labour. He began to store upknowledge. Contrivance followed

contrivance, each making it possible for a man to do more.

Always down the lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and

again, he is doing more… A quarter of a million years ago the

utmost man was a savage, abeing scarcely articulate, sheltering

in holes in the rocks, armed with a rough-hewn flint or a

fire-pointed stick, naked, living in small family groups, killed

by some younger man so soon as his first virile activity

declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would

have sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical

river valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his

little herds, a male, a few females, a child or so.

Heknew no future then, no kind of life except the life he led.

He fled the cave-bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the

promise of sword and spear; he froze to death upon a ledge of

coal; he drank water muddy with the clay that would one day make

cups of porcelain; he chewed the ear of wild wheat he had plucked

and gazed with a dim speculation in his eyes at the birds that

soared beyond his reach. Or suddenly he became aware of the scent

of another male and rose up roaring, his roars theformless

precursors of moral admonitions. For he was a great

individualist, that original, he suffered none other than

himself.

So through the long generations, this heavy precursor, this

ancestor of all of us, fought and bred and perished, changing

almost imperceptibly.

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