XVII 



Using Tools and Symbols 

 H 



Everything which has been said so far applies, at least to some extent, 

 to the higher animals as well as to man. They have memory and 

 recognize things; their acts are determined partly by their immediate 

 sense impressions and partly by what they remember. They are 

 capable of learning how to perform complicated actions; they appear 

 to choose between possible actions and to base their choice to some 

 extent on an estimate of the results which are likely to follow. We 

 must ask, what is it in addition to all this which distinguishes a human 

 being from an animal? Have we left out anything in our description 

 which would be distinctive of human life? 



There can be no doubt that two of the essential characteristics of 

 human life are the extensive use of tools and of language. Both of 

 these occur only to a very rudimentary extent in animals — although 

 we could not say that they do not occur at all. For this reason we 

 might perhaps be justified in thinking that human abilities are de- 

 velopments from abilities already existing in the animals. Let us con- 

 sider then what such developments involve. 



The changes necessary to transform apes into men have been listed 

 by Dr R. K. J. Hayes^ as follows: 



(1) the hands are remodelled and reformed so as to enable them 

 to use tools and weapons; 



(2) the pelvis is developed to form a bone ring, which can carry 

 the trunk upright; 



(3) the vocal organs are refined so as to make them capable of pro- 

 ducing articulated sounds of varying pitch; 



(4) the brain undergoes an all-round development, with an im- 

 provement in memory and foresight and becomes capable of 

 abstraction and symbolism; 



1 R. K. J. Hayes in A.A.A.S. 1954. 



