

DIVISIONS OF T1IE ANIMAL KINGDOM. xlvii 



mals proceeding from the same stock, or, in other words, from 

 the same individual or pair of individuals. For this is not a 

 logical definition, but a proposition, which itself involves the 

 very question at. issue. It may be believed by every one 

 that all men fall within the limits of the same specific form ; 

 but it were to reason in a circle, to define species as being 

 the like animals derived from a common stock, and thence to 

 infer that all men are derived from a common stock, because 

 they are like one another. All that we know of species, it 

 has been said, is the similarity of the characters which we 

 call specific, to which we may add the possession of a power, 

 which we observe in all known species, to reproduce creatures 

 possessing the like characters. But there is nothing in any 

 known phenomena of the organic kingdom to shew, that in 

 the animal any more than in the vegetable kingdom, it is a 

 law of nature, that animals which fall within the limits of 

 what we regard as the same specific form, must have been 

 derived from a common stock. 



We can know nothing, then, by means of the unassisted 

 reason, of the production of the human species ; and if we 

 are permitted to reason concerning the times and modes of 

 its diffusion over the earth, we must call to our aid analogy 

 and reasonable probabilities, unless we are to assume that 

 the dispersion of man was itself a miracle, exempt from the 

 common course of natural events. It were rash, nay, impi- 

 ous, to assert that man could not be, or has not been, called 

 into existence in one part of the earth's surface, and dis- 

 persed, as from a common centre, to all the parts of the 

 world which he now inhabits. But treating the question as 

 one on which we may lawfully employ our judgment, it is 

 reasonable to inquire whether it be more consonant with the 

 known course of natural events to infer that different races 

 of men though within the limits of the same specific form,and 

 so creatures of the same kind had been called forth in differ- 

 ent regions of the earth to occupy it, or that one race only, 

 and this produced in a single spot of a boundless surface, had 



