have as yet completely failed to adduce satisfactory positive proof
of the specific diversity of mankind. Like the Monogenists, the
Polygenists are of several sects; some imagine that their assumed
species of mankind were created where we find them--the African in
Africa, and the Australian in Australia, along with the other animals
of their distributional province; others conceive that each species of
man has resulted from the modification of some antecedent species of
ape--the American from the broad-nosed Simians of the New World, the
African from the Troglodytic stock, the Mongolian from the Orangs.

The first hypothesis is hardly likely to win much favour. The whole
tendency of modern science is to thrust the origination of things
further and further into the background; and the chief philosophical
objection to Adam being, not his oneness, but the hypothesis of his
special creation; the multiplication of that objection tenfold is,
whatever it may look, an increase, instead of a diminution, of the
difficulties of the case. And, as to the second alternative, it may
safely be affirmed that, even if the differences between men are
specific, they are so small, that the assumption of more than one
primitive stock for all is altogether superfluous. Surely no one can
now be found to assert that any two stocks of mankind differ as much
as a chimpanzee and an orang do; still less that they are as unlike as
either of these is to any New World Simian!

Lastly, the granting of the Polygenist premises does not, in the
slightest degree, necessitate the Polygenist conclusion. Admit that
Negroes and Australians, Negritos and Mongols are distinct species,
or distinct genera, if you will, and you may yet, with perfect
consistency, be the strictest of Monogenists, and even believe in Adam
and Eve as the primaeval parents of all mankind.