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 coûte." 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 predicate a brain capacity as
great as that which enables modern man to apply and develop the