624 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



Most of US are apt complacently to regard ourselves 

 as representatives of the highest type of life : and to a 

 certain extent this is true. Although it is often exceed- 

 ingly difficult, and in some cases impossible, to decide 

 which is the higher and which is the lower of two 

 forms of life whose type is different. Supposing, for 

 instance, a question should arise as to the relative 

 superiority of the fish and the insect j our thoughts may 

 quite legitimately take the directions recently indicated 

 by an able writer in the ^Quarterly Review,' who 

 says ^ : — ^On the one hand we may ponder over the 

 dreary simplicity of a fish's life, the monotony of its 

 daily swim, the low character and even small amount 

 of nervous energy required to move its uniform masses 

 of muscle, and the feeble working of its diminutive 

 brain — limited apparently to the stirring up, through 

 rough and gross sensual perceptions, of a turbid con- 

 sciousness, which the accumulation of even years of 

 experience can hardly mould into anything like intel- 

 ligence. Even in performing that duty which gene- 

 rally calls foith the highest cerebral activity, viz. the 

 care of the young, the greatest effort of the fish is 

 perhaps to construct a nest of the rudest kind.' But, 

 ^ Turning from these cold and flabby creatures to the 

 gifted bee, and meditating on its bright and varied 

 life — on those wonderful exhibitions of its power and 

 skill which never fail to excite the admiration of 

 mankind, and on its finely- wrought and compact 



^ Art. on ' Higher and Lower Animals/ Oct. 1869, p. 383. 



