H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 141 



In all our attempts to gain an understanding of the progress of early 

 man, we are, in fact, heavily handicapped by the training and experience 

 which mould our thoughts from our earliest years. As children we 

 acquire knowledge and ' general ideas ' concerning materials, methods, 

 and results, which make it impossible for us to picture the real character 

 of the mental states of primitive man, and of the founders of the early 

 civilisations. We leave our cradles to turn a tap or push a button that 

 effects a miracle, and our minds are never quite the same again. We 

 learn also that man has evolved, that his culture has evolved, and that 

 there is good reason to suppose that progress will continue for an indefinite 

 period. As Bury has shown, however, it was not until the latter half of 

 the nineteenth century that the ' idea of human progress ' received 

 acceptance, though it had been in process of evolution for some centuries. 

 It was not familiar to the Greeks and Romans, nor, we may assume, to 

 the peoples of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It is difficult to assess the 

 importance of the general idea of progress as an incentive in the detailed 

 development of discoveries and inventions, though we may be sure that 

 it is very far from being negligible. But if our own opportunism is inspired 

 by a vision of an almost unlimited field of progress, the culture of ancient 

 times was based on an opportunism sufficient for the day. Foresight is a 

 cultivated aptitude, not a human instinct. The men who began the 

 growing of grain did not look forward to feeding a multitude — population 

 increased with the food supply, and cornfields were enlarged to feed the 

 growing numbers. The idea of a multitude of men evolved with the 

 multitude itself. The plough was not invented as a means of more 

 efficient tillage, but was the result of the discovery that a pick or a hoe 

 could be dragged through light soil so as to prepare a seed bed more 

 rapidly than could be done by pecking up the soil ; the implement got a 

 new start in life by a change in the method of use, and it was improved 

 as a result of discoveries arising out of its manufacture and employment, 

 aided later by the adoption of modifications suggested by other con- 

 temporary devices or appliances. At no stage was there a premonitory 

 vision of a method of agriculture, or a type of plough, having an origin' 

 in a mental conception cut off from its roots in the state of knowledge of 

 the place and time. That kind of unconditioned foresight does not happen 

 even nowadays, and we may assume it never will. It is only on the basis 

 of his actual knowledge that man can reason and deduce, and though 

 modern scientific learning may enable us to make predictions with some 

 certainty, the result of experiment is either a confirmation of theory or 

 it is a surprise — a true discovery ; and the part played by chance in 

 thrusting discoveries on man is well known to all of us. We differ from 

 our forerunners in the fact that our receptivity and enterprise are fostered 

 by the idea of progress, and are nourished through an organised system 

 of traps and snares which provide discoveries and ideas for domestication 

 and consumption. This is directional research, but real discoveries that 

 are outside the range of existing theory are apt to bring about an oppor- 

 tunist change of direction by a revelation of new aims and possibilities. 

 That is to say, we may be systematic and forethoughtful in our use of 

 existing knowledge, and in our quest for new, but true discoveries reveal 

 us as the opportunists men have always been. The modern discoverer or 



