296 



when no longer under the guidance of expe- 

 rience and analogy. 



The nations that have a white skin begin 

 their cosmogony by white men ; according to 

 them, the Negroes and all tawny people have 

 been blackened or embrowned by the excessive 

 heat of the Sun. This theory, adopted by the 

 Greeks % though not without contradiction *f, 

 has been propagated even to our own times. 

 Buffon has repeated in prose, what Theodectes 

 had expressed in verse two thousand years 

 before : " that the nations wear the livery of 

 the climate they inhabit." If history had been 

 written by black nations, they would have 

 maintained what even Europeans have recently 

 advanced that man was originally black, or 

 of a very tawny colour ; and that he has whi- 

 tened in some races, from the effect of civiliza- 



* Strabo, liv. xv. (Oxford edition by Falconer, t, 11, p. 

 990.) 



+ Onesicritus, apud Strabon., Lib. xv, (loc. cit., p. 983). 

 Alexander's expedition appears to have contributed greatly 

 to fix the attention of the Greeks on the great question of 

 the influence of climates. They had learned from the ac- 

 count of travellers, that in Hindostan the nations of the 

 south were of a darker colour than those of the north near 

 the mountains j and they supposed, that they were both of 

 the same race. 



% See the work of Mr. Prichard, abounding with curious 

 research. €i Researches into the physical History of Man, 

 1813," p. 233—239. 



