Sincere Christians have understood that the moment is come to prepare the conciliation of the doctrine of the polygenists with the sacred writings. They are disposed to admit that the Mosaic narration does not apply to the whole human race, but merely to the _Adamites_, from which sprung God’s people; that there may have been other human beings with whom the sacred writer had no concern; that it is nowhere said that the sons of Adam contracted incestuous alliances with their own sisters; that Cain, banished after the murder of his brother, had a mark set upon him that no one might kill him; that, besides the sons of God, there was a race of the sons of man; that the origin of the sons of men is not specified; that nothing authorises us to consider these as the progeny of Adam; that these two races differed in their physical characters, since, by their union, a cross-breed was produced designated by the name of giants, “to indicate the physical and moral energy of mixed races.” And that, finally, all these antediluvian races might have survived the deluge in the persons of the three daughters-in-law of Noah.[84] We have collated here the observations of various authors, one of whom, the Rev. John Bachmann, remarks with evident satisfaction that, if contrary to the prevailing opinion, the multiplicity of human species should eventually be demonstrated, which he considers very improbable, the authority of the Bible would still remain unshaken, and that “the highest interest of mankind would not suffer by it.” We have here a preparatory conciliation as a sort of prevision of ulterior scientific developments. Very recently a fervent Catholic, a physician, who in his various voyages has attentively studied the races of mankind, Mr. Sagot, has advanced an hypothesis which we consider as quite new, and which would enable us, better than by the preceding suppositions, to accommodate the biblical narration with anthropological science. After having demonstrated that the physical, intellectual, and moral characters establish between the races of men profound differences, which are indelible, and that all influences to which they have been attributed are absurd and imaginary, inasmuch as natural causes would never have produced such a deviation from the primitive form, Mr. Sagot supposes that the division in perfectly distinct races, and their methodical dispersion and repartition upon the surface of the earth, was a miraculous intervention of Providence. He is of opinion that this great fact was accomplished at the period of the confusion of tongues, that is, after the audacious enterprise of the Tower of Babel, and that God, in dispersing the families, endowed each with a peculiar organisation and aptitudes accommodated to the various climates assigned to them.[85] Whether the differences of human races and their geographical distribution was the consequence of distinct creations, or miraculous transformations equivalent to