"MAN AND HIS HANDIWORK." 113 



The work, of course, is largely ethnological. It 

 takes in much of the ground already covered in the 

 " Natural History of Man," although approaching it 

 from a totally different point of view, man heing con- 

 sidered with regard to what he does, rather than to 

 what he is. And the contrast between civilisation and 

 uncivilisation is constantly brought forward, while at 

 the same time the great gulf fixed, which separates the 

 savage from the brute, is never forgotten. 



And it is these two latter points which inspire the 

 closing lines of the book. " I mention this phase of 

 human existence," runs the last paragraph, " as showing 

 the common humanity of ourselves at the present day, 

 and of the races who lived and left their handiwork 

 behind them as the only memorial of a long-vanished 

 epoch. It is impossible, moreover, for anyone to con- 

 template even the simplest example of man's handi- 

 work, be it but a flint flake or a notched bone, and not 

 to feel that it indicates the impassable gulf which 

 separates the lowest of the human race from the highest 

 of all other inhabitants of earth." 



From this it will be seen that my father was no 

 believer in the theory of evolution, at any rate so far 

 as it concerns the development of man. Other passages 

 in his books speak even more strongly and decidedly 

 upon the subject. " Anyone," he says, in the larger 

 " Natural History," with reference to the gorilla, " who 

 could fancy himself to be descended, however remotely, 

 from such a being, is welcome to his ancestry." And 

 for many years after the doctrine was set before the 



