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VIII 
doubt, accusation, and ridicule, which for so many years 
crushed down the truth with regard to Palaeolithic man? 
One would think, as Jeremy Bentham said of another matter, 
that it was “ wicked or else unwise ” to accept any evidence 
for facts' which are yet so inherently probable that the entire 
absence of evidence for their existence ought to be felt to be 
the greatest stumbling-block. 
No better illustration of this curious prejudice can be 
given than the way in which some recent discoveries of stone 
implements in deposits of considerable antiquity in India are 
dealt with. These implements are of quartzite, and are of 
undoubtedly human workmanship. They were found in the 
Lower Laterite formation, which is said to have undergone 
great denudation and to be undoubtedly very ancient. Old 
stone circles of a great but unknown antiquity are formed of 
it. It is also stated that the distinction between the Tertiary 
and post- Tertiary is very difficult in India, and the age of 
these Laterite beds cannot be determined either by fossils, 
which are absent, or by superposition. Yet we are informed, 
“ The presence of Palaeolithic implements proves that the rock 
is of post-Tertiary origin.” 1 Here we have the origin of man 
taken as fixed and certain, so certain that his remains may be 
used to prove the age of a doubtful deposit ! Nor do these 
indications of great antiquity stand alone, for in the Ner- 
budda fluviatile deposits Mr. Hackel has found stone weapons 
in situ along with eleven species of extinct fossil mammalia. 
Believing myself that the existence of man in the Tertiary 
epoch is a certainty , and the discovery of his remains or works 
in deposits of that age to be decidedly probable , I hold it to be 
both wise and scientific to accept all evidence of his existence 
before the Glacial epoch which would be held satisfactory for 
a later period, and when there is any little doubt, to give the 
benefit of the doubt in favour of the find rather than against 
it. I hold further that it is equally sound doctrine to give 
some weight to cumulative evidence ; since, when a thing is 
not improbable in itself, it surely adds much to the argument 
in its favour that facts which tend to prove it come from 
many different and independent sources — from those who are 
quite ignorant of the interest that attaches to their discovery, 
1 Manual of the Geology of India, p. 370. 
