Three, two, one. Just that road in my toe. Welcome back to the Squall Car Tent. It's Tim and Jaco, and we are looking at part two of How to Progress, where we are looking at combining our locker tools. Before Tim tells you exactly what we're gonna get into today, make sure you click subscribe so you don't miss any more of our content, Tim. So in the last lesson, we looked at the individual tools that we have in the locker, isometrics, eccentrics, weighted, stability, assistance, levers and angles. They're all great. They're all amazing. You can use them by themselves as great tools just to try and help your progression to move along and keep things going in the right direction. But they actually become really effective if you start to think about how you can combine the two together. It opens up loads of different training options and it really helps you to either make an exercise a little bit more difficult or a little bit easier so you can bridge the gap between movements or progressions that you're working on. But the second thing which we talk about loads is that they're really effective at helping you to build general global capacity strength. Getting stronger is a key part of calisthenics. So if we combine these tools, we've got some options, we've got lots of things to play around with to keep us moving forwards. Yeah, we're gonna take you through some examples and we're just gonna show you these through whether it's a handstand, whether it's a back lever, whether it's a human flag, where you can combine one or more tools together, like Tim says, just making that a little bit easier, a little bit harder. And what we want you to do is take those principles that we go through in those examples away and then you can apply them to whatever it is that you're working on. If you need some help along those, you've got any ideas, go comment below and go like, Jacko, Tim, I'm gonna use these two tools for this purpose, this reason, do you think that's gonna work? And we go, yes or no, I'll give you some feedback. So we look forward to hearing from you on those and let's get into these examples. So the first example we're gonna use is the back lever and Tim's gonna show us a combination of tools where we're gonna be lowering down through a different range of the angle. We're gonna be using a different lever length so we're gonna do tucked and single leg. Then also it's gonna be an isometric because we're gonna hold that bottom position. So first one is gonna use the rings for these. You can do this on the bar. He keeps the knees tucked, feet by his bum, knees close to his chest as possible. He's gonna lower down slowly under control. He's trying to make a five second lower and then he's gonna hold this bottom position where the hip is in line with the shoulder and he's nice and flat. I could eat my dinner off that flat back so holds that for five seconds as isometric then pulls back up. If you get good, we can then start to just make this a little bit harder by extending one of those lever lengths out. You're gonna do the same thing. He's gonna lower down through a range, full range of the angle so that lower he starts to get harder and harder and harder. He then keeps that hip in line with the shoulder and the foot holds that for five seconds and then Tim's strong enough to pull himself back up but for you, once you've held that five seconds you might be dropping back down. Like we said with these eccentric works, the portion of the bottom we're gonna hold for a minimum of five seconds, nice controlled lower down there and then we're trying to build up something close to a minute's worth of tension total. You can do the same thing with the human flag where we can go up to the top and then we can lower down in the tuck position, lower again under control, hold that bottom position. If you're good, you can then try and look at taking out some of those lever lengths so we could have one leg out on the human flag and lower down into it. You can even straddle and eventually you can bring those legs together. We're gonna look at active hanging the ways which we can progress this great foundation exercise for all of our pulling. If you're trying to work on muscle ups, if you're trying to work on pull ups for any variations, even if it's you starting out with your calisthenics journey, you need to get into more skin the cap progressions and your back lever, this is the foundation of all of those things. Sometimes we get to a point where it's actually feeling pretty comfortable. I'm gonna get Jako to go dead hang here and then he pulls into active hang. Shoulder blades go down, he's keeping a midsection tight, bums on, but he's basically trying to pull his shoulders away and down from his ears. That's our active position. If we can get that nailed, it might be you can spend a minute or so there so we wanna start to make that a bit more difficult. One of the ways is to just kind of load the single arm position. So this is pretty difficult. You've really gotta work hard not to let your shoulder relax and unwind and lose tension through there. So we're gonna hold that single arm position. That's a great progression for our flag. Now you might be saying that well, I've got both of those sorted, but we can now use the weighted tool to make them a little bit more difficult. And I realized this is a finishing exercise. At the end of a session, you might go right and put 20 kilos on or whatever you think you can manage. I've got to manage them, but yeah, obviously I can. For video purposes. I can do a lot more. And then just hang out there and literally can you go for a minute and active hang? It puts a load of strength development into the middle of traps. The rhomboids, it's great stuff around the back of the shoulder which is retracting and depressing the shoulder blade. And that's what creates a load of stability and the foundation is now pulling. The last one, because we're talking about combining tools is a single arm with the belt creates a load of stability. We let go of the bar. The grip goes a little bit more. With the one hand, sorry, we let go of the one hand. The grip starts to slide, but we're able to work really hard to recreate that tension, keeping the abs tight, shoulders staying super stable to stop it from winding. And there's loads of stuff to play around on that one. So just get these more in your program. It's building the foundations for so many exercises. Now loads of you are enjoying working on your frog to handstand and eventually working on those handstand press-ups. So head of handstands at Scorecast, Tim's gonna give us a nice demo of these. So the tools we're gonna look at is gonna kick up and then we're gonna look at adding an eccentric. So he's gonna lower down under control but we're gonna have the assistance of the wall for the first part. So those two together. So he's gonna use the wall so he doesn't have to worry about the balance so much. He's also gonna add some stability in there. And then he's gonna lower down and control five, four, three, two, one.  On the way back up, he's then gonna dig his heels into the floor and try to help himself back up with his heels to pull almost as well as him driving himself up. So you can see that he's using his foot into the wall to help him with the pushing part of getting back up. He's working some lovely things there. We've got that eccentric on the way down. You could do these separately. You could have the eccentric on the way down on its own, put your feet down and kick back up again. Or we can have, as he did, the eccentric on the way down and nice control and then actually using those feet to try and help claw yourself back up the wall. The nice thing about that as well is as long as you're conscious that you're keeping that body and that nice alignment, the wall's gonna help you to do that. These vertical pushing positions are so important in getting that frog stand to hand stand progression. So if you can find the right progression of this exercise that's appropriate for you, it's an absolute winner. Yeah, so we've got eccentric, we've got assisted, and then you can do those on their own or you can do them together. So with that frog stand to hand stand, one of the things we need to work on is strength out of real deep positions in your hand stand push-up. So having your hands on the floor and taking your head down to the floor sometimes isn't quite good enough because you just don't get deep. So what we can do is you can put your hands up on a box to actually raise the height of the floor, but then you can take your head past that position. So you go into a deep position, hands are almost coming towards the shoulders and then having the strength to drive out of there. It might be that you can't push out of that position so you just use the eccentric part of that elevated position, put your feet back down and then kick back up. We're gonna look at the planche now, really popular exercise, but one that's really difficult to build up to the specific or applied strength that you need for it. So Tim's first thing we're gonna do is looking at this planche lean and we've shown you a video before with a planche lean for a beginner's planche work. But now we're gonna elevate the box, the feet up with the box. So the box now puts Tim's body, you see his shoulders, hip and feet on a nice straight line horizontal sort of parallel to the floor. If his feet were down, his body would be at an angle. So now we're raising it up, just that initially makes it a little bit harder. The box is also a nice stable base. That actually makes it a little bit more comfortable or it's not challenging his, but it's a stable base for him to apply force from his feet. He's gonna now then go into that lean position where he rolls over on those toes so he's not really using his feet at all. He's pushing the shoulder blades up and he's pushing that core, trying to keep that in that sort of hollow body position but getting that hip, shoulder and ankle all in a nice straight line. He holds that there as an isometric. So we've got the elevated position, the levers and angles. We've got the isometric aspects of it and we've got a little bit of extra stability from the box because it's not gonna move around. We can make this exercise just a tiny bit harder and just adjust the difficulty of it by taking away the box, which was nice and stable and replacing it by a stability ball. So we have the height of the ball, which is gonna be the same as the box, keeping then the body in that nice straight line position. But what's nice about the ball is it allows him to be able to roll backwards and forward to find a more difficult position as that ball gets further away from his center point. It's gonna make it more difficult. It also has a stability challenge because that ball, as you can see, it's gonna start moving about and then he can actually make it harder for himself by going onto one leg rather than having both leg on there. So now, not only we elevated and holding that isometric position, we're really challenging the stability of the whole exercise because the point of contact he's got with his foot is gonna be moving about and therefore he's got to create that stability and that's what we see. So I'm a little bit of shaking from the upper body because that stability challenge has increased. Same exercise as with the box, but change that tool of adding more of a stability challenge or taking away the stability from the feet and all of a sudden that exercise becomes a lot more difficult. So with planche training, once you've got that planche lean sorted, you really have to get into the position where you're able to hold a tucked position and that's when your planche training really starts and that can be a difficult step to take. So we can use the band to help your hips in that position. So getting into a tucked position, knees tucked, shoulders forward, but the band just helping to keep those hips in line with those shoulders before you can work on being able to take away that band. That then really gives you hopefully some really good principles around combining tools together and just one little point for me to finish off with, a lot of those tools that I'm adding onto either an eccentric or an isometric and the key bit that I need you to remember about them is we need to create tension. You don't get strong just by falling down our position. So five seconds for those eccentrics as a minimum, five seconds for those isometrics as a minimum and you've got to be in control and creating tension. That's my take home message, Tim. I like that one. You know the thing is to be humble enough to make sure you're right. Oh, I love that.  Let's just build it back in so you can actually get an opportunity to train with great technique, great form and just the long-term benefits of that are gonna be way more significant. And the last point for me is just to go back to remember, you can combine these tools. Your objectives are to bridge the gap between two movements, so smaller progressions are making something easier, all a bit more difficult. And the second thing is to just think about getting that capacity strength in the system. You've got to get strong if you're gonna progress forwards with calisthenics and these are great tools to make that process even more effective.  If you haven't got our free beginners guide, that one's down there. And there's a little bit about that planche work in there. So if you've missed out on our beginners planche video, that one is down there. So until next time. Class dismissed.


