has little weight, because, as we go further back in
time, it is natural to suppose that man's distribution over the surface
of the earth was less universal than at present.

Besides, Europe was in a great measure submerged during the tertiary
epoch; and though its scattered islands may have been uninhabited by
man, it by no means follows that he did not at the same time exist in
warm or tropical continents. If geologists can point out to us the most
extensive land in the warmer regions of the earth, which has not been
submerged since Eocene or Miocene times, it is there that we may expect
to find some traces of the very early progenitors of man. It is there
that we may trace back the gradually decreasing brain of former races,
till we come to a time when the body also begins materially to differ.
Then we shall have reached the starting point of the human family.
Before that period, he had not mind enough to preserve his body from
change, and would, therefore, have been subject to the same
comparatively rapid modifications of form as the other mammalia.

_Their Bearing on the Dignity and Supremacy of Man._

If the views I have here endeavoured to sustain have any foundation,
they give us a new argument for placing man apart, as not only the head
and culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in
some degree a new and distinct order of being. From those infinitely
remote ages, when the first rudiments of organic life appeared upon the
earth, every plant, and every animal has been subject to one great law
of physical change. As the earth has gone through its grand cycles of
geological, climatal, and organic progress, every form of life has been
subject to its irresistible action, and has been continually, but
imperceptibly moulded into such new shapes as would preserve their
harmony with the ever-changing universe. No living thing could escape
this law of its being; none (except, perhaps, the simplest and most
rudimentary organisms), could remain unchanged and live, amid the
universal change around it.

At length, however, there came into existence a being in whom that
subtle force we term _mind_, became of greater importance than his mere
bodily structure. Though with a naked and unprotected body, _this_ gave
him clothing against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though
unable to compete with the deer in swiftness, or with the wild bull in
strength, _this_ gave him weapons with which to ca