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this principle, if it be admitted, those only are to be esteemed of different species whose distinctive properties are so essential to each respectively, and so inherent in them, that they cannot be changed, or their differences accounted for, by the known operations of any physical, or moral causes.  If this, then, be received as the acknowledged criterion of diversity of species, I doubt not being able to demonstrate, in the progress of this essay, that all the varieties of men may have sprung from the same original stock. To whichever criterion, therefore, we appeal, the same conclusion will result.*

* It is amusing to see the critical reviewers in England, in their remarks on the first edition of this essay, attach so much importance, as they do, to a frivolous and dubious disquisition respecting the proper criterion of a distinct species, which could lead to no other result, by their own confession than this, that no accurate criterion has ever been discovered by philosophers.  If that be so, surely a discussion of the question, merely as an exhibition of learning in Natural Science, could have been of little importance towards an elucidation of the subject.—"So loose and inconclusive is his reasoning, say they, that he has never enquired what really constitutes a different species.  In botany, it is preserving the general and essential characters in changes of situation, and losing, in time, the accidental differences which climate and culture have produced.  In animals, where the distinction ought to have begun, it has been neglected [viz. by Naturalists].  If the production of a fertile off- [[footnote continued on the next page]]

 
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The hypothesis that the human kind is divided into various species, radically different from one another, is commonly connected in the systems of philosophers with another opinion, which, however general the assent be which it has obtained, is equally contrary to true philosophy, and to the sacred history; I mean the primitive and absolute savagism of all the 

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 spring be the criterion of the sameness of the species, men are, undoubtedly, of the same species.  But this distinction is found to be fallacious, particularly in domestic animals.  And, if carefully examined, we shall find that, in zoology, the species are not, in reality, ascertained with accuracy.  We must, then, at last, refer to the botanical distinction."—Now what elucidation could my subject have received from such learned remarks, which leave the question in the same uncertainty in which they found it?  "In zoology, they say, no criterion has been ascertained with accuracy ;"—therefore they will apply to animals that which botanists have fixed for plants.—Be it so.  It differs not much from that which Dr. Blumenbach proposes both for plants and animals.  And, agreeably to this criterion, it is the whole object of the essay to deduce the varieties of men, or to account for them, from what the Doctor calls degenerating causes ;—or, to shew, according to the botanical standard of the Reviewers, that men in all climates, "preserve the general and essential characteristics of the race, and will lose, in time, the accidental differences which climate, and culture, or the habits of living, and various states of society, have produced in them."  With what success this has been done I cheerfully leave to the philosophic reader to determine. 

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-Katatatatoo ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 07:43:42 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 19:32:41