THE HUMAN SPECIES. 179 



ble, that the structural differences observable in nations are 

 solely the result of changes of climate, food, and other condi- 

 tions of existence, which a careful attention to history does' not 

 confirm ; and which, if they operated at all, must be a result 

 of the long-continued action of the same causes upon the por- 

 tions of mankind placed within the sphere of their operation, 

 such as arid or moist tropical heat, arctic cold, open mountain 

 ridges, or low swampy forests ; — yet there is so little cer- 

 tainty that such causes do or would effect the modifications 

 ascribed to them, that it is not even proved they influence the 

 brute creation to any extent, except in clothing; and the three 

 normal forms of Man, in every region which is sufficiently 

 genial to sustain the persisting duration of one of them, feel 

 the effect but slightly; and as there are only three who attain 

 this typical standard, tee have in them the foundation of that 

 number being exclusively aboriginal. 



This inference is further supported by facts, which show, if 

 not a succession of distinct creations of human forms, at least 

 probabilities that their different characteristics are of a remoter 

 date than the last great cataclysis of the earth's surface ; 

 for the admitted chronological data do not give a sufficient 

 period of duration between that event and the oldest picture 

 sculptures of Egypt, to sanction the transition from Caucasian 

 bearded to the Negro woolly-haired, or vice versa, as both 

 appear on the monuments. In that case, the operation of the 

 decided changes would have passed through all their main 

 gradations in three or four centuries, without any subsequent 

 perceptible addition in as many thousand years;* or should 



* There are, besides, such facts as the perfection of style in building, 

 in drawing, and in hieroglyphic intaglio sculpture, remarkable in the oldest 

 monuments ; not surpassed, but even receding to inferior execution, in 

 subsequent ages. A national multitude must have risen out of few parents 

 — all the subordinate arts invented, and so far carried to perfection, as to 

 be available for scientific purposes, such as architecture, &c, in some 

 cases exceeding our present capacities, or demanding the utmost ability 

 in the moderns to equal. All this, without mentioning Etruria, Bactria, 

 Assyria, India, and China. 



