48 VERTEBRATA. 



Formed for the regions they inhabit, ;iii'l nol hy them, the true circumstances of their primordial 

 rise are lost in the night of unrecorded ages. 



" Bat supposing that the negroes, or that any well-defined races of mankind, be aboriginal, it 

 does not follow that their specific identity with other races is therefore nullified. That they an 

 of the same species with the other families of mankind, according to the received ideas of spi 

 every circumstance tends to establish; nor does this admission interfere in one way or another 

 with the question either as to their aboriginal creation, or as to their assumption at some unknown 

 period of their distinguishing characteristics. It', by the command of the Creator, the earth be- 

 came covered with grass and herbagi — it forests sprung up on the hills — then must millions of 

 the same species of the vegetable kingdom have simultaneously acquired existence ; there is there- 

 fore little to startle us in the admission that such may have been the case also with respect to the 

 animal kingdom."* 



Finally, we may remark, that the important assumption, so powerfully argued by Prichard, that 

 the psychological nature of all races is essentially the same in all nations and tribes, is flatly 

 denied. "There exists," says Dr. Nbtt,f "not the slightest unity of thought on these recondite 

 ■•-.""— the exist nee of God and a future state. "Some believe in one God ; the greater num- 

 ber in many : some believe in a future state, while others have no idea of a Deity, nor of the life 

 hereafter. Many of the African and all Oceanic negroes possess only the crudest and most grovel- 

 inn.- superstitions." 



v ich is a brief outline of some of the leading arguments in favor of the diversity of origin in 

 the human race. It is not to be denied that there is great force in these suggestions. It is due 

 to truth also to say, that this doctrine is already maintained by some of the ablest naturalists and 

 archaeologists of the age, while the opinion of its correctness is doubtless becoming more and more 

 extensive. 



The friends of Christianity have regarded this State of things with some alarm, as it seems to 

 be antagonistic^ to the Bible, which asserts the descent of all mankind from a single pair. 



In reply to this, on the part of those who hold the contrary opinion, it is said that thev by no 

 means attempt to undermine the religious force of the sacred writings. Thev hold that it was not 

 tin' purpose ofRevelation to instruct mankind in natural science. In respect to subjects of this 

 nature, they conceive that the authors of the Bible spoke as things appeared to their minds, within 

 the range of their knowledge and experience. As the writer of the Pentateuch was acquainted 

 only with the geography of a very limited portion of Asia and Africa, it was the whole world to 

 him, and to this, therefore, we are to suppose his historical and descriptive passages refer. This, it 

 is urged, is in fact no new opinion, it having been held by some of the early fathers of the church, 

 and even by theologians of more modern date. Thus, in respect to the deluge, thev regarded 

 it as confined to that portion of Asia known to the patriarchal ages. These deemed it incredible 

 that Noah could have brought into the ark a pair of every species of animals, including those of 

 America, Oceanica, Europe, and Africa — countries wholly unknown to him and to the people of 

 his age and nation. They held that the ark could by no possibility* have contained the countless 

 species of the animal kingdom, and hence it is asserted that the Scriptures rather derive strength 

 from an interpretation which confines the animals that the ark contained to those known in the 

 region f t] (u Euphrates, as any other view renders the whole account alike incredible and impos- 

 sible. In short, the propagators <»f these new doctrines hold that the question under discussion is 

 not theological, but scientific, as either conclusion haves the great moral and religious doctrines 

 of the Bible equally binding upon the consciences of mankind. 



• Martin's ••Natural History of Man and Monkc)*s." 

 t See "Typea of Mankind," p. 162. 



>me persons have attempted to explain the Mosaic aecotmt of the preservation of every species of animal in' 

 the ark, by supposing that only types of the several kin. Is were si i that the present diversity is the result 



of a principle of development inherent in the nature of all created things, animal and vegetable— a system of philos- 

 ophy which was popularized in some degri e by the author of " V I n," a few years since. Besides 

 other fatal obj< s to this t eory, there is this, in respect to animal and vegetable life, tnat during the five or six c 

 thousand years in which history instructs us, we have not a single instai co or example in which a plant or animal- 

 permanently changed its species, or shown any tendency to such a result. 



