516 THE ADVENT OF MAN IN AMEBIC A. 



to wliicli Ibcy bcloug' hius a more complete, luore developed, or in other 

 words a more perfect orgauization." 



The greater restriction of the area in proportion to the increasing 

 perfection of the organism is then a general fact, a law applicable to 

 all organized beings, and which is easily explained by physiology. 

 iS^ow this law is in direct opposition to the hypothesis that there can 

 exist a hnman genus comprising vseveral distinct species which have 

 appeared in every quarter of the earth, wherever we now find men. In- 

 voking the authority of Murray, and the universality of habitat which 

 he attributes to the genera of the rorqual and the dolphin, polygenists 

 might be tenq3ted to say, " non-cosmopolitism already presents two ex- 

 ceptions. Why may there not be a third ? Two genera of cetaceans are 

 represented naturally in all the seas. Why may not the human genus 

 have api^eared at the start in every land?" This reasoning is faulty 

 at its foundation. The rorqual and the dolphin belong to the lowest 

 order of mammalia. Man, if we regard the body alone, is of the 

 highest order. Unless we constitute them a single exception, they 

 nnist obey the laws of the superior group ; consequently they can not 

 escape the law of increasing restriction of area. 



It follows therefore that a human genus, as tlie polygenists under- 

 stand it, must have occupied, in its origin, an area no more extended 

 than that which has comprehended some genera of monkeys. But 

 among the monkeys themselves all naturalists recognize a hierarchy; 

 all place at their head the order of anthropoid apes, it is then 

 from the secondary groups of this family that polygenists should ask 

 for indications of the possible extent of area primarily accorded to the 

 human genus; and it is well known how inconsiderable is the area 

 occupied by tlie genera Gibbon, Orang, Gorilla, and Chimj)anzee. 



Whatever our point of view, we have either to assume that man 

 alone escaped the laws which have regulated the geographical distri- 

 bution of all other organized beings, or else admit that the primitive 

 tribes were domiciled upon a very restricted space. Judging from 

 present conditions, making the largest concessions, neglecting the in- 

 contestable superiority of the hnman type over the Simian type, all 

 that the polygenistic hypothesis permits is to regard that area as 

 having been nearly equivalent to that occupied by the difiiereut 

 species of Gibbons which range on the continent from Assam to 

 Malacca; in the islands from the Philippines to Java. Monogenism of 

 course tends to restrict this area vStill more, and to make it equal at most 

 to that of the Chimpanzee, which extends nearly from the ( 'ongo river to 

 the White Xile. I would be the first to recognize that we may perhaps 

 have to eidarge these limits at some later time. I consider the exist- 

 ence of man during the Tertiary geologic epoch to be demonstrated; 

 and only the geographical distribution of the nujnkeys, his contempo- 

 rary, can furnish more precise information upon the primary extension 

 of the center of man's appearance. Paheontology has taught us that 



