[64] That the negro has undergone modifications, seems established by the fact that we nowhere find all the characteristics of the negro united in any one case--unless, perhaps, in the case of the negroes of Guinea, to which I have alluded. Yet, in the people who border them, there has been noticed "un retour vers des formes superieures." The Yoloss, "out le front élevé, des machoires peu saillantes, leurs dents sont droites, et ils sont en général bein constitués, _mais ils sont tout à fait noirs_. Leurs voisins, les Mandingues, tiennent beaucoup plus du type négre ... mais leur teint est beaucoup moins noir."--De Bur. ap. Reusch, p. 505. But under no influences of climate has the negro ever become white like the European, or the European black like the inhabitant of Guinea; if they become darker, "c'est simplement la teint particulier à leur race qui gagne en intensité."--Burminster, ap. Reusch, p. 509. But it is a case which De Maistre's view exactly solves. Now, however much we may rebel against De Maistre's theory, that the early races of mankind were endowed with higher and more intuitive moral faculties than ours, and, whether or not, we accept his _dictum_ that great punishments pre-suppose great knowledge, and reversely, that higher knowledge implies the liability to great punishments, I do not see how we can refuse to consider the matter, so far as to see whether the view solves all the difficulties of the question. It is not the first time that the blackness of the African race has been connected in theory with a curse; but De Maistre's theory throws a new light on the malediction--whether it be the curse of Cham or of Chanaan, or whether both were smitten, according to different degrees of culpability: and I maintain, further, that it is adequate to the explanation of the phenomena, that it does not clash with history, and that it is sustained by tradition. Nevertheless, I apprehend that this view will be as much combated from the point of view of scriptural exegesis, as of scientific speculation. Yet the curse of Cham, or of Chanaan, affecting all their posterity, ought not in reason to be more revolting even to those who have never realised what sin is, than the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve with its direful consequences. The theory seems perfectly conformable to Scripture, and to what we know of the secrets of the Divine judgments. The picture of Cham, or Chanaan, stricken with blackness, does not present a more sudden or more terrible retribution to the mind than the Fall of the Angels. How many thousand years did it take to transform Lucifer into Satan? or the primitive Adam into the Adam feeling shame, and conscious of decay, want, and the doom of death?