c, to
reflect a little how these differences arise. Not that we intend here to
give even any particular description of the various races of mankind, or
to enter into any inquiry upon the degrees of their mental and bodily
capacities; such would be foreign to our purpose, and would exceed our
limits. We shall merely hazard a few observations upon the several
causes to which the diversities in men have been referred, not
pretending to any decided opinion on so nice a point, as whether these
causes are wholly of a physical or of a moral kind, or whether they are
compounded of both. The question is, perhaps, one of the most difficult
in the whole range of philosophical experience; we say experience,
because it is obvious that all theory on the subject must be the result
of observation and analysis; and that no general principles can be laid
down in the first instance, as the ground work of any hypothesis we
might be inclined to frame.

The scientific men to whom we are chiefly indebted for the facts
accumulated on this subject, are Dr. Blumenbach, of Goettingen, Dr.
Pritchard, of Edinburgh, and the eminent surgeon, Mr. Lawrence. It has
been a favourite matter of speculation with Lord Monboddo, as well as
with Voltaire, Rousseau, and the philosophers of the French school, who
have endeavoured to show that men and other animals are endowed with
reason or instinct of the same kind, but of different degrees. According
to these fanciful writers, the monkey is but another species of the
human race, and has been termed by them _Homo Sylvestris_. They made the
most diligent researches into all accounts concerning men in a savage
state, and were delighted beyond measure with the discovery alleged to
have been made in the island of Sumatra, of men with tails regularly
protruding from their hinder parts, who, according to Buffon, walked and
talked in the woods like other gentlemen:--

And backwards and forwards they switched their long tails,
Like a gentleman switching his cane.

The appearance of Peter the Wild Boy, who was found in the woods of
Hamela, in Hanover, living on the bark of trees, leaves, berries, &c.
threw Voltaire into transports of joy. He declared the event to be the
most wonderful and important that ages had recorded in the annals of
science, as it demonstrated the fact of man living after the fashion of
beasts, without the least spark of civilization, and without speech;
thereby forming a species of a nature