44 
NATURES APPEAL. 
pine tree "talking to the wind with whistling breath," and "the 
dark cedar sighing for Lebanon." 
(6) Finally, cannot we study this question developmentally ? 
This is a difficult matter, and you must not be surprised if I 
fail to make my meaning clear. If you do not understand me you 
must credit me with some profound thought. 
I must, to begin with, take it for granted that whatever view we 
may hold of our origin, we believe at all events that many 
"thousands of ages have gone to the moulding of man." That 
whatever cycles Nature has gone through, these cycles represent 
enormous periods of time. Now, from our birth onwards we 
slowly develop and change. The man is not merely a large 
child, he is a different creature, especially in his instincts and 
mental endowments. Shakespere has told us this in his seven ages 
of man. 
But before birth the development is a hundred times more rapid. 
There is pre-natal and post-natal development, and in the former 
events are crowded together one after the other so rapidly that the 
thing becomes miraculous. Think for a moment of the develop- 
ment of a chick before it leaves the egg, and remember that the 
same changes, or very nearly the same, go on in our own 
embryonic bodies. At first the future chick is a collection of 
cells ; then at the appointed time some of these cells form a little 
heart and begin to beat, others form the nervous system, and so 
on. But the development does not go on in quite the manner one 
might expect. At certain stages one sees before one a very peculiar 
creature, which might be turning into a fish, for it surely is going 
to develope gills. Then their is a longish curved tail and four 
limbs, which might become parts of a four-legged creature. 
What do all these mean. They mean that the future chick is 
reproducing, in little, some of the peculiarities, not of its parents, 
but of its remote ancestors. Nor does this entirely cease at birth. 
But if man (like the chick) in his physical development inherits 
at different stages the stamp of his ancestry, does it not follow 
that he must also inherit the stamp of their instincts ? These 
instincts can only show themselves after birth ; and no one can 
doubt, I think, who has watched the growth of children, that they 
go through fairly sharply marked-off phases in their instinctive 
and mental development, very much as they do in their physical. 
The baby has the instinct to get food ; it knows at once how to 
take it, and is quite clever at it. The young child has also the food 
instinct predominant, but it loves to play, and takes delight in moving 
its muscles and looking after itself generally, It is at first entirely 
selfish. The boy especially develops the ancestral instincts of 
chasing anything that will run away from him, the love of fighting 
and fighting games, and especially the love for animals. When he 
begins to read, if his mind is healthy, he likes books of adventures 
in wild, uncivilized lands, escapes from savages ; shooting, hunt- 
ing, &c. His fighting instinct may take the form of real fighting 
or rough, struggling games. During the period when these 
