So far as investigations have gone, they indisputably refer the existence of man to a date remote from us by many hundreds of thousands of years.  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.  The discussions that arose as to the age of the earth were long after the conflict as to the criterion of truth—­that is, after the Reformation; indeed, they were substantially included in the present century.  They have been conducted with so much moderation as to justify the term I have used in the title of this chapter, “Controversy,” rather than “Conflict.”  Geology has not had to encounter the vindictive opposition with which astronomy was assailed, and, though, on her part, she has insisted on a concession of great antiquity for the earth, she has herself pointed out the unreliability of all numerical estimates thus far offered.  The attentive reader of this chapter cannot have failed to observe inconsistencies in the numbers quoted.  Though wanting the merit of exactness, those numbers, however, justify the claim of vast antiquity, and draw us to the conclusion that the time-scale of the world answers to the space-scale in magnitude.

CHAPTER VIII.

Conflict respecting the criterion of truth.

Ancient philosophy declares that man has no means of ascertaining the truth.

Differences of belief arise among the early Christians—­An ineffectual attempt is made to remedy them by Councils.—­Miracle and ordeal proof introduced.

The papacy resorts to auricular confession and the Inquisition.—­It perpetrates frightful atrocities for the suppression of differences of opinion.

Effect of the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian and development of the canon law on the nature of evidence.—­It becomes more scientific.

The Reformation establishes the rights of individual reason.—­Catholicism asserts that the criterion of truth is in the Church.  It restrains the reading of books by the Index Expurgatorius, and combats dissent by such means as the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve.