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 nicker 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 Body, 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," 



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