materials even after some appreciable work in pottery comes in evidence. What has just been said is after all of a negative character. It says that nothing like a warlike, predatory, or fearsome origin can be proven from the archæological material for the neolithic culture of those racial stocks that have counted for most in the early periods of Europe. The presumption raised by this evidence, however, is fairly strong. And considerations of the material circumstances in which this early culture was placed, as well as of the spiritual traits characteristically required by these circumstances and shown by the races in question, point to a similar conclusion. The proclivity to unreasoning fear that is visible in the superstitious practices of so many savage communities and counts for so much in the routine of their daily life,[83] is to all appearance not so considerable an element in the make-up of the chief European stocks. Perhaps it enters in a less degree in the spiritual nature of the European blond than in that of any other race; that race--or its hybrid offspring--has at any rate proved less amenable to religious control than any other, and has also shown less hesitation in the face of unknown contingencies. And the circumstances of the presumed initial phase of the life-history of this race would appear not to have favoured a spiritual (instinctive) type largely biassed by an alert and powerful sentiment of unreasoning fear. So also an aggressive humanitarian sentiment is as well at home in the habits of thought of the north-European peoples as in any other, such as sorts ill with a native predatory animus. If it be assumed, as seems probable, that the situation which selectively tested the fitness of this stock to survive was that of the early post-glacial time, when its habitat in Europe was slowly being cleared of the ice-sheet, it would appear antecedently probable that the new (mutant) type, which made good its survival in following up the retreating fringe of the ice-sheet and populating the land so made available, will not have been a people peculiarly given to fear or to predation. A great facility of this kind, with its concomitants of caution, conservatism, suspicion and cruelty, would not be serviceable for a race so placed.[84] * * * * *