106 MAN: 



perfect, and prejudices arising from early and widely- 

 accepted beliefs. Notwithstanding these difficulties 

 and prejudices, an attempt must be made ; and though 

 science in the meantime may fail in arriving at satis- 

 factory conclusions, she may succeed in indicating the 

 way to more rational convictions both as to the time 

 man has been struggling upwards on this globe, and 

 the nature of the source from which he started. And 

 this, be it observed, is always something gained — the 

 unsettling of former prejudices being next to the es- 

 tablishment of new convictions. 



In appealing to history for any information re- 

 specting the antiquity and origin of man, it wiU be 

 readily admitted that the response must necessarily 

 be faint and unintelligible. All tradition on the 

 subject is vague and unreliable ; all written history 

 is recent, partial, and uncertain. And even where 

 no uncertainty need be, historical facts are so fre- 

 quently obscured by traditional beliefs that it is often 

 impossible to separate the real from the unreliable. 

 " In the history of ancient nations," as has been truly 

 remarked by Sir J. G&,rdner Wilkinson, "the early 

 portion usually consists of mere fable, either from 

 real events having been clothed in an allegorical 

 garb, or from the substitution of purely fanciful tales 

 for facts in consequence of the deficiency of real data ; 

 to this succeeds an era when, as manners and habits 



