The Prehistoric Difficulty. 1 1 



historic and savage states of humanity. Ferhaps 

 no better position offers itself than this present 

 moment of time which is now passing, and this 

 point of space in which we now happen to be. We 

 are here, and now : we are defined by this moment 

 and this point. How different has it been with the 

 family to which we belong! Men and women have 

 lived, and their hearts have throbbed, all over the 

 habitable space on this globe of ours, and all the 

 way back through the ages past, in places where we 

 have never set a foot, in ages long before we were 

 born. The course of our family's history, origin- 

 ating in a definite place and at a definite time, has 

 flowed outward and onward to all the borders and 

 limits of this habitable globe. Unlike the fated 

 sameness of any dumb species of animals, with its 

 instincts running in a fixed channel, and the ex- 

 pression of its life about as rigid as a scientific for- 

 mula, the story of our family has been rather that 

 of a turbulent sea, swelling and surging in all direc- 

 tions. It has ever had a free and self-willed nature. 

 It has ever been a restless body of vitality, just 

 kept within some bounds of time and space and 

 eternal laws, by one Power /which knows how to 

 limit the tide. 



4. Defining in particular the position of our an- 

 cestry, with reference to the knowledge 

 .» , •, , r ^.1 Outside of 



that posterity were to acquire of them, History. 



we may note that different fortunes 



have attended different lines in the family's an- 



