manifestations, so carefully recorded, do ' indicate a certain tendency' widespread throughout his volumes—a tendency, which appears to us illogical and not a little reprehensible, to identify theology with the follies and blunders of persons who have not the remotest claim to be called theologians. Our readers will form their own estimate of a theory which needs to be bolstered up with such futilities as these. Or does Dr. White's contempt for theology lead him to the polite conclusion that any stick is good enough to beat a dog with ? In concluding our review of Dr. White's elaborate volumes we hope that it is sufficiently clear that we object, not to the record of facts, but to the conclusions which the historian would have us deduce from them. The annals of human error and ignorance convey lessons of inestimable value, and their prominence in the pages of Church history gives pointed emphasis to the truth that our own faith must not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God; but we have ample warning that the weakness of the superstructure does not affect the immutable stability of the foundation, and the Church is built on a rock against which the gates of science will not prevail. With the motives by which Dr. White professes to be inspired in his dealing with what he vaguely terms theology we have nothing to do; we give him full credit for sincerity in his professed desire to save the essence whilst sacrificing what he deems the accidents of religion; but with his method we are profoundly at variance. In his hands evolution becomes a universal solvent, under whose disintegrating influence all distinctive Christian teaching melts away, whilst by the specious jugglery of a conciliatory phraseology the distinction between falsehood and truth is obliterated, and clear statements of fact are glozed over as the inevitable tendency of humanity in the prescientific age to regard things through a certain refracting medium. In this fashion, the creation of man in God's own image, the fall, the early history of the chosen people, the credibility of prophecy and of miracle, the reality of Satanic agency, the integrity and authenticity of the Canon of Holy Scripture, are all in turn melted in the crucible of evolution, from which there emerges in their stead the pale vision of certain Christian sentiments, perfumed with the odour of a sanctity distilled in days when words were held to express realities, and this faint shadow we are urged, under pain of absolute loss of all Christian truth, to accept as a substitute for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The proffered reconciliation of Christianity thus realized as seen through the refracting medium of bygone credulity with the asserted conclusions of science is the more astounding from the historian who repeatedly denounces the futility of like attempts by Christian apologists. So far as the discoveries of science appear to be in conflict with revelation we are content to wait for fuller light, remembering that Catholic truth is an anvil which has worn out many a hammer, and already there are indications that much which has been positively maintained as established is open to serious dispute. Let science pursue her own path unimpeded —so far we are entirely in accord with Dr. White-but to us the historic facts of Christianity are the most certain of all certainties, and we absolutely decline, under the pressure even of acknowledged difficulties-ten thousand of which do not, in our minds, create one doubt-to surrender any vital portion of the sacred deposit committed to our charge. ART. IX.-THE EARLY STONE AGE IN 1. Les Cavernes et leurs Habitants. Par JULIEN FRAIPONT. (Paris, 1896.) 2. La France Préhistorique. Par EMILE CARTAILHAC. Deuxième édition. (Paris, 1896.) 3. On certain Phenomena belonging to the close of the Last Geological Period, and on their bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood. By Sir JOSEPH PRESTWICH, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.G.S. (London, 1895.) 4. Etude sur l'Ethnographie de l'Homme de l'Age du Renne, dans les Cavernes de la Vallée de la Lesse. Par EDOUARD DUPONT. (Bruxelles, 1867.) 5. The Bone Caves of Ojcow in Poland. By Dr. FERD. RÖMER. Translated by J. E. LEE. (London, 1884.) 6. Excavations at the Kesslerloch, near Thayngen. By CONRAD MERK. Translated by J. E. LEE. (London, 1876.) IT is now twenty-three years since the great work of Christy and Lartet, entitled Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ, issued complete from the press, and, notwithstanding the time that has elapsed since its publication, this magnificent treatise is still the standard authority on the antiquities of the Palæolithic Period in Southern France. It contained a series of memoirs, in which the Paleolithic caves of the Dordogne, with their antiquities and human remains, were described and classified. The customs of barbarous races-such as the Eskimo and the Indians of Alaska-were compared with the relics of the ancient hunters of the Vézère; the habits of the reindeer, the musk-ox, the glutton, and the hippopotamus were noticed at length; and a series of Paleolithic skulls and bones found in the Dordogne caverns was minutely described. Such leading anthropologists as Rupert Jones and Flower in England, and Lartet, Broca, and Pruner Bey in France, all contributed to the work, which was further enriched by the most splendid collection of plates that ever appeared in any book relating to prehistoric archæology. Since its publication a host of eminent scientists, such as Quatrefages, Arcelin, Hamy, Mortillet, Joly, and Cartailhac, have described innumerable fresh discoveries in the Palæolithic deposits, and we purpose to summarize the principal of these in the following article. France is the paradise of archæologists. Its Quaternary beds are so extensive, its bone-caves are so numerous, and its sepulchral and megalithic monuments are so countless, that no thorough idea of the prehistoric ages can be obtained unless its antiquities are thoroughly studied. English archæologists have too often neglected to do this, and by refusing to look with any degree of attention beyond Great Britain, they have fallen