Digitalphilologie

Titel

On the Races of Man

Jahr

1850

Ort

Hartford, Connecticut

Nachweis

in: Christian Secretary 13:13 [= 29:13] (31. Mai 1850), [o. S.].

Sprache

Englisch

Typografischer Befund

Antiqua; Spaltensatz; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung.

Identifikation

Textnummer Druckausgabe: VI.50
Dateiname: 1845-Alex_v_Humboldt-06-neu

Statistiken

Seitenanzahl:	1
Zeichenanzahl:	3288

Weitere Fassungen
	Alex. v. Humboldt über das Menschengeschlecht (Augsburg, 1845, Deutsch)
	Volksstämme (Wien, 1845, Deutsch)
	Sur les races humaines et sur les langues, aperçus ethnographiques, extraits du Cosmos ou Essai d’une description physique du monde, par M. A. de Humboldt, tome Ier, dont la traduction française par M. Faye, revue par l’auteur et par MM. Arago, Élie de Beaumont et Guigniaut, paraîtra prochainement chez Gide (Paris, 1845, Französisch)
	De l’unité native de l’espèce humaine (Paris, 1846, Französisch)
	The Universal Brotherhood of Man (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1849, Englisch)
	On the Races of Man (Hartford, Connecticut, 1850, Englisch)
	On the races of man (London, 1850, Englisch)
	The univseral brotherhood of man (Edinburgh, 1850, Englisch)
	The universal brotherhood of man (London, 1850, Englisch)
	[Kurzer Textauszug] (Sheffield, 1851, Englisch)
	Die Einheit des Menschengeschlechts (Breslau, 1852, Deutsch)
	Man – races – language (Edinburgh, 1853, Englisch)

|Seitenumbruch|

On the Races of Man.

While we maintain the unity of the humanspecies, we at the same time repel the depress-ing assumption of superior and inferior racesof men. There are nations more susceptibleof cultivation, more highly civilized, more en-nobled by mental cultivation than theirs; butnone in themselves nobler than others. Allare, in like degree, designed for freedom—afreedom which, in the ruder conditions of so-ciety, belongs only to the individual, but which,in social states, enjoying political institutions,appertains as a right to the whole body of thecommunity. If we would indicate an ideawhich, throughout the whole course of history,has ever more and more widely extended itsempire, or which, more than any other, testi-fies to the much contested and still more deci-dedly misunderstood perfectibility of thewhole human race, it is that of establishingour common humanity—of striving to removethe barriers which prejudice and limited viewsof every kind have erected among men, andto treat all mankind, without reference to re-ligion, nation, or color, as one fraternity, onegreat community, fitted for the attainment ofone object—the unrestrained development ofthe physical powers. This is the ultimate andhighest aim of society, identical with the di-rection implanted by nature in the mind ofman, toward the indefinite duration of his ex-istence. He regards the earth, in all its lim-its, and the heavens, as far as his eye can scan,their bright and starry depths, as inwardly hisown, given to him as the objects of his contem-plation, and as a field for the development ofhis energies. Even the child longs to pass thehills or the seas which enclose his narrowhome; yet when his eager steps have bornehim beyond those limits, he pines, like theplant, for his native soil; and it is by thistouching and beautiful attribute of man—thislonging for that which is unknown, and thisfond remembrance of that which is lost, thathe is spared from an exclusive attachment tothe present. Thus deeply rooted in the inner-most nature of man, and even enjoined uponhim by his highest tendencies, the recognitionof the bond of humanity becomes one of thenoblest leading principles in the history of man-kind. With these words, which draw their charmfrom the depths of feeling, let a brother bepermitted to close this general description ofthe natural phenomena of the universe. Fromthe remotest nebulæ, and from the revolvingdouble stars, we have descended to the minu-test organisms of animal creation, whethermanifested in the depths of ocean, or on the sur-face of our globe, and to the delicate vegeta-ble germs which clothe the naked declivity ofthe ice crowned mountain summit; and herewe have been able to arrange these phenome-na according to partially known laws: but oth-er laws, of a more mysterious nature, rule thehigher spheres of the organic world, in whichis comprised the human species in all its variedconformation, its creative intellectual power,and the languages to which it has given exist-ence. A physical delineation of nature termi-nates at the point where the sphere of intellectbegins, and a new world of mind is opened toour view. It marks the limits, it does not passit.—Humboldt.

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