i88o.l 
The Antiquity of Mankind. 
3*1 
with judicial impartiality. In neither case are his hopes or 
his fears called into play any more than on learning the 
exadt composition of a mineral, the locality of a plant, or 
the structural peculiarities of a caterpillar. 
Unfortunately, however, two numerous and aCtive sections 
of the public approach this question not with the feelings of 
a judge, but with those of an impassioned and unscrupulous 
advocate. Though respectively hostile, they have both been 
mistrained into a common error. Both conceive that the 
interests of revealed Religion are gravely compromised if it 
should appear that mankind came into being earlier than 
the “ 4004 years before the vulgar Christian era,” as as- 
sumed by Archbishop Usher. Guided by this erroneous 
principle, Secularists and Materialists are eager to admit, 
and, on the other hand, orthodox theologians are no less 
anxious to deny, the high antiquity which has lately been 
assigned to our race. How utterly unfit such frames of 
mind are for the quest after truth, and how greatly the final 
solution of the difficulty must be hindered by such feelings, 
needs no demonstration. The position of those who, like 
ourselves, are determined to judge this question from a 
purely scientific point of view, craving neither to confirm 
nor to infirm any theological doCtrines, and holding fast to 
the great principle of Galileo so often enforced in the 
“ Journal of Science,” is rendered peculiarly difficult. Each 
party confounds us with its opponents. 
One of the works which have led to our selecting this 
subject is written in the very spirit which we are endeavour- 
ing to recommend. Mr. Dawkins writes not to uphold any 
foregone conclusion. He examines the evidence in favour 
of the pre-historical, and even pre-mythical, existence of 
man impartially, critically, even sceptically, just as he 
would deal with the fadts advanced to show the presence of 
any particular animal or vegetable form at some given 
geological epoch. It is naturally impossible to treat such a 
subject in an intelligible manner without giving a general 
survey of past geological changes and of the three great 
phases of organic life upon the earth. In the course of this 
sketch the author declares himself an Evolutionist. He 
declares “ the argument in favour of the theory of Evolu- 
tion founded on the specialisation of mammalian life in its 
progress from the Eocene times down to the present day 
seems to me so strong as to be almost irresistible.” In a 
diagram he shows that in the Eocene there appear families 
and orders which have still their living representatives, but 
none of the present genera. In the Miocene, a step nearer 
