A MILLION YEAES OF CHILDHOOD 8 



many; especially now that Europe lies in a trough 

 of reaction after so many years of war, and the future 

 is still so uncertain. 



The best antidote to this depressing pessimism is a 

 sound conception of the general outline of man's story 

 on earth. It is now definitely known that man has 

 been on the earth for something between one and two ^ 

 million years. That seems, at first sight, to confirm 

 the feeling that the human race has had a fair trial 

 and been found wanting. But it is just as definitely . 

 known that what we call civilization is not more than 

 eight thousand years old. Moreover, there was no 

 continuous progress during these eight thousand 

 years. The conditions of the ancient world were 

 such that civilization perished time after time, and 

 a new section of the race had to learn its lessons over 

 again, often (if not generally) with very little aid from 

 its predecessors. In the next chapter we shall read 

 about a most promising civilization which flourished 

 for thousands of years in Crete — about two hundred 

 miles from Athens — yet was almost unknown to the 

 Athenians a few centuries after its decay, and was 

 totally unknown to the rest of the world until twenty 

 years ago. 



Civilization, in other words, has not yet had a fair 

 trial. It has barely begun. We must, in view of the 

 facts which we now know, regard it as a thin film of 

 idealism which has developed on top of a million 

 years of human savagery. This thin film of aspira- 

 tions and fine sentiments has to control, and finally 

 subdue, the impulsive life which had grown strong in 

 man during a million years of unrestrained animal 

 activity, to say nothing of the millions of years of 

 antecedent animal life which have left their deep 



