66 Primitive Man. 



receives an affirmation second only to that which it received 

 when the genius of Darwin brought to its support the 

 revolutionary doctrine of natural selection, with all its 

 manifold implications. The descent of man from some one 

 of the primates of the animal kingdom was indeed dis- 

 tinctly asserted by Darwin ; but the proofs as to the 

 slow, gradual melioration of the race, in respect to its pro- 

 gress from brutehood to manhood, was yet to be distinctly 

 affirmed and demonstrated by the patient labors of prehis- 

 toric science. These demonstrations (for such they now 

 are) have put the last nail in the coffin of special creation- 

 ist theories, and the entire cosmos of man and nature is 

 fully explicated as the sublime immanent working of One 

 Power energizing in and through both Man and Nature. 



