the Old Testament, he soon entangled himself in very serious
difficulties; but, in spite of the great fathers of the first
three centuries, he reduced the antiquity of man on the earth by
nearly a thousand years, and, in spite of mutterings against him
as coming dangerously near a limit which made the theological
argument from the six days of creation to the six ages of the
world look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did
much to fix western Europe in its allegiance to the general
system laid down by Eusebius and Jerome.

In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of
thought from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses Maimonides
and other Jewish scholars, by careful study of the Hebrew text,
arrived at conclusions diminishing the antiquity of man still
further, and thus gave strength throughout the Middle Ages to
the shorter chronology: it was incorporated into the sacred
science of Christianity; and Vincent of Beauvais, in his great
_Speculum Historiale_, forming part of that still more enormous
work intended to sum up all the knowledge possessed by the ages
of faith, placed the creation of man at about four thousand
years before our era.[252]

At the Reformation this view was not disturbed. The same manner
of accepting the sacred text which led Luther, Melanchthon, and
the great Protestant leaders generally, to oppose the Copernican
theory, fixed them firmly in this biblical chronology; the
keynote was sounded for them by Luther when he said, "We know,
on the authority of Moses, that longer ago than six thousand
years the world did not exist." Melanchthon, more exact, fixed
the creation of man at 3963 B. C.

But the great Christian scholars continued the old endeavour to
make the time of man's origin more precise: there seems to have
been a sort of fascination in the subject which developed a long
array of chronologists, all weighing the minutest indications in
our sacred books, until the Protestant divine De Vignolles, who
had given forty years to the study of biblical chronology,
declared in 1738 that he had gathered no less than two hundred
computations based upon Scripture, and no two alike.

As to the Roman Church, about 1580 there was published, by
authority of Pope Gregory XIII, the Roman Martyrology, and this,
both as originally published and as revised in 1640 under Pope
Urban VIII, declared that the creation of man took place 5199
years before Christ.

But of all who gave themselves up to these chronological
studies, the man who exerted the most powerful influence upon
the dominant nations of Christendom was Archbishop Usher. In
1650 he published his _Annals of the Ancient and New Testaments_,
and it at once became the greatest authority for all
English-speaking peoples. Usher was a man of deep and wide
theological learning, powerful in controversy; and his careful
conclusion, after years of the most profound study of the Hebrew
Scriptures, was that man was created 4004 years before the
Christian era. His verdict was widely received as final; his
dates were inserted in the margins of the authorized version of
the English Bible, and were soon practically regarded as
equally inspired with the sacred text itself: to question them
seriously was to risk preferment in the Church and reputation in
the world at large.

The same adhesion to the Hebrew Scriptures which had influenced
Usher brought leading men of the older Church to the same view:
men who would have burned each other at the stake for their
differences on other points, agreed on this: Melanchthon and
Tostatus, Lightfoot and Jansen, Salmeron and Scaliger, Petavius
and Kepler, inquisitors and reformers, Jesuits and Jansenists,
priests and rabbis, stood together in the belief that the
creation of man was proved by Scripture to have taken place
between 3900 and 4004 years before Christ.

In spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities,
extending from St. Jerome and Eusebius to Usher and Petavius, in
favour of this scriptural chronology, even devoted Christian
scholars had sometimes felt obliged to revolt. The first great
source of difficulty was increased knowledge regarding the
Egyptian monuments. As far back as the last years of the
sixteenth century Joseph Scaliger had done what he could to lay
the foundations of a more scientific treatment of chronology,
insisting especially that the historical indications in Persia,
in Babylon, and above all in Egypt, should be brought to bear on
the question. More than that, he had the boldness to urge that
the chronological indications of the Hebrew Scriptures should be
fully and critically discussed in the light of Egyptian and
other records, without any undue bias from theological
considerations. His idea may well be called inspired; yet it had
little effect as regards a true view of the antiquity of man,
even upon himself, for the theological bias prevailed above all
his reasonings, even in his own mind. Well does a brilliant
modern writer declare that, "among the multitude of strong men
in modern times abdicating their reason at the command of their
prejudices, Joseph Scaliger is perhaps the most striking example."

Early in the following century Sir Walter Raleigh, in his
_History of the World_ (1603-1616), pointed out the danger of
adhering to the old system. He, too, foresaw one of the results
of modern investigation, stating it in these words, which have
the ring of prophetic inspiration: "For in Abraham's time all
the then known parts of the world were developed.... Egypt had
many magnificent cities,... and these not built with sticks, but
of hewn stone,... which magnificence needed a parent of more
antiquity than these other men have supposed." In view of these
considerations Raleigh followed the chronology of the Septuagint
version, which enabled him to give to the human race a few more
years than were usually allowed.

About the middle of the seventeenth century Isaac Vossius, one
of the most eminent scholars of Christendom, attempted to bring
the prevailing belief into closer accordance with ascertained
facts, but, save by a chosen few, his efforts were rejected. In
some parts of Europe a man holding new views on chronology was
by no means safe from bodily harm. As an example of the extreme
pressure exerted by the old theological system at times upon
honest scholars, we may take the case of La Peyrere, who about
the middle of the seventeenth century put forth his book on the
Pre-Adamites--an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known
difficulties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on earth
before the time of Adam. He was taken in hand at once; great
theologians rushed forward to attack him from all parts of
Europe; within fifty years thirty-six different refutations of
his arguments had appeared; the Parliament of Paris burned the
book, and the Grand Vicar of the archdiocese of Mechlin threw
him into prison and kept him there until he was forced, not only
to retract his statements, but to abjure his Protestantism.

In England, opposition to the growing truth was hardly less
earnest. Especially strong was Pearson, afterward Master of
Trinity and Bishop of Chester. In his treatise on the Creed,
published in 1659, which has remained a theologic classic, he
condemned those who held the earth to be more than fifty-six
hundred years old, insisted that the first man was created just
six days later, declared that the Egyptian records were forged,
and called all Christians to turn from them to "the infallible
annals of the Spirit of God."

But, in spite of warnings like these, we see the new idea
cropping out in various parts of Europe. In 1672, Sir John
Marsham published a work in which he showed himself bold and
honest. After describing the heathen sources of Oriental
history, he turns to the Christian writers, and, having used the
history of Egypt to show that the great Church authorities were
not exact, he ends one important argument with the following
words: "Thus the most interesting antiquities of Egypt have
been involved in the deepest obscurity by the very interpreters
of her chronology, who have jumbled everything up (_qui omnia
susque deque permiscuerunt_), so as to make them match with their
own reckonings of Hebrew chronology. Truly a very bad example,
and quite unworthy of religious writers."

This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant system and
against the "jumbling" by which Eusebius had endeavoured to
cut down ancient chronology within safe and sound orthodox
limits, had little effect. Though eminent chronologists of the
eighteenth century, like Jackson, Hales, and Drummond, gave
forth multitudes of ponderous volumes pleading for a period
somewhat longer than that generally allowed, and insisting that
the received Hebrew text was grossly vitiated as regards
chronology, even this poor favour was refused them; the mass of
believers found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith
committed to them by Usher, and it remained settled that man was
created about four thousand years before our era.

To those who wished even greater precision, Dr. John Lightfoot,
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the great
rabbinical scholar of his time, gave his famous demonstration
from our sacred books that "heaven and earth, centre and
circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and
clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man
was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October, 4004
B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning."

This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the
eighteenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of
leading commentators, Catholic and Protestant, until it came in
much majesty and force into our own nineteenth century. At the
very beginning of the century it gained new strength from
various great men in the Church, among whom may be especially
named Dr. Adam Clarke, who declared that, "to preclude the
possibility of a mistake, the unerring Spirit of God directed Moses
in the selection of his facts and the ascertaining of his dates."

All opposition to the received view seemed broken down, and as
late as 1835--indeed, as late as 1850--came an announcement in
the work of one of the most eminent Egyptologists, Sir J. G.
Wilkinson, to the effect that he had modified the results he had
obtained from Egyptian monuments, in order that his chronology
might not interfere with the received date of the Deluge of
Noah.[256]


                    II. THE NEW CHRONOLOGY.

But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and there
soon came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly
undermined all this theological chronology. Not to speak of
other noted men, we have early in the present century Young,
Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a new epoch in the study
of the Egyptian monuments. Nothing could be more cautious than
their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in
favour of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley
than could be made to agree with even the longest duration then
allowed by theologians.

For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkinson, it
became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chronology
was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civilization at
a period before the "Flood of Noah," and that no such flood had
ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse remained behind: it
was soon clear that the civilization of Egypt began earlier than
the time assigned for the creation of man, even according to the
most liberal of the sacred chronologists.

