466 MAN, PHYSICALLY CONSIDERED. 



tations ; to their sleeping constantly on the ground, and 

 to their rough and savage manner of living. These cir- 

 cumstances are sufficient to render the Tartars more 

 swarthy than the Europeans, who want nothing to make 

 their life easy and comfortable. Why are the Chinese 

 fairer than the Tartars, though they resemble them in 

 every feature ? because they live in towns and practice 

 every art, to guard themselves against the injuries of the 

 weather ; while the Tartars are perpetually exposed to 

 the action of the sun and air. Climate may be regard- 

 ed as the chief cause of the different colors of men, 

 but food, though it has less influence than climate, 

 greatly affects the form of our bodies. Coarse, unwhole- 

 some and ill-prepared food makes the human species de- 

 generate. All those people who live miserably are ugly 

 and ill made. Even in France the country people are 

 not so beautiful, as those who live in towns ; and I have 

 often remarked in those villages, where the people are 

 richer and better fed than in others, the men are like- 

 wise more handsome and have better countenances. 

 The air and the soil have great influence on the figures 

 of men, beasts and plants. Upon the whole, every cir- 

 cumstance concurs in proving that mankind are not 

 composed of species essentially different from each other; 

 that on the contrary, there was originally but one spe- 

 cies, which after multiplying and spreading over the whole 

 surface of the earth, has undergone various changes by 

 the influence of the climate, food, mode of living, opi- 

 demic diseases, and mixtures of dissimilar individuals ; 

 that at first these changes were not conspicuous, and 

 produced only individual varieties ; that these varieties 

 became afterwards more specific:, because they were ren- 

 dered more general, more strongly marked and more 

 permanent, by the continual action of the same cause; 

 that they are transmitted from generation to generation, 

 as deformities or diseases pass from parents to children ; 

 and that lastly, as they were originally produced by a 

 train of external and accidental caus :s, and have only 

 been perpetuated by time, and the constant operation of 

 these causes, it is probable that they will gradually dis- 

 appear, or at least that they will differ from what they 



