THE EPOCH OF HOPE 85 



the possession in a limited degree of which attribute of God 

 the Father had till now made her the slave of her relentless 

 spouse, man, the hitherto undisputed master of animal creation 

 whom she is henceforth to subjugate. 



Now I may mention here that this being the stick age 

 nearly all indication of the formation and development 

 of man's mind is obliterated by the course of time 

 and therefore we are entirely dependent on logical de- 

 ductions and conjectures to supply its evolution. Subse- 

 quently the creation of rough and smooth stone weapons 

 and tools marks the gradual growth of man's imagination and 

 conception, but during this period we must rely entirely on 

 conjecture and conception, so I have had to fall back on my 

 imagination to fill in these gaps of the probable manner in 

 which he advanced. It is probable that in the age of his ape 

 development, man when climbing or swinging from bough to 

 bough, fell to the ground, where writhing with pain he became 

 a source of ridicule to his more fortunate companions, who 

 with a monkey's strong sense of the ridiculous jabbered at him. 



The next step is natural and requires no great effort 

 of thought to follow it. From being the cause of ridicule 

 comes the emotion of injured pride, from injured pride comes 

 the impulse of anger. He rises instinctively without leaving 

 hold of the stick, and attacking the scoffers, discovers what an 

 advantage he has unexpectedly obtained over his adversary by 

 having a pointed weapon. He then starts to break off boughs 

 to fight with, and a sharp-pointed one which chance puts in 

 his way, by its breaking off in a slant, and a thrust given 

 instead of a blow, led from the use of a club to a spear, and 

 this soon evolved the desire in the future to sharpen every 

 stick ; and the germ of incentive thus given to improve upon 

 nature is sufficient, when assisted by the fact that man has 

 attained, with his upright posture, the possibility of evolving 

 the first germs of Imagination ; and it is this incentive to im- 

 prove on nature that now inspires him with the ambition to 

 attain a perpendicular and bipedal locomotion, which was the 

 final physical development which was to permit whichever 

 animal had first acquired sufficient brains and perseverance to 

 evolve these conditions to assume the supremacy of all other 

 creations of nature by being granted a mind as the Olympic 

 Crown of physical superiority. For the creation of man is not, 