As time went on, this became more and more evident. The long
duration assigned to human civilization in the fragments of
Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes in the third century B. C.,
was discovered to be more accordant with truth than the
chronologies of the great theologians; and, as the present
century has gone on, scientific results have been reached
absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by the
universal Church upon Scripture for nearly two thousand years.

As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of whom
mention is made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena,
or Menes. Manetho had given a statement, according to which Mena
must have lived nearly six thousand years before the Christian
era. This was looked upon for a long time as utterly
inadmissible, as it was so clearly at variance with the
chronology of our own sacred books; but, as time went on, large
fragments of the original work of Manetho were more carefully
studied and distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists
of kings at Karnak, Sacquarah, and the two temples at Abydos
were brought to light, and the lists of court architects were
discovered. Among all these monuments the scholar who visits
Egypt is most impressed by the sculptured tablets giving the
lists of kings. Each shows the monarch of the period doing
homage to the long line of his ancestors. Each of these
sculptured monarchs has near him a tablet bearing his name. That
great care was always taken to keep these imposing records
correct is certain; the loyalty of subjects, the devotion of
priests, and the family pride of kings were all combined in
this; and how effective this care was, is seen in the fact that
kings now known to be usurpers are carefully omitted. The lists
of court architects, extending over the period from Seti to
Darius, throw a flood of light over the other records.

Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average from
the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the
reigns preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have
satisfied themselves that the original fragments of Manetho
represent the work of a man honest and well informed, and, after
making all allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of
reigns, it has become clear that the period known as the reign
of Mena must be fixed at more than three thousand years B. C. In
this the great Egyptologists of our time concur. Mariette, the
eminent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B. C.; Brugsch,
the leading German authority, puts it at about 4500 B. C.; and
Meyer, the latest and most cautious of the historians of
antiquity, declares 3180 B. C. the latest possible date that can
be assigned it. With these dates the foremost English
authorities, Sayce and Flinders Petrie, substantially agree.
This view is also confirmed on astronomical grounds by Mr.
Lockyer, the Astronomer Royal. We have it, then, as the result
of a century of work by the most acute and trained
Egyptologists, and with the inscriptions upon the temples and
papyri before them, both of which are now read with as much
facility as many medieval manuscripts, that the reign of Mena
must be placed more than five thousand years ago.

But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully
understood until we bring into connection with it some other
facts revealed by the Egyptian monuments.

The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh,
that, even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile
Valley, a high civilization had already been developed. Take,
first, man himself: we find sculptured upon the early monuments
types of the various races--Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and
Libyans--as clearly distinguishable in these paintings and
sculptures of from four to six thousand years ago as the same
types are at the present day. No one can look at these
sculptures upon the Egyptian monuments, or even the drawings of
them, as given by Lepsius or Prisse d' Avennes, without being
convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a
difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have
been required to produce it.

The social condition of Egypt revealed in these early monuments
of art forces us to the same conclusion. Those earliest
monuments show that a very complex society had even then been
developed. We not only have a separation between the priestly
and military orders, but agriculturists, manufacturers, and
traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in each of these
classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and painted
representations of a daily life which even then had been developed
into a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and usages.

Take, next, the political and military condition. One fact out
of many reveals a policy which must have been the result of long
experience. Just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century,
the British Government, having found that they can not rely upon
the native Egyptians for the protection of the country, are
drilling the negroes from the interior of Africa as soldiers, so
the celebrated inscription of Prince Una, as far back as the
sixth dynasty, speaks of the Maksi or negroes levied and drilled
by tens of thousands for the Egyptian army.

Take, next, engineering. Here we find very early operations in
the way of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in
conception and thorough in execution as to fill our greatest
engineers of these days with astonishment. The quarrying,
conveyance, cutting, jointing, and polishing of the enormous
blocks in the interior of the Great Pyramid alone are the marvel
of the foremost stone-workers of our century.

As regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which
date from the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and
which are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for
boldness, for exactness, and for skilful contrivance, but also
the temples, with long ranges of colossal columns wrought in
polished granite, with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with
architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment,
which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead the
beholder to ask whether all this can be real.

As to sculpture, we have not only the great Sphinx of Gizeh, so
marvellous in its boldness and dignity, dating from the very
first period of Egyptian history, but we have ranges of sphinxes,
heroic statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the early
ages this branch of art had reached an amazing development.

As regards the perfection of these, Lubke, the most eminent
German authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in
the tombs about Memphis, declares that, "as monuments of the
period of the fourth dynasty, they are an evidence of the high
perfection to which the sculpture of the Egyptians had
attained." Brugsch declares that "every artistic production of
those early days, whether picture, writing, or sculpture, bears
the stamp of the highest perfection in art." Maspero, the most
eminent French authority in this field, while expressing his
belief that the Sphinx was sculptured even before the time of
Mena, declares that "the art which conceived and carved this
prodigious statue was a finished art--an art which had attained
self-mastery and was sure of its effects"; while, among the
more eminent English authorities, Sayce tells us that "art is at
its best in the age of the pyramid-builders," and Sir James
Fergusson declares, "We are startled to find Egyptian art
nearly as perfect in the oldest periods as in any of the later."

The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture in
the earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What
exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their
lesser statues is known to all who have seen those most precious
specimens in the museum at Cairo, which were wrought before the
conventional type was adopted in obedience to religious considerations.

In decorative and especially in ceramic art, as early as the
fourth and fifth dynasties, we have vases, cups, and other
vessels showing exquisite beauty of outline and a general sense
of form almost if not quite equal to Etruscan and Grecian work
of the best periods.

Take, next, astronomy. Going back to the very earliest period of
Egyptian civilization, we find that the four sides of the Great
Pyramid are adjusted to the cardinal points with the utmost
precision. "The day of the equinox can be taken by observing
the sun set across the face of the pyramid, and the neighbouring
Arabs adjust their astronomical dates by its shadow." Yet this
is but one out of many facts which prove that the Egyptians, at
the earliest period of which their monuments exist, had arrived
at knowledge and skill only acquired by long ages of observation
and thought. Mr. Lockyer, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, has
recently convinced himself, after careful examination of various
ruined temples at Thebes and elsewhere, that they were placed
with reference to observations of stars. To state his conclusion
in his own words: "There seems a very high probability that
three thousand, and possibly four thousand, years before Christ
the Egyptians had among them men with some knowledge of
astronomy, and that six thousand years ago the course of the sun
through the year was practically very well known, and methods
had been invented by means of which in time it might be better
known; and that, not very long after that, they not only
considered questions relating to the sun, but began to take up
other questions relating to the position and movement of the stars."

The same view of the antiquity of man in the Nile valley is
confirmed by philologists. To use the words of Max Duncker: "The
oldest monuments of Egypt--and they are the oldest monuments in
the world--exhibit the Egyptian in possession of the art of
writing." It is found also, by the inscriptions of the early
dynasties, that the Egyptian language had even at that early
time been developed in all essential particulars to the highest
point it ever attained. What long periods it must have required
for such a development every scholar in philology can imagine.

As regards medical science, we have the Berlin papyrus, which,
although of a later period, refers with careful specification to
a medical literature of the first dynasty.

As regards archaeology, the earliest known inscriptions point to
still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long sequence
in previous history.

As to all that pertains to the history of civilization, no man
of fair and open mind can go into the museums of Cairo or the
Louvre or the British Museum and look at the monuments of those
earlier dynasties without seeing in them the results of a
development in art, science, laws, customs, and language, which
must have required a vast period before the time of Mena. And
this conclusion is forced upon us all the more invincibly when
we consider the slow growth of ideas in the earlier stages of
civilization as compared with the later--a slowness of growth
which has kept the natives of many parts of the world in that
earliest civilization to this hour. To this we must add the fact
that Egyptian civilization was especially immobile: its
development into castes is but one among many evidences that it
was the very opposite of a civilization developed rapidly.

As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there
is, of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great
personages before that first dynasty, and these extend over
twenty-four thousand years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of
Christian scholars, declares that not less than ten thousand
years were necessary for the development of civilization up to
the point where we find it in Mena's time. No one can claim
precision for either of these statements, but they are valuable
as showing the impression of vast antiquity made upon the most
competent judges by the careful study of those remains: no
unbiased judge can doubt that an immensely long period of years
must have been required for the development of civilization up
to the state in which we there find it.

The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views.
That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced
is true; but the fact remains that again and again rude pottery
and other evidences of early stages of civilization have been
found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at
depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts,
considered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the
Nile, there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man
in that valley thousands on thousands of years before the
longest time admitted by our sacred chronologists.

