re to his needs, his career as a tool-making animal being greatly
stimulated by the necessities of his situation.
It is conceivable that the art of agriculture may have been one of the
outcomes of the situation in which man now found himself. The decrease
in the food supply must have put all his powers of invention to the
test, and the probable diminution in number and productiveness of food
plants may have served as an instigation to the cultivation of useful
plants, and the preservation of their products, where possible, for
winter supply. It is not unlikely that in this way and under this
stimulation agriculture began, and that it made its way subsequently
from this locality to more southern regions. In this, however, we cannot
go beyond conjecture.
It seems useless to pursue this topic further, since the absence of
facts forces us to confine ourselves largely to suggestions and
probabilities. We have arrived at two definite hypotheses: first, that
the original stage of man's progress upward from the apes was completed
when he gained dominion over the animal kingdom and attained the
condition of the forest pygmies; second, that an advanced stage was
reached when he achieved the conquest of nature, so far as overcoming
the exceedingly adverse conditions of the Glacial Age was concerned. At
the close of this period of frigid cold man emerged as a higher being
than the forest nomad or the agricultural people of the tropics,
possessed of much superior arts and implements and with largely enhanced
mental powers. The long and bitter struggle for existence through which
he had passed had lifted him to a much higher level in the upward
progress of life.
He was a savage still, and at the close of the struggle he settled down
into a second stage of stagnation. The conflict was at an end, he was
the victor in the fight, he could rest upon his laurels and take life
easy. In addition to his mechanical gains, man had advanced much in
social and political relations, and continued to advance until his
primitive form of organization was perfected. At the end of it all we
find him existing under two conditions, depending upon differences in
the character of the country in which he lived.
In the steppes and deserts of Asia and the deserts of Africa he was a
nomad herdsman, his life being spent in the care of his flocks and
herds, his political organization the patriarchal, his possessions few,
his needs small, his mind at rest,
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