Accepting the fact of five distinct languages from the
Equator to 12 degrees N. lat., it would appear by analogy that Central
Africa is divided into numerous countries and tribes, distinct from each
other in language and physical conformation, whose origin is perfectly
obscure. Whether the man of Central Africa be pre-Adamite is impossible
to determine; but the idea is suggested by the following data. The
historical origin of man, or Adam, commences with a knowledge of God.
Throughout the history of the world from the creation of Adam, God is
connected with mankind in every creed, whether worshipped as the
universal sublime Spirit of omnipotence, or shaped by the forms of
idolatry into representations of a deity. From the creation of Adam,
mankind has acknowledged its inferiority, and must bow down and worship
either the true God or a graven image; or something that is in heaven or
in earth. The world, as we accept that term, was always actuated by a
natural religious instinct. Cut off from that world, lost in the
mysterious distance that shrouded the origin of the Egyptian Nile, were
races unknown, that had never reckoned in the great sum of
history--races that we have brought to light, whose existence had been
hidden from mankind, and that now appear before us like the fossil bones
of antediluvian animals.
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