VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 445 



statement of holy writ, but I shall of course detail the arguments 

 quite independently of this consideration.* 



A priori, I think, the universal simplicity of nature's causes 

 would induce us to imagine that, as, if the varieties among us 

 are accidental, two individuals were evidently sufficient for the 

 production of the rest of mankind, no more than two were ori- 

 ginally created. Nor can I conceive it possible to deduce a con- 

 trary presumptive argument from the length of time during 

 which immense portions of the earth must have thus remained 

 unpeopled. One of nature's objects seems the existence of as 

 much successive life as possible, whether animal or vegetable, 

 throughout the globe. For this purpose every species of animal 

 and vegetable possesses an unlimited power of propagation, ca- 

 pable of filling the whole world, were opportunity afforded it. 

 The opportunities of exertion are indeed very scanty, compared 



hypocrisy, of many who profess it, and to suspend their hostility to the religion 

 of Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Milton, till they have dispassionately studied at 

 least the four gospels, and the works of Bishops Butler and Watson, of 

 Archdeacon Paley, Dr. Chalmers, and Mr. Leslie. 



I never met with a sceptic who would pretend to any acquaintance with the 

 overpowering evidences of Christianity. " Hume owned to a clergyman in the 

 bishopric of Durham, that he had never read the New Testament with attention." 

 (Boswell's Life of Johnson. Vol. ii. p. 7. fifth edition.) 



The depravity of too many young persons who, in their ingenuous admira- 

 tion of some men of talent, have blindly adopted their scepticism, forgetting 

 that knowledge of one subject does not imply knowledge of others or freedom 

 from prejudice and vanity, is unhappily notorious. 



* All the brutes of each species appear descended from one stock, for the 

 brutes of the old and new world arc all of distinct species, excepting in the 

 northern regions, where a communication is very explicable. The same is 

 true of the brutes of the arctic and antarctic regions : prevented, like the 

 more equatorial brutes of the two hemispheres, by the intermediate climate, 

 from communicating with each other, they are all of distinct species. In 

 islands remote from continents, either no quadrupeds are found, or such as 

 may have been conveyed thither, or such as are different from any others ; 

 while in islands near continents, the quadrupeds are the same as in the 

 neighbouring country. Thus point is ably handled by Dr. Prichard, 1. 1. 



