THE 



* 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



SEPTEMBER, 1890. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



X. THE FALL OF MAN AND ANTHROPOLOGY. 



By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D., 



EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



PART I. 



IN the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially 

 within the past few years, has thoroughly changed the intel- 

 ligent thought of the world in regard to the antiquity of man upon 

 our planet ; and how the fabric built upon the chronological in- 

 dications in our sacred books, first, by the early fathers of the 

 Church, afterward by the mediaeval doctors, and finally by the 

 reformers and modern orthodox chronologists, has virtually dis- 

 appeared before an entirely different view forced upon us, espe- 

 cially by Egyptian studies, Geology, and Archaeology. 



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 far more striking than that accom- 

 plished 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 re- 

 volving 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 views have existed regarding the 

 life of the human race upon earth, each utterly opposed to the 

 other. The first of these is the belief that man was created " in 

 the beginning," a perfect being, endowed with the highest moral 



VOL. XXXVII.- 



