224 EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR. 



her way across the ooefui is a slow and gradual process; yet there is a 

 cataclysmic epoch opening up a new era in her history. It is the mo- 

 ment when, after lying for months or ^'^ears a dead, inert, innuovable 

 mass, she is suddenly endowed w^ith the power of motion, and, as if 

 imbued with life, glides into the stream, eager to begin the careei- for 

 which she was designed. 



I think it is thus in the development of humanity. Long ages may 

 pass during which a race, to all external observation, appears to be 

 making no real progress. Additions may be made to learning and the 

 records of history mav constantly grow, but there is nothing in its 

 sphere of thought or in the features of its life that can be called 

 essentially new. Yet nature may have been all along slowly w^orking 

 in a way which evades our scrutiny until the result of her operations 

 suddenly appears in a new and revolutionary movement, carrying the 

 race to a higher plane of civilization. 



It is not difficult to point out such epochs in hiunan progress. The 

 greatest of all, because it was the first, is one of which we find no rec- 

 ord either in written or geological history. It w^as the epoch when 

 our progenitors first took conscious thought of the morrow, first used 

 the crude w^eapons which nature had placed within their reach to kill 

 their prey, first built a fire to w^arm their bodies and cook their food. 

 I love to fancy that there was some one first man, the Adam of evolu- 

 tion. Avho did all this, and wdio used the power thus acquired to show 

 his fellows how they might profit by his example. AMien the members 

 of the tribe or community which he gathered around him began to 

 conceive of life as a whole — to include .yesterday, to-day, and to- 

 morrow in the same mental grasp — to think how they might ap]:)ly 

 the gifts of nature to their own uses, a movement w^as begun Avhich 

 should ultimately lead lo civilization. 



Long indeed must have been the ages required for the development 

 of this rudest primitive community into the civilization revealed 

 to us by the most ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After 

 spoken language Avas developed, and after the rude representation 

 of ideas by visible marks draw^n to resemble them had long been 

 practiced, some Cadmus must have invented an alphabet. When 

 the use of written language was thus introduced, the word of com- 

 mand ceased to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it 

 became possible for master minds to extend their influence as far 

 as a written message could be carried. Then Avere communities 

 gathered into provinces, provinces into kingdoms, kingdoms into 

 the great empires of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization 

 wdiich we find pictured in the most ancient records — a stage in 

 which men were governed by laws that were perhaps as wisely 

 adapted to their conditions as our laws are to ours — in which the 



