322 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 
he neither possessed human speech, nor those sympa- 
thetic and moral feelings which in a greater or less 
degree everywhere now distinguish the race. Just in 
proportion as these truly human faculties became deve- 
loped in him, would his physical features become fixed 
and permanent, because the latter would be of less im- 
“portance to his well being; he would be kept in har- 
mony with the slowly changing universe around him, 
by an advance in mind, rather than by a change in 
body. If, therefore, we are of opinion that he was not 
reallyman till these higher faculties were fully deve- 
loped, we may fairly assert that there were many ori- 
ginally distinct races of men; while, if we think that 
a being closely resembling us in form and structure, 
but with mental faculties scarcely raised above the 
brute, must still be considered to have been human, 
we are fully entitled to maintain the common origin of 
all mankind. 
The Bearing of these Views on the Antiquity of 
Man. 
These considerations, it will be seen, enable us to 
place the origin of man at a much more remote geo- 
logical epoch than has yet been thought possible. He 
may even have lived in the Miocene or Eocene period, 
when not a single mammal was identical in form with 
any existing species. For, in the long series of ages 
during which these primeval animals were being slowly 
changed into the species which now inhabit the earth, 
the power which acted to modify them would only 
