156 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



the beginning. For the purposes of this paper I regard nothing less 

 than the hafted celt as the fini';hed implement whose genesis I shall 

 attempt to indicate. 



I assume as the starting point the conclusion reached in my paper 

 before referred to,-^ that the earliest mechanical process employed 

 by man was the art of working wood by abrasion. This cannot be 

 regarded as proven ; absolutely proven it can never be ; but it 

 comes in as a link connecting what must have been in the history 

 of primitive man with what is revealed to us regarding the man of 

 the earliest stone age. This art, or something closely similar to it, 

 appears as the immediate derivative of the original mechanical 

 expedients of man in a state of nature, and of the wants engendered 

 by his human characteristics. Tracing back the art of wood work- 

 ing we find no resting place till we come to the art in this condition. 

 In short the more the subject is contemplated, and from whatever 

 point of view, the stronger appear the probabilities, so strong that 

 to my own mind they are convincing. Starting from this basis, 

 v/hat was the process, what the result sought, what the methods 

 employed to produce it ? 



The object sought for was a pike, a strong, rigid, sharp-pointed 

 stick or shaft adapted for use as an offensive and defensive weapon, 

 a want early felt and hitherto imperfectly supplied by chance and 

 nature. The means employed was a rough rock, a coarse sand- 

 stone or mill-stone-grit upon whose exposed surface the wood was 

 rubbed or drawn back and forth until reduced as desired. A tedious 

 process, but not more so than many of those employed to this day 

 in the arts of savage life. We can imagine men coming from great 

 distances to the inventor of this art with poles on their shoulders to 

 be prepared in the new style. It would not at once be perceived 

 that no special properties attached to this particular rock, that rocks 

 having similar properties and perhaps better suited to the purpose 

 were every where. The mind was dull in grasping the essential fact 

 of the art, and perhaps for ages superstition and fetichism may have 

 been engendered by this very improvement. It is easy to see, 

 however, that it had created a new want, or perhaps intensified the 

 old one. Pikes were liable to be broken, were subject to natural 

 decay. They must be replaced, and new ones were always in de- 

 mand. Their artificial production had increased the number of their 



* An Inquiry into the Origni of Invention. Vol. II. Trans. Anthrop. Soc. 

 Washington. 188^- 



