FROM APE TO MAN 243 



them to choose one suitable for use as a hammer, and 

 another suitable for use as a piercing or cutting tool. 

 And from such a stage there is a gradual and easy 

 passage to the simplest breaking and preparation of 

 stones for use — in fact, to the earliest fabrication of 

 " implements." 



It is obvious when we compare not only the structure 

 but what we know of the ways and habits of the lowest 

 savages and the highest apes, that it is not by mere 

 strength, swiftness, or agility that man has flourished and 

 established himself, leaving the apes far behind him as 

 " inferior " creatures, though as a matter of fact he is not 

 deficient in these qualities. It is by his observation, 

 knowledge, memory, and purposive skill that he has 

 succeeded, and it is easy to point out a whole series of 

 modifications of form separating man from apes, which 

 are clearly contributory to the development of the mental 

 qualities which give him his actual superiority. I think 

 we are justified in taking the large opposable thumb and 

 fingers as the starting-point in man's emergence from the 

 ape stage of his ancestry. The exploring hand, with its 

 thumb and forefinger, is the great instrument by which 

 the intelligence, first of the monkey and then of man, 

 has been developed. The thumb of the gorilla is, in 

 proportion to the size of the fingers, very much smaller 

 than that of man, but bigger than that of the chimpanzee, 

 and much bigger than that of the orang and of lower 

 monkeys. It is evident that the thumb has increased in 

 size in the man-like apes, and in man himself this in- 

 crease has been carried much further, and led to the 

 perfecting of the hand as an instrument of exploration 

 and construction. Contributory to the perfecting of the 

 hand has been the gradual attainment of the upright 

 carriage, and the use of the feet alone for walking, and 



