NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 579 



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 it was developed it does not lie with- 

 in the province of this chapter to point out ; nor is it wortli our 

 while to dwell upon its evolution in the early Church, in the mid- 

 dle ages, at the Reformation, and in various branches of the Prot- 

 estant Church; suffice it that, though among English-speaking 

 nations, by far the most important influence in its favor 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 intel- 

 lectual, moral, and religious condition, has slowly risen from low 

 and brutal beginnings. Among all the statements of this theory 

 one is especially noteworthy ; 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 civ- 

 ilization from the rudest beginnings to the height of its achieve- 

 ments 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 in- 

 ventions : 



" 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 achie^ 

 ments 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 id 

 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.* 



During the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost en- 

 tirely obscured, but at the revival of learning in the fifteenth 

 century it reappeared; and in the first part of the seventeenth 



*For the passage in Hesiod, as given, see the Works and Days, lines 109-120, in 

 Banks's translation. As to Horace, see the Satires, i, 3, 99. As to the relation of the 

 poetic account of the Fall in Genesis to Chaldean myths, see Smith, Chaldean Account of 

 Genesis, pp. 13, 17. For a very instructive separation of the Jehovistic and ElolnVtic parts 



