Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    307/408 page 299
    consisted of many pairs, though situated at one place, and these may have been considerably dif- ferent from each other in external characters. And we are equally bound to admit, though this does not as yet seem to have occurred to any other speculator, that there may have been different lines and sources of origination, geographically apart, but which all resulted uniformly in the pro- duction of a being, one in species, although variously marked. It has of late years been a favourite notion with several writers, that the human race was at first in a highly civilized state, and that barbarism was a second condition. The principal argument for it is, that we see many examples of nations falling away from civilization into barbarism, while, in some regions of the earth, the history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains of works of art far superior to any which the present unen- lightened inhabitants could have produced. It is to be readily admitted that such decadences are common; but do they necessarily prove that there has been anything like a regular and constant decline into the present state, from a state more generally refined? May not these be only in- stances of local failures and suppressions of the
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image