LITERARY NOTICES. 



499 



"The Negro preadamic " continued; VI., 

 " Scheme of Prehistoric Times ; " VII., " Re- 

 trospective of Primeval Man in Europe ; " 

 VIII., "Antiquity of Man;" IX., "Origin 

 of Man;" X., "Patriarchal Chronology." 



It will be gathered from these heads of 

 his arguments that Prof. Winchell is con- 

 sidering the question of man's antiquity upon 

 the earth from the point of view of the 

 common Christian belief that the whole 

 human race is descended from the Script- 

 ure Adam. This he denies, affirming that 

 the black races have a much higher an- 

 tiquity than the period to which Adam is 

 historically assigned, and who, in so far 

 as he was a progenitor of races, must be 

 regarded as only the father of the white or 

 superior races. In the first chapter, en- 

 titled " A Sagacious Dutchman," Prof. Win- 

 chell calls attention to a small book that 

 appeared in Paris in 1665, written by a 

 Dutch ecclesiastic, named La Peyrere, on 

 the unheard-of subject, indicated by its 

 title of " PrBeadamita2." Prof. Winchell 

 says that La Peyrere was the first to prom- 

 ulgate to the world the idea of preadamite 

 men. Of course, the sciences of ethnology 

 and anthropology were at that time un- 

 known, and the inquiry was therefore con- 

 ducted entirely as a theological one all 

 questions being Bible-questions, and the 

 meaning of the Bible being extracted ac- 

 cording to the canons of grammar. The 

 case was strongly made out by the Dutch 

 doctor, and, although it could be argued in 

 no other way at the time, Prof. Winchell 

 takes occasion to charaeterize the method 

 because there are plenty of learned men 

 with whom it is still in vogue. Upon this 

 point he says : 



" There are doctors high in authority among 

 us at this day, who maintain that grammatical 

 structure and Hebrew usage are sufficient to 

 light the way to the meaning of the darkest pas- 

 sage's of revelation. I suppose a knowledge of 

 Hebrew history and usages is admitted to shed 

 its light upon interpretation, because the text 

 is generally occupied with Jewish affairs. But 

 the inspired writers have sometimes plunged 

 into the midst of the profound and mysterious 

 facts of science ; why not, then, summon all 

 our knowledge to the task of evoking the mean- 

 ing of the text? I maintain, against the narrow 

 and pernicious dogma that the Bible is sufficient 

 everywhere to interpret itself, that, on the con- 

 trary, it was ordained to be interpreted under 

 the concentrated light of all the learning which 

 has been created by a God-given intelligence in 



man, I believe that the Bible was written for 

 all time, and that its meaning is so deep and so 

 rich that the accumulated learning of the latest 

 generation of men will be unable to exhaust it." 



Prof. Winchell then proceeds to discuss 

 the question on its purely scientific basis, 

 or in the light of modern facts, as disclosed 

 by ethnological and archaeological research. 

 He concludes that the profound divergency 

 of the races of mankind, as now known, and 

 the demonstrated divergency that had been 

 reached in the earliest historic periods, make 

 the conclusion impossible that, if all the 

 races of men had one origin, that origin can 

 be brought within anything like the usu- 

 ally assigned period of six thousand years. 

 Scientific evidence " forces this alternative 

 conclusion upon us. If human beings have 

 existed but six thousand years, then the 

 human races had separate beginnings, as 

 Agassiz long since maintained each race 

 in its own geographical area. But if all 

 human beings are descended from one stock, 

 then the starting-point was more than six 

 thousand gears back, as Huxley and the evo- 

 lutionists generally maintain, and the Duke 

 of Argyll and other anti-evolutionists equally 

 maintain." 



"Now, every person remains free to con- 

 temn a logical difficulty, and commiserate the 

 unfortunate facts for being opposed to his be- 

 lief. But my training has been such that logic 

 and facts still command a degree of respect. 

 Nor am I enough of an actor to play the part of 

 an idiot. If I can avoid a difficulty I shall not 

 dash out my brains against it. Let us con- 

 sider Adam the father of the white and dusky 

 races. These, then, are Adamites ; and have 

 a chronology extending back about six thou- 

 sand years perhaps all the time we require. 

 The black races, then, are preadamites ; and 

 there is no objection to allowing all the time 

 requisite for their divergence from some com- 

 mon stock. This view recognizes the unity of 

 man the possession of 'one blood' by all the 

 races, one moral and intellectual nature, and one 

 destiny ; it recognizes Adam as the progenitor 

 of the nations which form the theme of biblical 

 history; it explains sundry biblical allusions 

 and implications for instance, the wife found 

 by Cain in the land of Nod ; Cain's fear of vio- 

 lence from others when condemned to the life 

 of a 'fugitive and a vagabond ;' the antithesis 

 of the 'sons of God 1 and the 'daughters of 

 men;' it validates the biblical chronology; it 

 satisfies the demands of facts. The only objec- 

 tion outstanding against this view is the au- 

 thority of an opinion formed two or three thou- 

 sand years ago, by men who also held the opin- 

 ion that witches ride broomsticks through the 

 air, and that the star9 were created two days 



