The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1879-12-10

"AOi 'Nu9olOLIo vi ullC D''NJ wv VI WV
luton, we deem it our duty to reply to
the article on the subject in the last issue
Of the New York Independent, which is
a reply to an article in our paper Of the
Goth ult. Perhaps we deem it of more
Importance than they do for such discus
sions have not fully spread in the South
yet, but they are rife in other quarters,
and we shall in due time hear plenty
about them. 1t is not amiss to prepare
ourselves for the coming wave; it has
borne down many old landmarks before
it among the protesting Christians Of Ger
many, Great Britain, and the Northern
States of our Union.
The Independent heads its article De-
liver us from our Friends" and says
that if any of the friends of Christianity
make the issue at this stage of inquiry
that man is not descended Cat least so far
as his body is concerned from the apes or
some other brute, they occupy an indie
feasible position, and are bound to come
to grief before the light of advancing
science as taught by such men as Prof.
Whitney and Prot. Joseph LIE Conte and
others.
We have heard this talk before, and
are unterrifed. Discovery after discove-
ry (So-called) of the biologists and an
thropologists in the past twenty years has
been set aside under the general head of
TOO Fast, and the thing has actually
become amusing.
Imprimis, we were not discussing with
the Independent the question of the
antiquity Of man; we were discussing
its affirmation that man has been
evolved from the lower animals. -
These are two questions, and one at a
time is enough. Man may be very old,
that is to say, man may have lived at the
close Of the Glacial age, and the close Of
the Glacial age may date 100000 or 20O,-
900 years back, and yet man may not
have been evolved from the lower ami
mails. And for this very plain reason,
that the man of the Quaternary age is,
as M. Pruner-Bey declared, imam in
every sense of the term already fully
and completely developed, and there is
no anthropoid form in the geological
strata behind hin. So that the antiquity
of post-glacial Nan does not take us one
step in the direction of evolution 1t
takes US aoOay from evolution; for if the
man of the bone-caves is 100000 years
old, and is eracty alike the man of to-day,
then it appears that evolution has not
struck single blow in 100000 years,
and the whole doctrine is rather weaken
ed than strengthened.
But this was not the question (and we
have not room to go into it,; the allega-
ton Of the Independent was that man
has cropped out from the lower animals,
and this necessarily involved that he
should have existed in the Tertiary Age
millions and millions of years before the
close of the Glacial Epoch We alleged
that there is no evidence that he did live
so early; the Independent affirmed, and
re-afirms, that he did. This is the issue
between us.
Now we know very well that our as
sertion would not be accepted to estab-
ish our opinion, and we appealed to the
admissions of the Independent s own scien-
tifc friends. We rest the case on this !;
that so far as we now remember, not one
scientific man in Great Britain accepts
the evidences adduced to prove that man
existed in the Tertiary Age On the con-
trary, the subject, within the past few
months, has been under discussion in
London, and the most eminent authority
in this department in that country de-
clared that as the evidence stands at
present, there is no proof, on the CONT
nent or in this country, of man having
lived in this part of the world before the
middle stage of the Pleistocene age, when
most Of the living animals were then
alive" The author Of this declaration is
Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, F R. S., an ex-
IRENE anthropologist On the same oc-
casion, an elaborate paper was read from
Prof. Hughes, Professor OF Geology in
Cambridge University,-who accepts the
antiquity of man, that is, the antiquity of
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