THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3121, 29 June 1881, Page 3

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

[To the Editor of the Daily Temeg-uaph.] Sib,— ,, Quis " is much obliged to " Trigon" for the copy of the Manchester Science Lectures, the last of which treats on the " Devonshire Cave Explorations." He has also taken his advice and read it with very special care, but fails to discover one sentiment in it with which even moderately informed scientific readers have not been familiar for the last dozen years. It is simply the repetition of the cumulative argument from a number of extremely hypothetical positions to arrive at the probable antiquity of man which has been often insisted on. As defining the present position of science on that very difficult question, the words of a writer in Chamber's Encyclopedia are as applicable to-day as in the time in which they were written, '«It is right to add that many still dispute the conclusions drawn from these facts." Scientists are very far from being agreed on this question ; and even if they were agreed, as has happened in other discoveries in that region, like the law of gravitation, does " Trigon " imagine that that would overturn the religion of the Christian Scriptures ? It will be found in the future, as it has been in the past, that " the questions which the progress of science raises the progress of science answers," and leaves the religion of the Christian Scriptures very much what it has always been. It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in connection with this question that many of the most eminent men in science are the most earnest Christians, as was the case with the lamented Hugh Miller, to whom " Trigon" refers. But all this is outside the queetion raised by " Quis." He wished to know something about the school, or as " Trigon" wishes it, the science primers " which talk to children of the existence of man in Britain two hundred thousand years agone." Doee " Trigon " not see that while he uses the term science primers he speaks of them as provided for school purposes ? " Who will ask if the children are to be taught," he proceeds. Well lectures are not primers, nor are primers lectures, and it is scarcely fit to describe 8 lecture by Wm. Pengelly, Eeq., to a popular audience as a science primer. When a matter gets placed in a primer for school purposes, it has generally passed from the region of hypothesis to accepted science, and on this ground •'Quis" felt anxious to see this new primer, believing it to have some existence in fact, like those science primers of Hnxley, Roscoe, and Balfour Stewart. It is very disappointing to find that the primer has degenerated into a lecture. While the scientists are engaged in gathering their data, and in maturing their theories to explain them, is it not worth " TrigonV while, who appears to take a warm interest in the progress of education, to remember that there are many certitudes in life and in religious ecience, which any discovery in natural science can never affect, which it is of the greatest moment to have impressed on the minds of the young, as for example that right and wrong are very different things; that duty ought always aod at once to be done; tbat God should be honored and his laws obeyed ; that the good should be loved and the evil ehunned. How very important for the welfare of the children and for the happiness of society that those truths are impressed on their minds. Science can never affect those matters. With the terrible potentialities which lie in them, would it not be better to leave the high themes of science until science itcelf gets settled about them, and secure what is so vital to the well-being of society. The railing accusations which "Trigon " burls against clericals generally shows that he knows very little about them. —I am &c, Qdis. Napier, 29th June, 1881.