Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/595



N the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially within the past few years, has thoroughly changed the intelligent thought of the world in regard to the antiquity of man upon our planet; and how the fabric built upon the chronological indications in our sacred books, first, by the early fathers of the Church, afterward by the mediæval doctors, and finally by the reformers and modern orthodox chronologists, has virtually disappeared before an entirely different view forced upon us, especially by Egyptian studies, Geology, and Archæology.

In this chapter I purpose to present some outlines of the work of Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing what the evolution of human civilization has been.

Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view based upon evidence absolutely irrefragable, is complete. Here, too, we are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and modes of thought upon man—a change far more striking than that accomplished by Copernicus and Galileo when they substituted for a universe in which sun and planets revolved about the earth, a universe in which the earth is but the merest grain or atom revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about the sun; and all these forming but one among innumerable systems.

Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the great problems around him, two views have existed regarding the life of the human race upon earth, each utterly opposed to the other. The first of these is the belief that man was created "in the beginning," a perfect being, endowed with the highest moral