The Testimony of the Rocks Part 12

_a_, CHAMFERED SCALES. (_Osteolepis._)

_b_, IMBRICATED SCALES. (_Glyptolepis._)

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

In carefully examining, for purposes of restoration, some of the earliest ganoidal fishes, I was not a little impressed by the peculiar mechanical contrivances exhibited in their largely developed dermal skeletons. In some cases these contrivances were sufficiently simple, resembling those which we find exemplified in the humbler trades, originated in comparatively unenlightened ages; and yet their simplicity had but the effect of rendering the peculiarly _human_ cast of the mind exhibited in their production all the more obvious. The bony scales which covered fishes such as the Osteolepis and Diplopterus of the Old Red Sandstone, or the Megalichthys of the Coal Measures, were of considerable ma.s.s and thickness. They could not, compatibly with much nicety of finish, be laid over each other, like the thin h.o.r.n.y scales of the salmon or herring; and so we find them curiously fitted together, not like slates on a modern roof, but like hewn stones on an ancient one. There ran on the upper surface of each, along the anterior side and higher end, a groove of a depth equal to half the thickness of the scale; and along the posterior side and lower end, on the under surface, a sort of bevelled chamfer, which, fitting into the grooves of the scales immediately behind and beneath it, brought their surfaces to the same line, and rendered the s.h.i.+ning coverings of these strongly armed ganoids as smooth and even as those of the most delicately coated fishes of the present day. In the scales of the Celacanth family the arrangement was different. Though exceedingly ma.s.sive in some of the genera, they were imbricated, like those of the Pangolins; and were chiefly remarkable for the combination of contrivances which they exhibited for securing the greatest possible amount of strength from the least possible amount of thickness. The scales of _Holoptychius giganteus_ may be selected as representative of those of the family to which it belonged. It consisted of three plates, or rather, like the human skull, of two solid plates, with a _diploe_ or spongy layer between. The outer surface was curiously fretted into alternate ridges and furrows; and hence the name of the genus,--_wrinkled scale_; and these imparted to the exterior plate on which they occurred, and which was formed of solid bone, the strength which results from a corrugated or fluted surface. Cromwell, in commissioning a friend to send him a helmet, shrewdly stipulated that it should be a "fluted pot;" and we find that the Holoptychius had got the principle of the fluted pot exemplified in the outer plate of each of its scales, untold ages before. The spongy middle plate must, like the diploe of the skull, have served to deaden the vibrations of a blow dealt from the outside. It was a stratum of sand bags piled up in the middle of a plank rampart. Their innermost table was formed, like the outer, of solid bone, but had a different arrangement. It was properly not one, but several tables, in each of which the osseous fibres, spread out in the general plane of the scale, lay at a diverse angle from those of the table immediately in contact with it. The principle was evidently that of the double-woven cloth, or cloth of two incorporated layers, such as _moleskin_, in which, from the arrangement of the threads, what a draper would term the _tear_ of the one layer or fold lies at a different angle in the general fabric from that of the other. We are thus presented, in a single fossil scale little more than the eighth part of an inch in thickness, with three distinct strengthening principles,--the principle of Cromwell's "fluted pot,"--the principle of a rampart lined with plank, and filled with sand bags in the centre,--and the principle of the double-woven fabrics of the "moleskin" manufacturer.[22] The contrivances exemplified in the cuira.s.s of the Pterichthys were scarce less remarkable. It was formed of bony plates, strongly arched above, but comparatively flat beneath; and along both its anterior and posterior rims a sudden thickening of the plates formed a ma.s.sive band, which served to strengthen the entire structure, as transverse ribs of stone are found strengthening Gothic vaults of the Norman age. The scale covered tail of the creature issued from within the posterior rim, which formed around it a complete though irregular ring, arched above and depressed beneath; whereas the anterior rim, to which the head was attached, was incomplete when separated from it. It was, in its detached state, an arch wanting the keystone. A keystone, however, projected outwards from the occipital plate of the head; and, as it had to form at once the bond of connection between the cerebral armature of the creature and its cuira.s.s, and to complete the arch formed by the strengthening belt or rib of the latter, it curiously combined the principle of both the dovetail of the carpenter and the keystone of the mason. Viewed from above, it was a dovetail, forming a strong attachment of the head to the body; viewed in the transverse section, it was an efficient keystone, that gave solidity and strength to the arched belt or rib. Both keystone and dovetail are comparatively simple contrivances; but I know not that they have been united in the same piece, save in the very ancient instance furnished by the strong bony plate which connected the helmet of the Pterichthys with its cuira.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 99.

