UNITY OF SYSTEM. 199 



terranean, to the north of Syria and of Mesopotamia. This sea, its level 

 being raised by an earthquake, flooded the plains then inhabited by man- 

 kind, and the ark was at length stationary above the mountains of Ararat, 

 as the highlands of Armenia were called in early times. In a few months 

 more these mountains were uncovered, and when the ground was dry, the 

 ark was opened, and the third epoch commenced. 



Earthquakes, as has been ascertained by their effects, were more frequent 

 and violent in the preceding epochs than in the seventh; but as the creatures 

 of some parts of the present world represent those of former times, so 

 there are still regions in which these electric shocks serve to indicate to us 

 the state of the earth before the creation of man. They and their accom- 

 paniments were generally the causes of the close of an epoch, or of a great 

 physical revolution of the earth, and, as if to shew the unity of system, 

 an earthquake was the appointed sign to mark the end of the legal dis- 

 pensation, or of a moral epoch, and in the concluding part of the Bible, 

 earthquakes are figurative of great political revolutions. 



A period of evil, like the former one, seemed about to ensue, when a 

 complete change was ordained in the state of mankind. The prophecy in 

 the ninth chapter of Genesis in some degree fortels this event, which oc- 

 curred long after, and is related in the eleventh chapter. 



By their humiliation in the institution of languages, they ceased to be 

 one community, were dispersed over the earth, and formed tribes more or 

 less distinct from each other in speech, habits, customs, inventions, and even 

 to some degree in organization, on which circumstances the extensive science 

 of Ethnology is founded. Their settlement throughout was just in accor- 

 dance, or alike in system, with the distribution of animals, degree and 

 difference being observable in the structure of the body, and more especially 

 in that of the mind of the natives (as it was in the mind, and more 

 especially in the body of the quadrupeds,) in Australia, North and South 

 America, and the old world; each greater division containing several lesser 

 divisions according to the same system. The geographical distribution of 

 plants and of animals has two divisions; the first relating to the native 

 kinds of each region, the second to those which have spread from their 

 original habitation to other regions, and often to islands by means of con- 

 tinents which have been since submerged. Both these divisions are repre- 

 sented in some degree by the human race; the first by the original 

 inhabitants of each country, the second by the tribes or nations which have 

 successively mingled with or supplanted the aborigines. It has been re- 

 marked that a distinct tribe, as well as a distinct fauna and flora, was 

 appointed to each region. The tribes into which mankind were then dis- 

 posed had characters as distinctly marked in gradations as those of a species 

 in a genus of animals, and each tribe flourished, and then dwindled like 



