The minor
causes I deal with made Greek to differ from Greek, but they did not
make the Greek race. We cannot precisely mark the limit, but a limit
there clearly is.
If we look at the earliest monuments of the human race, we find
these race-characters as decided as the race-characters now. The
earliest paintings or sculptures we anywhere have, give us the
present contrasts of dissimilar types as strongly as present
observation. Within historical memory no such differences have been
created as those between Negro and Greek, between Papuan and Red
Indian, between Esquimaux and Goth. We start with cardinal
diversities; we trace only minor modifications, and we only see
minor modifications. And it is very hard to see how any number of
such modifications could change man as he is in one race-type to man
as he is in some other. Of this there are but two explanations; ONE,
that these great types were originally separate creations, as they
stand--that the Negro was made so, and the Greek made so. But this
easy hypothesis of special creation has been tried so often, and has
broken down so very often, that in no case, probably, do any great
number of careful inquirers very firmly believe it. They may accept
it provisionally, as the best hypothesis at present, but they feel
about it as they cannot help feeling as to an army which has always
been beaten; however strong it seems, they think it will be beaten
again.
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