vi PREFACE 



Having glanced at some of the chief actors we will look at 

 the stage-setting, their surroundings and environment, their 

 relations to the great world in which they were feeling their 

 way. Was their situation, perhaps, not altogether unlike our 

 own to-day? Can we draw any useful inferences from their 

 successes or failures? Above all what constituted fitness to 

 survive and progress, and can we derive from their experience 

 any suggestions as to what are the elements or marks of fitness 

 under present conditions? Do the unintelligent efforts and 

 experiments of our "humble fellows" of times passed, give us 

 a reasonable ground of hope in a brighter future? These are 

 the vital, all-important questions. 



The book is intended to be an introduction in a more literal 

 sense. The references at the foot of many pages and the 

 bibliography are intended to lead the reader to an acquaint- 

 ance with a few of the thinkers and writers who have thrown 

 light on special subjects. If he will follow these suggestions, 

 he will be led far in excellent company into wide and fascinat- 

 ing fields of research and discovery. 



Finally, the book is written especially for those who have 

 never found time or inclination to study our benighted ances- 

 tors and predecessors, and their magnificent and truly heroic 

 achievements. Not able to talk, or suffering from the malady 

 of thought, they ''lost themselves" in their work. Certainly 

 ''they wrestled hard as we do now." If it can persuade a few 

 thoughtful souls to wonder at the amoeba, to become interested 

 in the highly significant hydra, to admire clams and worms, 

 to marvel at the strange experiments of reptiles, and gain a 

 fellow-feeling for the plodding primitive mammal, the sleek 

 cat and "aspiring ape," it will not have been written in vain. 



If I am not mistaken, no less a thinker than the keen, stern, 

 powerful theologian Jonathan Edwards, a loving observer of 

 the beauties of nature in his j^ounger days, has told us that 

 supreme virtue consists in love for being in general. 



