228 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
him in bodily strength, and are possessed of acuter senses, yet he 
has succeeded in getting the mastery of them all by the simple 
invention of manufacturing implements and weapons. Since he 
attained this art he has, to a certain extent, divested himself of the 
means of attack and defence with which nature originally endowed 
him, and he has substituted, instead of them, a system of armour 
founded upon practices and methods never before used by any other 
being in the history of the organic world. In swimming, flying, 
running, &c., Man is nowhere among thousands of competitors. 
Yet he beats them all in the actual attainment of locomotion by sea 
or land. Whenever an enemy becomes unmasked, it is sure to 
succumb eventually to his artifices. The bigger and stronger his 
antagonist, the more readily does he fall a prey to his cunning and 
ingenuity. After extinguishing the great giants of the antediluvian 
world, it would appear that at the present time his greatest oppo- 
nents are micro-organisms, which, in the form of parasitic germs, 
establish themselves as colonies in his body, where they consume 
his very vitals, and in this way bring about his downfall. But he 
is on their track ; and, as we are told that the resources of civilisa- 
tion are not yet exhausted, it is to be hoped that he will soon be 
able to reckon them also among his beaten foes. One great charac- 
teristic of man’s handiworks is that they bear the impress of intel- 
ligence. Hence a specimen of his workmanship, whatever its age, 
always conveys to the critical eye some knowledge of the technical 
skill and mental qualities of its maker. Wherever such objects are 
found, and to whatever period they may belong, it follows to a 
certainty that their manufacturers were there also. On the suppo- 
sition that the reasoning power, and its counterpart the manipu- 
lative skill of Man, were feeble at first, but improved gradually, we 
naturally expect that stray objects left behind him at successive 
stages would disclose indications of his upward progress. This is 
exactly what we find to be the case. This feature is the magic key 
by which the long-hidden secrets of prehistoric Man are being un- 
locked. In short, we have in these handicraft works — implements, 
weapons, ornaments, temples, tombs, houses, &c. — a graduated scale 
of man’s past civilisation and career on the globe. To this general- 
isation exception may be taken on the ground that we occasionally 
find evidence of degeneration in the products of civilisation. But 
