THE DA WN OF MIND. 141 



equal to this small discovery, and there are vast 

 remains representing long intervals of time where all 

 the stone implements and tools are of the unground 

 type. Even when the hour did come, when savage 

 vied with savage in putting the finest polish on his 

 flints, his inspiration probahly came from Nature. 

 The first lapidary was the sea ; the smoothed pebble 

 on the beach, or the rounded stone of the mountain 

 stream, supplied the pattern. There is no question 

 that the rough stone came earlier than the ground 

 stone. Thus the implements of the Drift Period, 

 those of the Danish Mounds, the Bone Caves, and the 

 gravels of St. AcLeul are mostly unground, while 

 those of the later Lake-Dwellers are almost wholly of 

 the smooth type. 



To follow the Stone Age upward into the Bronze 

 Period, and from that to the Age of Iron is not neces- 

 sary for the present purpose. For at this point the 

 order of succession passes from shell-mound and 

 crannog, into living hands. There are nations with 

 us still who have climbed so short a distance up the 

 psychic scale as to be still in the Age of Stone-^ 

 peoples whose mental culture and habits are often 

 actual witnesses to the mental states of early Man. 

 These children of Nature take up the thread of mental 

 progress where the Troglodyte and Drift- Man left it ; 

 and the modern traveller, starting from the civili- 

 zation of Europe can follow Mind downwards step by 

 step, in ever descending order, tracing its shadings 

 backwards to a first simplicity till he finds himself 

 with the still living Lake-dweller of Nyasaland or 

 the Bushman of the African forest. Time was when 

 these humble tribes, with their strange and artless 



