_Knowledge of Man's Antiquity Influences Reflective Thinking_.--The importance of studying the antiquity of man is the light which it throws upon the causes of later civilization. In considering any phase of man's development it is necessary to realize he has been a long time on earth and that, while the law of the individual life is development, that of the human race is slowly evolutionary; hence, while we may look for immediate and rapid change, we can only be assured of a very slow progressive movement at all periods of man's existence. The knowledge of his antiquity will give us a historical view which is of tremendous importance in considering the purpose and probable result of man's life on earth. When we realize that we have evidence of the struggle of man for five hundred thousand years to get started as far as we have in civilization, and that more changes affecting man's progress may occur in a single year now than in a former thousand years, we realize something of the background of struggle before our present civilization could appear. We realize, also, that his progress in the arts has been very slow and that, while there are many changes in art formation of to-day, we still have the evidences of the primitive in every completed picture, or plastic form, or structural work. But the slow progress of all this shows, too, that the landmarks of civilization of the past are few and far between--distant mile-posts appearing at intervals of thousands of years. Such a contemplation gives us food for thought and should invite patience when we wish in modern times for social transformations to become instantaneous, like the flash of the scimitar or the burst of an electric light. The evidence that man has been a long time on earth explodes the long-accepted theory of six thousand years as the age of man. It also explodes the theory of instantaneous {80} creation which was expressed by some of the mediaeval philosophers. Indeed, it explodes the theory of a special creation of man without connection with the creation of other living beings. No doubt, there was a specialized creation of man, otherwise he never would have been greater than the anthropoids nor, indeed, than other mammals, but his specialization came about as an evolutionary process which gave him a tremendous brain-power whereby he was enabled to dominate all the rest of the world. So far as philosophy is concerned as to man's life, purpose, and destiny, the influence of the study of anthropology would change the philosopher's vision of life to a certain extent. The recognition that man is "part and parcel" of the universe, subject to cosmic law, as well as a specialized type, subject to the laws of evolution, and, indeed, that he is of a spiritual nature through which he is subjected to spiritual law, causes the philosopher to pause somewhat before he determines the purpose, the life, or the destiny of man.