564 DIFFERENCES IN MEN. 



ematician: " I represent him to myself as a celestial genius entirely dis- 

 engaged from matter." And, truly, transcendent intellect shines out in 

 every lineament of that noble countenance. 



What a contrast between the astronomer, of whom the human race 

 may be justly proud, and the Australian savage whose portrait Dr. Prich- 

 ard has furnished! This man lives in a hollow tree, which he has in 

 part excavated by fire, and obtains a precarious support from shell-fish, 

 or bruised ants and grass. He can make a hook of a piece of oyster, 

 and can fasten a line to it. He is lost in filth and vermin. His life is 

 like that of a beast ; it is concerned only with to-day. The early navi- 

 gators accused him of cannibalism. We can not say that his features 

 acquit him of the charge. 



History teaches us that a nation may pass through an ascending or 

 descending career. It may, by long-continued mental culture, exhibit a 

 general mental advance, and under such circumstances may produce, here 

 and there, an intellect of the first order ; or it may go through a course 

 of degradation until it reaches conditions inconsistent with its continued 

 existence, and then it dies out. 



Man is accordingly distributed over the face of the earth in various con- 

 Fig. 268. ^bls^ ditions. Here he presents 



the civilization of the Euro- 

 pean, there the abject mise- 

 ry of the Australian. What 

 more humiliating spectacle 

 could be offered to us than 

 the annexed engraving, Fig- 

 ure 268, from M. d'Urville? 

 Even a negro of Guinea 

 might look down on such a 

 specimen of human imbecil- 

 ity and physical weakness 

 with contempt, and refuse 

 to recognize such a being as 

 a man at all. 



W r hat is it that has 

 brought this man and his 

 companion to such a pass? 



Australians. . An almost tropical sun, a 



Causes of these pestilential climate, starvation, nakedness, the want of shel- 

 differences. ter, personal fear : these have done their work on the suc- 

 cessive generations of his miserable ancestors, who have been forced from 

 step to step in a descending career, and here is the result. 



Among the causes which influence the aspect of man, there are two 



