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DEDICATION

This volume is dedicated to my Mother and my Wife--the two women whose influence has most largely shaped my life, and whose companionship has afforded me so much happiness. It was written with the hope that it might be of value to my two children, and may they find as much happiness in life as has the author.

HUMAN LIFE

THE HABITAT OF MAN

In reviewing the facts concerning humanity, which are well authenticated at the present date, with the object of getting a composite view of the greatest of all "world riddles"--"Life"--possibly nothing tends so largely to expand our mental horizon as a study of the earth itself or man's place of abode. The ideas of the educated and cultured mind, at the beginning of the twentieth century, upon cosmogony, are necessarily of such a character that man's heretofore undisputed boast of being the objective and acme of creation or evolution is forced into that great mass of theories which science has proven to be absolutely untenable. Since the relative importance of the factors of heredity and adaptation has become known, the environment, or conditions surrounding man's existence in times past, is of exceptional importance, as, from an understanding of these prehistoric limitations, we are better able to judge what must have been the achievement of the individual and the race than we could be when in ignorance of these facts.

The length of prehistoric time has been the subject of much intelligent labor and thought, as well as the occasion for much dissenting of opinion and more or less designed misstatement. Until very recently, it has been difficult to reconcile the theories, as promulgated by the authorities in the various departments of science; but, notwithstanding this, some light may be obtained by the summarization of the most plausible hypotheses now advocated. We cannot take the space to go into detail concerning these, but will merely touch upon the most salient points.

The constancy of the supply of heat furnished by the sun and the division of the year into definite seasons was one of the first phenomena which attracted the attention of man at the dawn of history, and in the many accounts of the creation which we find in literature we see the feeble attempts of man to account for what he observed. Although the knowledge which we have at the present time is not complete enough to warrant any feeling of pride, yet we do know enough to say, with certainty, some things concerning the solar system. We know that our sun cannot forever radiate away its heat into space without sometime becoming as cold or colder than we are, unless the energy which it is losing in the form of heat be restored to it by some means not at this time known. Sir William Thomson has calculated that at the present rate of solar radiation, which amounts to about twenty-eight calories per minute, per square centimeter, at the distance of the mean radius of the earth's orbit, it would have taken somewhat more than fifteen million years for the heat generated by the contraction of the sun's mass from the orbit of the outer planet, Neptune, to its present size, to have been radiated away into space. This means that gravity, as a source of heat development, at the rate of solar radiation now known, would account for, perhaps, twenty million years' expenditure of energy in reducing the sun's diameter to but one-thirteen-thousandth part of what it once was. Not only does the nebular hypothesis fall short of accounting for the facts, as will subsequently be shown in this one particular of the length of time during which our solar system has existed, but it does not account for the variation in the obliquity of the poles of the planets, which are the attendants upon the sun; nor does gravitative attraction alone enable us to account for the tremendous velocities of some of the stars through space, such as Arcturus,--so that it may be safely assumed that we shall be forced to modify our ideas as to the value of the nebular hypothesis as a working basis, before we can harmonize our deductions from astronomical and geological grounds. Fortunately, the study of the spiral nebulae has done much to elucidate our conceptions of the formation of the planetary systems, and from the discoveries made concerning these highly attenuated bodies of matter, a new hypothesis has been formed which will completely harmonize, perhaps, with these above stated facts, which could not be made to accord with the nebular theory as previously held.

One source of the continued acquisition of energy by our sun, whose value is hard to estimate, is the shooting stars, or meteors, which constantly fall into it. Astronomical records show that, from the earth alone, no less than twenty million shooting stars are daily within the limits of vision, and inasmuch as the solar system is moving with a velocity of some twenty miles per second through space, it will be seen that the number of meteors which would come within the influence of the sun, being as it is about one and one-third million times the volume of the earth, would be practically infinite. What then must be said of the amount of energy acquired by the sun from these, although each meteor may have a mass of but a few grams, and perhaps may be only several hundred miles away from its successor? It is clearly demonstrated that, if no such additions of energy were received by our sun, in about ten million years its diameter would be reduced to one-half of what it is now, and its mass, where now it exists as a gas, would then become a solid, at least upon the surface, and the quantity of heat received by the earth would become so small that life here, as we know of it, would be an impossibility. But if it be granted that the sun annually gathers, by its gravitative attraction, a combined mass of matter equal to the one-hundredth part of our earth, at a distance away from its center equal to the main radius of the earth's orbit, the energy dissipated by its radiation of heat at its present rate would be accounted for, while the sensible heat of the sun would not diminish, and the supply would be kept up indefinitely. That such additions of mass are made, there can be no doubt, but as to their quantity, we cannot, with our present knowledge, even hazard a guess.

In speaking of the solar heat and man's dependence upon it in a constant definite quantity, as one of the conditions of his existence, perhaps it will give us some just appreciation of his place in nature when we consider that the earth receives somewhat less than one two-billionth part of the heat radiated away by the sun, and while this expression makes the quantity which we receive seem rather small, it is, nevertheless, large enough annually to melt a layer of ice one hundred and seventy-five feet thick--all over the surface of the earth, and is a little more than one six-thousandth part of the quantity of heat which would be generated by the burning of a mass of coal as large as the sun.

