576 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



tion went on between the plastic body organs and the brain 

 substance to which these organs sent afferent impulses, and 

 from which they received efferent impulses. 



But in order to estimate aright how evolutionary progress 

 can here be traced in man's historic progression from the apes 

 to superman — so-called — let us follow in historic sequence the 

 successive phases of forelimb activity. 



A start might be made with human warfare. We have cited 

 Emerson in the opening part of this chapter. In his article on 

 Napoleon he aptly quotes the warrior as saying, in connection 

 with one of his most decisive victories: "My hand of iron was 

 not at the extremity of my arm; it was immediately connected 

 with my head." The cold-blooded and unscrupulous but 

 marvelously far-sighted general had here seized on and ex- 

 pressed a great biological fact, that can be clearly traced through 

 anthropoid evolution, and onward tlirough every stage of 

 human progress. 



As Romanes describes for his Capuchin monkey, and as 

 every traveler in tropical forests testifies, the most primitive 

 mode of human warfare was missile-slinging. And each missile 

 meant a hand back of it, that by determined steady use — prac- 

 tice we call it — ^became increasingly adept. When the op- 

 ponents came to closer quarters, a tree branch that the hand 

 had broken could be utilized. As the branches of different 

 trees with harder and' softer wood were utilized, the brain 

 registered and in time stimulated the hand in conjunction with 

 the eyes, to select the hardest sort available, which for the 

 early Irishman became the "tight little sprig o' shillelagh." 

 So, as the history of rude nations still informs us, the stone and 

 the clul) were the primitive offensive and defensive weapons. 



But by slow, slight, often scarcely perceptible changes, due 

 to hand and eye experiment that acted as a stimulus-action 

 to start a brain-reaction, the rude club became enlarged at the 

 end, then somewhat flattened on one face of the end, then 

 sharj) and sjjlitting along that face. So by slow degrees, 

 specimens of which every good ethnologic museum collection 

 can show, the first battle-ax was fashioned that in time became 

 the dreaded iron battle-ax of a half to two millennia ago. 



