— 304 THE HISTORY OF CREATION, 
ing to the roots of their language, it might be said that the 
different races of men had originated, independently of one 
another, by different branches of primzeval, speechless men 
directly springing from apes, and forming their own pri- 
mzeval language. Still they would of course be connected 
further up or lower down at their root, and thus all would 
finally be derived from a common primeeval stock. 
While we hold the latter of these convictions, and while 
we for many reasons believe that the different species of 
speechless primzeval men were all derived from a common 
ape-like human form, we do not of course mean to say 
that all men are descended from one pair. This latter 
supposition, which our modern Indo-Germanic culture has 
taken from the Semitic myth of the Mosaic history of 
creation, is by no means tenable. The whole of the 
celebrated dispute, as to whether the human race is descended 
from a single pair or not, rests upon a completely false way 
of putting the question. It is just as senseless as the 
dispute as to whether all sporting dogs or all race-horses 
are descended from a single pair. We might with equal 
justice ask whether all Germans or all Englishmen are 
“descended from a single pair,” etc. A “first human pair,” 
or “a first man,” has in fact never existed, any more than 
there ever existed a first pair or a first individual of 
Englishmen, Germans, race-horses, or sporting dogs. The 
origin of a new species, of course, always results from an 
existing species, by a long chain of many different indi- 
viduals sharing the slow process of transformation. 
Supposing that we had all the different pairs of Human 
Apes and Ape-like Men before us—which belong to the true 
ancestors of the human race—it would even then be quite 
