ning to engulf mankind in its fall.

Ever since the triumph of autocracy in the Roman empire, the masses of
mankind have steadily protested against an inequality that is alien to
the natural rights of man. For century after century the struggle
against undue exercise of power has gone on, and the hereditary lords of
mankind have lost, stage by stage, their usurped power, until in the
modern republic they have been replaced by the servants and chosen
agents of the people. But the autocracy of wealth still holds its own,
and is growing more and more formidable, and against this the wave of
opposition is now rising. Everywhere man is earnestly and sternly
demanding an equitable distribution of the productions of nature and
art. What the outcome of this demand will be it is impossible to say. It
must inevitably lead to some readjustment of the wealth of mankind; but
only the slow process of social evolution can decide what this shall be.

We have endeavored in this brief treatise to trace the development of
man from his primeval state as a tree-dwelling animal in the depths of
the tropic woods, through the phases of his later condition as an erect
surface dweller, his conflict with and dominion over the animal kingdom,
his subsequent contest with the adverse powers of nature, and his final
warfare with his fellows and emergence into civilization. Each of these
contests has left its results; the first in the forest nomads of the
eastern tropics, the second in the patriarchal herding tribes of the
steppes and deserts, the village communities of Russia and the paternal
empire of China, the third in the enlightened nations of Europe and
America.

For how long a period this mighty drama of evolution has continued it is
impossible to say. Its first phase must have been of interminable
slowness; its second, while more rapid, still very deliberate; its third
of much greater rapidity, yet extending over several thousands of years.
Millions of years have probably passed away since it began, yet the
period involved is none too long for the magnitude of the results, whose
greatness can be seen if we contrast man's mental development with that
of the lower animals during this period. Physically, the development of
man has been inconsiderable--much less apparently than that of many
other animals. Mentally, it has been enormous. The whole of nature's
influences, in new and often adverse situations, have been brought to
bear upon man's m