220 PART IV. PREPARATORY STAGE. 



Third and Fourth Stage. Generalisation and Interim Statement. ' 



95. After prolonged sifting of the chaff from the wheat, 

 and after applying the necessary generalising and verifying 

 methods indicated in Conclusions 25 to 29, we clarify our thought 

 by formulating, for instance, the interim statement that man is 

 the sole specio-psychic being, or, less tersely, that man is the 

 sentient being which, for satisfying its needs, primarily depends 

 on species-developed and environmentally preserved culture; 

 or, more exhaustively, that what differentiates man most truly 

 is that the necessary means for adequately gratifying his needs 

 are, in a growingly satisfactory form, provided not, as in 

 animals, by instinct, by individual intelligence, by learning a 

 few things from neighbouring members of the same species, 

 by incidental traditions, by group co-operation, or by a com- 

 bination of several or of all of the just enumerated means, 

 but by the steadily increasing collection of material and other 

 inventions and discoveries made and developed through the 

 ages by his species as a whole and transmitted traditionally or 

 environmentally from generation to generation. In more formal 

 terms: Man most nearly resembles the mammals belonging to 

 the order Primates, and is specially distinguished from (a) the 

 other Primates, by his completely erect posture and higher 

 development of extremities and brain, and from (b) all animals, 

 including the Primates, by his mode of life being a cumulative 

 and environmentally preserved species-product, that is, by his 

 depending, instead of on almost entirely inherited means and 

 methods for satisfying his desires, on in substance species- 

 discovered, invented, adapted, and improved means and methods 

 environmentally preserved. 



These definitions satisfy the important canon ( 110) which 

 requires that a whole subject should be summed up in one 

 brief statement wherever possible; but, to be of no uncertain 

 value, the main implications of the definition should be stated 

 for the purpose of placing ourselves in a position to test the 

 correctness and the importance of the definition. With a crisp 

 definition and a compressed deductive statement before them, 

 author and reader obtain a bird's-eye view which naught else 

 could replace, and which should be, therefore, only omitted 

 when extraordinary circumstances render the attempt inadvis- 

 able or prohibitive. 



Fifth Stage. Theoretical Deductions.- 



96. The interim statement reached at the fourth stage 

 implies: (a) Since every species of animal known (other than 

 man) is for all intents hereditarily determined, and in no degree 



1 See Conclusions 25-30. 



2 See Conclusion 31. 