Nor have these investigations been of a careless character.
Between the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely
cautious English geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows
at intervals of eight English miles, at right angles to the
Nile, in the neighbourhood of Memphis. In these pottery was
brought up from various depths, and beneath the statue of
Rameses II at Memphis from a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the
rate of the Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to
indicate a period of over eleven thousand years. So eminent a
German authority, in geography as Peschel characterizes
objections to such deductions as groundless. However this may
be, the general results of these investigations, taken in
connection with the other results of research, are convincing.

And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of
archaeologists of the highest standing, French, German, English,
and American, have within the past twenty years discovered
relics of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time
of Mena, prevailing throughout Egypt. These relics have been
discovered in various parts of the country, from Cairo to Luxor,
in great numbers. They are the same sort of prehistoric
implements which prove to us the early existence of man in so
many other parts of the world at a geological period so remote
that the figures given by our sacred chronologists are but
trivial. The last and most convincing of these discoveries, that
of flint implements in the drift, far down below the tombs of
early kings at Thebes, and upon high terraces far above the
present bed of the Nile, will be referred to later.

But it is not in Egypt alone that proofs are found of the utter
inadequacy of the entire chronological system derived from our
sacred books. These results of research in Egypt are strikingly
confirmed by research in Assyria and Babylonia. Prof. Sayce
exhibits various proofs of this. To use his own words regarding
one of these proofs: "On the shelves of the British Museum you
may see huge sun-dried bricks, on which are stamped the names
and titles of kings who erected or repaired the temples where
they have been found.... They must... have reigned before the
time when, according to the margins of our Bibles, the Flood of
Noah was covering the earth and reducing such bricks as these to
their primeval slime."

This conclusion was soon placed beyond a doubt. The lists of
king's and collateral inscriptions recovered from the temples of
the great valley between the Tigris and Euphrates, and the
records of astronomical observations in that region, showed that
there, too, a powerful civilization had grown up at a period far
earlier than could be made consistent with our sacred
chronology. The science of Assyriology was thus combined with
Egyptology to furnish one more convincing proof that, precious
as are the moral and religious truths in our sacred books and
the historical indications which they give us, these truths and
indications are necessarily inclosed in a setting of myth and
legend.[264]


                         CHAPTER VII.
       THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY

                    I. THE THUNDER-STONES.

WHILE the view of chronology based upon the literal acceptance
of Scripture texts was thus shaken by researches in Egypt,
another line of observation and thought was slowly developed,
even more fatal to the theological view.

From a very early period there had been dug from the earth, in
various parts of the world, strangely shaped masses of stone,
some rudely chipped, some polished: in ancient times the larger
of these were very often considered as thunderbolts, the smaller
as arrows, and all of them as weapons which had been hurled by
the gods and other supernatural personages. Hence a sort of
sacredness attached to them. In Chaldea, they were built into
the wall of temples; in Egypt, they were strung about the necks
of the dead. In India, fine specimens are to this day seen upon
altars, receiving prayers and sacrifices.

Naturally these beliefs were brought into the Christian
mythology and adapted to it. During the Middle Ages many of
these well-wrought stones were venerated as weapons, which
during the "war in heaven" had been used in driving forth
Satan and his hosts; hence in the eleventh century an Emperor of
the East sent to the Emperor of the West a "heaven axe"; and
in the twelfth century a Bishop of Rennes asserted the value of
thunder-stones as a divinely- appointed means of securing success
in battle, safety on the sea, security against thunder, and
immunity from unpleasant dreams. Even as late as the seventeenth
century a French ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which
still exists in the museum at Nancy, as a present to the
Prince-Bishop of Verdun, and claimed for it health-giving virtues.

In the last years of the sixteenth century Michael Mercati tried
to prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or implements
of early races of men; but from some cause his book was not
published until the following century, when other thinkers had
begun to take up the same idea, and then it had to contend with
a theory far more accordant with theologic modes of reasoning in
science. This was the theory of the learned Tollius, who in 1649
told the world that these chipped or smoothed stones were
"generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a
cloud by the circumposed humour."

But about the beginning of the eighteenth century a fact of
great importance was quietly established. In the year 1715 a
large pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with
the bones of an elephant, in a gravel bed near Gray's Inn Lane,
in London. The world in general paid no heed to this: if the
attention of theologians was called to it, they dismissed it
summarily with a reference to the Deluge of Noah; but the
specimen was labelled, the circumstances regarding it were
recorded, and both specimen and record carefully preserved.

In 1723 Jussieu addressed the French Academy on _The Origin and
Uses of Thunder-stones_. He showed that recent travellers from
various parts of the world had brought a number of weapons and
other implements of stone to France, and that they were
essentially similar to what in Europe had been known as
"thunder-stones." A year later this fact was clinched into the
scientific mind of France by the Jesuit Lafitau, who published
a work showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines
then existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitants
of Europe. So began, in these works of Jussieu and Lafitau, the
science of Comparative Ethnography.

But it was at their own risk and peril that thinkers drew from
these discoveries any conclusions as to the antiquity of man.
Montesquieu, having ventured to hint, in an early edition of his
_Persian Letters_, that the world might be much older than had
been generally supposed, was soon made to feel danger both to
his book and to himself, so that in succeeding editions he
suppressed the passage.

In 1730 Mahudel presented a paper to the French Academy of
Inscriptions on the so-called "thunder-stones," and also
presented a series of plates which showed that these were stone
implements, which must have been used at an early period in
human history.

In 1778 Buffon, in his _Epoques de la Nature_, intimated his
belief that "thunder-stones" were made by early races of men;
but he did not press this view, and the reason for his reserve
was obvious enough: he had already one quarrel with the
theologians on his hands, which had cost him dear--public
retraction and humiliation. His declaration, therefore,
attracted little notice.

In the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinking
men in England. In that year John Frere presented to the London
Society of Antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the clay
beds near Hoxne: that they were of human make was certain, and,
in view of the undisturbed depths in which they were found, the
theory was suggested that the men who made them must have lived at
a very ancient geological epoch; yet even this discovery and theory
passed like a troublesome dream, and soon seemed to be forgotten.

About twenty years later Dr. Buckland published a discussion of
the subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift
and in caves. It received wide attention, but theology was
soothed by his temporary concession that these striking relics
of human handiwork, associated with the remains of various
extinct animals, were proofs of the Deluge of Noah.

In 1823 Boue, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to
Cuvier sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of
the upper Rhine, and suggested that they were of an early
geological period; this Cuvier virtually, if not explicitly,
denied. Great as he was in his own field, he was not a great
geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many years.
Moreover, he lived in a time of reaction; it was the period of
the restored Bourbons, of the Voltairean King Louis XVIII,
governing to please orthodoxy. Boue's discovery was, therefore,
at first opposed, then enveloped in studied silence.

Cuvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under similar
circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and
his leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded, him in
the sway over geological science in France, was even more
opposed to the new view than his great master had been. Boue's
discoveries were, therefore, apparently laid to rest forever.[269]

In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the Rev.
Mr. McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to have been
completely overawed by orthodox opinion in England and
elsewhere; for, though he found human bones and implements
mingled with remains of extinct animals, he kept his notes in
manuscript, and they were only brought to light more than thirty
years later by Mr. Vivian.

The coming of Charles X, the last of the French Bourbons, to the
throne, made the orthodox pressure even greater. It was the
culmination of the reactionary period--the time in France when
a clerical committee, sitting at the Tuileries, took such
measures as were necessary to hold in check all science that was
not perfectly "safe"; the time in Austria when Kaiser Franz
made his famous declaration to sundry professors, that what he
wanted of them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that
those who did not make this their purpose would be dismissed;
the time in Germany when Nicholas of Russia and the princelings
and ministers under his control, from the King of Prussia
downward, put forth all their might in behalf of "scriptural
science"; the time in Italy when a scientific investigator,
arriving at any conclusion distrusted by the Church, was sure of
losing his place and in danger of losing his liberty; the time
in England when what little science was taught was held in due
submission to Archdeacon Paley; the time in the United States
when the first thing essential in science was, that it be
adjusted to the ideas of revival exhorters.

Yet men devoted to scientific truth laboured on; and in 1828
Tournal, of Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens
of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among
bones of extinct animals. In the following year Christol
published accounts of his excavations in the caverns of Gard; he
had found in position, and under conditions which forbade the
idea of after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the
extinct hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general
notice was taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox
atmosphere involved such discoveries in darkness.

But in the French Revolution of 1830 the old
politico-theological system collapsed: Charles X and his
advisers fled for their lives; the other continental monarchs
got glimpses of new light; the priesthood in charge of education
were put on their good behaviour for a time, and a better era began.

