The viability of cysts under various conditions of excreta disposal offers a simple and important problem for research.

Records should of course be made of each case and should include the name, sex, race, age, occupation and sanitary surroundings of the patient; important facts of clinical history such as dysentery and diarrhea; abnormal features noted on physical examination; and reports on treatment and their effects.

To make a survey as effective as possible it is desirable to properly prepare and preserve for future reference specimens of the parasites found. The best preparations result from the use of Schaudinn's alcoholic-sublimate iron-haemotoxylin method.

The methods of fecal diagnosis employed depend somewhat on the accuracy of the results desired and the ability to obtain and use special apparatus. The Donaldson iodin-eosin-smear method seems to be the quickest and easiest. Concentration methods give a slightly higher percentage of positives and the Schaudinn iron-haemotoxylin smear method just mentioned is very useful in checking up doubtful

cases.

Species of protozoa resembling those that occur in the intestine of man are also present in the lower animals and one who wishes to undertake a protozoan survey will find it helpful to become acquainted with these before undertaking human fecal diagnosis. Parasitic amoebae inhabit the intestine of the cockroach, the frog and the oyster; Giardia is common in the intestine of rats; Trichomonas is abundant in the intestine of the frog; Balantidium occurs in the frog and pig; and Coccidia are very frequently present in rabbit feces.

ON THE CHARACTER OF PRIMITIVE HUMAN

THE

PROGRESS

By Professor R. D. CARMICHAEL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

HE most remarkable thing among natural processes is the unfolding of the intellect and moral nature of man. Since his emergence from the animal state he has possessed powers comparable to those which he now manifests. Neither history nor speculation can reveal a period in his development when he was not making conquests evincing the same high order of intelligence as that which marks even his later career. In the earliest stages the individual man or the small group in a roving tribe had to approach the problems of life and environment without any effective tradition to guide or sympathetic collaboration with others to inspire. This called for a measure of independence unlike anything manifested by individuals today except in the labors of men of dominating genius. Among ruder peoples, in early times and at the present, the remarkable character of the discovery of truth is signalized by the acceptance of the new vision as something supernormal and sacred, akin to the activity of the gods and directly inspired by them. Though we have ceased to refer it to the supernatural, we ourselves understand it but little better.

Confronted with this problem, the man given to creative thinking seems no more able to effect a solution than another. He realizes that he knows not whence his fertile ideas come. Often they seem to spring up in his mind full grown, coming from depths which are not open to the view of consciousness. The thinker can describe some of the conditions which seem to be favorable to the appearance of the idea; but he cannot surely name its origin.

So has it been also in the appearance of the great motive forces which at different times have modified the whole outlook and prospect of human development as a whole. How they were conceived does not appear. That they have effected revolutions in thought and life cannot be denied. Some of the circumstances of their appearance we can see; but we cannot ascertain the prime source from which they sprang.

The first fundamental conquests over material nature, lost in the obscurity of a past from which not even tradition has come down to us, would now afford a sublime spectacle if the eye of history could

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find a means to behold them. Standing alone in the presence of nature, enveloped in darkness except for the meager light afforded by the glow of a mysterious genius arising or expanding in himself, primitive man found a means of mastery unlike anything before witnessed on this planet. He took the step on account of which he could cease to be driven about at the whim of circumstance and could introduce into his actions some measure of control over material forces which in themselves were of such magnitude as to overwhelm all physical power in himself and reduce him to mental impotence and mere animality, unless that power were directed by an understanding of himself and of phenomena which was sound in some at least of its fundamental aspects.

It was a marvelous advance when man first realized that he had a power in his being enabling him to bring under control some of these great forces of nature, in the presence of which he had before cowered with fear; and he was a long time in rising to the conception of harnessing these forces to his uses. His earlier advances seem to have been slow and to have been brought about largely by almost accidental discovery. How could it have been otherwise? What, other than unexpected successes, could first have brought man to a realization of the possibility of mastery? What is it in the nature of mind which makes it possible for it to exercise such control over matter? Certainly there is nothing conceived by primitive man which guided him to the realization of his first important successes. In fact, the matter is so difficult to understand that we have not yet formulated a satisfactory explanation, even though for many millenniums man has constantly exercised an increasing control over his environment.

