In the scale of being man rises above mere animal life and sensation, however delicate and varied, and beyond mere instinct, whatever that mysterious faculty may be, to rational existence, which constitutes him “the minister and interpreter of nature.” The most sagacious and instinctive of the brute creation live and die without the least comprehension of the vast system of which they form a part; but man is capable of surveying the whole with thought and reflection, of understanding its economy and purpose, of tracing the Author of the work, and marking the display of his perfections, of yielding to Him adoration and homage, and sanctifying the varied scene to moral uses. Sometimes, in the spirit of lurking infidelity to the announcements of Scripture respecting the attention paid to our race by Divine Providence, philosophy has paraded before us its demonstrations concerning the plan of the universe, and called upon us to contemplate its stately forms and vast dimensions. We may obey its summons, and return from the contemplation with renewed ability to “vindicate the ways of God to man.” For what knows the sun of his own brightness, or the lightnings of their force, or the planets of their velocity, or the ten thousand stars of their mighty proportions? The universe of material things can neither think nor feel, but is perfectly unconscious of itself; whereas man can appreciate to a certain extent its design, derive enjoyment from its objects, track their course, comprehend their laws, gather from them an intellectual apprehension of the wondrous Artificer, make them subservient to morals and devotion; and thus the grandeur of nature illustrates the greatness of man.
Linnæus placed man in the order of Quadrumana, or four-handed, in fellowship with the monkey tribe, and even considered the genus Homo as consisting of two species, the ourang-outang being the second, the congener of the human being. Cuvier, with an obvious propriety, has departed from this classification, and placed man in an order by himself, that of Bimana, or two-handed, in allusion to the prehensory organs with which he is furnished. They are instruments of essential moment to their possessor, and form a characteristic mark of his nobility, for, strictly speaking, he is the only bimane. In several physical respects, man is far inferior to many of the lower animals. The elephant is his superior in bulk and power, the hawk in sight, the antelope in swiftness, the hound in scent, and the squirrel in agility. No animal, in the infancy of existence, continues for so long a period in a state of helplessness and dependence, or suffers for an equal interval infirmity in age. To every other animal nature supplies an appropriate clothing, for which they “toil not, neither do they spin”—the office of man; without which, he would live and die in the nakedness of his birth. No parallel to his case can be found in the animal kingdom, in relation to the slowness of his growth, the variety of his wants, and the numerous diseases to which he is exposed; and while animals directly adapt to their support the food that is suited to them—the lion his flesh, and the ox his grasses—the greater part of the human aliment, according to the practice of all nations, is subject to preparing processes, more or less rude or perfect, in order to be rendered agreeable and nutritious. These are apparently the hardships of the human condition; but a regard to their moral and intellectual effect will strip them of the character of disadvantages. If endowed with a high degree of physical force, if free from the necessity of culinary preparation, if naturally arrayed against the exigencies of climate, and thus constituted with a greater amount of personal independence—it may reasonably be inferred, that civilization would not have made its present advances, that mental capacity would have remained largely undeveloped, and the career of man have exhibited a succession of melancholy oscillation, between intemperate ferocity and selfish indolence. The sense of his weakness and the pressure of his wants have contributed to call forth his resources, to stir up “the gift and faculty divine,” to rouse inventive powers to action which would otherwise have continued dormant, and to excite benevolent affections, by the demand he is compelled to make for the society of his kind; and thus the very disabilities of his mere animal being tend to evoke his higher nature, and to accomplish one of the designed ends of his creation by sheer intellectual power, that of having “dominion over the fowl of the air, and over the fish of the sea, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth.”
The human population of the globe has been commonly rated at eight hundred millions, but this is probably an error in excess. The statements of geographers vary considerably, as appears from the following estimates of two of the most distinguished, MM. Malte Brun and Balbi. The former justly remarks, that all the calculations that have been made upon the subject are chimerical, and that it is impossible to state any which shall even approximate to the truth.
| Malte Brun. | Balbi. | |||
| Population of | Europe | 170,000,000 | 227,700,000 | |
| Asia | 320,000,000 | 390,000,000 | ||
| Africa | 70,000,000 | 60,000,000 | ||
| America | 45,000,000 | 39,000,000 | ||
| Oceanica | 20,000,000 | 20,300,000 | ||
| ----------- | ----------- | |||
| Total | 625,000,000 | 737,000,000 | ||
| ----------- | ----------- |
But however uncertain the numbers of the human race, maritime and inland discovery show the wide dispersion of the species, to the extreme bounds of vegetable life; and the extraordinary facility of the human frame in accommodating itself to diverse circumstances. There are but few tracts of land which have not within their limits an indigenous human population. The antarctic continent, the Falkland Isles, and Kerguelen’s Land, with Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen in the northern zone, are the principal exceptions. St. Helena is also another; for when that island was discovered, in 1501, it was only occupied by sea-fowl, occasionally visited by seals and turtles, and covered with forest-trees and shrubs. However small the coral islands of the Pacific, and remote from continents, they have in general their families of men. The New World, though very scantily peopled, has the Esquimaux at its northern extremity, within ten degrees of the pole, and the Fuegians at its southern end, perhaps in the lowest condition in which humanity exists upon the face of the globe. In the Ancient World, we every where meet with traces of man and of his works, except in the zone of deserts; and even here he has planted his race in the oases, the verdant islets of the great ocean of sand. In situations high and low, dry and moist, cold and hot, we find members of the family to which we belong, enduring the extremes of temperature; a degree of heat which on the banks of the Senegal causes spirits of wine to boil, and of cold in the north-east of Asia which freezes brandy and mercury.
