Article 2. Whether the Whole Human Race was Propagated from Adam, the First Parent of All

159. In the preceding article we established the immediate origin of man from God; now we must treat of the propagation of the human race. What revelation teaches concerning this matter, the Praeadamites and Coadamites attack with diverse arguments; therefore we shall proceed against them in distinct sections.

160. The doctrine concerning the propagation of the whole human race from one parent of all, Adam, has an intimate connection with the dogma concerning the elevation, fall, and reparation through Christ of human nature. Hence the Council of Trent, session 5, decree on original sin, supposing it as a necessary foundation, calls Adam the first man and the whole human race his offspring, according to the words of the Apostle which it cites.

161. Passing over certain ancient heretics, such as the Sabaeans, Julian the Apostate, etc., Isaac Pereyrus, a Frenchman by nation, of the sect of the Calvinists, defended this doctrine in the seventeenth century. He published two books: one whose title is Praeadamitae, or an Exercise on Verses 12, 13, 14 of Chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Romans; another, which he inscribed Theological System from the Hypothesis of the Praeadamites. In these he taught that the man whose formation is narrated in Genesis 1 was not Adam, whose formation, he said, is read in Genesis 2 from verse 7, but another man, created before Adam; that this man was the parent of the Gentiles, but Adam of the Jews; that the progeny of Adam and not of the other man is described by Moses, because his scope was to describe the origin and offspring of the Jewish people. Pereyrus was at once solidly refuted by many; and at last, stirred up and helped by divine grace, he sought Rome, and there under Alexander VII abjured his error and the Calvinistic sect. He acknowledged the authority of Sacred Scripture; indeed he abused it to confirm his error. Therefore the error of the Praeadamites must be refuted especially from Scripture.

162. Therefore we say:

PROP. XVI. We are taught by divine revelation that the whole human race was propagated from Adam, the protoparent of all.

Proof I, from Scripture. After the description of the creation of heaven and earth, and of all things which are either in heaven, or in the waters, or on the earth, Genesis 1:27 says: "and God created man to his own image." Therefore this man, even by the confession of the Praeadamites, is the first man founded by God. But the formation not of another man, but of the same man, is described more fully in Genesis 2 from verse 7, and this man is called Adam; therefore before Adam no man existed. But from the man concerning whom both places treat, with Scripture as witness and with the Praeadamites confessing it, both the Gentiles and the Jews, or the whole human race, were propagated. Therefore.

Proof of the minor. a) Genesis 2:5 says: "And there was not a man to work the earth"; and then, verse 7, the fashioning of Adam from the earthly slime is reported. Genesis 2:18 says: "It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like himself"; but afterwards, verses 21 and 22, the formation of Eve from Adam's rib is reported. Hence: if the man whose formation is handed down in Genesis 1 were another than Adam and Eve, who are treated in Genesis 2, already before the creation of Adam there would have been a man who would work the earth, and there would have been a helper like Adam. But Scripture teaches the contrary. Therefore.

b) Genesis 3:20 reads: "And Adam called the name of his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living." But if other men had been created before, from whom the nations had been propagated, Eve would not now be the mother of all the living. Therefore.

c) Genesis 5:1 and following says: "This is the book of the generation of Adam. In the day on which God created man, he made him to the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and blessed them; and he called their name Adam, in the day on which they were created." Hence, when God is said to have created Adam, he is said to have created man par excellence (l'uomo, l'homme, man). But this could not be said if other men had existed before Adam. Therefore.

d) In the same chapter, Genesis 5, Moses deduces the origin of Noah from Adam; Genesis 10:32 says: "From these (the families of Noah) the nations were divided on the earth after the flood." Therefore all nations descend from Adam.

e) Wisdom 10:1: "She (wisdom) preserved him who was first formed by God, the father of the world, when he had been created alone." Therefore.

f) Matthew 19:4: "Have you not read that he who made man from the beginning made them male and female?" Hence the same argument returns as under letter (c).

g) The Apostle supposes this truth in Romans 5:12, where he treats of original sin poured forth into all men; and in 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45 and following, where he discusses the universal death and resurrection of men. But also, in Acts 17:26, standing in the middle of the Areopagus and announcing the supreme God "who made the world and all things that are in it," he says expressly: "And (God) made from one the race of men to inhabit the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation."

