194 The Bible of Nature 



that, in the struggle of primitive man, wits were 

 of more avail than strength. His bodily frame- 

 work admitted of little more perfecting, and evo- 

 lution "ever climbing after some ideal good" be- 

 gan, metaphorically speaking, to experiment with 

 the brain. Sir E. Ray Lankester has called atten- 

 tion to the interesting fact that in the early 

 Miocene times there was great increase in brain- 

 growth in several animal types, perhaps for the 

 same reason, that anatomical differentiation of the 

 rest of the system could not profitably go much 

 further. One of the first types to shoot ahead in 

 brain-development was the elephant, which was 

 already sagacious in Eocene times. 



Now the possession of a big brain seems to 

 mean great " educability," i.e., power of storing 

 and profiting by experience.^ And man's enor- 

 mous brain, which does not seem to have increased 

 greatly in bulk since Palaeolithic times, marked a 

 new departure. It removed him head and shoul- 

 ders above the rest of creation, enabling him to 

 pit himself against Nature in a degree impossible 

 to less endowed organisms. It raised him, to his 



* "The power of building up appropriate cerebral 

 mechanism in response to individual experience, or what 

 may be called 'educability,' is the quality which charac- 

 terizes the larger cerebrum, and is that which has led to its 

 selection, survival, and further increase in volume." 

 E. Ray Lankester, "The Kingdom of Man" (London, 

 1907). 



