Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Extravagant as this illustration may appear, the professor goes on to
say, philosophically, on the doctrine of the unity of the human race, it
is not so; for what else than such an imaginary prolonged individual
life is the life of the race? And what greater changes have occurred to
our imaginary traveler than have actually befallen the human family?
The facts are patent. Under the equator is found the negro, in the
temperate zones the Indo-European, and toward the pole the Lapp and
Esquimaux. They are as different as the climates in which they dwell;
nevertheless, history, philology, the common traditions of the race,
revelation, point to their brotherhood.
How is it that climate can bring about such modifications in man? Is it
possible that the sun, shining upon his face and his children's faces
for ages, can make their skin dark, and their hair crisp and curly, and
their foreheads low? Or that sunshine and shadow, spring-time and
autumn, summer's showers beating upon him and winter's snows falling
about his path, can make him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and
cheerless day of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat
and stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other
influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the less
essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment, shelter, occupation,
amusement, influences that tell upon the very citadel and stronghold of
life--and all in their very nature climatic, since they are controlled
and modified by climate--are the means by which such changes are
effected. The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much
clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food, delighting
in the chase and in battle, and living thus because his surroundings
indicate it, becomes swart and athletic, fierce, cunning and
cruel--takes ethnologically the lowest place. Of literature, science,
art, he knows nothing: for him will is justice, fear law, some miserable
fetich God. Still, in his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the
noblest manhood, awaiting only favorable surroundings to call them into
glorious being. It might shock the salt of the earth to reflect that
some centuries of life among them and their fair descendants would make
him like them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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