Hence, the _mucosum corpus_ being tinged in various parts by this brown coagulated fluid, and the parts so tinged appearing through the _cuticle_, or upper surface of the skin, arises that spotted appearance, observable in the case recited.
Now, if we were to conceive a black skin to be an _universal freckle_, or the rays of the sun to act so universally on the _mucous substance_ of a person's face, as to produce these spots so contiguous to each other that they should unite, we should then see, in imagination, a face similar to those, which are daily to be seen among black people: and if we were to conceive his body to be exposed or acted upon in the same manner, we should then see his body assuming a similar appearance; and thus we should see the whole man of a perfect black, or resembling one of the naked inhabitants of the torrid zone.

Now as the feat of freckles and of blackness is the same; as their appearance is similar; and as the cause of the first is the ardour of the sun, it is therefore probable that the cause of the second is the same: hence, if we substitute for the word "_sun_," what is analogous to it, the word _climate_, the same effect may be supposed to be produced, and the conjecture to receive a sanction.
Nor is it unlikely that the hypothesis, which considers the cause of freckles and of blackness as the same, may be right.

For if blackness is occasioned by the rays of the sun striking forcibly and universally on the _mucous substance_ of the body, and drying the accumulating fluid, we can account for the different degrees of it to be found in the different inhabitants of the globe.

For as the quantity of perspirable fluid, and the force of the solar rays is successively increased, as the climates are successively warmer, from any given parallel to the line, it follows that the fluid, with which the _mucous substance_ will be stained, will be successively thicker and deeper coloured; and hence, as it appears through the cuticle, the complexion successively darker; or, what amounts to the same thing, there will be a difference of colour in the inhabitants of every successive parallel.
From these, and the whole of the preceding observations on the subject, we may conclude, that as all the inhabitants of the earth cannot be otherwise than the children of the same parents, and as the difference of their appearance must have of course proceeded from incidental causes, these causes are a combination of those qualities, which we call _climate_; that the blackness of the _Africans_ is so far ingrafted in their constitution, in a course of many generations, that their children wholly inherit it, if brought up in the same spot, but that it is not so absolutely interwoven in their nature, that it cannot be removed, if they are born and settled in another; that _Noah_ and his sons were probably of an _olive_ complexion; that those of their descendants, who went farther to the south, became of a deeper olive or _copper_; while those, who went still farther, became of a deeper copper or _black_; that those, on the other hand, who travelled farther to the north, became less olive or _brown_, while those who went still farther than the former, became less brown or _white_; and that if any man were to point out any one of the colours which prevails in the human complexion, as likely to furnish an argument, that the people of such a complexion were of a different species from the rest, it is probable that his own descendants, if removed to the climate to which this complexion is peculiar, would, in the course of a few generations, degenerate into the same colour.
Having now replied to the argument, "that the Africans are an inferiour link of the chain of nature," as far as it depended on their _capacity_ and _colour_, we shall now only take notice of an expression, which the _receivers_ before-mentioned are pleased to make use of, "that they are made for slavery." Had the Africans been _made for slavery_, or to become the property of any society of men, it is clear, from the observations that have been made in the second part of this Essay, that they must have been created _devoid of reason_: but this is contrary to fact.

It is clear also, that there must have been, many and evident signs of the _inferiority of their nature_, and that this society of men must have had a _natural right_ to their dominion: but this is equally false.