214 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



veloped for him by the lower animal kingdoms. The 

 old view, that man was the microcosm, had in it a cer- 

 tain amount of every important truth. We need to 

 be continually reminded of our indebtedness in a 

 thousand ways to the lowest and most insignificant 

 forms of life. 



Man is a vertebrate animal. This means that he 

 has a locomotive, not protective, skeleton, composed of 

 cartilage a tough, elastic, organic material, hardened, 

 as a rule, by the deposition of mineral salts, mainly 

 phosphate of lime, in exceedingly fine particles, so as 

 to form a homogeneous, flawless, elastic, tough, light, 

 and unyielding skeleton, held together by firm liga- 

 ments. 



The skeleton is internal, and this fact, as we have 

 seen, gives the possibility of large size. And size is in 

 itself no unimportant factor. Professor Lotze main- 

 tains that without man's size and strength, agriculture 

 and the working of metals, and thus all civilization, 

 would have been impossible. But we have already seen 

 that there is an extreme of size, e.g., in the elephant, 

 which makes its possessor clumsy, able to exist only 

 where there are large amounts of food in limited areas, 

 slow to reproduce, and lacking in adaptability. This 

 extreme also is avoided in man ; in this, as in many 

 other particulars, he holds the golden mean. But we 

 have also seen that large size is, as a rule, correlated 

 with long life and great opportunity for experience and 

 observation. And these are the foundations of intelli- 

 gence. Hence the deliverance of the higher vertebrate, 

 and especially of man, from any iron-bound subjection 

 to instinct. 



And here another question of vital importance 



