48 
YERTEBRATA. 
Formed for the regions they inhabit, and not hy them, the true circumstances of their primordial 
rise are lost in the night of unrecorded ages. 
"But supposing that the negroes, or tliat any ■well-defined races of mankind, be aboriginal, it 
docs not follow that their specific identity "with other races is therefore nullified. That they are 
of the same species with the other families of mankind, according to the received ideas of species, 
every circumstance tends to establish ; nor does this admission interfere in one way or another 
with the question either as to their aboriginal creation, or as to their assumption at some unknown 
period of their distinguishing characteristics. If, by the command of the Creator, the earth be- 
came covered with grass and herbage — if forests sprung up on the hills — then must millions of 
the same species of the vegetable kingdom have simultaneously acquired existence ; there is there- 
fore little to startle us in the admission that such may have been the case also with respect to the 
animal kingdom."* 
Finally, we may remark, that the important assumption, so powerfully argued by Prichard, that 
the psychological nature of all races is essentially the same in all nations and tribes, is flatly 
denied. " There exists," says Dr. Nott,f " not the slightest unity of thought on these recondite 
points," — ^the existence of God and a future state. " Some beHeve in one God ; the greater num- 
ber in many : some believe in a future state, while others have no idea of a Deity, nor of the life 
hereafter. Many of the African and all Oceanic negroes possess only the crudest and most grovel- 
ing superstitions." 
Such is a brief outline of some of the leading arguments in favor of the diversity of origin in 
the human race. It is not to be denied that there is great force in these suggestions. It is due 
to truth also to say, that this doctrine is already maintained by some of the ablest naturalists and 
archa3ologists of the age, while the oj^inion of its correctness is doubtless becoming more and more 
extensive. 
The friends of Christianity have regarded this state of things with some alarm, as it seems to 
be antagonistical to the Bible, which asserts the descent of all mankind from a single pair. 
In reply to this, on the part of those who hold the contrary opinion, it is said that they by no 
means attempt to undermine the religious force of the sacred writings. They hold that it was not 
the purpose of Revelation to instruct mankind in natural science. In respect to subjects of this 
nature, they conceive that the authors of the Bible spoke as things appeared to their minds, within 
the range of their knowledge and -experience. As the writer of the Pentateuch was acquainted 
only with the geography of a very limited portion of Asia and Africa, it was the whole world to 
him, and to this, therefore, we are to suppose his historical and descriptive passages refer. This, it 
is urged, is in fact no new opinion, it having been held by some of the early fathers of the church, 
and even by theologians of more modern date. Thus, in respect to the deluge, they regarded 
it as confined to that portion of Asia known to the patriarchal ages. These deemed it incredible 
that Noah could have brought into the ark a pair of every species of animals, including those of 
America, Oceanica, Europe, and Africa — countries wholly unknown to him and to the people of 
his age and nation. They held that the ark could by no possibility^; have contained the countless 
species of the animal kingdom, and hence it is asserted that the Scriptures rather derive strength 
from an interpretation which confines the animals that the ark contained to those known in the 
region of the Euphrates, as any other view renders the whole account alike incredible and impos- 
sible. In short, the propagators of these new doctrines hold that the question under discussion is 
not theological, but scientific, as either conclusion leaves the great moral and religious doctrines 
of the Bible equally binding upon the consciences of mankind. 
* Martin's Natural History of Man and Monkeys." 
t See "Types of Mankind," p. 4(52. 
X Some persons have attempted to explain the Mosaic account of the preservation of every species of animal in 
the ark, by supposing that only types of tlie several kinds were saved, and that the present diversity is the result 
of a principle of development inherent in the nature of all created things, animal and vegetable — a system of philos- 
ophy which was popularized in some degree by the author of "Vestiges of Creation," a few years since. Besides 
other fatal objections to this theory, tliere is this, in respect to animal and vegetable life, that during the five or six 
thousand years in which history instructs us, we have not a single instance or example in which a plant or animal 
has permanently changed its species, or shown any tendency to such a result. 
