248 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



This " hairy-tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits " 

 must sometimes have wandered or been driven into 

 places where trees were few and far between. It 

 is conceivable that an animal, accustomed to get 

 along mainly by grasping something, should have 

 picked up a branch and held it in its hand, partly 

 to use as a crutch, partly as a weapon, and partly 

 to raise itself from the ground in order to keep a 

 better look-out in crossing treeless spaces. An 

 Orang-outang may now be seen in the Zoological 

 gardens in Java which promenades about its bower 

 continually with the help of a stick, and seems 

 to prefer the erect position so long as the stick 

 or any support is at hand. 



The next stage after the invention of anything 

 is to improve upon it, or to make a further use 

 of it. Both these things now happened. One 

 day the stick, wrenched rapidly from the tree, 

 happened to be left with a jagged end. The 

 properties of the point were discovered. Now there 

 were two classes of weapons in the world — the 

 blunt stick and the pointed stick — that is to say, 

 the Club and the Spear. 



In using these weapons at first, neither prob- 

 ably was allowed to leave the hand. But already 

 their owners had learned to hurl down branches 

 from the tree-tops, and bombard their enemies 