A novel conquest over material things is in itself a victory of mind; and this constitutes one of the central elements in its meaning for the progress of mankind. Certain material things are in themselves essential to our welfare; we must have food and also protection against the discomforts of climate. But, however these may contribute to our physical needs, they can never inspire in us the emotions which constitute our chiefest delights. We instinctively feel that there is something finer in our nature than anything which may be gratified by merely physical satisfactions. The external world and its elements interest us in proportion as they are able to contribute values to our higher life. Whatever may be the material gains arising from increased control over nature-and these are great-more important values overshadow them or displace them in the field of our interest. Until we can extract from the material progress something to advance the interests of our higher nature we feel that it has not rendered us a service of the more vital kind. If the mind has not somehow made a gain in connection with the physical progress the latter is without essential import for us.

Moreover, the physical and the mental, in the stricter meaning of these terms, do not exhaust the whole of human nature and activity. Besides the material and that which is mental in the sense of being actuated primarily by the reasoning powers, there is the realm of emotion and religious experience-what we may call the spiritual aspect of man's nature. We do not understand his development when we leave this out of account. We may tie it up as closely as we please with his physical experience and material environment, we may think of the spiritual as due to a delusion induced in him by phenomena which he does not understand; but we can not dismiss it from consideration. It is one of the great characteristic elements of his nature and must be reckoned with. In fact, it is not too much to say that no element in his development is properly understood in relation to his progress until its colors are seen in the light of his deeper emotional experiences.

The first fundamental step forward in the control of nature, whether taken by the individual or the collective mind, was the most novel mental event occurring after the appearance of life in the process of evolution on this planet. As such it challenges investigation. It marks the beginning of a mastery by the living over the non-living so that the former is no longer to be driven about by the latter but is to come itself into a state of authority. Neither history nor speculation can yield us a well-established opinion as to the stage at which this novel power was first realized by our ancestors; but an analysis of the elements of progress among primitive peoples, both of ancient and of modern times, will help us toward an understanding of this momentous event in our history.

Was the advance first made by an individual who rose far above his fellows and had a grasp of his surroundings unlike anything possessed by his contemporaries, who therefore projected from his personality into the life of man a force which lifted it to a new plane and gave it a new character? Or was it brought about by slow accretions of power accumulated by a sort of collective mind in some advanced tribe which had found a means of preserving its smaller advances and combining them into a whole possessing elements different from any of its parts? Or was it still more complicated than this and required the interaction of tribe with tribe and the accumulation of power through many generations finally to issue in such flower of novel achievement?

The answers to these questions are important for our understanding of the past and of the basic conditions for further progress. The experiments in the laboratory dealing with mental processes are trivial in comparison with this vast social experiment in coming to understand our environment. The former has the advantage that we know the conditions of the experiment; the latter, that the greatest forces of our experience have operated in all the grandeur of their most far-reaching

powers. It is hard to conceive a price too great to pay for a better understanding of this colossal experiment.

Man's environment, both that which he has found in the external world and that which he himself has created, has served to release the powers inherent in his nature. It is this which gives to his deeper understanding of it the supreme significance which we find there. The external world has no power in itself by which it can project a force from itself into the mind of man and create there a new character. Neither is there any such potency in the environment of created truth and spiritual forces with which man has surrounded himself. The power is not obtained from any external source which we can bring under observation, either direct or indirect. Whatever we may think about the question as to whether the native force of man is an endowment more or less supernatural, made by a benevolent Creator, we find no reason now for believing that his acts are merely the direct acts of a Being of higher order operating through him. Whatever is the ultimate source of the power he now manifests, it resides at present in him and is not exerted by a supernatural activity governing each sepa

rate act.

This leaves to the environment, then, at most the opportunity of releasing this power and setting it into activity. That it has done this in a marvelous manner is apparent from many considerations, but from none more forcibly than from the fact that a novel material conquest has several times in our long history given a new color to our lives and a different character to our outlook.

What stage of development have we reached in this process of unfolding? What proportion of the native endowment of man has already been realized by completed achievement? How nearly has he gained his maximum control over his environment? To what has he reached relative to the fullness of his being, in the understanding of his own nature and powers?

On our answers to these questions will depend the character of our outlook on the future of the race, as to whether it shall be optimistic or pessimistic. If we feel that all, or nearly all, of the fundamental conquests have been made, there will be nothing left to us to give zest and meaning to our lives. No vision of great things to be achieved will stand out as the goal of our labors, inspiring us to efforts realizing the greatest force of our character. As a race we should cease to live in the future or rejoice in the visions of things to come; the activity of life would lose much of its charm for us and we should find our greatest comfort in meditations on the achievements of our ancestors. Nothing could more clearly indicate that the race had come to the period of old age; and we could hardly prevent the feeling that the time of its end was drawing near.

On the other hand, if the evidence should indicate that we are still in a stage of active development and that there is every reason to ex