4 TlMEHRI. 
of mechanical implements, that is of its arts. It is very 
reasonable to assume that in a very early stage of devel- 
opment men were provided with none but such unarti- 
ficial implements as simple sticks and stones. The most 
remarkable lefture it was ever my privilege to hear was 
devoted to an attempt to indicate a few of the infinite 
number of stages, along a few of the many diverging 
lines of development, by which the simple stick, the im- 
plement of the primitive man, has been transformed into 
countless implements of modern everyday use. We 
were shown how the stick was added to and improved 
until it became a bow ; how this bow, altering along one 
line of development, became a cross-bow, which in turn 
was developed into a gun, that into a cannon, and that, 
we might now add, into the modern automatic maxim 
gun ; how the bow, altering along another line of develop- 
ment, became a single-stringed musical instrument, 
how that became a lyre, that a harp, that a spinet, 
that a piano, and that, we might now add, a voca- 
lion. A very similar leclure might be given though 
it would naturally be harder to work it out, on 
the development of many highly complex thoughts, 
familiar to us now, from the very simple germinal idea 
of primitive man. All that I can pretend to do is to 
point out, without attempting to indicate the time which 
it took in its development, the particular germinal 
thought of primitive man which is represented in modern 
thought by our common knowledge of, and even by our 
scientific classification of, the phenomena of the natural 
world surrounding us. As in the development of the 
mechanical apparatus of the human race is the stick of 
the primitive man to our machine guns, so in the devel- 
