Recap it ii lation . 8 3 



make up every other kind of beauty, so do they 

 constitute the family comeliness of the species 

 called Mankind, which is quite at home in its own 

 world. 



95. Let us recapitulate now and conclude these 

 two chapters. The society of mankind, in its natural 

 groups and general formation, is the sub- 



? - , • „ , , Recapitula- 



ject-matterof the science called antnro- t ion. Results 

 pology. Going back from where we stand of Anthro- 

 towards our origin, we find ourselves 

 reaching in different places, at points in the past 

 unequally distant from the present, that state of 

 dim obscurity and uncultured ignorance, which 

 afflicted certain outlying margins of the human 

 species. This state has been called the prehistoric, 

 that is, prior to history. And it is so, with refer- 

 ence to local and partial history; not however as 

 referred to the universal history, which is handed 

 down to us with the documentary evidence of the 

 Mosaic narrative. Prior to the point of history 

 with which that narrative begins, there is nothing 

 prehistoric. 



96. Away from the margins inward, at the 

 cradle of the human family, archaeology with its 

 clearest renderings of its own records is but a feeble 

 commentary on the distinct and articulate history 

 consigned to Babylonian bricks, Vedantic books, 

 Oriental annals generally, and most of all, because 

 the clearest of all, the narrative written by Moses. 



