EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



of the southern peninsulas of Europe. It was 

 only after civilization had already made consid- 

 erable progress, after tribes of men had become 

 united into large and stable political aggregates, 

 and after the business of society had acquired a 

 rather high degree of complexity, that individ- 

 ual men could achieve work of any sort on a 

 sufficiently grand scale to arrest the attention 

 of succeeding generations through thousands of 

 years. Granting that some pre-Homeric hero 

 may have had the native powers of a Hannibal, 

 the fact that his achievements did not visibly 

 affect great masses of society, but only the 

 movements of a few petty tribes, would be 

 enough to prevent his fame surviving, save, 

 perhaps, in some vague half-intelligible legends 

 about giants and demi-gods. But after the his- 

 torical period, in the long career of nascent 

 humanity, had fairly begun after great socie- 

 ties had been formed, with generals and states- 

 men, poets and artists, and even philosophers 

 a long time had still to elapse before any- 

 thing was heard of inventors of giant calibre and 

 wonderful achievements like Arkwright and 

 Watt. And this fact has in history a marked 

 significance. 



Before inventors of this sort were possible, it 

 was necessary, in the first place, that society 

 should have reached a state of comparative sta- 

 bility politically. The ages which witnessed the 

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