Vice-President's Address. 295 



possible within the lines adopted. For example, no con- 

 ceivable morphological change on the foot of a horse could 

 improve it as a means of locomotion, on the plan by which 

 the animal has achieved its special position in the organic 

 world, i.e., by gradually lengthening and strengthening the 

 bones of one of the original five toes, and dispensing with 

 the others. If hard pressed and beaten in swiftness by more 

 powerful enemies, extinction would be its fate unless it 

 resorted to some other means of protection. It is another of 

 Professor Cleland's terminal forms of life. Then again, some 

 animals find securit}^ by burrowing in the earth, and others 

 by climbing trees. Some fight the battle of life with 

 claws, and others with great sharp-pointed teeth. Even an 

 elongated neck or a protruding nose may be the straw which 

 turns the scales in favour of the particular mode of exist- 

 ence the animal has selected. Indeed, there is scarcely a 

 physical, chemical, mechanical, protective, or aggressive 

 principle invented by man which has not been utilised in 

 the armoury of the organic world. But it is not on any 

 such lines that man's advance has been based. 



I have already noted the fact that the superiority of man 

 over other animals is due to his higher mental organisation. 

 I do not say that man has a monopoly of the reasoning 

 faculty, except perhaps in dealing with abstract ideas, and 

 that he alone can draw conclusions from physical phenomena, 

 for many animals do this. They have learned by experi- 

 ence to interpret the ordinary phenomena of nature and to 

 conform to their behests. But their intelligence, whether 

 instinctive, i.e., hereditarily acquired, or suddenly elicited 

 by current phenomena, is altogether on a lower platform 

 than that of man ; and its manifestations are very much 

 alike in them all, seldom going beyond the power of recog- 

 nising what is beneficial or injurious to the individual. 

 This limitation in the mental capacity of animals, except 

 man, is determined by the uniformity of cause and effect in 

 the material world, the interpretation of which involves no 

 higher reasoning than simple obedience to physical laws. 

 But in the case of man a new element is superadded. Man 

 is not content with the supply of fruits he gathers from the 



VOL. XIV. u 



