454 Life and Immortality. 
given up a roving habit of life, the advantage which would 
accrue from the planting of some more trees of a similar 
kind. They would undoubtedly be led to cultivation for 
themselves by a simple observation of the plan by which 
nature contrives in keeping up a continuation of her many 
kinds of plants. Instead of dropping the seeds upon the 
ground as nature is prone to do, and trusting to their burial 
by accident or otherwise, seeing the advantage to be gained 
by burying them out of the reach of noxious influences, 
whether of climate or animal life, they would soon learn to 
take the matter of planting under their own watchful care 
rather than leave it to the seemingly thoughtless provision 
of nature. But the problem of the first advance of palxo- 
lithic man toward civilization, is at present much too difficult 
to be solved, for it involves the consideration of certain ele- 
ments which we know too little about, and their disentangle- 
ment from others whose value is of recognized significance 
in the domain of biological science. 
While it has been shown how it has been possible for pri- 
meval man to have acquired a moral sense or conscience, yet 
it must not be forgotten that the lower animals, at least such 
as have come under the civilizing influence of man, have 
also come into possession of the same highly complex senti- 
ment which has been of such inestimable service to man for 
his progressive advancement. Other faculties, such as the 
powers of imagination, wonder, curiosity, an undefined 
sense of beauty, a tendency to imitation, and the love of 
excitement or novelty, have also been of immense impor- 
tance in this direction, for they could not fail to have led to 
the most capricious changes of customs and _ fashions. 
Caprice, it has been rather oddly claimed by a recent writer, 
is “one of the most remarkable and typical differences 
between savages and brutes.” It is not only possible to 
perceive how it is that man is capricious, but the lower ani- 
mals, as has been previously shown, are capricious in their 
affections, aversions and sense of beauty. And there is good 
