146 THE DAWN OF MIND. 



nations have fallen from a higher intellectual level the 

 proof indicates a rising potentiality and widening of 

 range as we pass from primitive to civilized states. It 

 is open to debate whether during the historic period 

 mere intellectual advance has been considerable, 

 whether more penetrating or commanding intellects 

 have ever appeared than those of Job, Isaiah, Plato, 

 Shakspeare. But that is matter of yesterday. 

 What concerns us now to note is that the Mind of 

 Man as a whole has had a slow and gradual dawn ; 

 that it has existed, and exists to-day, among certain 

 tribes at almost the lowest point of development with 

 which the word human can be associated ; and that 

 from that point an Ascent of Mind can be traced from 

 tribe to nation in an ever increasing complexity and 

 through infinitely delicate shades of improvement, till 

 the highest civilized states are reached. In the very 

 nature of things we should have expected such a re- 

 sult. For this is not only a question of faculty. In 

 a far more intimate sense than we are apt to imagine, 

 it is a question of a gradually evolving environment. 

 Every infinitesimal enrichment of the soil for Mind to 

 grow in meant an infinitesimal enrichment of the 

 Mind itself. " It needs but to ask what would happen 

 to ourselves were the whole mass of existing knowl- 

 edge obliterated, and were children with nothing be- 

 yond their nursery-language left to grow up without 

 guidance or instruction from adults, to perceive that 

 even now the higher intellectual faculties would be 

 almost inoperative, from lack of the materials and 

 aids accumulated by past civilization. And seeing 

 this, we cannot fail to see that development of the 

 higher intellectual faculties has gone on part passu 



