VII THE ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF MAN 431 
the passages and chambers being lined with huge blocks of 
stones fitted with the utmost accuracy, while every part of 
the building exhibits the highest structural science. 
In all these respects this largest pyramid surpasses every 
other in Egypt. Yet it is universally admitted to be the 
oldest, and also the oldest historical building in the world. 
Now these admitted facts about the Great Pyramid are 
surely remarkable and worthy of the deepest consideration. 
They are facts which, in the pregnant words of the late Sir 
John Herschel, “according to received theories ought not 
to happen,” and which, he tells us, should therefore be kept 
ever present to our minds, since “they belong to the class of 
facts which serve as the clue to new discoveries.” According 
to modern theories, the higher civilisation is ever a growth 
and an outcome from a preceding lower state; and it is 
inferred that this progress is visible to us throughout all 
history and in all material records of human intellect. But 
here we have a building which marks the very dawn of 
history, which is the oldest authentic monument of man’s 
genius and skill, and which, instead of being far inferior, is 
very much superior to all which followed it. Great men are 
the products of their age and country, and the designer and 
constructors of this wonderful monument could never have 
arisen among an unintellectual and half-barbarous people. 
So perfect a work implies many preceding less perfect works 
which have disappeared. It marks the culminating point of 
an ancient civilisation, of the early stages of which we have 
no trace or record whatever. 
Conclusion 
The three cases to which I have now adverted (and there 
are many others) seem to require for their satisfactory inter- 
pretation a somewhat different view of human progress from 
that which is now generally accepted. Taken in connection 
with the great intellectual power of the ancient Greeks— 
which Mr. Galton believes to have been far above that of the 
average of any modern nation—and the elevation, at once 
intellectual and moral, displayed in the writings of Confucius, 
Zoroaster, and the Vedas, they point to the conclusion that, 
while in material progress there has been a tolerably steady 
