ON MAN AND HIS DEVELOPMENT. 67 



Nature from the Unknown. It makes all of the great 

 man except his special genius, which is afterwards to 

 improve society; all of Shakespeare except his extra- 

 ordinary imagination and insight, by which he has for 

 ever enriched the world. Even if we revert to the 

 earliest stages of development, we can see that before 

 natural selection got anything worth selecting in the 

 most primitive societies, the creative spirit, the superior 

 man, had first to appear. Before primitive man could 

 make any decided step in advance, or could separate 

 himself conspicuously from his lower animal relations, 

 some inventive individual had to conceive and construct 

 the first rude flint weapon, which gave men so great 

 advantage in the combat with wild beasts or with their 

 fellows ; some prehistoric Prometheus first stole the 

 secret of fire from Nature, and showed to the others its 

 uses ; some one discovered the fruitful corn amongst the 

 common grasses, and taught the rest to plant it ; to some 

 one the idea first occurred that the skin of a slain beast, 

 if deftly transferred and arranged, would warm himself 

 as it did its original owner. Again, and later, some one 

 invented spoken speech, some one before Cadmus in- 

 vented the use of letters, some one before Tubal-cain 

 taught how to temper and shape the metals. But in all 

 these and many other cases, the first seeds of fruitful 

 thought or invention appeared in one mind; the sub- 

 sequent important improvements have* likewise come 

 from one. And this has been true of the history of the 

 arts of war as of peace ; from the inventor of the bow, 

 the spear, and the plough, to the inventor of the printing 

 press and the steam-engine. 



If we come to the historical stages of the course of 

 evolution, we shall see the truth of this exemplified in 

 still more important matters. We still see that all dis- 



