Of this race there is one species, yet divided into many nations,
kingdoms, and tribes. These are all grouped under five races: 1. The
_Caucasian_, or white race, including the most highly civilized
nations; 2. The _Mongolian_, or yellow race, including the Tartars,
Chinese, Japanese, &c.; 3. The _Malay_, or brown race, including the
people of Malacca, and most of the Oceanic islands; 4. The _American_,
or red race, including the American Indians; and 5. The _African_, or
black race, including Negroes.
Philosophers have been a good deal puzzled for a definition of man; yet
it would seem by no means difficult to point out characteristics which
distinguish him from all other animated beings. He is not only the
acknowledged lord and master of the animal kingdom, but he is the only
being that knows God, yet the only one that worships stones, apes, and
idols; the only being that has the Bible, and the only one that makes
systematic warfare on his own species. He is the only created being
that perceives the force of moral obligation, and the only one that
makes slaves of his fellow-beings; he is the only creature that has
reason, and yet the only one that besots himself with intoxicating
drugs and drinks. Man is the only being that has tasted of the tree
of knowledge, and yet the only one that appears, in all ages and
countries, to be a _fallen being_,--one not fulfilling, here on the
earth, the purposes of his creation. Must we not, from the analogy of
the works of God, look to a future state, to find the true end of human
existence?
That we may not omit to give at least one illustrative and characteristic
anecdote, under the head of "_homo sapiens_," we copy the following from
the quaint pages of Carlyle:--
"What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport of
war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the
British village of Dumdrudge, usually, some five hundred souls. From
these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are
successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied
men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she
has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and
even trained them to crafts--so that one can weave, another build,
another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone
avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are
selected, all dressed in red, and shipped away at the public charge
some 2000 miles, or, say, only to the south of Spain, and fed there
till wanted.
"And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar
French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till,
at length, after infinite effort, the parties come into actual
juxtaposition, and thirty stand fronting thirty, each with a gun in his
hand. Straightway the word 'Fire' is given, and they blow the souls out
of one another; and instead of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world
has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anon shed tears for.
Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest. They
lived far enough apart, were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a
universe, there was indeed unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual
helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their governors had
fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to
make these poor blockheads shoot."