THE EARLIEST MEN 159 



backwards until we could in vision behold those 

 far-off days ? How did this individual live ? What 

 did he make ? Had he any ideas about art ? About 

 God ? About another life ? All these and many 

 other questions are constantly being asked, and 

 what is most strange, are being asked not without 

 considerable prospect of an answer being returned, 

 and that answer one which, up to a point, we may 

 quite reasonably accept in spite of the remote and 

 shadowy period to which it applies. To sketch 

 very briefly the replies to some of these questions, 

 and to indicate as far as possible the point at which 

 reasonable certainty ceases and surmise some- 

 times legitimate, sometimes wholly visionary 

 commences, is the object of this article. It 

 is written in order that Catholics who require 

 such knowledge certainly not less urgently than 

 other people may know exactly what is estab- 

 lished fact and what is mere surmise, what, in 

 other words may, nay must, be believed, and what 

 may be rejected or accepted, according as the 

 wavering balance is inclined this way or the other 

 by fresh pieces of information coming to light. 



Before attacking the questions indicated, indeed 

 as an essential preliminary to any such attack upon 

 them, it will be necessary to clear our minds as to 

 the fundamentals of chronology, for on an easily 

 understood misconception of those fundamentals 

 depends a great deal of the confusion and, fur- 

 ther, of the unsettlement of mind which exists 

 on these questions. 



We may say, then, that there are : Geological 

 Time, Archaeological Time, and Historical Time. 



