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Three centuries could not have so completely swept away the vestiges of such a civilisation as they describe leaving scarcely a trace of it to attest the truth of their assertions.
It is much more free from sacramentalism, from vestiges of the ancient blood sacrifice, and its associated sacerdotalism, than Christianity. The religion that will presently sway mankind can be reached more easily from that starting-point than from the confused mysteries of Trinitarian theology. Islam was never saddled with a creed.
The acceptance of accomplished facts may save yet the precious vestiges of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste's eyes glowed dully; he believed in parliamentary institutions and the convinced drone of his voice lost itself in the stillness of the house like the deep buzzing of some ponderous insect. Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently, leaning his elbow on the balustrade.
But we have no experience either of spontaneous generation on the one hand, or of a transmutation of species on the other. Observation has not discovered, nor has history recorded, an authentic example of either. In regard to the first, the author of "The Vestiges" anticipates this objection, and attempts to answer it.
Since Lamarck's time, almost all competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the 'Vestiges', by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers.
Here is this dry-looking archaeological museum, with antipathetic custodians at the door who refuse to get change for twenty-lira pieces: nothing could be more unpromising than they or their building; and yet you find yourself instantly among countless vestiges of a past people who had risen to power and crumbled again before Christ was born but at a time when man was so vastly more sensitive to beauty than he now is that every appliance for daily life was the work of an artist.
Man is old, his dwellings are old, his works are old, and the very earth seems old. All seems to betoken that it is the last age, and that the world is winding up its business, preparatory to the final closing of the drama. Commerce, the arts, empire, all have taken their departure, and have left behind only the vestiges of their former presence.
The whole scientific world is drifting slowly, but steadily and surely, to the verification and acceptance with certain and in some cases important modifications of the development hypothesis of Maillet, Lamarck, La Place, Owen, and the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation. The movement reminds one of the motion of one of the great Greenland glaciers, so slow, quiet, almost imperceptible, yet inexorable as fate heedless of all obstacles.
The alluvial and marine deposits of the Paleolithic age, the earliest to which any vestiges of man have yet been traced back, belong to a time when the physical geography of Europe differed in a marked degree from that now prevailing.
And the sale of everything she possessed presented itself to her fancy as a transaction which would enfranchise her from the past. It symbolized the starting-point of a new life, of a recommencement unhampered by the vestiges of grief and error. She could go anywhere, do what she chose. The entire world would lie before her. "Please do sell it all for me!" she pleaded wistfully.
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