72 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



wrist to the elbow, instead of from the elbow to the wrist, or 

 upside down as compared with all the rest of our body, for 

 they cannot forget in half a million years the rains which 

 washed them into that position for twenty millions of years. 

 Yet nowadays we are arrogant enough to think that we can 

 despise the teachings of millions of years, and by Acts of 

 Parliament alter human nature, communities and societies in 

 a day. Yet it takes over one thousand years to make any 

 marked alteration in the mind of man. Thus it took the 

 Egyptians two thousand years after they had invented an 

 alphabet to realise that there was no necessity to draw an 

 illustration of an eye when they wrote the word eye, nor of a 

 monkey when they wrote the word monkey ; and it was not till 

 the Greeks pointed out the fact that this was a useless waste 

 of time that the folly of it dawned upon their infantile minds. 

 Yet their civilisation was little short of our own to-day in many 

 forms of advancement. In this respect we have made during 

 the last one hundred years the greatest advancement ever 

 made in the march of evolution by the fact that we have 

 acquired a rapidity of change of thought and a tolerance of 

 opinion never dreamed of in the past, and which will hasten 

 the results and possibilities of future development to an extent 

 that is beyond our conception to realize. For the freedom with 

 which opinions are now permitted to be expressed, and are 

 readily adopted, will do more in the course of a thousand years 

 to advance civilisation than all the armies and religions of the 

 past have done in ten thousand years by their wars to establish 

 governments, empires and commerce. 



The first influence which acted in this direction was the 

 evolution of Imagination, the first faculty of the human mind 

 which, by some chance action, taught mankind during his 

 ape existence the advantage of sticks and clubs as implements 

 of defence. This materially acted in , the direction of the 

 development of his mind. The second was probably that he 

 desired when it rained to sit under cover, and, as his powers 

 of imagination increased, he conceived the idea that he could 

 best attain this end by interweaving the boughs of the trees 

 above his head. The Orang-utan has progressed thus far, but 

 not having developed sufficiently to continually stand upright, 

 has not been able to develop further; but the apes, which 

 managed to become men before the earth cooled below 140 



