146 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of 

 the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has 

 effected in industry has nevertheless upset human 

 relations altogether. New ideas are arising, new feel 

 ings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, 

 when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of 

 the present age will still be visible, our wars and our 

 revolutions will count for little, even supposing they 

 are remembered at all ; but the steam-engine, and 

 the procession of inventions of every kind that accom 

 panied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak 

 of the bronze or of the chipped stone of pre 

 historic times : it will serve to define an age. 1 If 

 we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define 

 our species, we kept strictly to what the historic 

 and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant 

 characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say 

 perhaps not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. In short, 

 intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original 

 feature^ is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects^ 

 especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying 

 the manufacture. 



Now, does an unintelligent animal also possess tools 

 or machines ? Yes, certainly, but here the instrument 

 forms a part of the body that uses it ; and, corre 

 sponding to this instrument, there is an instinct that 

 knows how to use it. True, it cannot be maintained 

 that all instincts consist in a natural ability to use an 

 inborn mechanism. Such a definition would not apply 

 to the instincts which Romanes called &quot; secondary &quot; ; 

 and more than one &quot; primary &quot; instinct would not 



1 M. Paul Lacombe has laid great stress on the important influence 

 that great inventions have exercised on the evolution of humanity (P. 

 Lacombe, De I histoire consider te comme science, Paris, 1894. See, in 

 particular, pp. 168-247). 



