COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



everything indicates the most extreme barba- 

 rism ; nowhere does there appear a trace of any- 

 thing like even the rudest civilization, until we 

 reach that comparatively recent epoch antece- 

 dent to the dawn of history, but accessible to 

 philology. The partial restoration of the Ar- 

 yan mother tongue enables us to go back per- 

 haps a dozen or fifteen centuries beyond the 

 age of Homer and the Vedas, and catch a few 

 glimpses of the prehistoric Aryans, — an agri- 

 cultural race completely tribal in organization, 

 but acquainted with the .use of metals, and show- 

 crease in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, which, as calcu- 

 lated by Mr. Croll, began about 950,000 years b. c, and 

 lasted 200,000 years. But while the fact of this great increase 

 of eccentricity is, I presume, well established, and while it 

 can hardly fail to have wrought marked climatic changes, it is 

 by no means proved that the glaciation of Europe and North 

 America was produced solely or chiefly by this circumstance ; 

 and accordingly I do not care to insist upon the chronology 

 which I have adopted in the text. Nor is it necessary for 

 the validity of my argument that it should be insisted on. What 

 we do know is, that men existed both in Europe and in North 

 America at the beginning of the glacial period ; that this ex- 

 tensive dispersal implies the existence of the human race for a 

 long time previous to this epoch ; and that thus we obtain a 

 dumb antiquity in comparison with which the whole duradon 

 of the voice of historic tradinon shrinks to a mere point of 

 time. And this is all that my argument requires. [See the 

 essay II. in the Excursions of an Evolutionist^ on ** The Ar- 

 rival of Man in Europe.'* The theory here in question has 

 since been much controverted.] 



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