200 ARBOREAL MAN 



Neopallial perfections did not, for instance, create the 

 hand, but cerebral advances made possible the full 

 utilization of this very primitive yet very plastic member. 



Large-brained Man has invented schemes of classifica- 

 tion which embrace all living things, and he has agreed 

 that the brain perfection which he possesses is to be 

 adjudged, in his schemes, as the qualification for the 

 highest rank. We may therefore say that, from a human 

 point of view, evolution consists of increasing perfection 

 of the brain, and that an animal's place in the scale of 

 Nature may be determined, in the last resort, by an 

 appeal to its cerebral development. In this sense, the 

 brain has led the way in evolution, and physical adapta- 

 tions may be regarded as following in its train. Yet the 

 physical adaptations are by no means to be ignored. 

 A Master may perform marvels upon the violin, but his 

 expression will be seriously hampered if there is nothing 

 better to hand than an empty cigar-box strung with a 

 few strings. Man may execute a bewildering array of 

 highly skilled movements with his thumb and five fingers, 

 but it is difficult to see how the human brain could have 

 coped with a fore-limb in which stability had predomi- 

 nated in the culmination of a second segment devoid of 

 the power of rotation and furnished with a terminal hoof. 



