322 FOSSIL MEN. 



in the Christian dispensation; and in so holding, 

 though we rise above the primeval Animism, we justify 

 it as at least a low and childlike way of recognising 

 the one God, just as the funeral gifts buried with the 

 dead constitute a simple testimony to the belief in the 

 immortality of the soul. 



We have passed from the tribal communism and 

 the descent in the female line to the doctrine of 

 immortality, but not unintentionally. Just as we 

 find these things united in that old primitive race, 

 whose fragments exist everywhere over the world, so 

 do we find them in our oldest written history. The 

 God-given woman, the man leaving father and mother 

 and cleaving to his wife, the lost immortality by the 

 woman's means, and its destined recovery by her 

 seed, are no less familiar doctrines to every Sunday- 

 school child among us than they are ingredients in 

 the creeds of all primitive peoples, from the days of 

 the pre-historic cave-dwellers until now. Are they 

 not landmarks of some importance in connection with 

 all inquiries as to the origin and unity of our species ? 



Pre-historic and other ancient men, both in the Old 

 and New World, must have had poetical tendencies, 

 leading them to attribute their own views and feelings 

 to natural objects. We read this even in their carved 

 implements and ornaments ; and the same mythical 

 and poetical representation of nature which we see in 

 the most ancient poetry is still extant among the 

 ruder races. Multitudes of poetical tales and legends 

 have been written down from the lips of old Indian 



