Page:The Harveian oration (electronic resource) - Royal College of Physicians, 1881 (IA b20411911).pdf/29

 nearly seventy years ago. He used it as an argument in favour of the unity of the human family, which even in those days was sometimes called in question. Its importance was overlooked chiefly because philosophic speculation set in a current opposed to the idea that the high mental culture of Europe could belong to the same race of beings as those who adored a fetish in South Africa. It was evident that some other principle was involved when, in the vast continent of America, a copper-coloured race of a comparatively low type of humanity had taken the place of a people who had left behind them evidences of a much higher state of civilization at an earlier period. In the old continent, events of the same kind had happened. Long ages ago, the treasures of Nineveh had been buried, and over the mounds under which they lay hid wandering Arabs had reared their tents. The wisdom of Egypt has long since perished; but the huge masses of solid rock out of which her ancient monuments were constructed still remain, amid a debased and degraded population. The Greek race has abandoned its high intellectual eminence; the Roman Senate has ceased to rule the world. These considerations gave rise to speculations which influenced the theories of the last generation. The survival of the fittest could hardly offer a solution of changes such as these; and rash hypotheses regarding the origin of species obscured the ques-