from his own black passions, he had also escaped the
curious tyranny of the wild; not further subject to its cruel moods and
whims, but rather one of a Dominant Breed, a being who could lift his
head in defiance to the storm, obey his own will, go his own way. This
was no little change. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it marks the
difference between man and the lesser mammals, the thing that has
evolved a certain species of the primates--simply woods creatures that
trembled at the storm and cowered in the night--into the rulers and
monarchs of the earth.

Ben had come out from the darkened forest trails where he made his lairs
and had gone into a cave to live! He had found a permanent abode--a
lasting, shelter from the cold and the storm. It suggested a curious
allegory to him. Some time in the long-forgotten past, probably when the
later glaciers brought their promise of cold, all his race left their
leafy bowers and found cave homes in the cliffs. Before that time they
were merely woods children, blind puppets of nature, sleeping where
exhaustion found them; wandering without aim in the tree aisles; mating
when they met the female of their species on the trails and venturing on
again; knowing the ghastly, haunting fear of the night and the blind
terror of the storm and elements: merely higher beasts in a world of
beasts. But they came to the caves. They established permanent abodes.
They began to be men.

All that now stands as civilization, all the conquest of the earth and
sea and air began from that moment. It was the Great Epoch,--and Ben had
illustrated it in his own life. The change had been infinitely slow, but
certain as the movement of the planets in their spheres. Behind the
sheltering walls they got away from fear,--that cruel bondage in which
Nature holds all her wild creatures, the burden that makes them her
slaves. Never to shudder with horror when the darkness fell in silence
and mystery; never to have the heart freeze with terror when the thunder
roared in the sky and the wind raged in the trees. The cave dwellers
began to come into their own. Sheltered behind stone walls they could
defy the elements that had enslaved them so long. This freedom gained
they learned to strike the fire; they took one woman to keep the cave,
instead of mating indiscriminately in the forest, thus marking the
beginning of family life. Love instead of deathless hatred, gentleness
rather than cruelty, peace in the place