Proof II, from the Fathers. Lactantius (Institutes, book 6, c. 10): "If we all arise from one man, whom God fashioned, certainly we are of one blood; and therefore it must be thought the greatest crime to hate a man, even one who is guilty." St. Augustine (Tractate 9 on John): "At the very beginning Adam and Eve were the parents of all nations, not only of the Jews." St. Laurence Justinian (On Charity, c. 15): "For this reason God willed first to form one single man, from whom all would proceed, so that all might love one another as brothers: it is not read that this was done in Angels or in brutes." St. Ambrose (On Paradise, n. 48): "Nor is that idle, that the woman was made not from the same earth from which Adam was formed, but from his very rib, so that we might know that there is one nature of body in man and woman, one source of the human race. Therefore not two were made at the beginning, man and woman, nor two men nor two women, but first man, then from him woman. For God, wishing to constitute one nature of men, beginning from one principle of this creature, took away the possibility of many and disparate natures. Let us make, he says, for him a helper like himself: we understand this for the generation of the human race." St. John Chrysostom (Homily on Charity), St. Jerome (book 16 on Isaiah), and Theodoret (book 3 of Therapeutics) teach the same. Moreover Pereyrus himself acknowledged that he had the authority of the Fathers against him; for in his letter to Philotimus he writes: "I confess that it did not escape me that the hypothesis which came into my mind concerning the first men founded before Adam departed utterly from the opinion of the holy Fathers, and also wandered from the whole canon of orthodox Councils; and that the whole fabric of doctrine concerning man fallen and redeemed had been founded by the Fathers and Councils upon the hypothesis concerning Adam, formed first of all men."

NOTE. For the solution of difficulties it is enough to note a few things.

1. Although only three sons of Adam are expressly named, Cain, Abel, and Seth, nevertheless Adam certainly had other sons, since Genesis 5:4 says of him that he begot sons and daughters and lived nine hundred and thirty years. Hence St. Augustine, book 15 of The City of God, c. 8, says: "They little consider that the writer of this sacred history did not have to name all the men who could then have existed, but only those whom the plan of the work undertaken demanded. For the purpose of that writer, through whom the Holy Spirit was doing this, was to arrive, through the successions of certain generations propagated from one man, at Abraham, and then from his seed at the people of God; so that neither would there be silence concerning the other society of men, which we call the earthly City, as much as was enough for commemorating it, so that the City of God might also be made clear by comparison with its adversary."

2. At the beginning of the human race, for its propagation it was permitted to take one's sister as wife. Hence St. Augustine, cited place, chapter 16, says: "Therefore, since the human race after the first union of the man made from dust and of his spouse from the man's side had need of the conjunction of males and females, so that it might be multiplied by begetting; and since there were no men except those who had been born from those two, men took their sisters as wives: and this indeed, the more ancient it is by compelling necessity, the more damnable it afterwards became when religion forbade it."

3. In the space of 225 years during which the sons of Israel remained in Egypt, we know from Exodus 12:37 that they had grown to six hundred thousand and more souls, although there were only 70 souls when Jacob entered there with his whole house. "Therefore," St. Augustine notes, book 1, Questions on Genesis, 9.1, "since they lived many more years than the Israelites were in Egypt, who does not see how many men could have been born, by whom that city would be filled, if the Hebrews could be multiplied so in a much shorter time?"

4. The city of Henoch, built by Cain, was not built before the five-hundredth year of the world, nor did it require the perfection of arts which is required for our cities; the same must be said concerning instruments for cultivating the earth.

5. That text of Genesis 4:7, "sin will immediately be at the doors," certainly does not indicate imaginary judges judging in the gates, but signifies punishment soon to be ready for sin; examples of this way of speaking also exist among profane writers. See, besides Perrone, Gotti, tract 10, q. 1, dub. 9.

163. Here we call Coadamites, in general, all those who acknowledge other men, besides Adam and Eve, as first parents of the human race. We can distinguish them into ancient and more recent. The ancient Coadamites are all those who admit aborigines; or who have imagined that in various regions of the very broad world there existed (let us say "were created," for if they denied creation, they would already have been refuted in the preceding article) primordial men, from whom the diverse nations of men came forth, and therefore that the dogma concerning the origin of all men from that first pair, Adam and Eve, must be rejected. As is clear, we in no way attack those who admit aborigines only in this sense, that they say there are peoples whose immediate origin cannot be known from historical documents.

