ality_.
Imagine a boat from the coast of America, or from the South Sea Islands,
cast by a tempest on some unknown shore or some desert island. A few
young persons, a few children, alone escape from the shipwreck, knowing
imperfectly the language, the arts, and the family traditions of their
parents. Such is the origin of the unfortunates sometimes met with, who
are ignorant even of the use of fire." Against the spontaneous
generation of the human race in several localities he argues at length
as an utter absurdity, the point of his argument being, that isolated
couples so produced would be unable to resist the inhospitality of
nature without miraculous aid, and one miracle, he contends, is more
admissable than ten or a dozen. But the chief grounds upon which he
labors to establish his doctrine are the similitude of the most ancient
traditions among all branches of the human species, the affiliation and
analogy of languages, and the identity of organization and equality of
aptitudes. He finds similar traditions among the Hebrews, the Chaldeans,
the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Hindoos, the
Persians, the Chinese, the Thibetans, the Scythians, and the Americans.
In the theogonies and cosmogonies of the Aztecs of America, he says that
the traditions of ancient Asia are plainly to be found, while some vague
traces of these primitive narratives are to be found even among the
savages of Oceanica, and the most barbarous and miserable negroes of
western Africa. To the negroes he devotes perhaps the most careful and
learned portion of the work. Starting from the discovery of M. Flaurens
as to the _pigmentum_ or coloring matter of the skin, he contends with
great force that nothing but the gradual influence of climate, giving a
greater and greater intensity to the action of this coloring matter,
which exists in every race and every individual, has caused the
essential difference between whites and blacks. For, he argues, there is
no other difference between them than that of color, all the other
features, such as the prominent mouth, the woolly hair, the facial
angle, being in no wise exclusively peculiar to the Africans. And so,
after having gone over the entire race in detail, proving the identity
of organization in every division, M. de Salles concludes that the
primitive complexion was olive, somewhat like the color of unburnt
coffee, and the original men had red hair. On the affiliation of
languages he reas