58 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



since all wild creatures avoid avoidable efforts, it is 

 more than likely that brute -man would drop the 

 stick immediately upon becoming aware that he 

 had missed his hold. Furthermore, on the branch 

 breaking, the recoil would startle the brute and 

 perhaps make him angry or afraid, and all the more 

 likely to drop the stick. To teach him the use of a 

 stick, it would have to be further assumed, that, 

 immediately after grabbing it and after the recoil 

 from breaking, another accident made him acci- 

 dentally lift the arm and then strike a blow. Then, 

 by further accidental coincidence, the blow would 

 have to fall in just the right place, on some creature 

 or object happening to be there, at the exactly right 

 moment, and that this combination of exact acci- 

 dents achieved so impressive a result in the life of 

 the creature as to determine his stolid nature to 

 remember and voluntarily repeat these actions on 

 future occasions. He would have to say to himself: 

 "This is a stick. Sticks come from trees, when you 

 want to climb and happen to miss. Sticks must 

 first be lifted and then brought down violently. 

 That kills some animal good to eat, or one that might 

 have killed and eaten me unless I had first struck 

 it with the stick." Then this complex series of 

 coincident and precisely adjusted accidents must be 

 repeated frequently before a single man-brute could 

 acquire the habit. 



Even so comparatively simple an accident as that 

 a grabbed branch, fit for a stick, should break off 



