2i2 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



world in further civil strife mightier than all civil warfare of 



the past, and 



' Cry " Havock!" and let slip the dogs of war; 

 That this foul deed shall smell above the earth 

 With carrion men, groaning for burial/ 



This it appears to me must be the end of the final day of this 

 week of the Epoch of Hope, and war now drawing to a close 

 with its last day of Invention. This Epoch, which has made 

 up the week of the evolution devoted to ages of cruelty, sel- 

 fishness and war fighting for supremacy with those of benevo- 

 lence, charity and justice, which are to be evolved out of their 

 expiring ashes during the coming week of the Epoch of 

 Charity, by higher ideals of religion, government and com- 

 merce. 



I will now run through a few of the facts that go towards 

 distinguishing these three or four days of Government, 

 Science, Commerce and Invention, so as to point out to my 

 reader that they were evolved in the above order as stated (on 

 the Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Days re- 

 spectively in the course of creation) by my Tables. 



There is little doubt that the early Chinese civilisation dates 

 back in prehistoric times say, to anywhere between twenty to 

 eighty thousand years B.C., and we can also reckon it as highly 

 advanced as compared with savagery at so remote a date as 

 twenty thousand years B.C. Its fables and legends are of too 

 mythical a description to be looked upon as history in its more 

 restricted sense, and so uncertain are its narratives that we 

 are scarcely within the strictly historic times until we arrive 

 at five hundred B.C. Yet there is little doubt that ten to 

 twenty thousand years B.C., or possibly fifty thousand B.C., 

 its rich and fertile valleys and territories were decked with 

 fields of rye, and that these southern landscapes were decked 

 with magnificent gardens wherein the palm and other orna- 

 mental trees the fig, chestnut, and pomegranate ministered 

 to the wants of mankind. Although it can boast of some 

 form of civilisation thousands of tens of thousands of years 

 before any other nation dreamed of even tickling the ground 

 with a wooden spade ; and the Mongolian, through being the 

 first of all races to drop its nomadic habits, was the first to 

 evolve some form of agriculture and civilisation, skill, manu- 



