118 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



A little higher in the animal world a rude ear has 

 developed, first as a very delicate organ for feeling the 

 waves caused by approaching food or enemies ; only 

 later as an organ of hearing. Meanwhile the eye has 

 been developing, to perceive the subtle ether vibra- 

 tions. The eye of the turbellaria distinguishes only 

 light from darkness, that of the annelid is a true visual 

 organ. Now the brain can begin to perceive the shape 

 of objects at a little distance. Touch and smell, hear- 

 ing, sight ; such is sequence of sense perceptions. 

 The sense-organs respond to continually more delicate 

 and subtle impacts, and cover an ever-widening range 

 of more and more distant objects. Up to this point 

 intelligence has hardly included more than sense-per- 

 ceptions. 



But these sense-perceptions have been all the time 

 spurring the mind to begin a higher work. At first it 

 is conscious merely of objects, and its main effort is to 

 gain a clearer and clearer perception of these. 



Now it is led to undertake, so to speak, the work of 

 a sense-organ of a higher grade. It begins to directly 

 see invisible relations just as truly as through the 

 eye it has perceived light. First perhaps it perceives 

 that certain perceptions and experiences, agreeable or 

 disagreeable, occur in a certain sequence. It begins to 

 associate these. It learns thus to recognize the pre- 

 monitory symptoms of nature's favor or disfavor, and 

 thus gains food or avoids dangers. The bee learns to 

 associate accessible nectar with a certain spot on the 

 flower marked by bright dots or lines, " honey-guides," 

 and the chimpanzee that when a hen cackles there is 

 an egg in the nest. But association is only the first 

 lesson ; inference and understanding follow. 



