CONCEITED ASSUMPTION 291 



same thought or desire can communicate itself, in- 

 stantaneously, to a number of birds, in a way diffi- 

 cult to account for, other than on the hypothesis of 

 thought-transference, or, as I should prefer to call 

 it, collective thinking. Who can imagine, however 

 — or, rather, why should we imagine — that faculties 

 which, though we may not be able to understand 

 them, yet do exist in animals, have become 

 developed in them by other than the ordinary 

 earth-laws of heredity and natural selection ? It is, 

 indeed, easy to imagine that the power of con- 

 veying and receiving impressions, otherwise than 

 through specialised sense-organs, may have been — 

 and still be — of great advantage to creatures not 

 possessing these ; and how can such structures have 

 come into being, except in relation to a certain 

 generalised capacity which was there before them ? 

 Darwin, for instance, in speculating on the origin of 

 the eye, has to presuppose a sensitiveness to light 

 in the, as yet, eyeless organism. Again, it does not 

 seem impossible that the hypnotic state — or some- 

 thing resembling it — may be the normal one in low 

 forms of life, and this would make ordinary sleep, 

 which occurs for the most part when the waking 

 faculties are not needed, a return to that early semi- 

 conscious condition out of which a waking conscious- 

 ness has been evolved. Be this as it may, we ought 

 surely to assume that any sense or capacity, however 

 mysterious, with which animals are endowed, was 

 acquired by them on the same principles that others 

 which we better understand were ; and, moreover, 

 where all is mystery — for ultimately we can explain 

 nothing — why should one thing in nature be deemed 



