1660 THE STORY OP THE UNIVERSE 



which may be at hand for the purpose of striking and 

 breaking a nut. The elephant tears branches from 

 the trees and uses them as an artificial tail to fan 

 himself and to keep off the flies. But between these 

 rudiments of intellectual perception and the next 

 step that of adapting and fashioning an instrument 

 for a particular purpose there is a gulf in which 

 lies the whole immeasurable distance between man 

 and the brutes. In no case whatever do they ever 

 use an implement made by themselves as an inter- 

 mediate agency between their bodily organs and the 

 work which they desire to do. Man, on the con- 

 trary, is so constructed that in almost everything he 

 desires to do he must employ an agency intermediate 

 between his bodily organs and the effect which he 

 wishes to produce. But this necessity, which in one 

 aspect is a physical disability, is correlated with a 

 mind capable of invention, and with certain im- 

 planted instincts which involve all the rudiments of 

 mechanical skill. The man who first lifted a stone 

 and threw it, practiced an art which not one of the 

 lower animals is capable of practicing. This is an 

 act which in all probability is as strictly instinctive 

 and natural to man as it is to a dog to bite, or to a bull 

 to charge. Yet the act involves the idea and the 

 knowledge of projectile force and of the arts by 

 which direction can be given to that force. The 

 wielding of a stick is, in all probability, an act 

 equally of primitive intuition, and from this to the 

 throwing of a stick, and the use of javelins, is an easy 

 and natural transition. Simple as these acts are, they 

 involve both physical and mental powers capable of 



