and dark mythologies, tell us of wonderful demi-gods, of dynasties of the sun and moon, of silver and golden ages, reaching back in time to the day when the fiat of the Omnipotent spoke man into being. When now we consider that in those remote ages, many centuries must have been requisite for nations to have wandered so far from each other, over vast tracts of country equally inviting with those they eventually chose, and with no necessity whatever impelling them on; and that many more must have been required, for them to have established in those seats, two thousand leagues apart, splendid and well adjusted monarchies, and to have attained no inconsiderable advance in science and literature, it verily seems counter to all probabilities, if not possibilities, to ascribe their orgin to that lone Ark which rested but fortytwo centuries since on the summit of Mount Ararat. Thus have we traced the characteristics of races back through all historic time, and in all probability beyond the age, when righteous Noah was selected to be the head of a favored line. It remains for us to consider if even farther, we may not peer into the dark night of antediluvian ages. All history, sacred and profane, as well as tradition running far back of this, establishes the fact, that from time immemorial there has reigned from the Nile to the Hoang Ho, over one fourth of the earth's circumference, the same peculiar culture-stamped with so striking a unity as to be remarked by every antiquary from Herodotus to the present time. Throughout the realms of China, India, Assyria, and Egypt, they have found, ever prevailing, the same dogmas in philosophy and religion, the same institutions and traditionary superstitions, the same knowledge in the sciences, and advance in the arts.* Not only were years and cycles similarly apportioned in many of those nations, but even weeks were divided alike, and days named after the planets, ranged in precisely the same arbitrary order.† Such coincidences have compelled all to assign to ancient civilization a common origin. Is then this origin indigenous or foreign? That there has been no intercourse between these nations, since the earliest records of history, we have abundant evidence. And that there was none previously is shown by the fact, that while the languages of the Old Empires had nothing whatever in common, and the literature in those languages was wholly distinct, the elements of their civilization were almost identical. Yet, however, many of their sacred books, as the Vedam of the Brahmins and the Zendavesta of the Magi, were written in foreign and similar tongues, but understood only by the priests. Again this ancient civilization itself bears the marks of a foreign origin. It is such a strange composition of refinement and barbarism—of exalted ideas mingled with the lowest conceptions of sense--such a peculiar combination of the most refined truths of * Prichard, vol. 2, p. 193. + Tytler's Univ. Hist., Harper's Fam. Lib. ed., vol. 5, p. 67. + Prichard, vol. 4, p. 480 and 556. Greppo's Cham. p. 207. Malte Brun, vol. 1, P-567. religion and philosophy, with a mass of childish superstitions and ridiculous notions, as to be accounted for on no other supposition. The Chinese have at the present day, implements of science, of the use and application of which they are totally ignorant. They have been acquainted with the art of printing for thousands of years; yet even now it is but a laborious system of wood-engraving. For ages they have used the magnetic needle but to gaze at in toys; and have compounded gunpowder but to blaze in fire-works. The Indians had many beautiful specimens of sculpture; but valued them only for filling the dark and loathsome caves connected with their superstitions. The Chaldees were conversant with many sublime truths in Astronomy, which they brought into use only in reading destinies in the horoscope. The Egyptians applied a superior knowledge in architecture, but to rear huge pyramids and obelisks to cumber the earth. In short, over all this vast region, from the Pacific to the Great Desert, we find the vestiges of a progress far beyond the genius of the people-the elements of a civilization, which, from their present inferiority, from the history of the past, and more than all from that eternal immobility which has stamped its identity on the annals of four thousand years, we must infer, they never were capable by themselves of acquiring. It seems as if, in remote ages, the fragments of some noble and perfect machinery had been carelessly scattered over Southern Asia, which a wondering race had preserved as toys, or as relics. The existence of permanent hereditary castes in all the Empires of the East, from the first faint glimmerings of their history, would seem to indicate a peculiar foreign agency-since every such institution in modern nations, of which an origin has been recorded, is known to have sprung from the advent of foreigners, superior either in authority or in native powers. That such was the case in at least one of the ancient nations, we have the clearest evidence in the distinctive character of the sacred caste of the Hindoos, which is acknowledged to be of foreign extraction.