s and
superior strength he ravishes the females of his species and goes his
way. But life creeps slowly upward, increasing in complexity and
necessarily in intelligence. When some forgotten inventor of the older
world smote his rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it
was good and thereafter made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies
with branches of wood, then, and on that day, artificiality may be said
to have begun. Then, and on that day, was begun a revolution destined to
change the history of life. Then, and on that day, was laid the
cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices, CIVILISATION!

Trace it up. Our ape-like and arboreal ancestors entered upon the first
of many short cuts. To crack a marrow-bone with a rock was the act which
fathered the tool, and between the cracking of a marrow-bone and the
riding down town in an automobile lies only a difference of degree. The
one is crudely artificial, the other consummately artificial. That is
all. There have been improvements. The first inventors grasped that
truthful paradox, "the longest way round is the shortest way home," and
forsook the direct pursuit of happiness for the indirect pursuit of
happiness. If the happiness of a savage depended upon his crossing an
extensive body of water, he did not directly proceed to swim it, but
turned his back upon it, selected a tree from the forest, shaped it with
his rude tools and hollowed it out with fire, then launched it in the
water and paddled toward where his happiness lay.

Now concerning love. In the state of nature it is a brutal passion,
nothing more. There is no romance attached. But life creeps upward, and
the gregarious human forms social groups the like of which never existed
before. Consider the family group, for instance. Such a group becomes in
itself an entity. By means of the group man is better enabled to pursue
happiness. But to maintain the group it must be regulated; so man
formulates rules, codes, dim ethical laws for the conduct of the group
members. Sexual ties are made less promiscuous and more orderly. A
greater privacy is observed. And out of order and privacy spring respect
and sacredness.

But life creeps upward, and the family group itself becomes but a unit
of greater and greater groups. And rules and codes change in accordance,
until the marriage tie becomes possessed of a history and takes to
itself traditions. This history and these traditions form a great fund,
t