In 1906, of the 14,944 members of religious denominations 9,97 0 were Roman Catholics, 1,210 Protestant Episcopalians, 1,105 Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), 618 Methodists and 520 Presbyterians.
Clearly Lamarck gives us no reason for any such assumption, and his followers or latter-day adherents have not attempted to do so.
By this new standard the Romans seem our contemporaries in latter-day civilization; the "Golden Age" of Greece is but of yesterday; the pyramid-builders are only relatively remote.
The philological analysis of Wolf and his successors had raised doubts as to the very existence of Homer, and at one time the main current of scholarly opinion had set strongly in the direction of the belief that the Iliad and the Odyssey were in reality but latter-day collections of divers recitals that had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another of bards through ages of illiteracy.
All the wild beasts and monstrous creatures commemorated in current legend were to be found in his dominions, as well as all the wild and eccentric races of men of whom strange stories were told, including those unclean nations whom Alexander Magnus walled up among the mountains of the north, and who were to come forth at the latter day - and so were the Amazons and the Bragmans.