Dependent, although in a lesser degree than plants and animals, on the soil,
and on the meteorological processes of the atmosphere with which he is
surroounded -- escaping more readily from the control of natural forces, by
activity of mind and the advance of intellectual cultivation, no less than
by his wonderful capacity of adapting himself to all climates -- man every
where becomes most essentially associated with terrestrial life. It is by
these relations that the obscure and much-contested problem of the
possibility of one common descent enters into the sphere embraced by a
general physical cosmography. The investigation of this problem will impart
a nobler, and, if I may so express myself, more purely human interest to the
closing pages of this section of my work.
The vast domain of language, in whose varied structure we see mysteriously
reflected the destinies of nations, is most intimately associated with the
affinity of races; and what even slight differences of races may effect is
strikingly manifested in the history of the Hellenic nations in the zenith
of their intellectual cultivation. The most important questions of the
civilization of mankind are connected with the ideas of races,
p 352
community of language, and adherence to one original direction of the
intellectual and moral faculties.
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