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Age, no tribe of Simiae has either stumbled upon such in- 
ventions or copied them from man. The most savage tribes 
learn from civilized man to improve their weapons of war- 
fare ; sometimes copy with deadly effect the weapons and 
tactics of their superiors ; but no tribe of Simiae has yet 
learned to make the simple weapons of stone that even the 
rudest savage manufactures for himself. All experience 
teaches us that man is the only animal capable of fashioning 
an implement for a specific purpose; and hence the imple- 
ments of the Stone Age are a primitive demarcation between 
man and other animals. 
This fact has no necessary bearing upon the question of 
man’s derivation as to his bodily frame ; but it does mark 
very distinctly a point of departure in the crude pre-historic 
data of our race. The Stone Age is, after all, an age of 
human capacity, discovery, invention, and also of prophecy, 
and we need not be ashamed of our connexion with it. 
Admitting that the first suggestion of a knife, the first hint 
of fire, came of the accidental striking of two flints together ; 
in the same sense it may be said that the invention of the 
steam-engine was accidental, being suggested by the vapour 
lifting the lid of a tea-kettle; and if we may accept the 
legends about Newton and Galileo, the discovery of gravi- 
tation was due to the accident of a falling apple ; the sug- 
gestion of the heavenly motions, to the accidental swinging 
of a chandelier. In every case there was something in the 
man for the accident to work upon ; the accidental sharpen- 
ing of the stone sharpened his capacity into a purpose for 
adapting inorganic nature to his use ; the first spark struck 
from the flint elicited a spark from his consciousness that 
kindled to a flame of invention. What we see in the Stone 
Age is man asserting his supremacy over nature by taking 
into his own hands her raw materials and shaping these to 
his higher uses. The first attempts are crude enough, and 
the progress to polished and ornamental implements, and to 
works in metal, is toilsome and slow. But the germ of great 
possibilities is there ; the science of architecture is there ; 
the science of engineering is there ; the science of husbandry 
is there; all arts, manufactures, inventions are potentially 
there; for in building the cathedral, the fort, the viaduct, 
in forging Krupp^s cannon and the armour of the Thunderer, 
man is but carrying to higher and yet higher perfection that 
which he began to do when he first formed the rough mate- 
rials about him into tools and weapons for his own use. He 
then began the mastery of nature through his adaptive in- 
telligence and his purposing will. All that he has yet accom- 
