Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/177

172 the constant exhumations of the remains of Prehistoric races, some of which, reckoning from geologic data, date back not less than from three-quarters of a million to two whole millions of years ago, it is impossible to accept the literal account as we find it. People used to hold and believe that all mankind were the progeny of an original pair of Protoplasts, the autochthones or primal couple—Adam (Kadmon) and the fair Eve, his rib-originated compagnon du vie, or wife. But that dogma is a dogma no longer. Black, brown, white, yellow races, are all as clear cut and distinct from each other as are grayhounds from poodle dogs, or bantam fowls from headstrong, long-spurred, do-or-die game; nor will one race, even by admixture, produce a perfect specimen of either of the others.

In these days science explodes the fables of antiquity, and has already gone far toward dispensing altogether with the Edenic couple,—insisting that Tartar, Caucasian, Indian, and the Nigritian race came from diverse centres and sources, and Darwinian theorists hold the reins and drive straight from Palace to cavern; from man in pride and pomp, to man the cousin of hairy chimpanzee and red-rear baboon; and she demonstrates him to be a natural outgrowth of nature; and that his ancestors were some sort of superior ape-monkey or baboon, gorilla, nschiego or chimpanzee; and that he is himself a grand improvement, by natural and sexual selection, upon his progenitors, who slowly advanced from monkey-hood to be cave-dwellers and weapon-users; who gradually learned the use of fire and fighting, monogamy and mating, hut-building and clothes-wearing, and who, developing still, finally, through the lapse of thousands of—centuries, grew to be what he is now—generally, half-civilized; for he yet hangs, beheads, cruelizes his kind, and at best delights in carnage, drums, war, glory, gibbets, jails, Alcohol, Tobacco, Robbery, and Force, meat food, and fiery drink, still laying claim to survive the ordeal of death, in an etherealized form, but with out knowing really how or why: Holding firmly to the belief that his life on earth is but the prelude to his music of perpetual being beyond the grave, while all nature chants the low, sad requiem of all other sentient forms, the totality of which topple over into their