Critiques and Addresses (Paperback)

Excerpt: ... From the facts of ethnology I now turn to the theories and speculations of ethnologists, which have been devised to explain these facts, and to furnish satisfactory answers to the inquiry-what conditions have determined the existence of the persistent modifications of mankind, and have caused their distribution to be what it is? These speculations may be grouped under three heads: firstly, the Monogenist hypotheses; secondly, those of the Polygenists; and thirdly, that which would result from a simple application of Darwinian principles to mankind. According to the Monogenists, all mankind have sprung from a single pair, whose multitudinous progeny spread themselves over the world, such as it now is, and became modified into the forms we meet with in the various regions of the earth, by the effect of the climatal and other conditions to which they were subjected. The advocates of this hypothesis are divisible into several schools. There are those who represent the most numerous, respectable, and would-be orthodox of the public, and are what may be called "Adamites," pure and simple. They believe that Adam was made out of earth somewhere in Asia, about six thousand years ago; that Eve was modelled from one of his ribs; and that the progeny of these two having been reduced to the eight persons who were landed on the summit of Mount Ararat after an universal deluge, all the nations of the earth have proceeded from these last, have migrated to their present localities, and have become converted into Negroes, Australians, Mongolians, &c., within that time. Five-sixths of the public are taught this Adamitic Monogenism, as if it were an established truth, and believe it. I do not; and I am not acquainted with any man of science, or duly instructed person, who does. A second school of monogenists, not worthy of much attention, attempts to hold a place midway between the Adamites and a third division, who take up a purely scientific position, and...