a, or engulfed by earthquakes; and
had these catastrophes been repeated throughout an indefinite lapse of
ages, the high antiquity of man would have been inscribed in far more
legible characters on the framework of the globe than are the forms of
the ancient vegetation which once covered the islands of the northern
ocean, or of those gigantic reptiles which at still later periods
peopled the seas and rivers of the northern hemisphere.[230]

Dr. Prichard has argued that the human race have not always existed on
the surface of the earth, because "the strata of which our continents
are composed were once a part of the ocean's bed"--"mankind had a
beginning, since we can look back to the period when the surface on
which they lived began to exist."[231] This proof, however, is
insufficient, for many thousands of human beings now dwell in various
quarters of the globe where marine species lived within the times of
history, and, on the other hand, the sea now prevails permanently over
large districts once inhabited by thousands of human beings. Nor can
this interchange of sea and land ever cease while the present causes are
in existence. Terrestrial species, therefore, might be older than the
continents which they inhabit, and aquatic species of higher antiquity
than the lakes and seas which they now people.

But so far as our interpretation of physical movements has yet gone, we
have every reason to infer that the human race is extremely modern, even
when compared to the larger number of species now our contemporaries on
the earth, and we may, therefore, ask whether his creation can be
considered as one step in a supposed progressive system, by which the
organic world has advanced slowly from a more simple to a more complex
and perfect state? If we concede, for a moment, the truth of the
proposition, that the sponge, the cephalopod, the fish, the reptile, the
bird, and the mammifer, have followed each other in regular
chronological order, the creation of each class being separated from the
other by vast intervals of time, should we be able to recognize, in
man's entrance upon the earth, the last term of one and the same series
of progressive developments?

In reply to this question it should first be observed, that the
superiority of man depends not on those faculties and attributes which
he shares in common with the inferior animals, but on his reason, by
which he is distinguished from them. When it is said that the human