Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

 

 

 

 

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich. The Anthropological Treatises of Johann FriedrichBlumenbach: De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa. 1795. Ed. and Trans. Thomas Bendyshe. Published for the Anthropological Society of London by Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1865.

 

SECTION II.

 

OF THE CAUSES AND WAYS BY WHICH THE SPECIES OF

ANIMALS DEGENERATE IN GENERAL.

 

[188]    23.  What is species?  We say that animals belong to one and the same species, if they agree so well in form and constitution, that those things in which they do differ may have arisen from degeneration.  We say that those, on the other hand, are of different species, whose essential difference is such as cannot be explained by the known sources of degeneration, if I may be allowed to use such a word.  So far well in the abstract, as they say.  Now we come to the real difficulty, which is to set forth the characters by which, in the natural world, we may distinguish mere varieties from genuine species.

 

            The immortal Ray, in the last century, long before Buffon, thought those animals should be referred to the same species, [189] which copulate together, and have a fertile progeny.  But, as in the domestic animals which man has subdued, this character seemed ambiguous and uncertain, on account of the enslaved life they lead; in the beginning of this century, the sagacious Frisch restricted it to wild animals alone, and declared that those were of the same species, who copulate in a natural state¹.

 

            But it must be confessed that, even with this limitation, we make but little progress.  For, in the first place, what very little chance is there of bringing so many wild animals, especially the exotic ones, about which it is of the greatest possible interest for us to know whether they are to be considered as mere varieties, or as different species, to that test of copulation? especially if their native countries are widely apart; as is the case with the Satyrus Angolensis (Chimpanzee) and that of the island of Borneo (Orang-utan).

 

            Then it is universally the case that the obscurity and doubt is much smaller, and of much less importance, in the case of wild animals on the point in question, than of those very animals which are excluded by this argument, that is, the domestic.  Here, in truth, is the great difficulty.  Hence the wonderful differences of opinion about, for example, the common dog, whose races you see are by some referred to many primitive species; by others are considered as mere degenerated varieties from that stock which is called the domestic dog (Chien de berger); again, there are others who think that all these varieties are derived from the jackal; and, finally, others contend that the later, together with all the domestic dogs and their varieties, are descended from the wolf, and so forth.

 

            As then the principle sought to be deduced from copulation is not sufficient to define the idea of species and its difference [190] from variety, so neither are the other things which are adduced with this object, for example, the constancy of any character.  Thus the snowy colour and the red pupils of the white variety of rabbit are as constant as any specific character could possibly be.  So that I almost despair of being able to deduce any notion of species in the study of zoology, except from analogy and resemblance.  I see, for example, that the molar teeth of the African elephant differ most wonderfully in their conformation from those of the Asiatic.  I do not know whether these elephants, which come from such different parts of the world, have ever copulated together; nor do I know any more how constant this conformation of the teeth may be in each.  But since, so far in all the specimens which I have seen, I have observed the same difference; and since I have never known any example of molar teeth so changed by mere degeneration, I conjecture from analogy that those elephants are not to be considered as mere varieties, but must be held to be different species.

 

            The ferret, on the contrary, does not seem to me a separate species, but must be considered as a mere variety of the polecat, not so much because I have known them copulate together, as because the former has red pupils, and from all analogy I consider that those mammals in whom the internal eye is destitute of the dark pigment, must be held to be mere varieties which have degenerated from their original stocks.

 

            24.  Application of what has been said to the question whether we should divide mankind into varieties or species.  It is easily manifest whither what we have hitherto said has been tending.  We have no other way, but that of analogy, by which we are likely to arrive at a solution of the problem above proposed.  But as we enter upon this path, we ought always to have before our eyes the two golden rules which the great Newton has laid down for philosophizing.  First, That the same causes should be assigned to account for natural effects of the same kind.  We must therefore assign the same causes for the bodily diversity of the races of mankind to which we assign a similar diversity of body in the other domestic animals which are widely scattered over the world.  Secondly, That we ought not to admit more causes of natural things than what are sufficient to explain the phenomena.  If therefore it shall appear that the causes of degeneration are sufficient to explain the phenomena of the corporeal diversity of mankind, we ought not to admit anything else deduced from the idea of the plurality of human species.

