82 Transactions. — MisceUaneotis. 



not have been developed from the mental nature of the lower 

 animals by variation and natural selection alone, and con- 

 sequently some other influence, law, or agency is required to 

 account for it. The mathematical faculty is not necessary to 

 man's existence ; he could live even in comfort without it ; it 

 is the spontaneous production of his own mind, and leads him 

 into regions of thought altogether beyond his daily wants. 

 Wallace puts the musical and artistic faculties in the same 

 category with the mathematical, but I have just shown that 

 in birds the musical faculty has attained a considerable de- 

 velopment. Here, again, the distinction between the bird 

 mind and the human mind is disclosed. Notwithstanding the 

 exuberant delight which many kinds of birds take in singing, 

 none of them has ever invented a musical instrument, or con- 

 trived any means of developing their voices ; whereas man has 

 created for himself musical systems, and devised a variety of 

 instruments for producing combinations of harmonious sounds. 

 The poetic faculty is likewise one which is peculiarly human, 

 because, while some of the lower animals seem to possess the 

 power of calling up mental images of past events, we have no 

 just ground for concluding that any of them possess a mental 

 power akin to the imagination which enables man to ''body 

 forth the forms of things unknown " ; nor is it possible to 

 understand how the pressure of outward circumstances in the 

 struggle for actual existence could evolve such a power, since 

 it would in no wise assist the animal in holding its own 

 against competitors. It might, indeed, prove a disadvantage. 

 I regard this self-originating power which is possessed by 

 the human mind as constituting the radical distinction be- 

 tween the human and the animal mind ; and consider that, 

 while the former has been evolved from the latter, as is proved 

 by the numerous mental qualities which man and the lower 

 animals possess in common, a,nd, further, by the fact that we 

 can make our wishes and feelings understood by many of the 

 lower animals — and the more we study and learn to know 

 them the wider become our capabilities in this respect — yet 

 man has nevertheless been endowed with other mental faculties 

 of a special character and of a different order to any appertain- 

 ing to the brute. These faculties create an inner mental life 

 in man ; and the humaii mind of to-day is thus partly the 

 hereditary creation of the outer world, and partly the outcome 

 of the working of its own inherent forces, also modified by 

 the influence of the experience of successive generations. I 

 further believe that man, independently of his mental faculties, 

 is gifted with a spiritual faculty, in which the annual does not 

 share ; but a consideration of this spiritual faculty does not 

 fall within the scope of this present paper. 



