62 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



son, like mother like daughter. Fate rules all our actions. 

 These thoughts and ideas we hold to-day are not, as we like 

 to think them, the creations of our own individuality. No, 

 dear reader, the exalted order of thought and imagination of 

 to-day has not, and cannot be evolved in a second of time. It 

 is not the work of an instant, nor of an hour, day nor year. 

 The momentous thoughts which emerge instantaneously on 

 the mirror of the modern mind are the result, not of the few 

 hours that the modern inventor devotes to his rapidly-produced 

 designs, nor of the time employed by the philosopher of to- 

 day in working out the arguments of his scientific investiga- 

 tion, but the outcome of the past experience of his ancestors. 



This result is no more possible as an instant creation of 

 his own mind than it was possible for Archimedes of old, 

 because he had discovered the principles of the lever, to lift 

 the world. For granted he could have found a fulcrum, when 

 he exclaimed in his enthusiasm, " Give me a fulcrum, and 

 with this lever of which I have now learnt the principle I can 

 lift the Earth," (for it might have been possible to achieve 

 such an act with the sun as a fulcrum,,) but to evolve a lever of 

 sufficient strength and length, or to communicate -sufficient 

 power to humanity to permit of the possibility of driving such 

 a lever, if obtained, through the vast millions of miles of 

 space that the motive power would have to travel, was far 

 and away beyond the bounds of human capacity. So with the 

 human mind, the action of our mental productions of to-day 

 is not the result of our individual efforts, but far and 

 away beyond our individual capability. These ideas we 

 proudly call our own are the product of the study, thought 

 and experience, throughout the hundreds of thousands of years 

 of evolution, which it has taken to produce them in the brains 

 of our ancestors. 



The evolution of these ideas has been brought about in 

 the following manner. At the beginning of the Epoch of 

 Hope, God took away our power of memory, in order to advance 

 civilisation and to make us more observant, and so assist us 

 to evolve the faculties of Imagination and Comprehension. As 

 early as fifteen years of age our powers of observation are 

 strongly and fully developed, but in exact proportion, as 

 education and practice evolve the use of our memories and 

 reminiscences, this faculty is reinstated in our individual 



