38 All tJie Articles of the Darwin FditJi. 



The battle, in short, has yet to be fought before Darwinism 

 can make good this first step in its hypothetical sorites. 

 The antiquity of man is another battle ground where it is 

 hardly set up its banners. Assuredly it can boast no 

 .victory. On the existence of man before the Tertiary 

 period all is yet the merest conjecture, and that of so 

 slender a structure that it may at any moment vanish 

 away. Sir John Lubbock's theory of a savage origin is a 

 third hypothesis more in want of proof for itself, than able 

 to afford proof of another. Not a single fact is established 

 which is not quite as easily reconciled with the opposite 

 theory. Against it is the unbroken testimony of history 

 that while in many nations civilization has decayed and 

 died out, in none has it sprung up and flourished without 

 extraneous assistance. If man were originally savage, 

 and acquired civilization by his own exertions, we ought 

 occasionally to find him on the rise. There are savages 

 enough within the sphere of history, and even of present 

 observation, to give full scope for the experiment. How is 

 it that we never see them improving themselves, till some 

 one comes to improve them ? Why did New Zealand 

 remain in canibalism till visited by missionaries within our 

 own recollection, and then spring almost at a bound to a 



