From time immemorial, common sense has enlightened mankind upon the intellectual differences which make one nation differ from another, and one race from another. Almost all nations, in admitting that they are superior to their neighbours, acknowledge thereby a characteristic difference between themselves and those whom they thus place below their own level. An overweening sense of vanity may possibly cause deception in this case; but this belief is, at least, based on a veritable fact,--intellectual inequality. There are, indeed, sensible and manifest differences, which no one will deny, especially those who seek in the literary monuments of a race for the history of its ideas and its tendencies, and those who have mingled with other nations, and who have examined their manners, their customs and their religion. “It is sufficient to have seen the blacks,” says their most enthusiastic defender,[165] “to have lived some time with them, to feel that there is in them a humanity quite different to that of the white man.”[166] Some persons have wished to deceive themselves; they have wished to raise the Negro race to our own level, in the name of some sort of sentimental feeling, which, moreover, has always turned out to be a mistake. Many persons have been engaged upon them. Not being able to give them plastic equality, they had recourse to intelligence,--they wished to deceive themselves, like Desdemona, when she said,-- “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind.”[167] The Negro was declared to be our equal by the moral law, only with certain shades of distinction depending on some particular and transient circumstances which would soon disappear. It was announced that, _in their turn_, they would advance ideas, and would work at what is called _progress_, that is to say, “the increase of good on the earth.”[168] “In proportion as work makes vital energy to predominate in the head,” said M. Marcel de Serres in 1844, “these deeply coloured men,[169] with crisped, woolly, or short hair, will tend in a manifest manner towards the white race,--will march with them in the path of progress.”[170] And farther on, “This experiment has scarcely commenced, but it already shows sensible effects.” Unfortunately, the twenty years which have passed since these words were written, have not shown that they are true; and the challenge offered by an American has never yet been accepted, “Let anyone quote to me one single line written by a Negro which is worthy of being remembered.”[171] They are not more advanced now than at the time when Mohammed refused them the gift of prophecy.[172] And, as Dr. Hunt remarks, there is certainly no means of civilising those who have been uncivilised for three thousand years, during which time they have been connected with the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English.[173] If it be objected that they have always been slaves, we