 

            25.  How does the primitive species degenerate into varieties?  As we are now about to treat of the modes of degeneration, I hope best to consult perspicuity in dealing with the subject if I arrange it again under two heads; of which the first will briefly relate the principle phenomena of the degeneration of brute animals; and the second will inquire into the causes of this degeneration.  This being done, it will be easier in the following section to compare the phenomena of variety in mankind as well with those phenomena of degeneration in brute animals as with the causes of them. …       [193]    

 

             32.  Causes of degeneration.  Animal life supposes two faculties, depending upon the vital forces as primary conditions and principles of all and singular its functions; the one, namely, of so receiving the force of the stimuli which act upon the body that the parts are affected by it; the other of so reacting from this affection that the living motions of the body are in this way set in action and perfected.  So there is no motion in the animal machine without a preliminary stimulus and a consequent reaction.  These are the hinges on which all the physiology of the animal economy turns.  And these are the foundations from which, just as the business itself of generation, so also the causes [194] of degeneration flow; but in order to make this clear to those even who know but little of physiology, it will be as well to premise with a few words from that science.

 

            33.  Formative force.  I have in another place professedly, and in a separate book devoted to this subject, endeavored to show that the vulgar system of evolution, as it is called (according to which it is taught that no animal or plant is generated, but that all individual organic bodies were at the very earliest dawn of creation already formed in the shape of undeveloped germs and are now being only successively evolved), answers neither to the phenomena themselves of nature, nor to sound philosophic reasoning.  But on the contrary, by properly joining together the two principles which explain the nature of organic bodies, that is the physico-mechanical with the teleological, we are conducted both by the phenomena of generation, and by sound reasoning, to lay down this proposition: That the genital liquid is only the shapeless material of organic bodies, composed of the innate matter of the inorganic kingdom, but differing in the force it shows, according to the phenomena; by which its first business is under certain circumstances of maturation, mixture, place, &c. to put on the form destined and determined by them; and afterwards through the perpetual function of nutrition to preserve it, and if by chance it should be mutilated, as far as lies in its power to restore it by reproduction. … [196]

 

            34.  Climate.  That the power of climate must be almost infinite, as on all organic bodies, so especially on warm-blooded animals, will quickly appear to any one who considers first, by how intimate and how constant a bond these animals are bound while alive to the action of the atmospheric air in which they dwell.  Besides, how wonderfully this air (which was once held to be a simple element of itself) is made up of what they call multifarious elements, such as gasiform constituents, the accessories of light, heat, electricity, &c.  Then of what different proportions of these matters does it not consist, and in consequence of this variety how different must be the atmospheric action on those we call animals!  Especially when we [197] throw in the consideration of so many other things, by whose accession climates differ so much, as the position of countries in respect of the zones of the globe, the elevation of the soil, mountains, the vicinity of the sea or lakes and rivers, the customary winds, and innumerable other things of this kind. 

 

            This air, then, which those we call animals suck in by breathing from the time of birth, modified do greatly by the variety of climates, is decomposed in their lungs as it were in a living laboratory.  Part of what they inhale is distributed with the arterial blood over the whole body; but as a balance to another portion of this point, elements are liberated, which are partly deposited on the peripheral integuments of the body, and partly are carried back by the flow of venous blood to the respiratory organs; hence arise the various modifications of the blood itself, and the remarkable influxes of these humours, especially of fat, bile, &c. into the secretions.  Hence finally the action of all these things as so many stimuli on a living solid, and hence the resulting reaction as well of this thus affected solid, as what especially belongs to our discussion, the direction and determination of the formative force.  This great and perpetual influence of climate on the animal economy and the habit and conformation of the body, although there has been no time when it has not attracted the attention of good observers, has in our own time above all been illustrated and confirmed by the great advance that has been made in chemistry, and by a deeper study of physiology.  Still it is always a difficult and arduous thing, in the discussion of these varieties, to settle what is to be attributed exclusively to climate, what rather to other causes of degeneration, and finally to the joint action of both.  Meanwhile I will bring forward one or two instances of degeneration which seem most clearly to be derived from the effects of climate.  For example, the white colour of many animals in northern regions, which have other colours in the temperate zones.  Instances are, those of wolves, hares, cattle, falcons, crows, blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches, &c.  That this whiteness must be attributed to cold, we learn from the analogy of animals of the same kind who, under the same climate [198] during winter, change their summer colour into white or grey; as weasels and ermines, hares, squirrels, reindeer, the ptarmigan, snow-bunting, and others¹.  So also I am more inclined to attribute to climate that snowy fleece so conspicuous for its silky softness of some of the animals of Angora than to the kind of diet, because that is shared by those who feed on all sorts of different things, by the carnivorous, as the cat for example, equally with the herbivorous ruminants, as goats, &c.

