o the future rather than the
past?--May we not be looking into the womb of Nature, and not her grave?
May not these images be like the shades of the unborn in Virgil's
Elysium--the archetypes of men not yet called into existence?"

These speculations, if advocated by eloquent writers, would not fail to
attract many zealous votaries, for they would relieve men from the
painful necessity of renouncing preconceived opinions. Incredible as
such skepticism may appear, it has been rivalled by many systems of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and among others by that of the
learned Falloppio, who regarded the tusks of fossil elephants as earthy
concretions, and the pottery or fragments of vases in the Monte
Testaceo, near Rome, as works of nature, and not of art. But when one
generation had passed away, and another, not compromised to the support
of antiquated dogmas, had succeeded, they would review the evidence
afforded by mummies more impartially, and would no longer controvert the
preliminary question, that human beings had lived in Egypt before the
nineteenth century: so that when a hundred years perhaps had been lost,
the industry and talents of the philosopher would be at last directed to
the elucidation of points of real historical importance.

But the above arguments are aimed against one only of many prejudices
with which the earlier geologists had to contend. Even when they
conceded that the earth had been peopled with animate beings at an
earlier period than was at first supposed, they had no conception that
the quantity of time bore so great a proportion to the historical era as
is now generally conceded. How fatal every error as to the quantity of
time must prove to the introduction of rational views concerning the
state of things in former ages, may be conceived by supposing the annals
of the civil and military transactions of a great nation to be perused
under the impression that they occurred in a period of one hundred
instead of two thousand years. Such a portion of history would
immediately assume the air of a romance; the events would seem devoid of
credibility, and inconsistent with the present course of human affairs.
A crowd of incidents would follow each other in thick succession. Armies
and fleets would appear to be assembled only to be destroyed, and cities
built merely to fall in ruins. There would be the most violent
transitions from foreign or intestine war to periods of profound peace,
and