THE DA WN OF MIND 177 



every nation when the only supplements to the 

 organs of the body for the uses of Man were the 

 stones of the field and the sticks of the forest. To 

 use these natural, abundant, and portable objects, 

 was an obvious resource with early tribes. If Mind, 

 dawned in the past at all, it is with such objects 

 that we should expect its first associations, and as 

 a matter of fact it seems everywhere to have been 

 so. Relics of a Stick Age would of course be 

 obliterated by time, but traces of a Stone Age 

 have been found, not in connection with the first 

 beginnings of a few tribes only, but with the first 

 beginnings — from the point that any representation 

 is possible — of probably every nation in the world. 

 The wide geographical use of stone implements is 

 one of the most striking facts in Anthropology. 

 Instead of being confined to a few peoples, and to 

 outlying districts, as is sometimes asserted, their 

 distribution is universal. They are found through- 

 out the length and breadth of Europe, and on all 

 its islands ; they occur everywhere in Western 

 Asia, and north of the Himalayas. In the Malay 

 Peninsula they strew the ground in endless num- 

 bers ; and again, in Australia, New Zealand, New 

 Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the Coral Islands 

 of the Pacific. Known in China, they are scattered 

 broadcast throughout Japan, and the same is true 



