12 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



ment of time can be only by reference to advance 

 manifest in the remains of human industry. A chipped 

 flint for an arrow-head, or a polished stone for an axe, 

 bears witness for a rational life. Here we have evi 

 dence of man s presence in the world, as reliable as 

 any we find in folk-lore, in folios, or in manuscripts. 



To fix the date of man s appearance on the earth 

 may not prove an easy thing : nor is it essential here 

 that we should be able to do so with exactness. We 

 judge of epochs by signs of intellectual advance, thus 

 including many ages prior to those from which written 

 testimony has come. 1 Some see in this large extension 

 of human history, valuable support for an Evolution 

 Theory. The earlier the appearance of man, so 

 much easier, it seems to them, must it prove to bridge 

 the chasm between animal and human intelligence. 

 But the force of reasoning flows in the other direction. 

 Geological records require us to extend human history 

 beyond the appearance of such an animal as the 

 dog, to which we now specially refer, for evidence of 

 animal intelligence. The antiquity of man thus con 

 stitutes a special perplexity for a theory of evolution, 

 even while we recognise that antiquity is a rela 

 tive term, having a meaning for the earth itself, im 

 measurably beyond the term of human existence. 



In the history of our race, we go back to a period 

 fitly named the stone age (Neolithic and Paleolithic). 

 Our museums contain arrow-heads and axes supplying 

 abundant evidence of the antiquity of man. That the 

 remote age was intellectually a less advanced age than 

 the later, is true. The tools are of primitive simplicity, 

 for appliances at command are few ; but along with 



1 See Lyell s Antiquity of Man, p. 7, and p. 228. 



