180 EVOLUTION 



taken the pains to calculate the actual 

 capital value of these ancient Mediterranean 

 terraces, and brings out the marvellous, yet 

 credible, result that the actual economic 

 wealth of this remote prehistoric world far 

 exceeded that of the Mediterranean to-day; 

 and this not merely in its agriculture, or 

 with roads and railways thrown in, but with 

 the existing cities as well! Here then is a 

 view of the early human past very different 

 from the picture of groping brutishness, of 

 promiscuity and struggle with which nine- 

 teenth-century anthropology was too much 

 obsessed; for if we seek the modern repre- 

 sentatives of these old cultivators and 

 selectors, these breeders and arboriculturists, 

 at their best we must seek them at the very 

 highest growing-point of our own civilization 

 to-day. For with all respect to the great 

 mechanical inventors, and the masters of the 

 physical sciences who have accompanied 

 them, we claim a higher primacy in science 

 for Darwin and his peers, and this alike as 

 regards vision of the universe, as in organic 

 not merely physical evolution, and in poten- 

 tial and forthcoming, if not yet fully actual 

 contribution to the service and uplift of man. 

 In short, these prehistoric transformists of 

 wild life into cultivated fruitfulness and 

 domesticated use, had already among them 