SCALE OF HOLOPTYCHIUS GIGANTEUS.

(Nat. size.)

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 100.

SECTION OF SCALE OF HOLOPTYCHIUS.

(Mag. eight diameters.)]

A brief anecdote, yet further ill.u.s.trative of the framework of this ancient ganoid, may throw some additional light on what I have ventured to term the _human_ cast of the contrivances exhibited in the organisms of the old geologic ages. After carefully examining many specimens, I published a restoration of both the upper and under side of Pterichthys fully fifteen years ago. The greatest of living ichthyologists, however, misled by a series of specimens much less complete than mine, differed from me in my conclusions; and what I had represented as the creature's under or abdominal side, he represented as its upper or dorsal side; while its actual upper side he regarded as belonging to another, though closely allied, genus. I had no opportunity, as he resided on the Continent at the time, of submitting to him the specimens on which I had founded; though, at once certain of his thorough candor and love of truth, and of the solidity of my data, I felt confident that, in order to alter his decision, it was but necessary that I should submit to him my evidence. Meanwhile, however, the case was regarded as settled against me; and I found at least one popular and very ingenious writer on geology, after referring to my description of the Pterichthys, going on to say that, though graphic, it was not correct, and that he himself could describe it at least more truthfully, if not more vividly, than I had done. And then there followed a description identical with that by which mine had been supplanted. Five years had pa.s.sed, when one day our greatest British authority on fossil fishes, Sir Philip Egerton, was struck, when pa.s.sing an hour among the ichthyic organisms of his princely collection, by the appearance presented by a central plate in the cuira.s.s of the Pterichthys. It is of a lozenge form, and, occupying exactly such a place in the nether armature of the creature as that occupied by the lozenge shaped spot on the ace of diamonds, it comes in contact with four other plates that lie around it, and represent, so to speak, the white portions of the card. And Sir Philip now found, that instead of lying over, it lay under, the four contiguous plates: they overlapped it, instead of being overlapped by it. This, he at once said, on ascertaining the fact, cannot be the _upper_ side of the Pterichthys.

A plate so arranged would have formed no proper protection to the exposed dorsal surface of the creature's body, as a slight blow would have at once sent it in upon the interior framework; but a proper enough one to the under side of a heavy swimmer, that, like the flat fishes, kept close to the bottom;--a character which, as shown by the ma.s.sive bulk of its body, and its small spread of fin, must have belonged to the Pterichthys. Sir Philip followed up his observations on the central plate by a minute examination of the other parts of the creature's armature; and the survey terminated in a recognition of the earlier restoration,--set aside so long before,--as virtually the true one;--a recognition in which Aga.s.siz, when made acquainted with the nature of the evidence, at once acquiesced. Now, here was there a question which had been raised regarding the true mechanism of one of the oldest ganoidal fishes, and settled erroneously on wrong data, again opened up, to be settled anew on one of the most obvious mechanical principles exemplified in the simple art of the slater or tiler. The argument of Sir Philip amounted simply to this:--If the accepted restoration be a true one, then the Creator of the Pterichthys must have committed a mistake in mechanics which an ordinary slater would have avoided; but as the Creator commits no such blunders, the mistake probably occurs in but the restoration. I may mention, that the dorsal surface of this ancient fish had also its central plate,--a lozenge truncated at its two longer ends; and that, moulded to meet the necessities of its position, it was not flat, like the under one, but strongly arched; and that on four of its six sides it overrode by a squamose suture the lower plates with which it came in contact.

These are but humble ill.u.s.trations of the designing principle, as exhibited of old; and yet they impress none the less strongly on that account. Among the many contrivances of the Chinese Museum, to which I have already referred, none seemed more to excite the curiosity of visitors than a set of tall-backed, elaborately carved chairs, exceedingly like those which were used in our own country two centuries ago, and which Cowper so exquisitely describes. For thousands of miles in the wide tract that spreads out between European Christendom and the great wall, the inhabitants squat upon mats or carpets, or loll on divans; and the contrivance of the chair is unknown: it reappears in China, however, and reappears, not as a mere seat or stool, but as, in every bar and limb, the identical chair of Europe arrested a century or two back in its development. And every corresponding tenon and mortise exhibited by the Chinese and European examples of this simple piece of furniture served more forcibly to show an ident.i.ty of character in the minds which had originated them in countries so far apart, than the more elaborate contrivances which, though ill.u.s.trative of the same principles of invention, were less easily understood. It is so with the more simple and familiar instances of adaptation furnished by the works of the Creator. We infer from them, more directly than from the complex mechanisms, that he who wrought of old after the manner of a man must have, in his intellectual character, if I may so express myself, certain man-like qualities and traits. In all those works on Natural Theology that treat, like the work of Paley, on the argument of design, the a.s.sumption of a certain unity of the intellectual nature of the Creator and creature is made, tacitly at least, the basis of all the reasonings; and it is in the cases in which the design is most simple that the argument is most generally understood. It is in the lower _skirts_ of the Divine nature that we most readily trace the resemblance to the nature of man,--an effect, mayhap, of the narrow reach of our faculties in their present infantile state.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 101.

