TWO PATHS, ONE GOAL. 



115 



detail one particular line of the works of man in which the 

 limits of purpose are very wide. Among the important 

 agencies of liuman intercourse and development roads of 

 various kinds are prominent. Koads are obviously the products 

 •of purpose, and if we trace briefly some of them in an ascending 

 scale, we trace at the same time a very definite gradation of 

 purpose on the part of man. Pre-historic man can have had 

 little more than a few beaten tracks, hardly differing from the 

 tracks of goats on the side of a mountain, by which he would 

 wander from one locality to another. In such a roadwny 

 it is hardly possible to trace purpose, for it would be formed in 

 a subordinate way by his finding this path the line of least 

 resistance to his movements from place to place. With 

 growing intelligence and power of associating with his fellows, 

 he would come to see the results of liis half-conscious purpose 

 exhibited in a path which it would be to his interest to keep 

 open. A pathway of this kind must have been for an immense 

 stretch of time the precursor of Watling Street, that great 

 trunk-road which from pre-Saxon times cut a diagonal course 

 from the south-east to the north-west of Britain, or the 

 Icknield Way, another of the earliest lines of British com- 

 munication, crossing at right angles the former great road. 

 From primitive pathways like these, gradually converted into 

 highways, it was a great advance when the Eomans ran their 

 great military roads through the country, ignoring natural 

 obstacles with masterful wisdom, and leaving behind them 

 these monuments of their power and greatness. Beyond these 

 developments of roads the growing needs of man and his 

 increasing skill slowly produced still liigher forms. Thus in 

 the coaching days of lOU years ago a high degree of perfection 

 for the purpose in view was attained. Then, again, further 

 improvement in the surfaces of roads was reached by the 

 teachings of Macadam, and yet such roads as these could 

 not meet the further development of traffic which came with 

 railways as they covered the country in the first half of the 

 nineteenth century. Thus railway lines grew and progressed 

 towards their present perfection, until we reach their present 

 development which carries them up mountains and through 

 mountains, underground, over rivers, and over the heads of 

 dwellers in great cities. 



These marvellous changes and advances beyond the primitive 

 pathways of our rude prognathous hair-clad ancestors embody 

 a world of growing purpose, and we may, in this simple 

 illustration, read even among this one class of work, on the 



