Chap. II. MENTAL POWERS. 53 



flints, and not a very wide step to rudely fashion them. 

 This latter advance, however, may have taken long 

 ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of time 

 which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period 

 took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. In 

 breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, 

 sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them 

 heat would have been evolved : " thus the two usual 

 " methods of obtaining fire may have originated." The 

 nature of fire would have been known in the many 

 volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through 

 forests. The anthropomorphous apes, guided probably 

 by instinct, build for themselves temporary platforms ; 

 but as many instincts are largely controlled by reason, 

 the simpler ones, such as this of building a platform, 

 might readily pass into a voluntary and conscious act. 

 The orang is known to cover itself at night with the 

 leaves of the Pandanus ; and Brehm states that one of 

 his baboons used to protect itself from the heat of the 

 sun by throwing a straw-mat over its head. In these 

 latter habits, we probably see the first steps towards 

 some of the simpler arts ; namely rude architecture 

 and dress, as they arose amongst the early progenitors 

 of man. 



Language. — This faculty has justly been considered as 

 one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower 

 animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Arch- 

 bishop Whately remarks, " is not the only animal that 

 " can make use of language to express what is passing in 

 " his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so 

 " expressed by another." 29 In Paraguay the Cebus azarse 

 when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which 



29 Quoted in ' Anthropological Review,' 18G4, p. 158. 



