CHAPTER XVIII. Comparative Elements of Civilization (original) (raw)
It has been shown in a chapter on color that the white and black (the pure European and pure African races), the most distinct and unlike each other in general external physical characteristics, are of equal vitality and equally enduring; absorbing and reproducing themselves as races, with all of their native external physical properties of complexion and hair.
That it may be indelibly fixed on every mind, we place on record the fact, that the races as such, especially white and black, are indestructible; that miscegenation as popularly understood, the running out of two races, or several, into a new race cannot take place. A cross only produces one of a mixed race, and a continual cross from a half blood on either side will run into the pure original race, either white or black; the fourth cross on one side from the half blood perfecting a whole blood. A general intermarriage of any two distinct races would eventually result simply in the destruction, the extinction of the less numerous of the two; that race which preponderates entirely absorbing the other.
The three original races in complexion and texture of hair are sterling; pure white, pure yellow, and pure black, with straight hair, and woolly hair; the two first being straight, and the other woolly. But it will be observed in the classes of mixed races, there is every variety of complexion and texture of hair. We have thus endeavored to be precise on a subject of such grave import to social science.
If indeed it were true, that what is implied by miscegenation could take place (the destruction of all or any of the three original rules by the formation of a new race to take the place of either or all) then, indeed, would the works of God be set at naught, his designs and purposes thwarted, and his wisdom confounded by the crafty schemes of poor, mortal, feeble man. Nay, verily, as long as earth endures, so long shall the original races in their purity, as designed by God, the Creator of all thing, continue the three sterling races (yellow, black and white) naming them in the order given in Genesis of Shem, Hamand Japheth.
The sterling races when crossed can reproduce themselves into their original purity, as before stated. The offspring of any two of the sterling races becomes a mixed race. That mixed race is an abnormal race. Either of the two sterling races which produced the abnormal race may become the resolvent race.
That is, when the offspring of a mixed or abnormal race marries to a person of a sterling race, black or white, their offspring is a quadroon; and if that quadroon intermarries on the same side, and the intermarriage so continues to the fourth cross on the same side, the offspring of this fourth intermarriage is an octaroon (whether black or white), and therefore becomes a pure blood. The race continuing the cross to its purity is the resolvent race, and each offspring of the cross till the fourth is an abnormal race, when the fourth becomes sterling or pure blooded. Hence to speak of a mixed race as being changed by a resolvent process, simply means tht the change is being made by one race alone, which must result in normal purity of either black or white, as the case may be.
The Malays, as stated in another of this work, we regard not as an original or pure, but a mixed or abnormal race, possessing every feature, the complexion and texture of hair, known to the three original races, with many of these characteristics not belonging to either. The Malays, no doubt, are an abnormal race, composed of the three original races, formed by an intermingling of the followers of the various invaders of Egypto Ethiopian Persian, Assyrian, Parthian, Greco Macedonian and Tartar conquerers who have made conquests from time to time with the original natives of the Malay countries. The natives of Australia, Van Dieman's Land, New Zealand, Borneo, Papua or New Guina are fair examples of this race of people who, in time, no doubt will become extinct by the European race fast settling among them, and the Mongolian, who will become resolvent races. It is observable that these Malays in their characteristics of features, complexion and hair differ more from each other than any other people as a race. They vary from "snowy white to sooty," showing thereby that first they are not a fixed race, but a mixed, an abnormal race, which has frequently been interrupted by different preponderating, and thereby for the time, resolvent races. In this we have a fair evidence in the natives of Papua, or New Guinea. And who can doubt the fact that the African once preponderted and was the resolvent race among them? These Malays though they might preponderate never could become a resolvent race to either of the sterling or original races. Because being themselves a mixed race they could only produce a mixture, though they intermarried to the fourth cross such an offspring would not be a pure blood.
To absorb and reproduce the race must be sterling; hence it is resolvent. There is no dount but that the time will come when there will be but the three original sterling races as grand divisions of people of the face of the whole earth, with their natural complexions of yellow, black, and white.
Finally, the African race in Africa should not be adjudged by those portions of that race found out of Africa. The difference is too great for comparison. Untrammeled in its native purity, the race is a noble one, and worthy to emulate the noble Caucasian and Anglo Saxon now at the top round of the ladder of moral and intellectual grandeur in the progress of civiization.
The regeneration of the African race can only be effected by its own efforts, the efforts of its own self, whatever aid may come from other sources; and it must be in this venture succeed, as God leads the movement and his hand guides the way. And now the advanced civilization of the Christianity of the world is called upon to recognize an overture to their consideration
"Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God:" Ps. lxviii. 31.
With faith in this blessed promise, thank God, in this our grand advent into Africa, we want "No kettle drums, nor flagolets, Bagpipes, trombones, nor bayonets."
But with an abiding trust in God our Heavenly King, we shall boldly advance singing the sweet songs of redemption in the regeneration of our race and restoration of our father land from the gloom and darkness of superstition and ignorance, to the glorious light of a more than pristine brightness, the light of the highest godly civilization.
