OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 505 



Asiatic and American continents ; and also against the possibility of his having 

 reached the American continent before the epoch of the tribal organization. It 

 may be said that if these causes produced the system once they might again. This 

 is true, but it involves a further condition that two primitive families in discon- 

 nected areas shall have their lives through unnumbered ages graduated to the 

 same experiences. Without pursuing other branches of the argument, I may con- 

 fidently leave the conclusion of the Asiatic origin of the Ganowanian family to 

 turn upon the naked question of the probability or improbability of the production 

 of the system in America by natural growth, from suggestions springing from the 

 nature of descents, its antecedent existence in Asia having been established. If 

 the two families commenced on separate continents in a state of promiscuous inter- 

 course, having such a system of consanguinity as this state would beget of the 

 character of which no conception can be formed, it would be little less than a 

 miracle if both should develop the same ultimate system of relationship. Upon 

 the doctrine of chances it is not supposable that each would pass through the same 

 experience, develop the same series of customs and institutions, and finally pro- 

 duce for themselves the same system of consanguinity, which would be found, on 

 comparison, to be identical in radical characteristics, as well as coincident in minute 

 details. A slight divergence in customs, an imperfect development of a particular 

 institution, or a difference in social condition would be apt to be represented by 

 corresponding divergencies in their respective systems of relationship. And finally, 

 from what is known of the mode of propagation of the system in different stocks 

 of the same family, and of its power of self-perpetuation when once established, 

 the hypothesis of its transmission with the blood from a common original source 

 is found to be both adequate and satisfactory ; thus leaving no occasion for the 

 violent hypothesis under discussion. It remains to consider this final proposition. 

 4. By transmission with the blood from a common original source. If the four 

 hypotheses named cover and exhaust the subject, and the first three are incapable 

 of explaining the present existence of the system in the two families, then the 

 fourth and last, if capable of accounting for its transmission, becomes transformed 

 into an established conclusion. Its joint possession by the Turanian and -Gano- 

 wanian families having been demonstrated, and no causes adequate for its repeated 

 reproduction either in the same, or in disconnected areas, being found it follows 

 that it is only necessary to find an instrumentality capable of its propagation, from 

 a single beginning, to conclude the discussion. When such a vehicle is found, it 

 yields a solution of the problem. The system once established finds in the diverg- 

 ing streams of the blood an instrument and a means for its transmission through 

 periods of indefinite duration. As these innumerable lines ascend through the 

 ages they converge continually until they finally meet in a common point, and 

 whatever was in the original blood, capable of flowing in its currents, was as cer- 

 tain to be transmitted as the blood itself. Could anything have existed in the 

 ancient human brain more likely to follow down in these streams of existence, 

 through all vicissitudes, than those simple ideas, in their fixed relations, by which 

 man sought to distinguish his several kinsmen 1 These ideas were seeds planted 

 in the beginning, and perpetually germinating. Language has rolled along 



64 May, 1870. 



