Man 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



420 



Anew. An apparatus for controlling one of 

 the lower animals can be turned out from 

 the workshop of Nature sometimes in a day. 

 The wheels are few, the works are simple, 

 the connections require little time for ad- 

 justment or correction. Everything that a 

 humble organism will do has been done a 

 million times by its parents, and already 

 the faculties have been carefully instructed 

 by heredity and will automatically repeat 

 the whole life and movement of their race. 

 But when a man is made it is not an autom- 

 aton that is made. This being will do new 

 things, think new thoughts, originate new 

 ways of life. . . . For half the life, 

 therefore, that lies before the human off- 

 spring no storage of habit has been handed 

 down from the past. . . . Into the in- 

 fant's frame must be fitted not only the ap- 

 paratus for automatic repetition of what its 

 parents have done, but the apparatus for in- 

 telligent initiation; not only the machinery 

 for carrying on the involuntary and reflex 

 actions involuntary and reflex because 

 they have been done so often by its ancestors 

 as to have become automatic but for the 

 voluntary and self-conscious life which will 

 do new things, choose fresh alternatives, 

 seek higher and more varied ends. The in- 

 strument which will attend to breathing 

 even when we forget it; the apparatus 

 which will make the heart beat even tho we 

 try to stop it; the self-acting spring which 

 makes the eyelid close the moment it is 

 threatened these and a hundred others are 

 old and well-tried inventions which, from 

 ceaseless practise generation after genera- 

 tion, work perfectly in each new individual 

 from the start. . . . But the higher 

 brain is comparatively a new thing in the 

 world. It has to undertake a vaster range 

 of duties, often totally new orders of duties ; 

 it has to do things which its forerunners 

 had not quite learned to do, or had not quite 

 learned to do unthinkingly, and the incon- 

 ceivably complex machinery requires time to 

 settle to its work. DRUMMOND Ascent of 

 Man, ch. 8, p. 283. (J. P., 1900.) 



2057. MAN NOT PERFECT, BUT 

 PERFECTIBLE For the creation of man 

 was by no means the creation of a perfect 

 being. The most essential feature of man is 

 his improvableness. FISKE Destiny of Man, 

 ch. 10, p. 71. (H. M. & Co., 1900.) 



2058. MAN, PRIMEVAL Not Like 

 Modern Degraded Races Fuegians and 

 Tasmanians Not Types Brain Power of 

 Earliest Men. Thus it would appear that 

 these earliest known men are not specifically 

 distinct from ourselves, but are a distinct 

 race, most nearly allied to that great Tura- 

 nian stock which is at the present day, and 

 has apparently from the earliest historic 

 times been, the most widely spread of all. 

 Tho rude and uncultured, they were not 

 either physically or mentally inferior to the 

 average men of to-day, and were indeed in 

 several respects men of high type, whose 



great cranial capacity might lead us to sup- 

 pose that their ancestors had recently been 

 in a higher state of civilization than them- 

 selves. It is, however, possible that this 

 characteristic was rather connected with 

 great energy and physical development than 

 with high mental activity. 



To the hypothesis of evolution, as applied 

 to man, these facts evidently oppose great 

 difficulties. They show that such modern 

 degraded races as the Fuegians or the Tas- 

 manians cannot present to us the types of 

 our earlier ancestors, since the latter were 

 men of a different and higher style. Nor do 

 these oldest known men present any approx- 

 imation in physical characters to the lower 

 animals. Further, we may infer from their 

 works, and from what we know of their be- 

 liefs and habits, that they were not crea- 

 tures of instinct, but of thought like our- 

 selves, and that materialistic doctrines of 

 automatism and brain force without mind 

 would be quite as absurd in their applica- 

 tion to them as to their modern representa- 

 tives. DAWSON Facts and Fancies in Mod- 

 ern Science, ch. 4, p. 172. (A. B. P. S.) 



2O59. 



The Embodiment 



of Helplessness and Homelessness. Go with 

 me to that early day when the first being 

 worthy to be called man stood upon this 

 earth. How economical has been his endow- 

 ment. There is no hair on his body to keep 

 him warm, his jaws are the feeblest in the 

 world, his arm is not equal to that of a 

 gorilla, he cannot fly like the eagle, he can- 

 not see into the night like the owl, even the 

 hare is fleeter than he. He has no clothing, 

 no shelter. " Foxes had holes, and the birds 

 of the air had nests, but this man had not 

 where to lay his head." He had no tools or 

 industries or experience, no society or lan- 

 guage or arts of pleasure; he had yet no 

 theory of life and poorer conceptions of the 

 life beyond. All Nature laughed at him. 

 The sun said, I will blister his skin. The 

 storm said, I will spit upon him. The sea 

 said, I will drown him. The noxious mal- 

 aria said, I will parch him with fevers. 

 The lion, the wolf, the tiger said, I will de- 

 vour him. The mountain-sheep withheld 

 her fleece and lambs. The wild ass and the 

 wild horse fled away in scorn. The silly 

 fish said, I know you not, and the birds 

 skimmed the air around him in mockery. 

 There were no waving grain fields, nor 

 golden corn fields, nor tempting vineyards, 

 nor fragrant orchards. 



" Poor naked wretches, on the edge of time, 

 That bide the pelting of this pitiless 



storm, 

 How shall your houseless heads and unfed 



sides defend you 

 From seasons such as these ? " 



King Lear, iii, 1. 



Whatever we may say of our own golden 

 age, surely his was not around him nor 

 above him. If he had one at all it was 

 within him. MASON The Birth of Invention 