164. Certain more recent authors have attacked the propagation of the whole human race through Adam and Eve in another way. From considering the differences existing among men of diverse regions, especially as to the body (for soul and reason seem to them to be nothing, or almost nothing), they deduced that there must be admitted not only diverse stocks, which all know, but also diverse human species. But as to the number of species they do not agree: for some, such as Virey, admit only two; others, such as Bory Saint-Vincent, fifteen; others, such as Desmoulins, sixteen; others, such as Knox, the head of the American school, admit almost as many distinct species of men as there are nations. Thus indeed, while the Transformists see so great a similarity between men and apes that they attribute one origin to them, others, the polygenists, find so great a dissimilarity among men themselves that they say they were procreated from altogether diverse parents. Truly "they became vain in their thoughts"!

165. For understanding the question, and the proofs which must be brought forward, it will be useful to hand down in a few words the true notions of species and stock. Species, as regards the present question, can be defined: a collection of similar individuals descending from one common stock through an uninterrupted succession of families. Now among the individuals of any species whatever, whether of plants, or of animals, or even of the human species, there is a certain diversity. If this diversity is notable, constant, and transmitted through generation, there is had that which is called a stock. The idea of species, as is clear, includes two elements, similarity and filiation; and although one includes the other, and conversely, nevertheless the principal one is filiation, for this more determines the very similarity necessary among individuals of the same species. Therefore species are judged and distinguished chiefly from the character of filiation.

166. Now it is found by experience that unions among individuals of the same species but of diverse stock are as fecund as unions among individuals of the same stock, indeed sometimes more fecund than these. On the contrary, however, unions among individuals of a diverse species of animals are obtained with difficulty, and if they are obtained, they are either altogether sterile, or become sterile after one or another generation, or finally reproduce all the characters of one of the species from which the hybrid individuals (so the offspring from individuals of diverse species is called) took their origin.

167. The idea of species just set forth, and of its fecundity, rests on experience. Hence 1. among the ancients, Aristotle taught: "every like generates something like itself"; and generation, which is an action of living things tending to the conservation and propagation of the species, was defined: "the origin of a living thing from a conjoined living principle unto the likeness of nature." 2. The more celebrated recent Naturalists handed down the same notion of species and established the same law of propagation, as can be seen in de Quatrefages (Rapport, etc., 2nd part, ch. 2). Darwin also (Plants and Animals under Domestication, vol. 2, ch. 16) bears witness to the aforesaid difficulty and sterility of unions among individuals of diverse species. 3. In Genesis 1, where the first production of plants and animals is treated, the word min is employed, which of itself involves the concept of similarity and filiation; therefore by the Latin interpreter it is rendered four times as species and six times as genus. Species, from looking upon, denotes the similarity of living things which is perceived by the eyes; genus, from generating, suggests the origin of living things from a stock of the same collection (gruppo). "All flesh will be joined to its like." Ecclesiasticus 13:20.

168. With these things posited, we say:

PROP. XVII. Nothing can be adduced from the human sciences by which plurality of human origin and species may be established; indeed there are many things which suggest that all men exist in such a way that, both by origin and by the specific unity of nature, all are brought back to the same family and the same humanity.

Proof I. With abstraction made from the divine authority of the Scriptures, and with the art of criticism alone as guide, it is shown that the Pentateuch of Moses is the most ancient historical document, and that no other can be preferred to it or compared with it in integrity and authenticity. But when the diverse places of this book are compared, it is established, as we have seen, that all men were propagated from one progenitor down to Noah, and then all from Noah and his sons. Hence sound reason teaches that one must not depart from the testimony of this book, or at least that one must not depart without some evident contrary reason; otherwise no historical faith would remain. But that book teaches the unity of origin, and consequently of the human species, while no evident reason is given why this should be denied, as will be clear from the things soon to be said. Therefore.

Confirmation. All the ancient anthropogonies which poets and historians have preserved for us, and also the traditions of all peoples, whether more ancient or more recent, entirely reproduce the Mosaic anthropogony, as Huet shows (Demonstratio evangelica, prop. 4, c. 5 and following). All the histories which narrate transmigrations of colonies from Asia, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, etc., are at least witnesses that all peoples, having arisen from a small beginning, gradually increased and had a common origin. Nor is it opposed to this universal tradition that some peoples have been called aborigines: both a) because it is established that this fable arose from a certain desire for a little glory, by which they were led to contend among themselves about antiquity; and b) because, together with this fable, the same peoples at the same time retained certain signs and traditions concerning the common origin of all (Perrone in the note). Therefore, if the truth concerning the unity of origin and species of all men could be denied, all traditions, however universal, and all historical documents would have to be rejected.

