420 TROPICAL NATURE 



protoplasm up to the highest development of the human 

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

 sixteen years. Formerly difficulties were exaggerated, and it 

 was asserted that we had not sufficient knowledge to venture 

 on any generalisations on the subject. Now difficulties are set 

 aside, and it is held that our theories are so well established 

 and so far-reaching that they explain and comprehend all 

 nature. It is not long ago (as I have already reminded 

 you) since facts were contemptuously ignored, because they 

 favoured our now popular views; at the present day it 

 seems to me that facts which oppose them hardly receive 

 due consideration. And as opposition is the best incentive 

 to progress, and it is not well even for the best theories to 

 have it all their own way, I propose to direct your attention 

 to a few such facts, and to the conclusions that seem fairly 

 deducible from them. 



Indications of Man's Extreme Antiquity 

 It is a curious circumstance that, notwithstanding the 

 attention that has been directed to the subject in every part 

 of the world, and the numerous excavations connected with 

 railways and mines, which have offered such facilities for 

 geological discovery, no advance whatever has been made for 

 a considerable number of years in detecting the time or mode 

 of man's origin. The Palaeolithic flint weapons first dis- 

 covered in the north of France more than thirty years ago 

 are still the oldest undisputed proofs of man's existence ; 

 and amid the countless relics of a former world that have 

 been brought to light, no evidence of any one of the links 

 that must have connected man with the lower animals has 

 yet appeared. 



It is, indeed, well known that negative evidence in 

 geology is of very slender value; and this is, no doubt, 

 generally the case. The circumstances here are, however, 

 peculiar, for many converging lines of evidence show that, 

 on the theory of development by the same laws which have 

 determined the development of the lower animals, man must 

 be immensely older than any traces of him yet discovered. 

 As this is a point of great interest we must devote a few 

 moments to its consideration. 



