That the large anthropoids are neither gregarious nor co-operative follows from their having no task in which co-operation would be useful, no common purpose: they are able alone to defend themselves and their families; and when families range apart through the woods their food is in better supply. But the ancestor of Man found an object for association and co-operation in the chase. Spencer, indeed, says that a large carnivore, capable of killing its own prey, profits by being solitary; and this may be true where game is scarce: in the Oligocene and Miocene periods game was not scarce. Moreover, when our ape first pursued game, especially big game (not being by ancient adaptation in structure and instinct a carnivore), he may have been, and probably was, incapable of killing enough prey single-handed; and, if so, he will have profited by becoming both social and co-operative as a hunter, like the wolves and dogs—in short, a sort of wolf-ape (Lycopithecus). The pack was a means of increasing the supply of food per unit; and gregariousness increased by natural selection up to the limit set by utility. Hence (as will be shown at length in the next chapter) Man is in character more like a dog or a wolf than he is like any other animal.
(9) Some development of the rudiments of speech may be confidently traced to social co-operation. The gibbon, most social, is also the most vocal of anthropoids; but having no common task in which united action is necessary, he uses his remarkable power of voice (apparently) merely to express his feelings and to keep the troop together. The chimpanzee and the gorilla enjoy probably a close and affectionate family life, but one that makes little or no demand for concerted effort. Hence their vocalisation is very rudimentary. According to R. L. Garner, it is true speech: a chimpanzee (he says) knows the meaning of the sounds he makes, and intends to convey it to some definite individual at whom he looks. But he has at command very few sounds, and those mainly expressive of natural wants.[7] If it be urged that anthropoids do not talk because their lower jaw and tongue have not the special adaptation to speech that is found in Man, it should be considered (a) that if such structure had been useful to them it would have been acquired, as at some time it must have been by Man himself; and (b) that even without any change they might have jabbered well enough to convey a good many discriminated, objective meanings if they had needed to do so: for Man must have begun in that way; he cannot have waited for the development of physical structure before trying to talk. Sufficient intelligence is not wanting to chimpanzees; for in captivity they learn to understand a good deal that is said to them. What they wanted was a sufficient motive for persistently trying to communicate, such that those who made any progress in the art had a living advantage over others. Man had such a motive; because co-operation was necessary to him, not (as we have seen) in industry, but in hunting. In hunting, in planning and directing the hunt, speech is plainly useful; and it is better than gesture, which probably preceded, and generally accompanied it; because, as speech became independent of gesture, it could go on whilst the hands and body were otherwise employed, or where comrades could not see one another—transferring, by a very profitable division of labour, the whole business of expression to organs not otherwise needed. It may not be much more than very simple beginnings of articulate speech that can be traced to early co-operative hunting; but in the beginning lies the whole difficulty. And the situation was particularly favourable to the beginning of language by onomatopœia, imitating the characteristic noises of different animals and of the weapons and actions employed in pursuing and slaying them.
(10) The intelligence and extensive knowledge (compared with anthropoids) that distinguish Man in his lowest known condition are clearly accounted for by his adoption of the hunting life. Already (as we may assume) the most intelligent of living animals, with great knowledge of the forest, he had everything to learn about the world beyond the forest as soon as he ventured into it, and everything to learn about the art of hunting. Depending chiefly upon sight and hearing, he had to learn by observation, and to remember, and to apply all and more than all that the carnivore knows and does instinctively, or learns by following its mother. He must have learned to discriminate all sorts of animals, many of them new in a strange country; their reactions to himself, manner of flight, or of attack, or defence; the spoor of each and its noises; its habits and haunts, where it reposed or went to drink, where to set snares or lie in wait for it. Advancing to the use of weapons, he must have adapted them to his prey; he must have discovered the best materials—wood, or stone, or bone—for making weapons, the best materials for snares, and where to find such things. He must have fixed in his mind this series: game, weapons, the making of them, materials, where found; and must have learned to attend to the items of the series in the necessary order without impatience or confusion: a task far beyond the power of any other animal.
Further, the hunting life supplied a stimulus that had formerly been wanting to our ape. There is some difficulty in comprehending why the anthropoid should be as intelligent as he is; and, similarly, it seemed to Wallace that the savage has intelligence above his needs—“in his large and well-developed brain he possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual requirements.”[8] This illusion results from our not reflecting that the first task of increasing intelligence is to deal appropriately with details in greater and greater number and variety, and that the details of their life, with both savage and anthropoid, are just what we cannot appreciate. Still, the anthropoid seems to have a rather lazy time of it: especially, he seems to have hardly any occasion for following out a purpose needing some time for its accomplishment. This powerful stimulus the hunting life applies to carnivores, above all to dogs and wolves; and in the same way it affected our ape: compelling him to combine many activities for a considerable period of time, along with his fellows, and direct them to one end in the actual hunting, and (later) to prosecute still other activities for a longer period in preparing weapons and snares to make the hunting more effective. Add to these considerations the development of gesture and rudiments of speech, exacting intelligence for their acquisition and increasing intelligence by their attainment, and the superiority of the lowest savage to an anthropoid is sufficiently explained. Severe must have been the selection of those that were capable of such progress, and correspondingly rapid the advance and differentiation of the species.
(11) Using stones as weapons, and finding that broken stones do most damage, and breaking them for that purpose, the progressive hunter necessarily makes some sparks fly; and if these fall amongst dry leaves or grass, he may light a fire. “In making flint implements sparks would be produced; in polishing them it would not fail to be observed that they became hot; and in this way it is easy to see how the two methods of making fire may have originated.”[9] But if the production of fire by friction had been suggested by the polishing of flints, it could hardly have been discovered before the neolithic stage; whereas hearths are known of much earlier date. And it may have happened earlier whilst some one was polishing an arrow or a spear with another piece of wood: a supposition which dispenses with the long inference from a warm flint to a flaming stick. It is a curious fact that to this day in Australia fire is sometimes made by rubbing a spear-thrower upon a shield;[10] but I lay no stress upon this, as if such a practice must be traditionary from the earliest discovery of the method. Either in the chipping of flints or in the polishing of spears it is far easier, and a more probable way, to learn the art of making fire than by observing that dried boughs or bamboos driven together by the wind sometimes catch fire; because those processes include the very actions which the art employs: imitation of nature is not called for. It is true that the natives of Nukufetan in the South Seas explain the discovery of fire by their having seen smoke arise from two crossed branches of a tree shaken in the wind;[11] but this, probably, is merely the speculation of some Polynesian philosopher. Volcanoes, too, have been pointed out as a possible source of fire; and, in the myth, Demeter is said to have lit her torches at the crater of Ætna—an action fit for a goddess. But were such an origin of fire conceivable with savages, it would not show how they came to make it themselves. Fire at first must have excited terror. Until uses were known for fire no one could have ventured to fetch it from a volcano, nor to make it by imitating the friction of boughs in the wind. Fires were accidentally