Note 298 — DEMOTIC CHARACTERS (continued 3)

The Development of Form and Function in Implements; an unpublished paper presented before the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the Toronto meeting in 1897. A brief abstract, revised by the author of the paper, was printed in the American Anthropologist, vol. X, 1897, pp. 325-326; and in the absence of full authorial publication, the more strictly germane passages of the abstract are worthy of quotation: “Beginning with the semiarboreal [human] progenitor indicated jointly by projecting forward the lines of biotic development and projecting backward the lines of human development, Mr Cushing undertook to trace hypothetically, yet by constant reference to known facts, (1) the genesis of artificial devices, and (2) the concurrent differentiation of the human brain and body in the directions set forth by Sir William Turner; and he gave special force to his exposition by frequent reference to commonly neglected characteristics, physical and psychic, of young infants. He pointed out that the prototype of man, whether infantile or primitive, is a clumsy ambidexter, the differentiation of hand and brain remaining inchoate; that one of the earliest artificial processes is a sawing movement, in which, however, the object to be severed is moved over the cutting edge or surface, and that the infant or savage at first selects sharp objects (teeth, shells, etc.) as cutting implements, and only after long cultivation learns to make cutting implements of stone; this early stage in development he called prelithic. Passing, then, to the age of stone, he showed that this substance is first in the form of natural pebbles or other pieces for hammering, crushing, bruising, and as a missile. That in time the user learns that the stone is made more effective for severing tissues by fracturing it in such way as to give a sharp edge, the fracture being originally accidental and afterward designed; yet that for a long time it is the hammerstone that is fractured and not the object against which the blows are directed. In this stage of development (called protolithic, after McGee) stone implements come into more or less extended use in connection with implements of shell, tooth, etc.; yet the implements are obtained by choice among natural pieces and by undesigned improvement of these through use. The next stage is that of designed shaping through fracture by blows from a hammerstone, followed by intentional chipping. This may be regarded as the beginning of paleolithic art, and also marks the beginning of dexterity and the activital differentiation of the hands. Incidentally the author brought out the importance of that concept of mysticism which is found of so great potency among infantile and primitive minds, in such manner as to suggest the genesis, and the obscure reasons for the persistence of this phase of intellectuality; for the inchoate imagination is able to expand only in the direction of mystical explanation, so that fertility in primitive invention seems to be dependent on appeal to the mysterious powers of nature. At first the mystery pervades all things, but in time it is largely concentrated in animate things; then animate powers are imputed, e. g., to physical phenomena. So to the infant or race-child fire is a mystical animal or demon which, in prelithic or protolithic times, must have been at first tolerated, then fed with fuel and punished with water and eventually subjugated and tamed, much as the real animals were afterward brought into domestication.”