ARGUMENTATIVE PROOF. 129 parents to offspring, equally transmit their mental likeness, their intellectual capabilities, and their moral character 24. Is any farther proof that mind is transmitted required? Behold it in the fact already demonstrated of the hereditary descent of INSANITY. Nor of insanity alone; but also of that particular FORM of it found in parentage. The posterity of parents deranged on property, or religion, or the domestic affections, are usually insane on the same topics 344, and if the insanity takes on a suicidal caste, it runs in the same channel in the former 343. Every fact adduced to prove that insanity is hereditary, proves that those same mental ORGANS and faculties which were deranged in the ancestry were deranged in their descendants, and no others. The chapter on insanity DEMONSTRATES, by an order and amount of proof both irrefutable and ABSOLUTE, that the insane mental characteristic is transmitted. Then why not all the OTHER biases and powers of the mind? On what principle one and not ALL? How can hereditary law propagate one without THEREIN AND THEREBY entailing all? 324 p. 17 The whole or nothing, is nature's universal motto. Moreover, these diversities of character and talents in men must have some CAUSE. Education does not, cannot render one a natural painter, another a poet, another a mechanical genius, another fluent in speech, and others remarkable for other intellectual and moral idiosyncrasies, because they appear prior to and often in the teeth of education. Was Benjamin West taught to paint? Was he not rather whipped for painting, and obliged to steal away into the garret to follow his intense passion strong at BIRTH? Did education render Patrick Henry eloquent? No, but PARENTAGE did. As well argue that ducks love water and hens avoid it because TAUGHT to do so, or that education causes the infant to nurse, cry, and even breathe! Are not hunger, sensation, sight, crying, affection, anger, laughing, fear, etc., INNATE, and prior to all education? Indeed, how can a child without eyes be educated to see, or without muscles to move, or without reason to think? These, all our primary mental powers, must be CREATED before education can have any data on which to operate. Edu cation can only develop and dirECT what is born in and with us. Dr. Nott says, "Give me one hundred boys taken promiscuously and I will make them all brave." Granted, because all have more or less Combativeness by nature, which cultivation can increase; but how much more easily can some of them be rendered courageous than others, some mathematical, or mechanical, or imitative, or eloquent, or shrewd bargainers, etc., than others? Why? Because, though all human beings possess more or less of all the faculties, yet some INHERIT Some of them, and others others, in greater or less DEGREES of power and activity. Our hereditary doctrine alone satisfactorily accounts for that almost infinite diversity seen among men. What cause more more appropriate? And how perfectly in keeping with the established fact of hereditary transmission! Everything in man which is constitutional is transmitted, because nature trusts no PRIMITIVE mental or physical element to education, but renders its continuance certain by ENTAILMENT. To leave it to educa tion would be to leave it out; and the omission of any mental faculty, like that of any bone, muscle, or physical organ, would impair all the others, and well nigh spoil this perfect structure, man. No; it will not answer to leave the human mind a blank on which education and circumstances write all that is; for this would soon obliterate all its primitive powers, to prevent which they are all ENTAILED, and in that relative degree of energy in which they exist in parents. Not that education is valueless. Though it can create no primitive power, yet it can develop and increase hereditary capabilities, as shown in "Education" and "Self-Improvement." But here its power ends. Let neither entailed nor educational influences be overrated, undervalued, neglected, or carried beyond their appropriate limits, but let both, hand in hand, go on to achieve that greatest of all terrestrial works-HUMAN IMPROVEMENT AND HAPPINESS. HUMAN NATURE ALWAYS ALIKE. SECTION II. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MANKIND AS A WHOLE, and of RACES, NATIONS, AND MASSES HEREDITARY. 