This conclusion would hold, even if the higher faculty of the Caucasian were antecedently extremely improbable; the _a priori_ unlikelihood would become _a posteriori_, in view of the facts of history, a practical certainty. However, the case is immeasurably stronger. For a difference in faculty, not merely in kind, but also in degree of faculty, is not only not improbable _a priori_--it is probable almost to certainty. All nature around us is one endless spectacle of such diversities. Equality is absolutely unknown. This observation is altogether too trite to dwell on. Will any one deny that the degrees of faculty are often inexpressibly apart in members of the same family? Did any amount of opportunity serve to raise any other member of the Bonaparte family quite to the level of the first Napoleon? If, then, such inherent disparities in individuals be undeniable, is parity among tribes or races to be expected? Is it not, in fact, antecedently incredible? To us it seems no more unlikely that one race should be superior to another than that one man should be taller, or one mountain range higher, or one ocean deeper, than another. The question of equality or inequality between two races of men is a mere question of present facts, to be settled without any bias, now and here, precisely as you would settle the like question between the Numidian lion and the Colorado cougar. And when some one pleads for the backward "primitives" that they need only a little more time, a few millenniums, we answer once more: Very possibly; but time may be all that the jaguar needs to surpass the tiger, or the ant to rival the eagle. So much, then, for the historical argument. As already brought forward in our Chapter Two, it is shaken by the scruples presented even as an oak is shaken by a zephyr.