s labors.

For if we compare primitive man with the anthropoid apes, it is to find
one striking and important difference between them. The anthropoids are
at a level in position with their animal neighbors. Man is lord and
master of the animal kingdom, the dominant being in the world of life.
He has no rival in this lordship, but stands alone in his relation to
the animal kingdom. He is feared and avoided by the largest and
strongest beasts of field and forest. He does not fight defensively, but
offensively, and whatever his relation to his fellow-man, he admits no
equal in the world of life below him. He is the only animal that has
made a struggle for lordship. The gorilla is said to attack the lion and
drive it from its haunts. If it does so, it is not with any desire for
mastery, but simply to rid itself of a dangerous neighbor. The battle
for dominion has been confined to man, and in the winning of it no small
degree of mental development must have taken place.

The supremacy of man was not gained without a struggle, and that a
severe and protracted one. The animal kingdom did not yield readily to
man's lordship, and the war must have been long and bitter, settled as
the relations now seem. Rest has succeeded victory. The lower animals
are now submissive to man, or retire before him in dread of his strength
and resources, and the strain upon his powers has ceased. So far as
this phase of evolution is concerned the influences aiding the mental
development of man have lost their strength. The warfare is over, and
man reigns supreme over the kingdom of life.

Of all animals the man-ape was the best adapted for such a struggle. The
other anthropoid apes, while favored by the formation of their hands,
lacked that freedom of the arms to which man mainly owes his success. No
other animal has ever appeared with arms freed from duty in locomotion
and at the same time endued with the power of grasping, and these are
the features of organization to which the evolution of the human
intellect was wholly due in its first stages. The man-ape was not able
to contend successfully with the larger animals by aid of its natural
weapons. Its diminutive size, its lack of tearing claws, and its lesser
powers of speed, left it at a disadvantage, and had it attempted to
conquer by the aid of its strength and the seizing and rending powers of
teeth and nails, its victory over the larger animals would never have
been won. Even with the aid