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to a primeval cell, the primeval cell that could become a man is more 
mysterious by far than the man that was evolved from a cell. If we 
trace him back to a pro-anthropos, the pro-anthropos is more unin- 
_telligible to us than even the prot-anthropos would be. If we trace 
back the whole solar system to a rotating nebula, that wonderful nebula, 
which by evolution and revolution could become an inhabitable universe, is 
again far more mysterious than the universe itself. The lesson that there are 
limits to our knowledge is an old lesson; but it has to be taught again and 
again—‘Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou know the 
Almighty to perfection ?’” 
REMARKS BY THE REV. W. GUEST, F.G.S. 
It has for some time appeared to me that there is no more important 
and even crucial point in relation to the appearance of man upon earth than 
that which will be brought before your meeting. If there is a single his- 
torical record of savages, unaided by contact with higher influences, 
developing, of themselves, a cultured civilisation, this must be known. There 
must be a proof which falls within a human and historic period, and no 
argument of the nexus failing investigators through vastness of time, or 
the absence of observation, can avail here. The matter might be put in 
a syllogistic form :— ee 
If the doctrine of development be true, according to what is. under- 
stood by Darwinianism, man must have first appeared upon the globe in 
a rude, untaught, and uncivilised condition. 
There is an absolute and total absence of historical evidence that rude 
and uncivilised men, left to themselves, have ever emerged out of a savage 
condition, and risen into the arts and refinements of civilisation. 
Primitive man, therefore, could not have been a savage,as Darwinianism 
demands. 
Of course, if there is a case of human beings, unaided by,the contact of 
civilising influences, developing cultivation of mind and manners, we ought. 
to admit all that the fact fairly carries. But, if there be not, it is disin- 
genuous for any evolutionist to deny the necessary inference. It seems to 
me, therefore, that the Victoria Institute never drew nearer the very heart 
of this great controversy than when it demanded attention to this very 
issue. 
t 
