296 THE HISTORY OF 



Beauty of Nature, not for worship, but as a sensual plea- 

 sure. This is now the reality ; when thousands of years 

 have past, let us hope to be able to report better things ; 

 for we do not despair of Humanity, in it lies the germ of 

 the Divine, capable of eternal development and destined to 

 it. But with derision might we meet the cry of our high 

 culture ; for all earnest moral reflection upon History would 

 tell us, that we have yet scarcely struggled out of the 

 mire of the lowest degradation and barbarism. The 

 following facts, perhaps, made use of in a better way, 

 might afford a means to the attainment of a somewhat 

 better result. 



The Cradle of the human race, lying back in a distance 

 of time we can never explore, probably stood in a warm, 

 half-tropical climate, shaded by the broad leaves of the 

 Banana, the Plantain, and the delicate, feathery leaf of the 

 Date-Palm. What the first food of Man was, we know not, 

 but he seems to have used these two plants at a very 

 early period, since neither of them, from the oldest times 

 of which we have record, appeared in the condition in 

 which they came from the hands of Nature, but essentially 

 altered by the interference of human cultivation. The wild 

 Banana is a small, ill-flavoured fruit, filled with numerous 

 seeds ; the cultivated plant, on the contrary, contains no 

 fertile seeds in its nutritious berry; its maintenance, its 

 multiplication, are dependant wholly on the activity of Man, 

 who propagates it artificially by cuttings. Very early too 

 must Man have made the large-seeded Grasses tributaries 

 to his store-house. We know not the time when any of 

 the plants now used as Bread-corn, were transplanted from 

 the Eden of God into the fields of Man. Their use has 

 passed from one race to another, but when we arrive at the 

 most ancient sources, the legends tell us, in manifold 



