faculties to its particular place in Nature. In some cases it holds
its own largely through the evolution of some one structure or group
of structures. Thus, the bat is especially distinguished by the
great development of its fingers and of the web between them, and
the elephant by its trunk. The principal distinguishing physical
peculiarity of man is the enormous relative size in him of that upper
part of the vertebrate brain which is termed the cerebrum, and, we have
every reason to believe, constitutes the organ of memory and thought.
[Sidenote: Evolution of Man’s Powers]
Associated in a special way with his great brain are his organs of
speech and manipulation. These three structures, the brain, the vocal
apparatus, and the hand, undoubtedly underwent concurrent evolution
by the constant survival, during a period of intense competition, of
those individuals who were naturally the best capable of receiving
and storing experience, of using it for the intelligent manipulation
of objects, and of communicating it to their fellows and descendants
through the medium of speech. Even the highest of the lower animals are
able to learn from one another only by example or through such very
elementary verbal signs as calls, growls, or cries of alarm, which
express no more than simple emotions.
Their traditional knowledge, therefore, is as nothing compared with
that of man, who by means of articulated speech communicates not only
information concerning sense impressions and emotions, but complex
items of knowledge and processes of thought which have been garnered,
elaborated, and systematised during tens of thousands of years by
millions of predecessors. Without speech, or some such method of
communicating abstruse information, his great brain would be useless.
But knowledge and powers of thought are of no avail unless they can be
translated into action; and for this the hands are necessary. To set
free the fore limbs, which had hitherto been organs of locomotion, for
their new function of manipulation, man became a biped, and assumed
the erect posture--by no conscious effort, however, but solely by the
survival of the fittest in each generation.
[Sidenote: Man Paves His Way to Greatness]
Savage man, then, differs from the lower animals in that he has a
larger brain, a more capacious memory, and greater powers of utilising
and communicating its contents. Modern man differs from ancient man
because he is the heir of longer experience. Civilised man differs from
the savage chiefly in that he has invented and more or less perfected
certain artificial aids to speech, written symbols by means of which
he is able to store in an available form knowledge immensely more
abstruse and voluminous than would otherwise be possible. His books are
artificial memories and vehicles of communication of unlimited capacity
and unerring accuracy. Moreover, by means of these symbols he is able,
as in the mathematics, to perform feats of thinking quite beyond the
powers of his unaided mind; just as by means of machinery and other
mechanical contrivances he is able to perform physical feats beyond the
unaided powers of his body.
To memory, then, is due the advance of the savage beyond the lower
animal; to tradition, the child of memory, the advance of modern
man beyond ancient man; to tradition stored in books the advance of
civilised men beyond the savage. To written symbols are due also man’s
vast powers for future advance. The brute, the mammoth, the mastodon,
the whale, the elephant, and the tiger, became ever more and more
helpless in the presence of a knowledge and an ingenuity that gathered
with the rolling years, and, though accumulated for ages, were yet
relatively new things in this enormously old world.
Low animals, in proportion as they lack memory, move in a narrow,
instinctive groove. Their mental traits are all inherited, and
therefore each individual follows exactly in the footsteps of its
predecessor. Since they cannot learn, they cannot adapt themselves to
circumstances. Removed from the ancestral environment they perish. Cast
in a rigid, inexpansive mould, every individual resembles every other
of the same species, as much mentally as physically.
[Sidenote: Man can Revert to Savagery]
It is different with man. He is preeminently the educable, the
reflective, the adaptive animal. Since the experiences of no two men
are quite similar, they differ in knowledge, ideas, and aspirations,
and, therefore, none are very closely alike mentally. The child does
not follow exactly in the footsteps of the parent. So great is human
adaptability that, though the mind of the savage differs immensely in
all except instinct and power of learning from that of the civilised
man, yet, were the child of the latter trained from birth by the
former, he could not be other than a savage.
On the other hand, utter savages--for example, the Maories of New
Zealand--have passed in a single generation from barbarism to
civilisation. The average individual amongst us may be trained to fill
the rôle of a beggar or a king, a scientist or a monk, a thief or a
legislator. He is able to dwell in the Tropics or in the Arctic, in the
town or in the wild. Memory, knowledge, intelligence, adaptability, are
all links in a single chain of efficiency.
