xlvi INTRODUCTION. 



sprung from the loins of the same parents, or been called 

 into existence in different regions contemporaneously, or at 

 different epochs, though continually mixed with the question 

 as to the identity of the species, is in no respect necessarily 

 involved in it. Although we see far greater differences in the 

 characters of animals produced by agencies which we can 

 trace than in the different races of mankind, and therefore 

 may reasonably believe that all men have proceeded from a 

 common centre, and then have assumed, in the course of 

 great periods of time, the characters which they now retain, 

 yet this does not resolve the question as to which was the 

 mode which the Creator, in his infinite wisdom, ordained for 

 peopling the earth which he had called into existence ; whe- 

 ther, by diffusing the species from one region of the earth, 

 or from more than one. We are not entitled to assume 

 that identical species cannot have been called into existence 

 in different regions of the globe, either at the same or at 

 different times. We know nothing of Creation, whatever 

 fancies we may build up on our assumed knowledge. We 

 may imagine that we can observe something of the first ap- 

 pearance of life, as in the fungus, when it multiplies its or- 

 ganized cells at the rate of some millions in an hour, or in 

 the globules of the chyle, which, in their passage to the heart, 

 become organized beings ; but of the modes or times in which 

 species first manifest themselves in any given place, we are 

 as ignorant as of the laws which determine species to their 

 allotted forms. We may suppose that different parts of the 

 world have produced identical species, as much as that differ- 

 ent parts of the world have produced different species ; and 

 it were absurd to seek to limit, as it were, the Creative power 

 to our narrow conceptions, by arguing that, under the same 

 laws by which unlike animals have been called forth in dif- 

 ferent parts of the world, the like animals cannot have been 

 so. It is no solution of the problem regarding the origin of 

 man, to adopt, as has been recently done, peculiar definitions 

 of the term species, as that a species consists of the like ani- 



