56 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. Part I. 



as among the races of men, are permanent under the most diversified chmatic influ- 

 ences ; a fact, which the extensive migrations of the civihzed nations daily proves more 

 extensively, and which stands in direct contradiction to the supposition that such or 

 similar influences could have produced them. 



When considering the subject of domestication, in particular, it ought further to 

 be remembered, that every race of men has its own peculiar kinds of domesticated 

 animals and of cultivated plants, which exhibit much fewer varieties among them 

 in proportion as those races of men have had little or no intercourse with other 

 races, than the domesticated animals of those nations which have been formed by the 

 mixture of several tribes. 



It is often stated that the ancient philosophers have solved satisfactorily all the 

 great questions interesting to man, and that modern investigations, though they have 

 grasped with new vigor, and illuminated with new light, all the phenomena of the 

 material world, have added little or notliing in the field of intellectual progress. Is 

 this true? There is no question so deeply interesting to man as that of his own 

 origin, and the origin of aU things. And yet antiquity had no knowledge concerning 

 it J tlihigs were formerly beheved either to be from eternity, or to have been created 

 at one time. Modern science, however, can show, in the most satisfactory manner, 

 that all finite beings have made their appearance successively and at long intervals, 

 and that each kind of organized beings has existed for a definite period of time in 

 jjast ages, and that those now living are of comparatively recent origin. At the 

 same time, the order of their succession and their immutabihty during such cosmic 

 periods, show no causal connection with physical agents and the known sphere of 

 action of these agents in natm-e, but argue in favor of repeated interventions on 

 the part of the Creator. It seems really surprising, that while such an intervention 

 is admitted by all, except the strict materialists, for the estalilishment of the laws 

 regulating the inorganic world, it is yet denied by so many physicists, mth reference 

 to the introduction of organized beings at different successive periods. Does this not 

 rather go to show the imperfect acquaintance of these investigators with the condi- 

 tions vmder which life is manifested, and with the essential difference there is between 

 the phenomena of the organic and those of the physical world, than to furnish any 

 evidence that the organic world is the product of physical causes ? 



