But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as he puts it, he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.”[279] He does not attempt to show us who these “few beings” were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for in the admission of their existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation. With all the changes that our globe has passed through as regards temperature, climate, soil, and—if we may be pardoned, in view of recent developments—its electro-magnetic condition, he would be bold {155} indeed who dare say that anything in present science contradicts the ancient hypothesis of ante-Silurian man. The flint-axes first found by Boucher de Perthes, in the valley of the Sômme, prove that men must have existed at a period so remote as to be beyond calculation. If we believe Büchner, man must have lived even during and before the glacial epoch, a subdivision of the quaternary or diluvial period probably extending very far back in it. But who can tell what the next discovery has in store for us? Now, if we have indisputable proof that man has existed so long as this, there must have been wonderful modifications of his physical system, corresponding with the changes of climate and atmosphere. Does not this seem to show by analogy that, tracing backward, there may have been other modifications, which fitted the most remote progenitors of the “frost-giants” to live even contemporaneously with the Devonian fishes or the Silurian mollusks? True, they left no flint-hatchets behind them, nor any bones or cave-deposits; but, if the ancients are correct, the races at that time were composed not only of giants, or “mighty men of renown,” but also of “sons of God.” If those who believe in the evolution of _spirit_ as firmly as the materialists believe in that of _matter_ are charged with teaching “unverifiable hypotheses,” how readily can they retort upon their accusers by saying that, by _their_ own confession, their physical evolution is still “an unverified, if not actually an unverifiable hypothesis.”[280] The former have at least the inferential proof of legendary myth, the vast antiquity of which is admitted by both philologists and archæologists; while their antagonists have nothing of a similar nature, _unless they help themselves to a portion of the ancient picture-writings, and suppress the rest_.