Turning from the theories of astronomy, which are obviously more or less inaccurate, owing to their very nature and the character and duration of the observations upon which they are based, we come to the nearer and more certain deductions of geology. Here we have the phenomena of denudation and deposition with which to deal, and inasmuch as these are measurable at many places, and under many conditions upon the earth to-day, it is safe to assume that computations made from these measurements cannot be far from the truth. We know that practically all of the great formations of the earth were depositions of material from water which contained them, and that, in many cases, heat caused these strata to be metamorphosed or crystallized ages after they were deposited, and that in this crystallization many of the fossils remaining imbedded in the deposited matter were destroyed. Concerning this deposition we know that it is going on to-day in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where, in the deeper portions the Globigerina ooze is filling in these depressions with a deposit, resembling chalk, at the rate of perhaps an inch per century. We know that the Gulf of Mexico and several other ocean areas are being filled in with silt at the rate of as high as three inches per century. This silt is brought down in the tributary rivers and emptied into the gulfs. We also know that large areas in the Indian Ocean are being covered with coral and the d?bris from the coral reefs. We are absolutely certain that every geological period has had its characteristic fauna and flora, and that, in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, some persistent types have connected it with both the past and the future, so that the fossils have become the "open sesame" to the geological records. We further know that the strata composing the earth's surface are subject to elevation and subsidence, such as is now going on in the delta of the Nile, on the coast of the Netherlands, and in many other places, and that such movement is a measurable quantity, given only the necessary time.

The total thickness of known strata measures but about one-three hundred and twentieth part of the earth's diameter, or, in round numbers, twenty-five miles. Thirty thousand feet of this is quite readily identified as belonging to the old Archaic or Laurentian period, and constitutes the oldest stratified deposit known. Even in this, we find the remains of the Eozoon Canadense, which is now universally acknowledged to be the petrifaction of a foraminiferous living organism with a chambered shell. This means that, at this time, the earth's atmosphere must have been very similar to what it is at the present, and that the temperature of the sea was somewhere between the boiling and the freezing points of water. What time had elapsed since the earth was thrown off by the sun in an incandescent state can only be faintly imagined. At the rate of deposition given for the deepest of ocean deposits, this Archaic period would have taken perhaps thirty-six million years; but inasmuch as the water may have been far warmer then than now, and the rainfall more abundant, and the forces of denudation in all respects more active, this figure may be excessive. The next eighteen thousand feet of strata are easily identified as Lower Silurian, by the Diatoms which occur imbedded in them, and these formations include some of the largest deposits of limestone known. At our rate of calculation, this deposit would require no less than nine and one-half million years, and, in assuming this figure, no account is made of the intervals of time during which no deposit took place, although such periods of inactivity must necessarily have been. The Upper Silurian strata consists of twenty thousand feet, the fossils of which are the lower fishes, and for which we must assign a period of time equal to no less than twenty-five million years, inasmuch as these deposits are limestones and sandstones, or the remains of water-living animals and plants.

In the Silurian rocks, we find the remains of an air-breathing scorpion, very similar to that found to-day, which shows that the atmosphere at that remote period was practically the same as we have at the present time.

In the Mesozoic time, we find deposits aggregating some fifteen thousand feet, and inasmuch as the Triassic sandstones were formations of slow deposition, our heretofore established rate will not answer the conditions. It has been estimated, after the most careful study of the Triassic and Jurassic measures, that probably no less than thirty million years were occupied by these periods, and that the chalk deposits of the Cretaceous must have taken at the present known rate, in like formations, somewhat over six million years of ceaseless activity. This gives to Mesozoic time a period of thirty-six million years, as a minimum, and, from what we know of the rate of biological evolution, this figure is conservative. The first period of the Mesozoic time was characterized by monotremes, the Jurassic by marsupials, and the latter by the first of man's direct progenitors, the placentals. The flora of this period consisted almost entirely of gymnosperms, or naked seed plants, and, as far as we know, at the close of this second great division of geological time, conditions on the earth were, in all respects, very much as they are to-day.

Concerning the climatic conditions at the beginning of the Cenozoic time, we have every reason to believe that from the commencement of the Lower Silurian epoch, until then, there were no climatic zones upon the earth. Not only have coral formations been found in what are now Arctic waters, when we know that such reefs are formed only in waters where a moderately warm temperature is constantly maintained, but the cephalipods of the genus Ammonitoidea are found in what is now the Antarctic zone, and in the torrid. While, at the present time, we cannot see how the obliquity of the earth's poles to the plane of the ecliptic could have been changed after the earth began its career as an independent planet, yet the facts above stated show that the climatic zones must have been unknown during the Tertiary period. Our common cypress, which is now so plentiful in Florida and California, had very close relatives living as far north as Spitzbergen, as lately as Miocene time. Magnolias, which are now so abundant in all of the Gulf States, are plentifully found in the Miocene strata of Greenland.

Returning to the length of the Tertiary period, it is well to note that, covering Wyoming and Nebraska, there was an immense lake, at least as large as Lake Superior is to-day, and into which several quite large rivers emptied, whose head waters were in the surrounding mountain ranges. This lake was at one time at least five thousand feet deep, and was completely filled up by the fine mud and silt, as the formation now shows, although at the known rate of filling in of smaller modern lakes, into which rivers, which originate in glaciers, empty, this would have taken the better part of fifty thousand years. This figure is particularly conservative, as during the Eocene period, there could have been neither glaciers nor melting snowfields to assist in the denudation at the head waters of the tributary rivers. During the Miocene period, many of the best geologists hold that America and Europe were connected, and there are certain similarities in their fauna and flora which make this very probable. Supposing that this depression which constitutes the bed of the North Atlantic Ocean, took place at the highest known rate of subsidence, as measured upon the coast of Sweden to-day, it is almost impossible to state the amount of time that necessarily elapsed from the beginning of the sinking of this strip until it finally went below the surface of the water. That such changes in level did take place in the Tertiary period, no one can doubt, as chalk deposits in England, which must have been laid down in the deep oceans, have now an elevation of thousands of feet. The Nummulite limestone of this same period is found in both the Alps and the Himalayas, at an elevation as great as ten thousand feet. The consideration of the fact that the greatest known rate of elevation or subsidence is, perhaps, scarcely more than two feet per century makes the figure of five hundred thousand years, as a minimum for Pliocene time, seem rather conservative.

