e outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with
more of it.[71]

They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labor
through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to
sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out
with the first dawn of the morning.[72]

In general, their existence appears to participate more sensation
than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to
sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in
labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect,
must be disposed to sleep of course.[73]

Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which
render it doubtful whether Heaven has given life to us in mercy
or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.[74]

Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and
imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to
the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could
scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the
investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull,
tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to
Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the
same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not
apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right
to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of
education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move.
Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America.
Most of them, indeed, have been confined to tillage, to their own
homes, and their own society; yet many of them have been so
situated that they might have availed themselves of the
conversation of their masters; many of them have been brought up
to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always
been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally
educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and
sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had
before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The
Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve
figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They
will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove