We must try and form a mental picture of what was probably the primitive state of man; and a little judicious reasoning from known facts will do much for us in this direction. Some writers have contended that the first condition of man was that of pleasing innocence, combined with a high degree of enlightenment, which, owing to the wickedness of mankind, he gradually lost. This ideal picture, however consonant with our wishes, must not only give way before the mass of information now at our command, but has really no foundation in reason; “or, at any rate, if this primitive condition of innocence and enlightenment ever existed, it must have disappeared at a period preceding the present archæological investigations.”29 Nothing is plainer than that our present civilization has been developed from barbarism, as that was from savagism.30 We need go back but a few centuries in the history of any nation, before we find them emerging from a state of barbarism. The energy and intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon has spread his language to the four corners of the globe; he has converted the wilderness into fruitful fields, and reared cities in desert lands: yet his history strikingly illustrates our point. A century back, and we are already in a strange land. The prominent points of present civilization were yet unthought of. No bands of iron united distant cities; no nerves of wire flashed electric speech. The wealth of that day could not buy many articles conducive of comfort, such as now grace the homes of the poor. The contrast is still more apparent when we recall another of the countless centuries of the past. England, with Europe, was but just awakening to modern life. Printing had but just been invented. Great discoveries had been made, and mankind was but just beginning those first feeble efforts which were to bring to us our modern comforts. But a millennium of years ago, and the foundation of English civilization had but just been laid by the union of the rude Germanic tribes of the Saxons and the Angles. Similar results attend the ultimate analysis of any civilization. It was but yesterday that wandering hordes, bound together by the loose cohesion of tribal organization, and possessing but the germ of modern enlightenment, held sway in what is now the fairest portion of the world: and we, the descendants of these rude people, must reflect that the end is not yet—that the onward march of progress is one of ever hastening steps—and that, in all human probability, the sun of a thousand years hence will shine on a people whose civilization will be as superior to ours as the light of day exceeds the mellow glow of a moon-lit night.