A Three- fold Development. 161 



we find in the gravel deposits at the close of the glacial 

 epoch. He had then risen far enough above his brute 

 associates so that he knew how to make simple weapons 

 and tools from the hard flinty rocks that he found about 

 him. What was his condition and development from his 

 first appearance up to where he has left his works behind 

 him, we must surmise and judge as well as we can. He 

 was probably, at first, simply a biped animal, having a 

 brain of more force and acuteness than had the animals 

 by which he was surrounded. For many thousands of 

 years before the beginning of the most ancient civiliza- 

 tions, men were but savages of the lowest type. They 

 warred with their enemies and competitors. Beings less 

 strong and cunning than themselves became their prey. 

 Like the animals, they were born, grew and died dur- 

 ing countless generations, in company with the mam- 

 moth, the urus, and other extinct species of the brute 

 kingdom, similar in life, and only equal in all moral 

 relations to their four-footed neighbors. The stream of 

 evolution bore man, like other species, forwgjKd in its 

 current, and he neither knew nor thought of what he 

 was or where he was bound. Finally his more active 

 brain brought him to invent the rudiments of a language. 

 This could not, at first, have been much in advance of 

 the inarticulate cries of other animals, but gradually 

 grew in distinctness as his increasing thought and in- 

 telligence asserted itself. His first weapon, the stick or 

 stone, which he picked up as did the monkey or ape, be- 

 came selected ^-nd chosen for its fitness for his use. 

 Nature furnished him with fire and, like other animals, 

 he was at first probably afraid of it, but finally learned 

 that by its use he could warm himself in cold or chilly 

 days and nights. Long afterwards he learned that by 

 its use he could soften his food, open his shellfish or 

 bake the hard nuts he ate. Can you imagine the condi- 

 tion of the human race if all knowledge of the use of 

 fire was suddenly lost? We depend so directly upon its 

 use in such a multitude of ways and are so accustomed 

 to all of its benefits that I believe none of us can place 

 ourselves, in imagination, in a condition or among a 

 people who have never known its use. Parent of nearly 

 all the arts, civilization and culture would not have been 



