158 



EARLY HISTORY" OF MANKIND. 



a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human. There 

 is more than this, for, after completing the animal trans- 

 formations, it passes through the characters in which it 

 appears in the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian 

 nations, and finally is Caucasian. The face partakes of 

 these alterations. " One of the earliest points in which 

 ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone is 

 consequently sooner completed than the other bones of 

 the head, and acquires a predominance, which, as is well 

 known, it never loses in the Negro. During the soft, 

 pliant state of the bones of the skull, the oblong form 

 which they naturally assume approaches nearly the per- 

 manent shape of the Americans. At birth, the flattened 

 face, and broad smooth forehead of the infant, the position 

 of the eyes rather towards the side of the head, and the 

 widened space between, represents the Mongolian form ; 

 while it is only as the child advances to maturity that 

 the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked fea- 

 tures of the true Caucasian become perfectly develop- 

 ed."* The leading characters, in short, of the various 

 races of mankind are simply representations of particular 

 ctages in the development of the highest or Caucasian 

 type. The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect 

 brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs of a 

 Caucasian child, some considerable time before the period 

 of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the 

 same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested 

 infant, newly born ; and so forth. All this is as respects 

 form ;f but whence color? This might be supposed to 

 have depended on climatal agencies only; but it has 

 been shown by overpowering evidence to be independent 

 of these. In further considering the matter, we are met 

 by the very remarkable fact that color is deepest in the 

 least perfectly-developed type, next in the Malay, next in 

 the American, next in the Mongolian, the very order in 

 which the degrees of development are ranged. May not 

 color, then, depend upon development also ? We do not, 

 indeed, see that a Caucasian fcetus at the stage which the 

 African represents is anything like black ; neither is a 



* Lord's Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M 



Serres. 



f Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute of 

 maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the 

 Americans and Negroes. 



