2622 The Zoologist — June, 1871. 



" To believe that mau was aboriginally civilized, and then suffered utter 

 degradation, is to take a pitiably low view of human nature. It is apparently 

 a truer and more cheerful view that progress has been much more general 

 than retrogression; that man has risen, though by slow and interrupted 

 stages, from a lowly condition to the highest standard as yet attained by 

 him in morals and religion." — Vol. i. p. 162. 



Where is that highest standard to be found ? Among the hairy 

 Ainos of the far east; anaong the Buddhists of India; among the 

 aborigines of Australia, who Mr. Darwin tells us cannot count more 

 than teu ; among the Bushmen of Africa ; or in the saloons of Paris, 

 the empress of fashion, the queen of civilization ; or among the 

 spas of Germany. Where, I ask, is this highest standard in morals 

 and religion to be found ? I believe this hypothesis of evolution 

 will nevertheless prevail, because it flatters our vanity. Though the 

 Venus and the Apollo, the ruins of Balbec and Palmyra, the massive 

 masonry of Karnac and Edfou, may ere long serve to mend our 

 roads, our evolutionists will doubtless still point to the mitrailleuses 

 and the chassepots, to the electric telegraph and the steam engine, 

 as unquestioned evidence of progress. But although Mr. Darwin 

 recoils from the idea of retrogression, he does not refute it: he does 

 not deny or in any degree invalidate the fact, that when the Muse 

 of History first unveiled the statue of man's mind, she presented 

 him in all his glory, — a glory ineflable, indisputable, — a glory that 

 creates in us an insatiable, an insuperable desire to know something 

 earlier, and therefore grander and more perfect, and more worthy of 

 our imitation and admiration. 



In the very most remote ages that history can reach, there was 

 an idea, and in the Bible it is more than an idea, — it is an asser- 

 tion, — that angels walked the earth, and that men were their 

 associates and friends. Men dwelt with angels, conversed with 

 angels, and were deemed worthy the companionship of angels, and 

 even the companionship of their Creator. The belief in these 

 assertions was once general ; and it was advocated by some of the 

 earlier Fathers of the Christian Church, and has been embodied in 

 the sweetest poetry of modern times. 



" When, in the light of Nature's dawn 

 Rejoicing, men and angels met 



On the high hill and sunny lawn, 

 Ere sorrow came, or sin had drawn 



'Twixt man and heaven her curtain yet. 



When earth lay nearer to the skies 

 Than in these days of crime and Woe." 



