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СКАЧАТЬ actually occurred) touching at some island inhabited by wild savages in the midst of the great ocean between America and Eastern Asia. This island lies, we suppose, at a very great distance from either Continent, and the same will hold good of it, though there be a group of islands. These savages have but miserable fishing-boats made of hollow trunks of trees, by which it is not easy to conceive how they could have been transported so far. The question now naturally occurs how has this race of men come hither?—

      A Pagan natural philosophy, which even now dares often enough to raise its voice, would be very ready with its answer: "There, it would say, you see plainly how every thing has sprung from the pap of the earth—the primitive slime—there is no need of the far-fetched idea of an imaginary Creator—these self-existing men of the earth—these well known autocthones of the ancients—these true sons of nature—have risen up or crawled out of the fruitful slime of the earth."

      A deeper physiological science would, independently of every other consideration, and looking merely to the natural organization of man, scout this wild chaotic hypothesis respecting his origin from slime. For this organic frame of the human body, which has become a body of death, is still endowed with many and wonderful powers, and still encloses the hidden light of its celestial origin.—Without, however, entering further into this enquiry, which falls not within the limits here prescribed, let us rather tacitly believe that although, as the ancient history saith, man was formed out of the slime of the earth; yet it was by the same Hand which invisibly conducts each individual through life, and has more than once rescued all mankind from the brink of the abyss, that his marvellous body was framed, into which the Maker himself breathed the immortal spirit of life. This divine in-dwelling spark in man, the Heathens themselves, notwithstanding the opinion about the autocthones, recognized in the beautiful tradition or fiction of Prometheus; and many of their first spirits, philosophers, orators and poets, and grave and moral teachers, have in one form or another, and under a variety of figurative expressions, borne frequent and loud and repeated testimony to the truth of a higher spirit, a divine flame, animating the breast of man. This universal faith in the heavenly Promethean light—or as we should rather say, this spark of our bosoms—is the only thing we must here presuppose, and from which all our historical deductions must be taken. With the opposite doctrine—with the absolute unbelief in all which constitutes man really man—no history, and no science of history, is possible; and this is the only remark we shall here oppose to an infidelity that denies the existence of every thing high and godly. For the question respecting the creation of man, or as atheism terms it, the first springing up of the human race, is beyond the limits of history, and must be left to the decision of revelation and faith; for the question can be reached by no history, no science of history—no historical research. History begins, as this will be presently shown, with man's second step; which immediately follows his concealed origin antecedent to all history.

      To recur now to the example already given of an island situated in the middle of the ocean, with its savage inhabitants and their miserable fishing-boats—the real solution, as experience has really proved, of this apparent difficulty is, on a nearer acquaintance with the subject, easily found. If, for example, the language and traditions of this rude, savage, or at least degraded, tribe, are minutely studied and investigated, then so striking a resemblance and affinity will be found with the languages and traditions of the races in either of the remotely situated continents, that the most sceptical mind will hardly entertain a doubt respecting the common origin of both; for this community in language and traditions is too strong, too strikingly evident, to be ascribed with any degree of probability to the sport of accident. This truth now once firmly established, (for a community of language, tradition and race among all the nations of the earth is a truth almost unanimously received and acknowledged by those historical enquirers most versed in nature, and most learned in philology of the present age,) it becomes a mere matter of indifference, or one at least of minor importance, how and in what way this originally savage, or at least barbarized tribe first arrived hither; and it were a mere waste of labour to select, among the hundred conceivable or inconceivable accidents and possibilities which may have occasioned or led to this arrival, any particular one as the best explanation, and to found thereon some ingenious hypothesis, how the land on both sides may have been differently situated, before a closer connexion with this little island was broken off by the destructive floods; or in which of the last great catastrophes of the earth that disjunction may have taken place. We may leave such conjectures to themselves, and, satisfied with the main result, proceed further in the historical investigation and survey of the earth. For, in truth, the earth's surface more narrowly and carefully examined, furnishes in reference to man and his primitive history, far other and weightier problems than those involved in the example first selected.

      It is generally known that in a great many places situated in various parts of the earth, in the interior of mountains and even on plains, sometimes near the surface, and sometimes at a greater or less depth in the interior of mountainous chains rising to a very great elevation above the level of the sea, there are found whole strata of scattered bones belonging to animal species either actually existing, or which formerly existed and are now totally extinct—the chaotic remains of an all destroying inundation that immediately remind us of the general tradition respecting the great Flood. In other places again extensive layers of coral, sea-shells, marine plants, and other products of the sea, imbedded in the firm soil, prove these tracts of land to have been an ancient bottom of the sea. According to all appearance, these are not only monuments of one great natural revolution, but these elemental gigantic sepulchres of the primitive world offer to the mind many and various problems which more nearly, indeed, regard the earth, but as that planet is the habitation of man, have in consequence an indirect, but proximate, reference to mankind and their earliest history. A single example will best serve to point out among so many things, which are no longer perhaps susceptible of explanation, that which is of most moment to the historian; as well as the limits within which he should keep.

      Not long back, about nine years ago, a cave was discovered in the county of Yorkshire in England, filled for the most part with the bones and skeletons of hyænas, of the same species now found in the southernmost point of Africa—the Cape of Good Hope. These bones were intermixed with those of tigers, bears, wolves, as also of elephants, rhinosceri, and other animals, among which were found the remains of the old large deer, that is not now to be met with in England. The profound Naturalist, Schubert, whom, in subjects of this kind, I willingly take for my guide, observes in his natural history with respect to this newly discovered cavern (which evidently belongs to another, long extinct, and anterior world of nature); that the opinion which would make a whole stratum of bones to have been swept thither by floods in so sound a state, and from so remote a distance, is perfectly inadmissible. He shews it to be much more probable that this cave was the den of a troop of hyænas, which had dragged thither the bones of the other animals; for this fell and rapacious animal feeds by preference on bones, which it knows how to break, as it is in the habit of raking up dead bodies.—What an immense interval separates that now highly civilized state—those flourishing provinces—that country abounding, and almost overteeming with all the fruits of human industry, with all the productions of mechanic skill;—that cultivated garden, that Island-Queen, the mistress of every sea;—what an immense interval separates her from those savage times, when troops of hyænas prowled about the land, together with the other gigantic animals of the southern zone, and tropic clime!

      Thus it is natural to suppose that in one of the last great revolutions of nature the climate of the earth has undergone a total change; and that originally the now icy north enjoyed a glowing warmth, a rich fertility, and all the fulness of luxuriant life. A number of still more decisive facts declare for this supposition, or, to speak more properly, this certainty; since we discover in the upper parts of Northern Asia, and in general throughout the Polar regions, entire forests of palm in the subterraneous strata, as also well-preserved remains of whole herds of elephants, and of many other kindred species of animals now totally extinct. Long before most of these facts were discovered, Leibnitz had conjectured that originally the earth in general, even in the north, enjoyed a much warmer temperature than in the present period of all-ruling and progressive frost; and Buffon and others have established on this idea their hypothesis СКАЧАТЬ