of the world, it would not be possible in this brief writing to
recount the story in even the most summary fashion. Except the tale of
recent years, the story is known as I have said, only in outline, rude,
dim and broken, but for the present purpose this will suffice. Countless
multitudes of details are lost--most of them doubtless forever. But we need
not despair. The really great facts of our racial childhood--the massive,
dominant, outstanding facts--are sufficiently clear for our guidance in the
present enterprise. And what do we know?

We know that the period of our human childhood has been inconceivably
long; we know that in the far distant time, the first specimens of
humankind--the initial members of the time-binding race of man--were
absolutely without human knowledge of the hostile world in which they
found themselves; we know that they had no conception of what they
themselves were; we know that they had neither speech nor art nor
philosophy nor religion nor science nor tools nor human history nor human
tradition; we know, though we to-day can hardly imagine it, that their
_sole_ equipment for _initiating_ the career of the human race was that
peculiar faculty which made them human--the capacity of man for binding
time; we know that they actually did that work of initiation, without any
guidance or example, maxim or precedent; and we know that they were able
to do it just because the power of initiation--the power to originate--is a
time-binding power.

What else do we know of the earliest part of humanity's childhood? We know
that in that far-distant age, our ancestors--being, not animals, but human
creatures--not only _began_ to live in the human dimension of life--forever
above the level of animals--but _continued_ therein, taking not only the
first step, but the second, the third, and so on indefinitely; we know, in
other words, that they were progressive creatures, that they made
advancement; we know that their progress was _natural_ to them--as natural
as swimming is to fishes or as flying is to birds--for both the impulse and
the ability to progress--to make improvement--to do greater things by help
of things already done--are of the very nature of the time-binding capacity
which makes humans human.

We know that time-binding capacity--the capacity for accumulating racial
experience, enlarging it, and transmitting it for future expansion--is the
peculiar power, the characteristic energy, the definiti