HUMAN RACES. 



moral and intellectual powers, and in. their geographical distribu- 

 tion. Those whose observations have been mainly confined to 

 the extremes of form and colour, and who have not reflected 

 on the wonderful changes to which all organised beings are 

 subject by various external physical causes, changes which, 

 when once superinduced, are transmitted, not only in man, 

 but in inferior animals, and even in plants, through the 

 series resulting from reproduction, have viewed the differences 

 observed among the members of the human family, not as 

 characteristics of so many varieties of a single species, but as 

 marks distinguishing different species of the same genus. We 

 have, however, the authority of the greatest living observer of 

 nature, as developed in the animal kingdom, in opposition to this 

 cheerless doctrine. 



60. " The permanence of certain types, in the midst of most 

 opposite influences," says Humboldt, " especially of climate, ap- 

 peared to favour this view, notwithstanding the shortness of the 

 time to which the historical evidence applied ; but in my opinion, 

 more powerful reasons lend their weight to the other side of the 

 question, and corroborate the unity of the human race. I refer 

 to the many intermediate gradations of the tint of the skin, and 

 the form of the skull, which have been made known to us, by the 

 rapid progress of geographical science in modern times, to the 

 analogies derived from the history of varieties in animals, both 

 domesticated and wild, and to the positive observations collected 

 respecting the limits of fecundity in hybrids. The greater part 

 of the supposed contrasts, to which so much weight was formerly 

 assigned, have disappeared before the laborious investigations of 

 Tiedemann on the brain of negroes and of Europeans, and the 

 anatomical researches of Vrolik and Weber, on the form of the 

 pelvis. When we take a general view of the dark-coloured 

 African nations, on which the work of Prichard has thrown so 

 much light, and when we compare them with the natives of the 

 Australasian Islands, and with the Papuas and Alfourous, we see 

 that a black tint of skin, woolly hair, and negro features, are by 

 no means invariably associated. So long as the western nations 

 were acquainted with only a small part of the earth's surface, 

 partial views almost necessarily prevailed. Tropical heat, and a 

 black colour of the skin, appeared inseparable. * The Ethiopians,' 

 said the ancient tragic poet, Theodectes of Phaselis, *by the 

 near approach of the Sun- God in his course, have their bodies 

 coloured with a dark sooty lustre, and their hair curled and 

 crisped by his parching rays.' The campaigns of Alexander, 

 in which so many subjects connected with physical geography 

 were originally brought into notice, occasioned the first 



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