1 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Some ages ago Nature, as we may say, made a great and wonderful 

 discovery, that of the survival value of intelligence, supplemented later 

 by the discovery of the survival value of sympathy and cooperation. It 

 was no longer, thereafter, a question of tooth and claw, of swift foot, 

 strong arm and warm fur ; it was a question of the manufacture and use 

 of weapons and tools and clothes and houses. Psychologically, it was a 

 question of the development of certain new and wonderful mental traits, 

 those of cunning and dexterity, attention and concentration, abstraction, 

 analysis and invention. But these required a large brain, and Nature 

 therefore produced an erect, top-heavy animal, who acquired speech and 

 called himself man. Physically this animal ceased further development. 

 He needed nothing but a large and ever larger brain and a dexterous 

 hand, and, finally, the dexterous hand also was scarcely needed, but brain 

 and brain alone. The brain, however, required nourishment and a cer- 

 tain physical support, hence stomach, heart, lungs, and a circulatory 

 system must needs be retained after some fashion, but the main intent 

 was to develop brain and only brain. 



This process is now at its height. Nature we may say is more than 

 ever elated at her discovery of the survival value of intelligence and this 

 discovery is being worked for all that it is worth. There is no limit, 

 it would seem, to the power of the mind. Other animal species are 

 no longer feared. They are not even needed as servants. Electricity 

 can be made to do all things better than the horse. Against intelligence 

 the elements have no longer any power. Storm and lightning and flood 

 are now only interesting episodes. Night is no longer a harbinger of 

 evil but under the glare of the electric light a joy and great delight. 

 Heat and cold are no longer to be considered. Steam and the electric 

 current turn winter into benign summer and night into day. Neither is 

 distance to be reckoned with any more. It is short-circuited by steam, 

 gasoline and electricity. 



Especially in continental Europe, in England and America, during 

 the past fifty years, has the march of mind gone forward with dizzy-like 

 rapidity. More than ever has man become master. More than ever 

 are the higher brain centers the only significant organs in the body. 

 Less than ever has Nature found it necessary for her immediate needs to 

 care for stomach, heart and lungs, or muscle and reproductive system. 

 It is mind that counts and mind alone. Nineteenth and twentieth cen- 

 tury man has become a high-power efficiency machine combining a mar- 

 velous capacity for thought with an unconquerable force of will, but 

 working inevitably under high pressure and dangerous tension. 



A gigantic system of wireless telegraphy is not invented and ex- 

 tended over the whole face of the earth in a few years (one might almost 

 say in a few months) without thought and effort. Dreadnoughts and 

 superdreadnoughts, mortars and machine-guns, dirigibles and aeroplanes, 



