An animal's tools are parts of its body; they are stings, claws, fangs and so on. Some of the tools of man are also parts of his body; but there are others, not his natural organs, by which its instrumentality is extended—and that, you may say, without signs of coming to an end. It seems as though life had a sort of prophetic instinct in this business; for primitive man was driven to search for these new tools by his lack of organic armament of either the offensive or the defensive kind. He had no protective shield like the armadillo or the crab; and even the scanty covering of hair, which contrasted so ill with the close fur of his cousins, grew scantier still, until it became altogether useless against rain or cold or storm. He had no claws, no tusks, worth considering as weapons of offence; but he had a desirous and adventurous mind, and both by his necessities and his mind he was driven to the making of tools. He owned also one very remarkable natural tool. He had an archaic five-fingered hand inherited from his amphibian ancestors, which had not been specialized into a wing or a shaft ending in a hoof or a paw—a hand plastic, mobile, delicate and sensitive, a very 'instrument of instruments' for a creature opening wide the gate for life. We are apt to think of this beautiful tool of ours as highly specialized. It is not; it was preserved unspecialized from the amphibian stage throughout a long pre-human history, as though life had indeed foreseen just what was coming and knew that its versatility would make it the worthy partner of man's versatile brain. Let us put it that way. (Or let us say that it was a happy accident. As you please; anyhow the fact remains.) The result was that man possessed a natural tool beautifully adaptable for making and using many and various artificial tools. And there was not another creature upon earth that had not either spoilt its hand for those various uses by specializing it for some narrow use, or like the monkeys and the apes, had no brain to match. Man specialized his feet, as the monkeys and the apes did not; he left his multifarious hand alone.