VOL. XLIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 05 



ture, origin, progress, alterations, and different success of divers methods of 

 cure of this lues, may be accounted for; and the most rational methods of 

 cure deduced. 



8. From what has been said about the cause of the colour of black and white 

 people, we may justly conclude, that they might very naturally be both descended 

 from one and the same parents ; for the different colours of people have been de- 

 monstrated to be only the necessary effects, and natural consequences of their 

 respective climes, and ways of life ; as we may further learn from experience, that 

 they are the most suitable for the preservation of health, and the ease and con- 

 venience of mankind in these climes, and ways of living ; so that the black co- 

 lour of the negroes of Africa, instead, of being a curse denounced on them, 

 on account of their fore-father Ham, as some have idly imagined, is rather a 

 blessing, rendering their lives, in that intemperate region, more tolerable, and 

 less painful : whereas, on the other hand, the white people, who consider them- 

 selves as the primitive race of men, from a certain superiority of worth, either 

 supposed or assumed, seem to have the least pretensions to it of any, either from 

 history or philosophy; for they seem to have degenerated more from the primi- 

 tive and original complexion of mankind, in Noah and his sons, than even the 

 Indians and negroes ; and that to the worst extreme, the most delicate, tender, 

 and sickly. For there is no doubt, but that Noah and his sons were of a com- 

 plexion suitiible to the climate where they resided, as well as all the rest of man- 

 kind ; which is the colour of the southern Tartars of Asia, or northern Chinese, 

 at this day perhaps, which is a dark swarthy, a medium between black and white: 

 from which primitive colour the Europeans degenerated as much on one hand, 

 as the Africans did on the other; the Asiatics, unless, perhaps, where mixed with 

 the whiter Europeans, with most of the Americans, retaining the primitive and 

 original complexion. The grand obstacle to the belief of this relation between 

 white and black people is, that, on comparing them together, their colours seem 

 to be so opposite and contrary, that it seems impossible that one should ever have 

 been descended from the other. But, besides the falsity of this supposed direct 

 contrariety of their colours, they being only different, though extreme degrees 

 of the same sort of colour, as we have above proved ; besides this, that is not a 

 right state of the question; we do not affirm that either blacks or whites were 

 originally descended from one another, but that both were descended from people 

 of an intermediate tawny colour ; whose posterity became more and more tawny, 

 i. e. black, in the southern regions, and less so, or white, in the northern climes ; 

 while those who remained in the middle regions, where the first men resided 

 continued of their primitive tawny complexions ; which we see confirmed by 

 matter of fact, in all the different people in the world. Agreeably to this, we 

 see, that the heat of tlie sun will tan, as the saying is, the fairest skin, of a dark 



VOL. IX. K 



