The greatest movement appears to have been north-eastward between the great desert and mountain tract of Central Asia on the one hand, and the Pacific on the other, attended by divergences eastward to many islands (as they are now) of the Pacific. When the emigrants got too far north to wish to explore further, they spread out to east and west, forming a belt below the Arctic regions and sending a branch down the whole length of the American Continent. This movement embraced the Mongoloid races, and included the old American Indians and the Malayan races. Before the disturbing influences of man's later development, this branch had three notable centres of civilisation: the Chinese in Asia, the Mexican in North America, and the Peruvian in South America.
A second and much less numerous band of emigrants struck out to the south-east, and reaching the southern hemisphere gave rise to the Australian and New Zealand aboriginal races—all peoples who never rose very much or developed notable power.
To a third movement to the south-west is assigned the peopling of Africa south of the Sahara with the negro and similar races, which have become very numerous but never very powerful or intelligent.
The fourth movement was north-westward across or around the barriers of desert and mountain to Western Asia, Europe, and North Africa. These emigrants were the true adventurers, hardy, progressive, and energetic; and their descendants have developed into the strongest and most vigorous of the human family. The less progressive of them remain still on the further side of the mountains of Western Asia. The three passage-ways used by the original emigrants seem to have been (1) the Red Sea Nile-Valley path, in which the dusky white and the Ethiopian races mingled; (2) the Euphrates Valley, down which the Semitic races moved; and (3) the tracts of the more northerly plateau, across which moved the ancestral Aryan races. It is also quite certain that some races moved backwards by this route and returned to India to give rise to the Brahmins, the most learned race of that country.
We have thus traced, so far as our limited knowledge will allow us, the geographical spread of man's dominance. But we cannot associate him with the history that in previous chapters we have roughly traced, of the development of the lower members of the animal kingdom. The qualities which have developed in Man are of such an unprecedented power and so far dominate everything else in his characteristics and surroundings that they justify the view that he forms a new departure in the gradual unfolding of this world's predestined scheme. Knowledge, Reason, Self-consciousness, Will, are the attributes of Man. He goes on from strength to strength, and in the Divine purpose which created him may lie the possibility that in the future he may attain a fuller knowledge than any he yet possesses. The great poet of the Victorian Age wrote of Knowledge:—
Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies;
I hold you there, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,