THE DESCENT OF MAN 135 



years immense strides had been made in every depart- 

 ment of anthropological science, and the whole tenor of 

 modern speculation had been clearing the ground for 

 the ' Descent of Man.' In 1865, Rolle in Germany 

 had published his work on l Man Viewed by the Light 

 of the Darwinian Theory.' Two years later, Canestrini 

 in Italy read before the Naturalists' Society of Modena 

 his interesting paper on rudimentary characters as 

 bearing on the origin of the human species. In 1868, 

 Biichner brought out his rudely materialistic sledge- 

 hammer lectures on the Darwinian principle; and in 

 1869, Barrage flung straight at the head of the Roman 

 clericals his offensive work on man and the anthropoid 

 apes. Most of these foreign publications were unhappily 

 marked by that coarse and almost vituperative opposi- 

 tion to received views which too often disfigures French 

 and German controversial literature. In England, on 

 the contrary, under our milder and gentler ecclesiastical 

 yoke, the contest had been conducted with greater 

 decorum and with far better results. Wallace had 

 broken ground tentatively and reverently in his essay 

 on the ' Origin of Human Races,' where he endeavoured 

 to show that man is the co-descendant with the anthro- 

 poid apes of some ancient lower and extinct form. 

 Lubbock's 'Prehistoric Times' (1865) and 'Origin of 

 Civilisation' (1870) helped to clear the way in the 

 opposite direction by demolishing the old belief, firmly 

 upheld by Whately and others, that savages represent 

 a degraded type, and that the civilised state is natural 

 and, so to speak, congenital to man. Tylor's ' Early 

 History of Mankind' (1865) did still more eminent 

 service in the same direction. Colenso's 'Pentateuch 