Toward the close of the Tertiary era the finishing touches were placed upon some of the greatest of the geological works. The folding of the strata, which had been going on for a long period in Eastern New York, was brought to an end by a violent rupture therein, and the out-rushing igneous rock, which was subsequently cooled rapidly by the floods of water flowing over it, gave us the beautiful palisades of the Hudson River. In the west, this folding resulted in the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range, with their attendant high plateaux. In Europe, the Alps and the Pyrenees Mountains both belong to this period, while the grandest and highest of all mountain chains, the Himalayas, of Asia, were the culminating effect of the gigantic foldings of the earth's crust.

The deposits of the Tertiary period will aggregate somewhat more than three thousand feet, and, inasmuch as this entire time was one of continued change in level, or the fluctuation between the subsidence of the earth's strata on the one hand and the elevation on the other , it is very hard to form any conjecture as to the actual amount of time required to do this work. Certainly, from what we know of the rate at which like phenomena are taking place at the present time in Northeastern North America, in Northwestern Europe, and Western Asia, the figure, as sometimes given, of ten million years seems very conservative.

In the brief review which we have just given, of what can be conservatively considered the minimum limits of geological time, we have taken into account generally only periods of activity, and in but a few cases has any estimation been hazarded as to the proportion which this was of the whole time consumed in bringing about the changes which the fossils show so clearly to have taken place during the various epochs. But one thing should be kept clearly in mind, and that is, that no matter how long geological time may seem, it is but an infinitely small fraction of the period which must have elapsed since the world came into existence, as this globe had to cool down to below the boiling point of water before any geological records could be made. When thought of in this way, the Laurentian period becomes as but yesterday, and even man's dwelling place, which seems relatively so large, dwindles into nothingness, when compared with the vastness of the interstellar spaces or the size of the larger stars. Whoever conscientiously endeavors to form any idea of the teachings of astronomy and geology, must necessarily feel any prejudice which he had for man as the object and culmination of either the evolutionary or creative power, shrink at a tremendous rate, while over his mentality comes the sense of his diminutiveness, which awakens in him a brotherly feeling for even the primitive single-celled Laurentian Eozoon Canadensis, or the unnucleated monera of the present time. It must have been this same sense-perception in the Hindoos which made them worship and revere life wherever they found it, and which inspired them with so active a sympathy toward all living things.

In the preceding chapter, no mention has been made of the length of the Quaternary sub-division of Cenozoic time, and it will now be our aim to briefly review this period and then investigate the evidence which we have as to how much of this time man has been a portion of its fauna.

The geological record teaches us that in the so-called Glacial Period, at least two distinct epochs of low temperature, and the consequential accumulation of ice, are to be definitely discerned. Still further back, we see evidence of glacial action in the Permian Strata, and possibly as far back as the Cambrian formations, although these eras of cold are not comparable with the period at the beginning of the Quaternary time. Croll, the Scottish physicist, first called attention to the fact that at certain regular intervals of time, the precession of the equinoxes, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, would so act in conjunction as to render favorable a great many conditions which would certainly all point toward a period of extreme cold. He calculated that the earth was traveling around the sun in an ellipse of maximum eccentricity, and that winter was occurring in the northern hemisphere when the earth was furthest from the sun, for the last time some quarter of a million years ago. About eighty thousand years after this date, the coincidence of the two phenomena reached a maximum effect, and about eighty thousand years later, climatic conditions were again about as we have them to-day. Upon this hypothesis, another period of extreme cold must have existed some one-half million years earlier, as calculations upon the same premises as were used in the last computation will show. It is likewise true that, according to this theory, there must have been at least one other such period further back in geological time, and it is now to be seen whether our records, as shown by the strata, establish these facts.

Prior to the enunciation of this theory by Croll, the famous English geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, from measurements of the strata, had calculated that the last period of glaciation occurred about as Croll stated, and that a period of cold and ice far more intense and extensive occurred some four or five hundred thousand years earlier. Mr. Laing has shown that, in order to make such conditions as must have existed at this time, not only is a low temperature necessary, but a certain amount of land must have an elevation sufficient to give the required initial fall to the ice river, so that it may move over the obstacles in its way, and that the higher such elevations in the Arctic zones, and the greater the humidity of the air when it strikes such elevated polar plateaux, the more augmented will be the probability of glacial activity. The rapidity of the glacier's movement can have no bearing upon the duration of the glacial period, inasmuch as a certain length of time may have been required for the ice-cap to form and push forward to a certain place, and it may have remained there for an indeterminate period, governed only by the amount of snow deposited upon the original source, and the rapidity of melting at the moraine. In Eastern England, no less than four distinct boulder clays have been found separated by the d?bris deposited from the moraines of each ice sheet, and a few hundred miles away in France, the record is so certain that we know that the Arctic fauna and flora gave away twice for that of the warmer parts of the Temperate zones.

We are certain that both that portion of Scandinavia and Canada, which were the centers of the great European and American ice-caps, had an elevation greatly in excess of what it is to-day, at the time of the glacial epoch. During the first glaciation, Eastern Canada, or that part south of Hudson's Bay, was certainly twenty-five hundred feet higher than it is now, and the area covered by ocean formations or marine beds to the southward, show that at the same time these sections were very much lower than they are at the present day. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the elevation in Norway was at least a couple of thousand feet more than at present; while both England and Ireland have risen a considerable amount since this period.

