584 ERA OF MIND. 



or of an age in any history, it is not right to look to its beginning, 

 when the past and future are commingled and the progressing 

 stages are obscured, but onward to a time when the past has faded 

 and the age stands forth in its own true characters. Thus viewed, 

 the Cenozoic and present eras stand widely apart. Both are, ap- 

 proximately, on the same broad foundation of the lower orders of 

 life. But, while the former rises to an eminence in the size and 

 ferocit}* - of its higher brute races, the latter — with more adornment 

 in its tribes, as we may believe, and less bulk by three-fourths in its 

 largest animals, as we know, — with an assemblage of life stripped 

 largely of the animal, — noted neither for Leviathan reptiles, like 

 the meridian of the Mesozoic era, nor for great beasts of prey, like 

 the Cenozoic — culminates in Man, with whom all is in harmony. 

 It has its true affiliation not so much with the past as with the 

 unending future. 



Man of one species. — This oneness of species is sustained by the fol- 

 lowing considerations: — 



(1.) The fact of an essential identity among men of all races in 

 physical and mental characteristics. 



(2.) The capability of an intermixture of races with continued 

 fertile progeny. The inferior race in case of mixture with a superior 

 may dwindle, the people becoming from their position discouraged, 

 debased, and, in their poverty and superstition, an easy prey to dis- 

 ease ; and it may possibly die out, as the weaker weeds disappear 

 among the strong-growing grass : such decay is hence no evidence 

 that there is a natural limit to the fertility of " mixed breeds," as 

 some have urged. 



(3.) Among Mammals, the higher genera have few species, and 

 the highest group next to Man, that of the Ourang-outang, contains 

 only eight ; and these eight belong to two genera,— -Jive of them to 

 the genus Pithecus, of the East Indies, and three to the higher genus 

 Troglodytes, of Africa. Analogy requires that Man should here have 

 pre-eminence. If more than one species be admitted, there is 

 scarcely a limit to the number that may be made. 



The investigations of Darwin on the variations of species, and 

 other facts of like character, set aside objections to an origin from 

 one stock arising from the diversities of the races. 



These are some of the reasons for believing that Man stands 

 alone — the one sole species—at the head of the kingdoms of life. 



Origin on only one of the two great continents. — Among the higher 

 Mammals no species is known to have existed originally within the 

 tropics or temperate zones on both the oriental and occidental con- 

 tinents (the former including Europe, Asia, and Africa, the latter, 



