OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 503 



truth that the families who now occupy Europe and Asia shared a common expe- 

 rience, and lived in direct relations during the ages of barbarism ; and that they 

 participated in the benefits, to a greater or less extent, of each other's discoveries, 

 customs, and institutions. Another fact seems not less certain, namely, that there 

 is progress in barbarism. With some oscillation forward and backward there is a 

 constant and prevailing tendency upward to a higher and improved condition. 

 This is an inevitable consequence of the development, through reformatory move- 

 ments, of customs and institutions, the benefits of which when once secured were 

 never lost. Their progress may have been substantially imperceptible for ages 

 upon ages ; but any supposed perpetual tendency to relapse into a deeper barbar- 

 ism was permanently arrested by their influence. They were so many sheet anchors 

 against the surging waves of barbarism. Indestructible elements of progress are 

 incorporated in the improvable nature of man. The tribal organization, which 

 was by far the most important reformatory institution conceived in the ages of 

 barbarism, was common alike to the Aryan, Semitic, Uralian, and Turanian families. 

 It originated with some one of their respective ancestral stocks, and was propagated 

 from thence into all the others ; or it may, and it is not a violent supposition, have 

 originated in a primitive family from which they are all alike descended. This 

 gives to the system of relationship an antiquity without known limits, and pro- 

 bably reaching back to a point of time which preceded the independent existence 

 of these families. And yet the tribal organization gave a supplementary part of 

 the system only, the body of it with its displaced portions extending back through 

 unmeasured periods beyond this epoch. If it is now assumed, for the time being, 

 that the Ganowanian family came out of Asia, the period of their migration or 

 expulsion must be fixed long subsequent to the establishment of the tribal organi- 

 zation. The whole period since its first introduction is much too long for the 

 relative conditions of these families at the present time, physical and linguistic on 

 any other assumption. Within its lifetime four great families of mankind, and per- 

 haps a fifth, the Mongolian, have been developed in Asia, with clearly defined lines 

 of separation between them, whilst the American aborigines are still of the same type, 

 and without such marked diversities as to break their ethnic connection. Every fact 

 in man's physical history points to a much longer occupation of the Asiatic continent 

 by man, than of the American. Herein is found an insuperable difficulty in ascrib- 

 ing to the Ganowanian family an occupation of the American continent anterior to 

 or even coeval with the introduction of the tribal organization. It follows that if 

 they came, in fact, from Asia, they must have brought the tribal organization with 

 them, and also the system of relationship then fully developed. The further pro- 

 gress of the argument seems now to be shut in to one of two alternative theories of 

 the origin of the human species. First, that man was created in Asia, and has 

 spread from thence over the surface of the earth ; or, second, that he was created, 

 the same species, several different times in independent zoological provinces. The 

 first theory, as it assumes the Asiatic origin of the Ganowanian family, needs no 

 discussion ; but the second requires some notice. 



Whilst this last theory is open to the objection that it is entirely unnecessary to 

 explain the physical history of man, it will be considered exclusively in its relations 



