among the female
members of the class. Looking, then, at the entire evidence,--at the
admitted fact that the Circassians of the present day are an eminently
handsome people,--that the old Greeks, Ninevites, Egyptians, Jews,
Romans, and with these all the modern nations of Europe, are but the
varieties of the central race that have retained in greatest perfection
the original traits,--I do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion
that this Caucasian type was the type of Adamic man. Adam, the father of
mankind, was no squalid savage of doubtful humanity, but a noble
specimen of man; and Eve a soft Circassian beauty, but exquisitely
lovely beyond the lot of fallen humanity.

"The loveliest pair
That ever yet in love's embraces met:
Adam, the goodliest man of men since born
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve."

I know not whether I should add what follows. It has been said that
Luke, the "beloved physician," was also a painter. It has been said that
that traditionary, time-honored form, which we at once recognize in the
pictures of the old masters as that of the Saviour of mankind, he in
reality bore when he walked this earth in the flesh. I know not what
degree of probability attaches to the belief. I know not whether the
traditionary form be in reality the true one. This, however, I know,
that _if_ such was the form which the adorable Redeemer assumed when he
took to himself a real body and a reasonable soul, the second Adam, like
the first, exemplified, when upon earth, the perfect type of Caucasian
man.

Let me next remark, that the further we remove from the original centre
of the race, the more degraded and sunk do we find the several varieties
of humanity. We must set wholly aside, in our survey, the disturbing
element of modern emigration. Caucasian man has been pressing outwards.
In the backwoods of America, in Southern Africa, in Australia, and in
the Polynesian islands, the old Adamic type has been asserting its
superiority, and annihilating before it the degraded races. But taking
into account merely the aboriginal varieties, it seems to be a general
rule, that the further we remove in any direction from the Adamic
centre, the more animalized and sunk do we find the various tribes or
races. Contrary to the conceptions of the assertors of the development
hypothesis, we ascertain, as we proceed outwards, that the course is not
one of progression from the low to the high,