INDUSTRY AND BIODYNAMICS 465 



at constant strength, with an energy system fully represented by equation (i). 

 A stream of energy or life pressure having progressive improvement is con- 

 stantly welling upwards. At the topmost stratum this energy is set free 

 and the force of evolution is made operative. The topmost creature — man, 

 of course — is not at present giving way to another species ; therefore, it 

 appears, a superior form of life is being evolved in which man is the bio- 

 dynamical agent. 



Animals frequently possess some peculiarly formed organ which gives 

 them a hold on their environment. Some we have already noted. Other 

 examples are : the neck of a giraffe ; the tentacles of a cuttle-fish ; the 

 eyes of an owl ; the beak of a snipe. A study of these leads along the now 

 familiar tracks of the biological system. But what of man, does he possess 

 no biological limb of this character ? The answer is, of course, the hand. 

 But when we compare the industrial achievements of the hand with those 

 of the special organ of any other animal, we realise the feebleness of the 

 biological conclusion. A snipe's beak, for example, prods through two and a 

 half inches of soft mud in search of week-old potential energy. A depart- 

 mental aspect of man's industry is coal-mining ; how about man'j hand here ? 

 The cases admit of no comparison ; for the biological principles involved 

 are not on the same plane. What now appears to be the absolute industrial 

 system of man has fructified mainly during the past hundred years, but its 

 beginnings are coeval with the beginnings of man as a superior creature. 



Primeval man had, like other brutes, reached the end of an epoch in 

 biological expression. At this juncture life pressure made him the agent 

 in a new venture. One day he threw a stone at a passing animal or bird 

 and brought it down. On doing so man reached into an environment not 

 immediately contiguous to his own (no other animal kills its prey without 

 bodily contact) ; but that fact is of less importance than the means employed 

 to do it. Birds use the wind, fishes use ocean currents, to bring them into 

 touch with their environments ; but, note, here is no transfer of internal 

 energy from the animal to the medium employed and, therefore, life pressure 

 plays no part in the scheme. (On the contrary, in the hand of man, through 

 long processes of development, these media have become pneumatics and 

 hydraulics — both agents of potential energy, and consequently media upon 

 which life pressure has had an action.) In the simple act of throwing a 

 stone a quantity of internal energy issues at a man's hand and is transmitted 

 to an external object as a supply of potential energy. We must remind our- 

 selves that energy may under some circumstances advance from one poten- 

 tiality to another. In primeval man, therefore, equation (3) takes a new 

 form which may be written : 



P.E. = K.E. + P.Ei .: „ (4), 



the term P.E^ representing energy transferred to an external system of man 

 and not, as before, to some other species. This transference is without 

 degradation ; that is, the quantity P.Ei is transferred in tact and possesses 

 as much power to cause life as some other original energy did when life first 

 began. Clearly, P.E^ is the point of evolution, and although concerning the 

 person of man it is external, it remains, in some manner, internal. How the 

 stone became improved as a mechanical device producing spear, sling, and 

 arrow, is now a matter of history. With these improvements the value of 

 P.E^ constantly increased. Thus we see the beginnings of the growth of 

 a new phase of life in which anatomical changes are not involved. 



When the life inhabiting, say, a giraffe, decided to provide a more out- 

 reaching instrument in the shape of a long neck, some one mechanical element 

 of that life (a cell) found itself so charged with energy that it started the 

 growth of the desired mechanism. When the life inhabiting man took a 

 similar mechanical advance and, in the effort, actually achieved the trans- 



