EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 221 



tion on the borders of India. Standing on that point, it is 

 easy to see how this great section of the human family, 

 originating there, might spread out in different directions, 

 passing into varieties of aspect and of language as they spread, 

 the Malay variety proceeding towards the Oceanic region, 

 the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off the red 

 men as a sub-variety, the European population going off to 

 the north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, 

 towards the countries which they are known to have so long 

 occupied. The Negro alone is here unaccounted for; and 

 that race is the one most likely to have had an independent 

 origin, seeing that it is a type so peculiar in an inveterate 

 black colour, and so humble in development. The traditions 

 of the first section exhibit an agreement with this view of its 

 origin. There is one among the Hindoos which places the 

 cradle of the human family in Thibet ; another makes Ceylon 

 the residence of the first man. 



It is one of those things necessary to complete our view of 

 the world as wholly under law, that civilization should appear 

 to be capable of arising in a natural manner. The tendency 

 of the uninstructed mind is to suppose supernatural causes for 

 such phenomena, and there are even educated persons whose 

 habits of thinking predispose them to take similar views. By 

 one of these it has lately been argued, that facts are in favour 

 of a supernatural origin for civilization. We see, says this 

 authority, many examples of nations falling away from civili- 

 zation into barbarism, while, in some regions of the earth, the 

 history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains 

 of works of art far superior to any which the present unen- 

 lightened inhabitants could have produced. The appearances 

 are therefore in favour of a decline from some great and wide- 

 spread civilization of early times. To this it may be answered 

 that these appearances are partial, compared with what we 

 know from history of an advance and an extension of civiliza- 

 tion from early times. The decadences from civilization in 

 such regions as Medea or Greece are only such local 

 instances of failure or suppression as might be expected when 

 civilization was cradled amidst nations generally barbarous, 



