exactly in the steps of its predecessor, yet the circumstances of primitive society long made it very difficult for any deviation to be effected.  For the tribes of primitive men were perpetually at war with each other, and their methods of tribal discipline were military methods.  To allow much freedom of thought would be perilous, and the whole tribe was supposed to be responsible for the words and deeds of each of its members.  The tribes most rigorous in this stern discipline were those which killed out tribes more loosely organized, and thus survived to hand down to coming generations their ideas and their methods.  From this state of things an intense social conservatism was begotten,—­a strong disposition on the part of society to destroy the flexible-minded individual who dares to think and behave differently from his fellows.  During the past three thousand years much has been done to weaken this conservatism by putting an end to the state of things which produced it.  As great and strong societies have arisen, as the sphere of warfare has diminished while the sphere of industry has enlarged, the need for absolute conformity has ceased to be felt, while the advantages of freedom and variety come to be ever more clearly apparent.  At a late stage of civilization, the flexible or plastic society acquires even a military advantage over the society that is more rigid, as in the struggle between French and English civilization for primacy in the world.  In our own country, the political birth of which dates from the triumph of England in that mighty struggle, the element of plasticity in man’s nature is more thoroughly heeded, more fully taken account of, than in any other community known to history; and herein lies the chief potency of our promise for the future.  We have come to the point where we are beginning to see that we may safely depart from unreasoning routine, and, with perfect freedom of thinking in science and in religion, with new methods of education that shall train our children to think for themselves while they interrogate Nature with a courage and an insight that shall grow ever bolder and keener, we may ere long be able fully to avail ourselves of the fact that we come into the world as little children with undeveloped powers wherein lie latent all the boundless possibilities of a higher and grander Humanity than has yet been seen upon the earth.

II

THE PART PLAYED BY INFANCY IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN

The remarks which my friend Mr. Clark has made with reference to the reconciling of science and religion seem to carry me back to the days when I first became acquainted with the fact that there were such things afloat in the world as speculations about the origin of man from lower forms of life; and I can recall step by step various stages in which that old question has come to have a different look from what it had thirty years ago.  One of the commonest objections