Families of Nations. 



4-83 



This mode of reafoning I have adopted, not from any affectation (as you will do 

 me the juftice to believe) of a fcientifick diction, but for the fake of concife- 

 nefs and variety, and from a wifh to avoid repetitions j the fubftance of my 

 argument having been detailed in a different form at the clofe of another dif- 

 courfe ; nor does the argument in any form rife to demonftration, which the 

 queftion by no means admits : it amounts, however, to fuch a proof, grounded 

 on written evidence and credible teflimony, as all mankind hold fufficient for 

 decifions affecting property, freedom, and life. 



Thus then have we proved, that the inhabitants of Afia y and confequently, 

 as it might be proved, of the whole earth, fprang from three branches of one 

 ftem : and that thofe branches have fhot into their prefent ftate of luxuriance 

 in a period comparatively fhort, is apparent from a fact univerfally acknow- 

 ledged, that we find no certain monument, or even probable tradition, of nati- 

 ons planted, empires and ftates raifed, laws enacted, cities built, navigation im- 

 proved, commerce encouraged, arts invented, or letters contrived, ' above 

 twelve or at moft fifteen or fixteen centuries before the birth of Christ, and 

 from another fact, which cannot be controverted, that feven hundred or a 

 thoufand years would have been fully adequate to the fuppofed propagation, 

 diffufion, and eftablifhment of the human race. 



The molt ancient hiftory of that race, and the oldert compofition perhaps 

 in the world, is a work in Hebrew, which we may fuppofe at firft, for the 

 fake of our argument, to have no higher authority than any other work of 

 equal antiquity, that the refearches of the curious had accidentally brought 

 to light : it is afcribed to Musah ; for fo He writes his own name, which, 

 after the Greeks and Romans, we have changed into Moses ; and, though it 

 was manifeftly his object to give an hiftorical account of a fingle family, he 



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