CHAP. xrx. OPINIONS or THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 379 



of St. Acheul, or from the Liege caves. In them, or in the 

 upraised bed of the Mediterranean, on tlie south coast of 

 .Sardinia, instead of tlie rudest pottery or flint tools, so irre- 

 gular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt 

 Avhether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we 

 should now be finding sculptured forms, surpassing in beauty 

 the master-pieces of Phidias or Praxiteles; lines of buried 

 railways or electric telegi\aphs, from which the best engineers 

 of our day might gain invaluable hints; astronomical instru- 

 ments and microscopes of more advanced construction than 

 any known in Europe, and other indications of pei'fection in 

 the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not 

 yet witnessed. Still farther would the triumphs of inventive 

 genius be found to have been carried, when the later dej^osits, 

 now assio-ned to the agres of bronze and iron, were formed. 

 Vainl}' should we be straining our imaginations to guess the 

 possible uses and meaning of such relics, — machines, perhaps, 

 for navigating the air or exploi"ing the depths of the ocean, 

 or for calculating arithmetical problems, beyond the wants 

 or even the conception of living mathematicians. 



The opinion entertained generally by the classical writers 

 of Greece and Rome, that Man in the first stage of his exist- 

 ence was but just removed from the brutes, is faithfully 

 expressed by Horace in his celebrated lines, which begin — 



Quum prorepserunt prim'is animalia terris. — Saf., lib. i. .3, 99. 



The picture of transmutation given in these verses, however 

 severe and contemptuous the strictures lavishly bestowed on 

 it by Christian commentators, accords singularly with the 

 train of thought which the modern doctrine of progressive 

 development has encouraged. 



" When animals," he says, "first crept forth from the newly- 

 formed earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for acorns 



