t certainly develope. If the
savage developes through contact with the civilized man after centuries
of degradation, why have not domesticated dogs, who are, according to
Laing, their intellectual and moral equals, developed long ago?

However, as "evolution has become the axiom of science and is admitted
by every one who has the slightest pretensions to be considered a
competent authority," [77] it is preposterous to suppose man an
exception, whatever be the difficulties. [78] And so Mr. Laing, assuming
axiomatically that man and the ape have a common ancestor, is interested
to make the differences between them deeply marked, and that, as far
back as he can, for thereby "Human Origins" are pushed back by hundreds
of thousands of years. If miocene man is as distinct from the ape as
recent man, the inference is that we are then as far from the source as
ever. Hence it is to geology he looks for the strongest basis of his
position. One thought till lately that geology was a tentative science,
hardly credited with the name of science, but Mr. Laing wisely and
boldly classes it among the "exact sciences," whose subject-matter is
"flint instruments, incised bones, and a few rare specimens of human
skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to be deciphered by
skilled experts." [79] "The conclusions of geology," up to the Silurian
period, "are approximate facts, not theories." [80]

If he means that the only legitimate data of geologists are facts of
observation, classified and recorded, well and good; but to deny that
they deal largely in hypotheses, and use them constantly as the
premisses for inferences which are equally hypothetical, is palpably
absurd. First of all we are to "assume the principle of uniformity"
which Lyell is said to have established on an unassailable basis and to
have made the fundamental axiom of geological science. He "has shown
conclusively that while causes identical with ... existing causes will,
_if given sufficient time_, account for all the facts hitherto observed,
there is not a single fact which _proves_ the occurrence of a totally
different order of causes." [81] This, however, is (1) limited to the
period of geology which gives record of organic life, and not to the
earlier astronomical period; nor (2) does it exclude changes in
temperature, climate, distribution of seas and lands; nor (3) does it
"_affirm positively_ that there may not have been in past ages
explosions more violent th