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EEV. D. GATH WHITLEY, OX 



ancestors are supposed to have existed, because, according to 

 the theory, they ought to have existed! Such a method is to 

 put darkness for light, and ignorance in the place of knowledge. 

 If our theories are opposed to facts they must be given up. 

 I really feel I ought to apologise for noticing such childishness. 

 In these days of knowledge and progress men are permitted to 

 dream dreams, but they are not permitted to call their dreams 

 by the name of science.* 



Let me now pass to some of the proofs that the progress of 

 discovery has brought forward to show that Palaeolithic Man 

 possessed a religion. First of all I place those facts which are 

 connected with the Burial of the Dead during the Earliest 

 Stone Age. 



It was not so very long ago that writers such as De Mortilletf 

 maintained that the burial of the dead was a rite absolutely 

 unknown during the Palaeolithic Period, and in many elementary 

 works on Primitive Man the same opinion was expressed, 

 apparently with the intention of degrading Primitive Man and 

 making him as near the lower animals as possible. The pro- 

 gress of discovery has shown that this opinion is entirely false, 

 and a whole army of facts can be produced against it. So 

 completely has the tide of opinion turned that so eminent an 

 archaeologist as M. Cartailhac writes a lengthy chapter in one 

 of his recent works* on The Ritual of the Dead as shown in 

 the burials of the Palaeolithic Age. Since the time this chapter 

 was written many further discoveries have been made, the 

 principal of which I shall notice. 



Before enumerating them, however, let me say that it is 

 absolutely necessary that we should make ourselves familiar 

 with the forms of burial which now pxist among savage nations. 

 To do this we must carefully study the accounts given by 

 travellers themselves. Books of travel are not read in the 

 present day as much as they should be, and popular treatises 

 are often brief and sketchy. It is also desirable that we read 

 the earliest travellers' books. Two hundred years ago (or more) 

 travellers were not possessed with theoretical predilections, and 

 did not see savage life through the spectacles of Evolution. In 

 those early times also the savage races retained their primitive 



* I refer chiefly to those visionary writers of the school of Haeckel, 

 who are always inventing evidence to make the facts of science suit 

 their theories. 



t Le Prehistoriqve Antiquite de V Homme, p. 501. 



} La France Prekis'.orique, Chap. VI. 



