A view of human history, which has been strongly advocated of late, is that our race began physically, intellectually, and morally at the lowest possible point. Some even maintain that the first men and women were but the latest and highest developments of certain species of brutes. But whether this phase of the theory of evolution be included in it or not, the essential idea of the view to which we refer is that the progenitors of our race were the lowest kind of savages, in their powers and capacities, their tastes and pursuits scarcely distinguishable from the brutes around them, and that from this low beginning men have gradually come to the height of attainment and improvement which they occupy to-day. If this theory be true, the statement which we have made, and which we proposed to consider, is false. If such were the origin of our race, if the first men and women were in all the parts of their nature but a shade removed above the brutes of the forest and the field, of course we of to-day are in no respect their inferiors—of course ours is not, as has been declared, a fallen race. We maintain, however, that the theory which makes our race begin in a condition of barbarism and imbecility is untrue. I know that it is supported by eminent names; I know, too, that it has been pressed upon public attention with much noisy and confident assertion; I know all this, and yet I declare that the theory is unproven; more, I declare that it is untrue. Let us look at a few considerations which may shed the light of truth upon this matter of the primitive condition of mankind, and by this I mean the condition of those who succeeded Adam himself on the stage of the world’s history: