DIVERSITY OF RACES. 179 



requisite for nations to have wandered so far from each other, 

 over vast tracts of country equally inviting with those they 

 eventually chose, and with no necessity whatever impelling them 

 on, and that many more must have been required for them to 

 have established in those seats, two thousand leagues apart, 

 splendid and well adjusted monarchies, and to have attained no 

 inconsiderable advance in science and literature, it verily seems 

 counter to all probabilities, if not possibilities, to ascribe their 

 origin to that lone Ark which rested but forty-two centuries 

 ago on the summit of Mount Ararat. 



Thus have we traced the characteristics of races back through 

 all historic time, and in all probability beyond the age when 

 righteous Noah was selected to be the head of a favored line. 

 It remains for us to consider if even further we may not peer 

 into the dark night of antediluvian ages. 



All history, sacred and profane, as well as tradition running far 

 back of this, establishes the fact that from time immemorial 

 there has reigned from the Nile to the Hoang Ho, over one-fourth 

 of the earth's circumference, the same peculiar culture, stamped 

 with such a striking unity as to be remarked by every antiquary 

 from Herodotus to the present time. Throughout the realms of 

 China, India, Assyria, and Egypt, they have found, ever prevail- 

 ing, the same dogmas in philosophy and religion, the same 

 institutions and superstitions, the same knowledge in the sciences 

 and advance in the arts.* Not only were years and cycles 

 similarly apportioned in many of those nations, but even weeks 

 were divided alike, and days named after the planets ranged in 

 precisely the same arbitrary order, f Such coincidences have 

 compelled all to assign to ancient civilization a common origin. 

 Is then this origin indigenous or foreign? 



That there has been no intercourse between these nations since 

 the earliest records of history, we have abundant evidence. And 

 that there was none previously is shown by the fact, that while 

 the languages in common use in the Old Empires had no simi- 

 larity whatever and the literature in those languages was wholly 



* Prichard, vol. 2, p. 103. 



f Ty tier's Univ. Hist., Harper's Fam. Lib. ed., vol. 5, p. 67. 



