As to the creation of the world, the church resorted to the artifice of saying that "days" in reality meant long periods of time; so that no matter how old the earth was, the time could be spanned by six periods--in other words, that the years could not be too numerous to be divided by six. But when it came to the creation of man, this evasion, or artifice, was impossible. The Bible gives the date of the creation of man, because it gives the age at which the first man died, and then it gives the generations from Adam to the flood, and from the flood to the birth of Christ, and in many instances the actual age of the principal ancestor is given. So that, according to this account--according to the inspired figures--man has existed upon the earth only about six thousand years. There is no room left for any people beyond Adam. If the Bible is true, certainly Adam was the first man; consequently, we know, if the sacred volume be true, just how long man has lived and labored and suffered on this earth. The church cannot and dare not give up the account of the creation of Adam from the dust of the earth, and of Eve from the rib of the man. The church cannot give up the story of the Garden of Eden--the serpent--the fall and the expulsion; these must be defended because they are vital. Without these absurdities, the system known as Christianity cannot exist. Without the fall, the atonement is a _non sequitur._ Facts bearing upon these questions were discovered and discussed by the greatest and most thoughtful of men. Lamarck, Humboldt, Haeckel, and above all, Darwin, not only asserted, but demonstrated, that man is not a special creation. If anything can be established by observation, by reason, then the fact has been established that man is related to all life below him--that he has been slowly produced through countless years--that the story of Eden is a childish myth--that the fall of man is an infinite absurdity. If anything can be established by analogy and reason, man has existed upon the earth for many millions of ages. We know now, if we know anything, that people not only existed before Adam, but that they existed in a highly civilized state; that thousands of years before the Garden of Eden was planted men communicated to each other their ideas by language, and that artists clothed the marble with thoughts and passions. This is a demonstration that the origin of man given in the Old Testament is untrue--that the account was written by the ignorance, the prejudice and the egotism of the olden time. So, if anything outside of the senses can be known, we do know that civilization is a growth--that man did not commence a perfect being, and then degenerate, but that from small beginnings he has slowly risen, to the intellectual height he now occupies.