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■ •• V ' - , • ' ' I . f '. \ . .. •.■'V./..V /;■ , 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
tion, of poise and balance, in a word, of judgment and wisdom, with all 
that that means for theoretical science and practical knowledge and 
skill. 
And here the mention of skill brings me to the question of tools. It 
used to be held that a distinctive human capacity was tool-using, much 
as it was supposed that language was confined to man; but, as Darwin 
and many after him have shown, animals and especially monkeys use 
tools; it is the making of tools that only men compass.. Animals use 
tools only if they happen by lucky chance to be at hand, while men look 
for them, and if they can not find them, make tools. And, as scarcely 
needs saying, it would no t be easy to exaggerate the roll that tool-mak- 
ing, and, in general, implement-making, has played in assuring to man 
his place of supremacy in the world. For these resources to man’s hand, 
gradually and painfully wrought out, include all weapons of offense 
and defence, from the first rough club and arrowhead to the modern 
rifle and the man-of-war with its armor and its' 100-ton guns; all do- 
mestic devices, from stones, simple pottery and friction fire to the latest 
inventions of The modern kitchen; all clothes and shelters, from tree- 
bark and rock shelters to the fashions of Paris and New York and the 
dwellings of Belgravia and Fifth Avenue; all means of locomotion, from 
the ass and the ox to railways and steamboats; and all tools, from the 
first bone needle and stone knife to the delicate, smooth-running and 
strong steam and electrical machinery of our workshops. And remem- 
ber that each and every one of these wonderful devices, essential to civ- 
ilization, had its origin in the power of search, so determined that fail- 
ure repeated again and again could not discourage it, for means that 
would accomplish desired ends, and that by adjustments growing in 
nicety could accomplish them with ever increasing accuracy and ease, 
till much of the world has been subjected to the dominant will of man. 
And finally religion distinguishes man from other animals. Dread 
and fear animals experience, but the sense of the presence all about of 
supernatural powers that rule men and the world and mould them to 
their purposes, the dispensers alike of the most essential benefits and 
the direst injuries, is an experience peculiar to man alone. Beginning 
with the vaguely conceived prototypes of Thor and Odin, of Zeus and 
Apollo, and of the grosser gods of savage tribes, and tracing the ad- 
vancing evolution to the relatively intellectual and moral supreme deities 
of Buddhism, Mohammedanism and Christianity, wherever we look, 
whether backward in time or far abroad in space, we find man believing 
to .his weal or woe in spiritual powers, conceived to explain the mysteries 
of creation and sustentation, and of reward and retribution. Nor is the 
reason for this exclusive capacity of man now far to find. No animal 
has any experience of agency, and therefore no idea of agency that he 
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