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The present tendencies of natural science, especially since Darwin, are favorable to the monogenist view. "The opinion of modern Zooelogists, whose study of the species and breeds of animals makes them the best judges, is against this view of the several origins of man, for two principal reasons.
Such, in brief outline, is the method which history, from the point of view of race affinities, as these are indicated by language, would adopt. UNITY OF DESCENT. Whether mankind are all descended from one pair the Monogenist view, or spring from more than one center of origin the Polygenist view, is a question which philological science can not answer.
While cautious philologists are slow in admitting distinct affinities between the generic families of speech, as the Semitic and Indo-European, which would be indicative of a common origin, they agree in the judgment, that, on account of the mutability of language, especially when unwritten, and while in its earlier stages, no conclusion adverse to the monogenist doctrine can be drawn from the diversities of speech now existing, or that are known to have existed at any past time.
Science, if it has no decided verdict to render, does not stand in conflict with the monogenist doctrine, which has generally been understood to be the teaching of the Scriptures. The polytheistic religions are in themselves a highly interesting part of the history of mankind.
As far as science is concerned, the decision of the question must be left to zooelogy. The tendencies of natural science at present, as we have said above, are strongly toward the monogenist view. The variety of physical characteristics not only affords no warrant for assuming diversity of species among men; they do not even imply diversity of parentage at the beginning.
The extremes of form and color are certainly separated, but without regard to the races which can not be included in any of these classes." MONOGENISM. Zooelogists, from the point of view of their own science, now more generally favor the monogenist doctrine, which traces mankind to a single pair, than the polygenist, which assumed different centers of origin.
The Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, met this difficulty. Burton was the first president, and in two years the Society, which met at No. 4, St. Martin's Place, had 500 members. "These rooms," Burton afterwards commented, "now offer a refuge to destitute truth. There any man, monogenist, polygenist, eugenestic or dysgenestic, may state the truth as far as is in him."
These speculations may be grouped under three heads: firstly, the Monogenist hypotheses; secondly, those of the Polygenists; and thirdly, that which would result from a simple application of Darwinian principles to mankind.
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