(Philadelphia, 1901), pp. 1
and 39; also W. McDougall's Social Psychology (1908), p. 146--where the
same age is tentatively suggested.

I have touched on this subject before, but it is so important that the
reader must excuse repetition. There came an inevitable severance, an
inevitable period of strife. The magic mirror of the soul, reflecting
nature as heretofore in calm and simple grace, was suddenly cracked
across. The new self-conscious man (not all at once but gradually)
became alienated from his tribe. He lapsed into strife with his fellows.
Ambition, vanity, greed, the love of domination, the desire for property
and possessions, set in. The influences of fellowship and solidarity
grew feebler. He became alienated from his great Mother. His instincts
were less and less sure--and that in proportion as brain-activity and
self-regarding calculation took their place. Love and mutual help were
less compelling in proportion as the demands of self-interest grew
louder and more insistent. Ultimately the crisis came. Cain murdered
his brother and became an outcast. The Garden of Eden and the Golden Age
closed their gates behind him. He entered upon a period of suffering--a
period of labor and toil and sorrow such as he had never before
known, and such as the animals certainly have never known. And in that
distressful state, in that doleful valley of his long pilgrimage, he
still remains to-day.

Thus has the canker of self-consciousness done its work. It would be
foolish and useless to rail against the process, or to blame any one for
it. It had to be. Through this dismal vale of self-seeking mankind had
to pass--if only in order at last to find the True Self which was (and
still remains) its goal. The pilgrimage will not last for ever. Indeed
there are signs that the recent Great War and the following Events mark
the lowest point of descent and the beginning of the human soul's return
to sanity and ascent towards the heavenly Kingdom. No doubt Man will
arrive again SOME day at the grace, composure and leisurely beauty of
life which the animals realized long ago, though he seems a precious
long time about it; and when all this nightmare of Greed and Vanity and
Self-conceit and Cruelty and Lust of oppression and domination, which
marks the present period, is past--and it WILL pass--then Humanity will
come again to its Golden Age and to that Paradise of redemption and
peace which has for so long been prophesied.

But w