We paid you $2.2 million, Freedom Family, four days ago. This is over a week early because last month, we paid you a little bit late. Click that I to see why we paid you late last month. We paid everyone $2 million almost a week late this time. Why? And I hope you appreciate the early payment this month. I am still in Dubai and I want to talk about the freedom experience as well as the five billion dollars that Google was fined, fined. This is a bill that they are expected to pay over their Android operating system. The EU decided that Google was doing anti-competitive practices using its Android system to promote its search product and fined them five billion dollars. Now you might wonder how does that hurt Google? Turns out they have $100 billion in their bank account, cash. So they got hit with a 5% fine. How long does it take Google to earn $5 billion? Two weeks. Well, the parent company, Alphabet, that owns Google earns $5 billion in revenue every two weeks according to this article that you see beside me. It's amazing, guys. Can you imagine if you had access to that kind of cash? What would you invest in? What would you do? Most of you don't, but most of you have access to the cash you're earning on and off YouTube. A good way to help extend that cash is to pay zero tax while living and working in Dubai. That is the whole point and Dubai is a little hot taking off my glasses because they're fogging up. That is the point of the freedom experience to help you relocate, move from your home country to Dubai for six plus months so you can live and work with me making videos here and enjoy the zero tax environment. It's just the law. Every country has taxation. This country, the United Arab Emirates, or UAE for short, which Dubai is the city in, has the zero tax law. They make their money from fees. They charge a fixed fee for all the companies here, for all the services they offer, visas for visitors. That's how this government chooses to make money, not on a percentage of your income. I personally prefer this format, this strategy, don't you? Click that I to learn about Dubai. All the things that we learned so far in that video. What wasn't in that video is the following. Everybody uses WhatsApp. It's like the national communication tool. They don't use text messages, Discord, Skype, or even email. They prefer to receive voicemails and texts using WhatsApp. Skype voice is blocked, meaning you can't make voice or video calls using Skype without a VPN. The same is true for Google Hangouts, Discord, and many other popular voice over IP communications. You can get a VPN or you can use a business line if you have a company in a business internet. Skype is unblocked. Now we have found that Steam voice chat still works. That lets us talk without a VPN on a residential line, and there may be other voice services as well. The real estate prices are the lowest they've been in over three years here in Dubai. Now, apparently, is the best time to buy or rent. Expo 2020 will be here in Dubai. In two years, there will be the whole world. 25 million people expected to come to Dubai for six months during which the Expo will be on. Have any of you been to an Expo? Tell me down there in the comments below. I was at the Vancouver Expo in 1986 because I was living in Vancouver when they had it. It's an amazing combination of all the different countries having boots that they showcase everything that's unique and awesome about their country, and it certainly is an experience. I look forward to that in 2020 here in Dubai. Click that eye to see the playlist of the entire freedom experience, all the videos I've created so far while I've been here in the city. Dubai is a city, it isn't a country. We are very close to completing our Emirates ID, which gives us full permanent residence status in this city and the whole country, UAE. So we will be able to live and work permanently if we choose to here. The only requirement is you need to come to the country at least once every 175 days, it's actually 180 days, but we say 175 just in case you miss a day, because if you don't show up, then you lose your residency, it's as simple as that. If we do move in September to Dubai, I will be committing one full year for myself, my wife and our four kids to live and work here in Dubai. That is the promise I make all of you, so if you decide to join us, you can be sure I will be here to help and sponsor you to make sure you have an awesome experience in the freedom experience. Other than office space and apartments, what is available to help people grow their business? There are incubation centers here in Dubai where you can get help with professionals to connect you with industry, even investors. We just toured one of those spaces in production city where all the rent is subsidized, all the recording areas are provided, and you get to meet the people network with everyone to build your community here. We will certainly be taking advantage of that, as well as all the other amazing people we've met so far here in Dubai, in production city, studio city, internet city, media city, in the YouTube space, in this JLT, Jumerra Lake Towers, in all the different areas, we are still yet to explore and meet people. Everyone has been super friendly and I'm so happy to have discovered this environment and I hope you will also discover it and enjoy it with me in the freedom experience. Who am I? I am Papa George, George Sun Pie and many other names you, the beautiful freedom family has given me. I am the CEO and founder of Freedom. I'm wearing my big freedom shirt today for freedom and the freedom family. And all of you creators who are helping each other grow together as a family. That is the spirit of freedom. And if you wanna continue that spirit, head on over to www.community.tm, which is our community off YouTube forums where you can introduce yourself, meet a lot of other people and hang out with the freedom staff. Check out our Discord servers as well. All of that, all of those links are down there in the description below and leave comments beneath these videos. Ask your questions, answer people's questions. Until the next video, freedom family, keep safe and you've been watching. Click that I to partner with freedom and join the freedom family so we can all grow together. You get many perks like position music, you also get epidemic sound, a lot of other access to royalty free videos, sponsorships and many things to help you grow. Just click the links down there in the description below to get involved in our community, our forums, our Discord chat servers, meet our graphics team, meet our community team, all of that on Discord and the forums. What are you waiting for? Get started. And we will grow together as a family because this is the freedom family. You are part of it, we are all part of it and we're all growing together. To get more George, click that big F that will subscribe you to Freedom Central, home of the George show. And PewDiePie gave one of you, Freedom Family, a big shout out. Click that video to see the shout out and to see our new 3D sets for you. And click that video to see what YouTube recommends you watch next.


Be sure to eat one big salad like this one every single day and watch your reproductive health change. In the beginning, you may not like it, but you'll grow to love it.


The study found that presenting a vibratactile signal derived from the speech temporal envelope can improve speech and noise, SYN, intelligibility in a multi-talker background for untrained, normal hearing listeners. Vibratactile sensitivity, evaluated using vibratactile detection thresholds, modulates the extent of audio-tactile SYN improvement. The study also found that concurrent vibratactile stimulation delivered to the left or right palm all both led to a significant improvement in SYN recognition when compared to the audio-only condition. The results highlight the potential of concurrent vibratactile stimulation to improve SYN recognition, especially in individuals with poor SYN perception abilities, and tentatively more so with increasing tactile sensitivity. This article was authored by Isabina Ruto, Xavier Dutig, Vako Jusmaki, and others.


