must be
thought of as a promiscuous company of pre-troglodytic mammals, at least
partially arboreal in habit, living on uncooked fruits and vegetables,
and possessed of no arts and crafts whatever--nor even of the knowledge
of the rudest implement. At the end of the period, there emerges into
the more or less clear light of history a large-brained being, living in
houses of elaborate construction, supplying himself with divers luxuries
through the aid of a multitude of elaborate handicrafts, associated with
his fellows under the sway of highly organized governments, and
satisfying aesthetic needs through the practice of pictorial and
literary arts of a high order. How was this amazing transformation
brought about?

Crucial developments.

If an answer can be found to that query, we shall have a clue to all
human progress, not only during the prehistoric but also during the
historic periods; for we may well believe that recent progress has not
departed from the scheme of development impressed on humanity during
that long apprenticeship. Ethnologists believe that an answer can be
found. They believe that the metamorphosis from beast-like savage to
cultured civilian may be proximally explained (certain potentialities
and attributes of the species being taken for granted) as the result of
accumulated changes that found their initial impulses in a half-dozen or
so of practical inventions. Stated thus, the explanation seems absurdly
simple. Confessedly it supplies only a proximal, not a final, analysis
of the forces impelling mankind along the pathway of progress. But it
has the merit of tangibility; it presents certain highly important facts
of human history vividly: and it furnishes a definite and fairly
satisfactory basis for marking successive stages of incipient
civilization.

In outlining the story of primitive man's advancement, upon such a
basis, we may follow the scheme of one of the most philosophical of
ethnologists, Lewis H. Morgan, who made a provisional analysis of the
prehistoric period that still remains among the most satisfactory
attempts in this direction. Morgan divides the entire epoch of man's
progress from bestiality to civilization into six successive periods,
which he names respectively the Older, Middle and Later periods of
Savagery, and the Older, Middle and Later periods of Barbarism.

Speech.

The first of these periods, when mankind was in the lower status of
savagery, comprises the