nd Magdalenian peoples, and 5,000 years
ago for the first actual historical records that have come down to us,
we may perhaps get something like a proportion between the different
periods. That is to say, half a million years for the purely animal man
in his different forms and grades of evolution. Then somewhere
towards the end of palaeolithic or commencement of neolithic times
Self-consciousness dimly beginning and, after some 10,000 years of slow
germination and pre-historic culture, culminating in the actual historic
period and the dawn of civilization 40 or 50 centuries ago, and to-day
(we hope), reaching the climax which precedes or foretells its abatement
and transformation.

(2) Though Dr. Arthur Keith, Ancient Types of Man (1911), pp. 93
and 102, puts the figure at more like a million.

(3) See Ancient Hunters (1915); also Hastings's Encycl. art.
"Ethnology"; and Havelock Ellis, "The Origin of War," in The Philosophy
of Conflict and other Essays.

No doubt many geologists and anthropologists would favor periods greatly
LONGER than those here mentioned; but possibly there would be some
agreement as to the RATIO to each other of the times concerned: that
is, the said authorities would probably allow for a VERY long animal-man
(1)-period corresponding to the first stage; for a much shorter
aggressively 'self conscious' period, corresponding to the Second
Stage--perhaps lasting only one thirtieth or fiftieth of the time of
the first period; and then--if they looked forward at all to a third
stage--would be inclined for obvious reasons to attribute to that again
a very extended duration.

(1) I use the phrase 'animal-man' here, not with any flavor of
contempt or reprobation, as the dear Victorians would have used it, but
with a sense of genuine respect and admiration such as one feels towards
the animals themselves.

However, all this is very speculative. To return to the difficulty about
Language and the consideration of those early times when words adequate
to the expression of religious or magical ideas simply did not exist,
it is clear that the only available, or at any rate the CHIEF means
of expression, in those times, must have consisted in gestures, in
attitudes, in ceremonial ACTIONS--in a more or less elaborate ritual,
in fact. (1) Such ideas as Adoration, Thanksgiving, confession of Guilt,
placation of Wrath, Expiation, Sacrifice, Celebration of Community,
sacramental Atonement, and a score o