II58 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



influence formerly (even in the Lemuroidea) exercised by smell." 

 {Ibid., p. 143.) The snout is reduced in the fascinating Spectral 

 Tarsi er so that the eyes come to the front of the face and look 

 forward. But although Tarsius has binocular vision, it is not yet 

 capable of appreciating stereoscopic effects. Elliot Smith thinks that 

 the creature feels the need of being able to adjust the two eyes in 

 close co-ordination, for it moves its head about on its vertebral 

 column through an extraordinarily wide range, almost to 180° 

 when looking backward. "It moves its head much as a cat does, and 

 so roughly achieves its purpose of bringing the two eyes at the same 

 distance from the object." 



No small part and factor of the progressive evolution of living 

 beings has gone in the varied acquirement of the art of seeing; and 

 man has grounds for congratulating himself that he seems on the 

 whole to have got farthest. But in what different measure! As our 

 languages show, the Japanese have here gone far beyond us Westerns 

 in their colour-observation; but within all people this range of 

 development varies greatly: recall the story of Turner, who when 

 told by the philistine that he had "never seen such colour in 

 Nature" — replied, "But don't you wish you could?" And much 

 as muscle and nerve are trained to finer and more subtle skill, so 

 are the naturalist's and the artist's eyes in their different ways — and 

 so too the thinker's and the poet's, as they survey with under- 

 standing, feeling, and inward imagery as well. What better training, 

 then, for that ontogeny of the individual and race — from Protozoon 

 to Psychozoon — Life's main evolution — than the continuing of 

 this long evolutionar}^ progress of the art of seeing? Is not this a 

 main line for the Education of ourselves and others ? 



Referring for details to a recent discussion in Thomson's What 

 is Man? (1924), we must be content here with resuming what we 

 dimly discern as probable factors in Man's emergence. He belonged 

 to a clever social Hominid stock arising from ancestors common to 

 them and to the Anthropoid Apes; he diverged at a time when 

 several other types of mammals were experiencing great increase of 

 brain, and to this there may have been some environmental, e.g. 

 climatic, stimulus; he was probably an expression of successive 

 cerebral mutations, especially in the anterior cortex of the fore- 

 brain ; this enhanced brain-development may have been correlated 

 with the prolonged ante-natal life; a prolongation of infancy and 

 of the play period would favour educability of mind, as contrasted 

 with early fixation; the prolonged infancy would also favour the 

 development of gentleness in the individual and its evolution in 

 the race; in a social stock the improving capacit}^ for speech, and 

 its gradual rise into language, would certainly have great survival 

 value; consequent on continental elevation and an associated 

 increase in aridity, there would be a shrinkage of the forests, perhaps 



