THE DECLINE OF MEN AND RACES 253 



man begun as a savage, a savage he would be to- 

 day. Man has always within himself the reason 

 for his fall. Self-exertion alone can avert it. 

 This precisely is wanting in the savage, who rather 

 tends to sink still lower, unless assisted from with- 

 out. 



The net result of all our modern discoveries 

 no less than of our wider historic knowledge is 

 that man began as now we know him, although 

 amid less favorable surroundings and in a far 

 lower stage of material development the very 

 lowest hitherto discovered by archeologists, it may 

 be. Yet these stages of material development 

 are not necessarily any index to his intellectual 

 and spiritual qualities, which essentially were al- 

 ways the same as now in their nature, and which 

 in their actual exercise may at least have been as 

 perfect in the first man that came from the hand 

 of God as in the highest type of modern men. 

 But material civilization developed constantly, 

 while the decline into barbarism and savagery in 

 various parts of the earth, to which men had 

 gradually come by adventure, by accident, or 

 by necessity, took place we may presume before 

 the Flood, as it was resumed after that period. 

 The Flood itself is an outstanding fact of science. 

 The Scripture account enables us also to explain 

 the diversity of races sprung from the three sons 

 of Noah. The same material development con- 

 tinued anew in the earliest centers of culture, 



