160 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION 



of investigation now opened to them. It was not only the 

 grander forms of the animal kingdom, the luxuriance of 

 vegetation, the variations of the surface, and the periodical 

 swelling of the great rivers which arrested his attention ; 

 man and his varieties, with their many gradations of form 

 and colour, could not but appear, in accordance with Aris- 

 totle's own saying ( 241 ), as "the centre and object of the 

 whole creation, the conscious possessor of thought derived 

 from the divine source of thought." From the little 

 that remains to us of the accounts of Onesicritus (much cen- 

 sured by the ancients), we see that in the Macedonian 

 expedition great surprise was felt when in advancing far 

 towards the east, the Indian races spoken of by Herodotus 

 "dark coloured and resembling Ethiopians," were indeed 

 met with; but the African negro with curly hair, was 

 not found ( 242 ) . The influence of the atmosphere on colour, 

 and the different effects of dry and humid warmth, were 

 carefully noticed. In the early Homeric times, and for a 

 long subsequent period, the dependence of the temperature of 

 the air on latitude was completely overlooked. Eastern and 

 Western relations determined the whole thermic meteorology 

 of the Greeks. The parts of the earth towards the sun-rising 

 were regarded as near to the sun, or " sun lands.* " The God 

 in his course colours the skin of man with a dark sooty 

 lustre, and parches and curls his hair" ( 243 ). 



The campaigns of Alexander first afforded an opportunity 

 of comparing on a large scale the African races, assembled 

 in Egypt especially, with Arian races beyond the Tigris, and 

 ath the very dark coloured, but not woolly haired, Indian 

 aborigines. The subdivision of mankind into varieties and, 

 their distribution over the earth's surface, (the result rather 



