A group becomes fitted to its environment, and, as
long as its surroundings do not change, it does not advance. A
related group, in a different environment, receives a particular
stimulation, and advances. If, moreover, a group remains
unstimulated for ages, it may become so rigid in its type that it
loses the capacity to advance. It is generally believed that the
lowest races of men, and even some of the higher races like the
Australian aboriginals, are in this condition. We may expect this
"unteachability" in a far more stubborn degree in the anthropoid
apes, which have been adapted to an unchanging environment for a
million years.
All that we need further suppose is--and it is one of the
commonest episodes in terrestrial life--that one branch of the
Miocene anthropoids, which were spread over a large part of the
earth, received some stimulus to change which its cousins did not
experience. It is sometimes suggested that social life was the
great advantage which led to the superior development of mind in
man. But such evidence as there is would lead us to suppose that
primitive man was solitary, not social. The anthropoid apes are
not social, but live in families, and are very unprogressive.
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