322 THE ACTION OF NAIUEAL 



he neither possessed human speech, nor those sympa- 

 thetic and moral feelings which in a greater or less 

 degree everywhere now distinguish the race. Just in 

 proportion as these truly human faculties became deve- 

 loped in him, would his physical features become fixed 

 and permanent, because the latter would be of less im- 

 portance to his well being ; he would be kept in har- 

 mony with the slowly changing universe around him, 

 by an advance in mind, rather than by a change in 

 body. If, therefore, we are of opinion that he was not 

 really man till these higher faculties were fully deve- 

 loped, we may fairly assert that there were many ori- 

 ginally distinct races of men ; while, if we think that 

 a being closely resembling us in form and structure, 

 but with mental faculties scarcely raised above the 

 brute, must still be considered to have been human, 

 we are fully entitled to maintain the common origin of 

 all mankind. 



The Bearing of these Views on the Antiquity of 

 Man. 



These considerations, it will be seen, enable us to 

 place the origin of man at a much more remote geo- 

 logical epoch than has yet been thought possible. He 

 may even have lived in the Miocene or Eocene period, 

 when not a single mammal was identical in form with 

 any existing species. For, in the long series of ages 

 during which these primeval animals were being slowly 

 changed into the species which now inhabit the earth, 

 the power which acted to modify them would only 



