INDEPENDENCE
life on the ground, but lived first among tree-tops—a platform which does not offer much room for large or democratic assemblies. Here he had to keep his individual balance on the branches, under penalty of death or disablement if he lost it, and here, when his few wants were satisfied, he had time to realize slowly that he was not altogether like the beasts, but a person apart, and therefore lonely. Not till he abandoned his family-tree, and associated himself with his fellows on the flat, for predatory or homicidal purposes, did he sacrifice his personal independence of action, or cut into his large leisure of brooding abstraction necessary for the discovery of his relations to his world. This is the period in our Revered Ancestor's progress through Time that strikes me as immensely the most interesting and important.
[4]
