140 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



blind alley of the Stone Age he had, for example, to make discoveries and 

 evolve methods, relating to materials that only entered his environment 

 on his own unpremeditated invitation. Metal made its first impression 

 as a fascinating luxury, from which evolved a need. 



Methods, like materials, are far older than man, and in so far as they 

 make calls on bodily and mental powers alone, they may be called pure 

 methods. But progress has depended upon the development of reinforced 

 methods, involving the use of extraneous means. Methods are man's 

 ways, and his means are tools and other artefacts, but it is not entirely 

 true to say that he discovers his ways and invents his means, since he 

 may discover his means as well as his ways. 



Substance is the static warp, and method the dynamic woof, of man's 

 material culture, whilst the products may be looked on as the fabrics, 

 though these are not always tangible. Amongst the more obvious of those 

 which are material in their nature are artefacts of all kinds, but it is clear 

 that such products are themselves the means to further ends. These 

 further ends are material in the case of implements, less immediately 

 material in that of houses or canoes, and non-material in the case of 

 shrines or musical instruments, which satisfy demands of social and 

 individual mentality. And it is here that we find our objective point of 

 view overlapping the subjective — oiir material products require for their 

 explanation some understanding of such aims and ends as lie outside the 

 field of primary material needs. As soon as we get beyond the study of 

 the instinctive quest of food and self-protection, and pass to that of the 

 aims of the human artificer, we realise that aims and ends as well as ways 

 and means, are products of evolution. Man did very well before he was 

 a man at all, and no one has given any reason why he ceased to be an 

 ape. We may appeal to natural selection, to the inheritance of acquired 

 characters, to orthogenesis, and though our belief in the ascent of man 

 remains unshakeable, since the proofs are overwhelming, the reason why 

 an ape-man became an artisan continues to elude us. To say that it was 

 due to action and reaction between a developing brain, aided by versatile 

 hands, and an environment which expanded as knowledge grew, is not an 

 explanation but a statement. But if we cannot say why it happened, 

 and why we have reached a point at which man aims at creating new 

 needs, to the overcrowding of his artificial environment, we can at least 

 attempt to understand something of the way in which natural man became 

 unnatural, and eventually fell into the ways of civilisation. 



The Distorting Mirror of the Present. 



Our attitude towards the problems that arise in the study of origin 

 and development depends very largely upon the extent to which we 

 ascribe to man a power of foresight enabling him to overrun the limits of 

 environmental suggestion. If we assume that his progress has been based 

 upon his opportunist reactions to such suggestion, we secure a standpoint 

 from which to take a retrospective view of human progress. The %'isibility 

 is not too good, and the details that are fundamental are often but obscurely 

 seen, partly because the field of view is not only restricted by our ignorance, 

 but is overshadowed by our knowledge. We can see too little of the past 

 • and too much of the present. 



