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Galleporto Bavicarius Directory 14
Page 06
But the essential and vital part of the mystery is not what the soul asks of it, but the signals which it makes to the soul. And here I am but recording my own experience when I say that the lights and gleams of sunset, its golden inlets and cloud-ripples, the dusky veil it weaves about the world, is for my own spirit the solemnity which effects for me what I believe that the mass effects for a devoted Catholic--the unfolding in hints and symbols of the mysteries of God. An unbeliever may look on at a mass and see nothing but the vesture and the rite, a drama of woven paces and waving hands, when a believer may become aware of the very presence of the divine. And the sunset has for me that same unveiling of the beauty of God; it illumines and transfigures life; it shows me visibly and sacredly that beauty pure and stainless runs from end to end of the universe, and calls upon me to adore it, to prostrate myself before its divine essence. The fact that another may see it carelessly and indifferently makes no difference. It only means that not thus does he perceive God. But, for myself, I know no experience more wholly and deeply religious than when I pass in solitude among deep stream-fed valleys, or over the wide fenland, or through the familiar hamlet, and see the dying day flame and smoulder far down in the west among cloudy pavilions or in tranquil spaces of clear sky. Then the well-known land whose homely, daylong energies I know seems to gather itself together into a far and silent adoration, to commit itself trustfully and quietly to God, to receive His endless benediction, and in that moment to become itself eternal in a soft harmony of voiceless praise and passionate desire.
We considered this point fully when speculating as to the presence of man in the Miocene: so we have nothing further to offer. We might, however, suggest that, if the hippopotamus amongst mammals could survive all the changing time since the Pliocene, as it has done, it seems no more than fair to admit equal power of endurance to the human species. The position then of the scientific world as to the Pliocene Age of man is, on the whole, more decided in its favor than for the Miocene Age. Quite a number of eminent scholars, whose conclusions are worthy of all respect, unhesitatingly affirm the existence of Pliocene man in Europe. Others are not quite ready to admit his existence in Europe, but do think he was in existence elsewhere. Still others, with all due respect for the discoveries of Capellini, think it more prudent to await further discoveries. The reader, who has followed us through this brief outline of the past, can join which of the classes he will, and be sure of finding himself in good company.
While there is no necessity for supposing an elevation greater than that required to lay bare a passage for animals back and forth, yet soundings undertaken by the British government have established the fact, that the ocean deepens very gradually away from the shores of the main-land until a depth of six hundred feet is reached, when the shore falls away very suddenly. This is supposed to be the sea-coast of that time. The English Channel would then have existed as the valley of the Seine, and the Rhine have prolonged its flow over the present bed of the North Sea. As the land stood at this height through a large portion of the Glacial Age, it is not at all unreasonable to suppose that primitive tribes hunted back and forth along these valleys, and so doubtless many convincing proofs of their presence at that early day lie buried underneath the waves of the sea. In like manner, at the south, we know that elephants, lions, and hyenas passed freely from Africa to Spain, Italy, and the Island of Crete,<7> and, consequently, the Mediterranean Sea must have been bridged in one or two places at least.
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