ABSTRACT
A celebrated definition of the genus homo classifies man as “a cooking animal.” It is not a bad definition. Cooking implies the knowledge and use of fire; and not even the most intelligent of monkeys has yet been known to evoke sparks from a stick and a block. I should prefer, however, to define man as “a writing animal;” for writing implies language as its starting-point, and literature as its goal. Given the first barbarian attempt at transmitting intelligence by means of signs scratched on rocks or graven on the bark of trees, it is but a step—a long step, I admit—from the driftman to Shakespeare.
