28 Remeivs — Mortillet's History of Man. 



gress, but even to recognize the chronological blank without which 

 we cannot realize this progress. The chronology taught in all our 

 schools is terribly distanced. Indeed it scarcely covers the historical 

 period. In the Temple of Edfoa, erected by the Egyptian Govern- 

 ment in the Park of the Exposition, we see the statue of Chephren, 

 a veritable work of art, to which learned Egyptologists assign an 

 age of 6000 years, — a date contemporary with '' the first man " of our 

 school-teaching! How long a series of years, or rather of ages, 

 must we not allow for man, once using stone flakes, not only to 

 attain the art of grinding and polishing his implements of stone, but 

 to develop the genius of the Sculptor and give life and sentiment 

 to the hardest rock ! There has been an enormous lapse of time ! 

 Indeed, Chephren was a cotemporary of a fauna altogether similar to 

 that which exists ; whilst, on the other hand, the man who only 

 used chipped stone was surrounded by animals now quite extinct ! 

 It is fossil man, then, that lived with fossil animals ! 



In France, England, and Spain, and at Kome, stone implements of 

 the first period are found associated with bones of the tichorhine 

 Ehinoceros, the great Hippopotamus, various Hyaenas, the great 

 Bear of the caves, the Megaceros of Ireland, the fossil Tigers or 

 Lions, and Elephants, among which, especially, the hairy Mammoth 

 is well known. Stone implements made by Man lie in place with 

 these bones, in undisturbed deposits, and nowise rearranged; and 

 hence they are decidedly contemporaneous, one being as much fossil 

 as the other. For these conclusions the glass-cases on the left- 

 hand side of the first saloon of the '' History of Labour" could leave 

 no doubt. To this first period in the infancy of Mankind, charac- 

 terized by a fauna comprising many now extinct species, succeeded a 

 second period, during which there lived in our lowlands, and 

 abundantly too, species that have emigrated, and are now found only 

 in the north or on snowy mountain -heights. Such are the Keindeer, 

 the Glutton, the vulpine Lagopede, the Musk-ox, the Chamois, the 

 Ibex, the Marmot, the Heath-cock, etc. At that time there was 

 progress ; for Man began to be an artist. He figured animals ; and 

 he has left for us in France representations, not only of the animals 

 that have retreated to cold regions, but also of some of those species 

 which were dying out. The Man of that distant epoch has perfectly 

 represented (together with the Eeindeer and the Ibex, which have 

 emigrated) the great Bear, the cave Lion, and the Mammoth, all of 

 which are extinct; and the figures were usually made on the 

 Reindeer's antlers or on the ivory of the Elephant itself. Man was 

 incontestably contemporaneous with these creatures, whose forms 

 he represented so well, and whose bones, teeth, and horns he utilized 

 in various ways. Of this we could not have more convincing 

 evidences. 



The age of man goes back, then, to the later geological times, 

 far away beyond the time of Chephren and of classical chronology ! 



The comparative study of objects of prehistoric antiquity and of 

 objects now used by savages leads to the statement of another law, 

 which completes, as it were, the law of Progress. It is the Law of 



