EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



159 



Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian. There may, 

 nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of 

 development which is predisposed to a particular color 

 when it is presented as the envelope of a mature being. 

 Development being arrested at so immature a stage in the 

 case of the Negro, the skin may take on the color as an 

 unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization. 

 It is favorable to this view, that Negro infants are not 

 deeply black at first, but only acquire the full color tint 

 after exposure for some time to the atmosphere. Another 

 consideration in its favor is that there is a likelihood of 

 peculiarities of form and color, since they are so eoinci 

 dent, depending on one set of phenomena. If it be ad 

 mitted as true, there can be no difficulty in accounting 

 for all the varieties of mankind. They are simply the 

 result of so many advances and retrogressions in the de- 

 veloping power of the human mothers, these advances 

 and retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the 

 immediate effect of external conditions in nutrition, hard- 

 ship, &c.,* and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suita- 

 bleness and unsuitableness of marriages, for it is found 

 that parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring 

 of the Mongolian type — that is, persons who in maturity 

 still are a kind of children. According to this view, the 

 greater part of the human race must be considered as 

 having lapsed or declined from the original type. In the 

 Caucasian or Indo-European family alone has the primi- 

 tive organization been improved upon. The Mongolian, 

 Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending, perhaps, 

 five-sixths of mankind, are degenerate. Strange that the 

 great plan should admit of failures and aberrations of such 

 portentous magnitude ! But pause and reflect ; take time 

 into consideration: the past history of mankind may be, 

 to what is to come, but as a day. Look at the progress 

 even now making over the barbaric parts of the earth by 

 the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not 



* Of this we have perhaps an illustration in the peculiarities 

 which distinguish the Arabs residing in the valley of Jordan. 

 They have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair than 

 other tribes of their nation ; and we have seen one instance of a 

 thoroughly Negro family being born to an ordinary couple. It 

 may be presumed that the conditions of the life of these people 

 tend to arrest development. We thus see how an offshoot of the 

 human family migrating at an early period into Africa, might i^i 

 time, from subjection to similar influences; become Negroes 



