THE RELIGION OF NATUEE 



inhabited, converting what was once tropical for- 

 est into wind-swept plain. 



Whatever the cause may have been, it is evident 

 that man was compelled to break from all the tra- 

 ditions of an arboreal race and to find his living 

 on the open ground. Here, instead of gathering 

 the fruits of the forest trees, he would learn to 

 pick out the seeds from low-growing plants, and 

 to this is probably due the original cleverness of 

 human fingers: for it is an invariable rule of 

 nature that hardship confers upon all creatures 

 which successfully come through it, some valuable 

 quality which raises them in the scale of life. 



[126] 



