Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/744

 724 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

fatal to the individuals that make it. They find themselves in an environment to which they are not adapted and therefore hostile to them, and they quickly succumb to adverse influences. Any species that could successfully overstep its faunal barriers would, according to the now well-understood laws of multiplication, soon overspread the globe. That no species has done this proves the general law of faunal limitation. Man alone acquired this power, and this was the result of his superior resourcefulness, due in turn to his inventive faculty. For however feeble the inventive powers of primitive peoples may appear to the civilized man, they were greatly in excess of those of any other species of animal, and it required only a little exercise of reason to neu- tralize the most effective influences exerted by the environment in restricting migration. The ability to cope with the remaining fauna, to evade the attacks of predatory species, and to entrap and ensnare animal enemies, was alone almost sufficient for this. The least success in counteracting injurious climatic conditions, such as the most primitive forms of clothing and shelter insure, further conduced to the same end. The acquisition of an omnivo- rous character, such as belongs to all primitive races, rendered the food-supply certain, even before the introduction of any of the arts by which both the vegetable and animal kingdoms were early made to contribute to man's nourishment and comfort. The invention of the earliest weapons of the chase and the most primitive instruments for tilling the soil disarmed the hostile environment and converted the dangerous forces of nature into means of subsistence for man.

Thus emancipated from the slavery of the environment, this favored species commenced that career of universal expansion which ultimately compassed the entire globe. Although his memory was sufficient to establish the kinship group, this faculty was not sufficient to maintain a connection between the daughter- hordes and the ancestral horde from which they had descended, and a few removes were sufficient to obliterate all traces of rela- tionship. Tradition, which has been aptly called social memory, did not yet exist, and those groups that had wandered farthest from the original center of dispersion were utter strangers to the