IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



171 



to 



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srs 



3ry 



his 

 of 



i in 

 ex- 

 he 



ived 



[own 



eless 



aits? 



yreat 



most 

 lest? 

 Post- 

 had 

 se he 

 )f the 

 nown 



lushed 

 mpar- 

 ecture 

 \ as to 

 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 high intellectual and moral nature, 

 fitting him for communion with God and head- 

 ship over the lower world. They indicate, 

 also, like the Mound-builders, who preceded 

 the North American Indian, that man's earlier 

 state was the best — that he had been a high 

 and noble creature before he became a savage. 

 It is not conceivable that their high develop- 

 ment of brain and mind could have sponta- 

 neously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and 

 savage life. These gifts must be remnants 

 of a noble organization degraded by mgral 

 evil. They thus justify the tradition of a 

 Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest 

 against the philosophy of progressive develop- 

 ment as applied to man, while they bear wit- 

 ness to the identity in all important characters 

 of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety 

 of our species which is at the present day at 

 once the most widely extended and the most 

 primitive in its manners and usages. 



