INTRODUCTION. 21 



That climate, situation, food, mode of life, have considerable effect in 

 altering the constitution of man and animals ; but that this effect is 

 confined to the individual, is not transmitted by generation, and 

 therefore does not affect the race. That the human species, like 

 that of the cow, sheep, horse, and pig, is single ; and that all the 

 differences which it exhibits are to be regarded merely as varieties. 



Dr. Prichard, the most zealous and learned advocate of the unity 

 of the human race, commences his second section* as follows : 

 " The Sacred Scriptures, whose testimony is received by all men of 

 unclouded minds with implicit and reverential assent, declare that it 

 pleased the Almighty Creator to make of one blood all the nations 

 of the earth, and that all mankind are the offspring of common par- 

 ents. But there are writers in the present day who maintain that 

 this assertion does not comprehend the uncivilized inhabitants of 

 remote regions ; and that Negroes, Hottentots, Esquimaux, and 

 Australians, are not, in fact, men in the full sense of that term, or 

 beings endowed with like mental faculties as ourselves." These 

 half-brutes, half-men, do not belong to what Bory de Saint Vincent 

 calls the " Race Adamique ;" they were created to be the slaves of 

 the superior races ; and are capable of improvement to an extent 

 comparable to that attained by dogs or horses. Such men think it 

 the extreme of folly for England to have recently emancipated from 

 West Indian slavery a tribe of Negroes, exactly in the situation for 

 which nature designed them. There are not a few in this country 

 who cherish, if they do not express, a similar opinion. But in mat- 

 ters of scientific inquiry, all considerations, not bearing on the im- 

 mediate facts in the case, must be set aside ; the maxim to follow is 

 "fiat justitia, mat coelum." "In fact, what is actually true it is 

 always most desirable to know, whatever consequences may arise 

 from its admission." 



As the signification of the word "species" has been variously 

 understood, he defines species as " simply tribes of plants or of ani- 

 mals which are certainly known, or may be inferred, on satisfactory 

 grounds, to have descended from the same stocks, or from parent- 

 ages precisely similar, and in no way distinguished from each 

 other." The principal object of his work is to point out the most 

 important diversities by which the genus Man is separated into 



* The Natural History of Man: by James Cowles Prichard, M. D. 

 London, 1313. 



