December 22, 1905.] 



SCIENCE, 



817 



plane of the animal to hio distinct and ex- 

 alted position as a progressive conqueror 

 of lower nature; and of such are man and 

 the works of his hand and mind. 



icas was occupied by the Amerind race, 

 and the red men were confined to these 

 continents with their neighboring islands 

 and a small section of adjacent Asia; 



IV. 



In the general view (in which the out- 

 lines are strengthened by classification), 

 mankind are separated from all lower ani- 

 mals by certain small differences in size, 

 form and structure, and by several large 

 distinctions in habits of life; so that while 

 the anatomist finds connecting links be- 

 tween simians and men, and while physi- 

 ologists find their functions much alike, 

 the student of broad anthropology defines 

 man as the fire-making animal, and hence 

 a user of cooked food and in other ways a 

 creator of his own chief distinctions from 

 the brutes— for all men known of them- 

 selves or from relics enslaved fire, while no 

 lower animal masters this most potent of 

 forces for the conquest of nature. So man 

 stands out as a unique and dominant or- 

 ganism in the animal realm; and at the 

 same time as a type or order of creative 

 beings bound together by the power of 

 control over natural forces for the common 

 welfare. 



The fire-maker, man, is distributed over 

 all lands in a number of races and a still 

 larger number of industrial and social 

 varieties. Until recently all of both Amer- 



nearly all of Africa was occupied by the 

 African race, while the black men extended 

 beyond this continent and a few neighbor- 

 ing islands only in a modified or negroid 

 type; and the great Eurasian land-mass 

 with its peninsulas and islands was the 

 home of three races — the white men who 

 lead and the yellow men and brown men 

 who follow in that conquest of lower nature 

 through the control of natural forces begun 

 by the making of fire. The physical varia- 

 tions were least in America, more in Africa, 

 most in Eurasia, where the physical break 

 between highest and lowest (albeit spanned 

 by numberless links) is greater than the 

 chasm between the lowest human and the 

 simian. 



Until within a few centuries, most of the 

 fire-making folk remained isolated, partly 

 because of intervening seas, chiefly because 

 of intervening gulfs of faith and custom; 

 though some tribes were united in con- 

 federacies in which the chief bond was 

 similarity in belief, the next similarity in 

 speech, and the next similarity in work and 

 industrial standards. In North America 

 there were at the time of exploration some 

 1,200 or more tribes speaking some 75 



