176 PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. 



Fuegians, the Andaman Islanders and Esquimaux, &c., 

 with the cultivated people of classical antiquity, or 

 with the higher culture of some of the nations of our 

 own time. Can we in changes of physical condition 

 and other natural accidents find explanation of those 

 vast diversities growing out of a single stock of human 

 existence diversities of human culture which time has 

 brought about in the same regions and even among the 

 same races of men ? 



To meet questions like these we are forced back in 

 speculation on the grade and condition of that primitive 

 people on the earth from which all others have their 

 presumed descent. Here written history is a blank, 

 traditions are wrapt in mist, and our sole reading is in 

 those rude sepulchres of caves and tumuli which have 

 disclosed to us the admixture of human remains with 

 those of animals now extinct on the globe, the present 

 congeners of which dwell in climates and countries far 

 distant from these places of entombment. Such re- 

 searches are yet in their infancy, going little beyond 

 a few detached spots on the face of the earth. Who 

 can conjecture the results of future discovery, es- 

 pecially in those regions of Asia the seats of the 

 oldest empires, as well as of those nomadic races which 

 poured themselves westwards to subdue and occupy 

 what are now the most civilised parts of the world ? 

 The inference from the discoveries first denoted is that 

 of rude tribes of men, generally of a lower anatomical 

 type, rudely implemented, but showing in succession, on 

 the same soil, a progress in those arts and means which 

 serve to human subsistence. The successive ages, or 



