3S4 THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN. 



One of these is the belief in a future state of exist- 

 ence beyond this life. This belongs purely to the 

 spiritual nature of man. It is not taught by physical 

 nature, yet its existence is probably universal, and it 

 lies near the foundation of all religious beliefs. Lartet 

 has described to us the sepulchral cave of Aurignac, 

 in which human skeletons, believed to be of Post- 

 glacial date, were associated with remains of funeral 

 feasts, and with indications of careful burial, and with 

 provisions laid up for the use of the dead. Lyell well 

 remarks on this, " If we have here before us, at the 

 northern base of the Pyrenees, a sepulchral vault with 

 skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and 

 relatives to their last resting-place if we have also at 

 the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and 

 within it indications of viands destined for the use of 

 the departed on their way to a land of spirits ; while 

 among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in 

 other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion, 

 the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros we have at last 

 succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, 

 and more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to 

 times long anterior to those of history and tradition. 

 Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of 

 that remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes 

 of a hereafter, the epithet of ' noble/ which Dryden 

 gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as 

 the primitive condition of our race." * 



In like manner, in the vast American continent, all 

 * ' Antiquity of Man," p. 192. 