There are other ways by which we may form some estimate of the time which has elapsed since the melting away of the great glaciers, besides that given by Croll. From measurements taken on Table Rock, at Niagara Falls, which we know has receded in post-glacial times from Lewiston to the place which it occupies at present, we are certain that Lyell was not far wrong when he estimated this to have taken at least sixty thousand years. Shaler, on entirely different grounds,--mainly the redistribution of certain angiosperms--has arrived at figures in excess of these. Calculations made upon the canyons of the Columbia, San Joaquin, and Colorado Rivers, all show the estimations previously given to be conservative. Of course, the figures given will apply only to the time which has elapsed since the melting of the American ice-cap, as we have no means of knowing that the American and European glaciers acted at all in unison in their retreat to the northward. The manner in which we can get some idea of the length of time required to account for the enormous quantity of work done in the Champlain period, is by taking into account the deposits which lie in almost all of the great river valleys which were covered by the glaciers, or whose watersheds were made into lakes by the subsidence of the land to the north, and the rapid melting of that portion of the ice-cap which contained stones, dirt, and other material picked up in the travels of the glacier across the country. The Rhine, the Rhone, and the Danube in Europe, and the St. Lawrence, the Connecticut, and the Mississippi in America, all flow through valleys lined with cliffs of loess. These accumulations overlying the coarser sands and gravels, and conforming to the river valleys, have been measured in the case of the Rhine, and were found to be about eight hundred feet in depth. It is unreasonable to suppose that these deposits being, as they are, material thrown down out of the water after the rivers had lost their transporting power, could have accumulated at a greater rate than that now going on in the rivers, such as the Mississippi and the Nile, to-day, and if this was the case, these deposits must have taken no less than three hundred and twenty-five thousand years to form. Inasmuch as this work was all done during the Champlain period, this figure can be safely taken as the minimum for the measure of the duration of that time.

Arriving now at the recent period of Quaternary time, we find in Europe evidences of a very short and less intense period of cold; in the remains of the reindeer and other Arctic animals in southern France. Associated with these, although of a later period, we find the bones of the cave bear, hyena, and lion, and in many of the localities intimately associated with these are the bones of man. In fact, since the first discovery of the paleolithic implements in the gravels of the Somme, there have been almost countless finds of human remains in England, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Greece, in Europe; Algiers, Morocco, Egypt, and Natal, in Africa; in China, Japan, India, Syria, and Palestine, in Asia; in Brazil and Argentina in South America, and in no less than ten States of this country, associated with stone implements or paleoliths, and all of which, dating from the beginning of the Quaternary period, have established the certainty of human existence during the entire Quaternary era, beyond the possibility of doubt.

Turning now from geological evidence to that founded upon other observations, as to the length of time man has been an inhabitant of the earth, perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries was that of the Tumuli or mounds of shells of such animals as the oyster, cockle, limpet, etc., and, along with this, the bones of birds, wild animals, and fish, together with stone implements and rude pottery. These kitchen-middens were first discovered in Denmark, but they have since been found in many countries where savages have lived along the coast. In many of the Swiss lakes, such as Zurich and Neufchatel, there have been found piles driven into the ground, around which, in dredging, human bones, as well as stone implements, have been brought up, and which are now known to have been the dwelling-places and remains of prehistoric peoples, who located in this manner so as to protect themselves from prowling wild animals and from their savage neighbors. From the amount and character of these deposits, we are forced to assume that the habitations were used for a long period, and from geological computation of the time required to deposit the silt around these piles in the Swiss Lake-villages, and from the similarity of the remains in the Danish peat-mosses and the kitchen-middens no period could be assigned to their antiquity of less than seven thousand years.

Our earliest record of historic man is found in the Valley of the Nile, where we can say with certainty that, over seven thousand years ago, there existed a high state of civilization under the old Egyptian Empire. Menes was the first recorded king who sat on the throne, and during the six dynasties of kings which composed this period, we see the rise to supremacy of Memphis, the building of the pyramids, the accumulation of a varied and extensive literature, and the perfection of the industrial and fine arts. In fact, so faithfully and indestructibly were the lines of human faces reproduced upon stone and other materials, that, at this day, we have no difficulty in identifying the different races of men from their resemblance at the present time. Menes, himself, carried to completion the great engineering feat of turning the course of the Nile so as to obtain a site for his capital, at Memphis. His successor was not only a patron but a practitioner of the art of medicine. From the monuments and papyri of the great tombs of Ghizeh and Sakkara, we have learned so much of the social and political life of Egypt at this period through the deciphering of the Rosetta stone by Champollion, that we may be said to have a very accurate knowledge of mankind, as his existence was conditioned in Egypt from four to five thousand years before the beginning of our present era. From Memphis, the seat of the government first shifts to Heracleopolis, and then to Thebes, and, during these changes, we see Egypt go back into the night of semi-barbarism , and after a long period of time to again develop a high state of civilization, under a new language and a new religion, in the eleventh dynasty. Egyptian influence extended from the equator on the south, to southern Syria on the north, and Isis and Osiris were the deities that commanded the veneration of the then civilized world. The kings of this dynasty built the famous labyrinth of Fayoum, where in the desert was formed a large artificial lake with tunnels and sluices so arranged that the annual inundations of the Nile were partially controlled by allowing the surplus water to fill this lake, and in the time of a drouth, letting it out to irrigate the valley as needed. Many temples, obelisks, and statues were erected, and the period was one of social and literary activity. About two thousand years before Christ, the seat of the government was transferred from Thebes to the Delta, and, shortly after this, the Hyksos dynasty began with a conquest by these invaders, who laid all Egypt under tribute. The conquerors adopted both the civilization and the religion of their subjects, and reigned over Egypt somewhat more than five hundred years. Their expulsion marks the beginning of the new empire, which extended the Egyptian influence from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and subjugated both Babylon and Nineveh. From this time on, we are on certain and firm historical grounds, and with the founding of the great library at Alexandria, by Ptolemy Philadelphus, Egypt received her last great literary impulse, and since the fourth century of this era the part which she has played in the struggle of humanity has been inconsiderable. From other data gathered by Horner, who sunk numerous shafts across the Nile Valley at Memphis, and who brought up copper knives and pottery from depths approximately of sixty feet, it has been calculated, from the rate of deposition in that valley to-day, that these remains are upward of twenty-five thousand years old. In other places, Paleoliths have been found that are undoubtedly very much older than the oldest temples and tombs. Furthermore, we know that in all the traditions of this country, the first inhabitants are represented as being autochthonous, which, if correct, must mean a very great state of antiquity, so far as man is concerned; if it be granted that this Egyptian civilization, which is known to have existed at Memphis, had to develop of its own accord in the Valley of the Nile, abundantly fertile though it always has been.

