But we were without this momentum.

We were just getting started, and we could not go far in a single generation.

We were without weapons, without fire, and in the raw beginnings of speech.

The device of writing lay so far in the future that I am appalled when I think of it.
Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery.

To show you how fortuitous was development in those days let me state that had it not been for the gluttony of Lop-Ear I might have brought about the domestication of the dog.