had for common basis the dispersion, over the surface of the earth
of the family of Noah.
“ The sciences had, therefore, their point of departure fixed and
determinate ; and around each of them was traced a circle, out of
which it was forbidden to them to issue, under pain of falling
instantly beneath the dread censure of theologers,—who always
possessed, at the service of their notions, whether good or bad
three irresistible arguments, viz., persecution, imprisonment, or the
stake. 26
Thus, then, the doctrine above advocated by the Humboldts is
supported, at the present hour, by the most brilliant Scholarship of
the European eontinent-as might easily be proved through quota,
rions from a hundred recent works. Into parliamentary-stifled
ngland,^ even, the light is beginning to penetrate. For instance
me erudition of M r . S amuel S h a r pe none will contest. To his
Hellenic learning we owe the most critically-accurate translation of
the New Testament27 our language possesses : to him, also, Egyptology,
among other great services, is indebted for the best “History
of Egypt 28 derived from classical sources. His remarks “ on the
Book of Genesis’w bear directly on the subject before us : “We have
no account of when this first of the Hebrew books was written, nor
by whom. It has been called one of the books of Moses; and some
small part of it may have been written by that great lawgiver and
leader of the Israelites. But it is the work of various authors and
various ages. The larger part, in its present form, seems to have
been written when the people dwelt in Canaan and were ruled over
by judges, when Ephraim and Manasseh were chief among the
tribes. But the author may have had older writings to guidé him
m his history. It is evident, also, in numerous places, that other
writers, far more modern, have not scrupled to make their own
additions. We must divide it into several portions, and each portion
will best explain itself.”
Still more recently, an English biblical scholar, of no mean pretensions—
whose gentlemanly temper and pleasant style inspire
regrets that one so truthful should be compelled, owing to the
dreary atmosphere of national prejudices which surrounds him, to
f l “ ° n, . th? r m0graphiCal ° pini0nS °f the Fathers of the Church, compared with the
602° Dootrmes Greece”—Revue des Deux Mondes (S™ série), Paris, 1834; I,
» The New Testament translated from Griesbach's Text. London, 12mo, Moxon 3d ed„
? 856.
28 London, 8vo, Moxon, 1846.
® Sharpe, Historié Notes on the Books of the OU and New Testaments; London 12mo.,
Moxon, 1854; p. 6.
fight, in the cause of plurality of human origins and of diversity of
races, with his visor down—has put forth a volume30 that augurs well
for ethnological progress in Great Britain. The method of argument,
and the majority of facts advanced, will be new, however,
only to the mere reader of English,—two hundred years having
elapsed since P e y r e r t o s 31 started a controversy which, on the continent,
has been prolific enough, down to Fabre d’Olivet and his pupil
Rafiinesque,32 and still later to Klee.33 More recently still, we find
an apposite passage in Dr. August Zeune:34 “ It is known that, after
the uprooting of the several Antilles by the Spaniards, Spanish
ghostly divines palliated the introduction of negro slaves, for the
purpose of working the mines, by the assumption that negroes, as
the descendants of Ham (that is to say, the hlack), who was accursed35
by his father Noah ; because Ham is named in a holy record as
‘slave of all slaves among his brethren.’ * * * A well-known naturalist,
now deceased, held the wondrous opinion that Ham, after his
father had cursed him, became hlack from grief; and was the (Stammvater)
lineal progenitor of the negroes. Which of the three sons of
Noah became Kalmucks ? Genesis indicates three (Menschenschöpfungen)
races, at a much earlier day, in the children of Adam, of the
Elohim, and of the Nephihm, &c. ; so that Adam appears merely as
the stem-f ather of the Iranian race, because Paradise also points to
Armenia [quoting S c h i l l e r , über die erste Menschengesellschaft nach
der Mosaïchen Urkunde]. * * * Inasmuch as, however, according to
the assertion of an admired dramatist, it has not yet occurred to anybody
to sustain that all figs have sprung from a solitary primitive fig,
even as little can any one admit the whole of mankind to be derived
{abstammen) lineally from a single human pair. Wherever the conditions
for life were found, there life has sprung forth.” * * *
Did the limited, size of the present work permit (its previous space
being engrossed by contributions of higher order than polemical dis-
cussions upon the scientific value, in anthropology, of a single nation’s
80 Anonymous— The Genesis of the Barth and of Man: “ A critical examination of the
Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, chiefly with a view to the solution of the question, whether
the Varieties of the Human Species be of more than one origin,” &e. Edited by R e g in a l d
S tuart P o o l e , M. R. S. L., &c. Edinburgh, 12mo, Black, 1856.
81 Prce-Adamites, sive exercitatio super Versibus XII®», XIII®», et XIV'», capitis quinti Epis-
toles D. Pauli ad Romanos, 1655.
2 Langue Hébraïque restituée, Paris, 4to, 1815 ; “ Cosmogonie de Moyse,” pp. 55-8,177-83
^*1-12:—and American Nations.
38 Le Déluge, &e., Paris, 18mo, 1847 ; Chapter III, pp. 192-204.
Uber Schädelbildung zur festem Begründung der Menschenrassen, Berlin 4to 1846-
pp. 2-4. ’ ’ *
85 Similar anti-scriptural notions, so far a,s the Hebrew text is concerned, are entertained
y D r . Wa r d , Natural Hist, of Mankind (Society for promoting Christian knowledge), Lon-
on» I2mo, 1849, p. 195. Compare Types of Mankindf voce KNAdN, pp. 495-8.