 

            Such too seems to be the explanation of the coally blackness which under some districts of the torrid zone, as on the coasts of Guinea, animals of different orders, mammalia, as well as birds, are seen to put on with the colour of the Ethiopians (s. 27).  And it is above all worthy of remark that this Ethiopic blackness, just like that Syrian whiteness, although the animals may be transported into regions of a very different climate, is still preserved permanently for many series of generations.  Nor is the power and influence of climate on the stature of organic bodies at all inferior; since cold obstructs their increase, which, on the contrary is manifestly augmented and promoted by heat.  Thus the horses of Scotland, or cold North Wales, are small; in Scandinavia the horses and the cattle, like the indigenous races, are of tall and stalwart stature; in Smaland they are sensibly smaller, and in the north of East Gothland are in proportion smallest of all.  

 

SECTION III.

 

ON THE CAUSES AND WAYS BY WHICH MANKIND HAS DEGENE-

RATED, AS A SPECIES.

 

[207]    41.  Order of proceeding.  Now let us come to the matter in hand, and let us apply what we have hitherto been demonstrating about the ways in and the causes by which animals in general degenerate, to the native variety of mankind, so as to enumerate one by one the modes of degenerating, and allot to each the particular cause to which it is to be referred.  We must begin with the colour of the skin, which although it sometimes deceives, still is a much more constant character, and more generally transmitted than the others¹, and which most clearly appears in hybrid progeny sprung from the union of varieties of different colour composed of the tint of either parent.  Besides, it has a great connection with the colour of the hair and the iris, and a great relation to the temperament of men: and, moreover, it especially strikes everywhere the eyes even of the most ignorant.

 

            42.  Seat of the colour of the skin. The mucous, commonly called the cellular membrane, about whose most important function in the economy of the human body we have spoken above, affords as it were a foundation to the whole machine.  It is interwoven with almost all parts alike, even to the marrow of the bones, and is collected on the outermost surface of the body [208] into a thick white universal integument, called the corium.  By this the rest of the body is surrounded and included; and above all it is penetrated by a most enormous apparatus of cutaneous nerves, lymphatic veins and finally with a most close and subtle net of sanguiferous vessels.

 

            The nerves communicate sensation to the corium, so as to make it the organ of touch, and as it were the sentinel of the whole body.  The lymphatic veins make this some corium the instrument of absorption and inhalation.  But the sanguiferous vessels have most to do with the subject under discussion, as being the constituent parts of the common integuments of the body, and equally with the lungs and ailmentary canal make up the great purifier and chemical laboratory of the human machine; whose surfaces, as will soon be seen, have a good deal to do with giving its colour to the skin.  The corium is lined with a very tender mucus, which from the erroneous description of its discoverer is called, the reticulum Malpighii: this affords a sort of glutinous bond, by which the most external stratum of the integuments, the epidermis, or cuticle, stretching over and protecting the surface of the body, and which in the born man is exposed immediately to the atmospheric air, adheres to the corium.  The reticulum, just like the epidermis, is a most simple structure, entirely destitute of nerves and vessels, differing both of them as much as possible from the nature of the corium.  They agree themselves in more than one way, so that it seems most probable that these similar parts are allied, or that the exterior cuticle draws its origin in some way from its substratum, the reticulum.  Besides, each of these allied strata of integuments so make up the seat of colour, that in clear-complexioned men, where they are stained with no pigment, they permit the natural roseate whiteness of the corium to be seen through: and in brown or coloured men, although the principal cutaneous pigment may adhere to the Malpighian reticulum, although the epidermis may be paler, still it will manifestly partake of its tint.  The darker the reticulum the thicker it is, and the more it approaches the appearance of a membrane peculiar to itself; the more transparent it is on the contrary [209] the more tender it becomes, and only appears to have the constitution of a diffused mucus.

