Chap. III. SUMMARY. 105 



yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool 

 was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would 

 admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical 

 reasouing, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect 

 on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, 

 however, would probably declare that they could and 

 did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of 

 their partners in marriage. They would admit, that 

 though they could make other apes understand by cries 

 some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion 

 of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had 

 never crossed their minds. They might insist that they 

 were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in 

 many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take 

 charge of their orphans ; but they would be forced to 

 acknowledge that disinterested love for all living crea- 

 tures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite be- 

 yond their comprehension. 



Nevertheless the difference in mind between man 

 and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one 

 of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the 

 senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, 

 such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, 

 reason, &c, of which man boasts, may be found in an 

 incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed con- 

 dition, in the lower animals. They are also capable of 

 some inherited improvement, as we see in the domestic 

 dog compared with the wolf or jackal. If it be main- 

 tained that certain powers, such as self-consciousness, 

 abstraction, &c, are peculiar to man, it may well be 

 that these are the incidental results of other highly- 

 advanced intellectual faculties; and these again are 

 mainly the result of the continued use of a highly 

 developed language. At what age does the new-born 

 infant possess the power of abstraction, or become self- 



