210 GEOLOGY AND HISJORY 



CHAPTER XIII 

 SUMMARY OF RESULTS 



IT may be well, in conclusion, to sum up the general 

 truths we have arrived at in relation to the place of 

 man in the great and long-continued drama of the 

 earth's geological history. 



I. We have found no link of derivation connec- 

 ting man with the lower animals which preceded him. 

 He appears before us as a new departure in creation, 

 without any direct relation to the instinctive life of 

 the lower animals. The earliest men are no less men 

 than their descendants, and up to the extent of their 

 means, inventors, innovators, and introducers of new 

 modes of life, just as much as they. We have not 

 even been able as yet to trace man back to the 

 harmless golden age. As we find him in the caves and 

 gravels he is already a fallen man, out of harmony 

 with his environment and the foe of his fellow 

 creatures, contriving against them instruments of 

 destruction more fatal than those furnished by nature 

 to the carnivorous wild beasts. Yet we would fain 

 believe in an Edenic age of innocence ; and physio- 

 logical probability, as well as the old story in Genesis, 



