202 FOSSIL MEN. 



extended westward through Ireland? Did he know 

 and had he visited the nations that lived in the valley 

 of the great Gihon, which ran down the Mediterranean 

 valley, or that nameless river which flowed where the 

 German Ocean now lies. Had he visited or seen from 

 afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could 

 almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest ? 

 Or did he live at a later time, after the Post-pliocene 

 subsidence, and when the land had assumed its 

 present form ? In that case he could have told us of 

 the great deluge, of the huge animals of the ante- 

 diluvian world, known to him only by tradition, and 

 of the diminished strength and longevity of men in his 

 comparatively modern days. We can but conjecture 

 all this. But mute though they may be as to the 

 details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his 

 contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in 

 which they coincide with the Americans and with the 

 primitive men of all the early ages. They tell us that 

 primitive man had the same high cerebral organization 

 which he possesses now, and we may infer the same 

 intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for com- 

 munion with God and headship over the lower world. 

 They indicate also, like the mound-builders who pre- 

 ceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier 

 state was the best, that he had been a good and 

 noble creature before he became a savage. It is not 

 conceivable that their high development of brain and 

 mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a 

 mere brutal and savage life. These gifts^ must be 



