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notion that mankind owe their own faith and ideas of religion, 
and even themselves, to a monkey origin! Well may M. 
Boudin observe, that “just as the diseased eye bears every- 
thing better than light, so the mind diseased with the evil ot 
pride, accepts anything rather than the truth; ...... and 
instead of attaching itself to transcendent truths which en- 
lighten, it gives itself over to astounding errors whic 
delude.” 
Not long ago I observed it was argued in an article in the 
Anthropological Review, that, in order to study history ang , 
we must step out of our libraries-a hint, perhaps, m other 
words, that we may as well burn all our books ! And you 
cannot fail to have heard of late years that anthropology, 
or the study of man, is quite a new science. Before you can 
believe that, you must, indeed, walk out of your libraries . ike 
oldest books in the world, the oldest history, sacred and pro- 
fane, and the oldest poetry of the ancients, alike disprove it. 
is not only, as our own poet has it, “ the noblest study of man- 
kind ” but it has been, in truth, the oldest and most universal. 
Nor could we find a more fitting motto for a work on anthro- 
pology— unless, indeed, we borrowed the language of holy 
Scripture, that “ God created man”— than the words of the 
Delphic oracle, “ Know thyself.”] 
Assuming, then, man's creation in a perfect condition, or as 
“ made upright” by God,— as having intuitive wisdom, the 
highest intellectual power, the gift of speech, and moral facul- 
ties all in perfection,— we must yet remember that lie had not 
possibly the kind of knowledge that comes alone by expe- 
rience: and that he was necessarily at first without those 
artificial adjuncts of an elevated or civihzed condition which 
we are now, perhaps, too apt to confound with the true 
essentials of civilization or elevation of character, ihe many 
inventions,” whether for good or evil, whether for man s com- 
fort or destruction, which were readily found out, were yet not 
all discovered in a moment; and, as necessity is well said to 
be the mother of invention, we should remember that, as at 
first man's necessities in a fruitful and genial clime were 
probably few, inventions of arts of some kinds would come 
but by degrees. Nevertheless, as we have assumed the 
greatest intellectual capacity for the primitive man as part ot 
our hypothesis, we may fairly deduce from this, that man s 
first strides in invention and in art would be stupendous, and 
even more than equal to his absolute necessities. And so just 
as we might have anticipated upon these suppositions, we find, 
