of late years, has not yet reached the point at which we can say after close examination of all the features of a brain that its owner has reached this or that status.  The statement which Huxley made about the ancient human skull from the cave of Engis still holds good of the brain:  ’It might have belonged to a philosopher or might have contained the thoughtless mind of a savage.’  That is only one side of our problem, there is another.  Huxley’s statement refers to the average brain, which is equal to the needs of both the philosopher and the savage.  It does not in any way invalidate the truth that a small brain with a simple pattern of convolutions is a less capable organ than the large brain with a complex pattern.  If then we find a fairly large brain in the Piltdown man, with an arrangement and development of convolutions not very unlike those of a modern man, we shall be justified in drawing the conclusion that, so far as potential mental ability is concerned, he has reached the modern standard.  We must always keep in mind that accomplishments and inventions which seem so simple to us were new and unsolved problems to the pioneers who worked their way up from a simian to a human estate.”

In his concluding remarks upon this important find, Dr. Keith iterates his opinion:  “Although our knowledge of the human brain is limited—­there are large areas to which we can assign no definite function—­we may rest assured that a brain which was shaped in a mould so similar to our own was one which responded to the outside world as ours does.  Piltdown man saw, heard, felt, thought and dreamt much as we still do.  If the eoliths found in the same bed of gravel were his handiwork, then we can also say he had made a great stride towards that state which has culminated in the inventive civilisation of the modern western world."[13]

Professor Herbert Donaldson of the University of Chicago, gives it as his opinion that “In comparing remote times with the present, or in our own age, races which have reached distinction with those which have remained obscure, it is by no means clear that the grade of civilisation attained is associated with a corresponding enlargement in the nervous system, or with an increase in the mental capabilities of the best representatives of those communities."[14]

Now while the ordinary man is unable to pronounce judgment upon expert opinion he is quite capable of understanding the main arguments upon which the foregoing conclusions are based.  We all realise the truth of the old saying “Il n’y a que le premier pas qui coute.”  We all appreciate the tremendous difficulty of taking the first step in the way of discovery and invention.  We know that to be the first to step forward in an utterly new direction or venture; to be the first to work out, without any guidance or previous education, the first principles, however simple, in the doing, or thinking out of anything new, requires a mental audacity and astuteness that