Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity [pp. 250-294]

Apologetics.
lian family of nations, the extreme abnormal Negro type repeated, in distinct localities, which their isolation and language
utterly forbid us to assign to the Negro zone.
The Negro is, in fact, itself an exaggerated and extreme
representation of the African type, evidently due to the collective force of physical conditions perpetuated and exaggerated
by the natural laws of reproduction; and varying extremely in
different parts of the cohtinent, and different portions of the
same family. Any argument that will demand a separate
origin for the African variety, will require a separate origin for
the Negro and Hottentot sub-varieties.
In an exceedingly elaborate table on the ethnographical distribution of round and elongated crania, combined with the perpendicular or the prognathous profile, by Professor Retzius, in
the proceedings of the British Association, for 1846, we find a
complete network of these cranial and physiognomical variations,
applied to each of the great divisions of the globe, which laughs
to scorn any idea of classifying, permanently, the families of
the human race, on any principles of the sort. Each of the
forms, in all their possible combinations and transition stages,
is found in every separate family of affiliated nations on the
globe.
But it is impossible for us to present a tithe of the evidence
before us, to the truth of the proposition, that whether we make
few or many centres of origin, the difficulties of the subject are
not met: and an ethnographic classification, founded on the
hypothesis of a diversity of origins, would be an inconceivable
absurdity. It groups together, as in the African, the Hyperborean, and still more in the Australian zoological province, the
most diverse and incongruous elements of classification: and it
separates others into distinct zones, which are clearly one in
origin and history.
Our third, and we think decisive, point against the hypothesis
is, that it ignores all set'tled ethnographical distributions, and
runs a quixotic tilt against the profound researches, and rigorous scientific deductions of comparative philology. Professor
Agassiz despatches the whole results of the untiring and amazing labours of nearly half the highest German intellect, for half
a century, to say nothing of the countless scholars devoted to
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