THE CANNIBAL IN EVOLUTION 149 



of the imagination and intellect we are apt, according 

 to Keith's views, to think that when we make great dis- 

 coveries they must be relatively greater than those dis- 

 covered in the past. Yet it may be doubted if Napier 

 of Merchistoun made a greater discovery than the un- 

 known genius who first counted on his fingers. It is at 

 least certain that, though logarithms lessen labour, they 

 have not lessened it to the millionth extent that finger 

 reckoning, and all that has flowed from it, including 

 logarithms themselves, have since achieved. To learn 

 how to make fire was a greater discovery than any 

 made by Watt, while the inventors of the wheel or the 

 wedge must have been men of the very highest capacity. 

 The same may be said of the arts, for the discovery 

 that an outline represented in some magical way a real 

 animal or a person, whether it was found out by some 

 savage boy outlining a shadow, cast by the camp- 

 fire, on a neighbouring rock, or by some primeval 

 master, was an effort of much more amazing originality 

 than a masterpiece by Rembrandt or Rubens. We 

 cannot, perhaps unjustly, attribute most, or even many, 

 of such inventions to a Piltdown brain. The question 

 is then how it came about that relatives, close or far 

 removed, of Homo Eoanthropus gave rise, within a com- 

 paratively short period of time, to the later and still 

 prevalent type, capable of the highest intellectual efforts. 

 A solution of the problem may, perhaps, be found in 

 cannibalism as the chief factor, if it first gave rise to 

 organized war and the development of weapons, such as 

 made the best period of Chcllean art a time of master- 

 pieces in flint. 



It is certainly justifiable to assume that some such 

 factor is needed for explanation. If the missing link 



