58 



Origin and Primal Condition of Man. 



such inhospitable climes and amid such unpropitious sur- 

 roundings. 



Primeval man had not indeed the mechanic arts. He 

 could have had no knowledge of what is technically called 

 science. His knowledge of himself and of nature is the 

 growth of long observation and reflection. The earliest 

 vestiges of man in the so-called paleolithic age show that 

 his first tools and weapons were the simplest and rudest 

 possible, and that only by long and painful experience have 

 improvements been gradually discovered. The steps in 

 this course of progress may already be traced to some ex- 

 tent, and with increasing discovery, the development of 

 the human mind, may be more fully traced ; but of his 

 moral nature, of the condition and history of his heart and 

 conscience in unrecorded time, stone implements and 

 fossil remains do not, and can doubtless never testify. 



But it may be asked, if the theory of evolution is true, 

 will not new races of men again arise by genesis from 

 apes ? To this query there need be no hesitation in re- 

 sponding in the negative. It appears that the production 

 of man was so grand an achievement as to have tasked the 

 resources of nature to their utmost, so much so, that as we 

 have seen the opinion that all men have had a common 

 origin is widely prevalent, while those who doubt the unity 

 of mankind are satisfied to claim only a very small number 

 of progenitors for the different races. At the present time, 

 however, naturalists announce that the anthopoid apes are 

 in process of extinction, as they do not find a condition 

 favorable to the continuance of their species. Having ac- 

 complished the end of their existence as the final link of 

 the long chain by which man was evolved from the ani- 

 mal creation to be their lord and king, it would seem that 

 these inferior archencephala have no further function to 

 perform in the scheme of nature, and are destined ere long 

 to fade and perish forever from the earth ; while man, the 



