42 
of the case. The simple history of the development of the Brahmin religion 
utterly exploded, to all candid and well-informed people, the dream of which 
Theodore Parker and others in America had made so much some years 
aoo Looking at that Brahminical development, as it was to be seen at the 
•time of the Aryan dispersion and a little before, we trace it through the 
Vedic hymns and literature, and we see that it was an elemental worship, 
which had nothing in the form of definite polytheism in it at all. ihe he is 
therefore, given to all these theories, and their supposed facts are exploded 
and dissipated. Just so we may expect that it will be m the case of those 
who hold the theory that from some strange and unimaginable degradatio 
in the past the perfection of the present has arisen. (Hear, hear.) 
Mr Eeddie. — I have to thank you all for the kindly way m which you 
have received this paper. As to the questionable point whether some 
advancement might not be made by savages, I must state that this pap 
supplemental to three others which I have had the honour of reading before the 
Institute, and to the very able and interesting paper of Mr. Tltcomb > 
not to mention some by other contributors-all of which have appeared in our 
Journal of Transactions. I therefore did not again go over the ground 
which had already been covered ; but in one of my former papers I quoted a 
passage on the subject from Professor Waite’s work, m which he points out 
that you can hardly get the savages to advance if you try . ey seem 
no disposition to do so. But even if they did advance m the slight degree 
which our chairman has supposed, that would still not be ^vancemert out 
of savagery into civilization, and it is upon that one point that the who 
argument ^turns. I wrote this paper very hurriedly, and I ha not tune to 
refer to various authorities that I might otherwise have ^ oted ’ ^ 
that in addition to Professor Dawson’s testimony, we have lib. Hoard s 
valuable examination of the Darwinian theory (published, not " nder “ r ' 
Howard’s name, but as written by a Graduate of ™ 
bridge), besides similar testimony from Professor Bouse and Professor 
Goubert. This shows that the geological facts are a S ai ^ st ^ ar ™ lsm - 
remark I intended to make on the point taken up by Mr. Titcomb wth 
regard to the stone age. We know that stones are easily got, and th 
metals are difficult to discover and work ; but at the same 
assent too much to the existence of a stone age. The probable conterw. 
raneousness of metal and stone implements has, I think, been " admitted 
by Sir John Lubbock himself, and we must remember that all metels would 
disappear through chemical action, and rust away, while stones would be left 
as tangible testimony. However, Mr. Michell, and his coadju to m ‘ ^ 
south of England, Mr. N. Whitley, the Secretary of the Eoyal fcstitufa ^ 
Cornwall, have done much to explode the stone age theory so 
to the Drift. There is one thing which Mr. Michell did no J ■ 
He told you that these implements were found aU over the 0°“^’ 
he did not tell you in what numbers. There are 
I was one of the first to point out that these stones might have been used 
to throw from slings ; but if the whole world had been populated twice 
