112 



man: 



from Greek to Ptoenician and Hebrew, and from 

 Hebrew to Egyptian, Cbaldsean, and other Orientals ; 

 but these are only a few of its most recent and 

 civilised stages. Of all the races that went before, 

 working their way onward and upward to the civil- 

 isation of which these nationalities were the successive 

 exponents, we have scarcely the trace of a tradition, 

 and are left in utter ignorance alike of their chrono- 

 logical sequence and the localities they possessed. 

 All, then, that can be fairly and honestly afBrmed as 

 to man's historical relations is this : — That the evo- 

 lution of new races and nationalities is a thing of 

 slow and gradual growth, and as many nations have 

 undoubtedly risen and disappeared on the historic 

 and traditional platforms of Asia and Europe, the 

 antiquity of man, even in these areas, must be far, 

 unspeakably far, beyond the popular chronology of 

 sis or seven thousand years j and further, that as 

 civilisation is a thing of slow and gradual evolution, 

 and as many Asiatic and European peoples have 

 successively risen to high degrees of civilisation and 

 refinement, so the legitimate inference from this 

 source is also that of a higher antiquity for manldnd 

 in Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe. Indeed, 

 whether we appeal to written history or to monu- 

 mental evidence, we find all over Southern Asia and 

 Southern Europe difierent phases of civilisation. 



