GENESIS OF MAN, INTELLECTUALLY 



ing marks of an intelligence decidedly above that 

 of high contemporary barbarians like the Kaffirs. 

 At the same time the deciphering of hierogly- 

 phics on Egyptian monuments reveals to us the 

 existence in the valley of the Nile of an old and 

 immobile civilization, organized on a tribal basis, 

 like that of China, already sinking in political de- 

 crepitude at the ill-defined era at which we first 

 catch sight of it. Of the beginnings of civiliza- 

 tion on the Nile, and also indeed on the Eu- 

 phrates, and of the stages by which the Aryans 

 arrived at the intellectual preeminence to which 

 their recovered language bears witness, we know 

 absolutely nothing. But even if we were to 

 allow twenty thousand years for these proceed- 

 ings, — an interval nearly seven times as long 

 as that which separates the Homeric age from 

 our own time, — we should obtain but a brief 

 period compared with the countless ages of un- 

 mitigated barbarism which preceded it. The 

 progress of mankind is like a geometrical pro- 

 gression. For a good while the repeated dou- 

 bling produces quite unobtrusive results ; but 

 as we begin to reach the large numbers the 

 increase suddenly becomes astonishing. Since 

 the beginning of recorded history we have been 

 moving among the large numbers, and each de- 

 cade now witnesses a greater amount of psychi- 

 cal achievement than could have been witnessed 

 in thousands of years among pre-glacial men. 



63 