 

[210]    44.  Causes of this variety. The seat of the colour of the skin has now been placed beyond all doubt.  The division of the varieties of colour, and their distribution, seem sufficiently plain and perspicuous.  But to dig out the causes of this variety is the task and the trouble.  Authors have laboured most in endeavouring to explain the colour of the Ethiopians, which above all other national colours from the most remote period has struck the eyes of Europeans, and excited their minds to inquire.  Nor is it surprising that with that object all sorts of hypotheses should be elaborated, which, however, I pass by unnoticed, as being sufficiently known², and already explained all together by others³, and shall go into the details of that opinion alone, which, unless I am much mistaken, seems to come nearest the truth.  I think, myself, the proximate cause [211] of the adust or tawny colour of the external integuments of the skin, is to be looked for in the abundance of the carbon in the human body, which, when it is excreted with the hydrogen through the corium, and precipitated by the contact of the atmospheric oxygen, becomes imbedded in the Malpighian mucus.  Hence it is well known that the national colour of their skin in not congenital even to the Ethiopians themselves, but is acquired by the access of the external air after birth and after the intercourse with the mother, by which the foetus was nourished, has been taken away.

 

            Besides this, the action of the sanguineous vessels of the corium seems necessary as well for secreting as for storing up the carbon.  For if this is distributed or comes to a stop, an unnatural and diseased colour is everywhere brought upon the skin in dark men just as much as in Ethiopians.  But on the other hand, although in a white skin that action of the corium may be stimulated, ephelides and spots of tawny colour occur, and sometimes it is found that it puts on an Ethiopic blackness.

 

            Generally carbon seems to be in greater quantity in the atrabilious; for the connexion of the manufactory of the bile with the common integuments, and those which belong to them, as the hair, is plain: indeed both organs, that is, the liver and the skin, must be considered as by far the principal and mutually co-operating purifiers of the mass of the blood.

 

            Then there is the vast influence of climate upon the action of the liver, which in tropical countries is wonderfully excited and increased by the solar heat.  Hence the various kinds of bilious and endemic disorders in the tropics.  Hence also the temperament of most inhabitants of tropical countries is choleric and prone to anger.  Hence also, what was first observed by physicians¹, the bilious constitution and habit of Europeans who dwell in India, and especially in the children which are born there.  But there is no other climate, in the vehemence and duration of the heat, or in the peculiar chemical constitu-[212] ents that make up the atmosphere there, such as particular winds, and rains, which can be compared to that burning an scorching climate which is to be found on the wet and marshy regions both of eastern and western Africa under the torrid zone.  Now the aboriginal Ethiopians have been for a long time and for many series of generations exposed to the action of that climate, since they must without doubt be ranked amongst the most ancient nations of the world¹.  So we must not be surprised if they propagate unadulterated, even under another climate to succeeding generations, the same disposition which has spread such deep and perennial roots in their ancestors from the most distant antiquity.  But, on the other hand, from this tenacity and constancy of the constitution of the Ethiopians, this comes out all the clearer, that such a power can only be contracted after a long series of generations, and so it must be considered as a miracle, and against all natural law, if it be true, what we find frequently related that the present descendants of some Portuguese colonists who emigrated to Guinea in the 15th century, have in so short an interval of time, only through the influence of the climate², been able to contract the Ethiopian habit of body.

 

            45.  Final exposition of the causes of the colour of the skin.  What I have summarily and succinctly already laid down about the causes of the colour of the skin is strongly corroborated, on more accurate inquiry, by all sorts of arguments answering most accurately to each other, and taken from actual observation of human nature. 

 

            We have discovered from the antiphlogistic chemistry of the French³ that carbon belongs to the radical elements of the animal body, and is also the cause of dark colour, whether it be yellow, tawny, or blackish.  In order that the animal economy may not be disturbed and endangered by a redundancy of this substance various emunctories have been provided, in which the liver and the skin occupy by no means the lowest place.  Pathology, here as elsewhere so often the instructor of physiology, shows together with the phenomena just mentioned, the co-operation of the functions of the bile with the common integuments.  For although I do not wish to insist too much on the analogy of jaundice with national tints of the skin, still there are various peculiar phenomena which deserve attention, common to those suffering under the regius morbus, and the nations of colour (so to speak) to which I refer, the fact of the albuminous part of the eye being tinged with yellow, a thing common to tawny nations and specially to the Indians¹, the Americans², and the Ethiopians³.  Besides it not unfrequently happens with jaundiced persons, according to the varieties of the disease, that the skin, even after the disorder has been removed, remains always tinged with a different shade, very like the skin of coloured nations⁴.  Nor are examples wanting of a genuine sooty blackness being sometimes deposited in atrabilious disorders by a sort of true metamorphosis of the skin⁵.  And from the affinity of the bile with fat⁶ it is clear that this sort of cherry tint had been observed in tawny peoples⁷.  Hence, unless I am mistaken, we must look for the reason why nations [214] who feed copiously on animal oil not only smell of it, but also contract a dark colour of skin¹; while the more elegant Otaheitans on the contrary, who try to be of a pale colour, live every year for some months in the bread fruit alone, to the use of which they attribute great virtue in whitening the skin²; although part of that effect must be attributed to the fact that during the same period they remain at home, covered with clothes, and never go out.  How great an influence abstinence from the free and open air has in giving whiteness to the skin, our own experience teaches us every year, when in spring very elegant and delicate women show a most brilliant whiteness of skin, contracted by the indoor life of winter.  Whilst those who are less careful in this way, after they have exposed themselves freely to the summer sun and air, lose that vernal beauty before the arrival of the next autumn, and become sensibly browner³.

