I PROLOGUE 51 



destruction of the human race ; not the smallest 

 indication that man has been treated on any 

 other principles than the rest of the animal 

 world. 



10. The results of the process of evolution in 

 the case of man, and in that of his more nearly 

 allied contemporaries, have been marvellously 

 different. Yet it is easy to see that small primi- 

 tive differences of a certain order, must, in the 

 long run, bring about a wide divergence of the 

 human stock from the others. It is a reasonable 

 supposition that, in the earliest human organisms, 

 an improved brain, a voice more capable of 

 modulation and articulation, limbs which lent 

 themselves better to gesture, a more perfect hand, 

 capable among other things of imitating form in 

 plastic or other material, were combined with 

 the curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong 

 family affection of the next lower group ; and 

 that they were accompanied by exceptional length 

 of life and a prolonged minority. The last two 

 peculiarities are obviously calculated to strengthen 

 the family organisation, and to give great weight 

 to its educative influences. The potentiality of 

 language, as the vocal symbol of thought, lay in 

 the faculty of modulating and articulating the 

 voice. The potentiality of writing, as the visual 

 symbol of thought, lay in the hand that could 

 draw; and in the mimetic tendency, which, as we 

 know, was gratified by drawing, as far back as the 



