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 circumstance 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 gods. 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 class. Looking, then, at the entire evidence,—at the admitted fact that the Circassians 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 noble specimen of man; and Eve a soft Circassian 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 assumed 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 asserting 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 assertors 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. Passing 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. Passing 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. Passing 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, passing 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 shivering 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 God created him; but they do not exemplify man as God 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 competition 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 assert by honest labor a noble 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 ignoble solicitations of appetite 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 class,—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 classes 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 circumstances such as obtained in the earlier ages of the human family, all the existing nomades and paupers of our country would have passed 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. There are cases in which not more than from two to three centuries have been found sufficient thoroughly to alter the original physiognomy of a race. "On the plantation of Ulster in 1611, and afterwards, on the success of the British against the rebels in 1641 and 1689," says a shrewd writer of the present day, himself an Irishman, "great multitudes of the native Irish were driven from Armagh and the south of Down, into the mountainous tract extending from the Barony of Fleurs eastward to the sea; on the other side of the kingdom the same race were exposed to the worst effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of the human race. The descendants of these exiles are now distinguished physically by great degradation. They are remarkable for open, projecting mouths, with prominent teeth and exposed gums; and their advancing cheek bones and depressed noses bear barbarism on their very front. In Sligo and northern Mayo the consequences of the two centuries of degradation and hardship exhibit themselves in the whole physical condition of the people, affecting not only the features, but the frame. Five feet two inches on an average,—pot-bellied, bow-legged, abortively featured, their clothing a wisp of rags,—these spectres of a people that were once well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, stalk abroad into the daylight of civilization, the annual apparition of Irish ugliness and Irish want."
Such is man as man himself has made him,—not man as he came from the hand of the Creator. In many instances the degradation has been voluntary; in others it has been forced upon families and races by the iron hand of oppression; in almost all,—whether self-chosen by the parents or imposed upon them,—the children and the children's children have, as a matter of inevitable necessity, been born to it. For, whatever we may think of the Scriptural doctrine on this special head, it is a fact broad and palpable in the economy of nature, that parents do occupy a federal position; and that the lapsed progenitors, when cut off from civilization and all external interference of a missionary character, become the founders of a lapsed race. The iniquities of the parents are visited upon the children. And in all such instances it is man left to the freedom of his own will that is the deteriorator of man. The doctrine of the Fall, in its purely theologic aspect, is a doctrine which must be apprehended by faith; but it is at least something to find that the analogies of science, instead of running counter to it, run in exactly the same line. It is one of the inevitable consequences of that nature of man which the Creator "bound fast in fate," while he left free his will, that the free will of the parent should become the destiny of the child.
But the subject is one in which we can see our way as but "through a glass darkly." Nay, it is possible that the master problem which it involves no created intelligence can thoroughly unlock. It has been well said, that the "poet's heart" is informed by a "terrible sagacity;" and I am at times disposed to regard Milton's conception of the perplexity of the fallen spirits, when reasoning on "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," and finding "no end in wandering mazes lost," much rather as a sober truth caught from the invisible world, than as merely an ingenious fancy. The late Robert Montgomery has rather unhappily chosen Satan as one of the themes of his muse; and in his long poem, designated in its second title "Intellect without God," he has set that personage a-reasoning in a style which, I fear, more completely demonstrates the absence of God than the presence of intellect. It has, however, sometimes occurred to me, that a poet of the larger calibre, who to the Divine faculty and vision added such a knowledge of geologic science as that which Virgil possessed of the Natural History of his time, or as that which Milton possessed of the general learning of his, might find, in a somewhat similar subject, the materials of a poem which "posterity would not willingly let die." There is one of the satirists justly severe on a class of critics
"Who, drily plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made."