THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig. 2. Great Cave of Placard (Charente), where drinking cups made of the top 

 of the human cranium were found. Photographed by G. G. MacCurdy. 



ourselves of the heritage of all the ages and assume the primitive role 

 of Eoanthroptis for example. 



Environment presupposes mind, matter, space and time. With 

 these combined in workable proportions it is conceivable how the result- 

 ant might be that thing we call human culture. Mind, with its power 

 to register and to profit by its own experiences, is that which has 

 leavened the lump. As long, however, as those accumulated experiences 

 remained individual, there was no real progress. Means had to be 

 devised to translate individual experience into racial experience. The 

 one who discovered this secret, who first deposited that little bank 

 account on which the race has ever since drawn, is entitled to be called 

 the first man. 



There were from the beginning as there are to-day individuals with 

 exceptional minds, who contrived to live up to the full measure of the 

 light that was given them, thus contributing little by little to racial 

 experience, which at first could help them very little in return; but 

 which as it grew and as ways were found to make it more generally 

 available became a dominant factor in the racial uplift. 



