Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/135

Rh originally proceeded from the other continents, in the same manner, at former periods. For the lower animals we may readily assent to the doctrine of separate creations in different countries suited to their respective climates. When the earth was ordained to bring forth each living creature after its kind, it is an inference fairly allowable that it was a law of the God of nature, perhaps to be of long-continued operation, to suit such creatures to their peculiar localities, beyond which they could not live healthily. The phrase used in the Hebrew, in our version translated "after its kind," seems to me rather to require the interpretation "according to her kind," as referring to the earth; and this explanation renders unnecessary any question as to how the animals found on the new continent came there, or how they proved to be of different species from those of the other continents. But to man was given a constitution fitted to endure every climate, with intelligence to provide for every want wherever his wishes or his requirements might lead him. With the command given him to replenish the earth and subdue it, the power to do so was also given, and it has been extended to the savage no less than to the civilized man. I concede the question to the advocates for distinct creations of "primitive men" to account for the difference of races, that if any such distinct creation could be supposed to have taken place anywhere, the America continent, so recently opened forth to our knowledge, with its multifarious varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, might have been expected to present the most satisfactory traces or evidences of the fact. But when we find this new continent not only not offering us any such evidences, but the very contrary, and when we can so clearly shew it to have been peopled from the other parts of the world, we may unhesitatingly reject this doctrine as in reality inconsistent with facts and experience, and therefore as being unphilosophical, at the same time that it is at variance with our sacred records.