Among the widely prevalent traditions may be mentioned the tradition of the fashioning of the world and man, of a primeval garden, of an original innocence and happiness, of a tree of knowledge, of a serpent, of a temptation and fall, of a division of time into weeks, of a flood, of sacrifice. It is possible, if not probable, that certain myths, common to many nations, may have been handed down from a time when the families of the race had not yet separated. See Zöckler, in Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 8:71-90; Max Müller, Science of Language, 2:444-455; Prichard, Nat. Hist. of Man, 2:657-714; Smyth, Unity of Human Races, 236-240; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:77-91; Gladstone, Juventus Mundi.
4. The argument from physiology.
A. It is the common judgment of comparative physiologists that man constitutes but a single species. The differences which exist between the various families of mankind are to be regarded as varieties of this species. In proof of these statements we urge: (a) The numberless intermediate gradations which connect the so-called races with each other. (b) The essential identity of all races in cranial, osteological, and dental characteristics. (c) The fertility of unions between individuals of the most diverse types, and the continuous fertility of the offspring of such unions.
Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, 163—“It may be safely affirmed that, even if the differences between men are specific, they are so small that the assumption of more than one primitive stock for all is altogether superfluous. We may admit that Negroes and Australians are distinct species, yet be the strictest monogenists, and even believe in Adam and Eve as the primeval parents of mankind, i. e., on Darwin's hypothesis”; Origin of Species, 118—“I am one of those who believe that at present there is no evidence whatever for saying that mankind sprang originally from more than a single pair; I must say that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or any tenable evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of man.” Owen, quoted by Burgess, Ant. and Unity of Race, 185—“Man forms but one species, and differences are but indications of varieties. These variations merge into each other by easy gradations.”Alex. von Humboldt: “The different races of men are forms of one sole species,—they are not different species of a genus.”
Quatrefages, in Revue d. deux Mondes, Dec. 1860:814—“If one places himself exclusively upon the plane of the natural sciences, it is impossible not to conclude in favor of the monogenist doctrine.” Wagner, quoted in Bib. Sac., 19:607—“Species—the collective total of individuals which are capable of producing one with another an uninterruptedly fertile progeny.” Pickering, Races of Man, 316—“There is no middle ground between the admission of eleven distinct species in the human family and their reduction to one. The latter opinion implies a central point of origin.”
There is an impossibility of deciding how many races there are, if we once allow that there are more than one. While Pickering would say eleven, Agassiz says eight, Morton twenty-two, and Burke sixty-five. Modern science all tends to the derivation of each family from a single germ. Other common characteristics of all races of men, in addition to those mentioned in the text, are the duration of pregnancy, the normal temperature of the body, the mean frequency of the pulse, the liability to the same diseases. Meehan, State Botanist of Pennsylvania, maintains that hybrid vegetable products are no more sterile than are ordinary plants (Independent, Aug. 21, 1884).
E. B. Tylor, art.: Anthropology, in Encyc. Britannica: “On the whole it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity of mankind now stands on a firmer basis than in previous ages.” Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1:39—“From the resemblance in several countries of the half-domesticated dogs to the wild species still living there, from the facility with which they can be crossed together, from even half tamed animals being so much valued by savages, and from the other circumstances previously remarked on which favor domestication, it is highly probable that the domestic dogs of the world have descended from two good species of wolf (viz., Canis lupus and Canis latrans), and from two or three other doubtful species of wolves (namely, the European, Indian and North American forms); from at least one or two South American canine species; from several races or species of the jackal; and perhaps [pg 481]from one or more extinct species.” Dr. E. M. Moore tried unsuccessfully to produce offspring by pairing a Newfoundland dog and a wolf-like dog from Canada. He only proved anew the repugnance of even slightly separated species toward one another.
B. Unity of species is presumptive evidence of unity of origin. Oneness of origin furnishes the simplest explanation of specific uniformity, if indeed the very conception of species does not imply the repetition and reproduction of a primordial type-idea impressed at its creation upon an individual empowered to transmit this type-idea to its successors.
Dana, quoted in Burgess, Antiq. and Unity of Race, 185, 186—“In the ascending scale of animals, the number of species in any genus diminishes as we rise, and should by analogy be smallest at the head of the series. Among mammals, the higher genera have few species, and the highest group next to man, the orang-outang, has only eight, and these constitute but two genera. Analogy requires that man should have preëminence and should constitute only one.” 194—“A species corresponds to a specific amount or condition of concentrated force defined in the act or law of creation.... The species in any particular case began its existence when the first germ-cell or individual was created. When individuals multiply from generation to generation, it is but a repetition of the primordial type-idea.... The specific is based on a numerical unity, the species being nothing else than an enlargement of the individual.” For full statement of Dana's view, see Bib. Sac., Oct 1857:862-866. On the idea of species, see also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:63-74.