An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" - With a Notice of the Author's "Explanations:" A Sequel to the Vestiges by Anonymous
page 59 of 84 (70%)
page 59 of 84 (70%)
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tribe. (p. 267.) Again, human reason is considered no exclusive gift; it
exists subordinately in the instinct of brutes, and is alleged to be nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early stage of development. CUVIER and NEWTON are only intellectual expansions of a clown; and this notion is extended to moral obliquities, the wicked man being characterised as one "whose highest moral feelings are rudimental." (p. 358.) From a like principle the writer concurs with Dr. PRICHARD, that mankind may have had a common origin; that there exists no diversities of colour or osseous structure not referable to climatable or other plastic agencies influencing the development of the different races, commencing with the lowest, or Negro tribe, and ascending upward through the intermediate aboriginal American, Mongolian, and Malay, to the last and most perfect stage of the Caucasian type. Into the verity of these conclusions we are not called upon to enter; they have been long in controversy, involve a great array of facts and inductive inferences, and we have only referred to them as corollaries or collaterals of the author's hypothetical fabric. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TENDENCIES. We have no charge of impiety to bring against the _Vestiges_. Final causes, or to express ourselves more intelligibly, a _purpose_ in creation, is nowhere impugned. The Deity is not degraded by impersonification in the form and frailties of mortality, but everywhere the author reverently bows to that august and unsearchable name, acknowledges the grand and benevolent design--the admirable adaptation of every created thing to its end and place, and finally concludes in a |
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