Page 525 sur 1391

If we go back to an imaginary state in which men were almost

animals and the companions of them, we have as much right to

argue from what is animal to what is human as from the barbarous

to the civilized man. The record of animal life on the globe is

fragmentary,-the connecting links are wanting and cannot be

supplied; the record of social life is still more fragmentary and

precarious. Even if we admit that our first ancestors had no such

institution as marriage, still the stages by which men passed

from outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of China,

Assyria, and Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly

unknown to us.