PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTUKE 445

there is an elemental savageness which manifests itself in
epidemic form during periods of war, but is scarcely hid-
den even in times of peace. This description of the facts
of life need make us neither pessimistic nor optimistic. There
is room in the perspective of World History to be more
sanguine about the future of our race than the face of con-
temporary experience seems to warrant; but at the same
time, the incorrigibility of human nature in certain matters
should put a curb on the boundless optimism of idealists.
To appreciate to which side the balance tilts, it is necessary to
carefully garner the grain of our grand survey.

If we do not question the scientific conclusions of anthro-
pologists, Man, in the process of evolution, emerged from
ape ancestors. To arrive at this astounding anthropos, in the
biological laboratory of Nature, it took the Creator count-
less ages of experiment Among His discarded relics are
the "missing links" who seem to have been only tentative
products before homo sapiens arrived. Then followed the
pre-historic period of man's education up to his learning,
or rather discovering, the art of writing by some Montessori
method or a divine Dalton plan. Once language was master-
ed (both spoken and written), this precocious child of
Nature made rapid progress. Indeed, man's progress has
been increasingly rapid since then. Even before the Christ-
ian era, he had achieved the marvds of Egyptology, Assyrio-
logy, and the more recently unravelled mysteries of Inddogy.
Towards the dose of this long epoch he worked the mirade
of Greek culture, and left to posterity the rich legades
of India, Greece, and Rome, no less than those of Egypt,
Babylonia, and Israel. Without repeating all that we have
set down in greater detail before, we migfct assess here the
net contributions of these cultures to human civilisation.
We need consider only a few typical or rather fateful dis-