222 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



At what period man was first defined upon the earth 

 as a being possessed of reasoning powers and of far 

 higher possibilities than the most highly developed 

 forms beneath him, is for ever lost in the abyss of past 

 time. There is nothing that forbids us to believe that 

 primeval man, as yet little removed from the life of 

 wild animals, roamed the woods a thousand centuries 

 ago. Only well within the last ten thousand years 

 does he emerge to our knowledge as possessing the 

 rudiments of civilisation. The proof of this civilisation 

 is contained in the art productions and inscriptions 

 of ancient Egypt. In the astronomical works and 

 architectural glories of Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt, 

 in the extraordinary efflorescence of art and literature 

 in ancient Greece, as well as in mediaeval Italy, we seem 

 to have evidence that the human mind in historic 

 times has not acquired any new faculties or increased 

 in power. But it has broadened and become enlarged 

 by the knowledge that has come to it from the past, 

 but more especially by its discoveries of the potencies 

 of Nature and by the application of its powers to the 

 means of utilising them. 



It is a succession of kaleidoscopic changes that is 

 presented to us in the pages of history previous to 

 the nineteenth century, with small apparent advance 

 from age to age. In the last century, mankind, in 

 view of its final goal, has made a forward advance 

 much greater than that made during the whole 

 historic period before it. I have already indicated 

 the nature of that advance. The civilisation that has 



