While we hold the latter of these convictions, and while we for many reasons believe that the different species of speechless primæval men were all derived from a common ape-like human form, we do not of course mean to say that _all men are descended from one pair_. This latter supposition, which our modern Indo-Germanic culture has taken from the Semitic myth of the Mosaic history of creation, is by no means tenable. The whole of the celebrated dispute, as to whether the human race is descended from a single pair or not, rests upon a completely false way of putting the question. It is just as senseless as the dispute as to whether all sporting dogs or all race-horses are descended from a single pair. We might with equal justice ask whether all Germans or all Englishmen are “descended from a single pair,” etc. A “first human pair,” or “a first man,” has in fact never existed, any more than there ever existed a first pair or a first individual of Englishmen, Germans, race-horses, or sporting dogs. The origin of a new species, of course, always results from an existing species, by a long chain of many different individuals sharing the slow process of transformation. Supposing that we had all the different pairs of Human Apes and Ape-like Men before us—which belong to the true ancestors of the human race—it would even then be quite impossible (without doing so most arbitrarily) to call any one of these pairs of ape-like men “the first pair.” As little can we derive each of the twelve races or species of men, which we shall consider directly, from a “first pair.”