Proof II. From the comparative study of languages it is established that all languages are easily brought back to two primitive ones, the Semitic and the Japhetic, and that these proceeded from one. Philologists show this from the identity, or similarity and analogy, of words, roots, forms, the grammatical system, etc. Consult the authors whom Fr. Perrone cites in the note. Experience also often establishes that there is a greater affinity among the languages of peoples very far apart from one another than among those nearer to one another. Now this common analogy and affinity of all languages easily shows that there was one origin of all men; otherwise it would have no cause.

Proof III. We have already said that it is established by experience and by the testimony of naturalists that unions among animals of diverse species either are altogether sterile, or at least that generations are not perpetuated except through the return of the descendants to the perfect type of one species of the progenitors. It is also established that the characteristic marks of one species are not found in the individuals of another species; while, on the contrary, the characters of one stock are found in the individuals of another stock (see de Quatrefages, Rapport, etc., p. 112). But unions among men of whatever region, of whatever stock (of whatever species according to the adversaries), have complete fecundity, as de Quatrefages shows at length in the cited work, p. 115; nor does any of the facts alleged to the contrary prove anything, as the same Author shows on p. 439. But the characters of one human stock (according to the adversaries, species), which the adversaries themselves assign [color; the color and nature of the hair; the different structure especially of the skull and facial angle of the human mouth, etc.] are found in individuals of another stock, as the same de Quatrefages among others shows in the cited work, p. 112. Therefore.

Proof IV. The chief foundation of those who try to establish the plurality of human species is the great difference among men of diverse stocks. But this foundation is altogether unstable. For a) those diversities appear great if individuals of diverse stock are compared, each of whom has the marks of his own stock in the highest degree (the greatest blackness, for example, and the greatest whiteness); but they are very small if individuals are compared together each of whom has the marks of his own stock in a lower degree. This observation is confirmed from the fact that, as de Quatrefages well proves in the cited work, p. 111: "Even where the extremes are most distinct, as in Africa, the difficulty is not to find resemblances; it consists in specifying the differences." b) Among certain animals of diverse stock there are greater dissimilarities than among men, and yet by the confession of all naturalists those animals do not belong to diverse species. c) Whatever the differences may be among men of diverse stock, it is well shown that they can be explained from climate, food, manner of life, etc., without admitting diversity of origin. See de Quatrefages, cited work, 2nd part, ch. 3. d) The same Author, in the 3rd part, carefully weighs the physical, anatomical, physiological, pathological, intellectual, and moral characters of men of diverse stocks; and from all these he rather deduces the unity of the human species, a conclusion which, like the premises, he confirms by the testimonies of the more celebrated naturalists.

Proof V. The same de Quatrefages, to overturn another argument by which especially Agassiz strives to show that all men do not have the same origin, establishes this thesis: "Whether one is monogenist or polygenist, one could not attribute multiple geographical origins to man without making him a unique exception among all organized beings." Cited work, p. 165. He confirms this thesis at length.

Moreover, the very mode of acting of the adversaries sufficiently proves that their arguments, which lack principles and logic, must be considered of no account. For Knox and Gliddon think it useless and ridiculous to define species, although they establish a plurality of human species. The same Gliddon and Nott, against experience and authority, wish to judge diverse species solely from dissimilarities, although this argument, as we have seen, proves nothing, indeed proves against them. Agassiz and some others teach that continuous fecundity and limited fecundity or sterility are of no moment for determining species; which again is against fact and the authority of the more celebrated Naturalists, both ancient and recent. See de Quatrefages, cited work, p. 118.

Therefore we can briefly press all these men in this way: if you do not define species, from the fact that there are, as you say, diverse human species, you can by no means prove that it is repugnant for all to have a common origin. If you define species only from similarity, it has been shown that the similarities existing among men of diverse regions do not prevent all from having been able to proceed from a common stock. Finally, if you admit, what is true, that species is determined chiefly from continuous fecundity, it has been shown that this is found among men of diverse regions, whatever the dissimilarities among them may be. Therefore in no way do you show that the whole human race could not have been propagated from Adam and Eve. But that this, which could have happened, in fact happened, is demonstrated by revelation, the universal tradition of men, etc.

See the objections in Perrone.