COMPLEXION, among physicians, the temperament, habitude, and natural disposition of the body; but more often the colour of the face and skin.

Few questions in philosophy have engaged the attention of naturalists more than the diversities among the human species, among which that of colour is the most remarkable. The great differences in this respect have given occasion to several authors to assert that the whole human race have not sprung from one original, but that as many different species of men were at first created as there are now different colours to be found among them. It is certainly a matter of no small difficulty to account for the remarkable variations of colour that are to be found among different nations. On this subject Dr Blunter published a thesis, in which he considers the matter more accurately than has commonly been done, and determines absolutely against any specific difference among mankind. He introduces his subject by observing, that when the question has been agitated, whether all the human race constituted only one species or not, much confusion has arisen from the sense in which the term species has been adopted. He therefore thinks it necessary to set out with a definition of the term. He includes under the same species all those animals which produce issue capable of propagating others resembling the original stock from whence they sprung. This definition he illustrates, by having recourse to the human species as an example; and, in this sense of the term, he concludes that all of them are to be considered as belonging to the same species. And as, in the case of plants, one species comprehends several varieties depending upon climate, soil, culture, and similar accidents; so he considers the diversities of the human race to be merely varieties of the same species, produced by natural causes. Of the different colours observable among mankind, he gives the following view :—

Black. Africans under the line.

Inhabitants of New Guinea. Inhabitants of New Holland.

Swarthy. The Moors in the northern parts of Africa. The Hottentots in the southern parts of it.

Copper coloured. The East Indians.

Red coloured. The Americans. Brown coloured. Tartars.

Persians. Arabs.

Africans on the coast of the Mediterranean.

Chinese.

Brownish. The inhabitants of the southern parts of Europe; as Sicilians and Spaniards, as well as the Abyssinians in Africa.

Turks, and likewise the Samoiedes and Laplanders.

White. Most of the European nations; as,

Swedes.

Danes.

English. Germans. Poles, &c. Kabardinski. Georgians.

Inhabitants of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.

In attempting to investigate the causes of these differences, our author observes, that there can be no dispute of the seat of colour being placed in the skin; that it is not [7:7:190]even extended over the whole of this, but confined to that part named the cuticle, consisting of the epidermis and reticulum; and that it chiefly occupies the latter of these. The cuticle is much thicker and harder in black than in white people; the reticulum in the latter being a thin mucus, in the former a thick membrane. He concludes that this seat of colour in the whites is transparent, and either totally deprived of vessels, or only furnished with very few; as the yellow colour appearing in jaundice vanishes on the cause of the disease being removed, which is not the case with stains in the cuticle from gunpowder or similar causes. He next points out three causes destroying the pellucidity of the cuticle, giving it a brown colour, and rendering it thicker. These are, access of air, nastiness, and the heat of the sun. The influence of each of these he proves by many examples, and from them he is inclined to consider the last as by much the most powerful. If, however, it be admitted that these causes have this effect, he thinks that all the diversity of colour which is to be observed among mankind may be thus accounted for. He remarks that all the inhabitants of the torrid zone incline more or less to a black colour. When we observe the differences which occur among them, we must at the same time remember that a black colour is not referred to heat alone, but to the other causes also; and when we attend to the diversity of temperature that occurs even in the torrid zone, the existence of a white nation there would by no means destroy the argument. He is further of opinion that the existence of a brown colour, and of considerable varieties from white, in the northern and coldest parts of Europe, may very easily be explained. This he accounts for from the manner of life of the inhabitants, by which they are either exposed to the inclemency of the air, or to constant nastiness from smoky houses.

Having thus attempted to account, from natural causes, for the varieties which occur among mankind with respect to colour, our author observes that, to all this reasoning an objection will naturally be made from considering that infants bring these marks into the world along with them, before they can be exposed to any such causes. Dr Hunter imagines, however, that this may readily be explained upon the supposition that many peculiarities acquired by parents are transmitted to their posterity; and of this he thinks no one can entertain the least doubt who attends to hereditary diseases. Thus gout, scrofula, mania, and many other affections, although at first induced by particular accidents, will continue to affect families for many generations. In the same manner a parent exposed to causes destroying the natural whiteness of his complexion will beget swarthy children; and the same causes continuing to operate upon the son, the blackness will be increased. Thus all the different shades may have been at first induced, and afterwards continued.

