An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species. To which are added, Strictures On Lord Kames's Discourse on the Original Diversity of Mankind. A New Edition. With Some Additional Notes, By a Gentleman of the University of Edinburgh.

SMITH (Samuel Stanhope)

Published by Philadelphia Printed And Edinburgh Reprinted For C. Elliot Edinburgh; and C. Elliot and T. Kay. London, 1788

About this Item

8vo, 213 x 124, pp. 217 [218 blank, 219 - 220 adverts],contemporary tree calf, gilt rules across spine, red morocco label. A very good to fine copy. Samuel Stanhope Smith (1750 - 1819) was Professor of Moral Philosophy and later (1795 - 1819) President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). In this book, he takes issue with Kames's view that the Eskimoes and American Indians were inferior races and the result of a second order creation. Smith instead argued that the variations among mankind are due to environmental factors. The entry in Wikiepedia records, "Smith was the first systematic expositor of Scottish Common Sense Realism in America. An empiricist in his anthropology and a Lamarckian before Lamarck, he sought to mediate between science and religious orthodoxy. In his work, Stanhope Smith expressed progressive views on marriage and egalitarian ideas about race and slavery. The second edition of his Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species (1810) became important as a powerful argument against the increasing racism of 19th-century ethnology.[7] He opposed the racial classifications of naturalists such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Carl Linnaeus.[8] In this text, his attempt to explain the variety of physical appearances among humans involved a strongly environmental outlook. An example he provides involves "the blacks in the southern states." Smith noted that field slaves had darker skin pigmentation and other "African" features than did domestic slaves, and claimed that exposure to white, European culture through their 'civilized' masters had changed their anatomy as well." The 1811 edition of the work was reviewed at great length (and negatively) in The American Review of History and Politics. Sabin 84104.

Seller Inventory # 10135

Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species. To which are added, Strictures On Lord Kames's Discourse on the Original Diversity of Mankind. A New Edition. With Some Additional Notes, By a Gentleman of the University of Edinburgh.
• Publisher: Philadelphia Printed And Edinburgh Reprinted For C. Elliot Edinburgh; and C. Elliot and T. Kay. London
• Publication Date: 1788
• Binding: Hardcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • anthropology