the floorstone, or the black smooth-stone that is generally below
water-level--has served the needs of all the palaeolithic periods,
and of the neolithic age as well, and likewise of the modern Englishmen
who fought with flintlocks at Waterloo, or still more recently took
out tinder-boxes with them to the war in South Africa. And what does
this stand for in terms of the antiquity of man? Thousands of years?
We do not know exactly; but say rather hundreds of thousands of years.




CHAPTER III
RACE


There is a story about the British sailor who was asked to state what
he understood by a Dago. "Dagoes," he replied, "is anything wot isn't
our sort of chaps." In exactly the same way would an ancient Greek
have explained what he meant by a "barbarian." When it takes this
wholesale form we speak, not without reason, of race-prejudice. We
may well wonder in the meantime how far this prejudice answers to
something real. Race would certainly seem to be a fact that stares
one in the face.

Stroll down any London street: you cannot go wrong about that Hindu
student with features rather like ours but of a darker shade. The short
dapper man with eyes a little aslant is no less unmistakably a Japanese.
It takes but a slightly more practised eye to pick out the German waiter,
the French chauffeur, and the Italian vendor of ices. Lastly, when
you have made yourself really good at the game, you will be scarcely