48 EVOLUTION 



infinitesimal degrees the use of fire, the mode of manufactur- 

 ing stone hatchets and flint arrowheads, the earliest be- 

 ginnings of the art of pottery. With drill or flint he be- 

 came the Prometheus to his own small heap of sticks and 

 dry leaves among the tertiary forests. By his nightly 

 camp-fire he beat out gradually his excited gesture-language 

 and his oral speech. He tamed the dog, the horse, the 

 cow, the camel. He taught himself to hew small clearings 

 in the woodland, and to plant the banana, the yam, the 

 bread-fruit, and the coco-nut. He picked and improved 

 the seeds of his wild cereals till he made himself from 

 grass-like grains his barley, his oats, his wheat, his Indian 

 corn. In time, he dug out ore from mines, and learnt the 

 use first of gold, next of silver, then of copper, tin, bronze, 

 and iron. Side by side with these long secular changes, 

 he evolved the family, communal or patriarchal, polygamic 

 or monogamous. He built the hut, the house, and the 

 palace. He clothed or adorned himself first in skins and 

 leaves and feathers ; next in woven wool and fibre ; last of 

 all in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every 

 day. He gathered into hordes, tribes, and nations ; he 

 chose himself a king, gave himself laws, and built up great 

 empires in Egypt, Assyria, China, and Peru. He raised 

 him altars, Stonehenges and Karnaks. His picture-writing 

 grew into hieroglyphs and cuneiforms, and finally emerged, 

 by imperceptible steps, into alphabetic symbols, the raw 

 material of the art of printing. His dug-out canoe culmi- 

 nates in the iron-clad and the ' Great Eastern ' ; his boome- 

 rang and slingstone in the Woolwich infant ; his boiling 

 pipkin and his wheeled car in the locomotive engine ; his 

 picture-message in the telephone and the Atlantic cable. 

 Here, where the course of evolution has really been most 

 marvellous, its steps have been all more distinctly historical ; 

 so that nobody now doubts the true descent of Italian, French, 

 and Spanish from provincial Latin, or the successive growth 



