48 THE BIOC08M08 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



and thus nursed a God-consciousness, inter- 

 linking it with human consciousness. Then 

 arose the earliest association of man in an 

 institution, doubtless the religious, with 

 which was intimately joined the political in- 

 stitution. As late as the time of Herodotus 

 the observant historian could declare that the 

 Egyptians were still the most religious of 

 peoples. 



Conscious man, therefore, probably spread 

 out from the Nile, that unique stream-bed of 

 our terraqueous globe,where he broke through 

 into his double Self-awareness, not only that 

 of his own Self, but likewise that of the All- 

 Self, the two indeed being united in the one 

 basic process of consciousness. Certainly the 

 most important node was just that in the 

 movement of humanitv, vea of all animal it v, 



v ' / / 



possibly of total Nature as far as our planet 

 is concerned. We have already noticed that 

 Egypt was probably the center of the great 

 Mammalian transition of the Vertebrates, 

 and even the Vertebrates may have started 

 there. For that matter the original proto- 

 plasmic life-stuff in which took place that 

 primordial transition from the Inorganic to 

 the Organic, from Unlife to Life, may have 

 been the Nile slime whose proliferous energy 

 has been famed from time immemorial. Not 

 without parallel significance is the fact that 



