TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 397 



only by example, or through such very elementary verbal signs 

 as calls, growls, or cries of alarm, which express no more than 

 simple emotions. Therefore their traditional knowledge is as 

 nothing compared to that of man, who, by means of articulated 

 speech, indicates not only sense-impressions and emotions, but 

 also complex items of knowledge and processes of thought which 

 have been garnered, elaborated, and systematized during tens of 

 thousands of years by millions of predecessors. Without speech 

 or some such method of communicating abstruse information, his 

 great brain and its special functions would be useless. Knowledge 

 and powers of thought are of no avail, unless they can be trans- 

 lated into action, and for this the hands are necessary. To set 

 free the forelimbs, which had hitherto been organs of locomotion, 

 for their new function of manipulation, man gradually became a 

 biped, and assumed the erect attitude not, of course, by any 

 conscious effort, but by the constant survival of the fittest, those 

 best structurally adapted to walk erect. 



657. Savage man differs from lower animals mainly in that 

 he has, relatively to his size, a larger brain, a more capacious 

 memory, and greater powers of using its contents and communi- 

 cating them to others of his species. Modern man differs from 

 ancient man because he is heir to a greater accumulation of 

 traditionally transmitted experience. Civilized man differs from 

 the savage chiefly in that he has invented and more or less 

 perfected certain artificial aids to memory, thought, and speech 

 written symbols by means of which he is able to store in 

 an available form information immensely more abstruse and 

 voluminous than would otherwise be possible. His books are 

 artificial memories and vehicles of communication of unlimited 

 capacity and unerring accuracy. Moreover, by means of these 

 symbols he is able, as in the mathematics, to perform feats of 

 thinking quite beyond the powers of his unaided mind, just 

 as by means of mechanical contrivances, he is able to perform 

 physical feats beyond the unaided powers of his body. Obviously, 

 the mental change which occurred when savage races achieved 

 civilization did not necessarily imply germinal alteration. But, 

 because each generation communicated its growing traditions to 

 the next, it so exactly mimicked evolution that innumerable 

 writers have been deceived. The belief is almost universal that 

 the savage differs innately in mind from the civilized man. 1 He 



1 Dr Alfred Russel Wallace is a rare exception. See his very interesting 

 article on Evolution and Character in the Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1908. 



