524 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



the camp-fire, and are not unfrequently repeated in the form 

 of a chant or song. Such was probably the first beginning of 

 every subsequent educational institution from the dame school 

 to the Post-Graduate Course. The very fact that the deeds 

 of the day are still often chanted in a kind of rhythm by the 

 lower savages shows the purpose served by such narrations. 

 Probably we may trace the beginning of all rhythmic utterance 

 to a mnemonic system which prevailed through untold ages 

 before the crudest writing was invented. This was the one 

 way then possible of fixing and preserving experience for 

 general future use. For such a purpose a fairly good voca- 

 bulary was needful, though doubtless at first such didactic 

 recitations necessitated a good deal of acting or gesture. Even 

 to this day there are said to be some low tribes in South 

 America whose spoken language is so imperfect that they 

 cannot converse in the dark. 



If we learn anything from the relics of the stone ages it is 

 that man dwelt in small separate communities and lived by 

 hunting alone for a period a hundred times as long as that of 

 which we have any historical record. At the end of this period, 

 wonderful to relate, he appears to emerge from primeval dark- 

 ness practically such a being as ourselves, with a truly human 

 body and a great brain capable, if opportunity offered, of 

 practically all the intellectual pursuits with which we busy 

 ourselves at the present day ! If there is anything in the 

 evolutionary doctrine, this was all a product of the normal 

 forces of his savage forest life. 



Without a doubt throughout the whole of this period com- 

 petition was keen between tribe and tribe and between individual 

 and individual — and in every case it was a duel to the death. 

 Many a race like the Neandermen proved unfit, and went under 

 in the struggle. Where small communities exist by hunting and 

 fishing alone there is bound to be eternal friction leading to 

 warfare about boundaries and game rights ; so that even without 

 any desire for scalps or heads, or tribal glory, or other provoca- 

 tives of blood-lust only too evident to-day, we may assume that 

 throughout the whole enormous period which preceded history 

 the fateful struggle for existence between man and man and 

 between tribe and tribe never failed or relaxed. 



It is very easy to discern the enormous power which speech 

 must have exercised in this struggle. Probably through no 



