HISTOEICAL EELATIONS. 



Tradition Uncertain and Unreliable — AU History Recent and 

 Partial — Discrepancies in Chronological Systems — Inferences 

 as to Man's Antiquity from the Known Eate of Progress in 

 Civilisation and Refinement — Our Fifth Proposition. 



Admitting man's existing relations, or the position he 

 now occupies in nature, let us next try to discover 

 what light can be thrown on the antiquity of his 

 species relatively to the antiquity of other species. 

 For this purpose we must appeal to History in the 

 first place, and where History fails us we must turn 

 to the record preserved in the earth's rock-formations, 

 and which Geology is striving to interpret. Having 

 obtained some notion of his antiquity, or, in other 

 words, having traced him nearer and nearer to his 

 origin, we may discover some indication of the nature 

 of that origin, and the process by which it was effected. 

 In the prosecution of this inquiry, science has to con- 

 tend not only with numerous difficulties but with 

 inveterate prejudices — difficulties inasmuch as both 

 historical and geological records are obscure and im- 