The subject of complexion has been very well illustrated by Mr Clarkson, in a dissertation introduced in bis essay on the commerce and slavery of the human species. The first point that occurs to be ascertained is, what part of the skin is the seat of colour? The old anatomists usually divide the skin into two parts or laminae; the exterior and thinnest, called by the Greeks epidermis, by the Homans cuticula, and hence by us cuticle ; and the interior, called by the former derma, and by the latter cutis, or true skin. Hence they must necessarily have supposed that, as the true skin was in every respect the same in all human subjects, however various their external hue, so the seat of colour must have existed in the cuticle or upper surface.

Malpighi, an eminent Italian physician of the last century, was the first person who discovered that the skin was divided into three laminae or parts, the cuticle, the true skin, and a certain coagulated substance situated between both, which he distinguished by the title of n>⅛ rowcoíWMř,· which coagulated substance adhered so firmly to the cuticle as, in all former anatomical preparations, to have come off with it, and from this circumstance to have led the ancient anatomists to believe that there were but two laminae or divisible portions in the human skin.

This, discovery was sufficient to ascertain the point ⅛ question; for it appeared afterwards that the cuticle, when divided according to this discovery from the other lamina, was semitransparent; that the cuticle of the blackest negro was of the same transparency and colour as that of the purest white; and hence, the true skins of both being invariably the same, that the rete mucosum was the seat of colour.

This has been further confirmed by all subsequent anatomical experiments, by which it appears that, whatever is the colour of this intermediate coagulated substance, nearly the same is the apparent colour of the upper surface of the skin. Neither can it be otherwise; for the cuticle, from its transparency, must necessarily transmit the colour of the substance beneath it, in the same manner, though not in the same degree, as the cornea transmits the colour of the iris of the eye. This transparency is a matter of ocular demonstration in white people. It is conspicuous in every blush; for no one can imagine that the cuticle becomes red as often as this happens: nor is it less discoverable' in the veins, which are so easy to be discerned; for no one can suppose that the blue streaks which he constantly sees in the fairest complexions are painted, as it waere, on the surface of the upper skin. From these, and a variety of other observations, no maxim is more true in physiology than that on the rete mucosum depends the colour of the human body; or, in other words, that the rete mucosum being of a different colour in different inhabitants of the globe, and appearing through the cuticle or upper surface of the skin, gives them that various appearance which strikes us so forcibly in contemplating the human race.

As this can be incontrovertibly ascertained, it is evident that, whatever causes co-operate in producing this different appearance, they produce it by acting on the rete mucosum, which, from the almost incredible manner in which the cuticle is perforated, is as accessible as the cuticle itself. These causes are probably those various qualities of things which, combined with the influence of the sun, contribute to form what we call climate. For when any person considers that the mucous substance before mentioned is found to vary in its colour, as the climates vary from the equator to the poles, his mind must be instantly struck with the hypothesis, and he must adopt it without any hesitation as the genuine cause of the phenomenon.

This fact of the variation of the mucous substance, according to the situation of the place, has been clearly ascertained in the numerous anatomical experiments that have been made, in which subjects of all nations have come under consideration. The natives of many of the kingdoms and isles of Asia are found to have their rete mucosum black: those of Africa, situated near the line, of the same colour; those of the maritime parts of the same continent of a dusky brown, nearly approaching to it; and the colour becomes lighter or darker in proportion as the distance from the equator is either greater or less. The Europeans are the fairest inhabitants of the world. Those situated in the most southern regions of Europe have in their rete mucosum a tinge of the dark hue of their African neighbours; hence the epidemic complexion prevalent [7:7:191]among them is nearly of the colour of the pickled Spanish olive; while in this country, and those situated nearer the north pole, it appears to be nearly, if not absolutely, white.

These are facts which anatomy has established; and we acknowledge them to be such that we cannot divest ourselves of the idea that climate has a considerable share in producing a difference of colour.

