EXGURSION TO THE REALMS BELOW. l6l 



grounded in the very frame of man, as that whereon 

 nature has made every thing of confequence to him to 

 depend, If there be races of men to whom this difpofi- 

 tion to their perfection is totally or in a very high de- 

 gree wanting, then they do not belong to the mankind 

 of whom we are fpeaking ; they rather form an interme- 

 diate fpecies between men and monkies, who from the 

 want of impulfes to perfection, are neceili rated for ever to 

 walk round and round within the contracted circle of 

 animal life # . The nobler races of mankind have all of 

 them — at an earlier or a later period, more or left, 

 according as outward circumftances were favourable or 

 adverfe to them — worked themfelves out of the ftate of 

 favage nature, and united in civil focieties, for the efta- 

 blimment and elevation of their common welfare. Na- 

 ture and dire neceffity here cooperate to one and the fame 

 great end; and, as it would be abfurd to fay, that 

 mankind have therein been merely paffive agents : fo it 

 can no more be affirmed, that, in the erection of the 

 firft civil focieties, they went to work as experienced 

 artifts ; and, that, after previous, common, free de- 

 liberation, they unanimoufly adopted that confritution 

 and form of government which they knew to be the 



* Whether there actually be fueh half-men (the queftion is not 

 concerning Jingle and accidentally wretched beings of this flainp, 

 but of whole races, to whom this defecl: is fuppofed natural) upon 

 the globe of the earth — whether perhaps the Pafcheras of the 

 Tena del Fuego, and the ftunted and dull New-Hollanders ma/ 

 be fuch middle links between the inferior animals and man, — ap- 

 pears, from the whole refult of competent obfervations and re- 

 peat :d experiments, to be fell undetermined. 



vol. I. m belt 



