PRE-ADAMITES, supposed inhabitants of the earth anterior to Adam. The author of the opinion, or at least the writer in whose hands it first took a scientific form, was Isaac de In Peyrere, better known by his Latinized name Pererius. He was born of a Calvinist family of Bordeaux in 1594, and was attached to the service of the prince of Conde. His theory was first' made public in 1655, in the form of a commentary on the 12th, 13th, and 14th verses of the 5th chsptcr of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which was followed, in the same year, by the first part of a formal treatise on the pre•Adamite hypothesis, and the theological consequences to be derived therefrom. According to his hypothesis Adam was the progenitor of the Jewish race only, and it is only of him and his race that the Bible is designed to supply the history. Other races existeeon earth before that of Adam; but of them the Bible contains no record, nor (lid the Mosaic law regard them or impose any obligation upon them. It was only under the gospel that they began to be comprehended in the law, which through Christ was given to all the bullion races of. the earth; and it is in this sense that, according to Peyrere, sin is said (Rom. v. 13) to " have been in the world until the law," but not to have been "imputed when the law was not." For the pre-Adamite race, as the law was not, there
was no legal offense. The only evil which Peyrere recognized was natural evil. The same limited interpretation he extended to most other details of the Mosaic history. Thin he regarded the deluge as partial, being confined only to the Adiunite race. Other miraculous narratives of the Pentateuch and even of other books lie restricted similarly. As his book was published in the Low Countries he fell under the animadversion of the inquisition, and eventually was arrested in the diocese of Mechlin, but was released at the instance of the prince of Conde. He afterward went to Rome, where he conformed to the Catholic religion, and made a full retractation of his erroneous opinions. lie was offered preferment by the pope, Alexander VII.; but returned in preference to Paris, Where lie entered the seminary of Notre Dame des Vertus, in which he resided till his death in 1676. The discussion has acquired new interest by recent discoveries of sup posed evidences of human art and industry, in positions which, considered geologically, appear to their discoverers to be of an age beyond those limits which the 7Alosaic chronology assigns to the creation of Adam.