In relation to the futile efforts of Spain in Mexico, the ethnologist Knox
exclaims, "Neither climate, nor government, nor external influences ever
alter race. They may and they do affect them, and in time destroy them,
but they never give rise to a new race. In half a century the dreams of
Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen, have come
to a close, and Nature once more, as I long ago predicted, asserts her
rights."
Naturalists, from Hippocrates to Buffon, have believed that climate, heat
and cold, dryness and humidity, the qualities and abundance of
nourishment, have power to modify men and animals, but "neither climate,
nor government, nor external circumstances ever give rise to a new race."
The generous qualities once gone, are departed forever, and their loss can
rarely be retrieved. Where is the instance of a fallen man, class, or
nation?
"The history of nations," writes the Registrar-General of England,--"the
history of nations on the Mediterranean or the plains of the Euphrates and
Tigris, the deltas of the Indies and Ganges, and the rivers of China,
exhibits the great fact: the gradual descent of race from the highlands,
their establishment on the coasts, in cities sustained and refreshed for a
season by emigration from the interior--their degradation in successive
generations under the influence of the unhealthy earth, and their final
ruin, effacement, or subjugation by new races of conquerors. The causes
that destroy individual men lay cities waste, which, in their nature, are
immortal, and silently undermine eternal empires.
"A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shattered splendors renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish time and fate?"