6z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weapons of prehistoric man with those of modern savages, so that the 

 use of even the rudest flint implements has become quite intelligible, 

 that we can hardly wonder at the vast revolution effected in public 

 opinion. Not only is the belief in man's vast and still unknown an- 

 tiquity universal among men of science, but it is hardly disputed by 

 any well-informed theologian; and the present generation of science- 

 students must, we should think, be somewhat puzzled to understand 

 what there was in the earliest discoveries that should have aroused 

 such general opposition and been met with such universal incredulity. 



But the question of the mere "Antiquity of Man" almost sank 

 into insignificance at a very early period of the inquiry, in compari- 

 son with the far more momentous and more exciting problem of the 

 development of man from some lower animal form, which the the- 

 ories of Mr. Darwin and of Mr. Herbert Spencer soon showed to be 

 inseparably bound up with it. This has been, and to some extent 

 still is, the subject of fierce conflict ; but the controversy as to the 

 fact of such development is now almost at an end, since one of the 

 most talented representatives of Catholic theology, and an anatomist 

 of high standing Prof. Mivart fully adopts it as regards physical 

 structure, reserving his opposition for those parts of the theory which 

 would deduce man's whole intellectual and moral nature from the 

 same source, and by a similar mode of development. 



Never, perhaps, in the whole history of science or philosophy has 

 so great a revolution in thought and opinion been effected as in the 

 twelve years from 1859 to 1871, the respective dates of publication of 

 Mr. Darwin's " Origin of Species" and " Descent of Man." Up to the 

 commencement of this period the belief in the independent creation or 

 origin of the species of animals and plants, and the belief in the very 

 recent appearance of man upon the earth, were, practically, universal. 

 Long before the end of it these two beliefs had utterly disappeared, not 

 only in the scientific world, but almost equally so among the literary and 

 educated classes generally. The belief in the independent origin of 

 man held its ground somewhat longer, but the publication of Mr. 

 Darwin's great work gave even that its death-blow, for hardly any 

 one capable of judging of the evidence now doubts the derivative na- 

 ture of man's bodily structure as a whole, although many believe that 

 his mind and even some of his physical characteristics may be due 

 to the action of other forces than have acted in the case of the lower 

 animals. 



"We need hardly be surprised, under these circumstances, if there 

 has been a tendency among men of science to pass from one extreme 

 to the other, from a profession (so few years ago) of total ignorance 

 as to the mode of origin of all living things, to a claim to almost 

 complete knowledge of the whole progress of the universe from the 

 first speck of living protoplasm up to the highest development of the 

 human intellect. Yet this is really what we have seen in the last six- 



