Note 4 — THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.

Says Herder,—But the peculiar formation of the members of the human body says more than all these; and this appears to me applicable in the African organization. According to various physiological observations, the lips, breasts, and private parts, are proportionate to each other; and as nature, agreeably to the simple principle of her plastic art, must have conferred on these people, to whom she was obliged to deny nobler gifts, an ampler measure of sensual enjoyment, this could not but have appeared to the physiologist. According to the rules of physiognomy, thick lips are held to indicate a sensual disposition; as thin lips, displaying a slender, rosy line, are deemed symptoms of chaste and delicate taste; not to mention other circumstances. What wonder, then, that in a nation for whom the sensual appetite is the height of happiness, external marks of it should appear? A Negro child is born white; the skin round the nails, the nipples, and private parts, first become colored; and the same consent of parts in the disposition to color is observable in other nations. A hundred children are a trifle to a Negro; and an old man who had not above seventy, lamented his fate with tears.

With this oleaginous organization to sensual pleasure, the profile and whole frame of the body must alter. The projection of the mouth would render the nose short and small, the forehead would incline backwards, and the face would have at a distance the resemblance of that of an ape. Conformably to this would be the position of the neck, the transition to the occiput, and the elastic structure of the whole body, which is formed, even to the nose and skin, for sensual, animal enjoyment.—Herder's Philosophy of the History of Man, pp. 150, 151. Translated by Churchill, London, 1800.