III. We know nothing of primitive man; we acknowledge that, from want of information, it would be impossible to recognise him. All that the present state of our knowledge allows us to say is that, according to all appearance he ought to be characterised by a certain amount of prognathism, and have neither a black skin nor woolly hair. It is also fairly probable that his colour would resemble that of the yellow races, and his hair be more or less red. Finally everything tends to the conclusion that the language of our earliest ancestors was a more or less pronounced monosyllabic one. These are only conjectures, and they amount to but little, but this little is founded upon experiment and observation. IV. We can also only form very vague conjectures upon the degree of intellectual development which man exhibited at his birth and during his first generations. At any rate it is possible to believe that he did not enter upon the scene of the world with innate knowledge, and the instinctive industries which belong to animals. Still less did he appear in a fully civilised state “mature in body and mind” as thinks the Comte Eusèbe de Salles. All traditions point to a period when human knowledge was very small, when man was ignorant of industries, to our eyes very elementary, and which we see appear in succession. Upon this point the Bible agrees with classical mythology. The Hebrews have their Tubal Cain, and the Greeks their Triptolemos. Prehistoric studies confirm this progressive development in Western Europe upon every point. Tertiary industries precede quaternary. The whole history of races seems to me to give, at least in part, a representation of that of the Species; and our thoughts go back almost irresistibly to the time when man found himself face to face with creation, armed solely with the aptitudes which were destined to undergo such a marvellous development. Thanks to these aptitudes, at a very early period he satisfied at least the first wants of existence. The miocene man of La Beauce already knew the use of fire and worked flint. However rough and rudimentary his instruments may have been, he had even then an industry, and according to all appearance fed partly upon cooked food. The man of Saint-Prest, with his small lozenge-shaped arrow-heads, worked only on one side, with his rough hatchets, could undoubtedly attack and kill the great contemporary mammalia. He possessed _scrapers_ which he used to prepare their skins with, and _awls_, which perhaps served as needles. From this distant period, upon which science has thrown as yet but little light, man reveals his existence by two great facts, and shows his superiority to the whole animal creation. CHAPTER XXII. FORMATION OF HUMAN RACES UNDER THE SOLE INFLUENCE OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND HEREDITY.