Good afternoon! For those who are new, I'm Dr. Theron Sherman, and in today's briefing, we will be discussing SCP-6387. There isn't any objectionable material in this document, so let's begin. Item Number SCP-6387 Object Class, Neutralized Special Containment Procedures SCP-6387's remains are currently preserved in Site 44's Biological Abnormalities Containment Wing, pending further study. Description SCP-6387 was an anomalous humanoid neutralized in Virginia in 1923. Physically, SCP-6387 stood at 2 meters tall, with luminous eyes and thin, translucent skin. Subject was hairless, with tapered ears and cloven, hoof-like feet. No reproductive organs present. SCP-6387's hands, disproportionately large, each possess four digits with protruding claws measuring 6 cm in length. Whether or not SCP-6387 was sapient remains unknown. SCP-6387 was first sighted in Oakland Cemetery on October 15, 1923. Shortly after midnight, 50-year-old groundskeeper Joseph Rutledge awoke to the sound of an intruder. Initially suspecting grave robbers, Rutledge set out to investigate, whereupon he discovered SCP-6387 digging furiously at the site of a fresh burial plot. Startled, Rutledge shot SCP-6387 twice in the chest with a 38-smith-and-wesson revolver. Subject expired instantly, with Rutledge later informing the civilian authorities. Agents embedded in the local police force subsequently alerted the Foundation to suspect an extra-normal activity. SCP-6387's remains were transported to Site-44 for research, with amnestics administered to all witnesses. The grave targeted by SCP-6387 was exhumed, and found to contain the remains of 24-year-old milkmaid Charlotte Abernathy, who was reported to have died following an epileptic seizure the previous morning. The casket's interior exhibited numerous prominent scratch marks. Cause of death was deemed suffocation. Ms. Abernathy was reburied without further incident. Thank you for listening.  Please become a patron or visit our merch store at the link in our bio to support our work. Secure. Contain. Protect.


Chapter 11 of Man and His Ancestor, A Study in Evolution. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Mack, Tucson, Arizona. Man and His Ancestor, A Study in Evolution by Charles Morris. Chapter 11. Warfare and Civilization. Long before the second phase of the evolution of man had been completed, the third phase had begun, that of the conflict of man with man. The animal kingdom once subdued, and nature made man's friend and servant. The human race increased and multiplied until the borders of communities met and hostile relations arose between them. A fight for place began, a struggle for domination, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring, and aggressive rose to power and control. It was the final act in the great drama of natural selection, which had been played upon the stage of the earth since the first appearance of living forms, the last and most ruthless of them all. For the instigating cause was no longer merely the pressure for a share of the food supply, but to this was added the lust for power and place, the hunger for wealth and dominion, the insatiable appetite for autocratic control. Millions upon millions of men were swept away by the sword and by its attendant demons, famine and pestilence, and still the stronger and abler climbed to the top. The weaker and inferior succumbed, and the intellectual evolution of man went on with enhanced rapidity as the harvest of the sword was gathered in and the merciless reapers of men swept in successive columns over the earth, each a stage higher in mental ability than the preceding. This phase of human evolution is that of the era of human history. Before its advent men had no history. It would be as useful to attempt to give the history of the gorilla as of man in the early stages of his progress. History is the record of individuality and in primitive times equality and communism prevailed and the individual had not yet separated himself from the mass. Man had settled into the dull inertness of a stagnant pool and the fierce winds of war were needed to break up his mental slothfulness and stir thought into healthful activity. There must be leaders before there can be history. The annals of mankind begin in hero worship. The relations of superior and inferior need to be established and the individual action and supremacy are the foundation upon which all history is built. Only by stirring up the deep pool of human life into seething turmoil and unrest could the tendency to stagnation be overcome. The best and most aspiring rising to the top, the dull and heavy sinking to the bottom and the element of thought permeating the whole with its vitalizing spirit. When this stage of evolution is reached we cease for the first time to deal with species and genera in the mass and begin to deal with individuals who now emerge from the general group and stand above and apart like great signal posts on the highway of progress. These heroes are not alone those of the sword. They are the leaders in art, in literature, in science, in thought, in every domain. The men who stand above supreme and shining and toward these elevations the whole mass below surges slowly but strenuously upward. The third phase of human evolution therefore is that of the emergence of the individual as the leader. Lawgiver, teacher of mankind, each leader forming a goal for the emulation of all below and this condition is the legitimate outcome of war. Which, terrible as it has always been, was the only agency that could rapidly break up the stagnancy of early communism and send man upward in a swirl toward the heights of civilization. To give the history of this phase of evolution would be to give the history of mankind and would be aside from the purpose of this work. All that need be attempted in support of our argument is to present some general deductions from human history indicating the leading features of the service man has received from war. The conflict between man and man was at first vague and inconsequential. It was only after settled and organized communities based originally on the family relation and held together by possession of property in common had been formed that war became more effective in its results. The chief of these results in the early days were two, breaking up of the old equity of power and possession and the development of larger and more powerful communities. The head man of the village community or the herding clan possessed some delegated authority but no political supremacy over his fellows. Equality existed alike in theory and in fact battle between neighboring clans was the first step toward breaking this up. The conquered clan became subordinated to the victorious one and the chief of the victors as the representative of his nation exercised an authority over the subject community which he did not possess at home. The degree of subordination differed from the mild form of tribute paying to that of personal slavery but in either case we see the old condition of equality vanishing and that of class distinctions and the relation of superior and inferior arising while the power of the chief advances from a delegated authority to an established supremacy. The second outcome of this early phase of war was an increase in the size of political groups. The conquered were forced to aid the conquerors in war as in peace. Clans combined to resist aggression minor communities grew into organized tribes. Tribes developed into nations as a result of war like operations. This growth in political organization was a necessary and inevitable result of continued warfare. The aggressors gathered all the strength possible. The assailed peoples did the same. Temporary alliances grew into permanent ones. Larger armies were formed. Larger communities were organized. National development advanced at a rate ten fold probably a hundred fold more rapidly than it would have had peaceful conditions persisted. Side by side with tribal and national consolidation went on the growth in leadership.  The war chief a king. Success made him a hero to his people. He grew to be the lord of conquered tribes into his hands fell the bulk of the spoils. The relation of equality of possessions vanished as the plunder taken by the army was distributed unequally among the victors. Below the principal leader came the ableist followers each claiming and receiving a proportionate share in the new division of power and wealth. In short when the era of war had become fully inaugurated the old social and political relations of mankind were broken up with great rapidity. Equality of power was replaced by inequality which steadily grew more and more declared. Equality of wealth in like manner vanished in all directions the individual emerged from the mass. Class distinctions became intricate and the relations of rich and poor of king, noble, citizen and slave completely replaced the old communal organization of mankind. War was the great agent in this evolution. It might have emerged slowly in peace. It came with almost startling rapidity in war and reached a degree of power on the one hand and subordination on the other that could scarcely ever have appeared had conditions of peace prevailed. With this growth of great nations came a rapid development in political science, in legal institutions, in social relations. An enormous advance was made in a limited period in the civilization of mankind. As a result, not of the devastation and slaughter of war but of its influence upon human organization it was the principle of reward for ability to which the leaders of men owed their supremacy. When nations were organized this same principle took another and very useful form. The distribution of wealth had become strikingly unequal. There were endless grades of distinction between the supremely wealthy and the absolutely poor. The wealthy were ready to lavish their money in return for articles of pleasure and luxury. The poor in their thirst for a share of the wealth were strongly stimulated to inventive activity in producing new and desirable wares. Inequality became the mainspring of business activity. Thought and inventive ingenuity were strongly exercised. A rapid progress went on in the production of new devices, new methods, and new articles of necessity and luxury. Manufacture flourished. Commerce increased. Civilization appeared the whole as legitimate outcome of the conditions brought about by war. This phase of human evolution as may be seen was radically different from that already considered arising from the development of sacri-dotal influence and priestly power. They worked together no doubt. The establishment of the great primitive empires as a peaceful progress was greatly complicated by war which tended steadily to increase the temporal power of the ruler and enable him in time to control by the sword alone. But it is interesting to find that long after the old system was practically overthrown, its shadows still lay upon the nations. The powerful war monarchs of Assyria led their armies to conquest in the name of the national deity whose vice-edgerents they claimed to be. The autocratic emperors of Rome went so far as to claim in some cases to be gods themselves. Even in modern Russia some of this dignity pertains to the emperor. As the supreme head of the national church, old ideas are proverbially hard to kill. But the mission of the priesthood by no means stopped here. The priests rose to influence as the teachers as well as the leaders of the people. The members of this class set aside from manual occupations and devoted to thought upon the relations of man to the divine played an important part in the development of the human mind. As a result of their speculative activity of thought, the old religious system sank into the background. The simple worship of primitive times were overshadowed by intricate mythological systems. Splendid in worship and creed, cosmogonies and philosophies were devised, and human thought once fairly set loose in this field went on with great energy and imaginative fervor. Literature arose as a result of this activity of thought. It took at first the form of hymns, speculative essays, magical formulas, dogmas, ordinances of worship, etc. By degrees it grew more secular in form until in the end secular literature arose. This was greatly stimulated by the conditions of inequality arising from war. In the same manner as the reward for merit and invention stimulated men to activity