We keep repeating this process when we learn about anything. The typewriter is at first a mere mass impression, and only gradually and imperfectly do most of us distinguish certain of its parts; only the men who made it are likely to realize its full complexity by noting and assigning names to all the levers, wheels, gears, bearings, controls, and adjustments. John Stuart Mill thought that the chief function of the mind was making inferences. But making distinctions is equally fundamental--seeing that there are really many things where only one was at first apparent. This process of analysis has been man's supreme accomplishment. This is what has made his mind grow. The human mind has then been built up through hundreds of thousands of years by gradual accretions and laborious accumulations. Man started at a cultural zero and had to find out everything for himself; or rather a very small number of peculiarly restless and adventurous spirits did the work. The great mass of humanity has never had anything to do with the increase of intelligence except to act as its medium of transfusion and perpetuation. Creative intelligence is confined to the very few, but the many can thoughtlessly avail themselves of the more obvious achievements of those who are exceptionally highly endowed. Even an ape will fit himself into a civilized environment. A chimpanzee can be taught to relish bicycles, roller skates, and cigarettes which he could never have devised, cannot understand, and could not reproduce. Even so with mankind. Most of us could not have devised, do not understand, and consequently could not reproduce any of the everyday conveniences and luxuries which surround us. Few of us could make an electric light, or write a good novel to read by it, or paint a picture for it to shine upon. Professor Giddings has recently asked the question, Why has there been any history?[14] Why, indeed, considering that the "good" and "respectable" is usually synonymous with the ancient routine, and the old have always been there to repress the young? Such heavy words of approval as "venerable", "sanctified", and "revered" all suggest great age rather than fresh discoveries. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, is our protest against being disturbed, forced to think or to change our habits. So history, _namely change_, has been mainly due to a small number of "seers",--really gropers and monkeyers--whose native curiosity outran that of their fellows and led them to escape here and there from the sanctified blindness of their time.