Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/215
whom the book was professedly written, concerning the real condition of scientific opinion. The attitude of the reviewers who first criticized the work was not that glacial man did not exist, but that the author had failed to represent the present state of scientific opinion on this question, and that existing evidence does not, in the minds of many competent observers, bear out the conclusion which Professor Wright advances, and which he advances as if it were not open to question. Instead of answering or attempting to answer the criticisms passed on the book, the responses to the reviews, and the reviews of the reviews have diverted, or attempted to divert, attention from the real criticisms, to other matters. They have shifted, or attempted to shift, the discussion from the presentation of the above questions in the volume under review, to the merits of the questions themselves. Shifted to this basis, the questions at issue are very different from those first raised, and may continue to be discussed long after Man and the Glacial Period has ceased to attract attention.
If the discussion is not at an end, it is presumably near it. Incidentally, two questions which had previously been clearly recognized and sharply emphasized by specialists have been brought into greater popular prominence than heretofore. The one question concerns the simplicity versus the complexity of the glacial period. The other concerns the nature of the evidence which is to be admitted into court touching the question of man's geological chronology. The first of these questions has been long before the geological world, and little that is new has been added in connection with the recent discussion. What has been said will be likely to stimulate the accumulation and critical consideration of data bearing on the question.
Concerning the question of man's antiquity in terms of geological history, the discussion has for the first time sufficiently emphasized in the popular mind the importance of the most rigid scrutiny of the evidence which claims to mark a definite stage in geological history when man's existence is beyond question. For the first time, the criteria by which such evidence