240 
compete with the deer in swiftness or with the wild bull in 
strength, this gave him weapons with which to capture or 
overcome both. Though less capable than most other ani- 
mals of living on the herbs and the fruits that unaided 
nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern 
and direct nature to his own benefit, and make her produce 
food for him when and where he pleased. From the 
moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when 
the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, the 
first seed sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was 
effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous 
ages of the earth's history had had no parallel ; for a being 
had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change 
with the changing universe, — a being who was in some 
degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to 
regulate and control her action, and could keep himself in 
harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an 
advance of mind.^* This we see already in the Stone Age. 
But whence came this capacity in man, or whence came man 
having this capacity ? 
It has been suggested that man came by accident to the 
use of implements ; that the savage, beginning like the 
monkey with using a round stone for cracking nuts, acci- 
dentally discovered that he could crack other stones also, 
and sharpen these for cutting; and, moreover, by thus elicit- 
ing sparks he made the accidental discovery of fire.fi Now 
all this may have been ; but it is an unscientific method to 
take our present knowledge of implements and their uses 
and prescribe from this the way in which the primitive man 
must have invented his tools. It is, to say the least, a 
curious accident that no such accident as is here imagined 
for the savage ever happened to the monkey ; that it never 
occurred to him to crack a stone and shape it into a knife, 
or to gather sparks for kindling a fire. And it is still more 
curious — indeed unaccountable upon the theory of a kindred 
intelligence — that no monkey, baboon, or chimpanzee has 
profited by the example of man in learning to make imple- 
ments of the crude native materials about him. Different 
tribes of savages, it is believed, have separately stumbled 
upon these inventions ; but in all the ages since the Stone 
* Anthropological Review, May, 1864, p. clxvii. ; also reprinted in Natural 
Selection, p. 325. 
f Sir J ohn Lubbock’s Pre-historic Times, chap. xiv. 
