422 THE OKIGIN OF TRADITION 



a hundred-fold measure must have been pressing itself upon the 

 attention of man when supporting himself by hunting and fishing 

 only. How often the metal softened in the camp-fire before the 

 method of fashioning a far more effective tool than stone was 

 adopted, we cannot guess. Eventually the facts were observed, 

 the practical applications to the needs of life undertaken, and 

 valuable additions made to skill and embodied in tradition. Man 

 in fact throughout the greater part of his history has not gone 

 about consciously trying to better his lot. Rude and poor as life 

 was, his necessity was not the mother of his inventions. Once, 

 however, an invention was made it became a necessity, and it is 

 more in accordance with the facts to invert the proverb and to 

 regard invention as the mother of necessity. But where should 

 we expect the facts to be noticed and the improvements to be 

 made in skill ? Obviously where they most often happened, 

 where, in other words, fertility was greatest. For it is in those 

 regions where there is the greatest abundance in quality and 

 quantity of useful objects that there will be the greatest chance 

 of their usefulness being observed, and that there will be derived 

 the highest return per head from any improvements in skill. 



The greater the fertility, therefore, the greater the incentive 

 to progress in skill. This conclusion may seem to be in contra- 

 diction with the commonly accepted idea that, when a living is 

 easily obtained, there is a tendency to stagnation. 1 This notion is 

 derived from observations and descriptions of countries where, so 

 it is said, such is the bounty of nature that the hand has, so to 

 speak, only to be stretched out in order to gather in the fruits 

 of the earth. This idea is largely founded upon an under-estimate 

 of the labour undergone, especially on the part of the women, and 

 upon an exaggeration of the returns per head, and, as far as it is 

 so derived, it is incorrect. But it is true that often in such regions 

 there is a tendency to stagnation ; such tendency, however, is 

 in no way derived from the fertility ; it arises because to the 

 tradition there is added for quite other reasons a spirit of apathy 

 and of listlessness. How this comes about may be discussed 

 later but it may be mentioned here that a destructive element in 

 the natural endowment of any area, such as not infrequently exists 

 in tropical regions, is one cause of the existence of this spirit. 



1 Statements such as the following are commonplaces of anthropological litera- 

 ture. * These [Brazilians] have found life too easy, as the latter [Australians] 

 have found it too difficult ' (Herbertson, Man and His Work, p. 3). 



