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in contemplating the various phases of human nature , and to search for some fixed point in the character of a people or an age , to which climate , physical geography , manners , laws , and literature , all stood in a common relation , as a consistent and harmonious whole .
His philosophy is , in this respect , conceived in a spirit diametrically opposite to that of Voltaire . The French philosopher sees no traces of a common nature among the several tribes of mankind , beneficially adjusted by the moulding influences of climate to the place which those tribes severally occupy on the surface of the globe ; but even forces facts beyond their legitimate inferences * , in order to draw a stronger line of demarcation between
the different races , and to assimilate the laws , by which the human race is dispersed over all the earth , to those by which we have reason to think , that the brute and vegetable creation have been universally distributed . On some of these topics , Voltaire must be confessed , by his warmest admirers , ( and no doubt there are admirable things in his historical writings , ) to have as many prejudices , and to be as much of a bigot , as any priest who
ever wrote . Facts and reasonings weigh as nothing with him ; he settles the point at once by a bold assertion and the false application of a general principle , or dismisses everything like serious argument in the flash of an epigram . That there are very great difficulties respecting the origin of the diversities of the human race , every candid mind , that has reflected on the subject ,
must admit ; but they cannot be disposed of by observing , * On ne devait pas etre plus surpris de trouver en Amerique des hommes que des mouchesf ; ' or by reasoning from a case , that is not parallel , . On ne s ' avise point de penser que les chenilles et les limagons d ' une partie du monde soient originaires d ' une autre partie ; pourquoi s ' &onner , qu'il y ait en Amerique quelques races d'hommes semblables aux notres { ? ' The power with which man
alone , of all animals , is exclusively endowed of adapting himself , by the exercise of intelligence and skill , to every variety of climate , the laws which seem to have governed universally the dispersion of the arts of civilized life , and the fact of kindred traditions and practices prevailing amongst the most distant tribes of the human race , are phaenomena which indicate so marked a
distinction between man and the inferior tribes of animal and vegetable life , and plead so strongly in favour of the supposition of a common origin , that they ought to have checked the rash and petulant dogmatism , b y which this question has been sometimes attempted to be settled . The views of Herder and Voltaire on the subject of the negro
* See his remarks on the Albinos , in different parts of his Essoi our les Moenri , tome i * p . 7 , and also tome vi . 158 . ? . Essai , &c » tome i . Introduction , p . 35 . Essai , &c . tome vi . p . 156 .
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88 The Philosophy of the History of Mankind .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 88, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/16/
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