MC gee] THE TREND OF HUMAN PROGRESS 433
— the verb in language, outward movement of limbs, vigorous ex- tension of thought. With the coordination of hand and tongue, perfected by exercise in graphic construction, cheirization is stimu- lated, and limb and brain come into closer cooperation to the further strengthening of both organs ; and, with the stimulation of the sense organs brought into play through the cooperation, impersonal relations are perceived, analyzed, and gradually systematized. As the perception of relation proceeds, the lowly egocentric system becomes ethnocentric and then democentric, while among the more learned a geocentric cosmology arises and gives place slowly to a heliocentric system ; at the same time perspective appears in art, and a refined spirituality in faith. As the perception of relation extends to individuals and their activi- tal products, the concept of property-right crystallizes ; then the relation between individuals and their habitat is perceived, and the concept of territorial right arises to mature in a new order of thinking. In its most general aspect, the thinking of this stage may be defined as coordi native.
4. As manual activity bears fruit in mechanical devices a fourth stage of thinking, in which thought-symbols are multi- plied and perpetuated by mechanical devices, grows definite. Machines replace unaided hands, printing replaces writing, and semi-symbolic conventionism declines in art as mechanically faithful portraiture betrays its weakness ; and in every stage the mode of expression reacts on the way of thinking. As the habit of action grows, and as the relations of things in nature are per- ceived with increasing clearness, inherent forces are controlled with ever-growing success ; the brain prompts and the hand responds, and each full response gives birth to new impulses ; and, as faculty develops through exercise, the passive coordination of perceiving relation rises into the active coordination of regu- lating relation. The modes of thinking in this stage are multifari- ous and complex, and perhaps too near at hand for just definition ; but they may be characterized provisionally as inventive.
AM. ANTH. N. S M X— 28
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