NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. 



495 



These variations, we are bound to add, are not always of 

 advancement alone, but sometimes manifestly of degradation 

 from the standard of the particular race. As such we may 

 probably regard the Hottentots and Bushmen of Southern 

 Africa; the Esquimaux, Laplanders, and Samoyedes of the 

 arctic circle; the Fuegians, Papuas, and numerous other 

 tribes scattered over the globe. This fact indeed, applying 

 alike to the mental and bodily organisation, is one which 

 binds itself closely and necessarily with all other parts of our 

 argument. Those varying conditions of existence, which 

 even in the same nation or community tend to degrade and 

 debase certain classes, do so on a larger scale and with more 

 lasting effect, where the insulation from the original stock is 

 more complete, and where the circumstances of life are yet 

 more strongly contrasted, and continued for longer periods 

 of time. 



What we have said will be readily understood as applying 

 equally to the moral feelings and character of different races 

 as to their intellectual faculties. The denotation of unity of 

 origin is as strong in the one case as the other. However 

 modified in form and expression by various conditions or 

 necessities of life, the emotions, the desires, the moral feelings 

 of mankind, are essentially the same in all races and in all 

 ages of the world. We have neither room nor need for 

 argument on this subject. History and personal experience 

 alike concur as to the fact. Were we to cite any one instance 

 in particular, it would be the faculty of laughter and tears 

 those expressions of feeling common to all colours, races, and 

 communities of mankind, civilised or savage ; and which give 

 proofs of identity, stronger than any reasoning \6jov TI 

 /cpslrrov. To our great poet, whose philosophy alone would 

 have made him immortal, we owe a line, which far more 

 happily expresses our meaning : 



One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 



