PREFACE. vll 



rudiments, in installations ; the scene is the primeval 

 forest; the date, the world's dawn. Tracing his rise 

 as far as Family Life, this history does not even 

 follow him into the Tribe ; and as it is only then that 

 social and moral life begins in earnest, no formal dis- 

 cussion of these high themes occurs. All the higher 

 forces and phenomena with which the sciences of 

 Psychology, Ethics, and Theology usually deal come 

 on the world's stage at a later date, and no one need 

 be surprised if the semi-savage with whom we leave 

 off is found wanting in so many of the higher poten- 

 tialities of a human being. 



The Ascent of Mankind, as distinguished from the 

 Ascent of the Individual, was orginally summarized in 

 one or two closing lectures, but this stupendous sub- 

 ject would require a volume for itself, and these frag- 

 ments have been omitted for the present. Doubtless 

 it may disappoint some that at the close of all the be- 

 wildering vicissitudes outlined here, Man should ap- 

 pear, after all, so poor a creature. But the great lines 

 of his youth are the lines of his maturity, and it is 

 only by studying these, in themselves and in what 

 they connote, that the nature of Evolution and the 

 quality of Human Progress can be perceived. 



HENRY DRUMMOND. 



