a
nation.

5. Enumerate the arguments that the next destructive war will destroy
civilization.

6. In what ways do you think man is better off than he was one hundred
years ago? One thousand years ago?

7. In what ways did the suffering caused by the Great War indicate an
increase in world ethics?

[1] See Chapter XXVII.

[2] See Cooley, _Social Organization_, chap. III.

[3] The transition from the ethnic state to the modern civic state was
through conflict, conquest, and race amalgamation.

{57}

_PART II_

FIRST STEPS OF PROGRESS

CHAPTER IV

PREHISTORIC MAN

_The Origin of Man Has not Yet Been Determined_.--Man's origin is still
shrouded in mystery, notwithstanding the accumulated knowledge of the
results of scientific investigation in the field and in the laboratory.
The earliest historical records and relics of the seats of ancient
civilization all point backward to an earlier period of human life.
Looking back from the earliest civilizations along the Euphrates and
the Nile that have recorded the deeds of man so that their evidences
could be handed down from generation to generation, the earlier
prehistoric records of man stretch away in the dim past for more than a
hundred thousand years. The time that has elapsed from the earliest
historical records to the present is only a few minutes compared to the
centuries that preceded it.

Wherever we go in the field of knowledge, we shall find evidences of
man's great antiquity. We know at least that he has been on earth a
long, long period. As to the method of his appearance, there is no
absolutely determining evidence. Yet science has run back into the
field of conjecture with such strong lines that we may assume with
practical certainty something of his early life. He stands at the head
of the zoological division of the animal kingdom. The Anthropoid Ape
is the animal that most nearly resembles man. It might be said to
stand next to man in the procession of species. So far as our
knowledge can ascertain, it appears that man was developed in the same
manner as the higher types in the animal and vegetable world, namely,
by the process of evolution, and by evolution we mean continuous
progressive change according to law, from external and internal
stimuli. The process of evolution is not a process of creation, nor
does evolution move in {58} a straight line, but through the process of
differentiation. In no other way can on