vin .THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 181 



to suppose that man's distribution over the surface of the 

 earth was less universal than at present. 



Besides, Europe was in a great measure submerged during 

 the tertiary epoch ; and though its scattered islands may have 

 been uninhabited by man, it by no means follows that he did 

 not at the same time exist in warm or tropical continents. If 

 geologists can point out to us the most extensive land in the 

 warmer regions of the earth, which has not been submerged 

 since Eocene or Miocene times, it is there that we may expect 

 to find some traces of the very early progenitors of man. It 

 is there that we may trace back the gradually decreasing 

 .brain of former races, till we come to a time when the body 

 also begins materially to differ. Then we shall have reached 

 the starting-point of the human family. Before that period 

 he had not mind enough to preserve his body from change, 

 and would, therefore, have been subject to the same com- 

 paratively rapid modifications of form as the other mammalia. 



Their Bearing on the Dignity and Supremacy of Man 

 If the views I have here endeavoured to sustain have any 

 foundation, they give us a new argument for placing man 

 apart, as not only the head and culminating point of the grand 

 series of organic nature, but as in some degree a new and dis- 

 tinct order of being. From those infinitely remote ages, when 

 the first rudiments of organic life appeared upon the earth, 

 every plant and every animal has been subject to one great 

 law of physical change. As the earth has gone through its 

 grand cycles of geological, climatal, and organic progress, 

 every form of life has been subject to its irresistible action, 

 and has been continually but imperceptibly moulded into 

 such new shapes as would preserve their harmony with the 

 ever-changing universe. No living thing could escape this 

 law of its being ; none (except, perhaps, the simplest and most 

 rudimentary organisms) could remain unchanged and live, 

 amid the universal change around it. 



At length, however, there came into existence a being in 

 whom that subtle force we term mind, became of greater 

 importance than his mere bodily structure. Though with a 

 naked and unprotected body, this gave him clothing against 

 the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to 



