ON THE RACES OF MAN.

Whilst we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men.

There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly-civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others: but none in themselves nobler than others.

All are, in like degree, designed for freedom--a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs only to the individual, but which, in social states, enjoying political institations, appertains as a right to the whole body of the community.

If we would indicate an idea which, throughout the whole course of history, has ever more and more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is that of establishing our common humanity--of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected amongst men, and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation, or colour, as one fraternity, one great community, fitted for the attainment of one object--the unrestrained development of the physical powers.

This is the ultimate and highest aim of society, identical with the direction implanted by nature in the mind of man, towards the indefinite duration of his existence.

He regards the earth, in all its limits, and the heavens, as far as his eye can scan their bright and starry depths, as inwardly his own, given to him as the objects of his contemplation, and as a field for the development of his energies.

Even the child longs to pass the hills or the seas which enclose his narrow home; yet when his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, like the plant, for his native soil; and it is by this touching and beautiful attribute of man--this longing for that which is unknown, and this fond remembrance of that which is lost, that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the present.

Thus deeply-rooted in the innermost nature of man, and even enjoined upon him by his highest tendencies, the recognition of the bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mankind.

With these words, which draw their charm from the depths of feeling, let a brother be permitted to close this general description of the natural phenomena of the universe.

From the remotest nebulae, and from the revolving double stars, we have descended to the minutest organisms of animal creation, whether manifested in the depths of ocean, or on the surface of our globe, and to the delicate vegetable germs which clothe the naked declivity of the ice-crowned mountain summit; and here we have been able to arrange these phenomena according to partially known laws: but other laws, of a more mysterious nature, rule the higher spheres of the organic world, in which is comprised the human species in all its varied conformation, its creative intellectual power, and the languages to which it has given existence.

A physical delineation of nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is opened to our view.

It marks the limit, but does not pass it. -- Humboldt.