FORCING INTELLIGENCE 83 



finger tips, fingers, and hands from becoming cal- 

 loused, or from having their sensitiveness impaired 

 by frequent contact with the ground, or by friction 

 or concussion against it, or by serving as supports 

 to the body. Their use can thus become more 

 exclusively devoted to handling, pulling, pressing, 

 feeling; the latter being an ever-present, unavoid- 

 able element in every one of these other actions. 



Thus a sensation indicating the nature and 

 properties of the things touched accompanies every 

 use made of the finger tips, fingers, and hands. 

 Man is taught the nature and properties of his en- 

 vironment while handling, pulling, pressing, etc., and 

 human knowledge increases, in spite of carelessness 

 and inattention, by every use made of hands, fingers, 

 and finger tips. 



This opens a veritable new realm, an inestimably 

 great reservoir of experiences, of close intimacies 

 with the peculiarities and properties of the infinite 

 variety of existencies which are around us. It gives 

 opportunities for the multiplication of primary 

 impressions. And these are, metaphorically speak- 

 ing, the elementary atoms, out of the infinite com- 

 pounding and recompounding of which conceptions 

 and knowledge, are obtained. To what an enor- 

 mous extent the expansion of knowledge thus made 

 possible surpasses that derived from other sources can 

 hardly be over-estimated. Given an ignorant and 

 helpless brute with the human body, and the upright 

 attitude naturally and necessarily follows. Given the 



