MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
exceeded him in ferocity. But thanks to his superior 
intellect, he asserted his supremacy first over the animal 
world and then over inanimate nature. The struggle goes 
on, though the tiger and the mammoth as man’s most 
dangerous enemies have given place to insects like the 
fruit fly and the boll weevil and to small mammals like 
the rat. His conquest of inanimate nature has gone on 
much more slowly; in fact even today it has only barely 
begun. 
This increase in brain power and the consequent growth 
of ideas would, however, have profited early men as a 
group but little if they had not had some means of com- 
municating with one another. Language in the broadest 
sense, including gesture as well as sound, began long before 
man himself first appeared; but only he, of all living crea- 
tures, was able to develop it and be developed by it. It 
constitutes the earliest as well as the greatest of the 
achievements of his genius, none the less important be- 
cause achieved unconsciously. 
For untold ages, however, man had to depend wholly 
on word of mouth and on signs for the communication of 
ideas, and on the unaided memory alone for their preser- 
vation, limitations which account, in part, for the ex- 
tremely slow progress made by mankind in early ages. 
Only within the last few thousand years has mankind 
slowly been learning to preserve the results of past ex- 
perience by putting them down in writing. The keeping of 
records is even yet far from universal, or even general. 
The greater portion of mankind, outside of America and 
western Europe, remains illiterate, although nearly every- 
where it has come more and more under the control and 
direction of ruling elements, native or alien, familiar with 
the art of writing. In fact, largely by this very knowledge 
have these classes gained the ability to control and exploit 
their fellow men. 
The mechanical problems involved in the struggle for 
existence, of course, far antedate the human race. At first 
[170 ] 