SIGILLARIA GROESERI

(_Coal Measures._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 102.

Fig. 103. Fig. 104.

WHORLED Sh.e.l.lS OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE.[23]]

But the resemblance is not restricted to the constructive department.

Both in the Chinese collection and among the Egyptian antiquities exhibited in the British Museum, I found color as certainly as mechanical contrivance. And the color furnished not only a practical example from both the early and the remote peoples of the same sort of chemical science as exists at the present time among ourselves in our dyeworks and pigment manufactories, but it also showed a certain ident.i.ty with our own of their sense of beauty. The Chinese satins are gorgeous with green, blue, yellow, scarlet, crimson, and purple, and have fringes heavy with thread of gold. Gilding is as common among this distant people as among ourselves, and at once shows a familiarity with the art of the gold beater, and a sensibility to the beauty of a golden surface; and in the painted ornaments I detected the rich tints of vermilion and crimson lake, with the mineral blues, yellows, and greens.

In the Egyptian department, though the blanching influences of three thousand years had dimmed the tints and tarnished the metals, I found evidence of the same regard to hue and l.u.s.tre as exists still in China and among ourselves; all that now pleases the eye in London and Pekin had pleased it in Thebes during the times of the earlier Pharaohs. And just as we infer from the mechanical contrivances of the Creative-Worker that he possesses a certain ident.i.ty of mind in the _constructive_ department with his creature-workers, and this upon the principle on which we infer an ident.i.ty of mind between the creature-workers of China, ancient Egypt, and our own country, seeing that their works are identical, must we not also infer, on the same principle, that he possesses in the _aesthetic_ department a certain ident.i.ty with them also. True, this region of the beautiful, ever surrounded by an atmosphere of obscure, ill-settled metaphysics, is greatly less clear than that mechanical province of whose various machines, whether of Divine or human contrivance, it can be at least affirmed that machines they _are_, and that they effect their purposes by contrivances of the same or of resembling kinds. And yet the appearance in nature, age after age, of the same forms and colors of beauty which man, in gratifying his taste for the lovely in shape and hue, is ever reproducing for himself, does seem to justify our inference of an ident.i.ty of mind in this province also. The colors of the old geologic organisms, like those of the paintings of ancient Egypt, are greatly faded. A few, however, of the Secondary, and even Palaeozoic sh.e.l.ls, still retain the rich prismatic hues of the original nacre. Many of the Tertiary division still bear the distinctive painted spots. Some of the later fossil fishes, when first laid open in the rock, exhibit the pearly gleam that must of old have lighted up the green depths of the water as they darted through. Not a few of the fossil corals preserve enough of their former color to impart much delicacy of tint to the marbles in which they occur. But it is chiefly in form, not in shade or hue, that we find in the organisms of the geologic ages examples of that beauty in which man delights, and which he is ever reproducing for himself. There is scarce an architectural ornament of the Gothic or Grecian styles which may not be found existing as fossils in the rocks. The Ulodendron was sculptured into gracefully arranged rows of pointed and closely imbricated leaves, similar to those into which the Roman architects fretted the torus of the Corinthian order. The Sigillaria were fluted columns ornately carved in the line of the channelled flutes; the Lepidodendra bore, according to their species, sculptured scales, or lozenges, or egg-like hollows, set in a sort of frame, and relieved into k.n.o.bs and furrows; all of them furnis.h.i.+ng examples of a delicate diaper work, like that so admired in our more ornate Gothic buildings, such as Westminster Abbey, or Canterbury and Chichester Cathedrals, only greatly more exquisite in their design and finish. The scroll sh.e.l.ls, a very numerous section of the cla.s.s in the earlier ages, such as Maclurea, Euomphalus, Clymenia, and the great family of the ammonites, were volutes of varying proportions, but not less graceful than the ornament of similar proportions so frequently introduced into Greek and Roman architecture, and of which we have such prominent examples in the capitals of the Ionic, Corinthian, and composite orders. In what is known as the modern Ionic the spiral of the volute is not all on one plane; it is a Euomphalus: in the central volutes of the Corinthian the spiral is an open one; it is a Lituite or Gyroceras: in the ancient Ionic it is either wholly flat, as in Planorbus or the upper side of Maclurea, or slightly relieved, as in the ammonites. There is no form of the volute known to the architect which may not be found in the rocks, but there are many forms in the rocks unknown to the architect. Nor are the spire-like sh.e.l.ls (see Fig. 105) less remarkable for the rich and varied style of their ornamentation than the whorled ones. They are spires, pinnacles, turrets, broaches; ornate, in some instances, beyond the reach of the architect, and ill.u.s.trative, in almost all, of his happiest forms and proportions. We detect among the fossils the germs of numerous designs developed in almost every department of art; but merely to enumerate them would require a volume. One form of the old cla.s.sic lamp was that of the nautilus; another, that of _Gyphaea incurva_; the zigzag mouldings of the Norman Gothic may be found in the carinated oysters of the Greensand; the more delicate frettings of similar form which roughened the pillars of a somewhat later age occur on Conularia and the dorsal spines of Gyracanthus. The old corals, too, abound in ornamental patterns, which man, unaware of their existence at the time, devised long after for himself. In an article on calico printing, which forms part of a recent history of Lancas.h.i.+re, there are a few of the patterns introduced, backed by the recommendation that they were the most successful ever tried. Of one of these, known as "Lane's Net," there sold a greater number of pieces than of any other pattern ever brought into the market. It led to many imitations; and one of the most popular of these answers line for line, save that it is more stiff and rectilinear, to the pattern in a recently discovered Old Red Sandstone coral, the _Smithia Pengellyi_. The beautifully arranged lines which so smit the dames of England, that each had to provide herself with a gown of the fabric which they adorned, had been stamped amid the rocks _eons_ of ages before. And it must not be forgotten, that all these forms and shades of beauty which once filled all nature, but of which only a few fragments, or a few faded tints, survive, were created, not to gratify man's love of the aesthetic, seeing that man had no existence until long after they had disappeared, but in meet harmony with the tastes and faculties of the Divine Worker, who had in his wisdom produced them all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 105.

