HIS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 117 



the universe, must be abandoned as the unscientific 

 assumption of rabbins and scholastics, which has 

 grown into a wUful mischievous falsehood, in the face 

 of the annals of nature and of mankind." 



Qui fifth proposition therefore is, that as concerns 

 man's antiquity, neither tradition, monumental re- 

 mains, nor written history, afford any certain or 

 reliable information beyond a few thousand years ; 

 but that we may safely infer, from the slow rate at 

 which nationalities are evolved and civilisation deve- 

 loped, an existence for the human species immeasur- 

 ably beyond that of the commonly received chronology. 

 We admit that new nationalities and races may be 

 evolved at very different ratios, according to the 

 geographical conditions under which they are placed ; 

 but the most prejudiced in favour of a limited chrono- 

 logy must allow that sis or seven thousand years 

 seems too short a period for the evolution of the 

 civilised races, with different forms and features, dif- 

 ferent languages, different religions, different architec- 

 ture, and different laws and customs, that have 

 successively appeared and disappeared in the old 

 world, to say nothing of the uncivilised and pre- 

 historic peoples that must necessarily have preceded 

 them. 



