present time. [Footnote: It is thought preferable by some scholars to let
the beginning of the great Teutonic migration (A.D. 375) mark the end of
the period of ancient history. Some also prefer to date the beginning of
the modern period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D.
1453; while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about
the close of the 15th century, at which time there were many inventions
and discoveries and a great stir in the intellectual world.]

ANTIQUITY OF MAN.--We do not know when man first came into possession of
the earth. We only know that, in ages vastly remote, when both the climate
and the outline of Europe were very different from what they are at
present, man lived on that continent with animals now extinct; and that as
early as 4000 or 3000 B.C.,--when the curtain first rises on the stage of
history,--in some favored regions, as in the Valley of the Nile, there
were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, and possessing
languages, arts, and institutions that bear evidence of slow growth
through very long periods of time before written history begins.
[Footnote: The investigation and study of this vast background of human
life is left to such sciences as _Ethnology, Comparative Philology_,
and _Prehistoric Archeology_.]

THE RACES OF MANKIND.--Distinctions in form, color, and physiognomy divide
the human species into three chief types, or races, known as the Black
(Ethiopian, or Negro), the Yellow (Turanian, or Mongolian), and the White
(Caucasian). But we must not suppose each of these three types to be
sharply marked off from the others; they shade into one another by
insensible gradations.

There has been no perceptible change in the great types during historic
times. The paintings upon the oldest Egyptian monuments show us that at