Under the constitutional monarchy of the house of Orleans in
France and Belgium less attention was therefore paid by
Government to the saving of souls; and we have in rapid
succession new discoveries of remains of human industry, and
even of human skeletons so mingled with bones of extinct animals
as to give additional proofs that the origin of man was at a
period vastly earlier than any which theologians had dreamed of.

A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against
science in this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 had
explored a multitude of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engis
and Engihoul, and had found human skulls and bones closely
associated with bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear,
hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were
evidences of human workmanship in the shape of chipped flint
implements; discoveries of a similar sort had been made by De
Serres in France and by Lund in Brazil; but, at least as far as
continental Europe was concerned, these discoveries were
received with much coolness both by Catholic leaders of opinion
in France and Belgium and by Protestant leaders in England and
Holland. Schmerling himself appears to have been overawed, and
gave forth a sort of apologetic theory, half scientific, half
theologic, vainly hoping to satisfy the clerical side.

Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so devoted
a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was still
holding out against it on the scientific side; and, as to the
theological side, it was the period when that great churchman,
Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York
Minster, and the Rev. Mellor Brown denouncing geology as "a
black art," "a forbidden province" and when, in America, Prof.
Moses Stuart and others like him were belittling the work of
Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock.

In 1840 Godwin Austin presented to the Royal Geological Society
an account of his discoveries in Kent's Cavern, near Torquay,
and especially of human bones and implements mingled with bones
of the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other extinct
animals; yet this memoir, like that of McEnery fifteen years
before, found an atmosphere so unfavourable that it was not published.


             II. THE FLINT WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS.

At the middle of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a
new epoch in science--an epoch when all these earlier
discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in
a different field: for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the
world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first
volume of his work on _Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities_, and
in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and
weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in
the high drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France.

The significance of this discovery was great indeed--far greater
than Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his
book showed that he at first regarded these implements and
weapons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of
Noah; but it was soon seen that they were something very
different from proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis: for
they were found in terraces at great heights above the river
Somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to fact,
must have been deposited there at a time when the river system
of northern France was vastly different from anything known
within the historic period. The whole discovery indicated a
series of great geological changes since the time when these
implements were made, requiring cycles of time compared to which
the space allowed by the orthodox chronologists was as nothing.

His work was the result of over ten years of research and
thought. Year after year a force of men under his direction had
dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme,
and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results
of his labour. So far as France was concerned, he was met at
first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence," and then by
a contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head
of whom stood Elie de Beaumont.

This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that
Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the
orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that
these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah,
and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis
seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively
that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and
they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to
account for them by the orthodox theory.

And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to
the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes
himself. Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his
own worst enemy. Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped
to the most astounding conclusions. The engravings in the later
volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human
features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are
worthy of a comic almanac; and at the National Museum of
Archaeology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the
remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new
epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy
of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted
inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of
prehistoric man.

Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents at
first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for
materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St.
Acheul--and was converted: for he found implements similar to
those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of
man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made
similar discoveries.

But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came
from other parts of France and from other countries. The French
leaders in geological science had been held back not only by awe
of Cuvier but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has
always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule which
finally overtook the supporters of the attempt of Scheuchzer,
Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was still
remembered. From the great body of French geologists, therefore,
Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other
side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such
as Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville
and St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of
Boucher, Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then
quietly but firmly told England the truth.

And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The
arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other
early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements
found might have been washed about and turned over by great
floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but
in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own
excavations at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that man
had existed in the time of the Quaternary animals was complete.
This grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a
stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents
of water had been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of
eight out of nine of the main species of animals which
characterize the Quaternary period in Europe; and upon them marks
of cutting implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.

Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and
his English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a
carefulness in making researches and a sobriety in stating
results which converted many of those who had been repelled by
the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found
in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof
of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or
departed to arctic regions--one of these a vertebra of a
reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with
these were found evidences of fire.

Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there
still remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed
interest of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing
array of facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination
of circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly
remote periods might have been brought into connection with all
these human bones and implements of human make in all these
different places, refusing to admit that these ancient relics of
men and animals were of the same period. Such gainsayers
virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who,
having maintained that God created the world "about five
thousand sixe hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if
they aske what God was doing before this short number of yeares,
we answere with St. Augustine replying to such curious
questioners, that He was framing Hell for them." But a new class
of discoveries came to silence this opposition. At La Madeleine
in France, at the Kessler cave in Switzerland, and at various
other places, were found rude but striking carvings and
engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of
those long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of
them, were soon to be seen in all the principal museums. They
showed the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other
animals of the Quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously
by contemporary men; and, to complete the significance of these
discoveries, travellers returning from the icy regions of North
America brought similar carvings of animals now existing in
those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic
winters to-day.[275]

As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing
that man was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of
past geological epochs, but that he had already developed into
a stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought
began to turn. Especially was this seen in 1863, when Lyell
published the first edition of his _Geological Evidence of the
Antiquity of Man_; and the fact that he had so long opposed the
new ideas gave force to the clear and conclusive argument which
led him to renounce his early scientific beliefs.

Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early
Quaternary, and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed
forward along the whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded
his review devoted to this subject; and in 1865 the first of a
series of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was
held in Italy. These investigations went on vigorously in all
parts of France and spread rapidly to other countries. The
explorations which Dupont began in 1864, in the caves of
Belgium, gave to the museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint
implements, forty thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary
period, and a number of human skulls and bones found mingled
with these remains. From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India,
and Egypt similar results were reported.

Especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the caves
and drift throughout the British Islands. The discovery by
Colonel Wood, In 1861, of flint tools in the same strata with
bones of the earlier forms of the rhinoceros, was but typical of
many. A thorough examination of the caverns of Brixham and
Torquay, by Pengelly and others, made it still more evident that
man had existed in the early Quaternary period. The existence of
a period before the Glacial epoch or between different glacial
epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude
stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more
significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution
even in the history of that period. It was found that this
ancient Stone epoch showed progress and development. In the
upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who,
although he has migrated from these regions, still exists in
more northern climates, were found stone implements revealing
some little advance in civilization; next below these, sealed up
in the stalagmite, came, as a rule, another layer, in which the
remains of reindeer were rare and those of the mammoth more
frequent, the implements found in this stratum being less
skilfully made than those in the upper and more recent layers;
and, finally, in the lowest levels, near the floors of these
ancient caverns, with remains of the cave bear and others of the
most ancient extinct animals, were found stone implements
evidently of a yet ruder and earlier stage of human progress. No
fairly unprejudiced man can visit the cave and museum at
Torquay without being convinced that there were a gradation and
an evolution in these beginnings of human civilization. The
evidence is complete; the masses of breccia taken from the cave,
with the various soils, implements, and bones carefully kept in
place, put this progress beyond a doubt.

All this indicated a great antiquity for the human race, but in
it lay the germs of still another great truth, even more
important and more serious in its consequences to the older
theologic view, which will be discussed in the following chapter.

But new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of
man. Remains of animals were found in connection with human
remains, which showed not only that man was living in times more
remote than the earlier of the new investigators had dared
dream, but that some of these early periods of his existence
must have been of immense length, embracing climatic changes
betokening different geological periods; for with remains of
fire and human implements and human bones were found not only
bones of the hairy mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros,
and reindeer, which could only have been deposited there in a
time of arctic cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus,
sabre-toothed tiger, and the like, which could only have been
deposited when there was in these regions a torrid climate. The
conjunction of these remains clearly showed that man had lived
in England early enough and long enough to pass through times
when there was arctic cold and times when there was torrid heat;
times when great glaciers stretched far down into England and
indeed into the continent, and times whe England had a land
connection with the European continent, and the European
continent with Africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate
freely from Africa to the middle regions of England.

The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier
than the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely
settled, but among the questions regarding the existence of man
at a period yet more remote, the Drift period, there was one
which for a time seemed to give the champions of science some
difficulty. The orthodox leaders in the time of Boucher de
Perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had a weapon of
which they made vigorous use: the statement that no human bones
had yet been discovered in the drift. The supporters of science
naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those
of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional
proof of the great length of the period since man had lived with
the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workmanship
proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones could
do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small bones
simply indicated the long periods of time required for
dissolving them away.

Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and
filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones
would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in
1863 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the
discovery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in
the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived:
the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had
offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human
remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky
labourer had deceived him. The result of this was that the men
of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon
discovery was not proven.

But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early
Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various
other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin
Quignon relic was of little importance.

