216 THE ESSENCE OF HUMANITY. 



from which the anthropologist derives his most essential facts, 

 combine in assigning a locality in the North Temperate Zone 

 as the original area of man. We must assume, therefore, that 

 a temperate zone affords more immediately the material con- 

 ditions of human life and welfare. Nevertheless, man has 

 gradually extended the area of his habitation, or temporary 

 occupation, into the Torrid and Arctic Zones ; and as no 

 arguments can be drawn from ethnological science in opposi- 

 tion to the assumption that man — in that gradual advance in 

 power over material nature which is one element of civilisa- 

 tion, along with that increasing elevation of his own energies 

 which his rational consciousness, under the increasing influ- 

 ence of Christianity, secures for him, and which constitutes 

 civilisation properly so called — will at length be enabled, if 

 not continuously to inhabit, at least to (connect and) appro- 

 priate for his benefit every portion of the earth's surface ; and 

 so to fulfil his Creator's reiterated command " To be fruitful 

 and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and 

 have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 

 air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 



7. When man in a proper spirit avails himself of that do- 

 minion over the plants and animals of the globe, bestowed 

 upon him by his and their Creator, he is fulfilling consciously 

 a divine law, similar to, but of higher import than, that law 

 in virtue of which the instinctive consciousness of the animal 

 guides it in availing itself of the vegetables and animals which 

 have been provided as its proper food. 



8. It may not be out of place here to remark, that the 

 instinctive consciousness possessed by man, that the majority 

 of the vegetables and animals which surround him would, 

 under circumstances of privation, afford him subsistence, is in 

 exact accordance with the revealed Record, in which we are 

 informed that man after his creation, and again after the flood, 

 ■was divinely informed by his Maker, that the dominion over 



