f Argyll has been forced to yield to the evidence.

Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing light on
the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most notable have
been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated strata of the Lake of
Geneva; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake Neufchatel; by Horner, in the
delta deposits of Egypt; and by Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi.
But while these have failed to give anything like an exact result,
all these investigations together point to the central truth, so amply
established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter inadequacy of
the chronology given in our sacred books. The period of man's past life
upon our planet, which has been fixed by the universal Church, "always,
everywhere, and by all," is thus perfectly proved to be insignificant
compared with those vast geological epochs during which man is now known
to have existed.(188)

(188) As to the evidence of man in the Tertiary period, see works
already cited, especially Quatrefages, Cartailhac, and Mortillet. For an
admirable summary, see Laing, Human Origins, chap. viii. See also, for
a summing up of the evidence in favour of man in the Tertiary period,
Quatrefages, History Generale des Races Humaines, in the Bibliotheque
Ethnologique, Paris, 1887, chap. iv. As to the earlier view, see Vogt,
Lectures on Man, London, 1864, lecture xi. For a thorough and convincing
refutation of Sir J. W. Dawson's attempt to make the old and new Stone
periods coincide, see H. W. Haynes, in chap. vi of the History of
America, edited by Justin Winsor. For development of various important
points in the relation of anthropology to the human occupancy of our
planet, see Topinard, Anthropology, London, 1890, chap. ix.

CHAPTER VIII. THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY

In the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially within
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has thoroughly changed the
intelligent thought of the world in regard to the antiquity of man upon
our planet; and how the fabric built upon the chronological indications
in our sacred books--first, by the early fathers of the Church,
afterward by the medieval doctors, and finally by the reformers and
modern orthodox chronologists--has virtually disappeared before an
entirely different view forced upon us, especially by Egyptian and
Assyrian studies, as well as by geology and archeology.

In this chapter I purpose to present