some outlines of the work of
Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing what the
evolution of human civilization has been.

Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon the
letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view based upon
evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. Here, too, we are at the
beginning of a vast change in the basis and modes of thought upon man--a
change even more striking than that accomplished by Copernicus and
Galileo, when they substituted for a universe in which sun and planets
revolved about the earth a universe in which the earth is but the merest
grain or atom revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about the
sun; and all these forming but one among innumerable systems.

Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the great
problems around him, two antagonistic views have existed regarding the
life of the human race upon earth. The first of these is the belief that
man was created "in the beginning" a perfect being, endowed with the
highest moral and intellectual powers, but that there came a "fall,"
and, as its result, the entrance into the world of evil, toil, sorrow,
and death.

Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the existence
of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle and nowhere law. It
is, under such circumstances, by far the most easy of explanations, for
it is in accordance with the appearances of things: men adopted it just
as naturally as they adopted the theory that the Almighty hangs up the
stars as lights in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun
behind a mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the earth, or
flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a wicked world, or allows
evil spirits to control thunder, lightning, and storm, and to cause
diseases of body and mind, or opens the "windows of heaven" to let down
"the waters that be above the heavens," and thus to give rain upon the
earth.

A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and perfection--moral,
intellectual, and physical--from which men for some fault fell, is
perfectly in accordance with what we should expect.

Among the earliest known records of our race we find this view taking
shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the gods, and of a fall of
man; both of which seemed necessary to explain the existence of evil.

In Greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was