opening up a new era in her history. It is tke moment 

 when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, 

 immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the 

 power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into 

 the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was 

 designed. 



I think it is thus in the development of humanity. 

 Long ages may pass during which a race, to all external 

 observation, appears to be making no real progress. 

 Additions may be made to learning, and the records of 

 history may constantly grow, but there is nothing in 

 its sphere of thought, or in the features of its life, that 

 can be called essentially new. Yet, nature may have 

 been all along slowly working in a way which evades 

 our scrutiny until the result of her operations suddenly 

 appears in a new and revolutionary movement, carrying 

 the race to a higher plane of civilization. 



It is not difficult to point out such epochs in human 

 progress. The greatest of all, because it was the first, 

 is one of which we find no record either in written or 

 geological history. It was the epoch when our pro- 

 genitors first took conscious thought of the morrow, 

 first used the crude weapons which nature had placed 

 within their reach to kill their prey, first built a fire 

 to warm their bodies and cook their food. I love to 

 fancy that there was some one first man, the Adam of 

 evolution, who did all this, and who used the power 

 thus acquired to show his fellows how they might 

 profit by his example. When the members of the tribe 

 or community which he gathered around him began 

 to conceive of life as a whole to include yesterda}', 

 to-day and to-morrow in the same mental grasp to 



