lody, and I said to myself there is a regular
advancement. I saw at the same time a row of human skulls, from the
lowest skull that has been found, the Neanderthal skull--skulls from
Central Africa, skulls from the bushmen of Australia--skulls from the
farthest isles of the Pacific Sea--up to the best skulls of the last
generation--and I noticed that there was the same difference between
those skulls that there was between the products of those skulls, and I
said to myself: "After all, it is a simple question of intellectual
development." There was the same difference between those skulls, the
lowest and highest skulls, that there was between the dug-out and the
man-of-war and the steamship, between the club and the Krupp gun,
between the yellow daub and the landscape, between the tom-tom and an
opera by Verdi. The first and lowest skull in this row was the den in
which crawled the base and meaner instincts of mankind, and the last
was a temple in which dwelt joy, liberty and love. And I said to
myself, it is all a question of intellectual development.

Man has advanced just as he has mingled his thought with his labor. As
he has grown he has taken advantage of the forces of nature; first of
the moving wind, then of the falling water and finally of steam. From
one step to another he has obtained better houses, better clothes, and
better books, and he has done it by holding out every incentive to the
ingenious to produce them. The world has said, give us better clubs
and guns and cannons with which to kill our fellow Christians. And
whoever will give us better weapons and better music, and better houses
to live in, we will robe him in wealth crown him in honor, and render
his name deathless. Every incentive was held out to every human being
to improve these things, and that is the reason we have advanced in all
mechanical arts. But that gentleman in the dugout not only had his
ideas about politics, mechanics, and agriculture; he had his ideas also
about religion. His idea about politics was "Might makes right." It
will be thousands of years, may be, before mankind will believe in the
saying that "right makes might." He had his religion. That low skull
was a devil factory. He believed in Hell, and the belief was a
consolation to him. He could see the waves of God's wrath dashing
against the rocks of dark damnation. He could see tossing in the
whitecaps the faces of women, and stretching above the crests the