develop natural capacity but never create it, and that if the fundamental qualities of the human race are to be improved, the diseased and the vicious must be prevented from contributing to posterity. I have left myself but little space to refer to the light which evolution has thrown on the origin of the human race. Darwin argued strongly that man must have sprung from an ancestor common to him and the apes, and so far as bodily structure is concerned there is much less difference between him and the Gorilla, for example, than between the Gorilla and one of the Lemurs or half-apes, of Madagascar. This conclusion has been very greatly strengthened by discoveries which have been made since Darwin's time. It has been shown that the human infant during the embryonic period of its existence possesses a tail and a thick covering of hair like that of an ape; but the tail is absorbed and the hair lost before birth. Secondly, the oldest remains of men which have been discovered have skulls which in size are exactly intermediate between that of a negro and that of a chimpanzee, and the shape of their thigh bones shows that they did not walk quite upright. Then it has been shown that a baby's first efforts in walking are strikingly similar to the normal gait of certain of the higher apes. A baby if unencumbered with clothes frequently totters along on its feet with its arms stretched straight downwards and resting on its knuckles—and this is the way the gorilla and the Orang-utan progress. When a baby has, however, learned to walk it will often run up and down holding out its arms to act as balancing-poles, and it is just this way that the long-armed Gibbon runs about. at But the most interesting advances which have been made in recent years on this question have been with regard to the history of man and human institutions since he became man. I shall in a few words try, to outline this history. The most primitive type of present existing is the Negro, who, like the Apes most nearly allied to Man, is essentially a tropical animal, and does not flourish in cold countries. In all respects in which the negro departs from the type of the white man-in his smaller brain, thicker skull, protruding jaw, woolly hair, and feeble ankle-he approaches the ape. Therefore, it is clear that man was evolved in the tropics and that the first kind of men were negroes. The negro, left to himself, has never developed anything which could be called civilization; the highest form of society he reached was the tribe, and the form of religion is what is called totemism-a worship of the spirits of ancestors supposed to be incarnate in animals, trees and even stones. Now the way in which man has obtained dominion over the earth is not by his natural strength-for in this he is greatly surpassed even by the larger apes-but by his power of combining into societies and undertaking enterprises for the benefit of all the members of the society. Hence the degree of development of social institutions is just as surely the mark of the most highly developed men as the most highly developed limb is in the case of the herbivorous animal, or the largest canine tooth in the case of the carnivorous animal. When we trace back the social institutions of the more civilized nations, we find that they originate always in the tribe, and beneath the later developments of the great historic religions there is a core to be detected of primitive ancestor worship. So that in spiritual as well as bodily structure the negro is the most primitive type. As the negro race, however, spread, it gradually reached the temperate regions, and here the struggle with Nature became fiercer and the whole civilization underwent development and a higher type of man-the yellow or Mongolian race was evolved. This race spread all over the temperate regions of the globe. One branch of it constituted the Red Indians, who formed the primitive population of this continent, in which no negroes were found before the advent of Europeans. Some divisions of this race, like the Peruvians, attained a considerable level of culture-others remained in almost as primitive a tribal condition as the negroes. Other branches of the same race constituted the Chinese and the Japanese, the original Turks whose home was on the Steppes of Asia, and the Gnomes and Fairies. These "little people," tales of whose magic used to delight our infancy, were a real race, which inhabited Britain and Northern Europe in pre-historic times-and the fairy tales are the legends of the struggle which took place between them and their invaders, whose descendants we are. As the yellow race spread still further towards the North-or as some people think, the cold North in the great Ice age, came down nearer to them, the struggle for the necessities of life, the need for bravery, endurance, and all the manly virtues, reached its climax, and the highest type of man was evolvedthe Nordic type or white man, whose original home was on the fringe of the ice-sheet, whose retreat he followed, living as has been plausibly suggested on the herds of reindeer. The white race established itself in Scandinavia and Russia; but it soon increased