CHAPTER IV. 



THE DAWN OF MIND. 



THE most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man 

 is the Mind of a little child. The stealing in of that 

 inexplicable light yet not more light than sound 

 or touch called consciousness, the first flicker of 

 memory, the gradual governance of will, the silent 

 ascendancy of reason these are studies in Evolution 

 the oldest, the sweetest, and the most full of meaning 

 for mankind. Evolution, after all, is a study for the 

 nursery. It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or 

 Lucretius that Maternity, bending over the hollowed 

 cradle in the forest for a first smile of recognition from 

 her babe, expressed the earliest trust in the doctrine 

 of development. Every mother since then is an un- 

 conscious Evolutionist, and every little child a living 

 witness to Ascent. 



Is the Mind a new or an old thing in the world ? Is 

 it an Evolution from beneath or an original gift from 

 heaven? Did the Mind, in short, come down the ages 

 like the IJody, and does the mother's faith in the in- 

 tellectual unfolding of her babe include a remoter 

 origin for all human faculty? Let the mother look at 

 her child and answer. " It is the very breath of God," 



119 



