7 z8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are now seen to have brought on the downfall of feudalism, and 

 the centralizing, civilizing monarchical period ; the French Revo- 

 lution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion, but now 

 seen to be a transition from the monarchical to the constitutional 

 epoch — all show that even wide-spread deterioration and decline, 

 even indeed the greatest political and moral catastrophes, so far 

 from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise 

 humanity to higher planes. 



Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids Ethnology, Phi- 

 lology, and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of 

 the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man 

 upon our planet. 



And these researches have not been confined to progress in 

 man's material condition. Far more important evidences have 

 been found of upward evolution in his family, social, moral, in- 

 tellectual, and religious relations. The light thrown on this sub- 

 ject by such men as Lubbock, Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, 

 Draper, Max Miiller, and a multitude of others, despite mistakes, 

 haltings, stumblings, and occasional following of delusive paths, 

 is among the greatest glories of the century now ending. From 

 all these investigators in their various fields, holding no brief for 

 any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth, comes 

 the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of 

 lower. The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this 

 does not prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruit- 

 ful in sorrow as humanity goes on.* 



While, then, it is not denied that many instances of retrogres- 

 sion can be found, the consenting voice of unbiased investigators 

 in all lands has declared more and more that the beginnings of 

 our race must have been low and brutal, and that the tendency 

 has been upward. To combat this conclusion by examples of de- 

 cline and deterioration here and there, has become impossible : as 

 well try to prove that, because in the Mississippi there are eddies 

 in which the currents flow northward, there is no main stream 

 flowing southward ; or that, because trees decay and fall, there is 

 no law of upward growth from germ to trunk, branches, foliage, 

 and fruit. 



A very striking evidence that the theological theory had be- 

 come untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scien- 

 tific field, Von Martins, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly 

 declared his conversion to the scientific view. 



Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in re- 

 cent times is unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is 



* As to. the good effects of migration, see Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, Lon- 

 don, 1863, p. 345. 