so as to overflow its boundaries and we may say that most of human history is but the record of a series of southern raids carried out by colonies of the white race. One of the oldest of these raids was that of the Achaeans-the Greeks who besieged Troy. These Achaeans subjugated a dark-haired people which inhabited the shores of the Mediterranean, and largely intermarried with them, and partly due to this fact and partly owing to the enervating influence of the warmer climate their original qualities were largely lost. Yet even the dark-haired Greeks of historic times remembered their yellow-haired Scandinavian forefathers. Their gods, their glorified and idealized ancestors, had yellow locks. Later raids gave rise to the Romans, still later to the barbarian Goths and Germans, who overran the Roman Empire. The Celts of Britain were a mixed race there was an early Nordic invasion which had blended with the stock of the "Fairies" or yellow men. To this day the small dark Highlander and the Welshman retain in considerable purity the physical characters of their Mongol forefathers. The latest raids of the Nordic race comprised the Danish and Norman invasions of England, for the Normans were not French-to this day a Norwegian calls himself a Norman. Such is in baldest outline the history of the human race as determined by zoological methods. From it we may draw several comforting conclusions as to the future of Canada. We have seen, first, that the conquering type of man is the Nordic-or as we are accustomed to call it, the Anglo-Saxon type-but we must remember that our Frenchspeaking fellow-countrymen, so far as they are of Norman descent, belong to the same race. Secondly, we have seen that this Nordic man is essentially an arctic animal and only flourishes in a cold climate— whilst in a warmer region he gradually loses virility and vitality. So that from a zoological point of view the outlook is bright for Canada. The only drawback is that from earliest times these Northmen have been wont to migrate south and subjugate inferior people and when we to-day lament the migration of young Canada to the States, we must reflect that this is only an instance of a tendency that has been developed for thousands of years. It would be cowardly and dishonest if, before closing, I did not say a word or two on the objections which religious people have felt to the evolution doctrine on account of the conclusions to which it seems to lead. By religion is meant the relation of the soul to the great Reality in the Universe-the Spirit behind phenomena. This subject lies entirely outside zoology and is not touched by it. When we awaken into conscious life, we gradually learn to separate in our experience two factors on the one hand, a personality which wills and thinks and suffers on the other hand, an outside Nature, which we can sometimes bend to our wills, but which oftenest is intractable and limits and opposes us. This outside Nature is the object of scientific study. To our earliest forefathers it seemed capricious and governed by a multitude of inconstant and passionate wills, like those of savage man. These were the spirits of the earliest stage of religion. Increased study shows that law and order prevail in it, and the conclusion that behind Nature there is One-to whom in the sublime words of Dante will and power are one-is supported by science and in one form and another has forced itself on the deepest scientific thinkers. But if behind the objective part of our experience there is Reality, the same must be true of the subjective-and all attempts to resolve the soul into a concourse of atoms-which latter indeed are concepts of the very mind which some would seek to explain by them, will result in failure. These two points, God and the soul, will form the basis for all sound religious thinking. How the human soul comes into existence we do not know and as little do we know how it is related to the souls of animals. But what is the use of vexing ourselves about the latter point when we have not the remotest conception how and when the soul of the baby comes into existence ? On such subjects the only proper attitude is that of a wise and temperate agnosticism, and the whole subject could not be more fittingly summed up than in the words of that great Christian thinker of modern times-Harnack: 66 "We have to do with a dualism the origin of which we do not know, but as moral beings we are convinced that this dualism, given to us that we may conquer it and reduce it to unity, has sprung from a fundamental unity, and will ultimaltely be resolved into unity-the realization of the good ... We see only in part for we cannot form a consistent logical scheme out of our knowledge of the things of space and time on the one hand, and of our inner life on the other. But in the peace of God which is higher than all reason we feel that they shall be reconciled." E. W. MACBRIDE. THE MICROSCOPE OF TIME. It happened once that long ago An aged, withered Troglodyte The bright waves broke upon the beach The mammoths bellowed in the wood's The old man told them of his youth, "Long, long ago when I was young, "When I was even younger than |