96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Nevertheless, I believe it is allowable for us frankly to admit all 

 these facts, and yet remain evolutionists just as heartily as before. 

 No doubt our general tendency was at first in the opposite direction, 

 and many evolutionists will be staggered by the conclusions of Pro- 

 fessor Dawkins and Dr. Mitchell, while others will endeavor, under the 

 influence of false prepossessions, to dispute their facts. But modifi- 

 ability of opinion is the true test of devotion to truth, and honest 

 thinkers can hardly fail to modify their opinions on this question 

 in accordance with the latest discoveries. After frankly and fairly 

 facing all the difficulties of the situation, I believe we may come at 

 last to the following conclusions, which, for clearness' sake, I will 

 number separately : 1. The cave-men were not only true men, but 

 men of a comparatively high type. 2. But the river-drift men, who 

 preceded them, were men of a lower social organization, and probably 

 of a lower physical organization as well. 3. The earliest human re- 

 mains which we possess, though, on the whole, decidedly human, are 

 yet, in some respects, of a type more brute-like than that of any exist- 

 ing savages. 4. They specially recall the most striking traits of the 

 larger anthropoid apes. 5. There is no reason to suppose that these 

 remains are those of the earliest men who inhabited the earth. G. 

 There is good reason for believing that before the evolution of man 

 in his present specific type, a man-like animal, belonging to the same 

 genus, but less highly differentiated, lived in Europe. 7. From this 

 man-like animal the existing human species is descended. 8. Analogy 

 would lead us to suppose that the line of descent which culminates in 

 man first diverged from the line of descent which culminates in the goril- 

 la and the chimpanzee, about the later Eocene or early Miocene period. 



In order to give such proof of these propositions as the fragment- 

 ary evidence yet admits, it will be necessary first to clear the ground 

 of one or two common misapprehensions. And, before all, let us get 

 rid of that strangely unscientific and unphilosophical expression, the 

 Stone age. 



Most people who have not specially studied prehistoric archaeol- 

 ogy, and many of those who have studied it, believe that the period 

 of human life on the earth may be divided into three principal epochs, 

 the Iron age, the Bronze age, and the Stone age ; and that the last- 

 named epoch may be once more subdivided into the Palaeolithic and 

 the Neolithic ages. All the great archaeologists know, of course, that 

 such a division would be utterly misleading ; yet, in their written 

 works, they have often used language which has led the world gen- 

 erally to fall, almost without exception, into the error. The division 

 in question can only be paralleled by a division of all human his- 

 tory into three periods, the age of Steam, the age of Printing, and 

 the age of IJnprinted Books ; the latter being subdivided into the 

 mediaeval and the Egyptian ages. The real facts may much better 

 be represented thus : 



