vn.j METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 1C3 



favour. The whole tendency of modern science is to 

 thrust the origination of things further and further into 

 the background ; and the chief philosophical objection to 

 z\dam being, not his oneness, but the hypothesis of his 

 special creation; the multiplication of that objection 

 tenfold is, whatever it may look, an increase, instead of 

 a diminution, of the difficulties of the case. And, as to 

 the second alternative, it may safely be affirmed that, 

 even if the differences between men are specific, they 

 are so small, that the assumption of more than one 

 primitive stock for all is altogether superfluous. Surely 

 no one can now be found to assert that any two stocks 

 of mankind differ as much as a chimpanzee and an 

 orang do ; still less that they are as unlike as either 

 of these is to any New World Simian ! 



Lastly, the granting of the Polygenist premises does 

 not, in the slightest degree, necessitate the Polygenist 

 conclusion. Admit that Negroes and Australians, Ne- 

 gritos and Mongols are distinct species, or distinct genera, 

 if you will, and you may yet, with perfect consistency, 

 be the strictest of Monogenists, and even believe in Adam 

 and Eve as the primaeval parents of all mankind. 



It is to Mr. Darwin we owe this discovery : it is he 

 who, coming forward in the guise of an eclectic philoso- 

 pher, presents his doctrine as the key to ethnology, and 

 as reconciling and combining all that is good in the 

 Monogenistic and Polygenistic schools. 



It is true that Mr. Darwin has not, in so many words, 

 applied his views to ethnology ; but even he who " runs 

 and reads" the " Origin of Species" can hardly fail to do 

 so ; and, furthermore, Mr. Wallace and M. Pouchet have 

 recently treated of ethnological questions from this point 

 of view. Let me, in conclusion, add my own contribution 

 to the same store. 



I assume Man to have arisen in the manner which I 



