PuENBLL. — The Animal and Human Mind compared. 81 



While the animal niiud has grown and developed ^;an 

 passu with the animal body, it apparently possesses no self- 

 originating power. The animal is mentally the creature of 

 external circumstances — formed and fashioned by the outer 

 world. When the mind of any kind of animal is become per- 

 fectly fitted to meet the physical wants of the body and guard 

 against its destruction by enemies it ceases to grow. The 

 lion of the present day has reached no higher mental grade 

 than the lion of the days of Julius CaBsar. It may be that the 

 animal's habits, like its body, have become somewhat altered 

 to suit altered surroundings — if the surroundings have changed 

 — but the animal occupies the same mental level now as it did 

 then. It is the same with our tamed and domesticated 

 animals, which, notwithstanding their daily intercourse with 

 man, have made no appreciable mental advance, although 

 their dispositions have become milder, or, at least, they have 

 learned to keep the native fierceness of their tempers under 

 control. There is no valid reason for supposmg that the modern 

 racehorse is a more intelligent animal than the horses which 

 were driven in chariot competitions at the Olympic games. 

 The elephant is a sagacious animal ; but, although man has 

 tamed it, and employed it in the arts of both war and peace 

 for thousands of years, its sagacity has not developed into 

 any higher mental faculty. No domesticated animal, nor even 

 monkeys bred in confinement, has ever yet learned to make a 

 fire for itself. An animal's mental capacity is exactly measured 

 by its place in creation, and it shows no power of raising 

 itself into a higher mental plane by its own inherent vigour. 



The human mind, on the contrary, possesses a self-origi- 

 nating power which enables it to overcome external circum- 

 stances. When I use the term " self-originating power " I do 

 not refer to superior mental energy under another name. 

 Many individual animals exhibit a mental energy superior to 

 that of their fellows. The leaders of the herd attain that 

 position by the superiority of their courage as well as that of 

 their bodily strength over that of their rivals. By self- 

 originating power I mean that special mental quality which 

 has enabled man to invent civilizations and all the arts of war 

 and peace. The human mind, unlike the animal's, is not 

 merely the creature of the outer world — it possesses its own 

 inner world also. A human being's mental capacity is not 

 measured by his environment, nor by his bodily wants ; he is 

 gifted with faculties which transcend his daily needs, and are 

 practically useless so far as the preservation and maintenance 

 of his life are concerned. Nor could these faculties have been 

 evolved by the pressure of surrounding circumstances. Wal- 

 lace, in his work on " Darwinism," proves very clearly that 

 the mathematical faculty, as exhibited in civilised man, could 

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