WORKING HANDS AND THINKING MIND 



Do you suppose that it took those early men very 

 long to notice that their hands were quite unlike 

 the fore paws of the animals among which they 

 lived? A bear can walk on his hind legs and put 

 things into his mouth with his paws, but he cannot 

 move the different joints of his paws. The monkeys' 

 fore paws, which look so much like the hands of the 

 cave men, cannot be used as the cave men learned 

 to use their hands. 



Those cave men, like ourselves, had fingers which 

 could be moved as they wished. They were able, 

 as we are, to touch the thumb with the tip of each 

 finger, and that no animal can do. The more those 

 early men tried to do, the more easily their hands 

 and fingers obeyed their wish. The training which 

 they gave their fingers by using them helped to de- 

 velop their minds. So the more skillful their hands 

 became the quicker and brighter their minds were. 



Did they learn to weave by watching the spiders 

 spin their thread and weave their webs overhead in 

 the roofs of the caves? Many times they must have 

 lain on beds of leaves, looking up into the smoke- 

 begrimed roofs where the little spiders were busy 

 making festoons and spreading out their carpets. 

 Spiders had been making webs for millions of years; 

 it would not be strange if they should have taught 



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