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CHAPTER II. 



" If the human mind can ever flatter itself with having been 

 successful in discovering the truth, it is when many facts, and 

 these facts of different kinds, unite in producing the same result." 



BAILLIE. 



IT is still an unresolved problem among Philo- 

 sophers, whether all the varieties of mankind have 

 resulted from the influence of climate, geographi- 

 cal position, and different modes of living, as sup- 

 posed by Herodotus, Diodorus, Hippocrates, Buf- 

 fon, Zimmerman, Forster, Herder, Smith, and 

 some others, or from an original difference of 

 race, as maintained by Voltaire, Humboldt, Ade- 

 lung, Caldwell, Lawrence, and others. The most 

 prevalent hypothesis of the present day is, that 

 all the nations of the earth may be traced to dif- 

 ferent races, which have been mingled by con- 

 quests, colonizations, marriages, &c. Without de- 

 nying that all of them may have descended from 

 the same original stock, Blumenbach has reduced 

 the whole to five distinct classes, which he terms 

 the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malay, the 

 American, and the Ethiopian races. 



To the first of these classes belong the Hindoos, 

 Arabians, Persians, Egyptians, Lybians, Phoeni- 

 cians, Greeks, Romans, Saxons, Celts, with their 

 descendants, now spread over Europe and many 



