Note 269 — XLVII. GRAHAM. 1794–1851.

Professor Lawrence instances particularly “the Laplanders, Samoides, Ostiacs, Tungooses, Burats, and Bamtschatdales, in Northern Europe and Asia, as well as the Esquimaux in the northern, and the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the southern, extremity of America, who, although they live almost entirely on flesh, and that often raw, are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people of the globe.”—Lectures on Physiology. Of all races the North American native tribes, who subsist almost entirely by the chase, are notoriously one of the most ferocious and cruel. That the omnivorous classes in “civilised” Europe—in this country particularly—have attained their present position, political or intellectual, in spite of their kreophagistic habits is attributable to a complex set of conditions and circumstances (an extensive inquiry, upon which it is impossible to enter here) which have, in some measure, mitigated the evil results of a barbarous diet, will be sufficiently clear to every unprejudiced inquirer. If flesh-eating be the cause, or one of the principal causes, of the present dominance of the European, and especially English-speaking peoples, it may justly be asked—how is to be explained, e.g., the dominance of the Saracenic power (in S. Europe) during seven centuries—a dominance in arms as well as in arts and sciences—when the semi-barbarous Christian nations (at least as regards the ruling classes) were wholly kreophagistic.