in the mechanical arts, so the hope of reward for literary production stirred up men to the composing of poems, histories and other works of thought. In both directions physical and mental, men were stimulated to the most active exertions by the conditions of inequality in wealth and power and the consequent desire to obtain a share of the money lavished by the rich and the authority similarly lavished by the powerful. The broad general view here taken must suffice for our consideration of this phase of human evolution. It brings the story of the development of man closely up to the present stage of political and social organizations and relations. It may be said in conclusion of this section of our work that the powerful agency of war, so active and important in the past, as in great part lost its utility in the present and bid's fair to be brought to an end before the world is much older. It is no longer needed nearly or quite all that it is capable of doing for mankind being accomplished while the equally powerful agency of commerce, travel, leagues of nations and other conditions of modern origin have taken its place. War while yielding many useful results has given rise to others whose utility is questionable and whose ill effects it will take much time and effort to set aside. The inequality of power to which war gave rise continues in many parts of the world and the inequality of wealth shows signs of increase instead of diminution. Once useful they have developed to an injurious extent. The result is a state of unrest, discontent and more or less active opposition which constitutes a condition of permanent conflict, a deep dissatisfaction with existing institutions normal to a justly organized society. War has become in great measure useless, but the scaffolding from which it built up the edifice of civilization remains and stands as a tottering ruin threatening to engulf mankind in its fall. Ever since the triumph of autocracy in the Roman Empire, the masses of mankind have steadily protested against an inequality that is alien to the natural rights of man. For century after century the struggle against undue exercise of power has gone on. And the hereditary lords of mankind have lost stage by stage their usurped power until in the modern republic they have been replaced by the servants and chosen agents of the people. But the autocracy of wealth still holds its own and is growing more and more powerful. And against this wave of opposition is now rising. Everywhere man is earnestly and sternly demanding an equitable distribution of the productions of nature and art. What the outcome of this demand will be, it is impossible to say. It must inevitably lead to some readjustment of the wealth of mankind. But only the slow process of social evolution can decide what this shall be. We have in this brief treatise to trace the development of man from his primeval state as a tree-dwelling animal in the depths of the tropic woods through the phases of his later condition as an erect surface dweller. His conflict with and dominion over the animal kingdom, his subsequent contest with the adverse powers of nature, and his final warfare with his fellows and emergence into civilization. Each of these contests has left its results. The first in the forest nomads of the eastern tropics, the second in the patriarchal herding tribes of the steppes and deserts, the village communities of Russia, and the paternal empire of China. The third in the enlightened nations of Europe and America. For how long a period this mighty drama of evolution has continued, it is impossible to say. Its first phase must have been of interminable slowness. Its second, while more rapid, still very deliberate, its third of much greater rapidity, yet extending over several thousands of years. Millions of years have probably passed away since it began. Yet the period involved is none too long for the magnitude of the results, whose greatness can be seen if we contrast man's mental development with that of the lower animals during this period. Physically the development of man has been inconsiderable, much less apparently than that of many other animals. Mentally it has been enormous. The whole of nature's influences in new and often adverse situations have been brought to bear upon man's mind. And as the result we have civilized man as contrasted with the anthropoid and the end is not yet. The era of war in man's development is near its close and a new era of peace under conditions of advanced mental and physical activity seems about to begin. Its outcome no man can predict but it may far surpass in beneficial results all that has gone before and carry man upward to an extraordinary elevated mental plane. Chapter 12 Of Man and His Ancestor A Study in Evolution This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Boutros Man and His Ancestor Charles McClain Morris The Evolution of Morality The evolution of man from his animal ancestry has been a composite phenomenon one by no means confined to the physical and intellectual conditions which we have so far considered but embracing also features of moral and spiritual progress. The origin and growth of these need also to be reviewed as if we would present a fully rounded sketch of human evolution. So far as his physical form is concerned, man became practically completed ages ago as the supreme effort of nature in the molding and vitalizing of matter. When the arena of the struggle for existence became transferred from the body to the mind, variation in the body once so active rapidly declined and with the full employment in the conflict with nature, physical evolution ceased except in minor particulars and the organic structure of man became practically fixed. The human animal therefore as a physical species has reached a stage of permanence and this may be regarded as the supreme result of material evolution in animals or at least it may be affirmed that while man continues to exist, no member of the lower animal tribes can possibly develop to become his rival. But though man is not markedly distinct as a physical species from his anthropoid ancestor, the process of evolution has not ceased but has gone on in him rapidly and immensely. The strain has simply been transferred from the body to the mind and to the extent that the mental characteristics are more flexible and yield more readily to formative influences. The mind has surpassed the body in rapidity of evolutionary variation. Within a period during which the lower animals have remained almost unchanged, man has varied enormously in mental conditions and today may be looked upon not merely as a distinct species but practically as a new order or a class of animals as far removed intellectually from the mammals below him as they are from the insects or mollusks. If now we turn from the physical and intellectual to the ethical stage of development, it will be to perceive as marked and decided a process of evolution. The change has perhaps been even greater since in the lower animals the moral faculties are more rudimentary than the intellectual but on the other hand moral development in man has been much inferior to the intellectual. Therefore though the foundation was lower the edifice has not reached nearly so great a height and man today stands in moral elevation considerably below his intellectual level. It was formally the custom to look upon man as the only intellectual and moral animal the forms below him being credited solely with hereditary instincts. This belief is no longer entertained by those familiar with the results of modern research. Evidences of unquestionable powers of thought have been traced in the lower animals. Imagination and reason being alike indicated. The elephant for instance is evidently a thinking animal and is capable of overcoming difficulties and adapting itself to new situations using methods not unlike those which man himself might display under similar circumstances. Its gratitude for favors and remembrance of and revenge for injuries are evidences of its possession of the moral attributes. The recorded instances of displays of reason in the dog man's constant companion are innumerable. Intellectual attributes are still more pronounced in the ape tribe as indicated in a preceding chapter where it was argued that man began his development in intellect at a somewhat advanced stage. The same cannot be said in regard to his moral evolution. In this respect the level from which man emerged was a much lower one. If his moral growth may be symbolized as a great tree it is one not very deeply rooted in the world below him. Yet it doubtless has grown out of the soil of animal life and its finer tendrils and fibers may be traced to a considerable depth in this fertile soil. Before proceeding with this subject it is important to devote some attention to the characteristics of the moral attributes concerning which there is much diversity of opinion. There has been abundance of theorizing upon the principles of ethics. Thinkers dividing themselves into two widely separated groups. In the one school the intuitive the principles of morality are looked upon as inherent in the soul of man unfolding as the plant unfolds from its seed. In the other school the inductive morality is claimed to be founded upon selfishness. The moving principle of human actions being the desire to avoid pain and attain pleasure. Each school makes a strong argument which goes far to indicate that each is based upon a truth and therefore that neither has the whole truth. The fault would appear to lie in the attempt to make morality a unit. In our view this unity does not exist while both schools may be partly right neither would seem to be wholly right and they appear to be pulling at the two ends of a single chain. Ethics in short may be regarded as composed of unlike halves which unite centrally to form a whole. It may aid to reconcile the conflicting systems of theorists if it be held that the inductive half of ethics is the product of the reasoning powers and outer experience. The intuitive half the product of feeling and inner development while both meet and harmonize in life as reason and feeling harmonize in the mind. It is interesting to find that it is the intuitive not the inductive element of the moral attributes that we find principally developed in the lower animals. This is the outgrowth of instinct not of thought. The development of that principle of attraction which manifests itself in all nature and which when associated with consciousness becomes what we know as love affection or sympathy. It is a powerful and pervading force in all matter intelligent and unintelligent and in conscious beings falls naturally among the emotions. Like all the passions it is instinctive in origin though it may come under the control of the intellect as the mind develops. In the lower animal world it is manifested as a vigorous attraction the sexual in the higher animals this attraction expands and grows complex. The attraction between the sexes becomes love and in its full unfoldment may join two individuals together for life and influence most of their actions to the attraction between the sexes should be added that between parents and children the parental and filial and that between associates the tribal or social the latter the weaker of the same character. With these bonds reason has nothing to do it does not form them and would seek in vain to sever them. They belong to a part of the mental constitution which lies outside the kingdom of thought and they therefore often act counter to the selfish consideration of personal safety. The love bond indeed in its full strength seems to constitute a partial loss of individuality. Mates will suffer pain and endure physical injury for each other or for their offspring to as great an extent as if these constituted a part of themselves and as if their actions were performed in self-defense. With this brief review of the philosophy of the ethical sentiments we may proceed to a consideration of the facts. While the rudimentary form of the sentiment in question is manifest far down in the descending grades of animal life it expands into what we may fairly term love or affection only in the higher forms. Romanus in his animal intelligence remarks as regards emotions it is among birds first meet with a conspicuous advance in the tenderer feelings of affection and sympathy. Those relating to the sexes and the care of progeny are in this class proverbial for their intensity offering in fact a favorite type for the poet and moralist. The pining of the lovebird for its absent mate and the keen distress of a hen on losing her chickens furnish abundant evidence of vivid feelings of the kind in question.  