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proof that the world was peopled from different centres, which became 
scattered in different places ; and from which I conceive the varied races 
of mankind to have descended. But the principal object which I had 
in view in rising was to direct your attention to the fact that it is generally 
considered that the source of the human family was created in a com- 
paratively recent age ; whereas it appears to me, from a study of the 1st 
chapter of Genesis, that the whole earth was peopled at a much earlier 
period than the Adamic age, and that it was peopled in different centres. I 
do not mean to say that the population was entirely spread over it, but that 
there were different centres of the human family ; and it is particularly 
observable that in the tropical regions we have black races of wholly 
different kinds. I cannot and will not believe that they could possibly 
have come from the same stock. There must have been different individual 
stocks. I am pleased with the paper ; it is on a subject into the details of 
which we cannot enter without due caution and anxious study ; but I would 
suggest, from the considerations which I have now thrown out, whether it is 
not probable that there was a much earlier state of creation, so far as con- 
cerns mankind, than what is usually believed. I view the creation of Adam 
as the creation of one source of a human family alone. The object of this 
creation was restrictive : their penalties were greater, and those penalties 
were entirely restricted to them ; but, for fear I should call up Mr. Reddie 
again, I will simply say that the consideration of the subject of the age at 
which mankind was created must, I think, lead us to the conclusion that the 
period must be antedated in reference to the period of the creation of the 
paradisaic Adam. 
Mr. Reddie. — I cannot help thinking that the learned professor has failed 
to appreciate the issue which is raised in the paper under discussion. 
Unquestionably Mr. Titcomb was not likely to be ignorant of the fact that 
there exists what has been termed a pre- Adamite theory of the creation of 
mankind, and that one portion of that theory is that the human species 
sprang not from one common father of us all, but from various centres of 
creation ; because the whole object and tendency of the paper is to prove 
that that pre- Adamite theory is not so probable as the other theory that all 
mankind has sprung from one common origin. It was not intended to-night to 
discuss the Scriptural argument or the Scriptural view of the creation of man, 
but, simply taking the facts as we have them, of the existence of black races, 
white races, yellow races, and red races, to show, by pointing to a community 
cf customs and to a community of language, and by proving the existence of 
opportunities of migration, that mankind, as now spread over all the world, 
with all these various diversities, may (as we have been recently taught in 
very learned quarters on physiological grounds) still have been dev eloped from 
a single pair ; and that the facts as we find them are not at all incompatible 
with the account of the origin of mankind as described in the Scriptures. 
Mr. Titcomb’s object was to show from all these various arguments what is 
the most probable belief as regards the distribution of the human family, and 
therefore I think that we cannot to-night enter into any mere exegesis of the 