We have seen that researches regarding the existence of
prehistoric man in England and on the Continent were at first
mainly made in the caverns; but the existence of man in the
earliest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides of the
English Channel, in a way even more striking, by the close
examination of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results
arrived at by Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in
England. Rude stone implements were found in terraces a hundred
feet and more above the levels at which various rivers of Great
Britain now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at
the time when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain
in many cases were entirely different from those of the present
period, and formed parts of the river system of the European
continent. Researches in the high terraces above the Thames and
the Ouse, as well as at other points in Great Britain, placed
beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the British Islands
at a time when they were connected by solid land with the
Continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the
existence of man in northern Europe, a large portion of the
British Islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred
and twenty-five hundred feet beneath the Northern Ocean,--had
risen again from the water,--had formed part of the continent of
Europe, and had been in unbroken connection with Africa, so that
elephants, bears, tigers, lions, the rhinoceros and
hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct, had left their
bones in the same deposits with human implements as far north as
Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with this fact came in the new
conviction, forced upon geologists by the more careful
examination of the earth and its changes, that such elevations
and depressions of Great Britain and other parts of the world
were not necessarily the results of sudden cataclysms, but
generally of slow processes extending through vast cycles of
years--processes such as are now known to be going on in various
parts of the world. Thus it was that the six or seven thousand
years allowed by the most liberal theologians of former times
were seen more and more clearly to be but a mere nothing in the
long succession of ages since the appearance of man.

Confirmation of these results was received from various other
parts of the world. In Africa came the discovery of flint
implements deep in the hard gravel of the Nile Valley at Luxor
and on the high hills behind Esneh. In America the discoveries
at Trenton, N. J., and at various places in Delaware, Ohio,
Minnesota, and elsewhere, along the southern edge of the drift
of the Glacial epochs, clinched the new scientific truth yet
more firmly; and the statement made by an eminent American
authority is, that "man was on this continent when the climate
and ice of Greenland extended to the mouth of New York harbour."
The discoveries of prehistoric remains on the Pacific coast, and
especially in British Columbia, finished completely the last
chance at a reasonable contention by the adherents of the older
view. As to these investigations on the Pacific slope of the
United States, the discoveries of Whitney and others in
California had been so made and announced that the judgment of
scientific men regarding them was suspended until the visit of
perhaps the greatest living authority in his department, Alfred
Russel Wallace, in 1887. He confirmed the view of Prof. Whitney
and others with the statement that "both the actual remains and
works of man found deep under the lava-flows of Pliocene age show
that he existed in the New World at least as early as in the
Old." To this may be added the discoveries in British Columbia,
which prove that, since man existed in these regions, "valleys
have been filled up by drift from the waste of mountains to a
depth in some cases of fifteen hundred feet; this covered by a
succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-streams from volcanoes long
since extinct, and finally cut down by the present rivers
through beds of solid basalt, and through this accumulation of
lavas and gravels." The immense antiquity of the human remains
in the gravels of the Pacific coast is summed up by a most
eminent English authority and declared to be proved, "first, by
the present river systems being of subsequent date, sometimes
cutting through them and their superincumbent lava-cap to a depth
of two thousand feet; secondly, by the great denudation that has
taken place since they were deposited, for they sometimes lie on
the summits of mountains six thousand feet high; thirdly, by the
fact that the Sierra Nevada has been partly elevated since their
formation."[280]

As an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient
implements came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiologists
between human skulls and bones found in different places and
under circumstances showing vast antiquity.

Human bones had been found under such circumstances as early as
1835 at Cannstadt near Stuttgart, and in 1856 in the Neanderthal
near Dusseldorf; but in more recent searches they had been
discovered in a multitude of places, especially in Germany,
France, Belgium, England, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and
South America. Comparison of these bones showed that even in
that remote Quaternary period there were great differences of
race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier
existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must
have been required to develop such racial differences.
Considerations of this kind gave a new impulse to the belief
that man's existence might even date back into the Tertiary
period. The evidence for this earlier origin of man was ably
summed up, not only by its brilliant advocate, Mortillet, but by
a former opponent, one of the most conservative of modern
anthropologists, Quatrefages; and the conclusion arrived at by
both was, that man did really exist in the Tertiary period. The
acceptance of this conclusion was also seen in the more recent
work of Alfred Russel Wallace, who, though very cautious and
conservative, placed the origin of man not only in the Tertiary
period, but in an earlier stage of it than most had dared
assign--even in the Miocene.

The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving
proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from
all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence
that in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different,
strongly marked races and in great numbers. From all regions
which geologists had explored, even from those the most distant
and different from each other, came this same evidence--from
northern Europe to southern Africa; from France to China; from
New Jersey to British Columbia; from British Columbia to Peru.
The development of man in such numbers and in so many different
regions, with such differences of race and at so early a period,
must have required a long previous time.

This argument was strengthened by discoveries of bones bearing
marks apparently made by cutting instruments, in the Tertiary
formations of France and Italy, and by the discoveries of what
were claimed to be flint implements by the Abbe Bourgeois in France,
and of implements and human bones by Prof. Capellini in Italy.

On the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science are
still content to say that the existence of man in the Tertiary
period is not yet proven. As to his existence throughout the
Quaternary epoch, no new proofs are needed; even so determined
a supporter of the theological side as the Duke of Argyll has
been forced to yield to the evidence.

Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing
light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most
notable have been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated strata
of the Lake of Geneva; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake
Neufchatel; by Horner, in the delta deposits of Egypt; and by
Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi. But while these have
failed to give anything like an exact result, all these
investigations together point to the central truth, so amply
established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter
inadequacy of the chronology given in our sacred books. The
period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been fixed
by the universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," is
thus perfectly proved to be insignificant compared with those
vast geological epochs during which man is now known to have
existed.[283]


                         CHAPTER VIII.
              THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY

IN the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially
within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has thoroughly
changed the intelligent thought of the world in regard to the
antiquity of man upon our planet; and how the fabric built upon
the chronological indications in our sacred books--first, by the
early fathers of the Church, afterward by the medieval doctors,
and finally by the reformers and modern orthodox
chronologists--has virtually disappeared before an entirely
different view forced upon us, especially by Egyptian and
Assyrian studies, as well as by geology and archeology.

In this chapter I purpose to present some outlines of the work
of Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing
what the evolution of human civilization has been.

Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon
the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view
based upon evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. Here,
too, we are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and
modes of thought upon man--a change even more striking than
that accomplished by Copernicus and Galileo, when they
substituted for a universe in which sun and planets revolved
about the earth a universe in which the earth is but the merest
grain or atom revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about
the sun; and all these forming but one among innumerable systems.

Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the
great problems around him, two antagonistic views have existed
regarding the life of the human race upon earth. The first of
these is the belief that man was created "in the beginning" a
perfect being, endowed with the highest moral and intellectual
powers, but that there came a "fall," and, as its result, the
entrance into the world of evil, toil, sorrow, and death.

Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the
existence of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle and
nowhere law. It is, under such circumstances, by far the most
easy of explanations, for it is in accordance with the
appearances of things: men adopted it just as naturally as they
adopted the theory that the Almighty hangs up the stars as
lights in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun
behind a mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the
earth, or flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a
wicked world, or allows evil spirits to control thunder,
lightning, and storm, and to cause diseases of body and mind, or
opens the "windows of heaven" to let down "the waters that be
above the heavens," and thus to give rain upon the earth.

A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and
perfection--moral, intellectual, and physical--from which men
for some fault fell, is perfectly in accordance with what we
should expect.

Among the earliest known records of our race we find this view
taking shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the gods,
and of a fall of man; both of which seemed necessary to explain
the existence of evil.

In Greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was made by
Hesiod: to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the most
ancient times, that they were at first "a golden race," that
"as gods they were wont to live, with a life void of care,
without labour and trouble; nor was wretched old age at all
impending; but ever did they delight themselves out of the reach
of all ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep; all
blessings were theirs: of its own will the fruitful field would
bear them fruit, much and ample, and they gladly used to reap
the labours of their hands in quietness along with many good
things, being rich in flocks and true to the blessed gods." But
there came a "fall," caused by human curiosity. Pandora, the
first woman created, received a vase which, by divine command,
was to remain closed; but she was tempted to open it, and troubles,
sorrow, and disease escaped into the world, hope alone remaining.

So, too, in Roman mythological poetry the well-known picture by
Ovid is but one among the many exhibitions of this same belief
in a primeval golden age--a Saturnian cycle; one of the
constantly recurring attempts, so universal and so natural in
the early history of man, to account for the existence of evil,
care, and toil on earth by explanatory myths and legends.

