TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1395 



of successive types of palaeolithic and neolithic peoples, while at 

 highest level projects an implement of bronze. Bones of animals 

 which these peoples had hunted and captured, and these from 

 denizens of climates now as far distant as chilly Lapland, with its 

 reindeer, or Africa with its rhinoceros. We thus see the succession 

 of glacial periods, first compelling the cave-dwellers to burn fires 

 against the cold, and then, with rising rivers, driving them out 

 altogether ; until with a return of better climate came a fresh and 

 distinct type to occupy anew. In such ways, and in a few days spent 

 between well-guided cavern visits and museum studies, reinforced 

 by books of reference, and sometimes vivified by actual dramatisa- 

 tions of the past, the novice to these studies sees the way towards 

 becoming an initiate. Of course, something of the like can be done, 

 though generally on smaller scale, at any of the kmdred caverns in 

 our own island or elsewhere. Leaving now the Vezere valley, for the 

 more ordinary but still varied and beautiful one of the Dordogne 

 river, one can next survey and vividly realise, with help of corre- 

 spondingly skilled geographic and historic guidance, much of 

 recorded history, from remains, and monuments along its course, 

 from Pre-Roman Gaul to Roman, and thence through something 

 of the "dark ages", to fully developed feudal and catholic times, 

 and thence onwards to and through those of the Renaissance, and 

 its decline, to the mingled developments of our own day; or again, 

 in the range of interesting little old towns, find survivals of past 

 ages below the day's adornment by the billsticker. Thus a broad 

 survey — of the varying adjustments of people and their doings to 

 their place, throughout untold ages of pre-history, and then two 

 thousand years or more of history — is condensed in a brief fortnight 

 of experience; and so with training towards better use and more 

 result from all subsequent travel, than that of conventional tourists, 

 unaccustomed to observe, to reflect, and to image. 



Similarly to start towards fuller appreciation of nature, even a 

 single walk with the geologist or with the ornithologist or ento- 

 mologist, may often be a revelation and an arousal; or again, the 

 cloud-landscape, as seen by the meteorologist, and by the painter. 

 It is indeed largely by help of such vivid experiences that bright 

 adolescence, sometimes even childhood, is often awakened to some 

 new interest, and this even continuing and extending through life. 

 A peep through microscope or telescope can often work the same 

 magic, and so on; so in whatever living way we may directly enter 

 this scene or that, of nature or of civilisation, a complex and ever 

 interacting drama of evolution opens before us. 



THE VALLEY SECTION.— But how are we to elucidate and 

 develop, from all this, the general conception of social life? As 

 interaction of people, work, and place, and in keeping with its 