Amongst social and communal animals the sentiment of sympathy widens to embrace all the members of the tribe a characteristic which is very strongly manifested in so low an organism as the ant. As an example of this feeling among birds Romanus quotes an interesting illustration from Edward the naturalist. The latter had shot and wounded a turn but before he could reach it the helpless bird was carried off by its companions. Two of these took hold of it by the wings and flew with it several yards over the water. They then relinquish their burden to two others and the process continued in this way until they at length reached a rock at some distance. When the hunter eager for his prize pursued them the sympathetic birds again took up their wounded companion and flew off with it again over the water. Abundant instances of this sentiment of social affection could be quoted from the mammalia. It is by no means confined to members of a species but may extend to very unlike species. No one needs to be told of the warm affection so often shown by the dog for its master. A love which will lead it to dare wounds or death in his service or in the protection of his property. This altruistic sentiment strongly exists in the monkeys. Examples of the ardent feeling of these animals for their fellows have been given in a preceding chapter and many more might be quoted if necessary. It must suffice here to quote a single further instance cited by Romanas and relating to a small monkey which was taken ill on ship board where there were several others of different species. It had always been a favorite with the other monkeys who seemed to regarded as the last born and the pet of the family and they granted it many indulgences which they seldom conceded to one another. It was very tractable and gentle in its temper and never took advantage of the partiality shown to it. From the moment it was taken ill their attention and care of it redoubled and it was truly affecting and interesting to see with what anxiety and tenderness they tended and nursed the little creature. A struggle often ensued between them for priority in these offices of affection and some would steal one thing and some another which they would carry to it untasted however tempting it might be to their own palates. They would take it up gently in their fore paws, hug it to their breasts and cry over it as a fond mother would over her suffering child. With the human race the love sentiment does not usually display the singleness of energy shown among the lower animals. It is affected and often in effect in its development by an intricate series of influences which act on savage and civilized man alike. The family formed the primitive human group, its linking elements being the sexual attraction between man and woman and the fervent affection between parents and children. These feelings while strong in certain directions were crude and uneven. In savage tribes today the wife is an ill treated drudge yet the husband will protect his wife and children from danger at risk of his life. The maternal instinct seems still stronger. The mother often acts as if the child were an actual part of herself. Danger or injury to it produces in her a mental agony the close equivalent of its fear or pain and she will endure suffering and peril in its protection with an impulse beyond the control of reason. This sentiment in a weakened form extended from the family to the group and the success of man in gaining the mastery over the other animals was doubtless greatly aided by the strong bond of social affinity existing between the members of a group. They work together in a fuller sense than any other animals except the ants and bees. In the original social group another and closer community seems gradually to have developed the group of kindred. This was a natural outgrowth from the family whose bond of affection was extended to include more distant relatives until there emerged the organized group of kindred known as the village community which seems everywhere to have preceded civilization. This bond of kindred gradually extended combining men into larger and larger groups until the clan the horde and the tribe emerged their members all linked together by the reality or the fiction of common descent. Such was the form of organization that existed in Greece and Rome in their early days and made its influence felt far down into their later history. It existed indeed at some period over almost all the earth. As the group widened the bond of sympathy weakened. Love in the family found its counterpart in fellow feeling in the tribe in patriotism in the nation. It is undoubtedly true that desire for personal protection is one of the strong influences which bind men into societies. The hope of advantage in other directions and the pleasure of social intercourse are other combining forces yet below these rational elements has always abided the emotional element the sympathetic attraction which binds kindred closely together and which exerts some degree of influence on all members of the same group or nation. The development of the ethical principle in mankind is largely due to the extension of the sentiment of social sympathy for ages it was confined to the immediate group. Such was the case even in civilized Greece. Intellectually one of the most advanced of peoples but morally very contracted. The Greeks were long divided into minor groups with the warmest sentiment of patriotism uniting the members of each community while their common origin bound all the Hellenes together. But this feeling failed to cross the borders of the narrow peninsula of Greece all peoples beyond these borders being viewed as barbarians in whose pleasures and pains no interest was felt and whose misfortunes produced no stir of sympathy in the Grecian heart. Even Aristotle taught that Greeks owed no more duties to barbarians than to wild beasts and a philosopher who declared that his affection extended to the whole people of Greece was thought to be remarkably sympathetic. The Romans were equally narrow in their early days and not until the empire extended to the outer borders of the civilized world did this narrowness give way to a more expanded sympathy. The brotherhood of mankind indeed was taught by Socrates, Cicero and others of the ancient moral philosophers yet these seeds of philosophy fell in very sterile soil and took root with discouraging slowness. Philosophers elsewhere taught the dogma of universal love, Confucius among the Chinese Gotama among the Hindus, but their teachings have born little fruit in the great stagnant peoples of Asia in whom the narrowness of semi-civilization prevails. The teachings of Christ whose code of morality was intuitive one, love one another have been far more effective. Christianity became the religion of Europe since then the most progressive part of the world and with every step of progress and civilization the Christ doctrine of charity and sympathy reached a higher and broader stage. Today it has attained in Europe and America a wide degree of development and the vast extension of human intercourse through the mediums of travel, commerce and telegraphic communication is for the first time in human history beginning to lift the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of men from the plane of a philosophic dogma toward that of an established fact. The range of sympathy is narrow yet selfishness predominates, the truly altruistic are the few, the feebly sympathetic and coldly selfish are the many. Yet it must be admitted that there has been a great development of altruism during the 19th century and the promise of the coming of Christ's kingdom on the earth is greater today than at any former period in the history of mankind. The love principle is the innate moral element of the universe. Its rudimentary form is the attraction between atoms which expands into the attraction between spheres. We see a development of it in the magnetic and electric attractions and a higher one in the sexual attraction that exists in the lower organisms. Its expansion continues until it reaches the high level of human love and social sympathy but throughout its whole development consciousness takes no part in its origin. While conscious of its existence we call it into existence. Men and women fall in love they do not reason themselves into affection. Those we love become in a measure a part of ourselves. We feel their sufferings and endure their afflictions not through the nerves of the body but through the finer ones of the mind a plexus of spiritual nerves which stretch unseen from soul to soul. So strong an affinity that comped was induced to look upon mankind as an organism and it gave rise in the mind of Leslie Stevens to the conception of a common social tissue. Love and law rule the universe. It is this second moral element that of law which we have next to consider. Inductive morality had its origin in experience. It assumed the form of social restriction of man of fixed law and precept and culminated in the sense of duty. A conscientious avoidance of that which was thought to be wrong and an earnest desire to do what was looked upon as right. The history of this phase of morality differs essentially from that of the phase we have just considered. The sense of duty the conscientious sentiment so highly developed in man seems to be non-existent in the lower animals so far as observation has taught us. Yet it is not quite wanting its rudiment is there and this rudiment is capable of development. It may be indeed that a higher developed sense of duty exists in the ants and bees to judge from their diligent labors for the benefit of the community. But the clearest examples of conscientious performance of duty are those seen in the case of the dog in which animal intimate association with man has developed something strongly approaching a conscience. A dog needs only to be well treated to display a sense of dignity and a self-respect analogous to these feelings in man. A sensitive resentment against injustice in high caste and carefully nurtured dogs has often been observed. While shame for an act which the animal knows to be forbidden has been seen in a hundred instances. The sense of duty is occasionally very strongly developed. Many striking examples of this are on record. A dog will often defend his master's property with the greatest devotion letting no temptation draw him away from the path of duty. An instance has been related to the writer in which an extraordinary display of this feeling was made. A gentleman on coming home at night found he had forgotten his key and attempted to enter the house by the window of a room in which his dog was on duty as a night watchman. To his surprise and annoyance the animal would not permit him to enter and attacked him every time he tried to climb in. The animal knew him well, responded to his attempts to fondle it, but the moment he made an attempt to enter the window became hostile and seemed ready to spring upon him. In its small brain was the feeling that no one, master or stranger, had the right to enter that house at night by the window and it was there to perform its duty without regard to persons. In the end the gentleman was obliged to leave and seek shelter elsewhere. The development of this sense of duty and the growth of moral restriction in primitive man were probably very slow, much more so than the evolution of intelligence. The social habit of man, doubtless rendered necessary at an early period, some restraints on the actions of individuals, and these in time gained the strength of unwritten law, but many of them were scarcely what we should call moral obligations. Many such restrictions exist among savage tribes today, and to these we must turn for examples of their character. We, for instance, look upon theft and lying as immoral practices but such is not the case with savages generally, most of whom will steal if the opportunity offers, while they will lie in so transparent and useless a manner as to indicate that they see nothing wrong in this practice. And yet the aborigines of India, many of whom are very immoral according to our standard, are often strongly averse to untruthfulness.  