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barous races are in a continual condition either of progressive decay and 
corruption or of stand-still With regard to the question of the stone and 
metal age, Mr. Michell has given us some testimony which deserves to be 
very carefully and respectfully considered ; but supposing we take the 
other view, I do not myself think that the fact of the existence of these 
stone implements proves that you must give to the existing human family 
a pedigree so degraded as that which some writers think the stone age tends 
to make probable. You must take into account the circumstances in which 
those races were placed which used such humble instruments, as has been 
done by Canon Kingsley in a little work called Madam How and Lady 
Why, which is one of the best and most Christian books of philosophy I 
have seen for some time. If you take into account the circumstances in 
which those races were, for them to have made such implements, for their 
aid and assistance, that of itself puts an immense and immeasurable distance 
between them and those supposed ancestors of theirs of whom some writers 
speak. Then there is another thing that I wonder no one has referred to 
to-night. I always feel ready to ask those who hold such views as those I 
have spoken of, “ How is it that the process of development is, so far as we 
know, in the historical period, utterly and everywhere at an end ? How is 
it that we do not see and cannot trace the steps by which the simice are 
advancing until they come to the condition of men ? How is it, if this were 
so in the olden time, that all existing physiology goes to prove that it cannot 
and will not ever be so again V* (Hear, hear.) I do not think it agrees with 
the theory of development and progress to suppose that the powers of nature 
and the forces of the universe are slower and feebler now than they were in 
older and bygone ages. If they advanced in the past, why do they not 
do so now ? If they performed such miracles in those ages which are 
beyond us, how is it they do not perform immensely greater miracles now ? 
—for, according to the hypothesis with which we have to deal to-night, if the 
progress did go on from age to age and from generation to generation, the 
forces ought to gather strength as they proceed, and there ought to be greater 
miracles of expansion and development occurring continually now than ever 
did occur in those pre-historic times. (Hear, hear.) 
Mr. Row. — I suppose they would say that the historic time is too short. 
The Chairman. — But I do not think there is anything at all in that, 
because it has lasted some thousands of years, and there should be at least 
some traceable marks of progress which ought to be becoming more patent, 
more rapid, more powerful, and more swift from age to age. But we need 
not be at all alarmed in regard to this theory, for we all remember when 
positivism was beginning to make itself known twenty-five years ago, we 
were told that the development of religious conviction among the race 
had been, and could not but have been, first, fetishism, then polytheism, 
then monotheism, then, at a time of great enlightenment, pantheism, and 
in the final consummate days positivism. But when men came to look at 
the facts of the case and to bore back through the early strata of history, 
they found that this pretence was utterly against all the evidence and facts 
