10 



place) ; whilst in more genial climates, where the spontaneous 

 productions of nature were sufficient for the support of mankind, 

 the absence of motives for exertion would lead to the total de- 

 clension of their debased inhabitants, so that at length they 

 would become almost assimilated with the brute creation. 



The hypothesis which is thus advocated removes very many 

 of the difficulties which, under the opposite one, have attended 

 the consideration of primeval history; and it more especially 

 accounts for the existence, in the earliest ages, of nations whose 

 civilization and power, even allowing to them the utmost preco- 

 city, were always incompatible with what was conceived to have 

 been at the same periods the state of society generally. 



A still more important result is, that we have afforded to us 

 a satisfactory means of explaining the existence of the various 

 diversities in the human species ; which diversities, so far from 

 being referrible to any permanent distinctive characters, or even 

 to the action of climate and other physical causes alone, must 

 principally be derived from the operation of changes in the 

 moral and intellectual state of the various races. Indeed, it must 

 never be lost sight of, that man is a reasonable being and not a 

 mere animal ; and that consequently it is absolutely necessary, 

 in all investigations of his natural history, to consider him not 

 physically only, but also psychologically. 



Upon the hypothesis, then, that the origin of the numerous 

 and widely differing races of man is to be referred to a single 

 parent stock possessed of a high degree of cultivation, the fol- 

 lowing principle presents itself: namely. That (allowing for cir- 

 cumstances by which the progress of deterioration may have 

 been accelerated or retarded or otherwise modified) the culture 

 or the degradation of an aboriginal race* will be in proportion 

 to the geographical distance of its residence from the common 

 centre of dispersion. For example, if we take the primitive 

 residence of the post-diluvian race to have been in the north- 

 western portion of Mesopotamia, — the reasons for which location 

 are given at length in the workf of which this paper is designed 



* By the term " aboriginal race " is simply meant the people who were 

 the earliest inhabitants of any country. 



f Origines Biblicse, or Researches in Primeval History, vol. i. London, 1834. 



