g near
him, is only a step, and yet by that step the destiny of the _genus
homo_ is settled. The application of natural objects, such as sticks
and stones, to the purposes of daily life, to defence against animals
and men, to hunting, to cutting down fruits, and so on, does not
certainly become a habit all at once. Indeed, a very long time
elapsed before this adaptation became a general and even a conscious
one, and it was only possible when the advantages of such objects had
been perceived through many experiences.

It needed a still longer time before man learned to choose between the
various objects offered to him by nature, and understood how to
distinguish a more pointed and sharper or a harder stone from one of
those less useful for his purpose. Perhaps it required the experience
and disappointments of uncounted ages to bring the consciousness of
purpose even up to this point. But when this was once done, when man
could judge as to the usefulness of the implement which nature offered
him, then a further step of progress, and certainly the most important
in this series of developments, was taken. To natural selection
follows immediately artificial. The need for suitable and useful
implements became more general and greater, and at the same time it
became more difficult to satisfy, since nature is not so generous with
objects of this kind, and (as was soon seen) only very few substances
united all these qualities which hitherto had been recognised as
necessary or useful. But by this time individuals who were already
better provided for had made other discoveries; they had, for example,
in cracking a nut, broken a stone with which they cracked it, and
noticed that the broken pieces had greater sharpness and pointedness
on their edges than those which nature afforded; or they had found the
pieces of some tree split by lightning, and discovered their greater
hardness and capacity for resistance. What was more natural under the
pressure of the necessity, than to produce intentionally those
processes by which the objects afforded by nature became more
usable--to break the stone in pieces or to burn the wood?

And now at last the artificial implement was produced, and all future
progress was but a trifle compared to the development which had gone
before. The wonders of modern technical art are child's-play compared
to the difficulties with which the anthropoid ape succeeded in making
the first stone celt. The most urgen