Hybridity, as has been said, is not a unit, is not a fixed, uniform law or principle. A moment’s consideration is sufficient to convince any intelligent mind of this truth. Each form of life has necessarily its own character, its own specific qualities, and the laws governing its reproductive powers must be in correspondence, and just as differently manifested as any of its specific qualities. To suppose that the laws of the phenomena governing the reproductive functions of the horse and ass are exactly similar to those manifested in the case of human beings, is as absurd as to suppose that the term of gestation, the length of life, the mode of their locomotion, or any other qualities—should be exactly the same in both cases. But nothing more need be said. It is perfectly obvious that the laws of reproduction must be radically different in the human creatures, and therefore the inference of Pritchard and others, that whites and negroes were of the same species, because the mulatto, unlike the mule, did reproduce itself, is simply absurd. But they were still further and still more vitally mistaken in respect to their assumptions of fact. The mulatto, literally speaking, or in the ordinary sense, does beget offspring, but mulattoism is as positively sterile as muleism. The phenomenon of hybridity is manifested, as has been stated, in conformity with the nature of the beings concerned, and as the human creatures are separated by an almost measureless as well as impassable distance from the horse and ass, the laws of hybridity are, of course, correspondingly different. Instead of a single generation, as in the animals referred to, sterility in the human creatures is embraced within four generations, where a boundary is arrived at as absolutely fixed and impassable as the single generation in the case of the former. But in order to understand the matter clearly, it is proposed to present the reader with the preliminary principles or facts, and inductive facts, that lead to this vital and all-important conclusion. It is all-important, not as demonstrating beyond doubt the vital and fundamental truth of distinct species, for that is a self-evident and indeed unavoidable truth that meets us at every step, and confronts our senses almost every hour or day of our lives. But mulattoism is a subject of stupendous importance in itself, and as the public are generally, and the “anti-slavery” writers especially, profoundly ignorant of it, and of all the laws that govern it, it is proposed to present the elementary principles or basis on which the whole subject rests.[1] Footnote 1: The author has devoted much time and labor to this interesting subject, and, together with his own and the observations of friends and correspondents, covering several thousand cases of the mixed blood, is able to deduce the general laws as stated in the text, and with entire confidence in their essential accuracy.