CH. XXI.] GENESIS OF MAN, INTELLECTUALLY. 295 



little save a more marked sociality from the dryopitliecus and 

 other extinct lialf-liumaii apes. We may represent primitive 

 man as an animal in whom, physical and psychical changes 

 having hitherto proceeded pari jjctssu, intelligence had at 

 length arrived at a point where variations in it would sooner 

 be seized on by natural selection than variations in physical 

 structure. When among primates possessed of such an intel- 

 ligence, the family groups temporarily formed among all 

 mammals began to become permanent, then we must say that 

 there began the career of humanity as distinguished from 

 animality. For countless ages our ancestors probably were 

 still but slightly distinguished from other primates, save that 

 their increasing intelligence, their use of weapons, and their 

 habits of combination, rendered them more than a match for 

 much larger and stronger animals. In the later Pliocene times 

 these primitive men may have come to bear some resem- 

 blance to the lowest contemporary savages. Human remains 

 and relics of the still later glacial period supply clear proof of 

 such a resemblance ; yet the absence of any improvement in 

 weapons and implements for many ages longer shows that as 

 yet there was but little capability of progress. Of the career 

 of mankind during the eight hundred thousand years which 

 would seem to have elapsed since the era of the cave bear 

 and woolly rhinoceros,^ we possess many vestiges. But every- 



* In assifjning this conjectural date, I follow the theon^ which connects the 

 great glacial epoch with tliat notable increase in the eccentricity of the earth's 

 orbit which, as calculated by Mr. Croll, began about 950,000 years B.C., and 

 lasted 200,000 years. But while the fact of this great increase of eccen- 

 tricity is, I presume, well established, and while it can hnrdly fail to have 

 wrought marked climatic changes, it is by no means proved that the glaciation 

 of Europe and North America was produced solely or chi'-'fly by this circum- 

 stance ; and accordingly I do not care to insist upon the chionology which I 

 have adopted in the text. Nor is it necessary for the validity of my arga- 

 ment that it should be insisted on. What we do know is, that men existed 

 both in Europe and in North America at the beginning of the glacial period ; 

 that this extensive dispersal implies the existence of the human race for a 

 long time previons to this epoch ; and that thus we obtain a dumb antiquity 

 in comparison with wliich the whole duration of the voice of historic tradition 

 ihrioka to a mere puiut of time. And this is all '.aat my argument requires. 



