80 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



would not let any other monkey touch It. Here, then, we have 

 the idea of property; but this idea is common to every dog with 

 a bone, and to most or all birds with their nests. 



The Duke of Argyll'^ remarks, that the fashioning of an imple- 

 ment for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he 

 considers that this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and 

 the brutes. This is no doubt a very important distinction; but 

 there appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion,*' 

 that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any purpose, 

 he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have 

 used the sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small 

 one to break the flints on purpose, and not a very wide step to 

 fashion them rudely. This latter advance, however, may have 

 taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of 

 time which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to 

 grinding and polishing their stone tools. In breaking the flints, 

 as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been 

 emitted, and in grinding them heat would have been evolved; 

 thus the two usual methods of "obtaining fire may have orig- 

 "inated." The nature of fire would have been known in the 

 many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through for- 

 ests. The anthropomorphous apes, guided probably by instinct, 

 build for themselves temporary platforms; but as many instincts 

 are largely controlled by reason, the simpler ones, such as this 

 of building a platform, might readily pass into a voluntary and 

 conscious act. The orang is known to cover itself at night with 

 the leaves of the Pandanus; and Brehm states that one of his 

 baboons used to protect itself from the heat of the sun by throw- 

 ing a straw-mat over its head. In these several habits, we prob- 

 ably see the first steps towards some of the simpler arts, such 

 as rude architecture and dress, as they arose amongst the early 

 progenitors of man. 



Abstraction, General Conceptions, Self -consciousness. Mental 

 Individuality. — It would be very difiicult for any one with even 

 much more knowledge than I possess, to determine how far ani- 

 mals exhibit any traces of these high mental powers. This diffi- 

 culty arises from the impossibility of judging what passes through 

 the mind of an animal; and again, the fact that writers differ to 

 a great extent in the meaning which they attribute to the above 

 terms, causes a further difiiculty. If one may judge from various 

 articles which have been published lately, the greatest stress 

 seems to be laid on the supposed entire absence in animals of the 

 power of abstraction, or of forming general concepts. But when 



*= 'Primeval Man,' 1869, pp. 145, 147. 

 IS 'Prehistoric Times,' 1865, p. 473, &c. 



