An essay on the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the human species : to which are added, animadversions on certain remarks made on the first edition of this essay, by Mr. Charles White, in a series of discourses delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester in England : also, strictures on Lord Kaims' discourse on the original diversity of mankind : and an appendix / by Samuel Stanhope Smith.

  • Smith, Samuel Stanhope, 1750-1819.
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the human species : to which are added, animadversions on certain remarks made on the first edition of this essay, by Mr. Charles White, in a series of discourses delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester in England : also, strictures on Lord Kaims' discourse on the original diversity of mankind : and an appendix / by Samuel Stanhope Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    52 arrive at the same principle. There is the highest reason to believe that the primitive man received from his Creator, along with his existence, such a knowledge of the qualities, powers, and uses of the various objects around him, together with such mo- ral and religious principles, as would lay in his fam- ily, and among his immediate descendants, the true foundations of civilized society. Hence the primi- tive nations are, at their first appearance, in history, already civilized. Savagism was an after growth, which took its origin from idle, or disorderly men who, abhorring the constraints of society, sought, in the bosom of boundless forests, that free- dom from control, and from labor, which was con- genial with their wandering disposition. By rapidly extending themselves over the uncultivated regions of Europe, and the North of Asia, they there prepar- ed the elements of future nations. Thus mankind, either in a civilized, or savage state, became diffused in time over the surface of the whole globe. In every position suffering the influences of the climate, of the sterility or richness of the soil, of the eleva- tion or depression of the face of their country, of the vicinity of seas or desarts, of their insular, or conti- nental situation: or the modifications of all these.