In the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, we have further evidence of the existence of a high state of civilization, as taken from the cylinder of Sargon I, which reads, "Sharrukin the mighty king am I, who knew not his father, but whose mother was a royal princess, who, to conceal my birth, placed me in a basket of rushes closed with pitch, and cast me into the river, from which I was saved by Akki, the water-carrier, who brought me up as his own child." The date of this king is generally accepted as about four thousand years before Christ, and his exploits have been found pictured and described on the relics taken from Cyprus, Syria, and Babylonia. He did for Mesopotamia what Menes did for Egypt, and the prestige of his arms, and the renown of his civilization, spread over all Asia Minor. As a patron of literature, he founded some of the most famous libraries in Babylonia, and compiled a work of seventy-two volumes on Astronomy and Astrology, which was even translated into Greek. From recent researches, which have resulted in the finding of a great many clay tablets from the libraries of Mesopotamia, it seems certain that this Sargon I, upon his ascension to the throne, found the Accadian people already enjoying a high civilization, with sacred temples, a sacred and profane literature, and one who had a large and well-ordered knowledge of astronomy, as well as of agriculture and the industrial arts. From the archaeological remains which have been discovered, and, in particular, the marble statue of a king by the name of David, which was recently found at Bisinya, and whose antiquity is probably greater than 4,500 B. C., it is entirely conservative to assume that Chaldean civilization was as old, if not older, than that of Egypt; while no figure can be set upon the length of time which was required in these fertile valleys for this state of affairs to develop from a condition of barbarism.

In China, strangely enough, where the oldest historical records would be expected, we can find nothing to compare with the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldean clay-cylinders, and competent authorities are well agreed that there is great reason to suppose that much of the early civilization was brought from Accadia. In any case, at the dawn of history, we find China just as she is to-day:--an overpopulated, agricultural country, where blind imitation of predecessors ruled, and, consequently, progress, unless brought in by conquest, is extremely slow. If the empire was founded, as has been supposed, by an Accadian invasion or immigration, which must have occurred about 5,000 B. C., or at least before the time of Sargon I, then these wanderers drove out the aboriginal inhabitants, the Mioutse, who have been crowded at last into the mountains of the western provinces. Certain it is that no greater date can be assigned to the civilization of this country, at the beginning of its historical record, than about 2,750 B. C., which time is known in Chinese tradition as the "Age of the Five Rulers."

Perhaps next in order of antiquity, comes the small country known as Elam, lying between the Tigris River and the Lagros Mountains, and extending to the south along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. As in both Egypt and Chaldea, this country was brought into prominence by an aggressive and warlike king,--the famous Cyrus of history,--and, fortunately, his clay-cylinder; from one of the magnificent libraries of Susa, or Shushan; was recently found by Mr. Rassam, amid the d?bris composing the mound, which is now the only mark left to show where these great centers of population once were, in the fertile valleys and coast plains of this part of Asia; and this cylinder is now kept, with hundreds from like sources, in the British Museum at London. On this memorial cylinder, Cyrus gives his genealogy and an account of his exploits, and we find that he came from a line of kings, and held to the popular faith of his country, thanking and petitioning the whole Elamite Hierarchy of gods. Cyrus carried the Elamite arms into southern Syria and Palestine, and overthrew Mesopotamia about 2,300 B. C. It was the reaction from this conquest that caused some of the most gigantic struggles of antiquity.

Of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, no definite historical record can be found earlier than from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before Christ. The Hittite civilization and influence we find at their height at about the same time, but here we can get no inkling of a greater antiquity for man than that given in the Middle Egyptian Empire. In the cities of Troy and Mycenae, we find civilization at its crest some five hundred years later, and it is not until we come to Arabia that we again find evidence of such high antiquity as we find in Chaldea and Egypt. The old kingdom of Saba was built upon the ruins of a still older, known as Ma'in, and the former was in its decline as an empire at the beginning of the eighth century, B. C. Now, contemporary history shows that this country has gone through all the transformations which Egypt and Chaldea had, and if this is also true of the Ma'in kingdom, then a date of great antiquity must be given to it. But these are not certainties, while in the cases of Chaldea and Egypt there can be no mistake. The Israelite civilization was at its height under David and Solomon, about contemporaneously with that of Troy and Mycenae, and even the Hebrew tradition does not attempt to antedate the year 2,000 B. C., so that we can obtain no information from this source. Greece flourished but five hundred years before the present era, and even if we regard Homer as authentic, no more remote date can be given to their earliest civilization than that of the attack by the Hellenes upon Troy, which was about 1,000 B. C.

