IN HIGHER PEOPLES 117 



Some one has said that ''civilization wears a 

 train. ' ' It does. And it is a very long one. It is 

 composed of the ideas, beliefs, and institutions 

 which have served men in the past, but which are 

 today out of date and useless, but which we go 

 on tolerating because we are not energetic enough 

 to get rid of them. The world ought really to get 

 out a new edition of itself every little while, leav- 

 ing out the things that are useless and untrue and 

 inserting new material that has come to it from 

 the higher points of view. 



Human nature is like everything else — it slowly 

 changes. It is not the same today that it was a 

 thousand years ago ; and it is not the same today 

 that it will be a thousand years in the future. We 

 live in a universe where everything is flowing. 

 Human nature, like everything else, slowly 

 changes. But at any particular time human na- 

 ture, like the human body and like human civiliza- 

 tion, consists largely of parts which ought to have 

 been abandoned long ago, but which survive be- 

 cause of our inability to revise ourselves and 

 bring ourselves up to date. We are not entirely 

 of the present. Much of us has come from the 

 past and really belongs to the past. 



It is exceedingly important that these survivals 

 should be understood. It is still more important 

 that they should be recognized beyond question as 

 being illegitimate. The first five lessons of this 

 Book form a series intended to teach these things. 

 The first lesson on ''The Origin of Domesticat- 