[Sidenote: Dawn of Human Life]
Memory is of two sorts, conscious and unconscious. The conscious memory
contains experiences which can be recollected, such as the words of a
language or the sights we have seen. The unconscious memory contains
impressions which cannot be recalled to mind, but which are none the
less important. Thus, we learn to use our limbs, a process which
involves a precise but quite unconscious adjustment of the actions of
numerous nerves and muscles, the very names and existences of which
are known only to the anatomist. So, also, in youth we unconsciously
imitate our fellows, adopting in great measure their mental tones and
attitudes without knowing how or when we were influenced. Much, too,
that was once capable of being recalled is added to that hidden store,
and, though apparently lost, remains potent for good or evil. Our
minds are like floating icebergs, of which the visible part is but a
fraction of the whole, and are moved by deep currents in a seemingly
unaccountable way. At birth the mind of a child, unlike that of a
beetle, is practically blank. Sights and sounds and the other feelings
convey no meanings to it. But soon the messages sent by the sensation
are understood. In a few weeks the child evolves order out of chaos,
and comprehends to a wonderful degree the world around it. It learns to
move its muscles in a purposeful way, and in a year or two is able to
walk and speak a language, and do a vast deal more besides. In these
early years, the period of man’s greatest mental activity, are made
his most valuable and indispensable acquirements. But as he becomes
more and more completely equipped for the battle of life, his powers
of adding to the store slowly decline. In adult life the gains are
balanced by the losses. In old age the losses exceed the gains. Compare
the perfection with which the young acquire the manners of society,
and every accent, inflection, and intonation of a language, with the
imperfections displayed when learning is undertaken later.
[Sidenote: Habits are Imitation Instincts]
We learn to do new things, acquire new knowledge, and think new
thoughts with toil. But practice brings facility. In the end we perform
with ease that which was acquired with difficulty. We cannot, however,
unlearn as we learnt, by an act of will. The facility lingers, and,
as a consequence, our actions and thoughts, our mental attitudes, our
whole outlook on life becomes more or less automatic and stereotyped.
In other words, our acquirements come at last to resemble instincts,
and are often so misnamed, as when a boy who has learned to dodge is
said to avoid a blow instinctively. A being from another planet who
for the first time saw a man walking or cycling could not distinguish
the nature of these acquirements from such instinctive movements as
the running or flying of an insect. The patriotism of a Spartan or a
Japanese differs from that of a bee only in its mode of origin. In
brief, the low animal is a creature of instincts, the man is a creature
of habits, which are nothing other than imitation instincts.
[Sidenote: Mankind’s Substitutes for Instinct]
A principal function, then, of our faculty of making mental
acquirements, of our conscious and unconscious memories, is to supply
us with those automatic ways of thinking and acting which are our
substitutes for instincts. Our conscious memories supply us with our
stereotyped mental attitudes--desires, beliefs, aspirations, habitual
way of thinking, and so forth. Our unconscious memories supply our
stereotyped ways of acting--the automatic ways of acting we have just
considered. It is a principal business of our lives to acquire them;
but, though a great advantage is thus gained, one almost as great is
lost. We act and think more quickly in familiar situations, but in
proportion as we grow older we lose our splendid human capacity for
learning. Beyond the verge of our imitation instincts spreads a domain,
very wide in the infant, but narrowing as we pass towards old age,
which is the real realm of the active intellect. Here, where thoughts
and actions are not yet stereotyped, memory gathers fresh harvests,
imagination plays, and reason ponders. Here man is a rational being in
the strict sense of the word.
[Sidenote: Mind and Memory]
A little thought renders it evident that a feeble-minded person, an
idiot, or an imbecile, is always one with a defective memory. He is
unable to profit like the normal individual from experience. The truth
that the higher faculties are more often absent in the feeble-minded
than the lower is due entirely to the fact that they can be acquired
only by people whose receptive powers are well developed. In effect
and in fact the feeble-minded person is an instance of reversion to a
prehuman mental state. Judged by the human standard, every monkey is
an idiot. But the reversion is not complete, for, though the imbecile
loses some part of his power of profiting by experience, he regains no
part of the lost power of being guided by instinct. Therefore he is
correspondingly helpless as compared with a lower animal.
Owing to the constitution of the human mind, some decay of the faculty
of profiting by experience accompanies advancing age. But it need
seldom be so great as it usually is, and never so great as it often
is. Certain mental attitudes, certain systems of education, certain
environments, leave the mind of the man almost as open as that of a
little child; others inflict on it premature senility. An Aristotle or
a Darwin learns to the last year of his long life; a Mohammedan or a
Tibetan ecclesiastic is old before he has ceased to be young. Convinced
that pestilence is due directly to the wrath of God, he scorns the
notion that sanitation can be right or useful; believing that the earth
is flat, no evidence will convince him that it is round; holding his
sacred religion with a steadfast faith, he will murder the heretic
rather than think out his propositions.
