CHAPTER I. 



FROM KNOWN TO UNKNOWN 



Upward — still upward — still upward to the highest ! Such is 

 the claim of modern man for the story of himself and the lower 

 inhabitants of the globe. The zoologists have gone so far as to 

 confer upon him the surname Sapiens — Homo Sapiens. Learned 

 indeed he is, and heir of all the ages, but whether or not his assumed 

 surname be warranted the doctrine of descent with modification 

 can never again be questioned. The work of Darwin was crowned 

 when he compelled a general acceptance of that doctrine, and now 

 the Descent of Man and the Ascent of Man are equivalent terms 

 for a natural process which has converted man from a thing to a 

 person, and is the foundation of all modern thought. The biologist 

 works secure in the knowledge that he is studying some portion 

 of a chain of life stretching back for incalculable ages, and is not 

 careful to produce those missing links demanded by the once 

 formidable foes of his fundamental principle. Haeckel may 

 announce that Pithecanthropus Erectus of Dubois is truly a 

 Pliocene remainder of that famous group of highest Catarrhines 

 which were the immediate pithecoid ancestors of man. This may 

 or may not be true, but if true it makes the descent of man from 

 a lower stock none the surer, the increasing verification of which 

 is not found to rest on missing links. 



Many of the discoveries of modern science are made by 

 proceeding from known phenomena to the unknown, or, more 

 precisely, from the well-known through the little-known 

 to the hitherto unknown. 



As to the validity of knowledge it is enough to say this — and 

 pass on — all our knowledge is provisional and imperfect, and much 

 of our ignorance is as transient as ourselves. 



There are two chief ways in which historians deal with their 

 subject-matter, though the moderns combine them. When oral 

 tradition gives place to written records the lineal descendant of 

 the bards and annalists collects his scanty authorities and compiles 

 his story from them from beginning to end. The Anglo-Saxon 

 Chronicle of Bede and Alfred, the Book of Howth, the works of 

 Giraldus Cambrensis, the Chronicles of Froissart and the Memoirs 



