ideal picture, however consonant with our
wishes, must not only give way before the mass of information now at our
command, but has really no foundation in reason; "or, at any rate, if
this primitive condition of innocence and enlightenment ever existed, it
must have disappeared at a period preceding the present archaeological
investigations."<29> Nothing is plainer than that our present
civilization has been developed from barbarism, as that was from
savagism.<30> We need go back but a few centuries in the history of
any nation, before we find them emerging from a state of barbarism. The
energy and intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon has spread his language to
the four corners of the globe; he has converted the wilderness into
fruitful fields, and reared cities in desert lands: yet his history
strikingly illustrates our point. A century back, and we are already in
a strange land. The prominent points of present civilization were yet
unthought of. No bands of iron united distant cities; no nerves of
wire flashed electric speech. The wealth of that day could not buy many
articles conducive of comfort, such as now grace the homes of the
poor. The contrast is still more apparent when we recall another of
the countless centuries of the past. England, with Europe, was but just
awakening to modern life. Printing had but just been invented. Great
discoveries had been made, and mankind was but just beginning those
first feeble efforts which were to bring to us our modern comforts. But
a millennium of years ago, and the foundation of English civilization
had but just been laid by the union of the rude Germanic tribes of the
Saxons and the Angles. Similar results attend the ultimate analysis
of any civilization. It was but yesterday that wandering hordes, bound
together by the loose cohesion of tribal organization, and possessing
but the germ of modern enlightenment, held sway in what is now the
fairest portion of the world: and we, the descendants of these rude
people, must reflect that the end is not yet--that the onward march
of progress is one of ever hastening steps--and that, in all human
probability, the sun of a thousand years hence will shine on a people
whose civilization will be as superior to ours as the light of day
exceeds the mellow glow of a moon-lit night.

If such are the changes of but a few centuries, what must we not
consider the changes to have been during the countless ages that have
sped away since man first