When we look for a moment at an individual of this type, we are involuntarily reminded of the structure of the monkey, and are inclined to admit that the negro races of West Africa come from a stock that has nothing in common, except the human form, with the Mongolian. We come next to tribes whose appearance is still less flattering to the self-love of mankind than that of the Congo negro. Oceania has the special privilege of providing the most ugly, degraded, and repulsive specimens of the race, which seem to have been created with the express purpose of forming a link between man and the brute pure and simple. By the side of many Australian tribes, the African negro himself assumes a value and dignity, and seems to derive from a nobler source. In many of the wretched inhabitants of this New World, the size of the head, the extreme thinness of the limbs, the famished look of the body, are absolutely hideous. The hair is flat or wavy, and generally woolly, the flesh is black on a foundation of grey. When, after examining these types, taken from all the quarters of the globe, we finally come back to the inhabitants of Europe, and of South and West Asia, we find them so superior in beauty, in just proportion of limb and regularity of feature, that we are at once tempted to accept the conclusions of those who assert the multiplicity of races. Not only are these peoples more beautiful than the rest of mankind, which is, I confess, a pestilent congregation of ugliness;[50] not only have they had the glory of giving the world such admirable types as a Venus, an Apollo, a Farnese Hercules; but also there is a visible hierarchy of beauty established from ancient times even among themselves, and in this natural aristocracy the Europeans are the most eminent, by their grace of outline and strength of muscular developement. The most reasonable view appears to be that the families into which man is divided are as distinct as are animals of different species. Such was the conclusion drawn from simple observation, and so long as only general facts were in question, it seemed irrefutable.