Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
from a period indefinitely remote. There is no arguing against fact; and the antiquity of the
human race, if proved by geological discovery, would have to be admitted, just as has been
done in regard to the movement of the earth and the six days of the creation.
The existence of the human race before the geological deluge, it may be objected, is still
doubtful. But the same objection cannot be urged against the following considerations -
Admitting that man first appeared upon the earth 4000 years before Christ, if the whole of the
human race, with the exception of a single family, were destroyed 1650 years afterwards, it
follows that the peopling of the earth dates only from the time of Noah-that is to say, only
2500 years before Christ. But when the Hebrews emigrated to Egypt in the eighteenth century
before Christ, they found that country densely populated, and already in possession of an
advanced civilisation. History also shows that, at the same period, India and various other
countries were equally populous and flourishing, to say nothing of the chronological tables of
other nations, which claim to go back to periods yet more remote. We must, therefore,
suppose that, from the twenty- fourth to the eighteenth century before Christ-that is to say, in
the space of 600 years-the posterity of a single individual was able to people all the immense
countries which had then been discovered, not to speak of those which were then unknown,
but which we have no reason to conclude were destitute of inhabitants; and we must suppose,
still further, that the human race, during this brief period, was able to raise itself from the
crass ignorance of the primitive savage state to the highest degree of intellectual
development-sup-positions utterly irreconcilable with anthropological laws.
The diversity of the various human races confirms this view of the subject. Climate and
modes of life undoubtedly modify the physical characteristics of mankind, but we know the
extent to which these modifications can be carried, and physiological examination
conclusively proves that there are between the different races of men constitutional
differences too profound to have been produced merely by differences of climate. The
crossing of races produces intermediary types; it tends to efface the extremes of characteristic
peculiarities; but it does not produce these peculiarities, and, there. fore, creates only new
varieties. But the crossing of races presupposes the existence of races distinct from each
other; and how is