Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/212

198 moſt riged integrity, and as many as among their better inſtructed maſters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unſhaken fidelity.—The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reaſon and imagination, muſt be hazarded with great diffidence. To juſtify a general concluſion, requires many obſervations, even where the ſubject may be ſubmitted to the anatomical knife, to optical claſſes, to analyſis by fire, or by ſolvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a ſubſtance, we are examining; where it eludes the reſearch of all the ſenſes; where the conditions of its exiſtence are various and variouſly combined; where the effects of thoſe which are preſent or abſent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumſtance of great tenderneſs, where our concluſion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the ſcale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it muſt be ſaid, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as ſubjects of natural hiſtory. I advance it therefore as a ſuſpicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a diſtinct race, or made diſtinct by time and circumſtances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not againſt experience to ſuppoſe, that different ſpecies of the ſame genius, or varieties of the ſame ſpecies, may poſſeſs different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural hiſtory then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philoſophy, excuſe an effort to keep thoſe in the department of man as diſtinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of color, and