THE HUMAN SPECIES. 1G7 



adventitious distinctions, sprung from changes of cli- 

 mate, latitude, food, mode of life, and the innumerable 

 other influential conditions of existence ; conditions that 

 affect, though in a less degree, the typical structure, the 

 external appearance of Man, and that acquire a deep- 

 seated power over his intellectual faculties in their 

 possible development, and consequently also in their 

 contraction, externally observable. Therefore, in rea- 

 soning upon them, we must be guarded against certain 

 prepossessions of self-esteem, which the educated man 

 of the bearded stock, and indeed mankind in general, 

 is apt to entertain of strangers ; for the same tendency 

 is ever at work between nation and nation, and between 

 every sub-division of the human family, however formed. 

 In the description of characters, scientifically taken, we 

 can only point out what they are, without having the 

 power of stating what may be eventually evolved ; and, 

 though already assured, even with the apparently most 

 degraded nations, that moral rectitude is fully under- 

 stood, nay, often put in practice by the savage, to the 

 disgrace of the rapacious Christian who visits his abode ; 

 not ashamed to use knowledge for the purpose of 

 deception, and illusions for his own gain, though the 

 consequences carry destruction to his victims. When 



perhaps unwittingly, so far as the Greeks were concerned, 

 to the three typical stocks, in the evocation of Hecate (a 

 Scythian divinity), for the ceremony demanded a waxen 

 triform image, whereof one was to be white, the second 

 red, and the third black. These indications are significant 

 on a spot such as Tauris, notwithstanding the usual expla- 

 nation, which refers them to the triune doctrines of India. 



