It must be borne in mind that these investigations are quite recent, and confined to a very limited geographical space.

No researches have yet been made in those regions which might reasonably be regarded as the primitive habitat of man.
We are thus carried back immeasurably beyond the six thousand years of Patristic chronology.

It is difficult to assign a shorter date for the last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of a million of years, and human existence antedates that.

But not only is it this grand fact that confronts us, we have to admit also a primitive animalized state, and a slow, a gradual development.

But this forlorn, this savage condition of humanity is in strong contrast to the paradisiacal happiness of the garden of Eden, and, what is far in ore serious, it is inconsistent with the theory of the Fall.
I have been induced to place the subject of this chapter out of its proper chronological order, for the sake of presenting what I had to say respecting the nature of the world more completely by itself.