 

            If then under one and the same climate the mere difference of the annual seasons has such influence in changing the colour of the skin⁴, is there anything surprising in the fact that climates, in the sense defined above (s. 34), according to their diversity [215] should have the greatest and most permanent influence over the national colour: everywhere within the limits of a few degrees of geographical latitude, and still more when a multifarious concourse of the causes¹ above-mentioned has occurred even under the same latitude, a manifest difference in the colour of the inhabitants may be observed².

 

[229]    57. Causes of the racial face.  First of all, notice must be taken that I am not going to speak here of the countenance, taken in a physiognomical sense, (look, expression,) as an index of the temperament, which is however itself sometimes racial, and peculiar to some nations, and may be derived from a common source.  In that way it is probable that to their diet you may attribute the placid countenance of the abstemious Brahmins and Banyans of India, and the atrocious aspect, on the other hand, of the man-eating Botocudos¹ of Brazil; or you may instance religion by the examples of the pious and devoted countenance by which especially the softer sex is distinguished in some countries in southern Europe (in the vernacular Madonna faces); or cultivation and luxury, in which the soft and effeminate Otaheitans so much excel the manly and powerful New Zealanders.  

 

            But our business is with the causes of the racial face, that is, of the countenance itself and the proportion and direction of its parts, all of which we see to be peculiar and characteristic to the different varieties of mankind.  The mere discussion, however, of these causes is overwhelmed with such difficulties that we can only follow probable conjectures.  I am persuaded, myself, that climate is the principal cause of the racial face, on three grounds especially; 1st, we seethe racial face so universal in some populations under a particular climate, and always exactly the same in men of different classes and modes of life, that it can scarcely be referred to any other cause.  There are the Chinese, for example, amongst whom a sort of flattened face is just as characteristic as a symmetrical and particular beauty is common among us Europeans to the English and inhabitants of Majorca². 

 

            2nd. Unless I am mistaken there are instances of peoples who after they have changed there localities and have migrated [230] elsewhere, in process of time have changed also there original form of countenance for a new one, peculiar to the new climate.  Thus the Yakutes have been referred to a Tartar origin by most authors on northern antiquities.  Careful eyewitnesses assert that now their face is Mongolian, and I myself see it plainly in the skull of a Yakute, with which the munificence of Baron von Asch has enriched my anthropological collection¹.  Something of the same kind will be observed below about the Americans of wither coldest zone (s. 88).  I have already shown that the Creoles sprung from English parents and ancestors in the Antilles, have finally exchanged to some extent the native British countenance for one more like the aborigines of America, and have acquired their deep-set eyes and their more prominent cheeks².

 

            Egypt, however, and India this side the Ganges afford us the clearest examples of all.  For as this peninsula has been frequently subdued by the most different nations, because the first conquerors becoming effeminated by living in such a soft climate were at last conquered by other and stronger northern nations who came after them, so also their appearance seems as it were to have accommodated itself to the new climate.  In fact, we only know the racial aspect of the old possessors of India and their manifest characteristics from the most ancient works of Indian art, I mean those stupendous statues, which are carved out in a wonderful way in the subterranean temples of the islands of Salsette and Elephanta, wonderful copies of which I saw at London, both in the British Museum, as amongst the antiquarian treasures of the polished C. Townley³.  The more modern conquerors of India, that is, the Mongolians, have lost much of their original features under a new climate, and approached nearer the Indian type, of which I have had ocular experience from the Indian pictures shown to me by John Walsh, a most learned man on Indian antiquity. 

