8.  Those who are acquainted with the closeness of the structural relations between the human organisation and that of the mammals which come nearest to him, on the one hand; and with the palaeontological history of such animals as horses and dogs, on the other; will not be disposed to question the origin of man from forms which stand in the same sort of relation to Homo sapiens, as Hipparion does to Equus.  I think it a conclusion, fully justified by analogy, that, sooner or later, we shall discover the remains of our less specialised primatic ancestors in the strata which have yielded the less specialised equine and canine quadrupeds.  At present, fossil remains of men do not take us hack further than the later part of the Quaternary epoch; and, as was to be expected, they do not differ more from existing men, than Quaternary horses differ from existing horses.  Still earlier we find traces of man, in implements, such as are used by the ruder savages at the present day.  Later, the remains of the palaeolithic and neolithic conditions take us gradually from the savage state to the civilizations of Egypt and of Mycenae; though the true chronological order of the remains actually discovered may be uncertain.

9.  Much has yet to be learned, but, at present, natural knowledge affords no support to the notion that men have fallen from a higher to a lower state.  On the contrary, everything points to a slow natural evolution; which, favoured by the surrounding conditions in such localities as the valleys of the Yang-tse-kang, the Euphrates, and the Nile, reached a relatively high pitch, five or six thousand years ago; while, in many other regions, the savage condition has persisted down to our day.  In all this vast lapse of time there is not a trace of the occurrence of any general destruction of the human race; not the smallest indication that man has been treated on any other principles than the rest of the animal world.

10.  The results of the process of evolution in the case of man, and in that of his more nearly allied contemporaries, have been marvellously different.  Yet it is easy to see that small primitive differences of a certain order, must, in the long run, bring about a wide divergence of the human stock from the others.  It is a reasonable supposition that, in the earliest human organisms, an improved brain, a voice more capable of modulation and articulation, limbs which lent themselves better to gesture, a more perfect hand, capable among other things of imitating form in plastic or other material, were combined with the curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong family affection of the next lower group; and that they were accompanied by exceptional length of life and a prolonged minority.  The last two peculiarities are obviously calculated to strengthen the family organisation, and to give great weight to its educative influences.  The potentiality of language, as the vocal symbol of thought, lay in