PKEADAMITE MAN. 



THERE is hardly a topic of speculation and debate in respect 

 of which an under-current of belief does not exist in advance 

 of printed documents. By more in advance is not meant 

 more truthful of necessity, that would be altogether begging 

 the question but more outspoken, more free, and, if not 

 necessarily more true, more like what the speaker himself be- 

 lieves to be true. It would be perhaps impossible to indicate 

 a topic to which the remark just enunciated more forcibly 

 applies than that of the dawn of man upon the earth. If any 

 time during the last half-century a geological naturalist or a 

 physiologist had been asked by an intimate friend, in whose 

 presence reserve was habitually thrown aside, if he had been 

 asked whether he believed or disbelieved in the Mosaic ac- 

 count of the creation of man, the chances are much in favour 

 of the reply point-blank, *I do not believe.' That is one 

 phase, the private phase, of a man's bearing in respect to the 

 matter in debate. Had the same man the geological natu- 

 ralist or physiologist to write a book involving in any way a 

 reference to the same topic, he would most probably have 

 treated it in a different way. Without absolutely changing 

 his former <non credc? into i credo ,' he would have probably 

 weighed and measured out his words in such wise that his 

 opinions on the topic might seem either acquiescent, indeter- 

 minate, or if determinate and resolved out, so very abstruse 

 as to frighten ordinary readers from even trying to under- 

 stand. If it be inquired whether the dealing by a subject 

 thus be truthful, the answer is plain. It is not truthful ; the 



