“Das Ewig-weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.”
The buried Pelasgic religion regained its rightful place. It had more vital reality than the Olympian. Has the great Roman Catholic Church, in its worship of the Virgin, retained at least the symbol of an element of vital reality which we Protestants, in our recoil from so-called “Mariolatry,” have neglected to our cost in favor of a purely paternal conception of God? We leave this question to the theologians.
CHAPTER XI
PROGRESS
IT is a far cry and long and weary road from the ape descending from the trees and the ape-man shuffling over the ground, keeping close to his arboreal refuge, to the lake-dweller and builder of stone monuments. There was very little in the appearance or structure of the ape-man to encourage great hopes for the future. The sleek, graceful, wiry, well-armed cats were far more attractive, promising, and thrilling actors on the world’s stage. Why did not they progress, win the future, and insure that all the future meetings of art and learning should be held on the back fence? They certainly did not progress—that is a stubborn fact.
They had largely or completely exhausted the possibilities of their special line of development; as cats they were perfect and could dominate the portion of the world in which as cats they were solely interested. This was an impassable bar to progress. Why should they change? They were so thoroughly conformed to the environment of their time and conditions that any marked change would have been a disadvantage. But when conditions did change, and the fashion of the world which had produced them passed away, they became out of fashion, “back numbers,” incapable of meeting new emergencies and crises—like men, parties, and governments in all ages of human history. They suffered from over-adaptation and the resulting limitations.
Man did not make this mistake. Isolated tribes and even races might settle down in contentment, become completely adapted to easy conditions of life, and stagnate or degenerate. But a saving remnant was always marching out into new physical or social surroundings, exposed to new needs, fears, and opportunities, and readapting itself to meet and profit by them. Man was not, and could not be, precocious. He was always a bundle of possibilities and great expectations, which he has even now only begun to realize.
Overpopulation, or other pressure in his primeval home, resulted in great racial migrations, sending him all over the world to seek his fortune. He became one of the very few physically cosmopolitan animals, living everywhere from the equator to the Arctic zone. He became toughened and hardened and adaptable, able to live under the most trying circumstances. Everywhere he had to be a close observer, watch ful and wary. He was weak and defenseless, and his life depended upon his quick recognition of “nature’s signs of displeasure,” upon the full exercise of his few small wits. He learned to be faithful in a few things. We need not repeat or review this weary chapter of his history.