196 



SCIENCE. 



of men represent different species— or, at least, that if 

 Man be defined as one species, it is a species which has 

 spread from more than one place of origin. But those 

 who hold to this idea are men who stand outside the 

 general current of scientific thought. The tendency of 

 that thought is more and more to demand unity and 

 simplicity in our conception of the methods of creation, 

 and of the order of events through which the birth of 

 species has been brought about. So strong is the ten- 

 dency, and so intimately connected is it with the intellec- 

 tual conceptions on which the modern theory of Devel- 

 opment has been founded, that Mr. Uarwin himself, and 

 Mr. Wallace, who may be said to be joint-author with 

 him of that theory, both lay it down as a fundamental 

 postulate, that each new organic Form has originated, 

 and could only originate, at one place. This doctrine is 

 by no means a necessity of thought, nor is it a necessary 

 consequence of the theory of Development. It rests 

 mainly on the doctrine of chances, and that doc- 

 trine may be wholly inapplicable to events which 

 are governed not by accident but by law. It is, 

 however, a postulate of the particular form of that 

 theory which Mr. Darwin has adopted. It is not always 

 easy to reconcile this postulate with the existing distribu- 

 tion over the globe of animal forms. But it is not abso- 

 lutely inconsistent with the facts so far as we know them ; 

 and it is interesting to observe how universally and tacitly 

 it is assumed in all the current explanations of the his- 

 tory of Creation. On this point, therefore, of the unity 

 of Man's origin, those who bow to the authority of the 

 most ancient and the most venerable of traditions, and 

 those who accept the most imposing and the most popu- 

 lar of modern scientific theories, are found standing on 

 common ground, and accepting the same result. 



And when we come to consider a very curious subject, 

 namely, the configuration of the habitable continents of 

 the globe, we find that this configuration stands in a very 

 intelligible relation to the dispersion of Mankind from a 

 single center. If, indeed, we could suppose that the 

 earliest condition of our race was a condition of advanced 

 knowledge in the useful arts, there would be no difficulty 

 to solve. The great oceans of the world are now the 

 easiest highways of travel, and, consequently, of disper- 

 sion. The art and the science of navigation has made 

 them so. But we cannot imagine that this art or this 

 science was known to our forefathers of a very early age. 

 Various means of crossing narrow waters, from the use 

 of solid logs of wood to the use of the same logs when 

 hollowed out, and so to the use of canoes and boats, were 

 in all probability among the very earliest of human in- 

 ventions. But not the less would it have been impossi- 

 ble with these inventions to cross the Atlantic, or the 

 Indian Ocean, or even many of the more limited tracts of 

 sea which now separate so many habitable regions. Some 

 other solution must be found for the problem presented 

 by the fact that the earliest navigators who traversed 

 those seas and oceans have always found the lands on 

 the other side already colonized, and in some cases thickly 

 inhabited by races and nat ; ons which had made consid- 

 erable advances in civilization. Yet, this problem pre- 

 sents no serious difficulty in accepting the unity ot the 

 human race, when it is regarded in the light of physical 

 geography. The distribution of the larger tracts ot land 

 and sea upon our planet is very singular indeed. At- 

 tached to the southern Pole there is no mass of land 

 which stretches so far north as to enter the latitudes 

 which are even moderately temperate. In the centre 

 of the Antarctic Circle there is probably a great conti- 

 nent. But it is a continent where volcanic fires burst 

 here and there through surfaces which are bound in per- 

 petual ice. Round that vast Circle roll the continuous 

 waves of an Ocean vexed by furious storms, and laden 

 with the gigantic wrecks of immeasurable fields and 

 cliffs of ice. In the northern hemisphere, round the Arc- 

 tic Circle, on the contrary, everything is different. There 



I land-masses begin, which stretch southward without a 

 break through all the temperate and through all the tor- 

 I rid zones on both sides of the Equator. Then, again, all 

 l these great continents of the globe, as they extend towards 

 the south, become narrower and narrower, and so tend 

 to become more and more widely separated from each 

 other by vast oceanic spaces. Towards the north, on 

 the contrary, all these continents converge, and at one 

 point, Behring's Straits, they approach so near each other 

 that only a space of some forty miles of sea intervenes 

 ! between them. The result is, that in the northern hemis- 

 1 phere there is either a continued connection by land, or a 

 ! connection severed only by comparatively narrow chan- 

 nels, between all the great inhabited continents of the 

 world. The consequences of this as bearing on the dis- 

 persion of Mankind are obvious at a glance. If, for ex- 

 ample, Man may be supposed to have been born in any 

 part of Western or Central Asia, it is easy to see how his 

 earliest migrations might lead him without serious diffi- 

 culty into every one of the lands in which his children 

 have been actually found. The Indian peninsula was at 

 his feet. A natural bridge, as it were, would enable him 

 to penetrate the Arabian deserts, and would conduct him 

 by the glorious valley of the Nile into the heart of the 

 continent of Africa. Eastwards he had before him the 

 fertile tracts of China, and beyond the narrow passage of 

 Behring's Straits lay that vast continent which, when re- 

 discovered from the West, was called the New World. 

 Again, beyond the southern spurs of the great Asiatic 

 Continent there lay an archipelago of magnificent islands, 

 with comparatively narrow seas between them, and con- 

 nected by a continuous chain with the continental islands 

 of Australasia. The sea-faring habits which would spring 

 up among an insular population, — especially in an archi- 

 pelago where every volcanic cone and every coral reef 

 rising above the waves was rich in the products of a 

 bounteous vegetation, — would soon lead to a rapid devel- 

 opment of the arts of navigation. When these were once 

 acquired, there is no difficulty in accounting for the 

 gradual dispersion of the human race among the beau- 

 tiful islands of the Pacific. Across its comparatively 

 peaceful waters it is not improbable that even rude navi- 

 gators may have made their way at various times to people 

 the western shores of the continent of America. 



It is true indeed that the science of geology teaches us 

 that the distribution of sea and land has been immensely 

 various in different epochs of the unmeasured ages which 

 have been occupied in the formation of our existing world. 

 And it may be urged from this that no argument on the 

 methods of dispersion can be based with safety upon that 

 distribution as it now is. There is not much force, how- 

 ever, in this plea. For it is equally true that the evidence 

 afforded by geology is in favor of the very great antiquity of 

 the principal land-masses, and of the great oceanic hol- 

 lows which now divide them. The antiquity of these is 

 almost certainly much greater than the antiquity of Man. 

 The fauna and the flora of the principal continents indi- 

 cate them to have been separated since a period in the de- 

 velopment, or in the creation of species, long anterior to any 

 probable estimate of the time of Man's appearance. Even 

 if that appearance dates from the Miocene epoch in geol- 

 ogy, — which is an extreme supposition, — no great differ- 

 ence in the problem of the dispersion of our species would 

 arise. Since that time indeed it is certain that great sub- 

 sidences and elevation of land have taken place. But al- 

 though these changes have greatly altered the outlines of 

 sea and land along the shores of Europe and America, 

 there is no reason to believe that they could have materi- 

 ally affected, either injuriously or otherwise, the earlier 

 migrations of Mankind. 



But although the peculiar physical geography of the 

 globe makes it easy to understand how, from a single cen- 

 tre, it must have been quite possible for a creature with 

 the peculiar powers and faculties of Man to distribute 

 himself, as he has actually been found distributed over 



