TEXTBOOK OF EVOLUTION 

 AND GENETICS 



CHAPTER I 

 INTRODUCTION 



Whatever may be the attitude of the individual toward evolu- 

 tion, memory will tell him that there was a time in his life when he 

 did not think. Experience with others or the words of his parents 

 will show him that he was a living, active organism, carrying on in 

 his small body all of the fundamental life processes which continue 

 in it today, but without consciousness of these processes or of the 

 world about him, or of his individual existence. There is a distinct 

 resemblance between this past oblivion of infancy and the normal 

 condition of the lower animals. We cannot say that they are 

 entirely devoid of the processes of mind which are so highly de- 

 veloped in ourselves ; rather it seems that they do the same things 

 in lesser degree, handicapped as they are by inferior brain develop- 

 ment and by lack of that convenient means of storage and ex- 

 change, language and articulate speech. 



If we look back through the long ages of recorded history we 

 cannot fail to note another analogy in the gradually increasing 

 complexity of society, in the development of mankind from 

 savagery to primitive cultures and finally to the great civilizations 

 which have come and gone. Each stage has contributed to the 

 greatness of its successors, each has added to the complexity of 

 human knowledge, each has made man a httle more independent 

 of his environment, each has turned his thoughts a little more 

 keenly inward until race consciousness has become an active factor 

 in the shaping of human destiny. Behind this long record we find 

 a few remnants which tell us of the infancy of the human race. 

 Crude drawings on the walls of caverns and the implements which 

 these primitive peoples used disclose something of their limited 

 culture. Bones associated with these eloquent legacies tell us 

 much of the characteristics of the people who left them. Every- 

 thing points to gradual change, but behind these records — what? 



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