* But further, all the traditions of the East refer the origin of its literary and religious castes to the distant North. Thither the Magi, and the Zendish priests of Western Asia point as to the home of their heroes and their gods. From thence, in remote antiquity, came down the Brahmins of India, diffusing throughout the South a foreign culture. The Chaldaeans are said to have been strangers in Assyria, whose native land was far among the Highlands of Upper Asia. The priests of Lao-tseu, from whose system the great Confucius drew the elements of his practical philosophy, trace back the wanderings of their sect to the same regions of the North. That the same early teachers found their way to the Nile as to the Ganges, is shown from the fact that, of all nations, no two have ever had more dissimilar languages, or a more identical cultivation, than Egypt and India. Hence, we con * Heeren's Asia, vol. 3, p. 279 and 280. + Prichard, vol. 4, p. 12 and 49. Ib. vol. 4, p. 485. ‡ Ib. vol. 4, p. 244. § Ib. vol. 4, 563. clude, that the ancient civilization of the East was there introduced by foreigners, who were so few as to be unable to change the native tongues of the lands they civilized; as also that it emanated all from those same lofty table lands of the bold Tartar, from which Asia has recruited its dynasties from time immemorial. To this tendency of tradition to assign to oriental advancement, dating back with much certainty to diluvian ages, a still more ancient original in the regions toward the Arctic, the accounts of travelers who have penetrated thither, add much corroborative evidence. They tell us, that over the vast snow-fields of Siberia, and the bleak uplands of Tartary, where now roam a few scattered savages, gleaning their bare sustenance from a sterile nature, are to be found the vestiges of an ancient people, which once was numerous, refined, and powerful. Here have been discovered, in countless numbers, ancient mines, quarries, and tumuli, of which the barbarous tribes, which now behold them with a careless look or a vacant stare, have preserved not the slightest account or tradition.* In the Ural and Altay Mountains, are mines so long since abandoned that nature has even already progressed far in the tedious process of filling them again with the original metals. Quarries, also, are found, deeply excavated, and in them the implements of the workmen; but the constructions, for which these doubtless afforded materials, exposed to the elements, have, with but few exceptions, crumbled to dust. Of the mounds which are scattered up and down on the banks of the Irtish and Yenisei, many contain ornaments of gold and copper, beautifully embossed, and of exquisite workmanship; but others present only the rude relics of a people who had lived out their day, before art was known, or mines were wrought. Would we now follow up the stream of time to the era when this polished people, from unknown causes, deserted their primeval seats, and still on to the far more remote period of their origin? We pass from age back to age from the fall to the rise of mighty empires and religions-we trace back the tribes chosen of God to the patriarchal family of the Deluge, and yet we have not probably arrived even to the decline of this ancient race. But a nation springs not, Minerva-like, into refinement in a day. And we have yet to allow for the slow progress of man into the arts and inventions of comparatively civilized life. Who, then, on that scroll of time which counts its cycles of ages back to those, when the giant creatures of a tropical clime roamed over exuberant plains where are now the wastes of Siberia, will venture to mark any but a darkly distant period, for the origin of this long since extinct nation. Again, in Europe, we find the same peculiar phenomena-its traditions and early history pointing ever northward-while there, profusely spread, are found the vestiges of ancient and unknown races. Those * Prichard, vol. 4. p. 281; also vol. 5, p. xvii. Malte Brun, vol. 2, p. 394. Tytler's Hist. vol. 5, p. 73. + Prichard, vol. 3, p. 294, also p. xvii-xxii. strange mounds, called "giant's tombs," which have long been the wonder of the Northmen, have opened for antiquaries a field of most interesting research. By the differences, not only in their structure, but in the relics they contain, there has been made a chronological division of them into three distinct classes. In the most recent, are found various implements of iron; which metal is known to have been in use among the tribes of the North, long before the Christian era. Other tumuli, different from these, present only relics of gold, bronze, and copper; which, before the age of iron, were long the materials on which was exercised the ingenuity of a. polished race. But in a third series of barrows, by far the most numerous, appear only ornaments of amber and weapons of stone. Not a trace is here found of any remains, that would indicate the knowledge of metals among the tribes which deposited them. Both the numerousness of the rude relics of this