with the origin of life, and with the mode of its transmission from
parent to offspring, which the researches of philosophers have never
yet been able to explore.

These same constitutional and congenital peculiarities which we see
developing themselves all around us in families, mark, on a greater
scale, the characteristics of the different nations of the earth, and
in a degree much higher still, the several great and distinct races
into which the whole human family seems to be divided. Physiologists
consider that there are five of these great races, whose
characteristics, mental as well as bodily, are distinctly, strongly,
and permanently marked. These characteristics descend by hereditary
succession from father to son, and though education and outward
influences may modify them, they can not essentially change them.
Compare, for example, the Indian and the African races, each of which
has occupied for a thousand years a continent of its own, where they
have been exposed to the same variety of climates, and as far as
possible to the same general outward influences. How entirely diverse
from each other they are, not only in form, color, and other physical
marks, but in all the tendencies and characteristics of the soul! One
can no more be changed into the other, than a wolf, by being tamed and
domesticated, can be made a dog, or a dog, by being driven into the
forests, be transformed into a tiger. The difference is still greater
between either of these races and the Caucasian race. This race might
probably be called the European race, were it not that some Asiatic
and some African nations have sprung from it, as the Persians, the
Ph[oe]nicians, the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, and, in modern times,
the Turks. All the nations of this race, whether European or African,
have been distinguished by the same physical marks in the conformation
of the head and the color of the skin, and still more by those traits