MAN'S DEVOTION in 



living creature, unless it be a human being, can 

 reasonably be supposed to have acted in a way which 

 calls for such accurate adjustments of means to ends, 

 unless by a perfected instinct, which would have 

 taken many thousands of generations to emerge by 

 natural selection into efficiency. During the period 

 of its inefficiency the human race would have per- 

 ished, and if there had been such an instinct, some 

 traces of its former existence would surely have been 

 discovered before this. Since neither has happened, 

 the hypothesis is too absurd for consideration. It 

 is, therefore, certain that human beings must have 

 provisioned the females in their retreats, and the 

 questions arise, were they male or female, or some- 

 times of one and sometimes of the other kind? 

 What was the relation between them and the females 

 they fed? 



When man had learned the use of clubs, missiles, 

 and fire, in other words, when he had learned arti- 

 ficially to arm and warm himself, his survival was 

 no longer in question, but abundantly secure. Higher 

 intelligence applied to the use of these aids, and his 

 wonderful adaptation to handle them skillfully, 

 secured him advantages far outweighing the infirmi- 

 ties, disabilities, and perils brought upon him by his 

 physical uprightness. 



But the problems discussed in chapters I to VIII 

 of these essays, be it distinctly remembered, refer to 

 that long period which commences with the first 

 appearance on earth of the two-footed man-brute, 



