OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



201 



the red or copper-coloured tribes with lank hair, which have of late years been 

 traced in particular parts of Africa. It is also probable that Australia has in 

 like manner been peopled by successive waves of rovers from both these 

 continents : for we trace proofs of both sources, sometimes separate, and 

 sometimes mixed. But the theories that have been offered upon this subject are 

 too numerous, and for the most part too fanciful for a minute detail, and belong 

 rather to the geographer than to the physiologist. 



There are some philosophers who have assigned several other distinctive 

 characters to the different faaiilies of mankind than any thus far dwelt upon ; 

 and which are chiefly derived from the stature, the shape of a particular limb, 

 or the intellect: thus the gigantic height of the Palagonian has been adverted 

 to as a very prominent feature ; the pigmy form of the Esquimaux ; and the 

 still more pigmy form of the Kimos of Madagascar, if any reliance may be 

 placed on the testimony of Commerson, now that it has been corroborated by 

 Modave, and still more lately by the Abbe de Roclion ; the curved leg of the 

 Calmuc race ; the long leg of the Indian ; and the high calf and flat foot of 

 the Ethiopian. But it appears to me that all such distinctions are upon too 

 narrow a scale, and perhaps too much dependent upon particular circumstances, 

 for an admission into the lines of a broad and original demarcation. To the 

 different powers of the intellect, M'hich are still less to the point than even 

 these corporeal peculiarities, I shall have occasion to advert presently. 



Omitting, then, the consideration of these subordinate points, whence have 

 proceeded those striking and far stronger characteristics which we have 

 noticed in the preceding divisions 1 Are the different distributions of man 

 mere varieties of one common species, or distinct species merely connected 

 under an imaginary genus 1 Has the human race proceeded from one source 

 or from many ] 



In a country professing the Christian religion, and appealing to the records 

 of Moses, as an established and veritable authority, I ought, perhaps, to blush 

 at proposing such a question in public : but the insinuations which have in 

 various ways been thrown out against this authority demand it, and I hasten 

 to rescue, so far as I am able, the first and most interesting account we pos- 

 sess of the creation of man, from the philosophical doubts which have been 

 thrown upon it, and to reconcile it with the natural history of man in our 

 own day. 



The Mosaic statement has met with two distinct classes of opponents, each 

 of which has pretended to a different ground of objection. The one has re- 

 garded this statement as altogether untrue, and never intended to be believed; 

 as a mere allegory or fiction ; — a beautiful mythos often indulged in by other 

 oriental writers in the openings of their respective histories ; — as an enliven- 

 ing frontispiece to a book of instruction. The other class has been in some 

 degree more guarded in its attack; and has rather complained that the state- 

 ment is inexplicit than that it is untrue. These last philosophers have found 

 out that in its common interpretation it does not accord with the living vo- 

 lume of nature ; and they hence contend that the common interpretation is 

 incorrect; they perceive, or think they perceive, a variety of chasms in the 

 sacred text which it is necessary to fill up before it can be made to harmo- 

 nize with natural facts and appearances. 



At the head of the former class stand the names of some of the first natu- 

 ral historians and scholars of modern times, as Linnaeus, Buffon, Helvetius, 

 Monboddo, and Darwin. And from whom do these philosophers, thus de- 

 parting from the whole letter and spirit of the Mosaic history, pretend to de- 

 rive the race of man ] The four former from the race of monkeys ; and the 

 last, to complete the absurdity, from the race of oysters ; for Dr. Darwin se- 

 riously conjectures that as aquatic animals appear to have been produced be- 

 fore terrestrial, and every living substance to have originated from a form or 

 nucleus exquisitely simple and minute, and to have been perpetually 

 developing and expanding its powers, and progressively advancing towards per- 

 fection, man himself must have been of the aquatic order on his first creation : 

 at that time, indeed, imperceptible from his exility, but in process of years, 



