Campari/on between the Human Race and Szvine. aSj 



attention too much on man, without examining other fpecies 

 of animals, and comparing their varieties and degeneration 

 with thofe of the human fpecies. The flrft fault is, when 

 one, for example, places together a Senegal negro and an 

 European Adonis, and at the fame time forgets that there 

 is not one of the bodily differences of thefe two beings, 

 whether hair, colour, features, &c. which does not gra- 

 dually run into the fame thing of the other, by fuch a va- 

 riety of {hades that no phyfiologift or naturalift is able to 

 cftablifh a certain boundary between thefe gradations, and 

 confequently between the extremes themfelves. 



The fecond fault is, when people reafon as if man were 

 the only organifed being in nature, and confider the varie- 

 ties in his fpecies to be ftrange and problematical, without 

 reflecting that all thefe varieties are not more ftriking or 

 more uncommon than thofe with which fo many thousands- 

 ©f other fpecies of organifed beings degenerate, as it were, 

 before our eyes. 



As my obfervations refpeeting the bodily conformation 

 *nd mental capacity of the negroes * may ferve to warn man- 

 kind againfl the flrft error, and at the fame time to refute it, 

 I fhall here offer a few remarks to refute the falfe conclusion, 

 which might be formed from a carelefs Companion of the de- 

 generations among the human race with the varieties among 

 other animals, and for that purpofe {hall draw a comparifon, 

 between the human race and that of fwine f. 



More reafons than one have induced me to make choice 

 of fwine for this comparifon ; but in particular, becaufe 

 they have a great fimilarity, in many refpe&s, to man : not, 

 however, in the form of their entrails, as people formerly 

 believed, and therefore ftudicd the anatomy of the human 



* Sec Phil. Mag. vol. iii. p. 141. 



f See, for example, Auuiomia Porrl of the old Arabian Cophon in 

 the beginning, where lie fays : Et cum briua anirualia quadam, ut fimia, 

 in eucrioribus. nobis inver.iantur finiiJa, ijitciiorum partiuin, nulla invcr.i. 



wntur adco fimilia ut porci. i 



bodv* 



