Evolution of the Mechanic Arts. 199 



their progeny that infancy being occupied in building up 

 the nerve and brain substance which were to be the organs 

 of that intelligence, increasing them in mass and functional 

 power from generation to generation. In reaching this con- 

 clusion he mentions, but objects to, Mr. Darwin's view, 

 "That men were originally a race of meek and mild 

 creatures like chimpanzees, and not a race of strong and 

 ferocious creatures like gorillas, and were accordingly forced 

 to combine because unable to defend themselves singly." 

 Putting the question in similar form, I venture to ask : How 

 did the mental evolution characteristic of man originate ? 

 And to suggest as the answer, that it originated in the ge- 

 neric, or racial infancy and relative weakness of the early 

 progenitors of man, long continued, and, through natural 

 selection preserving only those who, fleeing singly to the 

 trees, found others of their kind seeking the same refuge 

 from common dangers which they were thenceforth to meet 

 and combat in common, or in associated numbers, loosely 

 organized and captained by the strongest and most intelli- 

 gent of the band. The tree thus became a place of abode, 

 in fact a home, and a house of which the leaves fvirnished 

 the roof, the limbs the upper chambers, and the smaller 

 branches the cradles for their young. It would seem that 

 the real strength and promise of the human race have lain 

 and still lie in relative racial infancy and weakness. 



Constantly surrounded by wild beasts foes so much 

 stronger than themselves we may well, and sympathet- 

 ically, understand how the mothers of that early time 

 watched over their children by day, and especially how 

 they must have forbade them to be out late o' nights in the 

 streets of their arboreal villages and cities ; and, thus keep- 

 ing them at home, how they cultivated from generation to 

 generation as we do now what we know and appreciate 

 as home and societary life. My own recollections of the 

 maternal slipper do not go back so far as that ; nor have 

 my archaeological studies yet qualified me to accurately de- 

 scribe the instrument used on such occasions by prehistoric 

 mothers ; but there is evidence to show that something was 

 efficiently used, and that it may have had an influence in 

 giving man his upright attitude. 



It does not, then, seem to me a mere matter of fanc}' to 

 consider the period of arboreal or tree-home-life as the 

 strictly infantile part of racial development ; the subsequent 



