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If those philosophers, who maintain that the varieties in  complexion, and other constitutional properties of different tribes of mankind, are infallible indications of diversity of species, have embraced this hypothesis from an apprehension that is most consistent with the benignity and wisdom of the Creator to form different races of human beings, fitted by some peculiar adaptation of their physical organs to the respective climates they were severally destined to inhabit ; one would think that sound reason should induce us, from these premises, to infer a contrary conclusion; that he has formed the human constitution with such flexibility in its organization that it is capable of accommodation itself to  every situation on the globe, to which business or necessity may call men, or a liberal curiosity and the desire of improvement may invite them. This pliancy of nature in man, above that of most other animals, is favorable to the intercourse of the most distant nations, and greatly facilitates the cultivation of science. To what ample sources of information have not navigation and commerce opened an access? How imperfect must the philosophy of human nature itself have remained if we had been precluded from contemplating it under every climate, and form of


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society, and in every progressive stage of its improvement from absolute savagism, to the highest point of civilization and refinement? And according to this wise and benignant intention of providence, do we not see mankind continually changing their habitations? Dot not we find them under every zone from the equator, to the pole, not only able to endure all these different degrees of temperature without injury, but so assimilated by time to the character of each new climate, that hardly can we pronounce with certainty, who have been descended from the aboriginals of the country, and who from families who have migrated thither only a few generations past?

Why should it be though necessary then that the Creator should have formed different species of men to inhabit the frozen regions of Lapland, and the torrid climes of Africa, when it is confessed by one of the greatest champions of this doctrine, that a colony of Hungarians, who are among the handsomest and best proportioned people of Europe, have, by migration to Lapland, some ages ago, become absolutely assimilated to the natives of the country in every attribute of that diminutive and deformed

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 11:12:36