Esquimaux Hut.
This wide diffusion of the species, occupying every variety of climate, soil, and situation, necessarily involves the fact of man being omnivorous, or able to derive support from all kinds of aliment; for otherwise, if the nourishment depended exclusively upon animal or vegetable food, various regions where the race exists and multiplies would be incompatible with the easy maintenance of human life. In the cold and frozen north, beyond the range of the cereal plants, where excessive poverty marks the only vegetation that appears, the tribes of Esquimaux draw their support entirely from the land and marine animals, principally from fish and seals; and this is also the case with the miserable Petcheres, inhabiting a corresponding district in the southern hemisphere, the chill and barren shores of Tierra del Fuego. On the other hand, the condition of many interior tropical countries is not propitious to the subsistence of an extended population of the domestic animals and the common cerealia, owing to the number of the beasts of prey and the interchange of a flooded and a parching soil; and there we find large families of men chiefly sustained by a peculiar farinaceous diet, the fruits of the plantain and the palm. In the temperate zone, a plentiful supply of both animal and vegetable food is met with, which mingle in the aliment of the inhabitants. Thus, as we approach the poles, man does not live by bread at all, the Esquimaux being unacquainted with it; while approaching the equator he is mainly supported by vegetable nutriment; and intermediate between them, he is strikingly omnivorous, various kinds of grain and flesh composing the staff of life. Some naturalists have proposed a classification of mankind, according to the species of food by the use of which they are distinguished. Thus we have carnivorous, or flesh-eaters; Ichthyophagists, or fish-eaters; Frugivorous, or fruit and corn-eaters; Acridophagists, or locust-eaters; Geophagists, or earth-eaters; Anthropophagists, or man-eaters; and Omnivorous, or devourers of every thing. But we have no tribes of men that exclusively belong to any one of these classes. The only clear division that can be made of the human race, taking their food as a characteristic, is the very general one already stated, between the inhabitants of polar, temperate, and tropical regions; and growing intercommunication is constantly lessening the amount of difference even here, by transporting the aliment yielded in abundance in one district to another naturally destitute of it. The locust-eaters include some of the wandering Arabs of northern Africa and western Asia, where the crested locust, one of the largest species of the tribe, is made use of for food, both fresh and salted; in which last state it is sold in some of the markets of the Levant. Morier, in his Second Journey to Persia, observes, that locusts are sold at Bushire as food, to the lowest of the peasantry, when dried; and he adds, that “the locusts and wild honey, which St. John ate in the wilderness, are perhaps particularly mentioned to show, that he fared as the poorest of men.”
In considering the distribution of mankind, it is an obvious reflection that, to secure the general diffusion of human life, the same necessity did not exist, as in the case of plants and animals, for parent stocks to be originally planted in different regions of the globe. It has been correctly remarked, that had an individual of each tribe of plants, and a pair of each tribe of animals, been called into being in one and the same spot, the Linnæan hypothesis, large regions, separated by wide seas and lofty chains of mountains from the country containing that single spot, would forever have remained almost, if not entirely, destitute of plants and animals, unless at the same time means had been provided for their dispersion far more effectual than any which we behold in operation, and a constitution more accommodated to diverse climates had been given to them. To accomplish the dissemination of animal and vegetable life, to an extent commensurate with the capacity of the globe, separate regions were supplied with distinct stocks of plants and animals. But the case of man required no such arrangement to secure a large occupancy of the earth with his species. Endued with a constitution capable of accommodating itself to extreme diversities of climate, and with intelligence to invent methods of protection against atmospheric influences; enabled also by the same intelligence to devise means of transport over the most extensive seas, and across the most formidable ranges of mountains, it is clear, that, possessed of these capabilities, the whole habitable earth might be replenished with his race from the location of a single pair. This is the doctrine of the Mosaic history, and also of another part of the sacred record, which declares that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth;” and notwithstanding numerous and important diversities, the conclusions of philosophical inquiry are clearly in harmony with it, establishing the unity of mankind.