312 A Limit to Evolution 



But our fourth rule absolutely compels us to deny them 

 intellectual faculties ; for had they the higher mental powers 

 they would very soon make us unmistakably aware that 

 such was the case. To do this they need not speak, they 

 need merely use a significant gesture-language, like that of 

 the mutes reciting the Lord's Prayer, or like that which is 

 used in ballets. The absence of all such unequivocal signs 

 eloquently proclaims their essentially unintellectual nature. 

 If animals really had ideas, those ideas would be sure to 

 clothe themselves in a language at least of gesture. Bodily 

 signs are necessary for the continued mental activity of even 

 the highest human minds, and they would therefore certainly 

 be necessary for intelligences very much lower in the scale, 

 did such exist. Thus the so-called 'intelligence/ 'under- 

 standing,' and ■ knowledge ' of animals are not really intelli- 

 gence, understanding, and knowledge. They are but sensuous 

 simulations of such intellectual faculties. 



The distinction between the human mind and the highest 

 aaimal powers will be yet more clearly seen if we reconsider 

 our perception of the qualities of objects. A dog may feel 

 another dog as formidable, because courageous ; but he will 

 have no idea of ' courage ' or ' courageousness ' in the abstract. 

 Many animals, even insects, will distinguish clearly between 

 objects of different colours — the white from the blue, the red 

 from the yellow — but no animal knows white^iess or hhxQness, 

 or the conception ' colour' Yet every savage who rewards a 

 youth of his tribe for a brave action, or who smears his body 

 with pigments, thereby shows us that these abstract ideas are 

 familiar to him. Only the human mind has, and ever}^ 

 human mind has, the power of making an abstract quahty 

 a direct and a distinct object of thought. 



Thus it is that a most marked difference, a difference not 

 of degree but of kind, divides men from all, even the highest 

 brutes. There is a limit to evolution between human and 



