But once more the
adversity has its use, and man, stimulated in his hunt for food,
invigorated by the cold, driven into social life, advances to the
culmination of the Old Stone Age.
We are still very far from civilisation, but the few tens of
thousands of years that separate Magdalenian man from it will be
traversed with relative speed--though, we should always remember,
with a speed far less than the pace at which man is advancing
to-day. A new principle now enters into play: a specifically
human law of evolution is formulated. It has no element of
mysticism, and is merely an expression of the fact that the
previous general agencies of development have created in man an
intelligence of a higher grade than that of any other animal. In
his larger and more plastic brain the impressions received from
the outer world are blended in ideas, and in his articulate
speech he has a unique means of entering the idea-world of his
fellows. The new principle of evolution, which arises from this
superiority, is that man's chief stimulus to advance will now
come from his cultural rather than his physical environment.
Physical surroundings will continue to affect him.
Pages:
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485