intelligence made its debut upon the platform of life. In imagination 

 we may go still further back, and view the wonders of that ancient Asian 

 civilisation which preceded that of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, 

 and which was probably derived very gradually from the earliest social 

 conceptions of the Caucasian branch of the Polynesian primitive man. 

 Still we are ages away from the period we desire to arrive at ; and even 

 were we able to trace the human family back to that remote time when 

 man could not be said to partake more of the character of the human 

 than the ape species, still we should even then be unable to point to 

 the precise moment when intellect shed its glorious rays upon the race, 

 making bright, clear, and beautiful what before was dark, misty, and 

 unmeaning. The ancient Prosimiae gradually became Catarrhine apes, 

 which, in their turn, as slowly assumed the characters of the Anthro- 

 poidae, and afterwards of ape-like men ; but the time required for this 

 imperceptibly gradual process of evolution was probably many hundred 

 thousands of years, during which period, or perhaps even at a prior time 

 the first intellectual spark became manifest : how, when, or for what 

 ultimate purpose it is apparently beyond our power to devise. 



How soon after the dawn of intellect the conception of Deity was 

 evolved in the human brain it is equally impossible to say ; but the 

 probability is that the date was a very early one, for it seems highly 

 probable that such a conception would be among the very first efforts 

 of the mind, the materials necessary for the stimulation of such an 

 effort being at hand at any moment. We can imagine our early fathers 

 groping in the darkness of ignorance, with mental powers on a par with 

 those of the awakening minds of our own children, seeing bogies in 

 every natural phenomenon, and tremblingly glowering at the spectra ot 

 their own imaginations. Having no experience of the past or know- 

 ledge of the future, they would indeed be in a most helpless condition, 

 relying entirely upon the instinctive capabilities they had inherited from 

 their ancestors. By degrees, however, their various faculties would be 

 further awakened by impressions received from external objects ; their 

 wants would be multiplied in proportion to their intellectual develop- 

 ment, causing them to manifest a desire for industry ; and their self- 

 consciousness would arouse within them a feeling of dignity and 

 importance to which they had hitherto been strangers. Thus gradually 

 would the race cast off its animal and put on its human clothes. The 

 old plan of hand-to-mouth existence would be abolished by the newly- 

 developed reason of man ; the innumerable dangers which confronted 

 him would undoubtedly stimulate him to approach his fellows with the 

 object of establishing mutual aid and of co-operating for their common 

 welfare ; and a feeling of confident superiority over others of the animal 

 kingdom would become apparent among them. Not only would man's 