In the Western Hemisphere archeologists are every year making valuable discoveries in Mexico and Peru which will probably give a remote date for the civilizations which flourished in these countries long before the conquests of the Spaniards. The great pyramids of the Sun and Moon on the Mexican plateau and the similarity of their design and orientation with the Egyptian all point to an interchange of ideas between the East and the West in prehistoric time.

The geological table given at the close of this chapter may be of interest, as a careful consideration of it, and the foregoing facts, will show the real value of man in nature. That man is ascendent now, does not, in the light of experience, mean necessarily that he will by any means remain so. In the warm Champlain period, we know that brute mammals thrived and attained gigantic size, and, as Dana aptly remarks, "the great abundance of their remains and their conditions show that the climate and food were all that could have been desired." Yet the mastodon and the cave-bear have gone, together with countless other species which have become extinct, and, if science teaches anything at all, it tells us that nature delights in fostering one species at the expense of another. In the case of man, we most clearly see this. "For the historical succession of vertebrate fossils corresponds completely with the morphological scale which is revealed to us by comparative anatomy and ontology. After the Silurian fishes come the dipnoi of the Devonian period,--the Carboniferous amphibia, the Permian reptilia and the Mesozoic Mammals. Of these again, the lowest forms, the monotremes, appear first in the Triassic period; the marsupials in the Jurassic, and then the oldest placentals in the Cretaceous. Of the placentals, in turn, the first to appear in the oldest Tertiary period are the lowest primates, the prosimiae, which are followed by the simiae, in the Miocene. Of the carrhinae, the cynopitheci precede the anthropomorpha; from one branch of the latter, during the Pliocene period, arises the apeman, without speech, and from him descends finally the speaking man.

"Since the germ of the human embryo passes through the same chordula-stages as the germ of all other vertebrates; since it evolves, similarly, out of the two germinal layers of a gastrula, we infer by virtue of the biogenetic law, the early existence of corresponding ancestral forms. Most important of all is the fact that the human embryo, like that of all other animals, arises, originally, from a single cell, for this stem-cell--the impregnated egg cell--points, indubitably, to a corresponding unicellular ancestor, a primitive Laurentian protozoon."

In the foregoing quotation, Haeckel clearly states what every geologist and embryologist plainly knows to be the truth, and in this case, as in all others, does it hold good:

"Because truth is truth, to follow truth Were wisdom, in the scorn of consequence."

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

In considering this problem of the origin and destiny of man, which, axiomatically, includes ourselves, let us remember that it matters not what we may wish, for we have no choice in the matter,--the truth is inexorable, and, consequently, cannot be influenced. It is directly up to each human being to work out this problem for himself, and this can only be done by the fearless recognition of the truth, wherever found. It is in this spirit that the preceding and the succeeding chapters are written, and if they contain misstatements and errors, the author will not only most cheerfully acknowledge the same, when proven to him, but will accept the logical conclusions drawn therefrom, although they may completely revolutionize the philosophy of life as he now sees it, and is trying to live it.

Geological Table, showing Approximate Minimum Duration in Time. Comparative Duration of Periods: Paleozoic, 12/16ths; Mesozoic, 3/16ths; Cenozoic, 1/16th. Geological Time, at least 200,000,000 years.

Geological Epoch | Petrographic | Ascendant Form | Thickness Sub-Division | Formation | of Life | of of G. E. | | | Deposits | | | Paleozoic | | | | | | Laurentian | Archaic Igneous | Eozoon | | Rocks | Canadense | 30,000 ft. Cambrian or | | | L. Silurian | Potsdam Sandstone |} | | Magnesian Limestone |} Diatoms | 18,000 ft. | Trenton Limestone |} | | | | Upper Silurian| Niagara Limestone |} | | Medina Sandstone |} | | Saline Formations |} Lower Fishes | 22,000 ft. | Lower Helderberg |} | | Oriskany Sandstone |} | | | | Devonian | Corniferous or |} | | Upper Helderberg |} | | Limestone, |} Dipnoi | | Hamilton, |} | | Portage and Chemung|} | | Shales |} | | | | Carboniferous | Crinoidal Limestone |} | | Lower Coal Measures |} | | Mill Stone Grit |} Amphibia and | 42,000 ft. | Upper Coal Measures |} Sagillaria | | Permian Sandstone |} | | | | Mesozoic | | | | | | Triassic | Sandstones | Monotremes and | | | Gymnosperms | Jurassic | Wassatch Mountains | Marsupials | 15,000 ft. | | | Cretaceous | Sandstone and Chalk | Placentals | | | | Cenozoic | | | | | | Tertiary-- | | Lowest Primates | Eocene | | and Angiosperms| 3,000 ft. Miocene | | Simiae | Pliocene | | Catarrhinae | | | | Quaternary-- | | | Glacial | | | Champlain| | | Recent | | |

We are quite sure to-day that, roughly estimated, each pound of human flesh represents an amount of potential energy equal to about sixteen million foot-pounds, and that all of the life-processes are, in the last analysis, purely physical, and that they follow physical laws. Any exertion, either muscular or nervous, which we make, over and above that supplied by the energy in our assimilated food, will have to be taken from the stock as represented in the tissue,--consequently, continued work means hunger; if continued longer without food, it means exhaustion, and if continued longer without food and rest intervening, it means the deterioration of the tissues. The recent investigations of Matthews upon the manner of nerve action, and the fact that the same is due to substances known as reversible gelatines, as well as to the cause of the negative variation of nerves exposed to exciting stimuli, all show that these most complex of life's processes are as purely physical, in the largest sense, as the most simple ones. The artificial fertilization of sterile eggs by the use of dilute solutions, whose actions might almost be called catalytic, still further emphasizes the fact that life's processes, even in the embryo, are essentially physical. Take, for instance, the sterile egg of the sea-urchin; the two per cent. solution of potassium cyanide; the continued constant temperature for a definite time, and all of the other conditions which enter into the development of this crude protoplasmic mass, are all physical factors, regardless of the fact that the result is a living organism, where we would, according to our old ideas, certainly expect an undeveloped sterile egg, or a potentially dead body. As with this ovum, so with the vegetable protoplasmic mass in the germinal radical of a seed: if its development is once started, it must continue its natural course without interference, upon pain of speedy degeneration upon interruption, and, in this light, both the egg and the grain of seed are places where life can be started rather than living things before their development began, or while they were lying in their dormant state.

