72 INTRODUCTION. 



the question of the plurality of races is converted into the question 

 whether these varieties :m: species. 



That men are nearly related, physically ami mentally, is no reason 

 why a community of i >uld be claimed for them; we have 



the same near relations among animals, for which community of 

 origin lias never been claimed. For instance, the carnivore all 

 ajrree in peculiar teeth and claws for Beizing their prey; in a short 

 alimentary canal for digesting animal food; in their savagt 

 unsocial dispositions; constituting a natural unity in the animal 

 kingdom, entirely different from that of the qnadrumana, ruminantia, 

 &c. But for all this, who ever derived the wolf, the tiger and the 

 bear from a common stock ? And yet they exhibit closer resemblance 

 of dispositions then the different races of men. Common character 

 does not prove common descent. The species of the genus Felis, 

 so similar in habits and structure, were never supposed to be one 

 and the same species; for the same reason, there may be different 

 species of the genus Homo, as far as this argument is concerned. 



Van Amringe,* speaking of the incompleteness and obscurity of 

 the Mosaic account of the creation of man, asks, whence came Cain's 

 fear that some one, finding him, should slay him, if the only per- 

 sons living, at the death of Abel, were Adam, Eve and himself? 

 and why the reply of the Lord, that " whosoever slaveth Cain, 

 vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold?'' and whence the necessity 

 of putting a mark on him ? Surely his father and mother, and their 

 descendants, would not have killed him. The departure of Cain, 

 his marriage, the birth of his son Enoch, and his building a city, 

 took place before the birth of Seth. the next human being, according 

 to Moses. The intermarriage of the "sons of God" with the 

 " daughters of men*' was the cause of the wickedness punished by 

 the flood. There were also " giants in the earth in those days," 

 who " cannot be referred to Cain as their progenitor, because four 

 generations from Cain are mentioned, among whom there were no 

 giants ; and these are sufficient to cover the whole intermediate time" 

 to the epoch of the flood, [p. 57.] All these point to a race of 

 men independent of Adam. Even though all the descendants of 

 Adam, except Noah and his family, had perished in the flood, there 

 may have been other men, in parts of the earth not reached by the 



* Outline of a New Natural History of Man, founded upon Human Anal- 

 ogies. By W. F. Van Amringe. New York, 1343. 



