in groping about for evidence, in support of their theory, have, in their blind zeal, attributed the various complexions of the Races to the effect and influence of climate; and, instinctively, presupposing the first man created to have been white, they alledge that a hot climate will change a white to a black complexion, and as proof of it they say that if a white man exposes himself to the sun, even in a cold climate, it will darken his complexion. I grant it. But. if he returns to the house again and remains there a short time he will resume his fair complexion;