320 



ON THE VARIETIES 



century, contended, in a book wliicli was not long afterwards condemned 

 to the flames, 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 w hich occupied a part of the sixth day's 

 creation, and is related in the first chapter of Genesis ; and a junior, con- 

 fined^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 ob- 

 serve this writer and those who think with him, the historian confines him- 

 self entirely to the annals of his own nation, or of those which were oc- 

 casionally 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 implements of 

 husbandry which belonged to him ; or what is meant by the fear he ex- 

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

 every one who found him would slay him : or, again, his going forth into 

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

 birth of his eldest son. 



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

 testably 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 instru- 

 ments employed in husbandry, and a few patches of mankind scattered 

 over the regions adjoming that in which Cain resided, at the period of his 

 fratricide, it should be recollected 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 

 suflicient, especially if we take into consideration the peculiar fecundity 

 of both animals and vegetables in their primaeval state, for a multipHcation 

 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 history 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 further observed to them, that thus to multi- 

 ply causes without necessity, is not more inconsistent with the operations 

 of nature, than with the principles of genuine philosophy. 



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

 diversities among the ditFerent 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 : 



*Acts, xviii. 26. 



