CHAP. VI.] MAN. 157 



degeneracy of Portugal and its transatlantic offspring Brazil 

 a degeneracy manifestly due to the jealousy felt by those 

 States of the controlling action of the Head of the church 

 and consequent tendency to schism. In all these cases, then, 

 more or less religious isolation has been the prelude to 

 degeneracy. 



There is, then, much reason to think that degeneracy may 

 have been both great in degree and widespread in its effects, 

 so as to account by degradation for the existing states of all 

 the various tribes of savages which discovery has made known 

 to us. But the maintenance of this position, it may be re 

 marked by-the-way, is by no means necessary to justify the 

 religious belief of even the most orthodox Christians. Ortho 

 doxy does not by any means necessarily conflict with such views 

 as those put forward by Messrs. Tylor and Lubbock. All traces 

 now, or to be hereafter, discovered of ancient man, may indi 

 cate ascent and progress, and all existing savages may be 

 ascending from still lower levels, and yet the first man may, not 

 withstanding, have been all that theology asserts that he was. 

 Nay more, his progeny may none the less have preserved for 

 a considerable period a high degree of direct, simple, moral 

 elevation in an nge of stone, and yet have been the ancestors 

 of races who fell below the level of any savages now ex 

 isting on the earth. In theology Adam stands in a 

 category of his own, and was actually all that it 

 became him as man to be, having the full and perfect use 

 of reason in the first moment of his existence. But it is 

 impossible to argue from Adam even to his immediate 

 descendants, as the difference between their states is a differ 

 ence not of degree but of kind. According to the strictest 

 theology, part even of Adam s knowledge was acquired, not 

 infused, and, therefore, took time and depended upon the 

 occurrence of opportunities. His descendants were m s descend- 

 naturally in a state of mere ignorance, to be re- ants 

 moved only by education either byway of what is technically 

 called disciplina or else by inventio. Now as regards their 

 degenerate descendants, the Homines sylvatici, these wero, 