[Sidenote: How the Minds of Men Differ]
But habits of stupidity are not confined to particular regions of
thought. Becoming almost as incapable of mental change as a beetle,
a man may undergo an arrest of mental development which differs from
that of the idiot only because it occurs later in life, is less
complete, and is acquired, not innate. In his ordinary surroundings he
appears a normal person; but placed among people of more open mind,
his brute-like inability to learn suggests sharply the resemblance
to the feeble-minded child. Let us sum up. Man has conquered the
earth because he is pre-eminently the educable, the adaptive animal.
His educability--indeed, his whole thinking capacity--depends
on his memory. He has few instincts, a fact which increases his
mental ductility; but one of the most important of his instincts is
imitativeness, which impels him to copy not only such obvious things as
the speech of his predecessors, but their mental attitudes as well. In
this way not only the actual knowledge and beliefs but also the habits
of thought of one generation are handed on to the next. Apart from a
few instincts which are more active in the child than in the adult, and
two or three others whose appearance is deferred till later life, the
whole mental difference between the child and the adult lies in the
fact that the former has a great memory in the sense that it is very
capable of storing experience, whereas the latter has a great memory
in the sense that it has already stored much experience. As parent to
child, so one racial generation hands on its acquirements to the next,
but with greater certainty; for the parent is not the only influence
in the life of the child, who imitates many other people, sometimes
more closely than the parent; whereas, since few individuals travel
during youth, the young are seldom influenced by others than by members
of their own race. Except in times of great change, therefore, racial
generations resemble one another even more closely than parents and
children.
Like individuals, races differ in their mental characteristics. The
English have one set of characters, the Japanese another, and the
Russians a third. The problem of the extent to which these characters
are inborn or acquired is very important to the student of history.
Accordingly as we believe they are the one or the other we are driven
to accept one or other of two very different readings of the past.
[Sidenote: Influences in a Child’s Life]
Are races, then, brave or cowardly, energetic or slothful, enlightened
or savage, and so forth, by nature or by training? Are the qualities
that have enabled some races to flourish, while others are decadent,
transmitted as instincts or handed on, as knowledge is? The reader
has now materials of a kind not usually found in historical works on
which to found a judgment. He must bear in mind that, while an American
infant reared by cannibals would retain the bodily characteristics
of his race mentally, he could not be other than a savage. He must
remember also that some races have altered their mental characteristics
very rapidly. Thus, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
immediately after the long Dark Ages, the British and several other
European races suddenly became intellectually active and socially
progressive. The Japanese supply a more modern, the Greeks and Romans
more ancient, instances. The latter quite as suddenly sank into abysmal
degradation. Innate mental characters, such as the instincts, usually
change so slowly that not merely historical but geological time elapses
before the alteration is perceptible. Again, the reader must note that,
while the _opinion_ that racial traits are inborn is nearly universal,
most men _act_ as if they knew them to be acquired; for nearly all men
are careful in training their children, especially with respect to
those traits that contribute to the formation of character.
[Sidenote: Great Facts to Remember]
Doubtless, races of men differ innately in mind as they do in body, but
these differences can occur only within narrow limits. The instincts
of all races are, of course, very similar, for all the instincts
are essential to the preservation of life. But races may differ in
strength of instinct, and more especially in powers of memory. Thus
it is possible, or probable, that the English, for example, are more
capable of profiting by experience than Australian blacks. Certainly,
their brains are larger. On the other hand, the brain grows under the
stimulus of use, and therefore the larger size of the English brain may
be due to more arduous labour.
[Sidenote: The Real Value of History]
Lastly, the reader must ask himself the question: What mental effects
have centuries of freedom or slavery, or of civilisation, or of
barbarism, on races? Do they produce innate changes, or do they merely
render certain acquirements so nearly universal that their perpetuation
by imitation is insured? If he supposes that the changes are innate,
he must ask himself the additional question whether they arose through
the transmission of parental acquirements to offspring, or through the
actual and constant destruction in certain environments of certain
definite types of individuals who were thus prevented from leaving
offspring and so perpetuating their like. The former hypothesis is now
generally repudiated by science. The latter may be true, but as yet
has not been supported by evidence; or at any rate is supported only
by such evidence as that which Mill and Buckle denounced. In either
case, though history may furnish him with intellectual occupation,
it will supply few lessons of practical value. If, on the other
hand, he has perceived the greatness of the part played in the human
mind by acquirement, if he has noted that man is man, a thinking and
rational being, the conqueror of the earth, only because he is the
most impressionable and therefore the most adaptable of living types,
the reader will learn from the racial see-saw of the past what kinds
of mental training have conduced to success and happiness and what to
ruin, and so perhaps he may find himself in a position to help the
fortunes of his people and his children. The real value of history,
as in the last analysis of all experience, lies in its educational
applications.
