But if we allow (as we must) this unity and perfection of nature, and this somewhat cosmic character of the mind, to exist among the Animals, we can hardly refuse to believe that there must have been a period when Man, too, hardly as yet differentiated from them, did himself possess these same qualities--perhaps even in greater degree than the animals--of grace and beauty of body, perfection of movement and action, instinctive perception and knowledge (of course in limited spheres); and a period when he possessed above all a sense of unity with his fellows and with surrounding Nature which became the ground of a common consciousness between himself and his tribe, similar to that which Maeterlinck, in the case of the Bees, calls the Spirit of the Hive. (1) It would be difficult, nay impossible, to suppose that human beings on their first appearance formed an entire exception in the process of evolution, or that they were completely lacking in the very graces and faculties which we so admire in the animals--only of course we see that (LIKE the animals) they would not be SELF-conscious in these matters, and what perception they had of their relations to each other or to the world around them would be largely inarticulate and SUB-conscious--though none the less real for that. (1) See The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck; and for numerous similar cases among other animals, P. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: a factor in Evolution. Let us then grant this preliminary assumption--and it clearly is not a large or hazardous one--and what follows? It follows--since to-day discord is the rule, and Man has certainly lost the grace, both physical and mental, of the animals--that at some period a break must have occurred in the evolution-process, a discontinuity--similar perhaps to that which occurs in the life of a child at the moment when it is born into the world. Humanity took a new departure; but a departure which for the moment was signalized as a LOSS--the loss of its former harmony and self-adjustment. And the cause or accompaniment of this change was the growth of Self-consciousness. Into the general consciousness of the tribe (in relation to its environment) which in fact had constituted the mentality of the animals and of man up to this stage, there now was intruded another kind of consciousness, a consciousness centering round each little individual self and concerned almost entirely with the interests of the latter. Here was evidently a threat to the continuance of the former happy conditions. It was like the appearance of innumerable little ulcers in a human body--a menace which if continued would inevitably lead to the break-up of the body. It meant loss of tribal harmony and nature-adjustment. It meant instead of unity a myriad conflicting centres; it meant alienation from the spirit of the tribe, the separation of man from man, discord, recrimination, and the fatal unfolding of the sense of sin. The process symbolized itself in the