No one knows how long it took to divide the human line of ascent from that of the larger apes; but during that cleavage there may have been an epoch when Man lay under the affliction of something very like human thought before he could have reached the relief of speech. It is indeed conceivable that in that long inarticulate agony he may have traversed--dumb--the full round of personal experience and emotion. And when, at last, speech was born, what was the first practical use Man made of it? Remember, he was, by that time, past-master in all arts of camouflage known to the beasts. He could hide near a water-hole, and catch them as they came down to drink--which is the germ of war. He could attract them by imitating their cries of distress or love--which is the genesis of most of the arts. He could double back on his tracks and thus circumvent an acquaintance of his own kind who was stalking him--which is obviously the origin of most of our social amenities. In short, he could _act_, to admiration, any kind of lie then extant. I submit, therefore, that the first use Man made of his new power of expression was to _tell_ a lie--a frigid and calculated lie. Imagine the wonder and delight of the First Liar in the World when he found that the first lie overwhelmingly outdid every effect of his old mud-and-grass camouflages with no expenditure of energy! Conceive his pride, his awestricken admiration of himself, when he saw that, by mere word of mouth, he could send his simpler companions shinning up trees in search of fruit which he knew was not there, and when they descended, empty and angry, he could persuade them that they, and not he, were in fault, and could despatch them hopefully up another tree! Can you blame the Creature for thinking himself a god? The only thing that kept him within bounds must have been the discovery that this miracle-working was not confined to himself. Unfortunately--most unfortunately--we have no record of the meeting of the World’s First Liar with the World’s Second Liar; but from what we know of their descendants to-day, they were probably of opposite sexes, married at once, and begat a numerous progeny. For there is no doubt that Mankind suffered much and early from this same vice of lying. One sees that in the enormous value attached by the most primitive civilizations to the practice of telling the Truth; and the extravagant praise awarded, mostly after death, to individuals notorious for the practice.