M2 CAUSES OF THE VAKIETIRS 



])r()duced in the domesticated animals, because they have 

 been taken from their primitive condition, and exposed to 

 the operation of many, to them, unnatural causes ; if the pig 

 is remarkable among these for the number and degree of its 

 varieties, because it has been the most exposed to causes of 

 degeneration ; we shall be at no loss to account for the di- 

 versities in man, who is, in the true, though not ordinary 

 sense of the word, more of a domesticated animal than any 

 other. We know the wild state of most of them, but we 

 are ignorant of the natural wild condition to which man was 

 destined. Probably there is no such state, because nature, 

 having limited him in no respect, having fitted him for every 

 kind of life, every climate, and every variety of food, has 

 given him the whole earth for his abode, and both the or- 

 ganized kingdoms for his nourishment. Yet, in the wide 

 range through which the scale of human cultivation extends, 

 vv^e may observe a contrast between the two extremities, 

 analogous to that which is seen in the wild and tamed races 

 of animals. The savage may be compared to the former, 

 which range the earth uncontrolled by man ; civilized peo- 

 ple to the domesticated breeds of the same species, whose 

 diversities of form and colour are endless. Whether we 

 consider the several nations, or the individuals of each, 

 bodily difterences are much more numerous in the highly 

 civilized Caucasian variety, than in eitlier of the other divi- 

 sions of mankind. 



Such, then, are the causes by which the varieties of man 

 may be accounted for. Although I have acknowledged my 

 entire ignorance of the manner in which these operate, I 

 have proved that they exist, and have shewn by copious 

 analogies, that they are sufficient to explain the phenomena. 

 The tendency, under certain circumstances, to alterations of 

 the original colour, form, and other properties of the body, 

 and the law of transmission to the offspring, are the sources 

 of varieties in man and animals, and thereby modify the 

 species ; climate, food, way of life ; in a word, all the phy- 

 sical and moral causes that surround us, act indeed power- 

 fully on the individual, but do not change the offspring, ex- 



