Researches into the physical history of man / [James Cowles Prichard].

  • James Cowles Prichard
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches into the physical history of man / [James Cowles Prichard]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    adverted to, are too great to have been so pro- duced, and must therefore be referred to ori- ginal diversity. This question has already un- dergone much discussion, and we find among the disputants in either party, names eminently respectable in the literary and scientific world. In the following pages I shall endeavour to state as clearly as possible the principal facts whether physiological or historical, which ap- pear to me likely to illustrate this interesting inquiry, and shall draw such inferences as seem to be authorised by the commonly received methods of reasoning. With such evidence I shall attempt to answer the question, whether it is probable that all mankind are the offspring of one family, and shall afterwards proceed to trace the affinities of different nations, as far as an inquiry of this nature may tend to throw any light on the physical history of man. I shall in the course of this investigation endeavour to obtain some idea of the efficacy of those causes, which have been supposed capable of producing the diversities of the human kind. Many of the writers, who have entered on the inquiry before us, have preferred the more specious and expeditious modes of reasoning which are drawn from probabilities, and found- ed on arguments a priori, to the tedious process of analytical discussion. Some of them confi- dently assuming that all mankind are of one A. 2
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