It is well known that truthfulness was one of the chief virtues of the ancient Persians, a virtue that was accompanied by much which we would call immoral. The Hindu devotee is exceedingly tender of the lives of animals while he is often callous to human suffering. Disregard of human suffering indeed showed itself strongly through all the past ages, men being slaughtered with as little compunction as if they were so many wild beasts, while frightful tortures were inflicted with an extraordinary absence of humane feeling. And these excesses were committed by persons who, in the ordinary affairs of life, were frequently tender in feeling and conscientious in action. In truth, moral development from this point of view has always shown a one-sidedness that goes far to discredit the doctrine of intuitive conceptions of right and wrong. The indications are strong that rules of conduct are not inherent in the human mind, that men become moral to the extent that they are taught the principles of justice and grow one-sided in their ideas of virtue through incompleteness in their moral education. What we call sinfulness is largely a matter of custom and convention. Men cannot properly be said to sin when their actions are checked by no conscientious scruples. And what one people would consider atrocious instances of wrong doing might be looked upon as innocent and even estimable by a people with a different moral standard. Religion has much to do with this. The human sacrifices and cannibal feasts of the Aztec Indians, for instance, were regarded by them as good deeds, obligations which they owed to their gods. Yet this people had attained to some of the refined practices and moral ideas of civilization. The leading principles of correct human conduct are few and simple. They were arrived at early in the history of human thought and little has since been added to them. They arose as results of human experience as necessary principles of restraint in developing communities and were nearly all extant in prehistoric times as the unwritten laws of social organization. What creed makers did was to put these ancient axioms of morality on record and offer them to the world as codes of religious observance. They could not have been of primitive origin since the most of them do not exist among the savage tribes still with us. There is nothing indeed to show that any idea of sinfulness exists in the minds of the lowest savages. The rules of conduct which they possess being such regulations as are necessary to the existence of the most undeveloped community. Of the various codes of morals much the best known to us is that given to the Israelites by Moses the famous Ten Commandments. The most of these as of all such codes were evidently legal in origin. Rules necessary for the existence of a civilized society. Restrictions controlling the conduct of men toward one another. It was the creed makers who first gave such legal restrictions the strength of moral obligations and announced that their infraction would be punished by divine agencies even if they should escape human retribution. Many hurtful acts indeed came to be viewed as crimes alike against God and men and punishable in the interests of both. Political and moral obligations thus shaded together some of the evils of the world being punished by human agencies alone. Some by divine. Some by both. It must be said however that throughout the whole progress of human civilization the influence of moral obligations has been rising while the necessity for political laws has declined in like proportion. In ancient times the penalties for crimes against the community were terribly severe while religion threatened those who offended the divine powers with frightful future punishments. The necessity for such severe restrictions has long been decreasing and the more vividly it is felt that immoral deeds or debased thoughts and purposes will be visited by a spiritual retribution the less necessity is there for laws and penalties. Thus the limitation of human actions by government is growing less necessary than of old. In conformity with the growing sense of spiritual degradation in evil and of spiritual elevation in good deeds mild laws have succeeded the severe edicts of the past and with a considerable section of the community restrictive laws have become useless. Conscience taking the place of law in such men the impulse to evil deeds dies unfulfilled and the penalty for wrongdoing within themselves may be more severe than that which the community would inflict In the souls of such men sits a spiritual tribunal by which evil thoughts are tried and punished before they can develop into evil acts. This consideration of the development of the moral principles and dogmas has been necessarily brief. In what direction it is leading must be evident to all and we can with assurance look forward to a condition of human society in which conscience will have become a stronger element of the intellect than now. The sense of moral obligation a more prevailing sentiment and legal restriction a less necessary governmental requirement. Of all the isms of the day altruism is far the noblest and most promising. In this opponent of selfism this regard for the rights and happiness of others equally with our own we find the link which binds together the two halves of the moral principle. The love sentiment on the one hand the sense of duty on the other meet and combine in the zeal of altruism for which a truly developed conscience is merely another term. Those who have the good of others strongly at heart who are truly Christian in a practical realization of the brotherhood of mankind can safely be set free from all the reins of law and trusted to do the right thing from innate feeling instead of outside compulsion and trusting in the future full development of the altruistic sentiment we can hopefully look forward to a time in which the moral law will exist alone and the conscience become the controlling force in human actions and government let fall the whip which it has so long held in threat over the shrinking back of man. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of Man and His Ancestor This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rita Boutros Man and His Ancestor A Study in Evolution by Charles McClain Morris Chapter 13 Man's Relation to the Spiritual The purpose of this work has been to trace the evolutionary origin of man in his assent from the lower animal world to his full stature as the physical and intellectual monarch of human life. But to round up this story of human evolution it seemed necessary to consider man from the moral standpoint and it now appears equally desirable to review his relations to the spiritual element of the universe. Having dealt with the development of man as a mortal being we have now to regard him as a possibly immortal being. This outlook into the supreme domain of nature lifts us in the first time in our work, definitely above the lower world of life. There is nothing to show that the animals below man have any conception of the spiritual. It is true that there are various statements on record which seem to indicate in some animals the horse and the dog for instance a dread of unseen powers, a recognition of some element in nature which is invisible to the eyes of man. But what these facts indicate, what influences affect the rudimentary intellect of these animals in such instances no one is able to say. Though some vague recognition of powers or existences beyond the visible may arise in their narrow minds, it does not probably pass beyond the level of instinct and doubtless lies almost infinitely below man's conception of the spiritual. In this stage of intellectual development then, we have to do with a condition which seems to belong solely to man, or has but a germinal existence in the lower organic kingdom. In fact, primitive man may well have been as devoid of the conception of a realm of spirit as was his anthropoid ancestor. The lowest savages of today are almost if not quite lacking in such a conception and are destitute of anything that can fairly be called religion. Where apparent religious ideas exist among them we cannot be sure to what extent they have been infused by civilized visitors, or how far ardent missionaries in their anxiety to discover some trace of religion in savages have themselves inadvertently suggested the beliefs which they triumphantly record. The Pygmies of Africa the Negritos of Oceanica, and various debased tribes elsewhere may possibly be quite destitute of native religious conceptions, at least of a higher grade than those which move the horse and dog to a dread of the unseen. It should be borne in mind that these tribes have for thousands of years been in some degree of contact with more developed races and subject to educative influences and the crude religious conceptions which some travelers attribute to them may well have been derived, not original. Investigation in this field certainly gives us abundant warrant to believe that primitive man on whose mind no influences of education could act was destitute of religion and that man's conception of the unseen arose gradually as one important phase of the development of his intellect. Any attempt to trace the stages of this religious development is far beyond our purpose even if we were capable of doing it. It must suffice to say that man everywhere when he emerges into history as a semi-civilized being is abundantly supplied with mythological and other religious conceptions which indicate a long preceding evolution in this field of thought. For extended ages the realm of the unseen has been acting upon the mind of man filling him with dread of malevolent and reverence for beneficent powers inspiring him to acts of worship, peopling his imagined heavens with imagined deities and giving rise to an extraordinary variety of deific tales and mythological ideas. The literature of this subject would fill a library in itself that is almost abundant enough to supply one with reading for a lifetime yet it is largely if not wholly ideal. It is in great part based on false conceptions and misdirected imaginings. It rarely adduces evidence and such evidence as is offered is always questionable. In short scientific investigation and the critical pursuit of facts have taken no part in the development of religious systems and a deep cloud of doubt envelopes them all. It is by no means our purpose to seek to throw discredit on any of the great religions of the world to say that they have been products of evolution is not to invalidate them much that is true and solid has arisen through evolution. To say that they lack scientific evidence is not to question their validity many of the subjects with which they deal lie beyond the reach of scientific evidence. Science has hitherto dealt strictly with the physical. It has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. In fact the highest of these claims that of the existence of a deity must lie forever beyond its reach. God may exist and science grope for him through eternity in vain. Great facts can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproves alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity but the problem remains unsolved. None of these proofs or disproves are positive. They all depend on ideal conceptions and ideas are always open to question. Positive facts on either side of the argument are and are always likely to be wanting the belief in God must be based on other than scientific grounds. But when we come down to the lower levels of the domain of the spiritual we find ourselves on firmer ground. Here we are dealing with the finite not with the infinite and nothing that is finite can lie beyond the boundaries of investigation however long it may take to reach it. The question of the existence of spirits for instance that much mooted the problem of the immortality or at least of the future existence of man which forms so prominent an element in modern religion dwells within the possible reach of science and the attempt to deal with it by scientific evidence may reasonably be made. When we pass beyond the realm of the senses we find ourselves in a kingdom peopled by stupendous forms and forces. Space, time, matter, energy and perhaps infinite consciousness all in their ultimate conditions too vast for the finite mind to grasp. All presenting problems open to speculation but beyond the reach of demonstration but below these lie finite possibilities which the human mind may now be