MURCHISONIA BIGRANULOSA.

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 106.

CONULARIA ORNATA.

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 107.

CALICO PATTERN.

(_Manchester._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 108.

SMITHIA PENGELLYI.

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

You will, I trust, bear with me should I seek, in depths where the light shed by science becomes obscure, to guide my steps by light derived from another and wholly different source. In an a.s.sembly such as that which I have now the honor of addressing, there must be many shades of religious opinion. I shall, however, a.s.sail no man's faith, but simply lay before you a few deductions which, founded on my own, have supplied me with what I deem a consistent theory of the curious cla.s.s of phenomena with which this evening we have been mainly dealing. First, then, I must hold that we receive the true explanation of the _man_-like character of the Creator's workings ere man was, in the remarkable text in which we are told that "G.o.d made man in his own image and likeness." There is no restriction here to moral quality: the moral image man had, and in large measure lost; but the intellectual image he still retains. As a geometrician, as an arithmetician, as a chemist, as an astronomer,--in short, in all the departments of what are known as the strict sciences,--man differs from his Maker, not in kind, but in degree,--not as matter differs from mind, or darkness from light, but simply as a mere portion of s.p.a.ce or time differs from _all_ s.p.a.ce or _all_ time. I have already referred to mechanical contrivances as identically the same in the Divine and human productions; nor can I doubt that, not only in the pervading sense of the beautiful in form and color which it is our privilege as men in some degree to experience and possess, but also in that perception of harmony which const.i.tutes the _musical_ sense, and in that poetic feeling of which Scripture furnishes us with at once the earliest and the highest examples, and which we may term the _poetic_ sense, we bear the stamp and impress of the Divine image. Now, if this be so, we must look upon the schemes of Creation, Revelation, and Providence, not as schemes of mere adaptation to man's nature, but as schemes also specially adapted to the nature of G.o.d as the pattern and original nature. Further, it speaks, I must hold, of the harmony and unity of one sublime scheme, that, after long ages of immaturity,--after the dynasties of the fish, the reptile, and the mammal should in succession have terminated,--man should have at length come upon the scene in the image of G.o.d; and that, at a still later period, G.o.d himself should have come upon the scene in the form of man; and that thus all G.o.d's workings in creation should be indissolubly linked to G.o.d himself, not by any such mere likeness or image of the Divinity as that which the first Adam bore, but by Divinity itself in the Second Adam; so that on the rainbow-encircled apex of the pyramid of created being the Son of G.o.d and the Son of Man should sit enthroned forever in one adorable person. That man should have been made in the image of G.o.d seems to have been a meet preparation for G.o.d's after a.s.sumption of the form of man. It was perhaps thus secured that _stock_ and _graft_, if I may venture on such a metaphor, should have the necessary affinity, and be capable of being united in a single person. The false G.o.ds of the Egyptians a.s.sumed, it was fabled, the forms of brutes: it was the human form and nature that was a.s.sumed by the true G.o.d;--so far as we know, the only form and nature that could have brought him into direct union with at once the matter and mind of the universe which he had created and made,--with "true body and reasonable soul." Yet further, I learn by inevitable inference from one of the more distinctive articles of my creed, that as certainly as the dynasty of the fish