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call a house, and most familiarly connect with the notion of architecture.
It is not, however, his cultivation of the arts which have been named, or of others, that makes man peculiar as an industrial animal. It is the mode in which he practises them. The first step he takes towards remedying his nakedness and helplessness, is in a direction where no other creature has led the way, and none has followed his example. He lays hold of that most powerful of all weapons of peace or war, Fire, from which every other animal, unless when fortified by his presence, flees in terror; and with it alone not only clothes himself, but lays the foundation of a hundred arts. Man may be defined as the only animal that can strike a light; the solitary creature that knows how to kindle a fire. This is a very fragmentary definition of the "Paragon of Animals," but it is enough to make him the conqueror of them all. The most degraded savage has discovered how to rub two sticks together, or whirl the point of one in a socket in the other, till the wood is kindled. It is a thoroughly technical process, not easily learned or practised. Judgment, dexterity, and patience, are needed for its performance; and even the most sagacious of monkeys, though he has a pair of hands more than a man, has never attempted this primitive pyrotechnic art.
Once provided with his kindled brand, the savage technologist soon proves what a sceptre of power he holds in his hands. He tills with it; by a single touch burning up the withered grass of a past season, and scattering its ashes to fertilize the plains, which will quickly be green again. It serves him as an axe to fell the tallest trees with, and hollows out for him the canoe in which he adventures upon strange seas. It is an all-sufficient defence against the fiercest wild beasts; and it reduces for him the iron ore of the rocks, and forges it into a weapon of war. I might say, indeed, with truth, that his kindled brand makes the ten-fingered savage, without further help, a farmer, a baker, a cook, a carpenter, a smith, a potter, a brick-maker, a lime-burner and builder; and, besides much else, a soldier and a sailor. Well did the wise ancients declare that men obtained fire from heaven, but not well that they stole it. It was a gift to them, in compensation for their having no share in the dowry granted to the lower animals, and it has proved an ample compensation.
You may think this sketch of the savage's obligation to fire
