Thus it would appear that these earliest known men are not specifically distinct from ourselves, but are a distinct race, most nearly allied to that great Turanian stock which is at the present day, and has apparently from the earliest historic times been, the most widely spread of all. Though rude and uncultured, they were not either physically or mentally inferior to the average men of to-day, and were indeed in several respects men of high type, whose great cranial capacity might lead us to suppose that their ancestors had recently been in a higher state of civilization than themselves. It is, however, possible that this characteristic was rather connected with great energy and physical development than with high mental activity.
To the hypothesis of evolution, as applied to man, these facts evidently oppose great difficulties. They show that such modern degraded races as the Fuegians or the Tasmanians cannot present to us the types of our earlier ancestors, since the latter were men of a different and higher style. Nor do these oldest known men present any approximation in physical characters to the lower animals. Further, we may infer from their works, and from what we know of their beliefs and habits, that they were not creatures of instinct, but of thought like ourselves, and that materialistic doctrines of automatism and brain-force without mind would be quite as absurd in their application to them as to their modern representatives.
It is not too much to say that, in presence of these facts, the spontaneous origin of man from inferior animals cannot be held as a scientific conclusion. It may be an article of faith in authority, or a superstition or an hypothesis, but is in no respect a result of scientific investigation into the fossil remains of man. But if man is not such a product of spontaneous evolution, he must have been created by a Being having a higher reason and a greater power than his own; and the ancestry of the agnostic, and the rational powers which he exercises, constitute the best refutation of his own doctrine.
[8] The Ceylon elephant is by some believed to be distinct, but is probably a variety of the Indian species.
[9] _Fossil Men_ (London, 1880), Appendix.