THE ANIMAL CLIMAX-THE CHORDATES 



361 



human race today might go on for a long 

 time. 



In spite of all of his apparent caducity, 

 man has done rather well, biologically 

 speaking. He has spread himself over a very 

 large portion of the globe and has reached 

 well over two billion in numbers, not a 

 large figure, to be sure, when one considers 

 that there are more bacteria in a quart of 

 sour milk! He has managed himself rather 

 well in most respects; he plans for his own 

 food and shelter as well as other comforts 

 of life. He has, by concerted effort, been 

 able to allow himself some leisure time from 

 the endless task of providing the bare ne- 

 cessities of life. He has used this time crea- 

 tively, thus improving not only his immedi- 

 ate environment but also his relation to it. 

 What is more important, he has written 

 down the information he has acquired so 

 that his knowledge can be passed on to oth- 

 ers. Man can learn in his own lifetime more 

 than experience could bring him in 100 or 

 perhaps 1,000 lifetimes. This has been the 

 real secret of man's skyrocket ascent to his 

 present position in the world, at least 

 the civilized world. 



There has been little, if any, improve- 

 ment in our brain since the Cro-Magnon 

 man, and during the intervening 50,000 

 years progress toward civilization as we 



know it has been extremely slow. Only dur- 

 ing the last 5,000 years, and particularly the 

 past 300 years, has outstanding progress 

 taken place. Why was man so slow in rising 

 as a social animal, and why, when he 

 started, did he rise so rapidly? It was un- 

 doubtedly due to the fact that he acquired 

 the ability to put down in writing what he 

 had learned so that those who followed 

 could profit by his experience. Once this 

 idea took root it flourished and with it the 

 progress of mankind. Information is accu- 

 mulating today at a staggering rate. Most 

 scientists have great difficulty reading the 

 literature that has been and is accumulatins; 

 even in their own restricted field, to say 

 nothing of that in the cognate sciences. It is 

 doubtful if a person working 24 hours a day 

 could read the titles alone of scientific pa- 

 pers that appear continuously. One of the 

 big problems today is to condense this in- 

 formation so that any one person can have 

 some understanding of it all. If the present 

 rate continues, all the university buildings 

 on all campuses will be filled with literature 

 in another 100 years! 



It is well worth while, then, to study 

 rather carefully this animal that has made 

 such stellar progress in the past few hun- 

 dred years, and whose primary mark of 

 distinction is a huge brain. 



