vni THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 169 



render permanent, physical peculiarities, which, though slight 

 in the limited periods allowed to our observation, would, in 

 the long ages during which the human race has existed, have 

 sufficed to produce all the differences that now appear. It is 

 further asserted that the advocates of the opposite theory do 

 not agree among themselves ; that some would make three, 

 some five, some fifty or a hundred and fifty species of man ; 

 some would have had each species created in pairs, while 

 others require nations to have at once sprung into existence, 

 and that there is no stability or consistency in any doctrine 

 but that of one primitive stock. 



The advocates of the original diversity of man, on the 

 other hand, have much to say for themselves. They argue 

 that proofs of change in man have never been brought for- 

 ward except to the most trifling amount, while evidence of 

 his permanence meets us everywhere. The Portuguese and 

 Spaniards, settled for two or three centuries in South 

 America, retain their chief physical, mental, and moral 

 characteristics ; the Dutch boers at the Cape, and the de- 

 scendants of the early Dutch settlers in the Moluccas, have 

 not lost the features or the colour of the Germanic races ; 

 the Jews, scattered over the world in the most diverse 

 climates, retain the same characteristic lineaments every- 

 where ; the Egyptian sculptures and paintings show us that, 

 for at least 4000 or 5000 years, the strongly contrasted 

 features of the Negro and the Semitic races have remained 

 altogether unchanged; while more recent discoveries prove 

 that the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, and the 

 dwellers on Brazilian mountains, had, even in the very infancy 

 of the human race, some traces of the same peculiar and 

 characteristic type of cranial formation that now distinguishes 

 them. 



If we endeavour to decide impartially on the merits of 

 this difficult controversy, judging solely by the evidence that 

 each party has brought forward, it certainly seems that the 

 best of the argument is on the side of those who maintain 

 the primitive diversity of man. Their opponents have not 

 been able to refute the permanence of existing races as far 

 back as we can trace them, and have failed to show, in a 

 single case, that at any former epoch the well marked varie- 



