ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 105 
in some of the various stages of human development. Adelung reckons the 
total population of the earth as 1,288 millions, professing 1,100 forms of 
religion, among which there exists 3,664 known languages or dialects, viz.: 
937 Asiatic, 587 Kuropean, 276 African, 1,624 American. These are signifi- 
cant facts. 
Sir Charles Lyell is inclined to admit that an imperfect form of man was 
living when the tertiary stata was deposited. Agassiz, who pronounced 
America the oldest continent extant, measured the coral growth during a 
given number of years along the southern half of Florida, which, he asserts, 
has been formed by accretion during the geological period known as recent, 
and must have required not less than 135,000 years toform. We may arrange 
epochs in their order of sequence, but not of date, for in contemplating the 
vastness of such a past, the mind becomes lost in amazement at the vista 
opened into antiquity. The histories of China contain records of the past, 
which modern chronologies have insufficient room to measure. The limits 
of history are steadily receding, and Greece and Rome are taking their proper 
positions in a comparatively modern era. Science is developing unanswer- 
able proofs of the greater antiquity of the human race, than current ecclesi- 
astical histories have been supposed to allow. Greater freedom in chronology 
is absolutely necessary. No sound religious principles have aught to fear 
from true interpreters of antiquity. Truth, in all its natural simplicity, is 
susceptible of proof, and reason is its steadfast supporter. Nature’s own 
religion is grander than any human conception. In the dark ages, mysteries, 
miracles, and absolute imposture stood in the way of absolute truth. Evolu- 
tion gives to the Infinite higher attributes, and more nearly connects him 
with all created things. The God of the true scientist is grander and more 
comprehensible to mankind. It takes us half our lives to unlearn and eradi- 
cate errors honestly taught usin youth, with perfect good faith and intention, 
which persistently cling to us until displaced by the sound reasoning 
powers of maturer years. Hach conscience is but the result of its own moral 
education. It is composed of ideas it has fed on. Many imbibe, hereditarily, 
the opinions of their forefathers, and venerate them because they were first 
upon their mind, which circumstance alone produces to them an unsophis- 
ticated conviction of their truthfulness. None are free but those whom Truth 
makes free: 
‘*Most men by education are misled, 
They so believe because they so are bred; 
The priest continues what the nurse began, 
And so the child imposes on the man.” 
America was undoubtedly peopled many age’ before Julius Czsar landed 
in barbaric Britain, and many of the colossal structures, whose ruins still 
excite the wonder of the wandering Indians of Central America and Peru, 
doubtless passed from use long before the Tartar conquerors in Central Asia 
drove their hordes eastward, or Attila and his Huns swept his legions west- 
ward, from the great wall of China and the steppes of Ancient Tartary. 
Chinese historians assert that in the fifth year of the reign of Yao, B. C. 
2,353, strangers from the south, of the family of Youe-Tchang, brought, as a 
