This is again our infinite advantage. If the protean change of characteristics made possible to us by tool-chest and armory were possible to any other creature we should not hold our easy supremacy. The dying leader of the wolf-pack cannot hand his superior teeth to the next one, or produce sudden wings and lend them to his followers. The distributability of our tools gives us the limitless flux of power which is human. One man makes swords for a thousand, and each sword spreads the sword-power far and wide. The needle, the pen, all individual tools, may be used by many in turn, to the advantage of all. Even more do we see this advantage in anything which may be used by many at once. Here indeed is humanness made manifest. Men, separate men, may swim as well as some animals, or ride a log, perhaps a hollowed one. But man, the human creature, man socialised, make for _themself_ the ship, a swimming body for the social soul, and in that one material product of humanity lies unmeasured share of our real growth and greatness. Only men together can make it, with ages of gradual evolution and relentless elimination of the unfit, with elaborate specialisation and co-ordination of effort; only man together and in similar complex relation can use it. And because of this larger range of usability is its larger value. More persons can use it, and for a longer time; it is a large and lasting piece of the social structure. So of the road, the bridge, the hall,—whatever is open to the largest use by the most people for the longest time, this is of the largest value to society; as statue, picture, music, book. In direct practical result these common products for our common use minimise effort and maximise gain, and in the living miracle of their use they steadily react upon the user and make him something nearer to the power that made them. The shiny-bladed knife in the hand of the eager boy cries to him to cut, to carve, to do a thousand things; and as he uses it, skill, the human skill bred by long ages of knife-using, is born anew in him. Ward has shown this—achievement embodied in object. The pillared temple, visible product of the human soul in purest, proudest aspiration, reacts always on those who come within, lifting their spirits to its plane, to each according to his power of receiving. In our made things lies that much of our humanness, and as we use them we grow by that much more human; in this reactive power lies the desirability of the Thing, and its importance. The power of “mind over matter” is commonly observed, but the effect of matter upon mind, the reaction of the body upon the spirit, is not so clear to us. We see the human spirit laying violent hands on clay and wood and iron, and building for itself a visible, tangible form. We do not see so well this visible form steadily and inexorably reacting upon the imprisoned spirit.