350 



V.-WORKING STAGE. 



give rise to the wonderful wireless waves." Or, to consider a 

 different case: with both parents brunettes, the offspring may 

 be either fair or dark, and with both parents blondes, the 

 offspring is invariably blonde. Again, a certain minimum of 

 learning from the experience of others may be found among- 

 some animals; man, however, assimilates the substance of the 

 thoughts of all his kind past and present. Man, therefore, 

 almost infinitely transcends in degree the capacity of any animal 

 for learning from others, and this quasi-infinite difference argues. 

 that man has reached a unique stage which knows no limitation 

 to the assimilation of the thoughts of others. If that were 

 not so, we should only have a right to expect in this connection 

 a virtually negligible difference between man and ape. 



Similarly with man and his tools. Viewing the matter com- 

 prehensively, men may be said to have manufactured and 

 employed thousands of millions of different tools or art-produced 

 means. Compared, therefore, to what is presented by Western 

 civilisation, for instance, the two or three unfashioned tools 

 used by animals, bear witness once more to some exclusive 

 quality in man. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain 

 why man should in this respect surpass almost infinitely any 

 known animal, instead of manifesting only an infinitesimal 

 difference. Had Darwin, therefore, observed not only the 

 abstract similarity, but the colossal degree of the difference, 

 he would have been necessarily obliged to search for the cause 

 which would explain this prodigious departure from animal 

 skill. He might have then perhaps discovered that through 

 man having reached the stage of intelligence (just above the 

 higher apes) where he could freely learn from others, a crucial 

 turning point had been attained in the history of living beings, 

 replacing individual and organic evolution by specio-psychic or 

 cultural evolution. It is, therefore, indispensable that not only 

 bare similarity, but the degree of the difference should be taken 

 account of in an enquiry. 



In the opposite direction the same fallacy should be avoided. 

 The reality of progress has been frequently denied, because 

 there appeared to be inappreciable progress in certain directions, 

 and even retrogression in others. A general survey, however, 

 on the basis of a compendious classification, would have yielded 

 overwhelming evidence not only of the reality of progress, but 

 of its vastness and its virtual universality. Examine, for ex- 

 ample, in this connection the progress in matters relating to 

 language. "From a few inarticulate calls and cries a vo- 

 cabulary of a hundred thousand words or more, with a cor- 

 respondingly developed grammar, is evolved; the evanescent 

 word comes gradually to be fixed by the process of writing, 

 which translates the sounds into sight symbols; the invention 

 of printing follows, whereby, at a trivial cost of labour and 

 with almost lightning-like velocity, what is written may be in- 



