teristics, 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
of character--the intellect, the energy, the spirit of determination
and pride--which, far from owing their existence to outward
circumstances, have always, in all ages, made all outward
circumstances bend to them. That there have been some great and noble
specimens of humanity among the African race, for example, no one
can deny; but that there is a marked, and fixed, and permanent
constitutional difference between them and the Caucasian race seems
evident from this fact, that for two thousand years each has held its
own continent, undisturbed, in a great degree, by the rest of mankind;
and while, during all this time, no nation of the one race has risen,
so far as is known, above the very lowest stage of civilization,
there have been more than fifty entirely distinct and independent
civilizations originated and fully developed in the other. For
three thousand years the Caucasian race have continued, under all
circumstances, and in every variety of situation, to exhibit the
same traits and the same indomitable prowess. No calamities, however
great--no desolating wars, no dest