34 The Descent of Man. Part i e 



attention, association, and even some imagination and reason. 

 If th«\se powers, which differ much in different animals, are 

 capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in 

 more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, 

 and self-consciousness, &c, having been evolved through the 

 development and combination of the simpler ones. It has been 

 urged against the views here maintained, that it is impossible 

 to say at what point in the ascending scale animals become 

 capable of abstraction, &c. ; but who can say at what age this 

 occurs in our young children ? We see at least that such powers 

 are developed in children by imperceptible degrees. 



That animals retain their mental individuality is unquestion- 

 able. When my voice awakened a train of old associations in 

 the mind of the before-mentioned dog, he must have retained 

 his mental individuality, although every atom of his brain had 

 probably undergone change more than once during the interval 

 of five years. This dog might have brought forward the 

 argument lately advanced to crush all evolutionists, and said, 

 " I abide amid all mental moods and all material changes. . . . 

 " The teaching that atoms leave their impressions as legacies to 

 " other atoms falling into the places they have vacated is con- 

 " tradictory of the utterance of consciousness, and is therefore 

 " false ; but it is the teaching necessitated by evolutionism, con- 

 " sequently the hypothesis is a false one." 45 



Language. — This faculty has justly been considered as one of 

 the chief distinctions beiween man and thp lower animals. But 

 man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately remarks, 

 " is not the only animal that can make use of language to express 

 " what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, 

 "what is so expressed by another." 47 In Paraguay the Cebus 

 azarcb when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which 

 excite in other monkeys similar emotions. 4S The movements of 

 the features and gestures of monkeys are understood by us, and 

 they partly understand ours, as P.engger and others declare. It 

 is a more remarkable fact that the dog, since being domesticated, 

 has learnt to bark 49 in at least four or five distinct tones. 

 Although barking is a new art, no doubt the wild parent-species 

 3f the dog expressed their feelings by cries of various kinds. 

 With the domesticated dog we have the bark of eagerness, as in 

 the chase ; that of anger, as well as growling ; the yelp or howl of 

 despair, as when shut up ; the baying at night ; the bark of joy, as 



46 The Re-r. Dr. J. M'Canr, < Anti- 48 Rengger, ibid. s. 45. 

 Darwinism,' 1S69, p. 13. 49 See my ' Variation of Ani- 



47 Quoted in 'Anthropological Re- mals aud Plants under Domestics* 

 view ' 1864. p. 158. tion,' vol, i. p. 27. 