The only objection of any consequence that has ever been made to the hypothesis of climate is this, that people under the same parallels are not exactly of the same colour. But this is no objection in fact; for it does not follow that those countries which are at an equal distance from the equator should have their climates the same. Indeed nothing is more contrary to experience than this. Climate depends upon a variety of accidents. High mountains in the neighbourhood of a place make it cooler, by chilling the air that is carried over them by the winds. Large spreading succulent plants, if among the productions of the soil, have the same effect; they afford agreeable cooling shades and a moist atmosphere from their continual exhalations, by which the ardour of the sun is considerably abated. While the soil, on the other hand, if of a sandy nature, retains the heat in an uncommon degree, and makes the summers considerably hotter than those which are found to exist in the same latitude where the soil is different. To this proximity of what may be termed burning sands, and to the sulphureous and metallic particles which are continually exhaling from the bowels of the earth, are ascribed the different degrees of blackness by which some African nations are distinguished from each other, though under the same parallels. To these observations we may add, that though the inhabitants of the same parallel are not exactly of the same hue, yet they differ only by shades of the same colour; or, to speak with more precision, that there are no two people in such a situation, one of whom is white and the other black To sum up the whole, suppose we were to take a common globe, to begin at the equator, to paint every country along the meridian line in succession from thence to the poles, and to paint them with the same colour which prevails in the respective inhabitants of each, we should see the black, with which we had been obliged to begin, insensibly changing to an olive, and the olive, through as many intermediate colours, to a white; and if, on the other hand, we should complete any one of the parallels according to the same plan, we should see a difference perhaps in the appearance of some of the countries through which it ran, though the difference would consist wholly in shades of the same colour.

The argument, therefore, which is brought against the hypothesis is so far from being an objection, that it may be considered as one of the first arguments in its favour; tor if the climate has really an influence on the mucous substance of the body, it is evident that we must not only expect to see a gradation of colour in the inhabitants from the equator to the poles, but also different shades of the same colour in the inhabitants of the same parallel.

To this argument may be added one that is incontrovertible, which is, that when the black inhabitants of Africa are transplanted to colder, or the white inhabitants of Europe to hotter climates, their children born there are of a different colour from themselves; that is, lighter in the first, and darker in the second instance. As a proof of the first, we shall give the words of the Abbé Raynal. “The children,” says he, “which they (the Africans) procreate m America, arc not so black as their parents were. After each generation the difference becomes more palpable. It is possible, that after a numerous succession of generations, the men come from Africa would not be distinguished from those of the country into which they may have been transplanted.” This circumstance we have had the pleasure of hearing confirmed by a variety of persons who have been witnesses of the fact; but particularly by many intelligent Africans, who have been parents themselves in America, and who have declared, that the difference is so palpable in the northern provinces, that not only they themselves have constantly observed it, but that they have heard it observed by others.

Neither is this variation in the children from the colour of the parents improbable. The children of the blackest Africans are born white. In this state they continue for about a month, when they change to a pale yellow. In process of time they become brown. Their skin still continues to increase in darkness with their age, till it becomes of a dirty sallow black; and at length, after a certain period of years, glossy and shining. Now, if climate has any influence on the mucous substance of the body, this variation in the children from the colour of their parents is an event which must be reasonably expected; for being born white, and not having equally powerful causes to act upon them in colder, as their parents had in the hotter climes which they left, it must necessarily follow that the same effect cannot possibly be produced.

Hence also, if the hypothesis be admitted, may be deduced the reason why even those children who have been brought from their country at an early age into colder regions, have been observed to be of a lighter colour than those who have remained at home till they arrived at a state of manhood. For having undergone some of the changes which we mentioned to have attended their countrymen from infancy to a certain age, and having been taken away before the rest could be completed, these farther changes, which would have taken place had they remained at home, seem either to have been checked in their progress, or weakened in their degree, by a colder climate.

We come now to the second and opposite case; for a proof of which we shall appeal to the words of Dr Mitchell, in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 476, sect. 4: “The Spaniards who have inhabited America under the torrid zone for any time, are become as dark coloured as our native Indians of Virginia, of which I myself have been a witness; and were they not to intermarry with the Europeans, but lead the same rude and barbarous lives with the Indians, it is very probable that, in a succession of many generations, they would become as dark in complexion.”

To this instance we shall add one, which is mentioned by a late writer, who, describing the African coast, and the European settlements there, has the following passage. “There are several other small Portuguese settlements, and one of some note at Mitomba, a river in Sierra Leone. The people here called Portuguese are principally persons bred from a mixture of the first Portuguese discoverers with the natives, and now become, in their complexion, and woolly quality of their hair, perfect negroes, retaining, however, a smattering of the Portuguese language.”

These facts with respect to the colonists of the Europeans are of the highest importance in the present case, and deserve a serious attention. For when we know to a certainty from whom they are descended; when we know that they were, at the time of their transplantation, of the same colour as those from whom they severally sprung; and when, on the other hand, we are credibly informed that they changed it for the native colour of the place which they now inhabit; the evidence in support of these facts is as great as if a person, on the removal of two or three families into another climate, had determined to ascertain the circumstance; as if he had gone with them and watched their children; as if he had communicated [7:7:192]his observations at his death to a successor; as if his successor had prosecuted the plan; and thus an uninterrupted chain of evidence had been kept up from their first removal to any determined period of succeeding time.

