THE LONG ROAD 
period he has survived plague and pestilence, and 
want and famine. What must he have survived in 
prehistoric times! What must he have had to con- 
tend with as a cave-dweller, as a tree-dweller, as 
ariver-drift man! Before he had tools or weapons 
what must he have had to contend with! 
Nature was full of sap and rioted in rude strength 
well up to Quaternary times, producing extravagant 
forms which apparently she had no use for, as she 
has discontinued them. 
In all these things you and I had our part and lot; 
of this prodigal outpouring of life we have reaped 
the benefit; amid these bizarre forms and this car- 
nival of lust and power, the manward impulse was 
nourished and forwarded. In Eocene times nearly 
half the mammals lived on other animals; it must 
have been an age of great slaughter. It favored the 
development of fleetness and cunning, in which we 
too have an interest. Our rude progenitor was surely 
there in some form, and escaped the slaughter. Then 
or later it is thought he took to the trees to escape 
his enemies, as the rats in Jamaica have taken to the 
trees to escape the mongoose. To his tree-climbing 
we probably owe our hand, with its opposing thumb. 
In all his disguises he is still our ancestor. His 
story reads like a fairy book. Never did nimble 
fancy of childhood invent such transformations — 
only the transformations are so infinitely slow, and 
attended with such struggle and suffering. Strike 
29 
