of its reptile tribes:  that volcanoes should have ravaged fair continents prolific of animal and vegetable life:  that, in fine, though man’s death came by man’s sin, yet that death and sin were none of man’s creating:  he was only to draw down upon his head a preexistent wo, an ante-toppling rock.  Observe then, that these geological phenomena are only illustrations of my meaning:  and whether such parables be true or false, the argument remains the same:  we never build upon the sand of simile, but only use it here and there for strewing on the floor.  Still, I will acknowledge that the introduction of such fossil instances appears to me wisely thrown in as affects their antecedent probability, because ignorant comments upon scriptural cosmogony have raised the absurdest objections against the truth of scriptural science.  There is not a tittle of known geological fact, which is not absolutely reconcilable with Genesis and Job.  But this is a word by the way:  although aimed not without design against one of the poor and paltry weak-holds of the infidel.

ADAM.

Remembering, then, that these are probabilities, and that the whole treatise purports to be nothing but a sketch, and not a finished picture, we have suggestively thus thrown out that the material world, man’s home as man, was likely to have been prepared, as we posteriorly know it to be.  Now, what of man’s own person, circumstances, and individuality?  Was it likely that the world should be stocked at once with many several races, or with one prolific seed? with a specimen of every variety of the genus man, or with the one generic type capable of forming those varieties?—­Answer.  One is by far the likelier in itself, because one thing must needs be more probable than many things:  additionally; Wisdom and Power are always economical, and where one will suit the purpose, superfluities are rejected.  That this one seed, covering with its product a various globe under all imaginable differences of circumstance and climate, should, in the lapse of ages, generate many species of the genus Man, was antecedently probable.  For example, morality, peace and obedience would exercise transforming powers:  their opposites the like in an opposite way.  We can well fancy a mild and gentle race, as the Hindoo, to spring from the former educationals:  and a family with flashing eyes and strongly-visaged natures, as the Malay, from a state of hatred, war, and license.  We can well conceive that a tropical sun should carbonize some of that tender fabric the skin, adding also swift blood and fierce passions:  while an arctic climate would induce a sluggish, stunted race.  And, when to these considerations we add that of promiscuous unions, we arrive at the just likelihood that the whole family of man, though springing from one root, should, in the course of generations, be what now we see it.