was predetermined in the scheme of Providence to be succeeded by the higher dynasty of the reptile, and that of the reptile by the still higher dynasty of the mammal, so it was equally predetermined that the dynasty of responsible, fallible man should be succeeded by the dynasty of glorified, immortal man; and that, in consequence, the present mixed state of things is not a mere result, as some theologians believe, of a certain human act which was perpetrated about six thousand years ago, but was, virtually at least, the effect of a G.o.d-determined decree, old as eternity,--a decree in which that act was written as a portion of the general programme. In looking abroad on that great history of life, of which the latter portions are recorded in the pages of revelation, and the earlier in the rocks, I feel my grasp of a doctrine first taught me by our Calvinistic Catechism at my mother's knee, tightening instead of relaxing. "The decrees of G.o.d are his eternal purposes," I was told, "according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pa.s.s." And what I was told early I still believe.

The programme of Creation and Providence, in all its successive periods, is of G.o.d, not of man. With the arrangements of the old geologic periods it is obvious man could have had nothing to do: the primeval ages of wondrous plants and monster animals ran their course without counsel taken of him; and in reading their record in the bowels of the earth, and in learning from their strange characters that such ages there were, and what they produced, we are the better enabled to appreciate the impressive directness of the sublime message to Job, when the "Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, and said, Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding." And I can as little regard the present scene of things as an ultimate consequence of what man had willed or wrought, as even any of the pre-Adamic ages. It is simply one scene in a foreordained series,--a scene intermediate in place between the age of the irresponsible mammal and of glorified man; and to provide for the upward pa.s.sage to the ultimate state, we know that, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, he through whom the work of restoration has been effected was in reality what he is designated in the remarkable text, "The Lamb slain from the _foundations_ of the world." First in the course of things, man in the image of G.o.d, and next, in meet sequence, G.o.d in the form of man, have been equally from all eternity predetermined actors in the same great scheme.

I approach a profound and terrible mystery. We can see how in the pre-Adamic ages higher should have succeeded lower dynasties. To be low was not to be immoral; to be low was not to be guilt-stained and miserable. The sea anemone on its half-tide rock, and the fern on its mossy hill-side, are low in their respective kingdoms; but they are, notwithstanding, worthy, in their quiet, un.o.btrusive beauty, of the G.o.d who formed them. It is only when the human period begins that we are startled and perplexed by the problem of a lowness not innocent,--an inferiority tantamount to moral deformity. In the period of responsibility, to be low means to be evil; and how, we ask, could a lowness and inferiority resolvable into moral evil have had any place in the decrees of that Judge who ever does what is right, and in whom moral evil can have no place? The subject is one which it seems not given to man thoroughly to comprehend. Permit me, however, to remark in reply, that in a sense so plain, so obvious, so unequivocally true, that it would lead an intelligent jury, impannelled in the case, conscientiously to convict, and a wise judge righteously to condemn, all that is evil in the present state of things man may as certainly have wrought out for himself, as the criminals whom we see sentenced at every justiciary court work out for themselves the course of punishment to which they are justly subjected.

