Herbert Spencer i6i 



This is not the place in which to examine, seriatim, the 

 facts adduced by Mr. Spencer as exemplifications of intel- 

 lectual evolution (to do so would require a volume at the 

 least), but the effect upon our minds of reading these chap- 

 ters has been to bring home to us with a force we never felt 

 before how man is the one only intellectual animal ' looking 

 before and after.' Moreover, though Mr. Spencer is a master 

 in biology, all his facts are not always accurate. For ex- 

 ample, he has, we think, made a slight oversight in the 

 following passage. Speaking of the order containing Man 

 and Apes, he says : ' The prehensile and manipulatory powers 

 of the lower kinds are as inferior as are their mental powers. 

 On ascending to the very intelhgent anthropoid apes, we find 

 the hands so modified as to admit of more complete opposi- 

 tion of the thumb and fingers.' Now, it is notorious that in 

 the American apes the thumb is very imperfectly oppos- 

 able, bending round about in the same place with the four 

 fingers. Nevertheless, it is the common ring-tailed American 

 apes or Sapajous (Gehus) which are habitually selected 

 by itinerant Italians as the best adapted, by their psychical 

 powers, for the acquisition of numerous and complicated 

 tricks. 



Were it not the case, as we have elsewhere ^ pointed out, 

 that we can, by means of language, draw a sharp line between 

 rational and irrational animals, it would none the less 

 be exceedingly unreasonable to deny the existence of an 

 absolute distinction, though unable to clearly point it out. 

 The animal and vegetable kingdoms have different natures, 

 although we are unable satisfactorily to discriminate between 

 the lowest forms of both. 



When Mr. Spencer, in his Special Analysis,^ passes to a 

 consideration of reasoning, we have again to complain of a 

 total elusion of the main question. We have elaborate ex- 



^ See ante, p. 43 ; and below, p. 182. 2 Psychology, vol. ii. part vi. 



VOL. II. L 



