158 THE NEXT GENERATION 



So, too, when man found he could gather grains from cer- 

 tain grasses, plant them together in the same field, and raise 

 wheat and corn for human use. This was another milestone 

 in the journey toward civilization — another blessing to* be 

 handed on to later generations. 



One after the other also came the inventions. 



Man left his cave and built himself a hut — the beginnings 

 of architecture. He made bow and arrow, tools and traps, 

 rafts and canoes. And each separate invention was the result 

 of brain activity. Memory, curiosity, imagination, reason, 

 will power, choice — all these he pressed into service. 



Moreover, by using fingers and toes as numbers he began 

 to count, and all our present-day higher mathematics come 

 from that early start. The decimal system itself is but a 

 reminder of the ten toes and^ the ten fingers of those early 

 ancestors. 



In some such way, through the ages, discovery and inven- 

 tion followed each other up the road toward our modern 

 civilization. Each generation inherited what had gone before; 

 each made new inventions, new discoveries ; each in turn 

 passed on to the next generation what it had received and 

 cared to keep. 



We of to-day have our occupations and our recreations, 

 our comforts of life, our requirements and our luxuries, as a 

 rolled-up inheritance from past generations of men, and no 

 form of inheritance is more valuable to us. 



We see, then, that in addition to the physical inheritance 

 which each of us has received, there is this other form of 

 influence, this accumulated knowledge, these gathered-up ex- 

 periences, which reach us as a social inheritance from our 

 ancestors, and which we, just as necessarily, pass on to the 

 next generation. 