It has been well said of the Author of all by the poet, that, "binding nature fast in fate," he "left free the human will." And it is this freedom or independency of will operating on an intellect moulded after the image and likeness of the Divinity that has rendered men capable of being what the Scriptures so emphatically term "fellow-workers with G.o.d." In a humble and restricted sense, as I have already remarked,--humble and restricted, but in that restricted sense obviously true,--the surface of the earth far and wide testifies to this fact of fellows.h.i.+p in working. The deputed lord of creation, availing himself of G.o.d's natural laws, does what no mere animal of the old geologic ages ever did, or ever could have done,--he adorns and beautifies the earth, and adds tenfold to its original fertility and productiveness. In this special sense, then, he is a fellow-worker with Him who, according to the Psalmist, "causeth the gra.s.s to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil that maketh his face to s.h.i.+ne, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." But it is in a greatly higher sense, and in reference to G.o.d's moral laws, that he is fitted to be his fellow-worker in the Scriptural sense. And his proper employment in this department is the elevation and development, moral and intellectual, of himself and his fellow-men, both in adaptation to the demands of the present time, and in preparation for a future state.

All experience, however, serves to show that in this paramount department man greatly fails; nay, that he is infinitely less true to his proper end and destiny than the beasts that perish to their several instincts. And yet it may be remarked, that such of the lower animals as are guided by pure instinct are greatly more infallible within their proper spheres than the higher, half-reasoning animals. The mathematical bee never constructs a false angle; the sagacious dog is not unfrequently _out_ in his calculations. The higher the animal in the scale, the greater its liability to error. But it is not the less true, that no fish, no reptile, no mammal, of the geologic or the recent ages, ever so failed in working out the purposes it was created to serve, as man has failed in working out _his_; further, in no creature save in man does there exist that war of the mind between appet.i.te and duty of which the Apostle so consciously complained. And we must seek an explanation of these twin facts in that original freedom of the will which, while it rendered man capable of being _of choice_ G.o.d's fellow-worker, also conferred on him an ability of choosing _not_ to work with G.o.d. And his choice of not working with him, or of working against him, being once freely made, we may see how, from man's very const.i.tution and nature, as an intelligence united to matter that increases his kind from generation to generation in virtue of the original law, the ability of again working with G.o.d might be forever destroyed. And thus man's general condition as a lapsed creature may be as unequivocally a consequence of man's own act, as the condition of individuals born free, but doomed to slavery in punishment of their offences, is a consequence of _their_ own acts. A brief survey of the many-colored and variously-placed human family, as at present distributed on the earth, may enable us in some degree to conceive of a matter which, involving, as it does, that master problem of moral science, the origin of evil, seems, as I have said, not to be given to man fully to comprehend.

"The different races of mankind," says Humboldt, employing, let me remark, the language of the distinguished German naturalist Muller, to give expression to the view which he himself adopts,--"the different races of mankind are not different species of a genus, but forms of one sole species." "The human species," says Cuvier, "appears to be single."

"When we compare," says Pritchard, "all the facts and observations which have been heretofore fully established as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the universe, we are ent.i.tled to draw confidently the conclusion, that all human races are of one species and one family."

"G.o.d hath made of one blood," said the Apostle Paul, in addressing himself to the _elite_ of Athens, "all nations, for to dwell on the face of all the earth." Such, on this special head, is the testimony of Revelation, and such the conclusion of our highest scientific authorities. The question has, indeed, been raised in these latter times, whether each species of animals may not have been originally created, not by single pairs or in single centres, but by several pairs and in several centres, and, of course, the human species among the rest? And the _query_,--for in reality it amounts to nothing more,--has been favorably entertained on the other side of the Atlantic. On purely scientific grounds it is of course difficult to prove a negative in the case, just as it would be difficult to prove a negative were the question to be, whether the planet Venus was not composed of quartz rock, or the planet Mars of Old Red Sandstone? But the portion of the problem really solvable by science,--the ident.i.ty of the human race under all its conditions, and in all its varieties,--science _has_ solved. It has determined that all the various tribes of man are but forms of a single species. And in the definition of species,--waiving the American _doubt_ until it shall at least become something more,--I am content to follow the higher authorities. "We unite," says M. de Candolle, "under the designation of a _species_, all those individuals that mutually bear to each other so close a resemblance as to allow of our supposing that they may have proceeded originally from a single being or a single pair." "A _species_," says Buffon, "is a constant succession of individuals similar to and capable of reproducing each other." "A _species_," says Cuvier, "is a succession of individuals which reproduces and perpetuates itself."

