THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



haps extend still further, whether he himself 

 may not have developed from an animal. And 

 he may recognize with calm conviction that this 

 fact cannot have any more significance morally 

 than that other fact which is affirmed a thousand 

 times every day and sanctified by the deep love 

 of every mother the fact that even the greatest 

 man must have first developed from a primitive, 

 human bud, from a child which can neither 

 speak nor walk, which germinates in the dark 

 recesses of nature, just as that blue bell out there 

 develops under the hot rays of the sun. And if 

 the individual develops in this way, why should 

 not all humanity have developed in this way, 

 once upon a time? ** 



It was about a million years ago. If a man 

 could have had the opportunity to wander 

 through our present European continent, with a 

 rifle in his hands, he would have seen in those 

 days a very strange country. He might have 

 imagined that he was in the interior of Africa 

 as we know it to-day. He would have tramped 

 for ( weeks over immense prairies in Southern 

 Europe, dotted sporadically with a few dense 

 woods, and out of the wilderness of this green ' 

 ocean of grass, he would have started before 

 him innumerable herds of antelopes, giraffes and 



