VIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 169 
render permanent, physical peculiarities, which, though slight 
in the limited periods allowed to our observation, would, in 
the long ages during which the human race has existed, have 
sufficed to produce all the differences that now appear. It is 
further asserted that the advocates of the opposite theory do 
not agree among themselves; that some would make three, 
some five, some fifty or a hundred and fifty species of man ; 
some would have had each species created in pairs, while 
others require nations to have at once sprung into existence, 
and that there is no stability or consistency in any doctrine 
but that of one primitive stock. 
The advocates of the original diversity of man, on the 
other hand, have much to say for themselves. They argue 
that proofs of change in man have never been brought for- 
ward except to the most trifling amount, while evidence of 
his permanence meets us everywhere. The Portuguese and 
Spaniards, settled for two or three centuries in South 
America, retain their chief physical, mental, and moral 
characteristics ; the Dutch boers at the Cape, and the de- 
scendants of the early Dutch settlers in the Moluccas, have 
not lost the features or the colour of the Germanic races ; 
the Jews, scattered over the world in the most diverse 
climates, retain the same characteristic lineaments every- 
where ; the Egyptian sculptures and paintings show us that, 
for at least 4000 or 5000 years, the strongly contrasted 
features of the Negro and the Semitic races have remained 
altogether unchanged; while more recent discoveries prove 
that the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, and the 
dwellers on Brazilian mountains, had, even in the very infancy 
of the human race, some traces of the same peculiar and 
characteristic type of cranial formation that now distinguishes 
them. 
If we endeavour to decide impartially on the merits of 
this difficult controversy, judging solely by the evidence that 
each party has brought forward, it certainly seems that the 
best of the argument is on the side of those who maintain 
the primitive diversity of man. Their opponents have not 
been able to refute the permanence of existing races as far 
back as we can trace them, and have failed to show, in a 
single case, that at any former epoch the well marked varie- 