Now, all history and all tradition, so far as they throw light on the question at all, agree in showing that the centre in which the human species originated must have been somewhere in the temperate regions of the East, not far distant from the Caucasian group of mountains. All the old seats of civilization,--that of Nineveh, Babylon, Palestine, Egypt, and Greece,--are spread out around this centre. And it is certainly a circ.u.mstance worthy of notice, and surely not without bearing on the _physical_ condition of primeval humanity, that in this centre we find a variety of the species which naturalists of the highest standing regard as fundamentally typical of the highest races of the globe. "The natives of the Caucasus," says Cuvier, "are even now considered as the handsomest on earth." And wherever man has, if I may so speak, _fallen_ least,--wherever he has retained, at least intellectually, the Divine image,--this Caucasian type of feature and figure, with, of course, certain national modifications, he also retains. It was developed in a remarkable degree among the old Greeks, as may be seen from the busts of some of their handsomer men; and still more remarkably in their _beau ideal_ of beauty, as exemplified in the statues of their G.o.ds. We see it also, though dashed with a shade of severity, in the strong forms and stern features of monarchs that reigned of old in Nineveh and Babylon, as brought to light in their impressive effigies by the excavations of Rawlinson and Layard. And further, though somewhat modified by the African dash, we detect it in the colossal statues of Egypt. Nor, as shown by Egyptian paintings still fresh in color and outline, was it less traceable in the ancient Jewish countenance and figure. It is still palpable, too, amid all the minor peculiarities of national physiognomy, in the various peoples of Europe. We may see it in our own country, though, as Sir Walter Scott truly tells us,--

"The rugged form may mark the mountain band, And harsher features and a mien more grave."

It walks, however, the boards of our Parliament House here in a very respectable type of Caucasian man; and all agree that nowhere else in modern Europe is it to be found more true to its original contour than among the high-bred aristocracy of England, especially among the female members of the cla.s.s. Looking, then, at the entire evidence,--at the admitted fact that the Circa.s.sians of the present day are an eminently handsome people,--that the old Greeks, Ninevites, Egyptians, Jews, Romans, and with these all the modern nations of Europe, are but the varieties of the central race that have retained in greatest perfection the original traits,--I do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion that this Caucasian type was the type of Adamic man. Adam, the father of mankind, was no squalid savage of doubtful humanity, but a n.o.ble specimen of man; and Eve a soft Circa.s.sian beauty, but exquisitely lovely beyond the lot of fallen humanity.

"The loveliest pair That ever yet in love's embraces met: Adam, the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve."

I know not whether I should add what follows. It has been said that Luke, the "beloved physician," was also a painter. It has been said that that traditionary, time-honored form, which we at once recognize in the pictures of the old masters as that of the Saviour of mankind, he in reality bore when he walked this earth in the flesh. I know not what degree of probability attaches to the belief. I know not whether the traditionary form be in reality the true one. This, however, I know, that _if_ such was the form which the adorable Redeemer a.s.sumed when he took to himself a real body and a reasonable soul, the second Adam, like the first, exemplified, when upon earth, the perfect type of Caucasian man.

Let me next remark, that the further we remove from the original centre of the race, the more degraded and sunk do we find the several varieties of humanity. We must set wholly aside, in our survey, the disturbing element of modern emigration. Caucasian man has been pressing outwards.

In the backwoods of America, in Southern Africa, in Australia, and in the Polynesian islands, the old Adamic type has been a.s.serting its superiority, and annihilating before it the degraded races. But taking into account merely the aboriginal varieties, it seems to be a general rule, that the further we remove in any direction from the Adamic centre, the more animalized and sunk do we find the various tribes or races. Contrary to the conceptions of the a.s.sertors of the development hypothesis, we ascertain, as we proceed outwards, that the course is not one of progression from the low to the high, but of descent from the high to the low. Pa.s.sing northwards, we meet, where the lichen-covered land projects into the frozen ocean, with the diminutive Laps, squat, ungraceful, with their flat features surmounted by pyramidal skulls of small capacity, and, as a race, unfitted for the arts either of peace or war. We meet also with the timid Namollas, with noses so flat as to be scarce visible in the women and children of the race; and with the swarthy Kamtschatkans, with their broad faces, protuberant bellies, and thin, ill-formed legs. Pa.s.sing southwards, we come to the negro tribes, with their sooty skins, broad noses, thick lips, projecting jawbones, and partially-webbed fingers. And then we find ourselves among the squalid Hottentots, repulsively ugly, and begrimmed with filth; or the still more miserable Bushmen. Pa.s.sing eastwards, after taking leave of the Persian and Indian branches of the Caucasian race, we meet with the squat Mongolian, with his high cheek bones set on a broad face, and his compressed, unintellectual, pig-like eyes; or encounter, in the Indian Archipelago or the Australian interior, the pitiably low Alforian races, with their narrow, retreating foreheads, slim, feeble limbs, and baboon-like faces. Or, finally, pa.s.sing westward, we find the large-jawed, copper-colored Indians of the New World, vigorous in some of the northern tribes as animals, though feeble as men, but gradually sinking in southern America, as among the wild Caribs or spotted Araucans; till at the extremity of the continent we find, naked and s.h.i.+vering among their snows, the hideous, small-eyed, small-limbed, flat-headed Fuegians, perhaps the most wretched of human creatures. And all these varieties of the species, in which we find humanity "fallen,"

