The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-07-13

man bein0 and final ascension into civilization i,
onon 70 discussion the progression of the savage to
the nIane of the civilized man must be proved We
o., further and state as a historical fact that there
i no instance on record of a savage tribe ascend
;no. h, 10 own unaided efforts from savagerv f,
barbarism which is intermediate between savagerv
and civilization. Stanley, Livingston Burton
Speke and Grant, the African explorers. all agree
and declare that the negroes OF the West Coast
and of Central Africa were as savage and brutal
lied fftv wears SINCE that is before the coming Of
civilized man among them, they Were in the
time of Herodotus $500 years ago. In that long
interval of time they made not one solitary step
forward TO the civilization their fore-bears or ana
cestors had lost The description OF the tribes
eastward of the Persian Gulf by the companiol- t
Alexander the Great 400 years before the Chris
tan era applies perfectly to them as they were
sixty years ago when the traveller Bruce saw and
wrote of them Schomburg and Charles Harour-
ton. the explorers of Guiana, declare in their writ
inrs that the Warni Arowack, Acoway, Macou-
shi and Carib Indians of the main land and islands
would remain savages till the end of time if the
Spanish missionary fathers had not 'Chrstonized
them The companions of OtOndO IN his historic
failure to colonize Lower California IN 1888 SAID
that the digger Indians" or ComanciIs Of the
peninsula had descended to the rock bed Of saw
agery and could not, except by the special inter-
position of God, rise out of their unspeakabe deg
radiation.
Face to face with these facts of history, CON
fronted with the written and unwritten testimony
of the human race the men, called scientists try to
persuade thoughtful men that the "wom-like
thing" of the dean of American naturalists, after
millions of years of transmissions and mutations
became an ape and after other millions of years
developed into a savage man who after hundreds of
thousands of years expanded into a university
professor or the president of the United States
1t ought to be patent to every of common
sense that religion, and the enforcement of the
laws made for the government and preservation of
society, alone save the American people from de-
seending to savagery. When God created the first
man an almost perfect human being he endowed
him with language will memory and understand
ing and taught him q rule of conduct by which he
could ever retain in their integrity the attributes
of his honorable manhood. This rule of conduct
he supplemented with additional instructions when
he cut out the Hebrew people from idolatrous
nation, and perfected when he sent his divine Son
to assume human nature and our race. The
story of the Montana cutthroats In 1854 told by
Thomas Dimsdale and the history of the Nevada
bandits recorded by Colonel Wilbur F. Sanders in
the New York Sun of January 6, 1890, are proofs.
if we demanded them, of the descent of civilized
man to savagery when unrestrained by fear of God
OF the strong arm of the law. These murderers
were the of civilized parents and went down;
in one generation, to barbarsm. Our large cities,
towns and rural districts have many men who are
law-abiding citizens in spite of themselves. Hulk
ley, in his COLLECTED Essays" left us an advice
that may help to perpetuate his memory. He says:
"Giye unqualified assent to no proposition the truth
of which is not so clear and distinct that it can
not be doubted" And yet Huxley himself gave IN
qualified ascent to propositions now proved to be
false The Catholic alone is safely entrenched be
hind the impregnable rock of Peter and, secure
himself he watch with equanimity the war Of
the infdel intellects