ly chipped
flint to the first implements of polished stone, was two or three
thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly,
by human standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim
intimations of the beast. And that first glimmering of speculation, that
first story of achievement, that story-teller bright-eyed and flushed
under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous
listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most
marvellous beginning this world has ever seen. It doomed the mammoths,
and it began the setting of that snare that shall catch the sun.

Section 2

That dream was but a moment in a man's life, whose proper business it
seemed was to get food and kill his fellows and beget after the manner
of all that belongs to the fellowship of the beasts. About him, hidden
from him by the thinnest of veils, were the untouched sources of Power,
whose magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even to-day, Power that
could make his every conceivable dream come real. But the feet of the
race were in the way of it, though he died blindly unknowing.

At last, in the generous levels of warm river valleys, where food is
abundant and life very easy, the emerging human overcoming his earlier
jealousies, becoming, as necessity persecuted him less urgently, more
social and tolerant and amenable, achieved a larger community. There
began a division of labour, certain of the older men specialised in
knowledge and direction, a strong man took the fatherly leadership in
war, and priest and king began to develop their roles in the opening
drama of man's history. The priest's solicitude was seed-time and
harvest and fertility, and the king ruled peace and war. In a hundred
river valleys about the warm, temperate zone of the earth there
were already towns and temples, a score of thousand years ago. They
flourished unrecorded, ignoring the past and unsuspicious of the future,
for as yet writing had still to begin.

Very slowly did man increase his demand upon the illimitable wealth
of Power that offered itself on every hand to him. He tamed certain
animals, he developed his primordially haphazard agriculture into a
ritual, he added first one metal to his resources and then another,
until he had copper and tin and iron and lead and gold and silver to
supplement his stone, he hewed and carved wood, made pottery, paddled
down his river until he came to the sea, discovered the