52 THE NOACH1AN FLOOD. 



Mr. Darwin contends? Would not the obvious infer- 

 ence be that Nature had done so, if it were not fancied 

 that such an origin of species was still more repugnant 

 to the Book of Genesis than even a limitation of the 

 area covered by the Flood ? But the Darwinian theory, 

 happily for itself, is not dependent upon any supposition 

 so incredible as one which would warrant us in expect- 

 ing among the descendants, for example, of William the 

 Conqueror, people as little like one another as John Bull 

 and John Chinaman, Uncle Sambo and the last of the 

 Mohicans. There are circumstances of immense weight 

 to convince us that certain marked divisions of mankind 

 originated in the regions which they are now occupying. 

 There are other circumstances preponderating for the 

 common origin of mankind. Darwinism has at length 

 shown how these phenomena can be reconciled, by 

 simply connecting the history of man with that vast 

 duration of life upon the globe which geological science 

 has unveiled. The likenesses among races of men 

 demand a common parentage for all those races ; the 

 unlikenesses can only be accounted for on the view 

 of an isolation immensely protracted of one race from 

 another. Thus the primary origin is common to all; 

 the secondary origin is peculiar to each : but now that 

 the primary origin has been proved to be so vastly 

 more remote than was once supposed, the secondary 

 origin recedes of itself into a far distant past, to give 

 time for differences to arise and develope, since, if 

 the actually existing unlikenesses were only skin-deep, 

 instead of affecting, as they do, the bones of the 