The death-knell to the theory of the personal immortality of the human soul, as ordinarily enunciated, was rung in 1875 by the German biologist, Hertzig, when he succeeded in bringing the living ovum into the presence of the ciliated sperm-cells under the microscope, while in the field of a lens of sufficient power to enable him to see clearly what took place. It is sufficient for our purpose to state that the minute the spermatozoon had pierced the cell wall of the egg-cell, the new individual of that species came into existence, and had, potentially, all of the life-possibilities, or was, in fact, as much alive as it would have been if this had happened under conditions which would have been favorable to its further development. The fact that the fertilized egg-cell immediately forms a mucous sheath the moment that its nucleus coalesces with that of the spermatozoon to prevent the further entrance of other spermatozoa, has done much to give rise and impetus to the theory that each cell has a soul, and that when these two nuclei completely fuse together, the resulting cytula, or fertilized ovum or stem-cell, has a soul peculiarly its own; which is made up in much the same way as two corresponding magnetic fields which are blended when two magnets are brought within the territory of each other's influence and unite to form a resultant field. That each of the sexual una-cells is distinguished by a form of sensation and motion of its own, and that this is true throughout the whole animal world, has given peculiar significance to these empirical facts of conception; as these will at once offer an explanation of the mysterious influence of heredity, such as was never possible heretofore. That each human individual has a beginning of existence with the coalescing of the nuclei of the parent cells, just as he has an end of existence with the violation of the integrity of his physical body, whether after the lapsing of one second or one century, must, to anyone who has observed biological phenomena like the above, be perfectly clear.

With the recent development of the science of embryology, there is no longer any ground upon which man can lay claim, in the largest sense, to free moral agency. Conditioned as he is, even before birth, by the influence of heredity, which science has now localized to the inner nucleus of the cytula, not only are his natural tastes and temperament quite largely determined for him, but often, in at least as large a sense, his mental and physical possibilities. It was our genial Dr. Holmes, who, some years ago, said, "If you would make a man, you must begin at least four generations before he is born," and, as embryology has since proven, he spoke more truth than he thought. Any person possessing a normally trained observation cannot help but note in their aptitude, or in their manner of doing certain things, their debt to their ancestors. How seldom do we find in our friends what we had pictured and hoped for, owing, perhaps more than anything else, to the baneful influence of heredity. Degenerate features, scrofula, epilepsy, melancholia, etc., are all practically in every case the gift of some progenitor. Tendencies to insanity and crime are clearly recognized to-day by the administrators of the law, in every civilized country, as possible a legacy as coin, real estate, or chattels were a few centuries ago.

Whatever influence can be ascribed to heredity, as a positive limitation to human existence, we know absolutely that in a much larger sense is man a victim of his environment, particularly during the period of his childhood and adolescence. Professor Loeb has shown that at least as large proportion of the influence of heredity may be eliminated by the artificial fertilization of the ovum of many species, but embryology tells us that it is beyond the possibilities of science to ever render impotent the adaptive tendency of the individual. With human beings, the importance of environment is much greater under a high state of civilization than in the condition of savagery or barbarism, since the possibilities of achievement are infinitely greater in the individual well-educated than in a condition of illiteracy. What would the mathematical genius of Newton or Leibnitz accomplish in developing the calculus, had they been born among the Patagonians or the bushmen of Australia? Would Napoleon's military talent have availed him anything if he had been placed by birth among the cliff-dwellers of Arizona instead of the fomenting political corruption of overpopulated France? Even in a much more restricted sense, Austerlitz, Marengo, and Lodi could not have become noted as the stepping-stones toward his imperialism, had he not attended the military school at Brienne.

In the discussion of this question, of the freedom of the will, or the free moral agency of man, it seems almost preposterous that educated people still cling to a theory so at variance with all known facts. That all men are created free and equal is not only relatively but absolutely untrue in the largest sense, but that they are all entitled to, and have equal possibilities, so far as is within their power, is not only the meaning which the writer of the "Declaration" intended to convey, but is what every fair-minded man must necessarily accord to all of his fellow-men, even regardless of sex. In Jefferson's time, the last clause could not have been inserted, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, at least in four of the States of this country, woman has been given her full property rights, and in one she has full and complete citizenship on an equal basis with man. It cannot be many years until culture and a sense of equity will have been so disseminated that, at least under democratic forms of government, woman will be given her full civil and political rights, and regarded, as she justly should be, as no longer a forced parasite of man, but as potentially his equal in every respect.

