In considering this great question, do all inquirers sufficiently recognize the element of Time? Obviously the sphere of operation is enlarged in proportion to the time employed. Everything is possible with time. Confining ourselves to recognized chronology, existing varieties cannot be reconciled with that unity found in a common origin. What are the six thousand years of Hebrew time, what are the twenty-two thousand years of human annals sanctioned by the learning and piety of Bunsen,[134] for the consummation of these transformations? And this longest period, how brief for the completion of those two marvellous languages, Sanscrit and Greek, which at the earliest dawn of authentic history were already so perfect! Considering the infinitudes of astronomy, and those other infinitudes of geology, it is not unreasonable to claim an antiquity for Primeval Man compared with which all the years of authentic history are a span. With such incalculable opportunity, amidst unknown changes of Nature where heat and cold strove for mastery, no transformation consistent with the preservation of the characteristic species was impossible. Egypt is not alone in its Sphinx, perplexing mortals with perpetual enigma. Science is our Sphinx, and its enigma is Man and his varieties on earth: to which I answer, “Time.” Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that at the Creation conditions were stamped upon man, making transformations natural. Because unnatural according to observation during the brief period of historic time, it does not follow that they are not strictly according to law. The famous Calculating Engine of Charles Babbage, the distinguished mathematician, as described in his remarkable “Bridgewater Treatise,” where Science vindicates anew the ways of Providence to man, supplies an illustration which is not without instruction. This machine, with a power almost miraculous, was so adjusted as to produce a series of natural numbers in regular order from unity to a number expressed by one hundred millions and one,--100,000,001,--when another series was commenced, regulated by a different law, which continued until at a certain number the series was again changed; and all these changes in the immense progression proceeded from a propulsion at the beginning.[135] Any simple observer, finding that the series stretched onwards through successive millions, would have no hesitation in concluding from the vast induction that it must proceed always according to the same law; and yet it was not so. But the Calculating Engine is only a contrivance of human skill. And cannot the Creator do as much? That is a very inadequate conception of the Almighty Power creating the universe and placing man in it, which supposes, according to the language of Sir John Herschel, the eminent astronomer, that “His combinations are exhausted upon any one of the theatres of their former exercise.”[136] Thus far we know not the law of the series which governed Primeval Man.