THE SCIENTIFIC LAW 103 



dog : some way off the man perceives the rabbits in the 

 field skirting the copse, quite in the distance a flock of 

 sheep on the high-road, and behind them the shepherd with 

 his colhe — all these remain unobserved by the dog, or if 

 observed, unreasoned on. Clearly the sense-impressions 

 corresponding to the distant landscape are far less com- 

 plex and intense in the dog than in the man. . The 

 perceptive faculty in the dog selects certain sense-impres- 

 sions, and these form for it reality ; that of the man 

 selects another and probably far more complex range, 

 which form in turn reality for him. Both may be again 

 compared to automatic sweetmeat-boxes, which only work 

 on the insertion of coins of definite and different value. 

 Objective reality does not consist of the same sense- 

 impressions for man and dog. 



If we pass downwards from man to the lowest forms 

 of life, we shall find the range of sensations perceived 

 becoming less and less complex till they cease altogether 

 as perceptions with the cessation of consciousness. Hence, 

 if we accept the theory of the evolution of man from the 

 lowliest types of life, we see a wild field of variation in 

 the matter of the perceptive faculty open to him. Man 

 will evolve a power of perceiving those sensations, the 

 perception of which will on the whole help him in the 

 struggle for existence.^ 



Now, step by step with the perceptive faculty the 

 reflective or reasoning faculty is developed ; the power 

 of sifting and arranging perceptions, the power of rapidly 

 passing from sense-impression to fitting exertion (p. 46), 

 is seen to be a factor of paramount importance to man in 

 the battle of life. Without our being able at present to 

 clearly understand the relation between the perceptive 

 and reflective faculties in man, the nature of their co- 

 ordination, it is still reasonable to suppose a close relation 

 between the two ; the one largely selects those perceptions 

 which the other is capable of analysing and resuming in 



^ Light and vision, sound and hearing, extension and touch, are known 

 not to be identical in range. See Sir William Thomson's Popular Lcittires 

 and Addresses, vol. i. pp. 278-90. 



