viii PREFACE 



earnest, no formal discussion of these high themes 

 occurs. All the higher forces and phenomena with 

 which the sciences of Psychology, Ethics, and 

 Theology usually deal come on the world's stage 

 at a later date, and no one need be surprised if 

 the semi-savage with whom we leave off is found 

 wanting in so many of the higher potentialities of 

 a human being. 



The Ascent of Mankind, as distinguished from 

 the Ascent of the Individual, was originally sum- 

 marized in one or two closing lectures, but this 

 stupendous subject would require a volume for itself, 

 and these fragments have been omitted for the 

 present Doubtless it may disappoint some that 

 at the close of all the bewildering vicissitudes 

 recorded here, Man should appear, after all, so 

 poor a creature. But the great lines of his youth 

 are the lines of his maturity, and it is only by 

 studying these, in themselves and in what they 

 connote, that the nature of Evolution and the 

 quality of Human Progress can be perceived. 



HENRY DRUMMOND. 



