EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND 



15? 



fields ready cultivated to yield them food without labor, 

 stores of luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete 

 social enginery for the securing of life and property, — and 

 we shall turn from the whole conceit as one worthy only 

 of the philosophers of Utopia. 



Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might 

 be simple and innocent, while at the same time unskilled 

 and ignorant, and obliged to live merely upon such sub- 

 stances as they could readily procure. The traditions of 

 all nations refer to such a state as that in which mankind 

 were at first: perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an 

 idea which the human mind naturally inclines to form 

 respecting the fathers of the race ; but nothing that we 

 see of mankind absolutely forbids our entertaining this 

 idea, while there are some considerations rather favorable 

 to it. A few families, in a state of nature, living near each 

 other, in a country supplying the means of livelihood 

 abundantly, are generally simple and innocent ; their in- 

 stinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to be very 

 active, although the higher intellect may be dormant. If 

 we, therefore, presume India to have been the cradle of 

 our race, they might at first exemplify a sort of golden 

 age ; but it could not be of long continuance. The very 

 first movements from the primal seat would be attended 

 with degradation, nor could there be any tendency to 

 true civilization till groups had settled and thickened in 

 particular seats physically limited. 



The probability may now be assumed that the human 

 race sprung from one stock, which was at first in a state 

 of simplicity, if not barbarism. As yet we have not seen 

 very distinctly how the various branches of the family, as 

 they parted off, and took up separate ground, became 

 marked by external features so peculiar. Why are the 

 Africans black, and generally marked by coarse features 

 and ungainly forms ? Why are the Mongolians generally 

 yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white ? Why 

 the flat features of the Chinese, the small stature of the 

 Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the lank fea- 

 tures of their descendants, the Americans ? All of these 

 phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the 

 ground of development. We have already seen that various 

 Leading animal forms represent stages in the embryotic 

 progress of the highest — the human being. Our brain 

 goes through the various stages of a fish's, a reptile's, and 



