If the first and most important of these sources is the discovery of
the conditions of physical well-being, the second is the discovery of
means of communication between the widely separate portions of man's
kingdom. The record of the process of bringing the world under the
control of the organized government of man is largely the record of the
improvement of communications. Side by side with the unending struggle
of human reason against cold and hunger and disease we can watch the
contest against distance, against ocean and mountain and desert, against
storms and seasons. There can be few subjects more fascinating for a
historian to study than the record of the migrations of the tribes of
men. He might begin, if he wished, with the migrations of animals and
describe the westward progress of the many species whose course can be
traced by experts along the natural highways of Western Europe. Some of
them, so the books tell us, reached the end of their journey while
Britain was still joined to the continent. Others arrived too late and
were cut off by the straits of Dover. I like to form an imaginary
picture, which the austerity of the scientific conscience will, I know,
repudiate with horror, of the unhappy congregation, mournfully assembled
bag and baggage on the edge of the straits and gazing wistfully across
at the white cliffs of England, which they were not privileged to
reach--_tendentesque manus ripae ulterioris amore_, 'stretching out
their paws in longing for the further bank.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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