ADVENT OF MAN. 217 



a skeleton or skull has yet accompanied these primeval im- 

 plements, to indicate the character of the race that fashioned 

 them ; and be it ever remembered that only the merest 

 specks in Western Europe have yet been examined leav- 

 ing wholly untouched the wider areas of Asia, to which 

 history and tradition alike point as the earlier nursery of 

 the human family. In the mean time then, these ancient 

 implements, wherever they occur, indicate the same con- 

 ception and the same design, and would go to prove so 

 far as the evidence is of value a unity and community of 

 the heads and hands concerned in their fabrication. An- 

 other question occasionally mooted by theologians who 

 dabble in geology, is, that man came from the hand of his 

 Maker a higher and nobler being than those rude old im- 

 plements would seem to imply, and, therefore, they are of 

 no antiquity, but the mere yesterday fabrications of a savage 

 and curse-degenerated race. Geology, restricting herself to 

 her own proper province, declines to argue this question. 

 Those are the facts deep in the old alluvia and gravels ; 

 these are the evidences which science has to deal with ; 

 and sound induction will not permit her to travel beyond 

 her own tangible record. The question of moral debase- 

 ment lies altogether beyond the pale of natural science ; and 

 these disputants seem to forget that man's early condition, 

 as indicated by geology, is much the same as that depicted 

 in the Mosaic record. Our great progenitors sewed them- 

 selves aprons of fig-leaves, not of jacquarded silks or power- 

 loom calicoes ; were tillers of the ground and keepers of 

 flocks, ignorant alike of high farming, steam- ploughs, and 

 reaping-machines ; travelled and communicated by camel- 

 caravans and pack-horses, not by railroads and electric 

 telegraphs. The course of civilisation is ever slow and 

 gradual ; and history, tradition, and experience alike point 

 to the early condition of every race as hunters and herds- 



