Excerpt from An Essay of the Natural History of Mankind, Viewed in Connection With Negro Slavery: Delivered Before the Southern Rights Association, 14th December, 1850 The Bible was clearly intended, not as a book of science, but to teach mankind their duties towards each other, and towards their Maker; and the inspiration which guided the human beings who wrote it, though full, for all purposes in tended, stopped very far short of Omuiscz'euce. It certainly will not be questioned that these writers gave no evidence whatever, of any scientific or geographical knowledge be yond that of their profane cotemporaries. They regarded the earth as an extended plain, and spoke of its sides and ends 3 they knew nothing of its extent beyond that border ing on the Mediterranean Sea; they knew nothing of South ern Africa, Northern and Eastern Asia, the greater part of Europe, the whole of America, Australia, &c.: in a word, of nine-tenths of the inhabited globe. Even as late as the time of Christ, and for several centuries after, geographical knowledge extended little beyond the confines of the Roman Empire, and it can hardly be supposed that those writers knew any thing of Races whose countries were unknown to them. That many of these countries - and probably all were populated, as far back as the time of Moses, by the same many-colored races which we now find in them, is abundantly proved, and will be conceded. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.