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The saying is attributed to xenophanes of colophon that if horses, oxen, and lions could paint they would certainly make gods in their own image :—
If oxen or lions had hands, and could work in man’s fashion,
And trace out with chisel and brush their conception of godhead,
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.
This is no doubt true, and the Negro who grew up normally would certainly not be inferior to lions, horses, and oxen. The christian Negro, abnormal in his development, pictures god and all beings remarkable for their moral and intellectual qualities with the physical characteristics of europeans, and deems it an honour if he can approximate—by a mixture of his blood, however irregularly achieved—in outward appearance, at least, to the ideal thus forced upon him of the physical accompaniments of all excellence. In this way he loses that “sense of the dignity of human nature”
Christianity, Islam and the Negro race / by Edward W. Blyden, pg 18
