hall be a real and lastingly effective one, it certainly must also have
its real basis in the history of the origin of mankind. But, we must ask,
is the only conceivable reality of this basis a monogenetic pedigree, and
do we lose this reality if science should once find that mankind came into
existence not only in one single pair, but in several pairs, even in
different places, and at different times? Even in such a case, the idea of
the unity of mankind would only lose its real basis, if at the same time we
were permitted to think also anti-teleologically--if we were permitted to
suppose that that which came into existence, repeatedly, and in different
places, had each time entirely different causes without a common aim and a
common plan. If we think teleologically, we see the unity of mankind, also
in case of a polygenetic origin, in the unity of the metaphysical and
teleological cause which called mankind into existence; and to rational
beings, endowed with mind, as men are, the metaphysical bond is certainly
stronger than the physical. {341} Precisely the Darwinian ideas of the
origin of species through descent would show us in such a case the real
bond which unites mankind. For then we should only have to go back from the
different points on the stem-lines of the prehistoric generators of these
primitive men, at which men originated otherwise than by generation, in
order to arrive finally at a common root of all these stem-lines: the
members of mankind would even then remain consanguineous among one another,
not only in an ideal, but in a real sense.

Now that the idea of the unity of mankind was holy and important to St.
Paul, is to be inferred in advance from such a universal mind. And when in
Acts XVII, 26, he expresses this idea before the Athenians, so proud of
their autochthony, with the words that "of one blood all nations of men
dwell on all the face of the earth"; or when, in Romans V, and 1
Corinthians XV, he makes use of the idea in order to explain and to glorify
the universal power of redemption of Christ by putting Adam and Christ in
opposition to one another, as the first and the second Adam, so that he
sees sin and death coming forth from Adam, grace and justice and life from
Christ and extending over mankind; then we find this idea quite convincing
and natural, and adhere firmly to the quintessence of these truths, even if
we acknowledge neither in these passages, nor in Genesis I and II, the
intent