ABSTRACT
INCE when has this type of the inventive carnivore existed? Or, what comes to the same thing, since when have there been men? What is man? And how did he come to be man?
The answer is — through the genesis of the hand. Here is a weapon unparalleled in the world of freemoving life. Compare with it the paw, the beak, the horns, teeth, and tail-fins of other creatures. To begin with, the sense of touch is concentrated in it to such a degree that it can almost be called the organ of touch, in the sense that the eye is the organ of vision, and the ear of hearing. It distin guishes not only hot and cold, solid and liquid, hard and soft, but, above all, weight, form, and position of resistances, etc. — in short, things in space. But, over and above this function, the activ ity of living is gathered into it so completely that the whole bearing and allure of the body has — simultaneously — taken shape in accordance with
it. There is nothing in the whole world that can be set beside this member, capable equally of touch and action. To the eye of the beast of prey which regards the world “ theoretically ” is added the hand of man which commands it practically.
