

The Ascent of Man 175 



succession of four Great Ice Ages or Glaciations, and it may be 

 that the human race owes much to the alternation of hard times 

 and easy times glacial and interglacial. When the ice-fields 

 cleared off Neolithic man had his innings. (8) And we have 

 closed the story, in the meantime, with the Metal Ages. 



It seems not unfitting that we should at this point sound an- 

 other note that of the man of feeling. It is clear in William 

 James's words: 



Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, are these half- 

 brutish prehistoric brothers. Girdled about with the im- 

 mense darkness of this mysterious universe even as we are, 

 they were born and died, suffered and struggled. Given 

 over to fearful crime and passion, plunged in the blackest 

 ignorance, preyed upon by hideous and grotesque delusions, 

 yet steadfastly serving the profoundest of ideals in their 

 fixed faith that existence in any form is better than non- 

 existence, they ever rescued triumphantly from the jaws of 

 ever imminent destruction the torch of life which, thanks to 

 them, now lights the world for us. 



Races of Mankind 



Given a variable stock spreading over diverse territory, we 

 expect to find it splitting up into varieties which may become 

 steadied into races or incipient species. Thus we have races of 

 hive-bees, "Italians," "Punics," and so forth; and thus there arose 

 races of men. Certain types suited certain areas, and periods of 

 in-breeding tended to make the distinctive peculiarities of each 

 incipient race well-defined and stable. When the original pecu- 

 liarities, say, of negro and Mongol, Australian and Caucasian, 

 arose as brusque variations or "mutations," then they would 

 have great staying power from generation to generation. 

 They would not be readily swamped by intercrossing or aver- 

 aged off. Peculiarities and changes of climate and surroundings, 

 not to speak of other change-producing factors, would provoke 

 new departures from age to age, and so fresh racial ventures 