While considering this matter, it is worthy of note that no less an authority than Havelock Ellis has conclusively shown that, not only in the moral world, where woman is and has been the acknowledged superior of man, is she at least his peer, but also in her intellectual power and physical development as concerns the evolution of the race when surrounded by equally advantageous conditions has she occupied the very van. The chivalrous and insane worship which man has bestowed upon her as an exchange for her condoning his moral crimes, has tended both to make him lax in his morality, by reason of her readily granted forgiveness, and to rob her of her rights as his equal, by keeping her in seclusion and incapacitated for self-support. Probably no one thing has worked more harm to the race as a whole than this, and it is perhaps the crowning glory of the age in which we are living that woman, in America, no longer has to accept the physical and moral derelict which the average man is when he comes to the age at which he has finished "sowing his wild oats," and wishes to settle down to a domestic existence, as a candidate for reform under the tutelage of a pure and virtuous woman; or by refusing his proffer of marriage, become the laughing-stock of not only her suitor, but of her own sex as well, under the name of "an old maid." As woman has become capable of self-support, man has lost his power over her, and his accountability for his actions has directly increased, just as woman has gone from under his power. That woman can have an honorable destiny to fulfill other than as a convenience or source of amusement for man is, at last, after countless ages of darkness, beginning to dawn upon the world of culture and intelligence.

Perhaps the greatest of all human limitations arises from the fact that after the gratification of physical desire, of whatsoever kind, comes satiety. The food which, to the starving man, was priceless, and which afforded him keen delight as he ate it, but nauseates him when temporarily his appetite is satisfied and try, as hard as he may, he can contain no more. How many a man has failed to realize this, and, after a youth of penury has, by the closest application, obtained a competence, and by its use, a gratification of his desires, but without consideration kept up his earning power, and hoarded his wealth, only to find, to his sorrow, that it was impossible to furnish gratifications when he no longer had the shadow of a desire! No matter how much of a gormand a man is he can eat but a certain small quantity of food per day, the amount of which varies directly with the manual labor which he does, and, as a usual thing, the more he is able to purchase, the less likely he is to do that labor which alone will make his money of value to him from a gastronomic standpoint. Should his desire be to pale "the lilies of the field" with his raiment, he is still limited to a certain quantity and character of vesture, so that in comparison with "unreasoning" vegetable life, his pride will not be greatly gratified should he possess any sense of humor at all. If prestige and prowess resulting as the outcome of any physical endeavor be his ambition, he must realize that whatever pinnacle of popularity he may attain to, it will be only a few years until he must acknowledge a successful rival.

In the constant mutation of all the conditions which surround human existence, we find another most potent limitation to life. How few of these vital conditions, from a physical standpoint, are under our control? And yet how important some of the even trivial ones really are? The extent to which we are dependent upon health, comeliness, wealth, location, the physical aspects in the lives of our friends, and all of those complex details which go to make up our routine of life, can hardly be over-estimated. Starting, as the individual does, with a complete lack of experience from which to judge, and without even the power to exercise his reason, as this develops within him after years of mistakes, until his fund of recollection of these errors constitutes a basis of experimental knowledge, he is at best upon most dangerous ground in early life. He is handicapped just in proportion as he has not some guardian who pilots him until he is able to judge for himself of the character of his actions. It is the most pathetic thought which the human mind is capable of comprehending, that nature cannot be imprecated, bribed, or frightened out of her relentless rule of exacting full and complete consequence of our every action. Ignorance is no plea for mercy before her court, and her penalties are exacted without either fear or favor. Nor is her tribunal cognizant of any plan of vicarious atonement, but in many cases partially are we visited with the penalties of our progenitors' disobedience to her immutable laws. In view of these truths, let us not falsely be inflated with pride, because of any ephemeral successes. Let us in the moments of aggrandizement remember Massillon, as he stood at the bier of "Le Grand Monarch," and when we consider the truth in his opening statement, in that magnificent funeral oration, "God only is Great," we must feel our sense of importance leave us. Whoever stood erect with egotism over the corpse of a friend, even though he be as mad as Lear, raving, "O that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life, and thou no breath!"? Our control over our physical condition is worthy of mention only on account of its paucity, and we can never appreciate our true position on earth, until at times we are filled with the sentiment, so well expressed by Bryant:

"In sadness then I ponder, how quickly fleets the hour, Of human strength and action, man's courage and his power."

It is not for us to be crushed with the appreciation of our real lack of importance, from a physical and moral viewpoint, but no scheme of life can be built upon a sure foundation without an understanding of what in the case of Schopenhauer, and some other brilliant intellects, formed the basis of their pessimistic philosophy. That we are not absolutely free, morally, to select our course, does not keep us from being relatively so, and, after all, the destiny of the individual is very largely within his power to shape. It is only through incessant and vigorous struggle that anything worth while is accomplished, and nature, in this and many other instances, is with us, since we become capacitated for greater endeavor through practice, and the habit, once formed, makes the effort for advancement become almost an instinct within us, so that our mental activity does not have to be continually consumed in holding our will to the course, but can be applied to fighting our way upward along it. Just as fresh recruits are unable to render the efficient service of veterans in actual warfare, so our capabilities, morally and intellectually, become augmented by constant practice. In the succeeding chapters, we shall attempt to show what is possible to be got from life by the use of all of the advantages which we have, and, in doing this, we shall elucidate a philosophy which is as consistent with the facts of life as known to us as we can make it.

In the days of the decadence of the Roman Empire, when perhaps life was as uncertain as it ever was in the history of the world, the walls of the banquet halls of a certain clique were always adorned with skulls and other tokens of death, and according to all accounts, the mirth was more furious, and the licentiousness greater, as the guests were brought to realize the shortness of the time during which they had to live. We moderns may well get an idea from these feasts, in which the sentiment of Solomon, as voiced a thousand years earlier--than the instance cited, and under similar conditions, "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," is the dominating one, and, in considering the shortness of life, realize that every minute should be filled with effort, as time which is passed is gone forever. Even at the best, whatever we may elect to accomplish, should take all of our attention, and, although we may give it this, we will still be able to find moments in which we did not live up to our possibilities.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

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