CHAP. xix. OPINIONS OF tllE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 379 



of St. Acheul, or from the Liege caves. In them, or in the 

 upraised bed of the Mediterranean, on the south coast of 

 Sardinia, instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools, so ir 

 regular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt 

 whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we 

 should now be finding sculptured forms, surpassing in beauty 

 the master-pieces of Phidias or Praxiteles; lines of buried 

 railways or electric telegraphs, from which the best engineers 

 of our day might gain invaluable hints ; astronomical instru 

 ments and microscopes of more advanced construction than 

 any known in Europe, and other indications of perfection in 

 the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not 

 yet witnessed. Still farther would the triumphs of inventive 

 genius be found to have been carried, when the later deposits, 

 now assigned to the ages of bronze and iron, were formed. 

 Vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess 

 the possible uses and meaning of such relics machines, per 

 haps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the 

 ocean, or for calculating arithmetical problems, beyond the 

 wants or even the conception of living mathematicians. 



The opinion entertained generally by the classical writers 

 of Greece and Rome, that Man in the first stage of his ex 

 istence was but just removed from the brutes, is faithfully 

 expressed by Horace in his celebrated lines, which begin 



Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris. Sat., lib. i. 3, 99. 



The picture of transmutation given in these verses, however 

 severe and contemptuous the strictures lavishly bestowed on 

 it by Christian commentators, accords singularly with the 

 train of thought which the modern doctrine of progressive 

 development has encouraged. 



4 When animals,' he says, ' first crept forth from the newly 

 formed earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for acorns 



