it would be if we had found
clasp-knives and carpenters adzes." [66] Perhaps Professor Boyd-Dawkins,
who credits the "dryopithecus" with these productions, is a more
consistent evolutionist; but at present Mr. Laing is defending a thesis
as to _man's_ antiquity. Yet he has just said that these flint
instruments are "_only one step_ in advance of the rude, natural stone
which an _intelligent_ orang or chimpanzee might pick up to crack a
cocoa-nut with." Truly a very significant step, though it be only one.
How hard this is to reconcile with what Mr. Laing ascribes to dogs and
ants elsewhere, or with what he says on page 173, "These higher apes
remain creatures of very considerable intelligence.... There is a
chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens ... which can do _all but_
speak" [either it speaks, or it does not. It is precisely a case of the
"only one step" quoted above. Here if anywhere a "miss is as good as a
mile"], "which understands almost every word the keeper says to it, and
when told to sing will purse out its lips and try to utter connected
notes." [How on earth do we know what it is trying to do?] "In their
native state they (apes) form societies and obey a chief." [The old
fallacy of metaphors adverted to in relation to ants and dogs.] Yet "no
animal has ever learned to speak," "no chimpanzee or gorilla has ever
been known to fashion any implement." [67] Their nearest approach to
invention is in the building of huts or nests, in which they "are very
inferior to most species of birds, to say nothing of insects." On the
other hand, "as regards tool-making, no human race is known which has
not shown some faculty in this direction." [68] "The difference is a very
fundamental one," and "may be summed up in the words 'arrested
development.'" Words, indeed! but what do they mean? They mean that
these animals have not developed the faculties of speech and
tool-making, which would have been most useful to them in the struggle
for existence, the reason being _that they did not_; and this reason is
exalted into a cause or law of "arrested development." Who or what
arrested it? The advantage of the term is that it implies that they were
on the point of developing, that they could "all but speak," were
"trying to utter connected notes," were "but one step" behind flint
axes, when some cosmic power said, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no
further."

If the dog had organs of speech or an instrument like the hand by which