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Prehistoric man, researches into the origin of civilisation
Prehistoric man researches into the origin of civilisation Author:Daniel Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PRIMEVAL OCCUPATION: SPEECH. On the busy scene of the Western Canadian capital, little more than half a century ago, stood, as we have seen,... more » the primitive wigwams of the Red Man, in a state of nature ; and the primeval forest swept like a leafy sea back from the shores of the great lakes to the Arctic circle. At times a little more remote, within the last three centuries, the same was the case on every civic site of the New World. We call the forest primeval, and we speak of the savage as the child of nature. But we do neither in any very strict or scientific sense. What, indeed, is the natural condition of man, is even now by no means a settled point. Nevertheless we have very varied sources to which we may turn for a reply. Without looking for systems of science in the Bible, which it was never designed to furnish, either in relation to the organic or inorganic world, or to man himself: we nevertheless derive from thence incidental notices of the highest value in reference to the suggested inquiry. The geologist may turn aside from the Mosaic record as a book never designed for his aid, but the ethnologist cannot do so, unless he is prepared entirely to reject its authority; for man is its theme, and the earth's creation is only considered there in so far as it relates to him. Moreover, there, and there only, can he turn for any authoritative information relative to the origin ofour race. If that is rejected, there remains for us only the vague inductions of science on a point beyond its ken ; or the childish fables of tradition, in which the intellectual Greek and the untutored savage are on a par. There, then, we learn, in the one written record possessed of the slightest value, of man primeval as no savage, but a being of intellectual power and moral puri...« less