class, and the wide extent over which they are spread, bear evidence, that the people who wrought them were for long ages the sole inhabitants of Northern and Western Europe. What, then, must be the extreme antiquity of the original race, which there began to work its slow and toilsome way into the advanced state, which it occupied, even at a very distant epoch from the earliest date of its history or tradition ? Thus have we attempted to thread a few of the windings in the labyrinth of the past; and have shown, we think, that from such researches, may be deduced the strongest probabilities in favor of several distinct centers of distribution, and consequently, of the original diversity of races, in the human family. Nor can such a supposition be justly construed as at variance with revelation. That the history of creation in Genesis, so beautifully and appropriately written thus, for the imaginative Jews, is allegorical, science is daily proving more and more conclusively, and the learned are now agreed in the belief, that the true beginning of things is but darkly figured forth in the work of those six days. Then why select from the very midst of an otherwise continuous allegory, a part only on which to impose a rigidly literal construction? And Moses himself, so far from recording anything inconsistent with the supposition that there were cotemporaries with Adam, has related many circumstances which can be explained on no other whatever. The fear of Cain, as he went out from his father's home, lest those who found him might slay him-his marrying, and founding a city, in the land of Nod, while yet he was the only child of the primeval pair-the circumstance of "giants in the Earth in those days," ere it was possible for the human organization thus to have changed-the marriage of the "sons of God" with the "daughters of men," which made the renovation of the chosen people necessary-all imply the existence of races coeval with the Adamic creation. This hypothesis, moreover, explains much that has been mysterious both in nature and in history, It alone accounts for those distinguishing marks in organism which so plainly divide the world of man; and also for those distinct traits of character which are deeply impressed on each several kind. It tells how the American Indian, sequestered from all the world besides, became the only and ancient tenant of this Western Continent; and how the European, environed by thronging myriads, of a constitution and capacity totally different, grew up alone and distinct, to his high preeminence. It explains why the Negro, in his benighted home, has ever contested sway with the wild roamers of the forest; and never yet has asserted his right of 'dominion over the brute'-and why the dark race of the Orient has groveled on, in its childhood of ages, as if man had no goal of destiny in his career. through time. It adds the lacking links to that chain of gradation, which is at once the beauty and wonder of terrestrial creation. And it perfects the range of that beautiful economy of living existencesthat whatever variations nature calls for the Creator provides. But beyond the analogies drawn from inferior orders of beings, there is another and a higher analogy, which seems to force upon us this theory. No one doubts that the providences, as well as the revelation, of the Omnipotent, proclaim man to be an originally distinct and superior order of animal creation. No one now supposes, that he, to whom all nature is made subservient, whose manor is the Earth, whose realm of thought the Universe, is but a favored Chimpanzee, and undistinguished from it, by the creative hand of the Deity. But there is a particular race of men, in which have always centered His most marked providences. Yet we are told that this is but a chance variation from the rest—as if, while in one case providental agency was applied in aid of creative power, in another and for the attainment of the same grand result, He could combine it only with accident. On the bounds of Europe were erected those mighty barriers of mountains and seas, which have ever kept within their own allotted homes, the hordes of Tartary, and the nomads of the South; while that favored land rested in quiet, until the dawn of its glorious day. During more than twenty centuries, Jehovah instructed and watched over His chosen tribes. But when, by His agency, the civilization of the East had been borne to the classic shores of Europe, and all things were adapted according to His eternal purpose, He compelled even reluctant Israel to deliver over to the favored race the trust of His sacred religion. And, again, when the time had come that the nations of Southern Europe must be renovated, or Christianity and man's advancement become extinct, He stirred up the countless tribes of the North; whose incursions, beyond the Alps, gave the grand impetus to modern progress. Surely the hand of God has marked the course of the white man. There is a glorious destiny, to which He is guiding him, and for which He created him. Providence, then, as well as reason and research, indicates an original diversity of races. |