296 COSMIC PEILOSOPET. [pt. u 



thing indicates the most extreme harbarism; nowhere does 

 there appear a trace of anything like even the rudest civiliza- 

 tion, until we reach that comparatively recent epoch ante- 

 cedent to the dawn of history, but accessible to philology. 

 The partial restoration of the Arj'an mother-tongue enables 

 us to go back perhaps a dozen or fifteen •Centuries beyond the 

 age of Homer and the Vedas, and catch a few glimpses of 

 the prehistoric Aryans, — an agricultural race completely 

 tribal in organization, but acquainted with the use of metals, 

 and showing marks of an intelligence decidedly above that 

 of high contemporary barbarians like the Katfirs. At the 

 same time the deciphering of hieroglyphics 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 

 decrepitude at the ill-defined era at which we first catch 

 sight of it. Of the beginnings of civilization on the Nile, 

 and also, indeed, on the Euphrates, and of the stages by 

 which the Aryans arrived at the intellectual pre-eminence to 

 which their recovered language bears witness, we know abso- 

 lutely nothing. But even if we were to allow twenty 

 thousand years for these proceedings, — 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 unmitigated barbarism 

 which preceded it. The progress of mankind is like a geo- 

 metrical progression. For a good while the repeated doubling 

 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 mov- 

 ing among the large numbers, and each decade now witnesses 

 a greater amount of psychical achievement than could have 

 been witnessed in thousands of years among pre-glacial men. 

 Such a result is just what the Doctrine of Evolution teaches 

 us to anticipate ; and it thoroughly confirms our statement 