G. ARCHDALL REID
[Illustration: PREHISTORIC MEN ATTACKING THE GREAT CAVE BEARS]
[Illustration: THE RISE OF MAN AND THE EVE OF HISTORY]
THE WORLD BEFORE HISTORY
By Professor Johannes Ranke
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF DRIFT MAN
[Sidenote: Nature’s Great Book of History]
The history of the world is the history of the human mind. The oldest
documents affording us knowledge of it lie buried in those most mighty
and comprehensive historical archives, the geological strata of our
planet. Natural philosophy has learned to read these stained, crumpled,
and much-torn pages that record the habitation of the earth by living
beings; but only a few sections of this book of the universe have yet
been perused, and these appear but fragmentary in comparison with the
whole task. The passages that relate to the human race are small in
number and often even ambiguous, and it is only the last pages that can
give an account of it.
The oldest undisputed traces of the presence of man on the earth that
have hitherto been discovered are met with in the strata of the Drift
Epoch, and it is only during the last generation that the existence of
“Drift Man” has been palæontologically proved beyond dispute. The late
Sir J. Prestwick believed, however--and his results have been confirmed
by later discoveries--in the existence of evidence of the presence of
man in Western Europe before the present river system of our land was
established, long before the age of the “Drift” relics. The evidence
consists of rudely shaped pieces of flint, apparently artificially
chipped along one or more edges. These supposed implements are termed
“Eoliths.” They were first discovered by Mr. Benjamin Harrison in the
high-level plateau, probably of the Upper Pliocene Age, in Kent, and
their significance is now widely accepted.
Up to the middle of last century research appeared to have established
as a positive fact that man could not be traced back to the older
geological strata; remains of man were said to be found only in the
newest stratum of the earth’s formation--in the alluvial, or “recent”
stratum. The bones of man were accordingly claimed to be sure guides
to the geological formations of the present time, as the bones of the
mammoth and cave-bear were to the strata of the Drift. Where traces of
man were found it was considered as proved by natural science that the
particular stratum in which they occurred was to be allotted to the
most recent system, which we see forming and being transformed under
our eyes at the present day.
[Illustration: A PAGE FROM NATURE’S HISTORY BOOK
It is in the successive layers of the earth’s strata with their
human and animal remains that we read the story of the past.
Embedded in the earth itself we have the existence of “Drift Man”
established. Our illustration is that of a section of the famous
Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, which is rich in prehistoric remains.
]
[Sidenote: The Theory of Natural Catastrophes]
While it was declared that man belonged to the alluvial stratum, it
was at the same time stated, according to the doctrine of Cuvier,
which had the weight of a dogma, that man could not have belonged to
an older geological stratum or era, and therefore not even to the next
older one, the Drift. The beginning and the end of geological eras are
marked by mighty transformations which have caused a local interruption
in the formation of the strata of the earth’s surface. In many cases
we can point to volcanic eruptions as the chief causes, but more
especially to a change in the distribution of land and water. Cuvier
had conceived these changes involving the transformation to have been
violent terrestrial revolutions, the collapse of all existing things,
in which all living beings belonging to the past epoch must have been
annihilated. It appeared impossible that a living thing could have
survived this hypothetical battle of the elements, and passed from an
older epoch into the next one; and the new epoch was supposed to have
received plants and animals by re-creation. All this had to be applied
to man also; he was supposed to have come into existence only in the
alluvial period. Not without consideration for the Mosaic account of
the Creation, which, like the creation legends of numerous peoples
scattered far and wide over all the continents of the earth, tells of
a great deluge at the beginning of the present age, the Pleistocene
Epoch of the earth’s formation preceding the present period had been
termed the Flood Epoch, or Diluvium. In its stratifications it was
thought that the effects of great deluges could largely be recognised;
but the human eye could not have beheld these, for, according to the
catastrophe theory, it appeared out of the question that man could have
been “witness of the Flood.”
[Sidenote: What Actually Happened]
Here modern research in the primeval history or palæontology of mankind
begins, starting from the complete transformation of the doctrine of
the geological epochs brought about by Lyell and his school. Proofs
of terrestrial revolutions, as local phenomena and epoch marks, are
doubtless to be found, imposing enough to make the views of the older
school appear intelligible; but, generally speaking, a complete
interruption of the existing conditions did not take place between the
periods. Everything tends to prove that even in the earlier eras the
transformation of the earth’s surface went on in practically the same
way as we see it going on before our eyes to-day in a degree that is
slight only to appearance. The effects of volcanic action; the rising
and sinking of continents and islands, and the alteration in the
distribution of sea and land caused thereby; the inroads of the sea
and its work in the destruction of coasts; the formation of deltas and
the overflowing of rivers; the action of glaciers and torrents in the
mountains, and so forth, are constantly working, more or less, at the
transformation of the earth’s surface.
[Sidenote: Nature’s Unbroken Chain]