Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
Dana, quoted in Burgess, Antiq. and Unity of Race, 185, 186—“In
the ascending scale of animals, the number of species in any genus
diminishes as we rise, and should by analogy be smallest at the
head of the series. Among mammals, the higher genera have few
species, and the highest group next to man, the orang-outang, has
only eight, and these constitute but two genera. Analogy requires
that man should have preëminence and should constitute only one.”
194—“A species corresponds to a specific amount or condition of
concentrated force defined in the act or law of creation.... The
species in any particular case began its existence when the first
germ-cell or individual was created. When individuals multiply
from generation to generation, it is but a repetition of the
primordial type-idea.... The specific is based on a numerical
unity, the species being nothing else than an enlargement of the
individual.” For full statement of Dana’s view, see Bib. Sac., Oct
1857:862-866. On the idea of species, see also Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:63-74.
(_a_) To this view is opposed the theory, propounded by Agassiz, of
different centres of creation, and of different types of humanity
corresponding to the varying fauna and flora of each. But this theory
makes the plural origin of man an exception in creation. Science points
rather to a single origin of each species, whether vegetable or animal. If
man be, as this theory grants, a single species, he should be, by the same
rule, restricted to one continent in his origin. This theory, moreover,
applies an unproved hypothesis with regard to the distribution of
organized beings in general to the very being whose whole nature and
history show conclusively that he is an exception to such a general rule,
if one exists. Since man can adapt himself to all climes and conditions,
the theory of separate centres of creation is, in his case, gratuitous and
unnecessary.
Agassiz’s view was first published in an essay on the Provinces of
the Animal World, in Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, a book
gotten up in the interest of slavery. Agassiz held to eight
distinct centres of creation, and to eight corresponding types of
humanity—the Arctic, the Mongolian, the European, the American,
the Negro, the Hottentot, the Malay, the Australian. Agassiz
regarded Adam as the ancestor only of the white race, yet like
Peyrerius and Winchell be held that man in all his various races
constitutes but one species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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