This view, growing out of the myths, legends, and theologies of
earlier peoples, we also find embodied in the sacred tradition
of the Jews, and especially in one of the documents which form
the impressive poem beginning the books attributed to Moses. As
to the Christian Church, no word of its Blessed Founder
indicates that it was committed by him to this theory, or that
he even thought it worthy of his attention. How, like so many
other dogmas never dreamed of by Jesus of Nazareth and those who
knew him best, it was developed, it does not lie within the
province of this chapter to point out; nor is it worth our
while to dwell upon its evolution in the early Church, in the
Middle Ages, at the Reformation, and in various branches of the
Protestant Church: suffice it that, though among
English-speaking nations by far the most important influence in
its favour has come from Milton's inspiration rather than from
that of older sacred books, no doctrine has been more
universally accepted, "always, everywhere, and by all," from
the earliest fathers of the Church down to the present hour.

On the other hand appeared at an early period the opposite
view--that mankind, instead of having fallen from a high
intellectual, moral, and religious condition, has slowly risen
from low and brutal beginnings. In Greece, among the
philosophers contemporary with Socrates, we find Critias
depicting a rise of man, from a time when he was beastlike and
lawless, through a period when laws were developed, to a time
when morality received enforcement from religion; but among all
the statements of this theory the most noteworthy is that given
by Lucretius in his great poem on _The Nature of Things_. Despite
its errors, it remains among the most remarkable examples of
prophetic insight in the history of our race. The inspiration of
Lucretius gave him almost miraculous glimpses of truth; his view
of the development of civilization from the rudest beginnings to
the height of its achievements is a wonderful growth, rooted in
observation and thought, branching forth into a multitude of
striking facts and fancies; and among these is the statement
regarding the sequence of inventions:


     "Man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails,
     And stones and fragments from the branching woods;
     Then copper next; and last, as latest traced,
     The tyrant, iron."


Thus did the poet prophesy one of the most fruitful achievements
of modern science: the discovery of that series of epochs which
has been so carefully studied in our century.

Very striking, also, is the statement of Horace, though his idea
is evidently derived from Lucretius. He dwells upon man's first
condition on earth as low and bestial, and pictures him lurking
in caves, progressing from the use of his fists and nails, first
to clubs, then to arms which he had learned to forge, and,
finally, to the invention of the names of things, to literature,
and to laws.[287]

During the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost entirely
obscured, and at the Reformation it seemed likely to remain so.
Typical of the simplicity of belief in "the Fall" cherished
among the Reformers is Luther's declaration regarding Adam and
Eve. He tells us, "they entered into the garden about noon, and
having a desire to eat, she took the apple; then came the
fall--according to our account at about two o'clock." But in the
revival of learning the old eclipsed truth reappeared, and in
the first part of the seventeenth century we find that, among
the crimes for which Vanini was sentenced at Toulouse to have
his tongue torn out and to be burned alive, was his belief that
there is a gradation extending upward from the lowest to the
highest form of created beings.

Yet, in the same century, the writings of Bodin, Bacon,
Descartes, and Pascal were evidently undermining the old idea of
"the Fall." Bodin especially, brilliant as were his services to
orthodoxy, argued lucidly against the doctrine of general human
deterioration.

Early in the eighteenth century Vico presented the philosophy of
history as an upward movement of man out of animalism and
barbarism. This idea took firm hold upon human thought, and in
the following centuries such men as Lessing and Turgot gave new
force to it.

The investigations of the last forty years have shown that
Lucretius and Horace were inspired prophets: what they saw by
the exercise of reason illumined by poetic genius, has been now
thoroughly based upon facts carefully ascertained and
arranged--until Thomsen and Nilsson, the northern
archaeologists, have brought these prophecies to evident
fulfilment, by presenting a scientific classification dividing
the age of prehistoric man in various parts of the world between
an old stone period, a new stone period, a period of beaten
copper, a period of bronze, and a period of iron, and arraying
vast masses of facts from all parts of the world, fitting
thoroughly into each other, strengthening each other, and
showing beyond a doubt that, instead of a _fall_, there has been
a _rise_ of man, from the earliest indications in the Quaternary,
or even, possibly, in the Tertiary period.[288]

The first blow at the fully developed doctrine of "the Fall"
came, as we have seen, from geology. According to that doctrine,
as held quite generally from its beginnings among the fathers
and doctors of the primitive Church down to its culmination in
the minds of great Protestants like John Wesley, the statement
in our sacred books that "death entered the world by sin" was
taken as a historic fact, necessitating the conclusion that,
before the serpent persuaded Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit,
death on our planet was unknown. Naturally, when geology
revealed, in the strata of a period long before the coming of
man on earth, a vast multitude of carnivorous tribes fitted to
destroy their fellow-creatures on land and sea, and within the
fossilized skeletons of many of these the partially digested
remains of animals, this doctrine was too heavy to be carried,
and it was quietly dropped.

But about the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine of
the rise of man as opposed to the doctrine of his "fall"
received a great accession of strength from a source most
unexpected. As we saw in the last chapter, the facts proving the
great antiquity of man foreshadowed a new and even more
remarkable idea regarding him. We saw, it is true, that the
opponents of Boucher de Perthes, while they could not deny his
discovery of human implements in the drift, were successful in
securing a verdict of "Not prove " as regarded his discovery
of human bones; but their triumph was short-lived. Many previous
discoveries, little thought of up to that time, began to be
studied, and others were added which resulted not merely in
confirming the truth regarding the antiquity of man, but in
establishing another doctrine which the opponents of science
regarded with vastly greater dislike--the doctrine that man has
not fallen from an original high estate in which he was created
about six thousand years ago, but that, from a period vastly
earlier than any warranted by the sacred chronologists, he has
been, in spite of lapses and deteriorations, rising.

A brief review of this new growth of truth may be useful. As
early as 1835 Prof. Jaeger had brought out from a quantity of
Quaternary remains dug up long before at Cannstadt, near
Stuttgart, a portion of a human skull, apparently of very low
type. A battle raged about it for a time, but this finally
subsided, owing to uncertainties arising from the circumstances
of the discovery.

In 1856, in the Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, among Quaternary
remains gathered on the floor of a grotto, another skull was
found bearing the same evidence of a low human type. As in the
case of the Cannstadt skull, this again was fiercely debated,
and finally the questions regarding it were allowed to remain in
suspense. But new discoveries were made: at Eguisheim, at Brux,
at Spy, and elsewhere, human skulis were found of a similarly
low type; and, while each of the earlier discoveries was open to
debate, and either, had no other been discovered, might have
been considered an abnormal specimen, the combination of all
these showed conclusively that not only had a race of men
existed at that remote period, but that it was of a type as low
as the lowest, perhaps below the lowest, now known.

Research was now redoubled, and, as a result, human skulls and
complete skeletons of various types began to be discovered in
the ancient deposits of many other parts of the world, and
especially in France, Belgium, Germany, the Caucasus, Africa,
and North and South America.

But soon began to emerge from all these discoveries a fact of
enormous importance. The skulls and bones found at Cro Magnon,
Solutre, Furfooz, Grenelle, and elsewhere, were compared, and it
was thus made certain that various races had already appeared
and lived in various grades of civilization, even in those
exceedingly remote epochs; that even then there were various
strata of humanity ranging from races of a very low to those of
a very high type; and that upon any theory--certainly upon the
theory of the origin of mankind from a single pair--two things
were evident: first, that long, slow processes during vast
periods of time must have been required for the differentiation
of these races, and for the evolution of man up to the point
where the better specimens show him, certainly in the early
Quaternary and perhaps in the Tertiary period; and, secondly,
that there had been from the first appearance of man, of which
we have any traces, an _upward_ tendency[291]

This second conclusion, the upward tendency of man from low
beginnings, was made more and more clear by bringing into
relations with these remains of human bodies and of extinct
animals the remains of human handiwork. As stated in the last
chapter, the river drift and bone caves in Great Britain,
France, and other parts of the world, revealed a progression,
even in the various divisions of the earliest Stone period; for,
beginning at the very lowest strata of these remains, on the
floors of the caverns, associated mainly with the bones of
extinct animals, such as the cave bear, the hairy elephant, and
the like, were the rudest implements then, in strata above
these, sealed in the stalagmite of the cavern floors, lying with
the bones of animals extinct but more recent, stone implements
were found, still rude, but, as a rule, of an improved type;
and, finally, in a still higher stratum, associated with bones
of animals like the reindeer and bison, which, though not
extinct, have departed to other climates, were rude stone
implements, on the whole of a still better workmanship. Such was
the foreshadowing, even at that early rude Stone period, of the
proofs that the tendency of man has been from his earliest epoch
and in all parts of the world, as a rule, upward.

