66 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



cultuerd naitons that lived in the great plains of the 

 Mediterranean Valley-, or on that nameless river which 

 flowed through the land now covered by the German 

 Ocean ? Had he visited or seen from afar the great 

 island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see 

 in the sunset sky the islands of the blest ? Could he 

 have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian 

 world, and of the feats of the men of renown who 

 contended with these animal giants ? We can but 

 conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be 

 as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon 

 and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great 

 truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and 

 with the primitive men of all the early ages. They 

 tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral 

 organisation which he possesses now, and, we may 

 infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature, 

 fitting him for communion with God and headship 

 over the lower world. They indicate also, like the 

 mound-builders, who preceded the North American 

 Indian, that man's earlier state was the best that he 

 had been a high and noble creature before he became 

 a savage. It is not conceivable that their high 

 development of brain and mind could have sponta- 

 neously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage 

 life. These gifts must be remnants of a noble 

 organisation degraded by moral evil. They thus 

 justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age, 

 and mutely protest against the philosophy of progres- 

 sive development as applied to man, while they bear 



