PRIMITIVE MAN.* 



Man, whence and whither ? These problems have puzzled 

 all the ages and perplexed all the philosophies. If the 

 most advanced doctrine of Evolution be true, and if not 

 only the complex physical organization of Man, but his 

 royal intellect as well, have been compacted of the nebulous 

 mists of the ancient heavens, the mystery and wonder are 

 intensified in manifold degrees, and man becomes a greater 

 enigma to himself than ever. 



"We walk between two eternities," said Diderot. "Our 

 birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," writes Wordsworth. 

 Says the Sphinx, in Emerson's Poem : 



"Who'll tell me my secret 

 The ages have kept ? 

 1 awaited the seer, 

 While they slumbered and slept; 

 The fate of the man-child ; 

 The meaning of Man ; 

 Known fruit of the unknown.". . . 



Something, however, -thanks to the science of late years, 

 which has supplanted the former guess-work that went by 

 the name of science, is known of the character of man's 

 life upon the earth prior to historic records ; and the 

 same science is pressing hopefully onward to open new 

 avenues of exploration, and to perfect such knowledge as 

 we possess. 



In our course of lectures last year we were amply 

 instructed as to the present accomplishments of science on 

 the question of the "Descent of Man." We are now, in a 

 supplementary way, to inquire what has been the life record 

 of man since the period when first he stood forth as truly 

 man, asserting through some sujjcrior, though at first, slight 

 prescience, his mastery over the mere brutes that perish. 

 If the conclusions are subversive of some cherished legends 

 of the historic past, yet here, as on so many other lines of 

 Evolution, we obtain a more unified and coherent, and 



* COPYEIGUT, 1890, by James H. West. 