according to the poet, "into disgrace," are varieties that have lapsed from the original Caucasian type. They are all the descendants of man as G.o.d created him; but they do not exemplify man as G.o.d created him. They do not represent, save in hideous caricature, the glorious creature moulded of old by the hand of the Divine Worker. They are fallen,--degraded; many of them, as races, hopelessly lost. For all experience serves to show, that when a tribe of men falls beneath a certain level, it cannot come into compet.i.tion with civilized man, pressing outwards from his old centres to possess the earth, without becoming extinct before him. Sunk beneath a certain level, as in the forests of America, in Van Dieman's Land, in New South Wales, and among the Bushmen of the Cape, the experience of more than a hundred years demonstrates that its destiny is extinction,--not restoration.

Individuals may be recovered by the labors of some zealous missionary; but it is the fate of the race, after a few generations, to disappear.

It has fallen too hopelessly low to be restored. There remain curious traces in the New World of these perished tribes. The Bible, translated into an old Indian language, from which the devoted David Brainerd taught so successfully a nation of Red Men, still exists; but it speaks in a dead tongue, which no one can now understand; for the nation to whom he preached has become extinct. And Humboldt tells us, in referring to a perished tribe of South America, that there lived in 1806, when he visited their country, an old parrot in Maypures, which could not be understood, because, as the natives informed him, it spoke the language of the Atures. Tribes of the aborigines of Australia have wholly disappeared during the present generation; and I remember seeing it stated in a newspaper paragraph, which appeared a few years ago, that the last male survivor of the natives of Tasmania was at that time in the latter stages of consumption.

But if man, in at least the more degraded varieties of the race, be so palpably _not_ what the Creator originally made him, by whom, then, was he made the poor lost creature which in these races we find him to be?

He was made what he is, I reply, by man himself; and this, in many instances, by a process which we may see every day taking place among ourselves in individuals and families, though happily, not in races.

Man's nature again,--to employ the condensed statement of the poet,--has been bound fast in fate, but his will has been left free. He is free either to resign himself to the indolence and self-indulgence so natural to the species; or, "spurning delights, to live laborious days;"--free either to sink into ignorant sloth, dependent uselessness, and self-induced imbecility, bodily and mental, or to a.s.sert by honest labor a n.o.ble independence,--to seek after knowledge as for hidden treasures, and, in the search, to sharpen his faculties and invigorate his mind.

And while we see around us some men addressing themselves with stout, brave hearts to what Carlyle terms, with homely vigor, their "heavy job of work," and, by denying themselves many an insidious indulgence, doing it effectually and well, and rearing up well-taught families in usefulness and comfort, to be the stay of the future, we see other men yielding to the ign.o.ble solicitations of appet.i.te or of indolence, and becoming worse than useless themselves, and the parents of ignorant, immoral, and worse than useless families. The wandering vagrants of Great Britain at the present time have been estimated at from fifteen to twenty thousand souls; the hereditary paupers of England,--a vastly more numerous cla.s.s,--have become, in a considerable degree, a sept distinct from the general community; and in all our large towns there are certain per centages of the population,--unhappily ever increasing per centages,--that, darkened in mind and embruted in sentiment, are widely recognized as emphatically the dangerous cla.s.ses of the community. And let us remember that we are witnessing in these instances no new thing in the history of the species: every period since that of the vagabond Cain has had its waifs and stragglers, who fell behind in the general march. In circ.u.mstances such as obtained in the earlier ages of the human family, all the existing nomades and paupers of our country would have pa.s.sed into distinct races of men. For in the course of a few generations their forms and complexions would begin to tell of the self-induced degradation that had taken place in their minds; and in a few ages more they would have become permanent varieties of the species.