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The Life of Johnson

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Source Internet Archive
Relation University of Cambridge
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Boswell, James “The Life of Johnson”, RelRace, item créé par Julie Chevallier, dernier accès le 31 Oct. 2025.
Contributeur Julie Chevallier
Collection
Sujet L’origine de la couleur de peau noire
Mots-clés
Description James Boswell rapporte les propos de Johnson qui étudie l’origine de la couleur de peau noire et propose trois explications : la malédiction de Cham, le climat avec la chaleur du soleil et la création de deux êtres à l’origine, un de couleur blanche, l’autre de couleur noire.
Auteur James Boswell
Date 1763
Éditeur Oxford : G. Birkbeck Hill, vol. 1, p. 401 [1934]
Langue en

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Johnson and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute concerning the cause of some part of mankind being black. ‘Why, Sir, (said Johnson), it has been accounted for in three ways : either by supposing that they are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed ; or that GOD at first created two kinds of men, one black and another white ; or that by the heat of the sun the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue.’ What the Irishman said is totally obliterated from my mind ; but I remember that he became very warm and intemperate in his expressions ; upon which Johnson rose, and quietly walked away. When he had retired, his antagonist took his revenge, as he thought, by saying, ‘He has a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity, unworthy of a man of genius