Beviews — Lesley s Origin and Destiny of Man. 327 



lucid history of the circumstances which, one by one, led to an ac- 

 knowledgement of the true meaning of the discoveries which had 

 been made from time to time during the last forty years, after they 

 had been successively smothered, doubted, or explained away by the 

 advocates of the once omnipotent "Diluvial" theory. 



The antiquity of man being now taken as accepted, it furnishes 

 Mr. Lesley with a new starting point, and at once suggests the 

 question, what manner of men were they who made the flint im- 

 plements ? Therefore, in his fourth lecture, entitled '' On the Dignity 

 of Mankind," he discusses the origin of species from the opposing 

 standpoints of Darwin and Agassiz, and more especially the relation 

 of man to the lower animals. He thus leads his readers, as he led 

 his hearers, through the stages of the old controversy which we, in 

 England, have heard so often. Our author's own conclusion seems 

 to be that, so far as natural science can guide us, the differences 

 between man and the higher apes are but differences of degree, but 

 he adds that the imperfection of our data, and the mystery attaching 

 to the functions of the brain, should make us temperate in entertain- 

 ing convictions on the subject. 



** TJie Unity of Mankind," the subject of the next lecture, is 

 cognate to the last, and it is with no surprise that we read the 

 author's inference as addressed to a Boston audience. We will let 

 him speak for himself: — " I account it probable, then, that the races 

 of mankind have always been distinct ; and that they probably made 

 their appearance on the planet successively ; perhaps the black and 

 meagre races first, and the white races last. It would not be strange 

 also to find their history running parallel with that of the apes and 

 monkeys." 



We must pass by Mr. Lesley's well-told history of the early social 

 life of man, and his discussion of language as a test of race, merely 

 recording our assent to his negation of the theory that it can be so 

 used, and proceed to give a sketch of the author's apparently favourite 

 idea of what he terms Arkite Symbolism. This theory " starts from 

 a given point, the already established worship of the mountain, ship, 

 and flood, without explaining how this worship was begotten ; only 

 denying that it was developed intellectually out of Fetichism, Ophism, 

 Mithraism, Phallism, or any other known mythology ; and affirming, 

 on the contrary, that it explains and embraces them." This is the 

 author's concluding sentence ; and it probably gives as lucid an idea 

 of his theory as any description of our own. However, let us 

 retrace our steps for a moment to his lecture on the Origin of Archi- 

 tecture, and see what assistance that will give us. The simplest and 

 oldest example of architecture is seen in the sepulchral mount. The 

 tumulus passes onwards into the pyramid, then the propylon of the 

 Egyptian temple, then {h.Q pagoda, and so forth. Now Mr. Lesley, 

 although admitting that caves, basaltic columns, forests, and so forth, 

 may have suggested at different periods certain points of detail, con- 

 siders that " they offer no sufficiently broad explanation for the great 

 mystery of its original conception in the human mind." He cites 

 various temples, — Egyptian, Hindu, Norwegian, &c., — as consisting 



