animals below man is _individual_, not _co-operative_ and _cumulative_.
One dog does not seem to learn from another, nor one ape from another,
in spite of the widespread misapprehension in this regard. Many
experiments have been patiently tried in recent years and it seems to
be pretty well established that the monkey learns by _monkeying_, but
that he rarely or never appears to _ape_. He does not learn by imitation,
because he does not imitate. There may be minor exceptions, but the fact
that apes never, in spite of a bodily equipment nearly human, become in
the least degree civilized, would seem to show that the accumulation of
knowledge or dexterity through imitation is impossible for them.

Man has the various sense organs of the apes and their extraordinary
power of manipulation. To these essentials he adds a brain
sufficiently more elaborate than that of the chimpanzee to enable him
to do something that the ape cannot do--namely, "see" things clearly
enough to form associations through imitation.[12]

We can imagine the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his
momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization. Some restless
primeval savage might find himself scraping the bark off a stick with
the edge of a stone or shell and finally cutting into the wood and
bringing the thing to a point. He might then spy an animal and, quite
without reasoning, impulsively make a thrust with the stick and
discover that it pierced the creature. If he could hold these various
elements in the situation, sharpening the stick and using it, he would
have made an invention--a rude spear. A particularly acute bystander
might comprehend and imitate the process. If others did so and the
habit was established in the tribe so that it became traditional and
was transmitted to following generations, the process of civilization
would have begun--also the process of human learning, which is