68 FOSSIL MEN. 



be stretched indefinitely into the past, and arranged 

 according to his fancy in successive periods of bar- 

 barism and semi-civilization. 



It is true that this view seems in direct contradiction 

 to the theories promulgated with so much confidence 

 of the primitive barbarism or semi-brutal character of 

 man. Yet there are facts, in the old world as well as 

 in the new, which point in this same direction. For 

 example, it is admitted that the wild Yeddahs of 

 Ceylon are proved by their Sanscrit tongue and their 

 physical characters to be a degraded branch of that 

 great Aryan family to which the civilized Hindoo 

 belongs. The Hottentots and even the Bushmen of 

 South Africa can be shown by language and customs 

 to be merely depauperated descendants of that great 

 Ethiopian nation which in Upper Egypt founded one 

 of the oldest known civilized kingdoms. Physiological 

 considerations point in the same direction; for man, 

 unarmed and naked, must originally have been fru- 

 givorous, and then to some degree a horticulturist, be- 

 fore he could have developed into a savage hunter and 

 warrior. To suppose that the savage hunters of our 

 day are the primeval type of man, is one of the most 

 unfounded assumptions of that materialistic philosophy 

 which disgraces the intellect as well as the right feel- 

 ing of our time. At the same time, it has been the 

 policy of this philosophy to gather up and parade 

 all that is discreditable and low in the condition and 

 manners of the modern savage, so as to approximate 

 him as nearly as possible to brutes ; and having done 