But this rule was to be much further exemplified. About 1850,
while the French and English geologists were working more
especially among the relics of the drift and cave periods, noted
archaeologists of the North--Forchammer, Steenstrup, and
Worsaae--were devoting themselves to the investigation of
certain remains upon the Danish Peninsula. These remains were of
two kinds: first, there were vast shell-heaps or accumulations
of shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes which at
some unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the Baltic,
principally on shellfish. That these shell-heaps were very
ancient was evident: the shells of oysters and the like found in
them were far larger than any now found on those coasts; their
size, so far from being like that of the corresponding varieties
which now exist in the brackish waters of the Baltic, was in
every case like that of those varieties which only thrive in the
waters of the open salt sea. Here was a clear indication that at
the time when man formed these shell-heaps those coasts were in
far more direct communication with the salt sea than at present,
and that sufficient time must have elapsed since that period to have
wrought enormous changes in sea and land throughout those regions.

Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade
of civilization when man still used implements of stone, but
implements and weapons which, though still rude, showed a
progress from those of the drift and early cave period, some of
them being of polished stone.

With these were other evidences that civilization had
progressed. With implements rude enough to have survived from
early periods, other implements never known in the drift and
bone caves began to appear, and, though there were few if any
bones of other domestic animals, the remains of dogs were found;
everything showed that there had been a progress in civilization
between the former Stone epoch and this.

The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in the
peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls
varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them,
like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a
gradual evolution of human culture. The lower strata in these
great bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and
various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees,
sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination
of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various
bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first
in point of time, was always of the Scotch fir--which now grows
nowhere in the Danish islands, and can not be made to grow
anywhere in them--and of plants which are now extinct in these
regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle. Coming up
from the bottom of these great bowls there was found above the
first layer a second, in which were matted together masses of
oak trees of different varieties; these, too, were relics of a
bygone epoch, since the oak has almost entirely disappeared from
Denmark. Above these came a third stratum made up of fallen
beech trees; and the beech is now, and has been since the
beginning of recorded history, the most common tree of the
Danish Peninsula.

Now came a second fact of the utmost importance as connected
with the first. Scattered, as a rule, through the lower of these
deposits, that of the extinct fir trees and plants, were found
implements and weapons of smooth stone; in the layer of oak
trees were found implements of bronze; and among the layer of
beeches were found implements and weapons of iron.

The general result of these investigations in these two sources,
the shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same: the first
civilization evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone
implements more or less smooth, showing a progress from the
earlier rude Stone period made known by the bone caves; then
came a later progress to a higher civilization, marked by the
use of bronze implements; and, finally, a still higher
development when iron began to be used.

The labours of the Danish archaeologists have resulted in the
formation of a great museum at Copenhagen, and on the specimens
they have found, coupled with those of the drift and bone caves,
is based the classification between the main periods or
divisions in the evolution of the human race above referred to.

It was not merely in Scandinavian lands that these results were
reached; substantially the same discoveries were made in Ireland
and France, in Sardinia and Portugal, in Japan and in Brazil, in
Cuba and in the United States; in fact, as a rule, in nearly
every part of the world which was thoroughly examined.[294]

But from another quarter came a yet more striking indication of
this same evolution. As far back as the year 1829 there were
discovered, in the Lake of Zurich, piles and other antiquities
indicating a former existence of human dwellings, standing in
the water at some distance from the shore; but the usual mixture
of thoughtlessness and dread of new ideas seems to have
prevailed, and nothing was done until about 1853, when new
discoveries of the same kind were followed up vigorously, and
Rutimeyer, Keller, Troyon, and others showed not only in the
Lake of Zurich, but in many other lakes in Switzerland, remains
of former habitations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers
of relics, exhibiting the grade of civilization which those
lakedwellers had attained.

Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the
human race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery
of various grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of
domestic animals, various sorts of grain, bread which had been
preserved by charring, and a multitude of evidences of progress
never found among the earlier, ruder relics of civilization,
showed yet more strongly that man had arrived here at a still
higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave, and
shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better.

Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in
each class of implements. As by comparing the chipped flint
implements of the lower and earlier strata in the cave period
with those of the later and upper strata we saw progress, so, in
each of the periods of polished stone, bronze, and iron, we see,
by similar comparisons, a steady progress from rude to perfected
implements; and especially is this true in the remains of the
various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out
constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and
gradual improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of living.

Incidentally, too, a fact, at first sight of small account, but
on reflection exceedingly important, was revealed. The earlier
bronze implements were frequently found to imitate in various
minor respects implements of stone; in other words, forms were
at first given to bronze implements natural in working stone, but
not natural in working bronze. This showed the _direction_ of the
development--that it was upward from stone to bronze, not downward
from bronze to stone; that it was progress rather than decline.

These investigations were supplemented by similar researches
elsewhere. In many other parts of the world it was found that
lake-dwellers had existed in different grades of civilization,
but all within a certain range, intermediate between the
cave-dwellers and the historic period. To explain this epoch of
the lake-dwellers History came in with the account given by
Herodotus of the lake-dwellings on Lake Prasias, which gave
protection from the armies of Persia. Still more important,
Comparative Ethnography showed that to-day, in various parts of
the world, especially in New Guinea and West Africa, races of
men are living in lake-dwellings built upon piles, and with a
range of implements and weapons strikingly like many of those
discovered in these ancient lake deposits of Switzerland.

In Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and
other countries, remains of a different sort were also found,
throwing light on this progress. The cromlechs, cranogs, mounds,
and the like, though some of them indicate the work of weaker
tribes pressed upon by stronger, show, as a rule, the same
upward tendency.

At a very early period in the history of these discoveries,
various attempts were made--nominally in the interest of
religion, but really in the interest of sundry creeds and
catechisms framed when men knew little or nothing of natural
laws--to break the force of such evidences of the progress and
development of the human race from lower to higher. Out of all
the earlier efforts two may be taken as fairly typical, for they
exhibit the opposition to science as developed under two
different schools of theology, each working in its own way. The
first of these shows great ingenuity and learning, and is
presented by Mr. Southall in his book, published in 1875,
entitled _The Recent Origin of the World_. In this he grapples
first of all with the difficulties presented by the early date
of Egyptian civilization, and the keynote of his argument is the
statement made by an eminent Egyptologist, at a period before
modern archaeological discoveries were well understood, that
"Egypt laughs the idea of a rude Stone age, a polished Stone age,
a Bronze age, an Iron age, to scorn."

Mr. Southall's method was substantially that of the late
excellent Mr. Gosse in geology. Mr. Gosse, as the readers of
this work may remember, felt obliged, in the supposed interest
of Genesis, to urge that safety to men's souls might be found in
believing that, six thousand years ago, the Almighty, for some
inscrutable purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring very near the
spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and
sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a
pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did
a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and
great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists
of modern times into the conviction that all these things were
the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a
similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of
his book, as a final solution of the problem, the declaration
that Egypt, with its high civilization in the time of Mena, with
its races, classes, institutions, arrangements, language,
monuments--all indicating an evolution through a vast previous
history--was a sudden creation which came fully made from the
hands of the Creator. To use his own words, "The Egyptians had
no Stone age, and were born civilized."

There is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial King
of France, making a progress through his kingdom, was received
at the gates of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, who
began his speech on this wise: "May it please your Majesty,
there are just thirteen reasons why His Honour the Mayor can not
be present to welcome you this morning. The first of these
reasons is that he is dead." On this the king graciously
declared that this first reason was sufficient, and that he
would not trouble the mayor's deputy for the twelve others.

So with Mr. Southall's argument: one simple result of scientific
research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and
this is, that in these later years we have a new and convincing
evidence of the existence of prehistoric man in Egypt in his
earliest, rudest beginnings; the very same evidence which we
find in all other parts of the world which have been carefully
examined. This evidence consists of stone implements and weapons
which have been found in Egypt in such forms, at such points,
and in such positions that when studied in connection with those
found in all other parts of the world, from New Jersey to
California, from France to India, and from England to the
Andaman Islands, they force upon us the conviction that
civilization in Egypt, as in all other parts of the world, was
developed by the same slow process of evolution from the rudest
beginnings.