346. UNIVERSALITY OF ALL THE MENTAL FACULTIES. BUT the converging principles, that since the mentality depends upon the physiology, and since the latter is hereditary, therefore the former must be equally so, are by no means the main or even the strongest proof of the transmissibility of the mental powers and characteristics. Facts, the most extensive in range and varied in kind, prove the hereditary descent of the mental qualities to be a fixed ordinance of nature. Thus, the entire human family have always evinced the same primary elements as now-the same propensities, moral sentiments, and intellectual capabilities; the same domestic affections, appetite for food, spirit of resistance, love of money, power and glory, and fear of danger; the same sentiments of justice, kindness, and religious devotion; the same primary faculties of observation, memory of persons, places, colors, and events, as well as reasoning and communicating disposition and capability. This, who questions? As far back as history, sacred or profane, furnishes any record of man, and his desires and pursuits, it shows that they have been from the beginning just what they now are. It shows that in spite of all those ever-diversified modes of government and education, opposite climates and circumstances, and the like, which have been perpetually modifying human character for so many ages, all races, nations, and individuals have alike bowed submissive at the shrine of beauty, been led willing captives by the all-conquering power of love, relished food and drink, defended rights and life, scrambled after property, loved honor and courted fame, fed and sheltered the benighted stranger, loved their children and friends, hated enemies, worshiped a Supreme Being of some sort, conceived and expressed ideas, sung, laughed, adapted ways and means to ends, and manifested every primitive mental faculty now pos sessed. In short, so synonymous is universal human nature, that whoever has learned, or can operate on it at one time or place, can read and move it in all others. And since it has thus far remained fundamentally the same, will it not continue so while the race exists? But how can this oneness be secured or accounted for except by hereditary influences? Without that inflexible adherence to its original constitution thus secured, different circumstances, climates, educations, etc., would soon warp it, as they have language, so that various masses and nations would differ GENERICALLY from each other, instead of, as now, being substantially alike. 347. THE MENTAL PECULIARITIES OF THE INDIAN RACE TRANSMITTED. "Lo the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." Though this hereditary argument, drawn from the unity of human nature, is perfectly conclusive, yet the characteristics of the five races both furnish additional illustrations, and render assurance doubly sure. Though man's primitive mental faculties are alike, yet different races, masses, nations, and individuals, possess them in different DEGREES OF DEVELOPMENT, and hence, while all mankind are alike in all that is fundamental, yet they differ in details of character and capability. Thus, the Indian is always cunning, revengeful, wild, and free. Nothing can subdue him. Enslave an Indian! Who ever saw his proud spirit subdued? Torture him with your utmost ingenuity, and he laughs in your face, and taunts and defies you-his proud spirit absolutely indomitable. If it had been possible to subdue him, would not Caucasian cupidity long ago have pursued him throughout his native forests, as it chases the South American horse, and even now been scourging him with the lash of slavery? You may kill his body, but his lofty soul never surrenders. This love of liberty is INNATE, as is also his gratitude for favors and revenge for wrongs. He is always eloquent, but never forgiving. By nature he loves the chase, but hates to work, observes the stars and predicts the weather, but dislikes books, and, though beaten "in a mortar with a pestle," yet he is an Indian still-so BY BIRTH and mental constitution, as well as physical, and unalterable by any concatenation of circumstances. That these characteristics are innate rather than educational, is proved by his phrenology-always peculiar to himself. The developments of the infant papoose-and the author speaks from the personal inspection of hundreds from among various tribes-are essentially Indian, and partake of that same shortness from occiput to forehead, low and short coronal region, and breadth in the region of propensity, especially Destructiveness and Secretiveness, as seen in the accompanying drawings of the Indian chiefs Big Thunder No. 9. BIG THUNDER. No. 10. MECHE-KELE-A-TAH. An Indian is one at birth, and by NATURE, before rendered so by education, because papooses are as much Indian in character before education has had time to fully mould their characters as they ever are, whereas if this difference were the result of education, their phrenology would resemble that of Caucasian infants, and become more and more Indian the longer they live. Their having Indian heads in infancy proves that they are Indian by nature, and not by training. This hereditary argument is still farther established by the |