432 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



American Institute Polytechnic Association, ) 

 Sejitember \^th, I8G0. ) 



Chairman, S.' D. Tillman, Esq.; Secretary, Thomas M. Adriance. 

 Dr. E. P. Stevens read the following paper on the 



Origin of the Human Race. 



The endowment of matter with the prerogative of life, and the transmis- 

 sion of it, in a succession of varied phases, through successive generations, 

 is one of those mysterious questions, which owing to the absence of the 

 necessary data for a successful solution of the question, or the limitation 

 of his powers, may never be definitely settled by Man. 



The interest attending any attempts to solve the mystery may well ex- 

 cuse the philosopher, who steps aside for a brief space from his severe and 

 more certain studies, and wanders for a season on those shadowy confines 

 separating organic from inorganic matter, and which presents the organic 

 to us in new types and phases. 



These dim confines once passed, the inanimate having once assumed the 

 animate, the latter appear in higher and successive phenomena, until man 

 is the culmination; while the inanimate remain undergoing a round of de- 

 composition and recomposition of pseudomorphs and metaraorphs, but ever 

 essentially the same. 



Why should that succession of phenomena, which we call life appear in 

 the form of orders, classes, genera and species, when individuals are 

 grouped together according to their apparent similarities ? Why should 

 species be reproduced and perpetuated ? What is the cause or causes of 

 their generation ? What is the primal influence deciding the diflerence 

 between individuals by means of which we distinguish one from another, 

 and which l^ecome the characteristic marks of species ? These questions 

 are collateral and incidental to the great question of Like. 



Have groups of individuals, which we term species, possessing certain 

 characteristics, essentially distinct from other groups of individuals, and 

 which characteristics are capable of being transmitted from parent to 

 posterity, been derived from a common 2^^'ogenitor ? And by tracing back 

 the line of succession can w^e find a single source of life ? A comyiwn 

 parentage to all species ? Were the specific characteristics of the first 

 born of each new species, impressed npon it by its immediate ancestor 

 while, in utero? or ovaf or at conception? Or were they developed within 

 itself by the necessities of its conditions, surroundings, and growth ? Or 

 were the eldest born of each species, a distinct creation, by a power out- 

 side of, superior to, and beyond all matter and modification of matter? 



The last great theorist upon these questions, answers the first, by say- 

 ing, that he can trace all existing species to a few common progenitors, 

 and has no doubt, that if all the facts and discoveries in geology and palae- 

 ontology were collated he could fiud a common parentage. 



To this question, in the light of American geology, I purpose to address 

 myself; first premising that the Darwinian Hypothesis explains very satis- 

 factorily, man}' of the puzzles of existing varieties as modified by the 

 plastic power of man. Its great defect, I consider to be, that it makes 

 death the conservator of species, in this " struggle for existence " theory, 