But though these facts seem sufficient of themselves to confirm our opinion, they are not the only facts which can be adduced in its support. It can be shown, that the members of the very same family, when divided from each other, and removed into different countries, have not only changed their family complexion, but that they have changed it to as many different colours as they have gone into different regions of the world. We cannot have, perhaps, a more striking instance of this than in the Jews. These people are scattered over the face of the whole earth. They have preserved themselves distinct from the rest of the world by their religion; and as they never intermarry with any but those of their own sect, so they have no mixture of blood in their veins that they should differ from each other; and yet nothing is more true, than that the English Jew is white, the Portuguese swarthy, the Armenian olive, and the Arabian copper: in short, that there appear to be as many different species of Jews as there are countries in which they reside.

The same principles with the above we find adopted and further illustrated by Professor Zimmerman, in his Geographical History of Man. He there proves, in the most satisfactory manner, that the complexion of the human species is uniformly correspondent with the degree of heat or cold to which they are habitually exposed. In maintaining this position, he makes a very proper distinction with regard to climate. By climates we are to understand, not simply or solely those distinguished by the geographical divisions of the globe, to the exclusion of what he terms physical climate, or that which depends on the changes produced in any given latitude by such adventitious circumstances as the lower or more elevated situations of a country, its being encompassed by water or large tracts of land, overspread or surrounded with forests, placed in an extensive plain, or environed by lofty mountains. Peculiarities of the like kind, as has been already noticed, frequently prevent the physical climate from corresponding entirely with the geographical, as a country influenced by them is often much warmer or colder than other re*· gions placed under the same degree of latitude. The influence of these secondary or modifying circumstances has been already adverted to, and need not be further enlarged upon: we shall here only observe, that the erroneous reasoning of Lord Kames on this subject seems to have been owing to his inattention to the difference above mentioned. At Senegal, and in the adjacent lands, the thermometer is often at 112 or 110 degrees in the shade; and here we find the inhabitants jet black, with woolly hair. The heat is equally great in Congo and Loango, and these countries are inhabited by negroes only; whereas in Morocco, to the north of these regions, and at the Cape of Good Hope, to the south, the heat is not so intense, nor are the inhabitants of so deep a hue. Lord Kames asks, wherefore are not the Abyssinians and the inhabitants of Zaara of as dark a complexion as the Moors on the coast of Guinea? Μ. Zimmerman answers, that “these countries are much cooler. The desert is not only farther from the equator, but the winds blowing over the Atlas Mountains, which, like the Alps, are covered with snow, and the westerly wind coming from the sea, must considerably mitigate the héat. Nor is Abyssinia so warm as either Monomotapa or Guinea. The north-east winds from the side of Persia and Arabia are cooled by their passage over the Red Sea; the northern winds from Egypt lose much of their heat on the chain of the mountains that is extended between the countries; the winds from the south and the west are sea winds. Thus, the only quarter from which they can derive excessive heat is from the east, as the air on this side must pass over tracts of heated lands.” For a similar reason it is that negroes are not found either in Asia or South America under the equator. The situations of these countries, our author observes, expose them to sea-breezes and cooling winds from the continent. He confirms this hypothesis by observing, that the mountaineers of warm climates, as in Barbary and Ceylon, are much fairer than the inhabitants of the valleys; that the Saracens and Moors who conquered the north-east part of Africa in 1700, from being brown, are become like the negroes near the equator; that the Portuguese who settled at Senegal in 1400 became blacks; and Tudela the Jew asserts, that his countrymen in Abyssinia acquired the dark complexion of the original natives.

Upon the whole, colour and figure may be styled habits of the body. Like other habits, they are created, not by great and sudden impressions, but by continual and almost imperceptible touches. Of habits both of mind and body, nations are susceptible as well as individuals. They are transmitted to offspring, and augmented by inherit» ance. Long in growing to maturity, national features, like national manners, become fixed only after a succession of ages. They become, however, fixed at last; and if we can ascertain any effect produced by a given state of weather or of climate, it requires only repetition during a sufficient length, of time to augment and impress it with a permanent character. The sanguine countenance will, for this reason, be perpetual in the highest latitudes of the temperate zone; and we shall for ever find the swarthy, the olive, the tawny, and the black, as we descend to the south.

All the foregoing observations have been well illustrated and enforced by the Reverend Dr S. S. Smith, professor of moral philosophy in the college of New Jersey, in his Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species. See further on this subject the article Man.