THE ARREST OF THE BODY 131 



bone of a bear by thrusting a stick into it, and 

 striking it home with a stone — that day the doom 

 of the Hand was sealed. 



But has not Man to make his tools, and will not 

 that induce the development of the Hand to an as 

 yet unknown perfection ? No. Because tools are 

 not made with the Hand. They are made with the 

 Brain. For a time, certainly, Man had to make his 

 tools, and for a time this work recompensed him 

 physically, and the arm became elastic and the 

 fingers dexterous and strong. But soon he made 

 tools to make these tools. In place of shaping 

 things with the Hand, he invented the turning- 

 lathe ; to save his fingers he requisitioned the 

 loom ; instead of working his muscles he gave out 

 the contract to electricity and steam. Man, there- 

 fore, from this time forward will cease to develop 

 materially these organs of his body. If he develops 

 them outside his body, filling the world everywhere 

 with artificial Hands, supplying the workshops with 

 fingers more intricate and deft than Organic Evolu- 

 tion could make in a millennium, and loosing energies 

 upon them infinitely more gigantic than his muscles 

 could generate in a life-time, it is enough. Evolution 

 after all is a slow process. Its great labour is to 

 work up to a point where Invention shall be possible, 

 and where, by the powers of the human mind, and 



