dreamt much as we
still do. If the eoliths found in the same bed of gravel were his
handiwork, then we can also say he had made a great stride towards that
state which has culminated in the inventive civilisation of the modern
western world."[13]

Professor Herbert Donaldson of the University of Chicago, gives it as
his opinion that "In comparing remote times with the present, or in our
own age, races which have reached distinction with those which have
remained obscure, it is by no means clear that the grade of civilisation
attained is associated with a corresponding enlargement in the nervous
system, or with an increase in the mental capabilities of the best
representatives of those communities."[14]

Now while the ordinary man is unable to pronounce judgment upon expert
opinion he is quite capable of understanding the main arguments upon
which the foregoing conclusions are based. We all realise the truth of
the old saying "Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute." We all
appreciate the tremendous difficulty of taking the first step in the way
of discovery and invention. We know that to be the first to step forward
in an utterly new direction or venture; to be the first to work out,
without any guidance or previous education, the first principles,
however simple, in the doing, or thinking out of anything new, requires
a mental audacity and astuteness that predicate a brain capacity as
great as that which enables modern man to apply and develop the
accumulated knowledge available in the text-books of to-day. Dr. Alfred
Russell Wallace held strongly to this opinion. He could see no proof of
continuously increasing intellectual power; he thought that where the
greatest advance in intellect is supposed to have been made this might
be wholly due to the cumulative effect of successive acquisitions of
knowledge handed down from age to age by written or printed books; that
Euclid and Archimedes were probably the equals of any of our greatest
mathematicians of to-day; and that we are entitled to believe that the
higher intellectual and moral nature of man has been approximately
stationary during the whole period of human history. This great and
intrepid thinker states his view with characteristic incisiveness thus:
"Many writers thoughtlessly speak of the hereditary effects of strength
or skill due to any mechanical work or special art being continued
generation after generation in the same family, as amongst the castes of
Ind