1(34 
be (and we may safely challenge for those of Egypt, an 
antiquity of 5,000 years), there must evidently be a period 
in which the human race was attaining to that degree of 
civilisation which written monuments pre-suppose ; for no 
diary is kept in the cradle or the nursery. The formation 
and ramification of languages, the diffusion of population, 
the variations in colour and type, the coalescence of families 
into tribes, and tribes into kingdoms and empires — all these 
things must have proceeded according to some law, and a 
law of which time has been an element. What that law has 
been it may be even more difficult for the historical inquirer 
to ascertain, than for the geologist to calculate the time which 
it required to form the series of the coal strata. A negative 
opinion alone can at the present moment safely be enunciated 
— namely, that a certain definite time, popularly assumed, 
is insufficient for the production of the phaenomena. Still 
this need not prevent us from observing and reasoning upon 
every circumstance which can help us even to an approxi- 
mate conclusion. 
Geology has done more than merely to show us the 
existence of vast cycles of change in the past history of the 
globe ; it has given to the whole series the character of a 
continued preparation of the earth for the residence of man. 
It has established a long gradation of animal life, suited to 
the successive conditions of the earth, and varied by Creative 
Power, as those conditions varied. Of this ascending scale 
as man stands at the summit, so the latest of the geological 
seras shows the earth's surface in the most perfect adaptation 
to his wants and capacities. Where the ox and the deer 
lived, he could not want the means of subsistence. It seems 
a reasonable conclusion that the scene thus prepared did 
not wait long for his introduction upon it. He is the heir 
of all the ages that preceded him ; the earlier he entered 
upon his inheritance, the stronger is the testimony which 
