EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 253 
nearly abreast of that which had been attained in 
Egypt and Babylonia, perhaps seven thousand or eight 
thousand years before Christ; and this difference of 
nine or ten millenniums in advancement can be to a 
very considerable extent explained by the absence of 
horses and oxen in the western hemisphere. If such 
a statement surprises you, just stop and consider what 
an immense part of our modern civilization goes back 
by linear stages of succession to the era of pastoral life, 
that state of society which is described for us in the 
book of Genesis and in the Odyssey; then try to imag- 
ine what the history of the world as we know it would 
have been without that pastoral stage. But I must 
not tarry over this point. Another great stage was 
marked by the smelting of iron, and yet another by 
the invention of writing; the latter being on the intel- 
lectual side of progress an equivalent for the acquisi- 
tion of ox and horse power on the material side. 
Now this invention of writing seems very ancient, 
for the city of Nippur contains tablets which may be 
eight thousand or nine thousand years old, yet which 
are perfectly legible for modern scholars. The interval 
is not a long one when measured by the existence of 
the human race, yet it naturally seems long to our un- 
taught minds because it includes and contains the 
whole of recorded human history. Here we come 
upon one of the things which the doctrine of evolution 
is doing for us. It is altering our perspective; it is 
teaching us that the whole of recorded history is but a 
narrow fringe upon the stupendous canvas along which 
the existence of humanity stretches back; and thus it 
is profoundly modifying our view of man in his rela- 
tions to the universe. 
