i* 



i88 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



the feelings and thoughts and experiences of a 

 nation, yea often of many nations, and of all 

 which through long centuries they have attained 

 to and won. It stands like the Pillars of Hercules, 

 to mark how far the moral and intellectual con- 

 quests of mankind have advanced, only not like 

 those pillars, fixed and immovable, but even itself 

 advancing with the progress of these. The mighty 

 moral instincts which have been working in the 

 popular mind have found therein their unconscious 

 voice ; and the single kinglier spirits that have 

 looked deeper into the heart of things have often- 

 times gathered up all they have seen into some 

 one word, which they have launched upon the 

 world, and with which they have enriched it for 

 ever — making in the new word a new region of 

 thought to be henceforward in some sort the com- 

 mon heritage of all."^ 



What then, when we open this marvellous 

 structure, is the revelation yielded us of the mental 

 states of those who lived at the dawn of speech ? 

 An impression of poverty, great and pathetic. All 

 fossils teach the same lesson — the lesson of life, 

 beauty, structure, waning into a poverty-stricken 

 past. Whether they be the shells which living 

 creatures once inhabited, or the bones of departed 

 > Trench, The Study of Words, p. 28. 



