CHAPTER XIV 



TIME AND CONSEQUENCE 



There are many deficiences in the human constitution as 

 well as many virtues which are founded in ancestral acts or 

 habits established very long ago. Some are of times more 

 remote than the development of intellect ; things of physical 

 structure which persist because under the general law of 

 persistence they are estimated to be more valuable than 

 would be the readier variation under a less conservative law. 

 The science of evolution shows that much of the animal 

 character of the simpler phases of conduct, which reveals 

 a common source of motive with animal life, exists also in 

 bodily structure ; and a relationship is preserved or only 

 partly abandoned, which may be resumed upon occasion for 

 the preservation of existence. It is (for example), part of 

 known experience that when compelled, either by individual 

 mishap, or by tribal reversion, to descend again to savage 

 habits, men of civilization may soon resume more primitive 

 aspect and development. The cultivated taste for cooked 

 food, the nervous regard for details, even the acquired con- 

 ceptions of the higher authority in conduct, are quickly 

 dropped for the then more useful, although less advanced, 

 animal ideals. The savage and the animal persist in the 

 present individual. This persistence of consequences of 



