HUMAN COLONY FORMATION 



and the trial and error response to such observation. It 

 is not based on any appreciable interchange of infor- 

 mation with other members of the species. After all 

 methods for such an interchange do not exist for them. 

 Man, however, is able to learn through communication 

 with other members of his species. He consequently 

 avails himself of the experiences of other individuals, 

 who in turn were and are able to increase their own 

 effective range of experiences in the same fashion. This 

 process does not hold true only within one generation, 

 but also takes place from one generation to the next. 

 This is of very great moment, for it means that the ex- 

 periences of one generation can be directly transmitted 

 to the next. This constitutes a new and unprecedented 

 factor in the development of life. The extent to which 

 such a transmission of experiences takes place among 

 animals is by comparison very small indeed. At the 

 very best, aside from man, the species only learns be- 

 cause those individuals who do not, fail to survive. 

 Even then, the process is driven forward only by chance 

 mutations and is consequently a comparatively slow 

 one. 



The entirely new method of learning that is conse- 

 quently available to man as a result of the development 

 of language, increases the effective experience of each 

 individual, to an extent greater by an order of magni- 

 tude over that possible for relatively non-social ani- 

 mals. More than that, this experience is not strictly 



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