or may become capable of comprehending and prominent among these lies the problem just mentioned that of the existence of a spiritual substratum in man a soul which is capable of surviving the death of the body. This is a subject with which all of us are deeply and intimately concerned and it may be well to close this volume with a brief glance at its status as a scientific question. The belief in the immortality of man is comparatively modern in origin. There is no satisfactory evidence that any such belief existed among the old Jews or that it arose in Palestine before the time of Christ. It arose at an earlier period in India and Persia but everywhere it was late in its appearance as a well-defined doctrine. Yet while positive evidence is wanting there can be little doubt that crude and vaguely formulated ideas of the existence of man after death have been very long entertained. The traditions of all peoples that have a faith above that of fetishism contain stories of the apparition of spirits of human origin and when we reach civilized peoples and more advanced religions we find these in abundance. The annals of Christendom are full of them. They are equally abundant in the centers of other developed forms of faith. If we could accept these legends of the emergence of spirits through the thin veil that separates time from eternity as established facts the problem would no longer need solution. As it stands however the great mass of such narratives are utterly lacking in evidence of a character which science can admit. They are bare, unsustained statements, thousands of which would be far outweighed by a single one fortified by demonstrated facts. Occasionally indeed the story of an apparition has been closely investigated and there are a few cases of this kind handed down from the past which seem reasonably well established. But any statement coming from pre-scientific days is open to doubt. Methods of investigation then were not what they are now. The dogma of the existence of spirit is too important a one to be accepted on any but incontrovertible evidence and the vast sum of statements of apparitions which have come to us from the past or from the non-scientific peoples of the present must be dismissed with the one verdict not proven. There is one important fact however connected with the question of spiritual appearances which is worthy of some consideration. It is a fixed rule in the history of opinions that beliefs founded on imagination or misconception have declined with the advance of enlightenment and many conceptions once strongly entertained have faded and vanished in the light of new thought or where retained have been so only by the ignorant and unreasoning. It is of interest to find that this has not been the case with the belief in spiritual manifestations. This has held its own to the present time and while it is largely sustained by the unintelligent and credulous it can claim a considerable body of intelligent adherence today even in the most enlightened nations. This belief known as spiritism with the manifestations upon which it is founded lies open therefore to modern scientific investigation and this has been to some extent applied to it with in various instances rather startling results. It is certainly of significance to find that a number of prominent scientists thoroughly skilled in the arts of investigation have attacked this problem with the purpose of annihilating it and have ended in becoming convinced of the truth of spiritism. It may suffice to mention two of the most striking instances of this. In the early days of the spiritist propaganda Robert Hare a famous chemist of Philadelphia entered upon an investigation of the so-called spiritual phenomena with the declared purpose of proving them to be fraudulent. His observations were long continued, his tests varied and delicate and he ended by himself ardently adopting the belief he had set out to abolish. Somewhat later William Crooks of London an equally famous chemist and physicist entered upon a similar investigation and with like results. The tests applied by these men were strictly scientific and of the exhaustive character suggested by their long experience in chemical investigation a conversion to the tenets of spiritism. As a result of their experiments was a marked triumph to the advocates of the doctrine. Various others have admitted high intelligence who made a similar investigation and were similarly converted might be named. Two of the best known of these were Judge Edmonds of the Circuit Court of New York and Alfred Russell Wallace of England who shared with Darwin the honor of originating the theory of natural selection. While these and others of scientific education were converted to spiritism many investigators came to an opposite conclusion. While a similar negative result was reached in the investigations of several committees of scientists the latest and most persistent attempt to search into the reality of phenomena of this character has been that made by the London Society for Psychical Research whose investigations have extended over years and have yielded numerous striking and suggestive results. The most important conclusion at which the members of this society have so far arrived is the hypothesis of telepathy or the seeming power of one mind to influence the thoughts of another occasionally over long distances in a method that appears analogous to that of wireless telegraphy. The evidences in favor of this doctrine are so numerous that it has been somewhat widely accepted and the title applied to it has come into general use. It indicates if true remarkable powers in the mind of man, capabilities that seem far to transcend those of the ordinary intellectual activities. This is one side of the case. The other side now calls for presentation. This is that the great body of scientists utterly reject the theory of spiritism and look upon its manifestations as due to fraud misconception, credulity, or some other of the weaknesses to which human nature is liable. As regards the opinions arrived at by the prominent scientists mentioned these men are looked upon by their fellows of the great scientific body as mentally warped or as having allowed themselves to be victimized by imposters. The fact that Professor Crooks has continued one of the most acute and deep searching of investigators into the phenomena of physics and that his results in this direction are accepted without question and that Professor Wallace is acknowledged to be one of the leading thinkers of the day has not suffice to clear them of the doubt which rests upon their sanity or their critical judgment in this particular and the very attempt of anyone to investigate the so called spiritual manifestations is widely looked upon as an evidence of credulity or some greater mental weakness. This result may seem singular yet it is not without abundant warrant. It must be born in mind that the phenomena in question differ essentially in character from those with which science is usually concerned. The field of scientific investigation is distinctly the material. The facts with which it deals are those apparent to the senses or which can be tested by material instruments. Its discoveries are generally susceptible of but one interpretation. Its methods are capable of being indefinitely repeated and its results justly interpreted are unvarying in character. None of these postulates fully applies to the spiritistic investigation. Here the conditions differ. The results vary. The methods can rarely be exactly repeated. Conscious beings instead of unconscious instruments are the agents employed and the secret thoughts and purposes of such agents are very likely to vitiate the result and open a field of doubt which does not exist in the investigation of the inorganic world. This is one of the causes of the doubt of scientists. It is not the only or the chief cause. The latter is the fact that the claims of spiritism lift man into an entirely new domain of the universe. Remove him from the great field of the material with which he is physically affiliated and the senses are closely adapted and place him in a region beyond the scope of the senses. A vast kingdom which is held to underlie or subtend the physical and which the ordinary outlook of the scientist fails to perceive. It requires no strain of the imagination to admit the existence of a new constituent of the atmosphere. It requires a great strain to admit the existence of the constituent of the universe. A vast spiritual substratum to the domain of matter. Religion with its ideal tests has long maintained this to be a fact. Science with its rigid material tests sternly questions it and demands that the existence of an inhabited spiritual realm shall be incontestably proved by scientific evidence before it can be accepted. And is a reasonable one. The world is growing rapidly more scientific and the old method of arriving at conclusions is daily losing strength. Beliefs based on ideal or imaginative postulates once strong are now weak. Faith founded on ancient authority is active still but promises to become obsolete. The way of science is growing to be the way of the world to come. Intelligent men will doubtless demand incontestable evidence of any fact which they are asked to accept. As regards the phenomena in question however it cannot be said that they have been fairly or fully investigated by scientists. They have been set down as the work of charlatans and their apparent results ascribed to fraud collusion, credulity and mental obliquity in general. The fact that of the scientists who have exhaustively investigated the spiritistic phenomena a considerable number have accepted them as valid has had no effect upon scientists as a body who in this particular occupy the position which they accuse non-scientists of maintaining. That of forming opinions without investigating phenomena. This attitude of the scientific world towards these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the 19th century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter. The phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this they entered at the opening of this century upon an almost virgin field which they have wrought with great diligence and remarkable results. It is very possible however that in the 20th century no such undivided allegiance will be given to the phenomena of matter. But that the attention of scientists will be largely diverted from the physical to the psychical field of investigation which may prove to be a far broader and more intricate domain than we now have any conception of. Psychical phenomena have attracted some attention during the recent century. One by one the problems of hypnotism, unconscious celebration, double consciousness, telepathy, spiritism and the like all at first set down as unworthy of consideration have forced themselves upon the attention of observers and each of them has been found to present conditions amply worthy of investigation. This work has hitherto been performed by occasional individuals but the number of workers in experimental psychics is steadily increasing and their domain of research broadening and we may reasonably look forward to results approaching perhaps exceeding in interest those reached in material investigation. There is a whole world before us that of the mind and its phenomena fully equal in interest and importance to the world of matter and presenting as numerous and difficult problems. Hitherto it has largely been dealt with from the ideal or metaphysical standpoint only recently has it been subjected to physical analysis and already with striking results. During the century before us it is likely to attract a wide and active circle of investigators with what results it is impossible to predict. This is the only way in which the problem of the existence or non-existence of a spiritual life can be solved to the satisfaction of those of a scientific turn of mind and this solution must be left to the future to attain. In the present work we are concerned with man's past rather than his future. It is what man has come from not what he is going to that forms the subject of our inquiries. We have been led into these remarks simply as an outcome of a brief consideration of man's relations to the spiritual element of the universe and may close our work with the suggestion that the problem of human evolution may be immensely greater than that involved in the study of the Ancestry of Man.


