le, reached a relatively high pitch, five or six thousand years ago;
while, in many other regions, the savage condition has persisted down
to our day. In all this vast lapse of time there is not a trace of the
occurrence of any general destruction of the human race; not the
smallest indication that man has been treated on any other principles
than the rest of the animal world.

10. The results of the process of evolution in the case of man, and in
that of his more nearly allied contemporaries, have been marvellously
different. Yet it is easy to see that small primitive differences of a
certain order, must, in the long run, bring about a wide divergence of
the human stock from the others. It is a reasonable supposition that,
in the earliest human organisms, an improved brain, a voice more
capable of modulation and articulation, limbs which lent themselves
better to gesture, a more perfect hand, capable among other things of
imitating form in plastic or other material, were combined with the
curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong family affection of the
next lower group; and that they were accompanied by exceptional length
of life and a prolonged minority. The last two peculiarities are
obviously calculated to strengthen the family organisation, and to
give great weight to its educative influences. The potentiality of
language, as the vocal symbol of thought, lay in the faculty of
modulating and articulating the voice. The potentiality of writing, as
the visual symbol of thought, lay in the hand that could draw; and in
the mimetic tendency, which, as we know, was gratified by drawing, as
far back as the days of Quaternary man. With speech as the record, in
tradition, of the experience of more than one generation; with writing
as the record of that of any number of generations; the experience of
the race, tested and corrected generation after generation, could be
stored up and made the starting point for fresh progress. Having these
perfectly natural factors of the evolutionary process in man before
us, it seems unnecessary to go further a-field in search of others.

11. That the doctrine of evolution implies a former state of innocence
of mankind is quite true; but, as I have remarked, it is the innocence
of the ape and of the tiger, whose acts, however they may run counter
to the principles of morality, it would be absurd to blame. The lust
of the one and the ferocity of the other are as much provided for in
their