It is true that men learned in Egyptology had discouraged the
idea of an earlier Stone age in Egypt, and that among these were
Lepsius and Brugsch; but these men were not trained in
prehistoric archaeology; their devotion to the study of the
monuments of Egyptian civilization had evidently drawn them away
from sympathy, and indeed from acquaintance, with the work of
men like Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Nilsson, Troyon, and
Dawkins. But a new era was beginning. In 1867 Worsaae called
attention to the prehistoric implements found on the borders of
Egypt; two years later Arcelin discussed such stone implements
found beneath the soil of Sakkara and Gizeh, the very focus of
the earliest Egyptian civilization; in the same year Hamy and
Lenormant found such implements washed out from the depths
higher up the Nile at Thebes, near the tombs of the kings; and
in the following year they exhibited more flint implements found
at various other places. Coupled with these discoveries was the
fact that Horner and Linant found a copper knife at twenty-four
feet, and pottery at sixty feet, below the surface. In 1872 Dr.
Reil, director of the baths at Helouan, near Cairo, discovered
implements of chipped flint; and in 1877. Dr Jukes Brown made
similar discoveries in that region. In 1878 Oscar Fraas, summing
up the question, showed that the stone implements were mainly
such as are found in the prehistoric deposits of other
countries, and that, Zittel having found them in the Libyan
Desert, far from the oases, there was reason to suppose that
these implements were used before the region became a desert and
before Egypt was civilized. Two years later Dr. Mook, of
Wurzburg, published a work giving the results of his
investigations, with careful drawings of the rude stone
implements discovered by him in the upper Nile Valley, and it
was evident that, while some of these implements differed
slightly from those before known, the great mass of them were of
the character so common in the prehistoric deposits of other
parts of the world.

A yet more important contribution to this mass of facts was made
by Prof. Henry Haynes, of Boston, who in the winter of 1877 and
1878 began a very thorough investigation of the subject, and
discovered, a few miles east of Cairo, many flint implements.
The significance of Haynes's discoveries was twofold: First,
there were, among these, stone axes like those found in the
French drift beds of St. Acheul, showing that the men who made
or taught men how to make these in Egypt were passing through
the same phase of savagery as that of Quaternary France;
secondly, he found a workshop for making these implements,
proving that these flint implements were not brought into Egypt
by invaders, but were made to meet the necessities of the
country. From this first field Prof. Haynes went to Helouan,
north of Cairo, and there found, as Dr. Reil had done, various
worked flints, some of them like those discovered by M. Riviere
in the caves of southern France; thence he went up the Nile to
Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, began a thorough search in
the Tertiary limestone hills, and found multitudes of chipped
stone implements, some of them, indeed, of original forms, but
most of forms common in other parts of the world under similar
circumstances, some of the chipped stone axes corresponding
closely to those found in the drift beds of northern France.

All this seemed to show conclusively that, long ages before the
earliest period of Egyptian civilization of which the monuments
of the first dynasties give us any trace, mankind in the Nile
Valley was going through the same slow progress from the period
when, standing just above the brutes, he defended himself with
implements of rudely chipped stone.

But in 1881 came discoveries which settled the question
entirely. In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the
Royal Society and President of the Anthropological Institute,
and J. F. Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of
England, found implements not only in alluvial deposits,
associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals
which have since retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas,
near Thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard,
stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten feet below the
surface; relics evidently, as Mr. Campbell says, "beyond
calculation older than the oldest Egyptian temples and tombs."
They certainly proved that Egyptian civilization had not issued
in its completeness, and all at once, from the hand of the
Creator in the time of Mena. Nor was this all. Investigators of
the highest character and ability--men like Hull and Flinders
Petrie--revealed geological changes in Egypt requiring enormous
periods of time, and traces of man's handiwork dating from a
period when the waters in the Nile Valley extended hundreds of
feet above the present level. Thus was ended the contention of
Mr. Southall.

Still another attack upon the new scientific conclusions came
from France, when in 1883 the Abbe Hamard, Priest of the
Oratory, published his _Age of Stone and Primitive Man_. He had
been especially vexed at the arrangement of prehistoric
implements by periods at the Paris Exposition of 1878; he
bitterly complains of this as having an anti-Christian tendency,
and rails at science as "the idol of the day." He attacks
Mortillet, one of the leaders in French archaeology, with a
great display of contempt; speaks of the "venom" in books on
prehistoric man generally; complains that the Church is too mild
and gentle with such monstrous doctrines; bewails the
concessions made to science by some eminent preachers; and
foretells his own martyrdom at the hands of men of science.

Efforts like this accomplished little, and a more legitimate
attempt was made to resist the conclusions of archaeology by
showing that knives of stone were used in obedience to a sacred
ritual in Egypt for embalming, and in Judea for circumcision,
and that these flint knives might have had this later origin.
But the argument against the conclusions drawn from this view
was triple: First, as we have seen, not only stone knives, but
axes and other implements of stone similar to those of a
prehistoric period in western Europe were discovered; secondly,
these implements were discovered in the hard gravel drift of a
period evidently far earlier than that of Mena; and, thirdly,
the use of stone implements in Egyptian and Jewish sacred
functions within the historic period, so far from weakening the
force of the arguments for the long and slow development of
Egyptian civilization from the men who used rude flint
implements to the men who built and adorned the great temples of
the early dynasties, is really an argument in favour of that
long evolution. A study of comparative ethnology has made it
clear that the sacred stone knives and implements of the
Egyptian and Jewish priestly ritual were natural survivals of
that previous period. For sacrificial or ritual purposes, the
knife of stone was considered more sacred than the knife of
bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as to-day,
in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire not with
matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the
earliest, lowest stages of human culture--by violently boring a
pointed stick into another piece of wood until a spark comes;
and just as to-day, in Europe and America, the architecture of
the Middle Ages survives as a special religious form in the
erection of our most recent churches, and to such an extent that
thousands on thousands of us feel that we can not worship fitly
unless in the midst of windows, decorations, vessels,
implements, vestments, and ornaments, no longer used for other
purposes, but which have survived in sundry branches of the
Christian Church, and derived a special sanctity from the fact
that they are of ancient origin.

Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though
a plausible or very strong argument against single evidences may
be made here and there, the force of its combined mass remains,
and leaves both the vast antiquity of man and the evolution of
civilization from its lowest to its highest forms, as proved by
the prehistoric remains of Egypt and so many other countries in
all parts of the world, beyond a reasonable doubt. Most
important of all, the recent discoveries in Assyria have thrown
a new light upon the evolution of the dogma of "the fall of
man." Reverent scholars like George Smith, Sayce, Delitzsch,
Jensen, Schrader, and their compeers have found in the Ninevite
records the undoubted source of that form of the fall legend
which was adopted by the Hebrews and by them transmitted to
Christianity.[301]


                          CHAPTER IX.
               THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ETHNOLOGY.

WE have seen that, closely connected with the main lines of
investigation in archaeology and anthropology, there were other
researches throwing much light on the entire subject. In a
previous chapter we saw especially that Lafitau and Jussieu were
among the first to collect and compare facts bearing on the
natural history of man, gathered by travellers in various parts
of the earth, thus laying foundations for the science of
comparative ethnology. It was soon seen that ethnology had most
important bearings upon the question of the material,
intellectual, moral, and religious evolution of the human race;
in every civilized nation, therefore, appeared scholars who
began to study the characteristics of various groups of men as
ascertained from travellers, and to compare the results thus
gained with each other and with those obtained by archaeology.

Thus, more and more clear became the evidences that the tendency
of the race has been upward from low beginnings. It was found
that groups of men still existed possessing characteristics of
those in the early periods of development to whom the drift and
caves and shell-heaps and pile-dwellings bear witness; groups of
men using many of the same implements and weapons, building
their houses in the same way, seeking their food by the same
means, enjoying the same amusements, and going through the same
general stages of culture; some being in a condition corresponding
to the earlier, some to the later, of those early periods.

From all sides thus came evidence that we have still upon the
earth examples of all the main stages in the development of
human civilization; that from the period when man appears little
above the brutes, and with little if any religion in any
accepted sense of the word, these examples can be arranged in an
ascending series leading to the highest planes which humanity
has reached; that philosophic observers may among these examples
study existing beliefs, usages, and institutions back through
earlier and earlier forms, until, as a rule, the whole evolution
can be easily divined if not fully seen. Moreover, the basis of
the whole structure became more and more clear: the fact that
"the lines of intelligence have always been what they are, and
have always operated as they do now; that man has progressed
from the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general."

As this evidence from ethnology became more and more strong, its
significance to theology aroused attention, and naturally most
determined efforts were made to break its force. On the
Continent the two great champions of the Church in this field
were De Maistre and De Bonald; but the two attempts which may be
especially recalled as the most influential among
English-speaking peoples were those of Whately, Archbishop of
Dublin, and the Duke of Argyll.

First in the combat against these new deductions of science was
Whately. He was a strong man, whose breadth of thought and
liberality in practice deserve all honour; but these very
qualities drew upon him the distrust of his orthodox brethren;
and, while his writings were powerful in the first half of the
present century to break down many bulwarks of unreason, he
seems to have been constantly in fear of losing touch with the
Church, and therefore to have promptly attacked some scientific
reasonings, which, had he been a layman, not holding a brief for
the Church, he would probably have studied with more care and
less prejudice. He was not slow to see the deeper significance

