248 METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 



adversary were the same thing as proving your 

 own case, the Polygenists would be in a fair way 

 towards victory; but, unfortunately, as I have 

 already observed, they have as yet completely 

 failed to adduce satisfactory positive proof of the 

 specific diversity of mankind. Like the Monoge- 

 nists, the Polygenists are of several sects; some 

 imagine that their assumed species of mankind 

 were created where we find them — the African in 

 Africa, and the Australian in Australia, along 

 with the other animals of their distributional 

 province; others conceive that each species of 

 man has resulted from the modification of some 

 antecedent species of ape — the American from the 

 broad-nosed Simians of the New World, the Afri- 

 can from the Troglodytic stock, the Mongolian 

 from the Orangs. 



The first hypothesis is hardly likely to win 

 much favour. The whole tendency of modern sci- 

 ence is to thrust the origination of things further 

 and further into the background; and the chief 

 philosophical objection to Adam being, not his 

 oneness, but the hypothesis of his special creation; 

 the multiplication of that objection tenfold is, 

 whatever it may look, an increase, instead of a 

 diminution, of the difficulties of the case. And, as 

 to the second alternative, it may safely be affirmed 

 that, even if the differences between men are spe- 

 cific, they are so small, that the assumption of more 

 than one primitive stock for all is altogether super- 



