natural objects enter into associated behavior. Only a small
number of natural resources are utilized and they are not worked
for what they are worth. The advance of civilization means that
a larger number of natural forces and objects have been
transformed into instrumentalities of action, into means for
securing ends. We start not so much with superior capacities as
with superior stimuli for evocation and direction of our
capacities. The savage deals largely with crude stimuli; we have
weighted stimuli. Prior human efforts have made over natural
conditions. As they originally existed they were indifferent to
human endeavors. Every domesticated plant and animal, every
tool, every utensil, every appliance, every manufactured article,
every esthetic decoration, every work of art means a
transformation of conditions once hostile or indifferent to
characteristic human activities into friendly and favoring
conditions. Because the activities of children today are
controlled by these selected and charged stimuli, children are
able to traverse in a short lifetime what the race has needed
slow, tortured ages to attain. The dice have been loaded by all
the successes which have preceded.

Stimuli conducive to economical and effective response, such as
our system of roads and means of transportation, our ready
command of heat, light, and electricity, our ready-made machines
and apparatus for every purpose, do not, by themselves or in
their aggregate, constitute a civilization. But the uses to
which they are put are civilization, and without the things the
uses would be impossible. Time otherwise necessarily devoted to
wresting a livelihood from a grudging environment and securing a
precarious protection against its inclemencies is freed. A body