into serious error. We shall, in reviewing the works above mentioned, confine ourselves to the Continent, and only inferentially refer to English discoveries. The book of M. Fraipont, which has only just issued from the press, is most important. Its author is Professor of Paleontology in the University of Liège, and in connexion with M. Lohest, he compiled some years ago a most valuable work on the oldest human remains in Belgium.' He had also the good fortune to examine scientifically the skeletons which were discovered in 1886 at Spy by MM. Lohest and Marcel de Puydt, and which are probably the oldest at present known in Europe; and for the last ten years he has been incessantly exploring the numerous bone-caves in Belgium. His present work deals with both the early and the later Stone Ages, but only the first part will fall under our notice. No better archeologist than M. Cartailhac could possibly be chosen to write on prehistoric France. He is well known in England for his elaborate writings on the Stone Ages in France, Spain, and Portugal, and in the Balearic Islands; whilst he also held in France the most important post of editor of the accounts of the researches into the history of primitive man, 1 La Race Humaine de Néanderthal ou de Canstadt en Belgique. which was regularly issued under the name of Matériaux pour l'Histoire Primitive et Naturelle de l'Homme. 6 1 In discussing the question of the antiquity of man, it is necessary to examine the evidence for the existence of man during the Tertiary Period. All geologists admit that in the earliest deposits of this period—that is, in those of the Eocene epoch-no relics of man have been discovered. But in the following, or Miocene formation, many shattered flints have been found at Thenay, near Tours, which are thought to have been made by man. MM. Quatrefages and Hamy 2 consider them to be of human origin, but MM. Cartailhac3 and Fraipont reject this idea, whilst most English and American geologists look upon these flints as works of Nature; and M. Gaudry supposes that they were formed by an anthropoid ape. The strangest opinion is that of M. de Mortillet, who fancies that these flints were fabricated by a nondescript hairy creature, half man and half ape, which he terms Anthropopithecus, whose remains cannot be found, and whose existence is purely imaginary! Here we have indeed the hairy animal with pointed ears and a tail which Mr. Darwin considered to have been the remote ancestor of man ;7 but unfortunately the remains of this interesting creature have not yet been discovered. The Thenay flints speak for themselves, and they are so ridiculously small and rude that it is impossible to imagine that they are the work of man. Similar flints have been found in Miocene beds at Otta on the Tagus, and at Puy-Courny in Auvergne, but they are clearly formed by Nature, and M. Cartailhac rejects them. In the Pliocene Period, which follows, not merely the weapons, but also the bones, of man are said to have been found. In 1885 M. Sergi found in a Pliocene deposit near Brescia five skeletons, which he declared belonged to the members of a family who had been drowned in a shipwreck in those distant ages. The age of the deposit, however, is doubtful, and M. Sergi has recently adopted the opinion that the skeletons are those of human beings who were buried at a later time. 8 1 Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages, pp. 91, 92. 2 Précis de Paléontologie Humaine, pp. 45–50. 3 La France Préhistorique, pp. 36, 37. 4 Les Cavernes, p. 53. 5 Les Enchaînements du Monde Animal, p. 241. 8 La France Préhistorique, p. 37. M. Cotteau has also shown that many of these so-called Miocene flints at Ota really belong to a much later period, and that their claim to be of Miocene age is of little value. 1 The cuts on the bones of St. Prest, and the flints found at that place, which were thought by Quatrefages and Hamy2 to show evidences of human workmanship, are now, we are informed by M. Cartailhac, abandoned as evidences of the existence of man in Pliocene times. Of course if man lived in the Miocene and Pliocene Periods his antiquity is enormous, but the whole case in favour of man's existence during the Tertiary Era has hopelessly broken down. It rests principally on some rough shattered flints, which cannot possibly be proved to have been made by man, as similar rude fragments of flint can be found in still earlier deposits, which belong to times in which no one dreams that man could have lived. A strong reaction is taking place against considering that these insignificant flints are the work of man; and in America especially many fractured flints which were formerly thought to have been made by man are now looked upon by geologists with great suspicion, or pronounced to have been formed by natural causes.3 In England our best geologists. such as Professors Boyd Dawkins, Hull, Hughes, and Sir Joseph Prestwich,' have rejected the idea of Tertiary man; and Sir John Evans, having lately reviewed the whole of the evidence produced to prove that man lived in the Tertiary Period, finally decides that the verdict must be 'Not Proven.' Evolutionists are placed in a position of great difficulty with reference to Tertiary man. All the undoubted remains of man found in the Quaternary Period show that man was as much true man as he is to-day, so it is necessary to go still further back to find any forms intermediate between man and apes. Now, either the human relics found in the Tertiary deposits are of Tertiary age, or they are more recent. If they belong to later (ie. to Quaternary times), then the missing links between men and apes have still to be found. If, however, these bones, flints, and other relics are genuine remains of men who lived in the Tertiary Periods, then an equal difficulty arises. For, the oldest bones and skulls of man, in the Tertiary deposits, belong to individuals of a very high character, who were as truly 1 Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages, p. 17. Sketch of Geological History, p. 144. 6 Transactions of the Victoria Institute, 1879. 7 Nineteenth Century, April 1895. 8 Presidential Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Leeds, 1890. |
