THE NEW EVOLUTION 



daily rough, objects. Babies are very fond of passing 

 their fingers over sand-paper, which they usually 

 much prefer to ordinary paper. So far as I know this 

 is not at all true of young monkeys. 



When they are given a hard object, such as a watch, 

 babies usually first put it to their mouths, and when 

 they begin to lose interest in it they commonly end 

 by whacking it against something. Of course they 

 sometimes simply drop it. If monkeys lose interest 

 in anything which they are holding in the hand they 

 always simply drop it. The whacking propensity 

 of babies certainly is not learned from their parents. 

 Indeed, it commonly results in tangible forms of 

 parental resentment. It is, perhaps, the most impor- 

 tant and significant instinctive reaction of babies, at 

 once proclaiming them as fundamentally different 

 from young monkeys. Their preference for hard and 

 rough objects tells the same story. 



It is probably safe to assume that these two reac- 

 tions of young babies lie at the bottom of all material 

 human progress. For we see in these reactions an 

 inherent and characteristic impulse to acquire hard 

 rough objects and, holding them in the hand, to make 

 use of them. Apparently blind and undirected as 

 this instinct is, it is easy to suppose that it would lead 

 directly to the use of tools. 



Another peculiarity of babies is a more or less 

 marked desire constantly to hold something in the 

 hand. Young monkeys like to cling to the mother, 

 but show little, if any, desire to hold anything in the 

 hand. In man this curious desire to have something 



[16] 



