These same constitutional and congenital peculiarities which we see developing themselves all around us in families, mark, on a greater scale, the characteristics of the different nations of the earth, and in a degree much higher still, the several great and distinct races into which the whole human family seems to be divided.  Physiologists consider that there are five of these great races, whose characteristics, mental as well as bodily, are distinctly, strongly, and permanently marked.  These characteristics descend by hereditary succession from father to son, and though education and outward influences may modify them, they can not essentially change them.  Compare, for example, the Indian and the African races, each of which has occupied for a thousand years a continent of its own, where they have been exposed to the same variety of climates, and as far as possible to the same general outward influences.  How entirely diverse from each other they are, not only in form, color, and other physical marks, but in all the tendencies and characteristics of the soul!  One can no more be changed into the other, than a wolf, by being tamed and domesticated, can be made a dog, or a dog, by being driven into the forests, be transformed into a tiger.  The difference is still greater between either of these races and the Caucasian race.  This race might probably be called the European race, were it not that some Asiatic and some African nations have sprung from it, as the Persians, the Ph[oe]nicians, the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, and, in modern times, the Turks.  All the nations of this race, whether European or African, have been distinguished by the same physical marks in the conformation of the head and the color of the skin, and still more by those traits of character—­the intellect, the energy, the spirit of determination and pride—­which, far from owing their existence to outward circumstances, have always, in all ages, made all outward circumstances bend to them.  That there have been some great and noble specimens of humanity among the African race, for example, no one can deny; but that there is a marked, and fixed, and permanent constitutional difference between them and the Caucasian race seems evident from this fact, that for two thousand years each has held its own continent, undisturbed, in a great degree, by the rest of mankind; and while, during all this time, no nation of the one race has risen, so far as is known, above the very lowest stage of civilization, there have been more than fifty entirely distinct and independent civilizations originated and fully developed in the other.  For three thousand years the Caucasian race have continued, under all circumstances, and in every variety of situation, to exhibit the same traits and the same indomitable prowess.  No calamities, however great—­no desolating wars, no destructive pestilence, no wasting famine, no night of darkness, however universal and gloomy—­has ever been able to keep them long in degradation or barbarism.  There is not now a barbarous people to be found in the whole race, and there has not been one for a thousand years.