Maine Coons are one of the oldest natural living cat breeds in America, well respected for being able to survive even the harshest winter climates of New England. Their natural resilience to many common cat health issues has gained them a reputation for being a very hardy cat breed to own. Maine Coons are a loving and sociable breed of cat. These wonderful creatures, like people, are susceptible to a variety of renal disorders. The kidney is a key organ in a cat's body, serving a variety of functions. For example, blood filtration, blood pressure management, hormone, and vitamin synthesis, and acid-base balance. As a result, it is the responsibility of every cat owner to look after the renal health of his or her cherished feline companion. In this section, we will go through some of the most prevalent renal problems in Maine Coon cats. Polycystic Kidney Disease, PKD Polycystic kidney disease is also known as PKD, or feline polycystic kidney disease. It is a hereditary condition whereby multiple pockets of fluid, otherwise known as cysts grow in the kidney tissues of infected cats. These sacks of fluid will usually multiply, growing larger and larger over the years. Although the pace of cyst growth is usually slow, this is not always the case, so owners must therefore always be alert to visible symptoms that their cat is sick. Although PKD is more common in older cats, it can be difficult for owners to identify because cats tend not to show any signs of the disease until they reach 7 years old. At this point, a veterinary professional will be able to confirm via ultrasound of your Maine Coons kidneys, how severe the situation is. In the more severe cases, cyst growth may have begun to overwhelm a cat's kidney tissue, disrupting kidney functions. If this is the case, fatal kidney disease is a possibility. On the plus side though, some cats are luckier than others, because not all cats carrying the PKD disease will develop kidney failure. Polycystic kidney disease is caused by an autosomal dominant gene abnormality, whereby the kidneys do not develop correctly. This ultimately leads to multiple cysts forming in a cat's kidneys. Cats only need one parent to be infected with the defective gene, to inherit PKD. In fact, without DNA testing it may not even be evident that a breeding cat is carrying the defective gene at all. This is because they may only be a carrier of the gene, therefore showing no signs or symptoms of the genetic defect. The signs and symptoms of Maine Coon Polycystic kidney disease are very similar to those present when a cat is suffering from chronic renal failure. Thus, depending upon the level of cyst growth in your Maine Coon cat, you can generally expect your feline friend to be suffering from our range of symptoms. Early signs of Maine Coon PKD include. Poor quality coat, weight loss. Although these signs appear early, they also relate to a number of other medical conditions and the normal process of aging in cats. Thus, it is quite common for veterinary professionals to not immediately diagnose PKD as the root cause. Other signs of Maine Coon Polycystic kidney disease, PKD, are as follows. Frequent urination. Increased thirst. Loss of appetite. Vomiting. Lethargy. PKD symptoms do not often show themselves until later on in a cat's life. If you are at all concerned that your cat may be suffering from Maine Coon Polycystic kidney disease it is best that you take them to a veterinary professional immediately. Tests can then be undertaken to assess what is wrong with your cat. If in any doubt, request the vet test your Maine Coon for PKD specifically. Hello. This video is sponsored by Beemix Pets. Are you looking for high quality cat collars at an affordable cost? Check out beemixpets.com. Use coupon code Kittenlife to get 20% off. Kidney Stones. Kidney stones form in cats for a few different reasons. The different causes ultimately predict which type of nephro, kidney, plus lith, stone, is most likely to form. And the type of stone affects what treatments might help. Cats with small kidney stones really may have no signs at all. Kidney stones may show up on x-rays of the belly that are being taken for unrelated reasons, as a so-called incidental finding. Since kidney stones in cats don't seem painful, why should we worry about them? A kidney stone that allows normal urine flow out may be one that your vet watches closely, but ultimately leaves untreated. However, if the stone gets very large, or if little pieces break off and lodge in the ureter, the long narrow tube that connects each kidney to the urinary bladder, it likely becomes very painful. Kidney colic, signaled by abdominal pain, malaise, and even vomiting, may result, the kidney may swell and be damaged. If this should happen simultaneously to each kidney, and the blockage persists, your kitty will likely become critically ill from the disrupted flow of urine. If you think your cat's abdomen is painful, or his urinations change in any way, please contact your veterinarian right away. Urinary obstruction is a life-threatening emergency that must be treated. Most cats affected by stones are middle-aged or older. Metabolic kidney stones are much more common in cats than infection-based stones. Your veterinarian will determine treatment based on the kind of stone and what it's made of. The signs and symptoms of kidney stones could include fever, abdominal discomfort, kidney pain, blood in the urine, hematuria, altered urine production, increased or decreased, lethargy, poor appetite, vomiting, weight loss. A reason to treat kidney stones is bacterial urinary infections that recur or cannot be cleared. Veterinarians often struggle to determine whether the stone or the infection comes first, but sometimes eliminating a kidney stone is needed to help resolve the infection. Again, with some types of urinary stones, your veterinarian may want to treat conservatively, with a combination of antibiotics, diet, and plenty of fluids. Dissolving kidney stones completely often takes months, but any early reduction in size is great news. It's likely that your kitty with a kidney stone will not need more specific treatment to remove it. But it's good to be prepared and to understand what's involved if the situation changes. Special efforts to dissolve feline kidney stones are usually safer than surgery, but won't work for most stones. Since most feline kidney stones won't dissolve, plans for treatment can be challenging for your cat's veterinary team. Skilled surgery is widely available to remove kidney stones, but does risk permanently damaging the affected kidney, even if the surgery goes smoothly. Special techniques to break up a stone are not usually recommended for cats because the stone fragments tend to lodge in their narrow ureters. Fortunately, veterinary specialists are continuing to find better treatments for cat kidney stones by applying advanced techniques, commonly used in people, to our feline friends. For some cats, specialists may recommend treatment with an endoscope. For emergency situations, when the ureters are blocked, they might recommend life-saving bypass techniques that re-root urine around the blocked ureters. It's always fair to ask your doctor if surgery is the only option, or if there might be a cutting-edge technology to try, instead of surgical cutting. Renal failure, ARF. This type of renal failure occurs over a matter of a few days to a week. Cats of all ages are prone to this. Causes are renal infections, poisons, toxins, human medications, disinfectants, urinary blockage due to renal stones, and cardiac failure. Clinical manifestations are Frequent urination Vomiting and diarrhea Dry and dull skin coat Halitosis, bad breath, usual ammonia-like odor Ulcers in the mouth Drinking plenty of water General body weakness and depression A timely diagnosis can save the life of your cat. Remember, acute renal failure can be reversed, if diagnosed timely. X-ray, ultrasonography, and other KFT, kidney function tests, can be performed to reach the exact cause. Four fluids, surgical removal of stones, if blockage reported, give plenty of water to your cat, introduce a kidney-friendly diet, low in minerals, and high in omega-3 fatty acids in vitamin D. Provide your cat a stress-free environment and stay in touch with your vet. If you enjoyed this video, kindly press the like button. 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