This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... 128 chapter vi. ethnology. "Pleasant it is each diverse step to scan By which the savage first assumes the man." We are now in a position to discuss and determine, on purely scientific evidence and principles, the question of the priority of the time of appearance upon earth of these different races or varieties of man, whether they have originated from one or from several centres of creation. The whole world lies before us, with its strangely diversified population, from the high-bred European to the abject Australian and Bushman; and the question for our consideration is simply, whether this diversity of race, which has existed as it now exists from the first glimmering of tradition, has been the result of a process of degradation from the higher to the lower, or of elevation from the lower to the higher, types of organization. If the Caucasian was the first of the human family upon the earth, then the present aspect of the habitable parts of the globe has resulted from a degenerating principle, which has so operated, that while one member of the Caucasian race is now represented by the highly civilized European, other members of the same family have been retreating through time and space, until they have reached the confines of the brute creation. If, on the other hand, the Caucasian was the last to appear on the earth, then the law of human life has been, like the law that governs the rest of the creation, progressive, and the highest in the scale of organization was the latest in point of time. So far as the scientific evidence of man's existence extends, there never was a time, since humanity dawned upon the earth, at which the uncivilized savage was not its inhabitant. His memorials indicate his presence at periods long anterior...