X.] IN ANIMALS AND MAN ' 5 1 



kind by no means necessarily entails an}^ physical alteration 

 even in the brain itself : it is indeed quite independent of any 

 such change. Such development represents an increase in the 

 intellectual acquirements of mankind as a whole : this is the 

 origin of civilization, using the term in its voidest sense and 

 applying it to all the numberless directions taken by civilizing 

 forces \ Man, availing himself of tradition, is able, in every 

 part of the intellectual domain, to seize upon the acquirements 

 of his ancestors at the point where they left them, and to 

 pursue them further, finally himself leaving the results of his 

 own experience and the knowledge acquired during his life- 

 time to his descendants, that they may carry on the same 

 process. This method of progress is most clearly shown in the 

 history of science, and especially in that of natural science, 

 which deals with an immense number of facts and experiences 

 which have been very slowly acquired, collected, and transmitted 

 to descendants during many centuries of civilization ; and in 

 this way alone could the present state of our knowledge have 

 been reached. The human being of to-day can be easily raised, 

 by a short period of training, to this stage from which, if he be 

 successful, he may perhaps make one or more onward steps. 



This consideration affords especially clear evidence for the 

 assertion upon which I have already laid great emphasis — 

 that the development of any ifiental faculty is not necessarily con- 

 nected with any elevation of the mental capacity of the individual. 

 Hardly any greater power of observation or more acuteness is 

 required to observe the development of an Infusorian under 

 the microscope, than was needed in Aristotle's time to make 

 out the anatomy of a Cuttlefish, with the naked eye and simple 



^ Very similar ideas have been recently expressed by D. G. Ritchie 

 in his ' Darwinism and Politics ' (London : 1891). Thus on pp. 100, loi 

 he writes as follows. ' Language renders possible the transmission of 

 experience irrespective of transmission by heredity. By means of 

 language and of social institutions we inherit the acquired experience, 

 not of our ancestors only, but of other races in the same sense of "in- 

 heritance " in which we talk of people inheriting land or furniture or 

 railway shares. Language renders possible an accumulation of experi- 

 ence, a storing-up of achievements, which makes advance rapid and 

 secure among human beings in a way impossible among the lower 

 animals. Indeed, might we not define civilisation in general as the sum 

 of those contrivances which enable human beings to advance indepen ■ 

 dently of heredity ? '— E. B. P. 



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