204 



ON THE VARIETIES 



have now arranged them, must necessarily have originated from different 

 sources ; and that even the Mosaic account itself will afford countenance to 

 such an hypothesis. 



This ophiion was first stated, in modern times, by the celebrated Isaac Pey- 

 rere librarian to the Prince of Conde ; who, about the middle of last century, 

 contended, m a book which was not long afterward condemned to the tlames, 

 though for other errors in conjunction with the present, that the narration of 

 Moses speaks expressly of the creation of two distinct species of man ;— an 

 elder species which occupied apart of the sixth day's creation, and is related 

 in the first chapter of Genesis ; and a junior, confined to Adam and Eve, the 

 immediate progenitors of the Hebrews to whom this account was addressed ; 

 and which is not referred to till the seventh verse of the second chapter, and 

 even then without any notice of the exact period in which they were formed. 

 After which transaction, observes this writer and those who think with him, 

 the historian confines himself entirely to the annals of his own nation, or of 

 those which were occasionally connected with it. Neither is it easy, they 

 adjoin, to conceive upon any other explanation, how Cain in so early a period 

 of the world as is usually laid down, could have been possessed of the im- 

 plements of husbandry which belonged to him ; or what is meant by the fear 

 he expressed, upon leaving his father's family, after the murder of Abel, that 

 every one who found him M'ould slay him ; or, again, his going forth into 

 another country, marrying a wife there, and building a city soon after ihe 

 birth of his eldest son. 



Now, a cautious perusal of the Mosaic narrative will, I think, incontestably 

 prove that the two accounts of the creation of man refer to one and the 

 same fact, to which the historian merely returns, in the seventh verse of the 

 second chapter, for the purpose of giving it a more detailed consideration ; 

 for it IS expressly asserted in the fifth, or preceding verse but one, as the 

 immediate reason for the creation of Adam and Eve, that at that " time there 

 was not a man to till the ground ;" while, as to the existence of artificers 

 competent to the formation of the first rude instruments employed in hus- 

 bandry, and a few patches of mankind scattered over the regions adjoining 

 that in which Cain resided, at the period of his fratricide, it should be recol- 

 lected that this first fall of man by the hand of man, did not take place till a 

 hundred and twenty-nine years after the creation of Adam : for it was in his 

 one hundred and thirtieth year that Seth was given to him in the place of 

 Abel: an interval of time amply sufficient, especially if we take into consi- 

 deration the peculiar fecundity of both animals and vegetables in their pri- 

 meval state, for a multiplication of the race of man, to an extent of many 

 thousand souls. 



On such a view of the subject, therefore, it should seem that the only fair 

 and explicit interpretation that can be given to the Mosaic instory is, that 

 the whole human race has proceeded from one single pair, or in the words 

 of another part of the Sacred Writings, that God " hath made of one blood 

 all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."* The book of 

 nature is in this as in every other respect in union with that of Revelation: 

 it tells us that one single pair must have been adequate to all the purposes 

 on which this class of philosophers have grounded their objections : and it 

 should be farther observed to them, that thus to multiply causes without ne- 

 cessity ig not more inconsistent with the operations of nature than with ttie 

 principles of genuine philosophy. 



But the question still returns: whence, then, proceed those astonishing 

 diversities among the different nations of mankind, upon which the arrange- 

 ment now offered is founded ] 



The answer is, that they are the effect of a combination of causes; some 

 of which are obvious, others of which must be conjectured, and a few of 

 which are beyond the reach of human comprehension : — but all of which are 

 common to other animals, as well as to man ; for extraordinary as these 



*Acts,xvii. 26. 



