MANKIND’S PROGRESS IN HABITS OF DRESS
This series of typical pictures is intended roughly to illustrate the upward progress of man from the almost nude savage to the neatly and conveniently dressed gentleman of to-day. The Elizabethan dandy is, of course, as fully dressed as man can be, and is introduced only as indicating the great change of sartorial ideas in modern times.
The discovery of how to produce fire by artificial means, independently effected in all parts of the world—as was also the discovery of the art of navigation—was of the greatest importance for the entire future. Fire was first a result of chance.
When lightning set a portion of the forest in flames, and caused a multitude of animals or fruits to be roasted, men put it to practical use. They recognised the advantage that fire gave them and sought to preserve it. The retention of the fire which had been sent down from heaven became one of the most weighty and significant of functions. Man learned how to keep wood-fibres smouldering, and how to blow them into flame at will; he also learned that it was possible to convey fire, or the potentiality of fire, along with him in his wanderings. But even then success was uncertain until a lucky chance led him to discover how to produce flames at will, by rubbing two sticks together or by twirling one against the other. These actions were originally performed for other purposes—to bore holes in a piece of wood, or to rub it into fibres; finally, one or the other was carried out with such vigour that a filament began to burn, and the discovery was made. Sparks from flint must have suggested a second method of kindling a fire; certainly the art of igniting soft filaments of wood by means of a spark—thus enabling the very smallest source of combustion to be used for human purposes—was known to man in the earliest times. The obvious results of the use of fire are means of obtaining warmth and of cooking food.
AN INGENIOUS INDIAN FIRE DRILL
ESQUIMAU MAKING FIRE BY FRICTION
THE GAUCHO’S WAY OF GETTING A LIGHT
LARGER IMAGE
Self-defence had already led to the use of weapons, and, at the same time, the contrivances for hunting and fishing must have become more and more perfect. A very low degree of civilisation is that of races unacquainted with the bow and arrow, and familiar with club or boomerang only—who know how to make use merely of the weight of a substance, or, as in the case of the boomerang, of a peculiar means of imparting motion.