 

            As to the racial face of the ancient Egyptians, I am much surprised that some famous archaeologists, and those most learned [231] in Egyptian art, have been able to attribute one and the same common countenance to all alike¹; when a careful contemplation and comparison of these monuments has easily taught me to distinguish three sorts of face amongst them.  The first like the Ethiopian; the second the Indian; and the third, into which both of the others by the process of time and effect of the specific and peculiar climate of Egypt degenerated, spongy and flaccid in appearance, with short chin, and somewhat prominent eyes².

 

            3rd.  We see nations which are reputed to be but colonies of one and the same stock have contracted in different climates different racial faces.  Thus the Hungarians are considered to be of the same primitive stock as the Lapps³.   The latter living in the furthest North have acquired the face so peculiar to the most northern nations, whereas the former living in the temperate zone, in the neighbourhood of Greece and Turkey, have gained a more elegant form of face.

 

            Every one knows that much in all these cases must be attributed to the marriages between different nations, and I myself intend soon to say something about their influence in changing the racial face.   Still it seems most probable that the influence of climate alone is very great on this point, especially when we add what was noticed above about the causes and ways in which brute animals degenerate. 

 

            To find out the reason why one climate turns out this and another that kind of racial face seems extremely difficult; yet most sagacious men have made the attempt when endeavouring to explain the face of different nations; as Kant upon the Mongolian⁴ and Volney upon the Ethiopians⁵.  That accessory [232] causes sometimes endemical to peculiar climates, such as constant clouds of gnats, may do something towards contracting the natural face of the inhabitants, may be gathered from the observation of Dampier about the inhabitants of the south of New Holland¹.

 

            I am not sure whether the opinion of our Leibnitz about the similitude of nations to the indigenous animals of the country is to be interpreted as referring to the influence of climate on the conformation of man and brute animals alike; as it seems that the Lapps recall the face of the bear, the Negroes of the ape, of which also the people of the extreme East likewise partake². 

 

            Besides the climate we find it stated that the kind of life sometimes contributes to the racial form of face, as in the instance of the Ethiopians, whose thick nose and swelling lips are always attributed to the way in which, whilst in their infancy, they are generally carried on the backs of their mothers, who give them suck whilst they pound millet, or during their hard and heavy tasks³. 

 

[233]    In various barbarous nations also, such as the Ethiopians¹, the Brazilians², Caribs³, the Sumatrans⁴, and the inhabitants of the Society Islands in the Southern ocean⁵, is placed beyond all doubt by the testimony of eye-witnesses most worthy of credit that considerable force is used to depress and, as it were, subdue into shape the noses of the new-born infants; although perhaps it is going too far in what they say about the bones of the nose being broken or dislocated in this way⁶. 

 

            It is however scarcely necessary to recollect that the natural conformation of the nose can only be exaggerated by this violent and long continued compression of the nose when soft, but can in no wise by made thus originally, since it is well known that the racial face may be recognized even in abortions.

 

            Finally, these kinds of racial face just like the colour of the skin, become mingled, and as it were run together in the offspring from the unions of different varieties of mankind, so that the children present a countenance which is a mean between either parent.  Hence the mixed appearance of the Mulattos; hence the progeny of the Cossacks⁷ and the Kirghis⁸ becomes sensibly deformed by marriages with the Calmucks, whereas the offspring of the Nogay Tartars is rendered more beautiful through unions with the Georgians⁹. 

 

            The ancient Germans¹⁰ gave formerly instances of the unadulterated countenance of nations unaffected by any union with any other nation, and to-day the genuine Zingari, inhabitants [234] of Transylvania¹ do the same; and above all the nation of the Jews, who, under every climate, remain the same as far as the fundamental configuration of face goes², remarkable for a racial character universal, which can be distinguished at the first glance even by those little skilled in physiognomy, although it is difficult to limit and express by words³.  

 

 [275]   90.  Conclusion.  Thus too there is with this that insensible transition by which as we saw the other varieties also run together, and which, compared with what was discussed in the earlier [276] sections of the book, about the causes and ways of degeneration, and the analogous phenomena of degeneration in the other domestic animals, brings us to that conclusion, which seems to flow spontaneously from physiological principles applied by the aid of critical zoology to the natural history of mankind; which is, That no doubt can any longer remain but that we are with great probability right in referring all and singular as many varieties of man as are at present known to one and the same species.