239 
his views, 
8 o’clock. 
Special.” 
the discussion of the same to terminate not later than half-past 
*or these purposes all Ordinary Meetings shall he considered 
During the discussion alluded to, Dr. Haughton expressed an opinion 
that, if passed, the resolution would afford all members increased oppor- 
tunities for considering the Institute’s work, and so might tend to pro- 
mote still greater interest in it. Several others having spoken, the honorary 
secretary, in reply to a question, stated that the resolution could in no way 
open a door to any alteration in the constitution of the Institute, for the 
rules effectually prevented that. 
The following paper was then read by the Author : — 
THE EARLY DAWN OF CIVILIZATION, CON- 
SIDERED IN TIIE LIGHT OF SCRIPTURE. 
By John Eliot Howard, F.R.S. 
a. Civilization of Eden, Moral and Intellectual, more 
than Material. 
T HE origin and the early history of mankind have recently 
been discussed without any reference to the history of 
the human race embodied in the scriptures of the Old and New 
Testament. It is the ambition of many “ thinkers ” to start anew 
with unfettered and unimpeded course on the quest of information, 
ignoring entirely the claims presented in the Bible to afford 
historical information on these subjects. In so doing, our philo- 
sophers find themselves returning to the speculations of ages 
past, and discover that every possible phase of thought has been 
exhaustively pursued to its legitimate results by those who cer- 
tainly were not their inferiors in mental power — the philosophers 
of Greece and Rome, and before these the sages of the East. 
Such a course does not indicate progress, but a real retro- 
cession to the interminable metaphysical disquisitions of the 
past. It is not a little interesting to see that the newest and 
most remarkable reveries of scientific imagination return to the 
conceptions of the sophists of India. Even the notion that 
“the living body of a man is not a continuous whole,” but 
“ made up of a multitude of parts,” has its counterpart in 
the teaching of Gotama Budha.* The President of the British 
Association (1874) is compelled to exhort that learned body to 
abandon the idea of a Creator and of creative force, and to change 
the Darwinian notion of a quasi-divine force of “natural selection ” 
for a system of atheism more logically based, in accordance with the 
doctrines of Epicurus, who also derived his inspiration from the East. 
* See Appendix (A). 
