an assumption for which there is no evidence whatever,
and which leads at once to the admission that the diversity
among animals is not an original one, nor their distribution
determined by a general plan, established in the
beginning of the Creation; ■— or,
2d. We must acknowledge that the diversity among animals
is a fact determined by the will of the Creator, and their
geographical distribution part of the general plan which
unites all organized beings into one great organic conception
: whence it follows that what are called human
races, down to their specialization as nations, are distinct
primordial forms of the type of man,.
The consequences of the first alternative, which is contrary to all
the modern results of science, run inevitably into tbe Lamarkian
development theory, so well known in thi§, country through the
work entitled “ Vestiges of Creation;” though its premises are generally
adopted by those who would shrink from the conclusions to
which they necessarily lead.
Whatever be the meaning of the coincidence alluded to above,
it must in future remain an important element in ethnographical
studies; and no theory of the distribution of the races of man, and
of their migrations, can be satisfactory hereafter, which does not
account for that fact.
We may, however, draw already an important inference from this
investigation, which cannot fail to have its influence upon the
farther study of the human races: namely, that the laws which
regulate the diversity of animals, and their distribution upon earth,
apply equally to man, within the same limits and in the same degree;
and that all our liberty and moral responsibility, however spontaneous,
are yet instinctively directed by tbe All-wise and Omnipotent,
to fulfil the great harmonies established in Nature.