can they thus do, inflicting a poisoned wound. Then they had their
fagots in the Place de Grève, and as they could not catch Peyrerius,
the Sorhonne ordered his book publicly burned by the common hangman.
There is something ludicrously pathetic in the manner in which
he addresses his essay to the then-persecuted Jews, with an utinam ex
vobis unus! and adds, “ Hoc mihi certe cum vohis commune est;
quod vitam duco erraticam, quæque parum convenit cum otio medi-
tantis et scribentis.” The press fairly rained replies to this g daring
work, from both Catholic and Protestant writers, hut not one of them
based on scientific grounds, nor, indeed, in the defence of Genesis.
Peyrerius would appear to have confessedly the advantage there. But it
was asserted that the denial of mankind’s .universal descent from the
loins of Adam, militated with the position of the latter as “ federal
head” of the race in the “ scheme of redemption.” The writer’s offence
was purely theological, and hence the charge of Socinianism and the
vehemence with which even a phlegmatic Dutchman could be roused
to hurl at his devoted head the anathema :. Perturbet te Dominus, quia
perturbasti Israelem ! * This excitement over, the subject was heard of
no more until the French writers of the last century again agitated it.
Voltaire repeatedly and mercilessly ridicules the idea of a common
origin. He says- 7-“ Il n’est permis qu’à un aveugle de douter que
les blancs, les Hegres, les Albinos, les Hottentots, les Lappons, les
Chinois, les Américains, soient des races entièrement différentes. ”f
But Voltaire was not scientific, and his opinion upon such questions
would go for nothing with men of science. Prichard therefore sums
up his Matural History of Man, (London, 1845,) with the .final emphatic
declaration “ that all human races are of one species and one
family.” The doctrine of the unity was indeed almost universally
held even hy those commonly rated as “ Deistical” writers. D’Han-
carville, and his fellow dilettanti, will certainly not he suspected of
any proclivity to orthodoxy ; yet, in his remarks upon the wide dissemination
of Phallic and other religious emblems, he gives the
ensuing forcible and eloquent statement of his conviction of the full
historical evidence of unify :—
“ Comme les coquillages et les débris des productions de la mer, qui sont déposés sans
nombre et sans mesure sur toute la surface du globe, attestent qu’à des tems inconnus à
toutes les histoires, il fût occupé et recouvert par les eaux ; ainsi ces emblèmes singuliers,
admis dans toutes les parties de l’ancien continent, attestent qu’à des tems antérieurs à
tous ceux dont parlent les historiens, toutes les nations chez laquelle existèrent ces emblèmes
eurent un même culte, une même religion, une même théologie, et vraisemblablement
une même langage.
* Non-ens Præ-Adamiticum. Sive confutatio vani et Socinizantis cujusdam Somnii, &c.
Autore Antonio Hulsio. Lugd. Batav. mdclvi. f Essai sur les Moeurs, Introd.
J Recherches sur l’origine, l’esprit et les progrès des arts de la Grèce, London, 1785,
Morton was educated in youth to regard this doctrine as a scriptural
verity, and he found it accepted as the first proposition in the existing
Ethnology. As such he received it implicitly, and only abandoned it
when compelled by the force of an irresistible conviction. What he
received in sincerity, he taught in good faith. There can he no doubt
that in that early course of 1830, he inculcated the unity doctrine as
strongly as ever did Prichard.
But this state of opinion could not continue undisturbed. The
wide ethnic diversities which so forcibly impressed one who contemplated
them merely as an historian and critic (as Voltaire), could not
fail to engage the attention of naturalists. The difficulties of the
popular doctrine became daily more numerous and apparent, and it
owed its continued existence, less to any inherent strength, than to the
forbearance of those who disliked to awaken controversy by assailing
it. The ordinary exposition of Genesis it was impossible for naturalists
longer to accept, hut they postponed to the utmost the inevitable
contest. The battle had been fought upon astronomy and gained;
so that Ma pur si muove had become the watchword of the scientific
world in its conflict with the parti prêtre. The Geologists were even
then coming victorious out of the combat concerning the six days of
Creation, and the universality of the Deluge. . The Archaeologists
were at the moment heating down the old-fashioned short chronology.
How another exciting struggle was at hand. Unfortunately it seems
out of the question to discuss topics which touch upon theology without
rousing bad blood. “ Religious subjects,” says Payne Knight,
“ being beyond the reach of sense or reason, are always embraced or
rejected with violence or heat. Men think they Jcnow because they are
sure they feel, and are firmly convinced because strongly agitated.”*
But disagreeable as was the prospect of controversy, it could not he
avoided. It is curious to read Lawrence now, and see how he piles
up the objections to his own doctrine, until you doubt whether he
believes it himself ! The main difficulty concerns a single centre of
creation. The dispersion of mankind from such a centre, somewhere
on the alluvium of the Euphrates, might hé admitted as possible ;
hut the gathering of all animated nature at Eden to he named hy
Adam, the distribution thence to their respective remote and diversified
habitats, their reassembling by pairs and sevens in the Ark, and
their second distribution from the same centre — these conceptions
are what Lawrence long ago pronounced them, simply “ zoologically
impossible.” The error arises from mistaking the local traditions of
a circumscribed community for universal history. As Peyrerius remarked
two centuries ago, “ peecatur non raro in lectione sacrorum
* R. Payne Knight. Letter to Sir Jos.Bankesand Sir Wm. Hamilton, p. 23.