If, then, the human race may be looked upon as an individual entity or being, having an unconscious infancy, a half-conscious childhood, a wholly conscious but erratic and visionary youth, and a rational and reflective maturity, what facts or circumstances, what...evidence and information may be drawn concerning the earliest stages of human existence — that unconscious and infantile condition beyond the reach of all ethnic memory — beyond the horizon of light and vision? Are there any sources of thought and reflection, sufficiently matured to take the name of knowledge, from which, as if by a mirror, light and intelligence may be thrown into that remote region below the dawn of our race-consciousness?
— JOHN CLARK RIDPATH